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anti-defamation league
Schools Are No Place for the ADL
Educators must consider the actual cost of a free program like “No Place for Hate,” whose sponsor conflates antisemitism with anti-Zionism, files civil rights complaints against schools, and promotes Israel propaganda in the classroom.
Jan 02, 2025
Launched in 1913 to counter antisemitism and discrimination, the Anti-Defamation League, or ADL, now resembles a mythological shapeshifter that presents alternately as a civil rights organization and a pro-Israel propagandist.
In its “No Place for Hate” program that caters to both elementary and secondary schools, the ADL’s stated mission is to empower students, teachers, and parents to “stand against bias and bullying... ” with school-wide pledges, projects, and games aimed at celebrating diversity and stamping out hate in the halls, in the cafeteria, in the reading circle, anywhere that hate may manifest.
In Norse mythology, the jealous god Loki is a shapeshifter who appears alternately as a salmon or an old woman. Disguised as the old woman, Loki—the god of darkness—carves an arrow out of mistletoe to trick the blind god Hodr into hurling an arrow at his exalted twin brother, Baldr—the god of light.
The ADL is not a salmon or a singular old woman, but a cunning policy advocate that despite allegations of spying on social justice movements and targeting Arab-led organizations has popularized its “No Place for Hate” lessons in 2,000 schools, reaching 190,000 educators and 1.8 million students—according to the ADL website.
Sure, the program offers banners draped across hallways, pledges and to-do lists, even sage advice now and then, but the pretty package turns ugly once fully opened and scrutinized for its pro-Israel indoctrination.
In the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) of over 500,000 students, No Place for Hate schools either currently or previously included Roosevelt High School, Amelia Earhart Middle School, Benjamin Franklin Elementary School, Mark Twain Elementary School, and others. The LAUSD Office of Student Civil Rights links to the ADL under “Tools for Educators,” which in turn links to an article attacking American Muslims for Palestine for “being at the core of the anti-Israel and anti-Zionist movement in the United States.” In 2022, LAUSD board member Scott Schmerelson, now board president and often a champion of public education, authored a resolution instructing the superintendent to invite the ADL to update and revise curriculum.
While selling schools on activities to bolster respect and community, the ADL—analogous to the shapeshifter in mythology—engineers the death of debate over Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish nationalist state in historic Palestine.
In a No Place for Hate lesson on scapegoating, the ADL writes, “Debates about the legitimacy of Israel’s existence or demonization of Israelis create an unsafe climate for Jewish students and interrupt opportunities for critical thinking for all students.” Notice how the ADL wrongly mixes debate over a nation state’s political ideology with demonization of individuals in that state—all in the same sentence to discourage critical analysis and evaluation.
Schools that subscribe to this sort of speech suppression, ruling out debate over an ethnostate colonizing, annihilating, and terrorizing Palestinians, are like the blind brother who hurls a lethal dart—only this time the weapon of propaganda pierces the institution of education to silence inquiring minds wrestling with the devastation live-streamed on their cell phones.
In Japanese mythology, the nine-tailed kitsune-yako fox can take human form to infiltrate high society, where the yako appears as a seductive woman to level a lethal curse—a scar, a burn—on an unsuspecting yet powerful man.
If only the man had been more observant, he might have noticed a few furry fox tails sticking out of the back of the yako’s dress. Yes, the shapeshifter can be unmasked provided those it targets are willing to look behind the facade.
The Lure of a Packaged Curriculum
The ADL lures schools with its anti-bias No Place for Hate program by claiming to help administrators, teachers, and parents build “inclusive and safe communities in which respect and equity are the goals and where all students can thrive.” It’s hard to resist such a pitch, particularly when it comes with banners, buttons, balloons, and bracelets as part of a polished package that outlines a step-by-step approach to creating community through “I Am” poems; peer-to-peer interviews; school surveys; and collages of diverse, smiling students.
The program, however, warrants deeper analysis, so best to begin with the basics.
How a School Qualifies—Registration
Schools that want to become a “No Place for Hate” school first must register with the ADL, which could be a problem for anyone concerned about allegations of ADL surveillance. The Guardianreports an internal 2020 ADL memo reveals the ADL tracked a Black Indianapolis activist who worked on the Deadly Exchange campaign to expose U.S. police training with the Israeli military.
