Free Republic

CV NEWS FEED // The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Feb. 26 that Planned Parenthood is not required to pay back millions of dollars it defrauded from Medicaid, reversing a lower court ruling. POLITICO reported that both Texas and Louisiana attempted to remove the local branches of Planned Parenthood from their Medicaid programs after a whistleblower revealed that the abortion company provided fetal tissue from abortions to researchers in 2015. During years of litigation to remove Planned Parenthood, the company’s attorneys advised that the Texas and Louisiana branches continue billing Medicaid. Texas ultimately succeeded in removing Planned Parenthood from...

Judge Anthony J. Trenga, an appointee of George W. Bush, has temporarily blocked President Trump’s move to clean house in the intelligence community—specifically targeting agents involved in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives that have compromised national security in favor of leftist ideology. This ruling comes after a group of anonymous intelligence officers, who had been temporarily reassigned to roles implementing controversial Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) programs, have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the CIA. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of...

The U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals put a final end to former President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness plan on Tuesday. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey originally sued the Biden administration over its $500 million effort to wipe away student loans, known as the SAVE plan. The court's Tuesday ruling found that Biden's secretary of education had "gone well beyond this authority by designing a plan where loans are largely forgiven rather than repaid." Bailey noted in a statement that the ruling has no active impact beyond blocking future presidents from attempting Biden's maneuver. "Though Joe Biden is out...

A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday blocked the Biden administration’s student loan relief plan known as SAVE, a move that will likely lead to higher monthly payments for millions of borrowers. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the seven Republican-led states that filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education’s plan. The states had argued that former President Joe Biden lacked the authority to establish the student loan relief plan. The GOP states argued that Biden, with SAVE, was essentially trying to find a roundabout way to forgive student debt after the Supreme Court blocked his...

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Trump Administration to restore the gender ideology webpages it deleted. US District Jud7ge John Bates of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, a George W. Bush appointee, ordered Trump to restore the pages by midnight tonight. Last month, President Trump scrubbed public health websites of all things related to “gender ideology.” A group dubbed Doctors For America sued the Office of Personal Management and numerous government agencies, claiming the removal could prevent doctors from helping patients. Judge Bates agreed with Doctors for America and ordered the extremist ideology to...

(Reuters) -A federal judge on Tuesday ordered U.S. health agencies to restore websites that they abruptly took offline in response to an executive order by President Donald Trump telling them to scrub websites of "gender ideology extremism." The temporary restraining order by U.S. District Judge John Bates in Washington, D.C. came in response to a lawsuit by the left-leaning medical advocacy group Doctors for America, which said the sudden removal of websites by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration hampered doctors' and researchers' ability to fight disease. Bates ordered all websites specifically identified...

A federal judge rejected an attempt by some of the United States’s most powerful unions to block Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing the Department of Labor’s data. On Friday, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge John Bates issued a ruling striking a blow to AFL-CIO and five other large labor unions’ efforts to stop DOGE from accessing data filed in the Labor Department’s system, as well as information from the Education Department, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.The labor unions failed to show that “at least one...

Feb 7 (Reuters) - A federal judge on Friday declined to block Elon Musk's government cost-cutting department from accessing the U.S. Department of Labor's systems, an initial setback for the government employee unions resisting his efforts to shrink the federal bureaucracy. The temporary ruling by U.S. District Judge John Bates in Washington, D.C., is the first step in a lawsuit against the Labor Department by one of the largest U.S. labor unions, which alleges billionaire Musk could obtain sensitive information about investigations into his own companies and competitors by accessing government computer systems. Bates ruled that "although the Court harbors...

NEW ORLEANS (January 30, 2025) – Today, Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) announced that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the federal government’s handgun ban for adults aged 18 to 20 years old is unconstitutional. The opinion in Reese v. ATF can be viewed at firearmspolicy.org/reese. “Ultimately, the text of the Second Amendment includes eighteen-to-twenty-year-old individuals among ‘the people’ whose right to keep and bear arms is protected. The federal government has presented scant evidence that eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds’ firearm rights during the founding-era were restricted in a similar manner to the contemporary federal handgun purchase ban [...] In sum,...

Multiple lawmakers visited the Washington, D.C., jail to demand the release of pardoned January 6 rioters. Conservative House Freedom Caucus (HFC) members Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Chip Roy of Texas and Eli Crane of Arizona were among some of the MAGA-friendly members that visited the jail Tuesday. 'We hope they are going to be released shortly,' Roy said speaking outside of the jail on the conservative show Real America's Voice. 'A pardon is a pardon.' MAGA diehard Lauren Boebert even offered the soon-to-be released defendants a private tour of the Capitol. 'These men have already paid too much time, more...

