In early September, Dario Amodei of Anthropic published an essay to urge the slowdown of AI development. As the CEO of one of the leading AI companies, his call for more regulation is telling. Within days, competitors in the AI industry, such as Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk of xAI had endorsed his views. Soon after, on September 13th, House Speaker Mike Johnson argued that “If Congress just races in and does some sort of emergency session to try to regulate AI, we will lose the race to China, and that is a threat to every single American. So, we’ve got to have balance.” President Trump, meanwhile, dismissed the call for a slowdown, arguing on Truth Social, “We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!” He went on to say: “There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China.” It was a strange spectacle: the builders of a technology asking for restraint, and the government that could impose it refusing. If the companies building the most powerful AI systems want someone to set limits, who can? The EU has set out a framework on AI regulation; in America, its industry leaders are calling for regulation, only for federal lawmakers to rebuff such attempts. Two Philosophies on AI Regulation The European Union wrote the AI Act, which came into force in August 2024. The law applies to all 27 member states and divides AI by the different risks it poses. At the top of the hierarchy are AI uses that are banned, including social scoring by governments. Next, we have “high-risk” AI uses, such as systems that help to decide who gets hired, whether a customer is eligible for a loan, or whether a student should be offered admission into university. These systems are allowed, under certain rules and conditions, including transparency regarding how these AI programs are used. AI-generated content, like Chatbots and LLMs (Large Language Models), carries lighter regulations to disclose what these tools are and how they are used. For the U.S., there is no equivalent federal law that governs AI. AI is still governed by older statutes on technology use, consumer protection, and copyright law. There is, however, a body of state law that is putting further scrutiny on how AI is used. Europe: The Rulebook & Slowdown Europe was first to regulate via the EU AI Act. However, making rules is one thing; implementing them effectively is another. Part of the problem is effective enforcement. By 2025, companies simply did not have the technology or set of standards needed to enforce key provisions. As a result, it became clear that key regulations, particularly for “high-risk” AI — which had greater reporting standards — would not be enforced on time. A second problem is the structure of the EU. Under Article 70 of the act, each member state had until August 2nd, 2025, to establish standards and enforce the law. However, that deadline was not met, and each of the 27 member states moved at different speeds. Each member state also has its own limits and ability to effectively implement complex regulations. This is a common issue with EU regulatory frameworks, and the problem is also prevalent here. Because of this issue, later in 2026, the European Commission made an amendment to the AI law, called the Digital Omnibus on AI. This law came into force in July of this year, as Regulation (EU) 2026/1744. The new timeline pushes obligations for stand-alone high-risk systems to Dec. 2, 2027. It would be easy to read this as Europe losing its willingness to regulate AI; however, that misses a few things. Firstly, the omnibus also tightened the law. It added a ban on AI practices that generate non-consensual sexual imagery, including child sexual material. Second, the delay left the rules for general-purpose models untouched. These are the large systems, like ChatGPT and Claude, that sit under other products. Their providers have carried obligations since August 2025, and those whose models may pose “systemic risk” must notify the European AI Office. Using a banned practice can still cost a company up to 35 million euros or 7 percent of worldwide annual turnover. Third, Brussels has already started to use these regulations. On Aug. 29, the AI Office sent its first formal requests for information: one set to developers of some of the most advanced models, and another to more than 30 companies on how they disclose their training data. How much further it will go is unknown, but the regulatory powers are real, and they are being used America: Rulebooks Under Development In December 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14365, which makes it federal policy to pursue global AI dominance through a “minimally burdensome” national framework and to check state laws the administration considers excessive. The order directs the attorney general to create an AI Litigation Task Force to challenge them in court. In July 2025, the Senate voted 99 to 1 to strip a 10-year moratorium on state AI laws from the president’s signature tax-and-spending bill. Opposition had come from both parties; Congress is not yet willing to federally regulate AI, but does not support stopping states from issuing their own. With that vacuum, some states have decided to act. California’s SB 53, signed in September 2025 and in effect since January of this year, is aimed squarely at frontier AI like ChatGPT and Claude. It requires developers of the largest models to publish safety frameworks, report critical safety incidents to the state, and protect whistleblowers, with civil penalties of up to $1 million per violation. Colorado, on the other hand, targeted algorithmic discrimination in decisions about employment, housing, health care, lending, and education. Colorado is also where the federal-state conflict became a lawsuit. In April of this year, Musk’s xAI sued to block the law, and the Justice Department joined the case on the company’s side, arguing
By Vaibhav Sinha
I was seven years old, still in my school uniform, spewing out my thoughts to my mom. My vocabulary was limited, but my emotions certainly were not. Somewhere in the middle of my passionate rambling, my mom pulled out her phone and began to record me. The moment I noticed the camera, I held my head a little higher, proud that my concerns were being documented. To me, that camera meant that what I was saying mattered — that my frustration was being heard and that, somehow, my voice could reach beyond that singular moment. It was the day before Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. At school, the students were all excited that we would not have to return to class the next morning. Among the Armenian students, there was an unspoken understanding of why. We all had at least a basic understanding of what April 24th meant: the symbolic beginning of the mass killing and displacement of millions of our people by Ottoman Turkey. For many of the non-Armenian students, though, the Armenian Genocide may have been something they had never heard of, or only heard about in passing. As I remember it, no one had explicitly explained why our schools were closing, or taught us about the history we were taking the day to commemorate — which is precisely what sparked my adamant outburst. Despite growing up with an understanding of the Armenian Genocide through my family and community, I still wanted to deepen that knowledge in a classroom setting alongside classmates who would also be learning about such a crucial part