Republicans celebrate Virginia governor win, Atlanta Braves take World Series: 5 Things Podcast
On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: Republicans celebrate Virginia governor win, while New Jersey is too close to call
Glenn Youngkin defeated Terry McAuliffe for Virginia governor. Plus, national political correspondent Phillip Bailey considers what impact yesterday's elections will have on the 2022 midterms, education reporter Erin Richards talks about the election impact on schools, the final panel has signed off on a COVID-19 vaccine for kids aged 5-11 and the Atlanta Braves are World Series champions.
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, and this is five things you need to know Wednesday, the 3rd of November, 2021. Today, how yesterday's elections may impact the 2022 midterms, plus election day and school boards, and more.
Here are some of the top headlines.
- The Senate will today vote on whether to advance the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. The legislation aims to restore justice department review of changes in election law in states with a history of discrimination. The bill already passed the House along party lines.
- The Las Vegas Raiders have released wide receiver, Henry Ruggs. He faces multiple felony charges after a car crash yesterday left a woman dead and his female passenger injured.
- And African leaders at this week's climate conference in Glasgow are pushing the international community to do more to help poor countries adapt to climate change. The continent is the most endangered by the effects of global warming.
Taylor Wilson:
Glenn Youngkin will be the next governor of Virginia.
Glenn Youngkin:
Together we will change the trajectory of this Commonwealth. And friends, we are going to start that transformation on day one.
Audience:
Day one.
Taylor Wilson:
The Republican defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe last night. His win came even as top members of McAuliffe's party made a late push to try and help him across the finish line. As for Youngkin, he never campaigned directly with former president Donald Trump, but he did have his support as Republicans hope Virginia could offer some hints about what's to come in next year's midterm elections.
Elsewhere, New Jersey is still too close to call as of this morning, but Republican Jack Ciattarelli currently holds a slight lead over incumbent Democratic governor, Phil Murphy. Five of the last six governors in the Garden State have been Democrats, though Republican Chris Christie served for eight years. Other elections decided new mayors in some of America's biggest cities. Democrat Michelle Wu was elected as the first female mayor of Boston.
Michelle Wu:
From every corner of our city, Boston has spoken. We are ready to meet this moment. We are ready to become a Boston for everyone. We're ready to be a Boston that doesn't push people out, but welcomes all who call our city home.
Taylor Wilson:
Democrat Eric Adams was elected as New York City's second black mayor. Democrat Ed Gainey will also become the first black mayor of Pittsburgh.
Eyes were also on Minneapolis to see if the city would vote to disband its police department, as we talked about on the show earlier this week, but the measure failed for a second time. It would've replaced the department with a new department of public safety that would've likely included law enforcement, 911 responders and mental health professionals.
For a full list of results from around the country and the latest on that New Jersey race, head to usatoday.com. You can also find an easy link in today's episode description.
With the 2021 election cycle now wrapped up, the focus moves to the midterms in 2022. But what did last night's elections mean for next year? National political correspondent Phillip Bailey explores.
Phillip Bailey:
There are many who want to say that Virginia is a bellwether and often it is, but there's some information that shows that a lot of times it's not always a direct indicator of who's going to take control of Congress the next year.
But what it will be is, it's going to be the first test of President Biden's popularity in the country, which has been taking a nosedive as of late, as Democrats in Washington struggle to find their groove and really get things done that will please their voters. And we've seen national polling that shows that ... I think the recent NBC News poll came out last Friday showing that Biden had a 42% approval. I think Republicans are certainly using that to their advantage. Yes, President Trump is hated on the Left among Progressives and Liberals, but Joe Biden is the president. And that same poll, that same survey by NBC showed that 71% of Americans, including seven out of 10 Independents and roughly 48% of Democrats say the US is headed in the wrong direction.
The most troubling part for the White House, I think in that poll, is that just 18% strongly approve of Biden compared with about 46% who strongly disapprove of the president. So this is becoming a nail-biter for Democrats around the country, because now there is this concern of the president himself is a liability, politically speaking. This election, I think, sets up 2022, and Democrats are going to have a much closer governing margin, a much closer political margin because the boogieman of Donald Trump isn't always going to bail them out in the ways that they think.
