Free Republic

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A federal judge has reinstated a moratorium on coal leasing from federal lands that was imposed under former President Barack Obama and then scuttled under former President Donald Trump. Friday’s ruling from U.S. District Judge Brian Morris requires government officials to complete a new environmental review before they can resume coal sales from federal lands. Among President Joe Biden’s first actions in his first week in office was to suspend oil and gas lease sales — a move later blocked by a federal judge — and he faced pressure from environmental groups to take similar action...

A federal judge this week denied a temporary restraining order sought by environmental groups that would block grazing in six eastern Oregon pastures. The Capital Press reports U.S. District Judge Michael Simon said the plaintiffs haven’t shown that turning cattle out on the pastures will cause irreparable harm to sage grouse or to rangeland research. He said continued grazing isn’t likely to irreparably harm the ability of environmental plaintiffs to enjoy undisturbed sagebrush grassland, since the pastures have long been grazed and are rested on a rotating basis. The case was filed against the U.S. Bureau of Land Management by...

Dec. 11 (UPI) -- The U.S. government on Friday plans to execute a man convicted of killing his 2-year-old daughter nearly two decades ago. Alfred Bourgeois, 55, is set to receive lethal injection at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind. He's awaiting a Supreme Court decision on his request for a stay. His attorneys said Bourgeois' execution would be unconstitutional because he is intellectually disabled and can't understand his punishment. They submitted evidence of IQ test scores of 70 and 75, as well as assessments by experts. The Eighth Amendment bans executing people with such impairments as cruel and...

ICE released more than 250 detainees after a federal judge ordered the population be reduced A number of illegal immigrants who were released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention in October after a court order due to COVID safety have since been re-arrested for crimes including child sex and drug offenses, according to the agency. ICE released 250 detainees from its facility in Adelanto, Calif., after a federal judge ordered the population be reduced in order to halt the spread of coronavirus infections in response to a lawsuit. ICE complied with the order but objected strenuously to it on...

A federal judge ruled Friday that the head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees Voice of America (VOA) and other networks, unconstitutionally interfered with the news service when he went after its journalists for alleged bias against President Trump, NPR reports. Five suspended officials from the USAGM sued CEO Michael Pack in early October, accusing him of violating the "firewall" that protects international broadcasters from political interference. The officials alleged that Pack and others investigated and punished journalists for negative stories about the president, as well as stories about now President-elect Joe Biden and the racial...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday blocked a Trump Administration rule that opponents said would have harmed the bargaining rights of more than 500,000 home healthcare workers in California and several hundred thousand additional workers across the nation. San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria found that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services rule changing Medicaid state payment requirements would have made it tougher for states to deduct employee benefits and union dues from workers’ paychecks... ...The agency had said it was required to make the change because the old system was barred by federal...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge is temporarily blocking the federal government’s plan to execute the first female death row inmate in almost six decades after her attorneys contracted the coronavirus visiting her in prison. The order, handed down Thursday by U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss in Washington, prohibits the federal Bureau of Prisons from carrying out Lisa Montgomery’s execution before the end of the year. She was scheduled to be put to death on Dec. 8 at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. Montgomery’s attorneys had sought to delay the execution in order to file a clemency...

U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey are calling on President Trump to withdraw his nomination for a new federal appeals court judge in Massachusetts, saying it was made during a “lame-duck session” after the presidential race was called in favor of his rival. “Confirming the nominee during this lame-duck session would require Republicans to yet again violate longstanding Senate norms and rules,” the senators said in a statement Tuesday. “The White House should not be using its final days to try to rush through the nomination of a judge who will have a lifetime appointment to a court with...

Arias Marxuach, described as a conservative who was originally recommended by Washington Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González, has already passed the Senate Republican majority. In May 2019, the then private practice attorney was confirmed 95-3 by the U.S. Senate for the seat he currently holds on the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico. Arias Marxuach was originally appointed to the San Juan Federal Court in 2018, but the appointment did not complete the legislative process and Trump nominated him again on January 22, 2019.

The recent scene in Clark County, Nevada, has become increasingly common in courthouses around the country as President Donald Trump continues to push thinly supported allegations of election misconduct and fraud. When Republican lawyers in Nevada complained their observers were not close enough if they could not hear everything poll workers were saying, U.S. District Judge Andrew Gordon pushed back. "At what point does this get ridiculous?" the exasperated judge, an appointee of President Barack Obama, asked before ruling against the Republicans. In court hearings and opinions around the country, judges are voicing similar frustrations with the Trump campaign's legal...

