Impeachment Inquiry and Immigration

TOPICS DISCUSSED

  • Impeachment Inquiry  

  • Immigration 

  • Outside of Politics: Mammograms

  • Outside of Politics: Online Shopping

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EPISODE RESOURCES

IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY

IMMIGRATION

TRANSCRIPT

Sarah [00:00:09] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.  

Beth [00:00:10] And this is Beth Silvers. Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.  

[00:00:14] Music Interlude.  

[00:00:34] Thank you for joining us at Pantsuit Politics, where we take a different approach to the news. We are working on our speaking schedule for 2024. Look, we know and understand there is a lot of fatigue about the upcoming 2024 elections right now, but they are coming whether we want them to or not. And here's what I want you to know. Sarah and I are very helpful in organizations where elections surface questions and tension. We are good at talking to college students about how the process works and how to be informed voters. We are good at helping organizations that worry that elections are going to be divisive or just distracting. We show up where you are with your goals in mind. We talk in very concrete and specific ways about moving forward. So this is the moment to get us on your schedule. Reach out to Alise at Hello@pantsuitpoliticsshow.com  

Sarah [00:01:22] And now we know that hearing from us about this is one thing, and that's a different thing to hear from college students. So here's Lindsey from Abilene Christian University about our second visit to their campus last year.  

Lindsey [00:01:32] At the beginning of my term as Student Body President here at Abilene Christian University, I had a desire to bring a keynote speaker to campus that could talk about political issues in a nonpartisan way. When I stumbled across the podcast Pantsuit Politics, I was blown away by the ability that Sarah and Beth had to have conversations about things that they may disagree with. But instead of an agenda, their ultimate goal was to love, to empathize and to understand the other. While they were here, they exceeded my expectations to address hot topics and even give a framework for how to encourage dialog among people who may think differently. Since then, multiple organizations on campus have host of events that encourage discussion on differing viewpoints, and I think a lot of that has come from Sarah and Beth's visit, and I hope it continues. I'm so grateful that they were willing to work with us and I hope that ASU can bring them back again in the future.  

Beth [00:02:28] Thank you, Lindsey. Today, we are talking about how governing is about priorities. This comes up in two specific ways. We're going to talk about House Republicans efforts to impeach President Biden and about the political strain in responding to immigration to the United States through Mexico. And we always end our show talking about what we're thinking about Outside of Politics, right now that is mammograms and online shopping, which we did find some connective thread between I promise.  

Sarah [00:02:54] Next up, Kevin McCarthy says the House will open an impeachment inquiry. We have some thoughts on that.  

[00:02:59] Music Interlude  

Beth [00:03:18] Congress has a lot going on right now. We want to savor September. Congress really cannot do that. They have very few legislative days to figure out how to fund the government, to pass a new farm bill, to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration. They need to get some money to the Maui fires, to hurricane relief, to Ukraine. It's a big agenda. And in the midst of all of this, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy announced this week that the House is adding to its to do list an impeachment inquiry into President Biden.  

Sarah [00:03:55] I had plans for things to say about this, and they weren't kind. The title of the news brief that I reported on this development was dipshits, okay? But then on top of that, I read the piece about Mitt Romney in the Atlantic where he spills the tea, as they say, and confirmed all my worst instincts about both many members of the Republican Party, and particularly the Republican leadership. And now I'm struggling to just not let the Bs come out of my mouth because I'm so angry. And based on the cynicism that Mitt Romney reports is present in both the Senate and the House among the Republican Party, particularly when it comes to Donald Trump, it's hard not to just see this as a complete and total cynical political play. Which is bad enough, especially in that list of very important things I need to do.  

Beth [00:05:02] I'm having a hard time because my tendency has been to consistently underestimate Kevin McCarthy's ability to get things done and to deal with this very fragmented, unruly caucus that he manages. And he usually comes out better than I predict he's going to. So I'm trying to hold that in my mind as I take in the reporting that it's pretty clear he announced this impeachment inquiry to appease a part of his caucus in order to avert a government shutdown. Because you have these hardliners, Freedom Caucus types who don't want to spend any money. They want to radically reshape the federal budget and the programs that budget supports. Those folks are not appeased by this. They, in fact, have gone to everyone with a microphone since he announced this to say not good enough, a distraction. We feel condescended to by this. We feel the vibe of I'm giving you something. Now get on board to vote for some kind of continuing resolution so we don't shut down the government. They are itching to shut down the government. That's what they want to do. They see this as their shot to shoot and they want to take it. So I'm just trying to remember that maybe Kevin McCarthy knows these people better than I do. He has demonstrated that over and over, and I don't know everything, but it is hard to see how this benefits him or anyone else on any timetable.  

