• Family De-Planning: The Coercive Campaign to Drive Down Indigenous Birth-Rates in Xinjiang

    Beginning in April 2017, Chinese Communist Party authorities in Xinjiang launched a series of “strike-hard” campaigns against “illegal births” with the explicit aim to “reduce and stabilize a moderate birth level” and decrease the birth-rate in southern Xinjiang by at least 4.00 per thousand from 2016 levels. This followed years of preferential exceptions from family-planning rules for indigenous nationalities. The crackdown has led to an unprecedented and precipitous drop in official birth-rates in Xinjiang since 2017. The birth-rate across the region fell by nearly half (48.74 percent) in the two years between 2017 and 2019.

  • The TSA Should Regulate Pipeline Cybersecurity

    Fuel deliveries to the east coast of the United States have been brought to a standstill by cybercriminals that have gained access to Colonial Pipelines’ networks and forced the company to shut down its distribution system. After two decades of trying to make a voluntary partnership with industry work, this incident demonstrates that neither thoughts, prayers, nor information sharing is sufficient. It is time for the federal government to exercise its existing authority to regulate the cybersecurity of pipelines.

  • Unreliable Witness Testimony Biggest Cause of Miscarriages of Justice

    Unreliable witness testimony has been the biggest cause of miscarriages of justice over the past half century, a major new study suggests. The research also suggests that regulations governing the powers of police have been effective in reducing wrongful convictions caused by unreliable confessions.

  • QAnon Hasn’t Gone Away – It’s Alive and Kicking in States Across the Country

    By this point, almost everyone has heard of QAnon, the conspiracy spawned by an anonymous online poster of enigmatic prophecies. Perhaps the greatest success of the conspiracy is its ability to create a shared alternate reality, a reality that can dismiss everything from a decisive election to a deadly pandemic. The QAnon universe lives on – now largely through involvement in local, not national, politics. Moving on from contesting the election, the movement’s new focus is vaccines and pandemic denialism.

  • Tighter Gun Laws Help Reduce Mass Shooting Violence: Research

    President Joe Biden recently called for tougher gun laws to reduce mass shooting violence. Columbia University researchers have conducted research related to measures proposed by Biden, including on the impact of state gun laws and the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994; the use of high-capacity magazines in high fatality shootings; and the effects of exposure to gun violence on children.

  • How Much Regulation of the Tech Industry Is Too Much?

    As prominent figures, including former President Donald Trump, are banned from social media platforms for posting disinformation or inflammatory remarks, technology regulation has become a hot topic of debate. “We are living in times where technology has fundamentally changed almost all aspects of our lives,” says UCLA’s Terry Kramer. “It is within this context that we must carefully balance and enable the advantages of technology, which can improve our lives, improve our connectedness, lower the cost of critical goods and services, and improve health care against forces that can create negative externalities. Developing a critical understanding of the trade-offs is essential.”

  • The Importance of “Biological Destruction” in Responsible Coverage of Xinjiang

    Recent news coverage of the ongoing situation in Xinjiang has focused on whether or not those events meet the international legal definition of genocide.The majority of nonacademic pieces seem to presume, however, that if genocide is occurring, it must be a particular kind of genocide—the kind with torture and mass killings, like we saw in the Holocaust, Yugoslavia or Rwanda.But international law identifies five actus rei, each independently sufficient to constitute genocide. Among those guilty acts are birth prevention and the forcible transfer of children, both of which carried out by the Chinese government in Xinjiang.

  • Epidemic of Firearm Injury Spurs New Wave of Research

    Fifty-five years ago, America’s death toll from automobile crashes was sky-high. Nearly 50,000 people died every year from motor vehicle crashes, at a time when the nation’s population was much smaller than today. But with help from data generated by legions of researchers, the country’s policymakers and industry made changes that brought the number killed and injured down dramatically. Experts welcome new federal funding for more injury prevention research to reduce the toll of a leading cause of death while respecting Second Amendment rights.

  • Biden Announces Actions on Gun Violence

    U.S. President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland spoke Thursday about a set of new measures meant to address gun violence in the United States. Ahead of their remarks, the White House released details of some of the initiatives, calling gun violence a “public health epidemic.”

  • U.S. Immigration Courts Brace for Flood of Asylum Claims

    U.S. immigration courts, already swamped with a backlog of 1.3 million cases, are ill-prepared to handle a crush of new asylum claims filed by a rising number of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, especially children traveling alone, current and former immigration judges told VOA.

  • The Last Time the Justice Department Prosecuted a Seditious Conspiracy Case

    Lenawee County, Michigan, had an apocalyptic Christian nationalist militia problem about a decade ago. The group called itself the Hutaree, a name that members said meant “Christian Warriors,” though the FBI said it didn’t mean anything at all. The FBI had an informer inside the group, and nine of its members were charged with conspiracy, sedition, and various weapon charges. Judge Victoria Roberts acquitted the Hutaree members of the serious charges of conspiracy and sedition. Why should anyone care about the Hutaree now? Jacob Schulz writes that we should, “because one of those serious charges was seditious conspiracy under 18 U.S.C.§ 2384. It was the last time the Justice Department would use the statute until the present day.” It’s looking more and more like prosecutors might dust off the statute in response to the insurrection of Jan. 6. “The trial judge’s decision in the Hutaree case isn’t binding precedent. But the Hutaree are worth a second look.”

  • Less Gun Violence among Children in States with More Gun Laws

    Gun violence among children is lower in states with more gun laws, according to a new study. The study examined youth gun and weapon carrying data from 2005 and 2017 across several states.

  • China’s Abuse of the Uighurs: Does the Genocide Label Fit?

    On his last full day in office, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo determined that the Chinese government is committing genocide against the Uighurs and other minority groups in the Xinjiang region. The Biden administration is reviewing the decision. But what does the genocide label mean, and what would using it entail for U.S. foreign policy?

  • Why the Pro-Trump QAnon Movement Is Finding Followers in Japan

    After emerging among conspiracy theorists in the United States, the far-right QAnon movement is expanding to include a small but dedicated band of adherents in Japan. Julian Ryall reports from Tokyo.

  • Is Impeaching President Trump “Pointless Revenge”? Not If It Sends a Message to Future Presidents

    If Congress chooses to impeach President Trump, it is because there is a need to mark out, through a definitive statement, what no president ought to do. It will also set the moral limits of the presidency – and, thereby, send a message to future presidents who might be tempted to follow in President Trump’s footsteps.