In the past 10 years, there has been an increase in far-right political violence in the United States. While scholars have pointed to several possible reasons – and often, combinations of explanations – the trend is clear.
This violence has coincided with the growing influence of far-right state and federal political candidates, who collectively have excited and mobilized extremist communities both online and in person.
Outdoor recreation is on track for another record-setting year. In 2022, U.S. national parks logged more than 300 million visits – and that means a lot more people on roads and trails.
While research shows that spending time outside is good for physical and mental health, long lines and gridlocked roads can make the experience a lot less fun. Crowding also makes it harder for park staff to protect wildlife and fragile lands and respond to emergencies. To manage the crowds, some parks are experimenting with timed-entry vehicle reservation systems and permits for popular trails.
U.S. airline passengers in early 2023 faced the highest rate of flight delays since 2014. That heightened level of delays came shortly after December 2022, when Southwest Airlines experienced an epic meltdown, canceling 71% of its flights.
In response, on May 8, 2023, the Biden administration proposed new rules that would require airlines to compensate passengers whose flights are canceled or significantly delayed because of causes – unlike bad weather – that are under the control of the airlines. Under the new rules, the airlines would need to offer meal vouchers, overnight accommodations, and ground transportation to and from a hotel when customers are stranded.
The 2023 session of the Alabama Legislature stood out for two reasons: major pieces of legislation passed, and there was very little drama.
To hear House leaders explain it, that was deliberate. House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter (R-Rainsville) and House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels (D-Huntsville) said in separate interviews that they worked together to keep the most controversial bills off the floor.
A central feature of the Cold War racket was the anti-communist crusade. At the behest of the U.S. national-security establishment, the entire nation became obsessed with the commies, both foreign and domestic. The Reds were coming to get us. They were everywhere. They were in Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Russia, China, Guatemala, Chile, Indonesia, Brazil, and most everywhere else. They were in Congress, the military, the executive branch, the political system, the universities, and Hollywood. In the 1950s, people were even being exhorted to look under their beds for communists.
In the foreign realm, the anti-communist crusade led the U.S. national-security establishment to sacrifice almost 100,000 U.S. soldiers in U.S. interventions in civil wars in Korea and Vietnam. More than 250,000 U.S. soldiers were wounded in those conflicts.
Relying on an adversary to supply critical components in equipment that our nation deems mission-essential is, to put it mildly, foolish. But that is exactly what the United States has been doing when it comes to China and semiconductors.
The expansion and robust implementation of a Zero China Chips policy, originally introduced in the FY2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), would help change this equation. It would mitigate the risks associated with depending on China, while simultaneously boosting semiconductor production domestically and among our allies and partner nations—a reliable path towards removing the PRC’s leverage over the U.S. and the globe.
The challenge in documenting LGBTQ+ history in the South, said Maigen Sullivan, co-founder of the Invisible Histories Project, is that much of it has been purposely destroyed.
In her work with the project, a nonprofit based out of Birmingham, she once went to archive items of a recently deceased man who was gay. But a family member rid his house of his belongings.
“The biggest thing is it’s not that we’ve hidden all this, or we forgot about it,” she said during a talk at the Alabama Department of Archives and History on June 15. “It’s that it has been intentionally erased.”
When Donald Trump pled not guilty on June 13, 2023, to federal criminal charges related to his alleged illegal retention of classified documents, it was his first opportunity to formally answer charges that he violated the Espionage Act.
The Justice Department alleges that, after his presidency, Trump held, in an unsecure location, documents about some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets, including information about U.S. nuclear programs as well as U.S. and allies’ defense and weapons capabilities and potential vulnerabilities to military attack and that he repeatedly thwarted efforts by the National Archives to retrieve them.
Following years of pressure by good government advocates, the Alabama Legislature just passed a bill to create better transparency around the state’s use of economic development incentives.
This is a major victory for those concerned about government transparency and accountability.
The recently enacted Transparency in Incentives Act requires the state Department of Commerce to disclose online names of companies that receive economic development incentives. Up to this point, none of Alabama’s state subsidy programs were transparent, despite costing taxpayers billions of dollars.
Over the last five decades, the Southern Poverty Law Center has researched, documented, and tracked far-right extremist groups that espouse white supremacy, antisemitism, anti-LGBTQ+ hate, and other often-intersecting ideologies.
During that time, there have been ebbs and flows in the number of groups spouting virulent philosophies and hate. Old trends repeat, new faces appear, but the underlying harm remains the same.
