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Premise

As the world bumps toward energy…

Truth-in-taxation measures, which are intended to serve taxpayers, have failed to constrain the property tax burden in Texas, write Jennifer Rabb and Lebena Varghese of the McNair Center for Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth. They argue that it is incumbent upon the government to make tax rate notices clear, relevant and above all truthful.

China’s dominance over the supply of rare earths — which are critical for energy transition and defense technologies — should spur U.S. policymakers to bolster raw materials supply chains, write energy fellow Michelle Michot Foss and co-author Jacob Koelsch.

In American Coal Magazine, fellow Michelle Michot Foss examines the world’s continued dependence on fossil fuels as it pursues the energy transition.

The authors examine tensions in nickel supply and value chains within the context of broad aspirations to electrify transport. Through their case study, which focuses on China’s growing presence in Indonesian nickel extraction and processing, they contend that China is positioning itself as a gatekeeper to the energy transition — with vast implications for strategic planning in the United States.

In this paper, the author examines past attempts at immigration reform in the United States, especially as they pertain to the nation’s undocumented population. Analyzing these early reform efforts could be deeply instructive for the prospects of President Biden’s U.S. Citizenship Act and reveals both durable patterns and new developments that could shape the chances for legislative breakthroughs.

The authors show that border barriers can have unintended but important biological consequences for biodiversity by, for instance, inducing changes to the environment and reducing genetic diversity.

The authors analyze how the AKP and other Islamist parties in Turkey have fared in municipal governance and whether municipalities governed by Islamist mayors promote and Islamic political identity.

The invocation of sectarianism as a category of analysis for understanding the Middle East is misleading. It conflates a religious identification with a political one, and it ignores the kinship, class and national and regional networks within which sectarian self-expression has invariably been enmeshed. What is urgently needed is a new research agenda to study the dialectic — the complex, constant and unequal relationship between local and foreign — that makes up the modern Middle East.