By MATT O’BRIEN

OpenAI has named labor leader Dolores Huerta and three others to a temporary advisory board that will help guide the artificial intelligence company’s philanthropy as it attempts to shift itself into a for-profit business.

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Huerta, who turned 95 last week, formed the first farmworkers union with Cesar Chavez in the early 1960s and will now have a say on the direction of philanthropic initiatives that OpenAI says will consider “both the promise and risks of AI.”

The group will have just 90 days to make their suggestions.

“She recognizes the significance of AI in today’s world and anybody who’s been paying attention for the last 50 years knows she will be a force in this conversation,” said Daniel Zingale, the convener of OpenAI’s new nonprofit commission and a former adviser to three California governors.

Huerta’s advice won’t be binding but the presence of a social activist icon could be influential as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman attempts a costly restructuring of the San Francisco company’s corporate governance, which requires the approval of California’s attorney general and others.

Another coalition of labor leaders and nonprofits recently petitioned state Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, to investigate OpenAI, halt the proposed conversion and “protect billions of dollars that are under threat as profit-driven hunger for power yields conflicts of interest.”

OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, started out in 2015 as a nonprofit research laboratory dedicated to safely building better-than-human AI that benefits humanity.

It later formed a for-profit arm and shifted most of its staff there, but is still controlled by a nonprofit board of directors. It is now trying to convert itself more fully into a for-profit corporation but faces a number of hurdles, including getting the approval of California and Delaware attorneys general, potentially buying out the nonprofit’s pricy assets and fighting a lawsuit from co-founder and early investor Elon Musk.

Backed by Japanese tech giant SoftBank, OpenAI last month said it’s working to raise $40 billion in funding, putting its value at $300 billion.

Huerta will be joined on the new advisory commission by former Spanish-language media executive Monica Lozano; Robert Ross, the recently retired president of The California Endowment; and Jack Oliver, an attorney and longtime Republican campaign fundraiser. Zingale, the group’s convener, is a former aide to California governors including Democrat Gavin Newsom and Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“We’re interested in how you put the power of AI in the hands of everyday people and the community organizations that serve them,” Zingale said in an interview Wednesday. “Because, if AI is going to bring a renaissance, or a dark age, these are the people you want to tip the scale in favor of humanity.”

The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP’s text archives.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department has shut down its office that sought to deal with misinformation and disinformation that Russia, China and Iran have been accused of spreading.

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement Wednesday that he had closed what had been known as the Global Engagement Center because it had taken actions to restrict freedom of speech in the United States and elsewhere.

The center has been a frequent target of criticism from conservatives for calling out media and online reports that it said are biased or untruthful. At times, it has identified U.S. websites and social media accounts that it argued were amplifying misinformation, particularly related to the Russia-Ukraine war.

“It is the responsibility of every government official to continuously work to preserve and protect the freedom for Americans to exercise their free speech,” Rubio said, charging that the office worked “to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving.”

Rubio said that is “antithetical” to the principles that “we should be upholding.”

Congress had supported the center’s work, as had previous State Department leadership.

“This is a deeply misleading (and) unserious portrayal of an organization focused on identifying foreign — primarily Russian — disinformation ops,” former State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a post on X.

By FATIMA HUSSEIN

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration plans to eliminate the IRS’ Direct File program, an electronic system for filing tax returns directly to the agency for free, according to two people familiar with the decision.

The program developed during Joe Biden’s presidency was credited by users with making tax filing easy, fast and economical. But Republican lawmakers and commercial tax preparation companies complained it was a waste of taxpayer money because free filing programs already exist, although they are hard to use.

The program had been in limbo since the start of the Trump administration as Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency have slashed their way through the federal government. Musk posted in February on his social media site, X, that he had “deleted” 18F, a government agency that worked on technology projects such as Direct File.

There was some hope that Musk, with his DOGE team of savvy computer programmers, could take over Direct File and improve it. But the two people familiar with the decision to end Direct File said its future became clear when the IRS staff assigned to the program were told in mid-March to stop working on its development for the 2026 tax filing season.

