Don Cruse
doncruse.com
Don Cruse
@doncruse.com
The only appellate lawyer who doesn’t have a podcast. My practice is in Texas state and federal courts. I used to have a real blog.
Reposted by Don Cruse
Austin-area types: one of my favorite people was a career diplomat with USAID until there wasn’t one. He and family are back in Central Texas. Any job ideas, recruiters, or just generally good networking contacts I can share with him?
October 8, 2025 at 5:08 PM
Reposted by Don Cruse
the verge and various other sites have referred to DOGE as "fake" or "not real" a lot because musk didn't follow the legal rules for creating a US government department, and the effect this apparently had on google's magic answer machine is truly incredible
was idly looking up how many people DOGE is projected to kill and Google’s AI informed me that it was all in my head and that DOGE isn’t real
September 10, 2025 at 5:44 PM
Reposted by Don Cruse
I'm reading through the lawsuit now, and I'm going to live-post my reactions to it. The lawsuit is linked below. My immediate reaction: this is really bad, and egregiously misstates the law in a painfully obvious way.
gov.texas.gov/uploads/file...
INBOX: Texas Governor Greg Abbott has filed a lawsuit in the state Supreme Court against State Rep. Gene Wu, the Chair of the Texas Democratic Caucus, seeking his removal from office
August 5, 2025 at 10:42 PM
Reposted by Don Cruse
it’s even more demoralizing when the history you’re repeating is history you were around for the first time
June 22, 2025 at 1:44 AM
Reposted by Don Cruse
Here is Rico from Cincinnati eating popcorn

youtube.com/shorts/6uz3X...
Rico Loves National Popcorn Day - Cincinnati Zoo
YouTube video by The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden
youtube.com
January 29, 2025 at 12:44 AM
Reposted by Don Cruse
"Rebecca Tushnet, the Frank Stanton professor of First Amendment law at Harvard Law School, put it more simply: 'It’s ridiculous junk and should be mocked.'” www.cnn.com/2024/11/01/m...
Trump sues CBS over ‘60 Minutes’ interview with Harris. Legal experts call it ‘frivolous and dangerous’ | CNN Business
Former President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit Thursday against CBS broadcasting Inc. and CBS Interactive Inc., demanding $10 billion in damages over the network’s “60 Minutes” interview with Vice Pres...
www.cnn.com
November 2, 2024 at 4:54 PM
Reposted by Don Cruse
Happy Halloween from Brooklyn. The 9 year old says he got no bad candy. I told him that was bc the candy was dispensed by Gen Xers still traumatized by the memory of circus peanuts, those weird peanut butter candies in orange and black wrappings, loose handfuls of candy corn, and dirty pennies
November 1, 2024 at 1:32 AM
Reposted by Don Cruse
I guess it has fallen to me, the humor columnist, to endorse Harris for president wapo.st/3UqHWRM
October 26, 2024 at 10:50 PM
Reposted by Don Cruse
the hilarious thing is that the "non-denial denial" (of which this is an example) entered the cultural lexicon thanks to ben bradlee, during watergate
This is so insulting from Lewis. “Did not see the draft I wrote” =/= “did not tell me what to do”
October 26, 2024 at 4:46 PM
Of possible interest to court watchers: these new Twitter terms of service have a forum selection clause choosing NDTX rather than the district where Twitter HQ will actually be located (WDTX). The terms put state court suits in Tarrant County (Fort Worth), from which some could be removed to NDTX.
The new TOS replaces the California office with the new location in Texas.

So, Texas state law governs the new TOS.

I don't see anything about force arbitration, but this is Texas...
October 16, 2024 at 8:17 PM
Reposted by Don Cruse
the october surprise is october being tomorrow
September 30, 2024 at 8:26 PM
Reposted by Don Cruse
I'll never forget the staff meeting where the senior engineer, who always knitted during meetings, said at the ending, "Well, I got an inch of sock out of that; I don't know what the rest of you got."

She went on to become a professional sock designer and wrote a book on reading charts.
September 29, 2024 at 1:10 AM
Reposted by Don Cruse
Wild stuff! Doug Emhoff and Gavin Newsom stopped by Latchkey Records — owned by my partner Marc Faletti — this afternoon!

So I interviewed my own boyfriend about it. 😂 The good news is Marc is an awesome storyteller with a great eye for funny details.

www.salon.com/2024/09/10/e...
Exclusive: Doug Emhoff bought records at my boyfriend's store
The Second Gentleman purchased New Order, Stone Roses, and Chappell Roan
www.salon.com
September 10, 2024 at 11:28 PM
Congratulations to Bluesky for moving from the "we're going to need more engineers!" to "we're going to need more lawyers!" part of the growth curve.
September 3, 2024 at 7:56 PM
Reposted by Don Cruse
JD Vance, to a glazed donut: so how long u worked here. Ok. Good.
August 22, 2024 at 10:24 PM
Reposted by Don Cruse
Someone hurry and tell the pundits that satire and humor are a grand and ancient rhetorical tradition that happens as a way to punch up at the bullies who won’t stop punching down. The audience of satire is in on the joke, if you aren’t in on the joke, sorry for you.
The performance of political neutrality destroys nuance. There is no way a person who takes themselves seriously can equate misinformation like “Hillary Clinton runs a child rape ring” and “immigrants are raping everybody” with a joke about sexual relations w/ a couch that everyone knows is a joke.
August 12, 2024 at 3:00 PM
Reposted by Don Cruse
10 yo: yes that's the US. They look American.

Me: what does that mean to you, looking American?

10yo, waving hands are tv: all of that. They all look different.
July 26, 2024 at 8:02 PM
Reposted by Don Cruse
You reach a point where a friend dies and you say: sixty-one! that so young. When you are in your twenties and struggling that point is hard to visualize - you feel like forty more years will be too much. May all who struggle today live in the hope of knowing that sixty-one is so young, so young.
May 8, 2024 at 6:22 PM
I momentarily forgot the name of the "TSA" and, stg, just spelled it out by remembering "tub stacking agency."
May 3, 2024 at 7:11 PM
Reposted by Don Cruse
another great thing books do is they usually have a brief bio of the person who wrote the things in there, so you can get a sense if they are full of shit or not. more data sources should let you know if they were created by a total cretin.
March 23, 2024 at 6:47 PM
Is this Navarro opinion by Roberts the first "in-chambers opinion" the Supreme Court has issued in literally years?

SCOTUS has a page for them. It's empty (before this one): www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/in-...

Per, Wikipedia this might be the first in a decade: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-cham...
NEW: CJ Roberts DENIES Peter Navarro's bid to stay out of prison pending appeal
March 18, 2024 at 10:17 PM
Reposted by Don Cruse
I’ve been lurking in car forums for the last few months and saw reports from drivers of General Motors cars that GM was selling their driving data to LexisNexis. It was resulting in their insurance going up. Can that be true, I thought.

Reported it out. Yes. True.
www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/t...
Automakers Are Sharing Consumers’ Driving Behavior With Insurance Companies
LexisNexis, which generates consumer risk profiles for the insurers, knew about every trip G.M. drivers had taken in their cars, including when they sped, braked too hard or accelerated rapidly.
www.nytimes.com
March 11, 2024 at 5:33 PM
Reposted by Don Cruse
it's Friday and this week took absolutely 10000% out of me so I beg you

please tell me how your Roomba (or whatever) got its name
March 8, 2024 at 8:35 PM