• The Paris Summer Olympics holds opening ceremonies today, officially kicking off 16 days of elite athletic competition. USA gymnastics legend Simone Biles will return to the mat, while fans will return to the stadiums after COVID restrictions kept them away at the last Summer and Winter Games. There’s a political context at this year’s contests, too, and demonstrations have already begun in Paris to rally support for several causes. We spoke to Dave Zirin, sports editor for The Nation, about the protests happening ahead of the games.
• And in headlines: Vice President Kamala Harris presses Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a ceasefire deal in Gaza, California Governor Gavin Newsom instructs cities to remove homeless encampments, and the Ohio Supreme Court delivers a controversial boneless chicken wing ruling.

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TRANSCRIPT

Tre’vell Anderson: It’s Friday, July 26th. I’m Tre’vell Anderson. 

Priyanka Aribindi: And I’m Priyanka Aribindi and this is What a Day, the show where we regret to inform you that former first lady Melania Trump is releasing a memoir this fall. 

Tre’vell Anderson: In the words of that jacket she wore to the immigrant detention center, I really don’t care, do you?  

Priyanka Aribindi: No. It did just occur to me that we could do dramatic readings from the memoir for this program, and that could be fun for us. [laughter] [music break]

Tre’vell Anderson: On today’s show, new polling shows Vice President Harris is closing the gap with former President Donald Trump. Plus, an Ohio Supreme Court says boneless chicken wings can have bones. 

Priyanka Aribindi: Okay. Interested in how they got to that conclusion? But first, it’s an even happier Friday than usual, because today marks the formal start of the Paris Summer Olympics. If the Olympics have not been the first thing on your mind lately, we do not blame you. In the last two weeks alone, we have had an assassination attempt on a former president. A whole new Democratic presidential candidate, a man named JD Vance, who we suddenly have to care about. A lot has been going on. But starting tomorrow, we have 16 days jam packed with sporting events of every kind, from fan favorites like gymnastics and swimming to new additions like skateboarding, surfing, and even breakdancing. And of course, all of the world’s best athletes in one place. 

Tre’vell Anderson: And the political backdrop of these games is definitely layered. We’ll get to more of that in just a moment, but what can we expect to see this year in Paris? 

Priyanka Aribindi: First of all, Covid restrictions kept fans away from the last summer and Winter games, but spectators are back this year and ready to watch all of their favorite events with some very Parisian backdrops. Think beach volleyball by the Eiffel Tower. Open water swimming in the sun. But one event in particular is a little bit further away. Surfing is taking place all the way in Tahiti, which is actually a part of French Polynesia. I just want to say we need a WAD correspondent for that. I think I’m available at a moments notice. 

Tre’vell Anderson: It sounds like we need two. Okay. 

Priyanka Aribindi: Yup. Why not? WAD from Tahiti. It could be great. As usual, the U.S. is expected to go home with the most medals. No surprise there. And there are definitely some events we will not be missing. Top of mind, of course, is Simone Biles and USA gymnastics. Back in 2021, Biles pulled out of the all around competition in the Tokyo Games, but she is back and going for gold again during the women’s final. American sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson will finally make her Olympics debut. She very infamously lost her spot in the Tokyo Games after testing positive for THC. But she is making her big comeback. She actually had the best 100 meter sprint time in the world this year during the Olympic trials and of course, in swimming, seven time gold medalist Katie Ledecky is back in the pool for five different events. 

Tre’vell Anderson: Shout out yet again to all the ladies holding it down. Okay.

Priyanka Aribindi: Absolutely. I wasn’t even finished with them. I mean, in soccer, the games have started already and the U.S. women’s National team, off to a great start. They won their first game against Zambia on Thursday, three to zero. Same cannot be said for the men’s side, unfortunately. Host country France wiped the floor with them, three zero on Wednesday. But I think they are just happy to be there. The last time a U.S. men’s soccer team went to the Olympics was back in 2008, and they haven’t actually medaled in over a century. So I think they’re just enjoying the uniforms and the vibes. 

Tre’vell Anderson: You know what? Shout out to them. Shout out to the uniforms, I guess. And shout out to the vibes. 

Priyanka Aribindi: Yeah. 

Tre’vell Anderson: I am not a sports fan myself per se, but I will definitely be tuned in to artistic swimming aka synchronized swimming. Okay, it’s just so beautiful. Okay, if I do say so myself. 

