What A Day - The Case for Amendment 4

Episode Date: February 8, 2024

The Florida Supreme Court on Wednesday heard arguments about Amendment 4 — a constitutional amendment that would guarantee the right to abortion up until the point of fetal viability in the state's constitution. Justices must approve the language of the amendment proposed by abortion advocates before it can be put on the ballot in November. We’re joined by Anna Hochkammer, Councilmember for PineCrest Florida and Executive Director of Florida Women’s Freedom Coalition, to learn more about Amendment 4 and how it would protect women and pregnant people in the state if passed.Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the latest Hamas counterproposal for a ceasefire. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Egypt and Qatar working on mediation between Hamas and Israel. He also met with Netanyahu and other Israeli officials in Jerusalem.And in headlines: the Supreme Court will hear arguments about whether or not Trump is eligible to be president again, Senate Republicans killed the new border deal and foreign aid package, and the Environmental Protection Agency tightened standards for fine particle pollution.Show Notes:Florida Women’s Freedom Coalition — https://floridawomensfreedomcoalition.com/Vote Save America: https://votesaveamerica.com/What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcastFollow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/

It's Thursday, February 8th. I'm Priyanka Arabindi. And I'm Juanita Tolliver, and this is What A Day, the podcast that is telling election officials across the country to add a none-of-these-candidates option to every single ballot, especially in the Republican primary. Yeah, except I am going to be a little careful what I wish for here, because at this rate, none of these candidates is going to win the presidential election. Yikes. Yikes, yikes, yikes.

On today's show, we discuss the latest in the negotiations for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Plus, the Supreme Court is set to hear arguments today about whether or not Trump is eligible to be president again. But first, the Florida Supreme Court yesterday heard arguments about the language of the constitutional amendment that abortion rights advocates are working to get on the ballot in November 2024. Amendment 4, as state officials have labeled it, would guarantee a right to abortion up until the point of fetal viability in Florida's constitution. And as a reminder, currently women and pregnant people in Florida face a 15-week abortion ban and the six-week abortion ban,

and the six-week abortion ban, which DeSantis signed in the dead of night last year, would go into effect 30 days after the Florida Supreme Court rules on a challenge to the constitutionality of the state's existing 15-week ban. Right. It is a dire situation in Florida. There have been more anti-abortion bills, right? Tell us about those. The newest anti-abortion bill in Florida is HB 651. And according to Politico, the legislation would, quote, change the state's civil liability law to add the parents of an

unborn child to the list of potential survivors associated with a wrongful death lawsuit. Whoa. The author of the bill, the same Republican who also authored the six-week abortion ban, Republican State Representative Jenna Persons Mullica, told Politico that, quote, the bill is not meant to target abortions and is only intended to help grieving parents hold wrongdoers accountable. This is where I got to pause. Sure, Jan. Because all I can picture is women and pregnant people and doctors being sued for wrongful death by vengeful people.

Absolutely. We know how this goes. You're specifically adding parents of an unborn child to the list. Like, for what other purpose? All of that is why the push to have a guaranteed right to access basic health care in the form of an abortion is critical. To dig into Amendment 4 and yesterday's arguments in the Florida Supreme Court, I caught up with Anna Hockamer, council member for Pinecrest, Florida, and executive director of Florida Women's Freedom Coalition. I started by asking her why the Florida Supreme Court had to weigh in on the ballot language in the first place. Believe it or not, Florida is the only state that requires a citizen-initiated constitutional amendment to be vetted by the Florida Supreme

Court before it gets on the ballot. They're literally vetting the ballot language based on two fundamental criteria. The first is they want to make sure that it's single subject, ours is, and the second is the language needs to be clear and not misleading. Listen, our ballot language is 49 words. That's pretty short compared to what I've seen before. And we know that language can be tricky, right? Sometimes meant to be tricky. You have 150. We used 49. It's two sentences, common language that everybody understands. And I think that's one of the reasons why one of the headlines that I saw come out of oral arguments was, quote, Florida voters are not stupid. Because the fundamental argument on the other side is

Floridians are too stupid to understand what these words mean. And that is not a standard that I think the court was particularly happy with. And after listening to the oral arguments, what was your biggest takeaway? Are you feeling optimistic at all, given the court's conservative supermajority? I'm quite optimistic, actually. I don't think there was a single argument that we heard today or that we saw in any of the amicus briefs that we hadn't already considered when we wrote the language. We knew that we were going to have to get past the scrutiny of the Supreme Court as part of the process for getting on the ballot.

