Within the hallways of the U.S. Capitol, there is growing confidence by GOP Senators that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell can whip his caucus to block a vote on witnesses Friday.
While returning to the chamber after a short break Thursday, Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.) told Cheddar he's "feeling good" about tomorrow's expected vote.
Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told reporters during the break that Republicans have the "momentum" to move to end the trial tomorrow without witnesses. "If we're able to say no [to witnesses] and go right to final judgment, we'd move in that direction and stay here until that work is decided and completed Friday evening. That's where all the momentum is now."
Still up for debate is what, exactly, happens, if the Republicans vote to end the debate on witnesses quickly.
Meanwhile, back in the chamber, lead impeachment manager Adam Schiff said witness depositions could be limited to just one week and said that the trial should not be rushed just because the State of the Union is Tuesday.
After the break, Senators asked two bipartisan questions, both of which were from senators who may still be undecided on the issue of whether to allow witnesses. First, Senators Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) asked the defense team if the president would assure them that private citizens would not be directed to conduct foreign policy unless formally designated by the president and the State Department.
Murkowski and Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) submitted the second bipartisan question, asking if any action a president takes is inherently political and where the line is between permissible political actions and impeachable political actions.
In President Bill Clinton's impeachment trial, there was only one bipartisan question asked, which Sen. Collins had signed onto at the time.
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Arianna Huffington, the CEO of Thrive, is one of many business execs to pull out of the "Davos in the Desert" business summit in Saudi Arabia after the controversy surrounding a missing and presumed-dead Washington Post journalist. Huffington said she was "surprised" by the Trump administration's handling of the situation.
Deepa Seetharaman, tech reporter for the Wall Street Journal, said the company is still unsure of who's responsible for the most recent hack, in which 30 million user accounts were compromised. And perhaps more importantly, it still doesn't know where all the data went.
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Cannabis may have just been made legal in Canada, but Canopy Growth has been getting ready for this moment for years. Cheddar's Baker Machado went to the company's headquarters in eastern Ontario to talk to the company's execs about the budding cannabis market.
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