President Joe Biden has appointed Judge Dale Ho to a federal court in New York, at the request of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, isn’t happy about it. In Wednesday’s confirmation hearing, the senator took issue with Ho’s record of extremism and partisanship.
Ho works as a civil rights attorney at the far-left American Civil Liberties Union, and he directs the organizations project for election reform. The ACLU used to be a nonpartisan organization but has become increasingly far-left in the past few decades.
Ho argued against the Trump administration in front of the Supreme Court twice. On one occasion, he convinced the court to throw out any question about citizenship on the 2020 census. On another occasion, he fought unsuccessfully to include illegal immigrants in the census data for redrawing districts.
In 2018, Ho even convinced a Kansas court to stop requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration.
In the confirmation hearing, Ho admitted to saying in 2017:
In these dark times, I’ve been fortunate to find tremendous sense of purpose in my work as a civil rights lawyer. But as a colleague of mine asked me over lunch recently, Dale, do you do this because you want to help people or because you hate conservatives? What he was getting at is that anger can, in fact, be a tremendous source of power. For me, righteous indignation, can provide a sense of moral clarity, and motivate the long hours needed to get the work done. But it’s only a short term burst. It’s not sustaining in the long run.
Cruz had a problem with that, but — unlike Ho — the senator kept his cool. Cruz asked:
Mr. Ho, if you wake up and are Judge Ho, and I recognize that New York is a blue state, but imagine there is someone who considers himself or herself a conservative in the state of New York, who, God forbid, finds themselves in a courtroom where you’re wearing a robe. What comfort do you think that litigant would have that you described the hatred of conservatives, the righteous indignation, the anger at conservatives, as a tremendous source of power for you personally? How does that possibly give anyone comfort that you would be a fair and impartial judge?
Ho gave a convoluted answer:
This was a comment that I made in church where I was relaying a joke that someone else had told, the point of which was that that kind of temporary sugar rush for being angry at someone, while it can feel powerful in a moment, it’s not the kind of thing that is sustaining for a human being in the long run, that at the end of the day, if you want to do good work in the world, it has to come from a different place, a place of love for your fellow person. And that’s what I was trying to convey to my fellow congregants at my church.
“Well, that’s not what you said,” Cruz hit back. “You described hatred and ‘righteous indignation’ directed at conservatives.”
Cruz proceeded to his next question. The senator asked Ho about the Biden administration’s decision to dismiss United States v. Yale University, a civil rights case involving alleged discrimination against Asian Americans.
Cruz asked, “Do you agree with the Biden administration on that?”
Ho didn’t answer the question. He said, “I haven’t followed the in’s and out’s of what the Biden administration has done with respect to that particular matter.”
Cruz followed up. He asked simply, “Do you agree with your alma mater’s policy of discriminating against Asian Americans in admissions?”
“I’m not aware of a particular policy of discrimination in admissions at Yale Law School,” Ho said, unprepared. “I’m a member of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association. I try to do what I can in the Asian American legal community.”
Ho tried to change the subject.
“To your larger question, Sen. Cruz, I clerked for judges who were appointed by executives of different parties. They set an example for me,” Ho said. “You can have political views, but they don’t have a role on the bench. And I would look to follow their examples.”
Cruz concluded, “Well, your record says precisely the contrary.”
Watch a video of the hearing here —
Sen. Ted Cruz to Dale Ho, Biden judicial nominee, about him writing, “As a colleague of mine asked me over lunch recently, ‘Dale, Do you do this because you want to help people or because you hate conservatives?’”
Ho downplays his writings saying he made the comments in church. pic.twitter.com/mhgL1uXXee
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) December 1, 2021
The Horn editorial team