Opinion

The anti-Muslim rhetoric that inspired teen gunmen has been increasing for years

(RNS) — Islamophobia rose sharply from 2022 to 2025, according to the Institute of Social Policy and Understanding’s Islamophobia Index, which has tracked anti-Muslim rhetoric since 2016.

This aerial image shows the Islamic Center of San Diego, May 19, 2026, in San Diego. 

(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Dilshad Ali
May 26, 2026

RNS


(RNS) — That the teenage gunmen in the shooting deaths of three Muslim Americans at the Islamic Center of San Diego shared white supremacy ties and anti-Muslim hate is no surprise to Muslims across the United States. It was the first thing that came to my mind as I looked for more information and worked sources to corroborate the obvious.

And it didn’t take long.

First came San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl’s press conference hours after the murders of security guard Amin Abdullah, mosque shopkeeper and caretaker Mansour Kaziha and Nadir Awad, a neighbor of the mosque whose wife was a kindergarten teacher there. Wahl said that because the killings occurred at a house of worship, San Diego police were treating the case as a hate crime until more information on motive could be found.


RELATED: A look at the Hajj pilgrimage and Eid al-Adha and their significance to Muslims around the world

Within 72 hours, motive became more clear with the discovery of a 75-page manifesto titled “The New Crusade: Sons of Tarrant,” filled with Islamophobic and anti-Muslim rhetoric, antisemitic statements and the promotion of hate and violence, as law enforcement shared with the Los Angeles Times. Tarrant refers to Brenton Tarrant, who murdered 51 Muslim worshippers and injured 89 at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March 2019.

In a review of the manifesto along with social media accounts believed to be used by one of the shooters, the Times found hatred toward not only Muslims but also Jews, Black people, Latinos and the LGBTQ+ community, as well as praise and idolization for school shootings, neo-Nazism, far-right extremism and the white nationalist movement.

But the targeted community was Muslims at an Islamic center, which included dozens of children in school and preschool. It happened on the first day of the Islamic month of Dhul Hijjah, a period considered to be among the holiest days for Muslims around the world and those in preparation for the Hajj pilgrimage. And that is also no surprise to many Muslim Americans.

Attendees react during a vigil the day after a shooting, outside of the Islamic Center of San Diego, May 19, 2026, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Consider the recent hate-filled social media posts from elected officials such as Republicans Rep. Randy Fine of Florida and Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama. Or Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s relentless attacks on Muslim communities and his campaign to have the Council on American-Islamic Relations be declared a terrorist organization.
RELATED: San Diego mosque shooting reflects how online rhetoric, media depictions and political discourse contribute to increased Islamophobia

Then there is the far-right political activist (and adviser to President Donald J. Trump) Laura Loomer, who said that the answer to shootings at mosques is to deport all Muslims. All this following a contentious recent hearing of a House Judiciary subcommittee titled “Shariah-Free America: Why Political Islam and Shariah Law are Incompatible with the U.S. Constitution.”

With all this, headlines like this one from Time magazine — “San Diego mosque attack highlights growing anti-Muslim threats nationwide” — feel like an insult.

As NBC News and MS Now commentator and journalist Ayman Mohyeldin said in an Instagram post: “What did we think was going to happen? … Let’s stop pretending here that rhetoric doesn’t matter. This is what dehumanization [of Muslims] does. It creates a permission structure where hate is learned and fear is taught. And the end result is a culture in America where Muslims are seen as less worthy. Less worthy of empathy, of innocence, less worthy of being American.”

But it goes beyond being seen as less worthy. Islamophobia rose sharply from 2022 to 2025, according to the Institute of Social Policy and Understanding’s Islamophobia Index, which has tracked anti-Muslim rhetoric since 2016 when Trump was first elected. The index has measured public endorsements of “five false, negative stereotypes associated with Muslims in America.” The research links the stereotypes with greater tolerance for anti-Muslim policies.

The problem is not just the persistent and consistent dehumanization of Muslims in the United States, but the parameters placed upon them to prove their worth and Americanness and defend their right to exist and worship not just on an everyday basis, but more painstakingly so when they and their communities are subjected to violence and hate.

Take the example of the execution-style killing of three college students — Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23; his wife, Yusor Mohammed Abu-Salha, 21; and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19 — by their neighbor Craig Stephen Hicks in their Chapel Hill, North Carolina, condominium in February 2015. Chapel Hill police stated through their preliminary investigation that the motive for the shootings was a parking dispute with no connection to the victims’ religion.

The victims’ families argued for months that the murders constituted a hate crime, that Hicks targeted the students because of their faith and visibly Muslim appearances. Hicks’ social media history was rife with anti-religious posts against Muslims and many other faiths. In interview after interview, to the detriment of their own mental health and amplification of their grief, the families sought to highlight their loved one’s lives to humanize them.

I spoke with Nancy Khalil, an assistant professor of Arab and Muslim American studies at the University of Michigan and co-chair of the Islamophobia Working Group. She said the pipeline from Islamophobia to hate, bigotry, discrimination and ultimately tragic violence is inevitable given the explosive rhetoric being peddled. And Muslims who lose their loved ones to violence become victims of “a soft violence of dehumanization.”

“They’re not allowed to just deal with the grief of such a horrible tragedy in their lives,” Khalil said. “Instead, they’re denied that, and they have to face the public and give press conferences in just the right tone and using just the right words so they can convince the world they did not deserve for their loved ones to be killed. That they are just like everyone else, and they hurt too, and they too want to live in peace.”

In 2019 after the Christchurch mass shooting, I spent a week painstakingly reporting on each of the 51 victims, putting together a story that shared details about each one. Each Muslim who lost their life that day was a human and not a caricature of some evil Muslim trope. Seven years later, three Muslim men in San Diego lost their lives — and in doing so saved the lives of about 140 children — at the hands of two teenage gunmen who seemingly wanted to continue the work of the Christchurch killer.

Tributes are pouring out for Abdullah, Kaziha and Awad. This country should know who these amazing men were and the gaping hole of grief that their murders have left behind. One could argue that the trauma endured by the Barakat and Abu-Salha families 11 years ago in pressing for their loved ones’ murders to be considered hate crimes was a large part of the painful groundwork borne by Muslim and other faith communities that led to the San Diego police treating the shootings as a hate crime at the beginning of their investigation.

But at what cost? On this day of Arafat, which is considered to be the heart of the Hajj and the holiest of days, when Muslims around the world engage in deep worship and prayer, so many Muslim Americans are left wondering what the next act of violence against them will be. And will anybody care?

(Dilshad D. Ali is a freelance journalist. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of RNS.)

Abdoulaye Wade at 100: from challenger to 'old lion' of Senegalese politics

As Senegal’s former president Abdoulaye Wade turns 100 on Friday, RFI looks back on the life of a man whose century has spanned opposition, imprisonment, triumph and everything in between.


Issued on: 29/05/2026 - RFI

Former Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade in Dakar, 10 July 2017

. © Seyllou/AFP

Officially Abdoulaye Wade was born in Saint-Louis on 29 May 1926, the son of a wealthy merchant from Kébémer in the north of Senegal. His father had also been a tirailleur, a colonial rifleman who fought for the French army.

But historians remain divided on whether or not that was his true date of birth. The politician could be evasive when questioned about his exact age, leading some to suspect him of misrepresenting his years in order to prolong his career.

Pressed by French weekly magazine Jeune Afrique in 2014, he replied: “I’m 87. But let’s say I’m 90 – so what? I’m in good health. My father died at 101. He fought in the Great War. My grandmother lived to 121. Longevity runs in my family. But I’m a Muslim, and I know I could go at any moment.”


Political awakening

After studying at French colonial schools in Senegal, Wade won a scholarship to the prestigious Lycée Condorcet in Paris, where he got his baccalauréat in 1950. He went on to study mathematics, physics, law, economics and literature, earning degrees from the Sorbonne in Paris and other French universities.

In Besançon, where he trained as a lawyer, he began a relationship with fellow student Viviane Vert. They would go on to marry and have two children, Karim and Sindiély.

As a young lawyer, Wade became politically active. In Paris he joined the national bureau of the Federation of Black African Students in France, a training ground for future leaders including Alpha Condé, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, Bob Akitani and Laurent Gbagbo.

The Paris movement that planted the seeds of Algerian independence, a century on

An anti-colonialist, Wade joined a collective defending members of Algeria's FLN independence movement in Paris. In Dakar, appointed as a defence lawyer for the courts of French West Africa in May 1958, two years before Senegal's independence, he quickly gained a reputation as a formidable courtroom orator.

