Transcript 0:00 [rock music] Well, it's that time again this week where I talk with the host of Make It Make Sense with Grant Herms. 0:19 Welcome to Grant Herms. Always good to be here, Ryan. Thank you. And of course, if you don't know me, it's, I, I'm Ryan Welton with Oklahoma Memo, your daily news, your daily local news recap. 0:30 It comes in newsletter form to your inbox each and every weekday morning at 7:00 a.m. You can sign up at oklahomamemo.com. 0:37 And the reason why I talk to Grant, besides, uh, uh, catching up on everything that's happening in Washington, he provides, uh, via himself and his guests, a lot of great perspective about the things that are happening in Washington, and more important, how they are, 0:53 why they are important to us in Oklahoma. And there are a handful of things this week. This is our third time doing this, and we've been shut down the entire time. Breaking news, we're still shut down, and- Wait... 1:06 the, uh, the, the effects are starting to be felt. 1:09 So I thought maybe we would start there because one of the things that you have been, uh, that you have focused on with a, a video that I believe is dropping today, is its impact on rural healthcare. 1:20 And I will tell you, readers of the Oklahoma Memo have kept me apprised of issues with rural h- healthcare, especially in far eastern Oklahoma. 1:28 There was a hospital, Grant, in Stilwell that was shuttered a little bit earlier this year, and it's left people in communities all across the state without the healthcare that they need. Yeah. Yeah. 1:42 I mean, this conversation that I had with this professor who studies these things, and he's been doing this for quite a long time, he's basically at his wit's end about what's gonna happen starting November 1st with the shutdown. 1:53 Because just, just a quick refresher, ostensibly what's happening here is the Democrats, being in the minority, only have so much leverage, and they're using that leverage right now to say they wanna get these tax credits and subsidies for the Affordable Care Act and some Medicaid subsidies replaced that were stripped out earlier this year in the Republican big beautiful bill. 2:15 Those tax credits expire on November 1st, and that is going to hit a lot of these rural hospitals, especially in states like Oklahoma that depend a lot on Medicaid and Affordable Care expansions. 2:26 I think Oklahoma was, I think number five on the list of 50 states that took the biggest expansions for these things, which mean it's a good thing more people have health coverage and are able to go see their doctors without going bankrupt. 2:37 But those places will also be hit the hardest. 2:40 And so it's really one of these things where if these hospitals do not get these subsidies, they, they know that people that they will treat won't come in, and that's a real problem. 2:53 We want people to go see their doctors when they're hurt or when they're sick or when they need care. 2:58 A lot of these hospitals will try to stay open, uh, is what he's telling me, and that they, they'll pull back on their services at best, but you'll get a lot of places like Stilwell in which you're going to... 3:10 I- i- in the way that we talk about this, time will be extended between when you get hurt and when you can see a doctor. 3:18 And in cases like heart attacks and strokes, in cases like difficult pregnancies, in cases like gunshot wounds or snake bites, which is a, a, a very real thing. 3:29 If you live in eastern Oklahoma, you know the snakes are, are [chuckles] out there. 3:33 Those things could be dire and depend on how soon you can see a doctor, and if the closest hospital to you is closed because these subsidies and these tax credits expire and Congress is still closed and they're not gonna do anything about it, 3:47 your life is at risk. There's kind of no, no other way around that reality of that. And so this shutdown, the longer this stretches on, that is really at risk here. And 3:59 from a, you know, pol- politics standpoint, it sort of feels like at this moment, while Republicans are doing everything they can to make the shutdown feel as painful as possible so that Democrats cave, they also know that this deadline is coming, and they weren't real concerned about it in the first place. 4:15 They wanted to tackle the healthcare stuff in December, which i- is an interesting way to look at this. 4:22 Uh, partly they wanna do those things around the holidays, like I said before, because they wanna force members of Congress into 4:28 making a deal they might not have otherwise made because they don't wanna be stuck in Washington for Christmas. 4:33 But they also were kind of hoping that once those tax subs- or those tax credits expire, that a lot of people would just leave their health insurance, and then getting back on your health insurance once things get figured out from Congress is very difficult, and we know a bunch of people don't end up doing that. 4:51 And that would then shrink the size of Medicaid, which is what Republicans wanna do. They don't wanna spend so much money on these things they call entitlements. 