Free Republic

A federal judge on Friday temporarily halted deportations of eight immigrants to war-torn South Sudan the day after the Supreme Court greenlighted their removal, saying new claims by the immigrants’ lawyers deserved a hearing. District Judge Randolph Moss proceeded with the extraordinary Fourth of July hearing on Friday afternoon, directing the Trump administration to discuss whether a prior Supreme Court ruling that immigrants slated for removal under an 18th century wartime act invoked by President Donald Trump deserve due process might also apply to those due to be removed to South Sudan. The administration has been trying to deport the...

A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from moving forward with plans to overhaul the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services by reorganizing several of its agencies and substantially cutting their workforce. U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose in Providence, Rhode Island, issued an injunction at the behest of a group of Democratic-led states who challenged a plan HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr announced in March to consolidate agencies and fire 10,000 of the department’s employees. The layoffs, in addition to earlier buyout offers and firings of probationary employees, reduced the number of full-time HHS employees to...

The Department of Justice (DOJ) sued the entire federal district court of Maryland on Tuesday. The lawsuit challenges a standing order issued by the court to automatically block the deportation of any illegal migrant who files a petition for writ of habeas corpus. It names all 15 judges, as well as the court clerk, as defendants. “Defendants’ automatic injunction issues whether or not the alien needs or seeks emergency relief, whether or not the court has jurisdiction over the alien’s claims, and no matter how frivolous the alien’s claims may be,” the lawsuit states. “And it does so in the...

Federal judges are considering hiring armed private security forces amid fears that US Marshals will not protect them because they work for Donald Trump. The judiciary has been dealing with rising number of threats against magistrates who have ruled against the Trump administration's agenda. .... Snip.... Some judges are concerned the security provided by the Marshals Service will not be enough to protect them, or that the White House will revoke their services as retaliation for their rulings. The idea for private security came up in a series of closed-door meetings in March, when a group of roughly 50 judges...

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Saturday vowed to work to limit the abuses of activist federal judges. Radical leftist judges are waging an all out war against President Trump, Trump voters, and the Executive Branch. We are in a constitutional crisis. President Trump, in less than two months, has faced 129 legal challenges by activist judges. Only two cases are closed. Trump faced 64 injunctions halting his policies during in his first term – and 15 injunctions so far in his second term – more than all US presidents combined! Top Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer even boasted about putting 235...

If you've been hoping for a solution to the spreading antisemitic protests on college campuses, help may be on the way. This is what's known as hitting them where it hurts. More than a dozen federal judges sent a notification to Columbia University Law School yesterday informing them that they will not be accepting applications from any of their graduates to be law clerks starting with the class of 2024. The judges were led by jurists from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. The letter was addressed directly to Columbia President Minouche Shafik....

The Mar-a-Lago search warrant is interesting not only because of the high office of the individual whose papers were seized but also because of the low office of the person who signed it. The warrant illustrates the long-standing constitutional anomaly of letting magistrate judges sign search warrants. Leave aside how you feel about the former president. Leave aside what you think of January 6, 2021. Leave aside whether there was a good reason to issue the warrant. A more basic question is whether the Hon. Bruce Reinhart could constitutionally issue it. Under the Constitution, a Search Warrant Must Be Signed...

Tucker Carlson Tonight' host says the Republican lawmaker (Lindsay Graham)hasn't rejected any of Biden's judges.

President Donald Trump often boasts of his accomplishments in nominating federal judges, and for good reason: at the close of his first term, he will have confirmed more judges to the federal judiciary in one term than any recent U.S. president. As of October 5, according to the Heritage Foundation, Trump has confirmed 218 judges to Article III courts — that is, the “Supreme Court of the United States, the U.S. courts of appeals, the U.S. district courts and the U.S. Court of International Trade.” On October 26, that number will rise to 219 with the confirmation of Amy Coney...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will be back to prioritizing President Trump’s judicial nominations when the Senate returns to Washington on Monday. A Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing for a controversial judicial pick has been slated for Tuesday, according to NBC News, which will be one of the first things senators tackle when work resumes. House Democrats announced Tuesday that they will no longer come back to D.C. on May 4, due to health concerns expressed by the Attending Physician of the United States Congress. “There was a risk to members that he would not recommend taking,” said House Majority...

