- This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St.

Petersburg, Sarasota.

[music] - Florida's congressional map just got redrawn, and now four Democratic incumbents are in the crosshairs.

The Legislature acted.

The Supreme Court delivered what it means for Florida voters and the balance of power.

In Washington, D.C., two USF doctoral students are murdered, their suspected killer allegedly using ChatGPT to plan it.

It's the second Florida case in less than a year linking artificial intelligence to violent crime.

Now, Florida's attorney general is pursuing the first criminal investigation of an AI company.

And should a chatbot have to tell your child it isn't human?

Florida's proposed AI Bill of Rights would have required just that and more.

What was in the proposal?

Why did it stall?

And are Floridians protected in the meantime?

Hear from trusted voices in our community.

Next on Florida This Week.

[music] Welcome back, everybody.

I'm Lissette Campos.

On the panel this week, we begin with Darryl Paulson.

He's a professor emeritus of government at USF.

He has hands-on experience in Florida's own redistricting battles in the '90s.

He also has a long record testifying as an expert witness for the NAACP in federal voting rights cases.

We have Mitch Perry, a senior reporter for the Florida Phoenix.

He was in Tallahassee for this year's regular session, speaking directly to lawmakers, and Karney Chagal-Feferkorn.

She is a faculty member at USF's Bellini College of AI and Cybersecurity.

Her doctoral research focused on exactly what is now making headlines the ethical vulnerabilities of artificial intelligence.

And joining us by Zoom is Ciara Torres.

She is a constitutional law professor at Stetson University College of Law, and she's also a board member of crew that is the national government ethics watchdog.

Welcome to all of you.

This week, Florida lawmakers wrapped up a special session, and what they did in less than 48 hours could change the balance of power in Washington, D.C., both chambers passed a new congressional map.

It now awaits the governor's signature, and the U.S.

Supreme Court has handed governor DeSantis the legal cover that he needed.

All of this happening in the same week.

Florida is one of eight states redrawing congressional boundaries mid-decade.

At President Trump's urging, five Republican controlled, three Democrat controlled Texas, Missouri and North Carolina have already moved flipping seats towards Republicans.

California counterattacked with proposition 50, turning five Republican districts.

Democratic and last month, Virginia voters approved a new map that could flip four more seats to Democrats.

Standing in Florida's way has been the Fair Districts amendment.

It's a 16-year-old provision in our state constitution that bars partisan gerrymandering and codifies the racial protections of the Federal Voting Rights Act.

This week, that protection was challenged from two directions at once.

The U.S.

Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 in Callais v. Louisiana.

It strikes down Louisiana's majority-Black congressional map and narrowing Section Two of the Voting Rights Act.

Now, to win a discrimination challenge, plaintiffs must prove intentional discrimination, not just its effect.

Justice Elena Kagan warning in the dissent that it renders the heart of the VRA, quote, "All but a dead letter."

End quote.

On the same morning in Tallahassee, the Florida House passed governor DeSantis new 24-to-4 map.

The map eliminates four of Florida's Democratic seats in Congress.

The targets, Tampa's Kathy Castor.

Orlando's Darren Soto and two South Florida veteran lawmakers, Lois Frankel and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Both chambers have passed the map.

The governor's signature is expected shortly.

The Supreme Court ruling is in.

The question now is will these new congressional lines survive in court?

To help us understand what that means for Florida voters and for the Constitution itself is Ciara Torres-Spelliscy.

She is a constitutional law professor at Stetson University College of Law.

She is also a board member of the government ethics watchdog known as, "Crew," that stands for the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you so much for having me.

- I'd like to ask you first how you see this in the state.

What stood out most for you on the state side?

And then I'll ask you about what happened in the U.S.

Supreme Court.

- Sure.

I think this new decision from the Supreme Court highlights the power of map drawing in terms of legislative districts with gerrymandering.

Not only can a small majority in a state turn that majority into a supermajority in a legislature, what's really sort of horrifying about gerrymandering is that a minority of voters can get a majority in a legislature.

