From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro.
This is The Daily.
I am standing in the rotunda of the United States Capitol where, as of just a few moments ago, the federal government has officially begun to shut down.
It is by far the most audacious act of resistance by Democrats against President Trump's second term agenda.
And the question now is whether the Democrats' gamble will pay off or whether it is going to backfire.
Today the story of how the Democrats got to this point and what their decision-making looked like inside the Capitol in the hours leading up to this shutdown.
It's Wednesday, October 1st.
Okay, testing one, two, three, testing one, two, three.
Michael Barbaro, good morning.
Testing three, four, five.
Good morning, Mary.
Tell me where we are right now.
We're on the, according to Rachel Quester, daily editor Washington, resident the east side of the United States Capitol, looking at the dome.
It's a humid morning here, Tuesday, 10.20 a.m., government shutdown day.
If things proceed in the direction we believe they will, for the rest of the day, And we're about to head into the Capitol to go meet with our colleague, Katie Edmondson.
She's a Times congressional correspondent.
She's going to talk us through really the road to this moment to shut down.
So she's waiting for us.
And we've got to go head through a gauntlet of security.
Wanna go first, I'll go behind you.
Thank you.
Yep, you guys are all set.
Do you know how to get there?
No, we don't.
Yep, around the corner, elevator to three.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
You too.
All right, we're gonna get in this elevator, yeah?
This is the Senate Press Gallery.
I don't know.
An actual in-person interview?
Sorry that I'm so sweaty.
Hi.
You look like alive.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I feel fine for now.
Yeah.
The betting is now how long the shutdown is going to be.
We've shifted.
Yeah.
I think there really is just a feeling of inevitability here.
So I'm less, like, guarding for breakthrough negotiations that are going to pop all of a sudden.
And instead I think it's going to be pretty rote, like each side steps up to the mic and points the finger at the other side and we go from there.
We're in pre-shutdown mode, but there's not ambiguity about shutdown, which is really kind of striking.
Yeah, it is.
I mean, what the last actual shutdown and that was a partial shutdown was 2018, 2019.
And obviously in between that I've covered a lot of stops and starts with spending bills where it seemed like maybe we were going to teeter off the cliff for a day, a couple of days.
And you know, congressional leaders in both parties always sort of like, yanked their parties back from the cliff.
And that is very much not the feeling now, in large part because of what happened back in March, I think, this time and remind me of a situation that we were in back then.
Well, back in March we had another government funding deadline that lawmakers had to pass some sort of spending bill to avert a shutdown.
And Michael, if you remember that there was a lot of angst among Democrats at the time over whether or not to fund the government, because this was at the height of Doge.
This was at the height of the Trump administration taking really aggressive steps to claw back money that Congress had already appropriated.
The executive branch really throwing its weight around in a way that made a lot of lawmakers uncomfortable, but certainly that infuriated Democrats.
There's a school of thought that this was the Democrats' moment and this was their leverage to stand up to the Trump administration.
That's right.
And we saw that in the House.
Speaker Mike Johnson put forward a clean short-term funding bill and we saw every single Democrat in the House vote against that bill.
And the expectation, I think, was that something similar was going to happen in the Senate, that they did not want to lend their votes to help Republicans advance a spending bill to keep business going as usual.
If you remember Michael obviously, just given the math in the Senate You need 60 votes to clear any sort of spending bill and Republicans control 53 votes.
So for any spending bill to move forward, it has to have some sort of Democratic support.
Right.
But Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, surprised a lot of his own members when he basically reversed himself in a At the very last minute.
At the very last minute, in a private luncheon, right before the Senate was set to vote to advance the spending bill.
I believe it is my job to make the best choice for the country to minimize the harms to the American people.
And he made the case that it actually was going to be worse for Democrats if they didn't allow this spending bill to advance.
As bad as passing the CR is, as I said, allowing Donald Trump to take even much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option.
He made the argument that By shutting down the government, they were going to cede President Trump and his deputies far too much power.
Essentially, to shut down some parts of the government and maybe never reopen it.
Therefore, I will vote to keep the government open and not shut it down.
And of course, Michael, you'll remember that there was a huge backlash to that decision.
It was a decision that blindsided a lot of House Democrats, who again had voted to block that bill in the House.
And it blindsided and really infuriated a lot of Democratic activists, voters out in the country.
And for Schumer some of the worst blowback he's ever received in his career.
You had people openly questioning whether he was up to the job of leading Democrats here in the Senate.
