A lot of reporters and campaigns are suddenly obsessed with Meerkat, the new livestreaming app. They are forgetting that a lot of politics is pretty boring.

Meerkat, the new livestreaming app, is supposed to change politics. Now, campaigns and reporters will be able to directly broadcast video on Twitter and nothing will ever be the same.

The app was showcased last weekend at SXSW, and reporters and campaigns have been streaming from it since. Politico's Dylan Byers noted Meerkat is already "the social media tool of the 2016 presidential election." Former White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer argued Meerkat will, by removing the enormous fixed costs in television production, change the way political video travels, in a widely shared Medium post. We will witness, he wrote, "another new technology is in the process of revolutionizing our politics."

All of this leaves out a very key component of political events:

Many of them are boring as hell.

Most of what transpires on a given day of campaigning most people do not want to see. I know because I was the director of a conservative website's war room in 2012, and I spent that year endlessly, ceaselessly watching video from the campaign, waiting for news.

Why would anyone outside the political media want to watch Scott Walker or Hillary Clinton's third stump speech of the day? Why would most reporters? The monotony of these appearances, of which there are many each day, will drive you nuts. The reason so many reporters like Joe Biden is because Biden, unlike most, does not say the same thing every day. With Biden, there are fewer rote answers, paragraphs and paragraphs of repeated text, or small talk with all the vibrant flavor of some Saltines and a ginger ale. Biden's unpredictability creates some suspense.

Yes, there are times when livestreams captivate large swaths of the population. For example: Ferguson, the Green Revolution in Iran, the Cairo protests. But that's a few hours of video maybe once a year. When the world isn't on fire, not a lot of people want to watch a livestream.

And as Matt Browner-Hamlin pointed out on Friday, livestream isn't new to politics. Meerkat may seriously disrupt the television production model, but the end product isn't very original, and there is already an entire campaign and media apparatus of people watching — always watching — each appearance and each speech and searching for the small moments that create a news cycle.

Technology sometimes hangs around for years before it really blows up, though. There were digital video startups before YouTube, for instance. And this may be Meerkat's moment, the combination of a nice interface, an easy sharing feature, and the ubiquity of mobile devices that can carry video. Politics could help give Meerkat that moment.

But while politics may revolutionize Meerkat, it's hard to see how the reverse can be true. Most people do not want to meander through life waiting for things to happen. If you ask someone to watch something live, you need to give them a reason. There needs to be urgency or the expectation that something will happen, and soon.

And even when there is a real urgency to a livestream ("HOLY SHIT THIS IS HAPPENING!!"), in politics, things can change pretty quickly. Here's a scenario, for instance, that is unlikely to happen on a livestream: the 47% video. Twitter is not a soundless, static void — and no one monitors it more closely than a campaign operative. If a Twitter feed were broadcasting from inside a closed fundraiser during the fundraiser, sure, maybe it does operate live for a little while. But every campaign staffer will soon descend, even if they have to cut off the candidate.

There are a handful of smaller situations that make sense for uncomplicated livestreams — a shot of a rowdy debate crowd, for instance. Or maybe a situation like this: After a bad moment on the campaign or a major world event, Hillary Clinton goes to talk with reporters on the plane. Many people will want to know what she says and how she says it. And because there are eight reporters there, no one can hold what she's saying — they can't be the OPEC of Hillary Clinton's comments, picking and choosing when to release her words like crude oil.

Like a lot of technology in politics, Meerkat could actually turn out to be more message control than spontaneity. Because there is one cartel that can control a candidate's comments, one that would love to broadcast them in a way that feels intimate and immediate and new, without the messy complications of talking to a reporter or a voter: presidential campaigns. Campaigns already do that every day, and now they have a new tool for it — full of authenticity.

“They are secular, they are Democrats by political affiliation and by their nature they are leftist,” Rep. Steve King told BuzzFeed News.

Steve King / Via Facebook: SteveKingIA

In a phone interview with BuzzFeed News, Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa defended comments he made on Friday questioning how American Jews could be Democrats and support President Obama.

King, expanding on the comments, said much of the backlash occurred because "everyone in the discussion knows I'm right."

On Friday, King told Boston Herald Radio he didn't understand "how Jews in America can be Democrats first and Jewish second..."

"Here is one thing that I don't understand, I don't understand how Jews in America can be Democrats first and Jewish second and support Israel along the line of just following their president," King said. "And it's all — it says this, they're knee-jerk supporters for the president's policy. The president's policies throughout the Middle East have been a disaster. I would say to them, name a country where we have better relations today than we had when Barack Obama took office?' And I gave that in speeches in about six weeks until some lad stood up and said, 'I can name you two, they are Cuba and Iran.'"

King told BuzzFeed News Sunday he stood by those comments and that much of the criticism, particularly from New York Democrat Rep. Steve Israel, was an "effort to try to marginalize an opinion," through name calling.

Israel tweeted on Friday, "I don't need Congressman Steve King questioning my religion or my politics. I demand an apology from him & repudiation from GOP." King responded, "Real men make such requests face 2 face & man 2 man. I defend Israelis from Leftists & misogynists."

King said Israel's tweets descended into name-calling, saying of the exchange "I have more important things to do than do that."

Israel had tweeted of King, "Good to know @SteveKingIA has become a Talmudic scholar on what defines Jews. Steve, you really are mashugana. Look it up."

"Congressman Israel has interpreted a question to be lecture," said King, and he "converted it into simply calling me names."

Asked why he thought Jewish Democrats supported the president, King said many were secular and didn't have ties to Israel.

"I think many of them no longer have ties to Israel," said King. "They are secular, they are Democrats by political affiliation and by their nature they are leftist."

"Many are leftists first," he said.

He added, "those who regularly go to synagogue…" support Israel. "That's not the case with those who align themselves with the political left."

On CNN Sunday, Israel said, "I really do not need a lesson from people like Steve King on what it is to be Jewish or a Democrat. He added, "I'm not going to take lectures from Republicans like Steve King about how to support Israel."

King said of Israel's call for him to apologize that if Israel asked him for a dialogue in person he'd be open to a discussion.

"If he comes up to me and wants to have a man-to-man conversation I'd be open to that."

CINCINNATI — The plane was only on the ground a matter of minutes. Just enough time for wedding vows and little else.

Jim Obergefell and John Arthur had wanted to marry for a long time. In 2013, after the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, they decided this was the time to do it — even though Arthur was very, very ill. He had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2011, a fatal neurological disease that paralyzes the body. He was confined to his bed.

The couple could not get married in their home state of Ohio. They could, however, get married in one of the handful of states that did allow same-sex couples to marry. So their wedding took place aboard a small, specially equipped medical plane with two pilots, a nurse, and Arthur’s aunt — she performed the ceremony.

“We landed at Baltimore, sat on the tarmac for a little bit, said ‘I do,’ and 10 minutes later were in the air on the way home,” Obergefell said.

The marriage performed there on the tarmac of Baltimore-Washington International Airport has become iconic within the marriage equality movement and beyond, a testament to a couple’s commitment and to the absurd lengths the law required them to undertake for a simple ceremony.

Today, Obergefell’s condominium in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood of Cincinnati is covered with artwork, from landscape scenes to the floor-to-ceiling painting of a man submerged in water, still in his business suit. The wide hallway snakes past a bedroom, the kitchen, around the dinner table, inside the bright, aquamarine living room — it’s all filled with art.

Obergefell lives there alone. Arthur died in late 2013, three months after their wedding.

Off the long hallway, inside a smaller sitting room, hangs a portrait of the couple. In this painting, it's easy to see them together and married. In life, they were husbands. Now, Obergefell’s request — which has gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court — is a simple one: to be listed as such on his husband’s death certificate. That’s it.

“Taking care of John, it’s what I did our entire 21 years together,” Obergefell said in a wide-ranging interview with BuzzFeed News earlier this year. “It’s really — I had the great privilege of doing that full time as he was dying ... This case was another way to take care of him and to respect him and to respect our relationship.”

The story of John Arthur and Jim Obergefell is one of several stories now before the Supreme Court, as it considers whether the U.S. Constitution requires that states recognize same-sex couples’ marriages and allow other same-sex couples to marry. And their story comes out of a city that has lived out some of the biggest twists and turns in the evolution of LGBT rights.

Their effort to obtain that death certificate, before and after Arthur’s death, has been convoluted and complicated. A federal judge initially sided with them. Because of that, when Arthur died in October 2013, his death certificate listed him as married.

Ohio officials appealed a later ruling in Obergefell’s favor, however, and have said that they actually will issue an amended death certificate — listing Arthur as single — if they ultimately win the lawsuit.

“The last thing that this couple gets from Ohio is the death certificate,” Al Gerhardstein, a longtime civil rights attorney in Cincinnati, said about his reason for taking the case. “The only thing Ohio needed to do was recognize the marriage on the death certificate, and I knew they weren’t going to do it.”

The lawsuit has made its way through the federal courts — including what Obergefell called a “horrible” loss this past November at the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“We shouldn’t have to be treated this way,” he told BuzzFeed News a couple weeks after the Supreme Court decided to hear his appeal. “We shouldn’t experience this, and it was a very easy decision to say, ‘We have to stand up and say we’ve had enough.’”

Photograph by Ty Wright for BuzzFeed News

When Arthur and Obergefell met the first time, there weren’t sparks. Both men had gone to the University of Cincinnati at similar times in the late '80s and early '90s and, though they never knew each other at the time, they had many mutual friends.

Obergefell went off to grad school in the fall of 1992 at Bowling Green State University, returning many weekends to Cincinnati, and they met at a bar where one of those mutual friends had invited them both out.

“Met John the first time. Nothing,” he said of that night. “It was just, ‘Oh, hi,’ mutual friends meeting.”

A month later, maybe, they saw each other at the same bar. Same mutual friends, plus one — Obergefell’s current real estate partner, Melissa.

