The Lula regime named judge Fausto Mendanha Gonzaga to the TRF-1, backed by justices Flávio Dino and Gilmar Mendes, against the push by Kassio Nunes Marques. Gazeta do Povo says Lula weighed Nunes Marques's conduct as electoral court chief.
BRASILIA — President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva named federal judge Fausto Mendanha Gonzaga to a seat on the Federal Regional Court of the 1st Region (TRF-1), according to Monday’s official gazette, Gazeta do Povo reported. The pick goes against the campaign of Supreme Court justice Kassio Nunes Marques, who backed the other two names on the shortlist. Gonzaga has the support of justice Flávio Dino. Folha de S.Paulo reports he takes office on Tuesday, Nov. 10.
The seat was left by judge Novély Vilanova da Silva Reis, who retired in September 2025. In February, the court’s own members voted on a three-name list: Gonzaga received 31 votes, Itagiba Catta Preta Neto 27 and Henrique Gouveia da Cunha 24. Gouveia works as an auxiliary judge in Nunes Marques’s chambers at the Supreme Court. Dino and Gilmar Mendes backed Gonzaga, according to the press, while Nunes Marques pushed the other two. Folha adds that Catta Preta has already ruled against Lula in the past, and that Nunes Marques keeps strong influence over the TRF-1.
Why it matters
The TRF-1 covers the Federal District and 12 states, from Bahia to Acre, and hears cases involving the federal government, federal agencies and public companies. Its rulings reach public policy and the interests of the Executive directly. Whoever sits there decides, in second instance, many of the disputes in which the Lula regime is a party. American readers who follow how a court becomes a political prize should read this appointment as a case study: the executive chooses from a list, and two Supreme Court justices lobby for opposite names.
The record
What is documented: the appointment in the official gazette, the shortlist, the vote counts and Gonzaga’s first place in the court’s internal vote. What is reported but not confirmed by those involved: that Lula’s view of Nunes Marques’s performance as president of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) in the 2026 election influenced the choice. According to columnist Bela Megale of O Globo, government interlocutors judged that Nunes Marques showed more closeness to Flávio Bolsonaro’s candidacy, and Lula had signaled to him before the vote that his conduct at the TSE would count in choosing the new judge. The tension between Gilmar Mendes and Nunes Marques also runs through the case: in September, Gilmar demanded action on TRF-1 judges handling Banco Master bond payment cases and again mentioned the so-called “KN group,” a label for magistrates linked to Nunes Marques.
Nunes Marques was himself a TRF-1 judge from 2011 until 2020, when Jair Bolsonaro sent him to the Supreme Court. The story is not that a president picked from a list. It is that the list became a scoreboard: a justice was told, in advance, that how he ran an election would be weighed in a court appointment. Under the Lula regime, which has already seen the justices move to shape the Senate that could judge them, that is how institutional capture looks in practice, one chair at a time.
The Watch Post Daily will continue to follow this story. Sources: Gazeta do Povo; Folha de S.Paulo; O Globo (columnist Bela Megale); Diário Oficial da União.
Featured image: Tribunal Regional Federal da 1ª Região by Emerson Júnior GSF, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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