Good morning. As Josh has mentioned, one of our goals for this year is to give more guidance into how TPM works, what we’re working on on a given day, what events we’re focused on and why. In that vein, we’ll be publishing calendars on busy days — and eventually every day — showing which events our reporters and editors have their eyes on, where we have reporters deployed, what stories we’re working on and what we’re expecting over the course of the day. Here’s the first.
10:00 a.m. Nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar is testifying at his Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing. This hearing might not have any fireworks. But it will give us our first sense of what the administration’s emerging narrative is on the Affordable Care Act following the repeal of the individual mandate and last month’s surprisingly high enrollment numbers. Alice Ollstein is on the Hill for that. We’ll likely get a report from her later.
10:00 a.m. House GOP leaders take questions from the press.
Midday Senate leaders generally speak with reporters post-lunch.
1:45 p.m. President Trump signs an executive order on “supporting our veterans during their transition from uniformed service to civilian life.”
2:30 p.m. Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders holds a White House press briefing.
Stories in Process:
A homeschooling lobby group with a low profile but growing influence has a surprising agenda: keeping public money away from home-schoolers, to ensure they can operate free from government regulation. The conservative Christian group earlier this year got a sit-down with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. But critics say less scrutiny is the last thing home-schooling needs. They point to a spate of recent instances of misconduct in the home-school community, including child abuse. Later today, we’ll be posting investigative reporter Sam Thielman’s fascinating look at the Home School Legal Defense Association.
