Daily Archives: June 14, 2017

The Machine of Tomorrow Today: Quantum Computing on the Verge – Bloomberg

Posted: June 14, 2017 at 4:48 am

Its a sunny Tuesdaymorning in late March at IBMs Thomas J. Watson Research Center. The corridor from the reception area follows the long, curving glass curtain-wall that looks out over the visitors parking lot to leafless trees covering a distant hill in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., an hour north of Manhattan. Walk past the podium from the Jeopardy! episodes at which IBMs Watson smote the human champion of the TV quiz show, turn right into a hallway, and youll enter a windowless lab where a quantum computer is chirping away.

Actually, chirp isnt quite the right word. Its a somewhat metallic sound, chush chush chush, thats made by the equipment that lowers the temperature inside a so-called dilution refrigerator to within hailing distance of absolute zero. Encapsulated in a white canister suspended from a frame, the dilution refrigerator cools a superconducting chip studded with a handful of quantum bits, or qubits.

When it's running, this dilution refrigerator at IBMs Thomas J. Watson Research Center is one of the coldest places in the universe. To cool superconducting bits on a quantum computer processor, it gets down to 15 millikelvin (-459F)colder than outer space.

Photographer: Christopher Payne for Bloomberg Markets

Quantum computing has been around, in theory if not in practice, for several decades. But these new types of machines, designed to harness quantum mechanics and potentially process unimaginable amounts of data, are certifiably a big deal. I would argue that a working quantum computer is perhaps the most sophisticated technology that humans have ever built, says Chad Rigetti, founder and chief executive officer of Rigetti Computing, a startup in Berkeley, Calif. Quantum computers, he says, harness nature at a level we became aware of only about 100 years agoone that isnt apparent to us in everyday life.

Whats more, the potential of quantum computing is enormous. Tapping into the weird way nature works could potentially speed up computing so some problems that are now intractable to classical computers could finally yield solutions. And maybe not just for chemistry and materials science. With practical breakthroughs in speed on the horizon, Wall Streets antennae are twitching.

The second investment that CME Group Inc.s venture arm ever made was in 1QB Information Technologies Inc., a quantum-computing software company in Vancouver. From the start at CME Ventures, weve been looking further ahead at transformational innovations and technologies that we think could have an impact on the financial-services industry in the future, says Rumi Morales, head of CME Ventures LLC.

That 1QBit financing round, in 2015, was led by Royal Bank of Scotland. Kevin Hanley, RBSs director of innovation, says quantum computing is likely to have the biggest impact on industries that are data-rich and time-sensitive. We think financial services is kind of in the cross hairs of that profile, he says.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is an investor in D-Wave Systems Inc., another quantum player, as is In-Q-Tel, the CIA-backed venture capital company, says Vern Brownell, CEO of D-Wave. The Burnaby, B.C.-based company makes machines that do something called quantum annealing. Quantum annealing is basically using the quantum computer to solve optimization problems at the lowest level, Brownell says. Weve taken a slightly different approach where were actually trying to engage with customers, make our computers more and more powerful, and provide this advantage to them in the form of a programmable, usable computer.

Marcos Lpez de Prado, a senior managing director at Guggenheim Partners LLC whos also a scientific adviser at 1QBit and a research fellow at the U.S. Department of Energys Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, says its all about context. The reason quantum computing is so exciting is its perfect marriage with machine learning, he says. I would go as far as to say that currently this is the main application for quantum computing.

Photographer: Christopher Payne for Bloomberg Markets

Part of that simply derives from the idea of a quantum computer: harnessing a physical device to find an answer, Lpez de Prado says. He sometimes explains it by pointing to the video game Angry Birds. When you play it on your iPad, the central processing units use some mathematical equations that have been programmed into a library to simulate the effects of gravity and the interaction of objects bouncing and colliding. This is how digital computers work, he says.

By contrast, quantum computers turn that approach on its head, Lpez de Prado says. The paradigm for quantum computers is this: Lets throw some birds and see what happens. Encode into the quantum microchip this problem: These are your birds and where you throw them from, so whats the optimal trajectory? Then you let the computer check all possible solutions essentiallyor a very large combination of themand come back with an answer, he says. In a quantum computer, theres no mathematician cracking the problem, he says. The laws of physics crack the problem for you.

The fundamental building blocksof our world are quantum mechanical. If you look at a molecule, says Dario Gil, vice president for science and solutions at IBM Research, the reason molecules form and are stable is because of the interactions of these electron orbitals. Each calculation in thereeach orbitalis a quantum mechanical calculation. The number of those calculations, in turn, increases exponentially with the number of electrons youre trying to model. By the time you have 50 electrons, you have 2 to the 50th power calculations, Gil says. Thats a phenomenally large number, so we cant compute it today, he says. (For the record, its 1.125 quadrillion. So if you fired up your laptop and started cranking through several calculations a second, it would take a few million years to run through them all.) Connecting information theory to physics could provide a path to solving such problems, Gil says. A 50-qubit quantum computer might begin to be able to do it.

Landon Downs, president and co-founder of 1QBit, says its now becoming possible to unlock the computational power of the quantum world. This has huge implications for producing new materials or creating new drugs, because we can actually move from a paradigm of discovery to a new era of quantum design, he says in an email. Rigetti, whose company is building hybrid quantum-classical machines, says one moonshot use of quantum computing could be to model catalysts that remove carbon and nitrogen from the atmosphereand thereby help fix global warming. (Bloomberg Beta LP, a venture capital unit of Bloomberg LP, is an investor in Rigetti Computing.)

The quantum-computing community hums with activity and excitement these days. Teams around the worldat startups, corporations, universities, and government labsare racing to build machines using a welter of different approaches to process quantum information. Superconducting qubit chips too elementary for you? How about trapped ions, which have brought together researchers from the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology? Or maybe the topological approach that Microsoft Corp. is developing through an international effort called Station Q? The aim is to harness a particle called a non-abelian anyonwhich has not yet been definitively proven to exist.

