Summary: Plaintiffs seek temporary restraining order from Judge Amit Mehta Lawsuit challenges National Park Service and Interior Department approval Event scheduled for trump’s 80th birthday on june 14 A federal judge in Washington has been asked to block President Donald Trump’s plan to host an Ultimate Fighting Championship mixed martial arts bout at the White House next week and to halt construction of the metal arena structure ​called "the Claw" on the South Lawn of the iconic executive residence.  Two Washington-area residents in a June 7 court filing asked U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta to issue a temporary restraining order halting the event, scheduled to coincide with Trump’s 80th birthday on June 14.  On June 8, Mehta asked the lawyers in the case to propose a schedule to hear the emergency request.  Dubbed “UFC Freedom 250", the event is set to feature fighting inside the 92-foot-tall (28 meters), octagon-shaped cage with weigh-ins at the nearby Lincoln Memorial.  The lawsuit, filed on June 6, alleges that authorization of the program by the National Park Service and Interior Department was unlawful and should be set aside. “This nation’s public monuments should not be loaned out for private exploitation,” the plaintiffs said. In a statement, the White House called the case an “obstructionist, baseless, and dilatory lawsuit” and said the event “is no different than the various other White House-hosted events on the South Lawn and properly permitted events on the Ellipse and National Mall throughout the year.” The lawsuit contends the event violates rules barring sporting events on the South Lawn and at the Lincoln Memorial, and that construction of the large arena structure requires congressional authorization. Trump is facing other lawsuits over construction projects on the White House and elsewhere in the capital, including his plan to build a 90,000-square-foot ballroom on the site of the demolished East Wing, and his proposal to renovate and close the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.  Reporting by Mike Scarcella; Editing by David Bario and Bill Berkrot

Summary: Anthropic warns of recursive self-improvement risks Startup calls for coordinated pause among major AI labs Anthropic valued at $965 billion ahead of IPO     Anthropic is calling on major artificial intelligence labs to consider a coordinated and verifiable pause in development, warning that rapid advances in the technology could soon allow AI systems to improve themselves faster than society can manage the risks.  The Claude creator said AI's ability to complete tasks on its own has been doubling roughly every four months and it was headed for "recursive self-improvement", the point at which the technology can improve without human intervention.  "If systems are capable of fully building their own successors, the ways we secure them, monitor them, and shape their behavior all grow much more important," the startup said in a lengthy blog post on Thursday, adding that a pause would allow society to "deal with its immense implications."  "We are not there yet, and recursive self-improvement is not inevitable. But it could come sooner than most institutions are prepared for," Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark and Anthropic Institute lead Marina Favaro wrote in the post.  Fears that advanced AI systems may get out of human control and cause societal harm have risen as the technology becomes increasingly capable. Anthropic's own Mythos model sent shockwaves through industries including banking and software earlier this year with its ability to find vulnerabilities in existing code.  But regulation has been slow, especially in the U.S. where most leading AI labs are based. A Trump administration executive order earlier this week put the onus on the labs themselves, asking them to voluntarily submit their most capable models for government cybersecurity testing before public release.  AI researchers have also urged a pause before but had little success. Elon Musk, who owns AI lab xAI, was among backers of a 2023 push by the non-profit Future of Life Institute to halt AI development for six months to allow time for safety guardrails.  Anthropic has long positioned itself as a safety-focused AI lab. Earlier this year, it refused to let the U.S. military use its models for domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, prompting backlash from the government which put it on a national security blacklist, set to take effect later in 2026.  Reuters reported on Friday the dispute was showing signs of easing across parts of the U.S. government.  Still, Anthropic has continued to release increasingly powerful models and in February walked back a key safety pledge, saying that it would no longer hold back potentially dangerous AI if rivals were close to matching its capabilities.  It was recently valued at $965 billion in a massive funding round and confidentially filed for a U.S. initial public offering on Monday, putting it ahead of rival OpenAI in both valuation and the race to secure crucial funding.  COORDINATED ACTION  Anthropic's Thursday post cautioned that unilateral or poorly coordinated slowdowns could backfire if less cautious actors continue advancing, potentially reducing overall safety.  It said that a meaningful pause would require agreement among "multiple well-resourced labs" operating at the technological frontier, as well as rules on what conditions would trigger or lift such a pause and who would oversee it.  "A unilateral pause by one lab, by contrast, is achievable immediately, but accomplishes much less: it would change who the front-runner is, but it would not create the wider deliberative process that is currently missing," the startup said.  Its research arm, Anthropic Institute, plans to study systems needed to support a slowdown and in the coming months will convene policymakers, researchers, civil society groups and rival AI firms to discuss managing risks such as recursive self-improvement.  OpenAI, xAI, Alphabet, Meta Platforms and France's Mistral did not immediately respond to requests for comment on whether they would join the call.  Reporting by Aditya Soni in Bengaluru and Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Shreya Biswas and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty

Summary: US Supreme Court rules 8-1 in favor of FCC FCC fined AT&T $57 million and Verizon nearly $47 million Legal dispute over constitutional right to jury trial   The U.S. Supreme Court backed the Federal Communications Commission's system for levying fines, ruling on Thursday against wireless carriers AT&T and Verizon in their challenge to the agency and handing a win to President Donald Trump's administration.  The ruling was 8-1. At issue in the legal dispute was whether the agency's in-house proceedings for imposing the penalties deprived the companies of their right to a jury trial under the U.S. Constitution. Trump's administration defended the FCC's system for assessing financial penalties, known as forfeiture orders.  The FCC fined AT&T $57 million and Verizon nearly $47 million after the agency concluded that the companies had unlawfully sold access to customer location data to third parties without securing the consent of users.  In all, the FCC imposed nearly $200 million in fines on carriers that it said failed to safeguard customer data. It fined T-Mobile $80 million and Sprint, which T-Mobile acquired in 2020, $12 million.  Verizon and AT&T paid the fines they were assessed but also filed legal challenges that eventually led to a split among regional U.S. appellate courts over the lawfulness of the FCC's in-house procedure for imposing the penalties.  In Verizon's case, the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the fine. The Constitution permits the FCC to provide an initial penalty assessment as long as an accused party can challenge the government's collection efforts in court, the 2nd Circuit ruled, prompting Verizon's appeal to the Supreme Court.  In AT&T's case, the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the FCC's initial assessment of wrongdoing and a fine deprived the company of its constitutional right to a jury trial. That ruling prompted the FCC to appeal to the Supreme Court.  The legal dispute marked the latest case to test whether a federal agency's internal enforcement arrangement violates the constitutional right to a jury trial after the Supreme Court in 2024 curbed the power of in-house proceedings at the Securities and Exchange Commission.  In the government's defense of the FCC's in-house system, Justice Department lawyers had argued that the agency's assessments are not binding. If the government were to bring an enforcement action in court, it would allow the companies to make their case before a jury, the lawyers argued.  The companies, for their part, said that the FCC's system impermissibly uses in-house proceedings for a process that belongs in court, depriving them of their right to a jury trial. The FCC's initial assessments, they added, inflict reputational harm before the accused have had their day in court.  The Supreme Court in 2025 also issued an important ruling involving the FCC, endorsing the way the agency funds its multi-billion-dollar program to expand phone and broadband internet access to low-income and rural Americans and other beneficiaries.  Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham