The U.S. Constitution

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...

Court Expansion and Ending the Electoral College: What the Constitution Requires

When a major political figure endorses expanding the Supreme Court and abolishing the Electoral College , the debate usually jumps straight to motives and consequences. But the more basic question is structural: what does the Constitution actually require for either change? These two reforms get...

Immigration Bond Hearings and Due Process

Immigration detention has a way of sounding simpler than it is. People hear “bond” and assume the rules are basically criminal bail with a different label. They are not. Immigration detention is civil custody, run mostly by the executive branch. In many cases, DHS (usually through ICE) makes...

How the Senate Confirms an Attorney General and What Happens When Nominees Stall

Attorney General nominations tend to attract drama for an obvious reason: the person being confirmed will lead one of the federal government’s most powerful legal institutions, with authority over federal criminal prosecutions, major civil enforcement, and the Justice Department’s legal...

Can Congress Create a Compensation Fund for Jan. 6 Defendants?

When politicians talk about creating a federal compensation fund for Jan. 6 defendants, they are really talking about two different things at once. One is power : Can Congress spend federal money this way at all? The other is limits : Even if Congress can appropriate money, can it do so in a way...

What Is the Alien Terrorist Removal Court?

You can live in the United States, be detained or arrested by immigration authorities in the United States, and face a removal order from the United States and still may not be allowed to see the underlying classified evidence the government says supports its case. That is not a rumor. It is one of...

Can a State Limit Police Cooperation With ICE?

You can feel the tension in the question itself: immigration is federal, policing is local, and the boundaries are not always intuitive. Across the country, states and cities keep testing those boundaries with laws and policies that limit how state and local officers cooperate with federal...

What Is FISA Section 702?

You can tell a surveillance power matters when it shows up in places that do not look like surveillance debates at all, like a fight over confirming a Director of National Intelligence or a Senate logjam that leaves an intelligence authority in limbo. That authority is FISA Section 702 , and it...

Can the President Retaliate After an Attack Without Congress?

When U.S. troops are attacked overseas, the instinctive question is simple: can the president hit back immediately, or does Congress have to approve it first? The Constitution gives you two answers at once. Article II makes the president the commander in chief. Article I gives Congress the power to...

Judge Blocks Ethiopia TPS Termination After Supreme Court Warning

For most of us, “Temporary Protected Status” sounds like an internal immigration term that only matters to lawyers. But when a TPS designation ends, it can quickly become a very ordinary, very human question: Do people who have built lives here get told to leave, and how fast? That question is...

Trump Underwater at -25: Iran and Inflation Bite

In civics class, I used to ask students a simple question that never stayed simple: What does the public actually judge a president on ? Character. Competence. Results. Values. Crisis leadership. And, when everything gets real, the price of what you need to live. Right now, one number is catching...

Trump’s Approval Hits a New Low as Iran and Inflation Squeeze

When a president goes “underwater,” we usually treat it like a mood ring. The public is annoyed. The headlines get rough. The next election starts creeping into every conversation. But there’s a harder civics question underneath the approval numbers: what exactly is the public reacting to...

Can CBP Make You Unlock Your Phone?

It is hard to overstate how strange the modern border has become. In the founding era, the government searched trunks. Today, it searches lives. Your phone is not a suitcase. It is a diary, a filing cabinet, a photo album, a newsroom, a bank branch, a doctor’s waiting room, and a map of your...