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Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr President, prior to his confirmation to the district court, Judge Daniel Traynor showed his true colors as a MAGA partisan. After he was confirmed, he had a chance to show that he could be a neutral arbiter on the bench. Yet after more than 6 years as a jurist, Judge Traynor has confirmed what Democrats warned about, that he would be a rubberstamp for President Trump.

As just one example, Judge Traynor has ruled in favor of the Trump administration in all 28 cases on his docket involving challenges from immigrants who have been detained by ICE under the administration's illegal mandatory detention policy.

That includes seven habeas corpus petitions Judge Traynor volunteered to preside over in the District of Minnesota following Operation Metro Surge.

Judge Traynor is an outlier. Of the more than 17,800 cases in which Federal district judges have ruled on ICE's mandatory detention policy, at least 15,500 were rulings against the Trump administration, including the vast majority of rulings by Trump-appointed judges.

Judge Traynor's partisanship was also made apparent when he served as a contributing author and signatory of a May 2024 letter from Federal judges to the Columbia University president. The signatories vowed not to hire anyone who attended Columbia University beginning that year.

But Judge Traynor denied a recusal motion in a case brought by Columbia Law School's Initiative for a Just Society, implausibly claiming he wasn't biased against Columbia.

While he was comfortable taking a position on this controversial political question, Judge Traynor refused to answer questions at his hearing on who won the 2020 election, calling that well-settled fact a matter of ``political controversy.''

It is very clear that Judge Traynor seeks to remain in the good graces of President Trump, at the cost of his integrity and independence.

I urge my colleagues to oppose this nomination.

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