Free Republic

Quite a blockbuster ruling from the federal district court. The court found that in enacting certain election laws limiting registration outreach and the use of drop boxes, Florida violated the Voting Rights Act. The court also found that Florida acted intentionally discriminating against the state’s black voters. And although the parties hardly briefed it, the Court imposed a very strong remedy of requiring that certain changes in voting rules in Florida be precleared before the court for a period of 10 years under section 3c of the Voting Rights Act.

A lawsuit that aimed to stop the Obama Presidential Center from being built in Chicago’s historic Jackson Park has been dismissed by a federal judge. The crux of Protect Our Parks’ complaint is that under regulatory statutes, federal agencies should have considered relocating the proposed Obama center site entirely to avoid damage to the environment, according to the lawsuit. The city and Obama Foundation officials have said federal agencies closed the final review into the project because they determined the Obama center’s construction and nearby roadway fixes would not pose a “significant impact” on the environment - a finding the...

Some on the right were concerned when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell indicated a potential willingness to support the confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. Republicans indeed have shown more openness to support the nominees of Democrat presidents compared to vice versa, and given that Jackson’s confirmation wouldn’t change the balance of the court, it seemed possible that McConnell might ultimately join with Democrats and support her confirmation.But, Jackson has squandered that goodwill with her evasive answers during her confirmation hearings, and McConnell has since expressed concern that Jackson has been “evasive and unclear.”“She’s declined to...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who will be nominated for the Supreme Court, worked for seven years as a judge on the federal trial court in Washington, D.C., before Biden appointed her to the appeals court that meets in the same courthouse. Here are excerpts from some notable opinions: PRESIDENTIAL POWER In 2019, Jackson ruled on a dispute between Democrats who control the House of Representatives and the Trump administration over lawmakers’ efforts to subpoena former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify to Congress. The administration appealed, and the case bounced around the D.C. Circuit through the...

Pro-life Sen. Josh Hawley expressed alarm Wednesday about U.S. Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s “soft” record on child sex offenders amid growing concerns about protecting children from abuse. Jackson, President Joe Biden’s nominee to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, also has a pro-abortion record that includes working with abortion activists on a case about suppressing pro-life advocates’ free speech. Her record on unborn babies’ rights has pro-life advocates opposing her nomination. Now, Hawley’s findings are raising additional concerns about other vulnerable children. “Judge Jackson has a pattern of letting child porn offenders off the hook for their appalling crimes,...

A federal judge last week ruled that a cellphone dragnet used to find bank robbery suspects was unconstitutional. Judge M. Hannah Lauck, of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, ruled Thursday that authorities violated the Constitution when they used Google location data to find people who were near the scene of a 2019 bank robbery, NBC News reported. Lauck said the policing approach, by gathering information on innocent people without evidence that they might be suspects violated the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches.

On Friday, Federal District Judge Amita Mehta ruled that a civil suit alleging a conspiracy to foment the Jan. 6 insurrection could proceed. In an extremely thorough and detailed 112-page ruling, Mehta concluded that the plaintiffs had made a “plausible” case that former President Trump himself was at the center of a conspiracy to stop the peaceful transfer of power. While plausibility is not the same as proven, Mehta’s ruling is the first time such a finding has been made in an official proceeding.

Former President Donald Trump lost a bid Friday to toss lawsuits holding him responsible for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. Federal Judge Amit Mehta rejected Trump’s attempt to dismiss the civil cases with a claim that he has absolute immunity because he was in office at the time. “To deny a President immunity from civil damages is no small step,” Mehta wrote in a 112-page ruling. “The court well understands the gravity of its decision. But the alleged facts of this case are without precedent, and the court believes that its decision is consistent with...

A judge is withholding the release of an audit report of Dominion voting machines in Georgia. Now the federal government and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has inserted itself into the case and is asking the judge to delay the report longer.We reported on this case previously. Per our report a week ago:A federal judge is being urged to release a report that, despite the secrecy surrounding it, appears to indicate there are potential flaws in the Dominion Voting Systems’ equipment used in Georgia.“The public deserves to know the context of J. Alex Halderman’s claims and his testimony...

Joe Biden has reportedly narrowed down his search for his Supreme Court nominee down to four potential candidates.“What I’ve done is I’ve taken about four people and done the deep dive on them, meaning these thorough background checks, and see if there’s anything in the background that would make them not qualified,” Biden told NBC news anchor Lester Holt in a recent interview.It’s not said who these four candidates are, but among those reportedly under consideration are U.S. District Court Judge J. Michelle Childs; Ketanji Brown Jackson, who serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia...

