Since Election Day, the drama in the House has been concentrated on the GOP side, as Kevin McCarthy tries to overcome a MAGA world mutiny to get the gavel, and Democrats smoothly elect three new leaders to succeed Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn.

But it turns out things are not all kumbaya in the House Dem caucus. 

— Amid some Democrats’ discontentment about Clyburn’s insistence on staying in leadership, Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) has decided to challenge him for the assistant leader job — a vote that will happen later today. 

— And there’s an intense whisper campaign happening behind the scenes about Rep. Tony Cárdenas' (D-Calif.) bid to head the DCCC — one that compiles ugly past allegations about sexual assault, as well as new alleged connections to a man known as the “boogeyman of porn.” 

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host and Senior Editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

The four congressional leaders spent over an hour with President Joe Biden in the Roosevelt Room on Tuesday, and when they emerged from the White House and spoke to reporters, something unusual happened: They all agreed.

What they agreed on was something that appeared awfully iffy earlier this week: that the lame-duck Congress should negotiate and pass an omnibus appropriations bill in the coming weeks.

Plus, national politics reporter Natalie Allison stops by for an update on the Senate runoff election between Sen. Raphael Warnock and GOP challenger Herschel Walker. 

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host and Senior Editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

In 1992, two days into a crippling railroad strike, then-Sen. Joe Biden came to the Senate floor and decried the lopsided nature of federal labor laws dealing with the rail industry — laws, he argued, that essentially allowed corporations, regulators and, ultimately, Congress to run roughshod over workers.

“We need to restore a measure of balance to these negotiations,” he said, before voting with just five other senators against halting the strike.

Thirty years later, as president, Biden is turning to those very same laws to prevent another strike and impose a tentative contract agreement that his administration brokered but multiple rail unions voted to reject.

“As a proud pro-labor President, I am reluctant to override the ratification procedures and the views of those who voted against the agreement,” the president said in a statement. “But in this case — where the economic impact of a shutdown would hurt millions of other working people and families — I believe Congress must use its powers to adopt this deal.”

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host and Senior Editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

President Joe Biden and lawmakers return to Washington this week facing a lengthy lame-duck to-do list with only three weeks scheduled to resolve it — a recipe for a very un-merry holiday season should negotiations falter in the final throes of the 117th Congress.

— First up: government funding, which expires Dec. 16. The verdict is still out on whether a bipartisan full-year appropriations deal is within reach — or whether Congress will just kick the can down the road and pass another continuing resolution into next year.

All eyes this week will be on Senate Republicans — and especially GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, who will have to decide whether to help put up the 10 needed GOP votes to clear a 2023 omnibus.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host and Senior Editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

As we all pack up and take a quick break for Thanksgiving, the Peach State is still abuzz with activity as voters prepare to settle the final Senate race of this cycle. 

On Tuesday, a new poll by the AARP — the first major public survey since the November general election — showed the race remains inside the margin of error, with incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock pulling in 51% to Republican Herschel Walker's 47%. 

One key data point: “Warnock has a commanding lead of 54% to 39% over Walker among independent voters — an important bloc that once reliably voted for Republicans in Georgia.” 

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host and Senior Editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.

It’s one of the slowest weeks in politics as our elected leaders slip into the Thanksgiving break, when they have a chance to assess the fallout from the surprising midterm results and ponder the way forward.  

As you prepare your own holiday plans, you’ll probably want to be armed at the dinner table with something smart to say about the meaning of the midterms. If you want to filter out a lot of the noise in the results and focus in on the signal, this morning’s Ron Brownstein piece at CNN is a good one to clip and save for Thursday.

He identifies a few key trends present in the 2022 results that tell us a lot about 2024. 

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host and Senior Editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
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Playbook editor Mike DeBonis and deputy editor Zack Stanton break down the weekend in politics, including the Republican Jewish Coalition conference in Las Vegas, NV. 

“2024 Republican rivals put Trump on notice,” by Alex Isenstadt in Las Vegas: “If former President Donald Trump thought his early 2024 announcement would cow prospective Republican primary rivals into submission, he clearly miscalculated.

“At this weekend’s Republican Jewish Coalition conference, a parade of ambitious Republicans hit all the notes that politicians eyeing future campaigns for the White House typically do. Their tones and messages varied — few called out Trump by name — but collectively they made clear they are not going to back down to the former president after a third consecutive poor election with him at the helm.

