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Bloomberg link only: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-13/supreme-court-lets-trump-administration-end-census-count-early?srnd=premium

A federal appeals court on Saturday granted a temporary administrative stay, allowing Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's directive for one location per county for ballot drop boxes to remain in place for now. The grant from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit means the directive from Abbott, a Republican, will stand until the court has considered the state's motion for a stay on its merits. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had filed an emergency motion Saturday for a stay pending appeal to block a district court order that would have allowed county officials to accept hand delivery...

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday ruled that President Trump’s use of emergency powers to allocate millions of dollars in funding for the construction of a southern border wall was illegal, the latest blow to the Trump administration’s effort to limit immigration. In the 2-1 decision, the court upheld a December 2019 district court summary judgment in favor of a request from the advocacy groups the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition against Defense Secretary Mark Esper, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and “all persons acting under their direction ... from using military construction funds...

AUSTIN -- A federal judge in Austin blocked Gov. Greg Abbott’s order limiting the number of mail ballot drop-off sites a county can have. In an order issued late Friday night, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman of Austin put on hold Abbott’s order thereby allowing counties to have multiple mail ballot drop-off sites. The order said agents of the state are blocked from taking any action to inhibit election administrators from offering more than one drop-off location for ballots in their respective counties. The decision, issued by a Barack Obama appointee, is a blow to Abbott who argued the drop-off...

Devon Archer was convicted of defrauding the Oglala Sioux Indian tribe out of bond-sale proceeds. Hunter Biden was not implicated in the scheme, which defrauded the Oglala Sioux Indian tribe out of the proceeds of bond sales. | Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File/AP Photo A federal appeals court reinstated the fraud conviction of Hunter Biden’s former business partner on Wednesday, reversing a lower court judge who had granted his request for a retrial. Hunter Biden was not implicated in the scheme, which defrauded the Oglala Sioux Indian tribe out of the proceeds of bond sales. But the scheme was committed under...

The Supreme Court on Thursday declined to act on a Trump administration request to reinstate a rule mandating that abortion-inducing drugs be taken in the presence of a doctor Instead, the justices returned the case to a federal trial court in Maryland and gave the judge there 40 days to rule on the administration's request. The administration is expected to ask the judge to either lift or narrow an order he entered in July that suspended a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rule requiring women to take abortion pill in the presence of a doctor. U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang,...

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A federal appeals court on Thursday blocked a decision to extend the deadline for counting absentee ballots in battleground Wisconsin, in a win for Republicans who have fought attempts to expand voting across the country. If the ruling stands, absentee ballots will have to be delivered to Wisconsin election clerks by 8 p.m. on Election Day if they are to be counted. Results of the presidential race in the pivotal swing state would be known within hours of polls closing. Democrats almost certainly will appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Late Monday afternoon the Supreme Court issued a “Stay” with regard to an order from a South Carolina federal district court judge who rewrote a provision of South Carolina election law due to the impact of COVID 19. Judge Julianna Michelle Childs, an appointee of President Obama, granted an injunction for Plaintiffs preventing the South Carolina election officials from enforcing a provision of South Carolina election law requiring a witness signature on an absentee ballot envelope. Judge Childs set for the relief being sought by the plaintiffs as follows: SNIP But the Supreme Court’s emergency “stay” prevents Judge Childs order...

A federal appeals court on Friday voted against extending the deadline for voters to return their absentee ballots in the state of Georgia. The Atlanta Constitution-Journal reports: A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided 2-1 to grant a stay of a judge’s ruling that would have allowed voters three more days to return their absentee ballots.

A federal judge has stopped the 2020 census from finishing at the end of September and ordered the once-a-decade head count of every U.S. resident to continue for another month through the end of October, saying a shortened schedule likely would produce inaccurate results. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in California made her ruling late Thursday, two days after hearing arguments from attorneys for the Census Bureau, and attorneys for civil rights groups and local governments that had sued the Census Bureau in an effort to halt the 2020 census from stopping at the end of the month. Attorneys for...