And so what is at risk here is literally majority rule.

- How does the Supreme Court ruling impact what's happening with us in Florida?

- Well, I think Florida is a prime example of this phenomenon.

In Florida's 14.3 million registered voters, only 41% of them are Republicans.

So the map that was just produced by the Florida Legislature makes a super majority of the Florida delegation to Congress into Republican leaning seats.

And I think that is the danger that was unleashed by the Supreme Court yesterday.

- The Florida Democratic chair, Florida Democratic Party chair Nikki Fried, also the deputy House Democratic whip Daryl Campbell, have promised to challenge the Florida's new map in court.

They are also promising to create an independent redistricting commission to look at the reapportionment process.

Does that effort become null and void by this ruling at the Supreme Court?

- No.

Actually, reforms like the Fair District amendment to the Florida Constitution and independent redistricting commissions are more important now than ever.

So the challenge to the new map will be under the Florida State Constitution, which says that you cannot, uh, target and benefit incumbents and you can't, uh, target or benefit a political party, which is, it looks like exactly what they just did.

So I think this, this map is vulnerable under the Florida Constitution.

And one of the ways we will get out of this problem is adopting an independent redistricting commission.

So in the House of Representatives, it is majority rule.

And so it matters an enormous amount who has the gavel.

And even if both houses flipped, the president would still have veto power.

And so one of the key issues in the upcoming election is what are the margins if it does flip?

So the president can veto anything he disagrees with.

But then it goes back to the House and the Senate.

And if they can override that veto by a two thirds majority, then that's one way of getting laws that even the president of the United States disagrees with.

- Thank you so much for joining us.

That was Ciara Torres-Spelliscy from Stetson Law School.

- Thank you.

- And now we want to bring in our panel.

Darryl, I'd like to start with you.

You are part of a landmark redistricting cases back in the 90s.

When you think of what was going on then and now, what strikes you the most?

- Well, what strikes me the most is much of what was done in the 1990s, which was to increase minority representation, both among African Americans and Hispanics, is likely to go out the window with the redrawing that has just been done.

You know, reapportionment has been described as it's just like the family portrait.

The only thing you care about is how you came out and the heck with everyone else.

And there's a great deal of truth to that, because politics is very personal and reapportionment is very personal.

Every member of the legislature wants to know, what have they done to my district?

Am I going to be better off or worse off?

And we know that there are a number of people, particularly Democrats, who are going to be much worse off because we've seen the numbers in terms of fewer Democrats in those districts and more Republicans, and it's trouble.

But one thing to remember is there's no guarantee.

People keep talking about, well, Republicans will pick up four seats in Florida.

I'm going to tell you right now, there's no guarantee that Republicans are going to pick up four seats in Florida.

In fact, if you look at those four districts, one of those districts is a toss up district.

I mean, it's pretty neutral.

Two of the districts lean slightly towards the Republicans, and only one of those districts is a strong Republican district.

So that's likely to go Republican.

But the other three districts, I think, you know, the voters always surprise the politicians.

- And let's talk about voters.

What does this new map mean for voters in Tampa Bay?

- Well, it means that they may have different candidates running because the candidates that they voted for in the past will no longer be on the ballot.

They've looked at what the district lines are going to be in the district that they're running from, and they're going to decide it's not worth it.

It's not worth my time.

It's not worth raising a lot of money to run in this district, which I will have little chance at winning.

And that's one of the negative effects of reapportionment and gerrymandering.

And so I think you're going to see a lot less candidate choice, but particularly with respect to African Americans and Hispanics.

- And many voters are asking, why would governor DeSantis be pushing this at this time, at this particular time?

How do you see that?

- Well, politics, politics and politics.

He's doing it because he wants to get in the good graces of President Trump.

He's seen what happened to Texas when they reapportioned and created potentially five new Republican districts in that state.

He did it because he's interested in his own political future.

He's going to be out of a job soon.