4:58 It is, um, it's a really scary situation if you live in a rural part of the country, uh, places like northwest Oklahoma, like east Oklahoma, and, 5:08 a- and no one knows what's gonna happen here because there just does not seem to be a deal in sight right now. You know, it's kind of- Just does not... 5:15 it, it, it's kind of sad because y- you noted that the, the politicians, the, the elected officials see this as entitlement, and we see it as healthcare. Uh, it's, you know- Yeah... en- entitlement seems pejorative. 5:26 It's sort of like, ooh, we're, we're giving you a treat. Yeah. And, like, that change happens around the late '80s, early '90s, you know, Reagan, Bush One. 5:36 Uh, the- we call them entitlements because you pay taxes into these things, and therefore you are entitled to these government services. 5:44 Somewhere along the way, that, that gets changed into calling them entitlements like we're spoiled children. Right. 5:50 Like we're not, you know, that's not coming out of our paycheck, uh, and that we don't, you know, pay for those services. And even if you are someone who's covered by your employer, 6:00 generally people don't want poor people, children, old people to not be able to go see their doctors, and that's what these programs cover.There's also a fear here, and there's been a long-held fear, that if these hospitals get squeezed so much that they're gonna cry out, and the reaction from Congress is gonna be to undo a law that... 6:23 The, the acronym is EMTALA. It's not really important that you know exactly what that is. 6:26 Ronald Reagan signed it into law in the 1980s, and it is how we understand the idea that if you show up to an emergency room, that hospital has to treat you, their duty of care, and they get reimbursed from the government in part for that. 6:38 That already happens. But there's a worry that if these hospitals get too squeezed and cry out too much, that Congress could undo EMTALA and undo that duty of care, which means you... 6:47 then you'd have people being turned away from hospitals. 6:52 That fear is a long ways down the road, I wanna make that very clear, but it is being talked about in circles of people who look at these things, and care about these things, and care about the people who use these things. 7:03 Uh, and you should want, I think, a hospital to want to treat someone who shows up at their front door bleeding. I, I don't... You know, it feels like a basic thing we would like hospitals to do. 7:14 And I do wanna say that most hospitals, when you talk to them about these things, most hospitals, healthcare providers, and doctors also do not want the option to turn someone away. 7:24 That is just not how they operate and not how they think about their jobs at all. I don't want to, 7:31 um, uh, be one of those folks who say, "Well, this type of thing, Grant, would never happen," because I believe that we are entering an era where it feels like any of those things are, are happening. 7:42 Tulsa just recently got their first level one trauma center, so imagine having a gunshot wound, a serious injury, a heart attack or stroke, not having insurance. Well, that wouldn't be the level one trauma. 7:54 A gunshot wound or a... But, and, and then having to go to Oklahoma City if you're in Sallisaw, and then not being able to get care. Right. It, it's... And that's exactly the kind of thing that we're talking about here. 8:07 And in a lot of those cases too, you know, is your insurance, or if you're uninsured, if you got a gunshot wound and you're out in Sallisaw, y- like, they're, they're gonna try to fly you in on a helicopter. 8:17 But you could refuse that because you can't afford that. Medicaid, in some certain circumstances, would pay for that if you had that coverage. 8:24 The Affordable Care Act would help with some of that subsidies depending on the coverage you have. 8:29 And so [scoffs] the, in those emergency situations we're talking about here, when these rural hospitals get decimated because of the way insurance works, which is a, a pool system, that's how they stay afloat, uh, not to mix water metaphors there. 8:41 Uh, [laughs] like, y- you know, if, if these rural hospitals go away, you are talking about people who are now hours away from life-saving medical care, and a lot of them are gonna get driven there. And that is, 8:54 that is a situation in which a lot of people are gonna get hurt often. And it's, it just is one of those things that you think more members of Congress would be 9:04 upfront about caring about and remedying right away, and reaching across the aisle to do that. 9:10 Because as a reminder, Republicans control the House, and the Senate, and the White House right now, which is doing a lot of the heavy lifting in these negotiations. 9:19 And with, with this president, he's not about that kind of negotiate. He, he just doesn't like this thing. His, his mantra is the Trumps get even, that he wrote that in a book in 2000. 