Last month, a federal judge in Los Angeles handed down a temporary order placing some restrictions on the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in that city. The Trump administration now wants the Supreme Court to lift those restrictions.  The contested provisions of Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong’s order are fairly narrow. They provide that federal law enforcement […]

Depending on who you listen to, President Donald Trump’s decision to seize control over law enforcement in Washington, DC, is either an authoritarian menace or a farce. The authoritarian menace case is straightforward: Trump is (again) asserting the power to deploy the National Guard to a major US city, while adding the new wrinkle of […]

Just a few years ago, the movement for Washington, DC, statehood was gaining steam. In 2020 and 2021, Democrats in the House passed bills to make DC the 51st state, re-energizing the fight to grant residents of the nation’s capital representation in Congress.  Those bills were ultimately doomed because of strong Republican opposition. But now, […]

Whatever else can be said about the second Trump administration, it is always teaching me about parts of the Constitution I had forgotten were even in there. Case in point: Article I, Section 9, Clause 5 states that “No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.” This is known as […]

The richest person in the world is obsessed with creating a city on Mars. Elon Musk would like to see a million people living in a self-sufficient Martian settlement by 2050, both as a plan B for Earth and because it gives us something cool to get excited about. Traveling to Mars has been a […]