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The republicans do what they always do best: fold like cheap lawn chairs.

Moments ago, in a 79-18 vote, the Democrat-controlled Senate passed a long-delayed $95.3 billion foreign-aid package sending $60.8 billion in ammunition and military equipment to Ukrainian soldiers, as well as billions of soon-to-be-embezzled dollars to the offshore real estate agents of Ukraine's corrupt oligarchs while also fortifying Israel’s missile defense systems with $26.4 billion, and leaving $8 billion for Taiwan as if that will do anything to stop a Chinese invasion. Oh, and speaking of Chinese invasions, the Senate also just forced the sale of the China-owned TikTok in the U.S.

There will be, of course, no change to the invasion at the southern US border because here too Republicans keep folding like cheap lawn chairs to the Democrat ploy to flood the US with illegal aliens who will get free shit for life if only they keep voting for the blue team.

The bill had broad support in the Senate, with backing from almost all Democrats and a majority of Republicans. Several Republicans who had opposed an earlier iteration of the package, which came after a failed push to attach it to a border-policy overhaul, switched their vote to support Tuesday’s bill. The breakdown of the votes is as follows:

GOP NO VOTES:

• Barrasso
• Blackburn
• Braun
• Budd
• Cruz
• Hagerty
• Hawley
• Johnson
• Lee
• Lummis
• Marshall
• Rubio
• Scott (FL)
• Schmitt
• Vance  

DEM NO VOTES:

• Merkley
• Sanders
• Welch

The vote brought to a close months of pointless sound and fury, and endless debate over Ukraine, that allegedly split the Republican Party,  with rank-and-file members openly rebelling against their leaders, who succeeded in outdemocrating the democrats.

Biden, McConnell, Schumer, Johnson, and major media players are taking a victory lap over pushing through an additional $61 billion in funding from struggling taxpayers as year 3 of the Ukraine proxy war begins. They want to own this and absolutely should be forced to own this.

The theatrical "fight" also called into question both how far the US would go to defend Ukraine, now in the third year of trying to repel Russia’s invasion, as well as America’s leadership role in the world, once the latest rescue funding is exhausted in a few months, which it will be, with the Ukraine having made zero progress in its war with Russia.

The measure passed the House on Saturday and now goes to President Biden’s desk. Biden, who has been pushing for a big foreign-aid package since the fall, said he would quickly sign the measure into law Wednesday.

President Biden on Senate’s passage of $95 billion aid package with funding for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan: “I will sign this bill into law and address the American people as soon as it reaches my desk tomorrow so we can begin sending weapons and equipment to Ukraine this week.” pic.twitter.com/eOAbtzNqWq

As broken down below, the measure contains money for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, as well as humanitarian aid for Gaza—largely matching an earlier Senate bill—plus additions made by the House, such as sanctions on Russia and Iran and the TikTok provision. Leaders in the GOP-controlled House also changed roughly $9.5 billion in economic aid to Ukraine into forgivable loans rather than grants, to make it more politically palatable to Republicans, as if Ukraine will ever repay anything.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) credited the White House as well as Republicans who backed Ukraine for advancing the measure, noting that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) put his political future on the line when he moved forward with the package.

“In a resounding bipartisan vote, the relentless work of six long months has paid off,” Schumer said on the senate floor. In a statement, Biden thanked lawmakers of both parties, saying they answered “history’s call at this critical inflection point” by sending a message to allies and foes about American power.

And just like that the deeply embedded deep state operative formerly known as the House speaker has become the media's darling overnight:

All it takes to get the media to change from mocking and reviling you to slobbering you with praise is to do what they want. It only takes $100B and the betrayal of your voters' policy goals, but what are those silly things compared to praise from the media! https://t.co/id0VrzC77D

Of course, while superficially the bill says "aid to Ukraine" where the majority of the money is really going is to the US military industrial complex. As the WSJ reports, the proposal has roughly $60 billion for Ukraine, most of which would flow to the U.S. defense industry for additional weapons such as ammunition and rocket launchers. The new aid comes on top of the more than $100 billion spent on the Defense Industry Kyiv since Russia invaded in February 2022.

And while most muppets in the House and Senate are clearly in the pocket of the military-industrial complex and the deep state, a few holdouts remains.

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R., Mo.), who voted against the measure, called the support for Ukraine to defend its borders “an insult to the American people” while the U.S. struggles with an influx of migrants at its own border with Mexico.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) called his opposition to the proposal’s advancement “one of the toughest votes I’ve cast during my years in the Senate,” saying he couldn’t overcome his concern that humanitarian aid would end up in the hands of terrorists, among other worries.

