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Half-Life 2 Week How Valve made Half-Life 2 and set a new standard for future games From physics to greyboxing, Half-Life 2 broke a lot of new ground. Samuel Axon Nov 13, 2024 12:09 pm | 43 This article is part of our 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2 series. Credit: Aurich Lawson This article is part of our 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2 series. Credit: Aurich Lawson Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreIt's Half-Life 2 week at Ars Technica! This Saturday, November 16, is the 20th anniversary of the release of Half-Life 2a game of historical importance for the artistic medium and technology of computer games. Each day up through the 16th, we'll be running a new article looking back at the game and its impact.There has been some debate about which product was the first modern triple-A video game, but ask most people and one answer is sure to at least be a contender: Valves Half-Life 2.For Western PC games, Half-Life 2 set a standard that held strong in developers ambitions and in players expectations for well over a decade. Despite that, theres only so much new ground it truly broke in terms of how games are made and designedits just that most games didnt have the same commitment to scope, scale, and polish all at the same time.To kick off a week of articles looking back at the influential classic, were going to go over the way it was made, and just as importantly, the thought that went into its designboth of which were highly influential.A story of cabals and Electronics BoutiqueDevelopment, design, and production practices in the games industry have always varied widely by studio. But because of the success of Half-Life 2, some of the approaches that Valve took were copied elsewhere in the industry after they were shared in blog posts and conference talks at events like the Game Developers Conference (GDC).The cabals of ValveValve is famous for influencing many things in gaming, but it was most influential in its relatively flat and democratic team structure, and that played out even during Half-Life 2s development back in the early 2000s. While many studios are broken up into clear departments big and small for different disciplines (such as art, level design, combat design, narrative design, AI programming, and so on), many parts of Valves Half-Life 2 team consisted of a half-dozen multi-disciplinary small groups the company internally called cabals.Each major chapter in Half-Life 2 had its own unique four-to-five-person cabal made up of level designers and programmers. These groups built their levels largely independently, while frequently showing their work to other cabals for feedback and cross-pollination of good ideas. They all worked within constraints set in a pre-production phase that laid out elements like the main story beats, some of the weapons, and so on. Each major chapter, like this battle-in-the-streets one toward the end of the game, was designed by a largely independent cabal. Credit: Valve Additionally, similarly sized design cabals worked on aspects of the games design that crossed multiple levelsoften made with representatives from the chapter cabalsfor things like weapons.There was even a Cabal Cabal made up of representatives from each of the six chapter teams to critique the work coming from all the teams.Ruthless playtestingMany game designersespecially back in the '80s or '90sworked largely in isolation, determining privately what they thought would be fun and then shipping a finished product to an audience to find out if it really was.By contrast, Valve put a great deal of emphasis on playtesting. To be clear: Valve did not invent playtesting. But it did make that a key part of the design process in a way that is even quite common today.The Half-Life 2 team would send representatives to public places where potential fans might hang out, like Electronics Boutique stores, and would approach them and say something along the lines of, Would you like to play Half-Life 2? (Most said yes!) A photo from an actual early 2000s playtest of an in-development Half-Life 2, courtesy of a presentation slide from a Valve GDC talk. Credit: Valve The volunteer playtesters were brought to a room set up like a real players living room and told to sit at the computer desk and simply play the game. Behind them, the levels cabal would sit and watch a feed of the gameplay on a TV. The designers werent allowed to talk to the testers; they simply took notes.Through this process, they learned which designs and ideas worked and which ones simply confused the players. They then made iterative changes, playtested the level again, and repeated that process until they were happy with the outcome.Todays developers sometimes take a more sophisticated approach to sourcing players for their playtests, making sure theyre putting their games in front of a wider range of people to make the games more accessible beyond a dedicated enthusiast core. But nonetheless, But nonetheless, playtesting across the industry today is at the level it is because of Valves refinement of the process.The alpha waveFor a game as ambitious as Half-Life 2 was, its surprising just how polished it was when it hit the market. That iterative mindset was a big part of it, but it extended beyond those consumer playtests.Valve made sure to allocate a significant amount of time for iteration and refinement on an alpha build, which in this case meant a version of the game that could