Fleeing From Israeli Attacks, Harris' Policy Priorities, Plastic Recycling Lawsuit
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Tens of thousands of people are on the road to Beirut, some stuck in traffic, some walking. They're fleeing Israeli airstrikes on Hezbollah across much of southern Lebanon. What's it like to be on that road? I'm Steve Inskeep with Michelle Martin, and this is Up First from NPR News. Vice President Harris wants to make it easier to restore abortion rights. She renews her call to change Senate rules. And get us to the point where 51 votes would be...

What we need. Harris called into Wisconsin Public Radio and we will hear her pitch for votes in a swing stick. And California is suing ExxonMobil over recycling. The state alleges that the oil giant knowingly misled the public about the effectiveness of plastic recycling. How's the company responding? Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day.

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More than 500 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon, according to Lebanese officials. It's the worst death toll in a day of fighting there in many years. Yesterday, Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes into almost everywhere. The militant group Hezbollah has a presence, including the southern suburbs of the capital, Beirut. Tens of thousands of people fled their homes. NPR's Jane Araf was on that road and is with us now from Beirut. Good morning, Jane. Good morning.

Good morning, Michelle. Jane, this has to be a terrifying situation. What was it like in the midst of all of this? Yeah, we were in Sidon, south of Beirut, and as we got closer, soldiers had turned that four-lane highway going both ways into a one-way escape route north. Beep, beep.

It was bumper to bumper. Eight or nine people crammed into some cars. I saw a vegetable truck with more than a dozen children in the back. One car, there was a little girl hanging out of a sunroof holding a stuffed doll. A couple of guys were sitting in the open trunk of another car. And we met one man who had walked and hitchhiked for the last six hours to escape the airstrikes.

A businessman, Bilal Hamadi, told us he and his family left after he received a call telling him to evacuate. There was a message from the Israeli army on the landline in broken Arabic. They told me to leave the area. I said thank you.

What could I do? Hamadi and his family were going to stay with friends in Beirut, but a lot of people had nowhere to go, and they had left so quickly. They had nothing with them on the highway. Volunteers were handing out bottles of water to passing vehicles. Was there any warning?

Well, it's been building. Israel and Hezbollah have been training attacks across the Lebanese-Israeli border since the war in Gaza began last October. But last week, Michelle, it took an unprecedented turn. Israel detonated thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies. It had interrupted Hezbollah's supply chain and inserted explosives. Dozens of people were killed. Hezbollah fighters, but also office and medical workers and even children,

3,500 people were wounded. Yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave this address. I have a message for the people of Lebanon. Israel's war is not with you. It's with Hezbollah. For too long, Hezbollah has been using you as human shields.

It placed rockets in your living rooms and missiles in your garage. But Hezbollah's role in Lebanese society isn't that simple. The Iranbrack group was initially created after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 to defend the country. It's much stronger than the Lebanese army, and it's really interwoven into society here in many places.

It provides health care services, support to widows and orphans, things the government doesn't do. So, Jane, how is Hezbollah responding to all this?

They seem to be scrambling. The Pager attacks were a huge security breach, and an Israeli attack a couple of days later in Beirut, killing a top commander, was seen as evidence of a spy network. So Hezbollah has launched retaliatory attacks into northern Israel, which it says were aimed at military targets. But it's indicated that it has not yet avenged last week's attacks, and we don't know what form that could take.

And amid all that, there are fears that Lebanon, which is already a very weak state, could collapse if there's all-out war. That is NPR's Janne Raff reporting from Beirut. Jane, thank you. Thank you.

Vice President Kamala Harris has made four campaign stops in the battleground state of Wisconsin since she became the presidential nominee. Look at one of those election maps and you can see the Democratic votes in Wisconsin are clustered in a handful of places, including the blue counties right around the college town of Madison, which is where Harris visited on Friday. She needs to pile up votes in the blue areas and limit the damage in rural counties that lean heavily red. So what issues does she highlight in this swing state?

This week, Harris spoke with Wisconsin Public Radio about the issues that are hitting home there. Kate Archer-Kent is co-host of Wisconsin Today. She had an interview with Harris and she's here to tell us what they talked about. Kate, good morning. Good morning. Thank you, Michelle. Thanks for coming. So first, set the scene for us. Wisconsin is your home state. It's also a swing state. What has been Vice President Harris's message there?

Her campaign is very focused on abortion rights. And here in Wisconsin, we had a law from 1849 on the books that was used to dispute whether abortions were legal in the state. But abortion services did return last year when a judge passed.

here determine the law doesn't ban abortion. And I asked Harris about how she would work with Congress to pass a federal bill to restore abortion rights. And she said that she thinks it's well within Democrats' reach to hold on to the majority in the Senate and to take back the House in November. And she said she supports changing the Senate filibuster rules in order to pass a bill codifying abortion rights.

