• Should Nine Oath Keepers Receive Terror-Enhanced Sentences?

    More than 1,000 people have now been charged with federal crimes stemming from the Capitol insurrection. Of them, about 665 have been convicted, and roughly 485 sentenced. Among the convicted are nine members of the extremist group Oath Keepers, six of whom were found guilty of seditious conspiracy. The government wants the judge to impose terror-enhanced sentences on the nine, but Roger Parloff writes that the government’s request seems excessive -  with one exception: Oath Keepers’ leader Elmer Stewart Rhodes. “A terrorism enhancement for him seems appropriate and, indeed, unavoidable.”

  • IRS Granted Tax-Exempt Status to Extremists, Including an Oath Keepers Foundation – Here’s Why That’s Not as Surprising as It Sounds

    Not all nonprofits are principled or embrace missions everyone considers worthy of the tax-exempt status that the government grants some 2 million organizations. A large part of the strength of the nonprofit sector lies in its diversity of causes and viewpoints, and therefore it’s better for the government to err on the side of authorizing too many tax-exempt organizations than to quash free speech. But it should be clear that charities that encourage violence and cheer on extremism are not contributing to society with any of the purposes the IRS allows.

  • Get Ready to Meet the Next President of Taiwan

    In Taiwan, the main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), has announced that Hou You-yi is its candidate for the January 2024 presidential election. The KMT declined to hold a vote of its membership and instead party chairman Chu Li-lun chose the party’s candidate directly. Hou’s rival is Taiwan’s vice president, Lai Ching-te, from the incumbent Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

  • Title 42 Ends as Migrants Lined Up and Border Cities Braced for the Unknown

    Long lines formed again next to the border wall in El Paso — a scene repeated in other parts of the southern border — as migrants anticipated the end of a policy that has allowed immigration agents to quickly expel them.

  • Seeking Protection: How the U.S. Asylum Process Works

    Record numbers of migrants seeking to cross the southern U.S. border are challenging the Biden administration’s attempts to restore asylum protections. Here’s how the asylum process works.

  • We Could Easily Make Risky Virological Research Safer

    Lab Accidents happen, and they aren’t especially rare. A new book — appropriately titled Pandora’s Gamble — offers a shocking accounting of the problem, identifying more than a thousand accidents reported to federal regulators from 2008 to 2012. David Wallace-Wells, referring to the recommendations from the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity on how to minimize the risks from research biolabs, writes: “These suggestions would not eliminate the risk of lab accidents, but they would reduce the risk — and fairly simply.”

  • Confusion Reigns at US-Mexico Border as Title 42 Expires

    Title 42, the emergency health order used during the COVID-19 pandemic at the U.S.-Mexico border to quickly expel migrants back to Mexico or to their home country, ends Thursday night at midnight. Some border analysts say about 150,000 people are waiting to enter the U.S., but DHS says the majority of them will be expelled if they cross into the United States.

  • Benefits of Lead- and Copper-Clean Drinking Water Far Exceed Initial Estimates

    The cost-benefit analysis of the EPA’s Lead and Copper Drinking Water Rule Revision (LCRR) far exceeds the EPA’s public estimates and could help inform improvements to current regulations. (LCRR) costs $335 million to implement while generating $9 billion in health benefits annually, exceeding the EPA’s public statements that the LCRR generates $645 million in annual health benefits.

  • Texas House Republicans Revive Border Policing Unit in Early-Morning Vote

    The proposed unit would let those who are not law officers arrest or detain suspected undocumented immigrants in border-region counties.

  • Biden’s Resurrection of Emergency Powers at the Southern Border

    The Biden administration’s decision to send 1,500 active-duty troops to the border shows the striking similarity between Biden’s and Trump’s approach at least in one respect their willingness to use “law (both emergency and non-emergency powers) to sustain the continued deployment of thousands of military personnel at the southern border,” Chris Mirasola writes. “[E]asy access to any component of the Defense Department appears to be turning into a new normal, made available under shifting but substantially similar emergency declarations,” he adds.

  • Enhancing Advanced Nuclear Reactor Analysis

    Nuclear power is a significant source of steady carbon-neutral electricity, and advanced reactors can add more of it to the U.S. grid, which is vital for the environment and economy. Sandia Lab researchers have developed a standardized screening method to determine the most important radioactive isotopes that could leave an advanced reactor site in the unlikely event of an accident.

  • Lithuania Legalizes Border Pushbacks

    Lithuania enacted the so-called pushbacks in law, which allows border guards to push back border crossers – that is, push them back across the border – if they do not have the right papers. The move has been heavily criticized, but it is not without precedent in the EU.

  • To Restrict, or Not to Restrict, That Is the Quantum Question

    Innovation power—the ability to invent, scale, and adapt emerging technologies—will determine which country prevails in the great power competition of the 21st century. Export controls thus assume a central position in the U.S. foreign policy toolkit, carrying the ability to significantly impact an adversary’s innovation potential. “U.S. policymakers are right to identify quantum information science as a critical technology area ripe for restriction, but introducing export controls now is likely to cause more harm than good.,” Sam Howell writes.

  • Most Existing Methods to Tackle Conspiracy Beliefs Are Ineffective

    New study finds that traditional fact-based counterarguments to conspiracy beliefs don’t work. Approaches to fostering critical thinking and an analytical mindset are more promising.

  • SPFPA Disney Local under DOL Investigation

    Three officers of a Walt Disney Land local police security union allegedly received payoffs to affiliate with a national union, according to sources, and the U.S. Department of Labor is now investigating.