Free Republic

After making a brief comeback on school lunch menus, white bread and other refined grains may be vanishing again when schools reopen after a federal court threw out the Trump administration’s rollback of school nutrition standards. The U.S. district court in Maryland this week said the administration did not give adequate public notice of the change, which had gone into effect for this past school year. The ruling was in response to a lawsuit brought by the Center for Science in the Public Interest and Healthy School Food Maryland. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said it does not comment on...

<p>LITTLE ROCK (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday blocked Arkansas’ order preventing the state’s only surgical abortion clinic from performing the procedure during the coronavirus pandemic.</p> <p>The decision came as health officials announced that at least 1,498 people in the state have been infected with the coronavirus, an increase over the 1,410 reported a day earlier. Two more people died because of the virus, bringing the state’s death toll to 32.</p>

OKLAHOMA CITY (KOKH) — The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals let stand a lower court’s decision temporarily blocking Gov. Kevin Stitt’s ban on abortion care in Oklahoma during the coronavirus pandemic. This means abortion providers in the state can continue providing essential, time-sensitive abortion care. Abortion providers will now seek a preliminary injunction from the district court which will continue to block the ban from taking effect until the case concludes. “Today Oklahomans can breathe a temporary sigh of relief. But the fight is not over. Instead of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, Gov. Stitt is wasting valuable time and...

121 Mar 18, 2020 ELECTRONIC NOTICE as to Shelley M. Richmond Joseph, Wesley MacGregor Resetting Hearing. The Motion Hearing on Motion 109 MOTION for Discovery of Grand Jury Instructions, 59 MOTION to Dismiss the Indictment Under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 12(b), 61 MOTION to Dismiss Indictment Under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 12(b), 105 Objection to Magistrate Judge's 86 Order as to Shelley M. Richmond Joseph and 106 Objection to Magistrate Judge's 86 Order as to Wesley MacGregor, currently scheduled for 4/2/2020, is reset for 6/2/2020 at 09:30 AM in Courtroom 13 before District Judge Leo T. Sorokin. (Montes,...

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainee who contracted the Chinese coronavirus has been released from the Bergen County Jail in Hackensack, New Jersey. The infected detainee was released following a federal judge in New York City ordering ten illegal aliens released from custody citing “inadequate conditions.” “The risk that Petitioners will face a severe, and quite possibly fatal, infection if they remain in immigration detention constitutes irreparable harm warranting a TRO,” US District Court Judge Analisa Torres wrote in her order. “Respondents have exhibited, and continue to exhibit, deliberate indifference to Petitioners’ medical needs.” Bergen County officials maintain that the...

A Trump administration rule that would have tightened work requirements for food stamps was blocked by a federal judge on Friday, who cited the rapidly spreading coronavirus in her decision. D.C. District Court Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell granted a preliminary injunction blocking the new rule, which government estimates predicted would kick as many as 700,000 Americans off of food stamps. “Especially now, as a global pandemic poses widespread health risks, guaranteeing that government officials at both the federal and state levels have flexibility to address the nutritional needs of residents and ensure their well-being through programs like SNAP, is...

The Supreme Court issued an Order this morning, at the URL above, staying enforcement of a trial court order that had barred the Trump Administration from enforcing its policy requiring those applying for asylum having come from Mexico to remain in Mexico until the application is ruled on. The policy is being challenged in court,and the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to review the trial court order barring enforcement. The Supreme Court says today that Trump can continue to enforce the policy while the legal challenge continues. One is tempted to read the tea leaves and see this...

The Supreme Court has handed President Trump a victory, albeit a temporary one, by allowing the administration to enforce the “remain in Mexico” policy.Via The Hill:The justices will allow the “Remain in Mexico” policy to continue while the administration appeals a lower court ruling which deemed the program illegal and ordered a suspension that was scheduled to take effect tomorrow.Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the only justice to publicly dissent from the decision to allow the policy to continue.Known officially as Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), the policy aims to curb entry into the U.S. by asylum-seekers, many of whom are Central...

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday upheld a ruling that allows House Democrats to view secret grand jury information from Robert Mueller’s Russia probe that had been redacted from his report. The court’s 2-1 decision agreed with a lower court that the House Judiciary Committee can obtain the information for impeachment investigations of President Trump under an exception for “judicial proceedings,” per the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. ~snip~ The DOJ, opposing the House Democrats, argued that because Trump had already been impeached and acquitted by the time the court was to rule, there was no longer a...

