Special: What Homeland Security Lapse Would Look Like; FCC Votes for Net Neutrality; Identity of Jihadi John; Hillary Clinton's Foreign Money Problem

ANNOUNCER: This is the WASHINGTON WEEK Webcast Extra.

GWEN IFILL, "WASHINGTON WEEK" MODERATOR: Hello and welcome.

We have so much to talk about on the regular broadcast that we had to stick around a little bit longer.

Joining me: Dan Balz of "The Washington Post", Michael Duffy of "Time Magazine", John Harwood of CNBC and "The New York Times", and Juana Summers of NPR.

As Congress figures out what fights are worth picking, the question arises: what is a shutdown and what is not?

Let’s go back a bit, Juana, about how we got here in the first place and how they get out. So, how do we get here? Give us a little back story.

JUANA SUMMERS, NPR: How did we get here? If you remember back last year, Republicans were looking at funding and they passed a massive spending bill that would found all agencies for another fiscal year -- except, of course, the Department of Homeland Security. They chose to carve that one out and have its funding run out this month so that they could come back at it when Republicans had a larger majority in the House and full control of the Senate. They want to use that as kind of their vehicle to combat the president’s executive actions on immigration.

However, things have not exactly worked out as Republicans have hoped. We saw earlier today, the House had trouble passing a three-week extension of funding for that agency. So, that is where we are right now. Still have not really seen what’s going to happen. It seems like it’s very likely that a seven-day extension of that funding might happen to avoid a shutdown and having people and the DHS working their paychecks.

But that makes a lot of questions about what the tensions are and the Republican House and Senate, that her relationship between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner and just how far conservatives in the House particularly are willing to go to combat what they see as a constitutional crisis the president has created by these executive actions.

IFILL: Now, to be clear, when we say shutdown in this case, we were not talking about the Washington Monument turning away tourists. We’re talking about TSA agents who will still have to show up to work because they’re essential employees, but they’re not getting paid for the work.

SUMMERS: Exactly. Only about 15 percent of the DHS work force would actually be furloughed immediately. The rest of the workforce would be deemed essential employees and they would still have to show up to work. But until Congress figures out a way to fund the agency, they would just receive their bi-weekly paycheck. So, this will not be the same that we saw in the past at the last government shutdown, some 18 months ago when you had veterans outside the World War II Memorial. It’s a very different game and that’s why a number of Republicans don’t really see this as that big of a deal. It’s also the weekend. So, a lot of these folks that they say wouldn’t -- aren’t going to be able to get their paychecks that would be furloughed wouldn’t be on the clock anyway.

IFILL: Yes, I wouldn’t want to be the border security guard who’s not, doesn’t feel like really chasing the person crossing the border.

(LAUGHTER)

IFILL: OK. Let’s go on to another big thing which happened this week, which we didn’t get a chance to talk about in the regular broadcast, but it might affect your life, probably more than a lot of things we’re talking about and that’s on Federal Communications’ decision to both for what is known as net neutrality, which is something which has been a big, big deal in wired circles and a big, big deal, and the president he was for it, too.

HARWOOD: You’re exactly right about the effect on average Americans. And this is a fight that pitted the pipes if you will that bring information into people’s homes and devices, and the stuff that comes through the pipes. The stuff that comes through the pipes, your Netflix, your social media applications, Twitter, that sort of thing, that’s a lot more popular with people than the pipes, and Democrats stood with the applications and said, we are going to require that the people who control the conduit of the information have to make that freely available to everyone and not to be able to charge some more than others.

IFILL: So, your cable company, Time Warner or Comcast, couldn’t say, we’ll give you really speedy Netflix streaming if you pay this price as opposed to that price.

HARWOOD: Exactly.

They, in theory, would have the ability to use market forces to determine what they charge different people whose signals they were carrying. But Democrats are saying in trying to speak out for the average person and the average provider of information, that we’re not going to discriminate. Republicans said that this is going to make a hash of the market, that this is going to slowdown innovation, because the people with the pipes are not going to be able to get the return that they need to improve those pipes.

So, this is likely to be settled in the courts, you’re going to see Comcast and other big providers go and challenge and challenge the FCC’s authority to do this, and this is becoming a partisan split, and Republicans admit that they lacked the power right now to stop it.

IFILL: Comcast owns the company you work for. I just want to be completely clear to everybody.

HARWOOD: Put that on the table.

(LAUGHTER)

IFILL: Just an example.

HARWOOD: I work for the pipe-maker.