Sarah [00:06:39] When I was reading reporting on the shutdown, and there was some Republican member of Congress, probably from that far right faction that said, "I bet nobody would notice if the government was shut down." And I thought, really? And maybe that was because I read that reporting on the same day I read reporting from Haiti, which truly has no government right now. But I thought, what's wrong with you? This is serious. This is people's livelihoods. This is the functioning of our federal government in a very precarious time, economically, politically, civilly. I agree with you. I have underestimated Kevin McCarthy. But Kevin McCarthy's whatever proficiency he has is built on such a foundation of cynicism and willing to do whatever it takes to stay alive. That is not an example of ethical or moral leadership. He might live to fight another day, but he's not really doing his job, he's just keeping it. The Senate's done the work as far as the appropriations and keeping the government open. I don't remember what Senator I read that was like, we did it. We're better at this. Why don't they just stamp it? Just approve it. Move on.  

Beth [00:07:59] And they have done it on a very bipartisan basis. Senators-- I think it's Murray and Moore, both women-- worked really hard to get those appropriation bills. Just turning in the normal order.  

Sarah [00:08:12] Yes.  

Beth [00:08:12] Not [inaudible] the, normal order. Exactly the way we want this to function, the Senate has been on it.  

Sarah [00:08:18] Yeah. When I read that, I thought, accurate. Even though, again, this Mitt Romney article, not a great reporting back from the United States Senate either. But when you're comparing them to the House, they smell like roses. And so I don't know. It's so frustrating. I think we're going to get both. I think we're going to get a government shutdown and an impeachment hearing. I don't know. I mean, the impeachment, he knows he's going to lose the vote. I believe that he has the political calculus to keep his job. But I don't think anyone inside the Republican Party is doing the correct political calculus for the future of the Republican Party, be it in 2024 or in the future. I just think that their pragmatic political calculus is broken because they can't separate from Donald Trump. So I don't know. 

Beth [00:09:03] So if you haven't been following this, let's talk process stuff for just a second. Kevin McCarthy just announced that an impeachment inquiry would begin. This did not come through the process of a Judiciary Committee vote, followed by a vote of the entire House to open the inquiry, something that just a couple weeks ago Kevin McCarthy said is necessary. He was very critical of Speaker Nancy Pelosi for unilaterally opening an impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump. Now, I would argue that the circumstances surrounding January six necessitated something a little different from the normal order. Be that as it may, he has now realized he doesn't have enough votes to get the House to authorize an impeachment inquiry. So he just announced it. And as a practical matter, this means that oversight, judiciary and Ways and Means are going to keep doing what they've been doing. They have been living in the Biden families trashcans since they moved into the White House.  

Sarah [00:10:03] And finding very little.  

Beth [00:10:05] And what they really want now is to subpoena bank records. And the Ways and Means Committee is the committee that can do that. So they want the powers of the impeachment inquiry to increase the substantial investigative powers that they already had. What are they actually talking about here, though? So McCarthy says that while Joe Biden was the vice president, which I think is a key thing to understand, he used his influence in connection with Hunter Biden's business dealings to enrich Hunter and others in the Biden family. And they think himself-- they cannot demonstrate any connection between Joe Biden himself and this money. But that's the accusation that he improperly used his office for enrichment during his vice presidency and that subsequently he has lied about his knowledge of Hunter's business dealings. And also, probably this is kind of like the PPS has given Hunter special treatment as he's been investigated for tax crimes. Now, I don't know anyone who's been on the receiving end of a years long federal criminal investigation who would call that special treatment. I think it's been a rough journey for Hunter, and now there's a special counsel prosecuting that. But that's what McCarthy says. It's like, one, when he was the vice president, he helped Hunter make lots of money off of his influence. Two, now that he's the president, he's lied about that. And, three, now that he's the president, he's tried to protect Hunter from the fallout.  

Sarah [00:11:41] Yeah. And they're so desperate for a smoking gun. They point to this moment in the debate where Biden said Hunter hadn't made any money from Chinese companies and they're, like, he lied. But I think that assumes he knew. When all the reporting from both the testimony from Hunter's business associates and from people who work with Biden is that he tried to keep a distance. So I think it'd be hard to prove like, well, maybe that's what he believed at the time, even if it wasn't actually true. I don't think Hunter was sending in bank statements if he was trying to keep distance from Hunter's business dealings. What infuriates me the most about this Hunter Biden stuff is in the face of Jared Kushner's Saudi backed massive investment fund, that this is what they think they're going to hang impeachment on is just truly, truly ridiculous.  

