Articles by Eleanor Stratton

Is the “86/47” Flag Protected Speech?

When a short slogan becomes a national controversy, the constitutional question is rarely about the slogan itself. It is about who gets to decide what it means , and what the government is allowed to do when it believes a political message sounds like danger. The “86/47” flag has become that...

Why HHS Can Freeze Medicaid Fraud Unit Funding

When a headline says the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “froze” funding for a state Medicaid fraud unit, it triggers a basic civic question: How can the federal government pause money for a unit that operates inside a state government? The short answer is that a Medicaid Fraud...

Pentagon Escorts and the First Amendment

The First Amendment does not promise journalists a reserved seat inside every government building. But it also does not allow the government to hand out access like a reward and take it away like a punishment. That tension is now playing out in one of the most symbolically loaded workplaces in...

Foreign Funding and Judicial Training: What Ethics Rules and Oversight Allow

“Foreign influence” is one of those phrases that instantly turns civic life into a fog machine. It suggests a hidden hand. It implies a compromised judge. It invites a simple fix: ban it. But judicial education is not a single government program with one set of national rules. It is a patchwork...

Birthright Citizenship After the Court Says No

You can almost hear the constitutional gears grinding when a president loses at the Supreme Court and immediately turns to Congress for a do-over. That is exactly what happened after the Court rejected President Trump’s January 2025 executive order that attempted to condition U.S.-birth...

Why a Federal Judge Blocked Virginia’s ICE Mask Law

When a federal judge blocked Virginia’s new law prohibiting certain federal immigration agents from wearing masks on the job, the headline sounded like a culture-war skirmish. But the legal engine under the hood is older than cable news and sturdier than today’s politics. The case is really...

Can a Foreign Country Donate Air Force One?

“Air Force One” is a call sign , not a single airplane. It is the radio call sign used when the President is aboard an Air Force aircraft. The constitutional issues people associate with “Air Force One” do not come from the call sign itself. They come from what it represents in practice:...

Can the Federal Government Cut School Funding Over Transgender Policies?

When a presidential administration threatens to withhold federal funding from a public school district over transgender student policies, it hits a raw nerve in American government: public schools are mostly local, but federal dollars are real leverage. The question is not only political. It is...

Late Mail Ballots, Mississippi, and the SAVE Act: What Courts Allowed and Why

Mississippi’s rule sounds simple: if a mailed absentee ballot is postmarked by Election Day , it can still be counted even if it arrives afterward , so long as it arrives by the state’s deadline. That kind of rule has become a recurring constitutional flashpoint because it forces two questions...

What Gorsuch’s Concurrence Could Mean for the Administrative State

The phrase “administrative state” sounds like a political slogan. In constitutional terms, it is something more specific and much more concrete: the modern system in which federal agencies write detailed rules, enforce them, and often adjudicate alleged violations, all under authority Congress...

What Happens If You Vandalize a Federal Monument?

When people hear “vandalism,” they often picture a local crime: a city statue tagged with spray paint, a smashed window, a quick arrest and a fine. But a monument on federal land is different. The law treats it differently, the investigators are different, and the consequences can get bigger...

Can Birthright Citizenship Be Changed Without the Supreme Court?

Birthright citizenship feels like one of those American rules that is too basic to argue about, like the idea that the Constitution outranks ordinary politics or that courts can say what the law is. Then a headline comes along suggesting a president might be able to “end” it, maybe even without...

Springfield’s Haitian Community Faces TPS Shock With Unity

You can live for years inside a legal category and still wake up one morning to discover it was never a wall. It was a curtain. That is the quiet terror Temporary Protected Status has always carried: it is protection, but not permanence. It is lawful presence, but not belonging in the way most...

Springfield’s Haitian Community Faces TPS Shock, Finds Strength in Each Other

There are Supreme Court decisions that arrive like weather. You see the clouds gathering, you hear the distant thunder of oral argument, you brace for impact, and then the storm still manages to flatten the house. That is what it felt like in Springfield, Ohio, after the Court ruled Mullin v. Doe...

Minnesota Fraud Probes and House Oversight: What Congress Can Actually Do

When a state is accused of mishandling public benefits money, the first instinct is to ask a simple question: isn’t that a state problem? It can be. But it can become a federal one quickly when the program at issue is powered by federal dollars. That is the constitutional hinge behind renewed...

Immigration and Housing Costs: What the Fed Paper Actually Says

People are sharing a headline-friendly takeaway from a recent Federal Reserve working paper: that an increase in unauthorized immigration in the period it studies is estimated , under the paper’s model, to have raised home prices by about 2.2% and rents by about 1.4% . The key point, though, is...

Can a President Block a D.C. Mayor’s Agenda?

When a president promises to stop a Washington, D.C. mayor from implementing policies on policing, bail, or cooperation with ICE, the instinctive question is simple: can he actually do that? The constitutional answer is both more powerful and more limited than it sounds. D.C. is not a state. It is...

The Supreme Court’s Asylum Ruling and the Executive Power Shift

Immigration law is full of gray areas. Not moral gray areas. Jurisdictional ones. Who decides whether a person has actually “entered” the United States? Who gets to decide which immigrants keep a lawful foothold after years inside the country? And perhaps most consequentially, when agencies...

Birthright Citizenship and the 14th Amendment

Most constitutional fights are about the meaning of a power. This one is about the meaning of a word. Birthright citizenship lives in a single sentence of the 14th Amendment. For more than a century, Americans have treated that sentence as a bright line: if you are born here, you are one of us. Now...

Same Names on the Ballot: What the Law Actually Requires

Voters sometimes assume that if two candidates share a name, one of them must be barred from the ballot. In practice, election law often takes the opposite approach. Many states try to reduce confusion through ballot formatting and disclosure , not by limiting who may run. This matters in Alaska...