I’m just too perfect.

Hillary Clinton gave an interview Thursday to The Skimm, a popular morning email newsletter.

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Forget Bush vs. Trump. The kids are duking it out.

Carolyn Kaster / AP

At a convention in Chicago, Illinois, this weekend, members of the Young Republican National Federation (YRNF) from around the country will gather to elect the chairman who will lead them through the 2016 election -- an important role for an organization charged with engaging a younger generation in Republican politics.

This year's convention, however, occurs under the specter of potential legal issues over the fairness and transparency of the election.

One of the candidates for the YRNF chairmanship has threatened legal action and its consequences -- specifically the "unnecessary headache and expense of involving the Superior Court of D.C." -- against the organization if it does not turn over its complete list of delegates eligible to vote in the convention.

In a letter sent last Friday to YRNF chairman Jason Weingartner, candidate Meagan Hanson's attorney (and husband) alleged that the YRNF was unlawfully withholding the list of delegates' names and phone numbers, citing a D.C. law that requires nonprofits to provide for the inspection of such a list.

The letter also lists penalties that could be imposed by the D.C. Superior Court for not complying with law, specifically "a summary order allowing inspection, imposition of attorney's fees and other costs, and even a 'postpone[ment] of the meeting for which the list was prepared until the inspection and copying is complete.'"

"It is simply impossible for a fair, unbiased, open election to be held when one slate of candidates is systematically denied access to the names and contact information of all individuals who are qualified to vote in that election," the letter reads.

Weingartner told BuzzFeed News that both campaigns have been receiving rolling updates of the names of the delegates that have registered for the convention, but the groups' National Committee voted in March not to allow the more complete list (with full legal names, date of births, and phone numbers) to be disseminated over concerns of privacy violations. After Hanson requested the full list, however, Weingartner contacted each state organization and presented them with the option of sharing their list voluntarily.

According to Weingartner, earlier in July, Hanson made two allegations of possible mishandling regarding the delegate lists, but later asked Weingartner not to act on them because they were based on hearsay. Weingartner added that there was no credible evidence that any campaign had unfair access to the complete list.

"I did not enjoy the threat of a lawsuit. I don't enjoy getting unnecessary headaches or expenses. I can only do what the National Committee grants me the authority to do," Weingartner said.

In a formal response sent Tuesday to Hanson's attorney, Weingartner laid out YRNF's disagreements over the legal interpretation behind Hanson's initial letter -- mainly that D.C. law only requires the group to allow inspection of its members, which they say only comprises of the National Committee, not the delegates.

Weingartner said he hasn't spoken directly with Hanson since the first letter was sent on Friday.

BuzzFeed News emailed Hanson for an interview, and, in response, she sent back an official statement from her campaign, chalking up the whole ordeal to an "internal dispute."

"From time to time, internal disputes happen in all organizations. I have every confidence that this matter will be resolved internally and that the YRNF will be stronger and better positioned to help Republicans take governorships across the country, hold Congress, and take back the White House in 2016," Hanson said. "I look forward to the opportunity to lead the YRNF with an emphasis on transparency, expanding the organization to more young people, and helping all Republicans to victory in 2016."

Read the full letter Meagan Hanson's attorney sent here:

Read YRNF's response here:

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“Hitler did not change his stripes.”

Associated Press

Rep. Robert Pittenger, a North Carolina Republican, says the consequences of the Iran nuclear deal will be worse than those of the Munich agreement with Adolf Hitler.

"They view an Iran that would change its stripes, but in reality Iran is not going to change its stripes," the Pittenger told POTUS radio on SiriusXM.

He added the Obama administration is betting on the Iranian government changing its behavior under the deal, something he said was naive, drawing a comparison to Munich agreement in 1938 permitting Nazi Germany's annexation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia.

"Hitler did not change his stripes," Pittenger said. "Chamberlin was under some illusion that Hitler would be different in Munich and he wasn't and we paid a great price for that calculation early on and then we addressed it. The consequences of this deal make Hitler look - is a minor player in the context of the challenge to the rest of the world."

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Here's the transcript of the exchange:

JOHN RIZZI: "When you first said you can't have a zebra change its stripes I thought for sure that you were actually talking about Secretaries Kerry and Moniz that you just - that the distrust is so deep that you were actually characterizing them in that way but you eventually - I realized you were talking about Iran and not members of the administration."