He did run for president in the past.

- In your in your experience, you...you told me how things are so different now that one person, the governor, was able to present this new map and that in the past, you saw things very differently.

There was groups of people that worked on a new map.

Can you explain that?

- Well, the reapportionment process in the past in Florida, every time there was reapportionment scheduled, the legislature would hold a number of committees throughout the state of Florida.

I mean, they didn't make people come to Tallahassee.

They went to the people.

And in most cases, there were anywhere between 30 to 60 legislative hearings that were held throughout the state of Florida.

So the voters could express their interest in where the lines were drawn and who was going to do this.

And the.

The proposed general outcome of these districts.

- Mitch, how do you see all of this playing out?

Voters seem.

Even Republican registered Republican voters and independent voters seem a bit uncomfortable by all of this.

- Well, and this goes across the board across the country.

I mean, we know that Democratic states said they did it because Texas started it first.

But, you know, it's really a mess.

Uh, Gerald talks about maybe the Democrats might not lose all four seats, that it looks like it one of them right now.

Kathy Castor in the Tampa Bay area does not look good for her.

If she continues to run in that district, which would be really pretty radical considering Tampa Bay has always had a Democratic representative going back to Sam Gibbons.

I guess beyond that.

So that would be pretty major there.

Uh, Daryl said also that this is all politics with what Ron DeSantis did.

And absolutely that's the case.

But also, DeSantis would say he's been laying the predicate for this based on what the Supreme Court did yesterday, this week, which is they didn't strike down section two of the Voting Rights Act, but they severely, severely weakened it.

And the governor already tried this back in the 22 congressional map, when he eliminated a black district that allowed a black candidate to be elected there.

Al Wilson was the candidate back then that changed.

And this that was said he was saying was what he was intending to do here.

And and that's why when the map was drawn up, they really started in South Florida.

Congressional district 20 is the one he said was more of a majority minority district.

And that's what he was working on.

That.

And the rest follows.

- How many of his Republican colleagues were pointing to the fact that after the 2020 census, Florida did receive more than 700,000 new people into the state.

- That's right.

That was another argument he has been making, saying that we've got this incredible flood of people here that are our current map is in is up, not up to date, which is probably true, but a lot of the data they use, they use some new data, but they also mostly had to rely on the US 2020 census because the US Census Bureau only does that once every decade.

There were some new information they got from the state, and they worked with that and they mentioned that.

But that being an argument, which you'll hear a lot of Republicans say is, well, we have to update what we're doing right now.

They didn't use all those numbers, though, that's up to date in 2025, 2026.

- And some folks are taking issue with how they address the issue of those numbers.

Before we go on to our next segment, we want to talk about dates to remember, if you need to register to vote or change your party affiliation ahead of the August primary, the deadline is July the 20th to vote in the November general election.

The deadline will be October the 5th.

Florida is at the center of a landmark legal question.

Can artificial intelligence companies be held criminally responsible for how its technology is used?

Florida Attorney General James Othmer has launched what it described as the first criminal investigation of an AI company in U.S.

history.

It targets OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.

The investigation was sparked by the 2025 mass shooting at Florida State University.

Prosecutors say the accused gunman consulted ChatGPT before killing two people and injuring six others on campus.

And this week, the Florida attorney general expanded that investigation to include the alleged murders of two doctoral students at the University of South Florida.

OpenAI denies criminal responsibility but says that it is cooperating with the authorities.

We have Carney, Chagall, who is here.

You did your doctoral thesis on this whole issue of vulnerabilities with AI.

It's interesting to me that it was in 2020.

And how much of that has changed in the six years.

What was the vulnerability that you focused on in your dissertation?

- So maybe I'll start by, first of all, sending mine and Yusuf's condolences to the families of the of the victims of this horrible event.

The vulnerabilities of AI are.

What I focused on six years ago was the fact that, on the one hand, AI can cause damages and harms that are very similar to the ones that humans are causing.

