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January 15, 2026

Global Tropical Cyclone Landfalls

Back in 2012, Jessica Weinkle, Ryan Maue, and I published the first peer-reviewed paper presenting a time series of global tropical cyclone landfalls of hurricane strength. In that paper we concluded: From currently available historical TC records, we constructed a long-period global hurricane landfall dataset using a consistent methodology. We have identified considerable interannual variability in the frequency of…

By Roger Pielke Jr.

January 15, 2026

What Makes an App Succeed? Lessons from Competing on Apple and Google Platforms

In today’s digital economy, mobile apps are everywhere—and so are the entrepreneurs trying to build them. Over 3.8 million apps are available in Apple’s App Store, with new ones entering every day. But what determines whether an app breaks through to success—or quietly fades into the background? In our new research, we analyze over 400,000…

By Mark Jamison

January 13, 2026

Getting Serious About Improving Biosafety

Response to Better Biosecurity for the Bioeconomy by David Gillum. David Gillum makes a compelling and urgent case for improving oversight of high-risk biological research and proposes a National Biosafety and Biosecurity Agency to coordinate what is currently a fragmented federal process. His call for reform comes at a critical moment. As he notes, COVID-19 has created…

By Anemone Franz

January 13, 2026

Kids’ Online Safety Requires Precision, Not Centralization

Parents have valid concerns about how online environments shape their children’s behavior. However, as the House Energy and Commerce Committee advances a comprehensive package of children’s online safety bills, the crucial question isn’t whether lawmakers should act, but how responsibility should be shared. How Congress assigns that responsibility will determine whether these reforms truly protect…

By Shane Tews

January 13, 2026

Restricting Minors’ Access to Social Media: Divided Ruling Over Florida Law Reveals First Amendment Rifts

An appellate court ruled in late November that a Florida law severely limiting minors’ ability to hold social media accounts and imposing age-verification and parental-confirmation requirements on platforms “likely” passes First Amendment muster and can take effect. The two-to-one decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Computer & Communications Industry…

By Clay Calvert

January 12, 2026

Protecting Youth Online: 2025 Update

In 2025, the landscape of digital safety for youth shifted from monitoring to integrated protection. Major platforms have moved beyond simple screen-time counters to introduce granular content filtering, mandatory age-appropriate defaults, and tools that bridge the gap between operating systems and individual apps. The following report detail the specific toolsets announced by Apple, Google, Meta,…

By Shane Tews

January 12, 2026

A Monument to Private Enterprise: The Lessons Zohran Mamdani Missed at His Swearing-In

There were ghosts in the old City Hall subway station when New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani took the oath of office January 1. They were not the sentimental kind—not sepia-toned reminders of civic ambition—but the stubborn kind that insist on telling the truth about who really builds great things. They were whispering that New…

By Mark Jamison

January 9, 2026

2026 Tech Policy Predictions

With the second Trump administration settling into its second year, 2026 promises to bring continued evolution in technology policy. Our scholars are examining the developments likely to shape the year ahead across antitrust, AI infrastructure, broadband deployment, and emerging challenges in digital platforms. The Trump administration will continue reorienting antitrust enforcement away from its use…

By The Editors

January 8, 2026

Leaving the IPCC and UNFCCC is Bad for the United States

Yesterday, the Trump administration announced via executive order that the United States was withdrawing from 66 international organizations, of which 31 fall under the United Nations (UN). [1] Among these organizations are the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). [2] Today, I explain a bit about these organizations and…

By Roger Pielke Jr.

January 8, 2026

First Amendment Lessons from the Shutdown About Government-Compelled Political Expression

Automatic-reply, out-of-office (OOO) emails are generally informative, innocuous and noncontroversial. They’re frequently formulaic—templates abound—and Microsoft offers instructions for their creation. However, the OOO emails at the heart of a First Amendment-based complaint filed by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) against the US Department of Education and Linda McMahon during last fall’s 43-day government…

By Clay Calvert