A Tennessee man with a “violent white supremacist ideology” was arrested and charged after the FBI thwarted his alleged plot to blow up a Nashville energy facility, the Justice Department announced Monday. The man now faces federal charges of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to destroy an energy facility.
It was the latest incident in an alarming trend of far-right extremist attempts to attack the United States’ critical infrastructure, many of which involve guns. In September, a Maryland woman was sentenced to 18 years in prison after admitting to planning an attack on Baltimore’s power grid with a neo-Nazi; in addition to conspiracy, the woman also pleaded guilty to firearm charges. The FBI interrupted three different white supremacist plots involving substations in 2020; one of those plans, High Country News reported, was to shoot substations to take down the national energy grid.
These schemes aren’t new — they were first popularized by neo-Nazis in the 1980s. But according to The Baltimore Banner, these plots have been on the rise since 2020. And as The Trace and Capital B reported last week, under the infamous Project 2025, the FBI’s ability to interrupt them would be obliterated.
The presidential election has been called, and Project 2025 may well turn into policy under the second Trump administration. For now, Attorney General Merrick Garland calls the Nashville case a warning: “To those seeking to sow violence and chaos in the name of hatred by attacking our country’s critical infrastructure: the Justice Department will find you, we will disrupt your plot, and we will hold you accountable.”
From The Trace
- The Four Federal Gun Violence Prevention Efforts Trump Could Dismantle: If reelected, the former president has vowed to unwind Biden administration initiatives to combat gun trafficking and shootings.
- Project 2025 Would Obliterate Federal Policing of Racist Violence: The FBI thwarts dozens of domestic terror plots each year. The 900-page plan would upend that — with dire consequences for vulnerable groups.
- Shooting Deaths Are Down by 10 Percent Across the U.S., Despite What Politicians Say: The decreases are most pronounced in Democratic-led cities like those that the Trump campaign has painted as centers of violence.
What to Know Today
North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson — the scandal-plagued figure who spurred controversy during his campaign over reports that he called himself a “black NAZI” on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago — lost his bid for governor to Democratic state Attorney General Josh Stein. In 2023, Robinson was elected to the National Rifle Association’s Board of Directors for a three-year term; in February, the NRA endorsed Robinson’s run for governor. [NPR]
Colorado voters approved a ballot initiative that will create a new funding stream for victims’ services in the state by imposing a 6.5 percent excise tax on firearms and ammunition as of next April, when it will take effect. It was the only initiative related to guns on state ballots this year. [The Colorado Sun]
Memphis voters approved three contentious proposals for local gun restrictions, strongly supporting ballot referenda to require permits to carry a handgun within city limits, implementing an extreme risk protection order ordinance, and banning the sale and carry of AR-15-style rifles in many situations. Though they were on the ballot, the measures are largely symbolic; without changes to Tennessee law, they aren’t enforceable. [Memphis Commercial Appeal]
Two police violence cases ended with guilty verdicts this past week: In Ohio, a jury found former Columbus Police Officer Adam Coy guilty of murder, felonious assault, and reckless homicide in the 2020 shooting death of Andre Hill. And late on Friday, a Kentucky jury found former Louisville Metro Police Detective Brett Hankison guilty of violating Breonna Taylor’s civil rights during a 2020 raid that same year, when plainclothes officers shot and killed her. [The Columbus Dispatch/Louisville Courier Journal]
Cities across the United States have seen significant decreases in gun homicides this year, and some have reached record lows, yet GOP politicians have continued to claim that violent crime is escalating. Research shows that Americans frequently misperceive crime trends, and partisanship has historically played a role — but a recent Gallup survey shows that the divide in perception between Democrats and Republicans is starker than ever. [Jeff Asher]
Before he carried out the shooting, the family of a 19-year-old who killed a student and a teacher at his former St. Louis high school two years ago had pleaded with Missouri police to confiscate the man’s AR-style rifle, ammunition, and bullet-proof vest. Family members knew his mental health was fragile; his sister said she told police she “knew something was going to happen.” But Missouri doesn’t have a red flag law, and the best officers could do was recommend the man, who was shot and killed at the scene, keep his gun in a storage unit. [Associated Press]
Craig Garnett, 72, has lived in Uvalde, Texas, for more than 40 years. As publisher and owner of the local paper, The Uvalde Leader-News, Garnett and his 12-person staff endured the 2022 massacre at Robb Elementary School as both members of the media and of the community — they continued reporting on the tragedy even as they learned a colleague’s daughter was among the victims, and long after parachute journalists went home. Garnett documents this experience in a new book, “Uvalde’s Darkest Hour,” out later this month. [The New York Times]
Joe Frank Martinez, the Democratic sheriff of a 110-mile stretch of Texas’s border with Mexico, has a pro-gun, anti-abortion rights platform with enough bipartisan appeal to have kept him in office for 16 years. Then he was painted as “soft” on immigration — an issue outside his purview — and his bid for reelection became more difficult than ever before. [The Texas Tribune and ProPublica]
Anthony Borges, a survivor who was seriously wounded in the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, and his parents reached a settlement with families of some slain students over ownership of the name and likeness of the shooter. All sides now own an equal share of the killer’s publicity rights. [Associated Press]
Americans across the political spectrum are preparing for the possibility of a second civil war. Some who believe the country could descend into political violence have joined survivalist communities, started to can food, and bought guns. [The New Yorker]
Data Point
61 percentage points — the gap between Democrats and Republicans over perceptions of crime in 2024. In response to a Gallup survey, 90 percent of Republicans and 29 percent of Democrats said they believed there was more crime in the U.S. compared to “a year ago, or less.” [Jeff Asher]
Non Sequitur
On Jeju Island, a New Generation of South Korean ‘Mermaids’ Emerges
“For centuries the haenyeo ‘sea women’ have braved riptides harvesting urchins and other shellfish to put food on the table.” [National Geographic]
