Law & Politics
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Executive Power Play: Trump and the Return of Impoundment
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Within the deluge of policies coming out of the second Trump administration, impoundment has resurfaced as a battleground between legislative and executive power. Impoundment is a practice in which the President can refuse to spend federal funds appropriated by Congress. Those who support the restoration of this practice see it…
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Good Policy is Good Politics
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In the parts of America that will decide the election, the presidency is won or lost with policy and not in courts, brokered conventions, or headlines. With a high-stakes and volatile election, mired in early controversy, the focus on economic policy remains the most constructive path to gain the support…
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Political Bad Faith: When Misinformation is the Point
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This article was co-authored by Allison Swimmer, Matilde Tinazzi Martini, Ilina Mitra, and Jose Villalobos Gonzalez. All are first year MPP candidates at University of Chicago, Harris School of Public Policy. From unfounded theories about homeopathic COVID-19 remedies to baseless claims regarding herd immunity, manipulated information is sweeping across the…
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Incentives vs Mandates: Encouraging People to Get the Covid-19 Vaccine
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A year after the first vaccines for COVID-19 were administered, the United States is still struggling to reach herd immunity, which scientists estimate to occur when 70% of the population is vaccinated (Robertson et al, 2021). The main challenge in reaching herd immunity has been vaccine hesitancy. People have refused…
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The Twin Crises of Public Health and Immigration: Assessing the Title 42 Order
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The United States has long weaponized infectious diseases to direct racialized, derogatory epithets and to justify unfair treatments toward immigrants. In San Francisco, from 1900 through 1904, Chinese immigrants were subject to stricter and more prolonged quarantines, although there was no evidence that proved Chinatown to be a hotbed for…
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The Dubious Nature of “Race Blind” Predictive Algorithms in the Courtroom
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The United States currently ranks first in the world for the rate of incarcerated individuals with an estimated 2.1 million people currently in prisons and jails across the nation. For reference, the Census Bureau estimates the U.S. population as third in the world at just under 333 million people. Home…
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Soldiers to Guardians: Transition to a Community Policing Model
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The murder of George Floyd, committed by a former Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) officer in an extremely gruesome and heinous fashion, caught the world’s attention and shed light on other unjust slayings. However, police killings are not new. Data collected by Statista suggested that over 1,000 known individuals were murdered…
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Ending Infinite War: Rethinking Congressional War Authorization in The Age of Drones
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With the National Defense Authorization act coming up for a vote, the war in Iraq may finally be over. The war in Iraq is technically still ongoing, as is the war in Afghanistan. We may have pulled out the troops, but the Authorization of Use of Military Force (AUMF) for…
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Public Perception May Curb Supreme Court’s Shadow Docket
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Mike Bedell is a student in the University of Chicago’s Evening Master’s Program. Just before midnight on September 1, 2021, in a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an unsigned order declining to block S.B. 8, the Texas law that bans almost all abortions in the state. The order…
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Turkey and the Trump Philosophy
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The United States and Turkey have a long history of political cohesion, and no era was ever so prolific in deal-making for the allies as that of the Trump administration. After nearly two decades of carving away at his country’s democratic freedoms, Turkish President Recep Erdogan has aligned with the…
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Abortion Rights Are On the Supreme Court Docket
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During his campaign for President, Donald Trump famously vowed to appoint Supreme Court justices to overturn Roe v. Wade. However, at the end of his term, it remained the law of the land. This could soon change. While the Supreme Court upheld abortion rights in a 5-4 decision in Louisiana’s…