be played from beginning to end. When speaking to other developers about the process, representatives of Valve said that if youre working on a game for just a year, you should try to get to the alpha point by the end of eight months so you have four for refinement.Apparently, this made a big impact on Half-Life 2s overall quality. It also helped address natural downsides of the cabal structure, like the fact that chapters developed by largely independent teams offered an inconsistent experience in terms of difficulty curve.With processes like this, Valve modeled several things that would be standard in triple-A game development for years to comethough not all of them were done by Valve first.For example, the approach to in-game cutscenes reverberates today. Different cabals focused on designing the levels versus planning out cutscenes in which characters would walk around the room and interact with one another, all while the player could freely explore the environment. Nova Prospekt was one of the first levels completed during Half-Life 2's development. Credit: Valve The team who focused on story performances worked with level designers to block out the walking paths for characters, and the level designers had to use that as a constraint, building the levels around them. That meant that changes to level layouts couldnt create situations where new character animations would have to be made. That approach is still used by many studios today.As is what is now called greyboxing, the practice of designing levels without high-effort artwork so that artists can come in and pretty the levels up after the layout is settled, rather than having to constantly go back and forth with designers as those designers find the fun. Valve diddnt invent this, but it was a big part of the process, and its in-development levels were filled with the color orange, not just gray.Finding the DNA of Half-Life 2 in 20 years of gamesWhen Half-Life 2 hit the market via the newly launched Steam digital distribution platform (more on that later this week), it was widely praised. Critics and players at the time loved it, calling it a must-have title and one that defined the PC gaming experience. Several of the things that came out of its development process that players remember most from Half-Life 2 became staples over the past 20 years.For instance, the game set a new standard for character animations in fully interactive cutscenes, especially with facial animations. Today, far more advanced motion capture is a common practice in triple-A gamesto the point that games that dont do it (like Bethesda Game Studios titles) are widely criticized by players simply for not taking that route, even if motion capture doesnt necessarily make practical sense for those games scope and design.And Half-Life 2s gravity gun, which dramatically built on past games physics mechanics, is in many ways a concept that developers are still playing with and expanding on today. Ultrahand, the flagship player ability in 2023s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, could be seen as a substantial evolution from the gravity gun. In addition to offering players the ability to pick and place objects in the world, it gives them the power to attach them to one another to build creative contraptions.Theres also Half-Life 2s approach to using environmental lines and art cues to guide the players attention through realistic-looking environments. The game was lauded for that at the time, and it was an approach used by many popular games in the years to come. Today, many studios have moved on to much more explicit player cues like the yellow climbing holds in so many recent AAA titles. As youll see in an upcoming article this week written by someone who played Half-Life 2 for the very first time in 2024, Half-Life 2s approach may have set the stage, but modern players might expect something a little different. Environments like this were carefully designed to guide the player's eye in subtle ways. Today, many AAA games take a less subtle approach because playtesting with broader audiences shows it's sometimes necessary. Credit: Valve One thing about the environment design that Half-Life 2 was praised for hasnt been replaced these days, though: a commitment to subtle environmental storytelling. World-building and vibes are perhaps Half-Life 2s greatest achievements. From BioShock to Dishonored to Cyberpunk 2077, this might be the realm where Half-Life 2s influence is still felt the most today.A legacy rememberedLooking back 20 years later, Half-Life 2 isnt necessarily remembered for radical new gameplay concepts. Instead, its known for outstanding executionand developers everywhere are still applying lessons learned by that development team to try to chase its high standard of quality.Even at the time, critics noted that it wasnt exactly that there was anything in Half-Life 2 that players had never seen before. Rather, it was the combined force of quality, scope, presentation, and refinement that made an impact.Of course, Valve and Half-Life 2 are also known for multiple memorable cultural moments, some of the industrys most infamous controversies, and playing a big part in introducing digital distribution. Well explore some of those things as we count down to the "Red Letter Day" that is this Saturday.Samuel AxonSenior EditorSamuel AxonSenior Editor Samuel Axon is a senior editor at Ars Technica. He covers Apple, software development, gaming, AI, entertainment, and mixed reality. He has been writing about gaming and technology for nearly two decades at Engadget, PC World, Mashable, Vice, Polygon, Wired, and others. He previously ran a marketing and PR agency in the gaming industry, led editorial for the TV network CBS, and worked on social media marketing strategy for Samsung Mobile at the creative agency SPCSHP. He also is an independent software and game developer for iOS, Windows, and other platforms, and heis a graduate of DePaul University, where he studied interactive media and software development. 43 Comments

