Free Beacon's Aaron Sibarium shines scary spotlight on woke, anti-free-speech Biden judicial nominee

It’s easy to get lost in the sea of screwups and garbage policies from Joe Biden’s administration, but it’s also extremely important to try to stay afloat. Because you need to know what these people are doing. Because it could have long-term, really bad consequences.

The Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium, who has done really excellent work exposing insidious leftism in higher education, has a new scoop about Joe Biden’s nominee for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Maria Araujo Kahn’s record should concern each and every one of us, and in a thread accompanying his story, Sibarium explains why:

SCOOP: President Joe Biden’s nominee to fill a vacancy on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals is a longtime diversity trainer who has argued for curtailing the First Amendment and conducted training sessions that say "microaggressions" can "kill you." 🧵https://t.co/zojgMUCAk4

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) February 24, 2023

Judge Kahn is very, very bad news:

Now an associate justice on the Connecticut State Supreme Court, Maria Araujo Kahn suggested in a 2020 opinion that courts should criminalize speech that offends "oppressed groups."

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) February 24, 2023

Since 2013, she has also delivered at least a dozen diversity trainings and presentations to lawyers across the country, with titles like "Cultural Competence, Implicit Association and Racial Anxiety," according to her Senate Judiciary Questionnaire.

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) February 24, 2023

To prepare for one of those trainings, participants were instructed to watch an animated video, "How Microaggressions Are Like Mosquito Bites," that depicts a man-sized mosquito telling a dark-hued college student to "try a less challenging major" and then sucking him dry. pic.twitter.com/JWo5ZEseTP

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) February 24, 2023

In a 2020 opinion, Kahn argued for broadening the "fighting words" exception to the First Amendment—which bans speech likely to spark violence—on the grounds that some groups are unlikely or unable to physically retaliate against insults.https://t.co/2CcJy5Y098

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) February 24, 2023

That means they "must endure a higher level of offensive speech before being afforded legal remedies," she wrote.

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) February 24, 2023

Though Kahn is vague on how exactly she would reform First Amendment law, the opinion laments that bigots can "verbally assault certain oppressed groups"—especially women and the disabled—"without fear of criminal prosecution."

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) February 24, 2023

Are you worried yet?

The Second Circuit’s docket is unusually high-profile, in part because of its jurisdiction over NY state, and often includes prominent free speech cases. In 2022, for example, the court upheld a New York state official’s right to discourage banks from doing business with the NRA.

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) February 24, 2023

In 2019, it ruled on 1A grounds that Donald Trump could not block critics from his personal Twitter account. If Kahn joins the Second Circuit, she could hear challenges to NY’s controversial social media law, which requires platforms to report "hateful conduct" to the state.

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) February 24, 2023

Kahn’s views on free speech reflect a broader trend in progressive jurisprudence, where once-taken-for-granted legal norms have fallen out of favor.

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) February 24, 2023

Last year, for example, the Washington State Supreme Court flipped the burden of proof for claims of racial bias in civil trials, forcing attorneys accused of stereotyping to show that their language did not activate any juror’s "implicit bias." https://t.co/KSJrNKlM93

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) February 24, 2023

Lawyers and law professors said that the negative would be impossible to prove and that the court had set a chilling precedent. David Bernstein, a professor of constitutional law at George Mason University, called the decision "batshit crazy."

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) February 24, 2023

But wait — all this gets worse still:

Kahn isn’t the only radical Biden nom. Rebecca Slaughter, whom Biden this month renominated to the FTC, suggested the United States take a page from South Africa and integrate "racial equity" into antitrust law, going after businesses with "racially skewed" ownership.

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) February 24, 2023

"#Antitrust can and should be #antiracist," she declared in September 2020. Two weeks later, she told CNBC that "it isn’t possible to really be actually neutral, nor should we be neutral in the face of systemic racism and structural racism." https://t.co/MPIMYhJavJ

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) February 24, 2023

Any other left-wing nutjob Biden nominees we should know about?

Biden has also nominated Nusrat Jahan Choudhury, the legal director of the ACLU’s Illinois chapter, to serve on a New York district court. In 2019, Choudhury told an audience at Princeton that police shoot unarmed black men every day. https://t.co/kRPZsM7LQA

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) February 24, 2023

Liberal journalists and activists love to screech about “extremist” judges and whatnot. Well, what would you call the women discussed above if not extremists?