• Relax. The Supreme Court’s Election Order Isn’t What the Internet Says It Is.

    The president does not have the authority to unilaterally change election law. That’s still true. The Supreme Court’s order from yesterday does not change that analysis. Instead, it simply asks, “Did the plaintiffs sue too quickly?” The majority answered yes—and they make a compelling argument.

  • Back to (Oil) Normalcy? Not So Fast

    Oil shipments from the Gulf, averaging about 21 million barrels a day before the Iran war, declined precipitously in the first months of the, but the administration insists that the shipments are either “back to normal” or “near normal.” The numbers do not support these claims, and, more importantly, there is no “normal” to go back to, as Iran now has a veto over Gulf shipping.

  • The Long Afterlife of QAnon Conspiracy Theories Haunting American Politics

    Started on the online forum website 4chan in 2017, QAnon spread false, far-right theories on social media about a shadowy cabal of satanic pedophiles among the political elite, which Donald Trump was purportedly fighting alongside a mysterious ally named “Q.” While Q stopped posting in 2022, the movement did not disappear. Its conspiracy theories seeped from the margins into mainstream American politics, and the movement’s vocabulary quickly began to appear in official government circles at the start of Trump’s second term. Official uses of Q language have invigorated conspiracy theorists to advance new theories, undermining public health, governance, and civil society.

  • Tennessee Helped Usher in the Nuclear Age. It Wants to Lead the Way Again.

    Tennessee is among five finalists for a Department of Energy “nuclear lifecycle innovation campus” that could make it the centerpiece of a federal plan to finally deal with what’s left behind after splitting atoms to generate electricity.

  • AI, China, and the New Risks to U.S. Security: Q&A with Matan Chorev

    Major powers like the United States and China will find it harder than they hoped to translate advantages in AI into geopolitical dominance. They’ll still depend on external players for key resources, inputs, markets, and more. Emerging powers, meanwhile, will find that the gap between them and the great powers will grow, rather than shrink, since none of them possesses the combination of inputs—chips, compute, capital, talent, and energy—needed to develop frontier AI.

  • The Justice Department Lets 90-Year-Old Regulations on Silencers Fade Away

    The Trump administration let a judge block longstanding registration requirements on silencers and short-barreled guns like sawed-off shotguns. But the new legal landscape is murky.

  • North Korea Grows Stronger as South Korea Reckons with Fading U.S. Support

    The Russia-North Korea  partnership has created a clear cycle in which North Korea supplies ammunition and manpower for Russia to use in the war, Moscow supports North Korea with resources and technology in return, and Pyongyang uses these to improve its standing against the south.

  • North Korea Is Learning from War. The U.S.–South Korea Alliance Must Keep Pace

    President Donald Trump’s instruction to the Pentagon on Sunday to ‘substantially reduce’ joint military exercises with South Korea comes at a particularly difficult moment. North Korea is rapidly improving the capabilities that the US–South Korean alliance may someday have to confront. Substantially reducing US–South Korean exercises now would be a mistake.

  • East Texas Sits on a Goldmine of Lithium, but Questions Loom Over How the State Will Regulate Mining and Production

    As the U.S. pushes to reduce reliance on foreign suppliers, Texas companies prepare to capitalize on the state’s emerging lithium industry.

  • The Risks of Getting Russian and Chinese Nuclear Strategy Wrong

    Nuclear weapons first-use is an anxiety-inducing topic for policymakers. The possibility of nuclear weapons first-use influences diplomacy, the use of conventional force, and theories of deterrence. In this article, two scholars warn of the danger of misperception regarding first use of nuclear weapons and identify ways that major powers might—but often won’t—use nuclear weapons first.

  • 17 Iranians Charged in Major Cybercrime Case in New York

    Seventeen Iranian men have been charged in a cybercrime case being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. The accused are members of the Mabna Institute, an Iranian-based company known for hacking U.S. higher education institutions and private sector companies on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

  • Measles Used to Be in Our Rearview Mirror. Now Cases Are Reaching Record Highs.

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official, and President Donald Trump have been transforming a government that for decades promoted the lifesaving benefits of shots into one that sows doubts about their safety. The results were predictable: History has shown how vaccine-preventable diseases — long-forgotten scourges — can roar back to kill and disable children when trust in shots or access to them have faltered.

  • Anti-Jewish Hate Crimes Account for Nearly Two-Thirds of All Reported Religion-Based Hate Crimes Nationwide

    Hate crimes data recently released by the FBI reveals that reported single-bias anti-Jewish hate crime incidents in 2025 remained by far the most common form of religion-based hate crimes in the United States.

  • Right-Leaning Canadians Are Losing Trust in Canada’s Electoral Process: Study

    The notable drop of trust in the electoral process among right-leaning Canadians has been driven by false allegations of election fraud in the United States which have circulated extensively online. Individuals who receive political information from alternative-right media tend to have lower trust in election integrity than do those who rely more on legacy media.

  • Worth a Try: The U.S. Will Authorize Some Companies for Cyber Counterattacks

    The United States has had enough in cyberspace. The White House has now created a program under which American companies can conduct offensive cyber operations against ransomware gangs and other ‘cyber-enabled transnational criminal organizations.’