News

What Is the SAVE Act?

When a bill is “on the shelf” in the Senate, it often sounds like a political judgment. Usually it is something much more procedural: a tangle of unanimous-consent requests, objections that may or may not come, and the Senate’s unique ability to run on consent until a single senator says no. The...

What “Vindictive Prosecution” Really Takes

When people hear the phrase vindictive prosecution , they tend to translate it into everyday English: the government is “out to get me.” In ordinary life, that is a serious accusation. In constitutional law, it is not enough. A federal judge in the Middle District of Alabama has now rejected the...

Justice Alito Says He’s Staying

For a few weeks this summer, one question seemed to hover over the Supreme Court like humidity in Washington: Is Justice Samuel Alito about to retire? Justice Alito has now answered that question, at least for the near term. In an interview conducted in his chambers, he put it plainly: “Obviously...

Can Parents Demand Bathroom Policy Answers From Schools?

When parents ask a school a direct question about privacy and parental notice, they usually expect a direct answer. A new federal lawsuit out of North Carolina turns on what the district will say, and what it says it cannot say. The case was filed by Brandon Matthews , a father with a fourth-grade...

Judge Rejects SPLC Bid to Toss Indictment for “Vindictive Prosecution”

In a significant procedural loss for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a federal judge has refused to dismiss the organization’s criminal case on the theory that it is the target of a “vindictive prosecution.” Just as importantly, the court also declined to authorize discovery aimed at...

Kagan’s Quiet Warning to the Left

For years, some progressives have treated the Supreme Court like a captured institution, a black-robed obstacle that can only be overcome by force of politics. Add seats. Impose term limits. Cut the Court down to size. The underlying argument is simple: if the Court is a partisan weapon, then the...

The “75 Cases” Claim: What Judges Ruled and Where the First Amendment Line Is

When you hear a sweeping claim like “courts have ruled dozens of times that President Trump stifled free speech,” it is worth slowing down and asking two librarian-style questions: What exactly counts as a ‘case’? and what did the judges actually say the government did wrong? Here is the concrete...

Who Gets to Tax You at the Border?

There is a moment in every civics class when the kids realize something unsettling: taxes are not just about money. They are about power. Who gets to reach into your pocket, under what authority, and with what limits. That old question has resurfaced at the border, where twenty-five states have...

West Point Drops Its Appeal in Faculty Gag-Order Fight

West Point just made a quiet but meaningful choice. It let a deadline pass without appealing a federal judge’s order that blocked the academy from enforcing sweeping approval-first restrictions on civilian faculty speech. In constitutional terms, that matters because the ruling in place right now...

Appeals Court Clears End of TPS for South Sudan and Ethiopia

Two Temporary Protected Status programs, one covering South Sudan and one covering Ethiopia, are now far closer to ending after a federal appeals court said earlier court orders blocking the terminations cannot stand. The turning point was not a new factual finding about conditions overseas. It was...

DOJ Warns Montgomery County Over Armed Worship Ban

Montgomery County, Maryland, has found itself in a fast-moving constitutional clash after the U.S. Department of Justice signaled it may intervene against a local carry restriction that applies to “places of public assembly,” including houses of worship. At the center of the dispute is a county...

Ninth Circuit Limits Mandatory ICE Detention for Interior Arrests

The Ninth Circuit just issued a consequential immigration detention decision with a practical bottom line: in much of the western United States, many immigrants who entered the country without inspection but are later arrested inside the United States generally cannot be placed into mandatory,...

Judge Blocks Ethiopia TPS Termination After Supreme Court Warning

For most of us, “Temporary Protected Status” sounds like an internal immigration term that only matters to lawyers. But when a TPS designation ends, it can quickly become a very ordinary, very human question: Do people who have built lives here get told to leave, and how fast? That question is now...

Trump Underwater at -25: Iran and Inflation Bite

In civics class, I used to ask students a simple question that never stayed simple: What does the public actually judge a president on ? Character. Competence. Results. Values. Crisis leadership. And, when everything gets real, the price of what you need to live. Right now, one number is catching...

Trump’s Approval Hits a New Low as Iran and Inflation Squeeze

When a president goes “underwater,” we usually treat it like a mood ring. The public is annoyed. The headlines get rough. The next election starts creeping into every conversation. But there’s a harder civics question underneath the approval numbers: what exactly is the public reacting to when it...

Can CBP Make You Unlock Your Phone?

It is hard to overstate how strange the modern border has become. In the founding era, the government searched trunks. Today, it searches lives. Your phone is not a suitcase. It is a diary, a filing cabinet, a photo album, a newsroom, a bank branch, a doctor’s waiting room, and a map of your...

When Elite Lawyers Break the Law

When an everyday person is convicted of tax evasion, it is usually framed as a private failure with public consequences. When the person is a Supreme Court litigator, it becomes something else too: a stress test for the legal system’s basic promise that the rules are real, and they apply to...

Judge Blocks Ethiopian TPS Termination After Supreme Court Limits Injunctions

When the Supreme Court narrows what lower courts can do, you might expect the next chapter to be fairly straightforward: district judges follow the new boundaries, and any remaining disputes move through the normal appeals process. Immigration law rarely cooperates with that tidy picture. On...

Judge Preserves Ethiopian TPS Protections After Supreme Court Ruling

When the Supreme Court narrows the ability of lower courts to block an immigration policy, many people assume that is the end of the story. But immigration cases often have a second chapter, because the legal theories can change even when the underlying human stakes do not. That is what we are...

Trump’s Under-the-Radar Deportation Court Gambit

Some government actions are loud on purpose. Others slip by quietly, wrapped in procedural language that feels too technical to worry about. This week’s immigration news falls squarely into the second category. The Justice Department has taken steps to activate a special deportation tribunal...