Hello,

today is Thursday, August 3rd, 2017.

I'm Scott Bland, your host,

and you are listening to Politico's Nurdcast.

We're going to start off this week talking about

one of the big policy planks of President Donald Trump's campaign, immigration.

He and a couple of Republican senators rolled out a big piece of new immigration legislation

this week aimed at reducing the amount of legal immigration

the number of green cards issued per year into the United States.

We're going to talk about what is in that bill, how it kind of fits into the Trump administration's

daily political strategy,

and also a little bit of what's going on

inside the West Wing right now,

which we've been talking about a lot. There's yet more new stuff this week.

We're also going to dive into a couple of Senate races. We're going to talk this week about

Arizona home of Senator Jeff Flake who has in the past week has really amplified himself.

He's always been a never-Trump voice within the Republican Party, one of the few remaining

ones among congressional Republicans, but he's got a book out, he's been making a lot of media appearances,

and despite the fact that he's up for re-election in 2018,

he's really leaning into this at a time when President Trump has taken control of the Republican Party.

On the flip side, we're also going to be talking about the upcoming Alabama Senate special

election where every Republican in the race wants to be standing with Trump as they get ready to face Alabama

...