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Hi, this is Joe. I'm here with my dog Liberty.

We're about to step foot on Wingerich Beach in Gloucester, Massachusetts for the first time in 24 weeks since the city has lifted the summer dog ban.

This podcast was recorded at 12.08 p.m. on Friday, October 3rd, 2025.

Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but Lydia and I will be enjoying the real

beach season.

That's such a good feeling. You say Liddy or Liberty? Libby. I think, well, Liberty was the name. Oh, Libby is the nickname. Well, there is nothing more freeing than being with your dog on the beach and throwing a ball. Yeah, on the day that the rules have been lifted, right? Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Elena Moore. I cover politics. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And today on the show, we're talking about what is on Americans' minds, courtesy of a new NPR, PBS News, Maris poll that is out this week. But first, we are also on day three of the government shut down. And I want to start

there. Elena, can you just give us a quick recap of where things stand? Is the government any closer

to reopening? I mean, short answer, no, they're not. Most lawmakers were not in the capital

yesterday in observance of the Jewish holiday. But in the last few days, basically, there have been multiple failed votes in the

Senate. The Senate is expected to vote for the fourth time today on these stopgap measures. The vote is

expected to fail. The issue here is that senators need 60 votes in order to advance this spending

bill. And the Republicans control the Senate, but they don't have 60

senators. They need more than a handful of Democratic senators to vote for their plans, and they don't

have that. A lot of Democrats want Republicans to extend health care subsidies that are going to expire

at the end of the year. Republicans say, we can have a conversation about that,

but we have to fund the government first and then we'll come back to you. A lot of Democrats aren't sure. So it's the same kind of back and forth. There's a lot of blame game going on. And GOP leaders say they're just going to keep putting their stopgap measure on the floor for vote as they would hope things, you know, pressure Democrats to change their mind. Right. And we got into like the politics in an episode on Wednesday. But Domenico, I do, I am hoping to go back to a little bit to the poll of how do people feel about who to blame on the shutdown at this point? Well, marginally, they give Republicans more of the blame in a poll that we took with Maris College over five days last week before the shutdown. Thirty% say that Republicans would get most of the blame. 27% say Democrats. 31% say that they would blame both

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