Commentary

In fast-moving crises, early official statements often become the scaffolding on which public judgment is built. Sometimes those statements turn out to be accurate. But sometimes they do not. When the public repeatedly experiences the same sequence – confident claims, partial disclosures, shifting explanations, delayed evidence, lies – the damage can outlast any single incident.

There is no question that ICE fits the definition of a paramilitary police force. It is a police force under the control of the federal government, through the Department of Homeland Security, and it is heavily militarized, having adopted the weaponry, organization, operational patterns and cultural markers of the regular military. The United States is nearly alone among established democracies in creating a new paramilitary police force in recent decades.

When various figures in the Trump regime suggested that CBP agents had been justified in shooting Alex Pretti because he was carrying a holstered weapon, they provoked outrage from gun rights activists. And, significantly, many of these people are usually on the same page as the White House about pretty much anything.

While political polarization has many potential causes, existential anxiety– humanity’s inherent confrontation with mortality, moral responsibility and search for meaning–has received less attention. Higher levels of existential anxiety are associated with indicators of poor mental health, such as symptoms of depression or among those who have experienced a life-threatening event. It is also associated with aggression.

A federal judge heard arguments on Jan. 26, 2026, as the state of Minnesota sought a temporary restraining order to stop the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operation in the state. The administration has sent some 3,000 immigration agents to Minnesota, and attorneys for the state have argued, in part, that it amounts to an unconstitutional occupation, on 10th Amendment grounds.

More than a year after a ceasefire nominally ended active fighting, much of southern Lebanon bears the ecological scars of war. Avocado orchards are gone and beehives destroyed. So, too, are the livelihoods they supported. Fields and forests have disappeared under Israel’s white phosphorus shelling. This destruction indicates a grave breach of international environmental law and raises the question of whether Israel committed war crimes in Lebanon by deliberately targeting natural resources and engaging in environmental warfare.

As of Aug. 20, 2025, the National Institutes of Health has terminated over 5,100 grants totaling over US$4.4 billion in research funding. Likewise, the National Science Foundation, which seeks among other things to advance the nation’s health, has rescinded over 1,700 research grants totaling over $1 billion in funding. These terminations have disproportionately affected projects that study the experiences of marginalized groups and funding to scientists from social groups that are underrepresented in academia.

Recent moves by Washington, such as taking a 10% share of semiconductor maker Intel, point to a shift in that direction. For decades, Washington has supported free-market capitalism. Today, the government appears to be supporting a new direction – state-directed capitalism.

President Donald Trump’s relentless and escalating drive to acquire Greenland from Denmark could affect the functioning and even existence of NATO, the post-World War II alliance of Western nations that “won the Cold War and led the globe,” as a recent Wall Street Journal story put it.

For years, when the Environmental Protection Agency assessed the economic impact of new regulations, it weighed both the health costs for Americans and the compliance costs for businesses. The Trump administration is now planning to drop half of that calculation – the monetary health benefits of reducing both ozone and PM2.5 – when weighing the economic impact of regulating sources of air pollution.

A single, medium-sized data center here on Earth can consume enough electricity to power about 16,500 homes, with even larger facilities using as much as a small city. Over the past few years, tech leaders have increasingly advocated for space-based AI infrastructure as a way to address the power requirements of data centers. Google unveiled Project Suncatcher, a bold proposal to launch an 81-satellite constellation into low Earth orbit. The company will soon have to reckon with a growing problem: space debris.

U.S. military intervention in Latin America has largely been covert. And when the U.S. orchestrated the coup that ousted Guatemala’s democratically elected president in 1954, the U.S. covered up the role that economic considerations played in that operation. By the early 1950s, Guatemala had become a top source for the bananas Americans consumed, as it remains today. The United Fruit Company owned over 550,000 acres of Guatemalan land, largely thanks to its deals with previous dictatorships.

In 2018, high-speed passenger trains branded as Brightline started running along the formerly freight-only Florida East Coast Railway. Initial service from Miami to West Palm Beach was extended to Orlando in 2023. Unfortunately, the southern end of the line is in the spotlight because of collisions with pedestrians and motor vehicles. Over the past decade, an average of 900 pedestrians lost their lives each year in the U.S., and another 150 motor vehicle occupants died in collisions at highway-rail grade crossings.

Plurality voting is notorious for producing winners without majority support in races that have more than two candidates. Plurality can also encourage dishonest voting. An increasingly well-known alternative to plurality voting is ranked choice voting. It’s used statewide in Maine and Alaska and in dozens of municipalities, including New York City.

