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Voters Head to Polls in Massachusetts Primary Election Tomorrow; Data Center Build-Up Key Issue for Midterm Voters; Passenger Jets' Low Flyby at South Africa Stadium Sparks Concerns; NASA's Telescope Could Unravel Mysteries of the Invisible Universe. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired August 31, 2026 - 15:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[15:30:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: The generational divide that appears to be defining this season's midterm elections has come to the state of Massachusetts. Voters head to the polls tomorrow in the state's primary election. 39-year-old Patrick Roath is vying to unseat longtime Democratic Congressman Stephen Lynch in the state's sprawling 8th congressional district.

Lynch, who is 71, has represented the 8th district in Congress for the last 25 years. Patrick Roth is with us now. Patrick, thank you so much for being with us.

If you do win this seat, what do you plan to do on day one to counter the Trump administration that you don't think Democrats are doing right now?

PATRICK ROATH, (D) MASSACHUSETTS CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: Well, thanks so much for having me. We have our big day tomorrow. So we are absolutely thrilled up here, ready to win this thing.

And there's a real contrast in the race. Day one is the right way to be thinking about this, right? I ran for the seat because I wanted to see a Democratic Party that wasn't just saying, no, we don't like Trump, but that we are for something, right?

[15:35:00]

That we are actually prepared to fight for something and stand up and get something done. That is recapturing the American dream for people, rebuilding confidence that our government can deliver for that. That same American dream my parents lived, that a lot of people have up here in Boston.

So look, for me, that means housing costs are number one, and childcare costs are number two, right? I'm a new dad. The costs up here are crazy. It's pushing people out.

And there is so much more we can get done to actually increase the supply, push towards universal provisions of those goods, drive down the costs. We can do that if we actually have people who are ready to fight and we can fix our broken politics. KEILAR: A big part of the contrast that you draw with Congressman Lynch is how long he's been in Congress, well over two decades. You support term limits. What is the max number of years you think a person should be allowed to serve in the House or the Senate?

ROATH: Yes, well, look, you know, it took me a while to get to term limits. It's not in our Constitution. And I understand they're up every two years.

Why not just have that be the check? But when you do what I'm doing, and you take on an entrenched status quo incumbent who has been there for 25 years, hasn't had a town hall in person since 2019, right? You see how protected from accountability members of Congress are by corporate PAC money in particular, right, which we're not taking, by the entire system.

And so I've been asking everybody actually along the way what they think is the right amount of time. You know, I've landed on six terms in the House. That's the length of two Senate terms.

That's enough time to get your feet under you, get some things done in Washington, and then go home and hand it off to the next generation, right? Invite more people into our process. That is what keeps our democracy healthy, our Democratic Party healthy, and we need more of that.

KEILAR: So have you thought about the potential side effects of term limits? Like, I mean, when I think about it, I think of, say, like a Nancy Pelosi, who was kind of singularly crucial to the passage of Obamacare, which you very much support and want to build on. And she was in the House for well over what you've settled on there, that 12 years.

She was in for almost 20 years before she became Speaker. Does that kind of landmark legislation get through when people leave Congress after 12 years?

ROATH: Look, I'll tell you, I'm not saying that there wouldn't be costs, right? There's always costs and benefits. I'm just saying I'm fed up, right?

Like we have seen generations of members of Congress go down there and claim that they're going to solve problems for us and then just not achieve that. And getting that done and being responsive to what people need and responsive to the existential emergency that exists with having a MAGA extremist in the White House right now.

KEILAR: But do you think that the ACA would exist if there were term limits as you delineate them?

ROATH: Oh, quite frankly, yes. I think we probably would have gotten there faster, right? The things that were holding back progress on ambitious health care reform are not the tenure of members of Congress.

It is institutional impediments to trying to work for things that are actually going to improve the lot of ordinary people in this country. And in some ways, you know, getting some fresh thinking in there from time to time would have pushed that along faster, in my view.

KEILAR: I do want to ask you about who you're supporting in the Democratic primary for the Senate race in your state. Incumbent Ed Markey or his challenger, Congressman Seth Moulton?

ROATH: Yes, you know, look, I'm new to this. My first time running, I've learned a few things and one of them is to try to run your own race and not get too involved in other races when they're on the ballot at the same time, especially in a primary. So I'm staying out of it.

