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The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original production. You’re watching “Here & Now” 2024 election coverage.

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Frederica Freyberg:
Political ads are using artificial intelligence to push their agenda. But the political playbook is still the same.
I’m Frederica Freyberg. Tonight on “Here & Now,” election season means a battle over the airwaves in political ads, which now include artificial intelligence. And as the political climate has become so embattled, social studies teachers are being pressured not to teach about the electoral system. Then surge at the southern border has led to a crackdown on asylum seekers. We follow one man’s journey from Cameroon to Wisconsin and deaths from overdose finally appear to be abating. We look at how local communities are addressing the problem head on. It’s “Here & Now” for September 27.

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Funding for “Here & Now” is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:
Political groups are expected to spend $423 million on campaign ads in Wisconsin this year, with $60 million in ads for the presidential race alone reserved for airtime between now and Election Day. We may be used to attack ads stretching the truth or twisting facts, but a new concern comes with the growing use of artificial intelligence, or AI, to create an entirely new false reality. “Here & Now” senior political reporter Zac Schultz has the story.

Zac Schultz:
Watch just about any local newscast in Wisconsin and when the station cuts to break, many of the commercials will be campaign ads.

TV announcer:
Thanks a lot, Kamala.

Steve Lavin:
Political will occupy a large percentage of our available inventory between now and the election and have for many months.

Zac Schultz:
Steve Lavin is the general manager of WBAY-TV in Green Bay. In a purple state, campaign ads are the best way to reach the last few voters who haven’t already made up their minds.

Steve Lavin:
Well, let’s be honest, the majority of the public is already decided the way that they’re going to vote, and these ads are just over that little fringe, 5 to 7% of undecideds, really undecideds in the middle.

Zac Schultz:
Most of the controversies over campaign ads come when one side demands their opponent retract an ad due to inaccuracies or technicalities. Lavin says TV stations have lawyers to deal with those issues.

Steve Lavin:
I’ll never pull an ad myself because number one, I would rather the other side — if there’s falsehoods in an ad, the other side has every bit of right to actually answer those by buying more ads, right?

Zac Schultz:
A new concern over ads has to do with the growing use of artificial intelligence, or AI, to generate images that look real. Earlier this year, the legislature passed a bill that requires any campaign ad using AI to include that information.

Steve Lavin:
Any time they’re using any type of AI, they’re supposed to disclose it.

Zac Schultz:
Not disclosing comes with a $1,000 penalty, but that penalty would be paid by the group running the ad. An amendment to the bill made sure broadcasters are not liable if AI is used and not disclosed.

Michael Wagner:
There is a bit of responsibility on the side of the broadcasters, but it’s also extremely hard to police.

Zac Schultz:
Mike Wagner is a professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin who has studied the use of AI in political speech.

Michael Wagner:
How can they know for sure the video was AI generated? How can they know for sure the script was AI generated?

Zac Schultz:
Lavin says so far, there’s no evidence of any AI in campaign ads.

Steve Lavin:
Since that law went into place, I have not seen or heard an ad that has used that disclaimer yet. So either it’s — if it’s being used, nobody’s disclosing it or they’ve determined that the penalties are so high that they’re just not going to use AI to determine it.

Michael Wagner:
I think the real danger with AI in this election is not in campaign advertisements. It’s in social media posts that go viral.

Zac Schultz:
We’ve already seen examples of this.

Michael Wagner:
Using AI as a boogeyman, so something happens and the other side says, “Oh, that must be AI. Can’t possibly be real.”

Zac Schultz:
In August, Kamala Harris held a rally at an airport hangar in Detroit, Michigan. Donald Trump falsely claimed photos of the event used AI to make the crowd look bigger.

Garlin Gilchrist:
I spoke at that rally. I spoke to all 15,000 of those people. They are real.

Zac Schultz:
Garlin Gilchrist is Michigan’s lieutenant governor.

Garlin Gilchrist:
Donald Trump was so insecure about that crowd size that he had to find a way to try to delegitimize it. And so by playing on the fears of people and saying it was artificial intelligence and fake, that’s all he knows how to do is play on people’s fears.

