Michael Barbaro

This is Michael Barbaro.

Oh, that's flattering.

You are, as we speak, in Nevada.

Correct.

Not in Washington, D.C., because Congress is on a somewhat ill-timed recess.

That's right.

And I said ill-timed because we're in the middle of a partial government shutdown.

And I want to talk about your role in that.

We tend—

Senator, to think of the lawmakers who become the face of a government shutdown or one of the faces of it as a particular kind of lawmaker, a firebrand, a rabble rouser, pick your adjective.

You are pretty distinctly not that.

Does that seem fair?

Well, the last time there was a government shutdown, you opposed it.

I think you voted against it something like 15 times.

And so I don't tend to think of you as a shutdown person.

Well, that's what we want to talk about, how you got to this point where you decided to support withholding funding from the Department of Homeland Security.

And I think it stands out that you have joined this effort because of your background in law enforcement.

You're a former attorney general in the state.

You have a very strong set of relationships with law enforcement, which I'm sure we're going to be talking about in this conversation.

DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, is a major law enforcement agency, and you have decided that funding should be withheld from it over the way it has approached immigration enforcement.