Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) is requesting the Government Accountability Office review whether the Trump administration is improperly classifying documents that it provided to Congress.

In an interview, Murphy, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said that the Trump administration’s classification of a letter from Vice President Mike Pence’s aide Jennifer Williams centered on the vice president’s call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was the “last straw.”

“There was absolutely nothing in that document that should have been classified,” Murphy said. “It was only classified because it was politically hurtful to the president in the middle of an impeachment proceeding and you are not allowed as president of the United States to keep information from the public simply because it’s going to hurt you politically.”

Williams testified during the House’s impeachment inquiry that President Donald Trump’s July 25 call with his Ukraine counterpart was “inappropriate.” She submitted the document in question to the House Intelligence Committee as supplemental testimony and additional evidence in the impeachment inquiry, but Pence’s office has deemed it classified.

Democrats who viewed the document in January when it was made available to lawmakers claimed there’s no reason to keep it classified.

In a letter sent Thursday, Murphy asked that the GAO compare classified documents that are in the Office of Senate Security to their original classified versions to see if they have similar classification levels as well as examine the material the documents provided to Congress are based on.

“Some documents contain information that is classified at a level that appears inconsistent with the nature of the material,” Murphy wrote. “It is critical to ensure that information provided to the Congress is properly classified when it must be classified at all.”

Murphy along with other Democratic senators have criticized the Trump administration for keeping documents under wraps that they argue do not contain classified information. The Connecticut Democrat has also called for declassifying the War Powers notification sent to Congress after the strike against Iranian General Qassem Soleimani.

“I’ve noticed a trend — I’ve watched as more and more of these documents I’m reading in the [Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility] don’t have information that compromises sources and methods,” he said. “The War Powers notification for the Soleimani strike had no information in it that was classified.”

Murphy said in the interview that he’s also hearing concerns from Republicans. He acknowledged that the Obama administration also classified documents that didn’t necessarily have classified information, but said that under the Trump administration the problem is “much more acute.”

The Connecticut Democrat is also asking GAO whether a member of Congress can challenge the classification status of a document.

“Right now the only thing we can do is declassify it ourselves which I do not think is a solution,” he said. “But if this doesn’t get better, then I do think we need to think about processes by which a third party can weigh in and decide to un-classify something that’s just a political embarrassment.”

A Utah GOP lawmaker wants his colleagues to send a message of support to President Trump by voting to censure Utah Sen. Mitt Romney over his vote to convict the commander-in-chief in his impeachment trial. Rep. Phil Lyman of Blanding — population 3,375, the biggest town in San Juan County — announced that he had...

House Democrats are clobbering their Republican challengers in the fundraising race, dramatically reducing the GOP’s chances of winning back the majority.

The roughly four dozen most endangered House Democratic incumbents raised a collective $28.5 million in the last three months of 2019, a staggering total that is nearly twice the sum of all of their Republican challengers combined, according to a POLITICO review of the fundraising filings.

This drastic disparity, which House GOP leaders have deemed an all-out crisis, throws the Democratic advantage into stark relief: 32 of the 42 swing-seat Democrats raised over $500,000 last quarter and 36 started the election year with at least $1 million in cash on hand. Of the over 120 Republicans who filed to run against the so-called frontliners, just six had cleared that fundraising threshold, and three had that much in the bank.

“This is quite a wake-up call for Republicans — no way getting around it,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.). “There’s no panacea in this. It’s going to take a lot more grinding work.”

Republican members and strategists, clear-eyed about the scope of the problem, describe it as twofold. GOP donors eager to reelect the president and fortify the Senate majority seem to have less interest in funding House candidates. Meanwhile, Democrats have turned the unprecedentedly high fundraising that propelled them to the majority in 2018 into a regular occurrence.

Buoyed by grassroots enthusiasm and the structural dominance of ActBlue, Democrats have moved the financial goal post, and privately many Republicans are at a loss about how to adapt.

Democratic incumbents seem to be picking up speed: All but five of the 42 most vulnerable members raised more in the fourth-quarter than in the third. In fact, 11 of them raised over $900,000 in the last three months of 2019; only Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) passed that mark the prior quarter.

“We used to always tell our candidates: ‘Have a $250,000 to $300,000 quarter. That’s a really good quarter,’” said Parker Poling, the executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee. “And it was until they started having $900,000 quarters," she added, referring to House Democrats.

