What A Day - What The Special Elections In The South Mean For The Midterms

Episode Date: August 11, 2026

It’s voting day in states across the country – including in two Southern states that have already voted once this year. In South Carolina, Republicans will select their new Senate nominee after Lindsey Graham’s sudden death. And in Alabama, voters in several congressional districts are heading back to the polls after the Supreme Court told the state to use a map from 2023… despite that map being struck down by lower courts for being racially discriminatory. All of this is happening in the orange-tinted shadow of Donald Trump — but the South isn’t owned by the 47th president. For more, we spoke to Mitch Landrieu. He’s the former mayor of New Orleans and one of the hosts of Crooked Media’s newest podcast, Long Play, which examines politics in the ever-changing South.And in headlines, Trump signs an executive order calling for revamped childhood vaccine recommendations, a Syrian court sentences ousted President Bashar al-Assad and his brother to death by abstentia, and a new report reveals The White House asked the Department of Justice to try charging the man accused of vandalizing the reflective pool with a different crime after his case was dropped.Show Notes: Check out Long Play – crooked.com/podcast-series/longplay/ Call Congress – 202-224-3121 Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/y4y2e9jy What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast Follow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/ For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail]

I sense very clearly that America is struggling to find herself. And she's unsure and she's uncertain. They know that where we are now is really bad. They are trying to figure out how we got here. We're trying to get out of a zero-sum game. And we're trying to think about maybe even a new dynamic way of moving forward as opposed to continuing to have this fight. I'm Jane Koston, and this is what a day, welcoming you to another.

day of the worst guys you know make a great point. In this episode, President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, continues his media tour by sitting down with Tucker Carlson for an episode of Carlson's podcast, and they get to talking about someone they have both come to despise. Can you even imagine the people in, not the people, Donald Trump having a thought about using the power of the executive to benefit anyone but himself first. No. No. Fair.

On today's show, we talked to former New Orleans mayor, Mitch Landrieu, about his new podcast touring the South to learn about the changing electorate. Before we start breaking some of those southern stereotypes, here's what we're following today. Tuesday, August 11th. I saw that you are someone like me that's worried about childhood vaccines, that they give too many. And I agree with that.

I have four kids. Not too many. They're all, yeah, too many. It's too many. Yeah. The hepatitis B,

which is a sexual, you know, you don't need to give it to a kid who's just right, exactly. But with me, it's too many,

but it's something bigger than too many. It's too big. It's too much at one time. They give these massive, did you ever take a look that looks like a Coca-Cola bottle? You know,

like they're pumping this massive amount of fluid into a child's body. No, they aren't. Also, there are many ways you can get hepatitis B. Also, physically born? President Trump shared some weird Coke bottle vaccine analogy that I'm not even going to try to understand with Real America's voice host, Wayne Allen Root. On Monday, Trump signed an executive order calling for revamped childhood vaccine recommendations. The recommendations promote his long-held, but, and this is important, discredited theory that childhood shots should be spaced out into separate medical visits. Unsurprisingly, public health experts worry that children may become infected with a vaccine-preventable disease before returning for another visit. If we haven't said this before,

folks, please listen to your doctor and not the sleepy orange man in the White House. This is an astonishing story reportedly of secrecy and deception to keep the president safe, while a plane load of reporters and White House staff on Air Force One reportedly served as unwitting decoys. That was ABC News's Martha Raddits, and she is not kidding. According to a new report by the Washington Post, President Trump secretly flew out of last month's NATO summit in Turkey on an alternate military aircraft. All the while, the White House made it appear that he was flying on Air Force One.

The Post said the operation was prompted by an Iranian assassination threat against Trump, and the ruse was carried out as journalists and some White House staff members were led to believe they were on the same plane as the president. Now, remember, Trump had to be a man. had flown to the summit in his new Katari-gifted and retrofitted jet. But before leaving Turkey, he said he would fly partway home on an older model Air Force One plane instead. So when he was preparing to leave, Trump boarded the old Air Force One Jumbo jet, which was headed to the UK in view of television cameras. However, according to the post, after boarding, Trump was secretly shuttled minutes later to a smaller plane via, get this, an airport catering truck.