You had some activist groups calling for him to step down.
You even had Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House, being unwilling to answer the question.
Should Senator Schumer remain the Democratic leader in the Senate?
That's how deep the fissures were in that moment within the Democratic Party.
It was an extraordinary moment of backlash.
Right.
And so now, all these months later, we get to what seems like deja vu all over again.
Right, to shut down or not to shut down.
And again, we're in a situation where the House already passed the short-term spending bill.
And so all of the focus, once again, comes down to what happens in the Senate.
But you know Michael, when you talk to Senator Schumer now, Leader Schumer now, when you talk to Democrats, they will make the case that they feel they are in a very different moment now than they were back in March.
And exactly how?
Well, they point to three big data points here.
The first two relating to health care.
So number one.
Since they voted to fund the government in March, recently Republicans use their governing trifecta to push through the so-called Big Beautiful Bill that carried these steep cuts to Medicaid.
Right.
So Democrats are making the argument that American voters in fact despise the Medicaid cuts that are contained in that legislation and want Democrats in Congress to push back.
And so one of their asks is that if you Republicans want us, as Democrats, to lend our votes to keep the government open, then we want you to reverse the Medicaid cuts contained within the Big, Beautiful Bill.
A huge, huge ask given how central that is to the president's marquee domestic policy bill.
Right.
What's number two?
Number two, also healthcare related.
At the end of the year, there are a number of Obamacare tax subsidies that are set to expire.
Now, these are tax credits that Democrats passed into law when they had the majority in Congress.
They're set to expire at the end of the year and it's projected that about 4 million people over the next decade will lose healthcare coverage if those are not extended and that healthcare prices are going to go up for about 22 additional million people.
And the Democrats use numbers like... premiums rising 114% as a result of this.
It's projected to jack up health care prices pretty significantly for families, for older couples.
And so Democrats are making the argument to tie extending those subsidies to the government spending bill, in part because time is of the essence.
People are going to the marketplace to lock in their health care plans as we speak.
And what's the third issue?
So the third issue is the White House's campaign to unilaterally rescind money, to claw back money that Congress already approved.
And again Michael, you and I both know the White House has been picking and choosing which funds they want to disperse.
Let go to the agencies that Congress wanted that funding to go to.
And in some cases they have frozen or canceled funding entirely, especially when it comes to foreign aid.
And thereby essentially circumventing the will of Congress.
That's right.
That has infuriated both Democrats and Republicans, but Democrats in particular have zeroed in on this issue in this funding fight, because part of their argument is how can you expect us to agree to any sort of bipartisan funding agreement if then your deputies on the back end take back money that we wanted to go out?
Got it.
What do Republicans say to the idea of these three demands being suddenly tethered to the act of funding the government, that these three rationales would be used to shut it down?
Well, the case that Republicans are making is look, we have just offered a clean funding extension, right.
We're not asking for you to vote for any Republican policies.
We're not even asking you to endorse any spending cuts.
We just want to keep the government open.
We are not going to be held hostage for over a trillion dollars in new spending on a continuing resolution.
And Republicans like Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, have accused Democrats of trying to hold the government hostage, essentially in order to get the votes for their Democratic policies.
They, as you all know, have voted during the time they had the majority 13 different times.
And when Biden was in the White House on short term continuing resolutions, 13 different times.
And to what degree would Thune be correct in the sense that clearly, someone like Senator Schumer has gone on a journey here, right?
From we will not use our power in the minority to take a stand against the Trump administration back in March to now saying actually we will.
But essentially, this is a protest against the Trump administration's agenda.
Well, Thune has made the case that Republicans, when they were in the minority in the Senate, voted several times for these types of clean stopgap bills, that they did not try to add any Republican policies to these bills.
I think what's changed is President Trump is in the White House.
That's what this is about.
This is politics.
And there isn't any substantive reason why there ought to be a government shutdown.
Essentially, at the end of the day, Democrats are saying sure, but we are in such uncharted times now.
Given everything the White House is doing.
If you want our votes sorry, you're going to have to negotiate with us.
And this is our asking price.
This is totally avoidable.
It is a decision they're going to have to make.
And if the government shuts down, it is on the Senate Democrats.
The back and forth between the Democrats and the Republicans here has devolved pretty quickly.
Considerably, yeah.
I mean we started the week with President Trump meeting congressional leaders at the White House to discuss funding negotiations.
By all accounts, it seemed to be a cordial but ultimately fruitless meeting.
