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--:-- Georgia Howe: The lives of three adults and three children are mourned in Nashville and across the nation. I listened to him say, we know she's in the arms of Christ, and we know he loves her more than we did.
--:-- John Bickley: What else have we learned about the shooter and the potential motive?
--:-- Georgia Howe: We strongly believe there was going to be some other targets, including maybe family members. And one of the malls here in Nashville.
--:-- John Bickley: I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Wednesday, March 29th, and this is Morning Wire. New reports reveal the federal government has awarded millions in grants for the development of tools to monitor speech online.
--:-- Georgia Howe: How would the AI tools work, and is the use of this technology legal?
--:-- John Bickley: And backlash in France continues over President Emmanuel Macron's pension reforms.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
--:-- John Bickley: A day after the Christian school shooting that rocked the city of Nashville, new details began to emerge regarding the 28-year-old shooter and the heroic response from police officers on the scene.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, when we last spoke, we were still piecing together reports trying to get an idea of the timeline. We now have a much better idea of what happened.
--:-- John Bickley: Surveillance footage shows the shooter approaching the school at around 10:15 in camo pants and a military-style vest with multiple guns draped over her shoulder.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: She then shoots through the glass side doors and calmly crawls through into the school. At that point, she begins wandering around, appearing to look for victims.
--:-- John Bickley: We also got our first look at the harrowing body cam footage from police.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, by now, we're all accustomed to seeing body cam footage following a high-profile crime. But this footage is just as intense as you can imagine.
--:-- John Bickley: Yeah. It comes from the body cams of officers Rex Engelbert and Michael Colazzo. The footage starts as they arrive at the school, and within 60 seconds, they are already rushing through the school's front doors.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Let's go. I need three. One more. One more. Let's go. Metro police.
--:-- John Bickley: When they get inside, alarms are blaring, and they begin clearing the school room by room. Remember, when they got there, they had no idea where the shooter was.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: After about two minutes, they hear gunshots coming from the second level, and they rush up a stairwell.
--:-- John Bickley: At this point, they begin running down a hall towards the sound, at one point passing a victim lying motionless on the ground.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Listen as they run upstairs straight towards the sound of the gunfire. Keep pushing. Go. Shots fired. Shots fired.
--:-- John Bickley: As those shots get louder, the team of five officers turns a corner to an atrium where Officer Engelbert fires off three shots from his rifle dropping the shooter.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: The footage is difficult to watch for a number of reasons, but it gives an idea of just how heroic these officers were and how many lives they saved by acting without hesitation.
--:-- John Bickley: Yeah, their courage really was inspiring.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: The police also offered more insight into the shooter and potential motives.
--:-- John Bickley: On Tuesday, police made sure to clarify that despite rumors, they've yet to discover evidence showing that specific victims were targeted.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: At the moment, the assumption is that the shooter simply shot indiscriminately. But it is important to note, Nashville Police Chief John Drake did say the school was clearly targeted for a reason.
--:-- John Bickley: She went to that actual school. And so there's some belief that there was some resentment for having to go to that school.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: We don't have all the details of that just yet. And that's why this incident occurred.
--:-- John Bickley: Police say the shooter had recently purchased seven guns, including the three she used during the shooting, from five local stores in the area.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: They also say that she hid them from her parents because they felt she should not own weapons due to her mental state.
--:-- John Bickley: That's the other big thing we learned. Police say she was receiving medical treatment for what they called an emotional disorder, and there was also a report that the shooter may have been autistic.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: As we reported yesterday, police have also noted that she appears to have recently begun identifying as transgender, listing the pronouns he, him online.
--:-- John Bickley: Police say just before heading to the school, the shooter messaged an old friend saying, quote, I'm planning to die today. You'll probably hear about me on the news.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And then, quote, I'm not trying to upset you or get attention. I just need to die.
--:-- John Bickley: That message prompted the friend to call police, but by then the shooting had already begun.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And one final note on the shooter, police say they will not be releasing the contents of her manifesto until their investigation is complete.
