A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Fears of a wider regional conflict in the Middle East were heightened yesterday when Hezbollah and Israel exchanged some of the fiercest fire since the beginning of the war in Gaza.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
And all of this while high-level talks in Cairo wrapped up yesterday. Officials were hoping to inch Hamas and Israel closer to a cease-fire deal, but that seems still very elusive.
MARTÍNEZ: NPR's Hadeel Al-Shalchi joins us from the city of Haifa in northern Israel. What happened with the cease-fire talks?
HADEEL AL-SHALCHI, BYLINE: Well, at least we definitely know that no deal was reached. And it's unknown how much progress was made. Israel and Hamas said its delegations left Cairo late yesterday. Israel did not comment about the talks at all. Hamas said it was present, but it didn't participate in the talks and said it was later briefed by Qatari and Egyptian mediators.
Hamas also reiterated what it's been saying for the past few weeks. It wants Israel to accept a deal that was agreed upon last month, which Hamas says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu keeps making changes to. You know, NPR's Gaza producer Anas Baba, he talked to some Palestinians there about what they thought of these drawn-out talks. And many voiced frustration and just want the end of the war. Here's 29-year-old Ahmed Helis (ph), who said he's being forced to evacuate one more time by the Israeli military from central Gaza.
AHMED HELIS: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: Helis says he doesn't have an ounce of hope. He thinks the war will drag on for at least another year, and he doesn't even follow the news of the talks anymore.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah, wow. Another year, possibly, he says. Now, while these officials were meeting, Israel and Hezbollah attacked each other in a, you know, pretty serious way yesterday.
AL-SHALCHI: That's right. Hezbollah and Iran have been keeping the region on edge this month. They both promised to avenge the Israeli killings of a top Hezbollah leader in Beirut and Hamas' leader in Tehran. And, of course, you know, a retaliation could potentially lead to a wider regional conflict. So when the Israeli military said it had launched a major attack in southern Lebanon yesterday, many in Israel believed that it was the beginning of that wider war. Israel called it a preemptive attack because it says it got intelligence that Hezbollah was going to strike first. Hezbollah responded with its own set of rockets and drones. But then by late morning, Hezbollah said it had finished its operations for the day and Israel deescalated as well.
MARTÍNEZ: And then let's not forget that while all these sides are talking and also exchanging fire, Israeli strikes on Gaza continue. So what do we know about what's continuing to happen there?
AL-SHALCHI: Well, exactly. You know, just yesterday, Gaza health officials said that Israeli military strikes killed 71 Palestinians. They've also put the death toll, of course, now at over 40,000 Palestinians killed since the beginning of the war. The U.N. says Israeli evacuation orders have now displaced 90% of the 2.1 million Palestinians living in Gaza since October, so those humanitarian zones that Palestinians find some relative shelter are shrinking. But those zones are also - been struck by the Israeli military, killing hundreds of Palestinians. And, you know, the humanitarian crisis, of course, is getting worse. The first case of polio was discovered in a 10-month-old baby two weeks ago. The U.N. has called for a mini cease-fire to give medical workers a chance to vaccinate hundreds of children, and we're still waiting to hear if that will happen.
MARTÍNEZ: NPR's Hadeel Al-Shalchi. Thank you very much.
AL-SHALCHI: You're welcome.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MARTÍNEZ: All right, the political conventions are over, and now the sprint to the finish of this presidential election is on.
FADEL: So where do things stand and what should we look out for in the coming 70 days? NPR has a new swing state map out this morning that shows a significantly changed race since President Biden dropped out and his vice president, Kamala Harris, took his spot.
MARTÍNEZ: NPR senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro joins us now to tell us more. Domenico, you've got this new analysis out this morning, so tell us how things have changed going from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris over the past month.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: I mean, it's a very close race, but Harris has now taken a narrow, within the margin of error lead in the blue wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. If that holds, that would put her right at the 270 electoral votes she needs to win. She's also closed the gap completely in the Sunbelt states of Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina. Trump is holding onto a slight lead, very slight lead, in Georgia - again, very close, within the margin of error. And Harris will be in Georgia with her running mate Tim Walz this week.
MARTÍNEZ: And Biden won all those states in 2020. But a change of just - what? - 44,000 votes in just three states could've given Trump the win. So for all the momentum that Kamala Harris seemingly has, she's not quite even where Joe Biden was in 2020.
MONTANARO: Yeah. I mean, in our map, we have all seven of those very close states as toss-ups, given how close they are. But we've seen considerable movement since President Biden stepped aside. Before Harris got in, Trump was leading Biden in all seven, but now we've seen a four- to six-point shift in Harris' favor on average. That's pretty significant in our hyperpolarized political environment. And it's all part of this continued enthusiasm we've seen for Harris, including her campaign announcing over the weekend that they've raised half a billion dollars in just five weeks, a record in presidential politics. So they'll certainly have whatever money they need, but certainly no guarantees at all for her.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. The most recent political development, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspending his campaign in most states on Friday and then endorsing Donald Trump, will that make any difference?
MONTANARO: Maybe. I mean, looking at the polls before RFK Jr. got out, Trump stood to gain about a point or two with him out of the race. Whether that's actually going to be the case now that he's officially out is another story - on paper, maybe, but the actual effect isn't quite clear. I've heard from some Republican strategists who worry that bringing RFK on the team is a pretty big risk, too, because it's doubling down on, quote, "extreme." And Trump really didn't do anything at his convention or since to try to reach out to the middle. His team doesn't really believe he has to, though. You know, they think that there are enough voters who have not turned out in the past who agree with Trump's message who are going to show up this November for him.
