Free Republic

A Texas appeals court on Thursday overturned the illegal voting conviction of Crystal Mason, who was given a five-year prison sentence for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election while on supervised release for federal tax evasion. The decision by the Tarrant County-based Second Court of Appeals means she is formally acquitted of the felony voting charge. The court said in the decision that there was no evidence Mason knew she was ineligible to vote when she cast her ballot — which is a condition that must be met in order to convict her of illegal voting. Mason has...

Democratic candidate Marilyn Lands on Tuesday won a special election for a state House seat in Alabama after she made in vitro fertilization and abortion rights central to her campaign. Lands, a licensed professional counselor, defeated Madison City Council member Teddy Powell, a Republican who once worked as a Defense Department budget analyst. A Republican had held the Huntsville-area seat in the state's 10th District. "Today, Alabama women and families sent a clear message that will be heard in Montgomery and across the nation. Our legislature must repeal Alabama’s no-exceptions abortion ban, fully restore access to IVF, and protect the...

Washington — The House passed a massive spending package on Friday to fully fund the government through September, sending it to the Senate ahead of a midnight deadline to avert a partial shutdown. The House approved the $1.2 trillion package, which was unveiled early Thursday, in a vote of 286 to 134. The package wraps six spending bills into one to fund about three-quarters of the government until the end of the fiscal year. Another package funding the rest of the government cleared Congress two weeks ago. A majority of Republicans voted against the measure, with House conservatives objecting to...

FORT PIERCE, Florida, March 14 (Reuters) - A federal judge on Friday denied former U.S. President Donald Trump's request to dismiss a criminal case that charges him with illegally holding onto classified documents after leaving the White House. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida came just hours after a hearing in which his lawyers argued that the central charge in the case is improperly vague. Cannon, who was appointed to her post by Trump, ruled that question "warrants serious consideration" but should not be decided at this point. Trump, the Republican challenger to President Joe Biden...

House Republicans are beginning to temper expectations about the success of their impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. The possibility of pursuing articles of impeachment remains on the table, but Republicans are far from gathering the near-unanimous support needed to recommend removing him from the White House. A resolution formalizing their impeachment inquiry was approved in December. Losing steam Some Republicans feel there’s an unwillingness to follow through, as the chamber has pressing matters to address during a presidential election year. House Republicans face an uphill battle to keep their majority in 2024, and multiple members in vulnerable seats are...

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted 75-22 on Friday to pass a major government funding bill to keep a slew of agencies afloat through September, defusing fears of a partial shutdown and sending the legislation to President Joe Biden to become law. The 1,050-page measure is a collection of six appropriations bills negotiated by Schumer, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., Biden and top appropriators in both parties and chambers. It funds the departments of Justice, Commerce, Agriculture, Transportation and many other parts of the government, after leaders split federal funding into two packages. It passed the House on Wednesday by a...

Former Rep. George Santos announced Thursday night that he will run for New York's 1st Congressional District, challenging a Republican who voted to expel him from Congress. "Tonight, I want to announce that I will be returning to the arena of politics and challenging Nick for the battle over #NY1," Santos wrote on X, referring to Rep. Nick LaLota. Santos argued that "New York hasn’t had a real conservative represent them since I left office arbitrarily, thanks to RINO, empty suits like [LaLota]." "I look forward to debating him on the issues and on his weak record as a Republican,"...

Democrat Tom Suozzi has won the New York special election to the U.S. House, according to an AP race call. Suozzi will serve out the remainder of the term for former GOP Rep. George Santos, who was expelled from the House last year. The victory further narrows the already razor-thin majority for Republicans in the House. The race was seen as a test of Democrats' ability to overcome attacks over President Biden's handling of the U.S. border with Mexico and convince voters that Republicans are unable to legislate in Washington. Immigration politics have dominated the contest in a congressional district...

London — A judge in London on Thursday threw out a lawsuit by former U.S. President Donald Trump accusing a former British spy of making "shocking and scandalous claims" that were false and harmed his reputation. Judge Karen Steyn said there were "no compelling reasons" to let the case Trump filed against Orbis Business go to trial. The company was founded by Christopher Steele, who created a dossier in 2016 that contained rumors and uncorroborated allegations that caused a political storm just before Trump's inauguration. Steele, who once ran the Russia desk for Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, also known as...

Former President Donald Trump on Monday lost an experienced defense attorney from his legal roster. Joe Tacopina told ABC News, "I withdrew on all matters." Tacopina accompanied Trump when the former president pleaded not guilty in New York last April to charges that he falsified business records stemming from his hush payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Prosecutors with the Manhattan DA's office allege that Trump engaged in a "scheme" to boost his election chances during the 2016 presidential race through a series of hush money payments made by others to help his campaign, and then "repeatedly and fraudulently...

