Happy Tuesday! Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, the past week’s top stories from the intersection of technology and politics.
Marco mimicry
The State Department recently warned employees that an impostor used artificial intelligence to mimic the voice and text message style of Secretary of State Marco Rubio in an effort to connect with and manipulate several high-ranking officials, The Washington Post reported. Apparent targets included three foreign ministers, a U.S. governor and a member of Congress.
Read more at The Washington Post.
Trump Media teams up with Newsmax
President Donald Trump’s media company has launched a streaming platform that will feature Newsmax — a propaganda outlet that has been welcomed into the White House press pool — as a flagship channel. As I reported after the announcement, the idea of a president being financially intertwined with a media company known to promote lies in his defense sounds eerily similar to a suggestion that Trump and the Republican Party once received from Hungary’s illiberal leader, Viktor Orbán.
Read more at MSNBC.
MAGA donor allegedly scammed
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., alleged that a scammer pretending to be Trump adviser Steve Witkoff tricked a Trump supporter out of $250,000 worth of cryptocurrency that was intended to be donated toward the president’s inauguration.
Read more at The Independent.
ActBlue continues on
A new report found that ActBlue — the liberal fundraising platform that has come under an authoritarian assault by the Trump administration amid baseless fraud accusations — has remained a fundraising “juggernaut” for Democrats despite attacks from MAGA world.
Read more at CNN.
AI-based bigotry
Media Matters highlighted the recent trend of racist videos generated by artificial intelligence spreading on TikTok. The outlet reported that many of the videos — apparently created with Veo 3, Google’s new AI video generator — are “explicitly anti-Black, using images of monkeys to promote stereotypes about Black people.”
Read more at Media Matters.
MAGA county recorder’s voter mishap
Justin Heap, the MAGA-aligned county recorder in Arizona’s Maricopa County, is facing backlash after having to backtrack on a denial that his office approved the language of more than 80,000 letters that erroneously warned Phoenix-area voters that their voter registration was at risk.
Read more at 12 News KPNX.
Grok’s bigoted schlock
After Elon Musk’s recent announcement that Grok, the AI tool on his social media platform, has been “improved” and that users should “notice a difference,” it appears the chatbot’s responses have gotten more bigoted. A new report highlighted some of the replies the bot gave after Musk’s announcement, bashing Democrats and “Jewish executives” in Hollywood.
Read more at Tech Crunch.
Judge drags Trump admin over webpages
A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration violated the law and acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” when it hastily blacked out health-related webpages as part of an effort to eliminate references to “gender ideology,” a term frequently used by conservatives in relation to LGBTQ people.
Read more at Fierce Healthcare.
Musk’s new political party roils investors
Tesla’s stock plummeted Monday after Musk’s announced his plans to launch his own political party. Investors already seemed unnerved by Musk’s involvement in politics, and the stock plunge is yet another sign that Musk’s political dalliances are giving them heartburn.
Read more at CNBC.