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Don Willett testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearing to be a judge on the U.S. Circuit Court for the Fifth Circuit, on Wednesday, November 15, 2017.
Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM[/caption] Don Willett, the judge known as the Tweeter Laureate of Texas for his mastery of social media, will take a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. In a 50-47 party line vote, the Senate confirmed Willett’s nomination Wednesday to the powerful federal appellate court, making him the first Texan President Donald Trump has placed on the Fifth Circuit. "Returning to the court where I started my legal career as a law clerk a quarter-century ago is an otherworldly privilege," Willett said after the vote. "Judging according to the Rule of Law is a sacred trust, one I undertake with gladness, gusto and gratitude." Willett, who has served as a Texas Supreme Court justice since 2005, has become a semi-celebrity in legal circles because of his humorous tweets. He became an internet sensation after the press highlighted his tweets mocking Trump during the 2016 Republican presidential primary. Trump named Willett one of eleven conservative judges he’d consider naming to the U.S. Supreme Court during the campaign. Willett largely stopped tweeting after his nomination, but his Twitter use was one of the first questions he faced during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month. Willett told the senators he was uncertain if he’d continue tweeting as a federal appellate judge. “I haven’t thought a lot about it, but if I do, certainly the frequency and the content would change," Willett said of his tweeting habit at the time. Willett said if he did tweet as a Fifth Circuit judge, he would focus on “civic education” and improving “our collective national civics IQ.” He also promised the senators that if he did tweet, he would “post nothing that could be remotely construed as political.” Not all of the senators found Willett's tweets funny. He faced questions about some of his tweets, including one from 2014 in which he retweeted a story from Fox News about a 17-year-old transgender woman joining a girl’s softball team with the caption “Go away A-Rod,” referring to former baseball player Alex Rodriguez. “The tweet was a kind of off-kilter attempt at levity that missed the bull’s-eye, but it was never an attempt to disparage or demean her in any way, shape or form,” Willett told the senators. Willett was nominated to the Fifth Circuit on Sept. 28th, along with James Ho, a former Texas solicitor general. Ho, a partner in the Dallas office of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, would be the first Asian-American on the Fifth Circuit if confirmed by the full Senate. Ho’s confirmation vote is expected this week.