--:-- Leila Fadel: Mediators leave Egypt without a deal in the latest U.S. broker talks to end the war in Gaza. Is a deal still possible?
--:-- A Martinez: Talks took place as Israel exchanged heavy fire with Hezbollah across the Israel-Lebanon border.
--:-- Leila Fadel: I'm Leila Fadel, that's A Martinez, and this is Up First from NPR News.
--:-- A Martinez: The presidential race has changed a lot in recent weeks. Kamala Harris has closed the gap in many swing states, but will it be enough to win?
--:-- Leila Fadel: With just over two months left in the presidential race, we bring the latest NPR poll on where things stand.
--:-- A Martinez: And the U.S. ambassador to India is accused of lying under oath to protect an advisor from allegations of sexual and racist harassment.
--:-- Leila Fadel: I want to say unequivocally that I never witnessed, nor was it brought to my attention, the behavior that's been alleged.
--:-- A Martinez: Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.
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--:-- Leila Fadel: Fears of a wider regional conflict in the Middle East were heightened yesterday when Hezbollah and Israel exchanged some of the fiercest fires since the beginning of the war in Gaza.
--:-- A Martinez: And all of this while high-level talks in Cairo wrapped up yesterday. Officials were hoping to inch Hamas and Israel closer to a ceasefire deal, but that seems still very elusive.
--:-- Leila Fadel: NPR's Hadil Alshalchi joins us from the city of Haifa in northern Israel. What happened with the ceasefire talks?
--:-- Hadil Alshalchi: Well, at least we definitely know that no deal was reached, and it's unknown how much progress was made. Israel and Hamas said its delegations left Cairo late yesterday. Israel did not comment about the talks at all.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Hamas said it was present, but it didn't participate in the talks and said it was later briefed by Qatari and Egyptian mediators.
--:-- Hadil Alshalchi: Hamas also reiterated what it's been saying for the past few weeks. It wants Israel to accept a deal that was agreed upon last month, which Hamas says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu keeps making changes to.
--:-- Leila Fadel: You know, NPR's Gaza producer Enes Baba, he talked to some Palestinians there about what they thought of these drawn-out talks.
--:-- Hadil Alshalchi: And many voiced frustration and just want the end of the war.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Here's 29-year-old Ahmed Halles, who said he's being forced to evacuate one more time by the Israeli military from central Gaza.
--:-- Hadil Alshalchi: And this says he doesn't have an ounce of hope. He thinks the war will drag on for at least another year.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And he doesn't even follow the news of the talks anymore.
--:-- Hadil Alshalchi: Yeah, wow, another year possibly, he says.
--:-- Leila Fadel: While these officials were meeting, Israel and Hezbollah attacked each other in a pretty serious way yesterday.
--:-- Hadil Alshalchi: That right, Hezbollah and Iran have been keeping the region on edge this month.
--:-- Leila Fadel: They both promised to avenge the Israeli killings of a top Hezbollah leader in Beirut and Hamas leader in Tehran.
--:-- Hadil Alshalchi: And of course, you know, a retaliation could potentially lead to a wider regional conflict.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So when the Israeli military said it had launched a major attack in southern Lebanon yesterday, many in Israel believed that it was the beginning of that wider war.
--:-- Hadil Alshalchi: Israel called it a preemptive attack because it says it got intelligence that Hezbollah was going to strike first.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Hezbollah responded with its own set of rockets and drones.
--:-- Hadil Alshalchi: But then by late morning, Hezbollah said it had finished its operations for the day and Israel de-escalated as well.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And then let's not forget that while all these sides are talking and also exchanging fire, Israeli strikes on Gaza continue.
--:-- Hadil Alshalchi: So what do we know about what's continuing to happen there?
--:-- Leila Fadel: Well, exactly. You know, just yesterday, Gaza health officials said that Israeli military strikes killed 71 Palestinians.
--:-- Hadil Alshalchi: They've also put the death toll, of course, now at over 40,000 Palestinians killed since the beginning of the war.
