Mike Pence victimized by Trump yet again:

The decision to put Mr. Pence in charge was made on Wednesday after the president told some people that the vice president didn’t “have anything else to do,” according to people familiar with the president’s comments.

Following up on the last post, let me share an email from TPM Reader MR:

We woke up this morning to the news that President Trump is calling his purge of supposed disloyalists within the government good for America AND demanding that Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg recuse from any cases involving Trump.

It recalls the brilliant long-running episodic Slate series: “If It Happened There”

We’ll definitely have more on this soon, but the Justice Department ended up standing by all the sentence enhancement recommendations for Roger Stone that it made in the original sentencing memo it filed in the case, before dramatically repudiating that memo later.

What happened behind the scenes exactly? Why did Barr so badly damage DOJ for so little apparent gain? I’m not sure there are satisfying answers to these questions. More soon.

The Roger Stone sentencing hearing continues … and the judge appears to be edging closer to announcing the sentence. Follow our coverage here.

Tierney Sneed is at the federal courthouse in DC for Roger Stone’s sentencing this morning. She’ll have the proceedings for you in real time here.

A few weeks ago, the sentencing of Roger Stone seemed like it would be an anti-climax, a colorful footnote to the historic Mueller probe. But now it has become ground zero for the epochal battle to protect the rule of law from the assault of Donald Trump.

How will that play out today?

A fascinating night with Michael Bloomberg on the stage for the first time and an inspired performance from Elizabeth Warren, but could the night have gone any better for Bernie Sanders?

Warren goes after Bloomberg over NDAs concerning alleged sexual harassment at his company pic.twitter.com/ugqlkdqYH3

— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) February 20, 2020

Elizabeth Warren spent the first hour of the debate mopping the floor with Michael Bloomberg.

Just returning quickly to the Elizabeth Warren evisceration of Michael Bloomberg: