Filling the bench. President Obama will nominate three candidates Tuesday to fill remaining vacancies on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the New York Times reports -- law professor Cornelia T.L. Pillard, appellate lawyer Patricia Ann Millett and federal dstrict judge Robert Wilkins. "By making his choices in a group, the president and his strategists are hoping to put pressure on Senate Republicans to confirm them," and Obama's "nominees are likely to become part of a larger fight with Republicans over the president’s judicial nominees and Republican attempts to use the filibuster to block his picks.
The "trust" thing. New acting IRS chief Danny Werfel "vowed Monday to work quickly and with the cooperation of Congress to implement reforms to the tax agency in response to the revelations that conservative groups had been targeted for scrutiny in their applications for tax-exempt status" in his first testimony before Congress, NBC News reports. "Werfel told a panel of lawmakers that he had directed his team to quickly implement the reforms laid forth by an inspector general’s report first outlining the problems." Werfel: "“My primary mission is to restore that trust."
Et tu, House GOP? The Washington Post takes a look at the still very fractured House GOP, detailing how House Speaker John Bohener even faced an attempted coup after he bent on the fiscal cliff at the beginning of the year. "The cabal quickly fell apart when several Republicans, after a night of prayer, said God told them to spare the speaker. Still, Boehner came within a few votes of failing to secure his speakership on the initial vote, an outcome that would have forced a second ballot for the first time in nearly a century."