Tag: judges

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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Federal appeals court orders Trump admin to release Los Angeles homeless funds

federal appeals court on Thursday ordered the Department of Housing and Urban Development to release federal funding that has already been allocated to homeless service organizations in Los Angeles but was not distributed. 

The court order was in response to the Trump administration’s attempt to oversee how homeless service organizations in Los Angeles can seek millions of dollars in federal funding, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The Los Angles Homeless Services Authority was seeking up to $239 million on behalf of dozens of organizations, but HUD suspended LAHSA in June, citing a record of mismanagement, and directed the groups to apply directly through the federal government.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday largely upheld a district court ruling in a 2-1 split, which restored LAHSA as the applicant for the organizations.

The court determined that HUD “chose to suspend LAHSA at a time when it would leave the Los Angeles region particularly vulnerable” with ill effects on “vulnerable populations, critical programs and ongoing services.” 

“It is likely that its plan is unworkable and, at this late stage, extremely difficult if not virtually impossible to implement,” the decision added.

The new deadline for LAHSA to apply for HUD funding is Oct. 14. The original deadline was the end of August.

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New York Teen Forced Out of School After Judge Denies Medical Exemption

A senior at a New York high school can no longer attend class as of today, after a federal judge declined to extend a medical exemption from the school’s vaccine mandates for the current school year.

Last year, U.S. District Judge Gary Brown of the Eastern District of New York ordered a New York school district to allow Sarah Doe, who had obtained a medical exemption, to attend high school during the 2025-2026 school year.

But in a ruling issued late Wednesday in Jane Doe v. Oceanside Union Free School District, Brown denied the renewed medical exemption request for the 2026-2027 school year.

Last year, Brown granted an emergency preliminary injunction allowing Sarah to attend 11th grade without receiving the third dose of the hepatitis B (Hep B) vaccine — the only recommended shot she hadn’t taken at the time — because her severe reactions to previous doses had left her sick and disabled.

When the lawsuit was filed, at least six treating physicians certified to the school district that Sarah could be harmed by taking the shot, according to court documents. The district nonetheless repeatedly denied her exemption requests. Since then, more doctors have affirmed that assessment.

Brown said last year’s decision rested in part on a physician’s report that Sarah experienced an anaphylactic reaction to an earlier dose, and evidence she had received the first two doses and had some immunity.

Brown also based his previous decision on an appeals court precedent stating that there had never been definitive proof that hepatitis B could be transmitted through “non-parenteral” routes like saliva — meaning passed in ways not transmitted through blood or broken skin.

After attending school last year under the court order, Sarah applied for a medical exemption from the Hep B vaccine and also the second meningococcal vaccine required for this school year.

The school district again denied her request. Sarah’s lawyers responded by filing an emergency motion seeking a new court order allowing her to return to school this year.

Explaining his latest decision, Brown said this year’s circumstances were “substantially different.” This year, Sarah would be attending school without two of the mandated vaccines, instead of one. And, he said, there was insufficient medical evidence showing that she could not receive the meningococcal vaccine.

“At the end of the day, Sarah is a child who just wants to go to school,” her attorney, Sujata Gibson, told The Defender.

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PETA Appears to Run Cover for Brutal Monkey Torturer After Obama-Appointed Judge Reverses Trump’s Harvard Funding Freeze

PETA has spent three years telling its donors that the “lights are out” on Harvard neurobiologist Margaret Livingstone’s cruel infant-monkey lab, but federal records say otherwise.

A new notice of funding, thanks at least in part to an Obama-appointed judge reversing President Donald Trump’s Harvard funding freeze, came just sixteen months after PETA toasted “the end of Margaret Livingstone’s career as tormenter of baby monkeys.”

NIH RePORTER still lists Livingstone as the contact principal investigator on a National Eye Institute award at Harvard Medical School with an award notice dated September 11, 2026, fiscal year 2026 funding of $850,148; a budget period running September 1, 2026, through August 31, 2027; and a project end date of August 31, 2028.

Livingstone was also awarded a new grant on April 17, 2025, with fiscal year 2025 funding of $576,474; a project start date of May 1, 2025; a subsequent award notice dated June 1, 2026, for fiscal year 2026 funding of $576,201; and a project end date of April 30, 2029.