Trump then flew to the UK on that smaller jet, essentially leaving everyone on the old Air Force one unaware they were being used as a decoy. A Syrian court has sentenced ousted President Bashar al-Assad and his brother to death for murder, torture, and crimes against humanity during Syria's 14 years civil war that left about half a million people dead. Six other former officials were also sentenced to death in absentia today. The verdicts are the first against al-Assad,

or any members of his inner circle, since his own. family's five decades in power came to an end. The sentences, however, are mostly symbolic. Al-Assad and his brother fled to Russia and received asylum after the Syrian government's stunning collapse in 2024. The White House asked the Department of Justice to try charging Olympic canoeist David Hearn with a different crime, after U.S. attorney Janine Piro admitted that she had no proof that he vandalized the reflecting pool. That's based on new reporting from the Wall Street Journal, and if it wasn't obvious, it's highly unusual for the DOJ to pursue charges after it had already dropped charges. Why would a grand jury even give the Department

of Justice and indictment? Especially when the presiding judge in the first case will hold a hearing next month as to whether the dismissal of charges against Hearn should be, quote, with prejudice so that he couldn't be charged again for the same alleged crime. I'm sure the judge would be fascinated to hear how on Sunday Trump said on true social, while accusing Hearn of vandalizing the reflecting pool, quote, there was substantial other damage to the reflecting pool. Also, but, unfortunately, there is no video or proof other than the damage itself. So, to sum up, Trump is aware there is no proof David Hearn did anything wrong, but he wants the Department of Justice to charge him with a crime for doing something he didn't do, even after the Department of Justice dropped previous charges against

him because of a lack of evidence. Normeison, one of Hearn's attorneys, told the Wall Street Journal, quote, this would add another bizarre turn to a sad chapter in the DOJ's history and further harass an innocent man. My take, this is fucked up. And that's the news. Let's talk primaries. It's voting day in states across the country, including in two southern states that have already voted once this year. In South Carolina, Republicans will select their new Senate nominee after Lindsey Graham's sudden death. And in Alabama, voters in several congressional districts are heading back to the polls after the Supreme Court told the state to use a map from 2023, despite that map being struck down by lower courts for being racially discriminatory. If you think that's confusing, imagine being one of many

Alabamians trying to figure out where and how to vote today. All of this is happening in the orange-tinted shadow of Donald Trump. It's clear that there really isn't anything Trump wouldn't contemplate if it meant he could hold on to power. Here's Trump speaking about the midterms to right-wing television host and conspiracy theorist Wayne Allen Root. You have the right to declare a national security emergency for elections. And the Supreme Court ruled in 1983 under Reagan, that INS versus Chata, that if you declare a national security emergency as the president of the United States, they can't challenge it. It can only be overturned by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress. So if you do this in the next month, we will get photo ID, proof of citizenship, and a limit

to mail-in ballots, and you don't need the center. Okay, I'll leave it at that. All right, we'll leave it at that. I want to be very clear. Doing this would be unconstitutional and would run into issues in courts across the country. Part of why Trump lost before the Supreme Court on tariffs was because he argued that he was doing so under a state of national emergency. The president does not run elections. He does, however, want us to be terrified to vote against him in his party. But I don't think it's working. To find out more, I spoke to Mitch Landrieu.

He's the former mayor of New Orleans and one of the hosts of Crooked Media's newest podcast, Long Play, which examines politics in the ever-changing South. Mitch Landrew, welcome to what a day. Hey, it's great to be with you. You are in the great state of Mississippi right now, but you've been traveling the South all summer for your new podcast, Long Play. Can you tell me about it? This little group that I'm working with has been traveling across the South. We've been to Georgia, been to North Carolina, just came back from where, from Tennessee, where Elvis filmed Pajama Game in Hernandez's Hideaway.

We were in Memphis and then we jumped down to South Carolina and then now we're in Mississippi. And the idea is to try to figure out how the South is trying to find itself again and how it's becoming the really kind of focal point of future elections, both on the United States. on the federal state and local level. For many years, you served as the lieutenant governor of Louisiana and the mayor of Norlands. And earlier this year, you saw your state's congressional map get struck down in a landmark case that basically gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and took protections away from underrepresented voters. What have you been hearing from voters across the south about redistricting? What we're finding is that not only communities of color, but people that really feel very strongly about having a fair and open.

and transparent electoral system are outraged by this. And there's a lot of energy on the ground in not only federal elections, but statewide elections and local elections as well, where Democrats have fallen very short in the last many years. So to that point about a lot of energy on the ground, there's a special election in Alabama today where voters in four of the state's seven districts will go back to the polls to vote in a map that the Supreme Court allowed the state to use back in June. But I was just reading about how there are reports that a lot of voters that are confused about where and how they're supposed to vote. Yeah.

