Transcripts For KGO ABC7 20240703

Uc berkeley that would bring students to the city. But first, capitol hill is on pause as the house of representative remains without a speaker. Youre watching getting answers. Im kristen sze the house floor is turning into a soap opera, but one with grave consequences. Its been nine days since an internal revolt resulted in the ouster of House Speaker Kevin Mccarthy and republicans still havent taken a vote on a replacement. Joining us live now to discuss the frenzy behind the scenes battle and how the israelihamas war is affecting washington, abc news political director rick klein. Hi, rick. Nice to see you. Hey, great to great to be on with you. Kristen thanks for having me. Im wondering if you think theres new urgency to having a speaker with the war between israel and hamas. Well i think theres underscoring the stakes, but the urgency doesnt seem to be felt in capitol hill. The folks in the Republican Party who brought the ouster of Kevin Mccarthy are really no closer to finding a replacement that was one of the strange things about the whole exercise last week, which seems like a long time ago, given the events over the weekend and continuing into this week in israel. We understand the importance of this and obviously the grave stakes for everyone involved. But for the republicans who were part of this, this revolt that ousted Kevin Mccarthy, they havent been able to do anything in the last couple of days to bring themselves together. There was an inch forward when they seemed to agree for kevin, for Kevin Mccarthys replacement to be steve scalise, his former number two. But scalise doesnt have the votes to actually get the speakership on the floor. So it looks like were going to go into the weekend and perhaps beyond still without a speaker of the house. Okay. So what would it take for scalise to get over the finish line . Right. Because jim jordan, who had been his main rival, seemed to now say, okay, ill back scalise. And he says he told trump the same thing. I dont know if this means trump may then endorse scalise and would that do it for scalise . Its not easy to see the path. 217 votes is the magic number and scalise so far only had about half of the total that he needed. In fact, a lot more people were still defending mccarthy and sticking with mccarthy when he was being ousted than now. And trump has been talking about Scalise Health issues. Hes he is undergoing treatment for a rare form of blood cancer right now. And i think all of it gets wrapped up in the fact that theres a new precedent on capitol hill where anyone member or several members can essentially control the speakership and they all want to look to see what they can get out of this. And obviously, the ones once you start down that road, it becomes very hard to corral. And scalise or any speaker is going to have to make a lot of promises to a lot of members that may make it all but impossible to govern. Right . I mean, you get the job, but then you dont know what to do with the job. Rick, i read a New York Times article today that talked about how the fact that jordan even got 45 is really an indication that the old guard republicans will not ever get their party back, that those who kind of remade the party in trumps image are now an undeniable force with or without trump. What is your take . Yeah, i mean, i think the fact that jim jordan is a viable candidate for speaker is pretty astounding for people that have watched him on capitol hill over the last couple of years. He was something of a pariah inside his own party earlier in his career, and he emerged as a pit bull defender of donald trump and of maga republicanism on capitol hill. But he wasnt really friendly with anybody, and he seemed to be a thorn in everybodys side. And the fact that now he could be considered any kind of a consensus choice is kind of wild and mind boggling. And its impossible to see any of that as having been possible without the force of donald trump. But what does that say about where the party is or what its about today . Well, i think its increasingly in the thrall of a of a of a minority of members who are feeling emboldened, empowered by the maga movement. They come from very red districts and they hold enormous sway, outsized to their population or the representation of their districts, even inside their districts. They see in donald trump a champion and someone they can get behind. But its not clear that trump controls these forces. There are lots of ways where people have bucked trump over the years and the fact jordan didnt didnt beat scalise in that round of voting, even though both he and scalise are very much in the in the school of this is maga, trumpism. Can i just ask you without a speaker, what other important business is on hold and maybe endangering our economy or security as a result . Yeah. Look, for starters, you cant even hold a vote on a bill, a resolution to defend or support israel would be something that would be a natural in the in the wake of the attacks over the weekend on bills that would support additional aid. And of course, government funding is itself middle of next month, only about four weeks from now, were going to be back in the possible Government Shutdown territory. And right now, not having a speaker means you cant even advance a bill and as we just talked about, kristen having a speaker under these circumstances means its all but impossible to imagine a scenario where, like Kevin Mccarthy just did. Youve got some kind of consensus to try to try to keep government open. Is there a deadline for the house floor voting to begin . Is there a you got to select someone or a mechanism to say otherwise . Whoever gets the most votes wins. Maybe thats hooking me. Jeffries yeah, uncharted territory. Its not going to be Hakeem Jeffries anytime soon. The democrats choice may get the most votes if they had a floor vote. But so far, the republicans are trying to avoid the spectacle of january. Of those 15 votes. So they only wanted to one. But in the meantime, they have a speaker pro tem, a temporary speaker. Patrick mchenry of north carolina, who was named by mccarthy before his ouster as someone that would take over in case there was a vacancy, an emergency or any other