Real estate mogul and TV
star Donald Trump (L) listens as Michael Sexton introduces him to
announce the establishment of Trump University during a news conference
in New York on May 23, 2005. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)
Trump University Lawsuit
Trump University is currently the focus of two class action lawsuits
and a $40 million lawsuit from New York Attorney General Eric
Schneiderman, who has called the organization “a fraud from beginning to
end.”
Donald Trump has defended the University, criticizing U.S. District
Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel who he’s called “biased,” a “hater,” and in a
speech, alluded to Curiel’s ethnicity saying that he “happens to be, we
believe, Mexican.”
Trump later defended his comments about Curiel, saying “He’s
proud of his his heritage. I respect him for that,” Trump said,
dismissing charges that his allegation was racist. “He’s a Mexican.
We’re building a wall between here and Mexico.”
Judge Curiel was originally going to set the date of the trial for
this summer but decided to postpone it until after the election cycle,
fearing a “media frenzy.”
Curiel then ordered the release of documents associated with the
Trump University case, including the school’s “playbook.” Those
documents revealed a moneymaking scheme that preyed on and pressured
potential customers.
Following the attacks against the judge, Trump was criticized
by Megyn Kelly and House Speaker Paul Ryan—both of whom were former
critics, and then grudging advocates of the presumptive Republican
nominee.
Democratic
presidential candidate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks
during a Women for Hillary Organizing event at West Los Angeles College
on June 3, 2016 in Culver City, California. (Photo by Justin
Sullivan/Getty Images)
Clinton’s Email Server Woes
Last week, a 78-page report released by the Inspector General found
presidential candidate Hillary Clinton guilty of breaking federal rules
with her private email server, but Clinton and her campaign adamantly
deny any wrongdoing.
“Well, there may be reports that come out, but nothing has changed,”
Clinton said in an interview with Univision’s Los Angeles. “It’s the
same story.”
New developments in the story emerged when Clinton’s former tech aide
Bryan Pagliano announced he’s going to exercise his right to the Fifth
Amendment, protecting him from self-incrimination in a deposition given
to conservative group Judicial Watch about his involvement with the
setup of Clinton’s email server.
Pagliano also said in a court filing that
there’s no valid reason to make an audio or video recording of the
session, since he doesn’t plan to answer any of the questions in the
deposition scheduled for June 6.
Judicial Watch is pursuing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit
related to Clinton’s private email server, a scandal that has dogged her
campaign throughout the primary season. The group says that they are
going to fight Pagliano’s proposal to ban recording of the testimony.
US
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a press
conference at the Trump Tower on May 31, 2016 in New York. (Photo credit
should read JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images)
Contentious Trump Press Conference on Veteran Funds
The press conference was supposed to give an explanation from Donald
Trump accounting for the $6 million he said he raised for veterans
groups. It started off addressing the veterans funds, listing the
various organizations where Trump was sending money.
“I raised close to $6 million. It will probably be over that amount
when it’s all said and done, but as of this moment, it’s $5.6 million,”
Trump asserted.
Trump said most of the money had already been distributed, blaming the delay on the need to vet the groups.
“I had teams of people reviewing statistics, reviewing numbers and
also talking to people in the military to find out whether or not the
group was deserving of the money,” the presumptive Republican nominee
told reporters.
He continued, “I wanted to keep it private because I don’t think it’s anybody’s business if I want to send money to the vets.”
However, the press conference turned into an onslaught of accusations
and name-calling directed at media organizations, and in some cases,
specific journalists.
“The press should be ashamed at themselves, and on behalf of the vets
the press should be ashamed of themselves. They are calling me and they
are furious,” Trump said.
At one point, he called ABC reporter Tom Llamas a “sleaze” and said
that CNN’s Jim Acosta “a real beauty” after the reporter asked him if he
would be able to cope with being scrutinized.
Trump also assured the crowd of journalists that he would be just as combative if he were elected president:
“Yeah, it is going to be like this,” Trump said. “You think I’m gonna change? I’m not gonna change.”
Democratic
presidential candidate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
delivers a national security address on June 2, 2016 in San Diego,
California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Hillary’s Foreign Policy Speech
Hillary Clinton wasted no time attacking Donald Trump on foreign
policy, touting her experience as Secretary of State and repeatedly
questioning the Republican nominee’s ability to exhibit the temperament
necessary for presidency.
“Donald Trump’s ideas aren’t just different, they’re dangerously
incoherent. They’re not even really ideas, just a series of bizarre
rants, personal feuds and outright lies,” she said
“He is not just unprepared. He is temperamentally unfit to hold an
office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility,”
Clinton continued.
