Articles by Eleanor Stratton

Republicans Turn on Trump After Democrats Post Big Gains, Control Shifted

You can feel the shift in Washington before a single committee gavels in. When an election changes who controls Congress, the agenda changes with it. And after a brutal midterm showing, Republicans are already arguing about what went wrong, and who made it worse. Among some GOP operatives, aides,...

The Key 2026 Midterm Races Hollywood Is Watching

Hollywood loves a clean story arc: tension, stakes, a ticking clock, and a final scene that changes what comes next. The 2026 midterms have all of that. Not because actors and executives are suddenly the main characters of American politics, but because campaigns still run on attention and money,...

Ballot Measures and the Constitutional Back Door

American civics has a loophole, and it is not hidden in fine print. It is right there on the ballot. When a legislature will not act, or cannot act, voters in many states have a second route. They can write policy directly. In some places, they can even rewrite their state constitution, the...

Supreme Court Lets New Hampshire Reject Student IDs at the Polls

Student IDs feel like the most obvious “identity” document in the world. Your name. Your photo. Your institution vouching for who you are. For many students, it is the ID they carry every day, the one they use to get into buildings, borrow books, and prove they belong. But for voting in New...

The Property Tax Revolt and the Legal Tools Voters Actually Have

If you have to pay a recurring fee to keep living in the house you already bought, do you really own it? That question is no longer just a late-night complaint about the annual bill. It is the animating idea behind a growing, state-by-state movement aimed at cutting property taxes and, in some...

Louise Lucas and the Federal Case: What the Charges Mean for Virginia Politics

Power in a state legislature can look deceptively ordinary. A committee chair gavels in a hearing. A caucus negotiates. A senior lawmaker counts votes. Then a federal indictment lands, and the same question suddenly governs everything: what happens to democratic legitimacy when one of the system’s...

Three Men Allege Lindsey Graham Paid Them for Sex

Some political scandals are about money. Some are about power. And some are about a deeper kind of civic corrosion: the gap between what an elected official demanded from the public and what they allegedly did in private. A documentary released Thursday, titled The CLOSETocracy , centers on...

Britt McHenry Tosses Drink During Wizards Home Opener Spat

[content] A short clip from a packed NBA arena is now doing what viral video often does in American life: collapsing the distance between private behavior and public consequence. Britt McHenry, a former ESPN reporter and current staffer in the State Department, was captured on video Wednesday night...

How Medicare Fraud Investigations Work, and Why Hospice Abuse Gets Extra Scrutiny

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz is putting the Trump administration’s anti-fraud push on camera in a new 27-minute film, War on Fraud . The documentary follows Oz as he spotlights alleged schemes targeting taxpayer-funded health care programs and shows him...

What Happens When Suspected Noncitizens Show Up on Voter Rolls?

A new legal fight in California centers on a familiar question with high stakes: what happens when federal investigators flag possible noncitizens on voter rolls, and what election officials can realistically do once ballots are already moving. The number in the current dispute is more than 20,000...

The Supreme Court Takes Up the Home Distilling Ban

A Reconstruction-era statute makes it a federal crime to distill spirits at home, even for personal use. On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to consider whether Congress had the constitutional authority to impose that ban more than 150 years ago. On paper, the case is about liquor. In practice, it...

Trump and Vance’s $25M Whistleblower Reward Fund, Explained

Governments talk about waste, fraud, and abuse the way people talk about dieting. Everyone agrees it matters. Everyone promises they are finally getting serious. Then the incentives stay exactly what they were. On Tuesday afternoon, President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance plan to put a...

The Bend School Shooting and the Law of Armed Self-Defense on Campus

A shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon ended with the suspected attacker dead after being shot by a bystander. Early accounts said police were first called around 1:00 p.m. about a shot fired into a car. About a minute later, multiple 911 calls said the person had entered the...

Can the Government Collect Voter Data From 47 States? What the Lawsuit Says

A new lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., is challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to collect and analyze voter data from across the country. The complaint alleges the Department of Homeland Security obtained voter files from at least 47 states , then handled the...

Why Brennan’s Lawsuit Failed and Why the Investigation Still Matters

When a former senior official sues a sitting administration, most people assume the court is about to referee the underlying political fight. That is not what happened in John Brennan’s case. A federal judge dismissed Brennan’s lawsuit against President Donald Trump and multiple top officials...

Why White House Press Secretaries Get Fired So Fast

White House press secretaries can look like public officials in their own right. They stand at the podium, speak for the president, and become a daily proxy for the administration. But the job is still a job. And in this case, it lasted a week. White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia is leaving...

Katie Zacharia Ousted After Five Days as Press Secretary

Katie Zacharia’s time as the White House press secretary ended on Friday, less than a week after it began. Zacharia started on Monday. By Friday, President Donald Trump told reporters he had encouraged her to “reconsider” taking the job. Trump described a conversation with Zacharia as advice about...

Martial Law Talk Is Back. Here’s What the Constitution Actually Allows.

“Martial law” has become one of those phrases that can hijack the national nervous system in a single news cycle. It sounds like a button a president can press when politics get messy. It sounds like tanks, curfews, and soldiers replacing civilian government. That is why the latest round of...

Fired FBI Staff Sue Over Trump-Case Dismissals

When people hear “FBI” and “Trump classified documents” in the same sentence, they tend to assume the story is about evidence, indictments, or executive privilege. This one is about something more basic: a workplace dispute involving people who worked on a politically charged investigation. Nine...

When a Minor Violation Becomes Financial Ruin

You can live in a constitutional republic and still feel like the rules are hard to see until you trip over them, and the penalties are anything but subtle. Cases like these show how quickly that gap can open. Because somewhere in America, a six-pack of beer can end with the government taking a...