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Voters' views: one for Clinton, one for Sanders
Margaret Phillips, 67, a professor of international business at Pepperdine university in Los Angeles, California, said she voted for Hillary Clinton:
We need global stability. As a professor of international management I’ve always been very aware of the fact that we are one world, one planet. There are so many factors pushing us towards separatism – not least Republican leaders. We focus so much on things that separate us and make us different and yet we all live in one world. We are all people in this one tiny blue spot. We need a leader who is qualified, experienced and temperamentally suited to dealing with a complex world.
Armen Melkonians, 45, a civil engineer from Los Angeles, California, said he voted for Bernie Sanders:
People are discouraged by the establishment. The political and financial system, the media, the way we are governed more and more by a limited number of individuals and corporations – we need a political revolution. Voters and residents have been pushed to the bottom and the middle class is shrinking. People are working harder but not advancing. This has to change.
Updated
Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor and presidential candidate, is not buying Trump’s claim that his comments about judge Gonzalo Curiel were “misconstrued”:
Donald Trump should retract his comments, not defend them. There is no place for racism in the GOP, or this country. https://t.co/yizZUTiC6T
— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) June 7, 2016
A voter's view: the lonely Republican
Spare a thought for lonely Republican voters in the the People’s Republic of Santa Monica, a wealthy, progressive bastion in western Los Angeles also known as Soviet Monica.
After interviewing a stream of Clinton and Sanders voters emerging from a polling station on 2ndstreet, the Guardian encountered an elderly man with a forage cap and wary expression.
Asked for whom he voted, he waited for another voter to pass out of earshot.
“The one person I’m not going to vote for is Mrs Clinton,” he murmured. “It’s the succession of lies. I distrust her. I can’t forgive or forget the Benghazi event. And her private server is bothersome for me.”
So.. he had voted for Bernie?
“No.” He leaned closer. “I’m Republican.”
His name?
He tapped his nose. “Call me anonymous.”
Senator Duckworth, an Illinois congresswoman challenging Kirk for his US senate seat, tweets a rather sick burn at Kirk, who earlier tweeted, “Given my military experience, Donald Trump does not have the temperament to command our military or our nuclear arsenal.”
Kirk was in the Naval Reserves, but Duckworth is the more seasoned member of the military, as a former US Army helicopter pilot who lost both legs in combat in Iraq:
Given my military experience, Mark Kirk doesn't have the temperament to be our Senator. https://t.co/U8GqdH8Mn9https://t.co/k5m2hi1Rdu
— Tammy Duckworth (@TammyforIL) June 7, 2016
CORRECTION: This post has been corrected to fix a mis-identification of Duckworth.
(h/t: @bencjacobs)
Updated
Trump says comments on judge 'have been misconstrued'
Donald Trump has released a statement saying that his comments about judge Gonzalo Curiel, who Trump said had an “absolute conflict” of interest in presiding over cases against Trump University because of Curiel’s Mexican heritage, “have been miscontrued”.
Trump’s statement denies that he thinks that “one’s heritage makes them incapable of being impartial,” in spite of his prior comments.
“It is unfortunate that my comments have been misconstrued as a categorical attack against people of Mexican heritage,” Trump’s statement begins:
I am friends with and employ thousands of people of Mexican and Hispanic descent. The American justice system relies on fair and impartial judges. All judges should be held to that standard. I do not feel that one’s heritage makes them incapable of being impartial, but, based on the rulings that I have received in the Trump University civil case, I feel justified in questioning whether I am receiving a fair trial.
Over the past few weeks, I have watched as the media has reported one inaccuracy after another concerning the ongoing litigation involving Trump University. There are several important facts the public should know and that the media has failed to report.
Trump’s statement takes issue with one ruling, by which the judge allowed a plaintiff’s motion to have a witness removed from the case, he says.
The statement says that his attorneys have shown that Trump University “provided a substantive, valuable education” and names students who have had good experiences. “Indeed, these are just a few of literally thousands of positive surveys, all of which can be viewed online at www.98percentapproval.com,” the statement says.
Trump’s statement closes with reference to unspecified “unfair and mistaken rulings in this case”. “Due to those... and the Judge’s reported associations with certain professional organizations, questions were raised regarding the Obama appointed Judge’s impartiality,” the statement continues:
It is a fair question. I hope it is not the case.
