Are We Preserving Buildings or Building A Society?

DHS gets a new leader, the Senate passes a housing bill that misses the point, and Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month

The night before this episode I had a nightmare that Nicholas sold our house without our knowledge and we were forced to live in our previous house. It is a dream I have a lot and I am hysterical every time.

Believe me, when I say that I understand the desire to make a home that is safe, stable, and comfortable for your family. We have set an incredibly high expectation around home ownership in America and have failed at every junction to make it achievable for the majority of Americans. I’m glad that Congress is finally paying attention to this episode but I hope what you hear in our conversation is that it’s going to take a lot more than that to find a way for every American to have a home.

Not a house, a home. Some homes will be rented. Some homes will be made in a factory. Some homes will be built behind houses that hold single families.

Everyone deserves a home no matter what it looks like. George Bailey be damned. -Sarah

Topics Discussed

• DHS Nominee Markwayne Mullin Confirmation Hearing

• Housing in America

• Outside of Politics: Colorectal Cancer Awareness with Jessica Lotz

Want more Pantsuit Politics? Subscribe to ensure you never miss an episode and get access to our premium shows and community.

Episode Resources

• Rand Paul confronts Markwayne Mullin over ‘snake’ remarks: ‘Tell it to my face’ (YouTube)

• WATCH: Sen. Paul asks DHS nominee Mullin if he believes violence can resolve political differences (PBS News)

• Abundance | Book by Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson | Official Publisher Page | Simon & Schuster

• The Abundance Agenda (People’s Policy Project)

• Lighting a Candle (Our tribute to Rebekah Hardwick Massmann)

  Join Us in Minneapolis!

Episode Transcript

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

Beth [00:00:09] This is Beth Silvers. You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. Today, we are going to talk about the Department of Homeland Security, which has been mostly shut down for over a month and its likely new leader, Senator Markwayne Mullin. Then we’re going to talk about affordability and housing. Why is it so hard to buy a house in America? Why is so hard insure that house? And will a new bipartisan Senate bill help those problems? Then Outside of Politics, We’re going to do something pretty different today. March is colorectal cancer awareness month. A beloved longtime Pantsuit Politics listener, Rebecca Hardwick-Massman passed away in February from colon cancer. Another listener, Brooke, asked us to share more about screening. And a college friend, Jessica Lotz, just went through diagnosis and treatment. So Jessica is joining us today to very generously share her story and encourage all of us who are in our mid-40s to go get that colonoscopy.

Sarah [00:01:06] If you haven’t already, make sure you get your ticket to our Minneapolis live show and after party in August. We are so excited to be in the city and to be supporting some local businesses, hearing from local leaders about what the city has been through this year. We’re also going to have a lot of fun. We’re going to play Mahjong. We’re going to do all kinds of special things. You do not want to miss this live event and the incredible weekend that surrounds it. You can learn more and get tickets through the link in the show notes.

Beth [00:01:33] Next up, let’s talk about Markwayne Mullin.

Sarah [00:01:34] I don’t want to.

Beth [00:01:45] You don’t want to talk about Markwayne?

Sarah [00:01:46] I don’t like him.

Beth [00:01:48] Okay.

Sarah [00:01:49] We can start there. He’s a hothead.

Beth [00:01:54] He’s a hothead.

Sarah [00:01:55] I mean, that’s the takeaway from these confirmation hearings. He’s a hothead.

Beth [00:01:59] He was consistently described as both a hothead and a good hang. Like people really like him or they really, really don’t, as our Senator Rand Paul really, really doesn’t.

Sarah [00:02:08] Yeah, Senator Paul don’t like him because he mouthed off about-- listen, Senator Paul is still carrying so much trauma from this attack from his neighbor. It comes up a lot. I think he needs some therapy. I think he is right to be angry that Senator Mullen was basically like didn’t have kind things to say about this attack, hasn’t had really forceful, ethical, moral things to stay about political violence generally. And so to put him in charge of this paramilitary force, listen, it raises some concerns.

Beth [00:02:41] If you haven’t seen it, let’s just give you a taste of how Senator Paul who chairs the Homeland Security Committee in the Senate, opened his hearing with Senator Mullin.

Clip: Sen. Rand Paul [00:02:51] You told the media that I was a freaking snake and that you completely understood why I had been assaulted. I was shocked that you would justify and celebrate this violent assault that caused me so much pain and my family so much painful. I just wonder if someone who applauds violence against their political opponents is the right person to lead an agency that has struggled to accept limits to the proper use of force.

Beth [00:03:16] It might be helpful to know too, that Senator Mullin was late for this hearing. So Rand Paul gavels it in and is like I guess we’ll start when he comes. I think he’s doing media in the hallway.

Sarah [00:03:29] Oh no. But you know what else? They voted it through their committee.

Beth [00:03:34] So, which Senator Paul knew the whole time. He was like I’m going to be courteous to the White House. I’m going to schedule this quickly. I’m going to schedule the vote fast. We’re going to do it. I accept the outcome here, but I’m not voting for him. And I’m going to let everybody know why.

Sarah [00:03:46] Okay, well, I respect that.

Beth [00:03:49] I do too. And I respect that Senator Paul has connected this very personal beef he has to a broader issue with the department that Mullin is going to go run. I mean, DHS is in crisis in a lot of ways, right?

Sarah [00:04:02] So many ways.

Beth [00:04:04] You have 280,000 people working without pay right now. The reporting on TSA lines, airport saying you need to come four hours in advance. People missing a full paycheck, it’s bad.

Sarah [00:04:17] I don’t need the reporting. I’ve encountered some of these TSA lines. Pre-check lines- bad.

Beth [00:04:24] It’s a mess out there. And we’re not making any progress in Congress because Democrats have said, we’re not going to take your word for it. Democrats I think are kind of like Markwayne Mullin is not our issue here. Markwayne Mullin is a person, he’s fine. Most of us like him. He’s probably as good as it’s going to get as a nominee from this president.

Sarah [00:04:46] That’s probably fair.

