The Daily - Republican Town Halls Turned Ugly. One Congressman Kept Doing Them Anyway.

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

From Iowa to New York, Republican members of Congress have struggled to answer constituents’ tough questions about their party’s agenda, with several town hall meetings turning angry and going viral.Republican leaders have told lawmakers to stop holding them all together.Representative Mike Flood of Nebraska has ignored that advice. The congressman speaks about the disappearance of an American political tradition and why he thinks it is worth preserving.Guest: Representative Mike Flood, Republican of NebraskaBackground reading: Representative Flood faced his hometown voters. It wasn’t pretty.From March: Republican House members were told to stop holding in-person town halls.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Photo: Scott Morgan/Reuters Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

From New York Times, I'm Michael Bobarrow. This is the Daily. What people of America see with people of Eastern Washington sees, President Trump delivering on his promises. From Iowa to New York, Republican members of Congress have struggled to answer tough questions about their party's agenda in open town hall meetings that have turned angry. But what I view is the moral hazard created by the Biden administration by allowing the U.S. and gone viral. So people are not died. Well, we all are going to die.

So much so. That Republican leaders have told lawmakers to stop holding the town halls altogether. But at least one Republican has ignored that advice. I will be visible. I will be accessible. Today. Congressman Mike Flood of Nebraska on the disappearance of an American political tradition

and why for him, it's still worth preserving. It is an honor to serve you and a privilege to serve you at the United States Congress. Thank you very much. It's Monday, August 18th. Good morning, Congressman. How are you? I'm well. How about you?

Good. Sorry, I was around a few minutes late. There's so much road construction between where I live and my district office. It took me a little longer today. That seems like something you should be able to solve. You need to go to the state government to solve some of those problems. Right. Cone placement. Cone placement. There's only so much a member of Congress can do. Isn't that true? Congressman, thank you for making time for us. I appreciate it. Yeah.

Let me just start by explaining my own. own interest in the subject we're going to be talking about, which is town halls. I spent most of my career here at the times as a political correspondent, and I think I've probably attended hundreds of town halls. And I've always seen them as a pretty special part of our political system, a unique chance for elected officials to come face to face with voters, actually answer questions. In my experience, it really levels the playing field. And there's this built-in accountability system because everyone in the room is watching the elected official answer those questions, and it's evaluating them for authenticity and for candor. And I've watched elected

officials master the form of the town hall. I think a lot about Chris Christie, who would bring this tough love approach to a town hall, and he charmed people across New Jersey, and he became a national political star in the process. But now your party is questioning whether this tradition still makes sense in today's political environment and has basically concluded that they don't. And yet, you have kept doing them against the advice of leaders in your party. So I really want to understand why town halls are so important to you. And I think that means going back to the beginning and understanding if that's in any way personal for you. What is your first memory of attending a town hall if you have one?

Well, let me give you a little background, if I may, just on how I'm built. And then I will give you an example of the town hall I remember the most. Sure. So I grew up in a home with two very active Democrats. My mom was on the state central committee. My dad was an elected county attorney in a very Republican area of Nebraska. I remember he was driving me to the polls in 1980 with him. I wasn't going to vote.

But I asked him, what's the difference between Republicans and Democrats? And he said, well, Democrats are poor and Republicans are rich. And right there, I was like, well, I'm going to be a Republican. How old were you at the time, if you recall? I would have been five. And then in 1986, when I was 11, we had a very unique gubernatorial contest in Nebraska. We had two women running against each other for the first time in American history. And my dad had Helen Bussalis's sign in the yard.

And I had K.O.S. sign in the yard. K is the Republican. Helen was the Democrat. And I told my dad, I want to go to KOR's fundraiser at Omaha two hours away because I had gotten an invitation. And he laughed about it. You had finagled as a child an invitation to this. Well, I got on some list. I'm sure they didn't know I was 11. But I got on some list because I had done some call center work.

