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By Scott Wong (
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FRUSTRATION ON HILL AFTER WH BERGDAHL BRIEFING - Burgess Everett and Manu Raju report for the hometown paper: "Senior Obama administration officials showed senators a private video of an ailing Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl to bolster their defense of a controversial deal to secure his release by swapping Taliban detainees - and leaving most of Congress in the dark. But in a more than two-hour meeting, the administration failed to give lawmakers assurances that the five Taliban prisoners exchanged for Bergdahl would stay away from the battlefield, prompting bipartisan ire from senators as they left the tense classified briefing.

-- "'Everybody is concerned about that,' said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). "These are high-level people. This is not low level. ... And these are people who basically have the ability to go back and hit the ground running.' ...

-- "Lawmakers expressed frustration that the administration didn't comply with legal requirements to give Congress 30 days notice before engaging in prisoner swaps and also questioned the wisdom of exchanging five Taliban prisoners detained in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for a single U.S. prisoner - especially one who is facing growing allegations that he deserted his colleagues. ... The White House pushed back on some press reports that suggested Bergdahl left a note at his base that included statements critical of the U.S. and the Afghan war."
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-- SEN. CLAIRE McCASKILL (D-MO.), emerging from the briefing, said critics of the swap didn't have all the facts and had engaged in an "un-American" rush to judgment.
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-- AND RET. GEN. STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL defended the Bergdahl-Taliban swap: "We don't leave Americans behind. That's unequivocal," he told Yahoo News' Olivier Knox.
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-- WH officials had braced for Bergdahl backlash, report our own Edward-Isaac Dovere and Carrie Budoff Brown: "President Barack Obama's Rose Garden appearance Saturday afternoon with Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl's parents was an attempt to humanize the prisoner swap to deflect potential criticism of letting five Taliban leaders out of Guantánamo Bay, White House aides say. It didn't work. ... The White House has been surprised by how much attention has remained on the questions about Bergdahl, from the circumstances of his disappearance to the wild beard his father grew while he was being held that's even led to Bergdahl's hometown canceling a celebration. All this, Obama aides say, is in
their minds a proxy for the hatred toward the president."
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HUDDLE FIRST LOOK - LGBT HILL GROUP PICKS NEW LEADERSHIP -- The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Congressional Staff Association has announced its new Board of Directors. The bipartisan group's mission is to advance the interests of LGBT House of Representatives staff, and advocate for the LGBT community at large.

-- Michelle Mittler, director of scheduling and special events for House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, has been appointed as the organization's first female president after Twaun Samuel stepped down to become chief of staff for Rep. Maxine Waters.

-- Mitchell Rivard, communications director for Rep. Dan Kildee, will serve as vice president of the association. He previously had led communications.

-- Other board members will continue to serve in their current roles, including Brian Walsh (membership director), a scheduler to Rep. Mark Pocan, one of seven openly gay members of Congress; and Michael Wong (policy director), a legislative aide for Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, who is openly bisexual. Andy Flick, JoDee Winterhof and Todd Sloves will continue to serve as at-large members. See a pic of the new board here:
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Forget Cups. There's a Dunkin' Donuts inside the Library of Congress. BuzzFeed's Benny Johnson:
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COCHRAN ALLIES GIRD FOR BATTLE - Alexander Burns writes for POLITICO: "Jolted by a brush with political oblivion in this week's Mississippi Senate primary, Republican Sen. Thad Cochran and his top allies are regrouping - and hunkering down for an arduous three-week runoff campaign against conservative state Sen. Chris McDaniel. Cochran advisers and outside operatives supporting the campaign spent Wednesday huddled in closed-door meetings, assessing the path forward and beginning to lay out a strategy for the one-on-one race against their tea party opponent. ...

-- "Several advisers, speaking candidly and anonymously, said that competing in the June 24 runoff will likely require the campaign to shift resources from television and radio advertising into pure get-out-the-vote operations. It will mean raising concerns about McDaniel's electability and delivering an issue-driven message about what McDaniel's policy views would really mean for Mississippi. Riskiest of all, it will involve reaching out to casual voters - including independents and Democrats - to swell the electorate with Mississippians who may not have participated in this week's first round of voting."
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-- But as a candidate, Cochran has not been at the top of his game, writes WaPo's Dan Balz: "That Cochran didn't fully understand how his party has changed was evident even by his own admission. In February, he told some Mississippi reporters, 'The tea party, you know, is something I don't really know a lot about.' That may have been an honest statement, but it was also astonishing and impolitic. ... Over the past few weeks, as the race received more and more national attention, he sometimes stumbled during his interactions with the news media, offering answers that did not respond directly to the questions posed. More than one reporter mentioned this in stories over the past week, enough
to draw concern from some of Cochran's allies."
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COCHRAN, OTHERS DELETE SUPPORT FOR BERGDAHL ONLINE, Mario Trujillo reports for The Hill: "Earlier Wednesday, Cochran deleted a tweet posted three days ago that read, 'Welcome home, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. A grateful American thanks you for your service.' ... Similarly, Joni Ernst, who won Iowa's Republican Senate primary on Tuesday, deleted her tweet from Saturday when President Obama first announced Bergdahl's release.Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) and Lee Terry (R-Neb.) also deleted messages about Bergdahl's return.... The Sunlight Foundation's Politwoops captured all the deleted tweets. Terry's deleted message appeared on his Facebook page."
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GOOD THURSDAY MORNING, June 5, 2014, and welcome to The Huddle, your play-by-play preview of all the action on Capitol Hill. Send tips, suggestions, comments, complaints and corrections to
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swong@politico.com . If you don't already, please follow me on Twitter
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My new followers include
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TODAY IN CONGRESS - The House is on recess for the entire week. The Senate meets at 10 a.m. and at 1:45 p.m. will vote to confirm Sylvia Burwell as secretary of Health and Human Services and Carolyn Radelet as director of the Peace Corps.