Beth [00:04:48] And also, we need laws to restrain what we just saw happen with ICE and Customs and Border Patrol. And I think that they’re right about that.

Sarah [00:04:57] Yeah, well and it’s still happening. What happened? What past tense? Still happening. They’re still out there snatching people. They’re still out there wearing masks. They are still out there disrespecting just like the most basic boundaries around unlawful search and seizure. They’re harassing American citizens and protesters. It’s all still happening. I’m so glad what’s his head with the crazy coat that looks like a Nazi is retiring, but that doesn’t really fix it. I’m glad Kristi Noem is gone. Also, doesn’t fix it!

Beth [00:05:29] Crazy coat is I think Gregory Bovino.

Sarah [00:05:31] Yeah, that’s him. He’s retiring, right?

Beth [00:05:33] He’s retiring and he should still be investigated. His retirement should not preclude any investigation of his individual conduct or what he did on behalf and at the instruction of others. All of this is worthy of intense review. This is the first government shutdown where I have felt like Democrats are squarely in the right, both in substance and tactics. I don’t want this shutdown, but I appreciate that Democrats have said, look, we’re happy to fund everything except ICE and CBP until we get these laws. Let’s go ahead, let’s fund FEMA. Let’s fund TSA. Let’s not hold TSA agents hostage in the middle of this. But if you all stand behind your immigration agenda, let’s isolate the issue. Let’s deal on this issue only. And I think that’s the right thing to do. And I think they are absolutely correct that any assurance from anyone, future official or current official means nothing with this administration.

Sarah [00:06:30] No, you can’t depend on anything they say. I even like some of the things Markwayne Mullin is saying. I like that he’s going to improve the grant process that she held hostage and that definitely prevented some of the disaster relief funds getting through. I like it that he said, “My goal at six months is that we’re not the lead story every single day.” I would also like that, Senator Mullin. I would like that so very much. I don’t know if I can trust you. Senator Paul doesn’t trust you. And the fact that you had some weird time in war zones that you never disclosed in all this time that you’re running for office also does not engender trust with me. So every day is different. Every day is new. Every day’s a new level of corruption and lies. And I’m glad that his Senate colleagues like him and seem to trust him to a certain extent, at least some of them, but only time will tell.

Beth [00:07:23] Well, I think part of what you saw in this hearing is that he’s still going to work for Donald Trump. So he put some space between himself and Kristi Noem, not explicitly, but in terms of policy. He definitely did not put space between himself and the president, and he can’t, right? I heard people analyzing, why didn’t he just say, Rand Paul, I’m sorry. Oops, my bad, shouldn’t have said this. Because Donald Trump would hate that, that’s why. He can’t roll over on anything. He wouldn’t even say he was sorry about what he said about Alex Preti. He said he regretted it. He shouldn’t have come out so fast. He called Alex Pretti though, a deranged person. He was towing the line from DHS, but he can’t say I figured that what this administration was saying was true and that I could rely on their talking points and it wasn’t. He can’t say that. And he can’t say I’m really sorry because that will get clipped and the president will see that clip and hate it. And so even if you have personal confidence in him, even if you think this is a good guy who I like and enjoy, and even if you confirm him, which they will, and I guess that’s fine, I’m not opposed to him personally, he seems like an improvement on much of the existing cabinet, you do need these laws. You need something tighter than a gentleman’s agreement here.

Sarah [00:08:39] Because they’re not gentlemen. I mean, I’m going to say that as plainly as I can. Well, and here’s the thing. I was just reading this piece in the Wall Street Journal about the truly historic level of retirements happening this year in Congress. The largest number of retirement since they’ve measured them. They’re not all Republicans, but so many of them are. And it’s because of that. There’s just no room to be an independent person. You have no free will. Your will is beholden to Donald Trump. And they’re going to follow him right off this cliff. Doesn’t matter how unpopular he gets, doesn’t matter how high gas prices get. Like there just can be no daylight. I am so interested to see what happens with Thomas Massie, people who are like, no, I’m going to stay and fight to see what happens. But even Thomas Massie sometimes twists himself in knots to say, well, I don’t like this part of Donald Trump, the fact that he’s coming after me, but other parts of his agenda I like.

Beth [00:09:34] I just had the fourth visit to my house on behalf of Thomas Massie, this election cycle. And again, I’ve lived here 20 years in August. This is the first time someone from the Massie campaign has come to our door and we’ve had four visits. So you can tell he’s worried. Like they think it’s going to be tight. And a lot of his mailers are like look at how consistently I have voted with this president’s agenda. The only time I deviate from him is when he’s trying to do something that is corrupt or that puts us in another terrible war. Look, I’m going to vote for him. I think he’s right about those issues. I am going to vote in that Republican primary and support him. I have no qualms about it. And also, what a mess this is. I think it’s a convergence of factors for members of Congress. Because again, Donald Trump by himself couldn’t create this. It is the convergence of Donald Trump with donors, with a media echo chamber that turns the base, the local base, the local parties, into henchmen of Trump. If you look at some of what’s happening in Kentucky’s local Republican parties, it’s bananas. It’s bananas. And everybody had agency, but they’ve given it away. And I think all those factors have become a stranglehold on these members where it’s a job that just sucks now.

Sarah [00:10:53] Which is why Markwayne Mullin is trying to get himself a new one. And it looks like he’ll be successful.

Beth [00:10:59] Converging factors leading to a difficult predicament is maybe the best segue we could have to our next topic. We’re going to talk next about housing in the United States. Sarah, I was taking a look at some numbers and realizing that I have no handle whatsoever on the state of housing right now because all the numbers are shocking to me. The numbers that houses in my neighborhood are selling for now is shocking to be. I’ve lived here 20 years. I can’t believe what houses on my street costs now. The typical home in the United States cost about $400,000 and that is laughably low to people who live in metropolitan areas, states on the coast, and it is still so much money and so much more than most people can afford, especially at the beginning of their careers.

