Today in Campaign 2016
It was a slow day before the five-state marathon of the so-called “Acela primaries” in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland and Delaware tomorrow, where the respective Democratic and Republican frontrunners are expected to win the lion’s share of the delegates apportioned tomorrow - if not sweep all five states.
Ahead of tomorrow, here’s a rundown of the biggest stories from the campaign trail today:
- The Koch brothers and their powerful Freedom Partners network, an organization that has given millions to Republican candidates, won’t be attending this year’s Republican National Convention. “Why go?” asked Charles Koch, in an interview with ABC News. Koch noted his frustration at the remaining candidates and the vicious attacking nature of this election. “So we’ve tried to change that for the better, but we haven’t been successful,” the billionaire businessman told ABC News. Koch even said it was “possible” they would support Hillary Clinton, with Clinton quick to reject any theoretical endorsement from the powerful climate-change denying billionaires.
- Donald Trump released a statement decrying the new John Kasich/Ted Cruz alliance, and his argument of collusion is an interesting one: “Collusion is often illegal in many other industries and yet these two Washington insiders have had to revert to collusion in order to stay alive. They are mathematically dead and this act only shows, as puppets of donors and special interests, how truly weak they and their campaigns are.”
- The digs by Trump against Kasich got particularly personal today, with a jab at how the Ohio governor eats:
Trump on John Kasich: "I have never seen a human being eat in such a disgusting fashion" pic.twitter.com/AA6PDq9Mn5
— Joe Perticone (@JoePerticone) April 25, 2016
- A spokesperson for former Hewlett-Packard CEO and presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, the onetime presidential candidate, confirmed that she is being vetted by Cruz’s campaign as a potential running mate. “Normal stuff,” Sarah Isgur Flores said, which apparently include financial disclosures and meetings with campaign staffers.
- Megyn Kelly, the Fox News anchor and the only person to come out of this campaign with better approval ratings than before, has officially landed an interview with Donald Trump. “Mr Trump and I sat down together for a meeting earlier this month at my request,” Kelly said in a release sent out by the cable network. “He was gracious with his time and I asked him to consider an interview. I am happy to announce he has agreed, and I look forward to a fascinating exchange - our first sit-down interview together in nearly a year.”
That’s it for political news tonight - tune in tomorrow for up-to-the-second updates on the primary campaign in the Northeast!
A man who was himself incarcerated in the 1990s asks about criminal justice reform: “If you’re elected president of the United States, are you willing to make billion-dollar investments in the lives and communities in the people whose lives were impacted by the 1994 crime bill?”
“The answer is yes,” Clinton said, saying that a billion-dollar investment in front-end solutions to keep young people - particularly racial minorities - outside of prison in the first place is needed. “We need to have a lot more done to try to release nonviolent offenders, low-level offenders, we need to get them out of our prisons and jails,” she said. “I want us to have the best programs funded from the federal level, that will enable young people to finish their education and get back into society.”
Hillary Clinton, on having a Trudeau-esque cabinet:
Well, I am going to have a cabinet that looks like America, and half of our country is women.
Next question from an undecided voter who just changed her voter to Clinton: “What does it mean to you to be a feminist?”
“Women deserve the same rights as men in every aspect of our economy and our society, here at home and around the world,” Clinton said, to applause. “We have to do everything we can - though laws, regulation, culture - to change the still-existing stereotypes that hold women back.”
“We have made progress, but we are still a long way from where we need to be. If you look at pay, for example - equal pay is still a problem,” Clinton continued. “This has pervasive effects on women’s lives, and their well-being, so I think we have to keep hammering the points.”
“We have to start early - because a lot of little girls as they become teenagers, they begin to suffer all of these pressures,” Clinton said. “Stop it! We need to build the confidence - both of girls and boys.”
Rachel Maddow asks Hillary Clinton about “the greatest frustration of [Obama’s] administration” - gun violence.
“If we take back the Senate - which I believe we can, and you in Pennsylvania have a really good chance to help us do that - the Democrats have decided that they will be led by Chuck Schumer,” who Clinton says has proven himself an effective opponent of gun lobbyists.
