Worldscope

Lines of Power: America’s Redistricting Arms Race America’s congressional boundaries used to be redrawn like clockwork—once a decade after the census, with a handful of court fixes in between. That cadence is gone. We’ve entered a period in which maps can—and increasingly do—change mid-cycle, lawsuits are planned like campaign stops, and data science has turned map-drawing into an industrial process. Both parties now treat redistricting not as a compliance chore but as an organizing principle for national power. What follows are five key points that, in our judgment, define the current redistricting arms race—and what it may yield before the 2026 midterms. 1) The rulebook has subtly—but decisively—changed The single biggest reason the fight never ends is that the legal terrain now encourages permanent motion. In 2019, the Supreme Court took federal courts largely out of the business of policing partisan gerrymandering (Rucho v. Common Cause), pushing disputes to state courts and state ...

  The South China Sea Disputes: A Conflict Managed—Until It Isn’t The South China Sea remains the world’s most consequential maritime flashpoint, and August 2025 has underscored why. Within days, multiple close calls at sea and in the air reinforced a pattern that has become grimly familiar: routine gray-zone pressure punctuated by sudden spikes of risk. Philippines–China interactions around Scarborough Shoal and Second Thomas Shoal again dominated the headlines, while the United States and a widening circle of partners signaled support through presence and exercises. The disputes are no longer episodic quarrels over fishing grounds or energy blocks; they form a system of daily friction that can drift toward crisis on the back of a misunderstood maneuver, a broken tow line, or a skipper’s split-second miscalculation. What follows is a clear account of what is publicly known, what serious rumors suggest, and how the landscape might plausibly evolve over the next two years. What is...

  Bosnia on the Brink: Republika Srpska’s Secessionist Drive, the Narrative War Over Srebrenica, and the West–Russia Fault Line Summary Bosnia and Herzegovina has entered its gravest stress test since the 1995 Dayton peace settlement. The immediate trigger is the political and legal showdown between the Bosnian state and Milorad Dodik, president of the Serb-majority entity, Republika Srpska (RS). Dodik has been convicted and banned from public office by Bosnia’s state court for defying the international overseer (the High Representative), yet he refuses to accept the court’s authority and vows to continue governing. Belgrade’s leadership publicly rejects the verdict. Meanwhile, the RS assembly has passed laws to wall off the entity from state authority and to build parallel judicial structures—measures widely read as steps toward legal secession. The crisis unfolds amid EUFOR’s renewed security mandate, U.S. and U.K. sanctions on Dodik’s network, Moscow’s political embrace of Banja...