The Excerpt podcast: Biden and Xi agree to resume military talks at summit

On today's episode of The Excerpt podcast: President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to resume military talks at a summit. Israel says that weapons on video confirm a Gaza hospital was a Hamas fortress. USA TODAY Congress, Campaigns and Democracy Reporter Rachel Looker talks through some of the new voting laws around the country, and their potential impact on 2024. New Hampshire has scheduled its first-in-the-nation primary. USA TODAY Personal Finance Reporter Daniel de Visé talks about the toll of caregiving on the Sandwich Generation.

Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here

Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. 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.

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning, I'm Taylor Wilson. Today is Thursday, November 16th, 2023. This is The Excerpt. Today, the takeaways from Biden's meeting with Xi Jinping, plus the latest from Gaza and what new voting laws could mean for 2024.

♦

President Joe Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping yesterday, just outside San Francisco as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC, Summit continues in Northern California. It was the pairs first face-to-face meeting in a year, and Biden said one key takeaway was their agreement to improve communications.

President Biden:

He and I agreed that each one of us could pick up the phone, call directly, and we'd be heard immediately.

Taylor Wilson:

Biden said that Xi agreed to take steps to curtail the supply of chemicals being used to make fentanyl. And Biden said China agreed to create mechanisms to improve communication between military leaders. Chinese state media described the agreements as establishing a working group on counter-narcotics cooperation and resuming high-level military-to-military communication.

On the topic of Taiwan, the most volatile issue in US-China relations, Xi stressed the need for an eventual resolution, according to the White House. China views Taiwan as part of its territory while Taiwan sees itself as an independent sovereign nation. Biden has provided Taiwan with military support, but the US has stressed that it does not support Taiwan independence. Xi told Biden there are no plans for military action, but that at some point the situation needs to be resolved, according to a senior administration official.

♦

Israeli troops stormed Gaza's largest hospital, Al Shifa, yesterday. And the military released video from inside the facility's MRI wing showing rifles, grenades, ammunition, and fighting vests with the Hamas logo. The findings could not be independently verified. The video did not show any tunnels or the command center the Israeli military says that Hamas maintains at the hospital. Hamas and Gaza health officials have repeatedly denied that militants operate at Al Shifa. The UN estimates that at least 2,300 staff, patients and displaced Gazan civilians have taken refuge at the hospital complex, as Israeli forces have been rolling through Gaza since Hamas militants carried out a violent rampage in Israel on October 7th.

Meanwhile, Gazan residents said today that Israeli forces dropped leaflets warning Palestinians to flee parts of Southern Gaza. Israel has been focused on Gaza's north, but such reports signal a possible expansion of operations to areas where hundreds of thousands of people fled amid earlier evacuation orders. The UN's top humanitarian affairs official has called for a ceasefire. Israeli officials continue to say they won't stop fighting until all 240 hostages taken by Hamas last month are released. That rampage also killed more than 1,200 people, according to the Israeli military. More than 11,200 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

♦

A number of states have passed new voting laws this year, in some cases restricting, in other cases expanding ballot access. I spoke with USA Today Congress, campaigns and democracy reporter Rachel Looker to find out what the changes mean for 2024. Hello, Rachel.

Rachel Looker:

Hi. Thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

Thanks for hopping back on. So let's start here. How many states enacted laws that will make it harder to vote, and what kinds of restrictions are we talking about specifically?

Rachel Looker:

In the past year, at least 14 states so far have enacted laws that will make it harder to vote. And that's according to a roundup of voter access laws from the Brennan Center. And it's interesting because besides in 2021, this is a year that has seen the most restrictive laws that have been enacted in any year in the last decade.

Some of these laws passed this year target voter registration, mail-in voting, or enforce stricter voter ID laws. One example in North Carolina specifically shortens the window to return mail-in ballots, and it also bans ballot drop boxes. Another example in Texas gives counties the ability to consolidate their polling locations, which voting rights experts told me could end up increasing wait times for voters at these polling spots.

Taylor Wilson:

And Rachel, what are the links to election deniers with these restrictions?

Rachel Looker:

Voting rights experts have said that there's been a focus on passing more restrictive voting laws in response to the repeated false claims of fraud that stemmed from the 2020 presidential election. Legislators in some states are often using this misinformation or claims of election fraud to justify the need for stricter voting legislation, which is something that we could see take place in battleground states ahead of the 2024 general election.

Taylor Wilson:

And it's not just restrictions. Some states have also passed legislation that'll make it easier to vote. How many states are we talking about here, Rachel?

Rachel Looker:

Almost half of the states have passed some form of expansive voter access laws. At least 23 this year have enacted laws that will make it easier to vote. One example specifically in Michigan grants voters and extra nine days for the early voting period. Another example in Colorado requires there to be mandatory polling locations on college campuses and mandatory drop boxes on some college campuses that meet certain size requirements.

Taylor Wilson:

How does all this pro-voting legislation relate to some of the results we saw in midterm elections last year?

