My journey to Cato truly began during my 2L year, standing amidst the vibrant, jazz-filled streets of New Orleans on a warm Saint Patrick’s Day Weekend. Thanks to the generosity of our Cato partners, I spent my Spring Break at the Cato University College of Law. At the time, Clark Neily—now Cato’s Senior Vice President for Legal Studies—had recently taken over the Project on Criminal Justice and was beginning to articulate a bold new vision for our program. He identified four key pillars that continue to define our work: unconstitutional overcriminalization, self-defeating policing, insufficient accountability for law enforcement/​prosecutors, and the practical elimination of the citizen jury trial—which has been largely displaced by a regime of plea-driven mass adjudication.

As libertarians, we firmly believe that peaceful people ought to be left to their own devices. However, we recognize that once someone’s conduct poses a genuine harm to others, the state must step in to protect the public. The Framers articulated a federal government of only finite, enumerated powers. But thanks to a Congress that has little regard for constitutional constraints and a highly deferential Supreme Court, that is not the world we live in today. While states generally enjoy vast latitude over what they can criminalize, we as a society have become far better at policing morality than taking violent offenders off the streets. In this landscape, it is the jury—apprised of its historical power to prevent injustice—that must impart the community’s perspective and spare neighbors from the wrath of a tyrannical government.

We invite you to join us this August 6 through 8 at Cato’s Washington, DC headquarters as we explore how the Bill of Rights devotes more text to criminal procedure than anything else. We’ll dive headfirst into the doctrine of enumerated powers and the novel idea that the Constitution vests Congress, not unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, with the power to proscribe crimes and punish violators. We’ll examine the historical conception of the criminal jury as an injustice-preventing institution and discuss how coercive plea bargaining has made securing a criminal conviction—a process the Framers intended to be arduous and costly—frighteningly easy and cheap. We’ll discuss how judicially concocted immunity doctrines foster a culture of misconduct and foreclose relief for victims of even the most egregious constitutional violations. And we’ll illustrate how the self-professed Originalists on the Supreme Court have ignored the Constitution’s original public meaning where state power and policing prerogatives clash with individual rights. 

Beyond the theory, we’ll talk about the incremental progress we at Cato have made moving the needle towards individual liberty and the tangible wins we’ve scored for real people, including John Moore, Tanner Mansell, and Michelino Sunseri. While DC in August may lack the specific charm of St. Patrick’s Day in New Orleans, the experience promises to be just as insightful and informative. We don’t ask for total agreement, but we hope to share our vision for a constitutionally limited government that respects individual rights—a system that gets better at targeting those we are afraid of rather than simply locking up those we are mad at.

Each Cato University program uses classical liberal philosophy as a foundation for navigating modern policy. This specialized program for outstanding law students offers a unique opportunity to engage directly with Cato’s leading legal scholars through lectures, roundtable discussions, and close readings of foundational texts. Participants will leave with a deeper understanding of the legal landscape, a stronger professional network, and the analytical tools to pursue principled reform.

This program is open to United States-based applicants, and while we cannot currently accept international applications, those selected will receive room and board, over 20 hours of academic programming, and a $500 travel stipend upon completion. We review applications on a rolling basis, so we encourage you to apply before the deadline on Monday, June 22, 2026, at 5:00 p.m. EDT. If you have any questions or need assistance with the process, please reach out to our staff at events@​cato.​org.

The federal indictment against former FBI Director James Comey has ventured into the realm of legal parody. By asserting that seashells arranged on a beach qualify as true threats, the government has constructed a theory that is destined to collide with the First Amendment. (Comey is charged with making threats to harm President Trump.)

It is highly probable that US District Judge Louise Wood Flanagan will dismiss the indictment long before the matter ever reaches a jury. In fact, given the absurdity of the charges, Judge Flanagan may find the prosecution sufficiently vexatious to trigger the Hyde Amendment, potentially forcing the government to foot Comey’s legal bills.

This aggressive posturing appears to be a calculated audition by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. In an effort to shed the “acting” from his title, Blanche knows that he must succeed where his predecessor, Pam Bondi, failed. Accordingly, Blanche is signaling a Department of Justice fully untethered from constitutional restraints and evidentiary standards. By prioritizing the president’s partisan political agenda over the rule of law, the DOJ is demonstrating a chilling willingness to weaponize the legal system against perceived enemies, regardless of the merits.

While I often highlight the historic conception of the criminal jury as an injustice preventing institution—tasked with shutting down prosecutions as vindictive as this one—this case exposes a more systemic pathology: the total lack of accountability for prosecutors. When frivolous or politically motivated charges are brought, the prosecutors behind them face no personal or professional consequences. This lack of skin in the game empowers prosecutors to ignore the spirit of the law, confident that even a high-profile failure carries no real penalty.

