Obamas fire up Dems for Harris on second day of convention | The Excerpt
On Wednesday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama took the stage Tuesday night at the Democratic National Convention, where they amped up Democrats for Vice President Kamala Harris. Paste BN Reporter Lauren Villagran discusses enthusiam among Latino voters for Kamala Harris. Ukraine hits Moscow with a drone attack. Native Americans go missing at alarming rates. Advocates hope a new alert code can help. Paste BN Breaking News and Education Reporter Zach Schermele takes a look at the college housing crunch.
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.
Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more Paste BN podcasts right here
Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Wednesday, August 21st, 2024. This is The Excerpt.
Today we're halfway through the Democratic Convention, and the Obamas grabbed the spotlight last night. Also, we look at enthusiasm for Harris among Latino voters and what colleges are doing during a campus housing crunch.
♦
Night two at the Democratic National Convention was all about the Obamas, as Former President and First Lady Barack and Michelle Obama took the stage in Chicago. Speaking to a raucous crowd that hung on every word, the couple with Chicago roots brought into focus the values at stake and their belief in Vice President Kamala Harris.
Barack Obama:
America's ready for a better story. We are ready for a President Kamala Harris.
Taylor Wilson:
The Obamas capped off a night where Democrats attempted to sketch out Harris's policy goals. Democrats also continued their assault on Project 2025, the policy blueprint of the conservative think-tank, The Heritage Foundation, pushing to tie the agenda to Former President Donald Trump.
He's worked to distance himself from the project, which contains controversial proposals, including limiting access to abortion pills and eliminating the Department of Education. Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff also spoke last night. He called his wife, Kamala Harris, a joyful warrior.
To catch you up on what you missed yesterday, check out a link in today's show notes and stick with usatoday.com all week long for all things Democratic Convention.
♦
Enthusiasm among Latino voters is surging for Kamala Harris. I spoke with Paste BN reporter, Lauren Villagran, for the latest, and to get a sense of just how crucial the Latino vote will be this fall. Hello, Lauren.
Lauren Villagran:
Hey, Taylor.
Taylor Wilson:
So Lauren, how do Latino voters land at this point when it comes to support for Harris or Trump? What do the numbers say?
Lauren Villagran:
There's been a flurry of recent polls that show that once Kamala Harris took the top of the presidential ticket, enthusiasm and motivation among Latino voters just shot skyward. The vice president is still not polling at the numbers she may need among Latino voters in order to win in November, but there definitely has been a shift in motivation to vote and interest in her campaign.
Taylor Wilson:
What portion of Latino voters does Harris need here and does she appear to have that support now?
Lauren Villagran:
There's a lot of math in this, but the conventional wisdom has been that in recent decades, since at least President Barack Obama, Democratic candidates have needed 2/3 of Latino voters in order to win. That's not a firm percentage, but in a variety of polls, at least three.
In recent weeks since Harris took the top of the presidential ticket, you're seeing her polling between 53% and 60, 62% with Latino voters, so just shy of what pundits say she may need to win.
Taylor Wilson:
What are the key issues that Latino voters care about?
Lauren Villagran:
Taylor, they're the same issues that all Americans say they care about right now in poll after poll. Inflation, jobs, the economy. These economic pocketbook issues are routinely listed as the top concern among Latino voters. I'm citing both an Univision Poll as well as a poll by the Hispanic Federation that show that Latinos care about the economy.
Taylor Wilson:
Has the Harris campaign taken steps, Lauren, to address the Latino electorate explicitly, and where might her campaign still be falling short?
Lauren Villagran:
Yeah, well, of course everyone's at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago This week. On Monday, Harris campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, launched a new WhatsApp channel called Latinos con Harris-Walz. And that channel is supposed to bring in Latino voters on a platform that many Latino communities and families love to use.
There have been Latino leaders throughout the speaker roster at the Democratic National Convention, but Latinos are a very diverse group, Taylor. The folks in California are not the same as the folks in Florida. There's political differences based on national origin, on gender, just like any other voting group.
Taylor Wilson:
So as you've mentioned, polls show that about 1/3 of Latinos Stateside support Donald Trump. What do we know about the Trump campaign's efforts around the Latino vote?
Lauren Villagran:
Yeah, so in poll after poll, about 1/3 of Latino voters say they are voting for Former President Donald Trump. He polls higher among Latino men, which echoes the pattern you see in other groups as well. White men poll higher for Trump, as do Black men.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Lauren Villagran covers the border and immigration for Paste BN. Thank you, Lauren.
Lauren Villagran:
Thanks, Taylor.
♦
Taylor Wilson:
Ukraine attacked Moscow earlier today in what Russian officials called one of the biggest drone strikes on the city since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. No damage or casualties were reported, and Russian officials said their air defenses shot down at least 11 drones.
The war recently escalated earlier this month when Ukraine sent thousands of soldiers into Russia's Kursk region, marking the biggest foreign attack on Russian territory since World War II.
For months, Ukraine has also carried out drone strikes on Russian refineries and airfields, though drone attacks in and around Russia's capital have been rarer. Meanwhile, Russia continues to advance in Eastern Ukraine where it controls around 18% of the territory.