Look, I think there's great choices on the ballots tomorrow. I'm really excited to see who wins that race. You know, look, in my race is different in a lot of ways, right?

There's a really clear contrast. It is not just about the age of a candidate as it is more in the Senate race. You know, I'm running against someone who voted against the Affordable Care Act, the last one left in DC, the last Democrat left, the only member of our Massachusetts delegation who joined the Republicans on the Lake and Riley Act, someone who's taken millions of dollars in corporate PACs checks.

So that is the contrast in our race, much more than some generational divide.

KEILAR: Lynch did vote against the final bill on the ACA with opposition from the left. He voted on the initial more liberal bill that came out of the House. He voted against the final bill, true.

He was one of, I think, a couple dozen who did, with his opposition actually to the left of the bill. Does that give you pause?

ROATH: I don't think that's quite right, actually. He said a few things over the years. Most recently, you can just look at some of the things he said in forums up here, a candidate forum that we had.

His objection seems to have been that it was imposing a tax on certain unique health care plans.

KEILAR: No, I'm talking about what he said in 2010. I went back to 2010 when the bill passed and looked at what he said about why he voted against it, because I agree with you, it would probably be better to look at his opposition then compared to now, so many years later. And he talked about antitrust concerns, and he talked about the issues of it not tackling really the cost of putting a bunch of people into a system that didn't really tackle the cost.

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Which, I mean, I was a congressional correspondent during the inception and the entire passage of Obamacare, and I can tell you, that was a goal that they had at the beginning that ultimately did kind of need to be abandoned for them to get through what they could get through by the end. That was sort of the bargain in the end that Democrats made, and a lot of them weren't thrilled about it, but they went along with it. So his opposition, I mean, it does seem to -- it was reported at the time he was to the left, his opposition was to the left.

Does that give you pause?

ROATH: Well, I think what you've just, first of all, I'll let him explain it. I'm not going to put words in his mouth, right? I think what you've just articulated is not necessarily something that's fairly characterized as opposition to the left.

For example, Senator Bernie Sanders voted for that bill, right? Some of the most clear champion of Medicare for All. We were prepared to make incremental progress toward the goal of universal health care.

That is what we have been trying to do, and finally, we have an opportunity to do that soon, God willing, right? And we need a champion who is actually going to get with the program and is going to join us and fight for that and not be an impediment standing in the way of it.

KEILAR: I want to ask you about AI data centers because they become an issue in your race. They become an issue in so many races. How do you use AI in your personal and professional life?

ROATH: Oh, look, you know, I actually, personally, it's a very useful tool, of course, you know, like I'm on cloud all the time, and if you're not, you're probably losing some productivity. You're very useful. But that does not mean that we need to be living in a world where these things are allowed to go gangbusters.

If we don't put appropriate guardrails on this technology, I mean, first of all, it's going to be dangerous for kids to use, right? I mean, we can't do what we did with social media and leave it totally unregulated. First of all, there's that.

And second of all, the bigger picture problem here is what's going to happen to our workforce. We need to be taking the dividend that these hyperscale AI companies are generating and put that back into programs that are actually going to put people to work and make sure that working people are supported during this transition time, which is going to be pretty bumpy, right? So that's what I'm focused on.

That has to be a top priority for us because it's changing fast.

KEILAR: How do you balance that, I wonder, because they're using it, which so many people -- they use it, people use it and I think they'll just keep using it. Once they are using it, they get a lot of productivity out of it, but there's so much opposition to data centers. Like in Lowell Mass, they've implemented this one-year moratorium on building new data centers.

You're seeing people capping power usage, which essentially bans them from their communities, and we've run stories on them. I mean, if you talk to people and you hear the sounds they make, it's very difficult to live with that.

ROATH: Yes.

KEILAR: But how do you balance the fact that, you know, everyone's on this stuff all the time, and yet they don't want it in their backyard?

ROATH: Well, first of all, Lowell's not in our district. It's a little bit outside --

KEILAR: Oh, no, I understand.

ROATH: -- so to my knowledge, you don't have any problems around here.

KEILAR: I understand, but I'm using it just as an example of what someone in Massachusetts is doing.