In a joint interview last week at the NRCC’s headquarters, top committee officials outlined their work to confront their fundraising dilemma, from investing in Facebook and Google ads to grow their email lists to consulting with the president’s digital fundraising team.

Desperate to compete with ActBlue, NRCC’s digital fundraising managed to grow the amount the group raised online from just under $5.8 million in the 2017 off-year to $22.6 million in 2019, a 390 percent increase.

In total, the committee slightly surpassed their total 2017 fundraising, raking in $85.1 million last year.

But the DCCC raised a whopping $125 million in 2019, $40 million more than the House GOP campaign, and $38 million of that came from their digital fundraising. In the past four cycles the disparity between the two committees’ off-year total has never exceeded $21 million.

“The DCCC is very good at online fundraising. They’re probably the best Democratic organization at it,” said NRCC digital director Lyman Munschauer. “But we’re catching up.”

Part of the NRCC's task is getting members to invest in their digital operations. Many started the cycle “from ground zero” in building an email list and are still learning best practices for online fundraising, which is totally different from "having a nice lunch at the country club,” Poling said.

WinRed, the new GOP fundraising platform, raised $101 million in the last six months of 2019, but two-thirds of that went to President Donald Trump’s campaign or the Republican National Committee. Just $5.4 million of that haul went to the NRCC.

GOP donors appear to have other priorities. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy often tells members that that House Republicans get the “third dollar” after up-ballot donations.

“People give to the president. They want to make sure we hold the Senate,” said Rep. Susan Brooks (R-Ind.), who chairs NRCC’s recruitment team. “And so our candidates work really hard to get that $500 or $1000, maybe harder than they’ve had to in the past.”

Still, the NRCC insists there is still a path to reclaim the chamber if fundraising ticks up, and that top GOP leaders have been vocal about their monetary concerns because there is time course correction.

“If we were in July, and we’d just gotten those second-quarter reports, that’s when you’re really in the panic mode,” Poling said. “But we wanted to ring the bell now so that people can really step it up.”

There were some bright spots for Republicans in the fourth-quarter filings. Five vulnerable members — Reps. T.J. Cox (D-Calif.), Gil Cisneros (D-Calif.), Harley Rouda (D-Calif.), Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) and Susan Wild (D-Pa.) — were outraised by GOP challengers. Former Rep. David Valadao and Young Kim, who are challenging Cox and Cisneros, respectively, had more in cash on hand as of January.

But, overall, the numbers are daunting for Republicans. Some seats appear to be sliding off the map altogether. For example, in Orange County, Porter raised over $1 million last quarter. Not one of her challengers cleared $100,000.

Of the Republicans running in the 30 districts currently held by Democrats that President Donald Trump carried in 2016 — which should have seen the biggest grassroots boost from the impeachment vote last quarter — only one challenger raised more than $400,000 without self-funding.

Democrats’ financial dominance has major implications for GOP candidate recruitment. Republicans lack top-tier challengers in several key battlegrounds, including seats held by Reps. Antonio Delgado (D-N.Y.), Ron Kind (D-Wis.) and Ben McAdams (D-Utah).

McAdams' most formidable opponent ended his bid last quarter, sending House Republicans scrambling to find another contender. They courted Thom Carter, the executive director of an environmental group in Utah. Carter ultimately declined to run — in part, he said, because keeping pace financially with McAdams would require too much time away from his wife and newborn son.

“The incumbent has about $2 million hard cash on hand,” Carter said in an interview last week. “I’d have to spend so much time playing catch up to raise money — not just to win the primary, but against a well-financed, well-liked incumbent.”

House Democrats also plan to parlay their financial edge into growing the offensive battlefield, forcing Republicans to waste valuable resources on protecting incumbents and open seats.

Last quarter, several House Republicans were outraised by an Democratic or independent challenger, including DCCC targets like Reps. Jim Hagedorn (R-Minn.); Ann Wagner (R-Mo.); Don Young (R-Alaska); Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.); Steve King (R-Iowa); Rodney Davis (R-Ill.); Ross Spano (R-Fla.); David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) and Chip Roy (R-Texas). More concerningly, all but four on that list also trailed their opponent in cash-on-hand.