♦
Native Americans go missing at alarming rates. In 2023 alone, the Federal Communications Commission said more than 188,000 adults went missing, but didn't qualify for an AMBER Alert because they were 18 or older. FBI data shows about 3,200 of them were Native American, but researchers estimate the true toll is significantly higher.
Just in Montana, the State Department of Justice found Native Americans accounted for roughly 25% of reported missing persons, but made up 6.6% of the population. In a survey last year released by the First Nations Development Institute, found the biggest concern on Native Americans' minds was missing and murdered Indigenous women.
Advocates are hoping a new alert code can help. The FCC unanimously voted this month to approve the Missing and Endangered Persons Code after Indigenous leaders spotlighted the need to quickly disseminate information about missing adults.
The initiative will enable jurisdictions throughout the country to alert residents through phones, TV and radio about missing people of all ages, not just children who qualify for AMBER Alerts, and spotlight the alarming number of missing Native Americans. You can read more with the link in today's show notes.
♦
From sleeping in hotels, to living at home, college students this fall are grappling with a campus housing crunch. I spoke with Paste BN Breaking News and Education Reporter Zach Schermele to learn more. Hello, Zach.
Zach Schermele:
Hey, Taylor. Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
Thanks for hopping back on. So let's just start here. How bad is this campus housing crunch, and really how does the broader US crisis in affordable housing factor in here?
Zach Schermele:
Yeah, it's always tough to put numbers to these types of things, Taylor, but it's no secret that a shortage of affordable housing has been a longstanding problem in the US. And the youngest adults, including college-going students, who are typically new to the housing market, are impacted by that shortage in a really big way.
There are a couple of recent trends to keep in mind here. The first is that a significant number of colleges and universities, many of them private schools, require students to live on campus for their first year in school.
Schools do that for a lot of reasons, but one of them is because some research shows that being immersed in that on-campus experience can really have positive benefits in terms of students performing well in the classroom. And recent data shows that undergraduate enrollment is rebounding to pre-pandemic levels, Taylor, and much of that is due to freshman enrollment.
Though I should note a lot of that enrollment is attributable to community colleges, which are not necessarily the types of schools that always require students to live on campus, but still, schools have a lot of incentives to push up the amount of students they enroll and to get them on campus, and we're still seeing that.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah, so what do students and parents say about the challenges all this is presenting for them?
Zach Schermele:
Some schools are tackling the housing crunch in some pretty unconventional ways. Louisiana State University, for example, it's offering incoming freshmen whose families live nearby a roughly $3,000 incentive to commute to school rather than stay in the dorms. That's according to a university official who spoke to a local TV station in July.
Then there's the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. It's temporarily bunking some resident advisors or RAs with roommates. Now, RAs, if anyone listening wants to think back to their college days, they get some sort of monetary break to work in the dorms very often and they enjoy the perk a lot of times of not having to have roommates. And the change has left some students miffed, that's according to some reporting from inside higher ed.
Taylor Wilson:
Yes. I want to hear a little bit more about some of these solutions, you mentioned the hotels. Is that the main strategy that we're hearing about from colleges across the country and is that really sustainable going forward?
Zach Schermele:
A lot of schools are turning to hotels to fix this problem, and that's not necessarily new. It's been happening for years. New College of Florida, which is a public school in Sarasota that has drawn considerable scrutiny politically for a lot of other reasons, just renewed a roughly $4 million contract with a local hotel this year. And then over on the West Coast, San Jose State just announced plans to purchase a luxury hotel for a whopping $165 million.
I talked to one family in Louisiana, their situation really struck me. They said they literally enrolled their freshman student in an entirely different university after learning he'd be housed in a hotel for his first year. Basically, within a week of finding out about the fact that they were going to have to put him in a hotel, the mom I spoke to yanked her kid from the school and paid full tuition somewhere else nearby where her other son already goes to the school. I just found that wild.
Taylor Wilson:
Wow. So the full semester is here for some, right around the corner for others. What's next? Are folks just going to have to accept this for this fall and figure out new solutions going forward?
Zach Schermele:
In recent years, housing insecurity has really only gotten worse for low-income students. And I think a lot of focus is going to continue to be on what types of schools offer some forms of hybrid enrollment or they don't necessarily have that same emphasis on in-person learning.
The big question too in my mind, Taylor, is that I've heard from a few housing officials at schools that a major delay in federal financial aid this year didn't do anything to help them predict which students were going to end up being on campus ultimately. And a lot of us are wondering whether or not those same delays are going to continue into the next year. For that we're just going to have to see, but the federal government is already behind the eight-ball on that front.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Zach Schermele covers education and breaking news for Paste BN. Thank you, Zach.
Zach Schermele:
Thanks, Taylor.
♦
Taylor Wilson:
Millions of tons of discarded clothing wind up in landfills each year. Is there a better way to handle it, and what does that look like?
My colleague, Dana Taylor, spoke with Jules Lennon, fashion lead at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, about rethinking how we buy and dispose of our clothes. Tune into this feed after 4:00 PM Eastern Time today to hear their conversation about a circular economy for clothing.
♦
And 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.