• Sanctions Are Crippling Russia's Economy: Study

    Researchers at Yale University say the Russian economy is suffering massive damage due to Western sanctions, despite Moscow downplaying the effect.

  • Correcting Misconceptions About the Electoral Count Reform Act

    It has been apparent for a long time that the Electoral Count Act (ECA)—the 1887 law designed to ensure that presidential elections operate with integrity—is flawed. These flaws were on full display during the counting of electoral votes in 2020-2021, but all of the flaws had historical precursors. Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith write that the Electoral Count Reform Act (ECRA), which was recently introduced by a bipartisan group of senators to replace the ECA, is an exceptionally promising development in our polarized era.

  • A Water Strategy for the Parched West: Have Cities Pay Farmers to Install More Efficient Irrigation Systems

    Unsustainable water practices, drought and climate change are causing this crisis across the U.S. Southwest. To achieve a meaningful reduction in water use, states need to focus on the region’s biggest water user: agriculture.

  • Europe’s Energy Choice

    Russia’s war in Ukraine and the disruption of Russian gas exports to Europe has triggered an energy crunch, with price spikes unlike anything seen since 1973. And the situation will get worse before it gets better. Responding to the immediate energy crisis in the right way will help to address the broader climate challenge. Authorities must both buffer the shock of the gas crunch in the short term, and accelerate the transition to clean energy in the long -term.

  • China Tried to Infiltrate Federal Reserve: Senate Report

    Fed Chair Jerome Powell and a senior member of Congress are at odds over a report issued Tuesday by Senate Republicans alleging that China is trying to infiltrate the Federal Reserve and that the central bank has done too little to stop it. China’s goal, according to the report, is to “supplant the U.S. as the global economic leader and end the U.S. dollar’s status as the world’s primary reserve currency.”

  • Anti-Israel Activists Co-opt American Tragedies to Target Israel

    Prominent anti-Israel groups and individuals have sought to tether American issues such as gun violence and limits on abortion rights to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, doubling down on anti-Zionist tropes and false accusations against the state of Israel.

  • Buying Into Conspiracy Theories Can Be Exciting – That’s What Makes Them Dangerous

    The historian Richard Hofstadter, in his seminal 1964 book, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, described a “paranoid style” which he observed on the fringes of far-right U.S. politics and culture: a blend of “heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy.” In our time, the “birther” movement, “Pizzagate,” QAnon, and “Stop the Steal” are but a few examples of these conspiratorial fantasies. Much of the commentary on conspiracy theories presumes that followers simply have bad information, or not enough, and that they can be helped along with a better diet of facts. My research shows that believers in conspiracy theories have plenty of information, but they insist that it be interpreted in a particular way – the way that feels most exciting. Just as the “X-Files” predicted, conspiracy theories’ acolytes “want to believe.”

  • Building the “Big Lie”: Inside the Creation of Trump’s Stolen Election Myth

    Internal emails and interviews with key participants reveal for the first time the extent to which leading advocates of the rigged election theory touted evidence they knew to be disproven, disputed or dismissed as dubious.

  • There Is a Lot of Antisemitic Hate Speech on Social Media – and Algorithms Are Partly to Blame

    Antisemitic incidents have shown a sharp rise in the United States. There were 2,717 incidents in 2021. This represents an increase of 34% over 2020. In Europe, the European Commission found a sevenfold increase in antisemitic postings across French language accounts, and an over thirteenfold increase in antisemitic comments within German channels during the pandemic. Contemporary antisemitism manifests itself in various forms such as GIFs, memes, vlogs, comments and reactions such as likes and dislikes on the platforms. The continuous exposure to antisemitic content at a young age, scholars say, can lead to both normalization of the content and radicalization of the Tik-Tok viewer.

  • An Elusive Shadow: State-by-State Gun Ownership

    Policy-makers are faced with an exceptional challenge: how to reduce harm caused by firearms while maintaining citizens’ right to bear arms and protect themselves. Meaningful legislation requires an understanding of how access to firearms is associated with different outcomes of harm, but this knowledge also calls for accurate, highly-resolved data on firearm possession, data that is presently unavailable due to a lack of a comprehensive national firearm ownership registry.

  • U.S. Youth Firearm Mortality Increases Over the Past Decade --Trends Differ Significantly Across States

    In 2020, firearms were the leading cause of death in children in the United States. Four states with stricter laws restricting gun access successfully reversed upward trajectories in youth gun deaths over the past decade.

  • Alarming Trend Toward Political Violence

    A new report reveals alarming trends in attitudes toward violence, including political violence, in the United States. The survey is the first of its kind to explore the participants’ personal willingness to engage in specific political violence scenarios.

  • NIST Updates Guidance for Health Care Cybersecurity

    In an effort to help health care organizations protect patients’ personal health information, NIST has updated its cybersecurity guidance for the health care industry. The revised draft publication aims to help organizations comply with HIPAA Security Rule.

  • Global Supply Chains Remain Resilient in the Wake of Natural Disasters

    International trade links bind countries together in ways that are difficult to untangle following a crisis. While many U.S. policy makers are calling for reshoring and nearshoring to combat trade disruptions caused by COVID-19, new research suggests retrenchment of global supply chains is unlikely to happen in the post-pandemic context.

  • Further Indications of Iran’s Renewed Interest in Maraging Steel for its Nuclear Enrichment Program

    Maraging steel bellows are well known to be used in the IR-2m centrifuge, but Iran has not made any of these centrifuges in years, leading to speculation that the bottleneck was the maraging steel. A recent report has revealed Iran’s renewed interest in metal bellows in its advanced centrifuges.