The classic PC games market is "in a sorry state," according to DRM-free and classic-minded storefront GOG. Small games that aren't currently selling get abandoned, and compatibility issues arise as technology moves forward or as one-off development ideas age like milk.Classic games are only 20 percent of GOG's catalog, and the firm hasn't actually called itself "Good Old Games" in 12 years. And yet, today, GOG announces that it is making "a significant commitment of resources" toward a new GOG Preservation Program. It starts with 100 games for which GOG's own developers are working to create current and future compatibility, keeping them DRM-free and giving them ongoing tech support, along with granting them a "Good Old Game: Preserved by GOG" stamp.GOG is not shifting its mission of providing a DRM-free alternative to Steam, Epic, and other PC storefronts, at least not entirely. But it is demonstrably excited about a new focus that ties back to its original name, inspired in some part by its work on Alpha Protocol."We think we can significantly impact the classics industry by focusing our resources on it and creating superior products," writes Arthur Dejardin, head of sales marketing at GOG. "If we wanted to spread the DRM-free gospel by focusing on getting new AAA games on GOG instead, we would make little progress with the same amount of effort and money (weve been trying various versions of that for the last 5 years)." GOG Preservation Program's launch video. Getting knights, demons, and zombies up to snuffWhat kind of games? Scanning the list of Good Old Games, most of them are, by all accounts, both good and old. Personally, I'm glad to see the Jagged Alliance games,System Shock 2,Warcraft I & II,Dungeon Keeper Gold andTheme Park,SimCity 3000 Unlimited,and theWing Commander series (particularly, personally,Privateer). Most of them are, understandably, Windows-only, though Mac support extends to 34 titles so far, and Linux may pick up many more through Proton compatibility, beyond the 19 native titles to date.

Nash WeerasekerI vividly remember getting my first pair of glasses as a child. My mum is very near-sighted and dispatched me to the optician every year. My older sister was diagnosed at around the age of 8 and I prayed I wouldnt follow suit for fear of being made fun of, but by the time I was the same age, the world was becoming a blur. That years visit to the optician confirmed it, and I have worn glasses or contact lenses ever since.Back then, in the late 1970s, it was quite unusual to need glasses at such a young age. Not any more. Over the past 30 years, there has been a surge in near-sightedness, or myopia, especially among children. Today, around a third of 5 to 19-year-olds are myopic, up from a quarter in 1990. If that trend continues, the rate will be about 40 per cent by 2050 or 740 million myopic young people.That is more than an inconvenience. Myopia is a disease, says K. Davina Frick at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Maryland, who co-chaired a recent US National Academy of Sciences committee on the condition. It has wide-reaching quality-of-life and economic implications, she says, not least the risk of going blind in severe cases. Increasingly, however, researchers think the epidemic can be slowed or even reversed.Most cases of myopia are axial, meaning the axis of the eyeball the distance between the cornea at the front and the light-sensitive retina at the back grows too long. This means that light entering the eye is focused in front of the

Jared Isaacman led the first private space walk during SpaceX'sThe mission broke NASA's Earth orbit record and tested new Starlink communication technology.He talked with BI about the experience, what felt different during his second space mission, and the challenges of living off-world. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. Jared Isaacman's second trip to space felt different.The billionaire CEO of the payments company Shift4 made history two months ago when he opened up the hatch on a SpaceX rocketship and stepped into outer space. The moment marked the first-ever private space walk."There's nothing that's separating you from the vacuum of death other than the single-pane visor," Isaacman told Business Insider.That single-pane visor was part of SpaceX's new extravehicular activity spacesuits which Isaacman said "essentially becomes your spaceship that the four-person crew tested out during its nearly five-day Polaris Dawn mission. In the event that anything went wrong, Isaacman and his crew member, SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, only had about two hours of oxygen reserved."Everything in that environment is trying to kill you," Isaacman said. "The radiation, the lack of a habitable atmosphere, there's debris that's traveling at many times the speed of bullets."The hatch was open for 25 minutes, Isaacman said, during which he and Gillis each spent around eight minutes outside the capsule. The time went by quickly, he said, but