--:-- Leila Fadel: The UN says Israeli evacuation orders have now displaced 90 percent of the 2.1 million Palestinians living in Gaza since October.
--:-- Hadil Alshalchi: So those humanitarian zones that Palestinians find some relative shelter are shrinking.
--:-- Leila Fadel: But those zones are also been struck by the Israeli military killing hundreds of Palestinians.
--:-- Hadil Alshalchi: And you know, the humanitarian crisis, of course, is getting worse.
--:-- Leila Fadel: The first case of polio was discovered in a 10-month-old baby two weeks ago.
--:-- Hadil Alshalchi: The UN has called for a mini-ceasefire to give medical workers a chance to vaccinate hundreds of children, and we're still waiting to hear if that will happen.
--:-- Leila Fadel: NPR's Hadil Alshalchi, thank you very much.
--:-- Hadil Alshalchi: You're welcome.
--:-- Leila Fadel: All right, the political conventions are over, and now the sprint to the finish of this presidential election is on.
--:-- A Martinez: So where do things stand and what should we look out for in the coming 70 days?
--:-- Leila Fadel: NPR has a new swing state map out this morning that shows a significantly changed race since President Biden dropped out and his vice president, Kamala Harris, took his spot.
--:-- A Martinez: NPR senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro joins us now to tell us more.
--:-- Domenico Montanaro: I mean, it's a very close race, but Harris has now taken a narrow, within the margin of error, lead in the blue wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
--:-- Leila Fadel: If that holds, that would put her right at the 270 electoral votes she needs to win.
--:-- Domenico Montanaro: She's also closed the gap completely in the Sunbelt states of Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina.
--:-- A Martinez: Trump is holding on to a slight lead, very slight lead in Georgia.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Again, very close within the margin of error.
--:-- Domenico Montanaro: And Harris will be in Georgia with her running mate Tim Walz this week.
--:-- A Martinez: And Biden won all those states in 2020, but a change of just, what, 44,000 votes in just three states could have given Trump the win.
--:-- Domenico Montanaro: So for all the momentum that Kamala Harris seemingly has, she's not quite even where Joe Biden was in 2020.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Yeah, I mean, in our map, we have all seven of those very close states as toss ups, given how close they are.
--:-- Domenico Montanaro: But we've seen considerable movement since President Biden stepped aside.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Before Harris got in, Trump was leading Biden in all seven.
--:-- Domenico Montanaro: But now we've seen a four to six point shift in Harris's favor on average.
--:-- A Martinez: That's pretty significant in our hyper polarized political environment.
--:-- Domenico Montanaro: And it's all part of this continued enthusiasm we've seen for Harris, including her campaign announcing over the weekend that they'd raised half a billion dollars in just five weeks, a record in presidential politics.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So they'll certainly have whatever money they need, but certainly no guarantees at all for her.
--:-- A Martinez: Yeah, the most recent political development, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspending his campaign in most states on Friday and then endorsing Donald Trump.
--:-- Domenico Montanaro: Will that make any difference?
--:-- Leila Fadel: Maybe I mean looking at the polls before RFK Jr got out Trump stood to gain about a point or two with him out of the race.
--:-- Domenico Montanaro: Whether that actually going to be the case now that he officially out is another story.
--:-- A Martinez: On paper maybe but the actual effect isn't quite clear.
--:-- Domenico Montanaro: I heard from some Republican strategists who worry that bringing RFK on the team is a pretty big risk too because it's doubling down on quote extreme.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And Trump really didn't do anything at his convention or since to try to reach out to the middle.
--:-- Domenico Montanaro: His team doesn't really believe he has to, though.
--:-- A Martinez: You know, they think that there are enough voters who have not turned out in the past to agree with Trump's message who are going to show up this November for him.
--:-- Domenico Montanaro: So, Domenico, let's boil this all down because polls can be every once in a while wrong.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So and it's happened to Democrats in the past.
