Trump's Venezuela Strike and the Rise of Preventable Diseases

and our wishes for 2026

On the first News Brief of the year, Kate F commented that we were back…with a bang! I grimaced, but what else can you say? Our first episode of 2026 is largely dedicated to the US military action in Venezuela. I’ve struggled with how to describe the action, much less analyze it. Was it an act of war? “Removal” doesn’t seem quite right. Neither does law enforcement (as the administration has described it). Did we attack Venezuela? Are we a colonizer now (again)?

It might seem overwhelming to dive right back in with such a momentous event, but, as always, the news is only overwhelming if I avoid it (which I did for most of break). When I sit down with Beth to work through what happened, what I think about it, and what it means, then suddenly I feel less anxious, less disempowered, and more invested. That is how I want to feel about the actions of our military in a country with people just as real me, as Beth so eloquently says during our conversation. That is how I want to feel as we kick off America250 - which we bring up approximately eleventy times during this episode. That is how I want to feel at the start of every new year, particularly this one.

Topics Discussed

• The US arrests Maduro of Venezuela

• America250: Our First Medical Mandate

• Flu, Whooping Cough, Measles and Loosened Vaccines Guidance

• Outside of Politics: Wishes for 2026

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Episode Resources

Pantsuit Politics Resources

• Join the 2026 Pantsuit Politics Movie Challenge

The US Arrests Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro

• Trump coins ‘Don-roe Doctrine’ as he explains Venezuela operation (The Hill)

• Mock house, CIA source and Special Forces: The US operation to capture Maduro (Reuters)

• The U.S. captures Maduro. (Tangle)

• How a Top Secret SEAL Team 6 Mission Into North Korea Fell Apart (The New York Times)

• Before Nicolás Maduro, There Was Manuel Noriega (The New York Times)

• A year of strikes: US military operations surge under Trump (Military Times)

• This Is What Venezuelans Really Want (The New York Times)

• The Biggest Question About Venezuela (The Atlantic)

• Trump once called the Iraq war a ‘big, fat mistake.’ Now he needs to calm the GOP after saying he’s not afraid to put boots on the ground in Venezuela (Fortune)

• Trump Snubs Top Venezuelan Opposition Leader for the Pettiest Reason (The New Republic)

• US says it thwarted potential ISIS-inspired New Year’s Eve attack in North Carolina (Reuters)

America250: Our First Medical Mandate

• Smallpox, Inoculation, and the Revolutionary War (U.S. National Park Service)

• 5 things I learned after 12 hours of Ken Burns’ American Revolution (Pantsuit Politics)

Seasonal Illness

• Measles Cases and Outbreaks (CDC)

• Pertussis Surveillance and Trends | Whooping Cough (CDC)

• HHS to weaken childhood vaccine schedule for flu, meningitis (POLITICO)

• Why the flu season is so bad and how you can protect yourself (PBS News)

Wishes for 2026

• Random Bits of Knowledge About The New Year (Charles Duhigg | Substack)

• Unravel Your Year (Susannah Conway)

• Ask of Old Paths by Grace Hamman

• January is for Love (Beth Silvers | Thoughts and Prayers)

Episode Transcript

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

Beth [00:00:11] This is Beth Silvers. You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics in 2026!

Sarah [00:00:15] Woo-hoo!

Beth [00:00:15] Hooray! Whether this is your first episode or your 11th year with us, we’re so grateful that you’re spending some of your finite time and attention processing the news with us. That’s always our intention here, to process the news together. We started this show to have conversations that let us be whole people just experiencing and loving the world. And we are so grateful that we’re still here doing it with each other and with all of you. And there is plenty to process today. We’re going to discuss the Trump administration’s actions in Venezuela, what we’re learning about Trump’s vision for foreign policy. Sarah, perhaps you’ve heard the term, the Don-roe Doctrine.

Sarah [00:00:50] I reject that. Thank you.

Beth [00:00:53] We’ll talk about that. We are also going to talk about everybody getting sick and what’s going on with public health as flu and whooping cough and measles are on the rise. We’re going to introduce a new little segment where we observe a birthday moment for America’s 250th this year and we’ll end as we always have and probably always will with what’s on our minds Outside of Politics. Of course, that is the new year. Here is a major tease for those of you left hanging from December. Sarah has in fact arrived on a new word for 2026 and will share it with us at the end of this episode.

Sarah [00:01:26] Before we jump in, we wanted to share that our beloved executive producer, Norma, who ran a film club for us last summer, has created a 2026 movie challenge. Norma decided to be the change she wants to see in the world. After we did our slop episode, and there was a lot of conversations about art and the role of film and there’s nothing good to watch and it’s all crap, she was like, false. Okay. I’m going to bring all my expertise about The Criterion Collection and Letterboxd. And if you don’t know what any of those things mean, it doesn’t matter. She’s created 52 different prompts, one for each week of the year. You select the movie, you talk about it with others in community, both on our Substack or in our Facebook group. There’s more info about this on our Substack and link in our show notes for this episode. Nicholas and I have already watched two films for the movie challenged. We watched Defending Your Life with Meryl Streep and Albert Brooks from like 1991, I think. And last night, one of the challenges is a movie directed by Charlie Chaplin. So we watched the circus.

