The One Big Beautiful Bill and the Supreme Court

Do we still have three branches of government?

Have you ever had a feeling where something you didn’t realize was hurting suddenly starts feeling better?

I have had a couple of experiences like that recently.

• In April, I was at the eye doctor for my annual exam, and he informed me that I had a condition called blepharitis, but not to worry because there was a new treatment that could cure it. I thought that perhaps he was making it up because I wasn’t having any eye trouble that I’d noticed, thank you very much. But when I got the prescription eye drops, the relief I felt was instantaneous. And now that it’s cleared up, my face feels better, I can see better, I’m less irritated because my eyes aren’t itching all the time.

• Around the same time, I started using those nighttime nose strips that help you breathe at night (because my daughter informed me that I was snoring - thanks). As it turns out, I hadn’t been sleeping well, and being able to breathe through my nose without obstruction in my sleep really improves the quality of my sleep…and life.

• I’m doing physical therapy for an ankle injury. Just this morning, my physical therapist mentioned that my pelvis is out of alignment (thanks, giant babies), and if I put an arch support in one of my shoes, it would fix the alignment and reduce my low back pain. Instant relief for a problem I didn’t realize had a solution.

This all sounds a little bit more like Sarah and Beth’s conversation outside of politics today (little things that make your life noticeably better with little cost or effort on your part). But it also reminds me of our government.

I wonder if the Justices on the Supreme Court, our Senators, our Congresspeople, their staffs, the pundits, et. al. realize that the cumbersome procedures, gridlock, outrage cycles, and irritations they tolerate because they have lived with it for so long and conventional wisdom says “this is the way it is” could have a simple and creative solution?

In today’s episode, Sarah and Beth are naming the problems that are illuminated by this week’s headlines and asking, “What are the new approaches and attitudes we need to move forward instead of recycling the same problems over and over again?”

I know there’s more than enough frustration and blame to go around, but I would love to see what the nasal strips, eye drops, and shoe inserts of our Federal Government might be, and what we could do if our proverbial eyes weren’t itching, our back didn’t hurt, and we all got a good night’s sleep.

We might find that our best days were ahead of us after all.

-Maggie

Topics Discussed

• The One Big Beautiful Bill and Budget Reconciliation

• The Supreme Court Avoids Big Decisions

• Outside of Politics: Little Things that Make Life Better

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Episode Resources

Pantsuit Politics Resources

• Join us for Reimagining Citizenship. If you didn’t start with us in June, July 4th would be a great time to begin this series. You can visit each post or listen on Spotify (or another podcast player).

The One Big Beautiful Bill and Budget Reconciliation

• Roy Cooper unveils the true pronunciation of his last name (WRAL)

• Thomas Massey: For Example, Also this (x.com)

• Validation by Caroline Fleck

• Senate advances massive bill for Trump's agenda after GOP leaders sway holdouts (NBC News)

• Mike Lee preemptively drops 'big beautiful bill' provision to sell federal lands that riled GOP colleagues (Fox News)

• 10Plan, How Would It Affect Health Care Spending by Consumers and the Federal Government (The Rand Corporation)

• Teachers skeptical of Kentucky law banning text, social media communication with students (WHAS11)Main Block Resources (Title Section)

The Supreme Court Avoids Big Decisions

• More to Say About the Constitution and Baseball (More to Say by Pantsuit Politics)

• More to Say About TN’s Transgender Medical Care Law (More to Say by Pantsuit Politics)

• More to Say About Students with Disabilities (More to Say by Pantsuit Politics)

• More to Say About DOGE, SCOTUS and Compartmentalization (More to Say by Pantsuit Politics)

• More to Say About So-Called Reverse Discrimination (More to Say by Pantsuit Politics)

• More to Say About the Supreme Court’s Predicament (More to Say by Pantsuit Politics)

• More to Say About the Supreme Court on Deporting Venezuelans (More to Say by Pantsuit Politics)

Outside of Politics: Little Things That Make Life Better

We know you’ll have a lot of ideas around this, so please go ahead and see us in the comments.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our Managing Director and Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

Our theme music was composed by Xander Singh with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

Our show is listener-supported. The community of paid subscribers here on Substack makes everything we do possible. Special thanks to our Executive Producers, some of whose names you hear at the end of each show. To join our community of supporters, become a paid subscriber here on Substack.

To search past episodes of the main show or our premium content, check out our content archive.

This podcast and every episode of it are wholly owned by Pantsuit Politics LLC and are protected by US and international copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. We hope you'll listen to it, love it, and share it with other people, but not with large language models or machines and not for commercial purposes. Thanks for keeping it nuanced with us.

Episode Transcript

Sarah [00:00:10] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth [00:00:11] And this is Beth Silvers.

Sarah [00:00:13] You're listening to Pantsuit Politics. Today, we're going to talk about the Big Beautiful Bill.

Beth [00:00:21] It offends me so much that we have to call it that.

Sarah [00:00:24] I don't know if you heard this, it's the official name of the legislation. It's the Big Beautiful Bill. That as we are recording is involved in a vote-a-rama. So we're going to talk about that and Congress, we're going to talk about the Supreme Court's end of term decisions and the judiciary. And as far as I know, Beth, we still have three co-equal branches of government. And so I thought we could talk about both of these issues in relationship to the executive. What do you think?

Beth [00:00:55] That does seem to be the posture right now; everything in relation to the executive.

Sarah [00:01:02] Outside of Politics, we're going to talk about small changes in our lives that have made a big impact. I'm very excited about this.

Beth [00:01:11] Me too. Speaking of small changes that make a big impact, everything everywhere tells you how good meditation is for you, and we believe that. We also believe in meditating on important things, like directing your meditation, not just letting the clouds float by, but occasionally taking a beat with the clouds. And so we put together Reimagining Citizenship, which has been a really fun way to lead up to the 4th of July. So it starts this Friday. But here's the thing, you could restart because you could kick off your meditations on citizenship with Independence Day.

Sarah [00:01:45] Yeah, I think that would be kind of fun.

Beth [00:01:47] So if you have not joined, or if you are on Substack as a premium member, but you just haven't figured out how to get those meditations in your podcast feed or whatever's going on, Friday would be a great place to do day one again. And we would love for you to do that. All the details are in our show notes.

Sarah [00:02:09] Up next, the Big Beautiful Bill.

Beth [00:02:12] I think that was mean.

Sarah [00:02:31] So, here's where we're at with the Big Beautiful Bill. The BBB. You want to call it the BBB?

Beth [00:02:36] Thank you. I appreciate any attempt to not keep having to call it beautiful. Beautiful is an important word.

Sarah [00:02:43] It is.

Beth [00:02:44] It means something.

Sarah [00:02:44] Beauty is important in life. And this is not it. This is not.

Beth [00:02:50] No.

Sarah [00:02:50] We got it through the House; we squeaked it through the House thanks to the fact that the Democratic Party keeps running old people who die and then leave this majority vote available to the Republican Party. I'm not bitter about that part at all.

Beth [00:03:05] And even so, it barely made it through.

Sarah [00:03:08] So if the people had been alive and voting, it would not have, I think we can safely say. This is not what this show is about. I just do want to put that out there in the world.

Beth [00:03:20] It bears repeating.

