Debates “will not remain a major cultural point unless the way that the debates are delivered to voters is consistent with how voters are increasingly accustomed to getting their news.”

Win McNamee / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of senior-level political operatives is recommending broad changes to the way the U.S. holds presidential debates, warning that unless the debates become democratized and less dependent on traditional media, they will become increasingly irrelevant.

Formally called the Annenberg Debate Reform Working Group of the University of Pennsylvania, the group recommended a series of core changes to democratizing the debates through a formal process the soliciting of topics, expanding the pool of moderators, and increasing access to the debates through new media.

The group, which met over the course of about a year-and-a-half, included Democratic debate veteran Robert Barnett; Beth Myers, Mitt Romney's senior advisor for Mitt Romney 2012 presidential campaign and SKDK's Anita Dunn, the former White House communications director.

In recent election cycles, both parties have been dissatisfied with the process and rules surrounding the debates.

"We have a fairly old model that we're working from," Dunn said in an interview with BuzzFeed News. "Taking a step back and rethinking all of the pieces of this made sense."

Dunn pointed to one consideration that made sense to change: The cities and sites of the debates are picked well in advance without much credence to who the candidates are. Media has evolved since the glory days of the general election debate in 1960, but by and large, the debates have not changed with it, she said.

The group convened "to explore ways to increase the value and viewership of presidential general election debates, taking into account the ways in which the rise of early voting, the advent of social media, establishment of new media networks, changes in campaign finance, and the increase in the number of independent voters have altered the electoral environment."

All The Donald wants is for the political world to listen to him again. But is it worth a humiliating 2016 defeat?

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"Do you know what trolling is?" I asked Donald Trump.

It was late one January afternoon last year, and we were sitting in a dimly lit den at the billionaire's 17-acre Palm Beach estate. He responded that he was unfamiliar with the term, and at his request I attempted to define it for him. "It's basically saying or doing things just to provoke people," I said, explaining that there were many who considered him a troll because "provocation is your ultimate goal."

Trump bristled at the characterization. "That's not my ultimate goal," he protested. "My ultimate goal is to make this country great again!" But then, he thought about it for a moment. "I do love provoking people," he conceded. "There is truth to that."

We ended up spending a good portion of our interview that afternoon discussing Trump's notorious trolling tactics — how he picks his targets, how he aims to elicit the most hysterical reactions possible, how he is better at this than everyone else. At one point, he briefly swerved toward introspection. "I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, by the way," he confided. But then he corrected course and shrugged. "That's just the nature of me."

On Tuesday, Trump put those natural-born instincts on full display as he glided majestically down the gold-framed escalator in his eponymous Manhattan skyscraper; seized the podium at the head of an atrium packed with more than 100 reporters; and launched into a rambling, hour-long rant on national TV that was studded with incendiary rhetoric aimed squarely at the listeners' viscera.

Every outrageous line that tumbled out of Trump's mouth ricocheted across Twitter, and kept the cameras trained on him for much longer than live TV usually allows. The performance was too irresistible.

Trump on Mexican immigrants: "They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists, and some, I assume, are good people."

Trump on Islamic terrorists: "They've become rich. I'm in competition with them."

Trump on China: "I'm not saying they're stupid. I like China. I just sold an apartment for $15 million. Am I supposed to dislike 'em? ... But their leaders are much smarter than our leaders. And we can't sustain ourselves with that. It's like, take the New England Patriots and Tom Brady and have them play your high school football team."

Bellicose diatribes like these are why Trump is sometimes referred to in political circles as a "carnival barker" — a description President Obama famously used while skewering the right-wing real estate mogul at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner. But the term isn't quite right. In America's electoral circus, Trump doesn't play the part of the fast-talking promoter who entices passersby with "Step right up!" invitations to come see the weird, wondrous, and wild spectacles within. He is, himself, the Bearded Lady. And like any good sideshow attraction, he knows the only way to keep eyeballs on him is to find new tricks intended to shock, rattle, rile, incite, and inflame.

By these standards, his performance at Trump Tower on Tuesday might have seemed like a success — yet another triumph for the celebrity troll who successfully hijacked the day's news cycle. But in this case, it was unclear who, exactly, was trolling whom.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he proclaimed, grandly extending his arm in a sweeping gesture as though unveiling a new line of branded neckties. "I am officially running for president of the United States."

Trump has been publicly teasing the possibility of a political career for about a quarter-century now — constantly claiming that he is on the brink of running for president, only to back out at the last minute after gobbling up thousands of news media man-hours. This scheme proved for years to be a reliable attention magnet for Trump, but by the end of 2012, the political class — having been strung along for months of increasingly ludicrous and toxic partisan showmanship — had largely soured on the charade. Media coverage dwindled. Conservative goodwill evaporated. No one seemed to believe him when he tried stoking 2016 speculation.

Such was the dire state of Trump-mentum when I caught up with him early last year. Even inside the billionaire's bubble of lavish wealth and fawning yes-men serving a steady diet of praise and plaudits, Trump seemed alarmed by his fading political relevance. He was positively starved for validation from the political world, and consumed with a surprising amount of status anxiety.

That's the story I ended up writing.

Suffice it to say, he didn't like it.

What Trump was beginning to realize was that he had backed himself into a corner. The serious attention he craved from political elites was never going to return until he officially uttered the words, "I'm running for president." He had no options left. He had to run. But even now that he's a candidate, the coverage so far has seemed to treat his campaign like something between performance art and outright farce.

There are good reasons for the skepticism. The "financial disclosure" Trump released this week — declaring $9 billion in assets — more closely resembles a dream board than a set of official financial documents. If he actually discloses his tax returns like a credible, real-life candidate, he risks revealing a messier and more modest personal fortune. Not classy.

It is also worth noting that Trump has not yet actually filed the requisite paperwork with the Federal Election Commission that would make his candidacy official. He has 15 days to do so, and a spokesperson promised the New York Times that he would. In the meantime, voters face the possibility of being forced to settle for one of the other 397 candidates who have legally declared.

