Supreme Court Revives Trump Administration’s Voter Database

[MUSIC PLAYING] War in Ukraine is throttling wheat exports, threatening to raise food prices, and spark a global food crisis. Plus, the Supreme Court says the Trump administration can use a database to check if voters are US citizens. And accusations of AI use have taken a buzzing novel out of the running for France's top literary prize. The publishing industry has really been caught flat-footed by AI. And publishers have been very reluctant to make sweeping statements about AI use, partly because they don't know how widespread these tools are going to become. It's Friday, September 25. I'm Alex Osola, for the Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's New, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. We start today's show in Washington, D.C. where a federal appeals court has appelled the Defense Department's decision to designate Anthropic a security risk. In a two-to-one decision, the court said that the law that gives the Pentagon the authority to deem a company a supply chain risk means that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth can take the action against Anthropic. The court says that Anthropics refusal to have its AI tools used in mass surveillance or autonomous weapons could undermine military operations. The Pentagon has said it's almost done moving away from Anthropic's models and is instead using tools from OpenAI and other AI companies. Anthropic says it disagrees with the court's decision. WSJ Tech Policy reporter Amrith Ramkumar says this ruling means more uncertainty for federal contractors working with the Pentagon. The ruling basically makes clear that if there is the slightest opinion from Pentagon officials that a tech provider's stance could undermine operations, it's within their right to label them a supply chain risk and a security threat. And it's pretty unprecedented. This was one of the first times this has been used on a US company. Normally the supply chain risk designation is slapped on Chinese companies like Huawei or other companies from US adversaries. So the idea that some judges think that is valid and it could be used on others is pretty remarkable. Complicating matters. Another federal court in California actually sided with Anthropic last month in a parallel dispute. Some people think this will ultimately end up in the Supreme Court just because there's so much contradictory information between the different courts and there's a lot of ambiguity about what's involved and what this means for other companies beyond Anthropics. So this will definitely be an ongoing saga that we're not at the end of, not even close. In other legal news, a Supreme Court decision on elections. The court said today that the Trump administration can use a federal immigration database to check whether voters are US citizens. This verification system merges a database containing the citizenship status of immigrants with social security information for all Americans, along with other federal records. A federal judge had ruled against the expanded database this summer, saying it's against the law for the government to share social security records. The White House and some Republican states want to use the database to scrub voter rolls. Voting rights groups that sued the Trump administration say the database produces inaccurate results and that they're worried that eligible voters could be stopped from voting. The court's three liberal justices descended from the decision. It's not a final ruling on the case, but it allows the government to continue with its project while legal proceeding stretch beyond the midterms. (upbeat music) The global bond sell off pause today, but Treasury yields still ended the week significantly higher. The 10-year Treasury yield settled at 5.18%, closing at a 19-year high. As for oil, prices fell on reports from yesterday that US and Iranian negotiators were discussing a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. All three major US stock benchmarks ended higher today, with the Dow leading the gains and closing up about 1%. The three indexes also all posted weekly gains. (upbeat music) The war between Russia and Ukraine is escalating and now it's threatening to increase prices on food. Waves of drone and missile attacks in the Black Sea region have throttled both countries' exports of wheat and corn. That's pushed US wheat futures to three-year highs in recent weeks, and analysts warned that food inflation could accelerate. For more, I'm joined now by WSJ reporter, Alexander Alsopovich. Alex, this isn't the first time we're seeing disruptions in grain exports. It also happened earlier in the Ukraine war. That sent wheat prices soaring. Why is this happening again? - The big difference this time is that Ukraine is a lot better at hitting Russia. Ukraine has developed long-range drones and improved its missile technology. And in July, they began to hit port infrastructure and shipping around the Azov Sea, which is a side sea next to the Baltic. And that was a major impediment to Russian grain exports. Russia retaliated by hitting Ukrainian ports. Ukraine went on to hit a number of Russian ports along the Black Sea. And this had the effect of choking off both countries, seaborne grain exports. Both countries have alternative ways of getting up, but it's a small fraction of what usually goes out through the Black Sea. - And how is this expected to affect food prices? - Russian Ukraine supply more than one quarter of the world's wheat exports. If that goes offline, prices will go up. It will take a while for that to filter into the prices you see on supermarket shelves, but it's kind of inevitable if this much supply stays off. But there's also the issue of next year's crop farmers in both Russian Ukraine are planting what's called winter wheat. The numbers in so far look like the planting is gonna be quite a bit down. And that means that even if somehow this export situation is resolved, we'll still see shortages next year. Western consumers, Americans will see some impact. But the place where things get really bad is in the developing world. Sub-Saharan Africa, poor countries in Asia, in a situation where you have shortages and increasing food prices. They're the ones that are likely to get hammered. - This issue came up this week at the UN. What were world leaders saying about it? - Turkey has been meeting with both sides and trying to do some diplomacy to get a deal