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--:-- Noel King: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Noel King.
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--:-- Noel King: You always think flying can't get worse, and you are always wrong. You have traveled out of Houston's Bush Airport within the last week. Please tell me what is actually going on. Who stuck at the airports in three-hour lines just to get through TSA?
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--:-- Noel King: Child, this is crazy. This is insane. Always, always wrong. Tomorrow, the government is going to cut flight capacity at some of the country's busiest airports. Here's the Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and his prediction.
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--:-- Noel King: You will see mass chaos. You will see mass flight delays. You'll see mass cancellations. And you may see us close certain parts of the airspace because we just cannot manage it because we don't have the air traffic controllers. Because no one coming to work, because no one getting paid, because shutdown.
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--:-- Noel King: Coming up on Today Explained, your flight's been canceled. Is the Justice Department still just? Ultimately, Donald Trump is the person who began the weakening of the Justice Department in his first presidency. I'm Preet Bharara. And this week, investigative reporters Carol Lennig and Aaron Davis join me to discuss their new book, Injustice, How Politics and Fear Vanquished America's Justice Department. The episode is out now. Search and follow Stay Tuned with Preet wherever you get your podcasts.
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--:-- Noel King: Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Welcome aboard Today Explained. We hope you enjoy your flight. Please prepare for takeoff. My name is Daryl Campbell. I'm an aviation safety writer for The Verge, and I also wrote the book Fatal Abstraction.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: Tell us broadly, what is going on in American airports right now?
--:-- Daryl Campbell: Well, the government shutdown has really affected a lot of the operational behind the scenes that you may not know what's going on if you're on an airplane, but it's absolutely critical to just the normal functioning of aviation.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: The two things that most people will probably experience is, number one, at the security line, a lot of transportation security agency or TSA officers haven't been paid since, at the very least, the middle of October, if not more.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: They want you there and they don't care what you have to sacrifice to get there. Do I pay for medication? Do I pay for my food? Do I pay for gas to go to work but have nothing to eat that day?
--:-- Daryl Campbell: It's one thing to say, like, you know, people's mortgages and rents are due, which they are. People have already missed other payments. So this is just the biggest one.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: And that's a huge impact because a lot of these TSOs are, you know, coming in. They have to pay for gas. They have to pay for child care.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: I am a mother of five. I'm a grandmother of two. I run a single parent household. So it's hard. It's hard enough just going to work. Now when you're at it and not getting paid, that's when you just multiply the level of pressure.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: And they just can't afford to go into a job that's not paying them. So you'll see things like the number of lanes being shut down or TSA pre-check not being available.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: At Bush Airport, only TSA checkpoints at terminals A and E are open. At Hobby Airport, fewer screening lanes are open with wait times exceeding over an hour.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: I've been here for four hours. My feet hurt, my legs hurt, my back hurts. I'm very tired.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: The other thing is that the air traffic controllers, so the people who tell airplanes where to go and when to land and really just try to avoid any possibility of a collision or violent maneuvering because people have to take evasive action or anything like that,
--:-- Daryl Campbell: those people also aren't getting paid. And that means that there are fewer people coming in and you're seeing these huge delays where either airports can't handle the planned volume of traffic,
--:-- Daryl Campbell: or in some cases, some airports are operating their control towers or their air traffic control facilities with not enough people at all.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: In Orlando last night, the FAA warned that the airport was close to turning away arriving flights altogether due to staffing issues.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: At 4.15 Western Time, the control tower here at Hollywood Burbank Airport will be unmanned. There are no controllers who will be on the job starting in less than 15 minutes due to that government shutdown.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: There's already been a brush with disaster. A Delta flight with 300 passengers was 125 feet from landing in Boston, just as a commuter plane was taking off from an intersecting runway.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: So it's really starting to have a huge impact in just delays and cancellations.
--:-- Noel King: Okay, this is what you've just told me is terrifying. It is also understandable if people have not been paid since October for doing a job like air traffic controller, which is a very, very important job.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: So let's start with the air traffic controllers. How are they responding to this? What have they been doing?
