Good morning. This is Kyle from Pete's 3City, Georgia. It's currently 7 a.m. and I'm just now headed home after my seventh overnight shift in a row.

Luckily, it's also my last, but unfortunately, like the other 800,000 federal employees, I'm also not getting paid for it, because it's currently the 34th day of the government shutdown.

This podcast was recorded at...

151 p.m. on Thursday, January 24th.

Things may have changed since you've heard this. Alright, here's the show.

I have a lot of neighbors in this situation, and it's not easy for anyone, and not easy, especially for the people, you know, not at the top of the totem pole in a lot of those places.

It's a term of interns, janitors, who are having a difficult time.

That's totally true, and we're going to talk more about the government shutdown in just a bit.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. The state of the union has been postponed. The president can see it to house speaker Nancy Pelosi.

So could that be a sign that we're getting closer to the end of the government shutdown?

I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter.

I'm Aisha Rascal. I cover the White House.

I'm Dominican Manitano, political editor.

And I'm Mara Lias, and national political correspondent.

So, you know, for a minute, it seemed like there was a lot of uncertainty about what was going to happen with the state of the union. But now it has been officially delayed.

So let's walk through how this all played out.

Aisha, do you want to start with a letter that Donald Trump put out yesterday?

Yes, so yesterday, President Trump sent this letter to speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi about the state of the union.

And this is after she had sent a letter a little while back saying that we need to reschedule because of the shutdown.

And basically what he says is, I'm going to fulfill my constitutional duty and I'm going to deliver this state of the union in the chamber of the House of Representatives just so you're clear.

And it would be very sad if this doesn't happen. So he basically kind of called her bluff.

He called her bluff. And presumably he thought that she'd back down, but she didn't. She informed him that the House was not going to officially invite him because the government is shut down.

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