A new speaker of the House, finally

Make Me Smart October 25, 2023 Transcript

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Kai Ryssdal

Alright, let’s go. Are you ready?

Kimberly Adams

Yeah I’m ready.

Kai Ryssdal

Alright Iet’s go.

Kimberly Adams 

All right Hello, everyone. I’m Kimberly Adams, welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today make sense.

Kai Ryssdal 

I’m Kai Ryssdal, thanks for being here on this Wednesday, it is October the 25th.

Kimberly Adams 

Yes it is. And today we are just going to do some news and a smile maybe two who knows if I can get Kai to smile with my smile that I will submit. We will have a great day and move on and let’s let’s get into it because I mean, oh my gosh, they got it done.

Kai Ryssdal

They got it done.

Kimberly Adams

Republicans getting it done after weeks and ridiculousness. Okay, so as just about everybody has, probably everybody who hasn’t blissfully shut themselves out from the world of chaos that is Washington DC. There is a new house speaker we have Mike John Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, who was able to win the vote, it seems mainly because most people don’t know that much about him. I guess the anonymity has its has its benefits now. I’m I’m joking because he was fully elected in Florida to represent a district. So obviously he is known to some people.

Kai Ryssdal 

Louisiana, Louisiana, Louisiana, Louisiana.

Kimberly Adams 

Oh yes, sorry, Louisiana. I said that earlier now going back to Florida, because it’s always Florida. Anyway, Mike Johnson. The Hill, there’s been a lot written about it, written about him. The Hill has a piece, “Five things to know about the speaker Mike Johnson,” I’m just gonna read the five things. He has opposed Ukraine aid, he pushed to overturn the 2020 election results, he is an ally of Trump, he voted against the recent bill to keep the government open, and he has a good relationship with conservatives. Take from that what you will in terms of what that means for our time ahead, because some things need doing with a quickness that is funding the government. Because that funding runs out in mid-November. We need the FAA reauthorization bill. There’s funding for Ukraine and Israel, that the White House and a lot of the Senate wants to push through. And, you know, farm bill, other large pieces, yes, far, large pieces of legislation that need the attention of our nation’s leaders. So you know what, I’m going to be optimistic that this is going to work, although I’m seeing headlines like the one in Politico, the terrifying learning curve facing Mike Johnson. And there’s a lot ahead for this dude as he tries to wrangle the Republicans in the House, which will be interesting. One thing that was of the coverage I’ve been looking at today that I thought was really cool. Axios made a chart of the house 10 years of various house speakers in the past as and how long they served in the house before they became speaker. And Mike Johnson has the second shortest tenure at just 6.81 years, only to be beat by John G. Carlisle, first elected in December 3, 1883. So history is cool.

Kai Ryssdal

Right, history is cool. Oh, I see. And that well, never mind, I’ll talk about when we get there. So a couple of things about speaker Johnson. Number one, he is far right. He’s as far right as Jim Jordan is, right. He is anti-LGBT, LGBTQ. He is opposed to reproductive rights. He is far far right. And people need to not lose track of that in the general relief over having a speaker and having the house be able to function. Right. So that’s item number one. Item number two is I do kind of wonder, given how far right he is and the fact that he participated in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which Joe Biden won fair and square. I wonder what happened to the moderates who for the past 18 days have said about Jim Jordan, and about others, look, that’s ridiculous. You can’t be opposed to the free and fair elections and be second in line for the presidency. And I wonder what happened to moderates other than just fatigue? And if oh, by the way, you got tired, that’s no excuse.

Kimberly Adams 

I was thinking about that this morning as well, because I actually thought, and I know you’re going to blame me for my optimism and lack of cynicism and naivete again, but I thought because of that exact reason that this was just going to be another vote that didn’t go anywhere. Because how different was Mike Johnson from Jim Jordan, right? Other than just being unknown.

Kai Ryssdal

He’s less pugnacious, but he’s the same guy, right.

Kimberly Adams 

And I was just like, okay, so I really didn’t pay that much attention to it today, and I didn’t even watch the vote because I was working on stories and other things. And you know, I had a bunch of other stuff to do today and I was just like, well, you know, surely it’s not gonna really do much and this morning I started seeing some whisperings that like, no, this was actually gonna get over the finish line. And I was like, really? It’s concerning that someone who does not seem to be on board with the free and fair transfer of power is where he’s sitting in the transfer of power.

Kai Ryssdal

I think you’re underselling it. If you say it’s concerning, I think it’s outrageous. And it’s offense against it’s an offense against the republic truly, it’s outrageous. Whatever, whatever. Okay, so a little bit of dysfunction on the other side of the Capitol rotunda, which may be closer to resolving. There is a movement afoot in the Senate of the United States, to get around the blockade of the senior senator from Alabama, Tommy Tuberville that we’ve talked about many times on this podcast on military promotions. The catch is they’re going to do it with a change to the rules for this session only. And it will require 60 votes to get most of these 300 admirals and generals through. And that means that the 51, Democrats would need five or sorry, nine Republicans. And it may or may not happen, but I take it as a sign of progress, that they’re even talking about it. And I think that’s a good thing. And I just wanted to note that in the record.

