mihm, >> c-span's washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. previewp, we will washington with chris cadelago and stphen dinan. we will also speak to john donnelly. washington journal, live at 7:00 a.m. et. join the discussion. hawking's joins us. he is senior editor with cq and roll call. as congress comes back from their break, what do you see as the priorities for mitch mcconnell and house speaker paul ryan in the coming weeks? david: to keep things running as smoothly on drama-free as

possible i think would be the overarching desire. 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 will take up another appropriations bill the week of july 16 that is a combination bill, there is supposed to be a dozen bills. they already passed one the combined three of the least controversial bills. they are going to take up another that contains two, one of them not financial services bill. the senate appropriations committee is moving ahead on all of its appropriations bills. so keeping 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 is one priority for mitch mcconnell. the other priority is moving along on nominations. they have got a v.a. secretary nominee they want to move along. there are more judges they want to move along. and of course 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. >> let me ask you about the process, go back to appropriations for a second. before the break you were your podcast about the package that passed the house and senate. do you see the process this year of spending bills any better than prior years? any semblance of regular order? david: there is some semblance of regular order. particularly in the senate, when the senate passed that so-called minibus. it was, 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 in several years. so they are trying to show the public and lobbyists they can do the routine business of governing. will it actually help when the big end of september drama happens, which is almost surely because the more progress they have on these appropriation bills, the less there is to fight about. meantime, they, the republican majority, is at least showing some voters they can do some of the routine business of governing. having said that, there is an almost total lack of correlation between how productive a congress is in a midterm election year and what the voters do to that congress. in other words 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. but i think that does not prevent the republican leadership from wanting to keep the routine business going. >> on the supreme court nomination, we found up the retirement of justice kennedy just before the break, and your video had the headline, decoding the high court confirmation process, things trump needs to worry about. as we will find out monday night president's choice, what the potential 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 longish memories who remember when neil gorsuch was nominated, when he was first

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. so that potential for problems for president trump has gone away. now, that does not mean that the -- that a supreme court justice will be confirmed on a partyline vote, because the president has a handful of republicans he needs to worry about. we think principally susan collins, lisa murkowski, the two most moderate republicans who support abortion rights. we think also about jeff flake and bob corker, two senators who are retiring and feel somewhat emboldened.

so he needs to win those folks over. and at the same time if he cannot win those over, he has to hope for those three democrats who voted last time. mansion, joe donnelly, and heidi heitkamp. >> let's talk about one election in particular, the new york 11, joe crowley losing. you tweeted about it, saying politicians face a rorshach test as they assess the defeat of joe crowley. what did you mean by that and how do you think democrats will tailor their message ahead of the midterms? david: this is a story with multifaceted story lines behind it, not the least of it that mr. crowley was trying to position himself to become the next house leader of democrats. and not that -- not just that ms. cortez represents a generational breakthrough for the democrats. an ideological breakthrough.

we don't know how much that will be repeated. i think that her message, or what she wants people to remember as her message was something that i'm going to guess that we are going to hear more and more from democrats between now and the election. not so much her message of progressivism, in which she is a bernie sanders democratic progressive, wants to eliminate the ice agency, free public college for everyone, those progressive ideas i do not think are 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 ill of donald trump and talking to democrats as a vote against donald trump.

they may or may not do that anyway. the more we talk about it does not do any good. what does do good is when democrats democrats give voters a reason to vote for democrats. no matter what it is, she says let's have a proactive agenda. let's have something we can tell tell voters what we will do and not just make this a referendum on donald trump because that is a surefire way to fire up the republican base and make this a more polarizing election. so she says, let's talk about what we will do. i think more and more democrats are going to heed that message between now and november. talk about issues, not about trump. >> casio-cortez winning new york's 14th district. we have been speaking with david hawking's, senior editor of cq roll call. see his blog at rollcall.com. thank you so much. david: thank you. here is a look at our schedule. next it is q&a with freelance

journalist tom dunkel. after that, british prime ministers question time. atk to that we take a look the most recent sitting session of australian parliament. ♪ >> this week on "q&a," freelance journalist tom dunkel. he discusses his "washington post" story about the reverend sun myung moon and the church they ran in pennsylvania. brian: i'm going to talk to you about your magazine piece in a second, that i want to read back to you what you say in your biography on your website. "i have written about politics, adventure tr