Welcome back to Trump Watch. We're recapping the drama over the Trump administration's Ninth Circuit nominees this week, and previewing the crazy week ahead.

Kenneth Lee, left, of Jenner & Block and Daniel Bress, right, of Kirkland & Ellis.
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The Trump White House, again, spurned the two Democratic senators from California this week, when it unveiled nominations for three Ninth Circuit and four California district court seats.

President Donald Trump announced Wednesday evening that he would nominate lawyers Kenneth Lee, Daniel Collins and Daniel Bress to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He also announced the nominations of Patrick Bumatay, an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of California, to the district's trial court, as well as Stanley Blumenfeld, Jeremy Rosen and Mark Scarsi to seats in the Central District.

The list doesn't look quite so different from the Trump White House's nominations for those seats in October, when Lee, Collins, and Bumatay were nominated to the Ninth Circuit, as well as Blumenfeld, Rosen, and Scarsi to the Central District of California. But Wednesday's list, notably, moved Bumatay down to a district court nominee, while adding Bress, a Washington, D.C.-based Kirkland & Ellis partner, to the list of Ninth Circuit picks.

Wednesday's move came after talks between the White House and Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, the home-state senators for these vacancies, appeared to collapse. Feinstein and Harris had opposed the White House's previous batch of nominees, and sought to renegotiate them. Feinstein had urged a compromised package on nominations, which would include nominating one of the White House's preferred picks, one of the senators' preferred picks, and a compromise pick.

Those negotiations appeared largely for naught when Feinstein and Harris denounced Wednesday's announcement, saying they were “deeply disappointed” by the appeals court picks. They instead acknowledged “productive conversations” on the district court level.

“We are frustrated the same resolution was not achieved for the Ninth Circuit and this fundamentally demonstrates the importance of the blue slip. When an administration knows blue slips have to be honored, negotiations can achieve consensus results,” they said.

Mark Your Calendars

>> Neomi Rao, President Donald Trump's nominee to the D.C. Circuit to fill the vacancy left by now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh, will face senators' questions during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Feb. 5. Rao, currently the White House regulatory czar, is expected to be grilled over a controversial set of columns she penned in the early to mid-1990s. >> The judiciary committee will vote on the attorney general nomination of Bill Barr Thursday, Feb. 7. The committee is expected to also take up the nominations of over forty Trump administration court picks, including six circuit court nominees, teeing them up for floor votes.

>> Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, whose installation atop DOJ has been at the center of legal challenges, will testify Friday, Feb. 8, before the House Judiciary Committee, which is led by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-New York.

>> Also testifying on Capitol Hill that day: Michael Cohen, Trump's former fixer and lawyer, who has agreed to closed door testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, led by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-California. Cohen is also reportedly in talks to appear before the House Oversight Committee the day before, on Feb. 7. He previously postponed that hearing, citing fears for his family's safety.

Trump Docket

>> Special counsel prosecutors told a judge Wednesday that the Reed Smith attorneys representing Concord Management and Consulting shouldn't be permitted to share sensitive information with the company's officers and employees outside the U.S., my colleague C. Ryan Barber reports.

>> With a federal judge in Washington still determining whether Paul Manafort intentionally lied to federal authorities in violation of a plea deal, a separate federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia has postponed Manafort's sentencing. The sentencing for the former Trump campaign chair was originally set to take place Feb. 8.

>> The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit will hear oral argument in an emoluments lawsuit on March 19, the court said this week. The Justice Department asked the Richmond, Virginia-based appeals court to take up the case, after a federal judge in Maryland refused to toss an emoluments challenge brought against the president by the state attorneys general in Maryland and Washington, D.C.

>> The ACA case is back on. With the government shutdown over—at least for three weeks—the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit lifted its stay in the Affordable Care Act appeal. The case pits conservative state attorneys general against liberal AGs, although the Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives is seeking to intervene to defend the federal health law.

Speed Reads

>> Roger Stone's Legal Team Didn't Exactly Get Off to a Great Start in DC. [The NLJ]

>> “The White House is finalizing details of a potential national emergency declaration to secure President Donald Trump's border wall, even as lawmakers are trying to broker an immigration deal that could avert another shutdown in just over two weeks.” [Politico]

>> “U.S. Sen. Tim Scott has a message for the conservatives excoriating him for opposing Thomas Farr to be a district court judge: They ought not challenge the conclusion of the Senate's only black Republican that this one-time judicial nominee has a troubling record on race.” [The State]

>> “The GOP is planning to cut debate time on some lower-level nominees and accelerate confirmation of Trump's judicial and executive branch picks, and Senate Rules Committee Chairman Roy Blunt said his committee will likely take up the measure sometime before the end of March.” [Politico]

>> A new study by Clark D. Cunningham at Georgia State University and Jesse Egbert of Northern Arizona University, which combines traditional linguistics and data, might suggest a broader reading of the definition of an “emolument.” [Washington Post]

That's it for this week. Thanks for reading, and please send over any tips, feedback and ideas. You can always shoot me an email at [email protected] or follow me on Twitter.