Tag: judges

Federal Judge Blocks Border Wall Construction in Big Bend Region in Texas

A federal judge on Friday blocked border wall construction in the Big Bend region in Texas.

US District Judge Kathleen Cardone, a George W. Bush appointee, issued a preliminary injunction blocking border wall construction in Texas’s Big Bend region and Big Bend National Park.

The scope of Judge Cardone’s order includes patrol roads, border barriers or related infrastructure.

Environmental advocacy group Center for Biological Diversity filed the lawsuit in April and argued that the border wall construction lacked approval from Congress.

Judge Cardone sided with the plaintiffs on Friday and stopped the bulldozing and road-clearing by contractors while the lawsuit makes its way through the courts.

The Texas Tribune reported:

A judge on Friday blocked further border barrier construction in the Big Bend region, approving an environmental group’s motion for a preliminary injunction.

At the end of Friday’s hearing, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone asked the courtroom to remain calm while she read her order aloud from the bench.

She ruled that the plaintiffs’ constitutional claims to halt the construction were likely to succeed and her preliminary injunction against “ground-distrurbing activities” would remain in effect while the suit continued to play out in court.

The legal team at the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental advocacy group, filed the lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security and its secretary in April on behalf of the Friends of the Ruidosa Church, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving a historic church in Presidio County, and Danny William Miller, a Rio Grande river guide and landowner who stands to lose his property in Redford to the wall.

The lawsuit argues that the five contracted border wall projects in the region are unconstitutional for a range of reasons, including violating the constitutional separation of powers and depriving citizens of their land.

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COMMIES IN THE COURT: Biden Judge Rules Law That Makes It Illegal for NONCITIZENS to Vote Is UNCONSTITUTIONAL!

Biden commie Judge David Leibowitz from Florida ruled in favor of a Jamaican national because it was federal prosecutors who brought the case under a federal statute against non-citizens voting.

Leibowitz claims only states can decide whether noncitizens can vote. WTH?

The dirty communists are out of control in America today!

They know they need the illegal votes or Democrats CAN’T WIN!

U.S. District Judge David Leibowitz (Southern District of Florida, nominated by President Biden) dismissed a federal criminal case on October 1, 2026, against Chelsea Cox, a Jamaican national, ruling that the federal statute criminalizing noncitizen voting in federal elections is unconstitutional.

Cox entered the United States as a tourist in 1999 and remained after her visa expired the following year. She used a fraudulent U.S. Virgin Islands birth certificate to obtain a Florida driver’s license and registered to vote in 2012. She cast ballots in federal elections from 2012 through 2020.

Only the 2020 vote fell within the statute of limitations when she was charged in October 2025 under 18 U.S.C. § 611 (“voting by an alien”), a 1996 law that makes it a misdemeanor for a noncitizen to vote in elections for president, vice president, or members of Congress.

Biden Judge Leibowitz held that the Constitution assigns the power to set voter qualifications to the states, not Congress.

He wrote that Florida already prohibits and can punish the conduct at issue under state law, and that it is for Florida—not the Department of Justice—to enforce that requirement.

The opinion states: “Can the State of Florida prohibit and punish the exact conduct Defendant Cox allegedly engaged in here? This has already been decided elsewhere and is not addressed here: Florida can and does.” He concluded that “the Constitution does not authorize Congress to legislate voter qualifications for federal elections.”

Cox’s attorney welcomed the dismissal. Of course.

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Brazil Court Goes on Censorship Spree Days Before Presidential Election

Brazil’s top electoral authority, the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE), issued new censorship rulings on Wednesday as the nation prepares to hold presidential elections this weekend.

The South American nation is hours away from holding its 2026 general elections, scheduled for Sunday, October 4, with all polls suggesting that a runoff election will be held on October 25 between current incumbent socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and conservative Senator Flávio Bolsonaro.

In the past week, the 2026 Brazilian presidential campaign has seen two new controversies emerge surrounding Bolsonaro and Lula. The conservative senator denounced being the target of a fake news campaign accusing him of allegedly planning to remove the title of Brazil’s patron saint from Nossa Senhora do Aparecida (Our Lady of Aparecida), a title of the Blessed Virgin Mary that holds 300 years’ worth of faith and veneration for Brazilian Catholics.