A liberal blogger even claimed Tuesday night that he recognized a professional actor — posing in a campaign T-shirt — from one of the photos of Trump's kickoff event. I tracked down the actor's name and emailed him requesting comment, but got no response. When I asked a Trump spokesperson whether they had hired actors to fill the event, his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowoski, called back with a roundabout denial. "I recommend you go and do your homework before you write something that's completely factually untrue," he said. "You've tried that already."

Perhaps the most interesting question hovering over Trump's 2016 high-wire act is what kind of net he has installed to catch him when he inevitably finds himself in free fall. Unlike the last election, when an abnormally unappealing collection of candidates and a dissatisfied electorate conspired briefly to land Trump on top of a couple hypothetical polls, his standing in today's race is decidedly unimpressive. One poll in April found that 62% of Republicans would not even consider voting for him. He is viewed less favorably than almost every other contender. Many polls show him sitting at around ninth place in the field.

Last time we spoke, Trump let me in on his wife Melania's theory about his prospects. "She said, 'You know darling, if you ever announce that you're actually running, your polls will go through the roof,'" Trump said. "I think that might be right. A lot of people, they like me but they say, 'I'm not gonna play this game.' Because they think it's a game. It's not a game!" He repeated the rationale a few more times, and he could probably discern my skepticism, because eventually he added, "Pollsters are telling me the same thing. Professional pollsters."

Maybe Melania will end up confounding the data journalists. But if not, Trump may soon find himself in a precarious situation. The entire ethos of his empire is premised on the notion that Donald Trump is a winner, and his critics are irrelevant, jealous, pathetic failures. How would he square that perception with reality if he flames out as a single-digit also-ran in Iowa?

Trump routinely insists that if he had run in 2012, he would be in the Oval Office today. When I was with him, he even argued that Romney would have won if his campaign had made better use of The Donald as a surrogate.

Why didn't they recognize such an obvious path to victory? I asked.

"Stuart Stevens is a loser," Trump shrugged, referring to the campaign's chief strategist. He then mused that Romney was "afraid of me," and claimed the candidate's aides were concerned that next to a dynamic, commanding figure like himself, Mitt "would look secondary, not like a presidential contender."

Trump has been able to make claims like these for the past 25 years because he has never had to test them. Every time he storms onto the national political stage, he makes sure a trap door awaits that will allow him to make a quick, clean exit before the lights get too hot. It has been the most important face-saving mechanism in his political "career." He no longer has it at his disposal.

The Republican presidential candidate’s column ran from 2000 and 2006 and appears to have cut-and-pasted language from sources ranging from the Washington Post to an Arkansas Supreme Court justice’s opinion to a quote from Bill Clinton.

Darren Mccollester / Getty Images

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee appears to have committed plagiarism while governor of Arkansas, cut-and-pasting from an array of sources when writing a weekly column that ran on his official state website.

Huckabee wrote columns between 2000 and 2006 that contain language identical to or closely resembling that in articles by news organizations such as the Associated Press and the Washington Post, the testimony of a state police officer before a House subcommittee, an Arkansas Supreme Court Justice's opinion, a Yale University brochure, and a Clinton Foundation press release, including a quote from Bill Clinton, among other sources.

A Huckabee spokesperson said BuzzFeed News' allegations were not "evidence of plagiarism," but rather "an election year political witch hunt."

Although the columns were written in the first person and sometimes opened with the line, "Hello, this is Gov. Mike Huckabee with this week's comment from my corner of the Capitol," the spokesperson distanced the governor directly from the columns, saying they "were written by communications staff."

The plagiarism in Huckabee's columns, which BuzzFeed News accessed through an archiving service, followed certain patterns. Huckabee often made passing mention of a source, then failed to acknowledge how much of or where the column's diction and structure was taken from.

A column published on April 1, 2000 notes that Colonel Thomas Mars of the Arkansas State Police had recently testified before the House Subcommittee on Crime and suggests that they had a discussion. It does not, however, disclose that much of the preceding narrative, which describes the death of a state trooper and a deputy county sheriff, as well as the dynamics of the meth industry in Arkansas, is taken from Mars' testimony.

He plagiarized the Washington Post in a similar fashion. Huckabee observed that the re-surfacing of ivory-billed woodpecker, previously thought to be extinct, had made the front page of the Post. But later in the May 2005 column, Huckabee does not quote or cite the paper, though some of his lines are verbatim duplicates of lines in the Post's story. "It was about 1 p.m. and overcast," and "It landed on a tree trunk about 60 feet away. Sparling's camera was in a rubber bag on his lap," are sentences that appear in both.

By the same token, in a March 2006 column, Huckabee attributed some statistics to "the Supreme Court" without acknowledging that much of the language in the previous and subsequent paragraphs was the same as that in a March 2000 opinion by Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Robert L. Brown.

"Local funds were collected from the local tax base tied to property values within the districts," Huckabee wrote, changing Brown's "tied to" to "collected from." "School districts with higher property values obviously generated higher local taxes and more money available for education." Where Huckabee wrote 'obviously,' Brown had written 'necessarily.'

On other occasions, Huckabee cited the findings of studies or reports, sometimes explicitly suggesting that he had read them in their original versions, while in fact recycling text from summaries of those studies.

A column Huckabee wrote in August 2003, opens by claiming, "I've recently been reading a number of studies that show that the biggest factor in determining whether young people earn a bachelor's degree from college is a strong academic curriculum in high school." He then summarizes those studies in language that strongly resembled summaries previously published in a report by the Education Commission of the States.

That report's summary of one 1999 study is almost identical to Huckabee's opening sentence. "According to this study the biggest factor in determining whether young people earn a bachelor's degree is participation in a strong academic curriculum in high school," it says.

Sometimes Huckabee seems to have reorganized phrases in which the words themselves are the same or slightly changed the wording while maintaining the same structure. An October 2004 column evinces such tactics, apparently mimicking a Yale brochure advertising the achievements of the Schools of the 21st Century program in Arkansas.

At other times, Huckabee appears to have deployed the straightforward plagiarism technique of simply presenting another person's phrasing as his own with no reference to the source. Examples of this can be found in a column in July 2002, which includes a sentence identical to one in an Associated Press story from just over two week earlier and a June 2004 column that re-states the wording of the employee of a trucking company quoted the month before in the Christian Science Monitor.

