• The Democratic National Convention kicks off today in Chicago. While Vice President Kamala Harris is riding a lot of positive momentum into the DNC ahead of her prime-time speech Thursday, there are several protests planned to coincide with the convention, especially over the war in Gaza. It has a lot of people very nervous because of the parallels to the infamous 1968 Chicago DNC when tens of thousands of protestors and police violently clashed in the city’s downtown. Shawn Allee, a longtime Chicago reporter on the ground for Crooked this week, talks about some of the major protest groups planning to demonstrate at the convention.
• And in headlines: Vice President Harris laid out her economic agenda during a speech in North Carolina, OpenAI said it deactivated a group of ChatGPT accounts linked to an Iranian disinformation campaign, and the Supreme Court blocked the Biden administration from enforcing new Title IX protections for LGBTQ students.

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TRANSCRIPT

Tre’vell Anderson: It’s Monday, August 19th. I’m Tre’vell Anderson. 

Josie Duffy Rice: And I’m Josie Duffy Rice and this is What a Day where we are wondering where we can get the rose colored glasses that former President Donald Trump is wearing these days. 

Tre’vell Anderson: Yes, he says that he looks way better than Vice President Kamala Harris and–

Josie Duffy Rice: Wow. 

Tre’vell Anderson: Wow. 

Josie Duffy Rice: To be Donald Trump and say I’m a better looking person than Kamala, what is it? And how do I get some? 

Tre’vell Anderson: My lord, my lord, my lord. [laughter] [music break] On today’s show, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked the Biden administration’s new title nine rule protecting trans rights. Plus, Vice President Kamala Harris has a slight lead over former President Donald Trump in the polls. 

Josie Duffy Rice: But first, the Democratic National Convention kicks off today in Chicago. We also now know the themes and the prime-time speakers for the four day event. Today, President Biden is set to give the primetime address to ceremonially pass the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris. Later in the week, we’re also expecting speeches from former presidents and first ladies Barack and Michelle Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton and vice presidential nominee Tim Walz. Before Harris closes out the convention with her primetime speech on Thursday. 

Tre’vell Anderson: And while Harris is riding a lot of positive momentum into the convention, there are also a lot of protests planned to coincide with the DNC, especially over the war in Gaza and the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s military. And that has a lot of people very, very nervous, because Chicago, of course, has an ugly history with protests at the DNC. In 1968, the Democratic incumbent, Lyndon Johnson, had just dropped out of the race. The country was divided amid anti-war protests, political assassinations, and racial tensions. 

Josie Duffy Rice: At the convention, thousands of protesters opposed to the Vietnam War clashed with thousands of Chicago police, National Guardsmen, and military troops in the city’s downtown. Police beat demonstrators with batons and sprayed tear gas everywhere, and protesters chanted the whole world is watching as TV cameras rolled. And the 1968 DNC is still a dark chapter in the city and the party’s history. 

Tre’vell Anderson: Now, Chicago has hosted the DNC once since the infamous ’68 convention. That was in 1996. But the vibes were very different then. President Bill Clinton was headed to an easy reelection. The Macarena was the hit of the summer. 

Josie Duffy Rice: This summer, though, the party is once again divided over a war and navigating a last minute change at the top of the ticket in a race that they could possibly lose. So, to get a sense of how all of this history is weighing on Chicago as it prepares to host the DNC, I spoke with Shawn Allee. He’s a longtime reporter in the city and is on the ground talking to people for Crooked this week. I started by asking him how the city is preparing for the protests. 

Shawn Allee: Well, I would say not so fast on the permits. There were discussions in federal court as late as Friday night about how some of the largest protests could be conducted, including whether or not there could be a sound stage, for example, that could be within earshot of the DNC, which is the whole point of the protest to be heard literally by people in power within the convention. Beyond that, I mean, this is, among other things, an enormous event with super high levels of security and very importantly, entire parts of town are shut down. And for a town that wants to balance the right to protest, it is very much a Democratic Party town. And so they still are doing things to basically try to clean up the city or follow the secret services demands of um making certain approaches to the convention center highly secure. So, for example, they removed a very large encampment of folks that are unhoused away from the center a couple of weeks ago. 

