Hollywood strike hits tentative agreement, aid to Ukraine, heat impact: 5 Things podcast

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: Hollywood screenwriters and studios have reached a tentative agreement to end a monthslong strike. American support for more aid to Ukraine dwindles, but still rests on party lines. USA TODAY National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise examines the future impact of summer heat. Lower courts face scrutiny over ethics. USA TODAY Education Reporter Alia Wong looks at student loan debt forgiveness that became a reality for hundreds of thousands this summer.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. 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 this is 5 Things you need to know, Monday, the 25th of September 2023.

Today, tentative agreement after months of the riders strike, plus Americans grow weary of aid to the war in Ukraine. And as fall begins, we look at the future of summer heat.

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Hollywood screenwriters and studios have reached a tentative agreement to end the writer strike that has frozen the TV and movie industry for nearly five months. The Writer's Guild of America announced the deal late last night with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the group that represents studios, streaming services, and producers in negotiations. After stole talks for months, the strike came to an agreement after meetings picked up on Wednesday between union officials and four top media CEOs. The marathon meetings continued through the weekend leading to yesterday's announcement. A three-year contract agreement must still be approved by the Guild's board and members before the strike officially ends. Screenwriters had fought for increased pay and over the size of diminished writing staffs on shows in the streaming era, as well as issues relating to the use of artificial intelligence to create scripts. There is still no deal between Hollywood actors in the studios. SAG-AFTRA has been on strike since July.

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Americans desire to fund Ukraine's war with Russia keeps dwindling. According to an ABC News Washington Post survey out yesterday, 41% said the US is doing too much, up from 30% in February. And about half feel the US is doing the right amount or not enough down from 60% in February. The issue is also clearly partisan. Among those who lean Republican, 58% believe the US is giving Ukraine too much support, while that portion was only 22% among those who lean Democrat. The poll was conducted from September 15th to September 20th. That included two days that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attended the UN Summit in New York, but not the days of his visit to Congress and the White House. While he wasn't able to win over the American public, Zelenskyy didn't return home empty-handed. The White House announced a $325 million military aid package during his visit on Thursday. And Canada pledged $650 million in security help over the next three years. Zelenskyy also said he met with a number of business leaders in the US interested in investing in Ukrainian reconstruction.

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This summer was brutal. It's all heat wave after heat wave nationwide and around the world, along with a number of new high temperature records. And while fall officially began this weekend, we wanted to talk about summer one last time and the severe heat that may change how we lived during the summer in the years to come.

I spoke with USA Today National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise for more. Howdy, Beth.

Elizabeth Weise:

Hey, happy fall.

Taylor Wilson:

Happy fall. So before we look ahead to the fall, let's look back on an extremely hot summer now in the rearview mirror in the US. And Beth, this kind of heat is changing how we live as you write in this piece. I want to start with working outside. Just how difficult is this becoming during American summer months?

Elizabeth Weise:

So this was interesting. We actually did a story about heat deaths in the United States, which are rising. There was a study last year in Texas that at least 279 people in Texas were killed by heat. This story is it's kind of a look ahead at, "Okay, it was bad this summer. It's going to get worse over time. What's life going to look like in 10 years?" And so for this, we looked at countries where it already gets really hot, like the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia. They actually have laws in place that require mandatory break for outdoor workers between the months of June 15th and September 15th where you're not allowed to force people to work outdoors between around noon and 3:00 because temperatures can go 105, 110, and it's not safe for people to work outside. So nowhere in the US do we have laws like that yet, but it's interesting that places where it is already really hot are starting to adapt. And when I talked to experts, they said, "We're not there, but it'll be interesting to see if we get there in the end."

Taylor Wilson:

Travel is also being seriously impacted. Beth, what will the future of both flights and also car travel look like during the worst of summer heat?

Elizabeth Weise:

So the travel was really fascinating. So I talked to a professor of aeronautics. So the thing about airplanes is they go fast, they get lift and they go up in the air. The hotter the air, the less dense it is and the less lift you have. And so you need more runway to get up to enough speed to take off and you need more fuel. It takes more fuel to push the plane to get it to be able to take off and fly. And so, already in places like Dubai, Saudi Arabia and Singapore, they often don't schedule takeoffs in the hottest part of the day, usually between 1:00 and 4:00 because lift goes down and it takes so much fuel to take off.

Taylor Wilson:

Locally in cities, this affects cars too. Your story inspired me to search pictures of buckled roads during extreme heat. It's a crazy phenomenon. Are we just going to see more and more of this each summer?

Elizabeth Weise:

Well, we are. And it's actually interesting. I just talked with a engineering professor at the University of Maryland and he said, "Well, there's a way to fix this. You have to actually change the mix of asphalt that you put on streets." So in the US we tend to use a mixture of asphalt on the streets that's got a lot of the actual asphalt because it makes for a nice smooth roadway. He said in places where it gets really hot, you put more aggregate, the little rocks that go into it because the roadway isn't as likely to become fluid. So what we might see is as we start to change that mixture in hotter cities, our roadways aren't melting when it's hot, but they're a little bumpier and less smooth all the time. I mean, you know there's that lovely feeling when you drive on a newly repaved road and it's so nice and soft and smooth. In the future in hot towns it might be a little rougher than that.

