Free Republic

Verdicts were handed down today in the federal trial of five pro-life activists – Lauren Handy, Will Goodman, John Hinshaw, Heather Idoni, and Herb Geraghty – who were charged with conspiracy against rights and FACE Act violations. The jury found all of the defendants guilty of both charges. Read all the details here. The defendants were indicted for their participation in an October 2020 rescue action at the D.C.-based Washington Surgi-Clinic (WSC), the abortion facility run by Cesare Santangelo. Santangelo was featured in Live Action’s InHuman investigation stating that if a child was born alive at his facility during an...

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A federal judge in Wisconsin on Wednesday ruled that a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the father of a man shot and killed by Kyle Rittenhouse during a protest in 2020 can proceed against Rittenhouse, police officers and others. The father of Anthony Huber, one of two men shot and killed by Rittenhouse, filed the lawsuit in 2021, accusing officers of allowing for a dangerous situation that violated his son's constitutional rights and resulted in his death. Anthony Huber's father, John Huber, also alleged that Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time of the shootings, conspired...

A federal judge appointed by former President Barack Obama faced backlash this week for issuing a preliminary injunction against a law signed by Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that targets woke indoctrination in higher education. Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker issued the ruling Thursday against the “Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (W.O.K.E.) Act,” officially dubbed the Individual Freedom Act. The judge’s move means that the law cannot be enforced on college campuses for now. “The law officially bans professors from expressing disfavored viewpoints in university classrooms while permitting unfettered expression of the opposite viewpoints,” Walker wrote in...

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — A Florida judge on Thursday declared a Florida law championed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis that restricts race-based conversation and analysis in business and education unconstitutional. Tallahassee U.S. District Judge Mark Walker said in a 44-page ruling that the “Stop WOKE” act violates the First Amendment and is impermissibly vague. Walker also refused to issue a stay that would keep the law in effect during any appeal by the state. The law targets what DeSantis has called a “pernicious” ideology exemplified by critical race theory — the idea that racism is systemic in U.S. institutions...

A U.S. district judge on Wednesday issued a sentence against a couple who took part in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot that went beyond what prosecutors recommended, giving them jail time. The Department of Justice (DOJ) had asked that Brandon Miller and his wife Stephanie Miller be sentenced to home confinement as part of a 36-month probationary period. The Ohio couple was charged with entering the Capitol, with Brandon Miller livestreaming their actions on Facebook. As WUSA reported, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled, however, that their actions warranted time behind bars. "They didn’t just walk through a door. They...

(CNN)In a setback for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican lawmakers, a Florida judge has ruled that a new state law banning abortions at 15 weeks is unconstitutional and he intends to block it from taking effect on Friday. In a verbal ruling on Thursday, Second Judicial Circuit Court Judge John Cooper said he would be issuing a temporary statewide injunction that will go into effect once he signs the written order in the challenge brought by some Florida abortion providers. The decision is a short-term victory for abortion rights advocates in Florida and it comes a week after the...

A congressional map approved by Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and drawn by his staff is unconstitutional because it breaks up a district where Black voters can choose their representatives, a state judge said Wednesday. Leon County Circuit Judge Layne Smith said he would issue a formal order Thursday or Friday to keep the maps from taking effect in November’s election.

A federal judge on Monday ruled that a group of Georgia voters can proceed with legal efforts seeking to disqualify U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from running for reelection to Congress, citing her role in the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol. The challenge filed with the Georgia secretary of state’s office alleges Greene, a Republican, helped facilitate the Jan. 6, 2021, riot that disrupted Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s presidential election victory. That violates a rarely cited provision of the 14th Amendment and makes her ineligible to run for reelection, according to the challenge. The amendment says no one...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A federal judge on Thursday struck down key provisions of a 2021 Florida election law championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and, in a remarkable move, ruled the state must get court approval for the next 10 years before it enacts further changes in three areas. Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, in a blistering 288-page decision, said the law placed restrictions on voters that were unconstitutional and discriminated against minority citizens. Those included limits on drop boxes used for mail-in voting, on giving items to voters waiting in line and new requirements placed on voter registration groups....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A U.S. judge on Wednesday sanctioned Sidney Powell and other lawyers who sued in Michigan to overturn Democratic President Joe Biden's election victory over Donald Trump, and suggested they might deserve to lose their law licenses. In a highly anticipated written ruling, U.S. District Judge Linda Parker in Detroit said the pro-Trump lawyers, including Powell and prominent litigator Lin Wood, should have investigated the Republican former president's voter fraud claims more carefully before filing what Parker called a "frivolous" lawsuit. Parker, who dismissed the Michigan suit last December, formally requested that disciplinary bodies investigate whether the pro-Trump lawyers...

