Free Republic

The American Civil Liberties Union should not cavalierly take the side of prosecutors against the concept of self-defense. Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old who shot and killed two men during the riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last summer, was acquitted on Friday. Prosecutors had charged him with first-degree reckless homicide, first-degree intentional homicide, attempted first-degree intentional homicide, and two counts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety, but the jury was persuaded by Rittenhouse's argument that he acted in self-defense. For anyone who had followed the trial closely, this outcome is unsurprising. The prosecution simply did not meet its burden of proof, and Rittenhouse's...

NEW YORK — The following is a statement from Brian Hauss, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, in response to reports of an FBI raid on Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe: “Project Veritas has engaged in disgraceful deceptions, and reasonable observers might not consider their activities to be journalism at all. Nevertheless, the precedent set in this case could have serious consequences for press freedom. Unless the government had good reason to believe that Project Veritas employees were directly involved in the criminal theft of the diary, it should not have subjected them to invasive...

The ACLU sued the United States for money on behalf of illegal immigrants for being separated from their children when they were caught and detained at the border. The Wall Street Journal reported a few weeks ago that the Department of Justice was considering settling the case for about $450,000 per individual – a settlement amounting to over a million dollars in the case of a family of three and over two million for a family of five. The basis for the ACLU’s lawsuit on behalf of the immigrants is not clear. Most legal experts agree that whatever the morality...

A senior White House adviser said the Justice Department will set the amount of compensation if it deems that paying migrants separated from their families will save taxpayers money — payments that run as much as $450,000 or more. “If the DOJ determines that it saves the taxpayers money and it rights a wrong, then they will make the determination that is necessary and I would assume if they make a determination, they’ll come up with what they think is an adequate dollar amount,” Cedric Richmond said on “Fox News Sunday.” R​ichmond said the Justice Department is making its decision...

The total amount paid out could reach close to $1 billion to settle lawsuits filed over the separations. President Biden is “perfectly comfortable” with cash payouts to migrant families whose members were detained separately after illegally crossing the US-Mexico border, White House Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday. The answer comes just a day after Biden labeled as “garbage” a report that his administration is considering $450,000-per-person payments. Jean-Pierre pointedly pivoted Biden’s assessment after the American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday night said Biden “may not have been fully briefed about the actions of his very own Justice Department.”...

White House principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday that President Biden is 'perfectly comfortable' with cash payouts to migrant families separated at the border, but insisted the settlements won't be as high as $450,000. Fox News' Peter Doocy asked Jean-Pierre during the briefing what Biden meant when he called the reports of payments 'garbage' after the ACLU claimed that he 'hadn't been briefed properly. Jean-Pierre, standing in for Jen Psaki after her COVID diagnosis, responded by saying that settlements were happening, and he was responding to the claim that they could be close to half-a-million dollars. 'If it...

The American Civil Liberties Union tore into President Joe Biden on Wednesday night after he denied reports that his White House is planning on paying migrants separated under the Trump administration $450,000 each or $1 million per family. Biden had dismissed the reports as 'garbage' at a White House press conference just hours earlier. The head of the ACLU said the 78-year-old president's statement means he either hasn't been 'full briefed' on the matter or is 'abandoning' his promise to undo Donald Trump's more strict immigration laws.

The president 'may not have been fully briefed,' ACLU executive director says The American Civil Liberties Union countered President Biden's claim that his administration is not considering payments of up to $450,000 to illegal immigrants who had been separated from their families under the previous administration.... ...Yet ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero told Fox News that the plan is very much in the works. "President Biden may not have been fully briefed about the actions of his very own Justice Department as it carefully deliberated and considered the crimes committed against thousands of families separated from their children as...

President Biden on Wednesday denied his administration is considering paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to each migrant separated from their family under the Trump administration's zero tolerance policy. "That’s not gonna happen," Biden told reporters when asked about the reported plan. The Wall Street Journal first reported last week that the administration was contemplating a payment of roughly $450,000 per person for separated migrant parents and children. Multiple news outlets later confirmed The Journal's reporting.

President Biden responded Wednesday to a report that suggested his administration was mulling whether to make $450,000 payments to immigrants who were separated from their families at the border under former President Trump's administration, calling the reporting "garbage" and saying that it is "not gonna happen." Following remarks at the White House where he urged parents to get their children vaccinated, Biden was asked by Fox News White House Correspondent Peter Doocy about the Wall Street Journal's report and whether he believes it "might incentivize" immigrants to attempt to enter America illegally. Biden responded, "If you guys keep sending that...

The Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services are said to be offering to settle lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of 900 persons who entered the United States illegally during the Trump Administration. ACLU spokesman Bertram Petty asserted that "it is already a matter of law that if a person breaks into your home and you injure him you must pay damages. Our 900 clients have all sustained severe psychological trauma as a result of Trump's policy. First, many incurred thousands of dollars in expenses paying coyotes to smuggle them into...

To satisfy predatory lawyers and radical activists, the Biden administration is in talks to give nearly half a million dollars each to illegal immigrant separated from family at the border during two months of the Trump era. It’s a pure pander to progressives: Such cases have been settled before at just over a tenth of that sum. Three federal departments are negotiating to settle lawsuits the American Civil Liberties Union and others brought on behalf of families separated when President Donald Trump’s zero-tolerance policy on illegal immigration meant all adults unlawfully crossing the border were charged with a misdemeanor in...

Like the ACLU famously did in its legal defense of neo-Nazis who wanted to march in a Jewish-majority Chicago suburb 40 years ago, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, on Wednesday in a hearing defended the First Amendment right of a man to invoke a Nazi salute to express his view that school board members were acting like fascists. In fact, in the Senate oversight hearing, Attorney General Merrick Garland agreed with Cruz that the man's action was constitutionally protected. Nevertheless, the Daily Beast was among many left-wing outlets that framed the exchange as "Ted Cruz Defends Parents Doing Nazi Salutes at...

The same firms that volunteered to represent 9/11 terrorists pro bono now have no interest in defending the American citizens languishing in prison since January.At least 50 high-powered law firms that went out of their way to defend foreign terrorists in Guantanamo Bay free of charge are nowhere to be found as hundreds of American citizens languish in prison for charges related to entering the U.S. Capitol building during the January 6 riot.When foreign terrorists, including the accused mastermind who helped plan the 9/11 attack, were being held in the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, law firms from across the country...

Danielle Miller says her 11-year-old child, who identifies as non-binary or gender fluid, was punished for having hair to their shoulder.

Civil liberties legal expert Alan Dershowitz vowed on Newsmax to defend nonviolent protests at school board meetings after Biden administration Attorney General Merrick Garland mobilized the FBI and U.S. attorneys to "investigate and prosecute" school board protests. "I'll defend anybody who is chilled in their free speech," Dershowitz told "Saturday Report," denouncing the politicization of the ACLU. "Anybody who wants to protest at school boards and is going to do it nonviolently, can count on me. "It used to be we were able to count on the American Civil Liberties Union, but they're dead in the water when it comes...

The American Civil Liberties Union has been slammed over a tweet which altered a famous quote from the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg about abortion rights, replacing the word 'woman' with 'person' and swapping female pronouns with 'they.' 'The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a [person's] life, to [their] well-being and dignity… When the government controls that decision for [people], [they are] being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for [their] own choices,' the ACLU posted in a photo on Twitter on the one-year anniversary of Ginsburg's death on...

What’s the limiting principle on them? Tucker Carlson warned Monday that vaccine mandates are “about power,” adding that “these demands are so obviously irrational, that forcing you to accept them without complaint is the whole point of the exercise.” In another impassioned monologue, Carlson note that “it is a form of sadomasochism, it is dominance and submission. It’s about power. If they can make you take medicine you don’t want or need, they’ve won. You are theirs. You belong to them. They want this.” Carlson stated that “vaccines — which are far less effective than we were told they were...

The American Civil Liberties Union — financed with tens of millions of dollars from leftist billionaire George Soros — justified Orwellian vaccine mandates being forced on Americans by redefining the meaning of “civil liberties” to mean the lack of liberty. ACLU National Legal Director David Cole and ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief Director Daniel Mach penned an asinine New York Times op-ed headlined: “Want to Enhance Civil Liberties? Embrace Vaccine Mandates.” The headline has since been stealth-edited. The piece tried to gaslight readers by claiming that “we see no civil liberties problem with requiring Covid-19 vaccines in...

@ACLU Far from compromising them, vaccine mandates actually further civil liberties. They protect the most vulnerable, people with disabilities and fragile immune systems, children too young to be vaccinated, and communities of color hit hard by the disease. Vaccine requirements also safeguard those whose work involves regular exposure to the public, like teachers, doctors and nurses, bus drivers and grocery store employees. And by inoculating people from the disease’s worst effects, the vaccines offer the promise of restoring to all of us our most basic liberties, eventually allowing us to return safely to life as we knew it, in schools...