“Melissa loves to tell this story,” he said, smiling. “Later that night, after they left, Melissa said to John, ‘John, that guy really liked you.’ ‘Who?’ ‘That guy, Jim...’ ‘No, we’re just friends.’ ’No, John, he likes you.’”

Then, on New Year’s Eve 1993, they met again. “Love at third sight.”

“So, third time John and I had met, and I never left,” he said. “I think John’s mom wanted to kill me, but I decided not to finish grad school because I wanted to be here in Cincinnati.”

Arthur and Obergefell began making their life together in Cincinnati. “Buying our first home,” Obergefell said, “selling that, buying a different home, renovating homes, travel."

In the midst of all that, though, voters there threw them a curveball.

In 1993, voters considered an amendment to the city charter that would ban Cincinnati from passing specific protections based on “homosexual, lesbian, or bisexual orientation, status, conduct, or relationship,” a ballot fight that had been — before his current lawsuit — Obergefell’s only entrance into the political arena.

“That is the first and only time I’ve ever been part of an organized — I won’t call it a protest, but I remember being at a polling place with other people, with signs and whatever, asking people to vote against that measure,” he said, adding that Arthur was not with him. “Not that I’m that much of an activist type either, but John was even less of an activist than I am.”

The amendment passed.

Obergefell didn’t continue his activism. The couple didn’t go to protests or parades, really. After election day, he said, “John and I thought the best thing we could do was just be ourselves. We tried to be good people, good members of the community, and that’s how we approached life.”

Meanwhile, Al Gerhardstein and a handful of other lawyers fought the ban. “When we first sued, and got a preliminary injunction, the judge — very much like the judge in [the current] Michigan [marriage case] — said, ‘This is a big deal. We need to make sure we have a full trial,’ which of course we wanted,” Gerhardstein said.

“Judge [S. Arthur] Spiegel gave a very thorough decision, with detailed findings, concluding — as you would expect — gay people are just like everyone else,” he continued. “There really is no big deal here. There is no reason, no basis — no rational basis, certainly — to discriminate against them.”

The federal district court ruled that the amendment was unconstitutional, but the appeals court overturned that decision. After the Supreme Court struck down a similar statewide amendment in Colorado in 1996, there was new hope for Cincinnati. When the appeals court upheld the amendment again, Gerhardstein asked the Supreme Court to review the case. The Supreme Court refused in 1998 — leaving the charter amendment in place.

“And this stood, as the only city in America that had a discriminatory charter amendment like that that prohibited gays from full citizenship,” Gerhardstein said. “And that was horrible.”

Courtesy of Jim Obergefell

In early 2011, Obergefell noticed that Arthur’s left foot “sounded strange” when he was walking. “It was slapping, more than his right foot,” Obergefell said.

Then, uncharacteristically, Arthur began falling.

In the years since that 1993 city charter, they’d remained in Cincinnati. It wasn’t until 2004 that voters repealed the charter amendment — the same year that Ohio lawmakers passed a law banning same-sex couples’ marriages and marriage recognition and voters approved a statewide constitutional amendment doing the same. The city had moved on, but the state had informed the couple yet again that they were, Obergefell said, “second class, if that.”

Now, though, something was wrong with Arthur. The couple had planned a trip to Finland to visit a foreign exchange student they had earlier hosted, and Obergefell said, “For whatever reason, that was the thing that made me put my foot down, and say, ‘You’ve got to have this looked at. Something’s not right.’”

That spring was a series of doctors’ appointments and tests — from the family doctor and neurologist to CAT scans and MRIs. In June 2011, Arthur was diagnosed with ALS. They moved from their two-level condo into the winding, single-floor condo where Obergefell still lives. They got a different car. “We started doing things to address it, not just push things off to the end,” Obergefell said.

But Arthur’s condition deteriorated. He began using a cane in 2011. He went from cane to walker in 2012, then to a manual wheelchair. Then to a power wheelchair, and then in early 2013, he began receiving hospice care. In just two years time, Arthur was confined to a bed.

Obergefell was there the whole time, providing whatever comfort he could. Even the small items are still there in the condo. Little gifts to Arthur, Obergefell said.

A pillow emblazoned with a map of Ohio — Cincinnati marked with a red heart — that had been placed under Arthur’s elbow, a point of trouble. A little brown bear stuffed animal, wearing a blue-and-white striped sweater, was a reference to Arthur’s “Bear” nickname for Obergefell, purchased for whenever Obergefell was out of the condo. “His Bear would always be home,” Obergefell said.

Friends and family, he said, praised him for what he did for Arthur. But he didn’t consider it a decision.

“The person I love was physically falling apart, and I was happy and privileged to be able to be there to help him. So, it’s — what else would I do?”

Photograph by Ty Wright for BuzzFeed News

Back in the 1990s, when the possibility of marriage for same-sex couples was in the Hawaiian air, Obergefell said he and Arthur had considered marriage: “John’s stepmother at the time said, ‘If that passes in Hawaii, I’m flying everyone out there, you guys, my treat, you can get married.’”

But a constitutional amendment passed there in 1998 ended that possibility, and, though Obergefell said the topic came up occasionally after then, he added, “Our concern was always, ‘We don’t want to get married unless it actually means something legal for us. We knew it wasn’t going to change in Ohio — but until some level of government, federal or state, made a change or we had some type of recognition, we didn’t want to do it. Because we actually wanted it to mean something, legally.”

On June 26, 2013, that change finally happened. The Supreme Court struck down DOMA’s ban on federal recognition of same-sex couples’ marriages in United States v. Windsor. That day, Jim Obergefell and John Arthur decided they were going to get married.

But where? Arthur was confined to a bed at this point, receiving hospice care.

“I couldn’t just put John in his power wheelchair [and take] the four- or five-block trip to the Hamilton County Courthouse to get a marriage certificate.”

The first possibility considered was New York. A friend’s aunt had married her wife there. But both people have to apply in person for a marriage certificate in New York, and then there was a waiting period after that — time when they would need to find a place where Arthur could stay and medical assistance — and, practically speaking, “If John’s in the back of an ambulance … for four or five hours, that’s going to be really rough on him.”

A friend who had grown up in Maryland asked whether Obergefell had considered going there. In Maryland, only one person needed to apply for the license. There was a waiting period, but that could work, Obergefell thought. “I could go up in advance, get the marriage license, come back, and then — how do we get there? Can’t drive. Could fly, but there’s no way John could fly commercial.”

Arthur’s hospice offered what they call a “gift of a day,” where they do something for a hospice patient that the person has always wanted to do, but chartering a medical jet was “beyond their capacity to help with.” They offered to take care of related costs for the trip.

How could anyone afford something like this? Maybe there would be some other route, some other way to make it work, Obergefell thought.

“I just posted something on Facebook, saying, ‘Hey, does anyone have any connections with pilots or medical companies,’ things like that, trying to make this happen,” he said, choking up and stopping for a few seconds.

“And immediately, people are like, ‘We’re going to give you money, we’re going to help you pay for it.’”

The couple married on July 11, 2013, returning from Maryland to a large group of family and friends waiting for them on the tarmac at Cincinnati Municipal Lunken Airport when they returned home.

Photograph by Ty Wright for BuzzFeed News

Even though the couple had been together two decades, the marriage meant something different.

“We both used the word ‘husband’ a whole lot. I don’t think two sentences came out of either one of our mouths without the word ‘husband’ being included,” Obergefell said. “Simply put, it felt good.”

The reality, though, was that this was a respite in a dark time — their time together would be short. Arthur was very ill. He was dying.

What would happen when he did die? The state of Ohio doesn’t recognize the marriages of same-sex couples performed in other states. On the final legal record of Arthur’s life, there would be no acknowledgement that he was ever married — that he ever shared his life with someone else. On paper, he would die “single.” It was unacceptable.

“After going through all of that, and having that incredible experience of saying, ‘I do,’ and, for once in our 21 years together at that point truly feeling like we were a couple that mattered and was recognized and respected — to then have it come full circle, and say, ‘Jim, you know, when John dies, he’ll be listed as single on his death certificate and your name won’t be there as spouse,’” Obergefell said.

That same weekend of the wedding, some friends of the couple were at a party with Gerhardstein and mentioned the couple’s wedding. The lawyer had already been thinking about what to do in Ohio in the wake of the Windsor decision — how to put the next steps in motion, how to achieve more in terms of LGBT rights. And here was a couple who’d gone to extraordinary lengths for something impermanent when it came to the law.

“You go to all this trouble, go all the way to Maryland, come back here, you want to rest in peace, but you rest alone — unless this gets fixed,” Gerhardstein said.

The next week, Arthur and Obergefell met Gerhardstein. Eight days after their wedding, they filed a lawsuit to have their marriage recognized.

When Gerhardstein filed the case, he kept it narrow intentionally, he said — only addressing the marriage recognition question. The case was defined by a set of facts, the principles had been set out by the Supreme Court in the Windsor decision, and adding more to the case — couples seeking to get married in Ohio, for example — would have slowed it down.

Because of that decision, this is perhaps the cleanest, simplest representation of the issues before the justices now: It’s one piece of paper. It’s yes or no. Either the law recognizes that they were married, or it does not.

“Jim and John are a compelling story. It’s all of our stories, everybody dies, no one else gets a false death certificate at the end of their life. No one else is forced to tell a lie on their death certificate — so that doesn’t seem right,” Gerhardstein said.

Photograph by Ty Wright for BuzzFeed News

First, Mike Huckabee. Then the world.

Andrew Harnik / AP

LYNCHBURG, Va. — Texas Senator Ted Cruz is expected to announce his presidential campaign tomorrow, but he won't be running for president, exactly, not yet.

