Transphobic billionaire Elon Musk’s lawsuit against the progressive watchdog organization Media Matters for America (MMFA) may be “fizzling out” due to a recent court ruling, Ars Technica reported. Musk sued MMFA after the organization’s reporting on X’s neo-Nazi content caused big-dollar advertisers to flee.

U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, recently blocked a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) probe into MMFA. Sooknanan’s ruling noted that conservative FTC staffers seemed intent on targeting MMFA in “a straightforward First Amendment violation.”

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Sooknanan pointed out that FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson and the senior staffers he appointed under the current presidential administration had made social media comments calling MFFA “stupid and resentful” and the “scum of the Earth” for trying to “silence conservative voices,” the aforementioned publication wrote.

The FTC’s expedited probe sought to investigate an alleged “illegal coordinated campaign to game ad pricing, starve revenue, and censor conservative platforms.” But Sooknanan noted that the FTC requested MMFA to supply documents “well beyond the investigation’s purported scope,” including reporter resource materials, financial records, and all documents related to Musk’s lawsuit.

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As such Sooknanan said it appeared that the FTC’s probe under the current presidential administration was expedited “because it wanted to continue the years’ long pressure campaign against Media Matters by Mr. Musk and his political allies.”

The anti-LGBTQ+ attorneys general of Missouri and Texas had also launched their own probes into MMFA at the behest of Musk, but a U.S. district court issued a preliminary enjoinment against those probes as well. Additionally, a federal district court issued a preliminary enjoinment against Musk’s strategy of legally challenging MMFA in other courts.

While MMFA’s report led to an exodus of advertisers from X, Musk’s own endorsement of antisemitic and white supremacist tropes has caused X to lose millions in ad revenue from such major accounts as Apple, IBM, and Comcast.

Nevertheless, Musk still has a legal challenge against MMFA in Texas. MMFA accused Musk of “venue shopping” for courts in that state because its conservative judges are most likely to issue a ruling in his favor.

MMFA President Angelo Carusone told The New York Times that the recent court ruling “demonstrates the importance of fighting over folding, which far too many are doing when confronted with intimidation from the Trump administration.”

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