On reactions to the Supreme Court’s religious liberty decisions after Bostock — Sometimes history seems just “one damned thing after another.” Sometimes Supreme Court opinions seem that way, too. The Court issues its decision one at a time, or maybe a handful in a day. We read the latest opinions on scattered subjects; if a particular case involves an issue we care…

Reading “Witness” in the era of “Defund the Police,” “MAGA,” and “Flight 93 Elections” — I’m often reminded of Whitaker Chambers,* and all the more so lately. For the last few years, I’ve watched, astonished, and wondered how so many political elites and intellectuals could be so easily seduced by iconoclastic and anti-institutional movements. In all of this, I’m reminded of Chambers’s Witness—specifically Chapter 3…

As Ezra Klein notes, our political system is dysfunctional, and Congress’s decline is a major part of that problem. — After a brutal week, from the murder of George Floyd to the riots in America’s capital and other cities, Ezra Klein compares our moment to the 1960s and laments that today’s dysfunctional political institutions make our social problems even worse: But there was one thing the 1960s had, that we…

(Originally posted at the Yale Journal on Regulation’s “Notice and Comment” blog.) Yesterday the White House issued a new executive order titled “Executive Order on Regulatory Relief to Support Economic Recovery.” It is intended, most immediately and obviously, to amplify the economic recovery so sorely needed amid the Covid-19 crisis…

(Originally posted at the Yale Journal on Regulation’s “Notice and Comment” Blog.) By the time he actually signed it, President Trump’s “Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship” was no surprise. His complaints about social media platforms, and his calls for Congress to rescind Internet platform companies’ immunity under Section 230…

No, President Trump is not being impeached for things that all presidents do. And he’s not like Lincoln in the Civil War, either. — During the Cold War, William F. Buckley Jr. would sometimes poke fun at those who tried to equate the CIA with the KGB. He recounts this in Miles Gone By (2004): [Some say] there is little to choose between the KGB and the CIA. Both organizations, it is fashionable to…

Before we turn the calendar to 2020, I have a few thoughts on the merits of the House’s impeachment of President Trump, and on the Senate’s trial of the House’s impeachment. I started writing about impeachment in July 2018, with a long Weekly Standard essay on “The Coming Constitutional Storm.”…

Or, a View from the Justice Department’s Summit — The Justice Department’s recent “Summit on Modernizing the Administrative Procedure Act” proved to be a great step toward the goal of reforming the APA to reflect and respond to modern administrative reality. If you were interested in the event but couldn’t attend, then you can find the videos online: here…

This week I’ll leave the Hoover Institution, my professional home for the last few years. And because I am leaving with a heart full of gratitude for the institution and my colleagues, I want to take a moment to say “thanks.” This place, which I’ve admired for so long, changed…