Summer heat sets records worldwide, Trump's fake electors charged: 5 Things podcast

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: Summer heat sets records worldwide

USA TODAY National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise looks at the slew of summer heat records being set worldwide. Plus, former President Donald Trump says he's been informed that he's the target of a federal Jan. 6 investigation, Trump's fake electors have been charged by Michigan's attorney general in an alleged 2020 election scheme, USA TODAY World Affairs Correspondent Kim Hjelmgaard has the latest on continued tensions in Israel over judicial reforms, and an American soldier has been detained in North Korea.

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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.

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Wednesday, the 19th of July 2023. Today, a closer look at severe summer heat. Plus, Trump could be indicted soon on charges related to efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, and an American soldier has been detained in North Korea.

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It's not your imagination. This is not a typical summer. Heat records are being set around the world. And as USA TODAY National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise told me, this may be the new normal in the years to come. Thanks for hopping on, Beth.

Elizabeth Weise:

Happy as always to be here.

Taylor Wilson:

So this summer heat has been particularly brutal in much of the Northern Hemisphere. What kinds of records have been broken this year so far?

Elizabeth Weise:

Oh, it is so hot. It's just so hot. June was the hottest June in all of NOAA's climate records, which go back to the 20th century. They go back 174 years and it's the hottest June we've ever seen, and that probably means it's the hottest June it's been in a long time because only it's back as far as we've had records. Globally, it's 1.9 degrees above average. And that doesn't sound like a lot, but when you think globally, that means that a lot of places are super extra hot. It's also the 47th consecutive June and the 532nd consecutive month with temperatures over what they would've been in the 20th century. So anybody who was born in the 20th century, all of the averages that you were used to growing up, they're just gone.

Taylor Wilson:

So in the US, which specific regions or cities have gotten the worst of this heat?

Elizabeth Weise:

Phoenix is way hot. It is expected to hit probably 115 this week. It is the 19th consecutive day it's been over 110. Death Valley in California reached 128 on Sunday. That might go slightly higher later in the week. We don't know. In places that they're used to heat, these are temperatures that are just kind of knocking it out of the ballpark, and not in a good way.

Taylor Wilson:

So we've heard a lot in recent years about air quality, I feel like, increasingly so. What's the air quality like in US cities this summer?

Elizabeth Weise:

Well, so this summer it's been bad overall, and that's because of the Canadian wildfires. It was really bad a few weeks back. The Canadian wildfires have ramped up again in British Columbia, which is the province just over Washington state. And that smoke is starting to kind of drift across and more likely to start seeing poor air quality again, especially in the upper Midwestern states in the United States. And mind you, you got to remember that the California and Northwest fire seasons really haven't started yet. Canada is burning really early. We've always had forest fires on the West Coast. They won't start to hit hard until July, August, September. And so we don't even know what that's going to look like yet. I mean, maybe it'll be a low fire year and that would be a blessing.

Taylor Wilson:

And I want to just turn the page to Europe for a second where the heat has also been particularly rough. What's going on across the pond, Beth?

Elizabeth Weise:

Yeah, poor Europe. So they had really, I mean for them, blazing hot temperatures. In May, especially in Spain and Portugal up above 100, which is very high for them. And then things cooled down a bit and that was good, but now they're getting another heat wave and it's impacting mostly Greece, Italy, and Spain. And the Italian weather forecasters, they've dubbed it Charon. And Charon, if you remember your Greek mythology, is the ferryman that would carry souls to the underworld. So they're starting to name their heat waves and this one is the one that carries you to the underworld.

Taylor Wilson:

Beth, I mean with these kinds of extreme temperatures, how are cities adapting to this heat?

Elizabeth Weise:

A lot of things are moving to the evenings when it's cooler. The good news is that the electric grid has managed to stay pretty stable. So we haven't seen widespread blackouts or brownouts, even though the demand is really high for air conditioning. In a lot of cities, especially Phoenix for example, we are seeing cooling stations for people who don't have access to air conditioners, or at least reliable air conditioners. This level of heat is dangerous. I mean, when you stay in 110 degree, 115 degree heat for any amount of time, your body starts to shut down. So people have to be careful. They have to stay hydrated, they have to stay out of the sun, and they have to find ways to cool off.

Taylor Wilson:

And globally, will this year be the warmest ever on record?

Elizabeth Weise:

The current record for the warmest year was 2016 during the last El Niño, which is the cyclical weather pattern that tends to produce warmer, drier weather. And we've just shifted back into El Niño from La Niña and temperatures have risen globally since then. So it is very likely that 2023 will be the warmest on record. The terrifying thing about that is that although this may be the warmest year of your life, it's probably going to also be the coolest year of your life.

Taylor Wilson:

Is this the new normal going forward?

Elizabeth Weise:

Probably for the foreseeable future, it's going to keep getting hotter until we lower CO2 concentrations, and then it's going to take a long time to go down. And as I always say to listeners, we have the technology to do that. We know how to do it. All we lack is the political will, but we could make the shift in a year or two if we chose to.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Elizabeth Weise, thanks as always.

Elizabeth Weise:

You're so welcome.

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Taylor Wilson:

Former President Donald Trump says he was informed Sunday that he's a target of a federal investigation into the events of January 6th, 2021. The investigation led by Special Counsel Jack Smith is looking into efforts to overturn Trump's loss in the 2020 election and whether the former president incited his supporters to storm the Capitol to stop the electoral college vote count. Trump said a letter from Smith gave him four days to report to the grand jury, which Trump believes will lead to an indictment and arrest. The two times Trump was indicted and arrested already earlier this year, he was the first to go public with the news of it on social media. Attorneys familiar with these types of cases said a target letter indicates charges are imminent.

