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Gun Sellers Have Made Millions from Trump’s Deployment of Immigration Agents
Firearms companies – faced with plummeting sales to the general public – found a lucrative new opportunity last year: arming President Donald Trump’s immigration operation. Last year, DHS spent a record sum on guns and ammunition, a Trace analysis found.
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New START to Expire: Nuclear Arms Control Goes Up in Smoke
On 5 February 2026, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) will expire. This is the last remaining major treaty between the United States (US) and Russia limiting their deployed strategic nuclear warheads.
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Weakening Nuclear Arms Control Increases Risks of Crisis Escalation
The expiration of the New START agreement between the United States and Russia on 5 February marks the near-complete collapse of an arms control system that once made nuclear competition predictable, verifiable and contained. The risk is not merely enlargement of nuclear arsenals, but the diminishment of safeguards against escalation, with increasing instability and shorter warning times.
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States Reeling from Winter Storm Encounter a Smaller FEMA
The Trump administration was quick to mobilize initial aid, but it’s not clear how a shrunken agency will handle the long-term recovery costs.
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“We Should Take Over the Voting… Nationalize the Voting”
As courts have now repeatedly found, Trump has been willing to use the purported power of executive orders to command election changes that Congress has never mandated and that the Constitution gives him no power to command. We should be properly vigilant against any repeated such attempt before, during, or after the approaching midterms.
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ICE and Border Patrol in Minnesota − Accused of Violating 1st, 2nd, 4th and 10th Amendment Rights − Are Testing Whether the Constitution Can Survive
Chief Federal Judge Patrick Schiltz in Minnesota, criticizing ICE for acting as a “law unto itself,” accused the agency of failing to follow 96 court orders from 74 different immigration cases in a single month. “ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence,” he said. Legal scholars are especially worried about ongoing ICE violations of the First, Second, Fourth, and 10th amendments.
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The Real Story Behind the Midnight Immigration Raid on a Chicago Apartment Building
The Trump administration has claimed the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua had taken over the building. But new documents make no mention of the gang and reveal federal agents had information about “illegal aliens unlawfully occupying apartments.”
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Two CBP Agents Identified in Alex Pretti Shooting
The two federal immigration agents who fired on Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti are identified in government records as Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez.
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Mayors Describe ICE Presence in Their Cities
As federal immigration enforcement agents continue to clash with protesters in cities around the country, U.S. mayors gathering last week in Washington, D.C., said they’re anxious about what might be coming next. “We were told the actions would be precise. They were not,” said Edina, Minnesota, Mayor Jim Hovland.
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Turmoil at FEMA Adds to the Revolt Against Kristi Noem
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s handling of the killing of Alex Pretti follows sustained criticism of her management of FEMA. Lawmakers, disaster response experts, and disaster survivors say her policies have all but halted the agency’s disaster spending, thus slowing emergency response and delaying recovery funding.
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The Legacy of the Arab Spring, to Date
The Arab Spring did not simply unsettle Arab regimes. It disrupted an entire geopolitical equilibrium that had been quietly accepted for decades. What appeared at first as a series of domestic uprisings ultimately rewired regional alignments, altered great-power postures, normalized intervention, and reshaped how instability itself is managed and exploited.
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Mexico and U.S. Look for New Deal in Long-Running Battle Over 80-year Old Water Treaty
Mexico and the US’s growing dispute over water rights further complicates an already strained relationship that must tackle existing challenges related to drug trafficking, security, migration and trade wars. Water is just the latest issue to rise to the top of the tension table.
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I’m a Former FBI Agent Who Studies Policing, and Here’s How Federal Agents in Minneapolis Are Undermining Basic Law Enforcement Principles
As a policing scholar and former FBI special agent, I believe the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti illustrate how some federal agents are engaging with the public in a way that undermines established principles of policing and constitutional law.
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The Second Amendment Is Meaningless If the Government Can Kill You for Exercising It
The law is not supposed to make Americans choose between their lives and their constitutional liberty. The Second Amendment gives people the right to bear arms, and the Fourth Amendment promises to stop the government from killing them for doing so. People should demand better of a government that voices their rights one day before insisting, a couple of days later, that civilians can be killed for exercising them.
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FBI’s Search of Georgia Election Center Is “Dangerous,” Experts Warn
The search warrant, which sought 2020 election ballots, tabulator tapes, digital data and voter rolls from Fulton County, marked what experts described as a significant escalation in President Donald Trump’s breaking of democratic norms.
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The long view
Hybrid Risks Rise as U.S. Withdraws from International Organizations
The United States’ decision to withdraw from many international organizations risks allowing Beijing and Moscow to further advance their undermining of global stability.
The Legacy of the Arab Spring, to Date
The Arab Spring did not simply unsettle Arab regimes. It disrupted an entire geopolitical equilibrium that had been quietly accepted for decades. What appeared at first as a series of domestic uprisings ultimately rewired regional alignments, altered great-power postures, normalized intervention, and reshaped how instability itself is managed and exploited.
Bookshelf: Why the U.S. Failed to Contain North Korea’s Nuclear Threat
Joel Wit’s new book details the failure of the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations to contain and limit North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Wit writes that Trump had an opportunity to roll back the North Korean program, but Trump’s personal characteristics and governing style doomed the effort. Wit credits Trump’s unorthodox approach for setting the stage for the unprecedented Hanoi summit withKim Jong Un, but blames his short attention span – John Bolton said that Trump “has the attention span of a fruit fly” — for its breakdown. “The president couldn’t sit still long enough to close the deal,” Wit writes.
Small Modular Reactors and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are widely heralded as the next major leap in civilian nuclear energy. Beneath this optimism, however, lies a growing unease within the nuclear policy community relating to the nuclear weapons proliferation and safeguards challenges that SMRs pose to the existing global nuclear governance system.
“DeepSeek Is in the Driver’s Seat. That’s a Big Security Problem”
Democratic countries have a smart-car problem. For those that don’t act quickly and decisively, it’s about to become a severe national security headache.
Vaccine Myths That Won't Die and How to Counter Them—Part 1
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, has spent decades promoting vaccine skepticism. He has replaced scientists at different HHS such as CDC and NIH with vaccine skeptics and anti-vaccine activists. They have polluted the information environment with, and base their policy changes on, myths about the supposed risks of vaccines. Each of these myths has been studied extensively. Each has been refuted. And yet each persists, because misinformation travels faster than correction and because these myths tap into fears that are genuinely human.