News

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)...

Ohio’s Gun Preemption Debate

In Ohio, arguments over gun policy often drift toward a familiar dividing line: whether cities should be able to write their own firearm rules, or whether the state should insist on one uniform standard everywhere. That can sound like a technical turf fight between the statehouse and city halls. It...

Texas and the Ten Commandments: A Test of the Establishment Clause

Texas wants the Ten Commandments on the wall of every public school classroom. Not in a textbook. Not as part of a unit on ancient law codes. On the wall, full time, in the King James wording, as a state-mandated presence in the daily life of a student. A closely divided federal appeals court has...

Supreme Court Takes Up Case on Green Card Holders Charged With Crimes

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear an immigration case involving lawful permanent residents, often called green card holders, who have been charged with crimes. Beyond that basic frame, the central legal issue could take more than one form. Depending on what the justices agreed to review, the...

A Digital Constitution Archive Worth Building

Every few years we watch the same national ritual: a public official holds up the Constitution like a prop, a pundit invokes “what the framers intended,” and a classroom of teenagers asks the most honest question of all. “Where does it actually say that?” That question is the beating heart...

Congress Pauses Epstein Hearings, and Oversight Starts to Look Optional

Congress does not have to win a criminal case to do its job. It does not have to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. It does not even have to name a defendant. Its job is simpler and, in a functioning republic, more relentless: find facts, expose failures, and fix the laws that allowed those...

Congress Hits Pause on Epstein Hearings

Congressional oversight is supposed to work like sunlight. A committee announces witnesses, sets a timetable, and the public gets to watch the government do what the Constitution quietly expects it to do: investigate, inform, and legislate with facts rather than rumors. So when the House Oversight...

Can a Secretary Dismantle the Department of Education?

The U.S. Constitution does not create a right to education. It does not assign schooling to Washington. And it does not mention a federal Department of Education. In practice, that has helped leave primary responsibility for schools with the states. That said, the modern federal education state is...

Senate Border Funding Push: Enforcement, Shutdown Pressure, and Taxpayer Stakes

Washington loves to pretend a “shutdown” is a single switch that flips to OFF. It is not. It is a pressure chamber, and when funding talks stall, that pressure tends to show up first in departments built for constant operations. One concrete way this can bite: when funding is unsettled,...

Federal Court Halts Arkansas Act 900 in NetChoice Challenge

Arkansas tried, once again, to reshape how social media works for young people. And once again, a federal court stepped in. In NetChoice LLC v. Griffin , a judge in the Western District of Arkansas issued a preliminary injunction against Arkansas Act 900 of 2025, concluding that major parts of the...