--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Tuesday, October 22nd. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Sahil Kapoor: On today's show, the border issue lawmakers don't want to talk about, what home insurance is like in flood and hurricane-prone Florida, and why some election law experts say Elon Musk's million-dollar giveaway is illegal.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But first, in the final stretch of the campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris is trying to drive home her closing message to voters with some unusual political allies, Republicans.
--:-- Sahil Kapoor: Yesterday, she made stops in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania with former Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney. They did a series of sit-down conversations in suburban counties, the kinds that used to back Republicans but have increasingly turned out for Democrats.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There are a lot of different ways to think of who these voters are, but bottom line is they're historically Republican voters who do not like Donald Trump and are open to alternatives.
--:-- Sahil Kapoor: That's Sahil Kapoor, a senior national political reporter with NBC.
--:-- Liz Cheney: Cheney's message focused on protecting democracy and trying to convince Republicans like her, who are disillusioned with Trump, to break from the party vote in November.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In Pennsylvania, she spoke about how the January 6th attack on the Capitol changed her political perspective.
--:-- Liz Cheney: Cheney ended up being the vice chair of the January 6th committee in Congress, investigating the events of that day.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There was a moment right after January 6th when my husband and I were having dinner and I looked across the table at my young sons and I thought to myself, you know, in the aftermath of the attack on the Capitol, Are they going to grow up in a country where we don't have to worry about the peaceful transfer of power?
--:-- Sahil Kapoor: Cheney isn't the only Republican to come over to Harris's side. As we mentioned a few weeks back, her dad, one of the most prominent Republicans once upon a time, also endorsed Harris.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So did former Illinois Representative Adam Kinzinger, who joined Harris on the campaign trail last week.
--:-- Sahil Kapoor: And conservative radio host Charlie Sykes moderated a discussion between Harris and Cheney last night.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Meanwhile, some of Harris's most expensive ad spots feature former Trump administration officials who have since come out against him, including people like former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley, and former National Security Advisor John Bolton.
--:-- Sahil Kapoor: They haven't endorsed Harris, but they've made it clear they don't support Trump.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And Kapoor told us it might not take all that many people to be convinced in order for this to be a successful strategy for Harris.
--:-- Sahil Kapoor: In this, you know, electoral jigsaw puzzle where these six to seven battleground states are so, so tight that even small gains would make all the difference.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So that's what Kamala Harris is trying to do.
--:-- Sahil Kapoor: Kapoor pointed to recent national NBC polling that gives a snapshot sense of how this strategy is working.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A lot of these people are well suburban college graduates.
--:-- Sahil Kapoor: Among white college graduates, Kamala Harris is doing about 10 points better than Joe Biden did in 2020.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's very significant.
--:-- Sahil Kapoor: He says a strong performance for Harris among this demographic and across the suburbs nationwide could offset some of the gains that the Trump campaign has been making with groups like Latino voters, working-class voters, and young men.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You know, she's never going to win over Republican voters or even come close, but a few percentage points here and there could make a huge difference.
--:-- Sahil Kapoor: Let's turn now to an under-discussed aspect of the border crisis, its impact on labor.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Writing for Texas Monthly, reporter Jack Herrera takes us to Texas, where Governor Greg Abbott has put $11 billion toward a state border patrolling initiative called Operation Lone Star.
--:-- Jack Herrera: And yet, Herrera told us, while local lawmakers are happy to broadcast tough-on-the-border rhetoric, they're intentionally not passing measures that would actually deter undocumented migrants from coming.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Texas politicians are very happy to throw up razor wire on the border along the Rio Grande in Mexico, but they're extremely reluctant to put up any sort of barriers between undocumented immigrants and the jobs that want to hire them.
--:-- Jack Herrera: There are around 1.6 million undocumented immigrants in Texas, and the state's economy relies on them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Business owners know it. So do policymakers.
--:-- Jack Herrera: And that's why when politicians in Texas threaten to pass laws that would make it harder to employ undocumented people, their phones start ringing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Every time that's come up, including as recently as last year, it has failed in the legislature because there aren't enough Republican votes.
--:-- Jack Herrera: And indeed, some Republicans vote against these bills because large employers in the districts and their ears telling them, hey, you do this, I'm not going to be able to build houses anymore. I'm not going to be able to build offices. I'm not going to be able to build bridges.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The number of Americans interested in working in manual trades has plummeted over the last two decades.
--:-- Jack Herrera: Undocumented construction workers in Texas helped rebuild Houston after Hurricane Harvey and have built thousands of homes and apartment complexes in the state.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As a result, Texas has managed to avoid the worst of the affordable housing crisis that other states are grappling with.
--:-- Jack Herrera: The construction industry knows they're using undocumented workers. It's an open secret, according to Herrera.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's not difficult to get a job if you're undocumented. A company doesn't have to perform any due diligence to check whether or not you're authorized to work in the country.