ATLANTA (AP) — A federal cybersecurity agency says a report by an expert who says he’s identified security vulnerabilities in voting machines used by Georgia and other states shouldn’t be made public until it has had time to assess and mitigate potential risks. The report has been under seal since July in federal court in Atlanta, part of a long-running lawsuit challenging Georgia’s voting machines. Its author, J. Alex Halderman, said in sworn declarations filed publicly with the court that he examined the Dominion Voting Systems machines for 12 weeks and identified “multiple severe security flaws” that would allow bad...

Juliette Kayyem, a CNN contributor, Harvard professor and Obama’s former Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Intergovernmental Affairs, advocated for violence and property damage to deal with the freedom trucker convoy currently blocking the Ambassador Bridge. (snip) Juliette Kayyem @juliettekayyem The convoy protest, applauded by right wing media as a "freedom protest," is an economic and security issue now. The Ambassador Bridge link constitutes 28% of annual trade movement between US and Canada. Slash the tires, empty gas tanks, arrest the drivers, and move the trucks

A “leadership committee” created by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp under a new state law must stop spending money to get the governor reelected during the Republican primary, a federal judge ruled Monday. Former U.S. Sen. David Perdue, who's challenging Kemp in the primary, last month filed a lawsuit challenging the new law. Perdue and his campaign allege that the law gives Kemp a significant and unfair fundraising and spending advantage in the primary and asked the judge to declare it unconstitutional. The law, passed by state legislators last year and signed by Kemp, allows certain top elected officials, including the...

Lumping Donald Trump with Osama Bin Laden? That's going too easy on the former president! At least, if you ask CNN's "national security analyst" Juliette Kayyem, a former Obama DHS assistant secretary. Appearing on Thursday morning's New Day, Kayyem said that when a year ago in an Atlantic article she depicted Trump as "the leader of a terror movement," she was, as she recently tweeted, actually being "too kind" to him!Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

A federal judge invalidated the results of an oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday saying the Biden administration failed to properly account for the auction's climate change impact. The decision has cast uncertainty over the future of the U.S. federal offshore drilling program, which has been a big source of public revenue for decades but also drawn the ire of activists concerned about its impact on the environment and contribution to global warming. The Gulf of Mexico accounts for 15% of existing U.S. oil production and 5% of dry natural gas output, according to...

WASHINGTON — A federal court has rejected a plan to lease millions of acres in the Gulf of Mexico for offshore oil drilling, saying the Biden administration did not adequately take into account the lease sale's effect on planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, violating a bedrock environmental law.The decision Thursday by U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras in Washington sends the proposed lease sale back to the Interior Department to decide next steps. The judge said it was up to Interior to decide whether to go forward with the sale after a revised review, scrap it or take other steps.Environmental groups hailed...

Porn star Stormy Daniels detailed how her former attorney, Michael Avenatti, allegedly stole hundreds of thousands in book advance money from her – and lied to her about the missing funds almost every day for five months at his trial Thursday. Daniels, wearing a black dress, a red sweater and black high heels, took the stand at Avenatti’s criminal trial in Manhattan federal court – and walked jurors through a series of text messages and documents that showed her communication with her former attorney as she navigated a six-figure book deal in 2018.

Stormy Daniels, the porn star who catapulted herself and Michael Avenatti to fame with lawsuits against former President Donald Trump, will have a starring role in court beginning Monday when prosecutors try to prove that the California lawyer cheated her of $300,000 in book proceeds. Her testimony in Manhattan federal court will be pivotal for prosecutors trying to prove Avenatti engaged in wire fraud and aggravated identity theft to keep from giving his client money he had received from her publisher. Opening statements are set for Monday. Daniels is not expected to testify until Tuesday, at the earliest. Avenatti, 50,...

Michael Avenatti, the disgraced celebrity lawyer and fierce Donald Trump critic, is scheduled to go on trial Monday in Manhattan for allegedly swindling ex-porn star Stormy Daniels out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Avenatti is accused of fleecing Daniels – his former client – of about $300,000 in money she stood to collect for a 2018 advance on a book about her alleged affair with Trump.

Paul Hodgkins, according to Joe Biden’s Justice Department, is a domestic terrorist. A working-class man from Tampa, Hodgkins committed what Democrats and the media consider a murderous crime comparable to flying a packed jetliner into a skyscraper or detonating a truck filled with explosives under a crowded federal building. Paul Hodgkins entered the Capitol building on January 6, 2021. What exactly did Hodgkins do on that day of infamy? He followed a group of like-minded Donald Trump supporters SNIP When he entered the sacred Senate chambers, Hodgkins carried with him a weapon so offensive that the mere sight of the...