PETA’s May 27, 2025, release claimed a “massive victory” and said funding for the baby-monkey experiments “has been terminated.”

A PETA news post updated May 28, 2025, said “the lights have finally gone out on Margaret Livingstone’s dark experiments on baby monkeys” and that the work was on Harvard’s list of canceled federal grants.

PETA2 told younger readers the same week, “the lights are finally out” and “NIH just pulled the plug.

NIH itself posted on May 29, 2025, that it had “terminated funding at Harvard University for studies that included sewing the eyes of young monkeys shut.”

Then, a Boston judge gave the money back.

On September 3, 2025, U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs, an Obama appointee, granted Harvard summary judgment, vacated the administration’s freeze orders and termination letters, and barred the government from giving those letters any force.

The NIH termination letter dated May 6, 2025, was among the letters she set aside. The judgment vacated “all freezes and terminations of funding to Harvard made pursuant to the Freeze Orders and Termination Letters on or after April 14, 2025.”

The Daily Caller reported this week that taxpayer money is still moving through multiple Livingstone grants, including the new $850,000 award posted this month and a multi-year grant running through 2029.

PETA’s own description of the “maternal deprivation” horrors in Livingstone’s lab includes infant macaques taken from their mothers, some raised with only a cloth surrogate, some fitted with vision-distorting goggles or strobe-like conditions for months, some with eyelids sewn shut, some implanted with electrode arrays, and many later killed and dissected.

Former NIH Director Francis Collins privately called related maternal-deprivation work “third-rate,” according to the Daily Caller.

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Appeals Court Upholds Hawaii’s Rules For Gun Buyers

Hawaii’s rules for gun buyers were upheld by a federal appeals court Tuesday in a ruling that reversed a lower court’s injunction.

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii by a vote of 6 to 5.

In Todd Yukutake and David Kikukawa v. Anne Lopez and the City and County of Honolulu, the court found that the law imposing a list of rules on gun buyers is constitutional under the June 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen.

Writing for the majority of the Ninth Circuit’s en banc panel, Judge John B. Owens stated that a footnote in the Bruen decision holds that objective, “shall-issue” licensing standards comply with the Second Amendment.

A “shall-issue” standard means the state must grant a permit to a qualified applicant.

The dissenting judges say this is a misapplication of the Bruen standard.

The law in question requires a state-issued license to purchase a handgun. The licensing process requires applicants to submit fingerprints, a mental health check and their Social Security number. It also sets a 30-day limit for purchasing the gun once the license is issued. If the licensee fails to meet that deadline, the process must be restarted.

Once the firearm purchase is complete, the new gun owner is required to provide information about the gun to the police department. Under some circumstances the gun must be inspected by the police.

Under Bruen, a gun law is constitutional if it fits the plain text of the Second Amendment and has a historical analogue from the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification.

The majority wrote that footnote nine of the Bruen decision allows requiring a license to carry a handgun in public for protection as long as the licensing requirements are based on objective standards.

Owens wrote that the plaintiffs failed to show that the law effectively denied them their Second Amendment rights or impeded their ability to acquire firearms. He stated that, according to footnote nine, “non-abusive, shall-issue laws comport with the Second Amendment.”

Joining Owens in reversing the injunction were Chief Judge Mary H. Murguia and judges Kim McLane Wardlaw, Jacqueline H. Nguyen, Gabriel P. Sanchez, and Holly A. Thomas.

Judge Ryan Nelson joined Judges Daniel Bress, Lawrence VanDyke, Bridget Bade, and Danielle J. Forrest in dissenting in part.

The dissenters wrote that footnote nine does not apply since it covers the carrying of a firearm and not the acquisition of one. They also noted that the state did not identify a historical analog for the licensing requirement.

The lawsuit was filed on Oct. 21, 2021, by the Honolulu County residents. The pair said the licensing process was an unconstitutional infringement on their Second Amendment rights. In August 2021 the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii found in their favor.

Gun rights activists say this is not the end of the case. Brandon Combs, president of the Firearms Policy Council, called the decision a “roadmap for abusing gun owners.”

Alan Gottlieb, executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, vowed to continue the legal fight.

“This case will be headed to the Supreme Court and I believe that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will be overturned,” Gottlieb stated in an email to The Epoch Times.

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