Free Republic

A federal court on Thursday nixed a Trump-era rule that limited state and tribal authority to block projects that could impact their waters, including pipelines. California Federal Judge William Alsup vacated the rule and sent it back to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for further proceedings. The Clinton appointee's move came after the agency asked the court to remand the issue back to the EPA amid litigation filed by states and environmental groups... ...The now-vacated rule had limited states’ authorities to block projects by giving them a strict one-year time limit to do so before the federal government could decide...

U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco said Levandowski, who was convicted on Tuesday following a March plea agreement, said Levandowski could enter custody once the COVID-19 pandemic has subsided. Alsup said a sentence short of imprisonment would have given “a green light to every future brilliant engineer to steal trade secrets,” comparing what Levandowski took to a “competitor’s game plan.” The 75-year-old judge, who has been involved in Silicon Valley litigation for nearly five decades, described Levandowski’s conviction as the “biggest trade secret crime I have ever seen.” “Billions [of dollars] in the future were at play, and...

A Brooklyn federal judge said in court on Tuesday that he cannot make a decision regarding the status of young undocumented immigrants in the country on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program without considering President Donald Trump’s “incendiary” anti-Latino comments. “The statements that were made during the election cycle were extremely volatile,” said Judge Nicholas Garaufis in court, referring to Trump’s recurring comments that had painted Latinos with a broad negative brush. “This came from the top. This isn’t ordinary,” Garaufis added while DACA recipients in the audience nodded. “It’s not what we see from our leaders, I...

There’s been a huge development in the ongoing struggle to protect the Dreamers, the beneficiaries whose immigration status is protected under DACA. U.S. District Judge William Alsup of in San Francisco just issued an injunction blocking the Trump Administration from ending the program as it announced it would do in September.