A CDC policy of deleting former employees' emails after 90 days is "probably illegal" according to a ruling by U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras on Friday.
A Trump-aligned legal group, America First Legal (AFL), had requested emails from former CDC employees and was told they were deleted 90 days after they stopped being employees, which prompted them to sue the CDC.
The CDC claimed that it uses the National Archives and Records Association’s (NARA) Capstone policy for emails since it falls under the Health and Human Services (HHS) department, which does the same thing.
The CDC also claimed that the deleted records were "adequately preserved elsewhere."
The NARA policy was adopted in 2016 after the CDC said it petitioned NARA to do so, but there is no record NARA ever granted the permission.
“The Biden-Harris Administration’s politicization of records management must end, and we look forward to holding them accountable for their illegal actions in all such circumstances,” AFL’s Executive Director Gene Hamilton said in a press release.
The AFL wanted the records due to the agency's support for teaching gender ideology in the classroom.
After obtaining the CDC document “LGBTQ Inclusivity in Schools: A Self-Assessment Tool,” the AFL sued HHS and NARA in April.
Contreras has now ordered the CDC to stop deleting employees' emails until the previous deadline under GRS 6.1 had passed or until the court ordered that they could do so.
“This is another historic courtroom victory for America First Legal against widespread government corruption,” AFL President Stephen Miller and former advisor to President Trump stated.
/1🚨BREAKING🚨
We just secured a preliminary injunction in our lawsuit against the Biden-Harris CDC for illegally deleting employees’ emails.
The National Archives and Attorney General Garland must now work to recover illegally deleted records and make CDC comply with the law: pic.twitter.com/OsYByavu06
— America First Legal (@America1stLegal) August 9, 2024
AFL said it would continue to hold agencies accountable and pursue justice through the courts.
It probably won't stop the CDC from continuing to encourage the teaching of gender ideology in classrooms.
But it may at least make them be up front about it.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A federal judge has ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to answer a $30 million wrongful death lawsuit filed on behalf of the estate of Ashli Babbitt.
The unarmed protester was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, like many others, opposing the certification of Joe Biden as president.
In a crowd in the building, in which two individuals already had dislodged the glass panels in the lobby doors, she was raising herself into the opening when Capitol police officer Michael Byrd shot and killed her.
The order for the government to respond was from Judge Ana Reyes in Washington.
Her order also noted Judicial Watch can file a reply brief by August 23 in its petition to have the case returned to Babbitt's home in San Diego where it was originally filed.
The 35-year-old Babbitt owned and operated a successful pool business with her husband, Aaron.
She traveled alone from San Diego to Washington to attend a "Women for America First" rally on that day.
The lawsuit was filed earlier this year, and it cites a long list of prior incidents involving Byrd, the Capitol Police, and others.
A list of parties, including Congress, "knew or should have known that Lt. Byrd was prone to behave in a dangerous or otherwise incompetent manner."
Another hearing is set for Sept. 20.
Tom Fitton, of Judicial Watch, said, "Ashli Babbitt's family is thrilled the $30 million wrongful death lawsuit for her outrageous killing is moving full speed ahead."
After she was shot, the FBI opened a criminal investigation of Babbitt, and at the same authorities refused to prosecute Byrd for the shooting.
The delays and uncertainty surrounding special counsel Jack Smith's legal warfare against Donald Trump took yet another turn this week amid the government's request for additional time to decide how to move forward with its election interference case in which the former president is a defendant.
As The Hill reports, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Friday approved Smith's motion for an extension of time to assess the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling on presidential immunity on the case against Trump, a move that went unopposed by the former president's legal team.
It was on Thursday that the government's team made its request for more time to evaluate how its lawyers believe the case against Trump should move forward in light of the SCOTUS decision.
The difficulties for Smith arose in the wake of the thigh court's ruling that granted Trump at least some degree of immunity for acts deemed to have been part of his “official” duties while in office.
After months of appeal-induced delay, the case was finally returned to Chutkan's jurisdiction, and that is when she weighed in on Smith's request.
Smith sought a three-week halt to a number of upcoming deadlines, indicating to many the unlikelihood that a potentially riveting evidentiary hearing complete with witness testimony might take place in advance of the presidential election.
In asking for additional time, Smith's team wrote, “The Government continues to assess the new precedent set forth last month in the Supreme Court's decision in Trump v. United States. Although those consultations are well underway, the Government has not finalized its position on the most appropriate schedule for the parties to brief issues related to the decision.”