Zac Schultz:
Wagner says beyond making AI a boogeyman, there’s another way AI can be abused.

Michael Wagner:
The other is that a candidate picks up on a post that uses AI and treats it as true, which has also happened where former President Trump shared information that Taylor Swift had endorsed him, which she had not.

Zac Schultz:
Neither AI incident seems to have affected the race for president. Taylor Swift later endorsed Kamala Harris.

Kamala Harris:
When we fight, we win.

Zac Schultz:
Who has proven her large crowds are real.

Mark Pocan:
What a crowd. You know, Donald Trump says Democrats can only have large crowds because of AI.

Zac Schultz:
AI wasn’t even involved in the biggest lie of the campaign so far.

Donald Trump:
They’re eating the dogs.

Zac Schultz:
When Donald Trump falsely claimed Haitian immigrants were stealing pets and eating them in Springfield, Ohio, the source of the misinformation was a Facebook post. No AI involved at all.

Michael Wagner:
So when these kinds of things happen too, especially when the candidates themselves pick it up and share it, those things are going to take on a life of their own in really remarkable and fast ways that are hard to regulate.

Zac Schultz:
The targets for misinformation are the same as the audience for campaign ads.

Michael Wagner:
Low information voters who are paying attention at the last minute are often susceptible to the messages because they’re new to them. They haven’t been paying attention to the race, and these things are new.

Zac Schultz:
And the solution to misinformation, whether AI generated or not, is the same as it’s always been.

Steve Lavin:
There is so much disinformation out there, whether it’s in social media, it could be in these campaigns, could be spreading, spreading disinformation. I think it’s up to the individual voter to determine what’s actually the truth.

Zac Schultz:
Reporting from Green Bay, I’m Zac Schultz for “Here & Now.”

Frederica Freyberg:
Despite a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling in July that says absentee drop boxes are fully legal, they still remain a point of contention. Since then, some local clerks around the state have decided they will not allow their residents to use an absentee ballot drop box for the November election, saying they are not secure but one city mayor took matters into his own hands. This week, donning a hardhat and workers gloves, Wausau Mayor Doug Diny wheeled the city’s only drop box away from its position outside City Hall. But not before posing for pictures to “memorialize the event.” Diny now faces a legal investigation as he is not an election official, and this was not a decision approved by anyone but himself. He maintains he did not break the law.
As campaigning toward Election Day reaches a fever pitch and most of the world is talking about it, in nearly half of Wisconsin schools, teachers are being restricted from discussing U.S. elections. The Wisconsin Council for the Social Studies is pushing back. Its president and Shorewood Middle School social studies teacher and 2023 teacher of the year, Sarah Kopplin is here. And thanks very much for being here.

Sarah Kopplin:
Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:
So your council conducted a survey of teachers on this. What did that survey find?

Sarah Kopplin:
So we have a monthly newsletter that we send to our membership. And full disclosure, we don’t have every teacher in the state of Wisconsin who does teach social studies as members of our organization. Currently, we are working to change that though, but 42% of the respondents in our membership who filled out the survey said that they’ve experienced scenarios where their district administration, so either their principal or perhaps even their school board has placed limitations upon them for teaching of current events or the election in this upcoming school year. Also, I was recently at the Teaching About Elections conference at UW-Madison and a reporter asked the crowd of educators if they had experienced such things in their districts, and every hand in the crowd went up. There was well over 100 educators there. So this is something that we see as an organization. We also asked a similar question at our conference last March and received that type of overwhelming response.

Frederica Freyberg:
So what is behind the restrictions and complaints on the part of parents say?

Sarah Kopplin:
So the things that we hear from educators around our state in terms of parent complaints are our teachers are conducting units of study where students are learning about how elections work. You know, how votes are cast and counted, how the electoral, electoral college process works and parents are hearing from their students that when they come home, that this type of topic is being discussed and then immediately complain to principals or school board members that their children are being indoctrinated with political ideology. So that’s something we’ve heard a lot of. And this is not a scenario where an educator is talking about their partisan politics. It’s just simply giving students opportunities in classrooms to learn about how our democratic system works. We also have heard from educators that have had administrators that will just say to them, we don’t want you having any discussions in your classrooms about the election at all, or any classroom discussions about current events. It’s too controversial. We don’t want parent complaints, which makes it very difficult for social studies educators when this is related to our state standards and also partially related to some of the statutory requirements that we have in Wisconsin to teach social studies.