That could impact turnout. What has it been like for everyday Americans just trying to figure out their polling place or what district they're in? Because you have people who are showing up to vote and being like, you can't vote here. Also, you already did vote, but now you have to go do it again. Look, let me just say this. For people that are not focused on politics every day, just run-of-the-mill regular folks who just want to go to work, you know, take care of their kids, make that paycheck every week,

they're just generally confused about where they're supposed to go vote. This is why reapportionment doesn't happen during the middle, or you don't do it right before elections because you effectively disenfranchised voters when you make it harder for them to go vote, whether it's historically a poll tax or whatever crazy idea they can come up with or just changing the districts in the last minute. We just came back from Memphis. I was at one of the churches there, and I was talking to the pastor who was telling me that he had two churches. Now they're in two separate congressional districts. And so people just

practically, you've seen this. If you're with your mom and dad, you go someplace and they change the polling place where they voted their entire life. Now they're confused. They don't recognize the people in the polling place. They don't know exactly what precinct to vote in when they crunch a bunch of precincts together. And the Republicans in the South have basically wasted no time. In Tennessee, as soon as that bill was passed, I think within three or four days, the governor got a call from the president. And he was like, yeah, I'm going to bring my legislature right into session. They brought the legislature into session. And within a good, I don't know, 15 to 30 days, they had now eviscerated the last African American voting possibility in the state.

They had already two years before taken away Nashville. And so that's just in Tennessee. Now, in Louisiana, after they went through the reapportionment, which they did very, very quickly, they were not able to do that. And so there's one congressional district left. But what you were going to see, there's no question about this, is that you are going to see the elimination of the opportunities for African Americans to actually ascend to state offices and federal offices unless and until this has changed. And the reason you know that is because after the Civil War, when reconstruction started, there were actually protections in place. And so what happens when you gave really qualified people a fair shot? They got elected and they happened to be African Americans and they were in Congress and they

were in the Senate until the deal was done and they came back in and they started to eviscerating the African-Americans' rights and took those rights away and then the number of elected officials went away until the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act will put in place to make sure that we gave everybody in the country an opportunity to be represented and to have the ideas and their thoughts and the great diversity of this nation reflected in the people who were elected. So we're in the middle of a very, very serious fight about what the idea is. of America is all about. And if you don't have access to the ballot and you don't have the ability to vote for people who are representative of the way you think or the way you act or the way you live or

the way you love, we're going to create a very segregated and bifurcated country where we have a minority of people representing a majority view. And that, in my opinion, will not stand for a long period of time. If you also absolutely do not want a segregated bifurcated America, stay tuned. We'll get back my conversation with Mitch Landrieu in a moment. In the meantime, make sure to subscribe. Leave a five-star review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. What a Day is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. 250 years into the American experiment, it's time for all of us to decide, what kind of a country do we want to be?

The Founding Fathers got a lot of things wrong, but one thing they got right was knowing that church and state need to be kept separate. Christian nationalists are trying to destroy that history and take this country down a scary path. They're misusing government power to impose their beliefs, rewrite our history, and decide who belongs in America. Americans United refuses to let that happen. Every single day, Americans United is fighting back and holding the line against Christian nationalism with everything they've got. A.U has sued the Trump administration seven times in the last year alone, and 12 times since the second administration began. They've challenged government officials who use taxpayer resources to promote their religious beliefs. They're exposing abuses of power,

defending public schools, and holding the government accountable when it violates the Constitution. But filing lawsuits, changing policy, and community advocacy don't happen on their own. They happen because people like you decide to be part of AU's fight. If you're looking for an empowered community to join, take a look at what's going on with AU. Visit AU.org slash crooked to learn more and join the fight today. Waterday is brought to you by Nutrafol. Summer is full of vacations, weekend getaways, and spending more time outdoors. And when you're packing for a trip, the last thing you want is to be worrying about your hair.