What the contenders sound like: “Mike Pompeo, Trump’s hand-picked secretary of State and CIA director, warned that for Republicans to win elections, they can’t simply ‘go on Fox News or send tweets.’ Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who ran Trump’s transition, said Republicans were losing because ‘Donald Trump has put himself before everybody else.’

“Nikki Haley, Trump’s U.N. ambassador who said last year she wouldn’t run if her former boss did, has apparently changed her mind. She used her Saturday evening speech here to say she was looking at running in a ‘serious way,’ and to call for ‘a younger generation to lead across the board.’ …

“‘He’s not going to have the financial support he had anymore, he’s not going to have the internal support that he had before,’ said New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, whose state hosts the first-in-the-nation GOP primary. ‘And so therefore, there’s opportunity there. That political weakness is blood in the water for some folks.’”

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On Thursday, as the 5 p.m. deadline approached for employees to decide whether they were “hardcore” enough to stick it out at Elon Musk's Twitter, reports started to trickle out that Musk’s ultimatum had backfired spectacularly.

The second big development was that six Democratic senators wrote to the Federal Trade Commission asking it to investigate whether Musk broke the law. 

“We write regarding Twitter’s serious, willful disregard for the safety and security of its users, and encourage the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate any breach of Twitter’s consent decree or other violations of our consumer protection laws,” the senators wrote.

Tech reporter Rebecca Kern stops by the recap the latest in Twitter world and whether the platform is headed to the blue checkmark in the sky. 

Fortune Magazine’s Kylie Robison said up to 75% of Musk’s employees had decided to abandon the company.

The Verge reported that “given the scale of the resignations this week, they expect the platform to start breaking soon,” adding: “[T]he team that maintains Twitter’s core system libraries that every engineer at the company uses is gone after Thursday. ‘You cannot run Twitter without this team,’ the employee said.” 

Twitter’s offices were closed until Monday, and reports suggested Musk was paranoid that departing employees might try to sabotage the company.

Insider’s Kali Hays reported “that the entirety of Twitter’s payroll department has resigned/not elected to sign up for Elon’s Twitter 2.0.”

The Times reported that Musk frantically tried to retain top talent in hastily arranged Zooms. “As the 5 p.m. deadline passed, some who had called in began hanging up, seemingly having decided to leave, even as Mr. Musk continued speaking,” according to NYT’s Ryan Mac, Mike Isaac and David McCabe.

The second big development in Twitter world was that six Democratic senators wrote to the Federal Trade Commission asking it to investigate whether Musk broke the law. 

“We write regarding Twitter’s serious, willful disregard for the safety and security of its users, and encourage the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate any breach of Twitter’s consent decree or other violations of our consumer protection laws,” the senators wrote.

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On Wednesday night, just before 11 p.m., Nancy Pelosi's longtime spokesperson Drew Hammill announced on Twitter that today, the speaker will finally announce her plans for the future — putting an end to mounting speculation about whether she’ll retire (a possibility Hammill has batted away), stay on as the top House Democrat or step down from leadership but continue to serve in Congress.

“@SpeakerPelosi has been overwhelmed by calls from colleagues, friends and supporters,” Hammill wrote. “This evening, the Speaker monitored returns in the three remaining critical states. The Speaker plans to address her future plans tomorrow to her colleagues. Stay tuned.”

The tweet came just a few hours after the House was called in favor of Republicans — sending the rumor mill already churning over Pelosi’s future into warp drive. 

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host and Senior Editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
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You’ve heard allies of Rep. Kevin McCarthy say it a gazillion times — and they’ll say it another gazillion times over before the House speaker vote in January: You can’t beat somebody with nobody.

But what if history repeats itself? What if McCarthy, as in his 2015 bid for the speakership, fails to appease the renegade right and falls short of the 218 votes he needs to seize the gavel?

With 31 House Republicans spurning McCarthy in Tuesday’s nominating vote — and with McCarthy likely able to afford no more than three or four defections based on current election returns — the question is more than academic. 

To be clear, Team McCarthy and most GOP lawmakers tell us they believe the California Republican will get 218 — eventually. But if he can’t, Playbook co-author Rachael Bade stops by the show to discuss the most likely alternative members mentioned during our travels on the Hill this week.

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Raghu Manavalan is the Host and Senior Editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.