Transcript of The House Republican Who Says His Party Is Mishandling the Shutdown

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We found this was a little tricky area. A little big hair. Hull side.

Yeah. So we are starting our day here in Washington, DC, in the Dixon Senate office building, which is not where we want to be. We want to be over on the House side because we're going to interview a Republican congressman there, Representative Kevin Kyly of California, who's become very interesting in this moment, which is the government being shut down because he's very critical of how his party has been handling the shutdown. At the moment, the Senate side of the capital complex is pretty busy because they're actually in session. The House side is not in session, and we're really curious what it's going to feel like over there. Thank you. Okay, the little capital subway train has arrived. Should we go in this one? You can go in this one. Just so you know, we are recording you unwitting participants in the podcast. Is this a normal level of busyness on Is this train, or is this like a shutdown level? No, it's not busy. It's quiet. After you. So now we're walking through a long corridor with the house members' offices every few feet. And there's just a news paper stacked up outside these offices because these lawmakers aren't here.

Okay, here we go. Kevin Kyly of California. Do we knock? I'm Michael Robo. Very nice to meet you.

Great to meet you, too. Thanks for coming up. Hi. How are you doing? I'm Caitlin. Nice to meet you. Nice to be in charge of audio. Sorry. How can we How are you? That's Deneja.

From New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is the Daily. Today, Republican congressman Kevin Kyly on what he thinks his party is getting wrong in this moment. And his one-man campaign to try and fix it. It's Friday, October 31st. No, he doesn't think. Let's get started. Okay. I would normally say thank you for making time for us, and I mean that, but if we're being honest, there's not a ton going on here right now in the house. But you are here, and you have been here pretty much every day since the shutdown started to make a point. And what is that point exactly?

Well, I'd like to think it's about a little more than making a point, although it is also about making a point. So substantively, I'm trying just have constructive conversations with whoever's around and have had a number of those. And there are increasingly more people here. Back a few weeks ago, it was a little more lonely, and it's still much quieter than when you have the usual chaos of Congress in session. But I also am trying to say, Yeah, we should be here. And the speaker has made the decision to recess the House indefinitely. Basically to close it, in a sense. Well, yeah, exactly, because we were supposed to be in session these five weeks. The house has a schedule that is in advance, but all of the legislative business of the house has been canceled, and I've never seen anything like this, not to mention the fact that this terrible government shutdown is going on, and we're not here to play any part in trying to find a way out of it. Right.

In fact, those don't seem unrelated. You being here it seems like, is a act of protest. Does that feel right to you? An act of resistance against the decision to gather up?

I think I just characterize it as practicing what I preach. I'm saying we should be here, so I'm here.

Well, I just want to explain why we're talking to you in this moment. You're the pretty rare Republican to express some public frustration with how your party is approaching several issues facing the country right now, including, of course, the handling of the shutdown, the decision to basically close down the house. In addition to that, you've expressed some real frustration with how Republicans are carrying out partisan redistricting, which impacts you pretty directly, and we'll get to that. You've expressed some frustration over the refusal of your party's leadership to seat a newly elected member of this body who is a Democrat. I think understanding all of those complaints and frustrations that you have can, I hope, shed some real light on the way Washington works right now or doesn't work right now at this pretty important time. That's why we want to talk to you. I think to have this conversation, we need to understand the perspective that you bring to those situations I just outlined and understand the district you represent. You're a California house Republican. They do exist. I think there are nine out of 54 of the Caliphonians.

There are nine now. There are actually 12 before the last election. Now we're nine to nine.

You're elected in the first and the only midterm of the Biden presidency.

That's correct. 2022.

At the time, it's a fairly a safe Republican seat. You get former President Trump at the time's endorsement. When you win that seat, Republicans suddenly control the House. I wonder what you saw as your mission when you were being sworn in. Was it to be a check on President Biden at that moment? Is it working with him and the Democrats? How did you see that role?