Beth [00:02:30] Fun!

Sarah [00:02:32] It’s been really fun. It really does bring some structure, but also spontaneity to the dreaded, just flipping through Netflix or Apple TV or the [inaudible] who I don’t even like and don’t want to spend time with, trying to be like don’t watch this, don’t want to watch this. No, we got the movie challenge ready for you. So we love finding ways to bring excitement to your lives and connection between listeners. I think the movie challenge for 2026 is going to be one of them. So we hope that you will check it out and join us.

Beth [00:03:04] All right, up next, let’s talk about what our military and executive branch have been up to. On Saturday, January 3rd, United States forces apprehended Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in an operation called Absolute Resolve. I think just taking a second with that is a good idea.

Sarah [00:03:36] Well, I feel like it’s an oxymoron, but whatever. Absolutely Resolve, come on. Okay, it’s fine. I realize that’s not the biggest issue here. I just wanted to get that off my chest.

Beth [00:03:46] I would love some information about how these things are named. This was planned for months in advance. The CIA has been working on this. The CIA had someone on the inside in Caracas.

Sarah [00:03:59] They even built a replica of his palace, supposedly in Kentucky, in our home state.

Beth [00:04:04] I wish we can go see it.

Sarah [00:04:06] That would be fun. Do you think they just tear them down afterwards?

Beth [00:04:08] I don’t know. Could we put that out into the world if anybody has the ability to let Sarah and Beth of Pantsuit Politics check that out? We would love to go.

Sarah [00:04:16] Well, and I think it’s worth asking like this-- look, this went really smoothly, no doubt about it. It was a successful mission. Now, as you and I remember vividly from the mission in Iraq, declaring victory can be premature. Not that they’re declaring victory because they’re saying this is not a military action to begin with, but this was just a law enforcement action. But it went so smoothly that I was reading some analysis that said it’ll be worth asking whether this was brokered. Like whether we really went in with no agreement from people within the Maduro regime, or if they were also tired of him. So worth asking because it went really, really well. And I think there’s a part of me that said, like, it’s encouraging that the CIA and the military can work together so well and achieve missions like this, except I did read a piece of the New York Times like probably a month ago about that they tried something similar to plant intelligence, I think it was maybe drones or wires or something in North Korea, and it was a disaster in the first Trump administration. And it took months and years for us to find out the ways in which it was a disaster. So that’s the other thing, we know it went well based on what we know right now. But we absolutely don’t know everything.

Beth [00:05:45] I don’t doubt the skill and professionalism of our military. I think step one often goes well, and that’s the problem, right? Step one often does well, and then it gets a lot more complicated. To the question of whether this was a military action or a law enforcement operation might be worth reviewing. It began with a cyber-attack on Caracas. Then there were airstrikes on radar and air defense sites and a raid on Maduro’s residence. They were prepared to get through the steel door of the safe room there. They didn’t have to because they got in so fast. He didn’t make it there. But they were prepared for that too. I have been trying to really live by the mantra other people are real lately, and just really think about the fact that the people living in Venezuela are as real as I am and their lives are as full as mine and their inner lives are rich as mine. And I was thinking, if this is law enforcement, it could happen down the street from me. And were there a cyber-attack on my neighborhood and airstrikes nearby, I think that would feel more like a military strike than a law enforcement action to me.

Sarah [00:06:57] Well, and there’s a complicated timeline that they are using to justify the legality, which is they go in to grab him, and then they do have airstrikes on supporting military infrastructure justified under the argument that they were clearing the airspace to retreat. Right. So they said they’re under law enforcement, where the military is here to support the Department of Justice and exercising this arrest warrant. But then once our officials are in the country, well, then we can use the military more broadly to defend them, which seems self-justifying and deeply problematic to me. Don’t think this is the first time that we’ve used this legal justification, but even in such a short, precise, compact action, there are some sort of complicating factors along the timeline that they are using to legally justify their actions.

Beth [00:08:07] And it’s difficult to say sitting here in January 2026 what difference it would make if this were universally considered illegal. What would the ramifications of that be? Who would do something about that? We have a Congress that is going to consider the fact that it was left out of this process entirely and we’ll see what that means to them. But there’s all this debate about the legality and I think that’s important. I’m not trying to say the law doesn’t matter, I’m trying to say we have to shore up domestically what it means to us to have a rule of law around executive action like this if we want that question to have more salience.