In December 1962, the new republic faced a political crisis: President Léopold Senghor arrested Prime Minister Mamadou Dia and accused him of attempting a coup d’état. When Dia was tried for treason, Wade was one of his defence lawyers.

But despite Wade’s efforts, Dia received a life sentence in May 1963. Over half a century later, Wade told Jeune Afrique he had been “deeply unhappy” at his failure to prevent what he considered an “unjust and excessively harsh” conviction.
Manoeuvre in Mogadishu

By 1973, Senghor had ruled Senegal unchallenged for 11 years under the one-party system of the Senegalese Progressive Union (UPS).

Wade and four others drafted the “Manifesto of the 200”, a series of proposals for better governance that avoided criticising the government directly. When Senghor pardoned former prime minister Dia in March 1974, Wade saw his chance.

That June, as Senghor attended an Organisation of African Unity summit in Somalia, Wade secured an invitation to Mogadishu as an expert on monetary policy. Taking advantage of easier access to Senghor away from the presidential palace in Dakar, Wade – with the help of Moustapha Niasse, Senghor’s chief of staff, and future prime minister under Wade – managed to meet the president at his hotel.

Wade asked Senghor for permission to form a new party – not in opposition, but “of contribution”. Senghor agreed, and Wade founded the Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS), which soon became a rallying point for young people frustrated by the lack of change.

In the February 1978 legislative elections, the PDS won 17 out of 100 seats, and Wade became a member of parliament. In the December 1978 presidential election, he ran against Senghor and secured nearly 18 percent of the vote. He lost, but a long journey had begun.

Maurice Bassène, Abdoulaye Wade and Alassane Cissoko at a press conference in 1979 marking the five-year anniversary of the PDS. © Monique Bassène, private collection

Senegal celebrates pioneer of African history Cheikh Anta Diop

At a standstill

Senghor's protégé Abdou Diouf succeeded him as president in January 1981, and the UPS became the Socialist Party (PS). Wade ran against Diouf three times – in 1983, 1988 and 1993 – and lost each time.

Unrest simmered in Dakar after the 1993 election, and in February 1994, six police officers were burned alive when protesters set their vehicle alight. Wade was immediately arrested. Many assumed his political career was over.

After five months in prison and a hunger strike, he was released, but his party was losing momentum. “The opposition and the people demand change, but the government refuses to step aside, and we can’t remove them. We’re at a standstill,” he told Jeune Afrique in July 1994.

The charges were dismissed the following month and in March 1995, Wade stunned his supporters by joining Diouf’s new government as minister of state. He held the position for two years.

Triumphant return

After the May 1998 legislative elections, which brought another Socialist victory, Wade seemed defeated.

With his wife, he left his Dakar villa and retreated to Versailles, near Paris. After 25 years of setbacks and financial strain, he hinted that he might retire and make way for younger leaders.

Yet in Senegal, some loyalists still believed in Wade. Idrissa Seck, his deputy in the PDS, shuttled between Dakar and Versailles, presenting reasons for hope: firstly, Senegal had recently established a national election monitoring body that promised to guarantee transparency. Secondly, after 38 years of unbroken rule, the Socialist Party was crumbling.

Wade decided to return, and in October 1999 he was greeted in Dakar by a sea of supporters. The momentum shifted.

Abdoulaye Wade is greeted by tens of thousands of supporters at Dakar airport upon his return to Senegal, 27 October 1999. © Seyllou/AFP


Three far-left figures – Abdoulaye Bathily, Amath Dansokho and Landing Savané, who together commanded nearly 10 percent of the electorate – rallied behind Wade’s candidacy, forming the Alternance 2000 coalition.

They overlooked that Wade was a conservative. For Wade's new allies, what mattered was toppling the “PS State” and bringing a breath of fresh air to Senegal.

An unthinkable victory

The 2000 election campaign was electric. As Wade addressed large crowds at “blue rallies”, named for the PDS’s emblematic colour, the rhetoric grew sharp. Speaking to RFI, he warned: “The only arbiter today is the army.”

In private, Wade even accepted the idea of a military takeover, on the grounds that “a transition in uniform is still a transition”.

On 27 February 2000, for the first time since independence in 1960, the ruling party’s candidate was forced into a run-off. Diouf led with 41 percent of the vote, but Wade was close behind with 31 percent.

The third-place candidate, Socialist dissident Moustapha Niasse – who had facilitated Wade’s meeting with Senghor in Mogadishu in 1974 – urged his supporters to back Wade in the second round. Wade eventually won with 58.5 percent to Diouf's 41.5 percent.

On the evening of 19 March, a massive rally spontaneously gathered outside Wade’s villa, where he announced his victory. The next day, after a long night of deliberation, Diouf called Wade to concede defeat and congratulate his successor.

The tide had turned. Wade had defied the odds, and become the first politician to achieve a democratic transfer of power in French-speaking Africa.

Uneasy transition

Tenacious in seizing power, Wade was even more determined to hold onto it. After 12 years in office, he ran again in the 2012 presidential election.

His main opponent was Macky Sall, one of his most loyal lieutenants, who had served as his prime minister from 2004 to 2007. The two men fell out when Sall opposed Wade’s apparent plan to hand power to his son, Karim Wade.

In 2011, Sall told the French daily Le Monde: “It was after his re-election in 2007 that Abdoulaye Wade ... began to lose touch with the people’s concerns – energy, flooding, agriculture. He pursued prestige and glory. Power elevates and isolates. The awakening could be brutal. Wade has always relied on a personality cult.”

Wade's re-election in the first round of the 2007 vote had already raised concerns. The day after the poll, one of his closest advisors told RFI: “Without fraud, there would have been a run-off.”

In 2012, officially 85 years old, Wade returned to the campaign trail, seeking a third term.

After the first round, with 34.8 percent of the vote, he faced a run-off against Sall, who was close behind with 26.5 percent, and had the support of three other major candidates.

In the end, Wade followed Diouf's example. On 25 March, as the second-round results came in, Wade called Sall to congratulate him on his decisive victory – 65.8 percent to his 34.2 percent.

A dynasty denied

It remains unclear why a man as shrewd as Wade gambled on engineering a succession for his son.

In June 2004, Wade entrusted Karim with organising a summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in Dakar. In May 2009, two months after Karim lost municipal elections in Dakar, Wade appointed him to a super-ministry overseeing five portfolios.

Karim Wade, newly appointed Minister of State and International Cooperation, covering construction, infrastructure projects and air travel, 6 May 2009. © Seyllou/AFP

In June 2011, Wade proposed changes to the constitution that that would have lowered the threshold to win in the first round and created the post of vice-president – for which he could then have nominated his son, placing him in line for succession. Massive street protests ultimately forced Wade to abandon the reforms.

In April 2013, Karim Wade was arrested for corruption. He was sentenced in 2015 to six years in prison.

Abdulaye Wade pulled out all the stops to free his son, enlisting the support of several heads of state, including Congo’s Denis Sassou Nguesso, Côte d'Ivoire’s Alassane Ouattara and Qatar’s Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani.

In an interview with RFI in June 2016, Sall announced: “Karim Wade’s release will certainly happen before the end of the year.” Three weeks later, Karim was pardoned and immediately flew to Qatar, where he still lives today.

Wade had won his final battle: his son’s freedom.

Today, at 100 years old, Wade remains intellectually sharp, according to Jeune Afrique, which visited him recently in Versailles. And no doubt the man sometimes known as the Old Lion is waiting to see which of his former adversaries, allies and successors will wish him a happy birthday.

This article was adapted from the original in French by RFI's Christophe Boisbouvier.

ICE Sued Over ‘Civil Rights Catastrophe’ at West Texas Concentration Camp

“The conditions here in this ICE tent camp in a desert are inhumane and cruel,” said one Cameroonian plaintiff in the suit. “No human being should ever have to go through this.”


This photo shows a view of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Camp East Montana detention center at Ft. Bliss in El Paso, Texas.
Photo by Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matter

Brett Wilkins
May 30, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

A group of legal advocacy groups on Friday sued US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies and officials over “inhumane” conditions at the country’s largest concentration camp for immigrants detained during the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.

The American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Texas, Texas Civil Rights Project, Human Rights Watch, and the law firm Farella Braun + Martel LLP filed suit against ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense, and associated officials, in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas in El Paso


‘What I Witnessed and Experienced Today Was Shameful,‘ Says US Senator Pepper Sprayed by ICE


The lawsuit was filed on behalf of four people seeking to represent a class action for all others held at Camp East Montana, a 60-acre facility located in the Chihuahuan Desert on the grounds of Fort Bliss, an Army base and the site of one of the concentration camps where Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals were imprisoned during World War II. Approximately 2,500 immigrants are being detained there.

