Open AI and Google, having long trained their ravenous bots on the work of newsrooms like this one, now want to throw out long-established copyright law by arguing, we kid you not, that the only way for the United States to defeat the Chinese Communist Party is for those tech giants to steal the content created with the sweat equity of America’s human journalists.

“With a Chinese Communist Party determined to overtake us by 2030,” Open AI wrote Thursday to the federal Office of Science and Technology Policy, “the Trump administration’s new action plan can ensure that American-led A.I. built on democratic principles can prevail over CCP-built, autocratic, authoritarian AI.”

Built on democratic principles? More like built on outright theft.

That’s why news organizations, including this one and the New York Times, have sued Open AI and its partner Microsoft over their breaking copyright law by vacuuming up millions of newspaper articles without permission or payment, constituting copyright infringement on a colossal scale.

Now Open AI comes back with the absurd argument that this was somehow necessary for national security.

In their letter, Sam Altman’s crew added a whole lot of obfuscating, self-serving blather about “scaling human ingenuity” and “freedom of learning and knowledge” while describing the innovations of ChatGPT as part of some great and glorious trajectory from domesticated horses to steam power to electricity to printing presses and the internet.

You see the irony there? Printing presses.

For generations, those presses sent out the work of America’s reporters, the fruits of capital invested, and hard labor performed, in city halls and crime scenes and throughout all the communities they served.  They amplified and distributed a news organization’s work, as now does the Internet.

They didn’t steal the work of someone else and then pass it off as their own.

Gutting generations of copyright protections for the benefit of AI bots would have a chilling effect not just on news organizations but on all creative content creators, from novelists to playwrights to poets. That iron-clad commitment to protecting the rights of owners of work they themselves created is precisely what distinguishes the United States from communist China, not the reverse.

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This country has dominated the world of news and information by respecting not just the precious freedom of the press but also its right to protect its work. Had it not done so, there would have been no economic base on which to build the kinds of news organizations that can, and still do, keep a check on the government. Heck, there would have been no economic basis to build anything creative whatsoever.

Securing permission from, and fairly compensating, those publishers who created this great foundation of knowledge is the right, just and American thing to do.

The government should reject these self-serving proposals and protect the work of artists, authors, photographers, journalists and all other creators and copyright holders who have been the victims of these companies.

— The Chicago Tribune

This editorial is being published in more than 60 daily newspapers throughout the MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing networks.

By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis is registering new slight improvements in his monthlong treatment for double pneumonia, the Vatican said Monday, as it also provided some details on the first photo of the pope released since his hospitalization.

The 88-year-old pontiff is now able to spend some time during the day off high flows of oxygen and use just ordinary supplemental oxygen delivered by a nasal tube, the Holy See press office said. Doctors are also trying to cut back on the amount of time he uses a noninvasive mechanical ventilation mask at night, to force his lungs to work more.

While those amount to “slight improvements,” the Vatican isn’t yet providing any timetable on when Francis might be released from the Gemelli hospital or confirming any upcoming events. Known events include a planned visit by King Charles III and Holy Week in April.

Nuns pray the rosary in St. Peter’s Square at The Vatican, Sunday, Mar. 16, 2025, for the health of Pope Francis hospitalized at Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome where he is being treated for bilateral pneumonia since Feb.14. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis)

When Francis is being wheeled to his private chapel down the hall from his hospital room, for example, he doesn’t need to be attached to the oxygen, the press office said. It was at that moment that Francis was photographed on Sunday, from behind, as he sat in his wheelchair before the chapel altar in prayer without any sign of nasal tubes.

The photo, showing Francis wearing a Lenten purple stole, marked the first image of the pope since he was admitted to Gemelli Feb. 14 with a complex lung infection that developed into double pneumonia. It followed an audio message Francis recorded March 6 in which he thanked people for their prayers, his voice soft and labored.

Together, they suggested Francis is very much controlling how the public follows his illness to prevent it from turning into a spectacle. While many in the Vatican have held up St. John Paul II’s long and public battle with Parkinson’s disease and other ailments as a humble sign of his willingness to show his frailties, others criticized it as excessive and showy.

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Francis’ doctors told reporters on Feb. 21 that the pope authorized them to clearly explain the gravity of his situation, in detail, and their regular medical bulletins have suggested that Francis is comfortable with such information being in the public domain.

The Vatican press office said Francis approved the photo being released, but the fact that his face was hidden suggested something of a compromise in terms of how his sickness is seen visually.

Francis doesn’t want to hide his illness and the difficult moment he is going through but he’s “not dramatizing it either,” noted La Repubblica’s Vatican correspondent, Iacopo Scaramuzzi.

The first three weeks of Francis’ hospitalization were marked by a rollercoaster of setbacks, including respiratory crises, mild kidney failure and a severe coughing fit in which he inhaled vomit. Over the last week, his condition has stabilized and doctors said he was no longer in imminent danger of death. With gradual improvements, the Vatican has suspended morning updates and is issuing less frequent medical bulletins. The next one is not expected before Wednesday.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

State Republicans introduced a bill Monday to define “Trump Derangement Syndrome” as a mental illness under Minnesota statute.

The bill defines Trump Derangement Syndrome as “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal persons that is in reaction to the policies and presidencies of President Donald J. Trump.”

“Mental illness is a real problem for many, and I’ve supported resources for those who need help,” said Sen. Eric Lucero, R-St. Michael, in a statement Monday. “But Democrats need to get real and understand they can’t blame Trump for everything they’ve done. That’s exactly what this bill is highlighting.”

Lucero said that in the weeks since Trump took office, Democrats have attempted to make Trump the “scapegoat” for Minnesota’s problems, including the state’s $6 billion looming deficit.