But hours after that meeting, President Trump posted a pretty crude and inflammatory video on social media.
Look, guys.
There's no way to sugarcoat it.
Nobody likes Democrats anymore.
It's a deep fake video, so this was an AI-generated video.
Not even black people want to vote for us anymore.
Even Latinos hate us.
Depicting Representative Hakeem Jeffries wearing a cartoon mustache and a sombrero and has him mute in the video.
And then it sort of edited Senator Schumer's voice to say things that he did not say, including that Democrats want to fund health care for illegal immigrants, which is a pretty baseless claim, I should add.
They won't realize we're just a bunch of woke pieces of sh**, you know?
At least for a while, until they learn English and they realize they hate us too.
And all of this is set to mariachi music in the background.
That video kind of said, this is not the time for negotiation.
And we're not taking you seriously.
So given everything you've just laid out here, if a shutdown happens...
What are the repercussions?
And how quickly are we going to feel them?
You have federal employees who are furloughed, who are asked to continue coming into work, but who won't receive pay until the shutdown is over.
You have things like national parks closing down.
But I think this potentially could be a shutdown in uncharted territory because of the way that the White House is approaching it.
President Trump and his top deputies, including Russ Vogt, who is the director of the Budget Office, have indicated that they want to make this as painful as possible and for Democrats to bear the political blame for that pain.
President Trump earlier today in the Oval Office said that with a shutdown quote we can get rid of a lot of things that we didn't want and they'd be Democrat things.
And Michael.
I think it's important to note that the fear of the Trump administration weaponizing a shutdown was actually one of the reasons why leader Schumer and Democrats initially back in March, said OK, let's continue to fund the government.
But in the intervening months, they've said, look, we voted to fund the government.
We voted to avert a shutdown.
And you continue doing all of this stuff anyway.
You continue to rescind funding that we approved.
You continue to lay off federal workers.
You're going to do this whether or not we vote to fund the government.
Right.
In other words, what the Democrats feared most during a shutdown in their minds was happening in the absence of a shutdown.
That's right.
Okay.
So just to distill all this, it feels like Democrats are saying...
Having been burned the last time, there's nothing to lose from taking a principled stand against this administration and basically using the shutdown as a very public and, they'd argue principled, policy-oriented act of protest against the Trump administration.
And the Republicans, in turn, are saying good luck with that.
That's exactly right.
But I also think Michael, what you described also underscores why this could be one, why I think a shutdown feels inevitable here, and two, why a shutdown potentially could last a while.
What happens now?
We're talking to you on Tuesday morning.
There's a full day of logistics ahead of us that precede a shutdown.
So...
The rank and file of both parties are going to meet.
Democrats are going to meet for a strategy meeting, a messaging meeting over lunch.
Republicans are going to do the same thing.
The point of these luncheons are really to make sure that everyone is on the same page.
And then a few hours after that, we are going to have a pair of votes on the Senate floor.
There's going to be one vote on the Republican bill that the House already passed to keep the government open.
There's going to be one vote on what the Democratic counteroffer is.
And, Michael, we expect both of those to fail.
And then by 11.59 p.m., as the clock moves from 11.59 to 12 a.m., the government will shut down.
Okay well Kitty, with your permission, we are going to annoyingly follow you around the Capitol all day.
So let's head to these lunches.
Let's do it.
Let's go stand in some hallways outside of closed-door rooms.
And elevators.
Okay.
Okay.
How much is it really about health care?
Or are finally the Senate Democrats saying enough on all kinds of fronts?
Well, the only way to address the health care issue is to take a stand.
I care about my constituents and my constituents need help right now.
I survived a stroke three years ago.
When rural health clinics start closing and hospitals close and you have an episode like I did, time is not on your side.
If you can't get to a facility, you will die.
It's plain and simple.
What I want is pretty simple.
I just don't want insurance premiums to go up and be 75%.
I want the president to obey the law.
They're willing to help out their billionaire buddies.
All these cuts to health care were so that they could fund tax breaks for billionaires and billionaire corporations.
It's time for Democrats to stand up and say no more.
Republicans will leave at the same time, roughly.
Get another couple of Republican voices and toss them in the mix.
I don't know.
I can't figure out what my dem colleagues are doing by hurting the very people right now they say they want help.
My plea to them is like, hey, let's work on this stuff.
But don't take hostage all of these working people in America.
You voted for this beautiful bill, right?
So you both inflicted, and now you're saying don't act.
