moves

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — While the U.S. Senate remains deadlocked over President Trump’s call for strict citizenship voting requirements, Republicans in some states are pressing ahead with their own measures that could require documentary proof of citizenship to join or remain on the voter rolls.

Proof-of-citizenship legislation won final approval this week in South Dakota and Utah, already has passed one chamber in Florida and received a committee hearing in Missouri. In Michigan, supporters of voter citizenship documentation submitted 750,000 petition signatures this week in a bid to get a constitutional amendment on the November ballot.

Federal law already prohibits noncitizens from voting in U.S. elections, with violators subject to fines, imprisonment and potential deportation.

When people register to vote, they affirm under penalty of perjury that they are U.S. citizens. But Trump contends that’s not enough. He wants prospective voters to show proof of their citizenship.

Democrats and voting rights advocates say the Republican measures amount to voter suppression, as they may prevent many eligible voters from casting ballots. Similar laws have been overturned by courts as an unconstitutional burden on voting rights.

What would the federal legislation do?

The federal Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE America Act, would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote. That could be satisfied with such things as a U.S. passport, citizen naturalization certificate or a combination of a birth certificate and government-issued photo identification.

The federal bill also would require a photo identification to cast a ballot, which some states already mandate. The Republican-led House approved the legislation last month on a mostly party-line vote, but it has stalled in the Senate under a filibuster threat from Democrats.

South Dakota and Utah

Legislation passed in South Dakota and Utah would create a two-tier voting system. People who provide documentation of their citizenship could vote in all elections. Those who don’t could vote only in federal elections for president, U.S. Senate and U.S. House.

The bifurcated voting system is modeled after Arizona, where tens of thousands of voters who have not provided proof of citizenship can cast ballots only in federal elections. Arizona implemented its system after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that the state could not require citizenship documentation for federal elections.

The bills in South Dakota and Utah would take effect upon a governor’s signature, meaning they could be in place for newly registered voters ahead of the November elections.

Utah’s bill also directs election officials to use an online service from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to check the citizenship status of existing voters. Those flagged would be sent notices asking for proof of citizenship to remain eligible to vote in all elections.

Florida and Michigan

Neither the Michigan initiative nor legislation passed by the Florida House would require people to submit proof of citizenship when registering to vote. Instead, the measures would create a behind-the-scenes review that could result in some people being asked for citizenship documentation.

Under the Michigan measure, the secretary of state would review driver’s license records, juror records and federal Homeland Security and Social Security data to determine whether registered voters are citizens. Those flagged would be removed from the voter rolls if they cannot provide proof of citizenship.

The Florida legislation would require election officials to verify the citizenship of all registered voters using the state’s driver’s license database. Anyone whose citizenship could not be verified would be required to submit documentary proof.

Why are some pushing for proof of citizenship?

Trump and some fellow Republicans have complained for years about noncitizens voting in U.S. elections, although evidence of doing so is rare. The few cases found are not nearly enough to affect an election result, studies have shown, and those caught face severe penalty.

In 2024, a student from China was charged with perjury and attempted illegal voting after registering to vote by showing a University of Michigan student ID and signing a document asserting he was a U.S. citizen. He later contacted a local clerk’s office requesting to get his ballot back, and ultimately fled the country.

The case provided part of the impetus for the Michigan ballot initiative, said Paul Jacob, chairman of Americans for Citizen Voting, which is backing the measure.

“We want a system we can have confidence in,” Jacob said. “The way you avoid big problems in elections is to fix the small problems when they rise up and present themselves.”

Voting rights advocates’ concerns

Constitutional amendments limiting voting to “only citizens” have won widespread support when placed on state ballots. But voting rights advocates note that requiring documentary proof can get complicated.

During a recent debate in the Florida House, Democratic state Rep. Ashley Gantt recounted how her aunt was born in a South Carolina home at a time when some hospitals didn’t accept Black patients. As a result, she has no birth certificate and has had difficulty trying to demonstrate her citizenship, Gantt said.

A proof-of-citizenship law “would stop many thousands — if not more — U.S. citizens from voting in Florida,” said Michelle Kanter Cohen, policy director and senior counsel at the nonprofit Fair Elections Center. “It requires documentation that a lot of eligible citizens don’t have, or don’t have access to.”

Nationwide, about 21 million people — 9% of voting-age citizens — lack documentary proof of citizenship or cannot easily obtain it, according to a 2024 report by the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland.

Other states

Legal challenges are common when states pass proof-of-citizenship requirements for voters.

After Kansas adopted a proof-of-citizenship law 15 years ago, more than 31,000 U.S. citizens ended up getting blocked from registering to vote. Federal courts declared the Kansas law an unconstitutional burden on voting rights, and it hasn’t been enforced since 2018.

