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The principle [of emergency power] lies about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need. —Justice Robert H. Jackson, dissenting in Korematsu v. United States (1944) The president will do it. The predicate is being laid perfectly” [referring to President Trump’s […]
Gasoline prices are rising again, adding to voter concerns about the cost of living. Yet in the Philadelphia region, a new company, Freedom Fuel, is suddenly selling gasoline substantially below its competitors at more than two dozen stations. President Trump has personally promoted Freedom Fuel, and the White House has presented it as evidence that […]
Last October, I wrote in The Washington Spectator that the Trump administration was constructing an integrated system to constrain voting and criminalize political opposition. Claims of election fraud, domestic terrorism, foreign financing and organized political violence were being used broadly to recast the lawful administration of elections, political fundraising, protest against government…
On April 2, 2025, so-called “Liberation Day”, President Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and put high tariffs on US imports. His base tariff was 10%, but most countries faced higher rates, including 20% for the European Union, and over 40% for Cambodia and Vietnam. Trump has claimed repeatedly that he loves […]
The recent decisions handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court have only reaffirmed that John Roberts, the Chief Justice, has been assiduously laying the groundwork for two fundamental changes in the American system of self-government that would have been unimaginable during the first 250 years of U.S. history: first, a massive expansion of the powers […]
All of a sudden, during a single week in early June, a Marine sergeant turned oyster farmer named Graham Cunningham Platner, Democratic candidate for the Senate in Maine, became the most famous veteran in America. Or, if you prefer, the most infamous. Vets running for elected office have always occupied a special place in the […]
Trump produced this latest one through an unprecedented legal maneuver: suing his own government over disclosure of his tax returns, then settling the case through his former criminal defense lawyer, now Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. The legality of that settlement is now under active judicial review, even as Trump appears to be backing away from the fund […]
I am the North Carolina lawyer who served as lead counsel for the Black citizens whose lawsuit led to the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Thornburg v. Gingles. That case gave life to Congress’s 1982 amendments to the Voting Rights Act. Those amendments were born from a simple reality that every voting rights lawyer understood: […]
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The Department of Agriculture estimates that in 1960 it cost middle-income families $259,711 (in 2025 dollars) to raise a child. In 2015, it cost $414,000 (again, in 2025 dollars), an increase of over 50 percent—substantially more than median household income increased over this time period. As a result, women are having fewer children. During the […]