Sen. Bolsonaro — who is running for office after his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, was banned and imprisoned for “crimes against democracy” charges — is an Evangelical Christian. Globonews, which Bolsonaro accused of acting as a “central hub” to spread the fake news campaign against him, issued a public retraction and apology after the claim was confirmed to be false.

On Wednesday, a three-out-of-five majority of the TSE’s justices ordered the complete removal of any and all social media content involving the fake news campaign against Bolsonaro, upholding an initial ruling issued by Supreme Court Justice and TSE member André Mendoça in response to a request issued by the Bolsonaro presidential campaign team.

Wednesday’s ruling was preceded by a back-and-forth series of court orders on the matter. The state-owned news agency Agência Brasil detailed on Wednesday that Mendoça had originally ruled to censor the fake news campaign posts against Bolsonaro — but Supreme Court Flávio Dino overturned the censorship orders on the grounds that they infringed the free speech rights of a local comedian who lodged a complaint on the matter. Supreme Court Justice Luiz Fux later overturned Dino’s ruling. The impasse led to the head of the Supreme Court, Edson Fachin, bringing the matter to a vote.

Metrópoles detailed that Justice Mendoça had initially argued that removing social media posts pertaining to the fake news campaign did not constitute censorship, as the content had already been proven to be misinformation and therefore “does not constitute prior censorship, as it does not establish prior state control over future expressions, does not require judicial authorization for new publications, and does not suspend users’ profiles, accounts, or channels.”

Separate from the controversy surrounding the fake news campaign against Flávio Bolsonaro, President Lula has found himself at the center of a firestorm after he bizarrely claimed this week that Brazilian girls learn to “get touched” from a young age. According to Lula’s ruling Workers’ Party (PT), the Brazilian president was allegedly referring to cervical cancer screenings.

The TSE also issued censorship rulings on Wednesday against conservative lawmaker Nikolas Ferreira over his response to Lula’s controversial statements. Ferreira, a 30-year-old Congressman from Minas Gerais, published a video expressing his outrage about Lula’s remarks while questioning the “explanation” provided by his party. In the video, which remains publicly available at press time, Ferreira affirmed that there is the possibility that a pedophile “might be listening” to Lula’s remarks and stressed, “girls aren’t to be touched from an early age.”

TSE Justice Estela Aranha reportedly gave Ferreira a 24-hour deadline to remove a video, arguing that the lawmaker allegedly “took the president’s statement about medical exams out of context and attributed a sexual connotation to his words.” Arahna ordered Ferreira to abstain himself from both republishing the video and from producing any kind of content that is “substantially identical” to the original piece under penalty of a yet-to-be determined fine.

“The contested publication is not limited to political criticism or disagreement regarding the appropriateness of the language used,” Justice Aranha reportedly argued.

“In developing the line of reasoning set forth in the contested media report, the respondent introduces a connotation entirely different from that present in the original statement, shifting the discussion from the realm of public health to that of various criminal acts,” she continued.

Ferreira referred to the situation in a social media post, which reads, “Lula knows so much about what he lost that he only requested the removal of the video from my network, but not a right of reply, because he knows he would have to explain the inexplicable.” In a separate post, the lawmaker pointed out that it was Lula who appointed Justice Aranha to the TSE in 2025.

The contents of the conservative lawmaker’s video appear to have greatly infuriated Lula, who called Ferreira a “bastard” during a Tuesday night campaign rally. In the same event, Lula’s wife, First Lady Rosângela “Janja” Lula da Silva, referred to the lawmaker as a “little shit.”

Hours later, the Brazilian president once again insulted Ferreira in a Wednesday interview with Terra Brasil, referring to him as a “complete idiot” for allegedly spreading “misinformation” against him.

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Federal Judge Blocks $100,000 Fee For H-1B Visas

A second federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from imposing a $100,000 fee on H-1B visas, which allow U.S. companies to hire high-skilled foreign workers.

U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam, based in Oakland, California, determined that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the State Department did not adhere to proper federal rule-making processes before the implementation of the fee went into effect.