MINNEAPOLIS -- MyPillow chief executive and prominent election denier Mike Lindell said Friday that Fox News has stopped running his company's commercials, disputing the network's assertion that it is simply because he hasn't paid his bills. Lindell went public by tweeting that Fox, which had been one of MyPillow's biggest advertising outlets, had canceled him. He said in his tweet that he didn't know why but that he suspected that the network was trying to silence him. Fox denied that. Losing Fox was just the latest in a series of financial and legal setbacks for Minnesota-based MyPillow and Lindell, who...

The liberal-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned Republican-drawn legislative maps on Friday and ordered that new district boundary lines be drawn, siding with Democrats in a redistricting case that they hope will weaken GOP majorities. The ruling comes less than a year before the 2024 election in a battleground state where four of the six past presidential elections have been decided by fewer than 23,000 votes, and Republicans have built large majorities in the Legislature under maps they drew over a decade ago. The court ruled 4-3 in favor of Democrats who argued that the legislative maps are unconstitutional because districts...

A 10-month blockade on the promotions of hundreds of military officers came to a formal end on Tuesday after the Senate confirmed nearly a dozen four-star generals. The Senate confirmed the 11 nominees, among the most senior officials at the Pentagon, as lawmakers anxiously prepared to depart Washington for the Christmas recess. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), who held up the promotions over the department's abortion travel policy, had insisted on time-consuming votes for each but ultimately relented. The generals were confirmed without objection by voice vote on Tuesday evening. Tuberville had already lifted most of his holds earlier this month,...

Washington — A federal appeals court rejected a bid by former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to move the state election interference charges against him in Georgia to federal court. A three-judge panel on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling by a district judge in September who said Meadows must fight the charges in state court because he did not demonstrate that his alleged conduct was related to his official duties in the Trump administration. Writing for the court, Chief Judge William Pryor said in a 35-page opinion Monday that a statute allowing federal officials...

WASHINGTON, Dec 5 (Reuters) - Republican U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville, who has blocked hundreds of military promotions for months to protest the Pentagon's payment of abortion-related travel costs, said on Tuesday he would lift his hold on some of them. Shortly afterward, the Senate's Democratic majority leader, Chuck Schumer, took to the Senate floor to confirm hundreds of the stalled promotions. Since there were no objections, they all went through. "While today's confirmations are good news, these holds should never have happened in the first place," Schumer said. The exact number of confirmations was not immediately available.

Final total 311-114.

A grand jury voted to indict two local officials who delayed the certification of midterm election results in 2022 in Cochise County, Arizona, state Attorney General Kris Mayes said Wednesday. Cochise County Supervisors Peggy Judd, 61, and Tom Crosby, 64, voted against certifying the county’s election results by the statutory deadline in 2022, after months of casting baseless doubt on the integrity of the election. The county only certified its election results after a court ordered them to do so. The indictment alleges that Judd and Crosby committed two felonies by conspiring to delay the certification of election results and...

The Georgia Supreme Court (pictured above) refused to accept the proposed rules for the state’s new Prosecuting Attorneys Qualification Commission (PAQC) in a ruling made Wednesday, effectively pausing the Republican effort to provide oversight for the state’s attorneys. Georgia lawmakers passed SB 92 last year, creating the PAQC to provide oversight of elected district attorneys across the state, and it was signed into law by Governor Brian Kemp (R) in May. While independent, the legislation requires the Georgia Supreme Court to accept the PAQC’s draft standards and rules before the committee can enforce its decisions. In its written ruling, the...

An attorney for one of former President Donald Trump's co-defendants in the Fulton County district attorney's 2020 election interference case admitted at a hearing Wednesday that he had shared witness proffer videos of key figures in the case with a media outlet, saying he thought it was in his client's interest to do so. Jonathan Miller, an attorney for Misty Hampton, made the confession during an emergency hearing for a protective order that was prompted by the publication of parts of the video statements of Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, Kenneth Chesebro and Scott Hall by ABC News and The Washington...

WASHINGTON, Nov 13 (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Monday to pause the effort to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, halting a Republican campaign that alleges he has been derelict in his duty of in managing the U.S.-Mexico border. The articles of impeachment, introduced by Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene on Thursday, contend that Mayorkas, an appointee of Democratic President Joe Biden, violated his oath of office by failing to constrain the record numbers of migrants arriving at the border. The House voted to refer the articles back to the House Homeland Security Committee, which is...