10.20.26

WEBVTT
1
00:00:00.640 --> 00:00:03.459
Welcome to the reading of the New York Times for Tuesday,
2
00:00:03.560 --> 00:00:07.740
October 20th, 2026. As a reminder, Radio Eye is a
3
00:00:07.780 --> 00:00:10.279
reading service intended for people who are blind or have
4
00:00:10.320 --> 00:00:13.679
other disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material.
5
00:00:14.380 --> 00:00:19.949
Your reader for today is Julie Shaw. We'll start today's
6
00:00:20.010 --> 00:00:23.370
reading with the Merriam-Webster Word of the Day. Today's word
7
00:00:23.390 --> 00:00:27.929
of the day is compunction, which is a noun. Compunction
8
00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:32.079
refers to a feeling of misgiving, that is, doubt or suspicion,
9
00:00:32.240 --> 00:00:36.219
especially concerning a future event. It can also refer to
10
00:00:36.280 --> 00:00:39.700
a feeling of guilt or regret. The word is typically
11
00:00:39.859 --> 00:00:43.869
used in negative constructions. The first example given is, The
12
00:00:43.929 --> 00:00:55.969
second example is, Now we will read the front page
13
00:00:56.009 --> 00:00:59.890
headlines from today's edition. We begin with, This is what
14
00:00:59.990 --> 00:01:04.909
America's utility bill crisis looks like. Next, Next, Next, Next, Next,
15
00:01:23.349 --> 00:01:26.810
the frenzy behind getting an initiative on the California ballot,
16
00:01:27.530 --> 00:01:31.549
and last, how one global climate deal worked perfectly as
17
00:01:31.730 --> 00:01:35.329
others faltered. The first article from the front page of
18
00:01:35.370 --> 00:01:39.359
today's edition is entitled, This is What America's Utility Bill
19
00:01:39.390 --> 00:01:43.340
Crisis Looks Like. Record heat and rising demand for electricity
20
00:01:43.420 --> 00:01:46.780
are closing in on Oklahoma families trying to keep the
21
00:01:46.819 --> 00:01:51.340
lights on and the AC running. The photo is accompanied
22
00:01:51.379 --> 00:01:54.329
by a photograph showing depicting a man asleep in a
23
00:01:54.390 --> 00:01:58.510
recliner covered with a pink blanket, wearing a CPAP mask,
24
00:01:59.049 --> 00:02:02.109
and a woman asleep on a sofa. She's covered with
25
00:02:02.150 --> 00:02:04.920
a light gray blanket and is wearing a nasal cannula,
26
00:02:05.060 --> 00:02:07.680
while a small black and tan dog is sitting on
27
00:02:07.739 --> 00:02:13.659
her lap. The photograph is captioned, Gina Weitz and her husband,
28
00:02:13.740 --> 00:02:16.860
Daryl Mason, confined themselves to their living room to try
29
00:02:16.879 --> 00:02:20.349
to keep their electricity bill down. The article is written
30
00:02:20.389 --> 00:02:24.860
by Eli Saslow. The worst of the heat was just
31
00:02:24.919 --> 00:02:28.490
beginning to lift when Gina White, age 58, walked into
32
00:02:28.530 --> 00:02:31.229
the stubborn Oklahoma sun last month and found the next
33
00:02:31.310 --> 00:02:35.870
emergency waiting in her mailbox. Disconnection notice, the letter began.
34
00:02:36.710 --> 00:02:39.430
She scanned her electric bill and saw a total balance
35
00:02:39.509 --> 00:02:46.620
of $ 1, 340. 96, far more than her monthly income. State rules
36
00:02:46.719 --> 00:02:50.139
prevented the power company from shutting off someone's electricity when
37
00:02:50.180 --> 00:02:53.740
the heat index was above 101 degrees. but now it
38
00:02:53.780 --> 00:02:57.080
had dropped to $ 99 in September, and Weitz had nine
39
00:02:57.120 --> 00:03:00.689
days to pay. She went back inside where the window
40
00:03:00.719 --> 00:03:03.830
shades were drawn and heavy blankets hung across the hallways
41
00:03:03.889 --> 00:03:07.150
and doorways to trap cool air. The house had three
42
00:03:07.189 --> 00:03:10.289
bedrooms and two bathrooms, but for the past several months,
43
00:03:10.430 --> 00:03:14.289
Weitz and her husband, Daryl Mason, had mostly confined themselves
44
00:03:14.340 --> 00:03:17.840
to their 300-square-foot living room, letting the rest of the
45
00:03:17.900 --> 00:03:21.319
house bake to save money on electricity. They had an
46
00:03:21.439 --> 00:03:24.180
air conditioner mounted to the window that rattled all day.
47
00:03:24.939 --> 00:03:27.699
They had her oxygen machine plugged into the wall and
48
00:03:27.759 --> 00:03:30.860
his CPAP machine for sleep apnea hooked up in the corner.
49
00:03:32.479 --> 00:03:35.000
Whites had been sleeping on the couch while Mason slept
50
00:03:35.039 --> 00:03:39.580
in the requiner. Sometimes their grandchildren would pile onto mattresses
51
00:03:39.639 --> 00:03:42.460
in the living room. On the most humid nights, the
52
00:03:42.539 --> 00:03:46.740
heat index outside barely dropped below 85 and their machines
53
00:03:46.800 --> 00:03:49.919
ran until morning. I can't breathe if I don't have
54
00:03:49.960 --> 00:03:53.180
my oxygen, White said as she handed the bill to Mason.
55
00:03:53.840 --> 00:03:57.099
I don't think I'd last a single night. We'd probably
56
00:03:57.159 --> 00:04:00.240
stroke out anyway in all this heat, Mason said. If
57
00:04:00.280 --> 00:04:02.159
we lose this room, we're not going to make it.
58
00:04:03.319 --> 00:04:05.650
As fall sets in across the country, the bill is
59
00:04:05.710 --> 00:04:07.990
coming due for the hottest summer on record in the
60
00:04:08.050 --> 00:04:11.330
United States. The last three months were about three degrees
61
00:04:11.389 --> 00:04:14.310
above average, hotter than the Dust Bowl summer of 1936
62
00:04:14.310 --> 00:04:19.449
and the heat dome of 2021. and tens of millions
63
00:04:19.500 --> 00:04:21.939
of people can't afford to pay for the air conditioning
64
00:04:21.980 --> 00:04:25.180
that helped keep them safe in the deadly heat. About
65
00:04:25.300 --> 00:04:28.180
one in six U.S. households is already behind on its
66
00:04:28.279 --> 00:04:31.959
utility bills, according to federal data. More than a dozen
67
00:04:32.019 --> 00:04:36.240
hot weather states like Arizona, Georgia, Virginia, and Oklahoma restrict
68
00:04:36.259 --> 00:04:40.250
shutoffs during the most dangerous heat, so disconnections tend to
69
00:04:40.329 --> 00:04:43.610
peak in October when a climate crisis turns into a
70
00:04:43.670 --> 00:04:49.379
collection notice. The Public Service Company of Oklahoma PSO, had
71
00:04:49.439 --> 00:04:53.160
disconnected Weitz's power before, so she knew the shutoff notice
72
00:04:53.240 --> 00:04:57.500
wasn't an idle warning. PSO had told customers it was
73
00:04:57.620 --> 00:05:01.750
also facing rising costs for fuel and equipment, for investments
74
00:05:01.810 --> 00:05:05.009
to update an aging power grid, for the rising demands
75
00:05:05.050 --> 00:05:09.310
of extreme weather and new large load customers, including data centers,
76
00:05:09.769 --> 00:05:14.769
being built for artificial intelligence. The company's rates were still
77
00:05:14.810 --> 00:05:18.040
below the national average, and it attributed much of the
78
00:05:18.100 --> 00:05:21.560
summer's higher bills to temperatures that kept air conditioners running
79
00:05:21.620 --> 00:05:25.100
around the clock. Weitz studied her bill and saw she
80
00:05:25.139 --> 00:05:28.029
was paying nearly $ 500 each month to live in a
81
00:05:28.079 --> 00:05:31.910
single room. Turn the lamp off, Daryl, she said. Stop
82
00:05:31.990 --> 00:05:36.449
running the ceiling fan. She'd read on Facebook that power
83
00:05:36.490 --> 00:05:39.589
companies sometimes offered 30 days of relief to people with
84
00:05:39.629 --> 00:05:43.240
serious medical conditions, so she printed a form to bring
85
00:05:43.279 --> 00:05:47.310
to her doctor. Please be advised that a life-threatening situation
86
00:05:47.350 --> 00:05:50.370
does not cause the debt to be forgiven, but merely
87
00:05:50.430 --> 00:05:54.209
postponed to a later date, it read. Their car was
88
00:05:54.250 --> 00:05:56.920
broken down in the driveway, so she boarded a shuttle
89
00:05:56.949 --> 00:05:59.939
bus and looked out the window at the faded brick
90
00:05:59.980 --> 00:06:04.000
buildings of McAllister. It was a town of 18,000 people
91
00:06:04.060 --> 00:06:07.259
built on a coal rush and sustained by an ammunition
92
00:06:07.319 --> 00:06:11.189
plant and the state penitentiary. Weitz had also known it
93
00:06:11.329 --> 00:06:13.850
as a hard place to live, but after five decades,
94
00:06:13.990 --> 00:06:18.250
she also knew almost everyone, including the shuttle driver, Sondra Beck.
95
00:06:19.149 --> 00:06:21.230
Never thought I'd need to see the doctor just to
96
00:06:21.269 --> 00:06:25.889
keep my lights on, Weitz said. I owe $ 700 by Friday,
97
00:06:26.089 --> 00:06:31.170
Beck said. Everybody's getting shut off lately. They had worked
98
00:06:31.189 --> 00:06:33.850
together for several years at a nearby chicken plant where
99
00:06:33.889 --> 00:06:37.350
Beck was a supervisor and Weitz worked on the deboning line.
100
00:06:38.189 --> 00:06:41.149
White had stood in the refrigerated plant and deboned as
101
00:06:41.209 --> 00:06:44.029
many as a dozen birds a minute, hundreds an hour,
102
00:06:44.310 --> 00:06:48.230
thousands in an average 12-hour shift. She dug her fingers
103
00:06:48.290 --> 00:06:51.050
under the meat, peeling each fillet off the ribcage until
104
00:06:51.089 --> 00:06:54.009
her wrists went numb and her fingers swelled inside her gloves.
105
00:06:54.839 --> 00:06:58.160
Now she had arthritis in both hands, two artificial knees,
106
00:06:58.699 --> 00:07:03.600
a damaged back, and $ 860 a month in government disability payments.
