Free Republic

Judge John Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia made the remarks Thursday at a townhall-style event on judicial independence in Philadelphia at the National Constitution Center. Though he did not name Trump specifically, his comments left little mystery as to whom he was referring. “There are a lot of pressures,” Bates said. “The pressures are fairly severe in some quarters. And there’s a risk of eating away at the rule of law, eating away at judicial independence, and that’s not easily recovered if it is impacted.” “‘Once the independence of judges is destroyed, the Constitution...

A Georgia federal judge ruled in favor of Democrat Stacey Abrams’ campaign Monday night, ordering election officials to review thousands of provisional ballots that have not been counted in the contested election for governor. Judge Amy Totenberg, a New Yorker who serves on the Atlanta-based court, said that the race cannot be officially certified until those ballots were counted. Many voters have complained they were told at polling stations they weren’t registered and had to file provisional ballots. Abrams would need to gain more than 20,000 votes to force a runoff against Republican Brian Kemp.

A federal judge in San Francisco is asking whether President Trump’s “America first” agenda is camouflage for racial hostility. U.S. District Judge Edward Chen on Tuesday heard arguments over whether the Trump administration should be blocked from rolling back parts of George H.W. Bush-era humanitarian policy that offers foreign nationals U.S. residency from dangerous countries, Bloomberg reported. Roughly 300,000 people from El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Sudan could be deported if the Trump administration is successful in overturning sections of the policy, the news outlet noted. Chen noted a memo authored by former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Deputy Secretary...

Judge Robert S. Lasnik, United States District Judge of the Western District of Washington, at Seattle, issued a permanent injunction against the Trump Administration State Department. The injunction is to prevent the State Department from implementing a court settlement with Defense Distributed, allowing them to exercise their First Amendment rights. The permanent injunction was issued on the 27th of August, 2018, in Seattle, Washington State.  The temporary restraining order had been issued on 31 July.   Judge Lasnik has taken the power of deciding what may or may not be lawful, based on the principle of potential harm. Potential, or irreparable...

Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) warned immigration officials Thursday that “When the worm turns you will not be safe.” “If you are a US government official and you are deporting Americans be warned,” the tweet read. “When the worm turns you will not be safe because you were just following orders. You do not have to take part in illegal acts ordered by this President’s administration.”

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster is not giving up on his promise to protect his state taxpayers from funding the largest abortion group in America, Planned Parenthood. On Thursday, McMaster said he plans to contest a judge’s ruling blocking his efforts, WCNC News reports. “My position is the taxpayers of South Carolina who do not support the promotion of abortion should not have to support with their tax money the promotion of abortion, and that’s what Planned Parenthood does any way you look at it,” McMaster told reporters. In July, McMaster took a bold stance against the abortion industry by...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. federal judge on Saturday rejected key elements of President Donald Trump’s May executive orders that would make it easier to fire federal employees and reduce their ability to bargain collectively. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said in a court order that Trump’s orders, which also would reduce the amount of time low-performing employees had to improve their performance before being fired, “undermine federal employees’ right to bargain collectively.” Trump signed three executive orders in May that administration officials said would give government agencies greater ability to...

The only way I see the end of Trump is if there’s overwhelming evidence he rigged the 2016 election. In which case impeachment isn’t an adequate remedy. His presidency should be annulled. Let me explain. Many people are convinced we’re already witnessing the beginning of the end of Trump. In their view, bombshell admissions from Trump insiders with immunity from prosecution, combined with whatever evidence Mueller uncovers about Trump’s obstruction of justice and his aide’s collusion with the Russians, will all tip the scales. Democrats will take back the House and begin an impeachment, and the evidence of impeachable offenses...

Washington's Supreme Court has cleared the way for a gun-control initiative to appear on the November ballot. The court late Friday afternoon reversed a judge's decision earlier this month that threw out more than 300,000 signatures used to qualify Initiative 1639, saying the petition format did not follow election law. Thurston County Superior Court Judge James Dixon had said the signature petitions did not clearly identify what would change in the law and the font was too small to be readable. He ordered the secretary of state to stop certification of the measure. But the Supreme Court ruling, written by...

F YOUR job requires you to spin, some days are harder than others. And if you’re one of Donald Trump’s defenders, some very hard days are on the way. We may be at the beginning of a long and tortuous period for the president, with his former campaign chairman convicted of multiple crimes, his former personal lawyer not only pleading guilty to crimes but also directly implicating Trump, and who knows what else to come in the next few days, weeks and months. So rhetorical defences are already being erected. Unfortunately for the US president, these arguments range from irrelevant...