--:-- Daryl Campbell: So what we're seeing is just a lot of air traffic controllers calling in sick or being unable to come into work.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: We are continuing to see spotty staffing issues at air traffic control facilities across the country.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: The three New York City airports have been especially hard hit, and the FAA says on Friday those facilities saw nearly 80% of controllers call out.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: And that usually impacts the level of traffic that can come in. So a single air traffic controller can only handle so many simultaneous flights.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: And in places like New York or Dallas or Atlanta, where there's just this huge amount of traffic, you need three, four, five people at a time, even during your lowest periods of volume.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: So when one person calls out, that means that's a third of your capacity that you just can't handle. And so that tends to compound.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: And this past weekend was the worst for controller staffing since the shutdown began. Ground stops all over the country, because if you don't have these controllers, you have to slow down the air traffic to keep the skies safe.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: It's not just one airplane that gets delayed. It's also the people who are supposed to be on the next flight because the airplane was supposed to be in another city and another one.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: Some of these smaller airplanes, like a 737, like you might fly on Southwest, do five or six trips in a day.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: And so when the first one gets disrupted, that means all five or six are also disrupted and it just kind of cascades throughout the system.
--:-- Noel King: Okay so calling in sick is very effective in terms of the air traffic controllers saying hey guys without us you kind of screwed
--:-- Daryl Campbell: We talked to you earlier this year about there already being a ton of discontent among air traffic controllers
--:-- Daryl Campbell: What has been happening with them
--:-- Daryl Campbell: Essentially, the FAA as a government agency is always trying to fight for scraps on the budget, and it just does not have the amount of money available to hire enough people and to maintain a lot of these facilities that are in some cases 30 or 40 years old.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: So there's already this background of limited staffing and budget that's causing radar systems to go out and satellite tracking to be unavailable for long periods of time.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: Earlier this year, we were talking about what was happening at Newark. Controllers there lost both radio communications and a picture on their radar scopes.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: Our scope ship went black again. If you care about this, contact the airline and try to get some pressure for them to fix this stuff.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: You're literally in the middle of the day and your systems go out and you cannot see an airplane that's coming in.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: So you just basically lose track of it.
--:-- Noel King: Okay, this is what you've just told me is terrifying. It is also understandable if people have not been paid since October for doing a job like air traffic controller, which is a very, very important job.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: So let's start with the air traffic controllers. How are they responding to this? What have they been doing?
--:-- Daryl Campbell: So what we're seeing is just a lot of air traffic controllers calling in sick or being unable to come into work.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: We are continuing to see spotty staffing issues at air traffic control facilities across the country.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: The three New York City airports have been especially hard hit, and the FAA says on Friday those facilities saw nearly 80% of controllers call out.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: And that usually impacts the level of traffic that can come in. So a single air traffic controller can only handle so many simultaneous flights.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: And in places like New York or Dallas or Atlanta, where there's just this huge amount of traffic, you need three, four, five people at a time, even during your lowest periods of volume.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: So when one person calls out, that means that's a third of your capacity that you just can't handle. And so that tends to compound.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: And this past weekend was the worst for controller staffing since the shutdown began. Ground stops all over the country, because if you don't have these controllers, you have to slow down the air traffic to keep the skies safe.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: It's not just one airplane that gets delayed. It's also the people who are supposed to be on the next flight because the airplane was supposed to be in another city and another one.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: Some of these smaller airplanes, like a 737, like you might fly on Southwest, do five or six trips in a day.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: And so when the first one gets disrupted, that means all five or six are also disrupted and it just kind of cascades throughout the system.
--:-- Noel King: Okay so calling in sick is very effective in terms of the air traffic controllers saying hey guys without us you kind of screwed
--:-- Daryl Campbell: We talked to you earlier this year about there already being a ton of discontent among air traffic controllers
--:-- Daryl Campbell: What has been happening with them
--:-- Daryl Campbell: Essentially, the FAA as a government agency is always trying to fight for scraps on the budget, and it just does not have the amount of money available to hire enough people and to maintain a lot of these facilities that are in some cases 30 or 40 years old.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: So there's already this background of limited staffing and budget that's causing radar systems to go out and satellite tracking to be unavailable for long periods of time.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: Earlier this year, we were talking about what was happening at Newark. Controllers there lost both radio communications and a picture on their radar scopes.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: Our scope ship went black again. If you care about this, contact the airline and try to get some pressure for them to fix this stuff.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: You're literally in the middle of the day and your systems go out and you cannot see an airplane that's coming in.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: So you just basically lose track of it.
