Free Republic

A federal judge cast doubt on Bayer AG ’s proposal to neatly resolve all future lawsuits over the safety of its Roundup weedkiller, potentially snagging the German company’s attempts to move past the massive liability. Bayer said recently it would pay up to $10.9 billion to settle tens of thousands of current Roundup cases and create a system for handling future cases. The deal came after three juries in recent years awarded large verdicts to plaintiffs alleging Roundup caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma, spooking investors. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco, who must approve the class action, said Monday he...

NEW YORK -- Jeffrey Epstein's ex-girlfriend will appear remotely by video for a July 14 courthouse arraignment and bail hearing on charges she recruited girls for him to sexually abuse over two decades ago, a judge said Tuesday. U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan set the date in an order as she announced special arrangements to allow limited public access to the video feed of Ghislaine Maxwell facing charges for the first time in Manhattan federal court next week. **SNIP** Prosecutors say they plan to ask that Maxwell be kept incarcerated pending trial on the grounds that she has the...

Roberts suffered lightheadedness and dehydration, fall was not related to earlier seizures, court says. The Supreme Court belatedly disclosed Tuesday night that Chief Justice John Roberts was hospitalized overnight last month after becoming dehydrated and falling while exercising. The 65-year-old justice required stitches and was released the morning following the June 21 incident, the court told The Washington Post in a statement. The fall at a Maryland country club was not related to two prior seizures the chief justice has suffered, the last in 2007, court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg told the newspaper. “The Chief Justice was treated at a hospital...

The ruling greatly expands the kinds of employers that can cite religious or moral objections in declining to include birth control in their health care plans. WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday cleared the way for the Trump administration to give the nation's employers more leeway in refusing to provide free birth control for their workers under the Affordable Care Act. The ruling is a victory for the administration's plan to greatly expand the kinds of employers who can cite religious or moral objections in declining to include contraceptives in their health care plans. Up to 126,000 women...

Jan Jekielek at the Epoch Times held an exceptional interview with General Michael Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell a week ago where Powell’s entire timeline in regards to the government’s sham case against General Flynn was discussed.  This powerful interview is worth your time because it outlines the massive corruption surrounding the Flynn case that goes on to this day. We asked a week ago – What is Judge Emmet Sullivan waiting for?General Michael Flynn was lied to, set up multiple times before and after the Trump inauguration, excessively and to the point of illegally unmasked, targeted, ambushed in the White House,...

Roger Stone is asking a federal appeals court to delay the date when he has to report to prison to begin serving his 40-month sentence. A federal judge last week granted him a short delay, to July 14 after Stone cited coronavirus concerns. But late Monday Stone’s lawyers asked the D.C. Court of Appeals to delay his reporting date to Sept. 3. “He is at considerable risk from serious health consequences, including death, if his surrender date is not extended,” Stone’s motion says. The judge “failed to give adequate deference to the government’s uniform policy not to oppose surrender date...

@JackPosobiec BREAKING: Roger Stone to report to federal prison in 7 days Developing story...

The owners of gym that made national headlines after it opened in defiance of Gov. Phil Murphy COVID-19 lockdown were dealt a blow in their legal fight to convince the courts that shuttering their place of business was unconstitutional. In a decision reached during hearing held over Zoom Friday, U.S. District Judge Robert B. Kugler denied the request of the owners of Atilis Gym of Bellmawr to open via a temporary restraining order as they continued litigation with the state. In a federal lawsuit filed last month, attorneys for the gym claimed Gov. Phil Murphy “arbitrarily” deemed some businesses essential...

A preposterous lawsuit demanding cops be banned from using tear gas to disperse lawless protestors who block city streets and interfere with traffic has been struck down by a judge who ruled this week that the restriction “unnecessarily burdens the police and puts them and the public at risk.” The case was filed in Virginia by a leftist civil rights group that claims the city of Richmond and its police department as well as the state police violated the Constitutional rights of law-breaking protestors by using tear gas and other crowd control tactics during a disruptive Black Lives Matter demonstration...

