Subject: POLITICO Huddle : McConnell makes his move on AUMF -- Ash Carter: We need to accelerate ISIL fight
From: "POLITICO Huddle" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2016 07:42:07 -0600

01/22/2016 08:40 AM EDT

By Lauren French (@laurennfrench & [email-masked])

SHOT: MCCONNELL MAKES HIS MOVE ON AUMF. Seung Min Kim with the story, "Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made a quiet move this week on a sweeping war authorization measure written by one of his most hawkish members - an effort to pressure the White House to craft a war proposal more to the GOP's liking. President Barack Obama sent lawmakers an authorization for the use of military force last year, but it went nowhere in the Republican-led Capitol. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has drafted his own open-ended version targeting the Islamic State that has no limits on ground troops or geographic scope - an approach McConnell favors." politi.co/1P96rv7

CHASER: CARTER - IT'S TIME TO ACCELERATE THE ISIL FIGHT. Ash Carter, the secretary of defense, writes in POLITICO Magazine, "ISIL is a cancer that threatens to spread. And like all cancers, you can't cure the disease just by cutting out the tumor. You have to eliminate it wherever it has spread, and stop it from coming back. The coalition military campaign plan the United States has developed, and which our key allies support, focuses on three military objectives: One, destroy the ISIL parent tumor in Iraq and Syria by collapsing its two power centers in Mosul, Iraq and Raqqah, Syria. These cities constitute ISIL's military, political, economic and ideological centers of gravity, which is
 why our plan has big arrows pointing toward both. Two, combat the emerging metastases of the ISIL tumor worldwide wherever it appears. Three, our most important mission: Protect the homeland." politi.co/1Qj1QFC

THE REPUBLICAN SPLIT AND DONOR DOLLARS. ProPublica's Derek Willis reports, "The Republican split that defines this year's presidential campaign has been on display in Congress for years, with the most conservative wing battling party leaders on issues from spending to immigration. A ProPublica analysis of campaign donations highlights just how profound this gap has become in the House of Representatives. The analysis shows that the Republican leadership, including Speaker Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, raises money from a vastly different set of political action committees than members further to the right. In fact, the donor bases for Ryan and McCarthy are actually more
 similar to some Democrats than to their colleagues in the main conservative grouping, the Freedom Caucus." bit.ly/1Qj3kzU

HAPPY FRIDAY. Stay warm, stay safe and have fun. Please send tips to [email-masked] and follow along on Twitter @laurennfrench. 

TODAY IN CONGRESS - Nada.

AROUND THE HILL - Snow.

CONGRESS MAY BE STOOD UP BY SHKRELI. Vanity Fair's Emily Jane Fox reports, "A congressional committee subpoenaing pharma bro Martin Shkreli has, like most things involving the 32-year-old, kicked up quite the back-and-forth. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform ordered him to appear in a hearing next Tuesday to discuss drug pricing, in the wake of Shkreli's now infamous decision to raise the price of a drug used to treat H.I.V. and cancer patients 55-fold overnight last September as the C.E.O. of Turing Pharmaceuticals. But it's not yet known whether Shkreli, who threw smug jabs about the request through his Twitter page, will actually head to D.C. First, because his
 tweets suggest he's less than interested in appeasing Congress. And second, because it's unclear whether or not Shkreli is even allowed to attend the hearing." bit.ly/1QpepkS

MAKING MOVES. Mark LeDuc and Olivia Kurtz have both been tapped for new jobs with Sen. Susan Collins, the chairman of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging. LeDuc will serve as the committee's staff director and Kurtz will serve as deputy staff director.

EVERYBODY HATES CRUZ. The AP's Erica Warner is the latest reporter to delve into Ted Cruz's unpopularity with his Republican colleagues. "Republican senators are confronting an unsettling possibility: Sen. Ted Cruz, their least favorite colleague, stands within reach of becoming the party's presidential nominee and standard-bearer. Worse than that, many GOP lawmakers and aides fear the Texas senator could ruin Republicans' chances of hanging onto control of the Senate in November's elections, alienating voters in a half-dozen key swing states with his hardline stances on issues from immigration to abortion. And yet, these fellow Republicans say they're essentially powerless to stop him. Any
 attempt to weaken Cruz in his primary campaign against Donald Trump and other GOP candidates risks bolstering his argument that he's running against the "Washington cartel."" bit.ly/1RWxTPn

....BUT THE STORY CREATED A HE-SAID SHE-SAID CONTROVERSY. Jim Morrill with the Charlotte Observer, "U.S. Sen. Richard Burr on Thursday strongly denied a news report that said he had told people he would vote for Democrat Bernie Sanders over Republican Ted Cruz. Burr's aides asked The Associated Press for a retraction. An AP spokesman said the news agency was sticking by its story. "I will support whoever the GOP nominee is," Burr tweeted. "@AP is trying to create discord where there isn't discord by telling lies." Burr was responding to an AP story by reporter Erica Werner about Cruz's unpopularity with fellow Republican senators." bit.ly/1K10Zdq

GET YOUR SLEDS OUT. Ben Nuckols and Seth Borenstein with the AP, "The U.S. Capitol Police said sledding on Capitol Hill - which only recently became legal after an act of Congress - would be welcome for the first time in decades, as long as conditions are safe." apne.ws/1Qj4cV2

PAYMENT TO IRAN QUESTIONED. From the Wall Street Journal's Jay Solomon, "A deal that sent $1.7 billion in U.S. funds to Iran, announced alongside the freeing of five Americans from Iranian jails, has emerged as a new flashpoint amid a claim in Tehran that the transaction amounted to a ransom payment.....The White House described the settlement as a victory for taxpayers, arguing that the U.S. was likely to lose in arbitration under way in The Hague, Netherlands, and could have been held liable for billions more if the process had dragged on." http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=799a834b87cfd3ce44cbb5e4eecf3d393e7d721730ddc13518f4246b815f9bc5

HOW AMERICA'S MOST BORING CITY GOT COOL: As the February 1st Iowa caucuses approaches, candidates, journalists and politicos from across the country will descend upon the Hawkeye state. The newest installment of POLITICO's Magazine's "What Works" series explores how the capital of Iowa, Des Moines, transformed itself from one of the least dynamic cities in America into a magnet for creative millennials and entrepreneurs. politi.co/1lAMtgN

THURSDAY'S TRIVIA WINNER - Joseph Pratt has the first to correctly name Seattle as the world record-holder for the largest snowball fight. The snowy game included 5834 people.

TODAY'S TRIVIA - Joseph has today's question. Several of the world leaders who have addressed Congress were actually born or died on American soil, but only one did both. Who was it? The first person to correctly answer gets a mention in the next day's Huddle. Email me at [email-masked]

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