107
00:07:04.279 --> 00:07:07.040
She missed her job. She missed the chill of the
108
00:07:07.100 --> 00:07:11.269
factory floor. The shuttle stopped at the clinic. Weitz tried
109
00:07:11.310 --> 00:07:13.930
the front door, but it was locked. A sign on
110
00:07:13.949 --> 00:07:16.939
the window said the office was closed for lunch. She
111
00:07:17.000 --> 00:07:19.240
went back to the shuttle, took out her phone, and
112
00:07:19.300 --> 00:07:23.480
eventually texted her eldest daughter. You know I hate to ask,
113
00:07:23.579 --> 00:07:28.360
she wrote. Weitz's daughter, Sheena Mick, put on a business
114
00:07:28.399 --> 00:07:30.439
suit and a necklace and left home in the dark
115
00:07:30.480 --> 00:07:34.279
to drive to her office in Tulsa. Mick, age 36,
116
00:07:34.279 --> 00:07:36.800
had always believed in showing up early for her job
117
00:07:36.939 --> 00:07:40.589
at Gastek Engineering, but lately she was stretching her hours
118
00:07:40.629 --> 00:07:44.569
from 6 a.m. until early evening. What her bosses attributed
119
00:07:44.610 --> 00:07:48.149
to ambition and work ethic was also basic math. Her
120
00:07:48.290 --> 00:07:52.180
office was air-conditioned and somebody else paid the bill. Her
121
00:07:52.240 --> 00:07:54.699
house had been dangerously hot for much of the summer
122
00:07:54.939 --> 00:07:58.040
as her two aging wall units failed to keep up
123
00:07:58.079 --> 00:08:02.639
with 17 consecutive days of 100-degree heat and high humidity.
124
00:08:03.610 --> 00:08:06.189
She pushed the AC to its limit around the clock
125
00:08:06.250 --> 00:08:09.430
and ran up electric bills of more than $ 500 each month,
126
00:08:10.009 --> 00:08:14.420
but her indoor thermometer barely dipped below 80 degrees. She
127
00:08:14.480 --> 00:08:17.180
set up fans in her bedroom and still awoke sweating
128
00:08:17.220 --> 00:08:20.019
in the night. Once, she tried to cook dinner on
129
00:08:20.060 --> 00:08:23.620
the stove and became dizzy and then nauseated, suffering from
130
00:08:23.660 --> 00:08:26.819
what she believed to be heat stroke. Her boyfriend got
131
00:08:26.839 --> 00:08:29.779
her into the shower and the ice-cold water felt hot
132
00:08:29.819 --> 00:08:33.409
against her skin. She worked in her office until lunch
133
00:08:33.649 --> 00:08:36.730
when she saw a text message from her mother in McAllister.
134
00:08:37.509 --> 00:08:39.980
Mick was already helping to pay for her mother's water
135
00:08:40.019 --> 00:08:42.919
bill and car insurance, and here was a photograph of
136
00:08:42.960 --> 00:08:48.200
her mother's electric bill. These numbers are getting crazy, Weitz wrote.
137
00:08:48.799 --> 00:08:52.629
It's bad here too, Mick wrote. I'm constantly paying for something.
138
00:08:53.190 --> 00:08:56.169
I'm at work right now. You're doing so good, I'm
139
00:08:56.210 --> 00:08:59.529
proud of you. Her mother said it often and to everyone.
140
00:08:59.830 --> 00:09:02.990
her eldest daughter had escaped McAllister and become the town's
141
00:09:03.049 --> 00:09:07.129
most unlikely success story. Mick had dropped out of high school,
142
00:09:07.269 --> 00:09:10.549
run away from home several times, and returned with two
143
00:09:10.610 --> 00:09:14.460
children and a DUI before she turned 18. She lost
144
00:09:14.529 --> 00:09:17.639
years to alcohol and heroin before going into liver failure,
145
00:09:18.159 --> 00:09:20.419
and then she'd walked out of a Tulsa hospital in
146
00:09:20.440 --> 00:09:24.480
her mid-20s and somehow started clawing her way back to
147
00:09:24.500 --> 00:09:28.200
a methadone clinic every day, to a GED, to a
148
00:09:28.240 --> 00:09:32.110
manager's job at IHOP. She signed up for college classes
149
00:09:32.269 --> 00:09:35.169
and went to night school for seven years, earning three
150
00:09:35.190 --> 00:09:40.000
associate degrees and eventually a job at GasTech. She started
151
00:09:40.049 --> 00:09:42.639
in the shop wearing T-shirts and jeans as she helped
152
00:09:42.720 --> 00:09:46.399
build equipment for natural gas plants until a manager noticed
153
00:09:46.440 --> 00:09:49.360
Mick was organizing and running a team like a seasoned boss.
154
00:09:50.159 --> 00:09:52.639
The manager offered Mick a job on the business side,
155
00:09:53.139 --> 00:09:55.909
lent her a wardrobe of professional clothes, and helped her
156
00:09:55.970 --> 00:09:59.409
pay back years' worth of court fines. Now she was
157
00:09:59.470 --> 00:10:03.850
a senior bodyguard in the purchasing department, earning more than $ 80, 000
158
00:10:03.720 --> 00:10:06.720
a year to negotiate deals with suppliers around the world,
159
00:10:07.279 --> 00:10:10.480
with a LinkedIn profile her mother showed off around McAllister.
160
00:10:11.220 --> 00:10:14.909
She had her hair highlighted, her facial piercings removed, her
161
00:10:14.990 --> 00:10:22.070
suit jacket tailored. A results-driven professional, the profile read, But lately,
162
00:10:22.110 --> 00:10:24.110
it seemed to make as if the reward for so
163
00:10:24.149 --> 00:10:27.929
much transformation was more of the same bills, the same stress,
164
00:10:27.950 --> 00:10:31.529
the same debts that kept accumulating as she paid almost $ 1, 500
165
00:10:31.129 --> 00:10:35.340
for her own rent and just as much each month
166
00:10:35.379 --> 00:10:39.240
to help support her family in McAllister. In August, she
167
00:10:39.279 --> 00:10:42.580
made three separate payments to PSO for her own electric bill,
168
00:10:43.159 --> 00:10:51.779
sending $ 150, $ 194, and then $ 101. 42. After she became dizzy
169
00:10:51.799 --> 00:10:54.519
from heat in the kitchen, she borrowed money from an
170
00:10:54.700 --> 00:10:58.120
online lender to buy an extra portable AC unit for $ 379.
171
00:10:58.049 --> 00:11:02.730
The unit cooled parts of the house but drove up
172
00:11:02.850 --> 00:11:07.289
her electricity costs. Now she had another bill from PSO
173
00:11:07.750 --> 00:11:10.169
and she would have to borrow to pay that balance too.
174
00:11:11.289 --> 00:11:13.990
Mick texted her mother with a photo of her own bill, $ 589. 51.
175
00:11:13.870 --> 00:11:22.200
Avoid disconnection, the bill read. Pay at least $ 169. 59 to
176
00:11:23.519 --> 00:11:27.120
keep your power on. I'm paying this every month and
177
00:11:27.159 --> 00:11:30.299
it's still so hot in our house, Mick wrote. That's
178
00:11:30.379 --> 00:11:33.639
way too much, Weitz wrote. Is there anyone else who
179
00:11:33.679 --> 00:11:37.600
can help? Mick asked her. The heat held in the 90s.
180
00:11:38.179 --> 00:11:41.600
The window unit kept rattling in the living room. Weitz
181
00:11:41.639 --> 00:11:44.000
went back to the clinic and had her doctor sign
182
00:11:44.039 --> 00:11:47.429
and mail the medical form, certifying that losing power would
183
00:11:47.470 --> 00:11:51.620
be life-threatening. That bought her another 30 days. But her
184
00:11:51.759 --> 00:11:54.940
oxygen machine kept running and her debt continued to grow.
185
00:11:55.820 --> 00:11:59.000
One afternoon, she showed her electric bill to her daughter-in-law,
186
00:11:59.279 --> 00:12:03.070
Autumn Cooper, age 24. I still don't know what I'm
187
00:12:03.090 --> 00:12:07.250
going to do, White said. Even looking at that number
188
00:12:07.309 --> 00:12:10.169
gives me a heart attack, Cooper said. I'd panic if
189
00:12:10.250 --> 00:12:14.570
I was dealing with those big amounts. Instead of being
190
00:12:14.610 --> 00:12:17.879
billed hundreds of dollars each month, Cooper had switched to
191
00:12:17.919 --> 00:12:20.990
a prepaid plan with PSO so she could make small
192
00:12:21.019 --> 00:12:24.590
payments to her account every few days. As long as
193
00:12:24.649 --> 00:12:27.710
her account had a positive balance, she had power to
194
00:12:27.769 --> 00:12:31.470
cool her house, wash laundry, and cook for her five children.
195
00:12:32.350 --> 00:12:34.830
For the last month, she had been washing dishes by
196
00:12:34.889 --> 00:12:37.549
hand in the dark and still burning through an average
197
00:12:37.620 --> 00:12:42.500
of $ 12. 29 in electricity each day as she monitored her
198
00:12:42.580 --> 00:12:47.559
balance constantly. Whenever it dipped below zero, PSO cut her
199
00:12:47.720 --> 00:12:50.759
off within a few days. She had received more than
200
00:12:50.779 --> 00:12:53.580
a dozen low-balance warnings over the course of the summer.
201
00:12:54.340 --> 00:12:56.700
Now she checked the latest balance on her phone and
202
00:12:56.720 --> 00:13:00.980
showed it to Weitz. $ 2. 46, enough for a few more
203
00:13:01.019 --> 00:13:04.870
hours of power. See, that would stress me out even more,
204
00:13:05.019 --> 00:13:08.870
Weitz said. It's hanging over your head every minute. I
205
00:13:08.889 --> 00:13:11.169
can always come up with a few bucks, Cooper said,
206
00:13:11.509 --> 00:13:14.590
but every day is a hustle. Cooper was going to
207
00:13:14.649 --> 00:13:18.250
school to pursue a nursing certification during the week while
208
00:13:18.289 --> 00:13:21.970
her husband stayed home to care for their children, a six-year-old,
209
00:13:22.129 --> 00:13:26.740
a four-year-old, two-year-old twins, and an infant. On weekends, she
210
00:13:26.769 --> 00:13:29.879
worked back-to-back double shifts at the New Hope Retirement and
211
00:13:29.940 --> 00:13:34.299
Care Center, where she earned $ 16 an hour to bathe, feed,
212
00:13:34.419 --> 00:13:38.080
and change residents in the memory care wing. She scraped
213
00:13:38.120 --> 00:13:41.549
together a little extra money by selling used baby gear online.
214
00:13:42.230 --> 00:13:45.659
borrowing from friends and doing odd jobs for a construction company.
215
00:13:46.519 --> 00:13:49.480
If everything went exactly right, she made just enough to
216
00:13:49.539 --> 00:13:52.899
keep her power on. One day in July, she sent
217
00:13:52.960 --> 00:13:58.769
PSO three separate payments, $ 7. 15 in the morning, $ 3. 65 a
218
00:13:59.289 --> 00:14:04.789
few hours later, and another $ 3. 14 before she went to bed.