I don't want to inflict anything.
I mean no listen.
We got 50 billion in additional funding for rural health care in that bill.
That starts for my state right now.
What I do not want to see happen is that money not be available, those grants not go out.
Medicaid reimbursements not happen.
That's what's going to happen if they shut down the government.
I just don't know why you do that.
Do you have any sympathy for the government on the shutdown?
Or is it rubbish?
The high cost of health care is a tremendous issue.
You're not going to solve it between today and tomorrow.
I mean, just reality.
You're not going to fix it between today and tomorrow.
Katie, how would you describe the emerging vibes from these interactions with the lawmakers?
I think what we've heard so far is very different than what we heard back in March, when Democrats were having this same conversation.
There was a lot of agonizing going into these lunches over what exactly they should do.
And I think you've heard most Democrats that you've spoken to, that I've spoken to, be pretty steadfast in their resolve to pick this fight.
Mm-hmm.
All right, well, Katie, thank you for all your time this afternoon.
You're free to go.
Yeah.
We'll be right back.
It's almost 4.30.
We just hopped into an elevator, are headed down to the second floor of the Capitol, because Senator Schumer's office just let us know that he is going to make himself available to us for about five, 10 minutes to talk about the decision he faces and why he is pursuing this shutdown.
The minority leader's office.
Thank you. into the Minority Leader's office.
Hey there, Alex told us that the... So we are back-to-back on meetings, so just five minutes?
Seven minutes.
I'm sorry, it's very busy.
Thank you for making time for me, Senator.
Okay, so where are we each sitting?
We don't have much time, so... Let's go fast.
So we are literally 40 minutes away from the vote.
Yes.
And that's where I want to start.
Senator, you're a changed man when it comes to shutdowns, right?
Back in March, you were the face of the party saying, we're not going to do a shutdown.
It's not worth it.
It's too dangerous.
Now you're the face of the party saying it's time to do a shutdown based on the situation you're in.
That's a huge change.
And the way you're describing it is it's about Affordable Care Act subsidies.
It's about- Three things have happened between then and now.
Then we wanted to give them a chance to see if they could work with us.
First-
Trump has decimated healthcare between then and now.
Second, we had time to prepare.
We've been preparing for this, Democrats, House and Senate united, for months.
We have focused on health care and costs as our issue.
But we have also gotten the American people to understand how bad this is if you look at the polling and other kinds of things.
You say you weren't ready and the country wasn't ready for this kind of standoff last time.
No, we didn't have much time last time because we only knew on Saturday that they were going to pass their bill and we only had till Tuesday.
And the third thing that happened is they did impoundments.
They did rescissions.
And so what's the point of agreeing to a budget process if they then unilaterally can undo them?
So those three things were very significant changes.
And I think I did the right decision back in March.
And this is the right decision now, given those changes.
What you're describing, in a sense, if you're a certain kind of Democrat, seems kind of narrow.
You're talking about process, decisions.
But let me finish this, because here's my question.
Is what is really happening here?
The Democrats you leading them.
Are you unplugging a government that you all find to be abusing its power?
Look, there's no question this government is abusing its power.
And I do believe that health care and costs are the number one thing bothering people.
But I think if we're able to win the argument and get some changes there, it will thwart Trump in other areas as well because- Or into the rest.
Correct.
Well put.
Okay.
If you believe that I do need to point you to this polling the Times did that says 2 of Americans treat healthcare as the number one problem they face right now.
That means many other problems are first.
You're putting a lot of eggs in that basket as your front door.
Make two points.
One-
That poll shows cost of living is number one.
And when you break down the cost of living, healthcare is at the very top of the list, okay?
And second, it's now going to be much more apparent because, starting tomorrow, millions and millions of American families are going to get notice that their increases are going up.
We thought it was about $400 a month, which is too damn much already.
That's $5,000 a year for a middle-class family.
But a new estimate by Kaiser says it's going to go up $1,400 a month.
You guys are going to make it a very big issue for people.
Once people get that bill, they're going to say, what the hell happened?
And we are going to be there constantly relentlessly, saying it's because the Republicans have decimated health care.
So I think the bottom line is that health care itself is a very prominent issue now subsumed maybe in your poll in costs, but it's going to be even more prominent in the next few weeks.
And we're going to make it more.
That's part of our job, because this, as you said, is a door.
Let me ask you a provocative question, Senator.
How much for you is this at all personal?
And let me just be very specific.
You got a tremendous amount of blowback.
