Free Republic

The Justice Department plans to ask the Supreme Court to allow it to intervene in President Donald Trump's appeal of the $83 million jury verdict in a defamation lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll. The DOJ explained in a Tuesday filing with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which cites the Westfall Act, that the federal government should be substituted as the defendant in the lawsuit. The DOJ had previously certified that Trump was acting "within the scope of employment" when he made statements that Carroll claimed were defamatory, The Washington Examiner reported. The 2nd Court of Appeals denied...

On April 29, the Supreme Court decided Louisiana v. Callais. That’s the case where the Court held that the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create a second “majority-minority” Congressional district because “[t]he Constitution almost never permits a State to discriminate on the basis of race, and such discrimination triggers strict scrutiny.”A “majority-minority” district is one that has been gerrymandered to include sufficient numbers of the designated minority group as to make it nearly certain that a member of that group will be elected to represent the district. The case arose out of the redistricting process following the...

The Justice Department's top civil rights lawyer believes the Trump administration's lawsuit this week against the city of Denver's gun ban will one day soon lead to a Supreme Court decision legalizing the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle – revered by gun owners and reviled by liberals – in every jurisdiction in America. "We intend to make sure they do that," Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said in an interview set to be aired Wednesday night on the Just the News, No Noise television show. Dhillon spoke just hours after her office filed a lawsuit against the city of Denver over its...

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned new rulings have “spawned chaos” in Louisiana after the court agreed on Monday to speed up a previous order that a map drawn by the state was found to be unconstitutional for racial gerrymander and that the Voting Rights Act did not require the state to create an additional majority-minority district. ... Jackson, one of the three liberal justices in the court, dissented, writing that “the Court’s decision in these cases has spawned chaos in the State of Louisiana,” and highlighted the timing of elections in the state and that mail-in ballots were...

Justice Samuel Alito tore into Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s lone dissent in a high-stakes Louisiana redistricting dispute on Monday, calling her arguments "baseless and insulting" after the Supreme Court decided to fast-track implementing its recent redistricting ruling ahead of the 2026 midterms. Alito used a concurring opinion, joined by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, to directly rebuke Jackson, saying her "dissent in this suit levels charges that cannot go unanswered." "The dissent goes on to claim that our decision represents an unprincipled use of power," Alito wrote, adding that that was a "groundless and utterly irresponsible charge." The clash...

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision on the landmark voting rights case of Louisiana v. Callais, while arguments were heard in the Virginia Supreme Court in Scott v. McDougle. In Callais, the Supreme Court held that Louisiana’s congressional map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Yesterday, the Supreme Court ordered that the judgment be issued to the lower courts immediately, rather than in 32 days, allowing Louisiana to redraw its congressional maps immediately. In McDougle, the state held a referendum vote to temporarily amend the state’s constitution to allow...

The Supreme Court on Monday night granted a request to immediately finalize its opinion in Louisiana v. Callais, in which it struck down that state’s congressional map, to allow Louisiana to draw a new map in time for the 2026 elections. That map is expected to favor Republicans, who currently hold four of the state’s six seats in the U.S. House of Representatives but could pick up one or even two more under a revised map. The court’s decision drew sharp criticism from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the lone dissenter. Jackson argued that the court’s ruling “has spawned chaos in...

The Supreme Court on Monday night granted a request to immediately finalize its opinion in Louisiana v. Callais, in which it struck down that state’s congressional map, to allow Louisiana to draw a new map in time for the 2026 elections. That map is expected to favor Republicans, who currently hold four of the state’s six seats in the U.S. House of Representatives but could pick up one or even two more under a revised map. The court’s decision drew sharp criticism from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the lone dissenter. Jackson argued that the court’s ruling “has spawned chaos in...

Director Spike Lee, in a recent interview with CNN, called the United State Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling declaring a race-based redistricting map in Louisiana an “attack on voters.” “They’re going to be movies and documentaries about this period of the United States of America. With this guy in the White House — just down the block, right?” Spike Lee said of President Donald Trump. “It’s not the first this country’s been through stuff. And it’s found a better way to live and we gotta work at it.” “Let’s realize, black folks, we got a lot of our stuff through voting,”...

Washington — Justice Samuel Alito on Monday temporarily halted an appellate court order that blocked a Food and Drug Administration rule allowing the abortion pill mifepristone to be prescribed online and dispensed through the mail.Alito granted temporary relief to the maker of mifepristone, Danco Laboratories, and the manufacturer of a generic version of the drug, GenBioPro. His administrative stay will remain in place until 5 p.m. on May 11. The move gives the Supreme Court more time to consider the drug companies' requests to set aside the appellate court's order while litigation proceeds.Danco and GenBioPro also asked the high court...