Beth [00:12:29] You don't even have to go to Jared Kushner. I mean, you can go to the way that Trump traveled around as president to his own properties and force the United States Secret Service to pay millions of dollars to his businesses. Putting the what about aside, which I think is an excellent and strong what about case, I'm not dismissing it at all, but putting that aside, here's what I really think. And there's going to be a mix of I have paid a lot of attention to Hunter Biden's staff, as well as just total speculation here. This is what I really think. I think Joe Biden is a person who has had to bury an awful lot of people. And I think Joe Biden is a person who has worried that he would have to bury Hunter Biden probably every day of his life or a huge percentage of them. And I think that Hunter has been struggling the whole journey, and that Hunter also has just been reckless in his decisions and has been greedy and has put Joe Biden through it on so many levels.  

[00:13:42] And that probably there have been so many days when Joe Biden has thought, stop doing this to me, stop putting me in this position. Don't go on that board. Don't take this trip. Don't have that meeting. But has been so happy that Hunter Biden is still alive and functioning to some degree that he has let a lot slide, that he probably could articulate at the time he ought not. I think that there is a lot here that's bad. I think that Hunter has a ton of criminal exposure and will end up paying the price for many of his decisions in ways that he hasn't yet. And I think he's paid a lot of prices already. I do not think that Joe Biden has committed a high crime or misdemeanor or has personally been enriched as much as he has been a dad dealing with an awful lot of grief and fear in his family for decades; who has just not held the line as a politician because of all that emotion as a dad that's gotten in the way. That's what I really think has happened here.  

Sarah [00:14:53] I know I've talked about this before, but I think the most insightful thing I've ever read about the Biden family and Hunter's role inside of it was in that very, very long, very, very infamous I think it was a Vanity Fair profile of Hunter where they said the setup as understood inside the family-- because Joe Biden did not come from means, joe Biden did not come from a wealthy family-- was that Beau was the political star and Hunter was going to fund it all with his business dealings. And I don't mean in a corrupt way. I just mean we need money. You don't get paid a lot to be a United States senator. You don't get paid a lot to be a state attorney general or whatever Beau was for a while. And I thought, this makes so much sense to me. That this was sort of the understanding. And I think that Joe Biden, I'm sure, feels enormous responsibility for the way this played out. That no matter how much he loves his children-- and he does clearly, enormously. Makes me tear up.  

[00:16:00] But he made choices. He made tough choices. His family encouraged him to still be a senator when their mom had died and their sister had died. And I'm not judging him. I'm just like trying to give an honest accounting as much as we can from the outside looking in. This was tough. This was a tough situation. And I think that set up as Beau's the star, which I think gets missed a lot in this narrative. And Hunter will be the grunt work of it all, setting this all up like they all kind of lived near each other and they also are interwoven, as many political families are. Many, many political families are. And I just think between the enormous tragedy and the inherent sort of-- I don't want to say corrupting, but just the inherent problematic influence of being the son of a powerful, famous man, losing your brother. I mean, there's just a lot going on here. And the idea that James Comer is going to sort it all out for us, give me a break. This is the internal, difficult workings of a very famous family. But none of this is going to get sorted or solved by impeachment or the Justice Department, in my personal opinion, because I just think it's really complicated.  

Beth [00:17:15] I feel a huge amount of empathy for Joe Biden here. A huge amount. I feel 0% defensive of him. And I think that it is fair and fine to investigate Hunter for crime and charge him with crime if there is evidence to suggest that crime has committed, as I believe there is. Now, I've read enough to see that I think he has committed crime and should be held accountable as anyone else would be.  

Sarah [00:17:42] I feel like this is not a new pattern. You made a list. Clinton's brother. Jimmy Carter's brother. This is not a new situation in American politics where we have like a black sheep in a political family.  

Beth [00:17:52] And it is right that the Justice Department has appointed a special counsel to say we are insulating this from political influence. We get how this looks. It's hard. But he is being prosecuted and we're going to do it. I think they're taking the only path available to them in this political environment. I think it's fine for congressional committees to investigate what they're going to investigate. I wish there was a committee working hard on the Jared Kushner angle, because I think that is not over in any sense. And I think there's ongoing harm that does concern the whole of the United States in that.  

Sarah [00:18:27] The whole globe.  

Beth [00:18:30] So I think that most of this is fair game. What I think is silly-- and I'm not even worried about it because I think it's such political malpractice. I think it is silly to think that anyone is going to be helped by the opening of an impeachment inquiry before there's any evidence here that suggests that Joe Biden, the person who is the president, has done anything that would come even close to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors. I think McCarthy traps himself through this because they're not going to open an impeachment inquiry and then come out and say, "Well, we didn't find anything. We looked, but it wasn't there." They are marching themselves down a path to taking a vote on impeaching this president. And I just think the country is not going to stand for that. I think that is so silly.  