REP. ROBERT PITTENGER: "No, no. I think they see - their view of this is a different worldview than me. They view an Iran that would change its stripes, but in reality Iran is not going to change its stripes. Hitler did not change his stripes. Chamberlin was under some illusion that Hitler would be different in Munich and he wasn't and we paid a great price for that calculation early on and then we addressed it. The consequences of this deal make Hitler look - is a minor player in the context of the challenge to the rest of the world."

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“We will not be dictated to of how best to run the campaign or how best to move forward with our plan to make America great again.”

Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images

Donald Trump's campaign manager says Trump has specific policy positions ready for release at a time and method of the campaign's choosing.

"Candidly? They're all done," Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told The John Fredericks Show this week.

Lewandowski said the mainstream media will not dictate to them how they should release their specific policies, reiterating that the policy positions are in place.

"They're done and we're waiting for our schedule and we won't be dictated to by the mainstream media to tell us what we should or shouldn't be doing and how these positions should be put out front," he stated. "We have been held to a different standard in this race than every other candidate and so, you know, what we are not going to do is to allow them to drive the narrative of how our campaign should be run."

So far, Trump has said his health care plan is to "repeal and replace [ObamaCare] with something terrific," that he'll build a fence across the U.S.-Mexican border and make Mexico pay for it, and that he'll defeat ISIS because he "would hit them so hard your head would spin."

"First, they said, 'Mr. Trump's comments about illegals are incendiary and he should recant those,'" added Lewandowski. "And he said, 'Absolutely not. I'm standing by them.' And then they said, 'Oh, this or that,' and every single time he has stood up to them and pushed back against the elite media and the people like that. So we will not be dictated to of how best to run the campaign or how best to move forward with our plan to make America great again."

Here's audio:

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JOHN FREDERICKS: What is your timeline for putting out more policy position, specific policy positions? You've been criticized on that by some people, saying 'well, it's just, you know we don't have a lot of specifics.'

COREY LEWANDOWSKI: Well, you know look, candidly? They're all done. They're done and we're waiting, you know, for our schedule and we won't be, you know, dictated to by the mainstream media to tell us what we should or shouldn't be doing and how these positions should be put out front. You know we have been held to a different standard in this race than every other candidate and so, you know, what we are not going to do is to allow them to drive the narrative of how our campaign should be run. You know first they said you know, 'Mr. Trump's comments about illegals are incendiary and he should recant those.' And he said, 'absolutely not. I'm standing by them.' And then they said, you know, 'oh, this or that' and every single time he has stood up to them and pushed back against the elite media and the people like that. So we will not be dictated to of how best to run the campaign or how best to move forward with our plan to make America great again.

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“We did that in the context of the Gang of Eight bill [in the Senate],” Jindal said of a 2013 op-ed that supported a possible pathway to citizenship. “We were trying to rally conservatives to stop that bad bill, and they did, to their credit.”

Dominick Reuter / Reuters

Looking to build on a recent glimmer of momentum in early-state polls, Republican presidential candidate Bobby Jindal has spent this week on a media tour in New York attacking rival Jeb Bush for supporting "amnesty" for undocumented immigrants, and calling for a crackdown on so-called "sanctuary cities."

But in a recent interview with BuzzFeed News, the Louisiana governor defended his own immigration position, which does not perfectly align with conservative orthodoxy.

In a National Review op-ed 2013, Jindal wrote, "As for a pathway to citizenship: For folks who came here illegally but are willing to gain proficiency in English, pay a fine, and demonstrate a willingness to assimilate, we should require them to work here and pay taxes for a substantial period of time after obtaining legal status before they have the opportunity to begin the process of applying for U.S. citizenship."

Asked how this support for a pathway to citizenship differs from the "amnesty" he accuses Bush of supporting, Jindal said of the op-ed, "We did that in the context of the Gang of Eight bill [in the Senate]. We were trying to rally conservatives to stop that bad bill, and they did, to their credit."

Pointing to Bush's recent comments in a Spanish-language Telemundo interview, Jindal said, "To me what was so troubling was he's talking about giving amnesty to folks who have been here illegally."

Jindal said he opposes any comprehensive approach to overhauling the immigration system, and that the federal government must first secure the country's southern border.

Once that is done, however, Jindal said, "We'll be practical and compassionate about the people already here."

