--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Monday, October 21st. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, the crime that has spiked in the D.C. area. An American citizen speaks out about spending years in a Russian prison and the surprising class of new millionaires. But first, Election Day is just two weeks away, but thanks to early voting, people have begun casting ballots in a majority of states. As of this weekend, more than 14 million people have voted, according to the University of Florida's Election Lab, which keeps a tally on this.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Turnout is so high that early voting records have been broken in critical battleground states, including in Georgia and North Carolina. At the same time, there have already been dozens of lawsuits filed contesting voting protocols.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Joining me to talk about what all this means is my colleague Gideon Resnick. Hey, Gideon.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Hey, Shamita.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So let's talk about these huge early voting numbers that we are seeing. What do the numbers tell us so far about who is winning or who is losing this election?
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Well, not to be a wet blanket about it, but the short answer is it doesn't tell us much, honestly. So you might see all over your social media people making claims about, you know, oh, this many people voted in a particular Democratic stronghold. And that must mean that Democrats will win the state or this many Republicans voted in this stronghold. And that means Republicans are going to win the state.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But, you know, say, for example, we look at one of these states, I don't know, Georgia, and we look at Fulton County and we say that a Democrat voted there. Is that good for Democrats? Maybe if that Democrat voted for the Democratic candidates, but we don't know that.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: You know, these ballots get cast ahead of time, but they don't get tallied ahead of time. And secondly, if we even look at all of these numbers, we're only seeing a sliver of the overall eventual turnout.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: I think Jeffrey Skelly, a senior elections analyst at FiveThirtyEight, put it well. We can see in states that have party registration, like, what percentage are Democrats? What percentage are Republicans? What percentage are independents? And that's helpful. But the problem is that doesn't mean that we know how many people are going to actually show up on Election Day.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So that's just to say we don't know if early voting numbers capture people who would have voted anyway later on on Election Day itself or if those are in addition to those people.
--:-- Shamita Basu: OK, so I get that. But I thought that conventional wisdom told us that early voting and mail-in ballots benefit Democrats more, right? That's definitely the case, particularly in recent elections.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Democrats have been far more likely to vote early and to vote by mail. For example, in 2020, about 60% of Democrats voted by mail versus 32% of Republicans. That's according to a study by the MIT Election Data and Science Lab.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But there are a couple things to say here as we consider that, right? So one is that it kind of underscores the main point that we're making. If a large majority of Republicans are not voting by mail or they're not necessarily voting early and they're waiting until election day, then early voting overall kind of doesn't tell us that much.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And secondly, the disparity is more of a recent trend because, as you remember, in 2020, former President Trump was really criticizing early voting and mail-in voting as a way to falsely suggest there was fraud in elections.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And actually, this year, there's been a big Republican effort to counter that and to try to get their voters to show up. And then the last thing when we talk about 2020 versus 2024 is it kind of hard to draw comparisons to how this all broke down because the pandemic led to a massive uptick in absentee and mail voting.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: We had never tried to conduct an election in that particular circumstance. So is this year going to follow a similar pattern or are we going to see way more election day voting? We just don't really know yet.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Okay. So in addition to early voting, we're also seeing a lot of early lawsuits. What are in these suits? Who are they coming from and where could they go?
