Stephen Carter

It’s hard to find a good reason for Thursday’s decision by the US Supreme Court to stay a lower court’s preliminary injunction against the Trump administration’s rule requiring that “all new passports must display an individual’s biological sex at birth.”

What do you get when you mix $54 million worth of seized crude oil, an alleged insurrection, and a dispute over the legitimacy of the Nicolás Maduro regime in Venezuela? The answer: last week’s somehow overlooked but important decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in a lawsuit between Citgo Petroleum Corp. and its insurer. (For those who guessed “Trump bingo,” no credit — but stay tuned; we’ll get to that later.)

Recent stories about the parlous state of Democratic Party fundraising have raised an issue regarding a perhaps unnoticed constitutional decision. It appears that some big donors are concerned about how various independent groups spent their money during the last election cycle. But should the party’s nominee try to do better next time around — for example, by arranging for one group to invest in state A and another group to invest in state B — the campaign would run afoul of federal law, which

President Donald Trump’s recent flurry of attempts to deploy National Guard troops in cities around the country reminds me of an old “block-that-metaphor” line from the New Yorker: “As I look at things with a broad brush, there are lots of things going south out there, and there’s no silver bullet.” With this particular president and his constant whirligig of threats, puffery and offhand remarks, one never knows whether he is announcing a genuine policy initiative or simply reveling in the furio

There’s been a lot of excitement about last week’s ruling by a federal judge in Boston that the Trump administration, in its efforts to deport college students holding objectionable political views, violated the First Amendment. Commentators have described the opinion by District Judge William G. Young as “blistering” and a “landmark” — and so on in that vein. And I’m pleased to see that the court tried to find a way to extend the protections of free speech to those present in the country on tem

FCC Chair Brendan Carr shouldn’t have uttered a word about Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue. But government officials have been browbeating broadcasters since John F. Kennedy.

The government has no business trying to regulate speech about itself — and that includes Donald Trump.

Forcing immigration officers to reveal their identities sounds appealing, but the costs could be high.

Chief Justice Roberts’ ruling in an FTC case leaves the Federal Reserve as the sole independent agency whose members the president can’t fire.

The Supreme Court, which has deemed the Federal Reserve distinct from other federal agencies, is likely to uphold a challenge to her dismissal.