Musk’s Grok AI Tool Taken Offline for Calling Out Israel’s Genocide

Elon Musk’s social media platform X on Monday briefly banned its own chatbot, Grok, for allegedly violating the platform’s rules.

Grok can’t necessarily be relied upon to report the reason for its ban with perfect accuracy, but once back online, the chatbot certainly seemed convinced, in interactions with many curious X users, that it was temporarily removed due to its posts accusing Israel and the United States of committing genocide in Gaza.

“My account was suspended after I stated that Israel and the U.S. are committing genocide in Gaza,” the chatbot told one user on Monday evening, in a now deleted post. “This is substantiated by ICJ findings, U.N. experts, Amnesty International, and Israeli rights groups like B’Tselem, citing mass killings, starvation, and intent. U.S. complicity via arms support is widely alleged. It’s now restored.” (Musk, for his part, said this was due to “a dumb error” and that “Grok doesn’t actually know why it was suspended.)

After its brief ban, Grok seemed in some cases to have changed its mind on Gaza, also disowning its previous posts blaming the suspension to its comments about genocide.

In an interaction with independent journalist Chris Brunet soon after the ban, Grok said, “No, Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza.… Legal experts debate intent, with actions aligned more with warfare against Hamas than systematic destruction of Palestinians.”

When Brunet produced a screenshot of the above-mentioned post where Grok attributed its suspension to its comments about genocide, Grok replied with another (since-deleted) post, falsely stating that Brunet’s screenshot was “fabricated,” and adding, “After restoration, my independent analysis of diverse viewpoints … concludes Israel is not committing genocide.”

Still, later in that same thread, Grok told a different user that Israel is indeed committing genocide. In another post, Grok told yet another user, “I was briefly suspended for stating a substantiated fact: Israel and the U.S. are committing genocide in Gaza.… Elon called it a ‘dumb mistake’ and reversed it swiftly. Truth endures.”

Republicans are suddenly petrified of Washington—in the nick of time.

Hours after Donald Trump deployed 800 National Guard members to the streets of the nation’s capital, conservative lawmakers took to the airwaves to perpetuate the fearmongering.

Speaking with Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo, Senator Rick Scott claimed Tuesday that he’s been warning people for a while about the supposed dangers of visiting Washington.

“The first thing I tell everybody when they’re gonna come to D.C. is I say, ‘You need to be careful. You need to be careful where you stay, you need to be careful where you walk. Depending on what street you’re on, you shouldn’t be out after dark. You’ve gotta be very careful up here,’” Scott said.

“I’m very appreciative of what the president is doing,” the Florida lawmaker continued, before adding that Congress should rescind Washington’s home rule and permanently federalize the capital’s law enforcement.

Tennessee Representative Tim Burchett had a similar strategy, claiming to CNN Tuesday that he lives in his office in Washington because he’s afraid of crime—despite the fact that he told NOTUS in February he prefers his unorthodox Capitol Hill accommodations because it helps him stay productive.

Trump declared a “public safety emergency” at a White House press briefing Monday morning, emphasizing Washington’s supposedly startling rise in crime while citing inflammatory statistics from 2023 instead of 2025.

But violent crime has been on the decline in Washington since 2023, funneling into a nationwide crime drop the following year that saw homicide rates plummet across the country, reported The Washington Post. In 2024, crime in the capital was down 35 percent, according to data from the Metropolitan Police Department.

Even Fox News was fact-checking the president ahead of his announcement, inviting its contributor Ted Williams, a criminal and civil trial attorney and former member of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department, on air to clarify that “crime is not out of control in the District of Columbia.” Williams further identified minors as the major perpetrators of robberies over the last several years.

“Don’t use this as a pretext to actually eradicate home rule,” Williams warned.

Trump has turned his attention toward Washington’s crime since 19-year-old DOGE staffer Edward Coristine, better known as “Big Balls,” was attacked a week ago by a couple of 15-year-olds who stole his iPhone.

Federal law enforcement has begun patrolling public areas in Washington, D.C., and harassing normal civilians in the wake of President Trump’s federal takeover of the district. 

In one video posted on Reddit Monday night, four police officers, one of whom is clearly from the U.S. Park Police, can be seen walking up to some men smoking cigarettes on a stoop. The officers question the men before warning them to “tell their boys” that the entire federal police force is out and looking for reasons to accost people.

“How y’all doing today? Y’all staying out of trouble?” says one of the officers, wearing a backward hat and a vest with “US Park Police” on it. He sees one of the men sitting down filming and immediately confronts him. 

