The Headlines - 'Insider Threats' to the Election, and Starbucks’ 4-Minute Goal

Episode Date: October 31, 2024

Plus, the Harris campaign sidelines Biden.  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:Michigan Clerk Removed From Election Duty Over Plans for a Hand Count, by Alexandra BerzonAt Dueling Rallies, Harris Stresses Unity as Trump Attacks Biden’s ‘Garbage’ Remark, by Nicholas Nehamas, Reid J. Epstein, Jonathan Swan and Eduardo MedinaRaging Waters, Abandoned Cars, Layers of Mud: A Grim Scene After Spanish Floods, by Emma Bubola and José BautistaSomewhere Amid the Frappuccinos, Fans Say Starbucks Lost Something, by Julie CreswellDodgers Beat Yankees to Win Second World Series of Franchise’s New ‘Golden Era,’ by Andy McCullough

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Thursday, October 31st. Here's what we're covering. Across the U.S., more than 50 million voters have already cast their ballots. The election's mostly been running smoothly, but the country is still on edge. Authorities have warned about political violence and foreign powers spreading disinformation. There are also concerns

about how the actual counting of the votes will play out. One of the concerns that state and local election officials have right now is what they call insider threats. These would be people who are kind of well positioned or even running elections offices who would have ability to impact the election based on conspiracy theories. Alexandra Berzon covers voting for the Times. She says that people steeped in Donald Trump's false claims about rigged elections are now in some cases in charge of the election process in communities across the country. One example of this that came up just this week, in fact, is an incident that's been happening in Michigan

in a very small town called Rock River. And there you had a clerk and his deputy who have taken over the election systems there. And he has decided that they want to do hand counting of ballots, which is an idea that's been promoted by a lot of the election denial activist groups that election experts and election officials really say could be disruptive to elections because it can slow down the process.

It's actually not as reliable. It's been shown as machines are. And the director of elections in Michigan sent a letter earlier this week to the clerks, relieving them of their duties in the elections and basically saying that they could not oversee the elections because their plan to do hand counting of ballots, the state says is not legal in Michigan. Alexandra spoke with the clerk who was removed.

He argued that he was protecting the integrity of the election. The state of Michigan already had to take over supervision of elections in another town after the Republican clerk there was charged with a felony for his role in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Alexandra says other people steeped in the false theories

have gotten involved this year by volunteering to be poll monitors. They're supposed to document disputes and irregularities at the polls. But this year, she says many feel their role is to provide proof of Trump's claims of fraud. And officials are concerned they could delay or even disrupt vote counts. Meanwhile, on the campaign trail, President Biden's remarks from a Zoom call earlier this week are continuing to haunt

Kamala Harris. Biden appeared to call Trump supporters garbage on the call, though he since said he was actually calling racist rhetoric garbage. First of all, I think that the president has explained what he meant. But I've said it earlier, I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for. Harris has faced repeated questions about the comments and tried to separate herself from them. The vice president had already been trying to keep her distance from Biden. She did not include him at her Tuesday rally, even though it was just a few hundred yards from the White House. Harris campaign officials tell The Times they view Biden as a liability

and were concerned about potential gaffes even before his garbage comment. For their part, the Trump campaign has been going all in on the soundbite. Trump even posed for photos at a Wisconsin campaign stop in a garbage truck. Trump has a long history of disparaging comments of his own. He's called Democrats vermin, lunatics, and the enemy within. Just last month, he said Harris was surrounded by terrible people, calling them, quote,

absolute garbage. In Eastern Spain, flash floods have wreaked havoc in one of the worst natural disasters to hit the country in years. At least 95 people are dead and more are missing, and the torrential rainfall was off the charts. In one town in eastern Valencia, nearly a year's worth of rain fell in just eight hours. It washed away homes, bridges, and roads, and the full scope of the devastation is still unclear. I saw tons of cars just abandoned on the highway, on thick layers of mud, that driver that kind of left there to run away from the water.

Times reporter Emma Bubla is in Valencia, where the storm caught many people unaware. All of the people I spoke to had similar stories of just being in their car and slowly seeing water levels, climbing up and reaching their legs, reaching their chests, even their chins sometimes. I tried to go out to some of the villages that were the hardest hit, but it was very hard to get there because many bridges and roads were either broken or inundated by the water. And a lot of these villages are still completely isolated from the rest of the country. Right now, we aren't always at our best.

I've heard that while people love Starbucks, some feel like we have drifted from our core. We've made it harder to be a customer. In a call with investors yesterday, the CEO of Starbucks acknowledged the coffee giant has been struggling. Starbucks has seen a 10% drop in sales in North America in just the past year, as customers have complained about long wait times and the chaotic feeling in stores as they jostle for their drinks. We have to make it easier for our customers to get a cup of coffee. So in reporting this over the last couple of weeks, I actually went to a number of Starbucks

and saw the challenges firsthand. I think first of all, they were all slammed. They had mobile orders that they were shuffling out. They had people going through the drive-throughs. So they were just trying to get the orders through. Julie Cresswell is a business reporter at The Times. She says Starbucks had been riding a wave in recent years, luring in customers with expanded drive-throughs and ever more customizable drinks. But the complex orders have bogged down baristas,

and the focus on to-go orders made the stores feel more like frantic Frappuccino factories instead of cozy coffee shops. Now the company's CEO says he's setting a goal of delivering all orders in four minutes or less, and he wants people to enjoy the ambiance again. For example, some stores will lean into using ceramic mugs for customers who want to linger. But Julie says that for Starbucks, vibes are not the only issue. So whereas Starbucks is trying to do hot food, hot drinks, you know, beverages, they want to be a cafe, they want to have mobile orders, they want to have drive-through, you're seeing

competitors in different parts of the country that are just cleaving off sort of one piece of that. So they're just going to do the only drive-throughs and only cold beverages is going to be what they're focusing on. And other competitors that are truly just a sit down cafe experience. So I think that's one of the more interesting questions around Starbucks is it can it be everything for everyone? Or is it trying to be too much? And finally, the Dodgers roared back to beat the New York Yankees last night and win their eighth World

Series title. For the Los Angeles team, the win validates the massive spending spree it took to pull this team together. To get superstar Shohei Otani, the Dodgers offered him the largest contract in pro sports history, $700 million over 10 years. The last time the Dodgers won the World Series was in 2020, but that came with an asterisk. It was a short season because of the pandemic,

and COVID restrictions meant there was no citywide celebration. This year, the Dodgers will get their parade. They'll roll through downtown Los Angeles tomorrow morning. Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, a look at how the relationship between black Americans and the Democratic Party is changing through the story of one family in Georgia. 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.