Executive Branch
Just Security’s expert authors provide analysis of the U.S. executive branch related to national security, rights, and the rule of law. Analysis and informational resources focus on the executive branch’s powers and their limits, and the actions of the president, administrative agencies, and federal officials.
4,711 Articles

Letter to the Editor: There Is Much More to a Civilian Casualty Investigation than Eyewitness Accounts
I applaud and agree with Sarah Knuckey’s, Ole Solvang’s, Jonathan Horowitz’s and Radhya Almutawakel’s recent post (“Pentagon Admits Major Investigation Flaw: imeshey…

Back to the Supreme Court on the Scope of the Entry Ban Injunction: First Thoughts
Thursday night, Judge Watson issued a ruling rejecting two of the ways in which the government has interpreted the Supreme Court’s modification of the preliminary injunctions…
Trump Tower Meeting Helps Show Collusion Up To Election Day
Just Security’s Rolf Mowatt-Larssen and Ryan Goodman make the following points. Knowing about the Trump Tower meeting with Russians on June 9, 2016, we can now understand much…

David Cole on Stopping Authoritarianism’s Rise in the United States
Since becoming National Legal Director of the ACLU, Just Security editorial board member David Cole has been spending a lot of time in Just Security’s home base of New…

A Guide to this Week’s News Coverage of Trump Jr.’s Russia Meeting
The Russia-Trump story accelerated this week as it was revealed that Don Jr.’s now infamous June 9 meeting at Trump Tower had little to do with adoptions, as he first claimed.…

Norms Watch: Democracy, the Trump Administration, and Reactions to It (July 7-July 14)
Editor’s Note: Welcome to the latest installment of Norms Watch, our series tracking both the flouting of democratic norms by the Trump administration and the erosion of…

Considering the Legal Defenses of the Trump Jr. Meeting
A number of good legal commentaries have challenged rushing to judgment on the legal implications of the Trump campaign meeting with the Russian government. It is entirely fair…

What Trump Jr. Did Was Bad, But It Probably Didn’t Violate Federal Campaign Finance Law
The disclosure of emails documenting Donald Trump, Jr.’s arrangement of a meeting with Natalia Veselnitskay has lots of people asking whether he or the Trump campaign violated…

The Call is Coming from Inside the House — Homegrown Extremism is Here
Much of our nation’s focus on preventing terrorist attacks has been on our borders, but, in fact, violent extremists are already here. It is like those old horror movies, where…

The Smoking Gun for Donald Trump Jr. and the Trump Campaign Committee
On Saturday, the New York Times broke the news of a previously unreported Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 between a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer and Donald Trump Jr., Trump…

DNC Hack Victims Sue Trump Campaign and Roger Stone
On Wednesday, three victims of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) cybertheft and subsequent document release by WikiLeaks filed a federal lawsuit against Donald J. Trump for…

Explainer: The Special Counsel Investigation
All eyes are on Robert Mueller. In May, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed the former FBI Director as special counsel to oversee the Department of Justice’s Russia…