• 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. 

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • How Russia Emerged as the Clear Winner from the Alaska Summit

    The very act of meeting and the nature of the interaction were such that the summit did considerable damage to the U.S. and broader Western position on Ukraine. At the same time, it strengthened Russia’s stance considerably. Russia used the summit to its strategic advantage, coming away with more concessions than it could have hoped for. Trump’s calls for a ceasefire in Ukraine are now gone and the prospect of additional sanctions on Russia have evaporated. Moscow now has the US president advocating for Ukraine to cede additional territory to Russia over and above the amount it has already taken by force.

  • 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.”

  • Quotes of the Day: Alaska Summit

    By Mr. Trump’s account, Mr. Putin behind closed doors also endorsed the lie that Mr. Trump actually won the 2020 election, only to have it stolen by Democrats.
          — Peter Baker, New York Times, 17 August 2025

    A Ukrainian intelligence officer says the Americans are being “unbelievably aggressive” in pushing Ukraine to forfeit more land. The Russian interest is clear enough, he says. “They want to maximize the package they will get in return—from sanctions relief, to the return of seized assets, to the re-opening of energy markets.” What, he says, is far less clear is why the Trump administration was pushing so forcefully to promote Russia’s interests.
         — The Economist, 17 August 2025

  • The True Cost of Abandoning Science

    “We now face a choice: to remain at the vanguard of scientific inquiry through sound investment, or to cede our leadership and watch others answer the big questions that have confounded humanity for millennia —and reap the rewards.”