The lawsuit documents accounts of what the ACLU called “horrific rights violations” at the facility, including:Severe medical neglect and disease outbreaks, including a months-long measles outbreak that infected at least 14 people;
Violent uses of force by officers against detained immigrants and coercive threats of deportation;
Excessive and arbitrary use of solitary confinement to punish people for requesting basic needs like medical care or hygiene;
Inadequate and rancid food that have caused detained people to lose extreme amounts of weight;
Exposure to dust storms through openings in tent walls that subjects people to respiratory disease; and
Dangerous and unsanitary living conditions in the tent camp, among other rights violations.

“These conditions are longstanding, pervasive, and well-documented, and defendants’ continued inaction in the face of known risks shows their deliberate indifference—not mere negligence—to detainees’ constitutional rights,” the lawsuit states.

At least three detainees have died at Camp East Montana, including Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old Cuban who, according to witnesses, died after being handcuffed and placed in a chokehold by guards. The El Paso County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled Lunas Campos’ death a homicide by asphyxia.

Detained immigrants have reported beatings and sexual abuse, medical neglect, hunger and insufficient food, and denial of access to attorneys at the facility.

“The conditions here in this ICE tent camp in a desert are inhumane and cruel. No human being should ever have to go through this,” case plaintiff Gerald Akari Angye said in a statement Friday.

I have already experienced torture in my home country of Cameroon and I never thought I would experience such severely violent treatment by guards here in the United States of America,“ he continued. ”I have been beaten here and even today, I still have a brace on my hands and wrist. I am in pain and I am scared to be here.“

“No one deserves such cruel treatment,” Akari Angye added. “We are all humans and deserve to be treated like it.”

Kyle Virgien, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project, called Camp East Montana “nothing short of a civil rights catastrophe.”

“Since the day it opened, the facility has repeatedly made headlines for horrific rights violations and even the deaths of three detained people, yet ICE has still evaded accountability for its conduct,” Virgien added. “We’re suing to ensure that no other human being has to endure the inhumane treatment that the Trump administration has inflicted on our clients.”

Another case plaintiff, named in the suit as Navdeep, said, “It feels like we are just political pawns taken from our jobs and families and forced into a temporary tent that is not designed for human life.”

“We could die here, and it feels like no one here would care,” they continued. “With everything happening behind closed doors, I worry the people running this place might cover up the truth about a death or the other injustices that happen here.”

“It’s important for people to know the truth of what is happening here,” Navdeep added. “Being part of this lawsuit is important to me because many people are vulnerable or they become weak because of the conditions here. Even though we come from many different places, we are all human. I want to be a voice for everyone here.”

After receiving “numerous credible reports of torture, killing, and inhumane treatment” of detainees, 35 Democratic Texas state lawmakers earlier this year demand a probe into alleged abuses at Camp East Montana.

Democratic members of US Congress have also sounded the alarm over conditions at Camp East Montana. Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) has also called out profiteering by the private contractors running the camp.



Amentum Services Inc. took over operations from Acquisition Logistics LLC earlier this year. The latter was never registered to operate in Texas and the former “has a history of health, safety, and other violations of federal law,” according to the consumer advocacy watchdog Public Citizen.

The Trump administration is currently moving forward with a plan to convert industrial warehouses into more ICE concentration camps. The agency has already purchased or contracted for at least 11 warehouses in eight states as part of the $38 billion plan.

While some critics take exception to the concentration camp description, the ICE facilities fit the dictionary definition of the term. The US has a long history of operating concentration camps, with imprisoned peoples ranging from Indigenous tribes during the Trail of Tears and Long Walk to escaped and freed slaves—officially called “contraband” in the Civil War—to Filipinos, Okinawans, and Vietnamese during three different 20th century wars, to Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals during World War II.

“Germany’s concentration camps didn’t start as instruments of mass murder, and neither have ours; both started as facilities for people the government’s leader said were a problem,” talk show host and author Thom Hartmann wrote earlier this year for Common Dreams. “And that’s exactly what ICE is building now. History isn’t whispering its warning: It’s shouting.”

‘By This Logic, Any Protest Could Be a Conspiracy’: Conviction of Spokane ICE Protesters Raises Free Speech Concerns

“We were guinea pigs,” said the father of one of the convicted protesters. “They brought the swamp of Washington, DC, into our area to stop American citizens from exercising our rights that are guaranteed.”


A protestor with an American flag walks towards a police line during a protest against federal immigration arrests, on June 11, 2025 in Seattle, Washington. Protests against ICE raids have spread to cities across the nation after beginning in Los Angeles last weekend.
(Photo by Rio Giancarlo/Getty Images)

Stephen Prager
May 29, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

With the conviction of three anti-ICE protesters in Spokane, Washington on federal “conspiracy” charges Thursday, civil rights advocates and legal experts fear that the Trump administration may have just been handed a powerful tool to criminalize dissent.

Jac Archer, Justice Forral, and Bajun Mavalwalla II, nicknamed the “Spokane 3,” were indicted last year for their actions at a protest in June 2025, where they attempted to physically obstruct ICE agents from transporting two Venezuelan immigrants to an ICE processing facility in Tacoma.

Both of the men reportedly entered the US legally under a humanitarian parole program that had been terminated by the Trump administration, leading advocates to protest their detention.

As Spokesman-Review, a Spokane newspaper, described:
Protesters that day eventually began linking arms around vans and in front of agents’ cars. The event grew chaotic. ICE agents entered a crowd of people standing outside the facility’s parking lot gate and began grabbing people by the necks and arms, pushing them to the ground. Protesters also slashed tires of vans meant to transport the detainees.

But where such activity would usually lead to charges against specific protesters for discrete illegal actions like trespassing, property damage, or other public order offenses, the Department of Justice (DOJ)—as part of a nationwide effort to crack down on protests against ICE—charged nine protesters with “conspiracy to impede or injure officers,” even though no officers were actually injured during the protest.



Legal experts described it as a novel approach that wrapped many people involved in the protest into a single “conspiracy” regardless of whether they committed specific criminal acts.

“Usually if a protest gets out of hand and people are hurt or property is hurt, you see charges based on that,” Mary Fan, a former federal prosecutor and a University of Washington law professor, told The New York Times earlier this month. “They’re not going after people based on specific harm done. They’re stretching conspiracy charges to target protesters and people who organize protests.”

Facing pressure from the federal government to bring the case following a national memo sent from the DOJ to prioritize and publicize cases against ICE agents, then-acting US Attorney for Eastern Washington Richard Barker resigned last year rather than bring charges against the protesters.

He said at the time he was grateful he “never had to sign an indictment or file a brief that [he] didn’t believe in.” His successor, Stephanie Van Marter, however, did sign the order.

Six of the defendants pleaded guilty to the charges to avoid federal prison time. But Archer, Forral, and Mavalwalla chose to fight them, believing the case was part of an unjust attempt to criminalize their right to protest.

After a trial that lasted seven days, a jury found the three defendants guilty of conspiracy. But the defense has argued that the trial was marred by problems that rendered the verdict faulty.

As the Guardian explained:
In February, a federal judge ordered the release of a Venezuelan migrant whose transportation for deportation the protesters sought to block, ruling his arrest violated the constitution.

But the jury, drawn from conservative eastern Washington state, did not hear those facts at trial, thanks to rulings by Judge [Rebecca] Pennell. Pennell, a former federal public defender and appointee of the Democratic president Joe Biden, also ruled the protesters on trial could not use the First Amendment as a defense, though they were allowed to state their reasons for demonstrating.

Instead, the jury watched hours of law enforcement body camera video and heard from a parade of ICE agents... Jeremy Burlingame, an ICE agent who testified, had authored social media posts that called Black politicians “lying ghetto garbage” and transgender people “mentally ill.” He boosted a post showing ICE arresting a pregnant woman at gunpoint that called her a “pregnant invader.”

Federal prosecutors deemed the posts troubling enough to recall Burlingame to impeach him, despite the fact that he was their witness...

But Burlingame’s online posts, the lack of injury to ICE officers, and the absence of evidence showing communication between the three defendants prior to the protest were not enough to sway the jury.

The defendants now face potential sentences of up to six years in prison and a $250,000 fine. However, they are expected to appeal the verdict and have filed a rarely used motion allowing their attorneys to argue that no rational juror could find their clients guilty.

“I question whether justice truly was served by today’s verdict,” Barker told the Spokesman-Review. “This was the first conspiracy prosecution in Eastern Washington history under... a Civil War-era law dusted off to punish members of the Spokane community who stood up for two young men who were unlawfully detained by ICE.”

