It’s shaping up to be a big week on Capitol Hill, with a series of high-profile hearings and votes set to unfold in the coming hours and days.
First and foremost, Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch is set to begin his confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday — an event that will have many eyes peeled to his performance, as Congress officially vets and questions the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals judge.
Politico offered up the following assessment in a preview of his appearance: “Democrats plan to throw a barrage of attacks and exact a deep scrutiny of Gorsuch’s record. A real slip-up from the nominee could dominate the news cycle for days and cripple his prospects of getting confirmed.”
That hearing is set to begin at 11 a.m. ET.
The second congressional happening to keep tabs on is FBI Director James Comey’s testimony before the House Intelligence Committee on Monday. It’s expected to be an action-packed back-and-forth, with Comey purportedly preparing to tackle President Donald Trump’s claim that former President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower.
As of the writing of this piece, Comey has revealed that “the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 president election.”
He said the FBI typically doesn’t unveil such investigations while they are ongoing, but that the agency does rarely do so when there are “unusual circumstances where it is in the public interest.” This, he said, is one of those instances, confirming that the Trump campaign and some of its affiliated members are being included in the investigation.
And the third and final Capitol Hill happening to keep tabs on this week is Thursday’s scheduled vote on the Republicans’ Obamacare replacement — a measure Trump has thrown his full support behind. You can read more about that here.
“I just want to let the world know I am 100% in favor and these folks — and they are tough and they love their constituents and they love their country — these folks were nos, mostly nos yesterday and now every single one is a yes,” Trump said over the weekend of a recent meeting in which he claimed the change the minds of members of Congress on the health care repeal effort.
Stay tuned for updates.
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