Nutrafol is the number one dermatologist-recommended hair-growth supplement brand, and it's the number one hair-growth supplement brand personally used by dermatologists. Nutrifol's hair-growth supplements are peer-reviewed, NSF certified for sport, and clinically tested. Let your hair be one last thing to worry about. See visibly thicker, stronger, faster-growing hair in three to six months with Nutraful. For a limited time, Nutraful is offering our listeners $10 off your first month. subscription and free shipping when you visit neuterfold.com and enter promo code day 10. That's neuterful.com spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L dot com promo code day 10.

Let's get back to my conversation with Mitch Landrew. South Carolina also has a special election today. People will vote on who will replace Lindsey Graham as a Republican Senate nominee, including his younger sister, Darlene, who's serving in his place. You and other folks were just in South Carolina. Yeah. How do Lindsay Graham's longtime supporters feel about Darlene Graham as a candidate? As you know, after Lindsey Graham's untimely death, the president appointed or got the governor to appoint, Governor McMaster,

Lindsay's sister, whose name is Darlene. And then she decided that she wanted to not only fulfill his term, which goes until January, but she wanted to run for his six-year term. And it was very interesting to those of us that are watching from outside of that Republican tent that a bunch of of folks in South Carolina said, Mr. President, we like you, but not so fast. And so there are a bucket load of well-known Republicans basically saying, hey, look, we loved Lindsay and we want to honor him and let Darlene serve, but not for the long term. And so I don't know what's going to happen there, but I was really surprised at how not totally supportive people were of her. Not that they

didn't dislike her. They actually kind of think that she's liberal because of what she's done in the past. And so they're a little bit wary of her. And they don't, I don't think they're going to let Trump tell them what to do. And when you say what she's done in the past, what, what are they saying? Because she was working with, like, folks with disabilities, right? That's exactly right. And so, I can't, no, I can't, look, I don't want to defend the Republican view of this. But I think their view is if this woman has a heart and if she's been helping people and she's been working with the government to give assistance to people who actually need help, they go like, oh, well, maybe she's not really one of us, which says a lot about them, right?

It makes you crazy in a sense, because, listen, for all I know, she could be a spectacular person. But if she's going to go vote the line with Trump and she's going to allow Trump to continue to abuse the American public to steal money, to actually abuse power so that America gets weaker, not stronger, you know what? We need to elect a Democrat in South Carolina to stop Donald Trump from basically continuing to destroy the country, which he's well on the process of doing. To that point, you know, Trump's numbers are in the trash can.

They're in the toilet. They're not in a trash can. They're in the toilet. Exactly. And you're seeing those drop in numbers happening in states like Mississippi and South Carolina. I think, you know, his approval rating in the state of Mississippi is the lowest it's ever been. And this is Mississippi we're talking about. So when you've had the chance to talk to people who voted for him in 2024, what are they saying about him now?

There is a very, very, very strong yearning in the. very soul of America to find a new way forward, that I would maybe summarize like common sense, common ground, but definite red lines around the crazy shit coming from the left and the right. But people don't know exactly how to get there. Now, the way that kind of shows up on the, let's say, the right side of the 50-yard line between the 30% of the people that love Donald Trump, no matter what, and the 20 other percent that kind of voted for him because they thought, he was going to protect their interests, that group of people, where independents sit and Republicans, this is kind of what they're saying. They're like, man, I don't understand. I thought this guy was for me.

He told me that he was going to stay out of wars and make sure we didn't spend that money overseas that we spent it here, making my neighborhood safer and better. He told me that he was going to make my costs go down. And essentially, he spent 18 months putting money in his pocket, helping his friends, punish his enemies, and making my life freaking miserable. when he passed the bill to give the one percenters a big tax break, and then he screwed me and my family by cutting Medicaid so that the rural hospital where my daddy was supposed to go when he had a stroke did not exist,

and now I'm pissed, or that I had a special needs kid. Or I might have been born at night, but I wasn't born last night. These tariffs are killing my pocketbook, and they're essentially saying they're pissed and they feel betrayed. And they are open to a new way and new people because they're not married to Trump. they want the world to work for them. And the Democrats, therefore, are people who are running on the Democratic side, have an opportunity to capture that group of people.