A federal judge in Texas ruled against American Airlines after the company centered employee retirement plans on environmental, social, and governance factors, also known as ESG. U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor concluded on Jan. 10 that American Airlines failed to exercise its fiduciary duty to make investment decisions for retirement accounts based on the best interests of the beneficiaries, according to a report from Reuters. O’Connor added that American Airlines had inappropriate ties to BlackRock, the asset management behemoth which has long been a leading advocate for the ESG investing movement. ... The evidence made clear that [American’s] incestuous relationship...

A federal appeals court decided this week to allow Davina Ricketts, a former North Carolina high school student, to continue pursuing her racial discrimination lawsuit against the Wake County Public School System, its board of education, and numerous school officials. Ricketts alleges that school and district officials did not intervene and were “deliberately indifferent” to the racial harassment and cyberbullying she endured from other students during and after a student council election in 2016.... When election day came, Ricketts discovered her name and the names of the other three Black candidates were not on the junior class ballot. The omission...

ESG investments tend to underperform traditional funds by approximately 10 percent, the judge observed.A district court has ruled that American Airlines failed to prioritize the financial interests of its employees’ retirement funds by enabling fund managers to pursue environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investments.The judgment came as part of a 2023 lawsuit filed against American Airlines and the company’s Employee Benefits Committee. The class action alleges that the defendants violated their duty of loyalty under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, which states that fiduciaries managing retirement investments must act in the best financial interest of the participants.The defendants are...

Huge win for girls and women everywhere!!! This morning, a federal court ruled in favor of reality. Biden's Title IX rewrite has been vacated nationwide.

A New Jersey federal judge Friday shot down a last-ditch attempt to stop New York City’s controversial congestion toll from taking effect Sunday. Judge Leo Gordon clarified that his Monday ruling — finding that the toll plan didn’t sufficiently lay out a plan to mitigate the impacts the toll would have on New Jersey — would still allow the toll to start Jan. 5 at midnight. Gordon made his explanation at a last-minute hearing in Newark federal court, where lawyers for Gov. Phil Murphy argued that the plan shouldn’t be allowed to take effect until after measures are put in...

In a major victory for cable companies and telcos that raises concerns about the Federal Communications Commission's regulatory authority in the wake of recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has struck down the agency’s net neutrality rules. The rules require broadband operators to treat all internet traffic equally and banned them from giving preferential treatment to some sites by speeding up or slowing down consumer access. The FCC had implemented net neutrality rules under former President Barack Obama, which were then dropped during the Trump administration. Last April the FCC voted 3-2, along party...

Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on Tuesday warned that judges nationwide are under increasing threat from violence, intimidation, disinformation and officials threatening to defy lawful court decisions. Roberts said that robust criticism of judicial rulings is part of American civic life, but that some recent attacks had gone too far in threatening to undermine the independence necessary for judges to rule impartially. “Violence, intimidation, and defiance directed at judges because of their work undermine our Republic, and are wholly unacceptable,” Roberts wrote in his annual report on the state of the nation’s judiciary. The justice’s message follows...

From U.S. v. Saleem, decided [yesterday] by Judges J. Harvie Wilkinson, Steven Agee, and Allison Rushing: The Supreme Court in Heller defined "arms" as "any thing that a man wears for his defence, or takes into his hands, or useth in wrath to cast at or strike another." Therefore, "the Second Amendment extends … to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding." While a silencer may be a firearm accessory, it is not a "bearable arm" that is capable of casting a bullet. Moreover, while silencers may serve...

A federal judge on Friday ruled that the U.S. Naval Academy may continue to consider race when evaluating candidates to attend the elite military school, even after the U.S. Supreme Court last year barred civilian colleges from employing similar affirmative action policies.

BALTIMORE (AP) — A federal judge on Friday ruled that the U.S. Naval Academy can continue considering race in its admissions process, ruling that military cohesion and other national security factors mean the officer training school should not be subjected to the same standards as civilian universities. During a two-week bench trial in September, attorneys for the school argued that prioritizing diversity in the military makes it stronger, more effective and more widely respected. The group behind the case, Students for Fair Admissions, also brought the lawsuit challenging affirmative action that resulted in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling last...