Congress Deadlocked As Possible Government Shutdown Looms
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.5 • 24.9K Ratings
🗓️ 22 September 2025
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: White House correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben, congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.
This podcast was produced by Casey Morell & Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's time for the Emmy Awards, and we've kept up with all the nominated TV shows, so you don't have to. |
| 0:06.2 | We're recapping television's biggest night, breaking down the big wins and the moments everyone is talking about. |
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| 0:17.8 | This is Sarah in New Paltz, New York. |
| 0:20.5 | I'm spending my last day of vacation, hiking and biking with my mom, my husband, and my daughter. I used to have to push my daughter up the hills. Now she has to wait at the top for me to catch up. I think it's time for an e-bike. This podcast was recorded at. |
| 0:36.9 | 106 p.m. Eastern on Monday, September 22nd, 2025. Things may |
| 0:41.5 | have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll have gone back to work and have left this beautiful |
| 0:46.8 | woods and glacier lakes behind. Enjoy the show. Nice. That's beautiful. I love it. I'm with you, Sarah, on the e-bike. I want one. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover the White House. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And today on the show, the federal government is headed again towards a shutdown, this time on October 1st, unless Congress acts to prevent it. |
| 1:16.7 | So we have a lot to get into here. |
| 1:18.8 | It feels like there is a new shutdown threat once or twice a year, at least at this point. |
| 1:23.9 | Mara, let's start with you. |
| 1:25.6 | And I want us to zoom out for a moment. Tell us, what is a government |
| 1:29.4 | shutdown exactly and how do people experience it? Well, that's a really good question, because |
| 1:34.0 | government shutdowns have changed over the years and how people experience them have changed. |
| 1:38.7 | In other words, the government does not grind to a halt. There are a whole bunch of things |
| 1:43.5 | that are deemed essential services, |
| 1:46.4 | like social security checks, air traffic control, border protection, in-hospital medical care, |
| 1:53.5 | power grid maintenance, all of those things in past shutdowns have been deemed essential. |
| 1:58.2 | So the big question for the government shutdown is how people do experience it. |
| 2:02.6 | Now, they might not be able to go to their favorite national park, but they're still going to get |
| 2:06.4 | their social security check, and they might not notice much. Okay, so Deirdre, practically speaking, |
| 2:12.1 | what would this shutdown look like if it happened? So as Mara mentioned, there are a lot of functions of the government that |
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