Baltimore Democrats Triggered After Grok Generates Bikini Elon Musk, Sue xAI Over Sexual Deepfakes

The left-wing one-party rule in Baltimore City can barely govern its own imploding metro area. Parts of downtown are ghost towns; the resident exodus has been severe; taxes are through the roof; industry has left; and decades of progressive policies have helped transform large parts of the metro area into crime-ridden no-go zones. Yet somehow, city officials still found the time to weaponize local agencies and go after Elon Musk. 

Baltimore Mayor Brandon M. Scott and the City Council of Baltimore, represented by the Baltimore City Law Department and DiCello Levitt, filed a lawsuit in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City against Elon Musk's xAI, claiming Grok users were able to create non-consensual sexual deepfakes, including images involving minors, and that the defendants violated Baltimore's Consumer Protection Ordinance.

The core claim in the lawsuit is that Grok was marketed as a general-purpose AI chatbot with supposed safeguards, but in reality, it allegedly allowed users to "undress," sexualize, and manipulate photos of real people, including children, with minimal prompting and without meaningful guardrails or age verification.

"Beginning in late 2025, x.AI expanded Grok's image-generation and image-editing features, which 'edit' existing photographs, including images of private individuals and children, into photorealistic, sexually explicit, or otherwise degrading content. These features allow Grok, with minimal prompting, to 'undress,' sexualize, or otherwise manipulate images uploaded by or depicting third parties," the lawsuit reads.

The lawsuit claims xAI knew the chatbot could be abused on a large scale. It cites allegations that millions of sexualized images were generated in a short period, including thousands that appeared to depict children, and argues users in the metro area were exposed either to the content itself or to the risk that their own images could be turned into deepfakes. 

"These deepfakes, especially those depicting minors, have traumatic, lifelong consequences for victims, who are left with no way to prevent the spread of disturbing, sexualized images created of them without their consent," Mayor Scott wrote in a statement.

The only image in the lawsuit: 

DiCello Levitt Founding Partner Adam Levitt stated, "The City is setting a powerful example for municipalities nationwide in confronting a novel and rapidly advancing technology, and an emerging area of law, where accountability has not yet caught up with innovation."

Baltimore is seeking civil penalties, injunctive relief, restitution, disgorgement, and a jury trial.

What's odd is that Baltimore City officials weirdly found the time to hyperfocus on all things Elon Musk while ignoring all other chatbot companies. This lawsuit is merely a copy of how anti-free-speech Europeans went after Grok over nonconsensual deepfake images while failing to address other chatbots.

We wonder why Baltimore was chosen to target Musk. Let's not forget this is political warfare from the high-ups of the Democratic Party.

Mayor Scott appears to have Soros connections. 

The Govenor of Maryland with Alex Soros ... 

Perhaps the lawsuit from Baltimore is merely a shakedown of the world's richest man. These local Democrats have badly mismanaged the city's finances due to overspending and deficit woes. This mismanagement and failed progressive policies have sparked an exodus of residents, and since 2000, the metro area's population has declined by 1% per year, according to the city's own data.

This is political warfare. Shouldn't Baltimore focus on rebuilding the Key Bridge or stopping the mass hemorrhaging of residents, or perhaps the power bill crisis?

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Tyler Durden Wed, 03/25/2026 - 18:00

BLM Activist Ordered To Pay Back $224,000 In COVID Relief Funds, Donations

Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times,

A Black Lives Matter activist in Boston was ordered on March 23 to pay back more than $224,000 in pandemic relief funds and donations to her nonprofit.

Monica Cannon-Grant, 44, pleaded guilty last fall to multiple fraud charges and filing false tax returns. She was sentenced to serve six months of home confinement, 100 hours of community service, and four years of probation.

Federal District Court Judge Angel Kelly in Boston set the monetary judgment equal to the amount of money Cannon-Grant admitted taking from nonprofit Violence in Boston, which Cannon-Grant founded and where she formerly served as CEO.

In March 2023, a grand jury handed down a 27-count indictment against Cannon-Grant and her husband Clark Grant, charging them with fraud in connection to Violence in Boston, which they founded in 2017. Grant died in a motorcycle crash three weeks after the indictment was served while driving about 30 minutes east of Boston.