Yeah, and the district is really a purple district, for lack of a better word. I mean, President Trump I've won it by about a point and a half in 2020 by about three and a half points in 2024. So that has always informed my perspective as well that I represent folks who have very different views and who care about very different issues. And so Coming in in 2023, I guess, I did see it part of my role as providing something as a counterweight because in California, we have this one-party state. We have a super-duper majority. Democratic grand. Yeah, even beyond the partisan lens, it's just the way that the state has been governed has veered very far in one direction. Then you had layered on top of that some of the policies of the Biden administration. I said, Look, where I'm able to work with the Biden administration, I will. When it's necessary to oppose them for what's best for our district, I'll do that, too.

Got it. Then after the 2024 election, you're reelected. Of course, everything changes here in Washington because Donald Trump beats Kamala Harris, takes back the White House. Suddenly, every branch of the government is controlled by your party, which in theory is a dream come true for a House Republican like you. But over time, and this is what we're going to be talking about, you encounter some frustrations. I want to talk about that journey toward what feels like some level of disillusionment. It feels now like it's taking its loudest form with your frustration over the shutdown, but my sense is that it begins a little bit earlier When house Republican leaders start making decisions around redistricting, redrawing Congressional maps. Can you talk us through that?

I started raising concerns about this many, many months ago when the writing was on the wall, that there was going to be this redistricting domino effect across the country, where one state after another would redraw their district lines in order to advantage whatever party controlled the state politics in that particular state.

Just to be clear, this begins with President Trump asking several states, first Texas, to redraw their house Congressional maps to maximize Republican Party advantage in future house races.

That's certainly one way to frame it. But the reality is this has been going on for a long time. Like, gerrymandering is as old as the country itself. Certainly, if you ask the people in Texas, they'd probably say, Oh, we're responding to New York or some other state that has gerrymandered their state. But But I think that the logic of this, that responding to what a prior state has done in order to cancel them out, it just leads to this race to the bottom that degrades democracy everywhere.

Can just explain why it degrades democracy everywhere in your mind?

Yeah. The basic line that you sometimes hear is that voters to choose their representatives, representatives shouldn't choose their voters. When you are moving district lines around in order to arrive at the outcome that is preferred by incumbent politicians, then it really limits the agency of the voter to choose the destiny of their state or their polity. That's one reason. I mean, it's also just incredibly destabilizing when you do it mid-decade.

Right. Well, that's the important phrase, and I just want to make sure listeners understand it. What's so unusual about what's happening right now is that the President asked that house districts be redrawn outside of the normal system of waiting for the census to tell us how many people live in a district. Like you said, it's called mid decade redistricting. Very unusual. My understanding is that it literally touches off a chain of events that start to endanger your seat. I want to talk about, first of all, what that felt like, but then what you asked the Republican leadership to do.

Yeah, absolutely. I said from the moment this was on my radar that it shouldn't be happening anywhere. I'm against it in Texas. I'm against it in California. It's pure political opportunism. I just introduced a bill, very simple bill. It was back in August. Yeah, that sounds right. That says you cannot redistrict mid-decade with the very narrow exceptions of a federal court decision under the Voting Rights Act. That would say that none of these redistricting shenanigans that we're seeing in any state are allowed to happen. It would say this is a truce, a ceasefire in the redistricting war. We can all move on with our lives representing the districts as they were drawn at the time of the last census.

And what was the response? Because the way this works is you are a House Republican. If you want this legislation to go anywhere, you need to bring it to the leadership. That's right.

Yeah. So leadership has been unwilling to bring it to the floor, and I have urged them to do so publicly and privately and repeatedly. And I do believe that it is- Why?

Why won't they bring it to the floor?

I don't know. I've asked them to do it, and it hasn't happened. And I think that if it did come to the floor, it would have a lot of support because I have members who tell me all the time that they think this is the right thing for them and for the country. I don't just mean the people whose seats are going to be in jeopardy, like the Republicans in Texas. I'm talking about the members of Congress from Texas. They were very much opposed to this attempt to redistrict in Texas. They don't want to see their district suddenly butchered or upended.

