Makes Everyone Miserable......

I was in the courtroom with Trump. He seemed miserable.

Opening statements reveal the crux of the case against the former president.

By Rachel Maddow

I was at the courthouse Monday for opening statements in the first criminal trial of former President Donald Trump, the New York State case that alleges he falsified business records to cover up an affair with an adult film star and director, Stormy Daniels, in order to boost his 2016 run for president.

It’s a real privilege to be in the courtroom — news organizations have been fighting tooth and nail to get seats; I was very grateful for a chance to be there.

Some of my purely subjective observations about what it’s like to be there in person:

• The courtroom is barebones and inelegant. It has unflattering lighting. Think DMV office with a high ceiling.
• The courtroom doesn’t smell good. Think old soup and stale breath. 
• The overall atmosphere is one I would describe as tense.
• The police officers who police the courtroom are working very hard and they appear to be very stressed. 
• The judge in the case is soft-spoken and has a pleasant voice.
• Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo speaks just like Seth Meyers when Seth Meyers is not telling jokes. 
• Trump looks a lot older than he used to. 

It seemed to me — again, in my purely subjective take — that Trump seemed miserable to be there. That said, a lot of us look older than we did at the start of the Trump era in news and politics (myself very much included). 

I also think anyone’s got a right to look miserable when they’re sitting in a courtroom charged with dozens of felonies as a criminal defendant.

From the opening statement by defense counsel for Trump, we got a sense about how they’re going to defend their client. 

They’re going to stress that he’s a former president, that he’s the presumptive Republican nominee for president again. 

They’re going to claim that every aspect of his conduct was innocent — that there wasn’t an underlying sexual encounter to cover up, that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen paid a porn star on his own accord and for his own reasons, that Trump paid Cohen purely and only for normal legal services. In short, their message to the jury is that Trump had nothing to do with any affair or any cover-up of an alleged affair, and none of it had anything to do with the election.

If that is basic strategy from the defense, the prosecution’s opening statements presented one fact pattern in particular that might be the most difficult thing for the defense to explain away.

In the prosecution’s opening statement, Matthew Colangelo explained to the jury that there was what he called a criminal conspiracy between Trump and AMI to publish positive stories about Trump in the National Enquirer, and negative stories about his rivals, while also finding as-yet unpublished negative stories about Trump and paying people who might tell those stories to be quiet about them before the election.

The last part of that alleged conspiracy — the so-called “catch and kill” part of the scheme — is what is of most interest to prosecutors and what led to the charges that landed Trump in court.

Colangelo explained to the jury that AMI, which owns the National Enquirer, first found Dino Sajudin, a doorman at a Trump building, who said Trump had fathered a secret child with a housekeeper. 

The doorman was the first person they paid to keep quiet about a Trump-related story, Colangelo said. Then there was a second person — a woman named Karen McDougal who said she had had an affair with Trump. Colangelo told the jury they paid her to keep quiet about her story, too.

Then there was Stormy Daniels, and although the National Enquirer also made arrangements to pay her for staying quiet, after their earlier two payoffs to benefit Trump’s campaign, Colangelo said, they decided they were not interested in putting up yet more money for this third catch-and-kill. Instead, it was Michael Cohen who had to put up the money for the payment to Daniels. 

Here’s what Colangelo explained next:

"Cohen made that payment at Donald Trump’s direction and for his benefit, and he did it with a specific goal of influencing the outcome of the election. 

Now, look, no politician wants bad press, but the evidence at trial will show that this was not spin or communication strategy; this was a planned, coordinated long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected, through illegal expenditures, to silence people who had something bad to say about his behavior, using doctored corporate records and bank forms to conceal those payments along the way. 

It was election fraud. Pure and simple."

Standing before the jury, Colangelo noted that the 2016 election was close, and that the potential impact of this alleged criminal conspiracy on the outcome of the race will never be known. He continued:

"We will never know, and it doesn’t matter, if this conspiracy was the difference-maker in a close election. 

But you will see evidence in the defendant’s own words from his social media posts, from his speeches at campaign rallies and other events, you will see in his own words, making crystal clear that he was certainly concerned about how all of this could hurt his standing with voters and with female voters in particular. 

You will also see evidence that on election night, as news outlets got closer to calling the election for Donald Trump... the lawyer for both Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal texted [editor] Dylan Howard at the National Enquirer and he said, 'What have we done?'

About a month after the election, Pecker then authorized AMI to release both Sajudin and McDougal from their non-disclosure agreements."

So, having paid for the stories in order to keep them from the public before Election Day, Pecker and AMI then told both McDougal and Sajudin a month after the election that they were no longer bound by the non-disclosure agreements.

For context, it is important to know that the defense has claimed none of these payments had anything to do with the election. 

But the prosecution says it will present evidence that Trump and AMI paid for these people to be silent until the election was over, and then once the election was over, they released these people from their agreements. 

Logically, if not legally, this just bluntly gives lie to the defense’s portrayal of Trump’s actions, as described in their opening statement. 

The unavoidable implication is that, once the election happened, Trump and AMI didn’t care anymore about keeping those stories away from the public. Because at that point, it was “mission accomplished”; the mission had been to influence the election. 

From what I heard in court Monday, this is the prosecution’s argument that is most troublesome for the defense. If prosecutors can support these claims with evidence and convince the jury of the truth of this fact pattern, it presents a nearly irrefutable logical inference showing what the payoffs were for: Trump was not acting not to protect his brand or to save his family from embarrassment. The payments were made purely and only for the purpose of influencing the election. Full stop. 

The prosecution calls what Trump and AMI did “a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election,” one that was “covered up” by lying in Trump Organization business records. Logically, that would seem like the crux of the case. Legally — we’ll see.

Plastic pollution treaty

Talks for a plastic pollution treaty are stalling. Could the U.S. be doing more?

By Michael Copley

Negotiators from about 175 countries have been sparring for more than a year over a treaty to clean up plastic pollution that's choking rivers and piling up in landfills. As a critical new round of deliberations starts this week in Canada, the talks are floundering.

Some scientists and civil society groups say the United States bears a lot of the blame.

Almost every piece of plastic is made from fossil fuels, and major oil and natural gas producers like Russia and Saudi Arabia have also been widely criticized for throwing up roadblocks in the negotiations. However, scientists and environmentalists following the talks say the U.S. exerts outsized influence on the process. The country is the top producer of oil and gas globally, and it has the world's biggest economy, which has historically given the U.S. huge sway in environmental negotiations.

So far, American negotiators have been unwilling to push for measures in the treaty that would drive big cuts in plastic waste, critics say, like caps on manufacturing. Instead, they say, U.S. government representatives have put their weight behind policies around recycling and waste management that are favored by the country's giant fossil fuel and petrochemical industries. Researchers say those actions on their own won't drastically reduce plastic pollution.

