Hello, readers – happy Friday! Today, we’ll be talking about Grok going rogue, birthright citizenship, “freedom zones,” a “sort of” nuclear deal, rescuing people from ICE, an ice cream arrest, and orange cats. 

Here’s some good news: A Georgia woman who had been missing for nearly three weeks in the California mountains after going on a solo camping trip was found alive this week. Also, doctors in the U.S. have become the first to treat a baby with a customized gene-editing therapy after the child was diagnosed with a severe genetic disorder.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust

Grok Goes Goofy

Human meltdowns on Twitter are a dime a dozen, but AI meltdowns? We might have just seen our first one of those. Earlier this week, the White House welcomed a boatload of migrants looking to escape South Africa’s alleged “genocide” against its white citizens (known as Afrikaners). Soon after they landed in Washington, D.C., it appears that some major tweaks were made to Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbot, causing it to insert controversial claims about the supposed “genocide” into totally unrelated conversations. 

The special thing about Grok, which is developed by Musk’s xAI startup, is that it will reply to people on Twitter (or X). Thousands of users query the bot every day in their tweets, asking it questions about everyday things. This week, Grok began inserting various unsolicited data points from Afrikaner lobbying group AfriForum into its replies about everything from Hawk Tuah to HBO Max.

As his right-hand man was trying to use his billions to invent a genocide, Trump announced that South African President Cyril Ramaphosa would be making a trip to Washington next week “to discuss bilateral, regional and global issues of interest.” While Ramaphosa’s office optimistically framed the visit as “a platform to reset the strategic relations between the two countries,” we’re bracing ourselves for an awkward televised grilling session. Don’t say we didn’t warn you!

Hoisted By His Own Justices

Despite the Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority, it doesn’t look like the justices are going to just roll with anything Trump proposes. The Trump White House tried to bring an end to birthright citizenship, which grants citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil, via an executive order in January. Lower court judges across the country quickly ruled against the order, issuing multiple nationwide injunctions that essentially froze the president’s effort. 

In a series of emergency hearings yesterday, the court began hearing arguments on the injunctions. Justices didn’t seem likely to overturn lower courts and signaled that they weren’t very sympathetic to the president’s interpretation of the Constitution's 14th Amendment, which states that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

Trump claims that the amendment should be interpreted as only granting citizenship to people with at least one U.S. citizen parent. “Birthright Citizenship was not meant for people taking vacations to become permanent Citizens of the United States of America, and bringing their families with them, all the time laughing at the 'SUCKERS' that we are!” Trump wrote on TruthSocial before the court session began yesterday.

Free-Firing On The Freedom Zone

• In Qatar yesterday, Trump announced a new plan for Gaza: letting the U.S. “take” Gaza and “make it a freedom zone.” No one knows what it means, but it’s provocative, it gets the people going! “Gaza has been a territory of death and destruction for many years,” Trump told reporters following a roundtable with Qatari business leaders. "I have concepts for Gaza that I think are very good — make it a freedom zone. Let the United States get involved and make it just a freedom zone.” Later, he added, “There's practically no building standing. It's not like you're trying to save something.”

• While Trump was busy claiming there’s nothing of value in Gaza, Israel killed 150 people in the 24 hours leading up to his comments in its efforts to gain control over the enclave. Strikes pummeled Khan Younis, killing dozens and disabling the last remaining hospital providing cancer treatments in the entirety of Gaza. At this point, Israel’s offensive has killed almost 53,000 Palestinians, and the IDF’s blockade of Gaza continues to push the area closer to widespread famine.

More Concepts Of A Plan

• This is what leadership looks like: As part of his Middle East trip, Trump announced that U.S. diplomats had “sort of” reached a tentative nuclear deal with Iran yesterday. Decisive. He described talks between White House Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi as “very serious negotiations,” adding even more vague optimism to the pile.

• “Iran has sort of agreed to the terms: They’re not going to make, I call it, in a friendly way, nuclear dust,” Trump told reporters. “We’re not going to be making any nuclear dust in Iran.” He added that Iran “must stop sponsoring terror, halt its bloody proxy wars and permanently and verifiably cease pursuit of nuclear weapons,” though Araghchi has maintained that Iran reserves the right to enrich uranium.

