Confidence in the American legal system hinges on the beliefs that justice is blind and judges are impartial.
That confidence has taken a significant hit in recent years because Americans across the country have watched a two-tiered justice system emerge where violent activists are allowed to tear apart, loot, and burn whole neighborhoods in the name of social justice, while any excuse is accepted for arresting actual peaceful pro-life protesters who are at odds politically with the Biden Administration.
Further reputational damage occurred when no one was held accountable for leaking the Supreme Court’s draft decision in the Dobbs case to the press, even after crowds of angry, screaming maniacs descended on justices’ front yards.
It is a dangerous place indeed when the American public can no longer expect judges to be faithful to, and maintain professional competence in, the law without being swayed by interests, public clamor, or fear of criticism.
And there is nothing more antithetical to those expectations than the nomination of a staunch ideologue whose record indicates that he or she is not inclined to follow those norms.
That is why the Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA) is formally opposing the nomination of Nancy Abudu to the Eleventh Circuit, a step RNLA has only taken with one other nomination to the bench by President Joe Biden.
Abudu currently works as the strategic litigation director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization infamous for labeling institutions like the Family Research Council as hate groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center most recently made headlines when one of its attorneys was arrested for domestic terrorism in an attack on the future site of an Atlanta, Georgia police training facility.
Like her employer, Abudu has a well-documented track record of making extreme statements like comparing felons’ loss of voting rights to slavery and equating commonsense election reforms to voter suppression. As recently as 2021, Abudu accused officials in Alabama of being “distressingly committed to the state’s legacy of voter suppression.” These are just a few examples of how Abudu’s viewpoints fall outside of the mainstream.
Abudu is the poster child for the far-Left’s push to install radical judicial nominees who would upend America’s legal system, and Senate Democrats and the Biden Administration will not give up on her nomination even though it has been pending confirmation for more than a year.
Unfortunately, Abudu is not the only pending nominee who has a past indicating that their personal ideology could cloud their judgment on the bench. Nusrat Jahan Choudhury, Julie Rikelman, and Natasha Merle are just a few other controversial nominees.
Incredibly, after President Biden ran through his list of activist judges who cannot be trusted to faithfully apply the law due to their extreme political views, he managed to nominate individuals who would be incapable of faithfully applying the law – because they apparently do not know the law.
Judge Charnelle Bjelkengren is a sitting trial judge for the Spokane Superior Court in Washington who President Biden nominated to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington. During her confirmation hearing in January, nominee to the Eastern District of Washington Judge Bjelkengren was unable to answer simple questions about the U.S. Constitution posed to her by Louisiana Senator John Kennedy:
“Tell me what Article V of the Constitution does,” Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy asked Bjelkengren.
“Article V is not coming to mind at the moment," Bjelkengren responded.
“How about Article II?" Kennedy shot back.
“Neither is Article II," Bjelkengren replied.
Bjelkengren was also unable to explain the basic legal concept of purposivism to Senator Kennedy. Astonishingly, Senate Democrats criticized Senator Kennedy for his line of questioning and even defended Judge Bjelkengren’s apparent lack of legal knowledge.
None of this matters to Biden or the Senate Democrats, however, so long as the nominated can be counted on to toe the ideological line and rule the way the radical left-wing of the Democrat Party demands.
In the past two years, President Biden has routinely nominated unqualified individuals to the bench. The Senate must vote “no” on Nancy Abudu and other unqualified nominees if they are serious about maintaining trust in the fairness of the judiciary.
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