Kimberly Adams 

Because we’re getting closer to an election and nobody wants to campaign ads against him to be they voted against our troops, or they didn’t do anything to protect our troops and, you know.

Kai Ryssdal

I totally buy that.

Kimberly Adams

And that was actually another thing. I was thinking about the House Speaker race because I was listening to on our beloved NPR, this morning about what it was going to mean for fundraising, and also what it was going to mean for the 2024 election that it took them this long to get a speaker because Mike Johnson is not the fundraiser that McCarthy was but apparently one of McCarthy’s main fundraisers has Jeff Miller, who is an adviser to McCarthy. And we have a Politico article about this, that he’s going to go over and help Mike Johnson as well. But the person who they had on NPR this morning, who was Republican was basically like, yeah, people are gonna forget about this by election day. And not hold it against them.

Kai Ryssdal

Right, that was my take away, the election is in 14 months. Right. Yes, yes, exactly.

Kimberly Adams

And so the whole, one of one of the whole things that was keeping Democrats smug during this whole chaotic process was that, you know, this was testament and the evidence that they could use to say Republicans do not know how to govern, that argument goes away if people have stopped thinking about it, or just forget, or it doesn’t seem, you know, a big deal in a year and a half a year in two months from now. And I think the short attention span of our wonderful America is something worth keeping in mind. And will the Republicans actually be penalized for this? And I think when you were talking about the moderates getting tired, not only were they getting threatened, often violently, deluged with phone calls, and, you know, just ripped out over on Fox News and everything else. What what was their benefit for continuing to hold out? You know, and what penalty is there for the folks who just went along with it? Nothing?

Kai Ryssdal 

Yep. Yep. Yep. Totally fair. Totally fair. All right. Let’s move on. Shall we? Yeah. All right. What do you got?

Kimberly Adams 

I don’t know what wonders of the universe coordinated for me this morning. But this was literally the first news story that I saw this morning when I got up and I don’t know how it happened. And I’m grateful because it did make make me smile. It’s in The Washington Post. There is a Virginia teen who has been named the top young scientist in the annual competition held by 3M. It’s the 3M Young Scientist challenge, and he has developed a cancer fighting soap. So I know right. So okay, it took months of trial and error to create a prototype with a combination of compounds that can work effectively. Sorry, the young man’s name is Heman Bekele, who’s got same last name as an editor who used to be at Marketplace anyway. But this soap ideally could help fight skin cancer at a cost a cost of less than $10 per bar. It would be made with compounds that could reactivate the cells that guard human skin enabling to fight cancer skin sale cancer cells. Yeah, And I’m just going to read here from The Washington Post, “Heman’s idea for the competition came from the early years of his life in Ethiopia. ‘There I always saw people who were constantly working under the hot sun,’ Heman said. He moved to the United States at age four and never really thought more about it. But as he started considering ideas for the competition, he harked back to his time in Ethiopia, and wondered how many of the people he’d seen working in the sun were at risk of sun exposure. And that fueled his decision to focus his research on skin cancer.” And he submitted a pitch video and he has a mentor, and the soap is called skin cancer treating soap. It works by using a compound that helps revive dendritic cells, which are killed by cancer cells. And once dendritic cells are revived, they are then able to fight against the cancer cells. And it reactivates the body’s healing power.

Kai Ryssdal

Wow. Yeah. Wow.

Kimberly Adams 

That’s very cool. Yeah. I think it’s super cool. It was uplifting. Go kids. Do better than us.

Kai Ryssdal 

We will go out on that one. We will totally go out on that one. Wonderful. One good smile will do the trick. Perfect. All right.

Kimberly Adams 

Indeed, sometimes, that’s all you need. And that is it for us today. We’re gonna be back tomorrow. So let it end. We’re gonna have our little audio clip show tomorrow. So let us know if there’s a story that you heard this week that has some audio that jumps out at you. I guess I have to go back and listen to the floor speeches from today to see what exactly went down. And if there was some audio that caught your attention, we may include it in our Thursday show. Where at makemesmart@marketplace.org. You can also call us and leave us some audio yourself at 508-U-B-SMART.

Kai Ryssdal

Spoiler alert, by the way, it was Elise Stefanik and Pete Aguilar there and it was the same you know, same basic speech. Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. Today’s program is engineered by Jayk Cherry. That scratching you hear at the door is Willow wants to come in but we’re almost done so I’m not going to do it. Our interns Niloufar Shahbandi.

Kimberly Adams 

Ben Tolliday and Daniel Ramirez wrote our theme music. Our senior producer is Marissa Cabrera. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts and Francesca levy is the executive director of Digital. Give Willow a scratch for me.

Kai Ryssdal 

I will, she gets so much love that freaking dog. You kidding me?