Sarah [00:08:48] And it didn’t start with Donald Trump. We say that all the time. There’s been a lot of conversation regarding this action in particular about the removal of Noriega from Panama under first president Bush Herbert Walker. And this memo written by Bill Barr, who was a young attorney at the time, that basically says when you’re a wanted fugitive on foreign soil, then we have inherent authority, constitutional authority to come in and get you, even though this is a clear violation of the UN Charter, which we ratified and we should be following. But we have a long history of justifying the ways we want to work around it. That memo was widely criticized, but Noriega tried in legal proceedings to defend himself under these violations. It doesn’t matter; he went to prison. We didn’t really do much about it. It’s not like Congress stood up in that moment or the Iraq war or any of these other things and said, no, we want our authority respected and we want the UN Charter followed. How many Americans even understand the UN Charter or international law? Very, very low proportion. And this administration sort of functions under the, unless the people rise up in the street, we have the right to do it. And so, I’m worried that we will continue down this road that he is dramatically-- and the way he did under the first administration around domestic policy and domestic procedure, I feel like in this term he is really blowing up any norms around foreign policy that say, oh, well, we’ll at least tell the Gang of Eight. They told the Republicans in the Gang of Eight the morning after, two months before they come before Congress and said regime change is not on the table and just basically lied to them. And Marco Rubio makes a few calls so people, Republicans in particular, don’t tweak criticisms, but they still, hopefully by the time this episode comes out on Tuesday, have spoken to Democrats. But as we’re recording on Monday, they have not spoken to the Gang of Eight, the chairs of the, what is it, like Security Committee, the Intelligence Committee. They’re not following any of these precedents or norms. They’re just blowing them up completely.

Beth [00:11:12] And why would they? Because again what’s anybody going to do about it? That’s where we are.

Sarah [00:11:16] Yeah, he wanted to, so he did.

Beth [00:11:18] This is the question for the American public this year. To me, this is the questions squarely presented to the American Public, do we care? Do we care about this or do we not? We have elections and we have to decide. It’s hard to organize a conversation about what happened in Venezuela because there are so many components to it. There’s the big picture question, is this good? Is the world better off because of this action? And how much does the answer to that question inform how much we care about how it was done and what procedures were followed or not? Then there’s the what is next question for the people of Venezuela. There’s the question of what this will mean in American politics. There are the international law questions. There’s question of what is this administration going to do next? Donald Trump has gone from a candidate who sounded like he would rather focus all of his energy domestically, like all of our foreign involvement is a waste of time and money, to someone ready to go conquer the world and remake it as he sees fit. That’s an enormous shift. So what does America first mean now? What is the foreign policy of this administration? What does this mean if you’re Greenland or Panama or Cuba or Columbia or any number of countries where he has some thoughts and some notes for your leader? Just a lot of open questions here.

Sarah [00:12:51] To me, I think Marco Rubio has a policy. I think Marco Rubio is looking for regime change in Cuba, ultimately. I don’t think it has to do with oil or much else except for what he believes is the right thing to do. And because they don’t want to confirm anybody before the Senate and another big F you to congressional authority in our constitution, they’ve put him in two positions. So they don’t have to go get a Senate-confirmed appointee to the National Security Council. So he’s doing both, and he has an enormous amount of power right now. So I think that he probably does have a foreign policy and a doctrine, and as much as this Monroe doctrine, Trump corollary, which I refuse to call the Dun-roe Doctrine, to me that probably comes more from him and his camp. I think Donald Trump just has a short attention span. And actions go well, he kind of stores that away when they go well in the short term. And it’s very much like a hostile takeover. It’s like a very corporate view that he has about everything else. I mean, we went in thinking, well, if anything else, we know that he doesn’t like military action, but that is clearly not true anymore. In less than a year in office, he has now attacked seven countries. Somalia, Iran, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, and Venezuela. With at least 626 airstrikes, according to the military times. So he’s developed a taste for this. And just like anything else, it doesn’t reflect a policy. It just reflects his short-term attention span. So I get the Iranian strike on the nuclear facilities. Did we actually eliminate their nuclear capacity? Who knows, who cares? Is it actually going to increase stability in the region? Not as far as I can tell. It’s certainly not increased stability within Iran that has had numerous protests over the break. If we’re going to just say, well, we care about these dictators (and Columbia is also run by a sick man) well, what’s to stop us from taking out Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua or the leader of the military junta in Myanmar or Eritrea or Kim Jong Un. Like if this is the justification, there’s plenty to do. What we have learned over and over and over again since James Monroe over the course of our 250 year history that the short-term strikes we can achieve, but the long-term victory is much harder.

[00:15:34] There was a really good analysis, I don’t know you read it, in The Atlantic from Elliot Cohen and he was just talking about dictators have gotten better, like these authoritarian governments have better at suppression. And really the most successful overthrowing you have is from the people. But they’ve gotten good and they work together and they take surveillance tech from China and they get weapons from Russia and they can all work together to keep their people down. But over time, it’s not just that one dude. Like it’s an entire system that breaks apart civil society and the media. And you don’t just take him out and it just burst forth fully formed. Like, it’s really hard to undo that. To the Venezuelans on the ground, like I had two dear friends who are Venezuelan. I’ve been texting with them, their families’ back in Venezuela are of course thrilled that Maduro is gone. But there was a really great piece in the Times from Colette Capriles called What Venezuelan’s Really Want. And she says, “We are not a nation held together by a government or a social contract, but a collection of individuals trapped in a struggle for survival. Replacing the man at the top will not dismantle the web of bosses, private loyalties, corrupt practices, and institutional ruins that have replaced public life here.” He’s just got such a torn attention span. He hasn’t even fixed Gaza. It’s still a mess. The ceasefire is kind of a name only. It’s now a war of attrition, just like Ukraine and Russia. We got tons of coverage about Ukraine over the break. We’re going to peace deal. Where’s that? Like, what is this? I don’t think it’s a doctrine. I don’t think it is a policy. I think it just somebody with a very short attention span playing with the toys at their disposal.

