By MATTHEW LEE, REGINA GARCIA CANO and JACQUELYN MARTIN, Associated Press

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday that the United States is designating two Ecuadorian gangs as foreign terrorist organizations in the Trump administration’s latest move against cartels.

The announcement came as Rubio traveled to Ecuador to meet with its leaders in a trip to Latin America this week that has been overshadowed by a U.S. military strike against a similarly designated gang, Tren de Aragua, that has raised concerns in the region about whether the Trump administration will step up military activity to combat drug trafficking and illegal migration.

The two new designees, Los Lobos and Los Choneros, are Ecuadorian gangs blamed for much of the violence that began since the COVID-19 pandemic. The designation, Rubio said, brings “all sorts of options” for the U.S. government to work in conjunction with the government of Ecuador to crack down on these groups.

That includes the ability to kill them as well as take action against the properties and banking accounts in the U.S. for the group’s members and people with ties to the criminal organizations, Rubio said, adding it would also help with intelligence sharing.

Rubio called them “these vicious animals, these terrorists”

Rubio’s meetings in Quito on Thursday follow talks a day earlier with Mexican leaders that were overshadowed by the U.S. military strike on suspected Tren de Aragua drug runners in the southern Caribbean.

The Trump administration asserts that it targeted a Venezuelan drug-running ship crewed by members of Tren de Aragua. U.S. officials say the vessel’s cargo was intended for the United States and that the strike killed 11 people.

Rubio defended the action and offered no justification other than to say the boat posed an “immediate threat” to the U.S. and that Trump opted to “blow it up” rather than follow what had been standard procedure to stop and board, arrest the crew and seize any contraband on board.

“Interdiction doesn’t work,” Rubio said Wednesday. “Instead of interdicting it, on the president’s orders, we blew it up. And it’ll happen again. Maybe it’s happening right now, I don’t know, but the point is the president of the United States is going to wage war on narco-terrorist organizations.”

The strike got a mixed reaction from leaders around Latin America, where the U.S. history of military intervention and gunboat diplomacy is still fresh. Many, like officials in Mexico, were careful not to outright condemn the attack but stressed the importance of protecting national sovereignty and warning that expanded U.S. military involvement might actually backfire.

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Mexico Foreign Affairs Secretary Ramón de la Fuente, speaking to reporters alongside Rubio, emphasized his country’s preference for “nonintervention, peaceful solution of conflicts.”

Ecuador has its own issues with narcotics trafficking and also has been looked to by the Trump administration as a possible destination to deport non-Ecuadorian migrants from the United States. U.S. officials have said they would like to secure an agreement with Ecuador that would have it accept such deportees, but the status of negotiations with Quito was not clear.

Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, on Thursday thanked Rubio for the U.S. efforts to “actually eliminate any terrorist threat.” Before their meeting, Rubio had said on social media that the U.S. and Ecuador are “aligned as key partners on ending illegal immigration and combatting transnational crime and terrorism.”

The latest U.N. World Drug Report says various countries in South America, including Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, reported larger cocaine seizures in 2022 than in 2021, but it does not give Venezuela the outsize role that the White House has in recent months.

“The impact of increased cocaine trafficking has been felt in Ecuador in particular, which has seen a wave of lethal violence in recent years linked to both local and transnational crime groups, most notably from Mexico and the Balkan countries,” the report says.

Violence has skyrocketed in Ecuador since the COVID-19 pandemic, as drug traffickers expanded operations in the country and took advantage of the nation’s banana industry.

The South American country is the world’s largest exporter of bananas, shipping about 6.5 million metric tons (7.2 million tons) a year by sea. Traffickers find containers filled with bananas the perfect vehicle to smuggle their product.

In addition, cartels from Mexico, Colombia and the Balkans have settled in Ecuador because it uses the U.S. dollar and has weak laws and institutions, along with a network of long-established, ruthless gangs that are eager for work.

Ecuador also gained prominence in the global cocaine trade after political changes in Colombia last decade. Coca bush fields in Colombia have been moving closer to the border with Ecuador due to the breakup of criminal groups after the 2016 demobilization of the rebel group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known by its Spanish acronym FARC.

Rubio is also visiting the Andean country to argue against its close ties and reliance on China.

By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press

Artificial intelligence, apparently, is the new “fake news.”

Blaming AI is an increasingly popular strategy for politicians seeking to dodge responsibility for something embarrassing — among others. AI isn’t a person, after all. It can’t leak or file suit. It does make mistakes, a credibility problem that makes it hard to determine fact from fiction in the age of mis- and disinformation.

And when truth is hard to discern, the untruthful benefit, analysts say. The phenomenon is widely known as “the liar’s dividend.”

