Politics

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama congressman backed by President Donald Trump is seeking to defeat a political outsider in Tuesday’s Republican runoff for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat.

U.S. Rep. Barry Moore faces former Navy SEAL Jared Hudson for the Republican nomination to advance to November’s general election as the party seeks to retain the seat vacated by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who is running for governor. Two Democrats also are in a runoff.

Trump’s picks have largely prevailed in Republican primaries this year, although his preferred candidate for Iowa governor was defeated earlier this month. The Alabama race will be another test of his endorsement powers.

Moore is a three-term congressman and a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. He led first-round voting in May with nearly 40% of the ballot to Hudson’s 25%. He was an early backer of Trump’s first presidential campaign and Trump returned the support.

“Barry Moore has my complete and total endorsement. He’s the best America First candidate you can imagine,” Trump said recently.

Running as an outsider, Hudson had attacked Moore over his Washington ties while promising to be “a warrior for President Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda.”

“If you want the same thing over and over again, elect a career politician. If you want different results, somebody who can take your issues to Washington and not bring the stupidity of Washington back here to you, send a warrior to Washington,” Hudson said during a candidate forum in May.

Hudson secured a runoff spot in May by narrowly edging a leading early contender, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall.

Moore has leaned into his Washington record, highlighting Trump’s endorsement and his scorecard from a conservative group that ranks members of Congress on their voting records. He said many candidates say they support Trump, but he can prove it.

“Look at my record, the most conservative member in the Alabama delegation, an ally of the president,” Moore said. “The president has endorsed me because he’s seen me in the fire. I never bow down.”

Meanwhile, Hudson has quipped that he doesn’t have a legislative scorecard, but has racked up a high score “against the Taliban in over 60 combat operations.”

On the Democratic side, attorney Everett Wess and business owner Dakarai Larriett are in a runoff for the nomination. Wess led in the initial primary round, 39% to Larriett’s 29%.

Republicans currently holding all statewide offices, but Democrats believe frustration with inflation and other issues could give them an opening.

Wess is the managing partner of The Wess Law Firm and a former municipal judge, city prosecutor and public defender. His legal practice is primarily focused on estate planning and criminal defense.

He has emphasized his legal experience, community positions and experience working within the Democratic Party.

“Families throughout Alabama are struggling with inflation, housing costs, high gas bills, high utility bills and these everyday expenses,” Wess said during an online candidate forum hosted by Birmingham Indivisible.

Larriett is the owner of a pet care business. He said he was motivated to run after an encounter with police officers in Michigan two years ago when he said he was falsely arrested.

“We can and we must nominate a fighter, a Democratic fighter, for the United States Senate, someone who represents our values,” Larriett said during the forum. He said the party needs someone who “takes reproductive health seriously” and will “fight like hell” for voting rights.

Competitive runoffs for attorney general and lieutenant governor also are on Tuesday’s ballot.

Secretary of State Wes Allen and former Alabama Republican Party Chairman John Wahl are battling for the GOP nomination for lieutenant governor. The winner will face Democrat Phillip Ensler in November.

For attorney general, former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Jay Mitchell faces Katherine Robertson, who is chief counsel to the current attorney general, Marshall. Mitchell attacked Robertson over initial work by the attorney general’s office to uphold the conviction of a police officer accused of manslaughter for an on-duty shooting. Robertson has called Mitchell a “woke lawyer.”

The winner will face Democrat Jeff McLaughlin in November.

Andrew Sneed and Candice Duvieilh also have a runoff for the Democratic nomination for the 5th Congressional District. The winner will face Republican Rep. Dale Strong, who was first elected in 2022.

Alabama will hold a new round of congressional primaries in August after winning permission from the U.S. Supreme Court to switch to a different congressional map favoring Republicans for the midterms.

The state is holding special primaries to decide nominations in the 1st, 2nd, 6th and 7th congressional districts. The new map could give Republicans an opportunity to recapture the 2nd Congressional District in November, currently represented by Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures. It could be important nationally in the battle for control of the narrowly divided chamber.

Alabama is one of several Southern states that quickly redrew their U.S. House maps and eliminated districts held by Black Democrats following a Supreme Court decision that severely weakened the Voting Rights Act.

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Oklahoma’s primary elections on Tuesday put open races for U.S. Senate and governor on the ballot in the deeply conservative state where President Donald Trump’s status as party kingmaker faces another test ahead of November’s midterms.

In the Senate race, Trump’s early backing of Republican U.S. Rep. Kevin Hern for the seat previously held by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin kept other potential big challengers at bay in Oklahoma, which hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1990.