So long play is all about how politics in the South are changing. And I think politics in the South have been changing for a very long time. That's correct. Georgia is basically a purple state now. You have increasingly large cities across the South. There's population growth. We've got redrawn congressional maps. but just like what it means to be southern has changed a lot since, you know, the solid south of the 60s or 70s.

So as someone who has not just been a Southerner, but you've been a representative of a southern city and of a southern state, what have you learned about southern politics in 2026 as you've been visiting and talking to voters? Well, the important thing for people across America who have evidently looked down on this out, there's not only one way to be Southern. There's a lot of ways to be southern. And like every region of the country, it's a very complicated place. In Georgia and North Carolina, you hear those folks saying all the time, my God, masses of people are moving here. And it's changing the dynamic, not just because of the new people changing it, but because of them being changed when they get there.

So culture, food, music, entertainment, the way people commune, it's creating new possibilities. And you see this our sense very clearly that America is struggling to find herself. And she's unsure and she's uncertain. They know that where we are now is really bad. They are trying to figure out how we got here. We're trying to get out of a zero-sum game. And we're trying to think about maybe even a new dynamic way of moving forward as opposed to continuing to have this fight.

So the big point of long play, the reason why the show is called long play is because we go back. far and we want to look ahead for. We're not just operating in the moment. And so we're trying to be very thoughtful about what it is that we're seeing, what it is that we're hearing. And I'm here to tell you, I think we can win again in Georgia. I think we'll win that race. I think Roy Cooper is going to win in North Carolina. I was with Tala Rico on the border in Laredo, and I watched him talk in front of a group of 300 people. And shortly thereafter, talked to two Hispanic men who were born in America, that had voted for Trump three times,

that said, I'll never vote for him again because he's betrayed us. There is a thing happening here that we have to pay attention to. And if Democrats, who want to win, understand that you have to do what it takes to win, which is to be smart, not just ideologically bent. You have to have common sense.

People have to know where you're gone. They have to know that you're for them. You're not for something that doesn't matter to them. If you figure that out and you get good candidates that are smart and strong and tough and thoughtful, there's a really good chance. that we could actually, you know, win back the House and the Senate. But then when we do that, we have to govern in a way that improves people's lives.

Or we will get thrown out, too. And I think we're in the midst of a huge jump ball right now. And it's ours to win if we want it. Mitch, thank you so much for joining me. It's great to be with you. Thanks for having me. That was my conversation with Mitch Landrieu. Former mayor of New Orleans and co-host of Crooked Media's newest podcast, Longplay.

Before we go, in less than 100 days, voters will have the chance to stop Trump's agenda dead in its tracks. Votes of America is on a mission to take back the House of Representatives, starting with the 12 most beatable Republicans up for re-election who are called the Crooked Dozen. Votesave America is your guide to practical, no-b-S actions you can take to help kick out the crooked dozen and win other key races as fault. Head over to Votesaveamerica.com and learn how to get involved right now until Election Day.

It only takes a moment to sign up at Votesiveamerica.com. This message has been paid for by Votes of America. Votes of America.com. It is not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review. Read about how a cyclist bore outbreak isn't the only problem facing a massive produce business. And tell your friends to listen.

And if you are into reading, and not just about how a former Taylor Farms executive admitted to stealing $32 million from the company over roughly a decade in a new lawsuit, like me, Whataday is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Jane Koston, and the executive admitted to spending the money on, quote, gambling and women. But he also paid off a personal driver, a personal trainer, and a personal aquarium maintenance attendant. Because you have got to have a personal aquarium maintenance attendant. What Today is a production of Cricket Media. Our show is produced by Caitlin Plummer, Emily 4, Erica Morrison, and Adrian Hill.

Our team includes Haley Jones. Jones, Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Joseph Dutra, Johanna Case, and Desmond Taylor. Our music is by Kyle Murdoch and Jordan Cantor. We had helped today from the Associated Press. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. The What a Day podcast you know and love is shaking things up. You already know that five days a week, I, Jane Koston, bring you the need-to-know news and expert analysis on the big stories shaping today and tomorrow.

Stories like how social media warps our perception of the world and the strange reality of who is signing up to work for ICE. all in less time than it takes to roast a chicken. And now, What Today episodes will be hitting your YouTube and podcast feeds in the afternoons. You'll get the breaking news even faster. Check out Whataday, now dropping in the PM on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.