Frederica Freyberg:
So are teachers pushing a political agenda, in any case, in classrooms?

Sarah Kopplin:
So I have yet to come across an educator that tells their students what their political agenda is. You know, as an educator, you are bound by policies in your school district where most districts have similar policies that they purchase from a policy writing consortium. And it basically says that as an educator, you should not give any partisan political viewpoints in your classroom. But simply talking about politics, how politics work, or what issues are taking place in our political sphere is enough in the current political atmosphere to make parents and administrators feel like wrong or nefarious is going on in the classroom. The term of indoctrination is thrown around quite frequently. I have yet to find an educator, though that is telling any of their students their political ideology.

Frederica Freyberg:
Are these restrictions happening in your own district?

Sarah Kopplin:
They’re not happening in my district. I feel pretty fortunate to teach in a district where not only the community, but our school board and our district administrators at the building levels have been very supportive of social studies education. They have been supportive of us meeting our state standards, which require students to engage in their own inquiry and also to engage in developing civil discourse skills. So learning about current events and having current events discussions, learning about the election is something that is valued in the school district that I work in.

Frederica Freyberg:
And in your mind, why is it important for students to learn about government and elections?

Sarah Kopplin:
Well, our state legislature believes that it is. There’s a statute that actually talks about how important that is and it requires that to happen. The school board should provide an educational plan for that to take place in school districts. It’s also part of our state standards. But more importantly, I think it’s really important for the future of our democracy that our students understand how our government works. You know, what are the parts of our government? What are their powers and limitations? What are the rights and responsibilities that citizens have in this country? And with that being said, how — as a person who is part of your community or if you are a citizen as well, how do you engage to ensure that you are making a positive impact on your neighbors? And how can you have a voice to be somebody who is civically engaged? One of our state standards says that Wisconsin students will learn how to be civically engaged. And that’s really important because we want our future generations to be able to be strong leaders, strong problem solvers and people that will strengthen and improve the democracy and the country that we have, that we have here.

Frederica Freyberg:
We leave it there. Sarah Kopplin, thanks very much.

Sarah Kopplin:
Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:
Turning to the southern border, a temporary solution to deter a surge of illegal crossings at the US-Mexico border may become more permanent. As Republicans have made immigration a central issue in the presidential election, political pressure has mounted for Democrats to address the issue. An executive order issued in June from President Joe Biden severely limited the number of people who can seek asylum at the border. Immigration advocates fear the policy deters people with legitimate asylum cases who are fleeing their home country for fear of persecution. “Here & Now” student journalist Jane McCauley follows the journey of one such man who risked it all.

Ngwa Augustine:
At this point, I was thinking maybe I make a wrong decision of coming here.

Jane McCauley:
Ngwa Augustine had two choices. He could either face arrest seeking asylum at the U.S. southern border or face political violence in his home country of Cameroon.

Ngwa Augustine:
They look at us like second class citizens in your own countries simply because of what? Because you can’t speak French whatsoever.

Jane McCauley:
Cameroon is now in the midst of a violent civil war known as the Anglophone Crisis. Thousands of people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced.

Ngwa Augustine:
I said look, we cannot be in our own country and be treated as second class citizens. So I go down the street so start protesting. You know, we want our rights to be restored.

Jane McCauley:
The country’s internal conflict is a remnant of French and British colonization. It’s been decades of discriminatory policies from the French-speaking government against the country’s English-speaking regions. More and more, people like Ngwa have stood up against the government, risking arrest and torture. Ngwa’s wife and daughter assumed he had died in detention. What they didn’t know is that he escaped from Nigeria and fled to South America, starting in Ecuador and traveling north through the Darin Gap, one of the most dangerous places in the world. Over thousands of miles and through eight countries, he reached Mexico.

