California’s attorney general will announce her campaign for retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer’s seat on Tuesday morning.

AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

California Attorney General Kamala Harris will declare her candidacy for the U.S. Senate on Tuesday morning, a senior adviser to the Democrat said.

The announcement will come online, in a message to supporters, just five days after Sen. Barbara Boxer said she would retire at the end of her fourth term in 2016. The race mark the first open Senate election in California since 1992.

Harris's adviser said she has no press conference planned, just a statement to her constituents. Other possible candidates for Senate, including hedge fund manager Tom Steyer and former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, have only said they are "seriously considering" campaigns for the Boxer seat.

Harris's team was clear that there will be no deliberation period: She's running.

Boxer's retirement spurred a four-day period of intense deliberation among the state's top elected officials, who have considered campaigns for both Boxer's seat and the governor's race in 2018. It's also likely that California's other U.S. senator, Dianne Feinstein, who is 81, will retire at the end of her term in four years.

Gavin Newsom, considered the top prospect for office in California alongside Harris, said on Monday morning in a Facebook post that he would not run for Senate.

"It's always better to be candid than coy," Newsom wrote. "While I am humbled by the widespread encouragement of so many and hold in the highest esteem those who serve us in federal office, I know that my head and my heart, my young family's future, and our unfinished work all remain firmly in the state of California."

Newsom, the lieutenant governor, is likely to campaign for governor instead.

The two elected officials, who share the same base of Northern California voters, have said that running against each other in a statewide race would be ill-advised.

Newsom, the former San Francisco mayor, and Harris, the former San Francisco district attorney, have climbed the ladder of California politics in near lockstep.

They share a long, at times complicated relationship — often labeled as a rivalry.

There was speculation that Newsom and Harris would make a "deal" over who would run for what position. But in interviews this weekend, advisers to both Democrats dismissed the idea of a behind-the-scenes pact as ridiculous.

After Newsom released his statement, there was some confusion among state Democrats about whether he had reached out to let Harris know his plans.

The lieutenant governor, who is said to have made up his mind about the Senate race on Sunday night after a weekend with family, called Harris early that night and left a message, according to a person familiar with the correspondence.

He also is said to have followed up this morning himself, and through their shared political consultant — but did not reach her directly.

Harris and Newsom have both expressed interest in the role of governor before.

Many of her donors have wanted her in the job — she would make history as the state's first female and first black governor. But Harris has weighed both options, and is said to have considered the Senate as a less restricting platform.

Newsom, meanwhile, has been more vocal, privately and publicly, about his desire to become the state's top executive. The current governor, Jerry Brown, will finish his fourth and final term after the gubernatorial election in 2018.

LINK: The Job Nobody Wanted: Kamala Harris And Gavin Newsom Decide On Senate

The Justice Department had been pushing James Risen to reveal the confidential sources he used for his 2006 book on the Bush administration, State of War. But on Monday, the New York Times reported that prosecutors withdrew the subpoena.

New York Times reporter James Risen leaves federal court in Alexandria, Va.

AP / Cliff Owen

The Justice Department has been trying to get Risen to reveal his confidential sources since 2008, when prosecutors first subpoenaed him to testify in the case against Jeffery Sterling. A former C.I.A. officer, Sterling was charged with passing classified information to Risen.

After President Obama won election, Attorney General Eric Holder continued the case, and tried to compel Risen to testify again in 2011.

Risen has steadfastly refused to reveal the identity of his sources, acknowledging in court only that there were several.

In recent months, however, there were signs that Risen would likely avoid jail time for refusing to comply with the subpoena.

Speaking at a forum in Washington D.C. in October, Holder said a resolution "that will be satisfactory to everybody" was in the works. On Monday, the Times reported that prosecutors had withdrawn the subpoena.

In a statement carried by The Times, executive editor Dean Baquet said he was pleased with the outcome.

"I'm glad the government realizes that Jim Risen was an aggressive reporter doing his job and that he should not be forced to reveal his source," Baquet said.

For all the wrong reasons.

Randy Weber is a Congressman from Texas who tweeted Monday that he was upset about President Obama not attending the Paris anti-terrorism march, using a strange analogy to Hitler invading France to make his point.

Weber previously called President Obama the "Kommandant-In-Chef" in a tweet about the State of the Union last year. He misspelled chief as "chef."

The White House expressed regret Monday about not having a more senior official than the U.S. ambassador to France attend the march.

"I think it's fair to say that we should have sent someone with a higher profile to be there," spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters Monday.

In 1972, the year Reince Priebus was born, the political writer David Broder published The Party’s Over. Since then, political writers, me included, have been declaring the death of political parties nonstop. It’s sort of like writing about the decline of American manufacturing.

As the story goes, party committees were, once, owners of the famous smoke-filled rooms. Their chairmen were power brokers. When the primary process democratized, party leaders were transformed gradually into mere operatives — bagmen for powerful leaders at best, spokespeople at worst. The major party organizations, the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee, are well into their fourth decade of identity crisis.

But the current chairman of the Republican National Committee, Priebus, may be the one who finally figures out what the party is for. Priebus — a careful, trim 42-year-old from Kenosha, Wisconsin — will run unopposed for a third term this week at the RNC's Winter Meeting in San Diego. When he is done with that term, he will be the longest-serving RNC chairman in modern history. (His staff has done the math.) He has done this with almost no personal profile. Most people in Washington still can't pronounce his first name. (It rhymes with “pints.”)

Yet Priebus has transformed the RNC from an organization whose reach and braggadocio regularly exceeded its grasp into a trim, effective piece of party infrastructure — in his terms, "the common denominator of the political universe." (Its DNC counterpart is, as is traditional for a party in power, an arm of the White House; it doesn’t play as central a role in the politics of the Democrats, whose Senate committee is particularly strong.) The RNC’s salvation is, ironically, the campaign finance regime that many Republicans oppose. And its pillars are data — the law gives it a singular role in passing voter data to other party groups; its remaining influence over the primary process whose outcome it no longer controls — and, above all, money.

