New Orleans attack victims mourned | The Excerpt
On Thursday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: At least 15 people were killed in a New Year's terror attack in New Orleans. Paste BN Money and Consumer News Editor Charisse Jones discusses some economic optimism following Donald Trump's election win. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts warns that courts' independence is under threat from violence. Paste BN National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise talks about the supervolcano under Yellowstone. It's been 40 years since seat belts became part of U.S. culture.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. 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.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Thursday, January 2nd, 2025. This is The Excerpt.
Today, the death toll has risen after a New Year's terror attack in New Orleans. Plus, we talk about some small business optimism following Trump's election win, and what's next for the giant super volcano under Yellowstone.
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The death toll has risen to 15 after an armed man drove a speeding truck into a New Year's Eve celebration in New Orleans. The FBI has called the incident a terrorist assault. Loved ones have begun to identify some of those killed. Law enforcement and officials in New Orleans have not publicly identified any of the victims, but family and friends said yesterday that Martin Tiger Bech, a 28-year-old former Princeton football player, was among those killed, as was 18-year-old Nikyra Cheyenne Dedeaux who recently graduated high school, and father of two 37-year-old Reggie Hunter and 27-year-old mother Nicole Perez were among those killed in the attack.
Officials identified 42-year-old Shamsuddin Jabbar as a suspect, a US citizen, an army veteran who lived in Texas. Jabbar appeared to be carrying an ISIS flag and was dressed in military gear, the FBI said. Court records in Texas show Jabbar, who has been married and divorced twice, had ridden of financial troubles during his legal up and downs with past wives but a motive is still unclear. Multiple officials said yesterday they suspected others may be involved in the attack. President Joe Biden also said authorities are looking into whether there's any possible connection between the New Orleans attack and the explosion of a Tesla cyber truck near the covered entrance of Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas yesterday morning that killed one person and injured seven. You can stick with usatoday.com for more on this developing story.
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Small business distress has suddenly turned to optimism following Donald Trump's election win and ahead of his inauguration later this month. I caught up with Paste BN money and consumer news editor Charisse Jones for more. Happy New Year, Charisse.
Charisse Jones:
Happy New Year.
Taylor Wilson:
So you know, Charisse, we haven't been able to talk about much optimism on the US economy for some time. What's going on as we turn the page into 2025, especially as it pertains to small businesses?
Charisse Jones:
Yeah, small businesses are breathing a sigh of relief after the election. Some of it might be excitement that it's over. It was a very tense season. But they're also feeling positive about the incoming administration and the policies that they've talked about. They anticipate that their taxes will go down and that regulations will shrink, will diminish. And so all of those things are making them feel a lot better. Small business optimism is up 8.5% as of November. The level it's at is the highest it's been since June of 2021. And you have a share of businesses that are talking about hiring and investing in their companies that's reached the highest levels in three years. So yeah, basically they're just feeling a lot more confident and optimistic about what's going to happen after January 20th.
Taylor Wilson:
Interesting. And I will note that some leading economists have sounded the alarm on some downstream impacts of some of Trump's controversial plans, including his statements about levying new tariffs. We've talked about that here on the show. Charisse, what are they saying on that front?
Charisse Jones:
Yeah, the thing about tariffs, they're talking about 10 to 25% tariffs on products and materials that come in from Mexico and Canada and China. And customers are going to pay the price for that. Businesses are just not going to take that on the chin and absorb it. They're going to pass that along to the people who are buying their goods and paying for their services.
And so the fear is that inflation, which has been cooling, and that's led to interest rate cuts, which have been a good thing for consumers and businesses, that inflation might spike again because of those tariffs. So there is concern that if that happens, there's going to be a lot of tit-for-tat. The other countries are going to charge a lot more for their goods that we import. And again, businesses are going to have to absorb that cost and they're going to pass it along to their customers.
Taylor Wilson:
You mentioned lowering taxes earlier, Charisse. This is of course one of Trump's signature promises for his second term. Are there any obstacles he's facing here? And really what's the expected impact on the economy?