While this lawsuit should have been dismissed, it is now scheduled for trial in November. I do not intend to comment on this matter any further. With all of the thousands of people who have given the courses such high marks and accolades, we will win this case!
The Chicago Sun-Times has Kirk’s full statement. He makes it under some pressure; Illinois Rep Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat running for Kirk’s seat, had criticized Kirk this morning for being “complicit” in Trump’s campaign of “hate and division”, the Chicago Tribune reported.
For more than a decade, Mark Kirk has been a model of a winning suburban blue-state Republican – his Trump disavowal is a big deal.
— Alex Burns (@alexburnsNYT) June 7, 2016
Kirk’s statement singles out Trump’s statements about judge Gonzalo Curiel, which Kirk calls “un-American”. After much consideration, I have concluded that Donald Trump has not demonstrated the temperament necessary to assume the greatest office in the world.”:
I have spent my life building bridges and tearing down barriers–not building walls. That’s why I find Donald Trump’s belief that an American-born judge of Mexican descent is incapable of fairly presiding over his case is not only dead wrong, it is un-American.
As the Presidential campaign progressed, I was hoping the rhetoric would tone down and reflect a campaign that was inclusive, thoughtful and principled. While I oppose the Democratic nominee, Donald Trump’s latest statements, in context with past attacks on Hispanics, women and the disabled like me, make it certain that I cannot and will not support my party’s nominee for President regardless of the political impact on my candidacy or the Republican Party.
It is absolutely essential that we are guided by a commander-in-chief with a responsible and proper temperament, discretion and judgment. Our President must be fit to command the most powerful military the world has ever seen, including an arsenal of thousands of nuclear weapons. After much consideration, I have concluded that Donald Trump has not demonstrated the temperament necessary to assume the greatest office in the world.”
Kirk is a member of the US Navy reserve who served in Yugoslavia and Iraq:
Given my military experience, Donald Trump does not have the temperament to command our military or our nuclear arsenal.
— Mark Kirk (@MarkKirk) June 7, 2016
CORRECTION: This post has been corrected to fix a mis-identification of Duckworth.
Updated
Republican senator vows not to support Trump
Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois, who is widely considered the most vulnerable of sitting Republican senators up for reelection this year, has announced that he will not support Donald Trump for president.
Kirk previously had not taken a definitive position on Trump. (He had said he would support his party’s nominee.) With fellow Republican senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Kirk’s is the most high-profile defection from the party’s effort to take back the White House.
“I cannot and will not support my party’s nominee for president regardless of the political impact on my candidacy or the Republican Party,” Kirk said in a statement.
Developing...
Updated
Iowa state senator David Johnson became the first elected official to leave the Republican party over Donald Trump today, likening the presumptive nominee’s campaign to the rise of Adolf Hitler.
Johnson announced that he was changing his registration to No Party after Trump levelled accusations of bias at Judge Gonzalo Curiel, an American judge of Mexican heritage who allowed the release of some unflattering documents from a case against Trump University.
“I haven’t supported Mr Trump at any point along the way but what I am calling his racist remarks and judicial jihad is the last straw,” Johnson told the Guardian.
Johnson compared Trump’s run for the Republican nomination to the rise of Hitler and said Trump won “by reducing his campaign to reality tv and large crowds and divisive language and all the trappings of a good show for those who like that kind of approach and that’s what happened in the 1930s in Germany.”
He added: “I think that’s all I need to say but certainly the fascists took control of Germany under the same types of strategies.”
She may have bagged the nomination, but Hillary Clinton could benefit from nimbler Latino outreach as she prepares to take on Donald Trump.
So says Phillip Carter, a linguistics professor at Florida International University who has written a chapter on both candidates in a forthcoming book. In battling Bernie Sanders for up to 50 million Spanish speakers in the US, Clinton started well, then blundered, Carter says in an analysis for the Guardian.