Two July 2000 columns also appear to copy lines and quotes from an April 2000 Business Wire report. On July 1, Huckabee appropriated the claim of the CEO of the Delta Enterprise Corporation, quoted in Business Wire, that, "If the gap between the Delta and other regions is going to close, we must complement manufacturing recruiting with investments in technology, health services and other promising sectors of our economy. There's not a single solution or a simple one."

Finally, Huckabee wrote a May 2006 column with language first seen in a press release by the Clinton Foundation.

The column and press release described an initiative in which Huckabee was involved in his capacity as a leader of an organization called the Alliance for a Healthier Generation. It is unclear if his staff issued a press releases to match the Clinton Foundation's, but regardless, there is one glaring overlap between Huckabee's column and the press release.

In one paragraph, Huckabee cites a quote by former President Bill Clinton, who called what the governor describes as "new guidelines to combat childhood obesity" and "a bold step forward in the struggle to help America's kids live healthier lives."

Huckabee then takes credit for the ensuing words of praise for leaders of the beverage companies that helped craft the guidelines.

"I commend them for taking this important step," he wrote on May 10, 2006. "There is a lot of work to be done to turn this problem around but this is a big step in the right direction and it will help improve the diet of millions of students across the country."

Compare this to Clinton's quote in the press release, published on May 3: "I commend them for being here today and for taking this important step. There is a lot of work to be done to turn this problem around but this is a big step in the right direction and it will help improve the diet of millions of students across the country."

"If you look at the data and care to check the facts, you will find no evidence of plagiarism, but you will find evidence of an election year political witch hunt. During Governor Huckabee's tenure in Arkansas, the weekly columns and weekly radio addresses were written by communications staff and the sources were numerous. They frequently cited agencies and cabinet members who were more than happy to provide the information; often times the content originated from conversations with the governor himself. The communications office was often encouraged to use data and information that was provided through Gov. Huckabee's service as Chairman of the Council of State Governments and Chairman of the Education Commission of the States."

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Bush campaigning in Iowa.

Rosie Gray/BuzzFeed

WASHINGTON, Iowa — Jeb Bush wasn't totally opposed to the idea of transgender people openly serving in the military when asked about it during a campaign stop in Iowa on Wednesday.

Speaking to reporters after a backyard gathering in the small town of Washington where he took questions from audience members, Bush said that without knowing the specifics, he didn't see a problem with transgender people in the armed forces, though it would depend on the role.

"I’m sure there’s a role for everybody to play in the armed forces," Bush said in response to a question from BuzzFeed News. "I think it would depend on the role, the specific role, whether it’s appropriate or not."

"The first priority for the military is to create an environment where the morale’s high, where people are trained, and we have the best fighting force. And if you can accommodate that in that kind of environment, I don’t think there’s a problem for it. But I don’t know anything — I have no knowledge of the specifics of that," he said, referring to a story by BuzzFeed News' Chris Geidner about the first out transgender military officer who is active duty in the Army, Jamie Lee Henry.

Henry, a major in the Army's Medical Corps, was recently granted permission by the Army to officially change her name and gender. The policy has been that out trans people cannot serve, but there have been signs that the policy is changing, Henry's case being foremost among them. "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the policy against out gay people serving in the military, was repealed after 17 years in 2010.

Bush took several other questions from reporters, and even stayed longer after his press aide tried to end his media availability. He took five or six questions during the event itself, ranging from religious freedom to immigration reform. After months of quasi-campaigning, Bush announced his candidacy in Miami on Monday and is in the midst of his announcement tour through the early primary states.

Carson made the comparison at the Maryland Right to Life banquet in 2012.

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In a 2012 speech at a pro-life banquet, Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson compared abortion to slavery and said those in the pro-life movement are similar to the abolitionists.

"I wasn't always (pro-life). You know I was a live and let live type of individual," the retired neurosurgeon said in a clip from his speech available on YouTube.

Carson said he used to think it was a "reasonable approach" to focus only on his own self-interests and let others do what they wanted until he "started thinking about a particular episode in the history of this nation, called slavery."

"The slave owners felt that they should be able to do whatever they wanted to do. And there were some people who were not slave owners who said 'uhh you can do what you want to do, but I don't, I think it's unethical, I wouldn't do it.''

"And then there were the abolitionists, who said not only will they not do it, but it is such an evil that they want to make sure that it is rooted out of our nation," he said. "And uh, I started seeing the similarities there."

"Because you see, many people believe that if there is a baby and it is in my uterus, my uterus, then I can do anything I want with it," Carson said.

Carson continued, saying, "the good lord put that fetus in supposedly the safest place it can possibly be on Earth."

"And does that convey the right to terminate it? It doesn't convey that right anymore than a slave owner had the right to terminate a slave. Some of them thought that they did have the right to do that, but fortunately our thinking on that issue evolved and it gives me hope that hopefully our thinking on this issue will evolve as well as we begin to actually think about the importance of life."

Carson's comments are similar to those made in the past by other pro-life politicians, including fellow Republican presidential candidates Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum.

“I actually think this is how campaigns are going to be won in the future. It’s not about creating a 30-second ad and putting it up on Fox. It’s about getting information online and making the narrative go viral.”

Charles Dharapak / AP

As Spencer Zwick tried to figure out where to take his talents for the 2016 election, he kept thinking back to a key moment in Mitt Romney's last presidential race.

"I remember distinctly having Gov. Romney become the nominee, and turning that corner only to have Barack Obama standing there, completely fresh, ready to attack us," recalled Zwick, who served as the campaign's finance director. "He was an incumbent president who had not been held accountable in a primary battle. That was a defining moment of the 2012 campaign."

Zwick, a 35-year-old loyalist who has worked for Romney since he was in college, was too polite to identify the most damaging blow the candidate endured at that stage of the race: The emergence of the 47 percent video. But even if Zwick doesn't want to talk about the episode, his surprising new job suggests the experience looms large in his memory.

The heavily-courted architect of the most successful fundraising operation in GOP presidential campaign history, Zwick announced Wednesday he will chair America Rising PAC, the rapidly growing opposition research firm with plans to bury Hillary Clinton beneath a mountain of freshly dug dirt this election cycle. The two-year-old firm specializes in excavating unsavory elements from Democrats' backgrounds and records, as well as capturing unsavory moments on the campaign trail with an army of camera-wielding "trackers." They then peddle their intel to news outlets, or hand them over to Republican campaigns.

