Hollywood Reporter, The

Watch Out, CNN: President Trump's Supreme Court Frontrunner Is Bad News for Free Speech

President Donald Trump may go far in living up to his much-ridiculed pledge to open up libel laws to make it easier to sue media outlets. How? Turn no further than Abbas v. Foreign Policy Group, a 2014 decision at the US Appeals Court for the DC Circuit authored by recent Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh. At first blush, the decision looks like a win for libel defendants. In fact, when it came out, many reporters highlighted how Kavanaugh poured cold water on the notion that asking a question could be actionable as defamation by implication.