Sarah [00:03:22] You know what? It does. It bears repeating. Thank you. That's exactly what I meant. Okay. We squeaked it through the House. It went to the Senate. Over the weekend, it did advance procedurally, 51-49. All the Democrats voted against it. Senator Thom Tillis and our Senator Rand Paul voted against it for different reasons. Worth pointing out. Donald Trump goes after Thom Tillis. Thom Tillis says, don't worry, I'm not running against. Announces this surprise retirement from the United States Senate. He's from North Carolina. So that seat's going to be open. Similar announcement from Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, who's in one of the three districts that Kamala Harris won that has a Republican representing it. So this is clearly the new strategy. If I want to vote what I think is right, but I'm going to invoke the ire of Donald Trump, I'll just resign.

Beth [00:04:16] Counterpoint, my representative Thomas Massie who seems to be living his absolute best life--

Sarah [00:04:23] YOLO Thomas Massie

Beth [00:04:26] But also politically raising lots of money, getting lots of attention, being invited to speak in places he's not been invited to before, perhaps--

Sarah [00:04:36] Hold up, what do you mean raising lots money?

Beth [00:04:38] I mean that he's raising money. He keeps posting, "Look how much money I'm raising." I'm fine is his message. I bet he's thinking hard about that Senate seat that one Mitch McConnell is vacating. I think this is Thomas Massie's freedom moment. So I just look at Tillis, and I understand the politics are different in a statewide race versus a district. They're different everywhere. Lots of factors. I don't believe that Thom Tillis decided this weekend he wasn't going to run again. I think he was facing a tough election anyway. There's rumors that former Democratic governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper-- I just learned that actually it's not Roy Cooper, it's Cooper.

Sarah [00:05:20] Oh, come on.

Beth [00:05:21] No, it was him. It was this delightful local news segment about Eastern North Carolina pronunciation anyway. So I'm going to try to honor his pronunciation. Yeah, it's like, what's it called when the E is upside down? You know what I'm talking about.

Sarah [00:05:34] I want to be clear that it's spelled C-O-O-P-E-R.

Beth [00:05:37] Correct, but he's from Eastern North Caroline and they have their own lexicon there. Anyway, that governor is considering a run against Tillis.

Sarah [00:05:46] Very popular governor.

Beth [00:05:47] So it could have been rough anyway. I don't think that Tillis came to some hero’s recognition over the weekend, but I do admire that he's like, "You don't like what I'm doing? Don't care, I'm free." Any way that people can get themselves free, I think is good.

Sarah [00:06:06] Well, we had some small changes. They've been wrestling over this thing for a while. Mike Lee did withdraw his provision, which was going to allow for the sale of federal lands. Which they're just going to sell it to a bunch of crazy rich people.

Beth [00:06:22] Mike Lee needs to touch grass. That's the summary on Mike Lee right now. Mike Lee has lost the plot. I'm glad that someone told him no. My friend...

Sarah [00:06:32] Absolutely not. Okay, so there was some small victories. Not enough. This bill is offensive on both macro and micro levels. The macro level to me is basically the Republican Party, when it is in power, has decided that the only things they're going to get done are going to be squeezed into one big beautiful bill. Really absent any precedent of how Congress is supposed to work, how it has worked in the past, any desire to, I don't know, march orderly through the legislative or budgetary process, find compromise, find bipartisan pieces of legislation. They're just like, no, no, what we are going to do is just squeeze it all in and not touch the filibuster, but get it passed on a simple majority vote by using all manners of procedural tricks, machinations, and smoke screens to get everything we want to do all at once because we're probably going to lose the midterms and this is our play. And I just think it is gross and harmful to our constitutional foundations. That's my opinion. And here's the thing, look, maybe if a single part of this bill contained any bipartisan gesture towards a common agreement on problems in the United States, I think affordability is something everybody agrees on. Is there anything in there about affordability? Not really, no. I don't think Donald Trump was elected to extend tax cuts to the wealthy. I don't think Donald Trump was elected for Medicaid cuts. I don't think anybody thinks those are the problems haunting America. And so it's not just that they're shoving all their priorities into one piece of legislation. It's that the priorities suck. They're not even good. That's what bugs me.

Beth [00:08:45] I just read this great book about validation, and it talks about negative sentiment override. I was so happy there was a name for this phenomenon because I experienced it often. Negative sentiment override happens. She was talking about it in the context of a spousal relationship or an intimate partner relationship where you get mad about something and it makes you interpret absolutely everything through the least gracious lens possible and you just assume that everything is bad always because you got mad about one thing. And I do experience this a lot. And I'm trying not to have that negative sentiment override about this bill and about reconciliation in general, which I do think is bad. I just think it's bad for Congress that they have decided the filibuster is antithetical to getting anything done. We can't possibly get to 60 votes on anything. And so we're going to basically decide we are a totally ineffective body except for this one shot where we can do what we want to do on a majority basis. I hate that for the operation of our entire government. And so I do have negative sentiment over right there. It bugs me to hear John Thune, who used to be like kind of a mainstream politician out there saying, oh my gosh, the American people are going to love this when they get to know it. There are so many things in it that they're going to like.

[00:10:12] It sounds a lot like first we have to pass the bill for you to know what's in it. Which I do remember Republicans having big feelings about when it came to the Affordable Care Act. But he's talking about things like the extension of the childcare tax credit, about no tax on tips. There are some pieces of this that I think are broadly popular. I don't think no tax on tips is good policy, but it seems like the majority of Americans do. If you have things like that that are broadly popular, why don't you do them through the normal process? Get 60 votes. Force Democrats to have to vote with you or to have go on record as voting against something that is broadly popular. Just the political strategy of this makes no sense to me. In addition to your very good articulation of why I think this is just bad policy all around. Why would you use a mechanism that the top line is, hey, everybody, remember all the things we've said about debt forever, we don't believe those anymore. What we really just believe is that very wealthy people should get to keep their money. And that just means what it means for the rest of you. That's what this bill is.

Sarah [00:11:26] And for the country.

Beth [00:11:28] Yes.

Sarah [00:11:30] I feel like this is a reflection of the reality that people get to the Senate and they get really good at parliamentary procedure and not much else. That was always the analysis of Mitch McConnell. He was such a genius at parliamentary procedures. Lisa Murkowski is using parliamentary procedure to protect her constituent’s interests. So I guess you could say, well, there's one reflection of her work and her priorities. But as far as a deliberative body that is prioritizing the problems facing our country in any real way, I don't see any of that. I just see confusing things like policy baselines, which we'll get into it in a minute, to obscure the fact that this is just a giant wealth transfer. I think people, yeah, sure, will be excited about tax on tips. I don't think anybody should take away from a 2024 election that people are like I think rich people need a break and Medicaid needs to be cut.

Beth [00:12:39] I understand that President Trump wants this to be passed because it has his imprint on it. They've used one big, beautiful bill. Those are his kinds of words. And he feels like it would just look bad if they don't get it done. This is not his agenda, I don't think. This is normal DC cobble together everybody's priorities, wheel and deal laundry list of things. In what universe did anyone voting in the 2024 election want to see Congress say, you know what? We're just not going to do any AI regulation and we're not going to let the states do it either. We don't exactly know what AI is or how it works or where it might go. Let's pick the longest timeline possible and just say everybody's got to be hands off. I just don't think that's consistent at all with what Trump ran on. And here we are.

