Former FEC Chair and RNLA Board member Lee Goodman, represented by fellow RNLA Board Member Mike Columbo of Dhillon Law, advocated free speech on the internet in a recent friend of the court brief filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit concerning Campaign Legal Center, et al. v. FEC.

The heat is being turned up against soft-on-crime, rogue prosecutors after two of the most prominent figures in the movement have been forced to resign in recent weeks. Notoriously bad St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner left office abruptly in May:

Gardner, a Democrat, had been facing an ouster effort by Missouri’s attorney general and was under scrutiny from Republican-led state lawmakers when she announced May 4 that she would resign, effective June 1. But on Tuesday, Gardner announced the end of her tenure. . .

During the 2023 National Policy Conference, RNLA presented former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement with this year’s Hon. Edwin Meese III Award. The Meese Award is bestowed on an individual who has upheld the rule of law in the face of adverse political challenges.

On Monday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) informed House Oversight Republicans that it would not complying with a subpoena to hand over unclassified documents to the Committee regarding an ongoing investigation into an alleged criminal scheme involving President Joe Biden while he was Vice President. As a result, Chairman James Comer has announced the Committee's Republicans' intention to hold FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress.

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Today, the FBI informed @GOPoversight that it will not provide the unclassified documents subpoenaed by the Committee.

The Committee will now be taking steps to hold FBI Director Wray in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a lawful subpoena.

Statement.👇 pic.twitter.com/VY3WudlFkG

— Rep. James Comer (@RepJamesComer) May 30, 2023

On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down an important ruling regarding the interpretation of the definition of "waters of the United States" (WOTUS) in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency that stopped unconstitutional overreach by the federal government in its tracks. National Review explained:

In Sackett, the EPA argued that the Court should defer to the agency’s “broad and unqualified” reading of WOTUS, such that it might cover all the water in the country. The only limiting principle is a “nexus” test nowhere found in the statute, requiring an assessment of aggregate effects of all “similarly situated” waters on the local ecosystem of a body of water that is or could be navigable. Whatever that is, it is not law. All nine justices were unanimous in rejecting the EPA’s “nexus” test. The Court thus finally ruled in favor of property owners who had been fighting the agency for 19 years over whether they could move dirt and rock onto water that was on the opposite side of a road from a non-navigable creek that feeds into a once-navigable lake, on the theory that the aggregate effect of the Sacketts’ body of water when combined with an unconnected fen would harm the lake.

On Wednesday, the House Administration Subcommittee on Elections held a hearing on American titled, "American Confidence in Elections: Ensuring Every Eligible American has the Opportunity to Vote – and for their Vote to Count According to Law." Subcommittee Chair Laurel Lee kicked off the hearing, setting the stage for a robust discussion on measures to improve voter confidence.

At today's #ACEAct Elections Subcommittee hearing, Chair @RepLaurelLee: While there is no one-size-fits-all approach, there are steps states can take to boost voter confidence and improve voter integrity.

Watch her full opening statement here ⬇️https://t.co/5S9UMCkTrO

— House Admin. Committee GOP (@HouseAdmin) May 24, 2023

Our condolences to the family of C. Boyden Gray on his passing. He was a friend to the conservative legal movement and a defender of the rule of law. Ambassador Boyden Gray spoke at the RNLA National Policy Conference often, most recently in 2021. But we remember him best as the 2008 recipient of the Hon. Edwin Meese III Award and for giving the keynote address at our 2008 National Policy Conference. (Pictured below with fellow Meese Award winner Dick Wiley.)

Last Friday, the Biden Border Crisis reached a new stage with the expiration of Title 42, a Trump-era policy that used public health authority to quell immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border. The Biden Administration claims that it will be tougher on border issues moving forward, but reality shows otherwise. Former Trump Department of Homeland Security officials explained:

Beginning on Friday, all illegal aliens apprehended at the southern border will be put into Title 8 immigration proceedings and will be subject to "expedited removal." Though the Biden administration makes this sound like an effective enforcement policy, it is merely an optical misdirection. 

What the administration is not telling the American people is that there is a glaring loophole in expedited removal that the cartels coach aliens to exploit — the ability to claim asylum regardless of how dubious the claim. 

Republican attorneys general are fighting back against the disastrous border policies being implemented by the Biden Administration.

Special Counsel John Durham has completed his probe into the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation which morphed into the broader Trump-Russia probe by the Department of Justice (DOJ). The report minced no words in its criticism of the FBI and DOJ:

"Based on the review of Crossfire Hurricane and related intelligence activities, we conclude that the Department and the FBI failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report," the report said.

In When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives, Heather Mac Donald addresses the causes of racial disparities in outcomes in education, culture, and other areas. She expertly and with exhaustive research makes the case that the true cause of outcome disparities is not what has become a conventional wisdom of racism, but rather, the gap in academic skills and educational opportunities between black and white Americans.

Mac Donald traces the beginning of the racism conventional wisdom to the 1971 opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court in Griggs v. Duke Power. Prior to Griggs, only deliberate and intentional discrimination stated a claim under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and similar statutes. In Griggs, the Court adopted a disparate impact theory, finding for the first time that measuring outcomes rather than intent could create liability for discrimination. As Mac Donald reports, disparate impact analysis now pervades not just the law, but all of culture. Indeed, she writes, “The concept of disparate impact is destroying America’s core institutions in the name of inviting invented racism.”