News

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...

House panel subpoenas three nonprofits in Singham funding probe

The House Ways and Means Committee has escalated an investigation into what it describes as a far-left influence-and-funding network, issuing subpoenas to three nonprofits after Chairman Rep. Jason Smith said earlier requests yielded no responsive records. Smith, a Missouri Republican, is focusing...

Trump’s Under-the-Radar Deportation Court Play

Most immigration crackdowns are loud on purpose. Raids. Press conferences. Big numbers. But some of the most unsettling moves are the ones that happen quietly, on paperwork most people will never see. This month, the Trump administration took a step that should make anyone who cares about...

DOJ Targets U.S. Virgin Islands Magazine Ban

When people talk about the Second Amendment, they usually picture a debate playing out in a state legislature or a federal court somewhere on the mainland. This week, that familiar argument landed in a place many Americans rarely think about in constitutional terms: the U.S. Virgin Islands. On...

Home Whiskey, Home Weed, and the Commerce Clause

One of the Constitution’s most practical, day-to-day powers is also one of its most slippery: Congress’s authority “ to regulate Commerce…among the several States .” That short phrase, the Commerce Clause, helps determine what you can buy, sell, ship, grow, brew, and sometimes even what you can do...

Why Discovery Gets Aggressive in Trump’s $10B CBS Lawsuit

When Donald Trump sued CBS for $10 billion over a 60 Minutes segment, the most predictable fight was never going to be about cable-news commentary. It was going to be about proof: if you demand a number that large in a civil case, you invite the other side to ask hard questions about your math. In...

Why SSI Is Suddenly Everywhere: August Dates, New SSA Tools, and a Childhood Disability Fix

Supplemental Security Income is the kind of phrase you usually hear only in a benefits office. Then late July hits, and it turns into kitchen-table questions: When does the check arrive? How do I file? What happens when my child turns 18 on paper? Right now, three SSI storylines are colliding: the...

When War Injuries Go Quiet

In civics class, students always wanted to argue about the big questions of war. When can a president strike? Who has the power to declare? What counts as self-defense? But the grown-up fight is often smaller, quieter, and in some ways more revealing: who gets to know what war costs and when. This...

Congress vs. the Smithsonian: Politeness, Objectivity, and “White Supremacy Culture”

You can tell what a political moment is really about by what it chooses as its symbol. This week’s symbol was not a statue, or a painting, or a disputed line on a placard. It was the word politeness . In a House hearing on July 21, 2026, Rep. Brandon Gill questioned Anthea Hartig, the director of...

Zohran Mamdani’s First Six Months

You can learn a lot about American politics by watching what happens when a rising local figure starts tugging on national threads and the fabric actually moves. Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s youngest mayor in a generation, has become a national political figure not just because he beat former...