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With New “Alien Land Laws” Asian Immigrants Are Once Again Targeted by Real Estate Bans  (Edgar Chen, Just Security)
In Congress and in statehouses throughout the United States, lawmakers continue to introduce legislation designed to bar citizens of foreign adversaries from being able to purchase real property. Ostensibly aimed at preventing a short list of enemy governments from controlling the American food supply or spying on military facilities, these laws’ most cited rationale is fear of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influence on American soil. Sponsors argue that such legislation would safeguard agricultural land, defense, and critical infrastructure from malign foreign influence. However, much of the legislation introduced so far extends well beyond this ambit, restricting even those with no discernable ties to the CCP or other organs of Chinese state power.
These bills – which are opposed by groups including the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, where I previously served as Policy Director and continue to advise – raise significant concerns regarding the balancing of national security equities against civil liberties, federal preemption grounds, and present a host of unintended consequences with the potential to harm the economies of affected states. Opponents of these bills have described such legislation as a revival of unconstitutional anti-Asian land laws — a class of law once called “alien land laws” — and an ongoing threat to the civil rights of all Asian Americans, regardless of ethnic background.

False ‘Facts’ about Science and Social Security Share Origins  (Naomi Oreskes, Scientific American)
Whether they work on climate change, evolution, vaccine safety, or any of a host of other issues, scientists frequently face resistance from people offering “alternative facts.” How did we come to live in a world where so many people feel vaguely supported opinions are just as valid as evidence-based scientific research—where people can’t tell the difference between opinion and fact?
Part of the answer involves the long-standing efforts of the tobacco industry to deny evidence about tobacco’s harms and of the fossil-fuel industry to confound understanding about climate change. These campaigns have undermined confidence in the idea that large amounts of scientific evidence produce a more accurate view of the world than do a few dissenting thoughts.

Why Small Modular Reactors Herald a Nuclear Energy Renaissance  (Todd Royal, National Interest)
If successful, a recently announced project will prove that small nuclear reactors can be used in a wide variety of settings, with significant benefits to the environment.

Software Engineer Who Photographed US Landmarks For Possible Attacks Gets 12 Years In Prison  (Larry Neumeister, AP)
A New Jersey software developer who prosecutors say once photographed landmarks in New York, Boston and Washington, D.C., for possible terrorist attacks was sentenced Tuesday to 12 years in prison by a federal judge who said it seemed he no longer was a danger. In fact, Judge Paul G. Gardephe noted, Alexei Saab, 46, has become a model prisoner since his 2019 arrest, helping others incarcerated at New York City’s federal jails to get high school equivalency certificates, learn English and find relief from psychological problems. Gardephe called Saab’s 2005 exit from his relationship with the Lebanon-based Hezbollah Islamic Jihad Organization and the ‘peaceful and productive’ life he lived in the New York City area afterward among ‘inconvenient facts’ that made it impossible to grant the government’s request that Saab be incarcerated for 20 years. A jury at a trial last year heard prosecutors portray Saab as a highly trained terrorist who scoped out landmarks in the U.S., France, Turkey and the Czech Republic. Prosecutors said Saab was a sleeper cell waiting to activate if Iran was attacked by the United States.

More Than Half of Users Have Seen Extremist Content in Online Games  (Tess Owen, Vice)
The video game Animal Crossing: New Horizons is supposed to be a bucolic, adorable utopia where the player’s chief concerns typically include catching butterflies, designing clothes to sell in an online marketplace, and landscaping their islands to impress visitors. On one recent day, an Animal Crossing player took to Twitter to complain about an upsetting incident. They’d unwittingly welcomed two visitors, whose avatars appeared dressed in KKK robes and a T-shirt emblazoned with a swastika, onto their island. Animal Crossing is widely considered a ‘sandbox game’, meaning players are given a lot of freedom to build their own worlds—and in some cases, create their extremist fantasies, which they seek to lure others into. That’s just one way extremists use gaming spaces to spread their propaganda, and reach, radicalize, and recruit young followers, according to a new report by New York University. The report makes clear that they are not suggesting in any way that playing video games is itself a gateway to violence or radicalization.