Disney is asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to declare the daytime talk show “The View” a “bona fide news” program to bypass the federal equal opportunities law, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr announced May 22.
The show, co-hosted by Joy Behar, Alyssa Farah Griffin, Whoopi Goldberg, Sarah Haines, Sunny Hostin, and Ana Navarro, has come under scrutiny in recent years for its programming that heavily favored progressive guests and commentary.
In February, Carr told reporters the agency was investigating whether the show violated the federal “equal time” requirements for political candidates.
The equal time rule requires broadcast radio and television stations to give comparable airtime to legally qualified political candidates.
In May, Disney-owned TV stations KTRK-TV, Houston, Texas, and American Broadcasting Companies (ABC) filed a request with the agency to exempt the show.
“The companies … suggest in their Petition that they believe the federal equal opportunities statute itself would not survive First Amendment scrutiny today or at least if it is applied today to ‘The View’ would not survive any such review,” the FCC stated in a public notice issued May 22. “The companies also point to a letter from an FCC staffer from 2002 in support of their argument that ‘The View’ qualifies as bona fide news.”
If FCC commissioners exempt “The View” from the equal time rule, the program would be allowed to continue having almost exclusively left-leaning politicians and guests on to discuss political issues.
“Disney argues that The View qualifies as ‘bona fide news’ under the law, comparing itself to Meet The Press or Face The Nation,” Carr posted on X. “Therefore, Disney argues, it can have one partisan candidate for office on The View while denying equal opportunities to all others.”
Under the law, television shows don’t qualify as news shows if their content is based on partisan purposes, such as if they intend to harm someone’s candidacy for office, Carr said.
The FCC has opened public comment on the request, allowing written comments until June 22, before commissioners consider the request.
Stations can petition the FCC to seek exemptions from the rule for bona fide news programming.
Congress created exemptions for two news programs, “Meet the Press” and “Face The Nation,” in 1959 by passing an amendment to the Communications Act of 1934, because of the traditional question-and-answer formats used.
Congress passed the equal time rule to prevent media gatekeepers from deciding the outcomes of elections, Carr said.
“The law, even when it applies, does not prohibit anyone from having any candidate appear on any show,” Carr said. “Rather, Congress intended it to empower voters with more information and encourage more speech.”
In April, the FCC ordered an early review of license renewals for Disney’s ABC television stations as part of an ongoing investigation into whether the company and its stations were following federal communications laws and rules.
Trump Says Iran Peace Deal ‘Largely Negotiated,’ Hormuz To Reopen As Final Terms Discussed
Summary
Trump says an Iran peace agreement has been “largely negotiated” and will be announced “shortly,” with the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz included among the deal’s key elements.
Mediators believe they are edging closer to a deal to extend the US ceasefire with Iran by 60 days
Rubio from India: “There’s been some progress made. Even as I speak to you now, there’s some work being done.”
Trump says he’s a “solid 50/50” whether he would be able to make a “good” deal or else “blow them to kingdom come”.
Waiting game in Tehran, via Iran Foreign Ministry: “We need to wait and see what happens over the next three to four days.”
CBS says White House, Pentagon currently preparing for a new potential round of military strikes against Iran within the next three days.
Trump, officials have canceled prior travel plans: Trump says “Circumstances pertaining to Government” are keeping him from attending his son Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding this weekend.
Trump: Iran Deal “Largely Negotiated,” Hormuz Reopening Included
President Trump has now posted that an Iran peace agreement has been “largely negotiated” and is “subject to finalization” between the United States, Iran, and the regional governments involved in the talks.
Trump said he remains in the Oval Office after what he described as a “very good call” with leaders from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan and Bahrain, focused on a Memorandum of Understanding pertaining to “PEACE.” He also said he separately spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and that call “likewise, went very well.”
“Final aspects and details of the Deal are currently being discussed, and will be announced shortly,” Trump wrote. Most notably, he said that, as part of the agreement, “the Strait of Hormuz will be opened.”
The statement marks a major escalation from earlier comments that talks were merely progressing, though Trump framed the agreement as not yet finalized. Key unresolved issues remain unclear, including Iran’s nuclear program, sanctions relief, frozen assets, and the mechanics of reopening and administering Hormuz.
Needless to say, if this holds through Tuesday, your ears may pop from the sudden change in elevation.
US and Iran Move Closer to Extending Ceasefire by 60 days, say Mediators
The FT reports that mediators believe they are edging closer to a deal to extend the US ceasefire with Iran by 60 days and lay the framework for discussions on the Islamic republic’s nuclear programme.
People briefed on the high-stakes talks said it would include a gradual reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and a commitment to discuss the diluting or handing over of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium.
🇮🇷 Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman:
▫️We are focused on finalizing the MOU
▫️A 30 and 60 day timeframe is included in the text of the MOU.
▫️But as long as the MOU has not been agreed, this period has not yet begun.
— Nader Itayim | نادر ایتیّم (@ncitayim) May 23, 2026
The US would also ease its blockade of Iranian ports and, in phases, agree to sanctions relief and unfreezing Tehran’s assets held overseas.
Donald Trump told Axios on Saturday that he would meet his senior officials to discuss the proposal, but the US president added it was a “solid 50/50” whether he would be able to make a “good” deal or else “blow them to kingdom come”.