219
00:14:06.710 --> 00:14:09.070
She had come to believe that any real solution would
220
00:14:09.090 --> 00:14:11.649
take more than a few dollars at a time. so
221
00:14:11.720 --> 00:14:16.299
she went online to start researching electricity charges. Oklahoma was
222
00:14:16.360 --> 00:14:19.539
emerging as a major hub for data centers, luring companies
223
00:14:19.580 --> 00:14:22.600
like Google and Meta with the promise of tax breaks
224
00:14:22.639 --> 00:14:25.539
and cheap land in an effort to become the high-tech
225
00:14:25.580 --> 00:14:29.450
data center capital of the world, Governor Kevin Stint had
226
00:14:29.529 --> 00:14:34.549
said in 2025. One proposed data center outside McAllister would
227
00:14:34.710 --> 00:14:39.269
use more electricity each week at full capacity than all
228
00:14:39.309 --> 00:14:42.679
the homes in McAllister County. used in an entire year.
229
00:14:43.600 --> 00:14:47.799
PSO was planning to invest $ 1. 2 billion in new power
230
00:14:47.840 --> 00:14:51.539
generation and storage to keep up the rising demands of
231
00:14:51.580 --> 00:14:55.779
a growing population, new homes, and new businesses. A new
232
00:14:55.840 --> 00:14:59.059
state law aimed to make the largest new consumers pay
233
00:14:59.120 --> 00:15:01.879
their share, but some of the costs of adding more
234
00:15:01.940 --> 00:15:07.659
power had already fallen on ordinary customers. PSO had cut
235
00:15:07.740 --> 00:15:12.159
off power 58 times for every 100 residential customers in 2024,
236
00:15:12.159 --> 00:15:16.330
the most recent year with federal data. It was the
237
00:15:16.370 --> 00:15:19.950
highest rate of any investor-owned utility in the country, and
238
00:15:19.990 --> 00:15:22.610
the company said most of those disconnections were on a
239
00:15:22.690 --> 00:15:26.450
small number of prepaid accounts like Cooper's that shut off
240
00:15:26.490 --> 00:15:29.029
when they dipped below zero and then came back on
241
00:15:29.210 --> 00:15:32.929
within minutes of payment, on and then off again, on
242
00:15:33.070 --> 00:15:36.970
then off again. PSO had promised to waive some late
243
00:15:37.009 --> 00:15:40.269
fees on high summer bills and offer extensions and payment plans.
244
00:15:40.950 --> 00:15:43.669
The company had written a public letter to customers saying,
245
00:15:43.830 --> 00:15:47.409
affordability is important and we do not take any change
246
00:15:47.450 --> 00:15:50.809
to customer bills lightly. But Cooper went on social media
247
00:15:50.929 --> 00:15:54.470
and found hundreds of Oklahomans complaining about a similar crisis.
248
00:15:55.389 --> 00:15:58.059
My bill is unreal. I guess I'll just burn up.
249
00:15:58.850 --> 00:16:01.429
I use a flashlight on my phone before I turn
250
00:16:01.450 --> 00:16:04.929
a light on and I pay $ 100 a week. Single
251
00:16:04.970 --> 00:16:07.350
mom here. Cried on the phone with them last week
252
00:16:07.389 --> 00:16:11.049
because mine is so high. My monthly bill is almost $ 900.
253
00:16:10.850 --> 00:16:14.009
I know it's hot, but this is like an AC
254
00:16:14.049 --> 00:16:18.299
bill on Venus. Cooper read through the complaints in mid-September
255
00:16:18.340 --> 00:16:21.379
and started a petition online to demand more affordable and
256
00:16:21.440 --> 00:16:25.820
transparent electric bills. We, the customers of PSO, are speaking up,
257
00:16:25.940 --> 00:16:29.700
she wrote. We want our voices heard and our concerns addressed.
258
00:16:30.580 --> 00:16:33.379
Now she sat in Weitz's living room and checked the
259
00:16:33.399 --> 00:16:37.549
petition on her phone. It had 24 signatures. She switched
260
00:16:37.570 --> 00:16:41.769
to her PSO account. Urgent. Low balance warning, the app read.
261
00:16:42.490 --> 00:16:45.580
Here we go again, Cooper said. I could be waking
262
00:16:45.659 --> 00:16:48.299
up in the dark tomorrow. They might cut you off
263
00:16:48.340 --> 00:16:52.100
before me, Weitz said. Guess I have to figure this out,
264
00:16:52.200 --> 00:16:56.750
Cooper said. They got into Cooper's car and drove into downtown,
265
00:16:56.830 --> 00:16:59.710
passing the cluster of churches that were losing members even
266
00:16:59.789 --> 00:17:03.830
as more people came to their doors for help. Cooper
267
00:17:03.889 --> 00:17:06.509
watched her gas gauge dip below the empty line as
268
00:17:06.549 --> 00:17:09.369
she pulled up to the post office. She had cut
269
00:17:09.490 --> 00:17:12.309
a deal online to sell 30 baby outfits to a
270
00:17:12.329 --> 00:17:15.390
buyer in Texas for a total of $ 10, but she
271
00:17:15.430 --> 00:17:19.230
wouldn't get paid until the clothes arrived. How long until
272
00:17:19.299 --> 00:17:22.319
it gets there, she asked the clerk. Two days, maybe three.
273
00:17:22.980 --> 00:17:26.230
Nothing faster? You could overnight it, but that's not going
274
00:17:26.250 --> 00:17:29.509
to be cheap. Cooper shook her head and went outside.
275
00:17:29.950 --> 00:17:33.450
It's time to get creative, White said. She knew people
276
00:17:33.529 --> 00:17:36.559
in town who hired drivers for odd jobs and businesses
277
00:17:36.599 --> 00:17:39.599
that bought scrap metal or paid cash for gift cards.
278
00:17:40.380 --> 00:17:42.920
She knew all of the aid organizations in town and
279
00:17:42.980 --> 00:17:46.319
how much they gave to whom. Just a few weeks earlier,
280
00:17:46.440 --> 00:17:49.630
she had gotten almost $ 500 in energy assistance from a
281
00:17:49.670 --> 00:17:54.490
federal program for low-income families. Let's try the churches, White said.
282
00:17:55.210 --> 00:17:58.109
I already feel guilty about not going to church, Cooper said.
283
00:17:58.309 --> 00:18:00.690
I don't want to ask for help. You have a
284
00:18:00.710 --> 00:18:04.920
better plan? Cooper stood in the parking lot for a
285
00:18:04.950 --> 00:18:07.900
moment and then got back into the car. They drove
286
00:18:07.940 --> 00:18:11.259
to the charity Shared Blessings, where the administrator said it
287
00:18:11.299 --> 00:18:14.400
had resources to help 10 people with electric bills each month,
288
00:18:15.119 --> 00:18:20.210
and Cooper's request was the 43rd. They continued to All
289
00:18:20.269 --> 00:18:23.250
Saints Episcopal Church, where a woman came outside with her
290
00:18:23.289 --> 00:18:27.549
cell phone pressed to her one ear and waved them away. Sorry,
291
00:18:27.730 --> 00:18:31.029
all else, she said. They walked a few blocks to
292
00:18:31.089 --> 00:18:34.130
Mike's Club, a thrift store where the owner, Mike Brown,
293
00:18:34.230 --> 00:18:37.029
sometimes took money out of his register for families in need.
294
00:18:38.049 --> 00:18:40.750
I've got employees who've had their power cut, Brown said.
295
00:18:40.890 --> 00:18:44.589
The whole town's going dark. I'm sorry, but I just can't.
296
00:18:45.630 --> 00:18:48.059
Cooper thanked him and went back to her car. She
297
00:18:48.119 --> 00:18:50.759
started to drive home, but Weitz pointed to a building
298
00:18:50.819 --> 00:18:55.220
up the street. Last stop, she said. Cooper groaned but
299
00:18:55.279 --> 00:18:58.119
then turned into the parking lot for First Baptist Church.
300
00:18:58.579 --> 00:19:00.680
A woman at the front desk greeted them with two
301
00:19:00.720 --> 00:19:03.779
bottles of water and a package of snack foods. Let
302
00:19:03.799 --> 00:19:07.900
me guess. Electric bill, she said. I really just need
303
00:19:08.059 --> 00:19:11.660
maybe $ 10, $ 20 to keep my lights on, Cooper said.
304
00:19:12.579 --> 00:19:14.440
I get it, the woman said. Let me talk to
305
00:19:14.460 --> 00:19:19.089
the pastor. Cooper and Weitz waited as she disappeared into
306
00:19:19.130 --> 00:19:21.569
the back of the church. A few minutes later, the
307
00:19:21.609 --> 00:19:24.789
pastor came out to the lobby, shaking his head. My
308
00:19:24.829 --> 00:19:28.450
bill last month was $ 1, 800, and I live in a double-wide,
309
00:19:28.529 --> 00:19:31.339
he said. We are all out for the day. Will
310
00:19:31.359 --> 00:19:34.599
you try us again? Sure, Cooper said. I'll be in
311
00:19:34.640 --> 00:19:38.500
the same situation tomorrow. She drove back to Weitz's house,
312
00:19:38.660 --> 00:19:42.420
parked out front, and checked her account. To prevent disconnection,
313
00:19:42.480 --> 00:19:46.130
please make a payment immediately, the app read. The kids
314
00:19:46.190 --> 00:19:48.309
might stay over here with you for a few nights,
315
00:19:48.390 --> 00:19:51.759
Cooper said. Of course. White said, and they walked through
316
00:19:51.779 --> 00:19:54.579
the dark house, past the hanging blankets, and back into
317
00:19:54.619 --> 00:19:58.240
the living room. The next article from the front page
318
00:19:58.279 --> 00:20:02.009
of today's edition is entitled, Republicans in Ohio are worried
319
00:20:02.049 --> 00:20:05.769
about turnout. Here's what they're doing about it. To boost
320
00:20:05.809 --> 00:20:08.650
Senator John Husted, who is in a tight race to
321
00:20:08.710 --> 00:20:11.630
keep his seat, some Republicans who were making a jobs
322
00:20:11.750 --> 00:20:16.680
pitch have pivoted to focus on socialism, by Emily Davies.
323
00:20:17.819 --> 00:20:20.559
Just two volunteers showed up on a recent weekday at
324
00:20:20.599 --> 00:20:24.960
a Republican Party campaign office near Cleveland that in 2024
325
00:20:24.960 --> 00:20:28.450
was brimming with activity every night. One of the two,
326
00:20:28.990 --> 00:20:34.259
Tanya Karabanov, age 54, sat among stacks of untouched yard
327
00:20:34.319 --> 00:20:37.240
signs and brainstormed new ways to convince her neighbors to
328
00:20:37.299 --> 00:20:41.680
vote for Republican candidates, such as Senator John Husted, who
329
00:20:41.740 --> 00:20:44.960
was appointed in 2025 to finish the term of Vice
330
00:20:45.019 --> 00:20:49.910
President J.D. Vance. Her most recent idea, stuffing chocolate bars
331
00:20:50.069 --> 00:20:54.210
into goodie bags with leftover campaign literature. This is really
332
00:20:54.230 --> 00:20:58.150
a weird cycle, said Ms. Karabanov's. who recalled at least
333
00:20:58.150 --> 00:21:02.890
30 volunteers packing into the office each day in 2024.
