“I [think] any fair-minded person would have to conclude that, over the past several years, President Biden has nominated some people to the federal bench who, quite frankly, are not qualified to judge a pie contest.”
The statement above was made by Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) in March 2024. He was sounding the alarm on President Joe Biden’s radical judicial nominations, warnings everyone should pay attention to.
Arguably, it would not be a stretch to categorize Biden’s judicial appointments, whose political philosophies and ideologies are closer to Leon Trotsky than John Marshall, as neo-Soviet. His radical and extremist appointments will have a devastating impact that will last far beyond Biden’s time in office.
Republicans, independent voters, senators, and the Supreme Court as currently constituted must prevent Biden’s attempt to reshape the country’s judicial system with a trove of acolytes intent on issuing a new era of left-wing political activism from the bench.
Biden’s appointments range from ACLU lackeys to those who resemble Vasiliy Vasilievich Ulrikh, the Soviet judge who presided over the Stalin show trials of the 1930s. Consider some of the appointees over the years and the extreme leftist pressure groups that back them. We begin with a recent one whose confirmation hearing was held on April 17, 2024.
Rebecca L. Pennell is currently a Washington State Court of Appeals judge. On March 20, 2024, Biden nominated her to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington. During her confirmation hearing, Kennedy quoted a letter she co-authored as part of the Washington State Civil Legal Aid Oversight Committee.
“Racism and white supremacy currently plague every social, educational, economic, governmental, and legal system in our state and nation, as they have for centuries. Both target Black, Indigenous, African-American, Latinx, and other people and communities of color — resulting in entrenched inequality and inequity, manifesting in unjust, unfair, and differential treatment, and yielding remarkably disparate and negative outcomes relative to those experienced by white people,” the letter said. “Together, they have deeply wounded communities of color and deprived generations of countless opportunities, including the profound promise rooted in the founding of this country — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Imagine the damage Pennell will do behind the bench while embracing the left-wing ideology that “racism and white supremacy” plague every aspect of American society. It’s wrong, it’s hyperbolic, it’s creating a false historical narrative to create the oppressed class of the perpetually aggrieved in the country. It’s not grounded in reality. Look no further than the country’s college campuses at the moment. It’s not white supremacists or racists causing chaos and violence and harassing college students.
Kennedy also noted that appellate courts have reversed her rulings many times.
Furthermore, as if to reinforce Pennell’s extreme left-wing political leanings, the day before her confirmation hearing, the Alliance for Justice, a left-wing pressure group partially funded by George Soros, wrote to Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) to persuade the Senate to approve Pennell’s appointment.
“On behalf of the Alliance for Justice, a national association representing more than 150 diverse organizations united in our commitment to justice, I write to express our support for the confirmation of Rebecca Pennell to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Washington,” the letter said. “With over a decade of public defense experience, Judge Pennell will bring much-needed professional diversity to the federal bench.”
This letter was signed by Rakim Brooks, the president of AFJ and a far-left political activist. Brooks was the manager for the ACLU’s “Systemic Equality” agenda, a member of the Biden-Harris transition team, and a policy adviser for the Obama administration.
Next, consider the core tenets of left-wing extremism at AFJ’s foundation. According to InfluenceWatch, it is a “left-of-center legal policy coalition composed of over 100 organizations.” It was founded in 1979 by Nan Aron, a woman who was described as the “Madame Defarge of liberal court watchers” and who said that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was not her idea of justice.
In 1985, AFJ established the Judicial Selection Project. This organization aims to “promote left-wing and Democratic-appointed judges while defeating conservative and Republican-appointed judges.”
InfluenceWatch highlighted that AFJ and JSP have helped “turn the process of nominating judges into a highly partisan process.” These are the kinds of organizations that Biden has in his political arsenal. And he is using them with little resistance or uproar from legislators on the Right.
In recent years, specifically in May 2018, AFJ joined with Defending Rights and Dissent and many other groups to oppose five of President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees. It is worth noting that among DRAD’s board of directors is a person involved in the pro-Palestinian freedom movement and another who is a prison abolitionist. AFJ’s team includes alumni from the AFL-CIO and the ACLU.
AFJ was founded over 40 years ago and has been working to appoint left-wing judges and prevent constitutionally ideological judges since Leonard Leo was in high school. And, as they showed earlier this month in their witch hunt surrounding Leo, one could legitimately ask why Durbin or Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has not investigated this organization. In an ideal scenario, a Republican senator such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), or Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) would ask them.
Pennell’s is just one of Biden’s extremist nominees. Her campaign to expunge white people who do not ascribe to her political philosophy pales in comparison to that of another of Biden’s neo-Stalinist judges, Adeel Mangi. Again, consider the words of Kennedy.
“With respect, the president’s pick of Mr. Adeel Mangi is frankly one of his worst. Mr. Mangi is affiliated with an organization that calls itself the, quote, ‘Alliance of Families for Justice,’” Kennedy said. “In fact, Mr. Mangi is not just affiliated with this group: He’s on their advisory board.”
“One of the alliance’s founders was a member of a domestic terrorist organization,” Kennedy said. “What does that mean? One of the alliance’s founders was convicted of murdering police officers in cold blood. … Now the Alliance [of] Families for Justice — on whose board Mr. Mangi [sat] — advocates for the release of people who kill cops.”
Kennedy linked Mangi’s affiliation to an organization that advocated the release of cop killers and whose founding member was part of a domestic terrorist organization. It’s indicative of the kind of radicals Biden has been appointing to courts nationwide.
The person to whom Kennedy refers is Kathy Boudin. She pleaded guilty to felony murder for her participation in a 1981 armed robbery during which two police officers were killed. The purpose of the robbery was to obtain funds for the Weather Underground organization – another anti-American communist-inspired group she founded.
She served 23 years in prison. Yet, this cop killer has been honored by the Alliance of Families for Justice and sponsors a “Kathy Boudin fellowship.”
Incidentally, Boudin is the mother of Chesa Boudin, the former left-wing district attorney of San Francisco whose pro-criminal policies were so bad that even the Frisco Flower Power gang could not tolerate him. He was subsequently thrown out of office by a recall election.
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While Biden’s critics focus on gaffes, blunders, mishaps, failures, and bad policy, he is quietly reshaping the country from within with a steady flow of judicial appointments. Kennedy has been sounding the alarm for months but has fallen on deaf ears. Biden’s judicial appointments do not embrace American values; they support radical, left-wing ideologies that run counter to the liberties this country was founded on.
The kind of left-wing totalitarianism that nominees such as Mangi and Pennell support directly threatens the country’s democracy. The ideological havoc they will cause within our nation’s courts could very well be irreversible.
It’s time for the rest of the country to start listening and, more importantly, take action to resist such nominees. Because as much as Biden talks about the threats to American democracy, as his judicial appointments have shown, he is the biggest threat to it.