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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is A.O. Scott. I'm a critic at The New York Times. What I do and what the other critics here do is part of the same project that all of the journalists at The New York Times work on every day to give you clarity and perspective and, above all, a deeper understanding of the world.
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From New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today marks the sixth day of an unusual government shutdown in which Democrats have withheld funding to a single federal agency, the Department of Homeland Security, in order to force President Trump to change how thousands of its agents enforce immigration laws.
Today, my conversation with an unlikely leader of the Democratic strategy, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada. It's Thursday, February 19th. Senator. Hello. How are you? Good morning. This is Michael Barbaro.
Michael, I recognize the voice. How are you?
Oh, that's flattering.
Thank you for making time for us. Well, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you. And by the way, thank you for the great reporting you do. Seriously, it's important. Yeah.
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?
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Chapter 2: What prompted Senator Cortez Masto to support withholding DHS funding?
This is one I'm going to stand up and say, this can't occur. And you see that, I've done that, and you will see that for many moderates across the country doing the same thing.
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.
I see what you're saying. Yeah. So let me just say this. For me, there's nothing wrong with calling out an administration. I don't care what party you are. That's hurting our community. That is challenging our very norms, particularly around, in this case, law and order. They need to be challenged and they need to be called out.
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.
And I want to talk about how, given your background, you got to that point. So tell us that story. Where does it begin over the past year or so?
So let me just say, back in September, when we were talking about the first shutdown. Over health care. Over health care, that's right. I knew going into that argument, we weren't going to win it. You knew that you were not going to win it. You could play it out. You could see that the Republicans were not going to support an extension of the ACA tax credits, because here's why.
Most Republicans never even voted for the ACA, so they weren't going to go out there and vote for an ACA tax credit. So I knew it wasn't going to happen.
Right. You didn't see an outcome where the core issue of health care costs was going to be addressed.
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Chapter 3: How does Senator Masto define her role as a moderate Democrat?
Minneapolis. That's correct. And then we see what plays out in Minneapolis when they send that police force in. A national police force that this administration wants to create to just come in and brutalize communities and scare people under the guise of some sort of immigration enforcement.
A national police force that's brutalizing. I mean, those are some very loaded phrases. I just want to make sure I'm understanding them.
Yeah, no, please, because I think it is absolutely correct. They are going after peaceful protesters. They're killing peaceful protesters who are outraged that they're coming into their communities and actually not even going after violent criminals. And they're violating individuals' rights. They are detaining and deporting U.S. citizens.
They are using their administrative warrants to go into people's private properties. They have violated the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, the Tenth Amendment of our Constitution. That's what this administration is doing. So, yes, it demands action.
And so in your mind, given your background in law enforcement, this is not how law enforcement is supposed to be operating. And—
In mid-January, you do something about it, and you introduce a piece of legislation about ICE that would divert much of this money that we're talking about that came from the one big, beautiful bill that was designated for things like ICE and divert it to local law enforcement.
They have too much money. That's $75 billion in ICE. Too much. So let's take it away. Let's divert it to local law enforcement and state law enforcement. who are trained to work in our communities, who know how to manage a protest or even pull somebody over in the car without violating their constitutional rights. It's the same. I hear it and see it in my community.
Same conversation that you saw from the police chief in Minneapolis saying the same thing. Right. It's just common sense.
We had him on the show.
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Chapter 4: What concerns did Senator Masto have regarding immigration enforcement?
Let's see. Tanga is a word. Oh-ho. I don't know what tanga means, so I'm going to press down on the word and oh, definition popped up. As an English as a second language speaker, I like to learn new words. I'm pretty competitive. It's fun to beat friends and coworkers. New York Times game subscribers get full access to Crossplay, our first two-player word game.
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Senator, I want to turn now to a fundamental challenge for you and your party when it comes to this shutdown of DHS. You've made clear that you see this as a question of what good law enforcement is and what it isn't, and that right now immigration enforcement operations represent bad law enforcement to you.
But to some meaningful percentage of voters, this could end up looking like something else. which is potentially Democrats being weak on immigration.
How do you respond to that? Well, I think traditionally I have seen that. Democrats are weak on immigration. Under the last administration, we have seen that.
Full stop. I mean, you're conceding that.
Yeah. Well, absolutely, because this has been my challenge. I know as somebody who has worked in this space, we can do both. We can secure our borders. We can address the human trafficking, the drug trafficking, weapons trafficking that's happening at the border. I know because as attorney general, I worked on it.
I'm not a border state, but I'm close enough that I worked with the Mexican AGs on these very issues. We can work to secure it, fund it. And at the same time, have an immigration process that treats people with respect who want to come to this country, who have been playing by the rules, who have actually contributed to our communities and paying taxes and raising their families. We can do both.
But I have seen Democrats shy away from that. They don't talk about the balance between the two. And I watch as the last administration under Biden was too afraid to talk about securing the border. So it's just, to me, this is common sense. This is where most of the, at least in Nevada, and I see most of the country, this is how they think. Americans aren't stupid.
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