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“Fight Until Victory”: Speakers & Guests Declare Full Support for Terrorism at “People’s Conference for Palestine”
The “People’s Conference for Palestine,” held in Detroit, MI on 24-26 May, offered insight into the strategies and goals of the most influential forces driving a movement that has gained increasingly widespread and mainstream support as the Israel-Hamas war has dragged on.
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Muslim Drift to Republican Party Stalls Amid Gaza Conflict
The war in Gaza is shaking Muslim Americans’ political loyalties ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November. Disenchanted by President Joe Biden’s embrace of Israel, many Democratic-leaning Muslims who once backed him are now vowing to withdraw their endorsement. But it’s not just Muslim Democrats abandoning their once-preferred candidate. Some Muslim Republicans are also wavering amidst their own party’s support of Israel.
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Election Monitors Nervously Practice for the ‘Big Dance in November’
Georgia’s May primary tested voter engagement groups and political parties. If the upcoming presidential election is like the championship game, consider last month’s primary in Georgia the scrimmage.
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Top Texas Election Official Acknowledges Threats to Ballot Secrecy
Soon after the November 2020 election, as former President Donald Trump and his allies promoted baseless theories that his reelection loss was caused by voting fraud, election-related public record requests increased. Lawmakers, responding to pressure from groups seeking more access to election records, passed House Bill 5180, allowing public access to those records just 61 days after election day. But rules and practices meant to promote transparency also create vulnerabilities for voters, lawmakers were told.
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The Alaska Supreme Court Takes Aerial Surveillance’s Threat to Privacy Seriously, Other Courts Should Too
In March, the Alaska Supreme Court held that the Alaska Constitution required law enforcement to obtain a warrant before photographing a private backyard from an aircraft. The government argued that the ubiquity of small aircrafts flying overhead in Alaska; the commercial availability of the camera and lens; and the availability of aerial footage of the land elsewhere, meant that Alaska residents did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy The Court divorced the ubiquity and availability of the technology from whether people would reasonably expect the government to use it to spy on them.
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Colorado Law Will Require Disclosure of AI-generated Content in Political Ads
A law going into effect in July in Colorado will place new regulations and penalties on using artificial intelligence to manipulate video or images and using them in political campaigns. The new law will require disclaimers on communications generated or substantially altered by AI which falsely depict what a candidate or elected official has said or done.
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Political Elites Take Advantage of Anti-Partisan Protests to Disrupt Politics
Protest movements that reject political parties have an unintended consequence: They empower savvy politicians, who channel them to shake up the status quo. The findings provide a framework for understanding recent global political realignments.
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European Tech Law Faces Test to Address Interference, Threats, and Disinformation in 2024 Elections
The European Union (EU) began implementing the Digital Services Act (DSA) this year, just in time to combat online disinformation and other electoral interference in the dozens of elections taking place in Europe’s twenty-seven member countries and the European Parliament elections taking place June 6 through June 9.
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America’s Third Founding: May 24, 1924, the Immigration Act of 1924
On May 24, 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signed the National Origins Quota Act, which imposed the first permanent cap on legal immigration. No law has so radically altered the demographics, economy, politics, and liberty of the United States and the world. It has massively reduced American population growth from immigrants and their descendants by hundreds of millions, diminishing economic growth and limiting the power and influence of this country.
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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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The long view
Luigi Mangione and the Making of a ‘Terrorist’
Discretion is crucial to the American tradition of criminal law, Jacob Ware and Ania Zolyniak write, noting that “lawmakers enact broader statutes to empower prosecutors to pursue justice while entrusting that they will stay within the confines of their authority and screen out the inevitable “absurd” cases that may arise.” Discretion is also vital to maintaining the legitimacy of the legal system. In the prosecution’s case against Luigi Mangione, they charge, “That discretion was abused.”
Are We Ready for a ‘DeepSeek for Bioweapons’?
Anthropic’s Claude 4 is a warning sign: AI that can help build bioweapons is coming, and could be widely available soon. Steven Adler writes that we need to be prepared for the consequences: “like a freely downloadable ‘DeepSeek for bioweapons,’ available across the internet, loadable to the computer of any amateur scientist who wishes to cause mass harm. With Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4 having finally triggered this level of safety risk, the clock is now ticking.”