Welcome to Episode 394 of the podcast “No, Are You Fucking Kidding Me With This.” Today, we’ll be looking at the stalled, probably doomed nomination of Adeel A. Mangi to the Third US Circuit Court of Appeals. If he’s confirmed, Mangi would be the first Muslim American to serve as a federal judge at the appellate level.
But that’s unlikely to happen, because in addition to a truly ugly, racist media campaign against Mangi by rightwing groups and some astonishingly xenophobic questioning by GOP senators, two Senate Dems have come out against confirming him, too, effectively sinking the nomination if it goes to a vote. Mangi hasn’t yet withdrawn his nomination, but unless something changes, that’s looking likely.
As Balls and Strikes Editor Jay Willis details, Mangi has been subjected to
one of the most unhinged right-wing smear campaigns in recent memory. Given how integral unhinged right-wing smear campaigns are to modern Republican Party politics, this is a high bar.
If anything, that may be putting it mildly. Willis notes that the rightwing “Judicial Crisis Network” — which grew out of efforts to confirm Clarence Thomas ages ago and is now headed by a former Thomas law clerk — ran an ad campaign in February that
spliced images of Mangi’s face with, among other things, video clips from Hamas’s 2023 attack on Israel and footage of a plane hitting the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. An ominous-sounding voiceover warns viewers that Mangi is an “antisemite” who, at his confirmation hearings, “refused to condemn” terrorism and other “hateful views.”
Not exactly, or even barely, true. Mangi has served on the advisory board of the Rutgers Center for Security, Race, and Rights, which was founded after September 11 with the mission of studying “the underlying structural and systemic causes of Islamophobia and xenophobia.” Willis points out that Mangi’s duties at the Center involved taking part in annual meetings related to research on US antidiscrimination laws, and that’s it.
Oh! But in 2021, the Center “hosted a panel that included (gasp!) speakers critical of Israel.” Mangi didn’t attend, participate, or even know about the event, but it was just enough of a connection for Republicans to smear him for it during his confirmation hearings in December, because as a board member he was clearly responsible for every word each participant said, was he not?
As a partner — the youngest at his firm to make partner, in fact — at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP, Mangi “built an extensive pro bono practice focused on protecting the rights of LGBTQ people and immigrants,” as the National Women’s Law Center put it in its endorsement. Big rising star in progressive law stuff, but that’s not what the Republicans latched onto at Mangi’s confirmation hearing in February.
Instead, Goopers on the Judiciary Committee competed to ask Mangi the most freakishly racist questions, demanding he explain every last detail of every thought he may have had about the Israel-Palestine conflict, 9/11, terrorism, and probably that other Islam-related atrocity, algebra. Simple country Oxford graduate Sen. John Kennedy (R-Louisiana) just had to
ask Mangi if he “celebrate[s]” 9/11, hoping to generate breathless National Review headlines that placed “Mangi” and “Hamas” within a few words of each other.
Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz got in on the Islamophobia too, obviously. Cotton demanded to know whether Mangi believes “that Zionist settler colonialism was a provocation that justified Hamas’s atrocity against Jews in Israel?” [No. He doesn’t.] Ted Cruz couldn’t take just one condemnation of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attacks on Israelis; he needed several and still wasn’t happy:
Cruz: Do you condemn the atrocities of the Hamas terrorists?
Mangi: Yes, that’s what I was about to address, Senator.
Cruz: Is there any justification for those atrocities?
Mangi: Senator, I will repeat myself. The events of October 7 were a horror. I have no patience, none, for any attempts to justify or defend those events.
Josh Hawley, for his part, badgered Mangi to say, yes or no only, if a statement by someone at the Rutgers Center about Israeli “settler colonialism” reflected his own views. When Mangi said he had no patience for attempts to justify the attacks, Hawley interrupted and demanded to know whether he agreed or disagreed with the statement. Mangi said he isn’t a policy expert on the Middle East and couldn’t comment, so Hawley said that sounded like “maybe” Mangi agreed. And so on. Clearly, by trying to be nuanced about geopolitics that have nothing to do with the job of being an appeals judge, Mangi refused to condemn terrorism, despite his multiple condemnations of terrorism during the hearing.
The Republicans’ Islamophobic attacks on Mangi were widely attacked in statements by groups including the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, and others, but the smear campaign against Mangi never let up. You want vile? How about this Washington Times op-ed and illustration declaring Mangi “Hamas’ favorite judicial nominee”? Yes, that’s the Hamas flag superimposed on the nominee’s face.
Fact Check: Hamas is not in the habit of endorsing US judicial nominees.
This week, two Senate Democrats decided they might as well give up on defending a Biden nominee because what if Republicans used a vote to confirm him against vulnerable Dems in the fall? Oh, wait, because they too had “reservations” about him.
Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nevada) said she couldn’t support Mangi because, as HuffPost’s Jennifer Bendery explains, he has worked with the “Alliance of Families for Justice,” a nonprofit that helps families of incarcerated people with legal and counseling services. Cortez Masto complained that the AFJ
has sponsored a fellowship in the name of Kathy Boudin, a member of the domestic terrorist organization Weather Underground, and advocated for the release of individuals convicted of killing police officers.
Bendery writes, “There are so many problems with this argument that it’s hard to know where to begin.”
For starters, Mangi has only very loose ties to the AFJ, says Bendery. In 2020, his law firm took on a case referred by the AFJ, and as lead on the case, Mangi won a huge settlement for the family of a mentally-ill inmate who was killed by a prison guard.
After that, AFJ asked Mangi to join its advisory board. He joined, but only as a resource in particular areas of expertise. This board does not meet, and Mangi hasn’t taken any other cases from AFJ. He has never had any role in the oversight or governance of AFJ.
That’s the entire scope of Mangi’s “association” with the AFJ. He had zero involvement in its sponsorship of a fellowship in the name of Boudin, who was herself a criminal justice reformer, or in its call for a compassionate release of Mumia Abu-Jamal before he dies in prison. Says Willis,
Regrettably, this is the entire story: Catherine Cortez Masto, who does not have to defend her seat until 2028, wants to scuttle a trailblazing judicial nominee because he once won a landmark civil rights case in conjunction with a nonprofit that, independently of its relationship with Mangi or the case or anything else worth mentioning, also interacted with people whom Republican politicians find objectionable.
Shortly after Cortez Masto capitulated to the rightwing lie campaign, Joe Manchin joined in, with a typically Manchinesque explanation: He simply can’t vote for a nominee who doesn’t have bipartisan support, so since Republicans are dead set against Mangi, sorry, your abundant qualifications and long list of endorsements don’t count.
The bigots appear to have won, unless somehow Cortez Masto can be persuaded to see she was snowed by a rightwing propaganda blitz. But that would mean admitting she was wrong.
[NBC News / Balls and Strikes / PBS Newshour / HuffPost]
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