7th Circuit stays district court injunction allowing Wisconsin ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted if received up to 6 days later. No list or count of judges backing the order. No rationale given.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A federal appeals court on Sunday temporarily halted a six-day extension for counting absentee ballots in Wisconsin’s presidential election, a momentary victory for Republicans and President Donald Trump in the key presidential battleground state. As it stands, ballots will now be due by 8 p.m. on Election Day. A lower court judge had sided with Democrats and their allies to extend the deadline until Nov. 9. Democrats sought more time as a way to help deal with an expected historic high number of absentee ballots.

Happy,Happy! MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A federal appeals court on Sunday temporarily halted a six-day extension for counting absentee ballots in Wisconsin’s presidential election, a momentary victory for Republicans and President Donald Trump in the key presidential battleground state. more at link above: https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-wisconsin-elections-us-supreme-court-courts-9f58fae97f3296c1a318f9f1082cf198?utm_source=Twitter&utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_medium=AP

<p>Last week, a Wisconsin judge declared that instead of having to be present on Election Day to be counted, absentee ballots postmarked by 8 p.m. Election Day could be counted so long as they arrived up to six days later.</p>

A federal appeals court on Sunday temporarily halted a six-day extension for counting absentee ballots in Wisconsin’s presidential election, a momentary victory for Republicans and President Donald Trump in the key presidential battleground state. As it stands, ballots will now be due by 8 p.m. on Election Day. A lower court judge had sided with Democrats and their allies to extend the deadline until Nov. 9. Democrats sought more time as a way to help deal with an expected historic high number of absentee ballots. The Democratic National Committee, the state Democratic Party and allied groups including the League of...

“Nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program,” President Reagan once said. That adage certainly applies to the Temporary Protected Status program. TPS was intended to give only short-term permission for aliens to be in the U.S., but that permission has often gone on seemingly without end. Fortunately, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-to-1 decision, has just dissolved an injunction that prevented the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from ending TPS for illegal aliens from Sudan, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Haiti who have been in the U.S. for decades. As Judge Consuelo Callahan...

A federal judge on Friday ordered Texas officials to allow straight-ticket voting for the Nov. 3 election, ruling that a state law ending the practice would endanger voters by causing longer lines at polling places during the pandemic. The ruling, coming only 18 days before early voting was set to begin, will cause problems for election officials who must reprogram voting machine software and reconfigure ballots, U.S. District Judge Marina Garcia Marmolejo acknowledged in her ruling. “The substantial injury to (voters) is outweighed by the inconvenience,” the Laredo judge wrote.

A federal judge ruled earlier this week to extend the cutoff to count absentee ballots by six days after the election, but the decision is being appealed by the GOP-controlled Wisconsin Legislature and is expected to make its way all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. U.S. District Judge William Conley's decision came Monday after Democrats argued that an extension was needed to accommodate for the influx of voters requesting mail-in ballots, and allow them time to both receive and send back their votes just five weeks before the election. Republicans have said there is more than enough...

A ruling Monday by a federal judge in Wisconsin that would extend the counting of mail-in ballots six days beyond Election Day would also allow those ballots to be counted even if there is no “definitive” sign of a postmark. U.S. District Judge William Conley of the Western District of Wisconsin — an appointee of President Barack Obama — ruled that absentee ballots in the state can be counted until Nov. 9 as long as they are postmarked by Election Day, Nov. 3. That echoes last week’s ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which ruled that mailed-in ballots should be...

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A federal judge ruled Monday that absentee ballots in battleground Wisconsin can be counted up to six days after the Nov. 3 presidential election as long as they are postmarked by Election Day. The highly anticipated ruling, unless overturned, means that the outcome of the presidential race in Wisconsin likely will not be known for days after polls close. Under current law, the deadline for returning an absentee ballot to have it counted is 8 p.m. on Election Day. Democrats and their allies sued to extend the deadline in the key swing state. U.S. District Judge...