News

Harvard Sues Over International Student Ban

The federal government has significant power over the people and institutions it regulates. Often, that power shows up as forms, compliance checks, and rules that can change over time. Occasionally, it shows up as a ban. Harvard is suing the Trump administration after it banned the school from...

Resignations, Not Expulsions

The House of Representatives is not a courtroom. It is not a human resources department, either. But it is a constitutional body with one glaring obligation that rarely gets tested in earnest: the duty to discipline its own members. This week, that duty collided with political reality. Rep. Tony...

Virginia Gun Sales Spike Ahead of New Controls

One of the easiest ways to see how law influences everyday behavior is to watch what happens right before a rule changes, or might. In Virginia, gun retailers say that is exactly what is happening now: as a slate of proposed gun controls moves through the legislative process, customers are rushing...

Massachusetts and the Quiet Squeeze on Section 230

Section 230 is famous for what it says in plain English: if you run a website that hosts user content, you usually are not treated as the “publisher or speaker” of what your users post. That protection is not a courtesy. It is the legal architecture that made comment sections, reviews, social...

Birthright Citizenship and the Sovereignty Question

Every generation finds a new way to ask an old question: who is an American ? Sometimes the question comes dressed as a moral argument. Sometimes it shows up as a budget argument. Lately, it shows up in court as a sovereignty argument, the claim that the United States can only remain a nation if it...

Trump’s DOJ Keeps a Biden Gun Rule

Presidents campaign like they can flip Washington like a light switch. New team in, old rules out. That story sells. It is also often false. On April 10, the Trump Justice Department kept a Biden-era gun rule in place. Whatever people expected from a change in administration, the immediate result...

Can the Government Unmask Anonymous Critics?

Anonymous speech is not a loophole in the First Amendment. It is one of its oldest habits. That is why a recent effort to force Reddit to identify a user who criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not just a platform privacy story. It is a stress test for a constitutional principle:...

WATCH: Rex Heuermann Pleads Guilty to Killing 8 Women

Rex Heuermann admitted in court that he killed eight women as he changed his plea to guilty on April 9, 2026, in the Gilgo Beach murders case in New York. For many people following a case like this, a guilty plea can feel like the end of the story. In reality, it is more like a hinge in the...

FISA 702 and Warrants for Americans’ Data

Every few years, Congress faces the same uncomfortable question: how much surveillance power should the federal government have in the name of foreign intelligence, and what protections do Americans get when their messages get caught in the net? That question is back because Section 702 of the...

Melania Trump, Epstein, and the Public’s Right to Know

When powerful people get mentioned in the orbit of a notorious criminal, the public instinct is simple: Tell us everything. But the American system was not designed to satisfy curiosity. It was designed to allocate power, constrain government, and protect individual rights, including the rights of...

ICE, Graphite Spyware, and the Fourth Amendment

Americans like to tell ourselves a comforting story about modern surveillance. If your message is encrypted, it is safe. If the government wants what is on your phone, it needs a warrant. If an agency crosses the line, the Constitution snaps back like a rubber band. That story is getting harder to...

What Melania Trump’s Epstein Statement Really Demands

When powerful people get named anywhere near the Jeffrey Epstein story, the public reflex is predictable: someone is hiding something . That reflex is understandable. It is also dangerous. In a constitutional republic, outrage is not evidence, and vibes are not due process. That is why First Lady...

Can the President Ignore Presidential Records Rules?

Most of us only notice federal recordkeeping when something has gone wrong. A missing email. A deleted text. A phone call no one seems able to document. But records are not a minor administrative detail. They are the evidence that oversight and later review depend on. Without them, subpoenas,...

Should You Have to Pay to Read the Law?

We talk about “the rule of law” the way people talk about gravity. Like it is a force of nature. Always there. Always working. Not something you have to maintain. But law is not gravity. Law is text. It is language. It is a set of instructions written by humans, enforced by humans, and...

Chatrie and the Geofence Warrant: The Fourth Amendment’s Next Privacy Test

The Fourth Amendment was written for a world of paper ledgers and locked desks. But it was built for a problem that never goes out of style: the government’s temptation to search first and justify later. Later this month, the Supreme Court will hear a case that forces that old constitutional...

When DHS Revokes Status by Email

There is a certain kind of government power that feels almost magical when it is aimed at someone else. A form gets updated. A policy shifts. An email goes out. And a life that was lawful yesterday becomes deportable today. That is the core tension in a new federal court ruling out of Boston, where...

USPS Weighs Letting Americans Mail Handguns

The U.S. Postal Service is preparing to make a major change to its firearm mailing standards: a proposed rule that would let “lawful handguns to be mailed” under terms similar to those that already apply to rifles and shotguns. If finalized, it would mark a significant shift in how a federally...

Trump Removes Attorney General Pam Bondi, Names Todd Blanche Acting AG

President Donald Trump announced Thursday that Attorney General Pam Bondi is leaving the Justice Department, a sudden shakeup that places Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in the role of acting attorney general. Trump framed the change as a transition, writing that Bondi would be moving to “a...

Trump, Bondi, and the DOJ: What a Leadership Swap Means for Your Rights

When people ask whether the Justice Department is “independent,” I usually answer with a question: independent from whom ? The Constitution does not create an independent Justice Department. It creates a President who must “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” The DOJ is part of...

Trump Officials Born to Immigrant Parents

When people debate birthright citizenship , the conversation can feel abstract, like a courtroom exercise about commas and clauses. But the Constitution’s promise of citizenship at birth has always had a very practical side: it determines who is recognized as an American from day one, including...