Taylor Wilson:
You can find more of Phillip's work, including some other takeaways from this election season, on usatoday.com.
Yesterday's elections had a big impact on schools and what it could mean for vaccine and mask mandates along with social issues. Education reporter Erin Richards explains.
Erin Richards:
Tuesday's elections across the country have had a huge focus on school board races. Usually these are pretty sleepy affairs, they are low turnout elections, but there's been so much worry and frustration over the way schools have handled COVID protocols. These have all been issues that have been super politicized, they're right at parents' doorsteps. Parents have had a front-row seat to their kids' education for the last year and a half, and so school board meetings have just become ground zero for battling over some of these political ideas and also battles over science. What we've seen is a huge number of candidates running for school board, many of them activated by the Right, because they feel that, along with all these COVID things, that schools are leaning too Left. They're too focused on diversity and equity, and that's coming at the expense of just giving a mainstream education to all kids.
But I spent a lot of time recently with kids who are ... they identify as LGBTQ. They're somewhere on the spectrum of not being white and straight, and they say that these conversations really matter, signage in a classroom that says, "This is a safe space. It's got a rainbow flag," Those seem kind of insignificant if it's not how you identify. But to these kids, those are really important. These are places that they go every day and they like to know what teachers they can talk to and feel safe around. The argument from folks who aren't so into that is that schools should be safe anyway and everyone should feel safe. But not everybody's had the experience of being gay or transgender, Black students as well, students of color. Many schools have taken down Black Lives Matter posters because they can be attached to a sort of political movement. And a lot of kids of color have told me, "Hey, this isn't really political. This is how I identify and it makes me feel more safe and more welcome here. I feel like I can focus more in school when these are here."
So school boards have a lot of latitude to change these kinds of policies fairly quickly. And I talked to a bunch of kids and they're tuned into the issues, but a lot of them are 16, 17. They're not able to vote yet and so they're watching these elections pretty closely.
Taylor Wilson:
Those kids include 16-year-olds, Isabella Arndt and Reed Mueller, students at Waukesha West and Waukesha South High School, respectively, in Wisconsin. The schools are in a suburban Milwaukee district that banned teachers from displaying inclusive signs in classrooms, saying that they're too political.
Isabella Arndt:
Pretty much them taking down the pride flags and the safe space zones makes me feel ... and their reasoning at first was because pride flags are too political. It made me question what is the difference between a pride flag and me as a gay person? Because I'm gay and the pride flag represents gay people and gay people exist and there's gay people at the school. So it made me feel that I'm something that's too political. And if they can't have a pride flag in the school, then they can't have gay people in the school because I feel like they're similar things. It just made me feel like they don't want me there.
I guess I would just like to say that I'm really disappointed in the school board right now, because we're all sharing about how we feel and we're all doing the most we can right now and they still just ... It seems like they don't care. Last week I had to go talk to my counselor because this whole situation is just making me feel so defeated. And it's making me, for the first time, question if I'm proud of who I am and I've never felt like that. I've come out to my family and it did not go well and I never felt like that. So this whole situation has honestly been more than I expected it to be and it's been harder for me. So I guess I would just like to say that the school board is really hurting their students right now and they just don't care.
Reed Mueller:
I think diversity and inclusion are integral to be in pretty much every school. If kids cannot feel like they are safe in the school environment, how can they be expected to learn? I think that everyone can agree with that. And the truth is that if we don't push for diversity and inclusiveness, if we let people who are homophobic and transphobic kind of dictate these kids' emotions, they can't feel safe in their school environment.
And if people say that it's too political, I'd say that one of the things that the district promotes as something that we teach in our schools is preparing kids for an active political environment. If you would argue that we'd like to keep partisanship out of schools, that's a different issue. But both political parties in America right now, and almost everyone on the school board, I think it'd be pretty hard to argue that queer kids shouldn't exist, that queer kids shouldn't have a voice or be comfortable in their own bodies in their environment.
Taylor Wilson:
You can follow along with more of Erin's work on the Education Beat on Twitter @emrichards.
