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Tom McCarthy (now) and Scott Bixby (earlier) in New York

Sanders and Trump win West Virginia primary – as it happened

Interactive
Nebraska and West Virginia primary results. Donald Trump’s last remaining rivals, Ted Cruz and John Kasich, suspended their campaigns on 3 May and 4 May respectively. They are still on the ballot in both states, however.

Summary

The West Virginia and Nebraska primaries have come and gone. Here’s what happened:

  • Bernie Sanders cruised to victory over Hillary Clinton in West Virginia while, on the Republican side, Donald Trump won big in both states.
  • Sanders was estimated to have netted about three delegates, while Trump picked up closer to 60 in his pair of wins. Trump is now about 100 delegates away from a 1,237 majority, although his remaining opponents Ted Cruz and John Kasich dropped out of the race last week.
  • Sanders said: “We are in this campaign to win the Democratic presidential nomination ... Now we fully acknowledge, we are good at arithmetic, that we have an uphill climb ahead of us. But we are used to fighting uphill climbs.”
  • The Clinton camp was quiet. Up next are contests in Kentucky and Oregon, where Clinton has been polling ahead of Sanders.
  • Trump hailed his victories “by such massive margins” and called the wins “a great honor”.
  • Here’s how the delegate race stands on the Democratic side:
Democratic
  • Here’s how the delegate race stands on the Republican side:
Republican
  • Nebraska Democrats were also able to vote in a primary tonight, but it did not count, because Nebraska Democrats already held a caucus that did count, in March. Sanders won the caucus. But Clinton “won” the primary:

Updated

Trump: victories a 'great honor'

Trump’s campaign releases a statement on his “massive” victories tonight:

It is a great honor to have won both West Virginia and Nebraska, especially by such massive margins. My time spent in both states was a wonderful and enlightening experience for me. I learned a lot, and that knowledge will be put to good use towards the creation of businesses, jobs, and the strengthening and revival of their economies. I look forward to returning to West Virginia and Nebraska soon, and hope to win both states in the general election. Likewise, my time spent last week with the great people of Oregon will hopefully lead to another victory next Tuesday.

Sanders: 'we are in this campaign to win'

Sanders has taken the stage in Salem, Oregon, and touted a “double-digit” victory in West Virginia, to the crowd’s delight. He asks them for a similar result next week in Oregon. “It is high time for the wealthy and the large corporations to start paying their fair share in taxes,” he says, to cheers.

We have now won primaries and caucuses in 19 states. Let me be as clear as I can be: we are in this campaign to win the Democratic presidential nomination, and we are going to fight for every last vote in Oregon, Kentucky, California, the Dakotas. Now we fully acknowledge, we are good at arithmetic, that we have an uphill climb ahead of us. But we are used to fighting uphill climbs. We have been fighting uphill from the first day of this campaign when people considered us a fringe candidacy. And our message to the Democratic delegates... is while we have many areas of disagreement with secretary Clinton, there is one area where we agree, and that is we must defeat Donald Trump. And I am very happy to tell you we will defeat Donald Trump.

Big cheers for the last line.

Updated

In Nebraska’s beauty contest primary on the Democratic side – which did not count because the state’s Democrats, confusingly, already held a presidential preference contest that did count, a caucus won by Sanders in March – anyway Clinton “won” the primary tonight. But it doesn’t count.

Many observers note that the caucus won by Sanders had about 22,000 participants while the primary “won” by Clinton appears to have had more than three times as many participants.

Updated

Sanders calls for California debate with Clinton

Bernie Sanders releases a statement thanking West Virginia and calling for a debate with Clinton in California.

“The delegates will decide which candidate is the strongest nominee to take on Donald Trump in November. All of the evidence indicates that I am that candidate,” Sanders says in the statement.

GOP calls Clinton loss 'embarrassing'

The Republican National Committee hammers Hillary Clinton for her loss: “It is nothing short of embarrassing that Hillary Clinton has now been defeated twenty times by a 74-year-old socialist from Vermont...” the statement begins.

But what would the RNC know about embarrassing?

Updated

The New York tabloids roll out their Wednesday covers:

Trump likely within 100 delegates of 1,237

The 36 delegates Trump picks up tonight in Nebraska bring him to within 130 of an outright 1,237 majority. He’ll pick up significant delegates in West Virginia, too (which awards 34 total), likely bringing him within 100 delegates of victory.

Republicans

Sanders wins West Virginia

Bernie Sanders is the victor in West Virginia, the AP projects. He’ll split the 29 pledged delegates proportionally with Clinton.

That’s two state victories for Trump and one for Sanders. The Sanders call came about two hours after polling stations closed.

