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USA Today
4 days ago
- Business
- USA Today
Supreme Court rules Mexico can't sue US gunmakers over cartel violence
Supreme Court rules Mexico can't sue US gunmakers over cartel violence Show Caption Hide Caption Mexico takes on American gun companies at Supreme Court Supreme Court justices expressed skepticism as Mexico attempted to hold American gun companies responsible for drug cartel violence. WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on June 5 rejected Mexico's attempt to hold U.S. gunmakers liable for violence and atrocities Mexican drug cartels have inflicted using their weapons. The court unanimously ruled that firearms makers are protected by a federal law barring certain lawsuits against them. "An action cannot be brought against a manufacturer if, like Mexico's, it is founded on a third-party's criminal use of the company's product," Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the court. The decision landed against a backdrop of strained diplomatic relations between the United States and Mexico. President Donald Trump wants Mexico to do more to stop illegal drugs from flowing into the United States and Mexico wants to stop illegal arms from flowing south. Mexico has maintained tighter regulations on firearms than its neighbor to the north. The case was also the first time the Supreme Court ruled on a 2005 law that shields gunmakers from liability for crimes committed by third parties. An exception in the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act allows suits if a gunmaker is accused of knowingly violating a state or federal law. Attorneys representing Mexico argued that gun companies are 'aiding and abetting' the trafficking of hundreds of thousands of high-powered firearms into Mexico through deliberate design, marketing and distribution choices. That includes doing business with dealers who repeatedly sell large quantities of guns to cartel traffickers, Mexico's counsel alleged. Firearms makers, led by Smith & Wesson Brands, said the chain of events between the manufacture of a gun and the harm it causes after being sold, transported, and used to commit crime in Mexico involves too many steps to blame the industry. Guns made in the United States are sold to federally licensed distributors who sell them to federally licensed dealers – some of whom knowingly or negligently sell them to criminals who smuggle them into Mexico, where they end up in the hands of cartel members. What the Trump administration means for you: Sign up for USA TODAY's On Politics newsletter. Mexico's attorneys stressed that the suit was in its early stages and said Mexico should be allowed a chance to prove its allegations in court. A federal judge in Massachusetts dismissed the suit, ruling it was barred by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms. But the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the challenge met an exception in the law and could move forward. Mexico, it said, had adequately alleged the gunmakers 'aided and abetted the knowingly unlawful downstream trafficking of their guns into Mexico.' The Supreme Court disagreed, saying Mexico's lawsuit "closely resembles" the type of challenges Congress was trying to prevent. If Mexico's suit meets the exceptions in the law, that would "swallow most of the rule," Kagan wrote. Mexico was seeking an unspecified amount of monetary damages, estimated in the range of $10 billion, and a court order requiring gun companies to change their practices. Lawyers for gun rights groups told the Supreme Court that Mexico's suit is an attempt to bankrupt the American firearms industry and undermine the Second Amendment. Gun violence prevention groups worried the case could make it harder to bring domestic lawsuits against the gun industry. David Pucino, legal director at GIFFORDS Law Center, said after the decision that the Supreme Court may have ended Mexico's lawsuit but 'the justices did not give the gun industry the broad immunity it sought.' Pucino said the decision 'does not affect our ability an resolve to hold those who break the law accountable.' The case is Smith & Wesson Brands Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos.
