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COMMENTARY Heather Cox Richardson ... Nov 11, 2025 Senate Reaches Deal to End Government Shutdown PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TARui1T-S6Q
Senate Reaches Deal to End Government Shutdown \| Explainer Heather Cox Richardson Nov 11, 2025 650K subscribers Get full, free access to Letters from an American here: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack... You can also find me: Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/hcrichardson... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heathercoxr... Facebook: / heathercoxrichardson Resources: https://redwine.blue/ https://www.commoncause.org/take-action/ https://www.congress.gov/members/find... Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess Transcript 0:00 Let me get into a bunch of the questions you asked. And I'm going to start in the obvious place with what happened on Sunday night and Monday. And let me just be clear here that when I did a video last Friday about the deal that Schumer put forward for the Republicans in the Senate. Um that was a really different deal than Sunday night. It keeps circulating with people going, 'Oh, listen to to Richardson. It's was a brilliant move by Schumer and you always have to remember that politics is a moving target. So even though what happened on Sunday was less than 48 hours later, it was not at all the same thing. I mean it was just completely different. You could write a history of a number of things happening and you would not put both of those things in the same book. So that video I did was about the Friday deal that Schumer offered which was very clearly uh a messaging deal. What happened on Sunday was a different kettle of fish alto together and I think this is a lot about where we are as a country right now. Um 1:05 and and let me walk you through what happened. So when the you remember the Democrats are a minority party in both the House and the Senate and they don't have the White House and they don't have the Supreme Court. So their options are limited. But when they decided to shut down the government by refusing to give the eight votes that were necessary for seven or eight, depending on what Ran Paul did, who's a Republican from Kentucky, um to by refusing to let the Senate move forward with the House's continuing resolution, what they were doing was really trying to bring attention to the um many things, not just the uh end of the premium tax credits for the Affordable Care Act subsidies that the Republicans did not put in their um budget reconciliation bill of July, which is the one they call the one big beautiful bill act and which cut Medicaid and cut SNAP and cut um cut 2:04 all kinds of stuff um uh renewable energy subsidies, all kinds of stuff. So they were calling their people's attention to that through the Affordable Care Act subsidies, but they were also trying to make some kind of a stand against Donald Trump because first of all because I think they believe it, but mostly because people like you and me demanded it. So what happened was normally like always before when there is a shutdown, there's a negotiation. Like think about this. this happen. Nothing ever shut down under Biden because he would call people in into the Oval Office and they would say, 'Well, I really need this. I really need that.' And that's just how it's done. Because the end of the day, nobody likes a shutdown. It hurts people. But what the Democrats ran into with Donald Trump was he just said, 'I don't care. I want to hurt the American people. I want you to do what I say, and so I'm going to tell 3:00 I'm not I'm not going to negotiate. I'm going to refuse to let the Republicans negotiate and I'm going to cause as much pain as it is humanly possible to cause from the White House. So instead of funding SNAP, there's money to fund SNAP. People have always funded it before. That's the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Um he said, 'No, I've I'm not going to do that.' And that's that went to the Supreme Court and it's been through the courts and they're saying, 'You have to do it.' And he's saying, 'I'm not going to do it.' So all of a sudden, you have 42 million Americans who don't know how they're going to get enough food to eat. And similarly it during a shutdown the office of management and budget or the OM has a lot of power to determine who gets paid. And under Trump the person in charge of the OM is Russell vote. And Russell vote basically was like hey we're trying to get rid of the government anyway. We're not going to we're not going to going to um pay anybody we don't want to pay. And then they started to say and we're actually not going to pay the people who have been furled just the ones who are at work which uh there's a law that says you can't do that from 2019 I think. So 4:00 they were really trying to push this shutdown in such a way that it induced people to say I got to get a different job and to leave the federal government. And then there was another aspect that the administration really really pushed on and that was the airlines. And everywhere on social media you see people saying, 'Oh, you know, the Democrats were just mad because they couldn't go home for Thanksgiving.' But but that's not really what the problem was. Um although people should