‘Imported judges’: GOP lawmakers, Musk launch racist attack on judge who blocked Trump’s voter purge scheme

Republican elected officials and the richest man in the world have embraced rank nativism in the wake of a federal district judge’s decision to block the central pillar of the Trump administration’s dangerous scheme to purge suspected noncitizens from the rolls.

The author of that opinion, U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, an appointee of President Joe Biden, was born in Trinidad and Tobago.

The barrage of attacks from top Republicans underscores how the administration’s campaign to suppress voting is intimately tied to a far-right push to sideline non-white and non-native-born Americans in all walks of public life. 

“No one born in another country should be serving in our government,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) wrote on X. “Judges included.”

And Trump-aligned tech billionaire Elon Musk endorsed calls to require judges to be born in the U.S.

The xenophobic comments represent the latest fallout from a court decision that sidelined one of President Donald Trump’s many attacks on voting rights. Last year, Trump issued an executive order directing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to turn its Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system into a citizenship-checking program using Social Security Administration data and to make the overhauled database freely available for state and local election officials to use for ferreting out noncitizens on their registration rolls. 

But in a 75-page opinion Monday, Sooknanan rejected the SAVE expansion, writing that “the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote.”

Rather than attempting to criticize Sooknanan’s reasoning, a number of congressional Republicans decided to question her loyalty to America. 

“This is not about where someone was born. This is about who they serve,” Mace wrote. She recently came in last in the South Carolina gubernatorial race’s Republican primary.

Mace’s post included a photo of Sooknanan below text superimposed against a Trinidadian flag reading “foreign-born judge blocks efforts to secure American elections.” 

In an interview with MAGA commentator Benny Johnson, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) called for banning foreign born citizens from serving as judges or members of Congress. “I don’t think our Founding Fathers never intended for people from hostile nations to lead this country,” Ogles said.

“Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan blocked President Trump’s SAVE citizenship verification system. It appears she kept her Trinidadian citizenship and pledged renunciation only ‘if required by law.’” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) posted. “If judges can stop Presidents, they should not also be citizens of foreign nations.”

Those calls were echoed by prominent MAGA influencers, including Musk, who quote-tweeted another far-right commentator’s lies about “communists” encouraging immigrants to vote.   

“They didn’t just import voters, they imported judges too,” posted Musk, a South African immigrant who spent $291 million to influence the 2024 election.  

Sooknanan was confirmed to the D.C. District Court bench in 2024 on a 50-48 party line vote. In response to written questions during her confirmation, Sooknanan wrote that “in connection with my prior and current federal employment, I pledged to take any steps to renounce my Trinidad and Tobago citizenship as needed to fulfill my duties, including if such steps were required by law.” 

Since President Donald Trump’s first election, the Republican Party has increasingly embraced nativism. Trump’s second term has been defined by the administration’s heavy-handed and deadly crackdown on immigration. 

Beyond the focus on undocumented immigrants, the GOP has also questioned legal immigration, pushing for restrictions on refugee visas. Earlier this year, Rep. Pete Stauber (R-Minn.) introduced a bill that would require all judges to be natural-born citizens. Meanwhile, Trump attempted to cancel the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship. 

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The offices of Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.