The attack on the United States Capitol by insurrectionist Trump supporters was awful for a litany of reasons, but it’s symbolism of the event itself that makes it so unique.

Yes, there were Confederate flags. Yes, there was that casually horrifying Camp Auschwitz hoodie. There was the QAnon “Q” worn by many, signifying alliance to cultish conspiracy theories. But these were borne by individuals, so many others who broke into the Capitol could claim a sort of plausible deniability: They will protest that they’re not aligned with those particular symbols. …

As many western industrial nations drifted towards protectionism if not outright nationalism in the last decade, an already constrictive environment had developed for the free movement of the labor market. The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, gave such nations just the hammer they needed to further nail immigration constraints into place.

COVID-19 triggered mass unemployment globally with The Brookings Institute estimating that approximately 11.9 percent of workers were out of a job across the 20 countries they studied. That number reached almost 15 percent for the United States. And early this year, the IMF forecast that the global economy would contract by 3 percent in 2020, a worse contraction than we saw as a result of the 2008 financial crisis. But there’s little indication these immigration restrictions have helped any of the players in the global economy resolve their economic woes. …

I imagine I have a few friends who perhaps think Donald Trump won the 2020 election and there’s some sort of fraud involved in Biden winning. I want to make a few quick points, not be to be argumentative, but primarily because I think the rhetoric in some quarters (elected officials, QAnon types, Rudy Giuliani, Trump himself) is getting down right dangerous to the point that it could incite violence. Considering that many have been receiving death threats and QAnon organized placing a noose outside one 20-year-old Dominion employee’s Georgia home, I’d say we’re already there.

Trump didn’t win and it wasn’t difficult to predict he probably wouldn’t in advance. (Though, certainly, no one could say for sure, in the days leading up to election.) But as a lot of misinformation is getting tossed around right now, I think we should keep the following 6 points in mind to avoid something awful happening here. …

Over the past four years, the Trump administration enacted an unprecedented reduction in the number of asylum seekers admitted to the United States, slashing admissions to a level approximately 16 percent of the cap the Obama administration offered in 2016. Transgender asylum seekers, who are already more at-risk than typical applicants now face tremendous hurdles and abuse as they try to survive in the opaque confines of this increasingly constrictive immigration system.

By their own accounting, the Department of Homeland Security had approximately 300 transgender asylum seekers in their custody in 2019. Under U.S. law, anyone has the right to present themselves as an asylum seeker at the U.S. border or within the United States — regardless of how and where they enter. Before they can be removed, the law requires they be given the opportunity to present their case for a “credible fear” screening before a judge or qualified asylum officer. However, transgender asylum-seekers find themselves housed in detention centers at rates over twice that of typical applicants, their average detainment being about 99 days. They’re also unlikely to have their cases reviewed by individuals familiar with their unique needs and circumstances both as transgender individuals and in the context of their home countries. …

*Updated July 31, 2020 to include additional significant randomized studies, including those examining the use of hydroxychloroquine as a preventative measure

Can I provide an illustration of why it’s always important to consider evidence from multiple authoritative sources when studying subjects like COVID-19, the use of masks, and in this case, the use of hydroxychloroquine? Especially during this time of pandemic. (But, really, this strategy applies to any subject.)

If I were to look for something that initially seems compelling (as a non expert, non epidemiologist) on the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in treating COVID, this Newsweek essay by Yale professor Harvey Risch certainly might grab my attention. …

Imagine you’re an immigrant who fled danger to seek asylum in the United States after escaping torture and beatings in your own country. Arriving here, you make your case, but instead of proceeding through a careful review process, you’re interviewed by an asylum officer completely unfamiliar with the dynamics of your situation and designated for speedy deportation back to your place of origin, where your life may still be in danger. That’s the story of Vijayakumar Thuraissigiam, a Sri Lankan asylum seeker whose case we’ll explore in more detail below. …

We all have those moments in our lives, when we wish we could go back in time and do something differently, right? Lately, I’ve been returning to one prominent moment from when I was about 20 years old.

I was playing half-court basketball one warm summer night behind the gym at the South Carolina college I was attending. There were probably six of us. As it happens in these scrappy pickup games, one player eventually bumped into another or something and one young guy got angry. …

This piece was prompted by a Facebook post from a friend in which she described how she was exposed to the kind of behavior I describe below at her local grocery store, when she went shopping for the first time in a month or two.

One of the most extraordinary things about this time period is seeing people describe being asked to wearing a thin piece of fabric temporarily in some places they pass through as “tyranny” or an infringement upon their liberties. …