--:-- Domenico Montanaro: So is what we're seeing from Kamala Harris real or is it still kind of a honeymoon effect?
--:-- A Martinez: What do you make of all that?
--:-- Domenico Montanaro: Well, you know, we've seen Democratic pollsters try to warn Democratic activists and others not to get complacent like they did in 2016, they feel, for example, when polls overestimated Hillary Clinton.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So we're seeing some hangover from that for sure.
--:-- Domenico Montanaro: And Democratic professionals biting their nails, which might be the status, you know, the polls have improved.
--:-- A Martinez: But the bottom line is we don't know who will show up to vote.
--:-- Domenico Montanaro: And these polls are estimates, snapshots in time, not meant to be predictive.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Consistently, though, they tell us that the race is extremely close, which is what we've been expecting all along.
--:-- A Martinez: NPR senior political editor and correspondent, Domenico Montanaro. Thanks a lot.
--:-- Domenico Montanaro: You're welcome.
--:-- Leila Fadel: What happens when political ambition collides with harassment allegations in the Me Too era?
--:-- A Martinez: That's the subject of a new NPR investigation that digs into a scandal connected to the former mayor of Los Angeles and current U.S. ambassador to India.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Eric Garcetti has been accused of lying under oath to cover up harassment allegations against one of his friends and top advisors.
--:-- A Martinez: He's denied those allegations.
--:-- Leila Fadel: To get the facts, NPR's Tom Dreisbach obtained the full unredacted testimony from the case, including never-before-seen deposition videos.
--:-- Tom Dreisbach: Sure. One of Garcetti's closest friends, most trusted advisors before he became ambassador was a man named Rick Jacobs.
--:-- Leila Fadel: They knew each other for almost two decades.
--:-- Tom Dreisbach: He served as Garcetti's deputy chief of staff at LA City Hall.
--:-- A Martinez: Jacobs helped him raise millions of dollars for his campaigns for mayor.
--:-- Leila Fadel: They had multiple nonprofits they worked on.
--:-- Tom Dreisbach: They worked closely on a possible presidential run in 2020.
--:-- A Martinez: But for years, people who knew and worked with Rick Jacobs had serious concerns about his behavior.
--:-- Tom Dreisbach: What were the concerns?
--:-- Leila Fadel: Well, let me say up front that Jacobs has denied all wrongdoing and did not answer any of our questions.
--:-- Tom Dreisbach: He actually hung up the phone when I called him.
--:-- A Martinez: But people who worked with Jacobs at LA City Hall testified that he touched them with forcible kisses on the lips, massages, hugs without their consent, and made crude sexual comments, sometimes racist comments, and overall created a, quote, hostile work environment.
--:-- Tom Dreisbach: Multiple people testified that these concerns were a regular topic of office gossip for years.
--:-- Leila Fadel: I also talked to six employees of the Courage Campaign, a liberal group that Jacobs led before joining LA City Hall, and they echoed these same issues going back to the mid-2000s.
--:-- Tom Dreisbach: So Rick Jacobs' boss at the time was the mayor, Eric Garcetti.
--:-- A Martinez: What did Garcetti know?
--:-- Tom Dreisbach: Well, Garcetti has denied ever seeing any inappropriate behavior by Jacobs at any time.
--:-- Leila Fadel: I want to say unequivocally that I never witnessed, nor was it brought to my attention, the behavior that's been alleged.
--:-- Tom Dreisbach: And I also want to assure you, if it had been, I would have immediately taken action to stop that.
--:-- A Martinez: However, the allegations started coming to light in 2020 when an LAPD officer sued the city saying that Jacobs had harassed him for years.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And he alleged that Garcetti witnessed this behavior and did nothing.
--:-- Tom Dreisbach: The lawsuit turned up a lot of important evidence including a photo.
--:-- A Martinez: And in this photo Jacobs is posing next to Garcetti and some lobbyists while at the U Conference of Mayors.