have, you know, should be able to go home for Thanksgiving if they want to. But think about the role that airlines play in the commercial support of this country. the cargo planes, for example, um the giant airports like the one in Atlanta, like O'Hare, like LAX, like the major 40 hubs around this country. Um I used to live in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when it was a major hub for um for a key airline. And everybody in the town worked at at something that was associated with that airport. Now, it's not that hub any 5:04 longer, but think about what happens when you start to put the squeeze onto that part of the airports. And just today, um, news broke that airline executives were saying to Trump, 'What are you doing here? You're killing us.' And that economic pressure on top of all the other economic pressures that are so great they're not even putting out statistics any longer really looked like it was going to to to reach a a crisis in the United States. Now um which is unheard of because normally a president doesn't say I don't care. I I don't care who gets hurt. But the question for a lot of people was who's getting hurt worse by this? is this, you know. So, yeah, uh people are going hungry and the people in the federal government aren't getting paid and it looks like he's trying to crash the economy, but his numbers are plummeting. So, maybe we should just keep doing that because it's it it might further destabilize his 6:00 presidency. And nobody liked the fact he bulldozed the White House and, you know, all that stuff during the shutdown. Uh 40 it's going to be 45 days before it's over. I think 45 days before it's over, maybe 43. But um but no 45 I think is what they're looking at. But um but the downside of that of course was the extraordinary pain it involved. And it did not appear in any way that the Republicans were doing anything other than saying we're good the way we are. And Trump wanted at that point for the Senate Republicans to nuke the filibuster, which there, believe me, there is a huge argument about whether the filibuster is a good thing or a bad thing. I've been party to a lot of them and there's a lot of factors involved. But Trump wanted to nuke the filibuster because he then wanted to force the Republicans to push through all kinds of measures that would guarantee nobody could ever knock him out of office. you know, get rid of early voting, um, put down really strict 7:01 voter ID laws so that Democrats couldn't vote, you know, the whole bunch of things. And what was interesting, and and again, I I'm I'm going to cut to the chase here and tell you, I don't know how this comes out. Um, I have some guesses that I will give to you, but there was a real debate. You know, what was happening was badly hurting Trump. It was also badly hurting the country. So what was interesting about Sunday were there were a number of things. First of all, many people were blind, including me were blindsided by what the seven Democrats and one independent did by by voting with the Republicans to put forward a continuing resolution that would reopen the government under certain circumstances. And that was really interesting because one of the people who appeared to have been blindsided was Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House of Representatives, which is interesting. And I'll come back to that in a minute. But what happened 8:05 was the Senate Republicans basically said, 'We're willing to negotiate after all that. We are willing to negotiate with the Democrats because we don't want to nuke the filibuster and do what Trump says. That's a really big deal. So, what they did is there was a a pretty complicated negotiation in which the um the they put forward a bunch of funding bills. They funded SNAP. They they they did something crucial with um federal employees saying that they could not be fired, the ones that were fired or let go um probably illegally during the um the the shutdown period. but also that they had to get back pay. Um, so what that does is it keeps the federal government, you know, more or less as intact as it was at the beginning of the shutdown, which is going to matter in just a minute. And um uh you know, 9:06 basically got the the um the country Oh, I'm sorry. So, the other thing in it was the Democrats got the right to introduce a bill to extend the Affordable Care Act. um premium tax credits and it'll have to be before the second week of December. Now, let me unpack that a little bit. So, first of all, it's very important here that this is not the bill that the House passed. You know, somebody was arguing with me about that the other day. I've read them both. They're not the same bill. And that matters because it meant that by passing and and they didn't pass it at first, but they did go through and pass it. By passing their continuing resolution, the Senate forced the House to come back into session. So, that's a really big deal because Johnson, of course, has sent everybody home. They haven't been doing any work at all because they were doing Trump's 10:02 bidding. And what the Senate said was, 'Get your butts back into those chairs. You need to come back and do some work. And the first thing you're going to have to do is take on our bill because the way it works is the Senate and the House can can pass