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TARGETING SCIENCEAluminum in Vaccines: Separating RFK Jr.’s Claims from Scientific Evidence
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s belief that aluminum in vaccines can cause health issues is contradicted by scientific evidence, a fact which RFK Jr. does not allow to interfere with his campaign against vaccination. What is incontrovertible is that increasing vaccine hesitancy and reduced vaccination rates lead to more vulnerable people and more infectious diseases, illnesses, and deaths. It is important to question medical interventions, but this questioning should be informed, rational, and open.
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TARGETING SCIENCECDC Advisers Drop Decades-Old Universal Hepatitis B Birth Dose Recommendation, Suggest Blood Testing After One Dose
Scientists say that hepatitis B vaccine is safe and effective, and that dropping the decades-old practice of a universal dose at birth will have only one result: hepatitis B rates and resulting liver cancer, cirrhosis, and premature death will rise among the unvaccinated or undervaccinated—whether in infancy or later in life, when unprotected adults will be vulnerable to infection.
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EXTRAJUDICIAL KILLINGThe President Should Not Have a License to Kill
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.
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EXTREMISMFar-Right Extremists Have Been Organizing Online Since Before the Internet – and AI Is Their Next Frontier
How can society police the global spread of online far-right extremism while still protecting free speech? Far-right extremists have long pioneered innovative ways to exploit technological progress and free speech. Efforts to counter this radicalization are challenged to stay one step ahead of the far right’s technological advances.
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IMMIGRATIONMore Industries Want Trump’s Help Hiring Immigrant Labor After Farms Get a Break
Restaurants, construction and landscaping businesses have lost the most workers, a Stateline analysis found. Now, industries with large immigrant workforces are asking for relief as they combat labor shortages and raids.
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DEMOCRACY WATCHLabeling Dissent as Terrorism: New U.S. Domestic Terrorism Priorities Raise Constitutional Alarms
There is no single official definition of terrorism in U.S. law, but all the different definitions focus on identifying violent or dangerous acts done with the intent to intimidate or coerce civilians or influence government policy. But more than redefining terrorism,National Security Presidential Memorandum/NSPM-7, issued on 2 September 2025 (NSPM-7) reorients the machinery of national security toward the policing of belief. The directive’s emphasis on ideological orientations –“anti-Christianity, “anti-capitalism,” and “anti-American” views –as indicators of domestic terrorism potentially jeopardizes First Amendment rights.
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THE AMERICASPardoning Hernández—Where’s the Logic?
The presidential pardon power can serve real and legitimate purposes, and Trump himself has used it in some deserving cases. But history will long remember his use of it to free political allies and persons who have benefited his cronies and family.
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DEPORTATIONS5% of People Detained by ICE Have Violent Convictions, 73% No Convictions
President Trump’s deportation agenda does not match the campaign promises that he made – he said he would focus on deporting “the worst of the worse” – nor the rhetoric from his officials. The opposite is the case: for example, 73 percent of people booked into ICE custody this fiscal year had no criminal conviction. Of the small number of those convicted of a crime, the majority had vice, immigration, or traffic convictions. The problem: the diversion of effort and resources to find and deport noncriminal undocumented migrants has reduced the ability of DHS and the FBI to pursue investigations into terrorist financing; child exploitation and human trafficking; and drug and gun crimes.
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COMMON-SENSE NOTES // By Idris B. OdunewuFool Me Once… You Can’t Get Fooled Again: America Has Seen This Move Before
If drug trafficking truly threatens American communities, the solution lies in intelligence cooperation, economic pressure, cross border law enforcement, and deep regional diplomacy, not in hammer-fist militarism.
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DHSLawmakers Call for Probe of How Firm Tied to Kristi Noem Got Piece of $220 Million DHS Ad Contracts
The demands for an investigation come after a ProPublica story revealed that the Noem-connected Strategy Group was secretly a subcontractor on the ad campaign.
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FLOODSA West Texas County Wants to Better Prepare for Floods. Paying for It Will Be Tricky.
Ector County has boomed since the 1970s, when the drainage system was last updated. Officials hope state and federal funds will help pay for the update despite some grant programs ending under the Trump administration.
