Laws and regulations

Venezuela’s Attempts to Interfere in the September Guyana Election
Venezuela has long disputed Guyana’s claim to the sparsely populated Essequibo region, recognized by the international community as being part of Guinea. Venezuela has now extended its interference in Guyanese domestic affairs by seemingly supporting the candidacy of the colorful, and controversial, candidate Azruddin Mohamed, who is under U.S. sanctions for gold smuggling and corruption.
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Backgrounder: Guyana’s Forthcoming Election
Guyana is a small country –population of only 831,000 –but rich in recently discovered oil reserves, reserves estimated to hold the equivalent of 11 billion barrels. On 1 September the country will hold a national and regional election.
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Turnover Among Election Officials Reaches New High: Report
Election officials turned over at the highest rate in at least a quarter century during the last presidential election. Nearly 40 percent of election officials administering the 2024 election weren’t around in 2020.
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President Trump’s War on “Woke AI” Is a Civil Liberties Nightmare
The White House’s recently-unveiled “AI Action Plan” wages war on so-called “woke AI”—including large language models (LLMs) that provide information inconsistent with the administration’s views on climate change, gender, and other issues. The plan would force developers to roll back efforts to reduce biases—making the models much less accurate, and far more likely to cause harm, especially in the hands of the government.
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Dems Oppose Trump's Bid to End Mail-in Ballots, Voting Machines
More than 99 million Americans voted by mail in the 2024 General Election, according to the United States Postal Service. There is no evidence that either mail-in ballots or direct-recording electronic (DRE) machines –where voters cast ballots completely electronically –have enabled widespread voter fraud.
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Trump Wants States to Feed Voter Info into Powerful Citizenship Data ProgramElection
Republicans are laser-focused on purging noncitizens from voter rolls. Critics of the effort fear President Donald Trump wants to build a federal database of voters to target political opponents or cherry-pick the vanishingly rare examples of noncitizen voters to fuel a sense of crisis.
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The CDC Shooting Was a Matter of Time, Health Experts Say
“A lot of the current political rhetoric is not a good-faith discussion or debate, but outright labeling of other humans as somehow evil and not worthy of walking the earth,” says Dr. Megan Ranney, dean of the Yale School of Public Health. In a conversation with The Trace, she notes that “It is almost inevitable that when you combine evil rhetoric with isolation, lack of support for physical and mental health, and lack of ability to temporarily remove a firearm from someone who has the intent to kill, that we’re gonna end up with tragedies.”
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One in Five ICE Arrests Are Latinos on the Streets with No Criminal Past or Removal Order
Illegal profiling accounts for a substantial portion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests in 2025. Mass deportation is a socially and economically damaging goal regardless, but it’s certainly not a goal for which we should sacrifice a sliver of our liberty or the Constitution. Only time will tell whether ICE and Border Patrol can continue to get away with these tactics.
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Justice Department Demand for State Voter Lists Underscores Their Importance
DOJ is demanding that states turn over their voter registration lists and other election information, citing unspecified concerns with voter list maintenance. Power over voter registration lists is the power to shape the electorate.
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Denying Quorum Has Been a Texas Political Strategy Since 1870
While the Democrats could technically derail the GOP’s redistricting map, such efforts have been largely symbolic and had limited success blocking past legislation, experts say.
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How Special Interests Keep Bad Laws on the Books: The Case of the Jones Act
The 1920 Jones Act restricts intra-U.S. water transport to vessels that are U.S.-flagged, U.S.-owned, and built in U.S. shipyards The law serves as a tribute to how entrenched interests can hijack public policy and make the repeal of failed, costly laws among the heaviest of political lifts.
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Partisan Hostility, Not Just Policy, Drives U.S. Protests
Partisan animosity is a powerful driver of protest participation—sometimes nearly matching or even exceeding concern about the actual issues.
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Texas Senate Once Again Tries to Give the Attorney General Authority to Prosecute Election Crimes
A similar proposal stalled out earlier this year over disagreements between the House and Senate. This time, lawmakers might clash over whether to approve the new bill along with a constitutional amendment.
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DOJ Plans to Ask All States for Detailed Voting Info
The US Department of Justice has told secretaries of state group it will expand its outreach.
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Feds Move to Eliminate Petrochemical Watchdog, Putting Texans and Others at Risk
Amid increasingly intense weather, the Chemical Safety Board is the lone independent agency watching over the Gulf Coast’s petrochemical corridor.
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