“Hillary’s campaign started on a high note with Spanish - when she released her campaign announcement video on YouTube in April 2015, which depicted a diverse group of Americans discussing their hopes for the future, the voices of two Latino brothers describing a business venture in Spanish, ran beautifully and seamlessly throughout the video, interspersed with the stories of English speakers telling similar stories,” Carter said. “The inclusion of this story was a powerful yet subtle nod to the undeniably important role of Spanish in contemporary American life and seemed to hit all the right notes.”
“Since then, the campaign has faltered in its use of Spanish,” he continued. “In December, the Clinton campaign wrote a post on Clinton’s website entitled ‘7 Things Hillary Clinton Has in Common with Your Abuela,’ the Spanish word for ‘grandmother’. The post was written in English, with Spanish words like ‘respeto’ (‘respect’) peppered in, along with images of US Latinos, including pop singer Marc Anthony. The post was ridiculed on social media, where the hashtag #NotMyAbuela quickly gained traction on Twitter.”
“This June, during a campaign stop in California, Clinton pulled out the tried and true ‘Sí se puede,’ (‘Yes we can!’), a chant traceable to the United Farmworkers Rights movement of the 1970s, and since made famous by Anglo politicians looking to add a taste of authenticity to their campaigns. The trouble with Hillary’s usage, which has been uttered by Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and countless others, is that she bungled the pronunciation (‘Si se pueda, rather than Si se puede) in such a way that changed the meaning from ‘yes we can!’ to something more like ‘if one could.’ ”
“Of course, Hillary Clinton is not a Spanish speaker. At all,” Carter cautioned. “So the mispronunciation could perhaps be forgiven, but it happened to play right into what seems to be Hillary’s biggest problem with the electorate, both Latinos and non-Latinos alike: believability. While her Republican rival Donald Trump is praised by some for being a straight shooter - even when the language is broadly offensive - Hillary is seen as doing the opposite, shape-shifting to appeal to the diverse groups of people comprising America’s diverse electorate. Whether this depiction is fair or not, her use of Spanish on the campaign trail has played into this perception.”
“Ignoring Spanish, as Donald Trump has done, is not the same thing as ignoring Latinos, since most voting Latinos also speak English. But if a candidate does choose to speak Spanish on the campaign trail, getting it right is key, not only in terms of pronunciation, but also, especially, in tone.”
“Various.”
BREAKING: U.S. Senate Republican leader McConnell says it's time for Trump to stop attacking various minority groups
— Reuters Politics (@ReutersPolitics) June 7, 2016
Hillary Clinton, after clinching the Democratic nomination, will shift her focus to the general election with a trip to a few swing states, according to a release from her campaign, holding events in Ohio and Pennsylvania on Monday, June 13, and Tuesday, June 14.
The events will be held in the Cleveland and Pittsburgh areas.
Donald Trump on American exceptionalism: ‘You’re insulting the world’
Donald Trump does “not like the term”.
A state senator in Iowa has abandoned the Republican party over its embrace of Donald Trump as its presumptive presidential nominee, according to the Des Moines Register:
Republican state senator from heavily-GOP NW Iowa "suspends" his party registration in response to Donald Trump pic.twitter.com/srCj6tR83d
— Jason Noble (@jasonnobleDMR) June 7, 2016
After inciting controversy over racially-charged remarks about Barack Obama during Hillary Clinton’s 2008 run, the former president is trying more cautious tactics, writes the Guardian’s Maria L La Ganga.
The 42nd president of the United States is a little older, a little thinner, a little raspier than he was eight years ago when he first hit the presidential hustings on behalf of his ambitious wife.
He is, however, a little more disciplined, which is a good thing for Hillary Clinton.
Crisscrossing California ahead of the 7 June, Bill Clinton has been hewing close to script: supportive, optimistic, urgent, careful. His swipes at Donald Trump, the bombastic billionaire who has polarized his own party, have been pointed but largely low-key.
“Look, I know we can run this whole general election on Mr Trump’s greatest horrible hits,” he acknowledged from the bed of a white pickup truck. But on this bright Northern California afternoon, he restrained himself.
“Can we build a future, a tomorrow economy with broadly shared prosperity and less inequality and more upward mobility? Or do we have to settle for ‘making America great again’?” he asked the crowd of a few hundred assembled on Telegraph Avenue.
The Associated Press may have called the Democratic primary contest for former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, but there’s at least one person who is holding back from declaring her to be the presumptive Democratic nominee: President Barack Obama.