MARTÍNEZ: So, Domenico, let's boil this all down because polls can be, every once in a while, wrong. So - and it's happened to Democrats in the past. So is what we're seeing from Kamala Harris real, or is it still kind of a honeymoon effect? What do you make of all that?
MONTANARO: Well, you know, we've seen Democratic pollsters try to warn Democratic activists and others not to get complacent like they did in 2016, they feel, for example, when polls overestimated Hillary Clinton. So we're seeing some hangover from that for sure and Democratic professionals biting their nails, which might be the status, you know? The polls have improved. But the bottom line is we don't know who will show up to vote. And these polls are estimates, snapshots in time, not meant to be predictive. Consistently, though, they tell us that the race is extremely close, which is what we've been expecting all along.
MARTÍNEZ: NPR senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro. Thanks a lot.
MONTANARO: You're welcome.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MARTÍNEZ: What happens when political ambition collides with harassment allegations in the #MeToo era?
FADEL: That's the subject of a new NPR investigation that digs into a scandal connected to the former mayor of Los Angeles and current U.S. ambassador to India. Eric Garcetti has been accused of lying under oath to cover up harassment allegations against one of his friends and top advisers. He's denied those allegations.
MARTÍNEZ: To get the facts, NPR's Tom Dreisbach obtained the full unredacted testimony from the case, including never before seen deposition videos. Tom, this has been alongside Eric Garcetti's story since 2020. So what can you tell us about these harassment allegations and how they relate to him?
TOM DREISBACH, BYLINE: Sure. One of one Garcetti's closest friends, most trusted advisers before he became ambassador was a man named Rick Jacobs. They knew each other for almost two decades. He served as Garcetti's deputy chief of staff at LA City Hall. Jacobs helped him raise millions of dollars for his campaigns for mayor. They had multiple nonprofits they worked on. They worked closely on a possible presidential run in 2020. But for years, people who knew and worked with Rick Jacobs had serious concerns about his behavior.
MARTÍNEZ: What were the concerns?
DREISBACH: Well, let me say up front that Jacobs has denied all wrongdoing and did not answer any of our questions. He actually hung up the phone when I called him. But people who worked with Jacobs at LA City Hall testified that he touched them with forcible kisses on the lips, massages, hugs without their consent and made crude sexual comments, sometimes racist comments, and overall created a, quote, "hostile work environment." Multiple people testified that these concerns were a regular topic of office gossip for years. I also talked to six employees of the Courage Campaign, a liberal group that Jacobs led before joining LA City Hall, and they echoed the same issues going back to the mid-2000s.
MARTÍNEZ: So Rick Jacobs' boss at the time was the mayor, Eric Garcetti. What did Garcetti know?
DREISBACH: Well, Garcetti has denied ever seeing any inappropriate behavior by Jacobs at any time.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ERIC GARCETTI: I want to say unequivocally that I never witnessed nor was it brought to my attention the behavior that's been alleged. And I also want to assure you, if it had been, I would've immediately taken action to stop that.
DREISBACH: However, the allegations started coming to light in 2020 when an LAPD officer sued the city saying that Jacobs had harassed him for years, and he alleged that Garcetti witnessed this behavior and did nothing. The lawsuit turned up a lot of important evidence, including a photo. And in this photo, Jacobs is posing next to Garcetti and some lobbyists while at the U.S. Conference of Mayors. And Jacobs posed by placing his hand in front of the crotch of one of those lobbyists. Garcetti said he was looking the other way, didn't see it happen. But Naomi Seligman is a former communications director for Garcetti. She told me the photo suggests a pattern of behavior.
NAOMI SELIGMAN: Rick felt so comfortable displaying that kind of behavior in front of Eric Garcetti that he put his hand over a man's penis in a photo with Eric Garcetti inches from him.
DREISBACH: Seligman thinks Garcetti lied under oath. Another former Garcetti communications director, Suzi Emmerling, told me the same thing. And another eyewitness testified under oath that Garcetti told him, I can't believe we got through Rick's time at city hall without a lawsuit.
MARTÍNEZ: So how have Eric Garcetti and the White House - he is the ambassador to India - how have they responded?
DREISBACH: Well, Garcetti declined an interview request, but did say in an email that he fully stands by his testimony. The White House has completely stood by Garcetti. But after the White House got Garcetti confirmed, the city of LA paid $1.8 million to resolve that lawsuit from the LAPD officer without admitting wrongdoing. And that allowed us to take a fresh look at all this evidence.
MARTÍNEZ: That's NPR's Tom Dreisbach. You can listen to his two-part investigation on NPR's Consider This podcast. Tom, thanks.
DREISBACH: Thank you.
MARTÍNEZ: This morning, we're also following reports by French media that the CEO of the private messaging service Telegram has been arrested and detained in France. Pavel Durov, a Russian-born French citizen, is accused of failing to restrict the criminal use of his platform, including drug trafficking, the promotion of terrorism and fraud. Telegram is used by nearly 1 billion people worldwide. Researchers say its lack of moderation has spread disinformation and racist rhetoric, but Durov's supporters say he is a free speech hero. For more on this story, tune in to MORNING EDITION or visit npr.org. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