Sarah [00:12:01] Well, you can tell it’s a crisis because Congress is paying attention. A big housing bill passed through the Senate has to be reconciled with one in the House. And it goes after all kinds of things that I think sound good. And really to me signal that the federal government, and even Donald Trump has tried to sign some executive orders around this, are picking up on the fact that this isn’t working. Something is really broken within the housing situation in America. And it’s not just the cost of housing. It’s not just the price of rent. It’s homelessness. It’s the fact that people are sleeping in their cars, sleeping on the streets. There’s almost nowhere in America, especially large metropolitan areas, that you don’t encounter some sort of small to medium encampment. It just continues to be a massive problem.

Beth [00:12:58] And so this bipartisan agreement around this problem has become partly the abundance agenda. So the ideas that Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson wrote about in their book last year, that we need to relax some of our regulations. We need to make it easier and faster for people to build things because we are not building enough right now. And I think the other big piece that has made it into this federal legislation that there’s some consensus around is that we want people to own houses not giant companies. And so this institutional investor restriction is a big part of the bill, and it’s something that even made it into Trump’s State of the Union, that he was saying we want to prevent Wall Street from owning all of Main Street. And again, that sounds really good. And it is a very small part of a much larger story.

Sarah [00:13:48] I think to the relaxing regulations, there’s some things in here that are good, but it still ignores the reality that so many zoning regulations are local. So it is a massive lift to address all these zoning regulations at the local level that really put all our chips, we have put all of our chips on single-family homes. And I don’t just mean as the housing solution, I mean as the wealth building solution. And it has failed us. And I think so much of this orientation still wants to push everything in that direction. Look, I know it sounds good. I hate private equity. There are so many parts of the financialization of America and the bigness of corporate agglomerations and mergers that I really hate. And so it’s easy to read this and be like, yeah, people should own their homes. But that’s not true. We don’t get out of where we are, which we just don’t have enough units and we don’t have dense enough housing without institutional investors building. It could be a path to affordability. It could a path more units and not necessarily units that people own. I mean, I think we’re so obsessed with home ownership in America. I think about it every year at Christmas time when I watch It’s a Wonderful Life, which is basically just home ownership propaganda that we’ve made this the path to like retirement and wealth building.

[00:15:28] But there are European countries where Germany has like a massive long-term rental market. A huge percentage of their housing is built on really stable leases and rental agreements. And you build retirement other ways because it’s just this sort of self-fulfilling, self-feeding cycle. So I know I’m so locked in, I love my house, I don’t want to leave. But like I’m still locked in because I got this crazy low interest rate over the pandemic. Or you have generationally the statistics around like how much the baby boomers own in housing wealth. This was like a report from Redfin I found when I was researching for the show. Older homeowners hold more real estate wealth than ever. Homeowner’s age 70 plus possessed 26% of the real estate wealth in the country. And 20 years ago, that was 16%. So in even 55 to 69, they hold 35%. So you’re talking about 55+ holds half of the real estate wealth in this country. Because we’ve built this system that rewards grabbing it, keeping it against all sort of desire to move, desire to upgrade, whatever. It’s a mess. And I don’t think the institutional investor ban is going to get to that.

Beth [00:16:50] No, institutional investors own about 3% of single family homes nationwide. That is not where the problem is. It is so interesting to me that that has become the answer in Washington DC to this problem.

Sarah [00:17:03] Was it an easy boogie man?

Beth [00:17:06] Yes. It is an easy, easy target, but that is not the problem. And the baby boomers aren’t the problem either. Where are they supposed to go? We haven’t built anywhere for them to move to. The retirement communities popping up where I live are so unbelievably expensive. It’s buying a home plus. It’s buying a home several times over for your later years in life. We don’t have the configuration to support the supply. There are a bunch of apartments going in very close to my house right now, which I’m happy to see. And we’re building schools so slowly and our schools are bursting at the seams. When you add a bunch of apartments or any kind of, duplex, triplex, fourplex, you’re just bringing in a lot more people who need services from the community too. And so all of that has to go together. It’s not a simple problem. And it’s definitely not a problem that I think gets fixed out of Washington, DC. I am concerned now that we’ve done something we’re checking this off the list instead of pursuing all of the layers at which this is operating.

Sarah [00:18:11] I don’t want to shit all over this bill that passed with such bipartisan support. There is a part of this that fits with the abundance agenda, fits with a supply problem, gets the federal government out of the way. And that’s the ending of the permanent chassis requirement. I hope I’m saying that right. Which is basically like used too with manufactured homes, the old rule was like, well, they’re on wheels. So it required this permanent chassis, like this steel undergird that you could put this house on wheel. And that’s what allowed you to get all these federal subsidies and things that you can get for manufacturing homes. Well, now manufacturing homes, the future is more like factory built. I covered the house. Yeah, it’s just a house. And, listen, I covered this in the Good News brief in February. There’s this really cool company called the American Housing Corporation. And they have these modular homes that look like brownstones. And, listen, I know this is shallow, but they’re just nice to look at. Like esthetically they are pleasing. I think that’s important. And like they go up fast and the American Housing Corporation is owning every piece of the-- like vertically they’re owning all of it. They’re putting the homes together. They’re owning the land. They’re selling to the people. They’re just trying to keep all the process within. I think it’s a really, really good inventive model that I hope you know easing this requirement will get out of the way. I think that’s the best thing the federal government can do is offer incentives and get out the way. But if there was an institutional investor who wanted to scale up what the American Housing Corporation is doing, I want them to be able to do that

Beth [00:19:46] Well, this requirement to me illustrates the things the federal government could do to get out of the way that they won’t do. Eliminating that permanent chassis requirement saves like five to $10,000 per home to build it. And that’s in part because it’s made of steel. And steel is so expensive in part because of tariffs. And manufacturing, building new homes is so expensive because the labor supply is so diminished because of our immigration policy. There are many, many places where this administration specifically is contributing to the high cost of housing. And so that I think is why this bill has bipartisan support. They know that. And now they can say we did something on housing affordability when actually the major policies of this president are causing a problem that was already bad. He didn’t invent it, but it’s taking a problem that was already bad and making the main pain points worse.

