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Takeaways from the Supreme Court`s Arguments on Texas and Florida`s Social Media Laws and the First Amendment; Inside Los Angeles Mayor`s Plan to House The Homeless; NASA Seeks Volunteers for Simulated Mars Mission; Thousands Evacuated in English City Before Unexploded WWII Bomb Moved. Aired 4-4:10a ET
Aired February 28, 2024 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
COY WIRE, CNN 10 ANCHOR: What`s up lovely people. Welcome to CNN 10, the best 10 minutes in news, where we tell you the what, letting you decide
what to think. I`m your boy, Coy. We`re going to start with a freaking, freaking, freaking, remix pop quiz, hotshot.
If a social media company prevents you from voicing your opinion, because it doesn`t approve of what you`re saying, has it violated your right to
free speech?
Yes, no, maybe, so.
All right. This one`s tricky. So tricky, in fact, it`s currently a question in front of the Supreme Court. See, after former president Donald Trump and
other prominent conservatives have accused social media giants of censoring conservatives online, Texas and Florida both passed laws that prohibit
these companies from removing or demoting content that expresses certain viewpoints.
This week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments to determine if those laws are legal. The Florida`s Solicitor General argued that the social
media companies became as successful as they have because they market themselves as platforms for free speech. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HENRY WHITAKER, FLORIDA SOLICITOR GENERAL: Now that they host the communications of billions of users, they sing a very different tune. They
now say that they are in fact editors of their user speech, rather like a newspaper. They contend that they possess a broad first amendment right to
censor anything they host on their sites, even when doing so contradicts their own representations to consumers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WIRE: Now, the social media companies argue that the laws violate their own first amendment speech rights.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PAUL CLEMENT, ATTORNEY REPRESENTING SOCIAL MEDIA COMPANIES: It interferes with editorial discretion. It compels speech. It discriminates on the basis
of content, speaker and view -- and viewpoint. And it does all this in the name of promoting free speech, but loses sight of the first principle of
the first amendment, which is it only applies to state action.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WIRE: The justices expressed skepticism of the Florida and Texas laws, and seem to be divided along non-ideological lines as they tried to determine
whether social media giants have created a public square, if you will, that would allow them to be treated differently under the law than other private
companies.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS: And I wonder since we`re talking about the first amendment, whether our first concern should be with the state
regulating what, you know, we have called the modern public square.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WIRE: But not all the justices appeared skeptical of the laws. Check out this one question from justice, Samuel Alito, to an attorney for the social
media companies.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JUSTICE SAMUEL ALITO: Content moderation. Could you define that for me? Is it anything more than a euphemism for censorship?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WIRE: Now, for the moment, several of the justices seem to be looking for a possible way to keep the laws on hold, to allow the lower course to look
more deeply at the impacts of them on a wide range of social media sites.
So as for that pop quiz, as for now, nobody seems to have the right answer, so if you have a minute or two, go on pause and discuss.
Now, we`re going to take an in depth look at a new program in Los Angeles, aimed at helping to provide shelter for people experiencing homelessness.
Our Jake Tapper recently traveled to L.A. the second largest city in the U.S. to meet with the mayor and some of the folks utilizing this temporary
housing to learn more about the program.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR (voice over): This is the sound of someone`s entire life essentially being thrown in the trash. In the middle of recent record-
breaking rain in Los Angeles, the city is today clearing an encampment for unhoused people.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass campaigned on fixing the city`s homeless crisis. This is theoretically part of that fix.
MAYOR KAREN BASS (D), LOS ANGELES: This is exactly why I ran for mayor. This is the reason why --
TAPPER (voice over): Mayor Bass took me to see the cleanup firsthand, getting people out of tents and onto buses and into temporary housing. They
leave behind anything they cannot carry.
JAMES, MOVING INTO TEMPORARY HOUSING: I was recently stabbed about two weeks ago. This is like a Godsend right now, like, getting indoors and
being away from this.
TAPPER (voice over): Inside Safe is the name of Mayor Bass` flagship program to tear down these encampments and being L.A.`s unhoused indoors.
TAPPER (on camera): So, when I spoke to you about a year ago, you talked about your goal for homelessness and the end of homelessness in Los Angeles
by the end of your first term.
BASS: Well, I think that progress is going well. We destroyed the myth that people do not want to leave the tents, people don`t want to leave the cars
and their RVs. We`ve had the opposite problem. We have more people willing to leave than we have rooms for.