--:-- Noel King: Okay, so that's the air traffic controllers. There's also, as you said, TSA agents. They are also calling in sick. Is it the same story?
--:-- Daryl Campbell: It's pretty different. A lot of them make the lowest rung on the salary ladder in the government.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: So an average annual salary of $30,000 to $40,000.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: And if you're living in a high cost of living area like L.A. or New York or Washington, D.C., I mean, you really don't have a lot of margins.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: I was talking with one TSA officer named Johnny Jones.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: He's here in Dallas, where I live. And he was saying that, you know, put yourself in the mind of these TSOs.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: They got less than two weeks notice that this government shutdown was even happening.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: They're still scheduled out and it costs them, you know, $10 to between gas tolls just to get to their job.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: If they've also got to worry about child care or, you know, figuring out if their kid's sick or something like that, maybe they have to go and drive for Uber or a lot of them have second job.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: And so maybe they have to prioritize that one.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: And I think that's happening in a much larger scale than it is for air traffic controllers, because, again, there's less sort of margin of safety in terms of finances and the fact that just a lot of them have this second job backup.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: So they just kind of switch between the two.
--:-- Noel King: All right. So TSA agents calling in sick leads to longer lines. That's a pain in the butt for everybody. What are the risks if they are not there?
--:-- Daryl Campbell: There's a big portion of the TSA experience, let's call it. That's a lot of security theater.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: You know, people are not smuggling bombs on the airports.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: Nobody's going to try and do a 9-11 style attack.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: And in fact, airlines themselves have done a really good job of just developing tactics to stop the next 9-11.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: So if you eliminate a TSA, if anyone tried to do another 9-11 style attack, they just wouldn't be able to because of the policy and the security barriers that airlines have enacted.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: So I think that's one big thing.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: Now, there are probably other things like scanning for people accidentally taking loaded weapons on an airplane,
--:-- Daryl Campbell: which I live in Texas, it happens a lot, more than you might think.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: But that's a potential risk.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: Or, you know, people accidentally taking a lithium battery,
--:-- Daryl Campbell: or there's one guy at the airport last time was trying to take a power drill on.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: So a lot of sort of inconvenient slash minor security things.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: But I really doubt that, you know, getting rid of the TSA would cause the next 9-11.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: Now, that being said, I think there's also a level of sort of deterrence that happens,
--:-- Daryl Campbell: but that's just a hard thing to quantify.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: In terms of the operational impacts, though,
--:-- Daryl Campbell: I mean, there are still going to be supervisors and plainclothes cops who could step in and do some of this.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: In San Francisco, it's actually not run by the TSA.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: It's a private security organization.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: So you could see something like that happen,
--:-- Daryl Campbell: but it would still be pretty disruptive.
--:-- Noel King: All right. So after all of this, the shutdown is continuing and the Trump administration says we're going to cut flights at some of the biggest airports in the country.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: Daryl, how unprecedented is this?
--:-- Daryl Campbell: And what does this actually mean for travelers in the next couple of days?
--:-- Daryl Campbell: I can't think of another time that the FAA took such unilateral action across the whole of U.S. airspace since September 11th.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: Usually they're focused on a specific area or a specific airport,
--:-- Daryl Campbell: but for them to say a 10% cut on all flights across the board,
--:-- Daryl Campbell: I literally can't think of anything that's been like that since 2001.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: And for context, they're expecting about 4,000 cancellations.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: In a typical day, you'd probably get 300 to 500.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: And since the shutdown has started, they've been kind of ticking up to about 700 or 800.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: So this is a huge expansion of the disruption that travelers might face.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: So a couple of airlines have already kind of tipped their hand as to what's going to happen.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: United, American, Delta have all said international long haul flights won't be affected.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: And really what they're probably going to do is cancel the flights that are the little tiny airports.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: So not, you know, JFK to LAX or Atlanta to Seattle.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: But think about things like South Bend to Detroit or El Paso to Love Field.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: Because if you think about it from an air traffic controller perspective,
--:-- Daryl Campbell: an airplane is an airplane but the airlines have this huge incentive to keep the kind of cash cow routes
--:-- Daryl Campbell: the ones that have a lot of passengers and they sort of invest a lot of money in going.