Two years ago, New Hampshire and Louisiana both passed proof-of-citizenship laws, prompting lawsuits. New Hampshire’s law went to trial last month and is awaiting a ruling. Louisiana’s election commissioner acknowledged in a December court filing that the requirement has not been enforced.

A nonprofit group also filed a legal challenge to a Wyoming proof-of-citizenship law passed last year. But a federal court dismissed that case while ruling the group lacked standing to sue.

Lieb writes for the Associated Press.

PARIS — France’s top diplomat requested on Monday that U.S. Ambassador Charles Kushner no longer be allowed direct access to members of the French government after he skipped a meeting to discuss comments by the Trump administration over the beating death of a far-right activist.

French authorities had summoned Kushner to the Quai d’Orsay, which houses the Foreign Affairs Ministry, on Monday evening, but he did not show up, according to diplomatic sources.

Jean-Noël Barrot, the foreign affairs minister, moved to restrict Kushner’s access “in light of this apparent misunderstanding of the basic expectations of the mission of an ambassador, who has the honor of representing his country.”

The ministry, however, left the door open for reconciliation.

“It remains, of course, possible for Ambassador Charles Kushner to carry out his duties and present himself at the Quai d’Orsay,” it said, “so that we may hold the diplomatic discussions needed to smooth over the irritants that can inevitably arise in a friendship spanning 250 years.”

Kushner had been summoned following a statement by the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau, which posted on X that “reports, corroborated by the French Minister of the Interior, that Quentin Deranque was killed by left-wing militants, should concern us all.” The U.S. Embassy had posted that statement on social media.

Deranque, a far-right activist, died of brain injuries this month from a beating in the French city of Lyon. He was attacked during a fight on the margins of a student meeting where a far-left lawmaker was a keynote speaker.

His killing highlighted a climate of deep political tension ahead of next year’s presidential vote.

“We reject any instrumentalization of this tragedy, which has plunged a French family into mourning, for political ends,” Barrot said over the weekend. “We have no lessons to learn, particularly on the issue of violence, from the international reactionary movement.”

The State Department said in its post that “violent radical leftism is on the rise and its role in Quentin Deranque’s death demonstrates the threat it poses to public safety. We will continue to monitor the situation and expect to see the perpetrators of violence brought to justice.”

Kushner was summoned in August over his letter to French President Emmanuel Macron alleging the country did not do enough to combat antisemitism. France’s foreign officials met with a representative of the U.S. ambassador since the diplomat did not show up.

Official Fadi al-Qassem says all residents have left al-Hol camp, which long housed relatives of alleged ISIL (ISIS) members.

Syrian authorities say they have fully evacuated and shut down a remote camp that once kept thousands of relatives of alleged members of the armed group ISIL (ISIS).

The last residents were sent out in a convoy Sunday morning, according to Fadi al-Qassem, the Syrian government official overseeing the camp.

“All Syrian and non-Syrian families were relocated,” al-Qassem told Agence France-Presse.

Al-Hol, located in a desert region of the northeastern Hasakah province, had long kept huge numbers of relatives of suspected ISIL fighters.

At its peak in 2019, the camp held some 73,000 people. Last month, there were about 24,000 residents, mostly Syrians but also Iraqis and more than 6,000 other foreigners of around 40 nationalities.

While the camp’s residents were not technically prisoners and most have not been accused of crimes, they had been held in de facto detention at the heavily guarded facility for years.

Last month, Syria’s government took control of the camp from Kurdish authorities, as Damascus extended its reach across northeastern Syria.

Since then, thousands of its detainees, including family members of suspected ISIL members, have left for unknown destinations. Hundreds have been sent to the Akhtarin camp in Aleppo province, while others have been repatriated to Iraq.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor based in the United Kingdom, reported an unspecified number of residents “left the camp individually, without waiting for the organised convoys”. Sources on the ground told Al Jazeera many Syrian nationals left al-Hol for their hometowns, while many of the foreigners travelled west to government strongholds of Idlib or Aleppo governorates.

Al-Qassem said residents who have been relocated are children and women who will “need support for their reintegration”.

The future of the smaller Roj camp in northeastern Syria, which also houses relatives of alleged ISIL members but remains under the control of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), remains to be seen.

Most of its inhabitants are foreigners whose home countries have largely refused to receive them.

Syrian authorities turned back buses carrying 34 Australian women and children on February 16 after they left the Roj camp, headed toward Damascus with plans to travel on to Australia. Australian authorities later said they would not repatriate the families.

“We have no sympathy, frankly, for people who travelled overseas in order to participate in what was an attempt to establish a caliphate to undermine and destroy our way of life,” said Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, explaining his country’s stance.

While it is “unfortunate” that children have been affected, Australia is “not providing any support”, Albanese added.

