Hello listeners and welcome to another episode of Politico's Nerdcast. I'm Scott Bland, your host.

This week on the on the Nurdcast as the shutdown turns heading into a fifth week there are

not many signs there's any progress to ending the partial government

shutdown but we're going to hear from one of our

reporters about why Washington area TSA agents might actually hold all the cards

and when this gets resolved. Plus, if you had any doubt that the 2020 campaign has begun put it to rest because we've gotten

Three more candidate announcements about campaigns and exploratory committees in just the last seven days

And we've got more to come later this month we've got candidates

flooding into Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada soon. It's happening

so we're going to talk all about that. As always, before we begin a note,

we are taping this a little bit before noon eastern

on Thursday, January the 17th,

so it's all up to date as of then.

All right, let's get started.

I want to welcome our guests. We have senior politics

editor Charlie Matessian in the studio. Charlie, good to have you.

Hi Scott. We have Nancy Cook, our political White House reporter and a

nerd cast regular. Hello, Nancy.

Hey Scott, thanks for having me.

And I want to welcome in a member of our congressional team

on the line from the Capitol, Sarah Ferris,

making her Nurdcast debut.

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