New York Times
09-04-2025
- Business
- New York Times
A Friendship Divided by Musk
I'm doing something a little different with the newsletter today: delving into some reporting left over in my notebook that shows how Elon Musk — and the strong feelings that working for him can engender — can come between even the closest of friends. Last month, my colleagues and I published a story about Steve Davis, a longtime Musk lieutenant who has worked for the billionaire for more than two decades, at three different companies, and is now one of the most powerful people leading his cost-cutting effort in Washington. When Davis moved to Washington as a SpaceX employee more than 15 years ago, he developed a busy extracurricular life, running a popular frozen yogurt shop and bar; organizing kickball and competitive karaoke teams; and hosting game nights and Shabbat dinners. Much of that he did side by side with a close friend and roommate named Stephen Richer. (Here they are performing together in a flash mob for Davis's Mr. Yogato yogurt shop. Richer is the tall redhead.) Friends called the two inseparable. Richer sang the praises of SpaceX and the Boring Company, the Musk-founded tunneling startup that Davis would go on to lead. And a few years later, after Richer had gone back to law school in Chicago and then moved to Arizona, Davis backed his buddy when, of all things, Richer — a Republican — ran for and won the 2020 election for Maricopa County recorder, which oversees voting in the state's largest county. If you've been reading the On Politics newsletter for awhile, you may already guess where this is going. In his new role, Richer battled against allegations of voter fraud, as conspiracy theorists on X pushed misleading information about undocumented immigrants registering to vote. Among the biggest spreaders of that misinformation was none other than Musk. Perusing Richer's posts on X over time shows a man struggling to maintain — and demonstrate — his admiration for the billionaire. 'So proud of all my @SpaceX friends,' Richer tweeted in 2021, with a photo of himself at a SpaceX facility. The next year, he credited Musk with having revolutionized digital finance, the space industry, electric vehicles and battery technology. Then, last April, Musk promoted the idea that hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants had registered to vote in Arizona. And in September, Musk accused Arizona of 'refusing to remove illegals from voter rolls,' in a post that has been viewed 38 million times. At first, Richer tried to strike a conciliatory tone, even as he said there was '0 validity' to the idea that so many undocumented people had registered to vote. 'We loved the recent rocket launch that we could see in the Arizona sky,' he wrote as part of an eight-point post last April rebutting Musk's misinformation. He added that he was the 'owner of many, many Musk-related products.' Yet, as Musk has leaned into conspiracy and posted more about supposed voter fraud in Arizona, Richer has become less fawning and firmer in his pushback. He lost a Republican primary in his bid to retain his seat last August, after he denied that the 2020 election had been stolen from Donald Trump. In September, Richer posted that Musk had been wrong in every one of his posts about Arizona elections, but 'never corrected any of them.' And in an interview on MSNBC a few days later, Richer spoke more sharply. 'When people like Musk post on Twitter or speak to news outlets, and it's just filled with innuendo, or filled with lies, or filled with inaccurate information, then it's offices like mine and the 150 full-time employees that are in my office who see the downstream effects of that,' he said. Richer, who did not comment for this piece and is now a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, has now become a regular critic of the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency, the agency that his old roommate helps lead. On X, Richer has expressed concerns that Trump's actions have undercut the power of the legislative branch, and cracked jokes about DOGE's elimination of unnecessary positions when its co-head, Vivek Ramaswamy, left to run for governor of Ohio. Davis also did not respond to a request for comment. But he has asserted himself in his DOGE role, which at first was kept under wraps, and sat for his first public interview a week after we published our story. On Fox News, with more than a dozen other people who are taking part in the cost-cutting effort, Davis defended the team's slashing overhaul of the federal government. He sat directly next to Musk. A continued fixation on Social Security Musk is using his X account as a megaphone. My colleague Kate Conger looks at how he is fixating on Social Security recently. Elon Musk has repeatedly claimed of late that Social Security has been a target of enormous fraud, without providing much evidence. At the same time, he has pushed the unfounded theory that Democrats have allowed immigrants into the United States as part of a scheme to shift voter demographics, echoing a white-nationalist conspiracy theory known as the Great Replacement. On Wednesday, Musk seemed to try to combine these two threads, taking to X to revive his concerns about Social Security and sharing data from his Department of Government Efficiency team that he said showed immigrants had increasingly been issued Social Security numbers while they waited for their asylum cases to be heard. 'Insane,' Musk wrote, sharing a Fox News clip that discussed the findings. He also shared several posts from other X users who amplified the same Fox News video. After one user suggested that members of the Biden administration should be arrested, Musk replied, 'Absolutely.' Immigrants who are authorized to work in the United States are given Social Security numbers because they need to pay taxes, though they are not automatically eligible to receive benefits. Proposals to cut Social Security have been some of the most contentious ideas from Musk's team. The program is widely popular, and many Republicans fear that Musk-backed cuts could upset their constituents. But Musk has continued to focus on Social Security, sending one of his oldest and most trusted investors, Antonio Gracias, to the agency to oversee DOGE's work there. Other notable posts: 314 That's how many separate fields of data about people living in the United States are contained in information systems to which Musk's associates at the Department of Government Efficiency are seeking access, according to a New York Times analysis. That data could include a citizen's mother's maiden name, bank account number or amount of student debt — and a whole lot more. The categories of information in the analysis come from 23 data systems holding personal information about the public across eight agencies. See the eye-opening list of data categories and The Times's full story here. A pilot sues an X influencer for defamation Jo Ellis, a 35-year-old transgender pilot in the Virginia Army National Guard, became the center of a conspiracy theory after popular accounts on X spread the false rumor that she had been at the helm of a helicopter that collided with a passenger jet in Washington in January. To the online mob, her suspected involvement in the incident was evidence that diversity initiatives in the federal government had played a role in the crash. None of it was true. On Wednesday, she filed a defamation lawsuit on Wednesday against Matt Wallace, an influencer on X with more than two million followers who helped spread the falsehood. 'My life was turned upside-down at that point,' Ms. Ellis said in an interview with my colleague Stuart A. Thompson. 'Forever on, I'm known as 'that trans terrorist.'' Read more here.
