WSJ What’s News - The Battle Over America’s Dark History at the National Archives

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

P.M. Edition for Oct. 30. WSJ domestic policy correspondent Andrew Restuccia discusses how the President Biden appointee in charge of the nation’s most treasured documents has over the past year ignited a behind-the-scenes fight over the telling of American history. And more than 50 million Americans have already voted in the presidential race. Journal politics editor Ben Pershing explains what that could mean for election night. Plus, economics correspondent Harriet Torry on the U.S. economy’s continuing growth streak. Tracie Hunte hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Robert Half research indicates nine out of ten hiring managers are having difficulty hiring. Robert Half is here to help. Our recruiting professionals utilize our proprietary AI to connect businesses with highly skilled talent. At Robert Half, we know talent. Visit roberthalf.com today. U.S. economic growth continues its summer streak bolstered by heavy consumer and government spending and the internal battle at the National Archives over the negative parts of America's history. This is part of a broader theme of removing things that are seen as negative parts of history to focus on a more positive retelling of the American story.

Plus, more than 50 million Americans have voted early in the U.S. elections. What could that mean for the presidential race? It's Wednesday, October 30th. I'm Tracy Hunt for The Wall Street Journal. This is a PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. The U.S. economy grew slightly less than expected over the third quarter. The Commerce Department said today that gross domestic product, which is a broad measure of goods and services produced across the economy, increased at a 2.8% annual rate in

the third quarter, adjusted for seasonality and inflation. That was a slight slowdown from the second quarter's 3% rate and below economists' expectations for a 3.1% pace. These numbers come just six days before a presidential election where voters say the economy is a top concern. Joining us now is Wall Street Journal economics reporter Harriet Torry. So Harriet, what do these numbers tell us about the state of the economy?

These numbers tell us the economy is still very strong, slightly below what we had in the second quarter, but by historical comparison, it's a really good result. And we can see in the report that this was largely due to an increase in consumer spending. Consumers make up the lion's share of economic activity in the US and they picked up their pace of purchases from the prior quarter. The pace of spending on services was very slightly weaker, but was still pretty robust. So overall, the report was strong. There are a few weak patches. The housing market remains weak because, you know, high interest rates are continuing to weigh on the residential sector. And business investment was very slightly cooler than in the second quarter, but it was still growing at a robust pace. And federal government spending really picked up in the third quarter.

The Federal Reserve is set to meet next month where it is expected to cut interest rates again. How would this new data affect that decision? I think this data largely keeps the Fed on track. The big report that the Fed is going to be looking at before its meeting next week will be the jobs report that comes out on Friday. And there's expected to be a lot of noise in the jobs report because that's the first big report

where we expect to see the impact of the hurricanes. So it might be hard to discern what the underlying trend is in the labor market. But the Fed has said that its focus is on job growth now that inflation is showing signs that it's coming back to the 2% target. Harriet Torry is an economics correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. Thank you so much, Harriet. Thank you. In US markets, stock indexes declined.

The Nasdaq composite dipped 0.6 percent a day after clinching a new record. The S&P 500 shed 0.3 percent, while the Dow edged down 0.2 percent. With less than a week until Election Day, Kamala Harris is trying to tamp down a controversy over whether President Biden broadly denigrated Trump supporters when he criticized the former president's rally in New York City. Meanwhile, Donald Trump claims he's already winning the election based on early voting data, which does not show how individuals voted. Early voting in Oklahoma began today, joining the many other states that have some form of early voting. According to the University of Florida's Election

Lab, more than 54 million Americans have voted so far. Journal politics editor Ben Pershing joins me now. Ben, lots of people are voting early this year, including a significant increase in registered Republicans. Of course, we have no idea how they voted. But what can this tell us about reading the results Tuesday night? Good question. So we don't know for sure which party is actually benefiting from this early vote. But we do know that the big early vote increase among Republicans can affect the way we see the results on Tuesday night. Something we saw in 2020 was a slogan called a red mirage. It was a term for what happened in the vote results when on election day, Republicans seemed to jump out to a lead because their voters were voting on election day and the votes were being counted pretty quickly. And then later that night and the next day and the day after that, the mail-in vote came in, and that was heavily Democratic. So Republicans in some places thought they were way ahead. And then when the Democratic votes poured

in, it evened out or Democrats ended up winning. And for some Republicans, this was sort of a source of suspicion and worry and made them think there was some sort of conspiracy afoot. This time, because Republicans are closer to Democrats in terms of who's voting early, I think there's going to be less of a split between whose results show up election day and whose results show up later. We've already had Donald Trump claiming that he's been winning the election based on early data. Is he referring to this larger number of registered Republicans that have been voting?

