Republican narrative

The razor wire is a simple and effective deterrent to an untenable wave of illegal immigration — a phenomenon actively aided and abetted by the ineffective left-leaning policies of the Biden White House. What SCOTUS has now done with Monday's ruling is to make way for a worsening of one of the worst crises the country has ever faced.

Democratic narrative

Operation Lone Star is inhumane. It's maiming, killing, and dehumanizing entire families of desperate people looking to the US for a better life. Explosive revelations have shown the migrants are being denied even water by Texas officials amid soaring temperatures. Thanks to SCOTUS, the brutal and punishing barbed wire can now be removed, and the Biden admin. can pursue more humanitarian and effective border control operations.

Nerd narrative

There's a 3% chance that the US will deploy military forces in Mexico without the cooperation of the Mexican government before 2029, according to the Metaculus prediction community.

Pro-establishment narrative

The strikes targeting the Iranian-backed Houthis have come after diplomatic efforts by the US and its allies failed to deter the rebels from further operations against international commercial shipping and US and UK warships. Decisive action against the militants proves that the West stands united in defense of international law and free trade. Since military power seems to be the only language the Houthis and Iran understand, the rules-based international order must not shy away from taking further action if necessary.

Establishment-critical narrative

With the US-British aggression against Yemen, the West's moral bankruptcy in defense of its so-called "rules-based order" is now on full display. While Washington supports Israel's genocidal Gaza campaign, it's now bombing Yemen for the Houthis daring to stand up for Palestinians by targeting Israeli-linked ships. As so often, the latest US aggression is a recipe for more, not less, violence and instability. The West has deliberately expanded the Israel-Hamas war to distract from Israeli war crimes and will suffer the consequences of its heavy-handed actions.

Nerd narrative

There is a 10% chance that the US and Iran will be primary actors on opposite sides of a war before 2025, according to the Metaculus prediction community.

Narrative A

From cancer to COVID and across the medical community, fraud in critical trial data is running rampant. This often happens due to the "paper mill" problem, where third-party firms churn out countless fake studies. More must be done to determine the trustworthiness of studies before they're utilized in determining the treatment of patients.

Narrative B

Fraud in a few clinical trials doesn't discount the US' position as the global leader in healthcare and research. Health centers at schools like Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Cornell still produce the finest research and apply the greatest medicine. They're life-saving institutions, which is why countless patients from around the world visit the US every year.

Nerd narrative

There's a 50% chance that in 2030 there will be at least 142K medical scientist jobs in the US, according to the Metaculus prediction community.

Narrative A

The UN's migration agency must be well-funded to protect millions of displaced people who take dangerous journeys to reach greater freedom yet contribute to global prosperity and progress by generating nearly 10% of the world's economic output. Ignoring migrants' plight comes at a greater cost — not just in terms of money but in more significant danger to the international community through human trafficking and smuggling.

Narrative B

Migrants will keep coming to the US and Europe because they flee en masse from disorder toward more stable locations. A coherent international policy is required to deal with the systemic macroeconomic issues that cause an arc of human misery and uprooting, such as poverty, conflict, and climate change — simply increasing funding to "fix" the reality will not solve the growing problem and subsequent economic burden of population displacement.

Nerd narrative

There's a 50% chance that at least 176K refugees will be admitted to the US from 2021 to 2024, according to the Metaculus prediction community.

Narrative A

France is absurdly singling out Amazon for simply having a super-efficient warehouse management system. The logistics sector is peppered with similar measures and systems in place across the world. The scale at which Amazon functions requires an intricate system to keep the company's operations flexible and adaptive. Some tweaks can be made according to local needs and laws, but this massive fine defies logic.

Narrative B

Measuring employee productivity to this extent reduces workers to robots that don't get breaks or social time at work. Companies should not be allowed to forget the humans at the heart of their operations. Signaling there's a problem if an item is scanned too quickly is just one example of poor work standards at Amazon.

Nerd narrative

There's a 50% chance that Amazon will deliver some products by drone by May 2026, according to the Metaculus prediction community.