In his first interview since announcing the position, Zwick told BuzzFeed News America Rising's mission was more vital than ever in 2016.

"I think Sec. Clinton and her campaign are hopeful that they can not have to deal with a primary, and she can become the nominee without her record being exposed," he said. "This is a person who has shown herself to be untrustworthy and, frankly, incompetent. If the Democrats are going to put her up, which I think they are, we can't let the Republicans run against essentially an incumbent. I think there's plenty of opportunity to make her record clear."

As the gatekeeper of Romney's vast donor network, Zwick has been seen as a hot commodity in Republican campaign circles. Literally minutes after Romney officially bowed out of the 2016 race in January — thus freeing his aides to pursue other jobs — Zwick began receiving phone calls from campaigns who wanted to bring him aboard. He said he thought about signing on with one of the candidates, but ultimately decided he could do more good for the party by spending the primaries prosecuting Clinton.

Zwick will continue to work at his private equity firm, while serving at America Rising on a volunteer basis. He credits Matt Rhoades, whom he worked with on the Romney campaign, with building the firm into a cutting-edge operation that is hastening the demise of the old methods of political communication.

"I actually think this is how campaigns are going to be won in the future," Zwick said. "It's not about creating a 30-second ad and putting it up on Fox. It's about getting information online and making the narrative go viral."

For him, the new model is a no-brainer. Virtually no money is wasted on distribution, or the complex process of buying airtime in different media markets. When America Rising has a scoop or a bit of information it thinks could do damage, its employees simply select the best platform for the given story, and then click send.

"I can't remember the last time I sat down and watched cable news, along with all the ads, uninterrupted," Zwick said. "But on a routine basis, I'm on the Daily Mail app. I'm on the BuzzFeed app. We all get our news so differently now, and as a result, I think the way we choose our candidates is different."

Zwick, whose responsibilities will include stocking the research firm's financial war chest, said his hope is that America Rising will be able to supply the eventual GOP nominee with a trove of damaging material on Clinton. And he doesn't foresee any problem raising the necessary cash to fund the sort of operation they envision.

"If I can think of one unifying message the Republican donor base has right now, it's, 'We want to win,'" he said. "I share that view."

If Clinton has her own "47 percent" moment this cycle, Zwick is determined to ensure that America Rising will be there, cameras in hand.

A letter from the FDA explains that the shipment would be illegal. The Nebraska Department of Correctional Services expects the drug to arrive sometime in the next week.

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts address the Legislature, which recently abolished the death penalty.

Nati Harnik / AP

Nebraska's next shipment of execution drugs may never arrive. That's because the drugs are from a foreign supplier and the U.S. government is prepared to seize them.

The state, in fact, should be expecting this.

Earlier this year, Nebraska approached Chris Harris, a small supplier in India who has sold drugs to the state before, to sell massive amounts of sodium thiopental so the state could execute the 10 people remaining on its death row.

"Please give me a call when you have time to discuss," Nebraska Corrections Director Scott Frakes recently wrote to the would-be supplier of the state's execution drugs.

His email contained an attachment: a 2013 court ruling that spells out that the drugs the state spent more than $50,000 on would not be allowed into the United States.

Nebraska Department of Correctional Services

The drugs aren't approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and the court ruling that Frakes attached makes it clear that the FDA has no choice but to seize the drugs when they come to the states.

The shipment, enough for hundreds of lethal injections, is expected to arrive any day now, according to public records and emails obtained by BuzzFeed News.

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Right to Rise PAC says its raised $17 million in the New York-area so far, and its July fundraising report will give Jeb Bush’s opponents a “heart attacks.”

ANDREW PATRON / Getty Images

The super PAC tied to Republican presidential candidate and former governor of Florida Jeb Bush has raised $17 million so far in the New York-area alone, according to a conference call between the super PAC officials and donors on Wednesday.

Mike Murphy, the longtime Jeb Bush confidant and consultant who is heading the Right to Rise super PAC, told a group of donors on a conference call Wednesday that they had so far raised $17 million in the Tri-State area to support Bush's campaign for the presidency.

Telling the donors on the call they were "killers" who he was going to "set loose," Murphy said the number the SuperPAC would be filing by the next July reporting deadline would give opponents "heart attacks" and discourage their rivals' donors from opening their wallets.

"We set out six months ago with the goal of just under $19 million or so in the Tri-State area, and are obviously happy to report that, thanks to you on the call, we raised just north of $17 million," Mason Fink, the finance director for the Super PAC, told those on the donor call.

An anonymous person close to the superPAC told Politico they were likely to raise more than $100 million by July, people close to the operation then told the Washington Post this was unlikely to happen.

"This organization is going to break records with what's happened in the last six or seven months," Murphy added. "You guys get the credit. It's been a incredible, terrific effort."

"So I can tell you, we are excited," Murphy continued. "And, just keep doing what you're doing. And I keep coming back to this pitch, because, like any ad guy, I believe in repetition: Any extra buck you can give before June 30 is a weapon for us, in that report when we give some heart attacks to people in July. It'll effect some of their decisions, it'll bum out their donors, and it'll hurt their money, which cuts off their oxygen, and frankly we want to choke 'em all out. So, um, you're killers -- I'm gonna turn you guys loose to that mission."

Murphy said he thought Bush had gotten "a wonderful press boost" from the announcement but had previously been getting some "rocky process press, which is kind of the business of the insider world." Murphy added the announcement was "a day one home run."

"I predict that six or seven days from now we'll see a lift in the polls," Murphy said, adding that early polls were meaningless.

"We are very, very focused on the next two weeks," Murphy said. "That's because the report, as you all know, will become public in July for what we've raised until the end of June. We want to weaponize our number. The press has set a very high expectation, much higher than we would have set for ourselves, but that's the way it works. So we want to hit the biggest possible number for the Super PAC."

"So any marginal dollars we've raised in the next ten days, really have a leveraged effect, a multiplier effect, because the impact when our report comes out will be compared to others and we want to maximize our crushing advantage there as a sign of strength," he continued.