In his daily briefing of the White House press corps, Josh Earnest said that the president is not yet prepared to declare Clinton the winner of the nominating process.
“Some media organizations have concluded that Secretary Clinton now has achieved a majority of delegates who’ll be voting at the Democratic convention,” Earnest said. “However, at this point, there is at least one super delegate, the one who works in the Oval Office, who is not prepared to make a public declaration about his endorsement at this point.”
“But stay tuned,” he added impishly.
Paul Ryan has seemingly backpeddled, however slightly, from this morning’s criticism of presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, telling Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade that Trump is not a racist - just his comments are.
When asked by Kilmeade whether he thought Trump was a racist, Ryan said no.
“No, I’m not - I’m saying that the comment was,” Ryan said. “I don’t know what’s in his heart, I can’t speak to that whatsoever. What I’m saying is to suggest that a person’s race disqualifies them to do their job is textbook - that’s what I’m saying.”
“I’m not saying what’s in his heart, because I don’t know what is in his heart and I don’t think he feels that in his heart, but I don’t think it is wise or justifiable to suggest that a person should be disqualified from their job because of their ethnicity.”
Paul Ryan’s condemnation of Donald Trump, now on video:
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Chris Christie: 'Donald Trump is not a racist'
Outside of his local polling station in Mendham, New Jersey, Chris Christie told a gaggle of reporters that despite racialized criticism of a sitting federal judge, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is not a racist, calling the uproar over Trump’s comments “a kerfuffle.”
“Donald Trump is not a racist,” the New Jersey governor and former presidential candidate said, according to the New Jersey Star-Ledger. “The allegations that he is are absolutely contrary to any experience I’ve had with him.”
Christie, who became the highest-profile Republican to endorse Trump after the collapse of his own presidential bid in February, declined to criticize the nominee for his comments regarding Gonzalo Curiel, the federal judge presiding over the multi-state fraud suit against Trump University who Trump alleged was biased because of his Mexican heritage.
“I’ve said this before, that I know Donald Trump, I’ve known him for 14 years, and Donald Trump is not a racist,” Christie said. “The allegations that he is are absolutely contrary to every experience that I’ve had with him over the last 14 years, so we’re going to end it there.”
“In the end, there’s always going to be conflicts regarding civil lawsuits, people are always going to express their opinions,” Christie, a former US attorney, said. “Those are Donald’s opinions and he has the right to express them.”
Christie accused the political press of ginning up the controversy for unspecified purposes.
“The fact is that media loves controversy and media loves to pay attention to this stuff and to work it up. I understand why.”
The governor’s defense of Trump comes hours after House speaker Paul Ryan told reporters during a news conference that he will not defend Trump’s attacks because the candidate’s comments are “indefensible,” and “the textbook definition of racist comments.”
“Congressman Ryan is entitled to his opinion, as is everybody else who has an opinion on this,” Christie said.
Updated
Political commentator and former Ronald Reagan administration official Pat Buchanan has come out in defense of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, writing in a column for World Net Daily that conservatives must stop “the lynching of The Donald.”
“First, Trump has a perfect right to be angry about the judge’s rulings and to question his motives,” Buchanan wrote. “Second, there are grounds for believing Trump is right.”
Buchanan, whose own history of racial statements once prompted Trump to call his positions “disgusting” and to postulate that Buchanan had “a love affair with Adolf Hitler,” compared Trump’s racialized criticism to comments made by previous presidents that were critical of judicial decisions on the supreme court.
“The judiciary is independent, but that does not mean that federal judges are exempt from the same robust criticism as presidents or members of Congress,” Buchanan wrote. “Obama himself attacked the Citizens United decision in a State of the Union address, with the justices sitting right in front of him.”
Another Donald Trump campaign surrogate is accusing his critics of racism - this time, however, the person standing accused of racism is none other than House speaker Paul Ryan.
Jeffrey Lord, a former Ronald Reagan administration official, told CNN’s Carol Costello that “Speaker Ryan has apparently switched positions and is now supporting identity politics, which is racist.”
“Let me make no bones about it, Speaker Ryan is wrong, and Speaker Ryan has apparently switched positions and is now supporting identity politics, which is racist,” Lord said. “I mean, I am astonished, I like Paul Ryan a lot...”