USA Today
08-04-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
Air Force backtracks Hegseth pronoun ban after realizing it violates Biden law
Air Force backtracks Hegseth pronoun ban after realizing it violates Biden law Show Caption Hide Caption US Defense Secretary, Japanese Prime Minister visit Iwo Jima memorial In his first trip to Japan, U.S. Defense Secretary Hegseth visited Iwo Jima and attended a memorial with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. The Air Force walked back a Trump administration ban on pronouns in its official communications after realizing it ran afoul of a Biden-era defense policy bill that bars the Pentagon from establishing any pronoun policies. In a memo dated last Wednesday, Gwendolyn DeFilippi, the Air Force's acting assistant secretary for manpower and reserve affairs, said the ban on preferred pronouns was "rescinded." The ban, announced in an early February memo from DeFilippi, ordered the Air Force to "immediately" stop using "preferred pronouns" in any official communications, including "email signature blocks, memoranda, letters, papers, social media, official websites" and other official correspondence. The Air Force said this week that it changed course after realizing the pronoun ban was in violation of the 2024 annual defense policy bill, which bans the Defense Department from making any pronoun policy – whether for or against their official use. "The Department of the Air Force updated the guidance to comply with federal law after it was brought to our attention the policy was not in line with the fiscal year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act," a spokesperson for the Air Force said. The bill, which sets down the official policy outlining how each year's military budget will be put to use, prohibits the military from either requiring or barring the "identification of gender or personal pronouns in official correspondence." What the Trump administration means for you: Sign up for USA TODAY's On Politics newsletter. More: 'Appalled': Pentagon restores web pages on Navajo code talkers, Jackie Robinson In late January, federal employees from multiple departments received emails from the Trump administration ordering them to scrub pronouns from their email signatures. Hegseth wages anti-DEI campaign The ban on pronouns came amid Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's sweeping push to expunge all diversity, equity and inclusion policies from the military. Hegseth also canceled identity months, like Black History Month, from Pentagon policy and ordered hundreds of books pulled from the shelves of libraries at military schools and the Naval Academy Library. In a move widely condemned by Democratic lawmakers and LGBTQ advocates, the Trump administration also banned transgender people from enlisting in the military. The Department was also forced to backtrack after an order from Hegseth to delete all DEI-related content from official websites provoked outrage. The directive saw pages covering topics from Jackie Robinson to the Navajo Code Talkers to the Tuskegee Airmen taken down, with "dei" appearing in their URLs. After the backlash, some were reinstated, but many remain down. 'They don't seem to care if it's legal' Alex Wagner, a former assistant secretary of the Air Force, said the backtrack meant the military under Hegseth, "finally let the lawyers into some of their decision making." In late 2021, the Air Force updated its official style guide – called the Tongue and Quill – to allow its members to "include pronouns in their signature block," according to an archived screenshot of the announcement. The original link has now been taken down. Wagner said pronoun policy was barely an "afterthought" during his time in Air Force leadership. Most of the concern about it came, not from the force, but from Republican lawmakers who "assumed this was an all-consuming exercise that took our focus off of warfighting, which it absolutely did not." "This was a minor amendment to a writing style guide,' he said. "It never came up, except in preparation to testify before Congress." Amid the department-wide push to wipe out DEI, the Pentagon under Hegseth was glossing over the legality of its actions, he said. "They don't seem to care if it's legal or not and aren't really stopping to ask."
