We Need Leaders with Representative Mikie Sherrill

TOPICS DISCUSSED

• The TikTokification of Media

• The Avoidance Election

• Representative Mikie Sherrill on Leadership in the House of Representatives

• Outside of Politics: Class Reunions

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EPISODE RESOURCES

• Party activists hope to reach disengaged voters in North Carolina (AP News)

• Justin Access (Catholic.com)

• Mikie Sherrill (House.gov)

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TRANSCRIPT

Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.  

Beth [00:00:09] This is Beth Silvers.  

Sarah [00:00:10] You're listening to Pantsuit Politics.  

Beth [00:00:12] Where we take a different approach to the news.  

[00:00:14] Music Interlude  

Sarah [00:00:30] Thank you so much for joining us today. We were honored last week to spend some time with Representative Mikie Sherrill. She talked to us about reforming the Supreme Court, the National Defense Authorization Act, and much more. We're going to share that conversation with you. Know that this conversation was recorded before the House ultimately passed the NDAA and before the Supreme Court's decision on mifepristone. Before that conversation, though, we're going to check in on...  

Beth [00:00:55] Everything.  

Sarah [00:00:56] All of us. How are we doing? We are struggling with a news environment right now. We are struggling with many of the top-ish stories, and we just wanted to process that together and with all of you today. And then Outside of Politics, we're going to talk about class reunions.  

Beth [00:01:12] As we discussed in that first segment about everything, there is a presidential debate happening next week much earlier than it typically happens. For the first time, this election cycle, Donald Trump and Joe Biden will face off next Thursday night on CNN. Because of the timing of the debate, we are going to record our Friday episode late. We are going to wait. Instead of giving you something about something else, we are going to wait and release that episode later than we typically do. And thanks very much to our entire team for being willing to work off schedule to make that happen. So, when you don't see an episode first thing Friday morning, please know that it is coming to you just later in the day.  

Sarah [00:01:53] We also wanted to be able to hang out with you in real time during that debate, so we're going to have two group threads going that you can join. I will be in our Substack chat because Substack has a chat, Beth, did you know that? 

Beth [00:02:05] I did that's exciting.  

Sarah [00:02:06] So I will be on the Substack chat and that's for everybody who subscribe to our newsletter. Beth will be in the chat on Patreon. So, all these platforms have chats. Now, do we wish there was one chat? Of course, we do. But it is technologically easier to split us up in this way. Sounds to me super fun. Pick your platform. Pick your poison. We will be there. You can find details about how to join either of those chats in the show notes of this episode. And don't worry, we're going to talk about this again. We got a little time before the debate, but up next, we're going to talk about the vibe.  

[00:02:39] Music Interlude.  

Sarah [00:02:48] Beth, there were so many news stories that we thought about talking about. There are Supreme Court decisions. There was the Hunter Biden verdict. I went to Los Angeles this weekend and hung out with President Biden and President Obama. It was fun.  

Sarah [00:03:06] But it just felt like, overall, one story isn't really bubbling to the surface. The way that we are talking about all the stories is so disjointed. The only word I can think of is disequilibrium. That's what it feels like to me. And I can't decide if it's the stories, if it's us, if it's the news environment. But I was relieved to hear from you that you also feel this disequilibrium.  

Beth [00:03:37] Absolutely. As I was going through my usual routine of reading news this morning, my attention could not seem to stay with any one topic because they all feel important to me. And they all feel like I have more questions and I need to know more, but I can't seem to find my way in to any of them because the breadth of it is so massive. Wildfires in California, and a shooting at a splash pad in a Juneteenth celebration, and the disbandment of the War Cabinet in Israel. But the Israeli army pausing its operations in daylight hours for people to cross and get humanitarian aid. But Netanyahu criticizing that. I mean, it was just like-- it's just this spread. It's like the news is sprawling in a way where I cannot seem to grab on to any piece of it. I felt the same way about the parliamentary election in the EU. I am really interested in that. But it isn't just that. It's also the UK elections, and the French elections now and, and, and. There are too many tentacles of everything right now.  

Sarah [00:04:45] Yeah. And I feel like it has to do with the news environment, because when I feel like I have the best grasp on it is when I sit down with my print editions. Like last week, I was two New York Times Sunday print editions behind. I had like four issues of The Economist, and I sat down and I just read it all and I'm like, okay, now I have a handle on things. I feel like I got in-depth coverage, but also sort of a macro level on Ukraine and Russia. I felt like I understood some of the components of the Indian elections and of what's going on in Israel. And when I can sit down like that, I feel so much more firmly planted in what's happening and understanding what's happening. But that is a increasingly unique experience, I think, this sense that there is not one news narrative. Even at the event in Los Angeles I was at with President Obama and President Biden, they both talked about that.  

[00:05:40] President Biden brought up, like, "I'm not even mad at the media, but this environment is broken. People can go to a source repeatedly that's their source, and it could be lying all the time." And it just doesn't feel like there's one place or story where we can get our bearings. I was even struck by the outside meeting Obama had with activists where he said, "Basically, I mainly watch sports." I was like, oh my God. Because that feels like that's the only place where the news environment feels ever so slightly still intact, where you can get the viral stories. We all kind of know what's going on. We're all talking about Caitlin Clark not making the Olympic team or who is making the Olympic team or? All these things like sports feels like the only news environment where we're all kind of gathered and having an ongoing, somewhat coherent conversation.  

[00:06:36] Because every time I go to politics, especially the presidential, you get things where people are blaming Biden for the overturning of Roe v Wade or just completely disconnected from the reality of the politics and policy on the ground. And you're talking about an ever-shrinking component of the electorate, which also feels really weird. These early debates, all of that is shifting. I think particularly with the presidential, it's not just the broken media environment that has us feeling this sense of shakiness, but it's just like I feel like every day we are rewriting the rules of what a presidential race even means anymore.  

Beth [00:07:20] I wonder if you're talking about your experience of reading the print edition feels more grounded to you because more decisions were made about that print edition. No one's AB testing it. They're not moving things around. I just noticed with a lot of news sites, if I check them a few times throughout the day, you can see how things are being shuffled to follow readers attention, to try to get more clicks or engagement here. And it does seem that an aspect of decision making has been taken from editors, because of the way that the 24-hour internet news side works, there are so few constraints that the ability to deliver something that feels cohesive, even if just for the day, is impossible.  

[00:08:12] And I think there's a pressure on them to cover absolutely everything, plus culture and games and recipes to keep us in the sights somehow. And something is really being lost through that. I thought that the EU parliamentary elections were maybe the best example of this in a while, followed quickly by the G7. I see news organizations feeling like, well, this is important. We need to be talking about these things, but there is no context or specific angle that anyone's tracing because at the same time it's happening, so is everything else. And it's hard to take something off the board when you don't have that constraint of like, this is the newspaper for today.  

Sarah [00:08:56] Yeah, I'm about to start firing up the evening news again too. I'm just going to keep going. I'm just keep dialing in my analog options. 

Beth [00:09:03] I think the evening news is good. A lot of decisions are made about that.  

Sarah [00:09:06] Yeah. And you feel the limitations. They're important. It makes better art. It makes better news. And I think that since that where we're gathering or where it bubbles up into the sort of zeitgeist, there's such shallow moments and it feels like, well, they only bubble up when they're TikTok-able. I feel like everybody was talking about that moment in the congressional hearing where they were insulting each other's appearance. And I'm, like, guys, that is like the least important thing that we could be talking about. I'm not saying it wasn't insulting. I'm not saying there weren't racist overtones to Marjorie Taylor Green's comments. All of that is true, but it was almost like, well, because we could all watch what happened. That was a thing we could all talk about. It has to be a video clip now, and I don't know how I feel about that. It feels like not great.  