“I am determined - we are going to save lives, and we are going to do it by taking on the gun lobby and implementing common-sense gun safety reform,” Clinton said, saying that part of the battle is fighting against gun culture, “and that’s going to take all of us. We’ve got to break the grip of gun culture in our young people.
Hillary Clinton, addressing a question about how her policy priorities would differ from those of Barack Obama, her former boss, pointed out issues relating to equal pay and early childhood education as examples.
“I agree with a lot of what President Obama has done, and I don’t think he gets the credit he deserves in the work he has done as president,” Clinton said. “I want to really make a big, big push on equal pay for women.
“I believe that if we start early and we are determined there, we can make a difference there. I want to make a push on early childhood education,” she continued. “I would make a big push for affordable college, debt-free tuition.”
Another question from the audience, from a Harlem native whose parents struggled with drug addiction. “What as president you would do to address the systemic racism that still exists and creates a glass ceiling?”
“We have to talk about it more - and as a white person, I have to talk about it more. And say that we are not a ‘post-racial’ society, and that we still struggle with racism,” Clinton said.
“It is not only wrong - it is holding us back,” Clinton continued. “We want as productive a society as possible, so we have to enforce the civil rights laws, we have to use the bully pulpit.”
First question from a volunteer councilman: “Will you say what role you would trust Senator Sanders in in a Clinton administration?”
After demuring that she can’t begin to speak to administration positions before she’s even won the nomination, Clinton affirmed that she supports down-balloy Democrats.
“I’m already raising money for Democrats up and down the ballot - I’m dedicated to that,” Clinton said. “You can count on me doing that because I feel very strongly that we need to have a vital, dynamic Democratic party.”
“I wanna be a very strong ally of elected Democrats against the county,” she concluded.
Rachel Maddow asks about Charles Koch’s flirtation with endorsing Clinton: “If Mr. Trump or Senator Cruz is nominated, I think a lot of Republicans will find them to be unacceptable as Republican nominees.”
Will you lobby for Republican votes?
“I really am not looking for endorsements from people who deny climate change and have the views that the Koch brothers have had, so I’m going to stay focused on what I’m doing right now,” Clinton said.
Lambasting what she characterized as Bernie Sanders’ “Trump-like demagoguery,” Clinton criticized his plans on college debt for “the numbers not adding up.”
“It demonstrated that there weren’t a lot of answers to a lot of the hard questions that were asked on both foreign and domestic issues,” Clinton said, reminding voters of Sanders’ performance in an interview with the New York Daily News in which Sanders could not describe how he would break up large banks.
Rachel Maddow asks the former secretary of state whether there are “significant enough differences between you” and Bernie Sanders that she would not be able to echo his positions and rhetoric on Wall Street during a general election.
“I have a bigger lead in pledged delegates than Senator Obama, when I ran against him in 2008, ever had over me,” Clinton said. “I am winning, and I am winning because of what I stand for and what I have done and what my ideas are,” Clinton continued. “My Wall Street plan is much more specific than his - we saw that when he couldn’t even answer that in the Daily News interview.”
“There are so many more areas where I am more specific,” Clinton concluded, “and I think that’s why I have more than 2.7 million votes more than he has.”
Hillary Clinton makes appearance on MSNBC town hall
After an introduction that called her “the GOP’s number-one target,” former secretary of state Hillary Clinton walked onstage at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia to join Rachel Maddow for her half of the Democratic presidential town hall.
First question: How has Sanders influenced the Democratic party?
“I think that what weve had is a very spirited contest, certainly we share a lot of the same goals,” Clinton said. “But as I have said repeatedly, it’s not enough to diagnose the problem - you have to have solutions.”
“I think it’s because people want, not just to understand better what we think the problem is, but what are we gonna do about it?”
That’s it for Bernie Sanders’ segment on the MSNBC Democratic town hall - stay tuned for Hillary Clinton’s appearance on the special, which we’ll be liveblogging up to the minute!
Bernie Sanders, on using air strikes:
No president has the ability, willy-nilly, to be dropping bombs or using drones anywhere he wants.
“How you will address the issues around the collateral consequences of conviction?” a Pennsylvania voter asked Sanders.
“For a start, what I would propose, is when we have unemployment rates of minority kids of 40 or 50%, maybe it makes sense to invest in jobs and education for those kids instead of jails and incarceration,” Sanders says, echoing a frequent stump-speech line.