Costello, surprised, asked Lord to reiterate. “You’re accusing Paul Ryan of racism?”
“I am accusing anybody, anybody who believes in identity politics, which he apparently now does, of playing the race card,” Lord said. “The Republican establishment is playing this, Senator McConnell is playing this, these people have run and hid and borrowed the Democratic agenda of playing the race card. It is wrong.”
Lord appears to be following the playbook set forth by the candidate himself. In a phone call with campaign surrogates yesterday, Trump called on his high-profile conservative supporters to take the battle over his racialized criticism of a sitting federal judge to the critics.
“The people asking the questions - those are the racists,” Trump said, according to Bloomberg Politics. “I would go at ’em.”
Congressman: 'You could easily argue that the president of the United States is a racist'
In a phone call with campaign surrogates yesterday, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump called on his high-profile conservative supporters to take the battle over his racialized criticism of a sitting federal judge to the critics.
“The people asking the questions - those are the racists,” Trump said, according to Bloomberg Politics. “I would go at ’em.”
This morning, congressman Lee Zeldin of New York took Trump’s instructions as literally as possible, defending Trump’s declaration that judge Gonzalo Curiel is biased against the nominee because of his Mexican heritage by calling President Barack Obama a racist.
“You could easily argue that the president of the United States is a racist,” Zeldin told CNN’s John Berman, citing the president’s “policies and his rhetoric.”
Trump supporter @leezeldin on CNN: "The president of the United States is a racist"
— DCHomos (@DCHomos) June 7, 2016
🤔🤔🤔 pic.twitter.com/KwEGJDpUDc
Zeldin began the interview by telling CNN that he agreed with House speaker Paul Ryan’s declaration this morning that Trump’s criticism against Curiel were “the textbook definition of racist comments,”
“The way I subjectively define racism, I agree as well. I think that Mr. Trump made a regrettable mistake with his statement,” Zeldin said. “We shouldn’t be going after ethnicity and race with a judge, to assume that they are unqualified to serve in a particular case because of it.”
“With what I know, I’m not aware of this judge being unfit to handle this case because of the fact that he is of Mexican heritage.”
“What would you call someone who makes racist statements?” asked Berman in response.
“Everyone calls ‘em a racist,” Zeldin responded.
“So if Donald Trump is making racist statements, you’re saying he’s a racist?” berman reiterated.
Zeldin attempted to dodge the question before saying that he doubted Trump was making the comments based on a sense of racial superiority. “If he, internally, felt superior, because he is white and he’s not hispanic, if he felt superior because he was white and he wasn’t black, or if he was Christian and not Jewish, you could start getting into the weeds internally, as far as a person’s character goes,” Zeldin said.
CNN’s Kate Bolduan jumped in, asking Zeldin if he was “comfortable saying that Donald Trump, your nominee, is racist.”
“You could easily argue that the president of the United States is a racist,” Zeldin responded. “My purpose here isn’t to go through the list to call everyone a racist.”
Republicans have found themselves cleaning up yet another mess created by Donald Trump, the perennially controversial figure who is now their presumptive presidential nominee.
The latest fallout stems from his assertion last week that an American judge would be incapable of presiding over a legal case against Trump University due to his Mexican background.
Republicans roundly condemned Trump’s remarks, as the firestorm placed a particular burden on the many vulnerable incumbents facing tough re-election battles to the US Senate, where 24 of the 34 seats up for grabs this November belong to Republicans.
Several of those senators moved quickly to distance themselves from Trump – including Pat Toomey, of Pennsylvania, who referred to his attack on US district court judge Gonzalo Curiel as “outrageous, disturbing and absolutely ridiculous”.
“I have spent a lot of time interviewing a lot of candidates for the federal bench,” Toomey said following a vote in the Senate on Monday.
“People of every conceivable background: men and women, African American, Caucasian, Latinos, LGBT people … The idea that your ethnic background somehow determines whether or not you’re qualified to objectively determine cases is ridiculous and completely wrong.”
