Free Republic

On Tuesday, a federal appeals court struck down a West Virginia law that protects female athletes from male athletes who think they are women. According to NBC News, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 to halt the law, which prevents so-called “transgender” athletes from competing on teams that align with their “gender identity” in the state’s public schools and colleges. Reportedly, Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 13-year-old “transgender” child, argued that the law prevented “her” from running on the girls’ cross-country team and track teams at her middle school (NBC News):The federal appeals court, which is based in Richmond,...

One of the co-defendants in the sweeping RICO case against former President Donald Trump and his allies is accusing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis of racism. Harrison Floyd, who led Black Voices for Trump in 2020, announced Monday that he and his lawyers were planning to bring an equal protection claim against Willis, saying that she was going after some of the defendants because of the color of their skin. Floyd is one of two Black co-defendants in the Georgia case. "While my skin is also Black, DA Willis identifies me as white and views me as a defender...

On January 14, 2023, David J. Nastri, Esq. filed suit against Katie Dykes as Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection. Nastri challenged the constitutionality of Connecticut’s ban on the carrying of handguns in Connecticut state parks for the purpose of self-defense. From the complaint: This is an action for declaratory and injunctive relief that challenges the constitutionality of Connecticut’s state regulation that bans the carrying of handguns in Connecticut state parks for the purpose of self-defense. Connecticut’s ban on handguns in state parks cannot pass constitutional muster under the historical standard that the Supreme Court announced...

US District Judge Aileen Cannon on Thursday denied a motion filed by former President Donald Trump seeking to dismiss the criminal charges against him in his classified documents case. Trump, 77, had argued that under the Presidential Records Act of 1978 he had the authority to designate sensitive documents as his personal property after leaving the White House. Cannon ruled that “the Presidential Records Act does not provide a pre-trial basis to dismiss” the 40 charges against the former president. She further noted that prosecutors “make no reference to the Presidential Records Act” in the indictment against Trump and did...

A federal district court has overturned the Biden administration's climate rule that required states to track and set reduction goals for greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles on highways. In a sweeping judgment late Monday, Judge Benjamin Beaton of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky ordered the Federal Highway Administration to stand down on the rules, which the agency finalized in November. The ruling represents a major victory for the State of Kentucky, which challenged the regulations alongside 21 other states. "President Biden’s radical environmental agenda has lost touch with reality, and Kentucky families, farmers and workers...

The Pennsylvania Fraternal Order of Police, Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 and the Pennsylvania State Troopers Association have officially come out in opposition to Judge Adeel Mangi's nomination to sit on the United States Third Circuit Court of Appeals -- making them the latest in a long list of law enforcement organizations to oppose the nomination. “It’s an affront to all Pennsylvania law enforcement officers, active and retired, that Mr. Mangi would serve on an organization that describes a person who murdered a police officer as a ‘freedom fighter,'" the groups wrote in a letter to Senate Leadership...

Nine states show up again and again as the most repressive states in the union of the United States of America. With the occasional exception, these states refuse to honor the Constitution; they have extremely restrictive policies on who may bear arms, they ban common rifles, they ban the ownership of suppressors, and they tend to have high taxes. They are all controlled by the Democratic Party.The nine most repressive states are California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island.Of those nine states, all but Rhode Island have enacted bans on some semi-automatic firearms, usually...

Prosecutors went after Hunter Biden's attorneys during an hours-long hearing Wednesday on several motions to dismiss criminal tax evasion charges against the president's son.

After four years on the run, a senior leader of MS-13 – one of the largest transnational criminal organizations – was captured this month in Southern California on terrorism charges, court documents say. Freddy Ivan Jandres-Parada was accused by federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York in December 2020 of being a member of MS-13’s board of directors, known as the Ranfla Nacional, along with a dozen other MS-13 members, according to his indictment. Federal authorities have been searching for him since, offering a reward for his capture on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. Jandres-Parada was arrested on...

Immigration judges dismissed deportation cases against some 200,000 migrants under President Biden because the Department of Homeland Security failed to file the required paperwork before their court dates, according to a new report. The DHS’s failure to file thousands of notices to appear before scheduled hearing dates left courts without jurisdiction to handle deportation cases and rule on asylum claims, according to a report released Wednesday by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. “These large numbers of dismissals and what then happens raise serious concerns,” the TRAC report, which includes data through February 2024, states. The nonpartisan research...

