• 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.”

  • Foundation for U.S. Breakthroughs Feels Shakier to Researchers

    With each dollar of its grants, the National Institutes of Health —the world’s largest funder of biomedical research —generates, on average, $2.56 worth of economic activity across all 50 states. NIH grants also support more than 400,000 U.S. jobs, and have been a central force in establishing the country’s dominance in medical research. Waves of funding cuts and grant terminations under the second Trump administration are a threat to the U.S. status as driver of scientific progress, and to the nation’s economy.

  • Trump’s Bid to Support Coal Could Cost Ratepayers Billions: Report

    The market has spoken: Across the country, coal plants have phased out as they’ve been unable to compete with cheaper renewables and natural gas. A recent report found that 99% of existing U.S. coal plants “are more expensive to run than replacement by local wind, solar, and energy storage resources.” Mandates from the Trump administration to subsidize aging, uncompetitive coal plants would cause taxpayers billions and lead to a massive spike in energy costs.

  • The CDC Shooting Was a Matter of Time, Health Experts Say

    “A lot of the current political rhetoric is not a good-faith discussion or debate, but outright labeling of other humans as somehow evil and not worthy of walking the earth,” says Dr. Megan Ranney, dean of the Yale School of Public Health. In a conversation with The Trace, she notes that “It is almost inevitable that when you combine evil rhetoric with isolation, lack of support for physical and mental health, and lack of ability to temporarily remove a firearm from someone who has the intent to kill, that we’re gonna end up with tragedies.”

  • What Does Netflix’s Drama “Adolescence” Tell Us About Incels and the Manosphere?

    While Netflix’s psychological crime drama ‘Adolescence’ is a work of fiction, its themes offer insight into the very real and troubling rise of the incel and manosphere culture online.

  • In-Group Perceptions Play Key Role in Driving Political Extremism: Study

    Reducing the rising tide of political extremism –and violence –in the United States and beyond may require a rethinking of how we understand the forces that drive polarization. Believing your own side holds extreme views - even if it doesn’t - makes political violence more likely, researchers say.

  • Filtered Data Stops Openly Available AI Models from Performing Dangerous Tasks

    Researchers have reported a major advance in safeguarding open-weight language models. By filtering out potentially harmful knowledge during training, the researchers were able to build models that resist subsequent malicious updates – especially valuable in sensitive domains such as biothreat research.

  • One in Five ICE Arrests Are Latinos on the Streets with No Criminal Past or Removal Order

    Illegal profiling accounts for a substantial portion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests in 2025. Mass deportation is a socially and economically damaging goal regardless, but it’s certainly not a goal for which we should sacrifice a sliver of our liberty or the Constitution. Only time will tell whether ICE and Border Patrol can continue to get away with these tactics.

  • Tariffs Can Improve U.S. Economy, but Global Trade Realities, Retaliation, Could Offset Gains

    The United States could achieve modest economic benefits by applying uniform tariffs on all trade partners, but the complicated realities of supply chains, global trade and its downstream effects on people and businesses could offset economic gains and even lead to significant losses. 

  • Trump Fired BLS Chief, but Skipped Causes of Weak Jobs Report

    While the July U.S. jobs report last week was surprisingly bad—sending U.S. equities, bond yields, and the dollar all sharply lower—the reasons behind the labor-market developments have been pretty easy to see. The incontrovertible facts notwithstanding, Trump has fired a highly regarded, long-term government employee who received bipartisan backing to oversee the country’s labor-market statistics, bizarrely, and falsely, accusing her of “rigging” the figures he found to be inconvenient. Eroding trust in U.S. economic data and policymaking is a recipe for slower economic growth and even more challenging policymaking, whatever the data may say.

  • Israel Secretly Recruited Iranian Dissidents to Attack Their Country from Within

    The Mossad made Iran its top priority in 1993 after Israelis and Palestinians signed the Oslo Accords on the White House lawn, seemingly ending decades of conflict. The main goal of Israel’s focus on Iran: To protect Israel’s nuclear monopoly in the region.

  • ICE Has a New Courthouse Tactic: Get Immigrants’ Cases Tossed, Then Arrest Them Outside

    Inside immigration courts around the country, immigrants who crossed the border illegally and were caught and released are required to appear before a judge for a preliminary hearing. But in a new twist, the Trump administration has begun using an unexpected legal tactic in its deportation efforts. Rather than pursue a deportation case, it is convincing judges to dismiss immigrants’cases —thus depriving the immigrants of protection from arrest and detention —then taking them into custody.

  • HHS Scraps Further Work on Life-Saving mRNA Vaccine Platform

    In what experts say will hobble pandemic preparedness, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the dismantling of the country’s mRNA vaccine-development programs—the same innovation that allowed rapid scale-up of COVID-19 vaccines during the public health emergency.