Articles by Eleanor Stratton

Can Mail Ballots Be Counted After Election Day?

Every election cycle, the same question comes roaring back: if Americans vote on Tuesday, why are officials still counting on Friday, or next week, or sometimes longer? That confusion gets sharper when lawmakers point to a single rule they want nationwide: all mail ballots must be received by the...

Haiti TPS Explained: What Temporary Protected Status Is and What Court Orders Change

Temporary Protected Status sounds like something the Constitution must mention somewhere, tucked between “naturalization” and “habeas corpus.” It does not. TPS is not a constitutional right. It is a statute, a policy tool Congress created and the executive branch administers. That distinction is...

California Emissions Waivers Explained

California has more influence over what cars you can buy than most states have over their own speed limits. That sounds like a punchline until you read the statute. Under the federal Clean Air Act , California can ask the Environmental Protection Agency for permission to set vehicle emissions rules...

Treason and Leaks: What the Constitution Actually Says

When public officials call leaks “treason,” they are usually making a moral accusation, not describing a charge that fits the Constitution’s definition. That distinction matters because the Framers did something rare in constitutional drafting: they fixed the meaning of treason in the text itself....

Wayne County Vote Counts and Mail-In Ballots: What the Constitution and Michigan Law Allow

Every election cycle has a familiar soundtrack: a big county becomes a villain, mail ballots become suspicious by definition, and ordinary administrative steps get rebranded as “miracles.” Wayne County, home to Detroit, sits at the center of that storyline in Michigan. So let’s slow it down and...

What Is House Censure?

Censure is one of those congressional words that sounds like it should come with a legal consequence. Like the member is disqualified, removed, or at least forced to pack up their office that afternoon. It does not work that way. When the House of Representatives “censures” a member, it is issuing...

Can States Require ICE Agents to Remove Masks? The Constitutional Question

Editor’s note: The earlier version of this piece described a specific New York statute (S.9193A/A.10172), a Department of Justice lawsuit, and a temporary restraining order by Judge Dale E. Ho on August 4, 2024, and it included purported quotes from that order. We could not verify those claims, and...

Denaturalization: When the Government Can Revoke U.S. Citizenship

American citizenship feels like a one-way door. You take the oath, you get the certificate, you become a citizen. End of story. But there is a legal back door. It is called denaturalization , and it is exactly what it sounds like: the government asks a court to undo a naturalization and treat the...

What Is a Continuing Resolution?

When Washington starts using the phrase “continuing resolution” , it usually means one thing: Congress is running out of time to fund the government the normal way. That is why you will see headlines about Senate leaders signaling support for a short-term funding bill to clear a “shutdown hurdle.”...

Can a President Withdraw U.S. Troops Without Congress?

The Constitution gives the President the title that sounds decisive: Commander in Chief . But it gives Congress the powers that make wars and deployments sustainable: declaring war, raising and supporting armies, regulating the military, and paying for it . That tension is why calls for a President...

Can the President Control the Smithsonian?

The Smithsonian feels like a national attic. It holds the stuff we cannot quite throw away: artifacts, documents, aircraft, dresses, protest signs, dinosaur bones, and the stories we attach to all of it. That is why fights over its exhibits keep turning into fights over the country itself. When a...

Reflecting Pool Protest or Vandalism? Federal Law on the National Mall

The National Mall feels like common ground. People march there, pray there, celebrate there, and sometimes rage there. It is the country’s symbolic front yard. But it is not a legally blank space. It is federally managed land, with a permit system, enforceable regulations, and criminal statutes...

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...