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump endorsed the practice. Asked about viral footage showing someone tossing something out an upper-story White House window, the president replied, “No, that’s probably AI” — after his press team had indicated to reporters that the video was real.

But Trump, known for insisting the truth is what he says it is, declared himself all in on the AI-blaming phenomenon.

“If something happens that’s really bad,” he told reporters, “maybe I’ll have to just blame AI.”

He’s not alone.

AI is getting blamed — sometimes fairly, sometimes not

On the same day in Caracas, Venezuelan Communications Minister Freddy Ñáñez questioned the veracity of a Trump administration video it said showed a U.S. strike on a vessel in Caribbean that targeted Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang and killed 11. A video of the strike posted to Truth Social shows a long, multi-engine speedboat at sea when a bright flash of light bursts over it. The boat is then briefly seen covered in flames.

“Based on the video provided, it is very likely that it was created using Artificial Intelligence,” Ñáñez said on his Telegram account, describing “almost cartoonish animation.”

Blaming AI can at times be a compliment. (“He’s like an AI-generated player,” tennis player Alexander Bublik said of his U.S. Open opponent Jannik Sinner’s talent on ESPN ). But when used by the powerful, the practice, experts say, can be dangerous.

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Digital forensics expert Hany Farid warned for years about the growing capabilities of AI “deepfake” images, voices and video to aid in fraud or political disinformation campaigns, but there was always a deeper problem.

“I’ve always contended that the larger issue is that when you enter this world where anything can be fake, then nothing has to be real,” said Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “You get to deny any reality because all you have to say is, ‘It’s a deepfake.’”

That wasn’t so a decade or two ago, he noted. Trump issued a rare apology (“if anyone was offended”) in 2016 for his comments about touching women without their consent on the notorious “Access Hollywood” tape. His opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, said she was wrong to call some of his supporters “a basket of deplorables.”

Toby Walsh, chief scientist and professor of AI at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, said blaming AI leads to problems not just in the digital world but the real world as well.

“It leads to a dark future where we no longer hold politicians (or anyone else) accountable,” Walsh said in an email. “”It used to be that if you were caught on tape saying something, you had to own it. This is no longer the case.”

Contemplating the ‘liar’s dividend’

Danielle K. Citron of the Boston University School of Law and Robert Chesney of the University of Texas foresaw the issue in research published in 2019. In it, they describe what they called “the liar’s dividend.”

“If the public loses faith in what they hear and see and truth becomes a matter of opinion, then power flows to those whose opinions are most prominent—empowering authorities along the way,” they wrote in the California Law Review. “A skeptical public will be primed to doubt the authenticity of real audio and video evidence.”

Polling suggests many Americans are wary about AI. About half of U.S. adults said the increased use of AI in daily life made them feel “more concerned than excited,” according to a Pew Research Center poll from August 2024. Pew’s polling indicates that people have become more concerned about the increased use of AI in recent years.

Most U.S. adults appear to distrust AI-generated information when they know that’s the source, according to a Quinnipiac poll from April. About three-quarters said they could only trust the information generated by AI “some of the time” or “hardly ever.” In that poll, about 6 in 10 U.S. adults said they were “very concerned” about political leaders using AI to distribute fake or misleading information.

They have reason, and Trump has played a sizable role in muddying trust and truth.

Trump’s history of misinformation and even lies to suit his narrative predates AI. He’s famous for the use of “fake news,” a buzz term now widely known to denote skepticism about media reports. Leslie Stahl of CBS’ “60 Minutes” has said that Trump told her off camera in 2016 that he tries to “discredit” journalists so that when they report negative stories, they won’t be believed.

Trump’s claim on Tuesday that AI was behind the White House window video wasn’t his first attempt to blame AI. In 2023, he insisted that the anti-Trump Lincoln Project used AI in a video to make him “look bad.”

In the spot titled ” Feeble,” a female narrator taunts Trump. “Hey Donald … you’re weak. You seem unsteady. You need help getting around.” She questions his ”manhood,” accompanied by an image of two blue pills. The video continues with footage of Trump stumbling over words.

“The perverts and losers at the failed and once-disbanded Lincoln Project, and others, are using A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) in their Fake television commercials in order to make me look as bad and pathetic as Crooked Joe Biden,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

The Lincoln Project told The Associated Press at the time that AI was not used in the spot.

Associated Press writers Ali Swenson in New York, Matt O’Brien in Providence, Rhode Island, Linley Sanders in Washington and Jorge Rueda in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this report.

Fifty years ago, a group of New Scandia Township women wanted to raise money for town tennis courts. They formed the Scandia Tennis Association and held a fish fry. The next year, they held a brat feed. The third year was tacos – cheap to make and easy to sell – which eventually brought in enough money to build the courts.