"I don't think it's an understatement to say that where we're headed at right now with progress in negotiations is towards failure. And if there's one country that I think is responsible for that, I think it's the United States," says Douglas McCauley, a professor of environmental science at University of California, Santa Barbara, who has consulted with the U.S. State Department about the treaty and is attending the talks in Ottawa.

NPR spoke to seven scientists and environmental advocates who have consulted with the U.S. government about the plastics negotiations, some multiple times. Many of those experts contend that an absence of U.S. leadership is hindering efforts to push forward a treaty with effective regulations. The outcome of the negotiations could also have big implications for human health. A recent study found plastics contain more than 4,200 hazardous chemicals, the vast majority of which aren't regulated globally, according to the researchers.

"It's not that the U.S. is actively opposing some of these policies that could make a difference," McCauley says. "It's that they are showing no action whatsoever, no ambition whatsoever, for adopting any of these policies."

In a letter to President Biden in March, a coalition of more than 300 scientists said policy recommendations the government received from plastic manufacturers — and the government's own stance in the talks to date — are "inconsistent" with efforts to deal comprehensively with plastic waste. And a group of nine Democratic attorneys general whose states are grappling with plastic pollution recently urged the U.S. treaty delegation to back stronger global rules, saying the country is "uniquely positioned" to influence the negotiations.

"There is an important role the U.S. could play in addressing the growing influence of industry on these negotiations," says Carroll Muffett, chief executive of the Center for International Environmental Law who is an observer at the negotiations and whose organization has consulted with the State Department about the treaty. "So far, we have yet to see the U.S. on the right side of that issue."

A State Department spokesperson said in a statement to NPR that U.S. officials met with "a wide set of stakeholders" ahead of the negotiations in Canada, and that the country has a "central role in bridging differing positions" in the talks. For an agreement to be effective, it needs to be supported by every country, the spokesperson said, including major plastic producers and consumers.

Matt Seaholm, chief executive of a business group called the Plastics Industry Association, says the U.S. is doing "a very good job of trying to balance all of the interests" of different stakeholders.

"The U.S. government has positioned itself well to drive forward a workable, consensus-based agreement," Ross Eisenberg, president of another industry group called America's Plastic Makers, said in a statement.

It's a pivotal moment in the negotiations

The world produces about 400 million metric tons of plastic waste every year, according to the United Nations Environment Programme — roughly the weight of every human on the planet. Most of it ends up in places like oceans, shorelines and landfills, where it breaks down into tiny pieces called microplastics that have been found in every corner of the environment and inside human bodies.

The problem is getting worse. The amount of plastic waste the world produces is expected to almost triple in the coming decades, with less than a fifth recycled, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. So in 2022, countries agreed to negotiate a legally binding agreement to "end plastic pollution."

With months to go before a deadline to hash out the treaty, interest groups on all sides of the issue say this is a pivotal moment. The last round of negotiations in Kenya ended in deadlock. Afterward, environmental groups warned the talks were at risk of collapsing after some oil- and gas-producing countries blocked a final decision on how to move forward.

The negotiations are happening at a time when the oil and gas industry increasingly sees petrochemicals as a core part of their business. Efforts to limit the risks from climate change threaten demand for fossil fuels, but oil and gas demand for petrochemicals is expected to keep rising for years, industry analysts say.

Magnus Løvold, a policy advisor at the Norwegian Academy of International Law, says fossil-fuel producers including Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran and Bahrain "want this process to fail."

An observer at the negotiations, Løvold adds: "The reason for that is that these countries, they have huge oil production, they have a considerable petrochemical industry, so they see that regulation of plastics is a threat to their economic interest."

The U.S. is a giant in those same industries. Booming production of American natural gas has propelled plastic manufacturing around the world. Last year, the country produced, consumed and exported a record amount of ethane, which is used in plastic manufacturing and almost always comes from natural gas when it is produced in the U.S.

Experts who have met with the State Department and who have attended the talks say U.S. negotiators could be handcuffed by domestic politics. It would be "probably impossible" for the Biden administration to convince two-thirds of the Senate to approve a plastics treaty, says Løvold of the Norwegian Academy of International Law.

The U.S. government "does not want to be the bad guy," says Erica Nuñez, head of The Ocean Foundation's plastics initiative who has consulted with the State Department. "I think they do really want to come out of this with some wins. And I think they're very challenged right now in identifying what those wins are [realistically] within the U.S. context."

Against the backdrop of booming fossil fuel production, U.S. negotiators at the talks have declined to back a binding global agreement, say the state attorneys general and environmental advocates who have attended the talks. Instead, they say the U.S. has sought an accord that would leave countries free to decide for themselves how to clean up plastic pollution.

"The U.S. is really trying to reshape what could be a binding global treaty with binding global targets into a ground-up treaty where every country just says, 'Alright, this is what we're willing to do,'" says Muffett of the Center for International Environmental Law. "And that is inadequate."

A State Department spokesperson said the agreement needs to include "universal obligations," but that "overly prescriptive approaches" could dissuade countries that are big producers and consumers of plastic from joining. Countries should be able to meet their obligations "in ways that take into account their respective priorities and circumstances," the spokesperson said.

The plastic industry says cutting production is off limits

The plastics industry is fighting on two fronts to block treaty provisions that could constrain manufacturing. It is trying to stop countries from limiting how much new plastic is produced, and it opposes global regulations on the chemicals that companies use.

Scientists and environmental advocates say that to make a significant dent in plastic pollution, countries have to cut how much new plastic they manufacture. But plastic makers and the oil and gas industry, which includes national oil companies and publicly traded corporations, say the world needs all the plastic they can produce, and that negotiators should focus on creating a so-called circular economy where plastic is recycled and reused to prevent waste.

The industry is making that argument at the same time it tries to fend off scrutiny of a decades-long controversial campaign to sell recycling to the public. Investigations, including by NPR, have shown the plastics industry promoted recycling even though officials long knew that it probably wouldn't work on a large scale. Former industry officials have said the goal was to avoid regulations and ensure demand for plastics kept growing.

Current officials have said those investigations don't accurately portray today's industry.

"We fully and readily admit that we don't recycle enough plastic," says Seaholm of the Plastics Industry Association. "But what we're saying is we want to recycle more. The industry is putting billions of dollars into recycling technologies that get us where we need to be."

Seaholm says the industry also supports policies to encourage recycling, like making producers help pay for recycling infrastructure, and requiring companies to use some recycled material in plastic products.

A lot of experts say recycling will have to be part of the solution, because plastic is ingrained in modern life. But they say governments need to regulate manufacturing for recycling to work. The Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty, which includes major brands like Coca-Cola, Unilever and Walmart, is calling for governments to phase out "problematic plastics" that are hard to recycle or that are likely to end up as waste in the environment.