each other's bills, but generally they write their own bills and then either the other house passes like the House can pass a Senate bill or the Senate can pass a House bill or they go to conference committee. In this case, that probably won't happen. The House will either accept it or they won't and they probably will. But that forces the House to come back into session. And that's I think why you saw Johnson really being quite blindsided is because he thought he was operating on what Donald Trump wanted to do. And he seemed to think that the Senate was going to do the same thing and the Senate said, 'No, we're we're going to do this our own way.' Um, so let me let me walk you through the House next, but let me finish with the Senate. So what happened was the Democrats did not get what they 11:03 were demanding, the one thing that they had left on the table, which was the extension of the premium tax credits, without which more than four million Americans, according to the people who study this stuff, um the statistics I use tend to come from KFF, which is a nonprofit um u organization that looks into health care stuff. You can find them online. Look it up look it up yourself. they're solid. Um about which uh without which more than four million people will lose their health care and the health care premiums for millions of others are going to go through the roof because as people drop out of the health pools they um the people left in them are not as healthy and so the risk the risk goes up and the and the stuff gets way more expensive mean meaning way more expensive. this is not a small deal and those premiums come due at the end of um at the end of December or maybe it's December 15th but come up in December and this is a true crisis. So in a way 12:02 there was a crisis between the damage being done to the country itself and the damage being done to the people who wanted the extension of those uh premium tax credits which are slated to expire in December. And the the Republicans simply weren't budging on that. they weren't moving on that. But here's a wrinkle in that. So, so, uh, Senate Majority Leader John Thun, who's this Republican of South Dakota, agreed that the Democrats could bring a measure to the floor of the Senate. I've seeing a lot of people going, 'Well, Johnson's never going to do that. That was never part of the deal. This is a Senate deal.' Um, that that there will they will hold a vote on. And the Is it going to pass? Well, I I'm not going to predict that future because here's a wrinkle in that. 78% of Americans want those extended and Donald Trump doesn't. And there are a lot of Republicans who absolutely don't want it because that will support that will help the Affordable Care Act 13:03 that they're trying to get rid of. But there will it I I would be surprised if it's a straight Republican vote against it because a lot of people don't want to go back to their constituents and say, 'Yeah, I voted against your healthcare.' It's one thing to sort of say, 'Well, I'm not going to deal with the rep with the Democrats.' It's another thing to say, 'I voted no on a clean bill to extend your health care because there's a lot of of pressure for that.' So that's what the Democrats got. And a lot of you asked me, was it only these eight people? Were there more people? I don't know. I'm not party to those discussions, but I would be very surprised if there weren't more Democrats who were very unhappy about how badly their constituents were getting hurt from the simple reason that all the people who voted with the Republicans are not in any kind of electoral danger anytime soon. And that seems pretty damn random um if it 14:00 happened by accident. So, it is my guess that there were more people who thought this was a good idea, but but didn't want to take the hit for doing so. And before I go on to the House, let me let me go go into that um because um I think there are two things at play here. There's what I just outlined to you, which is the dayto-day issue of governance. Like, what are you going to do to help the American people, especially at a time when the president is trying to hurt them? That's a problem. I mean, aside from everything else, it's just a like a political problem. What do you do? But then there's another thing layered over that right now, which is the thing I am very interested in, maybe more interested in because of my intellectual interests. There is a dramatic change in American politics that has taken place over the past several years, but really since Trump was elected. And one of those things you are seeing is a very dramatic inst u um um demographic change in the 15:03 Democratic party. And what I mean by that is that the the new voices in the Democratic party and I don't I don't want to call them young voices which is what we usually hear except in the sense that they are young to becoming involved in politics. Many of the people who are getting involved are are quite old actually, but haven't previously been very involved and they are demanding that the Democrats be much more assertive in standing up to the Republicans. And um and I'm going to editorialize for a minute. I'm in the it's about time party on that one. But there's also something else at stake for people like me in this. This looks very much like the 1850s or the 1890s