Though originally scheduled for trial on March 4 of this year, a series of subsequent appeals resulted in noteworthy delays in the case's progress, and the Supreme Court's blockbuster immunity ruling has now all but guaranteed that proceedings will be stalled far beyond November.
As the Associated Press has noted, the justices' ruling requires a new round of fact-finding regarding the nature of the conduct at issue in the election interference case, the results of which could force Smith to make radical alterations to the charges against Trump.
The ability of either of the parties to appeal rulings made throughout that process adds even greater uncertainty to the timeline, which Trump foes had hoped would see him face trial -- and perhaps even a conviction -- before voters go to the polls.
With Chutkan's grant of additional time, both parties to the case will continue working on their respective status reports in which they will offer recommendations on where the case should go next.
As such, the reports that were initially set for submission on Friday are now due on Aug. 30.
In addition, a status conference that had been slated to take place on Aug. 16 has been pushed back until Sept. 5.
Legal observers and voters alike now await the filing of Trump's and Smith's status reports that will offer key insights as to how the government might attempt to salvage its case against the former president, knowing full well that nothing determinative is likely to unfold before Election Day.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The Supreme Court is being asked to make it easier for Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Superior in Wisconsin to run its ministry to help "the most vulnerable members of our society," the poor, elderly, disabled and vulnerable.
The Wisconsin state Supreme Court, which has a majority of leftists at this point, said in a 4-3 decision that such a ministry did not count as a "typical" religious activity.
If that ruling stands, the state then would force Catholic Charities into the state-controlled unemployment compensation program and prevent the organization from joining the better, and less costly, program run by the Wisconsin Catholic Church.
The case is Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin Labor &I Industry Review Commission.
With the help of Becket, the charities organization is asking the Supreme Court to overturn the state ruling and protect its freedom to join the church program.
Becket explained, "Most Catholic dioceses have a social ministry arm that serves those in need. Catholic Charities carries out this important work for the Diocese of Superior, Wisconsin, by helping the disabled, elderly, and those living in poverty – regardless of their faith. This requirement to serve everyone in need comes directly from Catholic social teaching and advances the Church's religious mission by carrying out the corporal works of mercy."
"Catholic Charities Bureau carries out our diocese's essential ministry of caring for the most vulnerable members of our society," explained James Powers, bishop for the diocese. "We pray the court will recognize that this work of improving the human condition is rooted in Christ's call to care for those in need."
Becket pointed out that under Wisconsin law, non-profits that are operated for a religious purpose are generally exempt from the state's unemployment compensation program.
However, the state's court decision claimed that Catholic Charities is not exempt because it serves anyone in need, and does not limit its help to only Catholics.
"The court said that Catholic Charities could qualify for an exemption only if it limited its hiring to Catholics and tried to convert those it served – even though the Catholic Church forbids Catholics from conditioning assistance on acceptance of the church's teachings," Becket said.
Catholic Charities is now asking the Supreme Court to take this case and ensure it can receive a religious exemption from the state law like all other churches in Wisconsin.
"It shouldn't take a theologian to understand that serving the poor is a religious duty for Catholics," said Becket spokesman Eric Rassbach. "But the Wisconsin Supreme Court embraced the absurd conclusion that Catholic Charities has no religious purpose. We're asking the Supreme Court to step in and fix that mistake."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Special Counsel Jack Smith, assigned by the Biden administration to prosecute President Donald Trump on a variety of election interference claims, already has seen one of his cases thrown out because the judge determined he wasn't properly appointed.
He's trying to get an appeals court to overlook his problematic hiring in that dispute.
But now, in his other case against Trump, where he's demanded the need for speed throughout, trying to get a trial and conviction before the election, he's suddenly flipflopped.
Now he wants to slow things down.
This case against Trump claims he engaged in a "criminal scheme" when he pointed out discrepancies and possible problems in the 2020 electoral vote count.
Smith alleges Trump's pursuit of what he considered electoral checks actually were "fake electors." And Smith claims Trump demanded "sham election crime investigations" and more.
In fact, that election now is considered tainted because of the $400 million plus Mark Zuckerberg handed to local election officials mostly to recruit Democrat voters – a scheme that multiple states now have outlawed. Further, the FBI interfered in the election by falsely claiming that accurate reporting about Biden family scandals documented in a computer Hunter Biden abandoned were Russian disinformation. A subsequent survey showed that move alone probably cost Trump the election.
Smith has insisted throughout the case, aided by Judge Tanya Chutkan, that things be hurried. He's opposed any sort of appellate review rights, and shoved the case so quickly that a reasonable record wasn't even developed on key points.
