MIDTERM MADNESS: Democrats rumble in Illinois debate
AZ-8: GOP nominee Debbie Lesko is facing another legal complaint about her campaign finance moves.
GA: Don’t miss this: The Georgia Senate has approved a tax measure punishing Delta for nixing discounts for NRA members.
IL-GOV: The Democratic candidates faced off in a televised debate last night, with candidate Chris Kennedy accusing J.B. Pritzker of using “the language of racists” in a phone call with Rod Blagojevich a decade ago.
IL-3: Nancy Pelosi is backing Dan Lipinski despite his opposition to abortion.
MO-GOV: More woes for Eric Greitens, this time over his use of a charity email account to arrange political meetings.
ND-SEN: A Republican poll has Kevin Cramer up five points on Heidi Heitkamp.
And Heitkamp has been taking a GOP-tinged tone on taxes in her reelection race, the AP notes.
PA-18: Will Trump travel to PA-18 if Rick Saccone looks like he’ll lose? Maybe not, reports the Huffington Post.
And Lamb has outraised Saccone by nearly a five-to-one margin in the first seven weeks of the year.
Joe Biden will stump for Lamb on Tuesday.
TX: Another storyline to keep an eye on in Texas: The number of women running.
TRUMP AGENDA: White House is preparing to replace McMaster
An NBC News exclusive: The White House is preparing to replace H.R. McMaster as national security adviser as early as next month. (The White House said this in response: “We frequently face rumor and innuendo about senior administration officials. There are no personnel announcements at this time.")
The latest on guns? After a West Wing meeting, the top lobbyist for the NRA said that Trump doesn’t want gun control after all.
And NBC’s Leigh Ann Caldwell reports that Mitch McConnell won’t commit to a Senate debate on guns at all.
Russia-U.S. relations are getting even chillier as the Kremlin increasingly sees Trump as a “lost cause,” writes the Washington Post.
NBC’s Jonathan Allen writes that Trump’s abrupt moves on tariffs have laid bare a big rift in the Republican Party.
And here’s what Trump tweeted about trade this morning: “When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win. Example, when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don’t trade anymore-we win big. It’s easy!”
The Washington Post writes on the fall of Jared Kushner during February.
And NBC’s Vivian Salama, Hallie Jackson and Kristen Welker write that morale in the White House has plummeted with Hope Hicks’ departure.
And here’s the New York Times on the current state of the West Wing: “For 13 months in the Oval Office, and in an unorthodox business career before that, Donald J. Trump has thrived on chaos, using it as an organizing principle and even a management tool. Now the costs of that chaos are becoming starkly clear in the demoralized staff and policy disarray of a wayward White House.”
And the Washington Post reports that the Justice Department inspector general is set to allege that Andrew McCabe approved an improper media disclosure and misled investigators.