The next president will face these issues in office | The Excerpt
On Monday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: USA TODAY Senior National Political Correspondent Sarah D. Wire takes an early look at some of the major issues facing the next president. Vice President Kamala Harris raised $82 million during the Democratic convention. Attacks by Israel and Hezbollah could fuel or ease tensions in the region. USA TODAY National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise discusses conservatives who love renewable energy. A team from Florida wins the Little League World Series for the first time.
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, and today is Monday, August 26th, 2024. This is The Excerpt. Today we discuss some of the major issues the next president will face. Plus Kamala Harris continues her fundraising role, and we hear about conservatives who are in on renewable energy.
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What issues will the next president have to tackle? From foreign policy to decisions on the Supreme Court, I caught up with USA TODAY's senior national political correspondent, Sarah D. Wire to discuss. Sarah, thanks for hopping on.
Sarah D. Wire:
Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
So the conventions are behind us, meaning we're now into the final stretch run of this election cycle, and you took the time, Sarah, to look at some of the big issues that the next president will likely have on their plate next year. Let's run through a few of these starting with Trump-era tax cuts.
Sarah D. Wire:
The 2017 tax cuts took a lot of money out of what the government normally takes it. We're talking trillions of dollars and so Congress and the next president gets to decide here in 2025 whether to extend those tax cuts or let them end. Now, for the average American, you're probably not going to notice much of a difference in your tax returns and what you owe, might even get more money back from the government or have to pay less. But what really it comes down to is how much money the government has to function. And that $2 trillion can go to a lot of places. It can go to Social Security or immigration or aid to Gaza or Ukraine. The next president, their entire policy proposal for the next four years might come down to what's decided with these tax cuts.
Taylor Wilson:
You mentioned those wars. We know the war in Gaza continues to be front and center fracturing really the US over its support of Israel and things have potentially shifted in recent weeks over the war in Ukraine where Ukraine is now advancing into Russia. How do we expect these issues to play out for a new president in 2025?
Sarah D. Wire:
It's going to come down to the president's relationship with the leaders of the involved countries. Kamala Harris does not have much of a relationship with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His best hope for a ceasefire if she wins, would be now most likely. If Trump and the Republicans have a better relationship with Netanyahu, and might give him more free reign to act in Gaza than Biden's been willing to. And this is one of those things that makes the story so interesting is that it's not just a matter of who is the president when it comes to a lot of these topics. It's also what's happening in foreign governments, what's happening with the stock market and which party has control of the House and Senate.
When it comes to Ukraine, the Biden administration has put a lot of on how Ukraine can use the aid that it's received, whether it can use it within the Russian border. But Harris might not feel those same restraints. At the same time, we know there's a closer relationship between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, and he has indicated that he thinks he could quickly stop the war, and so he might feel a pressure to either withdraw that aid and let Russia swoop in or perhaps help Ukraine in a different way that we're not quite expecting just to end the conflict.
Taylor Wilson:
Presidents of course make big decisions on the Supreme Court. How might the next occupier of the White House impact the high court's immediate future?
Sarah D. Wire:
When you look at the age of the current Supreme Court, we've got two justices in their mid 70s. You've got Sonia Sotomayor who just turned 70, and she has some health issues. So the next president could appoint between one and three justices to the Supreme Court. Now obviously justices aren't required to step down when they reach a certain age, and they tend to like to keep an eye on who would be replacing them, whether it's someone of their own party, but that's not always something that's within their decision-making. And just in the last year, the Supreme Court made some really societal-shaking decisions, and this next president has the ability potentially to set that course for the next decade or more.
Taylor Wilson:
And meanwhile, border crossings are dropping significantly, but it's clear that immigration has been a keystone issue really, of this election so far. How might this shake out, Sarah, over the next few months and into the new year?
Sarah D. Wire:
Both candidates put forward really broad ideas of how they want to take care of it. Immigration is one of those issues with Congress though that they just have not managed to make any headway on for so long. And part of that is there's no deadline and there's no calamity directly that they're addressing. And it's really hard to get anything passed Congress with a 60 vote threshold in the Senate, something that Republicans want to hold onto, but Democrats have talked about potentially getting rid of for certain bills. The experts I talked to for the story said that they really don't see anything happening with immigration on a large scale unless something major happens to shift the conversation.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, Sarah D. Wire is a senior national political correspondent with USA TODAY. Thank you, Sarah.
Sarah D. Wire:
Thanks for having me.
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Taylor Wilson:
Vice President Kamala Harris raised $82 million during last week's Democratic National Convention in Chicago and has now brought in 540 million for her presidential bid since launching her run according to the Harris campaign yesterday. They said the hour following Harris's convention speech Thursday night was the best fundraising hour of the campaign. And Harris campaign chair, Jen O'Malley Dillon said, "The money Harris has raised since President Joe Biden dropped out of the election on July 21st is the most in presidential campaign history during a 1 month span." The figure includes money raised by the Democratic National Committee and other joint fundraising committees in addition to the main Harris campaign fundraising arm. Harris trounced former President Donald Trump in July fundraising with the campaign's main fundraising committee last week reporting a July haul of 204 million to the Federal Election Commission, nearly 4 times the Trump campaign's 48 million. You can read more with the link in today's show notes.