or the 1930s to me when new voices not necessarily younger but new voices put real pressure on a political party to change. So in this moment what you I 16:01 think you had come together was the go the governance issue and the frustration of people who are like damn we've been asking you guys to stand up forever. you finally look like you're getting somewhere and you're backing down. And you know, I'm going to be a Libra here and say that seems to me to be an extraordinarily good point. On the other hand, I sit in the cheap seats and nobody lost their job because of me and nobody was not eating because of me and the government was not I mean sorry the economy was not about to crash because of me. So, um, so those are the two things I see coming together and they seem to be coming around the together around real fury for these eight people, but also around Chuck Schumer as a Senate minority leader. And once again, I want to emphasize when you talk about political parties, you don't always want your showboers in positions of power. So, there was a big fight about the fact that um AOC didn't get some um some 17:01 leadership position that a lot of people wanted her to have. And I was like, do not put that woman in a back room somewhere reading papers. We want her out in front. We want her charging people up. What a minority leader or a majority leader does is they corral votes and they hold people together. Now, whether Chuck Schumer is brilliant or a failure at that, I think the jury is still out. My guess is he's somewhere in between like most leaders are. You very rarely, you're all used to seeing um Nancy Pelosi, and she's one of the best in American history. You don't get that very often. But um but I'm not prepared to say we got to throw him out and replace him because many of the people that that individuals are calling to replace him with are ones that are very clearly running for or seem to be running for office and they don't want to be stuck in a back room either. They want to be out in front of the cameras. They want to be out there um charging people up and and again I am not party 18:04 at all to what Schumer does behind the scenes. But before you decide that he must go because he isn't meeting this moment, uh it is worth thinking about the fact that the moment is changing very rapidly. And it's not clear to me that it will do anybody any favors to take some of the most visible, inspirational, and forward thinking new voices and stick them in a back room. Um that's that's how I think about it. So, I'm I'm a bit of an agnostic about that. I'm I'm a little bit in the I I don't really care file. Um if you do, go more power to you. But that's kind of where I come down on why there seems to be this great disconnect. And I think you can see the disconnect between that sort of older guard and the new world in that they didn't tell they didn't they didn't come up with messaging for two days which I think is one of the reasons there has been such incredible fury over what they 19:04 did is because nobody understood it until finally somebody came out and said you know basically they're saying nobody expected Trump was going to try and you know hurt his own people you know an American president was deliberately going to try and hurt people and that meant they had to change tactics you know so I That's what was going on there. Um, but now the House because that's really interesting too. By forcing the House back into session, the Senate has forced I mean it wasn't ever out of session by the way, but se out of session means something very particular. It was not out of session. It was in proforma session. It's just an easier shorthand to say out of session. By forcing them to come back to Washington, the Senate has done a number of things. So, one of the things it's done is it has forced House Speaker Mike Johnson's hand in swearing in Adelita Graalva of Arizona, who was elected to the House of Representatives on September 23rd 20:02 and has not yet been sworn in. She is suing over that and that lawsuit is going forward. It's had a judge assigned to it, but he now says he's going to swear her in tomorrow at 4:00. Once he swears her in, she says she will be the final signature on the discharge petition that will force the House to take a vote on whether or not um the Department of Justice needs to release the Epstein files. Now, I'm going to be another skeptic on this one. Those files are so freaking toxic. I will believe that they are going to be released when I'm reading them in the New York Times or wherever. But that being said, all this stuff about how he's holding on to wait for a new vote from Texas or from Tennessee or whatever, I don't think that's right. I think 218 is just the number in this particular case. She says she's going to provide it. There are four Republicans who could switch their 21:02 votes uh before the signature is done. Once the once the once the discharge petition is done, it's done, you know, it's over. It's like a vote. Remember when somebody kept the house votes open to try and change votes all the time. Well, like that the once it once it's done, it's done. And then there's a number of days in which before which the the um the vote itself has to come up. Um so it is possible that anybody including Democrats could change their votes. Um, I'm not