A State Department spokesperson said the U.S. is advocating for measures to reduce demand for new plastic, including through government procurement policies. However, the spokesperson said countries wouldn't be stopped from also trying to limit the supply of new plastic. A lot of countries want to do that with caps on manufacturing.

Reducing demand for new plastic is "great," says Nuñez of The Ocean Foundation. But "we still need to directly implement policies to limit fossil fuel extraction — which is something that the U.S. is avoiding," she says.

As for the chemicals that go into plastic, industry representatives say they should be regulated by national governments, not by a global treaty on plastic pollution.

But scientists and environmental advocates calling for global chemical regulations note that plastic waste – and the chemicals it's made from – doesn't stay in the country where it is produced. It floats down rivers and around oceans.

To protect people and the environment, governments that are part of the High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution, including the European Union, Canada, and the United Kingdom, as well as a number of developing countries from Rwanda to the Maldives, want to "eliminate and restrict" hazardous plastics and chemicals globally. They also want to force companies to disclose information about the chemicals they use.

"We have the evidence to show that human health and environmental health are being impacted," says Susanne Brander, an ecotoxicologist at Oregon State University who was on a call recently with the State Department discussing the plastics treaty. "If we can't get information on what's being used," she adds, "we have no way of truly making these products safer."

Lawmakers and observers warn of industry influence

But groups advocating for aggressive global rules say there's been little progress in the negotiations. After more than a year of talks, governments still haven't come up with a plan that has the "ambition and strength" to limit plastic production and cut down on pollution, the group of state attorneys general wrote to the State Department earlier this month. The group faulted the U.S. delegation for taking a position that "lacks concrete objectives or standards."

"The United States has the power to persuade and to be forward-leaning," says Margaret Spring, chief conservation and science officer at the Monterey Bay Aquarium who has consulted with the State Department on the plastics treaty and is leading a delegation at the talks for the International Science Council. "Right now, you've seen other countries doing that. And so that's been disappointing to many of us."

Negotiators face intense lobbying from groups that have big financial stakes in the plastics industry. The influence of plastic producers and petrochemical companies is "one of the largest barriers to strong action," a group of Democrat lawmakers, as well as Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an Independent, and Mohammed Chahim, a member of the European Parliament, wrote recently to Biden and leaders of the UN and European Commission.

Ahead of this week's negotiations in Canada, the industry said it would be a mistake to talk much about manufacturing. "Certainly there are those in the [Biden] administration who would like to see some much more aggressive policies towards our industry, which we certainly don't agree with," says Seaholm of the Plastics Industry Association. "But there are those who are truly honest brokers that we're continuing to work with."

Too Far?

Did Trump Push the NY Judge Too Far?

The former president may be punished for violating a gag order.

RUSS CHOMA

Trump arriving for trial...

Once again, former president Donald Trump is about to find out just how far he can push a judge. On Tuesday morning, Trump’s attorneys faced an angry barrage of questions from New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan, demanding they explain why Trump should not be fined for what prosecutors in his hush-money case say was “willfully and flagrantly” violating a gag order Merchan imposed on March 26. 

The hearing kicked off the second day of testimony in the historic case that focuses on whether Trump had falsified business records to pay off adult film star Stormy Daniels, among others, to keep negative stories about him from getting out in the runup to the 2016 election. It’s the first time a former president has been charged criminally, but it is just one of several criminal cases Trump is currently facing. Trump has admitted he made the payments but has denied that he had an affair with Daniels. On Monday, his attorneys said Trump had not committed any crime, he was simply trying to “influence an election. It’s called democracy.” But, prosecutors say that the steps that Trump and his allies—including both Trump Organization staff and campaign workers—took to make those payments and keep the stories secret amount to a criminal conspiracy. 

But before testimony could begin, Merchan spent most of Tuesday morning focused on whether Trump had violated the gag order Merchan imposed in March. The judge did so after Trump repeatedly spread rumors about Merchan’s daughter and denigrated several potential witnesses. The order allows Trump to complain about Merchan and Manhattan Attorney General Alvin Bragg, but forbids him from making “threatening, inflammatory, denigrating” statements about potential witnesses, court employees or their families, or jurors. At Tuesday’s hearing, prosecutors said they had ten instances of Trump violating that order when he complained about his former fixer Michael Cohen—likely to be a witness in the case—and reposting commentary from Fox News host Jesse Watters that alleged there was a conspiracy to sneak “undercover liberal activists” onto the jury. 

Bragg’s office proposed a $1,000 fine for each violation for a total of $10,000. 

Merchan did not immediately decide, but he appeared to be deeply irritated by Trump’s attorney, Todd Blanche, who claimed Trump was just responding to attacks from others. Blanche seemed unable to provide examples, nor could he cite case law supporting his claims, Merchan noted.

“You’ve presented nothing,” Merchan told Blanche. 

Shortly after this exchange, when Blanche insisted his client was doing his best to abide by the gag order, Merchan appeared to be openly scornful of the claim. “You’re losing all credibility with the court,” Merchan told the attorney.

The scene was reminiscent of Trump’s civil fraud trial last fall, also in New York, when he was found liable for more than $450 million for defrauding banks and insurance companies. During the trial, Trump used his Truth Social media platform to attack presiding Judge Arthur Engoron, courtroom staff, and several witnesses—including Cohen and Engoron’s clerk—until the judge also issued a gag order. After Trump continued his posts, Engoron held a hearing similar to Tuesday’s, during which he made Trump himself testify. After Trump claimed he had done nothing wrong, Engoron scornfully declared, “As the trier of fact, I find that the witness is not credible.” He fined Trump $15,000 for his gag order violations. 

While threats of fines of several thousand dollars would amount to a relative pittance compared to Trump’s wealth, the former president did tone down his behavior after the ruling and appeared to abide by that gag order—at least for the remainder of Tuesday. Merchan ended the day in court without deciding whether he would fine Trump the $10,000 requested by the prosecutors.

Hush money....

Pecker testified about a 2015 meeting with Trump. Here's a timeline of key events in the hush money case

From CNN’s Lauren del Valle, Kara Scannell, Annette Choi and Gillian Roberts 

On Tuesday, former American Media Inc. CEO David Pecker testified about his August 2015 meeting with former President Donald Trump.

Pecker said he agreed to be the “eyes and ears” for Trump’s campaign and flag any negative stories to Trump’s then-fixer Michael Cohen.