A bigger test of Trump’s influence — which has usually proved potent in Republican primaries this year — may come in a crowded race to succeed outgoing Gov. Kevin Stitt.

Trump endorsed former state Sen. Mike Mazzei last month, wading late into a primary that includes several prominent Oklahoma Republicans. They include Attorney General Gentner Drummond, former Oklahoma House Speaker Charles McCall and Chip Keating, the state’s former public safety director.

It has raised the likelihood of an August runoff if no candidate receives at least 50% of the vote.

In a solidly Republican state, the open races for two of Oklahoma’s biggest offices set off a political scramble.

Mullin left the Senate to join Trump’s cabinet and replace Kristi Noem, whom the president fired in March over mounting criticism over her leadership at the Department of Homeland Security. Republican Alan Armstrong, an energy executive, is filling the Oklahoma Senate seat for now, but state law prohibits him from seeking a full term as an interim appointee.

Stitt, who been governor since 2019, cannot run again because of term limits — and Trump has seemed eager for him to go.

As head of the National Governors Association, Stitt drew Trump’s ire earlier this year over a dispute over invitations to White House events at the group’s annual meeting. The fallout led to Trump attacking Stitt on social media as a “RINO,” meaning Republican in Name Only.

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JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — A top Alaska elections official on Monday ruled that a U.S. Senate candidate with the same name and party affiliation as Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan is ineligible to appear on the state’s August primary ballot.

Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher, in a letter sent to the challenger Sullivan, said she concluded that his declaration of candidacy “was not filed in order to declare an actual good-faith candidacy for the office of United States Senator, but was instead filed with a purpose to confuse or mislead and to thereby compromise the ballot’s fairness or neutrality.”

The challenger can appeal the ruling, she said, while noting ballots are due to be printed June 28.

A text message seeking comment from Sullivan, the challenger, was not immediately returned. He previously said he anticipated making a decision on whether to pursue an appeal by early this week.

In a social media post Sunday, he said he “met the qualification and I entered this race because I am unhappy with the 12 year record of the current Senator and I feel we need a change. It’s that simple.”

It’s been a whirlwind chain of events in one of the nation’s most prominent U.S. Senate races, one both parties consider crucial to controlling the chamber.

The kerfuffle was set off by the challenger Sullivan filing days before the June 1 candidate deadline. Sen. Sullivan and Republicans called him a “sham” candidate and alleged he was working with Democrats to boost Democratic former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola’s chances in the race. Both the challenger Sullivan and Peltola’s campaign have denied the allegation.

Republican Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom a week ago announced an investigation into the challenger Sullivan’s run, citing “credible allegations” that he declared his candidacy “in coordination with another candidate and campaign” with an intent to confuse and “manipulate” voters. The announcement followed a letter that had been sent to her and Beecher by an attorney with the National Republican Senatorial Committee, outlining those claims.

Later, two complaints seeking to disqualify the challenger were filed by Alaska Republican Party Chair Carmela Warfield.

Sullivan, a 69-year-old retired teacher from the small, southeast Alaska fishing community of Petersburg, has said he’s done nothing wrong and insisted that Dahlstrom lacked a legal basis to exclude him from the ballot. He said in a recent interview he has been weighing a run for years and called sharing a name with Sullivan a “matter of fate.”

“The Lieutenant Governor’s job is to oversee elections fairly and impartially,” he said in a statement last week. “Instead, her actions create the impression that the state government is being used to protect an incumbent senator from facing competition at the ballot box.”

In her letter, the election director did not mention finding any evidence of alleged coordination with Peltola or Democratic Party officials. But she outlined details she said led her to conclude that the challenger is ineligible.

They include that he had registered to vote as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. and in conjunction with his candidacy changed his party affiliation to Republican, an affiliation he had not had previously. She also cited similarities between his campaign website and the senator’s and his work with a consultant whose clients have included some Democrats.

The work on his behalf by the consultant “is, in isolation, innocuous.” But she said that, taken with the other details, it “suggests a determined effort and a deliberate attempt to use the similarity of your name to confuse Alaska voters.”

The form candidates fill out asks them how they’d like to be referred to on the ballot — including any nicknames — and the party affiliation they want on the ballot. In the earlier interview, the challenger told The Associated Press he was motivated to register with the GOP in part by his late father, whom he described as a “true, compassionate, conservative Republican.”

Sen. Sullivan’s campaign manager, Billy Mackey, lauded the lieutenant governor, who oversees elections in Alaska, as upholding the right to “a free and fair election.”

