MS NOW’s Psaki: Black Turnout Had ‘Surge’ After SCOTUS ‘Gutted’ Part of Voting Rights Act

On Wednesday’s broadcast of MS NOW’s “The Briefing,” host Jen Psaki said that “this past spring, the Supreme Court gutted one of the last remaining pillars of” the Voting Rights Act, and the ruling “appears to have sparked a surge in black voter turnout across the South, and fueled the victory of Mississippi’s first black senator in well over a century.”

While discussing the results in Mississippi’s U.S. Senate race, Psaki said, “[T]he Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law, which, for six decades, has been one of the most powerful tools to protect political rights, preventing discrimination against minority voters at the ballot box. And then, this past spring, the Supreme Court gutted one of the last remaining pillars of the VRA. And boy, did that feel like a very, very dark day, and it was. But that didn’t stop voters. It motivated them.”

She continued, “That decision appears to have sparked a surge in black voter turnout across the South, and fueled the victory of Mississippi’s first black senator in well over a century.”

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