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Free speech is at the very core of our American and Tennessee values, empowering us to speak our minds, challenge our beliefs, and pursue the truth. But as we’ve seen too often in Congress, free expression and transparency are shut down by the Left to keep the American people in the dark.
That’s exactly what happened late last month when Democrats did something unprecedented in the history of the Senate Judiciary Committee: they blocked Committee Republicans from voicing our opposition to President Biden’s far-left judicial nominees before we voted on them.
This was a blatant abuse of power. But it’s easy to see why Democrats don’t want me and my colleagues talking about their nominees. For months, we have exposed that their radical picks have no business being a county fair judge – let alone serving on the federal bench with a lifetime appointment.
Just look at the track record of Judge Mustafa Kasubhai, one of the nominees Chairman Dick Durbin blocked us from speaking about. Judge Kasubhai has defended Marxism, going so far as to say in a 1994 legal essay that “property incites … rebellion.” He’s denigrated America, calling our country “so deeply Islamophobic.” And he’s promoted the radical, leftist view that all heterosexual relationships are infused with violence, and that all sexual acts should be viewed as rape – an appalling argument that silences women who have actually been victims of sexual assault.
Democrats and President Biden want Kasubhai to serve on the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon. But how can litigants – especially women and sexual assault survivors – possibly expect to be treated fairly in his courtroom given his clear biases and poor judgement?
Unfortunately, Kasubhai is not the only deeply unqualified nominee Democrats are trying to install on the federal bench.
When I questioned Judge Edward Sunyol Kiel during a Judiciary hearing last month, President Biden’s nominee for the District of New Jersey blatantly refused to condemn Hamas – a designated terrorist organization – and their unconscionable attacks against Israel. A judicial nominee who refuses to condemn such acts of evil has no place on the federal bench.
Next is Todd Edelman, a soft-on-crime associate judge for the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, who once used his authority to release a known criminal who went on to participate in the murder of a 10-year-old boy at a July 4th cookout. Think about that. Yet, Democrats want to reward Edelman’s failures with a lifetime appointment to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Some of the President’s nominees have been so unqualified that they have had to withdraw their names from consideration. Earlier this year, President Biden’s nominee for the First Circuit, Michael Delaney, was forced to drop out over revelations that he threatened to expose a 15-year-old sexual assault survivor if she came forward with her story.
But rather than learn his lesson from this shameful debacle, the President nominated someone with a similar disregard for victims to fill the seat. Seth Aframe, the President’s new nominee for the First Circuit, once recommended a sentence far below guidelines for an offender who kidnapped a 14-year-old girl with a hearing impairment to an abandoned motel in Vermont, where he brutally raped her. When recommending the sentence, Aframe said that the offender – who had just been released from prison for sexually assaulting minors – would “hopefully” no longer be a threat after finishing his sentence.
Can you imagine telling this little girl’s family that hopefully their daughter’s rapist won’t do it again? That hopefully this criminal would be too old and frail to continue raping little girls? This case alone should be disqualifying for federal service, yet Senate Democrats want to give Aframe a lifetime appointment to one of our nation’s highest courts.
I understand why Democrats don’t want us talking about Aframe, Delaney, Edelman, Kiel, Kasubhai, and the numerous other far-left nominees who lack the judgment and character to take the oath of office. But no matter the tactics the Left tries to use to silence the truth, I will continue to raise the issue of appropriate qualifications for the federal bench.
(Marsha Blackburn represents Tennessee in the U.S. Senate.)