He was also expected to hold a call with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Turkey on Saturday, an Arab official said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Saturday said progress has been made in the ongoing peace negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, saying the war will be solved “one way or the other” amid a visit to India.
“There’s been some progress made. Even as I speak to you now, there’s some work being done,” Rubio told reporters in Delhi. “This issue needs to be solved, as the president said, one way or the other.”
The US top diplomat has issued a lot of words but with little substance in terms of anything ‘new’ suggesting any level of breakthrough:
Rubio: “There might be some news (on Iran) later today. There may not be. I hope there will be. I am not sure yet. There has been some progress done. Even as I speak to you now there is some work being done. There is a chance that maybe later today, tomorrow, maybe couple of days we may have something to say, but this issue needs to be solved one way or another. Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. The strait needs to be open without tolls. They need to Give their enriched Uranium. We need to address the issue of enrichment. The president’s preference is to deal with it in a diplomatic way. That is what we are working on right now.”
Latest Statements from Tehran on Draft Status
Via Bloomberg: Iran’s talks with the US are focused on ending the war on all fronts, and neither the nuclear issue nor sanctions are being discussed at this stage, state TV cites Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmail Baghaei as saying:
“We need to wait and see what happens over the next three to four days.”
“After the memorandum of understanding is finalized, it will have to be negotiated in later stages.”
“The final draft of an agreement text between Iran and the US is still under review.”
Says 30- and 60-day timeframes have been included in the text.
“In recent days discussions and proposals were raised regarding certain points and wording where differences of opinion still existed. Some of these are still under review and pending final assessment.”
“At this very early stage, the matter of releasing frozen assets must be clarified.”
War Preparation Underway: CBS
CBS is reporting that the Trump administration, specifically the Pentagon – as well as intelligence community officials – are currently preparing for a new potential round of military strikes against Iran within the next three days.
However, like with much of the latest speculation and reporting regarding what comes next in the Iran war, the report included the important caveat that nothing is ultimately confirmed or final: “No final decision on strikes had been reached as of Friday afternoon.”
“Some members of the US military and intelligence community canceled their plans for the Memorial Day weekend in anticipation of possible strikes,” several sources said.
“Defense and intelligence officials began updating recall rosters for US installations overseas as tranches of troops stationed in the Middle East rotate out of theater, part of an effort to reduce the American military footprint in the region amid concern about possible Iranian retaliation,” CBS said.
Trump Sticking Near Oval
Additionally, Trump’s own Truth Social post about missing his son’s wedding has set off an avalanche of speculation that renewed attacks are imminent.
“Circumstances pertaining to Government” are keeping him from attending his son Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding this weekend, Trump wrote in the post. “I feel it is important for me to remain in Washington, D.C., at the White House during this important period of time. Congratulations to Don and Bettina!” Trump said. The day prior he had been vague in answering reporters’ questions on the matter.
“He’d like me to go, but it’s going to be just a small little private affair, and I’m going to try and make it,” he had said. A number of pundits noted the ease with which he frequently goes down to Florida to play golf, and that it’s strange that he would now miss his son’s wedding. However, the wedding is being held out of country, at a small island in the Bahamas, and so this does bring with it extra logistical and security planning and logistics.
As for potential new military action, it’s obvious that Trump has been growing increasingly impatient and frustrated about Iran’s lack of compromise when it comes to negotiations over several days and weeks.
The White House has made recovery of the country’s enriched uranium a top priority, while Tehran has repeatedly slammed the door on this as an option and has not budged. The Iranians aren’t even making the nuclear issue part of talks to achieve peace, and have made clear their view this would be for future, post-war negotiations.
More Latest Negotiations Back-and-Forth
US-Iran de-escalation hopes drove crude oil and rates lower and put a bid in equities by the end of Friday’s trading day, amid speculation that President Trump would stay at the White House over Memorial Day weekend instead of attending Donald Trump Jr. and Bettina Anderson’s wedding celebrations in the Bahamas.
“As Iran/oil/rates pressure eased on de-escalation hopes, leadership rotated toward small caps, equal weight, housing, transports, discretionary, and selective defensive growth, with short covering in high short-interest/profitless tech and consumer cyclicals reinforcing the catch-up trade,” UBS analyst Torsten Sippel wrote in a note to clients late Friday.
Early Saturday morning, Bloomberg reports that President Trump held a phone call with Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, regarding Pakistani-led efforts to de-escalate Gulf tensions and preserve the fragile US-Iran ceasefire.
Iran’s top negotiator and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf met Pakistani Army Chief Asim Munir in Tehran earlier today amid ongoing diplomatic efforts to bring the US and Iran to a peace deal, Reuters reported, citing Iranian state media. Ghalibaf told Munir that Iran’s Armed Forces “have rebuilt themselves during the cease-fire in such a way that if Trump foolishly restarts the war, they will definitely be more crushing and bitter for the U.S. than on the first day of the war.” The Iranian top negotiator also said, “We will not compromise on the rights of our nation and country.”
There was a series of headlines from Sky News Arabia, citing sources, indicating that a major push for regional diplomacy was underway earlier today, with officials from Iraq, Oman, Jordan, and Qatar working to mediate with Tehran to avert another flare-up in the conflict. Sky News Arabia sources said Pakistan’s mediator helped break the deadlock over the Iranian nuclear file, though several major issues remain unresolved, including the conflict in Lebanon, sanctions on bank accounts, the status of Iranian ports, and the presence of U.S. military forces in the Gulf area.