Okay. My dad drove me down there, but he wouldn't park in front of the house because he didn't want to be seen. So he dropped me off three blocks away. and I walked in by myself and I just loved it. I loved everything about it. And so growing up, I was interested in the interaction between elected officials and their constituents. But when I think about town halls and I think about the first real experience I saw, this would have been in 2003, a state senator from Lincoln, Ron Rakes, was proposing to eliminate all of the one-room school. houses across Nebraska, the rural schools. And I went to Wahoo, Nebraska, and the place was packed with

angry, rural Nebraska's. Right, who did not want to see their schools close? Did not want to see their small schools closed, yeah. So Ron Rake sat up there at the head of a table with the other members of the Nebraska legislature education committee, and he let everybody speak. And I saw tears, I saw screaming, I saw people that were just despondent. I mean, this was a way of life for them. Their children were getting this great education, and he was changing it. And I was definitely against what he was doing. But he sat there and respectfully listened to everybody, and everybody got their say.

You know, and this went on for like three and a half hours. And when I saw that, I said, this is everything I wanted to do. to be. This is the job I want to be in. As painful as it probably was. Yes. It was very powerful for me to witness the people, you know, exercising their right to protest and the power that it had. Well, given the importance that you so clearly place on town halls, what did you think when the National Republican Congressional Committee advised Republicans advised basically lawmakers like you

earlier this year to basically stop having them because in their minds it was starting to create just too many negative headlines and it was becoming too rich a target for democratic activists many of whom end up in the audience

when Republicans have these town halls that felt like a really unusual thing I think we can all remember when town hall have gotten out of hand in modern political history. I'm thinking about the Tea Party era when folks are furious at President Obama over his health care plans. But I can't recall a moment

when one of the two parties said, that's it for town halls, no more of these. So what was your first thought at that directive? What was your reaction? I was like, oh, my gosh, I have one scheduled for next week. That was my first thought. Too late to cancel. Yeah, too late to cancel.

Did, I mean, did you for a minute consider canceling? Well, for a brief second, I was like, I don't want to run a foul of the House leadership. You know, like I'm a team player. I pride myself on wanting to do the right thing and to build the respect of my colleagues. And so, of course, I'm going to think about it. But the guy that I replaced in Congress with Jeff Fortenberry, and he had town halls every year for 17 years. So when I was running and somebody asked me, I said, yes, I will do three town halls a year. So that's the commitment you made as a candidate.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's something that Nebraskaans expect in a lot of ways. And so by the time I got back to my office, my message to my chief of staff was, you better let leadership know that we're having these town halls. And the first one is next week. And we're not canceling it. I want to start by saying that I believe the town halls are in a. important part of the process. It's democracy. It's how we communicate with each other.

Tonight is an opportunity for me to listen to you, to learn from you, to answer your questions, but I want you to know I'm guided by this. This really matters to me, and I think it matters to all of us. Kim, why don't you start with our first question? Let's talk about your town halls this year and what they felt like, what they've sounded like, since you decided to keep holding them. When you opened up your first town hall this year, it was late March, Trump is suddenly back in office.

He's got a slew of executive orders against law firms. He's starting to go after universities. He's claiming the right to end birthright citizenship, even though it's guaranteed in the 14th Amendment. Doge has started, it's firing thousands of federal workers. there's a lot going on. So with that in mind, do you have any idea just how Raukes

these town halls are going to get? Going into that first one? Mm-hmm. No. Here's the deal. That $36 trillion number is not going away. It is not going away

unless we deal with Medicare and Medicaid. Let's remain calm. It was in Columbus. My wife was. was born in, raised in a town 45 minutes south of me. And this is something we have to do as a country. I couldn't have predicted that it would have gone like that. A balanced budget where we...

How can you be against a balanced budget? How can you be against a balanced budget? All right. Elon Musk gets $40 billion. a year in funding from the federal government. Do you think he would cut that before he would cut our Medicare or our Social Security or our jobs? I support Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency.

And I think when it was over, I was stunned and a little numb. That's my honest, that's honestly how I felt. I don't think your high school civics teacher would endorse that behavior. They want to endorse yours either. And on the drive back to Norfolk, which is 45 minutes, I was just replaying in my head everything that I saw and I heard. What are you doing to be real with people about how Trump is breaking the law? And I got home and...

When are you in Congress going to take back your responsibility? I just had to kind of just... process everything. You have done nothing. Who's lying? Them or you? Why are you doing this to your constituent? When are you going to do something?

This is where we're at. You have an oath. We need actual action. What he has stand up for? It's interesting because it felt like the subtext of a lot of the questions you were getting in these town halls, especially early on, is where is Congress right now? where in particular are congressional Republicans as a check on a president who is exercising a greater level of power than any president in modern history?