In the 35-page decision, Gilliam on Sept. 30 blocked the agencies from implementing the fee ordered by President Donald Trump in a Sept. 9, 2025, presidential proclamation. The block will remain in place until the federal rule-making process has been followed, the judge ordered, including a formal proposal for a rule change and a standard 30- to 60-day period for public comment.

In the initial lawsuit, the plaintiffs – a coalition of unions, employers, and nonprofit organizations – requested the court block the administration from imposing the new fee and require federal agencies to process H-1B visas in accordance with existing law.

They argued in a lawsuit that Trump has no authority to unilaterally impose fees, taxes, or other mechanisms to generate revenue for the United States.

“Here, the President disregarded those limitations, asserted power he does not have, and displaced a complex, Congressionally specified system for evaluating petitions and granting H-1B visas,” the lawsuit said.

The plaintiffs, including Global Nurse Force and the American Association of University Professors, among others, claimed that the Trump administration failed to assess how the fees would affect hospitals, schools, churches, and universities that rely on the H-1B program.

“Without relief, hospitals will lose medical staff, churches will lose pastors, classrooms will lose teachers, and industries across the country risk losing key innovators,” litigation and advocacy nonprofit Democracy Forward Foundation, representing the plaintiffs, said in a statement.

The group applauded the ruling.

“Today’s decision … protects a system that was thrown into chaos overnight,” attorney Steve Bressler said.

The program offers 65,000 visas annually, with another 20,000 visas for workers with advanced degrees, approved for three to six years.

The White House did not immediately return a request for comment.

In past statements, the administration has defended the legality of its program reforms.

According to a White House fact sheet, the proclamation was to address the misuse of the H-1B program, which Trump said had been exploited by companies to replace American workers “with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor.”

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the fee requirement is legal and that it was aimed at “discouraging companies from spamming the system and driving down American wages, while providing certainty to employers who need to bring the best talent from overseas.”

In June, a federal judge in Boston also temporarily blocked the fee. In July, the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to pause the ruling.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is also suing to challenge the fee. A district judge rejected its claims that Trump lacked the constitutional authority to set the fee, and the Chamber of Commerce is now seeking a review of that decision by an appeals court.

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Texas Man Accused of Plotting Attack on State Capitol Posts $75,000 Bond Just Hours After 3 A.M. SWAT Arrest — FBI Then Takes Him Into Federal Custody

A Texas man accused of planning to shoot up the state Capitol was booked before dawn Wednesday and, according to county jail records, walked out on a $75,000 bond before most of Austin had finished coffee.

Benny Caldera Jr., 40, of Converse, northeast of San Antonio, was taken from his home around 3 a.m. Wednesday by Texas Department of Public Safety SWAT after DPS received a tip Tuesday about a violent attack planned for Thursday, October 1.

He was charged with felony terroristic threat against a public servant and hauled to the Bexar County Jail.

According to the Washington Examiner, jail records showed him released on that $75,000 bond just before 7 a.m., roughly four hours after the raid, and was placed on pretrial supervision.

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DOJ Files Charges Against Minnesota Judges Who Launched ‘Unethical Partisan Press Tour’ to Attack Trump’s Immigration Agenda

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has formally filed a misconduct complaint against the Minnesota federal judges who admitted to the New York Times that they are using their power as judges to obstruct the Trump administration’s agenda.

Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter told followers on X that the DOJ is targeting the judges for engaging in an “unethical partisan press tour on immigration cases.”

“Judges who covet publicity undermine public confidence in the rule of law,” McCotter added.

Attorney General Todd Blanche blasted the clearly biased judges, saying that the U.S. government has a right, “just like every litigant in court, to have a judge that will be fair and impartial,” Blanche said. “We have no choice but to act.”

The complaint comes after the New York Times published a story early in September featuring Judge Patrick Schiltz and five of the seven judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit who spoke to the paper to reveal their experiences over the president’s crack down on illegal immigration.

The judicial misconduct complaint names Judge Schiltz, who was appointed to the bench by George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton-appointed Judge John Tunheim, both of whom have openly criticized Trump’s immigration policies.

