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A federal judge in Miami is warning Carnival Corp. that she plans to hold the cruise line to the parameters of its probation, meaning the company must certify that every ship is compliant 60 days before setting sail again in U.S. waters. The stern reminder from U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of Florida Patricia Seitz will certainly endanger Carnival’s plan to resume operations on Dec. 1, assuming the Centers for Disease Control lifts its ‘no-sail order’ on Nov. 1, according to the Miami Herald. Carnival has been on probation since April 2017 after pleading guilty to dumping oily...

The Supreme Court has refused to take up an emoluments case filed by Democrats back in 2017. That means the lower court ruling that Democrats do not have standing to bring the case will stand. This little corner of the resistance is dead: The Supreme Court on Tuesday put an end to a lawsuit brought by congressional Democrats that accused President Donald Trump of violating anti-corruption provisions in the U.S. Constitution with his business dealings.The justices refused to hear an appeal by 215 Senate and House of Representatives Democrats of a lower court ruling that found that the lawmakers...

-The Supreme Court on Tuesday paved the way for the Trump administration to end field operations for the 2020 census, blocking a lower court ruling that had prolonged the count. -As is usual for emergency situations, the ruling came in an unsigned order. -Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

The Trump administration can end counting for the 2020 census after the Supreme Court approved a request for now to suspend a lower court order that extended the count's schedule. The high court's ruling, following an emergency request the Justice Department made last week, is the latest turn in a roller coaster of a legal fight over the timeline for the count... Justice Department attorneys say the Census Bureau is under pressure to meet a legal deadline of Dec. 31 for reporting to the president the first set of census results — the latest state population counts that determine each...

Bloomberg link only: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-13/supreme-court-lets-trump-administration-end-census-count-early?srnd=premium

On Monday, Judge Phyllis Hamilton of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that denying incarcerated prisoners stimulus checks is unlawful, paving he way for prisoners to receive $1,200 checks in the near future, pending appeal.

A federal appeals court on Saturday granted a temporary administrative stay, allowing Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's directive for one location per county for ballot drop boxes to remain in place for now. The grant from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit means the directive from Abbott, a Republican, will stand until the court has considered the state's motion for a stay on its merits. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had filed an emergency motion Saturday for a stay pending appeal to block a district court order that would have allowed county officials to accept hand delivery...

A federal judge in Pennsylvania on Saturday threw out a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump’s campaign, dismissing its challenges to the battleground state’s poll-watching law and its efforts to limit how mail-in ballots can be collected and which of them can be counted. The ruling by U.S. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan — who was appointed by Trump — in Pittsburgh also poured cold water on Trump’s claims that Pennsylvania is fertile ground for election fraud. Trump’s campaign said it would appeal at least one element of the decision, with barely three weeks to go until Election Day in...

WINDSOR TERRACE — A federal judge denied a request made by the Diocese of Brooklyn for a temporary restraining order to block Gov. Andrew Cuomo from enforcing his new COVID-19 rules on houses of worship. Judge Eric Komitee’s decision, handed down late at night on Oct. 9 following a hearing that afternoon, means that the new restrictions Cuomo mandated can go into effect. The hearing took place one day after the diocese filed its lawsuit. While writing that the decision was a “difficult” one, Komitee sided with the governor. “Under Supreme Court precedent, the right to freely exercise one’s religion...

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday ruled that President Trump’s use of emergency powers to allocate millions of dollars in funding for the construction of a southern border wall was illegal, the latest blow to the Trump administration’s effort to limit immigration. In the 2-1 decision, the court upheld a December 2019 district court summary judgment in favor of a request from the advocacy groups the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition against Defense Secretary Mark Esper, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and “all persons acting under their direction ... from using military construction funds...

AUSTIN -- A federal judge in Austin blocked Gov. Greg Abbott’s order limiting the number of mail ballot drop-off sites a county can have. In an order issued late Friday night, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman of Austin put on hold Abbott’s order thereby allowing counties to have multiple mail ballot drop-off sites. The order said agents of the state are blocked from taking any action to inhibit election administrators from offering more than one drop-off location for ballots in their respective counties. The decision, issued by a Barack Obama appointee, is a blow to Abbott who argued the drop-off...

Key Points A federal appeals court in Manhattan rejected President Donald Trump’s effort to block enforcement of a grand jury subpoena that demands years of his income tax returns from his accountants. But court suspended enforcement of that subpoena by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., giving Trump time to ask the Supreme Court, for a second time, to step into the case and block the subpoena permanently. Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow said he will ask the Supreme Court to stay the unanimous decision against the president by the three-judge panel on U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit....

A federal judge says the IRS can't keep withholding coronavirus relief payments from incarcerated people, potentially clearing the way for at least 80,000 checks totaling more than $100 million to be sent to people behind bars across the United States. The ruling from U.S. District Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton late last month gives the IRS until Oct. 24 to reconsider the payments for those who were denied or had their money intercepted solely because of their incarceration.

Late Monday afternoon the Supreme Court issued a “Stay” with regard to an order from a South Carolina federal district court judge who rewrote a provision of South Carolina election law due to the impact of COVID 19. Judge Julianna Michelle Childs, an appointee of President Obama, granted an injunction for Plaintiffs preventing the South Carolina election officials from enforcing a provision of South Carolina election law requiring a witness signature on an absentee ballot envelope. Judge Childs set for the relief being sought by the plaintiffs as follows: SNIP But the Supreme Court’s emergency “stay” prevents Judge Childs order...

A federal appeals court on Friday voted against extending the deadline for voters to return their absentee ballots in the state of Georgia. The Atlanta Constitution-Journal reports: A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided 2-1 to grant a stay of a judge’s ruling that would have allowed voters three more days to return their absentee ballots.

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Department of Justice to publish information redacted from the Mueller report that had been designated as privileged. District Court Judge Reggie Walton said that the Trump administration had failed to justify certain redactions from the report on the special counsel's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. The specific redactions he took issue with cover the decision-making process within Robert Mueller's team over whether to charge certain people with crimes during the probe. "Based on the Court’s review of the unredacted version of the Mueller Report, the Court concludes that the Department...

Click link for live feed (audio) of Flynn hearing, happening now.

A federal judge has stopped the 2020 census from finishing at the end of September and ordered the once-a-decade head count of every U.S. resident to continue for another month through the end of October, saying a shortened schedule likely would produce inaccurate results. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in California made her ruling late Thursday, two days after hearing arguments from attorneys for the Census Bureau, and attorneys for civil rights groups and local governments that had sued the Census Bureau in an effort to halt the 2020 census from stopping at the end of the month. Attorneys for...

A federal judge ruled earlier this week to extend the cutoff to count absentee ballots by six days after the election, but the decision is being appealed by the GOP-controlled Wisconsin Legislature and is expected to make its way all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. U.S. District Judge William Conley's decision came Monday after Democrats argued that an extension was needed to accommodate for the influx of voters requesting mail-in ballots, and allow them time to both receive and send back their votes just five weeks before the election. Republicans have said there is more than enough...

The Trump administration will begin to retroactively apply its controversial "public charge" rule to immigrants, following a court decision that lifted a nationwide injunction on the policy. A notice posted on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) website said the rule will apply to all future and pending green card applications and petitions postmarked or submitted electronically as of Feb. 24, 2020. The move to reimpose the rule comes after the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals on Sept. 11 overturned a nationwide injunction on the policy that had been imposed earlier in the summer because of the coronavirus pandemic....