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Good Thursday morning from Washington, where the Iran nuclear deal has resurrected a debate on oil. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont hosted a nationwide house party, and Donald J. Trump‘s status as a front-runner has prompted an increased scrutiny that feeds his combative nature, further fueling that status.

“I don’t blow up.”

That was Mr. Trump‘s message to the CNN reporter Dana Bash as she interviewed him on Wednesday about a report of a court deposition he abruptly left when a lawyer involved in the case asked for a break to pump breast milk for her infant child.

The deposition dominated the discussion around Mr. Trump on Wednesday as the Republican presidential primary inches closer to the first debate.

In the interview, Mr. Trump was familiarly combative, insisting that the lawyer involved is a “horrible person“ who manufactured a negative story about him and is now posing as an expert on him for the news media.

The media scrubbing of Mr. Trump, as the current front-runner in opinion polls for the Republican nomination, has begun in earnest. But it remains to be seen whether any of the flare-ups around him will dent his poll numbers.

Some data suggest his support in New Hampshire dipped immediately after he insulted the war record of Senator John McCain, who is popular in the early primary state. But other polls in the aftermath showed him unscathed.

He is a celebrity candidate, and so far, he has proved to be fairly impervious to the types of questions that normally imperil a candidacy.

— Maggie Haberman

Stay tuned throughout the day: Follow us on Twitter @NYTpolitics and on Facebook for First Draft updates.

Landmark pieces of legislation are turning 50 this year, and several members of Congress will gather to celebrate them on Thursday at separate events. Representative Nancy Pelosi of California will join Representative John Lewis of Georgia, Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina and others to highlight the Voting Rights Act, which a group of conservative activists has been whittling away at for several years.There will be two events commemorating the creation of Medicare and Medicaid; a rally featuring Mr. Sanders calling on “policy makers to protect, improve and expand Medicare to cover all Americans,” and a discussion on Medicaid at the Newseum hosted by AmeriHealth Caritas and featuring several current and former elected officials.

Hillary Rodham Clinton and former Senator Jim Webb, both Democrats, will speak on Day 2 of an A.F.L.-C.I.O. conference to make their cases for why the group should endorse them. Labor leaders, however, have indicated that they will delay endorsements, giving the candidates a chance to continue to present themselves as the most in tune with the interests of organized labor.

And when they are not celebrating those landmark bills, members of the House Democratic caucus will meet with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to discuss the nuclear deal with Iran. President Obama will be working the phone on the subject, rallying grass-roots supporters as the administration’s 60-day persuasion effort is in full swing.

Is the nuclear deal between Western nations and Iran giving new life to the effort to lift the export ban on American crude oil?

The House and Senate are working on bills that would lift the ban, which began in the 1970s energy crisis and Arab oil embargo and which many lawmakers — and some members of the Obama administration — feel is now outdated. While refined products may be exported, crude oil, with some exceptions, may not, even as production potential has grown tremendously in the intervening decades.

The idea does not sit particularly well with refiners, who argue that such exports would take refining jobs out of the United States and lead to higher prices at the pump. Supporters of lifting the ban argue that new American exports would add to the global supply of oil and help lower international prices.

The old debate may have been given wings by the administration’s desire to lift sanctions on Iran.

“If the administration wants to lift the ban for Iran, certainly the United States should not be the only country left in the world with such a ban in place,” Speaker John A. Boehner said on Wednesday, noting that the House would finish its bill in the fall.

It is an argument that has also been made by Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska and chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which is working hard to get a bill out of its committee room before the August recess.

— Jennifer Steinhauer

In expansive remarks on Wednesday evening, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg named the “most disappointing” Supreme Court decision in her 22-year tenure, discussed the future of the death penalty and abortion rights, talked about her love of opera and even betrayed a passing interest in rap music.

The court’s worst blunder, she said, was its 2010 decision in Citizens United “because of what has happened to elections in the United States and the huge amount of money it takes to run for office.”

