• MILITARY PURGESCombat Experience as a Strategic Resource: Lessons of the Red Army Purges

    By Michael Schmitt

    Since January 2025, the Defense Department has removed, replaced, or forced the early retirement of a remarkable concentration of operationally experienced senior officers. What is the impact of these removals on combat effectiveness, which is Secretary Hegseth’s own widely shared standard? I believe the impact is negative. In fact, the impact of those decisions on combat effectiveness constitutes a strategic liability of the Defense Department’s own making – the depletion of a vital resource central to the Secretary’s sought-after lethality.

  • DEFENSE-INDUSTRIAL BASEThe Lamentable State of British Defense Acquisition

    By Bill Sweetman

    Britain needs to move towards the French or Swedish model. Each nation has a defense acquisition agency with real authority, as well as a working deal with industry and the services on one side and the government moneybags on the other.

  • CHINA WATCHSkyscraper Mystery: What Beijing Doesn't Want You to Know

    On Friday, a small single-engine aircraft slammed into the upper floors of the CITIC Tower — Beijing’s tallest skyscraper and one of the tallest buildings in the world. Within hours of impact, China’s vast censorship apparatus went to work. All references to the incident — videos, posts, eyewitness photos — were purged from Weibo, WeChat, and other Chinese social media platforms. The question everyone is asking — was this a 9/11-style attack or a tragic accident? — remains officially unanswered.

  • WAR ON VACCINESNew ACIP Charter Could Allow RFK Jr. to Further Restrict Vaccine Access, Critics Say

    By Liz Szabo

    Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is continuing his battle to remake federal vaccine policy, this time by rewriting the charter of a federal committee that wields enormous influence over childhood immunizations to shift its focus beyond vaccines.

  • COMPROMISED DOJThe Continuing Saga of Chief Judge Boasberg’s Contempt of Court Inquiry Involving Todd Blanche and Emil Bove

    By Marty Lederman

    Courts increasingly are expressing concern about the litigation conduct of the Trump administration’s Department of Justice attorneys. Courts have become reluctant to apply the “presumption of regularity” to Executive Branch actions, and many judges have often pointedly questioned the reliability and candor of DOJ’s written and oral representations. The result is that DOJ is in danger of seriously damaging its historic reputation for integrity, professionalism, and political independence in federal court litigation.

  • NATIONAL DEBTPutting a Number on How Much Debt U.S. Can Carry

    By Brett Rowland , The Center Square

    The United States has about 20 years to change course on its national debt before it reaches the estimated limits of its debt capacity, which is about 210% of gross domestic product. At that point, even a 100% tax on labor income would not generate enough revenue to cover interest costs. Federal debt currently held by the public equals about 101% of GDP.

  • FISAThe Fourth Amendment Forecloses a Foreign Intelligence Exception: A Brief Case Against the FISA Section 702 Program

    By Patrick G. Eddington

    The House and Senate versions of the extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) lack the only thing that matters: a warrant requirement to search the stored data of Americans collected under the program. In that sense, the 702 program has always been at odds with the plain language of the Fourth Amendment, thanks entirely to the secret court that oversees the semisecret surveillance activity.

  • COMPROMISING INTELLIGENCE Amateur Hour: The Unserious Appointment of Bill Pulte

    By Ben Frankel

    Pulte’s nomination is not an aberration but part of an established pattern. Trump’s national-security personnel choices routinely pass over the obvious pool of experienced professionals in favor of loyalists whose core qualification is ideological and personal devotion.

  • COMPROMISING INTELLIGENCE The Acting DNI and the Intelligence Office Trump Wants

    By Brian O'Neill

    Bill Pulte’s appointment as Acting Director of National Intelligence suggests that ODNI may now be serving a more political function than advising the president.

  • IMMIGRATIONDHS Threatens to Halt Customs Processing at Airports in Sanctuary Cities

    By Thérèse Boudreaux, The Center Square

    Major airports across the country could soon freeze customs processing and cancel all international flights if sanctuary cities continue bucking federal immigration enforcement operations.

  • GREEN CARDSDHS Quits Granting Green Cards—Almost Entirely

    By David J. Bier

    DHS announced Friday that it will cease granting green card applications except in extraordinary circumstances. Every legal immigrant must leave the country—that is, self-deport—even if they are qualified for a green card and even if leaving would disqualify them.

  • SCIENCE & POLITICSHow Much Should Politics Influence Science, and Vice Versa? National Science Board’s Ousting Resurrects an Existential Debate

    By Caroline Wagner and James Olds

    President Trump’s 24 April 2026 firing of the National Science Board has brought back the old question that President Harry Truman thought he had answered in 1950: how much politics should intervene in science. Now, that question is shaking the very foundations of U.S. science.

  • WILDFIRESTrump’s New Conditions on DEI, Immigration Could Cut Off States’ Wildfire Funding

    By Alex Brown

    A new effort to force states to affirm the Trump administration’s views on DEI, transgender athletes and immigration when signing contracts with the U.S. Forest Service is threatening millions of dollars in wildfire grant funding and fire reduction projects on federal lands. Liberal states may be barred from Forest Service grants and projects if they don’t sign the new terms.

  • DHS SHUTDOWNThe Homeland Security Shutdown and the Power of the Purse

    By Scott Levy

    The current Department of Homeland Security shutdown shows that the effects of a shutdown in appropriations are not fixed by Congress alone. They depend on executive choices about which functions to sustain, which funds to deploy, and where disruption will be felt. Without clearer constraints on that discretion, Congress’s power of the purse becomes increasingly illusory in the very moments it is meant to matter most.

  • 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.