Iran is reportedly demanding the lifting of restrictions on its ports and a U.S. military withdrawal from the region before reopening the Strait of Hormuz and entering a new round of talks within 30 days.
There is also a reported internal conflict between Iran’s government and the Revolutionary Guard over Tehran’s negotiating demands.
Latest Headline Round-Up
Latest negotiation headlines (via sources) from Sky News Arabia:
Iranian Foreign Ministry: Iraqi and the Omani Foreign Minister discuss in a phone call the ongoing diplomatic efforts to prevent escalation
The foreign ministers of Jordan and Qatar affirm the necessity of concerted efforts to ensure the success of mediation efforts with Iran to reach a sustainable solution that addresses all the roots of the crisis and prevents the renewal of escalation.
The Foreign Ministers of Jordan and Qatar affirm the continuation of coordination of efforts to support targeted mediation aimed at ending the escalation in the region and restoring security and stability.
Sources to Sky News Arabia: The Pakistani mediator has succeeded in overcoming the deadlock on the Iranian nuclear file.
Sources to Sky News Arabia: The issues that have not yet been resolved include stopping the war in Lebanon and lifting the ban on financial accounts.
Sources to Sky News Arabia: Iran demands the lifting of the siege on Iranian ports and the withdrawal of military forces from the region to open the Strait of Hormuz and proceed to a round of negotiations within a 30-day timeframe.
Sources to Sky News Arabia: There is a severe disagreement between the Iranian government and the Revolutionary Guard regarding Iran’s demands for negotiations.
Additional overnight headlines (courtesy of Bloomberg):
Economic Impact
The dollar ended the week nearly unchanged as risk assets got a boost from optimism around US-Iran peace talks [BN]
Germany’s business outlook improved for the first time since the Iran war began, with an expectations index rising to 83.8 in May [BN]
UK retail sales fell 1.3% as consumers made fewer car journeys amid the global energy shock from the Iran war [BN]
Qatar Airways will skip bonuses for almost 60,000 workers this year after the war forced cancellation of tens of thousands of flights [BN]
Military Readiness
The US halted arms sales to Taiwan to ensure sufficient munitions for the Iran war, according to Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao [BN]
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard resigned from her post, with her anti-war views having spurred tension with the White House [BN]
Trade Disruption
Japan is set to receive its first Persian Gulf oil shipment to transit the Strait of Hormuz since the war began, with the Idemitsu Maru carrying 2 million barrels of Saudi crude [BN]
Anglo American is redirecting Brazilian iron ore output to Asia as the near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz prevents shipments to Bahrain Steel [BN]
Ivanka Trump Was Reportedly Targeted For Assassination By IRGC Terrorist
First Daughter Ivanka Trump was allegedly targeted in an assassination plot by an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-trained terrorist seeking revenge for the killing of Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani. Iraqi national Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, 32, reportedly pledged to kill Ivanka Trump and was found with a blueprint of her Florida home after his recent capture, according to an exclusive report from the New York Post.
The alleged plot traces directly to the January 2020 drone strike that killed Soleimani in Baghdad.
Al-Saadi, who US authorities describe as a high-ranking operative within Iraq-Iran terror circles, had reportedly idolized the IRGC Quds Force commander as a father figure after his father died in a plane crash in 2006. That personal connection, analysts say, transformed a political grievance into something far more volatile. Ivanka Trump, 44, who converted to Orthodox Judaism before marrying Jared Kushner in 2009, emerged as Al-Saadi’s primary target.
Entifadh Qanbar, a former deputy military attaché at the Iraqi embassy in Washington and now head of the Future Foundation, says Al-Saadi began openly vowing revenge after Soleimani’s death. “We need to kill Ivanka to burn down the house of Trump the way he burned down our house,” Al-Saadi allegedly told associates. “We heard that he had a plan of Ivanka’s house in Florida,” Qanbar adds, noting that a second source independently confirmed the existence of the plot.
Al-Saadi posted a map image on social media showing the exclusive Florida enclave where Ivanka and Kushner own a $24 million home, paired with a warning in Arabic that “neither your palaces nor the Secret Service will protect you” and that “our revenge is a matter of time.” In that same post, he declared that he and his network were “currently in the stage of surveillance and analysis,” framing the operation not as an aspiration but as active preparation.
“Al-Saadi is said to be a high-ranking figure in Iraq-Iran terror circles, arrested in Turkey on May 15 and extradited to the US, where he is charged with 18 attacks and attempted attacks throughout Europe and the United States, per the Department of Justice,” the New York Post reports. “He’s been behind attacks on US and Jewish targets including the firebombing of the Bank of New York Mellon in Amsterdam in March, the stabbing of two Jewish victims in London in April and a shooting at the US consulate building in Toronto, also in March, according to the DoJ.”
Court documents also state that he “planned, coordinated” and claimed responsibility for attacks on Jewish communities, including the bombing of a synagogue in Liège, Belgium, and the arson of a temple in Rotterdam.
What makes the case especially striking is how openly Al-Saadi allegedly operated online.