scenario. And mchenry can at least control the rules of the house. But its untested as to what authorities he has. Beyond that and any actions that the house takes in this interim period could ultimately be challenged in court. Hes a speaker, but it really a speaker in name only. All right. So how is the war in israel all also factor in us president ial politics. Do you think . Is this a perilous time for biden, whos seeking reelection . Oh, no question. I think its reordered the political equations inside the Republican Party and the Democratic Party and democrats of late have had more tensions over israel than republicans. But theres an isolationist strain in both parties, frankly. And i think for all of the strong words that biden and his administration are offering this week, it gets harder with every passing day because theres going to be more and more civilians dying. Theres going to be more suffering. Theres going to be misconduct alleged. Theres going to be potential overreach. And theres going to be lots of political rivals that are ready to call that out in the other direction. So i think this is this is kind of the high point, i would think, for the National Mood as well as the cooperation between israel and the united states. It can only really go down from here, frankly. Yeah. All right. Interesting to see how thats going to play out in terms of national politics. Okay. I want to ask you about this because its also in the headlines. Federal prosecutors have today now charged new jersey senator bob menendez with conspiring to act as an agent of egypt while serving as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. What does that mean to people serving as a Foreign Agent . Well, this is this means that you are doing using your official capacity to try to lobby on behalf of a foreign government. It is orders of magnitude worse than a typical bribery allegation or any, you know, any kind of currying favor for a business associate. This is a suggestion that he used his position to try to try to influence policy influence prosecutors and investigators policy and state Department Policy in service of a foreign government. And that is extremely serious. And i think thats one reason that youve seen so Many Democrats distanced themselves from menendez. And frankly, so many of them asking for him to resign, step down from the senate pending the investigation. Menendez has defended himself, but the conduct from a from a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is pretty pretty difficult to defend. Right. And as you said, he has so far steadfastly said hes not resigning. And then, of course, we all remember new york congressman jorge santos, who despite all that about him having forged his credentials, all those other things, also says hes not going to resign. Do you remember a time when in washington, when not being charged with a crime, even being connected to a scandal led to resignations . As yeah, those were those were a long time ago. It feels like. And you know, obviously scandals happen and members of congress are pressured in this direction. But i think theres a kind of an emboldened attitude that a lot of take and i think, you know, santos and menendez are much different allegations, much different, much different criminal charges that they face. But being embattled and staying in office used to be a lot harder. I feel like theres become more of a template and more of an expectation that someones going to try to battle it out from while keeping their jobs. Yeah, i wonder if al franken wishes that he had been around 20 years later. But rick klein, thank you so much. Always great talking with you. Thanks, kristen. You bet. Good to be with you. Coming up, cruz is adding some new features to its Autonomous Cars after a few incidents involving Emergency Vehicles in San Francisco. A professor who focuses on transportation tech will join us next to explain how the company is adapting to Emergency Vehicles thousands of women with Metastatic Breast Cancer, are living in the moment and taking ibrance. Ibrance with an aromatase inhibitor is for adults with hr her2 Metastatic Breast Cancer as the first hormonal based therapy. Ibrance plus letrozole significantly delayed disease progression versus letrozole. Ibrance may cause low white blood cell counts that may lead to serious infections. Ibrance may cause severe inflammation of the lungs. Both of these can lead to death. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening chest pain, cough, or trouble breathing. Before taking ibrance, tell your doctor if you have fever, chills, or other signs of infection, liver or kidney problems, are or plan to become pregnant, or are breastfeeding. For more information about side effects talk to your doctor. Be in your moment. Ask your doctor about ibrance. Comment. Quote, we understand the unique challenges First Responders may face when interacting with an Autonomous Vehicle and that it is imperative that we listen to their concerns. Our goal is to enhance the avs responsiveness in various emergency situations and continuously improve. Joining us live now to talk more about these changes is scott mora, faculty director at uc berkeleys partners for advanced transportation technology, or path. Scott, thanks for joining us. Hi, chris, and happy to be with you this afternoon. Thank you so super quickly, can you summarize for our viewers what path researchers so that they understand your expertise . Yes. Path is a Research Center at the university of california, berkeley, that focuses on advanced Technology Solutions related to automation, decarbonization, safety, 880 equity and so forth to improve our transportation systems, we partner with industry, governments and academia to take advanced research in University Labs and bring it to the practice. All right. And you think Autonomous Vehicles is part of the transportation of the future right . I think thats fair to say. All right. So lets talk about todays newly unveiled changes that cruise is making to its driverless taxis to improve interactions with fire trucks and ambulances. Because there have been a couple of incidents regarding those. So im going to put up three of the key changes, i think, and maybe you can just walk us through