Dear John,
Victory in the Judiciary Committee! The Committee voted on the nomination of Nancy Abudu and deadlocked in an 11-11 tie, with all eleven Republicans voting against this radical nominee! This will delay her confirmation, but it did not stop her, so we need to keep asking Senators to oppose her nomination on the floor.
Will you take a moment right now to tell your Senators to oppose Nancy Abudu’s nomination?
As you know, some of her responses to questions in committee were quite alarming. She doubled down on her support for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) despite its corruption, she defended her employment and work there, and she refused to adequately answer questions about her involvement in judge-shopping. (The SPLC is currently under an ethics investigation in federal court for engaging in this sordid practice by withdrawing a case that had been assigned to a Trump-appointed judge and refiling a nearly identical case in another district days later, seeking a different judge to hear the case.) As the SPLC’s Director for Strategic Litigation, Nancy Abudu needs to explain what happened, and how involved she was in this maneuver.
Her activism is already well-established. In an astonishing exchange with Sen. Hawley during her confirmation hearing, she refused to condemn the comments of a senior fellow for the SPLC who said, “I want to say plainly that our aim in life is to destroy these groups [meaning organizations that are not ideologically aligned with the SPLC]. To completely destroy them.”
She was also asked about the SPLC’s connection to the shooting here at FRC in 2012 and refused to say that we were not akin to the KKK. When asked about the source of the SPLC’s funding and its profiteering off of labeling political opponents as “hate groups” she, again, did not answer the question. Rather, she pivoted to the use of the funds claiming it was for good purposes.
Similarly, when confronted with the internal sexism and racism at the SPLC, she doubled down on her support for the SPLC, and noticeably absent from her testimony was any indication that these issues have been addressed and are no longer a systemic problem within the organization.
Her primary work for the SPLC involved elections and voting rights issues. She was asked if she believed an SPLC report from last year which she helped create that said, “voter identification is burdensome and does not serve any legitimate state interest,” she claimed that it was hard to understand the context with that language and that the Supreme Court had found in favor of such laws.
Relatedly, Ms. Abudu supports the unconstitutional idea of “preclearance” that would require certain states to get approval from the Department of Justice before they can enact election integrity laws. The Supreme Court has said this is unconstitutional, yet she supports changing the Senate rules in an attempt to unilaterally enact this federal power grab without bipartisan consensus.
Please reach out now to tell your senators and ask them to oppose Nancy Abudu’s nomination!
Sincerely,
Your Friends at FRC Action