9:30 Um, and this is what he's picturing right now, is this is him getting even against people that don't like him. But they only need three or four Democrats in the Senate to get this thing over the line. 9:42 And if you make rural healthcare one of those things, I would imagine there are four senators in purplish states, in blue states with rural populations, that would jump on this. And they're just not making that offer. 9:59 Uh, and the ball is in the Republicans' court right now. That is, as I said to somebody in a comment this week, like, the idea of having to bring the negotiation to the table is the price you pay for being in leadership. 10:12 Leader- leading is the price of the majority, and that's what needs to happen right now, and we just aren't seeing that happening. Love that line, leading is the price of the majority. 10:21 You know, the, the funny thing is, is that when folks complain and they look at their executive legislative, uh, branches as both being ruled by one party, you really can't blame it on the other side. Yeah. 10:31 It's really, really hard to say, like, "These bad things are happening because of the other person," even though we put you in all the seats of all the power. 10:38 Uh, and, and the interesting thing, though, is that as we are looking at this shutdown continue, more Republicans are saying they want their members of Congress to stand their ground than Democrats. 10:52 So it's somewhere around 53% say they want, Republicans want their members to stand their ground, whereas something like 50% of Democrats want their members to compromise. 11:04 And, like, we could talk for a long time about the, the psychological peccadillos that make someone vote for one party or the other that would also lead them to believe those things as well, but the... 11:15 I don't w- wanna do that here. 11:17 It's interesting that just a few weeks ago when this thing started, more people blamed the President and Republicans than Democrats, and now we're starting to see that shift, that it does feel like to Americans that the Democrats are the fly in the ointment here, and they want them to compromise, even though all the things that we're talking about now, especially with rural healthcare, are likely going to happen if the Democrats cave. 11:42 It's a really interesting moment to understand how people think about their world, and the people around them, and then the broader circles of people they might not know. 11:50 Do you have a sense that the November 1st deadline would be the thing that brings them together? Is this the issue that ends the shutdown? I, I don't know. Um, 12:04 I mean, I think I said the first week that I gave it a 50/50 shot that this, this shutdown was gonna end in a week. Um, Mike Johnson said that we were barreling... 12:12 The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, said we're barreling towards the longest shutdown in history. He said that Monday, um, the longest shutdown was 35 days. We were at day 1416 when that happened. 12:24 So if he's already planning on doing this for another 25 days, I don't know. It seems like everybody in their brain has November 1st as a deadline. 12:36 I think the Democrats want that deadline so that they could try to force Republicans to come to the table. 12:42 I think Republicans want to blow through that deadline to basically make the Democrats' point on this null and void. 12:50 And so if they could stick this out and the subsidies expire, well, then they're like, "Well, what are you yelling at us about now? The thing you want is over, 12:58 and why don't we all just pass the government funding the way that we wanted, and we'll see you in December?" So I don't know. 13:05 I- it's a little bit of a war of attrition right now, and as is all things when the government shuts down, when this happens, it's way more than politics. Real people are being hurt. Right. 13:17 And I think as soon as we start seeing the stories from folks, uh, who are, have loved ones die because they don't have access, it will take time, and it will take real pain and real tragedy, uh, for folks to step up and make their voice heard. 13:35 You know, this is, uh... I wanna talk about something that was in your episode, uh, from yesterday. And just to remind folks, your podcast is called Make It Make Sense with Grant Herms. 13:45 You gotta put the with Grant Herms, H-E-R-M-E-S, in there, uh, to find it. However, this r- really, it didn't catch me off guard, but it made me think, "Oh, I don't... Really? This is where we're at?" 13:59 But the Supreme Court- Yeah... now has an appetite to sort of lessen the weight of the Voting Rights Act, and I, I want you to explain it because it's not like they are going to 14:10 literally, manually disenfranchise people of color from voting. They're not taking away your voting rights, but they are deadening, truly deadening the impact of the vote in minority communities. Yeah. 14:27 So to, to understand this court case, um, and really quickly what this case is, is some folks in Louisiana, uh, in 2024 when Louisiana drew its new district map, uh... 14:40 Or I should say in 2022 it drew its new district map. That map only had one majority Black district, despite the fact that the state of Louisiana is about a third Black. 