According to federal investigators, he posted photos with missiles, praised Qasem Soleimani, threatened “the American enemy,” and even shared images tied to alleged terror targets. Authorities also say he used a religious travel agency as cover to connect with terror cells internationally and traveled with an Iraqi government-issued service passport that reduced scrutiny at airports.
Analysts say Al-Saadi had deep ties to Iran-backed militias and maintained connections with both Soleimani and his successor, Esmail Qaani. He is now being held in solitary confinement in Brooklyn while supporters in Baghdad reportedly portray him as a resistance figure.
🇺🇸🇮🇷 An IRGC-linked Iraqi terrorist named Mohammad Baqer Al-Saadi was plotting to assassinate Ivanka Trump as revenge for the U.S. killing of his mentor Qasem Soleimani.
“Ivanka Trump was allegedly targeted in an assassination attempt tied to Iranian terror groups. Thankful Ivanka remains safe right now,” House Republicans said in a statement on X. “The failed assassination plot shows Iran’s true colors (and why we must make sure they never have a nuclear weapon). They hate America and they clearly see President Trump as the man standing between them and death to America. That’s why they’re targeting his daughter. It’s sick.”
One of the most frustrating aspects of contemporary conversations about politics and public policy is how often the deleterious effects of terrible programs – local, state and federal – are brushed aside with distracting and even deceitful claims that the intentions behind the policies were “compassionate.” This is an utterly wrongheaded analysis for many reasons. Laws, public policies, and government programs should be evaluated by their results, not by the state of mind of their advocates or sponsors.
The weaponization of compassion has launched a de facto competition of who can be thought to be the most “compassionate” or, at least, not thought to be uncompassionate. The result of this arms race has been chaos, destruction, and depravity.
It’s easy to lose sight of just how often this pernicious dynamic takes place, so it’s worthwhile to point out a few of the disastrous policies that were promoted, and in some cases continue to be promoted, as being “compassionate” and to call them out for the societally corrosive lies they are.
1. It wasn’t “compassionate” to close our mental hospitals. The impulse was understandable; plenty of those facilities were substandard. But the results were catastrophic. Until fairly recently in this country’s history, the “homeless” population consisted largely of small numbers of unattached males who drifted from place to place seeking work. But since the 1980s, the homeless population of the United States has exploded. Nearly three-quarters of a million people are homeless, and the number jumped 18 percent from 2023 to 2024. California has 187,000 of the country’s homeless; more than 70,000 are in Los Angeles County alone.
2. It isn’t “compassionate,” nor is it respect for “individual autonomy” or “dignity,” to leave the homeless to live as they do. Homeless encampments are hotbeds of filth, including human urine and feces, crime and diseases like leptospirosis, typhus, hepatitis, tuberculosis, and even plague. Across the country, cities are dealing with the economic impact of shuttered stores and declining downtowns attributable to the presence of ever-growing numbers of homeless.
3. It isn’t “compassionate” to hand out needles or create places where addicts can use drugs. Leaving aside what should be an obvious argument that we shouldn’t be encouraging, much less facilitating, the use of dangerous drugs, two-thirds of America’s homeless have a diagnosed mental health illness. A third have a serious substance abuse problem. Approximately half suffer with both. Open-air drug use exacerbates those problems and creates others.
4. It isn’t “compassionate,” or “equitable,” for that matter, to eliminate teaching math, giving grades, standardized tests, advanced academic programs for gifted students or graduation requirements, or to lower entrance qualifications for college and graduate school. It punishes high-achieving students and sends the message to lower-performing students that they aren’t capable of meeting basic standards. That, then, undermines public confidence in the graduates of our high schools, colleges, and professional schools.
5. It wasn’t “compassionate” to stop enforcing our immigration laws.
6. It isn’t “compassionate” to allow violent criminals back on the streets.
7. It isn’t “compassionate” to subject children and teenagers with gender dysphoria, and other emotional disorders, to permanent alteration of their bodies with medical and surgical interventions before they are old enough to understand the implications of those decisions.
None of these decisions have had beneficial impacts on their intended populations. Worse still, they are all deeply destructive to other individuals, groups, and society at large. Everyone affected should be able to protest the consequences of these failed policies without getting smeared with the false accusation that they “lack compassion.”
Another reason to eliminate “compassion” as a basis for public policy, which we’re seeing daily with painful clarity, is that these policies end up being vehicles for massive fraud. Anyone can set up a 501c3 nonprofit, claim to be working for a charitable purpose, and deceive donors into giving money that does little but line the CEOs’ pockets. And when government grants are involved, there is little oversight, take Minnesota, for example, and more incentive for grift, bribery, and payback in the form of pouring money into the campaign coffers of politicians who hold the grants’ pursestrings. What we end up with is a situation where neither the nonprofits nor the politicians have an incentive to solve the underlying problems, since they’re getting rich from their continued existence.
Why has the United States become a nation where “compassion” trumps all other considerations?
Scholars like Helen Andrews argue that the emphasis on “compassion” over logic and methodical analysis is a function of what she calls “the great feminization.” Women, Andrews claims, are hardwired to be maternal, and thus more likely to be persuaded by something that tugs at their empathy than by that which appeals to their reason.