what each one is about and whats happening. So starting with slowing drawing siren detection. Sure, absolutely. And first, of course, ill say im not associated with cruise, but ill help interpret. So the first slowing during siren detection and importantly, one wants to identify when theres one of these Emergency Response vehicles and categorically behave differently. Soeld to these Emergency Response vehicles. That includes slowing when they detect this Emergency Response vehicle. Well, the second one here parked emergency tsay vehicle response. Yeah, bypassing their for when theres a parked Emergency Vehicle. So the vehicle needs to understand and that it doesnt want to create congestion in and wait for that Emergency Vehicle to clear out of the way. So theyll have to make a route plan to move to bypass from that Emergency Vehicle. And the last one, improved emergency scene recognition in perhaps that even even can be listed first is really just understanding categorically is this a different environment that the vehicle is in, in which theres an emergency setting and it now has to enter into a different set of protocols than normal driving . How do you train the cars to make that happen . You know, im not a coder or an engineer or software engineer, but how do you teach it to do that . What do you have to give it . Thats a super good question. Kristen. Let me divide it into understanding and then acting. So the first is, can we understand . And when theres an Emergency Response vehicle now, in fact, theres a lot of technologies and ideas that are decades old that, you know, even apply for human driven vehicles, ideas where you could put for example, a unit on board the Emergency Vehicle that could broadcast wirelessly to other vehicles, alerting them that theres an Emergency Response vehicle in the area that could be done without a human. But even for human driven vehicles, wouldnt it be great if there was an alert in your car that said, hey, theres an Emergency Response vehicle in the in the vicinity, be aware now with all these cameras and so forth that you see on the vehicles on the screen here, what a lot of the companies are trying to do is collect video data from their driving operations in which the av is nearby. One of these Emergency Response vehicles. And specifically train algorithms to understand, hey, theres an Emergency Response vehicle categorically the vehicle needs to behave differently and it could be from cameras, it could be from microphones to detect the siren and its difficult because relative speaking, Emergency Response vehicles are happen relatively rarely be in driving situations. Um, and ill also add that they behave completely differently. So much of the algorithms on these avs are trying to anticipate how the other vehicles are moving through traffic. And for the most part, those other vehicles are abiding by traffic laws. Theyre not going through red lights. Emergency response vehicles behave categorically differently. Do you think that these changes and i know there were like some 8 or 9 more, that we dont have time to list, but do you think they should improve the interactions between those Autonomous Vehicles and the Emergency Vehicles . I do. I think they will help. It is great to see that theres iteration and improvement. This is what we want to see with these deployments. However, i also want to add that, uh, theres more that cities and infrastruc future owners and operators can do. For example, i think this highlights the idea that if we had smarter infrastructure in our cities, which could, as i mentioned before broadcast to all vehicles, theres an Emergency Response vehicle in the vicinity that could help all drivers, you know, respond and yield to the Emergency Response vehicles, even those who have certain disabilities, for example, if youre hearing impaired and youre not able to hear the siren, then it would be good to have of communication between infrastructure, nature and vehicles or these Emergency Response vehicles and vehicles is. So what cruz is doing is great at um, what other companies are attempting to do is, is great. But the ultimate solution needs to be as a transportation system. I hear what youre saying and pardon a terrible, terrible, cheap pun, but communication is a two way street, right . Right okay. And i do hear that. I think waymo is expanding in San Francisco right now. Waymo Just Launched taxis in santa monica this week. So clearly, see, theyre more test cases out there. So more iterations and hopefully getting us to where we need to be. Absolutely. All right. Scott mora with uc berkeleys path, thank you so much, as always. Really appreciate your expertise. Thanks, kristin. Could downtown San Francisco transform into a destination for education . Some universities are definitely showing interest. Our media partner, the San Francisco standard, has learned about ongoing talks and will be joining us live next to share welcome to big tobaccos fantasyland. A new, healthier World Without cigarettes. As long as you dont count the 6 trillion sold worldwide every year. And vaping wont lead to smoking, if you ignore the research that says otherwise. In big tobaccos fantasyland, the deadliest industry is your friend. Shh. System is responding. Our media partner, the San Francisco standard, has learned about talks between city officials and uc berkeley and the university of California School system and published this article today about it. Joining us live now is the standard senior political reporter, josh cahn, who wrote that story. Hey, josh. Hey, kristin, how are you . Good, good, thanks. Okay. So i think mayor breed, when she was on our show a few months ago and first threw out this idea to of maybe filling some of the empty downtown space with uc berkeley like an invite to, you know, populated with some university things. So your article puts more meat on the bones. You found out some details about some conversations and some ideas. So fill us in. Yeah. So earlier this summer, in july, mayor breed sent a letter to the chair of the uc regents system. Basically saying we have an interest in potential having a downtown campus or a satellite campus for uc berkeley or maybe another uc in these vacant towers. Since the pandemic. Commercial