WASHINGTON (AP) — Conservative Supreme Court justices on Tuesday appeared to back a Republican-led drive that would erase limits on how much political parties can spend in coordination with candidates for Congress and president and overturn a quarter-century-old decision.

A day after the justices indicated they would reverse a 90-year-old precedent limiting the president’s power to fire independent agency heads, the court took up a 2001 decision that upheld a provision of federal election law that is more than 50 years old.

The lawsuit, which originated in Ohio, includes Vice President JD Vance, who joined in the Republican challenge to the limits when he was a senator from Ohio. The arguments touched on whether Vance would run for president in 2028, and whether his plans should figure in the outcome.

The case is the latest in which the conservative majority could upend congressionally enacted limits on raising and spending money to influence elections. The court’s 2010 Citizens United decision opened the door to unlimited independent spending in federal elections.

Two hours of arguments showed entrenched divisions between the liberal and conservative justices over campaign finance restrictions.

“Every time we interfere with the congressional design, we make matters worse,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a dissenter in Citizens United and the court’s other campaign money cases.

By contrast, Justice Samuel Alito, a member of the Citizens United majority, described the decision as “much maligned, I think unfairly maligned.” The effect of the decision was to ”level the playing field,” Alito said, by expanding the right to spend freely that had previously belonged only to media companies.

The limits on party spending stem from a desire to prevent large donors from skirting caps on individual contributions to a candidate by directing unlimited sums to the party, with the understanding that the money will be spent on behalf of the candidate.

The Republican committees for House and Senate candidates filed the lawsuit in Ohio in 2022, joined by Vance and then-Rep. Steve Chabot.

The court should cast a skeptical eye on the limits because they are “at war” with recent high court decisions, lawyer Noel Francisco said, representing Republican interests. The Federal Election Commission, which changed its view on the issue after Trump took office, also argued that the limits should be struck down.

Democrats are calling on the court to uphold the law, even though there is wide agreement that the spending limits have hurt political parties in an era of unlimited spending by other organizations.

“That’s the real source of the disadvantage, right?” Justice Brett Kavanaugh said. “You can give huge money to the outside group, but you can’t give huge money to the party. And so the parties are very much weakened compared to the outside group.”

Alito, Kavanaugh and Justice Clarence Thomas all voiced skepticism about the limits, while the three liberal justices signaled they would vote to uphold them. The other three members of the court, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, either said nothing during the arguments or not enough to indicate how they might vote.

After the Trump administration joined with Republicans to ask the court to strike down the campaign finance law, the justices appointed a lawyer to defend it.

Roman Martinez, an experienced Supreme Court advocate, offered the justices a way out of the case without deciding anything. Among the reasons, Martinez told the court, is that Vance’s claim is moot because the vice president has “repeatedly denied having any concrete plan to run for office in 2028.”

The justices did not seem to be looking for the off ramp that Martinez was offering.

In 2025, the coordinated party spending for Senate races ranges from $127,200 in several states with small populations to nearly $4 million in California. For House races, the limits are $127,200 in states with only one representative and $63,600 everywhere else.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal on a Texas free speech case that allowed local officials to remove books deemed objectionable from public libraries.

The case stemmed from a 2022 lawsuit by a group of residents in rural Llano County over the removal from the public library of more than a dozen books dealing with sex, race and gender themes, as well as humorously touching on topics such as flatulence.

A lower federal appeals court had ruled that removing the books did not violate Constitutional free speech protections.

The case had been closely watched by publishers and librarians across the country. The Supreme Court’s decision to not consider the case was criticized by free speech rights groups.

The Texas case has already been used to ban books in other areas of the country, said Elly Brinkley, staff attorney for U.S. Free Expression Programs at PEN America.

“Leaving the Fifth Circuit’s ruling in place erodes the most elemental principles of free speech and allows state and local governments to exert ideological control over the people with impunity. The government has no place telling people what they can and cannot read,” Brinkley said.

Sam Helmick, president of the American Library Association, said the Supreme Court’s decision not to consider the case “threatens to transform government libraries into centers for indoctrination instead of protecting them as centers of open inquiry, undermining the First Amendment right to read unfettered by viewpoint-based censorship.”

The Texas case began when a group of residents asked the county library commission to remove the group of books from circulation. The local commission ordered librarians to comply and a separate group of residents sued to keep the books on the shelves.

Llano County, about 75 miles (120 kilometers) northwest of the Texas capital of Austin, has a population of about 20,000. It is mostly white and conservative, with deep ties to agriculture and deer hunting.

The book titles originally ordered removed included, “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent” by Isabel Wilkerson; “They Called Themselves the K.K.K: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group,” by Susan Campbell Bartoletti; “In the Night Kitchen” by Maurice Sendak; “It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health” by Robie H. Harris; and “Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen” by Jazz Jennings.

Other titles include “Larry the Farting Leprechaun” by Jane Bexley and “My Butt is So Noisy!” by Dawn McMillan.

A federal judge ordered the county to restore some of the books in 2023, but that decision was reversed earlier this year by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.

The county at one point briefly considered closing its public libraries rather than return the books to the shelves after the federal judge’s initial order.

In its order on May 23, the appeals court’s majority opinion said the decision to remove a book from the library shelf is not a book ban.

“No one is banning (or burning books). If a disappointed patron can’t find a book in the library, he can order it online, buy it from a bookstore or borrow it from a friend,” the appeals court opinion said.

Llano County Judge Ron Cunningham, the ranking official in the county, did not immediately respond to an email to his office seeking comment.