Beth [00:17:16] I think he is attracted to the idea of a doctrine that has his name on it, we know he loves that. And I think that he believes that America should take what it wants in the world. I think he believes that. I think he would like America to be bigger when he leaves office on a map than it was when he came into office. I think he’s getting more and more serious about that. I think we need to take that really seriously. I think there are enough factions within the conservative movement, very broadly defined, who have interests sort of aligned with this. Like that’s what you see with Venezuela. If you ask, why did we do this? Well, there are at least five answers that you could pin to different folks in the administration. You’re absolutely right. I totally agree with you that Marco Rubio has a very particular eyes agenda here, based on his own life experiences, his family, his history, his constituents that he represented when he was a senator from Florida. He has a vision about this. I think it is different than Trump’s vision, which I think is mostly about oil because Trump has always been fixated on oil. A number of news outlets are replaying comments that he made about the Iraq war right now. And if you listen carefully he wasn’t critical of the Iraq war because so many American lives were lost or because it was such a quagmire. He said we should have taken the oil. And you do have within that conservative umbrella, people who are worried about refugees from Venezuela. You have people who were worried about China and Russia making so many inroads in South America and in the Arctic, including in Greenland. So they’re like it’s like everything with Trump. If you analyze his personal motivations too much, you’re going to lose a lot of people supporting these actions. But everybody’s gotten really comfortable with not doing that. And just saying, there’s something here that works for me. So I’m going to see if I can bring enough influence to the table to direct this in a way that will ultimately really work for me and really pay off.

Sarah [00:19:26] Yeah, the issue is not that we don’t understand the way he operates. We understand that it might be a little bit of everything all of the time, like in the immortal words of Bo Burnham, right? The question is, what do we want? And I think the reason that presidents have been able to expand this authority and exploit these presidents from both parties has been because America, the American people, either don’t have the interest, the education, I don’t know, or no leadership, no maybe thought leadership to say, what do we want to be in the world? And not just, I don’t want us doing that because I want us focused on affordability. But we do have a powerful military. How do we want to operate? And really, I mean, what Trump is going to force in 2028 and beyond is a real reckoning with presidential power. And this is just one more manifestation of that. How powerful do we want the president of the United States to be as we celebrate our 250th birthday? Do we want a king that just says, I do it because I want to and I want it? I want the oil. I want. The Nobel Peace Prize. I mean, they’re saying he’s not supporting Mikado. There’s two anonymous sources that because she didn’t turn on Nobel Peace prize that he wanted. Is this it? This is not what I want for us on our 250th birthday. I want a real leader and a leader that puts the interests, not the financial interests of himself and his cronies, but the interests of the American people. First, including in perhaps leading a real examination of how much power we want the president to have.

Beth [00:21:33] And that is a question. How much power do we want the president to have is a questions that is also about what we want for each other because these strikes didn’t happen by themselves. Members of the military are involved in all of this activity. On Christmas day, American soldiers had to do a strike in Nigeria. If you walked around the street and ask people why, I don’t think many of us could answer that question. And I thought we were done with that here. I thought we did not like this use of our military anymore. I thought we were not willing to sacrifice to be the world’s police officers. I agree that Maduro was horrible, absolutely horrible. No question that the people of Venezuela need someone different to lead them and need someone with a vision that is about Venezuela as more than oil repositories, need someone who can really speak to the diversity of people there, the culture, the geography. There’s so much in Venezuela that’s so rich and they deserve to choose their leadership under their very sophisticated constitution, which they have, and move forward. No question that it’s good that Maduro is out of power there. But is it good is the question that I thought we were done with using as justification for putting Americans in harm’s way and spending our dollars this way. I agree with Donald Trump that I don’t want protesters gunned down by the regime in Iran. Of course, I think that’s awful. Of course, I think the Iranian people are oppressed by their government and would be better off with regime change, but I don’t want American military members involved in making that change. I’m just confused because the election message that I heard from Trump that was the thing I most connected with and that most made me understand why people, especially young men, flock to him, was the idea that we’re done doing things because they’re good. That’s not why we use our military anymore. So if it’s not America first, it’s Trump first, and I think that’s pretty clear. What reaction are we going to have to that as a populace?