To be clear, it sounds like for you this is both a principled position around the question of what is right and wrong when you partisan gerrymander mid-decade. And personal, because your district has become the target of Governor Newsom's retaliation to Texas's redistricting, he would like to redistrict Republican seats in California to maximize Democrats partisan advantage. One of those seats is the third Congressional district in California. That's your seat. Through a very wild series of events, what started with President Trump ordering mid-decade Congressional redistricting could result in you being drawn out of your own district.

Well, it'll certainly result in my district being split into six different pieces or going six different directions. That doesn't sound good. No, I don't like that at all. I do think I could still win re-election under the gerrymandered map, but I very much would prefer to continue to represent the beautiful third district as currently constituted.

Right. But to put it pretty bluntly, and this is a very unusual situation, it sounds like your party's leaders are willing to sacrifice you, in theory, for the party's ongoing control of Congress and refusing to entertain the idea of introducing a bill that would stop that.

I don't know what their motivations are, but their inaction is frustrating, certainly. All I'm asking for is a vote on the bill, and I think that if it came to the floor, it would pass.

Okay, so that seems like a very clear existential, even, moment of building frustration for you. Not long after that, because this has all happened in a very compressed period of time, we get the shutdown. You have blamed Democrats for the shutdown, and I would understand why that makes some sense. They withheld their votes to approve a spending bill, to protest the healthcare situation in the country. And yet, once the government is shut down, you become this voice of disapproval that Speaker Johnson and Republican leaders won't keep the House in session during the shutdown. I wonder if you can take us back to that moment and what you tried to do to make the case to them that the House should stay in session despite the shutdown.

Well, I'm not really sure it's a hard case to make. The House is supposed to be here. We have things to do. I don't understand why this is a particularly radical position to take. There's no reason for the House of Representatives to close its doors.

What was the argument that was put forth by Speaker Johnson to do it in the first place? It wasn't just done summarily, was it?

Or was it? Pretty much. The last vote we had was on the CR. I voted for the CR, even though I don't like CRs, and I think they're a bad way to govern. Continuous resolution.

A bill that would keep the government funded.

Yeah, exactly. I voted for it as the lesser of two evils because the government shutdown has such terrible consequences. I do wish that Senator Schumer would pass the CR out of the Senate. But I've also said, Look, this is politics, sometimes you have to find a way to work with people who have a different position than you have in order to find the common ground that's best for the country. So that's another reason why the House ought to be here, why it's even more important that the House is here during a shutdown.

So that you could actually have a conversation about ending the shutdown.

Exactly. And as things are, those conversations are happening mostly in the Senate because the Senate's actually here attending to its ordinary business as well as trying to find to have those conversations.

I mean, in a word, what does it feel like to you to have your party's leadership not be willing to ask you all to do your jobs during this moment?

Well, it feels like we're being deprived of the opportunity to fight for our constituents that we all- That's not a word, but fine.

What's that? I always joke, it's an in a word. In a word.

That's true. Bad? Is that a word? That's a word.

I think you've called it embarrassing. I mean, you've conveyed the idea that this is just beneath the institution.

I do think it's embarrassing. To have the House of Representatives just not here.

The serious work is not being done. Oversight of any number of institutions, reviews of potential legislation. I mean, nothing of that kind is being done. Then there are the very, very urgent questions around the shutdown that are not being addressed. Let's just talk about one of them, SNAP benefits. This is subsidies from the federal government that allow tens of millions of Americans to feed themselves and their family. They're going to run out. Within the next I think 24 to 48 hours. We're talking to you on Thursday. So over the weekend, I think November first, they're going to run out. And the house not in session means you guys can't come up with a plan to address that. The Senate is talking about potential plans to end that. Nothing concrete has yet come together. But if it did, you couldn't even vote on it.

Yeah, exactly. I'm actually co-sponsoring a bill that says, even if the government is shut down, we should continue providing Snap benefits. But there's no opportunity to vote on that bill because the house isn't here.

