Articles by Eleanor Stratton

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 diffusion...

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 applause....

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...

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 the...

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 positions...

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...

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...

Age Verification and the Balk Rate

Age verification on the internet is usually sold as a narrow fix: keep minors away from material lawmakers think is harmful. In practice, it can function more like a tollbooth on the First Amendment. Not because it blocks every adult, but because it changes behavior. It introduces friction. And...

Can Congress Ban Conversion Therapy?

When a candidate gets blowback for opposing a federal conversion therapy ban and then reverses course, the politics are obvious. The constitutional question is quieter, and arguably more important: even if Congress wants a nationwide ban, does it have the power to do it? “Conversion therapy” is not...

Minnesota’s “Transgender Dolls” and the Fight Over School Control

Minnesota is headed toward a familiar American dispute, but with key details still unresolved: what adult professionals in public-facing settings may introduce to very young children, and what parents can realistically avoid if the message is offered through an educator or a school-adjacent...

Asylum Interviews and Direct Referrals: What the Shift Would Mean

Asylum law has a familiar rhythm in the public imagination. You apply. You sit for an interview with a federal officer. You wait. And then, if the government says no, you ask a judge to review it. But that “first step” is not guaranteed by the Constitution, and it is not the only way the system can...

When State Tuition Laws Hit Federal Limits

States often describe immigration as a federal job until a local policy goal puts them in the middle of it. That tension shows up again and again in a familiar fight: can a state let certain undocumented students pay in-state tuition or receive state financial aid? The constitutional engine behind...

Can a Federal Judge Block Deportations After the Supreme Court Weighs In?

When you see headlines saying a federal judge “blocked deportations” even after the Supreme Court weighed in, it can sound like an open act of defiance. Constitutionally, it is usually something more ordinary and more confusing: different courts acting at different procedural moments, sometimes...

Can a President Ban Mail-In Voting?

When courts block a presidential executive order aimed at mail-in voting, it is tempting to treat it like a political headline. Constitutionally, it is something more basic: a reminder that American elections are not run by presidential decree. The question underneath the news is simple and...