Elie Mystal, a justice correspondent at The Nation, said Tuesday on ABC’s “The View” that “every law” passed before the Voting Rights Act 1965 “should be presumptively unconstitutional.”
Mystal said, “I set out to start to kind of try to write Project 2029,” Mystal explained. “When Republicans come into office, they come in with a sledge hammer. They come in smashing things that I hold dear. When Democrats come into office, they come with like superglue and tape. And, so they try to put things back together. So, I thought about writing ten Constitutional Amendments that would be super cool if we had. But, I was like, ‘No, no, no.’ We need to smash the things that they like. We need to smash the things that are holding this country back. And, so I came up with ten laws that we could just get rid of — not reform, not update for the modern era. Ten things that we can smash if we ever are allowed to get power again that would make this country better tomorrow.”
Co-host Sunny Hostin said, “One of the laws you write about is playing out right now, the Immigration and Nationality Act,” Hostin said. “Now, this administration is using this statute to justify the detentions and possible deportations actually of visa and green card holders who they seem to deem a threat to U.S. foreign policy. What do you make of the administration’s use of the act, and more broadly, is Trump really setting up a First Amendment showdown — which is what Whoopi’s been talking about?”
Mystal said, “Yes, absolutely. One of my premises for the book is that every law passed before the 1965 Voting Rights Act should be presumptively unconstitutional. Because before the 1965 Voting Rights Act, we were functionally an apartheid country. Not everybody who lived here, could vote here. So, why should I give a about some law that some old white man passed in 1920s like, the Immigration and Nationality Act?”
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