Sarah [00:20:43] And another huge part of the housing problem is home insurance, which they don’t touch on at all. We’re about to put old Markwayne Mullin in charge of FEMA because this extreme weather has become a huge, huge piece of the home insurance like crisis. Like there are people in California who cannot insure their homes, people in Florida not offering any insurance for a home. So we got to figure something else out because I don’t think there is a fix for this. I think we’re going to have to completely whiteboard home insurance.

Beth [00:21:20] Some of what has happened to whiteboard home insurance is just excluding risk. So if you look at the stats on where homeowner’s insurance is most affordable, one of the most affordable states is Hawaii, because Hawaii excludes hurricane risk. You have to buy a separate policy for that. And so we’re not really discussing the total affordability picture for a person, we’re just refusing to price certain risks in. That is the kind of thing that federal policy could probably start to speak to, but it’s a hard problem that they have not tried to tackle at all in this bill.

Sarah [00:21:58] No, and I think that’s even those of us who don’t live in these like most expensive states, like California or Oklahoma or Florida, I mean, they’re not always states you expect. I mean the Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas, the high risk of tornado drives up their homeowner’s insurance, even though tornado alley is more, has moved to the east. Like that’s not even really tornado alley anymore, it’s over here.

Beth [00:22:22] And closer to where I live. Well, a lot of it is hail in those Midwestern states now. The damage that a hail storm that never makes national news can do is so incredibly expensive. And people who study climate think we’re going to get a lot more hail as the planet warms. And so, you know, there are all these like granular localized pieces to what’s going on here that when you start to look at it, you think it makes sense. And what do we do about this?

Sarah [00:22:51] Well, and it’s like even in my own life, we paid for our roof. We’re like the only person we know who paid for a roof because everybody else gets hail damage reports it to their insurance and gets their roof covered. Well, that drives up the cost of insurance. I bet if every single one of us literally needed to rebuild our house from scratch, almost all of us would be underinsured because I increased it when the tornado hit Mayfield. But because of labor costs, because of the tariffs, I’m sure it’s even more expensive than it was just a few years ago. And it’s like people are already crunched so hard with the cost of everything. Car insurance is going up for the same reason, like the expense. I was just reading about how people can’t afford cars, just generally, like they cannot afford to have a car anymore. This is squeezing people so tightly and I just think-- again, I appreciate them getting to this, but this is the sort of big picture problem solving we need instead of a president who just piles the problems on.

Beth [00:23:56] There is one provision in this bill that I think will actually make the problem worse instead of better. And Democratic Senator Brian Schatz tried to raise this. In going after that institutional investor piece, the way this bill is drafted will really limit billed to rent housing, which has been a bright spot in a tough landscape. So if you have a contract with a builder where you get to move into your home and you rent it, over time until eventually the builder makes their money back, it takes more than seven years. But this bill says that if you’re an institutional investor and you build a house, you got to sell it before seven years expire. And he’s like, we should just fix this. This is just bad drafting. We can fix it. And because this bill had momentum, everyone just kept marching forward and didn’t stop to fix this and I do think we can’t do that with federal policy. It’s too powerful. If the Senate is going to pass a bill they need to do it slowly enough to figure this stuff out. Now, I’m not worried that this stays in. This might get resolved in that conference between the House and Senate versions. And, look, Trump may never take this up because he says he’s not signing anything until the Save America Act is passed. I don’t know if that means he would veto it or if he would just not sign it and let it become effective after some period without his signature. So who knows how long it takes to actually get this done. But that’s a problem. That shows you that there is a sense that we just need to check this off our list instead of doing it thoughtfully.

Sarah [00:25:29] Well, back to the retirements in Congress from the first segment, to me, that’s just the dysfunction. The fact that people are like, oh, don’t spook it because we get so little done, is really jacked up. Not to mention, did you catch that they threw in this central bank digital currency provision that has nothing to do with housing? They want to ban the central bank from issuing any digital currency through 2030, and the house is threatening to kill it because they want that as a permanent ban. Which leaves all these stable coins to guess who? The Trump family, who’s not going to be regulated because they gutted the Consumer Protection Bureau. So it’s like, come on, can you do one small thing without it reeking of corruption?

Beth [00:26:10] No, we have this with FISA reauthorization right now too, people wanting to attach all kinds of things to it. It’s a mess. I do not envy the job that they have to do. I don’t envy people working on housing, but I am grateful for the people who are doing a good job on housing. And we do have some examples of that.

Sarah [00:26:25] Yeah, locally all kinds of things are happening.

Beth [00:26:28] You sent a great article this morning to me about Portland and how Portland has really gone after that zoning piece. But what’s interesting to me is that Portland not only recognized that zoning restrictions were part of the problem, they realized that has to be paired with a way for housing to continue to be financially beneficial to builders and developers. So they said, hey, if you want to build something that houses more than a single family, you can have more space than if you were just building a single-family home. And being willing to incentivize that kind of construction has taken this proposal farther than Minneapolis, which also said we’re not going to have single-families owning anymore, exclusively. But they didn’t give them a financial stake in going to the next piece, and so they haven’t seen as much housing develop as Portland has.

Sarah [00:27:20] Yeah, it’s like there’s so many components of this sort of floor area ratio. The lot line was limiting how much floor size basically square foot you could put on the lot. And yeah, you got rid of single family zoning, but you forgot to update this square footage limitation. And so I think it’s so smart. And, look, here’s my call for everyone. I think those of us who are well situated with regards to housing wealth have to remember that we have children who have to live in this world. And so we need to advocate for these changes even if they don’t directly affect us. We need be YIMBY. We need say, yes, in my backyard. Fine, fill your lot line. You don’t have to have a front door on the street. There was some of this in my town. They built a new development and the front doors are facing in instead of back. And everybody’s like, oh, it’s going to disrupt the esthetics of Jefferson, this historical neighborhood. Okay, but guys, are we preserving the buildings or are we preserving society?