Sarah [00:19:19] I think the harder question as a way to bring this conversation back to Mitt Romney where we started, is what is impeachment anymore? If everyone views it as a political process, if we can't impeach Donald Trump after January 6th, does it hold any water? Does it even matter anymore? And I'm not sure it does. I think it will be a long time after the failed impeachment of Donald Trump, after he led a crowd to overthrow our government, before we can find any real validity in the process, before people just see it for what it has become, which is a truly political exercise.  

Beth [00:19:59] This is a place where I think the brake pedal of the Senate is so important too, because I think rightfully the American people see removal from office as a huge deal. So maybe this will become the House is always going to impeach. That's just what they do. But the Senate remains that place where we say if somebody is going to be removed from office, it's got to be through the political process. I do not think that was the right outcome as to Donald Trump after January 6th. But I think probably nine times out of ten, the right outcome is we put the evidence on the American people to see what they see, and then they remove in the next election cycle. And I think that that's what has to happen here. And maybe that's the calculus. Maybe they think they really have something and once the public understands it, it will harm Biden in his reelection campaign. But I think that this is much more likely to help him than to hurt him. But we will continue to follow it and talk about it and pay attention to the facts as they unfold. We're going to turn to another situation that should be very high priority for Congress right now. Beyond their rhetoric, there is actual work to do around immigration. So that's up next.  

[00:21:13] Music Interlude.  

[00:21:30] We're seeing an uptick in the number of people crossing into the United States from Mexico at the southern border. And that can sound like yada, yada, yada, because we hear the ups and downs at the border pretty often. A real shift is in the fact that people are crossing together as families instead of single adults coming across the border. And that number particularly surged in the month of August. And our systems and structures are not built to deal with families coming across the border. That's why you saw during the Trump administration that family separation. That's why we've had reports of the terrible conditions that shelters that are not built for children but were housing children were in. It is a unique set of challenges when families come together across that border. And it's happening for a lot of different reasons, but the scale of that is increasing.  

Sarah [00:22:24] Yeah. I just think this is so enormously complicated when I try to wrap my brain around it. The first is when you talk about crossings at the Mexico border, I think it's easy to think about this as either Mexico, Central America, South America problem, because there is an enormous violence. There has been economic decline and critical situations across Central and South America. But they're also coming from Haiti, which doesn't have a government. They're coming from China. It's just an enormous amount of flow due to the instability in many places of the world. I imagine we'll probably see an uptick from many countries in Africa as the coups seem to be spreading like a virus over there. And then we're talking about asylum, which is this whole other situation. And they've set up some of the apps where you can schedule border crossings, but then your asylum claim fails if you didn't claim asylum somewhere along the way. But those countries that you cross into along the way are also overwhelmed. So we're talking about asylum seekers. We're talking about just illegal crossings. Then we have the situation where many of these people are getting sent up to places like New York City and Chicago or going up there now because that has become a desirable location, because a lot of people's families are located up there. You have the ending of Title 42 during the pandemic which was supposed to be this big dramatic increase, but then it wasn't. And we're holding all this when we know that our own system is in desperate need of reform. It's just a huge mess. It's a huge mess.  

Beth [00:24:05] And the administration is trying to do what they can do without Congress. And that's not a lot.  

Sarah [00:24:13] Yeah.  

Beth [00:24:14] They are expanding efforts to quickly deport families who do not meet the asylum requirements. As Sarah said, they're trying to make people ineligible for asylum if they haven't either claimed asylum in every country they've passed to get here or used the CBP One app to make an appointment. And the legality of that philosophy is being challenged in courts right now across the country. They're considering a policy asking people to stay close to the border in case they need to be sent back, which is the opposite of what Texas is asking for. Texas is saying we cannot contain all of these people. Asking them to stay here just enhances the burden on those border communities. They've asked Congress to fund a new housing program for families. It is like trying to solve an incredibly complex puzzle with all but one of your fingers tied up. The tools to deal with this are in Congress. And the administration is trying, but there's just not a lot you can do when when the tools to deal with this are in Congress.  

