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On today’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Pope Francis calls for peace as the death toll rises in Gaza. Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been located in a remote prison colony. USA TODAY 2024 Campaign Reporter Karissa Waddick discusses how Republican presidential candidates stack up on likeability. A former federal judge said the Constitution could disqualify Donald Trump in 2024. USA TODAY Health Reporter Karen Weintraub looks at some of the health developments coming in the new year.
Hit play on the player below 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.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I’m Taylor Wilson, and today is Tuesday, December 26th 2023. This is The Excerpt.
Today, the death toll rises after continued Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. Plus a Russian opposition leader has been moved to a remote prison colony, and how do Republican candidates stack up when it comes to likability in 2024?
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The death toll rose to 106 yesterday in one of Israel’s deadliest airstrikes on Gaza since the war began at the Maghazi refugee camp, and refugee workers continue to pull bodies from the rubble. More than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict, and some 1.9 million Gazans have been displaced according to the UN Agency for Palestinian refugees. At least 156 Israeli troops have been killed, and around 1200 people were killed in Israel during the October 7th Hamas attacks, along with hundreds more taken hostage.
Pope Francis made a Christmas day appeal for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. He also blasted the weapons industry and what he called its instruments of death.
Elsewhere, Egypt has released a proposal to end the war with a ceasefire, phased hostage releases, and the creation of a Palestinian government of experts to administer Gaza and the West Bank, Egyptian officials told the Associated Press yesterday. The plan was worked out with officials in Qatar and presented to Israel, Hamas, the US, and European governments, but still appeared preliminary.
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Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been located in a prison colony north of the Arctic Circle, as confirmed by his associates yesterday, nearly three weeks after losing contact with him. Navalny, the leading critic of President Vladimir Putin, is currently serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism, and his attorneys had said they were previously unable to reach him since December 6th. Navalny’s chief strategist wrote on social media that it’s nearly impossible to get to the colony where Navalny is now located, after being moved from a different area closer to Moscow. His advisors had previously warned that Navalny was ill as he was kept in an unventilated cell and denied food. Navalny was poisoned with a military grade nerve agent in 2020, and spent more than a week in a coma outside the country. He returned to Russia in early 2021 and was arrested at passport control for violating the terms of his parole, something he’s called politically motivated over his campaigns against corruption.
Meanwhile, Putin has been privately signaling that he’s open to a ceasefire in Ukraine, according to a New York Times report over the weekend. That’s despite publicly saying that he won’t back down from the conflict. Russia invaded the country in 2022. Since then, more than 10,000 civilians have been killed, according to the UN, in addition to tens of thousands of troops.
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With less than a week to go in 2023, many presidential candidates are turning their attention to how to court voters in the new year. I spoke with USA today 2024 campaign reporter Karissa Waddick about how the Republican field stacks up on likability, and whether the question of who voters want to grab a beer with still matters.
Karissa, thanks for hopping on The Excerpt.
Karissa Waddick:
Yeah, of course. Excited to be here.
Taylor Wilson:
So Karissa, you’ve been talking with early primary voters. What are you hearing about Nikki Haley when it comes to likability and what are we seeing in the polls?
Karissa Waddick:
It’s really interesting because a lot of voters talk about Nikki Haley as this kind of warm figure. They describe her as approachable. One woman I talked to said that listening to her speak feels like a warm hug. But they also see her as strong, and that’s not something that a lot of women candidates are associated with, is being strong on the global stage. And Nikki Haley’s background as Ambassador of the United Nations has really helped her with that.
Taylor Wilson:
Can you talk about this, really this double standard that exists when it comes to likability for women in politics?
Karissa Waddick:
So I talked to Amanda Hunter from the Barbara Lee Family Foundation, and that organization has done a ton of research into this. And they found that voters won’t support women candidates they dislike, even if they believe they’re qualified for office. Whereas male candidates don’t have to necessarily be likable in order to garner a vote from somebody.
Taylor Wilson:
So Karissa, what are voters saying about some of the other candidates on the likability front for 2024?
Karissa Waddick:
As I’m sure you’ve seen, Ron DeSantis has definitely received the brunt of negative feelings of candidates, especially when it comes to his personality. People tend to talk about him as more of an awkward figure on the campaign trail, whether it’s his head bobble early on in the campaign or jokes about his smile during the debates. One voter I talked to who does like to DeSantis and does plan on voting for him, even said that she sees him as a less confident figure on the campaign trail.
Donald Trump, also a lot of his supporters, they will even call him a jerk. They have even said his personality isn’t the reason they like him. They like him because of his policies for what he’s done for the country, in their words. But when it comes to personality, they see him as brash, unrefined, and that has been a negative for him. Those traits for those candidates don’t necessarily detract from voters wanting to support them.
Taylor Wilson:
Karissa, we have historically thought of likability as a really important trait for political candidates. How important is likability toward winning elections these days?
Karissa Waddick:
It’s a really interesting question because like I said, for women candidates, likability is really important. It’s a necessity in order to be elected. Overall though, and especially for male candidates, it doesn’t seem to have that much of an effect. Some experts I talked to said that we commonly talk about electability and this idea of having a beer with a candidate, but oftentimes Americans really are voting on the issues they care about, and that when we talk about likability, we’re often bringing in a lot of these other ideas of leadership characteristics and other traits that we want a leader to have. And we boil that down to likability, but that’s not really what it’s about.
When we’re looking at the 2024 election and likability, it doesn’t seem like it’ll have that big of an impact, other than for Nikki Haley helping her potentially against her male competitors.
