Last week I addressed the myriad reasons Adeel Mangi is an unconscionable pick for the Third Circuit. The Daily Wire, New York Post, Free Beacon, and Washington Times also argued as much, each featuring pieces raising alarm bells about his nomination.
Yet at yesterday’s Senate Judiciary Committee markup, every single Democrat voted to report Mangi to the floor, where he will likely be confirmed for a lifetime appointment. Not a single Republican on the Committee voted to advance Mangi. Why Democrats would support without dissent a nominee who has repeatedly refused to disavow the hateful programming of the Center for Security, Race and Rights at Rutgers Law School, with which he was affiliated, remains a mystery. If Mangi is scheduled for a floor vote soon, it will be because Senators Sherrod Brown, Bob Casey, Jon Tester, and Kyrsten Sinema can be relied on to continue to be rubber stamps for President Biden’s judicial nominees, despite facing a tough election cycle.
In remarks on the Senate floor earlier yesterday morning, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell pointed out, “Unfortunately, the nominee’s testimony before the Judiciary Committee last month did nothing to assuage these concerns. In fact, even after claiming ignorance of the disgusting and well-documented history of the organization with which he chose to affiliate, he declined repeatedly to disavow it.”
During the markup, Senators John Cornyn, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Marsha Blackburn all vehemently reiterated concerns over Mangi’s 2019 to 2023 advisory board service at the Center for Security, Race and Rights, and his repeated refusal to disavow affiliations with an organization that is so blatantly anti-West, anti-Christian, antisemitic, and pro-terrorist.
Senator Cornyn spotlighted an event that the Center hosted in 2022, where one of the speakers said that “there’s a deep identification among many conservative white American Christians with Israel, and it partly comes from the fact that Israel, like the United States, is a settler colonial state.”
Senator Cruz highlighted another bizarre Center event hosted on the twentieth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks that sought to challenge the narrative of the deadliest attack on American soil and invited an actual terrorist to further make its point. On May 29, 2021, the director of the Center, Professor Sahar Aziz, signed a letter, posted on the Center’s website, which asserted, “A ceasefire does not end the colonial conditions of structural violence and inequality that Palestinians live under.” The most shocking part of the letter reads, “We are in awe of the Palestinian struggle to resist violent occupation, removal, erasure, and the expansion of Israeli settler colonialism.” Senator Cruz rightly asked, “Well, after October 7, are Senate Democrats in awe of that? We’ll find out with their vote in a moment.”
Senator Cruz went on to say that he asked Mangi whether he agreed with the above statements, whether Israel was an occupying force in Palestine, and specifically, did he agree or disagree with Professor Aziz? Mangi refused to answer and said the matter “was too complex.” Cruz quipped, “I kind of wondered if he was auditioning to be president of Harvard.” The answer is not difficult. Mangi had several opportunities to denounce the Center, its events, and its speakers, and instead elected time and again to pretend he knew nothing about them. Senator Lee noted that as someone who donated and lent his name to the Center and raised a considerable sum of money for it, “unless he was hiding under a rock, I just don’t see any plausible way that he could have missed all of this.”
I could spend pages listing every hateful event that the Center hosted while Mangi served on its advisory board. Senate Republicans have spent hours addressing the litany of reasons why he is unqualified to be a federal judge. Dozens of thoughtful pieces have addressed Mangi’s troubling affiliations. But Senate Democrats’ vote yesterday showed just how little they care. Surely affiliating with an organization that hosts terrorists as its speakers for events that effectively blame America for 9/11 would be grounds to disqualify a nominee. Thursday’s 11–10 committee vote proves how willing Senate Democrats are to blindly support any nominee the White House puts before them.