Free Republic

A federal judge on Wednesday said the speakers at the "Stop the Steal" rally that preceded the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol attack, including former President Trump, "stoked" the crowd and possibly "inspired" what went down that day, according to a CNN report. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson made the remarks while sentencing defendant Russell Peterson, who reportedly sat in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) chair after storming the Capitol on Jan. 6. He was arrested on Feb. 12 and entered a plea agreement in September. Jackson, without saying the former president's name directly, said that Trump and the other speakers...

A federal judge in Austin Wednesday blocked Texas' social media censorship law, which prohibits large social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter from censoring users "based on their political viewpoints." The law, known as House Bill 20, was signed by Gov. Greg Abbott on Sept. 9 and set to take effect Thursday. However, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman wrote in his ruling that the measure interferes with platforms' First Amendment right to moderate content disseminated on their platforms. Pitman called content moderation "the very tool that social media platforms employ to make their platforms safe, useful, and enjoyable for users."

Four Ways the Ghislaine Maxwell Trial Is Already Rigged Nobody likes a Debbie Downer, but I’m being realistic when I say I’m not expecting a ton of bombshell revelations to come from the Ghislaine Maxwell trial. We aren’t going to see Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, or anyone significant taken down as a result of the major revelations. I hope I’m wrong, but the cards seem to be stacked against the truth. Here are four reasons for my pessimism: No Coverage It should be the biggest story of the day (yes, bigger than Omicron) yet it’s barely a blip on mainstream...

Alison Julie Nathan has previously served as a special assistant to resident Barack Obama and also as his associate White House counsel.. As the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell begins on November 29, 2021, some questions may finally be answered about the sex scandal involving late Jeffery Epstein. Maxwell was arrested on July 2, 2020, and is one of the few remaining links investigators have to Epstein after he died suspiciously while he was in jail. The trial is likely to finally tell us how far, wide and deeply Epstein's sex trafficking ring had spread, especially in the elite circles he...

Judge Alison Nathan is likely to be nominated to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit The federal judge overseeing British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking case is set to be recommended for higher court – sparking concerns about possible ethical conflicts. New York Senator Chuck Schumer announced on Tuesday he is going to recommend to President Joe Biden that he nominate Alison J. Nathan, 49, to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Friday tossed out greenhouse gas emissions rules for heavy-duty truck trailers, ruling two government agencies had exceeded their authority. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in 2016 set rules for the first time requiring trailer manufacturers to adopt fuel-saving technologies like side skirts and automatic tire pressure systems. An industry group challenged the rule, which was put on hold by the court pending the review. The administration of then-President Barack Obama said it was important to regulate the fuel efficiency of the trailer portion of commercial...

A federal judge on Wednesday declined to delay a Friday deadline for the National Archives to begin handing over Trump administration documents to the House January 6 Select Committee. Lawyers for former President Trump had asked for a stay after U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected his lawsuit seeking to block the documents from being released while he appeals. In a six-page decision on Wednesday, Chutkan, an Obama appointee, denied Trump's request for a temporary stay for essentially the same reasons that she ruled against blocking the documents from being handed over.

WASHINGTON, Nov 9 (Reuters) - A U.S. federal judge has ruled that a congressional committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol can access some of former President Donald Trump's White House records. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in the District of Columbia rejected an argument by Trump's lawyers that telephone records, visitor logs and other White House documents should be kept from the committee. Trump had argued that the materials requested by the House of Representatives committee were covered by a legal doctrine known as executive privilege that protects the confidentiality of some White House communications....

A judge playing a central role overseeing the criminal cases stemming from the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol building has forcefully rejected claims from many alleged rioters that they’re being treated more harshly than people who broke the law during the widespread protests that arose last year in response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. Speaking during a sentencing hearing for Capitol riot defendant Glenn Croy, Chief Judge Beryl Howell disputed the notion that participants charged in last year’s unrest were treated leniently. She also insisted that the motivations of those involved rendered the Jan. 6...

A federal judge endorsed the University of North Carolina’s (UNC) use of race as a factor in screening applicants after ruling that the university did not discriminate against white and Asian American applicants.No discrimination: Judge Loretta Biggs ruled on Monday that the UNC’s undergraduate admissions process had not been discriminatory toward specific race groups, reported CNN.The group Students for Fair Admissions alleged in its 2014 lawsuit that UNC deliberately discriminated against certain members by including race in its admissions process.According to the suit, UNC allegedly used “racial preferences in undergraduate admissions where there are available race-neutral alternatives capable of achieving...

A Colorado man who in August pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of “parading” inside the Capitol during the January 6 “insurrection” begged a federal judge for leniency, declaring himself “an idiot,” new court filings show, and repeatedly apologized to America for his participation in the day’s events.Colorado Springs resident Glen Wes Lee Croy, 46, wrote in the letter to the federal judge in his case, as reported by WUSA in Denver:I am guilty of being an idiot and walking into that building, and again apologize to America and everyone for my role in participating.Croy apologized in a number of...

A federal judge ruled that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill can continue to use race-based admission practices, saying the school's policy did not discriminate against white and Asian American applicants. "Seventy years after the first Black students were admitted to U.N.C., the minority students at the university still report being confronted with racial epithets, as well as feeling isolated, ostracized, stereotyped and viewed as tokens," wrote U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs in a 161-page ruling Monday. "As a whole, underrepresented minorities are admitted at lower rates than their white and Asian American counterparts." The lawsuit brought by...

Whether it’s their response to January 6 or to COVID, activist judges have abandoned the law and are engaging in tyrannical acts. Thirty years of litigation work in the San Francisco Bay Area, which some might consider Ground Zero for activist judges, left me with a deep and abiding disrespect for leftist judges who are more concerned with their prejudices and feelings, than with facts and law. Two recent stories perfectly exemplify this. The first story involves an Obama appointee who is reaming people arrested because they dared to do what leftists always do: Enter government property, including the Capitol,...

Andrew McCabe, the disgraced Russiagate FBI agent who lied four times to the DOJ and FBI, will receive his full pension more than three years after he was fired by the Justice Department, according to the New York Times. Under the terms of a settlement stemming from a lawsuit McCable filed in 2019 over his firing, he will also receive around $200,000 in missed pension payments. The DOJ has also agreed to expunge any mention of his firing from FBI personnel records, and that he would receive special cuff links given to senior executives, along with a plaque bearing his...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who previously said that Democratic politicians should "lean into" COVID-19 policies such as vaccine mandates and issued the nation's first such mandate for schoolchildren, is trying to get the federal courts to halt a vaccine mandate for prison guards. Two weeks ago, a federal judge ruled that the COVID-19 vaccine must be mandated for California's prison guards on Eighth Amendment (cruel and unusual punishment) grounds given the risk unvaccinated guards pose to incarcerated individuals. Only 42% of prison guards are fully vaccinated. The state's prison guard union — a group that donated $1.75 million to Newsom...