30 Florida counties told to flee as Idalia approaches, hate crimes spike: 5 Things podcast

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: 30 Florida counties told to flee as Hurricane Idalia approaches

Evacuations continue as Hurricane Idalia approaches Florida. Plus, USA TODAY National Correspondent Will Carless explains how hate crimes in big cities hit a record high, former President Donald Trump needs millions to pay lawyers. His PAC doesn't have that much money, USA TODAY Supreme Court Correspondent John Fritze looks at the high court's latest ethics questions, and the first drugs selected for Medicare price negotiation have been named.

Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here

Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. 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.

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Wednesday, the 30th of August 2023. Today, Hurricane Idalia is about to slam Florida. Plus, hate crimes in big cities reach a record high and Trump runs up a massive legal bill.

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Hurricane Idalia strengthened to a Category 3 storm early this morning as it barrels toward Florida's Gulf Coast where it's expected to make landfall today. And Idalia is forecast to reach Category 4 status, making the storm extremely dangerous, with winds potentially exceeding 130 miles an hour. A hurricane warning is in place for hundreds of miles of Florida coastline and nearly all of Florida's west coast is also under a tornado watch. The storm's landfall is expected somewhere southeast of Tallahassee, though it's still not clear exactly where it'll hit. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said 5,000 National Guard members have been activated in preparation. Idalia is expected to remain a hurricane as it crosses into Georgia before moving over the Carolina coastline tomorrow and out to the Atlantic. You can stay up on all the latest throughout the day and the week with usatoday.com.

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The man who opened fire at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida over the weekend targeted Black people because of their race, according to local police, and the tragedy wasn't unique. Hate crimes in big cities hit a record high for the second year in a row, according to new data. I spoke with USA TODAY National Correspondent Will Carless for more. Will, thanks for making the time.

Will Carless:

Thanks for having me on.

Taylor Wilson:

Will, let's start here, what exactly is a hate crime?

Will Carless:

It's a good question. I think a lot of people think that there is some sort of one definition for what is and is not a hate crime. And actually that's not the case. The simple answer is it depends on the jurisdiction and it depends on the legal statutes, the legislation in whatever jurisdiction, whatever state you're in. There are something like 275 pieces of legislation across the country that help define what a hate crime is. So long story short, what is considered a hate crime in say, Los Angeles could be differently defined to what is considered a hate crime in New York. But essentially it is a crime that is committed with some sort of bias at its center as the reason for the crime. Somebody is attacked either on the basis of race, sometimes gender, sex, religion. Those are the main categories, but again, just depends on which state you're in.

Taylor Wilson:

A new study provided, provided exclusively to USA TODAY found that hate crimes in big cities hit a record high. What's the data say here Will?

Will Carless:

So this is a really interesting study. It's out of the Center for Hate and Extremism at Cal State University, San Bernardino. It's been going for about 25 years. What this does is it looks at hate crimes that are reported in 42 major cities across the country. It's not the 42 largest cities. They basically look at the cities that are good at reporting hate crimes and that have accurate info, and then they draw data from there. But what it essentially shows is that those hate crimes are up across the nation for the second consecutive year hitting a record number. And they're up about 10% across the 42 largest cities. But in the biggest 10 cities in the United States they're up more, about 22% from last year, which was already a record year.

Taylor Wilson:

Wow. And how does this study's data compare with federal crime statistics?

Will Carless:

So the best sort of federal statistics come from the FBI and there're notoriously appallingly bad. They're just not very accurate. Essentially, it comes down to the fact that the different jurisdictions, different police departments, different counties and states across the country report to the FBI in different ways. And some jurisdictions just don't report to the FBI and don't say to them how many hate crimes they've had. There are also four states around the country that just don't have hate crime statutes at all. So there's no hate crimes reported in those states. So the federal data is just notoriously bad. What this Cal State data does is to look at, again, the cities that are good and accurate at reporting their hate crime statistics. The cities that sort of take this issue seriously, I guess. And because it's a constant measure and the cities remain the same year in year out, it's considered by a lot of experts to be a very accurate measure of what's going on when it comes to hate crimes.

Taylor Wilson:

And Will, according to the numbers here, who are most of the victims of hate crimes?

Will Carless:

As we saw in Jacksonville, Florida this weekend in a racist attack against Black Americans, Black people are quite significantly the most targeted population across the country. So Black Americans, I think that's followed fairly closely by Jewish Americans. It is different in city to city. I mean, for example, in New York, the most targeted population is Jewish Americans. But across the nation it has, since they started counting 25 years ago, Black Americans have been the primary target.

Taylor Wilson:

And experts are concerned that hate crimes could ramp up as presidential election season heats up. Will, what's the connection between political rhetoric and hate crimes?

Will Carless:

So literally, if you look at a chart of these hate crimes going back 20 years or so, you'll see that they kind of go up and down. The up and down depends very regularly on what's going on in the presidential election. And so what experts say is that there is just so much political rhetoric flying around at that time. People are tense, people are being amped up by politicians who may in some places be telling the truth and may in other places be stretching the truth. And so there is this kind of tribalism, as one expert described it to me that goes on during election seasons. And so every four years they see hate crimes really spike. And of course, this year with what's going on with the GOP front-runner Donald Trump, under four different indictments, it's going to be an especially heightened political atmosphere. And they're expecting to see more and more of these hate crimes.

