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University of Texas School of Law Steve Vladeck fired back at a controversial Trump-appointed judge on Wednesday for personally attacking him in a recent court decision.
Anti-abortion groups challenging the FDA's approval of an abortion-inducing drug filed their lawsuit in Amarillo, Texas, since the Trump-appointed U.S. district judge that hears 95% of the cases filed in the city is known to be a champion of conservative causes.
Writing in Slate, Vladeck said that Texas and other red states have steered dozens of lawsuits to Amarillo with "no logical connection" the city, adding that "it’s part of a broader pattern of judge-shopping—where plaintiffs steer cases to the same isolated geographical venues and then publicly admit that the reason they’re doing it is because by filing in those jurisdictions, they know which judge they’ll draw."
The judge Vladeck is referring to is Matthew Kacsmaryk, who is considering a case on whether to issue a nationwide ban on the most common form of abortion medication "in a lawsuit that could’ve been brought anywhere in the country" -- but was brought to Amarillo specifically so Kacsmaryk -- whose anti-abortion views are well known -- would hear it.
IN OTHER NEWS: Trump makes it embarrassingly clear he doesn't know the difference between NATO and NAFTA
"If all Judge Kacsmaryk did in his Tuesday ruling was deny the DOJ’s motion to change venue in the ESG case, it wouldn’t be much of a story," Vladeck writes. "But in the course of rejecting the DOJ’s arguments, Kacsmaryk decided to come after me—even though I’m not involved in that case in any way."
"First, he dismissed the (incontrovertible) evidence of Texas’ behavior as 'an amicus brief filed by a professor with a Twitter account.' Leaving aside that the amicus brief to which he’s referring, once again, was filed in a different court in a different case, this clumsy attempt at a burn (lots of professors—and lawyers—have Twitter accounts) never comes close to addressing the substance of my trifling little tweets. If I had posted my data to a more academic site, would it somehow be more compelling?" Vladeck continues.
Vladeck says Kacsmaryk then took a more personal shot at him by name-dropping the late Texas Law Professor Charles Alan Wright, saying the late professor would be above taking his grievances to Twitter. Vladeck points out that he currently holds the Charles Alan Wright Chair in Federal Courts at the University of Texas School of Law.
"It’s hard to say what exactly Kacsmaryk intended to convey by name-checking the man whose chair I have the honor of holding; no doubt it was meant as another fire-emoji-level burn of me personally," he writes. "But it’s a remarkably childish and churlish shot for a sitting federal judge to take at a non-party for the sin of amassing accurate data in support of a position he doesn’t like."
Vladeck writes that it says a lot about a judge who would "go out of his way to try to denigrate someone with no direct involvement in a case before him for no other reason than scoring points (on Twitter, one presumes) and auditioning for a promotion in the next Republican administration."
Read the full article over at Slate.
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Trump makes it embarrassingly clear he doesn't know the difference between NATO and NAFTA
March 29, 2023
Former President Donald Trump recently conducted a television interview where he appeared to not know the difference between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
During a recent appearance on Fox News, Trump spoke with conservative host Sean Hannity where he claimed he "got rid of NATO."
The former president began his rant by insisting that other countries feared him and knew “not to mess around” in regard to trade alliances saying, “Did they fear me? I suspect they did."
He went on to share details about a previous discussion he'd had with Russian President Vladimir Putin as he weighed in on the Nord Stream pipeline.
According to Trump: "Putin said, 'Man, you are killing me, especially about Nord Stream.' And I stopped it. It was stopped cold. And I told other countries, 'If you go into the Nord Stream, you are not going to do any business with the United States of America,' meaning rip us off on trade because a lot of them have ripped us off. I made a lot of great deals on trade, though. I changed a lot of those deals where it was a bad deal for us and now it’s good, like USMCA with NATO. I got rid of NATO and built USMCA. I made a great trade deal with China. Our farmers, to this day they made tremendous money because of the deal."
It's unclear whether or not Hannity caught the former president's blunder but he did not challenge his remarks.
At one point during the discussion, Trump shifted his attention to President Joe Biden and took jabs at the president's cognitive functions. Hannity asked Trump if he would consider another round of cognitive testing.
“I would like to see it for anybody running for president, taking a cognitive test,” Trump said. “You know they do it in China, but it’s done in a different way. They have a caste system. And the smartest person gets to the top.”
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'He’s hardly infirm': Judge shoots down Fox News lawyers’ efforts to avoid Rupert Murdoch’s testimony
March 29, 2023
At 92, Rupert Murdoch is far from retired. Much of the coverage at Fox News and Fox Business reportedly reflects his enthusiasm for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as a possible 2024 GOP presidential candidate. And the Melbourne, Australia native (who has homes in London as well as different parts of the United States) continues to be a highly influential figure in right-wing media.
During a late March pre-trial hearing in Delaware, Judge Eric M. Davis pushed back against what he said were efforts by Fox News attorneys to prevent him from traveling to testify in Dominion Voting Systems' $1.6 billion defamation case against the right-wing cable news outlet. Davis, according to National Public Radio (NPR), believes that Murdoch is still perfectly capable of traveling.
Davis, the judge in that civil defamation case, noted that he had received a letter saying that Murdoch "couldn't travel" to Delaware because of COVID-19. But the judge cited recent examples of the right-wing media mogul planning to travel between his various homes. Davis, according to NPR, warned Fox News' attorneys to "be careful" and not make him "look like an idiot."
"I also have people telling me that he's done some things recently that (show) he's hardly infirm," Davis told the courtroom.
"On Tuesday, (March 28)," NPR's Karl Baker reports, "Fox attorney Matthew Carter pointed to Murdoch's deposition when responding to Davis' incredulity about the media magnate's ability to travel. Carter said there had been a miscommunication. He said his side hadn't argued that Murdoch was infirm, but that there was no reason for his trial testimony given that the Murdoch had already submitted to seven hours of questioning in the deposition."
Baker adds, "In his deposition, Murdoch asserted that he knew Trump had lost the 2020 election, but certain Fox hosts, including Maria Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs, had ‘endorsed’ the narrative of a stolen election."
It remains to be seen what jurors will think about Dominion's arguments and Fox News' counterarguments in the defamation case. Dominion alleges that Fox News defamed the company when, after the 2020 presidential election, it promoted the false claim that Dominion's voting equipment had been used to help now-President Joe Biden steal votes from then-President Donald Trump.
READ MORE: Dominion just created an 'overwhelming' hurdle for Fox News: legal expert
Fox News, in the Dominion case, has maintained that it wasn't trying to convince viewers that the company did anything illegal in 2020 — it was simply asking questions. But Dominion, in response, alleges that Fox News knew that the allegations against the company were false but promoted them anyway. As evidence, Dominion is presenting examples of e-mails and text messages in which Fox News hosts — including Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity — acknowledged that claims of a stolen election were nonsense. Moreover, according to Dominion, Carlson attacked Fox News' reporters for debunking claims of a stolen election, as he believed doing so would alienate the cable channel's audience and hurt its brand.
Nonetheless, defamation is very difficult to prove under the U.S. Supreme Court's 1964 standard in New York Times versus Sullivan. According to the Sullivan standard, a plaintiff in a civil defamation case must show that the defendant acted with "actual malice" — and things like sloppy reporting and inflammatory comments do not meet that tough standard.
Dominion has also filed separate defamation lawsuits against Newsmax TV, One America News (OAN) and attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, all of whom it says promoted false claims about the company after the 2020 election.
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