Sarah [00:25:24] Yeah. And I wonder if the way that many red states have sort of precipitated a crisis in these blue cities like New York City and Chicago, will spark the political will to finally address immigration in some real way. I am not hopeful, considering our previous conversation, that this is a highly functioning Congress that will get comprehensive immigration reform. I worry that the Republican Party benefits more from the crisis than they would from a solution, especially when politicians in states like Texas benefit from real cruel solution like the buoys in the Rio Grande. I think what's so hard and heartbreaking is there are just so many people. And if you're talking about families, you're talking about children swept up in this. And the flow of people if the calculus is the untenable situations in their home country, that's not going to get any better. That's not going to get any better any time soon. And so, if people are already willing to spend any money they have on very dangerous crossings, then what exactly are we going to do on this side to dissuade them? Because even the cruelty or the threat of separating them from their children didn't do much. And Title 42, I guess, did to a certain extent-- just shipping people back. But then there was no punishment. So you would just come again and just come again and come again tomorrow using enormous resources to move the same people back and forth, back and forth, and back and forth. And then then on top of all of this, we do have an actual aging population and a labor crisis. So work permits would be helpful, but it feels hopeless sometimes I think. The immigration situation in this country.  

Beth [00:27:09] The only pragmatic path forward to me also feels politically impossible. I think the pragmatic response of a president to this situation would be radical acceptance. I would love to hear someone running for president say immigration is mostly good for America, but it doesn't matter whether it is or not. People want to come here and we should be proud of that. We should be proud that people want to come here. And we need people to come here to continue to grow our economy. And we have space for people to come here. They can't all go to one city. They can't all be in the state of Texas. But we have space for people to come here. We need to do it an orderly way. We have technology that would allow us to manage the flow of people, not as a law enforcement matter, but as an administrative matter. And that's what we're going to do. And we are going to stop the effort to keep people from crossing at that southern border and put all of our energy into an orderly way once people are here to get them to a community where they have some tie, or some skill, or some ability to contribute to that community. And I just don't think anybody from either party feels like they can say to the American people we are going to stop trying to prevent people from coming in at that southern border because it's not working. Those buoys are idiotic and cruel and an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe and will do absolutely nothing. The idea that we could build a buoy or a wall or anything that presents more of an obstacle to these folks than nature itself has put in this path is absurd. It is absurd. And I just don't want to keep fighting this problem the same way instead of saying, "How could we turn this into not a problem anymore?"  

Sarah [00:29:11] Well, the only thing I want to push back on that is-- yes, I agree with you, no one is going to say open borders. That's the solution for sure. And, look, I think the reality is that open borders doesn't make it not a problem. It makes illegal crossings not a problem. But the flow of that many people into our country would create different problems, right?  

Beth [00:29:35] Yes.  

Sarah [00:29:35] We create some solutions, but it would create other problems as well. I think about this a lot. We were listening to a FiveThirtyEight podcast about polling and the polling among Latino voters who are growing percentage of the American populous and are very conservative as a group. They're not a monolith, no ethnicity is. But they're very conservative because of experiences in Central America and South America, very different perceptions of socialism and have very different perceptions of autocracy. And we would have to grapple with that. That would be hard politically. I think we already struggle with enough housing in this country. If we were to let a massive flow of people in, that would be even more difficult. We don't have enough housing for the people who are already here. Our schools are struggling. Our institutions on many levels are struggling. Now, I think, in the main, immigration would help many of those problems. I really do believe that. I think we are a country of immigrants. I think that's in the foundation of this nation. But I do think owning this would be hard.  

[00:30:50] Massive influx of people of many different cultures and values and experiences would be really, really hard. We got to own that too. And that's assuming we're not going to get to an open border anyway. I feel like that's probably why we need a compromise where we can say we all acknowledge that immigrants are essential pieces of so many communities, because I think most people want to let people come here through a safe and reasonable process. But we don't have that process, and haven't for decades. I'm so frustrated that there seems no political will, despite the fact that one side in particular crows about this crisis. It's just like you said, it's a fiction to pretend that open borders would come with no problems. And it is a fiction to pretend that closing the border is the real solution. That is the fiction. Closing our border is a fiction. And so we just keep living in these fictions as the reality on the ground escalates.  

Beth [00:31:55] I'm not advocating for a completely open border. I think we need the ability to screen people and say some people pose a threat and cannot be here. But I think the idea that we are going to police our way out of the border crisis has proven to not work definitively, and it is traumatizing so many people and asking way too much of Texas communities.  

Sarah [00:32:20] And killing people.  

Beth [00:32:21] It's not working.  

Sarah [00:32:22] We've changed it and forced people through the wilderness has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths.  

