|
Top headlines
Lead story
In announcing his latest travel ban this week, President Donald Trump pointed to “national security and public safety threats” as reasons for targeting the 19 countries in Africa and Asia on the list. Many of these countries were included on travel bans during his first administration.
But the latest regulations, set to take effect on Monday, will do little to improve national security, argues Charles Kurzman, a political sociology scholar. That’s because migrants account for a minute amount of violence in the United States. And, based on Kurzman’s data, migrants from the latest travel ban countries are responsible for an even smaller amount of crimes.
Instead, he writes, the latest travel ban is an attempt by Trump to use national security as an excuse to bypass oversight from other branches of government and to deny visas to nonwhite immigrant applicants. But these checks and balances, Kurzman says, are vital in democracies to guarantee that immigration policy is based on facts.
[How faith and religion drive the world. Sign up for our weekly newsletter, This Week in Religion.]
|
|
Alfonso Serrano
Politics + Society Editor
|
|
Taliban fighters guard the former U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, on June 5, 2025.
AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi
Charles Kurzman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Foreign terrorism accounts for a miniscule portion of violence in the United States.
|
Politics + Society
|
-
Frederic Lemieux, Georgetown University; Jeannine Bell, Loyola University Chicago
What is the difference between a hate crime and an act of terrorism?
-
Brooks D. Simpson, Arizona State University
Does Donald Trump have the power to suspend a foundational legal right to challenge a person’s arrest and detention? Americans have long debated whether the president or Congress can do this.
|
|
Health + Medicine
|
-
Zachary W. Schulz, Auburn University
Research shows that decades of policy choices shaped today’s fragmented health care system – which is precisely why reform is so difficult.
|
|
Arts + Culture
|
-
Xianda Huang, University of California, Los Angeles
Discovered in a Tokyo warehouse, a long-lost ballad by Taiwanese pop star Teresa Teng rekindles memories of an icon whose voice transcended Asia’s political fault lines.
|
|
Science + Technology
|
-
Alex Erwin, Florida International University
A legal scholar with a Ph.D. in wildlife genetics explains the promise biotechnology techniques hold for some animals that are currently endangered.
-
Matthew Bunn, Harvard Kennedy School
Missile defense systems are nothing new. History shows that even if they work as advertised – a big if – they’re a bad idea if your aim is to make your country safer from nuclear attack.
-
Matthew Shindell, Smithsonian Institution
In the 19th century, astronomers could see Mars through telescopes, but not clearly. Some used their imaginations to fill in what the blurry images couldn’t convey.
|
|
Education
|
-
Amber M. Simpson, Binghamton University, State University of New York
A researcher offers families advice on playful paths to summer STEM learning for children.
|
|
Economy + Business
|
-
Pamela Paxton, The University of Texas at Austin
The independent federal agency had been facilitating the work of approximately 200,000 volunteers a year, deploying them across the country through partnerships with thousands of nonprofits.
|
|
International
|
-
Michael A. Allen, Boise State University
A political scientist – with a penchant for gaming – explains how Minecraft, League of Legends and Civilization VII can help teach key international relations concepts.
|
|
Environment + Energy
|
-
H. Christopher Frey, North Carolina State University
The first Trump administration also used words like ‘transparency,’ ‘reproducibility’ and ‘uncertainty’ − to try to block regulators from using important health studies when writing pollution rules.
|
|
|
|
