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‘Vulgar and Lewd’: Trump Judge Cites Extremist Group to Allow Drag Show Ban
A federal judge in Texas known for a ruling that attempted to ban a widely-used abortion drug is citing an extremist anti-LGBTQ group in his ruling allowing a ban on drag shows to stay in place.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a former attorney for an anti-LGBTQ conservative Christian legal organization, and a member of the Federalist Society, in his 26-page ruling dated Thursday cited the “About” page of Gays Against Groomers to claim, “it’s unclear how drag shows unmistakably communicate advocacy for LGBT rights.”
Judge Kacsmaryk, appointed by Donald Trump twice before finally assuming office in 2019, suggests the First Amendment does not provide for freedom of expression for drag shows, calls drag “sexualized conduct,” and says it is “more regulable” because “children are in the audience.”
Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern adds, “Kacsmaryk’s conclusion that drag is probably NOT protected by the First Amendment conflicts with decisions from Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and Montana which held that drag is constitutionally protected expression. It also bristles with undisguised hostility toward LGBTQ people.”
Calling the judge “a proud Christian nationalist who flatly refuses to apply binding Supreme Court precedent when it conflicts with his extremist far-right beliefs,” Stern at Slate writes that Kacsmaryk ruled drag “may be outlawed to protect ‘the sexual exploitation and abuse of children.’ In short, he concluded that drag fails to convey a message, while explaining all the reasons why he’s offended by the message it conveys.”
Stern does not let Kacsmaryk off the hook there.
“From almost any other judge, the ruling in Spectrum WT v. Wendler would be a shocking rejection of basic free speech principles; from Kacsmaryk, it’s par for the course. This is, after all, the judge who sought to ban medication abortion nationwide, restricted minors’ access to birth control, seize control over border policy to exclude asylum-seekers, and flouted recent precedent protecting LGBTQ+ equality,” Stern says.
“He is also poised to bankrupt Planned Parenthood by compelling them to pay a $1.8 billion penalty on truly ludicrous grounds. And he is not the only Trump-appointed judge substituting his reactionary beliefs for legal analysis. We have reached a point where these lawless decisions are not only predictable but inevitable, and they show no sign of stopping: Their authors are still just settling into a decadeslong service in the federal judiciary.”
West Texas A&M University President Walter V. Wendler penned the letter that sparked the lawsuit.
Titled, “A Harmless Drag Show? No Such Thing,” Wendler wrote: “I believe every human being is created in the image of God and, therefore, a person of dignity. Being created in God’s image is the basis of Natural Law. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, prisoners of the culture of their time as are we, declared the Creator’s origin as the foundational fiber in the fabric of our nation as they breathed life into it. Does a drag show preserve a single thread of human dignity? I think not.”
Journalist Chris Geidner concludes, “It’s an extremely biased ruling by a judge who has established that he does not care about being overturned — even by the most conservative appeals court in the nation.”
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MS NOW producer Steve Benen says the FBI faces serious questions following the reported raid on the offices of Virginia Democratic Senate President Pro Tempore L. Louise Lucas, because “the hyperpartisan leaders of the Justice Department and the FBI have made it impossible to give them the benefit of the doubt.”
Benen finds multiple issues with the execution of what is reportedly a search warrant, including that Fox News was on the scene reporting almost immediately — an issue raised by online commentators as well.
The Bulwark’s Sam Stein quipped: “some pretty remarkable instincts by Fox News to have its London correspondent placed in Portsmouth, Virginia right in time for the FBI raid of Louise Lucas.”
The Bulwark’s Bill Kristol warned of an “awful lot of credulous quoting of ‘federal law enforcement’ sources in the coverage of the Louise Lucas matter. Given the manifest politicization of Trump’s DOJ and FBI, why should media agree to quote any of these sources on background?”
