The Excerpt podcast: Three US troops killed, 34 injured in Middle East

On today's episode of The Excerpt podcast: Three US troops have been killed in a drone attack on a Mideast base. USA TODAY National Correspondent Terry Collins breaks down Donald Trump's hold on rural voters. President Joe Biden speaks out over border negotiations. Small town residents unite to fight against a huge monkey farm. USA TODAY Personal Finance Reporter Daniel de Visé looks at the rise (and cost) of gray divorce. Super Bowl LVIII is now set!

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, January 29th, 2024. This is The Excerpt.

Today, the latest from the Middle East where three US service members have been killed, plus a look at Trump's support among rural voters and gray divorce is on the rise.

Three US service members were killed and dozens injured yesterday in a drone attack by Iran-backed militants. The incident happened at a US base along the Jordan-Syria border. President Joe Biden issued a statement calling the three patriots in the highest sense and that the nation is grieving. Biden said, "have no doubt we will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner of our choosing." These are the first US troops killed by enemy fire in the Middle East since October 7th when militants attacked Israel killing some 1200 people while taking hostages. Since then, Israel has killed more than 26,000 Palestinians during its Gaza offensive. The Pentagon says that Iran-backed militias have launched more than 150 attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria since October 17th, 10 days after the Israel-Hamas war broke out.

Meanwhile, talks intensified yesterday on a potential agreement that could see Israel pause military operations against Hamas for two months in exchange for the release of more than a hundred remaining hostages, according to multiple media reports. You can stay up on all the latest from the war and increase tensions across the region with usatoday.com.

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With a possible rematch looming rural voters heavily favor former President Donald Trump over President Joe Biden, according to a Colby College poll. My colleague Sara Ganim, sat down with USA TODAY National Correspondent Terry Collins for more.

Sara Ganim:

Terry, thanks so much for chatting with me today.

Terry Collins:

Ah, thanks, Sarah, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Sara Ganim:

So the theme of your story seems to be that many rural voters, even some lifelong Democrats, feel they're being ignored, that their issues don't matter. I think one quote was something to the effect of the flyover states are being looked over. Why do they feel this way?

Terry Collins:

Oh, thanks for the question. I think based on the research of two professors at Colby College and other entities such as the Rural Voter Initiative and the Rural Utah Project, there's been a long belief that concerns of rural voters on a large scale have been somewhat bypassed for many years compared to those in urban and suburban America. Some may think it's simply a number's thing. That said, we've had some of the closest presidential elections in recent years, and it seems the rural voters arguably more important than ever. What we're seeing in terms of the polls and research is that many rural birders tend to lean Republican and support former President Donald Trump, and that President Biden and his administration are just not in touch with their concerns and needs, especially post-pandemic.

Sara Ganim:

So for months, I've been reading these stories that say that the economy is strong, that the numbers show that, yet Americans don't feel like it's strong. Is that what's happening in rural America as well?

Terry Collins:

Yeah, yeah. Based on what I'm hearing, seeing from rural residents and experts including Isaac Wright, co-founder of the Rural Board Initiative, two points, they don't see it and therefore it doesn't have a direct effect on them right now at this time. Wright has also conducted a study that said rural voters appear to assess their economic circumstances through consumer prices rather than unemployment reports and economic statistics. Basically, in other words, rural voters can feel the pain based on their wallets, purses, bank accounts, and their gut.

Sara Ganim:

It seems that the polling shows that it's not even really about Republican versus Democrat, it's just about support for Donald Trump. I saw that support for him is so strong among rural Americans that 92% even said that if Trump was convicted of a crime, it would not change their support for him. Why is that?

Terry Collins:

Yeah, that's very interesting. I spoke to a resident who lives in rural Kentucky. She agreed with that statistic and clearly said she's not going to throw stones. She'd like to hear somebody in politics say, "I'd never made a mistake." The person I talked to also said she thinks Trump can rise above his woes, doesn't think he's guilty or not guilty, and she just thinks Trump's good, outweighs his bad.

Sara Ganim:

One of the things I read in your story was that the current Biden administration has tried to reach out to rural voters to show progress with his big infrastructure plan. Is that resonating at all?

Terry Collins:

No, not at this time. It doesn't appear to be according to Kobe professors Nicholas Jacobs and Dan Shea who conducted the poll and also Isaac Wright at the Apprehension Rural Voter Initiative. All three told me that Biden, his administration, and surrogates have a lot of work to do to show and tell rural voters otherwise that it is going to have some effect and promise for them. It's probably going to take some real examples and testimonials from actual rural Americans to prove otherwise.

Sara Ganim:

Terry Collins, thanks so much for this reporting and for making the time to talk to me about it.

Terry Collins:

Great. Thanks, Sara.

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Taylor Wilson:

President Joe Biden vowed to take immediate action to shut down the US-Mexico border if Congress approves a proposal currently under negotiation in the Senate. He said the proposal would include new presidential authority to do so when the border becomes overwhelmed. He also said in a statement Friday that what's being negotiated in the Senate around the border would be "the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we've ever had in our country." Biden's statement sought to save a border deal on the verge of collapse. After Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged privately to other Republican senators that opposition from former president Donald Trump puts the party in a dilemma. Trump reiterated his opposition in a Saturday social media post to Truth Social, writing that a bad border deal is far worse than no border deal. For his part, a bipartisan border deal would give Biden the chance to claim victory in addressing surging migration at the southern border. A topic that Republicans have hammered him on throughout his presidency.