President Donald Trump’s insistence that the U.S. will acquire Greenland “whether they like it or not” is just the latest chapter in a codependent and often complicated relationship between America and the Arctic’s largest island – one that stretches back more than a century but has recently been on the rocks.

AI influences decision-making, trust and human agency. This new reality is not a cause for doom. However, now that it’s becoming much harder – if not impossible – to tell whether something is created by a human or a machine, it’s worth asking what’s gained and what’s lost from this technology. Most importantly, what does it say about what we truly value in art?

Many adults are breathing a sigh of relief as the 6-7 meme fades away as one of the biggest kid-led global fads of 2025. In case you managed to miss it, 6-7 is a slang term – spoken aloud as “six seven” – accompanied by an arm gesture that mimics someone weighing something in their hands.

Decades ago, the New York City Police Department prohibited its officers from shooting at moving vehicles. That led to a drop in police killings without putting officers in greater danger. But not all agencies have implemented prohibitions on shooting at vehicles. Even in agencies that have, some policies are weak or ambiguous.

Protests go deeper than economic frustration alone. When people in Iran chant “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon,” they are, I believe, rejecting the theocratic system in Iran entirely. In other words, the current crisis isn’t just about bread and jobs, it’s about who decides what Iran stands for.

Political violence among rival partisans has been a deadly and destabilizing force throughout history and across the globe. It has claimed countless lives, deepened social divisions and even led to the collapse of democratic systems. Escalating acts of violence in the United States parallel Europe’s authoritarian past. Reports of politically motivated violence are distressingly common – ranging from mass shootings, car-ramming attacks and assaults at demonstrations to assassination attempts, kidnappings and threats targeting mayors, governors, political activists and members of Congress.

Washington increasingly relies on coercion – military, economic and political – not only to deter adversaries but to compel compliance from weaker nations. This may deliver short-term obedience, but it is counterproductive as a strategy for building durable power, which depends on legitimacy and capacity. When coercion is applied to governance, it can harden resistance, narrow diplomatic options and transform local political failures into contests of national pride.

The attack on Venezuela and the capture of President Nicolás Maduro herald the decoupling of Trump’s United States from the rules-based international order, and the end of liberal order as a whole. A new international order is now emerging, based on the use of force, revisionism and security on the American continent. Here are five keys to understanding the outcomes of the military intervention, and the new order it ushers in.

Trump is seeking to to purge public memorials and markers honoring the suffering and heroism of the enslaved as well as those who championed their freedom. Among the materials reportedly flagged for removal from history museums, national parks and other government facilities is a disturbing but powerful photograph known as “The Scourged Back.”

“Microdosing” originally meant taking tiny amounts of psychedelics (such as mushrooms) to enhance mood or performance, with fewer side effects. But the term has taken off to mean anything where you incorporate a much lower “dose” of something – and still reap the benefits. So, does this work for exercise? If you can’t make time for a 30-minute run, will shorter bursts of activity do anything for your health? Here’s what the evidence says.

Brigitte Bardot’s death, at the age of 91, brings to a close one of the most extraordinary careers in post-war French cultural life. Best known as an actress, she was also a singer, a fashion icon, an animal rights activist and a symbol of France’s sexual liberation. Famous enough to be known by her initials, B.B. symbolized a certain vision of French femininity – rebellious and sensual, yet vulnerable.

Jane Austen’s work might shake the blinkered out of an unhelpful way of seeing the world, or reveal hidden depths in overlooked friends and acquaintances. It can take people away from those who do not appreciate them, and introduce them into new communities in which they thrive.

Every year, editors for publications ranging from the Oxford English Dictionary to the Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English select a “word of the year.” This year’s slate largely centers on digital life. But rather than reflecting the unbridled optimism about the internet of the early aughts – when words like “w00t,” “blog,” “tweet” and even “face with tears of joy” emoji (😂) were chosen – this year’s selections reflect a growing unease over how the internet has become a hotbed of artifice, manipulation and fake relationships.

In 1986 Baudrillard was noting that in society “the scene and the mirror have given way to a screen and a network”. He predicted the use of the smartphone, foreseeing each person in control of a machine which would isolate them “in a position of perfect sovereignty”, like “an astronaut in a bubble”. Such insights helped him go on to devise perhaps his most famous concept: the theory that we were stepping into the era of “hyperreality”.