they were able to complete a test matrix of three suit mobility demonstrations.Isaacman likened looking out into the unknown darkness in space to traveling overseas in the 1400s, when humans may have feared sailing off the end of the Earth or encountering some kind of mythical sea monster.He said being outside the SpaceX Dragon capsule felt "very different" than looking through its window, with an intensity of light coming off of Earth that "no video can capture.""You have all these extra senses kind of fusing together and you get, I think, more of an appreciation for just how hostile and unwelcoming Space is," Isaacman said.The spacewalk itself, which occurred at altitudes up to 460 miles above the Earth, went as expected. The Polaris Dawn crew carried out around 38 science and research experiments to test the impact of radiation on the human body, contributing to SpaceX's goal to learn more about long-duration human missions to Mars and beyond."The goal was to learn a lot about the mobility of the suit and was also to learn a lot about thermal regulation of the suit, big temperature swings," Isaacman said.The SpaceX mission, Isaacson's second trip to space with the rocket company cofounded by Elon Musk, required flying through risky radiation belts.It surpassed NASA's record for the highest Earth orbit and went further into space than humans have traveled since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. The crew also transmitted the first violin performance in space using Starlink technology.In a Netflix docuseries about Isaacman's first SpaceX mission, Inspiration4, his wife describes worrying about what could go wrong. This time around, with Polaris Dawn, those concerns seemed to improve, Isaacman said."I think my family and my wife, specifically, were much more charged up and enthusiastic than they were the first time," he told BI.Isaacman attributed some of that increased ease to a successful first mission.The team prepped extensively for Polaris Dawn, spending hundreds of hours in pressurized suit testing. The SpaceX suits were tested in a vacuum chamber at NASA's Johnson Space Center, which Isaacman said was important to make sure none of the materials would "create a toxic environment or explode." The suits have a flame-resistant outer layer and thermal garment material to regulate temperature. screenshot/Polaris Program Re-entry into Earth's atmosphere, even with the prep and training from SpaceX, remained a point of nervousness. If there is a problematic amount of debris damage to the heat shield or thermal protection systems, there's "no backup plan," Isaacman said.The CEO said that while he and his family recognize the risks, they keep the mindset that it's worth it.He's going back and expects breakthroughs are 'right around the corner'Once he landed back on Earth, Isaacman went through about three days of medical tests before largely resuming business as usual.He's been on the road a lot, visiting facilities and doing debriefs, and estimates he's only slept in his bed four or five times since his journey to space.Isaacman has maintained his role as CEO, which he said helps make his work with St. Jude and SpaceX possible. Isaacman funded both Polaris Dawn and his previous mission with SpaceX. The first mission raised over $240 million for St. Jude and was named Inspire4 in an effort to inspire support for the hospital.His time in space isn't over yet though the Polaris Program is intended to be three missions mapped out over the next six to nine years, Isaacman said. He said he expects more progress on suit development in the second Polaris mission and the third will be the first crewed flight of SpaceX's Starship, the most powerful rocket system ever built that was designed to realize Musk's dreams of settling Mars.Isaacman shares the SpaceX cofounder's view that humans will be multiplanetary and he said the technological means to make it possible are "right around the corner." He anticipates fully reusable Starships becoming a tangible reality within the next decade and launching on a frequent basis, whether it be every week or month. That could lead to all sorts of space-related experimentation including asteroid mining or the establishment of bases on the moon or Mars, Isaacman said.However, the challenges don't end with the formation of an off-world base you have to ensure the astronauts maintaining it stay alive and sane, he said."Actually having a civilization that can be successful and thrive in space is a much different set of problems," Isaacman said.Roughly half the people who go to space get sick, he said. Following the landing, Isaacman said one of his SpaceX crew members experienced a minor case of spaceflight-associated neuromuscular syndrome, which impacts vision. While the symptoms subsided shortly after, he pointed to it as an example of some of the health risks people face when venturing into space.There's also never been surgery or childbirth in space, and the psychological challenges of living away from Earth, Isaacman said."You're gonna be in a bubble or living in a cave, or underground on Mars for the entire time you're there," Isaacman said. "We'll never get better than that. So there's a lot of things that need to be solved."While humans don't have it quite figured out yet, Isaacman sees a future where humans walk on Mars."We just got to proceed with caution and just make sure we get it right," Isaacman said. "And if we do, we stand to learn so much that can change the course of trajectory of humankind."