“We really need to re-think the war on drugs,” Sanders said. “I would take marijuana out of the Federal Controlled Substance Act.”
Chris Hayes, following up, asked Sanders about his vote for the 1994 crime bill that he has lambasted on the campaign trail. Sanders, protesting, points out that the bill also contained the Violence Against Women Act.
“It also had in it, as you know, the assault weapons ban,” Sanders said. “If I had voted against the bill, there’d be 30-second ad saying ‘Bernie Sanders didn’t vote against assault weapons.’”
“I wish I had a different piece of legislation!” Sanders said. “What we need to do now is address this very serious issue.”
Bernie Sanders characterized a large component of the Republican voter base as “obstructionist” and beholden to “far-right” candidates like Donald Trump, which would preclude cooperation with Republicans in Congress.
“I think the Republican Party, as I mentioned, has moved very very far to the right,” Sanders said. “People who are active in the horrific Trump effort, the birther movement, people who are very hostile to immigrants. You see Trump talking about and referring to Mexicans as immigrants and rapists.”
“If I became president, I think that we’d run into that kind of obstructionism,” he concluded.
Second question, from the daughter of undocumented immigrants: How will you ensure that after implementation, immigration reform will help immigrants not remain second-class citizens?
“If Congress does not do what it should do and pass that legislation, I will pick up where President Obama left office and use the executive powers of that office to make your parents safe in this county and not afraid.”
Updated
When pressed, Bernie Sanders says that he will help elect whomever it takes to keep Donald Trump or another Republican candidate from being elected president.
“I will do everything in my power to make sure that no Republican gets into the White House in this election,” Sanders said.
First question from a student at the University of Pennsylvania: “Will you encourage your supporters to vote for Secretary Clinton?”
“We’re not a movement where I can snap my fingers and tell you what to do,” Sanders said. “It is incumbent upon her to tell millions of people who right now do not believe in establishment politics or establishment economics, who have serious misgivings about a candidate who has taken millions from Wall Street.”
“She has got to go out to you,” Sanders said. “It is incumbent upon Secretary Clinton to reach out, not only to my supporters, but all of the American people with an agenda that they believe will represent the middle class.”
Bernie Sanders disputes that comments he made recently regarding voting rates among low-income Americans, saying that it’s not controversial to say that “candidates taking huge amounts of money from the wealthy and the powerful” prevent the poor from participating in the “charade” of the political process.
“Dispute it if you want with me: In the 2012 presidential election, 63% of the American people didn’t vote. Not a very vibrant democracy, in my mind.”
“Low-income people are not voting in large numbers - I think that’s a tragedy,” Sanders continued.
Bernie Sanders makes appearance on MSNBC town hall
With fans and supporters chanting “Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!”, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders declined to answer the question of whether the person with the most delegates and votes should be the Democratic presidential nominee.
“If we are behind in the pledge delegates, I think it’s very hard for us to win but we are going to make the case also... that we are the stronger campaign in taking on Donald Trump or any other Republican candidate,” Sanders said.
“And I think that most other Democrats out there wanna make sure that some right-wing Republican doesn’t become president of the United States.”
In roughly ten minutes, MSNBC will begin its two-hour special of back-to-back town hall meetings with the Democratic presidential candidates. On the eve of the so-called “Acela primaries,” it’s a big moment for Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. We’ll be liveblogging the entire proceedings, so stay-tuned for up-to-the-second updates.
Girls star-slash-creator Lena Dunham has penned an editorial for Time in which she declares why she has chosen to support Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign - and why “it has nothing to do with her anatomy or ‘girl power’.”
“I want Hillary Clinton to be president,” Dunham writes. “I think she’d do a fantastic job, better than anyone else.”
But, she cautions, she does not support the former secretary of state merely because of her gender - or, as Dunham puts it, “I have no plans to blindly follow my uterus to the nearest polling station.”
