Free Republic

Administration has 14 days to appeal ruling ... The Biden administration was dealt a major blow in its efforts to control the ongoing border crisis on Tuesday when a federal judge blocked a rule introduced in May that makes migrants ineligible for asylum if they have entered illegally and failed to take advantage of expanded lawful pathways set up by the federal government. Judge Jon Tigar of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California blocked the Circumvention of Lawful Pathways rule in response to a lawsuit from a coalition of left-wing immigration groups, which claimed the rule...

CHICAGO (AP) — A federal judge has approved a $9.25 million settlement by the Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union in two long-running lawsuits stemming from the layoffs of hundreds of Black educators at underperforming schools, officials said Wednesday. Those eligible to receive payments under the settlement have until Friday to submit claims, attorneys for the teachers union said. Eligible to receive payments are all Black persons employed as teachers or para-professionals in any school or attendance center subjected to a “turnaround” policy that targeted schools that had been put on probation due to substandard test scores and...

A federal appeals court ​on Sunday halted Sen. Lindsey Graham’s testimony before the grand jury investigating possible illegal efforts by allies of former President Donald Trump’s to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, acting on a request by the South Carolina Republican, temporarily blocked a decision by a federal judge in Atlanta that rejected Graham’s claim of congressional immunity and ordered him to appear before the special grand jury on Tuesday. ​ The three-panel appeals court returned the matter to ​US District Judge Leigh Martin May​ ​to decide whether the subpoena...

For carrying a “large wooden stick” on January 6 -- and for things the ex-officer said and believed.. Former police officer Thomas Robertson, who according to CBS News, “stormed the U.S. Capitol” on January 6, 2021, will spend more than seven years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. Robertson, 49, was charged with interfering with police officers and “entering a restricted area with a dangerous weapon, a large wooden stick.” The seven-year sentence, handed down last Thursday, matches the longest prison term among the Jan. 6 cases to date. Its severity was not entirely the result of...

A federal judge in Georgia has rejected the effort by Sen. Lindsey Graham R-SC to avoid testifying before a special grand jury in Georgia, which is investigating Donald Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A federal judge has reinstated a moratorium on coal leasing from federal lands that was imposed under former President Barack Obama and then scuttled under former President Donald Trump. Friday’s ruling from U.S. District Judge Brian Morris requires government officials to complete a new environmental review before they can resume coal sales from federal lands. Among President Joe Biden’s first actions in his first week in office was to suspend oil and gas lease sales — a move later blocked by a federal judge — and he faced pressure from environmental groups to take similar action...

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A federal judge has ordered Indianapolis Public Schools to allow a 10-year-old transgender girl to rejoin her school’s all-girls softball team while a lawsuit continues against a state law that bans transgender females from competing in girls school sports. U.S. District Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson in Indianapolis issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday on behalf of the girl, finding that she “has established that she has a strong likelihood of succeeding on the merits” of her claim. “She has also established that she would suffer irreparable harm for which there is no adequate legal remedy,” Magnus-Stinson wrote in her...

A man who attacked police officers with poles during the riot at the U.S. Capitol was sentenced on Tuesday to more than five years in prison, matching the longest term of imprisonment so far among hundreds of Capitol riot prosecutions. Mark Ponder, a 56-year-old resident of Washington, D.C., said he “got caught up” in the chaos that erupted on Jan. 6, 2021, and “didn’t mean for any of this to happen.” “I wasn’t thinking that day,” Ponder told U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, asking her for mercy before she sentenced him to five years and three months in prison. That...

The Department of Justice has asked a federal judge to prevent former presidential adviser Peter Navarro from discussing publicly his recent arrest and litigating his legal case "through the media," it was reported. Navarro, a former aide to then-President Donald Trump, was arrested and indicted Friday on contempt charges after defying a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The DOJ filed a protective order request Wednesday with Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. "DOJ is asking Judge Mehta to quickly enter a protective...

A federal judge on Friday tossed Trump’s lawsuit seeking to block New York Attorney General Letitia James’ witch hunt investigation into the former president’s business practices. U.S. District Judge Brenda Sannes for upstate New York, an Obama appointee, issued the ruling just one day after a state appeals court ruled Trump must testify under oath. “While the New York proceeding has been ongoing since August 2020, Plaintiffs have submitted no evidence that the subpoena enforcement proceeding has been conducted in such a way as to constitute harassment,” Sannes wrote in a 43-page decision. Trump’s lawyers said they will immediately appeal...