--:-- Daryl Campbell: So you'll probably see disruption on these smaller regional ones,
--:-- Daryl Campbell: but it's TBD right now.
--:-- Noel King: Daryl Campbell of The Verge coming up, believe it or not, once upon a time, American rage over flight chaos was enough to shut down a shutdown.
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--:-- Noel King: Are we looking at a repeat?
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--:-- Noel King: Hi, this is Bella Freud.
--:-- Bella Freud: Each week on Fashion Neurosis, I invite guests from the world of fashion, art, sport, music, and literature to lie on my couch and explore the connection between fashion and identity.
--:-- Bella Freud: This week on the show, I welcome the presenter and model, Alexa Chung.
--:-- Bella Freud: To me, it's now funny to dress in a more kind of kinky way because I think I'm more associated with like dungarees and smock tops and a slightly more sexless, tomboyish vibe.
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--:-- Noel King: You're listening to Today Explained.
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--:-- Burgess Everett: What happens is if you're not paying folks, eventually they don't come to work.
--:-- Burgess Everett: Too true, Burgess.
--:-- Burgess Everett: Burgess Everett is the Congressional Bureau Chief for Semaphore.
--:-- Burgess Everett: And he's here to remind us that there was a government shutdown, the longest in history back in 2019, that ended because of outrage over airports.
--:-- Burgess Everett: I mean, it's what happened back then, and it's what's happening now as we're seeing some of these frontline TSA employees not coming to work or air traffic controllers.
--:-- Burgess Everett: And that makes it more difficult to get people quickly onto their flights, and that can mess up the whole intricate dance of our nation's flight system.
--:-- Burgess Everett: The 2019 shutdown was a partial shutdown, but that piece of the government, DHS, was not funded, and that's where TSA gets paid from.
--:-- Burgess Everett: Right now, we're in a full government shutdown.
--:-- Burgess Everett: So we have that element as well, in addition to all the sort of more well-known widespread things like SNAP benefits, military pay, federal worker pay.
--:-- Burgess Everett: Was it in 2019, was it Americans saying to the government, hey, we don't feel safe flying?
--:-- Burgess Everett: Was there a plane crash? Like what exactly did happen?
--:-- Burgess Everett: Well, I think anecdotally, this is how members of Congress get around.
--:-- Burgess Everett: And so they start to notice this.
--:-- Burgess Everett: And this is one of the, you know, if you're if you're a senator who's who's busy and going across the country,
--:-- Burgess Everett: this is one of the places that you're going to notice the effects of the government shutdown.
--:-- Burgess Everett: I'm very concerned about security.
--:-- Burgess Everett: Many TSA agents are calling off sick in order to go work other jobs because they have to put food on the table.
--:-- Burgess Everett: They have to meet rent, all of that.
--:-- Burgess Everett: And there was also I would say another piece of that was Republicans were kind of at odds with with President Trump overfunding the border wall back then.
--:-- Burgess Everett: They didn't think it was a realistic ask from him.
--:-- Burgess Everett: And they were surprised when he said, I'm not going to sign a funding bill that doesn't fund the border wall.
--:-- Burgess Everett: We're in a shutdown because Democrats refuse to fund the border security.
--:-- Burgess Everett: They try and make it like it's just about the wall and it is about the wall.
--:-- Burgess Everett: So there was a little bit more disarray, I would say, on the Republican side back during that shutdown.
--:-- Burgess Everett: And so as soon as the president was ready to end it, everybody else in the Republican Party was ready to end it, too.
--:-- Burgess Everett: The longest shutdown in American history will finally end today, which is great news for 800,000 federal workers and millions of Americans who depend on government services.
--:-- Burgess Everett: Which is a little different than today.
--:-- Burgess Everett: It is. It is a little different than today.
--:-- Burgess Everett: Today is a little different.
