PRESENTED BY the Stop The HIT Coalition

Good morning! President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address 155 years ago today . Here’s your Daily News for Monday, November 19.

1. ???? at the Cliff Sims’ book cover.

• You may have heard that Cliff Sims has written a book.
• The YellowHammer founder turned Trump aide is the latest White House official to tell their story from inside the storm.
• Politico first reported the rumor on Friday, and today we have a first look at the art and general scope of the book.
• “Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House” is due on bookshelves January 29.
• One of Cliff’s duties as Director of White House Message Strategy was to sit in on meetings and take meticulous notes so that the communications team could be prepared respond to rumors, leaks or accusations. Those notes, coupled with his special access to Trump and other key leaders, resulted in a unique narrative that fetched a seven-figure guarantee from publishers.
• It’s not an Omarosa-style dump on Trump story, but others in the White House might get lit up. I mean the title says it all.
• Now Axios’ Mike Allen and the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman have stories as well.
• Read more HERE.

2. Florida is done.

• At long last, Florida’s election is over.
• Rick Scott is Senator-elect and Ron DeSantis will be the Governor.
• Their respective opponents conceded over the weekend after it became apparent that recounts were not likely to improve the Democratic vote count.
• That puts the GOP Senate majority at 52, a Mississippi win away from 53. That’s an improvement for Republicans, but hardly what they wanted or expected given a historically-favorable map.
• How did Republicans win Florida in a year in which Democrats won almost every other swing state? Taxes for one. Democrat Andrew Gillum promised to raise taxes to pay for new programs, forgetting that many people move to Florida specifically to avoid high taxes.
• One other important reason (and one Republicans nationwide should pay attention to) is the Florida GOP’s appeal to Latino voters.
• Exit polls show Scott won 45 percent of the Latino vote. For the rest of the GOP nation wide, that was more like 20.
• You might hear a lot more about this stat over the next two years.

A Message from the Stop The HIT Coalition

• Sen. Doug Jones: Don’t let Alabama small businesses and middle-class families get sacked by the 2020 Health Insurance Tax.
• Absent immediate action, the 2020 Health Insurance Tax will begin penalizing hardworking Alabamians on January 1, 2020 by driving up their cost of care as much as $450.
• Sen. Jones can help score lower premiums for Alabama’s 765,000 small business employees by supporting bipartisan legislation (S. 3063) to block the HIT in 2020.
• Ask Sen. Jones to help take S. 3063 to the end zone and support legislation to stop the 2020 Health Insurance Tax.

3. Senate stalemate.

• Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made it clear that his top priority in this lame duck session is confirming President Trump’s nominees to the federal bench.
• 35 such nominations are on the calendar and can be brought up for a vote.
• Sticking in McConnell’s crawl is one of his own Caucus Members, Sen. Jeff Flake, who refuses to support any judicial nominations until the Senate passes a bill meant to protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller as his investigation proceeds.
• This situation is really frustrating for McConnell and other conservatives because they see the legislation as either (1) unnecessary and/or (2) unconstitutional.
• They argue Trump is not likely to mess with Mueller because of the devastating, irreversible political consequences of doing so. And that maybe a non-binding Senate resolution would be more effective and, well, legal.
• All this comes as dozens of sealed indictments are on the DC docket – 14 added since January, which are likely to related to the Mueller probe.
• Flake retires in January, but McConnell doesn’t want to skip a beat confirming judges.

4. Matthew Stokes: On Straight Ticket Voting.

• Matthew Stokes is back this week with some thoughts on straight-ticket voting.
• Some Alabama pundits have decried the practice of allowing voters fill in one bubble for ALL Republicans or ALL Democrats.
• This is a ballot feature originally set up decades ago by the Democrats to help keep them in power. Ironically, it now helps Republicans maintain power.
• Even so, Stokes says many of the criticisms are off-base. Here’s an excerpt:

• Read Matthew Stokes’ full column HERE.

5. News Briefs.

• Transportation officials in Alabama have gotten plenty of opinions, pro and con, to consider on a proposed bridge to improve access to the state’s beaches.
• The department of transportation heard from 28 people in Gulf Shores on two proposals for a road and bridge project that’s expected to cost between $56 million and $61 million, news outlets reported.
• City leaders in Gulf Shores and Orange Beach also testified in favor of the project, saying it would help evacuate the beaches during hurricanes.
• “You cannot get on or off the island during any kind of catastrophic event,” said Orange Beach City Councilman Jerry Johnson.
• Read more HERE.

• Many of the nearly 3,000 Central American migrants who have reached the Mexican border with California via caravan said Saturday they do not feel welcome in the city of Tijuana, where hundreds more migrants are headed after more than a month on the road.
• The vast majority were camped at an outdoor sports complex, sleeping on a dirt baseball field and under bleachers with a view of the steel walls topped by barbed wire at the newly reinforced U.S.-Mexico border.
• The city opened the complex after other shelters were filled to capacity. Church groups provided portable showers, bathrooms and sinks. The federal government estimates the migrant crowd in Tijuana could soon swell to 10,000.
• Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum has called the migrants’ arrival an “avalanche” that the city is ill-prepared to handle, calculating that they will be in Tijuana for at least six months as they wait to file asylum claims.
• U.S. border inspectors are processing only about 100 asylum claims a day at Tijuana’s main crossing to San Diego. Asylum seekers register their names in a tattered notebook managed by migrants themselves that had more than 3,000 names even before the caravan arrived.
• Read more HERE.

• President Donald Trump said Saturday that his administration will release a full report in the next two days about the death of a Saudi journalist, which has created a diplomatic conundrum for the president: How to admonish Riyadh for the killing yet maintain strong ties with a close ally in the Middle East.
• “We’ll be having a very full report over the next two days, probably Monday or Tuesday,” Trump said. That will include “who did it,” he said.
• Reporters asked Trump about the death of Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post who was slain Oct. 2 inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Saudi Arabia’s top diplomat has said the crown prince had “absolutely” nothing to do with it.
• American intelligence agencies have concluded that the crown prince ordered the killing in the Saudi Consulate in Turkey, according to a U.S. official familiar with the assessment.
• Read more HERE.

Headlines.

Front Pages (images link to newspaper websites, which you should visit and patronize).