Idalia makes history along Florida's Big Bend, McConnell freezes again: 5 Things podcast

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: Idalia makes history along Florida's Big Bend

Hurricane Idalia makes history along Florida's Big Bend. Plus, Sen. Mitch McConnell freezes again, USA TODAY Congress and Campaigns Reporter Ken Tran looks at questions of whether former President Donald Trump should be allowed on the 2024 ballot, the HHS calls for classifying weed as less dangerous, and USA TODAY Investigative Reporter Chris Quintana explains how a professor skirted background checks after harassing students with a 'clown fetish.'

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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 Thursday, the 31st of August 2023. Today, the aftermath of Idalia. Plus, Sen. Mitch McConnell freezes at a press conference again, and some Republicans are wrangling with the question of whether Trump should be allowed on the 2024 presidential ballot.

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Idalia has been downgraded to a tropical storm after making landfall yesterday along Florida's Big Bend as a Category 3 hurricane. It then moved quickly over southeastern Georgia and the Carolinas last night. As of early this morning, the storm's center was located around 20 miles southwest of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

No hurricane related deaths were officially confirmed in Florida, but two people were killed in separate weather related crashes just hours before Idalia made landfall. Nearly 300,000 homes and businesses were without power in Florida as of yesterday afternoon, according to the utility tracker PowerOutage.us. And another 175,000 were powerless in Georgia. The storm hit land near Keaton Beach, Florida, with maximum sustained winds of 125 miles an hour. It was the strongest hurricane to make landfall in the Big Bend area of Florida's Gulf Coast since 1896, according to Colorado State University hurricane researcher, Phil Klotzbach.

The Big Bend region is mostly rural and the worst of the storm appears to have avoided Tampa Bay and other more populated areas of Florida's Gulf Coast. Authorities said the worst damage appeared to be in Taylor County, southeast of Tallahassee, already one of the most economically challenged areas of the state. Two businesses reportedly caught fire, some had roofs torn off, and the county's emergency operations center had to evacuate to more secure facilities.

Hurricanes thrive on warm water and this storm was no different, gaining strength in the hot Gulf of Mexico, as a series of marine heat waves cover nearly half of the world's oceans this summer. The heat is blamed on several factors, including the warming climate, which scientists say is contributing to more extreme weather events. If you want to learn more about how warmer waters can impact hurricanes like Idalia, we aired a special episode featuring NOAA's chief scientist, Dr. Sarah Kapnick, earlier this month. You can find a link in today's show notes.

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Sen. Mitch McConnell froze in front of a group of reporters yesterday, once again raising concerns about the 81-year-old Republican leader's health. At an event yesterday in Kentucky, he was asked about running for reelection in 2026 and appeared to begin an answer before quickly freezing and going silent for seven seconds. It's the second time in less than two months that such an incident has interrupted a news conference featuring McConnell. The Senate minority leader will be consulting a physician before his next event, according to an aide who asked for anonymity to speak candidly. His office has not responded to multiple questions this summer about the senator's freezing at the microphone and has not shared what medical advice or diagnosis McConnell has previously received.

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Questions over whether former President Donald Trump is legally eligible to run again for the White House are picking up steam in New Hampshire. Republicans there can't seem to agree on whether or not he should be on the 2024 ballot, a question that'll likely extend to other states too. I spoke with USA TODAY Congress and Campaigns Reporter Ken Tran for more. Thanks for making the time, Ken.

Ken Tran:

Thanks for having me, Taylor.

Taylor Wilson:

So what's the legal theory that's putting Republicans in a pickle when it comes to whether Trump should be allowed on the ballot for 2024?

Ken Tran:

Sure. So this legal theory is taking a look at Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which says that no one who has "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" or "given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof" is allowed to hold public office. So people that are proponents of this theory, and Trump's opponents, say that the January 6th, 2021 Capitol attack qualifies under insurrection or rebellion. And they argue that since Trump allegedly incited the riots, it's sort of, well, we've seen this happen before our very own eyes, so he can't be eligible for the presidency.

Taylor Wilson:

New Hampshire is the first primary, so obviously a crucial state for the upcoming election. Where do these arguments stand in New Hampshire, Ken?

Ken Tran:

These arguments have really started to pick up real steam in New Hampshire with attorney Bryant "Corky" Messner. He was also the GOP nominee for the New Hampshire Senate race in 2020. He's the one that's really pushing this theory and sort of telling the New Hampshire secretary of state's office, this should be something that should really be looked at. We should really decide whether or not former President Donald Trump is eligible to be on the ballot. He met with the secretary of state, David Scanlan, and he said that he is in a difficult position and it's true. The office is currently seeking legal guidance from the state's attorney general office and other lawyers on the issue.

Taylor Wilson:

So what do critics in New Hampshire say about using this legal theory to dump Trump off the ballot?

Ken Tran:

So critics in New Hampshire aren't a fan of it. I talked to Chris Ager, chair of the New Hampshire State Republican Party, who is remaining neutral in the primary race throughout 2024. He called it "an assault on American democracy" and he argues that if Trump really should be disqualified from running for president, we should have the voters of New Hampshire decide that.

Taylor Wilson:

And Ken, have Trump's Republican presidential rivals spoken out at all about this idea of whether or not he should be on the ballot in the first place?