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Yeah, there are quite a lot. In fact, Bloomberg tallied it and said that there are at least 165 lawsuits that have been filed since 2023. And really, they cover all sorts of things, challenging all facets of the election, everything from ballot drop boxes in certain states to voter ID options for college students and others.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Now, a majority of them have been filed by Republicans and conservative allies. There are some that are also coming from Democrats. The Republican ones are largely a downstream effect of what we had just talked about, that, you know, former President Trump has consistently made these false claims of fraud in the past election.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Bloomberg also notes that many of these suits have been filed quite recently, which means they're not likely to be resolved by November, but the purpose might be to sow distrust in the process. And we're seeing some judges already in various states push back against some of these efforts.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Recently, for example, a judge in Georgia invalidated a lot of these rules that had recently passed by this Republican-led election board. One of those rules would have basically allowed them to potentially delay certification results.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The other thing here, too, is that this is the first presidential election after federal legislation that was basically meant to prevent certification delays and ensure that something like January 6th never happens again.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So the system may indeed get tested this time, but there are some new measures in place. And we'll keep watching to see how it unfolds.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Gideon, thank you so much.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Of course. Thank you.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if you would like to know more about early voting options available to you in your state, Apple News has a guide that we made in partnership with NBC. You can find that in the Election 2024 section of the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's turn now to the Middle East, where things are moving quickly as Israel fights wars on multiple fronts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: First, there are renewed calls for Israel and Hamas to return to the negotiating table after Israel took out its number one target last week, Hamas's leader, Yaya Sinwar.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Over the weekend, an Israeli air attack in the northern Gaza Strip hit several houses and a multi-story residential building, killing at least 87 people, with many others trapped under the rubble.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here's one young girl talking with Al Jazeera after the attack.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I was in the market, came home to find all my brothers and sisters gone. All of them were killed, ripped to pieces, their flesh scattered all over the place.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Rescue efforts have been difficult because for weeks now, there's been a near blackout on communications.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's also been little to no access to food, water, medicine, or other essential services.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Meanwhile, tensions are escalating between Israel and Iran. On Saturday, a Hezbollah drone penetrated Israel's air defenses and exploded in close proximity to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's private home.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Neither he nor his wife were home at the time, and no injuries were reported.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Israeli officials have been meeting for weeks to plan an attack against Iran after Iran fired a series of ballistic missiles at Israel earlier this month.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Israel's foreign minister said over the weekend that the attack near Netanyahu's home was another crossing of a red line by Iran.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Iran denies involvement in the attack and has warned that if Israel strikes Iran is prepared to fight back even harder.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Also this weekend there was an apparent leak of Pentagon documents that detailed some of Israel's preparations for an upcoming attack on Iran.
--:-- Shamita Basu: House Speaker Mike Johnson told CNN's State of the Union on Sunday that an investigation is underway into the leak, which has not yet been verified, and that he supports Israel's decision to go after Iran.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And I think we're very close, I hope, I pray, to ending that conflict there. But we cannot equivocate. We can't appease Iran.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now is the time for a maximum pressure campaign against the head of the snake. It's not Hezbollah and Hamas and the proxies that are ultimately the threat. It is Iran itself.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And I think we need to recognize that reality right now.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This all comes as Israel is fighting a third front in the war as well against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Israel conducted a wave of airstrikes across Lebanon over the weekend, targeting financial offices associated with Hezbollah in an apparent attempt to disrupt the group's day-to-day operations and undermine its support in Lebanese communities.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now to a story about a very particular type of crime in and around our nation's capital.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One night, Shanty Summers was walking toward her apartment in her neighborhood in Maryland when she was accosted by strangers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She's almost to her door when she is approached by several masked juveniles who have a gun, stick it in her face, and demand the keys to her 2019 Honda Accord.
--:-- Jamie Thompson: That's Jamie Thompson, a contributing writer with The Atlantic. She hands over her keys and the juveniles make off with her car, her phone, you know, everything that's in her car.
--:-- Jamie Thompson: And she sort of runs into the house traumatized and terrified, crying and shaking and calls the police department.
--:-- Jamie Thompson: She now suddenly has no car. So she has no way to get her kids to school, the doctor. She doesn't have a way to get herself to her job at the post office.
--:-- Jamie Thompson: So it begins to sort of create this real financial burden in her life. It really has these ripple effects in our life, both emotionally and financially, for months.
--:-- Jamie Thompson: And Chantise's experience wasn't isolated. Last year alone, there were 958 reported carjackings in D.C.
--:-- Jamie Thompson: In some cases, the perpetrators are just kids, as young as 12 years old.
--:-- Jamie Thompson: In recent years, some of the victims were high-profile people, including a congressman from Texas, a chief of staff for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission who was killed in a carjacking, Even police have been victims of it.
