Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim member of Congress, expressed his outrage Tuesday at the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold President Trump’s ban on travel from five Muslim-majority countries.
“The Supreme Court has said that no matter how bad the discriminatory language is before, during and after President Trump’s run and his service, as long as he puts a very thin veneer of national security on top of all that discrimination and racism, they will buy it,” Ellison told CNN. “In other words, as long as a pig has some lipstick on it, it’s fine.”
According to Ellison, the president “has his Supreme Court tailor-made to his ugly philosophy, this partisan’s court. Gorsuch should really not be on the Supreme Court. In my view, he may be there, but he’s not there properly. You can do that. You know, you can jam in a Supreme Court by denying a sitting president their right to appoint the Supreme Court justice. That’s exactly what happened and Gorsuch has just done what his paymasters sent him there to do.”
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The fury didn’t stop there. “It just proves one thing that if you steal and rip off a Supreme Court justice, then you can try to jam any kind of nasty, racist, ugly policy you can down the throats of the American people,” he continued. “But we’re not taking it.”
Ellison has long been one of Congress’ most outspoken progressives, even as he recently decided to vacate his seat to run for Minnesota Attorney General. He will retain his position as deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee during his campaign.
The congressman went on to tell CNN that he believes this decision will eventually “hit the dustbin of history,” along with the infamously discriminatory Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson decisions.
“Discrimination and racism and hatred and religious bigotry is never going to be winning in the end,” Ellison declared.
