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Hillary Clinton lost her first national labor endorsement Monday when the 185,000-member National Nurses United endorsed Bernie Sanders. The NNU endorsed Sanders at a “Brunch with Bernie” event at union headquarters in Oakland, California. The nurses group is the second AFL-CIO member union to issue an endorsement; the first, the 1.6-million member American Federation of Teachers, endorsed Clinton in June. (Mahoney, 8/10)

Sanders’s long advocacy of a single-payer health-care system is among the issues that resonated with the nurses union. Late last month, the senator, a self-described democratic socialist, appeared at a rally in Washington sponsored by the union and announced he would re-introduce “Medicare-for-all legislation.” (Wagner, 8/10)

The endorsement is significant because it is Sanders' first sizable union endorsement in his quest for the Democratic nomination and comes after Sanders and other Democratic candidates pitched themselves to the AFL-CIO, a group that includes the nurses union, last month. (Merica, 8/10)

Mrs. Clinton, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, singled out Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), saying that his comments about abortion were deeply troubling. During the debate, Mr. Rubio said he had never advocated including exceptions for rape and incest in abortion bans. “What I have advocated is that we pass a law in this country that says all human life at every stage of its development is worthy of protection,” the Florida senator said. Mrs. Clinton called Mr. Rubio’s suggestion that abortion laws should not include exceptions for rape or incest “as offensive and as troubling a comment as you could hear from a major candidate running for the presidency.” (McCain Nelson, 8/10)

A member of [Utah Sen. Mike] Lee’s Senate staff had sent an email to a conservative group urging its leaders to pressure fellow Republicans to support another high-stakes procedural tactic to try to defund President Obama’s health care law, a move that Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, had counseled against. The message so provoked Mr. McConnell that he gave a copy of the email to Republican colleagues at an emergency meeting, then let them loose to attack Mr. Lee, whose efforts to gut the health care law two years ago helped lead to a politically toxic government shutdown. ... A few days later, Mr. Lee was working with Senator Amy Klobuchar, a liberal Democrat from Minnesota, to plan hearings on the consolidation of the health insurance industry, one of many efforts on the Judiciary Committee where Mr. Lee is gaining his legislative chops — and a reputation for working with Democrats. (Steinhauer, 8/10)