Why they're smearing Lina Khan
People are smearing Lina Khan because she is radically different, yes.
People are <i>also</i> smearing Lina Khan because she keeps failing in court in very bad, obvious ways.<p>She is also consistently ignoring the advice of the very seasoned lawyers in her own organization, who are not in political positions (federal agencies have both career employees and political ones).<p>Her organization has started to lose faith with her, and even scores in things like &quot;honesty and integrity&quot; dropped by 50% (from 84 points to &lt;40 points), with comments pointing out they feel like they are being forced to pursue cases with frivolous arguments.  See FEVS[1].<p>None of these are good things.<p>Cory wants her to be successful because she&#x27;s a true believer, and she is a true believer in things he supports.  But the true believers are rarely (maybe never) successful when they have <i>zero</i> pragmatism.<p>So far, she has zero pragmatism.  She is consistently losing in court (Meta&#x2F;Within, Lumina&#x2F;Grail, Activision&#x2F;MS, Altria&#x2F;Juul, etc).<p>If Lina continues on the path she is on, she will be totally unsuccessful.  She will change nothing, and will in fact, set things back and make people unwilling to try it again.
The Activision case is a great example - the FTC&#x27;s arguments are just silly.  I think this merger is a bad thing, but the tact the FTC is taking stands no chance of winning.<p>She will move precisely nothing forward in the world at this rate - it will only get harder - losses make it more likely you keep losing, people scrutinize arguments harder, etc.<p>The kind of change she wants and Cory wants doesn&#x27;t happen by throwing abstract policy positions at the wall (in the form of court cases), even if the positions are ones I mostly agree with.  It happens by moving your legal position from where it is, in reasonable, logical steps, to where you want it to be, and convincing courts along the way to take those steps with you.<p>That may suck in a lot of ways - especially when you think you are very right and everything sucks (and you might be!).  But bringing people along on the journey is necessary for courts too, the same way it is for any other part of society.  The righteousness of your cause or position rarely matters to the speed at which you can do successfully something about it .<p>[1] These are not employees who love or hate any particular company or industry, and have maintained high scores despite plenty of changes in administrations over the decades.