Israelis protest as Netanyahu pushes back over Gaza hostage deal pressure | The Excerpt

On Tuesday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under growing pressure to get a cease-fire deal done. President Joe Biden boosted Vice President Kamala Harris to union workers on Labor Day. With COVID-19 relief gone, teachers are losing their jobs. USA TODAY Money and Personal Finance Reporter Medora Lee discusses how early access to your pay may soon be classified as a loan. The Klamath River flows freely after the last dam comes down.

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 Tuesday, September 3rd, 2024. This is The Excerpt.

Today, the latest on protests in Israel as anger grows toward Netanyahu. Plus Biden boosts Harris to unions. Early access to pay, may soon be classified as a loan.

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Protests and general strikes swept through Israel yesterday as frustration continues to grow 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. Protests come after Israel's military recovered the bodies of six hostages from Gaza in recent days. Israeli protesters carried six empty coffins past Prime Minister Netanyahu's private residence in Jerusalem last night, in a symbolic act. As for what's next for a ceasefire proposal, the Washington Post reported that the Biden administration was set to present a final take-it-or-leave-it ceasefire and hostage release proposal to Israel and Hamas in the coming weeks. The move involves close collaboration with Egypt and Qatar and may mark the last chance for an American-brokered resolution.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, yesterday rejected calls to soften his demand to keep troops in a border area of southern Gaza. The Philadelphi Corridor bordering Egypt has been a sticking point in efforts to secure a ceasefire deal. Hamas has rejected any Israeli presence while Netanyahu has said Israel will not abandon the corridor where troops have uncovered tunnels they say have been used to smuggle weapons and ammunition into Gaza. Netanyahu, along with growing pressure from the public, faces a rift with his own defense minister, Yoav Gallant. On Sunday, Gallant cold on the cabinet to reverse an earlier decision to keep troops in the Philadelphi corridor in order to reach a deal to bring more hostages home. In his first public address since Israel's military recovered the bodies of the six hostages, Netanyahu pushed back last night against the wave of pressure saying at one point during the live press conference, "No one will preach to me."

One of the hostage bodies returned was that of Israeli-American Hirsch Goldberg-Polin. His parents paid tribute to their son at his funeral yesterday.

Rachel Goldberg:

Finally, my sweet boy. Finally, finally, finally, finally, you're free.

Taylor Wilson:

Hirsch Goldberg-Polin was one of dozens taken hostage at an outdoor dance festival in Israel where thousands of people were partying in the dawn hours of October 7th, when Hamas attacked.

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President Joe Biden gave Vice President Kamala Harris a strong endorsement at a Labor Day rally yesterday, telling union workers during their first joint campaign appearance since he left the Democratic ticket, that she's more than capable of leading the country. Looking to shore up her support from blue collar voters, Harris opted to campaign alongside Biden in Pennsylvania and wade into a fight over the ownership of one of America's largest steel producers. Harris's running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz met with labor leaders from his state in St. Paul in the morning. Walz also attended the Milwaukee area Labor Council's Labor Fest in Wisconsin yesterday. Harris Republican opponent, former president Donald Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, stayed off the campaign trail yesterday.

Harris said Biden is a lifelong friend of the labor movement, noting that when the heat was intense and the cameras were not rolling, that he has always stood with Labor. Harris immediately set to work on securing the support of the largest national labor unions after Biden quit the race earlier this summer. She's received endorsements from the American Federation of Teachers, the United Steelworkers, the UAW, and others. One endorsement that has eluded Harris so far is the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Teamsters President, Sean O'Brien, spoke at the Republican National Convention, an offer he said at the time that he made to both major political parties. He said Sunday, during an appearance on the CBS program, Face the Nation, that his union wants to meet with Harris before it determines which candidate to support. Half of the union's 1.3 million members are Republican and half are Democrats, he said.

While Trump performed better than expected among union workers in 2016, some of that support shifted back to Biden in 2020. Experts say that Biden's popularity among union workers is likely to carry over to Harris. Progress from any workers' rights issues was stagnant leading into 2016, and Trump tapped into that frustration, but he then proposed cuts to worker protection agencies and the Economic Policy Institute called moves under his administration to overturn worker protections, unprecedented.

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Thousands of teachers and school staffers across the country are at risk of losing their jobs as districts balance their budgets and prepare for the shortfall after COVID-19 relief money expires. Districts have been scrambling to put unfunded staffers into different roles, but the reality is that many students will lose contact with adults with whom they've built relationships in recent years. The Biden administration granted schools $189.5 billion over the past few years through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund under the American Rescue Plan Act. School officials have until the end of September to commit the remainder of their money and districts will no longer be able to pay for non-teaching staff roles with that money after September 30th. Schools nationwide used most of their relief fund money to pay for classroom teachers and support staff according to a U.S. Department of Education analysis of district spending for fiscal year 2022. Districts across the country are now laying off recently hired educators, teaching assistants, counselors, restorative justice coordinators, and other key staff at schools, or they're scrambling to find ways to retain them. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.