--:-- Jack Herrera: And even if they require a social security number, I talked to people who said that you could go down to the polga, go down to the flea market, and you could get a social security card for $250 or less.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And in my own reporting on construction sites and also interviewing contractors who hire workers, really seems to stand that there is an enormous percentage of undocumented workers working construction sites in Texas.
--:-- Jack Herrera: Herrera describes these workers as part of a shadow economy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They do pay taxes, in fact, close to a billion in 2022 alone, according to an estimate from a D think tank.
--:-- Jack Herrera: And if these workers were authorized to work legally, that number would likely go up.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But Herrera says there is no amount of political will truly committed to addressing the problem.
--:-- Jack Herrera: I think what it comes down to is the reality in the state of Texas, which is that if you don't have undocumented workers working, the economy is going to collapse.
--:-- Shamita Basu: These, some of the key industries, especially construction, are entirely reliant on undocumented workers.
--:-- Jack Herrera: And so you can have a functioning and growing Texas economy, or you can have a ban on undocumented workers. You can't really have both.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's turn now to Florida and the big question in the aftermath of back-to-back hurricanes, who is going to pay to clean up the mess?
--:-- Heather Gillers: Analysts estimate Hurricane Milton alone caused tens of billions of dollars in damage in the state.
--:-- Shamita Basu: While federal aid will help with some of it, homeowners in Florida rely on an unusual patchwork of insurers.
--:-- Heather Gillers: So Florida is an interesting and unusual place when it comes to insurance because unlike some more traditional markets, the big insurers aren't really the biggest players there.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Heather Gillers at The Wall Street Journal told us that ever since Hurricane Andrew hit Florida in 1992, multiple big home insurers decided to steer clear of the state.
--:-- Heather Gillers: The state government ended up making its own, a kind of insurer of last resort for people who couldn't get coverage from the private market.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's got about 1.26 million policyholders.
--:-- Heather Gillers: So that's one part of it. Florida also has a catastrophe fund that collects premiums from insurance companies active in the state and uses them to cover claims when private insurers are overwhelmed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Sometimes if hurricane season is mild, the state can go years without tapping into those funds.
--:-- Heather Gillers: But damages from a big storm like Milton could wipe them out.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if the catastrophe fund hits bottom, the state could tack an emergency fee onto other kinds of insurance like liability and auto policies.
--:-- Heather Gillers: So even someone who's renting an apartment and just owns a car could, in a really tough, expensive weather situation, end up helping pay the insurance claims of homeowners.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The last time that happened was about 20 years ago, so it's not like a frequent occurrence, but I think it speaks to the potential costliness of Florida's extreme weather.
--:-- Heather Gillers: Florida's average homeowner premium was around $3,300 last year.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's higher than any other state and roughly double the national average.
--:-- Heather Gillers: The combination of high premiums and high hurricane risks are a big reason why some people say they done They moving out of the state.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But the flip side of that story can be seen along the coasts where construction is booming for water view properties.
--:-- Heather Gillers: Tens of thousands of new properties have been built in high-risk flood areas in Florida since 2019.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One meteorologist told the journal that new development is a big reason insurance losses from catastrophic events are growing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories being featured in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A recent study on the infant mortality rate after Roe v. Wade was overturned points to an unsettling trend.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the 18 months following the Supreme Court's decision, hundreds more infants died than expected.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The majority of those deaths were related to congenital disorders.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before Roe fell, abortion was legal until a fetus was viable outside the womb, which is around 24 weeks.
--:-- Shamita Basu: CNN reports that other research shows that births have increased in states with abortion bans, and experts believe that some of that increase is linked to a rise in women carrying fetuses with lethal anomalies to term.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Election law experts are raising concerns about Elon Musk's big giveaway.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The billionaire Tesla founder and Donald Trump supporter says he's going to give $1 million away every day until Election Day to a person in a swing state who signs his petition pledging support to the First and Second Amendments.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He claims multiple people have already been awarded prize money.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One election law professor at UCLA told NPR, Musk's offer is only open to registered voters and therefore violates federal law because it's either an incentive or a reward.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Musk has rejected the idea that it's illegal, saying it's not requiring people to vote, just to sign a petition, which may walk a legal fine line.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And lastly, as the WNBA wraps up a record-breaking season for attendance and ratings, the Players Union has decided to opt out of its collective bargaining agreement.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This is the union's attempt to secure higher salaries for the athletes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They say the historic new level of interest in the sport, plus a recently negotiated media rights agreement that'll increase the league's TV revenue, is all good.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But that success hasn't yet reached players' salaries.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A starting rookie's minimum salary is about $64,000.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Many WNBA players spend the offseason in international leagues to supplement their income.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The current contract is in place for the next year, which means the league and the players have one year to come to a new agreement.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if you're already listening in the News app right now, we have that Texas Monthly story about Texas politicians and their approach to border policy queued up to play for you next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening in the podcast app, follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