Beth [00:10:00] And it means that all the incentives are to create a human-interest story out of anything. And a lot of what's really important is not best conveyed as a human-interest story. The story in France right now is not Macron is in trouble. What is underneath the voting that happened for the Parliament? Why is the far right on the rise in France? But you can't tell that as engagingly or as quickly as Macron is in trouble. And I just feel like the TikTok-fication, social media side, economic realities of media right now demand that everything be written like an US Weekly. No matter how thorny or complex or serious the story is.  

Sarah [00:10:55] The other thing that has really been in the background of all my thoughts and I feel like now that I've seen the matrix, I see the matrix everywhere, is this sense of it's not just the media, but that human interest story. That perspective to me is really about the way we've sunk our claws into identity politics and the way that everything has to be formulated as a precis, correct angle, ethical angle, moral angle, oppressor, evil, bad, unethical, terrible model. And you can just feel since the way everything is getting forced through that binary and what gets lost in the way people can't-- or have lost the ability to just debate ideas. Like, what's the idea that we're arguing about here instead of the identity. To the European Parliament, I was listening to Jerusalem Demsas' new podcast, Good on Paper. She's coming on the show to talk with us about housing policy next week, I cannot wait.  

[00:12:05] She did an episode on immigration and they had this incredibly helpful conversation, her and the expert, about European immigration. And how, for the most part, people who immigrate to English speaking countries, the UK, the United States are more highly educated and by the time their children are adults, they are better off than their parents. That the first generation born in the country does better than the immigrant parents. That is not true for mainland Europe. For the most part, the people who immigrate inside France and Germany are less well-educated. It makes sense when someone says that to you like, oh, that was staring me in the face. Because someone who's more highly educated, perhaps, is also educated in this global language of English, right? Have probably taken a course or two, so they're going to go somewhere they can use some at least a little bit of that language training.  

[00:13:00] That the people that, however, immigrate to Mainland Europe are less likely to speak English and their children are less likely to be, well, more well-off than they are. So, they are not assimilating. They are not thriving and flourishing. And that perspective was because-- it's not about, well, we're being treated badly and that's all you need to know because that's all I could get. I knew that there were all these anti-immigrant, right wing populist sentiments growing in Europe. But beyond, like, that's bad and your shitty, I wasn't getting more information around the idea of what this was and why the ideas were growing. And so, hearing that, I was like, okay, that was the missing piece of the puzzle. It doesn't condone those actions or those movements. But in order to present a winning argument in a democratic process, which is ultimately about persuasion, you have to understand what's happening.  

[00:14:12] And I thought that was so helpful. And it's just, like, I don't know if we've lost it or if it's just not rewarded in our current media environment. This ability to say-- so I respect Jerusalem Demsas so much because I think so often, she's like, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt. I'm going to say that you're a logical actor inside the system. And there's an attempt at sort of understanding that is just lost when everything is oppressor, bad, oppressive, ethical and good. We have to get out of this morass because every story doesn't fit through that prism. And engaging with the ideas is how we process what's happening. It's how we understand each other. It's how we have those conversations that feel like we are moving on instead of constantly feeling like we're stuck and we're on shaky, shaky ground.  

Beth [00:15:08] I think the presidential election version of that binary prism is with me or against me. And the reason that I am so uninterested in the coverage of that race right now is that there isn't a story that's just about what happened. It's always through the filter of and how will people react? How will people react to Hunter Biden's conviction? How will people react to what Donald Trump said at this last event? And I'm tired of that, and I think everyone else is too. I read a piece from the AP over the weekend about organizers in North Carolina knocking doors, and the piece opened with that human interest lens. Here comes to the door a woman, and they mention that she has on a Hello Kitty shirt.  

[00:15:56] And I'm just, like, I don't care about this at all. I don't care about this at all. But what interested me was the organizer saying that people do not want to talk about the presidential election, but they do want to talk about politics. They do want to talk about schools and roads and jobs. When you can get past that initial filter, people have a lot to say about politics. And I just think that that's the canyon that we're existing in with this election. It's like the election is way over there. And we're on the other side saying that over there matters a lot in my life, but the way that we're doing it doesn't matter to me a bit right now.  

Sarah [00:16:45] Yeah, I listen to the polling in the focus groups. I don't know the word I want for it, but, okay, fine, call people up and ask them what they care about. It's not that I don't care what people are interested in or what issues are important to them. But when they all say rising prices, then can you do some sort of like-- I don't know, half education, half debate. I don't know. There's only two halves, so I guess I don't need a third half. But where it's like, okay, well both of these candidates want to raise tariffs or have raised tariffs and that's going to raise the prices of everything, how do you feel about that? That's what's going to happen. So that's a policy issue that they're both proposing to go after China in the way we're all concerned about is going to make things more expensive. Are you okay with that trade off?  

[00:17:32] I just want to push people. I just feel like it's all this morass of feelings. Not opposed to feelings, but every feeling is not correct. Sometimes our feelings need to be processed and put in the proper perspective so that we can then assess the data or the policy or pass decision making, which we have lots of with these two candidates, and then decide from there. That's what's so frustrating. And I just feel like because we basically have two incumbents, there's no sense of future, which I think is the most energizing, refreshing part of American elections. It's this, who do we want to be? Where do we want to go? And how do you have that conversation with a 78-year-old and an 80-year-old? I don't know. It's hard. I think that's what we're learning.  

Beth [00:18:26] I kind of like that example, though, about economics. Because it is true that people constantly say, well, the economy is [inaudible] Okay, well, you do have really similar tariff policies. You have a really similar preference for U.S. business. You know that with either of them, the deficit will increase. The national debt will increase, that both of them have track records. That's what will happen. So, what would happen with your vote if you took that issue off the board, if you called that a tie? Does that get us to a new conversation? Now, I don't really believe that their management of the economy would be equal.  

Sarah [00:19:06] Yeah, seriously.  

Beth [00:19:07] But taking people seriously and meeting them where they are and speaking at that level of, like, I'm worried about rising prices, I do think that prices are probably going to continue to rise some amount, no matter who's the president. And we want that. We don't want deflation. That'd be terrible. I know nobody wants to hear that either. But so, what if you took that issue off the board? What would that mean? I just am desperate to find something new in this election, and that is hard. 

Sarah [00:19:36] And I'm saying it's all emotion. But maybe that's what I'm naming because that's all economics. I'm increasingly convinced that it's just a feeling. Feels like it's numbers, but it's not. It's feelings. And so, this emphasis in the face of recovering from a pandemic, in the face of all these institutional earthquakes, from public schools, to health care, to these demographic changes, these massive things, everybody just goes back to prices, prices, prices, prices, prices. So, what is that? I thought that Ezra Klein's conversation with Annie Lowrey, his wife, on his podcast about it's the cost of education, the cost of housing and the cost of health care. It's really not the prices at the pump. It's not really the prices of food. It's these things that for decades have just become increasingly out of reach for people. That is this undercurrent.  

[00:20:36] And because it bubbles up in a way that people want to name prices that even the president has so little control over. It's like we can't get at it. It just feels like we are bumping along on the surface and never diving down into what is really going on, because both strategies is just his worse. We can't go there. And, look, I agree with Joe Biden. I do believe that Donald Trump is worse. But, man, does this make just a terrible campaign electoral environment because we can't get past-- I mean, I've said this before. I hope this is sort of like our rock bottom of partisan politics. And it feels like America is like, pass, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to participate. When Barack freaking Obama is saying, "I watch sports," It really caught me off guard. I do wonder if maybe this is the avoidance election. That two incumbents is America's way of saying I just am not up for it. And maybe that's fair.  

