THE BIG SHOW — Congress editor Elana Schor talked over Slack with congressional reporters Kyle Cheney and Nicholas Wu about Thursday night's prime-time Jan. 6 hearing: As accustomed as congressional reporters are to juggling lots of news, we're gearing up for a sprint to end all sprints. There will be as many as eight Jan. 6 committee hearings in the rest of June, starting with Thursday's. If you could give readers one sentence of advice on how best to watch the hearings, what would it be? NICHOLAS WU: You should read POLITICO and follow our coverage, but remember to take care of yourself throughout the whole process. KYLE CHENEY: The committee's singular purpose is to help connect their vast troves of information to everyday people who haven't followed every twist and turn, so part of the metric of their success will be whether it doesn't take work for viewers to understand why all of this matters. The bottom line is, they want people at home to really feel how close our democracy came to collapse and that the threat is not over but ongoing, and arguably intensifying. So view it all through that lens. I'll let you get away with answering the question you wish I had asked — for two sentences — just this once. The committee is stocked with many different types of lawmakers, from nationally famous Trump critic Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), to the constitutional law professor and Trump impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), to the retiring centrist Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.). Who's your pick for the sleeper player here, the possible breakout, and why? CHENEY: I'd watch out for Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.). She's one of the savviest members and best communicators that the committee has. She's not always the chattiest with reporters, so you won't see her making off-the-cuff comments a lot, but when she gets into gear, she can drive home important points more succinctly and powerfully than many of her colleagues. She showed this during the first impeachment of Donald Trump, and she worked as a lawmaker and staff on the only other impeachment inquiries in modern history. WU: My pick for breakout star is Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.). He's the kind of guy who's a relatively under-the-radar House player but is poised to move higher in the chamber. He has been somewhat of a conduit between the committee and the rest of the Democratic caucus, and has taken on a highly visible role on the select panel. As for a sleeper player? It's not like we haven't seen much of her before, especially as she's taken on a role as a top Trump critic, but my vote would be for Cheney. There's talk of a final report from the committee by September, but as Hill folks, we know that Congress isn't typically great at making its deadlines. CHENEY: I think the deadline will stick — in part because I think the committee wants to tie another public hearing to the release of its report. And because the report is expected to make policy proposals to address some of the threats to elections and to the security of the Capitol, the committee needs to release it on an early enough timetable for colleagues to act. The challenge for the committee has been deciding when to cut off the spigot of information that hasn't stopped flowing. Documents from the National Archives are still flooding in, and the committee is engaged in numerous lawsuits that might unlock additional troves of evidence. So if there's pressure to move the deadline, it'll be because they're still bringing in substantive information. WU: Congressional deadlines are notoriously slippery, but the panel is going to run up against the clock with the House expected to flip in November's elections. I'd expect them to stick to it. Kyle is absolutely right in noting they need time for Congress to try to act on any of their legislative proposals. There's only a few legislative weeks in the House's schedule after the November elections, after all, and Republicans are almost certainly going to halt the committee's work once they take control of the House. I was surprised to hear a friend who doesn't follow politics too closely say she's watching the first hearing on a date. Do you see these hearings breaking through as must-watch, Watergate-esque events for the general public? WU: This is a question I've been thinking about a lot lately. It's important to remember that Richard Nixon didn't resign from office until more than two years after the break-in at the DNC headquarters. We might not know the effects of this investigation for quite some time. The media and political environment have certainly changed a lot in the 50 years since then, and I think it's really hard to tell exactly how this is going to play with the American public. Polling shows that there are certainly other issues at top of mind for voters — gas prices, inflation, etc. — but the test for the panel is going to be to convince the public that they should care about and tune into this monthslong investigation. CHENEY: The most important differentiator between these hearings and Watergate is the splintering of the media environment and the willingness of pro-Trump media outlets to bombard their audience with a counter-narrative — that Jan. 6 was not really that bad, that the investigation is a partisan sham, that those arrested are "political prisoners" — without ever really confronting the substance of what occurred. The committee knows this is what they're up against, and I think that's part of the reason the committee is putting a ton of energy into stagecraft — not because it's something Congress should care about, but because they have no choice given the forces arrayed against them. I'd be surprised if this weren't the new normal for how high-profile reports are presented in the future. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com.
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