I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Monday, March 14th.

It's an interesting moment to be Gregory Meeks, from Southeast Queens to the Poland-Ukraine border.

The 24-year congressman, who will join us in just a minute, is from Southeast Queens,

as is Mayor Eric Adams, and as is City Council Speaker, Adrian Adams.

So Meeks is from the new epicenter of power in New York City.

And as a member of Congress, he was elevated this term to the

position of Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and among his recent duties,

that visit to near the war zone, the Poland-Ukraine border. This is all happening in an election

year, too, when Meeks' Democratic Party is trying to hold their House and Senate majorities

amid rising inflation and rising crime, but also a soaring job market and a pandemic that's

receding, at least for now, under the Democrats' vaccination and other public health

experts' efforts, only sometimes with bipartisan support. So it's an interesting time to be Congressman Gregory Meeks,

who joins me now. Congressman, thanks for some time today with so much happening right now. Welcome

back to WNYC. Thank you, Brian. Thank you for having me. Can you start by telling us about your trip

to the border area? When exactly were you there and what specifically

did you go to observe? I was there just about a week ago. In fact, I returned a week ago Monday.

It was a visit to Poland, as you said, to support the defensive military efforts for Ukraine and to try

to see what we could do to help alleviate some of the humanitarian crises there.

We wanted to, and we visited the border to see exactly what was happening at the border and

wanted to leave a loud and clear message

that the United States Congress in a bipartisan way was a bipartisan delegation stands with our

NATO allies. And we had several meetings, beginning with the Polish foreign minister. We met with

...