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If Trump Wants More Deportations, He’ll Need to Target the Construction Industry
As President Donald Trump sends mixed messages about immigration enforcement, ordering new raids on farms and hotels just days after saying he wouldn’t target those industries, he has hardly mentioned the industry that employs the most immigrant laborers: construction. Almost a quarter of all immigrants without a college degree work in construction.
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MIx Helps Innovators Tackle Challenges in National Security
Startups and government defense agencies have historically seemed like polar opposites. Startups thrive on speed and risk, while defense agencies are more cautious. Mission Innovation x creates education and research opportunities while facilitating connections between defense agencies and MIT innovators.
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ACIP Draft Agenda Revives Anti-Vaccine Boilerplate Topics
RFK Jr. replaced scientists on the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) with anti-vaxx activists. On Wednesday, true to form, the new ACIP members issued a draft meeting agenda which contains topics which have become common talking points of vaccine-efficacy deniers.
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NIH Terminates GoF Research; OMB Proposes 54% Cut to CDC Budget in FY 2026
HHS announced it would terminate funding for gain-of-function (GoF), while OMB proposed budget includes 54% cut to CDC budget in FY 2026. The cuts include a $1.4 billion cut to chronic disease prevention and $794 million in cuts to HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, STD, and TB prevention.
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China and Rare-Earth Elements: Is Trump Blinking on Tariffs?
On 2 April 2025, President Trump announced a significant shift in the US trade policy, imposing tariffs on multiple countries, with special emphasis on China. In response, on 4 April 2025, China placed export restrictions on REEs, which are also known as rare metals.
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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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Examining State Legislation on Foreign Ownership of U.S. Farmland
Foreign entities now hold 3.5% of privately owned U.S. agricultural land, prompting growing attention from lawmakers. In 2023 alone, more than 30 U.S. states introduced bills seeking to restrict foreign ownership of farmland. An MSU study shows that these legislative efforts are driven more by national security concerns and political ideology than by economic factors.
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Deportations to Add Almost $1 Trillion in Costs to the “Big Beautiful Bill”
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R. 1). will direct an astounding $168 billion of the budget to immigration and border law enforcement, and there is even more for agencies that indirectly support immigration law enforcement. But the CBO’s cost estimate is deficient in three ways, not to mention the fact that immigrants are reducing the deficit and debt, so removing them will dramatically increase future debt.
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Nevada Lithium Mining Expands with Estimated $87B Project
Amidst widespread speculation and local pushback, northern Nevada has taken another step toward realizing its lithium potential with an estimated $87 billion Elko County mine.
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Trump’s Second Term Is Creating ‘a Limbo Moment’ for U.S. Battery Recyclers
Since January, President Donald Trump has taken a sledgehammer to the Biden administration’s efforts to grow America’s clean energy industry. At the same time, citing economic and national security reasons, Trump has sought to advance efforts to produce more critical minerals like lithium in the United States. That is exactly what the emerging lithium-ion battery recycling industry seeks to do, which is why some industry insiders are optimistic about their future under Trump.
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Chinese Nationals Charged with Conspiracy and Smuggling a Dangerous Biological Pathogen into the U.S. for their Work at a University of Michigan Laboratory
Two Chinese nationals were charged with smuggling into America a fungus called Fusarium graminearum, which scientific literature classifies as a potential agroterrorism weapon. This noxious fungus causes “head blight,” a disease of wheat, barley, maize, and rice, and is responsible for billions of dollars in economic losses worldwide each year.
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Economic Impact Report Warns of Setbacks to Public Health Progress Amid Federal Budget Cuts
A new report details the far-reaching impacts of 2025 federal funding cuts on public health infrastructure, research institutions, workforce development, and the broader US economy. The report provides the first comprehensive look at how widespread grant freezes, budget reductions, and agency restructurings are destabilizing academic public health institutions nationwide.
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Microbes That Extract Rare Earth Elements Also Can Capture Carbon
A small but mighty microbe can safely extract the rare earth and other critical elements for building everything from satellites to solar panels – and it has another superpower: capturing carbon dioxide.
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U.K. Government Not Sufficiently Prepared for the Increasing Risk from Animal Disease
Outbreaks of animal diseases have occurred in each of the past six years and the U.K. Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the Animal & Plant Health Agency (APHA) have worked hard to manage them. It’s likely that DEFRA and APHA would struggle to cope with a more severe outbreak of animal disease. Long term resilience is being undermined by the necessity of focusing on increasingly frequent outbreaks and there is no long-term strategy.
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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.”
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The long view
Factories First: Winning the Drone War Before It Starts
Wars are won by factories before they are won on the battlefield,Martin C. Feldmann writes, noting that the United States lacks the manufacturing depth for the coming drone age. Rectifying this situation “will take far more than procurement tweaks,” Feldmann writes. “It demands a national-level, wartime-scale industrial mobilization.”
Trump Is Fast-Tracking New Coal Mines — Even When They Don’t Make Economic Sense
In Appalachian Tennessee, mines shut down and couldn’t pay their debts. Now a new one is opening under the guise of an “energy emergency.”
Smaller Nuclear Reactors Spark Renewed Interest in a Once-Shunned Energy Source
In the past two years, half the states have taken action to promote nuclear power, from creating nuclear task forces to integrating nuclear into long-term energy plans.