Texas Our Texas

Russell F. Coleman - Fmr newspapers, television, & Fortune 500 general counsel. Principles First. No Labels. Retweeting not always endorsing.

[Bill Kristol @BillKristol]

As @davidfrum pointed out, having bankrupted casinos, Donald Trump has moved on to bankrupting the U.S.

[Glenn Rogers @RogersForTexas]

Why aren’t there more Republicans signed on to this letter?

[Texas Our Texas @TxOurTx]

@FactsOverMAGA @tedcruz Nobody said admissions committees were perfect.

[Texas Our Texas @TxOurTx]

Textbook demagoguery. Through this misinformation Ted is setting the table for a future increase in harm to public health. Like Mr. French says ... deeply, dangerously dishonest.

[David French @DavidAFrench]

Deeply, dangerously dishonest. He knows better. Yet here we are.

[Texas Our Texas @TxOurTx]

https://t.co/Iww3d4RfjV

[Texas Our Texas @TxOurTx]

Free to the public. Please register to hear these all-star participants discuss this important topic.

[David McKenzie @mckenzielaw]

The Big 12 has gone to federal court to ask permission to have a conviction. There was a time when a conference could simply disapprove of a player who bet on his own team's games. Now it needs a declaratory judgment first.

The Texas AG's threatening letter to the Big 12 was an unforced error of the first order. Strip it out and there's no lawsuit— because there's no justiciable controversy. A conference privately mulling a sanctions vote isn't a "case"; it's a meeting. The AG's 200M per se antitrust threat is what manufactured the ripeness, handed the Big 12 its MedImmune, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc hook, and let Sidley walk into federal court in Dallas with a complaint instead of a press release. Paxton's office didn't just pick a fight— it wrote the other side's standing argument for them, then signed it. Now TTU and the AG get to defend a theory the Oklahoma AG already called "facially absurd," in a real courtroom, against a national firm on its home turf. The letter was meant to intimidate. It functioned as service of process.

The complaint itself is well made, and its strongest section is also its most dangerous. Paragraphs 32 through 36 are devastating on TTU's hypocrisy: TTU voted for the Baylor sanctions in 2017 and now insists the conference has no power to sanction anyone. That is good lawyering, and it should sting.

But it cuts both ways. Baylor was sanctioned after findings, through process, for institutional conduct. The Big 12 wants to sanction TTU preemptively, for fielding a player a Texas court has enjoined the NCAA from declaring ineligible.

The state court injunction is the elephant in the room, and paragraph 62 works very hard not to look at it— "this isn't about the injunction." But it is. The District Court of Lubbock County enjoined the NCAA from barring Brendan Sorsby from practicing or playing for Texas Tech, on a 5K bond, through a trial not set until February 2027. The practical effect is that Sorsby plays the entire 2026 season. The Big 12 now asks a federal court to declare that it may bar Texas Tech from competing for letting him. Strip away the labels, and the conference is asking one sovereign's courts to restore the very exclusion another sovereign's court just lifted—relabeled, from "NCAA eligibility" to "conference governance," but identical in result.

That's a real trap, and it is structural. Federal and state courts keep a wary distance from one another's orders; neither likes to be handed the other's ruling to undo. A federal court will rarely enjoin a state proceeding, and it is nearly as reluctant to grant relief that achieves the same end through the back. The Big 12 was shrewd to choose a declaratory judgment over an injunction— a softer vehicle that does not, on its face, touch the state order. But that shrewdness cuts both ways: declaratory relief is discretionary, and a federal judge may simply decline to issue a declaration whose only real function is to neutralize a state court's ruling. The conference says it is exercising independent governance authority. A skeptical judge may see a conference trying to do through the side door what a state court has barred the NCAA from doing through the front— and may decline to hold the door.

The Big 12 should win this, and it should win because the law is not actually close: a private association enforcing its own bylaws against a member who bet on his own games is ordinary self-governance. The Texas AG has managed the rare feat of threatening a lawsuit so weak that he walked his adversary into court, drew a public rebuke from a fellow attorney general within 24 hours, and turned a meeting the Big 12 might never have held into a federal complaint with his own letter stapled to the back as an Exhibit. Crazy times.