Canadian company blocked from getting key permit to continue building BILLINGS, Mont. — The U.S. Supreme Court has handed another setback to the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada by keeping in place a lower court ruling that blocked a key permit for the project. Canadian company TC Energy needs the permit to continue building the long-disputed pipeline from Canada across U.S. rivers and streams. Without it, the project that has been heavily promoted by President Donald Trump faces more delays just as work on it had finally begun this year following years of courtroom battles. Monday’s order also put on...

A Chicago man with a long criminal history was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison after he was convicted of firing a gun into the open grave of a man murdered just two days prior, authorities said. U.S. District Judge John J. Tharp Jr. handed down the sentence Wednesday after Elston Stevenson, 57, pleaded guilty to one count of illegal possession of a firearm by a felon, according to a news release Monday from the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago.

A federal judge Monday dismissed a lawsuit by Michigan Republican groups seeking to block a new state redistricting commission. The ruling is the latest legal setback for Republicans, who earlier this year failed to win an injunction that would prevent the formation of the commission, which they contend is unconstitutional. The decision Monday — by U.S. District Court Judge Janet Neff, appointed by GOP President George W. Bush — is a blow to state Republicans who fought against the implementation of the redistricting commission, which was created in 2018.

A federal court ruled Monday that the Dakota Access Pipeline must shut down within 30 days, by Aug. 5, according to a copy of the brief obtained by USA Today. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia scrapped a key permit from the Army Corps of Engineers, and ordered the pipeline to end its three-year run of delivering oil out of North Dakota’s Bakken shale basin to its endpoint in Illinois. The decision marked the end of a yearslong legal battle over the Energy Transfer Partners-owned pipeline’s environmental damage to the Missouri River. President Donald Trump granted the...

A federal judge has ordered the shutdown of the Dakota Access Pipeline while a lengthy environmental review is conducted of the project opposed by environmentalists and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The move was requested earlier this year by Standing Rock and three other Sioux tribes in the Dakotas who fear environmental harm from the oil pipeline and sued over the project four years ago. North Dakota officials have said such a move would have “significant disruptive consequences” for the state, whose oil patch has been hit hard in recent months by falling demand for crude amid the coronavirus pandemic....

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that states can prohibit their Electoral College representatives from disregarding voters when casting their ballots in presidential elections. The unanimous decision, arising out of a case from Washington state, essentially gives states the right to outlaw "faithless electors" who cast their votes for people other than those chosen by their voters. "Nothing in the Constitution expressly prohibits States from taking away presidential electors’ voting discretion as Washington does," Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the majority decision. --This breaking news report will be updated.

The Supreme Court has a few more big decisions to hand down. The court has already decided some of the biggest cases on its docket — including abortion, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and LGBT rights — but several thorny legal questions need to be resolved before the term is over. When the next batch of rulings is issued on Monday, it will be the first time in 24 years that the Supreme Court has released decisions in July, a delay that can be attributed to the coronavirus that upended normal operations for the justices this year. Trump's...

A federal judge has ordered the attorneys of Jeffrey Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre to destroy documents related to Ghislaine Maxwell, an Epstein confidant who has been frequently named as his former collaborator in child sex trafficking. Senior U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska made the determination in lawsuits Giuffre and her attorneys, Cooper and Kirk, have filed against Maxwell and former Epstein attorney Alan Dershowitz. Preska rejected Dershowitz’s attempt to change a protective order to receive documents for his defense in the defamation case while ordering Giuffre’s attorneys to destroy documents from a previously-settled case involving Maxwell. Preska wrote in her...

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that attorneys for convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s accuser Virginia Guiffre must destroy certain Epstein files that were improperly obtained.The ruling came after attorney Alan Dershowitz requested access to the documents, Newsweek reports.  Dershowitz said the documents would be an asset to his defense in his 2019 defamation case against Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, who said Dershowitz was one of the men with whom Epstein forced her to have sex.“The Court is not convinced that the production of the [Ghislaine] Maxwell materials to Mr. Dershowitz would even vindicate those important objectives beyond making life easier for Mr. Dershowitz,” Senior...

General Michael Flynn administers "Q-Anon Oath" to family members. By way of a post to 8kun last month, the anonymous poster known as Q-Anon requested followers to take the following oath: I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter:...

This will be a weekly post. Count remains at 200 judges confirmed. 2 Trade Court judges 143 District Court judges 53 Circuit Court judges 2 Supreme Court justices Happy 4th of July!