NRCC Releases Ad With Fake A.I. Images of Immigrants Flooding National Parks

The National Republican Congressional Committee released a wildly xenophobic ad on Monday, depicting several national parks overrun with immigrants.

The ad used artificial intelligence to create images of different national parks in the style of vintage travel posters. The parks, which include the Grand Canyon and the National Mall, are filled with tents that supposedly belong to undocumented immigrants.

“More crime. Less tourism. No beauty,” the ad says. “Democrats’ National Parks.”

The ad is an attempted jab at Democrats who voted last week to block a bill that would prohibit using public lands for temporary housing for migrants applying for asylum. The bill passed in the House on Thursday by a vote of 224–203. Six Democrats joined Republicans to support the measure, which is unlikely to pass the Democrat-controlled Senate.

Many Democrats have warned that the bill is a Republican messaging tactic ahead of 2024, when GOP candidates are expected to make draconian immigration policies a major part of their platforms.

Those critics were proven right Monday with the RNCC ad. The ad combines two popular Republican talking points: opposing immigration and accusing Democrats of being soft on crime. But not only is the ad deeply xenophobic, it’s also false. A study released in July by a team of economists from Stanford University found that immigration has not caused crime rates to increase in 140 years.

Trevian Kutti, one of Donald Trump’s 18 co-defendants in the Georgia election interference trial, seems to have broken her bond with an off-the-cuff Instagram Live last week—and may even be indicted again.

On Tuesday, the publicist implied that she would “fuck up” the life of state witness Ruby Freeman, a former Georgia poll worker whose life was turned upside down by conspiracy theorists, after the trial.

“As a matter of fact there’s a woman sitting somewhere who knows this whole thing is a lie, who knows I never did anything, who knows I never—who knows she begged me for help,” Kutti fumed, according to an Instagram Live video captured by MeidasTouch. “There’s a woman sitting somewhere who knows I’m gonna fuck her whole life up when this is done.”

Kutti, who previously worked for Kanye West and R. Kelly, faces three charges in the election interference case: conspiring to commit solicitation of false statements and writings, violating the state’s racketeering law, and intimidating witnesses to make false claims of election fraud.

She spent the better part of the Instagram Live session asking for donations to help her in her legal battles.

“We got this. So I just wanted to give an update. I think all of you know what I’m dealing with in Georgia. I just want to come and say look, the fight is the fight. I have some things coming up very soon where I’ll be delivering a few blows and I just want to let ya’ll know I’m here for ya’ll,” Kutti shared.

Legal experts predicted that the Live overstepped Kutti’s bond agreement, which plainly bars her not just from intimidating witnesses but also from posting about the case on social media.

“I suspect we’ll see a motion to revoke Trevian Kutti’s consent bond for witness intimidation of Ruby Freeman within the next two hours and would not be shocked if she’s indicted again for an additional racketeering act by the Grand Jury,” posted Georgia State University law professor Anthony Michael Kreis.

“It’ll be the state’s burden to demonstrate to the court the meaning of Trevian Kutti’s statement and that it was a violation of the terms of her bond and the public interest favors remand if the state so moves. I don’t think they’ll have a hard time with that showing here,” he added.

This year’s oil magnate president of COP28, the United Nations–backed climate change summit, is desperately trying to walk back a string of incendiary comments in which he claimed there was “no science” behind the effort to phase out fossil fuels.

“I respect the science in everything I do. I have repeatedly said that it is the science that has guided the principles or strategy as COP28 president. We have always built everything, every step of the way, on the science, on the facts,” Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber said during a hastily arranged press conference on Monday.

“I know that there are strong views among some [countries], about the phase-down or phaseout of fossil fuels. Allow me to say this again: This is the first [COP] presidency ever to actively call on parties to come forward with language on all fossil fuels for the negotiated text,” he said.

But Al Jaber’s insistence on the “facts” falls in stark contrast to what he said just a few days ago.

Al Jaber—who happens to be the president and host of the Dubai-based COP28 as well as the CEO of the United Arab Emirates’ state oil company, Adnoc—upset the international consortium of climate scientists after he challenged former Irish President Mary Robinson during a She Changes Climate event on November 21.

