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☀️ @PunchbowlNews AM:

What is @LeaderMcConnell doing?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock with noise-canceling headphones on, you know that the left has been clamoring for Schumer to blow up the legislative filibuster.

 @PunchbowlNews @LeaderMcConnell Progressive groups are spending $$ it to happen. @AJentleson has made a cottage industry out advocating for the elimination of the 60-vote threshold. @AOC wants it gone. @BarackObama too. Even Harry Reid says it’s a matter of when, not if, the filibuster is gets thrown out.
@PunchbowlNews @LeaderMcConnell @AJentleson @AOC @BarackObama So what is McConnell’s first ask of Schumer? To guarantee Schumer won’t do the very thing that most of his party wants to see him do.
@PunchbowlNews @LeaderMcConnell @AJentleson @AOC @BarackObama And that’s what’s holding up the entire Senate -- McConnell's ask of Schumer to guarantee he won't blow up the filibuster. The chamber can’t efficiently function without an organizing resolution, and without some clarity on the filibuster, they won't have an organizing resolution
@PunchbowlNews @LeaderMcConnell @AJentleson @AOC @BarackObama And that's why @JoeBiden nominees are moving slowly in the new president’s first week. Despite being in the minority, Republicans still technically chair committees.
@PunchbowlNews @LeaderMcConnell @AJentleson @AOC @BarackObama @JoeBiden It’s not clear when McConnell and Schumer will cut a deal. Everyone was very polite this week, but each day that goes by ratchets up the pressure on the two leaders.
@PunchbowlNews @LeaderMcConnell @AJentleson @AOC @BarackObama @JoeBiden This is news: @SpeakerPelosi told donors on a Zoom call Thurs that she wanted to pass Biden’s Covid relief bill in two weeks using budget reconciliation. But Pelosi has to wait until mid-Feb now because the Senate isn’t yet organized.
@PunchbowlNews @LeaderMcConnell @AJentleson @AOC @BarackObama @JoeBiden @SpeakerPelosi So what’s the way out? What is McConnell’s endgame here? Schumer’s? McConnell will push Schumer as far as he can, but the Kentucky Republican knows Schumer can’t give in on this, not in his first showdown as majority leader.
@PunchbowlNews @LeaderMcConnell @AJentleson @AOC @BarackObama @JoeBiden @SpeakerPelosi The harder McConnell pushes, in fact, the more it helps Schumer by making McConnell look unreasonable. This becomes more true the longer it goes on, so McConnell has to judge this carefully.
@PunchbowlNews @LeaderMcConnell @AJentleson @AOC @BarackObama @JoeBiden @SpeakerPelosi Schumer and the White House also know that if the New York Democrat caves to McConnell here, then Biden’s progressive legislative agenda is dead before it even gets rolled out.
@PunchbowlNews @LeaderMcConnell @AJentleson @AOC @BarackObama @JoeBiden @SpeakerPelosi McConnell, for his part, has several arguments, some institutional, some political. First, whatever goes around, comes around. Democrats weakened the filibuster on nominations in 2013 to push through Obama’s executive-branch nominees.
@PunchbowlNews @LeaderMcConnell @AJentleson @AOC @BarackObama @JoeBiden @SpeakerPelosi And then, in 2017, Republicans went nuclear to put Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court. So if Democrats do this now, they’ll pay a price the next time there’s a GOP president and GOP Congress.
@PunchbowlNews @LeaderMcConnell @AJentleson @AOC @BarackObama @JoeBiden @SpeakerPelosi Second, without the filibuster, the Senate will continue to morph into the House -- the majority just rolls over the minority.
@PunchbowlNews @LeaderMcConnell @AJentleson @AOC @BarackObama @JoeBiden @SpeakerPelosi Third, if Democrats get rid of the filibuster, then 2022 senators in swing states -- read Mark Kelly -- are going to have to take some politically tough votes..
ourth, McConnell notes that 26 Senate Democrats and now Vice President Kamala Harris signed a 2017 letter saying they wanted to keep the 60-vote threshold.
There are several Democrats who are on McConnell's side right now: Sens. Joe Manchin (W-Va.), Jon Tester (Mont.), Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) and a few others. But if this standoff drags out, even these Democrats might begin to side with Schumer.
In the end, the two leaders may have to settle for a verbal agreement, a truce of sorts. Schumer commits to keeping the filibuster, as long as McConnell agrees to work in a reasonable manner.
Alternatively, Schumer could just blow up the filibuster as part of the organizing resolution, if he can get all his Democrats in line.

Or a bipartisan group of senators may get tired of waiting and force the leaders into a deal.

