Supreme Court allows California to move forward with new congressional map favoring Democrats

(NEW YORK) — Three years after affirming a constitutional right of Americans to carry a gun for self-defense, the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday will consider whether states can limit the carry of firearms on private property open to the public without first receiving the property owner’s consent.

The case involves a Hawaiian law and similar measures in four other states –- California, Maryland, New York and New Jersey –- where lawmakers set a strict “default rule” prohibiting the possession of handguns in privately-owned places where other members of the public might congregate, unless the owner affirmatively gives permission.

The laws govern locations such as stores, shopping malls, bars, restaurants, theaters, arenas, farms, and private beaches. It does not involve public property, which is subject to different rules.

“This law is extremely restrictive. It bans public carry in 96.4% of the publicly available land in the County of Maui,” said Alan Beck, an attorney for three Maui residents and members of the Hawaii Firearms Coalition who are challenging the law.

“They’d like to carry dropping off money at the ATM late at night or just going to have lunch at a restaurant,” Beck said. “They are unable to carry in any private business that is open to the public that is unwilling to put up a sign saying ‘guns allowed.'”

While property owners have the inherent right to exclude guns from their premises, Beck says the onus should be on them to make their wishes clear, otherwise expect that members of the public can freely exercise their Second Amendment rights as a matter of standard practice.

Unlike Hawaii, 45 states permit licensed handgun owners to presume they can legally carry their weapons onto private property open to the public, unless the owner explicitly bans guns by issuing verbal instructions or posting a sign.

“The express purpose of this law is to make it so that less people exercise their constitutional rights,” Beck said.

Hawaii officials argue in court documents that never in the nation’s history has there been a “right to armed entry onto private property without consent” and that its law is meant to protect a property-owner’s right to exclude guns without having to take extra steps.

“The basic principle is that private property owners are empowered to set the rules for their property, and the state can make it easier for private property owners to do so,” said Douglas Letter, chief legal officer at Brady, a gun safety group.

“Hawaii’s law is obviously eminently reasonable,” Letter added. “Visitors simply must get a private property owner’s permission to bring a firearm onto that property.”

The Supreme Court will evaluate the Hawaii law using a test laid out in a landmark 2022 decision in which Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the conservative majority, said only gun regulations consistent with “the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” can stand.

Hawaii points to an 1865 Louisiana law and 1771 New Jersey law as imposing nearly identical property restrictions as its current measure. The plaintiffs say they are “outlier” examples and not the historic norm. The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld Hawaii’s law, holding that “a national tradition likely exists of prohibiting the carrying of firearms on private property without the owner’s oral or written consent.”

Beck and co-counsel Kevin O’Grady said they expect the justices will likely reverse that ruling in their favor. “Just because Hawaii is giving lip service to the Second Amendment when they’re doing the kind of things they’re doing — and doing these mental gymnastics to try to justify this law,” O’Grady said, “it will not be tolerated by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

A decision in the case is expected by the end of June.

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(WASHINGTON) — Acting FEMA Administrator David Richardson resigned on Monday, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation.

Richardson, who was temporarily installed in May after former Acting Administrator Cam Hamilton was essentially fired by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.

Richardson was also in charge of the department’s countering Weapons of Mass Destruction office. It is unclear if he will still stay on in that role.

It is unclear who will lead the disaster management agency.

Richardson told staff in an all-hands meeting in June that he was unaware hurricane season had started, according to sources familiar with the meeting.

It was unclear if Richardson was joking, but a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson argued he was.

When asked by reporters during a White House press briefing whether President Donald Trump was “still comfortable” with Richardson after his remarks, press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed concerns and said FEMA is taking hurricane season “seriously, contrary to some of the reporting we have seen based on jokes that were made and leaks from meetings.”

Richardson’s comments followed an internal review indicating FEMA was “not ready” for the 2025 hurricane season in mid-May.

The DHS spokesperson denied FEMA is unprepared, saying “Despite meanspirited attempts to falsely frame a joke as policy, there is no uncertainty about what FEMA will be doing this Hurricane Season.”

“FEMA is laser-focused on disaster response and protecting the American people,” the spokesperson added.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., slammed Richardson, posting on X that he is “unaware of why he hasn’t been fired yet.”

“Trump’s FEMA chief is incompetent,” Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., added. “People will die.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(WASHINGTON) — Former Vice President Dick Cheney, considered by many political observers to be the most politically active and influential vice president in U.S. history, has died. He was 84.

“Richard B. Cheney, the 46th Vice President of the United States, died last night, November 3, 2025,” his family said in a statement. “He was 84 years old. His beloved wife of 61 years, Lynne, his daughters, Liz and Mary, and other family members were with him as he passed. The former Vice President died due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease.”

He worked for nearly four decades in Washington. He served as the youngest White House chief of staff under President Gerald Ford; represented Wyoming in the U.S. House of Representatives — where he worked with congressional leadership and President Ronald Reagan; was secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush; and later served two terms as vice president under Bush’s son, President George W. Bush.

He was also CEO of Halliburton, an energy company based in Texas that had a global presence.

When terrorists attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, it was Cheney who first took charge while the president was out of Washington.

“When the president came on the line, I told him that the Pentagon had been hit and urged him to stay away from Washington,” Cheney recalled in his memoir, “In My Time.” “The city was under attack, and the White House was a target. I understood that he didn’t want to appear to be on the run, but he shouldn’t be here until we knew more about what was going on.”

He and senior staff gathered at the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, where they monitored the horror unfolding.

“I stayed up into the morning hours thinking about what the attack meant and how we should respond,” Cheney wrote in his memoir. “We were in a new era and needed an entirely new strategy to keep America secure. The first war of the twenty-first century wouldn’t simply be a conflict of nation against nation, army against army. It would be first and foremost a war against terrorists who operated in the shadows, feared no deterrent, and would use any weapon they could get their hands on to destroy us.”

As vice president, Cheney was also known as the mastermind behind much of the Bush administration’s strategy in Iraq.

“His power is unparalleled in the history of the republic, frankly, for that position,” John Hulsman, a research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington-based think tank, told ABC’s “Nightline” in 2005.

Cheney said he looked upon his role as vice president as being an adviser to the president.

“I don’t run anything, I’m not in charge of a department or a particular policy area and for me to be out all of the time commenting on the issues of the day — pontificating if you will — on what’s going on, to some extent infringes upon everybody else in the administration, especially with those specific people who have got specific responsibilities,” he told ABC News Chief Global Affairs Martha Raddatz in an interview in March 2008, when she was a White House correspondent.

And later, in the 2013 documentary “The World According to Dick Cheney,” the former vice president said, “Tell me what terrorist attacks you would have let go forward because you didn’t want to be a mean and nasty fellow. Are you going to trade the lives of a number of people because you want to preserve your honor, or are you going to do your job, do what’s required, first and foremost your responsibility is to safeguard the United States of America and the lives of its citizens.”

After his time in office ended, he remained politically active while former President George W. Bush had moved back to Texas and refrained from commenting on politics in an effort to avoid “undermining” the current president.

During President Barack Obama’s administration, Cheney emerged as an outspoken critic of the president’s national security policies — charging that Obama’s counterterrorism policies were making the country less safe.

“It has always been easy for those who are evil to kill, but now it is possible for a few to do so on an unimaginable scale,” Cheney wrote in his 2011 memoir.

“The key, I think, is to choose serious and vigilant leaders, to listen to the men and women who want us to entrust them with high office and judge whether they are saying what they think we want to hear or whether they have the larger cause of the country in mind,” he continued. “It’s not always easy to move beyond pleasing promises, but in the case of America, the greater good is so grand.”

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