Josie Duffy Rice: And you’ve been speaking to groups who plan to protest at the DNC. So before we get to them individually, what are some of the big broad issues that are animating these groups? We know the war in Gaza has obviously been a huge issue. But what else is driving these protests? 

Shawn Allee: Yeah, beyond the Gaza war, which is the big driver here. I was actually surprised to learn that among the issues are reproductive rights. Um. I shouldn’t have been surprised by that. But some of the larger demonstrations on Sunday, the night before the convention, it’s around abortion rights, bodily autonomy, LGBTQ+ freedom. This has been organized by mostly local folks in Chicago, but they’ve been inviting many people from outside of Chicago, especially from states that currently have more restrictions on abortion than Illinois currently does. 

Josie Duffy Rice: So obviously, we have a new nominee for the Democratic Party. Have any of the groups kind of change their plans to protest more, to protest less, to expand the protest since Biden dropped out of the race about a month ago? I mean, it seems like the actual convention has expanded in size drastically. Just anecdotally, I know a lot more people who are planning on going than were when Biden was the nominee. Right. So I’m wondering, what has that meant for protests? 

Shawn Allee: Honestly, no. The protest situation really hasn’t changed. I would say that, in fact, it’s been growing more and more because through the summer, the situation in Gaza in particular has gone from bad to even worse, and there haven’t been that many discussions of peace between Israel and Hamas, and it’s been animating people to become even more strident, actually. We just had a ruling from the Supreme Court, for example, that gave municipalities more power to move folks who are homeless out of encampments. So on that issue, they’re more strident now than they ever were. The abortion rights issue has only gotten stronger. There’s independent movements and even in red states to put abortion rights on the ballot. So they feel that they need to have their voice heard on this, regardless of how well things go or don’t go from the Democratic Party’s vantage point within the convention. 

Josie Duffy Rice: You mentioned the protest on abortion Sunday, and one of the big ones was organized by a group called Bodies Outside of Unjust Laws. Can you talk a little bit about what their main issues are? 

Shawn Allee: Yeah. Bodies outside of unjust laws is organized by a longtime Chicago organizer and demonstrator. His name is Andy Thayer. And among the things that he has been working on for much of his adult life are LGBTQ issues, bodily autonomy, and being an ally towards folks who can get pregnant, basically. Andy’s main idea here is that he really wants to hold the Democratic Party to account for what he sees as shortcomings in their entire policy when it comes to reproductive care and LGBTQ freedom. 

[clip of Andy Thayer] Now that they see abortion as a vote getting vehicle, they’re all on board. But those of us who were working before the Dobbs decision, we were like pulling teeth to get the Democrats to even speak out about it, let alone try to mobilize people. So excuse me if I’m a little bit cynical about their promises now, because it seems to be that they’re only interested in our rights to the extent that they get them their power. They have to damned deliver. 

Shawn Allee: And for people who are not so familiar with what he referred to there as the Dobbs decision. Maybe you don’t have a political scorecard right next to you. That basically is where the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade and kind of kicked the idea back to the states. 

Josie Duffy Rice: Heading into the actual convention. One of the largest protests we’re expecting to see has been organized by a coalition calling themselves March on the DNC 2024. Now, their main issue is the war in Gaza, but it’s not their only issue. So tell us about them, what they’re planning, and we’ll play a quick clip from, Deanna Othman, an organizer and a board member with the Chicago Office of American Muslims for Palestine. 

Shawn Allee: Yeah. Deanna was really insistent that Americans in general are her audience. 

[clip of Deanna Othman] This is our chance, right? This is kind of our our time to shine, as they say, in Chicago, by bringing out our people, our allies. Having everyone come out into the streets and letting the Democratic Party know, you know, this is not a time for us to celebrate a candidate right now, because yes, we have had a change on the ticket. But at the same time, nothing has changed in reality for the causes that are so dear to us and the current genocide being at the forefront. 