You just argued why you didn't want the shutdown last time, but you got a lot of blowback.
Yes, I knew.
I knew I would.
But it was the right thing to do then and now this is the right thing to do, based on what the American people need.
My job is to take people's problems and anguish and try to solve them.
That's what we're trying to do here.
On the personal front, Trump's video, this deepfake, When that comes across your desk and I know you must have looked at it.
Yeah, just last night.
I've been fighting for this for a long time.
Does that offend you, and does that tell you what?
It tells me that the Republicans are not taking this issue very seriously.
It tells me that they're trying to intimidate us.
This doesn't intimidate me.
I mean, gee whiz.
Did it piss you off?
No.
It made me think even less of Trump.
He's like a five-year-old.
My last question is, in the past, these have always been about cutting government spending.
You may oversee one of the first and only shutdowns to be about increasing government spending.
It's undoing some of the bad things the Republicans have done.
But I think that the bottom line is but that makes it better for us because we're doing something to actually help people.
And the people are going to rally behind us.
You sure about that?
You never can be sure, but.
It's as good a shot as we're going to get.
I just, that's an important phrase.
It's as good a shot as we're going to get.
This may be the only leverage you have.
Well, who knows?
It's certainly the best leverage we've had thus far.
Much stronger leverage than it was in March.
Yep.
Senator.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
That beeping at the end means that the voting is about to start.
Mr. President.
Democrat leader.
We in a quorum?
No.
So at around 8 p.m.
I move to proceed to the motion to reconsider the vote on passage of S-2882.
Both the Democratic and the Republican spending bills that would have kept the government funded.
The clerk will call the roll.
Both went down in flames.
The 60-vote threshold having not been received achieved, the bill upon reconsideration is not passed.
And so now there are no more votes scheduled tonight, and a government shutdown is no longer theoretical.
It is an absolute certainty.
And because that is now the reality.
There's one last person we want to talk to today, and that is Carl Hulse.
He is the Times' most senior congressional correspondent.
I think, honestly, around here, he's considered the dean of the congressional correspondence.
And with several decades of covering this institution under his belt, we wanted the benefit of his perspective on all this.
Testing, one, two, three.
Carl?
Sir?
You ready?
I'm ready.
Please make your way into our extremely improvised studio here.
Carl, when I sat down to write how long you've been covering Congress, I wrote 30 years.
40 years.
Okay, so I was off by 10 years?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was here for Clinton, Gingrich shutdowns.
So how are you thinking about what just happened here tonight?
I think the Democrats are a different party.
And part of the reason is just practical.
They have lost the people who were in the states, the red and purple states that were in the past anxious about shutdowns.
They were really worried that they're going to turn off their voters there.
Well, the people in those states... The senators.
Yes.
Those Democrats are gone.
Remind me, who are we talking about?
Montana, Indiana, Florida, Missouri, North Dakota.
The kind of purplish-red flank of the Democratic Party.
Right.
Those seats have turned over.
So the complexion, the makeup of the Democratic caucus in the Senate is different than it has been in the past.
Would those senators from those states have tolerated the shutdown?
Yes.
No, they would have been freaking out.
They'd be yelling at Chuck Schumer we can't do this.
You're going to kill us.
We can't run for re-election.
Well...
Now these people are sitting here, but they are a different ideological stripe.
And how much did Trump change that?
I mean, obviously the political map changed, but how much in this moment has Trump changed those who even remain?
Yeah, no, I had one tonight, the Democrats say Trump is lawless.
Why should I...
Abide by any version of convention.
Anything that he wants to do.
And on sort of a practical level from spending and appropriations.
Why go along with the spending deal when they're just going to do whatever they want anyway?
Why not us?
Why don't we basically start breaking the rules too?
Well...
I don't know if they're breaking the rules, but they're kind of breaking their past practice.
They've always been super cautious, Democrats, about shutting down the government.
Always.
The Republicans were willing to do that because they thought it played with their base.
Now the Democrats are looking at their base.
Their base is saying, hey, you need to stand up.
Right.
We think of Democrats and you're hinting at this, Carl as the party that, by its own lights, safeguards the government.
They like government, yeah.
But they're also out there saying hey, we are for the government, but we have to shut down the government to show that we're for it.
It can be a tough sell, right?
And this is what they're going to have to contend with.
Well, let's talk about that sell.
I mean, we spoke with Senator Schumer and clearly he has a plan.
