From WNYC Studios, I'm Brian Lehrer.

This is my daily politics podcast.

It's Wednesday, May 21st.

So we told you yesterday that we would lead today with what we're learning from the all-nighter

that members of the House

of Representatives have just pulled on the fate of Medicaid coverage for millions of Americans,

the salt tax deduction, tax breaks for billionaires, and other items in the budget bill

that Politico, for example, describes as the central legislation of the Trump 2.0 project.

Its fate was uncertain enough, though, as you may have heard, that the president himself went to Capitol Hill for a last-minute lobbying trip yesterday, and even dropped an F-bomb on his fellow Republicans.

We'll explain why and where it all stands with who knows how many Congress

members and journalists, however, bleary-eyed at this point. And I wonder what else they

slipped in there in the middle of the night that they hoped we wouldn't notice. And no Democrat

will vote for this bill so the Republicans can only lose two votes from their side of the aisle. Up with us now, with us now, I should say,

the up since the crack of dawn herself, and that's pretty early this time of year, Mariana Sotomayor,

who covers the House of Representatives for the Washington Post. Mariana, thanks for doing this.

Welcome back to WNYC.

Of course. Thanks for having me. So they started at 1 a.m. Is this still going on?

Oh, yeah. It's still going on and it's expected to go for several more hours. A number of the

chairman from different committees and also ranking members are finishing, kind of

testifying about what's in their portions of this, as it's called one big beautiful bill.

We should expect Democrats to actually introduce dozens of amendments. So that's going to go

into, you know, way, way late this morning. And honestly, that is actually a lot of hours. That

...