News

Court Says the Second Amendment Covers Firearm Parts

Building a firearm at home used to sound like something only a dedicated hobbyist would attempt. Today, for many gun owners, it is closer to a practical form of customization, especially with modular platforms like the AR-15. That reality matters legally, because a federal appeals court has now...

Supreme Court Takes Up Bid to End TPS for Haitians and Syrians

The Supreme Court is stepping into a high-stakes dispute over Temporary Protected Status , a humanitarian immigration program that lets people live and work in the United States when returning to their home country is unsafe. At issue are Trump-era decisions aimed at ending TPS protections for...

Supreme Court Weighs Geofence Warrants

When the Fourth Amendment was ratified in 1791, the idea that a private company could quietly keep a minute-by-minute record of where millions of people go would have sounded like fantasy. Today, that kind of location history is routine. And the Supreme Court is now being asked a very practical...

Are Connected Cars Becoming Rolling Surveillance Devices?

For decades, your car mostly revealed what could be seen from the outside: where it was parked, whether it was speeding, maybe what was in plain view through a window. Today, many vehicles are something else entirely: networked computers with sensors, software, and cellular connections that can...

Your Car’s Data and the Fourth Amendment

For much of American history, the government often had to rely on physical surveillance, human sources, or scattered records to learn where you went. Today, your own vehicle may be quietly building a record instead. In Washington, lawmakers including Sen. Ron Wyden and Sen. Ed Markey have pressed...

The FCC’s News Distortion Trap

There is a specific kind of power in American government that does not look like censorship at first glance. It does not confiscate printing presses. It does not ban a book. It does not even need to win a defamation case in court. It simply reminds a speaker: your permission to operate can be...

Chip Roy Urges HHS to Suspend Funding for CAIR

Federal funding decisions can feel abstract until a lawmaker tries to tie them to a single, sharp claim: taxpayer money, Rep. Chip Roy argues, should not flow to organizations he says facilitate terrorism. In a letter sent Monday to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Roy...

A ‘Military-Grade Weapons’ Ban After WHCD: The Second Amendment Fight Over Definitions

In the days after the shooting connected to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, a familiar policy idea resurfaced quickly: ban “military-grade weapons.” That call was amplified by Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, a former Democratic Party vice chair, who urged such a ban in a...

GOP Section 702 Deal Hits Rules Committee Hurdle

A House Republican deal to renew and revise Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is hitting its first major procedural hurdle: the House Rules Committee. The committee decides what reaches the floor, how debate is structured, and which amendments are allowed. Lawmakers expected...

Geofence Warrants and the Fourth Amendment

There is a particular kind of search the Fourth Amendment was written to stop: the kind that begins with a dragnet and ends by deciding who looks suspicious. In 1791, that dragnet looked like a “general warrant,” a government permission slip to rummage through private papers without naming the...

Supreme Court Weighs Limits on Roundup Mass Lawsuits

The Supreme Court is considering a question that comes up again and again in modern product litigation: when a product is regulated at the federal level, how much room is left for state lawsuits claiming the warnings were not strong enough? This time, the product is Roundup, a widely used weed...

When the State Wants to Look Inside Your Home

The Fourth Amendment was written with a simple instinct: a person’s home should not be treated like a public hallway. The recurring question in state and local policymaking is how far government should be able to go in peering into the home, and how easily private spaces can be treated as close...

The Supreme Court Reopens Texas’ Mid-Cycle Map Fight

The Supreme Court just handed Texas Republicans a win with a move that was both simple and deeply consequential: it summarily reversed a lower-court ruling that had blocked Texas’ mid-cycle congressional redistricting plan. In other words, the Court struck down the block and left the new map...

Trump Fires the National Science Board

American science policy does not usually arrive like a thunderclap. It arrives as a budget line, a grant cycle, a committee vote, a quiet board meeting that decides which fields are “strategic” and which can wait. That is why reports from multiple sources that President Donald Trump has...

DOJ Adds Firing Squads to Federal Execution Options

The Justice Department has moved to expand the methods available for federal executions by adding firing squads to the federal toolkit, alongside a renewed embrace of a single-drug lethal injection protocol using pentobarbital. The change is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to...

Maine’s Criminal-Record Sealing Veto, Explained

Maine Governor Janet Mills has vetoed a sweeping criminal-record sealing bill that would have changed what the public can learn from the state’s court dockets, and what employers and landlords can discover with a quick search. The veto is not just a criminal justice story. It is a civics story...

The Conspiracy Surge After the Dinner Attack

When a violent incident erupts in a public place, we expect fear. What we do not always expect is the second blast, the one that hits your phone. No sooner had a gunman tried to storm the ballroom of the Washington Hilton, where the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was taking place Saturday...

Mississippi’s Special Session on Redistricting, Explained

Mississippi is preparing for a fast-moving, high-stakes civic moment: Gov. Tate Reeves says he will call a special legislative session to redraw district lines after the U.S. Supreme Court issues its decision in Louisiana v. Callais . He has said the session will happen 21 days after the Court...

The Geofence Warrant Case

You can lock your front door. You can shred your mail. You can refuse to answer questions. But your phone can still leave a trail. Depending on your settings and the services you use, location-related data can be created when you open a map, allow an app to check your whereabouts, or turn on...

A Justice Department Shift Makes DACA Deportations Easier

DACA has always lived in a strange legal space: powerful enough to change lives, fragile enough to be narrowed by a single administrative decision. Last week, that fragility got new reinforcement from inside the executive branch itself. The Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA)...