And there's one inquiry that stood out to me. Yeah, my question is regarding your oath of office. So you have up until now abdicated all of your rights as Congress to the executive branch. And if you don't act as a check and a balance... The question ended with this voter saying, what exactly is the purpose of Congress? Why do you even exist? I have not abdicated any responsibility I have under the Constitution of the United States.

Well, I think some of that is overblown, and let me tell you why. There's this idea that if you are providing oversight or the checks and balances, that it has to be done on CNN at 9 o'clock Eastern or Fox News at 9 o'clock Eastern, If I'm going to draw a red line, I'm not going to draw it on TV. I'm going to draw it with the people that are actually in charge of their part of the government. You're saying it's unseen. Well, it's unseen by the people that are dealing with the issue. It's just not done for public purposes.

When I see things that I do not think are right, I work on them, I speak out against them, and I stand up. I also, and I'm going to say this loud and clear, I voted for Donald Trump. And I support Donald Trump as president. He's done more to address the root issues of this country in the last four months than we saw from our prior president. And I believe that. And I want to say that out loud so that I'm on record doing that. Well, you did say that in your answer to this constituent, that you do speak out when you don't like something. But let's get specific.

Have you spoken out against anything Trump has done in his second term specifically? Yeah. National Weather Service cuts. National Weather Service is a vital federal agency for Nebraska because we are in Tornado Alley. I'm visiting these offices and they're down 40%. Right. And this was a hill to die on for me. Like this was public safety. And so, you know, I was successful able to get this going and since they've hired back people. So that would be one example. Mm-hmm. Why did, why did you not say that at the town hall when you're speaking to, to vote? Did it occur to you to say that? Look, I push back. I got these jobs restored at the National Weather Service. Yeah. I did at one of them, but, you know, like, who wants to work with a grandstander? You know what I mean? Like, the goal is to fix the problem. And I'm happy as hell that it got fixed. Well, grandstanding is an interesting word for what speaking out against something you don't like is. And I think you may know where I'm headed here. In the second Trump presidency, it feels like lawmakers, especially within the Republican Party, are fearful of publicly getting crosswise with the president.

And when you were asked about abdicating your role, when you were asked about specific policies, you in these town halls tend to specifically go out of your way to emphasize how much regard you have for the president. And you say, I want to make that loud and clear. I voted for him. I mean, am I right to intuit a certain level of, I don't want to step in it in this town hall? And I don't want to become the subject of the president's ire.

Does that constrain you in this environment? It sounds like it does. I am supportive of the president. I mean, but when I got to Congress in two, 2022, 65% of my time was dealing with agency rules and regulations that were punishing all sorts of folks in Nebraska, whether it be farmers, ranchers, banks, you name it. And the relief that came on January 20th is what I voted for. Like, that's what I wanted. I want innovation. I want all of these new ideas. Do President Trump and I have the same demeanor? Probably not.

I think it's fair to say that we don't. But I thought it was very important that I say, listen, I support President Trump and I support Elon Musk in doing what they're doing because the federal debt is a big issue for me and the spending is a big issue for me. And although the way it was approached at all times wouldn't be my preference, I think that the overall arc of what we're doing in terms of spending is important. What I heard were some people in that room saying, where are you pushing back? at all. And I think essentially what they're asking, and I'd ask it on their behalf of this, is there anything besides the National Weather Service, for example, that the president has done that has concerned you? Well, tariffs concern me because it introduces uncertainty into our economy. But you look at the first time he ran, he made it work. So we're counting on that.

I mean, there's something. Just to put it really plainly, do you feel like you can be truly candid in any disapproval that you have of President Trump's actions, especially in a public room where cameras may be rolling, people are searching for viral moments? I understand that if you pop over the hedge and say, nope, I don't agree with that, right? For me to do that, I have to be convicted in what I'm doing. I want to know where my conference is at. You don't come over the hill with no one. And sometimes he just says things, right?

like seizing the Panama Canal, turning Alcatraz into a prison again. You know, like, don't take the bait. Like, look at what you're trying to accomplish. Like, I'm trying to get housing reform going. I go to work every single day and I work on that bill. And I'm talking to people about that bill. And it's bipartisan. And so I know that it would make some people on the left love every minute of seeing their member up over the hedge every single day.

But you don't get to have a new red line every day. Just because a subset of your constituents are livid about X, he is the leader of the party that I'm in. And there's a balance. I will continue to do town halls. I will continue to show up in person. And I want to thank all of you for coming. Good night.

