The U.S. Constitution

Kagan’s Quiet Warning to the Left

For years, some progressives have treated the Supreme Court like a captured institution, a black-robed obstacle that can only be overcome by force of politics. Add seats. Impose term limits. Cut the Court down to size. The underlying argument is simple: if the Court is a partisan weapon, then the...

The “75 Cases” Claim: What Judges Ruled and Where the First Amendment Line Is

When you hear a sweeping claim like “courts have ruled dozens of times that President Trump stifled free speech,” it is worth slowing down and asking two librarian-style questions: What exactly counts as a ‘case’? and what did the judges actually say the government did wrong? Here is the...

Can Fauci Plead the Fifth After a Pardon?

When Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared before a Senate committee on July 29, 2026, he declined to answer questions by invoking the Fifth Amendment . The flashpoint was not just political. It was constitutional: can someone still “plead the Fifth” after receiving a presidential pardon ? This question...

Who Gets to Tax You at the Border?

There is a moment in every civics class when the kids realize something unsettling: taxes are not just about money. They are about power. Who gets to reach into your pocket, under what authority, and with what limits. That old question has resurfaced at the border, where twenty-five states have...

When Agencies Become the Courtroom

Here is a question I used to spring on my civics students when they got a little too comfortable with the word government : When the government accuses you of wrongdoing and demands money, who gets to decide whether you actually did it? For most Americans, the instinctive answer is simple. A judge....

Wayne County Vote Counts and Mail-In Ballots: What the Constitution and Michigan Law Allow

Every election cycle has a familiar soundtrack: a big county becomes a villain, mail ballots become suspicious by definition, and ordinary administrative steps get rebranded as “miracles.” Wayne County, home to Detroit, sits at the center of that storyline in Michigan. So let’s slow it down...

What Is House Censure?

Censure is one of those congressional words that sounds like it should come with a legal consequence. Like the member is disqualified, removed, or at least forced to pack up their office that afternoon. It does not work that way. When the House of Representatives “censures” a member, it is...

Can States Require ICE Agents to Remove Masks? The Constitutional Question

Editor’s note: The earlier version of this piece described a specific New York statute (S.9193A/A.10172), a Department of Justice lawsuit, and a temporary restraining order by Judge Dale E. Ho on August 4, 2024, and it included purported quotes from that order. We could not verify those claims,...

Denaturalization: When the Government Can Revoke U.S. Citizenship

American citizenship feels like a one-way door. You take the oath, you get the certificate, you become a citizen. End of story. But there is a legal back door. It is called denaturalization , and it is exactly what it sounds like: the government asks a court to undo a naturalization and treat the...

What Is a Continuing Resolution?

When Washington starts using the phrase “continuing resolution” , it usually means one thing: Congress is running out of time to fund the government the normal way. That is why you will see headlines about Senate leaders signaling support for a short-term funding bill to clear a “shutdown...

Can a President Withdraw U.S. Troops Without Congress?

The Constitution gives the President the title that sounds decisive: Commander in Chief . But it gives Congress the powers that make wars and deployments sustainable: declaring war, raising and supporting armies, regulating the military, and paying for it . That tension is why calls for a President...

Can the President Control the Smithsonian?

The Smithsonian feels like a national attic. It holds the stuff we cannot quite throw away: artifacts, documents, aircraft, dresses, protest signs, dinosaur bones, and the stories we attach to all of it. That is why fights over its exhibits keep turning into fights over the country itself. When a...

Reflecting Pool Protest or Vandalism? Federal Law on the National Mall

The National Mall feels like common ground. People march there, pray there, celebrate there, and sometimes rage there. It is the country’s symbolic front yard. But it is not a legally blank space. It is federally managed land, with a permit system, enforceable regulations, and criminal statutes...

Who Controls the Smithsonian?

The Smithsonian feels like a neutral national attic. A place where the country stores its artifacts, labels them, and quietly agrees on what they mean. But the Smithsonian is also a creature of law. It exists because Congress created it by statute as a federal trust for “the increase and...

Maher’s DSA Rant and the Constitution’s Hidden Wiring

Bill Maher has been a political contrarian for so long that people forget the category exists between “party loyalist” and “party defector.” On August 1, 2026, that middle category collapsed into a headline-shaped myth when a monologue from Real Time was clipped into bite-size outrage and...

West Point Drops Its Appeal in Faculty Gag-Order Fight

West Point just made a quiet but meaningful choice. It let a deadline pass without appealing a federal judge’s order that blocked the academy from enforcing sweeping approval-first restrictions on civilian faculty speech. In constitutional terms, that matters because the ruling in place right now...

Appeals Court Clears End of TPS for South Sudan and Ethiopia

Two Temporary Protected Status programs, one covering South Sudan and one covering Ethiopia, are now far closer to ending after a federal appeals court said earlier court orders blocking the terminations cannot stand. The turning point was not a new factual finding about conditions overseas. It was...

DOJ Warns Montgomery County Over Armed Worship Ban

Montgomery County, Maryland, has found itself in a fast-moving constitutional clash after the U.S. Department of Justice signaled it may intervene against a local carry restriction that applies to “places of public assembly,” including houses of worship. At the center of the dispute is a county...

Ninth Circuit Limits Mandatory ICE Detention for Interior Arrests

The Ninth Circuit just issued a consequential immigration detention decision with a practical bottom line: in much of the western United States, many immigrants who entered the country without inspection but are later arrested inside the United States generally cannot be placed into mandatory,...

Acting Attorney General Rules: Blanche, Senate Confirmation, and the Anti-Weaponization Bill

When a president says, in effect, “If the Senate will not confirm my pick, I will just keep him as Acting Attorney General,” it sounds like a simple workaround. It is not. It is a set of interlocking constitutional and statutory rules built around one core idea: the Department of Justice is...