It’s Friday, March 1, and that means the federal government has crossed the much-hyped and dreaded deadline for the fiscal reductions known as the “sequester.”

The members of Congress who for voted for the Budget Control Act – and the budget cuts contained within – and President Barack Obama who signed it into law on Aug. 2, 2011, may not have believed the day would arrive, but now it has.

But today is only the beginning of the beginning.

For one thing, Obama must sign an order formally starting the “sequester” or spending reductions, which according to a new estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, would amount to $42 billion in the current fiscal year.

And White House aides have indicated that the president is not likely to put pen to paper on that order until after he meets with congressional leaders, a meeting slated for Friday morning.

Once Obama signs the order to start the spending cuts, any furloughs of federal workers could not begin at least for another 30 days due to federal regulations and to collective bargaining agreements which the government has with the unions that represent roughly half of the federal workforce.

Alex Wong / Getty Images

House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi speaks during a news conference Feb. 28, 2013 on Capitol Hill in Washington.

So the Border Patrol Agents in Arizona won’t suddenly vanish on Friday and the civilians who repair Navy ships won’t be ordered to immediately put down their tools.

As with many things the federal government does, there are multiple rules, regulatory hurdles, avenues for appeal and opportunities for litigation.

As Under Secretary of Defense Robert Hale, the Pentagon’s Chief Financial Officer, explained last week, “The bottom line is, furloughs would not actually start for DOD employees until late April.”

He explained, “There's a whole series of notifications. We started the first one today (Feb. 20), with the notification to Congress, along with a message by the secretary of defense to our civilian employees. That starts a 45-day clock ticking. Until that clock has run out, we cannot proceed with furloughs.”

He added, “At some point in mid-March, we will send a notification to each employee who may be furloughed. That starts a 30-day clock, waiting period, before we can take any action. And then later on in April, we will send a decision to employees, and they have a one-week period, once we've made that decision, to appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board.”  

The Merit Systems Protection Board is the independent agency which hears and decides complaints when a federal employee claims that he or she has been the victim of an unfair, punitive, or discriminatory personnel action. The board issued 7,585 decisions last year.

Related: Budget cuts likely to be felt on Main Street

In a memo sent Wednesday to Cabinet officers and the heads of federal agencies, Danny Werfel, the controller of the Office of Management and Budget, emphasized that agency heads “must allow employees’ exclusive representatives” – their unions – “to have pre-decisional involvement” in planned furloughs or other personnel actions “to the fullest extent practicable” and must bargain with the unions over the impact of furloughs. The head of each department or agency must comply with “any and all collective bargaining requirements.”

In his memo, Werfel did not flatly warn federal agency heads to not hire any new personnel, but he did say they should give “increased scrutiny” to hiring any new workers, as well to the money they spend on training programs, conferences, and travel.

Like Hale at the Pentagon, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano emphasized in her briefing for reporters this week that the effects of the spending cuts – while they will be substantial – won’t be instantaneous.

“The impacts people are going to see – and they will build over the next several weeks; you won’t see them immediately like a shutdown, but it will accrue over the next few weeks,” she said. “Lines, procedures, wait times (at U.S. ports of entry and airports) are all going to get longer.”

She added, “It won’t be like a (government) shutdown, where it’s like turning off the light switch. But all I can say for folks is these are the effects that will accrue. Please don’t yell at the customs officer or the TSO (transportation security officer) officer because the lines are long. The lines over the next few weeks are going to start to lengthen in some dramatic ways in parts of the country.”

Just as the personnel decisions will take weeks to ripple their way through the federal workforce, so too will decisions on contracts for new ships, drones, and electronic gadgets.

“I don't anticipate that we will cancel many, if any contracts, because we'd incur substantial costs,” Hale told reporters last week.

He said that due to the spending cuts, the Pentagon might delay entering into new contracts, “but I wouldn't expect that we will terminate existing contracts.”

Seeking to reassure contractors, Hale said, “If you've got a contract with us, we're going to pay you ... . Even under sequestration and furloughs, we will find a time to keep our payments to our employers and the vendors on time.”

The slow grinding of the bureaucratic wheels does not mean that furloughs won’t hurt, if they occur.

A fact sheet issued by the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal union which representing 650,000 federal and D.C. government workers, spells out some of the possible pain:

•Up to 22 days out of work with no pay, equivalent to a 20 percent pay cut;

•Reduced contribution to workers’ retirement savings accounts;

•Reduced take-home pay due to the deduction of health insurance benefits at the full salary rate.

But as a recent report from the Congressional Research Service pointed out, the sequestration procedures provide for exemptions for many groups.

Among the categories which the law spares from the spending cuts are:

•Social Security benefits

•The Medicaid health insurance program for low-income people

•Payments to individuals in the form of refundable tax credits, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-wage workers and the tax credits under the 2010 health care law to help people buy health insurance.

•Retirement benefits paid to retired federal workers

•Child Nutrition Programs, including the School Lunch and School Breakfast programs,

•The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly called “food stamps”

•Pell Grants for college students

•Unobligated cash balances, carried over from prior years, for nondefense programs

•Pay for military personnel.

This story was originally published on Fri Mar 1, 2013 12:00 AM EST

In his first major interview since his unsuccessful 2012 bid for White House, Mitt Romney likened being a presidential candidate to the bumpy and unpredictable path of a roller coaster.

“We were on a roller coaster, exciting and thrilling, ups and downs. But the ride ends," Romney told Fox News. "And then you get off. And it's not like, ‘Oh, can't we be on a roller coaster the rest of our life?’ It's like, no, the ride's over."

The pre-released clip is from an interview with Romney and his wife, Ann, set to air on “Fox News Sunday,” the first media either has done since the November 6 election.

The Romneys have kept a low-profile since their unsuccessful bid for the White House. Photos of the former Massachusetts governor running errands around his La Jolla, Calif., home have been about the only thing the public has seen of him since the fall.

One photo even surfaced of Romney riding a roller coaster with family at Disneyland.

“It is an adjustment, but it’s one I think we did well,” said Ann Romney. She added, “The good news is fortunately we like each other.”

This is not the only public appearance Romney will be making. He will make his first speech since the campaign ended at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington, D.C., in two weeks.

With less than 36 hours to go until the much-discussed 'sequestration' deadline, the Senate blocked a pair of competing bills to prevent the broad, automatic cuts from taking effect.

Neither measure was expected to reach the 60-vote threshold required to move a fix forward, with Republicans and Democrats taking up the legislation largely for show the day before the cuts are slated to kick in. 

The Republican sequester ‘replacement’ proposal -- which would have offered the administration more authority to allocate the spending cuts -- was killed with a vote of 38 to 62. The White House had threatened to veto that bill in the unlikely event that it passed.

A Democratic plan focused on closing tax loopholes and raising some taxes garnered 51 votes, short of the 60 necessary to move it forward. 

With both sides still deadlocked over how to address the deficit, congressional leaders will meet with the president at the White House tomorrow. 

President Barack Obama lambasted Senate Republicans in a statement, saying that GOP opposition to the Democrats' bill stood in the way of a solution. 

"Even though a majority of Senators support [the Democrats'] approach, Republicans have refused to allow it an up-or-down vote - threatening our economy with a series of arbitrary, automatic budget cuts that will cost us jobs and slow our recovery," he said.

"Instead of closing a single tax loophole that benefits the well-off and well-connected, they chose to cut vital services for children, seniors, our men and women in uniform and their families," the statement read. "They voted to let the entire burden of deficit reduction fall squarely on the middle class."
"

Earlier Thursday, competing press conferences, lawmakers from both parties continued to lay blame at each other's feet as they acknowledged that the across-the-board reductions to the nation's military and domestic spending programs are inevitable.

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid olds a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on the eve of the budget sequester Feb. 28, 2013 in Washington, DC.

House Speaker John Boehner argued Thursday that the budget ball remains in Democrats' court, a case he says he will make again tomorrow in the meeting with Obama.

"My message at the White House will be the same that I'm telling you today,” he said. “It's time for them to do their job and to pass a bill."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid responded that Republican calls for Democratic action "take a lot of pizzazz."

"They've done nothing," Reid said, saying that House Republicans are hiding behind the lower chamber's now-expired passage of budget measures last year while failing to allow compromise legislation to come up for a vote.

The weariness over the sequester jockeying – which promises to drag on for weeks as the fight shifts to future deadlines for greenlighting federal funding -- even spilled over into the Senate chaplain’s opening prayer this morning.

Mentioning the cuts in his invocation, Senate Chaplain Rev. Barry Black prayed "Rise up, oh God, and save us from ourselves."

NBC's Mike Viqueira contributed to this report. 

This story was originally published on Thu Feb 28, 2013 1:41 PM EST

If Wednesday’s argument before the Supreme Court is any indication, a majority of the justices seemed inclined to strike down or curtail key sections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  Even if the court does move in that direction, election officials in some states will have more leeway to change some procedures, but voters in 2014 won’t suddenly wake up in 1964.   

Hearing a challenge brought by Shelby County, Ala., several justices voiced skepticism about the formula the law uses to decide which states and other jurisdictions are required to get permission, or “preclearance,” from the Justice Department or a federal court in Washington for any change in voting procedures that they seek to make.

In 2006 Congress reauthorized Section 5 of the law for another 25 years. The current formula uses election data from 1972 and earlier to determine which places section 5 applies to. Critics of the law say the formula is archaic and ought to be scrapped.

Currently nine states, mostly in the South, as well as 54 counties in New York, California, Florida, North Carolina and South Dakota and 12 townships in Michigan and New Hampshire, are covered by section 5.

What effect would a ruling which struck down or curbed section 5 have on elections in the United States?

Would parts of the country now covered by section 5 revert to the days of poll taxes, literacy tests, murders of voter registration workers, racial gerrymandering of districts, and other devices to negate the power of African-American, Latino and other minority voters?

The short answer is no, and that’s because a separate section of the Voting Rights Act, section 2 – which is a permanent part of the statute and need not be periodically renewed, as section 5 must be – bans voting procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in one of the language minority groups identified by the law, which includes not only Spanish, but Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and several Native American and Alaska Native language groups.