[00:21:49] After Covid, there was so much disruption, so much loss, so much staring at yourself thinking, who am I in this world? And what does any of this mean? Being angry at how other people were responding to it. Maybe it makes sense that we're, like, I don't really want to have an election this time. And so, this is a way of not really having an election. You'd need a lot fewer people when both candidates have basically 100% name I.D. You need a lot less energy. And then still that energy is there and the money is there, so it's in our faces all the time. And that's not what we want. We want to avoid it. And honestly, that's what the news environment is doing to me. I love news, but when I have in the morning 30 stories, all of which are pretty complicated, scattered out across sources, I feel permission to avoid. Because I think, well, nothing is that big, or everybody would be covering it in a fair amount of depth 

Sarah [00:23:01] To your point of coming out of the pandemic, I was in Los Angeles this weekend, and Nicolas and I were talking about all these, like, media earthquakes. You have people canceling arena shows, and you have our industry undergoing this massive change. And they're like, is the movie's over? People are never coming back. Is all TV myth? And these earthquakes at the Washington Post with their editor. And we're having all these conversations about how to pay for news. And the revenge spending is coming to an end travel-wise and, and, and, and. Because it does feel like we understand that we are coming out of something and that we are not going back to before. But that there is a complete and total absence of leadership. I was in the TSA line yesterday pre-check line at LAX and the pre-check wasn't moving. It just wasn't moving. You can imagine how well that went over. I think some people were coming up and in wheelchairs, but they weren't TSA PreCheck anyway.  

[00:24:10] All that happened was this woman at the TSA starts in a very loud, commanding voice saying, "Okay, this is what's doing. This is pre-check. They're going here, two wheelchairs at a time." And she takes command. And I'm sitting there marveling at her. And the guy behind me goes, "She's a leader. That's what happened. She's a leader." And we got up there and I said, "We were just having a conversation about your leadership. You took control and you said this is what's going to happen." And I think that we are starving for leadership. Everyone is scared, rightfully so, because I don't know what comes next either. I don't know what comes next in public schooling. I don't know what comes next with this demographic cliff we're dangling over. I don't know what comes next in podcasting. I don't know what comes next.  

[00:24:59] And I love Joe Biden, and I think he's a great president. I do, I think he's a great president. But there's no universe in which transformative leadership comes from an 80-year-old. I think he was what we needed. And I think of the two choices, he's definitely what we need to get through this transformation. But I think we're all suspended because we know it's time to transform into something new. And, look, to not just bust on Joe Biden, I don't see that leadership anywhere. I don't see that leadership in media. I don't see anybody in media doing anything except the safe bet. I don't see that leadership in public schooling. I don't see that.  

[00:25:39] I don't see that leadership because I think it's scary to be that kind of leader and say, I can't see exactly what's coming next, but it's time we moved forward into it. And I think that's why I feel this sense of suspension. And that's why to Emmanuel Macron's eternal credit-- actually, I will take back what I just said. I do see that leadership from him. I do see that like sense of we're going. We're going to go. We're going to do this now. We're not going to sit around and wait till it feels safer. We're going to do this now. We're going to deal with what's in front of us right now and decide what's going to come next.  

Beth [00:26:13] He did it with the pensions, too. People didn't like it, but he said, "It's time to address our fiscal house, so I'm going to do the unpopular thing and the chips will fall." And I do respect that. And I do think that some of what you're identifying is why people like Donald Trump. I don't see that leadership in him. I don't think what he's doing is real leadership, but some people do, and I think that's where that comes from. I'll tell you what I reject as leadership into this new phase, is the idea that data will get us there because that's the attempt that I see. To navigate this transition. The people who say they have answers are the people who can aggregate the most data. And I reject that. I watched a CNN clip this morning about this organization, people trying to do good work-- I'm not criticizing them. But it gave me goosebumps down my body thinking about where our society is because this organization tries to spread the Catholic faith.  

[00:27:09] And they created an AI priest called Father Justin to answer people's questions about the faith. Okay. And it's glitchy right now as all these technologies are. So, Father Justin ends up telling someone that it'd be fine to be baptized in Gatorade. Now, I personally don't have a problem with that. It sounds gross. But like as a matter of faith, that's fine with me. But it's not with most practicing Catholics. And so, they jumped on that and they fixed it. The journalist asked him a question about abortion. He gave what the person said was like pitch perfect answer exactly what they wanted him to do.  

[00:27:44] Then people started getting upset that he was being called Father, because a priest should be something more than a collection of data that spits things back out. So, they removed that because he was taking confessions from people and stuff. Anyway, again, I'm not trying to disparage the people who said, "Let me see how technology can help do something in the world that I think is good and important." This is not a critique of them. But my critique is reserved for the people who say they are our leaders through this transition, who just keep telling us that the answer is in aggregating all of our bullshit. I'm sorry. That's all they're doing.  

Sarah [00:28:25] Yes. 

Beth [00:28:26] All of humanity's often worst that comes through online, combined with some of our best art without people's permission, combined with a whole bunch of just mundane nonsense, and that if you can read into that enough and distill it enough, that's what's going to get us through. And I do not believe that.  

Sarah [00:28:46] And I totally agree. That's what I say about artists. I love Brandi Carlile. I love Brandi Carlile. And if I could create another fun rock out Hold Out Your Hand, would I listen to it? Probably. But my favorite Brandi Carlile song is Party of One, which is completely unique from her other work. It's very different. She went somewhere new. AI Brandi Carlile is not going to go anywhere new. AI leadership is not going to go anywhere new because it's just built on what we've done before. It's just a conglomeration, an aggregation of everything we've ever said before. And that's not interesting. But it's like every time I get down there, I'm like, why wouldn't I have just gone to the original source? I don't want a summary of Don Quixote. I want to struggle through Don Quixote itself. Summary is not knowledge. Summary is not wisdom, it's just summary. And I feel like we're just trying to summarize, find the next summary, find the next aggregation that's just guiding us along instead of somebody offering a real and true breakthrough.  

Beth [00:29:54] It's funny that you bring up Brandi Carlile, because I was just sitting here thinking about how we saw Sarah McLaughlin on Friday night. Her album Fumbling Toward Ecstasy turns 30 this year, which is rude, but it is a fact. She's so great live because her songs are so familiar to me that there is that comfort of, I know this. But she does enough change live that you're like, oh, I know this, but listen to that. She went up there instead of down or whatever. And she told stories. And the best parts were when she, like, was saying things that you could tell she had not planned. She was telling us about taking prednisone. And you could almost see her starting to say that and then being like, "Why did I just talk about that? These people don't care about my prednisone." But it was the real humanness of her on stage. That's why you go to a concert instead of just listening to the album again.  

[00:30:52] You could commemorate that anniversary with what you already have, but you go in search of that something a little bit new to add to it or something that deepens it or gives it more texture. And I want that from a politician so badly right now-- not even one politician, a political party, a political movement. I am told constantly this activist group has it, or this group. Or look at these young people, the young people have got it. I'm sorry, I don't see anywhere something that seems to be getting more layered instead of more flattened out. Because when you follow the data or you do what will go viral or you are always just going for the American Idol version of choosing a path in politics, you are going to distill, distill, distill instead of enrich. And that's what I want. The enrichment. I'm using my hands as though this were a visual podcast, and I apologize about that, but I want layers.  

Sarah [00:31:50] I will say, I know a place I see that. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I know I listed that video of her at the congressional as a problem, but I don't really think that was about her. But she is getting layered. She is getting smarter. Can you imagine if she was the candidate right now? The conversations we would be having, the excitement, the feeling of like we're going somewhere new. Oh my God!  

Beth [00:32:12] Would we let her have it though? Because I think the same thing is true of Vice President Harris, and we don't let her have it.  

Sarah [00:32:18] Well, I have a theory about this, and I think I've said this before. But I've thought a lot about it, and I still feel like I'm right. Primaries do not belong in direct democracy. I'm sorry. It was a bad idea we had. It was a bad idea with the McGovern Frazier Commission to put all this back into direct elections. It becomes a beauty contest. Now, I had a great interview y'all here soon with James Traub of the Hubert Humphrey biography I won't stop talking about. And he made a good point. He's like, man, without those changes, would we have ever gotten a Jimmy Carter? Would we ever have gotten a Barack Obama? Probably not. But I just think so much is lost. And I think if you could get a Kamala, you could get an AOC. Now, I understand the problem with the smoke-filled room is that they left women and people of color out. I am a student of history. I do get the problems there.  

