Adeel Mangi Deserved Better
Senate Democrats’ abandonment of Biden’s remaining appeals court nominees ensures that the federal judiciary won’t get its first-ever Muslim American appeals court judge anytime soon.
Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer struck a deal with his Republican counterparts: In exchange for Republicans dispensing with their procedural efforts to obstruct the confirmations of President Joe Biden’s district court nominees, Democrats would stand down on Biden’s four pending appeals court nominees, ensuring that President-elect Donald Trump will fill those seats instead.
Whether the deal is “good” sort of depends on how hard you think Senate Democrats should be working over the next three weeks to confirm Biden’s remaining nominees. On the one hand, the terms are probably not as bad for Democrats as Fox News, which first broke the story, framed it: Two of the would-be-outgoing appeals court judges are Democratic appointees, and will likely (wearily) rescind their decisions to take senior status in light of this development. My hunch is that the “Republicans Heroically Rescue FOUR Appeals Court Seats From Joe Biden’s Marxist Clutches!” narrative was pitched by Republicans to placate Trump, who has been raging for days at their failure to stop Democrats from confirming nominees during the lame duck—which, for the record, is the same thing that Republican senators were doing four years ago this month.
On the other hand, it is a real bummer that Senate Democrats have elected not to even try to confirm these appeal courts nominees, and are instead choosing a path forward that will allow them to go home at 5 PM every day, skip working weekends, and, if they wrap up the rest of their business in a timely manner, fly out of Washington for the holidays a bit early. A throughline of the past four years of judicial politics has been Senate Democrats failing to adequately prepare for the fight. Now, it seems, they’re content to simply call it off.
For my money, the saddest casualty of this choice is the nomination of Adeel Mangi to a seat on the Third Circuit. If confirmed, Mangi, a New Jersey law firm partner, would be the first-ever Muslim American appeals court judge, which prompted conservative activists to wage a vile, racist smear campaign against him earlier this year. While interrogating Mangi about his previous relationship with a university-affiliated religious freedom research organization, one Republican senator asked about how he “celebrates” September 11, which should, in my view, immediately replace the “beating your wife” formulation as the canonical example of a loaded question in persuasive writing classes.
As I wrote at the time, in an ideal world, the people in charge of confirming judges would not be affected by lazy appeals to rank bigotry. Regrettably, the people in charge of confirming judges are Senate Democrats, who folded in embarrassing, spectacular fashion: Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto announced she would oppose Mangi, and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, the most annoying senator of my lifetime who is not named Jeff Flake, quickly followed suit. As a result, Senate Democrats will soon have the privilege of watching Republicans fill the seat that could have been Mangi’s with some white guy with a monosyllabic first name who makes a recurring monthly donation to the Alliance Defending Freedom, and has prepared a carefully-workshopped non-answer about whether the Constitution allows for the indefinite imprisonment of people who criticize the Supreme Court.
Adeel Mangi deserved better. His nomination’s failure is a stain on the legacy of this Democratic Senate, which confirmed a lot of judges, sure, but could not be moved to display moral courage in the moment that most required it.
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Lets put it this way.....if this were the Republicans they would make the deal and then confirm everybody they wanted anyways. They play to win. Time for the Democrats do the same.....screw the republicans and confirm everybody they can by any means necessary.
Democrats are stupid and give in too easily. They should be working many more hours a day and on weekends to get as many court nominees confirmes. The hell with going home for the holidays. We hired you to do a job...do it for a change! Chuck is past his prime if he ever had one. Anyone who can;t afford a pair of bifocal glasses is too well-paid. I am sure he is worth millions and his constitutents suffer because he is ineffective every day. Time for a new leader.
djt should be in prison not the White House. He will soil it again as he did the last time. MAGA's don't pay attention. I hope that the Palestinisns are the first to get deported thanks to the Michigan voters. Ilain Omar did not do them any favors by urging them not to vote for Kamala. She would have made peoples lives easier and appoined qualified people not nuts. I wonder what will happen with Dr Oz, RFK Jr and the rest of the wrecking crew he is putting in place. I doubt that foreign countries will share sensitive info with tulsi knowing she will give it to Vlad. Yes put the heads of hedge funds and oil companies in charge. You bet Donnie dumpster fire. Scary times ahead. Polio, measels, covid, whooping cough, etc. Rampant flu.