Trump's rally a closing campaign act, Beyoncé endorses Harris | The Excerpt
On Saturday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Democratic nominee Kamala Harris held a Houston rally with Beyoncé and others Friday, while Republican nominee Donald Trump prepares for an event at New York's Madison Square Garden Sunday. Paste BN National Correspondent Deborah Barfield Berry discusses how several Black women are trying to make history in the U.S. Senate. Find more of the three-part series here. Israel completes military strikes in Iran. Paste BN Money and Personal Finance Reporter Medora Lee looks into how inflation is still slamming low- and middle-income Americans.
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 Saturday, October 26th, 2024. This is The Excerpt. Today we check in on how the candidates are spending some of their final days on the campaign trail before November 5th. Plus, Black women candidates are trying to make history in the US Senate and how the aftermath of inflation may continue to affect low and middle income Americans for years to come.
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Republican nominee Donald Trump heads to New York's Madison Square Garden tomorrow as one of his major appearances in the final stretch before the November 5th election. The move is perplexing the seasoned political types who question why the former president would focus his limited time and resources on a seemingly safe democratic state like New York. But he and his aides say there are good reasons to do this rally on the presidential campaign's penultimate weekend. His command of the media and ability to attract attention has always been pivotal to his success and a hallmark of his fame starting out in New York in the 1980s.
That's an essential ingredient he's looking to keep on capturing in his race against Kamala Harris who brought new energy and her own wave of positive press since joining the race. And Madison Square Garden is known for historic events, ranging from the 1971 fight of the century between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier to political conventions that nominated Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Ben route to White House victories Meanwhile Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris is staging big media events of her own, including yesterday's rally in Houston with cultural icons, Beyonce and Willie Nelson. At that event, Beyonce declared her support for Harris, the rally focused on abortion rights in Beyonce's hometown, and Texas has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country.
Harris also is planning an event on Tuesday at the Ellipse near the White House in Washington D.C., site of the Trump rally that preceded the insurrection of January 6th, 2021. You can follow along throughout the weekend and beyond as we count down the days to November 5th on usatoday.com.
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Black women candidates are vying to make history in the US Senate. I spoke with Paste BN national correspondent Deborah Barfield Berry to find out more as part of a series she did highlighting the work of Black women who have long played a key role in protecting voting rights and urging their communities to cast ballots. Deborah, thanks for hopping on.
Deborah Barfield Berry:
Thank you for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
So Deb, let's just start with this. Who are these three Black women running for the US Senate this year and really what can you tell us about them?
Deborah Barfield Berry:
This is the record that there are three Black women running and one of them is Lisa Blunt Rochester. She's actually a congresswoman already out of Delaware. She's the lone Black person and woman in her delegation. Then you have Angela Alsobrooks, who is running for the open Senate seat in Maryland. She's in a very competitive race with the former governor, Larry Hogan. And then in Indiana there's another candidate and all three of these women, by the way, are Democrats. Her name is Valerie McCray, and she's running in Indiana, which is a very conservative state and Cook Political Report has it very likely to be a Republican seat. So her race is not as competitive as the other two women.
Taylor Wilson:
And Deborah you wrote in this piece that these women are poised to really make history. Why have these races drawn so much national attention and are any of the three favorites to win their races?
Deborah Barfield Berry:
The race are not even one race, but them together just drawn national attention in part because if they win two of them or all three of them, if they win, would be the first time that more than one Black woman will be serving in the Senate in its 235-year history of the chamber. So that would be history. There have been three other women who have served in the Senate before, but they've served alone. The race in Delaware is not as competitive as others and partly because their whole delegation are Democrats and this leaning Democratic. So while she is running hard and she said she takes nothing for granted, her race is not as competitive as others. In Maryland is really a race. Again, Alsobrooks is running against Hogan who is a Republican, but he was a very popular governor. So there are a lot of resources, a lot of a tension on that race because number one, it's competitive, but two, it also can help determine the majority in the Senate. So there's a lot of tension there on what that can mean.
The other race with Ms. McCray isn't as competitive because as I said, Cook Political Report has it as a very much of a solidly Republican seat. So her race isn't quite competitive and she's being outspent big time over in Indiana.
Taylor Wilson:
Laphonza Butler of California is currently the only Black woman in the Senate. She was appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom to fill the late Dianne Feinstein seat. What did Laphonza share with you Deborah about the hurdles female candidates face when running for office and especially female candidates of color?
Deborah Barfield Berry:
Yeah, I had the opportunity to do a sit-down with the senator in her office earlier this year, and so we got to chat about a lot of things, including her being the only Black woman serving at the moment. But she also was a former president of EMILYs List, which supports Democratic women running. So she had a perspective from both places, of course. She talked a lot about how women in general often face challenges trying to run both when it comes to raising money as well as getting support and getting attention, including from the media. But she said it's even more challenging or has been even more challenging for women of color. You're dealing with a whole lot more stepped-up level, if you will, not only of sexism, but in some cases racism. So they do have a harder time raising money. They do have a harder time getting support from the outside and sometimes from inside, their own communities. So those are some of the major challenges they faced years ago and that they still face today.
But at that said, there are many more women of color running for Congress and for the Senate as we're talking about now. So there's a shift a little bit, or at least there are more women saying, well, I'm going to step up and try to run this race, and some of them are winning.
Taylor Wilson:
Shortly after Blunt Rochester announced her Senate bid, she reached out to former US Senator Carol Moseley Braun. This was the first African-American woman to hold the office. Why was that important to her having that conversation and reaching out in that way?
Deborah Barfield Berry:
Well, when I talked to her, we also did a sit down maybe a couple of weeks ago. She said it meant a lot to her in part because she said many younger people of color, she could see that it is possible, she could see that it was possible by looking at the Senator Carol Moseley Braun and seeing that it could happen. And again, now she's still alive. So she was able to pick up the phone and call her and talk to her about this journey. And for her, she said it meant so much that the senator was gracious to her, was kind to her, that encouraged her. And now a couple of months ago at the Democratic National Convention, she met with her and she said it was so powerful moment to be in a room with these other women and to be with her and to feel like she had someone who had her back, who understood that journey. So she was really uplifted by that moment.
Taylor Wilson:
That's a powerful experience, Deborah. So this story was part of a three-part series that you've been working on. What can you tell us about this series and really what you were aiming to do when you set out to do this journalism?
Deborah Barfield Berry:
For years I've been covering women in politics, particularly women of color in politics, writing into different stories along the way about their get out to vote efforts, which have been particularly powerful in the south. But along the way I've met many of them who have been fighting the fight for years. In one instance, in fact, the lead to this series was about generations of Black women fighting this fight from the Civil Rights Movement to the Black Lives Movement. So I interviewed three different generations of women who were fighting for voting rights, and that felt like a piece to give a nod to the work that continues. The second piece, as we just talked about, was a piece about these women who could make history in the Senate.
And then the third piece was about a pilot program at Harvard where these women are leaders who are doing programs to support Black women and girls in the South gathered together for a four-month program that helped them hone their leadership skills, their power skills, their resources, and basically created a sisterhood that still continues to this day. So it was a way to just highlight what some of these women who have long been in the field and in the game are doing.
Taylor Wilson:
It's a great series. I implore our listeners to check it out with a link in today's show notes. Deborah, great journalism as always. Deborah Barfield Berry is a national correspondent with Paste BN. Thank you Deborah.
Deborah Barfield Berry:
Thank you for having me.
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Taylor Wilson:
Israel's military said earlier today that it had completed a series of retaliatory airstrikes against Iran in response to an Iranian missile attack. The move continues to push the Middle East to a more dangerous and multi-front phase of conflict a year after Hamas's October 7th attack on Israel. Iran's authorities may not reveal the exact nature and impact of Israel's attack and whether it was limited to military targets or included facilities linked to Tehran's nuclear program, which could trigger a major response from Iran. Israel said that based on intelligence, its aircraft hit missile manufacturing facilities used to produce the missiles that Iran fired at Israel over the past year. The Israel Defense forces also said they struck surface-to-air missile arrays and additional Iranian aerial capabilities. State media in Iran said Israel's attacks did not cause any major damage.
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Inflation-shocked low and middle-income Americans may not spend normally again for years. I spoke with Paste BN money and personal finance reporter Medora Lee to learn more. Hello, Medora.
Medora Lee:
Hi, how are you?
Taylor Wilson:
Good, good. Thanks for hopping on today. So let's just start here. I've heard a few different things when it comes to inflation. Let's just get into the numbers at the top. Really, what is the latest with inflation? What have we heard from recent numbers?
Medora Lee:
So inflation has been cooling for the past year or so and that's great news. And last month it cooled to the lowest level since February 2021. So we all love to hear that. And then we also heard that wages are rising faster than inflation. So that's all great news and the economy is still on solid footing, there's still low unemployment and consumers are still spending.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah. So those seem like good indicators, but as you're right, there is still a really lasting effect on low and middle-income Americans when it comes to inflation. Why are they getting hit so hard, Medora, and really what are they functionally dealing with?
Medora Lee:
Before we get into that, I just want to say that economists, if you drill down with them, their reports don't go into all this, but all that consumer spending has really been from higher-income people because now we're going to drill down and we're going to see that low and middle-income Americans are just making enough to cover their essentials basically, which is their everyday needs like groceries, shelter, utilities, gasoline, those types of things. And what we've seen is that their discretionary income, which is the extra money that you might spend on fun things like going out to eat, going to movies, vacations, things like that, has really, really been diminished. So that tells us that a lot of the consumer spending and the GDP growth that we see is really coming from higher-income Americans because the low and middle income Americans are just treading water.
Taylor Wilson:
And are you hearing from these folks at all, Medora, in terms of what they're doing for solutions, for workarounds to this just tough climate that they're in?
Medora Lee:
Yeah, so I talked to a couple of people. They have jobs, they're managers, they work at restaurants and they say that inflation is taking a toll that even after the big inflation wave of 2021, 2022, they're still having to tighten their belts. They've now try to always wait for sales for grocery items. And so they also, one woman in Wisconsin also had to turn down her air conditioning this past summer to save on her electric bill. They had to be careful when they would water their garden to maximize how much water their plants would get because they wanted to keep their water bill down. And sadly, this woman from Wisconsin also said it's actually affected how many times she could go visit her family because they lived about between an hour and a half to three hours away, various family members. She said it costs them $50 to go.
And so she said she feels like she had to cut back on that. And it of took even an emotional toll on her because of all the belt tightening that she did during the year. She's fortunate enough that she can afford Christmas basically, and she might have to dip into her credit card a little bit because she's got 11 grandkids. That's a lot. And she wants to buy them all the same type of present that she might've bought them last year. And she did save enough to go visit her family for the holidays. But she said that in between she's not visiting as much.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, so she's trying to keep some normalcy going for the holidays. Writ large, what does all this mean really for holiday spending? And I'm also curious about spending going forward into the new year, what's the expectation for the next few months?
Medora Lee:
So I think that people feel a little bit better. Primerica has an monthly index where they measure how much discretionary income or how much better off people are than they were in January 2019. So based on a 100, a 100 being neutral, they just are above that at 102. So they were finally just catching up to where they were in 2019, which sounds good except that she said if we didn't have that inflation shock in 2021 and 2022, the trajectory shows them above a 112. So that gives you a feeling of how badly people have felt about the economy. And so going into the holidays, I think some people might still feel pretty bad, but being just above a 100, this sounds crazy, just that little two points gives people a little bit of breathing room and maybe they feel slightly more optimistic. So they may still spend, but they're still going to be frugal because they're still going to be looking for sales. They still can't afford big giant gifts that they're still going to try to celebrate, I think.
So for people to get back on the trajectory that they were on, some economists say this could take years. One economist says that the last time lower income families took this big of a hit in discretionary income, it took them five to 10 years to recover. I know, I don't want to say that even. We're getting better. It just might take a long time.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Here's to hope that regular Americans can catch up here again soon. Medora Lee covers money and personal finance for Paste BN. Medora, a great breakdown for us on this story as always. Thanks so much.
Medora Lee:
Thanks so much.
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Taylor Wilson:
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes's family fears that if re-elected Donald Trump will pardon Rhodes for his January 6th sedition conviction. Paste BN national correspondent and extremism reporter, Will Carless has spent years covering the Oath Keepers and the trial of Stewart Rhodes. He recently traveled to Montana to speak with members of Rhodes's estranged family, and joins my colleague Dana Taylor tomorrow to discuss. You could find that episode right here beginning tomorrow at 5:00 A.M. Eastern Time right here on this feed.
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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 Monday with more of The Excerpt from Paste BN.