“It scared the shit out of me,” the activist told the press, adding, “It stopped me from moving forward because I don’t want to put people in my life at risk—I work with youth, so it stopped me in my tracks.”
Decades earlier, The Washington Postreported that police in the 1990s investigated the ADL for allegedly “monitoring the activities of thousands of activists”—allegations the ADL denied. According to the newspaper, San Francisco police confiscated from ADL offices “leaked copies of confidential law enforcement reports, fingerprint cards, driver’s license photographs, and individual criminal histories drawn from police records.”
Next: Committee and Pledge
After registering with the ADL, schools then form a steering committee of faculty and students to guide the work of building community and challenging bias at every turn. No mention is made of centering students victimized by bullying and racism to spearhead the committee, which is charged with encouraging students, staff, and guardians to sign a school-wide pledge. For elementary schools, the pledge reads, “I promise my best to be kind to everyone—even if they are not like me.” For secondary, the pledge is more proactive, “I will reach out to support those who are targets of hate.”
The entire school is expected to sign the pledge which features a logo with the words, “No Place for Hate—An ADL Education Program.” While the words are innocuous enough, the platforming of the ADL raises concerns about elevating an organization with a history of surveillance, complaints against public schools, and unconditional support for Israel. This patronage continues in the wake of the International Court of Justice’s preliminary ruling (1/26/24) that South Africa’s genocide case against Israel was plausibly brought, and Amnesty International’s (12/5/24) scathing report, ‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza,
There’s another issue, too. While there’s nothing in the wording of the pledge that’s problematic, the fact that virtually everyone is expected to sign it in order for the school to participate can create a coercive environment.
Only ADL-Approved Activities
After students and staff sign the ADL pledge, they then move on to the next criteria required for ADL designation as an official “No Place for Hate” school. Each school must implement three of the ADL’s approved activities, such as discussions around identity, listening journals, and walks against hate.
For middle and high school, one of the recommended activities to lead to school-wide action involves a lesson plan entitled, “Antisemitic Incidents: Being an Ally, Advocate, and Activist,” in which students are to understand and recognize antisemitism based on a troubling definition that includes the marginalization of Jewish people based on myths about Israel.
Among the “materials needed” for the lesson is a link to the ADL’s “Audit of Antisemtic Incidents 2022,” which says, “References to Israel or Zionism were part of 19% of the 219 campus incidents.” The audit includes a section “Anti-Zionism/Israel-Related” in which the ADL smears the organizations Witness for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, charging antisemitic incidents were perpetrated by individuals associated with these groups. The ADL writes, “ Public statements of opposition to Zionism, which are often antisemitic, are included in the audit when it can be determined that they had a negative impact on one or more Jewish individuals or identifiable, localized groups of Jews.”
In No Place for Hate, students are rightfully encouraged to object to racist jokes, yet no one is encouraged to protest Israel’s killing and wounding of hundreds of thousands of Gazans, tens of thousands of whom are children
Does this mean the ADL considers antisemitic any criticism of Israel that offends a Jewish person? What about the thousands of Jews marching in cities, conducting sit-ins in the Capitol, and occupying subway stations with t-shirts that scream, “Cease-fire” or “Stop Arming Israel” or “Not in Our Name”? These Jews are more than offended by Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine; they are outraged.
Jewish Voice for Peace, a fast-growing anti-Zionist national organization, charges the ADL “is not a credible source on antisemitism and racism” because it conflates antisemitism with criticism of a state, adding, “The ADL has consistently targeted advocates for Palestinian human rights in a concerted and coordinated campaign to repress any speech that criticizes Israel’s current war on Gaza or its policy of oppression of Palestinians.”
The ADL has filed civil rights complaints with the Department of Education against Occidental and Pomona colleges, as well school districts in Philadelphia, Santa Ana, and Berkeley. In the complaint against Berkeley, the ADL objects to student protesters of U.S.-Israel genocide walking out of class to shout, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” The chant does not call for the elimination of Jews from Palestine but the right of Palestinians expelled from their homeland to return.
Additionally, the ADL, which tells students to be kind and compassionate—never bullying—writes a threatening letter to nearly 200 college presidents, demanding investigations of the nonviolent Students for Justice in Palestine, the campus organization leading protests against Israel’s slaughter in Gaza.
