Man, The Senate Judiciary Committee Is Broken

WASHINGTON ― When Maya Berry was called in as an expert to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, she thought she’d be sharing new data on hate crimes against Arab Americans and Jewish Americans since the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel.

Instead, Berry, the executive director of the Arab American Institute, a national nonpartisan civil rights advocacy organization, was subjected to some of the most offensive and bigoted attacks by Republican senators the committee has seen in recent years.

Her experience is part of a bigger, years-long problem with this committee, a purportedly storied body responsible for major legislation and lifetime appointments to federal courts, including the Supreme Court: Some of its GOP members have ditched basic decorum and opted for disgusting attacks on the people coming before the panel. And as Republicans berated Berry, Democrats on the panel did little to back up a witness they had called to testify.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) cut off Berry the moment she started engaging with him. As he pressed panelists to answer foreign policy questions about Israel, Berry tried to pivot back to the topic of the hearing: stemming hate crimes. Graham started 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 speak.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) brought posters with photos from pro-Palestinian campus protests and asked Berry if each image counted as a hate crime, which is, by definition, a criminal act . As Berry tried to steer the conversation away from free speech on campuses and back to actual hate crimes,