Updated

It appears that it may be too late to remove the white nationalist from Donald Trump’s list of California delegates, no matter what the campaign would prefer:

A third candidate besides Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders could earn a delegate in West Virginia’s Democratic primary on Tuesday night, writes Guardian politics reporter Ben Jacobs:

Paul Ferrell, a lawyer who is running as a protest candidate against “the war on coal” could get the 15% of the vote needed to earn a delegate in West Virginia’s Third Congressional District. With 5% of precincts reporting, Ferrell was at 12%.

West Virginia has long kept up its Democratic registration even as the state has tilted Republican at the national level. The result was that in 2012, Keith Judd, a federal convict, got over 40% of the vote against Barack Obama. Even on Tuesday, a majority of Democratic voters said they would not support Clinton in a general election against Trump.

If Ferrell does break the 15% mark, it would be yet another obstacle in Sanders’s quixotic quest to wrest the Democratic nomination from Clinton and deprive him of an essential delegate in that fight.

Trump wins Nebraska

Donald Trump is the projected winner in Nebraska. Ted Cruz won’t be getting back in the race after all, it appears. The Republican race is winner-take-all for 36 delegates.

Updated

For readers out there uncomfortable at the prospect that Donald Trump might become president, here’s a corrective to the notion that the general election begins as a neck-and-neck race, by Stu Rothenberg writing in Roll Call:

I’ve heard that it’s early in the presidential race and that we underestimated Donald Trump last time so we should be careful now. I’ve also heard that Trump’s strength with working-class whites could change the electoral map, giving him a path to an Electoral College win.

The purpose of these and similar warnings is to convey the impression that the 2016 presidential contest should be regarded as competitive. This is utter baloney. [...]

Given the makeup of the likely electorate, state voting patterns, the images of the candidates, the deeply fractured GOP and the early survey data, Clinton starts off with a decisive advantage in the contest. A blowout is possible.

Read the full piece here.

Nebraska polling stations to close

Polling sites in Nebraska close in about five minutes. Donald Trump was immediately projected to be the winner in West Virginia, we’ll see if Nebraska is so clear-cut.

Sanders leads in early West Virginia returns

Bernie Sanders’ 4-point lead in West Virginia – visit our comprehensive results page here – with 6% of precincts reporting may be durable, judging by initial returns on the county level, in the view of the Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman and others:

Who are you rooting for in the race to claim the distinction of being the single county in America with the most fervent Trump support – Wyoming, West Virginia, or Staten Island, New York (i.e. Richmond County):

Update:

Updated

Upshot analyst Nate Cohn points out that the Democrats in West Virginia won’t be so Democrat-ish come November:

A solid share of Sanders voters told exit pollsters that they were just supporting Sanders until they get to vote for Donald Trump in the general:

In a nutshell:

Updated

Retired professional wrestler Kevin Nash, 56, says his informal T-shirt poll conducted with an unknown number of potential voters (or not, who knows) in Florida indicates “Hillary you’re in trouble girl”:

Updated

Sanders proclaims victory

The Associated Press has not projected a winner in the West Virginia Democratic race, with 0% of precincts reporting, but one of the candidates, Bernie Sanders, has proclaimed victory.

“We just got word that we won our 19th state, taking the majority of the delegates in today’s primary in West Virginia,” a Sanders campaign email reads:

But I believe that it is not enough to just reject Trump – this is an opportunity to define a progressive vision for America. Voters agree: just today, three new polls showed that we are the best campaign to defeat Trump.

We fully acknowledge we have an uphill climb ahead of us, but we’re used to that. We have been fighting uphill from the day this campaign began, and we’re going to stay in the race until the last vote is cast. And with your help, I hope to take on Trump, too. Thank you for standing with me.

Zero percent of precincts have reported in West Virginia. We’ll report the results as they come in.

Updated

Guardian politics reporter Ben Jacobs scans the exit poll data on the Democratic side. It’s encouraging for Sanders, who wins young voters...

...less affluent voters...

...and independents, though Sanders loses Democrats by a hair to Clinton:

Trump projected winner in West Virginia

Donald Trump has won the Republican primary in West Virginia, AP projects. Thirty-four delegates are at stake, awarded by direct election.

The Guardian’s Ben Jacobs dives into the exit polling data and finds that Trump enjoyed 86% support with both men and women.

Updated

West Virginia polls close

The polls are closed in West Virginia, and we expect projected results in the Republican race momentarily.

Trump aide: presidential race is 'ultimate reality show'

Donald Trump convention manager Paul Manafort has called the White House race the “ultimate reality show” and told a cable interviewer that Trump is “the head of the Republican party”:

Updated

A DHM Research poll detects a healthy Clinton lead over Sanders in Oregon, which will award 74 Democratic delegates in a primary context in one week. But there’s not enough polling in the race to establish an average to compare the survey to.

The Trump campaign has released a third explanation for the inclusion of a white nationalist on its list of delegates in California.