The Kicker
If a school wants to implement its own activity for challenging bias and bullying, it must first appeal to the ADL for approval. Absent ADL approval, the activity cannot count toward achieving official “No Place for Hate” status. One need not be a champion of public education to cringe at the outsourcing of anti-bias education to a private political advocacy organization, particularly one that, according to the website Open Secrets, spent over a million dollars in 2024 to lobby lawmakers to vote for a pro-Israel agenda.
The ADL is, after all, an enthusiastic proponent of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, with examples that conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism to open the door for more legal complaints against schools and colleges, even when the speech in question is constitutionally protected free political speech, not hatred of Jews.
School-to-Prison Pipeline via the ADL
The ADL’s No Place for Hate program includes a section on social justice, as opposed to simple acts of kindness, such as offering to help a teacher distribute papers or hold down a fountain faucet for another student. The ADL aptly defines a social justice action as one that involves a group of people who organize to bring about “institutional change” that might solve the problems of gun violence, homelessness, or school-to-prison pipeline.
How contradictory then that the ADL encourages students and teachers to both report incidents of bias and hate to the ADL by completing an incident report form, as well as—in cases of extreme injustice—calling the police, rather than referring those involved to a student-faculty council on restorative justice process that emphasizes making amends, performing school service, or developing empathy through role-plays. Under the subheading, “Best Practices for School Administrators—Act Quickly and Respond,”the curriculum advises principals to “clarify what the role and duties of school resource officers (SRO’s) and (whether) police should and should not be in the process. Contact law enforcement as necessary.”
Given the ADL’s close working relationship with police, it is worth considering whether involving the ADL increases the likelihood of police involvement and a punitive rather than educational approach, potentially creating something akin to the school-to-prison pipeline that the ADL critiques.
Never mind the police for a minute. Reporting incidents—some of which may relate to criticism of Israel—to the ADL could spell legal trouble down the road, should the school’s administration not follow the ADL’s prescription for addressing the situation.
Moreover, despite the No Place for Hate social justice verbiage, it’s hard to imagine the ADL ever approving a school-wide letter-writing campaign to Congress to block weapons to Israel during its genocide in Gaza or testimony before school boards to divest from companies building segregated roads in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Note, the No Place for Hate glossary defines antisemitism as “The marginalization and/or oppression of people who are Jewish, based on the belief in stereotypes and myths about Jewish people, Judaism, and Israel.”
Antisemitism is real—white supremacy at Charlottesville, murders at the Tree of Life Synagogue, Nazi symbols at January 6—but to redefine antisemitism to include criticism of Israel only confuses people while allowing a nation state to act with impunity.
Pyramid of Hate
The ADL’s No Place for Hate program introduces students to the Pyramid of Hate to encourage discussion and analysis of escalating acts of bias and bigotry. At the pyramid’s base is Biased Attitudes of stereotyping; one level higher is Acts of Bias, such as bullying; even higher on the pyramid is Discrimination; and at the top of the pyramid is Genocide, the act or intention to systematically annihilate a people.
Even though the curriculum has been updated since October 7, 2023 there is no mention of Israel’s bombardment and starvation of over 2 million imprisoned Gazans, nor the multitude of experts around the world who have named Israel’s actions genocide.
In No Place for Hate, students are rightfully encouraged to object to racist jokes, yet no one is encouraged to protest Israel’s killing and wounding of hundreds of thousands of Gazans, tens of thousands of whom are children. A 2024 study by the Community Training Center for Crisis Management in Gaza found “96% of children surveyed feel their death is imminent, while 49% have expressed a desire to die.”
In its open letter to educators, the Drop The ADL From Schools campaign—endorsed by 90 organization—writes the ADL “attacks schools, educators, and students with bad-faith accusations of antisemitism in order to silence and punish constitutionally protected criticism of Israel and the political ideology of Zionism.” The organization asks educators to cut ties with the ADL, including use of its No Place for Hate curriculum. Meanwhile, CODEPINK activists are testifying in front of school boards on California’s Central Coast, urging board members to expel the ADL.
Bottom Line
For all its political correctness—the curriculum’s emphasis on pronouns and respect for non-binary identities—at the end of the school day No Place for Hate personifies the mythical character of the shapeshifter as it lures school districts into checking off the anti-bias box while surrendering authority to the controversial Anti-Defamation League. Sure, the program offers banners draped across hallways, pledges and to-do lists, even sage advice now and then, but the pretty package turns ugly once fully opened and scrutinized for its pro-Israel indoctrination.