[00:33:14] But I just think we're so far. Not that we've reached perfect representation, but we have a lot of people in both parties with diverse identities, with a lot of power. And I think that those people now see the path forward for candidates. I say, like, would we have ever gotten Barack Obama? But I think we maybe would have. I mean, let's not forget that it was Harry Reid telling Barack Obama, this is it, go for it. And he would have been in one of those smoke-filled rooms saying, I don't know, I think it might be Barack. So, I don't know. I just think that when we're in a primary situation where it's going to be name recognition, where we don't have local news environments where it's so spread out, I don't think it served us. I don't think it served the Republican Party. I don't think it served the Democratic Party. I feel like if we can't get to this election, this avoidance election, and say something needs to change in the primary process-- God, I hope people are having that conversation. This is not working.  

Beth [00:34:13] So I think all that is really interesting and mostly right. And you see it, the smoke-filled room still exists. It exists around the selection of the vice president and the cabinet. That’s where you really see the power player sitting down and going, okay, what's the balance between what we think is right, what the public will accept? All of the people who've invested a lot in us being satisfied that we're listening to them. That's the smoke-filled room now, the VP and the cabinet room. What I was thinking about when I said, "Would we let her have it," is more can you rise to a level of prominence without being tagged as one or two things at most? Can we the public know and appreciate layers from people once they've hit a certain level of fame. And I feel like with Kamala Harris, we were more open to her layers in the primary than we were when she became the vice president. And we decided the story about Kamala is going to be written in the first month in this office, and how she handles a few media hits in the first month.  

Sarah [00:35:24] Well, the ‘we’ was smaller. The ‘we’ in the primary that was handling, seen processing Kamala was just a smaller group. That's sort of the other problem with the primary. It's such a tiny percentage of the electorate. Maybe direct elections would work if everybody was participating in the primary, but they're not. Or maybe if it was just a national primary. We spent three months getting to know everybody. There were these national debates. We all knew that on this day, everybody's voting in the primary. That might be an evolution that I would agree to. I think that might work because we have this national media environment. And I think that's just the problem right now. I keep coming back to it. I just think the media environment's real broken. It's just really broken right now.  

[00:36:12] And it's so hard to have a sustained conversation about anything in this country to have a sort of shared experience where we are processing. And not that we process it the same, but that we can at least hear the different perspectives about what just happens in some sort of coherent manner. And I don't think it's the end of the world. I think there have been other moments in American history where our media environments were siloed and broken and messed up. And I do think that both media and politics is just hungry for leadership. Just someone that says it's time to decide what's next. And it might not be perfectly right, but we're going to make a call and move forward into that reality.  

Beth [00:36:56] And I think we have someone here today who is trying to do that in her scope of influence.  

Sarah [00:37:01] Yes. We are thrilled to be joined by Representative Mikie Sherrill up next. She is the U.S. representative for New Jersey's 11th congressional district. She's a former U.S. Navy helicopter pilot, attorney, former federal prosecutor, and mother of four. She was a delight to have on our show, and we can't wait for you to hear this conversation.  

[00:37:17] Music Interlude.  

Beth [00:37:26] Representative Sherrill, thank you so much for joining us on Pantsuit Politics. I would love to start by talking with you about your committee service. I know you're on the House Armed Services Committee, and it's a busy time for that committee. So, tell us about what that experience has been like during your tenure in Congress and what we should be keeping our eye on this year?  

Mikie Sherrill [00:37:46] Sure. So, one of the largest employers in my district is Picatinny Arsenal. It's a big economic driver. I'm also a veteran. I was a Navy helicopter pilot and a Russian policy officer for about 10 years in the Navy. I went to the Naval Academy. So, obviously, when I got to Congress, one of the committees I really wanted to serve on was the House Armed Services Committee. And it has been wonderful. It's one of the more bipartisan committees we have in the House. So, it's a committee where you really can get a lot accomplished. I think it's largely my work through the National Defense Authorization Act that has allowed me to be the most effective new Jersey legislator. The National Defense Authorization Act accounts for about half of our nation's budget, and we have to pass it every year.  

[00:38:33] So as you hear of all the legislation that we're attempting to pass and it's so difficult, it is the Defense Act that we have to pass and we have to figure out ways to come together. So, right now, we have passed the Defense Act through committee, meaning that the committee has put together a defense bill and we were able to pass it out of committee. And we worked very hard to keep it largely bipartisan and focused on defense and on our soldiers and sailors. And we had some great success with getting better pay for some of our most junior soldiers and sailors. We really worked hard to get support in for child care, which, as you can imagine, for all of us child care is such a struggle. But believe me, when you are being deployed, when one spouse is being deployed and you're trying to figure that out, it's really critical for the readiness in our armed forces.  

[00:39:23] And then we also added for families this certification plan so that spouses of our service members, as they go from one duty station to the next, can keep their accreditation. Which has been so hard for so many spouses to stay employed as they go from one place to another. So that's been really important. We passed this out. It was great. And, of course, now we arrive to this week where we are seeing, unfortunately, a lot of the culture war amendments being populated into the National Defense Authorization Act. So even though it's almost unanimous out of committee, we're seeing some pretty bad signs in some of the amendments that Republicans are pushing into the bill right now.  

Sarah [00:40:04] What do you make of that? I'm 42, and for so many years I guess there was a certain amount of very high-level disagreement about pieces of our military and the different branches and maybe even spending. But it was still this area of agreement, that this area of-- I think because it felt more reflective of ideas and values than it did even policy. Like, there was just this underlying foundation upon which everything was built. And that does seem to have shifted. That you do find this area of policy, particularly with abortion rights, becoming this battleground in ways I just don't ever remember it being like that before. What do you make of that?  

Mikie Sherrill [00:40:52] I think there are several reasons for that. And, of course, the largest reason, especially when we're talking about women's reproductive health, is because Trump orchestrated the court that overturned Roe. So, while you had certain statutes, maybe on the book, things that we would call trigger laws that would be triggered if Roe was overturned, Roe provided that basic level of protection to all of us. So, whether you were stationed in Corpus Christi, Texas, or Norfolk, Virginia, or Pensacola, Florida, all the jurisdictions I served in, you knew that you had those base level protections that would apply anywhere you served. Unfortunately, now we have women who are being sent to places like Corpus Christi, Texas and Pensacola, Florida, where we are seeing a rollback of all those protections to the point where now in Texas, they have some of the worst reproductive health in the nation. It happened really quickly.  

[00:41:53] Our legislature acted incredibly quickly to protect the rights of women in new Jersey. I'll speak to women, and I spoke to one woman who was pregnant, and she said, "My company's headquarters is in Texas. And while I'm pregnant, I refused to go down there." I spoke to another woman who was pregnant and telling me, "I just had to go on a business trip to Arizona. It was really scary. I was scared to death that something might happen." I've spoken to women in law school who are about to graduate who've said, "I'm only going to take jobs in certain cities in this nation, because I might decide to start a family in the next several years and I want to make sure I have good health care." Well, our service members can't do that. And I was told your next duty station is Pensacola, Florida, or your next duty station is Corpus Christi, Texas, I couldn't say, "Oh, I can't serve there. I'm really concerned about the reproductive health care there." 

[00:42:51] So, that is something that we've moved to address. So, I put forth amendments. I put forth some very basic amendments; some more simply, if you are changing duty stations, then you will receive training or information on what reproductive health services you can expect in that state. What are the laws in that state now that the Supreme Court has thrown all of this back on the states and there are no baseline protections, and what can you expect on the base? Because the base is governed by federal laws that are different. It's Title 10. The base is governed by Title 10. And the Republicans blocked that from being considered. I said that the doctor should at least have that information so they can advise their patients. That was blocked by Republicans for being considered. And then I, of course, did something that I think should happen, which was to say the base should be able to perform abortions.  