The Democratic frontrunner spent most of the thirty-five
minute speech listing ways that Donald Trump would be unfit as
president, parsing over comments about torture, nuclear arms, his
admiration for countries that are hostile to the United States, and a
desire to push away allies.
Democratic
presidential candidate, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) speaks during a
campaign rally at Cubberley Community Center on June 1, 2016 in Palo
Alto, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Sanders and Clinton, Neck and Neck in California
The largest state remaining in the Democratic primary season is
California, and multiple polls put Hillary Clinton only 2 percentage
points over her rival Bernie Sanders.
Two polls, the NBC/WSJ/Marist and Field polls released on June 2 show Clinton and Sanders within two percent in California—and if you include the PPIC poll—three out of the last four polls have shown Clinton leading by 2 points.
The NBC poll shows a 49-47 split; the Field poll shows a 45-43 split; the PPIC poll shows a 46-44 split.
A Sanders win in California would be embarrassing for Clinton, whose
husband won the California primary during the 1992 cycle to solidify his
nomination against the current California governor Jerry Brown.
Even if she doesn’t win in California, the proportional delegate
system should give her enough delegates to surpass the threshold and
receive a majority of delegates, although that victory would be muted by
the upset.
U.S. Speaker of the House Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Paul Ryan Endorses Trump
After months of saying he wasn’t ready to endorse the presumptive
nominee of the Republican party, the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan
published an op-ed in his hometown paper announcing that he is going to vote for Donald Trump in the fall.
Ryan admits that Trump and he have differences, but that “on the
issues that make up our agenda, we have more common ground than
disagreement.”
Less than 24 hours after the endorsement, Speaker Ryan’s differences
with Trump came to the forefront when he criticized the Republican
nominee for saying the judge in the Trump University lawsuit was biased
because of his Mexican heritage.
David French Floated as Third Party Candidate
Conservative Republicans are lobbying behind lawyer and National
Review contributor David French in an ongoing attempt to find a suitable
alternative to Donald Trump.
The two biggest backers endorsing French as a third party candidate
are 2012 Republican candidate Mitt Romney and Bill Kristol, editor of
the Weekly Standard.
“I know David French to be an honorable, intelligent and patriotic
person. I look forward to following what he has to say,” the former
Republican presidential nominee tweeted.
“To say that he would be a better and a more responsible president
than Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump is to state a truth that would
become self-evident as more Americans got to know him,” Kristol writes
in a recent article touting French’s virtues.
Elon Musk arrives for a
discussion during the 2014 annual conference of the Export-Import Bank
(EXIM) April 25, 2014 in Washington, DC. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The billionaire founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, Elon
Musk, has said before that a hostile artificial intelligence (AI) is a
real concern of his.
He even called it probably “our biggest existential threat,” talking at an MIT symposium two years ago.
“With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon,”
Musk said, without going into much detail about why did he thinks this
way.
On June 1, Musk elaborated while speaking at The Verge’s Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg at the Recode’s Code Conference 2016.
So what’s Musk’s problem with AI?
First, he indicated that AI is on its way to becoming massively more
intelligent than humans—not just equivalent or more intelligent.
“If you assume any rate of advancement in AI, we will be left behind by a lot,” he said.
The first order of business is, “if we create some digital
super-intelligence that exceeds us in every way by a lot, it’s very
important that that’d be benign.”
Two years ago, Musk mentioned regulation and oversight, but his approach has changed since then.
“I think it’s important if we have this incredible power of AI that
it not be concentrated in the hands of a few and potentially lead to a
world that we don’t want,” he said.
“If instead AI power is broadly distributed and to degree that we can
link AI power to each individual’s will,” meaning everybody would have
control over their own powerful AI servant, “then if somebody did try to
do something really terrible then the collective will of others could
overcome that bad actor.”
For that reason, Musk was one of the initiators of the OpenAI last
December. The non-profit received pledges for $1 billion to develop AI
and make it available for free.
That, of course, doesn’t mean somebody wouldn’t develop much more powerful AI privately.
Musk acknowledged that possibility, but he said he’s only worried about one company doing so.
“I won’t name a name,” he said. “But there is only one.”
Based on the context, The Verge reported Musk
probably meant Google, who bought British AI company DeepMind in 2014
and continues to make significant progress with the technology.
The question would then be if the OpenAI or any freely distributed AI
will be able to match the power of the ones developed privately.
Yet that still doesn’t solve the first issue Musk raised—the progress of AI.
“If you have ultra-intelligent AI, we would be so far below them in
intelligence that we would be like a pet,” Musk said. “We’ll be like the
house cat.”
“I mean, I don’t love the idea of being a house cat,” he said.
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