Free Republic

A federal judge abused his authority in pursuing contempt proceedings against Trump administration officials for removing alleged Venezuelan gang members from the United States in violation of a court order, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was split 2-1, with two Trump appointees in the majority and an Obama appointee dissenting. The decision overturns Washington-based Chief Judge James Boasberg's finding of probable cause that officials could be held in criminal contempt.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed President Donald Trump to fire members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a federal agency set up by Congress to be independent of political pressures. The justices, granting an emergency request filed by the Trump administration, blocked a Maryland-based federal judge’s ruling that reinstated Mary Boyle, Alexander Hoehn-Saric and Richard Trumka Jr., all of whom had been appointed by then-President Joe Biden. Without the three members in place, the five-member commission would for now lack the necessary quorum to fulfill its obligation to protect consumers from defective products. Under existing law, members...

MAGA activists have turned against one of President Donald Trump's own appointees to the Supreme Court: Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Appointed by Trump in 2020, Barrett is a staunch conservative who has joined major rulings in which the court has moved U.S. law to the right, including on abortion and affirmative action.

WASHINGTON — Lawyers challenging President Donald Trump's aggressive use of executive power in the courts are turning to a familiar weapon in their armory: an obscure but routinely invoked federal law called the Administrative Procedure Act. While lawsuits challenging such provocative plans as ending birthright citizenship and dismantling federal agencies raise weighty constitutional issues, they also claim Trump failed to follow the correct procedures as required under the wonky 1946 statute. Trump fell afoul of the law in some high-profile cases that reached the Supreme Court during his first term, raising the possibility he could suffer the same fate this...

WASHINGTON — Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett appeared to lose patience last week with the right-wing narrative that the Biden administration had unlawfully coerced social media companies to remove politically charged content. In authoring the Supreme Court’s ruling that threw out a lawsuit brought by Republican-led states and several disgruntled social media users, Barrett took aim at the flimsy nature of the claims, the lower courts that indulged them — and several of her conservative colleagues. While Barrett forensically pointed out how the plaintiffs had failed to substantiate their allegations that content moderation decisions were unlawfully influenced by the Biden...

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a challenge to the abortion pill mifepristone, meaning the commonly used drug can remain widely available. The court found unanimously that the group of anti-abortion doctors who questioned the Food and Drug Administration’s decisions making it easier to access the pill did not have legal standing to sue.

WASHINGTON — In ruling that states cannot kick Donald Trump off the ballot, the Supreme Court placed significant limits on any effort — including by Congress — to prevent the former president from returning to office. Should Trump win the presidential election and lawmakers then seek to not certify the results and prevent him from taking office because he "engaged in insurrection" under Section 3 of the Constitution's 14th Amendment, the decision could foreclose that action. It is on that point that the court — notionally unanimous in ruling for Trump despite its 6-3 conservative majority — appeared to be...

Special counsel Jack Smith on Monday asked the Supreme Court to immediately step in to decide whether former President Donald Trump has immunity from prosecution for his actions seeking to overturn the 2020 election. "This case presents a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy: whether a former President is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office," Smith wrote in the court filing. Smith said it was "of imperative public importance" that the high court decide the question so that Trump's trial, currently scheduled for March, can move forward as quickly as possible. The Supreme...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday questioned whether an ex-aide to former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was lawfully convicted on a bribery charge as it considered two cases that could place new limits on federal prosecutors in public corruption cases. The first case centered on whether Joseph Percoco’s conduct in taking a $35,000 payment from a real estate developer when managing Cuomo’s re-election campaign in 2014 is covered by a federal law that requires that “honest services” be provided to the public. Percoco says that because he was not working for the government at the time, he had...

President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett said on Tuesday at her U.S. Senate confirmation hearing she is not hostile to the Obamacare law, as Democrats have suggested, and declined to specify whether she believes landmark rulings legalizing abortion and gay marriage were properly decided. Barrett, a conservative federal appellate judge, answered questions from senators for the first time on the second day of her Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing. It gave Barrett a chance to respond to Democrats who have opposed her because of her potential as a justice to undermine the 2010 healthcare law and its protection...

In a major blow to election reformers, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday rejected efforts to rein in electoral map manipulation by politicians aimed at entrenching one party in power, a contentious practice known as partisan gerrymandering that critics have said warps democracy. In a 5-4 ruling that could reverberate through U.S. politics for years to come, the justices ruled that federal judges do not have the have the ability to curb partisan gerrymandering. ~ ~ ~ clip ~ ~ ~ {Guess who's objecting} "House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat, said in a statement, “Partisan gerrymandering...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court on Friday blocked lower court rulings ordering Republican legislators in Michigan and Ohio to redraw U.S. congressional maps ahead of the 2020 elections, dealing a blow to Democrats who had argued that the electoral districts were intended to unlawfully diminish their political clout. The justices granted requests from Republican lawmakers in both states to put those decisions on hold, halting further action in the cases and the need to rework electoral district boundaries. The justices did not provide any explanation for their brief orders. The lower courts found that the electoral maps in the...