Yesterday Vox’s Ian Millhiser penned his fifth screed in the past two months against federal district judge Matthew Kacsmaryk. And in case that weren’t enough to inspire his lefty readers to spew death threats and other abuse against Kacsmaryk, Millhiser tweeted that Kacsmaryk “is the single worst villain in the United States of America that most people have never heard of” and that “Republicans turned this f***ing guy into one of the most powerful people in the United States of America” (my asterisks, not Millhiser’s). That’s all on top of Millhiser’s previous rants that Kacsmaryk “is arguably the worst judge in the United States,” that his “record reads like he’s the villain in a parable about a puritanical witch-hunter,” and that he “has spent his brief career on the bench acting like a rubber stamp for reactionary grievances.”
As it happens, the Fifth Circuit has so far affirmed Judge Kacsmaryk in every ruling that Millhiser complains about (and Kacsmaryk’s ruling in another case comports with a recent en banc ruling by the Eleventh Circuit). Millhiser acknowledges that record by complaining that the Fifth Circuit is “exceedingly conservative” and “reactionary” and “has a history of rubber-stamping outlandish decisions handed down by Kacsmaryk.” Or maybe, just maybe, Judge Kacsmaryk is doing his best, and is doing quite well, in discerning how the Fifth Circuit would rule on some difficult questions of first impression.
The Supreme Court has reversed Kacsmaryk and the Fifth Circuit in one case. But by Millhiser’s own account, the Court gave the Biden administration “the smallest possible victory.”
In short, it would appear that for all the contempt Millhiser heaps on Kacsmaryk, his broader beef is with a conservative judiciary.