Free Republic

Former President Carter is taking the rare step of weighing in on judicial proceedings, saying that an appeals court is misinterpreting a conservation law he signed. On Monday, Carter filed a briefing chastising a ruling that upheld a Trump-era decision to build a road through a national wildlife refuge in order to enable medical evacuations nearby.

A second appeals court has upheld the vaccine mandate for federal employees that was issued by President Biden last year. A panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously said that federal employees cannot sue over the vaccine mandate and must instead challenge the mandate through the usual appeal channels available to the federal workforce through the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA). In other words, federal employees would have to face discipline for refusing to get the COVID vaccine before they could appeal the decision administratively. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals came to the same conclusion earlier...

WASHINGTON, April 12 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Tuesday declined to jail two men accused of impersonating federal agents and supplying Secret Service personnel with gifts, dealing a blow to prosecutors who had argued that the defendants pose a danger and should be detained. "There's been no showing that national security information has been compromised," U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Harvey said. Harvey ordered both men to remain in home confinement, subject to GPS monitoring, with their parents and that they surrender their passports and stay away from airports and embassies. Harvey agreed to stay his order until Wednesday morning...

In a landmark ruling, a federal district court has ordered the U.S. Department of Defense to end a longstanding Pentagon policy forbidding enlisted military service members from deploying in active duty outside the continental United States and being commissioned as officers if they have HIV. Supporters hailed it as overdue legal affirmation that people receiving effective antiretroviral treatment for HIV are essentially healthy and pose no risk to others. The judgment topples one of the nation’s last major pillars of HIV-related employment discrimination. Federal law has for decades barred employers from discriminating against people with HIV under the Americans with...

NEW ORLEANS -- President Joe Biden’s requirement that all federal employees be vaccinated against COVID-19 was upheld Thursday by a federal appeals court. In a 2-1 ruling, a panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court and ordered dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the mandate. The ruling, a rare win for the administration at the New Orleans-based appellate court, said that the federal judge didn’t have jurisdiction in the case and those challenging the requirement could have pursued administrative remedies under Civil Service law. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown, who was appointed to the District Court...

The judge says that “upholding an individual’s constitutional rights” is more important than the will of the masses. I would agree if indeed the will of the masses violated the constitutional rights of an individual. However, I’m not sure how it’s an “individual’s constitutional right” to have a US court consider sharia or international law when adjudicating a case: CBN NEWS – A U.S. district judge permanently blocked an Oklahoma law forbidding courts from considering Islamic or international law when deciding cases. “While the public has an interest in the will of the voters being carried out, the court finds...

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — U.S. officials improperly downplayed the climate change effects from burning coal when they approved a large expansion of an underground Montana coal mine that would release an estimated 190 million tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, a court ruled. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a 2-1 ruling that Interior Department officials “hid the ball” during the Trump administration, by failing to fully account for emissions from burning the fuel in a 2018 environmental analysis. A judge previously ruled against the disputed expansion of Signal Peak Energy’s Bull Mountain mine in 2017,...

Former President Donald Trump wants to remove the federal judge assigned to his lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, and others tied to the so-called "Russiagate" controversy. Trump's legal team filed a motion to disqualify U.S. District Court Judge Donald Middlebrooks, who is based in West Palm Beach, Florida, citing how the judge was nominated by former President Bill Clinton in 1997, when his spouse was the first lady. The filing stresses that "there exists a reasonable basis that Judge Middlebrooks’ impartiality will be questioned" and notes the lawsuit is levied, in part, against Hillary Clinton, who ran...

Former President Donald Trump “more likely than not” attempted to illegally obstruct Congress on the day of last year’s Capitol riot, a California federal judge ruled Monday. “Based on the evidence, the Court finds it more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021,” US District Judge David Carter wrote in a ruling ordering attorney and Trump ally John Eastman to turn over more than 100 emails to the House select committee investigating the riot.

A federal judge has found that former President Donald Trump "more likely than not" committed felony obstruction in the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The judge said Trump's former lawyer John Eastman must turn over documents to the Jan. 6 House committee investigating the attack on the U.S Capitol.