Sarah [00:13:34] Yeah. Yes, there is increased border spending. Yes, there's increased military spending, but none of this was supposed to come at the expense of Medicaid. He was explicit about that. And Thom Tillis has been explicit standing up on the floor of the Senate and saying, you're being lied to. Whoever's telling you this isn't going to affect Medicaid recipients, it's a lie. And I just I can't tell when we're supposed to empower the states and when we were supposed to tell them to go fuck themselves. I'm really struggling to sort out the difference because it seems like some of the time we really want the states to take control. Well, we want the States to spend; we want them to spend their money under our rubric of expectations, but we don't want to power them to regulate anything. Well unless it's abortion, then they can do that. Abortion, they can whatever they want and regulate whatever they want, but AI is no. I can't tell the political philosophy undercutting that distinction, except for I think there's money involved is my best guess.

Beth [00:14:39] I think it's just that the states are allowed to be more conservative than we are, but not less.

Sarah [00:14:44] Okay, that makes sense to me. Definitely an easily distinguishable, governable philosophy. Cool, that sounds great. But I cannot even articulate the rage I feel around the deficit. I just want to be like, okay, so you spent 20 years fear-mongering about this until the point where you actually convinced me. I'm convinced. Okay, it's a problem. In the era of cheap free money, it wasn't, but it is now. I'm fully on board, I get it. Okay, you've convinced me about the deficit and now you don't give a shit. It's very frustrating. It's enraging in fact.

Beth [00:15:29] What's really sad is that they're calling this Medicaid reform when it's just having fewer people on Medicaid.

Sarah [00:15:37] About 12 million fewer people.

Beth [00:15:39] We need reform. We have built these systems that are unsustainable as you look at the debt and the deficit. I think everybody agrees we have built systems that are unsustainable. I think pretty much everyone agrees that health insurance broadly is not working. So I am game for someone trying to fix that. What this bill does is make an already clusterfuck of a problem worse. Because if you take people off Medicaid, what we know from past history, relatively recent past history is that fewer people who have insurance drives the cost up for everybody. And I don't think anybody voted for more expensive healthcare costs. And that's what we're going to get. There's no vision here about how to improve it. The vision is just, well, we'd like to spend less money so fewer people should have it. But that has a societal cost that we will all bear. That's the reason they worked on the Affordable Care Act in the first place. We know that that will make everyone's health care more expensive. And, Sarah, I got to tell you, having just bought a new health insurance plan, it's not great out there.

Sarah [00:16:54] No.

Beth [00:16:56] My husband lost his job as part of a reduction in force on a Wednesday, the last week of March. Because it was the last of the month, that meant that on Sunday, we no longer had health insurance. It's a kind of limited window of time to think through and make decisions. Now, COBRA is out there. It wasn't the end of the world. He has a new job now. He has new plan. We looked at the cost of that plan to add me and the girls. Astronomical. You and I have looked a number of times at our small business having health insurance, astronomical. So I buy a marketplace plan. It is not cheap at all. And it covers almost nothing. It is catastrophic coverage only.

Sarah [00:17:36] Yeah, that's my favorite part. You pay so much and it is shit. That's my favorite part of the whole situation.

Beth [00:17:41] A prescription that I take every single day as a preventative measure that has been free the last times I've picked it up costs me $105 now. So just in my personal life, and I am blessed in almost every way, this system is very, very bad and this bill is going to make it worse. And they don't have any answers for that except to try to convince us that almost everybody on Medicaid is committing an act of fraud.

Sarah [00:18:15] Well, I'm into it because I think by making it worse they'll just break it. This is not sustainable. This is not going to last much longer. People are going to lose it. Well, we've broken the cycle of people thinking you just don't need health insurance. Some people just won't have health insurance, so now we have this expectation of like everybody should have health through the ACA. And so I don't think we're going to go back to some people deciding like I just won't have any. And so if it just keeps getting more and more expensive, if people like you and me are like what is going on? Then kicking 12 million people off Medicaid and seeing the prices go up even more is just going to push us closer and closer to like situation zero. You know what I'm saying? We're not going to make it.

Beth [00:19:13] My fear though is what I saw in a social post somewhere where a person was talking about how this is the end times. If big beautiful bill passes, we don't have a country anymore. And Democrats will have no choice if they retake Congress, but to just repeal every single aspect of this. And I thought, no guys, because that boomerang cost a lot of money and puts us just back to a status quo that is unacceptable. We're not making any forward progress when we operate this way.

Sarah [00:19:49] I just want some Democrats to stand up and say, okay, enough, we're just going to do Medicaid for all. Like, it's a failed market. It's not working. Is everybody really super protective of our health insurance industry anymore? Like, everybody just really still stuck in this absolutely not mindset? Or are you like me and be like, fine, let's try it because this is not working and has not been working for a while, and it's way too expensive, and everybody hates their healthcare anyway. Like, what are we fighting for? So the Medicaid part of it is infuriating, especially in the face of all they're trying to do math wise, is justify the extension of these tax cuts.

Beth [00:20:32] I'd like to put in a plug for Mark Cuban's 10 plan on healthcare. I don't want to do Medicaid for all because I feel like health insurance as a concept is broken. We know that Medicaid and Medicare still operate basically like private insurance with a government component and those costs keep ballooning, too. So I want something totally different and I think Mark Cuban has some good ideas about that. But anyway around it, can we look forward? This is a backward looking bill in every way. The thrust of this bill is make what we did in 2017 last forever. Yeah. But it's not 2017 anymore. And I'm ready for someone to have a new idea that takes us somewhere.

Sarah [00:21:16] There are no new ideas in this bill. I guess no tax on tips.

Beth [00:21:20] This is like a movie franchise that doesn't know when to hang it up. I mean- We're just recycling the IP.

Sarah [00:21:28] I don't even know why they're fighting so hard to extend these tax cuts. Sometimes if we get in this space, myself included, where I'm like, this is a new Republican party. The Republican party I grew up with is dead. It doesn't exist. And then even Donald Trump just can't let go of the tax cuts for the wealthy. And I'm like, well, I guess that zombie still lives somewhere deep inside the party. I didn't even think this is what MAGA was about. Did anybody take away from MAGA? I thought this was weird the first term. Did anybody watch the angry populism of the Make America Great Again movement and think tax cuts? That's it. That's the central tenant. No, I sure didn't. That's not what I take from that movement. That's not what I take for people who love Donald Trump. That's not what I hear. I don't hear like, yeah, but just more tax cuts for the wealthy. I don't get it. I don't get it!

Beth [00:22:15] Well, I think it might just be as simple as the fact that the MAGA movement is not content being underwritten by the people who buy the merch. They still want the big donor checks and the big donors still want something in return for those checks.

Sarah [00:22:31] Well, and so all of this, the reason there's no forward-looking momentum or vision is because all of is just to justify these tax cuts that are going to cost like $4 trillion over 10 years. Our process is so broken none of us should know who Elizabeth McDonough is, the parliamentarian, except we all talk about her all the time because they forced every through this mechanism of the budget reconciliation so she has to spend all this time going like, no, that's not budgetary, no, that's budgetary. Well, even when she has purview over a clear question, which is this policy baseline, if she gives them an answer they don't want, they skirt around it, which is what they've done here. So the budgetary baseline is saying, how do we basically categorize the spending? So let's say we spent $10,000 last year on, I don't know, Medicaid Q-tips, whatever, and this year are we going to set the budgetary baseline on zero and say $10,000 on Q-Tips? Which is usually what they advocate for because they want to categorize all spending as new spending so they can go no good for the deficit, except for when it doesn't suit them, which is now.

