Free Republic

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) has introduced articles of impeachment against Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, alleging “high crimes and misdemeanors by violating the Constitution, disregarding his statutory obligations as Chief Justice, and breaching his oaths of office.” “I am saddened that the United States Supreme Court, once the most admired federal institution, has now become a political actor. While Chief Justice Roberts may claim otherwise, it has become clear that the Court now routinely favors partisanship, the rich over the poor, and the powerful over the vulnerable. This is a shift that undermines the Constitution of the United States,...

A legal battle that began before the iPhone was invented ended Thursday as the Indiana Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from the city of Gary over a ruling that killed a lawsuit against 11 gun manufacturers. The city initially filed its suit in August 1999 seeking not just money for alleged damages caused by the gun manufacturers’ “negligence,” but also for the court to order the manufacturers, including Smith and Wesson, Glock and Beretta, to take various measures that anti-Second Amendment groups had not been able to achieve via legislation. In a statement released Thursday, Brady United, formerly...

The South Carolina Senate just killed a critical motion to expedite the Trump-backed congressional redistricting effort, putting the entire push for a bold 7-0 Republican map in serious jeopardy as Democrats and their weak-kneed GOP enablers drag their feet past the start of early voting on Tuesday, May 26. State Rep. Adam Morgan blasted the vote and sounded the alarm: “South Carolina Senate KILLS motion to expedite Redistricting! This puts the entire effort in serious jeopardy. 6 Republicans voted with Dems to kill it… The motion would [have] suspended Rule 15b to allow immediate cloture. Without this they can drag...

Based on my reporting, it was well known in national security circles that a CIA investigative unit had sent emails to several members of DNI Gabbard’s Director’s Initiatives Group — or DIG — demanding they come in for questioning. While the CIA unit routinely conducts polygraphs and investigations, the timing of the request was concerning. It did not appear to be part of a standard security clearance review. The alleged CIA monitoring of the Director’s Initiatives Group was described as tracking “every keystroke” on their government computers and devices. While there is no expectation of privacy on government computers and...

When the justices meet for their private conference on Thursday, there is one high-profile petition for review they will not consider, *** an appeal by President Donald Trump seeking review of the $5 million jury verdict entered against him in the sexual abuse and defamation case filed by journalist E. Jean Carroll.Carroll filed the lawsuit that led to the verdict in a federal court in New York in 2022. She contended that in 1996 Trump had sexually assaulted her in a dressing room at a Manhattan department store and then had defamed her in a 2022 social media post in...

Former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander (D) is leading incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman (N.Y.) in the Democratic primary for New York’s 10th District by more than 20 points, according to a new survey. In the Emerson College Polling/PIX 11 poll, 56.6 percent of respondents said they would back Lander while 23.1 percent said they support Goldman and 20.3 percent were undecided. Lander launched his bid to challenge Goldman late last year, shortly after losing the party primary for the New York City mayoral race.

The Trump administration this week onboarded more than 80 new federal immigration judges, in its latest push to expedite deportation cases and further its government-wide crackdown on illegal immigration, Justice Department officials said Thursday. The Justice Department, which oversees the U.S. immigration court system, swore in 77 permanent immigration judges and 5 temporary immigration judges, a group that officials described as the largest class of immigration judges in the department's history. The additions come after the ouster of dozens of immigration judges across the country by the Trump administration over the past year. When President Trump took office, the Justice...

The Senate GOP on Thursday delayed the reconciliation vote to fund ICE and Border Patrol – and Senate Majority Leader John Thune admitted it is a political hit against President Trump. The Senators will be on recess until June. Last week, the Senate Parliamentarian struck down three key provisions of the Senate’s reconciliation bill The House of Representatives previously passed the Senate-approved package to fund the Department of Homeland Security by voice vote, ending the 75-day shutdown. ICE and Border Patrol were to be funded separately through a reconciliation package. Senate Republicans put together a $72 billion reconciliation package to...

A U.S. citizen was found not guilty Tuesday of illegally voting in the 2018 election when she was a lawful permanent resident of the United States. A guilty verdict would have led to up to 18 months in prison for Maria Dearaujo, 63. But Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Chris Brown sided with the defense’s argument of entrapment. This generally entails a government actor leading a person into committing a crime they wouldn’t have otherwise committed. Brown, a Democrat, said Dearaujo’s trial testimony lines up with the documentary evidence. She admitted to “inconvenient” facts like having voted when she knew...

LOS ANGELES—Spencer Pratt knows he doesn’t need to be universally liked. At an annual tennis invitational and white party at a billionaire’s Beverly Hills mansion last weekend, the reality TV villain and mayoral hopeful marveled at his potential path to victory. “It’s pretty incredible you can become the mayor with only 51% of people liking you. I’m like, ‘I can do that,’” Pratt told the crowd. The 42-year-old rose to millennial fame as the dark prince of “The Hills,” playing the love interest of his now-wife, Heidi Montag. He provoked conflict with fellow cast members and was seen by fans...

