On paper, President Joe Biden’s nominee to fill a vacancy on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is an archetypical candidate for a federal judgeship. Adeel Abdullah Mangi has a sterling legal education, which he followed with a distinguished career at a high-profile private firm mixing corporate litigation with important pro bono work. He also has a classic American story: He grew up in a poor country dreaming of a career as a lawyer and immigrated to the United States, where he ascended to the heights of his profession.
The candidate has another quality that was especially appealing to Biden, who has made diversifying the federal bench a key priority: Mangi would be the first Muslim American federal appellate judge in the United States.
When Mangi appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee in December for a hearing about this lifetime appointment, Republican senators did not ask him about his legal background or judicial philosophy. “Do you condemn the atrocities of Hamas terrorists?” Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas demanded of Mangi, a Pakistani American with no connection to Hamas or Palestine other than the fact that he is Muslim, along with 1.8 billion people across the globe.
Such bad-faith ambushes are Cruz’s stock in trade, especially since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas. So it was hardly a surprise that he and his Republican colleagues spent their allotted time insinuating that Mangi was an antisemite and an apologist not just for Hamas but also for the perpetrators of 9/11.
But what is much more worrying is that these tactics could work on some Senate Democrats. Right-wing judicial activists have been running a smear campaign against Mangi, including advertisements aimed at Senate Democrats like Jon Tester of Montana and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, who are battling for reelection. The campaigns describe Mangi, with no evidence, as an antisemite and attempt to link him to Hamas and other terror groups. This means that Democrats who run the risk of losing their seats come November may see defending Mangi’s nomination as a potential risk to their chances at reelection.
The campaign seems to be working. Over the past few days, CNN and HuffPost have reported that there may not be enough Democratic votes to confirm Mangi.
This is an outrage. The attacks on Mangi are utterly disingenuous. Major Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League, have made statements of support for Mangi, whose pro bono legal work has focused in part on fighting for religious liberty and against religious bias across multiple faiths. The American Jewish Committee, which has joined several amicus briefs to the Supreme Court led by Mangi, described him as “a person of integrity, champion of pluralism, and adversary of discrimination against any group.”
Abandoning Mangi’s nomination would be an unconscionable act at any time but especially perilous for Democrats in the current political climate, when tens of thousands of Democratic primary voters in key states are expressing their outrage at Biden’s policy in the Gaza Strip by voting “uncommitted.” Meanwhile, the right is using the attacks on Oct. 7 and the ensuing war in Gaza as a means to imply that any Muslim could be pro-Hamas or antisemitic. If Democrats acquiesce, they will set a dangerous precedent.
Of course, the crucial background for the attacks on Mangi is the wave of Islamophobia that has swept the country over the past six months. The Council on American-Islamic Relations reported at the end of 2023 that it had seen a 216% increase in reports of bias and requests for assistance from the previous year. A 6-year-old boy was stabbed to death in what investigators are calling a hate crime days after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, and three college students of Palestinian origin were shot in Burlington, Vermont, last Thanksgiving weekend, stunning that small, progressive city.
But this goes beyond Islamophobia, as heinous as it is, and beyond Israel and Gaza. The basic ideals of the Democratic Party, including the moral and legal obligation to provide asylum to those fleeing persecution, seem up for grabs. On immigration more broadly, the party has acquiesced to right-wing talking points, failing to prevent or even helping the firm shove of the Overton window to the right. For all the Democratic talk about a freedom agenda, the party has not really seized religious liberty, one of Mangi’s core areas of pro bono work, as part of its vision of a pluralistic and inclusive society.
“By allowing the far-right to frame Mangi’s historic nomination with bogus Islamophobic smears and divide and conquer Senate Democrats, we aren’t just losing a nominee; we’re surrendering the entire debate on our core values of multiracial democracy and religious freedom,” said Waleed Shahid, a veteran Democratic operative who has helped spearhead the uncommitted movement.
While the Democrats waver, it is clear what kind of America the Republican Party wants. Republican values were on full display at Mangi’s confirmation hearing. Republican senators harangued Mangi for his tenuous links to a Rutgers Law School institute, accusing him of holding views espoused by speakers invited as panelists at the institute.
That institute, the Center for Security, Race and Rights, has indeed invited provocative speakers, in service of fostering dialogue on complex and sometimes difficult subjects. Even so, Mangi had no role in selecting such speakers or determining the programming at the institute. He repeatedly, with admirable patience, condemned terrorism and condemned any attempt to justify acts of terrorism.
In recent days, as his nomination seems to be teetering, prominent Democrats have spoken up in his defense.
“Adeel Mangi has faced a barrage of outrageous and unfounded smears because of his religious faith,” said Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Mangi’s home state. “When we look at Mr. Mangi’s record — the totality of his professional life, his commitment to religious freedom and civil rights, his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee — it only reinforces his commitment to upholding and advancing the fundamental values we all hold as Americans.”
The Biden administration is speaking out to urge Mangi’s confirmation without delay, calling him “an extraordinarily qualified nominee who is devoted to the rule of law, lived the American dream through hard work, proven his integrity and would make history on the bench,” said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson, warning that “no senator should cave to hateful, undignified lies.”
If Senate Democrats backpedal in response to the right-wing smear campaign against Mangi, they squander a perfect opportunity to demonstrate the stark difference between their party and the GOP at a time when some Democrats have become deeply disillusioned with their party’s ceding of ground to the right.
As the presidential election grinds on, it is clear that racism and Islamophobia lie at the core of the Republican Party’s revanchist campaign. Donald Trump, echoing fascist leaders throughout history, has declared that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” and when offered the opportunity to walk back or soften this inflammatory phrase by a Fox News journalist recently, he instead doubled down. “Why do you use words like ‘vermin’ and ‘poisoning of the blood’?” Howard Kurtz asked him. “Because our country is being poisoned,” Trump replied.
What better retort is there to this vicious notion than the formidable accomplishments of Mangi? He is an exemplar of how immigration has made the United States a stronger, richer, more powerful nation. He was drawn to the United States and the law by watching “Matlock” as a child in Karachi, Pakistan. In his pro bono legal work, he represents another venerable American tradition: a devotion to protecting the freedom of all Americans to peacefully practice their faiths without interference, prejudice or coercion from the state, a notion the right has sought to upend.
I would ask any Democrat considering voting against this nominee this question: What vision of America do you actually believe in, if not the one exemplified by the life and work of a man like Mangi? Republicans have been very clear about who they are and what kind of future they imagine for our country. Confirming this nominee without delay would offer a powerful and necessary contrast to that dark vision and an opportunity for Democrats to tell us which America they stand for.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
