Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez, R-Miami, speaks during the first day of the legislative session at the Florida State Capitol on Tuesday, March 4, 2025, in Tallahassee, Fla. Photo by Matias J.

This is the fifth of a six-part series on the constitutionality of the state’s budget guardrails. Here are Parts One, Two, Three, Four and Six. The “bond lock” is the most important budget guardrail.

Despite outspending Republicans, Democrats didn't achieve some ambitious goals in state legislative races. They lost power in Michigan and Minnesota, making some gains in Wisconsin and North Carolina.

As the 250th anniversary of our independence approaches, let us linger over the most important sentence that James Madison ever wrote, and the most relevant to the current moment. “The accumulation of ...