The Supreme Court lets the Trump administration end legal protections for Haitians and Syrians

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the Trump administration to end legal protections for migrants fleeing violence and natural disaster in Haiti and Syria, exposing hundreds of thousands more people to potential deportation.

The 6-3 decision overturns lower court orders and allows the Department of Homeland Security to swiftly end temporary protected status, a program that protects a total of 1.3 million people from 17 countries.

It marked another victory at the high court for Republican President Donald Trump’s sweeping crackdown on immigration. Though the conservative-dominated court has put the brakes on some of Trump’s immigration policies, it handed him a second win Thursday in a decision clearing the way for the revival of a policy restricting immigrants seeking asylum.

The court’s conservative majority found that the law doesn’t allow courts to question the process that immigration authorities use to revoke the protections.

Supreme Court strikes down blue state’s ‘vampire rule’ in major win for gun rights

Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the law ‘violates the constitutional right to keep and bear arms’

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Hawaii on Thursday, handing concealed-carry permit holders a major victory in a 6-3 decision.

The Supreme Court sided with the plaintiff in Wolford v. Lopez, who contested Hawaii’s state law requiring a property owner’s explicit permission to allow lawful gun owners to bring firearms into public businesses.

“Hawaii’s law at issue here violates the constitutional right to keep and bear arms,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote. “This regime hobbles what the Second Amendment protects: the right of Americans to carry arms for self-defense as they go about their daily lives.”

The ruling reverses a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which had upheld Hawaii’s restrictions after the state enacted them in response to the Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision.

Continue reading “”

FPC Moves Forward in Lawsuit to Strike Down National Firearms Act

A reply brief in support of the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment was filed in Roberts v. ATF, an FPC-backed challenge to the National Firearms Act of 1934.

Plaintiffs in the case include T.J. Roberts, Zachary Cockrell, Meridian Ordnance, Buckeye Firearms Association, Center for Human Liberty, Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership, and American Suppressor Association Foundation. The plaintiffs are represented by David Thompson, Peter Patterson, and Nicholas Varone of Cooper & Kirk.

The brief was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, in Covington.

The brief was filed on June 24, 2026.

The brief responds to the Trump DOJ’s defense of the NFA and explains why the plaintiffs should win on summary judgment. The NFA’s registration scheme can no longer be justified under Congress’s taxing power because the taxes it was designed to help collect no longer exist; even if it could, the scheme still violates the Second Amendment by infringing upon the right to keep and bear suppressors and short-barreled rifles.

“The National Firearms Act is a relic of a darker era and an authoritarian scheme without a constitutional foundation. The federal government cannot use a dead tax scheme as an excuse to maintain a registry and regulatory regime for constitutionally protected arms, period. Our Constitution does not allow the government to put fundamental rights behind a paywall designed to make the instruments of liberty expensive and less accessible to the very people who have a right to them. As we approach our nation’s 250th birthday, the Trump Administration should be ashamed for defending an immoral tax-and-control scheme that only King George III would be proud of. FPC and our Grassroots Army will continue Fighting Forward to strike down this unconstitutional gun control regime.” — FPC President Brandon Combs

About Firearms Policy Coalition: Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) is a nonprofit membership organization that exists to create a world of maximal individual liberty and eliminate unconstitutional gun control laws. FPC works—and wins—for the People through high-impact strategic litigation, groundbreaking research, legislative and regulatory advocacy, grassroots activism, education, and public engagement. FPC’s legal division, FPC Law, is the nation’s leading initiative dedicated to restoring the right to keep and bear arms across the United States. To learn more about how FPC is working—and winning—for the People, sign up for FPC news alerts at firearmspolicy.org and follow FPC on X, Instagram, and Facebook.

Burglar critically wounded after Memphian comes home, opens fire

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC) – A burglary suspect is fighting for his life after an attempted heist took a turn Tuesday afternoon at a Northeast Memphis apartment complex.

According to the police report, the bandit had forced entry into an apartment along West Quailbrook Cove at Greenbrook at Shelby Farms.

The resident told police that he came home around 3:15 p.m. to find a masked stranger in all-black clothing attempting to take his TV off the wall.

He said the burglar reached for a black bag once he realized he was caught. But before the suspect could retrieve what he was reaching for, the tenant pulled out his gun and shot the bandit twice.

The suspect then fled with his bag through the apartment’s back door.

The resident admitted that he shot at the suspect twice more while he was running. He told police that he witnessed the burglar fall, get back up, and continue fleeing without his loot.

After an extensive search, officers found the suspect with critical gunshot injuries more than a half mile away on Honeybrook Road.

He was then rushed to a local hospital for treatment.

Inside the dropped bag, officers recovered the victim’s PlayStation 5, four pairs of sneakers, a Roku remote, and a PlayStation controller.

The suspect remains in the hospital as of Tuesday night and has yet to be identified.

BLUF:
The Court’s reading of the Commerce Clause since Wickard has had wide-ranging consequences for Americans’ liberty and the powers the Constitution reserves to the states. Much federal overreach is accomplished in the name of this Clause, a provision that virtually no one, not even the Antifederalists, objected to at the time of the ratification debates. It’s well past time for the Court to reassert the Clause’s original meaning. Justice Thomas is leading the way.

Twenty-One Years Later, Justice Thomas Is Still Right About the Commerce Clause.