Federal prosecutors said Cannon-Grant paid herself about $25,100 in 2020 and more than $170,000 in 2021 from the nonprofit’s account, according to the charging documents.

About $181,037 of the total funds in question were donated to the organization and diverted for her personal use, $33,426 was obtained from pandemic unemployment assistance benefits, and $12,600 were from rental assistance funds, according to the judge.

In September, Cannon-Grant admitted to diverting thousands of dollars in donor money earmarked for the nonprofit for her own personal use, according to federal prosecutors.

In one instance, prosecutors say after receiving about $54,000 in pandemic relief funds from the city of Boston, Cannon-Grant withdrew about $30,000 in cash from the nonprofit’s account and made deposits of $5,200 and $1,000 into her personal checking account. She also made payments on her personal auto loan and car insurance policy.

Cannon-Grant also pleaded guilty to filing false tax returns for two years, among other tax charges.

“Monica Cannon-Grant repeatedly scammed multiple public financial programs and stole money donated by members of the public who believed their donations would aid in reducing violence and promote social awareness,” U.S. Attorney Leah Foley said in September in a statement. “She betrayed the trust of everyone who donated and the public who supported her fraudulent charity.”

Cannon-Grant’s attorneys asked the judge for a lighter sentence of two years of probation, no fine, and a special fee of $1,650. They described their client as a “loving mother, wife, and daughter who had dedicated her life to advancing social justice and serving communities in need.”

Black Lives Matter activists in Los Angeles on Dec. 30, 2020. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

“She has inspired a generation of social activists to speak out against injustice and to support those around them who need a voice and access to daily essentials like food and housing,” her attorneys wrote in a sentencing memo to the judge.

“Ms. Cannon-Grant made fundamental errors in judgment. She is deeply sorry and has now taken full responsibility for her actions.”

Her attorneys also described Cannon-Grant’s home life as traumatic and violent. She grew up in deep poverty and subsidized housing, and lived on welfare and food stamps with a violent and alcoholic father, according to court documents.

Her attorneys didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Tyler Durden Wed, 03/25/2026 - 17:40

Report Alleges Trump's Daily Military Briefing Scrubs Out Iran War Setbacks

A fresh NBC report has alleged that President Trump is being presented with a very incomplete picture of how the Iran war is going, with the conflict now approaching its first month, and as Washington struggles to find an offramp amid global oil market disruptions.

The report says that his daily military briefing provided by the Pentagon features a roughly 2-minute long video update for President Trump that shows the biggest, most successful strikes on Iranian targets of the prior 48 hours. Negative developments frequently get omitted or glossed over.

via Associated Press

Anonymous US officials have voiced fears that the video briefings, which the president tends to respond positively to, fail to represent the full scope of what's going on. Also, Trump's aides have reportedly voiced greater approval for the briefings, which feature Iranian military equipment and bases and sites getting blown up.

The NBC report, which has been rejected by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, in essence suggests Trump is not getting properly briefed on major negative developments.

Or in other words, the fear is that briefers are simply favoring information that he wants to hear, and too afraid to deliver bad news. According to NBC:

They said the videos are also driving Trump’s increasing frustration with news coverage of the war. Trump has pointed to the success depicted in the daily videos to privately question why his administration can’t better influence the public narrative, asking aides why the news media doesn’t emphasize what he’s seeing, one of the current U.S. officials and the former U.S. official said.

Again, Leavitt has called all of this "an absolutely false assertion" from people who aren't in the briefing room; however NBC does offer the following example which seems consistent with its reporting:

One example came this month when five U.S. Air Force refueling planes were hit in an Iranian strike at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, according to one of the current U.S. officials. Trump wasn’t briefed about the strikes, and he learned what had happened from media reports, the official said. When Trump inquired, he was told the planes weren’t badly damaged, the official said.

The official said Trump reacted angrily behind the scenes to the news coverage. Publicly he posted on Truth Social calling coverage of the strike misleading and accusing media organizations of wanting the U.S. “to lose the War.”

Given the initial projections by the administration that Operation Epic Fury would be rather quick (a mere 'days' was initially floated at the opener), there's been growing criticism concerning strategy, tactics, and vision - even from former Trump officials. For an example:

Former U.S. Sec. of Defense Jim Mattis on Iran War:

15,000 targets have been hit.