We recently witnessed the tragic killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents who, under current Supreme Court precedent, cannot be sued for their actions due to the absence of a specific federal statute. However, federal prosecutors enjoy even greater legal protection. Through the judicially confected doctrine of absolute prosecutorial immunity, the courthouse doors are effectively locked against those seeking redress against actions taken by prosecutors.

As long as a prosecutor is acting within their role as a courtroom advocate, they are shielded from civil liability, regardless of the merit—or the malice—behind their decisions. If a prosecutor like Matthew Petracca—who is leading the effort to prosecute Comey—could be held personally liable for his actions, the decision to launch a vindictive prosecution in furtherance of President Trump’s political vendetta would carry a heavy personal cost. Instead, the current system ensures that prosecutors remain the most powerful and least accountable actors in our criminal justice system.

This lack of accountability is further cemented by the Department of Justice’s internal culture—an environment rife with opacity. My colleague Matthew Cavedon and I recently filed a comment explaining how federal prosecutors are shielded from accountability. The current status quo is to defer to the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR).

In practice, the OPR functions as a veritable graveyard where allegations of prosecutorial misconduct go to die, allowing offenders to remain unidentified and their careers to proceed unscathed. Rather than fix this, the DOJ is currently attempting to codify this longstanding self-policing practice into official policy. This widens the accountability gap—authorizing the watchers to watch themselves, leaving the public in the dark.

The current trajectory of the Department of Justice suggests a dangerous shift toward placing political allegiance over the rule of law. When prosecutors are weaponized to target political opponents, they do so with the serene knowledge that they face zero personal or professional risk.

The remedy for this imbalance lies squarely with Congress, which possesses the unique authority to re-establish oversight. This begins with the power of the purse, through which Congress can and should slash funding to departments that engage in such obvious overreach. Even more crucially, Congress has the authority to create a statutory right of action that authorizes suits for civil damages against federal officials. But that’s not enough: Congress must also expressly abrogate judicially created immunity doctrines, including the absolute immunity prosecutors currently enjoy. 

Accountability only truly exists when those in power are forced to justify their actions to a jury composed of ordinary Americans. Until the law changes, prosecutors will continue to wield the coercive power of the state without fear of the consequences, and ridiculous cases like the Comey seashell indictment stand to become the rule rather than the exception.

Both of us have already explained why proposals from President Trump and Elizabeth Warren to ban large institutional investors from buying single-family homes are misguided. Now, the damage they threaten isn’t hypothetical—it’s already beginning to unfold sooner than expected.

Although functionally short of a “ban,” the bill (the “21st Century ROAD to Housing Act”) seeks to restrict the activities of institutional investors—namely, the proposed requirement that the houses built specifically for the rental market (build-to-rent, or BTR) must sell the properties within seven years of completion—hasn’t even passed both houses of Congress in its final form. But the mere threat alone that it might pass is already having a negative impact. 

Recent articles in the Wall Street Journal and the Phoenix Business Journal point out that BTR developers are shutting down their slated projects, and some are losing their financing due to the regulatory uncertainty. For instance, TerraLane Communities has paused two projects ready to break ground—one in Arizona, one in Texas—totaling roughly 300 new homes. 

“An entire industry nationwide is shut down,” Greg Hancock, founder of Phoenix-based Hancock Builders, told the Phoenix Business Journal. An early survey of just 14 build-to-rent firms found at least $3.4 billion in investment frozen — representing roughly 10,000 units of housing. That figure, according to the Wall Street Journal, likely represents only a fraction of the industry-wide impact across more than 1,700 firms. TerraLane alone has abandoned five prospective projects beyond the two it paused. Other developers are reportedly redirecting capital earmarked for rental communities toward data-center development instead. 

So it seems that the odd alliance between the White House and populist anti-market members of Congress has already been successful at introducing new growth-reducing distortions into the housing market before the bill has even reached the president’s desk. The fact that it doesn’t have to even make it that far to do damage shows why we need to extricate the federal government (and state and local governments, too) from decisions to buy, sell, or build housing—or anything else, for that matter. 

Markets are complex places composed of people trying all kinds of things to serve different consumers. They’re not composed of uniform “industries” striving to punish people, and basing legislation on that idea can go badly in all kinds of ways.

The Journal reports, for example, that “congressional aides said that during negotiations over this build-to-rent provision, the industry told them that build-to-rent units typically get sold within seven to 10 years anyway.” There’s no doubt that some investors—quite possibly the ones who spoke to these congressional aides—were happy to get the build-to-rent exemption, provided the bill included the 7‑year window.

But there’s no doubt that many other investors, as well as builders and others involved in the industry, find the 7‑year selling requirement catastrophic. It’s impossible for Congress to craft this kind of bill and make everyone happy, and that’s precisely why they shouldn’t do it. The federal government should stay out of it and let the market work the way it’s supposed to. 