Russia enacted a new decree on Wednesday that limits payouts for injured soldiers based on their wounds.Soldiers with less severe wounds now have their $30,000 payout knocked down to $10,000, or even $1,000.Previous foreign estimates found that Russia had to spend 6% of its budget on casualty payouts. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. The Kremlin introduced new restrictions on Wednesday to medical payouts for Russia's wounded troops, swiftly enacting a decree that allows only those with severe injuries to receive a promised $30,000.Previously, Russia had pledged at the start of its war on Ukraine that those wounded in the fighting were to each be given a one-time payout of 3 million rubles, or about $30,000.But Russian leader Vladimir Putin's new instruction on Wednesday reduces that payout to $10,000 for less severe injuries and $1,000 for other cases.The decree was approved by Russia's prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, who leads the country's parliament, and put into law at 4 p.m. on the same day.By the Kremlin's new guidelines, soldiers will only receive the full $30,000 if they suffer "Section I" injuries, or those that endanger their life or health or may cause significant damage to their organs.These include severe spinal injuries, brain damage, rupturing of genitalia, rib fractures, broken limbs, or damage to organs such as the lungs or kidneys.Less severe injuries that qualify a soldier for $10,000 are listed under "Section II." These are deemed temporary wounds such as minor fractures, concussions, first- and second-degree burns to the eyes, ankle fractures, and gunshot wounds that don't affect organs.Russia still holds to a law signed by Putin in March 2022 that entitles those who die in the war to about 7.4 million rubles, or $75,000, as well as 5 million rubles, or $50,000, to their families.Those wounded and deemed "unfit for duty" are also entitled to another 2.96 million rubles on top of their injury payout.The new decision comes about a week after Russian media reported that authorities had been discussing revising injury compensation.Anna Tsivileva, a Russian deputy defense minister, told reporters on November 5 that doctors and hospitals had said the payouts didn't account for the severity of soldiers' injuries.Meanwhile, mounting casualties from Russia's grinding advance in Ukraine's east have likely ballooned the cost of the payouts to the wounded and the families of those killed. The UK estimated that as many as 1,500 Russian soldiers were killed or wounded on average for every day of October.In July, two Western-based researchers estimated that Russia would have to spend about 2.3 trillion rubles, now worth about $23 billion, in payouts for the dead and wounded. That was about 6% of the country's entire budget for 2024.The Kremlin's press service did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

While campaigning, President-elect Donald Trump repeatedly threatened to dismantle the US Department of Education (DOE), on the basis that the federal education apparatus is indoctrinating young people with inappropriate racial, sexual, and political material. One thing Ill be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education in Washington, DC, and sending all education and education work it needs back to the states, Trump said in a 2023 video outlining his education policy goals. We want them to run the education of our children because theyll do a much better job of it. You cant do worse.Closing the department wouldnt be easy for Trump, but it isnt impossible and even if the DOE remains open, there are certainly ways Trump could radically change education in the United States. Heres whats possible.Can Trump actually close the DOE?Technically, yes. However, It would take an act of Congress to take it out, Don Kettl, professor emeritus and former dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, told Vox. It would take an act of Congress to radically restructure it. And so the question is whether or not thered be appetite on the Hill for abolishing the department. Related:What do librarians do? Do they need degrees?Thats not such an easy prospect, even though the Republicans look set to take narrow control of the Senate and the House. Thats because abolishing the department would require 60 votes unless the Republicans abolish the filibuster, Jal Mehta, professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, told Vox. Without the filibuster rule, legislation would need a simple majority to pass, but senators have been hesitant to get rid of it in recent years. With the filibuster in place, Republicans would need some Democratic senators to join their efforts to kill the department. The likelihood of Democratic senators supporting such a move is almost nonexistent.That means the push to unwind the department is probably largely symbolic. And that is the best-case scenario, Jon Valant, director of the Brookings Institutions Brown Center on Education Policy, told Vox. According to Valant, dismantling it would simultaneously damage the US education system while also failing to accomplish Trumps stated goals. Closing the department would wreak havoc across the country, Valant said. It would cause terrible pain. It would cause terrible pain in parts of the country represented by congressional Republicans