Bobby Allyn
@bobbyallyn.bsky.social
📤 21915
📥 976
📝 567
NPR correspondent covering tech Signal: ballyn.77
https://www.npr.org/people/638550790/bobby-allyn
is it really that surprising that the newspaper that made its hit podcast by poaching NPR staffers is now attempting to clone Tiny Desk? truly shameless.
2 days ago
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America’s first to-be trillionaire might wanna put those “PC handcuffs” back on his Grok toy
add a skeleton here at some point
9 days ago
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reposted by
Bobby Allyn
Drew Harwell
17 days ago
Scoop: The Trump admin's videos boasting triumphs on immigration have used misleading footage from months ago or thousands of miles away When we showed them the errors, DHS said they make a lot of videos and the White House said it'll keep making "banger memes"
wapo.st/4nuDGwf
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Trump administration uses misleading videos to portray chaos, push deportations
Official videos purporting to show the triumph of recent immigration operations used footage that was years old or recorded thousands of miles away, a Washington Post analysis found.
https://wapo.st/4nuDGwf
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“This post and other similar videos depict incidents that did not occur, though some commenters appeared to think they were real. “Accurate and sad. They milk the system on our back,” one user wrote.
add a skeleton here at some point
16 days ago
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"Belden got into AI slop after sinking into Instagram Reels, the holy land of shortform stupidity"
www.gq.com/story/truean...
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TrueAnon Saw How Twisted Politics Were About to Get. Here’s What They Say Is Coming Next
“Everything we’ve covered is coming to a head with the Trump administration in a very weird way,” says Liz Franczak, one third of the cult podcast.
https://www.gq.com/story/trueanon-podcast-profile
18 days ago
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reposted by
Bobby Allyn
Geoff Brumfiel
18 days ago
New A.I. grift just dropped: Spoofing real musicians to steal their follows and listens off Spotify. (By
@bobbyallyn.bsky.social
)
www.npr.org/2025/10/27/n...
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Your favorite band has a new single? It might be AI
With AI music generators widely available, scammers are uploading songs to the pages of inactive artists and dead musicians. Spotify says it is cracking down, but the practice persists.
https://www.npr.org/2025/10/27/nx-s1-5587852/spotify-ai-music-fakes
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AI companies desperate for data centers descend on rural America with big checks and NDAs to keep farmers and other land owners muzzled. “One of the men said he represented a “Fortune 100 company” that wanted the property for an industrial development”
www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...
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How Big Tech uses NDAs to hide AI data center details from Americans
Big Tech companies use secrecy agreements with local governments to keep communities from knowing who is building in their backyards.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/data-center-ai-google-amazon-nda-non-disclosure-agreement-colossus-rcna236423
18 days ago
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reposted by
Bobby Allyn
NPR
19 days ago
With AI music generators widely available, scammers are uploading songs to the pages of inactive artists and dead musicians. Spotify says it is cracking down, but the practice persists.
n.pr/4hzHZ8a
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Your favorite band has a new single? It might be AI
With AI music generators widely available, scammers are uploading songs to the pages of inactive artists and dead musicians. Spotify says it is cracking down, but the practice persists.
https://n.pr/4hzHZ8a
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Fans of the indie rock band Here We Go Magic were surprised to see they dropped a new single today, the first release since 2015. Actually nope, it's just AI. "It's so predatory, and so terrible," the band's singer Luke Temple told me.
www.npr.org/2025/10/27/n...
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Your favorite band has a new single? It might be AI
With AI music generators widely available, scammers are uploading songs to the pages of inactive artists and dead musicians. Spotify says it is cracking down, but the practice persists.
https://www.npr.org/2025/10/27/nx-s1-5587852/spotify-ai-music-fakes
19 days ago
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reposted by
Bobby Allyn
Elizabeth Lopatto
24 days ago
a teen's parents filed a wrongful death suit against openai after their kid had "lengthy conversations" with chatgpt about his intention to kill himself. how did the company respond? with harassing subpoenas
www.ft.com/content/47b0...
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Today in TikTok is awash in deepfakes: One random TikTok account posted Sora videos, where they tried to conceal the Sora watermark, of fake CCTV videos depicting the Louvre jewel heist. The videos got more than 6M views.
24 days ago
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NEW: Just confirmed that among the Meta layoffs today are product risk reviewers, which
@shannonbond.bsky.social
and I reported back in May, was a division Meta brass targeted for major automation overhauls
add a skeleton here at some point
24 days ago
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The robot.txt legal wars heat up!
www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...