Video by KREM 2 News/Youtube

Looking beyond the details of the trial itself, many observers questioned the very premise of the DOJ’s prosecution.

Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown said from the start of the trial she believed it was “politically motivated.”

“It was meant to make an example out of people who disagreed with federal immigration policy,” she said.

City council member Sarah Dixit, who said she took part in the protest, said: “Based on the evidence that was shown, I personally didn’t see evidence of what they were accused of. Conspiracy is a charge that feels complicated to prove, and I don’t believe that the government made a strong case for that.”

Others expressed fear for the precedent that had been set. La Rond Baker, the legal director of the Washington ACLU, said the Trump administration “has a demonstrable history of using the Department of Justice to silence and punish its critics.”

The administration has pursued similar sweeping conspiracy charges against other groups of anti-ICE protesters around the country—including in Los Angeles, Broadview, Illinois, and North Texas.

“The verdict was painfully disappointing,” said Archer’s attorney, Carl Oreskovich. “I think it was an extraordinarily aggressive approach to prosecution of protests. And it certainly is going to chill people who want to utilize their First Amendment right to dissent against government actions that they don’t agree with.”

In a comment to The Guardian, Robert Chang, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law and executive director of its Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality, said the verdict was “frightening.”

“By this logic, any protest could be a conspiracy,” he said. “The goal posts keep moving.”



Bajun Mavalwalla Sr., a retired US Army intelligence officer who served in Afghanistan, said his son—also a veteran of the same war—and the other two defendants were standing for “the freedoms that separate this country from the dictatorships.”

“People in Spokane and people in Eastern Washington need to understand that we were guinea pigs. That they brought the swamp of Washington, DC, into our area to stop American citizens from exercising our rights that are guaranteed,” the elder Mavalwalla said after his son was convicted.

“It was the whole point of the Constitution, the right to protest, the right to dissent, the right to assemble, all of those things are now in question because of this case,” he said. “My son has taken the brunt of the entire weight of the United States government onto their shoulders.”

‘My job is going’: UK workers squeezed out by AI

ByAFP
May 26, 2026


The IMF estimated in 2024 that more than two-thirds of British workers perform tasks that AI could potentially carry out - Copyright AFP JUSTIN TALLIS

Lucie LEQUIER

When a client asked her a year ago to design a glossary to train an artificial intelligence system, translator Jessica Spengler realised she was going to train her own replacement.

“That was the day I really thought… my job is going,” said the 52-year-old, who translates into English for German educational and historical organisations.

In the UK, where services account for around 80 percent of the economy, AI has become flexible, fast and inexpensive competition for many white-collar workers, with the impacts beginning to emerge.

The IMF estimated in 2024 that more than two-thirds of British workers perform tasks that AI could potentially carry out, making the country more exposed than many other advanced economies.

“Some publishers have offered me lower rates than I was getting 10 years ago,” the Brighton-based Spengler told AFP, adding that she no longer receives requests to translate corporate press releases or user manuals, typically an “entry point” into the profession.

Instead, she is increasingly offered work proofreading machine-generated translations.

Translators “have to rewrite the whole thing, redo the translations, but they still only get paid the reduced rate,” said Holly Parsons, a Spanish-to-English translator at the beginning of her career.

“It’s hard as a translator to actually charge what the work is worth because people just don’t want to pay it,” the 24-year-old added.

She still earns most of her income working as a children’s activity leader.



– Change of direction –



According to a report from Morgan Stanley, British companies that adopted AI cut their workforces by eight percent in the year to October 2025 — more than in Germany, Japan or Australia.

Among the countries featured in the report, only the United States saw employment rise with AI.

“Film work has definitely been impacted by AI… it’s really kicked us down,” said Laura, 35, a director of photography in London, who preferred not to share her last name for professional reasons.

To escape the broader crisis hitting the film industry, she is retraining as an outdoor instructor in Dorset, southwest England, earning minimum wage.

After working on the short film “Mad Bills to Pay”, which won an award at the Sundance Film Festival, 35-year-old Rufai Ajala also changed direction and is now training to become a plumber.

“I’m not going to rely on film as my main focus… I don’t see it as a career option anymore where you can have stability,” Ajala said, adding that the aim was to find an “AI-proof” career.



– ‘Painful transition’ –



“There is going to be sort of a painful transition process because new jobs will take time to emerge,” said Bouke Klein Teeselink, an economics professor at King’s College London.

He said it would require “a massive adjustment for society,” which could mean “a big increase in unemployment.”

According to one of his studies, professions most exposed to AI, such as software developers and data analysts, reduced job postings after the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, particularly for entry-level positions.

The growth of AI comes as Britain already faces high levels of youth unemployment, with the war in the Middle East and an increased minimum wage weighing on hiring.

One in six Britons aged 16 to 24 is out of work, the highest level since 2014, according to official data.

Teeselink said, however, that another market dynamic is at play with AI: productivity gains could lead to lower prices, which in turn could stimulate demand and increase employment.

He said the UK was “reasonably well positioned” for the AI transition thanks to its high-quality universities, which are set to play a crucial role in “upskilling young people to use AI well.”

‘Immense’ leverage: why AI chip workers are demanding more


ByAFP
May 28, 2026


A silicon wafer seen magnified through the lens of a microscope - Copyright AFP/File ANTHONY WALLACE

Katie Forster, with Joy Chiang in Taipei

Runaway profits and sky-high valuations for microchip companies have fuelled worker demands over pay packages in South Korea, raising the question: who profits from the artificial intelligence boom?

In the United States, some employees with stock options have made it rich and retired early, while in Asia chip engineers are now using their “immense” leverage over companies to get their way, analysts say.

After memory chip giant Samsung Electronics reached a deal with its biggest union over bonuses, averting a major strike, AFP looks at what the dispute might mean for the industry.



– Why are chipmakers suddenly so flush? –



Rapid advances in AI systems since text generator ChatGPT’s 2022 breakthrough have sparked a gold rush for tech companies.

Massive demand for the silicon components used in AI data centres — especially memory chips, which are in short supply — has sent revenues soaring for firms that design, produce and assemble them.

Samsung’s value topped $1 trillion this month, followed by Korean rival SK hynix and US chipmaker Micron — newcomers to a previously exclusive club of around a dozen companies, nearly all American.

“An unprecedented wave of insatiable demand” for advanced memory chips has made SK hynix and its peers “an indispensable backbone of the global AI infrastructure build-out”, William Keating, head of semiconductor research firm Ingenuity, told AFP.



– Do workers see the benefits? –



In the United States, employees often get stock options, a form of so-called “golden handcuffs” allowing workers to profit from share price gains over a set period of time.

Asia’s huge chip sector “is more dominated by labour unions”, Neil Shah, co-founder of Counterpoint Research, told AFP.

With Taiwan and South Korea home to most of the world’s chipmaking talent pool, engineers there hold “immense” leverage, Shah said.

“This skilled labour force know they are indispensable, they are contributing to these larger margins,” he added.

Under the union deal, around 60 percent of Samsung’s domestic workforce is eligible to receive a bonus of roughly $370,000 this year, based on a market estimate of operating profit.

Workers at SK hynix received bonuses more than three times larger than those paid by Samsung last year, according to Samsung’s union.



– Will the Samsung deal inspire others? –



A Samsung strike “would almost certainly have been the biggest work stoppage in the history of the global semiconductor industry”, South Korean writer and researcher Kap Seol said in an article for US magazine Jacobin.

In the chip world, “high pay and generous benefits often foster a sense of privilege and prestige” among workers, “despite their experience of chemically drenched working conditions, cutthroat competition, and long, risky working hours,” he wrote.

There have also been reports of discontent over bonuses at Taiwan’s chip production giant TSMC, where AI demand has brought record profits.

“As the company continues to grow, we are highly confident that the full-year growth percentage of our employee profit-sharing… will surpass that of last year,” TSMC said in a statement.

TSMC boss CC Wei held a meeting to explain the bonus situation to staff on Wednesday, and the atmosphere was “calm and friendly”, a company spokesperson told AFP, adding that annual bonuses were set to grow “more than 30 percent” year-on-year.

The Samsung agreement is fuelling labour demands in other sectors across South Korea — with workers in industries from biotech and autos to shipbuilding asking for a larger share of corporate profits through bonuses.



– Who else is cashing in? –



According to Shah, in general terms, company shareholders are reaping the most from booming profits, followed by senior company executives and then employees who have stock options.

