Fatalities in TX after driver crashes into crowd, gunman fires in mall: 5 Things podcast

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: 8 dead after driver crashes into crowd near migrant center

Texas was shaken Sunday by two tragedies. A gunman opened fire at a mall, and an SUV driver plowed into a group of people near a migrant center. Plus, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warns against using the 14th Amendment to end the debt limit fight, USA TODAY Politics Reporter Sarah Elbeshbishi explains the impact of expired SNAP benefits, the Biden administration proposes rule changes to better compensate airline passengers for cancellations and delays, and USA TODAY National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise looks at the future - and present - of driverless cars.

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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 Monday, the 8th of May 2023. Today, a violent weekend in Texas. Plus, the latest from the debt ceiling fight and driverless cars are here.

Before I get into the meat of the stories today, a warning, this is a tough start to the week with some heavy topics.

We start in Texas. Eight people were killed and others injured when an SUV slammed into a crowd at a city bus stop near a migrant shelter in Brownsville, Texas. Police said yesterday that the Sunday morning crash was still under investigation. Brownsville police investigator Martin Sandoval, told valleycentral.com that the driver was arrested on a charge of reckless driving and that more charges will likely be filed. The local media outlet said the crash happened in front of the Ozanam Center, a shelter for migrants and homeless people across the street from the bus stop. The male driver was the only person in the SUV and was hospitalized for injuries, according to police.

Also, on Sunday, a gunman opened fire killing eight victims at an outlet mall in Allen, Texas outside Dallas. The attack is the latest in a string of mass shootings both nationwide and in Texas. Just a week ago, a gunman opened fire on neighbors in Cleveland, Texas, including a nine-year-old child. The state's governor, Greg Abbott, dismissed gun control legislation as a quick solution. He told Fox News Sunday that addressing mental health issues is the long-term solution. President Joe Biden tweeted that the gunman was armed with an AR15 style rifle. He once again called on Congress to pass a ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines.

♦ Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen yesterday warned against President Joe Biden invoking the 14th amendment to end the debt limit fight. She told ABC's This Week that such a move could lead to a constitutional crisis, and she reiterated that Congress is the only authority able to raise the debt ceiling. Section IV of the 14th Amendment states that the "validity of the public debt of the United States shall not be questioned." Some say that language allows the President to raise the debt ceiling on his own, but Congress has always voted to raise the debt limit. And it's not clear how alternative options like invoking the 14th would play out. Yellen previously said the government could run out of cash to pay its bills by June 1st. Talks on raising the debt ceiling between Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy have stalled since their last meeting in February, but Biden is expected to meet with congressional leaders from both parties tomorrow.

♦ At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress created emergency legislation that allowed participants of the supplemental nutrition assistance program also known as SNAP to receive the maximum monthly benefit regardless of income. That was done to address rising food insecurity and to give an economic stimulus. But those extra benefits ended at the end of February. And now with the debt ceiling crisis looming, GOP lawmakers are suggesting even more changes to the program. To get a better understanding of what those changes would mean to those on the program, I sat down with USA TODAY Politics Reporter Sarah Elbeshbishi. Sarah, thanks for hopping on the show.

Sarah Elbeshbishi:Thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson:So House Republicans are proposing a plan that would include cuts to the SNAP program. What are these cuts specifically?

Sarah Elbeshbishi:So in the recent bill that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has brought forward for the debt stealing negotiations, it includes about $4.5 trillion in spending cuts, including raising the age limit for SNAP work requirements. So essentially right now, work requirements for people who don't have dependents under the age of 18 in their household are required to work a minimum of 80 hours a month, 20 hours a week in order to qualify for SNAP. If they don't meet that work requirement, they're only allowed up to three months of benefits for every three years. So currently that's 18 to 49 year olds. The proposed age requirement increases that to 55 that would affect nearly one million Americans between the age of 50 and 55.

Taylor Wilson:Wow. A lot of people. So Sarah, these pandemic era supplemental benefits, as you mentioned, have already expired. How are the families that you spoke with who had relied on them for years during COVID dealing with these expirations already?

Sarah Elbeshbishi:Yeah, it's definitely taken a toll. Parents Together Action, a nonprofit parent and family advocacy group, shared with USA TODAY a recent survey that they did of the parents and families that they work with about their experience just one month without those added benefits. And 63% of those parents said that they were having a hard time making ends meet, with 68% of them saying that having food on the table was their biggest challenge. And actually I spoke to a single mother from New Jersey who was saying that she had nothing in her fridge and she was trying to make the last $19 in her food stamps last so that she could feed her family of four.

Taylor Wilson:Sarah, you wrote about another GOP sponsored bill that hasn't been voted on but would also impact SNAP recipients. Who is sponsoring that and how would that impact the program?