Ngwa Augustine:
I look like I’m a kind of different human being. I come from a different world, you know. I was under a lot of police discrimination. I said, Oh, this is simply what I’m running away from.

Jane McCauley:
Ngwa’s journey was harrowing, taking a toll both physically and emotionally.

Ngwa Augustine:
I have not talked to my family for all the time I was traveling at that time. You know, the stress and the emotion was going on.

Jane McCauley:
Finally, he arrived at the US-Mexico border.

Ngwa Augustine:
You don’t understand what I’ve been through to get to cross this very border. It was really — when I think of what I’ve been through to get to this point, it was — I can’t even, I can’t even find the right word to describe it. When I got into US immigration, I thought I am safe. I felt relieved.

Jane McCauley:
That relief, however, turned to regret as he questioned if leaving for the U.S. was the right decision.

Ngwa Augustine:
When they took me to the, to the detention, I said I didn’t commit any crime. Why are they, like, taking me to this place?

Jane McCauley:
He thought seeking asylum meant being protected in the custody of the United States. Instead, he was arrested like a criminal.

Ngwa Augustine:
I have never been to prison. I’ve never committed any crime in my life, apart from being — apart from being protester in my home country.

Jane McCauley:
And they told him nothing.

Ngwa Augustine:
I thought I was still in Chicago because I didn’t even know where I was.

Jane McCauley:
It was weeks later he found out he was in a federal detention facility in Dodge County, Wisconsin.

Erin Barbato:
This is a humanitarian issue.

Jane McCauley:
Erin Barbato is director of the UW Law School Immigrant Justice Clinic. Ngwa says everything changed when he met her.

Erin Barbato:
They’re risking their lives because they have no other choice. We have laws that allow people to seek protection here when they will be persecuted or have been persecuted in their home country.

Jane McCauley:
Seeking asylum is one issue, but proving your case is another. His witness accounts attest to the chaos in his country.

Erin Barbato:
He also wears scars on his body that we were able to demonstrate were linked to the persecution that he suffered from the government.

Toni Swandby:
Obviously, our backgrounds are really different.

Jane McCauley:
Toni and Mark Swandby met Ngwa through Barbato.

Toni Swandby:
But we had so much in common, like values and belief systems and all that.

Jane McCauley:
Ngwa went to live with them after leaving Dodge County Jail on parole. They became his American parents, giving him a place to call home.

Mark Swandby:
Having Ngwa in our life now has been a real blessing to us. You know, we’ve inherited another family, if you will, or found more family.

Ann:
I’d like to…

Stella Augustine:
I know you love to listen to stories.

Jane McCauley:
After four long years, Ngwa’s wife Stella, and then five-year-old daughter, Ann received their documents to come to the U.S.

Stella Augustine:
I was just like, is this for real? Am I here? I was in shock when I saw him. I was so happy.

Mark Swandby:
To make a life here in the U.S. and what they’ve been through and what they’re going through is just a hard thing.

Jane McCauley:
In June, Ngwa graduated from UW-La Crosse with a masters in health care administration. After years of hardship, Ngwa received his asylum in 2021. Now he’s applying for U.S. citizenship. Stella and Ann await their green cards. In the meantime, it means everything to Ngwa to start a new life in Wisconsin.

Ngwa Augustine:
It’s a beautiful thing for your family to be united. I think we’re really happy. And I am looking forward to more amazing things.

Jane McCauley:
For “Here & Now,” I’m Jane McCauley reporting from Madison.

Frederica Freyberg:
In health news, good news. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports a more than 10% decline in drug deaths this year for the first time after decades of steep increases. Wisconsin mirrors the downward trend. There certainly has been an all-out push to save lives from law enforcement interdiction efforts to harm reduction efforts like Narcan. On the ground locally, the Medical College of Wisconsin also helps communities conduct overdose fatality reviews to look holistically at the victims, to help others stay alive until they can get treatment. La Crosse County has been conducting such reviews since 2018. Paula Silha is from the county health department. She joins us now. And Paula, thanks a lot for being here.

Paula Silha:
Thank you so much. It’s an honor to have this discussion.

