Free Republic

A federal judge on Wednesday shot down Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s attempt to block a former prosecutor in his office from testifying before the House Judiciary Committee about the criminal case against Donald Trump. The committee and its chairman, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), had subpoenaed ex-assistant district attorney Mark Pomerantz to give testimony about the DA’s investigation into Trump, 76, that culminated in the former president’s indictment in March. Bragg filed suit against Jordan and the Judiciary Committee, claiming the subpoena was an overreach by the GOP-led House and an attempt to influence a state criminal proceeding.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit tossed a Berkeley, California, ban on gas stoves on Monday, saying that the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act preempted state and local authorities in regulating natural gas. The Courthouse News Service reported: The three-judge panel’s ruling reverses a federal judge’s dismissal of a lawsuit by the California Restaurant Association claiming the Energy Policy and Conservation Act preempts the San Francisco Bay Area city’s ban. The group said the ordinance would affect chefs’ ability to prepare food the way they are typically trained — using natural gas stoves.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s urgent request to enter a restraining order against Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) was rejected on April 11, the same day it was filed. U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, a Trump appointee, turned down Bragg’s emergency request for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against Jordan. “The Court declines to enter the proposed Temporary Restraining Order and Order to Show Cause,” Vyskocil said, noting that she had not yet received several documents that were referenced in Bragg’s filings. She ordered Jordan and other defendants in the case to respond to the lawsuit and scheduled...

A federal judge in Texas recently agreed with a federal judge in Oklahoma that the national ban on gun possession by cannabis consumers violates the Second Amendment. Kathleen Cardone, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, also concluded that the federal ban on transferring firearms to an "unlawful user" of a "controlled substance," first imposed by the Gun Control Act of 1968, is unconstitutional. The case involves Paola Connelly, who was charged with illegal possession of firearms under 18 USC 922(g)(3) after El Paso police found marijuana and guns in her home while responding...

The state of Washington has secured a three-year supply of abortion pills in anticipation of a nationwide ban. The Democratic-run state has received a shipment of 30,000 doses of generic mifepristone, one of two drugs used to induce an abortion at home. The move is a direct response to a pending lawsuit in Texas overseen by federal judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who is considering whether to revoke the FDA's approval of the drugs in an unprecedented move. If he does move to revoke the approval, it would effectively end the ability of providers or pharmacists nationwide to purchase the medication and...

A federal judge has issued a ruling that will stop the sales of abortion drugs nationwide and possibly save hundreds of thousands or even millions of babies from abortions. The abortion drug mifepristone is used for more than half of all abortions in the U.S. every year, or hundreds of thousands of unborn babies, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute. But a new lawsuit, filed by a group of doctors with the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, challenges the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval and later expansion of the deadly drug under the Clinton, Obama and Biden administrations. Represented by...

PORTLAND, Ore. — A federal judge in Texas on Friday ordered that access to a common abortion pill be put on hold across the country, and then minutes later a federal judge in Washington ordered the Food and Drug Administration to keep the drug accessible. The dueling rulings put the medication mifepristone, which has been available for more than 20 years, in limbo. Not long after the rulings, Oregon’s senior U.S. senator, Ron Wyden, a Democrat, told KATU in a telephone interview that the president and the FDA should ignore the Texas judge’s ruling. "I think there's no basis for...

A new ruling by a U.S. district court judge in Texas has stripped the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of the medication abortion pill, mifepristone.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A lawsuit that Louisiana and other Republican-leaning states filed challenging figures the Biden administration uses to calculate damages from greenhouse gasses was dismissed Wednesday by a federal appeals court. The unanimous decision by three judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans was the latest defeat for states challenging the Biden “cost of carbon” policy. It leaves the administration to continue using a damage cost estimate of about $51 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions as it develops environmental regulations. That estimate is under review by the administration and could increase. The...

In the Fifth Circuit, the entire Court has ruled, en banc, that mere civil restraining orders may not infringe rights protected by the Second Amendment. The unconstitutional infringement was placed into law by the infamous Lautenberg Amendment in 1996. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been turned upside down and ruined by this infamous and unjust law. In the opinion published by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Circuit Judge James C. Ho writes a particularly well-argued and presented concurrence. The concurrence is worth reading. It is quoted below, without the footnotes:James C. Ho, Circuit Judge, concurring:The right to keep...

NEW ORLEANS — President Joe Biden’s order that federal employees get vaccinated against COVID-19 was blocked Thursday by a federal appeals court. The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans rejected arguments that Biden, as the nation’s chief executive, has the same authority as the CEO of a private corporation to require that employees be vaccinated. The ruling from the full appeals court, 16 full-time judges at the time the case was argued, reversed an earlier ruling by a three-judge 5th Circuit panel that had upheld the vaccination requirement. Judge Andrew Oldham, nominated to the court by then-President...