The Alternative–the Power Within
While it’s tempting for administrators to subscribe to a free, pre-packaged curriculum, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to addressing racism or bullying and bias that seeps into our schools as a result of society’s structural racism: segregation, caste, economic inequality, voter suppression. But this work must be done bottom up, by creating a school community of critical thinkers, principled actors, and life-long learners.
From the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) in Creating a School Community:
Students in schools with a strong sense of community are more likely to be academically motivated (Solomon, Battistich, Watson, Schaps, & Lewis, 2000); to act ethically and altruistically (Schaps, Battistich, & Solomon, 1997); to develop social and emotional competencies (Solomon et al., 2000); and to avoid a number of problem behaviors, including drug use and violence (Resnick et al., 1997).
Rather than ceding control to the Anti-Defamation League for a top-down prescription, schools can exercise their own agency to build community through schoolwide public service projects, murals that reflect students’ ethnic diversity, and cultural events that celebrate acts of resistance to oppression and colonization. Inside the classroom, teachers can address issues of race, bias, and bullying with books and short stories that lend themselves to rich discussion.
In the Final Analysis...
Educators must consider the actual cost of a free program like “No Place for Hate,” whose sponsor conflates antisemitism with anti-Zionism, files civil rights complaints against schools, and promotes Israel propaganda in the classroom. The answer to creating a positive school climate is not “out there”—in the hands of an organization with a distinct political agenda—but in here, in the school and in the school-to-community relationship.
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CNN's Tapper, Bash Urged to Apologize for 'Reprehensible' Lies About Rashida Tlaib
"At this point, there is virtually zero chance that CNN, Jake Tapper, and Dana Bash don't know that Rashida Tlaib never said what they are claiming," said one observer.
Sep 24, 2024
Calls grew on Monday for CNN and two of its top on-air personalities to apologize for claiming that U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib made an antisemitic remark during a recent interview after the journalist who interviewed the Michigan Democrat confirmed that the reporters were lying.
During the September 13 interview with Detroit Metro Times reporter Steve Neavling, Tlaib—the only Palestinian American member of Congress—condemned Democratic Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel for setting a "dangerous precedent" by prosecuting University of Michigan students who peacefully protested against Israel's war on Gaza, for which the key U.S. ally is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice. Charges against the Michigan protesters include trespassing on their own campus and obstructing police.
"I'm the reporter who interviewed Rashida Tlaib. She never said Nessel did this because she's Jewish. Never. You're spreading lies."
"We've had the right to dissent, the right to protest," Tlaib said during the interview. "We've done it for climate, the immigrant rights movement, for Black lives, and even around issues of injustice among water shutoffs. But it seems that the attorney general decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs."
Nessel, who is Jewish, accused Tlaib of antisemitism in a Friday social media post comparing the congresswoman's comments to a cartoon drawn by Detroit News automotive reporter Henry Payne and published in the right-wing National Review implying Tlaib is a member of Hezbollah, the Lebanese political and paramilitary group.
Enter Jake Tapper, CNN's lead Washington anchor, who critics have long accused of pro-Israel bias. On Monday, Tapper interviewed Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, asking the Democrat to respond to Tlaib's purported assertion that Nessel is only prosecuting Palestine protesters "because she's Jewish."
"I'm not going to get in the middle of this argument that they're having," Whitmer said. "I can just say this. We do want to make sure that students are safe on our campuses, and we recognize that every person has the right to make their statement about how they feel about an issue, a right to speak out, and I'm going to use every lever of mine to ensure that both are true."
During a live broadcast on Monday, CNN anchor Dana Bash lamented what she called the "sad reality" that "antisemitism is everywhere and it comes from both ends of the political spectrum."
"But politicians sometimes sidestep calling it out when it comes from a member of their own party," she added, referring to "a Democratic congresswoman's accusation that the state's Jewish attorney general was letting her religion influence her job."
There was no such "accusation."
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League—which has come under fire for conflating legitimate criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews—slammed Whitmer,
posting Monday that "saying you want to 'make sure that students are safe on our campuses' is just words if you are not willing to use your bully pulpit to speak out unequivocally on antisemitism and support holding people accountable for violating the law when it affects Jews."
