OUR PICKSStates Will Keep Pushing AI Laws | I Watched 12 Hours of Nick Fuentes | Are the Drug Boat Killings Trump’s Vietnam Moment?, and more

“The More I’m Around Young People, the More Panicked I Am”  (Yair Rosenberg, The Atlantic)
Anti-Jewish prejudice isn’t a partisan divide—it’s a generational one.

I Watched 12 Hours of Nick Fuentes  (Ali Breland, The Atlantic)
The white-supremacist influencer is laying the groundwork to go even bigger.

Pam Bondi Memo’s Quiet Rewriting of Domestic Terrorism Rules  (Thomas E. Brzozowski, Lawfare)
A leaked directive recasts counterterrorism around “Antifa,” hollowing out post-Church Committee safeguards while the administration claims restraint.

Even with Trump’s Support, Coal Power Remains Expensive – and Dangerous  (Hannah Wiseman and Seth Blumsack, The Conversation)
As projections of U.S. electricity demand rise sharply, President Donald Trump is looking to coal – historically a dominant force in the U.S. energy economy – as a key part of the solution.
In an April 2025 executive order, for instance, Trump used emergency powers to direct the Department of Energy to order the owners of coal-fired power plants that were slated to be shut down to keep the plants running.
He also directed federal agencies to “identify coal resources on Federal lands” and ease the process for leasing and mining coal on those lands. In addition, he issued orders to exclude coal-related projects from environmental reviews, promote coal exports and potentially subsidize the production of coal as a national security resource.
But there remain limits to the president’s power to slow the declining use of coal in the U.S. And while efforts continue to overcome these limits and prop up coal, mining coal remains an ongoing danger to workers: In 2025, there have been five coal-mining deaths in West Virginia and at least two others elsewhere in the U.S.

Students, Spies, and Self-Inflicted Wounds  (Michael Feinberg, Lawfare)
The short-sightedness of limiting foreign students in the name of national security.

Republicans in Congress Eye More Power for States to Remove Voters  (Jonathan Shorman, Stateline)
A US House hearing weighs changes to the National Voter Registration Act.

States Will Keep Pushing AI Laws Despite Trump’s Efforts to Stop Them  (Madyson Fitzgerald, Stateline)
38 states have adopted or enacted artificial intelligence measures this year, and more are expected in 2026.

Inside the White Supremacist Compound Hiding in Plain Sight  (Rob Picheta, CNN)
In east Tennessee, at the end of a winding dirt road, a mother glances into the woods she roamed as a child. It’s a deep and dramatic vista: a patchwork of pines and oaks disappearing into an endless Blue Ridge mountain range. “We used to ride four wheelers all through the woods,” said one woman, who spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity due to fears for her safety. “We had secret hiding places, we’d just be gone for hours … our parents wouldn’t even know where we were.” But things are different now.

DOJ Weighs Novel Federal Hate Crime Case Against Charlie Kirk’s Alleged Killer  (Ryan J. Reilly and Allan Smith, NBC News)
Three months after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the Justice Department is weighing how to bring federal charges against the shooter, including under a novel legal theory that it was an anti-Christian hate crime, according to three people familiar with the investigation.

Are the Drug Boat Killings Trump’s Vietnam Moment?  (Julian E. Zelizer, Foreign Policy)
One senator’s investigation into Lyndon Johnson’s expanding war was a turning point.