July 5, 2018

One of Trump’s Potential SCOTUS Nominees Sent a Tweet He Probably Really Regrets

He’s known in Texas as “the Tweeter Laureate.”

Tom Williams/Congressional Quarterly/Newscom via ZUMA Press

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Only one person on President Donald Trump’s short list to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is on record with his support for a “constitutional right to marry bacon.”

That man is 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Don R. Willett, who wrote this tweet as a way to assert his opposition two months before the Supreme Court declared a constitutional right to same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges. Dubbed the “Tweeter Laureate” by the Texas House of Representatives during his 12-year stint as a justice on the state’s high court, Willett describes himself as an “Extravagantly blessed husband.” But one tweet in his over 25,000 tweets about food, sports, and the exploits of the three children he calls the “3 wee Willetts” might come back to haunt him.

A former “rodeo bull rider” who once called himself the “most conservative” justice on the Texas Supreme Court, Willett won fame in the Lone Star State for his outspoken defense of right-wing values and his activist approach to jurisprudence. “I oppose judicial activism, inventing rights not rooted in the law,” he once wrote. “But the opposite extreme, judicial passivism, is corrosive, too—judges who, while not activist, are not active in preserving the liberties, and the limits, our Framers actually enshrined.”

His staunch conservatism did not go unnoticed, and in October 2017, Trump tapped him to join the 5th Circuit, a designation this bow-tie-wearing jurist said he was “honored and humbled” to receive. But during the 2016 presidential campaign, Willett did not act as if he would ever consider Trump his commander in chief, much less the person who might consider him for a Supreme Court appointment.

There was the time he mocked Trump’s appeal to evangelical voters.

Or the many, many jabs he took at Trump University’s expense.

But the one tweet Willett probably wishes he could take back concerned Trump’s potential choice of a Supreme Court justice. Like a true Twitter Laureate, he delivered it in the form of a haiku:

Perhaps it is no surprise the White House reportedly told Willett after his nomination to the 5th Circuit to “take his Twitter account down & behave himself.” That exile lasted just shy of 48 days. Soon enough, @JusticeWillett was back to his 113,000 followers but restricted his tweets to 8 Mile memes and a shout-out to Texas-shaped corn bread.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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