politicsnation. today from essence festival in new orleans. tonight s lead, justice not served. less than a week after the nation marked the first anniversary of roe s reversal, our conservative majority supreme court handed down a series of regressive decisions. collectively ruling against young and vulnerable people in a diversifying nation. on affirmative action, decades of transformative tools for underrepresented, specifically black kids seeking a higher education. the court left them to their own devices. on president biden s plan to apply a modest relief to suffering student borrowers, the court ruled that the administration had overstepped its bounds. and on lgbtq rights, the court insisted that the right to deny business on religious grounds can be protected as freedom of speech. president biden yesterday after days of responding to these judicial attacks on social progress, laid the blame for this week s decision at the feet of conservative lawmakers and the justice
this series of rulings? are they more energized, or demoralized, michael? that s an interesting question. when you first say that, i do agree with doug brandon in terms of this particular supreme court that acts like a as it relates to the election and black voters, it would be very easy for those people to feel despair as it relates to their engagement in politics and whether they should actually care. but i think this is a perfect opportunity for all of us to stand up and be more engaged, because elections matter. and if we re going to turn this court around, we all have to be engaged. it s gotta be a whole all hands on deck effort. and so our engagement in 2024 is needed now more than ever. that s how we got this court in the first place. some of us did not vote, and others did. but susan, the dobbs decision looms large in the 2022 midterms, and many analysts
about equity. and it s from slavery to jim crow to the mass incarceration, but it s still to this very day the inequities that contribute to why we do have to empower race conscious policy that helps address the systemic issues that have plagued our country since its founding. all right, thank you for being with us. the chair of the congressional black congress, congressman steven horsford. joining me now is a new york university law professor melissa murray. professor, very busy week for the supreme court of our nation, and we need you to help us with some analysis of the major rulings. six conservative justices, all six, were appointed by republican presidents, voted to undo race based affirmative action in university admissions thursday. and i argue, that precedent can be used in other areas.
us. let s start with the supreme court s 63 ruling thursday, overturning race based affirmative action and college admissions. yesterday s ruling canceling president biden s student debt relief plan, offering even modest relief to 40 million student borrowers. black borrowers are disproportionately represented in that group. chief justice john roberts claims these rulings are not political. and yet, in these two cases affecting black americans, we see the same 6 to 3 vote, with the three justices appointed by president trump making up the core of the conservative majority. and i ve been telling people all week long that said that we are not one to vote for, your vote is what gave trump the power to appoint a third of this sitting supreme court. three of the nine justices are