Murphy noted that he "can't coordinate any more" with the campaign, but said he was "well-informed as of a week ago."

Murphy said Bush's message would focus on three things: how to "make this country an economic superpower again..." that Bush wants "blow up the machine in Washington," and "the world is more chaotic than ever, we need an experienced president, who's had the life training to make our country safer, in a world that's become more unstable."

Murphy said the campaign was "really trying to get a lot of retail done in the summer period." He said that Bush would do "a pretty aggressive mix" of retail and fundraising, but "we can't lose those retail days, particularly in New Hampshire."

"The summer is where you start to really plant your grip on the state," Murphy told the donors on the call, even though "it doesn't pay off until the end of the year."

"We at the super PAC know the power of cash," Murphy said. "Some of you down in Miami when I did that presentation — we're very much into husbanding our cash until the end of the year, to be able to really have muscle in the first quarter. That said, we're going to do a few frugal, highly-targeted things to help boost the governor's narrative over the summer, to support his travels."

Murphy also said the super PAC would focus on positive messaging.

"One of the neat things about Right to Rise, and one of the new ideas that, you know, the governor had — he's such an innovator — is we're going to be the first super Pac to really be able to do just positive advertising, to tell his story, which is the missing ingredient right now," Murphy said. "And we have the dollars, thanks to you guys, and we actually were able to do some filming before the wall went down, so we can do excellent creative. We have some incredible stuff in the can that we shot with the governor. So we're going to be able to — starting with digital, but expanding to advertising — start to tell that story, to amplify his [inaudible] this summer and particularly right afterward."

He added a website was going up for the Super PAC "probably Friday."

As Oklahoma’s death-row inmates await word on whether the state’s execution procedure is constitutional, states — including Oklahoma — maintain strong laws protecting disclosure of information about the way they implement the death penalty.

Last year, an Oklahoma inmate sat on a gurney for 43 minutes while the drugs that were supposed to course swiftly through his body and kill him failed to do so.

Any day now, the Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision in a case on whether Oklahoma's death penalty protocol is constitutional, a case filed in the aftermath of that botched execution, many of the details of which still remain shrouded in secrecy. How the Supreme Court will decide — how narrowly or broadly or whether they will issue an opinion at all — is unknown.

One thing is clear, however, in Oklahoma and elsewhere: The way people are executed in America is increasingly done in secret.

The identities of the actual executioners have been secret for a long time. But in recent years, states have extended that same secrecy to the very drugs used to kill people — where they're purchased, how they're purchased, and how they're prepared and administered.

Death penalty lawyers argue the secrecy means they don't find out about many of the problems until something goes wrong. But even in those cases, investigations are done by the state itself, shielding an unknown amount of that information — beyond what the state releases — from public disclosure.

Lockett's execution took place more than a year ago, yet reporters in Oklahoma are still waiting for Gov. Mary Fallin's office to turn over emails and records from that night. Eventually Ziva Branstetter, a journalist now with the Tulsa Frontier, had little choice but to sue for the documents in December of last year.

Fallin has attempted to delay the suit — arguing that, although her office hasn't turned over the records, she hasn't formally denied the request either. Fallin's office claimed in court that absent a formal denial, the courts couldn't weigh in.

The response from Fallin isn't an anomaly, either. Her office has stopped responding to emails about a BuzzFeed News open records request from months ago.

In a statement, a Fallin spokesperson said the governor was committed to transparency.

"It is an extremely time-consuming process," Alex Weintz said. "And, since our office gets many Open Records requests, it can take a while to receive documents in response to a request."

The situation in Oklahoma isn't unusual.

"Departments of Corrections have realized that the more information they provide, the more it reveals how little they know," said Deborah Denno, a law professor who has followed the death penalty for decades.

"It's always been there, but now it's becoming more pronounced. The only time we really find out what's going on is when something goes wrong and we have a really badly botched execution."

The secrecy has also provided cover when things go wrong. That's how it has played out in Georgia after state officials had to halt an impending execution after finding particles floating in the syringe.

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It could come Thursday, or next week, or the week after that. Breathe — and don’t listen to anyone who tells you they know exactly when it’s going to happen.

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The anticipation for the Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges — the lead case before the court about same-sex couples' marriage rights — is high.

I know because people are asking me when the decision is coming down by every possible means of communication.

The questions at issue — debated out at oral arguments in April — are important: Can states ban same-sex couples from marrying, and can they refuse to recognize same-sex couples' marriages granted elsewhere?

So, to help everyone avoid the Twitter direct messages, Facebook messages, and texts, here is what we know — and don't know.

Early on, the questions started out nicely enough:

The answer to that is that we do not know. The Supreme Court, unlike some courts, does not give advance notice of what decisions are coming on what days. Instead, we only know — going into a given day — that the Supreme Court plans to issue one or more decisions on that day.

As SCOTUSblog puts it for this week's remaining opinion day: "We expect one or more opinions at 10 a.m. on Thursday."

The court generally issues all decisions for the term before the Fourth of July holiday, and usually by the end of June. However, if the court starts releasing the remaining 17 decisions slowly, expect rumors about "going into July" to begin in earnest. (Although rumors of going into July happen not irregularly, this has not actually happened since 1996.)

Beyond that, what else do we know?

It is true that the court saves some of its biggest cases for last — as detailed, statistically, in a recent law review article.

As such, expect marriage and the case challenging the availability of Obamacare subsidies to those purchasing insurance on the federal exchange to come toward the very end of the term. More than that, it seems most likely that the marriage cases — for which the justices released the audio on the same day as the arguments were held, the only case this term for which they did that — will come on the last day of decisions.

With 17 cases remaining for decision, many expect that — in addition to having decisions the week of June 22 — the court will finish issuing its decisions this term in the week of June 29.

That said, we don't know that! The justices could announce decisions in five cases tomorrow, for example, and then announce that, in addition to June 22, that there will be decisions issued on two other days next week. They could then issue four decisions each day — or five on Monday, four on another day, and three on the last day — and be done with it. We don't know!

Which brings us to the next issue: The court's practice of "adding" decision days. At the start of this month, the Supreme Court's calendar only had listed decision days on the Mondays of the month.