At first the campaign said the story was false. Then it blamed a “database error” for the recruitment of prominent racist William Johnson for its California team.

The third statement removes reference to a database error, repeats an earlier assertion that Johnson had been removed from draft lists, and uses the passive case to explain what happened next: “the inclusion... was discovered.”

Here’s the new statement, attributed to Trump’s state director in California, Tim Clark:

“Yesterday the Trump Campaign submitted its list of California delegates to be certified by the Secretary of State of California. Upon careful review of computer records, the inclusion of a potential delegate that had previously been rejected and removed from the campaign’s list in February 2016, was discovered. This was immediately corrected and a final list, which does not include this individual, was submitted for certification.”

– California State Director, Tim Clark

Updated

Trump whittles running mate list

Donald Trump has narrowed his list of potential running mates to “a very good list of five or six people,” he tells the Associated Press in a wide-ranging interview in which he also lays out an unusual vision for the Republican convention in November.

The speeches should be broken up by a song-and-dance act, Trump says:

“The concept of some entertainment from a great singer, a great group I think would be something maybe to break things up,” Trump said. “You’ll be hearing plenty of political speeches.”

Trump said he wouldn’t announce his running mate until the convention, which runs 18-21 July.

He also ruled out for the first time the option of taking public financing for his campaign, which would have required him to observe spending caps.

“I don’t like the idea of taking taxpayer money to run a campaign. I think it’s inappropriate,” he said.

Finally, Trump said his most effective tool for the general election will be large rallies:

“My best investment is my rallies,” Trump said. “The people go home, they tell their friends they loved it. It’s been good.”

White nationalist contradicts Trump camp, insists he is delegate

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is blaming a “database error” for the inclusion of a prominent white nationalist on the official list of delegates to the Republican National Convention, writes Guardian reporter Nicky Woolf:

However William Daniel Johnson, a Los Angeles based corporate lawyer who once called for a constitutional amendment which would revoke citizenship from all non-white Americans, cast doubt on the claim, telling the Guardian that he was, in fact, a delegate.

“I will confirm that I am a delegate, but I wont speak more than that because they don’t want me to,” Johnson said, referring to the Trump campaign.

Johnson said he had just been instructed by the Trump campaign to direct all inquiries to them. “That email I got from the Trump camp said to direct all communications regarding delegates to them. I don’t want to go against what they said.”

Read the full story here:

Updated

Rubio backs Trump... tepidly

Marco Rubio on Tuesday said he was prepared to back Donald Trump as the Republican nominee but stopped short of lending his former opponent a formal endorsement, writes Guardian politics reporter Sabrina Siddiqui:

“I intend to support the Republican nominee,” Rubio said in an interview with CNN. “I signed a pledge, put my name on it, and said I would support the Republican nominee and that’s what I intend to do.”

The Florida senator, who exited the race in March, nonetheless would not disavow the criticisms he leveled against Trump while competing against him in the Republican presidential race.

“My differences with Donald — both my reservations about his campaign and my policies differences with him — are well documented and they remain,” Rubio said.

“But I’m not going to sit here right now and become his chief critic over the next six months, because he deserves the opportunity to go forward and make his argument and try to win.”

With the nominee, but differences with Donald.
With the nominee, but differences with Donald. Photograph: Ron Sachs/REX/Shutterstock

The interview was, in many ways, an exercise in contortions.

Rubio struggled to reconcile his views with those of Trump, and deflected when confronted with positions that would indicate he was more in line with Hillary Clinton than Trump on issues such as foreign policy.

The senator said he was more aligned with Trump in certain domestic areas, such as being pro-life, while adding: “You have to take the package holistically.”

At the same time, Rubio hedged when asked if he planned to vote for the billionaire in November.

“I intend to support the nominee,” he reiterated.

Pressed again by host Jake Tapper on whether that meant casting a ballot in Trump’s favor, Rubio responded: “I’m not voting for Hillary Clinton. I’m not throwing away my vote.”

He also stood by statements that included dubbing Trump as “an erratic con artist” who shouldn’t have access to nuclear codes, just one example among a bevy of sharp attacks Rubio and his campaign levied against the real estate mogul prior to the suspension of his campaign.

“I know what I said during the campaign, I enunciated those things repeatedly. And voters chose a different direction. I stand by the things that I said,” Rubio said. “I don’t view my role over the next six months to just sit here and level charges against him.”

Rubio added that he had not yet determined whether he would attend the Republican convention in Cleveland in July, but said his indecision was irrespective of Trump. And he maintained his reservations about Trump’s overall demeanor, saying he believed the former reality TV star would benefit from toning it down his rhetoric.

“I think it would make it easier for him to get elected if he did,” Rubio said.

Clinton anticipates West Virginia loss – report

Averages of (a grand total of five) polls of the Democratic race in West Virginia have Bernie Sanders leading Hillary Clinton by four points. CNN reports that the Clinton campaign expects that tonight’s results will reveal the polls to be roughly accurate – though Sanders’ margin of victory may be bigger.

