Elon Musk's "thermonuclear" Media Matters lawsuit may be fizzling out
arstechnica.com

... In her opinion granting MMFA's preliminary injunction, US District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan -- a Joe Biden appointee -- agreed that the FTC's probe was likely to be ruled as a retaliatory violation of the First Amendment. ...

FTC staff social posts may be evidence of retaliation ...

A huge part of the problem for the FTC was social media comments posted before some senior FTC staffers were appointed by Ferguson. Those posts appeared to show the FTC growing increasingly partisan, perhaps pointedly hiring staffers who they knew would help take down groups like MMFA.

As examples, Sooknanan pointed to Joe Simonson, the FTC's director of public affairs, who had posted that MMFA "employed a number of stupid and resentful Democrats who went to like American University and didn't have the emotional stability to work as an assistant press aide for a House member."

And Jon Schwepp, Ferguson's senior policy advisor, had claimed that Media Matters -- which he branded as the "scum of the earth" -- "wants to weaponize powerful institutions to censor conservatives."

And finally, Jake Denton, the FTC's chief technology officer, had alleged that MMFA is "an organization devoted to pressuring companies into silencing conservative voices." ...