Some colleges and universities have put race-based scholarships on hold. Carlos Barquero via Getty Images The fate of hundred of millions of dollars in scholarship money is up in the air in Ohio after seven state universities put race-conscious programs on hold to check their legality. The review comes after Dave Yost, the state’s attorney general, advised administrators in a call that using race as a factor to award funds may be unconstitutional. Yost’s guidance was based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which banned consideration of a ..read more

Taxes can be tough – to file and to pay. Kameleon007/iStock / Getty Images Plus Most Americans don’t like doing, or paying, their income taxes. But every year, about 85% of them will voluntarily pay the full amount of the taxes they owe. Even so, the IRS estimates that it loses over US$400 billion of revenue each year because people fail to file their taxes, underreport their income or underpay the amount of taxes they owe. Most of these losses are the result of deliberate tax evasion schemes designed to fatten unscrupulous taxpayers’ own pockets. But some people take a less greedy and more pr ..read more

Donald Trump appears outside a Manhattan criminal court on March 25, 2024. Mary Altaffer-Pool/Getty Images Every defendant is entitled to a fair and impartial jury. But the process to find one can be long and taxing, particularly in a high-profile trial such as the one in New York, in which Donald Trump stands accused of fraud in his efforts to cover up his relationship with porn star Stormy Daniels by paying her US$130,000 in hush money. In this case, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged the former president with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Trump entered a plea ..read more

Graduating cadets at West Point take their oaths to the Constitution and are commissioned as officers in the U.S. Army. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images In general, Americans don’t trust their government institutions as much as they used to – and that includes the military. In part, that’s because the military can be used as a tool to gain a partisan advantage rather than as a professional group that should be trusted by both parties. For instance, the day he was inaugurated as president, Donald Trump spoke at a luncheon and pointed to retired Marine four-star generals John Kelly and James Mat ..read more

A worker at the National Hurricane Center tracks weather over the Gulf of Mexico. Joe Raedle/Getty Images It’s common for political candidates to disparage “the government” even as they run for an office in which they would be part of, yes, running the government. Often, what they’re referring to is what we, as scholars of the inner workings of democracy, call “the administrative state.” At times, these critics use a label of collective distrust and disapproval for government workers that sounds more sinister: “the deep state.” Most people, however, don’t know what government workers do, why t ..read more

Clouds float over the Supreme Court building on March 15, 2024. Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images This term, the U.S. Supreme Court has heard oral arguments in a total of five cases involving questions about whether and how the First Amendment to the Constitution applies to social media platforms and their users. These cases are parts of a larger effort by conservative activists to block what they claim is government censorship of people who seek to spread false information online. The most recently heard case, on March 18, 2024, was Murthy v. Missouri, about whether the federal government ..read more

Donald Trump continues to face criminal charges in Georgia, even though some have been dismissed by a judge. AP Photo/Steve Helber A Fulton County judge has tossed out six of the 41 state charges against Donald Trump and his allies in Georgia’s expansive election interference case against the former president and others. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee issued a ruling on March 13, 2024, that focused on charges related to allegations that Trump and other defendants tried to get state officials to break the law and decertify the 2020 election results. The ruling doesn’t mean that ..read more

A 1935 painting depicts the 1787 meeting that adopted the U.S. Constitution. John H. Froehlich via Wikimedia Commons When the Supreme Court ruled on March 4, 2024, that former President Donald Trump could appear on state presidential ballots for the 2024 election, it did not address an idea that seemed simple and compelling when Justice Brett Kavanaugh raised it during the Feb. 8, 2024, oral arguments in the case: “What about the idea that we should think about democracy, think about the right of the people to elect candidates of their choice, of letting the people decide?” In essence, he wa ..read more

Journalists set up in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building on Feb. 8, 2024. Aaron Schwartz/Xinhua via Getty Images The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled, in a unanimous decision, that the state of Colorado cannot bar former President Donald Trump from appearing on Colorado’s presidential ballot under the provisions of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The text of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment states, in full: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United ..read more

The US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments this week in former President Donald Trump’s appeal against the decision to exclude him from the ballot in the Colorado Republican primary for this year’s presidential election. The Colorado Supreme Court ruled in December that Trump was disqualified from holding the office of president under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution because he engaged in an insurrection on January 6, 2021. Because the Republican primaries have already begun (Coloradoans vote on March 5) and the US Supreme Court’s current term ends on June 30, the nine ju ..read more