>>21049627 Senate Democrats Pull Vote on Trial Court Nominee Kasubhai GOP dissention/Mustafa KasubhaiPN(Who is Kasubhai?)

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Our Federal Courts Need More Judges Like Mustafa Kasubhai

COURTS RESOURCES 05.30.24 By Kylee Reynolds

In January 2020, an incarcerated transgender woman petitioned a federal court with a simple request — that her name Katherine Nicole Jett be used in the court record and the court remove all references to her deadname, and that the court refer to her using she/her pronouns consistent with her gender identity going forward. “I am a woman and not referring to me as such leads me to feel that I am being discriminated against based on my gender identity,” wrote Ms. Jett. “I am a woman — can I not be referred to as one?”

Her two-sentence motion, simple and straightforward, was all the invitation that anti-LGBTQ 5th Circuit judge, Stuart Kyle Duncan, needed. Tossing aside common decency, professionalism, and judicial ethics, Judge Duncan authored a lengthy transphobic screed masquerading as a court opinion, denying Ms. Jett’s motion. In it, he rallies against Ms. Jett’s plea for basic respect,instead claiming that there is no law “requiring” a court to use a litigant’s correct pronouns — it is merely a “courtesy” extended by some courts(but certainly never his). Further, he says that allowing a litigant to use their correct pronouns calls into question the court’s “impartiality” and culminates with his final absurd point that it’s all just too “complex” for our courts.

Judge Duncan’s manifesto, while claiming to be at least loosely acquainted with the law, completely ignores its ethical responsibilities. All federal judges, except for Supreme Court justices, are bound by an enforceable code of conduct, with ethical canons to guide them. Canon 3 of this code says that judges should perform their duties “with respect for others, and should not engage in behavior that is harassing, abusive, prejudiced, or biased.” In spite of this, Judge Duncan reveals he can’t even be bothered to use the word transgender in the opinion, instead opting to refer to Ms. Jett and transgender people generally as “gender dysphoric persons.”

While the simple idea of treating people in your courtroom with dignity and showing respect to litigants might be too “complex” for Judge Duncan, there are judges who intentionally create inclusive and welcoming courtrooms. Judge Mustafa Kasubhai, a current magistrate judge and federal judicial nominee for the District of Oregon, is one such judge.

Judge Kasubhai leads by example. His courtroom rules include a section on pronoun usage, where he encourages all attorneys and litigants who come before him to share their pronouns and honorifics so that all parties involved know how best to refer to one another. Further, he and his staff include their own pronouns in email signatures, electronic filings, and on their website. In fact, he authored a best practice guide, “Pronouns and the Courts,” to help others create a more inclusive courtroom.

Why is this notable? In an ideal world, it wouldn’t be.

Judge Kasubhai’s intentionality and respect for all people in his courtroom is commendable. The Leadership Conference supports Judge Kasubhai’s confirmation because his career has been steeped in defending and protecting the rights of working people, and his rulings as a magistrate judge have shown that he is a fair-minded jurist.If confirmed by the Senate to the District of Oregon, Judge Kasubhai would be the first Muslim Article III judge on this court and the only Asian American judge to ever serve a lifetime appointment in the state of Oregon — something worth noting as we celebrate AANHPI Heritage Month this month.

More than ever, our courts need judges like Mustafa Kasubhai:Judges who understand the responsibility to equity and fairness that comes with the lifetime job security of a federal judge. Judges who ensure that their courtrooms are welcoming and safe spaces for all people to show up as they are. Judges who treat all people with dignity. And judges who preside over courtrooms where all can trust that their case will be decided by a neutral arbiter on the merits, nothing more or less.