Dunham ticks off various platforms, positions and causes that have influenced her decision, including reproductive choice, gun violence and “fighting for women,” which she calls Clinton’s “life’s work”:
She fights for equal pay. She raises money for other women running for elected office. She stays current on pre-natal nutrition research (Though when the time comes for me to have my baby, just let me eat in peace, okay Hillary?) She flies to countries where women are routinely denied basic freedoms—from China to Yemen to the Democratic Republic of Congo—and puts their leaders on blast. She coined the phrase “women’s rights are human rights,” for goodness’ sake!”
After criticizing Vermont senator Bernie Sanders’ response to Donald Trump’s willingness to “punish” women who have abortions - Sanders characterized it as an “absurd” comment destined to become a “story of the week” - Dunham rallies would-be supporters of Clinton to gather behind the former secretary of state.
“So I’ll say it again: I’m with her,” Dunham concludes. “Not as some winsome nod to ‘girl power,’ but because I share her bone-deep belief that when women are strong, families are strong, and that makes our country strong.”
Donald Trump to sit down with Megyn Kelly in Fox News interview
Megyn Kelly, the Fox News anchor and the only person to come out of this campaign with better approval ratings than before, has officially landed an interview with billionaire Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.
The highly anticipated sitdown caps off months of public feuding between the candidate and the newsreader, ignited last August when Kelly began the first primary debate of the cycle with an aggressive line of questioning regarding Trump’s statements about women.
“Mr Trump and I sat down together for a meeting earlier this month at my request,” Kelly said in a release sent out by the cable network. “He was gracious with his time and I asked him to consider an interview. I am happy to announce he has agreed, and I look forward to a fascinating exchange - our first sit-down interview together in nearly a year.”
The anchor will explore “how events unfolded with Trump after the August debate as one of the most prominent voices covering the 2016 presidential campaign of the frontrunner,” the release states. “She will also examine Trump’s successful campaign for the White House to date and his role in one of the most historic presidential runs in modern times.”
The primetime interview will air on May 17, with portions of the interview airing on Kelly’s show the following day.
Updated
The most Cruz and Kasich’s plan can do is wreck the Republican party, writes the Guardian’s Jeb Lund.
The GOP reflexively blames Washington gridlock and electoral failure on co-opted candidates and the perversions of the political process thwarting the will of the people. Meanwhile, Donald Trump has spent the last two weeks successfully castigating the Republican delegate process as a rigged game. His opponents’ brightest idea was to jointly announce their plans to rig it even more.
That is a kind of plan. Then again, so is burning down your house to collect the insurance money.
Here’s the strategy: Cruz will focus on friendly territory in Indiana, while the “moderate” Kasich focuses on friendly territory in Oregon and New Mexico. How the rest of the states get divvied up is anyone’s guess, as is how much money Kasich will have on hand for the states he’s supposed to lure away from media-saturated Trumpism.
This is a political superhero team assembled out of a kill-priced remainder bin of bad ideas. There hasn’t been a sadder or less formidable duo since the Wonder Twins on the old Super Friends cartoon – two kids from another planet whose superpowers involved one turning into forms of water and the other turning into shapes of animals.
Only in this case you have John Kasich, who takes the form of a perpetually peevish dad who looks like the only thing he wants to say at a podium is, Hey, kids, quit playin’ grab-ass and take a knee, before “moderately” suggesting we start the third world war in the Middle East.
Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton leads Republican billionaire frontrunner Donald Trump by a mere three points in a national head-to-head poll.
According to a George Washington University survey, Clinton leads Trump by three percentage points nationally, 46% to 43%, with 11% undecided. Her primary opponent, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, fares slightly better, taking 51% to Trump’s 40%.
“The Republican Party has a strongly favorable political environment for winning the White House,” pollster Ed Goeas said in a statement. “If a mainstream Republican candidate were the presumptive nominee, the GOP would likely be in a strong position for a lot of wins, top to bottom, in November.”
The poll also found that voters have highly negative views of almost all of the remaining candidates - of the five candidates still in the race, only Sanders and Ohio governor John Kasich have an unfavorable rating below 50% (44% and 29%, respectively). Clinton, Texas senator Ted Cruz and Trump are all disliked by a majority of those surveyed (56%, 55% and 65%, respectively).
A major Jewish advocacy group has issued a scathing critique of remarks made by Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Saturday, in which the Vermont senator compared the suffering of those in Baltimore’s poorest neighborhoods is equivalent to that of Palestinians in the West Bank.