Raising money is the core of Priebus’ job — he spends, he said, between 60% and 65% of his time raising money — and he is exceptionally good at it: He outraised the Democrats in 2012, and raised $188.8 million in the 2014 cycle. And the money he raises is, he said, "the golden money. It's the type-O blood of politics. Anyone can use it, there's a limited supply, but it's the universal blood of politics here at the RNC."

Because of complex laws around coordination, the resources the Republican National Committee buys can be used and reused, passed around among Republican campaigns. Soft-money groups cannot share and coordinate like this. So instead of going to war with deep-pocketed outsiders like the Koch brothers, Priebus has found a role in their ecosystem. When it comes to data, for instance, the committee has — through an arrangement involving a new private company — essentially made itself the partner of a Koch-backed data company, i360, initially seen as a rival.

Photograph by Matt Roth for BuzzFeed News

Priebus asks only that big donors make that golden money their first contribution, then they're free to head off to the super PACs. And he has absorbed from his third round of calling donors before a big election that "as chair of the party, for our national party, 2016 is the most important election we've had."

"I can't imagine if we don't win in an open race in 2016, that in 2017 what an RNC chairman could possibly tell potential donors as to what is going to be different," he said. "We're going to have to be perfect to do it. I think the other side can be good and win a presidential election — I think we have to be almost perfect."

If the Republican wins, Priebus said, he won't seek another term. And if they lose? "Heck no."

There's only so much Priebus can control. As he spoke, former Gov. Mitt Romney, whose campaign the chairman has widely trashed, was gearing up to run again over Priebus' public skepticism. He also shows no sign of trying to run off marginal candidates, like Dr. Ben Carson, who he invited to speak at the Winter Meeting. "I think he's got a good voice in our party. He's got some good ideas," Priebus said. "I also want to show that there's a lot of different kinds of candidates running and it's not just the people that the media seems obsessed with."

But he is controlling what he can. There's the debate stage, where he said he hopes to limit the participation of candidates to those who clear set polling hurdles, similar ones to those in place in 2012 — but on far fewer stages, "taking a 23-debate traveling circus and narrowing it down into a reasonable number of debates." And there's the primary calendar, which he hopes to compress from nearly six months to about 60 days.

"I can't control everyone's mouth, but I can control how long we have to kill each other," he said.

There have been, so far, few protests. Perhaps the only other major gravitational force is the Democrats. Priebus has heard rumors that Hillary Clinton supporters are trying to move the giant California and New York primaries earlier, to shut down their own bloodletting.

Priebus is trying to make the best of Clinton's implacable march toward the Democratic nomination. His consolation, he said, is that "she's not very good at politics."

"When you see her make tough decision about what to say and not to say and how to act and not act, it's usually awkward and cumbersome, and usually riddled with poor choices," he said. "If you were me and your job was to unify the party, raise a ton of money, and recruit a ton of volunteers, you'd want nothing more than for Hillary Clinton to be the nominee, period. So for me, I want her to be the nominee."

Photograph by Matt Roth for BuzzFeed News

The RNC is not, of course, merely relying on that. Its research and communications shops are focused almost entirely on Clinton. And Priebus is interested as well in the doings of her husband, the former president, who this month was mentioned in a lawsuit alleging that he'd been a guest at the decadent Caribbean compound of financier Jeffrey Epstein, who served time in jail for soliciting underage prostitutes.

"Bill Clinton's activities are fair game for Hillary Clinton to answer, absolutely. And if there are things that Bill Clinton has done that we don't know about, politically or through business enterprise, that are questionable and/or illegal, then we ought to look into it and ask Hillary about it too, because the presumption is that she's gonna benefit from the successes of Bill Clinton, so I think it's fair game," Priebus said.

What about his personal life, he was asked. Is that fair game?

"I would say that the Monica Lewinsky stuff is a little stale and old, obviously," Priebus said. "But if it turns out that there are things that are going on, and that we didn't know about, he's a public figure. He's a former president. And they want to launch Hillary into the public eye. She deserves just as much scrutiny as anybody. And if Bill Clinton was up to things we find to be unscrupulous, I think that people ought to know about it."

I asked if the RNC had any researchers headed to the Caribbean.

"You never know," Priebus said. "Good assignment."

The groups behind the draft effort dismiss a new interview in which Warren says she will not run for president. Run Warren Run launches in New Hampshire.

J. Scott Applewhite / AP Photo

The effort to draft Elizabeth Warren into the next presidential campaign — a race she has denied interest in nearly 50 times now — continues on this weekend to New Hampshire, the state that historically holds the election's first primary.

MoveOn.org and Democracy for America, partners in the national Run Warren Run draft that launched last month, will host a second "kick off" event in Manchester this Saturday. Their first was in Iowa last month, the week they launched what some Democrats eye as an ill-fated attempt to get Warren in the race.

Both groups expect their local New Hampshire members to attend the event at the Riverside Room, a space with standing room for about 150 people. Their Des Moines drew a crowd of about 75 attendees, including reporters and operatives.

Warren, the senior senator from Massachusetts and an avatar of Democratic Party's progressive flank, has disavowed other efforts to draft her as a candidate.

When another a super PAC called Ready for Warren launched last summer, Warren's lawyer issued a response disavowing the group. The senator, her lawyer stressed, "has publicly announced that she is not running for president in 2016."

The progressives supporting MoveOn and Democracy for America's draft campaign are still hoping her mind can be changed: They often point out that Warren has repeatedly used the present tense, not future, when ruling out 2016.

A spokesperson for Democracy for America, Neil Sroka, told the Washington Post last month that any denial in the future tense would be enough to close the door completely on the possibility of a White House bid — and enough to end Run Warren Run. "The way this speculation will end is if she says, 'I am not running and I will not run,'" Sroka said at the time. "That would end the draft effort."

On Tuesday, as the groups rolled out the details of their New Hampshire event, Fortune published a Warren interview that seemed to promise the closest thing yet to the "Shermanesque statement" the groups say they need.

"So are you going to run for president?" Warren was asked.

"No," she replied.

MoveOn and Democracy for America waved off the comment as nothing new.

