Articles by Eleanor Stratton

De Minimis Tariffs Explained: What the Court Ruling Means for Presidential Trade Power

You can feel the constitutional tension in the phrase “presidential tariff power.” Tariffs are, generally, taxes of a particular kind: customs duties on imported goods. The Constitution assigns taxing and trade powers to Congress. Yet modern trade law often runs through executive-branch processes,...

Who Is the Attorney General, and How Is the Job Chosen?

A new Attorney General being sworn in tends to trigger the same wave of questions: Who is this person? What power do they actually have? And who, exactly, is the nation’s “top law enforcement officer” supposed to answer to? The Constitution gives us the outline in broad strokes. The details live in...

What Does Pleading the Fifth Mean? Self-Incrimination and Senate Testimony Explained

“Pleading the Fifth” is one of those phrases Americans use as shorthand for guilt, stonewalling, or scandal. Constitutionally, it means something narrower and more technical: a witness is invoking the Fifth Amendment’s privilege against compelled self-incrimination , the rule that the government...

Can Congress End Daylight Saving Time?

Daylight Saving Time has a talent for returning to the headlines twice a year, like a civic groundhog. This week’s spark is a high-profile demand for the Senate to vote on a proposal branded as the “No More Changing the Clocks” act, framed as a push to end the disruption of moving clocks forward...

When Commentators Contact Trial Witnesses: Utah Rules, Subpoenas, and the Owens-Robinson Firestorm

Sometimes a controversy goes viral because of one clean scandal. A single quote. A single clip. A single unmistakable line crossed. This one is messier, and that is exactly why it is sticking. Candace Owens is trending because two separate storylines collided on the same day: (1) she publicly...

Texas Vote-by-Mail ID Rules and SB 1 Litigation

Texas has been litigating its post-2020 election rules for years, and the latest flashpoint is familiar: who sets the rules for voting, what counts as a permissible anti-fraud safeguard, and when federal courts can step in to stop a state from running its elections the way it chooses. Takeaway: In...

Tariffs, Section 232, and De Minimis

Tariffs feel like a blunt instrument. One day a product is cheap, the next day it is not. But the real story in the current tariff fights is not a single rate or a single sector. It is the way presidential power has grown into a system where the White House can tighten trade rules quickly, category...

What Is the National Firearms Act? Suppressor Rules After the Latest Ruling

The National Firearms Act, or NFA, is one of those federal laws that reshaped how certain firearms and firearm devices are bought, transferred, and prosecuted through forms, approvals, and penalties. It does not categorically prohibit silencers for civilians nationwide. Instead, it creates a...

Is Vandalizing a National War Memorial a Federal Crime?

The Constitution does not have a “thou shalt not deface the World War II Memorial” clause. But it does give Congress something just as powerful: the ability to protect federal property. So when news breaks that a National Mall memorial has been spray-painted, the core legal question is not whether...

Can Trump Run Again in 2028? The 22nd Amendment and the Third-Term Wall

Presidential term limits are one of those constitutional rules most Americans feel in their bones even if they cannot quote the exact text. This week, President Donald Trump put that rule back on the front page himself. Speaking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Tuesday night, Trump...

How Eighth Circuit Judges Are Nominated

When a president announces a new nominee for a federal appeals court seat, it can sound like a personnel move in Washington. But constitutionally, it is one of the most direct ways a president and the Senate shape the meaning of federal law for decades. That is the backdrop to a report by Brooke...

Minnesota Welfare Fraud Scandal: How Public-Benefit Fraud Is Investigated and Prosecuted

When a public-benefit fraud story re-enters the headlines, it often comes wrapped in campaign language: who knew what, who was “tainted,” who should answer for what. But the legal system does not run on slogans. It runs on jurisdiction, evidence, intent, and due process. This article explains what...

Presidential Clemency Power: Pardons, Commutations, and DOJ Vetting

When a president issues a large batch of commutations outside the usual Justice Department review pipeline, the resulting internal scramble can make clemency sound like a paperwork problem. It is not. It is a constitutional design feature, and a political accountability problem. The Constitution...

EPA Section 404(c) Explained: The Clean Water Act Veto That Can Stop Permitted Projects

You can build a project around a federal permit and still discover that the permit was never the final word. That is the core anxiety behind the recent attention to Section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act: a power Congress gave the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to prohibit or restrict the...

FSU Scholarship Investigation: Title VI and Equal Protection, Explained

Florida State University is facing a federal civil-rights investigation over scholarship programs that allegedly limit eligibility based on race or sex. The headline is easy. The law underneath it is not. This story sits at the intersection of three things Americans often blur together: the...

Can a President Serve a Third Term? What the 22nd Amendment Says

The question resurfaces every few years, usually after an offhand comment or a headline that sounds like a dare: can a president serve a third term? Today the answer is straightforward in law and in practice. The Constitution, through the 22nd Amendment , forbids any person from being elected...

What Is ICE and What Can Congress Legally Do About It?

When a candidate says they want to “rip ICE apart,” they are not just making a statement about immigration policy. They are making a claim about government structure. And structure is where the Constitution quietly does most of its work. Immigration and enforcement live at the intersection of two...

Texas Man Arrested After Rant About Age Checks Blocking His Anime

Most Americans have a pretty simple mental model of free speech: you can criticize the government, you can swear at the government, and you can be obnoxious while doing it. That model is mostly right. It just breaks down at one fraught edge case: when a political rant starts to sound like a threat....

No Gestational Cap After Dobbs

When a headline says a state “allows abortions up to birth,” it can sound like the law has abolished every boundary. In some states, what happened is more legally specific: the state removed one kind of boundary, a week-based gestational age cap , while leaving other controls in place through...

Can the President Send the National Guard Into Cities?

The Constitution does not have a neat clause that says, “The President may send the National Guard into cities when crime rises.” What it does have is something broader and more consequential: a structure that splits military power between the federal government and the states, and then hands...