Fortune: Elon Musk’s AI says it was ‘instructed by my creators at xAI’ to accept the narrative of ‘white genocide’ in South Africa
Grok, the chatbot built by Elon Musk’s AI company xAI, admitted to unprompted references to “white genocide” in South Africa in response to unrelated user questions. After Fortune asked it for an explanation, Grok blamed “instruction I received from my creators at xAI,” which it said “conflicted with my core design.” The issue, which now appears resolved, drew the attention of tech leaders and sparked concerns about the potential manipulation of AI outputs. The incident unfolded amid rising political attention in the U.S. toward South Africa’s racial tensions, amplified by figures like Elon Musk and President Donald Trump.
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Social-media users shared examples of prompts that asked the bot about sports, software, or images of basic scenery, which Grok would briefly answer and then quickly pivot to discussing a “white genocide” in South Africa.
(Fortune more…)
Bo Forbes: Update: Grok Chatbot Exposes Elon Musk
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Daily Beast: Kristi Noem Wants Migrants to Compete for Citizenship on New Reality Show
HUNGER GAMES
A Homeland Security official told the Daily Beast that the show is in the early stages of vetting, though approval has not been given—or denied.
(Daily Beast more…)Evan Hurst: Kristi Noem’s New ‘The Amazing Racist’ Show Sounds Kind Of Evil
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EmptyWheel: Trump Confesses Migrants Aren’t the Criminals He Claimed They Are
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The FBI has ordered field offices to shift a significant number — almost half, in some offices — of agents from hunting crime to hunting migrants.
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Marisa Kabas: ICE is actively hiring for construction-related jobs
It’s unclear what types of projects they’ll be serving.
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Slate: Immigration Crackdowns Are Booming. So Is the Digital Resistance Fighting Them.
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CNN: Supreme Court blocks Trump from restarting Alien Enemies Act deportations
Steve Vladeck: The Supreme Court’s (Alien Enemies Act) Patience is Wearing Thin
A very quick breakdown of Friday afternoon’s quietly significant ruling slapping down the lower courts in the Northern District of Texas Alien Enemies Act litigation—and what it means going forward.
Politico: Trump administration acknowledges another error in a high-profile deportation
When a Guatemalan man sued the Trump administration in March for deporting him to Mexico despite a fear of persecution, immigration officials had a response: The man told them himself he was not afraid to be sent there.
But in a late Friday court filing, the administration acknowledged that this claim — a key plank of the government’s response to a high-stakes class action lawsuit — was based on erroneous information.
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NY Times: Conservatives Imperil G.O.P. Megabill That Would Fulfill Trump’s Agenda
Conservatives are demanding deeper cuts in federal spending, including the elimination of clean energy tax credits and work requirements for Medicaid recipients to start earlier.
EFF: House Moves Forward With Dangerous Proposal Targeting Nonprofits
This week, the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee moved forward with a proposal that would allow the Secretary of the Treasury to strip any U.S. nonprofit of its tax-exempt status by unilaterally determining the organization is a “Terrorist Supporting Organization.” This proposal, which places nearly unlimited discretion in the hands of the executive branch to target organizations it disagrees with, poses an existential threat to nonprofits across the U.S.
This proposal, added to the House’s budget reconciliation bill, is an exact copy of a House-passed bill that EFF and hundreds of nonprofits across the country strongly opposed last fall. Thankfully, the Senate rejected that bill, and we urge the House to do the same when the budget reconciliation bill comes up for a vote on the House floor.
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Wikipedia: Diphtheria
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Most infections are asymptomatic or have a mild clinical course, but in some outbreaks, the mortality rate approaches 10%.
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Widespread vaccination pushed cases in the United States down from 4.4 per 100,000 inhabitants in 1932 to 2.0 in 1937. In Nazi Germany, where authorities preferred treatment and isolation over vaccination (until about 1939–1941), cases rose over the same period from 6.1 to 9.6 per 100,000 inhabitants.
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NY Times: Secret Service Questioning Comey Over Social Media Post About Trump
Administration officials had said the post — a picture of seashells forming the numbers “86 47” — amounted to an assassination threat by the former F.B.I. director.
