• IMMIGRATIONPushback Leads Homeland Security to Compromise on Some Warehouse Detention Centers for Immigrants

    By Tim Henderson

    Some of the Trump administration’s controversial new warehouse immigration detention centers are getting scaled back and postponed as states and cities fight back — one city even cut off the water to one of the centers — and new Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin reviews actions taken by his ousted predecessor, Kristi Noem.

  • AIThe Federal Government Is Rushing Toward AI. Our Reporting Offers Three Cautionary Tales.

    By Renee Dudley

    I’ve studied how the federal government has handled — and mishandled — the AI transition over the past two decades, and my reporting offers some cautionary tales and valuable lessons as policymakers encourage the use of AI and federal agencies adopt the technology.

  • CRIMETrump’s Justice Department Dropped 23,000 Criminal Investigations in Shift to Immigration

    By Ken B. Morales and David Armstrong

    In the first days after Pam Bondi was appointed attorney general last year, the Department of Justice began shutting down pending criminal cases at a record pace. In total, the DOJ quietly closed more than 23,000 criminal cases in the first six months of President Donald Trump’s administration, abandoning hundreds of investigations into terrorism, white-collar crime, drugs and other offenses as it shifted resources to pursue immigration cases.

  • ENERGY SECURITYTrump’s $1B Payoff to Stop Offshore Wind Is Even Stranger Than It Sounds

    By Jake Bittle and Rebecca Egan McCarthy

    Last week, President Trump’s Department of the Interior announced that it will refund almost $1 billion to a French multinational oil company. The government is paying TotalEnergies to halt a wind farm it isn’t building, in exchange for fossil fuel investments it’s already making.

  • DHSDHS Shutdown to Continue After House Rejects Senate Deal

    By Thérèse Boudreaux, The Center Square

    Republicans in the U.S. House quashed any hopes that the 42-day shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security would end Friday. The Senate’s last-minute deal early Friday to fund all DHS agencies except ICE and parts of Border Patrol hit a wall with House Republicans, who viewed it as a capitulation to Democrats.

  • DHSSenate Funds DHS without ICE or Border Patrol, Heads to House

    By Andrew Rice, The Center Square

    The U.S. Senate agreed to fund the Department of Homeland Security early Friday, without including funds for ICE and Border Patrol.

  • PUBLIC HEALTHHow Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Vaccine Agenda Risks a Resurgence of Deadly Childhood Plagues

    By Patricia Callahan

    The U.S. took a half century to build a vaccination system that shielded children from deadly diseases. Its success depended on two fundamental pillars: parents trusting in vaccines and children having access to them. Both are now in peril, thanks to the man steering America’s health policy. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a founder of an antivaccine group who likened the immunization of children to a holocaust, is transforming a government that long championed the lifesaving benefits of shots into one that spreads doubts about their safety here and abroad.

  • ENERGYTrump Is Forcing Coal Plants to Stay Open. It Could Cost Customers Billions.

    By Alex Brown

    In an unprecedented use of federal authority, President Donald Trump’s administration has invoked emergency powers to force a series of retiring coal plants to stay open. Utilities, states and grid operators have said the aging plants are expensive, in bad repair and no longer needed to meet regional energy needs. But Trump is determined to save the dwindling coal industry — an expensive move resulting in billions of dollars in added costs for customers in dozens of states.

  • IMMIGRATIONStudy: Texas’ Controversial Migrant Busing Program Helped Trump in 2024 Election

    By Christian Hetrick

    Texas busing programs that transported newly-arrived immigrants to Democratic-led cities boosted President Donald Trump’s vote share in affected counties during the 2024 election.

  • DEMOCRACY WATCHBlue States Push to Ban ICE at the Polls Amid Federal Voter Intimidation Fears

    By Jonathan Shorman

    Several Democratic states are moving to bar federal immigration agents from being near polling places and other election sites, amid persistent worries that President Donald Trump will use federal law enforcement or the military to disrupt the midterm elections. DHS says it has no plans to target voting locations.

  • WAR RHETORICI’ve Studied MAGA Rhetoric for a Decade, and This Is What I See in Hegseth’s Boasts, Action‑Movie One‑Liners and Gloating Over Dominance

    By Casey Ryan Kelly

    When Trump’s first Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, spoke, his professional tone and demeanor were a stark contrast to Secretary Pete Hegseth’s remarks on U.S.-Israeli combat operations in Iran. Hegseth not only deviated from the measured tone expected from high-ranking military officials. He flippantly employed villainous colloquialism, delivered with a combative and haughty tone, hypermasculine preoccupation with domination, giddiness about violence, and casual attitude toward death.

  • THE DOLLARBookshelf: The Waning Dominance of U.S. Dollar

    By John West

    Perhaps the greatest threat to the dominance of the dollar may come from the US itself. US government debt is basically ‘out of control’, representing 120 percent of GDP, and neither political party has a serious plan to bring it back under control.

  • PLUM ISLANDPlum Island, 1954-2026: A Requiem

    Plum Island is an 840-acre island in the Long Island Sound, just off Long Island’s North Fork (New York), a short distance from Connecticut. It has been federally owned since the 19th century and was long home to the Plum Island Animal Disease Center (PIADC), a research laboratory focused on foreign animal diseases such as foot-and-mouth disease.

  • PLUM ISLANDPlum Island: A History

    The history of Plum Island is rich and varied, with changing times, historical context, and national challenges changing the use of the island and its purpose.

  • DISASTER RESPONSEKristi Noem All but Killed FEMA. Will Her Departure Save It?

    By Jake Bittle

    Before she was fired by President Trump, Noem raised eyebrows for an unprecedented degree of control over staffing and spending at FEMA. A growing number of critics and experts believe that Noem’s interference with FEMA may well have been illegal.