These are early days, to be sure. As of late May, the number of quantum computers in the world that clearly, unequivocally do something faster or better than a classical computer remains zero, according to Scott Aaronson, a professor of computer science and director of the Quantum Information Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Such a signal event would establish quantum supremacy. In Aaronsons words: That we dont have yet.

Yet someone may accomplish the feat as soon as this year. Most insiders say one clear favorite is a group at Google Inc. led by John Martinis, a physics professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. According to Martinis, the groups goal is to achieve supremacy with a 49-qubit chip. As of late May, he says, the team was testing a 22-qubit processor as an intermediate step toward a showdown with a classical supercomputer. We are optimistic about this, since prior chips have worked well, he said in an email.

The idea of usingquantum mechanics to process information dates back decades. One key event happened in 1981, when International Business Machines Corp. and MIT co-sponsored a conference on the physics of computation at the universitys Endicott House in Dedham, Mass. At the conference, Richard Feynman, the famed physicist, proposed building a quantum computer. Nature isnt classical, dammit, and if you want to make a simulation of nature, youd better make it quantum mechanical, he said in his talk. And by golly, its a wonderful problem, because it doesnt look so easy.

He got that part right. The basic idea is to take advantage of a couple of the weird properties of the atomic realm: superposition and entanglement. Superposition is the mind-bending observation that a particle can be in two states at the same time. Bring out your ruler to get a measurement, however, and the particle will collapse into one state or the other. And you wont know which until you try, except in terms of probabilities. This effect is what underlies Schrdingers cat, the thought-experiment animal thats both alive and dead in a box until you sneak a peek.

Sure, bending your brain around that one doesnt come especially easy; nothing in everyday life works that way, of course. Yet about 1 million experiments since the early 20th century show that superposition is a thing. And if superposition happens to be your thing, the next step is figuring out how to strap such a crazy concept into a harness.

An IBM quantum-computing processor mounted on a circuit board. The silicon chip in the center contains several quantum bits, or qubits.

Photographer: Christopher Payne for Bloomberg Markets

Enter qubits. Classical bits can be a 0 or a 1; run a string of them together through logic gates (AND, OR, NOT, etc.), and youll multiply numbers, draw an image, and whatnot. A qubit, by contrast, can be a 0, a 1, or both at the same time, says IBMs Gil.

Ready for entanglement? (Youre in good company if you balk; Albert Einstein famously rebelled against the idea, calling it spooky action at a distance.) Well, lets say two qubits were to get entangled; Gil says that would make them perfectly correlated. A quantum computer could then utilize a menagerie of distinctive logic gates. The so-called Hadamard gate, for example, puts a qubit into a state of perfect superposition. (There may be something called a square root of NOT gate, but lets take a pass on that one.) If you tap the superposition and entanglement in clever arrangements of the weird quantum gates, you start to get at the potential power of quantum computing.

If you have two qubits, you can explore four states: 00, 01, 10, and 11. (Note that thats 4: 2 raised to the power 2.) When I perform a logical operation on my quantum computer, I can operate on all of this at once, Gil says. And the number of states you can look at is 2 raised to the power of the number of qubits. So if you could make a 50-qubit universal quantum computer, you could in theory explore all of those 1.125 quadrillion statesat the same time.

What gives quantum computing its special advantage, says Aaronson, of the University of Texas, is that quantum mechanics is based on things called amplitudes. Amplitudes are sort of like probabilities, but they can also be negativein fact, they can also be complex numbers, he says. So if you want to know the probability that something will happen, you add up the amplitudes for all the different ways that it can happen, he says.

The idea with a quantum computation is that you try to choreograph a pattern of interference so that for each wrong answer to your problem, some paths leading there have positive amplitudes and some have negative amplitudes, so they cancel each other out, Aaronson says. Whereas the paths leading to the right answer all have amplitudes that are in phase with each other. The tricky part is that you have to arrange everything not knowing in advance which answer is the right one. So I would say its the exponentiality of quantum states combined with this potential for interference between positive and negative amplitudesthats really the source of the power of quantum computing, he says.

Cover artwork: Zachary Walsh

Did we mentionthat there are problems that a classical computer cant solve? You probably harness one such difficulty every day when you use encryption on the internet. The problem is that its not easy to find the prime factors of a large number. To review: The prime factors of 15 are 5 and 3. Thats easy. If the number youre trying to factor has, say, 200 digits, its very hard. Even with your laptop running an excellent algorithm, you might have to wait years to find the prime factors.

That brings us to another milestone in quantum computing: Shors algorithm. Published in 1994 by Peter Shor, now a math professor at MIT, the algorithm demonstrated an approach that you could use to find the factors of a big numberif you had a quantum computer, which didnt exist at the time. Essentially, Shors algorithm would perform some operations that would point to the regions of numbers in which the answer was most likely to be found.

The following year, Shor also discovered a way to perform quantum error correction. Then people really got the idea that, wow, this is a different way of computing things and is more powerful in certain test cases, says Robert Schoelkopf, director of the Yale Quantum Institute and Sterling professor of applied physics and physics. Then there was a big upswelling of interest from the physics community to figure out how you could make quantum bits and logic gates between quantum bits and all of those things.

Two decades later, those things are here.

Asmundsson is editor of Bloomberg Markets.

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A Hybrid of Quantum Computing and Machine Learning Is Spawning New Ventures – IEEE Spectrum

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Machine learning, the field of AI that allows Alexa and Siri to parse what you say and self-driving cars to safely drive down a city street, could benefit from quantum computer-derived speedups, say researchers. And if a technology incubator program in Toronto, Canada has its way, there may even bequantum machine learningstartup companies launching in a few years too.

