Wildfire Smoke Turns Skies Orange Across the U.S., and Democrats Make a Big Shift on Israel

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**Tracy Mumford** (0:33)
From The New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today is Thursday, July 16th. Here's what we're covering.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:45)
Holy macaroni. It is smoky, and you can feel the smoke as you're breathing it in.

**Tracy Mumford** (0:52)
Across the Upper Midwest and the Great Lakes.

**SPEAKER_5** (0:55)
It is thick, it really smells like smoke here.

**SPEAKER_6** (0:57)
It was way more yellow this morning. This is spooky.

**Tracy Mumford** (1:00)
Into New England and down to New York. This is some of that thick haze now settling in across the area. Dense smoke from hundreds of wildfires in Canada has been smothering cities this week, turning skies orange and hazy.
Several wildfires are also burning in Minnesota.

**SPEAKER_7** (1:17)
For those of you at home today, I would probably recommend keeping the windows shut.

**Tracy Mumford** (1:22)
As it moves, the smoke has been dropping the air quality in some places to dangerous levels. Yesterday, Toronto's air quality index, or AQI, was among the worst in the world, and the smoke's continuing to spread. New York's AQI is likely to reach unhealthy levels today, and the smoke could dip as far down as Maryland. Health officials have warned that people with conditions that make them sensitive to polluted air, like asthma or other respiratory concerns, should take caution.
Smoke is spreading so widely this week because the same heat dome that's led to brutally high temperatures in the Midwest and Northeast is keeping the smoke close to the ground. One meteorologist told The Times, quote, we're really being fumigated.

**Jay Clayton** (2:10)
I'm just asking a really simple question. Who won the 2020 election?
As I said to you, we went through our processes and Joe Biden became the president of the United States. And that's not an answer to the question of who.

**Tracy Mumford** (2:23)
In a contentious hearing in the Senate yesterday, lawmakers grilled Jay Clayton, President Trump's pick to be the director of national intelligence.

**SPEAKER_5** (2:32)
It's a simple question, Mr. Clayton.

**Jay Clayton** (2:34)
And I've answered it.

**SPEAKER_5** (2:35)
Who won the 2020 presidential election?

**Jay Clayton** (2:38)
I've answered it.

**Tracy Mumford** (2:39)
Several Democrats pushed him repeatedly on the question of the 2020 election. Clayton's answer, saying simply that President Biden was certified, has become the standard response for Trump administration nominees, who won't say outright that Biden won.

**SPEAKER_5** (2:55)
You refuse to answer a basic question about who won a presidential election? But you asked to lead America's intelligence community?

**Tracy Mumford** (3:05)
Democrats claimed Clayton's response was a sign that he wouldn't be willing to disagree with or challenge the president in high-pressure situations involving national intelligence. The 2020 election is top of mind for Democrats because, tonight, Trump is giving a primetime speech which he said will be about election security and voting machines. And many lawmakers expect him to revive his long-standing and debunked claims about voter fraud.
In the past few months, the president has ratcheted up those claims. And under Trump, the office of the director of national intelligence has increased its focus on election issues, as the president uses multiple federal agencies to try and tip the midterms in Republicans' favor.

**Joaquin Castro** (3:55)
Meanwhile, over in the house yesterday, Prime Minister Netanyahu has taken Israel down an ugly path. The tragedy of October 7th has become a justification for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

**Tracy Mumford** (4:07)
Nearly half of Democrats voted to cut off US aid to Israel, reflecting a dramatic shift in the party.

**Joaquin Castro** (4:15)
If there are no consequences, why in the world would Benjamin Netanyahu change what he's doing? If we hope to change Israel's behavior, we must use our leverage.

**Tracy Mumford** (4:25)
Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas was one of 103 Democrats who supported the measure, which proposed axing $3.3 billion in military and humanitarian funding. And while the bill ultimately failed, getting almost no Republican support, the vote was a sign of how decades of unequivocal backing of Israel by the Democratic Party is crumbling, largely because of the country's aggressive military campaign in Gaza.