Amos Miller, an Amish farmer who runs a holistically managed small farm in Bird-In-Hand, Pennsylvania, grows and prepares food in tune with nature, the way he believes God intended. This seems like a sound idea to the approximately 4,000 customers who purchase Miller’s meat, eggs and dairy products from his private, members-only food club. The federal government, however, appears to disagree. A federal judge recently ordered Miller to cease and desist all meat sales, Our Organic Wellness reported. U.S. marshals were deployed to search Miller’s property. They inventoried his stock to assure he doesn’t sell or slaughter more animals. In...

A federal judge in San Francisco tossed a lawsuit from former President Trump against Twitter because of its decision to ban him from the platform after the January 6 riots in Washington D.C. In his suit, Trump alleged that Twitter and other social media companies which moved to curb his speech were acting as de facto government agents and were therefore infringing on his first amendment rights.

Lumping Donald Trump with Osama Bin Laden? That's going too easy on the former president! At least, if you ask CNN's "national security analyst" Juliette Kayyem, a former Obama DHS assistant secretary. Appearing on Thursday morning's New Day, Kayyem said that when a year ago in an Atlantic article she depicted Trump as "the leader of a terror movement," she was, as she recently tweeted, actually being "too kind" to him!Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

A federal judge invalidated the results of an oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday saying the Biden administration failed to properly account for the auction's climate change impact. The decision has cast uncertainty over the future of the U.S. federal offshore drilling program, which has been a big source of public revenue for decades but also drawn the ire of activists concerned about its impact on the environment and contribution to global warming. The Gulf of Mexico accounts for 15% of existing U.S. oil production and 5% of dry natural gas output, according to...

WASHINGTON — A federal court has rejected a plan to lease millions of acres in the Gulf of Mexico for offshore oil drilling, saying the Biden administration did not adequately take into account the lease sale's effect on planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, violating a bedrock environmental law.The decision Thursday by U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras in Washington sends the proposed lease sale back to the Interior Department to decide next steps. The judge said it was up to Interior to decide whether to go forward with the sale after a revised review, scrap it or take other steps.Environmental groups hailed...

Paul Hodgkins, according to Joe Biden’s Justice Department, is a domestic terrorist. A working-class man from Tampa, Hodgkins committed what Democrats and the media consider a murderous crime comparable to flying a packed jetliner into a skyscraper or detonating a truck filled with explosives under a crowded federal building. Paul Hodgkins entered the Capitol building on January 6, 2021. What exactly did Hodgkins do on that day of infamy? He followed a group of like-minded Donald Trump supporters SNIP When he entered the sacred Senate chambers, Hodgkins carried with him a weapon so offensive that the mere sight of the...

The leader of the Oath Keepers and two of the men captured on video urging people to enter or proceed into the U.S. Capitol on January 6 have been subpoenaed by the defense to testify in the government’s case against Kelly Meggs, an Oath Keeper accused of conspiring to storm the Capitol.Stewart Rhodes, Ray Epps, and John Sullivan have been subpoenaed to testify at Meggs’ trial in a move defense attorney Jon Moseley told National File he believes will prove his client’s innocence, and will prove the entire prosecution to be politically motivated.

A Florida man was sentenced to more than five years behind bars Friday for storming the US Capitol on Jan. 6 — the harshest penalty dished out yet over the insurrection. Robert Palmer, 54, was handed a 63-month sentence after he pleaded guilty in October to attacking police officers during the riot. “Your honor. I’m really really ashamed of what I did,” he told US District Judge Tanya Chutkan through sobs on Friday. Federal prosecutors said Palmer, of Largo Florida, was on the “front lines” of the mob attempting to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020...

A U.S. district judge on Wednesday issued a sentence against a couple who took part in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot that went beyond what prosecutors recommended, giving them jail time. The Department of Justice (DOJ) had asked that Brandon Miller and his wife Stephanie Miller be sentenced to home confinement as part of a 36-month probationary period. The Ohio couple was charged with entering the Capitol, with Brandon Miller livestreaming their actions on Facebook. As WUSA reported, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled, however, that their actions warranted time behind bars. "They didn’t just walk through a door. They...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has formally returned a lawsuit over Texas’ six-week abortion ban to a federal appeals court that has twice allowed the law to stay in effect, rather than to a district judge who sought to block it. Justice Neil Gorsuch on Thursday signed the court’s order that granted the request of abortion clinics for the court to act speedily. But the clinics wanted the case sent directly to U.S. Judge Robert Pitman, who had previously though briefly blocked enforcement of the Texas abortion ban known as S.B. 8. When Pitman ordered the law blocked in...