The Conversation

The president’s and the defense secretary’s campaign-like pair of bombastic speeches to hundreds of generals summoned to Quantico, Va., signals an escalation in the administration’s embrace of a militaristic mindset that, as long ago as 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against in his farewell address, and that the nation’s founders deliberately aimed to constrain.

An AI-generated image of Charlie Kirk embracing Jesus. Another of Kirk posing with angel wings and halo. Then there’s the one of Kirk standing with George Floyd at the gates of heaven. When prominent political or cultural figures die in the U.S., the remembrance of their life often veers into hagiography. And that’s what’s been happening since the gruesome killing of conservative activist and Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk.

Bruce Springsteen’s1975 “Born to Run” album was shaped by the times, particularly the malaise of the post-Vietnam and post-Watergate American landscape. There was an energy crisis, and it wasn’t only oil that was in short supply. These lyrical, operatic songs about freedom and fate, triumph and tragedy, still resonate, even though today’s music is more likely to emphasize beats, samples and software than extended guitar and saxophone solos.

At the Department of Justice, a “Weaponization Working Group” has a long list of Trump’s perceived enemies to investigate. It marks the first time since J. Edgar Hoover’s 48-year reign as FBI director that the FBI has targeted massive numbers of people perceived to be political enemies. The recent statements from both Trump and top aide Miller suggest the FBI’s independence, and broader constitutional requirements that the administration remain faithful to the law, are meaningless to them. They suggest that, like Hoover, they would criminalize dissent.

Justices affiliated with the Federalist Society will advance the conservative legal agenda decades into the future. The Federalist Society’s educational mission is pursued chiefly in law schools. That’s where it trains the next generation of lawyers in the approaches and goals of the conservative legal movement. This includes promoting the judicial philosophy of originalism – the idea that the best way to interpret the U.S. Constitution is according to how it was understood at the time of its adoption.

Trump congratulated himself, for turning the US into the “hottest country anywhere in the world” for repelling a “colossal invasion” of migrants at America’s southern border and for ending seven wars – for which he repeated his line that he should have been given the Nobel peace prize.

Use of digital technology to safeguard Holocaust memories for future generations is symptomatic of a global shift towards digitising the Holocaust as the survivor generation passes on and heritage sites decay over time. While the virtual site digitally preserves and encourages historically rooted depictions of the camp, it cannot ensure ethical engagement with the Holocaust. In fact, its creation only raises further issues about the extent to which the Holocaust’s digitisation goes hand-in-hand with ethical modes of remembrance and representation.

For Generation Z, born between 1997 and 2012, social media – especially YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat – has become their source of information about the world, eclipsing traditional news outlets. In a survey of more than 1,000 young people ages 13 to 18, 8 in 10 said they encounter conspiracy theories in their social media feeds each week, yet only 39% reported receiving instruction in evaluating the claims they saw there. The Civic Online Reasoning program was built to address this gap.

When more than 1,300 people at the U.S. State Department lost their jobs in a mass firing this summer, most headlines focused on what it meant for American diplomacy. But the layoffs are about more than embassies and foreign policy – they could also make it harder for U.S. companies to compete in global markets.

Most domestic terrorists in the U.S. are politically on the right, and right-wing attacks account for the vast majority of fatalities from domestic terrorism. During the 2024 election cycle, nearly half of all states reported threats against election workers, including social media death threats, intimidation and doxing. Domestic violent extremism is defined by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security as violence or credible threats of violence intended to influence government policy or intimidate civilians for political or ideological purposes.

Rupert Murdoch has succeeded in securing his vision for the future of News Corporation, the global media empire he has always thought of as his family business. To achieve this, he has torn apart his family. He has also ensured his media outlets, especially Fox News, remain committed to his hard right-wing views. Rupert’s chosen successor and elder son Lachlan has headed News Corporation and Fox Corporation since Murdoch stepped aside in 2023, and will inherit the empire.

A large part of Kirk’s political activism centered on what education should look like. Conservatives, well before Kirk’s time, have been trying to reclaim education from liberals whom they view as valuing equity and belonging instead of timeless values of order and traditional values in society. This philosophy overall focuses on reclaiming education from liberals.

The seven Colorado Basin states have been grappling with how to deal with declining Colorado River supplies for a quarter century, revising usage guidelines and taking additional measures as drought has persisted and reservoir levels have continued to decline. The current guidelines will expire in late 2026, and talks on new guidelines have been stalled because the states can’t agree on how to avoid a future crisis.

