The Trump Justice Department has stepped into a major religious liberty battle, backing an order of Catholic nuns challenging a New York law that would force them to house biological men with female patients in their residential hospice facility. The post DOJ Backs Catholic Nuns Fighting New York Law Requiring Biological Men to Be Housed with Women in Hospice Care appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
A judge who has criticized aspects of the US immigration crackdown may get another shot at probing whether ex-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and others were in contempt of court by deporting two planeloads of alleged Venezuelan gang members last year.
Alan Dershowitz, a former defense attorney for late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, will appear before the House Oversight Committee on July 20 for a transcribed interview, according to two sources familiar with the planning. Dershowitz helped secure a controversial plea deal for Epstein in 2008, in which the disgraced financier agreed to plead guilty to…
Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz is prepared to sit for a transcribed interview regarding his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in front of the House oversight committee next month. The closed-door interview is scheduled for July 20, according to a source familiar with the planning. Earlier this month, House oversight committee Chairman […]
A veteran federal prosecutor's grand jury misconduct is so pervasive that the Justice Department now expects to review more than 100 cases she handled going back to 2007.A court filing in the Northern District of Illinois names the collapsed prosecution of the "Broadview Six" as the case that started it all. News reports identify the lead prosecutor as Sheri Mecklenburg, a nearly two-decade veteran of the Justice Department whose conduct before a grand jury unraveled a high-profile case against six Democratic officials and activists arrested for protesting outside a Chicago Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility during the Trump administration's "Operation Midway Blitz" deportation campaign.Prosecutors made three attempts to indict the protesters on a rare felony conspiracy charge.During those attempts, Mecklenburg allegedly dismissed grand jurors who were skeptical of the government's case, had private conversations with grand jurors outside formal proceedings, and told jurors she would "never ask you to charge somebody if I didn't think there was probable cause." One dismissed juror had told her the case was "a crock of s— then and I still think it is.""I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts," U.S. District Judge April Perry said. "That trust has been broken."The Broadview Six case collapsed entirely, with all charges dismissed with prejudice.A separate court filing revealed Mecklenburg had ex parte contact with grand jurors in an unrelated arson case, telling them she "can prove this case" and that "we don't catch the smart ones." The government now estimates her conduct will trigger a review of grand jury minutes in more than 100 cases since 2007.Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) called Trump's Justice Department a campaign to "bully, prosecute, punish and silence" political foes. Slate noted the Department of Justice admitted to "weaponizing a prosecution against Trump's foes."Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) confirmed Mecklenburg's detail to the Senate Judiciary Committee was terminated after the misconduct became public.
Alan Dershowitz is scheduled to sit down with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on July 20 as part of its sprawling investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and the government's handling of his case, according to Politico."I asked to be allowed to set the record straight and correct various misconceptions," Dershowitz said in a text message. "I look forward to doing so."The prominent defense attorney, whose past clients include O.J. Simpson and President Donald Trump, was part of the legal team that negotiated Epstein's controversial 2008 plea deal, which let the financier plead guilty to Florida state charges, including soliciting prostitution from a minor, and avoid federal sex-trafficking charges. Critics have long argued the lenient deal allowed Epstein, who died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019, to keep abusing girls for years before his later arrest.Dershowitz, who has said he wants to testify publicly and "about everything," has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing connected to Epstein's crimes. He has also proclaimed his innocence over an accusation by Virginia Giuffre, who alleged Epstein trafficked her to him. Giuffre withdrew the claim in 2022, saying she "may have made a mistake." She died last year.Dershowitz's appearance would add to a roster of high-profile figures the committee has questioned, including Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates and Ghislaine Maxwell, as Epstein's survivors continue demanding answers. The panel is also expected to interview investor Leon Black, whose Epstein ties have faced scrutiny for years.
A federal judge on Monday struck down the Trump administration's revamped voter-citizenship database, ruling that federal agencies broke the law by building a centralized system that swept up the private data of millions of Americans and wrongly flagged U.S. citizens as non-citizens.In a sharply worded opinion, U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan vacated the 2025 overhaul of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system, along with two related privacy notices issued by the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration. She found the changes violated the Social Security Act, the Privacy Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act."[T]he federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote," Sooknanan wrote. "This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens."The overhaul followed President Donald Trump's March 2025 executive order on elections that expanded SAVE to include records of natural-born citizens, tap Social Security data including SSNs, as well as let states run their entire voter rolls through the system in bulk.The judge, an appointee of President Joe Biden, noted internal records showed the agencies knew the database was "not in compliance" with the Privacy Act and that accuracy shortfalls "could cause incomplete or false results." Naturalized citizens with outdated Social Security files were among those wrongly flagged as non-citizens, with some forced to prove citizenship within 30 days or lose their registrations. An investigation in one Texas county found a quarter of the system's "non-citizen matches" were people who had already proven citizenship, the court filing detailed.The case, brought by the League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, follows months of warnings about the error-prone system, which even several red states refused to feed their voter data.
A federal judge in Minnesota has tossed out multiple Department of Justice (DOJ) grand jury subpoenas aimed at Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) and other officials in the state. U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz wrote there was “no doubt” the DOJ issued the subpoenas to “harass” political opponents of President…
