Harris leads Trump in 5 battleground states, poll finds | The Excerpt

On Thursday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Vice President Kamala Harris is ahead or tied with former President Donald Trump in six of seven battleground states, according to a new survey. Columbia University President Minouche Shafik has resigned. USA TODAY Reporter Lucy Tompkins explains how a housing voucher program is failing poor families. The World Health Organization declares mpox a global public health emergency. USA TODAY Personal Finance Reporter Daniel de Visé breaks down how much you really need in emergency savings. Hurricane Ernesto knocks out power to half of Puerto Rico.

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

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Taylor Wilson:

Good morning, I'm Taylor Wilson. Today is Thursday, August 15th, 2024. This is The Excerpt.

Today, Harris leads Trump in a number of battleground states. Plus, why a housing voucher program is failing many poor families. And how much in emergency savings do you really need?

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Vice President Kamala Harris is ahead or tied with former President Donald Trump in six of seven battleground states, according to a new survey out yesterday. The latest data erases the leads Trump saw before President Joe Biden dropped out of the race last month. The Cook Political Report survey of seven key swing states found Harris leading Trump in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Arizona, and tied with him in Georgia. Nevada is the only battleground state that Trump still leads, the poll found. Harris's lead in three states is within the margin of error.

The finding suggests multiple paths to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the election have opened up for Harris. Biden's relative struggles in the Sun Belt states of Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina had forced his campaign to increasingly bank on the so-called Blue Wall states; Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Trump led Biden in six of the seven battleground states and was tied with him in Wisconsin in a survey the same pollsters conducted in May.

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Columbia University President Minouche Shafik resigned yesterday. The decision comes after her handling of pro-Palestinian protests on campus earlier this year and nationwide debates over the Israel-Hamas war. Shafik, a former official at the World Bank, said that the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary asked her to serve in a high-ranking government role, and she will return to England. Like the now former presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, Shafik's testimony before Congress in April put her in a precarious position. Harvard's Claudine Gay, who stepped down in January, was just six months into the job, and the University of Pennsylvania's Liz Magill was president for just over a year and resigned days after Republicans summoned her and Gay to Washington last December. You can read more about the context around Shafik's resignation with a link in today's show notes.

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A voucher program is supposed to help poor families rent a home, but it often fails. I spoke with USA TODAY reporter Lucy Tompkins to learn more.

Lucy, thanks for hopping on The Excerpt today.

Lucy Tompkins:

Thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

So, just starting with this, Lucy, what is a Section 8 voucher?

Lucy Tompkins:

A Section 8 voucher is sort of a rare golden ticket for affordable housing. It's the largest rental assistance program that the federal government runs. It subsidizes your rent. It's for low-income renters, disabled elderly renters, and it limits how much someone has to pay each month to only 30% of their income. The program is underfunded, so it's a pretty rare thing to get, and it can take many years on a wait-list to get it, but then once it does, it's really a lifeline for several million renters across the country.

Taylor Wilson:

Yeah. So what did this analysis out of NYU reveal about many people across the country who are losing their vouchers before they can use them?

Lucy Tompkins:

The Furman Center at NYU looked at data from thousands of housing authorities across the country, and those are the agencies that give out vouchers. And they found that in 2022, about 45% of people who were awarded vouchers were unable to use them. People get a voucher, they have a window of time where they have to find a home and use it, and if they can't, then it expires and it goes to the next name on the list.

Taylor Wilson:

So Lucy, all this begs the obvious question to me. Why do authorities hand out more vouchers than they have funding for?

Lucy Tompkins:

I found that this success rate that the researchers were looking at, how often people are able to successfully use their vouchers, that's not something that the federal government or housing agencies are really that focused on. What they're incentivized to do is to use all of their funding and make sure every voucher gets used eventually. And there's good reason for that. Any unused funding is considered a wasted opportunity to help a family in need. Housing authorities have learned that a lot of people get vouchers and can't use them, and so to make sure that they're still using all their funding, they'll give out two vouchers for every one slot that the program has, which keeps the utilization of the program high, but makes half the people who are losing their vouchers along the way invisible in this program.

Taylor Wilson:

And what are some of the other complications to this voucher program?

Lucy Tompkins:

It depends on private landlords to accept voucher holders, and landlords have a lot of complaints about this program. It can be slow. There can be a lot of red tape. There's an inspection required before a tenant can move in to an apartment, and then an inspection every year to make sure the home lives up to the government standards. Sometimes the voucher isn't worth as much money as maybe a landlord could get from a different tenant, especially in places where rents are going up really quickly. Sometimes people with vouchers have evictions on their backgrounds or poor credit or other things that landlords might not find appealing. And then the program also doesn't include funding for things like security deposits, application fees, broker fees, all of these hidden costs of moving into a new apartment.

Taylor Wilson:

You spoke with members of several households whose vouchers expired or were revoked. Just how much stress is this voucher limbo putting on them?

Lucy Tompkins:

I spoke to a handful of families and people in that situation and they were really devastated, and some of them are stuck in difficult situations; living in a motel room, relying on GoFundMe donations or sleeping outside. It's really difficult.

Taylor Wilson:

Are there any parts of the country where this program is working, and what lessons could we take from them?

Lucy Tompkins:

There are places that stood out for positive reasons. One of those places is Boston, which surprised the researchers and surprised me, because Boston is one of the most expensive housing markets in the country. It's competitive and difficult to find housing, but they have found a way around these limitations by pairing every person who gets a voucher with an organization or a service provider who helps them look for housing, find housing, negotiate with landlords, cover some of these extra costs. It helps them move in and then helps support them as they are living in their new home, as much as they need. I think the lesson from there, and Seattle's done some similar things, is that it can really make a big difference when people just have some help using these vouchers.