Feb. 19 (UPI) — More than 550 commercial driver’s license schools were cited for safety violations, including employing unqualified teachers, using improper vehicles, failing to properly test students, among other violations, according to the Trump administration, which said the “sham” institutions received notice they would be removed from the federal government’s National Training Provider Registry.

The Department of Transportation said Wednesday that more than 300 investigators conducted 1,426 on-site inspections of driver training schools across the country in a five-day sting operation. The Commercial Vehicle Training Association said the inspections took place during the week of Dec. 8.

The DOT said more than 550 schools were found in violation of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s safety standards. Of those, 109 training providers agreed to voluntarily remove themselves from the registry, while an additional 97 schools remain under investigation.

“For too long, the trucking industry has operated like the Wild, Wild, West, where anything goes and nobody asks any questions. The buck stops with me,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement.

“American families should have confidence that our school bus and truck drivers are following every letter of the law and that starts with receiving proper training before getting behind the wheel.”

The department said some of the schools lacked qualified instructors, used fake addresses or failed to properly train drivers in the transportation of hazardous materials. One school provided training for school bus drivers, the department said.

Following the inspections, CVTA, the largest association of commercial truck driver training programs, said in a statement that it welcomed the initiative, saying it strengthened “the integrity of commercial driver education and reaffirmed the critical role high-quality training plays in protecting the motoring public.”

General Atomics’ air-launched LongShort drone has made new progress toward its first flight with the completion of various tests on the ground, including a demonstration of its weapons release capabilities. LongShot, now also designated the X-68A, is set to be carried aloft first by an F-15 fighter. The goal of the program has been to explore how an uncrewed aircraft capable of firing air-to-air missiles could extend the reach and reduce the vulnerability of the launch platform, among other benefits.

The U.S. military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) released new details about the LongShot program, which it is leading, today. A “multitude of U.S. government stakeholders” have also been involved, including elements of the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, U.S. Army, and NASA, according to DARPA.

General Atomics, as well as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, received initial contracts to work on competing concepts for the drone in 2020. DARPA chose General Atomics’ design for continued development in 2023. The original hope had been that the uncewed aircraft would make its maiden flight before the end of that year. The current goal is to begin flight testing before the end of the year.

“DARPA’s LongShot with General Atomics Aeronautical Systems has successfully completed a series of technical milestones, moving its air-launched uninhabited vehicle – recently designated the X-68A – closer to flight testing,” according to DARPA’s release. “Recent achievements, including full-scale wind tunnel tests and successful trials of the vehicle’s parachute recovery and weapons-release systems, demonstrate significant progress in developing this next-generation capability.”

Previously released renderings of LongShot have depicted it as capable of releasing at least one AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) from an internal bay running along the bottom of the fuselage.

The overall LongShot design that has been shown to date is akin to that of a cruise missile, with an elongated fuselage and a chined nose. It has reverse-swept main wings toward the rear of the fuselage and small canards at the front, both of which pop out into their deployed positions after launch. It also has an inverted V-shaped twin-tail configuration and a vertical strake that sticks up just slightly from behind the top-mounted dorsal engine air intake.

The official entry for the X-68A in the U.S. Mission-Design-Series (MDS) designation system says that the drone is powered by a single Williams WJ38-15 turbojet, according to the Designation-Systems.net website. The use of the WJ38-15 may point to a high subsonic top speed for LongShot. This engine is also used on the German-Swedish Taurus KEPD 350 air-launched cruise missile, a 3,000-pound-class design with a stated maximum speed of Mach 0.95.

It is also worth noting that LongShot’s parachute recovery is intended, at least at present, for use in testing and training, rather than any actual combat employment of the drone.

“LongShot is intended for conflict. In combat scenarios, recovery isn’t really practical, and the price point doesn’t make it necessary,” C. Mark Brinkley, a General Atomics spokesperson, told TWZ last year. “However, for test and training, it is recoverable, and we have options for that.”

As mentioned, the first live test launch of a LongShot drone is set to be from an F-15 fighter, an aircraft type particularly well known for its ability to carry outsized payloads. F-15 variants have already been used in the United States, as well as in Japan, as aerial launch platforms for jet-powered drones. For years now, TWZ has been highlighting the particular potential of the Air Force’s new F-15EX Eagle II to carry oversized payloads and act as airborne drone controllers.

DARPA and General Atomics have also talked about the potential to launch X-68As from bombers’ internal bays, as well as from cargo aircraft using the Rapid Dragon palletized munitions system.

As TWZ has previously written:

“LongShot is intended to extend the range at which a launch platform can fire on targets, which, in turn, helps keep them further away from threats. The drones can fly forward into higher-risk areas before launching their own missiles. As designed, LongShots also simply expand the total area in which a launch platform, especially a tactical jet like an F-15, can engage threats.”

