Johnathan Walker:GA judge rejects Trump's attempt to dismiss charges | The Excerpt

On Friday’s episode of The Johnathan WalkerExcerpt podcast: A Georgia judge has rejected former President Donald Trump's request to dismiss election racketeering charges under the First Amendment. USA TODAY 2024 Campaign Reporter Zac Anderson talks about how Donald Trump has made the murder of Michigan woman Ruby Garcia part of immigration debate on the campaign trail. President Joe Biden gives an ultimatum to Israel. USA TODAY Money Reporter Bailey Schulz looks at a study that found racial bias in AI chatbots. This year's hurricane season forecast includes the highest number of hurricanes ever predicted.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Friday, April 5th, 2024. This is The Excerpt.

Today, a new development in Trump's election interference case. Plus, how Trump is making the murder of a Michigan woman part of the border debate. And we look at whether AI chatbots are racially biased.

The Georgia judge in former President Donald Trump's election interference case yesterday rejected his argument that the First Amendment shielded him from racketeering charges because his unfounded claims of widespread election fraud were political speech. Trump's lawyer, Steve Sadow argued the charges should be dismissed because Trump was speaking about politics as President. Sadow argued that even if Trump made false statements, as alleged in the indictment, he must be protected for a political debate. But Fulton County Superior Judge Scott McAfee ruled that the First Amendment does not protect speech that is part of a crime, and that a jury must decide whether it was in Trump's case.

Meanwhile, on the campaign trail, Trump has made the murder of a Michigan woman, Ruby Garcia, part of the immigration debate. I spoke with USA Today 2024 Campaign Reporter, Zac Anderson, to learn more. Zac, thanks for hopping on The Excerpt today.

Zac Anderson:

Yeah, happy to be here.

Taylor Wilson:

So Zac, let's just start with this. Who was Ruby Garcia, and what do we know about her death?

Zac Anderson:

Ruby Garcia is a woman who was killed recently in Michigan, and the murder did not attract a ton of attention outside of Western Michigan. But this week, former President Donald Trump held a rally in Michigan where he brought up Ruby Garcia and really drew a lot of attention to her. Her death was really tragic. She was killed. She was shot multiple times and left on the side of the road by her boyfriend. Her boyfriend was an undocumented immigrant. And Trump has really seized on this case, as he did with Laken Riley in Georgia, to try and present undocumented immigrants as dangerous.

Taylor Wilson:

Yeah. What does Ruby Garcia's family say about some of Trump's rhetoric around this tragedy?

Zac Anderson:

Trump was actually speaking during this event, and he said that he had talked to Garcia's family. Ruby Garcia's sister said that that wasn't true. She said that he never reached out to anybody in her family. So there's quite a bit of blowback on that.

Taylor Wilson:

Why is Trump leaning into immigration so heavily as a part of his campaign, Zac? Which voters really is he going after here?

Zac Anderson:

So, immigration has been something that he has talked about from the beginning, even when he was first running in 2016 when he famously came down the escalator in Trump Tower. He talked about immigration and was really tying undocumented immigrants to crime even back then. And it's been a through-line in all of his campaigns, and he's been pretty clear about some of the reasons why he's focused on this. In his speech in Michigan, he brought up this issue of immigration and crime and him trying to tie the two together. There's Republicans who think that this could appeal to swing voters, particularly women in the suburbs.

This is an issue where both campaigns are trying to reach these swing voters. President Biden has focused a lot on issues like abortion rights, protecting democracy with what happened on January 6th, and it's unclear what the issue will be that these voters make their decision on.

Taylor Wilson:

Trump makes a lot of claims about immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants, Zac. What does data show about crime committed by undocumented immigrants compared with the general population?

Zac Anderson:

Yeah, I spoke to a researcher about this who actually wrote a book reviewing all of the available literature, all of the available studies on this. And this researcher told me that undocumented immigrants are no more likely to commit crimes than native born US citizens. And in fact, there is some evidence that they may be less likely to commit crimes, although the data is limited on that. So the idea that undocumented immigrants coming to this country is going to increase crime is not supported by the data.

