Free Republic

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,...

Patrick Bumatay is the second openly gay person to be nominated by Trump to be a federal judge. President Donald Trump recently announced another wave of judicial nominees, and among them is an openly gay conservative, Patrick Bumatay. Trump nominated Bumatay to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, based in San Francisco, the nation’s largest federal appeals court. It hears cases from nine Western states and has 29 judges; there are currently six vacancies. Bumatay is an assistant U.S. attorney in California handling various criminal issues, including opioid abuse and transnational organized crime, according to...