Updated
Paul Ryan: Donald Trump's criticism of judge 'the textbook definition of racist comments'
House speaker Paul Ryan told reporters during a news conference this morning that he will not defend presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s racialized attacks on a sitting federal judge because the candidate’s comments are “indefensible,” and “the textbook definition of racist comments.”
“I’m not going to defend these kinds of comments, because they’re indefensible,” Ryan said. “I’m going to defend our ideas. I’m going to defend our majority.”
Trump has refused to back down from repeated attacks on judge Gonzalo Curiel, the federal judge presiding over the multi-state fraud suit against Trump University, after he told the Wall Street Journal that Curiel’s assignment to the case represents “an absolute conflict” because he is “of Mexican heritage”.
“I’m building a wall,” Trump said, of his proposed 2,000-mile barrier along the US-Mexico border with the stated goal of preventing undocumented immigrants from entering the country. “It’s an inherent conflict of interest.”
Ryan, whose week-old endorsement of his party’s nominee appears more strained by the day, all but demanded that Trump apologize for his remarks. “I think it’s wrong,” Ryan said. “The way I look at this is if you say something that’s wrong, I think the mature and responsible thing is to acknowledge it was wrong.”
The highest-ranking elected Republican in the nation, Ryan took the unprecedented step last month of refusing to back his party’s nominee, citing Trump’s divisive rhetoric and policy differences. After several meetings with the candidate, however, Ryan declared his support in an op-ed in his hometown Janesville Gazette.
“It’s no secret that he and I have our differences. I won’t pretend otherwise,” Ryan wrote at the time. “And when I feel the need to, I’ll continue to speak my mind. But the reality is, on the issues that make up our agenda, we have more common ground than disagreement.”
Since Ryan’s endorsement, Trump has expressed little indication that he is willing to rein in the unfiltered rhetoric that launched him to the Republican nomination. His unprecedented attacks on Curiel at campaign rallies have been nearly universally condemned by fellow Republicans, but in a phone call with campaign surrogates, Trump told well-placed supporters that “the people asking the questions - those are the racists,” according to Bloomberg News. “I would go at ’em.”
The nominee is facing three class-action lawsuits against Trump University over allegations of fraud. Trump denies all the charges and has vowed to fight them in court.
Updated
A new poll from Gravis Marketing shows Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico, is winning enough conservative support in Utah to make the state competitive in the general election in November.
That’s right - according to this poll, Hillary Clinton, a Democrat, could feasibly win Utah.
The poll of 1,519 registered Utah voters found that presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, who is historically unpopular in red-state Utah, has the support of 29% of registered Utah voters, while Clinton wins 26%. Johnson comes in third at a surprisingly healthy 16%.
The former governor seems pleased.
I love Utah. #2016election #tcot #tlot https://t.co/QEUWxdmUlv
— Gov. Gary Johnson (@GovGaryJohnson) June 6, 2016
Updated
For the first time, audio of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s famous 1969 Wellesley College commencement address is available to listen to online.
Last night, Clinton’s alma mater released a four-minute section of the address, the first given by a Wellesley College graduate chosen by her peers in the history of the school.
“We feel that for too long our leaders have viewed politics as the art of the possible,” Clinton’s speech begins. “And the challenge now is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible possible.”
The speech received a standing ovation lasting seven minutes.
Hillary Clinton said last night that while she does not “know what’s in his heart,” she considers Donald Trump’s attack on a federal judge of Mexican heritage to be “a racist attack” and part of a pattern of bigotry espoused by the presumptive Republican nominee.
“I don’t know what else you could call these attacks other than racist, other than prejudice, other than bigoted,” Clinton told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow in an interview. “It’s just plain wrong, and certainly wrong coming from someone who is vying to become President of the United States.”
Trump said last week that judge Gonzalo Curiel’s Mexican heritage represented an “absolute conflict” of interest in two class-action fraud cases against Trump University that Curiel is presiding over in California. Curiel, a federal appeals judge appointed by Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, was born in Indiana.
Clinton’s branding of Trump’s attack as racist came after days in which the sharpest criticism of Trump came from fellow Republicans, including former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who called the attack on Curiel “inexcusable”. Texas senator Ted Cruz, who challenged Trump for the presidential nomination, called his comments “inappropriate”, while fellow former candidate Marco Rubio was more stern, saying “I think it’s wrong” and “he needs to stop saying it”.