Cruz is running first for a different title: The One True Conservative. He wants the first ticket out of Iowa, where conservative voters boosted Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum in years past. Other candidates — Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Scott Walker — seem to revolve around what Jeb Bush, the apparent frontrunner, is doing. Cruz's decision to announce his presidential bid at Liberty University, the Christian college founded by Jerry Falwell, suggests that his targets are much different: Huckabee, Ben Carson, Santorum, Rick Perry, and Bobby Jindal.

In his stump speech, Cruz emphasizes religious liberty, the new conservative lens for fighting government-mandated contraception coverage and court-mandated marriage equality. And Cruz's core message here is simple: I am the only serious person in this group. Cruz has a unique personal story: He worked his way from an immigrant family into Princeton, Harvard, and then a career as a top flight constitutional litigator, federal official, and Solicitor General of Texas. Huckabee, meanwhile, is hawking a secret biblical cancer cure; Carson, for all his impressive medical career, knows little about foreign policy; Santorum hasn't won anything in 15 years. Jindal and Perry already had their shot.

Some of them, though, are formidable, perhaps especially Perry, the best retail campaigner running for president this year. And the divisive Texas senator, who helped shut down the federal government in 2013, does not perform as well as the better-known Huckabee in early polling.

So he is coming out strong, and early, fighting to be seen as the clear leader of the half-dozen conservatives. He has spent more time in Iowa, New Hampshire, and other key states this year than any other candidate besides Perry. And his early announcement has already been a success. Cruz has received more media attention this weekend for this off-Capitol-Hill appearance than he has for anything in months.

Cruz hasn't gotten the attention given to the looser, newsier Rand Paul, or to Rubio, whose plausibility as a general election candidate has kept him in Republicans' and the media's thoughts. But the Monday morning announcement will buy Cruz a new level of media attention, and another round of attacks from his many Washington enemies — something Cruz may think will grant him that favored American political status, the "outsider."

"It's worth remembering, in 1980 when Reagan ran, Washington despised Reagan," Cruz told the CPAC crowd this year.

This isn't the politics of broad appeal — it's the first-things-first focus of a campaign to consolidate the right. While Paul and Rubio have built out their messages this year as national candidates, a touch removed from the legislative priorities, Cruz's focus has been on Capitol Hill, where he's viewed as the conservative pulse, especially for House members. His early rejection of Loretta Lynch for attorney general led many senators to follow suit by saying they would not vote to confirm her.

Now, some of those may come to Cruz's side and endorse his campaign — raising the pressure on his rivals to get into the race soon.

LINK: Ted Cruz Announces He’s Running For President

View Entire List ›

It’s budget week in America: an insanely busy week of political, unlikely-to-pass votes. Here’s your preview of 2016’s TV ads.

Saul Loeb / Getty

WASHINGTON — Sometime this week, probably in the wee hours of Friday morning, the Senate will finally vote to begin the process of dismantling Obamacare, the first time the chamber will have done so.

Because the procedural move is part of the nonbinding budget, President Obama will simply ignore Congress. But you'll see the vote again, when Republican senators run ads hailing their efforts to end Obamacare during their reelection campaigns.

Welcome to budget week in the United States Senate, the busiest single week of the calendar year in which very little actually happens, but everything matters.

"When Congress considers the budget, the House and Senate floors turn into political battlefields where amendments are used by both sides as weapons," said Ron Bonjean, a former top Republican leadership aide in both chambers.

The basic idea is simple: craft amendments that cause the most damage to the other side while building street cred — and artificially inflating your voting record — to ingratiate yourself with the most hardline members of your base. The votes are in no way binding or create actual policy, but that doesn't mean they're insignificant.

Campaigns routinely use the votes as part of ad campaigns, while groups like the NRA, Sierra Club, Heritage Action, and NARAL gorge on the dozen of budget votes to build out annual voting scorecards for lawmakers.

And with five members of the Senate either already running or expected to run for president in 2016, the stakes will be significantly higher.

Both parties are largely holding their most politically damaging amendments close to the vest so the other side doesn't have time to craft response amendments to offset any political damage.

Still, both sides have already begun telegraphing their likely lines of attack.

On the Republican side, Sens. Jeff Sessions, David Vitter, and other conservatives are expected to force potentially dozens of votes on immigration policy, potentially ranging from ending Obama's deportation deferral program to new constraints on birthright citizenship, aimed at stopping so-called "anchor babies."

Georgia Sen. David Perdue has already introduced an amendment to reign in the "rogue" Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a favorite target of conservative and big business ire.

Looking for a Benghazi related vote? Sen. Lindsey Graham has you covered with his amendment to boost spending on securing overseas diplomatic facilities. Like fiscal responsibility and constraining the growth of deficits and spending? Sen. Ron Johnson and host of other Republicans have already prepared a series of amendments targeting the budget and appropriations process. Defense hawks have already made clear they'll look to boost spending; culture warriors should be on the look out for abortion amendments.

GOP focus on the Obama administration's regulatory policies — particularly at agencies like EPA — should also get extensive attention, and will likely put moderate Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin and others in the position of having to break ranks with their party to avoid potentially damaging ads in their next election.

Democrats, who this year are led by Budget Committee ranking member Bernie Sanders, a potential presidential candidate, have their own well-stocked arsenal of amendments. Sanders will kick it off Monday evening with his amendment to end the offshoring of jobs, the first of a series of jobs-related votes Sanders and Democrats are planning.

Sanders also already has an amendment on deck to raise the minimum wage, while Democrats are expected to make extensive political hay with votes on climate change, votes to maintain parts of Obamacare, Social Security, and Medicaid as is.

Indeed, thanks to a treacherous 2016 election map for Republicans, Democrats' use of budget amendments could prove the most painful, especially for senators like Kelly Ayotte, Mark Kirk, and Pat Toomey, all of whom hail from bluer or outright blue states.

And that, in the end, is really the point of the budget process in the modern Congress.

"Everything under the sun, from energy to taxes to you name it will be subject to amendments … so they can run ads on it next year," Bonjean said.

Cruz laid it out very clearly on Monday morning: He is running to be the social conservative candidate — the kind a Christian college student body would vote for. The largely enthused crowd had a few pockets of dissent.

Mark Wilson / Getty

LYNCHBURG, Va. — Sen. Ted Cruz had a very captive audience for the official kick off of his presidential campaign.

More than 10,000 students of Liberty University, required to attend a thrice-weekly "convocation" on the campus here or face a $10 fine, listened attentively to Cruz's half-hour long speech, small American flags (provided) in hand.

"It's mandatory, but convo is one of my favorite times of the week just because it's a time for the whole student body to come together and be encouraged by different things," said Anna Nusbaum, 20. "And what other school gets to hear a presidential candidate speak?"

At Liberty, Cruz became the first Republican candidate to announce this presidential cycle. And by announcing at Liberty, the largest Christian university in the country founded by Jerry Falwell, Cruz's message was clear: he wants to be seen as the most socially conservative candidate in the field.

And following the speech, students that BuzzFeed News talked to weren't interested in talking about other contenders for the social conservative vote, like Rick Perry, Mike Huckabee, or Ben Carson — or their relative merits next to the Texas senator.

Instead, the reception for Cruz was largely warm: Cruz hit conservative applause line after conservative applause line.

"Instead of a federal government that works to undermine our values, imagine a federal government that works to defend the sanctity of human life and to uphold the sacrament of marriage," he said. "Instead of a government that works to undermine our Second Amendment rights, that seeks to ban our ammunition, imagine a federal government that protects the right to keep and bear arms of all law-abiding American."

There were also overtures directed specifically at the younger crowd, although this is not an average college. Patrick Finn, a 24-year-old senior in the audience, said he was looking forward to how Cruz's Christian beliefs would "affect his candidacy, and that's key for me."

Not everyone was thrilled to be forced to sit through an inherently political speech. A small group of students, captured several times by C-SPAN cameras, clad in red "Stand with Rand" t-shirts, were eager to chat with reporters after the event about their support for Rand Paul, another potential candidate who will likely announce in the next few weeks.

Though the school's president, Jerry Falwell Jr., told students to not take Cruz's speech as an endorsement on behalf of the school, the Stand with Rand crew only saw it as such.

"We were upset about it. All students who live on campus, so over 7,000 are required to attend or have a $10 fine," said Eli McGowan, a 20-year-old junior who heads "Students for Rand" on campus. "We know that Ted Cruz knows this and it's a smart idea to have a captive audience to announce your campaign. To have 10,000 people show up. Most students take this a tacit endorsement. People on Facebook have been saying oh the board wouldn't have allowed him to come if they didn't think he was the right candidate."

McGowan's wife, Emily, also in a "Stand with Rand" shirt, called Cruz a "good Christian man" but it was his views on military intervention that made her support Paul.

"Rand stands for the more libertarian ideals and really speaks to this generation," she said. "We do need conservatives to make changes but we need someone to appeal to all walks of life and that's what libertarianism does."

Eli McGowan ticked off the typical libertarian list of reasons why he thought Rand could appeal to a younger generation: decriminalization of certain drugs, a level of non-interventionism, overcrowding in prisons.

One woman, a senior who asked not to be identified because she was a Democrat, said that the university was endorsing Cruz whether they said they were or not.

"At our school everyone is a Republican. You aren't allowed to have any Democratic groups," she said. "That's why I'm doing this anonymously because people will come after you. He told people what they wanted to hear and they are endorsing him, that's what they are doing."

Shut your poutine-hole and read some constitutional law, hosers!

Ted Cruz announced Monday that he is running for President of the United States.

PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP / Getty Images

The U.S. Senator and noted Tea Party champion was originally born in the Canadian city of Calgary, which is also known as Cowtown for some reason.

PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP / Getty Images/Thinkstock/BuzzFeedNews

But wait! Doesn't the constitution say you need to be a red-blooded American in order to be president?!

Alex Wong / Getty Images

"No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President," reads section 1 of article II of the constitution.