New York Attorney General Letitia James on Wednesday requested an appeals court turn down former President Donald Trump’s request to reduce or hold off collecting the bond amount of $454 million to cover a civil fraud judgment. Trump must post a liquid (cash, securities) bond covering the full amount of the judgment to pause enforcement of the judgment, but 30 surety companies told Trump they would not accept real estate assets as collateral, Trump’s lawyers said Monday. James could seek to freeze some of his bank accounts and properties if Trump cannot post the $454 million bond. Enforcement against Trump...

U.S. — Leaders in the Lone Star State awoke this morning eager to learn how they would be able to address the border crisis as a federal court once again flipped a coin to see if Texas would be allowed to enforce laws today. The daily routine, consisting of finding out whether law enforcement officers would have the power to enforce laws depending on the whims of different federal judges, has swung wildly from one day to the next, leaving Texas officials wondering which side of the argument currently had the advantage. "Step right up for the daily coin flip...

A unanimous Supreme Court ruled Friday that public officials can sometimes be sued for blocking their critics on social media, an issue that first arose for the high court in a case involving then-President Donald Trump. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the court, said that officials who use personal accounts to make official statements may not be free to delete comments about those statements or block critics altogether. On the other hand, Barrett wrote, "State officials have private lives and their own constitutional rights." The court ruled in two cases involving lawsuits filed by people who were blocked after...

Three judges on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals were ousted by candidates endorsed by Attorney General Ken Paxton, who targeted the court after it ruled against him in a 2021 case. Former Dallas appeals court justice David Schenck, Waco attorney Gina Parker and Richardson attorney Lee Finley were projected to defeat incumbents for the Presiding Judge, Place 7 and Place 8 seats on the state’s highest criminal court, according to the Associated Press. This year’s primary presented the first opportunity for Paxton to attempt to oust some of the eight judges who ruled in 2021 the attorney general cannot...

The former FBI informant charged with lying about a $10 million-dollar bribery scheme involving President Joe Biden´s family is set to appear in a California federal court on Monday. A judge will determine whether Alexander Smirnov, 43, must remain behind bars while he awaits trial. Special counsel David Weiss' office is pressing U.S. District Judge Otis Wright II to keep Smirnov in jail, arguing the man who claims to have ties to Russian intelligence is likely to flee the country. A different judge last week released Smirnov from jail on electronic GPS monitoring, but Wright ordered the man to be...

Strange events are occurring in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. In the Ninth Circuit, it has become clear that when a three-judge panel finds in favor of the Second Amendment as a fundamental part of the Bill of Rights, the case will be sent to an en banc panel to be reversed by the full court. Most of the time, the Ninth Circuit would wait for the three-judge panel to publish their decision before sending the case to the en banc panel. In the Fourth Circuit, en banc panels are snatching cases away from three-judge...

In a scathing rebuke of a New York Judge’s decision to fine Donald Trump a staggering $355 million, the entrepreneur and media personality Kevin O’Leary minced no words, denouncing the ruling as “unjust,” “appalling” and ultimately “un-American.” Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron’s Friday ruling not only slapped Trump with that hefty fine, but also with a temporary ban from conducting business in his native New York. O’Leary, known for his role on “Shark Tank,” lambasted the decision, arguing that it sets a dangerous precedent for the entire real estate industry. O’Leary had previously been critical of the months-long fraud...

Embattled District Attorney Fani Willis has been accused of lying about the timeline of her relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade in a bombshell new court filing. Mike Roman, who alongside Donald Trump is being charged with election fraud by Wade and Willis in Fulton County, Georgia, made a late Friday filing in the case. In it, his lawyers claim Wade’s former law partner Terrence Bradley will testify their romantic relationship began before he was appointed to prosecute in 2021, according to the Washington Post. “The romantic relationship between Wade and Willis began prior to Willis being sworn as the...

Hunter Biden is comparable to children in Japanese internment camps, to undocumented immigrants, to the murdered descendants of the Tsar. At least that’s what he argues in a new court filing in his federal gun case, which presents Hunter as one of the most tragic figures since the fall of Troy. Literally. In a brief that borders on delusional, Biden’s lawyers say the son of the president who burned through millions from influence peddling is comparable to all those unfortunate and destitute souls. While the media has endlessly covered how Donald Trump arguments are over-the-top in issues such as immunity,...

On September 7, 2023, Brennan Comeaux was arrested for possessing unregistered silencers without serial numbers. He was appointed a federal defender in Louisiana in the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. Louisiana is in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.On December 20, 2023, a motion to dismiss was filed by Comeaux’s attorney. From the Motion to Dismiss:By indictment, the government accuses Brennan Comeaux of possessing unregistered firearms in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 5861(d) (Count One) and receiving and possessing firearms unidentified by serial number in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 5861(i). ECF 1. Specifically, the...