"We understand that reporters are required to follow every twist and turn of the 2016 race, but let's be clear: This isn't a new position for Sen. Elizabeth Warren," a joint statement from the groups read. "Warren has been clear for years that she isn't planning on running. If she were running, there wouldn't be a need for a draft effort.

"We launched the Run Warren Run campaign to show [her] the tremendous amount of grassroots enthusiasm and momentum that exists for her entering the 2016 presidential race and to encourage her to change her mind."

MoveOn, the country's largest progressive group, started the draft campaign after polling its 8 million members. Officials have said the online organization will invest a minimum of $1 million into the campaign. Democracy for America, another liberal group, has said it will contribute an additional $250,000. MoveOn also has plans to hire organizers on the ground in both Iowa and New Hampshire.

Between MoveOn and Democracy for America, more than 241,000 people have signed the petition to draft Warren into the presidential race. (Nick Berning, a spokesperson with MoveOn, said that figure is a "de-duped number," meaning supporters who have signed up through both groups are not counted twice.)

A spokesperson for Warren did not reply to a request for comment.

“You are waiting for him to shoot himself in the foot. It’s going to look real good and then — bam something else — he screws it up,” Eric Hartsburg said in an interview with BuzzFeed News.

Eric Hartsburg Facebook

Eric Hartsburg Facebook

The Indiana man who had the Mitt Romney 2012 campaign logo tattooed on his face in October 2012 will not support Romney this time around.

When Eric Hartsburg first heard Monday that Romney was considering another bid for the presidency in 2016, his first thought, he told BuzzFeed News, was "maybe there is something in it for me."

But Hartsburg quickly realized that he did not think Romney could win.

"He's going to say something later on to mess it up," he said. "You are waiting for him to shoot himself in the foot. It's going to look real good and then — bam something else — he screws it up."

Hartsburg was paid $15,000 by an anonymous Republican eBay user to get the tattoo, according to ABC News. Since the 2012 election, he said he has had two laser treatments to remove the now-faded tattoo from his face, adding that he's ready to part with and "diss" Romney for good.

If Romney does ultimately run in 2016, Hartsburg's advice for him is to "keep your mouth shut; there is always someone recording. Don't mess it up. It might be too late for that guy..."

"I was loyal to it for a long time," he said of the tattoo. "It was a good a deal but I can part [now]."

Hartsburg said his focus was on the economy in 2012, but he's lost hope that it will get better and is now focusing on LGBT issues as his top priority, another reason he said he could not support Romney.

"That's the civil rights movement of our time," he said.

Hartsburg added that he's willing to sell the space, and cited Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, and Hillary Clinton as interesting candidates, but told BuzzFeed News he is "wide open."

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Cat scratch fever.

Mike Huckabee Show

Potential Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee recently criticized the Obama's parenting skills in a recent interview, objecting to what he sees as their acceptance of some of Beyonce's more suggestive lyrics and choreography.

"I don't understand how on one hand they can be such doting parents and so careful about the intake of everything — how much broccoli they eat and where they go to school and making sure they're kind of sheltered and shielded from so many things — and yet they don't see anything that might not be suitable for either a preteen or a teen in some of the lyrical content and choreography of Beyonce," Huckabee told People magazine in an interview promoting his new book God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy.

But the former Arkansas Governor has performed a sexually charged song on his Fox News show. Huckabee played the bass for singer Ted Nugent on the song Cat Scratch Fever.

Here are some of the lyrics to the song:

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The Florida senator and part-time political science professor writes in his new book that the popular ride-hailing app turned his progressive students into antiregulatory activists.

T.J. Kirkpatrick / Getty

Sen. Marco Rubio says the secret to turning college students into Republicans is Uber.

In a chapter titled "Making America Safe for Uber," Rubio, who teaches a course on Florida politics at Florida International University in Miami, describes how he explained to his students why Uber was not available in Miami and in the process turned them into "anti-regulatory activists."

"The students in my class were genuinely intrigued by this innovative service and wondered why they didn't have it in Miami. I explained to them that it was because of regulations created by government," he writes in American Dreams: Restoring Economic Opportunity for Everyone.

"In Miami, for example, there was a government-created cap on the number of sedan medallions allowed in the city. That regulation effectively shut out any competition to the existing car service companies — competition like Uber."

Republican politicians have hailed Uber as a triumph of free-market competition, but the company has faced regulatory challenges in major cities, in part a result of backlash from the taxicab industry.

Rubio goes on to write how the change he saw in his students "was another one of those times when my students surprised me."

"As my progressive young students listened to me explain why government was preventing them from using their cell phones to get home from the bars on Saturday night, I could see their minds change," he writes.

"Before I knew it, I was talking to a bunch of 20- and 21-year-old anti-regulatory activists."

The senator’s run in with the law is revealed in his application to be solicitor general of Texas, a copy of which was obtained by BuzzFeed News.

Yuri Gripas / Reuters

In the early 2000s, a young Ted Cruz was a rising star. He had been a debate champion at Princeton, a Harvard law graduate, worked for the Bush-Cheney campaign, clerked for the Supreme Court, and done stints at the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission.

In 2003, Cruz, a possible Republican presidential contender, was appointed the solicitor general of the state of Texas.

In an application for the position, accessed via a Texas Public Information request, Cruz listed among his references Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist whom he clerked for. The application also reveals Cruz's past salaries as an attorney, his recent legal record, speeches, professional associations, and a 1987 guilty plea for possession of alcohol as a minor.

An aide to Sen.Cruz said he was a senior in high school and got pulled over and they found a case of beer and he received a ticket.

"Teenagers often make foolish mistakes, and that certainly applied to me as well," Cruz said in a statement provided to BuzzFeed News.

Here's the application for the post:

Ted Cruz Solicitor General Application

Ted Cruz Solicitor General Application

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Marathon opening session of the President’s task force on policing hosts skeptical law enforcement leaders. Signs of agreement around body cameras, expanded data collection on cops.

Kena Betancur / Getty Images News

WASHINGTON — One question defined the eight-hour opening session of the President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing Tuesday, hosted Tuesday in a TV studio at the Newseum.

