The Koch network, including Freedom Partners, Americans for Prosperity and the LIBRE Initiative, has come out in support of an immigration deal pitched by Democratic leadership that would create a pathway to permanent citizenship for 1.8 million "Dreamers" while giving $25 billion to a border wall. The White House's proposal was a temporary extension of DACA for a smaller population.
Why it matters: The Koch network is hugely influential with Republicans and certain factions within the White House. Its support could tip the scale toward finally clenching an immigration deal.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected a request from Pennsylvania Republicans to halt the implementation of a court-drawn congressional map, which is expected to make elections more competitive and put several Republican-held seats in play for Democrats.
The backdrop: The decision comes just hours after a panel of federal judges in Pennsylvania dismissed a similar challenge, saying that Republican lawmakers who brought the suit had no legal standing. In both cases, Republicans argued that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overstepped its authority when issuing a new congressional map last month.
Democrats on the Homeland Security Committee released a statement Monday saying the four bombings that have killed two and injured others in Austin, Texas “must be classified as ongoing terrorist attacks and should be investigated as such.”
“For too long we have focused only on certain sources of terrorism and violence while ignoring others.”
What's next: The three Democrats, Reps. Bennie Thompson, Cedric Richmond, and Sheila Jackson Lee, are demanding to know whether the attacks are ideologically or racially motivated and called on the FBI to brief Congress before Thursday on the matter.
The Supreme Court has decided to hear the Trump administration’s appeal of a Ninth Circuit ruling that allowed criminal immigrants who would be subject to deportation to be released after they had served time in prison.
The state of play: In an earlier, similar ruling last month, the Supreme Court said that some immigrants who have been arrested could be held and detained without bond indefinitely during their immigration proceedings. However, that case was sent back to a lower court for other questions, which means that it could still be heard again by the court.
In a colorful deep dive into life in the West Wing, New York Magazine's Olivia Nuzzi profiled Hope Hicks and what she has learned in Washington. One key detail:
"A second source who meets regularly with the president told me that Hicks acted almost as an embodiment of the faculties the Trump lacked — like memory. 'He’ll be talking, and then right in the middle he’ll be like, ‘Hope, what was that … thing?’ When the name of a senator or congressman or journalist came up, Trump would prompt Hicks to provide a history of their interactions, asking, 'Do we like him?' And she f---ing remembers!'"
— Olivia Nuzzi on Hicks' role in the Trump White House
Senate Republicans believe a campaign trail assault from President Trump is their key to retaining a majority in this fall's midterm elections, per Politico. Their primary target races are five conservative states with vulnerable Democrats — West Virginia, North Dakota, Indiana, Missouri and Montana — as well as battleground states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.
The big picture: The Senate GOP doesn't see President Trump's national unpopularity as a hindrance given this year's Senate map. Sen. John Thune told Politico that Republicans "got to have some intensity in our base," believing that Trump can bring that intensity on the trail. Of course, it's worth noting that the last two Republican candidates who saw an in-person push from Trump — Roy Moore in Alabama and Rick Saccone in Pennsylvania — both lost their elections.
The House and Senate need to pass their massive 2018 spending bill before the government shuts down on Friday. Senior sources from both parties on Capitol Hill tell me they expect they'll get the deal done — though there's plenty of last minute haggling.
The big picture: This spending bill will cost more than $1 trillion and will further add to the deficit, which is likely to reach at least $800 billion for the 2018 fiscal year. Republican leaders and Trump will sell the spending package as a much-needed boost to military spending. House defense hawks, led by House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry, campaigned aggressively for this boost. And Democrats will rightly be thrilled that they've forced Republicans to capitulate to fund so many of their domestic priorities.
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) has offered fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe a temporary job working on election security in his office “so that he can reach the needed length of service” to retire and receive his government pension, according to the Washington Post. A spokeswoman for McCabe told the Post: "We are considering all options."
Would it work? It seems so. McCabe held a law enforcement position with the federal government for more than the required 20 years, meaning that he'd only need to work until his 50th birthday to receive his full retirement benefits. And, per the Post's conversations with a former federal official, "The job doesn't matter so much as the fact that he's working within the federal government with the same retirement benefits until or after his 50th birthday."
Michael Bromwich, the lawyer representing fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, responded to President Trump's morning tweets about his client and the FBI, insinuating that Trump's intervention had politicized the process behind McCabe's dismissal:
Democrats lead Republicans by 10 points in voter preference for the midterm elections, according to a new NBC/WSJ poll. Of registered voters, 50% prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress, while 40% want a Republican one. That's a wider margin that the 49-43 lead Democrats held in the same poll in January.
The state of play: These results come as President Trump's approval rating has ticked upward. The same poll found that 43% of voters approve of his job performance, which is four points higher than his approval rating earlier this year.
Andrew McCabe says President Trump asked him: “What was it like when your wife lost? ... So tell me, what was it like to lose?" McCabe — the former FBI deputy director who was fired Friday night, 26 hours short of being eligible for a full pension — says that in three or four interactions, President Trump was disparaging each time of his wife, Dr. Jill McCabe, a failed Virginia state Senate candidate in 2015. John Dowd, a Trump lawyer, told me: "I am told that the P never made that statement according to two others who were present."
The big picture: Axios has learnedthat McCabe has met with special counsel Robert Mueller, and has turned over Comey-style memos documenting his conversations with Trump. The memos include corroboration by McCabe of former FBI Director James Comey's account of his own firing by Trump.
Kicking off a series of morning tweets, President Trump accused former FBI Director James Comey of lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee during testimony last May. At that time, Comey stated that he had not authorized an FBI employee to be an anonymous source for a reporter in matters relating to the Trump-Russia investigation or the Clinton email investigation.
The inspiration: Trump saw a Fox & Friends segment this morning, which juxtaposed fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe's statement defending his actions at the bureau with Comey's testimony from last year.
