GOP Senator Warns Trump Court Pick Over Columbia Protests Letter

A Senate Republican pressed a Trump appeals court nominee over his decision to sign a letter pledging not to hire law clerks from Columbia University over its handling of Israel-Hamas war protests.

“I hope you won’t do something like that again,” Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana told Daniel Traynor during his confirmation hearing for the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

Traynor sits on the US District Court for the District of North Dakota. President Donald Trump nominated him to the federal trial court in his first term.

Many Americans feel judges are just “politicians in robes,” Kennedy said. “When a federal judge expresses a political opinion like you did, and your colleagues did, how does that help our effort to help the public understand that judges aren’t politicians?”

After Traynor declined to address questions about who won the 2020 election or whether the Capitol was attacked on Jan. 6, 2021, saying it would be inappropriate for him to comment on a matter of political controversy as a sitting judge, several Democrats asked why he believed it was appropriate to sign the letter to the Ivy League school’s administration.

The letter was signed by 12 other judges, and in addition to promising not to hire clerks from Columbia, called on the university to hire more conservative academics. A federal appeals court chief judge dismissed a misconduct complaint against Traynor over the hiring boycott in 2025.

Traynor signed the letter because he said Jewish students had to shelter in place during protests over the Mideast conflict that included some faculty.

“I’m a former member of the North Dakota Board of Higher Education. It is important that when students are able to be educated, that they have the opportunity to pursue that education,” Traynor said. “That type of conduct was not appropriate appropriately handled, and it was, as described in a letter a bias that was being promoted on that campus.”

The hiring of law clerks isn’t a case or controversy that could come before him—unlike the events of Jan. 6—Traynor said. Traynor declined to say whether he would recuse if a case or controversy involving Columbia came before him.

—With assistance from Maren Fagan.