Articles by James Caldwell

Rubio’s 60-Day Sanctions Window and the Foreign Policy Fight

When Americans hear the word sanctions , it can sound like something a president can flip on and off. In practice, it is often messier: sanctions and tariffs can be written into law, adjusted through executive action, and debated through the language of diplomacy. That tension is now front and...

A Maryland Magnet School Case Puts Admissions Back Before the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a new case out of Maryland that turns on a familiar flashpoint: when, if ever, can race be part of a public school admissions policy? This dispute is narrower than the Court’s 2023 ruling striking down the use of race in college admissions under the 14th...

What the Constitution Protects When Campaigns Turn Personal

Campaign season has a way of turning personal fast. Michigan’s Senate race offered a clear example Thursday, when Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s “Shouldn’t Be This Hard” tour stopped in Iron Mountain for a town hall featuring Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. El-Sayed tore into President Donald...

The Lobsterman Case and the Fourth Amendment’s “Regulated Industry” Loophole

Here is the question that keeps nagging at me, the kind I used to ask a classroom full of teenagers who thought “rights” were something you either had or you did not. If you need a license to make a living, does that mean the government gets to watch you do it all day, every day? Frank Thompson, a...

The CFTC’s Line on Prediction Markets

Washington is again wrestling with a familiar boundary question in a new context: when does a wager become a federally regulated financial instrument, and when is it simply gambling? On Friday, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed two measures aimed at separating prediction markets from...

The Shrek Text Case and the First Amendment Line

Every generation rediscovers the same uncomfortable truth about the First Amendment: it protects a lot of speech we wish people would keep to themselves. This time, the flashpoint is Ohio, where a progressive political blogger, D.J. Byrnes, spent 23 hours in jail after sending a state senator crude...

DOJ Targets 40 Naturalized Citizens for Denaturalization

What does it mean to become an American citizen by choice, and then have the government try to take that citizenship away? The Justice Department is moving to revoke the U.S. citizenship of 40 foreign-born Americans who allegedly lied or withheld key facts about their criminal histories when they...

DOJ Won’t Appeal the Suppressor Registration Ruling

The Department of Justice has now put it in writing to Congress: it is not appealing the decision in Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF . That single choice, not a new statute and not a Supreme Court opinion, is what gives this moment its political punch. A ruling that was headed toward the usual...

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...