Sarah [00:23:49] I think there’s two parts of that that are hard. One, I know that if you ask most Americans, they’ll say, no, I still don’t want to do that. And that’s a problem. They broadly agreed with Trump, but I don’t think their reasoning is because we didn’t take the oil. I don’t think their reason is we don’t want to do that because we don’t get good enough deal on the other end of it. I really don’t believe that. The problem is though, Beth, as the military continues to change and military tactics continue to change, which we’re going to talk about hopefully soon, is that we’re going to be able to do more and more of this without putting American lives at risk. Because of drones, because of technology, because of AI, it’s going to be easier and easier to do this without putting the American lives at risk. And that’s what he’s seen. He’s seeing these, the nuclear strikes, the strikes in Nigeria, like he’s not losing American lives. It’s not exacting a political cost. A lot of people were talking about this, absolutely, but not in the way they would have been if several Americans had died in the course of this operation. And he’s taking in that data. I mean, he’s a slow learner, but he can take in information. You know what I’m saying? Even if we didn’t have the drones and the technology, it’s just so far removed. I wrote in my journal, I woke up on the third, I checked the news and was like, holy shit. And then I got on Instagram, and I bought a bunch of stuff from Target’s new spring collection. I thought, what an American morning. Before I ever left my bed, I went shopping and I learned about strikes in Venezuela because the strikes in Venezuelan didn’t affect my life at all. I wasn’t running to the grocery store out of concern that I needed to stock up for my family. And I just think that’s part of the removal of all of this from like real strategic analysis, like real reckoning with does this matter? Do we care? Does it matter? What is this? How much do we care? And I think that that’s unfortunately because of our media environment, because of geographic isolation, like many, many things. It’s just difficult.

Beth [00:25:58] But that’s also just step one. Fewer lives at risk in step one of the operation. But that means that other countries can do it to us too. Those drones come this direction also. And I know that he’s got his vision for the golden dome that’s going to protect us from everything. But these cyber-attacks, the opportunity to use cheap technology to hurt people is available to everyone.

Sarah [00:26:21] Well, and some of these leaders in South America, they might not be able to defend themselves or keep this level of American intervention out of their nations, but they sure as hell can exact some costs in the aftermath.

Beth [00:26:39] Yes. And if the American people, I think, don’t answer some of these questions about what the rule of law means to us, how we want to use our military, what our role is in the world, I think more of those costs are going to be exacted on civilians in this country, especially as we see the parts of our government that have been focused on cybersecurity, counter-terrorism, dismantled or redeployed for other purposes like immigration, I’m really worried about this. I do think a lot of people understood and connected the threat of terrorism to some of our military action throughout the world. And I don’t think that’s over. It’s not over. Hell, we’re talking about ISIS again. That’s the Nigeria attack. There’s ISIS. The French and UK forces, part of the operation that started years ago just did airstrikes in Syria on ISIS facilities. So we’re still living some of the consequences of being expansionist and being the world’s police. And I thought we had a broad majority of Americans regardless of political party who didn’t want to do that anymore.

Sarah [00:27:56] I do want to say, though, because I’m committed to not ignoring facts that don’t support my opinion, we’ve been saying this and the things I’ve been reporting on the good news brief is that the United States law enforcement have prevented several, particularly over New Year’s, planned ISIS attacks on our shores. So, yeah, I’ve worried about this too, but they’ve been putting the proof in the pudding that they have prevented these attacks. And I just want to say that because I don’t want to just continue that analysis and ignore the countervailing evidence that they are preventing those sorts of terrorist attacks at least according to their own reporting

Beth [00:28:35] Yeah, and I’m grateful for everyone who does that work and who continues to do that work in what sound like pretty difficult circumstances right now. So we will certainly continue talking about this. We know that you all will have thoughts about Venezuela. We know we’ve only scratched the surface of the issues here because there are so many and they’re so complex, but we do want to transition from America’s actions across the world to how the impacts of politics and policy arrive at our doorsteps. So next up, we’re going to talk about super flu and when our vomiting and all the things that are infecting those we love.

Sarah [00:29:14] Beth, you’re going to talk about it because you’re going to have to monolog because you know I don’t talk about this topic from specifically about October to May.

Beth [00:29:23] Now, I understand that you don’t want to talk about specific illness. I do want to introduce this with our birthday moment. This year, as we have discussed with enthusiasm, is America’s Semiquincentennial, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776. And we are birthday believers around here. We like birthday weeks, birthday months, birthday years, depending on the significance of the birthday. And 250 is a big one. So we’re going to observe some birthday moments and today it seemed right to introduce this topic by talking about how we’ve been dealing with illness and vaccines since our founding.

Sarah [00:29:58] Maggie is a devoted presidential historian, and she has pointed out multiple times, particularly after my newsletter on the American Revolution by Ken Burns, which I recommend to everyone as a way to celebrate this particular semiquincentennial, that George Washington, and they do cover this in the documentary, ordered his troops to be inoculated against the smallpox. It was like a huge second enemy over the course of the Revolutionary War. And so they gave soldiers many of which were not too thrilled about it. If you have a problem with the scenes now, man, you would not have like smallpox inoculation in that process. Let me tell you what, because some of them died from the inoculations because you basically had to give them a little bit of smallpox and so I think he weighed this for a long time and ultimately decided to inoculate particularly the militia. He said, necessity not only authorizes, but seems to require the measure for should the disorder infect the army in the natural way and rage with this usual virulence, we should have more to dread from it than from the sword of the enemy. And historians credit this with a major factor in winning the war was inoculating the Minutemen under the orders of George Washington. RFK.

