The Headlines - The Trump Family Cashes In, and Why Chatbots Are Wrong More Than Ever

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

Plus, 200 snake bites later… On Today’s Episode: A Trump Family Push for Profit on Three Continents Breaks Historical Norms, by Eric Lipton and David Yaffe-BellanyTrump Says ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked About Due Process and Upholding Constitution, by Jonathan SwanTrump Says He Wants Alcatraz Restored as a Prison, by Devlin Barrett and Shawn HublerStudent Debt Collections Restart on May 5. Here’s What to Know, by Tara Siegel BernardAs Gaza Siege Grinds On, Gazan Children Go Hungry and Patients Die, by Erika Solomon and Rawan Sheikh AhmadSean Combs Jury to Decide if He Led an Entourage or a Criminal Enterprise, by Julia JacobsA.I. Is Getting More Powerful, but Its Hallucinations Are Getting Worse, by Cade Metz and Karen WeiseUniversal Antivenom May Grow Out of Man Who Let Snakes Bite Him 200 Times, by Apoorva MandavilliTune in every weekday morning. To get our full audio journalism and storytelling experience, download the New York Times Audio app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.Tell us what you think at: [e-mail]. 

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Monday, May 5th. Here's what we're covering. The Times has been looking at how President Trump's sons, Eric and Donald Jr., have been on a blitz of foreign trips and high-profile business deals. Just in the past 10 days, Donald Trump Jr. has been on a paid speaking tour called Trump Business Vision 2025 that had stops in Hungary, Romania, Serbia, and Bulgaria and included meetings with government leaders. At the same time,

On behalf of myself, on behalf of my family, we love Dubai, we love the Gulf, we love the people. Eric Trump, who the president put in charge of the Maine family business, We love the people. Eric Trump, who the president put in charge of the Maine family business, has been racing around the Middle East, celebrating a $2 billion cryptocurrency investment and multiple real estate deals that included a luxury hotel in Dubai and a golf course in Qatar. The moves are a 180 from Trump's first term when his family refrained from signing international business deals because of the potential for conflicts of interest. Now the family is going full steam ahead. Some of the deals have even directly involved foreign governments.

The White House has said there are no ethics issues because Trump's sons run the businesses. But President Trump's financial disclosure report, which he's legally required to file, shows that he benefits financially from many of the projects. And while the relatives of other presidents, including Hunter Biden and the brothers of Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush, also had business dealings that raised ethical questions, Trump's personal stake is what sets these apart. One presidential historian said, looking at the Trump family's recent business dealings, that when it comes to the conflicts of interest,

quote, there's nothing like it. There is just nothing like it. Now three more quick updates on the Trump administration. Your secretary of state says everyone who's here, citizens and non-citizens, deserve due process. Do you agree, Mr. President? I don't know. I'm not a lawyer. In an interview on NBC this weekend, President Trump repeatedly said he didn't know whether

every person in the U.S. is entitled to due process, despite the fact that it's explicitly spelled out in the Fifth Amendment. He also said that allowing people their full legal rights would slow down his push for mass deportations. It might say that, but if you're talking about that, then we'd have to have a million or two million or three million trials. When asked if, as president, he needs to uphold the Constitution, Trump replied again, I don't know. Also yesterday, the president said he had instructed federal law enforcement authorities

to renovate and reopen Alcatraz, the island prison in the San Francisco Bay. He said it would become a maximum security facility for people convicted of violent crimes. It wasn't immediately clear how realistic that is since the prison has been closed since the early 60s and the administration plans to cut billions of dollars from the Justice Department's budget. And as of today, the last bit of pandemic-era relief for student loan debt is going away.

The administration says it will now restart forced collections on the 5 million people whose loans are in default. For the moment, that will mean borrowers could have their tax refunds withheld. Starting next month, the government will also seize money from Social Security benefits, and it's expected to eventually start taking portions of people's paychecks, too. In Gaza, it has now been more than 60 days since Israel halted all humanitarian aid from entering the territory—no food, fuel, or medicine.

Israel says it will not relent until Hamas releases the hostages it still holds. But humanitarian groups warn that the total blockade violates international law and has created catastrophic conditions. Inside Gaza, stockpiles are dwindling. The Times spoke with a man who says his family now eats once a day to try and stretch out what they have left, and they cook on a fire fueled by torn-up shoes because there's no gas. Videos from the territory show sickly skeletal children, and doctors tell the Times that the lack of food is having devastating ripple effects.

For example, burn victims hit in Israeli strikes aren't getting enough nutrition for their skin grafts to heal. Israeli authorities say that the United Nations, aid groups, and private businesses brought enough supplies in during the ceasefire to provide for the population, and they accuse Hamas of hoarding and depriving Gazans. But aid groups tell The Times a lot has simply run out, and while there are some warehouses still stocked, aid groups say they can't reach them.

The UN estimates that Israel's new evacuation and no-go zones in Gaza have cut off access to about 70% of the territory. Today at a federal courthouse in Manhattan, jury selection will begin in the sex trafficking and racketeering case against Sean Combs, known as Diddy and Puff Daddy. Prosecutors allege that for years, the music mogul used his employees, including security guards and personal assistants, to arrange days-long, drug-fueled gatherings

where Combs assaulted women. They say Combs had his team then deal with the aftermath, bribing witnesses and keeping victims hidden from the public until their injuries healed. Prosecutors say his actions amount to running a criminal enterprise, which could earn him He's been held in a New York jail since he was arrested in September. Multiple judges ruled he couldn't be released on bail since they thought he might intimidate witnesses and be a threat to the community. In the two years since AI tools like ChatGPT were released and seemed to kind of take over the world, the companies behind them had been steadily improving their products and making them more and more accurate. But with a wave of recent updates, as they've rolled out what are known as reasoning systems, the number

of mistakes the tools make has skyrocketed. The reasoning systems seem to have made the tools better at math, but worse at facts. They're now generating more so-called hallucinations in response to what seem like basic questions. For example, ask a chatbot, what's a good marathon on the West Coast? And it might suggest a race in Philadelphia. The problem is widespread. Reasoning models from Google, DeepSeek, and OpenAI, the company behind chat GPT, are all hallucinating at higher rates than they were before. On one test of a new chatbot system, it was wrong 79% of the time.

Why is that? No one has a clear answer. But some experts say it could be because of how the new reasoning systems are designed to work. They take a little extra time to answer a question by basically breaking it down step by step behind the scenes. That process, though, could mean that small errors along the way compound, leading to a final answer that's just wrong. And finally, scientists say they've taken a significant step forward in creating a universal anti-venom for poisonous snake bites.

And a big part of that breakthrough comes from a basement in Wisconsin. That's where a man named Tim Freedy built up his venomous snake collection. Over the course of nearly two decades, Friede amassed dozens of venomous snakes and allowed the snakes to bite him about 200 times. He even filmed it happening. Arm is very swollen. It's killing me. Over the years, he also injected himself

with more than 600 calibrated doses of venom to build up his immunity to snake bites, his own personal experiment. Now, scientists have identified antibodies in his blood that neutralize the poison in whole or in part of cobras, mambas, and other deadly species. It could help solve a global health problem. Snake bites kill an estimated 120,000 people a year,

and the danger's only increasing. People are encountering snakes more often these days because of deforestation and changing climates. For the record, Freedy doesn't do the snake bite thing anymore. He says there was at least one coma plus blackouts, anaphylactic shock, and his personal experiments took over his life a bit. He says he misses the snakes, but not the bites. Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, Times chief economics correspondent Ben Castleman answers listeners'

questions about the economy. That's next in the New York Times audio app, or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.