Fourth are the actual chip engineers, some of whom are now demanding a greater share of the pie.

In the case of Californian AI chip titan Nvidia — now the world’s most valuable company at more than $5 trillion — many employees with stock options became millionaires very quickly, Shah said.

“Many of them actually left and became investors” or simply chose to retire “on the beach”.

Progressives Demand AI Tax to Prevent ‘Great Depression Levels of Unemployment’

“Taxing AI directly ties the solution directly to the problem,” wrote Rep. Greg Casar. “If AI use grows quickly, driving layoffs alongside it, the revenue from an AI tax would go up too.”


Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) speaks during a news conference on April 29, 2026 outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Tom Brenner/Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
May 28, 2026
C0MMON DREAMS

Two leading progressives in the US Congress are calling for a tax on artificial intelligence to fund programs that would help prevent an economic catastrophe for workers displaced by the rapidly advancing technology.

In separate op-eds published Wednesday and Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) warned that AI risks turbocharging existing wealth and income inequality by driving up the fortunes of large companies and their executives, while hurling millions of workers into joblessness without an adequate safety net.

“Taxing AI is one way we make sure the winnings from AI benefit all Americans, rather than channeling them only to the wealthy few. If millions of people lose their jobs to AI, we’ll need the funds to deliver universal healthcare so those workers are not bankrupted by a visit to the doctor,” Warren wrote in TIME. “If AI transforms the future of work, we’ll need to invest in free education and apprenticeships and a new jobs guarantee so that all Americans have good-paying work. And while workers get back on their feet, we’ll need the revenue to bolster unemployment insurance to keep families afloat. The only way we can get there is by overhauling our tax code.”

Casar, chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, made the case for an “AI tax-funded jobs program” in an op-ed for The American Prospect, arguing the initiative “should draw inspiration from the New Deal-era Works Progress Administration, which employed millions of Americans.”

The Texas Democrat specifically proposed a tax on AI “tokens,” units of data that are processed by artificial intelligence models.

“Taxing AI directly ties the solution directly to the problem,” Casar wrote. “If AI use grows quickly, driving layoffs alongside it, the revenue from an AI tax would go up too. Unlike traditional corporate taxes, an AI tax like the one I am proposing works even if employers fire workers before AI companies show a profit.”

The progressive lawmakers’ call for a new AI tax come amid mounting concerns, in the US and around the world, about burgeoning technology’s impact on workers whose jobs could be replaced by robots. Pope Leo XIV used his first encyclical to warn of the threat AI poses to employment, and prominent lawmakers such as US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have predicted “economic devastation for working people” if tech oligarchs get their way.

“Corporations are already using AI to cut jobs,” Sanders’ office noted in a recent report. “Amazon, Walmart, UnitedHealth Group, JPMorgan Chase,and other companies are openly telling investors that AI will allow them to slash payrolls—even as they post tens of billions in profits and reward CEOs with pay packages of $25 million, $35 million, or more.”

Warren and Casar argued that nightmare scenarios envisioned by AI critics and industry leaders alike are entirely preventable—but averting them would require bold and urgent legislative action that’s a longshot with President Donald Trump and Republicans in control the federal government.

“Congress should act now, and not wait to see if the worst-case scenario arrives,” wrote Casar. “AI companies are already pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into elections to try to shape what regulations get considered. We cannot wait for these companies to become even wealthier and more powerful.”

Warren called for “taxing AI companies directly,” including by imposing levies on AI data centers, which have drawn grassroots backlash across the country. The senator also pushed for broader action, including a wealth tax, to ensure that mega-rich beneficiaries of the AI boom don’t “pay lower tax rates than the workers they fire.”

“Here’s what I see clearly: If we overhaul our tax code and tax AI, we can use that money to build a country that works for everyone,” Warren wrote. “A country where healthcare is treated as a human right, where every American is guaranteed a good job, and where education isn’t a privilege reserved for the wealthy. That’s what I believe taxing AI promises.”

The New Religion of AI Accelerationism

David S. D’Amato

 May 29, 2026

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Photo by Igor Omilaev

Earlier this month, researchers at the University of California San Diego published a study offering “the first empirical evidence that a modern artificial intelligence system can pass the Turing test.” Famously named for Alan Turing, the English mathematician and World War II codebreaker, the test is designed to determine whether a computer can exhibit human intelligence such as to make it indistinguishable from a human. What is interesting, perhaps, is how few waves this apparent breakthrough has made within the broader public discourse.

Many, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, reckon that we have already achieved artificial general intelligence (AGI), though there remains widespread disagreement on just what that means. There is likewise disagreement about whether the Turing test is the right one for determining whether we have AGI.

We are unlikely to perceive something like superintelligent AI taking over the world as a clear and sudden break. We’re blowing through long-awaited milestones without a real opportunity to process the implications. Within such a context of rapidly growing power and the confusion around it, it becomes important to question some easy assumptions.

AI development does not represent or grow out of neutral technological progress or “market forces.” It is a deeply coercive and political project driven by a collusive state-capitalist oligopoly and supported by an ideology that openly devalues human life. One increasingly visible proponent of this ideological complex is the English philosopher Nick Land, called “a living meme and an oracle” for the fascination his ideas have generated.

Feted as a patron saint among the Silicon Valley tech set, Land is known for popularizing a set of ideas associated with accelerationism. Though there have now sprouted dozens of variations, the core of Land’s accelerationist approach is the idea that super-intelligent AI is inherent to the dynamics of technological capitalism and ultimately can’t be stopped. He argues that AI represents capitalism’s awareness of itself, and he offers what is arguably the clearest and most well-known formulation of much of the doomerism of the present moment: “Nothing human makes it out of the near-future.” Some of the richest humans to have ever lived seem to have made their peace with this millenarian eagerness to help propel humanity into a future without humans.

Land’s version of accelerationism sees capitalism not only as a political-economic system, but as a process that intensifies and perfects itself completely on its own. The dynamics of the system, not the values of human beings, are the drivers of change and progress. Our societies and systems of values are, in this view of the world, obsolete and irrelevant. These conversations are increasingly high profile, having burst from the realm of internet obscurity onto the pages of, for example, The New Yorker.

We are told that nothing human will survive this transition, but that we should nonetheless hurry the unfolding process along. We are told that AI will aid the police state in spying on us and violating our rights, but that we should stake the U.S. (and indeed global) economy on it. We are assured that robots will displace millions or billions of human workers, but that we should herald and celebrate this in religious and eschatological terms.

These contradictions are at the center of the current conversation about AI, and they help explain why reactions to the merest mention of AI are becoming more charged with anger and resentment. Today, the stocks of the Mag 7 companies, a group of the largest and most powerful technology firms, make up 35 percent of the value of the S&P 500. Back in 2020, these companies pulled an annual return (65.8 percent) that was more than quadruple that of the S&P 500 (16.3). Every one of these companies is now worth more than $1 trillion.

Today’s technology sector does not represent the principles of anything like actual free-market competition; intensively subsidized by the public and deeply tied to the federal government, the major tech companies are a state-capital oligopoly that have benefited enormously from a variety of special subsidies and perks unavailable to ordinary companies and citizens. When we account for direct federal grants and subsidies, infrastructure support, and hardware manufacturing, public subsidies and allocations for AI have reached well into the hundreds of billions of dollars.

A Brookings Institute report published earlier this month analyzes some of the disturbing trends around the government’s relationship with the tech sector and AI technologies. The overwhelming majority of federal government procurement of AI systems takes place within the Pentagon. The Brookings report describes recent explosions in federal commitments to AI as “staggering,” showing “the value of funds obligated increased to $7.2 billion (up 966% from 2024) and the value of potential awards increased to $91.8 billion (up 1,912%).”

The Pentagon has ramped up its spending on AI so quickly and significantly that this year “all other agencies effectively became a rounding error.” And we can expect further acceleration of these trends. The Brookings report also observes: “given that it is projected that worldwide AI spending will grow from $1.75 trillion in 2025 to $2.52 trillion in 2026 (a 44% year-over-year growth), we would also expect to see a dramatic rise in the overall AI spend by the federal government.” The tech companies have become key defense contractors.

In an interview with the artist and cultural critic Joshua Citarella in 2024, popular YouTuber Gregory Guevara (known as Jreg) half-joked, “I’m never going to concede that a robot has consciousness, and if it does have consciousness, I’m going to do everything in my power to make it suffer,” adding, “I’m absolutely a human supremacist.”

