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The federal judge overseeing the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump put a damper on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s victory in his separate case in Washington D.C. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday shot down Trump’s bid to dismiss his federal election interference case based on presidential immunity. On the same day, District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing the other case against Trump in Florida, ruled that some discovery material that Smith wanted to keep under seal would be disclosed, reminding him “of the strong presumption of public access in criminal proceedings.” “Following an...

As we reported earlier, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled against former President Donald Trump in his appeal on presidential immunity from prosecution. The three-judge panel affirmed the ruling of the District Court in the matter. The appeal delayed the start of the election interference case that had been set for March 4. Now, it should be noted that even though the ruling went against Trump, just the filing of it bought him some time, as George Washington law professor Jonathan Turley explained.“The most practical impact of this appeal was indeed the delay that...

Appeals court denies Donald Trump immunity in DC election case

DC Circuit largely vacates Chutkan's restraining order

The District allowed "Black Lives Matter" protestors to violate the city's defacement ordiance, but enforced the law against groups with a different political message. Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit revived a lawsuit agaisnt the District of Columbia for selective enforcement of the district's defacement ordinance in violation of the First Amendment. Judge Rao wrote for the court in Frederick Douglass Foundation v. District of Columbia, joined by Judge Childs, reversing the district court's dismissal of the Foundation's First Amendment claim, but affirming dismissal of an Equal Protection claim. Judge Wilkins concurred in the judgment. Judge...

BREAKING: A federal judge has just blocked the use of Title 42 at the border as a result of ACLU litigation. Title 42 allows the U.S. to immediately expel migrants on the basis of public health. It has been used millions of times under both Trump & Biden. T42 is gone, for now.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who will be nominated for the Supreme Court, worked for seven years as a judge on the federal trial court in Washington, D.C., before Biden appointed her to the appeals court that meets in the same courthouse. Here are excerpts from some notable opinions: PRESIDENTIAL POWER In 2019, Jackson ruled on a dispute between Democrats who control the House of Representatives and the Trump administration over lawmakers’ efforts to subpoena former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify to Congress. The administration appealed, and the case bounced around the D.C. Circuit through the...

A federal judge has encouraged all of his colleagues to "carefully consider" whether the Yale Law School students who attempted to shout down a bipartisan panel on free speech "should be disqualified from potential clerkships." D.C. Circuit judge Laurence Silberman sent an email on Thursday to all federal judges in the United States, urging them to take the fracas at the nation's top law school seriously. "The latest events at Yale Law School," Silberman wrote, "prompt me to suggest that students who are identified as those willing to disrupt any such panel discussion should be noted. All federal judges—and all...

Pro-life Sen. Josh Hawley expressed alarm Wednesday about U.S. Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s “soft” record on child sex offenders amid growing concerns about protecting children from abuse. Jackson, President Joe Biden’s nominee to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, also has a pro-abortion record that includes working with abortion activists on a case about suppressing pro-life advocates’ free speech. Her record on unborn babies’ rights has pro-life advocates opposing her nomination. Now, Hawley’s findings are raising additional concerns about other vulnerable children. “Judge Jackson has a pattern of letting child porn offenders off the hook for their appalling crimes,...

Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's membership in a Harvard University student group that once invited a controversial anti-Semitic speaker to campus has surfaced ahead of her confirmation hearings later this month. In 1992, Jackson was a member of the Harvard Black Students Association when they invited Leonard Jeffries, a professor known for making anti-Semitic remarks, to speak at the university, Fox News reports. According to the Anti-Defamation League, Jeffries first gained public attention in 1991, “when the New York Post published an account of a vitriolic anti-Semitic and racist speech he made on July 20 at the Empire...

Article was published anonymously in 1996 by Harvard Law Review, but Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson did not disclose her authorship until the Senate Judiciary Committee asked her to list published writings as part of her confirmation process. ******************************************************************************* President Joe Biden's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, admitted on a questionnaire for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee that she had authored a paper criticizing the "excessiveness" of sex offenders' punishments, which she said could be "unfair and unnecessarily burdensome." Jackson authored "Prevention Versus Punishment: Toward a Principled Distinction in the Restraint of Released Sex Offenders," which was published anonymously...