14:49 And under the Voting Rights Act, those districts need to be apportioned in a way that is representative of the racial populations of the state you're in. 15:00 The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was written that way because it was trying to stop Jim Crow South styles of election laws and processes. We are talking poll taxes, we are talking literacy tests. 15:14 We are also talking carving up Black and brown communities in a way that dilutes their power or shoves them all into one district. And, like, you can look at this map, and I've got it in the episode. 15:25 This, this district stretches across the entire state of Louisiana just about. 15:29 It looks like a little belt kinda going from, like, the notch of the boot of Louisiana all the way up to, like, you know, the mid-thigh, I guess. Um, it'd be a very stylish shoe, to be honest- [laughs]... 15:38 if you saw it in the store. But, like, yeah. Uh, [laughs] but what happens is, uh, in the Voting Rights Act, that gets sort of diluted as time goes on. There's a couple tests that happen. 15:48 But what we land at, and what's been law for just about 40 years now, is this test, and it's a really high one because three conditions have to get met. 15:57 First, is there an election law or process involved in this thing that somebody is suing over? Is... Does that law interact with some sort of social or historical context in which minority groups in that state have been 16:12 actively disenfranchised? And does that mean that their votes are being diluted or entirely canceled out? 16:19 And that is the stuff that we remember seeing from history textbooks, uh, for most of us, uh, you know, about Jim Crow South, about the civil rights era of the United States. 16:30 And what this case is from Louisiana is that these folks who saw that first map in 2022 and the second one that was more proportional, which was two districts that were majority Black, uh, which is then a third of the six seats in the Congress that Louisiana has, 16:46 these folks who sued, who are non-African American voters, which is what they label themselves in this lawsuit, said that that was a violation of their equal protection rights because they live in these districts. 16:56 The idea that... 16:59 This has been an idea that people have held for a long time in conservative circles, particularly Chief Justice John Roberts of the Supreme Court right now, who has spent the better part of 40 years, of just over that, 17:12 trying to dilute this part of the Voting Rights Act. He sees it as broadly unfair. He was called a zealot by a, a former civil rights attorney for the Reagan Department of Justice, uh, a- against the, the VRA. 17:24 What these folks believe is that their rights are being diluted here, but when you look at the Voting Rights Act, it is taken to the totality of the state. 17:32 Uh, and so that then means that you can have these two racially aligned districts because the rest of the state is majority white still. And it's... I know people don't like talking in terms of race like this. 17:45 I don't, I know this makes them uncomfortable, but this is the reality of what the world was coming out of 1965, and frankly continues to be in a lot of states. 17:55 And so this case seems poised to gut that entire section that basically says, uh, you can't discriminate against somebody based on their race when you're drawing an election map or your election processes. And it is 18:12 a, a full gutting of what the Voting Rights Act is about, and the court seems poised to do that. We don't have a ruling yet. They just heard this case two days ago. 18:21 Um, but it isIt is one of the more shocking moments of, of what this court has been doing when it comes to overturning things that have been pretty settled law for a long time. 18:31 There's a lot of election law and a lot of cases that have been built on this specific section, which is called Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, um, over the last, you know, 45 years, uh, longer, 60 years when you go back to the, the '60s. 18:45 So it really is, uh, a major change that we could see to our states. 18:51 Uh, the other thing too, and I think this is the thing that you kind of want to talk about, is it's hard to show or know an impact on minority groups of people, uh, in these states when these things would happen. 19:04 Um, it's just, uh, mostly because we don't-- people who are, you know, people of color, they don't vote as a monolith, so it doesn't work exactly that way. 19:13 Um, but one way we do know is that because race and party are so closely aligned, you can look at how the House seats would change in the South. 19:21 Um, and we are talking Florida, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Louisiana. Uh, I don't think I'm missing anybody there. Um, in the South, Democrats right now have 24 seats. 19:33 They would lose 12 seats if this Section 2 of the VRA gets gutted. And that would be then on top of all the redistricting we're seeing in Republican states across the country. 