I’m not so sure. First, women have functioning brains, and they are certainly intellectually capable of dispassionate analysis. Second, an awful lot of men seem to be just as hornswoggled by appeals to their “compassion” as are misguided women. And third, I don’t understand how it is “feminine” or “maternal” to witness the collapse of huge sections of our cities into third-world slums; or to know that drugs are pouring into the country, children are being trafficked for sex, and young women are being raped and murdered because the borders are unenforced; or to see people stabbed to death on public transportation, pushed in front of trains or run down by crazed lunatics at Christmas parades because criminals aren’t incarcerated; or to watch as multiple generations of disadvantaged minorities struggle because of schools with weak disciplinary and academic standards; or to want children and emotionally troubled teens to be chemically castrated or surgically sterilized before they’re old enough to drive a car, drink a beer, or understand the concepts of sexual satisfaction, fathering, giving birth to or nursing a child, none of which they will experience if they are “transitioned.”
None of this is “compassionate.” It’s objectively irrational. It’s wantonly destructive. It is the deliberate disregard of monumental, systemic, catastrophic failure, the evidence of which is irrefutable. There’s something seriously wrong with anyone who continues to defend these policies and programs, and I’m not persuaded that it’s a matter of chromosomal biology or evolution.
I don’t profess to have a complete solution. But a good start would be to demand meaningful metrics when we discuss proposed and existing policies and programs. What matters isn’t “compassion”; it’s consequences.
A never-ending flood of content generated by artificial intelligence is reshaping the internet and the way people engage with information faster than ever.
From news summaries to social media posts to academic research, the sheer volume of machine-assisted materials has been correlated with a spike in “cognitive offloading” – a phenomenon in which people outsource critical thinking and verification to automated systems.
A 2025 analysis of how AI tools affect cognitive offloading showed a “significant negative correlation” between frequent use of AI tools and the ability to think critically in people across age groups and educational backgrounds. The researchers at the SBS Swiss Business School found that younger age groups exhibited a higher amount of dependence on AI models and lower critical thinking scores.
What’s more troubling is a Pangram/YouGov study in May that found only 55 percent of participants, all of whom were Gen Zers aged 18 to 28, were able to identify fake or misleading AI-generated material. That number is lower in older age groups, which means half or fewer of adults over the age of 28 were confident in their ability to spot AI content online.
“AI-generated posts and comments can distort public perception, especially when volume is mistaken for credibility,” Javi Pérez, an editor of AI-assisted consumer education websites, told The Epoch Times.
“If a user sees dozens of similar posts about a product, trend, political claim, health issue, or financial topic, they may assume there is broad agreement.”
‘Confident Sameness’
Pérez said consumers need to beware as AI content increases the volume of what he called “confident sameness” online.
“Many articles and posts now repeat similar structures, similar advice, and similar phrasing. For casual readers, this can create the impression that a topic has more consensus or certainty than it really does, because they keep seeing the same ideas repeated across many sources,” Pérez said.
“The risk is that people stop knowing which content has been checked. In fields like finance, health, law, education, or news, readers need to know whether claims were reviewed against primary sources, updated recently, and edited by someone accountable.”
AI strategy consultant Armand Cucciniello III told The Epoch Times that AI-generated content is changing not only how we consume information, but also how quickly we process and trust it.
“We’re moving from deliberate reading toward rapid skimming of polished summaries, commentary, short-form videos, and AI-assisted content designed for speed and engagement,” he said.
As someone who has worked in the “U.S. national security landscape,” Cucciniello said one of his biggest concerns is that AI systems “can unintentionally amplify large volumes of inaccurate or deliberately manipulated content simply through repetition and scale.”
He also believes the high volume of AI-generated content is creating real pressure on public trust.
“When readers encounter nearly identical phrasing or interpretations across multiple sources, it’s natural to question whether the information was independently reported or simply repackaged,” he said.
Carl Stroud, a public relations expert and chief storyteller at the Smoking Gun Agency, has also witnessed AI content take a toll on the public.
“The fundamental audience need has not changed: People want to trust what they are reading,” Stroud told The Epoch Times. “What has changed is how much harder that judgment has become.
“AI-generated content, aggregation, and low-quality slop have made the information environment noisier, flatter, and more confusing, so audiences are now trying to work out whether they are reading original reporting, rehashed content, or something that should never have been published in the first place.”
Beyond social media and academia, few industries have been hit as hard with AI-generated misinformation as the news. Stroud, who has spent two decades within UK media circles, editing, and journalism, said he’s seeing the AI content churn create fatigue among readers searching for accurate information.
“Fatigue is dangerous because when people feel overwhelmed, they either disengage or become easier to mislead,” he said.
Losing Touch
Ashutosh Khulbe, founder of RawPickAI, tests AI tools for a living – about three to four new ones every week.
“What I notice most in my corner of the internet is that everything sounds the same now. Like, eerily the same,” he told The Epoch Times. “I’d guess 70 to 80 [percent] of ‘best AI tools’ articles are AI-generated at this point.
“It creates this weird feedback loop where AI writes reviews based on what other AI already wrote, readers assume there’s a consensus, and the actual experience of using these tools gets buried.”
He said he tested one writing tool that had hundreds of positive reviews online yet was unusable at the free tier. “You couldn’t even finish a paragraph before hitting the limit. But good luck finding that info in a Google search,” he said.