Charisse Jones:
Yeah, he's probably not going to face too much blow back because he is got a Republican Congress that'll probably do what he wants, and they did that with his first administration. And in the short term, tax cuts feel good. They sound good. Small businesses are excited about that. You might have some higher income households that will have more discretionary income because they're not paying as much in taxes. But in the long run, it could be detrimental to the national economy. Basically it can drive up the federal debt. If that money's not replaced in some way, you have a lot of federal benefits and services that go to households that will be cut. And so there's a lot of concern that, again, in the short term it may feel really good, but there can be some long-term pain.
Taylor Wilson:
Meanwhile, deportation of undocumented immigrants is another policy area that Trump has committed to. What downstream may be on intentional impacts might this have on the US economy?
Charisse Jones:
Yeah, a lot of the people that do the work, that pick the vegetables, that build the housing, we have a big housing deficit in this country and a lot of those construction workers, a lot of landscapers, et cetera, are undocumented immigrants. And if you have folks that are being pushed out of the country or are too afraid to show their faces and try to get work because they don't want to be deported, you're going to have these huge vacuums in these industries that are very critical to our society. And there's no guarantee that you're going to have a US worker who's going to eagerly fill those shoes.
And so it could really hurt a lot of industries if there's a shortage of labor that again drives up costs, and those costs, again, are passed on to consumers. And so once again, you've got an inflation spike that we're just coming out of. And so there are a lot of things that can happen downstream that are negative for the society writ large if you have a big scale, a deportation of people who do the work.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, Charisse, as you say, I'm sure our listeners don't need a reminder at just how inflation squeezed budgets these past few years. What are experts saying about that point, inflation going forward in the near future? Are Trump's policies likely to have an impact here?
Charisse Jones:
Yeah. Again, if tariffs come into play, it's very likely that prices are going to wind up going up. If there are deportations and these workers are pushed out and these industries have a shortfall in their labor supply, that will also increase costs and those will also be passed along to the people who are buying the goods and paying for the services. And so ultimately we could see a rebound in inflation, and we've had a really rough ride with that the last few years. People were finally feeling some relief that prices were coming down. And so that could be a real negative factor that impacts people's lives in the coming months and years.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Paste BN money and consumer news editor Charisse Jones with some great insight for us as always. Thank you, Charisse.
Charisse Jones:
Thank you.
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Taylor Wilson:
Chief Justice John Roberts warned this week that the independence of the federal courts is under threat from illegitimate activity, raising concerns about violence and intimidation against judges, disinformation, and possible defiance of court opinions. Roberts decried the volume of hostile threats and communications directed at judges, which has more than tripled over the past decade. According to the US Marshals Service, more than 1000 serious threats against federal judges have been investigated in the past five years, and about 50 people have been criminally charged. The Chief Justice called out court critics who publicized judges' addresses and phone numbers so they can be harassed.
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett said this year that she has worn a bulletproof vest, though she did not detail the reasons for it. The warnings in Robert's year-end report came after another tumultuous year for the Supreme Court that saw justices issue controversial decisions about President-elect Donald Trump and other high profile cases. The justices also continued to battle low approval ratings and calls for ethics reform. More Americans have disapproved than approved of the way the Supreme Court is handling its job in surveys by Gallup since September of 2021.
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The giant supervolcano that lies under Yellowstone National Park is cooling off in the west, but staying hot in another part of the park. Could it blow again? I spoke with Paste BN national correspondent Elizabeth Weise to learn more.
Beth, happy New Year to you. Thanks for hopping on.
Elizabeth Weise:
Always happy to be here. Happy seismic New Year to you.
Taylor Wilson:
Appreciate it. So let's just start with this. Why is Yellowstone such a danger in terms of enormous volcanic eruptions?
Elizabeth Weise:
So if you've ever been to Yellowstone and you actually stop and read the little plates they've got all over the place, Yellowstone is basically one enormous supervolcano that's 65 miles across. The good news is the last time it blew was like 640,000 years ago, but it's a very, very big volcanic system, so useful to pay attention to it.
