Good morning. Welcome to a special weekend edition of Axios today. It's April 10th. I'm

Nyla Budu, and we're trying something new this Saturday. Today's entire episode is me

talking to one person. It's a place for us to go more in-depth than we can during the week.

Our first guest is U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth. She just published a new memoir,

called Every Day is a Gift. The Illinois Democrat is just one of 17 Asian Americans in

Congress. She's a purple heart recipient who became a double amputee as a result of her military

service. And she's a mom. She was actually the first senator to have a baby while in office.

Here's our conversation.

So thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I have to tell you I've read a lot of

memoirs and this is certainly a very memorable one. And I was just thinking like I've actually

lost track of the number of times that I have interviewed you, but I didn't know all of these

details about your life and your childhood. What it was like growing up as a biracial

child in Thailand. How hard you work to support your family when you were in high school.

And I feel like we get a first hint of this with one of your first memories when you were three

or four. And the way you reacted to your dad getting military orders that would have taken him

away from your family in Thailand. Can you share that story?

Yeah. I mean, my first instinct even when I was three or four was to, and if you come from an

Asian household, you know, this was run to the kitchen and look under the sink for the giant

bag of rice to make sure that there was rice there. I could tell my mom was upset and I was upset

that dad was going to be gone. But my first thing was security and security was noting that we had

rice to eat. So that's the first thing I did. And I think every Asian household has that 40 pound

bag of rice under the kitchen to sink. I've always been a problem solver from the time I was

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