[00:43:46] We should have basic reproductive health care protections. If you are willing to serve, if you're willing to die for your country, you should at least get decent health care when you do it, no matter where you serve. That was not considered at all. And then we tried to change it to add an amendment, because right now the protections under Title 10, which is what governs our military bases, are less than the protections that the Biden administration has put in place. These are being challenged in the Supreme Court. But right now, doctors at a basic level can consider the health of the mother or the life of the mother when they're considering whether a woman needs an abortion.  

[00:44:25] So, for example, if the fetus has died and you are suffering severe hemorrhaging, and [inaudible] would say you can act to stabilize the mother's health, you can give that mother an abortion of the dead fetus so that she doesn't get a staph infection, lose her ability to have other children, etc. Now the military protections are only life of the mother. So, unless you assess as a doctor that that woman is about to die, you cannot act. And that's really what we're seeing in some of the draconian laws across the country as well. So even that wasn't considered. So, we are seeing an attack on just basic health care for our service women. And I think it's the overturning of Roe that has triggered all of these really poor protections that we're seeing for service women across the country.  

Beth [00:45:17] When you talk about the rejection of amendments like that, can you take us into the process a little bit and tell us at what level of detail are these things being considered by your colleagues before being rejected? From whom are they hearing and what is that conversation like?  

Mikie Sherrill [00:45:34] So these are being rejected in what we call the Rules Committee. So, the Rules Committee is a small committee of members. And when you see some of the things that are going on in the House right now, things that have I've never seen before, it's often because of the really extremist right wing Rules Committee. And you guys can cry uncle at any time. But you asked for it.  

Sarah [00:46:00] No, this is good.  

Beth [00:46:02] That's right. That's what we want.  

Sarah [00:46:02] Because I think we hear about these deals Kevin McCarthy struck and they get coverage in the moment. But we need to understand the long-term impact of these deals.  

Mikie Sherrill [00:46:10] That is exactly right. This is the deal. And as Kevin McCarthy was hunting votes to be speaker, he cut a deal with far right MAGA extremists in the Republican Party to put them on the Rules Committee, because they knew how much power the Rules Committee has over which bills amendments make it onto the floor of the House for a full House vote. And so, they're controlling that. And so, that's why you've seen it's kind of something that most people aren't tracking, but it's really surprising to see sometimes you hear that Democrats had to save the rule. That's almost unheard of, that a member of the minority party would vote for rule, because that's how the majority party controls the floor. So, in this case, it's in the rules Committee. We have put all the amendments to the bill that go through the Rules Committee because we're voting on this bill, the National Defense Authorization Act on a rule. And so, we put all these amendments through the Rules Committee. And the Rules Committee has been voting down all of the amendments, the ones I've just discussed.  

[00:47:14] Now, I also have an amendment to just put into law what the Secretary of Defense has done, which is to say we can't provide abortions on our basis. That's against the law. But what we can do is we can allow women the ability to travel, to seek abortion care and we can pay for their travel. And that's in regulation. I tried to put that into statute to protect women. That was somehow found out of order in the Rules Committee. However, a Republican Congress person has put in an amendment to take away that ability from the secretary of defense, and that was found in order. So, it's become this really partizan process to strip out all of these types of amendments that would really, I think, support our service women, but allow for the amendments that would really attack service women. And it doesn't stop. This is another issue that's been coming up in our House Armed Services Committee that greatly concerns me. It doesn't stop with reproductive health care, the attacks on women.  

[00:48:18] So, I'll just let you know quickly. Thirty years ago, when I was graduating from the Naval Academy, the combat exclusion laws were lifted. Meaning that before those combat exclusion laws were lifted, many women served in the general unrestricted line community. That acronym was GUL. That's what women were serving in, largely because they were restricted from these combat positions. And so, they could serve on Oilers, but they couldn't serve on destroyers. It was all support positions. And so, you can imagine that if that is the case in our military, you are a second-class citizen. You are not going to be considered a real leader in the military. And so, we overturned those rules 30 years ago, and I directly traced that to having the type of career in the military that would lead to myself and, my former colleague Elaine Luria being the first two women from the Naval Academy to enter into the House of Representatives.  

[00:49:21] It's because of those changes that we now have the first woman who was the commanding officer of an aircraft carrier, she graduated with me in my class. I'm the first woman who was the Chief of Naval Operations and now the first woman on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The first woman who is the superintendent of the Naval Academy. None of this would have been possible if we had not overturned those combat restrictions 30 years ago. And I am telling you now, I am sitting there hearing of Republican attempts to walk that back. It's really something I have not seen. And the attempts to really force women out of combat roles right now is another attack on so many of the things like Roe that many of us thought were settled law. We thought we were just going to continue to move forward.  

[00:50:07] And the really frustrating part about this is these attacks on women's service are really coming at a time when we need to make sure that we are getting our recruitment numbers up. We have an all-volunteer force. So, unless we want to go back to a draft, we simply can't run our volunteer military without the support of women. We can't do the missions. Now, when you go fight in the Middle East and you want to get intelligence, for example, from women, they are not going to speak to a male member of our armed forces. It was the Lioness squad that got a lot of intelligence information on weapons caches, etc. So, these are critical positions that women really have to be a part of. If we are going to be the most effective fighting force, if we are going to recruit, if we are going to support our national security. And the attacks on women in combat positions is also quite concerning to me.  

Sarah [00:51:02] What that speaks to, to me, is that we thought we were having a fight about policy and really what we're having a fight, debate, conversation about is a worldview. A worldview about women's place in not just the military, but the United States government and leadership in our society. And I don't think that very conservative worldview is just present in Congress. I think it's present on the Supreme Court, as we have this new recording of Justice Alito saying that we're in this godly fight for America. Saying the quiet parts out loud, that he is, in fact, not a neutral referee, but something much different. And I know that you have done some work on Supreme Court reform. So, with this another wave of reporting, I don't know how much more we need to learn about, in particular, this justice of the conservative justices and how they see their role on the Supreme Court before we're ready to do something. But talk to us a little bit about that, because I think they're part and parcel together.  

Mikie Sherrill [00:52:09] You guys are asking such great questions and I'm trying to limit myself to keep it together.  

Sarah [00:52:15] Hey, this is not cable TV. You can talk as long as you want.  

Beth [00:52:17] That's right.  

Sarah [00:52:18] We're in charge here.  

Mikie Sherrill [00:52:19] You never [inaudible] a member of Congress. Never. But as we go through these troubling times, these difficult times, it does remind me again and again how impressive our founding fathers were with so many of the things that they thought of and that they did that didn't resonate with me or I didn't think too much about. Now, as we're facing these difficult times, I think, wow, that's why they did that. That's really helpful. I wish we could all get back to that. And I think one of the really scary things that we see going on is this sort of Christian nationalism, because with that comes a worldview of a woman's place, which is second class. Quite frankly, in many, many cases. And we see that in in so many ways. And it is one, I think, of the many reasons that the Founding Fathers wanted that separation of church and state. And we see this really a historic view coming from the far right about the role of religion within our government and this rewriting of the founding fathers.  

[00:53:27] I've seen these speeches on how religious our founding fathers were, and yet that doesn't actually comport with the fact Some of them were deist or agnostic, and really believe that that was separate and should be separate from our government, that we didn't have a state religion. And I think that's really, really important because we have such a multicultural country. We have people from all different backgrounds. It makes us stronger and more resilient and better at what we do. The most innovative country on earth. And yet, we have those who I think would like to walk some of that back and in a really dangerous way. And you're exactly right, I think Alito has that worldview. And I think we see his belief as he sort of seems to be enacting the Heritage Foundation's vision in a really serious way. And bringing up, for example, the FDA mifepristone case, bringing up Comstock.  