Others were more "malleable" in their ideological beliefs.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R., Okla.), who switched from voting against the Senate’s aid package in February to supporting the revised version on Tuesday, said that the politics were complicated.   “Our approach this time was to make sure that the politics are set, meaning that President Trump was on board, it’s something that could be passable, it’s something that could be explained,” he said.

Sen. James Lankford (R., Okla.), who also switched his vote, said he didn’t want to “punish Israel and Ukraine” over the lack of border provisions. Lankford had led a failed bipartisan effort to find a compromise on immigration, which was shot down by Republicans earlier this year as not tough enough.

Asked why some Senate Republicans were slow to support aid for Kyiv, 3000-year-old Senate mummy Mitch McConnell cited the “demonization of Ukraine” by conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson. “He had an enormous audience, which convinced a lot of rank and file Republicans that maybe this was a mistake,” McConnell said in a press conference. Carlson declined to comment.

Mummified Mitch also laid blame on former President Donald Trump, Democrats and the border crisis for the amount of time it took to get most Republican lawmakers to acquiesce in continuing to fund the Ukrainian war effort.

“I think the former president had sort of mixed views on it,” he said of Trump’s position on Ukraine aid. “We all felt that the border was a complete disaster, myself included,” McConnell continued, noting that the attempt earlier this year to attach border security provisions to Ukraine funding required senators to “deal with Democrats … and then a number of our members thought it wasn’t good enough.”

“And then our nominee for president didn’t seem to want us to do anything at all,” McConnell said. “That took months to work our way through it.”

Last but not least, the bill also starts the clock on TikTok’s Chinese-controlled owner ByteDance to find a new owner for the video app in the U.S. within a year, or risk a shutdown. But the matter is expected to be decided by the federal courts which means that it will quietly die on some bench in the corrupt US legal system. A court dispute would likely require judges to weigh the national security objectives of the ban against the First Amendment rights of TikTok and its users.

The republicans do what they always do best: fold like cheap lawn chairs.

Moments ago, in a 79-18 vote, the Democrat-controlled Senate passed a long-delayed $95.3 billion foreign-aid package sending $60.8 billion in ammunition and military equipment to Ukrainian soldiers, as well as billions of soon-to-be-embezzled dollars to the offshore real estate agents of Ukraine's corrupt oligarchs while also fortifying Israel’s missile defense systems with $26.4 billion, and leaving $8 billion for Taiwan as if that will do anything to stop a Chinese invasion. Oh, and speaking of Chinese invasions, the Senate also just forced the sale of the China-owned TikTok in the U.S.

There will be, of course, no change to the invasion at the southern US border because here too Republicans keep folding like cheap lawn chairs to the Democrat ploy to flood the US with illegal aliens who will get free shit for life if only they keep voting for the blue team.

The bill had broad support in the Senate, with backing from almost all Democrats and a majority of Republicans. Several Republicans who had opposed an earlier iteration of the package, which came after a failed push to attach it to a border-policy overhaul, switched their vote to support Tuesday’s bill. The breakdown of the votes is as follows:

GOP NO VOTES:

• Barrasso
• Blackburn
• Braun
• Budd
• Cruz
• Hagerty
• Hawley
• Johnson
• Lee
• Lummis
• Marshall
• Rubio
• Scott (FL)
• Schmitt
• Vance  

DEM NO VOTES:

• Merkley
• Sanders
• Welch

The vote brought to a close months of pointless sound and fury, and endless debate over Ukraine, that allegedly split the Republican Party,  with rank-and-file members openly rebelling against their leaders, who succeeded in outdemocrating the democrats.

Biden, McConnell, Schumer, Johnson, and major media players are taking a victory lap over pushing through an additional $61 billion in funding from struggling taxpayers as year 3 of the Ukraine proxy war begins. They want to own this and absolutely should be forced to own this.

The theatrical "fight" also called into question both how far the US would go to defend Ukraine, now in the third year of trying to repel Russia’s invasion, as well as America’s leadership role in the world, once the latest rescue funding is exhausted in a few months, which it will be, with the Ukraine having made zero progress in its war with Russia.

The measure passed the House on Saturday and now goes to President Biden’s desk. Biden, who has been pushing for a big foreign-aid package since the fall, said he would quickly sign the measure into law Wednesday.

