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“Not Just Measles”: Whooping Cough Cases Are Soaring as Vaccine Rates Decline
Declining vaccination rates have caused the Texas measles outbreak, and vaccination rates for other childhood diseases have fallen as well. Deep cuts to public health jobs and funding, and HHS’s ambivalent messaging about vaccines, make it harder for agencies to fight outbreaks and prevent disease with vaccines.
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Some Measles Response Plans Crash to a Halt after Trump Cuts
Cities and states fighting a historic measles outbreak find themselves undermined by the Trump administration as they struggle to provide crucial vaccinations and overcome disinformation.
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Public Health Groups Call for Kennedy to Resign or Be Fired as Biomed Sector Airs Concerns
In the wake of dramatic cuts to US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) staff, cutbacks for state public health efforts, and mixed messages on battling measles and other infectious diseases, two public health groups called for HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to resign or be fired.
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Kinetic Operations Bring Authoritarian Violence to Democratic Streets
Foreign interference in democracies has a multifaceted toolkit. In addition to information manipulation, the tactical tools authoritarian actors use to undermine democracy include cyber operations, economic coercion, malign finance, and civil society subversion.
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Defending American Interests Abroad
Overseas malign information operations by foreign actors seek to undermine the strategic interests of the United States. These operations are intended to manipulate the global information environment for geostrategic purposes by disseminating false or misleading information to shape narratives, shift public discourse, and undermine other nations’ national security.
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Trump Aims to Shut Down State Climate Policies
President Donald Trump has launched an all-out legal attack on states’ authority to set climate change policy. Climate-focused state leaders say his administration has no legal basis to unravel their efforts.
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Nearly 1 Million Facing Deportation Released into U.S. Through CBP One App
More than 900,000 illegal foreign nationals who were unlawfully released into the country by the Biden administration through a now defunct CBP One phone app have been notified that their parole status is terminated and have been instructed to leave the U.S. immediately, or face deportation.
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Trump Thinks Tariffs Can Bring Back the Glory Days of U.S. Manufacturing. Here’s Why He’s Wrong
Trump’s “liberation day” tariffshave one thing in common – they are being applied to goods only.They are the perfect example of Trump’s peculiar focus on trade in goods and, by extension, his nostalgic but outdated obsession with manufacturing.Trump’s thinking is likely related to a combination of nostalgia for a bygone (somewhat imagined) age of manufacturing,and concern over the loss of quality jobs that provide a solid standard of living for blue collar workers – a core part of his political base.But nostalgia is not a sensible basis for forming economic policy.
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Declassified JFK Files Provide “Enhanced Clarity on CIA Actions, Historian Says
Fredrik Logevall, Pulitzer winner writing three-volume Kennedy biography, shares takeaways from declassified docs.
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A Deadly Mosquito-Borne Illness Rises as the U.S. Cuts All Climate-Health Funding
Climate change is driving an explosion in dengue cases. Studying that connection is about to get much harder.
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ISIS in 2025: The Resurging Threat
The threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) continues to grow as the Global Terrorism Index (GTI) 2025 has reported that the terror conglomerate has expanded its operations now to 22 countries.
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The Trade Deficit Isn’t an Emergency – It’s a Sign of America’s Strength
A trade deficit is often viewed as a problem. And yes, the U.S. trade deficit is both large and persistent. But far from a national emergency, this persistent deficit is actually a sign of America’s financial and technological dominance. Trump’s extreme tariffs, rather than reviving U.S. manufacturing, will erode the very pillars of the country’s economic dominance, at a steep cost to American firms and families.
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Why Was Russia Spared from Trump’s Tariffs?
Import tariffs, which President Donald Trump slapped on about 90 countries on 2 April, had some surprise omissions. One of them has turned out be Russia, which made many wonder why. Trump’s decision to spare Russia has not been lost on Russia’s ruling elite. Some top members of that elite could not help gloating over how some of America’s traditional allies were reeling from Trump’s tariffs, while Russia was untouched.
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Trump’s New Immigration Ban: An Arbitrary, Discriminatory Legal Immigration Rewrite
President Trump claims he wants a “merit-based” immigration system, but a system banning people based on their nationality is the opposite of merit-based. It is a national embarrassment.
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How Canadian Immigration Law Turns Judges into Border Guards
What happens to you if you get into an argument, it escalates, and you end up hitting someone with an umbrella or pulling their hair? In Canada, if you’re not a Canadian citizen, the consequences can be dramatic: you may be deported.
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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.”
A Brief History of Federal Funding for Basic Science
Biomedical science in the United States is at a crossroads. For 75 years, the federal government has partnered with academic institutions, fueling discoveries that have transformed medicine and saved lives. Recent moves by the Trump administration — including funding cuts and proposed changes to how research support is allocated — now threaten this legacy.
“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.
The “Invasion” Invention: The Far Right’s Long Legal Battle to Make Immigrants the Enemy
The Trump administration is using the claim that immigrants have “invaded” the country to justify possibly suspending habeas corpus, part of the constitutional right to due process. A faction of the far right has been building this case for years.
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.”
How DHS Laid the Groundwork for More Intelligence Abuse
I&A, the lead intelligence unit of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) —long plagued by politicized targeting, permissive rules, and a toxic culture —has undergone a transformation over the last two years. Spencer Reynolds writes that this effort falls short. “Ultimately, Congress must rein in I&A,” he adds.