--:-- John Bickley: But they did reveal some details from her writing. There was a map of the school, a drawing of how potentially she would enter and the assaults that would take place.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: It's quite a bit of writing to it. I have not read the whole entire manifesto. Our team and the FBI have been working on this.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, I want to close with the victims. What more have we learned about the six people whose lives were taken Monday?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Well, in addition to Dr. Catherine Koons, the school's principal, there was also Cynthia Boyles Peake, who was at the school that day as a substitute teacher, and 61-year-old Mike Hill, who worked as a custodian and on the kitchen staff.
--:-- John Bickley: He'd been there over a decade.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: There was nine-year-old Evelyn Dickhouse. Her fifth-grade sister, Eleanor, survived the shooting, but was heard crying at a vigil Monday night.
--:-- John Bickley: There was nine-year-old Will Kinney, who family and friends described as unflappable and unfailingly kind.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And finally, there was nine-year-old Hallie Scruggs. Hallie's father is Chad Scruggs, the senior pastor at Covenant Presbyterian.
--:-- John Bickley: He released a one-sentence statement after his daughter's death. Through tears, we trust that she is in the arms of Jesus, who will raise her to life once again.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Well, many, many prayers, including ours, are with those families.
--:-- John Bickley: Kappa, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: That was Daily Wire Senior Editor, Kappa Phillips.
--:-- Megan Basham: So Megan, for a few months now, you've been reporting on efforts by the government to control information online via Twitter and some of these other platforms, but this news isn't related to that.
--:-- John Bickley: You know, not really. This is actually something else.
--:-- Megan Basham: So there were two different reports last week related to this. One came from the higher education news site, College Fix, and then the other came from the political news outlet, The Federalist.
--:-- John Bickley: And both of those are on the right end of the political spectrum, by the way.
--:-- Megan Basham: So the College Fix report focused on about $6 million in grants that the National Science Foundation gave out to a group of five professors from several different universities to develop an AI fact tool that they call CourseCorrect.
--:-- John Bickley: So the system would use machine learning and natural language processing to crawl social media and identify people or groups who might be, quote, at risk for believing or spreading so-called misinformation.
--:-- Megan Basham: Then it would, according to them, combat their skepticism by targeting them with facts and information that would encourage their trust in government institutions.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, the Federalist's reporting covered a similar development.
--:-- Megan Basham: So we're all pretty familiar with how communication tech firms can track data for retailers and other companies. Think of something like how Amazon knows you clicked on a lawn equipment site and then it starts suggesting lawnmowers to you.
--:-- John Bickley: Well, since 2020, the Department of Defense has awarded 500 contracts to some of these companies to develop programs that use their monitoring and tracking technology to combat what they call misinformation.
--:-- Megan Basham: So usually I think of that being like targeted ads. How would that actually work in practice when it comes to misinformation?
--:-- John Bickley: Well, according to the Federalist's report, with the aid of AI and machine learning, this technology would actually be able to identify the source of mis- or disinformation as it's published.
--:-- Megan Basham: And then it would isolate and de-amplify it before it could spread.
--:-- John Bickley: So what that really means is it could squelch, say, for example, news from disfavored outlets before the public had an opportunity to read or hear it and judge for themselves how sound it is.
--:-- Megan Basham: And going by who's receiving these grants, it could really cover any discourse that happens online.
--:-- John Bickley: One company that received a $1.5 million grant, Peak Metrics, tracks millions of websites, blogs, social media apps, podcasts, mass emails, another that was awarded about the same, calls data from newspapers, TV networks, even messaging apps and more.
--:-- Megan Basham: So really anything that is written or said digitally.
--:-- John Bickley: And when you combine the capabilities of these companies with the power of AI, you start to see just how quickly this gets into some constitutionally dangerous territory.
--:-- Megan Basham: Right. So the government would be able to de-amplify the reach of news sources they don't like. How is that legal?
