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Ian Millhiser

Ian Millhiser

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The best legal case against Trump’s tariffs, explained

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced sweeping new tariffs on pretty much everything imported into the United States. Among other things, the...

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Vox

Ian Millhiser

The Supreme Court struggles with whether to wound Medicaid to spite Planned Parenthood

Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic should be one of the easiest cases the Supreme Court will decide this year. A federal law requires every...

yesterday 0

Vox

Ian Millhiser

Trump’s single most aggressive attack on immigrants is now before the Supreme Court

In mid-March, President Donald Trump invoked an almost-never-used federal law, claiming that it gives him the power to deport many immigrants at will...

yesterday 20

Vox

Ian Millhiser

The Supreme Court seems poised to give religious employers a big win

There wasn’t a lot of suspense going into Monday’s Supreme Court argument in Catholic Charities v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission....

monday 3

Vox

Ian Millhiser

The cockiest thing Trump has done so far

All nine of the Supreme Court justices are lawyers. All of them have friends and law school classmates in private practice. All of them sit at the...

29.03.2025 50

Vox

Ian Millhiser

Kavanaugh and Barrett appear likely to break with the Supreme Court’s MAGA wing

The Supreme Court spent Wednesday morning giving very serious consideration to a case that no one should take seriously.  FCC v. Consumers’...

27.03.2025 90

Vox

Ian Millhiser

The Supreme Court hands a rare loss to gun companies

An exceedingly rare event occurred on Wednesday — the Supreme Court upheld a federal gun regulation, with four of the Court’s Republicans in the...

27.03.2025 10

Vox

Ian Millhiser

A Supreme Court case about abortion could destroy Medicaid

Kerr v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic is one of the most straightforward cases the Supreme Court will hear this year. It involves a federal law...

25.03.2025 20

Vox

Ian Millhiser

The Supreme Court appears determined to blow up its one good Voting Rights Act decision

The Supreme Court sent a rather unfortunate message during Monday’s argument in a racial gerrymandering dispute called Louisiana v. Callais: Do not...

24.03.2025 4

Vox

Ian Millhiser

The Supreme Court’s new religion case could devastate American workers

If you know the name of a case the Supreme Court will hear on March 31, Catholic Charities v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission, you can...

24.03.2025 80

Vox

Ian Millhiser

There are 132 lawsuits against Trump. Pay attention to these two.

There are many lawsuits challenging allegedly illegal actions by the Trump administration — 132 of them as of March 21, according to the legal news...

22.03.2025 20

Vox

Ian Millhiser

The case for conservatism

The conservative philosopher GK Chesterton is known for a parable about two lawmakers who encounter a fence. One, brash and overeager, announces that...

21.03.2025 10

Vox

Ian Millhiser

A new Supreme Court case seeks to revive one of the most dangerous ideas from the Great Depression

Federal law seeks to make communications technology like telephones and the internet, in the words of one older statute, “available, so far as...

19.03.2025 60

Vox

Ian Millhiser

The alarmingly high stakes in an easy Supreme Court voting rights case

Louisiana v. Callais, a case about whether Louisiana’s congressional maps are an illegal racial gerrymander, should be one of the easiest cases the...

18.03.2025 5

Vox

Ian Millhiser

What can be done if Trump is openly defying the courts?

The question of what happens if the Trump administration openly defies a federal court order has hung over the United States since President Donald...

17.03.2025 3

Vox

Ian Millhiser

America’s (lack of) separation between church and state, explained

A Vox reader asks: If we have “separation of church and state,” why do we give religious schools tax exemption? How come religious schools get...

16.03.2025 4

Vox

Ian Millhiser

The Supreme Court just handed down some ominous news for LBGTQ youth

The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will hear Chiles v. Salazar, a challenge to a Colorado law preventing most mental health professionals...

10.03.2025 10

Vox

Ian Millhiser

Trump’s lawyers just made a $2 billion mistake

On Wednesday morning, the Supreme Court handed down a very brief order that effectively requires the government to pay foreign aid contractors as much...

05.03.2025 9

Vox

Ian Millhiser

The Supreme Court seems eager to kill a big lawsuit against gun companies

The nation of Mexico’s lawsuit against several major US gun manufacturers, known as Smith & Wesson Brands v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, was cursed...

04.03.2025 4

Vox

Ian Millhiser

Trump’s biggest power grab just reached the Supreme Court

On Wednesday night, Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily halted a lower court order, which would have required the Trump administration to make...

28.02.2025 40

Vox

Ian Millhiser

The Supreme Court is in “radical agreement” that a bizarre DEI rule needs to go

The proper term for a Supreme Court session where the justices hear verbal presentations by lawyers is an “oral argument,” but Wednesday’s...

26.02.2025 20

Vox

Ian Millhiser

The Supreme Court faces the absurdly difficult problem of where to put nuclear waste

On March 5, the Supreme Court will hear a case that may involve one of the most toxic examples of NIMBYism in American history. The issue at the heart...

26.02.2025 2

Vox

Ian Millhiser

The Supreme Court hands down a rare victory for a death row inmate

The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that Richard Glossip, a man sentenced to die under extraordinarily dubious circumstances, must receive a new...

25.02.2025 4

Vox

Ian Millhiser

The Supreme Court will decide if gun companies are to blame for arming Mexican cartels

It’s hard to imagine a lawsuit that faces more challenging political headwinds than Mexico’s case against US gun companies in Smith & Wesson...

