Courts

Trump And McConnell Are Winning

A profile of the kind of judges Trump and McConnell keep putting on the lower courts while people aren't paying attention.

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[Ed. Note: The Nation is running a story, “Donald Trump and the Plot to Take Over the Courts” I wrote about Donald Trump’s and Mitch McConnell’s stacking of the federal judiciary. I profile several odious Trump judges. One of those profiles is reprinted, with permission, below. Check out the full piece on thenation.com.]

Don R. Willett
Position: Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals
Age: 53
Hostile to: Civil rights, federal laws, gun regulations

It makes sense that our Twitter president would nominate a Twitter judge. Nearly every story about Texas Judge Don Willett mentions his Twitter feed, mainly because he has one and it’s exceedingly rare for a judge to have any kind of presence on social media. Unlike Trump, Willett has tended to cop an “aww, shucks” Twitter persona, praising his mother and presenting himself as an affable, God-loving family man.

Hidden among the dad jokes and puppy pictures, however, you’ll find a meaner streak that exemplifies his judicial opinions. In one tweet, Willett, a fierce opponent of marriage equality, joked that he could “support recognizing a constitutional right to marry bacon.” In another, he called a transgender woman allowed to play on a girls’ softball team “A-Rod.” Apparently, he’s another cis-dude bro who thinks the transgender-equality movement is just another ruse for people who want to cheat at high school sports.

Since Willett was confirmed to the Fifth Circuit in 2017, his Twitter feed has fallen silent, and we have only his record and his decisions to go on. That record is anything but kind. He previously served on the Texas Supreme Court, and none other than religious-right leader James Dobson of Focus on the Family called Willett the “most conservative” judge on the court—a claim he proudly repeated in a campaign ad.

Touting yourself as the most conservative judge on a court in Texas is like boasting about being the most violent member of your street gang. It’s a terrifying thing to be proud of, even to other members of the gang. But Willett wasn’t fronting; in decision after decision, he backed up his boast.

Prior to the Supreme Court’s decision protecting same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges, Willett refused to extend full faith and credit to same-sex marriages performed in other states. He dissented from an opinion that allowed a same-sex couple to be divorced in Texas. After Obergefell, he did everything he could to delay the implementation of same-sex marriage in Texas by lodging purely procedural objections. He ruled, again post-Obergefell, that the spouses of public workers in same-sex marriages can’t receive employment benefits through their partner.

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Even before Willett became a Texas judge, his personal agenda was well documented. He worked for George W. Bush when Bush was governor of Texas. As director of research and special projects, Willett wrote a memo about a proclamation that Bush was set to issue honoring the Texas Federation of Business and Professional Women. That memo leaked. In it, Willett wrote in part:

I resist the proclamation’s talk of “glass ceilings,” pay equity (an allegation that some studies debunk), the need to place kids in the care of rented strangers, sexual discrimination/harassment, and the need generally for better “working conditions” for women (read: more government).

Yes, the man who puts the mention of glass ceilings and better working conditions for women in scare quotes is now a federal judge who may strike down federal laws that seek to ameliorate inequities he thinks have been debunked. And he might someday be a Supreme Court justice. Willett’s name was floated by some hard-core conservatives as a possible nominee when Justice Anthony Kennedy retired. Willett never made the short list for the spot, which eventually went to Brett Kavanaugh, possibly because that old Twitter feed of his included a few disparaging remarks about Trump. (Willett, like many of the GOP faithful, was against Trump before he was for him.)

But on the Fifth Circuit, Willett has done what he could to stay in Trump’s good graces. He wrote a blistering dissent in a Second Amendment case, lamenting that the amendment was “scorned as fringe.” If Willett considered the number of bodies annually sacrificed to the Moloch that is the Second Amendment, he might see why others hold his position in such scorn. But gunmongering is a position that gets the Trump people riled up.

Most important for Trump, Willett was one of two judges behind a controversial ruling in Collins v. Mnuchin for the Fifth Circuit holding that the president could fire the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The FHFA is a minor agency, but the way Willett and his fellow judge described the agency made it sound as if the FHFA were similar in structure to the Federal Reserve. By creating this connection, the decision could someday provide a useful precedent for Trump to dismiss the head of the Federal Reserve if the country’s central bank doesn’t do what Trump wants on interest rates.

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Explaining the ruling, ThinkProgress justice editor Ian Millhiser wrote that the Collins decision “is a potential recipe for economic and political disaster—a central banking system subject to the whims of Trump’s reelection campaign.”

That’s the kind of decision the people who read Trump his bedtime stories will notice.

Most people are better humans in real life than they appear to be on Twitter. Willett is the opposite. Twitter is where he went to appear friendly and reasonable. His judicial opinions are where he trolls to own the libs.

Read the full story on The Nation.

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