• Texas Senate Approves Creation New Immigration Enforcement Unit, Allow State Police to Arrest for Border Crossings

    The House has already passed the bill, but the two chambers will need to iron out the differences in their versions before it is sent to Gov. Greg Abbott. It’s the most sweeping of a Republican package of bills that aims to stiffen the state’s response to a record number of crossings at Texas’ southern border.

  • Chinese Citizens Sue Florida Over “Xenophobic” Law Restricting Property Purchase by Citizens of "Countries of Concern"

    Four Chinese citizens living in Florida and a real estate brokerage that operates in the state have joined together in a lawsuit challenging a new law which places severe restrictions on the ability of non-U.S. citizens from “countries of concern” to purchase property there.

  • Stewart Rhodes Should Get No Leniency for Leading Anti-Government Paramilitary Group

    On Thursday, Stewart Rhodes, the founder and leader of the Oath Keepers, is due to be sentenced for seditious conspiracy and other crimes related to his role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Mary B. McCord and Jacob Glick write that Rhodes has a long history of organizing and calling for various acts of insurrection, “But you wouldn’t know about any of this armed opposition to federal authorities by reading Rhodes’s sentencing memorandum.”

  • What the Iraq War Can Teach the U.S. About Avoiding a Quagmire in Ukraine – 3 Key Lessons

    The Iraq and Ukraine wars have notable differences from a U.S. foreign policy perspective – chiefly, thousands of American soldiers died fighting in Iraq, while the U.S. does not have any ground troops in Ukraine. But assessing the Iraq War, and its long aftermath, can still help articulate concerns about the United States’ getting involved in intense violence in another faraway place.

  • Countering Violent Nonstate Actor Financing

    How do Violent nonstate actors (VNSA) finance their operations, and what do they use this financing for? What kinetic and nonkinetic counter–threat financing (CTF) methods have been successful in disrupting this financing and why? Which CTF methods have been counterproductive and why? How can the U.S. Army support efforts to disrupt VNSA financing?

  • Should Nine Oath Keepers Receive Terror-Enhanced Sentences?

    More than 1,000 people have now been charged with federal crimes stemming from the Capitol insurrection. Of them, about 665 have been convicted, and roughly 485 sentenced. Among the convicted are nine members of the extremist group Oath Keepers, six of whom were found guilty of seditious conspiracy. The government wants the judge to impose terror-enhanced sentences on the nine, but Roger Parloff writes that the government’s request seems excessive -  with one exception: Oath Keepers’ leader Elmer Stewart Rhodes. “A terrorism enhancement for him seems appropriate and, indeed, unavoidable.”

  • Northwest Region-Wide Effort for the Next Generation Electrical Grid

    Smart grids offer an important defense against climate change: smart devices improve energy efficiency and data and automation help keep grids stable, even if the share of renewable energy increases. They thus address the problem of short-term disruptions to solar and wind power, such as when clouds obscure the sun or winds die down.

  • DC Police Officer Indicted for Leaking Information to Proud Boys Leader

    A DC police lieutenant was indicted on for leaking to Enrique Tarrio, the leader of The Proud Boys, information about a police investigation of Tarrio, and then lying about his communication with Tarrio.

  • IRS Granted Tax-Exempt Status to Extremists, Including an Oath Keepers Foundation – Here’s Why That’s Not as Surprising as It Sounds

    Not all nonprofits are principled or embrace missions everyone considers worthy of the tax-exempt status that the government grants some 2 million organizations. A large part of the strength of the nonprofit sector lies in its diversity of causes and viewpoints, and therefore it’s better for the government to err on the side of authorizing too many tax-exempt organizations than to quash free speech. But it should be clear that charities that encourage violence and cheer on extremism are not contributing to society with any of the purposes the IRS allows.

  • Tech Mandated by U.K. Online Safety Bill “Could Turn Phones into Surveillance Tools”

    Tech mandated by the U.K. government’s Online Safety Bill could be used to turn millions of phones into facial recognition tools. It would be possible, for example, for governments to use client-side scanning (CSS) to search people’s private messages, for example performing facial recognition, without their knowledge.

  • Long-Term Coastal Cliff Loss Due to Climate Change

    The dangers of coastal erosion are an all-too-familiar reality for the modern residents of California’s iconic mountainous coastal communities. New tool brings historical perspective to the topic of how to manage these disappearing coastlines.

  • Montana first U.S. state to ban TikTok

    Starting next year, Montana will prohibit app stores from offering the video-sharing platform to users. The state’s governor said the ban protects people from Chinese surveillance.

  • Get Ready to Meet the Next President of Taiwan

    In Taiwan, the main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), has announced that Hou You-yi is its candidate for the January 2024 presidential election. The KMT declined to hold a vote of its membership and instead party chairman Chu Li-lun chose the party’s candidate directly. Hou’s rival is Taiwan’s vice president, Lai Ching-te, from the incumbent Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

  • Labor Trafficking in the United States

    In 2020, DHS developed a strategy to guide its efforts to curb trafficking worldwide. Principally, the strategy calls for improving the identification and reporting of suspected trafficking. Questions about the current state of research on U.S. labor trafficking and future research needs need to be answered as the initial step in building a research agenda focused on labor trafficking.

  • European Countries Would Be Wise to Assist Each Other with Regard to Energy

    If European countries collaborate, they can avoid severe energy scarcity due to a gas shortage. If the European countries act selfishly in times of gas shortage, Eastern Europe in particular will suffer. Eastern Europe is vulnerable because the entry points for natural gas are now in the west of the continent.