Khulbe is especially bothered by the way information distortion is affecting the public.
“AI content skews relentlessly positive because it’s trained on marketing pages and affiliate reviews. Nobody’s training models on ‘I tried this for two weeks, and it sucked.’ So the negative signal just disappears from the internet,” he said.
The effects of the AI content boom can now be seen in what some are calling “AI psychosis,” or a disconnect from reality. While not a clinical diagnosis, the term has become a popular catch-all phrase to describe when AI reinforces an unusual, fixed, or even delusional perception of something in the real world.
People with mental health conditions could be predisposed to developing “AI psychosis,” but it’s also not limited to that population, according to Dr. Ragy Girgis, professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
“The phenomenon of AI psychosis is quantitatively new and could be very dangerous, but qualitatively it’s very similar to what’s been happening for decades now since the advent of the internet,” Girgis said during an interview with the National Academy of Medicine in March.
‘Impossible To Negotiate With Ukraine’ After School Dormitory Strike, Kremlin Informs UN
The last year of the Ukraine war has been marked by both warring sides remaining far from the negotiating table, instead opting for a battlefield solution, also as a deadly tit-for-tat drone and aerial war continues to unfold. This week things just got even worse concerning the distant prospect of restarting direct peace talks, something underscored by a fresh statement of Russia’s Ambassador to the United Nations.
Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said Friday after a massive Ukrainian drone attack on a college in Starobelsk (Starobilsk) in the Lugansk People’s Republic that it’s now impossible to negotiate with Kiev.
“This clearly confirms the treachery and non-negotiability of Kiev, which, with the encouragement of its Western sponsors, is not only not committed to a peaceful settlement, but also openly sabotages it,” Nebenzia told a meeting of the UN Security Council.
“This deliberate attack on a civilian facility where children study and live, carried out at night when the dormitory was full, was clearly carried out with the aim of maximizing the number of victims,” the Russian envoy continued.
The death toll from the Thursday overnight into early Friday hours attack has risen to at least 18, amid a massive rescue effort which went through Friday. At least 39 were initially reported injured.
Large-scale destruction was observed at the academic building and dormitory of the Starobelsk Professional College, which teaches students aged 14 to 18. Over 80 students were at the complex at the time of the attack.
Additionally, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said those responsible needed to be brought to justice, calling it “a monstrous crime” – given the “attack on an educational institution where children and young people are present.”
The assault also included multiple strikes and drones, ruling out the possibility of an ‘accidental’ targeting, Amb. Nebenzia continued in his remarks. He further blasted Ukraine’s western backers.
“Such strikes using long-range weapons provided to the Kiev regime by NATO countries, including drones, are being carried out with technical assistance being provided by foreign specialists from well-known NATO states,” Nebenzia added.
State media also underscored that “He argued that the attack demonstrates that negotiations with the current Ukrainian leadership are impossible.”
President Putin had on blasted the mass casualty incident as a “terrorist attack by the neo-Nazi regime” while vowing swift revenge. He has reportedly asked for input from the Defense Ministry, meaning that plans are in motion for a likely imminent, heavy aerial assault on Ukraine.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon announced on X last night that she has ordered Maryland’s State Board of Elections to preserve their records concerning the utter debacle of mail-in ballots during the state’s primary election season.
“It’s the wrong time to send voters the wrong ballots. This @TheJusticeDept’s @CivilRights will not let Maryland’s mail-in ballot mistakes go unnoticed!” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon.
This update comes just one week after SBE was forced to admit that its third-party, out-of-state vendor mailed half a million or more ballots to the wrong primary voters.
President Trump himself called for a federal investigation into this breach of trust with Maryland voters…
… immediately after the Maryland Freedom Caucus had suggested the same:
To restore faith in Maryland’s electoral process, decisive action is necessary. We must release the voter rolls to the federal government to allow for a thorough audit into the reported issuance of 400,000 incorrect ballots. pic.twitter.com/39PJlDyKiN
— Maryland Freedom Caucus (@MDFreedomCaucus) May 16, 2026
The Maryland Freedom Caucus has been on the front lines of election integrity since our formation, placing Voter ID, citizen-only voting, and in-person voting at the center of our legislative platform. This past year, our landmark legislation, the Secure the Vote Act of 2026, did not even receive a vote in committee. To date, no other legislative group – Republican or otherwise – has called for the intervention of the Justice Department in oversight of Maryland’s elections.
But Maryland voters need not despair, because together with our grassroots partners, Secure the Vote MD, we have been pushing for reform in the court of public opinion and it is working. With AAG Dhillon’s announcement last night, the oversight of Maryland’s elections we have been calling for since last fall may soon come to pass.
AAG Harmeet Dhillon is exactly right. Voters receiving the wrong ballots isn’t a harmless mix-up; it is the kind of sloppiness that shatters confidence in our elections at the worst possible time. Mass mailing of ballots has always been a bad idea. It compromises the chain of… https://t.co/QXM2RZA0vH
“AAG Harmeet Dhillon is exactly right. Voters receiving the wrong ballots isn’t a harmless mix-up; it is the kind of sloppiness that shatters confidence in our elections at the worst possible time. Mass mailing of ballots has always been a bad idea. It compromises the chain of custody on a large scale, and this isn’t the first time Maryland has dropped the ball on issuing ballots,” said Maryland Freedom Caucus Chair, Matt Morgan.