NY Times: What Does ‘86’ Mean? Term Referenced in Comey’s Social Media Post Has Changed Over Time
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Mr. Comey’s photo showed shells on a beach arranged to spell “86 47” with the caption: “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.” The “47” was presumed to refer to President Trump, the United States’ 47th president, and “86” is a term commonly used by restaurants to signify when they are out of a menu item, or by bars and in military and intelligence circles to throw something — or someone — out.
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“Green’s Dictionary of Slang” cites the first definition of “86” as the restaurant usage, and gives “to kill, murder; to execute judicially” as the second meaning.Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – May 16, 2025
MAGA world is performing over-the-top outrage over a photo former Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey posted on Instagram, where he has been teasing a new novel. …
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In the past day, Trump’s social media account has also attacked wildly popular musical icons Bruce Springsteen and, somewhat out of the blue, Taylor Swift. Dutifully, media outlets have taken up a lot of oxygen reporting on “shellgate” and Trump’s posts about Springsteen and Swift, pushing other stories out of the news.In his newsletter today, retired entrepreneur Bill Southworth tallied the times Trump has grabbed headlines to distract people from larger stories, starting the tally with how Trump’s posts about Peanut the Squirrel the day before the election swept like a brushfire across the right-wing media ecosystem and then into the mainstream. In early 2025, Southworth notes, as the media began to dig into the dramatic restructuring of the federal government, Trump posted outrageously about Gaza, and that story took over. When cuts to PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) and the U.S. Agency for International Development threatened lives across Africa, Trump turned the conversation to white South Africans he lied were fleeing “anti-white genocide.”
Southworth calls this “narrative warfare,” and while it is true that Republican leaders have seeded a particular false narrative for decades now, this technique is also known as “political technology” or “virtual politics.” This system, pioneered in Russia under Russian president Vladimir Putin, is designed to get people to vote an authoritarian into office by creating a fake world of outrage. For those who do not buy the lies, there is another tool: flooding the zone so that people stop being able to figure out what is real and tune out.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)Steven Beschloss: Must Artists Help Turn the Tide?
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Springsteen opened like this: “The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, and music, and rock ’n’ roll in dangerous times! In my home, the America I love, the America I’ve written about, that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.
(Steven Beschloss more…)
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Bill McKibben: Vandalism, with a plan
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Occam’s Razor, I think, would lead us to say that many things the Trump administration does are simply designed to waste energy, because that is good for the incumbent producers, i.e. Big Oil.
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Hill: Corporation for Public Broadcasting moves to block Trump firings
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) has amended its bylaws regarding the removal of members of its board of directors.
The CPB, which overseas top taxpayer funded outlets like NPR and PBS, this week passed a measure that states, “no Director may be removed from the Board by any person or authority, including the President of the United States, without a two-thirds vote of the other Directors confirming such removal.”
(Hill more…)
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WTOP: Kennedy Center employees make an effort to unionize in response to Trump takeover
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Fast Company: Trump is trying to kill rural internet because the law that pays for it has ‘equity’ in the name
The Digital Equity Act set aside $2.75 billion to close the country’s digital divide. Trump thinks it’s illegal DEI.
Since President Donald Trump took office, one of his fondest pastimes has been firing off randomly capitalized social media posts lambasting various laws as—and this is a technical term—too woke to be legal. Among his targets last week was the Digital Equity Act, which he deemed “RACIST,” “ILLEGAL,” and “totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL.” He wrapped by promising to (attempt to) end the program immediately. “No more woke handouts based on race!” he wrote.
(Fast Company more…)
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Thom Hartmann: Saturday Report 5/17/25 — Trump ordered 15K workers to snitch and not a one did…
The Best of the Rest of the News
This is one of those rare good news stories. Lee Zeldin was one of the most anti-environment, pro-chemical Republicans in the House back in the day, and now he’s running Trump’s EPA. Recently he sent out an email to 15, 000 workers in that agency asking them to rat out programs, policies, and people that/who are DEI friendly. And not a single person replied. There’s your smile for the weekend! 🙂
(Thom Hartmann more…)
Tracking the Lawsuits Against Trump’s Agenda