334
00:21:02.890 --> 00:21:06.430
There's no way to feel confident about any of the races, honestly.
335
00:21:07.240 --> 00:21:10.480
Many of the Republican volunteers trying to keep Ohio's Senate
336
00:21:10.619 --> 00:21:14.119
seat red started the summer making the case that, despite
337
00:21:14.200 --> 00:21:17.619
rising prices, Mr. Husted was better suited to fix the
338
00:21:17.700 --> 00:21:22.299
economy than his Democratic challenger, the former Senator Sherrod Brown.
339
00:21:22.960 --> 00:21:25.609
But when it became clear that the message wasn't landing,
340
00:21:25.670 --> 00:21:30.319
they began to pivot. Some, like Ms. Karabanov's, got creative.
341
00:21:30.859 --> 00:21:35.079
The Political Pack for Americans for Prosperity, a prominent conservative
342
00:21:35.279 --> 00:21:38.880
advocacy group that deploys thousands of door knockers across the state,
343
00:21:39.559 --> 00:21:43.140
switched its script to the threat of socialism, and organizers
344
00:21:43.220 --> 00:21:49.430
quickly noticed a difference. I wouldn't like that, said Nikki Kvetokovic,
345
00:21:49.769 --> 00:21:54.609
age 77, after opening her door in working-class suburb of Youngstown,
346
00:21:55.119 --> 00:21:57.690
and inspecting a pamphlet with a picture of Brown next
347
00:21:57.730 --> 00:22:01.829
to the words, socialism threatens your freedom. She said she
348
00:22:01.869 --> 00:22:05.630
would cast her ballot for Mr. Husted. Polls have shown Mr.
349
00:22:05.690 --> 00:22:08.349
Brown running ahead of Mr. Husted in one of the
350
00:22:08.390 --> 00:22:12.769
most closely watched races of this cycle. But many conservatives
351
00:22:12.829 --> 00:22:14.970
across the state believe they can pull off in the
352
00:22:15.029 --> 00:22:18.549
final two weeks that Republicans have done better than Democrats
353
00:22:18.589 --> 00:22:22.880
for the last 10 years, defy expectations on Election Day.
354
00:22:23.769 --> 00:22:27.950
The modern-day Republican Party is built on upsets. Twice, polls
355
00:22:27.990 --> 00:22:31.670
showed Mr. Trump losing the presidential election only for him
356
00:22:31.730 --> 00:22:36.680
to triumph, cementing the MAGA movement's staying power and underdog status.
357
00:22:37.539 --> 00:22:40.099
The question now is whether the GOP can do it
358
00:22:40.180 --> 00:22:42.599
again at a time when Mr. Trump is not on
359
00:22:42.619 --> 00:22:47.500
the ballot and his popularity is historically low. The answer
360
00:22:47.559 --> 00:22:51.579
lies on the ground in unexpected battlegrounds, including Iowa and Ohio,
361
00:22:51.599 --> 00:22:54.759
where which have swung to the right over the last
362
00:22:54.799 --> 00:22:57.640
decade but this year have shown signs of shifting back.
363
00:22:58.519 --> 00:23:01.220
In these states, as the Republican Party has struggled to
364
00:23:01.259 --> 00:23:05.259
defend Mr. Trump's handling of inflation, the war with Iran
365
00:23:05.319 --> 00:23:09.740
and tariff policies, local campaigns and committees have leaned into
366
00:23:09.980 --> 00:23:14.549
depicting Democrats as dangerously far to the left, a last-ditch
367
00:23:14.589 --> 00:23:17.470
gambit to persuade their voters not to stay home or
368
00:23:17.549 --> 00:23:23.420
break the other way. In a historically expensive midterm cycle,
369
00:23:23.880 --> 00:23:27.309
the Republican Party apparatus has poured more money into Ohio's
370
00:23:27.329 --> 00:23:30.890
Senate race than all but one other contest, spending more
371
00:23:30.950 --> 00:23:35.990
than $ 277 million as of Saturday, according to Ad Impact.
372
00:23:36.769 --> 00:23:38.809
At least a third of that spending has gone toward
373
00:23:38.849 --> 00:23:42.700
negative advertisements about Mr. Brown, many of which depict him
374
00:23:42.799 --> 00:23:45.460
as part of the far-left wing of the Democratic Party.
375
00:23:46.319 --> 00:23:49.940
At Mr. Trump's rally in Youngstown on Monday, He called Mr.
376
00:23:49.980 --> 00:23:54.130
Brown the candidate of the Marxists, the communists, the anti-American
377
00:23:54.190 --> 00:23:57.950
radicals who want to tear down America's heritage. It may
378
00:23:58.190 --> 00:24:02.470
not be enough. President Max Miller, one of President Trump's
379
00:24:02.509 --> 00:24:05.269
closest allies in the House who has been besieged by
380
00:24:05.369 --> 00:24:09.410
allegations of domestic violence against his young daughter and ex-wife,
381
00:24:10.130 --> 00:24:12.750
came out against the war in Iran on Wednesday night
382
00:24:12.789 --> 00:24:15.910
during a meet-and-greet at a pub in Parma, a union
383
00:24:15.970 --> 00:24:21.900
town south of Cleveland. National Republicans have withdrawn campaign funds
384
00:24:21.940 --> 00:24:25.420
from Ohio's 1st Congressional District, where they had hoped to
385
00:24:25.559 --> 00:24:30.789
unseat a Democrat. And a Republican National Committee operative circulated
386
00:24:31.009 --> 00:24:34.450
an email this week with data from Ohio showing Democrats
387
00:24:34.589 --> 00:24:39.490
outperforming Republicans in early vote, absentee votes, and ballot requests
388
00:24:39.529 --> 00:24:42.119
compared with 2022 and 2018, according to an email reviewed
389
00:24:42.160 --> 00:24:50.309
by the Times. Democrats in Ohio remain optimistic about returning Mr.
390
00:24:50.349 --> 00:24:53.589
Brown to the Senate, mostly because of Mr. Trump's low
391
00:24:53.630 --> 00:24:58.150
approval rating and the deteriorating economy, but they also have
392
00:24:58.210 --> 00:25:02.210
benefited from Mr. Husted's struggle to introduce himself to voters
393
00:25:02.230 --> 00:25:06.430
since he took office 21 months ago. A former lieutenant
394
00:25:06.470 --> 00:25:10.250
governor and member of the House known for his outward reserve, Mr.
395
00:25:10.289 --> 00:25:13.910
Husted has tethered himself for much of the year to Mr. Trump,
396
00:25:14.500 --> 00:25:18.099
but he has also spent significant time describing his biography,
397
00:25:18.599 --> 00:25:21.359
including his time as a college football player and his
398
00:25:21.440 --> 00:25:24.769
upbringing as the son of a local factory worker focused
399
00:25:24.869 --> 00:25:29.170
on bringing jobs to the state. Republicans, including Mr. Husted,
400
00:25:29.269 --> 00:25:32.970
are bracing for narrow margins on Election Day. We have
401
00:25:32.990 --> 00:25:35.190
a tough race, there is no doubt about that, Mr.
402
00:25:35.250 --> 00:25:38.230
Husted said at an event last week at a GOP
403
00:25:38.279 --> 00:25:42.630
field office in Mahoning County. which sprawls across three units
404
00:25:42.690 --> 00:25:45.029
of a strip mall in a region that once powered
405
00:25:45.069 --> 00:25:51.559
the country's steel industry. Midterm elections are tough. Mr. Husted
406
00:25:51.599 --> 00:25:53.759
had drawn a full house to the outpost in the
407
00:25:53.799 --> 00:25:58.119
Youngstown area, with supporters crammed between a plaque celebrating the
408
00:25:58.160 --> 00:26:01.799
Second Amendment and boxes of pizza. The crowd cheered when
409
00:26:01.819 --> 00:26:04.849
he took the lectern. As he spoke, rows of people
410
00:26:04.930 --> 00:26:07.630
nodded along and held up their phones to snap pictures.
411
00:26:08.549 --> 00:26:11.690
Find someone you haven't talked to in a while. Call them, Mr.
412
00:26:11.730 --> 00:26:14.789
Husted continued. You tell them I told you to call
413
00:26:14.829 --> 00:26:17.130
and ask them to vote. Tell them that you spent
414
00:26:17.190 --> 00:26:20.730
time with me. Sitting in a plastic chair and listening
415
00:26:20.809 --> 00:26:23.640
along was Doris Layfield, who works at the Board of
416
00:26:23.710 --> 00:26:27.140
Elections in Mahoning County. She said she had knocked on
417
00:26:27.180 --> 00:26:29.680
doors for Mr. Husted and that she had liked what
418
00:26:29.720 --> 00:26:33.240
he said in person. Honestly, it's really kind of scary,
419
00:26:33.299 --> 00:26:35.859
she said. If he doesn't win, I really do feel
420
00:26:35.900 --> 00:26:39.980
like we will be living under communist rule. Mr. Brown,
421
00:26:40.039 --> 00:26:43.380
who was defeated in 2024 after three terms in the Senate,
422
00:26:44.079 --> 00:26:47.089
lost Mahoning County for the first time that year. The
423
00:26:47.109 --> 00:26:52.049
margin was just 220 votes. He is aware that his
424
00:26:52.130 --> 00:26:54.650
victory is far from assured in a state that Mr.
425
00:26:54.690 --> 00:26:58.109
Trump won by 11 percentage points the same year he
426
00:26:58.170 --> 00:27:01.849
was unseated. He also seems to know that Republican claims
427
00:27:01.910 --> 00:27:06.480
that he's a radical could resonate among Ohio's increasingly conservative voters.
428
00:27:07.460 --> 00:27:10.279
He cut one ad, for instance, that responded to attacks
429
00:27:10.319 --> 00:27:18.250
from his opponent and an Elon Musk-backed PAC regarding transgender issues. Mostly, though, Mr.
430
00:27:18.309 --> 00:27:21.670
Brown is running on the same progressive populism that has
431
00:27:21.730 --> 00:27:26.349
defined his political career since the 1970s. In speeches at
432
00:27:26.509 --> 00:27:30.039
union halls, Mr. Brown talks about how the economy is rigged,
433
00:27:30.559 --> 00:27:34.140
says Congress is controlled by insider trading, and describes Mr.
434
00:27:34.180 --> 00:27:37.869
Husted as a special interest guy in Washington, who is
435
00:27:37.930 --> 00:27:42.369
detached from working-class people. He has also targeted Mr. Husted
436
00:27:42.430 --> 00:27:46.339
for his support for investments in data centers while he
437
00:27:46.390 --> 00:27:49.960
served in state government. Aware of the resonance of the
438
00:27:50.019 --> 00:27:53.200
issue in Ohio, Mr. Husted sponsored a bill that passed
439
00:27:53.240 --> 00:27:56.559
in the House last month that encourages states to make
440
00:27:56.680 --> 00:28:00.079
data centers pay for higher energy costs, though it would
441
00:28:00.140 --> 00:28:04.200
not compel them to do so. Back in the Youngstown area,
442
00:28:04.400 --> 00:28:08.019
Donovan O'Neill, a senior advisor in Ohio for Americans for
443
00:28:08.079 --> 00:28:11.759
Prosperity's political pack, walked up to a house with an
444
00:28:11.819 --> 00:28:17.140
American flag hanging from its porch. Barb Delaney, age 65,
445
00:28:17.140 --> 00:28:20.980
a part-time bookkeeper, answered. Are you planning to vote? Mr.
