In Case You Missed It: Senator Cruz Responds To The Editor: Dems Don’t Want To Defend Mangi On His Record, So They Accuse Critics Of Islamophobia
To the Editor:
Re: An Islamophobic Smear Campaign Is Dividing Democrats, Column
From U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas)
The New York Times
March 21, 2024
Ms. Polgreen blames Islamophobia for Adeel Abdullah Mangi’s difficulty in getting confirmed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and she accuses me of conducting “bad faith ambushes” because I asked Mr. Mangi during a Senate Judiciary hearing if he condemns Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
The reason I asked Mr. Mangi this question — which Ms. Polgreen fails to mention — is that Mr. Mangi has refused to denounce statements by the director of Rutgers’s Law School Center for Security, Race and Rights in which the director referred to Israel as an “occupying force” and accused Israel of engaging in “settler colonialism.” Mr. Mangi donated to the center and served for years on its board of advisers.
Ms. Polgreen also fails to note that the Senate confirmed another nominee, Zahid Quraishi, who, like Mr. Mangi, is Muslim and Pakistani American, with 81 votes — one of the highest vote totals for any judicial nominee of the Biden presidency.
The White House and Senate Democrats don’t want to defend Mr. Mangi on the merits of his record, so they instead accuse his critics of Islamophobia. That is a shameful attack.
Ted Cruz
Houston
The writer is a Republican senator from Texas.
To read Cruz’s letter to the editor, click here.
Background on organizations Mangi is tied to:
Mangi served on the Rutgers Center for Security, Race and Rights Advisory Board from 2019 to 2023 and personally donated or facilitated nearly $20,000 in funding toward the Center. This organization sponsored an event on the 20th anniversary of September 11, 2001, featuring speakers who are tied to terrorism. One speaker at this event was convicted for providing support to a terrorist organization, another called for Intifada in the U.S., and a third speaker organized events with a terrorist who hijacked planes.
Mangi was personally invited to join the Advisory Board by the Center’s Director, Professor Sahar Aziz. This director signed an open letter on May 29, 2021 that read, “we are in awe of the Palestinian struggle to resist violent occupation, removal, erasure, and the expansion of Israeli settler colonialism” and has reposted propaganda on X, including the following: “Turns out there were no rapes or ‘beheaded babies’! Israel & its MSM accomplices are making up so many outrageous lies to distract from its carnage in Gaza!”
These concerning statements are not isolated. The Rutgers Center regularly platforms those who whitewash terrorism and promotes vile anti-Semitic material. The Center’s radical activities prompted an investigation by Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which remains ongoing. The House Committee on Education and the Workforce has launched a separate investigation into the Center.
Mangi also currently serves as an Advisory Board Member of Alliance of Families for Justice (AFJ). Kathy Boudin, one of AFJ’s founding board members, pleaded guilty to felony murder for her role in a Brinks armored truck robbery that resulted in the death of two police officers in 1981. She served 23 years in prison. Boudin served as a decoy in the crime, luring two police officers to lower their weapons before they were ambushed, shot, and killed by co-conspirators. The heinous crime was politically motivated—Boudin and her Weather Underground Organization committed the robbery to secure funds for their militant-marxist political activities. To honor her legacy, AFJ sponsors a paid year-long “Kathy Boudin fellowship.”
