How immigrants contribute to U.S. economic growth

How immigrants contribute to U.S. economic growth

A Council on Foreign Relations brief: According to an American Immigration Council analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, immigrants—almost 48 million of whom now live in the United States among an overall population of roughly 335 million people—generated some $1.6 trillion in economic activity in 2022, the most recent year for which such data is available. They also contributed more than $579 billion in local, state, and federal taxes. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that increased immigration could reduce the U.S. federal…

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Trump has no authority whatsoever to change United States citizenship rules

Trump has no authority whatsoever to change United States citizenship rules

Harvard Law Today reports: The Constitution is clear: Those born on American soil, even to undocumented parents, are citizens of the United States, says Gerald Neuman ’80, the J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law at Harvard Law School. Almost immediately after Donald Trump was sworn in on January 20, the second-term president issued a series of executive orders, including one touching on birthright citizenship — a constitutional provision that guarantees that those born within the boundaries…

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Reports of Navajo people being detained in immigration sweeps sparks concern from tribal leaders

Reports of Navajo people being detained in immigration sweeps sparks concern from tribal leaders

Arizona Mirror reports: As U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement intensifies its efforts to apprehend and deport undocumented immigrants throughout the country, concern is rising among Indigenous communities residing in urban areas about reports of Indigenous people being detained in the Valley. Since President Donald Trump issued his executive order for an increase in ICE raids, Navajo tribal leaders have received alarming reports that their tribal members are being detained, heightening uncertainties over the implications these actions have for their communities…

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On being Indigenous in America

On being Indigenous in America

USA TODAY reports: Wes Martel, of Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho heritage, sits with a plate of hash browns and fried eggs in front of him. At 74, he’s been active in tribal politics, buffalo restoration, environmental protection, and the fight for water rights. He thinks that Native Americans still live under the same legal constraints as they did a century ago. He points to the Doctrine of Discovery, enacted by the Pope in the 15th century, which gave control…

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Trump’s plan to crush the academic left is meeting little resistance

Trump’s plan to crush the academic left is meeting little resistance

Michelle Goldberg writes: Last year, Chris Rufo, the influential right-wing strategist who spearheaded the campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion, or D.E.I., initiatives, told me about his ambitions for a second Trump presidency. He hoped, he said, to see Donald Trump’s administration aggressively investigate Ivy League institutions that, according to Rufo, practice “rampant” discrimination against white, Jewish and Asian students and faculty members, particularly through D.E.I. programs, which aim to boost the representation of groups deemed underprivileged. If they were…

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How Assad’s drug trade fueled his downfall

How Assad’s drug trade fueled his downfall

Caroline Rose writes: Many years ago, in Beirut, I learned the first of many lessons about the Assad regime’s constructed counternarcotics narrative — something that simultaneously sustained the regime’s internal power structure and also fueled its very collapse. I was conducting some final fieldwork on a little-known (at least at that time) drug trade in an amphetamine-type stimulant called Captagon, which was quickly gaining popularity in the Middle East. The trip was part of a policy report that was initially…

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The changing climate of the Little Ice Age forced radical thinkers to reconsider humanity’s place in the universe

The changing climate of the Little Ice Age forced radical thinkers to reconsider humanity’s place in the universe

Timothy Grieve-Carlson writes: The sky in the northern hemisphere had been darkened, the winters unusually harsh, and the summers barely arriving for decades when the German Lutheran author Johann Arndt published his Four Books on True Christianity in 1610. Arndt warned his readers that: when the sky burns like this, and the sun turns blood-red, it is telling us: Behold, one day I will perish in fire. In this way, all the elements speak to us, announcing our wickedness and…

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Federal judges in Jan. 6 cases issue scathingly critical statements about Trump’s pardons

Federal judges in Jan. 6 cases issue scathingly critical statements about Trump’s pardons

Politico reports: A prominent federal judge on Wednesday ripped President Donald Trump’s mass clemency for Jan. 6 rioters, saying the justification he offered in his proclamation — to correct an “injustice” and trigger a “national reconciliation” — was “flatly wrong” and a “revisionist myth.” “No ‘national injustice’ occurred here, just as no outcome-determinative election fraud occurred in the 2020 presidential election,” U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell wrote in an eight-page order in the case of two Jan. 6 defendants who…

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Trump staff ‘furious’ after Musk trashes AI project but ‘the president doesn’t have any leverage over him’

Trump staff ‘furious’ after Musk trashes AI project but ‘the president doesn’t have any leverage over him’

Politico reports: Some of President Donald Trump’s key aides and allies are furious with Elon Musk for publicly trashing his $500 billion artificial intelligence mega-deal. A White House official said Musk “very much” got over his skis when the tech tycoon launched a daylong screed against the AI project. One Trump ally said Musk abused his closeness to the president. Another Republican close to the White House went further, saying Trump’s staff is “furious” over Musk using his massive social…

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King Trump and his court

King Trump and his court

Martin Kettle writes: The US is a nation increasingly governed by a court. But this governing court is not a court of law. Trump’s grip on the top judges in the US supreme court, many of whom he appointed during his first term, is already tight and likely to now grow tighter. Instead, Trump governs by placing himself at the centre of a presidential court almost on the monarchical model. Not all of this is down to Trump alone. During…

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How to start an ICE Watch neighborhood program in your community

How to start an ICE Watch neighborhood program in your community

Nikki Marín Baena writes: In 2017, following a previous set of Trump executive orders, immigrant families in North Carolina were inundated by misinformation and rumors about ICE agents hidden in grocery store parking lots and supposed substations near after-school facilities, leading some people to avoid leaving home. There was no Spanish-language rumor verification hotline here in Greensboro, so our organization — which was just a handful of volunteers at the time — created one, giving more people the ability to…

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Leaked documents expose deepening ties between Israeli army and Microsoft

Leaked documents expose deepening ties between Israeli army and Microsoft

Yuval Abraham reports: Microsoft has a “footprint in all major military infrastructures” in Israel, and sales of the company’s cloud and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli army have skyrocketed since the beginning of its onslaught on Gaza, according to leaked commercial records from Israel’s Defense Ministry and files from Microsoft’s Israeli subsidiary. The documents reveal that dozens of units in the Israeli army have purchased services from Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, Azure, in recent months — including units in…

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‘My neighborhood was one of the most beautiful in Gaza. All that’s left is rubble’

‘My neighborhood was one of the most beautiful in Gaza. All that’s left is rubble’

Ahmed Ahmed reports: As soon as the ceasefire came into effect in Gaza on Sunday, Hamza Othman had only one thought in his mind: to go and see whether his home was still standing. The 22-year-old had refused to leave the Fallujah neighborhood of Jabalia refugee camp for over a year — even after he was wounded by an Israeli airstrike that killed his mother and brother as they sold candy from a stall in front of the house last…

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Imperialist posturing by the United States has always spurred resistance from its southern neighbors

Imperialist posturing by the United States has always spurred resistance from its southern neighbors

Antonio De Loera-Brust writes: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s public threats to retake the Panama Canal, by force if necessary, have already done meaningful damage to U.S. standing in Latin America. Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino responded immediately: no way. Other Latin American states, including Mexico, Chile, and Colombia, were quick to offer their solidarity to Panama. United States began building the Panama Canal during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, who once advised, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Trump…

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