I wasn't 100% certain we were actually going to get here. And after collecting 1.45 million petitions and submitting them and raising $17 million just in the petition phase to finally be talking about ballot language in front of the Supreme Court because we qualified for the ballot, to me, was a sense of victory, not a sense of dread or peril. I do want you to go to a dark place with me. I have to ask, what is the backup plan in case the court does reject the ballot language? If this is rejected, we're going to have to start over again and continue the fight. This is not policy that can be allowed to stand. The public health

consequences of an abortion ban in Florida are truly staggering. We're talking about the third largest state in the nation. We have four million women and girls of reproductive truly staggering. We're talking about the third largest state in the nation. We have 4 million women and girls of reproductive age here. We have about a quarter million live births every single year. And when you just play the simple math out, one to 2% of pregnancies result in a fetus that's non-viable. Right there, you're literally talking about anywhere from 2,500 to 5,000 women in Florida every single year who will turn into medical refugees and have to travel to Virginia or Illinois, which will be the closest points of care. And that's just for people that have non-viable pregnancies.

We're not talking about incomplete miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, chromosomal abnormalities. I mean, you name it. And sooner or later, it's going to affect every single family in this state. So there is no question that we can't simply throw up our hands and announce that we've been defeated. The fight will continue. And I appreciate the framing of medical refugees, because I think that also emphasizes the regional impact of this type of ban, right?

Like you mentioned Virginia and Illinois. Those aren't close to Florida. Like just for our listeners who need a geography lesson, that's not close. The costs associated with having to leave Florida for most people. If you're in South Florida, if you're in Miami where I'm based,

it's an eight hour drive to the border with Georgia. And you're not gonna get care in Georgia. You've gotta go through Georgia. You've gotta go through South Carolina. You've gotta go through North Carolina. You gotta get yourself into probably the D.C. metro area. Then you have to find some place in an area you are not familiar with, be treated by a doctor you've never met before, somehow find a place to recover from whatever intervention you've had. And while you're doing this and paying for this, you're not taking care of your own children at home, you're not at work, and you're completely alone.

So when we talk about country this size, to have potentially thousands of women having to move thousands of miles to receive normal, modern health care, I think should make all of us profoundly question exactly what we want to get out of our policies. Yeah. And I appreciate the human level of this as well, because when I think about what a constitutional guarantee to access basic health care would mean for women and pregnant people, we know it's the ballot in November. I know that essentially ups the political ante in Florida, a state that has been aligned with Republicans for a number of years now. So how do you think this amendment will impact voter turnout, voter enthusiasm and energy in Florida in the lead up to November 2024? I think the evidence is that it's already affected voter enthusiasm. I mean, we managed to get 1.45 million registered voters

to sign a petition. Almost half a million of the petitions that we collected came from registered Republicans and independents. Half a million. Now, that's a point that I want to emphasize, because we've seen on ballot initiatives in Kansas, in Montana, in Michigan, voters crossing partisan lines, demographic lines, like all the lines that you could think of to support and codify and protect access to abortion. And I love to hear that that's the same scenario in Florida. Florida is a very gerrymandered state. Let's be honest, it really is.

Come on. It's had a Republican governor for 20 years. It's had a Republican-controlled legislature for 20 years. Most of the people on our Supreme Court were appointed by Republican governors. They have a super majority in the Florida House. We certainly have an extremist state government in Florida, but we don't really have extremist voters. We don't really have an extremist population, right? And so you see these sorts of citizen-generated ballot initiatives when you have unresponsive legislatures that aren't really reflecting the policy wishes of the voters drive, for the incredibly high polling that we have. I think what we're seeing is a Florida populace that understands very well what abortion is. It's been part of the political environment of America for 50 years.

