‘Thugs’: The Moderate Democrat Railing Against ICE

The Daily

The New York Times

News, Daily News

4.3 • 107.6K Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2026

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada is nobody’s idea of a partisan firebrand. She’s a moderate, swing-state Democrat with a résumé steeped in law enforcement — all of which makes her an unlikely leader of the Democratic-led shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, which has now entered its sixth day. But over the past few months, Senator Cortez Masto said she was horrified by the conduct of federal immigration enforcement agents in her own state and across the country. By last week, she and many of her Democratic colleagues in the Senate decided to act on their outrage. In an interview with her on “The Daily,” Senator Cortez Masto talks about why she decided to support withholding homeland security funding, the political perils for her party in blocking that funding and why she believes most Americans support the strategy.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From New York Times, I'm Michael Bobarrow.
0:04.0	This is the Daily.
0:05.0	Today marks the sixth day of an unusual government shutdown in which Democrats have withheld funding to a single federal agency,
0:22.7	the Department of Homeland Security, in order to force President Trump to change how
0:28.1	thousands of its agents enforce immigration laws.
0:32.8	Today, my conversation with an unlikely leader of the Democratic strategy,
0:38.9	Senator Catherine Cortez Mastow of Nevada.
1:01.4	Thank you. It's Thursday, February 19th.
1:06.7	Senator.
1:08.8	Hello, how are you?
1:09.2	Good morning. This Michael Barbaro.
1:10.5	Michael, how? I recognize a voice. How are you? Oh morning. Michael Barbaro. Michael, how I recognize the voice. How are you?
1:13.0	Oh, that's flattering. Thank you for making time for us.
1:16.5	Well, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you. And by the way, thank you for the great reporting you do. Seriously.
1:22.3	I appreciate that. Yeah.
1:24.4	You are, as we speak, in Nevada.
1:28.3	Correct.
1:32.9	Not in Washington, D.C., because Congress is on a somewhat ill-timed recess.
1:33.7	That's right.
1:38.4	And I said ill-timed because we're in the middle of a partial government shutdown.
1:41.7	And I want to talk about your role in that.
1:47.9	We tend, Senator, to think of the lawmakers who become the face of a government shutdown or one of the faces of it as a particular kind of lawmaker, a firebrand,
	...

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