Hurricane Milton leaves widespread destruction; rescue operations underway | The Excerpt

On Saturday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: The death toll from Hurricane Milton has risen to 17, while officials warn of billions in damages. USA TODAY National Immigration Reporter Lauren Villagran discusses how Mexico is holding the line on migration. Plus, former President Donald Trump escalated his rhetoric about migrants during a Friday Colorado rally. Donald Trump is in a better polling spot now than he was against Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden. The Biden administration puts new sanctions on Iran's petroleum industry. USA TODAY Money Reporter Bailey Schulz explains how the cost of child care is hitting working parents hard, and has become one of their major election issues.

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 Saturday, October 12th, 2024. This is The Excerpt. Today, Floridians assess damage after Milton. Plus how Mexico is holding the line on migration, and how the cost of child care is hitting families and playing a role in the build-up to the election.

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As several major airports and tourist attractions in Florida reopened yesterday, rescue crews continued to pull people from floodwaters, and more than 2 million homes and businesses remained without power after deadly Hurricane Milton slammed the state, killing at least 17 people. Born out of a typically uninspiring cluster of thunderstorms late last week in the western Gulf of Mexico, Milton had a quick, intense life over the past few days as it roared across the Gulf and slammed into Florida late Wednesday as a Category Three hurricane after a rapid intensification to a Category Five at one point. As for what's next, early estimates suggest the damage wreaked by Milton could total $50 billion.

President Biden:

We're going to be going to the Congress. We're going to need a lot of help, going to need a lot more money as we identify specifically how much is needed. So I'm just telling everybody now, I don't want to hear this is going to be the end of it.

Taylor Wilson:

For all the latest on Milton and Hurricane Helene recovery efforts, stay with USATODAY.com.

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Ahead of a major US election, Mexico is holding the line on migration. I spoke with USA TODAY Today National Immigration Reporter, Lauren Villagran for more. Lauren, it's always good hearing from you.

Lauren Villagran:

Hey, Taylor.

Taylor Wilson:

So Lauren, I want to start here by just hearing about this agreement that Mexico has with the US when it comes to migration. What exactly is this? How did this agreement come to be and why did both parties really feel it was necessary?

Lauren Villagran:

I would say that it's more of an informal agreement. We don't have any publicly available written document. And of course, the US and Mexico are constantly in policy discussions. But what we do know is that last year in December, the Biden-Harris administration rushed down some top cabinet secretaries to speak to Mexico about migration enforcement. At the time, in December, there were more than 10,000 on average migrants per day arriving at the US border. It was an all-time record for daily averages and for an overall month total. And so the Biden-Harris administration was really scrambling. They went down to Mexico and began a series of urgent discussions that lasted into January, February, and much of the rest of this year.

Taylor Wilson:

So since those discussions, what has Mexico really functionally been doing? Are they accomplishing what they set out to do, Lauren? And really what impact is all this having on migrants passing through Mexico?

Lauren Villagran:

If the goal was to reduce the number of migrants who were at or reaching the US border, Mexico's northern border, it's been a success. Obviously, there's different ways to measure what Mexico has been doing, which is, interestingly, they haven't been deporting people in very large numbers, because many of the migrants moving through Mexico are not easy to deport. They're coming from places like Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, Colombia. Historically, Mexico did a lot of deportations to Central American countries, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and now what Mexico has been instead doing is rounding people up, taking them off of buses, having raids on cargo freight train lines, and basically busing them back south in Mexico over and over and over again.

Taylor Wilson:

And Lauren, have you spoken with or heard from any migrants who have been impacted or apparently impacted by this shift?

Lauren Villagran:

Yeah, absolutely. I and El Paso Times photographer Omar Ornelas have been doing this reporting all year, and we've heard repeatedly from migrants about their harrowing journey through Mexico. Some had even begun saying that traveling through Mexico was more dangerous and terrible than all the rest of their journey combined, including moving through the Darién Gap jungle between Colombia and Panama, which is notoriously dangerous.

So yes, we've heard over and over again. Most recently in Mexico City, we heard from a family, the Sarmiento family, from Venezuela who traveled with their twelve-year-old son overland to Mexico, and really shared a harrowing story of trying to make it out of southern Mexico. They are currently waiting in Mexico City, as are hundreds if not thousands of other migrants, for a CBP One appointment to present at the US border. Because, Taylor, functionally, there's almost no other way to make it to the US border without being potentially intercepted by Mexican migration authorities.

Taylor Wilson:

Lauren, we're in an election year in the US. I'm curious, what's next for this Mexico strategy going into 2025, and could it be impacted at all by who wins the White House north of the border next month?

Lauren Villagran:

Yeah, undoubtedly, Taylor. Whoever is next in the White House, whether former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris, clearly Mexico is going to continue to play an enormous role in migration enforcement, which is a trend that's been years coming, but Mexico has become, this year, incredibly effective at keeping migrants away from the US border. It's kind of known as border externalization, this idea that enforcement is pushed farther and farther south. And I think the US, at least during the current administration, has had more success with Mexico than we've seen in years past.

Taylor Wilson:

All right, Lauren Villagran covers the border and immigration for USA TODAY Today. Thank you, Lauren.

Lauren Villagran:

Thanks, Taylor.