“What do the serious issues Baltimore’s leadership and population are confronting have to do with daily Palestinian life in the West Bank?” said David Harris, CEO of the American Jewish Coalition, in a statement. “Inserting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into unrelated American political discourse serves only one purpose, to encourage those who are narrowly focused on assailing Israel for any shortcomings, failings by the Palestinian Authority.”
During a campaign event in Baltimore on Saturday, Sanders said that the poorest neighborhoods in the city had comparable quality of life to that of developing nations.
“Poverty in Baltimore, and around this country, is a death sentence,” he said. “Fifteen neighborhoods in Baltimore have lower life expectancies than North Korea. Two of them have a higher infant mortality rate than the West Bank in Palestine.”
Harris contested Sanders’ characterization of life expectancy in the West Bank, stating that “life expectancy in the West Bank, according to the CIA World Factbook, exceeds that of Egypt and Jordan, not to mention many other countries.”
“Furthermore, according to CIA statistics, infant mortality in the West Bank, at 13.08 deaths per 1,000 live births, actually compares favorably to most of the developing world,” Harris continued. “Turkey’s rate is 18.87, Brazil’s is 18.60, and Iran’s is 38.04. The US infant mortality rate, at 5.87, is far from where it should be, behind the United Kingdom, at 4.38, Australia at 4.37, France at 3.28, and Israel at 3.55.”
Ohio governor John Kasich’s campaign has fired back at billionaire frontrunner/etiquette coach Donald Trump for criticizing Kasich’s “disgusting” eating habits:
.@RealDonaldTrump, we were looking for some Trump steaks for the governor, but no one seems to sell them anymore. pic.twitter.com/zS5eLtfHOc
— Team Kasich (@TeamJohnKasich) April 25, 2016
Report: Ted Cruz vetting Carly Fiorina for VP spot
Reports surfaced over the weekend that both Texas senator Ted Cruz and Ohio governor John Kasich were vetting potential running mates, but this is the clearest sign yet that the campaigns may be leaning on the deep field of also-rans as potential starting points in the hunt for a vice presidential nominee.
According to the Weekly Standard, citing a spokesperson for former Hewlett-Packard CEO and presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, the onetime California senate candidate is being vetted by Cruz’s campaign as a potential running mate.
“Normal stuff,” Sarah Isgur Flores told the Weekly Standard, which apparently include financial disclosures and meetings with campaign staffers.
The digs by Donald Trump against John Kasich are getting particularly personal today, with a jab at how the Ohio Governor eats.
Trump on John Kasich: "I have never seen a human being eat in such a disgusting fashion" pic.twitter.com/AA6PDq9Mn5
— Joe Perticone (@JoePerticone) April 25, 2016
Kasich does seem to enjoy holding events with food - which is standard campaign games, so nothing that unusual. But is his eating style “disgusting”? You decide...
Republican presidential candidate, Ohio Gov. John Kasich eats lunch at PJ Bernstein’s Deli Restaurant during a campaign stop in New York, Saturday, April 16, 2016. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki) Photograph: Andres Kudacki/AP
Does Donald Trump have a point? pic.twitter.com/bqf8V7k00D
— Matt Viser (@mviser) April 25, 2016
Team Kasich tweeted a pretty decent quip in response to the eating uproar.
.@RealDonaldTrump, we were looking for some Trump steaks for the governor, but no one seems to sell them anymore. pic.twitter.com/zS5eLtfHOc
— Team Kasich (@TeamJohnKasich) April 25, 2016
Basketball coach Bobby Knight backs Trump
Former Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight will appear at a Donald Trump rally on Wednesday, his campaign announced today.
On the weekend Trump hinted at a possible endorsement from the famously aggressive coach, who coached the college basketball team from 1971-2000.
“By the way, would I like to get Coach Bobby Knight, who is a great coach, his endorsement,” he said in Connecticut on Saturday. “Tough, strong, smart. I would like to get that for Indiana, I’ll tell you what. To me, that would be a great endorsement.”