25.02.2025 20

Vox

Ian Millhiser

The Supreme Court hears a challenge to a DEI rule that genuinely needs to go

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear its first employment discrimination case since President Donald Trump took power and began a fairly...

24.02.2025 8

Vox

Ian Millhiser

We’re about to learn just how eager the Supreme Court is to help Trump

Hampton Dellinger, a federal official who President Donald Trump attempted to fire earlier this month, seems very likely to lose a lawsuit challenging...

20.02.2025 60

Vox

Ian Millhiser

The lawsuit seeking to kick Elon Musk out of government, explained

On Thursday, a group of current or former workers at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the foreign aid agency that the Trump...

14.02.2025 80

Vox

Ian Millhiser

What does it mean to be in a “constitutional crisis”?

We’re less than two months into the second Trump administration, but one thing is clear: President Donald Trump would very much like to be unbound...

13.02.2025 20

Vox

Ian Millhiser

How to make sense of all the court orders against Donald Trump

As of this writing, there are at least 45 lawsuits pending against President Donald Trump and his subordinates. They range from challenges to...

11.02.2025 7

Vox

Ian Millhiser

Don’t expect the courts to save us from Donald Trump

We seem to be in the middle of 16 constitutional crises at once. President Donald Trump and his allies are trying to kill an entire provision of the...

10.02.2025 60

Vox

Ian Millhiser

The legal theory that would make Trump the most powerful president in US history

President Donald Trump recently attempted to fire Gwynne Wilcox, a member of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and its former chair. This...

03.02.2025 30

Vox

Ian Millhiser

Brett Kavanaugh has very bad news for Donald Trump

On Friday afternoon, a federal judge in Rhode Island temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s attempt to halt a simply enormous amount of...

01.02.2025 100

Vox

Ian Millhiser

The one big question looming over Trump’s power grabs

Much of what Donald Trump has done in his first eight days back in the White House is legally unjustifiable. What’s uncertain is whether the Supreme...

28.01.2025 5

Vox

Ian Millhiser

A new Supreme Court case would force the government to create religious public schools 

The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it will hear two cases that are likely to revolutionize the relationship between church and state, at least...

28.01.2025 30

Vox

Ian Millhiser

The single most unconstitutional thing Trump did yesterday, explained

On Monday, his first day back in office, President Donald Trump issued a wave of executive orders.  Some are ridiculous, such as an order purporting...

21.01.2025 30

Vox

Ian Millhiser

Biden’s last-minute preemptive pardons, explained

Support independent journalism that matters — become a Vox Member today. On Monday, just hours before leaving office, President Joe Biden announced...

20.01.2025 80

Vox

Ian Millhiser

The Supreme Court’s decision upholding the TikTok ban, explained

On Friday, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a federal law that effectively bans the social media app TikTok in the United States, unless the...

17.01.2025 2

Vox

Ian Millhiser

The Supreme Court seems eager to curb First Amendment protections for porn

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard the first major First Amendment case involving pornography — or, for that matter, sexual speech of any kind...

15.01.2025 6

Vox

Ian Millhiser

A new Supreme Court case seeks to make it harder to get screened for cancer

The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it will hear Becerra v. Braidwood Management, the latest in a long line of lawsuits seeking to undermine...

14.01.2025 8

Vox

Ian Millhiser

The Supreme Court doesn’t seem likely to save TikTok

On Friday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that will decide if the popular social media app TikTok can still exist in the United...

10.01.2025 3

Vox

Ian Millhiser

The Supreme Court hands Trump a loss in his bid for legal immunity

By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court handed a largely symbolic, but still politically significant, loss to President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday...

10.01.2025 40

Vox

Ian Millhiser

Trump asks the Supreme Court to place him even further above the law

On Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court to halt the criminal proceeding against him in New York state court. Trump was...

08.01.2025 10

Vox

Ian Millhiser

Biden’s DOJ just asked the Supreme Court to do a huge favor for Donald Trump

In what is likely to be one of her final actions as the federal government’s top Supreme Court litigator, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar...

06.01.2025 5

Vox

Ian Millhiser

TikTok should lose its big Supreme Court case

Imagine that the government tried to force Jeff Bezos, the Amazon billionaire and owner of the Washington Post, to sell that newspaper due to...

06.01.2025 7

Vox

Ian Millhiser

The huge stakes in a new Supreme Court case about pornography

If you’ve studied First Amendment law, it’s impossible not to experience déjà vu while reading the briefs in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, a...

02.01.2025 4

Vox

Ian Millhiser

The long decline of the American death penalty, explained

President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of nearly all federal death row inmates on Monday, meaning that 37 men who were slated to be executed...

23.12.2024 2

Vox

Ian Millhiser

The Supreme Court’s new abortion case should be an easy win for Planned Parenthood

Kerr v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, which the Supreme Court announced Wednesday that it would hear, is not a difficult case. The question in...

19.12.2024 3

Vox

Ian Millhiser

The Supreme Court will race to decide whether the government may ban TikTok

The Supreme Court issued an unusual order on Wednesday morning, announcing it will hear a case deciding the fate of TikTok on a fast-tracked...

18.12.2024 7

Vox

Ian Millhiser

A new Supreme Court case about religion has a hidden trap for workers

One of the Supreme Court’s very first actions after Republicans gained a 6-3 supermajority on its bench was a revolutionary decision expanding...

17.12.2024 6

Vox

Ian Millhiser

The Supreme Court wades into the Israel-Palestine conflict

The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it will get involved in a longstanding dispute between the families of Americans killed in Israel and...

10.12.2024 5

Vox

Ian Millhiser