Crime is down, just about everywhere, but public perception of police has has remained steady for decades. White Americans are generally happy with policing, while nonwhite Americans are generally unhappy. Why?

Witnesses mostly said the answers focused on the police themselves. There was testimony from academics, civil liberties advocates, and police-protest leaders criticizing police training, tactics, and even the language police use when dealing with suspects. Bad language from police, Samuel Walker, a professor emeritus from the University of Nebraska, said, leads to a culture of invincibility among cops and anger among citizens who view the police as disrespectful.

Then, just before the lunch break, police leaders testified.

They were not ready to pin the blame on cops. Law enforcement leaders blamed budget cuts, political correctness, and the unintended consequences of laws passed to make law enforcement more effective for the problems plaguing community relations with the police that serve them. Leaders of the Fraternal Order of Police and International Association of Chiefs of Police bristled at what they saw as the suggestion that police are racist in the way they enforce the law.

Cops should face the same scrutiny as everyone else when it comes to fixing community relations, said Chuck Canterbury, FOP president.

"We all have the same responsibility towards society. I don't think a police officer should be held to any kind of a higher standard," he said in response to questions from task force members. "But we should take the lead and we should work with the communities to help build that trust."

In his opening statement, Canterbury lamented a "subculture" that he says "celebrates…resorting to violence and disrespect to police." The media has given a "shoulder shrug" to violence like the riots in Ferguson, Missouri, after a grand jury declined to indict Officer Darren Wilson. Police are "wary" of some interactions in the wake of the Brooklyn shooting of two police officers, he said, and that's why he's pushing for violence against police to be included in hate crimes statutes.

Richard Beary, president of the IACP, said "current smear campaigns aimed at law enforcement" had made policing dangerous in the current environment. He likened the attitude toward rank-and-file police officers to "the treatment of Vietnam vets coming home in the 1970s."

To men like Canterbury and Beary, policing is misunderstood and often mischaracterized. They blamed politicians for asking more and more of police while, they said, giving them fewer resources to do it with. Policing now, they said, includes social work, anti-terror work, and answering the call for drug overdoses and other calls that aren't public dangers. They said police hands had been tied by laws that prevented them from using their discretion in arrests in many cases, or for lawsuits and public sentiment that punishes police when they let someone go who later commits a high-profile crime. Racism is an accusation mostly without foundation that is thrown around a lot, Canterbury said.

"One of the worst things in a police department is you don't ever want to be accused of arresting somebody because of their race, which is an accusation that occurs a lot," he said.

Activists from the protest community seemed put off by the tone of the police leaders. "Three of you sounded extremely combative," Connie Rice, a task-force member and civil rights attorney from Los Angeles who helped lead LAPD community relations efforts in 2003.

Between panels, Carmen Perez executive director at the Gathering For Justice, a self-proclaimed "police reform" organization originally founded by Harry Belafonte, told BuzzFeed News the police leaders were "a little aggressive" in their public comments.

Not all police leaders addressing the panel or on the task force felt the same way. Andrew Peralta, a police lieutenant with the Las Vegas police department who also serves as president of the National Latino Peace Officers Association, agreed with the academics and activists calling for new training regimens and community outreach programs to bring police and communities together.

Police have generally favored the use of body cameras by officers on the beat, another area where they overlap with the activist community. Roberto Villasenor, chief of police in Tucson, Arizona and a task force member, also said he was "floored" by holes in police use of force data wasn't more available. Activists and academics addressing the panel uniformly called for better data collection by the federal government on local police forces.

The defensiveness by many police leaders in recent weeks has defined the push for changes in policing, with cops in New York City openly rejecting Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio, who they see as an anti-police crusader. The White House policing panel, co-chaired by former Obama Department Of Justice Office Of Justice Programs director Laurie Robinson and Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, is charged with bridging that gap and creating viable, tangible recommendations for improving police-community relations by March 2. There will be at least four more public meetings of the task force before it sets out to write the recommendations, which the co-chairs will deliver to Obama.

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter testified before the task force Tuesday along with two other big city mayors who have faced the same kind of police-community divide on the local level that the task force is trying to fix across the country. In an interview after his testimony, he acknowledged that tensions among rank-and-file officers and activists are high, but he said there are national solutions to be found. They might take some time to go into effect however.

"It's clearly possible to recommend a change. Change is not going to happen in 90 days," Nutter said. "I think the president was smart, given the situation in the country right now, to not have a six-month, a nine-month a year-long process. Because that's just more frustration. Look, we know what a lot of these issues are all about. This is nowhere near rocket science. This is not even science. It's just common sense. So we know what the [issues] are. Put it together, get it out there, let the public know that we're really serious about it."

The Kentucky senator hates Obama’s unilateral use of his office but said issues of diplomacy have been a part of “the executive branch’s purview.”

Brian Snyder / Reuters

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire — Sen. Rand Paul kicked off his whirlwind New Hampshire trip Wednesday morning, meeting with libertarian-leaning Republican legislators in the state.

He did, as he so often does, go after President Obama for his executive actions and pledged that should he ever be president (and he will very likely run), he would roll back as many executive actions as he could and make it more difficult for a president to use that power.

"The biggest problem with President Obama's administration is that he's attempted to legislate and that's not his jurisdiction," he told reporters here.

However, there's one area in which Paul says the president was right to act unilaterally. Last month, Obama moved to normalize relations with Cuba and open an American embassy in the country. Paul has supported the policy.

"Diplomacy and where we have embassies I think have historically been part of the executive branch's purview, so I don't think they are analogous," Paul said when asked by BuzzFeed News if he felt the use of the executive authority was appropriate when it came to Cuba.

Sen. Marco Rubio, another potential 2016 candidate, told ABC News last month that Paul was the "chief cheerleader of Obama's foreign policy."

"Rand, if he wants to become the chief cheerleader of Obama's foreign policy, he certainly has a right to do that," Rubio said. "I'm going to continue to oppose the Obama-Paul foreign policy on Cuba because I know it won't lead to freedom and liberty for the Cuban people, which is my sole interest here."

Paul recently hit back telling Politico that Rubio's statement was "childish."

