Sam Greenglass

Ashley mentioned that in the end, this all might amount to not giving Democrats or Republicans much of a different advantage in control of the House.

And I asked a University of Indianapolis political science professor, Laura Merrifield Wilson, about this.

And what she said is something I keep thinking about.

Yeah, so Katie Britt's first introduction to a national audience, I guess, happened two years ago when she gave the Republican rebuttal to President Joe Biden's final State of the Union address.

And, you know, this job is often called the worst assignment in politics.

So it's kind of a daunting task for really any up and coming politician who takes it on.

But Britt's response kind of went viral in not a good way, necessarily.

It got parodied on Saturday Night Live.

And I think for people who maybe this was their first introduction to who this person was, saw her as this hyper-partisan firebrand.

So when I got to Congress, I was really surprised to learn that this is actually really different from the profile that she's trying to cut.

in the Senate.

And she has been in the center of a couple of recent efforts to try and come up with bipartisan compromises, deals across the aisle, including ending that record long government shutdown in the fall.

And her latest assignment now is working with Democrats and the White House to try and come up with some policy changes to how federal immigration agents operate after those two deadly shootings in Minneapolis.

Yeah, so I had a chance to talk with her and I asked her why she even wants to engage in these kind of debates at a time when, as we've been talking about, there's just really little incentive to give and take and reach across the aisle.

Yeah, so Britt is actually a longtime Hill staffer before she got to Congress as a member herself.

And she worked for a longtime top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, which is really known for being bipartisan in nature.

And it's kind of this old school approach to the Senate where you develop relationships across the aisle, even friendships, and build that trust that is necessary for cutting deals and doing this kind of give and take that we're talking about.

And I talked about this with someone who's known Britt for a really long time, veteran Alabama political columnist Steve Flowers.

And what he told me is that he sees two different kinds of senators, ideologues and facilitators.

He said Shelby was a facilitator, and that's the kind of senator that Britt wants to be.