Thanks to @TomMarsLaw for making the complaint available.

[Cody Campbell’s Wallet🦅🦅 @TrutherTTU]

Just watched Pardon the Interruption talk about Brendan Sorsbys gambling for 5 minutes then go to a commercial break…

The first commercial was Draftkings.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

@susanaumack This is the right takeaway. The people who took the vacation, saved the photo locally, and treated the badge like a rental — they had the easiest morning on Tuesday.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am the Senior Vice President of Human Resources at Oracle Corporation.

Last Tuesday, I sent an email to 30,000 people at 6 AM.

Yesterday morning, I onboarded 1 person at $950,000 a year.

Both were my responsibility. Both were executed flawlessly.

The email said: "After careful consideration of Oracle's current business needs, we have made the decision to eliminate your role as part of a broader organizational change. As a result, today is your last working day."

I signed it "Oracle Leadership." Not my name. Not the co-CEOs' names. Not anyone's name. Leadership. Leadership is a signature that cannot be fired.

At 6:01 AM, our infrastructure team disabled 30,000 badges. Revoked 30,000 VPN tokens. Locked 30,000 laptops. Wiped 30,000 voicemails. Suspended 30,000 email accounts. By 6:04 AM, 30,000 people were staring at a login screen that would never accept their password again. The email reminded them they were "prohibited from downloading, copying, or retaining any Oracle confidential information."

3 people called the HR hotline before 6:15. 2 asked if the email was real. 1 asked if she could retrieve a photo of her daughter from her desktop. I directed all 3 to the separation portal.

That's data security.

I've managed 11 separation events. This was the cleanest. 30,000 endpoints terminated in under 4 minutes. I sent the email from a template in PeopleSoft called TERM_MASS_COMM_v4. The v4 is important. Version 1 had a paragraph that said "we value your contributions." Version 2 shortened it to a sentence. Version 3 shortened it to "thank you." Version 4 removed it entirely. Legal flagged it in 2024. You cannot say you valued something you are discarding at 6 AM. Liability exposure.

That's risk management.

The co-CEOs approved the plan in 11 minutes. I timed it. I always time approvals. Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia. They received $250 million and $100 million in stock option grants when they took the roles in September. They asked about the WARN Act filing timeline. They asked about the restructuring charge projection. They did not ask how the employees would be notified. They did not ask when.

That's executive alignment.

In January, TD Cowen published an analyst note. It said cutting 20,000 to 30,000 employees would generate $8 to $10 billion in incremental free cash flow. We needed that cash. Our AI data center capital expenditures are projected at $50 billion this fiscal year. We had a $20 billion shortfall.

The 30,000 people were the shortfall.

I don't call it that in the board deck. Slide 14 has a waterfall chart. The left column is labeled "Current Headcount Cost." The right column is labeled "Redeployable Capital." The 30,000 people are the bridge between the 2 columns. They are a blue arrow. Calibri 11pt.

That's strategic planning.

1 day before the email, on Monday, our 5-year credit default swaps hit 198.6 basis points. That is the highest level in Oracle's history. Higher than December 2008. Higher than the financial crisis itself. The market is pricing our debt at levels not seen since Lehman Brothers still had a lobby. We carry $124.7 billion in debt on the books. We added $39 billion in 9 months. Our trailing free cash flow is negative $24.74 billion.

I included this in the board deck on slide 3. Nobody discusses slide 3. Slide 3 is where we put the things that are true.

That's transparency.

By Thursday, the H-1B data reached the press. 3,126 petitions. We filed them while scheduling the separation event. Same department. Same quarter. Same PeopleSoft instance. The termination workflow is TERM_MASS_COMM_v4. The visa sponsorship workflow is ONBOARD_H1B_STD. They share a database. They share a help desk queue. They share a budget line.

1 workflow removes 30,000 people who built the cloud infrastructure. The other sponsors 3,000 replacements to continue building it. I manage both workflows from the same standing desk.

