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The Senate finally made long-expected committee assignments official on Thursday, kickstarting a new session for the top health committee under an unlikely pair: Vermont Independent and drug-pricing firebrand Bernie Sanders, and Louisiana Republican and doctor Bill Cassidy. (Owermohle, 2/2)

Sen. Bernie Sanders was named as the new chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions last week. It's a position that Sanders requested, because it deals with many of the issues he's worked on during his long political career. Vermont Public senior political correspondent Bob Kinzel had a chance to speak with Sanders about his priorities for the new session. He joined Morning Edition host Mitch Wertlieb to share what he learned. (Kinzel, Wertlieb and Anderson, 2/1)

Pharmaceutical lobbyists are bracing in the crosshairs of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee now that it is chaired by "Medicare for All" proponent Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who has long taken an antagonistic view toward the industry. The Vermont independent has already hinted he plans to take on the "greed of the pharmaceutical industry," which could involve calling in drug company executives to testify, leaving some lobbyists apprehensive that it won't be business as usual, making it harder to push their legislative priorities. (Adcox, 2/3)

Republicans are backing away from proposals to reduce spending on Social Security and Medicare as they enter talks with Democrats over raising the nation’s borrowing limit, sidelining for now a politically perilous fight over how to best firm up the finances of the popular benefit programs. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) has said he wants to slash federal spending in exchange for voting to raise the debt ceiling, but in recent days he stressed publicly and privately that he isn’t seeking cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Democrats for weeks have pressed Republicans to provide more specifics of what they plan to cut, while warning against entitlement-eligibility changes some GOP lawmakers had sought to tie to a debt-limit deal. (Wise, 2/2)

A new bipartisan duo is diving in to defend gas stoves. Senate Energy Committee Chairman Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the new ranking member of the Commerce Committee, are teaming up on legislation Thursday that would bar the Consumer Product Safety Commission from using federal funding to ban new or existing gas stoves, according to a copy of the bill first shared with NBC News. (Wong and Richards, 2/2)

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis waded into the debate over gas stoves and government regulation on Thursday, proposing a permanent tax exemption for the appliances. DeSantis used a news conference about rural internet access to criticize a federal regulator’s suggestion that gas stoves might need to be banned because they emit harmful indoor air pollutants. (Smith, 2/2)

The Energy Department proposal, published Wednesday, sets first-of-their-kind limits on energy consumption for the stoves, drawing fear from the industry that the regulation could effectively end the use of some products from the market. The proposal also sets energy usage standards for electric cook tops and new standards for both gas and electric ovens. (Natter, 2/2)

A group of eight Democratic senators formed the Gun Violence Prevention Caucus on Thursday, with the goal of promoting “commonsense solutions” to America’s abnormally high levels of gun violence. “We wake every day to headlines of another mass shooting in this country,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a member of the newly formed caucus, said in a statement. “We can’t allow this to continue.”  (Shapero, 2/2)

A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that the government can’t stop people who have domestic violence restraining orders against them from owning guns — the latest domino to fall after the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority set new standards for reviewing the nation’s gun laws. Police in Texas found a rifle and a pistol at the home of a man who was the subject of a civil protective order that banned him from harassing, stalking or threatening his ex-girlfriend and their child. The order also banned him from having guns. (Beam, 2/3)

When Isaiah Trotman visited his family in Ohio this past Christmas, his mother said, she noticed her 31-year-old son seemed unusually subdued. Fearing the change in his demeanor might indicate deeper problems, she said, she pleaded with him to move out of D.C. to be near her. “I saw a depression,” Althea Trotman said Thursday, a day after her son, an Auburn University graduate with a career in IT, was charged with targeting commuters and killing a rail worker in a shooting at the Potomac Avenue Metro station in Southeast Washington. “I knew it was real.” Police said Thursday they were working to determine the motive behind the chilling daylight attack, which renewed safety concerns regarding D.C.’s public transit systems and the neighborhood east of Capitol Hill where the shooting occurred. (Hermann, 2/2)

Democrats in the California Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom are making a second attempt to pass legislation that would tighten the state’s rules for concealed weapons by banning firearms in a host of public spaces. The bill is the state’s response to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that took a wrecking ball to state laws limiting concealed carry gun laws, which Newsom called a “very bad ruling.” (Gardiner, 2/1)