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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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Presidents Can’t Overhaul Election Law by Decree
On March 25, President Donald Trump published an executive order purporting to overhaul the nation’s election system. But under our American system, voting and voter registration are predominantly responsibilities of the states, with Congress constitutionally empowered to add some overlays through legislation of general applicability. A president cannot change those basics by putting out an executive order, nor may he commandeer the states, through funding blackmail or otherwise, into acting as instruments of his pleasure.
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American Couple Held in Mexican Maximum-Security Prison Over Timeshare Dispute
A Michigan couple has been detained in a maximum-security Mexican prison over a timeshare agreement dispute. American Express investigated the matter and sided with the couple, reversing the charges, but the Mexican authorities arrested them on charges of defrauding the hotel chain.
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Noncitizens Cannot Vote in New York City’s Local Elections, State High Court Rules
Though few localities allow noncitizens to vote, Republicans have made it a focus.
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Under Pressure from Trump, ICE Is Pushing Legal Boundaries
Confrontations with judges are grabbing attention, but more quietly a pattern of questionable arrests shows the extent to which the administration is willing to test norms and laws.
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Anti-Jewish and anti-Israel Bias Found in Leading AI Models, New ADL Report Finds
A comprehensive evaluation found that all four large language models (LLMs) — GPT (OpenAI), Claude (Anthropic), Gemini (Google), and Llama (Meta) — exhibited measurable anti-Jewish and anti-Israel bias, though the degree and nature of bias varied across models.
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ICE Detains Spouse of an American Citizen on Couple’s Return from Honeymoon
A 26-year-old Peruvian citizen who returned with her American husband from their honeymoon, was detained by ICE, and has been in a Louisiana correctional center since 15 February. Following her marriage in May 2024, they applied for her permanent residency. At the time of her detention, their application was under review by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
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The Paradox of Democracy’s Success: Behavioral Science Helps Explain Why We Miss Autocratic Red Flags
The era of global liberal democracy led some scholars celebrated the “the end of history,” as risks to democracy appeared ever more remote. But in the same way that a nuclear power plant may appear to be operating safely until the last safety valve is broken, democracies can appear stable right up until they flip into autocracy. The growing electoral success of extreme rightwing parties in many Western countries, from France to Finland and from the Netherlands to Germany, has turned the end of history into the possible end of democracy.
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Trump Is Using the Alien Enemies Act to Deport Immigrants – but the 18th-century Law Has Been Invoked Only During Times of War
The Alien Enemies Act empowers presidents to apprehend and remove foreign nationals from countries that are at war with the United States. U.S. presidents have issued executive proclamations and invoked this law three times: during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II. All three instances followed Congress declaring war.
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Under What Circumstances Can a U.S. Green Card Be Revoked?
The recent arrest of Palestinian activist and U.S. legal permanent resident Mahmoud Khalil, who played a prominent role in last year’s Columbia University protests over the war in Gaza, has prompted questions about the limits of a green card.
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The Parallels Between Kash Patel and William J. Burns, a Scandal-Mongering 1920s FBI Director — an FBI Historian Explains
As an FBI historian, I have researched political influence on the FBI. It’s still early days, but Kash Patel’s confirmation has one clear, if century-old, comparison in FBI history. It is not J. Edgar Hoover, but Hoover’s immediate predecessor, William J. Burns, who served as director from 1921 through 1924.With bogus charges and spurious probe, Burnsused the FBI to go after lawmakers who wanted to investigate the Teapot Dome Scandal. Trump’s and Patel’s own words portend the FBI returning to the open political targeting of the Teapot Dome era. History whispers a warning.
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Industry-Backed Legislation Would Bar the Use of Science Behind Hundreds of Environmental Protections
Two bills in Congress would prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from using hundreds of chemical assessments completed by its IRIS program in environmental regulations or enforcement.
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Trump’s Claim That U.S. Debt Calculation May Be Fraudulent Could Put the Economy in Danger
The US president, Donald Trump, is challenging official figures around the country’s federal debt, suggesting possible fraud in its calculation. With Trump in the White House, distinguishing between politically charged rhetoric and fiscal sustainability of the US federal debt will be essential for maintaining trust in the US economy and the health of the global financial system.
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As Facebook Abandons Fact-Checking, It’s Also Offering Bonuses for Viral Content
Meta decided to stop working with U.S. fact-checkers at the same time as it’s revamping a program to pay bonuses to creators with high engagement numbers, potentially pouring accelerant on the kind of false posts the company once policed.
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U.S. States Push Back Against Possible Election Security Changes
Moves by U.S. President Donald Trump to potentially gut programs aimed at supporting election security are not sitting well with key state election officials, who are now asking the Trump administration to reconsider.
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The long view
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.”
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.”