Frederica Freyberg:
So has La Crosse County also seen a reduction in overdose deaths as has been the case nationally and statewide?

Paula Silha:
Well, our rate in 2023 was the highest that it’s ever been. So, you know that was end of 2023. When we’re looking at 2024, we’re behind the numbers that we saw last year at this time. So we’re hopeful that the total numbers will be less than, you know, 2023. But we don’t know that yet. We’ve still got a few months of ’24 to get through.

Frederica Freyberg:
When you’re conducting an overdose fatality review, what are you looking at in that person’s life?

Paula Silha:
We’re looking at early substance use. We’re also looking at trauma that they may have experienced. You know, were they a party to a home where other substance use was going on? Did they have particularly difficult schooling? Did they move a lot? You know, were they a part of a broken family? People may have heard of the term ACES, which is adverse childhood experiences. And we know that those — there’s like ten different experiences and we know those experiences make children’s lives that much more difficult. So we look for that. We aren’t calling them ACES, but we look at the growing up history of the person. If we have access to that, we also look at how much they moved. There might have been medical problems that people have had. We’ve had several people who have had head injuries, and we know that — a concussion. We know that also impacts thinking and coping abilities that young people have. And then we look at involvement with treatment, law enforcement, if they’ve been incarcerated at all. We’re looking at all of those kinds of things to look at opportunities where prevention couldn’t be implemented to save someone from walking down that same path in the future.

Frederica Freyberg:
Give us a sense of who makes up the team.

Paula Silha:
So the team is a combination of — there’s probably 12 to 15 professionals and community members that are a part of the group. So law enforcement, we have someone from the judicial system. We have some treatment — people who are involved in treatment. When we have people from a school setting, whether it’s K-12 or post-secondary education, we have someone from that educational setting as well. We have a pharmacist who we can consult with whenever we need to. Our medical examiner and then fire department staff, who are often the first responders or respond when an overdose/911 call is called in within the city of La Crosse.

Frederica Freyberg:
So you spoke to some kinds of changes that have been affected coming out of these reviews. What’s an example of one of those tangible changes?

Paula Silha:
One of the changes is a jail release kit that’s provided to all people who have been discharged from the county jail. We were noticing in doing and conducting reviews that within the first couple of months after getting out of jail, if the individual returned to their former lifestyle, they were at a great risk of overdose. And so a jail release kit was something that was put together by some of the groups that or agencies that are represented on the team. And so it includes Narcan. It includes a rescue mask so for providing rescue breathing. That’s one example. Another example is, acknowledging that we might have a particularly, particularly, contaminated supply of drugs in our community because the thought now is that there’s no pure substance. Even substances like meth, are often laced with fentanyl or xylazine in the community.

Frederica Freyberg:
So your most recent report describes reducing the stigma of drug addiction as an important prong. Why?

Paula Silha:
I think it’s important to talk about it in the community and not have people look down on folks who are using substances. And in order to do that, we need to talk about it openly in the community. People sometimes have bad feelings about harm reduction. Well, why would you prevent people from overdosing? Because it’s about saving their lives until they’re ready to take that next step towards treatment. I also think that we need to acknowledge that many people, not all, but many people who are attracted to substance use are attracted because they’re struggling with some other condition. Something else that has a lot of stigma in our community and probably state and nationwide is mental health. I also think that we need to talk about people who overdose in our community aren’t just unsheltered people. They are people who have jobs, who have homes, might have college educations. They just are caught in that cycle, that addictive cycle of substance use and that drive, that addiction is really, really strong. And so they might want to quit. But it’s one more, one more experience with a substance. And that might be the experience that has the fentanyl in it. That then leads to them having an unintentional overdose.

Frederica Freyberg:
Paula Silha, we leave it there. Thanks very much. Thanks for your work.

Paula Silha:
Yeah. Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:
For more on this and other issues facing Wisconsin, visit our website at PBSWisconsin.org and then click on the news tab. To see all of our election coverage, visit WisconsinVote org. That’s our program for tonight. I’m Frederica Freyberg. Have a good weekend.

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Funding for “Here & Now” is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.