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Amid Trump Immigration Crackdown, Texas Reins in Border Spending and Shifts Focus to Deportations
With border crossings at record lows, state authorities are being sent to arrest people accused of committing crimes in Texas after entering the country illegally.
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Why U.S. Should Be Worried About Ukrainian Attack on Russian Warplanes
Audacious — and wildly successful — use of inexpensive drones against superior force can be used anywhere, against anyone.
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Bookshelf: How China Won Over America, and Then Lost It
In the four decades before 2010, the United States maintained a policy of engagement with China. But since 2010, the US–China relationship has given way to competition and disengagement. China’s formerly positive image among the American public has taken a nosedive.
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Grok’s ‘White Genocide’ Responses Show How Generative AI Can Be Weaponized
The AI chatbot Grok spent one day in May 2025 spreading debunked conspiracy theories about “white genocide” in South Africa, echoing views publicly voiced by Elon Musk. There has been substantial research on methods for keeping AI from causing harm by avoiding such damaging statements – called AI alignment – but this incident is particularly alarming because it shows how those same techniques can be deliberately abused to produce misleading or ideologically motivated content.
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Trump Has Punished South Africa for Something Its Government Has Not Done
The US president has claimed the South African government is seizing land from white farmers. The reality is much more mundane.
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Federal R&D Funding Boosts Productivity for the Whole Economy − Making Big Cuts to Such Government Spending Unwise
Large cuts to government-funded research and development can endanger American innovation – and the vital productivity gains it supports. If the government were to abandon its long-standing practice of investing in R&D, it would significantly slow the pace of U.S. innovation and economic growth.
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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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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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Escalation Between Israel, Iranian Regime Sparks Vicious Antisemitic, Anti-Israel Rhetoric Online
As reports emerged of preemptive Israeli airstrikes against the Iranian regime late Thursday evening (early Friday local time), antisemites and extremists of varying ideologies quickly reacted with their predictable rhetoric: open hatred of Jews and hoping for the destruction of Israel.
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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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The Mounting Crisis of Militarizing Immigration Enforcement
President Donald Trump has federalized 2,000 California National Guard troops to quell immigration protests pursuant to an obscure provision in federal law–10 USC §12406–which has not been used since 1970, when President Richard Nixon federalized the Guard to deliver mail during a postal strike. William Banks and Mark Nevitt write that “the last time the National Guard was federalized over a governor’s objection was in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson deployed the Guard to Selma, Alabama to protect civil rights demonstrators.”
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Trump’s Lawless, Baseless Immigration Ban
President Trump signed a proclamation that, with few exceptions, bans nineteen nationalities from entering the United States, supposedly based on “security” concerns, and went into effect on June 9. The president claims that there is no way to vet these immigrants. Yet that is precisely what his consular officers and border officials were successfully doing for decades—up until June 9.
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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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The Shadow Architects of Power
Intelligence agencies in authoritarian regimes have distinct foreign policy preferences and actively work to advance them. MIT Ph.D. candidate Suzanne Freeman reveals how these intelligence agencies do it.
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The Hole in Canada’s Intelligence System Is ASIS-shaped
A hardy perennial in Ottawa politics is whether Canada should create a foreign intelligence service equivalent to the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, aka MI6).
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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.”
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.