Taylor Wilson:
So do we know anything about where the magma underneath Yellowstone is moving?
Elizabeth Weise:
So that's what's interesting. So this is a group of scientists mostly with the US Geological Survey and then University of Oregon, folks who work at the Volcanic National Park in Hawaii. And they went out. A lot of work to map was under the surface in volcanic areas is done seismically, but they also did work, and let's see if I can pronounce this correctly, magnetotellurics, which is basically the Earth as we know has a magnetic system. That's why compasses work. But it turns out that magma, molten rock, is a really, really good way to move electricity. So you can, by looking at how well electricity is being conducted through the Earth, you can tell where there are pockets of magma, which interestingly they call melt, which I tend to think of as snow melt, but in their terminology, melt is like a whole bunch of molten rock.
So they constructed this really cool, and in the story, we'll put a link to it, this really cool three-dimensional map of what these molten reservoirs of magma look like under the Yellowstone Caldera. One of the scientists I spoke to described it like a sponge. It's like a sponge where all the little bubbles and crevices in the sponge, think of them as filled not with water, but with molten rock. And that's what it looks like. And they form these reservoirs, lots of different separate reservoirs under the volcano, and they're being fed by the heat source is basically the molten core of the Earth. And so what's interesting about Yellowstone is when they did this very careful mapping, they found at the western edge of the Yellowstone Caldera, that western edge is starting to cool down. There's less and less magma, and so it's really not going to be volcanically active. It isn't now and it's not going to be again. That part is kind of dying down.
Mind you, we're talking geological eras here, so we're talking, when I say it's dying down, that means, oh, over the next 100,000 years or so. But the northeastern portion of the Caldera is actually still very large. It's probably not growing, but it's still got a... It's like the heat is turned up, and so that is the more seismically active. And they were saying that if the Yellowstone Caldera were to blow at any point, it would happen in the northeastern portion of it.
Taylor Wilson:
I think that sponge imagery in particular is helpful to think about. A lot of folks might be surprised by that. Beth, what does all this mean for where specifically people might have concerns?
Elizabeth Weise:
Well, it's not even so much where. It's when. That's the really good news here. The Yellowstone volcanic system isn't capable of producing a major eruption right now because they're just eruptions are a ratio of the amount of earth to the amount of magma, and the percentage of magma is low enough at this point that it's not going to erupt. That could change over time. If it does erupt, it will happen in the northeastern portion of Yellowstone. But again, we're talking hundreds of thousands of years and possibly longer. So do not cancel your next vacation to Yellowstone. But the next time you go to Yellowstone, definitely read all the lovely informational science they've got because you'll learn all about how there's this huge super volcano underneath it.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Fascinating stuff as always, and folks of course can read more in Beth's full piece with a link in today's show notes. Elizabeth Weise is a national correspondent with Paste BN. Thanks, Beth.
Elizabeth Weise:
Happy to be here. As always, it's a pleasure.
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Taylor Wilson:
Forty years ago this week, New Yorkers became the first car occupants in the US to face penalties for not buckling up. So large numbers started fastening their seat belts. Through some starts and stops along the way, the rest of the country then followed suit. Seat belt use in New York state rose from 16 to 57% in the first four months the law was enforced after it was implemented in December of 1984 with a one-month grace period that postponed fines up to $50 until the new year. By the end of 1985, as the federal government provided funding incentives, nearly all state legislatures had introduced a mandatory seat belt law for adults, and 14 of them had passed bills according to a report by the CDC.
Today, compliance with seat belt requirements has climbed to nearly 92% nationwide, and New Hampshire is the only state that does not require their use, at least for the driver and front seat passengers. And a study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration showed that from 1968 through 2019, the agency's safety standards prevented more than 860,000 deaths on the road. Nearly half of the saved lives were attributed to seat belts.
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Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from Paste BN.