Separation of Powers

On March 24, the Supreme Court will hear a case that, while technically about immigration, could affect every American's ability to challenge government overreach. At stake is whether people have a fair chance to challenge government decisions in court, or if procedural traps can block them from doing so. In Riley v. Garland, Pierre Riley is see ...

"I didn't vote for Elon Musk." This complaint became a common refrain in recent weeks for those alarmed by Musk and DOGE's efforts to reduce government spending. Even Elizabeth Warren is getting in on this criticism. The distrust of power wielded by unelected officials has reached a new high. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) appear ...

"They were fighting to keep a state of emergency always present as the surest guarantee of authoritarianism." – George Orwell, 1984  Last fall, the U.S. solicitor general filed a brief in the Supreme Court asserting, with unsettling assurance, that even three decades ago Congress was "presumably" aware "it was unlikely that there will ever be ...

As the tariff war heats up, President Trump has threatened to levy a 25% import tax on Canadian products. While he has agreed to delay the tariffs for now, if and when they do go into effect, the United States will see a dramatic increase in the cost of vital products, like lumber. Canada is the United States' largest foreign supplier of lumber, ...

Two federal district courts determined in a single week that the Office of Management and Budget's federal funding freeze had to be put on hold while the claims were resolved. The courts showed no hesitation in wading into a political dispute between Congress and the president. Yet every day, individual US citizens and small businesses are denie ...

In the era of DOGE, many Americans are talking and thinking about regulatory reform and the cost of regulation on taxpayers in a new way. This essential conversation is encouraging and should continue, but regulatory reform and accountability are an old and vital concern. In recent years, legislators at the state and federal levels have been discus ...

President Donald Trump recently issued an executive order calling for action to address the "cost of living crisis," highlighting high housing costs as a major challenge. This major affordability crisis continues to put the American dream of home ownership beyond reach for many across the country. Even with good-paying jobs, many people stru ...

Commercial fishing is a tough way to make a living. The industry is highly competitive; revenues from year to year can be highly variable; the work is physically demanding and dangerous; and fishermen find themselves at the mercy of severe weather and choppy waters on a daily basis. But even those challenges are less taxing than going up against th ...

In their Feb. 19 op-ed "Precedents for the Eric Adams Case," James Copland and Rafael Mangual detail the Justice Department's decadeslong practice of extracting behavior-altering agreements from defendants in exchange for deferring or declining prosecution. But their examples are exclusively of private citizens or corporations. When the defenda ...