446
00:28:21.069 --> 00:28:25.369
O'Neill asked. Oh, hell yes, said Ms. Delaney, who was
447
00:28:25.430 --> 00:28:30.609
wearing a Detroit Lions t-shirt for Sherrod. Mr. O'Neill was
448
00:28:30.710 --> 00:28:33.130
not ready to walk away. He said he'd like to
449
00:28:33.269 --> 00:28:38.150
ask Ms. Delaney, a self-identified Democrat, a follow-up question. Are
450
00:28:38.190 --> 00:28:41.809
there concerns for you with the rise of socialism, the
451
00:28:41.849 --> 00:28:46.559
Democrat Socialists of America? There were some, she said, but Ms.
452
00:28:46.579 --> 00:28:49.900
Delaney was far more incensed this year about data centers,
453
00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:53.740
and she blamed Mr. Husted. Because of a nearby development,
454
00:28:53.799 --> 00:28:56.900
she said, her energy bill, which includes heat for her pool,
455
00:28:57.460 --> 00:28:58.759
had surged from $ 200 a month to almost $ 500 a
456
00:29:01.650 --> 00:29:04.079
by far the highest it had been in the 28
457
00:29:04.079 --> 00:29:07.579
years she had lived in her current home. My electric
458
00:29:07.640 --> 00:29:12.420
bill is skyrocketing, she said. Nobody wants data centers around. Then,
459
00:29:12.519 --> 00:29:15.819
referring to Mr. Husted, she added, I will not vote
460
00:29:15.839 --> 00:29:19.549
for that man. I would never. Mr. O'Neill listened, and
461
00:29:19.630 --> 00:29:22.490
after a few more attempts to engage her, he continued
462
00:29:22.529 --> 00:29:26.349
down the block. The next article from the front page
463
00:29:26.390 --> 00:29:30.240
of today's edition is entitled, France's far right seizes the
464
00:29:30.279 --> 00:29:34.990
moment as rioting stuns the country. The national rally, already
465
00:29:35.049 --> 00:29:38.009
ahead in the polls, presented itself as the party best
466
00:29:38.069 --> 00:29:43.039
placed to restore law and order. By Catherine Porter. After
467
00:29:43.119 --> 00:29:47.259
riots erupted this weekend in cities across France, its centrist
468
00:29:47.440 --> 00:29:51.539
government blamed the main far-left party, accusing its politicians of
469
00:29:51.619 --> 00:29:55.940
inciting the violence. That party blamed the government, accusing it
470
00:29:56.039 --> 00:29:59.940
of stirring public anger through years of bad governance and
471
00:30:00.039 --> 00:30:04.849
heavy-handed policing. What did the main far-right party do? It
472
00:30:04.900 --> 00:30:08.769
blamed both and launched into campaign mode. We are paying
473
00:30:08.789 --> 00:30:11.990
for decades of being soft on crime, of weak authority,
474
00:30:12.289 --> 00:30:16.250
of the moral, psychological, and material disarmament of our internal
475
00:30:16.349 --> 00:30:21.490
security forces, Jordan Bardella, the president of the far-right National
476
00:30:21.549 --> 00:30:25.690
Rally Party, said after emerging from a police station in
477
00:30:25.730 --> 00:30:28.890
central Paris on Sunday. He said he had gone there
478
00:30:29.089 --> 00:30:33.859
to support police officers. Then he addressed France's honest citizens,
479
00:30:34.059 --> 00:30:37.079
who were stunned on Sunday by the smashed storefronts and
480
00:30:37.119 --> 00:30:41.980
burned-out businesses destroyed by rioters the night before. He said
481
00:30:42.019 --> 00:30:45.559
they had a vital role to play in reinstating national stability,
482
00:30:46.160 --> 00:30:48.470
and that would be by voting in the coming election
483
00:30:48.509 --> 00:30:51.769
for his party. People need to wake up now, Mr.
484
00:30:51.809 --> 00:30:55.269
Bardella said. They need to make the right political choices.
485
00:30:55.700 --> 00:30:58.180
and in any case, we stand ready to restore order
486
00:30:58.240 --> 00:31:01.710
in the country. Sunday was a day of mourning, shock,
487
00:31:01.809 --> 00:31:06.029
and finger-pointing in France. The day before, huge peaceful protests
488
00:31:06.069 --> 00:31:09.750
for better school conditions and against rising living costs were
489
00:31:09.869 --> 00:31:15.450
overshadowed by black-clad and often-masked agitators of unclear affiliation who
490
00:31:15.509 --> 00:31:19.950
attacked government buildings and shops across the country, sometimes stealing
491
00:31:20.029 --> 00:31:24.309
wine or electronics. For the national rally, which bills itself
492
00:31:24.430 --> 00:31:26.490
as the party of law and order as well as
493
00:31:26.529 --> 00:31:30.970
an advocate for expelling unauthorized immigrants, Sunday was also a
494
00:31:31.009 --> 00:31:34.710
day of political opportunity. It is six months before a
495
00:31:34.799 --> 00:31:40.140
presidential election that the party's candidate, Marine Le Pen, is
496
00:31:40.200 --> 00:31:44.779
the favorite to win. The picture of France emerging this morning,
497
00:31:44.940 --> 00:31:47.769
in light of all the destruction, plays well into their hands,
498
00:31:48.309 --> 00:31:53.799
said Bruno Cotteres, a political scientist at Sciences Po, a
499
00:31:54.099 --> 00:31:58.059
university in Paris. We can clearly see that the national
500
00:31:58.119 --> 00:32:01.500
rally is not a loser here. Ms. Le Pen has
501
00:32:01.559 --> 00:32:05.839
tried to detoxify the party, forcing out its founder, her father,
502
00:32:06.000 --> 00:32:10.769
Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was notorious for making racist, homophobic,
503
00:32:10.910 --> 00:32:15.569
and anti-Semitic comments. But the party has never entirely disavowed him.
504
00:32:16.190 --> 00:32:19.509
Many of its candidates have made racist or anti-Semitic remarks,
505
00:32:20.069 --> 00:32:23.930
and France's top judges have maintained its formal designation as
506
00:32:23.990 --> 00:32:28.440
a far-right party. The party's approach to the riots mirror
507
00:32:28.500 --> 00:32:31.920
how far-right groups across Europe are presenting themselves as the
508
00:32:31.960 --> 00:32:36.579
solution to different kinds of social and governmental challenges. In July,
509
00:32:37.099 --> 00:32:40.220
Spain's government briefly lost control of the borders of its
510
00:32:40.279 --> 00:32:44.589
Spanish territory in North Africa, allowing a surge of migrants
511
00:32:44.670 --> 00:32:49.009
and handing the country's far-right party, Vox, a new issue
512
00:32:49.049 --> 00:32:53.630
to campaign on. In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany party,
513
00:32:54.089 --> 00:32:58.349
or AFD, is leading national polls, in part by channeling
514
00:32:58.490 --> 00:33:03.170
anxiety over the country's identity. In France this week, Mr.
515
00:33:03.210 --> 00:33:07.559
Bardella criticized the government's policing. Ms. Le Pen seized the
516
00:33:07.599 --> 00:33:12.079
moment to criticize Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the main
517
00:33:12.140 --> 00:33:16.380
far-left party, France Unbowed, and one of her main rivals
518
00:33:16.440 --> 00:33:20.630
for the presidency. She said legitimate social demands had been
519
00:33:20.690 --> 00:33:24.170
hijacked by the far left and the rhetoric of Jean-Luc
520
00:33:24.250 --> 00:33:28.380
Mélenchon and his colleagues, whom she accused of fostering chaos
521
00:33:28.440 --> 00:33:33.980
by legitimizing violence, an accusation that the party denies. The
522
00:33:34.039 --> 00:33:37.000
riots arrived at a sensitive time in France, with the
523
00:33:37.059 --> 00:33:40.829
country already dealing with a daunting budget deficit and a
524
00:33:40.910 --> 00:33:45.019
deadlocked parliament in which no party has a majority. The
525
00:33:45.059 --> 00:33:48.140
far right are sure to gain from this, said Alexis Veller,
526
00:33:48.339 --> 00:33:52.440
age 53, a filmmaker who stopped his motorcycle on Sunday
527
00:33:52.500 --> 00:33:56.359
morning to take photos of a broken storefront windows and
528
00:33:56.420 --> 00:34:00.500
tagged walls in central Paris. We are a very fractured country,
529
00:34:00.559 --> 00:34:05.240
he said. The situation is very, very worrying. Political analysts
530
00:34:05.359 --> 00:34:07.859
cautioned that the six months until the election is a
531
00:34:07.900 --> 00:34:12.010
long time in politics and that voters' motivations are complex
532
00:34:12.090 --> 00:34:16.010
and rarely focused on a single issue. Still, the violence
533
00:34:16.090 --> 00:34:19.230
perfectly aligned with the image the national rally has long
534
00:34:19.269 --> 00:34:23.440
painted of a France divided into two and battling for survival,
535
00:34:23.500 --> 00:34:28.239
said Vincent Martindy, a political science professor at the University
536
00:34:28.280 --> 00:34:32.179
of Nice-Côte d'Azur. The party has portrayed the country as
537
00:34:32.219 --> 00:34:35.360
split between the France of the city centers, filled with
538
00:34:35.400 --> 00:34:38.889
woke students and rioters, it says, and the good France
539
00:34:39.050 --> 00:34:43.190
in the quiet countryside, he said. They try to oppose
540
00:34:43.269 --> 00:34:46.809
these two Frances for an obvious reason, because their electorate
541
00:34:46.909 --> 00:34:50.070
is not in the city centers nor in the suburbs.