Democratic narrative

The Biden administration's attempts to expand access to abortion and contraception in the face of Republican-imposed restrictions is an important first step in protecting women's health in a post-Roe world. The fight must continue because this isn't just about abortion but women's health in general. The overturning of Roe should be enough to galvanize women to push back in several ways, including at the ballot box.

Republican narrative

The case against Biden is clear — a vote for him is a vote for someone whose priority in a second term will be codifying the rights of women at the expense of the vulnerable unborn nationwide. Already, his administration has done everything it can short of getting legislation through Congress — including executive orders and ordering unelected bureaucrats to issue health guidances — to preserve as much abortion-on-demand as it can. Biden and the Democrats don't believe in the sanctity of life.

Nerd narrative

There's a 5% chance that elective abortion will be banned nationally in the US before January 2030, according to the Metaculus prediction community.

Narrative A

Though this investigation has just been released, its claims are all too similar to others made in the past which have already been proved false and politically motivated. Should any credible allegations of wrongdoing in its counter-terrorism operations ever come to light, the UAE will rigorously investigate them. However, there will be no need given the lack of credibility to these allegations, once again.

Narrative B

This new BBC documentary confirms what several other investigations have found over the past years — that the UAE has indeed hired mercenaries to carry out high-profile political killings in Yemen and advance its geopolitical ambitions in the Middle East. It's disturbing that the UAE still denies its actions when all evidence points to the contrary.

Nerd narrative

There's a 50% chance that Yemen will no longer be classified as being in a state of civil war by January 2028, according to the Metaculus prediction community.

Left narrative

The UK's conservative government has been infringing on the basic right to peaceful protest, and thankfully, the UN is calling out this undemocratic behavior. Using government force and passing laws to criminalize protests is always wrong, but particularly in this case because it stops activists from speaking about the climate crisis. Climate defenders are heroes fighting on behalf of everyone, and they should be protected instead of being prosecuted.

Right narrative

Unhinged protests from groups such as Just Stop Oil have erupted throughout the UK, and hard-working Brits have had enough. While left-wing elites may try to paint these radical and polarizing demonstrations as "peaceful," they're anything but. These protesters instigate clashes with ordinary citizens and police, and do all they can to ruin public events. The UK allows and promotes peaceful protests, but these climate extremists are beginning to infringe upon the population's basic right to live undisrupted.

Nerd narrative

There's a 50% chance that greenhouse gas emitted globally in 2030 will be at least 43 gigatonnes of CO₂ equivalent, according to the Metaculus prediction community.

Pro-Palestine narrative

Israel is losing its war in Gaza. After over three months and 25K dead Palestinians, Israel has failed to release hostages via military operations, to kill Hamas' top leaders, or to create conditions advantageous to ending this long drawn-out conflict. Even then, if Israel did manage to achieve the majority of its goals, it still would be left without a clear plan of action for the day after the war. Destroying a group like Hamas is a fool's errand, and Netanyahu has dug Israel into a hole it will have a tough time climbing out of. Israel should accept a comprehensive ceasefire.

Pro-Israel narrative

Though, of course, this war has not been easy, Israel has made steady progress in Gaza, first neutralizing Gaza City before moving on to other population centers like Khan Younis. Israel has substantially degraded Hamas' military capabilities and leadership and even partially degraded elite Hezbollah units stationed along Israel's northern border. Indeed, as Israel's enemies should recognize, Israel's raw military power should not even be up for debate, and the country will fight and negotiate as it sees fit to achieve its goals.

Pro-establishment narrative

As noted by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the fact that the ticker hasn't been moved closer to midnight doesn't mean the world is getting better. After war broke out in Eastern Europe in 2022, war has now broken out in the Middle East; and after society dragged its feet on climate policy for years, governments are still not acting fast enough to save the planet. As new technologies and global threats continue to emerge, complacency is the enemy.

Establishment-critical narrative

The Doomsday Clock is a silly, pseudoscientific scam at best, and a politically biased agenda pusher at worst — likely the latter. Over the decades, the clock has been pushed closer to midnight under Republican US administrations and further away during Democratic ones. What the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists really measures is how anxious liberals are depending on who's living in the White House.

Nerd narrative

There's a 50% chance that the Doomsday Clock will reach midnight by December 2097, according to the Metaculus prediction community.