Updated
Hillary Clinton became the first woman in American history to clinch the presidential nomination of a major political party last night, but Republican opponent Donald Trump told Bill O’Reilly last night that if anyone is responsible for shattering the glass ceiling of gender inequality, it’s him.
“I was the one that really broke the glass ceiling on behalf of women more than anybody in the construction industry,” Trump told O’Reilly last night.
When Donald Trump remarked that “it’s possible” Muslim judges would be biased against him, he probably did not know how many Muslim judges there are in America’s federal courts. The number might surprise other people too. It is none.
This is despite a record-breaking push by Barack Obama to diversify a judiciary long dominated by straight white men. There are more female, black, Latino and gay judges than ever before, but the absolute absence of Muslims from the bench illustrates the scale of the deficit he inherited. And some observers fear that a Trump presidency could undo years of hard-won progress.
The Republican presumptive nominee has been roundly condemned for his comments not only about Muslims but accusations of bias levelled at Gonzalo Curiel, an American judge of Mexican heritage who allowed the release of some unflattering documents from Trump University.
“It’s very damaging to the entire perception of how the judiciary is viewed,” said Christopher Kang, a former deputy assistant and deputy counsel to Obama. “The judiciary is, and should be seen as, a fair and independent branch of government, and I think that means those sorts of broad, frankly racist characterisations just do damage to the institution.”
There are currently 785 federal judges, according to the Federal Judicial Center, with about 90 vacancies outstanding. They consist of 520 men and 265 women. The racial breakdown is 107 African Americans, 80 Hispanics, 25 Asian American Pacific Islanders, one Native American and 579 whites. (Some judges identify as more than one race.)
Religion is not measured in official figures but several non-government organisations confirmed that there are no federal judges who identify as Muslim.
Today in campaign 2016: Super Tuesday, part V
Good morning, and welcome to the last major presidential primary of the 2016 campaign! Congratulations – we did it!
For the first time since 1992, California is playing more than a ceremonial role in the nomination of a presidential candidate – although after the Associated Press called the Democratic nomination for Clinton last night, the Golden State may serve more as a capstone than a cornerstone of Clinton’s nomination.
That’s right: according to the AP, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton has crossed the 2,383-delegate threshold needed to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination, becoming the first woman in American history to be the presidential nominee of a major party.
The feat, accomplished after a “a burst of last-minute support from superdelegates”, according to the AP, was immediately contested by the rival campaign of Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, which argued that Clinton had not reached the crucial target through pledged delegates alone. Sanders has vowed continue to campaign through the party’s convention in July.
But whether Sanders has a realistic chance of persuading superdelegates to jump ship from Clinton – who has amassed roughly 3 million more votes than Sanders in the nominating competition and has a lead of nearly 300 pledged delegates – is up for debate.
As the Democratic candidates vie for unity, voters in six states – North Dakota, South Dakota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Montana and, of course, California – head to the polls today for “Super Tuesday V,” as CNN has decided to call it. (We’ve put forward “the No-So-New-New-Mon-Cal Primaries” as an alternative, but haven’t heard back.)
Here’s when to start expecting results:
- North Dakota: Polls close at 9pm ET, with results expected after 9pm ET.
- South Dakota: Polls close at 9pm ET, with results expected after a highly specific 9.05pm ET.
- New Jersey: Polls close at 8pm ET, with quick results anticipated within the half-hour mark.
- New Mexico: Polls close at 9pm ET, with results expected after 9.24pm ET.
- Montana: Polls start closing at 10pm ET, with results expected after 10.24pm ET.
- California: The big show! Polls close at 11pm ET, or 8pm local time. Results are expected soon after polls close.
The Sanders campaign still sees winning California as crucial to bolstering its rationale for continuing the campaign into the summer. But Clinton made clear that she expects Sanders to withdraw from the race for the Democratic nomination for president in the aftermath of primaries in California – just as she conceded to Barack Obama eight years ago today.
“Tomorrow is eight years to the day after I withdrew and endorsed then-senator Obama,” she said last night. “I believed it was the right thing to do. No matter what differences we had in our long campaign, they paled in comparison to the differences we had with the Republicans.”
Updated