'This is an important victory protecting the people of Texas from destructive federal overreach,' Texas attorney general says A federal judge blocked the Biden administration from implementing environmental regulations redefining how water sources are protected, but which opponents have argued were an example of overreach. In his decision published late Sunday, Judge Jeffrey Brown ruled that the so-called Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule announced by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in late December "poses irreparable harm" to residents of Texas and Idaho, the two states that challenged the regulations in the lawsuit filed on Jan. 18. Brown declined...

A federal judge ruled against the Biden administration’s efforts to dismiss a case involving online censorship Monday, saying that the states of Missouri and Louisiana had “plausibly alleged” First Amendment violations. United States District Judge Terry A. Doughty of the Western District of Louisiana denied the Biden administration’s motion to dismiss a suit brought on May 5 by Republican Attorneys General Erik Schmitt of Missouri and Jeff Landry of Louisiana. Schmitt and Landry said the Biden administration colluded with social media companies to censor debate on multiple issues, including the 2020 presidential election and the COVID-19 pandemic.

A trio of federal appellate judges upheld a prior legal ruling on Thursday that bars the state of Florida from enforcing the ‘Stop WOKE Act’ while it faces ongoing legal battles related to its constitutionality. The measure, supported by Gov. Ron DeSantis, imposes restrictions on the instruction of race-related concepts in Florida’s public universities. The decision affirmed a ruling ordered by Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker last year, where he granted a preliminary injunction against the legislation, finding that it violated First Amendment rights. “Neither the state of Florida’s authority to regulate public school curriculum nor its interest in...

Americans will hold accountable those responsible for the accelerating degradation of the U.S. justice system as the government's J6 narrative collapses and their wrongdoing becomes apparent. The FBI agent squirmed on the hot seat. Confronted with messages the Justice Department attempted to conceal, Nicole Miller, one of the lead FBI investigators assigned to the Proud Boys case, was on the verge of admitting that the FBI monitored privileged communications between one defendant and his attorney in 2021. “It appears so,” Miller responded when asked by defense attorney Nicholas Smith on March 8 to confirm she and another agent discussed the...

Fifth Circuit appellate judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, who was shouted down by Stanford Law School students as administrators looked on in silence, says the protesters behaved like "dogshit." Now, in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon, Duncan is calling on the school to discipline the students who disrupted his talk and to fire the school’s associate dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion, who stepped in during the event to chastise him and deliver what the judge described as a "bizarre therapy session from hell." Duncan’s remarks come after nearly a hundred students at Stanford Law School disrupted his remarks...

A federal judge appointed by former President Trump was ambushed by about 100 student protesters and a woke diversity dean who derailed his talk at Stanford Law School and accused him of causing “harm” to students. Tirien Steinbach, the school’s associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion, subjected U.S. Circuit Judge S. Kyle Duncan to a lengthy harangue and made it clear to him his presence on campus was unwelcome, video of the event shows. “It’s uncomfortable to say this to you as a person. It’s uncomfortable to say that for many people here, your work has caused harm,” Steinbach...

The judge in the picture above in Kyle Duncan. He is a sitting judge on the 5th Circuit Cour of Appeals. The hideous creature on the right is Tirien Steinbach. She is the Dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Stanford University (did you even know there was such a thing?) Duncan was invited by the Stanford Chapter of the Federalist Society to give a speech on guns, COVD mandates and Twitter. As he was to being speaking he was ambushed by the hideous creature who then spouted off about how terrible Duncan was. But she then launched into an...

Fifth circuit judge Kyle Duncan is calling on Stanford to axe DEI dean Tirien Steinbach ... Fifth Circuit appellate judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, who was shouted down by Stanford Law School students as administrators looked on in silence, says the protesters behaved like "dogshit." ... Duncan is calling on the school to discipline the students who disrupted his talk and to fire the school’s associate dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion, who stepped in during the event to chastise him and deliver what the judge described as a "bizarre therapy session from hell." Duncan’s remarks come after nearly a hundred...

A federal judge in Florida has struck down the Biden administration’s use of policies to mass release migrants into the U.S. interior is unlawful, accusing the administration of turning the border into a "meaningless line in the sand." Judge T. Kent Wetherell ruled in response to a lawsuit from the state of Florida, which alleged the administration’s mass release of migrants via humanitarian parole into Alternatives to Detention -- known as "Parole +ATD" -- is unlawful. In a scathing opinion Wednesday, Wetherell stated the Biden administration had "effectively turned the Southwest Border into a meaningless line in the sand and...