Donald Trump Calls Bankers 'Shylocks'
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
President Donald Trump used a term long viewed as an antisemitic slur when referring to unscrupulous bankers during a speech on Thursday.
It came as he was touting the impact of his One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed by Congress hours earlier, during a rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds.
"No death tax, no estate tax, no going to the banks and borrowing from, in some cases, a fine banker and in some cases, Shylocks and bad people," he said. "They destroyed a lot of families, but we did the opposite."
Shylock refers to the villainous Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, who demands a pound of flesh from a character unable to repay a loan. It has long been considered a slur.
Asked about his use of the term on Thursday night, Trump told reporters that he had "never heard that" it could be considered antisemitic.
"To me, a Shylock is somebody that's a money lender at high rates," he said.
President Donald Trump speaking at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on Thursday.
President Donald Trump speaking at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on Thursday.
Alex Brandon/AP
This is a developing news story. Updates to follow.
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San Francisco Chronicle
26 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Pope Leo XIV resumes the tradition of taking a summer vacation. But he's got plenty of homework
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Newsweek
30 minutes ago
- Newsweek
Donald Trump Reacts To Hamas' 'Positive' Response to Ceasefire Plan
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CNET
36 minutes ago
- CNET
Congress Won't Block State AI Regulations. Here's What That Means for Consumers
After months of debate, a plan in Congress to block states from regulating artificial intelligence was pulled from the big federal budget bill this week. The proposed 10-year moratorium would have prevented states from enforcing rules and laws on AI if the state accepted federal funding for broadband access. The issue exposed divides among technology experts and politicians, with some Senate Republicans joining Democrats in opposing the move. The Senate eventually voted 99-1 to remove the proposal from the bill, which also includes the extension of the 2017 federal tax cuts and cuts to services like Medicaid and SNAP. Congressional Republican leaders have said they want to have the measure on President Donald Trump's desk by July 4. 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Jay Obernolte, a Republican from California, signaled a desire to get ahead of more state-level regulation. "We have a limited amount of legislative runway to be able to get that problem solved before the states get too far ahead," he said. Read more: AI Essentials: 29 Ways to Make Gen AI Work for You, According to Our Experts While some states have laws on the books, not all of them have gone into effect or seen any enforcement. That limits the potential short-term impact of a moratorium, said Cobun Zweifel-Keegan, managing director in Washington for IAPP. "There isn't really any enforcement yet." A moratorium would likely deter state legislators and policymakers from developing and proposing new regulations, Zweifel-Keegan said. "The federal government would become the primary and potentially sole regulator around AI systems," he said. What a moratorium on state AI regulation would mean AI developers have asked for any guardrails placed on their work to be consistent and streamlined. "We need, as an industry and as a country, one clear federal standard, whatever it may be," Alexandr Wang, founder and CEO of the data company Scale AI, told lawmakers during an April hearing. "But we need one, we need clarity as to one federal standard and have preemption to prevent this outcome where you have 50 different standards." During a Senate Commerce Committee hearing in May, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, that an EU-style regulatory system "would be disastrous" for the industry. Altman suggested instead that the industry develop its own standards. Asked by Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii, if industry self-regulation is enough at the moment, Altman said he thought some guardrails would be good, but, "It's easy for it to go too far. As I have learned more about how the world works, I am more afraid that it could go too far and have really bad consequences." (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, parent company of CNET, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.) Not all AI companies are backing a moratorium, however. In a New York Times op-ed, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called it "far too blunt an instrument," saying the federal government should create transparency standards for AI companies instead. "Having this national transparency standard would help not only the public but also Congress understand how the technology is developing, so that lawmakers can decide whether further government action is needed." A proposed 10-year moratorium on state AI laws is now in the hands of the US Senate, where its Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation has already held hearings on artificial intelligence. Nathan Howard/Bloomberg via Getty Images Concerns from companies, both the developers that create AI systems and the "deployers" who use them in interactions with consumers, often stem from fears that states will mandate significant work such as impact assessments or transparency notices before a product is released, Kourinian said. Consumer advocates have said more regulations are needed and hampering the ability of states could hurt the privacy and safety of users. A moratorium on specific state rules and laws could result in more consumer protection issues being dealt with in court or by state attorneys general, Kourinian said. Existing laws around unfair and deceptive practices that are not specific to AI would still apply. "Time will tell how judges will interpret those issues," he said. Susarla said the pervasiveness of AI across industries means states might be able to regulate issues such as privacy and transparency more broadly, without focusing on the technology. But a moratorium on AI regulation could lead to such policies being tied up in lawsuits. "It has to be some kind of balance between 'we don't want to stop innovation,' but on the other hand, we also need to recognize that there can be real consequences," she said. Much policy around the governance of AI systems does happen because of those so-called technology-agnostic rules and laws, Zweifel-Keegan said. "It's worth also remembering that there are a lot of existing laws and there is a potential to make new laws that don't trigger the moratorium but do apply to AI systems as long as they apply to other systems," he said. What's next for federal AI regulation? One of the key lawmakers pushing for the removal of the moratorium from the bill was Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican. Blackburn said she wanted to make sure states were able to protect children and creators, like the country musicians her state is famous for. "Until Congress passes federally preemptive legislation like the Kids Online Safety Act and an online privacy framework, we can't block states from standing in the gap to protect vulnerable Americans from harm -- including Tennessee creators and precious children," she said in a statement. Groups that opposed the preemption of state laws said they hope the next move for Congress is to take steps toward actual regulation of AI, which could make state laws unnecessary. If tech companies "are going to seek federal preemption, they should seek federal preemption along with a federal law that provides rules of the road," Jason Van Beek, chief government affairs officer at the Future of Life Institute, told me. Ben Winters, director of AI and data privacy at the Consumer Federation of America, said Congress could take up the idea of pre-empting state laws again in separate legislation. "Fundamentally, it's just a bad idea," he told me. "It doesn't really necessarily matter if it's done in the budget process."
