More than 1,300 dead after severe heat at hajj pilgrimage | The Excerpt
On Monday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Severe heat led to deaths at the hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, while heat warnings and advisories spread across the U.S. USA TODAY Congress, Campaigns and Democracy Reporter Karissa Waddick discusses how Democratic candidates are approaching transgender issues in 2024. Are the economy and job growth slowing? Not based on sales of worker uniform patches. USA TODAY Personal Finance Reporter Daniel de Visé talks about millionaires next door.
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 Monday, June 24th, 2024. This is The Excerpt. Today, the latest on deaths caused by extreme heat at the hajj pilgrimage, plus how Democrats are approaching trans issues in this election year, and we hear about some millionaires next door.
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More than 1,300 people are dead after extreme heat amid the annual Muslim pilgrimage to the sacred city of Mecca that wrapped up last week. Hajj participants died in temperatures that climbed above 124 degrees. Saudi Arabia's health minister said the deaths came as a result of pilgrims walking long distances under direct sunlight without adequate shelter or comfort. The 5 to 6 day odyssey of hiking and prayer drew nearly 2 million pilgrims from around the world. Fatalities included a number of elderly people and those suffering from chronic diseases according to the health minister. He also said that most of the fatalities were among people who were not authorized to make the pilgrimage. Hajj is the fifth pillar of Islam, and Muslims are expected to make the pilgrimage at least once in their lives.
Meanwhile, extreme heat continues to be a concern stateside as well. Parts of the east saw temperatures linger around triple digits yesterday and more than a 100 million Americans were under heat advisories or warnings from the National Weather Service.
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Democratic candidates countered anti-trans rhetoric in races last year, but now advocates worry the party is shying away from the issue. I spoke with USA TODAY Congress campaigns and democracy reporter Karissa Waddick for more. Hello Karissa.
Karissa Waddick:
Hey Taylor. How's it going?
Taylor Wilson:
Good. Thanks for hopping back on The Excerpt. So I want to just start here. What kinds of anti-trans rhetoric have we seen playing out nationwide really, especially when it comes to youth sports?
Karissa Waddick:
So half of US states have enacted laws regulating transgender people's bodies, particularly youth. So for instance, many of the laws that have been passed prevent transgender girls from participating in school sports, and we also banned gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth. Proponents of the laws preventing transgender students from participating in girls sports argue that these laws are necessary to preserve fairness and protect competition in girls sports. But there's no evidence to suggest that there is any unfairness as it is. A 2022 study published in the Journal of Endocrine Society found that transgender children who haven't been through puberty and those that do receive gender-affirming care once they start puberty, they don't have any advantages in sports. And then gender-affirming care treatments typically lower testosterone levels for transgender girls and women. And these treatments have been found to erase any athletic advantage that anyone may have. So that's where the rhetoric is right now and some of the policy in this area.
Taylor Wilson:
So Karissa, you wrote about what's happened in recent years in Kentucky. How have we seen transgender youth play out as a political issue there?
Karissa Waddick:
Prior to the election in 2023 in Kentucky, the democratic governor of that state, Andy Beshear had vetoed a series of bills from GOP lawmakers that prevented transgender girls from participating in school sports and banning gender-affirming healthcare like some of the other states we had talked about. The [inaudible 00:03:27] Republican legislature in that state overrode Beshear's vetoes but his Republican opponent in the 2023 gubernatorial election was Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron. And he used the topic of transgender rights, particularly as it relates to youth and around the issue of athletics a lot in the campaign. He used it as an attack against Beshear. Beshear responded to a lot of that rhetoric by invoking his Christian faith to express support for transgender youth. And he said that all children are children of God. Beshear ended up winning the Kentucky Governor's race in 2023 in a pretty red state, and it showed that transgender rights really weren't an issue for voters as much as his Republican opponent, Cameron, had said that they might be.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah. So how might this really serve as a blueprint for democratic candidates outside the state, including President Joe Biden in this election year?
Karissa Waddick:
So I talked to one political strategist who essentially said this shows that there really are very few single issue voters out there anymore. This strategist who I spoke with said there really isn't evidence to suggest that transgender rights and particularly related to transgender youth, is high on people's priority list when they head to the ballot box. So for Joe Biden, that might mean that he doesn't need to shy away from supporting transgender people out of fear of how to navigate the rhetoric around this issue. He can focus messaging around transgender rights and supporting transgender children, really focusing on the aspects of what the science says about biology and what it means for children to just participate in sports in general.
Taylor Wilson:
Speaking of Biden, the Biden administration left proposed protections for transgender student athletes out of its recent Title IX update. What can you tell us here, Karissa, and what conundrum does this now give for the president?
Karissa Waddick:
So the Biden administration released its new Title IX update earlier this spring, and it had, like you said, a proposal that would've prevented states and schools from outright banning transgender students from participating in sports. It was slated to be part of this law and it wasn't. And some advocates, they speculated the decision was really based on a calculation by the Biden administration that trans sport policy might not be popular among moderate and swing voters in a consequential election year. Other advocates though have said they think that the Biden administration didn't include the law simply because they were waiting for a better faith environment to propose this athletic policy. The Biden Title IX policy as it is, there've been a number of lawsuits from attorneys generals against it, and a federal judge recently halted its enforcement.
Taylor Wilson:
How big or small an issue might this actually be for Americans at the ballot box when they cast their votes this fall?
