All posts tagged: Gavin Newsom

Here is what’s illegal under California’s 8 (and counting) new AI laws

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] California Governor Gavin Newsom is currently considering 38 AI-related bills, including the highly contentious SB 1047, which the state’s legislature sent to his desk for final approval. These bills try to address the most pressing issues in artificial intelligence: everything from futuristic AI systems creating existential risk, deepfake nudes from AI image generators, to Hollywood studios creating AI clones of dead performers. “Home to the majority of the world’s leading AI companies, California is working to harness these transformative technologies to help address pressing challenges while studying the risks they present,” said Governor Newsom’s office in a press release. So far, Governor Newsom has signed eight of them into law, some of which are America’s most far reaching AI laws yet. Deepfake nudes Newsom signed two laws that address the creation and spread of deepfake nudes on Thursday. SB 926 creates a new crime in California, making it illegal to blackmail someone with AI-generated nude images that resemble them. SB 981, which also became law on Thursday, requires social media platforms to establish channels …

Is Usha Vance’s Hindu identity an asset or a liability to the Trump-Vance campaign?

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] (AP) — Usha Chilukuri Vance loves her “meat and potatoes” husband, JD Vance. She explained to a rapt Republican National Convention audience how their vice-presidential candidate adapted to her vegetarian diet and even learned to cook Indian food from her immigrant mother. That image of her white, Christian husband making the spicy cuisine of her parents’ native state in South India is atypical for the leaders of a party whose members are still largely white and Christian. Her presence at the RNC sparked enthusiasm on social media among some Indian American conservatives, particularly Hindu Americans, although most Indian Americans identify as Democrats. But for all Usha Vance shared about their identity-blending marriage in her speech last month in Milwaukee, which was a little over four minutes, she made no mention of her Hindu upbringing or her personal faith and their interfaith relationship – biographical details that have exposed her to online vitriol and hate. While some political analysts say her strong presence as a Hindu American still makes the community proud, others question whether …

Newsom postpones State of the State address

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has postponed his State of the State address, the governor’s office confirmed to The Hill Friday night.  Newsom’s address was originally scheduled to be delivered on Monday. A new date for the speech has not been provided. His office is coordinating with the legislature to nail a new date for the governor’s address, per an email to The Hill.  The postponement of the address comes as his push to overhaul how California treats disorders related to mental health is still active, even with Proposition 1 having a slim lead. Newsom is making a last-minute effort to correct rejected ballots, notes Politico. “This ballot initiative is SO CLOSE that your commitment to volunteer could mean the difference between people getting off the streets and into the treatment they need… or not,” reads a Friday email from Campaign for Democracy, Newsom’s federal PAC, obtained by Politico. “Truly. It is that close.” Newsom, a two-term leader of the state, is facing another recall, after defeating a 2021 attempt. He also has to wrangle …

Biden Is Still the Democrats’ Best Bet for November

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] Let’s start with the obvious. The concerns about Joe Biden are valid: He’s old. He talks slowly. He occasionally bumbles the basics in public appearances. Biden’s age is so concerning that many Biden supporters now believe he should step aside and let some other candidate become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. The New York Times journalist Ezra Klein made the best-available case for this view recently in a 4,000-word piece that garnered intense attention by arguing that Biden is no longer up to the task of campaign life. “He is not the campaigner he was, even five years ago,” Klein writes. “The way he moves, the energy in his voice. The Democrats denying decline are only fooling themselves.” In one sense Klein is correct. As the political strategist Mike Murphy said many moons ago, Biden’s age is like a gigantic pair of antlers he wears on his head, all day every day. Even when he does something exceptional—like visit a war zone in Ukraine, or whip inflation—the people applauding him are thinking, Can’t. Stop. …

California Gov. Newsom backs dam removal projects to boost salmon. Critics say that’s not enough

Published by Sam

[ad_1] EUREKA, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom is pledging to fast-track more than half a dozen projects by the end of his term to remove or bypass dams that have blocked salmon from returning to the state’s chilly mountain streams and acting as the keystone of a complex ecosystem that sustains both economies and spiritual beliefs for tribes. Newsom — now in his second term and seen as a potential Democratic presidential candidate beyond 2024 — has worked hard to stake a claim as the nation’s most environmentally-conscious governor. But his record has been dogged by criticism from environmental groups who say his water policies benefit big agriculture at the expense of salmon and other fish species in danger of becoming extinct. Millions of salmon once filled California’s rivers and streams each year, bringing with them key nutrients from the ocean that gave the state an abundance of natural resources that were so important to Indigenous peoples that they formed the foundation of creation stories central to tribes’ way of life. But last …

Ron DeSantis’s Mad-Bull Strategy – The Atlantic

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[ad_1] Why did they do it? What was the angle? A presidential candidate such as Ron DeSantis usually would never waste an evening only weeks before the make-or-break early primaries debating a telegenic noncompetitor for a TV pseudo-event. Yet there was DeSantis onstage in Georgia, creating content for Fox News, opposite Gavin Newsom, the sharp-tongued California governor who has publicly ridiculed DeSantis for months. For the Democrat Newsom, the angle is pretty straightforward. He’s a presidential aspirant trying to elbow his way past a serving vice president to establish himself as his party’s heir apparent to the 81-year-old incumbent. Newsom accepted the Fox invitation with one simple plan: to create video moments on unfriendly ground that would cause loyal Democrats to think, We want this guy to fight for us. That thought probably won’t do him any good in the current cycle, when Democrats will surely renominate Joe Biden barring some catastrophic health event. But it could do Newsom a lot of good in future cycles—especially if the Biden-Harris ticket should lose in 2024. Read: …