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On Monday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Mass protests and strikes hit Israel after the the bodies of several hostages were recovered. USA TODAY National Correspondent Chris Kenning tells the story of an interpreter who fled Afghanistan, and how many who aided U.S. troops remain at risk. The final sprint to November is here! USA TODAY Reporter Andrea Riquier discusses whether the starter home is still part of the American dream.

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 and Happy Labor Day. I'm Taylor Wilson and today is Monday, September 2nd, 2024. This is The Excerpt.

Today, protests in Israel after bodies of hostages were recovered. Plus, a closer look at the struggles for those left behind who help the US during the war in Afghanistan. And are starter homes still part of the American Dream?

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Massive protests and general strikes are sweeping across Israel as frustration and anger mounts over the failure of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to secure a ceasefire deal with Hamas that would free Israeli hostages held by the militant group in Gaza for nearly 11 months. The actions come after Israel's military recovered the bodies of six hostages, including Israeli-American, Hersh Goldberg-Polin from a tunnel in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Israeli Health Ministry said the hostages appeared to have been shot at close range two to three days before the bodies were recovered. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized for not bringing them home alive. Protesters are demanding that Netanyahu do more to bring home the remaining 101 hostages, about a third of whom Israeli officials estimate have died in captivity.

Ofri Bibas, a relative of 3 hostages taken by Hamas in its October 7th attacks on Israel including a 9-month-old babies said, "They could have returned to us alive through a deal." Yesterday an estimated 500,000 people demonstrated in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and other cities across Israel. Hamas and other militants killed about 1,200 people and took around 250 hostages in attacks on Israel last fall. Since then, Israel's offensive has destroyed much of Gaza and killed nearly 41,000 Palestinians.

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It is been just over three years since the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and hundreds of thousands of people who helped American troops remain at risk. I spoke with USA TODAY national correspondent Chris Kenning, about these folks and the story of a young Afghan interpreter who made it stateside. Chris, thanks for hopping on The Excerpt today.

Chris Kenning:

Thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

So Chris, would you just start by telling us about Ahmadullah Karimi, his work with the US military and really what the withdrawal from Afghanistan was like for him and his family?

Chris Kenning:

Ahmadullah was a young Afghan from Kandahar who around 2011 trained to become an interpreter for the US military. He did it for one main reason and that was if you worked closely with the military in that form, you would qualify for a special immigrant visa. He was stationed in a small village helping a contingent of sort of special forces soldiers and others in their work. He did that for a few years and then he went back to finish college, got married, worked for an NGO.

By the time 2021 rolled around when the evacuation was going on and the withdrawal was happening, he knew he had to get out of Afghanistan because the Taliban were likely to target those who'd worked closely with the military. During August when the US was conducting these evacuation flights, he went to Kabul and joined the crowds outside the airport. He had his letter of recommendation that had been written for him years ago, but he was not able to get into the airport, talk to US forces in time to get on a plane. And so by the time he did, the airlift was over and he and his family had to turn around and the following month they headed like many others to the nearest border, which was Pakistan to escape.

Taylor Wilson:

Like so many of these stories from that year, just absolutely excruciating, Chris. The other major figure that you write about in this piece is Will Selber. What can you tell us about him and how does he come into this story?

Chris Kenning:

Will Selber is a retired Air Force officer who worked in intelligence, who was on his second deployment to Afghanistan in 2012 when he was assigned to this small village outpost in Kandahar. It was a place with no schools, no medical facilities, very remote, supplies had to be airdropped. He was with several dozen green berets whose job it was to train the Afghan police. And his job was to work with the local governor to try to build support for the government and he was assigned an interpreter and that interpreter was this guy. And so over the course of the year, they bonded during meetings with area elders and trips around the region, wound up parting ways. Selber would go back to Afghanistan several times, including in 2021, right ahead of the evacuation. But at the time he did not know that his former interpreter was among those trying to get out.

Taylor Wilson:

So how many Afghans like Karimi has the US resettled since leaving Afghanistan?

Chris Kenning:

The US has resettled more than 160,000 Afghans since then, according to the State Department. While it was pretty slow in the beginning, the Biden administration is credited by advocates with taking some pretty solid steps to at least accelerate the pace of some of these resettlements. They inherited a refugee program that was cut under former President Donald Trump that they worked to rebuild and to speed processing. They also took steps to cut red tape for the SIV, the Special Immigrant Visa processing and added staff at consulates and different things. This effort's really been helped a lot by these veteran and nonprofit groups that have really done a lot to connect Afghans that they knew with officials in the State Department and consulates and help them through the process. And so the pace has picked up, but the need still vast.

Taylor Wilson:

Chris, I'm curious what gaps still remain, which folks are still in Afghanistan or in the region trying to get to the US? As you're write in the piece, Congress has yet to approve the Afghan Adjustment Act. This was proposed two years ago to speed resettlement among other things. Is that the biggest barrier remaining? And what other barriers do remain?

Chris Kenning:

What advocates want is a permanent pathway to residency, and that's one of the things that this law would help. It's not automatic, but it would make it a lot easier. So that's a big one because right now a lot of these folks are having to apply through the asylum system, which is also very backlogged. There's more than 2 million other applicants already waiting for asylum. There's more than 250,000 vulnerable Afghans that are still stuck in Afghanistan and third countries waiting on approvals, waiting through this bureaucratic process or facing barriers that make it really tough. Among those still waiting are 130,000 applicants for Special Immigrant Visas, the visa that applies to interpreters. There's also their families, also a lot of other folks who worked alongside the US mission maybe for NGOs or human rights groups, civil society groups. So there's just a lot of folks.

