--:-- Steve Inskeep: Tens of thousands of people are on the road to Beirut, some stuck in traffic, some walking. They're fleeing Israeli airstrikes on Hezbollah across much of southern Lebanon. What's it like to be on that road?
--:-- Michelle Martin: I'm Steve Inskeep with Michelle Martin, and this is Up First from NPR News.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Vice President Harris wants to make it easier to restore abortion rights. She renews her call to change Senate rules. And get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need.
--:-- Michelle Martin: And get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need. Harris called into Wisconsin Public Radio and we will hear her pitch for votes in a swing state.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: And California is suing ExxonMobil over recycling. The state alleges that the oil giant knowingly misled the public about the effectiveness of plastic recycling. How's the company responding?
--:-- Michelle Martin: Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: This message comes from NPR sponsor Adobe. Introducing the all-new Adobe Acrobat Studio, now with AI-powered PDF spaces.
--:-- Michelle Martin: More than 500 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon, according to Lebanese officials. It's the worst death toll in a day of fighting there in many years.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Yesterday, Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes into almost everywhere. The militant group Hezbollah has a presence, including the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Tens of thousands of people fled their homes. NPR's Jane Aref was on that road and is with us now from Beirut. Good morning, Jane.
--:-- Jane Aref: Good morning, Michelle.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Jane, this has to be a terrifying situation. What was it like in the midst of all of this?
--:-- Jane Aref: Yeah, we were in Sidon, south of Beirut, and as we got closer, soldiers had turned that four-lane highway, going both ways, into a one-way escape route north.
--:-- Michelle Martin: It was bumper to bumper. Eight or nine people crammed into some cars. I saw a vegetable truck with more than a dozen children in the back.
--:-- Jane Aref: One car, there was a little girl hanging out of a sunroof holding a stuffed doll. A couple of guys were sitting in the open trunk of another car.
--:-- Michelle Martin: And we met one man who had walked and hitchhiked for the last six hours to escape the airstrikes.
--:-- Jane Aref: A businessman, Bilal Hamadi, told us he and his family left after he received a call telling him to evacuate.
--:-- Michelle Martin: There was a message from the Israeli army on the landline in Broken Arabic. They told me to leave the area. I said thank you. What could I do?
--:-- Jane Aref: Hamadi and his family were going to stay with friends in Beirut but a lot of people had nowhere to go and they had left so quickly. They had nothing with them.
--:-- Michelle Martin: On the highway, volunteers were handing out bottles of water to passing vehicles. Was there any warning?
--:-- Jane Aref: Well, it's been building. Israel and Hezbollah have been trading attacks across the Lebanese-Israeli border since the war in Gaza began last October.
--:-- Michelle Martin: But last week, Michelle, it took an unprecedented turn. Israel detonated thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies.
--:-- Jane Aref: It had interrupted Hezbollah's supply chain and inserted explosives. Dozens of people were killed, Hezbollah fighters, but also office and medical workers and even children.
--:-- Michelle Martin: 3,500 people were wounded. Yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave this address.
--:-- Jane Aref: I have a message for the people of Lebanon. Israel's war is not with you. It's with Hezbollah.
--:-- Michelle Martin: For too long, Hezbollah has been using you as human shields. It placed rockets in your living rooms and missiles in your garage.
--:-- Jane Aref: But Hezbollah's role in Lebanese society isn't that simple. The Iran-backed group was initially created after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 to defend the country.
--:-- Michelle Martin: It's much stronger than the Lebanese army, and it's really interwoven into society here in many places. It provides health care services, support to widows and orphans, things the government doesn't do.
--:-- Jane Aref: So, Jane, how is Hezbollah responding to all this? They seem to be scrambling.
--:-- Michelle Martin: The pager attacks were a huge security breach. And an Israeli attack a couple of days later in Beirut, killing a top commander, was seen as evidence of a spy network.
--:-- Jane Aref: So Hezbollah has launched retaliatory attacks into northern Israel, which it says were aimed at military targets.
--:-- Michelle Martin: But it's indicated that it has not yet avenged last week's attacks, and we don't know what form that could take.
--:-- Jane Aref: And amid all that, there are fears that Lebanon, which is already a very weak state, could collapse if there's all-out war.