Tunheim, for instance, told the Times that ICE was not arresting the right migrants, and said, “They weren’t arresting, in my view, people who were dangerous criminals on the street.”

The DOJ, though, says the judges’ public conduct “is particularly egregious” and that they “flagrantly violated the Code of Judicial Conduct with their improper and unethical comments.”

The complaint added that Schiltz’s comments were “overly political and concern matters that are pending” before the court, and that Tunheim’s comment was “less verbose” but “equally unethical.”

“If anything is a ‘grave threat to the rule of law,’ it is judges who repeatedly and brazenly exceed their authority then launch a partisan press campaign that includes criticizing the government for filing an emergency appeal when a judge refused to rule on a search warrant application,” McCotter said.

The DOJ is requesting that the court order both judges to recuse themselves from cases involving DHS and its departments, including ICE. The complaint also wants an investigation into “improper conduct” of the Minnesota judges who “‘covet publicity” rather than adhering to the rule of law by adjudicating cases or controversies.

Schiltz has already issued a statement proclaiming his innocence. “As legal-ethics experts have confirmed, I was acting well within the ethical rules that apply to federal judges in speaking to the New York Times,” he said, and citing the Judicial Conference guidelines for what judges can say in public, he added, “that is exactly what I did.”

The 8th Circuit Court also averred that the judges who spoke to the Times acted “well within” the ethics rules.

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Federal judge rules NCAA can allow men on women’s teams, Riley Gaines plans appeal

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit against the NCAA that had challenged its policy of allowing men who identify as women to play on women’s sports teams.

U.S. District Judge Tiffany Johnson, a 2024 Biden appointee, ruled that the collegiate sports organization is not beholden to Title IX because it is not a recipient of direct federal financial assistance, Fox News reported.

The two-year-old lawsuit, Gaines v. NCAA, had challenged the organization and the University of Georgia for allegedly violating Title IX’s provisions for equal opportunity in sports by allowing males to compete in the women’s category. The judge found that the NCAA maintained separate funding streams from participating universities.

“What this ruling means is basically the NCAA can put as many men on a women’s sporting team as they want,” said Riley Gaines, the lead plaintiff, on a video post on X on Tuesday. “We are going to appeal.”

Gaines said she feels that while the dismissal will ultimately help lead the case to the Supreme Court and ultimate victory, “this doesn’t come without a toll; it’s mentally draining, emotionally draining.”

According to the lawsuit, the NCAA authorized “naked men possessing full male genitalia to disrobe in front of non- consenting college women and creating situations in which unwilling female college athletes unwittingly or reluctantly expose their naked or partially clad bodies to males.”

The Independent Council on Women’s Sports, or ICONS, is funding this lawsuit. Gaines is a former All-American swimmer at the University of Kentucky and current advocate for women’s sports. More than a dozen additional female plaintiffs are all current or former collegiate athletes.

“We believe the district judge erred and that the Court of Appeals will find that the NCAA, which is the controlling body of college sports for more than 1,100 member schools, almost all of which are federally funded, is subject to Title IX,” said ICONS Co-Founder Kim Jones, a former NCAA All-American tennis player, in a news release.

“We will not give up our fight for women and girls’ rights in sports,” Jones said.

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The 5th Circuit Rejects Qualified Immunity for Cops Who Searched a Driver After a Bogus Traffic Stop

Around 5 p.m. on a Wednesday in June 2022, Mario Rosales was driving his red Mustang on Jackson Street in Alexandria, Louisiana, waiting to turn left onto Dorchester Drive, when a police SUV pulled up behind him. After the traffic light turned green and Rosales made his turn, Officers Samuel Terrell and Jim Lewis activated their lights and pulled him over.

The officers later claimed Rosales had “failed to signal” his turn. But as dashcam video showed, that was not true: The Mustang’s left-turn signal was blinking as Rosales waited at the intersection. And after stopping Rosales and his girlfriend, Gracie Lasyone, who was sitting in the front passenger seat, Terrell and Lewis detained them for 21 minutes, during which the cops asked if there was anything illegal in the car, grilled them about drug use, frisked Rosales, instructed him to empty his pockets, and gave him and Lasyone the Miranda warning that typically accompanies an arrest.

