OBAMA AGENDA: Latest on the US-Iran talks
"Nuclear talks between Iran and six major powers are “likely” to end Monday and resume next month, a senior western diplomat said, with the two sides apparently unable to break the deadlock by today’s deadline," writes the Wall Street Journal.
"Given progress made this weekend, talks headed to likely extension with experts and negotiating teams reconvening in December at a yet to be determined location," western diplomats tell NBC’s Andrea Mitchel.
Barack Obama over the weekend, defending his immigration action on ABC: "The fact is that we exercise prosecutorial discretion all the time. And, you know, the primary response that I have to Speaker Boehner and others is go ahead and pass legislation. They don’t need me to act."
The Wall Street Journal assesses the risks of Obama's second-term unilateral actions.
Via Roll Call: "President Barack Obama would veto any legislation hatched by Republicans to undo his immigration executive action granting relief to millions, according to a senior administration official."
The LA Times notes: "The president's aggressive deportation policies of recent years have had the perhaps unintended consequence of removing many of the same people he now says he intends to help."
The latest from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "Worry, wondering and impatience marked the mood in Ferguson and Clayton as a dreary Sunday passed with no word from the grand jury considering whether to bring charges against a Ferguson police officer in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown."
Here's what Rudy Giuliani said over the weekend in an appearance on NBC's Meet the Press: "The white police officers wouldn’t be there if you weren’t killing each other 70-75% of the time.”
D.C. “Mayor for Life” Marion Barry died over the weekend. From the Washington Post: “The most influential and savvy local politician of his generation, Mr. Barry dominated the city’s political landscape in the final quarter of the 20th century, also serving for 15 years on the D.C. Council, whose Ward 8 seat he held until his death. Before his first stint on the council, he was president of the city’s old Board of Education. There was a time when his critics, in sarcasm but not entirely in jest, called him “Mayor for Life.” Into the first dozen years of the new millennium, he remained a highly visible player on the city’s political stage, but by then on the periphery, no longer at the center.”
Writes the New York Times: "The Iraqi military and police forces had been so thoroughly pillaged by their own corrupt leadership that they all but collapsed this spring in the face of the advancing militants of the Islamic State — despite roughly $25 billion worth of American training and equipment over the past 10 years and far more from the Iraqi treasury. Now the pattern of corruption and patronage in the Iraqi government forces threatens to undermine a new American-led effort to drive out the extremists, even as President Obama is doubling to 3,000 the number of American troops in Iraq."
John Harwood wrote over the weekend that a simple technical corrections bill would fix the ambiguity in the health care law, but the Hill is so polarized that the courts must settle the matter instead.
CONGRESS: “Full of crap”
The New York Times profiles Debbie Dingell, who has taken over her husband's long-held House seat.
National Journal notes: "Everyone on the Hill gets ethics training -- Except House members"
Lindsey Graham says that a House Intelligence Committee report on Benghazi released on Friday is "full of crap."
OFF TO THE RACES: Polling 2016
A Bloomberg Politics/ St Anselm New Hampshire poll shows Rand Paul showing early strength in the state.
Harold Ickes is floating Jeb Bush and Rob Portman as a "strong ticket" against Hillary Clinton.
Rand Paul wants a formal declaration of war against ISIS, writes the New York Times.
LOUISIANA: USA Today notes how Bill Cassidy is using the immigration executive order against Mary Landrieu.
The Baton Rouge Advocate writes that Cassidy's "do no harm” strategy seems to be working.
NEVADA: Speaker-designate Ira Hansen is stepping down after controversial remarks about race and sexuality were revealed. "In a statement, he said the attacks were not about his past comments but instead aimed at removing him as speaker because he would be an obstacle to any tax increase that may be proposed by Gov. Brian Sandoval and other lawmakers in the 2015 legislative session,” writes the Las Vegas Review Journal.
PROGRAMMING NOTES.
*** Monday’s “News Nation with Tamron Hall” line-up: Tamron Hall interviews Criminal Defense Attorney John Burris on the Ferguson Grand Jury reconvening; Rolling Stone Magazine Contributing Editor Sabrina Rubin Erdely on UVA’s fraternity suspensions ; Dana Flor who directed and produced the HBO documentary, “The Nine Lives of Marion Barry” on Barry’s life and passing; and Actor Rob Riggle and oddsmaker Kenny White on a new app that's changing fantasy sports.
*** Monday’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” line-up: NBC’s Andrea Mitchell interviews Missouri Public Safety Director Daniel Isom, NAACP Legal Defense Fund Pres. and Director Sherrilyn Ifill, msnbc’s Trymaine Lee, NBC’s Ann Curry, Peter Alexander and Craig Melvin, the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza and Ruth Marcus, nbcnews.com Asia America editor Amna Nawaz and we’ll air an exclusive interview with Presidential Medal of Honor recipient Ethel Kennedy.