• POLITICAL VIOLENCE Right-Wing Extremist Violence Is More Frequent and More Deadly Than Left-Wing Violence − What the Data Shows

    By Art Jipson and Paul J. Becker

    After the assassination of Charlie Kirk, President Trump and members of his administration claimed that radical leftist groups foment political violence in the U.S. But all research on the subject conclusively shows that most domestic terrorists in the U.S. are politically on the right, and that right-wing attacks account for the vast majority of fatalities from domestic terrorism.

  • PERSISTENT SURVEILLANCEThe Toxic Legacy of 9/11…and How to End It

    By Patrick G. Eddington

    Restoring the Bill of Rights to its proper shape and place in our civic life would be one way to honor those killed on 9/11 and in the wars that followed.

  • POLITICAL VIOLENCE“This Will Not End Here”: A Scholar Explains Why Charlie Kirk’s Killing Could Embolden Political Violence

    By Arie Perliger

    “Political assassinations come in waves. We see that not only in the United States but other countries. I’ve looked at political assassinations in many democracies, and one of the things I see in a fairly consistent manner is that political assassinations create a process of escalation that encourages others on the extreme political spectrum to feel the need to retaliate. And that is my main concern,” says University of Massachusetts Lowell scholar Arie Perliger, who studies political violence and assassinations.

  • POLITICAL VIOLENCEAre Political Assassinations on the Rise? A Criminologist Weighs in on the Shooting Death of Charlie Kirk

    By Tanner Stening

    James Alan Fox, a Northeastern University criminologist, says there has been a rise in politically motivated killings, attempted killings and partisan threats —even though the overall fatalities remains a small number.

  • CHINA WATCHRising Dragon, Slumbering Sam

    By Bill Sweetman

    Last week was one for the books. President Donald Trump rebranded the Department of Defense as the Department of War, while China held a remarkable parade and flyover in Beijing. It was clearly intended to demonstrate that China’s armed forces had at least attained technical parity with the United States and possibly surpassed it. The week closed with a report of the Pentagon’s plan to prioritize focusing on domestic threats while downgrading other missions, such as deterring China and countering adversaries such as Beijing and Moscow.

  • EXTRAJUDICIAL KILLINGThe President Should Not Have a License to Kill

    By David J. Bier

    The administration claims that the “war” on drugs justifies extrajudicial killing. But redefining civilian drug criminals as “combatants” gives away the reality: the government just militarized what was a low-level criminal law enforcement incident outside the United States. Once we consider the victims’ alleged illegal actions, we can see that the government committed the most egregious crime here.

  • DISASTER RESPONSEHow AI Is Changing Our Approach to Disasters

    By Patrick S. Roberts

    Disaster losses are rising, and the stakes are high for reducing risk. Artificial intelligence (AI) promises new ways to spot danger sooner, coordinate relief more quickly, and save lives and property. But AI doesn’t just drop neatly into a command center.

  • TSUNAMI WARNINGSLLNL Scientists Explore Real-Time Tsunami Warning System on World’s Fastest Supercomputer

    Scientists have helped develop an advanced, real-time tsunami forecasting system that could dramatically improve early warning capabilities for coastal communities near earthquake zones.

  • THE MILITARY & DOMESTIC LAW ENFORCEMENTGovernors Split Over Mobilizing National Guard as Trump Seeks More Troops

    By Jonathan Shorman

    Republican governors want National Guard members to help ICE, in addition to deploying to Washington.

  • EXTREMISMRaised for the Reich: White Supremacists Are Recruiting Teens for On-the-Ground Action

    White supremacists have a long history of trying to recruit youths to join their movement as a means of filling their ranks and maintaining relevancy. The ubiquity of social media in young people’s lives means that today there are many opportunities for white supremacists to reach youths with their content and recruit them to their cause.

  • ARGUMENT: ON DOING NOTHINGStanding Around in Washington, D.C.

    What, exactly, is the National Guard really doing in Washington, D.C.? Benjamin Wittes writes in Lawfare that they just stand around. “This deployment isn’t really about doing anything. It’s not going to do anything about D.C.’s crime problem, though I’m sure the president will make up whatever numbers he needs to claim otherwise.” The answer is: “It’s a way of showing who owns whom. And doing it over nothing, for no reason other than that the president can do it, shows who’s boss in a way that doing it for a reason never could.”

  • HURRICANE KATRINA: 20 YEARS ONHurricane Katrina: 3 Painful Lessons for Emergency Management Are Increasingly Important 20 Years Later

    By Eric Kevin Stern

    Hurricane Katrina looms large in the history of American emergency management, both for what went wrong as the disaster unfolded and for the policy changes it triggered. As efforts to reform –and possibly rebalance –the U.S. emergency management system continue, it is essential to remember and heed the costly lessons of Hurricane Katrina.

  • TERRORISMTehran’s Homeland Option: Terror Pathways for Iran to Strike in the United States

    By Matthew Levitt

    The 12-day Iran war may be over, but the threat of Iranian reprisal attacks now looms large, and will for the foreseeable future.In addition to attacking U.S. targets around the world, Iranian operatives or their agents could also attempt to carry out attacks inside the United States, leveraging what U.S. counterterrorism officials have describe as a “homeland option” developed over years.

  • EXTREMISMActive Clubs Aare White Supremacy’s New, Dangerous Frontier

    By Art Jipson

    Small local organizations called Active Clubs have spread widely across the U.S. and internationally, using fitness as a cover for a much more alarming mission. These groups are a new and harder-to-detect form of white supremacist organizing that merges extremist ideology with fitness and combat sports culture.

  • WILDFIRESHuman-Caused Climate Change Is Expanding California’s Destructive Fire Seasons

    By Jason Islas

    Human-caused climate change was responsible for a six-to-46-day earlier start to fire season in California between 1992 and 2020, increasing the period in which large swaths of the state were susceptible to destructive burning. As climate warming trends continue, California’s fire seasons likely will continue to get longer and potentially more destructive.