This week’s edition of Friday Focus with Janice Stein and Rudyard Griffiths sets sail into the stormy weather that defined the last week in U.S. politics. For the first time in history, the Speaker of the U.S. Congress was removed from office by a vote of its members. The putsch was orchestrated by a minority of disaffected congressmen from the Speaker’s own party, not the opposition Democrats. Now, the U.S. Congress will have to rush to appoint a new GOP Speaker and pass critical budget legislation all in a tight forty-five day deadline before yet another government shutdown deadline. What does the week’s drama tell us about the state of U.S. democracy, and about the effectiveness of legislatures generally in a world whose complexity seems to outmatch and outpace parliamentary process? Janice and Rudyard discuss it all.