In recent years, the Justice Department, under both Republican and Democratic presidential administrations, has brought section 2 voting discrimination cases against jurisdictions in Massachusetts, Montana, Illinois, California, South Carolina, and several other states.

For example, in 2009 the Justice Department took action against Salem County, New Jersey and the borough of Penns Grove, N.J. for allegedly discriminating against Puerto Rican voters.

The Department charged that local election officials had never translated the ballot into Spanish in any election held in Penns Grove, and thus “numerous voters of Puerto Rican descent who cannot understand the ballot in English have been unable to fully exercise their voting rights.”

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

With images of murdered Mississippi civil rights worker Medgar Evers, demonstrators rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court February 27, 2013 in Washington, DC.

These kinds of enforcement actions will continue under section 2 no matter what the high court decides on section 5.

But the Solicitor General Donald Verrilli argued Wednesday that getting rid of section 5 – and its requirement that covered jurisdictions get pre-approval of their voting procedures – will make it more costly and time consuming for voters to challenge allegedly discriminatory practices. He said section 5 has a deterrent effect – blocking discriminatory practices before they’re ever implemented.

He said polling place changes are the most frequent type of election procedure submitted to the Justice Department under Section 5. “Changes in the polling places at the last minute before an election can be a source of great mischief,” he told the justices. 

He contended that “there is no way in the world you could use Section 2 to effectively police that kind of mischief.” Given the cost of litigation, he said, “The cost-benefit ratio is… going to tilt strongly against bringing these suits.”

Michael Pitts, an expert on the Voting Rights Act who is a professor at Indiana University School of Law and who worked on voting rights cases when he served as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, said, “There is certainly a possibility of more last-minute mischief with polling places if Section 5 were struck down.”

He said Section 5 enforcement actions “are rather simple. To attempt to get the same results using other provisions of the Voting Rights Act, such as Section 2, will be much harder.”

Responding to Justice Anthony Kennedy’s suggestion during Wednesday’s argument that some Justice Department attorneys who now are working on section 5 could shifted to section 2 enforcement, Pitts said, “The problem with Section 2 lawsuits is that at the very least, DOJ has to find out about the problem, then they have to conduct an extensive investigation before filing a lawsuit, and then they have to spend lots of time and resources to win the case.  Section 2 cases are not easy to win.”

University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock, an expert on the Voting Rights Act and Southern politics, said elimination of section 5 would “probably not” make a difference in voter registration or voting in places that are now covered by section 5.

He said in section 5 covered jurisdictions, black registration and turnout “is pretty much at the same level” as registration and turnout among white voters. He added, “Hispanic registration and participation rates are lower but that’s true whether you’re looking at section 5 states or looking at states which are not subject to section 5.”

Bullock said that when it comes to drawing new district line for state legislatures and for House seats that due to section 2, “there would still very much be a protection in place against actions which were found to be discriminatory even if section 5 were to be struck down.”

Bullock said one major change that came about as a result of section 2 was the elimination of at-large districts for school boards, county councils, etc. and the move to single-member districts. At-large districts had been used to dilute the power of minority voters.

If the court eliminates section 5, “Would they (local officials) go back to at-large elections?” He thinks not, because “politicians tend to like the system under which they have succeeded, and they think there’s less uncertainty in a system which they’ve already worked successfully. County council or school board members elected under a single-member district system would be reluctant to go back to at-large elections even if that was what was traditionally done until, say 20, years ago.”

Bullock said if section 5 is struck down he does expect some of the now-covered states would move to enact voter identification laws which the Justice Department has so far blocked from enacting.

One unknown is how Congress would react if the high court does strike down section 5. Would it devise an updated formula, perhaps based on 2012 data, for that tried to target jurisdictions with large disparities of minority and white voter turnout? Would it use some other metric? It’s too soon to know, but it’s worth recalling that in 2006 Congress chose to avoid the difficulty of writing a new coverage formula – one reason the Shelby County case reached the high court.

This story was originally published on Thu Feb 28, 2013 1:35 PM EST

The committee tackling early versions of gun control legislation will not act on the bills for another week. 

As expected, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee took advantage of rules allowing a one-week delay or “hold over” in addressing the newly-introduced bills.  

The extra week gives Democrats more time to hash out a deal on background checks, the gun safety proposal widely viewed as the most likely to survive the legislative process and be signed into law this year.  

Two Democrats - Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Chuck Schumer of New York - have been negotiating with Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn on the background check legislation.

Susan Walsh / AP

Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., gets help with a green ribbon pin for the victims of Sandy Hook Elementary School, from fellow committee member Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013.

But the bipartisan talks have slowed over disagreements related to private sellers keeping records of their gun sales.

In a hearing Thursday, committee chairman Patrick Leahy also promised Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that the panel will vote on her bill to ban assault weapons.

But that legislation has little chance of passing the Senate. 

The committee will begin debating and making changes to the assault weapons and background check proposals –- as well as gun trafficking and school safety measures -- starting next Thursday. 

Leahy warned of late nights for lawmakers next week, saying the sessions will go "as late as necessary" each day and continue into the following week if need be.  

NBC’s Carrie Dann contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Thu Feb 28, 2013 11:05 AM EST

This story was originally published on Thu Feb 28, 2013 10:37 AM EST

With the clock ticking until the sequester cuts, explaining how we got here… Failed assumptions, failed Grand Bargains… Boehner to appear on “Meet”… When does the sequester take effect? Answer: Anytime before 11:59 pm ET on March 1… Senate confirms Lew as Treasury secretary, while John Brennan gets bumped to next week… And why Iowa is so important to 2014.

*** How we got here: With Washington headed -- inexorably -- to Friday’s deadline when the automatic across-the-board spending cuts take effect, there’s a natural question to ask: How did we get here and why didn’t the sequester work as intended? Well, here’s our quick answer: First, Republicans, fueled by the Tea Party and their gains in the 2010 midterms on a message of cutting back the size of government, demanded that they would raise the debt limit only accompanied by equal spending cuts. (Prior to that, debt-ceiling increases had been fairly routine exercises for all past administrations.) Second, after agreeing to some spending cuts, the Obama White House and congressional Republicans couldn’t agree how to reduce the deficit by an additional $1.2 trillion over 10 years (to raise the debt limit by that much because the White House wanted to avoid another debt-ceiling showdown before Nov. 2012), so they created the sequester. That mechanism ($600 billion cuts in defense spending cuts that Republicans weren’t supposed to like; $600 billion in non-defense spending cuts that Democrats weren’t supposed to like) was intended to be so draconian that it would force the two parties to make a deal. As we know, it was the brainchild of Jack Lew, a veteran of the budget wars of the ‘80s, the first time the word “sequester” entered the Washington lexicon.

*** Failed assumptions, failed Grand Bargains: Third, the assumption that the cuts would force a compromise turned out to be incorrect. Whether it was during the Super Committee, the fiscal-cliff negotiations, or now, those spending cuts -- especially on defense -- weren’t enough to strike a deal. As it turns out, the deficit-hawk wing of the GOP got only larger in both the House and Senate. Fourth, all attempts for a Grand Bargain failed: In 2011, both sides retreated to let the election decide the fiscal fight. And at the end of 2012, they dealt only with the expiring Bush-era tax cuts (and not the sequester or increasing the debt ceiling again). Fifth and finally, that fiscal-cliff deal on the Bush tax cuts created a TREMENDOUS amount of intra-party blowback for House Speaker John Boehner, which only made resolving this sequester standoff even more difficult. (After all, remember that it wasn’t too long ago when the big discussion in DC was whether Boehner would lose his speakership.) And just as importantly, folks like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. John Cornyn -- who are both up for re-election next year and both have colleagues from their states who have become Tea Party stars (Rand Paul, Ted Cruz) – are probably more reluctant to make a deal than ever before. Bottom line: The Senate escape hatch that saved the day during the fiscal-cliff fight isn’t there right now.

*** Sequester is here to stay: So ultimately, the big miscalculation on the White House’s part on sequester was that defense spending would be a forcing mechanism. It is not and will not be. And, as things stand right now, they are wrong to believe the Republicans are going to break like they did at end of 2012. The law was on the president’s ideological side at the end of 2012. That’s why the GOP broke on taxes. In this case, the law is on the Republicans’ ideological side. It is easier for them to defend the sequester at home because they can say, “We said we’d cut spending and the size of government, the president tried to stop us but we wouldn’t let him.” A bad spending cut for many Republicans is easier to defend than any supposed fair tax hike on anyone. So if the White House really wants to stop the sequester, they might have to come up with their own set of $85 billion in spending cuts for this year to replace it. In this political environment, there is no way Boehner, McConnell and Cornyn can politically survive doing anything short of that. The president can still get more revenue down the road on tax reform, but he may have to fold on sequester if he wants a chance at winning in the long run. But that’s also a hard thing to ask a president who just won re-election on this very issue.

*** Boehner to appear on “Meet the Press”: Speaking of Boehner, the House GOP leader on Sunday will sit down for an exclusive interview with NBC’s David Gregory on “Meet the Press.”

*** When does the sequester take effect? By the way, when do the sequester cuts go into effect? As NBC’s Peter Alexander notes, we all know it happens this Friday, March 1. But when exactly does it take place? In simple terms, per Alexander, it doesn’t take place until the president signs the sequester order, which must happen anytime before 11:59 pm ET on Friday, March 1.

*** On the White House vs. Woodward dust-up: To be honest, we don’t have much more to say in the dust-up between the Obama White House and the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, except for these three points. One, political reporters should always go out of their way NOT to become part of the story. Two, you shouldn’t pick fights with folks who can buy ink by the barrel (or in today’s age, have unlimited bandwidth) and have banked credibility over decades to earn the benefit of the doubt. And three, if you’ve been in this business long enough, you’ve probably received emails more incendiary and threatening than “I think you will regret staking out that claim.” In fact, the email exchange between Woodward and White House economic adviser Gene Sperling, has since become public, and it’s hard to conclude that Sperling was attempting to intimidate Woodward.