sure that's going to happen for the Republicans anyway because uh so many of them are dependent on constituents who are demanding the release of those files. Remember that was key for the MAGA support for Trump in 2024. So that's going to happen or at least it seems as if it's going to happen. And I and remember those are those those certainly appear to be deeply deeply problematic for the administration. And I'm going to go into that in a minute, too. But again, try and keep this all in your mind because imagine you are a 22:04 senator, for example, or a representative or a governor or somebody just wanting to go into the state house uh in some state and you're watching the possibility that the leader of your party is going to be exposed in a negative way that's going to explode. What are you gonna do? And I'll come back to that in a minute, too. So, so that's going to happen. But remember, all along the House of Representatives under Mike Johnson has done nothing this year. They've done nada except the one big beautiful bill act and the budget, I'm sorry, the um continuing resolution because they can't get along over anything. They're completely split between, you know, all the different factions who are who who can't agree on anything. So now, one of the things that I'm seeing on social media is Mike Johnson's never going to bring up the Affordable Care Act um subsidies. Maybe 23:04 not. Or maybe um there'll be another discharge petition because a lot of House Republicans want those credits extended because guess who's going to get hurt worse by them? Republican districts. because the reason we had those extensions was because Biden put them forward. I think it was 2021 and so that it was the states that hadn't signed on to Medicaid before that that where a lot of people began to use those. So all of those things remain out there as wild cards in addition to the fact that the House basically hasn't done any work now since I don't know when and now they're behind on everything and that's going to have to to suddenly start to happen. So that's all going on a as as you know I wrote last night if you read my letters I I literally in my head think of this as a as the Q ball hitting a rack of balls because everything is suddenly now in play again. Um and uh and I I want to 24:06 talk about what that means for for people. But let me go in a little more about this. Um will the well I need to mention that again in a minute. Okay. So um so um what has happened since the since since um all this started started you know bouncing around? Well, Trump pardoned a whole bunch of people the other day. Um and it certainly looks as if he is trying to to gather more people to his side for sure. But if you look around the country, like I say, there's a lot of balls in place. So in Kansas, he and his people in the White House had put a ton of pressure on Kansas Republicans to redistrict and they said no. Kansas Republicans have said no to Trump in terms of redistricting. Utah uh a lot 25:05 of pressure from the White House to redistrict Utah to get rid of a Democratic seat and replace it with a Republican seat. Utah, including a Republican judge, said no. Trump is also seemingly less in control of his mental facilities. Um, mental faculties, I'm sorry, speaking of not being in control of them. Uh, and that seems to be a bit of a problem. And at the same time, you're increasingly seeing um what seems to be kind of panic from him. So unfortunately I was awake to see it come through at about a little after 2:00 this morning. So you know less than 24 hours ago but in the middle of the night he suddenly started tweeting about tariffs and saying a couple of things that were really interesting because as you know it was last Wednesday I think it was although time is moving at such a pace it might as well have been 150 years ago. The Supreme Court held a hearing about its 26:02 decision on whether or not it was going to uphold lower courts saying that Trump's tariffs are unconstitutional. Not all of them, but most of them. And um the it it certainly sounded from that discussion as if they were going to decide that those were unconstitutional. And he appears to be panicking over that for many reasons. It's his it's the centerpiece of his economic system. But also last night in his post he said this is um you know we can't give back all this money because theoretically I mean who knows you somebody asked me where the tariff money's gone. Who knows who knows what's going on in that administration and that's really interesting because he said we can't do that. You know this money is like we can't give this back. He said, 'This is an issue of national security.' And that's really interesting because if the money came in legitimately and went somewhere legitimately, 27:01 what's the problem giving it back? I'm not saying it would be a uh, you know, something that would make everybody happy. But he certainly seemed panicked at the idea that people were going to look into that money, where it went and where it where it whether or not it can come back out again. panicked enough that he said this is an issue of national security. And somebody else asked here about whether or not I thought the things that he was doing were outside of the Supreme Court's grant of presidential immunity for anything he undertook