These long waits have driven some to travel to the US southern border. Those numbers are relatively small, but they have grown in recent years. And then for the folks that are here, they want to bring family members over and that can be a challenge, especially when it's extended family members that are tougher to get in.

Taylor Wilson:

All right, this was an emotional and powerful story. I really do implore the listeners to go and check out the link in today's show notes. Chris Kenning is a national correspondent with USA TODAY. Thank you, Chris.

Chris Kenning:

Thank you so much.

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Taylor Wilson:

The final sprint to the November election kicks off this week and the two major parties' campaigns are digging in for a focus battle in a handful of swing states that will determine the outcome. Harris is casting herself as a forward-looking consensus builder, while Trump tries to portray her as extremely liberal. He's also launched a slew of insults at Harris and gone after her for flip-flopping on fracking and border security, while he has reversed on a number of issues in the campaign from immigration visas to electric vehicles in Florida's abortion rights ballot initiative. Labor Day weekend has typically served as the symbolic start to the general election with campaigns shifting their task from voter registration to voter persuasion and eventually voter turnout operations.

After several busy days on the campaign trail, which saw Trump visit Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in quick succession, he and his running mate, Ohio Senator J. D. Vance took the weekend off from campaigning. Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz did the same on Saturday and Sunday. The pair visited Georgia at the end of August and they'll hit the same battleground states that Trump did last week in a series of campaign stops today. Soon it'll be up to the vice presidential picks and top campaign surrogates to do the heavy lifting for several days as Trump and Harris prepare for a face off in the presidential debate next week.

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The starter home launched generations of homeowners. Is it still the American Dream? I spoke with USA TODAY reporter Andrea Riquier for more. Andrea, thank you for hopping on The Excerpt today.

Andrea Riquier:

Thanks Taylor for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

So Andrea, let's just start here. What exactly is a starter home?

Andrea Riquier:

There's no real definition of a starter home. Some people break it down by price. For the purpose of this story, I looked at homes that were more affordable than the average. I think I pulled data for homes that were up to $200,000, less than half the median price of homes being sold right now in the US. And really a starter home is something that somebody with more limited means, a first-time buyer, for example, can buy as a way of getting a foot in the door of the housing market.

Taylor Wilson:

Andrea, why have starter homes really been such a good way for Americans to build wealth historically?

Andrea Riquier:

There's a lot of research that shows that the earlier you buy a home, the better positioned you are to start building equity. So if you think about buying a less expensive home as opposed to paying rent, you're paying rent to yourself, which is the old cliche, and you build a little equity. In many cases, the sort of historical idea of a starter home is often something that requires work, a fixer-upper. So generations of people have grown up with this idea that you buy a fixer-upper, you build a little equity, but you also put in a little sweat equity, you renovate it, you paint it at the very least. And then you're in just a much better position to be able to sell that home, take the equity you've accrued. Ideally it's 3, 4, 5, 10 years down the road, you've got better salary and you're just in a better position to buy what is sometimes called the forever home that you're going to be in for the bulk of your adult life.

Taylor Wilson:

And as you outline in this piece, the idea of a starter home really is shifting in this country. What factors are driving this and what's happening here?

Andrea Riquier:

There's no affordable homes. Period. There's just such a shortage of housing at all levels. It's acute at the bottom end of the market. It's just very hard to find homes that are affordable. In many cases, the people that I talked to really made it clear that it's not so much that people are reluctant to put in the time and the sweat equity to really do the work, to build the equity that we just talked about. It's that you're so strapped for the down payment, the closing costs, the monthly payment to the mortgage, that the idea of coming up with a couple of thousand dollars down the road in a year or two to do whatever needs to be done to make it a better home, that's just laughable. Where am I going to get $10,000 to add on a porch or finish the floors or whatever it is? One person told me that there's actually a lot of interest in putting in the sweat equity, the work, because the do-it-yourself shows have been so popular, but there's just no money for that for first time buyers.

Taylor Wilson:

Some Americans do still at least value the idea of home ownership as part of the American Dream. Why do they feel it's still important and what do the experts say here?

Andrea Riquier:

Absolutely. A lot of people still value it, a lot of people are out there looking and looking and looking. And a lot of people value it again because it is a good financial decision. But a lot of people just see it as a way of having autonomy, being their own boss. The woman that I interviewed for the piece was very clear that having her own place was a sign of stability. She talks about it in terms of adulthood and a milestone in her life, but really it's just a sense of getting into your own place, being able to make decisions, not being at the whim of somebody else who wants to raise the rent or needs to raise the rent. And I think those things are valid.

Taylor Wilson:

Do you have any tips you can offer up the listeners on how to sort of make this work and actually get into the starter home market for themselves?

Andrea Riquier:

One tip that came to me from one of the sources in the story that I think is pretty interesting is to consider an adjustable rate mortgage. Again, if this is meant to be a starter home, meaning you expect to stay in it for 3, 5, 7 years, most adjustable rate mortgages start with a fixed rate of about that term. So if you look at a 5/1 ARM, adjustable rate mortgage, you're fixed at a certain generally lower rate for 5 years, at which point it will then begin to adjust. So you'll have the benefit of a slightly lower interest rate than you would getting a 30-year fixed and some time to either refinance at some point or to sell the home and move on, which is what a starter home is meant to be.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. USA TODAY reporter Andrea Riquier joining us with some great insight during this complicated time for housing. Thank you so much.

Andrea Riquier:

Thank you, Taylor.

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Taylor Wilson:

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. Wherever you're listening, I hope you have a happy and safe Labor Day. I'm Taylor Wilson and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.