--:-- Jamie Thompson: About 70% of cases go unsolved. In Chanteese's case, police caught the suspects the same day, but... One of the kids was found involved for having done the carjacking, but is released that day.
--:-- Jamie Thompson: So the person who violently carjacked her walks out of court right in front of her. And she's sort of outraged at this happening, just that this sort of seemingly utter lack of consequences for this very traumatic thing that has happened to her, and it seems to really be going unpunished.
--:-- Jamie Thompson: So why is this happening? Well, a lot of it started during the pandemic.
--:-- Jamie Thompson: Which turned so many of our institutions upside down. You had protracted school closings, you had a lack of recreation centers, a lapse in social services, so you had a lot of kids on the streets without much to do.
--:-- Jamie Thompson: This was also happening as the country was reacting to the murder of George Floyd in 2020, and many people began looking at the politics of policing more critically.
--:-- Jamie Thompson: Tough on crime policies had disproportionately affected poor Black communities.
--:-- Jamie Thompson: Policing in America is sort of undergoing an existential crisis of its own. You have a climate where cops are really telling us that they become hesitant to do anything that they would call proactive in the realm of policing.
--:-- Jamie Thompson: Recently, things have gotten a bit better. Carjackings in D.C. are down more than 50 percent this year and by about a quarter in the Maryland county where Shantese's car was stolen.
--:-- Jamie Thompson: Police say it's because they're getting better at solving cases and because public sentiment has shifted back toward harsher policing and prosecution.
--:-- Jamie Thompson: But experts warn that strategy doesn't address societal issues at the root of this.
--:-- Jamie Thompson: Statistics show many of the teens involved in D.C.'s juvenile justice system are experiencing homelessness, neglect, or abuse and behavioral issues.
--:-- Jamie Thompson: As one person who used to work under the attorney general's office for D.C. told The Atlantic, two things are true at the same time here.
--:-- Jamie Thompson: Carjacking is a terrible crime. And a child who commits a crime like this has likely been failed in so many ways.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories being featured in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Millions of people in Cuba were without power for the third day in a row on Sunday due to a major power grid collapse.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This comes after months of rolling blackouts and as Cuba is experiencing a dire economic crisis, which started during the pandemic, when tourism collapsed and then President Donald Trump issued sanctions against the island nation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Since then, inflation has soared, the economy has tanked, and there are widespread food shortages.
--:-- Shamita Basu: NPR reports that it's gotten so bad that earlier this year, the Cuban government only allocated bread to children and pregnant women.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Cuba's prime minister attributed the blackouts to the country's deteriorating infrastructure and fuel shortages, both of which he says were exacerbated by Hurricane Milton two weeks ago.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Paul Whelan, the American Marine veteran who was wrongfully detained in Russia for nearly six years until this past summer when he was freed in a prisoner swap, is speaking out about what it was like.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He told CBS's Face the Nation prison guards tortured him with sleep deprivation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They would come every two hours to my bed at night and they would wake me up. They'd try to lighten my face and take a picture.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Getting off that sleep pattern has been very, very difficult.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So now, you know, I'm sleeping better than I was, but it is still tremendously difficult to sleep for six or eight hours at a time.
--:-- Shamita Basu: After years of watching other prisoner swap deals being made without him, Whelan said it was emotional to finally be on a plane heading home.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I knew we were getting close to England. And as we got closer, I saw the White Cliffs of Dover.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So I knew that once we were in, you know, friendly British airspace, we would then go to Irish. We'd soon be in Canadian airspace and then be in America.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Wall Street Journal has reporting on a big transformation happening in trades like plumbing, electrical and HVAC.
--:-- Shamita Basu: These were the kinds of jobs that traditionally were mom and pop owned and handed down to the next generation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But lately, they're being bought up by private equity firms that believe they can turn them into bigger, more profitable operations.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This wave of investment is, in the journal's words, minting a new class of millionaires across the country.
--:-- 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've got that Atlantic article about carjackings 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.
