When something goes terribly wrong, we expect government to ask questions. Investigations begin. Decisions are examined. Timelines are reconstructed. We ask what happened, whether procedures were followed, whether different decisions could have produced a different outcome, and how to reduce the chances of it happening again.

But that instinct often becomes less certain when the decisions being examined were not made in the moment, but years earlier through public policy.

An officer may have seconds to make a life-or-death decision. Policymakers may spend months or years shaping decisions that affect millions. Yet after tragedy strikes, we often examine operational decisions in exhaustive detail while treating the assumptions behind public policy as beyond the same level of scrutiny.

This is not an argument against investigating government employees or law enforcement. It is an argument for applying the same standard of honest self-examination to every exercise of government power.

President Trump and his administration deserve credit for trying to restore balance, order and fairness to America's immigration system, and for being willing to examine what went wrong, confront the risks that were accepted and make changes intended to prevent those failures from being repeated.

That is the kind of institutional self-examination government should practice regardless of who is in power.

I began thinking about that standard very personally after my daughter, Katie, was killed on Jan. 19, 2025.

Katie was 20 years old and visiting friends at the University of Illinois when the car in which she was riding was........

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