Whitmer then issued a new statement
saying: "The suggestion that Attorney General Nessel would make charging decisions based on her religion as opposed to the rule of law is antisemitic. We must all use our platforms and voices to call out hateful rhetoric and racist tropes."
Neavling accused Whitmer of "adding to the lie."
"I'm the reporter who interviewed Rashida Tlaib," he
said in response to a social media post by Tapper. "She never said Nessel did this because she's Jewish. Never. You're spreading lies."
On Monday,
Detroit Metro Times also published a fact-check by Neavling underscoring that Tlaib never said what Nessel, Tapper, and Bash claim.
"Tlaib never once mentioned Nessel's religion or Judaism. But Metro Times pointed out in the story that Nessel is Jewish, and that appears to be the spark that led to the false claims," Neavling wrote. "It should also be noted that the ACLU of Michigan criticized Nessel for charging peaceful protesters at the University of Michigan."
Margaret Zaknoen DeReus, executive director at the California-based Institute for Middle East Understanding, said Monday that "at this point, there is virtually zero chance that CNN, Jake Tapper, and Dana Bash don't know that Rashida Tlaib never said what they are claiming."
"Why are they doubling down instead of correcting themselves and apologizing?" she asked.
Isaac Bailey, a McClatchy columnist and professor of communications practices at Davidson College in North Carolina, asserted Tuesday that Bash and Tapper "owe Tlaib an apology."
Later on Monday, Tapper said during an interview with Nessel that he "misspoke yesterday" about Tlaib's comments.
Bash followed Tuesday by acknowledging that Tlaib "did not reference Nessel's Jewish identity," but added that Nessel believes the congresswoman's remarks were antisemitic.
Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement Tuesday that "CNN made a misstatement of fact that needs to be retracted if the network is to maintain its journalistic credibility."
"Congresswoman Tlaib should also be offered a public apology for falsely claiming she is antisemitic," Walid added.
As the Jewish Telegraphic Agency noted earlier this year, Bash and Tapper have "both infused their Jewish identity into their reporting."
Tlaib has faced repeated unfounded allegations of antisemitism from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, especially for calling Israel's war on Gaza a "genocide"—an assessment with which many experts concur—and for using the phrase, "From the river to the sea."
The congresswoman has explained that, to her and to many Palestinians, the phrase—which is also a core component of the original platform of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party—"is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate."
Last November, Tlaib's House colleagues voted 234-188, with 22 Democrats joining almost all Republicans present, in approving a resolution to censure the congresswoman over her defense of Palestine and criticism of Israel's annihilation of Gaza, which has now left more than 147,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing.
On Tuesday, 21 House Democrats led by Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) and Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) published a statement contending that "casting doubt on Attorney General Nessel's impartiality or implying these cases are being handled unfairly due to her religious background is antisemitic, deeply disturbing, and unacceptable."
The dead in Gaza include at least 100 journalists, the vast majority of whom are Palestinian.
In May, the Paris-based press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) filed a third complaint at the International Criminal Court alleging "war crimes against journalists in Gaza."
RSF said it had "reasonable grounds for thinking that some of these journalists were deliberately killed and that the others were the victims of deliberate IDF attacks against civilians" and accused Israel of "an eradication of the Palestinian media."
There has been little reporting on the subject by the U.S. corporate media, even as American journalists are killed or wounded in what journalistic investigations have concluded are deliberate targetings by Israeli forces.
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'Insufferable Islamophobia': Senate Dems Could Help GOP Tank 1st Muslim Fed Appeals Judge
"A bipartisan coalition in the U.S. Senate is about to nix this judicial nominee because he's Muslim," one advocate said.
Mar 15, 2024
Progressive and Muslim rights organizations spoke out in support of federal appellate court nominee Adeel Mangi on Friday after news broke that enough U.S. Senate Democrats might vote with Republicans to scupper his appointment.
President Joe Biden nominated Mangi, a well-respected New York-based trial lawyer, to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit on November 15. If confirmed, he would be the first Muslim to serve as a federal appeals judge. However, CNN reported on Thursday that several Senate Democrats and their staff had told the White House that there seemed to be insufficient votes to confirm him.
