Greene, Gosar reinstated to House committees, Greta Thunberg detained: 5 Things podcast

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: Greene, Gosar reinstated to committees by GOP-led House after Democrats removed them

USA TODAY Politics Reporter Rachel Looker explains whether GOP reinstatements to committee might be part of concessions House Speaker Kevin McCarthy made to get votes for the speakership. Plus, Arizona Republic Money Reporter Russ Wiles looks at other economic concerns beyond recession, a group of Republican lawmakers in Wyoming want to phase out the sale of electric vehicles, climate change activist Greta Thunberg was detained while protesting, and Stephen A. Smith stops by USA TODAY Sports as his new book hits shelves.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Wednesday, the 18th of January 2023. Today a pair of Republicans are back on House committees after Democrats remove them. Plus financial dangers that might be more of a concern than recession, and hear which state wants to ban electric cars.

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GOP representatives Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene were stripped of committee assignments two years ago by the Democratic led House after menacing social media posts, but they were both reinstated to committee this week by the Republicans who now run the chamber. For more, I'm now joined by USA TODAY Politics Reporter Rachel Looker. Rachel, thanks for coming on the show.

Rachel Looker:

Yes, thank you for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

So Rachel, I want to start with Marjorie Taylor Greene. Why was she removed in the first place and why is she getting back on now?

Rachel Looker:

So Marjorie Taylor Greene was stripped of her committee assignments after she posted some controversial social media posts that depicted her holding an assault weapon, standing next to Representatives Ocasio-Cortez, Omar and Tlaib, or better known as members of the Squad. So when this happened, Democrats that led the House removed her from her committee assignments, and at the time McCarthy called this a dangerous new standard. And he said that removing her from these committee assignments over these controversial posts would deepen division within the House. Republicans appointed Greene on Tuesday to the Homeland Security Committee and the Oversight Committee, which was a pretty significant feather in her cap to be appointed to Oversight.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. How about Paul Gosar? What's his story in all of this?

Rachel Looker:

So Representative Gosar, similar to Greene, he faced criticism after he posted a controversial video on his social media. This was an anime style video that showed him killing Representative Ocasio-Cortez and attacking President Biden. So at the time, Democrats in the House voted to censure him, which stripped him of his committee assignments. And again, similar to Greene, at the time, McCarthy called the censure vote an abuse of power. On Tuesday, Gosar was appointed to the Committee on Natural Resources, and it is important to note both Greene and Gosar could still be added to other committees as House leadership releases more assignments throughout the week.

Taylor Wilson:

Rachel, we obviously saw tons of drama on Capitol Hill earlier this month with the 15 round vote for speaker, for now House speaker Kevin McCarthy, and we heard a lot about concessions that he would have to make for a lot of those votes. Are these committee reinstatements part of those concessions, Rachel?

Rachel Looker:

So it's a bit of a tricky answer. These moves were not exactly part of McCarthy's concessions. McCarthy has said before in the lead up to the elections and the lead up to him becoming speaker that he would reinstate Greene and Gosar to committees if he won that top leadership position. However, it is likely given the many rounds of voting and ballots it took to elect Kevin McCarthy that if Greene may not have been promised a committee, she may not have voted for him in that speaker election. In Gosar's case and the first few rounds of the speaker vote, he did not vote for McCarthy and he opted to vote for other candidates. So it is possible that he may have been promised certain committee assignments for backing McCarthy for the speakership vote, but it is not 100% clear exactly if those concessions are tied to this and exactly what those concessions were.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Rachel Looker covers politics for USA TODAY. Rachel, thanks so much.

Rachel Looker:

Thank you.

♦Taylor Wilson:

Spiking inflation was the story of 2022, while recession risk could emerge as the dominant economic theme for 2023. But is it really that big of a deal? Maybe not, at least in today's environment. Producer PJ Elliott spoke with Arizona Republic Money Reporter Russ Wiles to find out more.

PJ Elliott:

Russ, welcome to 5 Things.

Russ Wiles:

Happy to be here.

PJ Elliott:

So we've heard a lot about a recession possibly coming in 2023. It's everywhere, but you write about other financial dangers that may be more of a concern than a recession. Can you go into what they are?

Russ Wiles:

Yeah, and I just wanted to give some fresh perspective on the whole recession thing. We've been hearing about recession risk for really about a year now, and we haven't gone into one. And in fact, the economy perked up in the latest quarter, 3.2% growth. So to me that kind of indicates this fear might be a little bit overblown. But at the same time I wanted to, there's been a lot of conjecture, a lot of academic and other writings about recession and where we might be headed. And some of these other areas I think provide some interesting perspective.

For example, there was a guy named John Cochrane, an economist at Stanford University's Hoover Institution who wrote a piece recently about how maybe short-term recessions aren't really the big deal so much as long-term economic stagnation. And his point was that recessions are fairly brief, you get over them usually under a year. Part of the concern is focused on there are just fewer people as a percentage of the overall population who are working. We've heard this early retirement and early quitting and quiet quitting. And the point here is that the labor participation rate, which is what he focuses on, has been gradually declining. And that just basically means fewer working age adults are actually working as opposed to, say, focusing on the unemployment rate, which is what people do. The unemployment rate really isn't a problem right now.

PJ Elliott:

Right. So what does this say about the experts who are predicting a recession if things actually look better at times?