[00:23:51] And so let's say we'd go, well, we want 10,500 on Q-tips because of inflation. It would just be the $500 that would be new spending. Well, now they're using that to hide the tax cut extension. So instead of classifying as the CBO and everybody with a brain or a math degree, these extensions are going to cost us this money. They're like, no, we're just extending them permanently. This isn't new spending. This is just the same. It doesn't count. Because they pass themselves a baseline change in the finance committee that a bill can only increase the deficit by a maximum of $1.5 trillion, which these tax cuts exceed. And so they have to call them something different to get past their own limit that they set out of seemingly consistent concern for the deficit. My head is going to start spinning around backwards from range.

Beth [00:24:44] If you got lost in all of that, I can offer an example from my personal life where I recently argued on the policy baseline. I used to do jazzercise. I really loved dancing as a workout, but I wasn't making the classes very often. So I canceled my membership because it's a significant. So I do all my workouts on YouTube now and I bought YouTube Premium so that workouts would not be interrupted by ads. Actually what happened is I did a free trial and I forgot to cancel it and it continued. And I found that I really liked it. So I was talking to my husband about it because YouTube Premium also very expensive. And I was like, well, but it was kind of about the same as my Jazzercise membership, so it doesn't really count. It's just like we already had that in the budget and I just continued it. And he was like that is not how anything works. It is still an expense. Even if it's an expense you've paid for before, it is still in expense.

[00:25:37] So that's the argument here. The Republican party is just saying, no, we were never going to get those taxes again anyway. This was inevitable. Once we did the tax cuts the first time, it was inevitable that they'd be baked into the budget. It is the same trap that Democrats fall into with entitlement programs and lots of other spending where they say, no, no no, we started spending it; it should stay on the glide path. We should keep doing it. The trouble is we do that with the policy priorities of both parties forever and ever, amen. And at some point the bill comes due. And that feels like the point that we're at with interest rates, with the value of the dollar, with lots of pieces.

Sarah [00:26:18] They are currently in a vote-a-rama. I am assuming this will get through.

Beth [00:26:25] Yeah, me too.

Sarah [00:26:26] I am assuming it will also get through the House. I don't know what version will get through the reconciliation process with the House, not to be confusing also that's different from budget reconciliation. This is when the two bodies need to reconcile their versions for the record. But he's going to basically threaten anyone. Now, I hope everybody finds the path to freedom that Thomas Massie has found, but I'm not particularly hopeful. I think they're just going to balloon our deficit like they did in 2017.

Beth [00:26:57] I think that's right. I have no hope whatsoever that this is going to be defeated or meaningfully reshaped because this presidency is so much about production value. I've thought about Donald Trump's second presidency from the beginning as him show running versus governing because that's what he likes to do. He likes to produce television. And so I think that he will turn every screw necessary to get this done especially since he and Elon have broken up and Elon Musk has come out hard against this bill. I think anytime the president feels challenged, it is very important to him to defeat the challenger. And so I don't think there's a chance that this really gets locked up in any way. I also don't that is the end of the world as we know it. I think a lot of bad things will follow that. And I think states will have to get really creative. And I think it is an opportunity for Democrats to come out with a compelling new vision. Not just this sucks, but this pulls us backwards at a time when the future is moving so rapidly forward. Do you want some new ideas? Do you not just want trickle-down economics recycled for the 50th time? Here are some new ideas.

Sarah [00:28:16] Well, I don't know if it's because of our flashback series or our 10th anniversary or if I would feel this way no matter what. But I am very much in a head space where I'm ready for everybody to put their big girl panties on and just to equal opportunity, this metaphor, grow a pair. Just do your jobs. This is what I feel in a lot of institutions. I know COVID was hard. I know we're not all the way over it yet. I get that. Five years isn't long enough. And also I need everybody to step up now. It's been long enough. It's time to step up, have the hard conversation, do the hard work and do your job. And Congress is not doing its job, either party. There is no vision, there is no prioritization and there's certainly no indication through their work or through their production value that they are in fact Article One in the Constitution. Everything is in service to him or in opposition to him. Everything.

[00:29:31] I am ready for people to stand up and say, this is my new idea. This is what I think will work. This is why this won't work. I'm not saying no one in Congress is doing it, but it's time. We're in a new space. Like it's time to get to work and to point out if you feel this way, which I do, that one side is not working for anybody but Donald Trump. Not their constituents, not the United States of America, but only for Donald Trump. The next 2026 midterm theme should be he's for him and we're for you. A play off the she's for they/them and I'm for you. It's just so abundantly clear to me that this is not about any vision or principle or value. It's just in service to him. And including the fact that they will articulate, we're scared of him. Lisa Murkowski says it pretty plainly.

Beth [00:30:26] She does.

Sarah [00:30:28] So step up, everybody. It's time to step up.

Beth [00:30:33] And part of stepping up is doing something new and surprising. And this is maybe a bad idea, I'm not a strategist, but I've been thinking about how with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, an opposition to that that could be effective has to be something surprising and trust building and credibility building. What if Democrats went through and did like a this, but not that? I'd vote for that. I'd vote for the extension of the childcare. Tax credit. I'd vote for no tax on tips. Make a list of the things in this bill that you would support if they were put on the floor in the normal legislative process and then say the reason we are against it is because we made you all a promise with Medicaid, so did they, and they are violating their promise and we don't believe in violating our promises to you.

[00:31:25] Instead everything I am seeing from the party is this, oh my God, people are going to die. And that's not wrong, okay? I understand how vital Medicaid is to so very many people. What I know as a political matter is that that has become white noise to anybody who is not already firmly under the Democratic tent. If you want people who are not firmly under the democratic tent, you have got to do something unusual, new, surprising and that accepts that those people are not inclined to trust you. So what can you do that builds trust and gets that attention? And I would like to see some more creativity about that instead of these long asks please copy and paste your Facebook wall posts explaining in detail how people are going to die with the Medicaid cuts.

Sarah [00:32:19] I am so frustrated. I had this exact conversation about a local institution in my community and somebody said we need a big creative gesture to say we're trying. We're trying to come up with new solutions. And I think that's 100% correct in lots of institutions right now. Big creative solutions. Do you know why Zohran Mamdani won? Because he had a bunch of big creative solutions whether you think they'll work or not, it doesn't matter. They have impact. People are so tired of politics and the status quo. I don't know how to say any more clearly that we have been with Donald Trump as a politician for 10 years and as a cultural figure for nigh on 40, 50? This idea that he's the end of America, it doesn't work. How many times do you have to keep trying something to realize it doesn't work? He's president again, guys. A majority of Americans are comfortable with him in charge, or at least a plurality. So just cut it out, please.

Beth [00:33:32] We just did this bit on the policy baseline because we both love politics and it's kind of interesting and it is wild that the math doesn't have to math anymore in Congress, but people don't care about that either. People do not care about either. They care about how much do I have to spend every month on health insurance? Can I get health care that I need? And it's hard to make them care about that. I tell this story all the time.