24 days ago
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"Markets think in quarters and years, in profits and returns. Families — and voters — plan for lifetimes and focus on practical needs like food on the table, a stable home"
www.politico.com/news/magazin...
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Washington May Be Missing Signs of Economic Trouble
Why Republicans and Democrats alike get fooled by the stock market.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/10/21/what-washington-gets-wrong-about-wall-street-00615653
25 days ago
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reposted by
Bobby Allyn
Drew Harwell
26 days ago
“What kind of police go around without license plates?”
www.propublica.org/article/trum...
@davidmcswane.bsky.social
@hannahallam.bsky.social
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How Trump is Building a Violent, Shadowy Federal Police Force
Trump’s DHS appointees have dismantled civil rights guardrails, protected agents’ anonymity and encouraged them to wear masks, threatened groups that stood in their way, and overwhelmed legal challeng...
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-dhs-ice-secret-police-civil-rights-unaccountable
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Elon Musk's lawyers say Mira Murati is dodging subpoena requests. They have tried unsuccessfully to serve Murati, who they see as a key witness, eleven separate times in Musk's suit against OAI And Altman. Musk's attorneys say: "Serving process should not be reduced to a game of cat and mouse."
26 days ago
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reposted by
Bobby Allyn
Justin Hendrix
30 days ago
ICE "has been rapidly building out its surveillance capabilities in recent weeks, signing a string of contracts for technologies to identify individuals by their irises or facial features and to monitor their cellphone activity, social media posts and physical movements," per spending disclosures.
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ICE amps up its surveillance powers, targeting immigrants and antifa
Iris scanners, facial recognition apps, phone-hacking software and cellphone location data are among the agency’s recent technological purchases.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/10/17/ice-surveillance-immigrants-antifa/
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“Having listened closely to my fellow San Franciscans and our local officials—and after the largest and safest Dreamforce in our history—I do not believe the National Guard is needed to address safety in San Francisco,” Benioff said in a statement.”
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Exclusive | Marc Benioff Apologizes for National Guard Comments
The Salesforce CEO had called for President Trump to send the National Guard to San Francisco.
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/marc-benioff-apologizes-for-national-guard-comments-bc4d6827?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqe2RpTnU684sPkVR9V6QhLpXgGeDoOmWm_nNpTzEnMszK1wTCJQDBaP&gaa_ts=68f2a660&gaa_sig=de922W93L4TNIfbAH10frCiXjRK2e2FhHQaDLu5a_3IcKzUBTqNL2iyR_gsPc_PAx_YlM_suUSpyjFEU_f96Pg%3D%3D
29 days ago
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Right-to-publicity and defamation laws vary by state and may not always apply to deepfakes, meaning there could be "little legal downside to just letting things ride unless and until someone complains”
www.npr.org/2025/10/17/n...
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OpenAI blocks MLK Jr. videos on Sora after 'disrespectful depictions'
OpenAI is preventing people from making AI videos of King on its Sora app after the estate of the civil rights leader complained about the spread of offensive and vulgar portrayals.
https://www.npr.org/2025/10/17/nx-s1-5577869/sora-block-videos-mlk
29 days ago
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reposted by
Bobby Allyn
Drew Harwell
about 1 month ago
The tech billionaire and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel says the antichrist is ... Greta Thunberg
www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
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Inside billionaire Peter Thiel’s private lectures: Warnings of ‘the Antichrist’ and U.S. destruction
In leaked recordings of private lectures by tech billionaire Peter Thiel he argued that “the Antichrist” is likely to take the form of a critic of technology.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/10/10/peter-thiel-antichrist-lectures-leaked/
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reposted by
Bobby Allyn
News Literacy Project
about 1 month ago
"In a world where everything can be fake, & the fake stuff looks & feels real, people will stop believing everything." - Daisy Soderberg-Rivkin, a former trust & safety manager at TikTok, in this
@bobbyallyn.bsky.social
story ⤵️
#NewsLiteracy
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Sora gives deepfakes 'a publicist and a distribution deal.' It could change the internet
OpenAI's new hit app has unleashed a new wave of AI slop across the internet. But what happens when there are no rules over hyper-realistic synthetic videos?
https://www.npr.org/2025/10/10/nx-s1-5567162/sora-ai-openai-deepfake
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I talked to trust and safety professionals and former OpenAI employees about how Sora could change the internet forever "It's as if deepfakes got a publicist and a distribution deal”
www.npr.org/2025/10/10/n...
