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Las Vegas Sands Corp. Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson.

Investing in politics is finally paying off for billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson.

The dividends will be displayed this weekend as some of the nations top fundraisers assemble at his Venetian hotel in Las Vegas for the annual meeting of his signature political organization, the Republican Jewish Coalition. Among those paying their respects will be Vice President Mike Pence and Ronna Romney McDaniel, the new Republican National Committee leader.

While Adelson often attracts big-name conservatives, the RJC and its mega-donor benefactor have rarely enjoyed such a strong political position as now. He had a private dinner at the White House earlier this month, just days before a visit from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu where President Donald Trumpannounced an abandonment of a decades-old U.S. position supporting separate states for Israel and Palestinians.

With Jews deeply divided about Trump -- he was criticized for being slow to condemn recent threats against Jewish community centers that have raised antisemitism concerns -- the RJC provides the White House at least one steadfastly supportive national Jewish group.

He has gone much farther in his comments and in articulating his views in terms of the strength of his pro-Israel message than any president I can remember recently, said Matt Brooks, the RJCs executive director. That is very well received.

The three-day gathering, expected to attract about 600 people, will start the RJCs planning for a 2018 midterm election that will mark Trumps first electoral test as president. Former Vice President Dick Cheney, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado and Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa are among the other speakers.

The RJC provides an elite network of fundraisers who help Republicans up and down the ballot -- especially in states with larger Jewish populations -- while also lobbying Republican lawmakers and administration officials for pro-Israel policies. Adelson, 83, isnt entirely responsible for the influence enjoyed by the RJC, whose board of directors is a whos who list of top Republican fundraisers. Lew Eisenberg, the top RNC fundraiser in 2016, is just one such example.

The group is now running digital ads promoting David Friedman, the presidents pick for U.S. ambassador to Israel. The advertising is running nationally and in specific states to put pressure on Democratic senators Chuck Schumer of New York, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Chris Coons of Delaware and Bill Nelson of Florida.

Pence, who is scheduled to address the gathering Friday evening, is expected to assure RJC members that theres no distance between the administration and the groups goals. Trump, meanwhile, has softened some of his campaign pledges to conservative Jews, such as moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Pence is probably the best person in the administration in terms of a combination of seniority and the way that Republican Jews see him, said Tevi Troy, a policy adviser and Jewish liaison for President George W. Bushs White House. There is still discomfort within the Republican Jewish ranks about Trump.

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Trump was widely criticized by Jewish groups -- even mildly by the RJC -- when the White House late last month released a statement marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day that failed to mention Jewish victims. Aides stood by the statement by saying it was meant to be an inclusive message not intended to marginalize Jewish victims.

While the RJC has backed Trump ever since he secured his partys nomination last year -- even if a bit less robustly than for past Republicans -- the courtship wasnt always smooth.

"I had one conversation with Sheldon and all he wants to do is protect Israel, Trump told MSNBC in November 2015. But I dont want his money. I dont need his money."

Adelson and his wife, Miriam, contributed at least $82.5 million to conservative causes during the 2016 election cycle, ranking first among Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Four years earlier, theyd given at least $93 million.

Adelson, who is listed by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index as the 15th richest U.S. resident with an estimated fortune of $27.6 billion, didnt respond to an interview request made through RJC spokesman Fred Brown.

Brooks said the group is already lining up against some Democratic incumbents for the 2018 midterm elections, including Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio. The group is also looking at races in Florida and Indiana, he said.

As the RJC meets in Las Vegas, the liberal Jewish group J Street will convene in Washington for its annual meeting. That gathering will hear from two Democrats unsuccessful in 2016 national campaigns, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Kaine, who was Hillary Clintons running mate.

American Jews traditionally back Democrats by large margins in presidential elections, although the RJC argues it has helped increase support for Republican candidates.

Trump received just 23 percent of the Jewish vote nationally, according to exit polls, down from the 30 percent that Romney received in 2012. Still, Trumps proportion was larger than what Senator John McCain received in the 2008 presidential election and it was also slightly higher than the share secured by Bush in 2000.

