• Coercive Collection of DNA Is Unethical, Damaging to the Future of Medical Research

    The compulsory collection of DNA being undertaken in some parts of the world is not just unethical, but risks affecting people’s willingness to donate biological samples and thus contribute to the advancement of medical knowledge and the development of new treatments, say experts.

  • U.S. Classifies China's Policies toward Uighurs as “Genocide”

    The United States Tuesday formally labeled the Chinese government’s policies targeting ethnic Uighur Muslims and other minorities in the northwest region of Xinjiang as “genocide.” The United States has for years criticized China’s detention and reeducation policies in Xinjiang but has held off formally declaring the policies as a genocide. 

  • Police, Soldiers Bring Lethal Skill to Militia Campaigns against U.S. Government

    Thousands of police and soldiers – people professionally trained in the use of violence and familiar with military protocols – are part of an extremist effort to undermine the U.S. government and subvert the democratic process. When militia members have a professional background with the military or police, it enhances the ability of these groups to execute sophisticated and successful operations. It also helps them convey a patriotic image that obscures the security threat they present.

  • Russia to Exit Open Skies Treaty after U.S. Pullout

    Russia says it is beginning the procedure to withdraw from the international Open Skies Treaty after the United States last year left the accord, which allows unarmed aerial surveillance flights over dozens of participating states. The United States formally withdrew on November 22 from the arms-control and verification agreement.

  • Securing Public Places in the Wake of Capitol Violence

    In the wake of last week’s assault on the Capitol, experts are considering ways to secure such public spaces now and in the future; how added protective measures will affect public access to America’s most sacred shrines of democracy.

  • A Proposal for a Commission on the Capitol Siege

    On 6 January, the U.S. Capitol was assaulted and occupied for the first time since 1814. Five people were killed, including Brian Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer who was beaten to death while attempting to repel the siege. Herb Lin and Amy Zegart write that the insurrectionists were ultimately unable to block the Congressional certification of Joseph Biden as president-elect and Kamala Harris as vice president-elect. “Accountability, healing, and national reconciliation are vital to restoring American democracy in the days ahead,” they write. “It is critical for the nation to conduct a systematic, thorough and bipartisan examination of this event to understand how it happened and how to prevent similar violent attacks on democratic processes in the future.”

  • Furious Extremists Call for More Violence Around Inauguration Day

    In the immediate aftermath of the November 2020 presidential election, pro-Trump and other extremists announced their initial plans to protest President-Elect Joe Biden’s inauguration in Washington D.C. While it is impossible for anyone to predict with certainty how the events of the next week may unfold, recent history has shown that we cannot ignore potential threats from political and other right-wing extremists.

  • Capitol Siege Raises Questions over Extent of White Supremacist Infiltration of U.S. Police

    The apparent participation of off-duty officers in the rally that morphed into a siege on the U.S. Capitol building Jan. 6 has revived fears about white supremacists within police departments. Reports of officers involved in an attack in which the symbols and language of white supremacy were clearly on display are concerning. But so too, I believe, is a policing culture that may have contributed to the downplaying of the risk of attack before it began and the apparent sympathetic response to attackers displayed by some police officers – they too hint at a wider problem.

  • Necessary and Insufficient: The Problems Impeachment Does Not Solve

    Congress could not ignore President Donald Trump’s relentless, persistent campaign of Big Lies about the 3 November election—a pattern of behavior that culminated in the president’s move last week to assemble a mob in Washington and loose it on the Capitol. Benjamin Wittes writes that impeachment was, therefore, necessary – but “Impeachment is an awkward remedy in a more practical sense” since “It does nothing to disable Trump in the last seven days of his presidency.” “Congress can remove a president using impeachment but, in the meantime, has to leave the mad king in possession of all of his powers.”

  • Face Surveillance and the Capitol Attack

    After last week’s violent attack on the Capitol, law enforcement is working overtime to identify the perpetrators. This is critical to accountability for the attempted insurrection. Law enforcement has many, many tools at their disposal to do this, especially given the very public nature of most of the organizing. But the Electronic Frontier Foundations (EFF) says it objects to one method reportedly being used to determine who was involved: law enforcement using facial recognition technologies to compare photos of unidentified individuals from the Capitol attack to databases of photos of known individuals. “There are just too many risks and problems in this approach, both technically and legally, to justify its use,” the EFF says.

  • U.S. Prosecutors Expect to Charge Hundreds of Capitol Rioters

    U.S. prosecutors say they have identified more than 170 people for potential criminal charges in connection with the January 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol and that they expect that number to run into the hundreds in the coming weeks as a massive nationwide hunt for the pro-Trump rioters continues.  

  • Is Impeaching President Trump “Pointless Revenge”? Not If It Sends a Message to Future Presidents

    If Congress chooses to impeach President Trump, it is because there is a need to mark out, through a definitive statement, what no president ought to do. It will also set the moral limits of the presidency – and, thereby, send a message to future presidents who might be tempted to follow in President Trump’s footsteps.

  • An Avalanche of Violence: Revealing Predictable Patterns in Armed Conflicts

    New research finds that human conflict exhibits remarkable regularity despite substantial geographic and cultural differences.

  • FBI Issues Alert about Extremists’ Plan to Disrupt Biden’s Inauguration

    The FBI is warning state and local and law enforcement around the country of plans for violent action by right-wing extremists in the day leading up to the inauguration of Joe Biden on 20 January. According to the FBI, various right-wing extremist groups are planning a series of protests in the capitals of all fifty states between 16 and 20 January, and in Washington, D.C. between the 17 and 20 of January.

  • U.S. Capitol Mob Highlights 5 Reasons Not to Underestimate Far-Right Extremists

    In the wake of the mob incursion that took over the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, it’s clear that many people are concerned about violence from far-right extremists. But they may not understand the real threat. While researching my forthcoming book, It Can Happen Here: White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the U.S., I discovered that there are five key mistakes people make when thinking about far-right extremists. These mistakes obscure the extremists’ true danger.