Yukiseaside / Via en.wikipedia.org

View Entire List ›

Immigration activist leaders signed on to MoveOn.org’s “Run Warren Run” initiative calling for a credible challenge to Clinton. Other groups are said to be mulling signing on in the coming weeks.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

Some of the activists who made immigration a difficult issue for President Obama in 2014 are now signing onto the effort to draft Sen. Elizabeth Warren — or some other Democrat — to challenge Hillary Clinton.

Warren has time and time again said she is not and will not run for president, a declaration that has not prevented MoveOn.org's "Run Warren Run" project or deterred the liberal group from seeking more supporters. The latest participants: Arturo Carmona, executive director of Presente Action, which counts 300,000 members nationwide, and Erika Andiola, a national DREAMer activist, who played a key role in the fight for Obama's executive actions on immigration.

In a letter first given to BuzzFeed News, Carmona and Andiola write, "Contested primaries test and strengthen candidates and ensure progressives have a chance to make our voices heard." They argue that leaders are needed who will fight powerful interests and protect the most vulnerable, including "impoverished Americans, women, children and immigrants to reduce social and economic inequality."

Carmona said he joined the effort because it makes the most sense for Latino voters.

"Latinos are going to play, without question, the most important role they have ever played in an election in 2016 and they want to be an electorate that is not taken for granted," he told BuzzFeed News.

Carmona cited polls released by Pew and Latino Decisions in the aftermath of Obama's executive actions that would shield more than 4 million undocumented immigrants from deportation, which showed high support for the actions. He said Latino support of Clinton will be heavily influenced by how strong she comes out in support of issues like immigration.

After Obama's announcement, Clinton tweeted support for the actions, noting that it was a historic first step, and argued for a congressional immigration overhaul.

"It shouldn't be a foregone conclusion that Hillary will be the Latino candidate," Carmona said. "She has a lot of work to do to show the Latino electorate that she will advance our issues and agenda."

Andiola echoed Carmona, saying her group DRM Action Coalition is worried that Clinton will not be enough to the left on immigration issues, citing comments she made during her book tour as the unaccompanied minors crisis flared, that the children should be given love and support, but many should eventually be deported.

"The letter is saying to the Democratic Party not to put all of their resources to Clinton, to make it so other folks have a chance," she said.

Sources with knowledge of outreach by MoveOn.org said other Latino organizations have been approached and are mulling joining the effort, with the announcement of another Latino leader in the pipeline soon.

But Carmona said there is also a sense that many Latino groups are hesitant to sign on to something that might be viewed as a public rebuke of the powerful Clinton.

"You certainly get a feeling from the inside-the-Beltway types that there is a certain uneasiness with crossing what many people see as the next Democratic candidate," he said. "Our position is that every single candidate needs to be fully vetted."

LINK: The Draft Campaign Elizabeth Warren Didn’t Ask For But Hasn’t Killed

“There are legitimate questions about whether the deal that’s coalescing is a deal that should be made,” Rabbi Rick Jacobs said on the sidelines of a conference organized by the liberal pro-Israel advocacy group J Street.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, executive director of J Street

J. Scott Applewhite / ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON — A conference of the liberal pro-Israel advocacy group J Street focused on the crisis in U.S.-Israel relations and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process this week, but a strong undercurrent remained: even here, concern over the direction of the Obama administration's negotiation of a nuclear deal with Iran was on display.

"There are legitimate questions about whether the deal that's coalescing is a deal that should be made," Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the head of the Union for Reform Judaism, told BuzzFeed News. He warned that there was "a lot of naiveté about the security risks that Israel faces" among pro-Israel progressives.

J Street, far more liberal than the main lobby AIPAC and seen as marginal by other pro-Israel groups, is also seen as a key ally of the administration on Middle East policy. Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami's 2009 remark that the group's goal is to be a "blocking back" for Obama in Congress is often cited in Washington in discussions of J Street. Some attendees warned that partisan concerns — including the messy fight over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to address Congress on the invitation of Speaker John Boehner — masked more pressing concerns about Iran.

"The substance of his arguments are serious and should not be discounted," Jacobs said. "Some people on the progressive side were so upset about the forum that they missed actually the substance — the substance of a nuclear Iran, and the breakout time," he said, adding that Iran is not a "trustworthy" country.

"I think if you have a showdown between the prime minister and the president, not about whether to speak or not speak to Congress but whether a deal with Iran is one that is good for the U.S., Israel, and the region, that's a substantive argument and that argument has not yet been had effectively and deeply," Jacobs said. "And it's about to happen, but with the amount of distrust and the partisan ways people look at it, I'm worried we're not going to to have the debate that we need to have. Or that it'll be just who lines up with Obama and who lines up with Bibi."

The conference this year comes at an especially fraught time in the U.S.-Israel relationship, coming just after the Israeli election and days away from a deadline in the Iran negotiations. Netanyahu's campaign promise that a Palestinian state would never come about during his time as prime minister and his warning to his base that Arabs were voting in large numbers on election day have reinforced his negative image among the typical J Street supporter, who tend to be more aligned with the Israeli left and steeped in the peace movement.

But while the liberals at J Street are all-in on Obama's tough stance on Netanyahu — the president has threatened to stop shielding Israel from hostile U.N. resolutions — even they don't hold as much enthusiasm for the Iran policy. During White House chief of staff Denis McDonough's speech to the conference on Monday, his remarks criticizing Netanyahu and and affirming the United States' commitment to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process drew huge, enthusiastic applause from the crowd, while the section of his speech about the Iran negotiations drew polite, measured applause. And attendees have been more eager to talk about what they see as the Republicans' or Netanyahu's interference in the diplomacy process than about the substance of the deal itself. Even those who say progressives are generally on board with the potential deal admit that activists are much more invested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"You are probably right that progressive American Jewish activists feel more strongly and are more enthusiastic about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than they are about Iran," said Ori Nir, the spokesman for Americans for Peace Now, the sister group to leading Israeli peace movement group Peace Now. "It's not because they don't support Obama on Iran, I think. They do. But I suppose they are more passionate about efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

"You'd find a lot less sympathy [for the Iran negotiations] at the AIPAC conference," said Mike Amitay, a senior policy analyst for the George Soros-funded Open Society Foundations. J Street's conference was held at the Washington Convention Center, the same venue as the AIPAC conference last month, but according to J Street's numbers it drew 3,000 people, compared to AIPAC's estimated 16,000.

"I think there may be some anxiety here because people may not be familiar with the technical aspects of the deal and may be under the mistaken impression that Iran is closer to getting a bomb than it actually is," Amitay said. "And when they talk about the year of breakout, that's still scary to some people although it's not entirely accurate."

"I don't know whether it's a good deal or not," said Roy Saltman, a retired computer scientist from Maryland. "All I know is I support the right of the president of the United States to make agreements with foreign countries. And I'm very distressed at the Republican attempts to interfere with that."

Asked if it would validate Republican skepticism on the deal if the potential deal turns out not to prevent Iran from its pursuit of nuclear weapons, Saltman said, "It might very well. A deal needs to be made which guarantees through inspections that the Iranians are not pursuing the development of atomic bombs."

The six world powers and Iran that are negotiating over its nuclear program are re-convening in Lausanne, Switzerland this week ahead of a March 31 deadline in the talks. Some elements of the potential deal have been leaked; diplomats have told reporters that the deal would extend the time Iran would need to produce enough enriched uranium for a bomb to a year, and that it would make Iran cut the amount of machines it uses to enrich uranium by 40 percent. According to the AP, a draft nuclear agreement being circulated would set the number of permitted centrifuges to 6,000 and also structure the deal so that requirements would be eased after 10 years.

Michael G. Angstreich, an American retired agriculture advisor who lives in Oslo, said, "I am supportive of President Obama's efforts and John Kerry's efforts. It's got to be a good one though. It's got to be a good, verifiable agreement."

The Israeli opposition, which J Street is more naturally aligned with, is also skeptical of the deal that is taking shape. In an interview with BuzzFeed News at the AIPAC policy conference last month, Erel Margalit, a Labor politician who would have become the economic minister if the Zionist Union had won and been able to form a government, said that his party had just as many reservations about the potential deal as Netanyahu.

"Labour is adamantly against having Iran as a threshold nuclear state," Margalit said. "It's against the number of centrifuges that's being leaked. It's against the time that it would take them to get to a bomb, which is less than one year. And it is against the 10 year window because nobody wants Iran as a nuclear state 12 years from now either. But saying all that to the U.S. administration in confidence in consultation is key to the ability of Israel to not make this a partisan political issue, to leave this as an issue of national security and strategic importance to Israel."

J Street supports the negotiations and acknowledges that "Israel is justified in insisting on an agreement that really and verifiably takes Iran significantly back from the capacity to breakout to nuclear weapons," according to its website's policy statement on the issue. It has lobbied for Iran sanctions in the past, but has lobbied against efforts to impose additional sanctions during the negotiations. J Street's executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami acknowledged that there's a diversity of opinion on the subject within his organization, but argued that most of the Jewish community generally supports the idea of a negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear issue.

"I'm sure there's a range of opinions," said Ben-Ami. "But when we did a poll on election day, the general outline of a deal that says limited enrichment capacity, serious intrusive inspections and gradually ratcheted-down sanctions gets 84 percent support in the broader Jewish community. So you have to figure the 16 percent that doesn't support it are probably not here."

"This organization as you've heard throughout the conference is very open with the understanding that there's a range of views within the 100,000-plus, 180,000 people that are affiliated with the organization. There's going to be a range of views on all issues," he said.

"Some people may have some concerns with some elements of the deal, other people will think it's a great deal. So let's see what the deal is and we'll figure out our organizational position on it," Ben-Ami said.

Three of the more liberal justices would have heard Lester Leroy Bower’s appeal: “[T]he error here is glaring, and its consequence may well be death.”

People wait in line outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Monday, March 23, 2015.

Molly Riley / AP

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court Monday declined to review the death sentence given to Lester Leroy Bower by a Texas judge 30 years ago under guidelines later found to be unconstitutional by the court.