The court, however, regularly adds decision days to the weeks in June — and it has done so for this week, with Thursday.

But, that "unexpected" addition of the day — the Supreme Court's website merely says, "The Supreme Court has added a non-argument session for the announcement of opinions on Thursday, June 18, 2015, at 10 a.m." — has led to confusion and speculation for those unaware of the court's general practice of adding days in June.

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In Nevada for his first visit since Jeb Bush’s announcement, his son George P. said the contrast couldn’t be greater in the race and he wouldn’t be like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Bush will need 10,000 supporters in the Nevada Caucus, he said.

Courtesy Jeb Bush campaign

LAS VEGAS — George P. Bush, son of Jeb Bush, took his first campaign trip for his father on Wednesday — to Nevada, underscoring the importance of the caucus state and planting a flag where his cowboy boots and belt play well.

Speaking inside Mundo Mexican restaurant on a 106-degree day, and flanked by aquamarine chairs, Bush avoided other Republicans and focused keenly on linking Hillary Clinton to the president.

"Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama think the government should decide your health care," Bush said. "My dad thinks you and your doctor should make your health care decisions. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama think the solutions are in Washington, D.C. My dad believes our problems are in Washington, D.C."

Bush, who holds elected office in Texas and is likely to be a top surrogate for his father, called on supporters to go to the caucuses and roll up their sleeves to work with him — and said the campaign will need 10,000 supporters in the caucus state.

Taking questions from supporters afterwards, Bush was confronted by a woman in a red, white, and blue American flag blouse named Bonnie McDaniel, who took issue with an answer his dad gave her about the trade deal a few weeks back when he visited the state. She said he told her she didn't need to worry about it because it hadn't been voted on yet.

"Is your dad going to continue to not tell us what's going on, and be like Hillary and Barack and keep us in the dark, wanting us to be stupid?" she asked Bush.

Seeming to not fully understand or hear her question, Bush said he was surprised his dad would be rude to her and moved on.

Jeb Bush has written in support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Asian trade deal that Obama is negotiating that has become a source of significant intra-party contention for Democrats, and criticized Clinton for not backing free trade publicly.

After a couple other questions, the owner of Mundo restaurant, George Harris, took the microphone and said he did personal business with Jeb Bush and got turned down for the deal, and he didn't care, he was still at the event because Bush is a good man.

"Shame on you for saying he's not a good man," Harris said to McDaniel, also clearly not quite understanding what she had said.

Speaking to BuzzFeed News after the event, McDaniel, 69, who is retired but has a business card for her travel agency, which calls her a "master cruise counselor," said she has been a Las Vegas resident since 1960 and just wanted to ask him, "Is your dad going to tell us the truth?"

Besides the awkward interaction, the mood inside the restaurant, which bills itself as "a culinary haute spot" was celebratory.

Sandy Colón-Peltyn, the director of the Las Vegas Latin Chamber of Commerce said in Spanish that it was an honor to have George P. in their state. "It's an honor that you guys would take your first trip here after your father declared," she said, adding in English to the crowd, "Don't you think it's a privilege that the first trip the Bushes made is to Nevada?

Jeb Bush plans to make a major play for Latino voters in his campaign, which may not come into play early in the primary but could give him an advantage if he makes it to the general election. His son made the rounds on Wednesday: While in the state, Bush also met with Young Republicans and county Republicans in Reno, as well as a Republican Women luncheon there.

Mark Alden, the former regent of the University of Nevada, said he has known the Bush family for over three decades.

"Your dad knows more about higher ed than I do," Alden told Bush, adding that he admired his father's political style of "not attacking the opponent but attacking the policies," to applause from the crowd.

"What a great family," he concluded, before passing the microphone.

George P. Bush said during the last seven years Obama has taken the "country from the top of the world to a malaise — externally and internally," but running through his father's record as governor of Florida, he said that would change if he is elected.

It was clear that most in the crowd agreed.

After McDaniel's question, one man in the back of the crowd yelled, "All I have to say is good times are here again!"

Via Twitter: @JebBush

LINK: This Is How Jeb Bush Plans To Reach Out To Latino Voters

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In a 5–4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Texas’ speciality license plates are government speech, and the state can reject a proposal featuring the Confederate flag.

Mark Wilson / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court upheld Texas' rejection of a specialty license plate proposal that featured the Confederate flag, ruling Thursday that it was not a violation of free speech rights.

In a 5–4 decision, the court ruled that Texas' speciality vehicle license plates constitute government speech, and the state was therefore within its rights to refuse an application by the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

In a rare move, Justice Clarence Thomas joined the four liberal justices in the majority opinion, which was written by Justice Stephen Breyer.

The Supreme Court had accepted the case after the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals held that such specialty plates are private speech.

"Texas license plates are, essentially, government IDs," Breyer wrote for the court, in deciding the 5th Circuit was wrong as to whether specialty plates are government speech. "And issuers of ID 'typically do not permit' the placement on their IDs of 'message[s] with which they do not wish to be associated.'"

Although the Sons of Confederate Veterans had argued that such specialty plates were not actually government speech but were, instead, an example of the state opening up a forum for private speech, the court rejected that — calling such an argument "misplaced here."

Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Scalia and Anthony Kennedy, would have found Texas' rejection of the proposed specialty plates to be an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment.

Here's the Sons of Confederate Veterans' proposed license plate:

Supreme Court of the United States / Via supremecourt.gov

LINK: Read the full decision here.

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The town of Gilbert, Arizona, limited the size of “temporary directional signs” for nonprofit groups. A small church sued the town — and won on Thursday at the Supreme Court.

Mark Wilson / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Towns cannot limit signs posted by nonprofit groups — like churches — giving people directions to their event differently than they treat political and ideological signs without a compelling reason, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday.

The Town of Gilbert, Arizona — which did so in limiting "temporary directional signs" posted by the Good News Community Church more than it would limit political candidates' signs — showed no compelling reason for the distinction.

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Gilbert's treatment of such directional signs was unconstitutional.

In the Supreme Court's decision, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, he found that "[t]he Town's Sign Code is content based on its face." Under the First Amendment, content-based restrictions are only allowed if they advance a compelling state interest.