Beth [00:31:21] There was our first medical mandate in our country’s history, and that is very relevant because what’s happening right now is that people are getting fewer vaccines and more people are going sick. That’s the too long did not read of this segment. We have the normal winter viruses that Sarah will not speak of, the vomiting bug, the flu, COVID. Super flu is not a real designation. That’s not a technical term, but a lot of outlets are using it to describe a particular strain. Subclade K which is different than J which is what most of our flu vaccines are based on and some experts kind of worry about that misalignment, but that’s normal. We always know that we’re chasing strains of the flu and we do our best with the and they help to some degree.

Sarah [00:32:07] That’s what the medical professionals in my life have told me, that the people who are seeing everyone come in, they’re like, yeah, people are coming in that have been vaccinated but they are significantly less sick with this particular strain of flu than those who were not vaccinated.

Beth [00:32:24] And that’s kind of the way it goes. We have a historic number of measles cases from 2025, more than 2000 cases across 44 jurisdictions. And 93% of the people who are infected were unvaccinated or we don’t know their vaccination status. Texas accounts for almost half of those measles case. So there is just a direct corollary. Whooping cough is rising. That is preventable. We had the highest case count in 2025 in over a decade because fewer people are giving their kids those four doses of the DTaP vaccine that are recommended before kindergarten.

Sarah [00:33:00] Well, and this is all as they have officially changed the vaccine schedule from 17 shots to 11, taking it down dramatically. And you see the reporting from this and the parents who sometimes children have died are still defensive about this. This is a deep seated issue with people’s distrust of the vaccines and it is easy to blame RFK and maha, but they were able to rise because this was decades of misinformation and I think you know to a certain extent Mismanagement with people concerns about the vaccine. I think we have to be honest about that. And its heartbreaking. Whooping cough it’s a terrible way for a child to die. It’s just a terrible, terrible way.

Beth [00:33:49] Yeah, horrible.

Sarah [00:33:49] If you have ever seen your child involved in like a coughing fit or having any sort of respiratory issue, it’s awful. It’s just awful and it’s so heartbreaking to be facing when we have so many technological advances children and adults dying of completely preventable illnesses. It’s a reminder as much as we do want to take these moments to celebrate our country’s history, that it is not a straight line. It’s just not a straight line and it never has been.

Beth [00:34:25] And I think it’s important to look at the environment. What can we handle with illness on the rise? It’s getting messy out there. Health insurance premiums are going up in those Affordable Care Act marketplaces because the enhanced subsidies expired. Congress did not act by the end of the year. The cost of workplace health insurance policies are going up. I don’t know anybody who didn’t have a big premium increase this year. That’s anecdotal only, but I don’t know about people who saw their health insurance stay flat or go down. Drug makers are raising their prices. Medicaid is changing this year because the states have to implement all of those pullbacks that Republicans did in their tax bill last summer. So now states are going to be kicking people off Medicaid if they can’t meet the new work requirements. The expectation then is that we’re going to have a lot more people without health insurance, which means a lot of more emergency room visits, a lot a more strain on the healthcare system in general that drives cost up. The FDA is saying in addition to changing this vaccine schedule, we might have tougher requirements for new vaccines every year, especially the annual flu shot, which would make it virtually impossible to test and manufacture vaccines for next flu season. And this is all happening in a sector that is still reeling from DOGE and all of the changes and the firings and the re-hirings and the reorganization that happened at the beginning of last year. So it’s just a really tough time. I think about our healthcare providers who in some ways are still recovering from the strain of COVID, but this is like a never ending level of stress they’re undergoing.

Sarah [00:36:09] Two things. One, I’m not an isolationist. I believe in America’s role in the world and I think that we have been instrumental in the historic level of peace and prosperity the globe has seen over the last several decades, even for our major, major mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I do think the line of reasoning, the narrative that connects the two things we’re talking about is the first thing I thought with Venezuela is like we have enough going on. Again I’m not an isolationist, but at the end of the day time and resources and attention are finite and I want the leaders of our country focused on these problems. How dare you go and attack Venezuela when you don’t have the solution to our healthcare that you keep crowing about having presented to the American people. Not because I’m America first, but I do think it just feeds in such an unfortunate way. Instead of people seeing these failings and demanding more from their government, which is I hope what we do through the lens of this 250th celebration, instead of feeding the cynicism that, see, they don’t care about us, nothing’s going to ever change. It’s like, no, this could be different, this could better, and we should demand it. I am afraid it’s just going to feed this like everything will get worse and they’re going to pursue their own corporate, corrupt, financial gains, the rich will get richer, we’ll keep getting shit on. And I don’t want that. I don’t want that, but the other part of this that I keep thinking about and again sort of pressure testing and forcing myself to see is to the sort of COVID of it all.

