Good Thursday morning, I'm Jake Sherman, and welcome to your political playbook audio briefing, staying tuned after the show for a message from Google.

And I'm Anna Palmer. The Washington Nationals beat the Houston Astros Wednesday night, 12 to 3. The Nats are up to zero in the seven game series. In other words, the Nats need to win two of the next five games to win the World Series.

They play Friday night at 808 at Nats Park.

It's pretty safe to say that House Republicans have decided to spend the vast majority of their time,

focusing on their belief that Democrats are conducting a patently unfair impeachment process.

That message echoes from the halls of the Capitol,

where representatives Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows, and companies say it on repeat,

to the president's Twitter account, to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's plane,

where he griped about it to us last week. It's also pretty safe to say this is a ploy

and a play for public sympathy, and many of the Republicans

involved in these goofball antics, like busting into a secure facility, will privately concede that. It's a fine way for a quick headline and a nice way to appease Donald Trump, and for the slice of the electorate that's more concerned about process than substance, this might be a useful tool. But Republicans will soon face a new reality. The impeachment process

will move to a more public phase, and at that point, their stand outside a closed door for camera

stick will no longer work. So what's next? It's a bit tough to predict, because we don't know what

the process will look like. There are a bunch of decisions Democrats have to make before Trump's

defenders figure out how to best try to defend the

president. For example, at this moment, there are four committees involved in impeachment. How do Democrats

decide which one, or ones, get to prosecute the case? We spoke to some of the top Republicans

in the House to see how they view the next stage of the fight. First, witnesses.

Republicans have wanted to issue subpoenas in closed hearings,

and they say when the process goes public,

they want to be able to present their side of the case on behalf of the president.

New York Republican Lee Zeldon made this point that lawmakers who are not involved in the

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