Senator accuses lesbian judicial nominee of being a secret Marxist

An out lesbian judicial nominee was subjected to accusations that she was a Marxist in her Senate confirmation hearing this week.

Last month, state Judge Melissa DuBose was nominated by President Joe Biden to a place on the U.S. District Court of Rhode Island bench. If confirmed, she would be the first LGBTQ+ person and the first woman of color to serve on that court.

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Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) focused on the question of whether DuBose is a secret Marxist at her confirmation hearing yesterday.

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“Are you still a Marxist?” Kennedy asked.

“I am not, nor have ever been, a Marxist,” she responded.

Then Kennedy brought up a 24-year-old article from an obscure publication that he called “the feminist press.” It’s unclear if that is the name of a publication, but the Boston Globe found that the article was written by a college student in 2000 when DuBose was a public school teacher, before she went to law school.

Kennedy read a quote from that interview that described Dubose’s work at a coffee shop when she was in college: “The kids would come into the cafe all the time, we’d talk about what they’re doing, we’d talk about their classes, and I was in my Marxist phase.”

“So you used to be a Marxist but you’re not now?” Kennedy said, turning to Dubose.

Dubose started to respond as Kennedy interrupted her multiple times, but she was eventually able to explain that she was a political science major and that she studied various political schools of thought at the time.

“I immersed myself in a ton of political theory,” she said. “I read Hobbs, I read Locke, I read Rousseau, I read Marx, I went through a phase where I was into Eastern religion, where I read the Tao Te Ching, The Analects of Confucius. So I suspect… I don’t know that quote in that article, I don’t know if she was referring to what I was studying at the time, but as a political science major and as a theorist and as someone who was considering teaching a course in political theory, I had immersed myself in those things.”

“These are your words,” Kennedy responded. “And you didn’t say, ‘I’m in my Hobbs phase.’ You didn’t say, second, ‘I’m in my Locke phase,’ you didn’t say, ‘I’m in my Rousseau phase.’ You said, ‘I was in my Marxist phase.’ My question is real simple: Are you still a Marxist?”

“Senator, I’ve never been a Marxist,” she responded.

Dubose was a history and civics teacher in Providence, Rhode Island, public schools for ten years before she earned her law degree. Then she became a prosecutor with the Rhode Island Attorney General’s office before working in the private sector in contracts law. She was appointed to the Rhode Island District Court in 2019.

Dubose said she didn’t even know that the article got published until a day before the Senate hearing, according to the Boston Globe.

“Have you ever watched a federal jury trial on TV?” Kennedy asked DuBose later in his questioning.

“I don’t believe federal jury trials are televised, so, no, I have not, Senator,” she responded. They are not televised.

He then asked her if she ever watched any trial on television and DuBose reminded him that she is a judge.