The network’s ties to Hillary Clinton, treatment of Marco Rubio, and singular focus on immigration give Republicans fits. But for one big reason: Republicans need Univision.

Jenny Chang/BuzzFeed

The Republican presidential primary got going in earnest this month, but one of the Republican Party's biggest, most complex, most painful challenges still hasn't been solved: what to do about Univision.

The Spanish-language network has vast reach into America's Latino communities, a relentless focus on the Republican Party's least favorite issue, and close connections to Hillary Clinton. It's an immovable feature of the political landscape, and navigating around or through it is emerging as a key test for a party desperate to improve its dismal standing with a vital and growing share of the American electorate — and the subject of growing alarm among Republican leaders, operatives, and activists.

"It's highly questionable whether we're treated fairly on Univision," RNC chairman Reince Priebus told BuzzFeed News, adding that the party was going to keep at it. "You can fight all day long with people, not to say that that wouldn't continue, but at the same time you still have to get your message out."

Democrats see the dynamic just as clearly.

"The GOP needs Univision more than Univision needs the GOP," said Democratic pollster Fernand Amandi. "For a party looking to be competitive nationally again, they can't risk alienating the premier outlet that caters to the fastest-growing part of the electorate."

The scale of the Republicans' problem is hard to question. Univision reaches three times as many 18- to 49-year-old Hispanic adults with its flagship national news broadcast as CBS, NBC, and ABC do with their evening newscasts combined. The network reaches 96% of Hispanic households; 72% of Univision's primetime audience does not watch any of the top-rated English-language newscasts.

"After the Catholic Church, the next thing [American Latinos] trust the most is Univision," Univision News senior vice president Daniel Coronell told BuzzFeed News.

The network has a direct connection to the likely Democratic Party nominee for president. Univision's part-owner, Haim Saban, is one of Hillary Clinton's staunchest supporters. Of the former secretary of state, Saban once told an Israeli newspaper, "Seeing her in the White House is a big dream of mine." There are also formal connections: Univision partnered with the Clinton Foundation for an early education initiative in 2014.

Republicans, by and large, declined to criticize Univision on the record, citing its power. But speaking on the condition of anonymity, Republican operatives run down a litany of complaints, always returning to Univision's emphasis on immigration and the way the network's highest-profile journalist, Jorge Ramos, acts as an advocate on the issue.

"Immigration dictates their coverage," said a senior GOP source, a complaint made repeatedly to BuzzFeed News by Republicans. "We just took the Senate in Colorado, we just took the U.S. Senate, but Univision will generalize our platform as us not wanting to fund Obama's executive order," the source said of Republican opposition to the president's immigration actions.

The senior GOP source pointed to Colorado's first-ever Spanish-language debate, which was hosted by Univision in October, between Republican Mike Coffman and Democrat Andrew Romanoff. Immigration questions dominated the debate.

There have also been high-profile battles on other topics. In 2011, the network planned to report on the decades-old drug bust of Rubio's brother-in-law, but offered to approach the story differently — if Rubio agreed to an interview with Ramos. The story aired and Rubio went on with Ramos the next year in an interview that became contentious over the issue.

It is the focus on immigration, in particular, that grates on Republicans, in part because they say it contrasts so sharply with what Univision executives tell them when they're asking for ad dollars. In the fall of 2013, less than a year after President Obama carried 71% of the Latino vote, for instance, Republican officials listened at the Capitol Hill Club to a presentation from two people: Keith Norman, a vice president from Univision, and an outside pollster for the network. The message was simple: Immigration, according to the polling, wasn't the top issue for Latinos. Jobs and the economy, education, and health care all ranked higher.

The pitch, the kind party officials had received before and received again in 2014, was clear — spend money with Univision to reach Latino voters in competitive congressional races in places like Florida, Arizona, Colorado, and Texas.

The Republican officials grumbled, then decided they had no choice, and bought digital ads on Univision.com and 30-second audio ads on Univision's music radio app Uforia in Miami, hitting the president on Obamacare.

Univision News' Coronell, a former high-profile journalist in Colombia, defended the network's coverage as fair, saying Republicans aren't the only ones complaining. He pointed to Ramos' sharp coverage of Obama's immigration record and their last sitdown interview as just the latest example of the Democratic administration's ongoing frustration with Univision.

"Some of the members of the White House communications team felt that Jorge was not respectful enough to the president and very insistent and picky with his questions," Coronell said. "Jorge Ramos asked about deportations numbers, he asked why he took so long to make this decision. The role of journalism is to ask, to be the counterweight to the politicians."

Coronell repeated a common refrain: The network has a standing invitation to top Republican officials. He downplayed the issue of Saban, the Clinton donor and Univision owner.

"With respect to Mr. Saban, Mr. Saban is not involved with editorial decisions at Univision," he said. "This is a serious company, he is very respectful to our journalistic independence. He's not connected with our day to day; we're not in this to build his happiness."

Univision representatives told BuzzFeed News the network's partnership with the Clinton Foundation also includes former Republican Sen. Bill Frist and Cindy McCain, the wife of Sen. John McCain, who are part of the Too Small to Fail leadership advisory council. (Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was approached for an education partnership, too, a Republican source said, but the talks never advanced.) The network also pointed to a Hispanic employment event it did with Gov. Chris Christie in New Jersey as evidence of broader political cooperation.

Hillary Clinton with Randy Falco, president and CEO of Univision Communications, and Barbara Bermudo, host of Univision's news program Primer Impacto.

John Minchillo / AP Images for Univision

But when it comes to the main Republican complaint — that the network focuses too narrowly on immigration — Ramos and Coronell argue the issue is tied to the network's core appeal.

"It's true that immigration is not the most important issue for Latinos," Ramos said. "However, immigration is the most important symbolic issue for Latinos. Immigration defines who is with us and who is against us. Immigration is something personal."

He said half of all Latinos in the United States over 18 are immigrants and Univision will continue to press on immigration because it is an unresolved issue. He and Coronell said their approach is influenced by Univision's special relationship with its audience, an audience that can't find immigration news in English as readily.