Morgan added, “Thank you for making sure the DOJ Civil Rights Division holds Maryland accountable. Common sense tells us fair elections demand accuracy, not excuses. Integrity first.”
“565,639 Maryland voters were failed by the very system entrusted to protect their vote. We are grateful that Harmeet Dhillon and the Department of Justice are paying attention — because clearly, Maryland’s State Board of Elections is not. SecuretheVoteMD will not stop until every one of those voters be has a guaranteed path to a clean, counted ballot,” said Kate Sullivan, president of SecuretheVoteMD, the state’s citizen watchdog group.
Delegate Lauren Arikan, a founding member of the Maryland Freedom Caucus, thanked President Trump on X last night for following through on his promise to investigate what went wrong with Maryland’s no-excuse mail-in ballots this year:
The Trump administrationis once again walking towards the fire, even in a state that most Republicans would consider a lost cause. President Trump is going to Make Voting Great Again. 👏👏👏👏
“The Trump administration is once again walking towards the fire, even in a state that most Republicans would consider a lost cause. President Trump is going to Make Voting Great Again,” Arikan noted.
Nvidia CEO Urges Super Micro To “Enhance Compliance” Amid AI Chip-Smuggling Probe
In a rare public comment that Nvidia is growing more sensitive to downstream risk, CEO Jensen Huang was quoted by Bloomberg News as saying Super Micro Computer must strengthen internal compliance controls after Taiwanese authorities detained three people accused of smuggling banned AI chips to China.
“Ultimately, Super Micro has to run its own company,” Huang told reporters on Saturday in response to the chip smuggling scheme. “I hope that they will enhance and improve their regulation compliance and avoid that from happening in the future.”
The U.S.-based server and data-center hardware company primarily builds high-performance servers, storage systems, networking gear, and complete AI/data-center racks for various customers, but most importantly for those working on edge computing and artificial intelligence workloads.
Huang said Nvidia is “rigorously” explaining the complex regulatory environment to all its partners to avert further downstream diversion risk.
Huang’s comments stem from federal prosecutors charging the co-founder of Super Micro and two associates with participating in a scheme to divert roughly $2.5 billion in Nvidia AI accelerators to China.
How the Alleged Scheme Worked:
The group used a company in Southeast Asia as a front buyer to place huge orders with a California-based U.S. manufacturer.
Once the servers arrived in Southeast Asia, they were quickly repackaged and secretly shipped to customers in China through a network of brokers.
Our view is that Huang’s comments suggest he is trying to insulate Nvidia from a widening chip-smuggling investigation while preserving access to highly scrutinized international markets.
Now that we’ve drained the aquifers of a stable society, the replacement form of “wealth” is a delusional credit-asset bubble that generates the illusion of “wealth.”
Let’s weave together two threads that look different: systemic unfairness and civilizational psychosis. As I often note, social species that organize themselves into hierarchies (i.e. primates, including humans) have an innate sensitivity to fairness, as this trait is essential to maintaining social stability, and therefore it has been selected as advantageous.
This sensitivity applies both to individual instances of unfairness / injustice and to systemic unfairness / injustice. If there is no redress when an individual is treated unfairly or abused, the social order is weakened. This is why early civilizations instituted legal codes and systems of redress as they expanded into nations / empires that needed bureaucracies to organize, manage and enforce the rules and responsibilities of every class.
If the mechanisms of redress have become empty shams, then the unfairness is systemic: it isn’t just some individuals who have been treated unfairly–everyone is being exploited and treated differently from what the system claims is the operative set of values and rules.
When there’s an external source of wealth to be exploited, the leadership has the luxury of becoming extractive and oppressive, because they have a source of wealth that’s external to their own populace. Consider the progression from a society of systemic fairness to a society of systemic unfairness.
Consider a fledgling nation that was a society with high levels of social trust and cohesion generated by a dutiful leadership, social mobility and a system in which social pressures meant members of each social class had to respect the same set of social rules.
This structure is the essential foundation of a functional society and economy, for if the resident populace is immiserated by an unfair system, they respond by either fleeing the system (i.e. opting out or leaving), resisting the unfairness / exploitation or revolting against the status quo.
If the nation transitions into an expansionist empire, the leadership can jettison fairness / redress because it can extract wealth via conquest or exploiting new resources. The bureaucracy is co-opted / bought off via the spoils of conquest and corruption, and as the imperium expands, it has sufficient wealth to buy off the citizenry class with bread and circuses or equivalent largesse.
In other words, systemic unfairness–what we now call a rigged casino–is accepted as long as the key social classes feel they’re getting ahead. The Roman state / empire is an example of these dynamics, but there are many others.
As long as there’s enough external wealth flowing in to enable people to feel they’re still getting ahead, social decay is tolerated as “the cost of progress.” In other words, who needs fairness if I have a seat in the rigged casino?
But this structure is inherently unstable, both economically and socially. External sources of wealth / resources are eventually depleted, and the largesse diminishes asymmetrically: the wealthiest few at the top continue amassing fortunes, the bureaucrats are squeezed, and the lower classes are now being taxed to cover the decline of external wealth extraction.