Shawn Allee: And one of the things that she is hoping to do is use personal stories to get this idea across, you know, personal stories of people who’ve had families rendered apart, you know, children being slain, etc. she’s even affected by that directly. Some family members of her own in Palestine, have been hurt. 

Josie Duffy Rice: So let’s talk about one more group that’s planning to protest the DNC. That’s the Poor People’s Army, which is made of people who are currently or formerly unhoused and allies of people who are currently and formerly unhoused. Some members have spent the last few weeks walking from last month’s RNC in Milwaukee to Chicago, which is remarkable. So what are their plans for the DNC? It’s very interesting to me that everybody is kind of saying, we’re talking to everybody. We’re not just talking to people in this building. Um. And so who are they talking to? 

Shawn Allee: I asked Cheri Honkala about this. She’s the current leader of the group about like, what they’re trying to get across here. And she’s basically saying that America needs to keep its eye on the ball, like it needs to concentrate on this issue in a way that it has concentrated, for example, on the past on say space exploration or defense and the like. 

[clip of Cheri Honkala] It’s going to move the needle. It’ll move the needle of the American people when they see what’s this group of people that walked like 90 miles in horrible weather under horrible conditions? And why are they out here? This is our one shot. Um. This is where there’s thousands and thousands of reporters. So we can talk about the issues that we really need to talk about. That’s how we hope to move the needle. 

Shawn Allee: Josie, I’m going to give you one little surprise here. It turns out that the Poor People’s Army has the sweetest spot when it comes to protests, because they had put in their application very early, so early and kind of under the radar that um the city of Chicago responded pretty slowly. And so a federal judge said you actually missed the deadline, Chicago, to respond. So they basically have a primo seat. They’re going to get much closer to the convention center itself than any other group, albeit they’re probably a much smaller size. 

Josie Duffy Rice: Okay, so we had talked about this a little bit earlier about going back and forth with the city over the route and the permits for months. So clearly Poor People’s Army, the courts for once [laugh] working uh in the favor of this group. How close will these other mass protests be able to get to the convention? 

Shawn Allee: Yeah, it’s a good question, I think, for what people expect to be the largest and maybe the most well-attended protest, the one that’s called the March on the DNC. This is the one mostly with Palestine as main issue. They hope to have like maybe 10,000 attendees and the like. If you’re familiar with the geography of Chicago, you would be surprised if they could actually be heard from the United Center, because where that route is ending would be a maybe a block or two away, but they are going to be allowed to get pretty close to some security fences as long as they keep things moving along. But that back and forth went again, back up all the way through the weekend, and included things like whether they would have the ability to have soundstages at some of the local parks, that kind of thing. And like, could you literally be heard without a soundstage? The answer is no. They finally got that approved, and so they’re hoping to at least be heard by a good number of attendees. 

Josie Duffy Rice: Okay, just one last question we want to ask you. You asked all of these coalition leaders why they were protesting at the DNC and specifically against Vice President Harris, who’s on the ticket, knowing that Donald Trump is the alternative. This is obviously an argument we’ve heard a lot lately. So what did they say? And what if their protests have an impact and Harris was to lose? Like, what is their response to how they would feel in that moment?

Shawn Allee: To a person they say, look, some of the biggest gains we’ve ever made in terms of social justice happen to have occurred when there was a Republican in office. And it surprised me. But, you know, Andy Thayer in particular laid that out. It’s like, look, the um Environmental Protection Agency was created under Nixon, for example, um some very important civil rights um implementations were made under Nixon, even though he didn’t support civil rights in the first place. But there was progress made. And the reason, he says, is because all the noise that they made in 1968, ’69, ’70, ’71, ’72 that just demonstrated, again, support from the American people to close the war in Vietnam and make some progress on civil rights and other issues. So their mentality, at least for the folks that were organizing these, is like there is a risk that Trump could win. They don’t feel responsible if he does, but they feel hopeful that whoever’s in office, they’ve made an impression upon the American people, and that’s where they’re trying to play. 

