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Guns Kill More U.S. Children Than Other Causes, but State Policies Can Help, Study Finds
More American children and teens die from firearms than any other cause. Black children, especially, suffer when laws allow more guns to circulate, researchers found. There are more deaths — and wider racial disparities — in states with more permissive gun policies, according to a new study.
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Improving Resilience to Tsunamis and Earthquakes via Predictions of Waste Disposal Times
Researchers develop framework to predict cleanup times after seismic events by analyzing the interdependence of disposal facilities and road networks.
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Violent Extremists Like the Minnesota Shooter Are Not Lone Wolves
The threat of domestic violence and terrorism is high in the United States – especially the danger posed by white power extremists, many of whom believe white people are being “replaced” by people of color. Contrary to popular myth, the vast majority of far-right extremists are not abnormal deviants with anti-social personalities, but are, in fact, otherwise ordinary men and women.
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Trump’s Military Response to Protests: A Conversation on Law and Precedent
“The federalized response to riots in Los Angeles will inspire demonstrations in other cities, not just against ICE and its tactics, but against the use of military forces in civilian law enforcement. If those demonstrations turn violent, they could lure the president to use military forces elsewhere within the United States—creating a dangerous feedback loop with a very uncertain ending,” says Peter Mansour.
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Israel and Iran: An Early Read
It’s too soon to tell how exactly the current waves of Israeli strikes could transform the region, but one thing is clear: Israel’s actions have fundamentally reshaped the security landscape of the Middle East in the span of less than two years. These two years saw the collapse of Iran’s regional strategy as its two main proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, have been decimated, while Syria, the linchpin of Iran’s regional aspirations, has changed sides when the country’s Sunni majority removed the pro-Iran Assad regime in December last year.
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With Troops in Los Angeles, Echoes of the Kent State Massacre
The 1970 shooting of student demonstrators underscores the risks of President Donald Trump’s decision to deploy the military against protesters, a history professor explains.
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Trump’s Use of the National Guard Against LA Protesters Defies All Precedents
Unlike his predecessors, Trump has not mobilized the national guard to protect civil rights against a hostile police force. Instead, he appears to be using this as leverage to undermine a political opponent he views as blocking his agenda. Circumventing gubernatorial powers over the national guard in this way has no precedent and heralds the next stage in an extended conflict between the president and the state of California.
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Twenty-One Things That Are True in Los Angeles
To understand the dangers inherent in deploying the California National Guard – over the strenuous objections of the California governor – and active-duty Marines to deal with anti-ICE protesters, we should remind ourselves of a few elementary truths, writes Benjamin Wittes. Among these truths: “Not all lawful exercises of authority are wise, prudent, or smart”; “Not all crimes require a federal response”; “Avoiding tragic and unnecessary confrontations is generally desirable”; and “It is thus unwise, imprudent, and stupid to take actions for performative reasons that one might reasonably anticipate would increase the risks of such confrontations.”
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From Kent State to Los Angeles, Using Armed Forces to Police Civilians Is a High-Risk Strategy
I am a historian, and my recent book — Kent State: An American Tragedy — examines a historic clash on 4 May 1970, between anti-war protesters and National Guard troops at Kent State University in Ohio. Troops opened fire on the demonstrators, killing four students and wounding nine others. Dispatching California National Guard troops against civilian protesters in Los Angeles chillingly echoes decisions and actions that led to the tragic Kent State shooting. Some active-duty units, as well as National Guard troops, are better prepared today than in 1970 to respond to riots and violent protests – but the vast majority of their training and their primary mission remains to fight, to kill, and to win wars.
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AI-enabled Control System Helps Autonomous Drones Stay on Target in Uncertain Environments
An autonomous drone carrying water to help extinguish a wildfire in the Sierra Nevada might encounter swirling Santa Ana winds that threaten to push it off course. Rapidly adapting to these unknown disturbances inflight presents an enormous challenge for the drone’s flight control system.
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Local Police Join ICE Deportation Force in Record Numbers Despite Warnings Program Lacks Oversight
ICE officials tout an unprecedented expansion of its 287(g) Program, driven by agreements that allow local officers to function as deportation agents during routine policing. But advocates warn such agreements come at a high cost to communities.