Microsoft Corporation legal documents obtained by Project Veritas show that after a U.S. District Court Judge rejected the DOJ’s argument to ignore Project Veritas’ “journalistic privileges,” the DOJ went behind the judge’s back to obtain an extension on two sealed non-disclosure orders from a magistrate judge to conceal the fact they already had unsupervised and unfettered access to privileged emails and contacts of eight Project Veritas journalists. • Judge Torres had ruled that prosecutors must operate under the supervision of a Special Master to ensure first amendment protections are upheld for Project Veritas journalists and their source material. • These...

One of the reasons the 1st Amendment gives protection to the free press is because they are supposed to be one of the most important checks against a tyrannical government. Independence and protection for journalists can be argued as one of the biggest reasons the United States has flourished for a quarter millenium. Project Veritas has been targeted by our government on multiple occasions they do not abide by the standing orders given to journalists that they must be supportive of progressive ideologies. While most major news outlets pander to the left willingly, offering cover for corrupt Democrats while seeking...

James O’Keefe on Tuesday revealed the Biden DOJ spied on Project Veritas journalists with sealed search warrants then concealed the communications from a federal judge. Project Veritas obtained legal documents from Microsoft Corporation revealing the DOJ obtained an extension on two sealed search warrants after a federal judge denied the Department’s efforts to “unsupervised and unfettered access to privileged emails and contacts of eight PV journalists.” According to O’Keefe, Judge Torres ruled that federal prosecutors must be supervised by a Special Master to protect the journalists’ First Amendment rights. The documents obtained by Project Veritas prove the DOJ went behind...

NEW YORK, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Former U.S. vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin asked a U.S. court on Monday for a new trial after losing her defamation case against the New York Times (NYT.N) earlier this month, and requested that the judge overseeing the case be disqualified. Palin's attorneys said last week they would take those steps because several jurors received push notifications on their cellphones before deliberations were over about U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff's decision to dismiss the case regardless of their verdict.

NEW YORK, Feb 23 (Reuters) - Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican U.S. vice presidential candidate, plans to seek a new trial and have the judge disqualified after losing her defamation case against the New York Times. U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan discussed Palin's plan at a hearing on Wednesday, and said he will issue a written opinion by March 1 explaining why he dismissed her case while jurors were deliberating. He said he would speed up the opinion because of the "fracas" surrounding the dismissal. The unusual hearing came eight days after jurors rejected...

Legal experts have slammed the Clinton-appointed New York judge who tossed Sarah Palin's libel lawsuit against The New York Times while jurors are still deliberating the case and say he's effectively hobbled the jury. 'I would have expected the judge to wait for the jury to return its verdict before ruling on the motion for judgment as a matter of law, because there was no urgency to issuing that ruling,' attorney Mitchell Epner, of Rottenberg Lipman Rich PC, told Law & Crime on Monday. 'Nothing would have changed if he had waited for the verdict to have been announced, or...

A federal judge said on Monday that he will dismiss Sarah Palin’s libel case against The New York Times, concluding that Palin’s lawyers had failed to show the publication acted with actual malice.

After several days of bad news on the redistricting front, including a bad decision in North Carolina for the GOP-drawn map there, a big win has been delivered to Republicans. The US Supreme Court has ruled 5-4 to halt a lower court order in Alabama that it must redraw its previously passed Congressional map.That means a 6-1 Republican to Democrat map will now go into effect in 2022, and given the makeup of the Supreme Court, there’s no reason to believe it gets struck down at any point past that.BREAKING: By a 5–4 vote, with Roberts joining the liberals in...

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is retiring, NBC News reported Wednesday, giving President Joe Biden a crucial opportunity to replace the liberal justice.

Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin tested positive for COVID-19, which may delay her civil suit against the New York Times that was scheduled to go to trial Monday, one of her attorneys said. Palin is scheduled to take another test Monday morning and if that yields a negative result, her trial could resume with jury selection later in the day. If she tests positive again, however, Manhattan federal Judge Jed Rakoff will delay the trial until Feb. 3, attorney Shane Vogt said. “She is, of course, unvaccinated,” Rakoff said in court Monday morning while discussing the logistics.