Karissa Waddick:
So national polls have showed that Americans, Democrat and Republican, generally support policies that prevent discrimination. But when it comes to transgender sports, people, even Democrats are more on board with policies that prevent students from participating on teams that match their gender identity. But then when you look at whether transgender rights is an issue, that Americans will vote on a survey published by GLAAD, a nonprofit LGBTQ+ organization found that 53% of registered and likely 2024 voters this year said that they oppose candidates who speak frequently about restricting access to healthcare and sports participation for transgender youth.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Karissa Waddick covers Congress, campaigns and democracy for USA TODAY. Thanks as always, Karissa.
Karissa Waddick:
Thanks so much.
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Taylor Wilson:
Evidence of a coming economic slowdown in the US may be mounting, but not according to one under the radar metric: uniform patches. World Emblem, the largest maker of emblems and patches that go on uniforms worn by workers in a broad range of industries says sales are up 13% so far this year and showing no signs of slowing down. Through May, the company has sold 26.4 million patches to the nation's leading uniform makers, up from 22.1 million during the same period in a strongly performing 2023. And orders have steadily risen month to month according to its CEO, Randy Carr. Because World Emblem's products span such a large assortment of industries and are worn by newly hired employees, he says they provide a reliable gauge of hiring plans before monthly job reports are published. Still the unemployment rate is edging up and monthly payroll gains are projected to slow. Additionally, Americans' pandemic related savings largely have run dry and credit card debt is near a record high. You can read more with the link in today's show notes.
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It feels like the fulfillment of the American Dream: building millions from scratch. I spoke with USA TODAY personal finance reporter, Daniel de Visé about some millionaires next door who built their fortunes out of nothing. Daniel, thanks for hopping on.
Daniel de Visé:
Happy to be here.
Taylor Wilson:
So Daniel, I want to just start here with some of the numbers and then we'll hear about these millionaires next door. But how many millionaires are there in the US?
Daniel de Visé:
I searched around and Motley Fool has analyzed federal data and they think it might be now up to 18% of households, which would be about 24 million households that are worth a million dollars. And that's more than it used to be.
Taylor Wilson:
Do we know how much this is inherited?
Daniel de Visé:
Yeah, some of it. I guess more than you'd think because this is supposed to be the land of the American Dream, but anywhere between maybe 15% to almost half of wealth in this country is inherited. And then if you drill down, a lot of people now become millionaires by having jobs like law partner or surgeon. Medical specialists can reach a million bucks in a few years. So yeah, there's a lot of inherited wealth and a lot of law and medical wealth, and I tried to steer clear of all that in this story.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah. So you set out to find what you called the Millionaire Next Door. I want to hear about a few of the folks you found Daniel and spoke with. Let's start with Anwar Garcia from Texas. What's his story?
Daniel de Visé:
Well, all these people started out with basically zero, which is kind of inspiring to us all. Anwar was born in Guadalajara and grew up between Mexico and several different addresses in the United States. And he wound up in Houston and he worked for the Geek Squad and he got really good at finding computer components on eBay that were basically under-priced and he knew what he was doing. So he would buy up these things that if you had it, you wouldn't know what it was and he'd sell them back for a big profit. He basically developed a very small amount of capital into a big company, refurbishing computers and then getting them to new users, which was how he always thought old computers should be used.
Taylor Wilson:
And how about Greg Clement? This is an Ohio man who I believe made his money in real estate, is that right?
Daniel de Visé:
Again, started out with basically goose egg, nothing, and grew up in rural Ohio and his dad raced motorcycles and he went to work as a financial planner, Greg did, and kind of got to see how rich people got rich and he figured out real estate was a big thing. So he went one day, told his wife, "I'm getting into real estate." He became a house flipper and what makes him different because these guys aren't like Einsteins any more than you or I are. But he had a really smart thing, he went into it at a time when there was a lot of short sales happening, the housing bubble was bursting, and he just did a bunch of flips all at once and did sort of mass numbers of house flips and became very wealthy doing that.
Taylor Wilson:
And you also wrote about Rebecca Case. She said, "The secret is to try believing in yourself just a little." How did she become a millionaire next door?
Daniel de Visé:
She had survived a lot of trauma in her personal life and she just had a knack for psychology when she went to college and became a trained psychotherapist. And she just fell into this thing called EMDR, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, which is a kind of therapy that desensitizes traumatic memories. And she just became really, really good at it and started training other people and training other people. And lo and behold, at age, I think she's 42, she has thousands of people she's trained and she is a 7 figure social worker basically. And that's not a profession that pays very well.
Taylor Wilson:
Wow. So I'm curious, Daniel, did these folks have anything in common that stood out to you? What lessons might listeners who have their own aspirations maybe to join this group take away?
Daniel de Visé:
Each one of these guys has a quote in here. A lot of them benefited from combination of good timing. The ice cream truck guy who got into the business right in the Great Recession so people didn't have money to take a vacation, but they could buy ice cream. Or doing a really good job at something where people hadn't been doing a good job. These two brothers became roofers and just were much more professional about it, had much more of a real business approach to doing roofing, stuff like that. Or the guy who now has a bestselling business book. He just did a really, really good job of squirreling away savings. You and I both do that, but he did it better.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, Daniel de Visé covers personal finance for USA TODAY. Thanks as always, Daniel.
Daniel de Visé:
Always a pleasure.
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Taylor Wilson:
Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your pods, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: More than 1,300 dead from severe heat at hajj pilgrimage | The Excerpt