But now he wants a delay. "The government continues to assess the new precedent set forth last month in the Supreme Court's decision in Trump v. United States. Although those consultations are well underway, the government has not finalized its position on the most appropriate schedule for the parties to brief issues related to the decision," he said.
That Supreme Court decision, in fact, said presidents have absolute immunity for some actions in office, and no immunity for others.
The problem is that the lower courts never reviewed that dispute before the Supreme Court got the case, so it returned the fight to lower courts to determine that.
Chutkan immediately jumped into action and set an aggressive hearing schedule, a campaign that Trump's lawyers have opposed all along. And now Smith is dragging his feet.
A report from constitutional expert Jonathan Turley explains the faceoff.
He explained, "For over a year, Special Counsel Jack Smith has made one element the overriding priority in his prosecution of former president Donald Trump: speed. Smith repeatedly moved to curtail Trump's appellate rights and demand expedited appeals to try to secure a conviction before the election. In that effort, he found an equally motivated judge in U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who virtually turned her court into a rocket docket to try Trump. Now, in a neck-breaking change of direction, Smith is trying to slow down Chutkan who appears again ready to pull out the stops in this case."
He said only hours after Chutkan got the case back she was scheduling hearings – now to Smith's dismay.
He wants a three-week delay to consider what's next.
Turley pointedly noted that, "It is not clear if the press and pundits will now charge Smith with 'slow walking' the case," as they earlier accused Trump of doing.
"The question is whether Smith is considering a drastic move in light of the calendar and the ruling. There is, of course, always the possibility that he either throws in the towel or opts for a post-election trial. That would certainly go against the grain of Smith, who has always pushed both the law and the calendar to the breaking point. However, as some of us have been arguing for months, he may no longer view a trial as a plausible objective," Turley said.
"There is also the possibility that Smith will do something that some of us have discussed over the last year: pare down his case. Smith has always been undone by his appetite. As shown in his 8-0 reversal in his conviction of former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, Smith has rarely shown moderation as a prosecutor."
He pointed out that Smith's standard is to "load up" a case with charges, and the result is that the cases then get bogged down in various issues because of that.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A federal judge has ordered a pro se lawsuit filed by an injured J6 prisoner to be served on Attorney General Merrick Garland and others, a move the plaintiff suggests is the first time such a case has reached the stage of being an active case on the federal court docket.
A report at the Gateway Pundit said U.S. District Court Judge Rachel P. Kovner, "presiding over J6 hostage Ryan Samsel's pro se case for emergency medical treatment," told the U.S. Marshals Service to serve the defendants with the complaint Samsel filed in federal court.
Samsel sued Garland, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Metropolitan Detention Center, and the Washington Treatment Correctional Facility in separate cases.
Samsel now is being held in New York, and filed Writ of Habeas Corpus and Writ of Mandamus petitions on his own behalf.
Samsel also has filed his own motions demanding the federal court issue an order to prevent U.S. Marshals from interfering with his medical care.
He's seeking an order for a doctor's exam and then treatment.
Kovner has yet to rule on Samsel's request for a restraining order, but said the defendants must be served with the legal action.
His physical condition involves blood clots that threaten him.
A legal expert told the Gateway Pundit, "Ryan Samsel has been beaten up, he is brain injured. And his prior attorney doesn't really want to be named because she faced retaliation with election fraud litigation. She did not even put her name on any of Samsel's filings, she just worked behind the scenes investigating, and she got sanctioned — and it was not her lawsuit, and her name was not on it. The judges are just so vindictive."
One of the allegations is that Samsel is being abused because he declines to make statements against President Donald Trump.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The U.S. government's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been involved in some of the biggest health scandals in years.
It's been involved in recommending the controversial HPV shots, as well as promoting LGBT ideology. And then it was caught up in the maelstrom of the COVID shots, which actually injured tens of thousands of Americans.
And now its reputation has taken another major hit, with a judge's determination it was breaking the law by deleting information that should have been kept for government records.
Politico reported the ruling from U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras found that the agency probably has been violating the law for years by deleting employees' emails after they quit their jobs.
The decision came in a lawsuit brought by America First Legal Foundation, which pursued a Freedom of Information Act request for records about an LGBT-promoting publication by the CDC.
"After months of wrangling, the CDC identified three employees who worked on the document but indicated that two of them had departed the agency and their emails had likely been destroyed," the report noted.
The judge ordered the agency to halt such erasures immediately.
The ruling, by the judge appointed by Barack Obama, said, "The court concludes that CDC's policy and practice of disposing of former employees' emails ninety days after the end of their employment is likely unlawful."