Okay, when you exit, please go out the exit right here on your left. So don't go back out the way you keep in. We'll be right back. Here's what I ask of you tonight. I know some of you are angry. I know some of you are upset. Let's make this a model for the nation

in how we can have a discussion about the future of America, and we can talk as much about ideas and solutions as we do identifying the problems, because ultimately it's my job to do the best job I can representing all of you. With that, I want to cut my remarks short. I want to get right into questions and answers. Let me get back to this idea of Congress's responsibility, your responsibility. Hello, Congressman Flood. I share your concern for our national debt, but the ends do not just You had an exchange with someone at a town hall who asked you about a provision of the president's giant domestic policy bill, one big, beautiful bill as he refers to it, that would have seriously curtailed the power of the federal courts. Can you please tell us why you voted to approve a budget bill that includes Section 70302, which effectively prohibits federal courts from enforcing contempt orders?

And contempt orders allow federal judges to hold the executive branch accountable when they defy the courts. It's really their only tool. Which would then allow current and future administrations to ignore those contempt orders by removing the enforcement capabilities. I do not agree with that section that was added to that bill. This provision was unknown to me. when I voted for the bill. Okay, next question. Next question.

I am not going to hide the truth. This provision was unknown to me when I voted for that bill. And what you told this voter, Congressman, is that you didn't know that provision was in the bill, presumably because you didn't read the entire bill before you voted for it.

So how did it feel having to kind of admit that, which you did, that you voted for something you didn't quite understand? two things here um i did read the bill i voted for that one big beautiful bill i voted until like seven of the morning i got on a plane i went back home to nebraska now it's 930 at night someone in the legal community in nebraska calls me and like did you know this is in the bill i was like what are you talking about well this section so i pull it up i went to law school i practiced a

as a general practitioner for 20 years, you can read those seven lines 15 times. And if you aren't a practitioner in a federal district court on issues like constitutional issues, like I've never been to federal district court. And the way that provision was written, I had to go to an article written by a Notre Dame law professor to really understand its import. And after I did those things, I felt terrible. I didn't want that in there. I didn't have any interest in defanguing the federal district courts.

And that was a red line for me. And honestly, I appreciated the question. The only way through that was to be honest and to tell them how much that meant. I wasn't going to hide it. I couldn't defend it. There was no way around it. Hey, why are you guys booing me? I'm just telling you I didn't do the bare minimum of my job.

Right, that moment went basically viral and not necessarily in a good way. It is never a good sign in your defense to that in front of your own constituents was, I didn't read that version. Listen, I don't know what would be worse, honestly, if he was really this negligent or if he voted for it because he thinks Trump should be a king like Hinson does, apparently. It's not like a 23 and me terms of service. service agreement where you can just blindly sign it, and now there's a clone of you who's a sex slave for an Uzbek oligarch. Unlike that, these bills are important. You know, my oldest son, Brandon, said, Dad, you didn't read the bill. I said, I missed it, Brennan. Wow. I missed it. He must have seen this moment as well, somewhere on the internet.

Oh, yeah. And, you know, he got ridiculed for that, I'm sure. So to say it bothered me, it really bothered me. The next day, after I figured that out, I called my staff. We got a hell to the Senate Judiciary Committee. We flagged it for them. And the reason we have three rounds in our unit camel is that things get in bills that you end up figuring out what they're real important is. You take them out. This is part of the process of lawmaking.

What I voted for was not a law. I voted for a bill that went to the Senate and that was stripped out and I was able to vote for it. so it worked the process worked but i guess i'm just does does a moment like this help explain to you why some of the people in these town halls were so upset could you understand what they were coming from yes we've got people to come to these town halls that are upset to start with i mean they are receiving all of their news and information oftentimes from a television network that has a slant just like republicans are receiving their news and information from a network that has a they slant, and there's not a lot of nonpartisan information that comes. So they come angry

to start with. Well, and then they hear their congressman, as earnest as you are, saying, I didn't know that I was voting for a bill that was going to neuter the courts at a moment where the president is already defying them. Yeah, I get it. I get it. The only way through that, though, is to tell them the truth. And you know what? I slept better that night than I had in a long time because I didn't blink. And as mad as people are and as much as people can get upset about that, isn't that kind of what they also want? They want you to stand up.

