Free Republic

Monday’s order follows a ruling from U.S. Magistrate Judge Ivan Davis, who on Friday transferred the case back to Louisiana after Psaki attempted to fight the deposition in a Virginia court where she lives and would be deposed. Biden’s Justice Department supported her effort. "Ms. Psaki’s effort to eliminate or delay her deposition in this action had failed because of the swift action of two judges in widely dispersed courts, one in Virginia and one in Louisiana, and by the implausibility of her reasons for not testifying as to Federal efforts to censure social media that made quick resolution possible,"...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A judge refused Friday to quash a subpoena issued to former White House press secretary Jen Psaki that seeks her deposition in a lawsuit filed by Missouri and Louisiana, alleging that the Biden administration conspired to silence conservative voices on social media. Psaki filed a motion in federal court in Alexandria seeking to quash the subpoena, saying that she had no relevant information to provide and that a deposition would place an undue burden on her. The Justice Department supported her efforts to quash. U.S. Magistrate Ivan Davis said during a hearing Friday that he was...

The brand's packaging and website both disclose that many of its products are made in the U.S.A.Everyone knows Barilla pasta's blue box. The company refers to its "Classic Blue Box" on its website, and it has even become such a pasta aisle icon that one designer even based a limited-edition handbag on it. But some of the design elements on that box have gotten Barilla into a bit of a legal jam and, earlier this week, a federal judge in California ruled that a class-action lawsuit against the company could move forward. Two plaintiffs, Matthew Sinatro and Jessica Prost, took...

Wednesday’s decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals builds on a 2018 ruling involving the city of Boise, which found a person cannot be punished for sleeping in public if there’s nowhere else for them to go. A federal appeals court Wednesday upheld a ruling that found the city of Grants Pass in southern Oregon violated the constitutional rights of people experiencing homelessness through a series of ordinances designed to prevent sleeping outside on public property.In a 2-1 decision, judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld a 2020 injunction issued by U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Clarke,...

Today, a federal judge ordered the FBI to “produce the information it possesses related to Seth Rich’s laptop.” This case involves a multi-year fight by attorney Ty Clevenger to obtain records relating to the FBI/DOJ investigation of Seth Rich, particularly whether Rich was involved in the hack of the DNC or had communicated with Wikileaks. This fight dates back to 2017 and includes two FOIA lawsuit. In the first lawsuit, the FBI produced no responsive documents. The parties knew the FBI had something, and so this sparked a second lawsuit – where the FBI somehow found 20,000 pages of potentially...

A federal law prohibiting people under felony indictment from buying firearms is unconstitutional, a federal judge in Texas has concluded, citing a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that significantly expanded gun rights.

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...

Former President Carter is taking the rare step of weighing in on judicial proceedings, saying that an appeals court is misinterpreting a conservation law he signed. On Monday, Carter filed a briefing chastising a ruling that upheld a Trump-era decision to build a road through a national wildlife refuge in order to enable medical evacuations nearby.

WASHINGTON, April 12 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Tuesday declined to jail two men accused of impersonating federal agents and supplying Secret Service personnel with gifts, dealing a blow to prosecutors who had argued that the defendants pose a danger and should be detained. "There's been no showing that national security information has been compromised," U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Harvey said. Harvey ordered both men to remain in home confinement, subject to GPS monitoring, with their parents and that they surrender their passports and stay away from airports and embassies. Harvey agreed to stay his order until Wednesday morning...

A district judge, appointed by former President Donald Trump, has blocked President Joe Biden’s so-called “sanctuary country” orders that have successfully protected millions of illegal aliens from arrest and deportation over the last year.

CHICAGO (AP) — A judge in Chicago ruled Friday that an attorney for Jussie Smollett might have defamed two Black brothers who testified that they participated in a fake racist and homophobic attack on the actor when she suggested they had been wearing “whiteface.” U.S. District Judge Mary Rowland’s ruling centers on comments Tina Glandian made on NBC’s “Today” show in March 2019, shortly after the Cook County State’s Attorney announced it was dropping charges accusing Smollett of lying to police about the incident two months earlier. Discussing how Smollett had told police that one of his attackers was white,...