Clinton won West Virginia by a wide margin in 2008, but comments she made in March about putting coal companies out of business, in addition to the healthy anti-establishment sentiment in the Mountain State and a demographic advantage for Sanders, have diminished Clinton’s chances in 2016.

At a CNN town hall in March, Clinton said:

So for example, I’m the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country. Because we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right?

And we’re going to make it clear that we don’t want to forget those people. Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories.

Early this month, Clinton branded the foregoing a “misstatement”:

“I don’t know how to explain it other than what I said was totally out of context for what I meant because I have been talking about helping coal country for a very long time,” Clinton said. “It was a misstatement because what I was saying is the way things are going now, they will continue to lose jobs. It didn’t mean that we were going to do it. What I said is that is going to happen unless we take action to help and prevent it.”

Sanders is holding a rally in Salem, Oregon tonight. Clinton is in Louisville, Kentucky, where her rally drew protesters:

Updated

Trump blames white nationalist delegate on 'database error'

The Trump campaign has released a statement on the inclusion on its California delegate slate of a well-known white nationalist who has been doing uninvited freelance work on behalf of the campaign for months.

It was a “database error,” the Trump camp says.

Update: The Trump campaign’s “database error” explanation for the inclusion of a prominent white nationalist on its list of California delegates was preceded by a denial that the story was true.

Updated

Polling station closure times

Polling stations close in West Virginia tonight at 7.30pm ET and in Nebraska at 9pm ET. Nebraska Democrats held caucuses in March, won by Bernie Sanders 57-43; tonight in the Cornhusker state it’s the Republicans’ turn (they’re holding a primary not a caucus).

West Virginia awards 34 Republican delegates while Nebraska awards 36. On the Democratic side, West Virginia will award 29 pledged delegates and eight unpledged delegates.

Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee, but he’s still 169 delegates away from the majority threshold of 1,237. He won’t get there tonight, but he could, thanks to the Mountain State’s “loophole” primary system on the Republican side, win all or most of the 34 delegates at stake.

A word about West Virginia’s unusual system for allocating Republican delegates:

Voters will directly elect delegates, whose names will be listed on ballots along with the candidates they’re tied to. But in fact voters will see two slates of delegates: one for the local congressional district, and one for the state at large. When the dust has cleared, the state will allocate 22 delegates at-large, nine from congressional districts and three who automatically go to the convention. You can read more, as always, at Frontloading HQ.

Republicans

Counting super-delegates, Hillary Clinton is 155 delegates away from the finish line:

Democrats

Trump picks prominent white nationalist as delegate

Donald Trump has selected the leader of a white nationalist party to be on his delegates list in California, Mother Jones revealed Tuesday:

On Monday evening, California’s secretary of state published a list of delegates chosen by the Trump campaign for the upcoming Republican presidential primary in the state. Trump’s slate includes William Johnson, one of the country’s most prominent white nationalists. [...]

Johnson got the news that he had been selected by Trump in a congratulatory email sent to him by the campaign’s California Delegate Coordinator, Katie Lagomarsino. “I just hope to show how I can be mainstream and have these views,” Johnson tells Mother Jones. “I can be a white nationalist and be a strong supporter of Donald Trump and be a good example to everybody.”

The Trump campaign did not comment for the story. In his application to be a delegate, Johnson described his background and activism, but did not use the term “white nationalist,” Mother Jones’ Josh Harkinson reports. Johnson drew national media attention in March for recording white nationalist robocalls asking people to vote for Trump. A typical call included the line:

The white race is being replaced by other peoples in America and in all white countries. Donald Trump stands strong as a nationalist.

Updated

Hillary Clinton’s campaign has dropped a new ad in major Kentucky markets that focuses on her foreign policy bona fides - an area where Vermont senator Bernie Sanders is seen as less adept.

Rush Limbaugh, on Donald Trump:

How about this: American politics is determined by trolls on the internet today - maybe not determined, but internet trolls have a lot of say about what people are thought of. Well, Trump is an internet troll. With all of his tweeting, Trump is one of those guys. Trump has brought the internet troll to the campaign. Now, there’s a negative connotation to internet trolls, but at the same time, this is becoming mainstream. This kind of speech pattern, the way people speak, this is common on the internet, this is the kind of stuff that people say everyday everywhere on the internet multiple times a day, and nothing happens to them.

In March, a poll found that nearly 20% of Americans would consider moving to Canada if a Trump presidency comes to pass. Well, the dream doesn’t have to be mere fantasy any longer. A new company has arrived that intends to help whisk the country’s jaded abroad.