Rachel Looker:

Voting rights experts say that a lot more of these expansive laws can be traced back to the fact that these candidates who believed the 2020 election was fraudulent in some way ended up not being elected to office.

Taylor Wilson:

Rachel, needless to say, 2024 is a major election year coming up. What might all these changes mean for the presidential election and other key races?

Rachel Looker:

Changes to these voting access laws can really come into play in states where outcomes were determined by very narrow percentages. So heading into 2024, as Republicans are looking to pick up more seats in the House to increase their majority, Democrats are looking to flip certain districts blue, especially in swing states or districts where candidates won by just hundreds or thousands of votes, every vote may count and changes to these voter access laws could result in changing the outcomes.

Taylor Wilson:

All right, Rachel Looker, great insight as always. Thank you so much.

Rachel Looker:

Thanks for having me.

♦

Taylor Wilson:

New Hampshire has scheduled its first in the nation primary. Voters in the Granite State will head to the polls on January 23rd to cast their ballots in the first presidential primary. That's eight days after the in-person portion of the Iowa caucuses and weeks before Democratic and Republican contests in South Carolina. The scheduled primary ends New Hampshire Democrats' battle with the Democratic National Committee over its reshuffled primary calendar. Last year, in a move to elevate more diverse voters, the DNC rid New Hampshire of its first in the nation status, forcing the state party to move its primary to February 6th, the same day as Nevada's.

New Hampshire's GOP-run legislature has refused to change the state's election laws to accommodate the DNC. And now that the primary date defies the DNC calendar, New Hampshire Democrats are likely to lose many of their 2024 delegates to the national convention. And so will any candidate who participates in the election. President Joe Biden opted not to file in New Hampshire, citing potential penalties. As a result, his supporters in the state have launched a write-in campaign.

♦

Caregiving can be a full-time job. And for members of the so-called Sandwich Generation, it can be even more than that. I spoke with USA Today personal finance reporter Daniel de Vise to learn more. Daniel, thanks for hopping on,

Daniel de Vise:

Anytime. Glad to be here.

Taylor Wilson:

So Daniel, let's just start here. I was not familiar with this term. What is the Sandwich Generation?

Daniel de Vise:

I wasn't very familiar with it either, but it is basically people who are at a stage in life where they have children, usually dependent children for whom they're providing care, and they're also caring for maybe aging parents or other older loved ones. It could be a grandparent, it could be an aunt or an uncle. But that's the sandwich effect is you've got older generation that you're caring for and the younger generation person you're caring for.

Taylor Wilson:

And what does this new survey from the insurer New York Life tell us about the Sandwich Generation and caregiving currently?

Daniel de Vise:

Well, it told us a bunch of interesting stuff, but what leapt out at me was the hours of this job of being a sandwicher. According to this survey, the average person in that group, caring for older people, caring for children, devote a total of 50 hours a week. This is 28 hours of care to their children and another additional 22 hours to aging relatives, which is, I say in this story, not just a job. That's like a workaholic job.

Taylor Wilson:

Yeah, absolutely. Full-time workaholic job. I mean, what toll can this have, can caregiving writ large have on the giver?

Daniel de Vise:

The survey focused on some significant caregiving costs. A lot of these people who are working up and down the generations to provide help find themselves unable to meet basic essential expenses because of how steep the caregiving costs might be. We're talking childcare costs, elder care costs, and everyone knows those are going up. Half the people in this survey -- and everyone surveyed is a sandwich person -- half of them said they'd taken on credit card debt, which means they were not paying it off from month to month, with an average balance of nearly $13,000.

Taylor Wilson:

And what does the future hold for the Sandwich Generation and caregivers? Should we expect more sandwich caregivers in the coming years?

Daniel de Vise:

Well, traditionally, if you think of people who are caring for maybe mom, caring for kids, you think of it being women. And that's a stereotype. But it's changing. It changed in the pandemic. Many more guys are now reporting that they are doing caregiving up and down the generations because we were all at home and a lot of people started participating in this. So look for that to continue. Look for more men to be participating in caregiving, both with elders and with children. Look for the so-called Sandwich Generation to sort of flow down from Generation X to millennials.

The millennials are getting into their forties now, so they are increasingly at the center of this sandwich sort of squeeze. And I think we can look to see more people identify as being sandwiched. And the reason for that has to do with demographics. We are living longer compared to 10, 20, 30 years ago. Older people are living longer, and then we're also having children later. And so if you picture a millennial couple and they choose to have kids maybe in their thirties, that means their kids are in school and their parents are that much older, right? So they're doing both. They're caring for their children and then their own parents are getting old enough that they have to care for them. And that's where this pinch comes in of being in the Sandwich Generation.

Taylor Wilson:

Daniel de Vise covers personal finance for USA Today. Thank you, Daniel.

Daniel de Vise:

Thank you.

♦

Taylor Wilson:

And today is the Great American Smokeout. The day challenges smokers to quit cigarettes for 24 hours. As the American Cancer Society writes, "Quitting smoking isn't easy. Start with day one."

♦

Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you use a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA Today.