She was in dissent in the 5-4 decision.

The evening was sponsored by Duke University School of Law, and Justice Ginsburg answered questions from Neil S. Siegel, a professor there, and from students and alumni.

Echoing a dissent last month, she suggested that she was prepared to vote to strike down the death penalty, saying that the capital justice system is riddled with errors, plagued by bad lawyers and subject to racial and geographic disparities.

She added that she despaired over the state of abortion rights.

“Reproductive freedom is in a sorry situation in the United States,” she said.

“Poor women don’t have choice.”

She suggested that she would have written last month’s same-sex marriage decision differently than Justice Anthony M. Kennedy had, and would have expanded its cursory treatment of equal protection principles. But she decided not to write separately, she said, because “it was more powerful to have a single opinion.”

Justice Ginsburg loves opera, and she spoke glowingly of a new one called “Scalia/Ginsburg.” She added that her widely used nickname, the Notorious R.B.G., had caused her to look into the background of Notorious B.I.G., the rapper. “Both of us were born and raised in Brooklyn,” she said.

— Adam Liptak

Despite Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey‘s intense focus on winning New Hampshire, some Republican officials and voters there have expressed concern about his brushes with controversy in his home state as well as his forceful personality, a central selling point of his campaign strategy.

Congress has gotten a lot done in the rush toward its August recess, but disagreements caused lawmakers to put off some tough work until after they return.

And Facebook has increased its government and politics team, and has rolled out several products since the last presidential vote to help campaigns.

It might not be smart to make a financial wager with Mr. Trump, but Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas, has told the billionaire mogul to put his muscle where his mouth is.

Asked on Wednesday to respond to Mr. Trump’s suggestion that he was not smart or strong enough be president, Mr. Perry said: “Let’s get a pull-up bar out there and see who can do more pull-ups.”

Challenges are not completely unorthodox during campaign seasons. Underdogs often test rivals by suggesting more debates or perhaps a pledge on taxes.

Nor is Mr. Perry a stranger to being tested. During a debate in 2011, Mitt Romney offered him a $10,000 bet to settle a dispute about whether Mr. Romney had supported individual mandates for health insurance while he was the governor of Massachusetts.

“Rick, I’ll tell you what – 10,000 bucks,” Mr. Romney said, ready to shake on it.

Mr. Perry demurred, but after four years of getting into shape for another run, he is apparently ready to fight. As for how many pull-ups Mr. Perry can actually do, his campaign was not available for comment.

— Alan Rappeport

Ben Carson, a highly regarded neurosurgeon in his former professional life, demonstrates for Independent Journal Review, how to beat the game Operation.

And, Politico writes, a move by Representative Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina, to seek Mr. Boehner‘s ouster, was met with surprise among his colleagues and a sense of, “You’re on your own, pal.”

With Planned Parenthood coming under increasing scrutiny, Politico looks at Mrs. Clinton‘s deep ties to the organization.

Like his recent rallies around the country, Mr. Sanders‘s national organizing day house party was packed to the walls with supporters, volunteers, reporters and television cameras.

But new to this party were custom cocktails.

After Mr. Sanders spoke to what his campaign said were more than 100,000 supporters across the country at over 3,500 house parties via a live video link, his hosts at the Washington party passed around “Bernie’s Paloma,” a custom cocktail created by one of the hosts, Miguel Marcelino Herrera.

Mr. Herrera, who is a bartender at Barmini in Washington, developed the drink as a way to “show Mr. Sanders Mexican hospitality,” his wife, Manisha Sharma, explained. “Paloma means dove, dove means soul, and Bernie’s got soul.”

Mr. Herrera was kind enough to give the recipe to First Draft:

The Bernie Paloma:

0.5 oz. Vermont maple syrup

0.5 oz. fresh lime juice

2 oz. fresh grapefruit juice

2 oz. silver tequila

Garnish: “salt air,” which is sea salt, lime juice, water and Sucro, emulsified with a hand blender.

— Nick Corasaniti