Research in this hybrid field today concentrates on either using nascent quantum computers to speed up machine learning algorithms or, using conventional machine learning systems, to increase the power, durability, or effectiveness of quantum computer systems. An ultimate goal in the field is to do both use smaller quantum-computer-based machine learning systems to better improve, understand, or interpret large datasets of quantum information or the results of large-scale quantum computer calculations. This last goal will of course have to wait till large-scale quantum information storage and full-fledged quantum computers come online. Google has said they want to make a 49-qubit quantum computer by years end, so a machine thats the hundreds or thousands of qubits that might benefit from such secondary quantum technologies may still take years.

However, says Peter Wittek, research fellow at the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Castelldefels, Spain, researchers havent waited for super-duper quantum computers to begin experimenting and theorizing about the future of the field. Quantum machine learning, even in its earliest incarnations, still holds promise.

To build universal quantum computers is a big engineering challenge, says Wittek, whos also academic director at theCreative Destruction Labstartup incubator affiliated with the University of Torontos Rotman School of Management. But it turns out for quantum machine learning you need something less. Just like quantum cryptography and quantum random number generation have matured as technologies in the absence of big quantum computers, he says, so too might quantum machine learning find niches to expand into in the near term.

Wittek, author of the 2014 bookQuantum Machine Learning: What Quantum Computing Means to Data Mining, says the field took off after a 2008 quantumalgorithmcalled HHL (after its three creators Aram Harrow, Avinathan Hassidim, and Seth Lloyd). HHL solves vast linear algebra problems involving many degrees of freedom, potentially faster than could be solved on any traditional supercomputer. And since no small part of machine learning involves just these sorts of high-degree-of-freedom (high-dimension) algebra problems, some machine learning researchers have jumped on the HHL bandwagon. HHL-based quantum machine learning algorithms have proliferated in the technical literature over the past few years.

Yet, Wittek says, for all its brilliance, HHL may not even represent the most promising set of near-term applications which he speculates could instead be found in fields like finance, transportation, or medicine.

That said, he adds, most traditional, GPU-based machine learning applications will not be knocked off their perch by a quantum system, even if Google, IBM, or another research lab can one day build a practicable quantum computer. Conventional machine learning is plenty game-changing as it is in most applications.

However, Wittek says, standard machine learning algorithms have a hard time generating purely random numbers. Monte Carlo machine learning algorithms, often used in financial applications, require purely random numbers for optimal results. But often pseudo-random numbers are the best a classical computer can generate. Quantum systems, by contrast, practically define pure randomness. So a quantum machine learning could have a foothold here.

And, says Nathan Wiebe, researcher at Microsofts Quantum Architectures and Computation Group in Redmond, Wash., quantum machine learning systems will work especially well when the input is not the 0s and 1s of classical data but rather the qubits of the quantum computer.

If you think about a quantum computer, how do you understand whats going on inside one? Wiebe says. The vectors that describe it exist in an incomprehensibly large space. Theres no way you can go through, read off every single entry of those vectors and figure out if the machine is working properly.

According to Scott Aaronson, professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin, HHL has led to more hype than actual near-term hope in the field. As Aaronson argues in a skeptical 2015review of quantum machine learningresearch, the words caveat emptor should be tagged to any promise of quantum machine learning-powered breakthroughs.

Almost all the quantum machine learning algorithms that have been published over the last decade are really frameworks for algorithms, Aaronson says. Theyre algorithms that dont start with the classical problem that you would like to be solved and the answer to that problem.

Still, says Wittek, despite the technical objections, the number of applicants to this years quantum machine learningbootcamp and startup acceleratorin Toronto exceeded expectations. The final round of applications will close on 24 July, and as of mid-June they had already received 38 applications for the 40 available spots. Clearly something has inspired entrepreneurs to try their hand turning bold ideas into, possibly, working quantum machine learning technology.

Incorporation must be done by November, so these will be real companies, Wittek says. And the hope is by next summer well have companies raising money.

As Einstein once objected about quantum physics, God may not play dice. But angel investors, these future companies can only hope, do.

This post was updated at 9:30 a.m. on 13 June.

IEEE Spectrums general technology blog, featuring news, analysis, and opinions about engineering, consumer electronics, and technology and society, from the editorial staff and freelance contributors.

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A Hybrid of Quantum Computing and Machine Learning Is Spawning New Ventures - IEEE Spectrum

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Neural networks take on quantum entanglement – Phys.Org

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June 13, 2017 An artist's rendering of a neural network with two layers. At the top is a real quantum system, like atoms in an optical lattice. Below is a network of hidden neurons that capture their interactions. Credit: E. Edwards/JQI

Machine learning, the field that's driving a revolution in artificial intelligence, has cemented its role in modern technology. Its tools and techniques have led to rapid improvements in everything from self-driving cars and speech recognition to the digital mastery of an ancient board game.

Now, physicists are beginning to use machine learning tools to tackle a different kind of problem, one at the heart of quantum physics. In a paper published recently in Physical Review X, researchers from JQI and the Condensed Matter Theory Center (CMTC) at the University of Maryland showed that certain neural networksabstract webs that pass information from node to node like neurons in the braincan succinctly describe wide swathes of quantum systems .

Dongling Deng, a JQI Postdoctoral Fellow who is a member of CMTC and the paper's first author, says that researchers who use computers to study quantum systems might benefit from the simple descriptions that neural networks provide. "If we want to numerically tackle some quantum problem," Deng says, "we first need to find an efficient representation."

On paper and, more importantly, on computers, physicists have many ways of representing quantum systems. Typically these representations comprise lists of numbers describing the likelihood that a system will be found in different quantum states. But it becomes difficult to extract properties or predictions from a digital description as the number of quantum particles grows, and the prevailing wisdom has been that entanglementan exotic quantum connection between particlesplays a key role in thwarting simple representations.