CNN compiled a timeline of the key events leading up to the historic trial. Read up on the moments below:

• September 2016: Donald Trump discusses a $150,000 hush money payment understood to be for former Playboy model Karen McDougal with Michael Cohen who secretly records the conversation. McDougal has alleged she had an extramarital affair with Trump beginning in 2006, which he has denied. 
• October 7, 2016: The Washington Post releases an "Access Hollywood" video from 2005 in which Trump uses vulgar language to describe his sexual approach to women with show host Billy Bush. 
• October 27, 2016: According to prosecutors, Cohen pays Stormy Daniels $130,000 through her attorney via a shell company in exchange for her silence about an affair she allegedly had with Trump in 2006. This $130,000 sum is separate from the $150,000 paid to McDougal. Trump has publicly denied having any affairs and has denied making the payments. 
• November 8, 2016: Trump secures the election to become the 45th president of the United States. 
• February 2017: Prosecutors say Cohen meets with Trump in the Oval Office to confirm how he would be reimbursed for the hush money payment Cohen fronted to Daniels. Under the plan, Cohen would send a series of false invoices requesting payment for legal services he performed pursuant to a retainer agreement and receive monthly checks for $35,000 for a total of $420,000 to cover the payment, his taxes and a bonus, prosecutors alleged. Prosecutors also allege there was never a retainer agreement. 
• January 2018: The Wall Street Journal breaks news about the hush money payment Cohen made to Daniels in 2016. 

Refusal to follow gag order....

Trump’s refusal to follow gag order could cost him

Opinion by Norman Eisen

Perhaps the most striking thing about Monday’s opening of former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial was the juxtaposition between the extraordinary and the humdrum, with the judge and jury going through all the usual motions that I have seen hundreds of times – but doing them with a former president in the dock for the first time ever.

Tuesday morning, however, will be something I have never seen before in my three decades of criminal law practice. After court comes into session at 9:30 a.m., Justice Juan Merchan will weigh the prosecution’s request that he find Trump in contempt of court and sanction him for 10 alleged violations of the gag order for verbally attacking witnesses and even jurors. Seven of the 10 came after Trump was put on notice of the gag order hearing and were rolled into it. A possible 11th incident happened after court Monday and may be referenced, if not formally sanctioned.

Based on my legal analysis of the relevant New York law and the 10 statements at issue, I think Merchan will very likely sanction at least some of the misconduct. (This essay adapts arguments developed in that comprehensive analysis.) To begin with, the gag order prohibits Trump from making or directing others to make public statements about witnesses, the prosecution’s legal team and staff (other than District Attorney Alvin Bragg), jurors, court staff or the families of court or prosecutorial staff.

Among those statements cited by the prosecution is Trump’s April 10 Truth Social post referencing Stormy Daniels, to whom he allegedly arranged the payment of hush money, and former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who facilitated those payments. In the post, Trump called them “two sleaze bags who have, with their lies and misrepresentations, cost our Country dearly!” The prosecution also cites another Truth Social post, just three days later, in which Trump targeted his former fixer, writing, “Has disgraced attorney and felon Michael Cohen been prosecuted for LYING? Only TRUMP people get prosecuted by this Judge and these thugs! A dark day for our Country.”

The prosecution is asking that Merchan hold Trump in contempt for those statements plus eight others, and wants the judge to order sanctions including a $1,000 fine per statement – and a warning that Trump risks up to 30 days in jail for any future violations.

Trump will likely raise a slew of defenses but there’s one that we can expect him to advance the most aggressively – one that highlights the unique nature of this case. He’ll almost certainly try to argue that his posts aren’t threatening; they’re just defending himself against attacks that impact his campaign. That is something that Trump as a leading presidential candidate will undoubtedly claim he is well within his First Amendment right to do.

His lawyer Emil Bove has already articulated that argument in court, claiming that Trump’s posts targeting Cohen “are political in nature and intended to defend against what Mr. Cohen is saying in connection with the campaign” and that, because the gag order does not preclude Trump “from responding to political attacks,” they pose no violation of the order.

Trump’s right to political speech is of course protected by the First Amendment. Indeed, that’s partially why the gag order’s restrictions are so narrowly tailored. But the problem for him, is that right is not absolute in a criminal proceeding. As the Court found in issuing the gag order, Trump’s history of attacking his perceived foes presents a serious threat to the safety of witnesses and jurors (among others) and thus to the integrity of the trial. As a matter of law, that warrants these narrow restrictions.

Merchan has demonstrated that he’s a fair and thoughtful jurist, and he often seeks compromise. I expect his ruling to reflect this larger tension that’s symbolized by candidate-defendant Trump. The judge may split the baby and order sanctions for some but not all of Trump’s statements.

For example, he might say that Trump simply quoting others without any editing, as he does in some of the postings, was not a sufficiently clear violation of the order – but then clarify in strong terms that should never happen again.

And for other posts, expect Merchan to come down hard, levying fines and warning of additional consequences and even confinement if Trump keeps it up. That would be even more extraordinary than this hearing.

Back and alive...

Voyager 1 is sending data back to Earth for the first time in 5 months

By Ashley Strickland

For the first time in five months, NASA engineers have received decipherable data from Voyager 1 after crafting a creative solution to fix a communication problem aboard humanity’s most distant spacecraft in the cosmos.

Voyager 1 is currently about 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away, and at 46 years old, the probe has shown multiple quirks and signs of aging in recent years.

The latest issue experienced by Voyager 1 first cropped up in November 2023, when the flight data system’s telemetry modulation unit began sending an indecipherable repeating pattern of code.

Voyager 1’s flight data system collects information from the spacecraft’s science instruments and bundles it with engineering data that reflects its current health status. Mission control on Earth receives that data in binary code, or a series of ones and zeroes.

But since November, Voyager 1’s flight data system had been stuck in a loop. While the probe has continued to relay a steady radio signal to its mission control team on Earth over the past few months, the signal did not carry any usable data.

The mission team received the first coherent data about the health and status of Voyager 1’s engineering systems on April 20. While the team is still reviewing the information, everything they’ve seen so far suggests Voyager 1 is healthy and operating properly.

“Today was a great day for Voyager 1,” said Linda Spilker, Voyager project scientist at JPL, in a statement Saturday. “We’re back in communication with the spacecraft. And we look forward to getting science data back.”

The breakthrough came as the result of a clever bit of trial and error and the unraveling of a mystery that led the team to a single chip.

Troubleshooting from billions of miles away

After discovering the issue, the mission team attempted sending commands to restart the spacecraft’s computer system and learn more about the underlying cause of the problem.

The team sent a command called a “poke” to Voyager 1 on March 1 to get the flight data system to run different software sequences in the hopes of finding out what was causing the glitch.

On March 3, the team noticed that activity from one part of the flight data system stood out from the rest of the garbled data. While the signal wasn’t in the format the Voyager team is used to seeing when the flight data system is functioning as expected, an engineer with NASA’s Deep Space Network was able to decode it.

