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It's The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris Perry. During the past month, the new Republican majority controlling North Carolina's state Supreme Court issued reversals of previous rulings and overturned a

trial court decision. Now, these are moves that are going to have meaningful effects on the ability

to cast a vote in the state, and will have critical implications for local, state, and national

election outcomes. Here's Michael Watley, chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party, talking

with CBS. I think it's a great day for North Carolina. I think it's a great day for the rule of law, and I think it's a great day for North Carolina. I think it's a great day for the rule of law.

And I think it's a great day for North Carolina voters.

So in order to think about whether or not this has been a great day with me now is Ari Berman,

National Voting Rights Correspondent for Mother Jones.

Welcome back to the takeaway, Ari.

Hey, Melissa.

Always great to talk to you again. Thank you.

All right. Let's just go through each piece of this. What happened with a voter ID?

So the big picture is that there were three major voting rights decisions in North Carolina in one

day, which in and of itself was pretty unusual. One of the things they did was to reinstate a

voter ID law in North Carolina requiring strict government issued ID to cast a ballot. This was not

the first time the Republican legislature in North Carolina had passed such a law. They had put

voter ID into a package of laws in advance of the 2016 election that also

cut early voting and eliminated same-day voter registration, did things like that. The Fourth

Circuit Court of Appeals found that that law prior to the 2016 election targeted black voters in

...