--:-- Burgess Everett: There has been this question throughout this shutdown. Why do the Republicans and President Trump seem less bothered by the shutdown and by all the compounding effects than one might think?
--:-- Burgess Everett: Is this strategy? What's going on?
--:-- Burgess Everett: Well, I would say the president has been really creative in lessening the pain in certain areas like finding ways to pay military workers during the shutdown,
--:-- Burgess Everett: which I had heard multiple smart people tell me this was the moment that the government would reopen is because people cannot stomach the military not getting paid.
--:-- Burgess Everett: I will not allow the Democrats to hold our military and our entire security of our nation hostage with their dangerous government shutdown.
--:-- Burgess Everett: Now, I think the president's sounding a little bit different right now.
--:-- Burgess Everett: He's saying the shutdown is hurting Republicans.
--:-- Burgess Everett: I think if you read the pollsters, the shutdown was a big factor, negative for the Republicans.
--:-- Burgess Everett: And that was a big factor.
--:-- Burgess Everett: And they say that I wasn't on the ballot was the biggest factor.
--:-- Burgess Everett: And so I do feel like he's acknowledging that it's not good for him politically.
--:-- Burgess Everett: I mean, you don't have to be a genius to look at these polls and see that it's hurting both parties.
--:-- Burgess Everett: But voters are not inordinately blaming the Democrats, as I think Republicans believed they would.
--:-- Burgess Everett: What do we know about the state of negotiations? What is in play at this point?
--:-- Burgess Everett: There's been a big thaw over the past seven to 10 days.
--:-- Burgess Everett: I think a lot of Democrats are pretty much ready to end it, particularly with the elections behind them, with the November 1st.
--:-- Burgess Everett: ACA premiums now public for everyone to see.
--:-- Burgess Everett: They think they've pinned that on the Republicans.
--:-- Burgess Everett: And there's a lot more bipartisan talk.
--:-- Burgess Everett: The Republicans need to hear what the people are saying because it's clear.
--:-- Burgess Everett: They are saying enough is enough.
--:-- Burgess Everett: There is nothing left for the Republicans to do but get back to work.
--:-- Burgess Everett: The Republicans got to sit down and talk to us about it.
--:-- Burgess Everett: And I agree with Bernie Sanders.
--:-- Burgess Everett: The way to solve this is for Trump to sit down with Jeffries and I.
--:-- Burgess Everett: It's interesting, though, what is on the table is sort of what's always been on the table, which is a vote on extending these expiring enhanced premium tax credits for the Affordable Care Act.
--:-- Burgess Everett: Democrats can kind of pick what they want to have a vote on and get a guarantee from Senate Majority Leader John Thune.
--:-- Burgess Everett: And then a new continuing resolution, which is sort of a stopgap bill that would keep the government funded while negotiations on these full year funding bills,
--:-- Burgess Everett: which Congress really struggles to pass most of the time, would continue.
--:-- Burgess Everett: So that's kind of what's been on the table for weeks now.
--:-- Burgess Everett: I think what has changed is that everybody's sick of the shutdown.
--:-- Burgess Everett: The Senate's been in session for seven weeks.
--:-- Burgess Everett: These folks want to go home.
--:-- Burgess Everett: And now a lot of these key dates are in the rearview mirror.
--:-- Burgess Everett: And there's a sense that, OK, it's time to end this thing.
--:-- Burgess Everett: So as you said, and as we've covered on the show, the Democrats made this about health care.
--:-- Burgess Everett: They said the Republicans are going to raise your premiums.
--:-- Burgess Everett: And that's why we're standing our ground.
--:-- Burgess Everett: Open enrollment has started.
--:-- Burgess Everett: People are seeing those price increases.
--:-- Burgess Everett: What do we know about whether or not the public and their thoughts about health care are actually putting pressure on the Republicans to move on this?
--:-- Burgess Everett: Well, I think the Republicans are pretty darn divided on propping up or anything seen as propping up Obamacare.
--:-- Burgess Everett: And that's how they view these enhanced subsidies.
--:-- Burgess Everett: The COVID era Obamacare subsidy that they're all talking about is supposedly the issue of the day.
--:-- Burgess Everett: It was supposed to be related to COVID and it's become a boondoggle.