Beth [00:28:21] Encampments upset the esthetic of a neighborhood too. Like, come on. They’re just a million pieces here.

Sarah [00:28:26] Yeah, come on. We have to move out of this post-World War II. Maybe we should all just stop watching It’s a Wonderful Life. I’m not even playing it. The American dream cannot be so hyper-focused on this very tight post-World War II version of home ownership. The world is bigger. We are bigger. We should be bigger, more expansive thinkers. And we have to bring that to housing, particularly locally. I’m glad the federal government’s doing something, but they ain’t going to save us. We have to change our zoning locally in order to get somewhere new.

Beth [00:29:03] And part of the reason that’s been so hard is because it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s not just our vision of housing as how you build wealth. It’s our vision if single family housing is how you built good neighborhoods with safe streets and excellent schools. And so the rest of a community’s investment has to follow this. You do need to build more schools. You cannot keep introducing housing without introducing the services that accompany it. If people’s electricity, water, snow removal, public schools get disrupted along the way, that is a big impediment. So all of it has to flow together.

Sarah [00:29:41] And that is a hopeful note too because it is easy to worry about dropping real estate values because that is everyone’s retirement plan, which is part of the problem. But when you have denser housing, when you have people in triplexes and fourplexes, you get more services. You might get a grocery store you could actually freaking walk to. If you had more people nearby to visit the shops, it’s not just maybe you will get a new school. You could get all kinds of new things. And the school is harder because that’s the tax base. But businesses know when there’s more people around and there’s all kinds of exciting things that could come if, God forbid, your home value, even if it doesn’t drop, doesn’t continue to accelerate at such a crazy pace.

Beth [00:30:30] And all that has to be done carefully because even new business coming in means the roads need to be updated to accommodate those businesses. People worry they want green spaces too, I get it. I don’t want to preach it to anybody about this because there isn’t a single aspect of it that is just a total win all around that doesn’t require sacrifice somewhere or change somewhere that feels uncomfortable for a while and that requires a lot of adjustment. So kudos to the cities that are having these conversations. Doing the hard work of bringing people along with them. Kudos to the people who will listen to everybody in the process as decisions are being made about zoning and roads and schools and allowing people to live in duplexes and triplexes and fourplexes and having more apartment buildings. We need to get to the root causes here. And I would love for the Senate to get to the federal root causes that they can help with labor and the cost of goods and incentivize cities to keep trying innovative approaches that help us get here.

Sarah [00:31:34] Because not to sound like Sam Cooke, but a change is going to come either way. So we can try to keep doubling down on this vision that is excluding people and creates angry young people who cannot access a comfortable middle-class existence that might include some of our very own children or we can continue to ignore it and just swallow the externalization cost. Because again a change it’s going to come, either way

Beth [00:32:04] And this is part of everything. If you are for this administration’s approach to immigration because you’re worried about crime, housing policy would be a much more effective place to put that energy. Having people in stable homes affects crime, it affects education, it affects public health. Whatever your pet issue is, you want people in stable housing that they can afford. All of society benefits, that’s the good. That’s the unabashed good, right? How we get there is really tough, but I think all of us putting our focus there is really important. And maybe that is the most hopeful part of the Senate bill. At least we’re talking about it. Next up, we are going to talk about colorectal cancer.

Sarah [00:33:17] So, today, in Outside of Politics, we’re going to take Brooke’s request that we discuss Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. And in truly a Holy Spirit at work kind of moment, Beth and I had decided to talk about this because I did have a colonoscopy, I think, two years ago this summer. I just so happened to reach out to our sorority sister, Jessica Lotz, about something different. Of asking her advice about supplements and hormones, which I do semi-regularly.

Jessica Lotz [00:33:49] And is welcomed.

Sarah [00:33:51] And it’s welcome. She’s the best guide. No, you can’t have her cell phone number. She said to me, well, I’m glad you reached out. I have something to tell you. Do you want the good news or the bad news first? And I said bad news, which Beth told me was always the right choice.

Beth [00:34:06] Always start with the bad new.

Sarah [00:34:07] And you told me what, Jessica?

Jessica Lotz [00:34:10] I’ve been diagnosed colon cancer. .

Sarah [00:34:12] And then I said tell me the good news fast and it better be related.

Jessica Lotz [00:34:17] And it absolutely was. So the good news is after several procedures, a CAT scan pathology has shown that they got it all out.

Sarah [00:34:26] Well, and then she starts waxing poetic about colorectal screenings and colonoscopy. And I was like, oh wait, I have just the venue for you to express this newfound passion of yours because we literally had decided to talk about this the day before you and I started texting.

Jessica Lotz [00:34:41] And bless you for that because it’s not something people are willing to usually talk about and it needs to be taught. It’s like politics. You need to talk about it, not everybody’s willing or wants to, and it’s going to get literally and figuratively messy, but it is super important.

Beth [00:34:55] I was just thinking there’s probably a very extended metaphor about that, Jessica, but I’m really happy to hear that you are doing well. I’m sorry. I haven’t had a chance to tell you that I’m so sorry that you had to go through this at all.

Jessica Lotz [00:35:08] Thank you.

Beth [00:35:09] Will you just take us through the experience from diagnosis to where you are today?

Jessica Lotz [00:35:16] So I’m 46 years old and in December I saw my primary care provider and she was like, hey, you’re 46, that means you’re due for a colonoscopy. And I was like, no, that starts at 50. And she said, no, most recently the recommendations from two separate professional organizations dropped that screening age to 45. And I was like, well, okay, I’m a real follower so I’ll get my screening colonoscopy. Got it booked, went in, the process of prep was much easier than I thought it would be. Everybody says that’s the worst part, but then you get a great 30-minute nap that makes up for that.

