‘This Is A Tragedy!’ Despondent Van Jones Lashes Out Over Supreme Court Decisions That ‘Slam Shut the Door of Hope’

A devastated Van Jones joined a somber CNN panel Friday to discuss recent decisions by the Supreme Court on affirmative action, student debt forgiveness, and the First Amendment, and said that the week has been “a tragedy” and a blow to “hope” and inclusion.

The CNN commentator offered a bleak assessment when anchor Kate Bolduan glumly asked for his take on the “totality of what we’ve seen just in the past two days,” as the court has decided on mostly split on ideological lines in cases about how government does and can operate when it comes to the daily lives of Americans.

“This is a tragedy,” he said. “If you care about inclusion and equal opportunity and care about folks who don’t have much and are trying to make it today, this is a tragedy.”

Jones tore into the decisions, saying that they were the result of strategy, and that conservatives “hijacked” the courts and are now “remaking America as they will.”

He claimed that precedent and standing are “now out the door,” that this is a “legitimacy crisis” for SCOTUS, and asked whether Tower of Babel-era religious beliefs can now come back.

“Can somebody now say as a as a matter of religious faith, I just can no longer serve that the agenda of diversity?” he asked rhetorically.

“This is all nuts,” he added.

Well, look, this is a tragedy. If you care about inclusion and equal opportunity and care about folks who don’t have much and are trying to make it today, this is a tragedy. But it’s a tragedy that’s the result of a strategy. And that’s what I think we sometimes forget.

This is a deliberate effort on the part of conservatives to hijack the courts and use them to do what’s happening today. The Federalist Society was organizing on campuses, getting law students together in the eighties and the nineties, setting this thing up. Mitch McConnell focused like a laser on stacking the courts and blocking Obama from doing what he wanted to do. And now you have three Trump appointees. Three. Not one, not two. Three. Remaking America as they will. And all the things I was taught in law school are now out the door.

You used to have to have standing. You couldn’t just, “well, look, I’m concerned about the law. I want the Supreme Court to tell me I’m right.” That’s what just happened. When it comes to LGBTQ, LGBTQ rights. Literally this woman had not been sued by anybody, she hadn’t, had no reason to be in court at all. Standing used to be important. That’s out the window. Precedent. Earlier decisions used to matter. Out the window.

And the Supreme Court used to try to narrowly decide, what’s the most narrow approach we can take to resolve an issue. Now, nope. We’re going to entertain any theory that we can to go after certain groups.

This is a legitimacy crisis now for the Supreme Court. It’s a legitimacy crisis that’s been brought on by a conservative movement that saw it was losing public opinion, it was losing a generation to more inclusive ideas. And so, now you’re using the Supreme Court to slam shut the door of hope, to slam shut the door of opportunity for generations of Americans, and it’s shocking.

The Supreme Court, those black robes are supposed to be referee robes. That you’re not – If you’re a young gay or lesbian person, you shouldn’t look at Supreme Court and see your opponent, you should see a referee, should see somebody who’s going to call it fair.

They went out of their way to grab this case and use it in the way that they’ve used it. And now the First Amendment is being used as a shield for bigotry. The First Amendment is being used as a shield for discrimination. There were people in my father’s day, in my mother’s day, who said that the Bible separated the races, that after Noah, we were separated, after the Tower of Babel, we were separated. That it was ordained by God, that Blacks and Whites should be separated. Do their religious beliefs now come back? Can somebody now say as a as a matter of religious faith, I just can no longer serve that the agenda of diversity?

This is all nuts. But it’s not just a tragedy, it’s a result of a strategy. And we’ve got to wake up and realize this is a serious, serious political fight, not just legal.

Watch the clip above, via CNN.

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