542
00:34:50.269 --> 00:34:53.550
They are clearly in this other France, Mr. Martin Guy said,
543
00:34:54.110 --> 00:34:58.389
adding that this fuels the feeling decay of decline. Whether
544
00:34:58.429 --> 00:35:01.610
the unrest offers a long-term bump in the national rally's
545
00:35:01.730 --> 00:35:05.989
fortunes will depend in part on if the protests continue,
546
00:35:06.050 --> 00:35:09.750
he said. On Sunday evening, Ms. Le Pen released a
547
00:35:09.769 --> 00:35:12.489
video address in which she painted this very picture of
548
00:35:12.530 --> 00:35:16.179
a divided France. She was filmed sitting behind a wooden
549
00:35:16.219 --> 00:35:20.000
desk with the French flag behind her, hands clasped, the
550
00:35:20.099 --> 00:35:24.300
image of a president in waiting. I condemn the hijacking
551
00:35:24.420 --> 00:35:27.530
of this anger by thugs who are sowing chaos in
552
00:35:27.570 --> 00:35:30.969
the cities of France, she said. In six months, she said,
553
00:35:31.070 --> 00:35:33.630
the French people will be able to choose a different path,
554
00:35:34.210 --> 00:35:38.400
that of a restored authority and security. The national rally
555
00:35:38.440 --> 00:35:42.280
supports a bigger, stronger police force and campaigned in legislative
556
00:35:42.340 --> 00:35:47.000
elections in 2024 for mandatory minimum sentences and an end
557
00:35:47.039 --> 00:35:51.159
to reduced sentences as well as building more prisons. It
558
00:35:51.199 --> 00:35:53.989
also pledged to lower the age when defendants can be
559
00:35:54.030 --> 00:35:57.929
tried as adults by two years to 16 and to
560
00:35:57.989 --> 00:36:02.590
cut state subsidies to the parents of juvenile criminals. Since
561
00:36:02.630 --> 00:36:05.909
the current wave of protests broke out in working-class suburban
562
00:36:05.929 --> 00:36:10.000
high schools, Mr. Bardella has condemned students causing damage to
563
00:36:10.059 --> 00:36:14.239
schools and expressed support for police officers injured in confrontations
564
00:36:14.300 --> 00:36:21.309
with protesters. Across the Atlantic, President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance,
565
00:36:21.730 --> 00:36:24.449
who have both expressed support for Ms. Le Pen in
566
00:36:24.489 --> 00:36:27.070
the past, weighed in on the unrest in ways that
567
00:36:27.230 --> 00:36:31.809
amplified the national rally's critiques. Though the identities of the
568
00:36:31.869 --> 00:36:36.340
black-clad and masked rioters are largely unknown, the American leaders
569
00:36:36.409 --> 00:36:40.730
portrayed the unrest as caused by immigrants. Francis Bernie, Mr.
570
00:36:40.769 --> 00:36:44.130
Trump said on social media, the immigration of people from
571
00:36:44.190 --> 00:36:48.469
an entirely different world, people with hatred in their hearts,
572
00:36:48.610 --> 00:36:52.030
has shattered that once great country. Close your borders and
573
00:36:52.070 --> 00:36:55.489
take control before it's too late. Mr. Vance blamed the
574
00:36:55.530 --> 00:36:59.010
violence on Western liberals who imported the third world into
575
00:36:59.070 --> 00:37:02.230
France and other countries in the name of diversity and compassion.
576
00:37:03.079 --> 00:37:08.280
They ignored fundamental questions of assimilation and compatibility. He added,
577
00:37:08.900 --> 00:37:11.760
I hope Americans are paying attention. This is the future
578
00:37:11.840 --> 00:37:16.739
congressional Democrats seek for your country. Given how unpopular Mr.
579
00:37:16.800 --> 00:37:20.199
Trump's government is in France, it was not clear whether
580
00:37:20.440 --> 00:37:24.340
those messages would help or hinder the national rally. At
581
00:37:24.380 --> 00:37:27.909
the police station on Sunday, Mr. Bardella was confronted by
582
00:37:27.969 --> 00:37:33.099
the area's green lawnmaker, Poria Amershahi, who was touring his
583
00:37:33.179 --> 00:37:37.679
constituency wearing the tricolor sash of an elected official. It
584
00:37:37.719 --> 00:37:40.539
was scandalous, he said, that while he was working, Mr.
585
00:37:40.579 --> 00:37:44.590
Bardella was out campaigning. They spend their time, as you
586
00:37:44.610 --> 00:37:48.010
can see, rubbing their hands together over this violence as
587
00:37:48.110 --> 00:37:52.969
if their time has come, Mr. Amrashid said. Mr. Amrashid
588
00:37:53.289 --> 00:37:56.570
then turned to the camera. We in France should unite,
589
00:37:56.630 --> 00:37:58.849
he said. We should stand together in the face of
590
00:37:58.889 --> 00:38:01.889
the challenge ahead of us, and not fall into this
591
00:38:01.969 --> 00:38:05.230
pattern of division and this pornography of violence that seems
592
00:38:05.269 --> 00:38:09.550
to excite him right now. But Mr. Bardella wasn't listening.
593
00:38:10.050 --> 00:38:13.869
He had already hopped into a car and left. The
594
00:38:13.909 --> 00:38:16.719
next article from the front page of today's edition is entitled,
595
00:38:17.380 --> 00:38:20.780
How Top Trump Officials Stoked Fears of a Nuke That
596
00:38:20.820 --> 00:38:24.039
Could Fry the Power Grid. For more than a decade,
597
00:38:24.099 --> 00:38:28.079
conservative activists held that a single atomic bomb could, without
598
00:38:28.139 --> 00:38:32.510
killing Americans directly, Lay Waste to the Country, a Claim
599
00:38:32.550 --> 00:38:36.150
that Built Fervor for War with Iran by William J.
600
00:38:36.250 --> 00:38:41.420
Broad In his first term, President Trump signed an executive
601
00:38:41.539 --> 00:38:45.119
order directing federal agencies to defend the United States against
602
00:38:45.179 --> 00:38:49.260
an unusual type of nuclear strike that his advisers warned
603
00:38:49.300 --> 00:38:53.110
could shatter the power grid, wipe out critical infrastructure, and
604
00:38:53.190 --> 00:38:56.900
lead to a national collapse. Such an attack, caused by
605
00:38:56.940 --> 00:39:00.139
the detonation of a nuclear warhead miles above the Earth,
606
00:39:00.719 --> 00:39:04.119
would not have the power to kill people directly. Instead,
607
00:39:04.320 --> 00:39:07.119
it would create an enormous surge of energy known as
608
00:39:07.159 --> 00:39:12.590
an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, able to fry anything electrical
609
00:39:12.769 --> 00:39:16.929
on the ground below. Detonated at the right height and location,
610
00:39:17.309 --> 00:39:22.099
say 250 miles above Omaha, the impact might zap the
611
00:39:22.139 --> 00:39:26.010
computers of every modern car and airplane trash the nation's
612
00:39:26.050 --> 00:39:30.809
food supply, short out all telecommunications, do in the banking
613
00:39:30.849 --> 00:39:35.670
system and plunge the country into indeterminate darkness. For more
614
00:39:35.710 --> 00:39:40.510
than a decade, a movement, largely among conservatives, raised awareness
615
00:39:40.710 --> 00:39:43.630
of such a threat, culminating in Mr. Trump's 2019 executive order.
616
00:39:45.739 --> 00:39:48.340
Many of the most ardent voices in that movement are
617
00:39:48.380 --> 00:39:52.659
now members of the current administration, including Pete Hegseth, the
618
00:39:52.679 --> 00:39:57.570
Defense Secretary, J.D. Vance, the Vice President, John Ratcliffe, the
619
00:39:57.610 --> 00:40:02.030
CIA Director, and Mike Huckabee, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel.
620
00:40:03.110 --> 00:40:07.329
Those very administration officials who long warned about EMP and
621
00:40:07.389 --> 00:40:11.269
tied it to an Iranian bomb also advised Mr. Trump
622
00:40:11.369 --> 00:40:15.110
on going to war with Iran. But, strikingly, in eight
623
00:40:15.150 --> 00:40:18.150
months of conflict and many explanations about the reasons for
624
00:40:18.210 --> 00:40:23.000
attacking Iran, no official has publicly mentioned EMP or invoked
625
00:40:23.039 --> 00:40:26.440
it as a rationale. The White House, when asked if
626
00:40:26.500 --> 00:40:30.739
the administration discussed the possibility of an Iranian EMP strike
627
00:40:30.800 --> 00:40:34.409
before launching the war, did not answer the question directly.
628
00:40:35.929 --> 00:40:39.030
President Trump will never allow Iran to pose a nuclear
629
00:40:39.070 --> 00:40:42.150
threat to the United States, Anna Kelly said. a White
630
00:40:42.289 --> 00:40:46.309
House spokeswoman said in a statement. The president will never
631
00:40:46.409 --> 00:40:50.130
allow a terrorist regime that has chanted death to America
632
00:40:50.250 --> 00:40:54.369
to harm our homeland. But for scientists and other experts,
633
00:40:55.090 --> 00:41:01.539
EMP poses a different question. Is the threat real? National
634
00:41:01.579 --> 00:41:06.940
security experts often dismiss the EMP alarms as fear-mongering. They
635
00:41:06.980 --> 00:41:10.489
consider such an attack unrealistic given that an aggressor would
636
00:41:10.530 --> 00:41:15.170
very likely face the prospect of deadly retaliation. And scientists
637
00:41:15.210 --> 00:41:19.860
caution that, while technically plausible, a successful attack would require
638
00:41:19.909 --> 00:41:22.500
not only a bomb far more advanced than what the
639
00:41:22.579 --> 00:41:26.239
Iranians appear to have been seeking, but also a precision
640
00:41:26.280 --> 00:41:31.019
detonation aligned with a tangle of environmental factors. Newt Gingrich,
641
00:41:31.239 --> 00:41:34.860
a former House Speaker and godfather of the EMP movement,
642
00:41:35.480 --> 00:41:38.679
scoffs at that kind of skepticism, having worked for decades
643
00:41:38.719 --> 00:41:42.570
to call public attention to the threat. In an interview, Mr.
644
00:41:42.610 --> 00:41:47.429
Gingrich said the EMP activists were not alarmists, but realists
645
00:41:47.489 --> 00:41:51.250
who understood that a single EMP bomb could instantly turn
646
00:41:51.309 --> 00:41:55.690
America into a wasteland. When asked if Mr. Trump comprehended
647
00:41:55.730 --> 00:42:01.969
the Pulse issue, Mr. Gingrich replied, he understands. Frying Modern Life.
648
00:42:03.250 --> 00:42:08.190
As a phenomenon, EMP first materialized in 1962 when the U.S.
649
00:42:08.230 --> 00:42:10.820
military announced that it would, in the dead of night,
650
00:42:11.360 --> 00:42:16.420
high above the Pacific Ocean, detonate a hydrogen bomb. In Honolulu,
651
00:42:16.539 --> 00:42:19.920
hotels held rooftop parties so people could watch the test.
652
00:42:20.639 --> 00:42:24.050
Revelers filled parks and beaches, many prepared to toast the
653
00:42:24.090 --> 00:42:28.519
distant explosion. At zero hour, the sky lit up. in
654
00:42:28.599 --> 00:42:34.039
surreal displays of reds, greens, and blues. Unexpectedly, the blast
655
00:42:34.159 --> 00:42:37.289
also shut down some of the city's streetlights and power lines.