"In many ways Univision is different from other networks and it has to do with the lack of political representation of Latinos," Ramos said, noting that Hispanics comprise 17% of the U.S. population but there are only three Latino senators. "It falls on Spanish-language media to defend and represent those who have no representation, especially those who are undocumented."

And Democrats argue Republicans are using complaints to mask their simple aversion to talking about immigration — an issue that divides the GOP — at all.

"Democrats make themselves available so they get hit hard, Republicans do not," said Gabriela Domenzain, an Obama campaign veteran who spent years at Univision. She said there was only one time Republicans would actively seek out the network. "Unless something said in some newscast ticked them off, then they would call us until we booked Spanish-speaking Republicans to do damage control."

Latino Republicans say the network's influence makes ignoring Univision a nonstarter and some see openings for better coverage.

Ken Oliver-Méndez, with MRC Latino, a conservative media watchdog focused on Spanish-language media, said his organization believes Univision should either do a programming alliance with a conservative organization to offset its partnership with Clinton or drop it all together. But he also said Republicans need to a do a better job of engaging with Spanish-language media like Univision and Telemundo.

"Conservatives have an obligation to get their message out," he said.

That's why MRC Latino provided news organizations with a list of Spanish-language conservative sources, whom he called "eloquent, serious policy experts," in August.

For his part, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who many expect to run for president, and isn't one to shy away from speaking frankly, didn't criticize the network's ties to Clinton.

"That's not a question I've examined," he told BuzzFeed News. "I've been interviewed by Univision many times."

The former RNC official said Republicans should also think about the high-powered local Univision affiliates which can get more viewers than national newscasts with Ramos. "People work really long hours," the source said. "Somewhere like Las Vegas, the middle-class worker doesn't get out till late, they might miss Ramos but they get their news from the local affiliate."

The numbers in some cities bear it out. According to statistics provided by the network, Univision broadcast stations in Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, and Fresno ranked number one ahead of ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC among adults 18-49 and adults 18-34 during primetime. In Miami, Univision ranked as the number one broadcast station during primetime in total viewers.

The local opportunity also presents yet another problem, though: While national Univision is seen as more balanced in their segments, "when it comes to local coverage, there is more difficulty with local producers," the senior GOP source said.

Others point to progress in the relationship, with Univision working hard to develop relationships in both parties working through internal "red" and "blue" teams, which led to the RNC developing relationships with network general managers, for example.

But Ramos told BuzzFeed News that he's not planning to back off as the 2016 election approaches, and he said the only way the Republicans can fix it is by acting on immigration.

"I understand why the Republican party is so concerned," he said. "Latinos know that Republicans are the ones blocking immigration reform right now and they're going to have to deal with that in 2016. Unless they resolve the immigration issue, they might lose the Latino vote again and then they will lose the White House again."

Kate Nocera and Ben Smith contributed reporting.

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“Why 3 to 4 million Republicans stayed home and didn’t vote from him I will never understand,” Rep. Mike Kelley of Pennsylvania says.

Brian Snyder / Reuters

Mitt Romney has picked up the endorsement of at least one congressman. Rep. Mike Kelley of Pennsylvania said Tuesday Romney's the "only person" who had the credentials to be president.

"Listen, I'll be very honest Gov. Romney is the only person who had the credentials. He's done it in the past, he can do it again," said Kelly on NewsMaxTV. "Why three to four million Republicans stayed home and didn't vote from him I will never understand. But I do know this the result of this was four years of a failed presidency and an agenda that doesn't work."

Kelly added Romney was the "most efficient and effective person" to lead the country.

"I believe Gov. Romney is the most — the most — efficient and effective person we can put in that leadership position right now. Someone we can look to he's a man of faith, of success, and he's a man who understand this country and our role in it. He's the guy who called Russia out when everyone else turned, and uh, laughed. He was absolutely right. He understands the economy."

Here's the video:

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At least one Republican would look at the legislation.

AP Charlie Riedel

WASHINGTON — The nation's largest police union has been lobbying to change the federal definition of a hate crime to include crimes against the police, but they've so far been unable to snag a lawmaker to take up their cause.

At least one member, however, said he would consider the matter if legislation materializes. New York Rep. Peter King, one of the most outwardly pro-police members of Congress, said he was open to the idea but noted dealing with hate crimes was not a cut-and-dry topic.

"It's a tricky area," King told BuzzFeed News. "But I'd certainly look at it."

Rep. Richard Nugent, a Florida Republican who was a sheriff before entering Congress, said he heard the Fraternal Order of Police was pushing a bill, but he hadn't been personally approached about it.

The Fraternal Order of Police told BuzzFeed News it's still crafting language for the legislation and having "preliminary talks" with members. Republicans are in the process of heading to their annual issues retreat in Hershey, Pennsylvania, for the rest of the week.

The union has declined to say which lawmakers in Congress it is reaching out to.

This isn't the first time the FOP has tried to get police included in hate crimes legislation. While the expansion of the definition a hate crime was being debated and ultimately passed during the 110th and 111th Congresses, FOP President Chuck Canterbury said the union "made a strong case" for law enforcement officers attacked because of their profession to be included. The effort was ultimately unsuccessful.

With recent uptick in protests about police tactics and the death of two NYPD police officers late last year, the FOP has found a new opening to once again call for the change to the law.

"Now Americans who choose to be law enforcement officers, who choose to serve their communities and put their lives on the line for their fellow citizens, find themselves hunted and targeted just because of the uniform they wear," Canterbury said in a letter to Congressional leadership and the president last week.

White House domestic policy adviser Cecilia Munoz hit back at House Republicans Wednesday, saying the current battle over President Obama’s executive actions won’t keep DREAMers and other undocumented immigrants from coming forward.

Joshua Roberts / Reuters

WASHINGTON — A top adviser to President Obama said Wednesday that the White House won't allow legislation passed by House Republicans to dissuade undocumented immigrants from claiming temporary protections granted to them by executive order.

The GOP-controlled House of Representatives passed legislation Wednesday aimed at stripping the government's ability to implement DACA as well as Obama's 2014 executive actions extending deportation deferrals to millions more undocumented immigrants, including adults who crossed the border within the last five years.

