Former U.S. Sen. David Perdue is seriously considering mounting a Republican primary challenge against Gov. Brian Kemp, according to a number of GOP activists and operatives, which would set up a divisive showdown between two of Georgia’s biggest political figures in the 2022 election.

In recent weeks, Perdue has called donors and other allies to float the idea, according to eight people who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential matters. Several of them said he’s “conflicted” about a run, while others say he’s leaning toward a challenge.

Perdue has kept quiet publicly about his plans, and he declined to comment. But he remains close to former President Donald Trump, who encouraged the former U.S. senator to run at a rally in Middle Georgia in September. Trump’s allies also recently leaked polls that show Perdue in a strong position.

The biggest question is whether the 71-year-old is motivated to take on Kemp after narrowly losing a January U.S. Senate runoff to Jon Ossoff. Perdue ruled out a comeback bid against Democrat Raphael Warnock but hasn’t yet backed Kemp’s reelection after initial indications he would do so. Meanwhile, he’s building a new estate in coastal Georgia.

(CNN)Democrats are expected to scrap paid family and medical leave from their cornerstone economic and climate package, discarding one of the central planks of President Joe Biden's proposal as they scramble to strike a deal with holdout senators, according to multiple people familiar with the talks.

The plan's survival has been in question for several days due to objections from Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat. Biden's initial 12-week proposal was scaled back to four weeks in an effort to secure Manchin's support. That was rejected, leading to an effort by New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand that attempted to find a compromise with Manchin.

That has not succeeded, one of the people said, prompting Democrats to push it out of the package as they seek to scale back the proposal's overall cost and programs to meet Manchin's demands.

Manchin made clear he would not move when asked about the provision on Wednesday, saying: "I just can't do it."

The Senate’s top tax writer unveiled plans to create a special new tax on the uber wealthy that he hopes Democrats will use to help pay for their next big spending package.

Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wants to begin requiring people with more than $1 billion in assets, or who earn more than $100 million in three consecutive years, to begin paying capital gains taxes each year on the appreciation in value of their assets, regardless of whether they are sold.

Wyden figures it would hit around 700 people, and expects it to generate several hundred billion dollars, though Congress’s official scorekeepers have not yet put a number on the plan.

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Many House Democrats are already balking at the proposal, preferring a slate of more traditional income and capital gains tax rate increases approved last month by the Ways and Means Committee.

The Long Red Thread tells the story of House elections since the early 1960s — when a series of Supreme Court decisions enshrined the principle of “one person, one vote” into the congressional redistricting process — and explains why Republicans now hold more advantages in the battle for control even as Democrats retain the power to win majorities.

In the excerpt below, Kyle lays out the big-picture arguments from his book and notes the importance of electoral nationalization, political realignment, and congressional redistricting and reapportionment in helping Republicans both break the Democratic hammerlock on the House majority in 1994 and win majorities more often in the roughly 3 decades since that pivotal election.

— The Editors

Four days before the 1994 election, President Bill Clinton heard a prediction from a top advisor that he didn’t believe. Dick Morris, a Republican operative whom Clinton’s staff found so distasteful that the president hid his relationship with him, told Clinton that Democrats were going to lose their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. “No way, no way,” Clinton responded, according to John Harris’s biography of Clinton, The Survivor.

Few could blame Clinton for being incredulous about Morris’s prediction. Democratic control of the House had been a given for decades. Save for brief two-year majorities the Republicans won in 1946 and 1952, the Democrats had held the House uninterrupted since they took a majority in a series of special elections in 1931, allowing them to capture the gavel when the House opened that year in December.

And yet Morris, of course, was right.

Recreating President Joe Biden’s winning coalition is an all-important mission for Democrats working to protect their razor-thin House and Senate majorities in 2022. But they’re still digging through the data to figure out what that really looks like.

Catalist, a Democratic data firm, took a fine-tooth comb to the 2020 results out of Nevada and Wisconsin, two battleground states that backed Biden by narrow margins, in an analysis released on Wednesday. The top takeaways in its report include some surprises for Democrats’ conventional wisdom: Latinas drifted away from Democrats in Nevada at a higher rate than Latino men compared to the last presidential election; white voters who didn't graduate from college didn’t help Biden as much in Wisconsin as they did nationally; and first-time voters of color are not necessarily voting just for Democrats.

“It's not appreciated that people of all races, when they don't pay attention to politics, don't have strong ideological patterns,” said Jonathan Robinson, who authored Catalist’s report, in an interview with POLITICO. “Their preferences will be different than those with a strong socialization around politics.”

Understanding what went right — and wrong — for Democrats in Nevada and Wisconsin will be immediately important for the party in the midterms, as both states feature hotly contested House, Senate and gubernatorial races. POLITICO dove into Catalist’s top takeaways:

United States women's national team legend Carli Lloyd signed off on her international career in emphatic style on Tuesday night at Allianz Field in St. Paul, Minnesota, with a 6-0 win over South Korea.

Lloyd, who memorably scored three goals in the opening 16 minutes of the U.S. victory in the 2015 Women's World Cup final, is hanging up the boots after a decorated career that includes two World Cup titles and a pair of Olympic gold medals.

"It's been emotional. But there's just a sense of peace and contentment that I feel -- it's just joy and happiness," Lloyd said. "It's been an amazing journey and I gave it all I had, and now I can walk away into the next chapter."

Lloyd, 39, ranks second in the world for most-ever international appearances after having played in 315 career games. She has scored 134 goals with the U.S., third most in the history of the women's team.

Just one day after striking a $1.2 billion deal with Blackstone Inc., Spanx foundress Sara Blakely has gifted her employees – 500 of them – with first-class plane tickets to anywhere in the world, and $10,000 each to spend when they get there.

Her employees erupted in cheers and tears when the entrepreneur made the announcement at a company party last Thursday celebrating her funding coup.

Investment company Blackstone on Wednesday agreed to buy a majority stake in the undergarment company at a valuation of $1.2 billion. Blakely will maintain a significant equity stake in the business and will continue to oversee daily operations as executive chairwoman, the company said in a news release last week. Spanx’s existing senior management team will also be on board.

It was a long way from her start with $5,000 in savings back in 1998, persevering even as doors were slammed in her face and business cards ripped up in front of her, she recounted to CNBC in 2019.