Stringer . / Reuters

WASHINGTON — Sen. Patrick Leahy, 75, is just about everything one would expect from a longtime progressive lawmaker. And when it comes to the criminal justice movement now reaching a fever pitch in Washington, that means he's a bit ornery, a bit skeptical, and a bit less ready to embrace the spirit of compromise breaking out all over town.

"The frustrating part, I find, are the kind of talks they're having now we've been having for years and felt kind of lonely," the Democratic senator told BuzzFeed News in a recent interview. "I'm glad to see people are paying attention, but we need to make sure it's real. You talk about mandatory minimums. You know, get rid of all of them."

Criminal justice is for Leahy, like many of the most prominent advocates in Washington, a life's passion. He started his political career as an elected District Attorney in his native Vermont and said the experience gave him a deep understanding of the system and its potential flaws. He was working on the issue for years before its current moment in the spotlight.

The modern criminal justice legislative advocacy movement is now all about young politicians crossing aisles and sloughing off the crime policy ideas of the past. Younger Republicans in Congress have led their party away from the tough-on-crime mindset of the 1980s and 90s. Older Democrats like Bill Clinton have apologized for their hand in creating the modern war on drugs, which research has shown focuses the toughest penalties on young, male, minority offenders.

Policymakers from both sides of the polarized political debate have been meeting at various high-profile summits across Washington, setting the stage, many say, for passing legislation by the end of the year that will reduce or maybe even eliminate some mandatory minimum federal drug sentences.

Leahy is now a central figure in the summits, in the Capitol Hill negotiations and in the rhetorical push for change in Washington. The veteran statesman, tempered by past disappointments and what he calls past mistakes, is quick to welcome conservative support to the cause of reexamining mandatory minimums, but in conversation he regularly warns advocates to look closely at whatever legislation emerges.

"What I say to people, don't just say 'I'm tough on crime.' There aren't too many elected officials who say, 'I'm in favor of crime.' Seriously, ask them, 'what are the real things you do to make the criminal justice system better and our country better?" he said. "Go beyond the bumper sticker."

When he chaired the Judiciary Committee the last time, from 2007 until the Republicans took over the Senate 2014, Leahy railed against mandatory minimum sentences and tried to unravel them. All of them.

It led to some politically delicate moments, such as the time in 2009 when he spoke out against a Republican amendment to add a mandatory minimum 10-year prison sentence for sexual assault. (A five-year sentence eventually passed.) A year later, he took on a Republican amendment to create one-year mandatory sentences for possession of child pornography, apologizing for his support for mandatory minimum sentences in the past.

"I would note incidentally that in the past I have voted for a number of mandatory minimums, and I just have in mind that a lot of them were mistakes, and I see a lot of states facing bankruptcy because of the costs of just handling a lot of mandatory minimums," Leahy said during debate over the new mandatory penalty at the time. "I have a real reluctance to see mandatory minimums."

He's saltier when he's not talking about mandatory minimums in a Senate hearing.

"They haven't worked," Leahy told BuzzFeed News. "People ought to stand up and say, 'Mandatory minimums don't work, they don't deter crime, they create problems for law enforcement, they're extraordinarily expensive, and you get nothing in return.'"

Leahy is quick to dismiss the policies of the past he says have failed, taking stances that are still politically dangerous (or at least dangerous as evidenced by how few politicians sound like him). For the past few years, he has declared the war on drugs "lost," joining the chorus who say the costs of trying to destroy the drug trade in the United States — as well as the costs associated with the resulting incarceration rates, especially among communities of color — are too high for what they say are meager results.

The racial implications of the ongoing war on drugs are the basis for Leahy's favorite mandatory minimum sentence political allegory: the tale of the coked-up, presumably white lawyer and the inner-city black crack user. Leahy tells this story a lot, and he offered a particularly rousing rendition of it in the recent phone interview with BuzzFeed News:

"You're a lawyer on Wall Street — well, I don't want to say Wall Street — you're in a prestigious law firm. Every Friday afternoon, your supplier comes by with $200 worth of powder cocaine. If you're caught, people say, 'my goodness, I can't imagine somebody, such a pillar of society [buying cocaine.] We're going to teach him a lesson. They're going to have to serve three weekends in a soup kitchen, working for the homeless,'" Leahy said. "If you're a black kid in the inner-city and you buy $200 worth of crack cocaine, you're going to go to jail. Tell me where you're going to get a job when you get out?"