Sarah [00:35:51] It actually is the worst part as compared to the nap that is the actual colonoscopy

Jessica Lotz [00:35:57] Correct. But even the prep’s not bad, it’s kind of like one of my takeaways. It’s been like made up to be this thing and it’s really not. It’s like you feel really healthy after it, I’ll tell you that. So I had the procedure done, the doctor comes right in after it and says you had one polyp, it looked good, so we’ll see you in three years because the polyps are generally very slow growing. Usually if you go in and don’t have any polyps, you’re usually on a 10-year plan. they’ll see you again at age 55 and that’s because the polyps tend to be slow growing and so he said I’ll see you again in three years and we’ll take out any more that you have and if it’s clean then then I won’t see you again for like five or ten years. I forget. I’m like perfect. Well four days later my phone rings and it’s the physician himself. Which I worked in health care for 15 years, so if the doctor is calling you, you know that something’s up. And he said Ms. Lotz I’m very surprised to tell you that the pathology came back and that polyp we removed was cancer. And I was like getting out of my car to go into this huge community luncheon with a thousand of my closest friends and I was, like, I’m sorry, what? And he said, I am very surprised. He said, well, I remember you. I remember taking it out. He remembers me because of my nose ring and I had to sign a waiver because I wasn’t going to take my nose ringing out. Anyway, so he said I was very surprised it didn’t look like it normally looks. And I thought, okay. So that was one of seven phone calls in the first 24 hours.

[00:37:28] It moved so quickly. And that’s for someone, like I said, I grew up in healthcare. My dad’s a retired physician. I was the director of a family practice clinic. I know the healthcare side of things. And so for that to move so quickly, thank goodness. You don’t want to be sitting waiting for the next appointment and the next results. So I was very thankful, but man it’s scary in the sense that it moved quickly and you just don’t know. So I just kept telling myself I’m just going to think about whatever the next thing is. Whatever that is, if it’s an appointment, if it a CAT scan, if its a blood test, if it’s genetic testing, I’m going to just think about the next things. So I had two more procedures to make sure that they had gotten what they thought was all the cancer out and they took out some more the second time and then the third one by a surgeon it was in a really weird spot where if it was down here, they would have treated it one way. If it was up here, they would’ve treated it a different way. So she just wanted to get in there to see where it was. But it was like a week later before I actually said the words, like, I’ve been diagnosed with cancer. Like I just kept telling everybody, oh, well, this pathology came back, we’re going to see what it is. And then it’s like the second I said it out loud, it rewires your brain. Literally from the second I said that out loud, I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to do the rest of the day, what I had on my schedule for the week, like it does this weird thing to your brain and for someone like me, I rely on that next thing and the stability and the discipline of my routine. And that was not there for a while, so.

Sarah [00:39:00] So where is your brain right now? Like now that you’ve gone through the procedure or the multiple procedures, like you told me you’ll have to get a colonoscopy every six months, where are you at feeling like, okay, I have a handle on this. I am super thankful for the screening procedure, but this is what it means for my life now.

Jessica Lotz [00:39:21] I’m mentally in a really good place. If you would have asked me a month ago, I would have like, I don’t know. I don’t know who I am. And I want to say I am blessed in the sense that they found it incredibly early. Three quarters of people who are diagnosed with colon cancer before the age of 50, it’s found in an advanced stage. And that’s what’s really scary. By the time it’s advanced, it gets harder and more intervention is required. So I was in the minority of that. So I’m thankful for.

Sarah [00:39:51] Which is why they moved up the screening age.

Jessica Lotz [00:39:54] That is exactly why. So the incidence of colon cancer has more than doubled in the last 30 years. So a lot of other cancers-- not to minimize them, but a lot other cancers are sort of on a stable or even declining, thank God, trajectory. Colon cancer, the number of people under age 50 being diagnosed with it has doubled since the late 90s.

Sarah [00:40:16] What is going on? What is happening?

Jessica Lotz [00:40:17] They’re trying to figure it out. A recent paper came out indicating that the processed foods probably has something to do. It ultimately goes back to the gut microbe. And I think that traditional healthcare has acknowledged this much that the gut might play in our overall health, but it has disregarded the larger extent that it probably plays. I mean, for our neurology, our mental health. There’s a lot of connections that mainstream health care is now starting to say, okay, there’s probably something.

Sarah [00:40:50] Well, don’t you think GLP-1s have really accelerated that, that they’re saying like, oh, we are treating this aspect of what we thought was happening in your stomach, but we’re realizing it’s like decreasing desire and all these other different areas. Maybe there is more of a connection than we thought there was.

Jessica Lotz [00:41:05] Absolutely. What’s interesting about the GLP-1s is usually the way that health care goes is they study something in the lab and then they come up with recommendations for how to push it out like population-wide in actual practice. And so they did that for the weight loss side, but the unintended benefits of the GLP-1, that process has reversed. They’re seeing so many unexpected things in clinical practice that now that’s driving what they are going to be researching. So I think that’s a great call-out to make, is that there’s going to be a lot more to come stand by for that because they’re starting to see that heavily. So I’m in a much better place now that I was even just a month ago because at this point we know that it hasn’t spread. We know that I’m incredibly lucky that I got screened so early. And, Sarah, you and I, when we were talking, you asked about the Cologuard and I’ve got some thoughts on that.

Sarah [00:41:55] That’s poop in the box for those of you who don’t know.

Jessica Lotz [00:41:58] It’s a good way to put it.

Sarah [00:41:59] You can just poop in a box and send it off and they screen for abnormal cells of all different types. Now, I asked Nicholas about it. He looked it up after we had our conversation and he said there are some cells that will detect, that show the presence of a polyp. So they can detect for some of these, but obviously it’s not a colonoscopy.

Jessica Lotz [00:42:20] Yeah, so in general, if you want to know if you have cancer already, the Cologuard is very good at detecting that. And it can detect some precancerous cells too. If you want to prevent cancer, the colonoscopy is the way to go because every cancer starts as a polyp, but not every polyp becomes cancerous. So only 99. I think Dr. Tori Jaeger, she’s a GI doctor that I follow on Instagram. You know how you research something and the algorithms pick up on it. So my Instagram has unintentionally become fiber, bean salads, and GI doctors. But I had followed her even before. She’s one of the reasons I went ahead and did it because she recorded her own colonoscopy and kind of demystified it, which is super helpful. Like you have all these worries about what it’s going to be like, but then you see someone like her go through it and you’re like, okay, so it’s not really that bad.