Sarah Elbeshbishi:Yeah, so nearly two dozen House Republicans co-sponsored this legislation back in March, and this was led by South Dakota Rep. Dusty Johnson. It would also narrow the work requirement, raise the age from 49 to 65, which is even more of a drastic increase than McCarthy's proposed age increase. But it also would narrow the work requirement exemptions. Those who have dependents in their households under the age of 18 are exempt from that work requirement. Under this proposed bill by Johnson it would limit that exemption to only households with those under the age of seven instead of under the age of 18. And so if that were to be passed, more than 10 million people, about one in four SNAP participants, would be at risk of losing food assistance under the SNAP program.

Taylor Wilson: All right, Sarah Elbeshbishi covers congress, campaigns and democracy for USA TODAY. Thanks so much.

Sarah Elbeshbishi:Thank you for having me.

♦ Taylor Wilson: The Biden administration will take the first step today toward potentially requiring airlines to offer compensation beyond refunds for controllable flight cancellations or significant delays. President Joe Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg will announce that the government will begin the process to examine whether airlines must also cover expenses for meals, lodging, and rebooking when airlines are responsible for stranding passengers. The 10 largest airlines do guarantee meals and free rebooking on the same airline while nine guarantee hotel accommodations. Virtually no airlines offer compensation on top of refunds or amenities, according to the White House. For now, consumers can always check the government site flightrights.gov to see what airlines currently offer.

♦ Driverless cars. It once seemed like a concept in the distant future. But in some parts of America that future is here, for better and for worse. USA TODAY National Correspondent Elizabeth Weiss explains. Hello, Beth.

Elizabeth Weiss:Hey, how are you?

Taylor Wilson:Good, thanks. Thanks for hopping back on the podcast.

Elizabeth Weiss:Always happy to be here.

Taylor Wilson:So I want to just start here. How common are self-driving cars in America right now?

Elizabeth Weiss:Pretty uncommon in America, pretty common in certain cities. Mostly at this point, San Francisco and Phoenix, which are two big test beds. And the two biggest companies that are out there right now are Waymo, which is a Google offshoot, and then Cruise, which is actually owned by General Motors. There's something like 56 companies, they've done some of the regulatory work to at least start testing self-driving cars, but the number of companies that are actually doing it at scale is quite small. I think in San Francisco or in California, there were three.

Taylor Wilson:And so before we get to some of the criticisms and annoyances with these cars, what solutions can they offer?

Elizabeth Weiss:What the solutions are really depends upon who you talk to. There is a utopian vision 30 years out when we have a small fleet of electric self-driving vehicles that you kind of summon at need. If there's a group who needs to go from point A to point B, the system could figure that out and get them all in the same car or the same van and it would lower the number of actual miles driven. So that's kind of this utopian hope. Whether that would actually come to pass is unknown.

There was an MIT study that was done just a bit ago that actually found that people might drive more the easier you make it. And actually there was a fascinating study that the University of California Davis did where they offered people chauffeured driving, which is effectively what a self-driving car is, it's a chauffeured car without the chauffeur. And people drove 25% more miles because it was so easy. I mean, overall, you want to lower the number of individual vehicle miles driven and will self-driving cars do that? I think at this point we don't know.

Taylor Wilson:And what are some of the major criticisms of this technology right now?

Elizabeth Weiss:Boy, they freak people out. And how people feel about them. It ranges from bemused to annoyed to angry, to, oh my God, it's the robot apocalypse and this is Skynet, and we're in the Terminator movie suddenly. And it kind of depends. I mean, so they are everywhere in San Francisco. San Francisco's a small town, seven by seven miles, and there are about three hundred Cruise cars in San Francisco. And I don't have a number yet on how many Waymo's there are, but there's a lot in my neighborhood specifically. And I can't tell you how many times I'm out, and there's a fair number of people on the streets in San Francisco, and I'll be at a crosswalk with somebody and the person next to me, they look and they're like, "Wait a minute, there's nobody in that car." And you're like, "Yeah." They're like, "Whoa." You just hear a lot of "Whoa." And that's the bemused as opposed to the, "Dammit, they have blocked the school bus, they blocked the firetruck." I mean, there's a lot of that.

Taylor Wilson:Are cities fighting back against this elsewhere in America, or will they soon embrace them with open arms?

Elizabeth Weiss:I don't know if they'll embrace them with open arms. There's work afloat to test them in parts of LA, Boston. All these companies, everybody imagines that this is the future. We will be being driven by our cars rather than driving them. And there are two arguments for that. There's the safety argument that is often made, which is that eventually, and perhaps already, these cars are safer than human drivers. There's this other dream that somehow it will lower carbon emissions. And I feel like the jury's still out on that one a little more. I don't think anybody quite knows when it's going to happen but when we see these technological advances, it does seem that they often take root. So, in 10 years it's going to be really interesting to see is this one that took root or did it become the Betamax and fall away.

Taylor Wilson:All right, Elizabeth Weiss, great insight as always. Thanks so much.

Elizabeth Weiss:You are so welcome.

Taylor Wilson:Thanks for listening to 5 Things. You can find us every day of the week right here, wherever you get your audio. If you have any comments, please reach us at podcasts@usatoday.com. I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Driver hits crowd in Texas, impact of expired SNAP benefits: 5 Things podcast