In July former Trump Campaign staffer Carter Page announced attorney Lin Wood had agreed to represent him after he was falsely accused by government and media elites of being a Russian spy. On Friday night Attorney Lin Wood announced that a Delaware judge has revoked his counsel for Carter Page. Wood says this was done because he filed a case in Georgia now before the Supreme Court challenging the lawlessness and corruption in the Georgia election.

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.”

The Supreme Court on Wednesday lifted another injunction on the Trump administration's rapid push to resume federal death sentences this week. A divided court lifted one of a handful of injunctions temporarily blocking the execution of a man whose lawyers say suffers from severe dementia. The vote was 5-4 with the liberal justices — Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor — dissenting. DEVELOPING...

A federal judge in Washington has blocked federal executions scheduled for this week, citing concerns that the lethal injection protocol involved is "very likely to cause extreme pain and needless suffering." Judge Tanya Chutkan said the last-minute ruling only hours before executions were set to resume for the first time in 17 years was "unfortunate," but she blamed the Justice Department for racing ahead before legal challenges had been fully aired. The judge said the prison's plan to use a single drug, pentobarbital, could cause pulmonary edema, producing a sense that the condemned men were drowning. That would violate the...

For the second time this week, a judge in Washington, D.C. has blocked the Trump administration from resuming federal executions. U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan granted a preliminary injunction early Wednesday morning to Wesley Ira Purkey, a man who suffers from dementia and schizophrenia who is scheduled to be executed later in the day. The Department of Justice has already appealed Chutkan's order. The same process occurred earlier this week in the hours leading up to the first federal execution in 17 years. Chutkan had ordered an injunction against the death sentence, only to be overruled by the Supreme...

he U.S. on Tuesday carried out its first federal execution in almost two decades, killing by lethal injection a man convicted of murdering an Arkansas family in a 1990s plot to build a whites-only nation in the Pacific Northwest. The execution of Daniel Lewis Lee, over the objection of the victims’ relatives and following days of legal wrangling and delays, revived the debate over capital punishment during a time of widespread social unrest. *** Lee, 47, of Yukon, Oklahoma, professed his innocence just before he was executed at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. “I didn’t do it," Lee...

ERRE HAUTE, Indiana (Reuters) - A U.S. federal judge issued an injunction on Monday delaying what would have been the first federal execution in 17 years, scheduled for later in the day, thwarting at least for now the Trump administration’s goal of reviving capital punishment at the federal level. Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. district court in Washington ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to delay four executions scheduled for July and August to allow continuation of the condemned men’s legal challenges against a new lethal injection protocol announced in 2019. “The scientific evidence before the court overwhelmingly indicates...

The level of corruption in the Department of Justice is astounding. Bureaucrats receive little or no punishment for serious infractions, as illegal activity is frequently overlooked as a result of what is called professional courtesy. For instance, a police officer might not ticket a fellow officer for exceeding the speed limit. This is almost excusable; we often excuse behavior by a family member that we would not tolerate in a stranger. But when a life-threatening situation is excused it is no longer a matter of courtesy. Allowing a highly intoxicated driver to proceed with only a warning does no favor...

A federal district judge in D.C. ruled on Sunday that Ken Cuccinelli’s placement as the acting top official at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) violated the Federal Vacancies Reform Act. Why it matters: Policies that were put in place under Cuccinelli are now void, including a directive that gave asylum-seekers less time to consult with legal counsel before their initial "credible fear" interview with a USCIS officer. Details: After the resignation of Senate-confirmed USCIS director Lee Cissna, deputy director Mark Koumans automatically assumed the role of acting director because he was designated as the "first assistant" under the Federal...

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court this week blasted the Federal Bureau of Investigation for “misconduct” in the Carter Page surveillance warrant. Some would call this accountability. Others will more rightly call it the FISC’s “shocked to find gambling” moment. ... On Feb. 7, 2018, Devin Nunes, then chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, sent a letter to Judge Collyer informing her of its findings in his probe of the FBI’s Page application. He wrote that “the Committee found that the FBI and DOJ failed to disclose the specific political actors paying for uncorroborated information” that went to the court, “misled...