--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Friday, October 11th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, why some Latino voters in America are shifting to the right, how two Texas billionaire preachers are reshaping their state's politics, and why the people running for president keep showing up in your podcast feeds. But first, to Hurricane Milton, which knocked out power for millions of people in Florida after making landfall on Wednesday.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The vast majority still had no power 24 hours later. Authorities have confirmed a number of deaths, but the total is expected to change as search and rescue efforts continue. On its path to Florida, Milton quickly became one of the strongest Atlantic storms ever recorded as it crossed the record hot Gulf of Mexico. It exploded to a Category 5, weakened to a 3 by the time it made landfall near Siesta Key, and downgraded to a Category 1 as it cut through central Florida.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But remember, hurricane categories really only tell us how wind speed evolves as a storm moves. They don't convey the risk of things like storm surge, flooding, or tornadoes. And tornadoes turned out to be one of the biggest threats from Milton. Dozens of twisters were reported across the state, particularly on the East Coast.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They ripped roofs off buildings and tore down trees and power lines. Several deaths have been connected to the tornado specifically, including multiple residents of a retirement community. And search and rescue teams spent Thursday looking for anyone who could still be trapped under rubble.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In other areas, rescue crews were looking for people stranded by high floodwaters. In Hillsborough County, near Tampa, first responders searching by boat found a 14-year-old who was using a piece of fencing to float. The water was up to the boy's neck as the county sheriff pulled him onto the boat.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There were two major things that made Milton not as bad as anticipated. One was millions of people listened to evacuation orders and left when they were told to. The New York Times reports that this was one of the largest evacuations in Florida's history.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The other was this phenomenon called reverse storm surge. It's exactly what it sounds like. Instead of 10 to 15 feet of floodwater surging in, wind instead pushed water away from the western coast of Florida and out into the bay. USA Today explains how this is a strange but not uncommon occurrence with big hurricanes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One Floridian said it was as if the sea became a desert, just empty, dried out, and eerily beautiful. As residents of Florida start another long, difficult and expensive hurricane recovery process, President Biden promised the victims will have federal support.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I want you to know everything on our power to help you put pieces back together and get all that you need.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Latino voters in the U have historically leaned democratic. But in recent years, there's been a small but notable shift to the right as the Latino population has grown and diversified.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We're looking at a Latina voting bloc that is so young, that it has fully Americanized, that has fully assimilated. Even the most simple question of who do they identify with, who are they loyal to politically, is unknown.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's Paola Ramos, a journalist who's been reporting on Latino voters for years. In this week's episode of Apple News In Conversation, I talked to her about her new book, Defectors, The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America.
--:-- Paola Ramos: Ramos says that Trump's messaging is resonating with a lot of Latinos in ways that may not have worked a generation ago. So in 2020, 2016, they literally called it Latinos for Trump. Now, the label, the banner is Latino Americans for Trump.
--:-- Paola Ramos: So they're specifically and intentionally injecting the American. And I think part of that is even though so many Latinos feel a sort of distance from their immigrant stories and their immigrant backgrounds, there's still this unconscious fear among some Latinos that white America and sort of mainstream America will always look at them and look at us as these sort of perpetual foreigners.
--:-- Paola Ramos: Ramos says that the deep and often traumatic history of Latinos whose families immigrated to the U.S. is a sort of pathway for these voters to embrace far-right ideas, especially when they hear Trump labeling Democrats as communists.
--:-- Paola Ramos: And these forces are also shaping the way Democrats are thinking about how to reach Latinos. Typically, when campaigns knock on Latino voters' doors, the first thing that they talked about was immigration, comprehensive immigration reform.
--:-- Paola Ramos: And now you are seeing, I have to say, a Democratic Party that knows that they had to change something. Even when Vice President Kamala Harris is talking about immigration, it's actually kind of rare to see her say the word comprehensive immigration reform.
--:-- Paola Ramos: And then when she talks about the border, the first thing that comes out of her mouth is border security. It's the way that she frames herself as a sort of tough on crime, tough on the border candidate.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can hear more from Paola Ramos and how the candidates are trying to win Latino voters in this week's episode of Apple News and Conversation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you're listening in the Apple News app right now, that episode is queued up to play for you next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's turn now to a story out of Texas. ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine work together on a big investigation into two Texas billionaires who are reshaping the state's government with massive spending.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Ava Kaufman, investigative reporter at ProPublica, told us Tim Dunn and Ferris Wilkes have a lot in common. They both got their start in the oil industry.
--:-- Ava Kaufman: Tim Dunn started his own private family-run company, Natural Gas Drilling, and Ferris Wilkes started a fracking services company with his brother. It's a classic kind of Texas rag to riches story.
--:-- Ava Kaufman: They are also interestingly enough and unlike many oil barons and unlike many billionaires for that matter, preachers. And that, Kaufman told us, has led them to share a religious passion for remaking Texas politics.
