• A slew of new polls shows Vice President Kamala Harris with a slim lead over former President Trump in the must-win swing state of Pennsylvania. With just about a month until Election Day, both presidential running mates spent the weekend campaigning in the state to shore up support for their respective tickets. One person who definitely knows how to connect with voters in Pennsylvania, though, is Democratic Rep. Summer Lee, whose district includes parts of Pittsburgh and its surrounding area. She joins us to talk about her success as a progressive lawmaker in today’s Democratic Party and the lessons that the Harris-Walz campaign can learn from younger politicians like her.
• And in headlines: House Speaker Mike Johnson announced an agreement for a short-term spending bill to avoid a government shutdown, four top campaign officials for Republican North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson resigned amid a swirling scandal over comments he allegedly made on a porn website’s message board, and Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah inched closer to all-out war.

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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Monday, September 23rd. I’m Jane Coaston. And this is What a Day the show on which we also would not want to run for president when we are 82 years old. 

[clip of Donald Trump] I think that that would be and I don’t see that at all. 

Jane Coaston: That’s what former President Donald Trump said in the show Full Measure over the weekend. And I do not believe him. Not because I think he’s having an amazing time running for president, but because the man is physically incapable of just going away. He was in an episode of Sex and the City, for God’s sake. [music break] On today’s show, Congress agrees to concepts of a plan to avoid a shutdown for now. Plus, Harris agrees to an October debate, but Trump says it’s way too late. But first, the latest polls show Vice President Harris with a slim lead over former President Trump in the swing state of Pennsylvania. Over the weekend, vice presidential candidates Tim Walz and J.D. Vance were both campaigning in eastern Pennsylvania in an attempt to sway voters. Here’s Walz speaking at a rally in Bethlehem on Saturday, slamming his opponent for recent comments he made on the economy. 

[clip of Tim Walz] We saw Senator Vance lead an audience when he said, well, they reduced interest rates this week. How terrible is that? And he got the crowd booing. Who boos for lower interest rates? Venture capitalists apparently. 

Jane Coaston: Walz knows his audience, but if he does need any tips, one person who definitely knows how to connect with voters in Pennsylvania is Democratic Congresswoman Summer Lee. She represents the state’s 12th district, which includes Pittsburgh, [?], and surrounding areas. Her 2022 midterm victory made her the first Black woman ever elected to Congress in Pennsylvania. This April, Lee won her primary by about 20 points, all but guaranteeing she’ll keep her seat in Congress. So I wanted to talk to her about her success as a progressive in today’s Democratic Party. And the lessons that the Harris Walz campaign can learn from younger politicians like her. Representative Lee, welcome to What a Day. 

Summer Lee: Thanks for having me. 

Jane Coaston: So I’m curious because I know that, you know, there are going to be people hearing this and are like every election we hear that young people are going to turn out and then they don’t. What are some of the mistakes you’ve seen made in the past, and what lessons can people take from how you were able to win using that coalition? 

Summer Lee: Yeah. So, you know what? I won’t necessarily say mistakes because I think that also what we’re realizing is that there are multiple ways to win. I just suggest and I think that my argument is, is that we lean into the way that’s going to give us a long term victory. Right. We’re at a transition point. You know, we’re at an intersection, the crossroads. Right. Do we continue to lean onto the coalitions of the past or do we start now to invest in the coalitions of the future? When I ran, we obviously invested in the coalitions of the future, right? We needed Black and Brown voters. We needed liberals, white middle class folks. We needed, you know, Jewish and Muslim and Christian folks. We needed young folks and progressives. That was our coalition. And we went into every neighborhood to go and get that. We had to do some voter turnout to invest in that. We did door knocking, we did digital, we did all the things right the traditional way and plus the ways that, you know, younger, more progressive people have been doing politics. And that one two punch, I think, helped us. It’s an opportunity to say that we know that these are the people who are future voters. And first of all, let me also say millennials aren’t young. 

Jane Coaston: Nope, nope. We’re old. We’re old.

Summer Lee: We’re pretty old now. So and–

Jane Coaston: Yup. Nope.

Summer Lee: They’re like, now you know them young folks are not going to vote. Uh.

