The Headlines - Poll Shows Dead Heat, and Biden to Apologize for Native American School Abuses

Episode Date: October 25, 2024

Plus, a World Series with baseball’s biggest stars.   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:Trump Says He’ll Fire Jack Smith, Special Counsel Who Indicted Him, if He Wins Again, by Maggie Haberman, Michael Gold and Alan FeuerThe Group at the Center of Trump’s Planning for a Second Term Is One You Haven’t Heard of, by Ken Bensinger and David A. FahrentholdHarris and Trump Deadlocked to the End, Final Times/Siena National Poll Finds, by Adam Nagourney and Ruth IgielnikBiden to Apologize for Indian Boarding Schools Where Hundreds of Children Died, by Aishvarya KaviDistrict Attorney Will Ask Court to Resentence Menendez Brothers, by Tim Arango and Matt StevensJudge, Ohtani and a Dream World Series Matchup: Could This Be MLB’s Magic and Bird?, by Jayson Stark

From The New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Tracey Mumford. Today's Friday, October 25th. Here's what we're covering. Donald Trump says that if he's elected, he will immediately fire Special Counsel Jack Smith, the prosecutor who's pursuing cases against him for allegedly plotting to overturn the 2020 election and illegally holding onto classified materials.

It's so easy. I would fire him within two seconds. The former president made the comments in an interview with the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Thursday. This is the first time that Trump has said he would step in to personally stop the cases, though it's been assumed the charges would be abandoned if he's elected. They will impeach you again on day one if you fire Jack Smith or you, pardon yourself, are you prepared to be impeached again and again and again if they have the House? Because they just will. No, I don't think they'll impeach me if I fire Jack Smith. Jack Smith is a scoundrel.

Trump also said he didn't think the House of Representatives would impeach him if he fires Smith, effectively daring the House to try. Both of the federal cases against Trump are currently in legal limbo as the courts decide whether they can move forward. The Justice Department has said Smith is prepared to pursue them for as long as he has the legal authority to do so. As Trump continues his campaign, The Times has been looking at a think tank operating behind the scenes, laying the groundwork for what Trump's second term could look like. The group, called America First Policy Institute, didn't even exist four years ago, but it's now worked to install itself as the Trump campaign's primary partner in making plans. A similar right-wing playbook called Project 2025 from the Heritage Foundation has gotten a lot of scrutiny, but AFPI is poised to be more influential. Its top staff are actively advising Trump's team. The Institute's policy book calls for, among other things, halting federal funding for Planned

Parenthood and making ultrasounds mandatory before all abortions, work requirements for Medicaid recipients, and legally establishing only two genders. It also proposes making all federal workers at-will employees, meaning they could then be fired for any reason, including defying Trump or speaking out on issues like climate change. Trump's supporters believe that will help them root out federal staffers who they feel stood in Trump's way during his first administration. The head of AFPI says the group already has nearly 300 executive orders ready for Trump to sign.

And as of this morning, the presidential race is locked in a dead heat. A new poll out from The Times and Siena College shows Trump and Harris tied 48 to 48. This is the closest presidential race we've ever seen in modern history. And in the past few weeks, it's gotten even tighter.

Ruth Agelnik conducts and analyzes polls for The Times. That said, even though it's neck and neck, Kamala Harris is up with undecided and persuadable voters over where she was a couple weeks ago. This is a highly volatile group that's leaned in either direction.

And right now, these undecided and persuadable voters are leaning slightly towards Kamala Harris. But the bright spot for Trump is he is still leading on who voters trust to handle the economy and on immigration, which is sort of an increasingly important issue to voters as he finishes out this campaign. I'm heading to do something that should have been done a long time ago, make a formal apology to the Indian nation for the way we treated their children for so many years. Today in Arizona, President Biden will formally apologize for the federal government's role in running boarding schools for Native American children. It will be the first time an American president has apologized for what happened. From the early 1800s until the late 1960s, hundreds of thousands of Native American kids were sent to the schools,

many of them after being forcibly removed from their homes. The schools were established by the government to break the children's ties to their tribes. They were forced to convert to Christianity and punish for speaking their native languages. The schools were also violent, dangerous places. Children were physically and sexually abused, and nearly 1,000 died at the schools, according to the federal government. Biden will make the formal apology at the Gila River Indian Community.

It's the only visit to a Native American reservation that Biden has made as president, and it comes as Democrats are trying to win over Native American voters, including in the battleground state of Arizona. Biden will be joined by his Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, whose own family members were sent to boarding schools. Ahead of the visit, Haaland said, quote, For decades, this terrible chapter was hidden from our history books,

but now our administration's work will ensure no one will ever forget. I have to tell you that after a very careful review, I came to a place where I believe that under the law, resentencing is appropriate. In California yesterday, the Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon said he would ask for Lyle and Eric Menendez to be resentenced, opening the door for their release from prison more than three decades after they were convicted of killing their parents in a case

that captured the country's attention. There is no excuse for murder, but I understand also how sometimes people get desperate. And I do believe that the brothers were subjected to a tremendous amount of dysfunction in the home and molestation. Prosecutors said they murdered their parents with shotguns to get their multi-million dollar fortune. Lawyers for the brothers said they'd been sexually abused by their father and feared for their lives. But their story was dismissed by some as, quote, an abuse excuse. And the judge excluded most of those details from the trial that ended in their convictions. In the years since, new evidence about their abuse has emerged, and there's been an outpouring of support for the brothers after a series of documentaries about the case came out,

including a Netflix show featuring interviews with them from prison. Gascon says he'll ask for the brothers' life sentences to be downgraded to include the possibility of parole. The request will have to be signed off by a judge, and a parole board would eventually make the final decision about whether they should be released from prison. And finally, the World Series starts tonight in Los Angeles. The Dodgers will face the New York Yankees. And it is a super rare matchup because two of the league's superstars will be in the same World Series. The Dodgers' Shohei Otani and the Yankees' Aaron Judge. They are two of the biggest names in baseball.

They're both likely MVPs. They're both home run champions. This kind of showdown just does not happen in the sport. Tickets to the series are on track to be the most expensive in recent history. Earlier this week, the average price of a ticket on resale was over $1,600. But there is one thing that that pricey ticket will not get you. Mascots. Neither the Dodgers or the Yankees have one. They're the only teams in the league that don't. So there will be no oversized fuzzy birds taunting each other, no breakdancing furry monsters. You are just going to have to watch the game.

Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, how Pennsylvania, the place where Trump and Harris have now spent more money than anywhere else, became the crucial state to win. That's next in the New York Times audio app, or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts. This show is made by Robert Jemison, Jessica Metzger, Jan Stewart, and me, Tracy Mumford, with help from Isabella Anderson. Original theme by Dan Powell. Special thanks to Larissa Anderson, Jacob Judah, Jake Lucas, Zoe Murphy, and Paula Schumann. The headlines will be back on Monday.