Author: Eleanor Stratton

A congressional staffer hits “send,” and a handful of heavily redacted pages from the infamous Jeffrey Epstein files are released to the world. This small, seemingly procedural act has ignited a new and vicious round of partisan warfare on Capitol Hill. This is not a story about the names in the documents. It is a…

What is the most powerful weapon the federal government holds? It is not a missile or a tank. It is the awesome and terrifying power to launch a criminal investigation against a citizen. This week, a top Department of Justice official appears to have turned that weapon on a new and shocking target: a decorated…

An assassination attempt on a president. The murder of a state lawmaker in her home. A political activist shot and killed in broad daylight while giving a speech. A new national poll has just put a number on the feeling of dread that has been growing in the pit of the nation’s stomach: a vast,…

The scene was shocking and almost unbelievable. In the middle of a legislative hearing in Wisconsin, a state senator, consumed with rage, lunged across the dais to grab the chairman’s gavel. This was more than a moment of lost tempers. This was a stark and worrying symptom of the decay of our democratic institutions. It…

What happens when the most basic and essential duty of our government – to simply keep itself open – becomes just another weapon in a partisan war? With a September 30 funding deadline looming, the nation is once again careening toward a government shutdown, with both parties engaged in a high-stakes, constitutional game of chicken.…

On the world’s biggest diplomatic stage, the President of the United States was momentarily foiled by a stopped escalator and a broken teleprompter. He immediately seized upon the mishaps to portray the United Nations as a symbol of global dysfunction. But the strange and revealing truth behind these minor technical glitches tells a much deeper…

The reading of a jury verdict is meant to be a moment of solemn finality, the point at which the chaos of a crime is met with the sober, deliberate conclusion of the law. But in the trial of Ryan Routh for the attempted assassination of a president, that final moment was itself consumed by…

With a brief, temporary order, the Supreme Court today allowed President Trump to fire a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission. This single personnel decision, however, is merely the opening shot in what is poised to become one of the most significant constitutional battles in modern American history. At stake is not just one person’s…

In the wake of tragedy, the call for security is a powerful and understandable impulse. But a new initiative launched today in Florida, created in the name of preventing violence, raises a chilling question for every citizen: What is the cost of that security, and is it the very constitutional rights that define us as…

This is a lesson in civic virtue. Before a crowd of tens of thousands in a vast stadium, a grieving widow stepped to a podium to eulogize her assassinated husband. In a nation raw with political division and primed for a call to vengeance, she offered something far more radical, and far more constitutionally significant:…