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Chicago Tribune
a day ago
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Letters: Op-ed by liberal attack dog is an over-the-top criticism of Donald Trump
The Tribune's vendetta against President Donald Trump continues. Liberal college lecturer Storer H. Rowley goes after Trump like the newspaper's personal attack dog. His Aug. 3 opinion piece is so over the top that I thought I was reading the satirical Babylon Bee. The headline blares: 'Six months into his presidency, Trump has created a police state.' In Rowley's opinion, Trump has created a 'hellscape' of fear and chaos where unaccountable, masked immigration agents are hunting unauthorized workers 'like animals.' Trump deliberately appeals to white nationalists. His police state tactics are causing blowback. Only people power and voters can stop a criminal president! Nowhere does Rowley admit that the current situation was caused by the Joe Biden administration, which allowed countless immigrants to enter the U.S., and that Trump is trying to fix that situation. But Rowley does admit that 'Americans voted to get the border under control, and to be fair, Trump's administration has done that.' Hmm. On the opposite page in print, eternal liberal Clarence Page dwells on the Jeffrey Epstein files, just like CNN, in his column 'Trump drives a wedge into his own movement.' And no surprise that the Tribune did not report on the Department of Justice investigation into the Democrats' push to sell 'Russia collusion' to the American public during Trump's first op-ed by Storer H. Rowley is right on the mark. I don't believe most Americans want to have a police state that scares Americans and legal immigrants. We should never have masked officers scooping up people from schools, playgrounds and their homes, with no constitutional rights, and whisked away to a foreign gulag. We look like the dictator states we have always and Customs Enforcement has arrested, detained and/or deported tens of thousands of workers; this has chilled many others from reporting to jobs where they fear being picked up by ICE. The Department of Government Efficiency has encouraged tens of thousands of federal workers to retire early or quit and mandated the firing of tens of thousands of additional federal workers by closing departments and offices; this has deterred many individuals who might join the federal workforce in a typical year from seeking federal employment. Is it any surprise that unemployment is up and new jobs are down?Due process is a fundamental right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. It protects all people, citizens and noncitizens alike, from arbitrary government decisions and ensures fairness in legal matters. It's a basic promise: Before the government can take away someone's life, freedom, or property, they must have a fair chance to defend themselves. But today, that promise is under serious threat. In April, the U.S. Supreme Court deliberated on whether noncitizens have any right to a fair legal process before being removed from the country. Although the justices had different views on how much process is due, the court decided: Due process protections apply to everyone in America, regardless of immigration status. Due process means having access to a fair hearing before a neutral judge. It means having the right to speak with a lawyer. It means protecting the integrity of our legal system and protecting our communities. The Supreme Court's reaffirmation comes at a time when immigration policies have made it easier to deport people without traditional legal hearings, raising urgent questions about the strength and future of constitutional protections for all of us. Our organization represents residents from Barrington, Hoffman Estates, Inverness, Palatine, Rolling Meadows and Schaumburg, some of whom are immigrants. We are committed to ensuring all residents receive the legal protections to which they are entitled under the law. We value fairness and justice. Weakening due process protections for some puts all of our rights at risk. If the government can take away someone else's rights without a hearing, what prevents them from doing the same to you? Readers can take action by raising their voices in support of a fair legal process for everyone. Most importantly, remember that standing up for due process isn't just about protecting others; it's also about defending the fundamental rights that make America a place of justice and fairness for the last three months, the U.S. created a paltry 106,000 jobs. This, of course, was to be expected, as Donald Trump's tariffs have brought uncertainty and chaos to the economy. His response? Fire the messenger. But this poor jobs report is just another example of history showing that Republicans aren't very good with the economy. As recently as the fourth quarter in 2024, Joe Biden's last in office, the unemployment rate was 4%. Biden delivered the longest stretch of 4% or lower unemployment in 50 years, while creating an impressive 15 million new jobs in just four years. That's almost eight times more jobs what we saw with the last three Republican presidents combined. In his first term, Donald Trump actually lost 2 million jobs. In fact, since 1990, the U.S. has created over 50 million new jobs. Almost 49 million of those jobs — or 96% — were created by Democratic presidents. Poor job growth and economic downturns under Republican presidents are to be expected. Of the last 11 recessions that have occurred post-World War II, 10 have occurred under Republican presidents. In more recent history, George H.W. Bush's recession begat Bill Clinton's economic recovery; more than 18 million new jobs were generated during Clinton's term, the most in our history. George W. Bush's 'Great Recession' begat Barack Obama's economic recovery, one of the longest stretches of economic expansion in our history. Donald Trump's COVID-19-related recession begat Joe Biden's economic recovery. History shows that electing a Republican president often leads to slower growth, while also leading to massive budget deficits driven by tax cuts for the rich — Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' is forecast to add over $3 trillion to the national debt. In fact, the only presidents to reduce the deficit in the last 60-plus years were Democrats. The tired belief that Republicans are better at handling the economy simply isn't true.