A promise for our judiciary is carved in stone above our nation’s highest court — “Equal Justice Under Law” — yet we’re still failing to live up to this promise. But with a swift confirmation of Judge Kasubhai, we will be just a bit closer.

https://civilrights.org/blog/our-federal-courts-need-more-judges-like-mustafa-kasubhai/

(Look at Board of Directors, etc. of this Org, that tells you all you need to know, all Leftists orgs want him in)

https://civilrights.org/about/board-of-directors/

>>21051226

Two Videos Sen. Kennedy and Sen. Cruz. of questions of Judge Mustafa Kasubhai last Oct.

'Did You Write That?': Kennedy Confronts Judicial Nom About Past Statements On 'Race & Sexuality'

8:22

Oct 4, 2023

At today's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) pressed Mustafa Taher Kasubhai, nominee to be United States District Judge for the District of Oregon, about his past writings.

https://youtu.be/I0uLcRwXuRE

>>21051281

MUST WATCH: Ted Cruz Confronts Biden Judicial Nominee With His Past Writings Cruz Calls 'Marxist'Mustafa Kasubhai

6:25

Oct 4, 2023

At today's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) pressed Mustafa Taher Kasubhai, nominee to be United States District Judge for the District of Oregon, about his past writings.

‘Flirtations With Marxism’: Sen. Cruz Grills Biden Judiciary Nominee Over His Past Writings

October 5, 2023

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Oct. 4, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) pressed Mustafa Taher Kasubhai, President Joe Biden’s nominee to be the district judge for Oregon, onhis past writings. “That’s Marxism in 2020,” he said, referring to a more recent article Mr. Kasubhai wrote.

https://youtu.be/EdFJ8AGcovg

>>21051281

Look at Sen. Cotton, he's having a hard time not laughing

(Article, too long to post, but Coney Barrett causing problems at SC)

Amy Coney Barrett may be poised to split conservatives on the Supreme Court

Legal experts see signs of a “raging” philosophical debate among the court’s supermajority.

By JOSH GERSTEIN 06/19/2024 07:00 AM EDT

A rift is emerging among the Supreme Court’s conservatives — and it could thwart the court’s recent march to expand gun rights.

On one side is the court’s oldest and most conservative justice, Clarence Thomas. On the other is its youngest member, Amy Coney Barrett.

The question at the center of the spat may seem abstract: How should the court use “history and tradition” to decide modern-day legal issues? But the answer may determine how the court resolves some of the biggest cases set to be released in the coming days, particularly its latest foray into the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

If the court adheres to a strict history-centric approach, as Thomas favors, it will likely strike down a federal law denying firearms to people under domestic violence restraining orders.

But Barrett recently foreshadowed that she is distancing herself from that approach. If she breaks with Thomas in the gun case, known as United States v. Rahimi, and if she can persuade at least one other conservative justice to join her, they could align with the court’s three liberals to uphold the gun control law.

That outcome would avoid the certain political backlash that would result from a high court declaration that alleged domestic abusers have a constitutional right to carry a gun. Thomas, famous for his intransigence, might not care about such backlash, but the more pragmatically minded Barrett is surely aware of it.

“It does seem to me that there’s a fight going on, and Rahimi played an important role in provoking it,” said Reva Siegel, a professor at Yale Law School who is an expert on legal history.

The dispute over the historical approach — part of a legal philosophy known as originalism — also could have implications for Donald Trump’s pending bid to have the high court declare him immune from prosecution for attempting to subvert the 2020 election. The potential outcomes in that case, though, are less clear than in the gun case.

For the moment, the battle lines in this civil war among the court’s six conservatives remain somewhat murky. Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch seem to be squarely in Thomas’ camp, while Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh are being cagey about where they stand.

“There is a very ongoing, current debate raging among the justices about how to interpret the Constitution across a range of cases and whether they need to adopt the same approach in all cases,” said University of California Berkeley law professor Amanda Tyler.

Barrett skewers Thomas

The divide became evident last week as the court ruled on what was expected to be an amusing but not terribly significant case over a trademark application for crude anti-Trump T-shirts.

Despite the trivial subject matter, Barrett squared off with Thomas in such a confrontational manner that they seemed to be really fighting about something else. “I don’t think this is about T-shirts at all,” Tyler said.

