Ireland, Norway and Spain recognize Palestinian state | The Excerpt

On Thursday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Ireland, Norway and Spain are recognizing a Palestinian state. USA TODAY National Correspondent Will Carless discusses how former President Donald Trump is spreading QAnon posts as he campaigns. Nikki Haley says she'll vote for Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential race. Another controversial flag flew over a home of Supreme Court Justice Alito. USA TODAY Personal Finance Reporter Daniel de Visé discusses why first-time homebuyers are waiting to buy.

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, and today is Thursday, May 23rd, 2024. This is The Excerpt. Today, three new countries are recognizing a Palestinian state. Plus, how Trump is involving QAnon in his campaigning. And why would-be first-time home buyers are holding off.

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Ireland, Norway and Spain said yesterday that they would recognize a Palestinian state for the first time.

Simon Harris:

I've spoken with a number of other leaders and counterparts, and I'm confident that further countries will join us in taking this important step in the coming weeks.

Taylor Wilson:

That's Ireland's Prime Minister, Simon Harris. Norway's Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, said, "We must keep alive the only alternative that offers a political solution for Israelis and Palestinians alike. Two states living side-by-side in peace and security." And Spain's leader, Pedro Sanchez, said the recognition reflected public opinion in his country and was also the right thing to do. Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian diplomatic envoy to the UK, said the move would "move us closer to justice and a sustainable peace." He urged other countries to follow suit.

The diplomatic decision, while rare, is largely symbolic. It won't immediately impact the Israel-Hamas war. The trio of nations hope their announcement, which takes effect on May 28th, will inject momentum into a stalled political process that could lead to a halt in fighting and also apply pressure on Israel to move toward a two-state solution. Israel said it was a distorted step that will fuel extremism and instability. Israel's foreign minister, Israel Katz, immediately ordered the return to Israel of ambassadors in the three countries. The US does not recognize a Palestinian state.

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Ahead of the 2024 election, former President Donald Trump is spreading QAnon posts as he campaigns. I spoke with USA TODAY National Correspondent, Will Carless, for more on how Trump's online posts are reinvigorating a conspiracy theory that was a hallmark of his first term.

Will, thanks for hopping on.

Will Carless:

Thanks for having me on.

Taylor Wilson:

So Will, I know I've had you outline this for us before, but can you just remind us what QAnon is and what are some of its main principles or tenets?

Will Carless:

Sure. And to be clear, that this has evolved and changed over time, but what QAnon began as is essentially a conspiracy theory that was built up around a series of anonymous posts that appeared on message boards, first on 4chan and then on a message board called 8kun. And these purported to be messages from somebody with Q Clearance, Q Security Clearance, and they were very cryptic and they had all of these bizarre messages interwoven into them, and a whole community grew up around trying to decipher those messages. But the general gist was that President Trump, or then President Trump, was engaged in an almost holy mission against evil Democrats who were involved in everything from pedophilia to human trafficking to all sorts of other dark stuff. And the whole concept was that Trump was going to eventually arrest all of these people and that truth was going to win out. And that was how this whole ethos kind of got started.

Taylor Wilson:

So what have we seen recently with Donald Trump circulating some of these QAnon messages, and what kinds of messages are we talking about at this point?

Will Carless:

So in the early days, Trump was given several opportunities to completely disavow QAnon and the QAnon community. And he never did that. And indeed, he has said things in the past, like why would he not support a group of people who support him? What's happened recently and what this new study that we got from a group called Media Matters shows that Trump has actually actively been promoting QAnon. In the two years since former President Trump launched his Truth Social platform, he has posted or promoted QAnon-affiliated accounts more than 800 times, ensuring that those messages are really widely seen to his millions of followers. So he's really gone on a tear of late, actively promoting QAnon, rather than just not distancing himself from the movement.

Taylor Wilson:

And Will, can you help us understand the role that the Truth Social platform itself plays in all this?

Will Carless:

Sure. So, according to the experts that I talked to, Truth Social has really not shied away from promoting QAnon accounts. So, there was a big QAnon presence at January 6th, at the insurrection. I'm sure most of our listeners will remember the QAnon Shaman, for example. This guy Jake Angeli who wore the horned hat and was a big QAnon promoter. And in the months that followed, a lot of the big social media platforms basically banned QAnon. They deplatformed QAnon influencers and kicked them off. Truth Social pretty much did the opposite, welcomed Q-affiliated accounts and, as one expert put it, played footsie with the movement from the very beginning.

Taylor Wilson:

And so, how are analysts and experts viewing how Trump continues to really involve himself with these types of conspiracy theories and QAnon talking points?

Will Carless:

I think what this boils down to for Trump is, ultimately, former President Trump has never shied away from embracing groups of people who embrace him back. So that's the sort of analysis is, well, this is Trump knowing that this is a group of diehard supporters and he is just reaching out to them as we lead up to the election. Where that gets difficult is that the QAnon conspiracy theory isn't just some goofy sort of nonsense. I mean, people have killed people almost in the name of the QAnon conspiracy theory. People have gone down rabbit holes and become obsessed with conspiracies. So, on the one hand, he's just playing politics as usual and bringing in supporters. On the other hand, he's really boosting a dangerous movement, and a movement that's been tied to numerous acts of violence and even murder.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Will Carless covers extremism and emerging issues for USA TODAY. Thanks, as always, Will.

