Fighting Flies With Flies
House Republicans Pick a Speaker
I thought it would be fun to watch the Republican party implode. It wasn’t.
When Kevin McCarthy was ousted by Matt I-Like-Em-Young Gaetz with the help of Lauren Hands-On-His-Boebert Boebert and Marjorie Jewish-Space-Laser Taylor Green, I giggled more than a little bit as I had when it took him 15 tries to get the job in the first place. McCarthy was no friend to liberal social issues and had visited
Trump at Mar-a-Largo right after the January 6th riots, giving the former president continued legitimacy that he did not deserve. I laughed more when he decided not to run again, thinking I would enjoy the ensuing GOP eats GOP show.
Sure, there was a “Ginger get the popcorn” vibe (IYKYK, if you don’t) in the moment as—because this is the Republican party—white man after white man stood up to get the top job and fell short. Scalise came and went in a heartbeat (a fetal heartbeat?), leaving former wrestling coach Jim Jordan as the seeming front runner.
Jordan has introduced far fewer pieces of legislation than most long-serving members. Still, he’s used his bills to further a what’s-what of conservative causes: requiring ultrasounds before abortion, defining marriage as between one man and one woman, recognizing that life begins at conception, and loosening gun rules in DC. He also worked with the Trump White House in the days after the 2020 election to strategize ways that Congress could help delegitimize the results, and he refused to comply with subpoenas from the House January 6th committee (when the Dems ran the show). Clearly, he's who you want in charge of this institution.
Or not. He lost three votes for speaker as his margin of defeat kept going up.
At this point in the process, I got a little worried that the House would never elect a speaker and the work of the government would never get done. A friend calmed me down saying, “Look, every day we vote against Jim Jordan, we are doing God’s work.” Fair point.
Then came the list of nine people whose names I didn’t really know, not party superstars. It was hard to follow who was in and who was out at any given moment, but eventually they left the room having chosen Tom Emmer from Minnesota. Compared to all other nominees, he seemed downright liberal. For one thing, he voted to acknowledge same-sex marriage. While he called the 2020 results questionable and signed on to an amicus brief for one of Trump’s last-ditch legal efforts, in the end he voted to certify the election.
Which is likely why he’s not, in fact, Speaker today. Before the full House could vote, Trump took to Truth Social to say Emmer wasn’t MAGA enough. He wrote, “voting for a Globalist RINO like Tom Emmer would be a tragic mistake!" While Trump’s endorsement wasn’t enough to get Jordan the job, his denouncement seemed to be enough to prevent Emmer from getting the votes. Just hours after he won the party’s nomination, he dropped out of the race.
That’s when my mood really plummeted. It’s not just because he seemed to be the least terrible option, it’s that his failure was further proof that despite indictments on 91 felony counts, Trump can still call the shots because the GOP is still afraid of him and his supporters. This makes me seriously doubt the future of our democracy.
The final, successful election of Mike Johnson only exacerbates these fears. Some people have called the Louisiana congressman the architect of the effort to overturn the 2020 election. Others, like Megan McCain, have a called him a raging homophobe.
Before being elected to Congress, Johnson was a lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a right-wing group that “spearheaded legal efforts to criminalize same-sex sexual activity, block efforts to legalize same-sex marriage, allow for businesses to deny service to LGBTQ people, and ban transgender people from using restrooms that correspond with their gender identities.” The Southern Poverty Law Center has listed the ADF as a hate group.
In that role, Johnson wrote an amicus brief in the case of Lawrence v. Texas (2003) in which he argued that same-sex behavior should be criminalized as a public health issue because men who have sex with men are more likely to spread STIs. A few years later, in an editorial against legalizing same-sex marriage, Johnson wrote, “Homosexual relationships are inherently unnatural and, the studies clearly show, are ultimately harmful and costly for everyone.” He went on to say, “[If] we change marriage for this tiny, modern minority, we will have to do it for every deviant group. Polygamists, polyamorists, pedophiles, and others will be next in line to claim equal protection.” While I appreciate alliteration more than the next guy, I can see right through this slippery slope fallacy to the bigotry underneath.
Having lost both of those issues, he’s now trying to put the gay genie back in the bottle with a bill that would prohibit discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity at any institution that receives federal funds. He’s also extending his prejudice to the trans community by attacking gender-affirming care. Johnson co-sponsored a bill with MTG that would criminalize “genital mutilation and chemical castration” of minors.
Not surprisingly, he takes a hardline anti-abortion stance as well. He has supported all anti-abortion bills in the House including ones that would make abortion illegal after a “fetal heartbeat” is detected, and he co-authored legislation that would make it a crime to bring a minor across state lines for an abortion.
Yes, it was fun watching them chase their own tails for a little while and come out looking like what they are: a group of clowns who have more power than intellect and who couldn’t put aside their petty differences for the sake of the country they were hired to run. But we ended in a worse place that we began.
