'Radically unpopular' MAGA judges a liability for the GOP: conservative

11 April 2023

On Friday, April 7, U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk — a far-right Christian fundamentalist appointed by former President Donald Trump — infuriated reproductive rights supporters by suspending federal approval of mifepristone, an abortion drug that is also used to treat miscarriages and was first approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2000. But that same day in a separate case, another federal judge — U.S. District Judge Thomas O. Rice, a Barack Obama appointee — ordered the FDA to keep mifepristone available in 17 states as well as the District of Columbia.

In a column published by the Washington Post on April 11, Never Trumper Jennifer Rubin argues that "reactionary" judges like Kacsmaryk are hurting the Republican Party politically.

Rubin explains, "Kacsmaryk's opinion, which the Justice Department appealed on Monday, (April 10) and moved to stay, displays the three telltale characteristics of Trump-appointed judges' opinions: Contempt for the law, sleight of hand on the facts and partisan language more appropriate to a MAGA rally than a courtroom…. Moreover, the judge's reliance on the 1873 'anti-vice' Comstock Act smacks of utter desperation to find any rationale for his desired result. The law, which included a wildly overbroad ban on mailing any 'thing' that could be used in an abortion, was an obvious government prior restraint on speech. Comstock was largely invalidated by the Supreme Court's 1965 ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut."

The Post columnist goes on to say that like Kacsmaryk, the U.S. Supreme Court is wildly out of touch with public opinion on reproductive rights and other issues.

“Given that Kacsmaryk's decision has heaped fuel onto the conflagration caused by the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Republicans might want to ponder: Is the right-wing judiciary as a whole a threat to the MAGA movement's viability?" Rubin writes. "It is one thing to gin up the base on invented threats from critical race theory or the 'Great Replacement Theory.' But when the MAGA movement's judges begin to inflict radically unpopular edicts on those outside the right-wing audience, that risks sparking a counter-response: a determined, broad-based movement insistent that the United States not turn the clock back on decades of social progress…. Radical judges who would impose their will on modern America make themselves a target for a movement that pushes back on the courts' decisions and on the courts themselves."

Read Jennifer Rubin's full Washington Post opinion column at this link (subscription required).

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