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A Century Ago, Anti-Immigrant Backlash Almost Closed America’s Doors
Torn between “the American dream” and fears of an ungovernable “melting pot,” Americans have always viewed immigrants ambivalently. In 1924, as is true today, many citizens thought in terms of “good” immigration versus “bad” immigration. The Immigration Act of 1924 dramatically reduced immigration from eastern and southern Europe and practically barred it from Asia.
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The Supreme Court’s Ghost Gun Case Could Jeopardize Other Firearm Regulations
Legal experts say the ruling could expand Second Amendment protections to the gun industry, imperiling a host of laws governing the manufacture and sale of firearms.
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U.S.-China Trade War: Why Joe Biden Has Raised the Stakes
In a move to safeguard domestic industries and address unfair trade practices, the US president has quadrupled tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and raised levies on other green tech.
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It Is “Reasonable to Assess” that Israel’s Gaza Campaign Has Violated International Law: State Department
The State Department told Congress Friday that the administration has concluded it is “reasonable to assess” that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has violated international law, but that the department has not found specific instances which would justify the withholding of military aid.
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What Do Anti-Jewish Hate, Anti-Muslim Hate Have in Common?
Researchers scrutinize various facets of these types of bias, and note sometimes they both reside within the same person.
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Trump Promises to Deport All Undocumented Immigrants, Resurrecting a 1950s Strategy − but It Didn’t Work Then and Is Less Likely to Do So Now
Donald Trump said he would follow “the Eisenhower model” but on a much larger scale — referring to the 1954 “Operation Wetback” which aimed to deport hundreds of thousands of Mexicans. As an immigration scholar, I find Trump’s proposal to be both disturbing and misleading. Besides playing to unfounded and dehumanizing fears of an immigrant invasion, it misrepresents the context and impact of Eisenhower’s policy while ignoring the vastly changed landscape of U.S. immigration today.
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More Feelings of Misinformation, More News Avoidance
As people have more difficulty distinguishing fact from fiction in the United States, they are more likely to feel news fatigue and avoid news altogether, according to a new study. More than an unintentional avoidance because of lack of media exposure, the researchers say people actively avoid news.
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The Sources of Renewed National Dynamism
What does the historical record reveal about national recovery from long-term national decline? What factors distinguish cases of successful anticipatory renewal from those that fail? Is the United States entering a period of decline, and does it meet the preconditions for anticipatory renewal?
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In A Decade, Firearm Deaths Among Young Black People in Rural America Have Quadrupled
A new analysis of CDC data shows that gun fatality rates among Black children and teens in rural places are on par with cities, and are primarily driven by a rise in homicides.
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Lawmakers Call for Accountability Over Pro-Hamas Campus Violence
Pro-Hamas demonstrations on college campuses have become increasingly intense, and even violent in recent days, pushing lawmakers to call for a change. Senator Rick Scott (R-Florida) has, along with Tim Scott (R-S.C.), introduced the Stop Antisemitism on College Campuses Act, which would end federal funding for colleges and universities “that support, authorize, or facilitate events that promote antisemitism.”
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Banning TikTok Won’t Solve Social Media’s Foreign Influence, Teen Harm and Data Privacy Problems
Concerns about TikTok are not unfounded, but they are also not unique. Each threat posed by TikTok has also been posed by U.S.-based social media for over a decade. Lawmakers should take action to address harms caused by U.S. companies seeking profit as well as by foreign companies perpetrating espionage. Protecting Americans cannot be accomplished by banning a single app. To truly protect their constituents, lawmakers would need to enact broad, far-reaching regulation.
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The Right’s Bogus Claims about Noncitizen Voting Fraud
Bogus claims of widespread voter fraud, even when they do not stoke hatred and fear of the foreign‐born, are grossly irresponsible. They exacerbate polarization and malign honest election administrators. Most of all, they undermine public confidence in our election system. The more people believe elections are rigged, the more they are likely to turn their discontents in a direction other than electoral politics. Some will go the passive route of resignation, withdrawing from civic involvements, making themselves the perfect subjects for strongman rule. Others will turn to militia activity or outright violence. Either way, the consequences for the American experiment in liberal democratic self‐rule will be unfortunate.
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Cash-Strapped Election Offices Have Fewer Resources After Bans on Private Grants
Pushed by conservative activists over the last four years, 28 states have banned outside funding in elections over the past four years. These activists based their campaign on claims, rejected by the courts and federal regulators, that such private grants – for example, by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan — during the 2020 presidential election benefitted democratic voters.
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Transporting Hazardous Materials Across the Country Isn’t Easy − That’s Why There’s a Host of Regulations in Place
Transporting hazardous materials such as dangerous gases, poisons, harmful chemicals, corrosives and radioactive material across the country is risky. But because approximately 3 billion pounds of hazardous material needs to go from place to place in the U.S. each year, it’s unavoidable.
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Campus Antisemitism Surges Amid Encampments and Related Protests at Columbia and Other U.S. Colleges
College campuses have been the site of many tense anti-Israel protests and antisemitic incidents since the start of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war that began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023 terrorist attack. Anti-Zionist student groups on over a dozen U.S. college and university campuses have established “encampments” in recent days to ostensibly protest Israel’s actions in Gaza and their academic institutions’ alleged “complicity” in those actions.
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The long view
Sweden’s Deadliest Mass Shooting Highlights Global Reality of Gun Violence, Criminologist Says
“We in the United States don’t have a monopoly on mass shootings,” James Alan Fox says, “though we certainly have more than our share.”
Memory-Holing Jan. 6: What Happens When You Try to Make History Vanish?
The Trump administration’s decision to delete a DOJ database of cases against Capitol riot defendants places those who seek to preserve the historical record in direct opposition to their own government.