Maple Match ‘makes it easy for Americans to find the ideal Canadian partner to save them from the unfathomable horror of a Trump presidency’.
Maple Match ‘makes it easy for Americans to find the ideal Canadian partner to save them from the unfathomable horror of a Trump presidency’. Photograph: Maple Match

Maple Match is a matchmaking service like none other. In the words of its website, it “makes it easy for Americans to find the ideal Canadian partner to save them from the unfathomable horror of a Trump presidency”. The app, in other words, wants to help Trump-averse singles find love – and perhaps a new country to call home. At the moment, eager singles can sign up for early access when the dating app launches properly. And when it does, many thousands of unhappy Americans and generous Canadians will be paired.

The service’s founder is Joe Goldman, a 25-year-old education research and budding entrepreneur based in Austin, Texas. A self-described man of “liberal persuasions” living in a red state, Goldman says he has a natural affinity forCanada and its progressive leftwing image. Maple Match is a manifestation of his dual passions: connecting different people and his neighbors to the north. “When this election came about and I started seeing Donald Trump and the rise of his candidacy I started getting concerned, just like anybody else,” he said. “I thought it might be interesting to try something like this out.”

At first his ambitions were modest: “Last week I had a hundred page views and I thought that was a great – I made a hundred people smile.” But then virality transformed Maple Match into an international craze. Last Friday, Maple Match was getting 200 sign-up requests an hour. Today nearly 5,000 singles have signed up for Maple Match – and the app hasn’t even launched.

We have more background on former presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s conference call with Christian supporters today, in which his wife Heidi compared her husband’s presidential campaign to the fight against slavery.

Ted Cruz announces the suspension of his campaign as wife Heidi Cruz looks on.
Ted Cruz announces the suspension of his campaign as wife Heidi Cruz looks on. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

According to the Texas Tribune, Heidi Cruz was on a conference call with the campaign’s National Prayer Team when she likened the Texas senator’s political career to the abolitionist movement that ended chattel slavery in the US.

“I don’t want you to feel like any of this was in vain,” she told her husband’s supporters. “I believe in the power of prayer. This doesn’t always happen on the timing of man, and God does not work in four-year segments.”

“Be full of faith and so full of joy that this team was chosen to fight a long battle,” she continued. Think that slavery - it took 25 years to defeat slavery. That is a lot longer than four years.”

The comments, in addition to sparking criticism of the comparison of a partisan political campaign with the fight against slavery, also seemed to indicate that, for the Cruzes, the fight for the White House has only begun.

“We are not only keeping this band together, we have been having meetings five hours a day since the time we dropped out,” Heidi said. “Every single person in our leadership team in our campaign, Ted and I will probably be working with on a weekly basis in the next four years.”

Donald Trump is previewing his planned attacks on former secretary of state Hillary Clinton via a video on Instagram today. The line: Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi.

House speaker Paul Ryan’s primary challenger, businessman Paul Nehlen, faces an uphill battle in seeking to unseat the popular Republican leader in his home district. This might explain why he has endorsed an article in Breitbart News that seeks to label Ryan as a hypocrite for opposing Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim travel and immigration to the US... because he sends his children to parochial school.

In the article - which really should be read in its entirety - Breitbart writer Julia Hahn proposes that, because Ryan’s children attend a private Catholic school, Ryan has no leg to stand on in opposing religious tests for entry to the US.

Ted Cruz and Heidi Cruz just addressed their “National Prayer Team” on a conference call, during which Heidi dropped this:

Ted Cruz refused to commit his support to Donald Trump as the Republican nominee on Tuesday, and did not rule out resurrecting his campaign for president despite having dropped out of the race last week.

Ted Cruz.
Ted Cruz. Photograph: Nam Y. Huh/AP

In an interview with Glenn Beck, the Texas senator said that picking a presidential candidate “is not a choice that we as voters have to make today”. Cruz pointed out there are still two months until the Republican National Convention in Cleveland and six months until the general election, saying “we need to watch and see what the candidates say and do”.

Although Cruz had long committed to supporting the Republican nominee in the past, his tone changed after Trump repeatedly made personal attacks against Cruz and his family.

The businessman branded his rival “Lyin Ted”, threatened to “spill the beans” on his wife while implying she was unattractive, and accused Cruz’s father of involvement in the assassination of John F Kennedy. While Cruz once calledTrump “a friend” and “terrific”, he held an abrupt press conference hours before ending his campaign where he derided Trump as a “serial philanderer”, an “amoral pathological liar”, and a “braggadocious arrogant buffoon.”

Cruz also would not rule out returning to the campaign trail if “there’s a path to victory”. The Texas senator suspended his campaign after losing the Indiana primary on 3 May by a margin of 53%-37%, and said that with the loss he no longer saw a path forward to the Republican nomination. On Tuesday Cruz told Beck: “If that changes, we will certainly respond accordingly.”