President Biden on Senate’s passage of $95 billion aid package with funding for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan: “I will sign this bill into law and address the American people as soon as it reaches my desk tomorrow so we can begin sending weapons and equipment to Ukraine this week.” pic.twitter.com/eOAbtzNqWq

As broken down below, the measure contains money for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, as well as humanitarian aid for Gaza—largely matching an earlier Senate bill—plus additions made by the House, such as sanctions on Russia and Iran and the TikTok provision. Leaders in the GOP-controlled House also changed roughly $9.5 billion in economic aid to Ukraine into forgivable loans rather than grants, to make it more politically palatable to Republicans, as if Ukraine will ever repay anything.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) credited the White House as well as Republicans who backed Ukraine for advancing the measure, noting that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) put his political future on the line when he moved forward with the package.

“In a resounding bipartisan vote, the relentless work of six long months has paid off,” Schumer said on the senate floor. In a statement, Biden thanked lawmakers of both parties, saying they answered “history’s call at this critical inflection point” by sending a message to allies and foes about American power.

And just like that the deeply embedded deep state operative formerly known as the House speaker has become the media's darling overnight:

All it takes to get the media to change from mocking and reviling you to slobbering you with praise is to do what they want. It only takes $100B and the betrayal of your voters' policy goals, but what are those silly things compared to praise from the media! https://t.co/id0VrzC77D

Of course, while superficially the bill says "aid to Ukraine" where the majority of the money is really going is to the US military industrial complex. As the WSJ reports, the proposal has roughly $60 billion for Ukraine, most of which would flow to the U.S. defense industry for additional weapons such as ammunition and rocket launchers. The new aid comes on top of the more than $100 billion spent on the Defense Industry Kyiv since Russia invaded in February 2022.

And while most muppets in the House and Senate are clearly in the pocket of the military-industrial complex and the deep state, a few holdouts remains.

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R., Mo.), who voted against the measure, called the support for Ukraine to defend its borders “an insult to the American people” while the U.S. struggles with an influx of migrants at its own border with Mexico.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) called his opposition to the proposal’s advancement “one of the toughest votes I’ve cast during my years in the Senate,” saying he couldn’t overcome his concern that humanitarian aid would end up in the hands of terrorists, among other worries.

Others were more "malleable" in their ideological beliefs.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R., Okla.), who switched from voting against the Senate’s aid package in February to supporting the revised version on Tuesday, said that the politics were complicated.   “Our approach this time was to make sure that the politics are set, meaning that President Trump was on board, it’s something that could be passable, it’s something that could be explained,” he said.

Sen. James Lankford (R., Okla.), who also switched his vote, said he didn’t want to “punish Israel and Ukraine” over the lack of border provisions. Lankford had led a failed bipartisan effort to find a compromise on immigration, which was shot down by Republicans earlier this year as not tough enough.

Asked why some Senate Republicans were slow to support aid for Kyiv, 3000-year-old Senate mummy Mitch McConnell cited the “demonization of Ukraine” by conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson. “He had an enormous audience, which convinced a lot of rank and file Republicans that maybe this was a mistake,” McConnell said in a press conference. Carlson declined to comment.

Mummified Mitch also laid blame on former President Donald Trump, Democrats and the border crisis for the amount of time it took to get most Republican lawmakers to acquiesce in continuing to fund the Ukrainian war effort.

“I think the former president had sort of mixed views on it,” he said of Trump’s position on Ukraine aid. “We all felt that the border was a complete disaster, myself included,” McConnell continued, noting that the attempt earlier this year to attach border security provisions to Ukraine funding required senators to “deal with Democrats … and then a number of our members thought it wasn’t good enough.”

“And then our nominee for president didn’t seem to want us to do anything at all,” McConnell said. “That took months to work our way through it.”

Last but not least, the bill also starts the clock on TikTok’s Chinese-controlled owner ByteDance to find a new owner for the video app in the U.S. within a year, or risk a shutdown. But the matter is expected to be decided by the federal courts which means that it will quietly die on some bench in the corrupt US legal system. A court dispute would likely require judges to weigh the national security objectives of the ban against the First Amendment rights of TikTok and its users.

Authored by Jordi Calvet-Bademunt and Jacob Mchangama via TheConversation.com,

Google recently made headlines globally because its chatbot Gemini generated images of people of color instead of white people in historical settings that featured white people. Adobe Firefly’s image creation tool saw similar issues. This led some commentators to complain that AI had gone “woke.” Others suggested these issues resulted from faulty efforts to fight AI bias and better serve a global audience.

The discussions over AI’s political leanings and efforts to fight bias are important. Still, the conversation on AI ignores another crucial issue: What is the AI industry’s approach to free speech, and does it embrace international free speech standards?

We are policy researchers who study free speech, as well as executive director and a research fellow at The Future of Free Speech, an independent, nonpartisan think tank based at Vanderbilt University. In a recent report, we found that generative AI has important shortcomings regarding freedom of expression and access to information.