The two people were not authorized to publicly discuss the plans and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Adam Ruben, a vice president at the liberal-leaning Economic Security Project, said “the fix was in from the beginning.”

“It is an outrage to see everyday taxpayers play no role in this decision,” he said. “Cutting costs and saving money for families were just empty campaign promises.”

But David Williams, president of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, which describes itself as a nonpartisan organization that disseminates research and analysis on the government’s effects on the economy, said Direct File was “problematic” from day 1, citing the program’s costs and noting that many people who started the process never finished. According to the IRS 423,450 taxpayers logged into Direct File and 140,803 submitted accepted returns in 2024.

“From hidden costs to taxpayer confusion, the program is riddled with issues,” Williams said.

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Direct File was rolled out as a pilot program in 2024 after the IRS was tasked with looking into how to create a “direct file” system as part of the money it received from the Inflation Reduction Act signed into law by Biden in 2022. The Democratic administration spent tens of millions of dollars developing the program.

Last May, the agency announced that the program would be made permanent.

But the IRS has faced intense blowback to Direct File from private tax preparation companies that have made billions from charging people to use their software and have spent millions lobbying Congress. The average American typically spends about $140 preparing returns each year.

The IRS accepted 140,803 returns filed by taxpayers using Direct File in the 12 states where it was available last tax season. It was expanded to include half the country this year. It is unclear how many taxpayers have used Direct File this year.

Amanda Renteria, CEO of Code for America, which worked with the IRS to create a state tax filing integration program for Direct File, said the decision was “a betrayal of public trust at precisely the time government should be demonstrating its ability to deliver basic services effectively.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a proponent of building out Direct File, said in an emailed statement that Trump and Musk “are going after Direct File because it stops giant tax prep companies from ripping taxpayers off for services that should be free. Americans want a free and easy way to file their taxes — Trump and Musk want to take that away.”

Following a lawsuit involving posters featuring Black Lives Matter, the Lakeville Area Schools Board of Education approved a $30,000 settlement April 8.

In a lawsuit filed more than two years ago, a group of residents alleged their First Amendment rights were violated when the school district allowed posters featuring “Black Lives Matter” to be placed in classrooms, while not permitting the display of posters that read “All Lives Matter” or “Blue Lives Matter.”

In a 5-1 vote, with board member Amber Cameron absent and member Carly Anderson opposed, the board approved the settlement April 8.

“We appreciate the many different perspectives shared. Lakeville Area Schools remains committed to continuing to partner with our families and community to provide a safe, respectful, engaging, rigorous, and collaborative learning environment where every student belongs, is valued and can succeed,” the district said in a statement provided Wednesday.

Ahead of voting, Anderson said she felt the settlement approval was a premature decision, referencing the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision in June to reverse the lawsuit’s dismissal by a lower court.

“The Eighth Circuit decision was based on assuming that everything that the claimants were claiming could be possible in any scenario. And so to me, I believe we should have gone through the discovery process, which would have meant gathering all the information relevant to the case. In that situation, what I’ve understood from our legal counsel is that we are on very good footing, that they felt like what our district did was within the grounds of government speech, and that we had an excellent case,” Anderson said.

In January, the Lakeville school board voted to remove the series of posters from district buildings.

The posters are part of a series of “inclusive” posters ordered by the district in 2021, two of which said “Black Lives Matter,” and were distributed to staff members when requested.

Upper Midwest Law Center represented plaintiffs Bob and Cynthia Cajune, Kalynn Kay Aaker, and Aaker’s minor children in the lawsuit, which argued that the district violated their First Amendment rights “by engaging in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.”

“With the Eighth Circuit’s decision clearly signaling that the school district’s policy was constitutionally unsound, Lakeville Schools wisely reversed their policy and removed the posters from district facilities,” Upper Midwest Law Center said in a statement on its website. “Because that was what the plaintiffs had sought in the lawsuit, they agreed to dismiss their claims in the settlement in return for the District paying $30,000 in legal fees to the Upper Midwest Law Center.”

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