*** Lew confirmed, Brennan bumped until next week: Recapping yesterday’s activity in the Senate, former White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew won confirmation to be Treasury secretary by a 71-26 vote, per NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell. Meanwhile, NBC’s Kasie Hunt reports that the Senate Intelligence Committee moved a vote on John Brennan's nomination as CIA director until next Tuesday. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., the committee vice chairman, said Wednesday night that the panel had bumped the Brennan vote until next week.

*** Why Iowa is so important for 2014: The big 2014 news yesterday was Rep. Tom Latham (R-IA)’s decision NOT to run for the Senate, which potentially gives conservative Rep. Steve King (R-IA) a clearer shot to being the GOP nominee if he decides to run. Here’s why next year’s Iowa Senate race is so important: If you take this seat off the map for Republicans – and it’s very premature to do that – then they almost have to run the table on all their other Senate opportunities to win back the Senate. Remember, Republicans have to pick up six seats to take control of the upper chamber. If you give them West Virginia (Rockefeller retiring) and South Dakota (possible Tim Johnson retirement), then Republicans still needs to win four out of these five seats where Dems are probably running for re-election: Alaska (Begich), Arkansas (Pryor), Louisiana (Landrieu), Montana (Baucus), and North Carolina (Hagan). In other words, if Iowa is in play for Republicans, they don’t need to knock off as many Dem incumbents. If it isn’t in play, then they almost have to run the table. One other point here: King would probably have little chance of winning a Senate contest in a presidential year, but he does have a chance in a midterm cycle, so folks ought to be careful making assumptions.

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Vice President Joe Biden argued Wednesday that Democratic voters in yesterday’s special Democratic congressional primary in Illinois illustrated that there is a larger national mandate for tighter gun restrictions.

“The voters sent a message last night, not just to the NRA but to the politicians all around the country by electing Robin Kelly, who stood up and stood strong for gun safety totally consistent with our Second Amendment rights,” Biden told a gathering of state attorneys general in Washington D.C.

Kelly, a former state representative, won decisively over U.S. Rep. Debbie Halvorson, a Democrat who at one time had been favored to win the Chicago-area seat. But Halvorson faced over two million dollars’ worth of negative advertising funded by pro-gun control billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who attacked her for an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association.

The congressional district, which is heavily Democratic, includes some of Chicago's South Side neighborhoods as well as suburban areas south of the city.

Biden said Kelly’s decisive victory sent an “unequivocal signal” in the first major electoral contest since the shootings at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

“The message is there will be a moral price as well as a political price to be paid for inaction,” he said.

After meeting with Biden today, Bloomberg said he believed the race showed that support for stricter gun laws won't hurt candidates.

Bloomberg said the White House should reach out to members of Congress to explain "why their vote could make a difference and why all the polls show that they will not be disadvantaged the next time they run."

"Quite the contrary," he added. "They will have this as a feather in their cap and be able to say next time they run ‘when the going was tough, I stood up for you.’”

NBC's Kasie Hunt contributed to this report. 

Central parts of an election law dating back to the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, the Voting Rights Act, appeared to be in jeopardy Wednesday after the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a challenge to them.

NBC’s Pete Williams reported after the oral argument that key provisions of the 1965 law “are in big trouble. The question is how far will the Supreme Court go” in striking down parts of the law?

The justices were weighing an appeal from Shelby County, Ala., asking the court to find that Congress exceeded its power when it renewed the two key sections of the law in 2006. A decision is expected before the court ends its current term this coming June or July.

Under Section 5 of the law, nine states, mostly in the South, but also including Alaska and Arizona, as well as dozens of counties, townships, cities, and elected boards in other states, must get permission, or “preclearance,” from the Justice Department or a federal court in Washington for any change in voting procedures, no matter how small, that they seek to make.

The formula used to determine which states and other jurisdictions are covered by the preclearance requirement is set forth in section 4 of the law.

“It’s pretty safe to say that there at least five votes to strike down” either section 4 or section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, “either the coverage formula or preclearance totally,” Williams reported.

Williams added what seemed to concern a majority of the justices was “the fact that the law is too backward looking.”

Shelby County’s lawyer Bert Rein argued that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act – which Congress renewed for another 25 years in 2006 – is unconstitutional because the formula used to determine which states are covered is outdated – based on voter turnout and registration data from 1972.

The blatant racial intimidation and discrimination in voting procedures that prevailed in states such as Alabama when the law was written in 1965 and renewed in 1970, 1975, and 1982, no longer exist, the county says.

Overshadowing Wednesday’s argument was the Supreme Court’s decision in a 2009 Texas case, Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One vs. Holder. In that decision, the court expressed doubts about the continued need for Section 5, noting that “voter turnout and registration rates now approach parity” between whites and blacks in the states covered by section 5.

Evan Vucci / AP

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif.,speaks during a rally outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013, before arguments in the Shelby County, Ala., v. Holder voting rights case. The justices are hearing arguments in a challenge to the part of the Voting Rights Act that forces places with a history of discrimination, mainly in the Deep South, to get approval before they make any change in the way elections are held. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Solicitor General Donald Verrilli said the justices should defer to the judgment that Congress made in 2006 that the coverage formula was “rational and effective.” To that Justice Anthony Kennedy replied, “Well, the (1947) Marshall Plan was very good, too, the (1862) Morrill Act, the (1787) Northwest Ordinance, but times change.”

Kennedy suggested that the law had the effect of denying some states of their right to self-government -- in effect putting them “under the trusteeship of the United States Government.”

Related: Landmark civil rights law faces critical Supreme Court test

Addressing the question of why Congress had extended Section 5 in 2006 with no opposition at all in the Senate, Justice Antonin Scalia said it was “very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement. It's been written about. Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes.”

He said for most members of Congress there’s little to be gained by voting against continuation of the key sections of the law. “I am fairly confident it will be reenacted in perpetuity unless a court can say it does not comport with the Constitution.”

But the liberal justices were quick to defend the sections of the law which Shelby County is challenging.

The court’s newest member, Justice Elena Kagan, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2010, said Alabama still deserved to be singled out for coverage under section 5.

She said section 5 “seems to work pretty well” in targeting the places where there are the most successful lawsuits under a separate section of the Voting Rights Act, section 2.

That part of the law, which isn’t being challenged in the Shelby County case, bans all voting procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in a language minority group. Unlike Sections 4 and 5 of the law, Section 2 covers all 50 states.

“If Congress were to write a formula that looked to the number of successful Section 2 suits per million residents, Alabama would be the number one state on the list,” Kagan told Rein.

Kagan said that “under any formula that Congress could devise” Alabama would still be a targeted state.

Another liberal justice who defended section 5, Justice Stephen Breyer compared racially discriminatory voting procedures to a disease. “It's an old disease, it's gotten a lot better, a lot better, but it's still there,” he said. “So if you had a remedy that really helped it work, but it (discrimination) wasn't totally over, wouldn't you keep that remedy?”

But Rein argued that the high court ought to “remove the stigma” of preclearance from the states “and the unequal application based on data that has no better history than 1972.”

Justice Samuel Alito suggested to Verrilli that “maybe the whole country should be covered” by section 5 or “maybe certain parts of the country should be covered based on a formula that is grounded in up-to-date statistics.”

When Verrilli defended the section 5 of the law, Chief Justice John Roberts asked him, “Do you know which state has the worst ratio of white voter turnout to African American voter turnout?”

Verrilli said he did not, to which Roberts replied: “Massachusetts. Do you know what has the best, where African American turnout actually exceeds white turnout? Mississippi.”

Roberts then asked Verrilli which state has the greatest disparity in registration between whites and African Americans, and again Verrilli did not know.

Again Roberts answered Massachusetts. He added that in Mississippi, “the African American registration rate is higher than the white registration rate.”

Verrilli argued Wednesday that “changes in the polling places at the last minute before an election can be a source of great mischief. Closing polling places, moving them to inconvenient locations, et cetera.” He explained that Section 5 requires “those kinds of changes to be pre-cleared and on a 60-day calendar which effectively prevents that kind of mischief. And there is no way in the world you could use Section 2 to effectively police that kind of mischief.”

He argued in the Justice Department brief that Section 2 isn’t an adequate barrier against discrimination in voting partly because it places the burden of proof on plaintiffs who challenge allegedly discriminatory procedures, while Section 5 places the burden of proof on the states or counties to show that their procedures aren’t discriminatory.

This story was originally published on Wed Feb 27, 2013 12:12 PM EST

More Americans say they are now in favor of stricter gun laws than at any time since 2000, after the Columbine shooting, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

Sixty-one percent said so, a nine-point jump from before the December 2012 Newtown shootings. The last time the question was asked before the shooting was in January 2011. Then, 52 percent said guns laws should be "more strict." 

What’s responsible?

The shift is largely due to the Obama coalition of city-dwellers, African Americans, Hispanics, and Democrats, groups that also said they do not own as many guns as rural and white respondents. But there are shifts with most other groups as well. And even though only a minority of Republicans -- 37 percent -- support stricter gun laws, that's a 13-point jump from 2011. 

In the latest poll, 86 percent of African Americans, 82 percent of Democrats, 72 percent of Hispanics, and 71 percent of urban respondents said they were in favor of stricter gun laws, all up double-digits from 2011.

Urban: 71% (Feb. 2013) - 55% (Jan. 2011). Net change: +16
African Americans: 86% (Feb. 2013) - 71% (Jan. 2011) Net change: +15
Republicans: 37% (Feb. 2013) - 24% (Jan. 2011). Net change: +13
Hispanics: 72% (Feb. 2013) - 60% (Jan. 2011). Net change: +12
Democrats: 82% (Feb. 2013) - 71% (Jan. 2011). Net change: +11
Men: 51% (Feb. 2013) - 42% (Jan. 2011). Net change: +9
Women: 69% (Feb. 2013) - 61% (Jan. 2011). Net change: +8
Suburban: 59% (Feb. 2013) - 51% (Jan. 2011). Net change: +8
Whites: 55% (Feb. 2013) - 48% (Jan. 2011). Net change: +7
Rural: 48% (Feb. 2013) - 41% (Jan. 2011). Net change: +7
Independents: 49% (Feb. 2013) - 48% (Jan. 2011). Net change: +1 

SOURCE: NBC/WSJ poll

There has been virtually no change with independents. In the current poll, 49 percent say gun laws should be stricter, just a one-point increase from January 2011.