After reading the federal indictment of Trump, I realized that our democracy was only intact because of a few brave Republicans in red states who refused to engage in the clearly illegal and unethical acts that were asked of them. Watching this House Speaker race suggests that there are few if any GOP lawmakers on the federal level who would make that same moral choice, and the guy with the gavel does not appear to be one of them. That’s terrifying.
I miss Tip O’Neill. Hell, at this point I miss John Boehner. (I will never miss Paul Ryan and his doucheboy smirk.)
Ozempic and OCPs: Could the Weight Loss Wonder Make Pills Less Effective?
It’s being hailed as a miracle drug and the key to permanent weight loss for the yo-yo dieters of the world, but some experts worry that Ozempic could interfere with birth control pills both because of its method of action and because of its common side effects.
Semaglutide—sold as Ozempic and Rybelus for diabetes and Wegovy for weight loss—changes the way the body processes glucose. This can lead to slower digestion which means food stays in your stomach longer. Slower gastric emptying may help you feel full longer which is one of the reasons these drugs work for weight loss, but theoretically this delay could interfere with the absorption of the hormones in birth control pills.
In the prescribing information, the manufacturer notes the potential for Ozempic to impact the absorption of other oral medications a patient is taking but says that in clinical trials this did not happen to “any clinical relevant degree.” The manufacturer also did studies to see if Ozempic interacted with common ingredients in the pill (ethinyl estradiol and levonorgestrel). It found that there was a small decrease in the levels of these in participants’ blood but not enough to require a dose adjustment.
There’s another way, however, in which Ozempic might interfere with the pill: vomit. Many people who take the drug have gastrointestinal issues including nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting. In clinical trials, somewhere between 5% and 9% of the study group tossed their cookies compared to just 2% of those who took the placebo. Similarly, 9% of the study group reported diarrhea compared to 2% of those who took the placebo.
Absorption of the pill could be interrupted if you puke after you’ve taken the pill but before it’s gotten into your system. This is likely not an issue if it happens once or twice in a month, but frequent vomiting could be a problem. If you’ve experience continuous vomiting and/or diarrhea for 48 hours, the CDC recommends using a backup method or not having sex for a week. (As a lifelong emetophobe, I would call frequent vomiting the stuff of nightmares and argue that no one wants to have sex within a week of a two-day pukefest, but that might just be me.)
As we’ve been over many times, the pill thickens cervical mucus (hi Cecily) to keep sperm out of the uterus, slows down the progress of sperm within the reproductive system, and—if you’re taking the combination version with estrogen and progesterone—prevents ovulation. The fear is that without absorption of the pill these mechanisms could stop working, and you could get pregnant.
This fear is compounded by the fact that Ozempic comes with reproductive warnings because of studies in animals that found possible links to birth defects. People who want to get pregnant are told to stop taking the medication two months before trying to conceive.
As of now, there have been no studies that show a connection between Ozempic and unintended pregnancy. Normally, I wouldn’t write about maybes which are the stuff of clickbait headlines used to sow fear. In this case, however, it’s worth mentioning because there is a simple solution. The path to pregnancy prevention does not have to pass through peristalsis. (As I said, I love alliteration—even tortured alliteration—more than the next guy.)
The pill is the only birth control method that involves the GI system at all. It’s the only one you “eat.” People taking Ozempic or Wegovy can get the same hormones through the birth control shot, patch, or ring. Or they could choose the contraceptive implant or an IUD, both of which have even better effectiveness rates than the pill. We will likely learn a lot more about these drugs in the coming years as they soar in popularity, and this theory about interaction with the pill will be proven or disproven. In the meantime, it can’t hurt for anyone who is taking these drugs alongside oral contraceptives to talk to their health care provider about switching methods.
Birth Control for Flies is Just More Flies
California is fighting flies with flies after identifying the invasive Medfly in a Los Angeles home. This species is known to destroy fruits, nuts, and vegetables. If the population multiplies (as flies are known to), it could threaten the agriculture industry and cost the state $1.8 billion dollars according to one estimate.
The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) is going to employ a preventative release program in which they drop tons of fruit flies from planes in an effort to cut down on, well, the number of fruit flies. While it sounds counterintuitive, these male paratroopers are specially bred to be infertile. Of course, the flies don’t know this so they just keep mating and mating and mating as evolution taught them to, not realizing that the eggs they lay will never become the next generation. If enough infertile males are introduced into an area, the population can die out completely.
This brings us to our middle school math problem of the week. CDFA is planning on dropping 250,000 sterile male fruit flies per square mile over a 9-square-mile region near the infestation site every week until the population is fully eradicated, which could take six months or more. I prefer math problems about Nick Canon’s fertility than that of the Medfly, but by my calculation that’s at least 54 million sterile flies.
This type of program has been used since 1996 and has been successful in eradicating the Mexican fruit fly and the pink bollworm moth, among others. It prevents officials from having to use more invasive methods like dropping pesticides from planes. I can see why this is better, but I’m just imagining someone in that 9-square-mile radius walking their dog or raking their lawn when a plane overhead drops hundreds of thousands of flies. It’s practically Hitchcockian (or maybe Goldblumian?).