Free Republic

On Friday night, a judge dismissed former President Donald Trump's lawsuit against CNN in which the current 2024 front-runner for the Republican nomination claimed CNN’s coverage of his election lies equated him to Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. Judge Raag Singhal, a Trump-appointed judge, ruled that CNN referring to Trump’s claims about the election being stolen as “The Big Lie” did not meet the criteria for defamation despite Trump’s belief to the contrary. "There is no question that the statements made by CNN meet the publication requirement for defamation under Florida law," Singhal wrote. "The next question is whether the...

WASHINGTON — At least four members of the far-right Proud Boys organization were found guilty Thursday of seditious conspiracy in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Enrique Tarrio, Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean and Zachary Rehl each faced nine counts, and were found guilty on the rare charge of seditious conspiracy under a Civil War-era statute. They were also found guilty of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. The jury has only reached a partial verdict, U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly said Thursday, and the verdicts on other charges are still being read.

This is Marisa Maleck We both went to the University of Chicago Law School, were members of the Federalist Society (she was President), worked on class projects, and went to church together She ended up clerking on the US Supreme Court for Justice Thomas and was a Partner at King & Spalding Unfortunately I learned that she died unexpectedly earlier this week She was a brilliant lawyer, a devout Catholic, a loyal friend, and a courageous warrior for conservative values I was planning to reach out to her soon to reconnect, but unfortunately now I can’t She was as kind...

A federal judge rejected an effort by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to block a Congressional subpoena of a former prosecutor for that office who had worked on an investigation into former President Donald Trump. Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil ruled that she has no standing to block the subpoena, writing that the House Judiciary Committee has claimed to have legitimate legislative purposes for its inquiry. The committee and its Republican chairman, Rep. Jim Jordan, have aggressively confronted Bragg in the weeks since Trump was indicted in Manhattan. The Judiciary Committee says it is conducting its investigation in support of possible...

A federal judge on Wednesday shot down Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s attempt to block a former prosecutor in his office from testifying before the House Judiciary Committee about the criminal case against Donald Trump. The committee and its chairman, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), had subpoenaed ex-assistant district attorney Mark Pomerantz to give testimony about the DA’s investigation into Trump, 76, that culminated in the former president’s indictment in March. Bragg filed suit against Jordan and the Judiciary Committee, claiming the subpoena was an overreach by the GOP-led House and an attempt to influence a state criminal proceeding.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s urgent request to enter a restraining order against Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) was rejected on April 11, the same day it was filed. U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, a Trump appointee, turned down Bragg’s emergency request for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against Jordan. “The Court declines to enter the proposed Temporary Restraining Order and Order to Show Cause,” Vyskocil said, noting that she had not yet received several documents that were referenced in Bragg’s filings. She ordered Jordan and other defendants in the case to respond to the lawsuit and scheduled...

A federal judge in Texas recently agreed with a federal judge in Oklahoma that the national ban on gun possession by cannabis consumers violates the Second Amendment. Kathleen Cardone, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, also concluded that the federal ban on transferring firearms to an "unlawful user" of a "controlled substance," first imposed by the Gun Control Act of 1968, is unconstitutional. The case involves Paola Connelly, who was charged with illegal possession of firearms under 18 USC 922(g)(3) after El Paso police found marijuana and guns in her home while responding...

A federal judge has issued a ruling that will stop the sales of abortion drugs nationwide and possibly save hundreds of thousands or even millions of babies from abortions. The abortion drug mifepristone is used for more than half of all abortions in the U.S. every year, or hundreds of thousands of unborn babies, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute. But a new lawsuit, filed by a group of doctors with the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, challenges the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval and later expansion of the deadly drug under the Clinton, Obama and Biden administrations. Represented by...

PORTLAND, Ore. — A federal judge in Texas on Friday ordered that access to a common abortion pill be put on hold across the country, and then minutes later a federal judge in Washington ordered the Food and Drug Administration to keep the drug accessible. The dueling rulings put the medication mifepristone, which has been available for more than 20 years, in limbo. Not long after the rulings, Oregon’s senior U.S. senator, Ron Wyden, a Democrat, told KATU in a telephone interview that the president and the FDA should ignore the Texas judge’s ruling. "I think there's no basis for...

A new ruling by a U.S. district court judge in Texas has stripped the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of the medication abortion pill, mifepristone.