Priyanka Aribindi: Love it. I’m in, let’s watch. 

Tre’vell Anderson: But of course I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t also draw attention to what we won’t be seeing on our TV screens while watching the Olympics. And that’s the story of what’s happening right outside the arena. Protests in Paris have ramped up in recent days ahead of the opening ceremony to rally support for several different causes. Many locals have taken to the streets to speak out against the city’s displacement of migrant and unhoused populations ahead of the games. There have also been protests against French President Emmanuel Macron’s government amid France’s recent snap parliament election, and there have also been anti-war demonstrations invoking both the war in Ukraine and Israel’s continued destruction of Gaza. So there’s a thick political backdrop behind this year’s games, to say the least. 

Priyanka Aribindi: Definitely. And that is all very, very important to discuss. I know it’ll be at play for this whole games. 

Tre’vell Anderson: Absolutely. So to talk more about what political issues are at play during this year’s Olympics, I called up Dave Zirin, sports editor for The Nation and host of the Edge of Sports podcast. He is in Paris covering the games, and I started by asking him to paint a picture of the protests happening on the ground right now. 

Dave Zirin: Things in Paris are very tense. This is not a bunch of people sitting around sipping wine waiting for the games to start. I was at a protest this evening of several thousand people at a place called Plaza de Republique, and the demands being raised are pretty widespread because it’s a large coalition of groups that have come together to oppose the Paris Olympics. And what they’re opposing in particular has been an unprecedented crackdown on unhoused people. That’s really one of the main issues. 12,500 people, at least, have been loaded onto busses and driven outside of Paris. So, you know, they’re not an eyesore for visiting dignitaries and elites coming in for the Olympics. There’s been what they call a social cleansing of the city that has a lot of people on edge, and that includes taking apart shantytowns, attacking sex workers, going after encampments like all sorts of varieties of folks in different precarious housing situations. Another issue that’s really animating people to the core is militarization of the police. And Paris is like some action movie from the 1980s right now, there are 70,000 security officials on the ground in the city, 20,000 of whom are undercover, and the ones that are not undercover are armed to the teeth. The other issue, though, that really runs through a lot of this, is the issue of Palestine and Israel. There’s a huge Palestinian rights movement in Paris. The presence of Israeli athletes has led people to have a slogan where they say genocide is not a sport. People are also asking questions about the hypocrisy of Russian athletes who have been sanctioned heavily for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, while Israeli athletes are actually being, you know, celebrated by the International Olympic Committee and various officials. So because of that, you have a seriously Parisian Olympics. But there’s even more than that. I mean, the workers at the hotel where the International Olympic Committee is staying, a hotel they rented, by the way, for €22 million are protesting and picketing. The dancers at the opening ceremony might go on strike before the games. So will I go to any games? Will I see anything? I mean, there’s enough to see outside the lines to keep me busy. 

Tre’vell Anderson: Absolutely. And then you also mentioned that the games, right, comes amid two wars right now. We have Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s assault on Gaza. Now Russia has been banned, like you just mentioned, from competing since 2022. Um. But there’s some outrage over how the International Olympic Committee has not banned Israel. For example, as the death toll in Gaza now exceeds 39,000 and continues to rise. What message does the IOC send when they ban or don’t ban a country? 

Dave Zirin: It says that the International Olympic Committee is a group of aristocrats who are lickspittles of Western foreign policy. What does the United States want? The United States wants Russia sanctioned in every possible realm to really de-legitimize Vladimir Putin for the brutal invasion of Ukraine. Well, they want to do that culturally. They want to do that socially. They want to do that militarily, and they want to do that athletically. Meanwhile, the United States, of course, almost stands alone on the international scene in standing with the ugly, ugly assault that Israel has perpetrated on the people of Gaza, and by celebrating the Israeli athletes who’ve come here, the International Olympic Committee has inflamed people with their hypocrisy, and the French government has as well. Because that’s a huge issue right now in French politics, where everything is super polarized. There were just elections where the far left coalition beat back the far right and the far right fascists, even with their decades of history of anti-Semitism, have, you know, completely without shame, said well you know we stand with Israel, this idea of it being civilization versus barbarism and all the rest of it. But amongst people on the left, there’s a ton of Palestinian solidarity. So it has inflamed people through the organized parties in France, not just on a street level, not just on a neighborhood organizing level. 