Taylor Wilson:

Will Carless covers extremism and emerging issues for USA TODAY. Thank you Will.

Will Carless:

Thank you.

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Taylor Wilson:

As legal cases against former President Donald Trump pile up, the money used to pay for his criminal defense has been dwindling. According to the latest available numbers, Trump's key fund is sitting on less than $4 million. He's already dug into his 2024 super PAC and borrowed money recently to post bail in Georgia. Trump's main account that pays for legal fees, the PAC Save America, has spent almost all of the $156 million that it raised since the 2020 election. And had just around $3.7 million in the bank at the end of June.

Trump's campaign boasted raking in record amounts of money from his first two indictments in New York and Miami. But records show most of that went to his presidential campaign, not Save America, where he draws from for most of his legal costs. Recently, one of his co-defendants in the Georgia indictment, lawyer Jenna Ellis, publicly asked whether Trump would fund co-defendants' legal fees. The vast majority of co-defendants are hiring lawyers without previous relationships to the Save America PAC.

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The Supreme Court remains silent on recent ethics concerns, but the debate could again soon move to the spotlight. I spoke with USA TODAY Supreme Court Correspondent John Fritze for the latest. John, thanks as always for making the time.

John Fritze:

Thank you.

Taylor Wilson:

The debate over Supreme Court ethics will again heat up in the coming days as financial disclosure reports will be made public for Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. John, what are the major ethics controversies surrounding these two and what more could we learn from these disclosures?

John Fritze:

Obviously, both Clarence Thomas, and to a lesser extent Sam Alito, have been under a lot of attention for luxury travel and private jet flights that they took, they were paid for by other people. And it's not clear to me if these reports are going to give us a whole lot of insight into that. These trips that have been the focus of the ProPublica and other stories have been in past years. And these disclosure reports ostensibly are only going to look at last year. It could be that we get additional years, amended reports, that might happen. But I think more to the point is that it just puts ethics front and center again at a time when it's pretty clear the Supreme Court hasn't made any progress, at least outwardly on that issue.

Taylor Wilson:

Yeah. So I mean, John, you've been here on the show before talking about this idea of ethics reform on the High Court. Where do things stand at this point and who actually has the power to make reforms?

John Fritze:

It should be clearer, and I think a lot of people would say that John Roberts, the Chief Justice, has the power. But I think one of the things that's happened is over the summer we had a number of justices speaking publicly. And I think maybe Elena Kagan's remarks were some of the most interesting. And one of the things she said was something to the effect of, "It's difficult getting to the kind of consensus we like to have." And that raises the question of, well, how are they doing this internally? Is it a majority vote? Are they looking for unanimity? It's just not a hundred percent clear. I don't think Roberts can, by fiat, tell the other justices what to do on ethics. And so you already see some examples of them sort of handling certain situations differently, particularly in their recusals. So it looks to me, I think without any real inside information about what they're saying, it looks from the outside very much like they have discussions on it, they can't reach an agreement, and therefore nothing so far has happened.

Taylor Wilson:

And John, these kinds of ethics issues can really dampen people's confidence in such an important institution to make fair and just decisions. Do Americans still have faith in the Supreme Court?

John Fritze:

I mean, increasingly there are polls that suggest that the court has a real problem with public perception. There's an interesting poll out just this week looking at how Americans view the Supreme Court in relation to other legal entities such as state court judges and local police and juries of Americans. And the Supreme Court doesn't do very well when lined up against those other legal institutions. And so I think this is the kind of thing that Roberts is, and others, on the court are always looking out for and are concerned about, the court's legitimacy, it's standing with the public. The counterargument is that the court is not a political entity and is not really supposed to be responsive. And so there's a little bit of a tension there between the significance for the court of public perception and legitimacy, and these polls that right now suggests that really faith has slipped in the high court in the way that we haven't seen in decades.

Taylor Wilson:

USA TODAY Supreme Court Correspondent John Fritze. Thank you, John.

John Fritze:

Thank you.

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Taylor Wilson:

The first 10 prescription drugs the federal government will negotiate under a new federal law were revealed yesterday. That begins a process that could bring drug discounts for some of Medicare's most expensive medicines in the coming years. The batch of medications include some of the most widely prescribed drugs older Americans use for conditions like heart disease, diabetes, and autoimmune conditions. On the list are Eliquis, a drug use to treat and prevent blood clots, and Jardiance, an anti-diabetic medication. The federal government's new drug negotiating power comes from the Inflation Reduction Act, the sweeping climate and health legislation that Congress passed last year. Price changes for the first batch of negotiated drugs won't take effect until 2026. More drugs will be selected for negotiated prices over the next two years.

Thanks for listening to 5 Things. If you like the show, please subscribe and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And if you have any comments, you can reach us at [email protected]. I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.