The Headlines - Harris Makes Her Final Case, and Trump Seizes on ‘Garbage’

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

Plus, refunds for canceled flights.   Tune in every weekday morning. To get our full audio journalism and storytelling experience, download the New York Times Audio app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.Tell us what you think at: [e-mail]. On Today’s Episode:Harris’s Mission: Disqualify Trump, but Extend a Hand to His Voters, by Lisa Lerer and Shane GoldmacherTrump and His Allies Link Biden’s ‘Garbage’ Comment to 2016 ‘Deplorables’ Remark, by Jonathan Swan and Maggie HabermanThe New Threat to Brazil’s Forests: Chemicals, by Jack Nicas and Flávia MilhoranceWith Conference Realignment, College Athletes Are All Over the Map, by Billy WitzAutomatic Refunds for Significant Flight Disruptions: New Airline Rule Goes Into Effect, by Christine Chung

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Wednesday, October 30th. Here's what we're covering. So look, in less than 90 days, either Donald Trump or I will be in the Oval Office. Kamala Harris delivered what her campaign called her closing argument last night in Washington, D.C. as American voters decide Harris or Trump.

On day one if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list. When elected, I will walk in with a to-do list. Harris' choice of location for the speech was not at all subtle. She stood at the same spot where Trump spoke on January 6th, rallying his supporters, who then marched on the Capitol. And throughout her speech, Harris made the case for what she would do if elected versus Trump.

I will fight to restore what Donald Trump and his hand-selected Supreme Court justices took away from the women of America. She pledged to defend abortion rights and help Americans with the cost of childcare and housing, tax credits. She also cast Trump as a threat to democracy. These United States of America, we are not a vessel for the schemes of wannabe dictators. The United States of America is the greatest idea humanity ever devised. That closing argument was all about contrast.

It was a contrast with Donald Trump both in its setting and it was a contrast in the content of her speech as well. Peter Baker, the Times' chief White House correspondent, was at the speech. She made a point of laying out specific policies in more detail than she often does and in contrast to Trump, who doesn't talk about policy really at all, except in the broadest of generalities And it was meant to address critics who say she hasn't been specific enough She presented herself as a problem solver somebody who willing to work across the aisle to make things better for Americans

As opposed to Trump who is focused in her view on retribution on attacking enemies on Dividing the country. And the other thing she wanted to do was to reach out to those uncommitted voters, the very few of them who were left, to say, this is why it's important for you to come to the polls and to support me at this time. The idea being that she will address their problems rather than the way Trump will only address his own. Meanwhile, Donald Trump's campaign is taking a page out of their 2016 playbook and trying to

recreate a moment that hit big with his supporters back then. It was when Hillary Clinton called Trump supporters a, quote, basket of deplorables. They turned the insult into a rallying cry. Now, President Biden has provided the ammunition. The president was reacting yesterday to remarks from Trump's Madison Square Garden rally, where a comedian called Puerto Rico

a floating island of garbage. They're good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters. His demonization is seen as unconscionable. — The White House claims that what Biden was calling garbage was the demonization of Latinos. But... — Just moments ago, Joe Biden stated that our supporters are garbage.

— Trump's allies seized on the soundbite. Are garbage. He's talking about the border patrol. He's talking about nurses. He's talking about teachers. Senator Marco Rubio talked up the remarks at a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania. And so did Trump himself. But she said, deplorable. That didn't work out.

Garbage, I think, is worse, right? By last night, the Trump campaign had already sent a fundraising email But she said deplorable, that didn't work out. Garbage I think is worse, right? By last night, the Trump campaign had already sent a fundraising email with the subject line, You are not garbage. In northern Gaza, an Israeli strike on a residential building yesterday killed dozens of people, the latest in a series of recent strikes there that have caused mass casualties. Gaza's health ministry says at least 93 people were killed, including at least 25 children. We have reached out to the government of Israel to ask what happened here.

We don't yet know the underlying circumstances. A spokesman for the U.S US State Department said it was a quote Horrifying incident with a horrifying result and that the US was waiting for answers from Israel in Recent weeks Israel has been carrying out a renewed offensive against Hamas in northern Gaza It says it's trying to stop militants from regrouping there Civilians in the area are once again caught in the middle. According to the United Nations, no UN aid has reached northern Gaza since early last week. And an emergency effort to vaccinate kids there against polio, which has flared up in the region, has been put on hold.

More than 100,000 kids now only have partial protection from the disease, potentially allowing it to spread in Gaza and beyond. I have flown over the Amazon many times and what we either usually see is full green verdant forest or patches of barren land where the trees have been cut down. But this was very different. What was left was a broad swath of forest

that was gray and leafless. The trees were still standing, but they were just their corpses. The Times Brazil bureau chief, Jack Nickus, is reporting on a new threat to the country's forests. The forests are some of the most biodiverse habitat left on the planet, and for years, authorities have been trying to fight back against ranchers who clear the woods to raise cattle.

Authorities have used satellites to look for intentionally set fires or for sections of trees that have been clearcut with chainsaws. But Jack says some ranchers have changed their tactics. They're now using chemicals to illegally kill off whole sections of forest. Not only does it kill the trees, but it also contaminates the soil. The chemicals can wash into rivers. It affects the wildlife, and it also affects the people who live in the forest in a much more dramatic way.

In several cases, there have been indigenous communities that have to move their villages because of aerial spraying of chemicals. And in some cases, they've had to actually be evacuated because of symptoms of poisoning. Just in the past few weeks, authorities have charged one rancher with spraying chemicals over a stretch of protected forest the size of New York City, 300 square miles, and they are seeking nearly $1 billion in compensation from this rancher. Now this rancher has supplied some of the world's biggest meat packers and that includes

JBS. That's a Brazilian beef giant that exports a lot of meat to the United States. And it shows how a lot of this illegal deforestation has connections to the beef supply chain that many Americans buy into. Just a couple months into the school year, it's become clear that college sports in the U.S. have entered an entirely new era, one with a lot of jet lag. Once upon a time, college conferences mostly had a geographic logic to them. Schools played other schools nearby, or at least in the same time zone. But there's been a massive reshuffling of conferences recently to maximize profits and TV deals,

and it's created some head spinning schedules. One example, the UCLA football team, which is now in the Big Ten, kicked off in Hawaii this August. Then they were in Louisiana, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Nebraska, and up to Washington State. In all, the team will travel over 22,000 miles this season, almost enough to circumnavigate the globe.

That means student athletes are missing more class and more sleep, and schools are scrambling to adjust. Some are adding tutors, mental health support staff, or shifting budgets for more charter flights. One Stanford professor told the Times he's concerned about the balance between academics and athletics, which has always been somewhat controversial. He said at a certain point, the concept of a student-athlete, quote, gets so stretched that it's broken.

And finally, for anyone who flies in the U.S., including all of those college athletes, dealing with canceled or delayed flights just got simpler. New rules from the U.S. Transportation Department kicked in this week requiring airlines to automatically refund passengers for significant disruptions. The rules, which were announced this spring, apply to flights that are cancelled, to domestic flights that are delayed by more than three hours, and to international flights that are delayed by more than six hours. Passengers are now supposed to get those refunds automatically within 20 days, without having to listen to even one minute of that jazzy airline hold music.

that jazzy airline hold music. Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, the last political roundtable before the election, three Times reporters break down this week's news from the campaign trail, including why top members of the Harris campaign say they're feeling, quote, nauseously confident. That's next in the New York Times audio app, or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.