The systemic unfairness that was tolerated is no longer tolerable once the majority are no longer getting ahead. This presents the leadership class reaping the lion’s share of the wealth extraction with a problem: how to persuade the masses that 1) they’re still getting ahead, even as they visibly lose ground, and 2) how to mask the systemic unfairness, i.e. the rigged casino that stripmines the many to benefit the few.
The leadership’s “solution” is civilizational psychosis: the founding mythology of the state–so inspirational and lofty–is heavily promoted, even as this mythology (super-abundance, democracy, etc.) no longer maps the real world.
This widening divide generates civilizational psychosis as the masses are corralled into a state of denial that temporarily eases their anxiety at the recognition they’re no longer getting ahead and the ladders of upward mobility have all crumbled.
This state of inspirational delusion enables denial to take a superficially plausible inspirational form: Rome is eternal, so we don’t have to do anything but await an automatic return to greatness, AI will make us all rich, technological Progress is inevitable and automatically solves all our problems, and so on.
We fervently believe these delusions because the alternative is too painful to bear. The system is rotten to the core, it’s all artifice masquerading as authenticity, and not only are we no longer getting ahead, there are no pathways left to get ahead other than gambling, selling our blood or delusional aspirations to become one of the tiny handful of newly minted Tech Bro millionaires.
There is an emotional progression that parallels the progression from a stable society of dynamic equilibrium to civilizational psychosis: denial breaks down into anger, a volatile state with uncertain outcomes, which eventually transitions to bargaining (please let the stock market go back up so I can exit without losses) which leads to depression (it’s all lost) which once processed can move to acceptance (oh well, time to start over).
Both denial and civilizational psychosis are inherently unstable as they’re self-liquidating. So denial will blossom into anger whether we “like” it or not.
Now that we’ve drained the aquifers of a stable society, the replacement form of “wealth” is a catastrophically delusional credit-asset bubble that generates the illusion of “wealth.” Since the top 10% managerial / entrepreneurial / professional class the leadership needs to run the empire own 90% of the bubbling assets, inflating a credit-asset bubble is a painless way of generating the illusion in this class that they’re still getting ahead.
Until the bubble pops, of course, and all bubbles pop, even when we insist they’re not bubbles.
Bubbles masquerading as “wealth” is a manifestation of civilizational psychosis, and so these asset bubbles are equally unstable and self-liquidating: they implode not as a result of some external influence but as an inevitable consequence of their internal structure / nature.
Once the system’s transition to a rigged casino becomes undeniable, denial cracks wide open and is replaced by anger. The responses to systemic unfairness are flight, resistance and revolt: dropping out, laying flat, let it rot, opting out, booing toadies worshiping the new gods of AI and eventually, manifestations of revolt as political, economic and social redress are suppressed as needless by a delusional leadership class that has embraced civilizational psychosis.
The price of believing their own PR will be higher than anyone thought possible.
Roughly 40,000 people in Garden Grove, a Los Angeles suburb, were evacuated on Friday after a chemical storage tank was determined to be at risk of failing and spilling thousands of gallons of toxic material or exploding.
The malfunctioning tank holds methyl methacrylate, a flammable and volatile chemical used in plastics manufacturing for aerospace applications, igniting widespread worries over potential toxic vapor release.
The situation broke out Thursday, when the tank at a manufacturing facility started displaying signs of instability. By Friday, an update increased fears of an explosion, Orange County Fire Authority interim Chief TJ McGovern said.
On Friday, employees saw that the tank was bulging, a sign it was still “actively in crisis,” as one official described it.
The manufacturer said a valve had been damaged, preventing a controlled release.
Firefighters were working to cool the tanks with a mechanical device operated from a safe distance, stabilizing the temperature and buying critical time, officials said.
“I know I keep talking about we were handed this situation where there’s only two things that can happen: it could crack and leak, or it could blow up. That’s not acceptable to us,” Craig Covey, division chief of the Orange County Fire Authority, said in a video posted on social media.
Covey added in a later video, “I have an entire team actively working locally, regionally, across the state, and across the country, to try to figure out how to fix this.”
He said he is working to “get all these brilliant minds together to put a plan together, so that we don’t let this blow up.”
In an earlier announcement, Covey said the tank could fail and spill up to 7,000 gallons of toxic chemicals or explode and compromise neighboring tanks.
Garden Grove, which is home to 172,000 residents, is located approximately 30 miles south of Los Angeles. The evacuation zone affected neighborhoods in and around the city, and extends to nearby areas including parts of Anaheim, Cypress, Stanton, Buena Park, and Westminster.
Officials established three evacuation shelters in Garden Grove, Anaheim, and Cypress. Schools and roads in the affected areas were closed.
Garden Grove Police Chief Amir El-Farra said approximately 15 percent of those under evacuation orders were refusing to leave.
Health officials said that released vapor could prompt severe respiratory issues with prolonged exposure. Air quality monitors, however, had not detected any vapor as of Friday, said Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong of the Orange County Health Care Agency.
“You are safe as long as you are out of the zone that was determined to be an evacuation zone,” Chinsio-Kwong said.
Methyl methacrylate has a sharp, fruity odor. Some residents miles away reported smelling it amid the unfolding events.
The chemical is used in aerospace plastics manufacturing.