Right. There's no session in which to introduce the resolution. I mean, let's move to the central question of this shutdown, which is health care, right? I mean, the Democrats would say there are a number of reasons why they shut the government down. But the primary reason is that health care costs are going to be surging, especially towards the end of the year, and it's going to make health care inaccessible to millions and millions of Americans. So what do you want to see your party do or do to bring that subject any resolution in these shutdown negotiations? Because we know what the Democrats say they want. They want you all to approve subsidies for the Affordable Care Act that will expire, that are making health care much more expensive. What do you want? If we presume for the moment that the house would ever reopen.

I'm very concerned about the ACA subsidy issue. I'm one of a number of people on my side of the aisle, in addition to many on the other side of the aisle, who believe there needs to be some solution here. I do They do believe that there's enough interest on both sides, that there's going to be a deal. What that looks like, it remains to be seen. Is it going to be a long term extension? Is it going to be a short term extension? All those things would need to be negotiated. The Republican leadership has taken this view that, well, we just can't negotiate about anything in any form when the leverage that's being held over us is a shutdown government, which I certainly understand that perspective. But at the same time, I do remember a couple of years ago when Republicans were taking basically the opposite position with respect to the debt ceiling, saying, We're not going to pass a bill for a clean extension of the debt ceiling unless we get policy changes along the way. That's another reason why I think that we should at least be having conversations right now.

It feels fair to say, correct me if I'm wrong, that you're pretty much bewildered that amid all these cascading crises stemming from the shutdown that seem like they're going to make life pretty miserable for a lot of Americans, that the speaker is not bringing the house back into session to address them. I wonder why you think the speaker is refusing to change course.

I don't know what his real reason is, or I mean, not to say this.

You can't pick up the phone?

I have talked to him, sure. I mean, I don't want to share private conversations, but I haven't gotten any explanation that makes sense to me.

Just to add the last one of these complaints you have, and it's very interesting to a lot of people that Speaker Johnson will not seat a Democrat duly elected by her constituents, a Congresswoman elect Grijalva. She's not yet actually been sworn in. What do you think of that?

I think it's totally unacceptable. In this one, I just don't understand. It's pretty basic stuff. She won her election. She's the duly elected member of Congress.

But you probably do on some level understand, which is that she would give the Democrats the sufficient votes, along with four House Republicans, to force a vote on a resolution to direct the Department of Justice to release Jeffrey Epstein files. That could be very embarrassing to the President.

Yeah, I know that's offered as possibly the reason. The reality is that that would be the case whenever she's sworn in. Whether that's the reason or not, I don't know. I just think that having someone get elected and then have to wait five plus weeks to get sworn in. Then the rational law offered is, Well, the house hasn't been in session. Well, it's not her fault the house hasn't been in session. The house was supposed to be in session right after she was sworn in, supposed to be in session the week after that and the week after that. And by the way, even when the house isn't in session, you can still square someone in.

I mean, the question is, are these essentially amounting to antidemocratic moves by the speaker of the house?

It doesn't sit right with me. I don't know exactly how- I don't mean anti-capital D democratic, I mean, the democracy.

You said it doesn't sit well with you.

Yeah. Maybe it just is part of it as my perspective being on the other side of this in California for six years as a member of the legislature. But I think we ought to have norms and rules in the House that apply regardless of the situation.

Just to bring this all together, I mean, these are your complaints. They're very clear. I think we now need to talk about the role that you, and arguably, many of your House Republican colleagues may have played in creating the circumstances that you now object to. You may object to me saying that, but- Sure. I'd like to talk about that right after we take a short break. We'll be right back. Hi, This is Sydney Harper, and I help make the Daily. One night, it's 10: 00 PM. My colleagues working on the next day's episode are looking for a speech, this piece of tape that they really need to make the episode sing. They've tracked it down to a University library, and that library happens to be close to my house. So I hop into a car, I head across town, I get to the library. They're about to close. I'm copying the tape, uploading it on my computer, sending it off to my colleagues working on the episode. It makes it into the show the next day. It really helps make it shine. The whole effort is a success. And I'm telling you this because I don't think people realize that that level of teamwork and dedication goes into every episode that you hear of The Daily.

That collaborates It takes people. It takes resources. It takes support from subscribers. So that's why I'm asking you to subscribe to The New York Times, so we can keep bringing you The Daily every day. So, congressman, there are two pieces of legislation, as you know, that Democrats see as central to their case for shutting down the government and keeping it closed. You voted for both of them. Let me just explain. The first one is the President's domestic policy bill, what he calls the One Big Beautiful Bill, bill, which, besides extending his tax cuts, changes the requirements for Medicaid, the rules, the work requirements in ways that will result in millions of people losing their health care through Medicaid. And on top of expiring subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, the argument from Democrats is that this is going to be financially ruinous to people's relationship to health care. Because you voted for that bill, I want to understand whether you see yourself as being a little bit responsible for one of the tent pole reasons why Democrats are now saying they've shut the government down, which is that they think it's just basically intolerable to have health care be inaccessible to this many Americans.

So that's not really what they're making it about at this point, though. I know that Senator Schumer threw that out there initially is one of the things he wanted to change. But the idea of unraveling a bill that was just passed was never going to be a viable negotiating position. So at this point, they've really just winnowed it down to the ACA subsidy issue.

You're trying to say that you don't think the One Big Beautiful bills cuts to Medicaid are really motivating for the shutdown?

Well, that's not even what they're asking for at this point is altering that. I mean, obviously, they're still talking about it, but really the focus has been on the ACA subsidies, which were created several years ago in the COVID years. And incidentally, when it comes to HR1 or the Big Beautiful Bill, whatever it's called these days, what was initially proposed truly significant cuts to Medicaid across the country, which I was very much against. At the end of the day, not a perfect bill. It's a massive piece of legislation. Those were largely paired down to things like work requirements that I actually think make a lot of sense, saying that if you're going to get access to taxpayer-funded health care, you should at least be looking for a job or working or volunteering 20 hours per week. The fact that that's not even what they're asking for right now, I don't think you can necessarily tie the two together.

The only pushback I want to offer here is, I believe, estimates from independent groups and our colleagues at the times who have been looking into this is that those work requirements, which many people may agree with, will lead to millions, I think as many as 12 million people losing their health care through Medicaid. I think when the Democrats have talk about a health care crisis that they want Republicans to help them address that does feel in a role.

Well, again, look at what they're asking for. Initially, yes, Schumer did come out and say, When the government shut down, we want everything in the HR one reverse, pretty much, which was not a negotiating position that was ever going to go anywhere. But now they've said, Let's make it about the ACA, a subsidy issue. And I think that's a little more reasonable ground to stand on in the sense that there's a lot of interest in both sides of the aisle on extending these subsidies, Which are significantly. If those go away suddenly with just this cliff, then you're talking about millions of people who are going to be paying a lot more for health care.

Okay, so you'd prefer to meet Democrats halfway on the subsidies, not the Medicaid. I want to turn to the second piece of legislation that Democrats site, which is the recisions bill. With that legislation, which you also voted for, Republicans approved a request from the President to claw back $9 billion in money that Congress had previously approved in a bipartisan way. That was money for things like foreign aid, public broadcasting corporation. What the Democrats say in shutting down the government is we can't trust our Republican colleagues anymore because anything we agree to, whether it's on health care or anything else, we don't know that they're not going to go back at the behest of the President. And let him become the appropriator, not Congress, order House Republicans and Senate Republicans to just reverse everything that was already agreed to. That's what they think happened with the recision bill. Do you understand that worry from Democrats and how that motivated the shutdown. And if you do, why did you vote for the recisions?

I think this is actually the most maybe sympathetic part of their argument, because here's the dynamic that we're working with. So the reason that you can't just pass a party line bill to keep the government open is because of the filibuster rule in the Senate. You need to have 60 votes in the Senate to pass it. So what's happening right now is that you don't have enough Democrats who are joining with Republicans to pass their version of the CR. You don't have enough Republicans that are joining with Democrats to pass their version of the CR. So spending bills by their very nature have to be bipartisan. Whereas recisions bills, which can be sent to Congress with specific requests from the executive branch to undo appropriations that were made, those don't have the supermajority requirement. They can be done in a strictly in a party-line way. If the position of the Democrat leaders right now is, Well, we need to have some assurances that what is being done in a bipartisan way isn't going to be undone in a party-line vote, then I don't think that's a necessarily unreasonable position.