We have been chipping away and solidifying a significant chunk of the Jewish vote, Brooks said. Weve been putting millions and millions of dollars into that effort and its paying significant dividends.

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Billionaire Adelson Reaps Benefits From Big Republican Donations - Bloomberg

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A strange thing happened last week at the Federal Election Commission, the nation's watchdog for campaigns and elections. On Friday evening, the FEC's three Republican members quietly released a slew of missing legal memos related to cases dating back as far as 10 years. The commissioners gave no reason for why they decided to act now, after a decade of silence on the cases in question.

But it turns out that the newly released memos were the result of a Freedom of Information Act request recently filed by Mother Jones. The request was a modest one and asked only for a list of all such overdue legal documents at the FEC. That list would show every case for which FEC commissioners had failed to perform a customary part of their jobs: explaining to the public why they had voted a certain way on cases that had come before the agency. Dismiss a complaint, open an investigation, assess a finewhichever way a commissioner decides, he or she is expected to explain that decision in a memo made available to the public.

In a move that perplexed several legal experts, the FEC denied our FOIA request. Yet soon after that, the FEC's three Republican commissioners hastily wrote and released to the public 11 of these long-overdue legal memos. When Mother Jones asked the three Republican commissioners if our FOIA request had anything to do with their decision to act, two of them, Lee Goodman and Matthew Petersen, confirmed that it had. "Most of these were on the back burner as our reasons were either already clear or changes in the law made the issues moot," Petersen says. "Your request was a useful reminder to bolster the record with formal statements."

Congress created the FEC in the 1970s to police campaign-related abuses and enforce election laws passed in the wake of Watergate. Unlike most federal agencies, the FEC has an even number of commissionerssixdivided equally by political party. In today's hyper-partisan environment, with frequent 3-3 deadlocks on key votes, it's hard not to see the FEC as an institution designed to fail. (The commission will be without a sixth member now that Democrat Ann Ravel has announced her resignation, effective March 1.)

But for most of its 40-year history, the FEC worked mostly fine. The commissioners regularly found the four-vote majority they needed to actto investigate potential wrongdoing, assess fines against lawbreakers, and provide guidance to candidates, committees, political parties, and other outfits looking to get involved in federal elections. That began to change in the mid-2000s. Three new Republicans came aboard who took a more ideological approach to campaign finance laws and free speech. Led by then-Commissioner Donald McGahn, who is now President Donald Trump's White House counsel, the Republicans often voted in lockstep to block enforcement actions. A Public Citizen analysis found that the FEC hit a 3-3 vote on enforcement actions roughly 1 percent of the time between 2003 and 2007. In 2008, deadlocks rose to 10 percent. In 2013, they hit a peak of 23 percent. "For nearly every case of major significance over the past several years, the Commission has deadlocked on investigating serious allegations or has failed to hold violators fully accountable," outgoing Democratic Commissioner Ann Ravel wrote in a recent report titled Dysfunction and Deadlock.

When FEC commissioners vote on a case to go against what the agency's lawyers recommend, they are required to publish a legal justificationa Statement of Reasons, in agency jargonfor why they voted the way they did. These memos educate the public on the legal underpinnings of the commission's decisions and give outside parties a basis to sue the agency if they disagree. But starting in the mid-2000s, the FEC's Republicans simply stopped explaining many of their decisions. Some or all of the Republican commissioners failed to write Statements of Reasons in 25 such cases over a 10-year span, according to an unofficial tally obtained by Mother Jones earlier this month. (The tally shows that Democratic commissioners had no overdue Statements of Reasons.)

Larry Noble, a former FEC general counsel who now works at the Campaign Legal Center, a group that supports tighter political donation limits and more transparency in elections, says that failure to file Statements of Reasons is longstanding problem that has worsened over time. "Delaying them deprives the public of knowing what's going on or why commissioners did what they did," Noble says.

A few weeks ago, Mother Jones filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the FEC's own list of all overdue legal Statements of Reasons. In its February 17 denial letter, an FEC official cited FOIA Exemption 5, which shields from disclosure "documents covered by the attorney work-product, deliberative process, and attorney-client privileges."