Sen. Sullivan, who is seeking a third term, and Peltola are the highest-profile candidates in the crowded race and the only ones so far to report raising any money.

Democrats have targeted the seat in their push to regain the majority in the chamber.

On Friday, protesters gathered outside the Division of Elections office in Juneau, opposing efforts to remove the challenger Sullivan from the ballot. Among them was Ben Muse of Juneau. He said he felt the issue could have been addressed using middle initials to distinguish between the candidates but had been “blown way out of proportion.”

“This has nothing to do with whether you support this guy as a candidate,” he said. “It’s supporting his right to be on the ballot.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Voters in the nation’s capital head to the polls on Tuesday to select party candidates for mayor and the district’s delegate to Congress, an election taking place as Washington undergoes major change under President Donald Trump’s administration.

The primary marks the first time in a generation that D.C. residents will vote for a new mayor and delegate in the same election. And in an overwhelmingly Democratic city, that party’s winner is expected to come out on top in the general election in November.

The most prominent race is for mayor after Muriel Bowser, who was first elected in 2014, decided not to seek a fourth term. Democratic front-runners Janeese Lewis George and Kenyan McDuffie are hoping to replace her.

The district’s long-serving congressional delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton is also stepping down, with top candidates council member Brooke Pinto and at-large council member Robert White Jr. vying for the role. Republican Denise Rosado, an immigration lawyer, is running unopposed.

The primary will include rank choice voting for the first time, which D.C. election officials have warned could delay results for days.

Central to all the campaigns has been the city’s fraught relationship with the Trump administration and the federal government. The city has limited autonomy and federal leaders retain significant control over local affairs, including the approval of the budget and laws passed by the D.C. Council.

That autonomy has been further squeezed under Trump, who launched a federal law enforcement surge last summer and sent in the National Guard for an ongoing, open-ended deployment. Trump’s efforts to downsize the federal government also roiled the capital region, costing thousands of people their jobs. He has also been reshaping the city by removing or renovating storied landmarks and putting his name or image on buildings.

Trump just last week threatened a new federal takeover of Washington, when asked about his response to a potential victory by Lewis George, a democratic socialist.

“Maybe we’d take back Washington, run it on the federal basis,” he said.

Bowser found herself walking a fine line between staying in Trump’s good graces and responding to the concerns of constituents, many of whom said she didn’t push back hard enough on Trump’s actions.

Republicans in Congress meanwhile have used their oversight authority to challenge the local government’s limited autonomy.

“We are the capital of the United States, and it’s an incredibly symbolic place, this city,” said Amanda Huron, a professor at the University of the District of Columbia who teaches courses on D.C. history and politics.

She said it’s important to remind the public that what the federal government does to its capital city is a harbinger of “how it’s going to treat the rest of the country as well.”

Lewis George, in responding to questions sent by The Associated Press, said her top priority is addressing “the affordability crisis here in DC, which the Trump administration has only made worse by unjustly firing federal employees en masse and militarizing our streets.”

McDuffie said his top priority is public safety. He would add 1,000 police officers over four years and take a public health approach to violence reduction that would include a focus on mental health.

Other candidates for mayor include former council member Vincent Orange and Hope Solomon, a former federal contractor who lost her job because of cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency.

Some residents have expressed concern on how Trump will react to pushback. Pat Wheeler, who lives in Washington, said candidates must be realistic. Trump still has enormous power over the Republican Congress and could easily order members to take steps against the city’s home rule authority, she said.

Five people are seeking to replace Norton, who is finishing her 18th term representing D.C. in Congress. Norton, 89, faced heavy pressure to stand down by critics, including her former chief of staff, who said she was diminished and not capable of mounting the defense the moment called for against Trump.

Pinto and White both say their top priority for the city is self-governance along with affordability for middle and working class residents.

Other candidates seeking the Democratic spot on the ticket include Trent Holbrook, a former Norton staffer; Kenney Zalesne, the former Deputy National Finance Chair of the Democratic National Committee; and Gregory Jaczko, former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

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By Nate Raymond

WASHINGTON, June 15 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear a bid by Carter Page, an adviser to President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, to revive a lawsuit against former FBI officials accusing them of unlawfully obtaining warrants to surveil him during its probe into Russian interference in that year’s election.

The justices on Monday turned away Page’s appeal of rulings by lower courts dismissing remaining elements of a lawsuit he filed in 2020 alleging he had been the victim of unlawful spying. The Trump administration agreed to pay a reported $1.25 million to resolve the rest of the claims he had also brought against the government.

