Millions still without power after Milton | The Excerpt

On Friday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: Milton has moved to the Atlantic after slamming Florida as a Category 3 hurricane. USA TODAY Senior National News Reporter Rebecca Morin explains how Latino men are shying away from Vice President Kamala Harris in the major battleground state of Nevada. Former President Donald Trump unveiled new trade and tax deduction plans in a Detroit speech Thursday. USA TODAY Reporter Andrea Riquier talks through why the housing market appears to be an exception to inflation trends. Ethel Kennedy dies at 96.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson. Today is Friday, October 11th, 2024. This is The Excerpt. Today the latest aftermath from Hurricane Milton, plus how Latino men in a major battleground state are shying away from Kamala Harris. And why is the housing market an exception to inflation trends?

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Hurricane Milton moved out to the Atlantic yesterday after tearing across Florida, killing at least 14 people and knocking out power to millions. It appears the worst case scenarios of the storm feared by meteorologists, officials, and residents have been avoided, but it did not go quietly, flooding neighborhoods, destroying homes, ripping the roof off a major sports venue, and toppling a massive crane into an office building. More than 2.6 million homes and businesses remained without power late yesterday according to poweroutage.us. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said during a briefing yesterday that the storm weakened before making landfall and that the storm surge was not as significant as what was observed for Hurricane Helene. Milton came two weeks after Helene slammed into the Florida coast on its way to devastating communities across at least seven states. Milton made landfall Wednesday night as a category three hurricane.

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Vice President Kamala Harris is leading former President Donald Trump with Latinos in the key battleground state of Nevada, but many Latino men there are shying away. I spoke with USA TODAY's senior national news reporter Rebecca Morin to learn more. Rebecca, thanks for making the time.

Rebecca Morin:

Oh, I'm happy to be talking about this.

Taylor Wilson:

So, Rebecca, what do we know about Vice President Kamala Harris potentially losing ground among Latino men in Nevada?

Rebecca Morin:

USA TODAY had a poll with Suffolk University. Kamala Harris is doing well overall with Latino voters. She holds the majority of support in the state. But where she's seen a little bit of a crack is with this demographic with Latino men under the age of 50, especially young Latino men like Gen Z, millennial age, who are just very dissatisfied with her candidacy, was very dissatisfied with how Joe Biden handled some of his policies. Vice President Harris might continue what Joe Biden was doing, continue those policies. If they're dissatisfied with that, then why would they vote for Vice President Harris? And so, that's a lot of the sentiments that I've gathered.

Taylor Wilson:

Yeah. So how is Donald Trump really trying to reach out to these men? Rebecca, I've had this conversation in various ways over the last few weeks about this Trump approach with this demographic. Why does it appear that Trump approach might be resonating more than the Harris approach with some of these folks?

Rebecca Morin:

Right now Vice President Harris has focused a lot of her policies, especially to Latinos, on healthcare and reproductive rights, which are two big things for Latino voters, I'll be clear with that. But for men, just generally, young Latino men, fall into this category of them relating to this message.

Donald Trump is just reaching them where they're at. He's very blunt with how he talks about policies, how he talks about other candidates. He is going to events like UFC and just dropping in. He's going on podcasts, and that's really huge because a lot of the young men I spoke with, they don't watch a lot of CNN or Fox News. They are turning to YouTube, they're turning to TikTok, they're turning to podcasters.

We're seeing Vice President Harris do that a little bit more now too, going on different podcasts, going on radio shows like Howard Stern, which a lot of men listen to. But I think it's just a unique approach that Donald Trump has been doing for a couple of months now.

Another reason why support has been fading, there isn't sustainable long-term investment in reaching out to Latino voters, which is where information gaps happen, where disinformation leaks into the community.

Taylor Wilson:

Rebecca, can you help us understand how the Latino vote for Democrats in Nevada has actually faded really in recent elections, not just among men but the Latino vote across the board in Nevada?

Rebecca Morin:

Under Barack Obama, he relied a lot on the Latino vote. He helped do get out to vote campaigns, helped register voters. He had over 75% of support of Latinos in Nevada in 2008. But in recent years, after that, we've seen that fade. Even from 2008 to 2012, it stayed around 70%. But then when Hillary Clinton, the Democrat in 2016, ran, we saw it go down about 10 percentage points to 60. Joe Biden was around 60%. Now we're seeing in statewide polling in Nevada Vice President Harris is 56%.

There's a variety of reasons. There's newer immigrants, newer nationalities. For a long time, Nevada especially had a large Mexican population, and now we're seeing other nationalities of Latinos come and move to the state. We're seeing longer generations. For a while it was first-generation Latinos living in the state, and now it's second and third, and those voters have different priorities and sometimes they might not align with what Democrats have been saying.

Taylor Wilson:

What might all this mean ... That aspect and also some of this conversation around Latino men, what might all this mean for Nevada and the election as a whole next month?

Rebecca Morin:

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are neck and neck in the state. This shift could really cost Democrats. Democrats have relied heavily on the Latino vote. With how tight the election is, with how every battleground state is pretty important. This shift could be bad news for Vice President Harris who needs the Latina vote, and she needs to be at the same levels that Joe Biden had when he won the state.

Taylor Wilson:

Outstanding breakdown as always. Rebecca Morin is a senior national news reporter with USA TODAY. Thank you, Rebecca.

Rebecca Morin:

Thank you.

