• EXTREMISMAnti-Jewish Hate Crimes Account for Nearly Two-Thirds of All Reported Religion-Based Hate Crimes Nationwide

    Hate crimes data recently released by the FBI reveals that reported single-bias anti-Jewish hate crime incidents in 2025 remained by far the most common form of religion-based hate crimes in the United States.

  • DEMOCRACYU WATCHRight-Leaning Canadians Are Losing Trust in Canada’s Electoral Process: Study

    The notable drop of trust in the electoral process among right-leaning Canadians has been driven by false allegations of election fraud in the United States which have circulated extensively online. Individuals who receive political information from alternative-right media tend to have lower trust in election integrity than do those who rely more on legacy media.

  • OFFENSIVE CYBER OPERATIONSWorth a Try: The U.S. Will Authorize Some Companies for Cyber Counterattacks

    By Jason Healey

    The United States has had enough in cyberspace. The White House has now created a program under which American companies can conduct offensive cyber operations against ransomware gangs and other ‘cyber-enabled transnational criminal organizations.’

  • AI & BIOSECURITYAI‑Designed Viruses Are a Test of Whether Biosecurity Can Keep Pace

    By Tuck Seng Wong and Kang Lan Tee

    Scientists have crossed an important line in biological engineering. In a recent study, researchers used artificial intelligence to design complete sets of genetic instructions for bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria. These viruses were designed to infect bacteria rather than people, but even so, the experiment raises an important question: if AI becomes increasingly able to help design biological systems, are our safeguards developing fast enough?

  • THE AMERICASThe Significance of the Pentagon’s Investment in a Bauxite Mine in Guyana

    By Ben Frankel

    The United States is investing in a bauxite mining operation in Guayana because China has positioned itself at a vulnerable point in a specialized materials supply chain, and the Trump administration has decided that leaving the problem entirely to the market to sort out is no longer acceptable.

  • DEMOCRACY WATCHNo more “Hypothetical Situations”: States Move to Fortify Elections Against Trump

    By Kevin Hardy

    Locals are preparing for chaos at the polls this November, as President Donald Trump casts doubt on election integrity and pushes for more federal involvement in local voting. Trump may seek to interfere with the midterms, helped by the fact that Trump-supporting election deniers now hold power in at least 25 state and local governments.

  • DEMOCRACY WATCHHow Trump’s Unprecedented Effort to Prosecute Noncitizen Voters Fell Apart

    By Peter Elkind, Jen Fifield, Doug Bock Clark, Ken B. Morales and Andy Mannix

    Since Trump regained the White House, his administration has launched a series of unprecedented initiatives to find and prosecute voting by noncitizens, which he’s long claimed, without evidence, is rampant. An investigation by ProPublica reveals for the first time how the Trump administration came to harness DHS’s Homeland Security Investigations’ (HSI) personnel, technology, and sweeping legal authority in service of its election agenda — and how meager the results have been, despite the prodigious resources sunk into the effort.

  • FOREIGN MEDDLINGAI Detects “Foreign-Linked Opinion Manipulation” in 110 Million News Comments

    During election seasons or major national issues, online news comment sections often become heated spaces of conflict across gender, generation, and political lines. There have been growing concerns that behind some of these conflicts are interventions by foreign actors seeking to manipulate public opinion and deepen social divisions. Researchers have now developed an AI-based technology to precisely detect traces of such hidden influence operations.

  • SURVEILLANCEThe Digital Panopticon: Why Automated Surveillance Threatens a Free Society

    By Mike Fox

    Flock Safety, a manufacturers of cameras used in automatic surveillance, is merely one piece of a vastly expanding surveillance state. The company’s potential downfall should not be blamed on legislation targeting ALPRs specifically but through the firm enforcement of the Fourth Amendment itself. In a free society, companies that thrive on infringing upon constitutional rights should not be economically viable.

  • QUICK TAKES // BY BEN FRANKELA Permanent Veto: Iran and the Strait of Hormuz

    U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright claims that oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is returning “back to normal” or “normalizing.” But there is no going back to normal because the old normal is dead and buried – a victim of the Trump-driven U.S. strategic defeat in the Iran war. That defeat has made Iran’s commercial veto power over the Strait the new normal.

  • DEMOCRACY WATCHWould the SAVE America Act Have Prevented the New Jersey Noncitizen Voter Snafu? Maybe, Maybe Not.

    By Stephen Richer

    A serious software error in New Jersey’s Motor Vehicle System led to the registration of roughly 6,600 people who indicated that they were not U.S. citizens between June 2023 and June 2024. Preliminary analysis shows fewer than 400 individuals actually voted. There are approximately 6.68 million registered voters in New Jersey, and 4.3 million New Jerseyans voted in the November 2024 general election. It is unclear whether the SAVE America Act would have prevented what happened in New Jersey.

  • DEMOCRACY WATCHMore on the New Jersey Voter Registration Fiasco

    By Walter Olson

    Not only are major changes to election systems best phased in over time, but they also tend to work best when seasoned election administrators can take prominent responsibility for their design, debugging, and maintenance. That might be needed advice for backers of the Trump-backed SAVE America Act.

  • DISINFORMATIONAI Is Making Disinformation Harder to Spot—but We've Found a New Way to Catch It

    By Seán Roberts and Kateryna Krykoniuk

    As generative AI becomes more powerful, malicious groups are increasingly using it to produce and spread disinformation online. Automated accounts can flood social media with convincing comments designed to sow division, inflame political debate and undermine trust in reliable information. But our latest research offers a way to spot these attempts.

  • OUT OF AMMUNITIONFiasco in the Factory: Taxpayers Funded a $533 Million Artillery Plant That Made Nothing

    By Jesse Coburn

    In a rushed process exempted from normal rules, the Army hired General Dynamics, which brought on a Turkish subcontractor with little vetting, to make artillery shells. Despite being paid $533 million, General Dynamics did not produce a single usable shell at its new factory — and has not been held publicly accountable. Since the Army halted two production lines at the factory, the General Dynamics unit responsible for the debacle has received contract awards totaling $2.5 billion.

  • IMMIGRATIONImmigration Enforcement: More Than 175,000 Visas Revoked in 20 Months

    By Bethany Blankley, The Center Square

    In roughly 20 months, the U.S. State Department has revoked more than 175,000 visas of foreign nationals who “violated the terms of their visas, committed crimes, called for violence against U.S. citizens, defrauded Americans, abused the immigration system or endangered national security,” the State Department announced.