On Thursday, President Trump flipped another U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals into a conservative majority, as the Senate confirmed the nomination of White House attorney Steven Menashi to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals now has seven judges appointed by Republican presidents and six by Democrats. Democrats flailed about in hysteria over the Menashi nomination, in which he was confirmed 51-41 in a party line vote only excepted by Susan Collins of Main, who voted against Menashi.
Menashi, 40, was viciously attacked by Democrats; Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer raged, “Mr. Menashi is one of the most contemptible nominees to come before the Senate in all my time in this body. He would be a disgrace, a disgrace to the seat once held by the great Thurgood Marshall.”
Today, the Senate will vote on the confirmation of Steve Menashi to serve on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
Let me be very clear:
His nomination is a disgrace to the seat once held by the great Justice Thurgood Marshall. pic.twitter.com/MpxKHwS6Yy
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) November 14, 2019
Senaor Patrick Leahy of Vermont hyperventilated, “The Senate is voting right NOW on Steven Menashi, one of the MOST extreme and LEAST forthcoming judicial nominees I have seen in my 45 years in the Senate. His refusal to answer even basic Qs from both parties made a mockery of our constitutional duty to provide advice & consent.” He added, “Menashi was just confirmed 51-41. A shameful day for the Senate.”
The Senate is voting right NOW on Steven Menashi, one of the MOST extreme and LEAST forthcoming judicial nominees I have seen in my 45 years in the Senate. His refusal to answer even basic Qs from both parties made a mockery of our constitutional duty to provide advice & consent
— Sen. Patrick Leahy (@SenatorLeahy) November 14, 2019
Menashi was just confirmed 51-41. A shameful day for the Senate. https://t.co/cmAdgUvXQO
— Sen. Patrick Leahy (@SenatorLeahy) November 14, 2019
Menashi has been pilloried by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, who smeared his law-review article titled “Ethnonationalism and Liberal Democracy” as “a high-brow argument for racial purity.” But as Ed Whelan pointed out in National Review, Menashi’s point, that “ethnonationalism remains a common and accepted feature of liberal democracy that is consistent with current state practice and international law,” is to rebut claims that “Israel’s particularistic identity—its desire to serve as a homeland for the Jewish people—contradicts principles of universalism and equality upon which liberal democracy supposedly rests.” Menashi, whose maternal grandfather’s relatives were murdered in the Holocaust, added in his article, “[p]articularistic nationalism and liberal democracy … emerged together at the same historical moment and persisted in symbiosis.”
Whelan added:
Menashi’s argument about national identity is clearly not about “racial purity” or a “unifying race.” Indeed, the fact that Israelis from Ethiopia are black makes it impossible to take seriously the claim that Menashi is making a case for “racial purity.” Menashi further states that it “is not even clear … that Israel’s national identity can even be described as ‘ethnic’” (in a narrow sense of that concept), as Israeli Jews come from “Argentina, Ethiopia, Germany, Morocco, Russia, and Yemen.”
In another post, Whelan stated:
The assumption by many that Menashi welcomes his conclusion that “the solidarity underlying democratic polities rests in large part on ethnic identification” is beyond bizarre. That is a conclusion that Menashi, the descendant of Jewish refugees, draws heavily from the horrific failure of European states to protect the rights of their Jewish citizens and of Jewish refugees. As Menashi puts it, “the failure of liberal universalism to address the worst human-rights crisis in history revealed that a liberal scheme of human rights requires a system of particularistic nation-states.”
In other words, Menashi has millions of reasons to wish that “liberal universalism” had proven itself a solid foundation for a democratic polity. It is appalling that those who oppose the existence of Israel as a refuge for Jews are prominent among those viciously and baselessly attacking Menashi as a racist.
As Fox News noted, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said of Menashi, “Mr. Menashi is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Stanford University Law School, he’s accrued an impressive record in private practice and earned clerkships on the D.C. Circuit and with Justice [Samuel] Alito. I hope my colleagues will join me in advancing each of these nominations.”
The 2nd Circuit joins the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as a court Trump has flipped to a conservative majority.