• Arizona is one of 10 states where voters will get to weigh in directly on abortion access in November, in the form of a ballot measure that would enshrine the right to the procedure in the state’s constitution.
• On today’s show, we’re welcoming our new host of ‘What A Day,” Jane Coaston. Jane tells us more about her recent trip to Arizona with the ‘Pod Save America’ guys and speaks with Chris Love, a reproductive rights activist and a spokesperson for Arizonans for Abortion Access.
• And in headlines: The New York Times released a new poll showing Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump in a statistical dead heat ahead of the debate, the mother of the suspected Apalachee High School shooter says she called the school about half an hour before the shooting to warn a counselor about her son, and Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill was detained by police and placed in handcuffs a block away from the stadium ahead of Sunday’s game.

• Check out AAA – https://www.arizonaforabortionaccess.org/
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• What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast

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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Monday, September 9th. I’m your new host, Jane Coaston. 

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

Jane Coaston: And this is What a Day. The show where Drake absolutely cannot catch a break even at the Super Bowl. 

Tre’vell Anderson: With news breaking yesterday that Kendrick Lamar would be performing at the Super Bowl next year, is there anywhere on earth where Drake is safe? 

Jane Coaston: Has anyone ever been successfully bullied out of the United States? Because Kendrick Lamar is doing his best. [music break] On today’s show, a new poll shows the race between Vice President Harris and former President Trump is tighter than ever. Plus, a Miami Dolphins player is detained by police for a traffic violation on his way to play and ultimately wins Sunday’s game. 

Tre’vell Anderson: But first, Jane, this is your first full episode with us. Tell the people a little bit more about yourself. 

Jane Coaston: I’m from Ohio. I’m a Virgo. I watch a lot of sports. I love sports. I just moved to Los Angeles. I still don’t know where anything is. And I’m so excited to be here. 

Tre’vell Anderson: And you also apparently know a lot about Arizona politics. Just last week, we spoke about the transition of Arizona’s GOP from the party of late Senator John McCain to election denying loyalists of former President Donald Trump. You were just in Phoenix with Pod Save America over the weekend talking more about politics in the state. How was that? 

Jane Coaston: Awesome. And shout out to our fantastic audience. And I got to meet Chris Love, an attorney and reproductive rights activist and a spokesperson for Arizonans for Abortion Access at the Pod Save America show. Abortion is on the ballot in the Grand Canyon State. The voters will be deciding whether or not to put the right to an abortion in the state’s constitution, after the state’s 1864 ban on abortion, yes, from 1864 was overturned by the legislature. And I spoke with Chris again from the studio. Chris, hi. 

Chris Love: Hey. 

Jane Coaston: Welcome back to What a Day. 

Chris Love: Oh, thanks for having me again. And long time no see. 

Jane Coaston: So we are less than 60 days from the election. What are you hearing? What’s the mood on the ground in Arizona? 

Chris Love: There’s a lot of excitement, especially around, you know, the presidential race. Um. There’s a lot of excitement about everything else, our Senate race. And there is the most excitement about prop 139, which is the Arizona Abortion Access Act, which will enshrine the fundamental right to abortion in our state constitution. 

Jane Coaston: Your coalition has had some major wins in your path to getting the initiative on the ballot. Last month, your group announced that you got a record number of signatures and you scored a win with the state Supreme Court to ensure that prop 139 is on the ballot. What are the remaining obstacles you see between now and getting this passed in November? 

Chris Love: From here on out, we’re running a regular old yes campaign, right. So I think our obstacles will always be involved with getting our message out to as many voters as humanly possible and then driving them to the polls in November, and especially for our early voters, where in early October, they receive their ballots in the mail. So we’re going to make sure that everyone is turning out for this election. But we also need to direct them on where to find us on the ballot. This year we’re going to have four full pages. Um. And that’s because our legislature set out 11 different referrals. Um. We have a whole host of judges that are up for their retention votes, in addition to all of the other things that will be on the ballot. So we’ve got to direct people to prop 139, which will be like somewhere on the last page on the bottom of the ballot. 