The neural networks used by Deng and his collaboratorsCMTC Director and JQI Fellow Sankar Das Sarma and Fudan University physicist and former JQI Postdoctoral Fellow Xiaopeng Lican efficiently represent quantum systems that harbor lots of entanglement, a surprising improvement over prior methods.

What's more, the new results go beyond mere representation. "This research is unique in that it does not just provide an efficient representation of highly entangled quantum states," Das Sarma says. "It is a new way of solving intractable, interacting quantum many-body problems that uses machine learning tools to find exact solutions."

Neural networks and their accompanying learning techniques powered AlphaGo, the computer program that beat some of the world's best Go players last year (and the top player this year ). The news excited Deng, an avid fan of the board game. Last year, around the same time as AlphaGo's triumphs, a paper appeared that introduced the idea of using neural networks to represent quantum states , although it gave no indication of exactly how wide the tool's reach might be. "We immediately recognized that this should be a very important paper," Deng says, "so we put all our energy and time into studying the problem more."

The result was a more complete account of the capabilities of certain neural networks to represent quantum states. In particular, the team studied neural networks that use two distinct groups of neurons. The first group, called the visible neurons, represents real quantum particles, like atoms in an optical lattice or ions in a chain. To account for interactions between particles, the researchers employed a second group of neuronsthe hidden neuronswhich link up with visible neurons. These links capture the physical interactions between real particles, and as long as the number of connections stays relatively small, the neural network description remains simple.

Specifying a number for each connection and mathematically forgetting the hidden neurons can produce a compact representation of many interesting quantum states, including states with topological characteristics and some with surprising amounts of entanglement.

Beyond its potential as a tool in numerical simulations, the new framework allowed Deng and collaborators to prove some mathematical facts about the families of quantum states represented by neural networks. For instance, neural networks with only short-range interactionsthose in which each hidden neuron is only connected to a small cluster of visible neuronshave a strict limit on their total entanglement. This technical result, known as an area law, is a research pursuit of many condensed matter physicists.

These neural networks can't capture everything, though. "They are a very restricted regime," Deng says, adding that they don't offer an efficient universal representation. If they did, they could be used to simulate a quantum computer with an ordinary computer, something physicists and computer scientists think is very unlikely. Still, the collection of states that they do represent efficiently, and the overlap of that collection with other representation methods, is an open problem that Deng says is ripe for further exploration.

Explore further: Physicists use quantum memory to demonstrate quantum secure direct communication

More information: Dong-Ling Deng et al. Quantum Entanglement in Neural Network States, Physical Review X (2017). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevX.7.021021

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Neural networks take on quantum entanglement - Phys.Org

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Jeff Sessions, Dennis Rodman, Donald Trump: Your Morning Briefing – New York Times

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Jeff Sessions, Dennis Rodman, Donald Trump: Your Morning Briefing
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On Monday, a friend of President Trump said that Mr. Trump was considering whether to fire Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating possible ties between Russia and his campaign. A White House official said that only the president or his ...

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Jeff Sessions, Dennis Rodman, Donald Trump: Your Morning Briefing - New York Times

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Donald Trump’s boasts about accomplishments in office ring hollow – PolitiFact

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We checked a statement by President Donald Trump at his first official cabinet meeting on June 12, 2017.

Some commentators called it "the weirdest Cabinet meeting ever": President Donald Trumps leadership team gathered to deliver a litany of praise for the president.

Trump saved some of the boasting for himself, making claims that his administration has been one of historic accomplishments.

"I will say that never has there been a president -- with few exceptions; in the case of FDR, he had a major depression to handle -- who's passed more legislation, who's done more things than what we've done, between the executive orders and the job-killing regulations that have been terminated," Trump said, later adding, "We've achieved tremendous success."

Weve previously checked Trumps claim in April that "no administration has accomplished more in the first 90 days" and found that assertion to be False. But given the high-profile setting of Trumps comment -- his first formal Cabinet meeting -- we decided to take a look at his new statement.

Presidential and congressional scholars arent any more convinced than they were in April. "Trumps boasts are empty," said Max J. Skidmore, a University of Missouri-Kansas City political scientist who has written several books on the presidency.

Legislation signed by Trump

When we checked with the White House, they noted that in this remark Trump acknowledged exceptions such as Roosevelt. They also pointed to the statistics for the number of laws and executive orders signed by a president in 100 days --a metric that Trump fares well on.

Around the 100-day point of Trumps presidency, we found that White House press secretary Sean Spicer was accurate on the numbers when he said that the current president has "worked with Congress to pass more legislation in his first 100 days than any president since (Harry) Truman." We noted that in the first 100 days of his first full term, Truman signed 55 bills; the president with the highest count since then is Trump with 28.

However, none of the bills Trump had signed at that point qualified as major pieces of legislation. None of the ones since are, either. They include, among others, two federal spending bills of the sort required periodically of every president and Congress to keep the government running; a bill overhauling government-employee travel policy; a bill about the United States competing for an international expo; a measure addressing Department of Homeland Security vehicle fleets; and the official naming of a federal courthouse in Tennessee.

While the White House is pursuing several major issues in Congress -- notably the repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act and efforts to cut taxes and promote infrastructure -- it would be premature for Trump to take credit for these. The health care bill has passed the House but not yet passed the Senate, while the tax and infrastructure measures havent even gotten that far.

Trump is "correct that he has signed a rather large, although not unprecedented, number of bills," Skidmore said. However, "most of the bills he has signed are routine and unimportant."

Sarah Binder, a George Washington University political scientist who specializes in Congress, agreed that "the absence of significant legislative movement is glaring. Contrary to Trump's statement, this is a Republican government struggling to legislate, despite control of both chambers and the White House."

