Articles by James Caldwell

Trump’s USPS Voter ID Idea Was Bigger Than an Executive Order

Strip away the slogans about “election integrity,” and a basic question is left: who sets the operating rules for American elections, the states and their local officials, or the president through federal machinery? That question was put under real stress by a 2026 push from the Trump White House...

Can the UN Veto Be Changed?

The United Nations keeps running into the same hard limit: the Security Council can be ready to act, and one of the biggest powers can still stop it. That friction is not abstract right now. The council has been deadlocked on issues ranging from Israel’s war on Gaza to Russia’s war in Ukraine and...

Civics Gut Check: When 35% Can’t Name the Branches

Here is the gut check I wish we did at the start of every election season: Can you name the three branches of the federal government and tell me, in plain English, what each one is supposed to stop the others from doing? Because a recent national survey suggests a lot of us cannot clear even the...

When Reservists Miss a Paycheck

Missing a paycheck is not an abstract policy problem. It is rent. It is child care. It is a credit score. And when the employer is the federal government, the power imbalance is baked in. You cannot exactly threaten to take your labor elsewhere when you are a reservist with orders in one hand and a...

Susan Collins and the Price of “Moderation”

Americans love a comforting story about politics. The independent-minded senator. The brave centrist. The reluctant partisan who just cannot bring herself to go along with the worst impulses of her party. Susan Collins has lived inside that story for decades, and she has profited from it. Maine...

Can One State Force Another to Honor a Carry Permit?

If you want to understand America, watch what happens at state borders. A line on a map can turn a legal act into a felony, and it can happen in the space of a highway exit. That is the quiet tension behind the next big concealed-carry question: can a state refuse to recognize a concealed-carry...

Susan Collins and the Price of a Vote

Here is the civics question nobody in Washington likes to answer out loud: How much is a senator’s “independence” worth when the money shows up right before the budget add does? Sen. Susan Collins has built an entire brand on being the grown-up in the room. The reasonable Republican. The one who...

The Fed Blinks: Rates Up a Quarter Point

The Federal Reserve just did something it has not done in three years: it raised interest rates. Not by a dramatic half-point. Not by an emergency jolt. Just a quarter point, unanimously, moving its benchmark range to 3.75% to 4% from 3.5% to 3.75% . On paper, a quarter point can sound like a...

Buttigieg and Court-Packing: A Partisan Fix or a Constitutional Reset?

Pete Buttigieg has put a once-fringe idea back in the center of the Democratic conversation: expanding the Supreme Court. His basic claim is blunt. The Court has become, in his words, a “nakedly partisan institution.” And his proposed cure is not subtle either: add six seats to the current nine....

When Mass Surveillance Becomes the Shortcut

Here is the question I would put on the board if I still had my classroom: What happens to the Fourth Amendment when the police stop searching for evidence and start searching a database? For most of American history, a “search” looked like a person. An officer turned a doorknob, opened a drawer,...

SCOTUS Hits Pause on Missouri’s Map

The Supreme Court just did something that looks small on paper but looms large in practice: it pressed pause on a federal judge’s order about Missouri’s congressional map. That pause does not decide who is right on the merits, but it does help decide which set of district lines will govern the...

Concealed Carry Across State Lines

Try this on for size: you can invoke the First Amendment in any state, demand due process in any state, and refuse an unreasonable search in any state. But if you want to carry a concealed handgun for self-defense and you cross an invisible line on the highway, your legal status can go from...

DHS Pushes ICE to Pre-Dismiss Weak Asylum Claims

DHS has told its courtroom lawyers to move faster in a specific way: file early motions asking immigration judges to deny asylum applications that government attorneys believe are legally insufficient on their face. Under new Trump administration guidance, ICE attorneys are being directed to raise...

Supreme Court Stay Upends Mail-Ballot Injunction Fight

When the Supreme Court hits pause , it rarely feels like a simple pause. It changes the posture of a case, the leverage of the parties, and sometimes the behavior of the judge who thought she had the last word. That is the story behind this week’s whiplash in the litigation over new federal...

A Justice Called It a ‘Kafkaesque Nightmare’

There are phrases you expect to see in a Supreme Court opinion: jurisdiction , standing , irreparable harm , maybe even equity . “Kafkaesque nightmare” is not usually on the list. And yet on Monday, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson put those words in writing, in a dissent tied to the Court’s emergency...

McIver’s Immunity Claim Takes a Hit in Newark ICE Case

There is a question I used to put to my civics students when we hit the “Speech or Debate” Clause in Article I: What, exactly, counts as doing your job in Congress ? This week, a federal appeals court handed down a blunt answer in the case of Rep. LaMonica McIver of New Jersey. If the government’s...

A ‘Kafkaesque Nightmare’ at the Supreme Court

When a sitting Supreme Court justice reaches for the phrase “Kafkaesque nightmare,” you should not treat it as rhetorical garnish. That is a flare shot into the sky. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson used those words in a dissent tied to the Court’s latest emergency decision involving mail-in voting...

Firing the Newsroom: Stars and Stripes, the First Amendment, and Congress’s Job

When the Pentagon fires the top leaders of a newspaper that exists to serve American service members, it is tempting to reach for a single tidy headline: censorship . But the harder question is the constitutional one. What does the First Amendment actually protect inside a newsroom where the...

Prediction Markets, Gambling, and the Supreme Court

Prediction markets force a blunt constitutional question that America keeps dodging: when citizens put money behind a belief about the future, are they gambling, or are they participating in something closer to a public information system? That question is no longer academic. State regulators argue...

Can a President Rewrite the Vaccine Schedule?

Presidents love the clean drama of a signature. One pen stroke, one camera flash, and the public is supposed to understand: something has changed . On childhood vaccines, President Donald Trump is testing that idea again. His new executive order calls for fewer childhood vaccines and recommends...