Jane Coaston: Arizona is also a major swing state in the upcoming election. Most recent polls have the race virtually tied in the state of Arizona, with Trump slightly ahead of Harris by less than a point. I know that in the past, your coalition has tried to avoid making this measure about Democrats versus Republicans, but Kamala Harris has made abortion access central to her campaign and has generated a ton of enthusiasm, in part by doing so. So does that change how your group’s approaching this particular ballot issue? 

Chris Love: Not necessarily. I think we’re happy to have our friends wherever we can take them. We’re very excited that the vice president is out and putting reproductive freedom front and center in her campaign. We’re excited about it because the more people that are talking about it, the more we can relate it back to our proposition. However, in Arizona, Democrats make up about a third of the electorate here, and so we can’t win anything with 50% without also talking to Independents and Republicans. So we are, our message is as broad as it possibly can be, in order to make those people feel okay about voting yes for our initiative. 

Jane Coaston: The debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris is tomorrow. What are you hoping to hear from both candidates? 

Chris Love: I’m hoping to see that Donald Trump actually takes an actual position on abortion. And, you know, I really enjoy listening to the vice president speak about abortion and reproductive freedom. I really hope that she leans in on talking about abortion in general. I want to hear exactly what their plans are for how to ensure that, you know, folks across the United States will have abortion access, if they were the prevailing party. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah. If Trump wins in November, action to protect abortion at the state level is going to become even more important. How is Arizona for abortion access preparing for that possibility? 

Chris Love: Well, you know, this is the first step in many things that we need to do. But the first thing was to make sure that we constitutionally protected the right to abortion here in our state, right? Um. So that’s the first step. Then we need to do the things to make sure that that abortion access is a reality for uh folks in Arizona. So although our campaign will finish up in December, the organizations that are involved with the campaign will be doing the work of making sure that, you know, some of the things that are barriers to abortion, that are still on the books, are taken out of law here in Arizona. 

Jane Coaston: Chris Love, thank you so much for joining me. 

Chris Love: Thanks so much. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Chris Love. She’s a senior advisor to Planned Parenthood of Arizona, and one of the organizers behind an ballot initiative to enshrine the right to an abortion in the state’s constitution. 

Tre’vell Anderson: That’s the latest for now. We’ll get to some headlines in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe and share it with your friends. We’ll be back after some ads. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: Now let’s get to some of today’s top stories. 

[clip of Vice President Kamala Harris] Ah. It’s going to be good. We’re gonna be good, and we’re going to be fine. We’re gonna be fine. We’re all in this together. 

[clip of unknown speaker] Yes we are. 

[clip of Vice President Kamala Harris] We’re gonna be fine. 

[clip of unknown speaker] We are. 

[clip of Vice President Kamala Harris] Yes we are. Yes, we are. 

[clip of unknown speaker] Thank you so much. 

Jane Coaston: Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are set to square off tomorrow in Pittsburgh for their first and only scheduled debate ahead of Election Day. Harris was prepping in the city on Saturday and took a break to shop at a local spice shop, where she said that she was honored to earn the endorsements of former Republican Representative Liz Cheney and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney. Yes, that Dick Cheney. I know it’s weird for me, too. 

[clip of Vice President Kamala Harris] I think that what they both as leaders who are well respected, are making an important statement that it’s okay and if not important to put country above party. 

Jane Coaston: While Harris preps in Pittsburgh, Trump was in Wisconsin Saturday for a campaign event where he seemed to downplay expectations for his performance. 

[clip of Donald Trump] You know, if I destroy her in the debate, they’ll say Trump suffered a humiliating defeat tonight, no matter what. 

Jane Coaston: The stakes for Tuesday’s debate are sky high. On Sunday, The New York Times released a poll claiming to be the first high quality survey since the conventions. It showed the race in a virtual dead heat, with Trump ahead nationally by just one point. Last week, the Department of Justice released an indictment of two Russian employees of RT, Russia’s global TV network, suspected of funneling $10 million to a company called Tenet Media, which employed multiple American right wing influencers in an effort to push anti Ukraine, pro-Russian and generally anti a lot of other people opinions. Here’s just a sample from beanie wearing Trump enthusiast and podcast host Tim Pool, who was among the influencers involved in the scheme. 