By contrast, even if you set aside Franklin D. Roosevelt -- as Trump did -- other presidents signed more far-reaching legislation during their first 100 days.

Bill Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act, while Barack Obama signed not only a nearly $800 billion stimulus package to combat a spiraling recession but also the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and a law expanding the Childrens Health Insurance Program. Obama also implemented two urgent economic programs formally passed in the final weeks of George W. Bushs presidency -- the Troubled Asset Relief Program and the auto industry bailout.

Meanwhile, John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps (later ratified by Congress), while Trumans first 100 days were a whirlwind of foreign-policy actions -- the end of World War II in Europe, the writing of the United Nations charter, the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan, and Japans unconditional surrender.

Trumps most significant legislative achievements may be his use of the Congressional Review Act -- a previously little-used power that makes it easier for Congress and the president to overturn federal regulations.

"Some of these regulations are substantively and politically important," such as the overturning of the Stream Protection Act, an environmental regulation that Trump and others said harmed coal mining, said Gregory Koger, a University of Miami political scientist.

Still, Koger added, "these definitely do not rise to the level of landmark legislation, or even major legislation." And John Frendreis, a political scientist at Loyola University in Chicago, added that such powers were not available to most postwar presidents, since the Congressional Review Act was only passed in the 1990s. This makes comparisons with past presidents difficult, he said.

Trumps executive orders

As president, Trump has signed some three dozen executive orders, which also places him numerically above the presidents since Franklin Roosevelt.

A number of these orders have addressed high-profile issues, and some could potentially have significant impacts. One -- a visa ban for individuals from certain Muslim-majority nations -- remains tied up in lawsuits and is headed to the Supreme Court. Another notable order directs the Treasury Department to stop collecting penalties related to not having health insurance. If this policy is followed and isnt blocked by the courts, "it could cripple this aspect of the Affordable Care Act without altering the law," Frendreis said.

Trump also used executive orders to pull out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and to green-light key pipelines that had been held up by the Obama administration. And Trump also announced that the United States would be pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, though he didnt use an executive order in that case.

These are significant policy changes -- but its important to note some caveats about Trumps use of executive orders.

First, many of these orders started the ball rolling to overturn federal regulations, rather than overturning them in one fell swoop. Often, Congress needs to weigh in to change a law, or Cabinet departments must undertake a lengthy administrative process before policies officially change.

And second, new presidents routinely issue orders during their first 100 days that overturn actions of their predecessors of the opposite party.

Just two days after taking office, President Bill Clinton signed orders overturning restrictions on abortion imposed during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, and with equal speed, President George W. Bush overturned Clintons opposition to a ban on aid to international groups that participate in abortions.

"Every president uses executive orders, especially when they cannot pass legislation because of a hostile Congress," Frendreis said. "So his actions here are typical, and not unusually impressive. In fact, his need to act administratively instead of legislatively implies legislative weakness, not strength, because he should be able to make policy through the legislative process since he has unified partisan control."

All told, he said, "the early Trump presidency stands out in terms of the number of symbolic actions he has taken to fulfill campaign promises, but his record of changing policy is not off to a fast start. Like all presidents, he has taken some impactful actions, but he does not stand out in this regard."

Our ruling

In his Cabinet meeting, Trump said that rare is the president "who's passed more legislation, who's done more things than what we've done, between the executive orders and the job-killing regulations that have been terminated."

Scholars of the presidency and Congress are unconvinced that Trumps legislative and administrative output is exceptional by historical standards. Trump has signed a relatively large number of bills so far, but comparatively few with significant impact. And while some of his executive orders have made an immediate impact, most have merely expressed his policy preferences or set in motion a process that may, or may not, change policies down the road.

We rate the statement Mostly False.

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2017-06-13 18:56:28 UTC

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Rare is the president "who's passed more legislation, who's done more things than what we've done, between the executive orders and the job-killing regulations that have been terminated."

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Monday, June 12, 2017

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Here Are All the Ways President Trump Praised the GOP Health Care Bill He Just Called ‘Mean’ – TIME

Posted: at 4:47 am

President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized the House-passed health care bill, calling it "mean" in a meeting with Republican senators and urging them to develop a "more generous" version. But just over a month ago, the president repeatedly praised the GOP-sponsored legislation, describing it as a "great plan" after a vote confirmed the bill's approval in the House.

Here are all the ways Trump lauded the American Health Care Act in his speech from the White House Rose Garden on May 4th:

"And I will say this, that as far as Im concerned, your premiums, theyre going to start to come down," Trump said during the beginning of his remarks, before later adding: "And I think, most importantly, yes, premiums will be coming down. Yes, deductibles will be coming down. But very importantly, its a great plan. And ultimately, thats what its all about."

A forecast from the Congressional Budget Office, an independent, nonpartisan agency, said that premiums will actually increase over the next few years should the bill pass in its current form, and long-term effects will ultimately fall to individual states.

"Right now, the insurance companies are fleeing. Its been a catastrophe. And this is a great plan," Trump said. "I actually think it will get even better. And this is, make no mistake, this is a repeal and replace of Obamacare. Make no mistake about it. Make no mistake."

"And this really helps it. A lot of people said, how come you kept pushing healthcare, knowing how tough it is? Dont forget, Obamacare took 17 months. Hillary Clinton tried so hard really valiantly, in all fairness, to get healthcare through. Didnt happen," Trump remarked. "Weve really been doing this for eight weeks, if you think about it. And this is a real plan. This is a great plan. And we had no support from the other party."

"But we want to brag about the plan, because this plan really uh oh," Trump began before he was cut off by a laughing audience. "Well, we may. But were just going to talk a little bit about the plan, how good it is, some of the great features."