More and more politicians have begun to come around to Leahy's feelings on the story, and that's led to the current high-tide moment for criminal justice advocates in D.C. But Leahy has seen the bipartisan fervor on criminal justice stall out in the toxic legislative mixture of floor votes and a rapidly approaching election.

Early in 2014, the Leahy-led Judiciary Committee advanced the Smarter Sentencing Act by a vote of 13-5, a vote that brought together an unusual cast of partisans. Sens. Ted Cruz and and Dianne Feinstein both voted to send the bill to the floor.

The bill was heralded by advocates for its breath: It would slash federal mandatory minimum sentences on drug offenders and make retroactive changes already passed to the crack-vs-powder cocaine minimum sentence disparity, giving thousands of federal prisoners the opportunity to have their sentences reviewed. It also included sweeteners for the tough-on-crime crowd like new mandatory minimums for sexual abuse, domestic violence and terrorism.

The Smarter Sentencing Act was not Leahy's first choice in mandatory minimum sentence reduction that cycle. He co-sponsored a bill with Sen. Rand Paul that would have allowed federal judges to ignore all mandatory minimum requirements if they determined cases merited it. In a nod to so-called back-end advocates, who want to reduce the prison population with programs aimed at cutting down on recidivism, he also co-sponsored the effort to reauthorize a 2008 law that bolsters reentry programs easing the transition back into society for prisoners. He held a high-profile hearing on the subject where he condemned mandatory minimums and invited the families of some prisoners serving what he said were unfair sentences to attend. He called for compromise.

Once he got it, though, there were still plenty of tough-on-crime Senators willing to cast the Smarter Sentencing Act as "dangerous," however, and as Democrats got into a cautious crouch ahead of the 2014 elections they would go on to badly lose, the bill never made it to the floor.

The experience led Leahy to be more wary of the chances for serious change this cycle than most, though he said he remains hopeful.

"When I saw us get a 13-5 vote, which is pretty substantial, and it didn't go anywhere, I get skeptical," he said. "But let's see what happens. As far as I'm concerned, we should push the envelope as far as we can because what we have now is a failure."

At yet another bipartisan criminal justice policy summit in Washington earlier this month hosted by #Cut50, a group with Van Jones and Newt Gingrich among its public faces, Leahy again said Congress has to undo the mistakes he said it made when it passed mandatory minimum sentences in the past. But he warned against too much compromise on the part of advocates.

"We must not squander this moment," he told the audience. "We must demand that the reforms be both measurable and meaningful."

Speaking to BuzzFeed News, Leahy praised the efforts of Republicans like Sen. Mike Lee and Democratic advocates like Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates in bringing the sides together with regular bipartisan meetings and negotiations, but said that there was no room for half-measures.

"We had progress last year, I'd hate to see us lose the process we had last year. I'm afraid if we do a really half-hearted attempt, that you're not going to see people willing to take the steps to get a final bill through. I may be wrong." he said. "If I get half a loaf, am I happy? No. I want to reduce mandatory minimums. We did that with a bipartisan bill last year. I think we should be doing at least that."

It’s the third release of the year, as questions continue about how Clinton handled sensitive information with her personal account.

Scott Olson / Getty Images

The State Department will release more of the email Hillary Clinton sent and received as secretary of state on Friday, the third batch of the monthly email releases that are expected to continue into early next year.

Last week, the inspector general of the intelligence community informed Congress that Clinton sent at least four emails that contained classified information during her time at the State Department, the Wall Street Journal reported.

While serving as secretary of state, Clinton exclusively used a personal email account, which was housed on a personal server; both the account and the server have raised questions about the security of Clinton's communication. Clinton has maintained that she did not send classified information from the account.

In December, Clinton provided approximately 55,000 pages of email to the State Department. Clinton's personal staff selected which emails to send; she deleted all email deemed by her staff to be "personal."

The emails Clinton submitted to the State Department remain on her personal server, and on a thumb drive in possession of her lawyer, the Journal reported.

“The support from the Jewish community has been overwhelmingly positive.”

Denis Poroy / AP

Mike Huckabee said on Thursday that Holocaust survivors and descendants of those who survived the Holocaust "hugged" and "thanked" him for saying that, by trusting Iran, the Obama administration's nuclear deal "will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven."

Huckabee has received widespread criticism for the remark.

