Free Republic

President Trump’s revised executive order, commonly referred to as the travel ban, will be reviewed by a federal appeals court on Monday afternoon. The case, International Refugee Assistance v Trump, is centered on a battle between presidential authority and the rights of foreigners to travel to the United States. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia will decide if the travel order violates the First or Fourteenth amendments to the Constitution or the anti-discrimination section of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The Constitution does not usually apply to non-U.S. citizens on foreign soil. But a professor of immigration law...

The Supreme Court has again rejected a challenge to California's ban on so-called gay conversion therapy. The justices did not comment Monday in turning away an appeal from a San Diego minister and others who argued the law violated their First Amendment religious freedoms. The federal appeals court in San Francisco had previously upheld the law in dismissing the constitutional challenge.

Washington (AFP) - A federal judge has ordered the Arkansas authorities to conduct an autopsy on the body of an executed inmate whose lawyer described his death as "horrifying," including jerking and convulsions during his lethal injection. Judge Kristine Baker of the US Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas issued the order late Friday, less than 24 hours after the state executed the 38-year-old convicted multiple murderer Kenneth Williams. He was the last of four inmates put to death in a week -- the first executions by the conservative southern state since 2005.

President Trump on Friday is expected to sign an executive order that could open large parts of the Pacific, Arctic and Atlantic oceans to new oil and gas drilling, a prospect that elicited a fierce backlash in California and elsewhere even before details of the order were clear. The move, which is certain to face legal and political challenges, could undo a plan finalized late in President Obama’s second term that sought to limit fossil fuel development and fight climate change by not including new drilling leases off the coast of California or Alaska during the current five-year federal offshore...