Good morning to you. It is Sunday, September the 24th. I'm Ali Velshi. We begin this morning with America at a crossroads.

That sense of national unease and diminishing confidence in our system of government is coming now from several places at once.

Let's start with Capitol Hill, where

House Republicans are mired in a fight with each other that has set us on a path toward a

devastating government shutdown that is now just six days away. A small group of House Republican

extremists are continuing to hold up any sort of meaningful action on the matter with their

refusal to even consider a short-term funding bill,

known as a continuing resolution. That's a measure that could realistically be brought to the

floor of Congress over the next few days before funding runs out next Saturday at midnight.

Instead, Republican holdouts want to consider each appropriations bill separately, which is a time-consuming and extensive process that would take more than a week.

Now, ahead of the call with Republicans yesterday afternoon, the Speaker Kevin McCarthy expressed a bit of hope telling reporters he thinks when it gets down to crunch time, the holdouts will, quote, quote, hopefully move off.

A few hours later, however, this man, the Louisiana Congressman Garrett Graves, who is a McCarthy

ally, you'll remember him. He was instrumental in the debt ceiling negotiations a few months back.

He had tougher words. He compared the holdouts to arsonists who burn their

own houses down, then want credit for putting the fire out. He added, quote, anyone who says

that we're going to finish all 12 appropriations bills between now and next Saturday is absolutely

hallucinating, End quote.

So in short, not much progress has been made since Speaker McCarthy sent members home on Thursday afternoon after it became evident that his conference had reached an impasse.

This is just the latest instance of discontent among Republican ranks in what is turning out

to be a turbulent session of Congress.

Speaker McCarthy and the vast majority of House Republicans have failed to pacify a very

small but very loud group of hard-headed far-right Republicans, although it's doubtful

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