Man, The Senate Judiciary Committee Is Damaged

WASHINGTON ― When Maya Berry was referred to as in as an knowledgeable to testify earlier than the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, she thought she’d be sharing new information on hate crimes in opposition to Arab People and Jewish People for the reason that Oct. 7 terrorist assault on Israel.

As an alternative, Berry, the manager director of the Arab American Institute, a nationwide nonpartisan civil rights advocacy group, was subjected to a number of the most offensive and bigoted assaults by Republican senators the committee has seen lately.

Her expertise is a part of a much bigger, years-long drawback with this committee, a purportedly storied physique chargeable for main laws and lifelong appointments to federal courts, together with the Supreme Court docket: A few of its GOP members have ditched fundamental decorum and opted for disgusting assaults on the folks coming earlier than the panel. And as Republicans berated Berry, Democrats on the panel did little to again up a witness that they had referred to as to testify.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) lower off Berry the second she began participating with him. As he pressed panelists to reply overseas coverage questions on Israel, Berry tried to pivot again to the subject of the listening to: stemming hate crimes. Graham began yelling at her.

“If you think it’s complicated to figure out that Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran wants to kill all the Jews, I should not listen to anything else you have to say!” he shouted over her as she repeatedly tried to talk.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced posters with images from pro-Palestinian campus protests and requested Berry if every picture counted as a hate crime, which is, by definition, a felony act. As Berry tried to steer the dialog away from free speech on campuses and again to precise hate crimes, Hawley started shouting over her: “What you’re trying to do here today is wrong!”

And in an trade that went viral and drew probably the most consideration to this listening to, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) used all of his allotted time to baselessly accuse Berry of supporting terrorist teams, urgent her on whether or not she endorses Hamas and Hezbollah. As she repeatedly stated she didn’t and referred to as out his blatant Islamophobia, Kennedy drew audible gasps within the crowd by lastly telling her she ought to go “hide her head in a bag.”

Kennedy’s therapy of Berry drew widespread condemnation from Arab American teams, Jewish teams and the American Civil Liberties Union.

“I don’t even know what it means to put a bag on your head,” Berry, who can also be the co-chair of a hate crime activity pressure on the Management Convention on Civil and Human Rights, a nationwide coalition of civil rights teams, instructed HuffPost on Wednesday. She stated her children warned her to remain off of social media after the listening to, however she got here throughout a tweet with a picture of her subsequent to the picture of a prisoner at Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq who had a black bag over his head.

“I never thought of that,” she stated, trailing off. “I never thought the bigotry would land the way it did. … Like, it’s anti-Arab racism in the middle of a hearing about hate crimes.”

The workplaces of Kennedy, Hawley and Graham didn’t return requests for remark.

This is not what a Senate hearing is supposed to look like.

These hearings are supposed to be public conversations with top experts who spend weeks preparing and volunteer their time to share what they know, to help lawmakers make better laws to fix big problems. On the most basic level, they’re supposed to be about adults being respectful to each other and to the democratic institutions they’re fortunate to be a part of.

Tuesday’s hearing was supposed to be a conversation about policies to help stem an increase in hate crimes. In Berry’s prepared testimony, which she was able to get into only when Democrats on the committee engaged with her, she underscored how anti-Black hate crimes consistently represent most hate crimes in the U.S. She came ready to share her new data analysis showing a spike in anti-Arab and anti-Jewish hate crimes in the last quarter of 2023, tied to the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack in Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.

Berry is not the first Judiciary Committee witness to face this treatment. Republicans on this panel have been doing this for years, typically with President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees, all of whom have to come before this committee if and when they can be confirmed.

Since Biden took office, Republicans on this committee have been making blatantly racist, sexist, Islamophobic or otherwise offensive attacks on his court picks. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the panel’s chairman, has managed to get a good number of Biden’s nominees through amid the ugliness. But many who got through first had to endure inappropriate and belligerent questioning from Republicans, who have demonstrated that one of their primary goals is to generate viral video clips of themselves looking tough to share on social media.

Republicans like Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.), for example, have used their role on this committee to make a show of baselessly smearing a historic Muslim judicial nominee, Adeel Mangi. In a video clip Cotton pushed out on social media that now has 4.3 million views, the Arkansas Republican is seen pressing Mangi to answer foreign policy questions about Israel way outside the parameters of what potential federal judges are supposed to talk about.

The intent behind the video, presumably, is to show Cotton looking like he’s defending Israel’s war in Gaza, and Mangi, the Muslim guy, not saying much in response to his questions, creating the impression he is anti-Israel. In fact, none of this is appropriate for a judicial nomination hearing, and Cotton and Mangi both know that. But it sure makes for a buzzy video clip.

Stunningly, during Berry’s hearing on Tuesday, nobody on the committee intervened as Kennedy unleashed his Islamophobic attacks on her. Durbin did give Berry a chance to respond to the Louisianan when he was done, though.

“I regret some of the things that were said today at this hearing,” is all Durbin stated on the finish of the listening to. “But we are a free nation, and that’s what happens in a democracy.”

Berry told HuffPost she was “absolutely shocked” by the harm that Republican senators caused during Tuesday’s committee hearing ― not to her but to Jewish Americans and Arab Americans by fanning the same kind of hatred they were supposed to be working to stop.

“It literally made both American Arabs and Jewish Americans less safe,” she said of their behavior. “It’s complete showboating for reasons that are, honestly, beyond me.”