• Trump’s National Guard Deployments Reignite 200-Year-Old Legal Debate Over State vs. Federal Power

    If you’re confused about what the law does and doesn’t allow the president to do with the National Guard, that’s understandable. The conflict between the Trump administration and states such as Oregon and Illinois throws into relief a question as old as the Constitution itself: Where does federal power end and state authority begin?

  • Unfettered and Unaccountable: How Trump is Building a Violent, Shadowy Federal Police Force

    Under President Donald Trump’s deportation mission, ICE officers are using force to detain and jail immigrants. The administration gutted guardrails and offices meant to rein in abusive actions. Some families say they have no idea where their loved ones were jailed after immigration raids.

  • Global Risk Index for AI-enabled Biological Tools

    Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the life sciences, accelerating breakthroughs in research, drug discovery and biotechnology. However, some of the AI tools that drive innovation can also be misused, posing significant dual-use risks.

  • FBI Director Kash Patel Waived Polygraph Security Screening for Dan Bongino, Two Other Senior Staff

    As the FBI’s deputy director, Bongino receives some of the country’s most sensitive secrets, including the President’s Daily Brief. His ascent to that position without passing a standard bureau background check is unprecedented, insiders say.

  • Online Mobilization and Violence in the United States

    Even before the Charlie Kirk assassination, the United States was facing a resurgence of politically motivated violence that is deeply intertwined with the digital sphere. Extremists across the ideological spectrum exploit acts of violence to recruit followers, justify their ideologies, and sustain propaganda networks.

  • What Really Happened in Portland Before Trump Deployed the National Guard

    President Donald Trump said there was a need to deploy National Guard troops to “War ravaged” Portland to protect “under-siege” ICE agents. The president’s claims were divorced from the reality on the ground. In the two months before Trump’s decision, criminal charges were announced against only three people. On nights when physical conflict did erupt, it often came from police firing on, shoving, pepper-spraying, and tackling protesters.

  • Mass Shootings in Michigan, North Carolina Paint Complicated Portrait of Military Veterans, Experts Say

    Two separate mass shootings —one at a Michigan church and the other at a North Carolina bar —involved suspects who were reportedly Iraq War veterans. The two incidents aren’t necessarily emblematic of a trend among military veterans, says James Alan Fox, a Northeastern University criminologist.

  • Williamson v. United States Brief: Ten Months of Warrantless Video Surveillance Violates the Fourth Amendment

    In October 2018, law enforcement, without a warrant, surreptitiously installed two video cameras near the top of utility poles to surveil Rolando Williamson’s home.The Eleventh Circuit reasoned that the police did not require a warrant because only parts of Williamson’s home and yard were visible from the alleyway. Cato Institute filed an amicus brief supporting Williamson, arguing that partial exposure does not automatically extinguish Fourth Amendment protections.

  • An Analysis by The Trace of 150 U.S. Cities Shows One of the Greatest Drops in Gun Violence — Ever

    Gun violence is trending downward for more than three quarters of cities with the most shootings, according to a new analysis by The Trace’s Gun Violence Data Hub. The downward trend cuts across red and blue cities and states in every region of the country.

  • Young Adults Fear Mass Shootings but Don’t Necessarily Support Gun Control

    More than 60% of adults aged 18 to 29 worry that a mass shooting will impact their lives in some way. About 17% worry a lot. But when it comes to sentiments about gun control, the age group dubbed the “massacre generation” is deeply divided, new research shows.

  • There’s a Right to Record ICE Raids–and There’s No Blanket Immunity for Raiders

    DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and department spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin have repeatedly asserted that citizens have no right to photograph or video record ICE raids or identify the officers by name. This is not an accurate description of the state of the law, and it is dangerous to tell ICE agents that they have blanket immunity whatever they do. If the agents are hearing a persistent message from their higher ups of “you’re immune no matter what you do,” it’s up to the rest of us to disabuse them of that error.

  • Trump’s National Guard Deployments Raise Worries About State Sovereignty

    In two instances – Portland and Chicago – President Trump’s campaign to send the National Guard into Democratic-leaning cities he falsely describes as crime-ridden, has turned to out-of-state National Guard troops. Presidents who have federalized National Guard forces in the past, even against a governor’s will, have done so in response to a crisis in the troops’ home state. But the decision to send one state’s National Guard troops into a different state without the receiving governor’s consent is both extraordinary and unprecedented, experts on national security law.

  • Correctly Assessing Left-Wing Terrorism and Political Violence in the United States

    A recent CSIS report, making sweeping claims about a supposed rise in leftwing terrorism in the United States, risks feeding false narratives about political violence and polarization. Michael Jensen and Amy Cooter write that the evidence used to sound this alarm consists of just five plots and attacks, and that these five events not only “are doing a lot of heavy lifting” in the report, but that they are given “an unwarranted level of causal and predictive power.” This tiny sample “simply does not justify inducing panic with eye-popping headlines.”

  • UK Man Attempting to Make Firearms Using 3D Printer Guilty of Terrorism Offenses

    A man has been found guilty of various terrorism and firearms offenses after he was caught attempting to use a 3D-printer to make a sub-machine gun.

  • Trump Isn’t Sending Troops to Cities with Highest Crime Rates, Data Shows

    President Donald Trump has argued that he needs to deploy National Guard troops to support overwhelmed local law enforcement in cities he claims are “overrun” by crime. But an analysis of federal crime data shows that Trump’s deployments and proposed deployments have not focused on the nation’s most violent cities. Of the 10 cities with the highest violent-crime-rates, Trump has sent National Guard troops to just one: Memphis, Tennessee. Instead, the administration has focused on larger, Democratic-run cities in Democratic-led states where violent crime rates are lower than in many other major cities.