RICHFIELD, Utah — A federal judge in Amarillo, Texas, has offered yet another example of how the MAGA cult of the Repubican Party has turned traditional GOP orthodoxy on its ear.
The standard GOP mantra used to be that the party hated activist judges, that they shouldn’t “legislate from the bench.”
Well, welcome to the new world of GOP judicial activism.
It reared its repulsive puss in the form of U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who ruled this past week that the abortion drug mifepristone shouldn’t be used to terminate a pregnancy. He suspended its use, which the Food and Drug Administration approved more than 20 years ago, and which women for decades have relied on to end health-endangering pregnancies.
I write this blog while sitting in a community that likely endorses the judge’s activist stance. No worries. I’ll be gone in the morning.
To suggest that the judge has launched a legislative battle from the bench is to be guilty of grotesque understatement.
The judge is a Donald Trump appointee. He succeeded an iconic figure in Texas Panhandle judicial circles, the late Judge Mary Lou Robinson, who likely never — not in a million years — would have tossed out judicial precedent in the manner exhibited by her successor.
Kacsmaryk has done the dirty work of the GOP members of the MAGA cult in Congress. Never mind that most Republicans oppose the judge’s decision, along with a significant majority of all Americans, who want to protect a woman’s reproductive rights.
The Justice Department has filed an appeal with the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and is preparing to take the matter to the top of the judicial food chain, the U.S. Supreme Court.
As for Judge Kacsmaryk, he has tossed aside GOP political precedent by invoking the most judicially activist position possible in wiping out women’s rights.
I am fairly confident that the women, along with many milliions of other Americans, are going to have their say when the 2024 election rolls around.