[00:54:28] And when we're talking about FDA approval for mifepristone, he's trying to insert this line into the cases so he can start banning the mailing of abortion drugs, which is how many people have abortions across the country. And so, you see him trying to insert some of this stuff into the cases to sort of have our Supreme Court jurisprudence comport more with his world view, not with what our laws and statutes are. That's really dangerous. As we watch him, though, you have to wonder who is in his ear, seeing the flags and seeing that he was part of the Stop the Steal group or the Christian Nationalist flag. You wonder who are who are the people that he's listening to? And you don't have to wonder for too long because we know what the evidence is. That Paul Singer, a large Republican donor, had him on his private plane flying him to Alaska for a fishing trip at $1,000 a night hotel, all expenses paid.  

[00:55:35] And then we realized that because of a court case that Justice Alito decided and did not recuse himself from, that Paul Singer made over $2 billion on that court decision. So, we see the quid pro quo very clearly, and you start to wonder, well, then why is Justice Alito making certain decisions? Who's funding those decisions, which donors and why? And so, that's why I'm on some legislation that would give ethics training to the court, because obviously, Justice Alito, Justice Thomas and their wives desperately need some ethics training about what the rules and regulations are. And it's not just about impropriety. It's also when you're in public service about the appearance of impropriety. And so they need to have a refresher course on ethics very clearly, but also an independent investigatory agency that could look into this conduct and weigh in. Because we have been relying on the court to police itself, and they're simply not up to the job, obviously.  

Beth [00:56:46] I'm reminded, as we're having this conversation, that you flipped a Republican district and have been written about extensively as one of the centrists in the House Democratic Caucus. I think whenever we talk about court reform, there is sometimes like a skittishness about that from Democrats, because it can so easily be framed by Republicans as being about ideology, not about the way that the court functions. And so, I'd love for you to get into the details a little bit more, especially about that independent oversight body. That seems to me to be something that anyone, regardless of their ideology, could appreciate, and something that we have for everything else in government. But I think people don't quite understand Chief Justice Roberts role and the scope of that role, and how there isn't a boss of the Supreme Court to make sure the court is doing what it's supposed to be doing.  

Mikie Sherrill [00:57:39] Correct. And so, when you have a lot of organizations, federal organizations, you have an independent investigatory unit. So, for example, if you're in the Navy, you have the NCIS. They investigate wrongdoing within the military because it's difficult if you would just rely on the certain members of the military, certain admirals, or if you would rely on a police force because the military is not always domestic. There are things that go on bases overseas, etc. So, you have these independent investigations unit. We have that in so many different areas, the IG or others to independently investigate what's going on, even if they're part of the federal government. And that's what we're saying that the Supreme Court needs is that independent body. Because the Supreme Court, you have Chief Justice Roberts, but really, he's first among equals, really. So, they come together to determine what the rules are. And it sounds as if they've been having discussions about this, but cannot agree on what the rules should be.  

[00:58:41] And so, to me that signals, one, they need a refresher course on ethics. I can't say it enough, because it's pretty obvious that Justice Alito and Justice Thomas should be recusing themselves from certain cases because they are very biased. Having received compensation in the form of RVs or luxurious trips by certain people that have, as we say, a dog in the fight on some of these court cases. They should recuse themselves. I was a federal prosecutor. That's a little bit like jurisprudence 101. And the fact that he seems a little bit shocked that anyone would question whether or not he should be weighing in on these cases, it's crazy.  

[00:59:22] Nobody should be questioning whether or not he should be weighing in on these cases. They should know that he should not be weighing in those cases. There's really not much of a question here. So, they obviously need some ethics training. But then also this independent body that can investigate it, come up with recommendations from the outside, present that to Congress because then Congress can understand is the Supreme Court being policed well? Do people need to recuse themselves? And where do we go from here if that is not the case? I would also say it is time we really take a hard look at term limits for the Supreme Court.  

Sarah [00:59:57] Yeah, that's exactly what I was just going to say. 

Mikie Sherrill [01:00:00] We have these lifetime terms, and we have those largely because we thought that would make the court apolitical. We thought that by not having to run for election or--  

Sarah [01:00:13] Be accountable to anyone at any time.  

Mikie Sherrill [01:00:17] You could just be ethical. You could you could sort of be in this ivory tower of a very ethical people that would just weigh in based on the rule of law, based on statutes, based on precedent. But here we have justices who before Congress said that they thought Roe was settled law and then went and overturned it. So that alone speaks of something wrong going in there. But I think that at this point, like in so many things, you put statutes in place. They're very good for very good reasons, but over time people start to game the system or the situation on the ground changes. And so, the law itself needs to be updated. So, I think at this point we have people gaming the system. We have people saying, "Oh, I'm going to put these very, very, very young justices in. They're going to be in forever. I'm going to do it this way.".  

[01:01:06] If you're Mitch McConnell, I'm just going to completely have no shame whatsoever and not let a president appoint a Supreme Court justice, even though he is the president of the United States, and by our tradition should do that. And then completely ignore that thought when I'm in charge. So, you have all of these things going on. I think it's time that we say, okay, this has become too politicized and we don't want a political Supreme Court. So, at this point we're going to have term limits. And that way we're going to ensure that each president appoints a certain number of Supreme Court justices no matter what. And we can continue to move forward in that way and see if that doesn't get some better results. I think it's one area and certainly I'm happy to think about others. But I really think we have to move forward in a different way here.  

Beth [01:01:55] That is difficult and serious work, and I just wonder what it feels like to be attempting that difficult, serious work at a difficult, serious time for the world. And then being in a committee process where your amendments die with someone like my representative, Thomas Massie taking a cursory look at them, and hearing conversation about rolling back the combat restrictions for women. What is it like to try to be a serious legislator in the House of Representatives at this time? How are you feeling about the general body and where you might go in your next term?  

Mikie Sherrill [01:02:36] I think it's hard for some people to understand what some of this feels like to a woman of reproductive age, or maybe slightly past it. I think it's hard to understand what it feels like when you hear that, sure, you're fine in new Jersey, but you probably shouldn't go live in certain states. You probably shouldn't take a job in certain states, no matter how lucrative it is. I don't think people quite understand how threatening it feels and how hard it is to understand that if there is a kind of citizenship that is 100%, you start to feel like your citizenship is is bleeding down into the 80s at some point. That you now don't have full rights in the entire country, that you don't have full protections, and that you're in the midst of a time when there's no sense that those rights have stabilized or that they won't get worse. And that's what I'm afraid of as well, because it sounds like Republicans are, in many cases, trying to institute nationwide abortion bans.  

[01:03:54] And then that is compounded if you have a child. So, you're looking at your children-- and I think a lot about my daughters, but it's my sons too. What if they get married and want to move somewhere and they can't take a job because they know that their spouse’s life might be in danger if she chooses to get pregnant? It just starts to really limit opportunity and options in a way that feels incredibly threatening. And then just as you're sort of coming to terms with how horrible that is, and the fact that the former president says he's going to do pregnancy checks where you have legislators in Texas saying, "If we find that you've been driving on a certain county road and you're going to get an abortion, we're going to arrest you." Or you hear that women are going in, as I described earlier, and this is not a one off or one court case, these are many women coming forward saying, "I went to the doctor's office with a miscarriage as I'm bleeding, and they said, go home because I'm bleeding."  