That's human resources.

An employee posted on Blind that it was "a slap in the face." I know which employee. We have analytics on Blind. Sentiment tracking, attribution modeling, post velocity. His post received 4,200 upvotes in 12 hours. I flagged it for Corporate Communications. Communications sent me a thumbs-up emoji. Nobody drafted a response.

That's stakeholder management.

Yesterday morning, Hilary Maxson started as our new Chief Financial Officer. Base salary: $950,000. Annual performance bonus target: $2.5 million. Equity package: $26 million — $20.8 million time-based, $5.2 million performance-based, vesting over 4 years. We are also covering up to $250,000 in relocation expenses. Her offer letter is 7 pages. The separation notice I sent 30,000 people is 4 paragraphs.

I managed both documents. The compensation committee approved her package on the same call where we reviewed the $2.1 billion restructuring charge. We have recorded $982 million of that charge so far. That is what 30,000 people cost on a balance sheet. The CFO's equity package is 1.2% of the restructuring line. A rounding error. No — less than a rounding error. A rounding error's rounding error.

That's market-competitive compensation.

Our Slack user count dropped from 165,000 to 155,000 in a single day. If you have access to the admin panel, you can watch the number fall in real time. I have access. It drops fast between 6:04 and 6:11 AM. Then it slows. Stragglers. People who hadn't opened their laptops yet. People in Pacific Time who were still sleeping when their career ended. By 7:00 AM, the line flattens. I watched it from my standing desk with a coffee. The line goes down smoothly. No bumps. No steps. Just a slope.

That's attrition analytics.

In Kansas City, I filed WARN notices for 539 people. 85 software developers. 43 systems analysts. 39 program managers. In Washington, 491 people. 270 software developers. 46 development managers. These are the people who built Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. We are now spending $50 billion to expand it with different people on ONBOARD_H1B_STD.

The WARN filing lists the separation date as June 1. The email said today is their last working day. The badge stopped working at 6:01 AM. 3 different dates for the same event.

That's compliance.

12,000 of the 30,000 were in India. Bangalore. Hyderabad. Pune. India does not require WARN notices. This is not why 12,000 of them were in India. But it is why nobody has to file anything.

That's jurisdictional planning.

The quarterly earnings call was March 10. 21 days before the email. The co-CEOs announced $553 billion in remaining performance obligations. They said demand for AI infrastructure "continues to exceed supply." The analysts upgraded their estimates. The stock is down 57% from its peak. It was $326 in September. It is $146 today. Larry Ellison's net worth is $188.7 billion. He has not made a public statement about the layoffs.

He has not been asked to.

That's governance.

Trust in the Q4 engagement survey dropped 34 points. I reported it under "Culture Health Metrics." My manager said the numbers were "expected for a rebalancing of this scale." She told me to revisit it next quarter.

I will revisit it next quarter. By then the Slack count will have stabilized. The Blind posts will have cycled off the front page. The ONBOARD_H1B_STD workflows will have completed. The new CFO will have her equity vesting schedule configured in PeopleSoft. And the 30,000 will be on LinkedIn, adding "open to work" above the Oracle logo they can no longer access.

I will be here. At my standing desk. Managing the workflows.

30,000 separation emails sent at 6:00 AM. 3,126 H-1B petitions filed the same quarter. $26 million in equity for the new CFO. $350 million in stock options for the 2 co-CEOs. $188.7 billion in personal wealth for the chairman. $124.7 billion in corporate debt. 198.6 basis points on the credit default swaps — higher than 2008. Negative $24.74 billion in free cash flow. $50 billion in AI capital expenditure.

1 PeopleSoft instance. 2 workflows. Same server.

TERM_MASS_COMM_v4 and ONBOARD_H1B_STD share a database.

That's human resources.