White House domestic policy adviser Cecilia Munoz promised a White House veto of the House bill if it passes the newly Republican-controlled Senate.

"We're confident we're going to be implementing these executive actions," she said on a conference call with reporters.

Asked if the ongoing wrangling in congress, including Republican rhetoric condemning the executive actions, could have a chilling effect on undocumented immigrants coming forward to participate in the deferred action, Munoz said the fight has resonated outside Washington.

"It's clear that people in the community that is affected by these issues are watching the debate very closely," she said. She said the White House expected the immigration actions to be controversial and has already seen that Republican outrage doesn't put a damper on undocumented immigrant participation in the new programs.

"DACA has already been in existence for a couple of years and it's had a really transformative impact," she said. DACA is the shorthand name for Obama's 2012 executive action deferring deportation of undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as minors by their parents who come forward and apply for work permits. The success of DACA helps make the White House case to undocumented immigrants that they should participate in the new actions announced late last year, she said.

The White House was prepared for the backlash, Munoz said, and administration allies are ready to ease fears of immigrants closely watching the news.

"We have strong examples to point to and we're gong to continue to point to those examples and I know that leaders in the effective communities are going to do the same," Munoz said. "And hopefully that example will be stronger than the political theater you're seeing taking place in the House."

After years of complaints from left and right, George W. Bush’s controversial education law may finally be eliminated.

AP Photo/Benny Snyder

After 13 years, we could finally be heading toward the end of No Child Left Behind.

George W. Bush's transformative, highly controversial education act officially expired in 2007. The law has remained on the books for the past seven years, despite attempts to remake or dismantle it, largely thanks to partisan squabbling.

But this year has seen a rare occurrence: consensus from both Democrats and Republicans that repealing the thirteen-year-old No Child Left Behind is an urgent priority in 2015. Democrats, including Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, called Monday for the law to be revamped; yesterday the top Senate Republican on the education committee, Lamar Alexander, did the same, releasing a draft version of his own education bill, called the Every Child Ready for College or Career Act of 2015.

Passed in 2001, Bush's No Child Left Behind law mandated that all public schools administer a state-wide test every year to students in every grade, and it penalized those schools that performed poorly — schools whose students did not make "adequate yearly progress" on each year's tests. For each year of poor test scores, schools incurred increasingly harsh sanctions; after six years of failure, the school could be closed, dismantled, or taken over.

But the law has grown increasingly unpopular on both sides of the aisle. On the left, teachers' unions decried the impact that increased testing had on classrooms; Republicans were opposed to the way the law put the federal government in education. With Republicans in control of Congress, many observers see the coming months as the first real chance to push out No Child Left Behind.

The question of what will replace it, however, is still up in the air. On the most central issue, mandatory testing, teachers' unions are improbably aligned with some Republicans, who have said they are open to ending mandated annual tests — and against the Obama administration, which says it will fight to keep high-stakes testing. On other issues, like funding and federal oversight, the partisan divide is strong and bitter. On almost every front, the potential for real bipartisanship looks weak.

Bush's signature law has had mixed results at best, with debate over whether slight rises in test scores and a narrowing of the achievement gap is due to the increased funding, rather than tying test results to school funding.

Surprisingly, Democrats have been, up to a point, some of the law's biggest defenders. On Monday, Duncan and the Obama administration called to get rid of No Child Left Behind, replacing the law with something more flexible and less prescriptive. But the controversial tests, he said, should remain mandatory.

Duncan even quoted Bush in his speech, saying, "This country can't afford to replace 'the fierce urgency of now' with the soft bigotry of 'it's somehow optional'."

But there has been increasing unrest over the role of high-stakes testing in education, with parents, administrators, and teachers saying that test preparation for a narrow set of subjects has overtaken American classrooms, and that the tests do a poor job of measuring students outcomes in the first place. Teachers unions have been annual testing's strongest critics.

"If one test per year can cause an entire school to be shuttered or all the teachers fired, something is wrong with the way that test is being used," said teachers union leader Randi Weingarten in response to the Obama administration's No Child Left Behind proposal.

On the issue of testing, some Republicans, despite being longtime foes of teachers' unions, agree. They have long decried the power that No Child Left Behind gives to the federal government and takes away from the states, and annual testing is among the biggest of federal impositions. Sen. Lamar Alexander's latest draft bill floats an option that would allow states to opt out of mandated standardized testing, developing their own ways to evaluate students.

"I think there is considerable discontent across the country with NCLB, and that cuts across the political spectrum," Rep. Mark Takano, a California Democrat and former teacher, told BuzzFeed News. Getting rid of mandated annual tests, Takano said, "Would be in line with the general Republican philosophy of returning more flexibility to states."

But with the question of testing aside, there seems to be little opportunity for bipartisanship when it comes to No Child Left Behind. Republicans' vision of a new education bill strips the federal government of much of its oversight and authority, an important part of Democrats' vision, and includes a provision to increase school choice that teachers unions have strongly opposed in the past. Obama and key Democrats, like Sen. Patty Murray, the top-ranking Democrat on the education committee, want add $2.7 billion in increased education spending that Republicans will likely oppose.

The candidate’s daughter-in-law has run an active mommy blog for years and it’s full of shots of how the former Massachusetts governor spent his time after losing the 2012 election.

Mitt Romney Facebook

1. He attended his son and daughter-in-law's 10 year wedding anniversary in San Diego, California. It was in an airplane hanger.

2. Prior to the party, he hosted everyone attending the party at his beach house, where he and his wife provided lunch and everyone went swimming in ocean and played volleyball. He danced.

3. He and Ann hosted Craig and Mary and their kids for a weekend of skiing.

4. He attended a birthday brunch for the first birthday of for two of his grandchildren.

5. He visited Hawaii with his family, where he posed for some family photos and went sailing on a boat.

7. He visited the city of Cusco in Peru.

8. He visited a charity clinic, which performed eye surgeries.

9. He watched a cataracts surgery.

10. He visited a school in a Peruvian village in the mountains, where the charity helped give out glasses for those with eye problems.