Jane Coaston: Nope. 

Summer Lee: We’re getting old. 

Jane Coaston: Nope. Yep. You got to drink water. You got to moisturize. 

Summer Lee: Every day actually. 

Jane Coaston: Every day. [laughter] So Donald Trump obviously is doing his best to undermine confidence in the voting process in many states, including Pennsylvania. If we recall from 2020, it was notable how much time Trump spent yelling about Black voters in Philly, in Detroit, in Milwaukee. What do we need to do? What do officials need to do to ensure that those voters don’t need to worry about being intimidated or having their votes tossed out this November? 

Summer Lee: Yeah, I’m happy that you brought up 2020. That was actually our first election in Pennsylvania, where we had the option for no excuse mail in voting. And it actually wasn’t because of Covid. We just passed the law. It just happened to coincide with it. But it was a new process. So a lot of voters were naturally skeptical. And particularly you mix that with Donald Trump and his disinformation machine. Right. There were folks who were afraid that if they made any mistake in the mail in process, we have what’s called the naked ballot. Right. If you don’t put it in it’s little sheet and it’s little dressing and then put it in the envelope. Right. It can be disqualified. If it doesn’t land at the board of election by 8:00 election night. Then a lot of people felt like there were too many contingencies. But it is safe, it is secure and is an easy way of voting. So I think the thing that we need to do is to continue to really just build up confidence and vote by mail. It is such an easy and convenient way. And when we think about seniors, particularly like, you know, older Black folks, rural folks, people who are not sitting next to and very close to a polling place, it is a game changer for them. So it’s so important that we invest and it’s so important that we continue to instill confidence in the process and also that we’re transparent. In Allegheny County, we had those votes counted by the end of the night, and now we always do. They start pre canvasing at seven in the morning. By 8:00, mail in ballots are counted, your vote is counted. And we know. So the faster we move, the more resources we get to our county parties to actually tabulate quickly. It instills that confidence and it makes it unimpeachable. 

Jane Coaston: Speaking on CBS after Vice President Harris’s DNC speech, you said that Democrats have to do more than just say they believe in a cease fire in Gaza and the right to self-determination for Palestinians. What’s your message to voters who don’t support Donald Trump but are also a little hesitant about the Harris campaign based on policies related to Israel and the war in Gaza? 

Summer Lee: My first thing that I always do is I acknowledge and I honor where people are coming from. You know, these are really serious issues that we’re dealing with. It’s not a small trifle. And I’ve talked to so many people who have loved ones who have direct ties or people who just care, who are empathetic. They’re watching this and they’re horrified by what they’re seeing. And you acknowledge that. And then what we do is we try I try to help them figure out what do we want our country to look like, what direction do we want it to go in? And then you you do that strategy. I think what people want to realize and what people what I try to help people see is that there is a picture beyond November 5th. This is one step in it. But the world, the society, the United States that we are tasked with building right now, out of Covid, out of the insurrection time, all that is our responsibility to build it. It’s our responsibility to put us in the best position to protect all of our marginalized family and loved ones. It’s our responsibility to put us in a position where we’re not fighting back against so many things, but instead are fighting for things now. Um. And that’s what we have to do right now between today and November 5th. And that’s how we talk to voters. We respect them. We acknowledge that there are differences in our approaches, that there are differences and sometimes even in ideology. But at the end of the day, where are those points of you know similarity? Where are those points of sheer concern? And how do we focus on them and get them the Harris campaign, get Democrats as a whole closer to where the rest of the country and the world are on Gaza. 

Jane Coaston: So you’re a representative for a really interesting area. And your district includes the Tree of Life Synagogue, which was the site of a horrifying anti-Semitic massacre back in 2018 caused by a white nationalist. It was awful. Jewish leaders in the Pittsburgh area have signed letters criticizing your stance on Israel. You represent, as you were saying, a lot of people with a lot of perspectives on the same issue. And it’s complicated. So how do you take into account the views of some of your constituents who are more supportive of Israel’s policies when determining your own views and policies on Israel? 