The Bank Secrecy Act was enacted in 1970 to require banks and other financial institutions to monitor customers and report certain transactions to the government. It started as an attempt to go after tax evaders, but it has since been expanded to go after drug dealers, terrorists, and immigrants. Although the Bank Secrecy Act has created sweeping financial surveillance that intrudes on Americans’ privacy and imposes massive costs on banks, there is little data to show that it actually stops criminals. 

Why Was the Bank Secrecy Act Created?

The Bank Secrecy Act was originally enacted in 1970 for two primary reasons. First, both Congress and the Department of the Treasury were concerned about tax evasion, especially through the use of foreign bank accounts. Second, law enforcement was frustrated by the requirements and the time needed to obtain a warrant. 

In the decades since 1970, Congress has passed several expansions to the Bank Secrecy Act. In fact, while it’s common for people to refer to the “Bank Secrecy Act” or the “Bank Secrecy Act regime,” these terms are usually used to refer to a long list of legislation.

• Bank Secrecy Act (1970)
• Money Laundering Control Act (1986)
• Anti-Drug Abuse Act (1988)
• The Annunzio-Wylie Anti-Money Laundering Act (1992)
• Money Laundering Suppression Act (1994)
• Money Laundering and Financial Crimes Strategy Act (1998)
• USA PATRIOT Act (2001)
• Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (2004)
• Anti-Money Laundering Act (2021)

What Reports Does the Bank Secrecy Act Require Today?

As it stands today, the Bank Secrecy Act requires banks and other financial institutions to file currency transaction reports (CTRs), suspicious activity reports (SARs), reports on foreign bank and financial accounts (FBARs), reports of international transportation of currency or monetary instruments (CMIRs), and Form 8300 reports. 

Although the names are long (and confusing), the basic idea is that your transactions must be reported to the government when you have a cash transaction over $10,000, when you do something with your money that a financial institution judges to be suspicious, when you have an account with a foreign bank, and when you take more than $10,000 across the border.

Who Is Required to Report Customers Under the Bank Secrecy Act?

Financial institutions are required to file reports under the Bank Secrecy Act. While the term “financial institution” might make you think of banks and credit unions, Congress has applied the term to many businesses. For instance, both pawnshops and the United States Postal Service are defined as financial institutions. The list is regularly expanded, but it currently includes:

• Insured banks;
• Commercial banks;
• Trust companies;
• Private bankers;
• Agencies or branches of a foreign bank in the United States;
• Credit unions;
• Thrift institutions;
• Brokers and dealers;
• Broker and Dealer in securities or commodities;
• Investment bankers;
• Investment companies;
• Currency exchanges;
• Issuers, Redeemers, and Cashiers of checks, money orders, or similar instruments;
• Operators of a credit card system;
• Insurance companies;
• Dealers in precious metals, stones, or jewels;
• Pawnbrokers;
• Loan or finance companies;
• Travel agencies;
• Senders of money;
• Any business that engages in the transmission of value;
• Telegraph companies;
• Car dealerships;
• Anyone involved in real estate closings and settlements;
• The United States Postal Service;
• Any domestic government agency; and
• Casinos with an annual revenue of more than $1,000,000;

While there are certainly a few designations that should raise eyebrows, Congress saved the best for last by effectively giving the Treasury the authority to name anyone as a financial institution: 

• Any business or agency that engages in any activity that the Secretary of the Treasury determines to be an activity that is similar to any activity in which any business described above is authorized to engage; or
• Any other business designated by the Secretary whose cash transactions have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory matters.

Is the Bank Secrecy Act Effective?

While the government has long refused to provide comprehensive data, what little data we have suggests the Bank Secrecy Act is far from effective. More than 27.5 million reports were filed in 2024. That’s roughly 75 thousand reports a day. To comply with these requirements, financial institutions in the United States spent around $59 billion. Yet, despite these staggering numbers, the reports filed only initiated 370 criminal investigations at the Internal Revenue Service. 

How Can the Bank Secrecy Act Be Reformed? 

The Bank Secrecy Act poses many problems that are ripe for reform. Let’s consider just three options.

First, at a minimum, all of the thresholds for reports required under the Bank Secrecy Act should be adjusted for inflation. For example, the $10,000 threshold set in the 1970s should be adjusted to at least $80,000.

Second, going further, all of the reports should be abolished. Adjusting the thresholds is akin to treating the symptom instead of the cause. The Fourth Amendment does not say people have a right to be secure in their papers unless it involves a lot of money. So, Congress should go further and eliminate the reporting requirements entirely. Law enforcement could still go after criminals in this scenario. They would just need to obtain a warrant to demonstrate a legitimate need for someone’s records.