“LongShot drones could also leverage targeting data from sources other than their launch platforms. This would rely on, but also take immense advantage of long-range ‘kill web’ architectures in development now. As those kill webs expand in scale and scope, the likelihood of munitions engaging targets outside the range of a launch platform’s organic sensors will only grow. You can read more about these developments here.”

These capabilities could be further magnified by bomber or cargo aircraft carrying larger numbers of LongShot drones. Larger launch platforms could saturate a particular section of the battlespace with air-to-air assets quickly, enabling the rapid deployment of a temporary counter-air screen. The uncrewed aircraft could also provide more localized defense for larger and more vulnerable aircraft, and they would only have to be deployed as necessary in that role. That, in turn, would help reduce strain on escorting assets.

The LongShot program has so far been described in terms of scenarios that center more on direct control for the launch platform. However, control of the drones after launch could similarly be localized or executed across longer distances via beyond-line-of-sight datalink capability and/or signal relays. This could also allow for control to be handed off from one node to another. Higher degrees of autonomy would allow for the performance of tasks after launch with fewer direct human inputs, as well.

“We’ve got a program right now with DARPA that we’re working on. It’s called LongShot. And that effort is really, if you think about, it’s about an air-launched fighter,” Patrick “Mike” Shortsleeve, Vice President of DoD Strategic Development for General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc (GA-ASI), told TWZ‘s Jamie Hunter in an interview at the Air & Space Forces Association’s 2025 Air, Space, and Cyber Conference last September. “So, we’re talking about a smaller UAS [uncrewed aerial system], … but it also will be able to carry air-to-air missiles and be brought into the fight in mass when needed. So LongShot represents sort of another iteration of what we’re doing for disruption, to help the Air Force change or revolutionize the way air dominance is being done.”

General Atomics Update From Air, Space & Cyber 2025: CCA, LongShot, 9M Flight Hours

There are still questions about how efficient it would be in real combat to use an expendable drone like LongShot to get missiles closer to potential engagement areas, as well as offer some loitering capability. What the cost equation might be, in particular, compared to using more advanced, reusable drones and/or longer-ranged missiles, is unclear. Still, the Air Force and/or other services could see LongShot as a necessity for meeting certain operational needs that cannot be addressed by any other solution.

As we have highlighted in the past, LongShot could feed into other uncrewed aircraft efforts, especially separate, but intertwined Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) programs now being run by the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Marine Corps, and U.S. Navy. In an interview with Breaking Defense last year, David Alexander, President of General Atomics’ Aeronautical Systems, Inc., division (GA-ASI), said that LongShot could be a “great fit” for Increment 2 of the Air Force’s CCA program. General Atomics and Anduril are already developing separate drone designs, designated the YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A, respectively, under Increment 1 of that program. The Marines are also now set to utilize the YFQ-42A design at least as a surrogate for a future CCA capability.

When it comes to LongShot, DARPA says that “ground and integration testing currently underway” is now steadily building up to “the safe and effective employment of the X-68A from an F-15, confirm the flight worthiness of the LongShot vehicle, and demonstrate its ability to safely eject a captive sub-munition” after years of schedule slips.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Feb. 17 (UPI) — Artificial intelligence and software analytics firm Palantir Technologies Inc. has moved its headquarters from Denver to Miami, company officials announced on Tuesday.

The announcement was made on social media and says only that Palantir has moved its headquarters to Miami without providing other information.

The tech firm has many government contracts, including with federal immigration law enforcement agencies and the military, which recently triggered protests and vandalism at Palantir’s Denver headquarters.

Palantir co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Alex Karp recently described it as a “completely anti-woke” firm that seeks employees who share its values, according to the Denver Gazette.

Palantir accepted a $30 million contract to create the ImmigrationOS app that enables Immigration and Customs Enforcement to support self-deportation, and the U.S. Army awarded the tech firm an up-to-$10 billion contract to provide data and software tools over the next decade.

Palantir also is among the corporate donors that contributed $300 million to build a ballroom on the site of the former East Wing of the White House.

Palantir’s co-founders established the tech firm in Palo Alto, Calif., in 2003 and in 2020 moved its headquarters to Denver.

The move to Miami follows that of many other tech firms and positions the coastal city as a rival to California’s Silicon Valley.

Florida’s tax-friendly business environment has helped the state to lure many tech billionaires from California, where lawmakers are wrangling over a proposed 5% wealth tax on residents who have a net worth of $1 billion or more.

Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel has relocated to Miami ahead of the tech firm’s headquarters move, and Karp in 2020 said the tech firm does not share the same values as many others in Silicon Valley’s tech community.

Meta Platforms Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg also is among wealthy big-tech bosses who have moved from California to Florida, and many tech firms have established hubs in Miami.