GOOD MORNING! Welcome to Huddle, the play-by-play guide to all things Capitol Hill, on this Friday, April 21, where your Huddle hosts have lost their blue checkmarks on Twitter, but you can still trust us. FIRST IN HUDDLE: NRSC KISSED BY LAROSE — Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose was in Washington this week, where he met with some eye-emoji-worthy folks: The Senate campaign arm. LaRose has not hidden his interest in a potential campaign to unseat Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) and this latest meeting is a further sign he may be gearing up for the next steps. LaRose confirmed to our colleague Olivia that he met with Jason Thielman, chief of staff for National Republican Senatorial Committee chair Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), this week. But he also confirmed he's been staying in "close touch" with the Montana Republican, who has vowed to take a new approach this cycle after the NRSC ran into candidate quality issues in last year’s midterms. If LaRose enters this race, he'd first need to elbow out two other Republicans — state senator Matt Dolan and businessman Bernie Moreno — who are already in the race before he takes on Brown in the general. (Burgess and Olivia first reported that all three were likely to jump into the race in December.) DEBT DILEMMA — Republican leadership spent the last day working with conference members to vibe check on the debt limit proposal revealed by McCarthy on Wednesday. Jordain talked to several lawmakers who met with McCarthy’s leadership team, including Arrington, Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) and the heads of various factions within the conference, to discuss potential changes to the bill. One area of debate: work requirements. The House GOP bill would require Medicaid recipients to work 80 hours per month, or 20 hours per week. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) has a proposal that would up that to 30 hours per week. Some conservatives have also pushed for beefing up work requirements for SNAP food assistance. RASKIN’S RECOVERY — Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who was diagnosed with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma last December, had good news during a talk with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. "The doctors tell me that the chemotherapy has extinguished the cancer cells, at least as far as they can tell,” he said. “I’m hanging in there and I’m going to make it through.” He also said his last session of chemotherapy is Friday. ‘IT’S TIME TO SPEAK UP’ — Your Huddle hosts got an early look at a statement the National Republican Congressional Committee is going to make this morning calling on vulnerable House Democrats to urge President Joe Biden to negotiate with McCarthy on the debt limit. “Recent public polling shows broad public agreement with Speaker McCarthy's negotiating position,” the release read. “Yet vulnerable House Democrats have remained notably quiet, tacitly backing Biden's bad faith negotiating posture and ignoring the spending crisis they contributed to. It's time to speak up.” The statement mentions Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) statement Thursday calling on Biden to speak to McCarthy, as well as other rank-and-file Democrats who believe the White House should be at the negotiating table. SU IN THE SPOTLIGHT — Julie Su faced heat from Senate Republicans during her confirmation hearing Thursday, where they hammered her on everything from her meetings with union leaders to her activism as a college student. Republicans also criticized her for a relative lack of experience brokering collective bargaining negotiations — a specialty of former Labor Secretary Marty Walsh’s — a move geared at sowing doubts among the undecided cohort that includes Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). Kelly and Tester both said Thursday they’re still undecided on whether they will support her for the position, with Tester saying that he plans to meet one-on-one with Su next week “hopefully.” A new detail: Sinema has spoken to Su as part of her consideration of the Labor hopeful’s nomination, a person familiar with their conversation told your Huddle hosts. The HELP committee has scheduled a confirmation vote for Su next Wednesday, which would clear the way for a final floor vote later in the year. A 4/20 POLICY UPDATE — A deal on an array of weed policies, from banking, guns and criminal record expungements, went up in smoke in the Senate at the end of 2022. But on the steps of the House this week, Reps. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) and actor (and dispensary owner) Woody Harrelson were finding some new common ground on cannabis. Harrelson has been trailing Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) on the Hill, talking about weed while also hyping his new Watergate show. He brought up the Safe Banking Act with McHenry, who chairs the Financial Services Committee. The bill, which the House has passed a half dozen times with bipartisan support, would allow banks to offer financial services to the weed industry. McHenry isn’t going to move that bill through his panel, but he did voice support for changes to broader cannabis law. “When people want to utilize banking for some broader social debate, let’s just get on with the broader social debate,” he told Olivia after his convo with Harrelson. “The more straightforward way to do this is the broader descheduling of cannabis.” McHenry has voted against the cannabis banking bill, but said he thinks descheduling would alleviate the issues of cash and banking especially in states with legalized marijuana. And he's told his colleagues "to vote their conscience, vote their district" on the issue. Phillips said that what McHenry told Harrelson gave him some hope. “I agree with Rep. McHenry and believe his statement may give permission to countless other Republicans who’ve been hesitant to endorse descheduling. With almost 70% of Americans now supporting legalization, it seems to me the dam is about to break,” Phillips told Olivia.
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