The Deep Space Network is a system of radio antennae on Earth that help the agency communicate with the Voyager probes and other spacecraft exploring our solar system.

The decoded signal included a readout of the entire flight data system’s memory.

By investigating the readout, the team determined the cause of the issue: 3% of the flight data system’s memory is corrupted. A single chip responsible for storing part of the system’s memory, including some of the computer’s software code, isn’t working properly. While the cause of the chip’s failure is unknown, it could be worn out or may have been hit by an energetic particle from space, the team said.

The loss of the code on the chip caused Voyager 1’s science and engineering data to be unusable.

Since there was no way to repair the chip, the team opted to store the affected code from the chip elsewhere in the system’s memory. While they couldn’t pinpoint a location large enough to hold all of the code, they were able to divide the code into sections and store it in different spots within the flight data system.

“To make this plan work, they also needed to adjust those code sections to ensure, for example, that they all still function as a whole,” according to an update from NASA. “Any references to the location of that code in other parts of the (flight data system) memory needed to be updated as well.”

After determining the code necessary for packaging Voyager 1’s engineering data, engineers sent a radio signal to the probe commanding the code to a new location in the system’s memory on April 18.

Given Voyager 1’s immense distance from Earth, it takes a radio signal about 22.5 hours to reach the probe, and another 22.5 hours for a response signal from the spacecraft to reach Earth.

On April 20, the team received Voyager 1’s response indicating that the clever code modification had worked, and they could finally receive readable engineering data from the probe once more.

Exploring interstellar space

Within the coming weeks, the team will continue to relocate other affected parts of the system’s software, including those responsible for returning the valuable science data Voyager 1 is collecting.

Initially designed to last five years, the Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, launched in 1977 and are the longest operating spacecraft in history. Their exceptionally long life spans mean that both spacecraft have provided additional insights about our solar system and beyond after achieving their preliminary goals of flying by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune decades ago.

The probes are currently venturing through uncharted cosmic territory along the outer reaches of the solar system. Both are in interstellar space and are the only spacecraft ever to operate beyond the heliosphere, the sun’s bubble of magnetic fields and particles that extends well beyond the orbit of Pluto.

Voyager 2, which is operating normally, has traveled more than 12.6 billion miles (20.3 billion kilometers) from our planet.

Over time, both spacecraft have encountered unexpected issues and dropouts, including a seven-month period in 2020 when Voyager 2 couldn’t communicate with Earth. In August 2023, the mission team used a long-shot “shout” technique to restore communications with Voyager 2 after a command inadvertently oriented the spacecraft’s antenna in the wrong direction.

The team estimates it’s a few weeks away from receiving science data from Voyager 1 and looks forward to seeing what that data contains.

“We never know for sure what’s going to happen with the Voyagers, but it constantly amazes me when they just keep going,” said Voyager Project Manager Suzanne Dodd, in a statement. “We’ve had many anomalies, and they are getting harder. But we’ve been fortunate so far to recover from them. And the mission keeps going. And younger engineers are coming onto the Voyager team and contributing their knowledge to keep the mission going.”

Go untreated until they reach death’s door.

With This Week’s Abortion Case, Supreme Court Faces Grim Reality of Overturning Roe

The justices will decide whether pregnant patients must go untreated until they reach death’s door.

PEMA LEVY

Just weeks after the Supreme Court ended the Constitutional right to an abortion in the summer of 2022, Mylissa Farmer arrived at a hospital in Joplin, Missouri after her water broke at about 18 weeks pregnant. The doctors agreed that the fetus had no chance of survival and that she needed to end her pregnancy to avoid sepsis, hemorrhage, or even death. But instead of helping to induce labor or perform an abortion, they urged her to go to another state for care: Under Missouri’s just-triggered abortion ban, they couldn’t provide the care she needed until she was in labor or her health deteriorated and her life was in peril. 

The case shows how overturning Roe has forced women into dire yet preventable health crises.

Farmer left the hospital and drove three hours to one in Kansas. Again, doctors there believed that her pregnancy needed to be terminated. But one told her the hospital’s legal team feared the consequences of providing an abortion in the state’s heated political climate. Scared, Farmer returned to the first Missouri hospital, where a NICU doctor informed her that without amniotic fluid, her uterus was constricting, breaking the fetus’ bones. “There are some fates worse than death,” the doctor told her. Because the hospital staff would not treat her, she says she felt pressured to leave and went home. 

Early the next morning, nearly three days after her water broke, Farmer and her boyfriend drove 4.5 hours to Illinois, during which time she went into active labor. In the third state in three days, at an abortion clinic, she finally received an emergency surgical procedure to end her pregnancy. 

“No one should be forced to undergo an experience that puts their life at risk, simply because a state politician wants that to happen,” says Alison Tanner, senior counsel at the National Women’s Law Center, which is representing Farmer in two federal complaints over the hospitals’ refusal to treat her. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear Moyle v. United States, a case concerning  exactly what happened to Farmer: Can state abortion bans force women to delay the inevitable end of a pregnancy, putting their health and lives on the line?

The case centers on the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which requires hospitals to provide stabilizing emergency care to anyone who shows up requiring it for whatever reason. Shortly after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, an Idaho law automatically went into effect making it a crime to perform an abortion. The law contained an exception to save the life of the mother—but not to protect her health. So the Biden administration sued on the grounds that withholding abortion care in a medical emergency, even if it was technically not life-threatening, remained a violation of EMTALA.

While Idaho contends that EMTALA does not require abortion care when it is needed to stabilize a patient in an emergency, it conversely argues the law creates a duty to protect the fetus equal to the duty to stabilize the pregnant person. The argument denies the reality that removing abortion access in emergencies imperils the pregnant person—something made clear by Farmer’s experience, and by other harrowing stories told by women denied emergency care to end a pregnancy.

At issue in this case is a radical idea: that states can force pregnant people in need of abortions to preserve their life and health to choose between waiting it out at grave risk or traveling across state lines as medical refugees. The high court has already signaled that it is likely to gut EMTALA’s protections for pregnant people, as it has blocked their enforcement in Idaho while the case is pending. Arriving at the court less than two years after it overturned Roe, this case presents the justices with the unvarnished reality that decision created: it has forced women into dire yet preventable health crises.

Congress passed EMTALA in 1986 in response to private hospitals’ practice of refusing to treat indigent and uninsured patients, oftentimes pushing or wheeling them to a public hospital. By delaying care, so-called patient dumpingwas killing people. So Congress required hospitals that receive Medicare funding—a critical revenue source for nearly all hospitals—to provide stabilizing care to anyone experiencing a medical emergency. A person does not have to be at death’s door to qualify for treatment under EMTALA. 

