Right-leaning legal activists along with Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company have brought sweeping challenges against a cornerstone of legal enforcement in the United States: the right of private groups, people and local governments to sue over violations of many major laws.

Their argument, supported by the Trump administration, is that the Constitution reserves tremendous power for the president and federal agencies to decide how — or whether at all — to enforce federal law. They contend Congress should never have handed that power to others through so-called citizen suits that are part of environmental, campaign finance and certain other laws.

Environmentalists say it would be devastating to lose this essential, decades-old tool that is used to impose fines and halt lawbreaking by bad actors. Citizen suits, for example, have extracted millions from heavily polluting oil and gas operations, and ensured that lead pipes in Flint, Michigan, would be removed after its water crisis.

Legal experts say four pending federal cases — one of them filed last week — are moving forward at a time when the conservative majority on the Supreme Court gives opponents of citizen suits a greater chance than ever of success. The hard part for those opponents now is winning early federal cases and creating disagreement between the country’s appeals courts, which may help convince the Supreme Court the issue is important enough for a nationwide ruling.

Back in 2000, a Supreme Court opinion opened the door for that possibility.

“Many of us who worked in this area have been waiting basically 26 years for this shoe to drop,” said Richard Lazarus, a Harvard professor with decades of experience in environmental law.

Lazarus was referring to former moderate Justice Anthony Kennedy’s comments in a Clean Water Act case that citizen suits raised “difficult and fundamental” questions about whether they improperly dilute executive power. The late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in a dissenting opinion in the same case that citizen suits turn “over to private citizens the function of enforcing the law.” He avoided explicitly saying they were constitutional.

“The court is more like Scalia’s court since he died than it ever was when he was there,” said Lazarus.

He observed that those who lost cases where Scalia dissented are rushing back to today’s court hoping for a more favorable result.

The critical issue for citizen suits is who — the government or private citizens — collects fines and has control. A person filing a citizen suit must tell the government ahead of time. The government can stop the suit if it sufficiently pursues the case itself, but its options are limited and the person suing can stay involved. Citizen suits can force compliance with the law and result in fines, which go to the U.S. Treasury.

Two lawsuits filed by small businesses are challenging Trump’s sweeping tariffs announced Thursday that impose double-digit levies on 60 trading partners.

The tariffs, implemented under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 for what the Trump administration says is countries’ failure to prevent imports produced by forced labor, cover 99% of U.S. imports. Critics say the goal is less to prevent forced-labor imports and more to replace the worldwide tariffs that Trump imposed last year that were struck down by the Supreme Court in February. They came just as temporary 10% worldwide tariffs — that had also been challenged in court — expired.

Educational toy company Learning Resources, which was part of the tariff lawsuit that won in the Supreme Court, filed a new suit along with several other small businesses in the Court of International Trade on Friday over the current round of tariffs.

The second lawsuit was filed by Burlap and Barrel, a New York-based spice company, and Collective Horology, a watch retailer based in Ventura, California. They are represented by Liberty Justice Center, a libertarian advocacy group.

Both lawsuits argue that the government didn’t adequately establish its case against each specific economy or spell how the tariffs will eliminate the specified practice they are being levied for, as required by Section 301.

“Forced labor is morally indefensible, but an important objective does not give the government permission to ignore the law,” said Sara Albrecht, chairman and CEO of the Liberty Justice Center. “The administration allowed one global tariff to expire and immediately replaced it with another under a different statute. Changing the statute doesn’t change the law.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Experts say it might be tougher to successfully challenge the current round of tariffs than previous rounds. Trump used Section 301 to impose big tariffs on China in his first term, and they survived court challenges.

Unlike the Section 122 levies that expired Friday, “these tariffs will be with us for the long haul,” said lawyer Patrick Childress, a partner at Holland & Knight and a former U.S. trade official.

Even if countries enact the precise policies the U.S. wants, he said, they will still need to prove that they’re enforcing them to Washington’s satisfaction before the tariffs are removed. “This suggests that no short-term path for country-wide relief from the new Section 301 tariffs will be available.”

The U.S. government can continue collecting the 10% worldwide tariff it imposed in February while legal challenges to the levies continue to work their way through the courts, a federal court ruled Thursday.

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington decision handed a procedural win to the Trump administration, concluding that its case was “likely to succeed on the merits.”

At issue are temporary 10% worldwide tariffs President Donald Trump imposed after the Supreme Court in February struck down even broader double-digit tariffs the president had imposed last year on almost every country on Earth. The new tariffs, invoked under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, are set to expire July 24.

Section 122, which had never been used to justify import taxes before, allows the president to impose worldwide tariffs of up to 15% for 150 days, after which congressional approval is needed to extend them.

Section 122 is aimed at what it calls “fundamental international payments problems.” In dispute is whether that wording covers trade deficits — the gap between what the U.S. sells other countries and what it buys from them — as the Trump administration contends.

A split three-judge panel of the specialized Court of International Trade in New York last month found the 10% global tariffs were illegal after small businesses sued to stop them. The trade court ruled 2-1 that Trump overstepped the tariff power that Congress had delegated to the president under the law. The tariffs are “invalid” and “unauthorized by law,” the majority wrote.