The news followed a controversial hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee in December, in which Mangi, who was born in Pakistan, was asked to comment on both the September 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. and Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel. While the committee voted to advance him along party lines, the outcome of a full Senate vote is now in question.
"Someone as qualified as Adeel Mangi should have broad and enthusiastic support from the whole Senate."
"A bipartisan coalition in the U.S. Senate is about to nix this judicial nominee because he's Muslim," Jameel Jaffer, the director of Columbia University's Knight First Amendment Institute, posted on social media in response to the news.
Human rights lawyer Qasim Rashid said on social media that the move to vote against him was "insufferable Islamophobia and cowardice."
Rashid pointed out that seven of the judges nominated by former President Donald Trump were rated as "not qualified" by the American Bar Association (ABA), yet the Senate still voted to confirm them. Mangi, on the other hand, is "highly qualified" and "highly rated" and "instead even Senate Democrats are running away from him."
The ABA rates Mangi as "well-qualified," and Benchmark Litigation placed him on its 2024 and 2023 lists of the "Top 100 Trial Lawyers" in the country. He earned law degrees from both Oxford and Harvard and has had a successful career both representing corporate clients at the law firm of Patterson, Belknap, Webb, and Tyler and taking on pro bono cases.
One of his prominent pro bono victories involved Muslim communities who had been barred from building a mosque in two New Jersey towns. In another, he secured a settlement for the family of Karl Taylor, who died in a New York prison after being attacked by guards.
"Someone as qualified as Adeel Mangi should have broad and enthusiastic support from the whole Senate," People for the American Way posted in response to the CNN story. "Mangi has spent his career working pro bono for people who couldn't afford a lawyer and would be the first Muslim judge on the 3rd Circuit."
Muslim advocacy group Emgage Action urged the public to support Mangi's nomination and criticized the "overtly Islamophobic questioning" at his confirmation hearings.
"Call on your senators to swiftly move forward with his confirmation and advocate for Adeel Mangi's suitability for the federal bench!" the group said on social media.
One of the most vocal Republican opponents of Mangi's nomination is Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
Cruz was the one to ask him if he condemned "the atrocities of the Hamas terrorists," to which Mangi responded that the events of October 7 were "a horror." When Cruz then asked if he thought the attacks could be justified, Mangi answered, "I have no patience, none, for any attempts to justify or defend those events."
Cruz and other Republicans also questioned Mangi on his membership of the advisory board for the Rutgers Center for Security, Race, and Rights, which they claimed supported antisemitism because of speakers it had hosted, as NorthJersey.com reported. In response, Mangi said the advisory board only met once annually and discussed the center's academic research, not its programming.
At the time, Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats denounced the Republicans' line of questioning on social media.
"Senate Judiciary Republicans reached a new low, hurling unfounded accusations of antisemitism at an historic Muslim American judicial nominee today. In fact, Adeel Mangi is a longtime advocate for religious liberty," the Democratic committee members wrote.
Several Jewish American groups have backed Mangi's nomination, and even the Anti-Defamation League, which has been criticized for adopting an overly broad definition of antisemitism that stigmatizes legitimate criticisms of Israeli policies, defended him against the Republican line of questioning.
"Just as associating Jewish Americans with certain views or beliefs regarding Israeli government actions would be deemed antisemitic, berating the first American Muslim federal appellate judicial nominee with endless questions that appear to have been motivated by bias toward his religion is profoundly wrong," the group wrote in a January statement.
In a social media post on Friday, Cruz seemed to steer his opposition to Mangi away from anything that could be construed as Islamophobic to instead paint him as a radical. Cruz shared a letter opposing his confirmation from the National Troopers Coalition over Mangi's role as an advisory board member of the Alliance of Families for Justice, which supports the family members of incarcerated individuals. However, the coalition argued Mangi's role on the board showed an anti-law enforcement bias.
"He is so far left that even some Democrats are opposing his nomination," Cruz wrote.
In response to the news that Democrats might vote against Mangi, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates told CNN that the administration "continues to fight for his confirmation and to repudiate the vicious hate and bigotry with which he has been targeted because of his Muslim faith."
Bates called Mangi an "extraordinarily qualified nominee who is devoted to the rule of law, lived the American dream through hard work, proven his integrity, and would make history on the bench."
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