Sarah [00:33:52] I do think people care about the deficit though. I think that is something people understand and do not like broadly.

Beth [00:34:00] I agree. About healthcare, I just want to make the point that it's hard to get people to care about that. I tell this story all the time when I was in HR, it was so difficult to get to do open enrollment. Their own health insurance to pay attention to what the cost is going to be next year, what your options are, what I need you to do to re-enroll or to make any changes, it was really-- like we ended up putting signs on the bathroom stalls because that is a place where you have captive attention for a second and people would read it and be like, okay, it's open enrollment time. It's very, very hard, even on those personal issues to get people's attention about things that sound kind of boring. So you have got to figure out what are people worried about or excited about? People are excited, they're talking about artificial intelligence. You could make something of this idea that Republicans are just up for whatever. Just don't care what might come. It's all good. I'd be putting the Terminator clips out there all the time. Like just do it, engage, meet us where we are.

Sarah [00:35:08] Well, and I don't think that people are bored. I think they're overwhelmed. It's a decision that people feel immediate overwhelmed like they can't do anything but get it wrong so they'd rather just not do it at all. I think that's what happens with so much of this deep decision making. And you know what? I feel a lot of that from Congress, too. I feel like the AI energy is like we can't get it right, so why bother? We might hurt the industry, so we should probably not do anything at all. And listen, there is an undercurrent that I would be very offended at as a state legislator, even though I think this is mostly true. I think state legislators are sloppy. We're dealing with a thing in Kentucky right now where they put out this piece of legislation with good purpose to protect students from predators and teacher-student relationships, but it's a disaster. Did anybody check with anyone, like a normal person before they figured this out? It's freaking sloppy.

Beth [00:36:03] I totally agree with you about that overwhelm. So talk about that. Hey, you know what this bill does? It adds hoops. They say they're fighting fraud. What they're doing is adding paperwork. Not even paperwork--

Sarah [00:36:17] They're making government bigger.

Beth [00:36:19] They're making bigger government in a way that means you are going to have to spend more time to get what has been promised to you.

Sarah [00:36:29] I don't feel like any of that is breaking through, unfortunately. And so I think that's probably why it's likely that this goes through. I remain hopeful that some other representatives or senators (I'm looking at you Lisa Murkowski) go, "No, not enough change. I'm not voting for this" but we'll just have to see. All right, Beth, let's move on to the next branch of government, the judiciary. The Supreme Court wrapped up its term. How are you feeling about it?

Beth [00:37:04] I think the first question is, does the Supreme Court have a term anymore? And I think that the answer is pretty much no, because we have gone from regular cases to the Supreme Court's version of reconciliation, which is emergency application.

Sarah [00:37:19] Yeah, the shadow docket is what people call it.

Beth [00:37:21] Almost everything is happening on emergency applications. So the court came off the bench on Friday and said, "We'll be back October 6th," but that's not true. You're still going to hear all kinds of things about what the Supreme Court is doing. They're still going to be working. The main thing that I want to say, and I understand that this is probably not what you're seeing on your social media feeds, is that this was not a blockbuster Supreme Court term. There were some cases that will be meaningful in Supreme Court jurisprudence going forward. Everything that gets to the Supreme Court is a big deal, but this was a term where fundamental rights were taken away like in the Dobbs decision. Most of the outcomes in this term, I think, were pretty predictable. The court kind of followed the seeds that had planted in previous terms to get to where they got on some of these cases.

[00:38:19] There is a ton of commentary about how happy President Trump is at the end of this term. He didn't win everything he put in front of the court. He succeeded more than, say, people who were on death row asking for emergency relief from the Supreme Court. We just killed a whole lot of people in June because the death penalty is on the rise. Executions are on the raise right now. And those folks don't get much relief on emergency applications, but the president does, apparently. I think it is just important to recognize that the Supreme Court-- and I would say this Supreme Court but I think this would be true about almost any Supreme Court. The Supreme Court in 2025 is not going to have a showdown with Donald Trump the way that people want them to have it.

Sarah [00:39:07] I don't want them to have it for what it's worth.

Beth [00:39:09] I think that's right. I was just going to say, if you play out what a real confrontation between the Supreme Court and the president looks like, I don't think anybody wants it. So my headline for the Supreme Court term is that it was avoidant. It took narrow off-ramps, it kicked a lot of cans down the road, and it mostly acquiesced to the president being the president, reserving the right to limit that power later.

Sarah [00:39:39] Yeah. I feel like all of us, the royal we, the citizens of the United States, but in particular people unhappy with policies, procedures, administrations. We use the courts the way Congress uses the reconciliation process.

Beth [00:40:05] Absolutely.

Sarah [00:40:06] We don't want to do the hard work. So we asked the lawyers to do it for us. And how's that working, everybody? We're happy with the results?

Beth [00:40:16] Well, it's directly related to Congress not functioning. There are more emergency applications because there are more presidential executive orders and there are more of those because Congress doesn't get its work done. And then when you don't like the executive order, you can't count on Congress to check the executive. So you go to the court. That's why we're here. Congress is the thing under all the other things.

Sarah [00:40:36] And there is more of those because we have acquiesced to the expansion of presidential power, both Democrats and Republicans. Because it's easier to pay attention once every four years and go, well, my guy will fix it all instead of saying, I want a president who is going to pull back executive power and re-embody Congress to do its work. We certainly don't hold congressional representatives to account. We don't kick people out who don't do their work. We only kick people out when they don't tow the party line. And that's on both sides. And so I just think all of this is so imbalanced. Now, look, I think some of this is systemic. I want to uncap the house. Part of the reason Congress is not responsive is because they are asked to be responsive to too many people at once. Representatives were never. Where's Amy Coney Barrett and her cute little histories when I need her? Representatives were never, ever intended to represent this many people. It's outrageous. It's a travesty. And if we want to get off on constitutional end times, I'm happy to go there with you on that. Because that's the problem.

[00:41:43] There are systemic representation problems that the next person who comes if he's like the second savior of progressive politics or her, they're just going to keep going. At some point we have to go enough is enough. If we don't want a king, then in 2028 we need to make that clear. And we don't need to say, oh, we just need the next person to go in and do what we want them to do with all these rules. Although, the short-sightedness of the Republican party who kills administrative review, kills nationwide injunctions through the court system, all these things, I'm like, you guys know that Donald Trump's not going to be president forever because he is a mortal person who will die. So eventually these things you're fighting for are going to bite you in the ass, including this policy baseline bullshit in Congress. You don't think Democrats are going do it next? Although, I don't want them to. I really don't. I want somebody to stand up and say if we don't win a king, then when we're in charge, we have to change the things. Freaking Joe Biden should have done that with the Supreme Court when we knew it was broken and he didn't. So that's my frustration. I don't care how little attention you pay. No one should have to explain very deeply that the executive is too powerful and it is not intended to be that powerful under our constitutional system.

Beth [00:43:04] And I understand that it's hard to get people to pay attention to structural reform. Don't talk about it as structural reform. If a member of the House or the Senate came out and said, I have compiled an annual report of my list of failures. Here are all the things that I did not do this year that I wanted to do. Here's how long it took us to respond to constituents because here's how many constituents we have. There are this many people in my district, I've only made contact with this tiny percentage of them. That's not how the system's supposed to work. This is not me, this is a system that failed. And by the way, I ran these numbers for some of my colleagues of both parties. We're failing because we can't do this job because we have to represent too many people.