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Iran-backed Hezbollah militants and the Israeli military traded massive aerial attacks yesterday as violence along the Israeli-Lebanese border reached new heights. The attacks came as negotiators met in Egypt for struggling talks aimed at reaching a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Iran-backed Hamas amid global concerns the war in Gaza could expand into Lebanon and across the region. But Israel and Hezbollah indicated they did not want a full-blown war in Lebanon. And some experts said yesterday's powerful strikes could calm the rising tensions in the short term. Meanwhile, Israel issued new evacuation orders in Central Gaza yesterday, pushing more families to flee and saying that forces aim to act against Hamas in the area. Israel has issued a flurry of evacuation orders in Gaza in recent days, sparking criticisms from Palestinians, the United Nations and relief officials over the lack of safe areas in the enclave.
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Some conservatives love green renewable energy. I spoke with USA TODAY national correspondent Elizabeth Weise to learn more. Hello, Beth.
Elizabeth Weise:
Hey, always a pleasure to be here.
Taylor Wilson:
Always a pleasure having you on. So let's just start with this. What is the Conservative Energy Network? And also this summit that they sponsored this week?
Elizabeth Weise:
I was in Houston earlier this week. Most people would not think that 200 conservatives would be in a hotel room in Houston, oil capital of the world, talking about clean energy. But they were, and this is a group that started in 2016, the Conservative Energy Network, and they're all about free markets. If you let people choose the cheapest energy there was, at this point in time, it would be wind and solar because they're the cheapest.
Taylor Wilson:
So Beth, how did we get to this point? We often think of renewable energy as largely a liberal cause, at least formally. How has this issue really landed over the years?
Elizabeth Weise:
Renewable energy did not used to be a Democratic or liberal thing at all. Governor Bush in Texas back in the 90s, it was part of a strong free market, let's deregulate the energy markets in Texas push. And when they allowed people to build transmission, which you could do in Texas because you didn't run into a billion people trying to stop you like they do in other states. If you build it, they will come. They built transmission, they opened up the market, and Texas is now the number one provider of wind energy and it's coming up fast on solar because Texas is just about let's produce energy, whatever kind, and they got a ton of wind and they got a ton of solar.
Taylor Wilson:
So Beth, why is it so crucial for the progress of renewable energy to get conservatives on board?
Elizabeth Weise:
It matters because 90% of the places that it makes sense to build, especially wind and solar in this country are in Republican districts. And if you don't get conservative buy-in, you're not going to get them built. And that's what these guys are doing. That's the interesting thing. They've got the Conservative Energy Network, they've got an OSHU called the Land & Liberty Coalition. I mean, they're all about property rights. "If I'm a farmer or a rancher, this is my land. I can build what I want on it. Nobody gets to tell me I can't just because they don't happen to want to see a wind turbine. They might not want to see my cows either." So there's that, and I spent three days there talking to people and we're talking, these are as conservative as you can get. They've got folks on the ground in 25 states, folks who have spent decades, pro-life folks, tax cut folks, people who have been Republican representatives and senators in their states.
If you're going to go into Kansas or Nebraska or Texas or any place that leans red, you've got to have people who come in with conservative credentials to talk to them. One guy I talked to, he said, "Yeah, I spent the last decade fighting to make abortion illegal in my state. And now when I come and talk to them about clean energy, they're like, 'Huh, okay.'" So we can't immediately dismiss everything you say.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah, fascinating dynamic. So Beth you right in this piece that really the elephant in the room is this presidential election. How is that factoring into conservative renewable energy efforts?
Elizabeth Weise:
Everybody was very careful because they're mostly nonprofits and of course they don't get to have political opinions. There was also a great deal of support for former President Trump, just in general in his policies. It is also true that Donald Trump hates wind. He doesn't like renewable energy, and he said that he thinks climate change is a hoax. And I'll grant you a lot of people at this conference, were not so convinced that climate change is real, or if it is, that it's caused by humans. What they are convinced of is that we should get government out of the way and just let the markets decide. And so whoever is in the White House come January, their focus is at the state and down to the county and the township level.
So they're not looking at national policies. They're just like, "Listen, if I'm sitting in Illinois or Nebraska or Kansas or any state where solar and wind makes sense, how can we get information to the folks whose land it's going to be built on and whose land is sit next to where it's built to make them decide that this would actually be a good thing in terms of economic development, jobs, that sort of thing?" So it's not a message you hear a lot from conservatives. It sounds counterintuitive, but this was a fired up group of folks.
Taylor Wilson:
Elizabeth Weise is a national correspondent with USA TODAY. Thank you, Beth.
Elizabeth Weise:
As always, a pleasure.
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Taylor Wilson:
The winning play in the 2024 Little League World Series didn't come on a walk-off home run or a pressure packed strikeout. Instead, it was a bunt. With the score tied at one in extra innings of the event's championship game yesterday. Lake Mary, Florida's Hunter Alexander laid down a bunt along the first base line. Chiu Wei-Che, the pitcher for opposing Chinese Taipei fielded the play, but threw to an unoccupied first base after a moment of miscommunication. The US team scored and won the game and the tournament. You can watch the bizarre play with the link in today's show notes. The Little League World Series title is the first ever for a team from Florida.
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Happy National Dog Day, a chance to hug your furry friends. And if you're thinking about getting a canine bestie, it could be a chance to start researching whether or not to adopt.
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Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you're on a sports speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.