Sarah [00:43:15] Man, I still remember Katie Couric getting hers back in the day.

Jessica Lotz [00:43:19] See, she was on it before most people were. So shout out to Katie. But Dr. Jaeger says that 99% of polyps never turn into cancer. It’s just that 1% that does. But if you have polyps, they go in and take them out. So then 0% of them turn into cancer, and that’s kind of what you want. So if a patient’s not going to do anything but they will at least agree to do the Cologuard, perfect. Like that’s the bare minimum, that’s great. But if your goal is to prevent cancer, you definitely want to get the colonoscopy because they remove the polyps that would eventually turn into cancer.

Beth [00:43:54] Jessica, can you help me with the timeline? How far out are we from your diagnosis? How quickly did all those procedures happen? I know you said the first 24 hours, a lot of calls, but how long was this process from there?

Jessica Lotz [00:44:07] That’s a great question. So I was diagnosed on February 17th and within four days of that, I had the pathology back and that was the first-- well, the procedure itself was February 9th. And then February 17 was the diagnosis when I got the phone call. And then from there, everything happened and was wrapped up. Like I said, I’m blessed. I met with an oncologist. I met a colorectal surgeon. They did the whole workup on both sides to figure out based on the type of cancer I had what would be some potential next steps, either surgically or radiology chemo. Fortunately, because they got it out the two times they went in, I didn’t have to pursue either of those. But in my case, things were wrapped up in about a month. Like I said, super lucky. And I’m telling you, it is only because I got screened at 46. If the original recommendations were still 50, my mind won’t even let me go to what that could have looked like. Because the reason that if you don’t have any polyps, they put you on a 10-year path, it’s because polyps take a long time to grow. So that’s the good part. But once it becomes cancer, it doesn’t necessarily take a lot time to spread.

Sarah [00:45:20] So I had a colonoscopy before even the recommended age of 45 because once they moved it up, I was like, I know how cautious they are, and I want it even sooner. I’m not playing. And so I just happened to get this eye exam where my eye doctor mentioned, oh, you have this bear tracking in your retinas. And I’m like what the hell is that? And he’s like, oh, it doesn’t mean anything. And just like as a throwaway line, he says, “Now, genetically, I think it maybe means you have like a higher likelihood of colorectal cancers.” And I was like, I’m sorry, what? And I just hooked right into that. I took it to my primary care doctor and was like does this mean I can get a colonoscopy? And she was like yeah, probably. So I did it and my colon was beautiful. Thank you for asking everybody. This is so pretty. I’ve almost sent pictures to Jessica because I know she would actually be interested in it.

Jessica Lotz [00:46:11] Yeah, I would welcome it in a weird, weird way.

Beth [00:46:14] Don’t send me those pictures, Sarah. Thank you, I trust you. I will stipulate to the beauty of your colon. I do not need evidence.

Sarah [00:46:21] So I got the 10-year plan. But I just thought like, no, all these increased rates of diagnosis, I was like, I’m not playing around. Like if I can get this earlier... Now I do not have as nice of things to say about the prep. I really struggled because y’all I eat about every hour and a half. Like I don’t play. Low blood sugar really messes me up and so it was a hard process for me. I ate the clear gummies. I drank the bone broth. There’s all kind of recommendations for how to make it easier. But because of that, what you were saying about the connection, the mind gut connect, my gut no likey, my gut no likey being empty. My gut biodome was in a good place and it did not like being empty.

Jessica Lotz [00:47:04] You had a great information highway going between the two.

Sarah [00:47:10] I really did. Now what were you going to say?

Jessica Lotz [00:47:12] It’s gone.

Sarah [00:47:15] That’s not colorectal, that’s perimenopause.

Jessica Lotz [00:47:19] That’s perimenopause. What was really a hard part about having a procedure every week for three weeks was they don’t let you take your pills unless they are essential. And I’m like we need to revisit the medical definition of essential because these are essential to me. I do not sleep if I do not take my progesterone, but I survived. What I was going to say was if you would have asked me about the prep in the two or three days after it, I would have been like, ugh! Because I fasted for like 37 hours and so that felt tough. Once I got the diagnosis, my whole perspective changed. And guess what, that prep was nothing. It’s like, boy, that was worth it to me. So I have a different perspective only because I had a different diagnosis.

Beth [00:48:01] Do you feel recovered now? Like are there physical ways that you are still dealing with this or do you feel pretty normal?

Jessica Lotz [00:48:09] Physically, I feel pretty normal for sure. I have increased my fiber intake a lot because you should increase that over weeks. You shouldn’t Jessica this and just up at the next day.

Sarah [00:48:22] I love that as a verb, because that’s about what I was going to say. I said, y’all who don’t know Jessica, I know Jessica. Beth knows Jessica. I know that she’s all this like, oh, increase my fiber. That is that is one percent of what she has spent her mental capacity on. I bet she has a list of 10 very specific things she would like all of us to do. And I would like her to share those with us now because I know she has some in her brain. I know it.

Jessica Lotz [00:48:44] I do. So another thing I learned aside from that colonoscopies actually prevent cancer because they can take the polyps out is I thought in my mind fiber was like a multivitamin. It was good. It was recommended. And is it going to hurt me? No. Is it going to change my life? Also, no. That’s wrong. Jessica was wrong on that. Fiber, as it turns out, can quite literally prevent cancer. It has this amazing ability within your gut to ferment, and you’ve got the soluble and the insoluble, but the diversity of fiber creates an environment in your intestines and in your colon that make it very difficult for cancer to live. And so I track my food, and I did this before with the cancer diagnosis on my fitness pal, I was maybe getting 10 grams a day. And I need about 35. And in my mind, 10 and 35 are very similar. I don’t know why, but when I think about it as a percent, I was like, I need 235% more fiber than what I was getting. That was an aha moment for me. So physically I feel the same. I’m mentally telling myself like we’re past it. It’s no big deal. We’ve done everything we can. I approach things very logically, so I’ve logicized my way to I’m fine. We caught it early, they got it out. I have a follow up with the surgeon tomorrow. So after that, the next thing isn’t for six months. So I tell myself, I’m okay for six months.

