A declassified 1962 document shows that the Kennedy Administration considered “Operation Northwoods,” a plan to fabricate a terror attack and blame it on the Cuban government in order to legitimize an invasion of Cuba. The Northwoods plan was rejected by President Kennedy. This tactic of faking an attack for political purposes is called a “false flag” attack. Modern conspiracy theorists use Operation Northwoods as evidence that the American government fakes terror attacks in the 21st century, considering attacks such as the September 11, 2001 attacks and the 2018 Parkland shooting to be “false flag” events. I engage with the Operation Northwoods document, detailing its contents and implications. I then analyze the impact of the document in the conspiracy fringe, looking at its reference in various new media spaces, such as the online conspiracy editorial InfoWars and the alt-right social media platform Gab. I find that the power of the Northwoods document is often overestimated and exaggerated on online spaces and that the conspiracy theorists use motivated reasoning to further their belief in conspiracy.  Online spaces allow for the spread of false conspiracy narratives by enabling people with fringe beliefs to connect with each other more effectively. The wide propagation of Northwoods as evidence that major contemporary tragedies are fraudulent is a supreme example of dangerous information which can be spread unchecked online.

This research project explores the relationship between various business activities of Ezra Meeker, an early white settler of the Pacific Northwest, to illuminate how his identity was shaped by nineteenth-century American business culture. Since Meeker faced both financial and personal failures in his hop and his Klondike business enterprises, both of which were connected through the issues of prohibition, he felt pressured, at least in part due to his business context, to produce a legacy of success. Making extensive use of archival and printed sources, this paper shows how Meeker looked to his pioneer past as the time when he was the most successful, and then used his public memorialization of the Oregon Trail to restore and burnish his own legacy. This project argues that it is only by gaining a deeper understanding of Meeker's business pursuits that we can truly understand his nationally-recognized work of preserving the past. By examinging various responses to Meeker's efforts to reshape his image, this project analyzes Meeker's success in changing his identity and the broader implications thereof. In this way, the paper also sheds light on crucial aspects of American identity, including westward expansion and myths of the West, which people like Meeker and his compatriot Buffalo Bill preserved and perpetuated. This identity is vital to understand since many Americans' perceptions of themselves and their country, as well as their patriotic belief in it, have been built on this understanding of our nation's past.

Since the 1990s, legislation in many US states has increasingly criminalized and restricted undocumented immigration. However, despite these restrictive policies, the population of undocumented immigrants has increased and overall immigration flows from Mexico to the US only began to decline following the 2009 recession. This research responds to decades of increasingly punitive policy and intends to test the efficacy of these policies. Many studies have focused on the efficacy and implications of federal policies, but far less attention has been given to state-level policies in the US. This paper analyzes the efficacy of punitive, state-level immigration laws from 2010 to 2016 in the United States. I hypothesize that there is no significant relationship between the passage of punitive state-level immigration policies and the year-to-year change in state populations of undocumented immigrants. However, I also hypothesize that the introduction of punitive state-level immigration policies affects yearly immigration flows—or the number of people immigrating from Mexico to a specific US State. To conduct this study, I created an index that aggregates a broad spectrum of laws, including policing, licensing, education, public benefits and labor. I then selected a few high-profile state laws intended to deter or curb undocumented immigration. I used multivariate regression analyses to test whether the introduction of punitive policy immigration policy systematically influences migration flows and changes in migrant populations while controlling for relevant economic and demographic factors.

Imidacloprid (IMI), a neonicotinoid insecticide, is being sought by shellfish growers to control burrowing shrimp (ghost shrimp, Neotropea californiensis) in Willapa Bay and Grays Harbor, Washington. The shrimp destabilize sediments resulting in poor survival and low yields of the commercially harvested Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas), threatening the local shellfish industry. A permit for the use of IMI has been denied by the State, Pacific County has declared an economic emergency, and the outcome of an appeal by the growers remains uncertain. We have undertaken studies to determine if un-iodized table salt may be an alternative to IMI, specifically targeting juvenile shrimp (recruits) inhabiting the upper 10-15 cm of the sediment. Studies in 2018 indicated that a 2-3-fold increase in salinity resulted in 100% mortality when juveniles were exposed in artificial seawater. In 2019, we exposed juveniles (3 replicates, 5 shrimp each) within 10 cm of native sediment to five different salt solutions to achieve sediment pore water salinities of 25 (ambient, control), 35, 50, 70, and 100 ppt. Salt solutions were prepared with native seawater, added on top of the sediment (depth = 2 cm), and allowed to percolate through the sediment column for 6 h (low tide). At 6 h, 2 cm of ambient seawater (25 ppt) were added to simulate tidal inundation and allowed to remain on the surface for 12 h (low-high + high low tide) with two subsequent drawdowns and tidal inundations at 25 ppt (total test duration = 48 h). The sediment was then sieved to remove the shrimp and determine mortality. Average survival of controls (25 ppt) was 73.3% whereas none of the shrimp exposed to elevated salinities survived. Additional tests are underway to examine different exposure scenarios. Results to date suggest table salt may be a viable and greener alternative to IMI.