too.Much of that pain would likely fall on the countrys most vulnerable students: poor students, students in rural areas, and students with disabilities. Thats because the departments civil rights powers help it to support state education systems in providing specialized resources to those students.Furthermore, much of what Trump and MAGA activists claim the agency is responsible for like teaching critical race theory and LGBTQ ideology isnt actually the purview of the DOE; things like curriculum and teacher choice are already the domain of state departments of education. And only about 10 percent of federal public education funding flows to state boards of education, according to Valant. The rest comes primarily from tax sources, so states and local school districts are already controlling much of the funding structure of their specific public education systems.I find it a little bewildering that the US Department of Education has become such a lightning rod here, in part because I dont know how many people have any idea what the department actually does, Valant said.Even without literally shutting the doors to the federal agency, there could be ways a Trump administration could hollow the DOE and do significant damage, Valant and Kettl said. The administration could require the agency to cut the roles of agency employees, particularly those who ideologically disagree with the administration. It could also appoint officials with limited (or no) education expertise, hampering the day-to-day work of the department.Trump officials could also attempt changes to the departments higher education practices. The department is one of several state and nongovernmental institutions involved in college accreditation, for example and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) has threatened to weaponize the accreditation process against universities he believes to be too woke. Finally, Trump could use the departments leadership role to affect policy indirectly: Theres power that comes from just communicating to states what you would like to see being taught in schools, Valant said. And there are a lot of state leaders around the country who seem ready to follow that lead.Trumps plans for the department will become clearer once the administration nominates a Secretary of Education. Once that person is confirmed, Kettl said, Theyre just gonna be off to the races on the issue again.Youve read 1 article in the last monthHere at Vox, we're unwavering in our commitment to covering the issues that matter most to you threats to democracy, immigration, reproductive rights, the environment, and the rising polarization across this country.Our mission is to provide clear, accessible journalism that empowers you to stay informed and engaged in shaping our world. By becoming a Vox Member, you directly strengthen our ability to deliver in-depth, independent reporting that drives meaningful change.We rely on readers like you join us.Swati SharmaVox Editor-in-ChiefSee More:

Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on November 5, 2024.Donald J. Trump is headed to the White House again. Hell have the help of a Republican Senate, almost certainly a Republican House, and a conservative Supreme Court that includes three justices he appointed the first time around. The former president made plenty of pledges on the campaign trail now its time to see whats actually possible.Vox explains the agenda for Trumps second term. We take a look at what Trumps victory means for reproductive freedom and antipoverty programs, how his calls for tariffs will transform the economy, the realities of a plan for mass deportations, and more. We track Trumps promises and policies on everything from artificial intelligence to Middle East policy and how Americans are reacting in the wake of his historic win.We hope this coverage will cut through the chaos of the post-election months. Please keep checking back as we add stories and build out a guide to what to expect for the next four years.Why Ukraine thinks it can still win over Donald TrumpHow Trumps second term will be differentCould Trump actually get rid of the Department of Education?Health care and the social safety netFollowing Trumps victory, some women consider swearing off menTrump proposed big Medicaid and food stamp cuts. Can he pass them?What happens if another pandemic strikes while Trump is president?Trump won. So what does that mean for abortion?Trumps health care plan exposes the truth about his populismTrump just opened the door to Social Security cuts. Take him seriously.Taxes, tariffs, and the economyTrumps tariffs could tank the economy. Will the Supreme Court stop them?Elon Musk assures voters that Trumps victory would deliver temporary hardshipAI, social media, and Big TechTrumps techno-libertarian dream team goes to WashingtonAI is powerful, dangerous, and controversial. What will Donald Trump do with it?Immigration and the southern borderA Trump second term could bring another family separation crisisWould Trumps mass deportation plan actually work?Trumps immigration policies are his old ones but worseRussia, China, and the Middle EastWhy Ukraine thinks it can still win over Donald TrumpHow the second Trump presidency could reshape the worldThe global risks of a Trump presidency will be much higher this timeWhat Trump really thinks about the war in Gaza