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch said the Supreme Court system is “working” in a Sunday interview where he reflected on the country’s founding principles. .... “Americans file about 50 million lawsuits a year, and you give us the 70 hardest ones, where lower court judges have disagreed about what the law means about a statute or a provision of the Constitution dictates in a particular case — there are nine of us. Can you get nine people to agree on where to go to lunch?” he asked Bream. “All right, we’ve been appointed by five different presidents over 30 years,...

Six supreme court justices handed down a ruling built, ostensibly, on the belief that the US has changed so much as to render the protections of the Voting Rights Act unnecessary. No one should be that gullible.In 1901, the same year my great-grandfather was born, George H White rose to address the 56th United States Congress for the last time. He was a Republican congressman from North Carolina – the only Black member of the entire body. He was leaving because the state he represented had passed legislation making his re-election impossible. Reconstruction had already been undone. The powers that...

On last night’s The Weekend: Primetime on MS NOW, legal analyst and law professor Paul Butler delivered an astonishing assessment of the Supreme Court’s recent decision on the Voting Rights Act. Analogizing it to the Dred Scott decision, Butler made the absurd claim: “It’s like the Dred Scott decision, where the Court said that the black man has no rights that the white man is bound to respect. The Supreme Court is saying that the black voter and the brown voter has [sic] no rights that it respects.”Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

The implications of the Supreme Court's Louisiana v. Callais overturning race-based voting districts are far more profound and far-reaching than anyone has yet realized. This week, the Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito, ended decades of race-engineering in how congressional districts are drawn. The opinion is likely not only to benefit Republicans by increasing their representation in Congress, but it also should end racial engineering in a multitude of local institutions, to the benefit of all. It signals the beginning of the end for progressive governance, begun by President Woodrow Wilson (ironically, a segregationist), whose vision...

Going a bit farther. At the Federalist this week, I wrote about the truly amazing debate between the top candidates in CA-11, competing to see who will replace Boxwine Pelosi: “The California Primary Election Season Is Screaming A Warning For The Nation.” And I said that “if you have a couple of hours to clearly understand the dark future of the Democrat Party, this is it.” It really is, if you feel like torturing your brain for two hours. But, excerpts follow the big video, I think I can give you the whole flavor in just a couple of minutes....

On Saturday’s The Weekend on MS NOW, Stacey Abrams was given the full VIP treatment. Co-host Eugene Daniels introduced her as “Madam Leader,” and the panel kept the unctuous title going throughout the segment — even though her time as minority leader in the Georgia House ended nine years ago. When it comes to fellow leftists, flattery apparently has no expiration date at MS NOW. Abrams accused Republicans of trying to “legalize the restoration of Jim Crow,” branded Republican leadership “racist, fascist” and “vicious.” And the Supreme court? They had the "same ethos" as the Supreme Court justices in the...

‘Abortion supporters had an incentive to kill one or more of the justices in the majority to change the outcome,’ Hemingway writes in Alito. When the draft of the Supreme Court ruling that would overturn Roe v. Wade leaked to the press, the conservative justices who signed on to the majority opinion suddenly wore bigger targets on their backs. The very real threat of assassination hung over them like a coming thunderstorm. And still their pro-abortion colleagues stalled the release of the official ruling for weeks, putting the justices’ lives at increased risk, as detailed in Mollie Hemingway’s new book...

United States Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon said Thursday that the Justice Department will enforce the Supreme Court's decision on gerrymandering districts in every state that has such a district. The Supreme Court struck down two congressional maps in Louisiana Wednesday, ruling the state was unconstitutionally racially gerrymandering when it added a second majority black district. Louisiana redrew the maps in 2024 after a lower court ruled previous maps likely violated the Voting Rights Act because it did not include the second majority black district. Missouri GOP Sen. Eric Schmitt asked the Justice Department earlier Thursday to...

Dan Abrams ripped House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) Thursday for calling the U.S. Supreme Court “illegitimate.” Jeffries made the comments after the court ruled 6-3 to erode the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act that gave voters the ability to challenge electoral maps as “racially discriminatory.” “Today’s ruling by this illegitimate Supreme Court strikes a blow against the Voting Rights Act and is designed to undermine the ability of communities of color all across this country to elect their candidate of choice,” Jeffries said at a Wednesday press conference. President Donald Trump responded on Truth Social, calling Jeffries “a Low...

🚨 BREAKING — IT’S OFFICIAL: Alabama Governor Kay Ivey has called a special session on MONDAY to redraw Alabama’s Congressional map following this week’s HUGE Supreme Court win LET’S GO! 🔥 Democrats could potentially lose ALL US House seats in Alabama, with Republicans picking up 1-2 Several maps proposed make ALL districts safely Republican. Go hard, GOP.