Although Gilbert officials claimed that they had not implemented the regulation to discriminate, the court shot that claim down, with Thomas writing, "Innocent motives do not eliminate the danger of censorship presented by a facially content-based statute, as future government officials may one day wield such statutes to suppress disfavored speech."

Gilbert, the court ruled, showed no compelling interest in treating signs like those posted by Good News Community Church differently, and it struck down the town's sign code.

Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, joined the opinion striking down the town's sign code — but believed the court did not need to reach the issue of whether strict scrutiny should be applied to challenges to such codes.

Kagan warned that Thursday's decision could result in the court becoming "a veritable Supreme Board of Sign Review."

They both start with the letter E.

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The Supreme Court ruled that a Louisiana court “unreasonably” found that a condemned man with an IQ of 75 wasn’t entitled to a hearing on his mental capabilities.

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The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a Louisiana judge "unreasonably" denied a death row inmate a hearing to determine if he has an intellectual disability that would prevent him from being executed.

In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled that our "evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society" prohibits executing those with intellectual disabilities.

Kevan Brumfield pointed to evidence that his IQ is 75, "had a fourth-grade reading level, had been prescribed numerous medications and treated at psychiatric hospitals as a child, had been identified as having a learning disability, and had been placed in special education classes."

At the time of his original trial, those with intellectual disabilities were still permitted to be executed.

Not every death row inmate has a hearing on their mental capabilities. In order to get a hearing on the issue, the condemned inmate has to raise "reasonable doubt" about the person's intellectual capacity. A Louisiana court decided that Brumfield didn't meet the requirements for a hearing to examine his mental capabilities, but the Supreme Court on Thursday called that finding "unreasonable."

"It is critical to remember, however, that in seeking an evidentiary hearing, Brumfield was not obligated to show that he was intellectually disabled, or even that he would likely be able to prove as much," Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the court. "Rather, Brumfield needed only to raise a "reasonable doubt" as to his intellectual disability to be entitled to an evidentiary hearing."

She was joined by the other more liberal justices, as well as Justice Anthony Kennedy, who often is the swing vote on cases involving the death penalty.

Justice Clarence Thomas and three more conservative justices dissented — arguing that the evidence of an intellectual disability is just evidence of behavioral problems.

"The majority places special weight on Brumfield's placement in 'special education' classes," Thomas wrote, "but the record explains that he was placed in behavioral disorder classes not because he had a low capacity to learn, but because he had a high capacity to make trouble."

Thomas also accused other justices of glossing over the heinousness of Brumfield's crime. "Given that the majority devotes a single sentence to a description of the crime for which a Louisiana jury sentenced Brumfield to death, I begin there," he wrote — detailing Brumfield's murder of Louisiana police officer Betty Smothers and the aftermath faced by her son.

Sotomayor addressed the critique in her closing. "We do not deny that Brumfield's crimes were terrible, causing untold pain for the victims and their families," she responded. "But we are called upon today to resolve a different issue — whether Brumfield cleared [federal law's] procedural hurdles, and was thus entitled to a hearing to show that he so lacked the capacity for self-determination that it would violate the Eighth Amendment" to allow his execution.

The court on Thursday decided that Brumfield had cleared those hurdles — sending the case back to the lower courts for a hearing on his intellectual disability claim.

Chris Geidner contributed to this report.

“She’s a Marxist,” the Republican presidential candidate said in 2012 of the not-yet-elected Democratic senator.

Keith Srakocic / AP

During a 2012 meet and greet in South Carolina, Rick Santorum called then-Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren "a Marxist."

The former senator from Pennsylvania made the comments in October 2012, just days before Warren would be elected senator of Massachusetts. Santorum, who is running for president again this year, was talking about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, formed under the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010 and originally proposed by Warren as a Harvard Law Professor in 2007.

"There's a brand new bureaucracy, which is the Consumer Protection Bureau, CFB, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or something. Branded. Not funded by Congress. They set it up as an independent agency, funded through the Fed. Not by Congress," he explained. "And accountable to nobody, except the president. So there's no accountability. And this is the thing set up by this woman, created by this woman named Elizabeth Warren, who, uh, who is a Marxist."

"She's a Marxist," he said. "And believes that the federal government should basically be able to tell the marketplace what products they should offer to certain groups of people dependent on their financial condition. And that government knows best. And they are gonna regulate the living daylights out of consumer credit. It's, uh, it's a scary thing."

Here is the clip:

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And here's the full video:

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“Barack Obama is not a terrible president because he was a senator. Barack Obama’s a terrible president because he’s a radical ideologue. He’s an unmitigated socialist who has dramatically weakened America’s role in the world.”

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KOTV

In an interview with Oklahoma's KOTV Sunday, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz called President Obama "a radical ideologue" and "an unmitigated socialist who has dramatically weakened America's role in the world."

The senator from Texas made the remarks in response to a question about his rivals Rick Perry and Scott Walker arguing that the Republican nominee in 2016 should be a governor with executive experience, rather than a senator like Cruz.

"Barack Obama is not a terrible president because he's a senator," Cruz replied.

"Barack Obama is a terrible president because he's a radical ideologue. He's an unmitigated socialist who has dramatically weakened America's role in the world."

Earlier in the interview, Cruz sharply criticized President Obama's approach to fighting ISIS in Iraq.

"Unfortunately, we just saw in recent days President Obama admit yet again that he doesn't have a strategy to deal with ISIS," Cruz said.

"We need to use overwhelming air power to take out the leaders of ISIS, and we need to be arming the Kurds," he continued. "The Obama administration refuses to fund the Kurds, to let them kill ISIS leaders."

America needs "leadership at the top," Cruz argued, "that makes clear, across the world, that if you go and join ISIS you're signing your death certificate."

Asked if he would support American boots on the ground, however, Cruz said the military advice he is getting is to employ "overwhelming air power."

"The military advice I'm getting right now is that what we should be employing is overwhelming air power, not pinprick strikes," Cruz replied. "The problem is, right now what we're seeing is photo-op foreign policy."

"One of the simplest principles of history," Cruz added, "is that bullies and tyrants don't respect weakness, that appeasement doesn't work."

Here's the full interview:

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KOTV

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Which woman in U.S. history could the Treasury Department pick who’s most likely to produce videos of people lighting $10 bills on fire?