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Ukraine’s Drone Attack Offers Fearful Lessons for a Chinese Invasion Force
Ukraine’s massive drone strike against Russian air bases on 1 June should reverberate across all theaters of conflict. But there is one Western Pacific scenario where it could be very relevant indeed: a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
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Ukraine’s Air Force Has Survived. Taiwan’s Almost Certainly Couldn’t
The Ukrainian air force went to war against invading Russian forces in February 2022 with just 125 combat aircraft concentrated at around a dozen large bases. Given Russia’s overwhelming deep-strike advantage, few observers expected the Ukrainian brigades to survive the first hours of the war. But they did survive. And 38 months later, they’re still surviving—and flying daily air-defense and strike sorties. It has been an incredible feat. Can the equally outgunned Taiwanese air force duplicate it? Almost certainly not.
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Analysis of the IAEA’s Comprehensive Iran NPT Safeguards Report May 2025
The Trump administration’s 2018 decision to unilaterally withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran was a gift to Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions, freeing Iran from that deal’s tight restrictions on developing nuclear weapons – a freedom which Iran has used to accelerate, unhindered, its rush toward the bomb. But Iran is still a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which bars member states from developing nuclear weapons. The recent IAEA report notes that Iran is in egregious violation of its NPT obligations, and that it has been engaging in an elaborate, ongoing cover-up of its nuclear weapons-related activities.
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Golden Dome Dangers: An Arms Control Expert Explains How Trump’s Missile Defense Threatens to Make the U.S. Less Safe
President Donald Trump’s idea of a “Golden Dome” missile defense system carries a range of potential strategic dangers for the United States. Moreover, Trump’s goals for Golden Dome — protecting the U.S. from ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missiles, and missiles launched from space — are likely beyond reach.
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More headlines
The long view
Are We Ready for a ‘DeepSeek for Bioweapons’?
Anthropic’s Claude 4 is a warning sign: AI that can help build bioweapons is coming, and could be widely available soon. Steven Adler writes that we need to be prepared for the consequences: “like a freely downloadable ‘DeepSeek for bioweapons,’ available across the internet, loadable to the computer of any amateur scientist who wishes to cause mass harm. With Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4 having finally triggered this level of safety risk, the clock is now ticking.”
“The Federal Government Is Gone”: Under Trump, the Fight Against Extremist Violence Is Left Up to the States
As President Donald Trump guts the main federal office dedicated to preventing terrorism, states say they’re left to take the lead in spotlighting threats. Some state efforts are robust, others are fledgling, and yet other states are still formalizing strategies for addressing extremism. With the federal government largely retreating from focusing on extremist dangers, prevention advocates say the threat of violent extremism is likely to increase.
Luigi Mangione and the Making of a ‘Terrorist’
Discretion is crucial to the American tradition of criminal law, Jacob Ware and Ania Zolyniak write, noting that “lawmakers enact broader statutes to empower prosecutors to pursue justice while entrusting that they will stay within the confines of their authority and screen out the inevitable “absurd” cases that may arise.” Discretion is also vital to maintaining the legitimacy of the legal system. In the prosecution’s case against Luigi Mangione, they charge, “That discretion was abused.”
Autonomous Weapon Systems: No Human-in-the-Loop Required, and Other Myths Dispelled
“The United States has a strong policy on autonomy in weapon systems that simultaneously enables their development and deployment and ensures they could be used in an effective manner, meaning the systems work as intended, with the same minimal risk of accidents or errors that all weapon systems have,” Michael Horowitz writes.
Ukraine Drone Strikes on Russian Airbase Reveal Any Country Is Vulnerable to the Same Kind of Attack
Air defense systems are built on the assumption that threats come from above and from beyond national borders. But Ukraine’s coordinated drone strike on 1 June on five airbases deep inside Russian territory exposed what happens when states are attacked from below and from within. In low-level airspace, visibility drops, responsibility fragments, and detection tools lose their edge. Drones arrive unannounced, response times lag, coordination breaks.
Shots to the Dome—Why We Can’t Model US Missile Defense on Israel’s “Iron Dome”
Starting an arms race where the costs are stacked against you at a time when debt-to-GDP is approaching an all-time high seems reckless. All in all, the idea behind Golden Dome is still quite undercooked.