Taylor Wilson:

How does Trump's presumed general election opponent, President Joe Biden, feel about this issue and some of what we've been talking about here, Zac?

Zac Anderson:

I think that Biden has also moved a little bit to the right on immigration. It's an issue that if you look at the polling, there is quite a bit of concern. Both sides recognize that there has been a lot of undocumented immigration, that the border is a problem, that there's too much free-flowing travel through there, and they want to get a handle on it. Biden actually pushed a bill in Congress that would've really cracked down on the border and tried to limit undocumented immigration, but Republicans ended up opposing it, even though it had a Republican sponsor, because Trump ended up opposing it. So Biden has tried to say that Trump doesn't really care about the border or he would've supported this bill that was crafted by a Republican senator, and he has kind of changed his tune on this a little bit.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Zac Anderson covers Donald Trump and Republicans for USA Today. Thank you, Zac.

Zac Anderson:

Thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

President Joe Biden has issued an ultimatum to Israel that US support in the Gaza war depends on immediate steps to protect civilians and aid workers. Biden spoke by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu three days after a team from celebrity chef Jose Andres' World Central Kitchen aid group were killed in an Israeli drone strike in Northern Gaza. The White House said Biden has pushed Israel's leader to conclude long stalemated ceasefire negotiations with Hamas. Though earlier yesterday, an unnamed senior Hamas leader told Reuters that the group had rejected ceasefire proposals by regional diplomats. Last month, the US abstained on a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire and hostage release.

Are AI chatbots racially biased? A new study finds that many treat white and black sounding names differently. I spoke with USA Today Money Reporter, Bailey Schulz, for more. Bailey, thanks for hopping on.

Bailey Schulz:

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

So Bailey, what did this new study out of Stanford Law School find about racial bias in AI? And I'm also curious about the methodology here. How exactly did this study work?

Bailey Schulz:

Yeah. So we saw the Stanford researchers pose a number of questions to AI chatbots. So they were asking for advice on, "Oh, how much money should I pay for this used car?" "How much money should I offer this job candidate?" And they would ask these questions over and over, and the only thing they would change would be the name for the person's question. And the study found evidence that these chatbots will provide different answers depending on what sort of name you ask in the query. So for example, a chatbot may say a job candidate with a name like Tamika should be offered a $79,000 salary. But if you switch that name to something like Todd, then the suggested salary is more like 82,000.

Taylor Wilson:

That begs the question here, Bailey, are there not guardrails in place to prevent this?

Bailey Schulz:

So that's something that the authors do acknowledge, that there are guardrails in place, and AI companies have acknowledged that these biases are a problem. They're aware of this. They're working to establish guardrails and start preventing these biases. But yeah, one of the researchers I spoke to who worked on this paper told me that these findings just show how easy it is to find situations where these guardrails don't work, and how important it is for companies to keep testing to look for these biases.

Taylor Wilson:

What real-world consequences could these biases bring for people of color?

Bailey Schulz:

Yeah. So I think the concern and the risks that these authors bring up in the report is that we're seeing more companies turn to AI and integrate AI into their operations, and that's both internally and through these customer-facing chatbots. So these authors are saying that there are risks that these sort of biases could work their way into these AI outputs and possibly harm marginalized communities.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Bailey Schulz covers money for USA Today. Thank you, Bailey.

Bailey Schulz:

Thank you for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

An extremely active hurricane season this year is likely. That's according to forecasters from Colorado State University yesterday. In fact, the forecast includes the highest number of hurricanes ever predicted in an April forecast by the university since the team began issuing predictions in 1995. Colorado State Hurricane Forecaster, Phil Klotzbach, the author of The Forecast, said, "Everything is leaning toward an extremely active season, still a record warm Atlantic water temperatures and a pretty rapid transition over to La Nina." They're predicting 23 named storms and 11 hurricanes. A typical year averages about 14 tropical storms and seven spinning into hurricanes.

Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. We're produced by Shannon Rae Green and Bradley Glanzrock, and our executive producer is Laura Beatty. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA Today.