Free Republic

A judge in Texas struck down a Biden administration rule on March 28 that required states to measure and report the greenhouse gas emissions from any vehicles using the national highway system. The rule was issued by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT)’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) in 2023 as part of President Biden’s efforts to slash carbon emissions in half by 2030. Specifically, it required state transportation departments and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to both measure their transportation-related emissions on the U.S. highway system and set their own emission reduction targets. Additionally, the measure required state DOTs and MPOs...

Afederal judge on Tuesday ruled that the Nancy Pelosi-led House of Representatives acted unconstitutionally in December 2022 when it passed a $1.7 trillion federal budget. U.S. District Court Judge James Wesley Hendrix ruled that Pelosi, then speaker of the House, violated the Constitution by allowing members to vote without actually being at the Capitol for the Dec. 23 session at which the budget was adopted, according to Reuters. At the time of the budget’s passing, CNBC referred to the action as “the final major achievement” of Pelosi’s term as speaker of the House. The budget passed 225-201. At the time...

A Lubbock, Texas federal judge ruled Tuesday that lawmakers unconstitutionally passed the $1.7 trillion government funding bill in 2022 when they did so under a pandemic-era rule allowing members of the U.S. House of Representatives to vote on the matter by proxy instead of in person. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, requested the courts to block a provision of the funding bill that gave pregnant workers stronger legal protections. U.S. District Judge Wesley Hendrix reviewed the request and gave a "limited" ruling on one of two provisions Paxton sought to have blocked. Hendrix, who was appointed by former...

A federal judge has dismissed Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit seeking to invalidate an ordinance outlawing abortion in a major Texas city, arguing a "lack of jurisdiction." Judge James Wesley Hendrix of the Northern District of Texas, appointed to the bench by former President Donald Trump, tossed the lawsuit filed on behalf of the abortion provider against an ordinance banning abortion in the city of Lubbock. “Because the ability to remedy a plaintiff’s injury through a favorable decision is a prerequisite to a plaintiff’s standing to sue — an ability absent here — the Court dismisses the case for lack of jurisdiction,”...

A man from Water Valley, Texas, was sentenced today to serve 60 years in prison for producing hundreds of videos and images of himself sexually abusing a child. Douglas Stephen Groover, 37, was sentenced after pleading guilty in February 2020 to two counts of production of child pornography.  The sentence, which was imposed by U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix of the Northern District of Texas, also included a lifetime term of supervised release and a restitution award of $53,000. According to court documents, in addition to the hundreds of videos and images he created of himself sexually abusing a minor,...