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Texas Election Officials Are Dealing with a Flood of Challenges to Voter Registrations
Conservative groups and individual activists have targeted tens of thousands of Texans over their eligibility. But state and federal protections are in place.
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Election Deniers Secretly Pushed Rule That Would Make It Easier to Delay Certification of Georgia’s Election Results
On Monday, the GOP-controlled State Election Board is poised to adopt the rule, which would potentially allow county officials, including one who secretly backed the rule, to throw the election results of the swing state into chaos this fall.
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Red Flag Gun Laws Under Fire
Laws meant to keep firearms away from unstable people are under attack by Second Amendment radicals. An investigation by The Trace and Rolling Stone exposes the ugly campaign to undermine a bipartisan compromise to stop mass shootings.
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Despite Recent Water Supply Improvement, More Cuts Expected for Colorado River, Feds Say
After Lake Mead hit an all-time low two years ago, the Colorado River’s water supply is in a much better position this summer, but it hasn’t improved enough to prevent further cuts this year.
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Foreign Actors Could Sow 'Chaos' in the 2024 Presidential Election, Cybersecurity Expert Says
In a tightly contested election, a “hack and leak” campaigns can be hugely “consequential” at the margins, says an expert.
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AI Disinformation: Lessons from the U.K. Election
The record-breaking 2024 figure of about 4 billion voters eligible to go to the polls across more than 60 countries coincided with the full-fledged arrival and widespread uptake of multimodal generative artificial intelligence (AI), which enables almost anyone to make fake images, videos and sound.
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A View from the CT Foxhole: William Braniff, Director, Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
The decade after 9/11 was largely about integrating our special operations community with our intelligence community. “The decade after the decade after 9/11, we started to really integrate our federal law enforcement efforts so that we could find, fix, finish, exploit, analyze, and prosecute here in the United States,” says William Braniff.
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What Is the Online Safety Act and Why Have Riots in the U.K. Reopened Debates About It?
Social media played a key role in the widespread coordination of riots in locations across the country. Online platforms have also served as a vehicle through which misinformation and hateful rhetoric has spread.
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Why Indonesia Moved Its Capital to a Jungle Hundreds of Miles Away, and more
· Why Indonesia Moved Its Capital to a Jungle Hundreds of Miles Away
The new city, Nusantara, comes as Jakarta continues to sink at a record pace· America’s Failed Approach to Iran Can’t Really Be Called a Strategy
For almost a decade, Washington has had an attitude toward Iran — unrelenting opposition and pressure — but not a strategy· NATO’s Weak Spot Against Russia Facing a Choice to Take Up Arms
The undefended Aland Islands in the Baltic Sea have long been a gap in Europe’s shield. Remilitarization could turn them into one of the West’s key defenses -
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China’s Overseas Police Stations: Global Concerns
As China has emerged as a great power, it has sought to augment its overseas presence through measures like the establishment of Confucius Institutes and military bases and access points worldwide. The setting up of overseas police stations is a recent development that has invited international scrutiny, sparking serious concerns regarding the breach of international norms and the erosion of host countries’ sovereignty.
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Colombia Isn’t Ready for a New Venezuelan Migration Wave, Plus Bukele’s Mano Dura Threats Won’t Fix the Economy
Petro has eroded Colombia’s institutions for managing migration since taking office in 2022, leaving Colombia ill-equipped to handle a new Venezuelan migration wave; Bukele’s mano dura tactics got results on crime, but won’t fix the economy.
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Protecting Our Elections Against Tech-Enabled Disinformation
Electoral administrators around the world are dealing with a radically changed democratic landscape. Concerns focus on the pervasive presence of disinformation and false narratives, the rise of new technologies such as generative artificial intelligence, occasional madcap conspiracy theories, threats to electoral workers, and the need to maintain citizens’ confidence in electoral outcomes.
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How the Marshall Fire Sparked a Political Transformation in Colorado
After the fire destroyed his town in 2021, a state rep took on insurance companies, mortgage lenders, and landlords — and beat them all.
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Study Highlights Challenges in Detecting Violent Speech Aimed at Asian Communities
A study of language detection software found that algorithms struggle to differentiate anti-Asian violence-provoking speech from general hate speech. Left unchecked, threats of violence online can go unnoticed and turn into real-world attacks.
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Election Deniers Continue Attempts to Meddle with Certification – But the Process Is Resilient
Georgia’s State Election Board made it easier to delay certification, but disputes do not mean problems with the election.
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The long view
Kinetic Operations Bring Authoritarian Violence to Democratic Streets
Foreign interference in democracies has a multifaceted toolkit. In addition to information manipulation, the tactical tools authoritarian actors use to undermine democracy include cyber operations, economic coercion, malign finance, and civil society subversion.
Patriots’ Day: How Far-Right Groups Hijack History and Patriotic Symbols to Advance Their Cause, According to an Expert on Extremism
Extremist groups have attempted to change the meaning of freedom and liberty embedded in Patriots’ Day — a commemoration of the battles of Lexington and Concord – to serve their far-right rhetoric, recruitment, and radicalization. Understanding how patriotic symbols can be exploited offers important insights into how historical narratives may be manipulated, potentially leading to harmful consequences in American society.
Trump Aims to Shut Down State Climate Policies
President Donald Trump has launched an all-out legal attack on states’ authority to set climate change policy. Climate-focused state leaders say his administration has no legal basis to unravel their efforts.
Vaccine Integrity Project Says New FDA Rules on COVID-19 Vaccines Show Lack of Consensus, Clarity
Sidestepping both the FDA’s own Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee and the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), two Trump-appointed FDA leaders penned an opinion piece in the New England Journal of Medicine to announce new, more restrictive, COVID-19 vaccine recommendations. Critics say that not seeking broad input into the new policy, which would help FDA to understand its implications, feasibility, and the potential for unintended consequences, amounts to policy by proclamation.
Twenty-One Things That Are True in Los Angeles
To understand the dangers inherent in deploying the California National Guard – over the strenuous objections of the California governor – and active-duty Marines to deal with anti-ICE protesters, we should remind ourselves of a few elementary truths, writes Benjamin Wittes. Among these truths: “Not all lawful exercises of authority are wise, prudent, or smart”; “Not all crimes require a federal response”; “Avoiding tragic and unnecessary confrontations is generally desirable”; and “It is thus unwise, imprudent, and stupid to take actions for performative reasons that one might reasonably anticipate would increase the risks of such confrontations.”
Luigi Mangione and the Making of a ‘Terrorist’
Discretion is crucial to the American tradition of criminal law, Jacob Ware and Ania Zolyniak write, noting that “lawmakers enact broader statutes to empower prosecutors to pursue justice while entrusting that they will stay within the confines of their authority and screen out the inevitable “absurd” cases that may arise.” Discretion is also vital to maintaining the legitimacy of the legal system. In the prosecution’s case against Luigi Mangione, they charge, “That discretion was abused.”