Free Republic

Morale among Border Patrol agents is at an “all-time low” as they face massive, unprecedented border numbers as well as a looming end to the Title 42 public health order, which is expected to further fuel the overwhelming surge. “The agents are upset. I’ve never seen agents so upset as I have under what is currently going on,” Brandon Judd, head of the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) told Fox News Digital in an interview. And now, Fox News reports that Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said Monday that his office obtained a temporary restraining order blocking the Biden administration...

She has become an instant heroine of the Republican right. In a 59-page opinion on Monday, the US district judge Kathryn Mizelle of Tampa, Florida, overturned the federal requirement that people wear masks on planes and public transportation. Congressman Byron Donalds hailed her “courage” and “common sense”. The far-right activist Jack Posobiec praised her as a “patriot”. Matt Schlapp, chair of the American Conservative Union, tweeted: “God Bless Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle!” Mizelle’s decision triggered cheers and fears in the skies. Some passengers removed their masks with glee. Others thought the move hasty and questioned how a lone 35-year-old judge...

(CNN)A federal judge in Florida struck down on Monday the Biden administration's mask mandate for airplanes and other public transport methods. US District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle said the mandate was unlawful because it exceeded the statutory authority of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and because its implementation violated administrative law.

Steve Bannon suffered a setback ahead of his criminal trial when a judge on Wednesday ordered that he could not tell jurors he relied on advice from lawyers when he defied a subpoena to answer questions about the January 6 violence before Congress. He was charged with two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to provide documents and testimony to lawmakers investigating the attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters. Bannon's lawyers argued in a February filing that he had acted in good faith, based on the advice of veteran defense attorney Robert Costello, that he could not give...

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — U.S. officials improperly downplayed the climate change effects from burning coal when they approved a large expansion of an underground Montana coal mine that would release an estimated 190 million tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, a court ruled. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a 2-1 ruling that Interior Department officials “hid the ball” during the Trump administration, by failing to fully account for emissions from burning the fuel in a 2018 environmental analysis. A judge previously ruled against the disputed expansion of Signal Peak Energy’s Bull Mountain mine in 2017,...

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.

A federal judge on March 18 blocked a Washington, D.C., law that allowed children in the nation’s capital to receive a vaccine without parental consent.The parents who sued over the law appear likely to succeed in proving claims that the law violates federal statutes and will be irreparably harmed if a preliminary injunction weren’t entered, U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden wrote in a 38-page opinion.The D.C. Council passed the District’s Minor Consent for Vaccinations Amendment Act in 2020. It lets children as young as 11 get a vaccine without permission from their parents.But the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of...

A federal judge has encouraged all of his colleagues to "carefully consider" whether the Yale Law School students who attempted to shout down a bipartisan panel on free speech "should be disqualified from potential clerkships." D.C. Circuit judge Laurence Silberman sent an email on Thursday to all federal judges in the United States, urging them to take the fracas at the nation's top law school seriously. "The latest events at Yale Law School," Silberman wrote, "prompt me to suggest that students who are identified as those willing to disrupt any such panel discussion should be noted. All federal judges—and all...

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,...

The Justice Department has been ordered to provide internal documents associated with its decision to prosecute former Trump adviser Steve Bannon. This is a victory for Bannon, who maintains that he had a valid legal basis for refusing to obey a subpoena from the House’s Jan. 6 special panel. U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols ordered the Justice Department to provide Bannon’s team with “statements or writings” that demonstrate how the decision to charge Bannon with contempt of Congress square with longstanding legal opinions of the Justice Department that hold that former presidential advisers are generally exempt from congressional subpoenas....

A federal judge has dismissed a felony obstruction charge alleging a participant in Jan. 6 Capitol riot attempted to prevent the certification of the 2020 Electoral College results. The ruling Tuesday by U.S. District Judge for the D.C. Circuit Carl J. Nichols, a Trump administration appointee, marks the second time in eight days the judge has issued such a dismissal. Nichols ruled in the case against Joseph Fischer, who works for the North Cornwall Township Police Department in Pennsylvania, that the obstruction charge does not stand. "Nothing in Count Three (or the superseding indictment generally) alleges, let alone implies, that...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Wednesday ordered the Justice Department to provide former President Donald Trump's adviser Steve Bannon access to certain sensitive internal legal opinions or other related records that could potentially help bolster his defense against criminal contempt of Congress charges. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols told prosecutors they must produce "statements or writings reflecting official DOJ policy," including nonpublic opinions, that relate to "the department's policy on prosecuting or not prosecuting government or former government officials raising executive privilege claims or defenses of immunity."..... As part of his reasoning, Costello cited a number of prior...