Whether or not someone owns a gun in the household is the biggest factor in supporting or opposing stricter gun laws.

Among those who do not own a gun in the household, 75 percent support stricter laws. Among those who do, just 45 percent support stricter laws.

Overall, 42 percent said someone in their household owns a gun.

So who are they?

There’s a gender split, with more men saying they own one (48 percent) than women (36 percent).

It also varies, of course, by region. There are more gun owners in the South (50 percent) than anywhere else. The Northeast has the fewest (28 percent).

There’s also an urban-rural split. Just 34 percent of those who live in cities said they own a gun, but six-in-10 rural respondents do (59 percent). (Just 41 percent of those who live in the suburbs do.)

And there’s a Democratic-Republican split as well – just 30 percent of Democrats say they own a gun, while 55 percent of Republicans do. Forty-nine percent of independents said so.

Reflecting that divide, just 34 percent of Obama voters said someone in their home owns one versus 57 percent of Romney voters.

By race, whites own more guns than minorities. Nearly half of whites (47 percent) said they own a gun. Just one-in-five African Americans said so (20 percent) and just 28 percent of Hispanics.

Gun ownership does not vary much by age, but younger voters (18 to 34) are the least likely to own a gun (39 percent).

And gun owners are more affluent. Those making more than $75,000 a year are the most likely to own a gun (50 percent) – even though professionals (40 percent) and white-collar workers (40 percent) are among the least likely to own one.

This story was originally published on Wed Feb 27, 2013 11:44 AM EST

The battle over the Budget Control Act -- and the cuts contained in it known as the sequester -- is as much about tax increases as it is about spending.

That fact might have gotten lost in recent days amid press conferences and photo ops from President Barack Obama, his Cabinet officers, and Democratic members of Congress warning of meat inspectors being furloughed, trucks being slowed by long delays in Customs inspections at U.S. ports of entry, and the canceled deployment of an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf.

Related: Sequester fight takes a toll on all

Obama and his allies argue that to help avert the $44 billion in cuts to federal outlays required by the Budget Control Act in this fiscal year, another round of tax increases is required.

Democrats later this week will bring to the Senate floor a bill to replace the spending cuts with $55 billion in tax increases on people with incomes greater than $1 million, higher taxes on the oil industry, and changes in rules on U.S. corporations with foreign operations. The Democrats’ bill would also trim subsidies to farmers and make smaller cuts to defense spending than the reductions in the Budget Control Act.

One way to look at the tax side of the battle is that Obama has an unfinished project which he detailed in his first budget blueprint in 2009, with an array of tax increase proposals. In his first term, he succeeded in shifting more of the tax burden to higher-income Americans and to U.S. coporations, first with the $400 billion in tax increases over ten years in the 2010 Affordable Care Act and then with the income tax increase he signed into law on Jan. 2, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will raise between $600 billion and $700 billion over ten years.

But there are more tax increases that Obama asked for that he has not achieved yet. The current showdown with congressional Republicans is another occasion to get them.

Obama spokesman Jay Carney has said that Republicans would allow federal employees and contractors to be put out of work “in order to protect these special tax breaks for corporate jet owners and oil and gas companies.”

Obama has proposed a ten-year $580 billion package of tax increases, such as $2 billion in revenue from changing the tax depreciation schedule for general aviation aircraft, including corporate-owned or leased jets.

That idea raises the hackles of Sen. Pat Roberts, R- Kansas. Beechcraft Corp. and other jet manufacturers are based in Wichita, Kansas; Roberts said 40,000 jobs in his state are at stake.

“Not only do they propose that (tax increase), but the language in which they describe it, it’s always ‘fat cat corporate jets,’” complained Roberts.

He added, “The general aviation industry is always on the cusp (of financial viability) and it has become a favorite target” for Democrats’ tax increase proposals. “I’m damned tired of it.”

Roberts said, “I just don’t think it adds up – unless you want your general aviation industry to come from Brazil.”

Jewel Samad / AFP - Getty Images

President Barack Obama walks in the rain to the Oval Office on Feb. 26, 2013 upon returning to the White House in Washington.

On principle, Republicans object to Obama seeking to raise taxes again on some immediately after getting his tax increase at end of 2012. 

And there’s another reason Republicans oppose any just-get-us-past-this-crisis tax hike: every change in tax law they might agree to now chips away at what some GOP leaders hope to do as part of comprehensive tax reform later this year.

Rep. Dave Camp, R- Mich., the chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee told reporters Tuesday, “I’m not interested in a one-off (tax reform or tax increase). … What I’m interested in is a comprehensive effort” to redesign the entire tax code, both the corporate tax and the individual income tax.

He added, “I’m not interested in more revenue at this point. The comprehensive reform I’m looking at is revenue neutral. As some people say, 'We gave at the office at the end of the year’” – meaning the tax increase Obama signed into law on Jan. 2 is all he is going to get.

On the spending side of the battle, some Republicans seem to acknowledge that Obama’s campaign to portray the $44 billion in spending cuts as disruptive and potentially disastrous is having some effect.

“All the hot buttons have been pushed,” Roberts said Tuesday. “We have the Secretary of Agriculture saying, ‘we’re going to call off all the meat inspectors, shut down the packing plants.’ Every cowboy in Kansas has been in touch with me saying, ‘what in the hell am I going to do with my cow herd?’”

But some Republicans argue that it might useful to see how Americans do with $44 billion less in spending  -- out of more than $3.5 trillion in total federal outlays this year.

“I think it would be a wonderful test of whether or not we have the ability to actually reduce spending in Washington D.C.,” said Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R- S.C.

Even though he voted against the Budget Control Act, Mulvaney is willing to see it begin to bite. “I agree with many of the concerns regarding the disproportionate share the Defense Department bears here,” he said. “But that aside, the real question is; can we really cut spending? And not just cut the growth in future spending, which is typically what a ‘cut’ is in this town. Can we actually spend less money in any agency this year than we did last year?”

The South Carolina Republican said Obama and his subordinates have the discretion and flexibility they need to manage the spending reductions. “It looks as though it would be up to the administration whether to furlough air traffic controllers -- or janitors at FAA facilities. It’ll be an interesting test of the president’s management abilities.”

Another fiscal conservative, Sen. Pat Toomey, R –Pa., said Tuesday, “The magnitude of the spending cuts -- it’s very important that they be preserved and not be delayed. The willingness to go ahead with them will send a constructive message to our citizens, to the markets.”

He added, “I think they’re badly designed; I think too much of them lands on our defense budget and the nature of the across-the-board cuts precludes a more thoughtful way of prioritizing. But given the disastrous fiscal situation we’re in, we’ve got to make these cuts.”  

Spending must be reined in, he argued, and the cuts are “crude way to do it, but at least it’s moving in that direction.”

He said he supports a Senate Republican effort to give Obama and his aides some flexibility in how they administer the cuts “so they can make the least disruptive cuts possible.” But in Obama’s test of wills with congressional Republicans, that kind of flexibility might not be in Obama’s tactical interest. 

After weeks of argument over the sequester, bipartisan congressional leaders will meet with the president at the White House on Friday -- the same day that automatic federal spending cuts are scheduled to go into effect. 

President Barack Obama will meet with House Speaker John Boehner, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to discuss the across-the-board budget reductions to federal agencies, aides told NBC News.

Republicans were quick to question why the White House would schedule the meeting only on the final day of the belabored back-and-forth over the cuts.

"If the President is serious about stopping the sequester, why did he schedule a meeting on Tuesday for Friday when the sequester hits at midnight on Thursday?" a Republican aide told NBC. "Either someone needs to buy the White House a calendar, or this is just a - belated - farce.  They ought to at least pretend to try."

White House spokesman Jay Carney said that Obama also spoke briefly with congressional leaders Wednesday when he attended the unveiling of a statue of civil rights icon Rosa Parks at the Capitol. 

Asked why the longer White House meeting is not happening today, Carney told reporters that "the Senate is still yet to vote, hopefully will vote tomorrow, on a proposal that achieves the kind of postponement of the sequester deadline that would allow Congress to move forward on balanced deficit reduction in a sensible, no-drama fashion that would avoid these unnecessary impacts across the economy and the country." 

That measure has very little chance of passing both chambers.

Carney also disputed the assumption that the sequester goes into effect at midnight on Thursday night. By law, the president must execute the cuts on March 1st, meaning that they can be averted until 11:59 ET on Friday, he said. 

The sequester's origins -- and mechanisms to stop the self-executing cuts -- have been the subject of finger-pointing between both parties. The president has blamed Republicans for refusing a compromise that would include the closure of tax loopholes, while the GOP has blamed Senate Democrats for failing to propose a legislative fix.

McConnell described the meeting Friday as an opportunity to discuss spending reductions more broadly. 

"The meeting Friday is an opportunity for us to visit with the President about how we can all keep our commitment to reduce Washington spending," he said in a statement. "With a $16.6 trillion national debt, and a promise to the American people to address it, one thing is perfectly clear: we will cut Washington spending. We can either secure those reductions more intelligently, or we can do it the President's way with across-the board cuts. But one thing Americans simply will not accept is another tax increase to replace spending reductions we already agreed to."

NBC's Kristen Welker contributed to this report. 

This story was originally published on Wed Feb 27, 2013 10:06 AM EST

The debate over potential new gun laws turned raw and tearful on Wednesday as a key Senate committee held hearings on an assault weapons ban backed by President Barack Obama. 

"Jesse was the love of my life," said Neil Heslin, who broke down and cried as he told lawmakers about his son, Jesse Lewis, who was 6 years old when he was killed at Sandy Hook along with 19 other children.  

Standing on an easel were two photos of Jesse, one as a young boy and the other as a toddler, cradled in his dad's arms. His father struggled to read his testimony, his voice cracking and sometimes fading to a near whisper as he told the committee that Dec. 14, 2012, was the saddest day of his life.  

