POLITICO – Politics | Politics & Government

It’s no secret that AI has become an explosive factor in American politics. Even before the latest concerns that AI poses existential risks to humanity, many people had soured on the rapid growth of data centers used to support the technology. Meanwhile, tens of millions of AI industry dollars are sloshing around the midterm campaign in support of candidates on both sides of the aisle. But the increasing ubiquity of AI is also quietly shaping the perceptions of voters who are simply trying to educate themselves about the candidates — and are unknowingly being served partisan talking points in the guise of neutral news summaries. Leading AI chatbots cite partisan websites masquerading as independent local news outlets nearly half of the time when people ask about candidates and issues that the partisan sites have covered in the midterm campaign, according to a new audit by NewsGuard, an organization focused on news reliability where we work as analysts. These “pink slime” sites have gone into overdrive ahead of the 2026 elections, actively promoting articles designed to influence which party controls Congress in the last two years of Donald Trump’s presidency. Many of these sites, which don’t disclose their political orientation, are focused on the Senate and House races that are considered toss-ups and where small voter swings could be the deciding factor. Against this backdrop, NewsGuard prompted seven leading AI tools with queries based on recent coverage of candidates and issues by 12 pink slime sites — six left-leaning and six right-leaning. The results were stark. Collectively, the chatbots cited pink slime sites along with other sources in 48.2 percent of their responses. In 7.7 percent of responses, pink slime sites were the only sources at all that were cited in chatbot responses, although other sources appeared in the source list provided at the end of the response. None of the AI tools received results they’d probably be eager to boast about, though the percentage of chatbots’ responses that cited a pink slime site had a relatively large range: 70.8 percent for OpenAI’s ChatGPT, 54.2 percent for Microsoft’s Copilot, 54.2 percent for Perplexity, 50 percent for Anthropic’s Claude, 41.7 percent for Google’s Gemini; 37.5 percent for Meta AI and 29.2 percent for xAI’s Grok. A Microsoft spokesperson told NewsGuard: “Copilot has been designed to ground answers in high-quality search results that balance safety, authority, and access to information. The system indexes… [TheTopNews] Read More.

PUCALLPA, Peru — Carlos Lenski Davila Vela cannot name the Ukrainian village that Russia sent him to capture as part of a storm assault, nor a single town nearby. But with a crumpled napkin and a glass, he easily reconstructs where he was when the drones appeared, the tree line where he sought shelter and where, just meters away, one of his companions, a 19-year-old recruit from Kazakhstan, was hit and killed. Davila Vela, a 36-year-old Peruvian recruited into the Russian army, was left with shrapnel in his foot. Recreating his call for help to Puma, a 23-year-old Colombian, he holds his phone to his mouth like a radio: “Puma, Puma,” he says, using the Colombian man’s callsign. “This is Cash. I’m alive, but I’m hurt.” He had spent just four days on the frontline.As Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine grinds on, Moscow is looking abroad to find soldiers to send into battle. With recruitment becoming harder in some countries it previously relied on, predominantly in Africa and Asia, its war machine is increasingly turning to Latin America — including Peru, a country of about 35 million people — where testimonies from recruits and their relatives indicate that hundreds traveled to Moscow in the first half of this year alone. The widening of the Kremlin’s recruitment drive suggests that as Russian President Vladimir Putin hesitates to launch another round of military mobilization at home, the war is reaching deeper into the Western Hemisphere — a region where U.S. President Donald Trump has explicitly sought to reassert American primacy — drawing it into the conflict. In Peru, relatives of missing recruits have staged repeated protests and pressed authorities to act, likening the effort to lure men to fight against Ukraine to human trafficking. “We are seeing a clear expansion of Russia’s recruitment network in Latin America,” said a Ukrainian defense official working with prisoners of war who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters. “The number of Peruvian cases is clearly increasing.” This year, the official added, the number of foreign fighters is expected to reach a record high.“There are lots of Latinos,” Davila Vela confirmed during an interview in his hometown of Pucallpa, in the Peruvian Amazon, describing the three military training camps where he stayed before being sent to battle as a conveyor belt of fresh foreign recruits. “Every day, some are sent on, and new… [TheTopNews] Read More.