There have been significant military successes, but they are not matched by strategic outcomes.

Now, some of the strategic outcomes floated early on — unconditional surrender, regime change,… pic.twitter.com/mxuO1fpB4W

— Clash Report (@clashreport) March 25, 2026

Many independent analysts have been pointing out, amid the effort to drum up some level of official Washington-Tehran peace talks, that Iran is in fact in a position to impose a high cost on the United States - particularly on the economic and political fronts. 

But still, official US military statements seem to just provide fodder for Trump's 'We Won' statements, which have lately been repeated by the president more and more. Pentagon/DOD spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement, cited by NBC: "Operation Epic Fury has been an overwhelming success, with our forces executing the mission with unmatched precision and achieving every objective set out from the beginning. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is in constant communication with President Trump regarding every aspect of Operation Epic Fury. We are proud of the exceptional performance by our warfighters and remain fully confident in the commander-in-chief's decisions."

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Tyler Durden Wed, 03/25/2026 - 17:20

Pope Leo XIV Suggests Aerial Bombing Campaigns Should Be 'Banned Forever'

Authored by Dave DeCamp via Antiwar.com,

Pope Leo XIV suggested on Monday that aerial bombing campaigns should have been “banned forever” following the atrocities committed from the sky during the 20th century, as he continues pushing an antiwar message following the start of the US-Israeli war against Iran.

“Airplanes should always be carriers of peace, never of war,” Leo said while hosting executives and staff from ITA Airways, Italy’s national airline, and the Lufthansa Group, according to Vatican News.

“No one should be afraid that threats of death and destruction might come from the sky.”

The Vatican News report said the US-born pope recalled the bombing campaigns of the World Wars and other conflicts.

“After the tragic experiences of the twentieth century, aerial bombings should have been banned forever,” he said.

“Instead, they still exist, and technological development, positive in itself, is being placed at the service of war. This is not progress; it is regression.”

Since World War I, the Vatican has been highly critical of modern war.

“The combatants are the greatest and wealthiest nations of the earth; what wonder, then, if, well provided with the most awful weapons modern military science has devised, they strive to destroy one another with refinements of horror,” Pope Benedict XV said in an encyclical in November 1914, a few months after the outbreak of the First World War.

“There is no limit to the measure of ruin and of slaughter; day by day the earth is drenched with newly-shed blood, and is covered with the bodies of the wounded and of the slain,” Benedict added.

Pope Pius XII, who led the Catholic Church during World War II, was outspoken about the impact that the strategic bombing campaigns and the war in general had on civilians.

“We have had to witness the harrowing scene of death leaping from the skies and stalking pitilessly through unsuspecting homes, striking down women and children,” Pius said in a 1943 letter to US President Franklin D. Roosevelt after US warplanes bombed Rome.

The Second Vatican Council’s 1965 document Gaudium et Spes strongly denounced strategic bombing campaigns aimed at destroying cities, saying:

“Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.”

Leo has made opposing war a major theme of his pontificate since his election as pope on May 8, 2025.

Since the outbreak of the US-Israeli war on Iran, he has repeatedly called for an end to the conflict and suggested Christian leaders involved in starting wars should examine their conscience and go to confession, remarks seen as aimed at the Trump administration since Leo is American.

Tyler Durden Wed, 03/25/2026 - 17:00

Two Years Later, No Key Bridge As Maryland Dems Focus On Tampons In Men's Bathrooms

The two-year anniversary of the catastrophic collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge at the Port of Baltimore is on Thursday.

Gubernatorial candidate Ed Hale criticized Democrats in the one-party-ruled state for their inability to properly manage the reconstruction of the Key Bridge, which is critical to the port and local economy and regional supply chains across the Mid-Atlantic region. 

Hale described the Democrats as exhibiting a "failure of leadership" and cited "unacceptable delays" in rebuilding one of Maryland's major freight networks, which links to broader regional supply chains.

"Two years. And what do the people of this community have to show for it?" Hale asked reporters earlier. 

He said, "As a Maryland developer, I know what it takes to move projects forward. These delays are unacceptable, and Maryland families and businesses are paying the price every single day."

Two years later. Where is the bridge?

