Adeel Mangi’s letter to America
Biden's stalled Third Circuit nominee, Mangi spoke out in a fiery — and needed — four-page letter. Also: The clock is ticking on TikTok. (Sorry.)
On Monday, 13 months after President Joe Biden announced that Adeel Mangi would be his nominee for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Mangi issued a searing indictment of a system that has left him as the longest-pending appellate nominee in the nation.
“I have battled for justice, even if it meant there would be none for me,“ Mangi wrote in the letter, acknowledging there is “no pathway to confirmation” at this point.
Later, he summed up his four-page letter — which, bless him, included many links — with a damning, direct assessment, writing:
[W]e have a fundamentally broken process for choosing federal judges. This is no longer a system for evaluating fitness for judicial office. It is now a channel for the raising of money based on performative McCarthyism before video cameras, and for the dissemination of dark-money-funded attacks that especially target minorities. Nominees pay the price and so too does our nation.
Mangi would have been the nation’s first Muslim American federal appeals court judge, and the attacks against him never stopped. After Republicans questioned him at his confirmation hearing largely with anti-Muslim guilt-by-association attacks, the opposition later expanded to include baseless claims of terrorism and anti-law enforcement connections.
Then, three Democrats — Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen of Nevada and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia — announced earlier this year that they would not support Mangi’s nomination. As I wrote at the time, their opposition “is appalling cowardice, and they should be ashamed.”
And yet, their opposition stood — and Mangi’s nomination went nowhere, as many others were confirmed.
Then, in the lame-duck session, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer asserted that Mangi’s nomination lacked the votes to succeed — along with three other appeals court nominees — in reaching a deal with Republicans to allow district court nominees to proceed more easily.
Of the other appellate nominees, Ryan Park, who was nominated for the Fourth Circuit, has already withdrawn his nomination — prompting the judge he was to replace, Judge James Wynn, to rescind his decision to take senior status upon the confirmation of his successor. The other two include Julia Lipez, nominated for a now-vacant seat on the First Circuit, and Karla Campbell, nominated for the Sixth Circuit seat currently held by Judge Jane Stranch. Like Wynn, Stranch was planning to take senior status upon the confirmation of her successor. Many are watching now to see if she, also like Wynn, rescinds her plans.1
On Monday, Mangi, who was nominated for a now-vacant Third Circuit seat, sent his letter to Biden — but, really, to America — about his nomination, the process and indignity he has faced, and where we are as a nation.
He also understood — and shared — that this is about more than him, writing:
Our country faces an incoming tsunami of bigotry, hatred, and discrimination. It targets Muslims, Arabs, Jews, Black people, the LGBTQ+ community, and many others. And it always pretends to be something other than what it is. These forces are fueled not only by their proponents, but equally by the collaboration and silence of the spineless. They can be defeated only by those who lead voters with courage, not those who sacrifice principles for votes.
The letter should be required reading for anyone who wants to know how to deal with opponents of pluralism, diversity, and democracy — in part with a willingness to call out racists, bigots, and political opportunists.
Mangi addressed the year-long attack he faced beginning at his confirmation hearing:
When my nomination then came before the Senate Judiciary Committee, I was prepared to answer any questions about my qualifications, philosophy, or legal issues. I received none. Instead, I was asked questions about Israel, whether I supported Hamas, and whether I celebrated the anniversary of 9-11. Even more revealing, however, was the tone. The underlying premise appeared to be that because I am Muslim, surely I support terrorism and celebrate 9-11. When I made clear that all these claims are false — that I condemn the Hamas attacks and all forms of terrorism, and indeed that it was my city that was attacked on 9-11 — the next Republican Senators up just repeated their performative outrage. There were children in the audience.
He goes on to explain everything — all of the attacks, the reality, the cruelty, and the meaninglessness of it all. Really, it’s four brief, but essential, pages. Read it.
Mangi does much more, though, going on to address some of those who derailed his historic nomination.
As to Sen. Josh Hawley, whose treatment of Mangi at his confirmation hearing was criticized, alongside Sens. Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton, for being “un-American and Islamophobic” by the Council on American Islamic Relations, Mangi appeared to respond to him on Monday, writing, “[H]istory has recorded who raised a fist of solidarity to the protestors that later attacked law enforcement officers in our nation's capital on January 6, 2021. And which lawmakers support them still.”
But then, he wrote, “it was three Democratic Senators who surrendered to this campaign.“
As to Cortez Masto and Rosen, he wrote:
Two allied Senators from a state far from the Third Circuit announced their opposition ostensibly based on the attacks claiming I am against law enforcement. I will not assume the worst possible motivation for their embrace of this attack. But to me that leaves two possibilities: that these Senators lack the wisdom to discern the truth, which exposes a catastrophic lack of judgment; or they used my nomination to court conservative voters in an election year, which exposes a catastrophic lack of principle.
As to Manchin, who currently says he’s an “independent,” Mangi wrote:
Meanwhile, a third Senator literally handed control of his vote to Republicans. To fetishize bipartisanship amidst an outrageous attack campaign is not a virtue — it is a preening abandonment of morality.
He also challenged the deal itself, and, thus, Schumer’s leadership, writing:
[U]ltimately, none of these Senators had to reach a final decision and vote. Resurgent efforts after the election towards confirmation were derailed by the deal in the Senate that denied all circuit nominees a vote. My family and I were put through this astonishing prolonged process and yet in the end denied even a vote requiring Senators to show who they are. The strength of the Senate's collective commitment to principle stands revealed.
Mangi’s story is not unique, and Republicans’ opposition and fear-mongering is not new. What is new, at least in my time covering nominations, is his willingness to speak out forcefully about the problem.
“I set forth this record of my experience and my opinions so that this playbook will be recognized the next time a Muslim is nominated to a prominent position of service,” he wrote.
Let us hope people listen.
TikTok at SCOTUS
Lawyers for TikTok and a group of TikTok creators both went to the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to stop a law from effectively banning TikTok in the United States on January 19 if it is not sold by that time, something the company says won’t happen.
Aside from the president, who can delay the deadline under the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, the Supreme Court is the company’s last shot at stopping the ban from going into effect.
The filings followed Friday’s order from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejecting requests to block enforcement of the law as to TikTok during appeals to the Supreme Court. That, in turn, had followed the December 6 decision of the D.C. Circuit concluding that “the provisions concerning TikTok and its related entities … survive constitutional scrutiny.”
In TikTok’s filing, it seeks a ruling by January 6 because, the lawyers write, TikTok “would need a period of lead time before January 19, if the injunction were denied, to coordinate with their service providers to perform the complex task of shutting down the TikTok platform only in the United States.”
The company also suggested that the justices could treat this as a petition for certiorari, taking up the appeal on the basis of this injunction request and not waiting for the full filing of a petition for certiorari.
I’ll have more at Law Dork on this once the government’s response is filed.
This paragraph was added after initial publication, with the final update at 11:45 p.m.
This is moving, important, brave and heartbreaking. How far we have fallen.
Ah yes, of course judgeships are decided by politic and not logic. Of course, Cotton, Cruz and Hawlet bleated Islamophobia—they’ve got their audience. Of course Manchin cherished his outsider role. It’s no longer about law or justice … but about megaphones and spotlights.