I talked to a professor at Stanford, his name was Morris Fiorina, and he did this massive study a few years ago looking at every presidential election between 1952 and 2000. And in that study, he found no evidence that likability swayed a candidate’s chances of ending up in the White House. He saw the idea of likability as more looking at these other traits, leadership qualities, things like that, that people care about. And because of that, a lot of pollsters and political pundits have moved away from looking at likability and moved more towards looking at favorability.
So if you’re looking at polls, you’ll see more questions about favorability now, and those questions encompass whether voters like them or not, whether voters have confidence in their ability to hold office, and it encompasses favorability about their policy stances. It’s a much more dynamic way of looking at how voters view a candidate.
Taylor Wilson:
Karissa Waddick, great story and great work covering these 2024 campaigns. I’m sure we’ll hear from you again in the new year. Thanks, Karissa.
Karissa Waddick:
Thanks so much.
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Taylor Wilson:
Meanwhile, a former federal judge over the weekend said the Constitution could disqualify Donald Trump in 2024. Conservative former judge J. Michael Luttig denied allegations that the Colorado Supreme Court ruling disqualifying Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot was a political choice. The court’s decision last week marked the first time a court has embraced a theory that Trump disqualified himself from a second term by attempting to overturn the 2020 election.
In an interview with MSNBC, host Ali Velshi asked the former judge about concerns that disqualifying the 2024 Republican front-runner is anti-democratic, even if it complies with US laws. Luttig criticized politicians and media outlets for taking up the argument saying that the constitution itself tells us that disqualification is not anti-democratic. He went on to say, “To speak to the political warriors, it’s not President Joe Biden, it’s not the Democrats, it’s not the anti-Trumpers, it’s the Constitution of the United States.”
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From weight loss drugs to prescribed psychedelics, some big changes are on the way in 2024 that could reshape the nation’s health. I spoke with USA Today health reporter Karen Weintraub for more.
Hello, Karen.
Karen Weintraub:
Hello.
Taylor Wilson:
So Karen, you and your colleagues wrote about four big health stories to watch in the new year. Let’s start with weight loss. This has been a huge topic in 2023. What can we expect on this front in 2024?
Karen Weintraub:
Right. And Oprah just brought a lot more attention to it in the last couple of weeks with apparently her success on these drugs. So there may not be a ton of new progress. New drugs will probably take a little longer to come to market, but there’s a pill version coming eventually, and more drugs, maybe even more effective drugs coming.
We’ll probably see in 2024 is more access to the drugs that are on the market. So we’ve got Wegovy and we’ve got Zepbound, and both of those will probably become more accessible, both because insurance companies are likely to feel the pressure from companies and from participants to provide more coverage, the government is feeling a lot of pressure to provide coverage for Medicare Medicaid. And also because the companies will finally we think be able to keep up with demand. They’ve been expanding their manufacturing processes dramatically. So hopefully there’ll be more supply to meet the demand.
Taylor Wilson:
And mental health has become a costly and deadly issue nationwide. What steps did we see toward improving mental health treatments in 2023? And what’s on the table in the new year?
Karen Weintraub:
2023 was a lot more attention to the issue. Mental health was made a priority by the administration. The national 988 Suicide & Crisis health line was expanded and more support provided.
One of the biggest things we’re kind of predicting for 2024 is an expansion for psychedelics. So MDMA party drug ecstasy or Molly is likely to win its first approval under the FDA for PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. And that’s in connection with psychotherapy, so don’t use it as a party drug, don’t use it in connection with other drugs or alcohol. But in carefully constrained circumstances with psychotherapy, it’s been shown to be quite effective for treating really moderate to severe post-traumatic stress disorder.
And once it’s approved for that, it may be approved for other things as well. There are other things going through the pipeline, and psilocybin as well, magic mushrooms, also going through the approval pipeline for depression and some other mental health issues, addiction. So those are all to come, but this may be the year for psychedelics.
Taylor Wilson:
And a bill earlier this year put price restrictions on drugs. I know you’ve been here on the show talking about this, Karen. What’s that mean for 2024?
Karen Weintraub:
Sadly, not too much for 2024, more for years to come. Probably just attention this year. The real change is going to take effect in 2026 when the price changes on diabetes, heart disease, and cancer drugs take effect. The first 10 drugs that the federal government can negotiate prices on will take effect that year.
Taylor Wilson:
And of course, abortion access continues to move through courts and is a big debate across the country. What’s next for this conversation, especially as it pertains to the abortion pill mifepristone in 2024?
Karen Weintraub:
As you may have heard in the last week or two, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case providing access to mifepristone from other states. So right now in the states where it’s illegal, you can still get access to it for mail order. That right could be taken away by the Supreme Court as well, as taken away in other states potentially. That’s going to be a huge issue whether it can be provided via telemedicine and the mail.
There’s also, you may have heard of the case of Kate Cox, a woman in Texas who was denied a medical abortion. Her fetus had a genetic problem and couldn’t be born alive, so she wanted to have an abortion and was denied that. Her case is also going to come through the courts or similar cases like that.
So it’s going to be a big year legally for abortion, and also obviously with a presidential race and a lot of elections on the ballot, abortion’s going to be a big topic of conversation in 2024.
Taylor Wilson:
Absolutely. Well, Karen, thanks for coming on and discussing these stories. Happy New Year and I know we’ll talk again in 2024.
Karen Weintraub:
You as well. Look forward to it.
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Taylor Wilson:
And today is the start to Kwanzaa. First celebrated in 1966, Kwanzaa is a celebration of Black culture and African heritage and unity. Running seven days, each day is dedicated to a principle that’s supposed to be reflected on and celebrated, and often involves the lighting of candles each day.
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 Taylor Wilson, back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA Today.
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