Tre’vell Anderson: What I’m hearing, though, is a whole lot of things that might make me, if I were leading a city, not want to host the Olympics because of the political minefield, because of the need to, you know, seemingly bring in more security, but it ends up ruining the experiences of so many. Knowing all of this, and specifically the political backdrop in France that you just mentioned. Why does French President Emmanuel Macron keep saying this is a good thing for the city of Paris? Like, what do they stand to benefit from hosting the games? 

Dave Zirin: Emmanuel Macron, he sees the Olympics correctly as being an open faucet of profits for the people who back him and back his party. John Carlos, the great Olympian from 1968, who raised his fist with Tommie Smith on the medal stand. He once said to me that the reason why they have the Olympics every four years is that it takes them four years to count the money, so they are willing to put up with all sorts of inconveniences, political conflict and all the rest of it because it benefits a wealthy few so intensely. You know, you’re talking about the real estate industry because of all the stadium building. And you also have another group of lovely people, the people who do national security and defense and arm those 70,000 police and military that I mentioned earlier, like for the international weapons trade, the Olympics and the World Cup, those are their Super Bowls. So you have these very powerful interests that want the Olympics, but then you have ordinary people and you’ve seen this more and more who are saying, we don’t want the Olympic Games. The International Olympic Committee is having a tougher and tougher time finding host cities, not because leaders don’t want it, but because of popular resistance. 

Tre’vell Anderson: To me, that means, right, that all of these different interests are coming into a particular city to drive energy, money into it. But what happens after the games leave? Can you talk a little bit about the lasting impact that the Olympics sometimes have on cities that have previously hosted them? 

Dave Zirin: You know, I was in Rio in 2016 and I saw this firsthand. Is they tear down housing for poor and working class people. They promise there will be what they call mixed use housing so people can afford to live there. And then they completely break those promises and build higher income housing. And it’s a way of making cities more like playgrounds for the elite and more and more unaffordable. And that’s something that’s happening in cities across the world. But the Olympics supercharge that. It’s like taking the gentrification that cities across the world are all too familiar with and injecting it with a very, very potent kind of steroid. And then the other thing has to do with we talked about all the police officers on the street. Invariably when the Olympics come, they bring with them a security apparatus that is very hard to untangle once the Olympics are over. So a city becomes more invested in things like AI technology, facial recognition software, things that people would oppose, but then think, oh, well, we need them for the Olympics. You know, officials usually promise or even pass ordinances or laws that it won’t be there six months after the games. We won’t have it anymore. But I know in city after city that have hosted them, there’s been a national security aftermath. 

Tre’vell Anderson: That was my conversation with Dave Zirin, sports editor for The Nation. 

Priyanka Aribindi: We’ll get to some headlines in just a moment, but if you like our show, please make sure to subscribe and share it with your friends. We’ll be right back after some ads. 

[AD BREAK]

Priyanka Aribindi: Let’s get to some headlines. 

[sung] Headlines. 

Priyanka Aribindi: Vice President Kamala Harris met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday and pressed him to achieve a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas now. The one on one meeting was Harris’s first with the foreign leader since her presidential campaign began. And in her subsequent comments to the press, she reiterated her position. 

[clip of Vice President Kamala Harris] It is time for this war to end. And to end in a way where Israel is secure. All the hostages are released. The suffering of Palestinians in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can exercise their right to freedom, dignity, and self-determination. 

Priyanka Aribindi: Harris’s rhetoric demonstrated more compassion towards Palestinians than President Biden has, but on policy, her position does not differ from that of the administration. 

Tre’vell Anderson: An exciting new poll just dropped, showing Vice President Harris, in a near tie with former President Trump, conducted after President Biden left the race. The New York Times Siena College poll has Harris behind by just one point among likely voters, with 47% to Trump’s 48%. In a February Times Siena poll, Biden was trailing Trump by six points among the same group. Harris’s favourability has risen too by ten points since the February poll, and it could shoot up even further as the world witnesses a historic merger of The K Hive and the beehive. Beyonce’s Freedom has become a signature song for Harris, playing under her first campaign ad and at her first public appearance as a 2024 presidential candidate earlier this week. Unlike seemingly every artist whose music plays at a Trump rally, Beyoncé actually gave her permission for the song to be used. So you knows she’s telling the girls to get in formation. 

