News

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...

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...

The Courts vs. a Transgender Troop Ban

Americans tend to talk about “the military” like it is a separate country with separate rules. In one sense, that instinct is right. The Constitution gives the political branches extraordinary control over national defense, and courts traditionally hesitate before telling commanders how to run...

Appeals Court Keeps Block on Trump’s Transgender Troop Ban

Every generation gets its own version of a familiar question: Who gets to define what the military is, and who gets to belong in it? This week, a divided federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. stepped into that question and came down, at least partly, against President Donald Trump’s push to...

Los Angeles is the kind of city that can turn anything into a spectacle, including a municipal election. But the spectacle is not the story. The story is that Spencer Pratt, a reality TV figure turned online influencer turned mayoral candidate, is gaining real traction in the race, powered by a...

President Donald Trump is demanding that New York courts wipe away two of the legal judgments stemming from his recent New York cases: his criminal conviction in the hush money matter and the civil fraud judgment against him and the Trump Organization. In an overnight post on Truth Social, Trump...

Indiana Jail Hire Arrest Raises Questions About Asylum Claims and Screening

Every civics class eventually arrives at the same uncomfortable truth: the American system is built on paperwork. Rights get asserted on forms. Duties get assigned on forms. And, more often than we would like to admit, the public safety we assume is “screened” into existence is also built on...

New Hampshire’s Proof-of-Citizenship Voting Rule Blocked

New Hampshire tried to add a simple checkpoint to one specific voting scenario: if you show up on Election Day not yet registered and you want to register and vote that day, you must prove you are a U.S. citizen. Late Thursday, U.S. District Judge Samantha Elliott blocked that requirement, ruling...

Judge Orders Kennedy Center to Drop Trump Name

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is not just another cultural venue. Its name is fixed by federal statute, not by branding instincts or board votes. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ordered that President Donald Trump’s name be removed from the Kennedy Center,...

DOJ Opens Investigation Into E. Jean Carroll After Trump Civil Verdicts

The Justice Department has opened an investigation that involves writer E. Jean Carroll, who successfully sued Donald Trump for sexual abuse and defamation. The department has not disclosed the scope or purpose of the inquiry. An investigation is not proof of wrongdoing and does not necessarily...

Swatting at Justice Barrett’s Home and the Court’s Security Problem

On Wednesday night, police in Fairfax County, Virginia, were dispatched to the residence of Justice Amy Coney Barrett after a caller reported an emergency. It was a swatting call, a false report designed to trigger a law enforcement response where none is needed. A Fairfax County Police Department...

Birthright Citizenship at the Supreme Court

Birthright citizenship sounds like a policy argument, the kind you can settle by counting votes and measuring public opinion. But Trump v. Barbara , the case now sitting at the Supreme Court, is not only about policy. It is also about whether a constitutional promise made in the shadow of slavery...

The Record-Low Poll Narrative

When several polls land within days of each other and they all point in the same direction, it is worth pausing on the word that keeps popping up in the numbers: record . A tight cluster of national surveys fielded between May 11 and May 18 and released between May 18 and May 20 shows President...