Bower was convicted of capital murder in 1984 after a jury found him guilty of killing four men in a Dallas airplane hangar. Bower maintains his innocence.

Justice Stephen Breyer, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, would have heard the case and ordered that Bower be re-sentenced, writing that "the error here is glaring, and its consequence may well be death."

Although it only takes the votes of four justices for the court to hear a case, the fourth of the more liberal justices — Justice Elena Kagan — did not join the dissent and did not vote for the court to take the case. Justice Anthony Kennedy — often the swing vote in such cases — also opposed the court taking on the case.

The problem, as the three dissenting justices see it, is that Bower was sentenced to death under a system later found to be unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.

During the sentencing phase of his trial, Bower introduced what is known as mitigating evidence, or evidence that would lead to a lesser punishment. This included testimony from family members and friends that spoke to his character.

Texas law at the time, however, dictated that juries could only consider mitigating evidence as it related to three "special issues": whether the defendant acted deliberately and with expectation that their actions would result in the victims' deaths, whether the defendant could be a continuing threat to society, and whether the defendant was provoked.

The the third issue didn't apply to Bower's case, so the jury was only asked to consider mitigating evidence as it related to the first two questions. The jury answered yes to both, requiring the judge under Texas law to automatically impose the death sentence.

The Supreme Court struck down the "special issues" procedure used by Texas five years after Bower's sentencing. When Bower sought to have his sentence thrown out initially, the federal courts denied his request, deciding that the the second "special issue", which asked about "future dangerousness," allowed the jury to sufficiently consider Bower's mitigating evidence.

Although the federal appeals court later "changed its mind about" the meaning of the Supreme Court case, as Breyer put it on Monday, Bower's case was no longer before it.

In 2012, however, a Texas trial court agreed with Bower and ordered a new sentencing proceeding. When the state appealed, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed — drawing a distinction between "double-edged" evidence that could be seen as both aggravating and mitigating, at issue in the 1989 Supreme Court case, and evidence that is purely mitigating, as with Bower — which led to the request before the Supreme Court.

Although Breyer "recognize[d] that we do not often intervene only to correct a case-specific legal error," he wrote that the court should have done so here because "the error here is glaring, and its consequence may well be death."

Concern about whether Bower will be able to bring his claim to the court again led Breyer to conclude: "I believe we should act and act now. I would grant the petition and summarily reverse the judg­ment below."

While the justices considered Bower's request to hear his appeal, the Supreme Court had granted him a stay of execution. The stay "terminate[d] automatically" on Monday when the court declined to take his case, meaning Texas could now schedule a new execution date for him.

The Supreme Court already has agreed this year to hear two cases relating to the death penalty — one relating to the use of the drug midazolam, which has been in use in several executions where problems were encountered in 2014, and the other relating to Florida's death penalty sentencing process, which does not require a unanimous vote of the jury to sentence someone to death.

The justices will hear the lethal injection case on April 29, and it will hear the Florida case next term, which begins in October.

Read Justice Breyer's dissenting opinion:

While Ted Cruz announced his bid on Monday, Clinton was offering some of her most thorough (and progressive) policy remarks in recent months, surrounded by key Democratic stakeholders.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

WASHINGTON — Flanked by labor leaders, her longtime policy adviser, and the man who will steer her presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton made a distinctly progressive case on Monday that the country's cities "truly are divided," with a growing gap between the affluent and the middle-class families "being priced out."

Clinton, seated at the head of the table above a long sign bearing the words "Urban Renewal," delivered some of her most textured and thorough remarks about economic policy since leaving the State Department: She argued that investment in affordable housing, youth job training, and programs like universal pre-kindergarten would stem income inequality and trigger upward mobility in urban areas.

"Do it in a way that lifts everybody up," said the former secretary of state, who is expected to announce her second presidential campaign this spring.

Clinton spoke alongside 10 other panelists at liberal think-tank, the Center for American Progress. The group is headed by Neera Tanden, the policy adviser, and by John Podesta, the veteran Clinton operative who took his seat in the front row. (Both are expected to play a role in her presidential campaign — Podesta as chair.)

Alongside potential backers in the labor and progressive communities, Clinton spoke of such issues as public-private partnerships, wage stagnation, and government programs in terms native to the policy-minded crowd in attendance.

"A lot of our cities truly are divided," Clinton said. "They have a lot of inequality that has only gotten worse: They have some of the most dynamic, well-educated, affluent people in the world — and people who are trapped in generational poverty and whose skills are not keeping up with what the jobs of today and tomorrow demand."

In the last two years, Clinton has delivered dozens of paid, largely apolitical speeches to universities and trade groups. On Monday, in the tight quarters of the Center for American Progress headquarters in Washington, Clinton previewed a domestic agenda, emphasizing her eight years of service in the U.S. Senate.

"I not only represented New York City. I represented Buffalo and Rochester and Syracuse and Albany and Binghamton and a lot of other places that had very different challenges," Clinton said. "But they all fell under the category of, how do we make sure our cities are good places for people to live and work."

The event also put Clinton in close proximity to leaders in organized labor who could support her campaign. To her right was Lee Saunders, president of AFSCME, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — which backed Clinton's first bid for president seven years ago. The roundtable also featured Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, a loyal supporter of the Clintons who has also partnered with their family foundation.

Clinton included labor as a prerequisite to urban middle-class success. Mobility is achieved where the "fabric of community is strong," she said. "[In] places that are more integrated across class, places with good schools, places with unions, places with religious organizations and civic organizations that help people feel rooted."

Progressives and labor officials remarked afterward that Clinton had hit on all the requisite points, and several were struck in particular by her comment alluding to the effects of gentrification. "How do we keep middle-class families in cities where they want to stay?" she said. "They don't want to leave, but they're being priced out."

Clinton cited the universal pre-kindergarten push by Mayor Bill de Blasio in New York City as a way to "fit the human needs" of those residents. "But we also have to do more on affordable housing and the amenities so that families — middle-class families, working families — can actually stay in cities and have a place to go."

Saunders, the AFSCME head, echoed the remark later on: "We can not gentrify our way to a better tomorrow."

Ahead of the presidential race, Clinton has spent recent months in conversation with economists and policy experts. On Monday, she referenced the work of a Harvard scholar, Raj Chetty, who has studied the indicators of social mobility.

While most of Clintons speeches in the last two years have centered on her own experience, whether in the State Department or at her foundation, the roundtable on Monday was an exception. Clinton was a participant, not the focus — a notable shift that invoked the presidential campaign, and candidate, to come.

As the event came to a close, Clinton seemed to reference that future, turning to one fellow panelist, Aja Brown, the 32-year-old mayor of Compton, Calif.

"Don't be too surprised if you get a call," Clinton said.

"Maybe we'll start not too far from here, in a beautiful domed building, where we'll get everybody in the same room and start that conversation."

Rafael Cruz is a pastor and a prolific speaker with a compelling story — who also has a history of saying incendiary things. A BuzzFeed News review.

Ted Cruz's Senate YouTube Page / Via youtube.com

When Sen. Ted Cruz began his first speech as a presidential candidate on Monday, he talked about his father.

The story of Rafael Cruz — growing up in Cuba, joining a revolution to overthrow Batista at age 17, jailed and tortured, and fleeing to the United States — has been an integral part of the Texas senator's political story.

But don't take it from Ted: Rafael is also out on the stump, telling his own story. Since his son's election and rise as a conservative star, the elder Cruz has become a popular and prolific Tea Party speaker around the country. His life story is compelling, and it doesn't end once he left Cuba — a straight A student, he got accepted to the University of Texas-Austin and after a family friend bribed an official to stamp his passport, made his way by ferry to Key West. There he boarded a bus for Texas where he says he learned English by repeatedly watching movies and paid his way through school working as dishwasher. His life was turned around when he found his faith in the Lord.

But at the grassroots events featuring Rafael Cruz, he often makes news in a different kind of way. "Pastor Cruz does not speak for the senator," statements from his son's office frequently note, when one controversial statement or another surfaces.

Rafael Cruz would like to send Obama "back to Kenya, back to Indonesia," he said at one gathering. Obama, "probably doesn't have any problem with what this butcher in Philadelphia is doing," he said of abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell who killed babies born alive. The "average black" doesn't understand why the minimum wage is bad, he said at another.

A BuzzFeed News review of Cruz's speeches finds him often making controversial, conspiracy-based claims about the Obama administration, many of which are listed below.

Cruz has said Fidel Castro used the rhetoric of "hope and change."

"As some of you know, I was born in Cuba. At the age of 14 years of age I was involved in a revolution. We were suffering from a very cruel, oppressive dictatorship, and the revolution started in the high schools and the universities. So when I was 14, I was involved in the revolution. I was in the revolution four years. During that time, a young, charismatic leader rose up in Cuba, talking about hope and change. His name was Fidel Castro."

youtube.com

Cruz has argued the Obama administration efforts for gun control are so "they can impose a dictatorship upon us." Cruz argued Obama is trying to ban guns through the United Nations.

“The Obama administration wants to take our rights to keep and bear arms away from us. They are trying to take our God, and our gun. And if they do that, they can impose a dictatorship upon us. Now he’s been trying it through the courts, through the legislature – hasn’t gone anywhere. Now he’s trying through the United Nations. And there is now some proposals in the United Nations to try to impose a ban on guns. And of course we have a precedent, too: When Ted fought for U.S. sovereignty when the United Nations tried to impose their rule on our courts, and Ted fought defending U.S. sovereignty all of the way through the United Nations to the Supreme Court and won."

Link to video

Via youtube.com

View Entire List ›

“I’m the only one that beats Hillary Clinton in certain purple states.”

View Video ›

Fox News

Sen. Rand Paul didn't watch his colleague and competitor Ted Cruz's entire presidential announcement on Monday (Paul was "traveling" and "busy"), but he had a whole lot of analysis about the 2016 field in an interview with Megyn Kelly.