real estate in San Francisco has been hollowed out. Last count, i believe, was about a 34 vacancy rate for the Third Quarter of 2023. And so i was talking to people in and around city hall and i basically found out that since the mayor wrote her letter in july, there have been meetings on a almost biweekly basis between her new economic director at and officials for uc berkeley and the California University of california system interest meeting. So things are getting a little serious. How might they utilize some of the downtown buildings . What are some of the ideas would they be for classes . Would they be for housing . Or perhaps both . Yeah. So talking to people on all sides of the conversation, it sounds like the main focus right now would be housing for graduate students at uc berkeley. However, theres also talk about coursework that could be created around Climate Science and artificial intelligence, which is obviously been a huge buzzy conversation starter here in San Francisco. The ai industry is pretty much based in San Francisco and so theres a lot of people who feel like, you know, with our focus on the tech sector and all the really Brilliant Minds we have in the industry of ai, it would be a real natural fit. And then theres also another proposal on the table, which is to create essentially like a village of public universities, cities with uc berkeley being part of that. And from what i was told, uc berkeley is keen on this idea so that theres almost a coalition that can really create this new vibrant community in these towers that would be converted to housing, converted to classrooms and then could create just a whole new influx of thousands of young people to basically make a more vibrant community and really kind of drive growth in the downtown core. Now, this could be a win win, right, in terms of on uc berkeleys end, weve reported a lot about their lack of Student Housing and obstructions to building more housing. Yeah berkeley cant really actually build as much housing as it needs, so they are looking for other options. I will say that when i talk to the university of california, berkeley, they told me that undergraduate undergrads, mit students, so freshmen and sophomores, those are going to be off limits. They want these young people to actually have a true Campus College environment and be close to the classes in berkeley. However, when it comes to actually meeting the housing goals, they have to get creative. And when we look at the downtown towers here in San Francisco, the reason that this proposal could make a lot of sense is because when you convert a commercial tower, you know, its a huge expense to put in bathrooms and kitchens. However, if youre doing floors for students who essentially have a communal bathrooms and communal kitchens, then its a much easier process. And university of California Schools , public universities get special tax credits and breaks when it comes to taking over these properties. And doing work on them. So thats a way for the math to socalled pencil out when it comes to these projects that makes so much sense. Are there additional tax breaks or incentives being considered . You know, i think right now everything is on the table when it comes to San Franciscos outlook on how do we really spark construction, how do we really get Development Going . What do we do with these buildings that are basically just sitting there collecting dust . Right. But i havent heard percentage. Is that, by the way, josh, not to interrupt you, but when you say collecting dust, how many whats the vacancy rate last count we had heard was around a third of commercial towers in San Francisco. And that is an alarming trend. It has a lot to do with the way that the pandemic forced everyone to work from home. And then with the San Francisco economy being based so focused on tech, a lot of these companies can continue to do remote work, or at least not full time in office work. And so theres not a huge interest in them kind of renewing their leases and keeping these spaces when they dont need to use them as much as they did before the pandemic. That makes a lot of sense. By the way, i totally agree with like thinking of this housing ing as just for grad students. I did undergrad and cal, i can tell you, i wouldnt have wanted to have to take bart to get to my classes or see my friends or things like that. Okay so i know the mayor has launched her roadmap to recovery program, right . Have you learned anything new about that and where thats headed . Well, the roadmap recovery program, they hired a new executive director, sarah dennis phillips, to take over the office of economic and workforce development. That was back in may. From what i understand, she is putting all options on the table. She has been the point person leading these meetings on the discussions about converting towers into downtown Student Housing and class rooms. When it comes to actual the larger strategy of the roadmap, theres so many proposals floating out there, i wouldnt be able to kind of run them all down. I am more interested in finding out more about your undergrad years at berkeley. That seems like the questions we should be asking right now. Oh, no, this is where we ended. Youre not turning the tables on me . Not today, anyway. Im doing the interview now. Im doing the interview now. Okay. You scare me. Thank you. Josh thank you, kristen. You can check out joshs article and more of the sf sta but do they really . Do they see all that you are . At Kaiser Permanente all of us Work Together to care for all that is you. Rsv can be a dangerous virus. [sneeze]. For those 60 and older. Its not just a cold. And if youre 60 or older. You may be at increased risk of hospitalization. [coughing]. From this highly. Contagious virus. Not all dangers come with warning labels. Talk to your pharmacist or doctor. About getting vaccinated against rsv today. Tonight, from tel aviv, the stunning moment our team witnessed in southern israel today. Authorities surrounding a suspected hamas militant, and youll see the takedown. Back in the u. S. Tonight, the security concerns this evening outside synagogues and some schools what weve learned. And the standoff in the u. S. The five officers shot. What we now know