• U.S. Capitol Police Chief Highlights Improvements Capitol Security

    During the last two years, the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) has been working around the clock to implement more than 100 significant improvements. “Today we are clearly better off than we were before the January 6 attack,” USCP chief says.

  • Northern Ireland Reconciliation Bill Highlights Complicated Role of Catholic Church During the Troubles

    It has now been more than two decades since the signing of the Good Friday agreement in 1998, formally ending the Troubles in Northern Ireland. But the most recent attempt by the British government to “deal with the past” – the legacy and reconciliation bill – is itself provoking conflict.

  • Europe Faces a Chilling Couple of Years, but Russia Will Lose the Energy Showdown

    In the European Union this winter, fears of rolling blackouts triggered by Russian energy export cuts amid Moscow’s war in Ukraine have subsided thanks to good luck, good weather, and quick action. “In the long run, Russia simply can’t win this energy war,” says an expert.

  • ‘Beijing’s Plan to Crush Taiwan Under the “Wheels of History”’

    The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ideological commitment to the unification of Taiwan is presented as the ultimate demonstration of China’s development under the CCP leadership, what party chairman Xi Jinping calls the ‘great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’.

  • U.S. Gun Violence Soars in 2022

    Across America, gun violence surged in many communities in 2022 as overall death rates from firearms rose to the highest level in nearly three decades. The year saw a near-record number of mass casualty shooting incidents, including several motivated by hate.

  • Coughing Up Billions of Dollars to Save Florida’s Insurance Market

    In the three months since Hurricane Ian struck Florida, the state’s fragile property insurance market has been teetering on the brink of collapse. The historic storm caused over $50 billion in damage, and dealt a body blow to an industry that was already struggling to stay standing: Several insurance companies had already collapsed this year even before the hurricane, and major funders are now poised to abandon those that remain.

  • China Launches WTO Dispute Over U.S. Chip Export Controls

    Capping a year of increasing tension between Washington and Beijing over advanced chips used in everything from smartphones to weapons of mass destruction, China has initiated a trade dispute at the World Trade Organization (WTO) against the United States for imposing wide-ranging semiconductor export controls on China.

  • U.S. Military Expert: “Ukraine's Position on the Battlefield Is Very Strong”

    John Spencer says Russian President Vladimir Putin is unlikely to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine anytime soon but he predicts Ukraine will ultimately prevail. He says the recent decision by Washington to deliver a Patriot missile battery to Ukraine may not be a game-changing move, but it could trigger other Western allies to donate similar systems, bolstering Kyiv’s defenses.

  • Major Losses Shift Islamic State, Al-Qaida's Balance of Power

    Across the United States and many other Western countries, the threat from Islamist terror groups has been increasingly overshadowed by the threats from other extremist groups, but despite a rise in far-right and white-power-driven terrorist threats, counterterrorism officials have been careful not to overlook the still persistent threat from groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaida., even though both the Islamic State, known as IS, ISIS or Daesh, and al-Qaida suffered significant setbacks in 2022.

  • New Bill Proposes Banning TikTok in the U.S.

    Both the administration and Congress have moved to limit, or even ban, TikTok in the United States because of worries about China using the Chinese-owned platform to gather personal data on millions of Americans. Justin Sherman writes that “all told, it is a noteworthy piece of legislation, and it delineates between the risk of data access and the risk of content manipulation better than then-President Trump’s executive order on TikTok.”

  • SCOTUS Mulls the Independent State Legislature (ISL) Theory

    The United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments on 7 December in what is widely seen as one of the most significant cases in the country’s history to address fundamental questions of federalism. The case, Moore v. Harper,implicates what the Constitution means when it delegates to each state’s legislature the job of regulating congressional elections and the appointment of presidential electors.

  • U.S. Supreme Court Rules to Keep Title 42 for Now

    The court ordered the Biden administration to continue enforcing the policy while Texas and other states that want to keep the Trump-era rule in place prepare their legal arguments.

  • Concerns About Extremists Targeting U.S. Power Stations

    Attacks on four power stations in Washington State over the weekend added to concerns of a possible nationwide campaign by far-right extremists to stir fears and spark civil conflict. Violent extremists “have developed credible, specific plans to attack electricity infrastructure since at least 2020, identifying the electric grid as a particularly attractive target given its interdependency with other infrastructure sectors,” the DHS said in a January.

  • A Water War Is Brewing Over the Dwindling Colorado River

    Diminished by climate change and overuse, the river can no longer provide the water states try to take from it.

  • U.S. Saw Increase in Domestic Terror Threats in 2022

    The sweeping police raids in Germany earlier this month which nabbed 25 members of a far-right group who were plotting to topple the government and replace it with a Kaiser, highlighted the shifting and increasingly complex landscape facing Western countries in 2022 and, counterterrorism officials say, for years to come.