September 18, 2025

Now, on to the news…

This summer, pro-Palestinian activists set up an encampment outside the Israeli consulate in Houston. Demonstrators were so disruptive that officials deployed mounted police to clear the scene. Troublingly, one protester presented a sign listing other Israeli embassies, clearly suggesting that other activists stage similar encampments at diplomatic sites around the country.

Stu Smith argues that consulate takeovers likely run afoul of federal law and international agreements, which protect embassies from occupation. “Government entities may impose reasonable, content-neutral restrictions on speech based on time, place, and manner,” he writes, “particularly when necessary to ensure public safety or protect sensitive locations such as consulates.”

The United States is jockeying with China for global AI dominance. America’s most decisive advantage in that fight is its AI hardware, the most advanced in the world.

In August, however, the Trump administration approved chipmaker Nvidia’s efforts to export its H20 chip to China. According to Samuel Hammond, this could help China narrow its compute gap with the United States—or even overtake America entirely.

“America’s AI lead is tenuous,” Hammond writes. “Along with accelerating development at home, the administration should be tightening restrictions on China’s access to advanced AI hardware. Now is not the time to back down.”

Iryna Zarutska’s murder on a Charlotte, North Carolina, light-rail train, allegedly by a man with 14 prior arrests and a diagnosis of schizophrenia, has reignited debate on the connection between untreated serious mental illness and crime.

Devon Kurtz argues that this debate tends to focus on two faulty suppositions: that antipsychotic medications work consistently, and that the lack of treatment is due to a lack of resources or access. “The larger problems,” Kurtz writes, “are getting patients to take their medications as prescribed, ensuring long-term compliance with treatment plans, and responding appropriately to medication-resistant mental illnesses.”

Read here to see why Kurtz believes we need to build up our psychiatric bed capacity and “get more comfortable with the idea of long-term, indefinite institutionalization.”

Last month, President Trump threatened to raise tariffs on countries with onerous taxes, rules, or regulations aimed at technology protectionism. Though he didn’t mention it by name, the “EU is his clear target,” argues Logan Kolas.

From space to cyberspace, the EU’s regulatory posture is consistent: “implement broad regulations that appear universal but spare Europe when it cannot muster the technological strength to compete on the world stage,” writes Kolas.

Read here to see why restarting negotiations rather than immediately imposing additional tariffs would be the smart play for the U.S.

“If you want the American public to participate in the dissolution of Western civilization, this is one way to do it. Teach them to hate their country and themselves.”

—

David C., commenting on wokeness at the Smithsonian

Photo credit: Probal Rashid / Contributor / LightRocket via Getty Images