However, Cruz’s campaign had a well-organized effort to put his supporters into positions of power among Republican delegates, who will elect the party’s nominee at the national convention in Cleveland this July. This effort means that although Trump is the only candidate left in the Republican primary, pro-Cruz supporters will have significant influence on the convention floor, and that his delegates will probably hold control of crucial committees, such as those that write the convention rules and design the party’s platform.

Republican congressman Darrell Issa has penned an editorial in The Hill today calling on party members who are still holding back on endorsing Donald Trump as the Republican presidential nomination to “get on the Trump Train.”

“I don’t dismiss their strong views, but I hope they’ll soon come to their senses,” Issa wrote of Republicans who are refusing to endorse Trump. “Republicans need to step back, take stock and think carefully about the stakes in this election.”

“Elections are choices, and this year provides as clear an option between two candidates as any time in recent memory,” Issa continued. “Donald Trump is the obvious choice for every American suffering from eight years of disastrous economic policies and anti-job regulations that have caused continuous pain to tens of millions of people. He is also the only option left for those truly harmed by Obamacare or alarmed at a failed foreign policy that has weakened our military, betrayed our allies and clearly made us less safe at home and around the world.”

“This time requires updated thinking about our party and its place in American governance. As Trump makes his unifying trip Wednesday to Capitol Hill, Republicans need to get real and admit hard truths.”

Donald Trump has taken a swipe at Republicans who have preemptively ruled out serving as his vice presidential candidate, in an apparent reference to Florida senator Marco Rubio’s declaration that Trump would “be best served by a running mate and by surrogates who fully embrace his campaign.”

As of last week, Trump was open to Rubio serving as his running mate.

“Marco’s a good guy, a really nice guy, and I like him,” Trump told Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier. “But not necessarily with respect to any position, but it could happen.”

Budweiser has one-upped Donald Trump’s promise to make America great again by making America beer. Beginning later this month, the script that usually reads “Budweiser” on the brewing company’s cans and bottle labels will read “America.” The label change will stay in effect through to the election in November.

Budweiser America can
Budweiser America can Photograph: Budweiser

Budweiser regularly redesigns its logo along patriotic themes to coincide with major sporting events, often around Olympic Games hosted stateside, but this is the first time the company has effectively changed the name of its flagship product. In a press release, the brewery mentioned several upcoming events, notably the Olympics taking place elsewhere in the Americas this summer – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – and of course the deeply contentious US election itself.

The change is US-centric to the core, though. The label’s typeface will stay the same, but the words will change: “America” for “Budweiser,” “e pluribus unum” (out of many, one, the motto of the US) for “The King of Beers,” and where the lager’s label usually contains boilerplate extolling the virtues of its “exclusive Beechwood Aging”, the lyrics to The Star-Spangled Banner.

Ted Cruz floats restarting presidential campaign

Ted Cruz speaks during a primary night campaign event in Indianapolis.
Ted Cruz speaks during a primary night campaign event in Indianapolis. Photograph: Darron Cummings/AP

Texas senator and recently suspended presidential candidate Ted Cruz put forward the possibility of restarting his presidential campaign if he wins tonight’s Republican primary in Nebraska.

Speaking on Glenn Beck’s radio show, Cruz said that although he doesn’t expect to win in Nebraska tonight, he’s open to changing gears if he feels that there is a path to victory.

“Listen, let’s be very clear: If there is a path to victory, we launched this campaign intending to win,” Cruz said. “The reason we suspended our campaign was that with the Indiana loss, I felt there was no path to victory. If that changes, we will certainly respond accordingly.”

Updated

Although Donald Trump still needs delegates and Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are still fighting to be Democratic nominee, Paul Ryan and #NeverTrump overshadow tonight’s primary elections, report the Guardian’s Dan Roberts and Ben Jacobs.

Donald Trump holds a miner’s helmet up after speaking during a rally in Charleston, West Virginia.
Donald Trump holds a miner’s helmet up after speaking during a rally in Charleston, West Virginia. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Washington has largely been upstaged by the drama of far-flung primary elections, but as West Virginia becomes the latest state to vote for presidential nominees tonight, the nation’s gaze has swung back to the capital.

Such is the intrigue surrounding a crunch meeting between Trump and House speaker Paul Ryan, slated for Capitol Hill this Thursday, that the absence of the usual electioneering on the trail this week has barely been missed.

Neither the two Democrats nor the sole Republican in the race have visited West Virginia since last Thursday, even though Trump still needs delegates to secure the nomination and Clinton and Sanders are still, in theory, fighting to be the Democratic candidate.

Instead, attention has shifted to whether Trump can win over skeptics before an expected showdown with Clinton in November’s general election. Ryan’s concern about party unity, and the meeting with Trump to discuss it, has even led to speculation that an independent candidate could yet emerge to offer an alternative for disaffected Republicans.