within his um within the office of the presidency within the article one powers which is I'm sorry article two powers which is what the constitution lays out for the president. And I would say anytime he says this is about national security, as he did with the detainees that he sent to SECOT in El Salvador, as he has said about the attacks on the small ships uh theoretically out of Venezuela. Um 28:01 that's him trying to rely on that grant of immunity from the a recognition of immunity from the Supreme Court because they said not necessarily accurately by the way but they said that national security and foreign affairs are two areas in which the president should be afforded a great deal of leeway. So the fact that he felt obliged at 2:00 in the morning to say tariffs are a matter of national security um is interesting. It does not look to me like somebody who's feeling very comfortable in the wielding of his power. Similarly, you're seeing huge push back against the actions of um federal agents with regard to not simply undocumented immigrants, documented immigrants and um but also US citizens. That's not going terribly well. And then you've got the issue that came up, I think it was yesterday, I'm sorry, I've lost track of time, of um the whistleblower telling the House 29:02 Judiciary Committee that Guileain Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's um associate, has uh asked for her sentence, her prison sentence to be pardoned, I'm sorry, to be commuted and um has been given extraordinary privileges in her new digs in prison. um where she was moved after talking to members of the Trump Department of Justice, even though that should not have been able to happen. So um and that's not that's going to go over like a lead balloon as well. So if you think about I mean I think oh and plus the other thing that really jumped out to me um um two things really jumped out to me lately this week. One was that Trump was booed at a football game. You know, he has always, you know, remember he tried to start his own football league. Um, he has always identified football crowds as 30:02 his people and he was resoundingly booed. It's worth listening to that. That seemed to me to be a really big deal. as well as the fact that um a number of countries have said straight up they're not going to be sharing information with the United States any longer because of the attacks on these small boats from Venezuela and or from wherever else they're coming because because we don't really know anything about them except the fact he says that those are people who are trafficking drugs into the United States. the the I guess where I'm going with this as a whole is back to that analogy of the pool table. Um there's a lot of stuff in play, but somebody said to me, you know, like it's all over now. And I'm like, if you look at at how people are reacting to things right now, I don't think you're seeing a lot of triumph. I really don't. Um at least I'm not seeing it. I've seen a couple of reports that came from the White House saying that, you know, 31:05 Trump's people think they they completely won on the shutdown. His numbers are in the outhouse. Um and the and you know, it's not clear to me what he just won here um over the whole over the whole shutdown. Um, you know, the the Democrats did not get the extension of the um the premium tax credits for um the Affordable Care Act, which is uh you know, crucially important, but the they that was already lost. So, um so it seems more to me that the Democrats lost um the momentum that they had coming out of Tuesday. Um, but let me speak to that as a final thing here. When I say everything is bouncing around and on the table and you know maybe the Affordable Care Act extensions and maybe this and 32:05 maybe that, do you know why everybody is suddenly doing all kinds of stuff new and running around and and um and you know apologizing and trying new things and all that because the American people are finally stepping up and yelling and you know the the the demands for things like healthcare, which the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, more power to them. That was the best that Obama could get. The idea was always to do better than that going forward. But let's freaking fix it. You know, when you have, you know, it's an issue for the Republicans when you have a number of Republicans now, including Tim Burchetta today, saying, 'Let's just vote on it.' There isn't an it. The Republicans don't have a plan. Obamacare was their plan. It was put together by the um American Enterprise Institute. It was a right-wing version of health care 33:02 because it continued to employ um health care insurance companies and insurance companies which by the way when Obamacare went in when the Affordable Care Act went in the the economy was rickety enough that there was real push back even among Democrats um from the attempt to get rid of those insurance markets simply because so many people in America are in are employed by insurance companies. But we don't have to live like this. And the more that people speak up and the more, for example, that you know, call your Republican representatives, the ones who are saying, 'Hey, we got to do something about extending these affordable tax care, affordable um affordable, I'm sorry, the premium tax credits.' Um, that