--:-- Michelle Martin: That is NPR's Jane Aref reporting from Beirut. Jane, thank you.
--:-- Jane Aref: Thank you.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Vice President Kamala Harris has made four campaign stops in the battleground state of Wisconsin since she became the presidential nominee.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Look at one of those election maps and you can see the Democratic votes in Wisconsin are clustered in a handful of places, including the blue counties right around the college town of Madison, which is where Harris visited on Friday.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: She needs to pile up votes in the blue areas and limit the damage in rural counties that lean heavily red.
--:-- Michelle Martin: So what issues does she highlight in this swing state? This week, Harris spoke with Wisconsin Public Radio about the issues that are hitting home there.
--:-- Kate Archer-Kent: I'm Kate Archer-Kent, co-host of Wisconsin Today. She had an interview with Harris, and she's here to tell us what they talked about.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Kate, good morning.
--:-- Kate Archer-Kent: Good morning, Michelle. Thanks for coming.
--:-- Michelle Martin: So first, set the scene for us. Wisconsin is your home state. It's also a swing state. What has been Vice President Harris's message there?
--:-- Kate Archer-Kent: Her campaign is very focused on abortion rights. And here in Wisconsin, we had a law from 1849 on the books that was used to dispute whether abortions were legal in the state.
--:-- Michelle Martin: But abortion services did return last year when a judge here determined the law didn't ban abortion.
--:-- Kate Archer-Kent: And I asked Harris about how she would work with Congress to pass a federal bill to restore abortion rights.
--:-- Michelle Martin: And she said that she thinks it well within Democrats' reach to hold on to the majority in the Senate and to take back the House in November.
--:-- Kate Archer-Kent: And she said she supports changing the Senate filibuster rules in order to pass a bill codifying abortion rights.
--:-- Michelle Martin: I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe and get us to the point where we have 51 votes. That would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom and for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do.
--:-- Kate Archer-Kent: And of course, currently with that filibuster, most legislation needs support from at least 60 senators to move forward.
--:-- Michelle Martin: One other issue we're seeing across the country is concern over the lack of affordable housing.
--:-- Kate Archer-Kent: You asked Harris about that and asked her how to address the issue in Wisconsin. What did she say?
--:-- Michelle Martin: Well, I asked her this because Wisconsin is seeing a big jump in housing prices, and she said that she can relate to renters because she grew up with a mom who was a renter, and she was a teenager before her mother could afford to buy a home.
--:-- Kate Archer-Kent: And she said she would want to have 3 million homes built in her first term and give first-time homebuyers help with making that first mortgage down payment with $25,000 in assistance.
--:-- Michelle Martin: So what other issues are figuring prominently for Wisconsin voters that you asked her about?
--:-- Kate Archer-Kent: Well, I asked her about how to deal with toxic chemicals known as PFAS that are contaminating drinking water around Wisconsin.
--:-- Michelle Martin: And whether she would press for stricter federal regulations on these forever chemicals.
--:-- Kate Archer-Kent: There are some communities here, Michelle, that have been living on bottled water for years now due to this pollution in their wells.
--:-- Michelle Martin: And she said the Biden administration is funding billions in water infrastructure projects around the country to clean up drinking water and to replace lead pipes.
--:-- Kate Archer-Kent: And she said nearly two billion dollars of that funding is going to Wisconsin.
--:-- Michelle Martin: The work that we are also doing, which I've been a leader on, frankly, which is dealing with lead pipes and eliminating lead pipes.
--:-- Kate Archer-Kent: She also tried to draw a contrast between her and former President Trump on this issue, saying he is sided with companies that are polluting.
--:-- Michelle Martin: And we've asked former President Trump and vice presidential nominee Senator J.D. Vance to be on our show and to discuss this issue and others facing Wisconsinites.
--:-- Kate Archer-Kent: And what have they said? We haven't heard back yet.
--:-- Michelle Martin: You can hear Harris's full interview with Kate Archer-Kent later today on Wisconsin Public Radio.
--:-- Kate Archer-Kent: Kate Archer-Kent in Madison, thank you so much.