It's not an unreasonable.

It's not an unreasonable. In other words, it is a reasonable.

Then why did you vote for the recision?

Well, those are totally separate questions, right? How so? Because you can believe that a particular recision is actually a good thing while also understanding the view that one side wants to be able to have a say in recisions when they have a say in making the appropriations in the first place. Okay.

I just want to make sure I understand because I'm not entirely clear on how you can hold both of those positions at the same time. If recisions fundamentally undermine the process of bipartisan agreement on spending in a principled way that seems problematic, which you're suggesting, then how can you ever be okay with doing that?

Well, you can imagine a bipartisan recision. Let's say that- From the beginning, this wasn't that, right? Yeah, in that particular instance, it wasn't. But that doesn't mean that you can't have it.

Why not wait to vote for the one that is bipartisan? Here, I am attempting to hold you a little bit accountable for what you did. Sure.

No, I understand that. To be clear, I think that the recisions bill that did pass was not the ideal version of what a recisions bill should look like.

I mean, is it fair to assume that there's a meaningful amount of pressure that you may have felt to vote for a recidions bill that I'm hearing you correctly on principle, you don't really like all that much?

No, I think there were good things about that recidions bill as well. And again, recidions are a legal process. It's a power that the house has. And so at that point in time, we had the ability to pull back spending that was viewed as not good or not necessary in a simple majority threshold. But it's perfectly reasonable to then say, if you're the party that was on the other end of that, all right, well, we also have the ability to hold up a future spending bill until we get assurances as to how those situations are going to be handled in the future.

Which is what Democrats are doing right now. They're saying, how can we trust that this won't happen again? I mean, the reason I'm asking you these questions, and perhaps you've intuited it, is because so far I'm getting from you frustration around how the shutdown has been overseen by the leaders of your party. Of course, that's Speaker Johnson his deputies, for not calling the House back into session. But I'm trying to also understand if you feel that the votes you've taken create any personal responsibility for the circumstances that led to the shutdown, that deficit of trust that the Democrats feel around recisions, as well as the changes to the healthcare system in the country. I mean, can you see that argument?

I can certainly understand that given what has happened so far this year, from the perspective of someone like Hakeem Jeffrey or Chuck Schumer, they want to use whatever tools they have available in order to be able to have more of a say in policy going forward. I understand that position as far as it concerns the recisions. I think as well, the ACA subsidy issue is an important one. But we at the same time need to that a government shutdown is having terrible, terrible consequences for the country. And so the reality of folks not getting their Snap benefits of a million plus workers, other being furloughed or not getting paychecked, traffic controllers not able to keep the plane schedule running on time and everything else that comes with that. So we need to keep ourselves grounded in that reality, right? That there are people that are really suffering right now.

I have a related question about redistricting. You expressed dismay that the speaker didn't take up your proposed bill to ban mid-decade redistricting, which you've described as a threat to democracy. But I do want to push you on the idea that that redistricting, and I did this a little bit earlier, didn't come at the behest of Speaker Johnson, came at the behest of President Trump, the mid-decade redistricting. Are you upset with the President for ordering that in the first place? And if you are, why not criticize the President for initiating it?

Well, because this concerns the House of Representatives. So the speaker is the leader of the Sure does. He's the representative of our conference. I feel like if he had taken a strong position on this, then we wouldn't be where we are right now. And so the President- Isn't that two steps down the process of being willing to take up a law to prevent the thing that the commander in chief of the president. I mean, he didn't even need to do a lot. He could have taken the public position or advocated it more strongly in conversations with the white house.

But that would mean you wanted the House Speaker to say no to the President, which is not something he really does.

I think that the speaker of the House is the representative of the legislative branch. So when it comes to things that specifically concern the legislative branch, obviously the speaker needs to be and will want to be in alignment with the President on policy. But when it comes to the House as an institution, he's the leader of the House as an institution. So he's the one that I really hold accountable for protecting the House of the institution and representing our members.