Hukcabee told the Jan Mickelson Show that "the Jewish community" expressed its appreciation for his outspokenness when he visited the home of a Jewish doctor on Monday night, at an event where everyone was Jewish and which "several" Holocaust survivors attended.

"The support from the Jewish community has been overwhelmingly positive," Huckabee said. "I was in an event on Monday night this week, right after all this blew up on Monday, and I was in a home, a Jewish doctor who hosted an event for me, everyone at that event was Jewish — there were about seven rabbis, about a 150 Jewish people, several of them were Holocaust survivors and many of them were Holocaust descendants — they were the children or the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors."

"They hugged me," Huckabee said. "They thanked me."

Huckabee, who throughout the week has defended his "oven" remarks despite bipartisan criticism, reiterated earlier in the interview that the comments shouldn't be considered offensive.

"I'll tell you what's offensive," Huckabee said. "Offensive is that the United States government believes they can trust the Iranians. What's offensive is that the president of the United States left four hostages sitting in an Iranian prison and didn't negotiate for their release as part of this deal, part of a precondition. What's offensive is that many of the Democrats and the liberals in an overwhelmingly insane attempt to try to protect Barack Obama and John Kerry and Hillary Clinton for this agreement are turning the attention about something that I said to Breitbart on a Saturday afternoon satellite radio show into the point of discussion."

To drive home his analogy, Huckabee invoked the example of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whom he described as "one of the few voices in the German theological world, in the German church world, who had the guts and the courage to stand up against Hitler and to declare it's wrong," as others looked the other way.

"That's why we've got to learn the lessons of history or, as has often been said, we will unfortunately be forced to repeat them," Huckabee said.

Here's the audio:

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Ron’s golden boy.

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / Getty Images

Is Rand Paul taking his dad's advice on how to prepare for the alleged coming economic collapse?

The Kentucky senator's father, Ron Paul, has appeared in radio, television, and Internet ads suggesting impending economic doom and offering (for a one-time payment of $49.50) a survival guide. Part of Ron Paul's investment strategy to prepare for the collapse of paper currency is to invest heavily in precious metals like gold and silver.

According to his latest financial disclosure filed Thursday with the Federal Election Commission, the younger Paul has anywhere between $10,000 and $50,000 invested in a USAA Precious Metals and Minerals and $1,001-$15,000 in assets in the fund American Century Global Gold Inv.

Since running for public office and serving in the Senate, Paul hasn't been as stringent as his father in his adherence to Austrian economics, which favors a return to the value of currency being tied to gold. He has noted before that "a gold standard would work well if you have a tight fiscal ship."

Ron Paul said earlier this month that "an accident" or "false flag" will cause the collapse of the dollar and has said after the collapse people will buy gold and silver. He had previously noted there was "pure fascism" (in an economic sense) coming.

The Wall Street Journal noted in their review of Rand Paul's financial disclosure his reported assets are valued between $576,000 and $1.7 million. Paul has zero liabilities according to the disclosure.

Cruz said a video shows his father, Rafael Cruz, reacting to something an audience member called out. A video from 2012 shows Rafael Cruz making the remarks unprompted.

Olivier Douliery / Getty Images

Ted Cruz defended his father on Thursday from charges that his father had said President Obama should go back to Kenya — something his father did say in a 2012 video — saying that it was a response to someone in the audience.

The video of the exchange taken in September 2012 at a gathering of the North Texas Tea Party, shows pastor Rafael Cruz telling the audience (unprompted) that he'd like to send Obama "back to Kenya, back to Indonesia."

"We have our work cut out for us," Rafael Cruz said while discussing the United Nations. "We need to send Barack Obama back to Chicago. I'd like to send him back to Kenya, back to Indonesia."

In an interview with Alan Colmes on Thursday, the Texas senator said his father was simply repeating something someone in the audience said, adding that it was part of "an effort in the media and among some Democrats to try to paint a scary picture of my father."

"I'm not familiar with what you just mentioned there, but I'll tell you one of the most often cited examples that gets repeated in the fever swamps of the internet is that my dad has said President Obama should go back to Kenya," Ted Cruz said on Fox News Radio.

"Well, what actually happened if you go to the video, my father was giving a talk and what he actually said was President Obama should go back to Chicago and someone in the audience calls out 'back to Kenya' and my father laughed and repeated 'back to Kenya' and kept going and in the context to anyone watching it was obvious that it wasn't him and immediately the internet turns this into 'Pastor Cruz says Obama's from Kenya,'" Ted Cruz stated.

