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Towns across the U.S. are now grappling with what it means to have ICE detention centers in their backyard — even communities that overwhelmingly voted for President Donald Trump and support his deportation efforts.
Last week, hundreds of protestors showed up outside a Maryland courtroom while a federal judge temporarily blocked the construction of a detention center in the state. That pause will remain in place as a lawsuit from the the state’s attorney general plays out. And last month, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro blocked ICE’s access to water and sewage systems in two different counties where warehouses were bought. Local leaders argue these warehouses would overwhelm city resources.
So, what are conditions like in these facilities? And what does the future hold for this new wave of detention centers?
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Most of us would agree that access to foreign intelligence is important to national security. But whose private data gets swept up in the process?
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was first established in 1978 following Watergate. It’s a key U.S. surveillance tool. Section 702 was added to the act in 2008 allowing the government to collect the communications of more than 300,000 foreign nationals outside of the U.S. without a warrant every year. And the Trump administration would like to keep it that way even though lawmakers on both sides of the aisle worry that the act violates American citizens’ right to privacy.
That section was set to expire today. But last Friday, the House voted to extend the expiration to April 30th. That’s after House Speaker Mike Johnson failed to corral his party’s support behind a long-term extension. The Senate also passed that short-term extension.
So, as its future hangs in the balance, what’s at risk if we lose this tool? And what are the dangers of failing to reform it?
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We start with the U.S.-Israel war with Iran — a war that President Donald Trump said would end in two to three weeks. Now, in its seventh week, the Pentagon is sending 10,000 more troops to the Middle East to pressure Iran into making a peace deal.
On Sunday, Trump posted a long rant on Truth Social calling Pope Leo XIV “weak on crime, and terrible for foreign policy.” Then, later that night, Trump posted an AI-generated photo that appeared to depict him as Jesus Christ.
Rep. Eric Swalwell was a front-runner for the seat of California governor just weeks ago. Now, he’s out of the race and out of Congress after numerous sexual assault allegations were leveled against him.
And, in global news, Iran declared the Strait of Hormuz completely open to commercial vessels. This move is expected to lessen severity of the growing global energy crisis and bring the possibility of a peace agreement between Iran and the U.S. closer to becoming a reality.
New reporting from Axios indicates that U.S. and Iranian negotiators made progress in new peace talks on Tuesday. On Thursday, Pakistan’s foreign ministry said a second round of talks between the U.S. and Iran will be held in Islamabad. But no date has been announced yet.
And it’s the dawn of a new era in Hungary this week. For the first time in 16 years, Viktor Orbán will no longer lead the nation from Budapest, having lost the election for his position as prime minister to conservative rival Peter Magyar.
We cover the most important stories from around the world in the News Roundup.
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For over 75 years, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has bolstered American power and shaped the world order as we know it. But under President Donald Trump, its future is uncertain.
The United States has spent the better part of a year telling its allies they’re on their own. Trump has threatened to annex Greenland – the sovereign territory of NATO ally, Denmark. He skipped the Munich Security Conference. And he launched the war in Iran without consulting NATO allies.
Now, the president is asking for help securing the Strait of Hormuz. And European countries are saying no.
How is the war in Iran testing the alliance? And how would a U.S. withdrawal from NATO reshape global power dynamics?
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Imagine you’re in a bookstore and you wander over to the fiction section. There, you find two shelves: one for human-written novels… and one for novels written by AI.
That future may not be as far off as you think. Roughly 4 million books were published in the U.S. in 2025. That’s a more than a 32 percent increase from 2024, according to the trade magazine Publisher’s Weekly.
It’s unclear how many of those books were written by AI, in part because software used to detect it can be ineffective. And the literary waters were made even murkier by the fact that at least 3 million of those 4 million books were self-published. That makes it even more difficult to know if they were written by human hands (er, minds).
That’s not to say the self-published portion of the industry is the only part where this tech is showing up. Hachette, one the largest publishers in the U.S., canceled one of its novels, “SHY GIRL,” after allegations that its author used AI to write it.
All this is marking a turning point for the publishing industry. How can authors ethically use this technology? And do readers really need new AI-authored books in a market already saturated with options?