In Ciraci v. J.M. Smucker Company, (6th Cir., March 14, 2023), the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals held that employees of a company that sells food products to the federal government may not assert a 1st Amendment free-exercise claim against the company for denying them a religious exemption from a COVID vaccine mandate imposed by the company after the federal government required government contractors to do so. The court said in part: Constitutional guarantees conventionally apply only to entities that exercise sovereign power, such as federal, state, or local governments.... Smucker’s may be a big company. But it is...

Leonard Leo, a leader of the right-wing Federalist Society, hopes to transform American culture the way he transformed the judiciary. As Donald Trump’s adviser on judicial nominations, he helped put Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court, making him central to the demise of Roe v. Wade. Now he wants to build a new organization helping reactionaries consolidate power in realms like Wall Street, Silicon Valley, journalism, Hollywood and academia. “I spent close to 30 years, if not more, helping to build the conservative legal movement,” Leo said in a video for the organization at...

A federal judge appointed by former President Trump was ambushed by about 100 student protesters and a woke diversity dean who derailed his talk at Stanford Law School and accused him of causing “harm” to students. Tirien Steinbach, the school’s associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion, subjected U.S. Circuit Judge S. Kyle Duncan to a lengthy harangue and made it clear to him his presence on campus was unwelcome, video of the event shows. “It’s uncomfortable to say this to you as a person. It’s uncomfortable to say that for many people here, your work has caused harm,” Steinbach...

The judge in the picture above in Kyle Duncan. He is a sitting judge on the 5th Circuit Cour of Appeals. The hideous creature on the right is Tirien Steinbach. She is the Dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Stanford University (did you even know there was such a thing?) Duncan was invited by the Stanford Chapter of the Federalist Society to give a speech on guns, COVD mandates and Twitter. As he was to being speaking he was ambushed by the hideous creature who then spouted off about how terrible Duncan was. But she then launched into an...

Fifth circuit judge Kyle Duncan is calling on Stanford to axe DEI dean Tirien Steinbach ... Fifth Circuit appellate judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, who was shouted down by Stanford Law School students as administrators looked on in silence, says the protesters behaved like "dogshit." ... Duncan is calling on the school to discipline the students who disrupted his talk and to fire the school’s associate dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion, who stepped in during the event to chastise him and deliver what the judge described as a "bizarre therapy session from hell." Duncan’s remarks come after nearly a hundred...

The D.C. District Court Judge is anything but impartial in the J6 cases coming before his court. Following an armed FBI raid with SWAT vehicles that terrorized his neighborhood and pregnant wife, Zachary Rehl was arrested in March 2021 for his involvement in the events of January 6. A Philadelphia judge ordered Rehl, a member of the Proud Boys, to be released from custody pending trial. But Joe Biden’s Justice Department immediately asked a D.C. federal judge to keep Rehl in jail indefinitely even though he was not accused of committing a violent crime. Claiming Rehl “abetted” the destruction of...

According to local outlets in Tampa, Florida, process servers have attempted on nearly 30 occasions to deliver court papers at 10 different church properties. The drops occurred between May and August and the servers were all turned away by security guards, including at the Hacienda Gardens facility where former members say he lives. On January 25, lawyers for the plaintiffs asked attorneys for the Church of Scientology's leader if they would accept service and they declined. Court papers were also delivered to Scientology properties but all attempts resulted in unsigned returned receipts. Some were refused at the location. 'For years,...

On May 20, 2022, the defendant, Jared Michael Harrison, was pulled over by the Lawton Police department for an alleged traffic violation. The officer smelled marijuana. Officers searched the car and found some marijuana and a pistol. Harrison was on bond from Texas and was wearing an ankle monitor. Harrison was arrested and is awaiting trial. There are pending state charges. On August 17, 2022, a federal grand jury returned an indictment for possessing a firearm with the knowledge he was an unlawful user of marijuana, in violation of Statute 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3).Harrison argued, among other things, the charge...

A federal law prohibiting marijuana users from possessing firearms is unconstitutional, a federal judge in Oklahoma has concluded, citing last year's U.S. Supreme Court ruling that significantly expanded gun rights.

Rep. Mondaire Jones criticized GOP-appointed judges' abilities to issue nationwide injunctions. He referred to a Trump-appointed judge blocking student-debt relief for millions of Americans. His new bill would channel that authority to D.C. courts and the Supreme Court only. A Democratic lawmaker doesn't think conservative judges should have the power to halt Democratic policies for millions of Americans. Last week, New York Rep. Mondaire Jones penned an opinion piece criticizing Republican-appointed judges' "unrestrained use of nationwide injunctions" to block Democratic policies. For example, federal Texas Judge Mark Pittman — appointed by former President Donald Trump — ruled President Joe Biden's...