In 1989, Congress amended EMTALA, adding a requirement that hospitals must try to stabilize a pregnancy even when the pregnant person’s health was not in danger. The statute uses the term “unborn child” in this context, as it does when explaining hospitals’ obligations to help women in labor deliver. But Idaho says this text creates a duty to protect the fetus at the expense of the health of the pregnant person, a position that reads fetal personhood—the idea that from conception, a fetus shares the same legal protections as people—into the law. “That is another very shocking part of Idaho’s position, that federal law would have for all of this time created a preference for the life of a fetus—even when it’s already been determined that the pregnancy is nonviable—over the life and health of the pregnant person,” says Tanner.

Beyond Farmer’s experience, other reports make clear that doctors and hospitals are withholding medically-necessary abortions in violation of patients’ right to stabilizing treatment under EMTALA. Under Idaho’s ban, women are being put on hospital planes and flown out of state. If bad weather makes that impossible, they have to be driven. “Patients suffer” in these transfers, which, as attorneys for St. Luke’s, Idaho’s largest hospital chain, wrote in siding with the Biden administration, “cause not only pain and suffering, but also more permanent effects such as organ failure, loss of reproductive organs, and other forms of disability.” Such transfers are common. In a 12-day period last October, St. Luke’s transported four patients out of state for emergency abortions, according to the Idaho Capital Sun. If before EMTALA hospitals were dumping patients at nearby hospitals on gurneys, now they are dumped via airlift.

Research shows the horrific reality of being denied a medically necessary abortion. Often, these cases arise from pre-viability preterm prelabor rupture of the membranes (PPROM), which is when the water breaks before the fetus can survive outside the womb. If this happens, chances of fetal survival are essentially zero, while delaying ending the pregnancy puts the pregnant person at risk of requiring a hysterectomy, sepsis, hemorrhage, and death. In one 2023 study by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, a doctor in a state with an abortion ban reported the case of a woman whose water broke at 16 to 18 weeks, but was sent home without ending her pregnancy. She arrived in the emergency room two days later with severe blood infection and sepsis. She delivered the nonviable fetus, but required an additional procedure to remove the placenta. “The anesthesiologist cries on the phone when discussing the case with me—if the patient needs to be intubated, no one thinks she will make it,” the physician reported. The patient unexpectedly bled “from everywhere,” but luckily survived.

In an amicus brief filed in the Idaho case in support of the Biden administration’s interpretation of EMTALA, multiple women shared their harrowing experiences being denied abortion care until their lives were at risk. In Florida, Anya Cook was turned away from a hospital after her water broke at nearly 16 weeks pregnant. The next day, she delivered her stillborn daughter in a beauty salon bathroom, where she began to hemorrhage. She ultimately lost half the blood in her body, was put on life support, and required multiple surgeries to recover. The Biden administration determined that the hospital’s refusal to treat her violated EMTALA. 

In Texas, Amanda Zurawski was likewise sent home from the hospital after her water broke at 18 weeks to await signs of sepsis. The result? She spent three days in the ICU fighting for her life, and may have lost the ability to have children, which she would have been spared had doctors ended her pregnancy days earlier. Another Texas woman told of being turned away by multiple hospitals in the state despite having an ectopic pregnancy. Ultimately, her fallopian tube ruptured and she required emergency surgery to save her life.

Not every woman will survive such a scenario. As the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) warns in an amicus brief, “four in five pregnancy-related deaths nationwide are preventable. Deterring and delaying care to Idaho patients facing obstetrical emergencies will inevitably worsen those outcomes.” And these dangerous delays are being forced on patients in situations where an overwhelming amount of the time the fetus will perish regardless. “It is torture, what they are asking pregnant people to go through in order to then be able to get the care that they need,” says Tanner. 

Idaho, Texas, and other states with strict abortion bans are putting doctors in the difficult position of deciding when an emergency goes from health-threatening to life-threatening. In a future where Idaho wins, and more states short-circuit EMTALA’s protections, that decision will become even more difficult—and lie largely in the hands of hospital lawyers rather than doctors. As ACOG’s brief queries: 

When is it certain she will die but for medical intervention? How many blood units does she have to lose? One? Two? Five? How fast does she have to be bleeding? Soaking through two pads an hour? Three? How low does her blood pressure need to be? 90 over 60? 80 over 50? And at what point in time does the condition of a pregnant patient with sepsis from a uterine infection deteriorate from health threatening, to life-threatening, to necessarily about to die? If the standard treatment of IV fluids does not stop her blood pressure from dropping, is her condition now life-threatening? Even if life-threatening, is the care “necessary” to prevent her death? Is it when she is unconscious, and any further treatment has become more complex and fraught with risk and further complications? And clinicians are expected to make these judgments under threat of severe criminal penalties.

Faced with the prospect of criminal investigation or charges, doctors are fleeing Idaho. The state lost 22 percent of its practicing obstetricians in the 15 months following the end of Roe. Three hospital labor and delivery units have shuttered, while two more have paused labor and delivery services. The result is a dangerous scarcity of care for pregnant women in the state, even if they don’t encounter complications.

If Idaho prevails, the Supreme Court will have created a two-tiered medical system where pregnant people can be provided a different standard of treatment. Pregnant people who come in with emergency conditions—say appendicitis, or an injury from a car accident—would be imperiled because EMTALA would not guarantee the treatment they needed if it might result in pregnancy loss. “All of a sudden, anybody who is pregnant who walks into an emergency department is a potential abortion,” says Sara Rosenbaum, an expert in health law and policy at George Washington University. “either an intentionally done abortion, or a termination of a pregnancy as a byproduct of other treatment.”

The focus on life-saving care in the Idaho case obscures how EMTALA recognized the importance of minimizing a full range of harms short of death, including organ damage and pain. Women denied emergency abortion care often must receive hysterectomies to save their lives, or lose the ability to get pregnant due to scar tissue or other complications. “Individuals who are maimed and made disabled, permanently or for years—that too should not be acceptable within American jurisprudence and within American healthcare,” says Michele Goodwin, a professor of constitutional law and global health policy at Georgetown Law.

Yet the justices who overturned Roe may welcome such a distinction and allow Idaho to privilege the unborn over the health of the living, and issue a ruling that says, as Goodwin puts it, that “you may need to save a life—but not necessarily to preserve a life.” 

“Solar for All”

Biden Unveils $7 Billion “Solar for All” Investment for Earth Day

White House effort will prioritize jobs in underserved communities.

RICHARD LUSCOMBE

Joe Biden marked Monday’s Earth Day by announcing a $7 billion investment in solar energy projects nationwide, focusing on disadvantaged communities, and unveiling a week-long series of what the White House say will be “historic climate actions.”

