Hello and welcome to the Punchball News Reback Podcast. I'm your host, congressional reporter Max Cohen.

Today I'm joined by portal author and policy expert Sammy Handler to talk all things government shutdown.

Sammy, how you doing? I'm good, Max. How are you? We're good. You know, we're here. The government is shut down.

This is my first shutdown as a Hill reporter. I know you were on the Hill during the 2018,

2019 shutdown for Medell on the Hill. But this is kind of uncharted territory for all of us right now.

And the aspect of your readback item that I want to delve into today

is how lawmakers themselves are responding to the shutdown. And in your item, you run through a number

of high profile members of Congress and what they're saying about the impact in their home districts

and their home states. So walk me through some of the most notable you want to shout out for

audience. Right. Yeah. It's interesting here in the Capitol. Like you said, I was here in 2018,

2019. But this feels different. I mean, it's weird walking around the Capitol right now. It's

eerily quiet, I would say. You know, when I remember when I was back there, that was actually my first time on Capitol Hill and everything was frenetic. Like there were so many meetings, you know, it felt like everyone was running around. It was also my first time being on Capitol Hill. So that was overwhelming. But, you know, here it's like nothing is going. There's, I mean, things are happening, but it's so quiet, but members are chatty.

And, you know, they're concerned. I mean, even if, you know, they're not, you know,

actively involved in the negotiations over ACA credits, it impacts all of them, whether or not

you're in the DMV. And we, I talked to Tom Cole earlier this week in his office right across from the Punchful

News gallery or newsroom here.

And it was interesting.

He really laid through how his district in Oklahoma, which is a really federal

worker heavy district, was hit and or will be hit by this shutdown. You know, he has Tinker Air Force Base.

He has Fort Sill. He's the National Weather Service. It's all really important to Oklahoma.

He talked about how it has impacted his family in the past. During past shutdowns, his dad and his

brother have worked at Tinker Air Force Base. So it's, you know, that was one thing. Susan Collins,

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