Get all the latest news on coronavirus and more delivered daily to your inbox. Sign up here. President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., are pushing ahead with an aggressive effort to get more federal judges confirmed amid the global coronavirus pandemic, as they grapple with the possibility that the November elections could wrest away Republican control of the Senate and White House. Losing the White House or control of the Senate would be a major blow to efforts to install conservative jurists on the federal bench, as the president nominates judicial nominees and the Senate confirms them....

The ’emergency meeting’ of federal judges to discuss the intervention by Attorney General William Barr in the sentencing of Roger Stone and President Trump’s criticism of the proposed sentence was indefinitely postponed Wednesday. The teleconference meeting of the leadership of the 1,100 member Federal Judges Association, comprised of sitting federal judges, was originally set for Tuesday, then was put off a day until Wednesday at 1:30 p.m. EST. The group’s president, Judge Cynthia Rufe (a Bush 43 appointee), had initially said the meeting “could not wait” until the FJA annual meeting in April.

Just weeks after President Donald Trump was acquitted by the Senate of bogus partisan impeachment charges by the House of Representatives, a group of federal judges will hold an ’emergency meeting’ on Tuesday. The judges will meet to discuss the intervention by Attorney General William Barr against the abusive proposed sentence for Roger Stone and the criticism by President Trump of the proposed sentence and the federal judge overseeing the case, Judge Amy Berman Jackson, as well as other actions by Barr and Trump regarding ‘politically sensitive’ cases before the judiciary.

Minutes after Chief Justice John Roberts gaveled out President Trump's impeachment trial, which had consumed the Senate for almost three weeks, Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., got right back to what he's said is his top priority -- confirming judges. Less than half-an-hour after TV networks cut away from the Senate to dive into the ramifications of the body acquitting Trump, McConnell filed cloture on the nomination of Judge Andrew Brasher to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, a procedural step that moved the controversial nominee one step closer to confirmation. The body took the next step to confirming...

President Trump is closing the year by increasing his already transformative impact on the federal judiciary, with 13 of his district court nominees receiving confirmation this month. That brings Trump’s total to 102 federal judges confirmed in 2019. Over the course of his administration, that total jumps to 187, including 50 to circuit courts of appeal and two Supreme Court justices. "In terms of quality and quantity, we are going to be just about No. 1 by the time we finish -- No. 1 of any president, any administration," Trump said in early November, noting that George Washington may have...

On September 11th, at the beginning of the Senate's reconvening after their summer break, the Senate confirmed six judges that were supposed to be confirmed in June. There have been none since. Granted the Senate has been busy confirming other officials, but can still schedule votes on judges. We're watching, Mitch. Get your slow ass moving! I usually post on judges weekly, but will switch to daily to put the pressure on.

It may come as no shock that Democratic senators currently running for president have opposed nearly all of President Trump’s judicial nominees this year -- but newly reported voting data shows some of those same lawmakers backed a surprising number of the president's court picks before the election season began. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., for example, voted in favor of 46 percent of Trump’s nominees from 2017-2018, according to data compiled by Demand Justice. Yet the figures, obtained and reported by Politico, show that in 2019, that number shrank to zero. Two other 2020 candidates, Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and...

A federal judge threw out House Democrats’ lawsuit seeking an injunction against President Trump’s use of military funds for a border wall. Washington, D.C., district court Judge Trevor McFadden said the fight is ultimately a political one “because the Constitution grants the House no standing to litigate these claims.""This case presents a close question about the appropriate role of the Judiciary in resolving disputes between the other two branches of the Federal Government. To be clear, the court does not imply that Congress may never sue the Executive to protect its powers," McFadden, a Trump appointee, wrote in his opinion. "The...

Attorney General William P. Barr on Thursday railed against federal courts issuing nationwide injunctions blocking President Trump from implementing his policies, saying they wield “unprecedented power.” In a speech before the American Law Institute, Mr. Barr said such injunctions block politicians of all stripes from enacting the voters’ will. “One judge can, in effect, cancel the policy with the stroke of the pen,” he said. “No official in the United States government can exercise that kind of nationwide power, with the sole exception of the president

Senate Republicans confirmed President Trump’s 100th federal judge on Thursday, speeding through a series of picks this week thanks to the GOP’s “nuclear option” move last month. Judge Rudolfo Armando Ruiz II was No. 100, approved on a 90-8 vote to a district court in Florida. The Senate also approved two other district judges Thursday, bringing to eight the number of nominees approved in floor votes this week. That’s a much faster pace than could have happened under the old rules before the nuclear option. “We’re beginning to make better progress,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The Kentucky Republican...