AVONDALE, Louisiana — If I could only have one dinner in New Orleans, it would be at Mosca's. Yes, my favorite New Orleans spot isn't technically in the city. That's part of the charm. And that's why I went there last week, sitting down with former Mayor Mitch Landrieu at a groaning table filled with Oysters Mosca, Chicken a la Grande and a couple of meatballs An unremarkable-looking red sauce roadhouse perched on the side of Highway 90 — New Orleans is one way and Acadiana the other — Mosca's somehow manages to be both a hidden gem and bucket-list icon. Those who know know, as the saying goes. After opening in 1946, it was a fun, cash-only spot for a pair of couples or groups of friends. A young local reporter named Walter Isaacson reviewed it at the time — his clip is still framed on the wall. Then in 2010, Calvin Trillin wrote a love letter and Oysters Mosca became foodie famous. Alongside the chicken, with its garlic bath, the pasta bordelaise, the crab-speckled dinner salad and to-die-for shrimp, Mosca's became such a destination that it's common to see sprinter vans filled with epicurious pilgrims in the gravel-and-grass highway frontage. This is an Italian Creole mecca — yes, that's its own food genre— and it neatly captures the singularity of New Orleans. (I know what you're thinking: Red sauce in New Orleans?) This city is in the South but not fully of the South, closer spiritually and ethnically to fellow port towns around the world than Bible Belt burgs a couple hours north. Since marrying a native, and eventually moving here, I've described New Orleans as one part Deep South, one part Caribbean and one part Western Europe. Thankfully, and tragically, it has the vices and virtues of all three. But I’m a transplant, so I’ll let Landrieu riff about his town. This is where his dad was once mayor, too, and his sister represented Louisiana in the U.S. Senate. Landrieu was first in state politics, serving as lieutenant governor of Louisiana and then mayor of New Orleans from 2010 to 2018. Most recently, though, he served in Washington as former President Joe Biden’s infrastructure czar. Together we talked about New Orleans, Democratic politics, why he's uneasy about the DSA and why he thinks he, and not Pete Buttigieg, could've been the breakout mayor-turned-presidential-candidate in 2020. Laissez les… [TheTopNews] Read More.

Republican polling has so deteriorated this month that the only uncertainty remaining ahead of the midterms is the depth of the party’s losses. With early or mail ballot voting beginning in nearly half the country this week, that question will mainly be determined by which money matters more: the massive cash infusion from GOP groups into every competitive race or the price of gasoline soaring toward $5 a gallon.The spending advantage could mitigate Republican losses, especially in suddenly vulnerable precincts of red-state America. Yet those advertising dollars may be effectively nullified if the price of unleaded and diesel continues rising and grips the public’s attention more than any commercial.What’s clear is that GOP candidates are in a race against time.That urgency was on vivid display Monday when Mike Rogers of Michigan and Ashley Hinson of Iowa, Republicans running in two of the country’s most crucial Senate races, each said it was time to end the war.Multiple Republican lawmakers and strategists told me that their fate will be determined between now and early next month, by which point they’ll know if their onslaught of spending arrested the Democrats’ gains.“If there’s movement by the second week of October, we’ll know we’re in good shape,” said Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), who’s locked in one of the tightest races in the country. “Republicans always outperform their polling.”The cavalry can’t come soon enough for many Republicans. And, in fact, the money from President Donald Trump’s super PAC may have arrived too late. The high cost of living and a deepening fatigue with Trump’s self-obsession were cementing opinions about the midterms at the worst possible time for the GOP — in the critical weeks after Labor Day.“The bottom's beginning to fall out,” one House Republican from a blood-red district told me. Trump is even underwater in this lawmaker’s seat, which the president carried overwhelmingly two years ago. “We have money that we've never had before, but they have every strategic advantage in their direction, and the president's made it worse — nobody in my district cares about the Kennedy Center, arches or the Reflecting Pool, all this nonsense,” said this GOP member.The unpopular war and its impact on gas prices are the biggest drivers of voter dissatisfaction; the national average for regular unleaded was $4.48 a gallon as of Monday, according to GasBuddy. Yet not far behind is a recognition, even among the most loyal Republicans,… [TheTopNews] Read More.

On the evening of April 6, an unusual request began making its way from Washington to some of Wall Street’s most powerful executives. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wanted to see them first thing the next morning. The heads of Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo had already been in Washington for a routine meeting of the Financial Services Forum, a trade association whose gatherings are usually free of drama. But as the bankers wound down their day over dinner and drinks, that quickly changed. Bessent had learned that the artificial intelligence company Anthropic had developed a new model, called Mythos, which would be released the next day to approved users in the public and private sector, a limited rollout that Anthropic said was the safest way to release its most capable model yet. Treasury secretaries do not typically occupy themselves with Silicon Valley product releases, but the growing capabilities of AI presented a unique threat to the American economy.Anthropic had briefed the government on the advanced model, which was capable of finding holes in digital infrastructure at lightning speed — a skill that could be used for defense in the right hands, or to wreak havoc in the wrong ones. In late March, Microsoft had privately warned administration officials after receiving early access to Mythos that it represented a significant leap and could automate sophisticated cyberattacks against financial institutions, the energy grid and other critical infrastructure, allowing less skilled actors to carry out operations once limited to elite hackers.The White House spun into crisis mode. In the Situation Room, Cabinet secretaries met with the administration’s top science adviser to understand Mythos’ capabilities and brainstorm how their agencies could respond. Afterwards Vice President JD Vance convened a phone call with some of the country's most influential technology executives, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and his leading competitors. Vance conveyed that the administration wanted a partnership in addressing frontier AI that supported innovation while balancing security concerns.“We know today's hot button thing is Mythos, but we know that's not going to be the last one,” an administration official involved in the discussions said, describing the call.That engagement represented a turnabout for a president who had returned to office banking on continued expansion of the American artificial intelligence sector to drive the country’s economic growth. As his AI czar, President Donald Trump chose David Sacks, a cheerleader… [TheTopNews] Read More.