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U.S. Justice Department Disbands Team Investigating Foreign Election Interference
DOJ is disbanding the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), established in 2017 to investigate efforts by state actors, such as Russia and China, to influence U.S. public opinion, particularly around elections. Trump has been highly critical of efforts by law enforcement to identify and root out foreign interference in U.S. elections, especially after a report by special counsel Robert Mueller and a bipartisan report of the Senate Intelligence Committee found extensive evidence that Russian influence operations had been mounted to benefit Trump’s candidacy during the 2016 presidential election.
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Blue States Fear Invasion by Red-State National Guard Troops for Deportations
There’s an emerging blue-state nightmare: Inspired by President Donald Trump’s call to round up immigrants who are in the country illegally, Republican governors would send their National Guard troops into Democratic-led states without those leaders’ permission.
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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.
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Houston Man Pardoned by Trump Arrested on Child Sex Charge
Andrew Taake received a six-year sentence for assaulting officers on Jan. 6. He was arrested Thursday on an outstanding charge of soliciting a minor. Harris County District Attorney’s office had faxed a copy of Taake’s outstanding warrant to the Federal Bureau of Prisons five days before he was pardoned, but the Bureau ignored it.
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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.”
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FBI Agents Sue DOJ, Allege Retaliation Over Jan. 6 Cases
FBI agents involved in the Jan. 6 Capital riot investigations have filed lawsuits against the Justice Department, challenging its efforts to survey and identify personnel who participated in high-profile inquiries such as the riot and handling of classified documents at Mar-a-logo.
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Diseased Illegal Immigrants Aren’t “Invading” the United States
My research at the Cato Institute on crime and terrorism committed by illegal immigrants conclusively shows that they commit less crime than native-born Americans and have murdered zero people in domestic attacks since 1975. We also fond no statistically significant relationship between the size of the immigrant population, the illegal immigrant population, or the legal immigrant population and the spread of serious communicable diseases.
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What We Learned from Analyzing 10 Years of Shooting Data
A Trace series challenges what many people might think about gun violence in America. Here is one of the highlights: You’re more likely to be shot in the rural South than in big cities like Chicago.
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A Disaster Expert Explains Why the L.A. Fires Have Been So Catastrophic
As we’re seeing more and more disaster events, it raises questions about risk and whether insurers are going to keep insuring homes in the long run. Increasingly, it seems the answer is no.
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A Wagner Mercenary Who Crossed U.S.-Mexican Border Was Honored in Russia Weeks Before Arrest
A self-confessed veteran of Russia’s Wagner paramilitary group arrested for crossing into the United States from Mexico appears to have been honored as a combat veteran weeks earlier by an organization established by Russian President Valdimir Putin.
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How Many People Were Killed by the Pandemic Surge in Shootings?
In a new analysis, The Trace figured out the number of people who might have lived if gun violence had remained at its 2019 level.
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Nippon Steel and the “National Security” Hoax
The locking by President Joe Biden Nippon Steel’s proposed acquisition of US Steel risks damaging the US investment review process; US-Japan relations; the US position as a welcoming place for foreign investment; nations’ general rule against using “national security” as a guise for political favoritism and economic protectionism; and the US economy itself.
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Here Are the U.S. Immigration Terms to Know
The U.S. immigration system is complex, consisting of various laws, policies, and programs. Here’s what to know about immigration under a second Trump administration.
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“Anything we can do to help”: This Texas County Is Poised to Play a Key Role in Deportations
As Trump moves closer to reclaiming residency at the White House on Jan. 20, the vast Texas acreage at the edge of the Rio Grande promises to become a centerpiece of the get-tough immigration policies he plans to unfurl under recently named “border czar” Tom Homan. Impoverished Starr County might be the site of a new federal deportation center.
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Trump Wants to Use the Alien Enemies Act to Deport Immigrants – but the 18th-century Law Has Been Invoked Only During Times of War
President-elect Donald Trump often said during the 2024 presidential campaign that he planned to use an obscure 18th-century law called the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to carry out the nation’s largest-ever mass deportation operation ever. Why bother dusting off a 226-year-old law? Because the law lets presidents bypass immigration courts.
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The long view
History is repeating itself at the FBI as Agents Resist a Director’s Political Agenda
President Trump has installed loyalists to head the DOJ and FBI – loyalists who are determined to use the organizations they lead to advance the president’s political interests. In the past 50 years, the FBI has had only one other director as overtly – if not as unabashedly — political as Kash Patel: L. Patrick Gray, who served for a year under President Richard Nixon. Gray was held accountable after he tried to help Nixon end the FBI’s Watergate investigation. Whether Kash Patel has more staying power is unclear.
Trump’s Deployment of the National Guard to Fight Crime Blurs the Legal Distinction Between the Police and the Military
The deployment of National Guard troops for routine crime fighting in cities such as Los Angeles and Washington, and Chicago, and the proposed deployment of those troops to Baltimore, highlights the erosion of both practical and philosophical constraints on the president and the vast federal power the president wields.