ROATH: Yes, yes, yes, totally, got you. Look, I mean, this is nothing new, right? We have power plants that create problems for the environment, and yet we're all here using electricity.

What we need to do is regulate it appropriately, right? And arguably, we didn't always do that the right way with power plants. So we need to treat it that way.

We need federal law that governs the siting and the placement of these data centers, right? And when we do that, what we can't have is data centers plopping down in a community, consuming resources, destroying the natural environment without any consideration for the communities that they've come into. So there's a, you know, a natural give-and- take that'll have to happen there.

The problem is, as you know, is that it's just all moving so fast, right? And these companies are moving so quickly, the technology is advancing. We do need to make sure that we roll out the appropriate set of federal national standards that governs how those are going to get cited in our communities, and controls for particularly the energy costs.

KEILAR: Patrick Roath, thank you so much. Huge day tomorrow. We'll be watching and we appreciate you spending some time with us.

ROATH: Huge day. Thank you so much. PatrickRoath.com, if folks want to join in and learn more, we're really looking forward to it. And thanks for having me.

KEILAR: Thanks for being with us.

Still ahead, it gained widespread attention, but was it the right kind of attention? Two passenger jets flying just about 50 feet over a stadium filled with tens of thousands of people. We'll talk about that next.

[15:45:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: A pregame flight stunt at a rugby game in South Africa is now sparking criticism. Two passenger jets flew incredibly close to the stadium packed with tens of thousands of screaming fans.

KEILAR: Oh my gosh. I'm -- oh my gosh. I'm supposed to read the script.

Some say, ah, I'm getting nervous here. Some say that flyby was too close. They're raising questions about the safety of the stunt.

I'm raising, I'm raising, especially that one plane. CNN aviation correspondent Pete Muntean is here. Pete, I want to ask you how dangerous that was, but I also want to say it looks pretty dangerous to me.

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: You know, it almost doesn't look real, right? You kind of have to check yourself in an age of AI.

KEILAR: We didn't have that view in the tees. So that was the first one I was seeing. Wow.

MUNTEAN: Extraordinarily close. And here is the problem. When you're that close to the top of a stadium like this, the margin for error is only feet.

These are two Embraer regional jets from South African Airline Airlink doing this low flyby over DHL Stadium in Cape Town, 56,000 fans in there for a huge rugby match there. And the flight tracking data shows just how close. It seemed like --

(CROSSTALK)

MUNTEAN: -- did you see the airplane go through the smoke of the pyrotechnics there?

SANCHEZ: Yes, right?

[15:50:00]

MUNTEAN: OK, so the data says that the jets were at about 210 feet above the ground when you sort of corrected for the air pressure and a few other things that you have to do to figure out jet's exact altitude. The stadium's 164 feet high. So check my math here out there, NEWS CENTRAL viewers, 46 feet.

KEILAR: That's right.

MUNTEAN: Between the -- thank you. That was good in real time. They say never do math on live TV.

46 feet from the top of the stadium to the bottom of the plane. That assumes no error in the instrumentation here. This flight of two jets.

KEILAR: I'm calling some you-know-what on that 46 feet of that one on the other side. MUNTEAN: Yes, it looks pretty low.

KEILAR: 4.6, 4.6.

MUNTEAN: So Airlink insists that this was well rehearsed, not an accident, carefully planned, approved by South Africa's Civil Aviation Authority. But I spoke to NTSB Managing Director -- former Managing Director, Peter Gulls.

He says this really kind of seeds the authority of the Civil Aviation Authority there. If they said this was OK to do because their job, their primary imprimatur is safety. So the airline has done this before.

They did a similar formation pass over a stadium in Johannesburg only a few weeks ago, earlier in August. There's also kind of this long history of low flybys involving commercial jets in South Africa. There was a 747 that flew over a game in 1995.

That was depicted in the film Invictus. An Emirates A380 flew over Ellis Park, another big stadium back in 2024, but that was 500 feet above the ground. So we're talking a few hundred feet higher than what we're seeing here.

It feels like, to me, it's been the summer of flybys. We saw those low Apache helicopter flybys over the beach in South Carolina on July 4th. There was a really low flyover of a Blue Angel jet at the Pensacola Beach Air Show back in July, right over the crowd.

It kicked some tents up. It had military leaders sort of scrambling to defend that move. And then there was this Boeing 777 that flew low over Horseshoe Bay in Texas, an airport there.