That partial settlement left remaining claims Page had also been pursuing against numerous former officials. They include former FBI Director James Comey, his former deputy Andrew McCabe and Kevin Clinesmith, a former FBI lawyer who pleaded guilty to altering an email that had been used to seek court approval to wiretap Page.

Page’s lawsuit alleged that, while volunteering as a member of an informal foreign policy advisory committee to Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign, he became a target of an FBI surveillance program aimed at determining if anyone associated with the campaign was coordinating activities with Russia.

The FBI during the investigation obtained four warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to surveil Page.

But later reviews by the U.S. Justice Department’s inspector general discovered that the FBI made numerous errors in its warrant applications to the court, which is tasked with reviewing classified requests from agencies for surveillance warrants. The inspector general released its main report on the matter in 2019, during Trump’s first term as president.

Page was never charged and has denied having had any improper communications with or ties to Russia. He asked the Supreme Court to hear his case after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2025 upheld a judge’s dismissal of his lawsuit on the grounds that it was filed too late.

The D.C. Circuit said that his surveillance claim was subject to a three-year statute of limitations that kicked in when Page first became aware of the FBI’s surveillance, which it traced to an April 2017 article by the Washington Post about the operation.

Page, in asking the Supreme Court to consider his case, argued that the clock for the statute of limitations should instead be found to have begun ticking when the government acknowledged unlawfully surveilling him, rather than when an anonymously sourced news story was published.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Will Dunham)

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By John Kruzel

WASHINGTON, June 15 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear a former high school student’s free-speech challenge to an Indiana public school district’s policy that barred her from displaying a flyer with an anti-abortion message on school walls.

The justices turned away the former student’s appeal of a lower court’s decision that the Noblesville Schools district’s policy did not violate the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protections against government abridgment of freedom of speech.

The former student, who has since graduated, is known in court papers as “E.D.” due to her status as a minor when her parents Michael and Lisa Duell filed the 2021 lawsuit against the school district, which is located outside Indianapolis. 

The dispute arose in connection with an anti-abortion student club called Noblesville Students for Life, a local chapter of Students for Life of America, that E.D. formed during her freshman year at Noblesville High School.

The school approved the formation of the group and permitted the girl to advertise it at an activities fair during which she displayed a table-top poster with the group’s mission statement and a sign that stated, “I am the pro-life generation.” She also wore a shirt bearing the same slogan.

But the school prevented her from hanging on school walls flyers that included photographs of students in front of the Supreme Court building in Washington carrying signs that read, “I Reject Abortion,” “Defund Planned Parenthood,” “I Am the Pro-Life Generation,” and other similar messages.

The school has said its policy “categorically prohibited political content in flyers posted on its walls.” 

A school official told the girl that student group flyers appearing on school walls should contain only the club’s name and the location, time and date of its meeting, but not photographs of signage, according to court papers.

According to court papers filed by the school, the girl and her mother then sought approval for the same flyer from a different school administrator. The mother’s involvement fueled concerns among school officials that the group was not truly student-led, prompting the club’s suspension for the rest of the semester, the school’s court papers said.

The former student filed a lawsuit in response to the denial of her proposed flyers and her club’s revocation. She said in court papers that an administrator expressed concerns about the political nature of flyers, especially the “Defund Planned Parenthood” signage.

The girl is represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group that has brought other cases on behalf of anti-abortion plaintiffs.

The dispute implicates a 1988 Supreme Court ruling in a case from Missouri called Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier. In that case, the court ruled that schools may restrict student speech in channels that are not deemed “public forums” or where the speech at issue is inconsistent with the school’s educational mission.

An Indianapolis-based federal judge in 2024 sided with Noblesville Schools, finding the district was authorized to regulate the content of student flyers displayed on school walls. The Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed in 2025, prompting the girl’s appeal to the Supreme Court.

Conservative Justice Samuel Alito dissented from the court’s decision denying the appeal, writing that the justices should have used the opportunity to revisit the 1988 decision in the Hazelwood case.

John Bursch, a lawyer at the Alliance Defending Freedom, said his group supports Alito’s view.

“We agree with Justice Alito’s dissent that the court should have granted the petition to clarify the line between government and student speech,” Bursch said. “Public-school officials should not be in the business of censoring student speech that takes place outside the school’s curriculum.”

(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Alabama voters will return to the polls Tuesday to finalize nominees for an open U.S. Senate seat and a handful of other contests in which no candidate received a majority of votes in the May 19 primary.