Paul touted his traveling to unvisited locations for Republicans (Berkeley, Howard). Cruz, of course, chose a more traditional choice Monday, announcing at Liberty University, the Christian college in Virginia. And while he's been in those "places Republicans haven't gone," Paul said, "maybe not just throwing out red meat, but throwing out something intellectually enticing to people who haven't been listening to our message before."

None of the comments directly criticized Cruz in name — or any other Republican — exactly. Paul noted that Cruz and he agree on a lot and come from "kind of the same wing of the party." But Paul was unusually analytical and candid for a prospective presidential candidate:

"It isn't just about rousing the base, it's about exciting the base by being for the principles of liberty, but it's then taking those principles of liberty, not diluting them, and taking them to new people, bring them into the party. That's the way you win general elections."

"See my polling — no one is doing better against Hillary Clinton than myself because we're already picking up 3 to 5% of the independent vote above what the others are picking up."

"Your rival station had a poll yesterday that had me tied for the lead with Walker and Bush in a nationwide poll, so we feel pretty comfortable that there is sort of a developing first tier."

"Right now, I'm the only one that beats Hillary Clinton in certain purple states. I'm the only one that also scores above all the other Republicans in whether or not I can beat her."

"There will be a lot of conservatives — and Ted Cruz is a conservative — but it also goes to winnability."

Paul is expected to announce he is running for president on April 7 in Louisville.

LINK: It’s A Warm, Socially Conservative Reception For Ted Cruz

LINK: Ted Cruz’s Challenge

View Entire List ›

“She has agreed to join us for dinner.”

Win McNamee / Getty

WASHINGTON — It seemed only fitting on Monday night when, just 10 minutes before Hillary Clinton would keynote an awards ceremony for political journalism, one gala staffer burst into the press file to inform reporters covering the speech that the secretary's plans had, unexpectedly, changed.

"She has agreed to join us for dinner," the staffer said, a bit breathless.

It appeared that Clinton would be staying for the entire program — not just her speech, as originally planned. It also appeared that Clinton would not, to the surprise of the staffer, be making a quick exit from the ballroom of journalists attending the presentation of the Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting.

"She was escorted into the garage. She went up into a private entry. She was supposed to go in and then go out," the staffer said. "Now apparently she will be staying." She paused. "I'm not sure that's still accurate."

Clinton not only stayed for the entire program, but she even chatted with reporters afterward. It was, as she joked in her speech, a "new beginning."

Few figures are known to have as fraught and mutually strained a relationship with the press corps as Clinton, who has spent her career tamping down scandals now known simply as Whitewater, Travelgate, and Gennifer Flowers.

This month, Clinton faced another barrage for her use of a personal email account to conduct business at the State Department. The rush of coverage culminated in a tense and frenzied press conference at the United Nations in Manhattan.

In a wry 15-minute speech on Monday, Clinton called for a "new relationship" with the media. "Some of you may be a little surprised to see me here tonight. My relationship with the press has been at times, shall we say, complicated."

"I am all about new beginnings: a new grandchild… another new hairstyle… a new email account," she said, prompting the loudest round of laughter that night.

"No more secrecy. No more zone of privacy."

"After all, what good did that do me."

"But first of all, before I go any further, if you look under your chairs, you'll find a simple nondisclosure agreement. My attorneys drew it up. Old habits last."

Following her speech Monday, Clinton is expected to avoid public appearances — and the press — until she announces her presidential campaign.

In her remarks, she also took time to honor Robin Toner, the late New York Times reporter after whom the award is named. This year's recipient was Dan Balz, the longtime political reporter for the Washington Post.

"I am certainly aware that public figures can't complain about coverage we don't like if we don't give credit where credit is certainly due," Clinton said. "And that's why I'm here — to join all of you in supporting the kind of journalism that Robin loved and exemplified, and that so many of you work hard to do every day."

Toner, who died from cancer, first covered Clinton in the '90s, focusing on her failed push as first lady to pass a universal health care plan. She last interviewed Clinton for a piece about health care policy during the 2008 presidential race.

Clinton praised Toner's attention to substance and policy, not politics.

"It's pretty clear that you know I believe we need Robin Toners," she said.

The public-private partnership has taken on hundreds of cases and stopped 13 minors from getting deported as of February, according to data given exclusively to BuzzFeed News.

New York City Council speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, who pushed for the initiative.

Bebeto Matthews / AP

New York City's effort to supply lawyers for every unaccompanied, undocumented minor has kept 13 children from being deported as of February, new data provided to BuzzFeed News shows.

The preliminary numbers come six months into the public-private partnership, launched by the New York City Council following the flood of minors from Central America who made their way to the city during the height of the surge of undocumented immigrants last summer.

Thus far, 424 cases have been screened and 13 undocumented children have been shielded from deportation through family court or asylum proceedings as of February, according to the data. Another 22 applications for asylum are pending.

The $1.9 million partnership is between the City Council, The Robin Hood Foundation, an organization that fights poverty, and New York Community Trust, which funds nonprofits in the city. Taxpayers are only on the hook for the $1 million, which was already in the budget for legal services as part of its Immigrant Opportunity Initiative.

"These are children with severe trauma and we're providing them with proper support," said City Council speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, who spearheaded the initiative. "For me, it's a personal thing, a moral obligation, when you have a child in need."

Lawyers say the complex immigration court system is difficult enough for them to navigate and nearly impossible for a child to do so alone, and say the numbers — which may appear low at first glance — are at least a chance at representation.

"We're off to a good, but slow start," said Anne Pilsbury, with Central American Legal Assistance in New York. "We've been dealing with this population for decades. This was not a new phenomenom, what is new is the city's interest in funding."

Pilsbury said some adults can represent themselves, but kids fleeing gang violence have no chance. She gave the example of children fleeing gang recruitment, which has been found by the board of immigration appeals to be insufficient reason to grant asylum. "Just because you didn't want to join a criminal gang that kills people, it does not give you a leg up in asylum laws," she said.

While all New York City unaccompanied minors have received lawyers, about 720 who were believed to be from the city were found to be from Long Island. As of now they are not benefitting from the same program as their counterparts in the five boroughs, but Mark-Viverito said Long Island officials are looking at replicating the public-private model.

Avideh Moussavian, a lawyer with the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) who works on access-to-counsel issues, called the partnership "groundbreaking" and cited data that shows a stark contrast between what happens nationally when a child has counsel versus when they don't, and when a mother with a child has a lawyer and when they don't.

Using data up to June 2014, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) from Syracuse University found that children were almost five times more likely to be allowed to stay in the country when they had a lawyer (47% were allowed to stay) versus when they were without counsel (10%).

More recent data, as of January 2015, found that women with children but without representation were only successful 1.5% of the time, while those with counsel had a 26% success rate.

Moussavian said the public-private partnership model is in the same spirit as the New York Family Unity Project, an initiative which began as a pilot program in 2013 and became permanent in 2014, which gives access to an attorney to anyone who has been in detention. The program was instituted after studies were done which show that separating families and removing immigrants has social and economic costs for the state.

Mark-Viverito, who also championed a municipal ID program for which undocumented immigrants are eligible, sees the issue as one related to the economy.

"We want them to be fully integrated into our society and contributing positively," she said. "Employers are enlisting help from people who are undocumented all the time, let's not be hypocrites."

Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy says Democrats need to run on women’s economic issues (not just abortion) and the Affordable Care Act, even in red states.

Spencer Platt / Getty

WASHINGTON — The incoming chair of the Democratic Governors Association said Tuesday Democrats aren't going to win in 2016 by shifting positions and messaging to woo back the white men voters they've lost in recent cycles.

"The only middle-aged white men who voted for me were myself and my brothers," Dannel Malloy, the progressive-friendly, two-term governor of Connecticut told BuzzFeed News in a sitdown interview. "So if we're going to rely on middle-aged white men to win Democratic races again — you know, I mean I think we need to speak to a broader audience than middle-age white men."

Malloy takes over the DGA — the arm of the party charged with expanding Democratic gubernatorial ranks — at a time when Democrats are split over how best to recover from brutal electoral defeats in the last two elections when President Obama wasn't on the ballot. Some Democratic have suggested the party has spent too much time on its progressive base in the cities and it needs to shift focus away from issues like climate change and entitlement programs in order to win back white men voters who, in 2014, voted overwhelmingly for the Republicans. Malloy said that model isn't going to work, even though has to try and keep governor's mansions in red states like West Virginia and Missouri, where current Democratic governors are term-limited. And he has to help the DGA recover from deeply embarrassing 2014 losses in Massachusetts and Maryland, two Democratic strongholds where Democrats were expected to keep open seats.

Malloy said he hasn't closely studied the Maryland and Massachusetts losses for lessons that can be applied in 2016, but he said Democrats everywhere shouldn't shy away from "running as Democrats," as he put it. That means abandoning much of the party's strategy in 2014, including keeping their distance from the Affordable Care Act.

The Connecticut Democrat said he knows how to sell Obamacare in the reddest of red America.

"There are ways to talk about this issue in every single state. But if you're afraid of the issue, or if some consultant tells you you can't have a voice on that issue, then you don't. And I think senators made mistakes, Congress folks made mistakes, governors may have made mistakes [in 2014,]" he said. "I'm not trying to throw stones at anybody, I'm saying we're Democrats, we've got to stand for something. No person should work 35 or 40 hours a week and live in poverty. And certainly, no person should work 35 or 40 hours a week, live in poverty, and not have access to health care, particularly preventative health care."

"I could say that in Oklahoma," Malloy said. "People would understand that."

