The U.S. Constitution

Trump’s White House Press Ban and the First Amendment

President Donald Trump announced he was banning three news organizations, CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, from White House access “effective immediately.” In the same post, he argued that outlets should not be able to “constantly write or report fiction and lies” when covering the President, the Trump...

Border Agents Can Search Your Phone Without Suspicion

You can board a plane with a pocket-sized archive of your life: your messages, your photos, your health portals, your banking apps, your location history, and your cloud credentials. In many settings, the Fourth Amendment sharply limits when the government can search that kind of information. But...

Can a President Turn a Monument Site Into a Military Complex?

A recent viral, unverified claim circulating online and attributed to President Donald J. Trump says a purported “Triumphal Arch” proposal tied to the Receptive Circle by Arlington Memorial Bridge would be converted into a military facility for security purposes. Important note for readers: this...

Why NORAD Scrambled F-16s Over Camp David

You do not have to do anything “wrong” in the ordinary criminal sense to get a fighter jet’s attention. In American airspace, some of the most consequential rules are designed for prevention, not punishment: Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs), prohibited and restricted areas, and the air-defense...

Can a President Change Mail Voting Rules?

When a president issues an executive order touching mail voting, the instinctive question is simple: can the president change election rules? The constitutional answer is less dramatic and more important. A president cannot rewrite state election law with a pen stroke. But a president can direct...

Blagojevich, Obama, and the Senate Seat Scandal: What the Unsealed FBI Interviews Mean

The newly unsealed FBI interview materials tied to the Rod Blagojevich Senate seat scandal have a familiar effect: they pull everyone back into the most American kind of political question, the one where power is lawful, but trading it can still be criminal. When people say “unsealed FBI interview...

Appropriations, Mootness, and the Judgment Fund

When a federal judge says a program is still “alive and kicking,” the legal question is rarely about whether the program exists on a website. It is about whether the government can accomplish the same thing through a different pocket. That is the constitutional tension that shows up again and again...

A “Permanent” Greenland Security Deal and the U.S. Constitution

You can almost hear the constitutional gears grinding when a headline claims the United States has signed an “Infinite Life” agreement for “permanent control over security, and all other needs, in Greenland” at “no cost,” along with a veto over foreign bases and “sensitive investments.” Even if a...

Can Noncitizens Vote in Federal Elections? What the Indianapolis Case Shows About Voting Law

Every election cycle produces a familiar question that sounds simple until you ask the Constitution to answer it: can noncitizens vote in federal elections? Today’s version of that question is tied to a concrete case. In August 2024, federal authorities publicly announced the arrest of Helda...

Why the House Can End Early, and What It Means for an Impeachment Vote

The House of Representatives has the Constitution’s “sole Power of Impeachment.” But the Constitution does not tell the House how to schedule that power, how quickly to use it, or what happens when members clash over whether an impeachment question must come to the floor. That gap is where today’s...

Can Federal Judges Coordinate Immigration Cases? What the Constitution Allows

When a surge of immigration-related filings hits a federal district court, judges face a practical problem: dozens or hundreds of emergency petitions can arrive at once, raising overlapping legal questions on tight timelines. That is the context for a recent controversy in Minnesota. Sahan Journal...

What Are the Limits on ICE? Constitutional Rights in Immigration Enforcement

When people say immigration enforcement has “crossed the line,” they usually mean one of two things: agents entered places they should not have entered, or people were detained in ways that felt arbitrary, coercive, or impossible to challenge. Those concerns map onto two longstanding constitutional...

Who Decides War With Iran?

You can feel the question underneath the headlines: if a president escalates military action against Iran, who is supposed to be in charge of the decision? The Constitution gives you a frustratingly American answer: both branches , in different ways, at different moments, with different tools. The...

Do Data Centers Raise Your Electric Bill?

Data centers are the physical backbone of modern life. They store your photos, run your streaming, process card payments, train AI models, and keep cloud services online. They also use a lot of electricity, and not just for servers. The cooling systems can be just as power-hungry. So the...

Election Fraud Cases, Noncitizen Voting, and What the Law Actually Says

Whenever a cluster of election fraud cases hits the news, the public reaction tends to split in two directions. One side hears “proof the system is rigged,” the other hears “nothing to see here.” The law is less emotional and much more specific. “Election fraud” is an umbrella term for different...

Can Congress Block the Israel Bomb Transfer?

When a headline says a president wants to move billions of dollars in heavy bombs to a foreign ally, the obvious civic question is simple: can Congress stop it? In this case, press accounts have described a package valued at about $2.8 billion that includes 2,000-pound-class munitions for Israel....

Public Charge, Green Cards, and Medicaid: What the Rule Really Does

The phrase public charge sounds like something you might hear in a political argument. In immigration law, it is something much more specific: a century-old admissibility concept that lets the federal government deny admission or lawful permanent residence (a green card) to certain noncitizens who...

SCOTUS Blocks Trump’s Mail-Ballot Rule Before Midterms

The Supreme Court has stepped in, but in a quieter way than many people expect. Instead of issuing a sweeping ruling about mail-in voting, the justices refused to pause a lower-court order that blocks parts of new U.S. Postal Service rules for handling election ballots through the mail before the...

The Fed Blinks: Rates Up a Quarter Point

The Federal Reserve just did something it has not done in three years: it raised interest rates. Not by a dramatic half-point. Not by an emergency jolt. Just a quarter point, unanimously, moving its benchmark range to 3.75% to 4% from 3.5% to 3.75% . On paper, a quarter point can sound like a...

The Supreme Court Clerk “Cartel” Debate

Most Americans picture Supreme Court power as nine robed justices, isolated from politics, deciding cases by pure legal reasoning. That is the civics-book version. The working reality is more practical. The Court is a small institution, and it relies heavily on a small group of law clerks in each...