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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A lawsuit that Louisiana and other Republican-leaning states filed challenging figures the Biden administration uses to calculate damages from greenhouse gasses was dismissed Wednesday by a federal appeals court. The unanimous decision by three judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans was the latest defeat for states challenging the Biden “cost of carbon” policy. It leaves the administration to continue using a damage cost estimate of about $51 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions as it develops environmental regulations. That estimate is under review by the administration and could increase. The...

NEW ORLEANS — A federal appellate court refused late Thursday to delay implementation of a judge’s order reinstating a Trump administration policy forcing thousands to wait in Mexico while seeking asylum in the U.S. President Joe Biden had suspended former President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy on his first day in office and the Department of Homeland Security said it was permanently terminating the program in June, according to the court record. U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk last week ordered that the program be reinstated Saturday. The Biden administration appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Appeal in New...

This will be a weekly post. Count is now 198 judges confirmed 143 District Court judges 53 Circuit Court judges 2 Supreme Court justices This week Cory Wilson was confirmed to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals vacancy. For a long while this vacancy was in limbo since Mick Mulvaney convinced President Trump to appoint one of his cronies, Sul Ozerden, to the seat. Ozerden wasn't sufficiently conservative so kept getting votes delayed in committee, then Senators Hawley and Cruz refused to support him. The Ozerden nomination then quietly expired with the congressional session. Wilson was nominated, and is now...

WASHINGTON — The Senate has approved the nomination of a Mississippi judge to a federal appeals court, the 200th federal judge named by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the Republican-controlled chamber. It’s the highest number of judicial nominees confirmed at this stage of a presidency in four decades. Cory Wilson was elevated to a seat on the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal despite Democratic objections that he has a record of working to undermine voting rights of African Americans and other minorities. Approval came on a nearly party-line, 52-48 vote Wednesday. Maine Sen. Susan Collins was...

Wilson might as well have been hatched in a Federalist Society lab; his lengthy political record reveals a deep commitment to Republicans’ political goals. Alliance for Justice, a progressive group that has opposed most of Trump’s judicial nominees, compiled a record of Wilson’s many controversial positions. Examples of his partisanship are not difficult to find. Wilson called Barack Obama “King Barack,” “petty and small,” “a fit-throwing teenager,” the “Anointed One,” a “radical leftist,” and “shrill, dishonest, and intellectually bankrupt.” He charged Obama with running the “most paranoid and politicized White House since Nixon.” He has also called Hillary Clinton “Crooked...

A judge on the Mississippi Court of Appeals is being nominated to serve on a federal appeals court that handles cases for Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, the White House announced Monday. Cory Wilson joined the 10-member state court in February 2019 after being appointed by then-Gov. Phil Bryant, a Republican. Before that, Wilson was a first-term Republican member of the Mississippi House. President Donald Trump announced in August that he was nominating Wilson to become a federal district judge in southern Mississippi. The state’s two Republican U.S. senators, Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith, introduced Wilson to the Senate Judiciary Committee...