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Within Hours of Appeal, Supreme Court Stays Appellate Ruling on Texas Border Bill
Within hours of a federal appeals court decision Monday allowing a new Texas law to stand that makes illegal entry into the state from a foreign nation a state crime, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito stayed the appellate court’s decision. Alito’s ruling prevents the law from going into effect on March 5, as originally intended, or on March 11, as the Fifth Circuit ruled unless the Supreme Court intervened.
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The Crisis at the Border: A Primer for Confused Americans
The volume of migrants arriving at the border without prior authorization—a historic high of 3.2 million encounters in fiscal year 2023—is indeed record-breaking. Migrants now hail from a greater diversity of countries than in the past and consist of more families and children.
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U.S. Lobbyists Drop Chinese Clients Amid Tightened Scrutiny
Lobbying firms in Washington are reportedly rushing to drop clients from China as lawmakers look to tighten scrutiny. The push comes in the wake of a surge in Chinese lobbying in recent years and growing concerns about China’s influence. Legislators aim to prevent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) from using gray areas to secretly advance policy agendas that harm the interests of the American people.
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Appeals Court Reverses Order Blocking Texas Immigration Law, Setting Up Supreme Court Showdown
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals late Saturday reversed a lower court’s ruling that halted a new state law allowing Texas police to arrest people suspected of crossing the Texas-Mexico border illegally. If the U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t intervene in the coming days, the law making illegal entry a state crime could go into effect this weekend.
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Federal Judge Blocks Texas Law Allowing Police to Arrest Migrants Suspected of Being in Country Illegally
Senate Bill 4 was Texas’ latest attempt to deter people from crossing the Texas-Mexico border amid a surge in migration. SB 4 was scheduled to take effect Tuesday. “SB 4 threatens the fundamental notion that the United States must regulate immigration with one voice,” Judge David Ezra wrote.
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New York Appeals Court Strikes Down Law Allowing Non-Citizens to Vote
The law, pushed through the Democratic-controlled Legislature last year, was expected to add another 800,000 new eligible voters in New York City, which has a population of nearly 8.5 million. “As there is no reference to noncitizens, and thus, an irrefutable inference applies that noncitizens were intended to be excluded from those individuals entitled to vote in elections,” the court said.
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Top Lawmaker Warns U.S. 'Less Prepared' for Election Meddling
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner said that the prevalence of artificial intelligence could also make Russia’s interference with the 2016 presidential election look “like child’s play.”
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Berkeley K-12 Schools Accused of "Severe and Persistent" Antisemitic Bullying
A complaint filed with the Department of Education charges that the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) for failing to take action to end nonstop bullying and harassment of Jewish students by peers and teachers since Oct. 7. According to the complaint, Berkeley administrators have ignored parent reports and knowingly allowed its K-12 schools to become hostile environments for Jewish and Israeli students.
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Farrakhan Responds to Israel-Hamas War with Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories
The Nation of Islam (NOI) held its annual Saviours’ Day conference at the Huntington Place convention center in Detroit, Michigan, on February 22–25. As in years past, the event featured significant antisemitism, including from longtime NOI leader and keynote speaker Louis Farrakhan.
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Tucker Carlson, Vladimir Putin and the Pernicious Myth of the Free Market of Ideas
The so-called free market of ideas asserts that if we encourage all points of view into the digital town square and let them thrash it out according to the natural laws of competition, good ideas will flourish, and bad ones will sink. The wrongheadedness of this idea needs to be called out.
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Lifting of Federal Funding Ban Tied to Increase in Gun Violence Research
The lifting of a two-decade drought in federal funding for firearm injury prevention research was strongly associated with an increase in both clinical trials and publications on gun violence, according to a new report.
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Ongoing Conspiracies Pushed Out the Elections Staff in This Texas County. The New Director Won’t Budge.
Jim Riley, who took the job as elections administrator in Gillespie County more than a year after the entire staff there quit, says he won’t give in to demands from voter fraud activists who want to ditch electronic voting equipment and hand count ballots.
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Shoring Up Ports to Withstand Cyberattacks
There are more than 300 ports in the United States, employing an estimated 31 million Americans, and contributing about $5.4 trillion to the country’s economy The White House is moving forward with reforms aimed at shoring up cybersecurity at U.S. ports, some of which may already be in danger of falling under the sway of hackers linked to China.
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AI and Election Integrity
We don’t yet know the full impact of artificial intelligence-generated deepfake videos on misinforming the electorate. And it may be the narrative around them — rather than the deepfakes themselves — that most undermines election integrity.
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Compulsory Voting Can Reduce Political Polarization in the U.S.: Study
Introducing compulsory voting in the United States and other majoritarian democracies, with meaningful and enforceable penalties for abstention, has the potential to reduce political polarization and protect democratic institutions from anti-democratic threats, according to a groundbreaking paper.
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More headlines
The long view
The True Dangers of Long Trains
Trains are getting longer. Rail companies had recently adopted a moneymaking strategy to move cargo faster than ever, with fewer workers, on trains that are consistently longer than at any time in history. Railroads are getting richer, but these “monster trains” are jumping off of tracks across America and regulators are doing little to curb the risk.
New Report Card to Assess, Rank Campus Responses to Antisemitism
In the face of growing antisemitism across U.S. college campuses, ADL announced that it is developing a new tool to evaluate the climate of antisemitism on individual campuses. The ADL will create comparative evaluation of how leading colleges and universities are responding to the surge of antisemitism and protecting their Jewish students.
Truth Decay and National Security
The line between fact and opinion in public discourse has been eroding, and with it the public’s ability to have arguments and find common ground based in fact. Two core drivers of Truth Decay are political polarization and the spread of misinformation—and these are particularly intertwined in the national security arena. Exposure to misinformation leads to increased polarization, and increased polarization decreases the impact of factual information. Individuals, institutions, and the nation as a whole are vulnerable to this vicious cycle.