But such a hypothetical may be unrealistic, or an exercise in wishful thinking at this late stage in the primary – akin to the hopes of Sanders supporters, who cling to the belief that a victory in West Virginia will reinvigorate his campaign despite Clinton’s 300-delegate lead, and huge advantage in superdelegates.

Updated

Donald Trump’s controversial campaign manager Corey Lewandowski has reportedly been tasked with heading up the presumptive Republican nominee’s hunt for a potential vice president.

According to a report from the Washington Post, Lewandowski will head the team responsible for surveying and vetting potential running mates for Donald Trump, citing two Republicans familiar with his role.

Trump said earlier this month that he would likely make his vice presidential pick known at the Republican National Convention in late July, although traditionally the running mate is announced beforehand.

A Silicon Valley billionaire who is one of the top libertarian mega-donors in Republican politics will be a delegate for Donald Trump.

Peter Thiel, president of Thiel Capital, speaks at the annual Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California.
Peter Thiel, president of Thiel Capital, speaks at the annual Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California. Photograph: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Peter Thiel, who was a cofounder of PayPal and owns a substantial stake in Facebook, is on the ballot in California as a Republican delegate for Trump in the San Francisco-based 12th congressional district. Thiel’s name was on a list submitted to the California secretary of state’s office by the Trump campaign as an approved candidate.

With Trump facing no active opposition as the presumptive Republican nominee, Thiel is a near certainty to be elected in the state’s 7 June primary.

A longtime Republican contributor, Thiel was one of the biggest donors to Ron Paul’s Super Pac in 2012. An openly gay yet avowed ideological libertarian, Thiel has previously given to a host of Republican candidates as well to unconventional projects like the Seasteading Institute, which seeks to build floating cities in international waters.

In a 2014 interview with the Daily Caller, Thiel criticized Trump as “sort of symptomatic of everything that is wrong with New York City”. However, Thiel does share certain ideological beliefs with Trump. The Silicon Valley billionaire is very hawkish on immigration and in 2008 reportedly made a $1m donation to Numbers USA, a group that advocates for reduced immigration to the United States. Numbers USA has praised Trump’s immigration plan and given the presumptive nominee an A-rating.

Texas senator Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign may be in mothballs, but that isn’t stopping a music licensing company from suing his now-defunct campaign over background music it used in two videos.

Audiosocket, a Seattle-based music licensing outfit, filed the lawsuit yesterday in a Seattle district court against Cruz for President and advertising firm Madison McQueen, alleging that an agreement between Audiosocket and McQueen barred the use of its songs for political purposes.

The instrumental songs were allegedly used in two Cruz campaign videos: “Victories” and “Best to Come.” The lawsuit seeks hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages.

Hillary Clinton has shrugged off reporters’ questions about Republican rival Donald Trump’s attacks over the weekend on her personal life and her husband’s infidelities.

Clinton said she would keep the conversation on campaign issues, following an event in Stone Ridge, Virginia, with women and families. “I’m running my campaign. I’m not running against him. He’s doing a fine job of doing that himself,” she said.

Donald Trump, who has called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States, has suggested that he would make an exception for London’s newly elected Muslim mayor - and the mayor isn’t interested.

New London Mayor Sadiq Khan reacts as he leaves Southwark Cathedral in cental London after attending his swearing-in ceremony.
New London Mayor Sadiq Khan reacts as he leaves Southwark Cathedral in cental London after attending his swearing-in ceremony. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images

“There will always be exceptions,” the presumptive Republican nominee said in an interview, when asked how his controversial proposal would apply to Sadiq Khan, the son of a Pakistani immigrant bus driver and a seamstress, who was sworn in as London’s mayor on Saturday.

Trump said he was pleased to see Khan elected. “I was happy to see that,” Trump said. “I think it’s a very good thing, and I hope he does a very good job because frankly that would be very, very good. You lead by example, always lead by example. If he does a good job … that would be a terrific thing.”

“This isn’t just about me – it’s about my friends, my family and everyone who comes from a background similar to mine, anywhere in the world,” Khan told the Guardian.

“Donald Trump’s ignorant view of Islam could make both our countries less safe – it risks alienating mainstream Muslims around the world and plays into the hands of the extremists. Donald Trump and those around him think that western liberal values are incompatible with mainstream Islam – London has proved him wrong.”

Khan had said he wanted to go to the US in an interview with Time, but said that he would have to visit before January in case Trump was elected president and enacted his proposed ban on Muslim travel and immigration to the county.

“If Donald Trump becomes the president I’ll be stopped from going there by virtue of my faith, which means I can’t engage with American mayors and swap ideas,” Khan said.

Updated

Donald Trump more popular than hemorrhoids, less popular than Nickelback

“This is how you remind me / Of what I really am...”
“This is how you remind me / Of what I really am...” Photograph: Reid Jeffries

Public Policy Polling is having a bit of fun with its latest round of polling, stepping beyond the usual “favorable/unfavorable” paradigm to ask voters a series of head-to-head faceoffs between presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump with things such as root canals, cockroaches, and hipsters.

The results: Trump beats out hemorrhoids (45% to 39%) and cockroaches (46% to 42%) but loses to traffic jams (40% to 47%), lice (28% to 54%) and Nickelback (34% to 39%).

On the more serious side, PPP’s newest national poll finds that Republicans are just as unified around Trump as Democrats are unified around Hillary Clinton, spelling a much more competitive general election race than one might think.

Nearly three-quarters of Republicans - 72% - say that they’re comfortable with Trump as their nominee, functionally identical to the 75% of Democrats say that they would be comfortable with Clinton as their nominee.

As for general election prospects, Clinton leads Trump 42% to 38% when the ticket includes with Libertarian Gary Johnson at 4% and Green Party candidate Jill Stein at 2%. In a head-to-head match between Clinton and Trump, the former secretary of state’s lead expands to 47% to Trump’s 41%.

Obama to become first sitting US president to visit Hiroshima

Barack Obama has announced he will visit Hiroshima, Japan, becoming the first sitting president to visit the site where the US dropped an atomic bomb in 1945, killing an estimated 140,000 people the final days of the second world war.

Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima.
Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima. Photograph: Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP/Getty Images

The White House confirmed the visit in a statement, saying Obama’s visit will “highlight his continued commitment to pursuing peace and security in a world without nuclear weapons”. Obama will be joined with prime minister Shinzo Abe, who is hosting the G7 summit in Ise-Shima later this month.

Earlier this month, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the president does not believe the US should apologize for its use of atom bombs on Japan in 1945, a point reiterated by national security adviser Ben Rhodes this morning.

Obama “will not revisit the decision to use the atomic bomb at the end of World War II”, Rhodes wrote in a post on Medium. “This visit will offer an opportunity to honor the memory of all innocents who were lost during the war.”

Rhodes added that the visit aids the reconciliation between the US and Japan, and the nations’ mutual commitment to reducing the “the role of nuclear weapons in our security and in the policies of other global powers”.

In April, secretary of state John Kerry visited the site, where he made an emotional speech. “It tugs at all of your sensibilities as a human being. It reminds everybody of the extraordinary complexity of choices in war and of what war does to people, to communities, to countries, to the world,” he said.

Poll: Donald Trump effectively tied with Hillary Clinton in key swing states

Get ready.
Get ready. Photograph: STAFF/Reuters

It’s going to be a long 183 days, if Quinnipiac University’s latest survey is any indication.

Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump and likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton are functionally tied in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to a survey released this morning, a preview of some hard fighting for three of the most consequential swing states in the county.

In Florida, Clinton leads Trump 43% to 42%; in Ohio, Trump leads Clinton 43% to 39%; in Pennsylvania, Clinton leads Trump 43% to 42%.

Important sidenote: Quinnipiac’s number set is not in keeping with the majority of polling done in these states, which show a more comfortable lead for Clinton in all three states, in part because it predicts a higher percentage of white voters than in previous elections, as well as an older voting populace than in previous elections, key ingredients for a higher Republican turnout.

It’s also worth noting that Quinnipiac had the worst track record of predicting primary elections this cycle, including getting the Ohio Democratic primary wrong by a nine-point margin.

Good morning, and welcome to our live-wire coverage of the 2016 race for the White House.

Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are facing off in the West Virginia primary today, with 29 delegates at stake. With a relatively small delegate count, to be split proportionally between the two candidates, the Mountain State’s primary is not likely to change the current trajectory of the race for the Democratic nomination.

There are two Republican primaries today, in West Virginia and Nebraska, although the road has been paved for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to claim his party’s nomination regardless of the outcome.

Polls close at 7.30pm ET in West Virginia and 9pm ET in Nebraska – stay tuned tonight for minute-by-minute updates on the state of both races. The Guardian’s Dan Roberts will be monitoring the results of tonight’s West Virginia primary, where Sanders is expected to see a win in coal county.

Today’s primaries have largely been upstaged, however, by drama in Washington DC ahead of Trump’s meeting with House speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday. After Ryan offered to relinquish his role as chairman of the Republican convention if Trump so wishes, the meeting is seen as an important step in repairing the damage in party morale ahead of the general election campaign.

Sanders’ supporters, whose candidate is still in the race if almost mathematically out, are wavering in their support for the eventual the Democratic candidate if it’s not the Vermont senator. In California, at least, there are Sanders supporters willing to support Trump over Clinton.

dem

Florida senator Marco Rubio will be on-air on CNN this afternoon at 4 pm ET, where he’ll discuss Trump and open up for first time since dropping out of the race for the Republican nomination.

And with that, let’s get started!

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