🗞️ 9/11 reflections, trade war, no-fault divorce and more

September marks 25 years since 9/11, the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil. Nearly 3,000 people were killed after al-Qaida terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and passengers overwhelmed hijackers to crash Flight 93 in Pennsylvania.

Tim Lambert, a States Newsroom editor, is tied to the site near Shanksville, where 40 passengers and crew died trying to take control of a fourth plane from hijackers. He spoke to Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani about his familial connection to the land, reporting on the tragedy and a memorial for the victims of United Flight 93.

On a rural stretch of land in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, an open meadow filled with bright wildflowers, a memorial grove of trees and a giant boulder marks the spot where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed on Sept. 11, 2001. States Newsroom’s Pennsylvania Capital-Star Editor-in-Chief Tim Lambert recently revisited the national memorial on this field — where he happened to own a piece of land that was part of more than three dozen acres that made up the crash site.

President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war with Canada is creating headaches for Republicans ahead of November’s midterms as high prices remain a top concern among voters. Responding to Trump’s increased tariffs, Canadian officials have said they’re deliberately targeting goods from states where there are close elections. And GOP candidates in Kansas, Maine and Ohio among others have been forced to balance supporting Trump with defending local manufacturers.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, transformed how American intelligence and law enforcement agencies collect, share and analyze information. Twenty-five years later, that infrastructure has merged with a digital world capable of generating vast amounts of data about Americans — and artificial intelligence is making it easier to connect and analyze that information. The result is a surveillance system far more powerful than anything imaginable in 2001, raising new questions about privacy, policing and civil liberties.

State divorce laws have remained mostly static since 2010, when New York became the last state to allow no-fault divorce. In the years since, most of the states that have tweaked their divorce laws have made it easier, not harder, to get one. Now that could be changing. In recent years, more conservatives have turned to divorce as a “family values” talking point, with some pushing to make it harder for couples to divorce. By doing so, they’ve relaunched a national conversation that would have been nearly unthinkable just a few years ago.

The country’s two largest school districts — New York City and Los Angeles — banned most student use of artificial intelligence in classrooms for this school year as anxiety over AI’s effect on learning intensifies.

The Los Angeles Unified School District announced this month that it is barring student use of generative AI on school-issued devices for the current school year. Generative AI creates new text, images or other content following a user’s instructions. During the school year, a committee will produce recommendations for use of the technology in future years.

New York City Public Schools last week announced a similar but less broad approach. The district put in place a one-year moratorium on generative AI for children from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade.

High school students will have to complete 45-minute AI literacy modules twice a year. Some career-focused AI use will be allowed and some high schools will be permitted to test AI pilot programs. The restrictions, which New York officials said will affect 600,000 students, will allow time to study the technology’s impacts.

“The tech industry wants us to believe that A.I.-powered early education is not only inevitable, but necessary,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said in a news release. “We do not see it that way.”