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Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Friday, October 28th. I'm Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news, and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
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Elon Musk now owns Twitter. He reportedly fired the CEO and several top executives after completing his $44 billion acquisition. Overnight, he tweeted, "the bird is freed." "Washington Post" tech writer Will Oremus has been paying close attention to what Musk has said in the lead up to closing this deal. He's talked about laying off workers and rolling back Twitter's content moderation efforts. And he's indicated he might allow election deniers back on the platform, including former President Trump.
Will Oremus: Musk seems to genuinely believe that a more permissive attitude toward political speech, even if it's demonstrably false, even if it's maybe considered hateful or bigoted, that's the best thing for democracy, that we need to safeguard free speech above all.
And with the midterms just days away, Oremus says Musk's Twitter takeover has high stakes for U.S. politics.
Oremus: It's a place where news is reported and interpreted in real time, where the people who shape how the news will be communicated to the public argue about it and debate over what the facts are and how to interpret them in real time. So Twitter is enormously influential, especially when it comes to politics. And it matters who owns Twitter because they get to have the final say over what is and is not in bounds, in terms of discourse on the platform.
Twitter boosted its moderation budget after Russian attempts to influence the 2016 presidential race. It has teams and policies in place trying to stop the spread of false information, and it usually amps up those efforts around elections. Oremus says Twitter employees are worried that under Musk, election integrity efforts are at risk.
Oremus: With the midterms in particular, there are likely to be candidates who the polls show lost the election, who nonetheless claim victory or who follow Trump's lead in claiming that the election was stolen from them. And they would like to be able to use Twitter for that purpose. Whether Musk will allow them to do that is unclear.
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Early voting is well underway in most states, and some states are already smashing early voting records set in the 2018 midterms.
Basu: My colleague, Gideon Resnick, is here now to talk about how it's going so far. So Gideon, what's standing out to you?
Gideon Resnick: Yeah, among all these places, Georgia is really one that has been really interesting in the early going. By all accounts so far, turnout has just been massive. They started early voting on October 17th. I mean, here are some eye-popping numbers from the Secretary of State's office, which has been updating pretty regularly. As of this last Tuesday, more than a million people in Georgia have voted early already.
Basu: Oh, wow.
Resnick: It's quite impressive. And it's notable because this turnout is happening after Republican Governor Brian Kemp passed a law that restricted certain voting options like drop box locations. And also, it banned handing out food and drinks to those waiting in line, among other things. And so far, it appears that a majority of these votes are early and in person.
Basu: Mm. And does this match what we're seeing happening in other states? Are early voting numbers just up across the board?
Resnick: It's hard to say for sure. We don't have all of the information just yet. But a few other examples: "The New York Times" reported that, as of this past weekend, the early vote total in Florida was up 50% compared with the number at this time in 2018. Another example that is sort of a counter to that: Texas is one place where the numbers, so far, have not been quite as high as the last midterms.
Basu: Mm. So what does this all mean for overall turnout?
Resnick: It's kind of hard to fully read into anything just yet and I think we probably shouldn't. But based on these early vote numbers and some polling that we are seeing, it really does seem like people are very, very interested in this election. A recent "NBC News" poll found that 70% of all registered voters had a high interest in the election, either a nine or ten on a ten-point scale. So really maxing out there. And in a midterm year, that is pretty unreal.
Basu: Gideon, thanks for joining!
Resnick: Yeah, thank you!
We've got much more coverage of the midterms, along with details on how to vote where you live. That's all in the Apple News app.
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The World Series starts tonight between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Houston Astros. It's a clash of two teams that, let's just say, have had different levels of success.
Mike Petriello: You have maybe one of the most lopsided matchups we've had in a number of years.
Mike Petriello is the lead stats analyst for MLB.com.
Petriello: On one side, you've got the Astros who have been to the American League Championship Series six years in a row. And on the other side, you've got the Phillies who still haven't won 90 games in more than a decade.
Another way that it's lopsided? Petriello says baseball fans hate one team way more.
Petriello: For maybe the first time in sports history, 90% of America will be cheering for a Philadelphia-based sports team just because of all, you know, the bad vibes, the negativity that follows the Astros everywhere because of the 2017 sign stealing scandal.
That's when the Astros got busted for illegally using technology to find out what pitches opposing teams were gonna throw. The Astros fired their manager and general manager and paid a $5 million fine. It was one of the heaviest punishments in the history of baseball. Petriello says even though most of the players from that scandalous season are gone, lots of fans just can't forgive the team for cheating.
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We're always into a story about a dream come true. And this one sticks out because it isn't some lofty dream, like going to space or the Olympics. It's a humble one: just playing a dead guy on a TV show. Maybe you find that little weird, but you cannot deny the dedication that one man from Kentucky put into achieving it.
For the past year, Josh Nalley has posted hundreds of TikTok videos of himself in all kinds of places playing a corpse. All in the hopes of getting cast as a dead body in a real Hollywood production. This guy's got range. He's played dead in snow, dirt, grass. He's got some nice seasonal touches. Lately, he's been playing dead with pumpkins around and all the changing leaves. And he sets the mood with creepy scoring.
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So, we told you this story is about a dream coming true. He finally got the call. The "Louisville Courier-Journal" spoke to Nalley about the moment he got offered a spot on "CSI: Vegas." You can look out for his episode next week. He's the dead guy on the gurney.
And if you've got a slightly dark sense of humor like me, you'll probably enjoy scrolling through his TikTok and the many, many ways he convincingly played dead to score this role. You can find that linked in the story on the Apple News app, along with all the stories that we talked about today.
And before you go, don't forget to check out our weekend interview show, "In Conversation." This week, I talk to longtime media critic Margaret Sullivan. In her new book, she lays out why Americans' trust in media has dwindled to an all-time low and what can still be done to fix that broken relationship.
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Margaret Sullivan: I would really like the top leaders of news organizations to reframe their thinking. Something like this. I mean, it sounds so basic, it's almost laughable. "How can we best serve democracy and serve the American public?" Not "How can we get the most traction on this story?"
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Enjoy that weekend listen. I'll be back with the news on Monday.
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