USA Today
01-04-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
How long has Cory Booker been speaking? Senator continues marathon speech Tuesday afternoon
How long has Cory Booker been speaking? Senator continues marathon speech Tuesday afternoon If he speaks until 7:19 p.m. EDT, Booker will break the record for the longest known floor speech: Then-Sen. Strom Thurmond's 1957 speech against the Civil Rights Act went 24 hours and 18 minutes. U.S. Sen. Cory Booker is continuing a marathon speech on the Senate floor, which passed the 21-hour mark on Tuesday afternoon without a bathroom trip, a bite of food or even a sit-down break for the lawmaker. Starting at 7 p.m. ET on Monday, the New Jersey Democrat began criticizing President Donald Trump and Elon Musk on the Senate floor. Although it is not considered a filibuster since he is not attempting to stall or block legislation, the Senate floor will remain open so long as Booker is speaking. The former mayor of Newark, who is serving his second full term in the Senate, has said he plans to speak as long as he is "physically able." He was within a few hours of breaking a record for the longest floor speech on Tuesday afternoon. Watch live: Cory Booker holds marathon speech on Senate floor criticizing Trump administration How long is Sen. Cory Booker's speech? Just after 4 p.m. ET Tuesday, Booker has been speaking for more than 21 hours. If he speaks until 7:19 p.m. EDT, Booker will break the record for the longest known floor speech: Then-Sen. Strom Thurmond's 1957 speech against the Civil Rights Act went 24 hours and 18 minutes. In a pre-recorded video posted to X while Booker is simultaneously on the floor, Booker said he is speaking about "what Donald Trump is doing to our nation." "It's my plan to continue to go for as long as I possibly can," he said in the update shortly after 8 a.m. ET. "I know we have the power, I believe the power of the people is greater than the people in power." Keep up with Washington: Sign up for USA TODAY's On Politics newsletter. Who is Cory Booker? Cory Booker is a Democratic U.S. senator who has represented New Jersey since 2013, when he became the first Black person to hold the seat. He won a special election and was re-elected for a full term in 2014. The D.C. native who was raised in New Jersey completed his undergraduate and master's degrees at Stanford University and graduated from Yale Law School in 1997. He previously served as the mayor of Newark between 2006 and 2013. How to watch Cory Booker's marathon speech USA TODAY is streaming Sen. Booker's speech on YouTube, watch it live. Sen. Cory Booker begins anti-Trump marathon Senate speech Senator Cory Booker has launched a marathon speech on the Senate floor, speaking out against Donald Trump and Elon Musk. unbranded - Newsworthy (This story will be updated as Booker's speech continues.) Contributing: Riley Beggin Kinsey Crowley is a trending news reporter at USA TODAY. Reach her at kcrowley@ Follow her on X and TikTok @kinseycrowley or Bluesky at @
USA Today
01-04-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
How long has Cory Booker been speaking? Senator continues marathon speech Tuesday morning
How long has Cory Booker been speaking? Senator continues marathon speech Tuesday morning U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J. is continuing a marathon speech Tuesday morning that is stretching into more than 15 hours on the Senate floor. Starting at 7 p.m. ET on Monday, Booker began criticizing President Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Although it is not considered a filibuster as he is not attempting to stall or block legislation, the Senate floor will remain open so long as he is speaking. Booker, the former mayor of Newark serving his second full term in the Senate, has said he plans to speak as long as he is "physically able." Watch live: Cory Booker holds marathon speech on Senate floor criticizing Trump administration How long is Sen. Cory Booker's speech? Just after 10 a.m. ET Tuesday morning, Booker has been speaking for more than 15 hours. In a pre-recorded video posted to X while Booker is simultaneously on the floor, Booker said he is speaking about "what Donald Trump is doing to our nation." "It's my plan to continue to go for as long as I possibly can," he said in the update shortly after 8 a.m. ET. "I know we have the power, I believe the power of the people is greater than the people in power." Keep up with Washington: Sign up for USA TODAY's On Politics newsletter. Who is Cory Booker? Cory Booker is a Democratic U.S. Senator who has represented New Jersey since 2013, when he became the first Black person to hold the seat. He won a special election and was re-elected for a full term in 2014. The D.C. native who was raised in New Jersey completed his undergraduate and master's degrees at Stanford University and graduated from Yale Law School in 1997. He previously served as the mayor of Newark between 2006 and 2013. How to watch Cory Booker's marathon speech USA TODAY is streaming Sen. Booker's speech on YouTube, watch it live. Sen. Cory Booker begins anti-Trump marathon Senate speech Senator Cory Booker has launched a marathon speech on the Senate floor, speaking out against Donald Trump and Elon Musk. unbranded - Newsworthy (This story will be updated as Booker's speech continues.) Kinsey Crowley is a trending news reporter at USA TODAY. Reach her at kcrowley@ Follow her on X and TikTok @kinseycrowley or Bluesky at @
