A federal judge has tossed out a racketeering lawsuit House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes filed last year against the private investigation firm at the heart of the Trump-Russia saga.

Alexandria, Virginia-based U.S. District Court Judge Liam O'Grady's two-page order made short work of Nunes' suit, which sought $9.9 million in damages from Fusion GPS, its founder Glenn Simpson and a nonprofit watchdog group, Campaign for Accountability.

The judge also signaled that pressing on with the legal battle could result in sanctions against Nunes and his attorney, Steven Biss.

The California GOP lawmaker claimed that he was a victim of "active, coordinated and ongoing corruption, fraud and obstruction of justice" by the defendants that stemmed from his efforts to investigate the firm's role in stoking suspicions about Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign.

Katie Phang
✔
@KatiePhang
‼️NEW: Devin Nunes loses big in federal court lawsuit against Fusion GPS & others.

If Nunes attempts to refile and does so improperly, he’ll face Rule 11 sanctions.@DevinCow @NunesAlt

Bloomberg LP has identified 3 NDAs signed over the past 30+ years with women to address complaints about comments they said I had made.

If any of them want to be released from their NDAs, they should contact the company and they'll be given a release. https://mikebloom.bg/2Va9EnR

In Washington, where it was still Sunday afternoon, a fierce debate broke out: The State Department and a top Trump administration health official wanted to forge ahead. The infected passengers had no symptoms and could be segregated on the plane in a plastic-lined enclosure. But officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention disagreed, contending they could still spread the virus. The CDC believed the 14 should not be flown back with uninfected passengers.

“It was like the worst nightmare,” said a senior U.S. official involved in the decision, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. “Quite frankly, the alternative could have been pulling grandma out in the pouring rain, and that would have been bad, too.”
The State Department won the argument. But unhappy CDC officials demanded to be left out of the news release that explained that infected people were being flown back to the United States — a move that would nearly double the number of known coronavirus cases in this country.

The tarmac decision was a pivotal moment for U.S. officials improvising their response to a crisis with few precedents and extraordinarily high stakes. Efforts to prevent the new pathogen from spreading have revealed the limits of the world’s readiness for an unprecedented public health emergency. In the worst-case scenario, covid-19, a flulike respiratory infection, could become a full-blown global pandemic.

SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. - George Zimmerman is accusing two of the leading Democratic presidential contenders of defamation.

Zimmerman, who was acquitted in the killing of teenager Trayvon Martin in Sanford, reportedly filed a lawsuit in Florida this week against Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Washington Times reports.

According to the Washington Times, the lawsuit accuses the two of “maliciously defam[ing]” Mr. Zimmerman, using the killing “as a pretext to demagogue and falsely brand Zimmerman as a white supremacist and racist to their millions of Twitter followers.”

The lawsuit reportedly seeks $265,000,000, the Washington Times reports.

“You are a disgrace to my country,” Young writes in a long, scathing open letter to Trump on his Neil Young Archives website. “Your mindless destruction of our shared natural resources, our environment, and our relationships with friends around the world is unforgivable.… Our first black president was a better man than you are.”

He’s particularly irked by Trump’s usage of his song “Rockin’ in the Free World” at his rallies. Young has asked him to stop this practice numerous times while acknowledging he has no legal recourse to force him. “[It] is not a song you can trot out at one of your rallies,” he writes. “Perhaps you could have been a bass player and played in a rock & roll band. That way you could have been onstage at a rally every night in front of your fans, if you were any good, and you might be …”

Every time ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’ or one of my songs is played at your rallies,” he continues, “I hope you hear my voice. Remember it is the voice of a tax-paying U.S. citizen who does not support you. Me.”

Near the end of the letter, Young comes very close to endorsing Bernie Sanders. “One of your opponents has the answers I like,” he writes. “He is aiming at preserving our children’s future directly. He is not popular with the Democratic establishment because, unlike all the other candidates, he is not pandering to the industries accelerating Earth’s Climate Crisis, the end of the world as we know it. He is truly fighting for the USA. His initials are BS. Not his policies.”

Democratic House candidate Marie Newman pulls a MacGyver and explains Medicare for All in 30 seconds using three water bottles, a book and a styrofoam cup. @Marie4Congress is a rising star who has a primary against Dem in name only Dan Lipinski on 3/17.

Russia has sent intelligence agents to Ireland to map the precise location of the fibre-optic, ocean-bed cables that connect Europe to America, gardai suspect. This has raised concerns that Russian agents are checking the cables for weak points, with a view to tapping or even damaging them in the future.

Ireland is the landing point for undersea cables which carry internet traffic between America, Britain and Europe. The cables enable millions of people to communicate and allow financial transactions to take place seamlessly.

Garda and military sources believe the agents were sent by the GRU, the military intelligence branch of the Russian armed forces which was blamed for the nerve agent attack in Britain on Sergei Skripal, a former Russian intelligence officer....

The U.S. Supreme Court overturned a lower court's ruling that ordered Michigan politicians to return to the drawing board on voting maps. The Democratic voters who filed the lawsuit argued that the Republican-drawn voting maps would unduly weaken Democratic representation in the state.

The partisan gerrymandering ruling, which was handed down Monday, is the latest Supreme Court blow to redistricting reformers who advocate for fair voting districts that don't provide an advantage to any political party. In June, the justices ruled in cases involving Maryland and North Carolina that partisan gerrymandering is an issue for state, not federal, courts to police. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court threw out a similar case in Ohio.

The high court's ruling voids an April order by a three-judge panel for Michigan politicians to redraw 25 state legislative and nine U.S. House districts.