10 things you need to know today: June 15, 2016

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders on stage

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1. Clinton meets with Sanders as she wins last primary contest
2. Obama angrily pushes back against Trump's comments on 'radical Islam'
3. Russian hackers break into DNC computers
4. Clinton widens national lead over Trump in new poll
5. Orlando shooter's wife could face charges
6. Appeals court upholds net neutrality rules
7. Stanford rape judge blocked from hearing upcoming case
8. Suspect killed in Texas Walmart hostage incident
9. Alligator drags 2-year-old into water at Disney hotel
10. HBO says Curb Your Enthusiasm will return

published 15 June 2016

1. Clinton meets with Sanders as she wins last primary contest

Hillary Clinton won the District of Columbia Democratic primary on Tuesday, beating Bernie Sanders in the last primary contest of the election season. With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Clinton had 79 percent to Sanders' 21 percent. Clinton and Sanders met at a Washington hotel for two hours Tuesday night. The Sanders campaign said after the meeting that the candidates had a "positive discussion about how best to bring more people into the political process and about the dangerous threat that Donald Trump poses to our nation."

President Obama on Tuesday denounced Donald Trump's response to the Orlando mass shooting, saying the presumptive Republican presidential nominee's call for blocking Muslims from entering the U.S. is "dangerous." Obama also rebuked Trump and other Republicans who have scolded him for avoiding the phrase "radical Islam" when referring to terrorist groups. Obama said the phrase unfairly implicates an entire religious group in extremist violence, helping terrorists recruit. He said using the term is "not a strategy," but a "political distraction." Trump responded by saying Obama was "more angry at me than he was at the shooter."

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Russian government hackers got into the Democratic National Committee's computer system and gained access to opposition research on Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, according to DNC officials and security experts. The FBI notified the DNC of the hack, which was so thorough that the intruders were able to see all email and chat traffic. Russian spies also targeted the networks of Trump, presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, and several GOP political action committees.

Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump 49 percent to 37 percent among likely general election voters, according to a new Bloomberg Politics poll released Tuesday. Most polls showed a closer race in late May and early June. The poll came as Trump faces continuing opposition from some fellow Republicans. Trump placed a distant third in Tuesday's D.C. primary behind Marco Rubio and John Kasich, who have dropped out of the race. Also, House Speaker Paul Ryan distanced himself from Trump's inflammatory rhetoric about Muslims following the Orlando mass shooting, saying, "this is a war with radical Islam. It is not a war with Islam. Muslims are our partners."

Federal prosecutors on Tuesday convened a grand jury to investigate Noor Salman, the wife of Orlando massacre gunman Omar Mateen. Salman reportedly has told FBI investigators that she knew of her husband's plan to attack an Orlando gay nightclub, but she did nothing to stop him. The grand jury will have the job of deciding whether that justifies charging her as an accessory in the murders of 49 people at the club, and the attempted murders of 53 others who were wounded.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled in favor of FCC net neutrality rules — supported by the White House — that treat broadband as a utility rather than a luxury. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 vote, upheld the rules, which require broadband internet providers to treat all traffic equally and not block or slow down service to some customers. The telecom industry and Republicans say the rules discourage investment in better service, and place an unfair burden on providers. AT&T immediately said it would appeal.

Santa Clara County Superior Judge Aaron Persky, who faces ongoing criticism for what critics call a light sentence in the recent Stanford sexual assault case, has been removed from an upcoming sex crimes case. Prosecutors made the unusual decision of asking for a new judge after Persky unexpectedly dismissed a non-sex-crimes case before it could go before a jury. That case was his first since he sentenced ex-Stanford swimmer Brock Turner to six months in jail for three felony counts of sexual assault.

A SWAT team fatally shot a man suspected of taking hostages at an Amarillo, Texas, Walmart on Tuesday. Officers responded to a report that an armed person appeared to have taken one or more people hostage. A SWAT crew then entered the store and shot the suspect. The Amarillo Police Department called the incident a "workplace violence event," and said after the suspect was shot that everyone else inside the store was safe. Few other details were immediately available.

An alligator dragged a 2-year-old Nebraska boy into the water as his father tried desperately to save him at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa near Orlando on Tuesday. The boy was on the shoreline with his parents and 4-year-old sister when the four- to seven-foot-long alligator attack occurred. The parents rushed into the water, and the father unsuccessfully tried to "wrestle his son from the grips of the alligator," Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said. Rescuers searched the Seven Seas Lagoon at the hotel — one monorail stop from the Magic Kingdom — overnight but could not find the boy.

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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.