Subject: POLITICO Huddle: McConnell's SCOTUS fight -- Congressional Democrats in awe of Sanders' money and message
From: "POLITICO Huddle" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2016 06:25:03 -0600

02/22/2016 07:23 AM EDT

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

MCCONNELL'S SCOTUS FIGHT. John Bresnahan reports, "Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been involved in Supreme Court nomination fights going back to when Richard Nixon was still in the White House. But the 74-year-old Kentucky Republican now faces a nomination struggle unlike any he has taken part in before, and the stakes couldn't be higher - for him, the Senate, the White House and the Supreme Court. McConnell is trying to prevent a sitting president with 334 days left in office from naming a replacement for the late Justice Antonin Scalia, an unprecedented assertion of authority by the Senate and one that could alter the balance of power between the White House and Capitol Hill."
 http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=b0dcc4a1616941fe83ea8936e25fe9ac81846318c57b24b1ec6f7b1fea20b836

THE SUPREME COURT SETS THE SCENE FOR WASHINGTON THIS WEEK. Jennifer Steinhauer reports, "Members of Congress will return to work on Monday, convening for the first time since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in what is expected to be a protracted fight over any nominee offered by President Obama to replace the justice on the Supreme Court. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the minority leader, will take the Senate floor on Monday afternoon, when he is expected to chastise Republicans for using the battle over the nomination to delegitimize President Obama and undermine the government's basic system of checks and balances...Republicans - who have struggled to form a unified strategy for
 handling the nomination - will be more cautious in their approach. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said shortly after Justice Scalia's death on Feb. 13 that Mr. Obama should not bring a replacement nominee to Capitol Hill, but on Monday he is expected to contain his remarks on the subject to tributes." http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=b0dcc4a1616941fe42cae9e8b4e8386ad91ea9e20d4d76242f7c6b83fffb3418

HILL DEMOCRATS IN AWE OF SANDERS' MONEY AND MESSAGE. Yours truly and John Bresnahan report, "They haven't endorsed him, and many think he doesn't stand a chance to win. They're overwhelmingly supporting Hillary Clinton. Yet Democrats are in awe of their schlumpy, old colleague Bernie Sanders. Hill Democrats are scrambling to figure out how they can capture some of Sanders' magic - and his ability to conjure up campaign cash, seemingly out of thin air, from an apparently endless stream of supporters. They're also stunned by how "The Bern" has tapped into the zeitgeist of college-age voters, a key demographic for the party in a presidential election year. That surge of support is something
 Democrats haven't witnessed since the glory days of Barack Obama back in 2008." http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=b0dcc4a1616941fee99d9fad1d94dd040dc2c5143fdeaad1570b5300619f69fd

HAPPY Monday, February 22, 2016 and welcome to the Huddle. We know you have the Monday blues but cheer up because it is National Margarita Day - and 5 p.m. will come faster than you know. You can find me at [email-masked] and @laurennfrench on Twitter.

TODAY IN CONGRESS: The Senate will hold a roll call vote Monday at 5:30 p.m. The House is in recess until Tuesday. 

AROUND THE HILL (AND BEYOND D.C.) - Michigan Rep. Dan Kildee is hosting a congressional visit to Flint today where lawmakers, including Rep. Elijah Cummings and Scott Peters, will meet those impacted by the water crisis.  

THE SANDERS' LEGACY. Andrew Taylor the AP, "Bernie Sanders came to Washington as an activist, not a legislator. The Democratic presidential candidate has preferred rabble-rousing to the schmoozing required to get bills passed. So it's not surprising that his 25-year congressional career is defined by what he's opposed - big banks, the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, tax cuts for the wealthy - rather than what he's accomplished. But he has chalked up his share of victories as a congressman and senator. His successes in shepherding legislation into law involve less sexy stuff such as emergency funding for veterans' health care, help for dairy farmers and securing money for community health centers
 after giving up on his "single payer" health care plan." http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=b0dcc4a1616941fe1e13348943c3080bc653d04d94f04074540e2d895a916f61

MAKING MOVES - Lauren Blair Aronson has left the Committee on Education and the Workforce to join the Ways and Means Committee as a press secretary. -- Alee Lockman has left Sen. Steve Daines' office to join the communications team at the 2016 Republican National Convention.

