Briahna Joy Gray, former national press secretary for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) 2020 presidential campaign, is pushing back on claims from some moderate Democrats that progressives who did not back Hillary Clinton in 2016 are to blame for the conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
In an interview on Hill.TV “Rising,” Gray commented on the criticism she and other progressives on Twitter received after the Supreme Court this week refused to block the implementation of Texas’s “fetal heartbeat bill,” which prohibits virtually all abortions.
Some users on Twitter used this as evidence of the lasting impacts from the 2016 election, as former President Trump was able to appoint and get confirmed three conservative justices to the high court while in office.
However, Gray said that progressives are frustrated by Democrats’ use of the Supreme Court as a selling point to rally behind a single moderate candidate, arguing, “You actually have to provide something substantive instead of just bullying us and threatening us.”
“That’s not to say that there was a minimization of the consequences of what it would mean to have a conservative Supreme Court, but I was articulating what I observed, which is that frustration had reached a level that voters would no longer be bullied in that way without also being offered substantive policy reform,” she added.
Watch part of Gray’s interview above.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.