Colbert Says CBS Barred Interview With Democrat, and Search Teams Scramble After Lake Tahoe Avalanche

0:28Ready to reach your weight loss goals? restrictions, visit HIMSS.com. From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today is Wednesday, February 18th. Here's what we're covering.

0:45The Save America Act is not complicated. It's really not. It's not radical. It's crystal clear. If you want to vote in American elections, all you got to do is prove that you're an American. In Washington, The Times is covering an intensifying effort by Republican lawmakers to push for new voting restrictions. And the only people that oppose it are people who want to cheat our system, who want to participate in our elections illegally, unlawfully. Just last week, the House passed the Save America Act, which would require proof of U.S. citizenship to vote. And now House Republicans are trying to build momentum around another bill.

1:24Some of them are calling the Save America Act, but on steroids. Known as the Make Elections Great Again Act, this bill would ban universal voting by mail and prohibit counting ballots received after Election Day, among other provisions. It would also give more authority to the Department of Homeland Security to get information about voters from states. The parallel efforts come as Republicans are bracing for potentially significant losses in the midterms this fall. And raising concerns about election security could lay the groundwork for them to contest any races they lose. But the bills will face a steep uphill battle in the Senate.

2:06This is just an outrageous piece of legislation. It's turning the clock back 100 years. Where Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democrats have vowed to block them. They say Republicans are trying to reshape the electorate in their favor. And they're warning that the laws could disenfranchise low-income Americans, people of color, and other blocs, some of which are big parts of the Democratic base. If you're one of tens of millions of Americans who does not have access to your birth certificate, or if you're one of the 50 percent of Americans who don't have a passport, the SAVE Act could make it impossible for you to participate in elections.

2:41The Democrats say they see the Republican efforts in Congress, as part of the GOP's larger, relentless focus on voting. That includes President Trump's recent calls to have the federal government take control over local elections.

3:02Now, three other quick updates from Washington. The Pentagon announced yesterday that it blew up three more alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific, killing 11 people. It was the deadliest day of boat strikes this year. The U.S. military has killed more than 140 people since the attacks began in September. Experts on the use of force have called the strikes illegal, since the military cannot target civilians who don't pose a threat, even if they're breaking the law. But the Pentagon has kept up the attacks, blowing up boats every three to four days in the last month. Also, Democrats' latest demands to rein in federal immigration agents were rejected by the White House yesterday.

3:47Without a deal, they say they still will not agree to fund the Department of Homeland Security. DHS has been in a partial shutdown since Saturday. Republicans made a counteroffer at one point, the details of which aren't public, but Democrats dismissed it, calling it unserious. They say they will continue to hold out for things like restrictions on random sweeps by immigration agents and a ban on arrests in locations like schools, churches and hospitals. For the moment, while the debate on Capitol Hill continues, most DHS workers like TSA agents and ICE officers have remained on the job, though they may miss paychecks the longer the shutdown drags on.

4:27And a number of Democratic lawmakers say they will be boycotting President Trump's State of the Union address on Tuesday. Instead, they're putting on a rally on the National Mall and calling it the People's State of the Union. The event will be co-hosted by the liberal political commentator Joy Reid and will feature federal workers who've lost their jobs and immigrants who've been targeted by the White House. One Democratic lawmaker said he expects President Trump to lie and insult Democrats in his official speech, leading him to want to skip it, saying, quote, These aren't normal times, and we have to stop doing normal things.

5:13Give it up for the band, everybody. Welcome back, my friends. Oh, this is exciting. On an episode of The Late Show this week. You know who is not one of my guests tonight? That's Texas State Representative James Tallarico. He was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network's lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast. Stephen Colbert said that CBS had barred him from airing an interview because of new guidance from the Trump administration on airtime for political candidates. And because my network clearly doesn't want us to talk about this, let's talk about this.

5:55It's the first time that a late night talk show has changed its programming to meet the updated demands from the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC put out its new guidance last month, part of an escalating crackdown on media companies for perceived bias against conservatives. The agency warned that entertainment-oriented talk shows carried on local TV stations are required to offer candidates equal airtime if they're vying for the same office. Media companies had long considered late-night talk shows exempt from that rule, but the head of the FCC said that is no longer the case. The guidance was clearly aimed at hosts who frequently anger President Trump, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, and Colbert.

6:41CBS has pushed back on Colbert's version of events, saying it did not prohibit the interview from airing, but, quote, provided legal guidance that broadcasting it could trigger the FCC rule. Because the equal time provision applies only to broadcast, Colbert posted his interview with Tallarico to his YouTube page instead. Colbert is in the final stretch of hosting the late show, which will go off the air in May. CBS has said it's purely a financial decision. Two people familiar with the show's budget told The Times it's been losing tens of millions of dollars a year. But many have continued to speculate that the network is canceling it for political reasons.

7:30A scary situation. Search and rescue teams are dealing with whiteout conditions in the Sierra right now. In a remote part of California near Lake Tahoe. Nevada County Sheriff's Office says a group of backcountry skiers are involved. Nine skiers remain missing after they were caught in an avalanche yesterday. They were part of a group including several guides from a tour company. Rescuers were able to reach six survivors late last night. The Sheriff's Office said they were able to locate them thanks to their emergency beacons. But high winds, heavy snowfall, and near-zero visibility have made the ongoing search operation incredibly difficult and dangerous.

8:08The conditions are some of the worst there in years, according to scientists at the Central Sierra Snow Lab. Parts of two major highways are closed, and helicopters can't make it to the site safely. Warnings for more avalanches are still in effect. If the remaining skiers are not found alive, this would rank as among the deadliest avalanches in the U.S. in decades.

8:39And finally, a video has been making the rounds of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt duking it out on a crumbling rooftop. The stars punch, swing, and block, surrounded by ruins, a moody sunset behind them. The 15-second clip has all the bells and whistles of a big Hollywood movie, but it's not a trailer, it's not a promo, it's not even really Pit and Cruise. It was churned out by an AI video generation tool, Seed Dance, which is owned by ByteDance, the company behind TikTok. The man who posted it, a director from Ireland, said he made it with a two-sentence prompt. That has supercharged fears in Hollywood about how many jobs could just disappear with the rise of AI videos, especially ones as convincing as this fight scene.

9:31One of the writers behind the Deadpool movies said it sent a cold shiver up his spine, and the whole thing is likely to loom large over the negotiations between the Screen Actors Guild and studios, which have just started again and will include demands for guardrails on how and if AI can use an actor's likeness. Still, not everyone was impressed with the clip. One producer and writer who works on the series Rick and Morty said she's seen a flood of videos like this and thinks people are getting swept up by the circus of it all. She said she has seen, quote, nothing that has taken my breath away, nothing that is poignant, nothing that is provocative even.

10:10It's all just garbage.

10:15Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, are the bots coming for your job next, even if you're not Brad Pitt? Times tech columnist Kevin Roos on the next generation of AI tools. This feels different to me, And I think to a lot of other people, when you can actually build something useful without knowing how to write code. And I think this is what people think is the thing that's going to take AI from just kind of being a fancier Google to something that genuinely changes how people work. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.

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