Essays

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Judgment / September 27, 2026

Your Congressman Isn’t Your Concierge: Why Constituent Services Signal Broken Government

There are few applause lines in American politics safer than constituent services. Every incumbent, Republican or Democrat, loves to tell the story of the...

1 min read

JudgmentSeptember 26, 20261 min read

Appropriations Bills Are Central Planning in Disguise

Every fall, Washington performs a ritual that looks like republican deliberation and functions like Gosplan. Congress takes up the appropriations process...

JudgmentSeptember 26, 20261 min read

The Coordination Trap: Why the FEC Cannot Draw a Real Line Between Independent Expenditures and Coordination

There are few phrases in modern politics that carry more legal weight while meaning less than independent expenditure. It sounds like a narrow accounting...

JudgmentSeptember 26, 20261 min read

The FEC's Coordinated Party Spending Limits Are Price Controls on the First Amendment

Imagine you are a county party chair in western Pennsylvania. You have raised a few thousand dollars from your neighbors. You know which precincts are soft...

JudgmentSeptember 26, 20261 min read

The Progressive Caucus Is Not a Caucus—It’s a Faction Bent on Rewriting the Republic

Most coverage of the Progressive Caucus misses the real story. The argument is usually about policy-Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, student debt...

JudgmentSeptember 25, 20261 min read

Congressional Ethics Investigations Are a Star Chamber, Not Accountability

Every few months Washington performs the same tired ritual. A congressional ethics investigation becomes the story. The press covers it like a criminal...

AttentionSeptember 25, 20261 min read

Congress’s Attention Problem Is Quietly Handing Power to the Administrative State

We love to mock the congressional calendar. Long weekends spent somewhere other than Washington. Month-long recesses stretched across the calendar like...

JudgmentSeptember 25, 20261 min read

The GAO Shutdown Report Is an Audit of Nonessential Government

When the Government Accountability Office released its accounting of the 2018-2019 partial government shutdown, official Washington treated the document as...

JudgmentSeptember 25, 20261 min read

Unanimous Consent Agreements Are Quietly Destroying the Senate’s Judgment

The United States Senate was never meant to be efficient. The Founders built it as the republic's cooling saucer, a place where the hot passions of the...

JudgmentSeptember 24, 20261 min read

Filling the Amendment Tree: How Senate Cloture Became Central Planning

Most Senate jargon is deliberately dull, and that dullness is not an accident. It lets the real work happen while the rest of the country is looking...