Women voters, who Democrats successfully rallied in 2012 to keep the Senate when most prognosticators predicted they would lose it, are key to Malloy's "Democrats running like Democrats" strategy. He said women were warm to Democratic economic issues. But he criticized the party for trying to run the same "War on Women" strategy it did in 2012 in 2014. In the last election, Republicans were ready for attacks over women's health and abortion, and in some high-profile cases, like Colorado, the effort failed to keep Democrats in office. (Supporters of the strategy say it pushed Republican candidates to soften their rhetoric on issues like personhood amendments and birth-control access.)

"There are very few issues that are presented in exactly the same way, two years apart, that sell. You can't run on a campaign that's two years old. So what I would say to folks is, 'You've got a president of the United States who says in his State of the [Union] address, you know what? We should lift people out of poverty. People who work 40 hours a week, they shouldn't live in poverty.' That was the women's issue. Women understood that better than anyone else. ACA, women understand that better than anybody else," Malloy said.

"The idea that you shouldn't go to work sick as an hourly employee, they understand that better than anyone else. … So the idea of only talking about abortion? That may be perceived as offensive, and apparently was, but is I think it's too singular and too obvious," he said.

Malloy argued that economic issues and the Affordable Care Act should be out front when Democrats are looking for votes from women.

"You put together that [the GOP] is the party that wants to control your body, wants you work 35 or 40 hours per week and live in poverty, and, by the way, doesn't want you to have access to health care," he said. "You put those three things together? That's a pretty powerful argument."

Strategically, Malloy criticized Democrats for keeping their eye off the ball after wins in 2008 and 2012.

"Accept the Republican Party model that you're constantly in an election," Malloy said. Democrats "thought they could take a vacation" when they needed constant, persistent campaign-style messaging.

Back in Connecticut, Malloy has racked up a progressive legacy that probably wouldn't be on any red state Democratic candidate recruiter's checklist. He embraced Obamacare, successfully pushed strict new gun-control measures after the shootings in Newtown, and signed a law ending the state's little-used death penalty. But he said he can help Democrats across the country win again, mostly by abandoning the idea they need to change to embrace a different electorate.

"We have to speak to majorities," he said. "And we're probably never going to have a majority made up of middle-aged white men."

White men "can be part of a majority," he said, but only one that is based on an economic message he said is universal. The short version: Embrace an increase in the minimum wage, "take pride" in Obamacare, and push paid sick leave.

"My parents dreamed that their children would all make more money than they did, and that's not necessarily going to be matched by my children and me?" he said. "That's pretty damning stuff. While the rich have gotten richer and the gap continues to grow and we continue to have a debate about whether we're going to expand Medicaid to save people's lives."

The man behind Clinton’s campaign fundraising will run a very different kind of operation from Clinton 2008 and Obama 2012. New names, no general election money upfront, and a tightly controlled structure that directly reports to him.

Win McNamee / Getty

Dennis Cheng is no Terry McAuliffe.

He is quiet and private, guarded and discreet. He would rather sit at his desk, placing calls to donors or studying spreadsheets, than be seen with the candidate at her latest fundraiser. He does not back-slap, glad-hand, or arm-punch.

Some use the word "micromanager" — others prefer "thorough" or "detail-oriented." But there is no question that Cheng, the 35-year-old who will serve as finance director on Hillary Clinton's expected presidential campaign, is a departure from fundraisers like McAuliffe, the governor who for years marshaled the Clintons' sprawling, complex network of donors with his famously gregarious style.

During her last campaign, Clinton built a fundraising operation cast in the distinct mold of a McAuliffe type: Her loose, hands-off finance director, Jonathan Mantz, appointed deputies to help run his team in the field and, to the frustration of aides at headquarters, often left the office to travel with Clinton or her husband.

Democratic fundraisers and donors who support the campaign, which is expected to launch in some form this spring, said Cheng's approach isn't better or worse. Just different. But many were quick to cast his reputation as disciplined and discreet as a better fit for the no-drama campaign Clinton hopes to build this time around.

"There's a lot of pressure that comes with raising money. It's one of the positions in a campaign where you can see success, and everybody can see it, too," said Julianna Smoot, the lead fundraiser on President Obama's presidential campaigns. "Dennis is very smart and steady. When there's work to be done, he just puts his head down and gets it done."

Even with a sparse Democratic field, the task ahead is massive.

Clinton could have to raise as much as the $1.1 billion Obama needed during the last election, without the advantages of incumbency: From the start, his campaign had a joint fundraising effort with the Democratic National Committee that allowed for higher contribution limits, and access to the group's fundraising lists. (Clinton's have not been updated since 2008, and it is not yet clear whether her campaign will acquire the list built by Ready for Hillary, a super PAC launched in 2013.)

Since last month, Cheng has been assembling a finance team whose shape, reporting structure, and key players look little like the campaign of 2008.

One significant change will be apparent from the launch, according to a source familiar with Cheng's plans. The campaign will focus exclusively on primary dollars — a move that reflects a new approach Clinton has tried to project: that should she run, as her spokesman often tells reporters, "she will take nothing for granted."

In her last race, while Obama asked for primary contributions only, Clinton raised for the general election as well. (The funds are kept separate.) It was money she was never able to use. After the election, the campaign refunded millions in general contributions, causing a logistical nightmare for Clinton's remaining staff.

Cheng has also stacked his finance team with new faces. Only two of the lead regional fundraising roles, of which there are at least eight, have been given to staffers from Clinton's last run: Yaël Ouzillou, who is based in Texas, will handle the South Central, and Jon Adrabi, a Florida fundraiser, will oversee the Southeast.

The finance operation is one that will be notably "flat," according to fundraisers and donors briefed on the team that Cheng is said to still be assembling.

The structure grants more oversight than is typical to a finance director on a campaign of this scale: Cheng will directly supervise the lead regional fundraisers, referred to internally as "super regionals." He is said to be considering hiring deputies in the Brooklyn headquarters, but only to help on an operational level.

The eight super regionals will each be based in a different swath of the country. Assignments include the Northeast, Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, Northwest, Southwest, South Central, Southeast, and the Tri-State area around New York. Those fundraisers plan to each oversee deputies assigned to states and cities.

Clinton has also decided against appointing a national finance chair — a role sometimes given to a presidential campaign's biggest booster. (There may be a finance committee, a source said, with members chosen based solely on performance.)

The set-up leaves Cheng to oversee the national picture and the team of super regionals, while also handling relationships with the biggest donors and "bundlers," the high-powered supporters who volunteer to raise money from other donors.

But people who have worked with Cheng say that his controlled and methodical style has made him a well-respected and trusted member of Clinton's world.

"Dennis won't go around and be your drinking buddy. He's a solid guy who you can count on," said Alan Patricof, a longtime Clinton fundraiser. "He's going to run a professional operation and accomplish the objective."

Dennis Cheng, then deputy chief of protocol at the State Department, greets former British Prime Minister Tony Blair before a 2010 meeting with Hillary Clinton.

Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP

Cheng began working for Clinton on her Senate campaign, and in 2008 served as the finance director in New York, her highest-grossing state. After the presidential campaign, Cheng followed Clinton to the State Department, where he served as deputy chief of protocol under Capricia Marshall, a longtime Clinton adviser and a former ambassador.

He was brought into the Clinton Foundation as chief development officer in 2013, a time when the fundraising operation there was badly in need of organization.

Cheng brought a firm hand, leading the drive to raise $250 million for an endowment to sustain the foundation through a possible presidential campaign and for years beyond the Clintons' lifetimes. (Foundation officials are said to be about $2 million away from meeting the endowment goal. They ultimately hope to raise $500 million.)

Cheng left the foundation last month to help prepare for the presidential race. He is no longer involved the organization's fundraising, which has drawn increased scrutiny this year for accepting foreign contributions after Clinton's exit from the State Department.

Because of his long run, and varied roles, in the former first family's orbit, Cheng comes with a better grasp then most of the expansive community of Clinton donors, many of whom bring their own distinct histories, dating back to the early '90s.

"Anyone can look at a list of donors and determine who has done what. That's easy. What Dennis knows is not going to be on any list," said one of the top fundraisers for Clinton's last campaign. "Who lent their plane to Bill Clinton to go to Africa? Who helped them get a singer to perform at a Clinton Foundation gala?"

"That's not on a list. It's institutional memory," said the fundraiser.

Nancy Jacobson, who served as a senior finance adviser on Clinton's last campaign and is married to her former pollster Mark Penn, also described Cheng as most skilled at maintaining relationships with supporters. He will be "deft at making one and all feel important and included in the campaign," said Jacobson.

The campaign is still in the process of hiring across all departments.

Cheng has spent the last month finalizing his team.

The super regionals, according to sources familiar with the hires, include: in the Northeast, Kathy Gasperine, of Obama's policy arm, Organizing for Action; in the Midwest, Marcus Switzer, who worked on Obama's reelection; in the Mid-Atlantic, Angelique Cannon, former finance director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee; in the Northwest, Lindsay Roitman, a fundraiser for Sen. Maria Cantwell; in the Southwest, Stephanie Daily, a fundraiser for Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti; and in the South Central and Southeast, Ouzillou and Adrabi respectively.

Cheng has also hired the New York-based Lisa Hernandez Gioia to oversee the Tri-State area — a move that some fundraisers said shows the continued influence of Huma Abedin, one of Clinton's longest-serving aides. Gioia served on multiple campaigns for Abedin's husband, former congressman Anthony Weiner. The involvement of Cannon, Gasperine, and Gioia was first reported by the New York Times.

Some Democrats said that because there are no senior roles in headquarters, Cheng has had trouble hiring.

Fundraisers interviewed for jobs have also been told that the campaign will not use consultants on the finance team, three sources said. Any who join are required to do so as full-time staff, relinquishing clients or relationships with other firms.

Members of Cheng's team who have already been tapped for roles are now working as an unpaid volunteers, along with other future Clinton staffers, until a launch.