(excerpt) REP. AL GREEN: "... Impeachment is something that the Framers of the Constitution provided for a time such as this and a president such as Trump. The president does not have to commit a crime to be impeached. In fact, the president is not likely to be indicted, which means he’s not likely to be found guilty of a crime while he’s sitting, which means that if this comes before the House, it won’t come before the House as a president who has been found guilty, but rather as a president who is alleged to have committed certain offenses...

Allen Weisselberg, longtime chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, has been granted immunity by federal prosecutors as part of their investigation into President Donald Trump's former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing sources.

If anything in this article in the New York Times is true… we have reached a most dangerous time in our history. Unbelievable! ""Trump Is Not a King A group of top former intelligence and military leaders are sending a message to the nation’s troops and spies: think twice before following the president’s orders in a crisis. By Tim Weiner Mr. Weiner is the author of histories of the F.B.I. and C.I.A. Aug. 17, 2018"" More at link:

A federal judge issued a nationwide injunction Thursday against the Trump administration for delaying the Obama-era Waters of the United States rule, dealing a setback to a key piece of President Trump's deregulatory agenda. The decision by the U.S. District Court in South Carolina means that the so-called Clean Water Rule is again operative in 26 states where district courts have not halted the regulation.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo may have just handed Republicans a ready-made campaign ad for his rumored 2020 presidential bid – by declaring Wednesday that America “was never that great.” The Democratic star made the seemingly offhand remark as part of his rebuke of President Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan during a bill-signing in New York. But the line drew gasps from the crowd. “We’re not going to make America great again. It was never that great,” Cuomo said, to an awkward blend of gasps and chuckles. “We have not reached greatness, we will reach greatness when every American...

First Lady Melania Trump’s parents, Viktor and Amalija Knavs took the oath to become U.S. citizens on Thursday but NBC Nightly News was not having it. The broadcast network speculated that they received special treatment in the process and possibly used chain migration, a program the President opposes, even though the process still exists and still legal. “Now to new questions tonight about a possible double standard when it comes to the first family,” declared a seemingly offended Lester Holt. “First lady Melania Trump's parents becoming brand new U.S. citizens today apparently through a process that President Trump has repeatedly...

Special counsel Robert Mueller filed a formal complaint against the judge presiding over Paul Manafort’s tax fraud case this week; claiming T.S. Ellis III violated protocol while ruling against the prosecution’s star witness. According to Politico, Mueller’s team is increasingly frustrated with the “cranky judge” who has rebuked the special counsel’s office on multiple occasions. [T]he judge’s condescending attitude [could give] the jury the impression that the prosecution’s case is dubious “[T]he judge’s condescending attitude [could give] the jury the impression that the prosecution’s case is dubious,

Following the removal of Alex Jones from Facebook, Apple and YouTube, for violating “hate speech” policies, Democrat Senator Chris Murphy tweeted “Infowars is just the tip of a giant iceberg.”Monday afternoon Murphy tweeted, “I know Facebook and Apple and YouTube have gotten so big they sometimes seem like the government. But they aren’t. They are private companies that shouldn’t knowingly spread lies and hate. They took a good first step today removing Infowars. Infowars is just the tip of the iceberg of hate and lies that uses sites like Facebook and Youtube to tear our nation apart. These companies must do more than take down one website. The survival of our...

A judge agreed to appoint an independent “firewall” lawyer to review pretrial evidence related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s case against Russians who allegedly interfered in the 2016 election. The evidence will be screened for possible national security issues before it is turned over to a Kremlin-linked defendant, Bloomberg News reported Monday. U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich approved the request for the counsel because Mueller is concerned with providing evidence to Yevgeny Prigozhin, a wealthy Russian businessman and longtime associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Department of Justice’s legal team warned against Prigozhin gaining access to “sensitive” evidence. That...

A U.S. court on Monday ruled the Trump administration could not enforce an updated policy barring certain transgender people from serving in the U.S. military, becoming the second court in the country to rule against the government since it unveiled the policy in March. Trump announced on March 23 that he would endorse a plan by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to restrict the military service of transgender people who experience a condition called gender dysphoria. The policy replaced an outright ban on transgender service members that Trump announced last year on Twitter, citing concern over military focus and medical costs....