19:45 This idea would trickle into other Republican states, uh, across the country. Oklahoma might not really be affected by that almost at all. But what it would mean for the rest of us, uh, is that 19:59 we would w- march pretty steadily into a world in which Congress is controlled by the Republican Party 20:07 without really having to do much, because they would just control these seats, because these districts could get drawn in a way in which they would just kind of be the winners no matter what. 20:17 And that, and I said this in the episode yesterday, that no matter how you vote, no matter who you like or don't like as a politician or a party, that's not a great thing. 20:29 Because what happens in these districts, and, like, you can see it in Oklahoma, there are districts that are like this, uh, that when districts become really, really settled and set in how they're, they're going to be voted on, 20:44 people want to run for office. They want to be senators. They want to be members of Congress. Uh, they want to be state senators. In order to do that, you have to out, 20:56 out-primary your, the person who's in that seat, which means you generally have to run further to the fringe of your own party. 21:05 And that means we get more and more extreme people, and those people then get elected to Congress, and then we are being governed by a group of people whom quite a few of us didn't have a say in because of the way the lines are drawn, who are the most extreme version of what their party has to offer. 21:19 And that's a lot. Uh, that's, that's a lot of trouble for a lot of people who maybe don't intend it, but also that might just be the reality of where this thing heads. 21:29 Uh, and again, as with also the, the hospital that we talked about before, there are lots of roadblocks that'll happen in front of that. 21:37 But in a vision of how this thing ends without anything stopping it, that's where we go. So, um, 21:45 in a world where you have to move to the extreme of whichever party you're in to get elected, the real danger I see there is that as those people get elected, there is sort of a justification by result, and it normalizes those types of opinions. 22:05 There are people who are espousing and communicating opinions right now politically that are very, very popular, and a lot of people gather to listen to them that would have been, they would have come from David Duke 30 years ago. 22:19 Just saying. Right. Exactly. No, 100%. Yeah. It's just, it's, it's, it's a big problem. 22:25 Um, and, and when you look at, at the origin of a term that has such a negative connotation like woke, really it just means an awakening. 22:33 Do you think that if this happens, as you said, this may take a long time for it to have its intended effect, but do you think that this is an issue that would cause people to, uh, and I say especially people of color, and you think about the, the movements that we had in the 1960s, and then after, uh, shocking tragedies like we had in 2020, uh, is this something that will rally the Democratic base and get them, uh, more active? 23:02 Are, are people gonna raise a fuss over this? I don't know. Um, let's take the 2024 election and the big line from Democrats was that democracy was at stake. 23:16 Americans generally think our democracy is moderately strong, um, and they don't like the it could happen here idea. 23:26 And so we tend to think that our institutions are stable-ish, stable enough, you know, and that's good enough for most people, and they're more concerned about the economy, their healthcare, their schools, their jobs. 23:41 And this idea that voting rights might get altered dramatically just isn't a thing that most people, I think, are going to care about a ton until they maybe go through a couple election cycles. 23:55 We're talking maybe six years straight of a losing candidate that feels like they cannot do anything about it, or their lines get redrawn, let's say, next year just before the midterms, or they get drawn, you know, before the 2028 election, and all of a sudden they realize that they're not in a place anymore where their voice is getting heard in the way that it once was. 24:20 Uh, even though, yes, one vote is one vote, but that's not how elections really work. Um-So I don't know if this is gonna be the thing that, that makes people stand up and say something. It, it doesn't strike me as that. 24:33 It- this idea is maybe a little too abstract for most people. Um, but we'll see. 24:41 When you take these things sort of in aggregate, in a totality of how many things are being affected of, of the things that we thought were stable-ish, then maybe this is one of those things. 