Scandia’s annual Taco Daze festival was born.

The festival, which runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at Scandia Community Center, has grown to include a pickleball tournament; a car, truck and tractor show; a coin scramble; bingo, and a parade.

There also will be a “running of the meatballs,” a fundraiser for Gammelgården Museum, at 3:30 p.m. Saturday at the top of Oakhill Road near Elim Lutheran Church; tickets can be purchased at the Butik (the museum’s gift shop) before and during Taco Daze, and at the museum’s booth in the vendor area at the Scandia Community Center during Taco Daze.

Festival coordinator Janelle Lindberg-Kendrick said a DJ will be playing music from each of the past five decades to celebrate the festival’s 50th anniversary. The person wearing the oldest “Taco Daze” T-shirt at the festival will win a prize, she said.

Over the years, money from the event has been used to pay for fencing around the tennis courts, playground equipment, the outdoor water fountain, outdoor toilets, the new coffee machines in the community center and outdoor signs, according to a history of the event posted on the Scandia-Marine Lions Club’s website.

In 1995, the Boy Scouts took over the making of the tacos, and the Scandia-Marine Lions Club began running bingo.

For more information, go to scandiamarinelions.org/event/taco-daze.

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On Wednesday evening, the Texas Senate approved an extreme bill that, pending the governor’s signature, will empower citizens to sue anyone who “manufactures, distributes, mails, transports, delivers, prescribes, or provides” abortion pills to Texans for at least $100,000 in damages. While Texas already broadly bans abortion, with House Bill 7 Republicans aim to halt the flow of abortion medication from out of state, one of the only remaining avenues for Texans to still access this care. The measure has been sent to Governor Greg Abbott’s desk and is slated to become law in about three months, barring successful legal challenges. 

Democrats and reproductive rights advocates caution the law will instill even more fear in abortion patients—living under bans since 2021—and may lead to additional pregnancy-related deaths in Texas. 

“This bill will harm women and could even lead to more pregnant women dying because they couldn’t access life-saving medications,” said Rep. Donna Howard, an Austin Democrat and chair of the Texas Women’s Health Caucus, on the House floor before the lower chamber cast its vote late last month. “The only reason we haven’t returned to the days of [pre-Roe v. Wade] ‘coat-hanger abortions’ is because of the medication abortion pill. I ask you: ‘When will this be enough? How many women have to die or suffer severe bodily injury because they couldn’t access the care they needed?’”

State Representative Donna Howard speaks to colleagues on the House floor in May. (Jordan Vonderhaar for the Texas Observer)

The GOP-backed attempt to “crack down” on abortion pills and those who provide them could potentially impact access in much of the country and serve as a blueprint for other states to adopt, a professed goal of Texas Republicans who support the bill. 

“HB 7 exports Texas’ extreme abortion ban far beyond state borders,” said Blair Wallace, policy and advocacy strategist on reproductive freedom at the ACLU of Texas, in a statement. “It will fuel fear among manufacturers and providers nationwide, while encouraging neighbors to police one another’s reproductive lives, further isolating pregnant Texans, and punishing the people who care for them.”

Largely a revival of a bill that stalled in a House committee during the Legislature’s regular session (and also stalled during a first special session prior to the second special session that came to a close early Thursday morning), the so-called “Woman and Child Protection Act” claims to not target abortion patients. Domestic abusers or men who commit sexual assault resulting in pregnancy are not allowed to bring suit under the bill. Texas hospitals, doctors, and those who manufacture or distribute the pills for medical emergencies, ectopic pregnancies, and miscarriage management would be exempt; however, such medical gray areas have already confused and frustrated physicians, who say abortion law exceptions often don’t work in practice. 

The bill is modeled after Senate Bill 8, the 2021 “bounty hunter”-style six-week abortion ban that encouraged reproductive health vigilantism with $10,000 lawsuits and chilled abortion care in Texas nearly a year before the fall of Roe. HB 7 allows those connected to someone who seeks out abortion medication—for instance, a pregnant person’s parent or partner—to sue in Texas court a doctor, distributor, or manufacturer of the medication based anywhere in the country and reap the legislation’s hefty cash payout. 

Similar to its predecessor, HB 7 also seeks to evade judicial review by placing the power to sue in the hands of private citizens rather than state officials, preventing state court constitutional challenges to the law. It also relegates all appeals to the 15th Court of Appeals—a conservative court recently created to handle challenges to state statutes. 

