Multiple Democratic senators and their staff have privately warned the White House in recent days that there does not appear to be enough votes in the Senate to confirm Adeel Mangi, President Joe Biden’s Muslim-American judicial nominee, sources familiar with the conversations tell CNN – appearing to suggest that the confirmation of one of Biden’s top-priority judicial picks is in peril.
Biden nominated Mangi in November to the US Third Circuit Court of Appeals. If confirmed, the New York-based litigator would become the first Muslim-American to serve on any federal appeals court. But some allies of the White House on Capitol Hill have made clear that there is not enough support – including among Democrats – to confirm Mangi in the full Senate, those sources said.
The controversy surrounding Mangi’s nomination comes at a moment of heightened political tensions across the country since Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel.
Mangi confronted contentious questions from lawmakers at his confirmation hearing in the Judiciary Committee in December. He was grilled by some Republican lawmakers about, among other things, his views of the Israel-Hamas war, the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and connection to a group that some have described as anti-Semitic.
At one point during Mangi’s confirmation hearing before the Judiciary panel in December, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz highlighted Mangi’s connection to the Center for Security, Race and Rights at Rutgers University – a group that Cruz said embraces “extremism and myopia” and has expressed anti-Semitic views.
Mangi said he had served on the center’s advisory board, which met once a year and advised on areas of academic research, and that he had no knowledge of any events or speakers that the group might have hosted.
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