Media Matters Sues FTC Over Agency Probe
An FTC probe into Media Matters for America is "aimed at silencing [it] and punishing it for its speech," the left-leaning journalism watchdog group told the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in a lawsuit filed Monday (docket…
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1:25-cv-01959) against the agency. It said that due to its reporting, "state governments and now a federal agency have employed sweeping governmental powers to attempt to silence and harass an organization for daring to speak the truth." The Texas and Missouri attorneys general previously launched investigations after unflattering reporting about social media platform X, but those probes have been dropped or halted by court injunction, so "the Trump Administration has picked up where the states left off." Media Matters asked the court to declare that the FTC's civil investigative demands are a retaliatory action in violation of the group's First Amendment rights and to enjoin the FTC from trying to enforce the demands or continue the investigation.