The primary runoff election will lock in the party nominees for most races in the general election in the fall, when candidates will compete for a full docket of state and federal races in the heavily Republican state.

Primaries for four of the state’s seven congressional districts were postponed from May 19 to an Aug. 11 special primary in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that prompted Republicans in a handful of southern states to throw out their congressional maps.

In the Republican primary for U.S. Senate, Barry Moore and Jared Hudson vie for the nomination to succeed U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who opted to run for governor rather than seek a second term. Moore is a third-term congressman representing Alabama’s 1st Congressional District. He has President Donald Trump’s endorsement. Hudson is a former Navy SEAL, owner of a security and weapons training company and founder of a nonprofit combating human trafficking.

Moore was the top vote-getter in the primary, with about 39% of the vote, compared with about 26% for Hudson. State Attorney General Steve Marshall was a close third with about 25% of the vote.

Moore’s strongest performance was in his 1st Congressional District in southern Alabama along the Florida border and the Gulf Coast. He also won pluralities across a swath of Central Alabama, including Montgomery, and by more modest margins in the north and northeast along the Tennessee and Georgia borders.

Hudson scored one of his biggest margins in his home base of Jefferson County, the most populous in the state and home to Birmingham. Padding his 19-percentage-point lead and 45% of the vote there would be a critical ingredient to a runoff victory.

Moore heads into the runoff with an advantage in the key county of Madison, the second largest in the state and home to Huntsville, also known as Rocket City for its NASA facilities. He received about 34% of the vote there, while Hudson placed third with about 22%.

Trump’s endorsement should be an important asset to Moore in a state where Trump won two out of every three votes against Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race. Trump’s picks have a near-perfect winning record at the ballot box, but his choice for Iowa governor fell short of the nomination earlier in June.

Alabama Democrats will also decide a U.S. Senate runoff. The two finalists are former corporate executive, aromatherapy pet care entrepreneur and policing reform advocate Dakarai Larriett and attorney and former Midfield Municipal Court Judge Everett Wess. Wess led the primary field with about 40% of the vote, followed by Larriett with about 29%.

Additional Republican runoffs will be held for lieutenant governor, attorney general, agriculture commissioner and other state offices. A Democratic runoff also will be held in the 5th Congressional District, which was one of the three congressional districts to hold primaries in May. Primaries for the 1st, 2nd, 6th and 7th Congressional Districts will be held in the Aug. 11 special election.

Here are some of the key facts about the election and data points the AP Decision Team will monitor as the votes are tallied:

Polls close at 7 p.m. CT, which is 8 p.m. ET.

The Associated Press will provide vote results and declare winners in primary runoffs for U.S. Senate, U.S. House, lieutenant governor, attorney general, agriculture commissioner, state Public Service Commission, state Board of Education, state Senate and state House.

Voters who cast a ballot in a partisan primary on May 19 may only vote in the runoff of the same party as they did in the primary. In other words, Democratic primary voters may not vote in a Republican primary runoff or vice versa. Registered voters who did not participate in a party primary on May 19 may vote in the runoff for either party.

As of Thursday, there were about 3.8 million registered voters in Alabama.

In the May 19 primary, about 482,000 people voted in the Republican U.S. Senate primary, about 474,000 in the Republican lieutenant governor primary and about 340,000 in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary.

The two U.S. Senate seats last had Republican primary runoffs in 2022 and 2020. In 2022, total votes fell from about 647,000 in the primary to about 402,000 in the runoff, or 18% of registered voters to 11%.

In 2020, when Tuberville was first on the ballot, total votes fell from about 718,000 in the primary to about 551,000 in the runoff, or 20% of registered voters to 15%.

Relatively few Alabama voters cast their ballots before Election Day. The state is one of the only holdouts in the country not to offer some form of in-person early voting. In the 2024 primaries, about 4% of Democratic primary voters and about 1% of Republican primary voters voted by mail.

Vote release practices vary from county to county. Most counties tend to release results from absentee voting in the first vote update, sometimes along with results from in-person Election Day voting.

In the May 19 Republican U.S. Senate primary, the AP first reported results at 8:28 p.m. ET, or 28 minutes after polls closed. The last vote update of the night was at 12:54 a.m. ET, with more than 99.9% of total votes counted.

The AP does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow a trailing candidate to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.

Alabama has an automatic recount law, but the Alabama attorney general in 2010 issued an opinion that it does not apply to primaries.

