Hi, this is Ryan James from Dallas, Texas. I am currently driving a combine on my parents'

farm in Alberta, Canada, helping finish the harvest. This is my first time being home

in over two years. This podcast is recorded at...

205 PM Eastern Time on Monday, September 20th.

By the time you hear this, things may have changed. Enjoy the show!

Hey, got right to work. That is extremely awesome. I think that's the first combine call we've

ever got. I think so. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miss Mahalo, I cover

the White House. I'm Deer Dhrwal, shy cover congress. And I'm Mara Laiasan, National

Political Correspondent. And today on the show, we're going to talk about Republican strategy

for the midterms. I know it seems like a long time into the future, but campaigning and

election strategizing is already underway. But first, we have a bit of bad news for Democrats.

Last night, the Senate Parliamentary Unit ruled that Democrats cannot create a pathway

to citizenship for undocumented Democrats by adding this to this massive reconciliation

bill that they've been working on. Deer Dhrwal, explain this decision to us.

This was definitely a big setback for Democrats on Capitol Hill. So the process they're using

to pass this massive spending bill is called budget reconciliation. And under that process,

there are limits to what can be included in a bill. They're using this process to get around

a Republican filibuster and pass a bill just with a simple majority in the Senate. They

wanted to include immigration as a part of this big package. And they argued that it would

have an impact on the budget. But the Senate Parliamentarian, her name is Elizabeth McDonough.

She is actually a former immigration attorney. She is a nonpartisan arbiter of the Senate

rules. And she ruled that this proposal from Democrats to provide this path to citizenship

...