Summer Lee: One thing that I will say is that, you know, there is no doubt in my mind that I will always stand with my community, every part of my community against white supremacist hate, against xenophobia, against all of these ills that, not just MAGA, but that they have amplified and that they have been given a platform to. Uh. And the reality is, is that anti-Semitism, anti-Blackness, Islamophobia, they are all cousins and they come for each and every one of us. And it’s that important that we keep these coalitions together because that is our shared battle and where one of us has been picked off or where we have we’ve allowed or we’ve seen people drive a wedge. The reason why they want to drive a wedge between these beloved communities is because they recognize how powerful it is when we are in coalition. So we have to fight back against that. The reality is, is that you’re right. I won’t agree with everybody. Everybody won’t agree with me. It is my job, though, to hear everybody, to understand their experiences and their perspectives, their expertise, to take it into consideration and to put that into a my process of how we come to our policy decisions. How do we come to the decision around what stances we will take? I recognize that people have longstanding views around this, and I also recognize that more people in this district are for a ceasefire, have been for a ceasefire from day one, and that we can acknowledge that while also keeping space and grace for people who aren’t all the way there yet and helping to get them there. 

Jane Coaston: Teen Vogue recently published a piece that I really loved because it was about how you and your fellow freshman representative, Congresswoman Delia Ramirez of Illinois, decided to become roommates in D.C., in part because you’re both cool and have shared values, but also for financial reasons. I lived in D.C. for 13 years. It is not a cheap place to live for anyone. And housing has been a huge issue up and down the ballot across the country. What has it been like navigating Congress as someone who doesn’t have the same financial safety net as many of your colleagues? And also you’re facing an issue that millions of Americans are dealing with right now. The rent is literally too damn high. 

Summer Lee: It’s too damn high. Well, first of all, let me say this. I have no financial safety net, Right? You know, if I stop working, the money stops coming in. I am working class in that sense. Um. I will say, when we first got to Congress, people don’t know this. There is a per diem now, right? There there is a taxed per diem, right? We pay for our rent, for our housing, for our lodging out of our paychecks, that is already taxed. And then we’re taxed back on the reimbursement. But that’s very new. So forever in Congress, there was no reimbursement. There was no per diem, right. So this is a very new process so when I first got to D.C., I had no idea how I was supposed to pay for my mortgage here in Pittsburgh and for rent in DC. I had no idea. In my first couple pays before we even got this figured out, I was making less than I was before I got to Congress because I was spending that much more on my expenses. And that’s what keeps young working class people out of Congress, because you can’t afford it. We’re not developers, right? We’re not trading stocks. Right. I’m not a businesswoman or whatever.

Jane Coaston: We aren’t millionaires from Connecticut who just happened to decide that they want to run in a different state. 

Summer Lee: For Senate. Right. We’re not those people. They not like us. So so for me, it was a very real experience. I navigated it. But also, even with my salary, I still am a millennial who has hundreds of thousand dollars in loan debt because that was my American dream, right? To make it, come out of my first generation college student, right. Come from my working class neighborhood. I’m the first generation in my family to go to law school. Well, that costs money that I will pay back for the rest of my life. So we even as a generation of new Congress people, we have considerations that our colleagues never even had. So it was great to have somebody to have a class full of people who are all trying to room up and then have Delia, who is also progressive, who was also a woman of color, who was also going through this at the same time. It’s like a twofer, right? We get to make sure that we can afford to live and we get to be each others sounding board. We get to navigate this really weird place, this place that is quite hostile to people like us, and we get to navigate that and change it together. 

Jane Coaston: Representative Lee, thank you so much for joining me. This has been a great conversation. 

Summer Lee: Thanks for having me so much, it was so fun. [music break]

Jane Coaston: Before we take a break, I want to say thank you. Thank you to the What a Day community for welcoming me. I’ve been a listener for years and it’s been awesome getting to wake up with you every morning as your new host. You’ve probably noticed some changes and I’m sure we’re going to continue to change and evolve to meet the moment, including our new daily YouTube show. What won’t change is the honest but optimistic, hopefully funny, hopefully funny takes that made you a fan of What a Day when it first launched five years ago. This is a show with a lot of heart because of the people who have worked on it for five years, and I am so proud to grab the baton and take the show forward. But I need to hear from you. What stories do you want covered? Who do you want to hear from? Come talk to me and the What a Day team on the Friends of the Pod Discord tomorrow, Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. Pacific. We’ll drop the subscription link in our show notes. You can also email us anytime at hey@crooked.com. We’ll be back in a moment. But if you like our show, subscribe, watch us on YouTube and share it with your friends. We’ll be back after some ads. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

[clip of Donald Trump] She’s done one debate. I’ve done two. It’s too late to do another. I’d love to in many ways, but it’s too late. The voting is cast. The voters are out there immediately. Is everybody voting? Please get out and vote. 