Democrats were the top fundraisers in five competitive open-seat races in Indiana, Iowa, Georgia, New York and in the Texas district held by retiring GOP Rep. Will Hurd. Though Republicans dominated in two other open Texas seats in the Houston and Dallas suburbs.

“We want to work very hard to make sure that we push deeper into Republican territory,” DCCC Chairwoman Cheri Bustos told reporters at a briefing last month. “That is the job that we have in front of us.”

Yet Democrats have failed to post strong fundraising in some biennial House battlegrounds held by Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.); Don Bacon (R-Neb.); and John Katko (R-N.Y.).

GOP strategists insist there is time to rebound, and that Democrats’ vote to impeach Trump will backfire, particularly through the 30 Democratic-held districts that Trump won in 2016.

"We recaptured the majority in 2010, even though they raised more money than us," said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a former NRCC chairman. "If you think you can get out of a bad vote with money, good luck to you. I don’t think you will."

House Democrats are clobbering their Republican challengers in the fundraising race, dramatically reducing the GOP’s chances of winning back the majority.

The roughly four dozen most endangered House Democratic incumbents raised a collective $28.5 million in the last three months of 2019, a staggering total that is nearly twice the sum of all of their Republican challengers combined, according to a POLITICO review of the fundraising filings.

This drastic disparity, which House GOP leaders have deemed an all-out crisis, throws the Democratic advantage into stark relief: 32 of the 42 swing-seat Democrats raised over $500,000 last quarter and 36 started the election year with at least $1 million in cash on hand. Of the over 120 Republicans who filed to run against the so-called frontliners, just six had cleared that fundraising threshold, and three had that much in the bank.

“This is quite a wake-up call for Republicans — no way getting around it,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.). “There’s no panacea in this. It’s going to take a lot more grinding work.”

Republican members and strategists, clear-eyed about the scope of the problem, describe it as twofold. GOP donors eager to reelect the president and fortify the Senate majority seem to have less interest in funding House candidates. Meanwhile, Democrats have turned the unprecedentedly high fundraising that propelled them to the majority in 2018 into a regular occurrence.

Buoyed by grassroots enthusiasm and the structural dominance of ActBlue, Democrats have moved the financial goal post, and privately many Republicans are at a loss about how to adapt.

Democratic incumbents seem to be picking up speed: All but five of the 42 most vulnerable members raised more in the fourth-quarter than in the third. In fact, 11 of them raised over $900,000 in the last three months of 2019; only Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) passed that mark the prior quarter.

“We used to always tell our candidates: ‘Have a $250,000 to $300,000 quarter. That’s a really good quarter,’” said Parker Poling, the executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee. “And it was until they started having $900,000 quarters," she added, referring to House Democrats.

In a joint interview last week at the NRCC’s headquarters, top committee officials outlined their work to confront their fundraising dilemma, from investing in Facebook and Google ads to grow their email lists to consulting with the president’s digital fundraising team.

Desperate to compete with ActBlue, NRCC’s digital fundraising managed to grow the amount the group raised online from just under $5.8 million in the 2017 off-year to $22.6 million in 2019, a 390 percent increase.

In total, the committee slightly surpassed their total 2017 fundraising, raking in $85.1 million last year.

But the DCCC raised a whopping $125 million in 2019, $40 million more than the House GOP campaign, and $38 million of that came from their digital fundraising. In the past four cycles the disparity between the two committees’ off-year total has never exceeded $21 million.

“The DCCC is very good at online fundraising. They’re probably the best Democratic organization at it,” said NRCC digital director Lyman Munschauer. “But we’re catching up.”

Part of the NRCC's task is getting members to invest in their digital operations. Many started the cycle “from ground zero” in building an email list and are still learning best practices for online fundraising, which is totally different from "having a nice lunch at the country club,” Poling said.

WinRed, the new GOP fundraising platform, raised $101 million in the last six months of 2019, but two-thirds of that went to President Donald Trump’s campaign or the Republican National Committee. Just $5.4 million of that haul went to the NRCC.

GOP donors appear to have other priorities. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy often tells members that that House Republicans get the “third dollar” after up-ballot donations.

“People give to the president. They want to make sure we hold the Senate,” said Rep. Susan Brooks (R-Ind.), who chairs NRCC’s recruitment team. “And so our candidates work really hard to get that $500 or $1000, maybe harder than they’ve had to in the past.”

