Free Republic

A federal appeals court has set a mid-January deadline for the Louisiana state legislature to draw up a new congressional map, which comes in a long-running legal dispute that included a lower court ruling that found the current map likely unfairly diluted the power of black voters. A three-judge panel in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals issued its order on Nov. 10, requiring the state legislature to pass a new map by Jan. 15, 2024. The appeals court's order notes that, if the state legislature fails to adopt a new map by the deadline, then the lower court should...

House Judiciary Committee Republicans are pressing ahead with sweeping reforms to the government’s FISA surveillance powers that among other things would would prohibit the FBI from searching through Americans’ phone records without a court-approved warrant. The effort is on track to be wrapped up by the end of the year when several Patriot Act powers expire. Republicans and Democrats are coming together on this matter in rare bipartisan cooperation, lawmakers told Just the News. “We've got, I think, strong agreement amongst members of the Intel Committee and members of the Judiciary Committee. And frankly some Democrats as well, that there...

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Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge James Ho doubled down on his refusal to hire clerks from certain elite law schools, saying the cancel culture he's witnessed on campuses is "antithetical to America." In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Ho said his hiring boycott against Yale University and Stanford University has already made waves and garnered support among students who see discourse on their campuses improving. "The real problem with the academy is not disruption but discrimination," he said. "Rampant discrimination against mainstream views held by millions of Americans but disfavored by the cultural elites who control the...

(The Center Square) – A federal judge ruled over the weekend in favor of a Catholic health care clinic that’s challenging Colorado’s ban on “abortion reversal” treatment. U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Domenico on Saturday issued a preliminary injunction in favor of Englewood-based Bella Health and Wellness, which bars the state from enforcing Senate Bill 23-190. The law, passed by Democrats in the last legislative session, makes it “unprofessional conduct for a person … to provide, prescribe, administer, or attempt medication abortion reversal.” Medication abortions terminate a pregnancy with the use of two drugs consecutively: mifepristone, which inhibits the hormone...

Lehigh County, Pa., is on fire right now with the outrage of at least 70 families who are on a mission to have Dr. Debra Esernio-Jenssen, a “child abuse pediatrician,” fired from Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN) and hopefully brought up on criminal charges. The families allege that Dr. Jenssen diagnosed all of them with the controversial “Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy” and accused them of child abuse when they brought their children into LVHN for various reasons. [snip] Speaker after speaker told their horror tales of Dr. Debra Jenssen and her obsession with the rare (and possibly bogus) disorder. Local...

The highest court in Brazil, the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), sentenced two of the first defendants implicated in the January 8 Brasilia riot to 17 years in prison on Thursday on a variety of charges including “attempted coup d’etat” and “attempted abolition of the democratic rule of law.” Aécio Lúcio Costa Pereira, 51, was identified as part of a crowd of thousands of supporters of conservative former President Jair Bolsonaro who stormed the Brazilian Congress, STF headquarters, and office of the presidency in January in large part due to videos Pereira himself published on social media in which he documented...

On September 5, U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly sentenced the last of five members of the Proud Boys convicted by a D.C. jury of various crimes, including seditious conspiracy, earlier this year. Kelly imposed the longest sentence to date in any January 6 case by ordering Enrique Tarrio, the group’s ex-leader, to serve 22 years in prison even though Tarrio was not in the Washington, D.C. that day. Similar to his decision on the fate of Tarrio’s co-defendants, Kelly consented to the Department of Justice’s request to add a terror enhancement to Tarrio’s sentence, which dramatically elevated the base...

A federal appeals court Thursday put on hold a judge's order from earlier this week requiring Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to remove a floating barrier from the middle of the Rio Grande. The 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals allowed Abbott, a Republican, to leave in place for now the 1,000-foot barrier the state installed to deter illegal migrant crossings. The order was issued by a three-judge panel of two Democratic appointees and a Republican appointee. Wednesday, U.S. District Judge David Ezra had ordered that the barrier moved out of the main waterway to the bank of the Rio Grande...

Only if a critical mass of Americans ‘know what time it is’ will there be any hope of combating this onslaught.Democrats are seeking to land a one-two punch to cement their control of America today and for generations to come: Criminalize the political opposition and cripple the last authority to which the opposition might appeal in defense of its rights.This is one way to understand two running lines of attack that may appear independent but are inextricably intertwined.Criminalizing the OppositionThe first consists of the unprecedented, Soviet show trial-style “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” “cases” conjured...