Priyanka Aribindi: Yes, and we heard her loud and clear. Also just want to say, I mean like love the song, always got chills from the song, but now under this video, it’s just another level. It’s really great. California Governor Gavin Newsom instructed cities in his state to remove thousands of homeless encampments on Thursday. Newsom’s executive order comes one month after a Supreme Court decision that expanded the rights of local governments to block people from sleeping outside. In California, cities and towns can decide whether or not to follow Newsom’s directive. A spokesperson for San Francisco Mayor London Breed said efforts to dismantle camps in that city have already begun. But in Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass responded to the order with a statement saying, quote, “strategies that just move people along from one neighborhood to the next, or give citations instead of housing, do not work.” The impact of Newsom’s order could be vast, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. There were 180,000 homeless people in California last year, with the majority of them sleeping on the streets. 

Tre’vell Anderson: An alarming report was released this week by New Zealands Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. It found that from 1950 to 2019, an estimated 200,000 people were abused while in the care of state and faith based institutions in the country. Many of those who suffered this abuse were children. The report also states that indigenous Maori people were more likely to be placed in state care, despite making up less than 20% of the country’s population. New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon spoke at a press conference following the publication of the report. 

[clip of Christopher Luxon] To the survivors, I want to say thank you for your exceptional strength, your incredible courage and also your confronting honesty. I cannot take away your pain, but I can tell you this. Today you are heard and you are believed. 

Tre’vell Anderson: The report notes that survivors who spoke to the Commission want to see a complete overhaul of New Zealand’s care systems, with an emphasis on granting local Indigenous communities control of these services. 

Priyanka Aribindi: Absolutely. This is just so widespread and horrific. Not even chicken wings are safe from partisan politics it appears. In a four – three decision split along party lines, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled against a customer who swallowed a bone after ordering boneless chicken wings. An Ohio resident said that in 2016 he was eating boneless wings with parmesan garlic sauce, which is an interesting order but does sound good when he noticed something go down the wrong pipe. He claims that he eventually went to the emergency room, where a doctor found a five centimeter long chicken bone stuck in his esophagus. He later sued the restaurant where he ate the wings as well as its chicken supplier. But his quest for boneless justice has come to an end. In the majority opinion, Justice Joe Deters wrote, quote, “the food item’s label on the menu described a cooking style. It was not a guarantee.” In his dissent, Justice Michael Donnelly fired back that when consumers, quote, “read the word boneless, they think that it means without bones, as do all sensible people.” I mean, yes. Correct. That is the right take here. It’s a dumb lawsuit, but this is pretty cut and dry. 

Tre’vell Anderson: I’m all over the place. Okay? Because, yes, boneless means less bone. Maybe that was it. They saw less and they–

Priyanka Aribindi: Oh, my God. 

Tre’vell Anderson: –just said.

Priyanka Aribindi: They just did less bones?

Tre’vell Anderson: They that’s what what it was! 

Priyanka Aribindi: Tre’vell. No, you’re arguing for the wrong side. 

Tre’vell Anderson: Oh, Lord. This is what we have to deal with now, Priyanka. 

Priyanka Aribindi: I feel like I got a window into the courtroom in this moment. 

Tre’vell Anderson: [laugh] There you go, you’re welcome.

Priyanka Aribindi: And those are the headlines. 

[AD BREAK]

Tre’vell Anderson: That is all for today. If you liked the show, make sure you subscribe. Leave a review. Carefully inspect your chicken wings and tell your friends to listen. 

Priyanka Aribindi: If you are into reading and not just polls that terrify Trump like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Priyanka Aribindi. 

Tre’vell Anderson: I’m Tre’vell Anderson. 

[spoken together] And you can’t make us read Melania’s book.

Priyanka Aribindi: Except we will do the dramatic readings, if enough of you ask for it. So, like, go on, friends of the pod, blow up the Twitter, do all the things. 

Tre’vell Anderson: I mean, based on her history, she probably didn’t write the book. So is it her book?

Priyanka Aribindi: No. It’s a Michelle Obama speech. I’m happy to dramatically read um, Becoming? . 

Tre’vell Anderson: Listen. They go low, we go high. All right. [music break]

Priyanka Aribindi: What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Bill Lancz. Our associate producer is Raven Yamamoto. We had production help today from Michell Eloy, Ethan Oberman, Jon Millstein, Greg Walters, and Julia Claire. Our showrunner is Erica Morrison, and our executive producer is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.