--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. Today's Thursday, August 8th.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I'd like to start with Michigan reporters. Holy hell, can you throw a party here in Michigan? The battle to win over the Midwest is on. Both the Harris-Walls and Trump-Vance campaigns made dueling appearances in the same cities yesterday.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Harris and her running mate held a packed rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, then another in Detroit, while J.D. Vance stopped in Eau Claire and the Detroit suburbs.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: We actually just saw the vice president's plane on the tarmac. We landed about the same time that she did.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Wooing Wisconsin and Michigan is a priority for both sides. The two swing states narrowly went for Joe Biden in 2020.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And at the events yesterday, Harris brought in some of the biggest crowds of her campaign to date. But in Detroit, she also faced pushback.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Pro-Palestinian protesters interrupted her speech, accusing her of supporting genocide in Gaza.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Harris moved to shut them down. You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I'm speaking.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Opposition to the war has been a fault line in the Democratic Party and will continue to be an issue heading into November.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: As Vice President, Harris has been more outspoken than Biden about the suffering of Palestinians, but has not strayed far from Biden's support of Israel.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Her campaign will continue tomorrow when she and Walls hold their next rally in Arizona.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Trump, meanwhile, will be back on the campaign trail talking to voters in Montana.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Transcription by CastingWords
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Across the UK last night, thousands of people took to the streets to denounce the violent right-wing riots that have swept the country in recent days.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They chanted anti-racism slogans and held signs saying, refugees welcome and fascists out.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Britain's been in turmoil for the last week after misinformation spread online about the background of a teenager accused of a deadly attack on a children's dance class.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Authorities have said the suspect was born and raised in Britain, but rumors that he was an undocumented immigrant circulated on social media.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Right-wing extremist groups amplified the claims, and rioters in more than a dozen cities have attacked mosques, looted businesses, and targeted hotels that house immigrants seeking asylum.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The rate of immigration into the U.K. has spiked in recent years, turning the issue into a flashpoint, particularly on the right.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And the rioters have included neo-Nazis and anti-Muslim campaigners.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: More than 400 people have been arrested so far, including some accused of using the internet to incite the violence.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The country's Prime Minister Keir Starmer has criticized social media companies for allowing the misinformation and calls for violence to spread on their platforms.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And he said, quote, The far right are showing who they are. We have to show who we are in response to that.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Three nights of Taylor Swift's blockbuster Eras tour have been canceled after authorities in Austria said they'd arrested two men who were plotting a terrorist attack.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Swift had been scheduled to play three shows in Vienna starting today, with 200,000 fans expected to attend.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Authorities say one of the men arrested, a 19-year-old Austrian citizen, recently pledged allegiance to the Islamic State after becoming radicalized online.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: He was considering the Eras tour as a target. Officials raided his home and sent a bomb squad there after finding chemical substances.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The Islamic State has carried out three high attacks on concert venues in the past decade.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: One counterterrorism expert said several plots have been foiled across Europe this year, and that many of those plots have featured young ISIS supporters, some of whom are radicalized via TikTok.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Today marks one year since a wildfire swept through Lahaina on the island of Maui.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It reduced the town to ashes and killed at least 102 people.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In the last year, officials have put new funding into firefighting equipment.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: They've revamped evacuation procedures and cut back the grasslands that fueled the flames.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But Times reporter Mike Baker, who was there in the days after the fire, says the town is just at the beginning of what will be a years-long rebuilding effort.
--:-- Mike Baker: A lot of it right now feels quite disorienting. You know, the old foundations that survived the fire, many of them have been wiped away.
--:-- Mike Baker: A lot of the lots now are just layers of fresh gravel. So you drive down the streets and sometimes it's difficult to tell what was the landmark that used to be here?
--:-- Mike Baker: What building was this that was on this corner? What street am I at?
--:-- Mike Baker: One of the biggest questions facing residents is what to rebuild.
--:-- Mike Baker: Some want to resurface layers of Hawaiian history that were buried by time and development.
--:-- Mike Baker: Lahaina was once home to palaces for the royal Hawaiian family, while others want to bring back a bustling commercial waterfront.
--:-- Mike Baker: In the rebuilding process, there's a lot of questions about whether Lahaina had become too focused on catering to tourism and had maybe lost sight of that deeper native Hawaiian history.
--:-- Mike Baker: You know, there's a lot of a push to restore more of that heritage, maybe renaming the street names maybe bringing back some of these old grounds that were central to the Hawaiian kingdom.
--:-- Mike Baker: But there are others who also have deep ties to the area who are native Hawaiian who want to see that waterfront rebuilt as it was to see the waterfront restaurants and nice boutiques and fancy art galleries come back and restored just as it used to be.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The county has said it will release a long-term rebuilding plan for Lahaina by the end of this year.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: When we started this mission, it was a test mission.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: We knew that it potentially had a higher risk than a flight on a vehicle that has more experience, more flights on it.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In a press conference on Wednesday, NASA acknowledged what it had been downplaying for weeks.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: That two of its astronauts on the International Space Station don't really have a ride back to Earth yet.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: We know that at some point we need to bring Butch and Sonny home.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams traveled to the station on the Boeing Starliner in June, the first time the craft had ever carried astronauts.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It was supposed to be an eight-day trip, but there were problems with the ship that have kept them up there now for more than two months.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And NASA says it's got a plan B.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: It's going to keep trying to fix the Starliner, but if it can't, the astronauts will just become a regular part of the space station crew for now and come back on a capsule built by SpaceX in February.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: The whole thing adds more headaches and embarrassment for Boeing, which had been trying to prove it can be a player in space and compete with SpaceX.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Today on The Daily, a look inside the Harris campaign's Wisconsin field office and how they're trying to win over voters.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: You can listen on The Times audio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.