--:-- John Bickley: Well, I think a big part of this debate is that the technological development's been going on so quietly that the courts are really just now starting to address it.
--:-- Megan Basham: And claims about needing to police information that are constitutionally, as you said, very questionable, are being accepted right now at face value.
--:-- John Bickley: And that was something that independent journalist Michael Schellenberger addressed during a House judiciary hearing on Twitter censorship earlier this month.
--:-- Megan Basham: We were fighting ISIS recruiting, and then it was Russian disinformation. And now they're in a situation where they're wanting to censor true information, accurate facts because they're worried that people might behave in ways that they don't want them to, that involves mind reading at a level that is grossly inappropriate.
--:-- John Bickley: Absolutely.
--:-- Megan Basham: Megan, thanks so much for reporting.
--:-- John Bickley: Anytime. That was Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham.
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--:-- Tim Pierce: France faced another round of mass protests on Tuesday as backlash continues over President Emmanuel Macron's pension reforms.
--:-- John Bickley: Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce is here to give us the latest on Macron's fight to raise France's retirement age.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Hey Tim, how much pressure is Macron feeling right now?
--:-- John Bickley: A lot. So last week on Thursday, according to one estimate, about 800,000 people took to the streets across France to protest the pension reforms.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Police arrested about 450 people and over 400 officers reported being injured in the riots that day.
--:-- John Bickley: Tuesday's protests were still quite large. Cars and a bank were burned.
--:-- Tim Pierce: And this goes back weeks, even months at this point, right?
--:-- John Bickley: Right. The protesting is now into its third month.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The unrest began about mid-January with backing from opposition leaders who berated Macron's cabinet in parliament and union leaders who have been organizing national days of striking.
--:-- John Bickley: As a result, a lot of public transportation and public services have been restricted or shut down.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Here's just one example. Garbage collection in Paris stopped several weeks ago.
--:-- John Bickley: So alongside the husks of vehicles torched in riots, thousands of tons of trash currently line Paris' streets waiting to be picked up.
--:-- Tim Pierce: That doesn't sound pleasant.
--:-- John Bickley: Probably not.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Macron has forged ahead so far despite polling with the highest disapproval numbers of his presidency.
--:-- John Bickley: And on Tuesday, French economist Philippe Aguillon became the latest Macron ally to abandon him.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Aguillon said the president should put the reform on hold and take some time to reset the country.
--:-- John Bickley: All right, so losing allies fast. What's Macron's strategy?
--:-- Tim Pierce: He wants to ride it out, and he has some reason to believe he can.
--:-- John Bickley: His government survived two no-confidence votes in parliament earlier this month, and the mass unrest lessened some this week.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The crowds were noticeably lighter, and some of the protest leaders may run out of steam soon.
--:-- John Bickley: The CGT Union, which represents Paris sanitation workers, said Tuesday that it was calling off its strike because, quote, we hardly have any strikers left.
--:-- Tim Pierce: And how much longer do we think Macron needs to last to ride this thing out?
--:-- John Bickley: That's unclear, because while there are signs that the unrest could be breaking, there's still a committed opposition to Macron's reforms.
--:-- Tim Pierce: It's important to note that these are national protests, so pretty much every major city is feeling the effects of this.
--:-- John Bickley: Unrest forced Macron this week to postpone indefinitely an official visit by Britain's King Charles.
--:-- Tim Pierce: And, of course, the troubles aren't just diplomatic. The Eiffel Tower, maybe France's most well-known landmark, is closed because workers are on strike.
--:-- John Bickley: Same thing with the Louvre.
--:-- Tim Pierce: About 15% of France's gas stations are short of fuel because of refinery strikes, and at least one nuclear reactor in southwestern France has been shut down.
--:-- John Bickley: Well, it's going to be interesting to see if Macron keeps it up or caves.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Tim, thanks for reporting.
--:-- John Bickley: Sure, thanks for having me on.
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