LOADINGERROR LOADING WASHINGTON — Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) announced late Tuesday that she won’t support President Joe Biden’s judicial nominee, Adeel Mangi, caving to an ugly campaign waged by the GOP and throwing the fate of his nomination into question.“I cannot support this nominee,” Cortez Masto said in a statement. “Mr. Mangi’s affiliation with the Alliance of Families for Justice is deeply concerning.”Advertisement
She said AFJ, a New York City-based nonprofit organization that provides counseling services and legal aid to the family members of people who have been incarcerated, did two things that she can’t get past.“This organization 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,” she said.There are so many problems with this argument that it’s hard to know where to begin.And the bigger question is whether Cortez Masto, the first Democrat to publicly oppose Mangi, realizes that she is giving in to a monthslong campaign of baseless and Islamophobic attacks on a historic judicial nominee that Republicans simply don’t want confirmed to a pivotal seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit. You folded like a deck of cards, Cortez Masto.Anna Moneymaker via Getty ImagesAdvertisement
Mangi, a veteran civil litigator based in New Jersey, was unanimously rated well-qualified by the American Bar Association. He has been hailed for his legal and pro-bono work by a range of organizations, including the AFL-CIO, the Coalition of Underrepresented Law Enforcement Associations and more than a dozen prominent Jewish groups.Mangi also happens to be Muslim. If confirmed, he’d be the nation’s first-ever Muslim appeals court judge. He would also even out the ideological balance of this appeals court. The 3rd Circuit is currently made up of seven Republican-appointed judges and six Democrat-appointed judges. With Mangi on it, it would be tied.Chalk it up to plain old Islamophobia or a willingness to say literally anything to prevent Biden from filling this U.S. appeals court seat, but Republicans have made Mangi the target of some of the ugliest and most disingenuous attacks on a judicial nominee in recent years.GOP Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas), Tom Cotton (Ark.) and Josh Hawley (Mo.) berated Mangi in his December hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, to the point where the chairman, Sen. Diick Durbiin (D-Ill.), had to bang the gavel and apologize on behalf of the committee. These Republican senators demanded that Mangi share his personal views on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel and the Israeli-Hamas conflict in general. Mangi repeatedly denounced all terrorism. All of this is not normal or appropriate.Last month, the Judicial Crisis Network, a right-wing dark money group, began running ads accusing Mangi of being a “radical” and an “antisemite” and of being involved in an organization’s efforts to teach students “to hate Israel, to hate America and to support global terrorism.” None of this is true.Advertisement
The ads even used video footage of the second plane crashing into the World Trade Center in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, overlaid with a headline about Mangi. He had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack or anyone who planned those attacks.The smears against Mangi have been so disgusting that the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, publicly denounced the GOP senators for their treatment of Mangi. So did the Anti-Defamation League, the leading national group focused on combating antisemitism.In a particularly unusual instance, a Black former U.S. appeals court judge appointed by President George W. Bush also privately reached out to Senate leaders this month to urge them to confirm Mangi, saying he is “deeply disturbed” by how poorly Mangi’s been treated. President Biden’s judicial nominee Mangi, shown here in his Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in December 2023.C-SpanThis gets back to Cortez Masto’s reasoning for opposing Mangi.She said she wouldn’t support Mangi because of his affiliation with AFJ. But his tie to this group — which, again, is a nonprofit that provides things like care packages and legal help to families of people who have been incarcerated — is extremely loose.Advertisement
In 2020, Mangi’s law firm, Patterson Belknap, took on a wrongful death case referred by AFJ that inv …
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She said AFJ, a New York City-based nonprofit organization that provides counseling services and legal aid to the family members of people who have been incarcerated, did two things that she can’t get past.“This organization 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,” she said.There are so many problems with this argument that it’s hard to know where to begin.And the bigger question is whether Cortez Masto, the first Democrat to publicly oppose Mangi, realizes that she is giving in to a monthslong campaign of baseless and Islamophobic attacks on a historic judicial nominee that Republicans simply don’t want confirmed to a pivotal seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit. You folded like a deck of cards, Cortez Masto.Anna Moneymaker via Getty ImagesAdvertisement
Mangi, a veteran civil litigator based in New Jersey, was unanimously rated well-qualified by the American Bar Association. He has been hailed for his legal and pro-bono work by a range of organizations, including the AFL-CIO, the Coalition of Underrepresented Law Enforcement Associations and more than a dozen prominent Jewish groups.Mangi also happens to be Muslim. If confirmed, he’d be the nation’s first-ever Muslim appeals court judge. He would also even out the ideological balance of this appeals court. The 3rd Circuit is currently made up of seven Republican-appointed judges and six Democrat-appointed judges. With Mangi on it, it would be tied.Chalk it up to plain old Islamophobia or a willingness to say literally anything to prevent Biden from filling this U.S. appeals court seat, but Republicans have made Mangi the target of some of the ugliest and most disingenuous attacks on a judicial nominee in recent years.GOP Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas), Tom Cotton (Ark.) and Josh Hawley (Mo.) berated Mangi in his December hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, to the point where the chairman, Sen. Diick Durbiin (D-Ill.), had to bang the gavel and apologize on behalf of the committee. These Republican senators demanded that Mangi share his personal views on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel and the Israeli-Hamas conflict in general. Mangi repeatedly denounced all terrorism. All of this is not normal or appropriate.Last month, the Judicial Crisis Network, a right-wing dark money group, began running ads accusing Mangi of being a “radical” and an “antisemite” and of being involved in an organization’s efforts to teach students “to hate Israel, to hate America and to support global terrorism.” None of this is true.Advertisement
The ads even used video footage of the second plane crashing into the World Trade Center in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, overlaid with a headline about Mangi. He had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack or anyone who planned those attacks.The smears against Mangi have been so disgusting that the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, publicly denounced the GOP senators for their treatment of Mangi. So did the Anti-Defamation League, the leading national group focused on combating antisemitism.In a particularly unusual instance, a Black former U.S. appeals court judge appointed by President George W. Bush also privately reached out to Senate leaders this month to urge them to confirm Mangi, saying he is “deeply disturbed” by how poorly Mangi’s been treated. President Biden’s judicial nominee Mangi, shown here in his Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in December 2023.C-SpanThis gets back to Cortez Masto’s reasoning for opposing Mangi.She said she wouldn’t support Mangi because of his affiliation with AFJ. But his tie to this group — which, again, is a nonprofit that provides things like care packages and legal help to families of people who have been incarcerated — is extremely loose.Advertisement
In 2020, Mangi’s law firm, Patterson Belknap, took on a wrongful death case referred by AFJ that inv …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]