He said the agency's practice of destroying emails was not approved by the National Archives.
Government records normally must be kept for periods ranging from three to seven years.
"The available evidence suggests that CDC did indeed commit to manage and dispose of its employees' emails pursuant to the [Capstone] schedule," Contreras wrote. "Because CDC disposed of former employees' email records pursuant to a schedule that was not approved by the Archivist, it is likely that … records removed or deleted under the CDC's unapproved policy were removed or deleted unlawfully."
"The Biden-Harris Administration was actively destroying the records of federal employees at the CDC in blatant violation of the law — and we are pleased that the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has ordered a stop to their illegal conduct," said America First Legal's executive director Gene Hamilton.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
America's abortion industry giant, Planned Parenthood, has taken hundreds of millions of dollars over the years from taxpayers for its campaign to destroy the unborn. Of late, it's added to its revenue stream by soliciting those who believe they are transgender and providing "treatment."
Now that agenda may be backfiring, as a 20-year-old woman has accused, in a lawsuit, the megacorporation of pushing her into a gender transition when she was 18, leaving her with lifelong damages.
A report in the Daily Mail noted Cristina Hineman has filed a lawsuit against the organization that is America's largest single provider of abortion and contraception.
The case accuses of Planned Parenthood of giving her testosterone following an evaluation that included a 30-minute consultation with a nurse practitioner.
She charges that her permanent side effects now include hair on the back of her hands and face and constant discomfort.
The report explains Hineman also charges her sexual responses have been changed and a double mastectomy left her chest scarred and "alternately numb and raw."
The report says Hineman went to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Hudson, New York, in November 2021 when she turned 18, seeking testosterone after her parents were skeptical about her claim to "gender dysphoria."
"The teenager was reportedly instructed to fill out a consent form for 'masculinizing hormone therapy.' According to medical records, a nurse practitioner noted that Hineman had 'consulted with a mental health provider.' The nurse and Hineman then discussed 'expected changes,' such as growing a beard and body hair and a deepening voice. The two also reportedly discussed that 'changes to fertility may be permanent or reversible,'" the report said.
But only a year into treatments, she discovered her gender was not the root of her issues, and regretted the process. In an interview with Free Press, she said, "I was brainwashed… A lot of people say that adults should be able to do whatever they want."
The report noted that her issues included self-harm, depression, anxiety and autism.
She now considers herself a detransitioner, someone who has acknowledged their sex at birth.
"If you have mental illness that's clouding your view, or you're so misinformed about what gender dysphoria even means, then you cannot consent to such invasive treatments," she explained.
Her action seeks unspecified damages from Planned Parenthood.
Other detransitioners already have announced their lawsuits against others in the transgender business, including individual doctors and Kaiser Permanente.
The Free Press report explained Planned Parenthood now is the nation's leading provider of gender transition hormones.
Her legal fight charges Planned Parenthood with negligence and failure to obtain informed consent. Planned Parenthood is fighting the case.
The Free Press report added, "Her suit comes as the U.S. is increasingly alone in championing hormonal and surgical interventions to swiftly transition gender-distressed young people. A growing list of European countries, including Sweden, Finland, and the UK, are restricting these sometimes irreversible treatments for young people and favoring an approach that encourages therapy to address all the causes of a patient's distress."
And some two dozen Republican-led states have adopted limits on what kind of treatments can be inflicted on minors.
"Treatment without a competent evaluation shouldn't be foisted on you whether you're 15 or 30," said Kevin Keller, a lawyer consulting on detransitioner cases.
"Vulnerability is the issue. If there's no comprehensive screening in place before a medical intervention that's going to have permanent effects," that's a breach of duty, he explains.
The report noted there already is a second lawsuit over the issue against Planned Parenthood, charging the infliction of "great pain and anguish."
Hineman described, "There was no conversation about the actual process of what the hormones are going to do in your body; it's just you take the shot and start becoming more male."
Voters in two different minority groups cannot combine efforts to claim a Texas political map stripped their voting power, according to a federal appeals court decision that could win congressional seats for Republicans in the South.
Conservatives had claimed that Democrats were misusing the Voting Rights Act to create voting districts favoring their party in Galveston, Texas, and the appeals court agreed.
The same thing was happening in other parts of Texas as well as Mississippi and Louisiana. Fixing the problem could turn a number of blue districts red again and potentially shift the balance of power in the House.
Section 2 of the law prohibits voting practices that discriminate based on race or color, but the appeals court decided it does not support coalition claims of multiple groups acting together.
In many of the affected districts, no single group comprises a majority, but several groups together do.