We've definitely seen some Republicans express real confidence in how they're doing and they have been pointing to their early voting numbers as a sign of enthusiasm. And they could be right. It could be lots of Republicans are fired up to vote and we're seeing it in the early voting. But it could also be these people were going to vote anyway on election day and they're just choosing to vote early this time and it is not actually going to affect the final results.

That was WSJ Politics Editor, Ben Pershing. Coming up, the behind the scenes fight over American history happening at the National Archives. That's after the break. Robert Half research indicates nine out of 10 hiring managers are having difficulty hiring. Robert Half is here to help. Our recruiting professionals utilize our proprietary AI to connect businesses with highly skilled

talent. At Robert Half, we know talent. Visit roberthalf.com today. The Biden appointee in charge of the nation's most treasured documents has over the past year ignited a behind the scenes fight over the telling of American history. The National Archives house 13.5 billion pages of paper records, more than 33 billion electronic records and tens of millions of photos, maps and other items relating to the country's history. The agency also operates a museum in D.C. which draws more

than a million visitors a year. But current and former employees say chief archivist Colleen Shogan has been systematically removing from public view material revealing the darker side of American history. Andrew Vistusha wrote about this for the Wall Street Journal and he joins us now. So Andrew, what are the accusations being leveled against Shogun? We talked to nearly a dozen current and former employees of the archives and we got some internal documents as well as contemporaneous notes from behind the scenes meetings at the archives and there's a few things that are happening. One is that she has decided to make a series of sweeping changes to a roughly

40 million dollar redesign of the museum and something called the Discovery Center which is right next to the museum that does programming for children and families and those changes have had the effect of, in some cases, glossing over some of the darker sides of American history. She's removed some prominent references to such landmark events as the government's displacement of indigenous tribes and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. And two is that she's trying to preemptively prevent Republicans from finding things in the museum that they might object to. Republicans in Congress have a huge amount

of control over the agency's budget, and the agency is facing a budget shortfall. So if Trump were to win the election and Republicans were to take more control in Congress, the Archives budget could really be up for a major cutting. Has there been a response to our article from the archives or Shogun? Since this story is published, Shogun has put forward a public statement on our reporting. She hasn't disputed any of the individual facts in the story, but she said that some of it was based on what she calls misperceptions from staff. And she has defended her record at the archives. President Biden appointed Shogun to the position back in 2022.

And this was actually controversial at the time. Why was that? Well, he announced his nomination for her just days before federal authorities searched Mar-a-Lago for classified documents. And that entire investigation was kicked off by the archives, referring its concerns about Donald Trump holding documents to the Justice Department. Several weeks later in her first confirmation hearing, Republicans criticized the archives writ large for what they said was a political attack on the president.

There have been a lot of fights over the past few years over how to talk about and teach American history. How does this situation fit into these larger conversations? Yeah, you're right. I mean, it's unfolding at a moment where history and the way we talk about it is being questioned, particularly by conservatives. There's been criticism of elementary and primary school education, the way people are taught about our history and how deeply we should be looking at the past. And there's been a real push by conservatives to not project guilt and norms of today onto the founding fathers.

And so this is all sort of taking place with that backdrop. Andra Vastusha is a domestic policy correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. Thank you so much, Andra. It was great talking to you. Thank you. We exclusively report that Florida accidentally made it illegal for most banks to sell investments in the state. Florida's top financial regulator last weekend used emergency powers to suspend part of a law that unintentionally banned banks from selling securities in Florida.

Lawmakers wanted to make it easier for companies to fundraise while ensuring that bad actors with a criminal record couldn't take advantage of Floridians. But according to people familiar with the matter, the law appeared to ban any bank that had been punished by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission or other authorities from selling a range of securities to investors. And that meant nearly all of the country's banks. A spokeswoman for Florida's Office of Financial Regulation called it a drafting error and said that the agency had developed a temporary solution.

And before we go, a look at the big tech companies that reported earnings just after the closing bell. Microsoft reported strong quarterly growth in its cloud computing business that indicated its heavy investment in artificial intelligence is paying off. Revenue for the tech giant's Azure cloud business, a core of its AI offering,

rose 33% in the quarter through September, beating analysts' expectations. The company's overall revenue rose 16% to $65.6 billion. And Meta platforms recorded record third-quarter revenue despite slower digital advertising growth, bolstering profits that helped fund billions in artificial intelligence and augmented reality investments. The social media giant posted more than $40 billion in sales, up 19% compared with a year earlier. Advertising made up 96% of Metta's third quarter revenue.

And that's what's news for this Wednesday afternoon. Today's show was produced by PRB NMA with supervising producer Michael Kosmitis. I'm Tracy Hunt for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening.