Free Republic

Conservatives warned the White House on Wednesday against striking a deal with California’s two Democratic senators to water down President Trump’s judicial picks for the West Coast’s federal appeals court. Sen. David Perdue, a Georgia Republican close to Mr. Trump, said he will call and try to scuttle the negotiations, reported by The Wall Street Journal, that would have the White House pick one conservative, one consensus nominee and one liberal nominee for three openings on the already liberal U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. “Why do we need to do a deal? This is totally within our purview. We...

The Trump administration began implementing a new hard-line immigration policy by sending a single asylum-seeker from Central America back to Tijuana, Mexico, to await his assigned court date later this year in San Diego. The first asylum-seeker to be returned to Mexico was a Honduran man identified as Carlos Catarlo Gomez. He appeared confused and scared by the throng of reporters waiting for him Tuesday on the Mexican side of the San Ysidro border crossing, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was whisked away by Mexican authorities. Officially dubbed "Migrant Protection Protocols," the policy was announced by Homeland Security...

The White House on Tuesday announced the re-nomination of 51 federal judicial nominees left over from the previous Congress, kickstarting the administration's effort to install more conservative judges after GOP activists worried that such appointments had stalled. Nine of the 51 appointments are for spots on prestigious and influential federal appellate benches, including two on the mostly liberal San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which President Trump has often derided as politically biased. (Please see full story at the link)

As an attorney experienced working with public policy litigation, here is a practical plan for how Trump can keep the legal dispute entirely within the Fifth Circuit and out of the Ninth Circuit. First, President Trump should get on Air Force One and fly to Texas to meet with Republicans opposed to illegal immigration Governor Greg Abbott, Senator Ted Cruz, and leaders of the Texas legislature. Second, Governor Abbott should formally request the Texas legislature to issue an application for the federal government to defend the Texas border with Mexico. Section 4, Article 4 of the United States Constitution commands...

The Trump administration’s battle against a global warming lawsuit brought by 21 youths will continue into 2019 after a federal court handed the government a big win over the holiday season. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the Department of Justice (DOJ) in a Dec. 26 ruling largely missed by major media outlets. The court granted DOJ’s petition for interlocutory appeal that decreases the chances of the climate lawsuit going to trial anytime soon. The three-judge Ninth Circuit panel is the very same one that in March 2018 ruled against Trump administration petitions for a writ of mandamus,...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—Amid heated debate in Washington over President Trump's border wall, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has weighed in, ruling that construction on the U.S.-Mexico border wall can proceed, so long as it is "short enough that a pregnant woman carrying a child in each arm could be expected to scale it without difficulty." While that definition may seem vague to some, the Ninth Circuit's judges further clarified in their decision that "two or three feet high ought to suffice." Contractors working on the wall have been ordered to have a pregnant woman and several children on hand....

A U.S. appeals court Thursday blocked rules by the Trump administration allowing more employers to opt out of providing women with no-cost birth control. States were likely to succeed on their claim that the changes to President Barack Obama’s health care law were made without required notice and public comment, a divided, three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said. The panel upheld a preliminary injunction against the rules issued by a lower court judge last year. An email to the Justice Department seeking comment was not immediately returned. Obama’s health care law required most companies to...

The Trump administration on Tuesday formally asked the Supreme Court to block a nationwide ban on the administration's new asylum policy that was unilaterally instituted by a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judge last month. In a November news conference days before the midterm elections, Trump had vowed to turn away all asylum seekers who attempt to cross the border illegally instead of properly presenting themselves at ports of entry. The president, who has long said the asylum process is rife with fraud, said the emergency policy was necessary as the leading Central American migrant caravan approached the U.S. border...

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday asked the Supreme Court to bypass the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals' and decide on whether or not the Trump administration's ban on transgenders in the military is constitutional, NPR reported.From the court petition: In 2018, Secretary of Defense James Mattis announced a new policy concerning military service by transgender individuals. Under the Mattis policy, transgender individuals with a history of a medical condition called gender dysphoria would be disqualified from military service unless they meet certain conditions. The question presented is: Whether the district court erred in preliminary enjoining the military...