Jane Coaston: Like me at a party I didn’t really want to go to anyway, former President Donald Trump is saying no thanks to a second debate with Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of the election. Early Saturday, Harris said she’d agreed to an October 23rd debate hosted by CNN. But at a rally in North Carolina later that day, Trump said it’s too late. But it’s definitely not too late. Four years ago, I remember, Trump and President Biden had their second debate on October 22nd, and a slew of new polls released Sunday suggest maybe Trump should reconsider his position. An NBC News national poll has Harris leading Trump 49% to 44%. And a CBS News YouGov poll says Harris has a four point lead over Trump nationally and a two point lead in battleground states. But sure, let your running mate J.D. Vance, have the campaign’s final word in the debate stage when he takes on Minnesota Governor Tim Walz on October 1st. Sounds like a great idea to us because J.D. Vance is so fun and popular. House Speaker Mike Johnson on Sunday announced an agreement for a short term spending bill that will avoid a government shutdown for another three months. Yay. The new bill doesn’t include redundant and unnecessary language requiring people to provide proof of citizenship in order to register to vote, which Trump has said Republicans should shut down the government over. Because, of course he did. And it does include an additional $231 million for the Secret Service to provide security to the two ongoing presidential campaigns. The looming shutdown was putting pressure on both parties to come up with a plan before the election. But Johnson had struggled to put together enough votes partially due to opposition from his own party. The bill is expected to be reviewed on Monday, with a vote likely to happen on Wednesday. Less than a week before government funding runs out October 1st. Four top campaign officials for North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson resigned on Sunday. Last week, CNN released a report alleging Robinson’s long history of disturbing and racist posts on a porn site’s message board. A sentence I would prefer never to hear again. Robinson has not dropped out of the race, but Republicans are tiptoeing around his latest scandal. Here’s Vance speaking with NBC News in Leesport, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. 

[clip of J.D. Vance] Well, look, the allegations are pretty far out there, of course, but I know that allegations aren’t necessarily reality. 

Jane Coaston: When asked if he believed Robinson’s claim that the posts don’t belong to him, Vance had this to say. 

[clip of J.D. Vance] Uh. I don’t not believe him. I don’t believe him. I just think that you have to let these things sometimes play out in the court of public opinion. 

Jane Coaston: A stirring show of support. Amazing. Trump also skirted the issue at a rally in Robinson’s home state of North Carolina on Saturday. Though Robinson is often a surrogate for Trump in the state. Trump didn’t mention Robinson at all during his speech. Weird. Democratic Senator from Georgia, Raphael Warnock, also weighed in on MSNBC on Sunday, taking offense to Trump’s Martin Luther King comparison he made back in April. 

[clip of Raphael Warnock] He is the antithesis of everything that Dr. King represented. He is white supremacy in Black face. 

Jane Coaston: Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah continue to trade rocket fire over the weekend, bringing the region the closest it’s been to all out war in the last year. On Sunday, Hezbollah fired more than 100 rockets and missiles into northern Israel, though most of them were intercepted. Hezbollah’s deputy leader said it was the beginning of a, quote, “open ended battle of reckoning with Israel” and that rocket fire would not stop until there’s a cease fire in Gaza. The barrage was in response to a series of escalating Israeli attacks against Hezbollah that started last week. On Friday, Israel launched an airstrike at an apartment building in suburban Beirut. The strike killed more than 40 people, including a senior Hezbollah official and more than a dozen other members of the group. Speaking to CBS’s Margaret Brennan on Sunday, Israeli President Isaac Herzog claimed the Hezbollah members who died in the strike were planning an attack on Israel similar to Hamas’s attack on October 7th. 