View Entire List ›

“…the tea party, these 80 to 100 folks from the hard right, none from New York, say they hate immigration, they hate immigrants.”

w.soundcloud.com

Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York says the tea party "hates immigrants," adding that Republicans didn't pass the Senate immigration bill in the last Congress because of fear of the tea party.

"If Speaker John Boehner, the leader of the House, put it on the floor today, it would pass," Schumer said on Reaching Out With Gregory Floyd.

Schumer added the tea party "hate immigrants."

"Why doesn't he? Because the tea party, these 80 to 100 folks from the hard right, none from New York, say they hate immigration, they hate immigrants. One person told me in this immigration move, they wouldn't let Albert Einstein come into this country if he wanted to, amazingly enough, and they block it."

The interview was posted by Reaching Out Monday, listing the date as "3-21-2015," but it's unclear when the interview was conducted because the 2014 midterm election is mentioned as an event in the future.

Schumer singled out Rep. Steve King of Iowa as the leader of the tea party.

"Their leader is a guy named Steve King from a rural district in Iowa. He says the most outrageous things about immigrants. He says they are all drug dealers, and this and that and the other stuff. He calls them all kinds of names. And in the Republican Party, even though they the know the right thing to do is pass the immigration reform bill, so afraid of the tea party, that they are doing nothing."

Schumer said not passing immigration reform was "hurting them politically," referring to Republicans. He added, "No Hispanic community is going to vote for them with their attitude but they are still doing it. So I want to get this passed for the good of America, for the good of the 11 million living in the shadows, for the good of the industries and things like that."

Earlier in the interview, Schumer said the immigration bill was supported by those from states with immigrants and largely opposed by "the people who don't have any immigrants. States from Wyoming and stuff like that."

Accidental reply-all: Buckley Carlson says mayor’s spokesperson has “extreme dick-fright” in email she received.

Brendan Hoffman / Getty

WASHINGTON — Daily Caller founder Tucker Carlson's brother Buckley Carlson referred to New York City mayor Bill de Blasio's spokesperson as a "self-righteous bitch" in an email to his brother obtained by BuzzFeed News.

The email appears to have been accidentally sent to de Blasio's spokesperson, Amy Spitalnick, as well as to Tucker Carlson. In the email, Buckley Carlson, who occasionally writes for the Daily Caller, makes several offensive comments about Spitalnick after she asked for a correction on a piece about the mayor:

Great response. Whiny little self-righteous bitch. "Appalling?"
And with such an ironic name, too… Spitalnick? Ironic because you just know she has extreme dick-fright; no chance has this girl ever had a pearl necklace. Spoogeneck? I don't think so. More like LabiaFace.

Spitalnick had reached out to Daily Caller writer Peter Fricke to ask for a correction on a story about de Blasio that claimed the mayor had said that the president's $80 billion transportation proposal was not enough. After a back and forth between Spitalnick, Fricke and editor Christopher Bedford, Bedford told Spitalnick that if she "annoyed" him "with another whiny email before then, I'm muting this thread, thanks," prompting Spitalnick to contact Tucker Carlson directly. He responded to Spitalnick:

Dear Amy,

Thanks for your email. You believe our story was inaccurate and have demanded a correction. Totally fair. We are going over the transcript now.

What Bedford complained about was your tone, which, I have to agree, was whiny and annoying, and I say that in the spirit of helpful correction rather than as a criticism. Outside of New York City, adults generally write polite, cheerful emails to one another, even when asking for corrections. Something to keep in mind the next time you communicate with people who don't live on your island.

Best,

Tucker Carlson

The email sent from Buckley Carlson to his brother and to Spitalnick appears to have been a response to this.

In response to a request for comment from BuzzFeed News, Tucker Carlson said, "I just talked to my brother about his response, and he assures me he meant it in the nicest way."

The story by Fricke, which had been the subject of the email exchange, has been updated.

The full email exchange, capped by Buckley Carlson's comments about Spitalnick:

From: Buckley Carlson
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2015 3:18 PM
To: Tucker Carlson; Spitalnick, Amy (OMB)
Subject: Re: Correction Needed

Great response. Whiny little self-righteous bitch. "Appalling?"
And with such an ironic name, too…Spitalnick? Ironic because you just know she has extreme dick-fright; no chance has this girl ever had a pearl necklace. Spoogeneck? I don't think so. More like LabiaFace.
--
Buckley Carlson
XXX-XXX-XXXX

From: Tucker Carlson
Date: Wednesday, March 25, 2015 2:58 PM
To: "Spitalnick, Amy (OMB)"
Subject: Re: Correction Needed

Dear Amy,

Thanks for your email. You believe our story was inaccurate and have demanded a correction. Totally fair. We are going over the transcript now.

What Bedford complained about was your tone, which, I have to agree, was whiny and annoying, and I say that in the spirit of helpful correction rather than as a criticism. Outside of New York City, adults generally write polite, cheerful emails to one another, even when asking for corrections. Something to keep in mind the next time you communicate with people who don't live on your island.

Best,

Tucker Carlson

On Mar 25, 2015, at 2:38 PM, Spitalnick, Amy (OMB) wrote:

Tucker – it's pretty appalling that this is how your staff chose to respond to us requesting a basic correction (and providing a transcript that directly contradicts the original story).

From: Christopher Bedford
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2015 2:31 PM
To: Spitalnick, Amy (OMB)
Cc: Peter Fricke
Subject: Re: FW: Correction Needed

We're reviewing the video now, Amy. If you annoy me with another whiny email before then, I'm muting this thread, thanks.

On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 2:26 PM, Spitalnick, Amy (OMB) wrote:
This clearly states that we should "follow the president's vision." It is disingenuous at best for you to suggest the mayors were calling for anything else. Please correct the story now.

That's where we should – to question before about [inaudible] – if we really are serious about infrastructure investment, we would follow the president's vision, which is long-term funding and substantially increased funding, and a higher share of [inaudible].

From: Spitalnick, Amy (OMB)
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2015 2:16 PM
To: 'Peter Fricke'
Cc: Christopher Bedford
Subject: RE: FW: Correction Needed

That is simply wrong. Watch the video and you will see the context – and, most importantly, I am telling you now as a mayoral spokesperson that they were highlighting the President's plan as an "ideal reference point" for what the funding should be. So please correct the story now.

From: Peter Fricke
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2015 2:14 PM
To: Spitalnick, Amy (OMB)
Cc: Christopher Bedford
Subject: Re: FW: Correction Needed

Amy,

Based on what is in the transcript, I have to respectfully disagree with your assessment.

The mayor called Obama's plan "an ideal reference point" and talked about "[following] the president's vision," but never said that $80 billion was "adequate."

Indeed, his claim that "we're going to push for the highest number attainable" clearly implies that the mayors would gladly accept an even higher figure. That impression is further reinforced by his response to the question about exact dollar amounts, where he said, "we're all working on that together," indicating that the task force has not endorsed any specific figure.

Cordially,
Peter Fricke

On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 1:51 PM, Spitalnick, Amy (OMB) wrote:
Please correct this ASAP.

http://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/192-15/transcript-mayor-de-blasio-participates-press-conference-transportation-u-s-conference

From: Spitalnick, Amy (OMB)
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2015 1:25 PM
To: peter@dailycallernewsfoundation.org
Subject: Correction Needed

Peter -

Your story on Mayor de Blasio and the USCM is totally inaccurate. The mayors said $50B in flat funding was not enough, and cited the President's $80B proposal as one that boosted funding to adequate levels.

The transcript is on nyc.gov.

The Florida senator has introduced more than 20 amendments to Republican budget that frame big pieces of his foreign (more defense spending, pro-Israel) and domestic policy (school choice, an Obamacare change, middle-class economics) agenda.

Mark Wilson / Getty

WASHINGTON — Sen. Marco Rubio isn't sure if he'll ultimately vote for the Republican budget this week.

That uncertainty will not prevent the Florida senator from introducing at least 20 amendments that closely resemble the hawkish foreign policy and middle-class-focused domestic policy agenda he talked up in stump speeches last year on the trail.

Rubio's amendments cover everything from changes to welfare and school choice (issues he's been talking about around the country for months now) to increasing the defense budget and cutting foreign aid to groups in Palestine "because of these entities' anti-Israel behavior and increasing foreign assistance for missile defense programs in Israel."

The Florida senator seems to be taking an early advantage of the opportunity to get some of his ideas onto the Republicans' budget — in a way other 2016 contenders are not. Sen. Ted Cruz, who launched his presidential bid earlier this week, has been traveling and not yet introduced anything as of Wednesday afternoon. A spokesman for Sen. Rand Paul said no decision had been made on if he'd introduce anything.

Senators often use the amendment process to put up legislation they can hail down the road in campaign ads (or force other senators to make uncomfortable votes).

Even if Rubio gets everything he wants on the budget, though, he wouldn't commit to voting for the final product telling reporters Wednesday he has "concerns about a lot of the ways the numbers add up," and he was continuing to look at them. But even if he doesn't vote for it and some of his amendments will fail, it's an opportunity to lay down a real marker on where his priorities are heading into 2016.

Other amendments Rubio will introduce include one dealing with religious freedom and another to repeal Obamacare's "risk corridors"— again, something Rubio has pushed for over a year. Rubio's first move was to introduce an amendment to increase defense spending along with Sen. Tom Cotton and he spoke on the floor to argue that "defense spending should be driven by the strategy."

"In essence, to put it succinctly, we should not have a strategy that's based on limited resources: 'We're going to have to do the best we can with limited resources,'" Rubio said. "We should first outline a strategy."

The message in the amendment is clear: Rubio wants to been seen as serious about defense and his foreign policy credentials, and show what he plans to do about it. Rubio and Cotton's amendment would boost defense spending to numbers projected by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates in 2012 to $661 billion.

"It increases the funding to the Gates number which is the last time a group of bipartisan experts told us what the defense needs were for our country," Rubio told reporters on Wednesday. "We'll hopefully get a vote on that and see how it plays out."