In addition to its as-yet undetermined consequences for a potential US-Iran nuclear deal, “Operation Midnight Hammer”—the US military operation that involved aerial strikes on three key Iranian nuclear facilities in June—has brought a long-standing legal debate with considerable implications for US foreign policy to the fore: the scope of executive war powers under the US [...]
President Donald Trump’s July 24 executive order on reducing “vagrancy” is exactly the wrong approach to the pervasive problem of houselessness. It encourages, and funds, cities and states to treat people living in poverty and lacking housing like criminals and to confine them in involuntary, often inhumane, institutions. Trump takes this approach as his administration has [...]
I began publicly invoking the word “genocide” in July 2025 to describe the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza in response to the horrific Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023, and the incomprehensible ongoing hostage crisis. Since that time, despite increasing agreement among liberal Jewish organizations over the use of this term, I [...]
The world is failing women and girls. With just five years left to accomplish the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), not a single country is on track to meet SDG 5: achieving gender equality. Governments cite excuses such as budget constraints or political instability, but a leading cause is the injustice that remains embedded [...]
On the morning of June 13, 2025, the city of Tehran was rocked by deafening explosions. An unexpected Israeli military operation began, targeting nuclear and military facilities throughout Iran. Israel asserted that its actions were justified under the principle of ‘anticipatory self-defense,’ a concept that is narrowly defined in international law. However, the aftermath of [...]
The October 7 Hamas assault on Israel did not merely mark another round of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; rather, it triggered a deeper and more structural transformation in the security landscape of the Middle East. While the attack exposed tactical vulnerabilities within Israel’s internal security nodes, it simultaneously accelerated the erosion of Iran’s long-standing [...]
In a unanimous decision in April, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit gave new life to a hard-fought effort by residents of St. James Parish in Louisiana to seek a moratorium on new petrochemical plant construction and expansion. This reversal of a lower court’s dismissal in 2024 marks a promising moment in [...]
Medicaid, the public health insurance program that covers more than 80 million low-income people in the US, is once again on the chopping block. A federal budget proposal currently under consideration aims to slash $1.5 trillion in spending over the next decade, with Medicaid among the programs targeted for restructuring. Any significant reduction in Medicaid [...]
Introduction In the spring of 2020, Kingfish Maine (KM) and the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (MDEP) began collaborating on a proposed $110 million onshore fish farm in Jonesport, a small fishing town in Maine. The path to MDEP approval has been convoluted and opaque, ultimately resulting in the green light for an international corporate [...]
The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 is not merely a relic of a darker era in American history—it is a live wire capable of short-circuiting rights protected by US constitution. The act’s recent invocation by the Trump administration to summarily detain and forcibly disappear Venezuelan men into a notorious prison in El Salvador has pushed [...]
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