Explanation: Ringed planet Saturn will be at its 2023 opposition, opposite the Sun in Earth's skies, on August 27. While that puts the sixth planet from the Sun at its brightest and well-placed for viewing, its beautiful ring system isn't visible to the unaided eye. Still, this sequence of telescopic images taken a year apart over the last six years follows both Saturn and rings as seen from inner planet Earth. The gas giant's ring plane tilts from most open in 2018 to approaching edge-on in 2023 (top to bottom). That's summer to nearly the autumn equinox for Saturn's northern...

As FPC Action Foundation’s Cody J. Wisniewski said on Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co yesterday, since the Bruen decision was handed down by the Supreme Court last year we’re starting to see lower courts around the country start to take the Second Amendment a little more seriously. While we’ve still seen some egregiously awful misreadings of Bruen over the past twelve months, we’ve also seen some major successes, including one case out of Massachusetts that addresses the fact that in many states, your right to keep and bear arms stops at the state line. As The Reload’s Jake Fogelman reports,...

The conservative advocate who engineered the lawsuit behind the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision to end race-conscious affirmative action in college admissions on Tuesday sued two law firms that offer fellowships for diverse candidates. The lawsuits, filed by Edward Blum’s two-year-old anti-affirmative-action organization, American Alliance for Equal Rights, accuse the law firms of unlawful racial discrimination against white candidates. They ask the courts to remove race from consideration when selecting fellows. The law firms have offices in Texas and Florida. The suits are filed in federal courts in both states. The lawsuits target the international law firms Perkins Coie and...

Just when you may have thought things couldn’t get any crazier: American playwright and humorist C.J. Hopkins, profiled in this space on numerous occasions, has been sent a “punishment order” by a German judge, offering him a Sophie’s Choice of 60 days in jail or 3,600 euros. His crime? Essentially, insulting the German health minister in a tweet, and using a scarcely-visible image of a Swastika on a mask in a book critical of the global pandemic response, The Rise of the New Normal Reich. He was first accused of this “crime” in June, shortly after Roger Waters was placed...

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A federal appeals court ruled Monday that Alabama can enforce a ban outlawing the use of puberty blockers and hormones to treat transgender children, the second such appellate victory for gender-transition care restrictions that have been adopted by a growing number of Republican-led states. A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a judge’s temporary injunction against enforcing the law. The judge has scheduled trial for April 2 on whether to permanently block the law. The ruling follows a string of decisions in recent weeks against similar bans. A federal judge in June...

*** Trump ***, fumed on Truth Social over a report that former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan had agreed to testify before the Fulton County panel Tuesday. “I am reading reports that failed former Lt. Governor of Georgia, Jeff [sic] Duncan, will be testifying before the Fulton County Grand Jury. He shouldn’t,” Trump posted. *** “He refused having a Special Session to find out what went on, became very unpopular with Republicans (I refused to endorse him!), and fought the TRUTH all the way.” *** “WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE TELL THE FULTON COUNTY GRAND JURY THAT I DID NOT TAMPER WITH...

During an interview with The Weather Channel that is set to air on Wednesday, a portion of which aired on Tuesday, President Joe Biden said that he “wanted to stop all drilling on the East Coast and the West Coast and in the Gulf” but was blocked by the courts from doing so. Weather Channel Meteorologist Stephanie Abrams asked, “Let’s talk Gen Z, because they’re going to play a big role in the next presidential election, and many of them are angry about the 7,000 oil and gas permits you approved since you’ve been in office. You promised no new...

President Joe Biden has reportedly asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop pushing through a “divisive” judicial overhaul bill amid protests. This is the same Biden, incidentally, who crammed through a massive, highly “divisive,” generational spending bill with zero votes from the opposition; the same guy who regularly rules by unconstitutional executive diktats; and the same guy who has done more to delegitimize the Supreme Court than any president in modern history. In any event, the president is concerned. As is The New York Times, which reports, “The Israeli Parliament passed a deeply contentious law limiting the Supreme Court’s...

When the subject of legal challenges to election fraud or irregularities in 2020 comes up, Lefties love to sneer, “Oh, you guys didn’t win a single case.” In the most technical sense, they have a point, but that doesn’t mean they’re right. All one has to do is consider the abject partisan, corrupt collapse of America’s legal system at the present moment — a former president and 2024 frontrunner under attack by his opponent’s DOJ as well as little-league state DAs who literally campaigned on promises to “get Trump.” Clearly, Leftism has overthrown Justice as the goal of far too...

First Lady Jill Biden is wielding her influence in the public sphere by meeting with drag queens while Americans suffer from rising prices and crime under her husband’s administration. A photo recently surfaced showing Jill Biden posing with drag queens at the San Francisco event space Welcome to Manny’s. The event space describes itself as a “community focused meeting and learning place” that encourages meetings and engagement with “civic leaders, elected officials, artists, activists, changemakers, and each other.”