Free Republic

After months of emergency rulings, the justices will be asked to render final verdicts on economic and immigration policies at the core of Trump’s presidency. The Supreme Court and President Donald Trump are headed for a reckoning. After months of terse emergency rulings that largely avoided major confrontations with the new administration, the justices will open their new term on Monday faced with the need to render full, final verdicts on policies at the core of Trump’s presidency. “It really is going to be a showdown,” said Jennifer Nou, a law professor at the University of Chicago. “So many of...

The high court will also hear arguments about overturning a 90-year-old precedent that allowed Congress to create independent agencies.The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for President Donald Trump to fire the sole remaining Democrat on the Federal Trade Commission, the latest victory in his aggressive push to exert greater control over the federal bureaucracy. The justices overturned a lower-court injunction that reinstated Rebecca Slaughter to her position with the agency that oversees antitrust and consumer protection issues while litigation over her removal works its way through the courts. The ruling — while provisional — is significant because the...

The Supreme Court has already expanded President Donald Trump’s authority in a string of emergency rulings, but he’s signaling in his firing of Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook and other issues likely headed to the court that he continues to seek broader powers for the executive branch. The cases could serve as major tests of how much further the nation’s high court is willing to go to bless the president’s assertion of executive authority. They differ from previous showdowns because of the sheer magnitude of the authority Trump is seeking to wield and because he wants greater control over powers...

Emboldened by Friday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the president said his administration will flex its authority on issues ranging from immigration to higher education.An emboldened Trump administration plans to aggressively challenge blocks on the president’s top priorities, a White House official said, following a major Supreme Court ruling that limits the power of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions.Government attorneys will press judges to pare back the dozens of sweeping rulings thwarting the president’s agenda “as soon as possible,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.Priorities for the administration include injunctions related to...

Legal experts questioned the president’s response to unrest in Los Angeles, saying the military personnel involved will face strict limitations under the law.President Donald Trump’s order to deploy 2,000 California National Guard troops to Los Angeles is unprecedented, relying on an unorthodox use of a law aimed at quelling serious domestic unrest or an attack on the United States by a foreign power, some legal experts said Sunday.Trump invoked a section of the Armed Forces Act that allows the president to bypass a governor’s authority over the National Guard and call those troops into federal service when he considers it...

Maryland’s iconic Smith Island faces one of the nation’s most dire forecasts for rising seas, but real estate is booming. ... More homes have sold on Smith Island in the last three years than in the previous 11 combined, according to sales data. Locals see a story of hope. Their efforts to rescue a 400-year-old way of life tied to tide and season are beginning to bear fruit. Many question the doomsday predictions for the island or hope they can find a way to ride out rising waters. Environmentalists see a dangerous kind of denialism. They say Smith Island’s long-term...

The worst of Hurricane Michael’s remnants were supposed to track south of tiny Charlotte County in southern Virginia, but a desperate 911 call Thursday night told a different story: A car had been washed away in a torrential flash flood. When sheriff’s deputies raced to the scene on Mount Harmony Road after 11 p.m., county administrator Daniel Witt said they heard the screams of a 17-year-old boy clinging to a guardrail. The sheriff’s deputies and some bystanders linked arms and waded into the raging water, before tossing the teen a rope. He was pulled to safety, but his father and...