It's the Brian Lair show on WNYC.

I'm Bridget Bergen, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist Newsroom, filling in for Brian today.

Later in the show today, we're going to have

two conversations about young people and work. First, just after 11 a.m., we'll talk about

teenagers deciding to learn a trade, like plumbing or HVAC, instead of heading to a four-year

college for an often expensive liberal arts degree. Then to wrap today's show, we'll talk about babysitting.

It was once the quintessential first job, especially for girls, myself included, but an article

in the Atlantic looks at why it's hard to even find a teenager willing to babysit these days,

or maybe it's that it's hard to find a parent willing to trust them.

And right after this conversation, we'll talk to our own Nancy Solomon, who will recap last

night's Ask Governor Murphy conversation. So New Jersey callers, we're going to want to hear from

you in about half an hour. But first, House Speaker Mike Johnson is less than five months into his tenure. The Louisiana Republican was the party's fourth choice after they ousted Kevin McCarthy, and he's faced no shortage of challenges trying to corral his own members and lead the House through a series of issues. Aid to Ukraine, funding to keep the government from shutting down, and just yesterday, a stalemate

over renewing a warrantless surveillance law that intelligence officials say is essential to their

ability to prevent terror attacks on the U.S. At this point, Johnson is facing a backlash from

far-right members of his own party who say he's giving too much ground to

President Biden and the Democrats. Joining us now to unpack the latest from the Capitol is Luke

Broadwater, who covers Congress for the New York Times with a focus on investigations. Luke,

welcome back to the show.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for having me.

And Luke, I want to zoom out to start and just remind our listeners who we're talking about here.

Who is Mike Johnson? Where does he come from? How did he become the compromise speaker way back last October?

Sure. Well, Mike Johnson was a rank and file congressman from Louisiana. Nobody, if you had asked a year ago, nobody would have envisioned him becoming the Speaker. But amid the chaos and the carousel of candidates that House Republicans trotted out after they ousted Kevin McCarthy, who was the Speaker,

...