Figures from a classified Israeli military intelligence database, reported recently by the Guardian, indicate that 83% of the Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza as of May have been civilians. Israel’s own military data also now shows that Israeli officials have both overstated the number of militants they say have been killed and, by implication, the ratio of civilian to militant deaths.

Israel launched an unprecedented airstrike on the Qatari capital of Doha on September 9, the first time it has directly attacked a Gulf state. The Qatari government said it “strongly condemns the cowardly Israeli attack”, which it described as “a blatant violation of international law”. The Netanyahu government has now decided that its regional objectives will be pursued through “decapitation”.

The U.S. government is justifying its lethal destruction of a boat suspected of transporting illegal drugs in the Caribbean as an attack on “narco-terrorists.” To an expert on international law, that line of argument goes nowhere. Even if, as the U.S. claims, the 11 people killed in the Sept. 2, 2025, U.S. Naval strike were members of the Tren de Aragua gang, it would make no difference under the laws that govern the use of force by state actors. Unlawful killing is unlawful regardless of who does it, why, or the reaction to it. And in regard to the U.S. strike on the alleged Venezuelan drug boat, the deaths were unlawful.

Statistics Canada reports that Canadian trips to the U.S. are down by 28.7 per cent from last year. Left-wing and right-wing people are participating in the boycott of American products. There are no ideological differences in participation in Canada and France. However, in the U.K., those on the right are more likely to boycott American products, services and travel than those on the left.

Despite two centuries of evolution, the structure of a modern military staff would be recognizable to Napoleon. At the same time, military organizations have struggled to incorporate new technologies as they adapt to new domains – air, space and information – in modern war. AI agents – autonomous, goal-oriented software powered by large language models – can automate routine staff tasks, compress decision timelines and enable smaller, more resilient command posts. They can shrink the staff while also making it more effective.

AI slop is low- to mid-quality content – video, images, audio, text or a mix – created with AI tools, often with little regard for accuracy. It’s fast, easy and inexpensive to make this content. AI slop producers typically place it on social media to exploit the economics of attention on the internet, displacing higher-quality material that could be more helpful. AI slop has been increasing over the past few years. As the term “slop” indicates, that’s generally not good for people using the internet.

With the conflicts in Ukraine, south Asia, and the Middle East showing the limitations of more established European and Russian hardware, there are growing opportunities for Chinese weapons technology. It’s also likely that Chinese military systems will find customers among countries that are not on Donald Trump’s list of favoured nations, such as Iran. Should Iran be able to equip itself with Chinese systems, it will be better placed to go head-to-head with Israel.

Today’s sanctuary practices, and the federal targeting of sanctuary cities, are largely the result of the way sanctuary took shape across the U.S. in the 1980s when churches, city officials and activists assisted migrants fleeing the violent conditions created by U.S. proxy wars in Central America. To a large extent, this was the result of the Reagan administration’s refusal to acknowledge the extent of human rights violations perpetrated by U.S.-supported regimes in Central America.

Australia will recognise a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly meeting in September, joining the United Kingdom, Canada and France in taking the historic step. The Israeli government has ruled out a two-state solution and reacted with fury to the moves by the four G20 members to recognise Palestine. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the decision “shameful”. Practically speaking, the formation of a future Palestinian state consisting of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem will be difficult to achieve.

There is not much research on how white people think about what it means to be white. Meanwhile, popular and scholarly treatments of white Southerners as overwhelmingly conservative and racially regressive abound. Some white Southerners fit those tropes. Many others do not. Overall, white Southerners across the political spectrum actively grappling with their white racial status.

Mohammed Amer’s “Mo” provokes laughter and stirs deep emotions, including despair, loneliness and helplessness, as the episodes explore life in America for people on the margins. Mo is a semi-autobiographical depiction of Amer’s life. He’s a Palestinian who grew up in Houston, Texas, immigrating to that city when he was nine years old by way of Kuwait. The comedy-drama format allows Mo to address difficult and divisive issues, such as immigration in America and the Israel-Gaza war, in non-threatening ways.