BREAKING: Biden has chosen his Supreme Court nominee, with announcement expected as soon as Friday - CNN

(CNN)With only a few days left in February, court watchers are trying to read tea leaves as to the identity of President Joe Biden's pick for the Supreme Court before his end-of-the-month deadline -- and a federal court on Thursday increased the buzz around DC Circuit Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit deviated from its typical procedure by issuing an opinion on a Thursday -- breaking with its usual schedule of Tuesday and Friday release days. Notably, Jackson -- who has interviewed with Biden for the Supreme Court nomination -- was...

On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Ingraham Angle,” host Laura Ingraham contrasted President Joe Biden’s vow to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court to replace outgoing Justice Stephen Breyer with then-Sen. Biden’s opposition to and multiple filibusters of the nomination of Janice Rogers Brown to the federal bench by then-President George W. Bush in 2003 and 2005 and remarked that “race and gender, they only count if you’re thought to be a committed judicial activist, judicial leftist.” Ingraham said, [relevant remarks begin around 2:50] “I’m thinking back on the nomination of what would’ve been another first,...

Sen. Joe Biden said Sunday that if President Bush nominates recently confirmed Circuit Court Judge Janice Rogers Brown to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court, Senate Democrats will launch a filibuster. "If [Bush] sent up Edith Jones, I could assure you that would be a very, very, very difficult fight - and she would probably be filibustered," Biden told CBS's "Face the Nation." In the next breath Biden corrected himself, saying, "I misspoke, I misspoke. Janice Rogers Brown is what I meant to say." Asked whether that would break the Senate's much heralded compromise last month not to...

The GOP-controlled Senate on Tuesday ended a nearly two-year Democratic filibuster of California judge Janice Rogers Brown, putting her on track to become the second black woman on what many people consider to be the nation’s second highest court. The 65-32 vote virtually assures the conservative jurist and Alabama native’s confirmation Wednesday evening to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, part of a historic deal to avert a partisan showdown over judicial filibusters. It takes 60 votes to bypass a filibuster. In November 2003, Brown’s Republican supporters were able to get only 53 votes for...

Yesterday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected former President Donald Trump’s claim of executive privilege, holding that the archivist of the United States could provide a tranche of Trump’s presidential records to the House’s “Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.”In a unanimous ruling, the federal appellate court concluded that President Biden’s conclusion that “an assertion of executive privilege is not in the best interests of the United States” controlled and that the archivist, therefore, must hand over the first of three sets of documents requested. The court added, however, that it would...

A federal appeals court ruled Thursday against an effort by former President Donald Trump to shield documents from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. In a 68-page ruling, the three-judge panel tossed aside Trump's various arguments for blocking through executive privilege records that the committee regards as vital to its investigation into the run-up to the deadly riot aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election. Judge Patricia Millett, writing for the court, said Congress had “uniquely vital interests” in studying the events of Jan. 6 and said President Joe Biden had made...

(CNN)An appeals court hearing Tuesday on former President Donald Trump's claim to keep January 6 documents from his presidency private showed that Trump faces an uphill battle to keep the documents out of the hands of House investigators... ...The case touches on some unsettled law around whether a former president can litigate executive privilege claims when the incumbent sides with transparency. And the three judges on the appellate panel -- all Democratic appointees -- signaled that they found some of the case's questions difficult, even as they expressed doubt about Trump's claims.... ...They also challenged the lawyers with several hypothetical...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Friday tossed out greenhouse gas emissions rules for heavy-duty truck trailers, ruling two government agencies had exceeded their authority. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in 2016 set rules for the first time requiring trailer manufacturers to adopt fuel-saving technologies like side skirts and automatic tire pressure systems. An industry group challenged the rule, which was put on hold by the court pending the review. The administration of then-President Barack Obama said it was important to regulate the fuel efficiency of the trailer portion of commercial...