Will Carless:

Thank you.

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Taylor Wilson:

Nikki Haley said yesterday that she will vote for Donald Trump in this year's general election. Haley made the comments during a discussion on foreign policy at the Hudson Institute, a Conservative think tank. Though she dropped out of the GOP Presidential primary in March, Haley continues to rack up a notable share of votes against Trump across the country. Just last week, the former ambassador to the UN received 20% of the vote in Maryland, nearly 18% in Nebraska, and more than 9% in West Virginia.

Meanwhile, in Trump trial news, the latest development is another headache for the candidate. He still had classified documents in his bedroom at Mar-a-Lago four months after an FBI search of his Florida estate, according to a court decision in the case released this week. Another court filing revealed that FBI agents approved the use of lethal force if necessary during the search. The FBI says that's just routine. But in a social media post, Trump said the potential use of force was a serious threat to democracy.

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Another controversial flag flew over a home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. The New York Times reported yesterday that a second flag flew over his New Jersey vacation home last summer, reading, "Appeal to Heaven," which the report said is a symbol for a religious strand of the Stop the Steal campaign. The Times previously reported that an upside down American flag flew over the Justice's Virginia home in January of 2021. Alito told The Times his wife Martha-Ann Alito raised the inverted flag in response to a dispute with a neighbor and that he had no involvement. The Times said Alito declined to respond to questions about the beach house flag. The flags have made headlines since Supreme Court Justices are supposed to avoid politics.

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Both first-time home buyers and current owners say they're waiting out high mortgage rates. But when are rates going to come down? I spoke with USA TODAY Personal Finance Reporter, Daniel de Visé, for more.

Daniel, thanks for hopping on.

Daniel de Visé:

It's my pleasure.

Taylor Wilson:

So Daniel, let's start here. What does polling tell us about how would-be first-time home buyers are really holding off on buying right now?

Daniel de Visé:

Yeah, this caught my eye. A good recent poll from a bank, BMO Bank, found that 71% of people who don't own homes but want to, first-time home buyers, said they're not going to do it. They're not going to enter the market until interest rates drop. And that's just interesting, because it's kind of in a microcosm why we've got such a slow housing market right now, that people don't want to buy.

Taylor Wilson:

You mentioned rates. When are mortgage rates going to come down, and how far? I know you write about that big 4% number in this piece, Daniel.

Daniel de Visé:

So, especially younger people are confused about this, because if you're a millennial, maybe a person in your mid-30s, you've never seen interest rates this high on home mortgage at 7%. You've never seen that. But the truth is, the last 15 years was not an anomaly, but sort of an outlier, sort of a asterisk. And over the long course of history, usually mortgage rates are pretty high. They were almost 20% in the 1980s. And so I think there's this kind of unreasonable, unrealistic expectation that a lot of people have, younger people and even older people, people who own homes with these great mortgages, that they're going to come way down. And the more and more we're getting economic signals this year from the Fed, they aren't coming down, at least not a lot, anytime soon.

Taylor Wilson:

Of course, everyone's situation is different, but what general advice then are we hearing from experts on this when it comes to frustrated home buyers in the market right now?

Daniel de Visé:

The 4% mortgage rate is not coming back in the near future. So there are other things you can do, and I was thinking about these potential first-time home buyers. Let's say you want to move from DC where I live, to Asheville, beautiful Asheville, North Carolina. The experts would say, "Don't go and buy a home right away in Asheville. You might end up next to a brewery and it'll smell like beer. Rent first, get a lease. Rent something and spend some time there, six months or a year, and get to see all the different neighborhoods and find out where the grocery stores are and the schools." That's one tip. Then also, in the unlikely event mortgage rates do come significantly down, you'll be renting so you can pounce and buy a house. That's one tip. Another one is, right now, because this is a difficult housing market, I would say for both buyers and sellers, it's just so darn slow. That's all the more important to have a really good real estate agent. This would be the person who knows about the houses coming on the market way before they're on the market.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Daniel de Visé covers personal finance for USA TODAY. Thanks, as always, Daniel.

Daniel de Visé:

Oh, thank you, sir.

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Taylor Wilson:

Solar radiation management might sound like science fiction, but it's just one of many geoengineering solutions scientists are working on to help cool the Earth's climate. The biggest risk, a significant number of unknown unknowns. Be sure to tune into The Excerpt later today as my co-host, Dana Taylor, is joined by Wake Smith, author of Pandora's Toolbox: The Hopes and Hazards of Climate Intervention. You can find the episode right here beginning at 4:00 PM Eastern Time.

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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, back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ireland, Norway and Spain recognize Palestinian state | The Excerpt