I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Friday, October 22nd.

We begin the day with Steve Bannon, Kirsten Cinema, and Tom Malinowski, all in the crosshairs of Congress right now.

Bannon, you probably know about the right-wing firebrand, former Trump advisor, now officially

held in contempt of Congress for refusing a subpoena to testify about January 6th, and Congress

wants the Justice Department to prosecute him for that.

Malinowski, maybe you didn't know

about yet. So, hello, New Jersey. This is your Tom Malinowski. The House Ethics Committee has a report

with some serious questions about the Garden State Democrats' stock trades. We'll get to that.

And then there's Kirsten Cinema, the holdout Democratic Senator from

Arizona, one of the two, along with Joe Manchin of West Virginia, right, holding back President

Biden's bill back Better Bill for child care, home health care for the elderly and severely disabled,

more competitive prescription drug pricing,

climate change protection, and more. On the plus side, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman

Richard Neal says he talked to cinema yesterday and thinks she's ready to make a deal. On the

downside for her, five U.S. military veterans who are advisors to Senator Cinema have quit,

sending her a scathing letter saying she's hanging her constituents out to dry.

That is reported in the New York Times, and joining me now is New York Times congressional reporter,

Luke Broadwater, who is covering that and, and in fact all three of the stories I mentioned.

Luke, thanks for coming on today. Welcome to WNYC.

Good morning. Thanks for having me.

Kirsten Cinema. Was this your scoop about the five veterans who quit as her advisors?

Yeah, I mean, I guess, yeah, we had that first. So I guess that's a scoop. I don't really like to talk about scoops because I just try to, I don't care too much about who gets things first.

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