[clip of Israeli President Isaac Herzog] They developed this school of thought, of swarming into Israel, of trying to take hostage of butchering–

[clip of CBS’s Margaret Brennan] Do do you have evidence–

[clip of Israeli President Isaac Herzog] –raping, burning, abducting. 

Jane Coaston: But he didn’t offer any evidence to back up the claim. 

[clip of CBS’s Margaret Brennan] Do you have evidence that there was an imminent attack? 

[clip of Israeli President Isaac Herzog] So I can’t go into all the information itself, but it is assumed that they were planning an attack. 

Jane Coaston: Israeli’s strike on the apartment building followed two days of coordinated explosions of pagers and radio equipment used by members of Hezbollah. President Biden told reporters on Sunday his administration was doing, quote, “everything we can to keep a wider war from breaking out.” And that’s the news. By now you’ve probably heard of Project 2025, an effort by a conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, to ban pornography, and the Department of Education, cut funding for Medicaid, use the Comstock Act to punish people who get abortion pills through the mail, and ensure that every employee of the federal government is MAGA approved. Through something called the Presidential Personnel database. According to Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, it’s going to go just great. 

[clip of Kevin Roberts] We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be. 

Jane Coaston: Comforting. And you’ve probably heard Donald Trump deny having literally anything to do with Project 2025 during the debate. 

[clip of Donald Trump] Number one, I have nothing to do, as you know, and as she knows better than anyone, I have nothing to do with Project 2025. That’s out there. I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it purposely. I’m not going to read it. 

Jane Coaston: Now I actually believe that Donald Trump has not read Project 2025. I believe Donald Trump reads old issues of People magazine and complains about them. And I also believe that Donald Trump does not want to be tied to any piece of policy that will make lots of people mad. Sure, he is absolutely fine with threatening to mass deport a population the size of Ohio and fanning the flames of racism. But besides that, marijuana, he loves it. Health care, he’ll come up with a plan soon. Any day now. Abortion? Well, he doesn’t know anything about that. J.D. Vance does, though. He’s been talking about it since 2022 on the Very Fine People podcast. 

[clip of J.D. Vance] I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally. 

Jane Coaston: But Project 2025 is specific, and it is also extremely unpopular. A new poll from NBC News shows that Project 2025 is viewed more negatively than J.D. Vance and the concept of socialism. Trump’s campaign advisers issued a statement back in July after Project 2025’s director left the Heritage Foundation saying in part, reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed. But don’t tell all that to Kevin Roberts on Fox News on Sunday. 

[clip of Kevin Roberts] Project 2025 is the largest, broadest scale conservative movement boilerplate set of policies that we’ve been talking about for 45 years. To do what? To correct government overreach, which has happened at the expense of everyday Americans who are striving for the American dream. That’s what Vice President Harris is running against. 

Jane Coaston: See. Exactly. That’s what Kamala Harris has said. She is running against the largest broader scale conservative movement, boilerplate set of policies which would quote unquote “correct government overreach” by putting the government in everyone’s bathrooms and bedrooms. Even requiring states to report where women who seek abortions in states that permit them live. And cutting off funding if they refuse. 

[clip of Kevin Roberts] Project 2025 became the target of the radical left. Why did it become a target of the radical left? Because what the radical left can’t have an intellectually honest conversation about, they attempt to destroy and to mischaracterize. 

Jane Coaston: No, it’s because Project 2025 sucks. It’s 887 pages of stuff that sucks. It’s a plan to start a second American Revolution that claims that transgender people existing is itself pornographic and would cut funding for school lunches and give the president specifically Donald Trump, way more power. This is like if someone threatened you with a two by four and then acted like you were weird for being worried. So, yes, Kevin Roberts is right. Project 2025 is what Kamala Harris is fighting against. I’m just so glad he seems happy to tell us all about it. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you liked the show, make sure you subscribe. Leave a review. Check if your state allows voting by mail and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading and not just old issues of People magazine like Donald Trump and me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston. And clean up your online profile. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded by Jerik Centeno 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, JoHanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters, and Julia Claire. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison and our executive producer is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Collin Gilliard and Kashaka. 

[AD BREAK]