As you know by now, in 2020, the United States will put a woman on the $10 bill.

Why the Treasury Department is altering the $10, which features the father of the American financial system, rather than the $20, which features the administrator of the Trail of Tears, is unclear.

But it doesn't matter, because they are, and here are the rules:

1. A woman's getting added to the $10.
2. Alexander Hamilton is staying on the bill.
3. The government does not put living people on money.

They didn't really give details on how exactly this will work. Presumably, the woman will go on the front of the new bill, and Hamilton will go on the back or in a watermark, but who knows, maybe the disembodied heads of Alexander Hamilton, Margaret Sanger, and Ayn Rand will float, side-by-side, like an ABBA album.

Again, it's unclear.

All we know is that Hamilton's staying, and a woman's joining him there, and they're going to pull that off somehow.

1. Betsy Ross stitching a portrait of herself stitching a portrait of Alexander Hamilton.

2. Jackie Kennedy, smirking confidently, on a sofa next to a bust of Alexander Hamilton, festooned with a string of pearls and her hat, perched at a jaunty angle.

3. Eleanor Roosevelt sitting on Alexander Hamilton's shoulders at Bonnaroo.

4. Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth Cady Stanton on a jet ski with an American flag on the back, which then turns into a watermark on the bill.

5. Front of the bill: Edith Wharton behind the wheel of a car, as pictured through the windshield. Back of the bill: Hamilton, in the car behind, as seen in her rear view — with Wharton's arched eyebrow visible in the mirror, as well.

6. Clara Barton, Alexander Hamilton, and Grandma Moses sitting through a really torturous HR seminar on sexual harassment.

7. The end of Return of the Jedi, wherein Anakin, Yoda, and Obi-Wan are joined by Alexander Hamilton and Rosa Parks.

8. Helen Keller and Alexander Hamilton dressed up in a couple's Halloween costume, but, whimsically, the gender roles are reversed; for instance, Keller is a fireman, and Hamilton is the dalmatian.

9. Betty Friedan holding the severed head of Alexander Hamilton.

10. Emily Dickinson and Alexander Hamilton, together and yet alone and desolate, at one end of a bar as others boisterously celebrate New Years behind them.

11. Alexander Hamilton, Sacagawea, and Georgia O'Keeffe smoking on a curb at 2 a.m.

12. Alexander Hamilton and his mistress.

Clinton, speaking at a conference of Latino elected officials, also made the case for preschool as part of her pitch to Latino voters.

David Goldman / AP

LAS VEGAS — Calling it a "massacre" that broke her heart, Hillary Clinton said the country must be honest with itself and face hard truths about race, violence, and guns during her remarks at the NALEO conference of Latino elected officials on Thursday.

"How many innocent people in our country, little children, church members, movie theater attendees, how many people do we need to see cut down before we act?" she said.

Clinton visited a technical school in Charleston, South Carolina, on Wednesday and said she felt great about the city and country after meeting the students. But when she arrived in Las Vegas, she heard about the church shooting, in which nine black worshipers were killed while praying by a lone gunman, and said the shock and pain of the crime strikes deep.

She invoked Martin Luther King Jr., who after the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church 50 years ago, told the victim's families "you do not walk alone."

"Today we say to the families of Mother Emanuel and people of Charleston, 'You do not walk alone.' Millions of Americans regardless of race, creed, and religion are walking with you in grief, solidarity, and determination," she said. "We will not forsake those who have been victimized by gun violence; this time we have to find answers together."

Returning to the state where she made detailed comments on immigration policy, Clinton also spoke about the issue and early-childhood education — which she argued is even more important because Latino children disproportionately do not receive preschool education.

Clinton has embraced a more liberal campaign than many expected early on and Latino voters are a big part of that calculation. During her previous visit to Nevada, Clinton tacked hard to the left on immigration, calling for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, and telling a roundtable of DREAMers that she would pursue executive action if Congress once again does not pass legislation.

She said she will fight any effort to deport DREAMers, but received the loudest cheer of the day on Thursday when she reiterated her pledge to do executive action on her own.

"If Congress continues to refuse to act, as president I will do everything possible under the law to go even further than President Obama has attempted to do," she said of the president's administrative actions, which are held up in court.

Clinton was the second presidential candidate to address the group of Latino elected officials, after Ben Carson did Wednesday afternoon. Bernie Sanders will be addressing the convention Friday. No other Republican candidates attended the event, with many citing scheduling conflicts.

Clinton's campaign has made a number of high-profile Latino hires, like National Political Director Amanda Renteria and Emmy Ruiz and Jorge Neri, the duo that helped Obama get 70% of the Latino vote in Nevada in 2012.

On Wednesday, overlooking Las Vegas from the 22nd floor at the Aria Resort, Renteria spoke to a fundraiser for the Latino Victory Project, a Democratic fundraising effort. The audience included DNC's Henry Muñoz, California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, and Rep. Loretta Sanchez, who is also running for U.S. Senate against California Attorney General Kamala Harris.

She spoke about how important Nevada is for Clinton and singled out Ruiz, the state director, to cheers from the donors and elected officials.

On Thursday, Clinton said she has known DREAMers throughout her life, even before the term for undocumented youth brought to the country as children existed, and said she was taking a stand "right here and right now" against divisive rhetoric about immigrants.

"Immigrants who came here without papers but came here with a burning desire to make the most out of their God-given potential," she said. "So many people like the parents of DREAMers who deserve a chance to stay and I will fight for them, too."

Courts may “be required” — at another time, in another case — to address “a solitary confinement regime that will bring [an inmate] to the edge of madness, perhaps to madness itself,” Justice Anthony Kennedy writes. A solitary confinement case could make its way to the Supreme Court this fall.

Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy testifies before a House committee on Monday, March 23, 2015.

Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP

When the Supreme Court issued its decision Thursday in Davis v. Ayala, about the process for challenging questions about bias in jury selection, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote separately — despite agreeing with the court's opinion "in all respects."

Why? Because Hector Ayala's lawyer mentioned at oral argument that Ayala has spent the majority of his past 25 years in solitary confinement.

Kennedy went on to detail a brief history of human thought about the "human toll wrought" by such isolation.

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