Beth [00:32:27] It's not stopping the drug problem. I feel like a lot of what's happening is we hear particularly Republican lawmakers saying, let's keep doing a whole lot more of everything that doesn't work and let's do it with a lot more aggressiveness and see if it works. And I just don't think it will. I think what I am suggesting comes with a ton of problems. Just like you said, they're problems that we're better equipped to solve. We are better in this country at building an app than a police state. So let's build the apps that allow us to schedule people's flow of coming here and that transports them to places where they can be housed and fed and set up to contribute to their communities. I just think that we got to pick our set of problems and we keep choosing the same ones and the same tools to try to tackle them. And it feels crazy making to me and hopeless and desperate and morally wrong. And so I want to pick a new set of problems to tackle.  

Sarah [00:33:35] The only thing that feels new to me and I can't believe I'm about to say this, I'm not necessarily praising the strategy, but there is something different about the way that immigrant populations have either been bused, shipped, directed to blue cities. Now, do I think this was the kindest political strategy? Of course, I don't. But I do think it has disrupted the conversation in a way that if I can put on my most positive hat can say, well, maybe this will get us somewhere. Maybe this will get people to the table. Because we've said on this podcast we ask parts of the country to shoulder this in unfair ways. Now, I don't think bullying people into sharing this burden in the way that many red states have done was ethical or moral, but it has been politically productive. When you have the mayor of New York City calling out the Democratic president of the United States for not doing enough, I'm listening. I'm interested. I'm paying attention. To say like, listen, this isn't going to work. They're spending billions of dollars dealing with this crisis. Adams says that it'll cost more than 12 billion over the next three years. So something's got to give. And it's not fair that it took New York City and Chicago to say help. I'm sure the people at El Paso and other places at the border are like, welcome to the party. But it has at least upended the conversation in ways I hope will lead to some sort of forward movement.  

Beth [00:35:12] The questions for me surrounding the busing are more about what the people getting on those buses were told about what was happening to them. It does not bother me for Texas to say, "Hello, America. We need help here." It doesn't bother me at all. It doesn't bother me to relocate people from the border to places where they can get jobs and connect with family. I think the safest way that we have more immigration in this country is to work really hard to get people with their people. I think that's what everybody needs. I think families coming across the border together, if we had a logical system, is a really healthy thing. You come with your family, you're coming here to really build a new life and invest in communities the way that we would hope people will and people have for generations now in this country. I just am concerned about stories where the folks put on those buses were lied to or felt that they were used or put in an even more desperate situation than the one that they arrived in because of a political stunt. But overall, yes, I think we have got to start doing some things differently. That is the main thing for me. Can we not continue to just feed this problem? That's what feels like it's happening to me. We're just feeding the problem.  

Sarah [00:36:38] Well, I mean, they're a vulnerable population ripe for exploitation politically and every other way. So why we can't get a solution to this problem? Because they don't have a lot of political capital. And so it will take other people being impacted. But the problem is when people get impacted by this crisis, it doesn't lead to openhearted and open-minded solutions. It leads to get out. Like some of the protests around New York City in the suburbs, I'm like, guys, seriously? Go where? But, look, I'm not stepping over people in my community. So I just think it become a scarcity mindset and that does not always lead to the best political solutions, which I think is another sort of trap we get stuck in with immigration.  

Beth [00:37:22] It's just really hard. And I think the language around it matters. I don't say migrants a lot because I always want to remember these are just families. These are people. And who knows what's going to happen on this earth where someday I could be on another country's doorstep with my kids saying, "Please help us. Just all we're asking for is to be able to come here and work and pay taxes and live somewhere and do our best." And I always want to keep that in mind when we're talking about this. And I hope that someone somewhere will start to lead us toward a better strategy instead of continuing to talk about the need for comprehensive immigration reform and to do precisely nothing toward that end in Congress.  

[00:38:10] Music Interlude.  

[00:38:21] Sarah, we always end the show talking about what's on our minds Outside of Politics. You and I are both getting our mammograms right now. That's what's happening.  

Sarah [00:38:29] Yes. In an accidental scheduling, we both had a mammogram scheduled this week. This was your first mammogram?  

Beth [00:38:34] It was. I went to my doctor's appointment last year, my annual appointment. And the guidance on when to do this has kind of shifted. And we talked about how it's an optional guideline between 40 and 44. And based on my family history, I could probably wait another year. And this year it was like, It's probably time to do this. And I did. And I went in. I was the first appointment of the day. This is my strategy, if I can get there when they're turning the lights on, that's when I want to arrive. I was in and out in 10 minutes and I had my results on my phone an hour later.  