Marijuana stinks, enervates malaise into America’s youth, and even has a tendency to induce panic attacks. But let it not be said that marijuana has no benefits. After all, thanks to marijuana, or more accurately, Congress’s regulation of it, Justice Clarence Thomas has written opinions reminding Americans, and his fellow Justices, that Congress’s powers are not unlimited.

In a recently decided Supreme Court case called United States v. Hemani, the Court reversed a conviction of a man who had been prosecuted under a federal statute that prohibits anyone who uses a controlled substance from owning a firearm. The government prosecuted Ali Hemani under the statute because, while owning a firearm, he used marijuana.

The majority opinion in Hemani asked whether Hemani’s prosecution violated his Second Amendment rights and found that it did. Justice Thomas agreed with that conclusion but wrote a separate concurring opinion in which he asked the more fundamental question: Did Congress have the authority to pass this law in the first place?

The Constitution vests in Congress certain powers, and Congress has no power not vested in it by the Constitution. When Congress passes a law, it must be able to point to a specific power enumerated in the Constitution that allows it to do so. When a representative introduces a bill, he must point to the specific section of the Constitution that permits him to do so, called a Constitutional Authority Statement. Although the Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment, does place further limits on those congressional powers, the Bill of Rights is irrelevant where Congress lacks the power to pass a law in the first place.

As Justice Thomas’s concurring opinion explains, Congress likely lacked authority to pass the law at issue in the Hemani case.

The Commerce Clause empowers Congress to “regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.” As scholarship has made clear, and as Advancing American Freedom has argued several times in amicus briefs, at the time of the founding, the word “commerce” simply meant the trade of goods and “among the several states” meant — well — among the several states.

In other words, the Commerce Clause allows Congress, as Justice Thomas put it, “to regulate the buying and selling of goods and services trafficked across state lines.” By the time Hemani owned his firearm, it was no longer in interstate commerce — it was not being bought or sold across state lines. As such, Congress had no power to regulate it under the Commerce Clause.

Nor is this the first time Justice Thomas has had an opportunity to remind Americans about the Commerce Clause in a case involving marijuana. In a 2005 case called Gonzales v. Raich, federal officials, acting under a statute enacted by Congress supposedly under its Commerce Clause power, seized marijuana plants that individuals were growing in their backyards for personal medical use.

Continue reading “”

Doubling Down on Wrongness: Anti-Gun Jurisdictions Don’t Let Little Things Like the Bruen Decision Get In Their Way.

Why is it that, after being told their gun laws are unconstitutional, so many areas that are run by anti-gun extremists seem to respond with something along the lines of, “Oh yeah? Watch what we do next!” We saw this type of response after the landmark NYSRPA v. Bruen decision that affirmed law-abiding gun owners have a right to carry firearms for self-defense away from the home.

Like spoiled children who run to their room when told they can’t do something by their parents, anti-gun extremists ran to anti-gun legislatures to ram through more anti-gun laws that seek to circumvent the Bruen decision. We saw several states, including Hawaii, New Jersey, and New York, quickly pass and enact new laws to restrict the lawful carry of firearms.

The laws in both New Jersey and New York—based on expanding so-called “sensitive places” where carry is prohibited to the point where virtually nowhere is deemed suitable for lawful carry—have suffered losses in court, while Hawaii’s may soon be dealt a crushing blow to its anti-self-defense regime by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In apparent preparation for a loss, anti-gun extremists ran to the Hawaii legislature shortly after the Supreme Court heard the challenge to its unconstitutional law, filing yet another feeble attempt to potentially circumvent a ruling by the Court.

Meanwhile, Bearing Arms recently reported the U.S. Virgin Islands, has adopted “a massive gun control bill,” even as the U.S. territory is already facing a lawsuit challenging existing policy relating to the issuance of their gun permits.

In December of last year, the Second Amendment Section of the Civil Rights Division of the DoJ announced its intent to sue the Virgin Islands Police Department for “an unconstitutional permitting process” in the V.I. As part of that announcement, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who’s in charge of the Civil Rights Division and created its Second Amendment Section, was quoted in a release, stating . . .

The newly-established Second Amendment Section filed this lawsuit to bring the Virgin Islands Police Department back into legal compliance by ensuring that applicants receive timely decisions without unconstitutional obstruction.

So, similar to other anti-gun jurisdictions, the most virulently anti-gun operators in the V.I. responded to being told they were doing something wrong…by doubling down on the wrongness.

Bearing Arms describes the VI effort as an attempt to moot the lawsuit challenging the permit issuing process, a procedure Hawaii should have probably considered in light of the hard questions its counsel faced during the Supreme Court hearing on its initial attempt to circumvent Bruen.

But along with the apparent attempt to moot the suit regarding carry permit issuing in the island territory, Bearing Arms reports there’s also language seeking to impose bans on popular semi-automatic firearms and magazines capable of holding more than 15 rounds, as well as adding restrictions on where permit holders may lawfully carry firearms for self-defense—the so-called “sensitive place” restrictions on carry that jurisdictions like New Jersey and New York implemented that led to their laws being challenged in court.

Similarly, semi-auto and magazine bans are also being challenged by Harmeet Dhillon’s team of attorneys, most notably in Denver, Colo., and Washington, D.C.

So, as with others, the V.I. appears to be thumbing its nose at the Second Amendment and the Trump administration by doubling down on anti-gun efforts when told they are already doing something unconstitutional. Disappointing, but hardly surprising.

We will be sure to continue to post updates on these cases, as well as what we presume will be other cases coming out of other anti-gun government agencies at the state, local, or territorial level.