Texans vote to give Elon Musk the city he so desperately wanted

Happy Tuesday! Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, a weekly roundup of the past week’s top stories from the intersection of technology and politics.

Residents in a small Texas town where Elon Musk's SpaceX company is headquartered voted Saturday in favor of becoming an incorporated city known as “Starbase” — a move Musk had publicly pushed for since 2021.

NBC News reported on the immediate and potential future impact of the newly incorporated city:

In addition to incorporating the new city, Saturday’s election also selected Starbase’s first mayor — Bobby Pedden — and two city commissioners — Jordan Buss and Jenna Petrzelka. The candidates for all three positions ran unopposed, and all three are employees of SpaceX. ...

Neither SpaceX nor Musk has detailed the purpose of incorporating a city around the rocket company’s operations. There has been speculation, however, that having greater municipal control of the area could ease some of the bureaucracy and restrictions around SpaceX’s tests and rocket launches.

Read more at NBC News.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of Signal, the unsecured messaging platform, for official Pentagon business has been more extensive than previously known. Specifically, the outlet alleges he’s been involved in “at least a dozen separate chats," citing people familiar with his management practices. (The Pentagon did not return the Journal's request for comment.)

The story follows Hegseth’s sharing of sensitive military plans on a Signal chat that mistakenly included a national reporter, and after another report alleged Hegseth’s wife and his brother have also discussed official business with the defense secretary on Signal.

Read The Wall Street Journal report here.

Donald Trump appeared to walk back his vow to place tariffs on all films made abroad shortly after he issued the announcement. The initial proposal caused confusion and concern throughout the film industry, with questions swirling about how the tariffs could be implemented, whether they might also impact streaming platforms that produce TV shows, and fundamentally, whether the tariffs would achieve Trump’s stated goal of bringing more film production stateside.

Read more from my blog on it here.

The Associated Press published a feature on Republicans' assault on the government’s efforts to root bias out of artificial intelligence models:

Past efforts to “advance equity” in AI development and curb the production of “harmful and biased outputs” are a target of investigation, according to subpoenas sent to Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and 10 other tech companies last month by the House Judiciary Committee.

And the standard-setting branch of the U.S. Commerce Department has deleted mentions of AI fairness, safety and “responsible AI” in its appeal for collaboration with outside researchers. It is instead instructing scientists to focus on “reducing ideological bias” in a way that will “enable human flourishing and economic competitiveness,” according to a copy of the document obtained by The Associated Press.

Read more at The Associated Press.

Air traffic controllers at New Jersey's Newark Liberty International Airport lost communication with an aircraft in flight last week during an outage that prompted massive delays, as Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's chaotic tenure continues.

Read more at NBC New York.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida, one of multiple Democrats who chose to join the so-called Congressional DOGE Caucus to interface with members of Musk’s purported cost-cutting operation, said he believes the caucus is officially “dead” after telling CNN that the group hasn't met since January. So much for oversight. 

Watch a clip of Moskowitz making the revelation here.

Content moderators in Ghana who work for a company contracted by Meta are suing Facebook’s parent company for psychological distress they say they've experienced while sifting through and removing inappropriate content. Meta is facing a second set of lawsuits filed by content moderators in Kenya who were "diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder caused by exposure to graphic social media content," The Guardian reported.

Meta told The Guardian that the company takes “the support of content reviewers seriously" and said it instructs subcontractors on counseling and training expectations for moderators.

Read more at The Guardian.

ChatGPT’s tendency to offer up sycophantic responses to its users has been creeping some of these users out. As an example, one social media user carried out a fake conversation that demonstrated how the chatbot could fuel psychotic episodes by affirming users’ claims that they are clairvoyant, more virtuous than others, and responsible for meting out punishment against those who defy them. The complaints have gotten so loud that OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, has publicly vowed to address the issue. 

Read more in New York Magazine.

Sen. Chris Murphy, an outspoken critic of Trump’s grifting from the White House, said he's introducing a bill called the MEME Act that, if passed, would block officials from launching their own meme cryptocurrencies like the ones Trump has launched.

The bill is unlikely to pass in the Republican-controlled Senate, but it shows Democrats are eager to highlight Trump’s blatantly unethical behavior. Trump’s crypto coins are a glaring example of corruption and self-dealing, and a trucking logistics firm recently highlighted this by sharing plans to invest $20 million in a Trump crypto venture — according to its CEO — as “an effective way to advocate for fair, balanced and free trade between Mexico and the U.S.”

Watch Murphy explain the MEME Act here:

After being recorded last week apparently admitting that she had hurled a racist slur at a 5-year-old Black child in a park, a white woman in Minnesota is being handsomely rewarded after conservatives turned her into a cause célèbre.

The woman is just the latest person to receive a groundswell of financial support via the MAGA-friendly crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo after facing widespread backlash.

Read more from my blog about it here.