| | | | | Breaking tonight: The Senate has confirmed Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions to become President Donald Trump's attorney general. | | Warren's moment galvanizes the left | | Coming to an anti-Donald Trump protest near you: "Nevertheless, she persists" -- the complaint Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell offered last night as he silenced Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts.
Warren's attempt to read a decades-old letter by Coretta Scott King critical of Sessions on the Senate floor late Tuesday led Republicans to invoke "Rule 19" forbidding senators from impugning one another. For progressives fresh off the women's marches, it became another galvanizing moment, one fueled by charges of sexism. And Warren, silenced on the Senate floor, was handed a megaphone outside it. She read King's letter on Facebook in a video now viewed by more than 8 million people. She went through a series of interviews. And Twitter hashtags like #LetLizSpeak and #ShePersisted ruled the day.
Nightcap's big takeaway: The Democratic Party united behind a single figure -- Warren -- today for the first time since the election. Her long-term appeal to the political center is still a question, but Warren has been elevated to the forefront of the Trump resistance, and has captured the Democratic base's zeitgeist. Just consider these two tweets: | | | The nagging fear in some Democrats' minds: McConnell is shrewd. He's proven it so many times that it's impossible to dismiss this move as simply a strategic misstep. The Washington Post's James Hohmann put it well: "Perhaps he is strategically trying to elevate Warren. Maybe he thinks that life will be harder for the 10 Democrats up for re-election next year in states Trump carried if Warren, not Chuck Schumer, is the face of their caucus." | | Per CNN's Ashley Killough: President Donald Trump's nominee for the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, was critical about Trump's Twitter attacks on the "so-called judge" in the travel ban case in a meeting with Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal.
What Blumenthal said happened: "He said very specifically that they were demoralizing and disheartening and he characterized them very specifically that way. I said they were more than disheartening and I said to him that he has an obligation to make his views clear to the American people, so they understand how abhorrent or unacceptable President Trump's attacks on the judiciary are."
For the record: A Trump administration official confirmed the Gorsuch meeting and said those comments are accurate.
That came after this: Today, Trump declared that even a "bad high school student" could understand the language of his travel ban and find in his favor. | | "I was a good student. I understand things. I comprehend very well, better than I think almost anybody." -- President Donald Trump at the National Sheriff's Association's winter meeting today. | | | Trump considered delaying his travel ban | | From CNN's Kevin Liptak: President Donald Trump -- even as he blasted lawyers contesting his immigration executive order -- detailed for the first time Wednesday his own hesitations about the controversial plan before it was signed. Trump said he argued before the order was finalized for giving travelers a month's notice before cutting off entry to the United States. But he said he was overruled by law enforcement officials, who he didn't name, alleging the delay could prompt a flood of dangerous terrorists into the country.
"The law enforcement people said to me, 'Oh, you can't give a notice,' " Trump said at a conference for the Major Cities Chiefs Association. "I suggested a month. And I said, 'What about a week?' They said you can't do that because then people are going to pour in before the toughness." | | Trump vs. Nordstrom: President Donald Trump tweeted a jab at Nordstrom department stores from his personal account this morning, which was then retweeted by his official @POTUS account.
The problem? @POTUS, the official Twitter account for the President, had so far been reserved for government issues. Press secretary Sean Spicer defended Trump's use of the @POTUS handle to discuss his daughter's business. "This was less about his family's business and (more) an attack on his daughter," Spicer said. | | 3 things you might have missed today | | More on Trump's travel ban: When President Donald Trump read from US immigration law to law enforcement this morning, he declared that even a "bad high school student" could understand the language and find in his favor. More from CNN's Kevin Liptak.
Reconciliation Plus: Top GOP lawmakers have a strategy of including Obamacare replacement measures in a repeal bill that would roll back big chunks of the Affordable Care Act. A House GOP aide told CNN that the strategy is being referred to as "Reconciliation Plus." More from CNN's MJ Lee. Is Trump violating his lease? Democrats on the House Oversight Committee want the General Services Administration to determine whether Trump is violating the hotel lease because Trump rents the space for the Trump International Hotel from the GSA, making him effectively landlord and tenant at the same time. More from CNNMoney's Jill Disis and Cristina Alesci. | | | We'd love to share our other newsletters with you. Check out Five Things for Your New Day, CNN's morning newsletter. Give us five minutes, and we'll brief you on all the news and buzz people will be talking about. | | | Get the Nightcap, a comprehensive summary of the most important political news, delivered to your inbox daily. | | | | | |
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