“Not to put too fine a point on this,” Benen continued, “but this is why we don’t politicize federal law enforcement. Because even if the underlying case is legitimate, it’s impossible to avoid the larger context and the degree to which this looks like a retaliatory investigation against a Democrat, launched by a weaponized department known for its retaliatory investigations against Democrats.“
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Benen slams both the FBI and DOJ, saying they “have, over the last 16 months, set their collective credibility on fire, corrupting federal law enforcement to a degree unseen in generations. There have simply been too many abuses, launched too often, against too many Trump targets.”
He notes that Senator Lucas is the face of the Democrats’ successful redistricting of Virginia. Benen calls it “something very different, although possibly related.”
Benen also points to an Associated Press report:
“Though the exact nature of the investigation was unclear, the search comes as the FBI and Justice Department have opened a spate of politically charged investigations into perceived adversaries of President Donald Trump.”
He adds that he has “not seen or heard a word about any of the evidence against Lucas, if such evidence exists,” but allows that it is “entirely possible that investigators have worked in good faith.”
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Image via Reuters
The Trump Department of Justice will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to allow it to intervene in President Donald Trump’s appeal of the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, which Trump lost and was ordered by a jury to pay $83.3 million. The DOJ wants SCOTUS to allow it to substitute itself for Trump — which effectively would result in the defamation case being dismissed because the federal government cannot be sued for defamation under federal law.
The DOJ, Bloomberg News reports, will claim Trump was acting as a government employee when he denied Carroll’s sexual-assault claims.
“A panel of appeals court judges previously denied the government’s request to invoke the Westfall Act in the case,” Bloomberg notes. “Carroll alleges Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990s and then defamed her by calling her a liar when she went public with the claim in 2019.”
Critics blasted the DOJ’s decision to go to the Supreme Court.
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“This is outrageous. This has nothing to do with Trump as a public official or president. More corruption in the Justice Department in service of the Cult Leader,” charged The Atlantic’s Norman Ornstein, a prominent political scientist.
“Of course they have. They’re the president’s personal law firm at this point,” said MS NOW legal analyst Joyce Vance, a former U.S. Attorney.
“Most corrupt president ever,” alleged HuffPost White House correspondent S.V. Dáte.
“This is insane—the DOJ is not the president’s personal law firm,” noted Democratic strategist Mike Nellis.
“In case you have any doubt that the DOJ is just Trump’s personal lawyers now,” wrote journalist Franklin Harris.
“There really needs to be a lot more alarm about the level of fascism and corruption unfolding right now,” observed former Obama and Biden official Jesse Lee.
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Image via Shutterstock
Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House’s National Economic Council, is boasting that rising consumer spending — including on gasoline — proves the economy is thriving, even as Americans put those costs on their credit cards.
“And so the consumer is really, really firing on all cylinders, just like the corporate sector you’re seeing in the earnings reports, and they’re doing that because they have so much more money in their pockets,” Hassett told Fox Business.
Bragging that “credit card spending is through the roof,” Hassett said, “They’re spending more on gasoline, but they’re spending more on everything else, too.”
The data shows a different story.
Polls show that the majority of Americans are worried about their finances, more now than at any time in decades.
Late last month, Gallup reported that 55 percent of Americans say their finances are getting worse.
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“That percentage is the highest Gallup has recorded since it began asking Americans about their finances in 2001, showing consumers are less optimistic than they were during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and the Great Recession in 2008,” CBS News reported.
Since President Donald Trump was sworn into office in January 2025, Americans are paying roughly 45% more for gas — with the national average hitting $4.53 per gallon today, per AAA, up from $3.13 that week.
“Almost 3 in 10 Americans now have less savings than they did a year ago, and for many, the safety net they once relied on is already gone,” reports MoneyWise. “According to a recent DepositAccounts survey, 37% of Americans have less than $500 set aside, and nearly half (45%) wouldn’t be able to cover more than a month of essential expenses if their income stopped.”
Kevin Hassett: “The consumer is really, really firing on all cylinders…Credit card spending is through the roof. They’re spending more on gasoline, but they’re spending more on everything else too.” pic.twitter.com/QHxcpIyQJT
— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) May 6, 2026
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Image via Reuters
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