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It’s that time of the year again. Have you finished filing your return?
Doing taxes this season has been particularly fraught – for both taxpayers and the Internal Revenue Service. It’s been a year since DOGE slashed federal funding and cut droves of federal employees. Those departures hit the IRS hard. Its leadership has largely turned over.
Also, Republicans in Congress took back billions of dollars the agency had received to improve its systems. Then, they gave the IRS even more tax code changes to enforce.
Can the IRS handle it all? And what do taxes – and a functional tax agency – have to do with the strength of U.S. democracy? We sit down with a panel of experts to find out.
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The Democrats are having a moment. They’ve enjoyed massive turnout for recent primaries, special elections, and local races. And voter data shows they’re also gaining support among Republican and independent voters.
In Wisconsin, liberal judge Chris Taylor recently won a spot on the state Supreme Court by nearly 20 points. That’s nearly double the margin of victory another liberal candidate in 2025.
Some Republicans are worried about what wins like these mean for the GOP’s performance in the midterms. And as a shrinking job market, high inflation, and a costly war in Iran drag down the economy, Democrats are seizing the moment to capture voters.
In this installment of our weekly politics series, “If You Can Keep It,” we go deep on the Democrats’ recent successes. How are voters responding to a Republican party struggling to deliver on its promises?
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The U.S. and Iran have agreed to a two-week ceasefire after President Donald Trump threatened that “a whole civilization will die” in a social media post this week. Iranian officials are temporarily reopening the Strait of Hormuz as long as the truce remains unbroken.
Trump also signed an executive order this week that restricts mail-in voting, a practice he’s long criticized due to his belief that it leads to fraud. There is no evidence for the president’s claim.
Meanwhile, the president’s former attorney general, Pam Bondi, has signaled she will not appear for a scheduled Congressional deposition over the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein.
And, in global news, despite the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran, Israel is continuing its offensive in Lebanon meant to target the terrorist group Hezbollah.
Now that the Strait of Hormuz has temporarily reopened, analysts are expecting that it will take weeks for global energy supplies to rebound.
JD Vance was in Europe this week for a visit to Hungary where he repeatedly praised its president, Victor Orban, and attacked the European Union.
We cover the most important stories from around the world in the News Roundup.
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In 2019, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, the first openly gay governor elected in the U.S., signed a bill banning conversion therapy in the state. Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that ban may be unconstitutional.
Conversion therapy seeks to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The practice has been deemed unethical and ineffective by most major mental health groups. And a study from the Trevor Project found that young people who go through conversion therapy were more than twice as likely to have reported attempting suicide compared to those who did not.
Only one Supreme Court justice dissented in this case. Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that this decision “opens a dangerous can of worms” and “threatens to impair states’ ability to regulate the provision of medical care in any respect.”
What’s behind the Supreme Court’s decision that will likely overturn this ban? And how might this decision affect nearly two dozen other states that have similar bans?
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After threatening massive attacks on civilian and energy infrastructure, Donald Trump is agreeing to a ceasefire to end the war in Iran.
On Tuesday morning, the president posted on social media that “an entire civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” referring to his Tuesday night deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz for trade.
Tuesday evening, the president extended that deadline and agreed to a two-week pause in fighting, writing in a social media post that his decision is based on conversations with Pakistan army chief and its prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said ships will be able to pass through the strait for the next two weeks in compliance with the ceasefire. Araghchi also said Iran will stop military attacks as long as it is not attacked.
Plus – hiring in most of the country is at a virtual standstill. That’s according to the most recent labor market figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The hiring rate fell to 3.1 percent in February. That’s the lowest since April 2020, when the pandemic shuttered many businesses. Job openings also dropped over by the hundreds of thousands compared to January.
Those losses are being felt most by young people. According to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the unemployment rate for college grads reached 5.6 percent last year, outpacing the national rate of 4.2. And a November report by the Stanford Digital Economy Lab shows a “substantial decline” in job openings for early career workers in fields most vulnerable to artificial intelligence.
So, how are Americans feeling about the current job market? And how could U.S. and Israel’s war in Iran make a chilly jobs market even colder?
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