Welcome to Scoop, where you get the Scoop on this week's news. My name is Jenna, and this is Smarter News.

Well, hello, everybody. Welcome to Scoop on Monday, November 17th. I had to check the date there. It seems

that time is just moving us by real fast. I mean, just, we're really getting close to the end of the

year. I know that's actually not breaking news, but I feel like if I say it out loud, I'm less alone.

So thank you so much for joining me today as we're going to rapidly move through a lot of the

stories that are now back and active because Congress is back and actively in session.

One of the big questions is just because people are working. Are they doing what you want

them to do? And that's really ultimately the question for American

politics overall, isn't it? Are the people that we elected to serve actually carrying out the

will of the people? Or do we start seeing a political or elite class that breaks with the rest

of America? And I'm thinking a lot about that as I'm seeing already the start of the anniversary of America's 250th birthday.

Have you guys seen the new Ken Burns documentary that just launched?

It was just this weekend on PBS.

It's a multi-part series.

Ken Burns is all these amazing historic documentaries.

And so we're getting into it.

And we know that although

we will mark 250 years in America next year, we know that 1775 was a really important year that

is very easy to forget because there's so much focus on 1776 in the Declaration of Independence.

So if we think back 250 years ago, some of the questions

that we're raising even now about American leadership are questions that were wrestled with so many

years ago. And it's nice to be reminded of that. I know that maybe doesn't give us a lot of comfort

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