A key advisory committee has unanimously recommended that kids aged five to 11 receive the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. Children in the age group could begin getting the shots as soon as this week once CDC director Rochelle Walensky signs off, which she's expected to do.
Rochelle Walensky:
Today's a monumental day in the course of this pandemic and one that many of us have been very eager to see. For almost two full years school has been fundamentally changed. There are children in the second grade who have never experienced a normal school year. There are students in middle school who missed out on school sports and extracurricular activities. There are missed proms and homecoming dances and too many missed graduations. We have watched as the education gaps that exist in this country have widened as this virus has disproportionately impacted racial and ethnic minority communities.
Pediatric vaccination has the power to help us change all of that and to let us move towards schools as we once knew it and hope it can be a safe and enriching environment for all of our children.
I also think that I share with your perspective that pediatric vaccination is just one important piece to this puzzle. It is important that we also continue to vaccinate as many adults as possible to provide protection to children in the community, including those younger than five who may not be eligible now for vaccination.
Taylor Wilson:
The Biden Administration says it has ordered enough vaccines to cover all 28 million American children in the age group. The distribution program is expected to run at full strength starting next week, though doses may be available this week as well. The CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices found that benefits outweigh any risks to vaccinate that age group. Doses will be available at 100 children's hospitals, temporary clinics and schools, pharmacies and pediatrician's offices. Shots will be delivered for free at one third the dose of the adult vaccine, and will be delivered in two shots at least three weeks apart.
In a Pfizer study, out of more than 2200 children, only 19 got COVID-19 at all, but only three children were infected out of the 1,500 who received the active vaccine and none had a fever or any severe symptoms. The other 16 unvaccinated children who were infected suffered more serious symptoms, including 10 fevers and no severe cases or deaths were seen in either group.
Several professional groups added their support yesterday for childhood vaccination, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners and the Pediatric Infectious Disease Society. One potential vaccine side effect is extremely rare, a swelling of the heart muscle, known as myocarditis, that's been seen particularly among young men who get the vaccine. Out of every million 16 and 17-year-old boys who have been vaccinated, 69 have developed the condition. That's compared to just two out of every million men in their 40s. Most cases appear to be mild and none have died. Health experts also expect that side effect to be even rarer in children since they have lower levels of testosterone. Many children, like adults and teens, will feel side effects within the first 48 hours or so. Most common side effects in trials were fatigue, headache, joint pain, and nausea.
There's a new champion in Major League Baseball. The Atlanta Braves won the World Series last night, beating the Houston Astros seven-nothing in Game Six. It's the Braves' first championship since 1995 and their second since moving to Atlanta in 1966. They pulled it off despite a slew of injuries to some of their biggest stars, including outfielder Ronald Acuña Jr. in July. But they managed to not only win the World Series, but also take down two of the best teams in baseball in the process, the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros. USA Today's Sports Bob Nightingale looks at how they did it.
Bob Nightingale:
It's unbelievable for Atlanta to win this thing. I picked them to win at the beginning of the season, but I had no idea Ronald Acuña would be going down, Mike Soroka, they had so many injuries. They didn't get over .500 until August 6th, the latest any team ever make the playoffs. They made six trades by the trade deadline, grabbed their four outfielders to make up for Ronald Acuña. So when everybody thought they were done, the GM Alex Anthopoulos went on and brought these guys in, made a huge difference.
And take a look at this infielder, they're going to be around a while. I know Freddie Freeman's a free agent. They're certainly going to keep Freddie. But when you're talking about Freddie Freeman at first base, Ozzie Albies at second, Dansby Swanson at short stop, Austin Riley at third. This is one of the greatest infields of all time. I mean, all four guys playing Golden Glove caliber defense, and all but Swanson hit 30 home runs and Swanson had 27. So terrific, terrific defense. Good young starting pitching. And they'll be back. There's no reason in the world why we won't see Atlanta back in the World Series a year from now.
Taylor Wilson:
For more from the past month's baseball postseason, head to usatoday.com/sports.
You can find 5 Things wherever you're listening right now, seven mornings a week. Thanks to PJ Elliot for his great work on the show and I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA Today.