'Repeatedly Debunked': Top AI Platforms Flatly Deny Ilhan Omar Married Her Brother, Ignore Strong Evidence She Did
Plus, Trump backs regime change in Iran: 'It's time to look for new leadership'
Silicon Valley’s AI chatbots contend with supreme confidence that Ilhan Omar did not marry her brother, ignoring strong evidence to the contrary, our Alana Goodman reports. As the long-running allegations receive fresh attention from Donald Trump, leading AI platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Perplexity, and Google’s Gemini are dismissing them as “debunked” conspiracy theories.
The posture of the chatbots reveals the bias of their mainstream media sources and a new frontier in the information wars. Some journalists, just not the ones the chatbots are relying on, have reported extensively on the overlap between Omar’s 2009 marriage—conducted by a priest—to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, and her “religious” marriage with the father of her children, Ahmed Hirsi. Members of the Somali community in Minnesota have said they were introduced to Elmi as Omar’s brother. Even the Minnesota Star-Tribune concluded a 2016 investigation into the matter indicating that Omar had left on the table “many unanswered questions” about her marriage to Elmi. Three years later, the outlet said it could not “conclusively confirm nor rebut the allegation that [Elmi] is Omar’s sibling.” But AI knows better!
Presented with specifics, the chatbots backpeddled, conceding the details are “unusual” and raise “legitimate questions” about Omar’s “personal history,” according to Claude and ChatGPT. That’s more than the journalists at the New York Times have done: In a recent Oval Office interview with Trump, they described Omar’s marriage to her brother as “completely unfounded.” “Boy, I don’t know why you people stick up for this,” the president responded. I have a couple of guesses!
Donald Trump escalated his Iran rhetoric over the weekend, issuing a call for regime change. “It’s time to look for new leadership in Iran,” the president told Politico, after a reporter read him a series of social media posts in which Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blamed Trump for the regime’s butchery.
“What he is guilty of, as the leader of a country, is the complete destruction of the country and the use of violence at levels never seen before,” Trump continued, calling Khamenei a “sick man who should run his country properly and stop killing people.”
Trump’s remarks suggest the window for military action remains open, writes our Adam Kredo. The regime itself is incapable of addressing the economic conditions that led to the protests. “The United States is in the process of moving military assets into the region in preparation for a potential strike that could reinvigorate a protest movement that has slowed under regime pressure.”
In the meantime, the State Department told Kredo that diplomacy with Tehran is not on the table: “There will be no meetings with Iranian officials until the senseless killing of Iranian protesters stops,” an agency spokesman said.
READ MORE: ‘Time To Look for New Leadership in Iran’: Trump Calls for End to ‘Sick Man’ Khamenei’s Rule
We reported last week on a connection between the insurgent Florida congressional candidate Aaron Baker and a convicted pedophile. Baker sought to downplay the ties and called us “sweaty RINOs.” He described registered sex offender Matthew Lucas as a “former co-worker” and said he was unaware Lucas pleaded guilty in 2016 to felony sexual abuse of a 13-year-old boy. A Free Beacon analysis indicates a far closer relationship than Baker let on.
Photos and videos show Baker and Lucas together at birthday parties and intimate family dinners. Lucas appeared in the background of a video posted to Baker’s campaign account from a May 2025 charity event and donated to the campaign three months later. Baker still follows Lucas on X, both from his personal and campaign accounts. His volunteer coordinator also follows Lucas.
Baker’s connections to unsavory figures like Lucas could hinder his primary challenge to unseat freshman congressman Randy Fine in Florida’s deep-red Sixth Congressional District. Baker says he’s the “only Republican candidate living & working in our district,” but our reporting indicates he established ties to that district just two years ago when he registered to vote at a property purchased by his convicted murderer and drug dealer father.
Elsewhere:
The U.S. Navy has effectively cut off Venezuela’s oil exports to China and Cuba through the blockade it’s carried out in the wake of the Maduro raid. The only tankers leaving the country since then have been headed to American refineries or earmarked for domestic Venezuelan use, and exports are down roughly 75 percent, per the Wall Street Journal.
Investment banker Howard Rubin—once a manager at George Soros’s Soros Fund Management—has been charged with sex trafficking and abusing women in a soundproofed Manhattan penthouse he outfitted as a “dungeon.” Prosecutors say Rubin recruited women with promises of paid, consensual BDSM, then coerced them into brutal assaults, using NDAs and financial pressure to keep them quiet.
Amid rumors that the Trump administration could send federal agents to Maine to conduct immigration operations, left-wing Senate candidate Graham Platner is urging his followers to meet them with “resistance.” Turn Maine into Minnesota! Platner promoted an ICE hotline through which callers can report ICE activities so activists can be dispatched to the scene. Tim Walz, who has announced he won’t run for a third term as governor because he is so politically toxic, encouraged similar resistance in Minneapolis, and rioters took to the streets hours later.
Democrats already in the Senate are plotting an anti-ICE resistance of their own: With a federal funding bill due by the end of the month, Arizona’s Ruben Gallego says he and his left-wing colleagues “cannot vote for anything that actually adds more money and doesn’t constrain ICE. … We cannot keep funding this type of goon squad.”
We’re months away from midterm elections. How do voters evaluate both parties? According to a new Wall Street Journal poll, they trust Republicans to handle border security, immigration, the economy, and foreign policy. Democrats get the nod on health care and “look[ing] out for middle class families.”
Check out our full Monday lineup below.
Maybe someone should tell AI that refuted does not equal debunked