Happy Wednesday! We have two main stories for you today, and neither is about politics. We hope you enjoy the break as much as we did.
Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
- A Defense Department spokesman announced Tuesday the Pentagon will send 1,500 active-duty troops to the Southern border next week ahead of an anticipated surge of migrants following the end of a pandemic-era border restriction. The troops, deployed for 90 days, are expected to perform administrative duties usually handled by Customs and Border Protection officers, freeing the latter group up to be in the field.
- The Justice Department announced nearly 300 arrests on Tuesday as part of an international operation targeting so-called “darknet” drug trafficking, especially of fentanyl and opioids. The operation, which lasted more than 18 months and spanned three continents, shut down an online drug marketplace and led to the seizure of more than $50 million in cash and virtual currencies—as well as nearly 2,000 pounds of drugs.
- Pornhub—one of the most-visited pornography platforms in the United States—blocked users in Utah from accessing its site this week in protest of the state’s new age-verification law. The law, which was signed in March and went into effect yesterday, requires users to verify they are over 18 years old with a “digitized identification card” before they can enter the site. Pornhub claimed that, without consistent enforcement, the measure will only drive traffic to other, less-secure sites.
- Republican Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a law on Monday making it a felony to perform gender-transition procedures on minors, as well as provide them with puberty-blocking drugs or certain hormones. Oklahoma is the latest Republican-led state to limit such procedures.
- U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger announced this week a 36-year-old Minnesota man had been arrested and charged with arson for allegedly starting fires at two Minnesota mosques last week that resulted in tens of thousands of dollars of damage. The man—who reportedly suffers from bipolar disorder—was also captured on surveillance video vandalizing Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s district office in January.
- The Labor Department reported Tuesday job openings fell from 10 million in February to 9.6 million in March—the lowest level since April 2021—indicating the demand for workers may be cooling ahead of the Federal Reserve’s decision on interest rates later today. The quits rate—the percentage of workers who quit their job during the month—ticked down to 2.5 percent, while the number of layoffs and discharges edged up slightly to 1.8 million.
- Texas law enforcement officials on Tuesday arrested the gunman who allegedly shot and killed five of his neighbors over the weekend, ending a four-day manhunt for the suspect, who is believed to be in the country illegally. Authorities confirmed Tuesday the alleged shooter’s wife had filed a protective order against him last year, claiming he beat her.
- Washington Democratic Attorney General Bob Ferguson launched his campaign for governor on Tuesday, one day after Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee announced he would not run for reelection. Meanwhile, former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, said Tuesday he would not run for the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin, and former Nevada state lawmaker Jim Marchant—a Republican who ran a failed, Trump-backed campaign for secretary of state in 2022—announced Tuesday he will challenge sitting Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen for her seat in 2024.
- Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot died on Monday at the age of 84. The musician penned others’ Top 40 hits in the 1960s and 1970s before topping the charts himself with songs like “If You Could Read My Mind” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
Inevitable AI
To demonstrate the flaws of current artificial intelligence tools, we could start with the thousands of people fooled by a fake photo of the pope wearing a slick white puffer jacket. Or the AI-generated news articles full of plagiarism and falsehoods. Or the artists seeing their work scraped from the internet and regurgitated without compensation. Or the Afghan who had her refugee claim denied after a machine translation introduced errors into her paperwork.
But why not start with the people who helped develop these tools? “If I hadn’t done it, somebody else would have,” artificial intelligence pioneer Geoffrey Hinton told the New York Times this week, embracing the tech worker tradition of quitting a major company—in Hinton’s case, Google—to loudly warn of the dangers they’ve designed. “It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things,” he said of AI technology. “I don’t think they should scale this up more until they have understood whether they can control it.”
Writers on Strike—But Nobody Told Us!
During the 2007-2008 writers strike, Conan O’Brien—then host of the Late Show—killed airtime by seeing how long he could spin his wedding ring on top of his desk. In the middle of the 1988 strike, David Letterman decided to get a shave on TV. Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Fallon aired reruns last night, but we’re eager to see what the now writerless late-night hosts come up with if this drags on long enough.
Yesterday, screenwriters went on strike for the first time in more than 15 years. As picket lines go up in New York and Los Angeles, the walkout will slowly begin to affect the content engines of studios, television networks, and streaming companies—but how much viewers see the disruption will depend on how long it takes the two sides to strike a deal.
Worth Your Time
- It’s been three months since twin earthquakes flattened much of southern Turkey. How much of the devastation could have been avoided if President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling party had better enforced the law? “Slow violence is not slow in Turkey,” Justus Links writes for N+1 magazine. “Death comes quickly, in large numbers, and without accountability on the part of those in power. The government implemented stricter building codes after the 1999 earthquake—setting higher standards for materials and engineering calculations to ensure that buildings would withstand future earthquakes—but it has systematically failed to enforce them. Builders have been allowed to hire private inspectors who sign off on substandard construction, and Erdoğan himself has issued numerous ‘amnesties,’ legalizing unregistered buildings in exchange for a fine. How many could have been rescued had AFAD been better funded, or had alternative rescue efforts not been blocked by the state? What would the earthquake-stricken landscape look like if the AKP-connected construction industry had had to abide by building codes?”
Presented Without Comment
Washington Post: Trump, Irritated by Questions About Manhattan Probe, Sought Reporter’s Removal
“Former president Donald Trump got so irritated with an NBC reporter’s questions about a Manhattan criminal investigation that he grabbed the journalist’s phones and demanded that he be removed from an airplane interview, according to audio of the exchange obtained by the Washington Post.
…
‘I don’t want to talk to you,’ Trump said. ‘You’re not a nice guy.’
When [NBC reporter Vaughn] Hillyard presses on, Trump is heard demanding, ‘Let’s go, get him out of here. Outta here! Outta here!’ and then asking if a phone on the table is Hillyard’s.
‘Whose is this?’ Trump asked.
‘That one’s mine, too,’ Hillyard said, referring to another phone.
In the audio, a soft thud can be heard as Trump tossed the phones to the side.”
Toeing the Company Line
- In the newsletters: Haley takes a look at (🔒) the state of debt ceiling negotiations ahead of the new June 1 deadline, Sarah predicts (🔒) the extinction of the Manchins and Sinemas of the world, and Nick pens a (🔒) half-hearted defense of CNN’s decision to host a town hall with Donald Trump.
- On the podcasts: Screenwriter and satirist Rob Long joins Jonah to discuss the Hollywood writers’ strike.
- On the site today: Jonah argues that the loudest and most extreme voices in the GOP are chasing away sensible voters, and Kevin explains why ending a payroll-tax cap won’t save Social Security.
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