open. Marco Rubio made some remarks about this. - Both sides have expressed an interest in some limited ceasefire that involve grain and energy. Obviously, that won't be easy either. - So far though, the two sides are really at loggerheads and the war has been escalating, rather than de-escalating. - That was journal reporter Alex Halsipovich. Thank you, Alex. - Thank you for having me. - Coming up, why some private colleges are cutting tuition and how the publishing world is reckoning with the growing use of AI. More after the break. (upbeat music) - The journal has learned that Blackstone's top private equity executive, Joseph Barada, is preparing to leave the firm. It's the latest in a series of departures by senior leaders at the company. Executives there have long faced the reality that 79-year-old CEO Steven Schwartzman has an expected successor in Blackstone president, Jonathan Gray. That leaves few paths for growth for someone as senior as Barada. He's been with Blackstone for almost three decades. And under his leadership, Blackstone's private equity business grew from about $50 billion in assets under management to more than $450 billion. And Brightline, the largest private passenger railroad in the U.S. has filed for bankruptcy. The railroad operates more than 200 miles between Miami and Orlando. And it's struggled for years to hit ridership and revenue targets. It has five and a half billion dollars in debt and is looking to restructure in court. The train is expected to keep operating as the bankruptcy plays out. An AI scandal is rocking the books world. Haitian Canadian author, Taley Song, Arrallion's debut novel, which in English is called, "It Was Either That Or Die" was nominated for several of France's top literary awards, including the most prestigious prize, The Precon Corps. Then, this week, Arrallion was accused of using AI to write his novel. Anna Silman covers power and culture for the journal and is here now with more. Anna, where are these accusations coming from and what is the evidence? These accusations first surfaced online from an anonymous account called Balance Ton Claude calling out writers that they had found to be using AI seemingly through an AI detection tool called PanGram. And the account posted that they had run Arrallion's work through PanGram and it had come back with 100% of the passages they put in flagged. Arrallion has said he started writing the book in 2019 and he said his writing is inspired by the rhythms of Haiti and the Caribbean. He is not in the running for The Gone Core anymore. As of today, they have announced that they are pulling him from the nomination list. If there's something proactive that publishers are doing, are they screening books for AI use? Publishers generally are not screening books, partly because there's no real agreement industry wide about what tool they would use to do that. There are still debates about whether there can be false positives. Some agents have started using AI detection tools. Agents are in many ways on the front lines. They're the ones who receive manuscripts and connect authors with publishers. But publishers have been very reluctant to make sweeping statements about AI use. That being said, the standard is that works should be written by the author and that if AI is used, there should be honest disclaimers about it. And I think in some of the cases we've seen, there have-- been attempts to pass off work that used AI as completely human-written. I was just texting with my book club about this and most of them straight up rejected using AI at all when writing a book. One woman said, "You have to struggle for the art." What do you think? It's a big philosophical question about what the meaning of authorship is. Why do we read part of reading is to have a connection with whoever wrote this as AI tools become more and more integrated into our lives? I think that that boundary is going to shift and maybe the boundary for what people are comfortable with is going to shift. That was WSJ Reporter Anna Silman. Thank you Anna. Thanks so much for having me. New Jersey Lieutenant Governor Dale Caldwell has resigned. His resignation comes a day after New Jersey's Governor Mikey Sheryl called on him to step down. An independent investigation found that Caldwell tried to get his girlfriend a promotion and that he made a sexual comment to a staffer. A lawyer for Caldwell yesterday had disputed the investigation's findings. Sheryl and Caldwell are both Democrats and the Governor says she'll pick a successor for Caldwell within 45 days. And turning to higher education, the cost of college has been out of reach for many families for years. Now, a growing number of private schools are making it cheaper to go there. For some schools, that means slashing the cost of tuition by almost half. Private colleges like Marist University in New York State are copying what public universities do and offering cheaper in-state tuition prices to students who come from the same state. And the Ivy League and some other colleges are cutting out loans, which have to be paid back from their financial aid packages for certain students. This is all in an effort to get more people to enroll. And though experts say these moves do generate buzz, they don't all translate to a sustainable boost in student numbers. This is just one of the ways universities are getting creative in their efforts to address the looming enrollment cliff. What questions do you have about that? If you're a current student or alum, are you worried about your school closing or what this could mean for the value of your degree? We want to know. Send a voice memo to [email protected] or leave a voice mail with your name and location at 212-416-4328. We might use it on the show. And that's what's news for this week. Tomorrow, you can look out for our weekly markets wrap up what's news and markets. Then on Sunday, we'll be doing a feed drop from our take on the week podcast, unpacking the recent moves in the treasury market. That's in what's news Sunday. And we'll be back with our regular show on Monday morning. Today's show is produced by Danny Lewis and Anthony Bansy with supervising producer Tali Arbell. Michael Laval wrote our theme music. Aisha L. Muslim is our development producer. Chris Sinsley is our deputy editor. Lee Tal Malad is our senior director of shows. And Samantha Hennig is the Wall Street Journal's head of multimedia. I'm Alex Ocila. Have a great weekend and thanks for listening.