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PUBLIC HEALTHSouth Carolina’s Measles Outbreak Shows Chilling Effect of Vaccine Misinformation
For the first time in more than two decades, the United States is poised to lose its measles elimination status, a designation indicating that outbreaks are rare and rapidly contained. The confluence of larger national trends —including historically low vaccination rates, skepticism fueled by the pandemic, misinformation, and “health freedom” ideologies promoted by conservative politicians —have put communities at risk for the reemergence of a preventable, potentially deadly virus.
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PUBLIC HEALTHCDC’s New Deputy Director Is Vocal Critic of Vaccines, Advocated for Ivermectin
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. named a critic o COVID vaccines — and a promoter of a worthless alternative to such vaccines – as deputy director of CDC.
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DEMOCRCY WATCHWhen Presidents Target Congress
President Trump reacted to the calls of six members of Congress for military personnel to refuse to carry out unlawful orders by claiming those six federal legislators had engaged in “seditious behavior, punishable by death.” But Congress has explicit constitutional authority over the military. For lawmakers to remind military personnel of their obligations under the Uniform Code of Military Justice is prospective oversight communication about congressionally mandated legal requirements. Indeed, there’s an argument to be made that any attempt by FBI personnel to interview, much less investigate, those six congressional members for their speech would itself constitute a violation of the speech and debate clause.
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DISASTER RESPONSEFEMA’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Year
As 2025 draws to a close, the departure of the beleaguered acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, David Richardson, caps a tumultuous year for FEMA. Internal turmoil and delayed aid – all under the shadow of President Donald Trump’s vow to abolish the agency — expose the agency’s fragility under Trump.
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The long view
COMMON-SENSE NOTES // By Idris B. OdunewuLaughing Through the Storm: How Humor Can Help Us Not Only Survive but Thrive in Turbulent Times
The world feels heavy again. In a time such as this, laughter can seem almost obscene. Who dares to joke while the world burns? Yet, perhaps the better question is: how can we not?
TERRORISMTechnology Evolves the Tactics: Preparing for the Rise of Terrorist AI Harms
Terrorist groups, like the societies they emerge from, adapt to new technologies. As AI capabilities evolve, so too do the tactics of extremist actors. While the full effects may take years to observe, as the technologies continue to develop, we are starting to see them directly alter extremism tradecraft.
DEMOCRACY WATCHTrump’s National Guard Deployments Raise Worries About State Sovereignty
In two instances – Portland and Chicago – President Trump’s campaign to send the National Guard into Democratic-leaning cities he falsely describes as crime-ridden, has turned to out-of-state National Guard troops. Presidents who have federalized National Guard forces in the past, even against a governor’s will, have done so in response to a crisis in the troops’ home state. But the decision to send one state’s National Guard troops into a different state without the receiving governor’s consent is both extraordinary and unprecedented, experts on national security law.
ARGUMENT: UNSUPPORTED CONCLUSIONSCorrectly Assessing Left-Wing Terrorism and Political Violence in the United States
A recent CSIS report, making sweeping claims about a supposed rise in leftwing terrorism in the United States, risks feeding false narratives about political violence and polarization. Michael Jensen and Amy Cooter write that the evidence used to sound this alarm consists of just five plots and attacks, and that these five events not only “are doing a lot of heavy lifting” in the report, but that they are given “an unwarranted level of causal and predictive power.” This tiny sample “simply does not justify inducing panic with eye-popping headlines.”
UNILTERAL DISARMAMENT What Just Happened? Dismantling the Intelligence Community’s Foreign Malign Influence Center
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced that the functions of the intelligence community’s Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC) would be significantly reduced. Gabbard has thus dismantled the last remaining U.S. federal government organ dedicated to tracking and analyzing state-sponsored efforts to interfere in U.S. institutions, elections, and society – following the Trump administration’s shutting down of related units at the State Department, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and Department of Justice earlier this year.
UNILTERAL DISARMAMENT Silencing America’s Voice
The Trump administration has taken a series of steps which have substantially weakened U.S. government-funded media outlets whose task it was to tell the American story and counter the global propaganda and disinformation efforts of U.S. adversaries. These moves greatly benefit the anti-American propaganda efforts of Russia and China, which will now go unchallenged.