They want you to be there. One thing I'd add here. Yeah. That exchange right there is the reason why politicians on both sides of the aisle don't want to do town halls because these things are real they're raw

and they are as accountable as anything else in America well good evening Lincoln thank you very much for being here tonight I know that many of you stood in line for a long time

I know that many of you have made this a point to be here and here's the deal so Congressman and you were final town hall this year, which you held after this bill. The one big beautiful bill is it was known officially passes. I want to go right into this bill because I know this is something a lot of people have questions about. Okay. Okay, let's start here. Let's start here. That's when voter anger seems to reach a fever pitch. First of all, I'd ask you please not to refer to that monstrosity is the

big beautiful bill. It's the name of the bill though So how can you justify taking health care away from 78,000 Nebraskaans? As I explained before, this bill protects Medicaid for the future. People are asking you about cuts to Medicaid. Why did you cut SNAP and health care research?

We do not have unlimited money in the United States. to food stamps, snap. And I see this new bill that transfers trillions of dollars of wealth from working class Americans, people that are sitting in this room, to billionaires that don't even live in this state. And so my question is, I know who I worked for, but who do you work for? So my question is, did you read the bill? I read the bill.

I read the bills. And you worked really hard to make the case that this legislature. the case that this legislation is good for your district. If we didn't pass the Big Beautiful Bill, it would have been a $1,600 tax increase to every Nebraska family. That is a true middle-class tax cut. Next slide, please. You look like a college professor on that stage talking about what's in this bill.

People in here are upset with me that I voted to cut $2 trillion in spending from the budget. But still, the Republican Party, now more than ever, represents the heart and soul, the working class. You're booed. How much does it cost for fascism? How much do the taxpayers have to pay for a fascist country? You're jeered. Fascists don't hold town hall. with open question and answer series.

So I'm curious, as someone who sees so much value in this format, what was the value in that? Was there any? Yeah, there's value because I think it's cathartic for the people that are so upset. And I get something out of it. it you know people don't realize when you're standing on stage and everybody's looking at you i see people that maybe are upset about the one big beautiful bill but they are with me on ukraine and i see that in the nonverbal i see people that are worried about the future of democracy and they are smiling when i say fascist don't hold town halls there's a communication back and forth

that only the elected official gets to see when you're talking to a crowd of people that are upset. Had I not done a town hall in Lincoln, it would have been a slap in the face to my biggest city of my district. And before each town hall, I go out and shake the people's hands coming in, you know. Chris Christie says it's hard to hate up close, right? So I go up and I shake everybody's hands and, you know, I get a lot of feedback. But one of the things I heard a couple times when I was shaking people's hands was, thanks for realizing that we're in Nebraska too. And at first I was like, what are they talking about?

And it's easy to go to these rural communities where there's more, you know, Republicans. And as somebody who grew up in a small town, I felt that way before. Like, am I really part of Nebraska? Isn't all this just about Oman Lincoln? And so to have people from Lincoln say, thanks for coming here and doing it here. Right. we're in Nebraska too. This is your most democratic corner of your district.

Yeah. I thought that's a compliment, you know, like, I'm here and we're doing this. Can I say that they were thanking you, but the hate, to quote Chris Christie, was up close. It was not hard to hate up close in that, in that room, it seems. No, that's true. But that was maybe 100 people of the 700 that were that upset. And at no time did I ever lose my cool or my, my, my, my, my. mode of operation, we just kind of went through it. And I did say going in, I said,

hey, let people stay their peace. I do not want people drug out of here. That is not what this is about. If that's the way they want to do it, that's the way they want to do it. But if I'm not willing to go stand in the middle of my biggest city, how does anything ever get better? Okay, next question. Can you hear me? Yes. I'm a lifetime member of the veterans of foreign wars. You know, I had somebody come up to me in sewer and say, You know, he's a 57-year-old postal worker. You voted for a budget bill that cuts the Social Security supplement, which is a large portion of our benefits. And these are benefits that we've earned.

We work for these benefits, okay? We had made one change that he was fine with in his retirement system, but there was something else in the bill that wasn't good. What I need to understand in your situation is the exact program that you're on and the exact impact that the bill in his current form is having. We're eligible to retire when we're 57, so we're not eligible for Social Security until we're 62. So what the bill that you voted for does erases the 57 to 62 supplement that gets us to it, which is a large portion at that age of our retirement. I'm happy to sit down with you. I'm happy to look at it.