I think you're probably getting at my larger curiosity here, which is in showing up every day during the shutdown and saying that what's happening right now, the House not being a cession, in saying that that's wrong, are you fighting the right battle in this moment, or are you missing the larger fight, which is what the President has done to Congress, to house Republicans like you in particular, and what he's asked you all to become in this era, which many would regard as, and please interrupt me if you disagree, so far, a rubber stamp for his agenda on things on things like health care, on things like Medicaid, on redrawing Congressional maps whenever he wants, and so on.

In a very definite sense, what every president in recent memory has tried to exert as much influence as they can over Congress. I don't think that's even debatable. That's the entire reason they have an Office of Legislative Affairs in the White House that has a lot of people, and that's constantly on our side of Washington.

But no one has done it with the skill of Donald Trump.

Well, sure. It's the job of the House to work with the White House to advance the values and the agenda that we share, but also to maintain the integrity of the House and Article One as an institution.

Do you think that's being maintained? I've heard some very knowledgeable people say, and perhaps it's somewhat in jest, that Congress is over right now. Maybe that's an extraordinary overstatement, but do you worry that Congress's place in this dynamic under this President, under the speaker, Is taking you closer to irrelevance than is at all required?

I think that's hyperbolic. I mean, the whole reason we have a shutdown is that the Congress has not funded the government, right? That's relevance. That's relevance in a bad way.

But from the Democrats. What makes House Republicans and Congressional Republicans relevant in this moment?

I'm just saying this is a clear example of how the power of the purse lies with the House. The House has failed to act. So that's just the separation of powers at work. But the bigger issue is that the House itself hasn't shown up. And so that's not something that has been a decision of the White House. It's not something that's been a decision of Chuck Schumer, the Democrats, over in the Senate. It's a decision that's been made by the speaker of the House and our own leadership. And that's why I've been focusing on our own leadership and trying to encourage them to do the right thing and bring us back. And I'm not the only one. There are a number of others who have spoken up, and I think that's actually a majority opinion among our conference at this point.

I mean, does that ultimately and inevitably lead to questions about whether this speaker should be speaker if the majority of the conference does not like what is happening here?

I don't think now is the time to raise those questions.

I mean, Well, certainly it can't be acted upon because- Right, exactly.

So someone asked me the other day, Oh, are you going to vote to vacate the speaker? No, of course, I'm not going to do that. And for a number of reasons, but in particular, when you vacate the speaker, literally the house shuts down. So that's not a good remedy for the house not being here is to do something that by definition, shuts the house down. And we actually dealt with that when McCarthy was vacated. The house literally shut down for, I think it was three weeks then.

Right, while you're re-electing somebody else. Forgive me, but it does sound like you and others feel to a degree that the speaker is abdicating the role of Congress. Just to put that very clearly.

I don't know that I'd use that word. That's a pretty loaded term. But I'd say that certainly not having Congress in session for five weeks that we were supposed to be here, or the house, I should say, has made it so the house has not been particularly relevant in terms of the path out of the shutdown has resulted in members of the house not being able to represent our districts in the way that we were elected to do. And just saying, We passed the CR, we're going home, we're not going to come back, has made it a lot more difficult for us to talk about any of these issues.

It seems like you're trying to make your voice clearly very heard by being here. You've done several interviews with with other journalists, including some of my colleagues at the Times. And yet, I wonder if you think it's working. The shutdown is still underway, and you being here, understandably, hasn't altered that situation single-handedly. It makes me think about this question of what is the place of Congress right now? What's the place of the House under Republican control? If showing up for work is what amounts at this moment to a demonstration of independence, of resistance, of protest, does that read as empowering, or is it instead a demonstration of Congressional powerlessness?

Well, so yeah, I was under no illusions that coming back, I was going to single-handedly end everything immediately. But I think that it has perhaps encouraged others to come back as well. We see more people around now. We've seen more people speak out. Hopefully, this results in the House coming back soon.