Meanwhile, in the classified documents case against Trump, US District Judge Aileen Cannon is considering his request to delay the trial. Defense attorneys are requesting time to gain security clearances to view the classified documents Trump is charged with keeping at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Judge Cannon said she'll issue a ruling shortly.

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In Michigan, Attorney General Dana Nessel announced felony charges yesterday against a slate of so-called fake electors involved in an attempt to award the state's electoral college votes to Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Joe Biden won Michigan's 16 electoral votes by over 150,000 popular votes. But the 16 Republicans are charged with submitting full certificates, naming themselves as the state's legitimate electors. They're each charged with eight felony counts, including forgery and conspiracy to commit election forgery. The list of defendants includes the head of the Michigan chapter of the Republican National Committee and a former co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party. Multiple charges there carry up to 14 years in prison.

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Israel's president, Isaac Herzog, will address US Congress today. His visit comes amid concerns over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's judicial overhaul and the ongoing protests there that have disrupted daily life. I spoke with USA TODAY World Affairs Correspondent Kim Hjelmgaard for the latest. Welcome back to 5 Things, Kim.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

Thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

So we know that legislative efforts have resumed on this overhaul to Israel's judicial system. Where do reforms stand this week, Kim?

Kim Hjelmgaard:

Well, essentially, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after pausing these reforms for a couple of months because of lots of protest, he decided to try to push through one particular law, which is related to what they call reasonableness. And essentially, this proposed law would grant lawmakers greater control over the appointment of judges and give the parliament the power to overturn high court decisions and basically make some of Israel's lawmakers impervious to judicial review. Netanyahu has brought one part of this legislation back and it's currently in its first reading in the Parliament there, which means that it's got to go through a few more readings before it technically becomes law.

Taylor Wilson:

And Kim, protests appear to have again erupted in Israel alongside this. What's the latest there?

Kim Hjelmgaard:

Actually, for the last six months, the protests have not gone away. Israelis have done a remarkable job of going out day after day, week after week, month after month now to just express their dissatisfaction at these potential reforms. Before Prime Minister Netanyahu paused this legislation because the protests were getting so loud and problematic, we had things like the airports were about to get shut down, school teachers were going out on strike. Corporate CEOs were telling their employees not to show up for work. Israel's military, particularly its reserve forces, a lot of them were saying they were not going to show up for duty. But essentially, the protests have continued all the time. The Israeli public, by and large, has made it clear that they are not willing to just accept these proposed judicial reforms in the way that Netanyahu wants them.

Taylor Wilson:

And these reforms and protests come the same month as a renewed Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp. How does the situation in that camp reflect some of the broader tensions going on right now?

Kim Hjelmgaard:

Over the last couple of years, there's been an uptick of terrorist attacks against Israelis by militant groups that are based in Palestinian areas. And Jenin is a refugee camp in the north of the West Bank. There's thousands of families that live there, but there's also militant groups that headquartered themselves there and hide weapons there. The Israeli government sort of watched these attacks take place over a number of months and basically decided that it needed to raid this camp because it was just the sort of center of where militant groups have been storing weapons and planning assaults and so on and so forth.

The issue here is that Israel is 75 years old as a country now, and it has long kind of described itself and thought of itself as the only democracy in the Middle East. And the way that it interacts with the given US administration revolves around this sort of idea of democracy and so on. But really, 20% of Israeli citizens are Arabs and they have some of the same rights, but they don't have all of the rights that Jewish Israelis have. Therefore, when these reforms were proposed, a lot of people were kind of pointing out well, there might be a public opinion saying these reforms are anti-democratic. But there's a lot of Arab Israelis who don't feel the full impact of Israel's democracy.

Taylor Wilson:

And Kim, the situation in Israel has seeped over into American political discourse, especially this month. How important of a player is the US here, Kim, in terms of what these reforms and the next few months look like in Israel?

Kim Hjelmgaard:

Well, I mean the US and Israel consider themselves to be extremely close strategic partners. There's no question about that. American historic support for Israel is strong, it always has been. Israel is the recipient of the largest amount of US military aid since its existence in 1948, cumulatively amounts to about $160 billion. And that money really has helped transform Israel. The two countries cooperate extremely closely on intelligence and technology research. The sort of trajectories of the two countries are intertwined. And part of the frustration, I think, from the White House perspective is that these reforms that Prime Minister Netanyahu seems hell-bent on pushing through, they don't quite sit well with the White House that is also keen to kind of promote ideas of democracy and so on and so forth.

Taylor Wilson:

Kim Hjelmgaard, great insight for us as always. Thanks, Kim.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

Thanks for having me.

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Taylor Wilson:

An American soldier has been detained in North Korea after he willfully crossed into the country's territory. The army identified the soldier as Private Travis King. He was stationed in South Korea and recently finished a 47-day jail sentence there for kicking a police car. The soldier was being processed to return to the United States, but left the airport before his scheduled flight on Monday. He would've flown to Fort Bliss, Texas where he faced possible discharge. But instead of boarding the plane, King joined a tour of a Korean border village. And once there, he bolted across the guarded border. An army spokesperson confirmed yesterday that a US service member willfully, and without authorization, crossed into North Korea. US authorities are working to resolve the incident. At a Pentagon Press conference yesterday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed that King was likely now in North Korean custody.

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, as always, you can reach us at podcasts@usatoday.com. I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Worldwide heat records, American detained in North Korea: 5 Things podcast