WASHINGTON—A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that Congress can have access to grand-jury materials from Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in a 2-1 ruling, sided with the Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee, which sought access to material that was redacted from the 448-page special counsel report. as well as some of the exhibits and transcripts referenced in the report. ... TO READ THE FULL STORY

A ruling by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Wednesday mistakenly said Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm which hired British ex-spy Christopher Steele in 2016, was looking for dirt on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rather than on then-candidate Donald Trump. The court fixed the glaring error only after the Washington Examiner brought it to its attention. Judge James Boasberg, the court’s presiding judge, cited the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications against former Trump campaign associate Carter Page in a Wednesday opinion and, in the midst of pointing out the multitude of flaws, omissions, and factual errors in...

Next week—for the first time since Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh joined the bench—the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case involving abortion. On the docket is June Medical Services v. Russo, a constitutional challenge to a Louisiana law that requires doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of where the abortion takes place. Life Legal submitted amicus briefs in support of the pro-life law, and we’ll be there on March 4 to watch the Supreme Court argument in this critical case. You can read the brief we filed on behalf of Abby...

South Philadelphia residents are outraged after a federal judge cleared the way for a safe injection site in the city. The planned site is not where it was originally proposed and some of the neighbors from the new location are not happy. Councilman Mark Squilla says the site will be at Constitution Health Plaza, near Broad and McKean Streets, in South Philadelphia. During Wednesday’s contentious press conference, promised facts about the forthcoming opening of the city’s first injection site were overshadowed by a lot of back and forth between angry community members and the heads of nonprofit agency Safehouse, which...

A key juror from Roger Stone’s trial was questioned in court on Tuesday over allegations that she prejudiced the jury that convicted the longtime GOP political operative, with the juror also facing public attacks from President Trump on Twitter. In a lengthy hearing in a court in Washington, D.C., Judge Amy Berman Jackson brought in the juror, Tomeka Hart, to answer to accusations that she provided misleading answers about her political bias — a claim that Stone says justifies a new trial. Hart said she stood by the answers she gave during jury selection, in which she said she could...

by Sheri Urban On Tuesday Roger Stone and his lawyers appeared in court to request a new trial after it was revealed the lead juror was biased and posted tweets attacking Trump and Roger Stone. Stone’s lawyers asked for a new trial after it was revealed jury forewoman Tomeka Hart lied to the Court during her testimony when she claimed she didn’t really know who Roger Stone was. During the proceedings today demon Judge Amy Berman Jackson complained about critical media reports on her outrageous conduct in the courtroom -- singling out popular FoxNews conservative Tucker Carlson for criticism....

Judge Army Berman Jackson, who presided over the case of former Trump adviser Roger Stone, denied Stone’s request that she be removed from deciding whether he can have a new trial, writing Sunday that his motion seemed to be "nothing more than an attempt to use the court’s docket to disseminate a statement for public consumption that has the words 'judge' and 'biased' in it." Stone was sentenced to over three years in prison last Thursday following his conviction in November on charges of lying to Congress and intimidating a witness in connection with the Trump-Russia probe. Stone’s defense team...

Tonight's tucker Carlson commentary. Judge verbally attacks Tucker. How is this woman still a Judge?

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration on Friday night in a case that contested the president’s “public charge” rule, which critics have called a “wealth test” for legal immigrants. The policy in question, the Immigration and Nationality Act, would make it harder for immigrants who are “likely at any time to become a public charge” to obtain green cards. The policy discourages legal immigrants in the process of obtaining permanent legal status or citizenship from using public assistance, including Medicaid, housing vouchers and food stamps. The case heard by the court, Wolf v. Cook County, sought...

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a blustering dissent in an ideologically split 5-4 Supreme Court ruling released Friday night in which she accused the five conservative justices who voted in the majority of repeatedly favoring the Trump administration. The case involved an appeal by the Department of Homeland Security for an injunction in a ruling against the imposition by the administration of a “public charge rule” regarding immigrants in an Illinois case that the Court has already allowed for the other 49 states. (DHS fact sheet on public charge rule.) Sotomayor’s dissent is in the context of the growing pushback...

Attorneys for Roger Stone late Friday filed a motion arguing the federal judge who sentenced him to more than three years in prison should recuse herself from deciding his request for a new trial. Defense attorneys said Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s statements just before sentencing Stone Thursday afternoon show she’s already made up her mind about whether a juror was biased against the longtime GOP operative. Stone is seeking a new trial based on social media posts by the forewoman in his trial, Tomkea Hart, saying she never should have been allowed on the jury because of Twitter posts mocking...