Princess Kate diagnosed with cancer. What's next? | The Excerpt podcast
On Saturday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Princess Kate has been diagnosed with cancer. What's that mean for the Royal Family? Gunmen killed more than 60 in a Russia concert attack. USA TODAY National Correspondent Trevor Hughes looks at the politically charged climate around electric vehicles. Congress passes a spending bill after a short government shutdown. Parents think their kids are doing well in school. They're often wrong. USA TODAY National Correspondent Deborah Barfield Berry discusses how new museums are changing the way Black history is told.
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 Saturday, March 23rd, 2024. This is The Excerpt. Today, the latest after Princess Kate's cancer diagnosis, plus the Islamic State has taken responsibility for an attack on a Moscow concert venue, and we look at how new museums are reflecting Black history.
Princess Kate has been diagnosed with cancer and is undergoing preventative chemotherapy treatment. That's according to a Kensington Palace announcement yesterday in a video released on her social media channels. Kate thanked the public for their support.
Princess Kate:
I wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you personally for all the wonderful messages of support and for your understanding whilst I've been recovering from surgery. It has been an incredibly tough couple of months for our entire family, but I've had a fantastic medical team who have taken great care of me, for which I'm so grateful.
Taylor Wilson:
She did not specify what type of cancer she's fighting. Kate said that she had major abdominal surgery in January and initially thought her condition was non-cancerous, but additional tests after the operation found cancer. The announcement comes after King Charles III was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year, and it was made following weeks of speculation about Kate's wellbeing after she stepped away from public appearances.
A lack of transparency surrounding the whereabouts and condition of the princess have led to conspiracy theories and speculation in recent weeks. With the princess and the king out of commission, Queen Camilla and Prince William are expected to take on a bigger role. You can read more about what that might look like with a link in today's show notes.
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At least 60 people were killed and 145 wounded yesterday, when camouflage-clad gunman fired with automatic weapons on concert goers near Moscow. It was one of the deadliest attacks on Russia in decades. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack according to the group's Telegram channel. And a US official said yesterday that the United States has intelligence confirming Islamic State's claim of responsibility for the violence.
Multiple blasts were also reported at the venue and fire and plumes of smoke could be seen engulfing the building. The US Embassy in Russia warned earlier this month that extremists had plans for an attack in Moscow, and Russian officials said they had foiled an attack on a Moscow synagogue by an Islamic State cell.
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The US needs to move away from gas-powered vehicles to meet climate goals, but driving an electric vehicle has become politically charged. I spoke with USA Today national correspondent, Trevor Hughes for more. Trevor, thanks for hopping on today.
Trevor Hughes:
Hey, good to see you.
Taylor Wilson:
So Trevor, how many Americans have now made this shift to electric vehicles?
Trevor Hughes:
Well, we're still talking about a relatively small percentage of people, 10%, 12% of people. It depends on how you count it. Depending on where you live, you may not see an electric vehicle on the road. If you live in California, you see them every day.
Taylor Wilson:
What do experts say about the climate importance of moving away from gas-burning vehicles?
Trevor Hughes:
Right now, the vast majority of vehicles are powered by hydrocarbon fuel in some way, either by burning gasoline or by burning coal or oil or natural gas to produce electricity to power those cars. But the amount of renewable energy that's being used to produce electricity and therefore power electric cars is growing rapidly.
And that's what experts say is really important, this idea that we're transitioning away from fossil fuels that dump carbon into the atmosphere and into a much cleaner source of energy that helps the Earth stay cooler.
Taylor Wilson:
And Trevor, we had big news this week. The Biden administration unveiled new rules surrounding electric vehicles. What are these rules and how big of an issue is his White House making EVs?
Trevor Hughes:
So these new rules essentially require automakers to cut tailpipe emissions, and there's a number of ways you can do that. The effective output of these rules is to push the entire industry toward EVs, and many manufacturers are already moving in that direction themselves.
It's also important to bear in mind that this rule doesn't force you to give up your car. I have a V8 Hemi, for instance, which I love dearly. But what it does is it makes it easier for automakers to make those battery-powered vehicles, which in theory will help drive the prices down for all of us and make them cheaper to buy in the long run.
Taylor Wilson:
On the other side of the coin, have we heard from Donald Trump on this issue, Trevor? And how are electric vehicles now representing this new front in the culture wars?
Trevor Hughes:
For a long time, electric vehicles were very much a niche thing, right? People drove a Toyota Prius and it was a thing you didn't see that often. But increasingly, everywhere you go, you see EVs. They've really started to move into the mainstream.
The criticism with EVs is a couple of different things. One, they tend to contain some exotic materials because of their batteries. And two, because they are powered by electricity, which is still largely generated by fossil fuels, they are not necessarily a silver bullet.
But one of the really fascinating things about this is that electric cars require a lot less maintenance and they have a lot fewer moving parts, which means fewer people needed to assemble and maintain them. And Donald Trump has been talking a lot about that recently, especially in Michigan, where there are huge automakers, huge automaker unions, and an important set of votes during the presidential election.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, interesting stuff. Trevor Hughes is a national correspondent with USA Today. Thank you, Trevor.
Trevor Hughes:
You bet.
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Taylor Wilson:
Congress has passed the final six spending bills needed to avert a government shutdown and finalized funding until September. The move puts an end to recent shutdown scares that have rocked the country. The $1.2 trillion spending package passed the Senate earlier this morning with a 74 to 24 vote after a long negotiation over additional policy votes with hard-right senators.