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Sora gives deepfakes 'a publicist and a distribution deal.' It could change the internet
OpenAI's new hit app has unleashed a new wave of AI slop across the internet. But what happens when there are no rules over hyper-realistic synthetic videos?
https://www.npr.org/2025/10/10/nx-s1-5567162/sora-ai-openai-deepfake
about 1 month ago
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When investigators recovered the phone of the man suspected of starting the Palisades fire they found an image of a burning city he generated on ChatGPT
www.latimes.com/california/s...
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Uber driver accused of intentionally starting fire that destroyed Pacific Palisades
Authorities will announce an arrest in connection with the devastating Palisades fire, law enforcement sources said, and are expected to announce a cause of the blaze.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-10-08/palisades-fire-arrest
about 1 month ago
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“OpenAI has done more than most to build controls into the system, but the deeper question is this: what does "permission" mean in a world where harm can outrun response?”
www.linkedin.com/pulse/demyst...
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Demystifying Trust and Safety-Special Edition
OpenAI’s Sora Is a Technical Marvel, and a Trust and Safety Stress Test Wearing Lipstick By Daisy Soderberg-Rivkin There's a specific kind of tension that settles in when something is breathtakingly i...
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/demystifying-trust-safety-special-edition-daisy-soderberg-rivkin-kw3re?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&utm_campaign=share_via
about 1 month ago
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we asked for flying cars and instead got AskJeeves for bespoke Internet Research Agency videos
about 1 month ago
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lol former Oracle exec: "I remember earlier in my career when I told people I was working for Oracle they would say, ‘Oh you mean the toothbrush company,' and I would say, 'not Oral B, Oracle'
www.npr.org/2025/10/06/n...
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Who is Larry Ellison, the billionaire Trump friend who's part of the TikTok takeover?
Larry Ellison has a lower profile than other tech billionaires, but his influence over media is about to be immense. His family's empire could soon own CBS, Paramount, CNN and TikTok.
https://www.npr.org/2025/10/06/nx-s1-5560216/who-is-larry-ellison-the-billionaire-trump-friend-whos-part-of-the-tiktok-takeover”
about 1 month ago
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feels notable that Sora is dropping in a moment when the AI capex bubble crowd is getting bigger and bigger and everyone is looking around for the next killer AI app and AI investors are really wondering what their return is exactly. the answer: rebranding deepfakes as cameos for a laugh.
about 1 month ago
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The name Sora will hit different for criminal lawyers in NY, since a “Sora hearing,” a very common type of hearing, is a reference to the state’s sexual offender registration act
about 1 month ago
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Apple bowing to Trump admin’s pressure on ICEBlock invites even more jawboning, says
@gshans.bsky.social
. "Compliance will only incentivize further government demands."
www.npr.org/2025/10/03/n...
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Legal experts condemn Apple bowing to White House's request to remove ICE tracking app
It's the latest example of tech giants bowing to pressure from the Trump administration. Legal experts say the developer of the app has free speech rights that may have been violated.
https://www.npr.org/2025/10/03/nx-s1-5561999/apple-google-iceblock-app-removal
about 1 month ago
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Sora has consumed too much of my last few days, but here’s my favorite slop
about 1 month ago
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if
@katienotopoulos.bsky.social
had to pay the energy bill for her day on Sora, she’d need a mortgage banker
about 1 month ago
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Google tells me that earlier today it removed apps similar to ICEBlock from Google Play stores for “violations of our policies,” but didn’t specify the apps Apple yanked ICEBlock from App Stores today after DOJ pressure Google says that app was never on Google Play but made a similar crackdown
about 1 month ago
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since new Sora dropped i’ve asked Brick to expedite my order
about 1 month ago
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how are the air conditioners doing at OAI data centers rn?
about 1 month ago
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reposted by
Bobby Allyn
Charles Ornstein
about 2 months ago
“Bots or likely bots authored 44.5% of X posts mentioning Cracker Barrel in the 24 hours after the new logo gained attention on Aug. 20, according to research for @WSJ by PeakMetrics. That number rose to 49% among posts calling for a boycott.”
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Bot Networks Are Helping Drag Consumer Brands Into the Culture Wars
AI tools have made coordinated attacks targeting corporations much more common, researchers say.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bot-networks-are-helping-drag-consumer-brands-into-the-culture-wars-63dffa04?st=ajMWnf&reflink=article_copyURL_share
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"This is straight influence-peddling," said
@ericgoldman.bsky.social
"This YouTube settlement is not a sign of any legal merit."
www.npr.org/2025/09/29/n...