Third, in the most ideal case, Congress should abolish the Bank Secrecy Act as a whole. Even if the reports are taken off the table, issues like know-your-customer requirements, transnational repression, derisking, and debanking all tie back to this regime. Repealing this regime in its entirety would let banks decide what information they need, with whom they do business, and the risks they take on. It would still be illegal to knowingly assist criminal activity, and law enforcement would still be able to obtain a warrant if an investigation justifies it.

Conclusion

Financial privacy has largely disappeared under the Bank Secrecy Act. Worse yet, most Americans have no idea this system exists. Rather than continue the trend of expanding financial surveillance under the Bank Secrecy Act, Congress should seek to protect Americans’ rights and bring this regime to an end. 

At the beginning of Trump’s second term as president, Jonathan Rauch introduced readers of The Atlantic to the word “patrimonialism,” as the “default form of rule in the premodern world … [in which the] state was little more than the extended ‘household’ of the ruler; it did not exist as a separate entity.” Trump, Rauch argued, isn’t a conservative or a liberal. He’s a patrimonialist.

The past 24 hours make a convincing case for Rauch’s term.

On April 28, NBC News reported that the Federal Communications Commission ordered Disney to file its broadcast license renewals ahead of schedule. This seemingly stemmed from a joke made last week by late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel on ABC (which Disney owns) that landed poorly with first lady Melania Trump (“His monologue about my family isn’t comedy; his words are corrosive and deepen the political sickness within America. People like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate.”) Trump joined his wife, posting, “Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC.”

Reasonable people can disagree if Kimmel’s joke was funny. No reasonable person could say the joke incited violence or was terribly unusual for late-night comedy.

But Trump, a patrimonialist, is directing the federal government to punish the comedian and the company that gave offense to his wife.

Similarly, and at almost the exact same time, CNN reported that the DOJ had indicted former FBI Director James Comey for his seashell rendition of “86 47” from May 2025. At the time, I, and presumably many others, had to learn that to “86” something means to get rid of it. Trump, Kash Patel, and Kristi Noem interpreted Comey’s post to be a threat of physical violence toward the president, and they promptly sent federal law enforcement to investigate Comey.

Nevermind that Comey had deleted the post. Nevermind that Comey had apologized. Nevermind that Comey said he hadn’t intended to issue a threat. Nevermind that thousands of people every day talk about “getting rid of” certain politicians. And never mind that some of Trump’s own high-profile supporters previously wanted to “86 46” when Joe Biden was president.

Again, Trump sees the federal government as a vehicle for achieving his own interests. The Eastern District of Virginia previously failed to successfully ruin Comey’s life on a previous criminal charge. Now the government is trying again. And in doing so, it produced an indictment that I’d be hard pressed to read out loud without laughing:

the defendant, JAMES BRIEN COMEY JR, did knowingly and willfully make a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon, the President of the United States, in that he publicly posted a photograph on the internet social media site Instagram which depicted seashells arranged in a pattern making out ‘86 47’, which a reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances would interpret as a serious expression of an intent to do harm to the President of the United States.

Least seriously, but most symbolically, in the same 24-hour period, The Bulwark revealed that the State Department plans to include a picture of Trump in new US passports. Instead of being greeted by a flag, or the US Constitution, the inside flap of the new passport will feature a menacing scowl of Trump—the alpha and omega of American governance and identity.

Trump is by no means the first politician to act for private gain. Private use of governmental power is a concept so ancient, so storied that nobody said, “that wouldn’t possibly happen!” when the king in Mel Brooks’s “History of the World Part I” regularly used his governing authority for … personal indulgences … (“It’s good to be the king!”)

Nixon had an “enemies list” that he harassed with the FBI and IRS. The link between IRS investigations and Obama’s political enemies was less direct, but it certainly seemed suspicious. Ron DeSantis moved to strip Disney of special district privileges after a political spat. Huey Long was so bold that he even celebrated his effectiveness at using government as a tool for punishing personal enemies. And Truman used stationery from the White House to threaten the journalist who criticized Margaret Truman’s (Truman’s daughter) singing performance (“Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens, you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!”).

What’s different today is, first, the scope. This week it’s Trump’s face on the US passport. Previously, it was his face outside the Department of Labor. Or the Department of Justice. Or his name on the Kennedy Center. Or this week, it’s using law enforcement to punish Jimmy Kimmel. Previously, it was using the pardon power to exonerate a cryptocurrency criminal who had enriched the Trump family.

It’s also different today because Congress—the branch of government that could effectively check Trump—has zero interest in exercising any constraining authority.

Accordingly, Trump is allowed to use the federal government as he did with many other private businesses he ran throughout his life. He used those private businesses to make money, give friends jobs, and, yes, to boldly thrust his name into your face.

Now he’s doing so with the federal government.

And wouldn’t you know it, today the office White House X account posted a picture of Trump with King Charles of England and wrote “TWO KINGS.”

America has no king. America needs no king.