IFILL: You work for the pipe-maker. OK.

I want to talk to Michael here about another interesting story which was playing actually kind of playing in the background in all of our discussions about ISIS and security and domestic and international security. And that’s the revelation of the identity of "Jihad John", the guy who’s been executing -- this ISIS member who’s been executing these hostages for the past several months, and it turns we knew he was a masked man with a British accent, but we didn’t know much more about him. But we do now.

MICHAEL DUFFY, TIME MAGAZINE: Now, we do. Now, we do. Jihadi John, he’s real name is Mohammed Emwazi. He’s 26. He grew up in London, in a fairly comfortable environment.

He went to the University of Westminster and after college began with some friends to have sort of jihadi fantasizes --traveled first to Somali then to Tunisia, then to Kuwaiti, went back and forth between London and the Middle East a couple of times, and sometimes, three or four years ago, just went to Syria. And essentially hooked up with ISIS, like many other of the recruits into the ISIS, have done.

But Emwazi has become the face in many ways, in the masked culture. You know, he’s become the face of ISIS, since we’ve never seen a picture of al Baghdadi that we know, maybe once.

IFILL: Once. There’s one picture.

DUFFY: One picture.

IFILL: Is there any worry among Western nations about what seems to be an outflow of those three British teenagers who went to Syria, or foreign fighters who are really keeping ISIS staffed.

DUFFY: The three American residents who were arrested this year -- this week also in two different cities, on their way also to ISIS. But what Emwazi represents is particularly difficult and challenging for the West, is that he not only is a Westerner himself, but he gives them that extra propaganda boost, because he comes from the very heart of the decadent Western culture that ISIS that, you know, wants to reverse and destroy.

He’s from London and he knows our ways. He’s probably part of their keen understanding of the social media and how to use it. But he is really also the worst of their nihilistic violence and that comes now we have an identity of him, and that’s really the first we’ve seen that.

IFILL: Dan, I want to talk a little bit about, we spent a lot of time in the program talking about Republicans, but, you know, to somebody they’re running against. And that person appears, for all intents and purposes for now, to be Hillary Clinton. She didn’t have the greatest week actually because your newspaper wrote about -- among other things -- about the degree to which her foundation, Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, has been accepting money from foreign governments, that while she was secretary of state even.

So, how much of that is resonated in this campaign?

DAN BALZ, THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, it clearly does resonate. And the interesting thing we had assumed, we had believed -- we had been led to believe that while she was secretary of state, there was a ban on taking money from foreign governments.

IFILL: We’ve been told that, I think.

BALZ: They had agreed to do that as part of her becoming secretary of state. It turns out that that had some loopholes in it. Some of the foreign governments that had given money were grandfathered in and were allowed to do it, though unbeknownst to the general public.

IFILL: Like say, Algeria.

BALZ: Right.

Now, the Algerian contribution was a one time after the Haiti earthquake, which was, in fact, they acknowledged a violation of the agreement.

IFILL: Oh, that was an outright violation.

BALZ: Now, the other thing that we’ve now become aware of is that once she left as secretary of state, they resumed in a much more aggressive way, raising money from foreign governments. Who cares about this? I think a lot of people because it creates potential conflicts of interest. It creates conflict of interest when she’s secretary of state. But if she were to become president, they had been out around the world, asking these governments for help. These governments may feel that they’ll get some favors. The Algerians had some interests before the State Department at the time they made a contribution to Haiti.

Now, some people say, look, it was for earthquake relief. Good for them. But, there’s a messiness about this. And Clinton network -- I mean, the Clintons have been raising millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars over 25 years for all kinds of things -- campaigns, the library, the foundation, and it’s certainly does raise questions in people’s minds about --

IFILL: The very least, it gives a break back to her opponents.

BALZ: Well, it does that. I mean, she doesn’t really have Democratic opponents at this point.

IFILL: I mean, Republicans.

BALZ: But the Republicans will no doubt at the CPAC meeting, of people suggesting it, how much more -- you know, kind of volume they give to that, I don’t know. I think there are other things that they’re going to go after harder about her record. But it’s just one of these questions that kind of hangs over her prospective candidacy.

IFILL: OK. Well, we will see.

Thank you very much, Dan, Michael, Juana, John.

As Juana said to me earlier today -- never a dull moment.

Stay online all week long for the latest developments on these and other stories from the best reporters in Washington, our panelists. That’s, of course, at PBS.org/WashingtonWeek.

And we’ll see you next time on the WASHINGTON WEEK Webcast Extra.