Two hours after the denial, the FEC posted its weekly digest. It included the 11 Statements of Reasons authored by Republican commissioners relating to old cases. The documents were all signed and dated within a four-day span last week, and each one is only several pages long, unlike the lengthy, footnote-laden documents typically produced by the commissioners and their staffs.

Ellen Weintraub, the senior-most Democratic commissioner at FEC, applauded the release of the 11 legal memos. "I am pleased on behalf of the American people that they are finally getting some kind of explanation for the commission's failure to act in so many cases," she says.

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Republican Election Commissioners Just Released Key Legal DocumentsNearly a Decade Too Late - Mother Jones

Chicago Tribune

Republican Health Plans Have Winners And Losers, Just Like Obamacare FiveThirtyEight Last week, Republican members of the House put forward the outline of a replacement plan for the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama's signature health care bill. The ACA was decried by Republicans as an unmitigated financial disaster and ... Republicans suddenly realize destroying the health-care system might be a bad ideaChicago Tribune The Republican Obamacare Dilemma In One 6-Minute VideoHuffington Post The End of the Republican Health-Care CharadeBloomberg MSNBC -The Independent -Common Dreams all 631 news articles »

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Republican Health Plans Have Winners And Losers, Just Like Obamacare - FiveThirtyEight

Conservatives signature Washington gathering moved into full swing Thursday with calls from an influential GOP governor for the party to go big, go bold, now that Republicans have control of Congress and the White House for the first time in a decade.

With that control comes pressure to deliver on long-sought policy priorities, and the four-day Conservative Political Action Conference marks one of activists first big post-election brainstorming sessions on how to achieve those goals.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a conservative icon dating back to his high-profile fights with labor unions, rallied the crowd at the convention center just outside D.C. Thursday as he urged attendees not to get caught up in Washington.

As for the agenda ahead, he urged President Trump and conservatives to go bold.

"Do what you said you were going to do, said Walker, a former presidential candidate.

The conference at National Harbor in Maryland features a host of lawmakers and officials -- including top White House advisers and Vice President Pence on Thursday, and President Trump on Friday morning.

White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway predicted Thursday morning that the energy surrounding the new president is so intense, tomorrow it will be TPAC when hes here.

During her remarks on the CPAC stage, Conway lauded her bosss ability to make supporters feel like theyre part of a movement.

He went right to the grassroots and brought you along, she said.

The conference was from the outset a departure from recent CPAC gatherings, which for the last eight years were used to bash the Obama administration. Now, Republicans are in control and working on their own agenda.

The conservative movement has elected a Republican president, American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp said Wednesday, at the start of the annual conference, which his group sponsors. Its not so much now about complaining about President Obamas agenda as it is about what well do with political power and the responsibility to get the economy moving.

Leaders are hoping to use the conference to strategize about what they can accomplish and to better articulate their values at a time when the very definition of conservatism has seemed to waver.

But much of the buzz around the four-day event has centered on CPAC organizers pulling the speaking slot of alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, after the release of an audio tape in which he made what Schlapp called disgusting comments.

Yiannopoulos seems on the year-old tape to defend adults having sex with minors. Yiannopoulos apologized this week for the comments and said he had been sexually abused as a teen.

Schlapp said Wednesday that CPAC invited Yiannopoulos because the backlash he faced for his college talks were part of a large, chilling effect regarding free speech on campus.

We understand the alt-right, but it has no voice in conservativism, Schlapp said. Bigotry has no voice in conservativism.

The attendance of Trump, the first president since Ronald Reagan to visit CPAC in a first term, has indeed brought some energy to the 44-year-old event.

But other scheduled speakers and events -- including the speech by Pence and a one-on-one Thursday between White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Trump strategist Steve Bannon -- are also attracting a lot of interest.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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At CPAC, Walker urges Republican leaders to 'go big, go bold' - Fox News

In their districts this week, Republican members of Congress are facing pushback from angry town-hall crowds over the potential repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Some lawmakers are offering up a degree of sympathy in response, whether by defending the right to protest or attempting to convince voters they understand their concerns.

