NPR News Now - NPR News: 10-26-2024 7PM EDT

Episode Date: October 26, 2024

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J.D. With more electoral college votes than any other swing state, Pennsylvania is largely seen as the make or break battleground. Getting those last couple yards in the red zone in Pennsylvania is really, really tough. The presidential candidates have their eyes on it, and so do we. All this week on the Consider This podcast from NPR. Come along. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Janene Herbst. There's just over a week to go until Election Day and both candidates are campaigning in swing states. Vice President Harris rallied in Michigan with former First Lady Michelle Obama. Harris touched on familiar themes

including the rising cost of health care. I believe health care should be a right and not just a privilege of those who have the money to afford it. On the other hand we've got Donald Trump who intends to end the Affordable Care Act. Trump campaigned in two states today, starting in a Detroit suburb where he slammed early voting, even though it was a rally to mark the start of statewide early voting in Michigan. Tonight, Trump's campaigning on the Penn State campus in State College, Pennsylvania.

Kamala will destroy your inheritance, but much more importantly, she's going to destroy your country. If you vote for me, I will ensure that you begin your careers, young people, in a roaring economy and a time of unprecedented peace and prosperity. Trump's using the college setting to make a direct appeal to first-time voters. A growing number of current and former journalists at the Washington Post are criticizing the newspaper after its owner, Jeff Bezos, decided to withhold a planned editorial endorsement for president for the first time in 36 years. And Pierce Juliana Kim reports.

Juliana Kim, Pierce Juliana Kim, The Washington Post, Newsweek. Within hours after The Washington Post publisher William Lewis published an opinion piece explaining the decision to not endorse a candidate this presidential election, the paper published three columns and a cartoon to disapprove of that decision. 17 columnists shared a byline in a piece that called the non-endorsement quote a terrible mistake and quote another columnist wrote that she had never been more disappointed at her paper and a post cartoonist published an image with broad strokes of black paint with the title democracy dies in darkness. The paper's guild leadership also expressed concern that post management

interfered with the editorial board. So far one employee editor Robert Kagan has resigned in protest. Juliana Kim, NPR News. US officials are reacting after Israel's anticipated airstrikes against Iran last night, targeting military sites. And Pierce Jackie Northam has more. The National Security Council actually held a background call late last night with a senior administration official who said essentially that, you know, perhaps hopefully, that the

U.S. thinks this should be the end of direct military exchange between Israel and Iran. However, that same official said that if Iran chooses to respond, the U.S. is fully prepared to defend against any attack on Israel and has been communicating that message to Tehran. And here's Jackie Northam. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin today spoke with his Israeli counterpart about using diplomacy to dial down tensions in the region. This is NPR. Maximum Security Prison, north of New York City, is hosting a film festival this week. As Samantha Max of Member Station WNYC reports, all the movies are about the criminal justice

system. All the judges are incarcerated. A group of men serving time at the Sing Sing Correctional Facility evaluated five documentaries about policing, prisons, and the courts. A formerly incarcerated filmmaker visited the men at Sing Sing and trained them on how to critique movies. Kiki Dunstan works for The Marshall Project, which organized the film festival. She says she hopes other prisons will hold their own festivals in the future. And we just pray that we can continue to do programs like this to show that it can't

happen, to be honest. The event is the first known film festival inside a prison in New York and just the second nationwide. The San Quentin Rehabilitation Center in California held its own festival earlier this month. For NPR News, I'm Samantha Maxx in New York. The number of people sickened by an E. coli outbreak tied to McDonald's Quarter Pounders is rising. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says at least 75 people in 13 states got sick, 22 of them hospitalized.

No source of the E. coli outbreak has been identified, but officials are focused on raw onions used on the burgers. McDonald's has confirmed a California-based produce company, Taylor Farms, was the supplier of those fresh onions that were used in restaurants involved in the outbreak. I'm Janene Herbst, and you're listening to NPR News from Washington.