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GOOD FRIDAY MORNING. Here’s how your American government is ending the year -- and the TRUMP presidency.

-- THE GOVT runs out of spending authority this evening at midnight. Typically, the govt avoids shutting down officially if there is a spending bill on the horizon, so we may be spared that drama. Divided govt began in 2019 w a shutdown, and it may end with another funding lapse.

-- CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS are preparing the second-largest federal rescue package in our nation’s history, and no one has seen it just days before it will get a vote.

-- ALL OF THE POWER is centralized among four people and their aides: @SpeakerPelosi , @senatemajldr , @SenSchumer and @GOPLeader

-- PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP has continued his, um, mastery of Congress, by nearly blowing up the talks by demanding large stimulus checks at the last moment -- this is per @JStein_WaPo, the master of the direct check, at the WaPo.
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MAYBE IT’S THE COLD, the impending wintry mix that’s bearing down on Washington. Maybe it’s because we’re about to leave 2020 -- that wretched, disgusting year -- in the rear view.

WHO KNOWS WHAT EXACTLY PROMPTED THIS, but reality is beginning to intrude in Washington.

REALITY 1) @JOEBIDEN is going to be the president. This was obvious to most breathing, thinking human beings with a pulse, but many Republican members of Congress were willfully blind to it.

BUT A FEW OF THEM BEGAN JOINING THE REST OF US on Planet Earth on Monday. @SenThomTillis called BIDEN the “presumptive president.” @LindseyGrahamSC -- who was calling around to state election officials a few weeks ago -- said “it’s a very, very narrow path for the president."

@SenThomTillis @LindseyGrahamSC SEN. ROY BLUNT (R-Mo.), the chair of the inauguration, said: “We’ll deal with Vice President Biden as the president-elect. The president continues obviously to have all the options he has available to him, but the electoral vote today was significant.”

@SenThomTillis @LindseyGrahamSC RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN took it further than most Republicans, straight up congratulating BIDEN after a month of saying he was waiting for the process to play out.
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☀️ This morning’s newsy @PunchbowlNews AM

"Trump's role in the riot"

Here’s a challenge: Make the argument that Donald Trump had nothing to do with the riot at the Capitol after the first few days of the impeachment trial.

It’s damn tough.
The Democratic impeachment managers did something Wednesday that desperately needed to be done: They laid out in a thorough, comprehensive and digestible manner what Trump said and did in the months and days leading up to the bloody Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

They covered all aspects of Trump’s shocking behavior -- his provocative tweets, TV interviews and speeches claiming the election was being stolen; his months-long campaign to undermine the American public’s faith in the election results;

his efforts, both public and private, to overturn those results once it was clear he lost, especially his attempts to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence;

his repeated appeals to his supporters to come to Washington on Jan. 6, the same day Congress was set to certify Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory;
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☀️ @PunchbowlNews AM: Problem Solvers Caucus grows

One of the trends we’ve noticed in this Congress is that middle-of-the-road caucuses are getting larger and attempting to grab more power.

We noted yesterday that the bipartisan Senate group that helped lay the groundwork for a Covid deal grew to 16 -- the Senate Sweet 16™, as we’re calling it.

News here from the House: The Problem Solvers Caucus has grown to 56 members, evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. @RepJoshG and @RepTomReed chair this group

@RepTomReed News here from the House: The Problem Solvers Caucus has grown to 56 members, evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Tom Reed (R-N.Y.) chair this group.

@RepTomReed I have dogged the Problem Solvers Caucus a good deal, but both of these groups have an opportunity here if they play their hand right.
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G’morning from the Capitol, where we’re about to have a pro forma session in both chambers during which nothing will get done. This begins at 9

In the meantime, here’s what we said in Playbook this morning.

Headline: "Cyclone of uncertainty and chaos"

WITH 27 DAYS LEFT IN HIS PRESIDENCY, and the nation on the doorstep of Christmas, DONALD JOHN TRUMP has sucked Americans into a violent cyclone of uncertainty and chaos.

HE IS PARDONING CRIMINALS at a breakneck clip. Last night it was MANAFORT, who was in prison on tax charges, R STONE and CHARLES KUSHNER, IVANKA's father in law. Earlier this week crooked politicians and other unseemly actors. @BenSasse called the pardons “rotten to the core.”

>@maggieNYT and @nytmike put it this way: TRUMP “is at perhaps his most unleashed.”

@maggieNYT @nytmike TRUMP -- as he has so many times before -- has thrown the government he is supposed to be leading into an intractable crisis.
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These calls can contain crucial details regarding the person’s location and medical condition.


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