SANTA CRUZ — During a U.S. Department of Homeland Security search at a Lower Ocean neighborhood home early Wednesday, a Santa Cruz man was taken into custody in a child pornography-related investigation. Court records for the case, filed late last month in the U.S. Northern District Court, were sealed by Magistrate Judge Donna M. Ryu as of this week. However, an online case description cites federal code for alleged crimes relating to material involving the sexual exploitation of minors. According to a copy of the executed search warrant shared with the Sentinel, the raid occurred on the 100 block of...

A federal judge in Missouri has issued a temporary hold on the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal contractors in 10 U.S. states while litigation plays out.“We just beat the Biden Administration in court again,” Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt announced on Twitter late Monday. “This afternoon, we obtained a preliminary injunction against the vaccine mandate on federal contractors, halting enforcement of that mandate in Missouri and the other states in our coalition.”The preliminary injunction, issued by U.S. Magistrate Judge David Noce, applies to Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. Schmitt...

"A U.S. federal judge ruled in favor of the relatives of former national security adviser Michael Flynn Thursday, allowing them to move forward with a lawsuit against CNN. The relatives, Flynn's brother and sister-in-law, allege that CNN wrongly portrayed them as QAnon conspiracy followers, according to a report. While U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Woods mostly upheld a magistrate judge's recommendation to throw out the pair's defamation case, he allowed the Flynns to proceed with accusations that CNN portrayed them in a "false light." ..."

DENVER - A federal judge has ordered two lawyers who filed a class action lawsuit alleging the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump to pay more than $180,000 in attorney’s fees for defendants Dominion Voting Systems, Facebook and others, saying the lawsuit was intended to manipulate "gullible members of the public" and helped spur the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The now-dismissed suit relied on baseless conspiracy theories spread by the former president and his supporters. It named elected officials in four swing states, Facebook and Denver-based Dominion, whose election machines were at the center of...

Two lawyers who unsuccessfully sued to overturn the results of the 2020 U.S. election must pay almost $187,000 to cover the legal fees spent by Facebook Inc., Dominion Voting Systems Inc. and others defending the lawsuit. U.S. Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter said the lawyers — Gary Fielder of Denver and Ernest John Walker, of Benton Harbor, Michigan — must take responsibility for their conduct because the defendants in the “pointless and unjustified lawsuit” were defamed in public court filings. “This lawsuit has been used to manipulate gullible members of the public and foment public unrest,” the judge wrote in...

Nursing Students With Religious Objections To Vaccine Mandate Victorious In Federal Court Against MCCCD: A federal judge in Phoenix issued a preliminary injunction Friday against the Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD) after finding that two nursing students deserve to graduate this year even if they need an accommodation due to their religious objection to receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. “Defendant shall make available to Plaintiffs a suitable accommodation that will allow Plaintiffs to satisfy the clinical components of their coursework and complete their academic programs as scheduled in December 2021,” U.S. District Judge Steven P. Logan wrote in his order...

Pablo Escobar's famed hippos - who have thrived in Colombia since the notorious drug lord was killed almost 30 years ago - got a stay of execution after a United States federal court ruled that animals can be recognized as legal persons. Judge Karen Litkovitz, of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, issued the ruling Tuesday after the nonprofit Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) filed an application seeking to allow two experts in nonsurgical sterilization of wildlife to provide testimony supporting a Colombian lawsuit to stop a cull. The Animal Legal Defense Fund made the...

The Navy submarine engineer and his leftist wife who were both charged with spying on the U.S. for an unidentified foreign government were ordered held without bail during a court appearance Tuesday. Jonathan Toebbe, 42, and his wife, Diana, 45, wore jail-issued orange jumpsuits and were handcuffed as they stood before a judge in Martinsburg, West Virginia. The couple was scheduled for a detention hearing on Friday at 11am and a preliminary examination into their case was set for October 20, at 1pm. The Toebbes, who were given a court-appointed counsel after the hearing, could face either life in prison...