Thomas wrote the majority opinion rejecting the trademark applicant’s claim. Barrett (and all the other justices) agreed with that bottom-line result. The quarrel came down to methodology.

In a concurring opinion, Barrett used unusually blunt terms to skewer Thomas’ history-based rationale for denying the trademark. She described his approach as “wrong twice over,” and she made clear that her gripes went far beyond this case alone.

“I feel like this is a really stark break,” said Sarah Isgur, a former Justice Department spokesperson during the Trump administration who’s now a prominent Supreme Court analyst.

Barrett complained in her 15-page concurrence that her conservative colleagues have become so enamored of history that they’re now employing it even when the record is ambiguous and the purpose of embracing a retrospective approach is unclear…(why is she making this public?)

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/19/amy-coney-barrett-supreme-court-conservatives-rift-00164047

Citizen Free Press

@CitizenFreePres

Drefanzor Memes for the win. Karine and her cheap fakes.

From drefanzor memes 3:34 PM · Jun 19, 2024 ·21.8K

https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1803511660646129717

(I agree excellent!)

JUSTICE, POLITICS June 17, 20241/2

The Corruption of Merrick Garland

Below is my column in The Hill on the concerning record of Attorney General Merrick Garland on a variety of recent matters, including a frivolous privilege claim to withhold the audiotape of President Joe Biden during the Hur interview. There is a certain corruption of judgment that is evident from this and other decisions by Garland since he became Attorney General.

Here is the column:

This week, Attorney General Merrick Garland took to the pages of the Washington Post to lash out at critics who are spreading what he considers “conspiracy theories crafted and spread for the purpose of undermining public trust in the judicial process itself.” His column, titled “Unfounded attacks on the Justice Department must end,” missed the point.

It is Garland himself who has become the problem. The solution is in Wilmington, Delaware, where 12 average citizens just showed a commitment to the rule of law that seems to be harder and harder for the attorney general to meet.

Since his appointment, Garland has repeated a mantra that he is apolitical and would never yield to the pressures of politics or the White House. When he was nominated, I believed that claim and enthusiastically supported Garland’s confirmation. He was, I thought, the perfect man for the job after his distinguished judicial service as a moderate judge.

I was wrong. Garland’s tenure as attorney general has shown a pronounced reluctance to take steps that would threaten President Biden. He slow-walked the appointment of a special counsel investigating any Biden, and then excluded from the counsel’s scope any investigation of the massive influence peddling operation by Hunter Biden, his uncle and others.

However, it is what has occurred in the last six months that has left some of us shaken, given our early faith in Garland.: I have long been a critic of Garland’s failure to order a special counsel to look into the extensive evidence of corruption surrounding the Bidens. As I stated in my testimony in the Biden impeachment hearing, there is ample evidence that Biden lied repeatedly about his knowledge of this corruption and his interaction with these foreign clients.

However, a more worrisome concern is the lack of consistency in these investigations.First, Special Counsel Robert Hur found that Biden knowingly retained and mishandled classified material. However, he concluded that Biden’s age and diminished faculties would make him too sympathetic to a jury. It was less sympathetic than pathetic, given that this is the same man who is running for re-election to lead the most powerful nation on Earth. More importantly, Garland has not made obvious efforts to reach a consistent approach in the two cases by dropping charges based on the same crimes by Trump in Florida. (Such action would not affect the obstruction counts).

Second, Garland has allowed Special Counsel Jack Smith to maintain positions that seem diametrically at odds with past Justice Department policies. This includes Smith’s statement that he will try Trump up to (and even through) the next election. It also includes a sweeping gag order which would have eviscerated free speech protections by gagging Trump from criticizing the Justice Department. While Garland has said that he wants to give the special counsels their independence, it falls to him to protect the consistency and values of his department….

https://jonathanturley.org/2024/06/17/the-corruption-of-merrick-garland/

>>21051605

2/3

Garland’s most brazenly political act has been the laughable executive privilege claim used to withhold the audiotape of the Hur-Biden interviews.