--:-- Tom Dreisbach: And Jacobs posed by placing his hand in front of the crotch of one of those lobbyists.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Garcetti said he was looking the other way, didn't see it happen.
--:-- Tom Dreisbach: But Naomi Seligman is a former communications director for Garcetti.
--:-- A Martinez: She told me the photo suggests a pattern of behavior.
--:-- Tom Dreisbach: Rick felt so comfortable displaying that kind of behavior in front of Eric Garcetti that he put his hand over a man's penis in a photo with Eric Garcetti inches from him.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Seligman thinks Garcetti lied under oath.
--:-- A Martinez: Another former Garcetti communications director, Susie Emmerling, told me the same thing.
--:-- Tom Dreisbach: And another eyewitness testified under oath that Garcetti told him, I can't believe we got through Rick's time at City Hall without a lawsuit.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So how have Eric Garcetti and the White House, he is the ambassador to India, how have they responded?
--:-- Tom Dreisbach: Well, Garcetti declined an interview request, but did say in an email that he fully stands by his testimony.
--:-- A Martinez: The White House has completely stood by Garcetti.
--:-- Leila Fadel: But after the White House got Garcetti confirmed, the city of L.A. paid $1.8 million to resolve that lawsuit from the LAPD officer without admitting wrongdoing.
--:-- Tom Dreisbach: And that allowed us to take a fresh look at all this evidence.
--:-- Leila Fadel: That's NPR's Tom Dreisbach. You can listen to his two-part investigation on NPR's Consider This podcast.
--:-- Tom Dreisbach: Thank you.
--:-- Leila Fadel: This morning, we're also following reports by French media that the CEO of the private messaging service, Telegram, has been arrested and detained in France.
--:-- A Martinez: Pavel Duroff, a Russian-born French citizen, is accused of failing to restrict the criminal use of his platform, including drug trafficking, the promotion of terrorism, and fraud.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Telegram is used by nearly one billion people worldwide.
--:-- A Martinez: Researchers say its lack of moderation has spread disinformation and racist rhetoric, but Durufe's supporters say he is a free speech hero.
--:-- Leila Fadel: For more on this story, tune in to Morning Edition or visit NPR.org.
--:-- A Martinez: That's Up First for Monday, August 26th.
--:-- Leila Fadel: I'm Amy Martinez.
--:-- A Martinez: And I'm Leila Faldil.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Your next listen is Consider This from NPR.
--:-- A Martinez: We here at Up First give you the three big stories of the day.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Our Consider This colleagues take a different approach.
--:-- A Martinez: They dive into a single news story and what it means to you in just 15 minutes.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Listen now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- A Martinez: Today's episode of Up First was edited by Barry Hardiman, Carrie Kahn, Anna Yukonanoff, Jan Johnson, and Alice Wolfley.
--:-- Leila Fadel: It was produced by Ziet Butch, Mia Dumas, and Nina Provinsky.
--:-- A Martinez: We got engineering support from Bill Edfers, and our technical director is Stacey Abbott.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Join us again tomorrow.
--:-- A Martinez: This message comes from Lisa. Lisa mattresses are meticulously designed and assembled in the USA for exceptional quality.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And each mattress is designed with specific sleep positions and feel preferences in mind.
--:-- A Martinez: Plus, they back it all up with free shipping, easy returns, and a 100-night sleep trial.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Visit lisa.com for 25% off mattresses, plus get an extra $50 off with promo code NPR.
--:-- A Martinez: That's L-E-E-S-A dot com promo code NPR.
--:-- Leila Fadel: heard, and prioritized. Visit joinmidi.com to book your virtual visit.
--:-- A Martinez: Midi, the care women deserve.
--:-- Leila Fadel: This message comes from the Nature Conservancy.
--:-- A Martinez: Nature is common ground for everyone, and uniting to protect nature can help solve today's challenges and create a thriving tomorrow for future generations.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Discover why at nature.org slash NPR.