We didn't have LLMs back then, but we did have autonomous vehicles that were causing car accidents, like human drivers or medical applications that could misdiagnose a patient, like a human physician or, um, decision making supporters.

That could, for example, say that or recommend that a defendant be released or not be released, similar to a human judge.

But AI does not have any legal status.

It cannot be sued if a person is causing harm, that they could be sued civilly or criminally in their.

- Detectives who have been following these cases have said that if the answers given by the artificial intelligence would have come from a human that they would have strongly considered charging that human as an accessory.

Um, and so when you look at this case, are you surprised by it or do you see it as a natural cause?

- Two points here.

First of all, to the second question, I'm not surprised, sadly, because I think we are all using AI or some of us are using AI to plan things.

Where are we going to go on vacation and what happens if it's too sunny?

Or should I?

If I want to ask a raise from my boss and he says this, what should I say?

If I mean, if you're a criminal, then you might use AI to, to devise your...your criminal plans.

So I it will not surprise me if we see more and more of those cases.

- When you look at this and the forensic evidence that the investigators say they have found is very specific, um, how do you how will this case play out?

What happens next?

The Florida attorney general has announced the investigation.

So what happens.

- Now?

This is like unprecedented, I believe, for law enforcement to go look at what they've done.

But, you know, my colleague Lee Caputo wrote she looked over.

There's over 10,000 exchanges between this FSU killer and ChatGPT actually.

And it was really granular.

And this is a very troubled individual.

And he was asking for all types of basic advice and very specific advice when it comes to planning this action out.

So I, you know, I think it's actually a really a proactive move that Meyer has done.

James, our attorney general, has done right now and that others may have to do.

And we're seeing, obviously, in this case over here in the Tampa Bay area, USF, he may do that.

He's not I don't think he's said he's looking into that yet in terms of what the AI component is.

But it's extremely troubling.

We've seen this already happen with suicides, right, with youth.

And that has been something that, you know, is on everybody's radar and it can go dark, like so many things in life.

- Yeah.

And there's so much going on with artificial intelligence.

Which leads us to our next segment.

Also this week in Tallahassee.

The governor was pushing for Florida to pass a sweeping AI Bill of Rights.

The proposal would have required chatbots to identify themselves as artificial intelligence.

It would also have given parents direct control over how an AI can interact with their kids.

The Florida Senate passed it overwhelmingly, but the House never took it up.

So what was in it?

And are Floridians protected at all when using AI at this point?

What would you say, Mitch?

- Well, I think that I think really the components of that bill had a lot to do with protecting children, I believe.

Is that correct?

And with chatbots and the like, I can tell you it wasn't a surprise in many ways that House Speaker Perez nixed this.

Look, he has had direct communications to the White House.

He said this.

The White House doesn't want these type of bills.

They don't like, they say it's a patchwork.

We don't want to deal with.

It works for them.

Big tech doesn't want this type of stuff happening.

DeSantis, as we know, has been very emphatic.

One of the leading governors in the country, I would say, in terms of really being concerned about the dark side of AI and with this legislation, which he was really frustrated that the House dropped it on the first day of the special session earlier this week.

But, uh, and whether they're going to be able to do anything with it again, there was another bill on data centers, of course, that did pass, right?

That has some regulations in there, probably not enough.

A lot of people say a lot of people said this bill wasn't strong enough.

There was one, uh, one senator who voted against it.

She said it didn't really go far enough.

- This bill would ban the companion chatbot for minors without their parental consent.

It would also require the bot to disclose that they are being used, which may sound like common sense, but when you're a child, you may not realize it unless it's expressly, expressly stated.

And then it would also allow $50,000 in fines for any for any violations.

- Yeah, yeah yeah.

So you know, it's not it's not happening though.

Right.

So, so, uh, whether it will, I think actually, uh, Sam Garrison, who's the incoming House speaker, he said this week was we'll see, you know, we're waiting on the feds to do their own regulation.

If they don't, we can address it next year.