of history. I searched for a solution with all the policy expertise one could expect from a seven-year-old. I spoke endlessly about schools, about recognition, and about how everyone should have the means to learn about the Armenian Genocide. I knew exactly what I wanted, but I didn’t have the words to explain what needed to be done and how we could get there. So, instead, I repeated the one thing I was certain of: we needed this education. That desire — a classroom, a curriculum, a country making this history accessible — didn’t disappear when the camera stopped recording. More than a decade later, it took shape as the Armenian Genocide Education Act. Reintroduced in Congress in 2025, the Armenian Genocide Education Act builds upon earlier federal recognition of the Genocide, including congressional recognition in 2019 and presidential recognition in 2021. It is the third time this bill has been reintroduced — a testament to the Armenian community’s persistence in making this history accessible to all of America. The Armenian National Committee of America’s (ANCA’s) policy brief sums it up clearly: the bill seeks to secure ten million dollars over five years for the Library of Congress to help educate Americans about the Armenian Genocide, while promoting greater public understanding of its history, lessons, consequences, and ongoing costs. The legislation addresses a shortage of Armenian Genocide material in school textbooks and lesson plans. As the ANCA rightly emphasizes, expanding education is necessary to push back against the Turkish government’s ongoing denial of the Armenian Genocide and its efforts to weaken U.S. recognition of it. The most powerful way to counter more than a century of denial is not always force — it is a curriculum that teaches the truth. The bill also recognizes that this history extends beyond Armenians alone. It specifically addresses the mass murder, national dispossession, cultural erasure, and exile of Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Syriacs, Arameans, Maronites, and other Christian communities under the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1923. In doing so, the bill helps ensure that the suffering of all these communities is remembered. History cannot be fully understood when key parts of its timeline are left out. Doing so would be like reading a book while skipping entire sections and still expecting to understand the full story. Leaving the Armenian Genocide out of that story means overlooking a history that Armenian-Americans continue to carry with them more than a century later. Lacking the resources to teach about the Armenian Genocide removes an important part of the twentieth century’s history of genocide and human rights. The result is a public uninformed about the events that shaped entire communities with which they now share a country. Because education is a powerful tool that can shape the minds of America’s youth, the passage of this bill is incredibly important. Teaching the history and consequences of genocide helps future generations recognize the dangers of denial and dehumanization, and ensures that they have the knowledge necessary to reject hatred and prevent history from repeating itself. ANCA’s comparison to the Never Again Education Act, a federal law that supports Holocaust education and awareness, demonstrates that nationwide support for genocide education is entirely possible, and can serve to confront denial and misinformation — countering distortion of history. On that April afternoon, the only audience to my speech was my mom and the camera in her hand. And yet, I remember believing wholeheartedly that my concerns belonged to something greater than myself. I realize now that my belief was right. The ideas I articulated to the very best of my ability have taken on a tangible form in the Armenian Genocide Education Act. Its passage would honor the lives and experiences of the millions affected, while helping build a better informed public — one better equipped to understand the past, challenge denial, and carry those valuable lessons into the future. Turns out, the seven-year-old confidently blabbering with zero policy expertise actually had it right all along. A passion to learn and be heard, it seems, has no age requirement.
By Maya Balmanukyan
Last Friday, Trump tried to institute a media ban against CNN, MSNOW, and Politico, refusing them entry to the White House. Now, CNN has been blocked from Air Force One. This is one of the greatest threats we have seen to the First Amendment rights by this administration. Though the Trump administration and the Justice Department claim this decision was made after threats to national security, Trump’s initial Truth Social posts cited different reasons: “It’s sick. I mean, there’s something wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stuff. Now, if they want to write them, that’s fine. But I don’t have to let them into my, into the people’s house,” Trump said at an event in the Oval Office last week. Now that doesn’t sound like a national security defense argument. Trump didn’t point to national security reasoning until the ban went to a hearing. He switched tactics in a Truth Social post, saying, “The White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish. It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America. It is a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW!” The Trump administration cited multiple alleged articles that were assaults on security due to their alleged misinformation. Some of the articles cited included topics like the status of munitions supplies for the Iran war, an FBI leak investigation involving a journalist, sanctions on Russia, and an article about the bad “vibes” at the Republican midterm convention. Most of the articles cited by the Trump administration were written by journalists who did not hold card passes to the White House. And yet, 78 journalists lost their White House press passes. No one can deny the fact that CNN, MSNOW, and Politico are left-leaning publications. Though I have my own journalistic qualms with any publications that try to take a political slant, that shouldn’t stop them from being able to produce content. It is their First Amendment right. And this was agreed upon in a court of law when, on Thursday, a judge temporarily overturned Trump’s ban due to lack of due process. These media companies were never proved to be a national security risk. Their press passes were taken away only with a letter from the administration stating that they failed to maintain “standards of professionalism and decorum.” Journalists are the watchdogs of America. They regulate our government to ensure our civil liberties and freedoms are protected. If there was a time in America when we needed someone like them to look out for the citizens, it would be now. In times like this, the last thing we want is a weaker press. We need as many journalists watching out for our best interests as possible. America is a free country, and although you don’t have to agree with the reporting tactics of these formerly banned organizations, you can understand what sort of implications these bans have on the future. The precedent of keeping our liberties in tow is most pressing. Acknowledgement: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author, not necessarily Our National Conversation as a whole.
By Adrihanna Collins
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