• POLARIZATIONSocial Media Research Tool Lowers the Political Temperature

    By Sara Zaske

    Researchers created a method to downrank antidemocratic and highly partisan posts on X, reducing polarization while potentially giving users greater control over their feeds.The method reprioritizes social media posts, pushing those that breach democratic norms and use hostile partisan language lower in a feed.

  • ENERGY SECURITYTrump Has Always Hated Offshore Wind. Now He’s Moving to Kill It.

    By Tik Root

    The Department of Interior abruptly paused the leases for five of the nation’s largest proposed offshore wind projects last month. That effectively halts all ongoing offshore wind development in the United States.

  • IMMIGRATIONTrump Canceled Temporary Legal Status for More than 1.5M Immigrants in 2025

    By Ariana Figueroa

    Since Inauguration Day, more than 1.5 million immigrants have either lost or will lose their temporary legal status, including their work authorizations and deportation protections. It’s the most rapid loss in legal status for immigrants in recent United States history.

  • VENEZUELA OPERATIONVenezuela—Indictments, Invasions, and the Constitution’s Crumbling Guardrails

    By Clark Neily

    The Constitution’s limits on foreign affairs power do not vanish simply because courts decline to enforce them. They persist both as structural commitments and as warnings. The fact that impeachment and political accountability may be the only remaining checks on such actions is not a solution; it is an increasingly hazardous pathology that puts America at far greater risk than any single foreign despot could, even one as brutal and destructive as Nicolás Maduro.

  • COMMON-SENSE NOTES // By Idris B. OdunewuWhen Conquest Becomes Precedent: Ukraine, Venezuela, Taiwan, and the Collapse of Restraint

    Global security policymakers face a choice. They can treat norms as tools to be used selectively, or as foundations to be defended consistently. The first path offers short term flexibility. The second offers long term stability.

  • EXTREMISMWhy Are Some Black Conservatives Drawn to Nick Fuentes?

    By George Michael

    Far-right activist Nick Fuentes continues to gain momentum. As a scholar of the American right, I’ve been fascinated by one aspect of Fuentes’ rise: the way some Black podcast hosts and political influencers have been receptive to some of his views.

  • ELECTIONS Trump’s DOJ Offers States “Confidential” Deal to Wipe Voters Flagged by Feds as Ineligible

    By Jonathan Shorman

    Justice Department attorney says 11 states have shown a willingness to stop residents from voting at DOJ’s request.

  • IMMIGRTIONTrump Administration’s Immigrant Detention Policy Broadly Rejected by Federal Judges

    By Cassandra Burke Robertson

    In response to the Trump administration’s practice of rounding up and jailing immigrants without a hearing — a departure from fundamental constitutional protections — federal judges have systematically rejected the administration’s attempt to drastically expand who can be locked up without a hearing while awaiting deportation proceedings.

  • DEMOCRACY WATCHThe Rise of the Far-Right in Japan

    By Saman Ayesha Kidwai

    Sohei Kamiya’s far-right populist Sanseito captured 14 seats (in addition to a previously existing seat) in the July 2025 elections to the House of Councilors, the Upper House of the Japanese Diet. The Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, along with its defining policy approaches and worldview, has found resonance among certain sections of the electorate in Japan.

  • ELECTION SECURITYVoting by Mail Faces Uncertain Moment Ahead of Midterm Elections

    By Jonathan Shorman

    Across the United States, voting by mail faces a moment of uncertainty ahead of the midterm elections next year, as the U.S. Supreme Court could require all mail ballots to arrive by Election Day.

  • EXTRAJUDICIAL KILLINGThe President Should Not Have a License to Kill

    By David J. Bier

    The administration claims that the “war” on drugs justifies extrajudicial killing. But redefining civilian drug criminals as “combatants” gives away the reality: the government just militarized what was a low-level criminal law enforcement incident outside the United States. Once we consider the victims’ alleged illegal actions, we can see that the government committed the most egregious crime here.

  • DEMOCRACY WATCHLabeling Dissent as Terrorism: New U.S. Domestic Terrorism Priorities Raise Constitutional Alarms

    By Melinda Haas

    There is no single official definition of terrorism in U.S. law, but all the different definitions focus on identifying violent or dangerous acts done with the intent to intimidate or coerce civilians or influence government policy. But more than redefining terrorism,National Security Presidential Memorandum/NSPM-7, issued on 2 September 2025 (NSPM-7) reorients the machinery of national security toward the policing of belief. The directive’s emphasis on ideological orientations –“anti-Christianity, “anti-capitalism,” and “anti-American” views –as indicators of domestic terrorism potentially jeopardizes First Amendment rights.

  • THE AMERICASPardoning Hernández—Where’s the Logic?

    By Walter Olson

    The presidential pardon power can serve real and legitimate purposes, and Trump himself has used it in some deserving cases. But history will long remember his use of it to free political allies and persons who have benefited his cronies and family.

  • DEPORTATIONS5% of People Detained by ICE Have Violent Convictions, 73% No Convictions

    By David J. Bier

    President Trump’s deportation agenda does not match the campaign promises that he made – he said he would focus on deporting “the worst of the worse” – nor the rhetoric from his officials. The opposite is the case: for example, 73 percent of people booked into ICE custody this fiscal year had no criminal conviction. Of the small number of those convicted of a crime, the majority had vice, immigration, or traffic convictions. The problem: the diversion of effort and resources to find and deport noncriminal undocumented migrants has reduced the ability of DHS and the FBI to pursue investigations into terrorist financing; child exploitation and human trafficking; and drug and gun crimes.

  • DEMOCRCY WATCHWhen Presidents Target Congress

    By Patrick G. Eddington

    President Trump reacted to the calls of six members of Congress for military personnel to refuse to carry out unlawful orders by claiming those six federal legislators had engaged in “seditious behavior, punishable by death.” But Congress has explicit constitutional authority over the military. For lawmakers to remind military personnel of their obligations under the Uniform Code of Military Justice is prospective oversight communication about congressionally mandated legal requirements. Indeed, there’s an argument to be made that any attempt by FBI personnel to interview, much less investigate, those six congressional members for their speech would itself constitute a violation of the speech and debate clause.