656
00:42:37.949 --> 00:42:41.010
The exact nature of the force was uncertain, because an
657
00:42:41.150 --> 00:42:44.309
east-west treaty soon banned the testing of nuclear arms in
658
00:42:44.469 --> 00:42:50.639
outer space. Overall, the nuclear effect remained more theoretical than experimental,
659
00:42:51.219 --> 00:42:56.340
more an odd possibility than a predictable certainty. Nuclear experts
660
00:42:56.429 --> 00:42:59.210
came to see it as similar to a radio wave,
661
00:42:59.690 --> 00:43:03.769
only millions of times stronger. They found that any metal object,
662
00:43:04.010 --> 00:43:08.809
railroad tracks, pipes, aircraft bodies, power lines, could work like
663
00:43:08.849 --> 00:43:11.889
an antenna to pick up EMP energy and turn it
664
00:43:12.010 --> 00:43:16.730
into deadly currents. Eventually, they determined that the electrical surges
665
00:43:16.769 --> 00:43:21.010
could fry not only delicate microcircuits, but by extension, the
666
00:43:21.050 --> 00:43:26.250
whole technological infrastructure of modern life. No trains, planes, or buses.
667
00:43:26.650 --> 00:43:30.510
No banks or credit cards. No lights, televisions, or refrigerators.
668
00:43:30.949 --> 00:43:35.070
No running water. Experts once believed that a crude EMP
669
00:43:35.110 --> 00:43:38.969
bomb was relatively easy to make. Any nuclear state with
670
00:43:39.010 --> 00:43:42.789
long-range missiles could loft one of its nuclear weapons to
671
00:43:42.829 --> 00:43:45.670
an altitude of anywhere between tens and hundreds of miles,
672
00:43:46.469 --> 00:43:50.230
set it off, and generate a pulse. The higher the elevation,
673
00:43:50.269 --> 00:43:55.079
the wider its impact. But Stephen M. Younger, a retired
674
00:43:55.139 --> 00:43:58.519
physicist who led bomb research at the Los Alamos Weapons
675
00:43:58.760 --> 00:44:03.530
Lab in New Mexico, said that an effective EMP attack required,
676
00:44:03.730 --> 00:44:07.769
at a minimum, the detonation of a hydrogen bomb. That
677
00:44:07.809 --> 00:44:11.050
held true for the American test over the Pacific. It
678
00:44:11.090 --> 00:44:14.550
might also explain why North Korea made no EMP threats
679
00:44:14.610 --> 00:44:18.760
during its atomic bomb tests and instead waited years until
680
00:44:18.800 --> 00:44:22.019
it had achieved the difficult step of making a hydrogen bomb,
681
00:44:22.639 --> 00:44:25.019
which can be thousands of times as strong as an
682
00:44:25.099 --> 00:44:30.820
atomic bomb. A successful EMP attack requires both an unusually
683
00:44:30.880 --> 00:44:34.539
powerful bomb and the precise alignment of its gamma rays,
684
00:44:34.980 --> 00:44:39.349
which all nuclear arms emit. On Earth, they feed the fireball,
685
00:44:39.449 --> 00:44:43.309
helping to create the deadly force that shatters cities. In
686
00:44:43.349 --> 00:44:46.809
the vacuum of space, however, the gamma rays create no
687
00:44:46.889 --> 00:44:51.130
shock waves or mushroom cloud. Instead, They strike the planet's
688
00:44:51.250 --> 00:44:55.050
upper atmosphere, producing a chain reaction that creates something akin
689
00:44:55.110 --> 00:44:59.960
to a super-strong radio transmitter. The gamma rays hit air
690
00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:04.039
molecules and knock out electrons that spin around the Earth's
691
00:45:04.179 --> 00:45:09.820
geomagnetic field lines, creating waves of electromagnetic energy so powerful
692
00:45:09.880 --> 00:45:14.380
they can fry circuits thousands of miles away. Atomic experts
693
00:45:14.420 --> 00:45:17.719
in the nation's intelligence agencies have long kept a close
694
00:45:17.780 --> 00:45:21.239
watch on which countries have the ability to make and
695
00:45:21.340 --> 00:45:28.400
field that kind of weapon. Concerns about EMP spiked in
696
00:45:28.400 --> 00:45:32.199
2008 after Iran was reported to have amassed a sufficient
697
00:45:32.260 --> 00:45:36.230
amount of enriched uranium to build an atomic bomb. Those
698
00:45:36.309 --> 00:45:41.210
fears were supercharged by Henry Schwartz, a dairy entrepreneur in
699
00:45:41.309 --> 00:45:44.369
upstate New York whose business gave him the means and
700
00:45:44.449 --> 00:45:48.550
whose pro-Israel politics gave him the motive to start a movement.
701
00:45:49.429 --> 00:45:54.599
In 2009, he founded EMPACT America, an advocacy group that
702
00:45:54.659 --> 00:45:59.159
sought to ring EMP alarms. A single Iranian bomb, his
703
00:45:59.219 --> 00:46:03.139
team warned, posed an existential threat to both Israel and
704
00:46:03.179 --> 00:46:07.219
the United States. His organization, on which he spent millions
705
00:46:07.260 --> 00:46:10.420
of dollars, would go on to play an outsized role
706
00:46:10.599 --> 00:46:14.550
in recruiting well-known conservatives to the cause. It would also
707
00:46:14.590 --> 00:46:19.210
help popularize the two main tenets of American EMP activists,
708
00:46:19.789 --> 00:46:24.289
which top scientists find baseless. First, the group argued, a
709
00:46:24.369 --> 00:46:28.869
crude EMP weapon, that is, a rudimentary atomic bomb made
710
00:46:28.909 --> 00:46:32.389
by a rogue state or a terrorist group, would suffice
711
00:46:32.449 --> 00:46:37.530
to spark a devastating pulse. Second, the pulse would kill
712
00:46:37.590 --> 00:46:40.699
most Americans as the collapse of the nation's power grid
713
00:46:40.760 --> 00:46:44.760
and supply chains led to a hellscape of riots and plagues,
714
00:46:45.019 --> 00:46:50.750
famines and vigilantes. The eventual deaths, E.M. Pack warned, could
715
00:46:50.809 --> 00:46:54.210
number up to 90% of the U.S. population or more
716
00:46:54.250 --> 00:46:58.489
than 300 million people. That's roughly four times the estimated
717
00:46:58.530 --> 00:47:01.789
number of individuals who died in World War II, the
718
00:47:01.809 --> 00:47:05.960
deadliest conflict in human history. Nine out of ten Americans
719
00:47:06.039 --> 00:47:10.539
would be dead, Frank Gaffney, a former Pentagon official, told E.M.
720
00:47:10.619 --> 00:47:16.130
Pack's first large gathering held in 2009. Other speakers included Mr.
721
00:47:16.190 --> 00:47:21.920
Gingrich and Mr. Huckabee. Julie Senko, a spokeswoman for Mr. Schwartz,
722
00:47:22.099 --> 00:47:27.500
age 92, said he would be unavailable for comment. In 2012,
723
00:47:27.500 --> 00:47:32.369
as President Obama began negotiations with Tehran to eliminate Iran's
724
00:47:32.429 --> 00:47:36.130
nuclear program, Mr. Schwartz argued that a deal with Iran
725
00:47:36.670 --> 00:47:40.400
would further raise the risk of an EMP attack on America.
726
00:47:41.349 --> 00:47:45.159
The United States must act militarily to stop Iran, Mr.
727
00:47:45.219 --> 00:47:51.460
Schwartz declared at a 2013 EMPAC meeting in Washington, warning
728
00:47:51.519 --> 00:47:57.119
that an Iranian EMP strike would end our civilization. At
729
00:47:57.179 --> 00:48:01.780
that meeting, John Bolton, a former UN ambassador, echoed Mr.
730
00:48:01.820 --> 00:48:05.110
Schwartz's call for military action. He went on to serve
731
00:48:05.159 --> 00:48:08.710
as National Security Advisor in Mr. Trump's first term and
732
00:48:08.750 --> 00:48:12.690
played a central role in drafting the EMP executive order.
733
00:48:13.590 --> 00:48:19.179
In early 2014, David Bellavia, an Iraq War veteran newly
734
00:48:19.239 --> 00:48:23.099
appointed by Mr. Schwartz to run EMPAC, joined forces with
735
00:48:23.139 --> 00:48:27.980
a fellow vet, Pete Hegseth. Together, they publicized an EMPAC
736
00:48:28.019 --> 00:48:34.719
meeting in Washington titled American Security and the Iranian Bomb. Mr. Hegseth,
737
00:48:34.860 --> 00:48:38.280
then a writer for the National Review, had already called
738
00:48:38.340 --> 00:48:42.349
for possible military action to destroy the Iranian nuclear program.
739
00:48:43.130 --> 00:48:47.190
A blog post he now wrote echoed the EMP activist view,
740
00:48:47.469 --> 00:48:51.230
warning that even a crude Iranian pulse weapon could bring
741
00:48:51.269 --> 00:48:56.309
the United States to its knees. Over time, EMPACT's message
742
00:48:56.769 --> 00:49:01.329
reached federal lawmakers. John Ratcliffe, now director of the CIA,
743
00:49:01.650 --> 00:49:05.440
but then a Republican congressman from Texas, joined many of
744
00:49:05.480 --> 00:49:08.840
his House colleagues in late 2015 to push for improved
745
00:49:08.900 --> 00:49:14.300
protections of the electrical grid. EMP's threats to health care,
746
00:49:14.360 --> 00:49:18.610
food supplies, and law and order, the legislature wrote, could
747
00:49:18.690 --> 00:49:22.780
lead to the large-scale loss of life. When the Republican
748
00:49:22.840 --> 00:49:27.489
Party adopted its national platform in 2016, it made the
749
00:49:27.530 --> 00:49:31.329
Pulse threat a top issue. EMP is no longer a
750
00:49:31.409 --> 00:49:35.829
theoretical concern, the plank declared. It named Iran as a
751
00:49:35.889 --> 00:49:40.139
potential threat. By the time Senator J.D. Vance became the
752
00:49:40.179 --> 00:49:45.559
Republican vice presidential candidate in July 2024, EMP had morphed
753
00:49:45.599 --> 00:49:49.619
from a nerdy issue of specialists into a ubiquitous national
754
00:49:49.679 --> 00:49:54.460
security topic for a subset of U.S. conservatives. Mr. Vance
755
00:49:54.519 --> 00:49:58.239
warned about the vulnerability of the grid's transformers, as Mr.
756
00:49:58.300 --> 00:50:02.340
Schwartz and his team had years earlier. The giant devices,
757
00:50:02.480 --> 00:50:05.369
of which there are thousands, can stand more than two
758
00:50:05.449 --> 00:50:09.650
stories tall and weigh several hundred tons. Each raises and
759
00:50:09.690 --> 00:50:13.250
lowers voltages so electric power can race across the nation's
760
00:50:13.329 --> 00:50:18.190
grid of overhead lines. In October 2024, when Mr. Vance
761
00:50:18.230 --> 00:50:23.619
spoke on Joe Rogan's podcast about the Transformers, he conveyed
762
00:50:23.659 --> 00:50:28.280
some very bad news. All the policy initiatives, notably Mr.