SUPREME COURT DECLINES NC REDISTRICTING FIGHT. Ariane de Vogue for CNN, "The Supreme Court late Friday declined to put on hold a lower court ruling that invalidated congressional redistricting maps in North Carolina. Early this month, a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina ruled that maps for two districts were unconstitutional, and ordered the state to redraw their lines within two weeks. The panel said that race played an impermissible role in the drawing of the districts. The state redrew the maps but asked the Supreme Court to grant a stay that would allow the old maps to remain in effect pending further appeal." 
http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=b0dcc4a1616941fef78b43b26b2a676e3dc46ec3e52b55b0009032085bfe8dc7

THE HOUSE SEATS MOST LIKELY TO FLIP. My colleagues over at POLITICO PRO outline the 10 seats host likely to change parties in 2016. Theodoric Meyer, Elena Schneider and Kevin Robillard, write "The districts in the greatest danger of changing parties are starting to become clear. Though we're squarely in the middle of a decade, redistricting figures to play a major role this cycle as multiple states grapple with new maps." They are: FL-02 (Democratic Rep. Gwen Graham); FL-10 (Republican Rep. Dan Webster; VA-04 (Open, Republican Rep. Randy Forbes); IA-01 (Republican Rep. Rod Blum); NV-04 (Republican Rep. Cresent Hardy); NH-01 (Republican Rep. Frank Guinta); IL-10 (Republican Rep. Robert
 Dold); NE-02 (Democratic Rep. Brad Ashford); FL-13 (Open, Republican Rep. David Jolly); and NY-24 (Republican Rep. John Katko). Subscribers can read more here: http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=b0dcc4a1616941fe78dc2d7a4de73d2bd780723c69876e45b9a779336020cba5

GROWING CONCERN OVER ISIS IN LIBYA. Eric Schmitt for the New York Times, "Even as American intelligence agencies say the number of Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria has dropped to about 25,000 from a high of about 31,500, partly because of the United States-led air campaign there, the group's ranks in Libya have roughly doubled in the same period, to about 6,500 fighters. More than a dozen American and allied officials spoke of their growing concern about the militant organization's expanding reach from Libya and across Africa on rules of anonymity because the discussions involved intelligence and military planning." http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=b0dcc4a1616941fef9f76effae790ec3bfba5e3162bfc6a19ca9c8ec084d7c49

THIS WEEK ON OFF MESSAGE: "If Don King had been born white he'd be Donald Trump..." Rev. Al Sharpton talks with Glenn Thrush about what drives Donald Trump in today's episode of the Off Message podcast. Sharpton also discusses Bernie Sanders' Brooklyn roots and his record on race, and what it'll take for one of the candidates to receive his endorsement. Plus: he weighs in on Black Lives Matter and evaluates the Obama administration on criminal justice. Listen to the full interview and get every episode by subscribing to the podcast on iTunes http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=b0dcc4a1616941febe0010455c0433d6883416f07921d4ea09c079efeff757d3 or Soundcloud http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=b0dcc4a1616941fe490cca3275d0856034c8364c82ae460c0e9f4d870914eb32

FRIDAY'S TRIVIA WINNER - Kenny Harrill was the first to correctly answer that President Grover Cleveland's nomination of Rufus Peckham was the last time a Republican-majority Senate confirmed a Democratic president's nominee for the Supreme Court.

TODAY'S TRIVIA -Keeping with the Supreme Court theme. Only two justices have ever graced our national currency. Who were they and on what dominations did each appear? The first person to correctly answer gets a mention in the next day's Huddle. E-mail [email-masked] 

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