The president was speaking at Prince William Forest Park, in Triangle, Virginia, touting his environmental record and unveiling measures to tackle the climate crisis and increase access to, and lower costs of, clean energy.

The centerpiece was the announcement of $7 billion in grants through the Environmental Protection Agency’s “solar for all” program, funded by last year’s $369 billion Inflation Reduction Act, and which Biden said will benefit hundreds of thousands of mostly low-income families who currently spend up to 30 percent of their income on energy.

“These awards across the country [are to] states, territories, tribal governments, municipalities and nonprofits to develop programs to enable low income and disadvantaged communities to benefit from residential solar power. And it’s a big deal,” he said. “Solar for all program means 900,000 households will have solar on the rooftops for the first time and soon, millions of families will save over $400 a year on utility bills.”

The EPA has calculated that the investment, will be distributed through grants to 60 applicant organizations nationwide, will generate $8 billion in household electricity bill savings over the life of the program.

Projects funded by the solar for all program will create 200,000 jobs, Biden said, and advance his Justice40 initiative, in which at least 40 percent of the benefits of investments in federal climate clean energy, and affordable and sustainable housing projects, are directed to communities “marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution.”

Biden also announced a new website to encourage citizens to join the American Climate Corps, a volunteer government organization modeled on former president Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s much-vaunted Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s.

The site, climatecorps.gov, aims to initially fill about 2,000 positions across 36 states, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico, hosted by organizations working on clean energy, conservation and climate resilience projects. Ultimately the corps will employ more than 20,000 young people, the White House says.

Aimed mainly at young people, the administration said in a press release that the scheme’s objective was “to make it easy for any American to find work tackling the climate crisis while gaining the skills necessary for the clean energy and climate resilience workforce of the future.”

“Today is a historic day and a landmark achievement,” said the Democratic New York representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who spoke shortly before Biden took the stage. “[It] serves as a reminder of the power of organizing, of what we can accomplish when young people, climate advocates, labor organizers and working people come together to demand the future we all deserve.”

Biden was also joined by the independent Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, one of the architects of the inflation act, who said the climate crisis was an “existential threat.”

“Climate change is real, climate change through drought, floods, forest fires, heatwaves, and extreme weather disturbances is already causing massive devastation for our country and the entire world,” Sanders said. “If anyone tells you climate change is a hoax, have them talk to farmers whose crop production is dwindling, have them talk to firefighters who risk their lives fighting fires with more severity and size than we’ve ever seen.”

Today’s announcements follow climate measures advanced by Biden officials last week, which included restricting oil and gas leases on 13 million acres in Alaska, and finalizing a federal land management rule that makes conservation an equal priority to “harmful” private industry activities such as oil drilling at government-owned assets.

Biden has been trying to shore up his support among younger, climate-savvy voters who have been disappointed with the administration’s approval last year of oil and gas developments including the huge Willow project in Alaska. Advocates have also been putting pressure on Biden to declare a climate emergency.

He said Republicans posed a threat to climate reforms he had initiated, such as rejoining the Paris agreement that Donald Trump withdrew from.

“Despite the overwhelming devastation in red and blue states, there are still those who deny climate is in crisis,” he said. “My MAGA Republican friends don’t seem to think it’s in crisis, they want to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act that provides the funding for a vast majority of these projects, and roll back protections for clean air and clean water.

“Anyone in or out of government who willfully denies the impacts of climate change is condemning the American people to a very dangerous future, and the world, I might add.”

Biden’s Virginia trip was the first of a packed Earth Week itinerary of visits nationwide by administration officials, including the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, and the energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, that officials insist will “build a stronger, healthier future for all.”

According to the White House, Tuesday’s theme will be clean water for all communities; Wednesday will focus on accelerating the US’s clean transportation future; Thursday will focus on steps to cut pollution from the power sector and strengthen the US electricity grid; and Friday will see measures to promote cleaner air and healthier schools.

Climate activist groups on Monday welcomed Biden’s solar energy announcement. “Solar for all is exactly the type of investment the country needs to reimagine our clean energy future,” Jean Su, energy justice program director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “Broad community-based solar is our brightest hope for protecting people and our climate from the scourge of fossil fuels. These targeted investments mean low-income families get clean energy that is affordable, resilient and protects our ecosystems. It’s great to see President Biden jumpstart this landmark program.”

Violated his gag order 10 times

Prosecutors say Trump violated his gag order 10 times. The judge is finally set to weigh in.

Justice Juan Merchan has scheduled a Tuesday hearing on prosecutors’ request to hold Trump in contempt.

By BETSY WOODRUFF SWAN

On Monday, Manhattan prosecutors began trying to persuade a jury that Donald Trump is guilty of 34 felonies in his hush money case. On Tuesday, they’ll try to persuade the judge that he deserves a more immediate penalty: They want him held in contempt.

The prosecutors say Trump has repeatedly violated a gag order that prohibits him from attacking witnesses, jurors and others involved in the case. Justice Juan Merchan has scheduled a Tuesday morning hearing, outside the presence of the jury, to consider the prosecutors’ arguments.

If Merchan agrees that Trump has defied the gag order, he’ll then face the thorny question of what to do about it. His options range from a sternly worded warning to a modest fine to a short stint in jail.

Several former prosecutors said they expect Merchan to be lenient. But they also noted that the situation is fluid, unpredictable, and — it goes without saying — unprecedented.

“Judge Merchan is going to do everything possible to give him as much leeway as possible to cure the situation and be a better defendant,” said Diana Florence, a former Manhattan prosecutor.

But Trump has shown little willingness to curb his public rhetoric, prosecutors say. On April 15, the first day of the trial, prosecutors cited three alleged violations of the gag order, including an April 13 post on Truth Social in which Trump called Michael Cohen, a star witness for the prosecution, a “disgraced attorney and felon.”

Then, on April 18, prosecutors accused Trump of violating the gag order seven more times in a three-day span. The most egregious example, they said, was a Truth Social post in which Trump quoted a Fox News host as saying, “They are catching undercover Liberal Activists lying to the Judge in order to get on the Trump Jury.”

These statements, prosecutors say, are “willful violations” of the judge’s gag order and risk undermining “the integrity of the ongoing trial.” They asked the judge to fine Trump $1,000 per violation. In their initial motion for contempt after the first three alleged violations, they also urged the judge to warn Trump that “future violations” could be punished “not only with additional fines, but also with a term of incarceration of up to thirty days.”

Trump’s team, meanwhile, defended the lawfulness of the posts. Trump lawyer Emil Bove argued, for instance, that Trump’s posts about Cohen came in response to commentary the consigliere-turned-state’s-witness made in the media about the former president.

The gag order doesn’t include an exception for such rebuttals. But the judge could add one, according to former prosecutor and New York Law School professor Rebecca Roiphe.