Rosales and Lasyone sued Terrell and Lewis in federal court that November, arguing that the officers had violated their Fourth Amendment rights under color of law. Terrell and Lewis claimed they were protected by qualified immunity, a doctrine that bars such lawsuits unless they allege violations of “clearly established” law. A federal judge disagreed, and last week the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld that decision, concluding that Rosales and Lasyone’s allegations were sufficient to defeat qualified immunity at this stage of the case.

That ruling by a unanimous three-judge panel is striking for two reasons. It illustrates the limits of the broad leeway that the Supreme Court has given police officers to stop and interrogate motorists. It also illustrates the limits of qualified immunity, which in many cases has prevented victims of outrageous police misconduct from pursuing constitutional claims because they were unable to cite sufficiently specific precedents.

In the 1968 case Terry v. Ohio, the Supreme Court ruled that police may stop someone when they reasonably suspect he is involved in criminal activity and may frisk him if they reasonably suspect he is “armed and dangerous.” Three decades later in Whren v. United States, the Court said reasonable suspicion of a traffic violation is enough to justify stopping a car, even when that allegation is a pretext for an unrelated criminal investigation. And when a traffic stop is legally justified, the Court has held in other cases, police may question the driver about unrelated matters and may order both the driver and any passengers out of the car in the interest of officer safety.

The impact of those rulings was clear when Terrell and Lewis pulled over Rosales and Lasyone. The cops ordered both of them to exit the car, and they interrogated them about their places of residence, itineraries, criminal histories, and personal habits.

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Another Federal Judge Strikes Down New York’s $75 Billion Climate Superfund Law as Unconstitutional — Second Court Torpedoes Hochul’s Climate Cash Grab

New York Democrats just lost again.

A second federal judge has now struck down Gov. Kathy Hochul’s Climate Change Superfund Act, the Albany scheme that tried to shake down American and foreign energy companies for $75 billion over alleged “local effects” of climate change.

According to a Department of Justice press release issued Monday, U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel of the Southern District of New York granted the United States’ motion for summary judgment last week, declared the statute unconstitutional, and permanently enjoined the state from enforcing it.

Castel, a George W. Bush appointee, found that New York’s law is preempted on two independent grounds: the federal Clean Air Act and the foreign affairs doctrine. The court also held that the United States has standing to defend its sovereign authority over interstate emissions and foreign policy.

That is the second knockout in a month.

As The Gateway Pundit reported earlier this month, Chief Judge Brenda K. Sannes, an Obama appointee in the Northern District of New York, already shredded the same statute, calling it an “unusual and sweeping” law that was “simply beyond the limits of state law.”

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Delaware Judge Orders Fox Corp. to Dump Hundreds of Files on Murdoch, Deleted Texts, Phone Hacking, and the Dominion Settlement In Massive Shareholder Lawsuit

A Delaware judge has just ordered Fox Corporation to hand over a mountain of internal records in a long-running shareholder lawsuit aimed at Rupert Murdoch, his son Lachlan, and other Fox directors. The files cover phone hacking, board minutes, emails, and the deletion of Rupert Murdoch’s text messages.

The order landed last week from Vice Chancellor Bonnie David. Fox fought to keep the material sealed. The judge sided with the plaintiffs across the board.

According to NPR, the haul includes roughly 700 documents that mention “phone hacking,” years of Fox board meeting minutes, emails from former Ford CEO and longtime Fox director Jacques Nasser’s Ford accounts, and a list of every email address ever used by Nasser or Rupert Murdoch.

Shareholders’ lawyers will also get sealed records from the still-pending Smartmatic case that deal with what the court calls Murdoch’s “spoliation” of records, legal speak for wiping texts.

The case was filed about three years ago by five New York City public-employee pension funds and Oregon’s public employee retirement system.

Those are Democrat-run, taxpayer-backed institutions using Delaware corporate law to try to pin Fox’s legal bills on the Murdochs personally.

The Associated Press reported earlier that the same funds accuse Murdoch and other Fox leaders of ignoring “red flags” after 2020.

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