The Supreme Court will be releasing Opinions from the October 2025 this morning at 10:00.Scotusblog will be liveblogging the release and we will be following along.There are 33 decisions pending for this term and we expect all opinions will be released by June 30th. You can find a list of the cases here. Note: The word "held" after the case name indicates the Opinion has already been released. The word "Issues" indicates the questions to be be resolved by the Court.There are several big cases on which we are awaiting decisions. Trump v Slaughter.(1) Whether the statutory removal protections for...

Democrats still searching for a way out of the rubble of the 2024 election got a peek in Tuesday’s primaries of what their voters want for the future. The races spanned a mix of competitive and safe-blue seats across six states — including a pair of crucial swing states. The result: A slate of disparate candidates who won’t give them a much clearer sense of their future. State Rep. Chris Rabb, a progressive firebrand and self-styled “rabble-rouser,” won the open primary for the bluest House district in the country in Philadelphia. In a nearby Pennsylvania House battleground, Democrats nominated Bob...

Liberal podcast star Jennifer Welch branded President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement a “Nazi-style cult” during the Monday’s edition of her show. Welch ranted that MAGA supporters are fake Americans who need to be placed in a special historical category, much like citizens of the Third Reich. “We cannot let them besmirch the name the United States of America. Let it be MAGA. Much like when you think of Germany, you don’t associate modern-day Germany as being Nazis. You don’t associate that,” Welch said on I’ve Had It. “So we need to separate ourselves from this Nazi-style cult,...

In Georgia, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp is term-limited, opening up the governorship and creating crowded primaries on both sides. President Donald Trump has endorsed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, but wealthy businessman Rick Jackson has proven a durable, free-spending rival on the Republican side. On the Democratic side, former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has led primary polls but faces a large slate of rivals. If no candidate gets a majority in a primary, the top two contenders will advance to a June 16 runoff. In Kentucky, we have House District 4 with incumbent Thomas Massie trying to maintain his seat...

The Atlantic magazine recently announced the People’s Choice for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination. “Trump Voters Like Marco Rubio More and More (And J.D. Vance Less and Less)” the headline proclaimed, a ruling that deserves respect considering that this is the magazine that has spent the past decade ferociously denouncing Trump as a “racist,” “fascist kleptocrat,” “warped,” “corrupted,” an “authoritarian,” a “demagogue,” a “xenophobe” and a “liar.” The piece was written by Sarah Longwell, whose career as a Republican consists almost entirely of loathing Trump, calling him an “incomprehensible lunatic,” “an insane madman,” “corrupt” and an “authoritarian.” So you can...

Georgia’s State Election Board, the state Republican Party and multiple Republican candidates are demanding access to the secretary of state’s election night hub during Tuesday’s state primary election. With less than a day to go before the election, state Sen. Greg Dolezal, who is running for lieutenant governor, congressional candidate Chris Mora and Cobb County Commissioner Keli Gambrill have also filed an emergency motion against Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. The lawsuit, filed Monday in Fulton County Superior Court, seeks to give election observers and State Election Board representatives access to the hub, known as the emergency operations center. Though...

The NAACP is calling on Black athletes and fans to boycott the athletic programs of public universities in states that are taking steps that the nation's oldest civil rights group says are restricting Black voting rights. The NAACP's campaign calls out Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and South Carolina as states to boycott, arguing that the athletic programs of those states' flagship universities are especially reliant on Black athletic talent and should protect Black political interests. The Congressional Black Caucus on Monday sent a letter to the commissioners of the SEC and ACC athletic conferences, as well as NCAA...

But if Massie loses, it's not just the end of his career. (He told Mangu-Ward that if GOP primary voters send him packing, he's going back to his plow and "nobody will ever hear from me again"). It would also effectively be the end of what used to be called the Tea Party, a loose conglomeration of Republican representatives and senators who rode a wave of anti-Barack Obama and anti-George W. Bush sentiment to office in the early 2010s. Although some said that the tea in Tea Party stood for the "taxed-enough already," the rallying cry of the early Tea...

I long took for granted that US opinion polls break down respondents into white people, black people and Hispanics. But I’ve come to look askance at this convention. Reporting on political views by race now seems perverse. It implies that a citizen’s primary identity is grounded in skin colour, and it reifies a way of thinking about the American people that is regressive, divisive, inaccurate and downright un-American. I was reminded of this recent point of annoyance last week when the Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana congressional map that none too subtly contrived to create an additional majority-black district....

On Monday, the Supreme Court issued two brief procedural orders involving Voting Rights Act (VRA) cases — one out of Mississippi, the other out of North Dakota. Neither case was decided on the merits. Instead, the Court "GVR'd" the cases, meaning it granted review of them, vacated lower court rulings, and remanded the cases to the lower courts for further consideration in light of the Court's recent ruling in Louisiana v. Callais. Despite their brevity, the orders may still have major implications for future VRA lawsuits. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented as to both orders, seemingly out of concern that...