matters. It matters a lot. And the more people do it and the more they yell, um, the more stuff is going to come down in such a way that it's good for the American people. And I didn't have time to talk about other stuff going on in Montana and so on, but the 34:02 only thing I would say about protests right now is by all means complain about the direction of the old Democratic party. But don't forget ever that the reason that the Democrats were in the position they were in was because of Trump and the Republicans. Make sure that you keep your focus on who the real culprits are here because it's really easy to complain about the person who didn't manage. If someone said, you know, I'm done. They didn't protect me. And it's like, you know, they're a minority party and they did their best to protect you, but the person who's actually hitting you is the person we need to be focusing on, which is Trump and the MAGA Republicans. And by the way, that is not a partisan position. That includes independents. That includes Republicans who don't like Magos and what they are doing. But now is not the time to back off and say, 'Oh, I'm done. I quit.' You know that I'm always going to get betrayed or whatever. Now is absolutely the time to 35:01 speak up. I'm not sure it's worth fighting over Chuck Schumer. I'm not sure it's worth fighting over the, you know, the senators who are not up for reelection and many of them not running again anyway. it is definitely worth saying, 'Okay, you're not going to extend the the uh the premium tax credits.' Then we want Medicare for all or whatever your version of that looks like. Um but keeping an eye on the ball here rather than attacking u the only group we have right now that is able to mount any kind of resistance to MAGA and and Trump is to me not the best use of that frustration and that anger. Um, that being said, I do think as somebody who studies changing political parties, I mean, that's that's really kind of my wheelhouse. We are seeing quite dramatic changes in both parties. Um, the Democrats are changing really pretty dramatically right now. And I think that's why people who are newly involved 36:06 or or newly aware of just how bad things have gotten are frustrated right now. But the more you speak up about that, the more we will create the leaders we want. The same way I always talk about us creating Lincoln. Um, but similarly, the Republicans seem now to me to be back on the table. That is, they got absorbed by by MAGA and by Donald Trump and there still are plenty of, you know, viciously MAGA people. Right now, the president is MAGA and running things. But increasingly, and if you look at the results of Tuesday, which also have a huge play in here, a lot of the people who voted for Democratic candidates last Tuesday had voted MAGA in 2024. So all of a sudden, all that stuff is back on the table. And to my mind, frustrating though it is to step 37:02 backward, there's an awful lot of signs that the efforts people are putting into moving forward are at the very least messing up the status quo and quite possibly creating a different set of coalitions to move forward into something very different. So, um, so I don't know. I started out by saying I don't know where it goes. I really don't know where it goes. Um I but but the other piece of that is I do think there is one group that is going to determine where it goes and that's us. I think the I think the weight of our political system has shifted to the American people and we can build on that. We've got to build on that and as we do that we'll have a lot of influence over who starts to run the table and and and I don't think right now that looks like it's going to be Trump. I could be wrong. We could lose momentum and it could absolutely happen. 38:01 But that's not the bet I would take right now going forward. And I think if you do the same thing, watch people watch how they're reacting. Watch the people in power who looks like they're confident and who's scrambling. I'm not sure that that that there isn't real concern that the people who are going to start running the table are people like us. So, um so, you know, it it is what it is. Um I wish, you know, I wish I I'm waiting for the day to come when I'll be like, 'Yeah, I'm done.' You know, we can all just kayak and eat M&M's. Today is not that day. But it's also not, I think, um I don't think it's the end at all. If you think about political parties and how they're changing, it looks more like a beginning to me than anything has looked in a very long time. Um, but you know, of course, you might say she've been saying that for six years and and that would be fine as well. I have been saying it for actually more than six years. I've been calling out the Republicans now since 1997. Um, but I don't see how you keep this 39:04 status quo any longer with this many things in play. And I think the next couple of weeks are going to be extraordinarily busy. They're going to be extraordinarily eyepopping. As you may or may not know, the United States has moved a a carrier into place near Venezuela. Um but I also don't think it's clear at all um that that that the MAGA Republicans won this. Um, the trick is going to be to make sure the American people win it over and above any political

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