24:52 I have my doubts because of how people react to when we said democracy was on the line- Right... you know, in the 2024 election. Um, yeah, I, I... We'll see about that one. It does feel a little 25:06 too far in the weeds for people, as most things are when they come out of the Supreme Court. Um, and that is kind of by design of both members of the Supreme Court for a long time, but also just the way that it is. 25:16 It's not really for the public ne- you know, necessarily. Uh, but we'll see. Uh, I, I tend to doubt it, though. I tend to agree with you. A- and it's, it's, it's not, um... 25:27 Uh, whereas rural healthcare, if you live in a rural place, that's gonna have a, a real impact on Grandma or Grandpa, or your aunt or uncle or cousin. Yeah. Um, and it's, it's gonna be a big... 25:38 By the way, this is a perfect segue into what's happening across the country, and frankly, across the world this weekend with No Kings rallies. There's been- Yeah... 25:46 a lot of talk and rumor that perhaps President Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 this weekend. Do you think... 25:53 Is this going to be the biggest of the n- I, I'm gonna be off in far rural southeastern Oklahoma this weekend, so there, there won't be any No Kings. 26:01 There may be a No Sasquatch, uh, event down there, but, but- [laughs]... the No No Kings protest. Is this gonna be a big deal this weekend, these protests? Uh, I don't know. 26:10 I mean, um, I will say, by the way, Sasquatch is the king of, of southeastern Oklahoma, so there, it, it could be, it could still be a No Kings rally. 26:17 Uh, but, uh, [laughs] it, these protests are slated to be, I, from what I understand, to be the largest protest collectively in American history. Um, there are dozens across cities. 26:30 There, uh, there are expected to be millions of people to show up to these things. The rumblings that the president might invoke the Insurrection Act here, I think is, 26:42 is a real thing we should pay attention to given how the White House just last week was actively talking about how and when to invoke the Insurrection Act. Uh, they're having real hardline discussions about that. 26:55 Stephen Miller coming out on CNN saying l- the president has plenary authority, unchecked authority to send troops wherever he wants. 27:02 Uh, you've got troops still staged outside of Portland even though a judge this week extended her stay order on that to s- stop them from going into Portland. You've got troops still just outside Chicago. 27:15 Uh, Greg Abbott in Texas, who at this point I, I've gotta believe his National Guard is starting to run a little thin, it's being sent everywhere. 27:22 Um, but he is deploying the National Guard into, I think, Austin specifically, um, potentially Dallas, but I think it's more Austin. That's kind of the blue dot in Texas. 27:34 Um, and s- Houston maybe, but, uh, then Houston's far away from Greg Abbott, right, in, in Austin. Uh, but the National Guard's getting deployed there, and he said, "We don't want any chaos here." 27:45 Um, the National Guard is out in Memphis, where in Tennessee they're expected to have quite a large No Kings rally. So w- we'll see. 27:53 We're, we're setting up stages in which, you know, as I've said before on the show, law enforcement experts have repeatedly said that the tactics of federal agents, uh, in these areas are escalating these situations almost by design. 28:09 And w- I'm certain that we will see some interactions, um, maybe not necessarily violent, but people will get arrested, people will say things, people will get into a scuffle with an officer. 28:23 Um, whether or not that rises to a level in which the president thinks that t- is tantamount to rebellion and therefore he can invoke the Insurrection Act, I think that's, that's a long shot. 28:36 And there, like I said before on this show and on mine, there are states who have lawsuits ready right now for when the president invokes the Insurrection Act to sue and to stop it, and that will be an emergency order, that'll be an emergency case to whatever court that is in whatever state that is. 28:52 I mean, if there are enough of these states, uh, 'cause we don't have exact numbers on those things, at least I haven't heard them and the people that I've been talking to from, um, you know, these states could just file them immediately in all of their states. 29:06 So I don't know. I think that, uh, just as I said last week, the important thing about the No Kings protest is that, 29:17 well, one, the organizers of it, a group called Public Citizen, whom I've talked to on my show a- as well, they do really fantastic work about corporate governance and how, you know, we regulate corporations. 29:29 Um, but they've had this going for a while. 29:32 But it's that in this moment right now when so many people feel like their voices aren't being heard, we still have rights and freedoms, and the most important thing for us to do is to use them. Um, and 29:43 as long as these pr- these, you know, protests don't get wildly out of hand, um, which it doesn't really seem like they did in the first time around, and it doesn't really seem like they're planning on doing that again, uh, then I think that this is an important moment for things like freedom of speech and general American freedoms. 30:04 Um, and yes, I know that the Republicans have frequently said that, you know, these are backed by Antifa or they're anti-American rallies or whatever, and, like, one, Antifa is a ideology according to the FBI, this FBI, and not an organization. 