Taylor Wilson:

Is that really where the conversation around solutions is right now? And what's next for this going forward?

Lucy Tompkins:

Right now, HUD, which is the federal agency that oversees this program, is thinking about a lot of different solutions. The navigation help is definitely one of them. They're also trying to find ways to make the program more appealing to landlords. HUD also recently started looking into the idea of direct rental assistance. So instead of giving people a voucher, they're starting to look into maybe just giving tenants funding directly that they could then use to pay for a home. So that kind of cuts the landlord/middleman out and could potentially streamline things. It's unclear if they're going to do that, but they're starting to look into it.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Lucy Tompkins, really revealing work on this excellent piece. Thanks for doing it and coming on to discuss.

Lucy Tompkins:

Thanks for having me.

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Taylor Wilson:

The World Health Organization yesterday declared Mpox a global public health emergency. The WHO issued an emergency for Mpox for the second time in two years, following an outbreak of the viral infection in DR Congo that has spread to neighboring countries. Mpox can spread through close contact. The disease is usually mild, but can be fatal in rare cases. It causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions on the body. WHO Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said yesterday, WHO had released $1.5 million in contingency funds and plan to release more in the coming days. WHO's response would require an initial $15 million, and the agency plans to appeal to donors for funding.

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How much do you need in emergency savings? More than you might think. I caught up with USA TODAY Personal Finance reporter, Daniel de Visé for more.

Daniel, thanks for hopping on today.

Daniel de Visé:

It's a pleasure.

Taylor Wilson:

So Daniel, this new report touched on emergency savings. So I'll just ask you, how much money should folks actually have in an emergency fund?

Daniel de Visé:

Well, this intrigued me because Investopedia, which is a great site, very educational, came up with an actual number, and you don't see that very often. They said you need, grab your seats here, $33,100. That's the average household. That is how much they think you need to save for an emergency.

Taylor Wilson:

Wow. So, how does this recommendation compare then, Daniel, with how much money many Americans actually have saved?

Daniel de Visé:

Well, I don't have that much. I don't know about you. No, in all seriousness, the typical family, the median family has about $8,000, and that's just a snapshot of probably what was in their combined checking and savings account when some federal survey person called them. You know how if you fill out a FAFSA form and it says, "How much do you have in your bank accounts?" And so that could have been purposeful emergency savings or just money people happen to have sloshing around, but that's the average.

Taylor Wilson:

So this strikes me as a big number. How does this 33,000 and change dollar figure break down? What are the main estimated expenses?

Daniel de Visé:

Well, I'm going to scare you even more, because it's actually a pretty conservative number. Advisors would say you should save three to six months worth of expenses, but six months, you need that much if you lose a job. And it covers medical care, which gets a lot more expensive if you're unemployed, because you're getting into COBRA where you're paying the company share of your healthcare. It covers car use, housing, rent and/or mortgage payments, utilities and food. And they have it down to the dollar and cent.

Taylor Wilson:

So Daniel, as you write in the piece, it appears folks' financial discomfort with savings really is rising. What do you mean here, and what do the numbers say?

Daniel de Visé:

I tapped another survey, which is an annual survey from Bankrate, which is very good, and it shows a really strikingly rising share of people say they're uncomfortable with how much emergency savings they have. Maybe that's because they're reading these scary articles that we write. It was only 37% in 2018 before the pandemic. And then that quotient rose to 44%, almost half in 2020. And now it's 59% of the people they surveyed this year said, "I'm not comfortable with how much I have saved for emergencies." And that tells me people know they should have more saved than they do have saved.

Taylor Wilson:

Wow. So just really quickly picking up there in the last few years. So Daniel, I'm sure there are some listeners thinking, "Maybe I really should put more focus on emergency savings, hearing this podcast." What tips do the experts offer up, Daniel, on how to do so?

Daniel de Visé:

I can offer my own tip. When I started it, here's what I did. Anytime I got any kind of a windfall, like a tax refund check, or in my case, I get occasional book royalty checks, anything that you're not expecting, especially if it's four figures, a thousand bucks or something, drop that right into your emergency savings account. If you do that, it'll build up quicker than you think. And then the more slow and steady way to build it up is just to withdraw a little bit out of every paycheck, little enough that you don't really notice it, maybe a hundred bucks or something. And if you keep doing that automatically every time you get paid, it'll build up to four figures and then five figures before you know it.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Good advice as always. Daniel de Visé covers personal finance for USA TODAY. Thank you, Daniel.

Daniel de Visé:

Thank you, sir.

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Taylor Wilson:

Ernesto intensified into a Category 1 hurricane yesterday as its swirled north of Puerto Rico. The storm dumped rain and heavy winds and left nearly half the island without power. Ernesto could become a Category 3 hurricane by Friday before approaching Bermuda on Saturday, according to the National Hurricane Center. Though Ernesto is expected to remain offshore from the US East Coast, the Hurricane Center said swells are forecast to reach the region into the weekend.

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In 2018, four female sex workers were brutally murdered in the span of 12 days in Laredo, Texas, shocking their small border community. A few hours after the last victim was murdered, an unlikely suspect was arrested; a 10-year veteran of the US Customs and Border Protection. During his trial, the prosecution argued that Juan David Ortiz used his role as a Border Patrol agent to methodically stay one step ahead of the investigation all along; an argument that eventually led to his successful conviction. USA TODAY National correspondent, Rick Jervis spent nearly five years reporting on this case, and he chronicles it in his new book, The Devil Behind the Badge. You can hear Rick's conversation with my colleague Dana Taylor after 4:00 PM Eastern Time on this feed.

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

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Harris leads Trump in 5 battleground states, poll finds | The Excerpt