Over the weekend, Sam Berger of the Center for American Progress tried to make the claim that Republicans had packed federal courts with conservative nominees by confirming circuit court judges. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) made a similar statement on Sunday during an appearance on Meet the Press. “The American people have watched the Republicans packing the court for the past three and a half years,” he said, “and they brag about it.”

If you used your free time on Saturday or Sunday to watch football, you may have seen an ad run by Joe Biden’s campaign in which the narrator says that Biden won’t raise taxes on anyone earning less than $400,000 annually. The ad perpetuates the myth that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was a “tax cut for the rich.” As Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute notes, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act “provided the largest percentage tax cuts to the bottom two quintiles—that is, the bottom 40 percent of U.S. households.”

Earlier this month, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released an updated budget and economic outlook for the next ten years. The report provided projections on federal spending, revenues, and economic growth. The update was needed because the report that the CBO released in January was out of date because of the explosion of spending in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and related partial economic shutdowns across the country.

The House and Senate are in session this week.

On Saturday, President Donald Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. In October 2017, Barrett was confirmed by a vote of 54 to 42 to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Prior to her service on the federal bench, Barrett was a law professor at Notre Dame Law School, where she received her law degree. She clerked for Judge Laurence Silberman at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Justice Antonin Scalia at the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Friday, FreedomWorks sent a coalition letter to Senate and House offices in support of the Pandemic Preparedness, Response, and Recovery Act of 2020 (PPRRA), S. 4708. Signers to the letter include Adam Brandon of FreedomWorks, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, Brandon Arnold of the National Taxpayers Union, David Williams of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance. The text of the letter and signers can be found below. A PDF of the letter is available here.

The Senate is in session this week. The House is in recess.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is under fire for visiting a hair salon in San Francisco in violation of a city ordinance. Hair salons have been shut down in San Francisco since March but opened on September 1 for outdoor business. Pelosi visited on Monday, a day before the scheduled reopening. Video of her visit, released by the store owner, shows the Speaker walking around inside the salon without a mask covering her face, also in violation of city ordinance.