During a week when the dangers of Mitch McConnell’s rubber-stamp Republican Senate majority were brightly on display, PFAW held a special telebriefing for our members on Trump’s now-confirmed secretary of state Mike Pompeo and McConnell’s forced vote on one of Trump’s most ideological judicial nominees Kyle Duncan, who was confirmed to the powerful 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Trump, McConnell, Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley, and other GOP senators have waged a full-frontal assault on the American Way with their mad dash to confirm extremists and narrow-minded ideologues to head important government agencies and sit on the federal bench.
In addition to PFAW’s experts, we had featured guest Madihha Ahussain, special counsel for anti-Muslim bigotry at Muslim Advocates, for additional insight on Mike Pompeo.
Madidhha detailed how “Mike Pompeo has a long history of being bigoted to a lot of communities—particularly to the American Muslim community.”
Particularly egregious is the fact that Pompeo has sustained a close association with the largest grassroots anti-Muslim hate group in the country, ACT for America. PFAW played a unique role through Right Wing Watch in the fight to stop Mike Pompeo’s confirmation by exposing his ties to these radical anti-Muslim groups.
As our nation’s chief diplomat, the secretary of state is supposed to play a key role in international climate negotiations, human rights initiatives, and efforts to preserve peace around the world. But Pompeo is a climate change denier, pro-torture, and rabidly anti-Muslim and anti-LGBTQ.
PFAW also helped lead the fight against judicial nominee Kyle Duncan, one of the top go-to attorneys for anti-gay activists, organizations, and corporations that have fought to legalize discrimination and codify bigotry against LGBTQ people in the court room. He was the lead counsel representing Hobby Lobby in the Supreme Court case which resulted in a 5-4 ruling that a corporation could cite its “religious beliefs” to justify discriminating against its employees. The threat posed by Duncan being on the federal bench is magnified by the immense power of the court to which he has now been confirmed.
Hear the call in its entirety here: