NPR News Now - NPR News: 11-02-2024 9AM EDT

Episode Date: November 2, 2024

NPR News: 11-02-2024 9AM EDTLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

J.S. O'BRIEN Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at autographcollection.com. G.J. O'BRIEN Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Giles Snyder.

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump now on the final weekend of campaigning ahead of Election Day. Both will be in key swing states this weekend. Last night, Harris rallied supporters in a Milwaukee suburb while Trump campaigned in the cities downtown after the Labor Department said 12,000 new jobs were created in October, as Chuck Wurmbach of Member Station WUWM reports. Speaking at a rally in Milwaukee, Trump said the new jobs figure of 12,000 is much less than it should be. The former president said the jobs numbers from

October may help him at the ballot box over Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. The only thing good about the numbers I'm going to give you now are that it's great to run against the people that created those numbers because it's terrible. Economists say an ongoing strike at Boeing and two hurricanes held down job growth. The nation's unemployment rate remained the same from the month before, holding steady at 4.1 percent. For NPR News, I'm Chuck Quirmbach in Milwaukee. Well, Trump was criticizing the jobs report. Harris urged Americans to make the choice to not return him to the White House. In all of you, in all of us, we are the promise of America. Harris said Trump is seeking unchecked power. She is campaigning today in Georgia and North

Carolina. Trump will also be in North Carolina, and he's planning a stop in Virginia as well. The U.S. Supreme Court has left in place a lower-court ruling that for now allows Pennsylvania voters to cast provisional ballots if their mail-in ballots have been invalidated. More from MPR's Nina Totenberg. Pennsylvania allows all voters to cast mail-in ballots and requires voters to place their ballots into a secrecy sleeve before placing it in the mailing envelope. Without the secrecy sleeve, the ballot is considered naked and will not be counted. But state law also says that voters whose naked ballots have been voided may then cast a provisional ballot at the polls.

Faced with that conflict, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that voters can cast provisional ballots when notified their mail-in ballots have been invalidated. The Republican National Committee asked the US Supreme Court to block that ruling, but the justices left it in place, at least for now. Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington. The Conservative Party in the UK has a new leader. Party members have chosen Kimi Baden-Nag to succeed Rishi Sunak. She is the first black woman to lead a major British political party. The Spanish government is sending 10,000 more soldiers and police to eastern Spain, hit

by flash flooding that has killed more than 200 people. Authorities say the vast majority of those who died were in the Valencia region, where thick mud covers the streets and has fouled homes and businesses. You're listening to NPR News. House Speaker Mike Johnson is seeking to clarify remarks he made at a New York campaign rally where he suggested that Republicans may try to repeal legislation that has spurred the production of semiconductor chips in the U.S. He later said he wants to further streamline the program. Reforming that because it is so important for national security and in on-shoring chip

manufacturing here, this district being central to that, we want to do that. You'll have 100 percent agreement by President Trump and all the Republicans in Congress. What we were opposed to in that bill was that it had too much crammed into it, and you had the Green New Deal stuff. The measure is known as the Chips and Science Act. Donald Trump disparaged it on a podcast last week. Johnson made his initial comment while campaigning in a congressional district that is anticipating a large new semiconductor manufacturing plant. Stocks fell this week after a mixed set of results from some of the country's top companies,

and here's Rafael Nalm reports. It was a pretty volatile week in stock markets. That's not a surprise when a number of big companies reported earnings. And all in all, it was a mixed bag, helping send all three major indexes lower for the week. There were some disappointing earnings from companies like Ford, while some tech companies like Microsoft did well but raised concerns about how much

they're spending on artificial intelligence. But there were some companies like Amazon that gained after beating expectations. This volatility is likely to intensify next week as the big day looms for markets, election day. And if there's one thing the stock market never likes, it's uncertainty. Rafael Nama, NPR News.