Until 2021, Galveston was a combined Black and Hispanic majority district. When redistricting eliminated that makeup, the the NAACP and the Justice Department sued Texas, but they have now lost.
They got their way with the lower court, but the appeals court reversed the decision.
Section 2’s language specifies protections for a “class” of citizens, not “classes,” the court discovered, which means that political alliances between different minority groups are not covered by the law.
Appeals court Judge Edith Jones wrote that the 5th Circuit refused to rubber stamp litigation “not compelled by law or the Supreme Court, whose principal effects are to (a) supplant legislative redistricting by elected representatives with judicial fiat; (b) encourage divisively counting citizens by race and ethnicity; and (c) displace the fundamental principle of democratic rule by the majority with balkanized interests.”
The ruling is a major one because it will prevent what turns out to be rule by the minority in many cases.
The deck has seemed unfairly stacked against Republicans for the past few decades, and now we know why.
The silver lining has been that it forced Republicans to make some inroads with Black and Hispanic voters, which means they could be stronger than ever in those areas.
The House is a toss-up in November with a very small Republican majority under threat by numerous retirements.
This ruling could be a big boost for them to try to hold on.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Unions representing public sector employees routinely insist that their union officers, public employees themselves, be given time to do the union's partisan activism.
At the expense of taxpayers.
But that's ending in Arizona, after the state Supreme Court struck it down as an abuse of taxpayers.
The procedure commonly is called "release time" and allows union officers to continue getting their full pay and benefits from taxpayers while doing their partisan union chores.
But the state constitution bans that, the ruling said.
"Today's decision is the first time that a state high court has squarely struck down release time as unconstitutional. It came after the Goldwater Institute sued the city of Phoenix on behalf of two city employees and taxpayers who objected to being forced to pay for unions to engage in recruiting, political lobbying, and other practices that don't benefit the taxpaying public," explained the Goldwater Institute, which pursued the fight.
The court decision explained, "The costs and benefits here are so one-sided" making the procedure "an impermissible subsidy to a private entity."
The problem, the institute explained, is that, "government workers are released from the jobs they were hired to perform to work full-time for the union instead – yet are still paid their taxpayer-funded salaries and benefits. While on release time, these government employees engage in political and lobbying activities, attend union conferences and meetings, recruit new members to the union, and do other things that advance the union's own interests, not those of the public."
Goldwater's report explained, "In this case, the city signed a Memorandum of Understanding, or MOU, with a local unit of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees union. Under that MOU, the city gave the union several release time benefits, including four full-time release positions. In other words, the city paid four employees to work exclusively for the union on the taxpayers' dime."
The contractual paperwork claimed that the four paid positions providing for union work was part of the "compensation" paid to all employees.
But Goldwatear noted that's a problem: "If release time was being paid as part of their 'total compensation,' then it violates the free expression and association rights of these employees to force them to give up their compensation to fund the political speech of union representatives with whom these employees disagree."
The institute explained that's the same message from the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2018 Janus ruling.
"On the other hand, if release time did not count as part of their compensation, and was instead paid for out of the city's own pocket, then it was a direct subsidy to the union, which violates the Gift Clause, the part of Arizona Constitution that forbids government from giving public resources to private entities," Goldwater reported.
The state's highest court determined, 7-0, that "the city pays for release time … and that means release time violates the Gift Clause. First, what the city pays is so disproportionate to what the city gets in return (which is effectively nothing), that paying for release time is effectively a handout, which is illegal. Second, the justices rejected the city's argument that as long as the MOU as a whole passes muster, any specific expenditure of public resources included within it must also be OK."
But the court found, "It would negate the purposes of the Gift Clause if scrutiny could be avoided merely because a gift is contained within a larger contract. …In all Gift Clause cases, courts must probe the reality of the transaction" and including release time provisions "as part of a larger contract does not insulate them from review."
The court also had doubts about any beneficial public purpose at all.
"The plain language of the Gift Clause aims to prevent subsidies to private individuals, associations, and corporations," the court said.
In this case, taxpayers were being forced to pay for employees to do private "union" work.
The institute said, "Today's ruling is a watershed decision that ensures taxpayer dollars will be spent to advance public interests, not private special interests, including the politically powerful special interests of government labor unions. And that will have nationwide ramifications, too. Just weeks ago, the Texas Supreme Court issued a lengthy decision making clear that the Lone Star State's Constitution also bars government from giving away taxpayer money to private interests. Government entities throughout Arizona—and the United States—should take notice when they seek to transfer taxpayer funds to their political cronies."