This will be a weekly post. Count is now 220 judges confirmed 2 Trade Court judges 162 District Court judges 53 Circuit Court judges 3 Supreme Court justices We've been waiting for this one! Only one judge confirmed this week. But it was a doozy!! On Monday, Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed by the US Senate to the Supreme Court of the United States! Take a look at the above numbers and picture yourself four years ago, the weekend before the election. The above would be unthinkable, impossible even. But it's real. Leave out the three (yes THREE) Supreme Court...

Sullivan’s apparent animus toward Flynn's attorney and his fixation on Flynn being punished demonstrate bias in this case — sufficient to require his disqualification. In the latest development in the seemingly never-ending Michael Flynn case, his attorney has filed a motion for the trial judge, Emmet Sullivan, to disqualify himself for bias or the appearance of it. Flynn’s counsel, Sidney Powell, had raised the bias issue during the Sept. 29 hearing on the Department of Justice’s motion to dismiss the case against Flynn. Sullivan is likely to move on this case immediately after the election, so the question of his...

A federal judge in South Carolina ruled Tuesday that local election authorities cannot discard absentee ballots whose signatures do not match those on file. U.S. District Judge Richard Mark Gergel, an appointee of President Barack Obama, said that the signature authorization procedures being used by local authorities were “subjective.”

A federal judge on Tuesday night ordered the U.S. Postal Service to reverse limitations on mail collection imposed by Trump-backed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, giving the agency until Wednesday morning to inform workers of the court's changes as more mail-in ballots continue to flood in. In a highly detailed order, Judge Emmet Sullivan of the District Court for the District of Columbia granted an emergency motion by plaintiffs against President Donald Trump to enforce and monitor compliance with Sullivan's previous injunction tied to USPS services. No later than 9 a.m. Wednesday, the judge said, agency workers must be told that...

In an unusual order posted Friday, the federal judge in the case of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn told the Justice Department to file a declaration -- under penalty of perjury -- by Monday that evidence in the case is “true and correct.”

A federal court in California on Thursday ruled against President Trump's order to exclude undocumented immigrants from the census count for apportioning congressional seats, dealing the administration its second court loss over the July executive memorandum. A panel of three judges for the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California ruled that the memo was unconstitutional and violated laws governing the census. "The policy which the Presidential Memorandum attempts to enact has already been rejected by the Constitution, the applicable statutes, and 230 years of history," the panel wrote in a 90-page decision. The order forbids the Commerce...

A federal judge in Miami is warning Carnival Corp. that she plans to hold the cruise line to the parameters of its probation, meaning the company must certify that every ship is compliant 60 days before setting sail again in U.S. waters. The stern reminder from U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of Florida Patricia Seitz will certainly endanger Carnival’s plan to resume operations on Dec. 1, assuming the Centers for Disease Control lifts its ‘no-sail order’ on Nov. 1, according to the Miami Herald. Carnival has been on probation since April 2017 after pleading guilty to dumping oily...

The Supreme Court has refused to take up an emoluments case filed by Democrats back in 2017. That means the lower court ruling that Democrats do not have standing to bring the case will stand. This little corner of the resistance is dead: The Supreme Court on Tuesday put an end to a lawsuit brought by congressional Democrats that accused President Donald Trump of violating anti-corruption provisions in the U.S. Constitution with his business dealings.The justices refused to hear an appeal by 215 Senate and House of Representatives Democrats of a lower court ruling that found that the lawmakers...

-The Supreme Court on Tuesday paved the way for the Trump administration to end field operations for the 2020 census, blocking a lower court ruling that had prolonged the count. -As is usual for emergency situations, the ruling came in an unsigned order. -Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

The Trump administration can end counting for the 2020 census after the Supreme Court approved a request for now to suspend a lower court order that extended the count's schedule. The high court's ruling, following an emergency request the Justice Department made last week, is the latest turn in a roller coaster of a legal fight over the timeline for the count... Justice Department attorneys say the Census Bureau is under pressure to meet a legal deadline of Dec. 31 for reporting to the president the first set of census results — the latest state population counts that determine each...