30:20 Uh, but two, there, there's just no evidence that that's the case, that there's any money flowing into these, you know, Antifa related groups, um, or that it's, it's an anti-Americarally. 30:31 I mean, foundationally, it's about not having a king, which is potentially the most American thing you could think of. So, so we'll see. 30:40 It will be, um, at the very least, a demonstration for the history books, uh, no matter what happens here, um, one way or the other. Yeah. 30:49 I'll be paying attention to it this weekend for sure, just to, just to see what happens. 30:53 Uh, but I'm also going to be paying attention, 'cause I gotta dri- uh, drive to southeastern Oklahoma, and I'm not sure when it's dropping, Grant. 31:00 But, uh, just quickly, tell us about the interview that's coming out today. It's Friday, October the 17th. 31:06 This conversation that you're having about rural healthcare, uh, that I think is real, real timely, and, and tell folks all the places you are. I keep referring to a podcast, but Grant Herms is more than a podcast. I am. 31:19 I'm, I contain multitudes, Ryan. Uh, so it is, uh, [laughs] so this conversation is with a professor here at the University of Michigan. 31:25 I live in Detroit, but he focuses on rural healthcare and the effects of that, and kind of understanding how we got to where we are now in the way that hospitals in rural parts of the country have to exist. 31:38 And a lot of that is by choices that we have made. A lot of it is just what happens then after these hospitals close, because I d- I don't think I mentioned this. 31:47 If a hospital closes in your town and you live in a rural place, that hospital is also likely the largest employer in your town. 31:54 And so then what we're talking about is people being forced to look for jobs that don't exist in those places, or more often, they leave, and they hollow out these, these places where people have lived for generations because there just isn't a place for them to work and they cannot survive. 32:11 And that's the kind of conversation that we're having. So that should drop this afternoon. Uh, I try to get it out about 4:00 for your drive home at 5:00 or 6:00. 32:19 Sometimes, depending on my day, it's a little, little after that. Uh, but hey, I set my own deadlines now. Uh, but you can also find that, I mean, on Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. 32:28 You can also subscribe to the Make It Make Sense with Grant Herms Substack. That is where you'll also find the podcast there. 32:35 I am doing a weekly wrap every week on Fridays that is all about the stuff you might have missed from Make It Make Sense from both the podcasts. 32:43 I do analysis and original reporting every Wednesday, uh, and that is for paid subscribers. It's just $5 a month. 32:50 Uh, but you can subscribe for free and still get the podcast, the newsletter, a new coming newsletter that's coming in about a month, um, that I think a lot of people are really gonna like. 32:58 I don't wanna spill too many beans about that right now. Um, but it is very exciting, so if you wanna get that, it's also free at the Substack as well. 33:07 I'll have links to the Substack and to the podcast channel in the show notes here and in the YouTube description, and I would encourage folks to connect with Grant on whichever platform you like the most. Yeah. 33:19 Because the thing that you bring to the table, and I'll say it every week until folks finally understand, is you bring a Civics 101 sensibility to the issues that are important nationally and at a state level here in Oklahoma, and you tie it back to stuff that we were taught in seventh and eighth grade, which I think is, is really great because, you know, old folks like me, we need reminders. 33:40 We need reminders of how this government is supposed to work for the people. Grant Herms, thank- I mean, I, I didn't- Yeah. Of course. 33:47 I would say I didn't care about some of that stuff when I was 13, learning them in ninth grade, right? But now they matter to me, and now I'm curious about those things, and so are so many other people. 33:54 And so I love when people reach out and ask me these questions because it is just the best way to know where people are at, and I, I love answering those questions because I also think that it's important that we sort of share in these things, too. 34:07 So th- uh, Ryan, really, thank you so much, man, for having me on again. You, you- Again, we'll talk to you next week. You are very, very welcome. 34:13 One of the great things about America is, is that as people learn, they start to get involved, and that's amazing. Yes. Yes, absolutely. Grant Herms. Make It Make Sense with Grant Herms. 34:26 My name is Ryan Welton with Oklahoma Memo, your daily local news recap. It's a newsletter at OklahomaMemo.com. 34:31 You can sign up for it, and if you see this video and you like it, like, subscribe, share with a friend, leave a comment. We'll answer questions. 34:39 I haven't gotten to some of the questions from the past couple of weeks, if we have them, but we'll, we'll have a questions episode at some point. And until next time, for Grant Herms, I'm Ryan Welton. Take care. 34:48 [outro music]
