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Active Clubs Aare White Supremacy’s New, Dangerous Frontier
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.
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How to Reverse Nation’s Declining Birth Rate
Health experts urge policies that buoy families: lower living costs, affordable childcare, help for older parents who want more kids
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Voting from Your Sofa Is Secure Enough – but Will It Be Allowed?
A new electronic voting system developed at NTNU can withstand attacks from quantum computers, meaning digital elections can be conducted securely, even in the future.
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Most Refugees and Asylees Will Be Denied Food Stamps Under Trump’s New Law
Many noncitizens have historically been eligible for food aid, but now most refugees and asylees, who entered the country legally, including B., are no longer eligible for food stamps.
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On Nonexistent Crime “Emergencies”: Trump’s Politicization of the National Guard
What Trump is doing now has nothing to do with “crime control” because the DC murder and crime rate is the lowest it’s been in literally decades. These out-of-state National Guard call-ups from Red states are designed to intimidate elected Democrats in major metropolitan areas under the guise of “fighting crime” and alleged immigration enforcement. Trump’s use of Title 32 authority to do this is a misuse of the statute, designed to get around the Posse Comitatus Act so he can use military personnel under the control of Trump loyalist governors for what can only be truthfully characterized as de facto political repression ops.
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What Would a More Effective Policing Strategy Look Like in D.C.?
We spoke with crime prevention expert David Kennedy about the Trump administration’s takeover of law enforcement in the nation’s capital, and the tactics that might prove more effective.
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Australia’s Deepfake Dilemma and the Danish Solution
Countries need to move beyond simply pleading with internet platforms for better content moderation and instead implement new legal frameworks that empower citizens directly. For a model of how to achieve this, policymakers should look to the innovative legal thinking emerging from Denmark.
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Microsoft Failed to Disclose Key Details About Use of China-Based Engineers in U.S. Defense Work, Record Shows
The tech giant is required to regularly provide U.S. officials with its plan for keeping government data safe from hacking. Yet a copy of Microsoft’s security plan obtained by ProPublica makes no reference to the company’s China-based operations.
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The Data Doesn’t Support Trump’s Justification for Deploying the National Guard
The president has taken over policing in Washington, D.C., and threatened to do the same in other Democratic-led cities. An analysis by The Trace shows that his claims of runaway violence are false.
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Venezuela’s Attempts to Interfere in the September Guyana Election
Venezuela has long disputed Guyana’s claim to the sparsely populated Essequibo region, recognized by the international community as being part of Guinea. Venezuela has now extended its interference in Guyanese domestic affairs by seemingly supporting the candidacy of the colorful, and controversial, candidate Azruddin Mohamed, who is under U.S. sanctions for gold smuggling and corruption.
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Backgrounder: Guyana’s Forthcoming Election
Guyana is a small country –population of only 831,000 –but rich in recently discovered oil reserves, reserves estimated to hold the equivalent of 11 billion barrels. On 1 September the country will hold a national and regional election.
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Turnover Among Election Officials Reaches New High: Report
Election officials turned over at the highest rate in at least a quarter century during the last presidential election. Nearly 40 percent of election officials administering the 2024 election weren’t around in 2020.
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President Trump’s War on “Woke AI” Is a Civil Liberties Nightmare
The White House’s recently-unveiled “AI Action Plan” wages war on so-called “woke AI”—including large language models (LLMs) that provide information inconsistent with the administration’s views on climate change, gender, and other issues. The plan would force developers to roll back efforts to reduce biases—making the models much less accurate, and far more likely to cause harm, especially in the hands of the government.
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Dems Oppose Trump's Bid to End Mail-in Ballots, Voting Machines
More than 99 million Americans voted by mail in the 2024 General Election, according to the United States Postal Service. There is no evidence that either mail-in ballots or direct-recording electronic (DRE) machines –where voters cast ballots completely electronically –have enabled widespread voter fraud.
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Trump Wants States to Feed Voter Info into Powerful Citizenship Data ProgramElection
Republicans are laser-focused on purging noncitizens from voter rolls. Critics of the effort fear President Donald Trump wants to build a federal database of voters to target political opponents or cherry-pick the vanishingly rare examples of noncitizen voters to fuel a sense of crisis.
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More headlines
The long view
Factories First: Winning the Drone War Before It Starts
Wars are won by factories before they are won on the battlefield,Martin C. Feldmann writes, noting that the United States lacks the manufacturing depth for the coming drone age. Rectifying this situation “will take far more than procurement tweaks,” Feldmann writes. “It demands a national-level, wartime-scale industrial mobilization.”
No Nation Is an Island: The Dangers of Modern U.S. Isolationism
The resurgence of isolationist sentiment in American politics is understandable but misguided. While the desire to refocus on domestic renewal is justified, retreating from the world will not bring the security, prosperity, or sovereignty that its proponents promise. On the contrary, it invites instability, diminishes U.S. influence, and erodes the democratic order the U.S. helped forge.
Fragmented by Design: USAID’s Dismantling and the Future of American Foreign Aid
The Trump administration launched an aggressive restructuring of U.S. foreign aid, effectively dismantling the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The humanitarian and geopolitical fallout of the demise of USAID includes shuttered clinics, destroyed food aid, and China’s growing influence in the global south. This new era of American soft power will determine how, and whether, the U.S. continues to lead in global development.
Water Wars: A Historic Agreement Between Mexico and US Is Ramping Up Border Tension
As climate change drives rising temperatures and changes in rainfall, Mexico and the US are in the middle of a conflict over water, putting an additional strain on their relationship. Partly due to constant droughts, Mexico has struggled to maintain its water deliveries for much of the last 25 years, deliveries to which it is obligated by a 1944 water-sharing agreement between the two countries.
How Disastrous Was the Trump-Putin Meeting?
In Alaska, Trump got played by Putin. Therefore, Steven Pifer writes, the European leaders and Zelensky have to “diplomatically offer suggestions to walk Trump back from a position that he does not appear to understand would be bad for Ukraine, bad for Europe, and bad for American interests. And they have to do so without setting off an explosion that could disrupt U.S.-Ukrainian and U.S.-European relations—all to the delight of Putin and the Kremlin.”
How Male Grievance Fuels Radicalization and Extremist Violence
Social extremism is evolving in reach and form. While traditional racial supremacy ideologies remain, contemporary movements are now often fueled by something more personal and emotionally resonant: male grievance.