I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe and get us to the point where 51 votes would be...

What we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom and for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do. And, of course, currently with that filibuster, most legislation needs support from at least 60 senators to move forward. One other issue we're seeing across the country is concern over the lack of affordable housing. You asked Harris about that and asked her how to address the issue in Wisconsin. What did she say?

Well, I asked her this because Wisconsin is seeing a big jump in housing prices. And she said that she can relate to renters because she grew up with a mom who was a renter and she was a teenager before her mother could afford to buy a home. And she said she would want to have families.

three million homes built in her first term and give first-time homebuyers help with making that first mortgage down payment with $25,000 in assistance. So what other issues are figuring prominently for Wisconsin voters that you asked her about?

Well, I asked her about how to deal with toxic chemicals known as PFAS that are contaminating drinking water around Wisconsin and whether she would press for stricter federal regulations on these forever chemicals. There are some communities here, Michelle, that have been living on bottled water for years now due to this pollution in their wells.

And she said the Biden administration is funding billions in water infrastructure projects around the country to clean up drinking water and to replace lead pipes. And she said nearly $2 billion of that funding is going to Wisconsin. The work that we are also doing, which I've been a leader on, frankly, which is dealing with lead pipes and eliminating lead pipes. She also tried to draw...

And what have they said? We haven't heard back yet.

You can hear Harris' full interview with Kate Archer-Kent later today on Wisconsin Public Radio. Kate Archer-Kent in Madison, thank you so much. You're welcome. The Attorney General of California has filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil, alleging it lied to the American public for decades about whether plastic could be recycled.

The state's top prosecutor filed the lawsuit yesterday. His suit also calls out Exxon's attempt to blame the public for a plastic crisis the prosecutor says the oil company created. This suit cites a lot of our reporting here at NPR, along with PBS Frontline. NPR correspondent Laura Sullivan has done a lot of this reporting. She's been following this case, and she is with us now. Good morning, Laura. Good morning. What specifically is the suit alleging ExxonMobil has done?

Well, the suit says that the company violated laws around false advertising and creating an unfair competition and a public nuisance. It also cites them actually for pollution. But the premise of that is that ExxonMobil, along with the oil industry as a whole, knew as far back as the 1970s that plastic recycling was never going to work. I mean, it's expensive, it's difficult, it's toxic.

But the suit says that the company set out on this ambitious plan to deceive consumers about recycling so that they would, you know, buy more plastic. And so here's Attorney General Rob Bonta. The company has propped up sham solutions, manipulated the public, and lied to consumers. It's time ExxonMobil pays the price for its deceit. What sort of evidence or examples does the suit include?

The attorney general staff unearthed dozens of internal documents between the oil company and industry executives where they appear to acknowledge to each other that recycling plastic doesn't work, but then turned around and told the public the opposite. Here at NPR, we've seen some of these same memos as part of our own investigative work. In fact, the lawsuit cites NPR and Frontline six times. But one of the points

Points of contention that people will probably recognize is the chasing arrows recycling symbol that was stamped onto the bottom of all plastic for decades. And the suit alleges that Exxon and other companies manipulated states into requiring that stamp, even though the industry knew that it was misleading. How has ExxonMobil responded?

The company said in a statement that recycling works and that California is just trying to blame them because the state can't get its recycling act together. You know, they said they have processed 16 million pounds of plastic so far. 60 million pounds. Okay, so they're sticking with the original message.

Exactly. But is the state seeking damages? It's interesting. They're not in the traditional sense. The state wants Exxon to pay billions of dollars to remedy the problem. There's a little bit of cleanup, but mostly they say they want Exxon to re-educate the public. Here's Attorney General Bonta said it this way. To have ExxonMobil stop lying.

Stop deceiving the public. Stop manipulating consumers. Stop gaslighting us and tell the truth. Bonda says he wants Exxon to explain to the public that the vast majority of all the plastic that they're holding in their hands is not actually recyclable. It's just trash. That is NPR correspondent Laura Sullivan. Laura, thank you. Thanks so much.

And that's up first for Tuesday, September 24th. I'm Michelle Martin. And I'm Steve Inskeep. For your next listen, consider this. Modern day wars go on and on and on. Why do wars in the Middle East and Ukraine and elsewhere last with no end in sight? Listen to Consider This from NPR News.

Today's episode of Up First was edited by Vincent Nee, Padma Rama, Robert Little, H.J. Mai, and Mohamed El-Bardisi. It was produced by Imam Ma'ani, Nia Dumas, and Mansi Karana. We get engineering support from Robert Rodriguez, and our technical director is Zach Coleman. Join us again tomorrow.

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