763
00:50:28.320 --> 00:50:32.590
Trump's EMP executive order, as well as state, federal, and
764
00:50:32.659 --> 00:50:37.150
private plans meant to strengthen grid protections, had essentially come
765
00:50:37.210 --> 00:50:41.190
to naught. The nation, Mr. Vance observed, had few, if any,
766
00:50:41.269 --> 00:50:45.329
backup transformers to replace the ones that an invisible burst
767
00:50:45.369 --> 00:50:50.460
of EMP energy would knock out. It's actually a scandal,
768
00:50:50.539 --> 00:50:53.719
he said. Later in the show, he called Iran the
769
00:50:53.780 --> 00:50:57.440
biggest foreign policy threat that we face in the Middle East.
770
00:50:58.500 --> 00:51:03.000
More difficult than it sounds. Despite the waves of public alarms,
771
00:51:03.099 --> 00:51:07.079
nuclear scientists who study EMP describe the ranks of activists
772
00:51:07.179 --> 00:51:11.599
as lost in a fog of physical impossibilities. The kind
773
00:51:11.639 --> 00:51:13.719
of bomb that Iran could make is not going to
774
00:51:13.760 --> 00:51:18.659
shut down all communications, said Dr. Younger, the Los Alamos physicist.
775
00:51:19.159 --> 00:51:22.090
It's not going to shut down the power grid. In
776
00:51:22.130 --> 00:51:25.150
an interview, he said that an attempted EMP strike would
777
00:51:25.190 --> 00:51:28.750
have an even more basic drawback. The pulse by nature
778
00:51:29.010 --> 00:51:34.550
is stochastic. a scientific term meaning random. That volatility, Dr.
779
00:51:34.590 --> 00:51:40.010
Younger added, undermined its military utility. Sometimes it produces an
780
00:51:40.070 --> 00:51:43.150
effect and sometimes it doesn't, he said. One of the
781
00:51:43.210 --> 00:51:45.989
downsides for EMP as a weapon is that you can't
782
00:51:46.030 --> 00:51:49.599
depend on it. Experts put the odds of success, even
783
00:51:49.659 --> 00:51:52.539
for a highly accomplished nuclear state, as equal to a
784
00:51:52.780 --> 00:51:57.380
coin flip. An EMP attacker who nonetheless sought to maximize
785
00:51:57.420 --> 00:52:00.690
the chances of a success would need information from the
786
00:52:00.730 --> 00:52:04.190
networks of satellites and ground stations that monitor the planet's
787
00:52:04.250 --> 00:52:08.320
space weather, which fluctuates on scales ranging from seconds and
788
00:52:08.360 --> 00:52:12.699
minutes to days, years, and decades. As regular viewers of
789
00:52:12.719 --> 00:52:16.420
the night sky know, such changes in the near-Earth environment
790
00:52:16.460 --> 00:52:20.360
can send the shimmering lights of the aurora borealis far south.
791
00:52:22.059 --> 00:52:24.880
Countries such as Iran and North Korea have little access
792
00:52:24.920 --> 00:52:29.170
to such information in real time, unlike the United States, China,
793
00:52:29.309 --> 00:52:33.389
and other developed nations, which closely track space weather in
794
00:52:33.489 --> 00:52:39.780
part because radiation spikes can endanger satellites and astronauts. More specifically,
795
00:52:39.860 --> 00:52:43.639
the known variables that can foil an EMP attack include
796
00:52:43.699 --> 00:52:47.460
insufficient blast height and poor alignment of the exploding weapon
797
00:52:47.500 --> 00:52:52.159
with the Earth's geomagnetic field lines, as well as solar winds, flares,
798
00:52:52.219 --> 00:52:56.780
and storms. Other variables, experts say, are classified, like many
799
00:52:56.940 --> 00:53:01.000
aspects of nuclear weapon design and use. EMP has become
800
00:53:01.039 --> 00:53:04.599
a cottage industry, said Dr. Younger, who once directed the
801
00:53:04.639 --> 00:53:07.940
Defense Threat Reduction Agency, an arm of the Pentagon that
802
00:53:08.000 --> 00:53:11.719
seeks to counter weapons of mass destruction. There's money to
803
00:53:11.760 --> 00:53:15.000
be made by scaring people in Washington, he added. That's
804
00:53:15.059 --> 00:53:19.079
how it works. Is EMP possible? Yes, it is. Do
805
00:53:19.119 --> 00:53:22.349
we need to be careful? Yes, we do. But Dr.
806
00:53:22.389 --> 00:53:25.050
Younger said that on a list of existential threats to
807
00:53:25.090 --> 00:53:29.320
the United States, a successful Iranian EMP attack ranked so
808
00:53:29.360 --> 00:53:34.119
low as to warrant little if any attention. It's extraordinarily unlikely,
809
00:53:34.239 --> 00:53:37.320
he said. The next article from the front page of
810
00:53:37.360 --> 00:53:41.440
today's edition is entitled, The Frenzy Behind Getting an Initiative
811
00:53:41.599 --> 00:53:46.360
on the California Ballot. An army of signature gatherers made
812
00:53:46.449 --> 00:53:49.599
plenty of cash hitting the streets of in California to
813
00:53:49.739 --> 00:53:57.469
qualify various November initiatives by Laurel Rosenhall. Dederick Huff scanned
814
00:53:57.489 --> 00:54:00.750
the grassy hillside of Dolores Park in San Francisco one
815
00:54:00.769 --> 00:54:04.250
day this spring and saw dozens of people relaxing on
816
00:54:04.309 --> 00:54:07.809
picnic blankets and park benches. To most people, it was
817
00:54:07.889 --> 00:54:11.610
an idyllic scene on a sunny day. To Mr. Huff, however,
818
00:54:11.739 --> 00:54:13.739
it was an opportunity to earn as much as $ 125
819
00:54:13.699 --> 00:54:17.780
from each person in the park who had signed the
820
00:54:17.820 --> 00:54:21.489
stack of petitions under his arm. How y'all doing? Mr.
821
00:54:21.610 --> 00:54:24.030
Huff asked as he approached a group of friends on
822
00:54:24.050 --> 00:54:27.650
a blanket. Are you registered to vote? With his ease
823
00:54:27.690 --> 00:54:30.670
talking to strangers and his knack for reading a crowd, Mr.
824
00:54:30.730 --> 00:54:33.530
Huff used the same skills he said he had developed
825
00:54:33.590 --> 00:54:36.849
in a very different setting, selling party drugs on the
826
00:54:36.889 --> 00:54:40.570
Las Vegas Strip. He had come to San Francisco because
827
00:54:40.639 --> 00:54:43.199
word had spread that campaigns were paying big money to
828
00:54:43.260 --> 00:54:46.690
place measures on the November ballot. So much, in fact,
829
00:54:46.710 --> 00:54:48.929
that Mr. Huff said he found he could make more
830
00:54:48.969 --> 00:54:53.070
money dealing democracy than dope. This is better than drug money,
831
00:54:53.130 --> 00:54:56.820
said Mr. Huff, who has had drug-related arrests in Nevada,
832
00:54:56.969 --> 00:55:00.409
records show. Mr. Huff was part of a small army
833
00:55:00.449 --> 00:55:04.019
of petition circulators who fanned out to shopping centers and
834
00:55:04.079 --> 00:55:06.860
street corners this spring, becoming the main reason that the
835
00:55:06.920 --> 00:55:10.579
ballots sent to California voters this month are stuffed with
836
00:55:10.619 --> 00:55:16.780
statewide initiatives. California's direct democracy system began over a century
837
00:55:16.840 --> 00:55:20.480
ago as a populist reform meant to empower citizens and
838
00:55:20.539 --> 00:55:25.579
bypass the special interests that controlled the state legislature. Over
839
00:55:25.639 --> 00:55:28.760
the years, though, ballot measures have morphed into a sprawling
840
00:55:28.889 --> 00:55:32.690
industry fueled by moneyed interests that spend whatever it takes
841
00:55:32.730 --> 00:55:36.670
to put their ideas before voters. This year, campaigns had
842
00:55:36.710 --> 00:55:41.550
to collect nearly 900,000 valid signatures to qualify a measure
843
00:55:41.590 --> 00:55:45.250
for the November ballot. To hit that number, most initiative
844
00:55:45.409 --> 00:55:48.349
efforts had to hire companies that specialize in this slice
845
00:55:48.369 --> 00:55:52.150
of the political process. The firms, in turn, contracted with
846
00:55:52.190 --> 00:55:55.829
smaller companies that paid people like Mr. Huff for each
847
00:55:55.889 --> 00:55:59.809
verified signature. A flurry of spending was set off in
848
00:55:59.849 --> 00:56:03.489
January when a health care workers' union began circulating petitions
849
00:56:04.010 --> 00:56:07.179
to put the billionaire tax on the ballot. That prompted
850
00:56:07.219 --> 00:56:10.059
a coalition of billionaires to flood the marketplace with three
851
00:56:10.119 --> 00:56:13.400
countermeasures that could void the tax initiative if they were
852
00:56:13.440 --> 00:56:18.019
to receive more votes in November. Campaigns paid as much
853
00:56:18.059 --> 00:56:21.940
as $ 15 per signature, drawing a raft of enterprising workers
854
00:56:22.559 --> 00:56:26.239
and some alleged fraudsters to take part in this political underworld.
855
00:56:26.880 --> 00:56:29.559
It turned into a bonanza for workers like Mr. Huff,
856
00:56:30.000 --> 00:56:34.780
who said he made $ 43, 000 in three months. That's the
857
00:56:34.820 --> 00:56:36.940
most money I've made in three months of my life,
858
00:56:37.039 --> 00:56:42.630
said Mr. Huff, age 38. All told, California ballot measures
859
00:56:42.710 --> 00:56:48.809
campaign spent $ 126. 5 million on circulating petitions during the first
860
00:56:48.849 --> 00:56:51.829
half of the year, four times as much as they
861
00:56:51.889 --> 00:56:55.829
spent in the same period in 2024, the last regular
862
00:56:55.909 --> 00:57:00.710
election year, according to state campaign finance reports. As the
863
00:57:00.750 --> 00:57:04.010
price per signature doubled in March, a Facebook group for
864
00:57:04.090 --> 00:57:08.250
petition circulators lit up with excitement. Commenters called it a
865
00:57:08.309 --> 00:57:12.050
legendary season and punctuated their posts with money bag emojis.
866
00:57:12.730 --> 00:57:15.429
They shared pictures of invoices for tens of thousands of
867
00:57:15.469 --> 00:57:20.300
dollars as they submitted heaps of petitions. Employers recruited circulators
868
00:57:20.340 --> 00:57:24.800
from other parts of the country, sometimes offering housing or transportation.
869
00:57:26.039 --> 00:57:28.119
This is all the time we have for today and
870
00:57:28.460 --> 00:57:30.829
concludes the reading of the New York Times for today.
871
00:57:31.610 --> 00:57:34.469
Your reader for today has been Julie Shaw. If you
872
00:57:34.510 --> 00:57:39.090
have any questions, comments, or suggestions concerning this program, please
873
00:57:39.150 --> 00:57:46.269
feel free to call us at area code 859-422-6390. Thank
874
00:57:46.289 --> 00:57:49.130
you for listening, and now please stay tuned for continued
875
00:57:49.190 --> 00:57:50.719
programming on Radio Eye.