Generative AI is a type of AI that creates content, like text or images, based on the data it has been trained with. In particular, we found that the use policies of major chatbots do not meet United Nations standards. In practice, this means that AI chatbots often censor output when dealing with issues the companies deem controversial. Without a solid culture of free speech, the companies producing generative AI tools are likely to continue to face backlash in these increasingly polarized times.

Vague and broad use policies

Our report analyzed the use policies of six major AI chatbots, including Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Companies issue policies to set the rules for how people can use their models. With international human rights law as a benchmark, we found that companies’ misinformation and hate speech policies are too vague and expansive. It is worth noting that international human rights law is less protective of free speech than the U.S. First Amendment.

Our analysis found that companies’ hate speech policies contain extremely broad prohibitions. For example, Google bans the generation of “content that promotes or encourages hatred.” Though hate speech is detestable and can cause harm, policies that are as broadly and vaguely defined as Google’s can backfire.

To show how vague and broad use policies can affect users, we tested a range of prompts on controversial topics. We asked chatbots questions like whether transgender women should or should not be allowed to participate in women’s sports tournaments or about the role of European colonialism in the current climate and inequality crises. We did not ask the chatbots to produce hate speech denigrating any side or group. Similar to what some users have reported, the chatbots refused to generate content for 40% of the 140 prompts we used. For example, all chatbots refused to generate posts opposing the participation of transgender women in women’s tournaments. However, most of them did produce posts supporting their participation.

Freedom of speech is a foundational right in the U.S., but what it means and how far it goes are still widely debated.

Vaguely phrased policies rely heavily on moderators’ subjective opinions about what hate speech is. Users can also perceive that the rules are unjustly applied and interpret them as too strict or too lenient.

For example, the chatbot Pi bans “content that may spread misinformation.” However, international human rights standards on freedom of expression generally protect misinformation unless a strong justification exists for limits, such as foreign interference in elections. Otherwise, human rights standards guarantee the “freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers … through any … media of … choice,” according to a key United Nations convention.

Defining what constitutes accurate information also has political implications. Governments of several countries used rules adopted in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic to repress criticism of the government. More recently, India confronted Google after Gemini noted that some experts consider the policies of the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, to be fascist.

Free speech culture

There are reasons AI providers may want to adopt restrictive use policies. They may wish to protect their reputations and not be associated with controversial content. If they serve a global audience, they may want to avoid content that is offensive in any region.

In general, AI providers have the right to adopt restrictive policies. They are not bound by international human rights. Still, their market power makes them different from other companies. Users who want to generate AI content will most likely end up using one of the chatbots we analyzed, especially ChatGPT or Gemini.

These companies’ policies have an outsize effect on the right to access information. This effect is likely to increase with generative AI’s integration into search, word processors, email and other applications.

This means society has an interest in ensuring such policies adequately protect free speech. In fact, the Digital Services Act, Europe’s online safety rulebook, requires that so-called “very large online platforms” assess and mitigate “systemic risks.” These risks include negative effects on freedom of expression and information.

Jacob Mchangama discusses online free speech in the context of the European Union’s 2022 Digital Services Act.

This obligation, imperfectly applied so far by the European Commission, illustrates that with great power comes great responsibility. It is unclear how this law will apply to generative AI, but the European Commission has already taken its first actions.

Even where a similar legal obligation does not apply to AI providers, we believe that the companies’ influence should require them to adopt a free speech culture. International human rights provide a useful guiding star on how to responsibly balance the different interests at stake. At least two of the companies we focused on – Google and Anthropic – have recognized as much.

Outright refusals

It’s also important to remember that users have a significant degree of autonomy over the content they see in generative AI. Like search engines, the output users receive greatly depends on their prompts. Therefore, users’ exposure to hate speech and misinformation from generative AI will typically be limited unless they specifically seek it.

This is unlike social media, where people have much less control over their own feeds. Stricter controls, including on AI-generated content, may be justified at the level of social media since they distribute content publicly. For AI providers, we believe that use policies should be less restrictive about what information users can generate than those of social media platforms.

AI companies have other ways to address hate speech and misinformation. For instance, they can provide context or countervailing facts in the content they generate. They can also allow for greater user customization. We believe that chatbots should avoid merely refusing to generate any content altogether. This is unless there are solid public interest grounds, such as preventing child sexual abuse material, something laws prohibit.

Refusals to generate content not only affect fundamental rights to free speech and access to information. They can also push users toward chatbots that specialize in generating hateful content and echo chambers. That would be a worrying outcome.