[clip of Tim Pool] This is psychotic. Ukraine is the enemy of this country. Ukraine is our enemy. Being funded by the Democrats, I will stress again, one of the greatest enemies of our nation right now is Ukraine. 

Jane Coaston: Now, several of the influencers in question are saying that they had no idea they were part of a Russian influence operation. But I have a couple of general rules. No one on the internet wants to help you commit crimes. Absolutely never go cave diving. And if someone offers you $400,000 a month and a $100,000 signing bonus to record four videos a week, as the indictment alleges, maybe something’s up. You know how people say like, know your worth. Well, none of us, not one is worth $100,000 a week for recording YouTube videos screaming about Ukraine that get less than a thousand views. The mother of the suspected Appalachee high school shooter says that she called the school about half an hour before the shooting to warn a counselor about her son, according to the text exchanges between her and her family. Several of the shooter’s family members had also been in contact with the school in the weeks prior to the shooting, trying to get him help for, quote, “homicidal and suicidal thoughts.” School administrators were apparently looking for the shooter in the minutes leading up to the first gunshots. A student from the high school said an administrator came into her math class and confiscated the backpack of a student with a similar name. The 14 year old gunman appeared in court on Friday but did not enter a plea or seek bail. He’s being charged as an adult with four counts of felony murder. His father, who purchased the automatic rifle for him, is also facing murder charges. Miami Dolphins star wide receiver Tyreek Hill was detained by police and placed in handcuffs hours before the start of his team’s game on Sunday. Just about one block from the Dolphin Stadium. Videos taken by many people in nearby cars show police officers forcing Hill to lay face down on the ground while handcuffed. Hill told reporters after the game that he was pulled over for speeding, and the director of the Miami-Dade Police Department put out a statement saying that the incident is being investigated internally and that one of the officers involved has been placed on administrative duties while the investigation is underway. Here Hill is at a post-game press conference responding to a question about why police officers handcuffed and forced him to the ground. 

[clip of Tyreek Hill] I’ve been trying to figure that out too man. Right now I’m still trying to put it all together. Um. So I’m not going to give you a version that I still don’t know what happened. You know what I’m saying? Um. But I do want to say I do want to be able to use the platform to say, like, what if I wasn’t Tyreek Hill, bro? Worst case scenario. 

Jane Coaston: Hill went on to score an impressive 80 yard touchdown during the Dolphins comeback win over the Jacksonville Jaguars. Because the Jaguars put safeties on one of the fastest people in the NFL, which is a very bad idea. He celebrated by putting his hands behind his back in a nod to the police incident. And those are the headlines. 

Tre’vell Anderson: And finally, certainly the WAD squad would like to know more about you Jane. Are you down for a little rapid fire moment? 

Jane Coaston: Always. 

Tre’vell Anderson: Okay, first up, what trash TV star would you want to have dinner with? 

Jane Coaston: Ooh, the entire cast of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, but I am in charge of who gets to speak. 

Tre’vell Anderson: [laugh] Next question. What’s your favorite football team? 

Jane Coaston: The University of Michigan Wolverines, who are mean to me sometimes. 

Tre’vell Anderson: [laugh] Okay, and last but not least, what’s the thing that interests you most about this election? 

Jane Coaston: I am interested to see if the Republican Party can crazy its way to the White House again, despite many people saying, hey, be less crazy. 

Tre’vell Anderson: Well, we surely will find out soon enough. [music break] 

[AD BREAK]

Tre’vell Anderson: That is all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe. Leave a review. Don’t get too stressed about the polls and tell your friends to listen. 

Jane Coaston: And if you’re into reading and not just thinking about how Anthony Richardson’s arm could be used in military operations like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston. 

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

[spoken together] And buy a new spice. 

Tre’vell Anderson: A little cardamom, a little cinnamon. 

Jane Coaston: Ooh ooh you could do like one of those salt blends, because we all know that there are some people who don’t salt their food, and we know who they are. [laughter] [music break]

Tre’vell Anderson: What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Bill Lancz. Our associate producer is Raven Yamamoto. Our producer is Michell Eloy. We had production help today from Ethan Oberman, Tyler Hill, JoHannah Case, Jerik Centeno, 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. [music break]

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