The Democrats have a plan to pin this shutdown off on the president and the Republicans portray them as the party unwilling to meet them halfway and they're going to really put forth this case that the people in charge don't care about your health care.
And they clearly would like to rebalance the national political discourse.
But it feels hard to compete with President Trump's megaphone and his ability to dominate the message around any moment.
And so won't the early stages of this be Trump saying—
Well, let's just look at the vote.
And the vote was the Democrats wouldn't vote to continue spending.
Yeah, I think it's tough for the Democrats, especially at the start.
I do.
They're the ones who did not provide the votes.
And Trump not only has a big megaphone, but he uses it like almost hourly.
Right.
Right.
So he's got a good opportunity to beat on the Democrats.
I do think it's kind of interesting in a way to hear the Republicans and Trump talk about how essential the government is now.
Right.
They're really building up the role of the government.
Maybe they may come to regret some of those statements, but they think they've got the Democrats right where they want them.
You guys just voted to shut down the government.
We're going to lay off a bunch of people and it's all going to be your fault.
But you never know how this is going to play out.
You really don't.
I want to just have you meditate for a minute on where the Democrats are in this journey that you start talking about at the beginning.
Parties seem to change slowly, but then all of a sudden it's very clear that they've changed.
That's been the story of the Republicans under Trump.
They're not at all the party that they were before he came around.
And maybe we're at the beginning of a meaningful and lasting change for the Democratic Party, where countering Trump means it's willing to do things it would have never done in the past.
Does this foretell, this moment, that change?
I do.
I think that, you know, they've been radicalized in some ways by Trump's actions.
And they think that they have to do things that are extraordinary to stop him.
They can't be doing business as usual anymore.
And their voters aren't going to stand for that.
Chuck Schumer learned a tough lesson.
Yeah, back in March.
And I do think that this is a gamble because it could totally blow up in their face.
But it could also reaffirm, if this works out for them, that they can take bold steps to fight Trump and that their constituents will support them, and that it won't cost them politically and it could actually advantage them.
And they would no longer just be kind of the bystander victims of Trumpism.
Right.
And, you know, they're making a big statement here.
We'll see how long they stick with it, though.
They've caved quickly in the past.
Carl, thank you.
Really appreciate it.
Thanks for coming here to the U.S.
Capitol where we do our work.
Our pleasure.
Oh, we have to hit the floor.
Oh, jeez.
Is it late?
You think our brains are fried?
We're done.
So it is now 1230 am on Wednesday morning, and we're walking out of the Capitol, which is pretty much empty, except for a handful of security guards and cleaning crews which, as of this morning, are not being paid anymore.
The plan is for more than 400,000 federal workers to be furloughed in the coming days.
And for some of them, it may be worse than that.
They may be fired.
And that's really the story of the shutdown that began here in this building this morning.
It's going to start here and then it is going to radiate out across the entire city of Washington DC and then the entire country.
Good night, sir.
All right.
Have a nice evening.
You too.
Thank you.
Good luck getting through this.
Not the first time.
Not the last time.
That's a wrap.
That's a wrap.
We'll be right back.
Here's what else you need to know today.
I'm thrilled to be here this morning to address the senior leadership of what is once again known around the world as the Department of War.
In an unusual speech to hundreds of the country's most senior military officials on Tuesday, President Trump said that he had instructed his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, to use American cities as a training ground for the US military.
And I told Pete We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military National Guard.
The surprise remark offers a new context for Trump's controversial decision to deploy the National Guard to cities across the country including, so far, Los Angeles, Washington DC and Portland, Oregon.
During the event, for which commanders had been summoned from around the world, Hegseth complained about overweight soldiers and commanders across the military.
It's tiring to look out at combat formations, or really any formation, and see fat troops.
Likewise, it's completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the country and the world.
It's a bad look.
And he warned the officials that they must sign onto his agenda of ridding the military of philosophies like DEI, or they should quit their jobs.
But if the words I'm speaking today are making your heart sink, then you should do the honorable thing and resign.
We would thank you for your service.
Today's episode was produced by Mary Wilson, Carlos Prieto, Asta Chaturvedi, and Eric Krupke.
It was edited by Rachel Quester and Liz O'Balin.
Contains music by Marion Lozano, Dan Powell, Alishaba Etup, and Pat McCusker.
And was engineered by Chris Wood.
Special thanks to Robert Jemison, Michael Gold, and Annie Carney.
That's it for The Daily.
I'm Michael Bilboro.
See you tomorrow.