Josie Duffy Rice: That was my conversation with Shawn Allee, who’s on the ground reporting for Crooked at this week’s DNC. 

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

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Tre’vell Anderson: Now let’s wrap up with some headlines. 

[sung] Headlines. 

Tre’vell Anderson: Vice President Kamala Harris gave an economic policy speech on Friday in North Carolina. Harris touted her recent work with President Biden to cap the price of insulin at $35 out of pocket and committed to lowering inflation, fixing the housing market by offering a $25,000 subsidy to first time homebuyers and a ban on grocery price gouging. 

[clip of Vice President Kamala Harris] My plan will include new penalties for opportunistic companies that exploit crises and break the rules, and we will support smaller food businesses that are trying to play by the rules and get ahead. [applause]

Tre’vell Anderson: And a new poll from ABC news, The Washington Post, and Ipsos shows Harris ahead overall, as well as on attributes like honesty and issues like health care and protecting democracy. While Trump is favored on the economy and immigration. 

Josie Duffy Rice: On Friday, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, said they have deactivated a group of accounts linked to an Iranian disinformation campaign. OpenAI did not specify how many accounts they deactivated, but did say that the accounts were using ChatGPT to create fake news stories and social media comments regarding the Israel-Hamas war, the Olympics, and the upcoming US presidential election. The mass deactivation is the first time OpenAI has removed accounts focused on meddling in US elections. According to OpenAI, the group associated with the accounts is known as Storm-2035. The FBI said last Monday that it is investigating an alleged Iranian hack of the Trump campaign, and reporting from The Washington Post claims that the campaign was aware of the hack but didn’t inform law enforcement. 

Tre’vell Anderson: In yet another setback for trans rights, the Supreme Court issued a decision on Friday, blocking the Biden administration from enforcing some of its new title nine rules that enforce how schools handle complaints of sexual harassment and discrimination. In April, the Department of Education updated title nine to include trans students in the definition of sex discrimination. The new guidance explicitly states that public schools cannot discriminate against trans students by restricting what bathrooms they can use. But these new regulations have been preliminarily blocked by at least 20 states. The rules took effect in public schools nationwide on August 1st, and while many blue states have already enacted these regulations on the state level, some red states have decided to challenge their legitimacy in court. The Biden administration asked the Supreme Court to weigh in, arguing that its new measures take precedence over any state laws that conflict with them. But the High Court’s decision on Friday keeps those implementations on hold while lower courts continue to litigate the issue. 

Josie Duffy Rice: And finally, an update on disgraced former Congressman George Santos. The one time New York representative is expected to plead guilty to the campaign fraud charges against him today in federal court. The news was first reported by Talking Points Memo on Friday. Santos was set to stand trial next month on 23 felony charges of wire fraud, money laundering, and defrauding campaign donors by lying about pretty much everything about himself. Santos initially pleaded not guilty to all charges last summer, but court documents show that he and his lawyers began negotiating for a plea deal back in December. 

Tre’vell Anderson: I just hope that part of the plea deal is that he has to disappear from public life. 

Josie Duffy Rice: I don’t hope that. I just want a YouTube channel that doesn’t make a profit but has like a niche. Okay. And those are the headlines. 

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Tre’vell Anderson: That is all for today. If you like the show. Make sure you subscribe, leave a review, clip some coupons to save on these high grocery prices and tell your friends to listen. 

Josie Duffy Rice: And if you you’re into reading and not just reports of OpenAI cracking down on election interference like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Josie Duffy Rice. 

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

[spoken together] And Donald, get a mirror?

Josie Duffy Rice: Have you seen pictures of his, like, apartments? They’re all so shiny. Everything’s really, like, shiny and gold. 

Tre’vell Anderson: Mm hmm. Do you think he can see himself in them? 

Josie Duffy Rice: Well, I think he’s substituting those for a mirror, but he doesn’t realize he also needs a mirror.

Tre’vell Anderson: Mmm. Self love is important. 

Josie Duffy Rice: It is. [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. 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. 

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