#dc circuit

A federal appellate panel strongly suggested Thursday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's mission to punish Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., for reminding troops they "can refuse illegal orders" is going absolutely nowhere.

On the heels of a ruling in the court below that practically begged Hegseth to stop threatening the First Amendment rights of millions of military retirees to punish his boss' political rival over a video, the D.C. Circuit heard the DOJ's best pitch on Thursday for reviving the disciplinary action.

Erum Salam at MS NOW:

The Justice Department on Tuesday requested that a federal appeals court erase the seditious conspiracy convictions of a group of leaders of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys — two right-wing extremist groups who were involved in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. The request asks the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to vacate the individuals’ convictions, effectively erasing their guilty verdicts, and to dismiss the charges with prejudice. A dismissal with prejudice prevents the government from bringing the cases again.

In January 2025, President Donald Trump pardoned or commuted the prison sentences of most of the roughly 1,500 people charged in connection with the 2021 attack on the Capitol after Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in 2020. While most of the defendants received pardons, wiping away their convictions, Trump only commuted the sentences of 14 high-profile defendants to time served, which upheld their convictions while allowing them to leave prison. The request by the Justice Department would go a step further and erase all the convictions for the extremist group leaders, including Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who didn’t receive pardons last January.

The Trump Regime’s US Department of Injustice requested that a federal appeals court erase the seditious conspiracy convictions of leaders of far-right groups Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys.

See Also:

U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit Oral Argument: United States v. Trump, a case concerning whether former President Donald Trump is immune from prosecution for his alleged role in the January 6 Capitol attack – LIVE at 9:30am ET on C-SPAN3 https://www.c-span.org/video/?532581-...

Union Membership Decreases. The percentage of workers who are union members dropped to 10.1 percent in 2022 from 10.3 percent in 2021, according to data released this week by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). In the private sector, the unionization rate fell to 6 percent last year from 6.1 percent in 2021. According to BLS: The 2022 unionization rate (10.1 percent) is the lowest on…