News

Mangione Plea Raises Double Jeopardy Fight in New York

When people hear “double jeopardy,” they often think it is a simple rule: the government only gets one try. In real life, it can be more complicated because the United States has overlapping criminal systems, including federal court and state court. That overlap is now being tested after Luigi...

The Justice Explaining Today’s Supreme Court

Most people experience the Supreme Court the way you experience weather. One morning you wake up to a new legal climate, and the only question that seems to matter is whether you should grab an umbrella. But the Court is not a storm. It is a machine. And if you want to understand why it can seem to...

Trump Tries Again on Birthright Citizenship

Birthright citizenship is one of those American commitments that feels too foundational to keep relitigating. And yet it keeps returning, election after election, lawsuit after lawsuit, executive order after executive order. On June 30, 2026, the Supreme Court rejected President Trump’s 2025...

When Commentators Contact Trial Witnesses: Utah Rules, Subpoenas, and the Owens-Robinson Firestorm

Sometimes a controversy goes viral because of one clean scandal. A single quote. A single clip. A single unmistakable line crossed. This one is messier, and that is exactly why it is sticking. Candace Owens is trending because two separate storylines collided on the same day: (1) she publicly...

Texas Vote-by-Mail ID Rules and SB 1 Litigation

Texas has been litigating its post-2020 election rules for years, and the latest flashpoint is familiar: who sets the rules for voting, what counts as a permissible anti-fraud safeguard, and when federal courts can step in to stop a state from running its elections the way it chooses. Takeaway: In...

How the Executive Branch Cancels Visas

The State Department says it has revoked more than 175,000 visas since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025 . In its public statement, the Department described revocations involving people who “ violated the terms of their visas, committed crimes, called for violence against U.S....

FSU Scholarship Investigation: Title VI and Equal Protection, Explained

Florida State University is facing a federal civil-rights investigation over scholarship programs that allegedly limit eligibility based on race or sex. The headline is easy. The law underneath it is not. This story sits at the intersection of three things Americans often blur together: the...

Can a Court Order a Security Clearance Restored?

A former Secretary of the Air Force is preparing to take his security-clearance dispute to court, and the legal question underneath it is one the Constitution keeps bringing us back to: who controls access to the nation’s secrets , and how far judges can go when the executive branch says “no.”...

Can Gun Makers Be Sued for a “No-Trigger” Discharge?

When people think about “gun rights,” they usually picture laws passed by legislatures: bans, permits, waiting periods, and background checks. But sometimes the Constitution shows up in a place that feels more everyday and more personal: a product liability lawsuit, filed by someone who says a...

Texas Man Arrested After Rant About Age Checks Blocking His Anime

Most Americans have a pretty simple mental model of free speech: you can criticize the government, you can swear at the government, and you can be obnoxious while doing it. That model is mostly right. It just breaks down at one fraught edge case: when a political rant starts to sound like a threat....

Texas, Suppressors, and the Limits of State Power

It is easy to treat a ruling about suppressors like a niche fight between hobbyists and regulators. But the decision handed down by U.S. District Judge James Hendrix last week is not a narrow technicality. It is a constitutional pressure point. When a federal judge says parts of a 1930s gun law may...

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...