Hi there, this is Matthew Rickse coming to you from the UPS hub in Denver, Colorado.

It's our heaviest day of the year and our drivers are just headed on the roads to make those

important Christmas deliveries. This podcast was recorded at 9.29 am on Saturday, December 22nd.

And things have probably changed by the time you hear this. Now here's the show.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. We are 9 hours and 29 minutes into a

partial federal government shutdown. We're going to talk through how we got here and what

Congress and the White House are going to do about it. I'm Tamar Keith, I cover the White House.

I'm Aisha Roscoe, I also cover the White House. And I'm Susan Davis, I cover Congress.

Sue, this is your first time back from maternity leave and you shut the government down.

I think exactly. Welcome back. I am afraid I'm being haunted by the ghosts of Christmas past right now.

It's kind of a rough way to reenter into back into the workforce, but it's also unfortunately a

very familiar way to reenter back into the workforce. So here we go. Well, because this is the third

government shutdown we've had in this year. Yes, and the fourth since 2013. Remarkable. Okay, so

let's talk through how we got here. Last night, it became clear that the Congress and the White

House were not going to come to an agreement. President Trump put out a video on Twitter.

We're going to have a shutdown. There's nothing we can do about that because we need the Democrats

to give us their votes. Call it a Democrat shutdown. Call it whatever you want. But we need their help

to get this approved. So Democrats, we have a wonderful list of things that we need to keep our

country safe. Okay, so I'm assuming Democrats are not calling it a Democrat shutdown. No, I don't

think so. I think they're calling it what Trump called it last week, which is a Trump shutdown,

because he did say last week that he would take the mantle of the shutdown. Of course, now he's

walked away from that. But last week, he said, if you do this, I won't put the blame on you. I will

...