The Guardian’s Rupert Neate headed out to Wilmington, Delaware to visit one of the country’s biggest tax havens - used by leading presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
There aren’t many things upon which Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump agree, especially as they court very different Delaware voters ahead of a primary on Tuesday. But the candidates for president share an affinity for the same nondescript two-storey office building in Wilmington. A building that has become famous for helping tens of thousands of companies avoid hundreds of millions of dollars in tax through the so-called “Delaware loophole”.
The receptionist at 1209 North Orange Street isn’t surprised that a journalist has turned up unannounced on a sunny weekday afternoon.
“You know I can’t speak to you,” she says. A yellow post-it note on her computer screen reads “MEDIA: Chuck Miller” with the phone number of the company’s director of corporate communications. Miller can’t answer many questions either, except to say that the company does not advise clients on their tax affairs.
The Guardian is not the first media organisation to turn up at the offices of Corporation Trust Centre, and it’s unlikely to be the last.
This squat, yellow brick office building just north of Wilmington’s rundown downtown is the registered address of more than 285,000 companies. That’s more than any other known address in the world, and 15 times more than the 18,000 registered in Ugland House, a five-storey building in the Cayman Islands that Barack Obama called “either the biggest building in the world, or the biggest tax scam on record”.
Officially, 1209 North Orange is home to Apple, American Airlines, Coca-Cola, Walmart and dozens of other companies in the Fortune 500 list of America’s biggest companies. Being registered in Delaware lets companies take advantage of strict corporate secrecy rules, business-friendly courts and the “Delaware loophole”, which can allow companies to legally shift earnings from other states to Delaware, where they are not taxed on non-physical incomes generated outside of the state.
Read the rest of the article here.
Trump warns RI to 'lock doors' because of Syrian refugees
Donald Trump warned attendees of his Warwick, Rhode Island rally today that Syrian refugees could break into their homes - a racist-fueled line since there’s no evidence of crimes by Syrian refugees in the area.
Donald Trump says there are a lot of Syrian refugees resettling in Rhode Island, "lock your doors, folks"
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) April 25, 2016
Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo refused to bow to pressure to ban Syrian refugees in her state last year, after President Obama announced an increase in refugees and other governors quickly tried to declare their state shut to Syrians escaping its brutal civil war.
The first Syrian refugee family arrived in Rhode Island in February, with a small welcome party cheering them as they arrived at the airport, reported the Providence Journal.
“I am very happy, very gratified and very optimistic to be here,” said Hussein Ghazala, who arrived with his wife and their three children aged 8, 7, and 6.
Updated
Republican candidates sling insults after Kasich/Cruz alliance
The tit-for-tat between Trump and the Kasich/Cruz alliance is continuing, with Ted Cruz declaring Trump’s campaign part of the “Washington cartel” (Trump always tries to align himself as anti-establishment) on Monday morning in Indiana.
“The entire Trump campaign is run by Washington lobbyists, it’s the Washington cartel. Donald Trump is the system,” said Cruz.
Interesting how everyone is campaigning so hard to be a part of the system that they claim to not want to be a part of.
Trump then lashed out on Twitter against John Kasich saying that people should still back him in Indiana - even if he’s not campaigning there, as part of his alliance with Cruz.
Kasich just announced that he wants the people of Indiana to vote for him. Typical politician - can't make a deal work.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 25, 2016
However, Kasich’s adviser John Weaver noted that the plan wasn’t to endorse the other in those states, but instead focus their spending.
We're not telling voters who to vote for in IN, only where we are going to spend resources to ultimately defeat Hillary. They get it.
— John Weaver (@JWGOP) April 25, 2016
Tom Steyer, the environmental activist and deep-pocketed Democratic donor, has said he will spend $25m to mobilise young voters in battleground states on election day next November.
The grassroots organising drive, on more than 200 college campuses in seven swing states, represents a departure for Steyer, who has focused on raising the profile of climate change in previous election cycles.
The campaign will deploy at 203 campuses in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Iowa, Ohio, New Hampshire, Nevada, Illinois and Colorado - which are expected to be pivotal in the contests for the White House and Congress.
“We don’t think that climate change can be separate from the other critical issues that are on the table in 2016,” he told a conference call with reporters, going on to define global warming as a justice issue. “In terms of talking to voters, to try to separate climate change from economics, to try and separate it from clean air and clean water is impossible and a mistake. We are going to be talking about this in broad terms. We are going to be connecting it to other issues.”