Malik Beasley's lawyer said the indicted former NBA star "wants to move on with his life" after pleading not guilty Wednesday to charges that he altered his play in certain games in 2024 to enrich sports bettors and ease his own debts.

Beasley, the latest big name caught up in a sweeping federal gambling investigation, said little at his arraignment in Brooklyn federal court. He answered a judge's questions with "yes, your honor" but let his lawyer, Jason Goldman, enter his plea on his behalf.

Afterward, the 6-foot-4 (1.92 meter) shooting guard stood quietly as Goldman spoke to reporters outside the courthouse, demurring when one asked if he had anything to say to his fans. Beasley, who played for six NBA teams in nine years, missed the most recent season because he was under investigation. Instead, he played for a Puerto Rican team co-owned by the rapper Bad Bunny.

"He looks forward to fighting. He's fought every day," Goldman said. "He's presumed innocent and that has to mean something still, obviously."

Beasley, 29, and sports agent Paolo Zamorano, who also pleaded not guilty on Wednesday, were among six people charged in an indictment unsealed this week.

They are the newest defendants in a gambling sweep that has netted more than three dozen arrests, including former Miami Heat star Terry Rozier, who was accused of conspiring with friends to help them win bets, and Basketball Hall of Famer Chauncey Billups, who was accused of conspiring to fix high-stakes poker games.

Zamorano, 39, formerly represented another co-defendant, ex-NBA player Ed Davis, who had loaned money to Beasley and is accused of acting as his "gatekeeper" in the alleged scheme.

"We look forward to our day in court," Zamorano's lawyer, Kenneth Breen, told reporters.

Beasley and Zamorano were both released on bond. They're due back in court for a status conference on Aug. 6. Beasley is accused of fixing or trying to fix his performance in at least four games while playing for the Milwaukee Bucks in 2024 by under or overperforming bookmakers' expectations. In exchange, the indictment said, the bettors bribed Beasley and his debts to Davis were reduced or eliminated.

"Only way you can beat Vegas is sports betting," Davis told Beasley in a Jan. 26, 2024, text message, according to the indictment. "Everything else they got the edge."

In one example, according to the indictment, Beasley told Davis that he would try to outperform the 3.5 line that sportsbooks had set for his rebound total in Milwaukee's game against the Los Angeles Clippers on March 10, 2024.

With a second left, and the Bucks up by seven points, Beasley challenged a Clippers shot and dashed past four players to grab his fourth rebound and securing a win for the bettors as the horn sounded.

One bettor made a $3,252 profit on a $2,838 wager, the indictment said, and another made a $2,107 profit on wagers totaling $2,400. Other bettors missed out and lost money, mistakenly placing wagers on Beasley to underperform the rebound total because of an apparent miscommunication, the indictment said.

"What's funny is after he got it he had a big sigh of relief," a co-conspirator said in a text message, according to the indictment.

Beasley borrowed money from Davis, a former teammate, after racking up millions of dollars in gambling losses. His widely reported financial problems include disputes with a Detroit landlord, a Milwaukee barber and a Minnesota dentist. A 2025 lawsuit from a sports marketing agency resulted in a $1 million default judgment against him.

A man linked to white supremacist movements pleaded guilty on Monday to setting a fire that destroyed an office at a historic social justice center in Tennessee, a court document shows.

Regan Prater also pleaded guilty to attempting to aid a foreign terrorist organization for efforts to provide the militant group Hezbollah "a list of personally identifiable information for individuals purportedly affiliated with the government of Israel," according to a criminal information filed in February.

Sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 9 in Knoxville.

A public defender representing Prater did not immediately respond to an email and phone message requesting comment.

Prater was arrested last April in connection with the arson at the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market. The arrest came more than six years after the March 2019 blaze, which caused more than $1.2 million in damage, prosecutors say.

An affidavit filed in federal court in East Tennessee last year said Prater's posts in several group chats affiliated with white supremacist organizations connected him to the crime. In one private message, a witness who sent screenshots to the FBI asked a person authorities believe was Prater whether he set the fire.

"I'm not admitting anything," the person using the screen name 'Rooster' wrote. But he later went on to describe exactly how the fire was set with "a sparkler bomb and some Napalm."

A white-power symbol was spray-painted on the pavement near the site of the fire. The affidavit describes it as a "triple cross" and says it was also found on one of the firearms used by a shooter who killed 51 people at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15, 2019, about two weeks before the Highlander fire.

Prater was initially charged in 2025 with one count of arson. On Monday, the previous indictment was dismissed in favor of the criminal information filed in February which included the charge related to the Lebanese group Hezbollah. In a plea agreement filed the following day in February, the government agreed that a sentence of no more than 20 years was appropriate.

Prater was previously sentenced to five years in federal prison for setting a fire in June 2019 at an adult video and novelty store in East Tennessee. He pleaded guilty and was ordered to pay $106,000 in restitution in that case. At the scene of that fire, investigators found a cellphone they later determined belonged to Prater. The phone included a short video showing a person inside the store lighting an accelerant, according to the affidavit.