The bill refers to the “syndrome” as “Trump-induced general hysteria, which produces an inability to distinguish between legitimate policy differences and signs of psychic pathology in President Donald J. Trump’s behavior.”

The bill sites “verbal expressions of intense hostility toward President Donald J. Trump; and overt acts of aggression and violence against anyone supporting President Donald J. Trump or anything that symbolizes President Donald J. Trump.”

Majority Leader Erin Murphy, DFL-St. Paul, said in a statement Monday that the bill should be withdrawn immediately and that it “trivializes” mental health issues.

“This is possibly the worst bill in Minnesota history,” she said. “If it is meant as a joke, it is a waste of staff time and taxpayer resources that trivializes serious mental health issues. If the authors are serious, it is an affront to free speech and an expression of a dangerous level of loyalty to an authoritarian president.”

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CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Debates over President Donald Trump’s hardline migration policies are focused on the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, to some a ruthless transnational criminal organization and to others the pretext for an overhyped anti-migrant narrative.

Trump labeled the Tren de Aragua an invading force on Saturday when he invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a little-used authority from 1798 that allows the president to deport any noncitizen during wartime. Hours later, the Trump administration transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador even as a federal judge issued an order temporarily barring the deportations. Flights were in the air when the ruling came down.

The Alien Enemies Act requires a president to declare the United States at war, giving him extraordinary powers to detain or remove foreigners to whom immigration or criminal laws otherwise protect. It had been used only three times — the last time to justify the detention of Japanese-American civilians during World War II.

The Trump administration has not identified the more than 200 immigrants deported, provided any evidence they are in fact members of Tren de Aragua or that they committed any crimes in the United States.

Gang gains notoriety in the US

From the heartland to major cities like New York and Chicago, the gang has been blamed for sex trafficking, drug smuggling and police shootings, as well as the exploitation of the nearly 1 million Venezuelan migrants have crossed into the U.S. in recent years. Trump told Congress this month that a Venezuelan migrant found guilty of murdering 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley on the University of Georgia campus was a member of the gang.

In this photo provided by El Salvador’s presidential press office, prison guards transfer deportees from the U.S., alleged to be Venezuelan gang members, to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (El Salvador presidential press office via AP)

The size of the gang is unclear as is the extent to which its actions are coordinated across state lines and national borders.

The Venezuelan gang entered U.S. political discourse after footage from a security camera surfaced on social media last summer showing heavily armed men entering an apartment in the Denver suburb of Aurora shortly before a fatal shooting outside. In response, Trump vowed to “ liberate Aurora ” from Venezuelans he falsely said were “taking over the whole town.”

The city initially downplayed concerns. But most of the apartment complex was closed under an emergency order last month after officials said they suspected Tren de Aragua members in the kidnapping and assault of two residents.

Most of the men seen in the video have been arrested, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement accusing them of gang membership.

The Tren originated in an infamous prison

The Tren, which means “train” in Spanish, traces its origin more than a decade ago to an infamously lawless prison with hardened criminals in the central state of Aragua. It has expanded in recent years as more than 8 million Venezuelans fled economic turmoil under President Nicolás Maduro’s rule and migrated to other parts of Latin America or the U.S.

FILE – Soldiers raid the Tocorón Penitentiary Center, where the Tren de Aragua gang originated, in Tocorón, Venezuela, Sept. 20, 2023. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, File)

Countries such as Peru and Colombia — all with large populations of Venezuelan migrants — have accused the group of being behind a spree of violence in a region that has long had some of the highest murder rates in the world. Some of its crimes have spread panic in poor neighborhoods, where the gang extorts local businesses and illegally charges residents for “protection.”

The gang operates as a loose network in the U.S. Tattoos, which are commonly used by Central American gangs, aren’t required for those affiliated with the Tren, said Ronna Risquez, a Venezuelan journalist who wrote a 2023 book about the gang’s origins.

Trump targets the Tren

On his first day in office, Trump he took steps to designate the gang a “foreign terrorist organization” alongside several Mexican drug cartels. The Biden administration had sanctioned the gang and offered $12 million in rewards for the arrest of three of its leaders.

Trump’s executive order Saturday accused the gang of working closely with top Maduro officials — most notably the former vice president and one-time governor of Aragua state, Tareck El Aissami, — to infiltrate migration flows, flood the U.S. with cocaine and plot against the country.

“The result is a hybrid criminal state that is perpetrating an invasion of and predatory incursion into the United States, and which poses a substantial danger to the United States,” Trump’s executive order alleged.

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Wes Tabor, who headed the Drug Enforcement Administration’s office in Venezuela when the gang first came onto law enforcement radar, said Trump’s decision to give the DEA and other federal agencies authority to carry out immigrant arrests is a “force multiplier” that will curtail the Tren’s activities in the U.S.

Tabor said authorities need to build a robust database like it did when combating El Salvador’s MS-13 containing biometric data, arrest information and intelligence from foreign law enforcement partners.

“We have to use a hammer on an ant because if we don’t it will get out of control,” said Tabor. “We need to smash it now.”

Venezuelan officials protest

In Venezuela, officials originally expressed bafflement at the U.S. interest in the Tren, claiming it had dismantled the gang after retaking control of the prison where the group was born.

As Trump’s immigration crackdown has intensified, they’ve conditioned their cooperation with U.S. deportation flights on progress in other areas in the long-strained bilateral relationship.

Last month, authorities gave a hero’s welcome to some 190 Venezuelan migrants deported by Trump, accusing the U.S. of spreading an “ill-intentioned” and “false” narrative about the Tren in the U.S. They said most Venezuelan immigrants are decent, hard-working people and that U.S. officials were looking to stigmatize the South American nation.

Over the weekend they protested the use of Trump’s invocation of the wartime rules, likening it to the “darkest episodes in human history, from slavery to the horror of the Nazi concentration camps.”