--:-- Michelle Martin: You're welcome.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: The Attorney General of California has filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil, alleging it lied to the American public for decades about whether plastic could be recycled.
--:-- Michelle Martin: The state's top prosecutor filed the lawsuit yesterday. His suit also calls out Exxon's attempt to blame the public for a plastic crisis the prosecutor says the oil company created.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: This suit cites a lot of our reporting here at NPR, along with PBS Frontline.
--:-- Michelle Martin: NPR correspondent Laura Sullivan has done a lot of this reporting. She's been following this case, and she is with us now.
--:-- Laura Sullivan: Good morning.
--:-- Michelle Martin: What specifically is the suit alleging ExxonMobil has done?
--:-- Laura Sullivan: The suit says that the company violated laws around false advertising and creating an unfair competition and a public nuisance.
--:-- Michelle Martin: It also cites them actually for pollution.
--:-- Laura Sullivan: But the premise of that is that ExxonMobil, along with the oil industry as a whole, knew as far back as the 1970s that plastic recycling was never going to work.
--:-- Michelle Martin: I mean, it's expensive, it's difficult, it's toxic.
--:-- Laura Sullivan: But the suit says that the company set out on this ambitious plan to deceive consumers about recycling so that they would, you know, buy more plastic.
--:-- Michelle Martin: And so here's Attorney General Rob Bonta. The company has propped up sham solutions, manipulated the public, and lied to consumers.
--:-- Laura Sullivan: It's time ExxonMobil pays the price for its deceit.
--:-- Michelle Martin: What sort of evidence or examples does the suit include?
--:-- Laura Sullivan: The Attorney General staff unearthed dozens of internal documents between the oil company and industry executives where they appear to acknowledge to each other that recycling plastic doesn't work, but then turned around and told the public the opposite.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Here at NPR, we've seen some of these same memos as part of our own investigative work.
--:-- Laura Sullivan: In fact, the lawsuit cites NPR and Frontline six times.
--:-- Michelle Martin: But one of the points of contention that people will probably recognize is the chasing arrows recycling symbol that was stamped onto the bottom of all plastic for decades.
--:-- Laura Sullivan: And the suit alleges that Exxon and other companies manipulated states into requiring that stamp, even though the industry knew that it was misleading.
--:-- Michelle Martin: How has ExxonMobil responded?
--:-- Laura Sullivan: The company said in a statement that recycling works and that California is just trying to blame them because the state can't get its recycling act together.
--:-- Michelle Martin: You know, they said they have processed 16 million pounds of plastic so far. 60 million pounds.
--:-- Laura Sullivan: OK, so they're sticking with the original message.
--:-- Michelle Martin: But is the state seeking damages?
--:-- Laura Sullivan: It's interesting. They're not in the traditional sense.
--:-- Michelle Martin: The state wants Exxon to pay billions of dollars to remedy the problem.
--:-- Laura Sullivan: There's a little bit of cleanup, but mostly they say they want Exxon to re-educate the public.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Here's Attorney General Bonta's said it this way. To have ExxonMobil stop lying, stop deceiving the public, stop manipulating consumers, stop gaslighting us and tell the truth.
--:-- Laura Sullivan: Bondis says he wants Exxon to explain to the public that the vast majority of all the plastic that they're holding in their hands is not actually recyclable. It's just trash.
--:-- Michelle Martin: That is NPR correspondent Laura Sullivan. Laura, thank you.
--:-- Laura Sullivan: Thanks so much.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: And that's Up First for Tuesday, September 24th.
--:-- Michelle Martin: I'm Michelle Martin.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: And I'm Steve Inskeep.
--:-- Michelle Martin: For your next listen, consider this. Modern day wars go on and on and on. Why do wars in the Middle East and Ukraine and elsewhere last with no end in sight?
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Listen to Consider This from NPR News.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Today's episode of Up First was edited by Vincent Ni, Padma Rama, Robert Little, HJ Mai, and Mohamad ElBardicy.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: It was produced by Iman Maani, Nia Dumas, and Mansee Khurana.
--:-- Michelle Martin: We get engineering support from Robert Rodriguez, and our technical director is Zac Coleman.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Join us again tomorrow.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Thanks for listening to Up First.