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Republican Senator Tom Cotton told an agitated town hall audience in Arkansas on Wednesday that he wouldnt deny that Obamacare has helped many Arkansans, after a woman said the law saved her life. When another woman insisted she wasnt a paid protester, the senator tried to reassure the crowd that wasnt a charge he planned to make: Youre all Arkansans and Im glad to hear from you, he said. Thank you to everyone for coming out tonight, whether you agree with me or disagree with me. This is part of what our country is all about.

Other Republican lawmakers have gone even further in making clear over the past week that they believe the people showing up at town halls and expressing alarm over the possibility of Obamacare repeal are genuine and should be listened to.

This wasnt an artificial crowd. It wasnt manufactured. It was real people with real concerns in terms of what came next on healthcare, GOP Representative Mark Sanford of South Carolina told CNN after holding a town hall of his own lasting almost four hours over the weekend.

In Iowa, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley told reporters on Tuesday that its all legitimate, as he too faced questioning at town halls over the fate of the healthcare law. If Hillary Clinton had been elected president, thered be people from the conservative end of the spectrum [who would] probably be doing the same thing.

Those acknowledgements might not be enough to allay the fears of people worried that they might lose health coverage if the Affordable Care Act is repealed. But they mark a contrast with the way the White House has characterized the protest and agitation taking place, and also appear to be a departure from how some Republican lawmakers talked about the activism at town halls when they first started generating national headlines earlier this month.

After video footage of an agitated crowd in Utah chanting Do your job! at House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz went viral, the GOP congressman went on the defensive. Suggesting that people at his town hall were not acting in good faith, Chaffetz said that what happened was bullying and an attempt at intimidation. The Deseret News reported that Chaffetz claimed that the protestors included people brought in from other states to disrupt the meeting.

The White House has also attempted to downplay the crowds. During a press conference last week, President Trump seemed to dismiss protesters by arguing that they arent residents of the lawmakers districts. They fill up our rallies with people that you wonder how they get there, but theyre not the Republican people that our representatives are representing, he said. On Tuesday, he tweeted: The so-called angry crowds in home districts of some Republicans are actually, in numbers cases, planned out by liberal activists.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer acknowledged during a press briefing earlier this week that some people are clearly upset, but similarly suggested the activism may not accurately reflect the sentiment of the lawmakers constituents. There is a bit of professional protestor, manufactured base in there, he said. It is a loud, small group of people, disrupting something in many cases for media attention.

In states across the country, liberal activists are taking a page out of the Tea Party playbook to help organize turnout at town hall events. Some of those activists are following guidelines that draw inspiration from Tea Party tactics as a way to put pressure on members of Congress and generate headlines, explicitly recommending that activists reach out to media, during and after the town hall. Still, that doesnt necessarily mean the people voicing concern at town halls are exclusively liberal activists. CNNs Eric Bradner and MJ Lee, meanwhile, have reported that theres no evidence of paid protesters.

Its too early to say what kind of impact the town hall protests might have, if much at all, beyond energizing liberal activists. The extent to which voter dissatisfaction is or isnt widespread is also difficult to gauge from protest alone. This week, a Pew Research Center survey found that most Republican voters have a favorable view of Trump and trust the president more than GOP leaders in Congress.

Even if some GOP lawmakers adopt a sympathetic tone toward angry town hall crowds, that isnt necessarily an indication that theyre changing course. When Cotton told the crowd on Wednesday that he wouldnt deny Obamacare has helped people in the state of Arkansas, he quickly added it has also hurt many Arkansans.

And some Republican lawmakers have voiced frustration at events. If all you want to do is vent, this will not be profitable, Republican Senator Bill Cassidy said during a Louisiana town hall on Wednesday amid shouts and yelling. Later, the senator lamented to reporters: The unfortunate thing is there was so much common ground that they would not listen to, adding unfortunately, people came in with their prejudices, and with their prejudice, they would not listen.

But Cassidy defended the right to protest. I assume theyre Americans who care about our country, he told Gambit, a Louisiana newspaper, after the event, dismissing the possibility that people in the room were paid protestors. He added: Theyre coming out with their Constitutionally protected right to assemble and speak. And isnt that a good thing!

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Republican Lawmakers Face Hostile Town-Hall Crowds - The Atlantic