Sarah [00:50:15] So I always heard that the five-- I have this big old jar of, what is it called? Like psyllium husk or whatever. I read a thing that was like this is the supplement with the most evidence behind it.

Jessica Lotz [00:50:27] That’s the best kind.

Sarah [00:50:29] And I struggle to get it. It’s like it makes your water so goopy. Are you taking in it?

Jessica Lotz [00:50:35] I’m not taking that. I have decided to eat my fiber. And so I’m eating a lot of beans, which I didn’t used to eat before. So we literally on Sunday’s meal prep bean stuff for the whole week. So we had like a French soup bean. So instead of pasta or anything like that, it was the white Navy beans. I have a fresh salad, which what’s funny is before all of this, like a year ag, I asked AI, how do I get more fiber? Because fiber’s also super important for women in perimenopause because we lose our ability to directly impact our blood sugar like we used to because of the loss of estrogen. So in perimenopause one of the better ways to control that is through increasing your fiber. That slows the impact on your blood sugar. So I had AI’d like, how can I get more fiber? And it came up with like the super complicated, like five different recipes that involve buying all new things. I mean, I Jessica’d it. I made it way more complicated than it needed to be. But after it, I was like, I’m not going to do that. I need more fiber. I like beans. So I’ll just find two or three ways to increase the amount of beans. And that’s where I landed.

Sarah [00:51:46] Listen, I went on a pilgrimage last year and one of the pilgrims said, I just feel that I need to share this habit with you. I feel like it will speak to you. And I was like, tell me. Danielle changed my life. She said, I just eat a breakfast salad. I just need a little salad for breakfast. And like just a little field green with dressing, nothing fancy. They do it in Europe all the time. Changed my life with breakfast salad. When you’ve had a salad by 8 a.m. what can you not do?

Jessica Lotz [00:52:12] Exactly. Yes, like your day’s done.

Sarah [00:52:16] I have a breakfast salad and I have my little egg and I put kimchi on my egg for like extra, extra credit because it’s a little fermented and the fiber. And I’m telling you, when you just sneak a little salad in here and there like you’re getting to your 30 grams.

Jessica Lotz [00:52:33] Exactly. That is exactly right. And that’s what I do now. Apparently, I’m not on TikTok, but apparently there’s a whole bean talk. So people that are on TikTok want to jump down the bean talk rabbit hole, be our guest. I was on the Instagram side and there was a gal that was like two cups of beans a day. And I’m like that sounds like a lot for someone who’s currently eating negative beans. It’s not that hard. It’s not hard. But I’m a creature of habit if you can’t tell. So I’ll make the same recipe every week until I don’t like it anymore, which will be never. So I’m pretty good with this. I’m pretty good with getting my fiber now.

Sarah [00:53:13] I love it.

Jessica Lotz [00:53:14] But I didn’t know, I just thought it was going to be something nice that helped your gut health and it turns out it can in many cases quite literally prevent cancer. So that’s an easy thing to do.

Sarah [00:53:24] Yeah, I remember somebody saying it’s like a broom sweeping out your colon. I was like, well, I want that. I definitely want that.

Beth [00:53:32] Well, I’m so glad that you caught it early and that you’re doing so well. And I appreciate you talking about it. I did not realize how recent this is. I have a friend who had breast cancer and we talked a lot about just sitting with the word cancer in your brain. And so to be able to speak about this publicly this soon is a real gift. And I appreciate you doing it.

Jessica Lotz [00:53:49] Thank you for that. I credit a lot of it to my husband who’s a clinical psychologist.

Sarah [00:53:54] Craig is wonderful, but we have known you before Craig and you have always been such a delight. You’ve been Jessicaing stuff for a long time.

Jessica Lotz [00:54:01] Thank you. I appreciate that.

Sarah [00:54:03] Jessica’s why I joined FAMU for what it’s worth.

Jessica Lotz [00:54:06] I don’t know that I deserve that much credit, but no, I appreciate that you all are talking about it. I feel like we are on the edge of it becoming just like-- we didn’t use to talk about mammograms and boobies and all the things, and now it’s like everyday conversation. And my hope is that based on what we know right now, and that is that the incidence for people under 50 is double what it used to be. Like, we’ve got to figure out this process. My hope is that people hear it and go, okay, if I’m a big baby when it comes to healthcare, if I can do it, I have confident other people can and should. That makes it worth it.

Sarah [00:54:41] Thank you for coming and sharing with Pantsuit Politics. We love you.

Jessica Lotz [00:54:44] Thanks for having me.

Sarah [00:54:45] We’re glad you’ve got your diagnosis and treatment and are feeling like yourself again.

Jessica Lotz [00:54:50] We’re getting there.

Sarah [00:54:51] We’re getting there.

Beth [00:54:53] Thank you so much to Jessica for sharing her story. Thank you to Brooke for prompting us to talk about colorectal cancer. Thanks to all of you for listening and for writing to us and contributing to our shows the way you do. Sarah, you’re going to be back with everybody on Tuesday with a special guest. Do you want to tell them about that?

Sarah [00:55:09] Yeah. I will be joined by Isaac Saul from Tangle News, another independent media company that I have been reading and engaging with for months. I’m so excited to have him on the show.

Beth [00:55:19] And I appreciate him being a guest host while I am out with Chad coaching our middle school academic team at their state competition. Good luck to the Ballyshannon Shamrocks this weekend. Don’t forget to grab your ticket to spend time with us in Minneapolis. We’ll see you back here next week. Until then, have the best weekend available to you.

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