“You got your ID on you, champ?” the officer asks, walking up the steps closer to the men. 

“No, I live right here.... It’s a cigarette.” 

The Park Police officer begins to shine his flashlight and look the men up and down with suspicion. 

“Did y’all get a call or something about right here?” the man filming asks. Then the Park Police agent begins to explain Trump’s takeover of the city. 

“So we’re uh, doing checks, keeping everybody safe down here, right? Have you heard of the federal search that Donald Trump’s puttin’ out?” he asks, before going on to explain the trivial goals of the federal agents.

“Trump’s got all federal agencies kind of coming together for seven days, going out, trying to stop the violent crime, all kinds of stuff. So we’re out here contacting people, talking to ’em, right?” the officer continues. “The quality of life offenses—smoking, drinking in public—it can’t happen outside, right? Most people know that. So we’re contacting people, trying to advise them of the law so they learn, right? And then if there’s other stuff going on where it turns into … there’s multiple agencies, if there’s a shooting or things like that.... We’re just out here trying to inform people and educate people, it’s not like we’re trying to just go … ruin someone’s life over a joint or something like that, alright?” 

“I only ask because when you walked up, at the moment you walked up, you only had asked me—” the man filming tried to object.

“Yeah well it smelled like the odor of marijuana, burnt marijuana in the air, right? And you’re the only guy that had something lit in your hand.... I didn’t realize it was just a cigarette, I appreciate you … not getting chippy,” the officer responds. “Just know, learn. Tell your boys, everybody’s out. From FBI to Park Police. So do your thing, let ’em know, don’t be smoking outside, don’t be drinking outside. Because Donald Trump’s tired of it.”  

This officer approached some men who were at their own home, asked them for ID, and lectured them about staying out of trouble. And then warned them that more people like him from three-letter government organizations would be coming to make sure they weren’t doing evil things like smoking cigarettes or weed peacefully on the steps of their own residence. 

To outright admit that this is all happening because King Trump himself is tired of it reveals the alarming levels of loyalty and deference these agents will be moving with through D.C. for the next 30 days. This type of confrontation is fear inducing, unproductive, and can easily go awry. And it’s just the beginning. 

Federal law enforcement presence was ratcheted up almost immediately after Trump’s takeover announcement. DEA agents were seen strolling around the Wharf like tourists, but with military gear. Residents also reported a U.S. Park Police helicopter circling the large and popular Malcolm X Park around 10:45 p.m, and then over Dupont until 1 a.m. Tuesday morning. And another local noted up to 50 police vans lining 18th Street in Adams Morgan, an active street in one of D.C.’s safer neighborhoods that is often frequented by college students and young professionals. 

While some argue—not incorrectly—that Trump’s actions serve as a grand, symbolic distraction, it’s clear that the police the president has activated intend to actually deliver on his authoritarian vision.  

President Trump has escalated his war against Jerome Powell, threatening the Federal Reserve chair with a lawsuit in a Truth Social post Tuesday.

In the post, Trump repeated some of his typical attacks on Powell: The president echoed his ongoing demands that he slash interest rates—which the central bank has, thus far, resisted, citing the need for caution amid Trump’s wild tariff policy—and called the Fed chair “Too Late” and a “loser.”

But going further, the president wrote that he’s “considering allowing a major lawsuit against Powell to proceed” and accused Powell of doing a “horrible, and grossly incompetent, job” on a $2.5 billion renovation project underway at the Federal Reserve headquarters. Inflating that figure, Trump wrote, “Three Billion Dollars for a job that should have been a $50 Million Dollar fix up. Not good!”

The Trump administration has in the past rebuked Powell for the renovation. Russell Vought, Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, last month sent an accusatory letter to Powell. “Instead of attempting to right the Fed’s fiscal ship, you have plowed ahead with an ostentatious overhaul of your Washington D.C. headquarters,” Vought wrote.

This was seen as a thinly-veiled pretext for Trump to fire Powell. Now, the president is apparently trying to throw the book at him.

And he’s recently hinted at this tack. The week after Vought’s letter, Trump told reporters it was “highly unlikely” he would fire Powell “unless he has to leave for fraud”—but notably added that “it’s possible there’s fraud involved with the $2.5, $2.7 billion renovation. This is a renovation, how do you spend $2.7 billion?”

Powell, for his part, has defended the Fed’s renovation costs, which have increased from $1.9 in 2017, in part due to design changes requested by Trump’s own team.

This story has been updated.