TAPPER (voice over): In a remarkable new study, researchers at the University of California San Francisco surveyed thousands of the homeless
in California. Nearly 90% of participants said high housing costs were a barrier to their moving into permanent housing. And the majority of those
surveyed did want to get off the streets.
JAMES: There are people on the street that don`t want to be housed, but most of them do, you know? It`s just finding the right housing for them and
the right situation.
TAPPER (voice over): Major factors to finding housing are high rents and low income. Then, of course, there`s also discrimination and bad credit.
Some people don`t even have ID. Some have been evicted before. Many are dealing with addiction or struggling with physical or mental health
problems.
The number of people experiencing homelessness in a single night went up 12% in the United States in 2023, in part because COVID programs preventing
evictions and housing losses came to an end. A quarter of those people were unhoused for the first time in their lives.
TAPPER: How many people fell into homelessness during COVID?
BASS: Before COVID there were probably about 20,000 or 30,000 people. Now it`s 46,000.
TAPPER (voice over): Today, this man, Mark, the father of four, is getting out of his tent and into temporary housing nearby.
Mark`s new housing is in these former shipping containers used to build interim housing quickly.
(On camera): There was a misunderstanding about homelessness in this country.
BASS: Exactly.
TAPPER: A lot of people think it`s just people with psychological problems or just people with addiction.
BASS: We have about 9,000 children who are homeless in Los Angeles. Some of them are in and out of schools. Some of them attend school. But many are
living in cars and RVs.
TAPPER: The short-term solution, get people out of the tents, off the street, out of the cars, into these containers. But this isn`t a long- term
solution for the problem.
BASS: It takes a while to build housing. Unfortunately, the policy de facto had been, you stay on the street while we build something. I think that is
completely unacceptable. So, what is the solution? Just putting somebody in a house is not enough. There needs to be health care and other social
services support and then they need to go into permanent housing.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WIRE: Ten second trivia.
What is the name given to the World War II German Airforce campaign that bombed Britain relentlessly for eight straight months?
Donner, Blitz, Schrei, or Feuer.
If you said Blitz, you are the bomb. The name Blitz comes from the German term Blitzkrieg, meaning Lightning War, according to the Imperial War
Museum Institute.
More than 80 years have passed since England was devastated by German air force explosives, but some of the Detritus can still be found across the
country. And for some folks really close to home. In the seaside city of Plymouth on England`s Southern shore remnants of a World War II era bomb
have been found unexploded in one person`s garden, prompting, a citywide response.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This unexplode World War II bomb was found buried in a residential garden in the English city of Plymouth. The discovery prompted
the city council to declare a major incident. Some 10,000 people were evacuated from the area in what the U.K. government calls one of the
largest evacuation operations since the end of World War II.
SALLY HAYDON, PLYMOUTH CITY COUNCIL: If you could leave your properties like you have been advised by the police, that would be brilliant.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Bomb disposal experts transported the 500-kilogram device to the sea where it was eventually detonated.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WIRE: Today`s story getting a 10 out of 10, Martians in the making. If you have dreams of someday visiting Mars, NASA is accepting applications for a
chance to participate in a simulated mission that could bring you one small step closer to your dream. Check out the 3D printed habitats built in
Houston that will house volunteer Martians who will test out what it might be like to live and work on our neighboring planet.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: For one year, a crew of four people will live and work inside this space. The Mars Dune Alpha at NASA`s Johnson Space Center in
Houston. The 3D printed habitat is designed to resemble the living conditions of a crew of astronauts that will hopefully land on the Martian
surface in the future.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WIRE: All right, time to give some thanks to all the linguists out there who submitted words on my @coywire social accounts for #YourWordWednesday.
Today`s winner is the current events class at Cory-Rawson Local Schools in Rawson, Ohio for detritus, a noun meaning debris or the portion of
something left behind after it had been destroyed. Thanks for teaching us a new word today, everybody.
For today`s shout out, we want to show some love to the Falcons up at Mrs. Farrell`s class at Minnechaug Regional High School in Wilbraham
Massachusetts. Thanks for my new t-shirt.
And this shout out goes to Milford High School in Milford, Delaware. Rise up.
Keep shining bright, lovely people. I`m Coy Wire. And I`ll see you right back here tomorrow on CNN 10.
END