"It was silliness and there's a reason they want to paint him as scary because his personal narrative as starting with nothing and working hard to achieve the American dream runs counter to the story that many are trying to tell," added Ted Cruz.

A request for comment was not returned by the Cruz campaign.

Here's the video of Rafael Cruz:

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Here's the audio of Ted Cruz's defense:

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In New Hampshire, Sanders tells a worried supporter that Fox News is a problem, but it isn’t the problem — that’s “the mainstream corporate media.”

Dominick Reuter / Reuters

EXETER, N.H. — Near the end of a packed, sweaty, boisterous campaign meeting in the historic and un-air conditioned Old Town Hall here, a Bernie Sanders supporter stood and told the candidate he was scared.

"I'm deeply worried about your candidacy and I'll tell you why. Fox News will come out and attack you in every conceivable way. Those billionaires own the media. And they own NBC as well as Fox News," the speaker, who identified himself as Peter from Exeter, told Sanders. "And there are people in this state who listen to nothing but Fox News. Nothing. … What can you do to counteract the propaganda machine that's Fox News?"

Sanders, who usually has a quick answer to everything, instead launched into a long, considered bit of progressive media criticism that essentially amounted to I don't know but here's what I've tried.

The press is a favorite target of any politician, activist, or ideologue, but Peter expressed the particular frustration with Fox News that amounts to the left's lament. Liberals believe the network has single-handedly destroyed their ability to make their case to independent voters. Even during a record year for progressive wins on social issues, progressives regularly blame Fox News for the inability of climate change and other issues to find any kind of home in the Republican Party despite polling showing voter interest.

On the stump, Sanders attacks the corporate media over and over. In three stops Saturday — one to accept the endorsement of Friends of the Earth, a large climate change advocacy group — Sanders went after the "corporate media" on more than one occasion with gusto and to great response from the crowds.

But asked how he can defeat it at the Exeter town hall, Sanders was more circumspect.

"That's a very important question, it's something that we have discussed a whole lot. It goes beyond Fox. Fox, to its credit, is simply an arm of the right wing Republican Party. That's what they are, unabashedly," Sanders said. "A more serious issue to my mind is mainstream corporate media which time and time again refuses to engage in serious discussion about serious issues."

"I don't have a magical solution," Sanders went on. "Let me tell you some of what I do."

The Sanders plan: regular appearances on the progressive radio talk show hosted by Thom Hartmann, old-fashioned grassroots shoe leather, and Facebook.

"You talk about Fox? Forget Fox. Ninety-five percent of talk radio is extreme, right wing," Sanders said of the Hartmann appearances, which he called "town halls of the air."

But that's just the start of the problem, he said.

"So when you look at talk radio, 95% right-wing, Fox, which owns the Republican Party, corporate media which often does not discuss the major issues affecting our country, you've got a huge issue," he said.

Sanders' plan for "political revolution," he said, involves leaving the media behind. "At the end of the day, people talking to each other, knocking on doors educating each other," he said.

Facebook, where Sanders has enjoyed outsize support given his much smaller campaign war chest and far lower profile than front runner Hillary Clinton, is Sanders' other corporate media killer.

"The other thing that we have been doing in this campaign is spending a lot of time of money and effort on our social media," he said.

Whether it all works is still an open question, Sanders said.

"I am very cognizant of the issue that you raise and all of us have got to figure this one out," he said. "It is a tough issue, but we have got to figure out how we have a media in America that presents all points of view and is not dominated by a corporate agenda."

Dominick Reuter / Reuters

HOOKSETT, N.H. — This time, when Bernie Sanders got a direct question about what he can do to assist the growing Black Lives Matter movement, the Vermont senator was ready.

“As a white ally, what should we start doing tomorrow?” asked a young woman in the large and overwhelmingly white crowd at a town hall, held at Southern New Hampshire University. “In terms of political revolution?” she added.

Without a beat, Sanders ticked off the kind of focused answer that eluded him at Netroots in June. He spoke of fighting against the “absurdity” of the number of minorities in prison.

He took direct aim at police.

“Support a number of police reforms,” Sanders said to the young woman. “And it’s not just body cameras and so forth. It’s also issues of use of force. Being a cop is not an easy job, but force should be a last resort. Too often, it is almost the first resort.”