BURWELL CLEARS KEY SENATE HURDLE, CRUISING TO CONFIRMATION - Jennifer Haberkorn reports for the hometown paper: "The Senate voted 67-28 on Wednesday to advance the nomination of Sylvia Mathews Burwell as HHS secretary, another sign of her smooth path toward confirmation. The vote was only a procedural move. Final confirmation is expected Thursday afternoon. Republicans had initially hinted that they would turn the nomination - to run HHS and Obamacare - into a proxy over the health care law. But their opposition never crystallized. Republicans say they're impressed with Burwell's resume - she ran OMB for one year and had key roles at the Wal-Mart Foundation and Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation - and her outreach to Capitol Hill, even amid the tense politics of Obamacare."
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- "Is the GOP Losing Its Anti-Obamacare Zeal?" By National Journal's Sam Baker: "This is the way the Obamacare war ends-not with a bang, but a whimper. Senate Republicans are essentially passing on what was once supposed to be the Next Big Obamacare Fight-the confirmation of a new Health and Human Services secretary.... It's not just Burwell: Anti-Obamacare bills in the House have gotten tamer lately-some of them look an awful lot like fixing obvious problems with the law, something conservatives once swore they'd never do. There are fewer big-ticket hearings, and even those are often poorly attended. Anyone who's been around Capitol Hill and health care for the past four years
can see it-the anti-Obamacare fire just isn't burning as hot as it used to."
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SCOTT BROWN RESIGNS FROM FLA. COMPANY BOARD - Todd Wallack and Noah Bierman report on A1 of the Boston Globe: "Republican Scott Brown abruptly resigned Wednesday from an obscure Florida company and gave up stock initially valued at $1.3 million after facing a barrage of questions about his role as a 'senior adviser,' a controversy that had dogged his US Senate campaign in New Hampshire. Brown's resignation from the advisory board of Global Digital Solutions Inc. was announced about two hours after a news media event in the state's capital designed to highlight his official entry into the race. He was repeatedly challenged by reporters in Concord seeking answers about what he had done to
earn the stock grant, and whether he had scrutinized the company before lending it his name. ...

-- "By late afternoon Wednesday, he stopped defending his association with Global Digital Solutions, and his campaign sent out an e-mail announcing he was leaving the company and giving up the stock."
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S.D. SENATE CANDIDATE LOSES RACE, GETS ARRESTED -- David Montgomery and John Hult report for the Sioux Falls Argus Leader On Tuesday night, Annette Bosworth lost the U.S. Senate race she spent the last year seeking. Twelve hours later, she was arrested. Now Bosworth faces 12 felony charges: allegations she lied on her petitions to get on the U.S. Senate ballot. Also charged is Clayton Walker, an independent who was kicked off the Senate ballot last month for the same petition problems that led to his nine charges Wednesday. Bosworth, visibly exhausted and stressed, said on Wednesday afternoon that the charges were 'political prosecution' by Attorney General Marty Jackley. On the advice of
her attorney, she didn't answer a question about whether the charges were false, but suggested the errors on her petitions were innocent mistakes."
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IMMIGRANT FAMILIES STAGE SIT-IN IN HOLDING'S OFFICE - By Franco Ordonez reports for McClatchy: "A group of immigrant families and advocates held a sit-in at Rep. George Holding's Raleigh office Wednesday afternoon, demanding that he call on House Speaker John Boehner to schedule a House vote on an immigration overhaul. One of the demonstrators, Angelita Morrisroe of Dudley, 63 ...was arrested just after 4 p.m. and taken into custody. Holding is one of more than two dozen House Republicans who are being targeted in a nationwide push on the anniversary of a House vote that would have defunded the White House program that blocks deportations of hundreds of thousands of young undocumented
immigrants brought to the country as children."
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-- Reps. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.) and many others got a similar treatment:
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WEDNESDAY'S TRIVIA WINNER - Omar Vargas, government relations director for Praxair Inc., was first to correctly answer that George Washington worst "injury" he sustained during the French and Indian War was several bullet holes in his coat.During the conflict, he attained the rank of colonel in the Virginia Regiment.

TODAY'S TRIVIA -A current events question: Tuesday's election saw one California county vote to secede to form a 51st state named what? The first person to send the correct answer to
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