Government funding technically ran out just after midnight earlier this morning. But because the bill will be enacted over the weekend, the effects of the shutdown will be very limited. The bill finalizes funding for several key agencies that represent around 70% of federal government spending. They include the Defense Department, Department of Homeland Security and State Department.
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Taylor Wilson:
A generation of children missed lots of class time and lost significant academic ground during the pandemic. Four years after the onset of COVID-19, schools are still struggling to catch kids up. They're also struggling to get young people to show up in the first place. Chronic absenteeism, when students miss at least 10% of the school year, remains rampant and in some cases has gotten worse.
But schools are not adequately communicating the challenges to families, and they even often mistakenly communicate that all is well. Research suggests parents are getting limited, if not inaccurate messages about their kids' performance, and new survey findings shared exclusively with USA Today underscore the problem.
Nearly half of parents say they want better communication from their kids' schools especially about attendance. That's according to the survey from K through 12 communication and data analytics platform, SchoolStatus. Other research from Brookings also shows a gap between students' marks on their report cards and those on standardized assessments. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.
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Taylor Wilson:
New museums are changing the way Black history is told across America. I spoke with USA Today national correspondent, Deborah Barfield Berry to learn more. Deborah, it's always good to have you on.
Deborah Barfield Berry:
Thank you for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
So you wrote about some of these new Black museums and sculptures that are popping up around the country. Let's start with this new sculpture park in Alabama. What should our listeners know here?
Deborah Barfield Berry:
Well, the Equal Justice Initiative has several museums, actually two sites, but they're about to open, at the end of the month, a new Freedom Monument Sculpture Park. It's basically a 17-acre site in Alabama between the Alabama River and some railroad tracks. It's kind of sacred ground as they put it. A lot of enslaved Africans were brought there and forced into slavery.
But it's there that they have all these different monuments, some created by Africans or African Americans and Indigenous people to illustrate and bring to life and tell the history and the story of slavery in America. It's a very powerful place.
One of the features of the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park is at the end there's a 43-foot-high wall. It's 155 feet wide. It lists the surnames that enslaved people chose in the 1870s census because before that, enslaved people were not named. But on it, there's a feature where you can look for your own surname on the wall.
And so I had that opportunity to do that, and I was able to find my family's surname, my mother's surname, which is Montgomery, and also my father's, which was Barfield. And that was so cool to, number one, find it on the wall, point to it on the wall and see them represented.
And what Bryan Stevenson said is that he felt that it was important for people to feel represented and that the ancestors are honored by having their names on the wall. So it was really touching, a kind of emotional feeling at the end.
Taylor Wilson:
That must have been just so powerful, Deborah. I appreciate you sharing that. There's also this new museum in Charleston. What can you tell us about that?
Deborah Barfield Berry:
It's the International African American Museum, and it's on the wharf. And that too was a place where many enslaved Africans were brought years ago. Most of these newer museums are in sacred places, if you will. That museum focuses a lot on slavery, but also focuses on the rich culture of South Carolina, particularly Gullah Geechee culture and people. But yet, a powerful story that still tells the broader story of what has happened for the African Americans in America.
Taylor Wilson:
So Deborah, why are we seeing more Black museums like these being created in recent years? Was there an impetus of some kind or a major moment that sparked this?
Deborah Barfield Berry:
At least when I talked to some of the experts and the leaders and creators of these museums, there wasn't any one thing. But what Bryan Stevenson told me, and he's the one who created three of them, is that in the last decade or so in particular, there's been more resources for these museums, some of them from foundations and themselves and other people, that there's been interest in them, and there's been the capability and capacity to do that when there hasn't always been that case before that.
Taylor Wilson:
You're touching on some of the resources and the funding behind these. Why do many argue that these are investments worth making and that these museums are so vital?
Deborah Barfield Berry:
Well, several of them say, number one, it's telling a story and telling a story through a different perspective, sometimes changing the narrative of African American experience and life in America, or the narrative about slavery, did it happen, how it happened, the impact of it, the legacy of that. So they say it's very important in that way.
And a lot of them are saying, particularly with this pushback and restrictions of teaching of Black history and the banning of books, that the museums and what they do and their mission is more important than ever because people are about teaching themselves now. And if they're not going to learn it in the classroom or they're not going to learn it in those other venues, many more of them are turning to museums where they think they will get the authentic story from a different perspective.
Taylor Wilson:
Absolutely. So Deborah, what's next here? Are there any new museums opening up soon or that just opened that our listeners should know about?
Deborah Barfield Berry:
The Urban Civil Rights Museum opening in Harlem, the National Urban League has led that one. You also have the Hip Hop Museum opening in the Bronx. So they're not just about history, but a different kind of history, about music. There's one in Nashville. There are several of them that have just recently opened or in the works to happen now, and it's kind of exciting.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Deborah Barfield Berry is a national correspondent with USA Today. Thank you, Deborah.
Deborah Barfield Berry:
Thank you.
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Taylor Wilson:
And finally, Oregon has recently reversed course on its drug policy and is re-criminalizing drug use and possession. Was the drug legalization movement a failed experiment? Tune in tomorrow when my colleague, Dana Taylor sits down to discuss the issue with Drug Policy Alliance executive director, Kassandra Frederique. You can find the episode right here on this feed.
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And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. We're produced by Shannon Rae Green and Bradley Glanzrock, and our executive producer is Laura Beatty. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio. And if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. You'll hear Dana tomorrow, and I'll be back Monday with more of The Excerpt from USA Today.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Princess Kate has cancer. What that means for Royals. | The Excerpt