Taylor Wilson:

Beth, when it comes to schools, how is extreme heat already affecting students?

Elizabeth Weise:

This year we've had school districts, there was still heat waves and affecting August. They either had to close schools or they had to close school early before it got too hot because a lot of schools aren't built with air conditioning systems. Or those systems aren't strong enough to deal with the kinds of heat that cities are seeing. Remember, most American schools aren't in session during the summer. And so historically, heating's been more of an issue in schools. But now that we're getting these years are beginning in August in a lot of places and we're getting heat waves that go into September, we had school districts in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Ohio, Wisconsin, all had to limit the number of hours and the number of days that students were in class.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Elizabeth Weise making me excited for sweater weather this fall. Thank you, Beth.

Elizabeth Weise:

Yes. Yes. You're welcome.

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Taylor Wilson:

By the end of last month, Americans were able to review financial disclosure reports for all nine justices on the Supreme Court. The documents revealed private jet flights, foreign travel and more. But those annual disclosures are harder to find for hundreds of lower court judges. Fix the Court, a watchdog group that advocates for greater transparency in the judiciary estimates that only about 17% of the court system's disclosures have been posted online even though most of the reports were due months ago. That means that purchases, investments, and more that might pose a conflict of interest are not available, making true oversight nearly impossible. A law signed by President Joe Biden last year requires the reports to be posted online within three months of filing. That would mean mid-August after a May 15th deadline for financial disclosures. Judges may request an extension, though it's not clear how many have done so.

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Hundreds of thousands of student loan borrowers woke up to golden emails this summer forgiving their debt. I spoke with USA Today Education Reporter, Alia Wong, to learn more. Alia, thanks for hopping on Five Things.

Alia Wong:

Thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

Hundreds of thousands of student loan borrowers woke up to these golden emails this summer forgiving their debt. Alia, what exactly happened here?

Alia Wong:

So a few weeks ago, some 804,000 borrowers essentially found out that they're off the hook for what was often tens of thousands of dollars each in student loan debt. These borrowers, most of them in retirement age notably, they've been paying off their loans for decades through an income-driven repayment plan. That's when the amount they owe each month is basically set or capped based on their income or their salaries. So as long as they paid that amount for 20 or 25 years and as long as they followed the relevant rules, in theory, they were supposed to be eligible for forgiveness after that time period. But for the 804,000 borrowers, that never happened, or at least that didn't happen until recently.

Taylor Wilson:

Yeah. And Alia, you mentioned these folks were paying off these debts for decades in some cases. Why is their debt being forgiven now after so many years?

Alia Wong:

So just some larger context, the Biden administration has been working on student loan debt relief for its entirety. This has been a priority of the administration since Biden was elected. The plan for mass forgiveness, which was intended to relieve up to 20,000 in debt for some borrowers, was struck down by the Supreme Court earlier this year. Against that backdrop, the Biden administration has been working on different avenues for targeted relief really for specific populations of people. And this was one of those targeted populations. Similar to the sort of messy situation with public service loan forgiveness, borrowers just told us about all kinds of bureaucratic lapses or just confusing requirements or other factors that were out of their control that just seemed to push their forgiveness timeline further and further out for reasons they couldn't quite understand. And the Biden administration had been working to iron out the kinks with this particular population of borrowers. For the last year or so actually, for quite a long time. We spoke to borrowers who saw their bounces cleared in recent weeks and they still feel disbelief over it.

Taylor Wilson:

Yeah. I want to hear more about some of these specific stories, some of the borrowers you spoke with. Just how much relief is this forgiveness bringing to their lives at this point?

Alia Wong:

Yeah, we spoke with an acupuncturist who made that career switch relatively late in life and went into school for acupuncture without really realizing that the training he was getting wasn't really preparing him for the business acumen he needed, to thrive as an acupuncturist. And it just took a lot, a lot of obstacles he had to overcome to finally figure out how to make do with that career and the debt that was following him.

The borrowers we spoke with just had to give up so much so they could stick with the payments. They had to give up buying homes, they had to give up retiring, they had to give up spending time with their children, they had to give up pursuing their passions, and they also sacrificed a lot of mental wellbeing. Many of the borrowers told us how their debt really drove them into depression. But now that they've gotten these golden emails, they are finally able to do all those simple things that many people take for granted. One borrower was like, "Now I can truly retire." She was a teacher for most of her life and was thinking now she had to get a second job after retirement to keep up with her payments. But now that she doesn't have to do that, she can spend time with her granddaughter.

Taylor Wilson:

Great info and insight for us as always. Alia Wong covers education for USA Today. Thank you, Alia.

Alia Wong:

Thanks so much.

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Taylor Wilson:

And today is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement is a time when Jews reflect on sins or wrongdoings from the past year. It follows Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

Thanks for listening to 5 Things. If you like the show, please subscribe and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And if you have any comments, you can reach us at [email protected]. I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA Today.