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Residents in one small town are uniting to fight against a common enemy, a huge monkey farm. Local officials in Bainbridge, Georgia, a rural outpost about 20 miles north of the Florida panhandle recently approved a startup's plan to build one of the largest monkey breeding facilities in the country. At its capacity, the nearly $400 million complex would hold some 30,000 monkeys. That's double the city's human population. But a growing group of locals and animal rights activists is set on stopping the monkey breeding plan before construction begins. Concerns are wide-ranging, some are worried about animal safety, others fear property values will plummet or they fear monkeys will escape or spread disease. They're also concerned the facility's waste may damage the environment. Still, the company behind the project, Safer Human Medicine says the long-tailed macaque will be bred and sold to pharmaceutical companies, universities, and laboratories for medical research studies.

Monkeys because of their similarities to humans have been essential to research for a wide variety of illnesses. Critics have said that using monkeys as research subjects is immoral, but the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine maintain that there are currently no alternatives that can fully replace non-human primates. You can read more about the fight in Bainbridge and the broader conversation with a link in today's show notes.

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So-called gray divorce rates are on the rise, but they're costly. I spoke with USA TODAY Personal Finance reporter Daniel de Visé to learn more. Daniel, it's always a pleasure to have you on. Thanks for making the time.

Daniel de Visé:

Likewise. Thank you.

Taylor Wilson:

So, Daniel, divorce rates are on the rise among older Americans in recent decades. What did the numbers say here?

Daniel de Visé:

The divorce rate has doubled in the last three decades, going back to 1990 for Americans over 55. And if you just look at people over 65, the divorce rate has tripled in those years. So a lot more gray divorces.

Taylor Wilson:

Yeah. And what's driving this gray divorce phenomenon?

Daniel de Visé:

The researchers who study it say there are a few reasons for it. One is our aging population, there are more older people. The baby boom is a huge group and they're entering retirement year. They're in retirement years. People are staying healthier longer. I know we had a dip in the longevity rate with COVID, but generally speaking, more of us are staying healthier longer into our life. Couples also are marrying later. And then I would throw in maybe the idea that there seems to be this impulse to stick together until the last kid has left home, has left the nest. I don't know how much of a thing that was in the 1970s and 1980s, but I think nowadays a lot of older married people think that way.

Taylor Wilson:

Interesting stuff. So how are the financial factors, Daniel, more complicated for those who get divorced after say age 55? And what are some of the major financial hurdles folks face?

Daniel de Visé:

Well, you start with retirement. If you divorce at age 55 or 60, you are perilously close to retirement. And generally speaking, the divorce court will split those retirement assets so that it's equitably distributed between the two partners. Unquestionably, it means both people will have that much less in their retirement kitty at the end of that. So you might wind up five years from retirement and it just is not very much time to play catch up. This is profoundly different than it would be for somebody divorcing in their twenties or thirties when you have decades of work ahead of you. If you retire in your sixties, I don't care how much money you think you've saved for retirement, you're going to have to refigure your retirement plan. That's a huge one.

A second factor would be going back to work because in a lot of gray divorces, not all, but a lot of them, there's one primary wage earner, one person with the big job, and the other person, again, if you're in your fifties or your sixties, might not have worked for 30 years or 25 years, might have not worked since the nineties. And that again, is much, much different than a divorce where the partners are 30 or 35. So you might have somebody facing the prospect of returning to work for the first time in decades or deciding not to do that, and then figuring out how to live on a much-reduced budget if they don't ever return to work.

Taylor Wilson:

And Daniel, how were some of these issues that we're talking about around gray divorce, especially true for women?

Daniel de Visé:

Well, the research shows, and this is heavy, but a man who has a gray divorce can expect his standard of living to decline by about 20%, which is a huge number. A woman on average will see her standard of living decline by 45%, and both partners in a gray divorce will see their overall wealth decline by about half. It's just very hard to claw your way back into prosperity after divorcing late in life. And women tend to fare worse after gray divorce.

Taylor Wilson:

Wow. As always, Daniel de Visé with some great personal finance insight when you're here on the show. Thanks so much, Daniel.

Daniel de Visé:

Always a pleasure. Thank you.

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Taylor Wilson:

The matchup for Super Bowl 58 is now set. In yesterday's AFC championship game, last year's Super Bowl champs, the Kansas City Chiefs held off the Baltimore Ravens 17 to 10 thanks to a strong defensive performance and a massive game from Travis Kelce. Then in a much different game, the Detroit Lions trying to get to their first Super Bowl ever stormed out to a big halftime lead against the San Francisco 49ers, but they saw their 24 to 7 lead evaporate early in the second half and they lost a thriller. Kansas City, San Francisco will now be a rematch of the Super Bowl from 2020, which was played just weeks before Coronavirus shut down the world. It's also Kansas City's fourth appearance in the big game in the last five years. You can read more from USA TODAY sports.

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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. You can also always email us at podcasts@usatoday.com. I'm Taylor Wilson, back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The Excerpt podcast: Three US troops killed, 34 injured in Middle East