Um, again, they the Trump administration has been emphatic that they, you know, and they have a lot of influence here in Florida with Florida Republicans that don't do this.

Other states, as we know, have done this.

Uh, and, uh, you know, it's interesting because Tallahassee is always kind of preempting the cities, local governments on actions.

Here you have the state saying, no, no federal government.

You can go ahead and preempt us.

- And Karni, would you say that federal or state is more effective in terms of being able to regulate AI?

- So we have experience with both.

Even when you talk about risky matters, for example, aviation is mostly regulated on the federal level and it is okay tobacco, to give another example, is also regulated at the state level.

Each has its own advantages.

um, I think that nowadays, the stakes are bigger and it could go both ways.

So on the one hand we need to protect people and especially children faster, which could go in the favor of state regulation.

And on the other hand, we have an interest of making sure that we promote AI innovation and take the lead.

And this could go in the favor of federal regulation.

I will say, though, that when it comes to the safety of children, specifically, the executive order does allow state regulation.

So perhaps if the bill focuses on that, this could be a ground for mutual agreement.

- And, Daryl, you were saying that the difference between federal and state could be between one law and 50 different ones?

- Yeah.

I mean, the whole history of this country is based on that argument.

Should we have each state set their own policies and have 50 different laws, or should we have a federal government policy and then let the states sort of tweak with that federal policy?

And there's good arguments for both ways.

I mean, you have local control of the states do it, but they may miss some fundamental aspects of the process.

Um, and if the federal government does it, you have one general standard.

And if the states don't like it, as I said, they can tweak it to their own needs.

- There's so much to talk about in our big stories of the week.

I'd like for each of you to tell us what your what you've been tracking.

Mitch.

- Let's look at the Florida Republican governor's race right now.

Byron Donalds is in the Tampa Bay area.

Last weekend.

Saw him earlier in the week.

Last week, Jay Collins came out at a press conference when people thought that he might be dropping out of the race because he's struggling, frankly, right now in the race.

And instead he came out and he kind of took the gloves off and said, you know, Byron Donalds should not be elected.

He's got some problems here.

And he very conveniently gave to reporters a 13 page dossier, if you will, of, um, you know, reported, uh, information about Byron Donalds, some of it negative, some of it you can question whether it's really negative or not.

Byron has admitted lately a few months ago that he sold cannabis when he was a youth.

Uh, there was other things in there about his stock trades and maybe how much he's actually gained in terms of wealth in Congress.

Uh, but it just shows you that these Republicans not named Byron Donalds, are doing anything they can to kind of get up there because the polls show after Donald Trump endorsed Donalds last year, that basically he's running away with the nomination for the governor's race.

- And Karni, we have talked so much about AI being used in ways that are alarming in a negative way.

Um, tell us about the ways that you see AI being used in a positive way.

- So many different ways.

Maybe I could focus on one research that is done at USF among many of the Bellini College.

Um, AI is now trying to help detect pain in neonatal babies in intensive care unit before it could be detected by the nurses, and hopefully that way avoid long term damage.

- Very interesting.

And Darryl, wrap us up with a short time that we have left.

- Yeah.

With respect to reapportionment, if we can reapportion every five years like they're doing right now, mid-census facts.

Why not reapportion every election cycle or why not reapportion every month if the state wants to?

And that's going to be the problem.

Now they've opened a can of worms that they I don't think can really control.

And it's going to be a mess down the road.

You also have to remember that in Florida, it was 110 years that there wasn't a single black in the state legislature.

Even though blacks were a majority of the population during much of that period.

- Thank you so much for your expertise and for your perspectives.

We so appreciate you coming in.

As always, thank you for watching.

Don't forget to check out our bonus content on digital, which will include an expert weighing in on Pam Bondi scheduled appearance before members of Congress on May the 29th.

- It doesn't matter whether they call it an interview or a deposition, she still has to tell the truth to Congress Uh, or she risks prosecution.

- On behalf of the entire team here at WEDU.

Thank you so much for watching.