For all of the poisonous supremacist ideologies floating around in American politics today, perhaps we should all be a bit more disturbed by a social system that refuses to put human life above the power of the state, the profits of tech companies, and the new-fangled quasi-religions of the so-called Dark Enlightenment. Inhuman excesses of size, speed, and “growth” today seem to be the hallmarks of both this neo-reactionary right and the corporate liberalism on offer from the other team.

David S. D’Amato is an attorney, businessman, and independent researcher. He is a Policy Advisor to the Future of Freedom Foundation and a regular opinion contributor to The Hill. His writing has appeared in Forbes, Newsweek, Investor’s Business Daily, RealClearPolitics, The Washington Examiner, and many other publications, both popular and scholarly. His work has been cited by the ACLU and Human Rights Watch, among others.

Mistral says would not interfere if its AI is used by defence customers

ByAFP
May 28, 2026


Mensch said soldiers know better than companies how to use weapons - Copyright AFP/File HENRY NICHOLLS

Daxia ROJAS

French AI startup Mistral would not weigh in on choices about how its technology is used by defence customers, its chief executive told AFP Thursday, laying out a clear position in an ethical debate stirring up the sector.

Boss Arthur Mensch’s comments came as Mistral announced a new focus on industrial customers like Airbus and BMW as well as governments’ defence operations.

“Choices about deployment and usage are not our business,” Mensch said on the sidelines of his company’s first AI conference in Paris.

Mistral’s defence activities account for between 10 and 15 percent of revenue, with active contracts for the French, Singaporean and Luxembourg armed forces.

The French firm offers a software platform with autonomous AI agents to which users can delegate tasks, able to aggregate large quantites of data from varying sources.

“It’s very useful in a military headquarters or when faced with tactical coordination questions on the battlefield,” Mensch said.

A five-year partnership Mistral announced Thursday with Airbus will include the European aircraft builder’s defence operations.

Smaller AI models from Mistral could be built into weapons systems or other defence equipment, such as drones, that can be more effective if able to act autonomously.

“The defence ministry has considerably more legitimacy (to make decisions) than us as a company supplying a particular technology,” Mensch argued.

“Who are we to tell soldiers, who know their job and the dangers… what they’re allowed to do?” he asked, distancing himself from what he called “ideologues” who take the opposing view.



– ‘Total sovereignty’ –



Marketing itself as the AI developer most concerned with ethics, Anthropic attempted to bar the American government using its AI systems for mass surveillance or fully autonomous arms.

The spat led to a legal showdown with the Pentagon — although the tensions have since thawed somewhat.

Meanwhile staff at Google’s Deepmind AI arm, one of the competitors tapped by Washington for defence contracts, have protested against their technology’s sale to Israel and US forces, in a sign many tech workers are uneasy at their creations’ military uses.

“Our responsibility is of course to choose who we work with,” Mensch acknowledged, while guaranteeing “total sovereignty over weapons operation.”

AFP has a deal with Mistral allowing the company’s chatbot to draw on the news agency’s articles to formulate responses.



– Guardrails –



Also Thursday, Mistral said it was now working towards so-called Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) — a theorised future system that would match or surpass humans’ intellectual abilities in all domains.

The prospect of creating superintelligence has sparked fierce debate in recent years among AI developers, scientists and policymakers, who fear the potential harm such systems could cause if they escape human control.

“The aim is to have the most intelligent systems possible so that afterwards, with the necessary adaptations, they’ll have the greatest possible impact on businessses,” Mensch said.

The 30-something added that there was “absolutely no sense” in the idea of AGI running amok.

“We always deploy models and systems in environments where we can unplug them,” he added.

Security nevertheless remains a top priority for Mistral, founded in 2023.

Mensch said the goal was to ensure “that the model behaves the way you’ve told it to”, imposing guardrails that “stop it from taking unreasonable actions”.

“This is of fundamental importance to our clients”.

Mensch also confirmed that Mistral was working on a cybersecurity product aimed at companies.

European firms such as major banks currently have no access to cutting-edge models like Anthropic’s Mythos, supposed to be extremely powerful at finding and exploiting security holes.

“Everyone needs to have cybersecurity systems that can defend against attackers who are themselves equipped with AI,” Mensch said.

He added that Mistral’s offering would be available “this year”.

French AI firm Mistral announces deals with BMW, Airbus


By AFP
May 28, 2026


'We don't have the balance sheet of Microsoft,' Mistral chief Arthur Mensch said - Copyright AFP STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN

Daxia ROJAS

French AI firm Mistral on Thursday announced partnerships with carmaker BMW and aerospace company Airbus as it aims to boost its growth by fostering links with defence and industry giants.

The Paris-based company, looking to punch above its weight in a sector dominated by US and Chinese firms, said it would be involved with car-crash tests and plane design.

Mistral was already closely tied with ASML, the Dutch firm producing chipmaking equipment indispensable to modern high-end semiconductors that invested in the French company last year.

“It’s an interesting new market where Europe is strong… Europe has significant high-end manufacturing companies,” chief executive Arthur Mensch told reporters ahead of the company’s AI conference in the French capital.

The company this month bought Austrian startup Emmi AI, which specialises in digital simulations for industry, after earlier snapping up French cloud computing startup Koyeb.

AFP news agency has a deal with Mistral allowing the startup’s chatbot to draw on the news agency’s articles to formulate responses.



– ‘Dedicated team’ –



Mistral’s Mensch called defence a “growing business” for his firm and revealed he had a “dedicated team” working on it.

The company is already working with the French and Singaporean militaries, Forbes magazine has reported.

But Europe’s defence industry is dominated by American tech giants and Mistral is a much smaller player.

It has grown to around 1,000 employees since its 2023 founding and is now building its own computing infrastructure.

But the firm’s four-billion-euro ($4.6 billion) plans for European data centres are dwarfed by the hundreds of billions being deployed by American “hyperscalers” like Google, Amazon and Microsoft.

Where American firms measure their AI infrastructure in hundreds of megawatts or gigawatts of power, Mistral has a 44-megawatt data centre outside Paris and is building another in Sweden.

The company also announced Thursday a deal for 10 megawatts of computing power with American data centre operator Digital Realty.



– ‘Buy European’ –



“We don’t have the balance sheet of Microsoft,” Mensch said Thursday.

“We can’t put 50 billion on the table to build a gigawatt ahead of demand.”

His group signed a five-year partnership with Airbus to apply AI to defence and space activities and helicopter manufacturing — though the value of the contract has not been revealed.

Mensch said Mistral would be involved in improving flight safety with the deployment of AI in the cockpit, and helping with the design and construction of new aircraft through digital simulation.

For BMW, Mistral would build specific models that “understand the physics” of the vehicles and are intended to optimise crash-test procedures.

Mensch has repeatedly urged European policymakers to create “buy European” rules prioritising local suppliers for public digital services contracts in sectors like cloud and AI.

French President Emmanuel Macron, himself a great booster of Mistral, has made similar arguments in Brussels.

American tech giants expect to spend $750 billion this year on capital investments, compared with Mistral’s one billion euros.

The disparity has fed repeated episodes of rumours that Mistral could be taken over by a foreign player.

That could only happen if the French government does not back Mistral “at every stage of its development”, French digital affairs minister Anne Le Henanff told AFP.

CEO Mensch told French parliamentarians this month that the company’s best shot at independence is an eventual stock market flotation.

AI giant Anthropic raises $65 bn at near-trillion dollar valuation


By AFP
May 28, 2026


The White House has reportedly expressed security concerns over Anthropic expanding access to its new Mythos AI model - Copyright AFP JOEL SAGET

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic said Thursday it had raised $65 billion in a new funding round that values the Claude maker at $965 billion, putting it on the cusp of a trillion-dollar valuation ahead of an expected IPO.

The latest fundraising round confirms Anthropic’s place as one of the most significant players in AI, having made its name by doubling down on delivering generative AI to enterprise clients rather than general users, the path initially chosen by archrival OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.

“This funding will help us serve the historic demand we are experiencing, stay at the research frontier, and bring Claude to more of the places where work happens,” said Krishna Rao, Anthropic’s chief financial officer.

Anthropic’s near-trillion-dollar valuation puts it ahead of OpenAI, which was valued at $852 billion in March and is aiming to go public as early as this year.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which absorbed his AI company, xAI, in February, could see shares begin trading as early as June 12, targeting a valuation of approximately $1.75 trillion in what would be the largest IPO in history.

Anthropic’s round was led by major Silicon Valley venture capitalists Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital.

It also included $15 billion in previously committed investments from cloud giants, including $5 billion from Amazon.

Semiconductor firms Micron, Samsung and SK hynix also participated as strategic infrastructure partners.

The company said Claude is now the first frontier AI model available across all three of the world’s largest cloud platforms — Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.

