from WNYC studios i'm brian lerer this is my daily politics podcast it's tuesday january third

the holidays are over and you made it through to the other side you know who may not make it through

today in the way he would like?

Kevin McCarthy. Will he become Speaker of the House with the new Republican majority? Or has he

alienated too many reality-based Republicans in his conference by embracing Donald Trump's

lies too much? Or alienated too many people on his right by not

being Trumpy enough. And we will start there today with Time Magazine National Political

Correspondent Molly Ball, who also wrote a best-selling biography of the outgoing speaker of the

House, Nancy Pelosi, of course, it is simply called Pelosi. Molly, happy to have you.

Happy New Year. I hope you didn't have to fly Southwest over the holidays. And welcome back to WNYC.

Thank you so much for having me. I got to spend Christmas all alone thanks to a combination of COVID

and airlines. But I'm back at it today and happy to be here.

Well, you sound good. I hope you're all recovered.

Yes.

Give us a civics lesson to start out.

Is the election of a Speaker of the House the very first order of business and the House

can't do anything else until they have a speaker?

That's right. I think the important thing to remember here is Congress makes its own rules,

but they can't make any rules, the House can't make any rules until there is a speaker.

So, in fact, the members can't even be sworn in until there is a speaker.

And so this is really just governed by tradition, precedent, and a very

small amount of text in the Constitution, this process. And it has been exactly 100 years since a

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