It's now been 2 years since Key Bridge fell in Baltimore. This is how much is rebuilt: pic.twitter.com/Gnc7uslGjq

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 24, 2026

Meanwhile, Maryland Democrats in Annapolis have prioritized providing "appropriately sized tampons" for men's bathrooms while advancing a failed left-wing agenda that has sparked a massive exodus of residents, as the state's fiscal status deteriorates.

Maryland Delegate Kathy Szeliga (R) EMBARESSES Democrats who want to force "appropriately sized tampons" into men's bathrooms.

Szeliga: "I've never heard of such a thing... what do you consider appropriate???"pic.twitter.com/jjasHIMtRE https://t.co/gsjXEzXVre

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 24, 2026

Baltimore City is broken. Maryland is broken. This is the direct result of one-party-ruled, left-wing politicians who masquerade as competent managers but are, in fact, incompetent DEI activists.

*  *  *

Click pic, add to cart, sleep like the dead with no grogginess Tyler Durden Wed, 03/25/2026 - 15:50

Washington State's Race-Based Housing Finance Program Faces Federal Probe

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Trump administration’s housing department launched an investigation into the Washington State Housing Finance Commission for allegedly violating the Fair Housing Act via its race-based housing finance program, according to a March 24 press release.

President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Eric Scott Turner, testifies before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan. 16, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Office for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (FHEO) notified the commission of the investigation into the state’s Covenant Homeownership Program.

Launched in 2024, the program offers down payment and closing cost assistance to homeowners, which, according to its website, seeks to rectify “state-sanctioned racial discrimination in housing.” Applicants for the program must have a household income at or below 120 percent of the area median income, and be a first-time homebuyer who had family living in the state before April 1968. Also, those relatives must have been black, Hispanic, Native American/Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, Korean, or Asian Indian.

Persons of European, Japanese, Arab, or Jewish ancestry do not appear to qualify, said the HUD statement.

“Fair housing is about equal rights, not extra rights. As HUD secretary, I will not stand for illegal racial and ethnic preferences that deny Americans their right to equal protection under the law,” HUD Secretary Scott Turner said in an X post.

According to the Fair Housing Act, direct providers of housing, including lending institutions, must not discriminate based on the applicant’s race or color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status, or disability.

“DEI is dead at HUD,” Turner said, referring to the so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. “HUD will work to ensure Washington state follows the law and provides equal opportunity for all citizens seeking assistance under the commission’s programs. Under President [Donald] Trump’s leadership, HUD will vigorously enforce the Fair Housing Act and ensure all Americans have an equal shot at the American Dream.”

Regarding the eligibility of certain racial groups compared to others, the FAQ section on the Covenant program’s website said that the “initial eligibility criteria are intentionally narrowly tailored. While many racial, ethnic and religious groups in Washington were subject to unjust and egregious housing discrimination, the Covenant program considers not only this history but also its current impacts.”

“Some of the groups discriminated against continue to show much lower homeownership rates compared with the general white population. These are named in the initial eligibility criteria. However, for other groups (such as Jewish residents), the data is limited when it comes to documenting the lasting impacts of historical discrimination.”

The Epoch Times reached out to the Washington State Housing Finance Commission for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

On March 16, a coalition of 16 attorneys general filed a lawsuit against HUD for withholding funding from state and local fair housing enforcement agencies, and imposing what they alleged were illegal conditions on HUD funding.

According to Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, who co-led the coalition lawsuit, the Trump administration is seeking to undermine the existing partnership, based on the Fair Housing Act, between HUD and state agencies, by attacking the states’ ability to combat housing discrimination under their own democratically enacted state laws.

“These actions are part of a broader, ongoing effort by the Trump administration to subvert the legal protections our country has put in place to combat discrimination and to tear down the hard-fought progress we have made for civil rights,” Raoul said.

In a letter sent to the Commission notifying it about the investigation, Craig W. Trainor, HUD’s assistant secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, said that the Covenant program was “groundbreaking” and “remarkably generous” but was discriminatory.

“This government-sponsored housing experiment appears to dole out spoils based on race and ancestry,” Trainor said. “[This discrimination] is morally reprehensible, socially perverse, and destructive of America’s pluralistic polity. The Trump Administration will not tolerate it. Not now. Not ever.”

Tyler Durden Wed, 03/25/2026 - 14:45