[01:04:53] It's just hard to understand. And then as you're just trying to get your head wrapped around that and what you might do about that, then you start to see these attacks elsewhere. So, you feel that it's not just an accidental outcome from Roe being overturned, it is actually a concerted effort to limit the rights of women. So, to then go into the National Defense Authorization Act and try to limit the roles that women can have in our military. And I don't think it'll end there either. I think it is this, I would say, a very far right Christian nationalist attempt to put women into a certain role that is something that I thought we had successfully fought to achieve more equality in this country. I mean, contraception. The one area I was successful I will say is getting a yearlong prescription for contraception instead of just three months. But the talk that there is an amendment by the far right to end contraception for women in the National Defense Authorization Act-- and my grandmother had eight children. I mean, I couldn't be in Congress with eight children. I can barely do it with four.  

[01:06:05] But [inaudible] there's no way. I mean, just the sense that I somehow shouldn't be able to determine when and how I want to start my family and whether or not I want to have a career and how that might impact my kids and all the difficulties so-- I mean, man, it's hard to be a working parent right now. And so, to think that you're going to then add on to it, that you're not going to have much of a choice, you're going to have to just have as many children as it happens. It's shocking to think of all of these things. And they're coming so fast that it's like the minute we think of this horrible outcome, it happens. And it's so difficult.  

Sarah [01:06:47] Well, I think the work you're doing of-- it's dehumanizing this view of women. It's like you said repeatedly, it's not just a less than citizen, it's a less than a person. And I just think there is a special place in heaven reserved for the female legislators like you, who stand up in these committee meetings and say, you will look me in the face. If you're going to vote it out anyway, you're not going to do it without looking me in the face and understanding that I see what you're doing, and I know what it means, and I'm going to fight it every step of the way. And so, just thank you. Thank you for doing that hard, important work not only for the women of new Jersey or the women in the military, but for the women of the United States.  

Mikie Sherrill [01:07:27] Well, thank you both, because I think that the good news is how I think united women across the country have been and our colleagues. I was just having a very intense discussion on the floor of the House about what we were going to do about abortion rights with Pat Ryan. So, we have these fantastic colleagues, not just women, but our male colleagues who are fighting side by side with us to push back against this. One thing that frustrated me was we were fighting tooth and nail to keep these minimal protections of Roe, and they were eroding every year.  

[01:08:06] I will tell you, in the aftermath of Roe being overturned, to see the broader understanding of why these rights have been so important to us, I think we're actually going to end up in a better, stronger place with the protections we will achieve over time. It will take time, but I actually think we are going to-- now that we understand what a world without Roe looks like, how bad it is quite frankly, and how dangerous it is for the health outcomes of women, and all of the work that now women across the country are doing, I think we will actually find ourselves at the end of the day in a much better, a much stronger place. But it just is going to take time to build actually that. But that's why back at you, because it's programs like these. It's people across the nation continuing to advocate for these things that I think makes it so powerful.  

Beth [01:08:58] Thank you so much, Representative Sherrill. We would love to have you back any time to discuss the work that you're doing. And good luck getting the NDAA across the finish line in a good place.  

Mikie Sherrill [01:09:07] Well, thank you both so much. I really do appreciate it and have a great one.  

[01:09:11] Music Interlude.  

Sarah [01:09:21] Beth, summer is the time for class reunions, and this year is our 25th high school reunion.  

Beth [01:09:32] That's rude.  

Sarah [01:09:33] We graduated high school 25 years ago. Like, a whole grown person years ago.  

Beth [01:09:40] I don't like anything about this.  

Sarah [01:09:43] It's wild though, right?  

Beth [01:09:44] It's very wild. It's so hard to think about. That is the kind of number that my parents talked about when I was a kid. And I thought, that's so old, that's so long. And now I'm like, well, that wasn't that long ago. It happened so fast.  

Sarah [01:09:57] My parents are going to their 50th high school reunion this summer.  

Beth [01:10:02] Yeah. 

Sarah [01:10:05] Whee! So, I woke up a few months ago, and our little high school reunion committee had, like, planned the whole entire thing. I went to bed early and somebody woke up and was like, hey, should we do this? Like, throwing it together last minute? But I have put myself in charge of contacting everyone. Last time our 20th, we really depended on Facebook and so many people just never heard about it. And I'm obsessed with getting in touch with every single person and getting emails. And I'm going to send an actual paper invite because we had the most amazing time at our 20th. It took me by surprise. That's how delighted I was at the experience. Because I think it's been so long, everybody had just mellowed. There wasn't that undercurrent of like insecurity and competition and all that that fed previous reunions. Everybody was just so happy to be there together that now I'm like, okay, I have to find everybody, and everyone must come. Even though some people have been like, I'm not coming, but thank you.  

Beth [01:11:13] On behalf of them, I would just like to encourage you to say, okay, I understand.  

Sarah [01:11:19] I know. I definitely am not like, "You have to come." But I have tried to say to people like, hey, if you've never been to one, give it a chance or at least just think about it because it's not what you think it is, it's a totally different experience than I was expecting. And I've been to several. I've been to almost every single one we've ever had since I moved back to Paducah. But the last one, the 20th, was just a totally different ballgame.  

Beth [01:11:44] Well, I think that is lovely that you are excited about it and giving yourself responsibilities to make it as wonderful as possible. I cannot imagine going to any class reunion. I think there are a bunch of things at work here. Okay. First of all, I just don't like a big party ever. I like small parties. I like small, intimate parties. I connect better with people one on one. I do not work a room well. I still at this age-- like I can do it, but I still have moments where I'm like, how do I gracefully exit this conversation that we both are done with, but neither of us wants to just be like, "Well, that was fun, bye." So, I don't like that kind of environment. I also feel a lot of ways about high school and college.  

[01:12:35] I think I feel a sense of regret about people I wish I had stayed in touch with and didn't. I think I feel like some big kinds of traumatic events are attached to those times of my life in ways that felt kind of lonely to me instead of communal. And so, going back brings that stuff up, but there's no one to really share that with, so it just makes it feel lonely all over again to think about. And so, I have truly enjoyed this year, reconnecting one on one with some folks from high school. And I think I'm going to continue to try to do that. But the prospect of rolling into my hometown for a 25th reunion sounds real tough to me.  

Sarah [01:13:23] And you've never been to one?  

Beth [01:13:24] No.  

Sarah [01:13:24] Yeah. It's so interesting to me because I think the reason I'm so obsessed with reaching out to everyone, because I think it is so impactful for someone to just say, hey, we want to see you there. Like that sense of we remember you, you are wanted. Like we had a friend who she was our basketball homecoming queen and our football homecoming queen, but she just wasn't on social media. Nobody had stayed in touch with her. I tracked her down like the FBI, let me tell you. And she was communicating with her husband, who was, in fact, on Facebook. She was like, "Thank you so much. It means so much that you missed me. You missed me and you wanted to see me there." I definitely get the big parties. That's not my favorite aspect of it either. I was super skeptical of the location my friends picked last time, but I was wrong. Mea culpa they picked the Moose Lodge, but it was like small enough.  

[01:14:20] And I think the key was it felt like the places we gathered in high school. It felt like those like dinky community centers we used to have parties at in middle school and we danced. And I was telling my friend, I'm like, "Man, when you dance to the songs with the people you danced to the songs with, it just hits different." It's not like a wedding. It's not like those other parties you go to where they put on Tootsee Roll and everybody gets excited. It's just wild. And I totally think you can capture that by reconnecting one on one. But I do think there is just something really-- it brings tears to my eyes. I mean, high school is definitely traumatic for me too. I mean, I had a high school shooting. But if there's just something so special about being in a room with people you shared that singular experience with, even people who were assholes then, like, I don't even know how to describe it, but it felt like weirdly healing to just be together and be like, we did it.  

[01:15:26] There was that aspect of what we always talk about on the show, like, I just love it here. We've all just gotten to the point-- at least the people who came to the reunion-- that were just very in their I-just-love-it- here, and I love that we were here together during this time. And I love that I get to see your face full of wrinkles and age, and we get to talk about our kids like, oh, I'm telling you, I'm about to cry right now. It just was so special. But I think any way you can find to reconnect one on one, or just to share with the people you shared that time with is so special.  