"Today we thank God for the blessings of having you people be our heroes, and you really are our heroes," Trump told members of all five military branches on a teleconference call placed from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla. "And your families are back here, and they love you, and they respect you, and they look forward to seeing you because you are the ones who keep America safe, and strong, and free." "You are very much appreciated like you wouldn't believe by the American public, by the citizens of our country," the president added. also hinting at...

Bill Bennett appeared on "Fox & Friends" Friday to weigh in on President Trump's war of words with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, saying this is a fight Roberts should not have picked.

President Trump said Thursday that Congress may have to step in to stop people from filing lawsuits in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which he said seems to routinely rule against his policies. Trump said people who oppose his border plans have relied on 9th Circuit rulings to thwart him, and said Congress might be asked to step in to make the file legal arguments elsewhere. "Everybody files in the 9th Circuit," Trump told reporters in Florida. "I haven't seen anybody file anyplace else. They automatically go to the 9th Circuit." "I think we're going to have to...

it is apparently all over mexican tv right now...

A liberal-leaning California-based federal appeals court that has often ruled against President Donald Trump dealt him another setback this week in a major immigration case and soon could be asked to weigh in on a pipeline project he has championed. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, has been a thorn in Trump’s side since he took office last year and has drawn the Republican president’s ire for its decisions in high-profile cases. See more examples

A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected the Trump administration’s bid to move ahead with its planned cancellation of a program that has provided protections and benefits to undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. when they were children. The ruling, by a three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said the administration voiced inadequate and flawed reasons for its decision in September 2017 to terminate an Obama-era program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.

One of the nation’s most-respected evangelical Christian leaders denounced a federal court ruling regarding a Washington state coach who was punished for praying after a football game. On Wednesday the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the Bremerton School District was justified in suspending Coach Joe Kennedy after he took a knee and prayed silently at midfield after a football game. “When Kennedy kneeled and prayed on the fifty-yard line immediately after games while in view of students and parents, he spoke as a public employee, not as a private citizen, and his speech therefore was constitutionally unprotected,” the...

The top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee blasted the White House Thursday for picking nominees for the West Coast’s appeals court without consulting her, and saying one of the three doesn’t have any judicial experience. President Trump named a new slate of court picks Wednesday, including three judges to sit on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. But Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California objected, saying she had tried to consult with the White House but was rebuffed. She said she would withhold her blue slip, in a signal that she doesn’t acquiesce to the picks. Blue slips are a...

After months of negotiations and delays, the White House is moving to fill California’s three vacancies on the influential 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — over the strenuous objections of the state’s two Democratic senators. President Trump’s nominees for the appeals court — litigators Daniel Collins and Kenneth Lee and Assistant United States Attorney Patrick Bumatay — are all based in Southern California, are prominent members of the conservative Federalist Society, and have worked for Republican administrations. None of the three were approved by Feinstein or Harris via a process known as a “blue slip,” the senators’ offices confirmed...

The Little Sisters of the Poor took their fight to not have to pay for abortions in their health care plan all the way to the Supreme Court and won. So that should be the end of the battle right? Not so much. Last year, pro-abortion attorneys general in Pennsylvania and several other states filed lawsuits to overturn new religious protections issued by the Trump administration. The new rules protect the nuns and other religious employers from having to pay for drugs that may cause abortions in their employee health care plans. A federal judge blocked the rule in response...

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is about to become about ten percent less crazy.  President Trump has nominated three new judges for the 29-seat circuit court, over the objections of the two senators representing their home state of California.  Until Trump discarded the practice, home state senators were allowed to veto judicial nominations for courts in their states, a custom known as the "blue slip."  That seems quaint these days, a relic of a bygone era in which actual qualifications, not ideology, were the issue in Senate confirmation votes that, anyway, required a filibuster-proof 60 votes.As a result, President Trump and...