[00:38:22] I was listening to the Ezra Klein show where they were talking about this economy and how deeply weird it is. And how we said after liberation day, the tariffs are going to come in, everything’s going to fall apart and the federal government’s getting cut under doge and everything’s going to fall apart. And they’re going to strike Iran and everything’s going to fall apart. And I’m not saying there aren’t consequences and I’m definitely not saying we haven’t seen them all yet, but it’s not falling apart. And the reason this line of thinking was triggered when you said that is because I think what COVID revealed which is hard to see is just the resiliency of the system. The resiliency of our economy, the resiliency it’s such a complex system and in some ways, yeah, it’s intuitive to think like it so complex and so one chink in the line, everything falls apart. But I think what he’s shown over and over again is that’s not true. You can mess with huge pieces of it and other sections can take on the risk or take on pressure or bear the burden. And I think we see that in healthcare and I think we see that in our economy and I think we see this in our foreign policy. Things are shifting dramatically and the system has a lot more capacity for that change than I thought it did.

Beth [00:39:53] I think there’s always true on the macro level. But those burdens are born on the micro level. Like when I talk about that burden on healthcare providers, I specifically think of my doctor and the conversations that I have with my doctor and what she is weighing, what she’s dealing with, what her job satisfaction must be like. These costs are born by people. It isn’t that I think we are never going to prevent another terrorist attack to harken back to our first segment. It is that I think it only takes one to do tremendous damage. And I think we’re making that job harder. And we’re repurposing resources that might better be spent there. A lot of this is just what kind of bad are you willing to tolerate? What do you think are the primary responsibilities of our government leadership, especially at the federal level? What do we think the president should be most focused on right now? Is it Venezuela for real? What do we think the CDC should be doing? Should we be pulling back on the capacity to have new vaccines approved and marketed given the information that we’re seeing about the effect of fewer people getting vaccinated? Is this really what we want? Again, I don’t want to be hyperbolic and talking all or nothings. Things are going to totally fall apart. The sky is falling. Even with the term super flu, it’s kind of annoying because it sounds like, oh my gosh, everybody’s going to die of flu. And then when they don’t, well, look, they’re just exaggerating again. No. But it’s real and it has burdens and costs. And more people getting sick ultimately makes businesses less productive and life a little harder for everybody and families that are already strained, a little more strained and contributes to more questions about the effectiveness of what we’re trying to do here with healthcare in general. So it’s the burden bearing and the increase of the burden-bearing on people who will be resilient and who will figure things out. But what do we want to be figuring out? There’s plenty to figure out without more getting piled on us. We didn’t need more whooping cough, is kind of what I’m saying. That’s just where I land. I’m sure that’s a conversation we’ll continue all year or two, but we are going to transition right now to our Outside of Politics section to talk about the new year. Sounds to me like our resolutions are that we’re going to wash our hands and get plenty of sleep and take our Emergen-C into everything that we can do to stay healthy.

Sarah [00:42:34] I really believe in vitamin C. I’ve converted you over time, haven’t I? Admit it.

Beth [00:42:37] I’m pounding that Emergen-C now. I take a shot of it every morning, sometimes twice a day.

Sarah [00:42:41] Right before Thanksgiving, just since we’re still on the sickness beat real fast, I woke up, my symptom radar was on, on the aura ring, five alarm fire. And my throat didn’t feel great. And I was like I’m not going to Thanksgiving sick. It’s not happening. It’s not happening. So I drank like my friend Elizabeth’s been telling me to do this year. You drink it till bowel tolerance. I understand that bowel tolerance is not a pleasant phrase, but I did. I didn’t even get anywhere near to where my stomach was upset. I had like, I don’t know, 5,000 milligrams of vitamin C over the course of the day. And I woke up the next day feeling like a million bucks. It was gone. I’m just saying. That’s not science, but that is anecdotal evidence that I believe it works. Thank you so much for coming to my TED Talk about vitamin C.

Beth [00:43:30] Footnote, this is not medical advice. Just Sarah’s experience. Well, okay, in addition to taking care of ourselves, we want to put good energy into our lives in the world. Loved this from Substack, Charles Duhigg, I hope I’m saying that close to right, says that Times Square drops roughly 3,000 pounds of confetti at midnight and they do a test beforehand, which is very messy, and some of that confetti comes from the wishing wall. Where people write wishes on slips of paper. So every time I see confetti now, I’m going to think of it as wishes.

Sarah [00:44:02] Well, the next time I go to New York City over the holidays, I’m going to go find that wishing wall. I’ll tell you that much right now.

Beth [00:44:06] Put your wish up there?

Sarah [00:44:08] Oh, hell yeah.

Beth [00:44:09] All right, so what would be on your wishing wall this year, Sarah?

