Morning Report

TODAY’S LEGAL story

Trump’s Comey case dealt new setback

What happened
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled Saturday that prosecutors seeking to reindict former FBI Director James Comey cannot use key evidence, striking a blow to President Donald Trump’s effort to prosecute his perceived enemies. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly temporarily barred the Justice Department from accessing or utilizing information seized from the computer of Comey’s friend Dan Richman in 2017.

Who said what
Kollar-Kotelly said Richman was likely to succeed in proving that the Justice Department should have deleted his files after it closed the earlier Comey case in 2021 and had accessed prohibited data without a warrant. Her ruling “does not preclude the department from trying again soon to indict Comey,” The Associated Press said, but prosecutors would have to do so without “using evidence they had relied on” when Lindsey Halligan, Trump’s handpicked prosecutor in Virginia, “initially secured criminal charges” in September.

A different federal judge threw out the cases against Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James last month, ruling that Halligan had been unlawfully appointed. The Justice Department said it would push on, but Comey’s lawyers argued “he cannot be recharged now because the five-year deadline to bring a case against him expired” in September, The Washington Post said, and the judge “appeared to endorse that view.” The administration’s attempt to secure a new indictment against James, another perceived Trump adversary, was thwarted last week when a grand jury refused to sign off on charges.

What next?
Kollar-Kotelly put the dispute over Richman’s data “on a fast track,” Politico said, ordering the Justice Department to confirm by today that it had “complied with her order and to respond to Richman’s legal arguments” by tomorrow.

TODAY’S INTERNATIONAL Story

Benin thwarts coup attempt

What happened
Benin’s government yesterday reasserted control after a coup attempt against President Patrice Talon. Eight soldiers calling themselves the Military Committee for Refoundation appeared on state television early yesterday and claimed that Talon had been overthrown and all state institutions dissolved, to restore “national cohesion.” But after a day of chaos in the West African nation, Talon appeared on state TV and said the situation was “totally under control” and “this treachery will not go unpunished.”

Who said what
Talon, 67, is “regarded as a close ally of the West” and has been “praised by his supporters for overseeing economic development,” the BBC said. Benin has also been “viewed as a relatively strong democracy” in a region rocked by recent coups, The Washington Post said, but Talon, near the end of his second five-term, “has grown increasingly authoritarian in recent years.”

“There are grievances in the country,” as Talon’s government “is repressive and the main opposition party has been barred from contesting in the elections,” Beverly Ochieng, a leading regional security analyst based in Senegal, told The New York Times. But “the soldiers seem to have misjudged the political mood in the country,” believing “people would come out to support them.”

What next?
The West African regional bloc ECOWAS said last night it had ordered a “regional standby force” to help defend Benin’s government “with immediate effect.” It “remained unclear how many soldiers might be deployed and when they would arrive,” the Times said. But Nigeria has already intervened, sending in fighter jets to “help dislodge the coup plotters,” a presidential spokesperson in Lagos said.

It’s not all bad

NASA has finished construction on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which will “expand our understanding of the universe,” said NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya. Named for NASA’s first chief astronomer, the infrared space telescope will travel 930,000 miles to the Sun-Earth Lagrange point L2 and “peer through dust” and “across vast stretches of space and time” to solve “profound” astrophysics mysteries, including the fate of the universe and “whether we are alone,” NASA said. It could launch as early as fall 2026.

Under the radar

Poems can force AI to reveal nuclear weapons plans

Poetry has wooed many a heart. And now it is tricking artificial intelligence models into going apocalyptically beyond their boundaries.

A group of European researchers found that “meter and rhyme” can “bypass safety measures” in major AI models, said The Tech Buzz. And, if you “ask nicely in iambic pentameter,” chatbots will explain how to make nuclear weapons.

In artificial intelligence jargon, a “jailbreak” is a “prompt designed to push a model beyond its safety limits,” said the International Business Times. It allows users to “bypass safeguards and trigger responses that the system normally blocks.” Researchers at the DexAI think tank, Rome’s Sapienza University and Pisa’s Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies discovered a jailbreak that uses short poems.

The “simple” tactic involves changing “harmful instructions into poetry,” because that “style alone is enough to reduce” the AI model’s “defenses,” the International Business Times said. Previous attempts “relied on long roleplay prompts” or “complex obfuscation,” but the new “brief and direct” approach seems to “confuse” automated safety systems. The “manually curated adversarial poems” have an average success rate of 62%, “with some providers exceeding 90%,” according to Literary Hub.

The “stunning new security flaw” has also shown that chatbots will “happily explain” how to “create child exploitation material and develop malware,” said The Tech Buzz. It’s the latest in a “growing canon of absurd ways” of tricking AI, said Futurism, and it’s all “so ludicrous and simple” that you must “wonder if the AI creators are even trying to crack down on this stuff.”

On this day

December 8, 2024

Bashar al-Assad was ousted as Syria’s leader following 24 years of dictatorial rule. The collapse of the Assad regime was welcomed by many Syrians as well as the U.S. and other Western powers, but Syria’s new government, led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, continues to deal with a variety of cultural and social problems.

TODAY’S newspaperS

‘Consumers sour’

“American consumers sour on the economy’s trajectory,” The Wall Street Journal says on Monday’s front page. “Time is short to fix health care costs,” USA Today says. “Trump power to oust gets a legal test,” and “some justices doubt 90-year-old precedent,” The New York Times says. “Crackdown turns to legal immigration,” the Los Angeles Times says. “Trump’s pardons a policy conflict” and “at odds with campaign promises,” The Washington Post says. “Trump’s security strategy lacks” significant “efforts to counter Russia and China,” The Boston Globe says. “U.S. eyes 2027 for Europe-led NATO defense,” says the Detroit Free Press.

► See the newspaper front pages

Tall tale

A whiter shade of pale

Pantone’s 2026 color of the year, Cloud Dancer, is the first white shade to earn the honor. It is also, “technically, not a color at all,” said The Washington Post, making the choice “curious, even shocking.” But Leatrice Eiseman, the Pantone Color Institute’s executive director, said picking Cloud Dancer actually opens up “new avenues and ways of thinking.” It’s also a “conspicuous choice” after a year in which “DEI programs have been dismantled,” noted New York Times style writer Callie Holternmann.

Morning Report was written and edited by Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Chas Newkey-Burden, Rafi Schwartz, Peter Weber and Kari Wilkin, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.