Author name: moderat ereport

Over the weekend, right-wing billionaire Elon Musk announced that his artificial intelligence company, xAI, would be developing a kid-friendly version of its antisemitic chatbot, Grok. Masterful gambit, sir. There’s just no question that what parents want their children exposed to on the internet is a mercurial bit of software trained on posts from white supremacists.  Like so many other Musk announcements and promises, this one has no real details. So the deployment of Baby Grok—that’s really what Musk is calling it—could be on the same timeline as his plans to colonize Mars, an ever-shifting timeline that is out of touch with reality. Instead, it will likely be more in the vein of Musk’s plans for fully self-driving cars. Musk has been promising for years and years that completely autonomous Teslas were right around the corner, something he’s continued to push despite pesky little things like fatal crashes. Meanwhile, Musk is apparently imagining a world where parents will be thrilled to give their children unfettered access to Grok, which recently made headlines by spouting so much Nazi rhetoric that xAI seemingly had to shut it down. Musk’s explanation as to why Grok descended into the sort of gutter racism usually reserved for X’s non-bot denizens is that Grok was “too eager to please and be manipulated.”  However, blaming Grok’s users ignores Musk’s own actions in reportedly altering Grok’s prompts to “not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect.” Elon Musk attends news conference with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House on May 30. Why wouldn’t Musk feel emboldened, however? Just a couple of days after Grok crashed and burned, xAI got a sweetheart contract with the government worth up to $200 million. According to a Department of Defense press release, Musk’s AI efforts will help the government “address critical national security challenges,” a thing which seems unlikely to happen if Musk’s chatbots are so easily tipped over into breathtaking racism and violent rhetoric based on the tone of user prompts.  It also isn’t clear how Baby Grok would be insulated from input by just the sort of users that make up much of Musk’s base. The white supremacists hanging out on X aren’t likely to steer clear of trying to push Baby Grok into just the same type of statements made by Baby Grok’s full-grown … big brother? Father? Creator? The familial relationship between Grok and Baby Grok is, as of yet, unexplained. Probably best not to inquire, given Musk’s creepy pro-natalist views. To be fair, maybe the time is right for a chatbot directed at children. Congress just gave Trump a big assist in his war on credible information, defunding public broadcasting, including PBS. The administration also froze, without explanation, $6 billion on funds appropriated for after-school programs. A lawsuit from 24 Democratic states to restore funding was met with silence, but after 10 Republican senators whined about it, the administration has restored about $1.4 billion. The fact that this is hailed as a victory shows how far things have fallen in the Trump era, where Trump releasing what still amounts to less than one-third of congressionally appropriated funds is cause for celebration rather than consternation.  Schools starved for teaching material acceptable to the administration or those in states that support the conservative goal of eradicating history in favor of partisan slop can now partner with PragerU, a right-wing propaganda platform. Education Secretary Linda McMahon is so down with PragerU’s unique educational tools—such as AI-slopified pictures of Founding Father John Adams saying that “facts do not care about our feelings”—that she made sure to attend PragerU’s launch event for its latest historical-revisionist series, “Road to Liberty.”  Kids don’t need Big Bird or accurate American history or anything else, really. They can just ask Baby Grok for information, which will no doubt be totally true and accurate and not at all Nazi-adjacent. Wouldn’t want the brave new world of chatbots declaring themselves “MechaHitler” to leave the youth behind.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent bizarrely attacked the Wall Street Journal for failing to grasp the “sophisticated” mind of President Donald Trump. Bessent made the laughable claim on CNBC Monday, when asked to address a Wall Street Journal report claiming he had to talk Trump out of—probably illegally—firing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.  “I think the problem with stories like this is I’m not sure who the leaker was, but the problem with leakers is they only have partial information,” Bessent said. “And I think the other problem, too, is that newspapers like the Wall Street Journal are not used to a high-functioning executive president. They’re used to, you know, perhaps President [Joe] Biden, perhaps President [Barack] Obama, who was not as economically sophisticated as President Trump.” YouTube Video Powell has been critical of Trump’s haphazard economic policy, warning that his disastrous trade wars with the world have helped to create “elevated risks of both higher unemployment and higher inflation.” And Bessent calling Trump more “economically sophisticated” than Obama is like claiming Trump’s hair is more “sophisticated” than that of the average human being. Bessent, who is no stranger to flubbling easy questions about the administration, seems to have confused “sophisticated” with “incoherent.”

