america's cable television service and today we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage. c-span is brought to by your cable or satellite provider. >> david hawkins joins us. senior editor of cq and roll call. as congress comes back from break, what do you see in the coming weeks? things running as smoothly on drama-frias possible is the overarching desire. legislative a large agenda. i think mcconnell and ryan went to make progress on the annual appropriations bills. the house announced it will take

up another appropriations bill the week of july 16 that is a combination of a dozen bills. they already passed one the combined three of the least controversial bills. they will take up another that contains to, one of them not financial services bill. the senate appropriations committee is moving ahead on all of its bills. keeping that regular process going knowing after labor day there will be some shutdown showdown drama almost for sure. that is one priority for mitch mcconnell. the other is moving along on nominations. they have a v.a. secretary nominee. they have more judges to milan. and the big news of the summer will be president trump's announcement of his choice to succeed anthony kennedy on the supreme court and that will

become number one with a bullet on the hit parade for the remainder of the summer. >> before the break you were aboutg about your podcast the package that passed the house and senate. do you think it is any better than prior years? any semblance of regular order? >> there is some. particularly in the senate, when minibus. so-called i don't have the report card in front of me but i think it was the first time they passed a standalone appropriations bill and years so they are trying to show the public and lobbyists they can do the reaching business of governing will it actually help at the end of

september because the more progress they have on these appropriation bills, the less there is to fight about. the republican majority, is at least showing they can do some of the routine business of governing. having said that, there is an almost total lack of correlation between how productive congresses in a midterm election year and what the voters due to that congress. there have been some very productive midterm election congresses and the voters have decided to switch party control anyway and there have been some very unproductive congresses in recent years and the voters have decided to retain partisan control, so there does not seem to be a correlation. i think that does not prevent the republican leadership from wanting to keep the routine business going. >> we found up the retirement of

justice kennedy just before the break and your video had the headline about the coding the confirmation process, things trump needs to worry about. we will find out the president's choice monday and it. what the digital roadblocks are there? david: there are fewer than in the past. this will be the first supreme court nomination in history that begins without any threat of a filibuster. those with longest memories remember when neil gorsuch was nominated at first, the senate still had rules in place that threshold forote confirming a supreme court justice. along the way to gorsuch's confirmation, that filibuster was done away with. so that potential for problems for president trump has gone away.

that does not mean that the supreme court justice will be ,onfirmed on a partyline vote because the president has a handful of republicans he needs to worry about. , the two most moderate republicans who support or, who rights, flake" flake and corker who are retiring and feel emboldened. time, he may have to hope he gets the three democrats to vote. mansion, donnelly, and heidi heitkamp. 11, joe crowley

losing that state. sayingeted about it, politicians face armor sock test -- politicians face a resource -- politicians face a rohrsach test. >> mr. crawley was trying to position himself to become the next house leader of democrats. it represents a generational breakthrough for the democrats. an ideological breakthrough. we don't know how much that will be repeated. when she wants people to remember is her message was something that i'm going to guess we will hear more from and thes between now election. not so much progressivism, not

bernie sanders democratic progressive wants to eliminate agency, public college for everyone, those progressive ideas i do not think or where the democrats want to go but here's what i think they will listen to, which is what she says time and time again. we, the democrats, the whole country knows who donald trump is. we don't need to spend our campaign talking a lot of donald the more we talk about it does not do good, what does do good is when democrats give voters a reason to vote for democrats. she says let's have a proactive agenda. let's tell voters what we will do and not just make this a referendum on donald trump because that is a way to make it more polarizing election.

so cortez says, let's talk about what we will do. i think more democrats will heed that message come november. winning newtez york's 14th district. you can follow david hawkings on cq roll call. thank you so much. david: thank you. on theer: monday night communicators, a stanford professor discusses his book demand."ce on it is about virtual reality technology. >> the back of your brain, the part in charge of keeping alive, it is terrified. whenever we bring children on a school field trip or the ceo of toortune 10 company, we want

show you it is real. if you are unwilling to take a step, once i have sold you on vr is sothat a are -- can't even step on the plank, you have to experience it to understand it. announcer: watch monday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2. >> next, the subcommittee hearing on war powers defined by the constitution. included a representative from the american civil liberties union and live news channel analysts and federal judge andrew napolitano. this is just over 90