National park visitation is growing, with record-high visitor numbers in 2024 across the entire 398-property system, as well as at the 63 formally designated national parks. And there has been a general trend of people gravitating to Instagram-popular parks, and even specific spots within popular parks. Reductions in federal funding and staffing at national parks means visitors may see longer lines to enter parks or popular locations within them, fewer visitor services and educational programs, and fewer rangers to ask for advice or assistance.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, which collates that data, accuses Israel of “engaging in the deadliest and most deliberate effort to kill and silence journalists” that the U.S.-based nonprofit has ever seen. “Palestinian journalists are being threatened, directly targeted and murdered by Israeli forces, and are arbitrarily detained and tortured in retaliation for their work,” the committee added. This history stretches back to at least 1967, when Israel militarily occupied the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip following the Six-Day War.

For decades, one name was ubiquitous in American evangelical homes: Focus on the Family. A media empire with millions of listeners and readers, its messages about parenting, marriage and politics seemed to reach every conservative Christian church and school. And one man’s name was nearly synonymous with Focus on the Family: James Dobson.

The American South – and the nation more broadly – continues to wrestle with how to remember its most painful chapters. Tourism is one of the arenas where that struggle is most visible. the impulse to monetize history isn’t new. More than 300 plantation sites across the country generate billions of dollars in revenue each year. This type of tourism forces communities and visitors alike to ask a difficult question: What parts of the past do Americans preserve, and for whom?

Specialists have estimated that the Eiffel Tower actually grows between 12 and 15 centimetres when comparing its size on cold winter days with the hottest days of summer. This means that, in addition to being a landmark, a communications tower and a symbol of Paris itself, the Eiffel Tower is also, in effect, a giant thermometer.

Beach vacations only became popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries as part of the lifestyle of the wealthy in Western countries. Early Europeans, and especially the ancient Greeks, thought the beach was a place of hardship and death. As a seafaring people, they mostly lived on the coastline, yet they feared the sea and thought that an agricultural lifestyle was safer and more respectable.

While it’s still too early to fully assess the long-term impact of the United States’ political shift when it comes to global cooperation on climate change, there are signs that a new set of leaders is rising to the occasion. China and the European Union issued a joint statement vowing to strengthen their climate targets and meet them. They alluded to the U.S., referring to “the fluid and turbulent international situation today” in saying that “the major economies … must step up efforts to address climate change.”

Despite promises of moderation and inclusion, four years later, the Taliban has established a repressive, exclusionary regime – one that has dismantled institutions of law, justice and civil rights with ruthless efficiency. As the Taliban regime has tightened its grip, international attention has waned. Crises elsewhere dominate the global agenda, pushing Afghanistan out of the spotlight. With the Taliban seeking to end its isolation and gain legitimacy, can the international community find the will now to exert real pressure?

Amin was the creator of a myth that was both manifestly untrue and extraordinarily compelling: that his violent, dysfunctional regime was actually engaged in freeing people from foreign oppressors. Even his cruelest policies were framed as if they were liberatory. In August 1972, Amin announced the summary expulsion of Uganda’s Asian community. Some 50,000 people, many of whom had lived in Uganda for generations, were given a bare three months to tie up their affairs and leave the country. Amin named this the “Economic War.”

The glacial flood risks that Juneau is now experiencing each summer are becoming a growing problem in communities around the world. These and other icy regions have provided freshwater for people living downstream for centuries – almost 2 billion people rely on glaciers today. But as glaciers melt faster, they also pose potentially lethal risks.

The federal spending law passed in early July 2025, often called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, significantly reduces federal funding for efforts to create renewable or sustainable types of fuel that can power aircraft over long distances while decreasing the damage aviation does to the global climate.

More than 500,000 Palestinians, one-fourth of Gaza’s population, are experiencing famine, the U.N. stated. And all 320,000 children under age 5 are “at risk of acute malnutrition, with serious lifelong physical and mental health consequences.” U.N. experts have accused Israel of using starvation “as a savage weapon of war and constitutes crime under international law.” Countries – including the United States and Canada – have used starvation to conquer Indigenous peoples and acquire their land.

When most people hear the word uranium, they think of mushroom clouds, Cold War standoffs or the glowing green rods from science fiction. But uranium isn’t just fuel for apocalyptic fears. It’s also a surprisingly common element that plays a crucial role in modern energy, medicine and geopolitics. Many headlines have mentioned Iran’s 60% enrichment of uranium, but what does that really mean?