--:-- Ava Kaufman: She said they have poured tens of millions of dollars into campaigns to steer the Texas state legislature, not just to limit government, but toward Christian nationalist ideals.
--:-- Ava Kaufman: They've moved the statehouse so far to the right that local consultants in Austin like to joke Karl Rove couldn't win a local race there these days.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So it's been kind of staggering to see their rise, and most Texans really haven't heard of them.
--:-- Ava Kaufman: One thing to know about Texas, it has very few limits on contributions to state and local campaigns. It also has, as Kaufman describes it, a high concentration of movement leaders, conservative pastors, and far-right megadonors.
--:-- Ava Kaufman: In recent years, Dunn has outspent all of them. Dunn and Wilkes together have managed to wield a considerable amount of power by donating to various political action committees and organizations, many of which support a second Trump term.
--:-- Ava Kaufman: One particularly effective method they have funded at the local level has been focusing on primary races and trying to unseat incumbent Republicans by pouring money into supporting a further right challenger.
--:-- Ava Kaufman: People with big pockets like Dunn and Wilkes can afford to be persistent, even when facing losses. The PACs funded, primarily funded by Dunn and Wilkes, have shown themselves to be remarkably agile in running candidates who might lose, you know, one, two, maybe even three races, and they'll just kind of slowly chip away at incumbent support until they kind of notch that seat or force someone who they don't agree with into retirement.
--:-- Ava Kaufman: They also have a media operation that churns out, you know, editorials and podcasts and the like, spending money 365 days a year to keep voters activated. That's also quite unusual on a local level.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And Kauffman reports that Dunn and Wilkes have ambitions far beyond Texas. One effort Dunn has funded is called the Convention of States Project, which would gather states for the second ever constitutional convention in an effort to change laws countrywide.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The idea of such a convention in which, you know, each state would have one delegate, which would be profoundly undemocratic population-wise, as well as the kinds of fractious issues that might be discussed, is truly terrifying.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And while it might seem like that's a long ways away, the project is, at least by their count, already halfway there.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Dunn and Wilkes did not respond to ProPublica's questions for their reporting.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Before we let you go, a few other stories being featured in the Apple News app. First to Lebanon, Israeli airstrikes hit two residential buildings in tightly packed neighborhoods Thursday night in what being called the deadliest strikes in Beirut of the past year.
--:-- Shamita Basu: At least 20 people are dead according to Lebanese officials and over 100 people were injured. Israel did not immediately comment on the incident.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Israeli strikes have targeted a number of high-ranking Hezbollah officials in recent weeks.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here in the U.S., it's been a week of non-traditional media appearances for the Harris and Trump campaigns.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Harris went on Alex Cooper's popular podcast, Call Her Daddy, which has an estimated audience of 5 million listeners who are mostly young women, with a third living in the South.
--:-- Shamita Basu: These are all demographics Harris is trying to mobilize.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Trump sat down with podcaster and comedian Andrew Schultz this week for his show, Flagrant, continuing on his path of appearing on shows with mostly young male audiences.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The New Yorker points out there's a lot to learn from these non-legacy media chats with the candidates.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They're a little more long-winded, a little less soundbitey, but mostly they're a signal as to where these campaigns think the candidates' time is best spent in these last few weeks before the election.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Moving on to a new tool for what's usually one of the biggest purchases of a lifetime. Starting at the end of this year, Zillow says it will list data about climate risks for every home for sale on the platform.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The move comes at a time when more buyers are worried about climate change, especially considering some of the largest U.S. insurance companies have ended certain disaster protection coverage and raised premiums in response to climate risks.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Zillow says it will work with a nonprofit that measures the likelihood of emergencies like floods, fire, wind, and extreme heat to create a score for a home's threat level today, but also in 15 or 30 years.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Washington Post reports this information could be especially valuable to people living in the many states that don't require home sellers to disclose past flood or fire damage to potential buyers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, to a trend in football the Wall Street Journal calls once unthinkable. That's the moment Brandon Aubrey, the kicker for the Cowboys, booted a 65-yard field goal earlier this season, the second longest ever recorded by the league.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And kickers like him have been shining all season. The Wall Street Journal reports they're not only making more field goals than ever per game, they're also hitting them from farther distances.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So both power and accuracy have gone up. It's turning NFL kickers into unlikely stars.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And along with some key rule changes, it's transforming the entire game. Because now, just a couple successful first downs might put a team in position to score, if they've got a great kicker who can finish the job.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if you're listening in the app right now, stick around for the rest of my interview with Paola Ramos about Latinos who are moving toward the far right.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That episode of Apple News in Conversation is queued up to play for you next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Enjoy your weekend, and I'll be back with the news on Monday.
