Articles by Eleanor Stratton

What Is a Congressional Criminal Referral?

A “criminal referral” from Congress sounds like the beginning of a prosecution. It is not. It is closer to a formal request backed by an allegation: a committee says, in writing, that it believes evidence suggests a federal crime, and it asks the Department of Justice to take a look. That...

Can the President Order Military Strikes Without Congress?

The modern argument over war powers usually starts with a simple sentence: the president is commander in chief. Then someone points to a different simple sentence: Congress declares war. Those two ideas can coexist, but they do not always fit neatly together, especially when a president threatens...

What Is Birth Tourism? Birthright Citizenship and the 14th Amendment Explained

“Birth tourism” is the term commonly used for a practice critics often describe as a loophole. A nonresident travels to the United States late in pregnancy, gives birth here, and returns home. The goal is straightforward: if the baby is a U.S. citizen at birth, that status can matter later,...

Who Can Legally Vote in U.S. Elections? Citizenship Rules Explained

Every election cycle, a familiar alarm goes off: foreigners are voting . Sometimes the claim is exaggerated. Sometimes it is a real administrative failure, like a voter-registration system that let non-citizens slip onto the rolls. But the legal question underneath the heat is steady and...

Hegseth vs. the Senate: War Funding, Oversight, and the Constitution’s Hardest Question

Two different clips from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s July 21, 2026 Senate testimony went viral for two different reasons. In one, he accused senators of moral theater: sending multiple supplemental packages abroad while, in his telling, treating urgent funding for American troops as a...

Congress vs. the Smithsonian: Politeness, Objectivity, and “White Supremacy Culture”

You can tell what a political moment is really about by what it chooses as its symbol. This week’s symbol was not a statue, or a painting, or a disputed line on a placard. It was the word politeness . In a House hearing on July 21, 2026, Rep. Brandon Gill questioned Anthea Hartig, the director of...

Smithfield Foods, Chinese Ownership, and the ICE Raid Argument

Smithfield Foods is trending for a reason that sounds like a punchline but is actually a civics exam: What happens when the nation’s biggest pork processor is owned by a foreign company, relies on an industry labor model that routinely draws immigration scrutiny, and becomes the target of viral...

Can the President Direct Annual Research Funds?

The federal government spends roughly $200 billion a year on research and development. That scale is exactly why the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s new action matters: OSTP released a new report and memo Tuesday that it says will help shape that annual R&D budget across...

Can the President Impose Tariffs on Generic Drugs?

Tariffs feel like a presidential weapon because presidents announce them like one. A rate. A date. A target. A promise that factories will come home. But constitutionally, tariffs start as a legislative power. Article I gives Congress authority to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and...

When Disapproval Outruns Approval

“Net negative” sounds like a financial term, the kind you use when a company is losing money. In politics it means something simpler and, in a way, more revealing: more Americans say they disapprove of a president’s job performance than approve of it. Recent national polling has put President...

Can Congress Cancel Student Visas by Nationality?

You can feel the question hiding underneath the headline: can the United States legally cancel student visas for people from one country , just because of where they are from? That question came roaring back after Rep. Anna Paulina Luna publicly called on the State Department to take action on F-1...

Zohran Mamdani’s First Six Months

You can learn a lot about American politics by watching what happens when a rising local figure starts tugging on national threads and the fabric actually moves. Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s youngest mayor in a generation, has become a national political figure not just because he beat former...

Harvard Financial Aid Probe: What Title VI Requires for Scholarships

You can fund a scholarship to reward achievement. You can fund one to expand opportunity. You can even fund one to honor a community, a region, or a field of study. But once a university accepts federal financial assistance , civil-rights law starts asking a different question: who is being...

TikTok on Government Phones: A Ban That Wasn’t

There is a peculiar kind of civic vertigo that hits when a rule exists, most people forget it exists, and then the government behaves like it never mattered. That is where federal employees now find themselves with TikTok. A federal statute has been on the books since 2023 barring the app from...

Who Pays to Fix the WWII Memorial?

You can feel the public assumption in any controversy about a big Washington monument: surely someone just “takes care of it.” Surely there is a checkbook somewhere. Surely a president can just order it fixed. The World War II Memorial on the National Mall sits at the intersection of those...

Can a President Block Climate Science Used in Federal Court?

A president can do many things with a pen. The President can direct agencies to revisit grants, to rewrite guidance, to change how the executive branch purchases expertise, and to prompt agencies to consider whether suspension or debarment proceedings are warranted against entities that do business...

Can Abortion Pills Be Mailed Across State Lines? What Hawley’s Criminal Referral Means

You can feel the legal tension in the headline: a U.S. senator sends a “criminal referral” over abortion pills allegedly being shipped into states that ban abortion. The obvious question follows immediately. Can abortion pills be mailed across state lines, or is that automatically a federal...

Can a Special Counsel Investigate Congress?

When a headline says a special counsel “spied on” Congress, it sounds like a constitutional emergency. Sometimes it is. Often it is something more mundane and more legally structured: prosecutors investigating a crime that happens to involve an elected official, using tools that are allowed...

U.S. Worldwide Caution: What It Means

You can tell a government message has landed when it stops sounding like policy and starts sounding like a group text: keep your passport close, avoid crowds, have a plan . On Oct. 19, 2023 , the U.S. State Department issued a rare Worldwide Caution (a global security alert) urging Americans...

The Tate Brothers Arrested in Miami: The 38 New UK Charges, Extradition, and the Barron Trump Side Story

The Andrew and Tristan Tate story keeps resurfacing for a reason that is bigger than personalities and hotter than politics: it is a live demonstration of how modern justice systems interact across borders. This week, the brothers were taken into custody in Miami by the U.S. Marshals Service after...