The emotional scene unfolded as the Senate Judiciary Committee met to discuss the potential assault weapons ban, part of a package of new gun laws that Obama is pushing for in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shootings.  

"Those weapons were used in a battlefield in Vietnam. They were used in the Persian Gulf, they were used in Afghanistan, in Iraq. The sole purpose is to put a lot of lead on a battlefield quickly," Heslin said of guns like the one Adam Lanza used in the Newtown elementary school massacre.

Tempers had already flared earlier in the hearing, as Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham clashed with Edward Flynn, the Milwaukee police chief. Graham was focused on limited prosecution of background check violations -- a reality that Republicans have highlighted as evidence that it would be more effective to enforce laws already on the books than to write new ones.

"We don't chase paper, we chase armed criminals," Flynn snapped back.

As senators discussed the ban, Vice President Joe Biden at the White House urged action on guns.

"The public mood has changed. The excuse that it’s too politically risky to act is no longer acceptable. We cannot remain silent," Biden said.

In the audience at the hearing was a group of supporters and friends from Newtown who offered Heslin quiet encouragement -- many crying along with him as he testified.

Before the hearing, they spent Tuesday on Capitol Hill lobbying members of Congress, meeting with Sen. Joe Manchin, W-Va., and staffers with Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C. They spent over an hour with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and also met with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

They learned firsthand just how politically difficult an assault weapons ban would be.

"We appreciate what you do, more and more, seeing those meetings," Newtown resident Shelley Northrop told Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who with fellow Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal stopped to talk quietly with the group from Newtown before the hearing began. Northrop was explaining to Murphy just how difficult it all seemed to get anything done.

"It's all tactical. Here, it's all tactical," Murphy told her. 

He was being more diplomatic than Republican Sen. John McCain was last week, when he told the mother of a victim of the shooting in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater: “I can tell you right now you need some straight talk. That assault weapons ban will not pass the Congress of the United States," McCain said.

Alex Wong / Getty Images

U.S. Attorney of the District of Colorado John Walsh waits for the beginning of a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee February 27, 2013 on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

The Senate Judiciary Committee does plan to take up the assault weapons ban, possibly as soon as Thursday. Reid, the majority leader, has pledged to allow a vote on the floor on the measure, and even pro-gun rights Republicans are publicly supportive of doing so.

"I couldn't agree more, I think we should take legislation like this up and get on record and make our respective cases," Graham said at the hearing.

The vote is a key part of the political calculus on gun laws, because it could help give some members cover to vote for the legislation that Democrats privately say could actually pass: universal background checks and new gun trafficking statutes.

But in recent days, the ongoing negotiations on a background check bill have slowed, with Democrats and Republicans at odds over how to keep track of private gun purchases.

Democrats want to require private gun sellers to keep records of who they've sold guns to so they can be traced if they're used in a crime. Republican Sen. Tom Coburn, who's been negotiating, is opposed to that requirement because he says it could lead to a database of all gun owners.

That's prompted Democrats, led by Manchin, to reach out to other moderate Republicans who might be willing to sign on, including McCain and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.

Both Collins and McCain met with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Wednesday to discuss gun control, and McCain said Tuesday that he has been involved in the negotiations.

"I've been talking to Sen. Manchin and others," McCain said Tuesday, though he emphasized that he has "only been peripherally involved."

Already involved in those talks is Illinois Republican Sen. Mark Kirk, who also met with Bloomberg on Wednesday. Bloomberg has already spent millions from his personal fortune to defeat pro-gun candidates in his bid to expand gun control; the billionaire also met with Reid on Capitol Hill.

NBC's Carrie Dann contributed to this report.

Related:

Let us study gun violence, physicians beg Congress

This story was originally published on Wed Feb 27, 2013 9:30 AM EST

Sequester fight already taking a toll -- on the American public, on Obama (whose numbers dipped in our new NBC/WSJ poll), and on the GOP (which is about as popular as Carnival Cruise Lines right now)… On CPAC not inviting the most popular Republican in the country… Mr. Secretary: Hagel wins confirmation (but by smallest margin in history for a defense secretary)… John & Lindsey’s Excellent Meeting… GOP denounces racially charged tweet directed at Mitch McConnell’s wife… And Teddy Turner’s -- shall we say -- provocative TV ad against Mark Sanford.

*** Sequester fight already taking a toll… : With Washington now knee-deep in its fifth contentious fiscal fight in two years, it’s hard not to look at our latest NBC/WSJ poll and see the toll it’s taking on everyone, including the American public. Per the poll, 32% believe the country is headed in the right direction, which is down three points from last month and nine points since the election. A majority of respondents (51%) believe the budget negotiations between President Obama and congressional Republicans make them feel less confident about economy, versus just 16% who feel more confident. (That has a DIRECT impact on consumer confidence, folks.) And then look at these headlines from some of the nation’s largest newspapers. The New York Times: “Austerity Kills Government Jobs as Cuts to Budgets Loom.” The Washington Post: “Sequester will sock a vulnerable economy.” By the way, here are the developments in the sequester debate worth noting. One, if there is any movement for a potential compromise, it’s over legislation that would give President Obama the flexibility to make these sequester cuts. But Obama himself said yesterday he doesn’t like this approach, and some Republicans are wary this gives him too much power. And two, it’s Wednesday -- just two days before the sequester cuts are supposed to go into effect -- and there isn’t a single meeting scheduled between the president and congressional Republicans.

*** … on the GOP: Speaking of taking tolls, there’s a sliver of good news for Republicans in our new poll, and there’s also A LOT of bad news. The good news: A majority of Americans (53%) prefer that Congress move ahead with the current sequester cuts or a plan that contains even more cuts, suggesting the public’s general appetite for reducing spending. But here’s the bad news: everything else. In fact, the party is about as popular as Carnival Cruise Lines right now. Only 29% say they agree “with most” of what Republicans in Congress have proposed (versus 45% for Obama and 40% for congressional Democrats). An identical 29% have a favorable view of the GOP (compared with 49% for Obama and 41% for the Dem Party).And the public believes the Republican Party is more interested in partisanship than Obama is. What’s more, the polls shows the Democratic Party beats the Republican Party on almost every issue -- looking out for middle class (by 22 points), Medicare (by 18 points), health care (16), reducing gun violence (15), Social Security (14), immigration (7) and even taxes (3) and the economy (2). The only issues where the GOP holds the advantage in the survey are reducing the federal deficit (by 6 points), controlling government spending (16 points) and ensuring a strong national defense (26). More importantly, in the dozen issues we tested, the GOP’s numbers dropped in most of them even as the Dem number didn’t budge. This is about a party LOSING ground, not about Democrats gaining it.

Brendan Smialowski / AFP - Getty Images

President Barack Obama speaks about automatic budget cuts set to take effect Friday during an event at Newport News Shipbuilding Feb. 26, 2013 in Newport News, Va.

*** … and even on Obama: But the current debate seems have taken a toll on Obama, too. His overall approval rating stands at a healthy 50%, but that’s down two points since January and three points since December. The percentage approving of the president’s handling of the economy has dropped five points, from 49% last month to 44% now. (It hasn’t been that low since before the 2012 political conventions.) If you saw these numbers isolation, you might say, “This isn’t good news for Obama.” But when you compare them with the Republican numbers, Obama looks like the tall guy attending a short-guy convention. And that perfectly sums up the current political environment (and it also pretty much sums up the 2012 election). That said, while Obama’s numbers have dipped somewhat – albeit within the poll’s margin of error -- strong majorities in the NBC/WSJ poll support the broad outlines of Obama’s top domestic priorities: 54% favor giving undocumented immigrants the ability to apply for legal status (up two points from last month); 61% believe the laws covering the sale of firearms should be stricter (up five points since January!!!); and nearly six in 10 support Obama’s proposal to raise the federal minimum wage. In particular, the gun-control numbers are pretty striking, and our pollsters say they reflect how presidential leadership can move the needle on issues. And as we found out last night in that special Dem Illinois primary, the issue of guns can win you a race (at least in a deep-blue urban district where there isn’t much evidence of a gun culture, but we digress).

*** On CPAC not inviting the most popular Republican in the country: Want another reason why the Republican Party is having problems right now? Look no farther than the Republicans and conservatives who decided not to invite New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) to next month’s Conservative Political Action Conference -- due in part to his advocacy for Hurricane Sandy relief as well as his support for some gun-control measures. In our NBC/WSJ poll, no politician has more crossover appeal than Christie does. His overall fav/unfav is 36%-12%; among Republicans, it’s 39%-9%; among Dems, it’s 36%-14%; among indies, 32%-17%; among conservatives, 34%-12%; among Tea Party supporters, 44%-13%; and among liberals, it’s even 33%-17%. Our poll also measured GOP Sen. Marco Rubio, who is more popular than Christie among Republicans (47%-7%), conservatives (41%-7%), and Tea Party types (52%-8%). But Rubio’s overall score is lower than Christie’s, 24%-17%. Explaining his group's snub of Christie, American Conservative Union Chairman Al Cardenas said, “CPAC is like the all-star game for professional athletes; you get invited when you have had an outstanding year.” Umm, then why are Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Sarah Palin, Allen West, and even Mia Love all speaking at CPAC? Does losing elections = outstanding years?

*** Meet Secretary Hagel: Christie’s big sin among the CPAC conservatives? He’s extended a welcoming hand to Obama (on Sandy, gun control). And that brings us to another Republican who extended a welcoming hand to the president and more -- Chuck Hagel. Yesterday, the U.S. Senate confirmed Hagel by a 58-41 vote (the smallest margin ever for a defense secretary), and that came after his nomination beat back a GOP filibuster by a 71-27 vote. Per NBC’s Courtney Kube and Jim Miklaszewski, Hagel has already arrived at the Pentagon for his first day on the job. On his agenda is getting sworn in (official photos only), a senior staff meeting, and then an address to Pentagon staff (which appears to be open to the press).