The green billionaire spent nearly triple the budget for his millenial voters’ project – $70m – supporting congressional candidates with strong climate records in the 2014 midterms – but to little effect.
Two of Steyer’s high-profile picks lost their races to Republicans Cory Gardner of Colorado and Joni Ernst of Iowa.
This time around Steyer said his NextGen Climate group would focus on registering millennial voters and getting them to the polls next November – using traditional grassroots organising, social media tools such as Snapchat, and on-campus events.
The former hedge fund manager gave $17m to NextGen Climate so far, making him the top super Pac donor of 2016, and he has said he plans to spend more in this election cycle than the $70m he spent on the 2014 midterms.
Updated
Gosh, sometimes politicians are just unbelievably embarrassing. Here Senator Tom Carper attempts to lead Hillary Clinton supporters in a little singalong - without singing? - of Donna Summer’s classic She Works Hard for the Money.
WATCH: Senator leads @HillaryClinton supporters in rendition of "She Works Hard for the Money."https://t.co/FMrIAAfgLu
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) April 25, 2016
Donald Trump will host his next primaries results party at Trump Tower in New York - rather than in any of the states voting on April 26. The event kicks off at 9pm, as polls close.
“Mr. Trump will be making post-election remarks the night of the Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island primaries,” reads the event description.
He won’t have far to go to get home: Trump lives with his wife Melania and 10-year-old son Barron on the top three floors of the building, his penthouse decorated in a not-so-subtle 24K gold and marble Louis XIV style.
Ted Cruz responded to Donald Trump’s “collusion” claims against him and Kasich’s new plan to stop the billionaire from winning enough delegates to cinch the Republican convention.
“I don’t doubt that Donald Trump will scream and yell and curse and insult and probably cry and whine some as well,” Cruz said in Borden, Indiana, where he’s hosting a rally today. Cruz will focus on Indiana, while Kasich won’t compete there.
The Texas Senator continued, Talking Points Memo reports:
Donald is a sore loser. When he lost five states in a row in landslide elections, Donald threw a tantrum... His response is to attack the voters. His response is to attack the people. Yes, I get that the Trump campaign is scared. They’re scared of Indiana. If Donald wasn’t scared, he’d show up in Indiana and have a debate. But he would much rather hide in Trump Tower. He’d much rather stay in Northeastern states that tend to be more liberal than actually come to the Midwest, come to the heartland and defend his policies.
Donald Trump released a statement decrying the new Kasich/Cruz alliance, and his argument of collusion is an interesting one:
Collusion is often illegal in many other industries and yet these two Washington insiders have had to revert to collusion in order to stay alive. They are mathematically dead and this act only shows, as puppets of donors and special interests, how truly weak they and their campaigns are. I have brought millions of voters into the Republican primary system and have received many millions of votes more than Cruz or Kasich. Additionally, I am far ahead of both candidates with delegates and would be receiving in excess of 60% of the vote except for the fact that there were so many candidates running against me.
Because of me, everyone now sees that the Republican primary system is totally rigged. When two candidates who have no path to victory get together to stop a candidate who is expanding the party by millions of voters, (all of whom will drop out if I am not in the race) it is yet another example of everything that is wrong in Washington and our political system. This horrible act of desperation, from two campaigns who have totally failed, makes me even more determined, for the good of the Republican Party and our country, to prevail!
Usually the Virgin Islands don’t rate a mention in the election, but with nine Republican delegates up for grabs in a year when every delegate is crucial, it’s suddenly become a key battleground.
The Guardian’s Chris Whitworth and Valerie Lapinski take a look at the vicious political battle underway by two politicians there, complete with attack ads and legal proceedings.
Koch brothers frustrated at Republicans, won't attend RNC
The Koch brothers and their powerful Freedom Partners network, an organization that has given millions to Republican candidates, won’t be attending this year’s Republican National Convention.
“Why go?” asked Charles Koch, in an interview with ABC News yesterday. Koch noted his frustration at the remaining candidates and the vicious attacking nature of this election.
“So we’ve tried to change that for the better, but we haven’t been successful,” the billionaire businessman told ABC News.
