Happy Friday Slatsters. We are doing our Slate Plus episode a little differently this week.

You might have noticed I was out for a few days touring college with my kid. And while I was out,

the U.S. government inched so much closer to a full shutdown. And I know we've been here before,

but it feels different this time, right? So this week, I called up

someone who could tell me a little more about what the folks on Capitol Hill are thinking.

Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen.

Senator Van Hollen, welcome to the show. Great to be with you.

This is a situation where I think I really got to give a timestamp because stuff is changing so rapidly right now in Washington.

You and I are talking Thursday afternoon.

And without funding, the government is set to shut down Tuesday, September 30th.

How are you feeling right now?

Well, I'd like to avoid a shutdown, but Donald Trump seems

intent on taking the country over the cliff because what he wants is a blank check to fund his

lawless activities. And I, for one, are not willing to give him a blank check. We also want to diffuse this ticking time bomb on American health care.

So I prefer not to see a government shutdown, but Donald Trump seems intent on shutting down the government.

A whole lot of your constituents would be impacted by a government shutdown, huh? Because you represent

Maryland. That's right. I represent lots of patriotic, dedicated federal employees who do good

work on behalf of the country. I will point out, if they're not able to do that good work,

people all over the country are impacted by the loss of very important services, as we've seen during the time

when Elon Musk took a chainsaw to many services and they had to reverse themselves.

Last week, Democrats released these bullet points of a continuing resolution. They wanted

Republicans to work on with them. It basically funds the government for about a month, focuses on restoring health care funding

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