• Mexico’s Lawsuit Against U.S. Gunmakers Has Cleared a Big Hurdle

    A federal law protects American gun manufacturers against most lawsuits, but an appeals court has allowed Mexico’s case to move forward. The Mexican government accusing America’s largest gunmakers of aiding and abetting the trafficking of weapons across the border.

  • Police Departments Are Turning to AI to Sift Through Millions of Hours of Unreviewed Body-Cam Footage

    Body camera video equivalent to 25 million copies of “Barbie” is collected but rarely reviewed. Some cities are looking to new technology to examine this stockpile of footage to identify problematic officers and patterns of behavior.

  • Why Treason Is a Key Topic in Trump’s 14th Amendment Appeal to the Supreme Court

    Someone who gives a weapon to a person knowing they intended to commit treason is a traitor, not an accessory to treason. Treason is treason, and a person either engages in treason or does not. In the Constitution’s Article III, and in the 14th Amendment, there are two ways a person can commit treason: by “levying war” – which in the 14th Amendment is replaced with “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” – or by giving “aid and comfort” to people determined to be “enemies” of the United States. The people Trump urged to march on the Capitol and said kind words to may have been enemies of democracy, but as American citizens, constitutionally speaking, they could not be enemies of the United States. Rather, they were insurrectionists, and the constitutional law of treason does not differentiate between supporting them and being among them.

  • Want to Solve the Border Crisis? Legalize Immigration

    Migrants aren’t the problem and the country is not “overwhelmed.” Nativist politicians and impossible barriers to legal entry caused (and maintain) the chaos. In other words, immigration restrictionists create the problems and then demand ever more restrictions to fix them.

  • U.S. Supreme Court Says Texas Can’t Block Federal Agents from the Border

    The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ordered Texas to allow federal border agents access to the state’s border with Mexico, where Texas officials have deployed miles of concertina wire. The high court’s order effectively maintains long-running precedent that the federal government — not individual states — has authority to enforce border security.

  • Germany Trains New Generation of Muslim Leaders

    In a groundbreaking move, Germany has begun training its own Muslim religious leaders, fostering a deeper connection with local communities. Muslim groups across the country are seeing change brought by a new generation.

  • In Eagle Pass, a Tense Border Standoff Between Texas and the Federal Government Is Reaching a Crescendo

    A park on the Rio Grande is the new focus of a long battle over border enforcement that’s reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Under federal law, the federal government has sole authority to enforce immigration laws — a power that’s been affirmed by Supreme Court decisions, but Gov. Greg Abbott, in the past three years, has convinced state lawmakers to spend more than $10 billion in an attempt to deter hundreds of thousands of migrants who have crossed the Rio Grande into Texas, many of whom are seeking asylum.

  • Fake News: Who's Better at Detecting it?

    More than 2 billion voters in 50 countries are set to go to the polls in 2024 — a record-breaking year for elections. But 2024 is also the year when artificial intelligence (AI) could flood our screens with fake news like never before. With the U.S. in election mode, a study finds Republicans are less likely to spot fake news than Democrats. Gender and education are important factors, too.

  • The Maths of Rightwing Populism: Easy Answers + Confidence = Reassuring Certainty

    Rightwing populists appear to be enjoying a surge across the Western world. For those who don’t support these parties, their appeal can be baffling and unsettling. They appear to play on people’s fears and offer somewhat trivial answers to difficult issues. The mathematics of human inference and cognition can help us understand what makes this a winning formula.

  • Tough New Immigration Rules Risk Empowering the Cartels

    It’s undeniable that in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, irregular migration—primarily from crisis-stricken countries in Latin America and the Caribbean—has reached unprecedented, unmanageable proportions. But it should be recognized that tight restrictions on asylum and parole will drive migration further underground, where criminal groups profit.

  • The Hidden Cost of Being Branded a Terrorist by the U.S. Government

    The FBI credits its Terror Watchlist with keeping the country safe, but critics point to the experience of thousands of innocent American Muslims who were swept up by a screening system, and then found themselves trapped in a Kafkaesque nightmare as they tried to clear their names. The watchlist currently contains nearly two million names, of which about 15,000 are U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

  • Could an Extremist Soon Head a German State Government?

    Björn Höcke, leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the eastern state of Thuringia, is aiming to take the reins in 2024. Analysts fear far-reaching consequences. Höcke has in the past marched alongside neo-Nazis. He criticized Germany’s efforts to atone for the Holocaust, saying that “These stupid politics of coming to grips with the past cripple us.” In the past five years, the AfD has become radicalized and is more aligned with Höcke’s extremist positions then the more moderate positions of other party leaders.

  • “Killer Robots” Are Coming, and UN Is Worried

    Long the stuff of science fiction, autonomous weapons systems, known as “killer robots,” are poised to become a reality, thanks to the rapid development of artificial intelligence. In response, international organizations have been intensifying calls for limits or even outright bans on their use. Human rights specialist lays out legal, ethical problems of military weapons systems that attack without human guidance.

  • Do Gun Regulations Equal Fewer Shootings? Lessons From New England

    Gun rights advocates often point to low rates of shootings in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont to argue that you don’t need strong gun laws to keep violence in check. Here’s what the data actually reveals.

  • 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.