Ken Tran:

So one of President Trump's opponents, former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, he has expressed support for the theory and he did suggest that maybe other people in other states might file legal challenges against him. He didn't say whether or not he would do it himself, but he said he does think it's serious jeopardy for the former president that he might not be qualified under the Constitution.

Taylor Wilson:

So what's next for this question of Trump on or off the ballot going forward?

Ken Tran:

So Corky Messner of New Hampshire, who's pushing it, he said that if the secretary of state's office does decide to keep Trump on the New Hampshire ballot, he will step in and personally partly file a lawsuit and see if he could take it to the Supreme Court and have them ultimately decide on the question. He thinks it should be a nonpartisan debate. He said he doesn't want to take sides in it and it's more about the Constitution. So the ultimate goal for him is to really just say look, we have this legal theory, we should have the courts decide it. So either way, he says there will be a lawsuit.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. We'll be looking out for that. Ken Tran, thanks so much as always.

Ken Tran:

Thank you for having me.

♦

Taylor Wilson:

The Department of Health and Human Services has moved to reclassify marijuana as less harmful than heroin or cocaine, and the move may be a first step toward wider legalization. In a letter obtained by Bloomberg News, an HHS department official wrote to Drug Enforcement Administration Administrator Anne Milgram that marijuana should be classified as a Schedule 3 substance. That consists of drugs with a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence.

Marijuana is currently a Schedule 1 substance, which is made up of drugs with no accepted medical use and a high potential of abuse, according to the DEA. The latest move comes after President Joe Biden last year asked HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and Attorney General Merrick Garland to review how marijuana is classified under federal law. Biden also took steps to ease restrictions of marijuana last year, including announcing a pardon of all prior offenses for possession of the drug, and urging governors to do the same at the state level. 23 states and the District of Columbia have passed measures to regulate cannabis for adult's non-medical use.

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A college professor with a so-called "clown fetish" harassed students at several universities. So why didn't administrators stop him? I spoke with USA TODAY Investigative Reporter Chris Quintana for more on this disturbing story and what it tells us about flaws when it comes to background checks on college campuses. Hey Chris, thanks for hopping on the show.

Chris Quintana:

Thank you so much for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

So this college professor harassed students with a kind of clown fetish for years. That's startling to hear, to say the least. What exactly did he do, Chris?

Chris Quintana:

My story is about Joseph Tokosh and what he did, it depended on kind of the university he was at. But broadly, he offered extra credit to students who were willing to paint their faces to look like clowns, in some cases. He also offered cash, in other scenarios, when in some of his classes he made it a requirement for students to paint their faces like a geisha, like a clown, in the style of Day of the Dead. The twist here is that Mr. Tokosh had posted on Reddit about having a facepaint fetish or a clown fetish and did not reveal this to his students as far as we know. So that is what caught our interest in this story initially. And cannot shout out the student journalists at Nicholls State University who first broke this enough.

Taylor Wilson:

Chris, what flaws does this expose in the background check system at colleges and universities?

Chris Quintana:

The students I talked to said that the failure to check social media was really surprising to them. Many of them are digital natives. They've been told from a young age to be careful about what you post on Facebook or Instagram because it can follow you for the rest of your life. Right? All these posts on Reddit, on YouTube, they were public and available for people to find, including university administrators. So the students especially feel that this was a real failure to kind of check basic social media, that they would've been able to find by looking for his name, Joe Tokosh.

Taylor Wilson:

And initially some students said they went to campus police, that they flagged this behavior. What happened that this was not investigated thoroughly?

Chris Quintana:

That is a good question and a little bit of a challenge, and we address it in the story as well. We asked Kent State and we asked Northern Illinois about Joseph Tokosh and they told us both times that there's this federal privacy law known as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act that prevents universities from disclosing information about students. So Mr. Tokosh was a graduate student at these two institutions, and so the universities say that we can't tell you anything about him. But that does inhibit our ability to know what they knew, right? And we did know at Kent State that two separate students filed police reports. We know that a different student raised a complaint on social media, and we also know that while he was at Northern, he was posting on Reddit about this stuff. We also know that he, in 2020, was posting on YouTube and offering to sell videos of people tied up and getting tied. So it raises a lot of questions.

Taylor Wilson:

And Chris, you mentioned that student journalists really broke a lot of this story. Can you talk about that?

Chris Quintana:

Yeah, I talked with the student journalist who initially broke this story. The lead writer, Sally-Anne Torres, is the editor-in-chief at the Nicholls Worth now. And this really started, one of her reporters heard a rumor back in January about this, and it seemed too odd to kind of be real at first, but Mr. Tokosh was then let go and he cited these grade inflation concerns. And at that point, Sally-Anne was like, "Oh man, we really need to look into this." And so they were able to pretty quickly find the Reddit account and were able to then talk to six students who really shared what had happened to them and they were really the ones who broke the story out. And so it just goes to show the power of student journalism.

Taylor Wilson:

Chris Quintana, thanks for your reporting and time on this. Really appreciate it.

Chris Quintana:

Thank you.

Taylor Wilson:

And before we go, today marks the beginning of college football season, a sport that's deep in the throes of realignment chaos. Could this be the last season for the sport as we know it? Tune in at 4:00pm Eastern for a special episode of 5 Things, when I'm joined by USA TODAY Sports Columnist Dan Wolken. We'll talk about how this cornerstone of American culture is changing.

And thanks for listening to 5 Things. If you like the show, please subscribe and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And any comments, you can send them our way at [email protected]. I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.