Koch even said it was “possible” they would support Hillary Clinton, with Clinton quick to reject any theoretical endorsement from the powerful climate-change denying billionaires.
Not interested in endorsements from people who deny climate science and try to make it harder for people to vote. https://t.co/TWN4zYhMBh
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) April 24, 2016
New Yorker’s Andy Borowtiz offered a brilliant comedic take on the Koch brothers suddenly looking at the Democrats.
He said that he and his brother had considered acquiring a Democrat only after determining that none of the Republicans on offer this year was worth adding to their collection.
“It’s kind of a scary proposition for us, because we’ve never owned a Democrat before,” he said. “We don’t really know what we should be looking for.”
Koch said that he and his brother learned, after making some phone calls, that other oligarchs have bought Democrats in the past, and “had good experiences with them.”
Seems the Kasich-Cruz power alliance (where Kasich won’t campaign in Indiana in order for Cruz to get a win, and Cruz will do the same for Kasich in Oregon and New Mexico) has hit its first speed bump.
Kasich on whether Indiana voters should vote for him or Cruz:
— Mark Murray (@mmurraypolitics) April 25, 2016
"They ought to vote for me"
Donald Trump is continuing his run of giving his former opponents’ staffers jobs, by hiring Chris Christie’s former campaign manager.
Ken McKay, whose former boss Christie endorsed Trump after he dropped out of the race, will join as a senior adviser, reports Bloomberg.
In recent months Trump also hired Ben Carson’s campaign manager Barry Bennett, chief strategist Ed Brookover, and Scott Walker’s campaign manager Rick Wiley.
Updated
Hillary Clinton just released a new emotional ad this morning, with Clinton speaking to victims of violence while a very sparse gospel song plays the words “Spread a little love and hope now.”
Former Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords makes a brief appearance, with some slick editing of her walking with her limp due to injuries from when she was shot, while the words “we’ll walk it out together now” plays.
Good morning and welcome to another day of madness on our rolling campaign coverage – two Republicans have made an extraordinary anti-Trump pact to carve up the primary race but it may be too late, and Bernie Sanders is laying claim to the future itself.
John Kasich and Ted Cruz have banded together in an attempt to beat Donald Trump, announcing on Sunday night that Cruz’s campaign will focus its money and efforts to win Indiana, a state with 30 winner-takes-all delegates, and Kasich will avoid it completely to focus on the more moderate states of Oregon and New Mexico.
The idea is that by agreeing to focus their respective strengths on certain states and ignore other ones, they can ensure that Trump doesn’t reach the 1,237 delegates needed for the nomination – and force a contested convention. My colleague Ben Jacobs explains it further here.
Unsurprisingly, Trump used Twitter to voice his fury over the plan:
Lyin' Ted Cruz and 1 for 38 Kasich are unable to beat me on their own so they have to team up (collusion) in a two on one. Shows weakness!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 25, 2016
Shows how weak and desperate Lyin' Ted is when he has to team up with a guy who openly can't stand him and is only 1 win and 38 losses.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 25, 2016
Cruz is already focusing on Indiana, hosting two rallies today, one in Borden in the morning and in Franklin in the afternoon. Trump is hosting a rally in Warwick, Rhode Island at 1pm today, and in West Chester, Pennsylvania this evening, while Kasich is in Philadelphia.
The Democrats are also preparing for Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary, with Bernie Sanders hosting rallies in Pittsburgh and Philly, with actress and surrogate Susan Sarandon appearing. Hillary Clinton has two Get Out the Vote events in the state today, in Youngwood in the early afternoon and then this evening in Philly.
On Sunday, Sanders both explained away his losses by saying “poor people don’t vote” and started looking beyond the Democratic primary race, in which the odds are stacked against him. He claimed that he and his supporters “are the future of the Democratic party”, a sign that he’s looking past the nomination and toward shaping the character of the nominee and party for years, if not decades, to come.
And Hillary Clinton is going to Youngwood, near Pittsburgh, and then Philadelphia ahead of Tuesday’s primary voting in states along the north-east and mid-Atlantic. She’s started attacking Donald Trump with stronger and stronger language, including in Delaware, where she and Trump happen to share a tax “loophole” address with 285,000 other businesses.
