News

The White House Octagon and the Limits of Presidential Spectacle

A cage on the White House South Lawn is not the kind of sentence most of us expect to read in a civics lesson. And yet, this weekend, an Ultimate Fighting Championship fight night is scheduled with “The Octagon” built on the South Lawn, timed to President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday and framed as...

The Fifth Circuit’s Horse Racing Fight Is Back, and SCOTUS Gets the Cleanup

There is a particular kind of legal mess that doesn’t come from the Constitution itself. It comes from a lower court deciding, repeatedly, that it knows better than everyone else, including the Supreme Court. That is where we are again with federal regulation of horse racing. A deeply conservative...

The Supreme Court and the Weather-Delayed Ballot

Most election disputes are fought with spreadsheets and statutes. This one is being fought with wind, ice, and a single, stubborn fact of American geography: in parts of the United States, the mail does not move on a predictable timetable. The Supreme Court is considering a challenge that could...

A Supreme Court Mail Ballot Case With Big Stakes for Snowy, Remote States

Election Day often brings to mind a polling place, a line, and results that start rolling in that night. But for many Americans, especially in rural and remote communities, voting looks different. It can depend on a plane, a boat, a snow machine, or simply the hope that the mail arrives on time....

The Death Row Split Between Kavanaugh and Gorsuch

Some constitutional rules look clean on paper but messy in a courtroom. The doctrine promises an orderly sequence, yet real trials move fast, objections overlap, and judges are forced to make credibility calls on the fly. When that happens, a procedural misfire can turn into the whole case: did the...

Supreme Court Reopens Fight Over Gas Furnace Rules

The Supreme Court reopened a fight over federal efficiency rules for natural gas home-heating equipment this week, vacating a lower-court decision that had upheld the Biden-era standards and sending the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. No full opinion, no sweeping...

Supreme Court Revives Challenge to Biden-Era Gas Furnace Rule

The Supreme Court has reopened a fight over federal energy efficiency standards for home heating, clearing the way for natural gas trade groups to keep challenging a Biden-era rule that would effectively push a large share of today’s gas furnaces out of the market. The Court did not issue a full...

Of Course Trump Is Going After E. Jean Carroll

When a private citizen sues a powerful public figure and wins, that is the legal system doing what it is supposed to do. When that same person then becomes the target of a criminal investigation under an administration led by the figure she sued, it is hard not to hear the warning embedded in the...

Trump Presses DOJ ‘Weaponization’ Fund After Court Block and Walkout

There are two very different ways to read a president insisting a controversial government fund should “move forward” after the Justice Department has backed away and a judge has already blocked it. One reading is political. The other is constitutional. And right now, President Donald Trump is...

The Roberts Court Won’t Stop Dismantling the Voting Rights Act

It is one thing for the Supreme Court to narrow a landmark statute in a signed opinion after full briefing, argument, and a public explanation. It is another thing entirely to do it in the dark, by unsigned order, on the emergency docket, with a few paragraphs that function like a shrug. That is...

WNBA Weighs ‘USA 250’ All-Star Patches After Slavery Objection

The WNBA is weighing whether to add a “USA 250” patch to uniforms for the league’s All-Star Game on July 25 in Chicago , hosted by the Chicago Sky . It is a small piece of fabric that has turned into a big civic argument: what does it mean to commemorate the nation’s 250th anniversary when the...

SCOTUS Passed on the Hunter Biden Laptop Case

Some Supreme Court moves arrive with a bang. Others arrive with a shrug, and that shrug can still matter. The Court declined to take up a case tied to the Hunter Biden laptop . There is no blockbuster merits ruling to parse, no sweeping new test announced. But a pass is still a decision. It still...

The Court Just Made Its Voting Rights Damage Worse

Here is the question I wish every civics student would ask before we start arguing about parties, personalities, or punditry: What is the Supreme Court for ? If your answer is “to enforce the rule of law,” then Tuesday evening’s unsigned shadow-docket order in the Alabama redistricting fight should...

A painful case out of Southampton, England is now reverberating well beyond the U.K. After 18-year-old Henry Nowak was stabbed and later died while in police custody, senior U.S. officials publicly condemned what happened. Downing Street, in turn, pushed back, warning outsiders not to inflame...

Thomas Scolds Court’s Priorities After Death-Row Ruling

One of the hardest things to explain about the Supreme Court is that it is not required to take most cases. The justices choose their docket , and that choice can be as consequential as any final ruling. This week, Justice Clarence Thomas issued a pointed dissent that was less about the legal...

In the final stretch before Maine’s Democratic Senate primary on Tuesday, the national conversation around one candidacy has become less about policy and more about basic fitness for public office. Republican senators are speaking plainly about why they believe Democrat Graham Platner should not...

Six Primary Night Signals That Could Shape the Midterms

Primary nights are supposed to be about nominees. In reality, they are stress tests for political narratives. They reveal which candidates can survive scrutiny, which factions can coordinate, and which signals still move voters when the rubber meets the ballot box. The latest round of midterm...

Appeals Court Blocks Pentagon From Removing Trans Troops

The Constitution does not contain a “military fairness” clause. It does not mention the armed forces at all, except to give Congress and the President overlapping powers to create them, fund them, and command them. And yet, some of the most consequential questions about equal protection, due...

Iran Strikes Kuwait Airport as Trump Says Talks Continue

When a ceasefire is real, civilians can feel it. Planes take off. Markets unclench. Families stop checking their phones every few minutes. When a ceasefire is mostly words, it looks like this: Iran launches a missile and drone attack targeting U.S. military bases in Kuwait, the incoming weapons are...

Trump’s Endorsement Power Hits a Primary Reality Check

Every election cycle has its shiny objects. This week’s primaries have one that is stranger than most: a Trump-backed, reality TV famous, online influencer turned candidate trying to crack open Los Angeles City Hall, a place Republicans have not won in roughly three decades. But the deeper story is...