--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. Today's Tuesday, October 8th.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A new poll out this morning from the Times and Siena College shows Kamala Harris sitting at 49 percent with likely voters nationwide to Trump's 46, giving her a slim lead within the poll's margin of error.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This is the first poll where we see Harris ahead nationally since she entered the race a couple of months ago. And this is the first time that we see any Democrat, Biden or Harris, leading in the presidential race nationally this year.
--:-- Ruth Agelnik: We've seen some notable changes since our last national poll, particularly that Harris has sort of shored up support with older voters and made some small gains with Republicans.
--:-- Ruth Agelnik: But sort of most importantly, she has sort of taken the mantle. She's edged Trump out as the change candidate. And we know that this is probably the most important metric.
--:-- Ruth Agelnik: This election, a lot of voters really want change this year. And so Harris sort of taking the edge there really helps explain some of her growth right now.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This poll does show a lot of signs of strength for Trump, though. In particular, he's still favored on the economy, which is by far voters' most important issue.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He also is doing fairly well with men who are an important group for Trump's victory. Right now, Kamala Harris is falling below where Biden was with men in 2020.
--:-- Ruth Agelnik: And one sort of valuable metric that we've been tracking this whole election cycle is whether voters feel like Trump's policies helped them or hurt them.
--:-- Ruth Agelnik: And right now, more voters say that Trump's policies were helpful to them. And that's pretty consistent across demographic groups.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Overall, Ruth says the latest numbers offer a look at how voters are feeling right now. But they don't necessarily indicate how the electoral college numbers will shake out.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That will be determined by the battleground states including Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin where the polls have been exceedingly close.
--:-- [Sound of a car driving]
--:-- Tracy Mumford: On Monday afternoon, I drove to the Tampa Bay area while everybody else was driving away from it. You could see the traffic on the highway from people leaving not only Tampa, but places to the south ahead of Hurricane Milton.
--:-- Patricia Mazze: Every time I drove into a new county, my cell phone would start blaring emergency alerts, storm surge warning, hurricane warning, storm surge warning, hurricane warning.
--:-- Patricia Mazze: Milton is currently on track to make landfall in Florida tomorrow night, squarely in the Tampa Bay region, which hasn't taken a direct hit in more than a century.
--:-- Patricia Mazze: Officials in the region are urging residents to evacuate from the vulnerable, low-lying areas there.
--:-- Patricia Mazze: This is a state that just went through Hurricane Helene two weeks ago, a Category 4 storm, and has had strong storms in the past few years where residents are just exhausted and worried and anxious and sick about having to think about evacuating again and where the storm might go and how everything is going to look like afterward.
--:-- Patricia Mazze: Even before Milton makes landfall, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has already been stretched thin, not just by Helene, but also by flooding, landslides, tornadoes and wildfires this year.
--:-- Patricia Mazze: It currently has less than 10 percent of its personnel available to deploy.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Today, the Biden administration unveiled a landmark rule that will require lead drinking water pipes to be replaced nationwide over the next 10 years.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The goal is to reduce a major source of lead poisoning in the U.S. which can cause irreversible damage to the nervous system and the brain particularly in babies and children.
--:-- Ruth Agelnik: Replacing all the pipes will be a colossal undertaking. The EPA estimates that it will cost $20 to $30 billion, most of which will fall to utility companies, and by extension, partly to their customers, though there is federal money as well.
--:-- Ruth Agelnik: Notably, the rule doesn't require utilities to replace pipes on private property, like those that go to a home.
--:-- Ruth Agelnik: And some environmental groups worry low-income homeowners won't be able to afford that.
--:-- Ruth Agelnik: Research has shown low-income Black and Latino neighborhoods are more likely to receive contaminated water through lead pipes.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This morning, the Supreme Court will hear arguments over whether the Biden administration overstepped in regulating ghost guns.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Ghost guns are firearms that people assemble themselves from kits you can buy online.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Companies who sell them promise they're quick and easy to put together. You could be at the firing range in an hour or two.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The key selling point for a lot of buyers was that ghost guns were effectively untraceable. Until 2022, when the ATF started requiring that they be marked with serial numbers and that would-be buyers pass a background check.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Law enforcement says that before that change, the number of ghost guns used in serious crimes was rising, and minors and other people who aren't legally allowed to have guns were getting their hands on them.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Since the regulation was put in place, though, the number of ghost guns that law enforcement's recovered at crime scenes has fallen.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Local officials and gun control groups fear that overturning the ATF's restrictions could reverse that.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The challenge to the regulation is coming from a group of gun owners and guns rights groups who say the ATF doesn't have the power to put this kind of regulation in place and that regulating firearms is Congress's job not the job of an administrative agency.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: This will be one of the first cases of the Supreme Court's new term which just started this week.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The justices are set to tackle the issue of not only ghost guns, but also transgender rights and potentially voting disputes that could decide the presidential election.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And finally, for decades, humans' life expectancy has been marching upward thanks to medical and technological advances like antibiotics and sanitation.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And some scientists predicted it would just keep on going up.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But a new study suggests there's a limit to what's possible, and humans could be closing in on that.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The study, published in the journal Nature Aging, looked at three decades of data from places where people typically live the longest, like Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Switzerland.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And they found that while average life expectancies went up, they're not going up as fast.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The research suggests that while modern medicine has helped more people regularly live to their 70s, 80s, and 90s, getting the average age up beyond that will prove difficult.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A professor who led the study, S.J. Olshansky, said, quote, We're basically suggesting that as long as we live now is about as long as we're going to live.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Olshansky knows that not everyone agrees. One of his colleagues in the field has a bet going with him, that a human being who is alive today could live to 150.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, how the trade deal between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, known as NAFTA, transformed the U.S. economy and broke American politics.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That's next in the New York Times audio app, or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.