First, Amazon promised prices wouldn’t rise under President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Then it quietly increased them anyway. A revealing analysis by The Wall Street Journal found that since Trump’s initial tariff announcement in January, Amazon raised prices on a range of everyday items—deodorant, pet supplies, protein shakes—by an average of 5%. This was despite a public pledge in April to keep costs stable. The price hikes hit Amazon’s cheapest household items the hardest. Of nearly 2,500 products analyzed, prices increased on about 1,200. Walmart, by contrast, cut prices on those same goods by nearly 2%. These different approaches show how major retailers are managing tariff fallout. Amazon, limited by high shipping costs and thin profit margins, is quietly passing the costs onto consumers. “Amazon struggles to profit from these items due to high shipping costs,” vendor consultant Corey Thomas told the Journal. Walmart, he said, has more capacity to absorb losses because in-store shoppers tend to buy higher-margin items. A cartoon by Clay Bennett. Amazon disputed the Journal’s findings, claiming the product selection wasn’t representative. “We have not seen the average prices of products offered in our store change up or down appreciably,” the company said in a statement. “Our commitment to offering low prices—not relative percentage changes—is what delivers the most value to our customers.” But it wasn’t manufacturers raising prices. Makers of multiple products told the Journal they hadn’t increased their own prices. Even American-made products were affected. In January, a can of Campbell’s New England Clam Chowder cost less than $2 on Amazon. By July, it had risen to $2.58—an almost 30% increase. Imported and mixed-origin products performed even worse. For example, a stackable metal basket from Ohio-based Dayglow, which imports from China and other countries, was sold by Amazon for $9.31 in mid-February. By late April, it was $19.99—more than double.  This aligns with earlier reports from Reuters and analytics firm DataWeave, which showed that Chinese-made products on Amazon are rising faster than overall inflation. The median price of over 1,400 China-made items increased 2.6% between January and mid-June, surpassing the U.S. core goods inflation rate for that period. The Journal also identified the biggest single-day price increase—Feb. 15, just two days after Trump signed an order indicating tariffs would soon apply to nearly all of America’s trading partners.  Related | Amazon shows Trump’s tariffs in action—and the White House flips out Amazon briefly considered labeling tariff-related price increases on its website but abandoned the idea after a call from Trump, who called it “hostile and political.” Meanwhile, Walmart doubled down on its low-price strategy. Amazon’s quiet price hikes suggest some retailers are finally responding to tariffs and inflation by passing the costs to shoppers. The company cited seasonal changes and product availability as reasons, noting many of the tracked items were out of stock on competitors’ sites. Other retailers are trying to avoid alarming customers. Target said it relies on cost-cutting measures before raising prices, and Walmart pointed to its longstanding reputation for affordability. Some have scaled back benefits, squeezed suppliers, and cut costs, but pressure is mounting. Trump’s advice to businesses back in May was blunt: “EAT THE TARIFFS.” So far, few have followed it.

As the mainstream media crumbles, PoliticusUSA can stand tall thanks to your support. Please consider supporting us by becoming a subscriber. Subscribe now The best way to fight back against an imperial president who is determined to rewrite history through bullying threats and intimidation is not to yield. Former CIA Director John Brennan is one of four former intelligence officials who have been referred to the DOJ for prosecution because they wrote reports and signed letters about Russia interfering in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump. On MSNBC’s Deadline: White House, Brennan defended the intelligence:  Anybody who looks at the intelligence assessment and the work that was done will see that it was very carefully worded, meticulously done, and it stands up to scrutiny and to the test of time. As you pointed out, there have been numerous reviews about it, and it didn’t say any of the things that tools Gabbard alleges it said or didn’t say. And I, I really do encourage people to read it because it was very clear in terms of what it said that the Russians were using at President Putin’s direction influenced operations to try to denigrate Hillary Clinton, try to increase the prospects for Donald Trump’s selection, and also just to undermine the integrity of our election system. And again, those were the primary judgements. Again, they are ones that certainly I and others who were involved continue to stand behind. Video: Brennan also discussed why he thought that Tulsi Gabbard released the memo: Read more