As of Tuesday, there will be 56 days until the special congressional primaries on Aug. 11 and 140 days until the Nov. 3 midterm elections.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2026 election at https://apnews.com/projects/elections-2026/.

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By Jarrett Renshaw

June 15 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that a July 4 celebration on the National Mall marking the nation’s 250th anniversary would double as one of his signature rallies, blurring the line between official commemoration and political event.

Critics have accused Trump of using presidential events and public spaces to promote his political brand, and his decision to label the celebration as a rally is likely to intensify that scrutiny.

“We are going to host the most spectacular TRUMP RALLY of them all, a ‘TRIBUTE TO AMERICA,’” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

The event is part of the administration’s broader “Freedom 250” programming. Trump said it will feature military bands, flyovers and a large-scale fireworks display between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument.

The Independence Day festivities on July 4 are the centerpiece of celebrations commemorating the 250th anniversary of American independence.

The White House also hosted a “Freedom 250” UFC event on Sunday, Trump’s 80th birthday, where fighter Josh Hokit used his post-bout interview to disparage former first lady Michelle Obama.

Several performers withdrew from the Great American State Fair, another marquee anniversary event slated to run from June 25 to July 10, saying they did not realize how closely it was tied to Trump. Trump responded by saying he would headline a kickoff rally on June 24 on the National Mall.

Trump said in his social media post on Monday that the July 4 event will include music from his rally playlists, not “those people that put you to sleep and constantly complain.”

(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw, editing by Colleen Jenkins and Nia Williams)

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By Jonathan Stempel

June 15 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court turned away on Monday a gun industry challenge to a New York law that permits lawsuits against gun makers, wholesalers and dealers for endangering people’s safety through sales of firearms and ammunition.

The justices declined to hear an appeal by an industry trade group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, of a lower court ruling upholding the law, which New York calls a public nuisance statute. 

Gun manufacturers including Smith & Wesson, Ruger, Beretta, Glock, Sig Sauer and Sturm joined the appeal, which argued that New York’s law unconstitutionally conflicted with federal law.

The Supreme Court in 2025 spared Smith & Wesson from a lawsuit by Mexico’s government accusing the company of aiding illegal gun trafficking to drug cartels.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation expressed disappointment that the Supreme Court decided not to hear its appeal.

“NSSF sincerely believes that those criminals who illegally misuse lawful products should be held responsible for the harms they cause when they commit their crimes,” spokesperson Mark Oliva said in an email. “Holding the firearm industry responsible for the criminal misuse of a firearm is akin to holding Anheuser-Busch and Ford Motor Company responsible for damages from drunk-driving crimes.”

Signed by Democratic former Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2021, the New York law requires the gun industry to use reasonable safeguards to protect against gun trafficking, theft and the use of “straw purchasers” who buy firearms for someone else. It also allows civil lawsuits by New York state and local officials as well as members of the public.

Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, has said the law helps in fighting a “scourge” of gun violence.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation said the law was preempted by a 2005 federal law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, that shields the gun industry from civil liability when its products are used in crimes. Under the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, federal laws take precedence over conflicting state laws. 

The Manhattan-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld New York’s law last year.

Circuit Judge Eunice Lee, an appointee of Democratic former President Joe Biden, wrote that Congress intended to preserve “at least some causes of action” when a defendant’s knowing violation of federal or state firearms sales and marketing laws was a proximate cause of harm.

‘CRUSHING LIABILITY’

The appeal did not hinge on the Constitution’s Second Amendment protections of the right to keep and bear arms. But the trade group said laws such as New York’s imperil such rights by allowing lawsuits that could saddle companies with “crushing liability” for crimes they had nothing to do with.

It also said a “predicate exception” in the federal law at issue subjected the industry to liability only for failures to comply with specific obligations or prohibitions within its control.

“The decision below blows a gaping hole in a statute that Congress enacted for the express purpose of protecting the firearms industry from exactly the kinds of lawsuits New York seeks to usher back in,” the group said.

New York said the predicate exception allowed liability for some “downstream acts” of third parties. It also said at least nine states have passed laws to satisfy the exception.

The gun industry appeal was supported by the National Rifle Association, 24 Republican state attorneys general and several dozen Republican members of Congress.

The Supreme Court has expanded gun rights in three major decisions since 2008, when it found that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)

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WASHINGTON, June 13 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Saturday said he will appoint James McDonald, who previously served as an assistant U.S. attorney and CFTC enforcement chief, to replace Jay as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District Of New York.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Jasper Ward)

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