Still, the NRCC insists there is still a path to reclaim the chamber if fundraising ticks up, and that top GOP leaders have been vocal about their monetary concerns because there is time course correction.

“If we were in July, and we’d just gotten those second-quarter reports, that’s when you’re really in the panic mode,” Poling said. “But we wanted to ring the bell now so that people can really step it up.”

There were some bright spots for Republicans in the fourth-quarter filings. Five vulnerable members — Reps. T.J. Cox (D-Calif.), Gil Cisneros (D-Calif.), Harley Rouda (D-Calif.), Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) and Susan Wild (D-Pa.) — were outraised by GOP challengers. Former Rep. David Valadao and Young Kim, who are challenging Cox and Cisneros, respectively, had more in cash on hand as of January.

But, overall, the numbers are daunting for Republicans. Some seats appear to be sliding off the map altogether. For example, in Orange County, Porter raised over $1 million last quarter. Not one of her challengers cleared $100,000.

Of the Republicans running in the 30 districts currently held by Democrats that President Donald Trump carried in 2016 — which should have seen the biggest grassroots boost from the impeachment vote last quarter — only one challenger raised more than $400,000 without self-funding.

Democrats’ financial dominance has major implications for GOP candidate recruitment. Republicans lack top-tier challengers in several key battlegrounds, including seats held by Reps. Antonio Delgado (D-N.Y.), Ron Kind (D-Wis.) and Ben McAdams (D-Utah).

McAdams' most formidable opponent ended his bid last quarter, sending House Republicans scrambling to find another contender. They courted Thom Carter, the executive director of an environmental group in Utah. Carter ultimately declined to run — in part, he said, because keeping pace financially with McAdams would require too much time away from his wife and newborn son.

“The incumbent has about $2 million hard cash on hand,” Carter said in an interview last week. “I’d have to spend so much time playing catch up to raise money — not just to win the primary, but against a well-financed, well-liked incumbent.”

House Democrats also plan to parlay their financial edge into growing the offensive battlefield, forcing Republicans to waste valuable resources on protecting incumbents and open seats.

Last quarter, several House Republicans were outraised by an Democratic or independent challenger, including DCCC targets like Reps. Jim Hagedorn (R-Minn.); Ann Wagner (R-Mo.); Don Young (R-Alaska); Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.); Steve King (R-Iowa); Rodney Davis (R-Ill.); Ross Spano (R-Fla.); David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) and Chip Roy (R-Texas). More concerningly, all but four on that list also trailed their opponent in cash-on-hand.

Democrats were the top fundraisers in five competitive open-seat races in Indiana, Iowa, Georgia, New York and in the Texas district held by retiring GOP Rep. Will Hurd. Though Republicans dominated in two other open Texas seats in the Houston and Dallas suburbs.

“We want to work very hard to make sure that we push deeper into Republican territory,” DCCC Chairwoman Cheri Bustos told reporters at a briefing last month. “That is the job that we have in front of us.”

Yet Democrats have failed to post strong fundraising in some biennial House battlegrounds held by Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.); Don Bacon (R-Neb.); and John Katko (R-N.Y.).

GOP strategists insist there is time to rebound, and that Democrats’ vote to impeach Trump will backfire, particularly through the 30 Democratic-held districts that Trump won in 2016.

"We recaptured the majority in 2010, even though they raised more money than us," said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a former NRCC chairman. "If you think you can get out of a bad vote with money, good luck to you. I don’t think you will."

Fresh off his impeachment acquittal Wednesday, President Donald Trump spoke Thursday morning at the National Prayer Breakfast. "Today, we proudly proclaim that faith is alive and well and thriving in America and we're going to keep it that way, nobody will have it changed," Trump said. "It won't happen as long as I'm here, it will never, ever happen."

Donald Trump has lashed out at the Democrats in a White House briefing in which he branded the opposition “liars” — in stark comparison to the comments former president Bill Clinton gave when he was acquitted by the Senate.Trump, who was acquitted by the Senate on Wednesday, spoke in the East Room of the White House in an address that made it clear his longstanding views on his impeachment were unchanged.

Senators are pushing for a myriad of changes to how Congress handles articles of impeachment in the wake of President Trump's trial.With the months-long saga wrapping on Wednesday, senators in both parties are pitching at least three different...