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Taylor Wilson:

Meanwhile, the immigration debate stateside heated up yesterday, just weeks before the November election, as former President Donald Trump ramped up his anti-immigration rhetoric during a Friday rally in Aurora, Colorado, repeating debunked claims that the city has become a war zone overrun with Venezuelan gang members. The comments came more than a month after Trump name-checked Aurora, along with Springfield, Ohio, as hotbeds for illegal immigration during the presidential debate last month. During that debate, Trump alleged that Haitian migrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, but the mayor of Springfield and local police have said there have been no credible reports of that happening. Trump during the debate also claimed that members of a Venezuelan gang were taking over Aurora. Aurora police arrested 10 people linked to the gang last month on charges ranging from assaults to shootings, but the police and city's Republican mayor, Mike Coffman, have refuted claims that the gang and other migrants have caused widespread crime in the city.

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If the polls are any guide, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is in better shape now than he was this time in 2020 and in his winning White House campaign of 2016. Trump trails Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in most polls, but he's down against the incumbent vice president by smaller margins than he faced in his first two general elections, both of which saw him score higher with actual voters than the ones who responded to pollsters. Republicans are counting on what some pollsters have called the hidden Trump vote, although pollsters also say there's no certainty that group still exists. During this cycle, pollsters have changed their methodologies in part to account for the hidden Trump voters, including people who plan to vote for him, but don't want to say it publicly, or other supporters who are hard to find via traditional polling methods like telephone calls. Also, different groups of voters are showing more signs of increased participation in the election because of new issues, from anti-abortion laws to the rising cost of living. As of yesterday, the RealClearPolitics average of recent national polls gives Harris a 1.8% lead over Trump. At this time four years ago, Democratic nominee Joe Biden had a lead of 10.3 percentage points over then-President Trump in the RCP national average. And in 2016, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton led the RCP national average by 6%. Both of those elections were much closer. You can read more with the link in today's show notes.

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The Biden administration put new sanctions on Iran's petroleum industry yesterday in retaliation for the country's missile attack on Israel this month. The Treasury Department announced that the sanctions would target the shadow fleet of tankers and illicit operators that help transport the Iranian regime's petroleum exports in violation of existing sanctions. The new punitive measures come under a federal law that allows the federal government to freeze a company's assets and property in the United States. Those targeted are sanctioned for their involvement in shipments of Iranian petroleum and petrochemical products, according to the announcement. Iran fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles at various targets in Israel on October 1st in retaliation for Israel's assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, in an airstrike in Beirut last month. Israel has promised to retaliate raising fears that what started as a regional conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas could cause a wider war in the Middle East.

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The cost of child care is hitting families hard, and it's become the top election issue for many working parents. I spoke with USA TODAY Money Reporter Bailey Schulz to learn more. Bailey, always good to hear from you.

Bailey Schulz:

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

So Bailey, how much do parents spend on child care? Really just how bad have things gotten?

Bailey Schulz:

Child care in America is, in one word, expensive. The exact number varies based on where you live, of course. But one study from Care.com found that parents spend on average about 24% of their household income on child care, and nearly half of those parents are paying more than $18,000 for child care as of 2023. So yeah, just a big chunk of income for these families.

Taylor Wilson:

Yeah. What's driving these high costs?

Bailey Schulz:

There is a national shortage of both workers and facilities, with about half of Americans living in what is known as a child care desert, where there are too few licensed child care providers. That has really just driven up these prices dramatically, with the daycare and preschool costs growing at nearly twice the pace of inflation.

Taylor Wilson:

In terms of solutions, what have you heard from parents and advocates about what might actually bring these costs down?

Bailey Schulz:

If we're looking at what's been put forth by the two presidential candidates, both Trump and Harris have proposed expanding the Child Tax Credit. Harris's running mate, Tim Walz, proposed paid daily leave on a Child Tax Credit as governor of Minnesota. And then we see Trump's running mate, JD Vance, has proposed boosting the Child Tax Credit and has argued that children benefit from a family member at home. But we really haven't seen clear, robust plans on a solution quite yet.

Taylor Wilson:

And in terms of just anecdotally what parents are doing for their own lives and the solutions that they're finding, are you hearing anything that's working?

Bailey Schulz:

We spoke with parents who are really struggling with this. They're putting more money into child care than their mortgage. One mother I spoke to said she's holding off on having a second child at this point just because child care is so expensive. A good number of parents are just hoping child care is in discussion more. We cite one poll in our article that's found about 89% of voters across party lines just want candidates to have a plan to address child care. And yeah, they're just saying this isn't getting enough attention. Even though I should point out, this isn't something that just affects parents only. This lack of child care affects American's ability to participate in the workforce, especially women. And we see that the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation estimates that states across the country lose billions of dollars in the economic activity because of the breakdowns in the child care system.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Great breakdown for us here. Bailey Schulz covers money for USA TODAY. Thank you, Bailey.

Bailey Schulz:

Thank you for having me.

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Taylor Wilson:

And Yom Kippur is this weekend, marking the holiest day of the year in Judaism. The name translated from Hebrew to English as the Day of Atonement began at sunset yesterday and ends at nightfall tonight.

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Although the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, had predicted an above average hurricane season, the intensity of hurricanes Helene and then Milton caught residents of North Carolina and Florida by surprise. It's six weeks to go in hurricane season this year. Well, what's next? Gus Alaka, director of NOAA's Hurricane Research Division, joins USA TODAY's national correspondent Elizabeth Weise to talk about the need to take other hazards beyond wind speed into account when preparing for these high-intensity storms. That's tomorrow beginning at 5:00 A.M. Eastern Time right here on this feed.

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And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your pods. And if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, and I'll be back Monday with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY