‘A Dangerous Willingness to Make Up Facts to Support an Ideological Agenda’
Michael Truncale is proudly opposed to allowing women the right to choose an abortion, a right the U.S Supreme Court confirmed decades ago. He also refuses to say he supports another landmark Supreme Court civil rights decision: Brown v. Board of Education, which solidified the concept that “separate but equal” is not equal. Brown is a key ruling on which many modern U.S. civil rights are based, including same-sex marriage.
Republicans in the U.S. Senate have just voted to make Truncale a federal judge. He will be sworn in as a U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Texas.
Truncale could not even get 50 Senate votes. He was confirmed 49-46.
That Truncale’s nomination to the federal bench is not in question. He is a longtime Texas GOP party official and volunteered for the Trump campaign. He’s also donated thousands to Republicans, including over $7000 to Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), according to the nonpartisan website The Vetting Room. Cornyn sits on the Judiciary Committee and voted to confirm him.
Truncale has declared that ObamaCare is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court later disagreed with his take.
He is opposed to immigration, and is accused of saying, “we must not continue to have the maggots coming in.” The DOJ, in defending Truncale’s nomination, claims Truncale used the word “magnets”:
“And, of course, we must…with regard to immigration…we must not continue to have the magnets coming in.”
Either way, it’s a dehumanizing statement.
Truncale is opposed to abortion, opposed to government funding of Planned Parenthood, and opposed to the Obama Administration’s contraception mandate, which he has called an “assault on the Catholic Church.”
People for the American Way took Truncale to task for his refusal to say he supports the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, along with his views on LGBT rights and reproductive rights.
“As we prepare to mark the 65th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the GOP-led Senate is advancing the nomination of a narrow-minded elitist, Michael Truncale, who will not share with senators whether he believes Brown was correctly decided. Just to be clear: by refusing to give an answer on this question—a question Chief Justice John Roberts answered during one of his nomination hearings—Truncale is refusing to say that legal apartheid in this country will never return. This refusal is enough to disqualify him, but unfortunately it’s not the only disqualifying factor.”
Truncale has also demonstrated a dangerous willingness to make up facts to support an ideological agenda involving other people’s constitutional rights—as demonstrated by his evidence-free assertions that ‘voter fraud makes a mockery of our elections.’ Pressed for evidence of this threat to elections, Truncale could provide none, and that’s troubling given that we rely on district court judges to make basic findings of fact relied upon by higher courts.
His legal views are also hostile to LGBTQ+ equality, reproductive rights, and a federal government constitutionally empowered to impose reasonable regulations on powerful corporate interests.