The U.S. Constitution

Who’s Paying for the Ads You Hate?

Try a simple civics exercise the next time your screen fills with a grim-faced attack ad: pause and ask, who paid for that ? In theory, that question is easy. In practice, modern campaign finance has turned it into a scavenger hunt with missing pieces, false leads, and a clock that runs out before...

What We’re Owed After the White House Checkpoint Shooting

When shots are fired at a White House checkpoint, the first question is always the same: how close did the threat get? But the second question matters just as much, and we ask it far less often: what are we, the public, entitled to know afterward ? Shortly after 6pm on Saturday, the White House was...

New Hampshire’s Campus Gun Ban Fight

Public colleges like to speak in the language of community. They are marketplaces of ideas, shared spaces, open campuses, open doors. But when the topic is firearms, many public universities suddenly speak a different language. Not community, but property. Not rights, but rules. Not citizens, but...

The White House Checkpoint Shooting and the Public’s Right to Answers

Saturday evening, a 21-year-old Maryland man, Nasire Best, approached a White House security checkpoint near 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, near the White House gates. Officials say that shortly after 6 p.m. ET he pulled a revolver from a bag and opened fire on Secret Service officers....

What Is a SLAPP Lawsuit?

A lawsuit can be a legitimate way to clear your name. It can also be a way to make you regret speaking at all. That second category has a name: SLAPP , short for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation . A SLAPP lawsuit is filed less to win at trial and more to punish, intimidate, or exhaust...

RICO Act

People talk about “getting hit with RICO” like it is a single crime, a special charge reserved for movie villains and mob bosses. In reality, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act is a federal statute (18 U.S.C. §§ 1961–1968) that creates several crimes and a civil cause of...

A Colorado Student, a Slam Poem, and the First Amendment

Public schools often say they want “student voice,” but the promise gets complicated fast when a student picks a topic adults would rather avoid. That tension sits at the center of a dispute out of Jefferson County, Colorado, where a 13-year-old student at Drake Middle School says she was...

A Primary Win and a Prison List

Here is the question that should make every American, left, right, and exhausted in the middle, sit up straight: what happens to constitutional democracy when a candidate runs not on laws they plan to pass, but on people they plan to punish? In a South Texas Democratic primary that spilled into a...

John Morgan’s 2024 Autopsy: DEI, Transgender Sports, and the Border

Every losing party does a version of the same thing after Election Day. It convenes a postmortem, produces a document, and promises that the next cycle will be different. The idea is simple: if we can diagnose the failure precisely enough, we can treat it next time. John Morgan, a longtime...

Tulsi Gabbard Resigns as Director of National Intelligence

Tulsi Gabbard is resigning from her position as Director of National Intelligence, notifying President Donald Trump during a meeting in the Oval Office Friday that she needs to step away from government service to support her husband through a serious illness. Her last day at the Office of the...

Passport Photo Sizes

Passport photos are one of those small details that can slow down an application faster than people expect. The photo rules are not universal. Each country sets its own standard dimensions, cropping expectations, and technical requirements, and even a “close enough” print from a retail photo...

Passport Photo Sizes by Country (20 English-Official Nations)

Passport photos look simple, but they can still slow down an application if they do not meet the specs. In many systems, a non-compliant photo triggers a request to resubmit before processing can continue. The tricky part is that there is no single global standard. One country may want a 2 × 2...

Certiorari

“Certiorari” is one of those Supreme Court words people repeat as if it is a spell. The Court “granted cert.” The Court “denied cert.” A case is “cert-worthy.” But certiorari is not a verdict. It is a door . Most of what the Supreme Court does today is decide which disputes it will...

Trump’s ‘Anti-Weaponization’ Fund: Constitutional Fix or New Problem?

A new Justice Department move is drawing intense criticism and, understandably, a lot of public confusion. The department has announced a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund meant to compensate people who say they are victims of “lawfare and weaponization” by the federal government....

Supreme Court Sends Two Voting Rights Act Cases Back Down

When people picture the Supreme Court at work, they often imagine a dramatic, final decision: a big ruling, a clear winner, and a clear loser. But some of the Court’s most consequential moves are quieter. This week, the justices issued brief orders in two Voting Rights Act cases that did not...

The Supreme Court’s Worst Decisions (and Why They Never Really Die)

We treat Supreme Court decisions like tombstones. Chiseled in stone. Final. Settled. But the Court’s worst moments do not stay buried. Even when a case is “overruled,” the reasoning that powered it can linger in the legal bloodstream, ready to reappear in a new body with a new name. So when...

A DOJ Addendum That Would Block IRS Audits of Trump

There are plenty of ways a legal settlement can end a dispute. What is far harder to justify, in a system built on equal treatment, is a settlement term that appears to place one person and his businesses outside the reach of routine tax enforcement for years already on file. That is the concern...

What Is the RICO Act?

People say “they got hit with RICO” the way they say “they got indicted.” Like it is just another charge. It is not. The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, better known as the RICO Act, is a federal law that lets prosecutors treat a pattern of crimes as one larger offense...

Virginia’s Assault Firearm Ban and the Post-Bruen Court Test

Virginia’s new “assault firearm” law is now the subject of a federal constitutional challenge, and it arrives at a moment when Second Amendment litigation follows a very different roadmap than it did just a few years ago. In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), the...

Trump Targets Thomas Massie

Every so often, American politics gives us a clean civics lesson. Not a tidy one. A real one. The kind with sharp elbows and clear consequences. In Kentucky, Representative Thomas Massie is staring down exactly that kind of lesson. With the Republican primary set for Tuesday, President Donald Trump...