More Mixed Nuts

• Britain says it's talking with some countries to set up migrant return hubs (AP)

• Guyana soldiers attacked three times in 24 hours amid tensions with Venezuela (Guardian)

• New Zealand MPs who performed haka in parliament given unprecedented punishment (Guardian)

• Ukraine's Zelenskyy arrives in Turkey for talks with Russia, without Putin (NPR)

Now That’s An In-Justice

• Wisconsin Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan pleaded not guilty yesterday on federal charges that she helped an undocumented man evade arrest. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has already suspended Dugan after she had served nearly a decade on the court. She was arrested by the FBI last month for trying to help an undocumented immigrant in her courtroom avoid arrest by ICE, and she could face up to six years in prison if she is convicted on both counts.

• Speaking of helping people evade ICE, Kid Rock’s and several other restaurants in Nashville owned by conservative restaurateur and Trump supporter Steve Smith asked undocumented kitchen staff to go home to avoid rumored immigration raids this weekend. Considering that Smith (and the restaurant’s namesake, Kid Rock) are vocal proponents of Trump’s anti-immigration crackdowns, it’s interesting that they rely on the labor of undocumented people to run their business.

Ice Cream, You Scream, Ben Screams For Gaza  

• Yesterday, we told you all about RFK Jr. and his Senate hearing (during which we got the absolute chef’s kiss quote, “I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me”), but there was a little side quest story that we didn’t get to mention. Ben Cohen, the co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, was removed from the room and arrested after protesting the aid blockade in Gaza, which is now in its eleventh week. 

• A group of activists heckled the health secretary over his anti-vaccine views before Cohen stood up. Video footage posted by Cohen on social media shows him being handcuffed and escorted away – after, a woman asked why he was being arrested, and Cohen said, “Congress kills poor kids in Gaza by buying bombs and pays for it by kicking kids off Medicaid in the U.S. Congress and the senators need to ease the siege, they need to let food into Gaza. They need to let food to starving kids.”

More Nuts In America

• Trump to Apple: Don't expand iPhone production in India (Axios)

• Supreme Court revives excessive force claim over deadly Houston police shooting (NBC)

• House Agriculture Committee approves $300 billion in nutrition spending cuts (Politico)

• Missouri lawmakers move to repeal abortion protections enacted by voters (ABC)

Orange You Gonna Ask More About The Cat?

• There’s nothing more powerful than a group of dedicated cat owners. A professor and his team raised 10.6 million yen ($73,312) via crowdfunding from thousands of fellow cat lovers globally to uncover the orange cat gene. Now, two teams of scientists at Kyushu University in Japan and Stanford University in the U.S. have released papers identifying just what makes orange cats orange. 

• They discovered that ginger cats are missing a section of their genetic code, which means the cells responsible for their skin, eye, and fur tone produce lighter colors. In the cells responsible for giving a cat its skin, hair follicles, and eyes their color (melanocytes), one gene, ARHGAP36, was much more active. Orange cats have a section of DNA code missing from that gene. 

• If you’re a cat lover (or maybe you just know a lot of trivia), you know that orange cats are almost always male. The gene is carried on the X chromosome, and boy cats have an X and Y chromosome – one missing piece of DNA is enough to make a cat look like Ed Sheeran. For girl cats, who have two X chromosomes, the DNA needs to be missing in both chromosomes to make them redheads.

More Loose Nuts

• Alligator that starred in 'Happy Gilmore' dies of old age in Colorado (AP)

• Harvard thought it had a cheap copy of the Magna Carta. It turned out to be extremely rare (AP)

• Marine life's latest hotspot could be an underwater volcano primed to erupt off Oregon (NPR)

• Pressure grows on Fifa as reports warn of serious risk to workers amid Saudi World Cup building boom (Guardian)

• Largest US crypto exchange says cost of recent cyber-attack could reach $400m (Guardian)

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Team Thoughts

Kayli - Okay, now somebody explain why my black cat is up at all hours of the night, knocking things off of shelves.

Marcus - “Freedom zone” and “nuclear dust” in the same day… what a way with words…

Editor In Chief: Kayli Woods

Head Writer: Marcus Gee-Lim

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