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YouTube agrees to pay Trump $24 million to settle lawsuit over Jan. 6 suspension
YouTube is the latest social media company to pay Trump tens of millions of dollars to resolve lawsuits brought before he returned to power. The money will fund a new ballroom at the White House.
https://www.npr.org/2025/09/29/nx-s1-5557371/youtube-trump-lawsuit-settlement
about 2 months ago
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“Trump’s eagerness to use the power of government to silence critics, punish opponents and reward loyalists is unparalleled since the Watergate scandal”
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...
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With Comey prosecution, Trump fulfills promise of revenge
President Donald Trump’s predecessors sought to preserve the Justice Department’s independence in political prosecutions. Trump openly intervened in the Comey prosecution.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/09/25/trump-comey-justice-revenge/
about 2 months ago
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NEW: The Trump admin asking TikTok investors for a multibillion-dollar payment to US is the latest extractive “fee for service” from WH. "These are shakedown schemes…I'd even call it extortion…Privately, CEOs are horrified."
www.npr.org/2025/09/26/g...
w/
@davidfolkenflik.bsky.social
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Trump's TikTok deal payment criticized as 'shakedown scheme' by experts
The U.S. government will collect a multibillion-dollar fee from the American investors who will take over TikTok. Some experts call the fee and other deals like it "extortion."
https://www.npr.org/2025/09/26/g-s1-90598/tiktok-deal-trump-oracle
about 2 months ago
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"The law’s sponsors “told us that their main motivation was propaganda, and by shifting the app to more friendly, politically-aligned owners, my worry is that we’ve introduced a different kind of propaganda concern"
add a skeleton here at some point
about 2 months ago
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The TikTok deal & algorithm licensing arrangement are about to get tons of attention. But the algo is just personalized linear algebra. More crucial thing is content moderation — who's doing it, what the rules are, what enforcement looks like. AI slop & disinfo is absolutely rampant on the platform
about 2 months ago
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he's a PR guy who monetizes rage against the big AI company and quietly reps tech companies with AI products and services, nothing to see here folks, nothing to see, move right along
about 2 months ago
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"The Ellison family is cornering the market on attention and data the way the Vanderbilts did railroads and the Rockefellers did oil."
add a skeleton here at some point
about 2 months ago
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logged onto TikTok and first video served to me is AI-generated Kimmel addressing controversy with 1.4M views
about 2 months ago
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reposted by
Bobby Allyn
Shannon Bond
about 2 months ago
we wrote about this WH tactic recently. they’re asking journalists for expert source names and then using them to look up political donations in FEC records to try to discredit those sources as biased.
www.npr.org/2025/08/18/n...
add a skeleton here at some point
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Took a look at Kimmel's ouster in light of the longstanding Republican attacks on social media over jawboning, which, the Supreme Court has found, requires a direct causal line. The Kimmel case "is as direct a line as you could dream up,"
@alexabdo.bsky.social
told me
www.npr.org/2025/09/18/n...
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Legal experts say pulling Jimmy Kimmel from air may amount to illegal 'jawboning'
Free speech scholars say ABC's decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel's late-night show indefinitely represents "jawboning," when government officials pressure private companies to suppress speech.
https://www.npr.org/2025/09/18/nx-s1-5545720/kimmel-abc-carr-fcc-jawboning
about 2 months ago
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reposted by
Bobby Allyn
Ryan Mac 🙃
about 2 months ago
Elon Musk had a 1.5 hour meeting at xAI yesterday where he talked about building a competitor to Microsoft called "Macrohard," creating "Baby Grok" for kids 2-12, and using AI to quintuple X's revenue to $10B. We listened in. After leaving Trump, he's all in on AI.
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/t...
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Since Leaving Washington, Elon Musk Has Been All In on His A.I. Company
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/technology/elon-musk-artificial-intelligence-xai.html
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reposted by
Bobby Allyn
nilay patel
about 2 months ago
Btw very important to say that the FCC has not at all said what Kimmel said that was so objectionable! This is classic chilling effect - there are no rules so everyone stops talking
www.theverge.com/news/780471/...
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a real “oh my fucking god, well maybe that was a little too hard” moment
add a skeleton here at some point
about 2 months ago
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reposted by
Bobby Allyn
Bill Grueskin
about 2 months ago
I’m old enough to remember when Bob Iger, whose company recently paid $16 million to settle a meritless Trump lawsuit, and who just indefinitely suspended Jimmy Kimmel under pressure from the Trump administration, was a chair for the **Committee to Protect Journalists** dinner.
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Seems like conspiracy theories about the texts are the only thing the right and left can agree on about the Kirk shooter.
about 2 months ago
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