Beth [01:15:58] Yeah, I will say I definitely am in my I-love-it-here era. There is not a person that I can name who I would be sad to run into in a restaurant or something, or I would feel awkward about. I would be truly happy to see anybody. I just think I would be happier to see them like at a restaurant with just the two of us, or in passing.  

Sarah [01:16:26] You could just be a lurker. You could just go to the weekend and just show up at the restaurants and be like, "Well, hey, I'm here to see my parents."  

Beth [01:16:31] Well, I have even less than no desire to do that. But the thing that you said that connected more with me than anything else you've said-- because most of it doesn't. But the thing that really resonates with me is that sense of like reaching out to say, I want you to be here. Because I just got a text message from someone, I went to high school with saying, "I'm getting married this summer and I really want you to come." I have not seen her since high school. I have not physically been in a room with her since high school. And getting a text message saying, "I would really love for you to be at my wedding," touched me so deeply. It also made me think of a Twitter thread that I meant to talk to you about that I saw the other day from people who were saying that they stopped going to their churches, and no one ever reached out to say, "Is something going on? We miss you. What can we do? Can I come see you?" Nothing. And how much it hurts when people who you have some expectation would like to be with you when they don't say anything.  

Sarah [01:17:34] There's just too much of a cultural narrative that people want to be home. That we all have anxiety about events, that I really just want to control my environment because of anxiety or XYZ. I'm not saying any of that's not true. And varying levels for very different people, going out into the world around other people comes with risk and difficulties on their own. And also, I think we've established we need each other. And so, in any environment, I think that we are starting a little bit from scratch. Church, school, weddings, reunions. And it has to be someone coming to you in a text and an email in person saying, "I want you to be there. I want you to come."  

[01:18:20] Because I think through Covid or a lot of different cultural changes, we have internalized the message that it doesn't matter if we're there, it just doesn't matter. And it does matter if you're there. And it really, really matters not just because of what you get from the event, but because your presence at the event is a part of the whole. That's the thing. I'm not saying everybody has to go to their class reunion, or everybody has to go to church, or everybody has to go to every wedding or funeral they're invited to. But we've internalized an idea that we're the consumers. And that we're not consumers, we're a part of the community that is the foundation of this event. And so, to just say, "What do I get out of it? If it's not enough, I'm not coming," ignores the other part of that, that your presence is a part of the whole. And it matters. It really, really matters.  

Beth [01:19:13] Yeah. I think in addition to that sense that people want to avoid or control our social situations, we just operate from this baseline of we should leave each other alone and stay out of each other's business. If they want to tell me why they stopped coming, they will. Or if they want to invite me to something, they will but I shouldn't make the outreach. We were on a vacation recently with the couple that is now like our best friends. Our kids call them our best friend family. It's like we just have gained bonus relatives because we're all so close. When they first moved here for about a year, we were discussing this together. It felt like we were dating as friends, you know what I mean? Inviting them to do anything felt like asking them to the prom. And making that invitation to go on vacation together the first time was scary and hard. And you just have to know that everybody is dealing with some of that awkwardness. So, it's such a gift to your community that you're willing to be the person who reaches out and says, I would love for you to be here.  

Sarah [01:20:16] I don't leave people alone. I really haven't ever in my whole life. And it served me really well. I don't know if it's because I'm an only child, but I have never internalized the message, even though it has caused conflict in my own extended family, that I should leave people alone. That's not a value I have. I don't leave people alone. It's just not my way. And even with, like, couple friends, I was thinking about your trip to the beach with your friends, and I just was thinking, like, with Nicholas and I, we've never not had couple friends. My best friend and her husband fell in love at the exact same time that Nicholas and I fell in love in college. We have always been together in this situation, like just locked up together.  

[01:20:55] Even at other points in my life, I just get up in people's business. I want to come. I want you to come. I'll push you to come if you don't want to come. I don't know. The stakes are high here, guys, with each other and with life. And maybe this is the summer energy too, because I feel like summer is big and hot, and we're all together all the time. But I love it here and I love it here because you're there too. I guess that's the other part of the sentence for me. I don't love it here to hang out by myself. Although, I do like to hang out by myself. I just love it here. And what I love the most about being here is being with other people. And I've never regretted that. I've never regretted sort of just getting all up in it with other people.  

Beth [01:21:42] I think that what I want to offer in this segment, for people who are maybe more like me about reunions than you, is that it doesn't have to be backward looking to have that sense of cultivation. It doesn't have to be nostalgic. You can still love it here and gather with people and build on a forward-looking basis sort of the community that feels right to you. You, Sarah, are unusually rooted, right? You live in your hometown. You're friends with a lot of people you knew in high school. You married someone from college. Your best friend family is from college and fell in love at the same time. That is an unusual set of experiences for a lot of people now.  

[01:22:25] And so, for those of us who don't have those facts operating for us and who do feel some tension with the past, or like we've become a different person than we were then, or there's some pain associated with it, whatever it is, I think that the risk taking IN your advice to be the person who says, "I really want you to be here, or I really missed you when you weren't here, or I would really love to do this with you," is so joyful as you start to put it in practice. I feel like I'm that person now who says, let's get together, let's do a thing. I will host it. I want you to come. And even though I am a very introverted person, I love having that role and I love what that has done in my life.  

Sarah [01:23:10] Well, into your comment on the church thread, I wish churches would start back with the homecomings. Did you have homecoming at church growing up?  

Beth [01:23:16] We did have homecomings. There was a lot of food, a lot of singing. So much singing. Yeah.  

Sarah [01:23:23] So much food, yes. It was like a class reunion for church, guys. And I think we should start that up again. It was good. It was outside. There was lots of fried chicken and potato salad, and it was just like another beautiful moment where we said, hey, remember that we used to do this together all the time? I would go back to the Baptist church I grew up at, even though I'm like mad at them half the time still. I would go back if they had a homecoming because I think it's just so special. And maybe this is just as I age, it gets more and more precious to me to see the people that composed such a huge part of my life. So just more homecomings, more reunions. And I don't care if it's like a yoga class, like find a reason to reunite with people.  

Beth [01:24:03] I think it's always good when it's true to have a chance to say some things just change and are over or we've moved on, but this isn't that complicated. Like, I could go back to the church I grew up in and it truly wouldn't be that complicated. It would just be like, oh, I moved away, but here I am to have some chicken and cake with everybody. And what a great time. And how lucky I am to feel that way about this, that I've just moved on from it, not that it is hurtful. And I think you're right, whether it's people used to do yoga with or people you used to work with. I feel that way now when I see people from my old job. The more distance I have from it, the more I savor the chance to be with people I used to work with. Because that's not that complicated for me.  

Sarah [01:24:55] Summer reunions, guys, that's what we're doing this year. We're getting cobbler. We're reuniting. We don't care if it's a class reunion. We don't care what it is. Just go out there and reunite over some chicken and some cobbler. That's what I'm saying.  

Beth [01:25:09] And/or just start to cultivate the people that you would want to reunite with later in life. Just start to make those new connections that feel really right to you.  

Sarah [01:25:20] Thank you so much Representative Sherrill for joining us today. We will be back in your ears this Friday with another new episode of The Nuanced Life. Don't forget to check our show notes for information about how you can join our live group chats during the presidential debate next week. And until then, keep it nuanced y'all.  

[01:25:34] 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. Emily Helen Olson. Barry Kaufman. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. The Pentons. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Amy Whited. Lee Chaix McDonough. Morgan McHugh. Jen Ross. Sabrina Drago. Becca Dorval. Christina Quartararo. Shannon Frawley. Jessica Whitehead. Samantha Chalmers. Crystal Kemp. Megan Hart. The Lebo Family. The Adair Family. Genny Francis. Leighanna Pillgram-Larsen. The Munene Family.  

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