“There’s something to be said for the fact that the whole point of the gag order is to ensure the integrity of the proceedings, and if the defendant would suffer from being tongue-tied because there are others in the media talking about this, then that’s not a completely irrelevant point to make,” she said.

Trump has repeatedly tested Merchan’s patience in recent weeks. The judge initially issued the gag order on March 26. Then, on April 1, after Trump verbally attacked Merchan’s adult daughter, the judge “clarified” that the gag order prohibits attacks on the judge’s family (although the order notably does not prevent Trump from attacking the judge himself).

Last week, Merchan scolded Trump for muttering and gesturing in the presence of a prospective juror. And at one point he told Trump lawyer Todd Blanche that he doubted whether Blanche could prevent Trump from publicly commenting on witnesses in the case.

But however frustrated Merchan may be by Trump’s behavior, former prosecutors are in agreement: It would be almost unthinkable for Merchan to jail the former president for contempt, at least for now.

“That would be a very extreme, draconian measure to take,” Florence said. “I would think that would be an absolute last resort. I think it’s only if Trump forces his hand. He’s on that road; I’m not sure he’s there yet.”

Adam Kaufmann, another former prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, said he expects the judge to take a light hand.

“My guess is he will give a direct warning and then fine him next time,” Kaufmann emailed. “But of course that’s just a guess — who knows.”

Former prosecutor Elizabeth Roper, a partner at Baker McKenzie, said a fine is most likely.

“Merchan would probably take that kind of step — something short of actual incarceration — before putting him in jail, just because that is such a drastic step and it’s not done very frequently,” she said.

But the situation is a First Amendment nightmare, according to Peter Tilem, another former Manhattan prosecutor who now helms his own firm. That’s because political speech enjoys robust First Amendment protections. Trump’s lawyers could appeal any contempt ruling and make a First Amendment argument, saying the posts were part of Trump’s political campaign. Success would be far from guaranteed, but an appeal would make an already complex legal proceeding even messier.

Trump, in fact, has already appealed the gag order itself on constitutional grounds. A New York appellate judge quickly rejected Trump’s effort to use the appeal as a way to delay the trial.

“This is probably one of the major reasons why it’s a bad idea to be trying a presidential candidate in the middle of a campaign, because it gets you into this massive constitutional quagmire,” Tilem said. “What do you do in a situation like this?”

If Merchan does hold Trump in contempt and wants to issue a penalty that will have an impact on the former president, there aren’t too many options between a fine and a jail sentence. Merchan could theoretically issue an order barring Trump from using social media during the trial: That’s what a judge did during the 2019 criminal case against Trump ally Roger Stone when Stone repeatedly attacked the judge. But such an order would face a robust appeal.

“I think he’s going to be very reluctant to do that, in part because of the very significant First Amendment interests at stake,” said Roiphe, the law professor.

Deepfake

Spot the deepfake: The AI tools undermining our own eyes and ears

Affordable and accessible generative AI tools have led to a rise in false video, images and audio on social media. Can you spot the difference?

BY MARK SCOTT

Have you ever seen a deepfake? More importantly, can you spot the difference between these AI-generated images, audio clips and videos and the real thing?

As more than 2 billion voters across 50 countries prepare for national elections in 2024, that question — and the ability of such deepfakes to skew potential voters’ decisions at the polls — has never been more critical. 

Case in point: In recent months, people have increasingly flagged alleged AI-powered deepfake images, audio and videos on X (formerly Twitter), according to a Brookings Institution review of the platform’s so-called community notes, a crowdsourced fact-checking initiative on the platform.

POLITICO decided to put you to the test. 

Using Midjourney, an AI research lab whose technology can create lifelike images based on someone simply typing suggestions into the company’s online platform, POLITICO collected a series of real images — and those generated by artificial intelligence. Repeated global trials have shown that, on average, people can detect digital forgeries compared with legitimate images about 60 percent of the time, according to tech company officials with whom POLITICO spoke.

While the technology is still a work in progress, the ability of anyone — including POLITICO reporters — to create such realistic images with a few clicks on a keyboard has politicians, policymakers and disinformation experts worried. 

If AI puts such power in the hands of anyone with a laptop, internet connection and $50 to access these powerful tools, such deepfake political content may flood people’s social media feeds in the months ahead.

Who wants to be a clone?

Of the potential deepfake threats this year, cybersecurity and disinformation experts are most worried about audio.

So far, almost all contentious AI-generated images have been debunked within hours, mostly because of the power of social media to quickly crowdsource errors in these photos that are often otherwise imperceptible. Big Tech companies and independent fact-checkers, too, have prioritized finding and removing such harmful politically motivated falsehoods.

But audio — especially the AI-powered grainy clips that were unsuccessfully used to smear British Labour Party Leader Keir Starmer — remains uncharted territory. The disconnect between what people hear and what they see can often hoodwink individuals into believing that an inflammatory deepfake audio clip is legitimate.

To test that theory, POLITICO used off-the-shelf technologies — costing less than $50 in total to purchase — to see how easy it was to generate a deepfake audio clip. Initially, we were going to clone actual politicians. But as such falsehoods are both legally dubious and represent a direct threat to this year’s election cycle, we decided instead to mimic the voices of POLITICO reporters.

AI Biden vs. AI Trump

The next frontier of AI deepfakes is video — especially content that can interact with humans in real-time.

And, when it comes to politically motivated AI-powered photos, a Soviet-era office block near the German-Polish border has become ground zero in demonstrating how that technology is evolving. 

There, amid a group of activists known as the Singularity Group, researchers created an ongoing, real-time online video debate between an AI-powered Joe Biden and an AI-generated Donald Trump.

Prompt: “Macron’s face displayed on a propaganda poster.” | AI-generated image by Midjourney

The project, which has been running for almost nine months, uses so-called open-source technology, or AI models freely accessible to the public. It allows anyone to type in a debate question — through the Amazon-owned streaming service Twitch — and then the Biden/Trump bots power up, calculate an answer through Singularity’s AI systems, and spit it out, mimicking the politicians’ voices and images.

“Deepfakes are a real concern,” said Reese Leysen, one of the activists behind the project that — importantly — is labeled as a parody on Twitch. “We wanted to focus on politicians to make people take notice.”

POLITICO asked multiple real-world debate questions to the fake Biden and Trump. Most were either too racy or too filled with profanity to publish — not surprising, given that this AI system has been trained on random people asking it questions on the internet for almost a year.

Ask the bots

We asked fake Donald Trump and Joe Biden a few real-world debate questions. Here’s how they answered.

Prompt question No. 1: Which Disney character best represents your political opponent, and why?

Prompt question No. 2:  If you were to win the November election, how would you resolve the Russia-Ukraine war?