A federal judge has thrown out an obstruction charge against a defendant charged with breaching the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a ruling that could reverberate across hundreds of cases stemming from the attack on Congress. In a 29-page opinion issued Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols ruled that ambiguities in the federal obstruction law required him to narrow the case against defendant Garret Miller, who is facing multiple felony charges connected to the attack. Under that narrow interpretation, Nichols ruled, defendants can be charged with obstruction only if they directly attempt to affect “a document, record, or other...

WASHINGTON — A judge on Friday blocked a shameless Democrat electoral challenge that sought to disqualify Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina from running for re-election by labeling him an insurrectionist.U.S. District Judge Richard E. Myers II, an appointee of President Donald J. Trump, stepped in to squelch an effort by Democrat lawyers in North Carolina who had filed a motion before the state’s Board of Elections declaring Mr. Cawthorn, 26, ineligible for re-election under the Constitution. They had contended that the first-term Republican’s support for Patriots who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, made him an “insurrectionist,” and therefore...

A federal judge on Friday blocked a legal challenge to Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s (R-N.C.) candidacy filed over allegations he helped spur the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on Capitol Hill. Richard Myers, a Trump-appointed federal judge in the eastern district of North Carolina, approved Cawthorn’s request for a preliminary injunction to the challenge to his reelection bid.

A whistleblower lawsuit alleging fraud during Pfizer’s COVID vaccine trials is moving forward, after a district court judge unsealed the complaint, including 400 pages of exhibits. Brook Jackson in January 2021 sued Pfizer and two companies the drugmaker contracted with to work on the trials: Ventavia Research Group and ICON PLC. Jackson worked for Ventavia for a brief period in 2020 before being fired after she filed a complaint with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over alleged improprieties she observed during the vaccine trials. She also gave The BMJ a cache of internal company documents, photos and recordings...

On Monday the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Navy's request to reinstate the U.S. Navy's COVID-19 vaccine requirement. In November, dozens of U.S. Navy SEALs claimed they were wrongfully denied COVID vaccination exemptions on religious grounds. The suit, which lists 35 unnamed service members, argues that that the Defense Department's mandate violates their First Amendment rights. While the percentage of vaccinated active duty personnel in each service is at 95 percent or higher, the number of unvaccinated personnel is close to 30,000. The Navy itself has previously said that it has not granted an exemption to any...

In U.S. Navy Seals 1-26 v. Biden, (5th Cir., Feb. 28, 2022), the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to grant the Navy a partial stay of an injunction issued by a Texas federal district court protecting 35 special warfare personnel who object on religious grounds to complying with the military's COVID vaccine mandate. The court said in part: Defendants have not demonstrated “paramount interests” that justify vaccinating these 35 Plaintiffs against COVID-19 in violation of their religious beliefs. They insist that “given the small units and remote locations in which special-operations forces typically operate, military commanders have determined...

(CNN)With only a few days left in February, court watchers are trying to read tea leaves as to the identity of President Joe Biden's pick for the Supreme Court before his end-of-the-month deadline -- and a federal court on Thursday increased the buzz around DC Circuit Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit deviated from its typical procedure by issuing an opinion on a Thursday -- breaking with its usual schedule of Tuesday and Friday release days. Notably, Jackson -- who has interviewed with Biden for the Supreme Court nomination -- was...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Friday blocked the Biden administration’s attempt to put greater emphasis on the potential damage from greenhouse gas emissions when creating rules for polluting industries. U.S. District Judge James Cain of the Western District of Louisiana sided with Republican attorneys general who said the administration’s raising the cost estimate of carbon dioxide emissions threatened to drive up energy costs while decreasing state revenues from energy production. The judge issued an injunction that bars the administration from using the higher cost estimate, which puts a dollar value on damages caused by every additional ton of...