Articles by Eleanor Stratton

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 crime?...

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 only if...

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...

What Does “Nuke the Filibuster” Mean?

When a candidate says they want to “nuke the filibuster,” they are not talking about a constitutional amendment. They are talking about changing a Senate rule that currently lets a minority of senators block many bills unless the majority can reach a higher vote threshold to end debate. That...

Can a State Defy the Supreme Court?

Every few years, an old American argument returns with a new headline: What if a state just refuses to go along with the Supreme Court? In recent weeks, that question flared up again after reports that a Hawaii state judge, speaking publicly, suggested the state should “defy” the Court. It is a...

Why the Third Circuit Could Strike Down New Jersey’s AR-15 Ban

You can feel the modern Second Amendment debate in the vocabulary alone. One side says “assault weapon.” The other says “common semiautomatic rifle.” New Jersey’s restrictions on AR-15 style rifles and so-called large-capacity magazines have long depended on the first phrase. The constitutional...

The 25th Amendment Explained: How Presidential Disability and Removal Work

The phrase “invoke the 25th” has become modern political shorthand for a very old anxiety: what happens if the President cannot do the job, and nobody can agree on it? That question flares up whenever a major public figure claims a President is cognitively unfit, medically impaired, or simply not...

Election Integrity, Voter Rolls, and Federal Power

When a high-profile political figure says new election-security intelligence has been declassified and released, the argument that follows is usually louder than the documents themselves. But the constitutional question underneath all the noise is actually straightforward. Who has the power to...

Congressional Term Limits and the Constitution

Every time Congress has a very public reminder that its members are human and aging, the same question returns with fresh urgency: why can the people not just impose congressional term limits and be done with it? It feels like it should be easy. The House is elected every two years. The Senate...

Trump Airport Backlash: Dulles Proposal and United

You can almost hear the modern American argument in the boarding announcement: now arriving at Washington Dulles . Then comes the online add-on that some viral posts and memes have pushed: also known as Trump International Airport . The backlash is not really about baggage claim or runway delays....

Why “Friendly Reminder” Is Trending: The Tim Walz Pardon Controversy Explained

There are days when the internet hands us a word that sounds harmless and turns out to be a weapon. Today’s example is “Friendly” and, more specifically, the meme-format phrase “Friendly reminder.” The term is trending because high-engagement political accounts are using that faux-polite opener to...

Olive Garden’s Pasta Pass ID Meme, Explained

Olive Garden is trending for a reason that has nothing to do with a menu change, a corporate scandal, or a sudden national shortage of breadsticks. It is trending because politics on the internet has discovered one of its favorite devices: the everyday analogy. This time, the prop is the chain’s...

Abolish the Senate, Replace Capitalism: What Happens to Checks and Balances?

Every few years, American politics rediscovers an old temptation: if the system is frustrating, simplify it. Make it more direct. More majoritarian. More immediate. A recent video clip making the rounds online captures that impulse in its most blunt form. In it, Ashik Siddique, identified as a...

Can a Lawmaker’s Spouse Win a $2 Billion Courthouse Contract?

When a news story suggests that a major public construction contract could benefit the spouse of an elected official, the public question is immediate and reasonable: is that even allowed ? To be concrete, that question has circulated in Massachusetts in connection with U.S. Representative Ayanna...

Birthright Citizenship and the 14th Amendment

Birthright citizenship is one of those American ideas that feels so basic we can forget it is also deeply technical. If you are born here, you are a citizen. In practice, that is how most people understand it. Except the 14th Amendment does not actually say “born here, therefore citizen” with no...