*** John & Lindsey’s Excellent Meeting: Why does immigration reform still look like the best opportunity for a big legislative item to pass through Congress this year? Just note this statement from GOP Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham after yesterday’s meeting with President Obama. "We had an excellent meeting with the president and the vice president … during which we discussed a variety of issues, including our effort to pass comprehensive immigration reform legislation this year. We were pleased to hear the president state his firm commitment that he will do whatever is necessary to accomplish this important goal." Of course, getting immigration reform through the House – not Senate – will be the chief obstacle, but first things first. Interesting that the statement only mentioned immigration, because we also have learned the sequester standoff also came up.

*** GOP denounces racially charged tweet against McConnell’s wife: NBC's Kasie Hunt notes that a progressive group in Kentucky took heat yesterday from Republicans for a racially charged attack on Sen. Mitch McConnell's wife -- former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. "This woman has the ear of @McConnellPress -- she's his #wife. May explain why your job moved to #China!," the group ProgressKY wrote on Twitter on Feb. 14. The tweet links to a website that alleges Chao, who is the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, discriminated against American workers when she served as Secretary of Labor. Republicans denounced the tweet, and the organization eventually apologized. The attack also prompted a tweet from actress Ashley Judd, who is considering a run against McConnell. "Whatever the intention, whatever the venue, whomever the person, attacks or comments on anyone's ethnicity are wrong & patently unacceptable," Judd wrote Tuesday afternoon, per Hunt.

*** Teddy Turner’s -- shall we say -- provocative ad against Mark Sanford: Lastly, don’t miss this new TV ad that Teddy Turner is airing against Mark Sanford in that South Carolina congressional GOP primary. Wow.

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Charles Rex Arbogast / AP

Robin Kelly celebrates her special primary election win for Illinois' 2nd Congressional District, once held by Jesse Jackson Jr., over Debbie Halvorson, and Anthony Beale Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2013, in Matteson, Ill.

Democratic congressional candidate Robin Kelly, who centered her campaign heavily on calls for tougher gun control laws, emerged from a crowded field on Tuesday to clinch her party’s nomination for the Illinois House seat vacated by Jesse Jackson Jr.  

“You sent a message that was heard around our state and around the nation,” Kelly said in her victory speech late Tuesday night. “A message that tells the NRA that their days of holding our country hostage are coming to an end."

Her speech was focused almost solely on gun control, the issue that came to define the race in the Chicago-area district, an area of the country that has recently been at the epicenter of gun violence. Kelly skated to an easy victory, earning well over 50 percent of the votes with none of her competitors earning anywhere near that amount of support.

The former Illinois state representative was aided greatly by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s super PAC, Independence USA, which endorsed Kelly and spent more than $2 million in the race.

The PAC focused on taking down opponents for supporting certain gun-rights policies, including chief rival Debbie Halvorson, a former member of Congress.

"In the race to replace Jesse Jackson, watch out for Debbie Halvorson. When she was in Congress before, Halvorson got an 'A' from the NRA," argued an Independence USA TV ad, adding: "Debbie Halvorson -- when it comes to preventing gun violence, she gets an 'F.'"

Bloomberg tweeted his congratulations, writing, "As Congress considers the President's gun package voters in IL have spoken: we need common sense gun legislation now."

Prominently featured on Kelly’s website is a list of her five-point plan to reduce gun deaths.

"In Congress, Kelly will keep taking on the NRA, fighting to ban assault weapons and outlaw high-capacity ammunition clips," said one of her TV ads.

Kelly will go on to face a Republican challenger in April, but is expected to win easily in the heavily Democratic district.

NBC's Mark Murray contributed to this report

With automatic, across-the-board spending cuts set to begin Friday, majorities of Americans believe that approach is not a good idea and also say the contentious budget negotiations make them less confident about the U.S. economy, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

Click here for full poll results (.pdf)

Despite those findings, a majority still supports Congress moving ahead with either the current cuts or a plan containing even more cuts as a way to reduce the deficit, suggesting the public’s general appetite for reducing spending.

But the poll also shows that as the nation’s political actors once again quarrel over these automatic cuts totaling $1.2 trillion over 10 years – commonly referred to as sequestration or the sequester – President Barack Obama finds himself in a much stronger position than his Republican adversaries. 

Related: NBC/WSJ poll: Public says GOP less interested in unity than Obama is

“If the president needs some tweaks and adjustments, the Republican Party is pretty much in need of a major makeover,” says Democratic pollster Fred Yang of Hart Research Associates, who conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff. 

“The Republicans don’t need a silver lining; they need a whole new playbook,” Yang adds.

Cut a deal – or let the cuts take effect?
In the poll, 52 percent of respondents say the sequester cuts are a bad idea, versus just 21 percent who say they’re a good deal.

What’s more, 51 percent believe that the budget negotiations between Obama and congressional Republicans make them feel less confident about the economy, which is unchanged from when this question was first asked in last month’s poll.

Just 16 percent say the negotiations make them more confident about the economy.

But a combined 53 percent prefer that Congress move ahead with the current sequester cuts or a plan that contains even more cuts. Thirty-seven percent want a plan with fewer cuts.

And in a separate question, exactly half of respondents say that Obama and congressional Republicans should work together to avoid the sequester cuts from taking place, while 46 percent believe the cuts – while not perfect – should go into effect.

But the NBC/WSJ pollsters caution that all of these numbers could change if these sequester cuts take place and are as dire as critics say. “A month from now, we might find a very different dynamic at play,” Yang says. “When you feel [these cuts], that’s a different story.”

Obama’s brief honeymoon – but growing support for his top priorities
In addition to the budget debate, the poll shows that Obama’s rise in the polls – after his re-election, his inaugural speech and his State of the Union address – has ended for now.

His overall approval rating stands at a healthy 50 percent, but that’s down two points since January and three points since December. 

The percentage approving of the president’s handling of the economy has dropped five points, from 49 percent last month to 44 percent now.

And just 32 percent of Americans believe the country is headed in the right direction – down three points since January.

“The poll points to significant vulnerabilities for the president” heading in next year’s midterm elections, says McInturff, the GOP pollster. 

Alex Wong / Getty Images

President Barack Obama waves during a visit to Newport News Shipbuilding Feb. 26 in Newport News, Va.

Democratic pollster Yang adds: “The transition from campaigning to governing hasn’t brightened the public’s mood.”

That said, strong majorities support the broad outlines of Obama’s top domestic priorities – on immigration, gun control and raising the minimum wage. 

Fifty-four percent favor giving undocumented immigrants the ability to apply for legal status, which is up two points from last month’s NBC/WSJ poll. 

Also, 61 percent believe the laws covering the sale of firearms should be stricter, which is up five points since January.

And nearly six in 10 support Obama’s proposal from his State of the Union address to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $9.00.

Asked which of Obama’s proposals Republicans in Congress should offer a helping hand, 36 percent answer eliminating tax loopholes for the wealthy; 28 percent say expanding background checks for guns; 23 percent cite making preschool available for every child; 17 percent say giving illegal immigrants a path to legal status; and 11 percent say addressing climate change and global warming.

GOP’s poor standing with the public
While Obama has seen his poll numbers drop – albeit within the survey’s margin of error – his political standing remains significantly stronger than Republicans’.

Only 29 percent of respondents say they agree “with most” of what Republicans in Congress have proposed (versus 45 percent for Obama and 40 percent for congressional Democrats). 

An identical 29 percent have a favorable view of the Republican Party (compared with 49 percent for Obama and 41 percent for the Democratic Party).

And the public believes the GOP is more interested in partisanship than Obama is: 48 percent say Obama is pursuing a path on unifying the country in a bipartisan way, while 43 percent say he's taking a partisan approach that doesn't unify the country.

By comparison, 64 percent say Republicans are taking a partisan approach, versus 22 percent who say it's focused on unity.

What’s more, the polls shows the Democratic Party beats the Republican Party on almost every issue – looking out for middle class (by 22 points), Medicare (by 18 points), health care (16 points), reducing gun violence (15 points), Social Security (14 points), immigration (7 points) and even taxes (3 points) and the economy (2 points).

The only issues where the GOP holds the advantage in the survey are reducing the federal deficit (by 6 points), controlling government spending (16 points) and ensuring a strong national defense (26 points). 

The NBC/WSJ poll was conducted Feb. 21-24 of 1,000 adults (including 300 cell phone-only respondents), and it has a margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points.

Actress and possible Senate candidate Ashley Judd joined Republicans Tuesday in condemning a progressive group’s racially charged attack on Sen. Mitch McConnell's wife, former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao.

"This woman has the ear of @McConnellPress -- she's his #wife. May explain why your job moved to #China!," the group ProgressKY wrote on Twitter on Feb. 14.

The tweet links to a website that alleges Chao, who is the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, disparaged American workers when she served as Labor Secretary under President George W. Bush. 

Judd, who is considering running against McConnell in next year's Senate contest, tweeted a veiled condemnation of the group.

"Whatever the intention, whatever the venue, whomever the person, attacks or comments on anyone's ethnicity are wrong & patently unacceptable," Judd wrote Tuesday afternoon.

The flap was first reported by WFPL public radio.

McConnell campaign manager Jesse Benton called Chao's family "salt of the earth" immigrants who represent "shining examples of the American dream." 

"It is unconscionable that anyone would use blatant race-baiting for political gain," Benton said in a statement. "Progress Kentucky should be ashamed of themselves. We hope all Americans can agree that these disgusting tactics have no place in American politics."

The National Republican Senatorial Committee called on national Democrats to denounce ProgressKY.

"This disgusting attack and this organization must be condemned immediately by top Democrats across the board," spokesman Brad Dayspring said in a statement.

This story was originally published on Tue Feb 26, 2013 5:29 PM EST

With the automatic across-the-board spending cuts set to begin on Friday, Americans are split over whether President Barack Obama is emphasizing unifying the country or taking a partisan approach, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

But by nearly a 3-to-1 margin, respondents conclude that the Republican Party is emphasizing partisanship more than unity.

In the poll, 48 percent say Obama is pursuing a path to unify the country in a bipartisan way, while 43 percent say he's taking a partisan approach that doesn't unify the country.

Recommended: Boehner blasts Senate Democrats for inaction

By comparison, 64 percent say the Republican Party is taking a partisan approach, versus 22 percent who say it's focused on unity.