Politico
2 days ago
- Politics
- Politico
A California judge opens the door to election deepfakes
American elections are increasingly clouded with anxiety over what AI-powered misinformation could be doing to democracy — misleading voters, smearing candidates, polluting the media ecosystem. Despite Congress' inaction on the issue — or maybe because of it — more than half of the U.S.' state legislatures have either considered or passed laws on election deepfakes, making states the main guardians of what Americans can and can't circulate about elections. A federal court, however, struck down one of the country's strictest state laws on AI election misinformation on Tuesday — raising the question of how, or whether, regulators should address deepfakes that could skew the vote. The law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last year, prohibits platforms from displaying election-related deepfakes within about four months of voting day in California. (States like Texas have similar laws, though they're mostly aimed at the campaigns themselves.) The challenge had its roots in a clash of egos. When X owner Elon Musk shared a distorted clip of then-Vice President Kamala Harris on the site, Newsom rebuked him. A few months later, Newsom signed the law, and the video's creator promptly filed a suit against California to get the deepfake rule overturned. Musk's X later joined the suit, along with Rumble and the Babylon Bee. On Tuesday, California District Judge John Mendez overturned the law — not on First Amendment grounds, but because it violated Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act, which protects platforms from liability for content that third parties post. He ruled that when a user uploaded the deepfake clip of Harris saying she was the 'ultimate diversity hire,' platforms didn't have a duty to block it. 'This is not surprising in the least,' Ari Cohn, lead tech counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said of the decision. 'It's kind of bizarre to me that [California] thought they could sneak this by Section 230 in the first place.' The full transcript of Medez's ruling likely won't be available until a month from now. But when he delivered his opinion from the bench, Mendez didn't invoke the First Amendment arguments that the attorneys raised about the law. (My colleague Chase DiFeliciantonio, the POLITICO reporter in the courtroom, told DFD that neither the websites nor the state pressed the issue further when Mendez asked.) You might see why the ruling makes sense from a tech policy perspective — regardless of how much it might horrify election-reform advocates. Section 230 is widely regarded as the '26 words that created the internet.' Written to protect service providers like America Online from being sued for the content their users were posting, it has evolved into the primary liability shield for massive online platforms like X, Facebook, YouTube and Reddit, which would likely be sued into oblivion if they could be liable for every single post. Without it, they might pre-emptively take down everything that has even a remote chance of being illegal, making feeds boringly vanilla. Section 230 also shields platforms when removing content they deem to be objectionable, which is essential for moderation. At the same time, Section 230 has become a political punching bag. Some advocates say it has hugely exceeded its original intent, and now protects companies from harms they knowingly allow to fester. The debate is especially sharp around elections, and not just from Democrats worried about Musk's provocations. During the 2020 presidential race, conservatives were up in arms when Facebook and Twitter (now X) suppressed posts about explicit videos on Hunter Biden's misplaced laptop — the kind of content policy protected by Section 230. Now with the rise of deepfakes, that argument has broadened — and critics suggest that the law allows for a genuine degradation of democracy. Section 230 isn't ironclad. The law doesn't absolutely shield platforms that host child sexual abuse material or copyright-infringing works, or that facilitate sex trafficking. First lady Melania Trump recently pushed through the Take It Down Act, a law signed in May that imposes criminal liability on platforms that display sexual deepfakes and revenge porn. (Section 230 technically doesn't apply to criminal laws.) So why shouldn't there be an exception for election deepfakes, too? For one, the country has a long tradition of trying to promote, and protect, robust political discourse. Pornography, by contrast, has generally been considered as less worthy of protection. 'Congress' judgment is if the consequences are that platforms will over-restrict porn in some measure, no big deal,' UCLA Law professor Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment specialist, told DFD. Whereas when it comes to political speech, even AI-generated, he says: 'We might be worried about the over-chilling of, say, election-related parody.' There's even a counterintuitive argument that such an exception could actually make misinformation worse. Cohn points out that without Section 230, a politician could file a bunch of lawsuits against platforms with frivolous claims that an unflattering video — even a perfectly real one — was a deepfake. In response to a 2024 election ad that compiled clips of then-candidate Donald Trump's real-life gaffes, he falsely asserted that they had been fabricated using AI. There may be ways to construct a narrower law than California's that would pass muster. A law that restricts election deepfakes a week, rather than four months, before the vote may be more legally defensible, according to Cohn. Courts have also left open the possibility that restrictions on misinformation about election mechanics — such as misleading people about how to vote — could be permissible. If there were a deepfake video of Biden telling people to visit the polls on the wrong day, served up to likely Democratic voters, a law could conceivably be narrow enough to address that kind of attempt to disrupt the system. For legislators looking to solve the deepfake problem, there's one other nettlesome fact: Despite all the anxiety, there isn't much evidence that election deepfakes in fact skewed the 2024 vote. Without having a documented harm, it's tough to know how to create a focused, defensible law to regulate it. Cohn said, 'The price of living in a free society is that bad things