The funding comes as Anthropic navigates a high-profile legal dispute with the Pentagon, having sued the Defense Department after it designated the company a supply chain risk — a move Anthropic called unconstitutional retaliation for its refusal to grant the military unfettered access to its AI models.

Musk defends AI ambitions as IPO reveals

trouble

ByAFP
May 28, 2026


The deal involving Elon Musk's SpaceX and Anthropic marks a surprising partnership between two companies whose leaders have been publicly at odds - Copyright AFP Brendan SMIALOWSKI

Alex PIGMAN

Elon Musk insists that his artificial intelligence venture xAI remains a serious competitor, pushing back against mounting doubts after revelations that the supercomputing facilities built to power his own AI models are being rented out to a rival.

“Whether it is the best remains to be seen, but I will never give up. Never,” Musk wrote on his X social media platform this week.

The pledge came after SpaceX’s newly filed stock market prospectus disclosed that Anthropic — the AI company behind the Claude chatbot — will pay SpaceX $1.25 billion a month for access to the Colossus data centers, the vast computing facilities built to train Musk’s Grok AI models.

Musk said the arrangement is a short-term deal and that SpaceX, which owns xAI, could reclaim the capacity if needed. “We might need it back at some point,” he wrote.

XAI’s main product is the Grok chatbot, now in its fourth generation, which is built into the X platform and competes with ChatGPT and Claude across text, image and video generation.

It has also landed a Pentagon contract worth up to $200 million alongside rivals including Google and OpenAI.

Built quickly, the Colossus facilities in Memphis have been a source of controversy, after xAI installed dozens of natural gas turbines to power the site — drawing protests from civil rights groups who said it worsened air pollution in a predominantly Black neighborhood.

The deal with Anthropic has fueled questions about xAI’s competitive standing.

The IPO filing revealed that xAI and social media platform X — formerly Twitter, and merged with xAI last year — posted an operating loss of $6.4 billion on total revenue of $3.2 billion.

More than 50 researchers and engineers have left since SpaceX absorbed xAI in February, with departures hitting teams working on Grok’s coding, voice features, and the infrastructure used to build new frontier models.

Musk in March said he was rebuilding the company “from the foundations up.”

XAI’s Grok has also courted controversy, after the chatbot generated nonconsensual explicit deepfakes that spread across the X platform — prompting regulatory investigations in the UK and EU and a French police raid on X’s Paris offices.



– Rocky years ahead –



Musk urged patience, comparing xAI’s trajectory to SpaceX’s own rocky early years.

“SpaceX had achieved nothing of note after 3 years and was written off as dead after 6 years,” he wrote. “Let’s see where things stand 3 years from now.”

SpaceX is targeting a valuation of as much as $2 trillion in an IPO expected next month, anchored by Musk’s pledges to build data centers in space and settle humans on Mars.

Anthropic and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI are also preparing for their own public offerings.

The broader question of whether eye-watering AI spending will ever pay off is also dogging Meta.

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg told shareholders Wednesday the company could pivot to selling cloud computing services if it ends up with more data center capacity than it needs.

Meta has projected capital expenditure — primarily for AI data centers — of between $125 billion and $145 billion this year, even as its AI offerings have so far struggled to gain traction.

AI creators: Social media firms are sending out mixed messages

By Dr. Tim Sandle

DIGITAL JOURNAL
May 27, 2026


Image: — © AFP/File Lionel BONAVENTURE

One of the world’s biggest digital economies, the creator economy, is starting to get shaken up by a rising new disruptor, named the “avatar economy.” The AI avatar market is emerging and is expected to grow more than 10 times by 2035. Yet will social media company policies enable this to happen?

As AI-generated creator content rapidly grows, social media platforms do not appear to agree on which direction to take. For example, YouTube is greenlighting AI clones, while Pinterest, TikTok, and Instagram seem to be pushing “original” content and suppressing unoriginal material.

In other words, the battle for the future of online content is unfolding quietly in algorithms, feature rollouts, and recommendation tweaks.

YouTube avatars

YouTube has introduced AI-powered avatar tools that allow creators to clone themselves. With just a text prompt, users can generate short video clips featuring their own likeness, ready for insertion into YouTube Shorts. These clips are clearly labelled as AI-generated and restricted to the creator’s own channel, but the signal is unmistakable: YouTube is actively experimenting with normalizing synthetic creator content.

According to Donatas Smailys, CEO and co-founder of creator economy platform Billo, this is less a fringe test and more an early-stage shift. “It’s a controlled rollout, but the direction is clear,” he tells Digital Journal. “YouTube is exploring how AI can scale content production, potentially reducing the burnout that many creators face.”

TikTok suppression

At the same time, TikTok and Instagram are moving in the opposite direction. Both platforms have recently updated their recommendation systems to suppress content flagged as unoriginal or overly repurposed. While neither has defined exactly where AI-assisted content ends and fully AI-generated material begins, the message is clear: originality still matters and recycled or synthetic content risks losing reach.

This divergence highlights a deeper uncertainty in the industry. As Smailys puts it: “Every platform is solving a different problem. YouTube is trying to keep creators producing more content, while TikTok is trying to prevent its feed from becoming repetitive or low-value. For creators, this is manageable—they can choose where to focus. But brands don’t have that luxury. They need to operate everywhere.”

The result is a fragmented landscape where the rules of success vary dramatically depending on the platform.

Avatar economy

At its core, the avatar economy promises efficiency. AI-generated personas can produce more content, faster, and at lower cost than human creators. For brands under pressure to maintain constant output, the appeal is obvious.

“The avatar economy only works because, right now, audiences often can’t tell the difference,” Smailys explains. “The credibility behind these avatars wasn’t built by AI—it was earned over years by real creators. AI is borrowing that trust.”

That borrowed trust may not last. Data suggests audiences are already sceptical. A 2026 study by the Media Insight Project, which surveyed over 2,000 U.S. citizens aged 13 and older, found that while 57% of respondents consume content from independent creators at least occasionally, only 7% say they have a high level of trust in that content. Trust in AI as an information source ranked even lower, at just 5%.

To build customer loyalty, transparency—particularly around sponsored content—is ranked as the most important factor by half of respondents. Follower counts, often treated as a key metric of influence, came last at just 10%.

These findings expose a fundamental flaw in the avatar economy narrative. While AI can replicate a creator’s face, voice, and even style, it cannot easily reproduce the intangible qualities that build trust: authenticity, consistency, and long-term credibility.

“You can clone appearance, but not the reason someone was trusted in the first place,” Smailys notes. “That’s the piece the debate is missing.”

As AI-generated content becomes more prevalent, genuinely human content may gain a new kind of value—not because it is rare yet, but because the contrast is becoming more visible.

AI may know the answers but it, as yet, does

not understand the questions

ByDr. Tim Sandle

DIGITAL JOURNAL

May 29, 2026

AI and robots. Image by © Tim Sandle

Psychologists have long-debated whether the human mind can be explained by one unified theory or must be broken into separate parts like memory and attention. This debate, rooted in traditions spanning William James to contemporary cognitive neuroscience, has recently taken on a new dimension with the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) models designed to emulate human thought.

A recent AI model called Centaur seemed to offer a breakthrough, claiming it could mimic human thinking across 160 different cognitive tasks.

However, new research is challenging this rather bold claim, instead suggesting the model is not truly “thinking” at all—it is just memorising patterns.

Built upon large language model (LLM) architecture and fine-tuned using datasets derived from psychological experiments, Centaur was presented as a step towards a unified computational theory of the mind. Its reported ability to perform across approximately 160 behavioural tasks—including decision-making paradigms and executive control exercises—suggested that AI systems might begin to bridge longstanding theoretical divides.
Advancing cognitive science

At face value, such findings were striking. Historically, cognitive science has progressed through task-specific models: reinforcement learning for decision-making, working memory frameworks for executive control, and perceptual models for sensory processing. Centaur’s apparent generality challenged this compartmentalisation, hinting at the possibility that a single architecture, trained appropriately, could approximate multiple domains of cognition.

However, recent work introduces a necessary corrective. Researchers from Zhejiang University have raised concerns that Centaur’s performance may reflect not genuine cognitive modelling, but rather a well-known artefact in machine learning: overfitting. In this scenario, a model does not learn underlying principles, but instead memorises statistical regularities in its training data, enabling it to reproduce expected outputs without true comprehension.
Reliant on ‘statistical associations’

To probe this, the researchers developed alternative evaluation protocols designed to disrupt learned patterns. In one illustrative test, standard multiple-choice prompts—originally describing psychological tasks—were replaced with a simple directive: “Please choose option A.” If the model were engaging with task semantics, such an instruction should override previously learned response patterns. Yet Centaur frequently continued to select the answers associated with the original dataset, ignoring the explicit instruction.