That plane was going to be delivered to a new customer that triggered this big federal investigation. So some really big questions here about these flyovers. They're spectacular, but --

KEILAR: He pulls up a little bit though. Do you see that? I mean, he or she, whoever is flying, pulls up that, the lower plane.

Am I wrong on that? It's kind of pulls up just a little bit.

MUNTEAN: Do you think 46 feet?

KEILAR: No way!

MUNTEAN: I think it looks pretty cool though. Doesn't it to you?

KEILAR: Wait, OK.

MUNTEAN: I mean, you know, it's all well and good until something goes wrong.

KEILAR: I'd need to measure it. I don't want to commit to an answer, but that seems mighty low.

MUNTEAN: Do I seem like a nag? Do I seem like I'm like anti-fun?

SANCHEZ: Security concerns are --

(CROSSTALK)

KEILAR: You know, I feel like you found my phobia.

SANCHEZ: But it is pretty cool, you've got to admit.

MUNTEAN: I've been flying airplanes essentially my entire adult life. And you know, everyone sort of gets a wild hair and when you have a big -- no really -- and you have a big crowd, and you have to sort of tamp it down and that's why these rules exist.

The ground is the final authority though. You can only tie the low to altitude record once.

KEILAR: Or the top of a stadium could be the final authority.

MUNTEAN: So, you know, I think when there's so many people involved, you have to think about their agency in all of this. It's not just you as a pilot. It's also so many people there who may not know what kind of risk they're in and that's the thing I think authorities should look at here.

We'll see sort of as this develops. It seems that the South Africa Civil Aviation Authority is kind of defending this in a way.

KEILAR: All right. We'll get our measuring tape out. Pete Muntean, thank you.

We do have some breaking news. Jurors in the Lindsay Clancy triple murder trial have just asked the judge to go home for the evening. We're following the latest out of court and we'll be right back.

[15:55:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: Scientists are now one step closer to getting an incredible and unique look at our universe. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope was launched into orbit yesterday. Scientists are hoping that they'll use it to seek out what they call the weird, the rare and the unusual.

KEILAR: When NASA officials said to put it in perspective, it will be as if Hubble and James Webb kind of peered through a keyhole at the universe. Well, Nancy Grace Roman will kick the door down. CNN's Tom Foreman is here with more on this telescope.

All right, that sounds cool. What does that mean?

TOM FORMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: What it means is when you use the Hubble, which is about 300 miles from Earth, and you compare it to this one, which at this moment is traveling for about three months to be a million miles away. So going about 460 miles an hour to get out there. This one, Hubble opens up its little lens and looks out there and it sees an amount of space.

This one will see 100 times as much every time it's looking around, and it will process the information 1,000 times faster. So what it would take in terms of what Hubble could photograph in the sky, infrared imaging up there, what it could take in a month -- what this can take in a month, it would take Hubble like a century to do.

KEILAR: Oh my gosh.

FORMAN: So it's going to be a big wide open aperture that allows mapping of the universe to look into things that we've had a lot of questions about. Like dark matter and dark energy. Dark matter, the things that are sort of between planets and stars that we don't really understand.

Dark energy, which sort of drives the expansion of the universe. Exoplanets, planets outside of our own solar system. By the way, the dark energy, dark matter, it's not because it's dark.

It's because we don't understand it. We're calling it dark because we don't understand it. But this is a huge accomplishment.

It's only about the size of Hubble. But once it gets out there circling at a million miles out, it should open up all sorts of areas of information. With that information flowing back at an extraordinary terabyte of information every day.

And that's going to be available to researchers all over the planet. It's great. And great part about this, Nancy Grace Roman, Dr. Nancy Grace Roman. She was born in the 1920s. She was a young woman who wanted to go into science when women were not encouraged to go into science.

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She said she had to talk her way past all the secretaries at NASA because they assumed she was another secretary.

She just died a few years ago. But she's the reason Hubble's in space. And now they've named this one after her.

So a great testament to the women of NASA and of science.

SANCHEZ: A great testament, indeed. We'll see what she finds out there. Tom Forman, thank you so much.

And thank you so much for joining us this afternoon. "THE ARENA" with Kasie Hunt starts right now.

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