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Taylor Wilson:

In a speech yesterday in front of the Detroit Economic Club, former President Donald Trump said he wants to make interest on auto loans fully tax-deductible. He also said that he would double the deduction businesses can claim for purchases like equipment, vehicles, and software, and that he would renegotiate the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement. Trump also repeated his plan to cut corporate tax rates to 15% for companies that make their products in America and put tariffs on products from countries that don't offer reciprocal trade with the US. He mentioned tariffs repeatedly throughout the speech. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.

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There are signs that inflation is trending down, but why is the housing market an exception? I spoke with USA TODAY reporter Andrea Riquier for more. Andrea, thank you for hopping on as always.

Andrea Riquier:

Of course. Thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

So, Andrea, would you just start by telling us about Rosalind Teo and Dave Hong? What obstacles have they encountered in the housing market?

Andrea Riquier:

A youngish couple in their 30s. They bought a townhouse in Atlanta in about 2017 and had some kids, and felt like they'd outgrown the townhouse and wanted to move to a different neighborhood to be closer to his job. And so, they went out on the housing market, and same story that's familiar to a lot of people. Everything was just out of reach, too expensive. They were outbid a bunch of times. They actually started looking at new construction just to try to cover all the bases. Even that didn't work.

And so, finally, what they did was they actually started to rent a house, so bigger, more space than the town home, a backyard for the little boys, closer to Dave's job. What they discovered was that by renting, they would actually save $2,000 a month versus what they'd been looking to pay when they were house hunting, to buy something, which is just crazy if you think about it.

And so, they've held onto the townhouse and they are renting that out. So they still have the equity that they have in the property, and hopefully that price will appreciate, and their tenant just covering their mortgage. But just the difference between the prices that they were looking at when they were trying to buy versus being able to rent something that checked all their boxes, as Rosalind said to me, was really just very stunning.

Taylor Wilson:

They're not alone with some of these wild stories from the housing market right now. Really, what are some of the overall inflation trends, Andrea, and why does the housing market seem to be an exception? What are some factors driving this?

Andrea Riquier:

So we know that inflation overall is coming down. Every time you say that, you get some pushback from people who feel the pinch, and I don't think anybody here at USA TODAY discounts that. Definitely the price of a lot of things that people rely on the most, like gas and food and things like that, are not as affordable as they could be. But, overall, the general trend of the economy is that inflation is down.

As you said, housing is the exception. For many, many years we did not build enough homes to keep pace with population growth, and that has come back to really hurt us. It's very hard to buy a home, just like this couple in this story. They're just one of many across the country, in all parts of the country, in cities and in suburbs all over, there just aren't enough homes. So they get bit up. They just happen to find a good situation for them. But when demand is just so much stronger than supply, that's just the basic law of economics.

Taylor Wilson:

We've heard a lot about this wait and see mode that the housing market is in right now. Can you talk through that a little bit? What's next and what might it take for more homeowners to feel comfortable selling in this market?

Andrea Riquier:

So it's a good point. One of the things that's holding back a little bit more activity than we would normally see is that a lot of people are sitting on these rock-bottom mortgage rates. Either they bought their home or they refinanced, and some people refinanced and refinanced and refinanced multiple times during the pandemic when interest rates went all the way down to almost nothing.

So if you're sitting on a 2% mortgage and you'd like to move, but then you look around and prices for homes are astronomical and the mortgage rate that you'd have to pay is three times as high, you're not going to move. Of course, there will always be people who have to sell, who have to move, to relocate, or whatever, but until mortgage rates come down more, we're just going to see people "locked in" to their current properties.

Taylor Wilson:

Andrea, is there any advice that experts can give to folks in the housing market, like Rosalind and Dave who you mentioned at the top?

Andrea Riquier:

I tend not to ask people for advice because it's a very personal transaction, but there's two things I would say. One is that if you've been looking for a long time and you're a little burned out and you want to take the next six months or whatever to regroup, now is a really good time to do that. Make sure that your credit score is as strong as it could be. Maybe talk with a financial advisor or a housing counselor.

The flip side might be if you still have a little energy left in you, the fall can actually be a surprisingly good time to get a deal because there is less competition, because so many people do try to buy before the start of the school year.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Andrea Riquier is a reporter with USA TODAY. I appreciate your time as always, Andrea. Thanks so much.

Andrea Riquier:

Thank you, Taylor. Take care.

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Taylor Wilson:

Ethel Kennedy has died. The human rights advocate and widow of the late Robert F. Kennedy was matriarch of America's most famous political family. Ethel Skakel became a Kennedy in 1950 when she married Robert, who had gone to become US attorney general in the administration of his brother, former President John F. Kennedy, and later a US senator from New York. Ethel Kennedy endured the tragedy of the assassination of her brother-in-law JFK in 1963 and, five years later, the assassination of her husband. Throughout her life, Ethel also lost her parents and brother in separate plane crashes and one son died of a drug overdose. Another son was killed in a skiing accident, and her granddaughter died of a drug overdose. Ethel Kennedy sought to carry on her husband's works with the founding of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Center in Washington, DC. Her work also surrounded many charitable causes, including raising money for Lou Gehrig's disease research, fighting poverty, and supporting social justice and environmentalism. Ethel Kennedy died yesterday after complications from a stroke she suffered earlier in the week. She was 96.

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Today is National Coming Out Day, an LGBT Awareness Day and chance to support our loved ones and others as they share their authentic selves.

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Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. We're produced by Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan, and our executive producer is Laura Beatty. You can get the podcast wherever you get your pods. If you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.