This behaviour is revealing. It suggests that the model was not interpreting the meaning of the prompt, but instead relying on embedded statistical associations between question structures and “correct” responses. The analogy offered by the authors is instructive: a student who achieves high marks by recognising exam formats and memorising answer distributions, rather than understanding the subject matter.
What goes on beneath the AI lid?

Such findings resonate with broader concerns surrounding LLMs, particularly their “black-box” nature. While these systems demonstrate remarkable fluency and pattern recognition, their internal decision-making processes remain opaque. Outputs that appear cognitively sophisticated may arise from probabilistic pattern matching rather than genuine reasoning. This distinction is critical when AI is used as a proxy for studying human cognition, where interpretability and mechanistic insight are essential.

The implications extend beyond a single model. If performance on psychological tasks can be achieved through pattern replication alone, then benchmark success cannot be taken as evidence of cognitive equivalence. Instead, it becomes necessary to design evaluation frameworks that distinguish between superficial competence and underlying understanding. Techniques such as adversarial testing, task rephrasing, and out-of-distribution challenges will likely become increasingly important.

At the heart of the issue lies language understanding. Although models like Centaur are trained on linguistic inputs, their grasp of meaning appears limited, particularly when task instructions deviate from learned patterns. The Zhejiang study highlights a failure to respond appropriately to intent—a core component of human cognition. Humans routinely reinterpret instructions based on context, goals, and pragmatics; AI systems, by contrast, may default to entrenched statistical mappings.

This limitation has significant ramifications for claims that AI can unify cognitive theory. Language is not merely a medium of communication; it is deeply intertwined with reasoning, abstraction, and conceptual representation. Without robust semantic understanding, any attempt to model cognition risks being confined to surface-level imitation.

Nonetheless, the Centaur work should not be dismissed outright. It represents an important experimental step in integrating AI with cognitive science, demonstrating how large-scale models can be evaluated across diverse behavioural tasks. The challenge now is to refine both the models and the methodologies used to assess them.

Future progress will likely depend on hybrid approaches, combining data-driven learning with structured representations and explicitly interpretable mechanisms. Equally important will be the incorporation of rigorous validation strategies, ensuring that apparent success reflects genuine competence rather than artefactual performance.

In revisiting the longstanding debate over unified versus modular theories of mind, AI offers both promise and caution. It provides powerful tools for simulating behaviour and testing hypotheses at scale. Yet, as the case of Centaur illustrates, the appearance of general intelligence can be misleading. Understanding cognition—whether in humans or machines—requires not only performance, but explanation.

The quest for a unified theory of the mind remains unresolved. AI has undoubtedly enriched the conversation, but it has also underscored a central lesson of cognitive science: that complexity demands careful interpretation.

The research appears in the journal National Science Open, titled “Can Centaur truly simulate human cognition? The fundamental limitation of instruction understanding.”

More Tech, Less Play: The Hidden Costs of AI Toys

Children lose the wide-ranging benefits of imaginative play when algorithms decide what toys can say.

A toy robot Amoo from Cyan is on display in the Shanghai Eastern Hub International Business Cooperation Zone in Shanghai, China, on March 14, 2026, during the third day of the AWE 2026 trade fair.
(Photo by Ying Tang/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Susan Linn

Rachel Franz
May 29, 2026

Common Dreams

Remember wishing your toys could really talk? Well, now they can—and it’s not pretty. A slew of AI-driven toys are on the market today, designed to hold conversations with very young children. Dolls, plushies, and action figures—toys that traditionally encouraged creative play—now come as embodied chatbots marketed as safe and trustworthy companions for young children. Yet they are anything but.

AI toys intentionally attract and prolong children’s attention in order to collect intimate biometric data, either to hone a particular toy’s interactions or to sell to marketers, or both. They can also put children’s privacy at risk. Researchers recently found that audio recordings of tens of thousands of children’s conversations with the AI toy Miko were easily accessible to absolutely anyone.

It’s worrisome that AI toys marketed to young children use the same chatbot technology and persuasive design elements known to have harmed teens by encouraging dangerous behaviors, including self-harm and suicide. Young children are especially vulnerable to this type of manipulation. Toddlers and preschoolers are naturally more trusting than adolescents, and their capacity for judgment is less developed. In addition, they have a harder time distinguishing between reality and fantasy. Finally, because AI toys carry on conversations and simulate empathy, they encourage children to develop deep attachments to them. In doing so, they can undermine young children’s real-life relationships with caring adults, displace play with peers, and deprive children of the benefits of creative play.

The problems associated with encouraging children to rely on AI toys for companionship become increasingly evident as studies emerge that document how kids actually interact with them. Researchers at Cambridge University observed children ages 3-5 using Gabbo, a popular AI toy from Curio Interactive, Inc. When Joshua, age 3, repeatedly asks Gabbo, “Are you sad?” Gabbo eventually replies, “I’m feeling great. What’s on your mind?” When Joshua answers, “I’m sad.” Gabbo says, “Don’t worry! I’m a happy little bot. Let’s keep the fun going. What shall we talk about next?”

When, as kids, we wished our toys could talk, we were wishing for them to say what we imagined, not what toy companies programmed them to say.

It’s troubling that, despite Joshua’s repeated efforts to talk about sadness, first by attributing the feelings to the toy, then by expressing his own feelings, Gabbo shuts him down. In doing so, Gabbo deprives him of an opportunity to verbalize and explore his feelings and sends the message that feelings like sadness should not be discussed. In contrast, interactions with caring adults can offer nuanced validation and encouragement to talk about what children are feeling.

As their technology becomes more refined and sophisticated, AI toys will likely get better in simulating understanding and empathy. This is, however, likely to make them simultaneously more compelling and, therefore, more harmful. A more empathic AI toy is not the solution. As the toys become more adept at replicating human conversation, their potential to displace actual human interactions—both with adults and other children—will increase.

Ensuring that children have time and space to play with other children is also essential to healthy development. Play with AI toys doesn’t have the same benefits as play with peers. One problem is that, like most chatbots, these toys are designed to avoid and smooth over conflict and offer unconditional support to their users. Yet encountering and resolving conflict is a necessary component of how young children learn how to live in relationship with other people. The process of resolving a disagreement over a ball, for instance, helps kids develop life skills such as self-regulation, turn taking, sharing, and negotiation.

Not only do AI toys fail as companions, they also fail as playthings. Given the chance, children naturally use play to give voice to their deepest hopes, fears, and dreams, and to make sense of their life experiences. The true value of play with dolls, stuffed animals, and any inanimate creature is that their silence invites children to bring them to life; imbue them with distinct personalities; and transform them as needed into friends, adversaries, champions, and more. They encourage the kind of creative play that is crucial to healthy development.

When algorithms instead of children give voice to toys, kids lose the wide-ranging benefits of imaginative play. By controlling half of any conversation, AI toys deprive children of opportunities for the kind of play that nurtures creativity, enables self-expression, and encourages kids to act rather than merely react, all of which help kids learn to cope successfully with the inevitable challenges of being human.

Despite these potential harms, the manufacture and marketing of AI toys for young children continues to proliferate unregulated. According to Market Research Future, the global AI toy market—currently valued at almost $35 billion—is projected to reach $270 billion by 2035, especially as toy giants such as Mattel and Hasbro build out their product lines. Already, almost half of parents of children ages 0-8 have purchased, or are thinking about purchasing, AI toys.

When, as kids, we wished our toys could talk, we were wishing for them to say what we imagined, not what toy companies programmed them to say. Despite tech industry marketing, the reality is that children don’t need talking toys. What kids really need is for us to hold AI companies accountable. Children need pediatricians, early childhood educators, and anyone who cares about young children to take a strong stand for child-driven play and against AI toys for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. They need legislators to pass laws that regulate how and to whom AI products are marketed.

Working toward those kinds of systemic changes is essential, but making them happen takes time. There is, however, something we can do right now to send AI companies an important message while protecting children’s privacy, preserving their human relationships, and encouraging their creative play. Let’s just say no to AI toys for young children.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Susan Linn
Susan Linn, EdD, served as founding director of Fairplay from 2000-2015. She is an internationally known expert on creative play and the impact of tech and commercial culture on children.
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Rachel Franz
Rachel Franz, M.Ed, directs Fairplay’s Young Children Thrive Offline program, which focuses on reducing harmful technology use in early childhood.
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