11. He watched children in the town perform dances.

12. He met a small child.

13. He held hands with a small child in another small village they visited to help people get their eyes checked.

14. He visited Machu Picchu.

15. He hosted his family at his New Hampshire home.

16. He set up a crib in his New Hampshire home for his grandchildren.

17. He took a group photo with his family.

18. He ate lunch with his family at a big picnic table.

19. He went to the New Hampshire town's 4th of July parade.

20. He looked at a small butterfly his grandchild caught.

21. He participated in something called the "3rd annual lumberjack games."

22. He made some ice cream by hand with his grandchildren.

23. He ate some pizza with his grandchildren.

24. He went sailing on a boat with Ann.

25. He lounged at the beach.

26. He posed for a photo at the beach with some girls in San Diego.

27. He watched his grandchildren jump rope at the beach in San Diego.

28. He hung out by a pool.

29. He visited Los Angeles and played what appeared to be Connect Four with his grandkids.

30. He opened Christmas presents with his grandkids.

31. He saw a movie and posed for a photo with a group of women.

“I’m disappointed that no one at the CIA will be held accountable,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein says.

CIA Director John Brennan

Chip Somodevilla / Getty

The Central Intelligence Agency will not discipline any of the five agency employees who accessed Senate Intelligence Committee computer systems last year during the Senate investigation of abusive interrogation tactics by the CIA, for the massive torture report released in December.

While the CIA's decision was in line with a review that the agency commissioned, it contradicts the agency's own internal watchdog, the CIA Office of the Inspector General', which had concluded that the employees accessed Senate computers "improperly" and didn't respond with candor when questioned.

The CIA announced its decision just weeks after Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, lost her position as chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, due to the Democratic loss in the Senate in November's election. That's important because Feinstein had been clashing with the CIA over the torture report for years, and had been the member of Congress most outraged by the CIA's probing of the Intelligence Committee staffers.

In a statement after the CIA's decision was announced, Feinstein said,
"I'm disappointed that no one at the CIA will be held accountable. The decision was made to search committee computers, and someone should be found responsible for those actions."

Republican Sen. Richard Burr, the new chairman of the committee, has been a critic of the so-called torture report, which leveled criticism at the CIA's interrogation practices. So he's unlikely to take on CIA Director John Brennan over his decision not to discipline the five employees. (His press office did not immediately respond to a request for information.)

Those agency employees, said to be two lawyers and three IT officials, had arranged to probe the computers of the Senate without approval, in what critics said was an unprecedented violation of the separation of powers, and interference of the Senate's oversight function.

The decision not to discipline the agency employees comes as part of an "accountability board review." That review was commissioned after the CIA Inspector General report that criticized the agency for accessing Senate computers "improperly" and for filing a criminal referral to the Department of Justice.

The new review claims that that the Inspector General was wrong, in part because Senate staffers "should have been aware" that the CIA could look at the computer system the Senate employees were using in their investigation of the agency's torture program.

Intriguingly, it was just last week that the CIA's Inspector General announced his resignation.

The CIA's announcement that it wouldn't take its employees to task comes as a former agency officer is being prosecuted criminally on charges of providing classified information to New York Times reporter James Risen.

A guide.

Getty Images/Alex Wong

This will be the second time the justices have considered whether to take any of the cases out of Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and/or Tennessee. When they did so on Jan. 9, they took no action on those cases, instead re-listing them for discussion on Friday.

This is a new practice by the court over the past year or so, re-listing cases they are considering taking once before accepting a case, called granting a writ of certiorari.

The justices did, however, deny an attempt by same-sex couples in Louisiana to have the Supreme Court hear their case before the appeals court — which heard their appeal on Jan. 9 — decided on the appeal.

Now, however, they are faced with choosing whether they will hear one or more of the four other cases — a decision that will foretell whether the justices intend to resolve the question of bans on marriage for same-sex couples nationwide by this June.

In striking down DOMA's ban on federal recognition of same-sex couples' marriages in Edith Windsor's case on June 26, 2013, however, the justices opened the floodgates for marriage equality.

Just short of six months later, on Dec. 20, 2013, a federal judge in Utah declared the state's ban unconstitutional. U.S. District Court Judge Robert Shelby refused to put his ruling on hold during the appeal, same-sex couples began marrying, and 2014 began with 18 states that allowed same-sex couples to marry. The Supreme Court eventually stepped in on Jan. 7, 2014 to stop marriages from proceeding while the case was appealed.

A year later, more than double as many states had marriage equality, with same-sex couples marrying in all of 35 states and in parts of two more.

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The internet personalities will conduct separate interviews with the president aimed at “tweens,” the social-minded crowd, and mothers.

Comedienne GloZell doing the cinnamon challenge in a video posted on YouTube.

Via Youtube

Two days after his State Of The Union address next week, President Obama will turn part of the White House over to a teenage makeup expert, a comedian whose husband is an Army veteran, and a professional nerd.

Three popular YouTube personalities -- Bethany Mota, GloZell, and Hank Green -- will sit down with Obama on individual sets Google will build at the White House for three separate interviews featuring questions gleaned from social media across the country. The White House has turned to Google to help Obama plug into the internet after his annual policy address since 2010, but this year's event will be the most elaborate. Past interactions have included Obama sitting down for half-hour interviews with Google staff or in Google+ hangouts with users from across the country.

This year, the YouTube personalities, who account for millions of views on the video hub every month, will host the president for five to 10 minute sessions featuring questions from social media, YouTube questions, and questions from the host. A Google official said the administration is able to see potential questions posted to open social media portals, but has no say in which questions are selected and will not vet the questions asked by the hosts.

The run-up to the 2015 State Of The Union has been unorthodox. Rather than take a whistle-stop tour across the country after the address, Obama has already been on the road for weeks, laying out a policy agenda in what the White House has called "State Of The Union spoilers." Administration officials told Politico they intend to keep rolling out smaller policy agenda items through the rest of the year.

As they often have in the past, White House aides have turned to new media outlets to push their message in the run up to the State Of The Union. White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer has posted to Medium several times. Top White House aide Valerie Jarrett posted to LinkedIn Wednesday. A day earlier, Obama gave an "exclusive" on broadband access to Upworthy.