[00:43:49] Just take the thing that people expect you to do, which is come out and say how awesome you are, and do the opposite. And I bet that would get some attention. About the Supreme Court, about your point on what you need to do when you're not in power, thinking through the fact that people of both parties are going to be in power at different points in time. I think that the decision on everybody's mind as we're recording today is from the birthright citizenship case, although it is not about birthrights citizenship. It is about the power of district courts to tell the president before there's been a trial, we think you violated the constitution, you have to stop. This is a decision that if you put it in a different context and change to the president is a lot of people who think that the world has ended today would be thrilled with.

Sarah [00:44:40] They would be thrilled.

Beth [00:44:40] That's right. They would be thrilled.

Sarah [00:44:43] Let's say they came out six months ago and said Republicans can't sue for nationwide injunctions on student loan relief. And people would be like, that's amazing. People get their student loan relief.

Beth [00:44:56] Because one district court judge in one little town in Texas should not be able to tell the president of the United States what he can do. I hate the birthright citizenship executive order. I think it is blatantly unconstitutional. I think the court will eventually find that.

Sarah [00:45:14] Yeah.

Beth [00:45:15] I think it sucks that we're going to have to wait a while for that. It sucks to have a period where the president can flagrantly act in a way that contradicts the plain text of a document. The constitution is unclear about nearly everything. And here we have something it's clear about. And we're going to have to weight to decide that. But that is our system. And I think Justice Barrett is correct in saying if you don't want an imperial president you also shouldn't want an imperial court. Just because the president is violating-- could be, she didn't decide he is because that wasn't before her. But just because the president could be violating the constitution, it doesn't mean we should as judges. That decision to me is much, much smaller than it's being discussed.

Sarah [00:46:01] Well, I don't think it's small. I just don't think it's big and impactful because it's about birthright citizenship. I think this is worth talking about. And I do think it will make it more difficult for people to challenge presidential decisions through the court. And you know what? I'm not even mad about that because I think we should stop using that as the only tool in our toolbox because I don't actually think we're getting the change we want. I think everyone should be very clear-eyed. About the fact that there is going to be a sustained effort to roll back gay marriage because we took the courts. We took that strategy, okay? That's what we decided. We decided we didn't want to wait to change it through the course of legislation state or otherwise; we're going to let the courts do it. Well, guess what that means? It means the courts can undo it. So we need to be clear-eyed about that.

[00:46:56] So let's not think that we're going to get what we want again through the same strategy. We're going to have to go about it a different way. We're going to have to about it through legislative change. If you live in a state with a trigger law with regards to gay marriage, arm up. There's about to be a fight. So what Roe v. Wade and the overturning of Roe v. Wade should have taught all of us is how fragile that strategy is. When you empower a group of nine people, there's some inherent instability. But when you do something through 435, who represent 330 million, it's a different story. I'm not saying that that is also not beholden to the whims of time cultural trends or otherwise. I'm just saying that's the system we have. And like you said, that's the levers we need to work, but some of them are damn near rusted stop. So we will have to do some real maintenance around this process.

Beth [00:48:08] I will say I'm not sure how big the impact of this is actually going to be, because I don't want to have knee-jerk reactions to the Supreme Court, but if we're going to have them, I think one good one to put in our minds is if Justice Barrett wrote the opinion, it's probably pretty narrow.

Sarah [00:48:22] Well, they didn't say no nationwide injunctions.

Beth [00:48:26] They did not say that. They left the door open for when states are the plaintiff because that's very complicated. How do you afford complete relief to a state? So that door is open. Class actions, that door is open. We have concurrences from Justice Thomas and Justice Alito that are basically like I'm watching you like the dad from Meet the Parents. Like don't you district court judges exploit these loopholes that the majority opinion left open. There are still lots of ways. And Justice Kavanaugh's whole concurring opinion was like the Supreme Court can definitely still on a preliminary basis issue an injunction telling the president his actions are unconstitutional. And we just might someday soon. Don't worry, guys. So I just I think it's unclear what the long-term impact of this opinion will be. I think in the short term, the impact will just be lots more new lawsuits saying the executive order on birthright citizenship is unconstitutional. And a pile of district court decisions headed to the Supreme Court and a file of appellate courts. And that is what the system is supposed to do.

[00:49:32] By the time the Supreme court gets something, it's supposed to have mountains of reading because the lower courts have thoroughly explored an issue. And we've gotten far away from that. And this tries to steer the ship back in the other direction. Whether that's right or not, I don't know. But again, that's not the end of the world. That's just the system working through what kind of system it's going to be. To your point about the courts being the avenue for equal rights for LGBTQ people, I think the other decision out of this term that will be pretty consequential long-term is US v. Skrmetti, where the court upheld Tennessee's law banning hormone blockers and surgery for transgender kids. And I think that that has been dissected by a lot of commentators in terms of the wisdom of taking that case all the way to the Supreme Court because it was not surprising that the Supreme court upheld Tennessee's law. And you got a lot of language in that decision that basically said the court's not going to do it for transgender people. The court did it for gay marriage. Some of the justices were not on board at the time and definitely haven't gotten on board since. But the rest of the court is not going to be the answer for protection for transgender people. It's going to have to go through the legislative process.

Sarah [00:50:59] Yeah, and I think that that is so complicated because there have been multiple moments, and at some point along the way, the Supreme Court stopped trying to find unanimous agreement on places where there was maybe still societal debate. I think the cases early like in the civil rights movement where you had the court say, yeah, we're going to weigh in here, but we're all going to weigh in together. And we kind of abandoned that. Wherever you are on this issue, it is difficult to debate that it is still a contested issue. The science is contested. Medical ethics are contested. You can go to the UK, you can go to France, you can go to Sweden, you can find this debate there too. And I think asking the court to weigh in on those debates, again, as we look back over other achievements that we thought were achievements that turned out to be a little more fragile than we wanted to tell ourselves, is not the rock hard strategy we think it is. And I think the people who brought this case got over their skis. I do. And I think ultimately it's going to really harm all the fight for trans rights. And that's something they should have considered, especially post-Dobbs. I don't really know what they were thinking. And I don't mean the parents. Of course, I know what the parents were thinking. I don't know what lawyers were thinking. I don't know what the ACLU was thinking. But again, I think this strategy has become the status quo in a way that has been damaging and is deserving of a lot more debate.

Beth [00:53:03] Honorable mention on could have a long-term impact for this term for me is the case about Texas's age verification law for minors accessing porn online. This was a standard of review case. So again, not about what it's about in a lot of ways. The majority of the court said in this case pretty plainly that adults do not have a free speech right to not have our ages verified when we're looking at things online. That's not a right that would subject a state law on age verification to strict scrutiny, the highest level of scrutiny. So they looked at this under intermediate scrutiny and said, yeah, of course Texas has an interest in making sure the kids don't look at porn online. The way that they've gone about trying to prevent that is fine. And I think that that decision about what level of protection does online content have as speech will come up again.

Sarah [00:54:08] I think that level of scrutiny is worth pausing on. It gets lost in so much of, I'm just going to be honest, TikTok. Short form video analysis. People want to see these decisions. They want to take the top line view, headline yes or no. And these levels of scrutiny that are essential to so many pieces of Supreme Court precedent and Supreme Court analysis just get completely lost. Even with the trans case, they decided if the state has a reasonable basis, that's good enough. You don't have to agree with their basis. But I don't know how anyone would debate that Tennessee at least has a reasonable basis to say the science on this is unclear. And so a reasonable person could go, uh-uh. When you get to strict scrutiny, it doesn't means no. In my really complex lawyer analysis, when you get to something like strict scrutiny, 99 times out of 100, you're going to get a no. It's really hard to me. But like a reasonable basis, that's a lot easier.

Beth [00:55:22] Those levels of scrutiny are asking about what is the court's job versus Congress's job or versus the state legislature's job. It is the courts saying, we aren't here to make policy calls. We are just here to protect constitutional rights. And so scrutiny means how hard are we going to take a look at what the state did vis-a-vis the constitution? And how much are we going to defer to the policy makers cause that's not our job? There is a back and forth that's getting a lot of play in media right now between Justice Jackson and Justice Barrett in the birthright citizenship case, because you can tell they really pissed each other off. When the Supreme Court is doing their opinions, they pass the drafts around. So it's kind of confusing because it comes out all at once and they're arguing with each other in separate documents, but they get to see what the other people are writing. And so they keep changing their drafts to say what they want to say about that.

[00:56:20] And Justice Barrett is very, very offended that Justice Jackson's dissenting opinion in this case accuses her of just getting caught up in like boring legalese. And Justice Barrett is like that's because I'm a judge, that's my job. Boring legalese is my job, that what we do here. I bring this up only to say, if you really want to understand what the Supreme Court is doing, and you don't want to just respond to the top line, which is almost never the entirety of the story with the Supreme court, understand that it takes a lot of patience to follow the court. It just takes a lotta patience and a lot of reading and a lotta getting caught in stuff that feels like a little bit of a maze. It's not impossible for the average person to understand what the Supreme Court is doing, but it is impossible if you are only taking in short form content, or you're only reading headlines. You don't want Supreme Court opinions to be fire. You don't want them to be owning anyone or imminently quotable. I saw a bunch of conservative outlets being like Barrett smacks down Jackson. That is not what we want as citizens. I promise you. Because when the court has done its best work, it's because there has been a level of respect among the justices that they could all get to the place of advancing a civil right. And that's what we want to encourage as citizens.

Sarah [00:57:56] Y'all going to get a little sneak peek of spicy bonus Sarah. Let me just lay this out. I don't give a shit what Justice Jackson or Justice Sotomayor or even Justice Kagan say in these dissenting opinions. I don't care if they read them from the bench because they're so mad about it. Miss me with that crap. I'm sorry. Let me be clear because this conversation is a lot about the functioning of the Supreme Court. Let me not give the impression that I think the current status quo of the Supreme Court is great because I do not. I think it is a broken institution in desperate need of reform. And I think the dissenting justices, if they want to convey that back to our previous conversation should take a really creative step. Step before Congress and say, I'm ready to talk. I'm ready to tell you what I've seen behind closed doors and why it's broken. Do that, I'd be all about that. You can wear any fancy collar you want to the Senate hearing if you're willing to spill the beans on what's going on back there. Cool, let's do it. Or Justice Sotomayor, if you wanted to resign during the Pridon presidency and say, "I'm out, I'm old enough, why don't you appoint somebody who's 27?" Cool, Let's do that. That's fine. But I don't want to hear like a dissenting opinion with a no King's Day wash over the top of it. I'm not interested. If it's that big of a five alarm fire, then you better do something bigger than writing a dissent opinion.

Beth [00:59:25] That's the thing. A normal dissenting opinion, great. Justice Thomas has been working concurrences and dissents his whole time on the bench to culminate in the project that he is part of now. It's not inconsequential to write separately, to vote separately and to explain your rationale. It is, I think, increasingly useless for those dissenting opinions to be valorized because what would be a lot more effective is those judges getting their colleagues to yes. And, look, they do. Only 10 of the 56 cases this term were 6-3, and only six of those were 6-3 the way that you would think, the conservatives and the liberals.

Sarah [01:00:12] Yeah, but what happens if you factor in the shadow docket, which we have no idea how that works?

Beth [01:00:18] It's really difficult to track the shadow docket for a lot of reason. Because we don't have transparency.

Sarah [01:00:21] That's why we call it the shadow. And again, if Justice Jackson wants to show up at the Senate and say, "I'm ready to spill the beans about the shadow docket," bring it on. That sounds great. I would be front row center. I think that's important. But that's not what she's doing.

Beth [01:00:37] But this back and forth where the Supreme Court is mirroring the populace in sort of you must hate the country because we disagree, this is an existential threat is, is useless to the very people who depend on the Supreme Court to guard fundamental rights. If you're going to be there on this lifetime appointment with these other human beings, you must be developing relationships that allow you to find the narrowest path forward that gets everybody to yes. That's what you need to be doing. Look, they take this long break because they get on each other's nerves. It's the end of June. They're not coming back to the bench until October. And Chief Justice Roberts this week has said, yeah, we really need those. That's ridiculous. What other workplace could that be said about?

Sarah [01:01:30] Also, they need that break because they're all in their 70s and they need their clerks to read that mountain of reading because they can't do it themselves.

Beth [01:01:38] Just four of them are in their 70s. The rest of them are awfully young because Republicans have adopted a very different strategy about this.

Sarah [01:01:46] That's true. Hey, I'm willing to give them a chance, so uncap the House and eliminate Supreme Court clerks and let's see who's left standing. Those are my creative solutions that I'm putting on the table.

Beth [01:01:56] I'm interested in all creative solutions.

Sarah [01:01:58] Yeah, we're interested in them.

Beth [01:01:58] We've been trying to have a whiteboard all year. It's the end of June. I'm ready to get more creative on our whiteboard. And I think maybe we just have to do it ourselves and that's fine.

Sarah [01:02:06] Clearly. We're going to talk about a different kind of whiteboard Outside of Politics. We're going to talk about little things that make life a lot better. I have a kickoff example. I wash my face every night. I use a new washcloth. I used to have white washcloths. But some of them would turn into rags or my children would steal them. Or maybe they're supposed to be the washcloths for the guest bathroom- all white. And then I would get frustrated because I wouldn't have the washcloths for my face. Or I wouldn't know like am I using a rag washcloth to wash my face? I think this was Nicholas' idea. He was like, just get a different color. I was like, oh my God. So I went to Sam's and I bought blue washcloths. And every night when all my washcloth are there and they match and I know exactly what they're for, I feel like the smartest person in life.

Beth [01:03:14] I'm in sync with you on this because my daughters have two different color washcloths for the same reason. They share a bathroom. And the solution was you just have to have your own set and we're going to color code those sets.