Among the many troubling concerns raised by Democrats including Representative Erin Zwiener: An abortion doesn’t need to take place for someone to sue a drug manufacturer or provider under the bill; pills only need to be mailed, potentially incentivizing “sting operations” by anti-abortion activists. HB 7 also allows Texans unrelated to the person ordering the pills to bring suit—but they can only be awarded $10,000 with the rest directed toward a charitable organization of their choice (as long as they or their family members don’t financially benefit from the organization). Advocates with the anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life have already openly suggested they could be a recipient of those funds. 

While both a near-total abortion ban and a law prohibiting the mailing of abortion pills went into effect in 2021, the latter has been difficult to enforce due to the fact that proving a violation of the law requires accessing people’s mail, a federal crime. 

With travel time, distance, and costs for abortion care rising dramatically, many abortion-seekers in Texas have relied on mail delivery of pills through online providers like Aid Access and out-of-state physicians, as a lifeline for care. About 2,800 Texas residents obtain abortion medication from telehealth providers across state lines per month, according to the Society of Family Planning. Texas accounts for the largest share of these types of patients nationally. (Across the United States, the total number of abortions has slightly increased since Roe was overturned in 2022, in part due to mail order access, raising the ire of abortion opponents.) Anti-abortion advocates in Texas and elsewhere consider these remaining channels a nagging loophole in abortion law and have worked to find ways to stop pill providers.

“We are cracking down, being vigilant, and giving Texans the tools necessary to enforce our existing abortion laws,” bill author and representative Jeff Leach, a Plano Republican, told a House committee last month. “I believe this bill provides the nation’s strongest tool to protect Texans’ unborn and their moms. Texas is proudly leading the charge and we hope other states will follow.” 

Republicans and anti-abortion advocates have pushed the bill on the premise that women are being “victimized” by “dangerous” abortion pills, despite more than two decades of documented scientific evidence that proves mifepristone and misoprostol, the most common pill combination, are safe and effective drugs. 

In reality, the process entails minimal health risk, and legal abortion care overall is shown to be 14 times safer than childbirth. There were five deaths associated with mifepristone use for every one million people in the country since 2000, amounting to a 0.0005% death rate, according to a CNN analysis of federal Food and Drug Administration data. The risk of death by Penicillin is four times greater while Viagra is nearly ten times deadlier, as Howard noted during debate on the floor. Last month, more than 260 researchers, including those with the University of California-based group Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, sent a letter to the FDA affirming the 25-year rigorous safety record of mifepristone. 

HB 7 is part of a broader, aggressive effort by Texas officials and anti-abortion advocates to attack individuals and groups that supply abortion pills to Texans. In an ongoing legal battle that could potentially reach the U.S. Supreme Court, Attorney General Ken Paxton sued a New York-based doctor in 2024 for allegedly mailing abortion pills to a patient in Texas and, last month, sent cease and desist letters to abortion pill support groups in an attempt to put “an immediate end” to the shipment of abortion-inducing drugs across state lines. Paxton has also asked to join a lawsuit that seeks to restrict the FDA’s use of mifepristone, including the agency’s allowing it to be sent by mail.

Jonathan F. Mitchell, architect of the Texas abortion private enforcement scheme, is also working to bring down out-of-state providers, recently targeting a California doctor in federal court on behalf of a Galveston man who claims the doctor sent his girlfriend medication. 

Some of these efforts are being thwarted by the “shield laws” of other states, measures put in place to protect doctors in abortion-legal states like California and New York from being sued by states where abortion is banned. HB 7 is crafted to directly bypass these shield laws, setting up “interstate legal warfare,” according to Democrats including state Senator Molly Cook, who stressed that the bill is rife with constitutional violations

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick presides over the Senate on May 20. (Jordan Vonderhaar for the Texas Observer)

“This bill doesn’t stop at our borders,” said Senator Carol Alvarado, a Houston Democrat, on the floor shortly before HB 7’s passage. “Providers outside Texas can be sued in Texas courts for lawful conduct in their own states. This sets a dangerous precedent; it flies in the face of state’s rights and contradicts the rationale behind the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs that each state should set its own laws on abortion.”

Angel Foster heads the Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project, a telemedicine abortion pill service founded in 2023. One-third, or roughly 800, of the project’s patients per month are from Texas. Despite the threat of litigation, Foster’s organization will not succumb to fear and halt her practice of serving Texans; she still feels confident in protection from her state’s shield law. 

“This Texas law would be a tremendous overreach and is meant to scare us away from helping our patients. We know that blocking access to pills is a huge part of the anti-abortion movement’s agenda today,” Foster told the Observer. “But our mantra is ‘no anticipatory obedience.’ We are not deterred in our mission. We will not stop our work.”

The post Texas Legislature Passes ‘Bounty Hunter’ Ban on Abortion Pills appeared first on The Texas Observer.