Sarah [00:39:10] I think this is my third mammogram or my second-- I can't remember. I was at the end of the day, but this radiology clinic that we have in our town is just so freaking well-run. I was also in and out in 15 minutes. I had my results in about 15 minutes. I found mammograms to be a very anticlimactic situation. I had friends that talked about how hard it was and how uncomfortable it was. I did not feel that. It feels pretty mundane. But, listen, psychologically though it's always hard to go in to a screening where you think, what are they going to say? I felt like this time I'm like, are they taking longer to come back and tell me everything's okay? At that moment that kind of little spin up. But no, I got my results. Everything was normal. I don't even find it as uncomfortable as people warn you that it is. I mean, if you've breastfed three kids, your boobs are barely attached to your body anymore anyway.  

Beth [00:40:06] I think it would be helpful to just describe the process. So you go. You want to wear pants for this? You want to wear a dress when you're going to have a pap smear. You want to wear pants when you're going have a mammogram. So you only have to take off your top and your bra. They give you a little gown. You go into the room and there's just a table, and they just lay your breast on the table and then bring down the machine. And as my husband put it, it's kind of like a Panini press. There is compression on the breast. It is not pleasant, but it's bearable.  

Sarah [00:40:36] It's just pressure, not pain.  

Beth [00:40:38] I think it is all psychological. You don't like to stand somewhere with your top off. You don't like someone manhandling you. The feeling of the machine against your body pressing like that is weird. And then you just turn and you do it another way. And it goes fast, but it's weird. It's not something I want to do every day. And then it's over. It's fine.  

Sarah [00:40:58] Yeah, but compared to a pap smear, come on.  

Beth [00:41:00] Oh, yeah. One hundred percent better than a pap smear, for sure. But you got to do them both. This is the thing. It's just important to do these things and it's important to talk about doing these things so they don't become so big in our minds that we won't do them. Sarah, I do have an insight that takes us far from women's health if you're up for it.  

Sarah [00:41:18] Sure. Always.  

Beth [00:41:19] September, as much as I'm trying to savor it, has become just a totally different pace of life than I was living in August. Just the uptick not only with school calendar and kids activities, but I've been doing things like getting my annual physical and doing blood work and getting the mammogram and all the things. And I have realized that this might be the explanation for me. Shopping more too. Because I think that when I get in this heightened state of read the school email, fill out the form, fund this scholastic book fair e-wallet, make the doctor's appointment, check my chart, do all the things, I am just coming back to that state of being glued to my phone and feeling like there's something to do all day. And so I'm shopping because it still feels like I'm doing something. I'm staying in that really productive place. I'm losing this beautiful August grasp that I had cultivated on free time and leisure, and I'm getting back into that heightened reactive state that comes with everything firing back up.  

Sarah [00:42:35] I had a day in August where I shopped in a way that I can only describe as compulsively. It was bad. I finally stopped because my freaking phone died at like 11:00. And I thought, what just happened? And I came to a similar conclusion. I had done the Whole30 with my husband during all this. I really did the Whole15. So there was lots of restriction. I wasn't eating sugar. I don't really drink. Anyway, I definitely wasn't on the Whole30 and I thought I think I just hit a wall where my brain was like, you got to give me something. I need something. I need some serotonin here. And so I channeled it all into this very intense day of shopping. And I thought, oh, this is what happens. You sort of like you're denying yourself. I'll never forget my friend Holly, who was a health coach for a while, telling me that women often eat even stuff they know that's going to make them feel bad as a sort of way to break the rules. Like I do everything I'm supposed to do, and so now I'm going to do this thing that I'm not supposed to do to make me feel some ownership of my self, some ownership of my time. Just this like, screw you, I follow the rules, I'm taking care of everybody; I want to do something for me. And I think online shopping definitely checks that box. And it's hard to find ways that feel like you are not engaging in some sort of good girl self-care, where you really just feel like you're checking off some other box you're supposed to do instead of just doing something you want to do dammit.  

Beth [00:44:27] And I think I'm not even in the state where I know what I want to do, dammit, because it's just like I'm just getting things done. And shopping still feels like I'm getting something done. I do need some jeans. I do need to order Christmas gifts. I do need to buy these things for Jane because it's Purple Day on Friday and she needs some leggings or whatever, and I just stay there. It is to the point that yesterday I had a moment I was like, we need to back up. I was going through the mail and someone had sent me a gel pin with my name and address on it with an offer for me to order 100 or 500 or 1000 of these gel pens with my name and address on them. And I wrote with the pen for a second and I was like, this is an amazing pen. Maybe I do need a 100 of these. And then I thought, like, Beth, 1000 pens with your name and address floating around in the world on them is the worst idea you could possibly have. Think of what you do for a living. Why would you want anyone to ever find a pen with your name and address on it? This is so dumb. But for a split second it was almost like part of processing the mail. They sent me a pen. It's a nice pen. Maybe I should just order them and then I can throw it away and be done with that. And I just stay in that task mood is out of control. I did not order the pens. I will just say thank goodness.  

