Welcome to today's podcast, sponsored by Hillsdale College.

All things Hillsdale at Hillsdale.edu.

I encourage you to take advantage of the many free online courses there.

And, of course, I'll listen to the Hillsdale Dialogues, all of them at Hugh for Hillsdale.com or just Google Apple, iTunes, and Hillsdale.

Join now by United States Senator Tom Cotton from the great state of Arkansas.

Senator Cotton, thank you for joining me.

I hope you have a happy Easter week with your family.

I appreciate your taking the time to talk to me.

First question.

I was on Fox earlier today, and I cannot believe the Democrats have closed the Department of Homeland Security 30 days into a war.

What are they thinking?

Hugh, they're scared or they're in league with their radical left-wing base.

I can tell you last week that on more than one occasion, Chuck Schumer had agreed to a deal

that would fund all of Homeland Security aside from ICE and Border Patrol, which

we pre-funded last year in our big budget bill, and which we plan to return and pass a new budget

that will fund them even further into future. And they constantly moved the goalposts on those

agreements and reneged on them. One key sticking point, Hugh, is the issue of masks.

I don't think ICE officers want to wear masks, Hugh, but they have to because otherwise

the radical left will docks them, and then left-wing street militias will terrorize their

wives and their kids at their homes.

And that's where Chuck Schumer and Democrats have drawn a line in the sand. We'll obviously, we're obviously never going to

agree to that. So we'll continue with the plan we had in place, which is to use the budget reconciliation

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