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Early access to your pay may soon be classified as a loan. I spoke with USA TODAY money and personal finance reporter Medora Lee to find out why that matters. Howdy, Medora.

Medora Lee:

Hi, how are you?

Taylor Wilson:

Good, good. Thanks for hopping back on. So let's just start here. What is earned wage access and who can it be useful for?

Medora Lee:

So earned wage access means that you can tap your earnings before your paycheck period. So for example, let's say I have a job, I work at Walmart, Walmart actually offers this, I think, as a benefit to their employees, but I'm going to work, my car breaks down, but I don't have the money to pay for the repair. And so what I can do is, because it's in between pay periods, say they pay every two weeks and I've only worked one, so this allows me to access the wages that I've already accrued. I've already worked that week, so I should be able to tap into some of that money early and then pay for my car repair and then be able to get back to work. So that's what earned wage access is. And some companies offer it as a benefit and if your company doesn't, you can get it through a third party by downloading or going to an online platform and signing up.

Taylor Wilson:

So it sounds like a solid option, but what are some potential downsides here?

Medora Lee:

A lot of people have come to rely on these to get them through, but now the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is saying that sometimes there are fees associated with it. If you want your money very fast, let's say within hours or within less than a day, they might charge you what they call an expedited fee. Otherwise, usually you don't have to pay too much. And it's like a few dollars, $3 to $5 maybe, and then on top of it, before you accept, you have an option sometimes to leave a tip for the service. So what the CFPB is saying that all of these fees and these tips really add up for a lot of people, and so they are proposing that maybe these need to be disclosed to people because they don't understand how much these fees can be eating of their wages, and so they're proposing to consider them a loan, which then opens up a whole new ballpark of regulation that companies have to follow.

Taylor Wilson:

So how do Americans feel about this proposal you mentioned from the consumer financial protection Bureau?

Medora Lee:

So it's been mixed. The CFPB's been accepting public comment through August 30th and some of them say "This is a lifeline that you're going to take away from me, because what happens is if they decide that the fee, they translate it into an annual percentage rate so that you can see how high you would be paying versus a credit card APR, then people may not want to do it. Or it hits state caps on how much interest lenders can charge, and so then it might be cut off to some of those people or the companies might have to rejig the product and make it more expensive. Some people are pretty upset about it because they just like it the way it is. Then other people said they've had family members who have used these and gotten trapped into this whole fee structure. The fees are taken out at the end when they deduct it from your paycheck and then they end up with not enough money to get to the next time period and then they have to keep borrowing.

Taylor Wilson:

So it's clear Medora, some Americans really do rely on earned wage access. What alternatives could they look to outside of this?

Medora Lee:

You can always do payday loans, which nobody really recommends, or pawn shops that require you to put up collateral, nobody really recommends that. Those are if you're really desperate. But one financial planner I talked to said sometimes if you work at a smaller company, you can just ask your employer directly for an advance. Or 0% credit cards if you have decent credit. Home equity line of credit if you own a home. And then you can also try to tap a credit union even if you don't have great credit, they might give you $500, small line of credit and there aren't really a lot of fees associated with it. But just remember that all of these loans that you take, you have to make sure you pay them back as soon as possible because you don't want to pay a lot of interest and you don't want to keep adding to it. That will be terrible. And if you can do that and repay the loans in about six months or so, you get the added bonus of building a good credit rating.

Taylor Wilson:

All right, super informative story. I want to point our listeners to it. They can check it out with a link in today's show notes. Medora Lee covers money and personal finance for USA TODAY. Thank you, Medora.

Medora Lee:

Thank you. Have a good day.

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Taylor Wilson:

The last of the four dams that nearly destroyed salmon populations on the Klamath River at the California-Oregon border was demolished last week. The move marked a significant victory for tribes and environmentalists who fought for decades to restore the river. Brooke Thompson was seven years old when she witnessed the 2002 fish kill on the Klamath River. That event spurred Thompson and many other Yurok, Karuk Hupa and Klamath Tribes people to lead a two decade campaign to save the Klamath River from death. Their solution: remove four dams that impeded the free flow of the river and had bred deadly algae that led to the 2002 fish die off. Last Tuesday, the final impediment was removed and the Klamath was again a free flowing river. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.

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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.