I will get the information, and then I will do my best to act on your behalf. That is my pledge to you. We went back, we called him, we made sure we understood it, and we were able to tell him, hey, that has been resolved. People don't see the casework that comes out of these things. But, you know, I would have never known about that issue with a postal worker that's 57 years old. There's no way I would ever dreamt that. But he came to a town hall and he put it on everybody's radar.

But I guess I'm still wondering what it means for constituents, for voters, when these town halls go away. If most of your party is avoiding this format, does something important get lost? Well, first, I will say the reason you see less of these is that you have constituents that attend on both sides of the aisle that say they're frustrated at their inability to have, to glean information from a respectful back and forth dialogue because they're actually there to try and get answers to the questions that they have. So a lot of the people that are doing the booing are the ones that are creating the challenge for others. but you know like everybody does their job differently in congress and this fits my way that I do it others are way more productive in different ways communicating with their constituents and some of my colleagues have legitimate safety issues that I don't feel like I have that is legit right I mean I mean back to that moment when you hesitated about whether to cancel

your own town hall what do you? you think would have been lost if you had canceled all three of them this year, right? I mean, how would that 57-year-old postal worker have gotten his concern across? Obviously, there's value. I think a lot of people see it. They don't think it has any value, and nobody's talking about the value that's there. It's good for America that we have Republicans and Democrats that can spend an hour and a half in a room together. And yeah, there's some shouting and yelling, but I got the chance to say what I wanted to say. I got the chance to explain my votes. I got the chance to essentially debate with a few of my constituents, and they got the

chance in their eyes to hold me accountable and to tell me how they felt. We all got something out of it. So right or wrong, maybe there's a better way to do this. I've been going to these things for a long time, and I hope that as Americans, they continue for a long, long time. It sounds like you're going to keep holding town halls next year as you have this year. And I'm thinking back to the town halls you talked about when you were a young lawmaker. And clearly there was emotion in them, but I don't think it looked like this. I mean, yes, when people were having their school shut down, they were emotional and they were upset. Were they calling the lawmakers fascists? I don't, I mean, I'm seeing you nod, no. And what I'm really asking is, you said in one of your town halls, you urged voters

to make the town hall that you were about to embark on a model of discussion for the rest of the nation. So what do you think it says that your town halls went the way that they did about the nature of our democracy, the nature of our ability to have conversations right now? What does it say to you? It's certainly strained. But it's also not representative of where I think most of the people are. I mean, the media grabs on to that person that's screaming fascist. And it delights one half of America and it repulses the other half of America. But I have more in common with those screaming protesters than I do the rest of America that thinks that politics is a hobby doesn't affect them and they don't pay any attention

to it. Like this is America. This is every decision I make affects somebody. So you have kind of come to a grudging admiration for. for the passion that leads someone to come to a town hall like that and scream, you're a fascist. Of course, because they care, right? Yeah.

There are people that can live in America and take care of their family and not give one ounce of thought to anything that's happening in the world other than the bubble that they live in. And the lady that's calling me a fascist is not living in that bubble. She is very invested. in her beliefs and where she thinks the country's going. She showed up, and she's spicy. Like, that's the town square.

That's politics. That's what we do. That's like, if I think that my votes are the right votes, I should have no problem standing in the town square and defending them. And I did that. Well, Congressman, thank you very much. We appreciate it. My pleasure. By Sunday, there was growing consensus that President Trump had broken from the principles

of his European allies and sided with Russia during his summit on Friday with Vladimir Putin. During the summit, Trump adopted Putin's view that to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, Ukraine must give up territory in a direct peace deal, including land unoccupied by Russia, rather than first trying for a ceasefire. That has alarmed European officials who believe that the plan prioritizes Russia's goals over Ukraine's. On Sunday, leaders from Germany, France, Britain, Italy, and Finland said that they would travel to Washington today to join Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky for a meeting with Trump. Their goal, they said, is to present a unified front against Russia and to try to persuade Trump to back away from

Putin's views. Today's episode was produced by Osta Chatharvedi and Rob Zivko, with help from Michael Simon Johnson and Alex Stern. It was edited by Lindsay Garrison and Maria Byrne, fact-checked by Will Paisal, and was engineered by Chris Wood. That's it for the daily.

I'm Michael Barbarrow. See you tomorrow.