--:-- Burgess Everett: It's a subsidy for insurance companies.
--:-- Burgess Everett: But the reality is they've lowered people's premiums.
--:-- Burgess Everett: And so when you get a sticker shock type price increase,
--:-- Burgess Everett: which we're seeing all across the country,
--:-- Burgess Everett: and it's blamed on congressional inaction,
--:-- Burgess Everett: like that's not great for Republicans.
--:-- Burgess Everett: The Republicans have never done anything to correct the problems that exist with it.
--:-- Burgess Everett: And I don't think it's an easy thing to fix.
--:-- Burgess Everett: However, it's something that we should have a plan for.
--:-- Burgess Everett: And Mike Johnson for a month now cannot give me a single policy idea.
--:-- Burgess Everett: So there's a there's a decent group of Republicans in the Senate and probably a group, you know, we've seen about a dozen or so in the House.
--:-- Burgess Everett: So certainly enough to pass the House and maybe to pass the Senate to revive these subsidies.
--:-- Burgess Everett: But there's a whole other sector of the Republican Party that hates them.
--:-- Burgess Everett: They think it's bad policy and they think it props up Obamacare.
--:-- Burgess Everett: And anything that they do to bring down these premiums could be seen as as sort of like helping a failed system that the Affordable Care Act put in place.
--:-- Burgess Everett: So there's a big division in the Republican Party that's kind of simmering behind the scenes that we're going to see really come out publicly over the next two months as negotiations on whether to extend these things really, really heat up.
--:-- Burgess Everett: Because the drop dead is coming up.
--:-- Burgess Everett: It's really at the end of the year.
--:-- Burgess Everett: I know that the markets are open now, but Republicans have always said there's some time.
--:-- Burgess Everett: It's a December 31st problem.
--:-- Burgess Everett: So I expect this to be kind of a dominant issue over the next six-ish weeks.
--:-- Noel King: We started by talking about how this shutdown is different.
--:-- Burgess Everett: Back in the day, there were pressure points that applied.
--:-- Burgess Everett: This time, it seems like the pressure points are, for a long time, they were nowhere to be found.
--:-- Burgess Everett: What do you think is the legacy of the longest shutdown in history?
--:-- Burgess Everett: Well, I think it's really going to depend on the midterms.
--:-- Burgess Everett: And the reason I say that is the other big full government shutdown of this sort of modern era of politics happened in 2013.
--:-- Burgess Everett: It was the opposite on Obamacare.
--:-- Burgess Everett: Ted Cruz was trying to defund Obamacare alongside a bunch of conservatives in the House and Senate.
--:-- Burgess Everett: Republicans kind of got the crud kicked out of them in the polls during that.
--:-- Burgess Everett: It looked really bad.
--:-- Burgess Everett: They eventually cried, uncle.
--:-- Burgess Everett: Fast forward a year later, they didn't pay a price for that at all.
--:-- Burgess Everett: In fact, they had an amazing election in 2014.
--:-- Burgess Everett: So Democrats have this in the back of their head.
--:-- Burgess Everett: They're saying, yeah, we don't like shutting down the government.
--:-- Burgess Everett: It inordinately affects our constituents.
--:-- Burgess Everett: A lot of them are federal workers in places like Northern Virginia or Maryland or across the country.
--:-- Burgess Everett: They have in the back of their mind that Republicans didn't pay the price for that.
--:-- Burgess Everett: Trump hasn't seemed to pay the price for a lot of his controversies.
--:-- Burgess Everett: So they don't think they're going to pay the price in the midterms for this.
--:-- Burgess Everett: So I would give this about a year fuse because I think if voters are still talking about this a year from now,
--:-- Burgess Everett: that's probably bad for Democrats.
--:-- Burgess Everett: They've made the bet that that's not what voters are going to be talking about.
--:-- Burgess Everett: They're going to forget it pretty quickly.
--:-- [Soft music continues]
--:-- Noel King: Hari Mawajdeh produced today's show.
--:-- Amina El-Sadi edited.
--:-- Laura Bullard is best director.
--:-- Patrick Boyd is our engineer.
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--:-- It's Today Explained.
