Vox: Trump-appointed TX federal judge threatens press freedom
The plaintiffs in Children’s Health Defense v. Washington Post are an array of Covid conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, and disgraced media figures who preach the gospel of ivermectin.
They target four of the world’s leading media institutions — the Washington Post, the BBC, the Associated Press, and Reuters — claiming that these institutions violated federal antitrust law by conspiring with major tech companies to suppress many of the plaintiffs’ business. That is, the business of spreading highly dubious claims about a disease that killed more than a million Americans.
In case there’s any doubt, these plaintiffs’ claims are meritless. It is not illegal for media companies to work together to promote public health — or to work together in myriad other ways — so long as the purpose of that collective effort is to advance social or political goals, as opposed to economic goals such as eliminating competitors.
But the case will be heard by a judge who has spent his brief career on the bench acting like a rubber stamp for reactionary grievances: Trump appointee Matthew Kacsmaryk.
Kacsmaryk is a longtime anti-sex crusader and former attorney for a Christian right law firm in Texas. Since then-President Donald Trump appointed him to the federal bench, however, Kacsmaryk has become one of the most powerful allies of reactionary causes in the United States. Indeed, he’s become one of the most consequential public officials in modern-day America largely due to a rule that automatically assigns every federal lawsuit filed in Amarillo, Texas, to him.
Accordingly, far-right plaintiffs have spent the Biden administration making pilgrimages to Amarillo to beg policy favors from Kacsmaryk — favors that Kacsmaryk has thus far been more than happy to grant. In less than four years on the bench, he has inserted himself into the Biden administration's foreign policy. He’s tried to nullify federal legal protections prohibiting health providers from discriminating against LGBTQ patients. He’s attacked the right to contraception. And he’s currently hearing a case attempting to force the Food and Drug Administration to withdraw its 23-year-old approval of mifepristone, a drug that is used in about half of all abortions.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2023/1/25/23568436/trump-judge-matthew-kacsmaryk-press-freedom-antitrust-childrens-health-defense-washington-post