“There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phaseout of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5C,” Al Jaber said at the time.

“Please help me, show me the roadmap for a phaseout of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves,” he added after Robinson cited reports that Adnoc was planning to invest in more fossil fuel initiatives.

U.N. Secretary General António Guterres railed against those claims on Friday, arguing that “the science is clear.”

“The 1.5C limit is only possible if we ultimately stop burning all fossil fuels. Not reduce, not abate. Phase out, with a clear timeframe,” he said.

Other climate scientists joined the chorus, affirming that Al Jaber’s terminology was “incredibly concerning” and “verging on climate denial,” reported The Guardian.

More than 100 countries signed a joint statement last month calling for the phaseout of the limited energy source.

Last week, the summit released the most damning climate report to date, which noted that 2023 was both the hottest year on record and the coolest for years to come.

Donald Trump tried Monday to set the record straight with former Representative Liz Cheney, insisting that he wasn’t depressed after his 2020 election loss. He was just hangry.

In Cheney’s book Oath and Honor, which comes out Tuesday, she says that her former colleague Kevin McCarthy told her he’d visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago because Trump was so “depressed” after January 6 that he wasn’t eating. Trump hit back Monday.

“Crazy Liz Cheney, who suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome at a level rarely seen before, writes in her boring new book that Kevin McCarthy said he came to Mar-a-Lago after the RIGGED election because, ‘the former president was depressed and not eating.’ That statement is not true,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I was not depressed, I WAS ANGRY, and it was not that I was not eating, it was that I was eating too much.”

Trump’s Truth Social rant refers to a scene in Cheney’s book where she has a conversation with McCarthy, who said he had just visited Trump in Florida.

“Mar-a-Lago? What the hell, Kevin?” Cheney asked.

“They’re really worried,” McCarthy reportedly replied. “Trump’s not eating, so they asked me to come see him.”

“What? You went to Mar-a-Lago because Trump’s not eating?” Cheney said.

“Yeah, he’s really depressed,” McCarthy answered.

Cheney was one of just a few Republicans to reject Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election had been rigged against him. The party turned on her as a result, and she ended up losing her 2022 reelection campaign during the primaries.

Before she left office, Cheney worked as vice chair of the House January 6 investigative committee. Since leaving Capitol Hill, Cheney has remained vocal in her opposition to Trump. Her upcoming book describes him as “the most dangerous man to ever inhabit the Oval Office.” The book also slams her former colleagues for their “cowardice” and willingness to “violate their oath to the Constitution” out of loyalty to Trump.

Donald Trump’s former sycophants at Fox News appeared somewhat reformed on Saturday, interrupting the GOP presidential candidate’s unhinged campaign speech to fact-check his election lies.

During a couple of back-to-back campaign stops in Iowa, Trump reiterated claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and even went so far as to claim he wanted to “redo the election” and encourage his followers in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta to “watch those votes when they come in” in 2024.

Fox News took note.

“Well, the former president finally got around to some campaign promises amid lots of cheering, as you heard,” said Fox host Arthel Neville. “Many untruths; the 2020 election was not rigged, it was not stolen.”

The live react could be part of a turning tide for Fox, which earlier this year settled a historic lawsuit for failing to dispute similar election lies, paying a whopping $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems. The network is still in the throes of another, $2.7 billion lawsuit by Smartmatic, another voting machine company allegedly defamed by Fox’s conduct.

Still, it’s not the first time Trump and Neville have clashed—in 2019, the former president tweeted that Neville and fellow hosts Leland Vittert and Shepard Smith should quit Fox in favor of CNN.

That wasn’t the only headline Trump was after on Saturday. In the same tour, Trump claimed that he invented the term “caravan” and unironically claimed that he was God-chosen in the 2020 election.

“I think if you had a real election and Jesus came down and God came down and said, ‘I’m gonna be the scorekeeper here,’ I think we’d win [in California], I think we’d win in Illinois, and I think we’d win in New York,” Trump said.