Sarah [00:45:46] I'm glad to hear it. Now, I definitely agree that it feels like you're doing something. I'm totally fascinated by how some of these Semaglutide medications people report a reduced need to online shop. I think that that is the most fascinating side effect of treating your insulin resistance. But I just think it's related. And I tell my husband, I'm like, this must be what middle age is like the bell curve because you get to the spot where things you used to do to treat yourself you can't anymore because they make you feel like crap, and you're in this space of longevity and taking care of your body. And I think your brain hits a wall or your spirit hits a wall where it's like, I just want to have fun. I just want a serotonin release, dammit. And reading does that for me, but come on. 

Beth [00:46:38] You got to have more than reading.  

Sarah [00:46:40] A little bit more than reading would be nice. A little bit more than just the Erin Moon good long walk. Yes, it does help. Yes, it feels good. But there's an aspect of rebellion, immediate pay off that is hard to find outside of behaviors that don't stack up and have bad consequences.  

Beth [00:47:01] Especially because in this stage of life, you are almost always fully responsible for creating your own fun. If you're going to do something that's going to be really fun, you are probably going to have to organize it, plan it, take a dish at minimum, figure out what everybody's wearing, figure out are the kids coming or not coming and what are we going to do if they aren't? Like, there's so many tasks attached even to the good stuff. And I say that all complaining. I am enjoying this phase of life very much in so many ways. I'm just trying to be a little bit of a detective about why the gel pens had such a strong pull, and I think this is it.  

Sarah [00:47:44] Well, I think that's why Barbie was so fun for people because it was sort of contained but you also get to do a little shopping. Same for the Eras tour. People want to feel joy and you want to feel excitement and you want to feel anticipation. And it is. I think it's hard to hunt down those experiences that feel like they're all positive, but maybe that's an impossible standard. Maybe that's the line we've been sold that every thing we eat or drink or do has to benefit our longevity. Probably not true. Probably not a good standard. I'll never forget the lady who lived to be the oldest. The French lady who smoked till she was 116. Not advocating smoking. But I do think there is a place here for things that are just pure. Because we love to moralize about our choices here in America. That's our actual favorite pastime, not baseball.  

Beth [00:48:36] So what you're saying is it wouldn't have been totally wrong to order the pens, it just would have been not a good idea.  

Sarah [00:48:43] No, I don't think it would have been wrong. It would have made you a bad person. Our online shopping does not make us bad people. But if it is not making us happy, it's just hard to pull that apart. Is it how we think about it that's making us unhappy or is it the activity itself that's making us unhappy? That is a tough nut to crack.  

Beth [00:49:01] Well, it is. And the other layer for me is sometimes the happiness is just in having done something. And I need to pull back from that because later I will regret some of those things that I did, even if they felt like checking something at the moment.  

Sarah [00:49:16] And that's the addiction of the online space. They say that the liking and the scrolling it gives your brain something to do. You feel like you're doing something, but you're not really doing something. And maybe that's okay. Maybe you're just entertaining yourselves. Maybe if there was a way to just view it as entertainment and enjoy it as entertainment, but the advertising and the capitalism is so baked in to all these platforms, it's hard to do.  

Beth [00:49:41] Yeah. Well, I didn't get the pens.  

Sarah [00:49:43] Well, I want to hear from our audience activities they found that met that need of immediate pay off, a little bit of rule breaking, serotonin dump, but they don't beat themselves up about it afterwards. Or if they've just found a way to online shop, smoke, drink, whatever, without beating themselves up. I would like to hear that too.  

Beth [00:50:06] Thank you all so much for joining us today. As always, we will be back with you on Tuesday. Please do not forget that if you'd like us to come speak to your community in 2024, you can email Alise at Hello@pantsuitpoliticsshow.com. We would love to chat with you about that. Until next week, have the best weekend available to you.  

[00:50:24] Music Interlude.  

Sarah: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. 

Beth: Alise Napp is our managing director. Maggie Penton is our director of Community Engagement. 

Sarah: Xander Singh is the composer of our theme music with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima. 

Beth: Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers. 

Executive Producers: Martha Bronitsky. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zuganelis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. Emily Neesley. The Pentons. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Amy Whited. Emily Helen Olson. Lee Chaix McDonough. Morgan McHugh. Jen Ross. Sabrina Drago. Becca Dorval. The Lebo Family. 

Sarah: Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Joshua Allen. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.

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