A former Texas judge and longtime Republican announced this week she has left the Republican Party, denouncing President Donald Trump’s “ideology” of “racism” on the heels of Trump’s racist attacks on four Democratic congresswomen of color.
“President Trump is the worst president in the history of this country,” Elsa Alcala wrote in a Monday Facebook post, saying she will vote in the Democratic primary next year for the first time in more than 20 years.
Alcala wrote, “At his core, his ideology is racism. To me, nothing positive about him could absolve him of his rotten core.” She added it has taken her “years to say this publicly.”
Alcala told CNN Wednesday she officially switched her party affiliation from Republican to Democrat.
“I needed to get the R off of my name so I had to say this publicly,” Alcala wrote in the post, saying she cannot support the Republican Party in Texas or nationally because of the party’s support of Trump. She wrote any of the “viable” Democratic candidates “are superior to the status quo.”
“Please don’t lecture me about abortion because today Trump’s actions are resulting in the deaths of live humans in other ways,” Alcala also wrote. “There is no moral high ground by Republicans on abortion or the value of life.”
“And don’t tell me to go back where I came from. My relatives have been in this Texas area since it was before the USA and I was born in the USA. My English is probably better than yours,” she said.
Alcala’s post came hours after Trump doubled down on racist tweets he posted Sunday attacking the four progressive Democratic lawmakers. In the tweets, he implied the congresswomen — all of whom are Americans and are women of color — weren’t American and suggested they “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts — “The Squad,” as they’ve come to be known on Capitol Hill — rebuked the President’s language and fired backin a press conference Tuesday.
In her post, Alcala wrote she has spent 29 years in government service and appreciated the support she received from past Republican administrations, which she said were not “Trump-like (they wanted an inclusive party).”
Alcala served on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for seven years after then-Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, appointed her to the court in 2011, according to her biography on the website of Texas Defender Service, a non-profit where she used to work.
She previously served for nine years on the First Court of Appeals, according to the website, and as a trial judge with the 338th District Court, a position to which she was initially appointed by then-Gov. George W. Bush.