And we still have, let's be honest, a population of seniors in this country who remember very well what it was like to live in America before Roe v. Wade, who have had personal experiences with watching friends bleed out on the floor of their college dorm because they had to go to some back alley hack to get medical care. And I think when you listen to the testimonies of women who were engaged in this fight 50 years ago, you start to create a world where you give people permission to draw the line. That was my conversation with Anna Hulkemer, council member of Pinecrest, Florida,

and executive director of Florida Women's Freedom Coalition. And I'm so grateful for the work that Anna and advocates are doing in Florida, because y'all, this is going to be a long fight until November. So get involved in the fight for reproductive freedom by going to votesaveAmerica.com today. Definitely go get involved there. Thank you so much for that, Juanita.

Now we're going to switch gears to the latest on the war between Israel and Hamas. This is as of our recording time at 9.30 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday night. On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the latest Hamas counterproposal for a ceasefire. During a news conference, he said, quote, there is no solution besides total victory, meaning, of course, total victory against Hamas. And that, quote, if Hamas survives in Gaza, it's only a matter of time until the next massacre. According to Reuters, Hamas's latest ceasefire proposal was a three-phase plan. It included the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, as well as the release of the remaining hostages and Palestinians who are being held in prison in Israel. Netanyahu didn't publicly specify the details of the proposal that he was

open to or was opposed to, but he continues to push against any agreement that leaves Hamas in power post-war. As we've discussed here before, he has repeatedly rejected calls for a solution involving Palestinian sovereignty, and he has emphasized that he will not compromise on, quote, full Israeli control over Gaza in any post-war scenario. So really, this rejection is in line with what he's been saying for quite some time now.

I do hope at some point people take him at his word and understand he can't be convinced otherwise and that this is the reality he's trying to achieve. But U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been in the region over the course of these negotiations. Tell us more about his visit and his response to this latest setback in ceasefire negotiations. Yes, Blinken was in Egypt and Qatar working on mediation between Hamas and Israel. And then yesterday he landed in Jerusalem to meet with Netanyahu and other Israeli officials. And then he headed to Ramallah to meet with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. Take a listen to

Blinken after those meetings. What I can tell you about these discussions is that while there are some clear non-starters in Hamas's response, we do think it creates space for agreement to be reached. And we will work at that relentlessly until we get there. In his meetings with the Israelis, he says that he stressed the importance of keeping civilians in Gaza safe, as well as bringing down the tensions in the West Bank. That also follows President Biden's sanctions last week against Israeli settlers who were accused of attacking Palestinians and peace activists in the West Bank. And in Blinken's meeting with Abbas, he reaffirmed the U.S.'s commitment to increasing

humanitarian assistance for civilians in Gaza. But many Palestinians in Ramallah, which is where they met, were in the streets once again protesting Blinken's visit. That happened back in January as well. Many of these protesters argue that the U.S. has continued to enable Israel to continue this war and the killing of so many civilians. Speaking of, we are entering now month five of this war, and according to the Hamas-run health ministry, more than 27,700 people have been killed in Gaza since its start, while over 65,000 others

have been injured. On the ground, Israel's military is preparing to deploy in Rafah, which is at the southern border of Gaza. That's an area where an estimated 1.4 million Palestinians are believed to be seeking shelter at this time. No one wants to see those figures rise, but when you're entering such an overcrowded area filled with refugees already at this point, it's not a good situation. On the topic of the region and U.S. involvement, there was another U.S. strike in Baghdad yesterday. Tell us more about what happened there. Yes, this was another retaliatory drone strike by U.S. special operations in response to the drone attack on a base in

Jordan last month that killed three U.S. service members and injured 40 more. That attack was launched by a militia group based in Iraq that's called Qatab Hezbollah, and one of their commanders was killed in yesterday's strike by the U.S. There are some conflicting reports about how many people were killed in the strike. U.S. officials say that it was just this one, according to their initial assessments,

and they added that no civilians were injured or killed. If anything changes there, we'll, of course, keep you updated. U.S. officials said that Iraqi officials were not notified of this strike in advance. A bunch of people gathered afterwards where it happened, chanting, America is the devil. So tensions really continuing to rise all around, not what we want to see. We'll, of course, continue to follow this, but that is the latest for now. We'll be back after some ads.

Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments today about whether or not Donald Trump is eligible to be president again because of his role in the January 6th insurrection. As a reminder, this case stems from a provision in the 14th Amendment that bars former officeholders who quote, engaged in insurrection

from holding public office again. I mean, seems pretty cut and dry, but we will see how it seems to the Supreme Court because they are not like you and me. I feel like this is also where we need to watch every question that they ask, especially one Kataji Brown Jackson. She's always asking the good ones. The Colorado Supreme Court last December ruled that Trump should be disqualified from the state ballot under the insurrection clause. Trump then appealed that decision to the Supreme Court, which brings us here. We'll be watching this closely as it unfolds in the nation's highest court. Congressional Republicans are riding the struggle bus heavy this week. They keep demanding things and then refusing to support what they asked for. Senate Republicans yesterday turned

around and shot down the big border security and foreign aid compromise plan they'd been demanding for months. This was the $118 billion plan that had been painstakingly hammered out and included funding for Israel and Ukraine, as well as other measures aimed at tightening the southern border.

Senate Republicans killed this plan, which, again, they asked for after Trump misrepresented what was in the bill and urged them to vote against it. Now the Senate is going to try to pass a plan that only includes foreign aid. And GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson, who apparently has a humiliation fetish, said on Wednesday that he's planning to hold another vote to impeach Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. Jeez. This is our daily reminder to not believe a word that comes out of the mouth of Republicans. They sat here telling us that this is what they wanted

for months and months and months, and they got it. And what did they do? Because Donald Trump said, no, I would actually rather campaign on this issue, they shot it down completely. They could have had this. They could have solved this issue. It will never cease to be

amazing to me. It's just because he said so. It's just sickening to me that they let this loser run their party and run them all into the ground. All of them. They're all going straight to the ground. They are hemorrhaging at all levels within the GOP. Yeah, and it really is his fault. And finally, the EPA, like Dua Lipa, said, I got new rules. I gotta say, I will not be singing that. Not one of my favorite Dua Lipa ones. She has a lot much better other songs, I think, but it's fine. We won't get into it. For the first time in a decade, the Environmental Protection Agency yesterday tightened standards

for fine particle pollution, also known as soot. The agency said in a statement that the stronger standard will, quote, better protect America's families, workers, and communities from the dangerous and costly health effects of fine particle pollution. According to the agency, fine particulate matter can come from construction sites, unpaved roads, smokestacks, and more. And if inhaled, it could cause serious health problems. Some particularly small particles can penetrate the lungs and even get into the bloodstream. The agency said that this new rule could prevent up to 4,500 premature deaths, as well as 290,000 lost work days.

The first thing that comes to my mind thinking about where this soot is found is that this is going to help rural communities. This is going to help construction workers and people who live around construction sites. Like this is a huge gain and that hopefully it's going to protect so many more million people absolutely and those are the headlines one more thing before we go cricket's newest limited series dissident at the doorstep is dropping their sixth episode this saturday this podcast is a wild ride following the true story of one of china's most prominent human rights activists, who later turns into a Trump MAGA supporter only a few years later. Listen to new episodes of

Dissident at the Doorstep every Saturday, available wherever you get your podcasts. That is all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, fight for reproductive freedom, and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just how to keep Trump off the ballot like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Juanita Tolliver. I'm Priyanka Arabindi. And don't forget to watch Abbott Elementary. I'm so excited. Quinta is my glimmer of light in these horrid, horrid times. It's like my favorite show on television. It really is just the best.

Makes me so happy. What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Bill Lance. Our show's producer is Itzy Quintanilla. Raven Yamamoto and Natalie Bettendorf are our associate producers. And our showrunner is Leo Duran. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. you