California teams up with big tech on AI education
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CALIFORNIA PARTNERS WITH GOOGLE, ADOBE, IBM, MICROSOFT TO SHORE UP STUDENTS’ AI SKILLS
Via Lia Russell…
California has signed agreements with Google, Adobe, IBM and Microsoft to provide high schools, community colleges and state universities with artificial intelligence technologies and train students on how to use them, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday.
During a press conference at Google’s San Francisco office, Newsom said the agreements would bolster the growing AI-powered economy and train the next generation of entrepreneurs who would then go on to found their own startups.
He framed the partnerships as a way to prepare new employees entering a workforce that has seen jobs erased by a technology that has rendered entry-level tech workers obsolete.
“If you’re a 20 year old or a 30 year old, you’ve recently graduated with particular skills, maybe you have coding skills … you’re seeing in certain coding spaces significant decline in new hires for obvious reasons,” Newsom said.
The governor, long an ally of Big Tech, has taken a hands-off approach to regulating AI. The industry has been more willing to engage with President Donald Trump than in his previous administration and unsuccessfully tried to lobby for a provision within a spending bill that would ban any state-level AI regulations for 10 years. On Thursday, Trump demanded that Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan resign because he invests in companies that have ties to the Chinese government.
In response, Newsom said Trump believes in “crony capitalism,” and said in the absence of federal oversight, California had to step up and create the conditions for businesses to thrive.
“It means we create an ecosystem where people are treated fairly and equitably, that creates not equal outcomes, but opportunity,” he said.
The four companies would provide no-cost products and services like coding bootcamps, certificate courses, and memorialize the CSU AI Workforce Acceleration Board, which pairs tech industry leaders, state agency leaders and educators to promote AI skills as a career pathway and provide students with internships and other employment opportunities.
“We need California to be vibrant. We need to have a society and communities that are AI literate and AI fluent, and the mechanism to do it is through the community colleges, because of the reach into California and communities that are hard to get to,” said California Community Colleges Chancellor Sonya Christian.
FOX NEWS: NEWSOM DEFAMATION LAWSUIT IS A ‘PRESS SPECTACLE’
Via Lia Russell…
Fox News is asking a judge to dismiss Gov. Gavin Newsom’s $787 million defamation lawsuit against the network, claiming that the presidential hopeful wants to create a “press spectacle” and that he reneged on a promise to drop the lawsuit after host Jesse Watters walked back a story accusing the governor of lying about a phone call he had with President Donald Trump.
Trump told reporters on June 10 that he had spoken with Newsom a day before, but the governor said there was no record of a call and that Trump had confused the timeline of a June 7 phone call they had. Newsom said the call was cordial and that Trump did not mention he would seize control of the California National Guard hours later to bolster federal deportation raids in Los Angeles, sparking an ongoing feud between the two.
Newsom also wrote in a letter along with his June 27 lawsuit that he would withdraw it if Watters or Fox executives publicly apologized and retracted its story, which ran with a banner on screen that read, “Gavin lied about Trump’s call.” Watters later said on air Newsom “wasn’t lying, he was just confusing and unclear,” which Fox said should have satisfied the governor.
The nearly $1 billion sum is identical to the amount Fox agreed to pay in 2023 after settling with a voting software company that the network falsely accused of flipping votes for Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
“Newsom may think that he has no more pressing responsibilities than using the Delaware courts to bolster his campaign war chest and harass his critics,” Fox’s attorneys wrote in a motion filed Tuesday in Newcastle County Superior Court. They are also accusing the governor of engaging in “brazen forum-shopping” by filing in Delaware despite none of the parties having any ties to the state. (Fox News is headquartered in New York City but is incorporated in Delaware.)
“But both the First Amendment and California law prohibit him from wasting this court’s time and chilling Fox News’ speech with meritless lawsuits. Fox News and Jesse Watters had a right to criticize Newsom for instigating a spat with the President with a carelessly worded tweet.”
Newsom’s political spokesperson, Nathan Click, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
RETAIL THEFT CRACKDOWN
Via Amelia Wu...
California’s Organized Retail Crime Task Force, led by the California Highway Patrol, increased its efforts against retail theft and the results are showing.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday that in the past seven months, the task force has recovered 150,000 stolen goods valued at $8 million.
Since the task force’s inception in 2019, teams statewide have recovered more than 1.4 million items of stolen retail merchandise, valued at nearly $60 million.
A July operation led to four arrests and the identification of over 1,200 stolen products worth $92,000, impacting multiple Northern California retailers.
“Organized retail crime doesn’t just impact businesses, it threatens the safety and stability of our communities,” said CHP Commissioner Sean Duryee. “The California Highway Patrol is committed to holding offenders accountable and working with our law enforcement partners across the state to stop these crimes at their source.”
Retail theft in California has increased in recent years, according to a June 2025 report by the Legislative Analyst’s Office. While retail theft started increasing in 2015, another uptick occurred after the pandemic.
Between 2021 and 2023, retail theft increased by 32%, the report added.
In response to this trend, Newsom signed legislation in August 2024 to crack down on property crime, introducing tougher criminal penalties for repeat offenders and felony prosecutions.
“We are serious about stomping out crime rings that target California’s businesses and undermine public safety,” Newsom said. “We appreciate the work of our law enforcement partners statewide to apprehend these bad actors.”
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“When veterans made the decision to serve our country, they were promised that when they returned home, we would have their backs.
But right now, the Trump Administration is breaking that promise by cutting VA funding and laying off thousands of workers who help veterans get the care and support they need.”
— U.S. Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-San Bernardino, in an X post
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