There’s something wrong with politics when it becomes personal—especially when we’re wrong about the person.
Back in May of 2016, candidate Donald Trump picked a fight with Judge Gonzalo Curiel. Trump had been losing a case against his Trump University; the presiding Judge was Gonzalo Curiel, an Indiana-born Obama appointee whose parents immigrated to the United States from Mexico. Trump’s problem with Curiel was the judge’s identity. He said that Curiel had a “conflict of interest” because “this judge is of Mexican heritage. [And] I’m building a wall.” In an interview with Jake Tapper the future president suggested that Curiel should recuse himself from the Trump University trial. Asked why he continually invoked Curiel’s race, Trump said, “I think that’s why he’s doing it . . . he’s proud of his heritage . . . I’m building a wall.” Eventually Trump agreed to pay $25 million to settle the case.
Just a few months later, Curiel was presiding over another Trump-related case. A lawsuit challenging the Department of Homeland Security’s plan to construct “the wall” claimed, among other things, that the Trump administration was ignoring environmental laws. This week, Judge Curiel—the same Judge Gonzalo Curiel whom Trump derided in May 2016—ruled that the administration may move ahead with constructing the wall, allowing for DHS to use the sections of land in dispute.
Rarely does politics come so beautifully full-circle.
Had Curiel ruled differently, or further prolonged the building of the wall, imagine the president’s response. As it was, his reaction was still pretty odd. “I have decided that sections of the Wall that California wants built NOW will not be built until the whole Wall is approved. Big victory yesterday with ruling from the courts that allows us to proceed. OUR COUNTRY MUST HAVE BORDER SECURITY!”
Evidently a judge of Mexican heritage also believed that OUR COUNTRY MUST HAVE BORDER SECURITY—or at least that the case against the wall’s construction lacked legal merit.
Identity politics is chiefly a phenomenon of the left, but there is a version of it on the right, or on the alt-right, and candidate Trump and many of his supporters embraced it, knowingly or not. In both the left- and right-wing versions, the individual is reducible to his or her identity and there’s no saying otherwise. The African American male, the Mexican-American female, the white Midwestern worker, the same-sex couple: These are not complex individuals but easily comprehensible and predictable political identities.
It’s a dismal worldview and we wish to have no part of it. Judge Curiel was appointed by Barack Obama to the federal court, but before that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed him to a California state court. We do not know, or even wish to know, his politics. In the best of worlds, a judge’s political opinions are irrelevant anyway. But we are happy to be reminded by his decision, pace candidate Trump’s fulminations, that a man’s identity does not reliably predict his ideas or his outlook.
