Another election year, another courtroom battle over voting rules. At this point, constitutional lawyers might as well keep overnight bags packed beside their desks. The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to suspend lower-court rulings blocking portions of the President’s executive order on citizenship verification and mail-in voting. The request would allow the administration…
Jay Clayton for DNI: Competence, Caution, and the Pulte Problem
President Trump’s nomination of Jay Clayton to serve as Director of National Intelligence is one of those Washington moves that manages to be both calming and concerning at the same time. On one hand, Clayton is a serious person with a serious résumé. He’s not some cable-news goblin pulled from the fever swamp and handed…
The Greenland Gambit
As Senate Republicans move to block President Trump from advancing his renewed push to assert American control over Greenland, the moment is more than a routine intraparty disagreement. It reveals a deeper fault line running through American politics: the difference between raw power and rightly ordered authority. At stake is not merely an unconventional foreign…
History, Power, and the Peril of Governing by Spectacle
The controversy surrounding President Trump’s attempted National Guard deployments to major U.S. cities is not merely a skirmish over public safety policy. It is a revealing moment about how power is exercised, justified, and constrained in a constitutional republic, and about what happens when political theater collides with historical and legal reality. At its core,…
Why President Trump’s Trade Fight Deserves a Second Look
When President Trump rolled out his new 10 % across-the-board tariff this year, the usual fireworks went off in Washington. Democrats clutched their pearls, the media went into DEFCON 1, and—perhaps most surprisingly—a handful of Senate Republicans broke ranks to challenge the plan. This week, the Senate even voted to roll back some of the…
When Courts Say “No” to Troops, Should the President Invoke the Insurrection Act?
Over the past few weeks, the Trump administration’s attempt to insert federal military (or Guard) force into major American cities has triggered a cascade of courtroom pushbacks. What looked like a bold posture on law and order is increasingly turning into a legal war of attrition. The administration, frustrated by injunctions and restraining orders, is…
Bombs, Boats, and the Battle Against the Bad Guys
President Trump recently decided that enough is enough when it comes to the drug cartels flooding our streets with fentanyl, cocaine, and all manner of misery. He’s officially labeled these cartels as “unlawful combatants,” a fancy legal way of saying, “We’re treating them like terrorists, not just criminals.” Under this new policy, the U.S. military…
From Portland to Chicago: Is Federal Force the New Normal?
When the National Guard starts showing up in your backyard more often than the Amazon delivery guy, you start to wonder: is this just another bad news cycle or is it the new way we do government? Let’s recap the last few weeks. President Trump sends troops to D.C. to clean up the mess that…
The Court, the Constitution, and Trump’s Los Angeles Deployment
The summer of 2025 was already simmering when Los Angeles became the epicenter of a political and constitutional storm. After a series of high-profile immigration raids swept through Southern California, the streets filled with demonstrators. Some were peaceful, gathering in large numbers to voice opposition to federal policy. Others grew heated, with scuffles breaking out…