| | | | |  | | By Katherine Tully-McManus and Marianne LeVine | Presented by The American Health Care Association | With an assist from Jordain Carney DIFI TO LEAVE THE SENATE — A “legend.” A “titan.” That is how Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s colleagues referred to her on Tuesday following her announcement that the oldest member of the Senate will not be seeking reelection. COONS REFLECTS: Back in 1988, Feinstein took a ride with a campaign volunteer for some forgotten New York candidate, from the airport to downtown Manhattan, chatting for close to an hour along the way. That volunteer would join her in the Senate more than 20 years later: Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.). He recalled that ride on Tuesday and soaking in her approach and perspective. “What was striking to me was that she saw New York from a mayor's eyes and had a mayor's sense of insight about services and housing and homelessness and police and public safety and education,” said Coons, who was working for the Coalition for the Homeless back in ‘88. “She was sharp and engaging and funny and warm,” he recalled. A TRAILBLAZER: Feinstein has been an undeniable trailblazer for women. When she first ran for Senate in 1992 there were only two women in the chamber. Now there are 25. Before that, she became acting mayor of San Francisco under tragic circumstances following the 1978 slayings of then-San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. She later chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee. While Feinstein has brushed off criticism about her age and competency to serve in recent years, she also gave up a few key positions amid concerns in her later years about her acuity, including leading the Judiciary Committee Democrats and declining to serve as president pro tempore of the Senate.
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Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is bowing out at the end of her term. | Francis Chung/POLITICO | IT’S ON: The race for her seat, of course, is already underway. Democratic Reps. Katie Porter and Adam Schiff didn’t wait for Feinstein's official announcement before jumping into the race and another Democrat, Rep. Barbara Lee, is expected to announce soon. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) expects that the field could grow. “It is harder to jump in before someone makes that announcement… which means that there may still be others out there,” he told Marianne on Tuesday. California’s “top two” primary system is also sure to play a role. “The calculation if you're a California elected official of ‘I just need to finish in the top two’ is very different than ‘I’ve got to win my party's primary,’” said Kaine. “Most people feel like they could finish in the top two.” (Politicians are known to have delusions of grandeur, of course.)
| | A message from The American Health Care Association: Nursing homes across the country are facing a historic labor crisis, forcing many facilities to limit patient admissions or worse, permanently close. The long term care labor crisis has affected all aspects of health care, creating bottlenecks in hospitals. A federal staffing mandate for nursing homes without resources to help with recruitment would make things worse. Help us hire, don’t require. | | | GOOD MORNING! Welcome to Huddle, the play-by-play guide to all things Capitol Hill, on this Wednesday, Feb. 15, where your co-Huddle hosts are still in awe of Maggie Rogers’ performance last night at the Anthem. OH, HEY, CRA — The Congressional Review Act is back in action, folks. The once obscure law empowers Congress to rein in the regulatory state, which Republicans love to do. When an administration finalizes a rule, a clock starts to give Congress 60 legislative working days to strike that rule down via a resolution. And only a simple majority is needed - no filibuster required. Republicans have a few tee’d up for after the President’s Day recess. “Hopefully we’ll get votes on a number of them when we get back after the break. I think there's a good chance on Hagerty, there's a Capito one. There's a Braun one, a whole bunch,” Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) told Huddle on Tuesday. TTYL, ESG: Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) has a CRA resolution on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing, that would roll back the Department of Labor’s rulemaking to allow fiduciaries to take ESG factors into consideration when choosing retirement investments. “You cannot direct funds in any fiduciary way to ESG. You’ve gotta go for whatever is going to give you the best financial return,” Braun said on Tuesday. “That doesn't mean that someone couldn't choose to tell their broker to invest in ESG.” Braun said his measure needs one more Democrat, in addition to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) who is already backing it, in support to clear the Senate. “We're gonna keep working on ‘em and I don't think we'll know for sure until it goes on the floor,” he added.
| | | | STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today. | | | | | WOAH, WOTUS: Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) is looking to permanently repeal the Biden administration’s waters of the U.S. — or WOTUS, which Republicans say is overreaching and will burden farmers and businesses. (The WOTUS rule determines which waters and wetlands fall under federal protection, and is a decades-long battle in Congress, the courts and federal agencies.) Capito expects a vote in March. “I think we've got a good shot at getting Democratic votes because this is impacting farm lands and any kind of construction, mining, all these things,” Capito said Tuesday, calling the Biden administration’s WOTUS “way far afield from reasonableness.” (Needless to say, even if the measures pass the House and Senate, President Joe Biden is expected to veto them.) ARE WE IN THE E.R.A. ERA? Senate Democrats want to find out if a broadly popular idea from the 70’s still has the juice in the modern era. They are eyeing a vote on the Equal Rights Amendment in the coming months. “I think there will be a vote,” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) told Marianne. The ERA promises equal rights to women and reads, in part, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to hold a hearing in the near future on the issue. Whether it can pass is another question. “I know where we have support, in fact I think we have unanimous support among Democrats. And Sen. Murkowski and Sen. Collins are working on their Republican colleagues,” Cardin said. “We've never tested this before.” Timeline: The amendment then needed the approval of three-fourths of the state legislatures before 1979, a deadline set by Congress. More than half of the states ratified the amendment within the first year, and 35 states ratified it before 1977. Congress then extended the deadline for another three years to 1982, but no additional states voted to ratify, leaving the amendment three state legislatures short of the three-fourths requirement. For Republicans, the ERA is nearly indivisible from the issue of abortion rights. They warn that ratification would lead to expanded access to and rollbacks of anti-abortion legislation on the state level. Conservatives argue that because abortions are exclusive to women, any restrictions on the procedure could be deemed unconstitutional under the ERA. Congressional support of the ERA in the early 1970s was widespread and bipartisan. | | | | A message from The American Health Care Association:   | | | | 
Sen. Rick Scott's (R-Fla.) split with Mitch McConnell keeps getting deeper. | Francis Chung/POLITICO | RICK AND MITCH DUKE IT OUT — The tensions between Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell aren’t easing, writes Burgess. The Florida Republican has managed to supersede Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) as the biggest thorn in McConnell’s side. And the split between the two men — which stems back to Scott’s performance as Senate GOP campaign chair and his decision to release his own legislative agenda ahead of the midterms — is showing no signs of receding. Related: Club for Growth endorses Scott and dings McConnell by POLITICO’s Natalie Allison SANTOS’ TRUMP CHANGE — Back in 2019 George Santos raised eyebrows when he tried to raise $20,000 for a pro-Trump rally in Buffalo, N.Y., that never came together, Jacqueline Sweet reports for POLITICO. His five-figure goal sparked questions within the New York state-based group United for Trump, of which Santos was president at the time, where members viewed him as going over the top. In total, Santos pulled in $645 out of a $20,000 goal, and it’s unclear what happened to the funds. Related: George Santos claimed to be ‘halachically Jewish’ during election campaign, from Matthew Kassel at Jewish Insider CRAIG’S D.C. CRITIQUE — “I got attacked by someone who the District of Columbia has not prosecuted fully over the course of almost a decade, over the course of 12 assaults before mine that morning,” Rep. Angie Craig told CBS News in an interview on Tuesday.
| | | | DOWNLOAD THE POLITICO MOBILE APP: Stay up to speed with the newly updated POLITICO mobile app, featuring timely political news, insights and analysis from the best journalists in the business. The sleek and navigable design offers a convenient way to access POLITICO's scoops and groundbreaking reporting. Don’t miss out on the app you can rely on for the news you need, reimagined. DOWNLOAD FOR iOS– DOWNLOAD FOR ANDROID. | | | | | QUICK LINKS Biden administration to brief ‘gang of eight’ on mishandled classified files by The New York Times’ Charlie Savage Sen. Bob Casey undergoes surgery for prostate cancer by NBC News’ Zoë Richards and Frank Thorp V Justice strongest candidate against Manchin, GOP poll says from Burgess GOP leaders start laying groundwork for more Ukraine aid, from Kevin Freking at The AP TRANSITIONS Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) has added Mike Reynard as comms director and Curtis Kalin as deputy comms director. Reynard previously was comms director for Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska). Kalin previously was comms director for Budd’s House office. Jacob Hochberg is now an associate staffer on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security. He continues as the chief of staff for Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas). TODAY IN CONGRESS The House is out. The Senate convenes at 10 a.m. and will resume consideration of the nomination of Adrienne Nelson to be a circuit court judge for the District of Oregon. At 11:30 a.m. the chamber will vote on the Nelson nomination and cloture on nomination of Ana Reyes to be a district court judge for the District of Columbia. At 1:50 p.m. the Senate will proceed to one vote on cloture on the nomination of Daniel Calabretta to be a district court judge for the Eastern District of California. And at 4:30 p.m. the Senate will vote on confirmation of the Reyes and Calabretta nominations. The Senate will also receive a briefing Wednesday afternoon from Biden administration officials on China. AROUND THE HILL 9:30 a.m. Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on global security challenges and strategy. (Dirksen G50) 10 a.m. Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee hearing on “The Federal Aviation Administration’s NOTAMS System Failure and its Impacts on a Resilient National Airspace.” (Russell 253) 10:30 a.m. Senate Finance Committee hearing to consider Daniel I. Werfel’s nomination to be IRS Commissioner. (Dirksen 215) 10:30 a.m. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on “Countering Illicit Fentanyl Trafficking.” (Dirksen 419)
| | | TUESDAY’S WINNER: Kellie Lunney correctly answered that Reps. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.) and Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) are the two sitting members of Congress who are alumni of Colgate University. TODAY’S QUESTION from Kellie: Which country was the first to ratify the 2016 Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol? The first person to correctly guess gets a mention in the next edition of Huddle. Send your answers to ktm@politico.com. GET HUDDLE emailed to your phone each morning. Follow Katherine on Twitter @ktullymcmanus | | A message from The American Health Care Association: The long term care community needs help. Facing a historic labor crisis, nursing homes cannot find the workers they need, resulting in limited admissions to facilities with some permanently closing. Nursing homes are doing everything they can to recruit caregivers, but with limited government funds, they can’t compete.
This crisis has also created bottlenecks in hospitals as patients wait for beds in nursing homes. A federal staffing mandate without resources to help with recruitment would only worsen access to care for vulnerable seniors.
We need an investment in our long term workforce, not unfunded staffing mandates. Learn more about better solutions to the labor shortage. | | | | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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