The Justice Department has not claimed that the transcript is privileged, but only that the audiotape of Biden’s comments is privileged. This is so logically disconnected that even CNN hosts have mocked it.

The Justice Department went further in court by adding conspiracy to absurdity as part of its unhinged theory.It asserted a type of “deepfake privilege”on the basis that the release of the audiotape could allow AI systems to create fake versions of the president’s words. It ignores that there are already ample public sources now to create such fake tapes and that, by withholding the real audiotape, the Justice Department only makes such fake copies more likely to arise and ensnare the unwary.

Most importantly,the arguments of a “he-who-must-not-be-heard” privilege or a deep-fake privilege are ridiculous. Garland knows that, as would any first-year law student. Yet, he is going along with a claim that is clearly designed to protect Biden from embarrassment before the next election. It is entirely political and absurd.

After stumbling through a half-hearted defense of the audiotape decision before he was held in contempt of Congress, Garland was faced with another clear test of principle. Three House committees (Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means) this month referred for prosecution cases of perjury against Hunter Biden and his uncle, James Biden. Despite what appear to be open-and-shut allegations that they lied to Congress, most everyone in Washington believes that Garland and the Justice Department will slow-walk and then scuttle the referrals to protect the Bidens.

This is the same Justice Department that seemed on a hair-trigger to prosecute Trump officials for perjury and contempt after referrals from Democrat-controlled committees.The questions at issue were not “gotcha” traps, like showing up at Michael Flynn’s office to nail him on his description of a meeting with Russian diplomats. These were some of the most-discussed questions heading into Hunter Biden’s long-delayed appearance before the committees.

Hunter is accused of lying about his position at Rosemont Seneca Bohai, a corporate entity that moved millions of dollars from foreign individuals and entities to Hunter Biden. He also allegedly lied about the identity of the recipient of his controversial message to a Chinese businessman, in which he threatened that his father was sitting “right next to me” and would join him in retaliating against the Chinese if they did not send millions. They promptly wired the money as demanded.

Hunter’s answers appear to be demonstrably untrue. Yet, there is little faith that the Justice Department will allow the matter to be presented to a grand jury.If Garland’s pledge to remain apolitical were widely accepted, there would be little question about the prosecution of such compelling claims.

https://jonathanturley.org/2024/06/17/the-corruption-of-merrick-garland/

>>21051616

3/3

Garland now appears entirely adrift in his own department.While mouthing platitudes about being beyond politics, he continues to run interference for the Biden White House. He appears to be looking to close aides for such direction.

He should instead look to those 12 people in Wilmington, Delaware.

Despite facing overwhelming evidence of Hunter Biden’s guilt, his legal team pursued a jury-nullification strategy. Wilmington is Bidentown, the hometown for the president and his family. An array of Bidens, including the first lady, lined up behind Hunter during the trial, in case anyone forgot that fact.

Yet the jury convicted Hunter on all counts without any hesitation. Despite sympathy for a recovering drug addict in a town that has overwhelmingly supported the Bidens for decades, “nobody mentioned anything about political motivations” in the jury room, as one juror noted. “I was never thinking of President Joe Biden,” said another.

Garland needs to show a modicum of that courage and principle as attorney general. He could start by dropping the farcical privilege claims over the audiotape and sending the referrals to the U.S. Attorneys Office for the same priority treatment afforded to Trump officials like Flynn.

As it stands, few believe that will happen, despite Garland’s repeated line about transcending politics. It is not the mantra that is in doubt, but the man.

Jonathan Turley is the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University School of Law. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon and Schuster, 2024).

https://jonathanturley.org/2024/06/17/the-corruption-of-merrick-garland/

>>21051631

When Turley starts using words of insult, you know he's mad. He's always so polite and refrains from outright criticism.