are sometimes going to happen before we can fix them.' AWS gives the administration a $1 billion coupon Amazon Web Services is effectively chipping in $1 billion to advance Trump's AI agenda, POLITICO's Sophia Cai reports. The General Services Administration announced on Thursday that it had struck an agreement with AWS to help move federal agencies onto the cloud. The deal, which is set to run through 2028, provides for $1 billion in credits for AWS' services. More access to cloud computing will help agencies to integrate large language models and other deep learning applications into its operations. The coupon is part of DOGE's OneGov initiative, which seeks to digitize the federal government's paper-based systems. Oracle also agreed to give agencies a 75 percent discount on its cloud and database services in July, and a senior administration official told POLITICO that similar OneGov deals are in the works with Google and Microsoft. Trump announces a 100 percent chip tariff Trump says he'll impose 'a tariff of approximately 100 percent' on all semiconductors manufactured abroad, POLITICO's Doug Palmer reports. During a Wednesday press conference with Apple CEO Tim Cook, the president indicated that the import tax was intended to pressure more semiconductor firms to come to the U.S. 'If you're building in the United States of America, there's no charge,' Trump said. He added, 'The chip companies are all coming back home.' A White House official told POLITICO that the tariffs will be designed to reshore manufacturing while also limiting disruptions to the supply chain. Trump has previously used tariffs as leverage to increase investment in domestic chip manufacturing. He claimed in April that he'd convinced Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to pitch in another $100 billion for its expansion into the U.S. by threatening the company with a 100 percent tariff as well. The Commerce Department has also been renegotiating grants provided under the CHIPS Act to press semiconductor companies to up their investments in American manufacturing. post of the day THE FUTURE IN 5 LINKS Stay in touch with the whole team: Aaron Mak (amak@ Mohar Chatterjee (mchatterjee@ Steve Heuser (sheuser@ Nate Robson (nrobson@ and Daniella Cheslow (dcheslow@
New York Post
3 days ago
- Politics
- New York Post
Best of the Babylon Bee: Kamala announces she will step away from politics to spend more time with vodka
Every week, The Post will bring you our picks of the best one-liners and stories from satirical site the Babylon Bee to take the edge off Hump Day. Want more of a chuckle? Be sure to click the links. Former Vice President Kamala Harris officially announced today that she would be stepping away from politics in order to spend more quality time with vodka. READ MORE As the race for mayor of New York intensified, one prominent candidate landed the support of another popular Democrat, as a fake Indian made a public endorsement of a real Indian. READ MORE Historians have uncovered a blue jeans ad featuring Adolf Hitler from 1942. 'Hitler has good jeans,' declared the newly-unearthed advertisement, a clarion call for the violent establishment of a dominant Aryan race. READ MORE According to CNN journalists on the ground, the white male has been identified as famed football player O.J. Simpson, who was fleeing arrest after a warrant was issued in connection with a double homicide. READ MORE
Politico
4 days ago
- Politics
- Politico
Elon Musk and X notch court win against California deepfake law
The first law would have blocked online platforms from hosting deceptive, AI-generated content related to an election in the run-up to the vote. It came amid heightened concerns about the rapid advancement and accessibility of artificial intelligence, allowing everyday users to quickly create more realistic images and videos, and the potential political impacts. But opponents of the measures, like Musk, also argued the restrictions could infringe upon freedom of expression. The original challenge was filed by the creator of the video, Christopher Kohls, on First Amendment grounds, with X later joining the case after Musk said the measures were 'designed to make computer-generated parody illegal.' The satirical right-wing news website the Babylon Bee and conservative social media site Rumble also joined the suit. The Harris video had depicted her describing herself as the 'ultimate diversity hire.' Mendez said the first law, penned by Democratic state Assemblymember Marc Berman, conflicted with the oft-cited Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act, which shields online platforms from liability for what third parties post on their sites. 'They don't have anything to do with these videos that the state is objecting to,' Mendez said of sites like X that host deepfakes. But the judge did not address the First Amendment claims made by Kohls, saying it was not necessary in order to strike down the law on Section 230 grounds. 'I'm simply not reaching that issue,' Mendez told the plaintiffs' attorneys. Neither Newsom's office nor the office of California Attorney General Rob Bonta immediately responded to requests for comment. Berman's office declined to comment and the office of Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, the Democrat who authored the second law, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
New York Post
30-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Best of the Babylon Bee: Trump to balance budget by starting swear jar for Dems
Every week, The Post will bring you our picks of the best one-liners and stories from satirical site the Babylon Bee to take the edge off Hump Day. Want more of a chuckle? Be sure to click the links. 4 mfalzone Advertisement The Congressional Budget Office estimated that at ten bucks per cuss, the swear jar will easily wipe out this year's projected $1.9 trillion deficit. READ MORE 4 mfalzone Advertisement In London, bats reportedly crept in unnoticed through the tube system before exploding onto the surface at dusk where they proceeded to take over parliament and all major bridges. READ MORE 4 mfalzone According to sources, the U.S. will now collect a fee every time someone uses a word with an unnecessary 'U' in it. READ MORE Advertisement 4 mfalzone Experts believe that even though you were anticipating a Monday free from the work week, AI hasn't gotten around to replacing you yet, so you have to log in and get cracking. READ MORE