[Daniel Wallach @WALLACHLEGAL]

Arizona charges Kalshi with criminal misdemeanors, alleging it’s an illegal gambling operation,

Via @contessabrewer (with insights from me) https://t.co/GKat8PuoPt

[Texas Our Texas @TxOurTx]

Chief Justice Says Personal Attacks on Judges Are ‘Dangerous’ and Must Stop https://t.co/s4KOHfOgBX via @NYTimes

[David J. Bier @David_J_Bier]

Incredible reporting by the team at WSJ. The government is covering up its crackdown on political opposition with bogus charges and claims of assaults. They are defaming hundreds of people and erasing the first amendment

[Scott Braddock @scottbraddock]

Well, what do you know?
*76%* of Texas school voucher applications come from families whose children are not enrolled in public schools. Less than 1% of public and charter school families have applied for vouchers.

It's straight up welfare for the wealthy #txlege

[Texas Our Texas @TxOurTx]

Makes more than a lot of sense. Makes total sense.

[Daniel Wallach @WALLACHLEGAL]

Was there clear congressional authorization in 2010 to empower CFTC to regulate sports wagering nationwide when other federal laws banned interstate sports betting and gave States "primary responsibility" for determining what forms of gambling may take place within its borders?

(Those federal statutes are the Wire Act, PASPA, and the Interstate Horse Racing Act).

The answer would appear to be no.

1) In every instance in which it has addressed the divisive subject of sports gambling, Congress has done so clearly and explicitly – starting with the Wire Act of 1961, which prohibits the interstate transmission of wagering information related to any “sporting event of contest” (a ban which is still in effect), and further exemplified by PASPA, which, until its demise in 2018, prohibited state-authorized sports wagering. The Third Circuit referred to these laws as exemplifying a “federal policy of disfavoring sports-gambling.”

2) The suggestion that Dodd-Frank nationalized sports gambling in all 50 states under the regulatory sphere of the CFTC would certainly come as a surprise to the Supreme Court and litigants in Murphy v. NCAA—all of whom operated under the belief that there was no federal regime in place to regulate sports wagering.

3) The leagues and the DOJ were on the losing side in Murphy because there was no federal scheme of regulation or deregulation in effect at the time concerning sports gambling; just a blanket prohibition (i.e., PASPA) directed at state governments.

4) The sports leagues and the DOJ might have won the Murphy case if only they had alerted SCOTUS to the CFTC’s "decades-long" exclusive jurisdiction to regulate sports-related event contracts.

5) If "sports-related contracts" have been "within the CFTC's regulatory perimeter for decades"--as both Kalshi and the CFTC claim--then such a weird oversight that the 1999 National Gambling Impact Study commissioned by Congress neglected to mention CFTC regulation in its chapter on sports betting.

6) The NGISC Final Report, which was addressed to the President and Congress, is the most comprehensive gambling study ever conducted in the United States. The Chapter addressing gambling regulation (including federal laws regulating gambling) makes no reference to the CEA or CFTC.

[Texas Our Texas @TxOurTx]

https://t.co/WmLDTDyqmi

[The Bulwark @BulwarkOnline]

"The one unforgivable thing is making money off of him. And the way he views this, the federal budget is his money... If you are spending that money to get something over for yourself...then you're stealing from him."

JVL on Kristi Noem's cardinal sin.

[Heath Mayo @HeathMayo]

The GOP kicked out Dan Crenshaw tonight. And it is well on its way to kicking out John Cornyn in favor of a serial philanderer and fraudster who even Cornyn himself will tell you has zero integrity and is unfit for office.

To the few still clinging to the belief that the GOP will “come back” someday: How many times does the GOP have to show you this is who it is before you finally believe them?

The battle to be waged against this version of the GOP is in the *general* election—not the primary. Help us defeat it, starting in Texas.

[Kristy Greenberg @KGreenberg_]

DOJ is withholding FBI reports about a claim that Trump sexually assaulted a minor — calling them duplicative or privileged. They’re neither. This is a clear example of DOJ breaking the law. Congress should sue DOJ and subpoena third parties for the files.

[Marc E. Elias @marceelias]

DOJ's recent 6th Circuit filing misspelled:

Voters as “Votors”
Emergency as "Emeregency"
United States as "United Staes"

And, it included a non-party in the caption.

These are the people who want access to your voting records and who my team fights in court every day.