As for the Democratic Party, a plurality of respondents -- by a 49 percent to 37 percent margin -- think it is emphasizing partisanship more than unity.

The full NBC/WSJ poll -- which was conducted Feb. 21-24 of 1,000 adults, and which has a margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points -- comes out beginning at 6:30 pm ET.

The Senate voted to confirm former Sen. Chuck Hagel as President Barack Obama's next secretary of defense following weeks of dogged opposition by Republican senators to their erstwhile colleague.

The Senate voted 58 to 41 to formally confirm Hagel, on the heels of a procedural vote earlier in the day that cleared the way for Tuesday afternoon's final vote.

That earlier vote dispensed with a filibuster that Senate Republicans had waged for a week and a half against Hagel, whose confirmation was delayed by Republicans past the President's Day recess in order to allow for more time to dig into the former Nebraska senator's background.

A number of Republican detractors — including Sens. John McCain, Ariz., Lindsey Graham, S.C. and Kelly Ayotte, N.H. — reversed their votes on Monday in order to allow the Hagel nomination to move forward.

The Senate voted 71 to 27 to move forward with Hagel's nomination, clearing the 60-vote threshold needed to end the GOP filibuster. A handful of the Republicans who allowed Hagel's nomination to come to a final vote ultimately voted against confirmation.

In the end, Obama was able to win confirmation for Hagel, his choice to succeed outgoing Secretary Leon Panetta at the Pentagon. But not before Republicans were able to drag out the confirmation fight and, in the process, ding Hagel, their onetime GOP Senate colleague from the Cornhusker State.

Republicans had fought strenuously to defeat Hagel, accusing him at points of harboring hostilities toward Israel, and sympathies for the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Tied into Hagel's nomination as well have been Republicans' long-running effort to ding Obama and his administration over their handling of the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. 

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

Former Senator Chuck Hagel testifies during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on his nomination to be Defense Secretary, on Capitol Hill in Washington, in this January 31, 2013, file photo.

"What has their filibuster gained my Republican colleagues?" Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., asked on the Senate floor. "Twelve days later, Senator Hagel's exemplary record of service to his country remains untarnished."

Reid added: "Senate Republicans have delayed for the better part of two weeks for one reason and one reason only: partisanship."

Hagel didn't necessarily help his cause during a combative confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Republicans aggressively questioned Hagel on a variety of matters during the Jan. 31 hearing. 

Even still, Democrats held firm in their backing for the former Nebraska senator, helping to move his nomination forward. Republicans, though, managed to buy themselves more time — they said, to more fully investigate Hagel's background — by waging a filibuster against the nomination on Feb. 14. 

Democrats angrily protested the delay, especially as current Defense Secretary Leon Panetta planned to leave the job, as dangerous and unprecedented. Republican opponents of Hagel, though, said at that time that they would drop their objections to holding a confirmation vote after last week's recess.

This story was originally published on Tue Feb 26, 2013 12:37 PM EST

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images, file

U.S. Supreme Court members (first row L-R) Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, Chief Justice John Roberts, Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, (back row L-R) Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, Associate Justice Samuel Alito and Associate Justice Elena Kagan.

The U.S. Supreme Court this week will consider whether a landmark civil rights law, the Voting Rights Act, remains constitutionally valid, given the growth in the political power of minority voters and candidates.

Civil rights groups fear the court's conservatives are prepared to gut what the ACLU calls "the most important piece of civil rights legislation Congress has ever enacted."

The justices will hear oral arguments in the case Wednesday and rule sometime before the current court term ends in late June.

Passed by Congress in 1965 and renewed four times since then, most recently in 2006, a key provision of the law requires states with a history of discrimination at the polls to get federal permission before making any changes to their election procedures — from congressional redistricting to changing the locations of polling places.

The law was at the core of last year's successful efforts to block strict voter photo ID laws in Texas and South Carolina and to prevent Texas from redrawing its legislative and congressional boundaries in a manner that challengers claimed would have discriminated against minority voters.

"The last election vividly showed that voter suppression and voting discrimination are not just problems of the past. They continue to undermine our democratic process," says the ACLU's Steve Shapiro.

The challenge to the law comes from Shelby County, Alabama, a mostly white suburb south of Birmingham.  It argues that the pre-clearance requirement — which covers nine entire states and 66 counties or townships in seven others — is unconstitutional.

The areas covered by the law, it says, include some localities that have made substantial reforms but leave out other parts of the country that have failed to root out discrimination at the polls.

"Florida has been forced into pre-clearance litigation to prove that reducing early voting from 14 days to 8 is not discriminatory, when states such as Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania have no early voting at all," says Bert Rein of Washington, DC, the lawyer for the county.

While the history of blatant discrimination at the polls justified renewing the law in the past, Shelby County says, Congress failed to marshal enough evidence in 2006 to justify extending it for another 25 years.  "At most, the 2006 legislative record shows scattered and limited interference with voting rights, a level plainly insufficient" to sustain the pre-clearance requirement, Rein says.

Since 1990, adds Alabama’s Attorney General, Luther Strange, African Americans in the state have registered and voted in larger percentages than in states outside the South.

“African Americans hold seats in the legislature at percentages that are roughly commensurate with Alabama’s 26 percent African-American population,” Strange says.

But the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund says the current map is a close enough fit to cover the areas of greatest concern.  "Congress is not a surgeon with a scalpel when it acts to legislate across the fivty states, but it can reasonably attack discrimination where it finds it," the group says.

If the law were struck down, civil rights groups fear the areas covered by the law would revert to their old habits.

Warns the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human rights, “There is a significant risk of backsliding and a likelihood that millions of minority voters will face new barriers to the exercise of their most fundamental human right.”

President Obama expressed a similar sentiment in a radio interview last week. If covered jurisdictions no longer had to defend their electoral changes in advance, Obama said, civil rights groups would be forced to file lawsuits after voting changes were already in place.

“There are some parts of the country where obviously folks have been trying to make it harder for people to vote. So generally speaking, you’d see less protection before an election with respect to voting rights,” Mr. Obama said.

The Justice Department, which is defending the law before the Supreme Court, argues that the coverage formula is flexible, allowing local governments to bail out of the pre-clearance requirement if they can demonstrate they have not discriminated against minority voters for at least ten years.

During the past three decades, 38 bailouts have been granted, freeing 196 local jurisdictions of the preclearance requirement, the Justice Department says.  They include the first ever granted from parts of Alabama, Georgia, Texas, and Virginia, four of the states that are otherwise covered by the law.

Four years ago, the Supreme Court strongly suggested that several justices had doubts about its constitutionality, given recent electoral reforms. "Things have changed in the South," the court said in 2009.  "Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare."

The court then went on to reject a constitutional challenge to the pre-clearance requirement, but it strongly suggested Congress should update the coverage formula.  Because, however, no changes have since made, the court may prepared to go the rest of the way this time.

The Senate Finance Committee voted 19-5 on Tuesday to report Jack Lew's nomination as Treasury Secretary to the full Senate. 

Lew's nomination moved a step closer to final confirmation before the full Senate with the finance panel's approval, though a floor vote isn't scheduled yet.

Recommended: Increasing polarization in Washington

Five Republicans joined with all of the committee's Democrats in supporting Lew. Five Republicans opposed Lew.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, voted yes, but criticized the administration for being reluctant to answer questions about nominees. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, voted no, citing concerns about Lew's ties to Citigroup, which received federal bailout money.

TODAY: The president hits the road today, heading to a Naval shipyard in Virginia in an attempt to build public support against a slew of spending cuts set to go into effect on Friday. NBC's Chuck Todd reports.

MORNING JOE: Must-Read Op-Eds: Before discussing Steve Rattner's charts on the potential effects of the sequester, Mika Brzezinski reads from a David Brooks NYT opinion column on why great presidents "...see situations differently" and why "[h]istory pivots around their terms."

DAILY RUNDOWN: Gov. Bob McDonnell, R-Va.,  joins The Daily Rundown's Chuck Todd to discuss sequester and how it will affect the state of Virginia as well as the state's comprehensive transportation bill. McDonnell also talks state politics showing his support for Ken Cuccinelli.

NIGHTLY NEWS: Lawmakers are emphasizing the urgency of preventing the large federal budget cuts from going into effect, so why wasn't there any progress all weekend? NBC's Peter Alexander reports. 

As Republicans decry a White House "road show" and cabinet officials continue to sound the sequester alarm, President Barack Obama said Tuesday that - even if Congress gives him greater flexibility to target coming budget reductions - rapid cuts without new revenues will still inflict "pain" on the national economy.

"The problem is, when you're cutting 85 billion dollars in seven months, which represents over a 10 percent cut in the defense budget … there's no smart way to do that," he said in a speech in the ship-building community of Newport News, Va. 

Obama's address at a shipbuilding plant came hours after House Speaker John Boehner used blunt language to urge Senate action on a budget fix, saying the upper chamber's members should "get off their ass" to avert the sequester.

In Virginia, Obama warned that the current across-the-board cuts will be particularly damaging for jobs along the state's defense-industry-rich coastline. 

"These cuts are wrong, they're not smart, they're not fair," he said. "They're a self-inflicted wound that doesn't have to happen." 

The backdrop of Newport News Shipbuilding offered a visual aide for the president, who lamented how fiscal scuffles on the Hill have caused uncertainty in the private sector. 

The overhaul of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which is currently docked nearby , has been put on hold due to economic uncertainty surrounding not only the cuts but also the funding of the government which is due to run out at the end of March.

Obama blamed the impasse on Republican unwillingness to compromise on tax reform measures that would raise additional revenue. 

"Too many Republicans in Congress right now refuse to compromise even an inch when it comes to closing tax loopholes and special interest tax breaks," he said. "And that's what holding things up right now."

The president was joined on the trip by the area's Rep. Scott Rigell, a Republican.  

Rigell told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to the event that -- although many in his party say the GOP should accept no more revenue-raising proposals from Democrats --  he has advised his Republican colleagues against resisting measures like closing tax loopholes. 

"I don't think that's a wise position and I don't hold that value," he said. 