Sarah [00:44:13] I was going to share my word. So I talked about wishing for more analog time and maybe my word was going to be analog. And then I realized like, duh, no. The year-long examination question I want to ask is what does it mean to be virtuous? I’m very into the examine of vices and virtue. We’re going to talk about that a lot on Friday with Elizabeth Holdfield, beloved friend of the pod. And so that’s my word, virtue. Duh, that’s my word. So I’m wishing for not necessarily an answer, but just time and space to ask those questions. And I’m wishing for lots of presence with my family and just soaking up this year. If you watched our AUA on Substack, I cried about how this is the last full calendar year Griffin will be in our home before he graduates from high school. So, yeah, I’m wishing for self-awareness and clarity. That was my word that I draw-- okay, I’m going to take us on a side tangent here just real quick. So I do this, Susan Conway, Unravel Your Year Journal, that’s fabulous. And she has this like little part where it’s like all the months of the year, and then a word of the years. And you can do tarot cards, but I have this little pack of cards. I don’t even remember why I put them on my wishlist, but my grandmother bought them for me. And they have all these words on them. And so we all do it. Me, every member of my family, every member of my best friend’s family who comes for New Year’s and you draw a word for every month and a word of the year. So my word for the year through the drawing of the card was clarity. But I feel like that goes with virtuous. And my first word was humility, which is one of the virtues for January.

Beth [00:46:00] I love that. I did Unravel Your Year over the break as well. I do find it really valuable. Honestly, what I like most because I’m not much of a journaler, is where she asks you what actually happened this year, month by month. Just go through and think about what actually happen. I think it gives you a lot of insight into what you want to make happen. Like what’s worth putting on the calendar and how you actually spend your time every year.

Sarah [00:46:22] Well, and if you do it year to year, she does these monthly reflections. So you can use your previous year’s monthly reflections to answer this year’s unravel year. It’s really like cooking with gas then.

Beth [00:46:32] And it is a free resource. It’s very generous of her to make this available for free. So we’ll put the link to that in the notes to this episode. I think your virtue quest is very aligned with something I’m working on, on my personal Substack that I write, which is called Thoughts and Prayers. I’m exploring the fruit of the spirit because I really have gotten obsessed with the question, what difference does it make? Like what difference does it make that I go to church every Sunday? What am I changing in my actual life? Where am I making a different decision or behaving differently or interpreting a situation differently because of my faith? And so I’m trying to take each month and just really dig into what does love mean? What does peace mean? I’m excited to get to gentleness and self-control at the end because I think those are really interesting. But just a not trite examination of the virtues, I think is something that I’m really looking for right now too.

Sarah [00:47:26] A listener recommended Ask of Old Past, this examination of medieval virtues by Grace Hammond. And I’m really loving it. And she talks about in our society we have put values front and center, but values just need articulation, they don’t require much action of you. You just need to tell everyone your values. But virtues and an examination of vices really do require action. They require practice. And I love that she talks about like-- and this is very in alignment with what Elizabeth’s going to talk about on Friday, that it has to be in community. This is not self-improvement. A virtuous life is built in community with one another. She has this incredible quote from Catherine of Siena. Your neighbors are the channel through which all your virtues are tested and come to birth just as the evil give birth to all their vices through their neighbors. I think that I’m thinking about this not just personally, but politically. I think we’re going to talk about this too, like, we have a society right now where the only virtue is money. Like the only value, the only virtual, the only thing that matters is money. And this is the lens through which Donald Trump is moving forth in the world, that it’s transactional. If I can get something from it, great. If not, who cares? And so I don’t want to be like that. And I think it’s worthwhile to think through this personally within our family, within my community, politically, as a nation, particularly as we are celebrating our 250th birthday. I promise you guys, we will not mention this 25 times every episode until July 4th-- or maybe we will, I don’t know, I reserve the right.

Beth [00:49:02] I was just going to say that seems like a big promise. I don’t know.

Sarah [00:49:05] It’s just really front of mind for me. You know what I mean? I do think it’s important. And I think virtue, absolutely the fruits of the spirit, which I think they call them the theological virtues. Like there’s all these kinds of different conglomerations.

Beth [00:49:21] Virtue frameworks.

Sarah [00:49:22] Virtue framework, for sure. Are just worth spending some time with.

Beth [00:49:27] Well, look, I think it makes a lot of sense that we are into the semi-quincentennial and the virtues and the fruit of the spirit, because the world that we’re describing for two-thirds of this show is really tumultuous and chaotic. And that’s always been true. It will always be true. But this version that we live in right now, it feels urgently chaotic and challenging. And so you look for anchors. And these are time-tested anchors. And however that plays out in our lives, it’s useful to have a framework and it’s useful to have bigger picture in mind and something to hold on to as a runway for something to aspire to. And we look forward to holding on and aspiring together with all of you throughout this year. We don’t know what 2026 will hold, but we are eternal optimists. We’re happy to be here with you through all of the beautiful and terrible that will come our way. We’ll be back with you on Friday. We’ll be on Substack between now and then. Have the best week available to you.

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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.

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