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--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Thursday, August 26th. I'm Shamita Basu. And I'm Duarte Giraldino. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There are a number of civilian and U.S. military casualties reported following a blast at the airport in Kabul. The Pentagon calls it a complex attack on one of the entrance gates. It says there was also an explosion at a nearby hotel.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Earlier, the U.S. and Western allies had warned people to stay away from the airport. There were intelligence reports that predicted an attack by the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This is The Developing Story. You can see the latest in the Apple News app.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Californians are voting on whether to kick Governor Gavin Newsom out of office. This is a tight recall race.
--:-- Shamita Basu: President Biden has plans to personally campaign for Newsom in California. The 538 polling average shows around 49 percent of voters want Newsom to stay.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Out of dozens of candidates running to take his place, the top challenger is Larry Elder, a conservative talk radio host whose polling average is around 19%.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The weird thing is, if these numbers were the actual results, Larry Elder would wind up the new governor of California. Which, when you first hear it, may not make a lot of sense, right?
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: But what you've got to understand is this is how California's recall system is designed. Voters have to answer two questions on the ballot. One, should Newsom be recalled? And two, if he is recalled, who should take his place.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Andrew Prokop is senior politics correspondent for Vox. Newsom needs to get a majority on the first question, the yes or no question of the recall, to stay in office.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But on the second question, the replacement, if Newsom gets recalled, one of those 46 candidates does not need a majority of the vote to get into office. They only need a simple plurality.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And that's why Republicans and especially conservative Republicans think they have such an unusual shot of winning the governorship in this very blue state because of this weird dynamic.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: A Republican in the governor mansion would have veto power and control of the state's pandemic response. But that could also have major implications outside of California.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The oldest U.S. senator is 88-year-old Dianne Feinstein of California. If something should happen and the seat becomes vacant during a Republican governorship, the Republican governor would be able to appoint a Republican to the seat.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And that would flip control of the Senate to Mitch McConnell, which would obviously have enormous implications for President Biden's agenda.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Conservative activists are leading the drive to remove Newsom. They're frustrated with how he handled the pandemic, homelessness and unemployment benefits fraud.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Prokop tells us about the Democratic strategy. So Newsom is trying to frame the race as a purely partisan showdown, Democrat versus Republican, and more specifically, California Democrat versus extreme conservative Trump Republican.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And the reason he's doing that is pretty simple, because on the presidential level, Democrats win California overwhelmingly. So if those baseline partisan trends assert themselves, then Newsom's fine. He'll win.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Mail-in voting is already underway. If you're a voter in California, the deadline to vote is 8 p.m. on September 14th.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This week, House Democrats passed a Voting Rights Act named for John Lewis. Republicans in the Senate oppose the act, so it may never become law.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This means all the action on this issue is really going to be on the local level, where Republican-led states are tightening voting restrictions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In Kansas, we're getting a glimpse at how one of these new laws is playing out. NPR brings us this story of a new rule in Kansas that makes it a felony to impersonate an election official.
--:-- [Audio clip from NPR plays]
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And the way this law is written leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Critics say the law is intimidating people who help register others to vote.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They're shutting down registration drives. Efforts like those are pretty common. To bring it closer to home, think about the last few elections. Ever been approached by a volunteer with a clipboard asking you to sign up to vote?
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Organizers worry under this new Kansas law these volunteers could be accused of posing as election officials.
--:-- Shamita Basu: NPR spoke with the leader of a civic engagement group that suspended its voter registration drives because of this law.
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--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Other organizations have done the same. And the leader of this group points out the irony. If you get accused of impersonating an election official in Kansas, you'd be charged with a felony, which means you could lose your right to vote for trying to help people register to vote.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Candace Republicans say they didn't mean for registration drives to close. But for the moment, the number of new people signing up to vote has slowed down.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Now voter registration groups are suing to stop the new law.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the past few years, cities and communities around the country have been taking down monuments that activists say glorify America's racist past. Statues of Confederate generals and supporters of slavery have fallen.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: But in Rockport, Texas, new public statues of 16th century European explorers meeting indigenous people are going up. And they're getting some pushback.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This installation is called Cultural Interface. Steve Russell is the artist behind the project.
--:-- [Audio clip from Texas Monthly plays]
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Texas Monthly reporter Peter Hawley spoke to him, along with other people in the community.
--:-- Shamita Basu: His goal was always to capture this moment that I think he sort of envisioned in almost a magical way that was in his imagination.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The reality is that people in that region, especially indigenous peoples and people from Latino backgrounds, have a very different interpretation of that moment.
--:-- Shamita Basu: For them, it's the beginning of what became a genocide.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The artist is white, like the majority of Rockport. Holly says some people there are defending the project. They don't think that they're doing anything wrong, so they don't really think about statues coming down in Houston and other big cities like Atlanta and obviously in South Carolina.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Their intent merely is to capture the local history. Obviously, there's a problem with that because the local history is sort of up for interpretation.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Holly spoke with members of the Latino and indigenous communities about why they find this work so troubling.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's almost like seeing something from a theme park mixed with a horror show. They're massive. They're like rust-colored. They're holding weapons. They're very ominous-looking.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And the goal is to put them on the shoreline in downtown Rockport in a place that thousands of people are going to be able to see them every single day.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Other people who've seen them, particularly people from Latino communities and indigenous backgrounds, find these things incredibly fearsome and troubling-looking.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And they almost feel like these enormous 10-foot-tall statues are sort of a warning or an ominous threat. Like, we own this land, we've taken it from you, and you'll never get it back.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can read more about this story and find other great reporting by checking out the Read Local feature in the Apple News app.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Every Thursday, we highlight standout stories from local news outlets across the U.S.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Have you ever been gifted a succulent? You know, the plants that barely need any water and are really hard to kill.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Nothing says you can't be trusted with a living thing quite like getting a succulent. And yet they've become so popular. They're the office plant of choice.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Turns out, being low-maintenance makes them really easy to love. The Washington Post reports on how the popularity of these plants in China is driving the growth of a new field, succulent fostering.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Some people there love these plants so much, they're paying professionals to house them. These owners are essentially outsourcing plant care.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Then they watch them grow through videos, photos, and maybe a visit here and there.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The post also explains how plant sellers are cashing in on this fandom. Sales of plants over live stream video have become very popular in China.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some sellers offer 16 hours of content a day. And the draw for buyers is this allows them to plug into a community of other fans online.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Also, some of them say that you're more likely to get quality plants, since old-school online succulent stores may doctor their plants' images.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One succulent fan is a busy exec with long work days. In the story, she explains how she loads her phone with images of her hundreds of plants, and she scrolls through them for little moments of peace during her day.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Her phone used to have lots of pics of her children. The difference, she says, succulents never throw tantrums.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And while you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News Plus partners.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
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