The CBO in the same aforementioned report said that if the bill goes through in its current condition, 23 million Americans will lose insurance over the next 10 years.

"So what we have is something very, very incredibly well-crafted. Tell you what, there is a lot of talent standing behind me. An unbelievable amount of talent, that I can tell you. I mean it," Trump gushed.

"But we have an amazing group of people standing behind me," the president added. "They worked so hard and they worked so long. And when I said, lets do this, lets go out, just short little shots for each one of us and lets say how good this plan is we dont have to talk about this unbelievable wasnt it unbelievable? So we dont have to say it again. But its going to be an unbelievable victory, actually, when we get it through the Senate."

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Donald Trump Might Set a Recordfor the Biggest Decline of American Power in History – The Nation.

Posted: at 4:47 am

Donald Trump announces that the United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, June 1, 2017. (Reuters / Kevin Lamarque)

In its own inside-out, upside-down way, its almost wondrous to behold. As befits our presidents wildest dreams, it may even prove to be a record for the ages, one for the history books. He was, after all, the candidate who sensed it first. When those he was running against, like the rest of Washingtons politicians, were still insisting that the United States remained at the top of its game, not anbut theindispensable nation, the only truly exceptional one on the face of the earth, he said nothing of the sort. He campaigned on Americas decline, on this countrys increasing lack of exceptionality, its potential dispensability. He ran on the single word againas in make America great againbecause (the implication was) it just isnt anymore. And he swore that he and he alone was the best shot Americans, or at least non-immigrant white Americans, had at ever seeing the best of days again.

In that sense, he was our first declinist candidate for president, and if that didnt tell you something during the election season, it should have. No question about it, he hit a chord, rang a bell, because out in the heartland it was possible to sense a deepening reality that wasnt evident in Washington. The wealthiest country on the planet, the most militarily powerful in the history of well, anybody, anywhere, anytime (or so we were repeatedly told) couldnt win a war, not even with the investment of trillions of taxpayer dollars, couldnt do anything but spread chaos by force of arms.

Meanwhile, at home, despite all that wealth, despite billionaires galore, including the one running for president, despite the transnational corporate heaven inhabited by Google and Facebook and Apple and the rest of the crew, parts of this country and its infrastructure were starting to feel distinctly (to use a word from another universe) Third Worldish. He sensed that, too. He regularly said things like this: We spent six trillion dollars in the Middle East, we got nothing. And we have an obsolete plane system. We have obsolete airports. We have obsolete trains. We have bad roads. Airports. And this: Our airports are like from a third-world country. And on the nations crumbling infrastructure, he couldnt have been more on the mark.

In parts of the United States, white working-class and middle-class Americans could sense that the future was no longer theirs, that their children would not have a shot at what they had had, that they themselves increasingly didnt have a shot at what they had had. The American Dream seemed to be gaining an almost nightmarish sheen, given that the real value of the average wage of a worker hadnt increased since the 1970s; that the cost of a college education had gone through the roof and the educational-debt burden for children with dreams of getting ahead was now staggering; that unions were cratering; that income inequality was at a historic high; and well, you know the story, really you do. In essence, for them the famed American Dream seemed ever more like someone elses trademarked property.

Indispensable? Exceptional? This country? Not anymore. Not as they were experiencing it.

And because of that, Donald Trump won the lottery. He answered the $64,000 question. (If youre not of a certain age, Google it, but believe me, its a reference in our presidents memory book.) He entered the Oval Office with almost 50 percent of the vote and a fervent base of support for his promised program of doing it all over again, 1950s-style.

It had been one hell of a pitch from the businessman billionaire. He had promised a future of stratospheric terrificness, of greatness on an historic scale. He promised to keep the evil onesthe rapists, job thieves, and terroristsaway, to wall them out or toss them out or ban them from ever traveling here. He also promised to set incredible records, as only a mega-businessman like him could conceivably do, the sort of all-American records this country hadnt seen in a long, long time.

And early as it is in the Trump era, it seems as if, on one score at least, he could deliver something for the record books going back to the times when those recording the acts of rulers were still scratching them out in clay or wax. At this point, theres at least a chance that Donald Trump might preside over the most precipitous decline of a truly dominant power in history, one only recently considered at the height of its glory. It could prove to be a fall for the ages. Admittedly, that other superpower of the Cold War era, the Soviet Union, imploded in 1991, which was about the fastest way imaginable to leave the global stage. Still, despite the evil empire talk of that era, the USSR was always the secondary, the weaker of the two superpowers. It was never Rome, or Spain, or Great Britain.

When it comes to the United States, were talking about a country that not so long ago saw itself as the only great power left on planet Earth, the lone superpower. It was the one still standing, triumphant, at the end of a history of great power rivalry that went back to a time when the wooden warships of various European states first broke out into a larger world and began to conquer it. It stood by itself at, as its proponents liked to claim at the time, the end of history.

As we watch, it seems almost possible to see President Trump, in real time, tweet by tweet, speech by speech, sword dance by sword dance, intervention by intervention, act by act, in the process of dismantling the system of global powerof soft power, in particular, and of alliances of every sortby which the United States made its will felt, made itself a truly global hegemon. Whether his America first policies are aimed at creating a future order of autocrats, or petro-states, or are nothing more than the expression of his libidinous urges and secret hatreds, he may already be succeeding in taking down that world order in record fashion.

Despite the mainstream pieties of the moment about the nature of the system Donald Trump appears to be dismantling in Europe and elsewhere, it was anything but either terribly liberal or particularly peaceable. Wars, invasions, occupations, the undermining or overthrow of governments, brutal acts and conflicts of every sort succeeded one another in the years of American glory. Past administrations in Washington had a notorious weakness for autocrats, just as Donald Trump does today. They regularly had less than no respect for democracy if, from Iran to Guatemala to Chile, the will of the people seemed to stand in Washingtons way. (It is, as Vladimir Putin has been only too happy to point out of late, an irony of our moment that the country that has undermined or overthrown or meddled in more electoral systems than any other is in a total snit over the possibility that one of its own elections was meddled with.) To enforce their global system, Americans never shied away from torture, black sites, death squads, assassinations, and other grim practices. In those years, the US planted its military on close to 1,000 overseas military bases, garrisoning the planet as no other country ever had.

Nonetheless, the canceling of the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal, the withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, threats against NAFTA, the undermining of NATO, the promise of protective tariffs on foreign goods (and the possible trade wars that might go with them) could go a long way toward dismantling the American global system of soft power and economic dominance as it has existed in these last decades. If such acts and others like them prove effective in the months and years to come, they will leave only one kind of power in the American global quiver: hard military power, and its handmaiden, the kind of covert power Washington, through the CIA in particular, has long specialized in. If Americas alliances crack open and its soft power becomes too angry or edgy to pass for dominant power anymore, its massive machinery of destruction will still be left, including its vast nuclear arsenal. While, in the Trump era, a drive to cut domestic spending of every sort is evident, more money is still slated to go to the military, already funded at levels not reached by combinations of other major powers.

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Given the last 15 years of history, its not hard to imagine whats likely to result from the further elevation of military power: disaster. This is especially true because Donald Trump has appointed to key positions in his administration a crew of generals who spent the last decade and a half fighting Americas catastrophic wars across the Greater Middle East. They are not only notoriously incapable of thinking outside the box about the application of military power, but faced with the crisis of failed wars and failing states, of spreading terror movements and a growing refugee crisis across that crucial region, they can evidently only imagine one solution to just about any problem: more of the same. More troops, more mini-surges, more military trainers and advisers, more air strikes, more drone strikes more.

After a decade and a half of such thinking we already know perfectly well where this endsin further failure, more chaos and suffering, but above all in an inability of the United States to effectively apply its hard power anywhere in any way that doesnt make matters worse. Since, in addition, the Trump administration is filled with Iranophobes, including a president who has only recently fused himself to the Saudi royal family in an attempt to further isolate and undermine Iran, the possibility that a military-first version of American foreign policy will spread further is only growing.

Such more thinking is typical as well of much of the rest of the cast of characters now in key positions in the Trump administration. Take the CIA, for instance. Under its new director, Mike Pompeo (distinctly a more kind of guy and an Iranophobe of the first order), two key positions have reportedly been filled: a new chief of counterterrorism and a new head of Iran operations (recently identified as Michael DAndrea, an Agency hardliner with the nickname the Dark Prince). Heres how Matthew Rosenberg and Adam Goldman of the New York Times recently described their similar approaches to their jobs (my emphasis added):

Mr. DAndreas new role is one of a number of moves inside the spy agency that signal a more muscular approach to covert operations under the leadership of Mike Pompeo, the conservative Republican and former congressman, the officials said. The agency also recently named a new chief of counterterrorism, who has begun pushing for greater latitude to strike militants.

In other words, more!

Rest assured of one thing, whatever Donald Trump accomplishes in the way of dismantling Americas version of soft power, his generals and intelligence operatives will handle the hard-power part of the equation just as ably.

If a Trump presidency achieves a record for the ages when it comes to the precipitous decline of the American global system, little as The Donald ever cares to share credit for anything, he will undoubtedly have to share it for such an achievement. Its true that kings, emperors, and autocrats, the top dogs of any moment, prefer to take all the credit for the records set in their time. When we look back, however, its likely that President Trump will be seen as having given a tottering system that necessary push. It will undoubtedly be clear enough by then that the US, seemingly at the height of any powers power in 1991 when the Soviet Union disappeared, began heading for the exits soon thereafter, still enwreathed in self-congratulation and triumphalism.

Had this not been so, Donald Trump would never have won the 2016 election. It wasnt he, after all, who gave the US heartland an increasingly Third World feel. It wasnt he who spent those trillions of dollars so disastrously on invasions and occupations, dead-end wars, drone strikes and special ops raids, reconstruction and deconstruction in a never-ending war on terror that today looks more like a war for the spread of terror. It wasnt he who created the growing inequality gap in this country or produced all those billionaires amid a population that increasingly felt left in the lurch. It wasnt he who hiked college tuitions or increased the debt levels of the young or set roads and bridges to crumbling and created the conditions for Third World-style airports.

If both the American global and domestic systems hadnt been rotting out before Donald Trump arrived on the scene, that again of his wouldnt have worked. Thought of another way, when the US was truly at the height of its economic clout and power, American leaders felt no need to speak incessantly of how indispensable or exceptional the country was. It seemed too self-evident to mention. Someday, some historian may use those very words in the mouths of American presidents and other politicians (and their claims, for instance, that the US military was the finest fighting force that the world has ever known) as a set of increasingly defensive markers for measuring the decline of American power.

So heres the question: When the Trump years (months?) come to an end, will the US be not the planets most exceptional land, but a pariah nation? Will that again still be the story of the year, the decade, the century? Will the last American Firster turn out to have been the first American Laster? Will it truly be one for the record books?

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NY Dem: ‘Every Racist in America Voted for Donald Trump’ – Fox News Insider

Posted: at 4:47 am

A New York City congressman said on the House floor that "every racist in America voted for Donald Trump."

Hakeem Jeffries (D), who represents East New York and Coney Island, said "so many folks dripping in hatred flocked to his candidacy."

"Why would people that worship at the altar of white supremacy [be] drawn to Donald Trump's campaign?" he asked.

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"That's not to say that every American who voted for Donald Trump is a racist. We do know that every racist in America voted for Donald Trump," Jeffries said. "That's a problem."

He said Trump's election is a "backlash" against "eight years of progress" in America.

