lori, matt, john. thank you for your questions. [applause] we're going to pause for a moment to make room for the disdisinformation coming punch -- coming up next. >> c-span wrrks history unfolds daily. in 1979 c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies. and today we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and public policy events in washington, d.c. and around the country. c-span is brought to you by your

cable or satellite provider. >> david hawkings joins us. senior editor with cq and role call as congress comes back the their break. david: to keep things running, there is not a large legislative agenda in the weeks ahead. i think mcconnell and ryan more than anything want to make some progress on the annual appropriations bills. the house announced they are going to take up another appropriations bill the week of july 16 that is a combination bill. there are supposed to be a dozen bills. they already passed one that combined three of the least

controversial bills. they are going to take up another one that combines two of the lesser bills, the financial services bill. the senate promingse appropriations committee is moving ahead on all of its appropriations bills. keep that regular process going for as long as possible knowing that after labor day there will be some shutdown showdown drama almost for sure. that's one priority for mitch mcconnell. the other priority is moving along on nominations. they have a v.a. secretary nominee they want to move along. there are more judges they want to move along and then of course the big news of the summer will be president trutch'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 host: let me ask you about the process. go back to appropriations. your podcast has a headline will

a mini bus rescue the hill's g.o.p? do you see the process this year of spending bills any better than in prior years? any semblens of regular order? >> there is some semblens of regular order. when the senate passed that so-called mini bus, it was -- i don't have my scorecard in front of me. i think it is the first time the senate passed a stand-alone bill in several years. they are trying to show the public and lobbyists that they n do the routine business of governing that will actually help when the big end of september drama happens which is almost for sure, perhaps because of the more progress that they have on these appropriations bills, the less there is to fight about. meantime as i said, they, the republican majority is at least showing some voters who are

playing close attention that they can do some of the routine business of governing. an ng said that, there is almost total lack of corligs between how productive a congress is in an election year and what the vote doers to that congress. there have been some productive midterm election congresses and voters decided to switch parties and there have been some unproductive congresses in recent years and the voters decided to retain partisan control. there doesn't seem to be a correlation. i think that does not prevent the republican leadership from wanting to keep the routine business going as much as possible. host: we found out about the retirement of justice kennedy just before the break and your video had the headline decoding the high court confirmation process, things trump needs worry about. as we will find out monday night

the president's choice. what potential roadblocks are there for the president? david: there are fewer potential roadblocks of course than in the past. this will be the first supreme court nomination in history that begins without any threat of a filibuster. those with longish memories that remember when neil gorsuch was nominated. the senate still had rules in place that allowed a 60-vote threshold for confirming a supreme court justice. along the way to gorsuch's confirmation, that filibuster threshold was done away with. that potential problem for president trump has gone away. a t does not mean that supreme court justice will be confirmed on a party line vote. the president has a handful of republicans that he needs to worry about.

we think susan collins, lisa mccow ski, the two most moderate republicans who support abortion rights and jeff flake and bob corker, two senators who are retiring and emboldened. he needs to win those folks over. if he can't win those over, he needs to hope he can get at least the same three democrats that voted for neil gorsuch last time. and ansion, joe donnelly heidi of north dakota. host: joe crowley lost that seat. you tweeted about it in the victory of alexander ria cortez saying politicians face a rorschach test. what did you mean by that?

how do you think democrats will tailor eir message or their message? david: mr. crowley was trying to position himself to be the lead next leader to have house democrats. cortez represents a generational breakthrough for the democrats and an id logical breakthrough for the democrats. how much that is going to be repeated, i don't know. i do think her message or what she wants people to remember as her message was something that i'm going to guess that we're going to hear more and more from democrats between now and the election. not so much her message of progressivism. she was a bernie sanders democrat. wants to eliminate ice, the immigration agency. wants free public college for everyone. those progressive ideas i don't think are where the democrats

are going to go. but here is what i think they are going to listen to. she said time and time again, we the democrats know -- the whole country knows who donald trump is. we don't need to spend our campaign talking ill of donald trump and trying to talk people out of voting for democrats as a vote against donald trump. they may or may not do that anyway. the more we talk about it doesn't do any good. what does do good is when democrats give veerts reason to vote for democrats. no matter what it is, let's have a pro active agenda. something we will tell voters wolede we would do if we.net elect. not just make this a referendum on donald trump. that is a way to fire up the republican base. let's talk about issues of what we would do if we were in charge. i think more and more democrats are going heed that message. talk about issues and not about

trump. host: winning the 14th district over joe crowley. we have been speaking with david hawkings. you can follow him at david hawkings. his blog atcall.com. thank you. >> president donald trump will announce his nominee for the supreme court filling the vacancy left by the retiring judge anthony kennedy. watch on c-span or c-span.org or listen on the free c-span radio app. ware the chief act tue testifies to lay-ups about the program's solve ensy and long-term projections. this house ways and means subcommittee hearing is about an hour and 15 minutes.