Pressure to Yeah, exactly. I have a final question for you. What happens to you if, as we suspect, your seat is redrawn, the third Congressional district in California, to the benefit of the Democrats, and you run, and the chemistry and alchemy of that new district just is not going to get you over the line. Your time here comes to an end. How are you going to feel? Because as we established at the beginning of this conversation, you did your best to ask your own party to do what you thought was the right thing, and the democratic thing, small de-democratic thing, to stop this mid-decade redistricting, and they're ignoring you. And the President, in some sense, is ignoring you. Will you have been basically sacrificed by your own party?

I mean, that seems to me like creating a prospective excuse. So if the gerrymander goes through, I'm confident that I can win re-election under the new map because in the last election, 2022, I got the second most crossover votes of any competitive district in the country. President Trump on my district by about three and a half points. I want to buy about 11 points with the crossover votes. I mean, folks who voted for Kamala for President, voted for me for a member of the House. And that's because I focused on issues that don't have a particularly partisan valence that just matter to the quality of life for the folks that I represent. And so I'm confident whatever the map looks like, I'll have a strong path to re-election.

Do you think this whole process of everything we're talking about and the positions you're taking in the public way that you're willing to challenge the leader of your own party inevitably makes you a more appealing candidate to a redrawn district, a less red district?

I think that what I'm doing now is simply fulfilling the promises that I ran on, which is that I'm going to be an independent voice for my district. Which is the third district as it's currently considered.

Compared to most house Republicans, you do sound quite independent.

Yeah. I think that honestly, this is all... Maybe this is the better answer to your question. Sure. I think this has all served to underline the extent to which excessive partisanship is one of the most serious problems facing the country. If you look at redistricting, this is now we're talking about bringing partisanship into actually the rules of the game itself, to an even deeper structural level of our politics. Or you'll get the government shutdown. This is where Congress can not even do its most basic job. And you wonder why Congress has a 13% approval rating on the part of the public. I think if you ask just about anyone, do you think partisanship is a big problem in the country right now. Almost everyone would say it's like the one thing that people can't agree on, right, is that partisanship has just reached peak levels. I think that these two episodes have really served to emphasize that. I do think- The redistricting in the shutdown. The redistricting in the shutdown. As I said, trying to overcome that partisan divide was a big part of my message when I first ran. I think that's an even more urgent message now.

Right.

That's why there would be a little bit of an irony if you end up getting squeezed out of the situation. People don't like partisanship. You tried to fight partisanship. You fail, you lose.

Well, I don't think that's going to happen.

We will see. Well, congressman, really appreciate your time.

Of course. Thanks for having me. Cheers.

On Thursday afternoon, after we spoke with Representative Kyly, a federal judge expressed frustration with the Trump administration over its refusal to fund the Snap Food Benefit program for the poor during the shutdown. The White House told the judge that it could not tap into billions of dollars specifically reserved for the Snap program, a claim that the judge said was hard to accept. At the same time, a new poll from the Washington Post found that more Americans now blame the shutdown on President Trump and Congressional Republicans than on Democrats. 33% blame Democrats, while 45% blame Republicans. We'll be right back.

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Here's what else you need to know today. But overall, I guess on the scale from zero to 10, with 10 being the best, I would say the meeting was a 12. I think it was a 12. On Thursday, After a high-stakes meeting with the leader of China, President Trump said that the two countries have de-escalated their trade war, agreeing to what amounts to a year-long ceasefire that would roll back tariffs as well as a shutoff of access to rare earth metals. The deal will lower the average tariff rate on many Chinese imports into the US from around 57% to 47%, but the tariffs will remain historically high. And just days before the election for New York City mayor, two new polls released on Thursday show that Zoran Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, holds a wide lead over his two rivals. One of the polls showed Mamdani with a 16-point lead, the other with a nearly 25-point lead. But in a new video to his supporters, Mamdani cautioned them against complacency.

People say we You got this.

It's over. Cuomo is cooked. Do not believe it. Take nothing for granted. Today's episode was produced by Kaylen O'Keefe, Michael Simon Johnson, and Asta Chattervedi. It was edited by Rachel Quester and Liz O'Balen. Contains music by Dan Powell and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. For The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.