Jeffries said people should be reminded that Trump "perpetrated the racist lie that Barack Obama was not born in the United States of America."

He added that he has doubts that Attorney General Jeff Sessions will prosecute hate crimes because he is "straight out of central casting" for a "good ol' boy."

Watch the clip above, and watch Trump respond to "Democratic obstructionists" below.

WATCH: Top Dem Repeatedly Cuts Off Sessions During Hearing

'He Tells the Truth a Lot': Gingrich Spars With Whoopi, Joy Behar

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Donald Trump Is About to Impeach Himself, Pelosi Says, as Approval Rating Plummets – Newsweek

Posted: at 4:47 am

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi delivered one of her strongest rebukes of the Trump presidency on Tuesday, telling her Democratic colleagues on Capitol Hill to allow time for the president to self-impeachbefore spearheading efforts to remove him from office just months into his tenure in Washington.

The Democratic lawmaker warned talks of impeachment are a big dealto raise so soon into a presidents time in power, though Donald Trump could be well on his way as a federal probe into Russias meddling in the 2016 election ramps up under special counsel Robert Mueller.

Related: Heres How Trump Could Actually Be Impeached

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Its a big deal to talk about impeachment,Pelosi told Democrats Tuesday, multiple sources relayed toPolitico. I think hes going to self-impeach.

President Donald Trump after attending an event welcoming the Clemson Tigers, the 2016 NCAA Football National Champions, at the White House on June 12. Reuters

Pelosis comments followed a discussion over the second draft article of impeachment from Democratic Rep.Brad Sherman, who joined Texas Congressman Al Green in his official call on the House floor to impeach Trump over obstruction of justice.

Democrats have repeatedly pointed to Trumps firing of former FBI Director James Comey and subsequent statements to the news media that he dismissed the head of the agency while considering the FBI investigation into Russias meddling in last years election, as an example of the president interfering with a federal probe into his campaign and new administration.

But Democratic leaders like Pelosi, as well as influencers within the party like Massachusetts Rep. Mike Capuano, have steered clear from discussing removing the president from office, noting the potential implications the exhaustive political process could have if Democrats were the only group calling for it.

Emotions are high. These issues have political implications and government ones, Capuano reportedly told the group of lawmakers after viewing the latest draft article of impeachment. The representative said there should instead be a discussion within the caucusin a public forumbefore we do something that would position our colleagues or our future colleagues.

Meanwhile, Trump spent the morning on Twitter accusing former President Barack Obamas administration of breaking the law while in office, as well as demanding an apology from the fake news media for its negative coverage ofhis administration. All this happens as Trumps Attorney General Jeff Sessions prepares to speak in a public hearing in front of a Senate intelligence committee Tuesday about the FBIs investigation into Russia.

Several Constitutional law and history experts have previously told Newsweek Trump will only be impeached when, and if, Republican lawmakers are moved by their voting bases and independents to remove the president from office. Meanwhile, Trumps approval ratings have plummeted into the mid-30s according to multiple polls; well under the publics support for impeachment, which sits at 43 percent.

Those figures have continued to fall in recent days, as Trumps Russia ties and several highly anticipated testimonies from within his administration dominate the news cycle. Trumps conservative agenda has also taken a hit in popularity, as approval for the GOPs healthcare bill continues to decline as Obamas landmark initiative, the Affordable Care Act, receives increasing support.

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Retail bloodbath: Bankruptcy filings pile up – CNNMoney

Posted: at 4:46 am

More than 300 retailers have filed for bankruptcy so far this year, according to data from BankruptcyData.com. That's up 31% from the same time last year. Most of those filings were for small companies -- the proverbial Mom & Pop store with a single location. But there are also plenty of household names on the list.

Most of these stores are suffering from the same thing: A shift away from traditional storefronts to online shopping.

Not all of these chains will eventually go out of business. Most of them fled for Chapter 11, which allows a company to keep operating while it restructures its debt. But the sector is already on course for a record number of store closings this year.

Here's a list of some of the more prominent retail bankruptcies to date.

Gymboree: The children's clothing retailer filed for bankruptcy on June 11, saying it may close 375 of its 1,300 stores under the Gymboree, Crazy 8 and Janie and Jack brands.

rue21: The teen clothing retailer filed for bankruptcy on May 15, and said it has plans to close about one third of its 1,200 stores.

Payless ShoeSource: The discount shoe retailer filed on April 4. It said it would move to close nearly 400 U.S. stores out of the 4,400 locations it has worldwide.

Gordmans Stores: A century-old regional department store chain, Gordmans had 106 stores in 22 states in the Midwest and western U.S. It filed for bankruptcy on March 13 and is shuttering all of its stores.

Gander Mountain: The hunting and outdoors retailer, which operated under the Gander Mountain and Overton names, filed for bankruptcy.

The RV retailer Camping World bought some of the company's assets at auction in April and will keep some stores open. Its remaining inventory will be sold through liquidation sales.

RadioShack: The iconic electronics retailer first filed for bankruptcy in 2015, and tried to stay in business through a deal with Sprint in which the wireless provider operated stores within the RadioShack stores. But in March the company that now owns RadioShack filed for bankruptcy once again, putting it on the path to close its remaining stores.

hhgregg: The appliance, electronics and furniture retailer filed for bankruptcy in March and has closed all of its 132 stores.

Wet Seal: The troubled teen clothing retailer, which made a previous trip through bankruptcy in 2015, filed for bankruptcy again in February. This time it went out of business, closing 171 stores and putting 1,750 employees out of work.

The Limited: The once popular women's clothing chain filed for bankruptcy in January and closed all of its remaining stores.

CNNMoney (New York) First published June 13, 2017: 12:05 AM ET

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Retail bloodbath: Bankruptcy filings pile up - CNNMoney

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