Everybody, it's David Green here. I am your host here on left right and center. And we are in a place that was essential to the fight for American democracy, the city of Boston, Massachusetts. And we are joined by a fabulous live audience at the public radio station here that is near and dear WBR. Thank you all for being here. We really, really appreciate it.

I'm here along with our regular left right and center panel to look at some of the pillars of our democracy. Of course, a democracy that was forged right here in Boston. I don't have to tell any of you some of the pillars remain under threat today.

So with me, Moelaithy, executive director at Georgetown's Institute of Politics and Public Service, he was communications director for the Democratic National Committee and an advisor to Hillary Clinton when I met Mo. And also Sarah Isger, senior editor at the dispatch, a lawyer, and was spokesperson at the Department of Justice under President Trump.

Thank you, too, for being here as always. This is quite a journey we're on together.

It really is. What a cool space and a great crowd to have this conversation. Yeah, it's really cool. This is city space at WBR. And it is one of my favorite venues in the country.

WBR is one of the best stations in America. I loved listening to this all the time when I lived here. This was like a companion.

Well, from that to saving democracy. So the pillar of democracy that I want to start with on this week's show is our legislative branch.

Specifically, the House of Representatives. It was three weeks now since former speaker Kevin McCarthy was removed from the role and efforts to replace him. I would say have been kind of embarrassing, making you wonder if anyone is running the House of Representatives.

In case you haven't been keeping up with this, Steve Scalice dropped out before he could face a vote, believing he was making the way for a more popular nominee in Ohio's Jim Jordan, Jordan lost his first two floor votes, appeared open to a plan to empower the speaker pro tempore representative Patrick McKenry of North Carolina, Jordan bucked those reports, pushed for an unsuccessful third vote in a secret vote late last week, Jordan was ousted.

House Republicans had nominated majority whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota, but Emmer's nomination also didn't make it to a floor vote. And you know, at one point, it seemed like it might take a moment of divine intervention for a speaker to actually get announced.

Just like the candidates before him, Minnesota Congressman Tom Emmer could not get the votes. Emmer is the number three Republican in the House. He beat out seven other candidates in a secret ballot and was the nominee for only about four hours.

I said, there's only one person that can do it all the way. You know, that is Jesus Christ Jesus came down said, I want to be speaker. He would do it other than that. I haven't seen I haven't seen anybody that can guarantee.

So in the end, it is not Jesus Christ who is the new speaker of the House just a few hours short of a full 22 days.

A speaker was announced its representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana who was elected speaker of the House by a vote of 220 to 209. This has been an insane journey.

Sarah, how do you reflect on this moment for the Republican party and our democracy?

I think of the last seven or eight or so years as a reality television show each year sort of a new season. They bring back some old characters that you didn't really want to have come back.

But they have these new plot lines every now and then they're like, wow, yeah, I guess so. This was a really good new plot line I thought for that larger story about dysfunction.

Look, Congress has been dysfunctional for quite some time. This was a new type of dysfunction. And I think some of the problem is that because there's not a lot of pressure from American voters for Congress to actually legislatively fix problems that then it's sort of like, okay, well, what are they doing there?

Like when you become a member of Congress, did you just basically like win a spot on a reality TV show because that feels like what they're spending a lot of their time doing is going on cable news, sitting on Twitter, raising money on social media.

So does it really even matter that we didn't have a speaker for three weeks? I don't think a lot of regular Americans were like looking, you know, checking in every day going like, oh my god, the House of Representatives doesn't have a speaker. How will they ever pass comprehensive immigration reform this week like I thought they would.

So in that sense, it was almost more depressing that it didn't matter very much because I think it highlights how broken that branch is because at this point when something really bad happens and you want a fix, you think that your government should fix it.

Very little what people even looking to Congress to fix it, they expect the president to fix it, they expect the executive branch to fix it and then the president, you know, is like, hey, Congress, can you fix it? Congress is like, la la la, fingers and ears.

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