Russ Wiles:

Well, predictions are all over the board and there are still people predicting recessions. And that brings up a second point I might make. In the past or recently, one of the tried and true recession indicators that has worked pretty well is what is known as the inverted yield curve. And without getting into too much technicalities here, it basically means in a normal situation when the economy's growing, long-term interest rates are higher than short-term interest rates. When recessions have been coming on, this inverted yield curve indicator has often worked as a good signal. This inverted recession signal has been flashing recession for the last seven, eight months, nine months, but we haven't slid into a recession. And this indicator, I think, has been a false alarm for a lot of people because it's just one of those things that has worked in the past, but it's not guaranteed to work every single time.

PJ Elliott:

Russ, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Russ Wiles:

Thank you, PJ. Appreciate it.

Taylor Wilson:

You can read the full story from Russ with a link in today's show description.

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A group of Republican lawmakers in Wyoming want to phase out the sale of electric vehicles there by 2035. The bill was introduced into the state legislature last week, arguing it would help protect oil and gas industries. The bill also says electric vehicles hurt Wyoming's ability to trade with other states, and it claims that electric batteries are not easily recyclable. The bill comes in stark contrast to a law in California that requires all new vehicles to be electric or hydrogen powered by 2035. Several other states, including Washington and New York, are expected to follow California's lead.

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Renowned climate change activist Greta Thunberg was detained by German police yesterday while protesting the demolition of a village for a coal mine. Producer PJ Elliott spoke with USA TODAY reporter Jordan Mendoza for the latest.

PJ Elliott:

Jordan, thanks for joining the podcast.

Jordan Mendoza:

Of course. Thank you so much.

PJ Elliott:

So let's start here. Why was Greta detained?

Jordan Mendoza:

So she's in Germany right now. She's protesting the demolition of a village by an energy company, and what they're trying to do is turn it into a coal mine. So she's there in Germany protesting, and that's where she ended up getting detained on Tuesday.

PJ Elliott:

What was she detained for?

Jordan Mendoza:

She was in this area with a bunch of protestors, kind of near this open pit to where the village is at. And what police are saying in Germany is that the open pit had a sharp break off edge and they believe that it was too dangerous for people to be around and they had already been prohibited from staying in there. So because there were people there and police didn't want them there, that's when they detained people, and Thunberg was one of the people that they took. And as you can see from the photos taken from the site, she was carried out by a couple of police officers out of the area into another area where they were keeping all the people that they were detaining.

PJ Elliott:

What's the likelihood of her actually seeing jail time here?

Jordan Mendoza:

It doesn't really seem likely. The police said that they were detaining them so they could identify the people that were there. There wasn't really any other reasoning as to why.

PJ Elliott:

So you said it in the story that police and demonstrators were throwing fireworks at officers. Was she part of that?

Jordan Mendoza:

It doesn't appear so. These are protests that have been going on throughout the weekend. It's just kind of been almost at a boiling point as this kind of happened. But yeah, throughout the weekend there's been clash between the protestors and the police because there are people that don't want this village to be demolished and people don't want this energy company to be taking over this area. So there's been unrest for a couple of days, and Thunberg has been there throughout the weekend. There hasn't been any reports saying that she was part of the people that were allegedly throwing fireworks, but it's beginning to a certain point where there was clashing and tension going on. So is this the last time that she'll be there, and will the protests be continuing in Germany? There's no answer for that at the moment.

PJ Elliott:

Jordan, thanks so much for your time. Appreciate it.

Jordan Mendoza:

Of course. Thank you so much.

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Taylor Wilson:

Stephen A. Smith. If you're even a little familiar with the sports world, you know the name and the voice. ESPN's journalist and personality has strong opinions on sports and all kinds of other topics, and that makes him polarizing. But as he tells USA TODAY Sports' Mackenzie Salmon ahead of his new book, he's not in this business to be liked.

Mackenzie Salmon:

Why all of a sudden did you want to write it now in this part of your life?

Stephen A. Smith:

The opportunity to put my words, pen to paper, to write a book, to be an author, to be somebody that tries to inspire and to motivate and to really illuminate the fact that there are things that I've overcome in my life that a lot of people are enduring, have endured. If I can do it, you can do it. And I harken back to something that I said years ago that went viral. I brought up Jay-Z, I brought up Kobe Bryant, I brought up Shaquille O'Neal and people like that. Kobe, God rest his soul. And I was like, "They're not the American dream. They're the American fantasy come reality. I'm the American dream." And what I meant by that was that you can be me. You don't have a chance of pulling off being them. That's a one in a billion shot. But you can get left back, you can have a reading disability, you can have trials and tribulations in your home and beyond, and you can fight, you can scratch and you can claw. And with hard work, you can make something of yourself.

Mackenzie Salmon:

How much of the Stephen A. Smith we see on TV is really you versus how much gets played up for?

Stephen A. Smith:

Well, what I will say to you is that there's nothing about me that's fake, for better or worse. I'm always me. I'm just not a one-dimensional person. If you spent 24 hours with me, you'd see me loud, bombastic and demonstrative as always. Then you'd see me quiet, you'd see me melancholy, you'd see me exuberant, you'd see me relaxed, you'd see me gung ho. This is all in a span of 24 hours. I'm not somebody that fakes or pretends to be anything because, to me, I've always believed phoniness, fakeness is not sustainable. The true you is going to be revealed, so why hide it? As long as you're yourself, no one shows all of who they are to everyone every single time they interact with people. People have an expectation when they see Stephen A., and that's exactly what I'm going to give to them.

Taylor Wilson:

Stephen A. Smith's new book called Straight Shooter hits shelves today, and you can watch the full interview on the USA TODAY Sports YouTube channel.

Thanks for listening to 5 Things. As always, you can find us wherever you get your podcast. I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Greene, Gosar back on committees, Greta Thunberg detained: 5 Things podcast