Sarah [01:03:27] Another one was I have a washer and dryer. I have a set of cabinets above the washer and dry, but they're just like kitchen cabinets, they're kind of shallow. So I had jars of laundry detergent and Tide pods and they would sit on the washing machine when I had a front loader. And they would rattle and it was junky and things would pile up. I also had this pile of rags in like a cloth bag on top of the dryer. It was a disaster. It always looked messy. It was a terrible situation. And I had my stepdad just put up a shelf. This is not some pretty shelf like you see on Instagram Reels. This is a piece of plywood on some metal bars. It doesn't even go all the way across the wall. There's like an inch. I don't even care. I put like a little container, like a wooden open faced box that holds all the rags. Now all the laundry detergents, everything fits on the shelf. There's nothing on top. Which had to happen because I got rid of my front loader and got a top loader and I've never been happier, FYI. And it feels so small, but it changed my life.

Beth [01:04:40] I love that for you. I have two even smaller and very highly specific examples of things that have made my life better recently. The first one is that I have finally found some earrings that I can wear under my headphones and not be miserable.

Sarah [01:04:53] Seems like a good one.

Beth [01:04:55] This is a 10 year quest for me, because almost every pair of earrings I have either get caught in the headphones or get pressed, like hoops get smushed against my face, or the post on the back is digging into my skin because of the headphones. So do you ever use the app Shop Pay?

Sarah [01:05:15] No.

Beth [01:05:16] Okay, I use it all the time. It's like a lot of small businesses use it to do online checkout. And Shop Pay will come and be like, "Psst, it's been a minute. You have $5 to spend on one of our clients." I'm like, oh, I have $5 to spend! Can't waste that. And it led me to the shop called O'Clementine that has the best little hoop earrings. They're very small. So they fit under the headphone, but they just tuck into themselves. There's no post. There's not a little piece that you attach to it. There's nothing sticking out. They just make a loop around your ear and they are waterproof. I've worn them in the pool, I've worn them on the river, I have worn them in the shower. I just keep them in pretty much all the time now and it is so nice. And earrings are not like a big problem to solve, but I like to have earrings in and I spend the bulk of my week with headphones on. So it's really been a delight and they're not expensive and it's small business that I'm happy to support. It's great all around.

Sarah [01:06:15] I had to look at what earrings I have on. I don't have this problem because you have bigger hair so you wear bigger earrings. I have always worn very small earrings. So it's very rare that I put them on and something bothers me. I'm also looking and I think my cans are bigger than yours. Do you see this?

Beth [01:06:29] I do see that.

Sarah [01:06:30] Like my cans are bigger than yours.

Beth [01:06:31] Like, significantly bigger.

Sarah [01:06:32] Yeah, I've never noticed until we had this conversation, so I think that leaves more room for earrings, too. Maybe you have bigger cans.

Beth [01:06:37] These are small.

Sarah [01:06:38] Yeah, see look I have a lot of room at the bottom of my ear. Maybe you just need bigger head, too.

Beth [01:06:42] But even when I have like tiny earrings in they stab me so much. So anyway, that's one thing. The second thing I feel very stressed about napkins that come with takeout orders.

Sarah [01:06:56] I don't like any of that bullshit. I don't like the utensils. I don't like the napkins. Can I ask a serious question? How much Taco Bell sauce do you think I need for my two tacos? How many packets of Chick-fil-A sauce do people need for six nuggets? I mean, just generally, I think there's some confusion about people's sauce practices. You understand what I'm saying?

Beth [01:07:20] I do not. I will take all the Chick-fil-A sauce because I will dip anything in it like vegetables.

Sarah [01:07:28] Fair, but it's still out of control.

Beth [01:07:28] I really get stressed about the napkins. I don't want to throw them away. I also don't want to use them as napkins because they're never good napkins. What I have discovered, especially from Chipotle, but also from some pizza places, is that if I keep the napkin with my counter spray, they do make an excellent way to just quickly wipe the counter down.

Sarah [01:07:49] That makes sense. I like that.

Beth [01:07:50] And now I'm deploying the napkin to some purpose. I'm not just tossing it, but I'm not keeping it forever as though one day I'm going to have like guests and say, would you like a Chipotle napkin?

Sarah [01:08:00] Hey, you make your fun, but I have at gatherings just gathered just kept every utensil packet from every takeout container, and then I roll those babies out in a big old solo cup and I'm like, go to it guys. Here's the utensils. I ain't got no beef about it.

Beth [01:08:19] I keep the plates, I keep utensils, absolutely. I keep the sauce packets. I have one gallon-sized Ziploc bag in my refrigerator that I put extra sauce packets in. So they're there if we need them. They're great for like a picnic or something. Also nice if you have like a small burn to get one of those cold sauce packets out and just put on your small burn. I do burn my hand a lot on the oven. I inherited this from my grandmother. My grandmother always had like the tiniest little burn on her hand and I'm kind of like that. So the sauce packets are nice for that too. So I'm really trying to bring everything to its highest best use.

Sarah [01:08:54] Hold up, wait just a second. Do you not have the gloves?

Beth [01:08:57] I don't like the gloves.

Sarah [01:08:59] Why not?

Beth [01:09:00] I don't know. I can't maneuver enough with them. I need more flexibility than the gloves give me.

Sarah [01:09:05] They're gloves. You get all five fingers. And then you don't ever burn your hand.

Beth [01:09:11] No, I don't do the gloves. I also am very sentimentally attached.

Sarah [01:09:16] Not mitts. The gloves. I just want to make sure we're talking about the same thing here.

Beth [01:09:19] I hear you. The five-fingered gloves. I'm also very sentimentally attached to the loop-made potholders that my daughters create. You know what I mean? Like they're all colors. They make them on the little loom.

Sarah [01:09:30] Well, you could just use those to protect your counters. You don't have to pull things out with them. That's crazy.

Beth [01:09:36] They're not very good at protecting the counters, though. They're not big enough.

Sarah [01:09:39] Okay, well, this is my fun idea.

Beth [01:09:43] Okay.

Sarah [01:09:44] I think in the comments of this episode, people should put small problems they need solved. Like I want to use the loom pot holders, but also I'm burning my hands all the time. And we should all crowdsource these tiny solutions.

Beth [01:10:05] I'm for it.

Sarah [01:10:06] I think it'll be really fun. I think we'll probably identify stuff like we didn't even know like, oh yeah, that annoys the crap out of me. And someone's like cracked the code.

Beth [01:10:16] I think this is citizenship. Let's just help each other out.

Sarah [01:10:18] All right, we're on it. So join us in the comments, everybody. We're going to solve these tiny problems as a community.

Beth [01:10:25] I believe in us.

Sarah [01:10:26] I'm really excited about it. You know I love this kind of thing. You know I love like a systems improvement.

Beth [01:10:32] Well, also it scratches an itch for a lot of people where they do really want to give advice to other people and often people don't want to receive the advice.

Sarah [01:10:39] But innocuous, you know I don't like advice-- like I never like to give actually impactful advice. This level of stuff, can I just tell you how to like sort your laundry or something very low stakes? I'm in on that. I'm 100%. Please do not ask me who you should marry or what job you should take or anything with any level of stakes. Low stakes, high impact, I'm your girl.

Beth [01:11:07] Well, it's going to be great. And I'm sure we'll all have a thousand ideas after we read through those comments.

Sarah [01:11:12] Yeah, okay. So meet us in the comments guys, it's going to be amazing. Thank you so much for joining us today. We will be back in your ears on Friday the 4th of July with another flashback episode. And until then, keep it nuanced y'all.