The trip to Virginia -- a swing state -- comes amid complaints from the GOP that Obama is "campaigning" on the road rather than addressing the solution to the coming budget slashes.

"He has traveled over 5000 miles the last two weeks, and we challenge him travel a mile and half and come to Capitol Hill," said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rogers of Washington on Tuesday. "Sit down with Harry Reid and urge the Senate Democrats to take action."

In his comments Tuesday morning, Boehner placed blame squarely on Senate Democrats for failing to propose a fix.   "We have moved a bill in the House twice," Boehner said at a press conference. "We should not have to move a third bill before the Senate gets off their ass and begins to do something." 

Republicans also slammed the White House this week for "scaring" Americans by overstating the consequences of the cuts, which would total $1.2 trillion over 10 years.

That push from administration officials continued Tuesday, with Attorney General Eric Holder warning bluntly that the sequester will make the country "less safe." 

"We’ll do the best that we can to minimize the harm that actually occurs as result of the sequestration, but the reality is there is going to be harm. There is going to be pain," he told a meeting of state attorneys general in Washington D.C. "The American people are going to be less safe." 

Charles Dharapak / AP

President Barack Obama speaks about automatic defense budget cuts during a visit to Newport News Shipbuilding, a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries, Tuesday, Feb. 26, in Newport News, Va.

Newly-minted Secretary of State John Kerry, traveling on his first foreign trip in his new post, told embassy staff in Berlin that he sympathizes with their confusion about Washington's machinations. 

"We face tough budget choices, and I know you sometimes scratch your heads - because I do it at home - and say what the hell are those guys doing or not doing as the case may be, and it's frustrating," he said. "And I get it."

And Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano summed up her own feelings about the budgetary staring contest Tuesday with a literal slap to the forehead. 

"You know, I've been in government and public service a long time-- 20 years actually," she said, after burying her head in her hands. "I have never seen anything like this." 

NBC's Shawna Thomas and Frank Thorp contributed to this report. 

This story was originally published on Tue Feb 26, 2013 10:24 AM EST

Increasing polarization helps explain why we’re on our fifth -- and counting -- fiscal showdown… That said, GOP Rep. Scott Rigell (R-VA) joins Obama on his trip to Virginia to warn against the sequester cuts… Attention Bob Woodward: Cantor tells the New Yorker that it was their plan to let the 2012 election decide the spending/taxes debate… It’s NBC/WSJ poll day!!!... Second time the charm for Chuck Hagel? Senate to hold vote on his nomination around noon ET… Gun issue dominates today’s IL-2 special primary… Republicans vs. Republicans in Virginia… Chris Christie not invited to speak at CPAC… And Lone Star rising?

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, responds to President Barack Obama's remarks to the nation's governors earlier today about how to fend off the impending automatic budget cuts, Monday, Feb. 25, 2013, on Capitol Hill.

*** Increasing polarization: This current political battle over the looming automatic budget cuts known as “sequester” has become the fifth fiscal showdown -- and counting -- between the Obama White House and congressional Republicans since 2011. Part of the reason for this conflict is due simply to divided government, with Democrats controlling the White House and Senate and with Republicans in charge of the House. (After all, it was divided government that produced the political showdowns of the late 1990s, as well as 2007-2008.) But there’s something else going on, too: increased political polarization in Congress, even in the U.S. Senate. According to National Journal’s 2012 vote ratings, for the third year a row, “no Republican member of the Senate had a more liberal voting record than any Democrat—just as no Democratic senator had a more conservative record than any Republican.” And in the House, only 10 Democrats had a more conservative score than the most liberal Republicans, while just five Republicans were more liberal than the most conservative House Democrat. In other words, there are few ideological crossovers (like liberal/moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats) anymore. Democrats are liberal; Republicans are conservatives; and there’s little ground in between. For over two decades, since National Journal started these rankings in 1982, it was the norm for there to be a handful of ideological crossovers in the Senate. Now, it’s the norm for there to be purity. 

*** Rigell, it, just a little bit: All of that said, President Obama has a surprise guest when he travels to Newport News, VA -- a huge shipbuilding community -- to warn of the sequester cuts at 1:05 pm ET, especially as it relates to the defense industry: local Republican Congressman Scott Rigell (R-VA). Also in attendance will be Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and Dem Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA). And today’s event won’t be the only bipartisan meeting. As NBC’s Mike Viqueira, Kasie Hunt, and Kelly O’Donnell report, GOP Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham will head to the White House this afternoon at 3:35 pm ET to discuss immigration with the president. But those examples are exceptions rather than the rule. By the way, there are NO talks scheduled before Friday’s sequester kicks in. Just a lot of media events designed to lay the groundwork for the negotiations in March. That said, don’t be surprised, if simply for appearances sake, there is a last minute meeting at the White House before Friday -- simply because both sides need to be seen as pretending to try to stop the sequester, even if there aren’t any serious proposals right now to do so.

*** Attention Bob Woodward: In his profile of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and the House GOP caucus, the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza has this scoop, especially as it relates to the current sequester fight: Cantor admitted he talked House Speaker John Boehner out of accepting Obama’s grand-bargain deal during the debt-ceiling battle of 2011. “Cantor told me that it was a ‘fair assessment’ that he talked Boehner out of accepting Obama’s deal,” Lizza writes. “He said he told Boehner that it would be better, instead, to take the issues of taxes and spending to the voters and ‘have it out’ with Democrats in the election.” Lizza adds: “The bet failed spectacularly. Just as Cantor had urged, Obama and Romney spent much of the campaign debating tax and spending policies that the House Republicans had foisted on the Romney-Ryan ticket. What’s more, by scuttling the 2011 Grand Bargain negotiations, Cantor, more than any other politician, helped create the series of fiscal crises that have gripped Washington since Election Day.” So this reporting -- which Boehner’s and Cantor’s offices dispute, saying that they walked away from the 2011 talks after Obama asked for more revenue -- begs the question: If Cantor and Republicans decided to let the election determine the spending/budget debate, why are revenues off the table for them, even after the fiscal-cliff deal?

*** NBC/WSJ poll day! How do Americans view the current political debate over the sequester? What are their impressions of President Obama and the Republican Party? What do they think about immigration and gun control? Beginning at 6:30 pm ET, we’ll have answers from our brand-new NBC/WSJ poll.

*** Second time a charm for Hagel? At noon ET, the U.S. Senate is expected to reconsider Chuck Hagel’s nomination to be President Obama’s defense secretary, according to a top Democratic Senate aide. If he gets 60 votes -- which he was unable to get earlier this month, becoming the first cabinet secretary pick to be successfully blocked by a filibuster -- final passage would occur either today or tomorrow. As we wrote on Friday, all signs are pointing to Hagel getting 60-plus votes. And here are the five lessons we’ve learned from the Hagel fight: 1) political betrayal is a worse sin than being a member of the opposing party; 2) getting 60 votes remains the standard in the Senate; 3) confirmation hearings, while maybe not decisive, do matter; 4) Benghazi has become a catch-all Republican fallback, with McCain and Lindsey Graham earlier saying they wanted more answers on the subject before they support moving Hagel’s nomination along; and 5) Hagel has been wounded by the entire process. Here’s a sixth point worth making, as we’ve done before: The extra week-plus that Republicans got after filibustering Hagel seems to have revealed only that a bogus group like Friends of Hamas never existed.

*** Gun issue dominates today’s IL-2 special primary: On this VERY busy day (sequester, poll, Hagel), there’s an additional story worth paying attention today -- the Democratic primary in the race to fill Jesse Jackson Jr.’s Chicago-area congressional seat. In this multi-candidate field, Cook County Chief Administrative Officer Robin Kelly appears to be the front-runner, thanks in large part to the issue of guns, especially after Newtown and the gun violence in Chicago. (See the TV ads here, here, and here.) As one of us wrote last week, this special primary has highlighted three points: One, the NRA has become anathema to many Democratic donors (hence the TV ads blasting Kelly’s opponents, like former Rep. Debbie Halvorson, for getting an “A” with NRA). Two, Michael Bloomberg’s organizations have become a countervailing force (see the $2 million-plus they’ve spent in this race). And three, do these things apply outside of urban areas like Chicago (that’s the big question moving forward after today if Kelly wins, and it’s something that Jessica Taylor of the Rothenberg Political Report questions). Polls close at 8:00 pm ET.

*** Republicans vs. Republicans in Virginia: The state of Virginia is in today’s political news beyond President Obama’s trip to Newport News, VA today. For starters, conservative pundit Erick Erickson is heavily criticizing Virginia Bob McDonnell for raising taxes in the state’s bipartisan transportation deal. “On Friday, March 15, 2013, at 8:00 a.m. Bob McDonnell will go to CPAC and address the Faith & Freedom Coalition Prayer Breakfast. For those of you who attend this event, you will be sitting staring at a liar,” Erickson writes. By the way, McDonnell will be on MSNBC’s “Daily Rundown” today.  In addition, Politico’s Martin writes that GOP business leaders aren’t all that pleased with Republican gubernatorial nominee Ken Cuccinelli. “Two prominent northern Virginia business leaders got into a heated exchange with Virginia Republican gubernatorial hopeful Ken Cuccinelli in front of a few hundred top GOP donors at a closed-door meeting Friday.” These two stories highlight the current fight within the GOP between the pragmatic conservatives and the ideologues.

*** Christie not invited to CPAC: We mentioned this last week, and it’s getting more pickup after another First Read piece noted it: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie wasn’t invited to speak at CPAC.

*** Lone Star rising? And finally at 11:00 am ET, a group of top field strategists who worked for the Obama campaign will hold a conference call announcing the effort -- called Battleground Texas -- to try to turn the Lone Star purple in future years. (San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro will be on this call.) As Politico wrote last month, the organization “plans to engage the state’s rapidly growing Latino population, as well as African-American voters and other Democratic-leaning constituencies that have been underrepresented at the ballot box in recent cycles. Two sources said the contemplated budget would run into the tens of millions of dollars over several years - a project Democrats hope has enough heft to help turn what has long been an electoral pipe dream into reality.”

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