There’s nothing especially new about Sanders publicly questioning police tactics or railing against the American prison infrastructure and its outsize impact on young men of color. But after a careful listening tour with activists after the brouhaha at Netroots, a person familiar with Sanders’ thinking said the self-described Democratic Socialist learned he had to do more to tell his story to a movement uninterested in Civil Rights Movement nostalgia or being lectured to about the enduring economic divides that are the heart of Sanders’ campaign message.

So now, Sanders is trying to retell his story for a new audience.

On the campaign trail across six stops in New Hampshire this weekend, that meant a careful reading out of the names of black Americans who have died either at the hands of police or in police custody and are mentioned often by #BlackLivesMatter activists. The Sanders source said the candidate is as moved by these stories as anyone — when he was told a speech he had already scheduled in Texas was situated just 60 miles from the county jail where Sandra Bland died, he mentioned her death in his speech. A few days later, he told a crowd in Washington that Bland would not have died if she were white.

That kind of rhetoric has continued on the trail, and ramped up before the mostly white crowds in New Hampshire. At a stop in Exeter, Sanders said the police “were responsible” for Bland’s death. Throughout the weekend, he added mentions of Samuel Dubose to his stump, speaking repeatedly of his death as well as that of the half-dozen or so others.

“The police must be held accountable,” Sanders said at the SNHU stop.

Sanders supporters argue this is no pander. It’s Sanders being Sanders now that he understands the contours of a protest movement that clearly caught him off-guard at Netroots, they say. There, he responded to a #BlackLivesMatter disruption of a town hall event by chastising protesters that he had “spent 50 years fighting for civil rights and dignity.” That did not go over well among activists looking for specific, actionable solutions for ending the phyisical risk for black Americans that the activists say is caused by white supremacy.

Sanders is now trying very hard to project that he gets it. And that he always has gotten it.

A key part of Sanders’ brand is consistency — at a stop in Franklin, Ben Cohen (the Ben of Ben & Jerry’s and a frequent Sanders surrogate) told the crowd that he’s heard Sanders say the same things for so long “that if it wasn’t so inspiring, it would be boring.” The #BlackLivesMatter moment at Netroots and the ensuing backlash against Sanders from young black activists was jarring for Sanders supporters who generally view him as the lodestar for progressive values and are not used to leftists calling him anything less.

So Sanders has tweaked his stump speech by digging around into his record.

While mayor of Burlington, he said at one stop, he helped to create a community policing program like the ones now popular nationally among political leaders hoping to foster a better relationship between police and the people they serve. When executed properly, Sanders said in his last stop of the tour, police “are not seen as oppressors.”

Militarized police, “like the ones we saw in Ferguson,” Sanders said in a repeated line, are a danger to black lives and must be curtailed. Sanders has been talking about that since the fires in the Missouri town raged on TV in August 2014.

The private prison industry, long a Sanders target, gets a prominent mention in all of his stump speeches now, and is tied directly to a criminal justice structure that he says unfairly targets blacks.

But everything still comes back to the economic message. More than one month before Netroots, Sanders gave a speech about unemployment called “Youth Unemployment and Dr. King’s Dream,” which centered around a 51% black youth unemployment rate he found in a study he commissioned from the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute. (The figure has come under some scrutiny from fact-checkers.) The figure is now a central part of Sanders’ economic messaging as he talks about better jobs and better wages.

The billionaire class, which Sanders has forever said is stealing the country from the working Americans, is also one of the forces continuing to create a racial divide in the country, Sanders often argues.

“These guys are so powerful today. I know them. I know what Wall Street is about. I know what the Koch Brothers are about and the influence that they have,” he said at one stop in a version of a line he delivers at every stop. “But we have something they don’t. We have the people. And when the people stand together, when we do not allow them to divide us up on race, when we do not allow them to divide us up on gender, when we do not allow them to divide us up on sexual orientation, when we do not allow them to divide us up on whether we were born in America or born in Mexico. When we stand together, there is nothing that we cannot accomplish.”

Sanders is very careful to reach out to #BlackLivesMatter in every speech. He stops, reads the names off his printed notes, and says “Black lives matter” aloud often. He speaks of racism, he speaks of police. The Netroots protesters were heard, his team insists. Their cry is his cry.

“We have made progress,” Sanders said at the Exeter stop, “but we should all be aware that in terms of racism in terms of sexism, in terms of homophobia, we still have a long way to go.”

Sanders said that #BlackLivesMatter was a movement for all races to embrace.

“I don’t have to tell anybody in this room because I know that you feel the same as I do,” he said to the white audience in Exeter's Old Town Hall before listing the names of the dead like Bland and Dubose. “All of you know that racism exists today in America. We’ve got a long way to overcome it, and we need to play an active role in reforming our criminal justice system.”

Standing near the entrance at the Sanders town hall in Rollinsford Sunday morning was at least some evidence the new approach is working. Virginia Towler, a former attorney in Janet Reno’s Justice Department and aspiring novelist, moved to New Hampshire several years ago from Washington, D.C/, to care for her mother, a former associate dean at the University of New Hampshire. A middle-aged black woman in a Black Lives Matter longsleeve t-shirt and one of those nylon floppy-brimmed hats common to outdoorsy New Englanders, she stood out from much of the crowd.

Both the hat and the shirt had Bernie Sanders stickers on them. Towler is full-square behind Sanders and can quickly tick off the reasons he’s the best candidate in the race for the current black activist movement.

“He understands the economics of this country,” she said. “He mentions the statistics, he sees that 50% of black youth are unemployed. They’re the ones so-called loitering. They’ve got no place to go. They’re probably from homes without air conditioning. So they’re going to be outdoors. Kids go outdoors.”

“Black youth being outdoors, being young and outdoors is a threat to the police, and that is frightening,” she said. “Those kids want work. They can’t get jobs.”

She praised Sanders for being quick to reorient his message to the new civil rights movement reality, as well as for having a history she said made that reorientation possible. In an interview after the event, she said her experience as a black American in the Granite State made her understand of how Sanders could be slow to catch on to #BlackLivesMatter.

“Remember, he’s from Vermont. He’s from Vermont!” she said with a laugh. “I don’t fault him for being from Vermont any more than I necessarily fault New Hampshire people for not understanding black people and Black Lives Matter, etc., etc.”

“But I don’t think white people are stupid,” she went on. “I think they’re complacent. And as long as they’re complacent we’ll have these problems. As long as they don’t take responsibility for speaking up and shaming each other.”

So maybe Sanders was a little complacent?

“I think, yeah. Because he’s in a bubble,” Towler said. “He’s in a New England bubble.”

“Well I think those guys are looking at it and thinking ‘wait a second, why not me?’”

Alex Wong / Getty Images

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus says he believes Bernie Sanders' poll numbers and large crowds may inspire Joe Biden, Al Gore, and John Kerry to challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

"Well, I think she's in trouble now," Priebus told radio host John Catsimatidis on his program Sunday. "Whether that amounts to Hillary Clinton being in trouble to not be the nominee, that's doubtful, but you never know what else is going to happen, right?

"So if you're Joe Biden, or you're John Kerry, or you're Al Gore, and you're looking at Hillary Clinton's unfavorables at sixty percent -- or her level of trustworthiness or untrustworthiness -- at sixty percent, and you see Bernie Sanders at twenty five, thirty, thirty five percent with ten thousand people coming to see him. Well I think those guys are looking at it and thinking 'wait a second, why not me?' And, I think that's the bigger issue for Hillary Clinton, even more than Bernie Sanders."

Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that Biden was considering a bid for the nomination.

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“I would hold them as an accomplice. Make them criminally culpable.”

Stacy Revere / Getty Images

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal told Boston Herald Radio on Monday morning that mayors of sanctuary cities should be arrested.

"Absolutely, I would hold them as an accomplice. Make them criminally culpable," the Republican presidential candidate said when asked if he'd arrest mayors of sanctuary cities . "I'd also make them civilly liable so that families, victim's families could sue. Especially if the prosecutor isn't taking action or the mayor's not changing their ways, I'd allow the families to go to court as well to recover damages."

The debate over sanctuary cities has been revived by the death of a San Francisco woman at the hands of an undocumented immigrant and convicted felon who was previously deported five times.

Take a listen to the audio:

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Chris Christie’s followers most commonly follow Khloe Kardashian.

Who do the followers of the 2016 presidential candidates on Instagram follow the most in common? The answers might surprise you.

Instagram offered BuzzFeed News a look at their data results analyzing the candidates.

Take a look at the results below (or skip to the bottom for the full results!).

Followers of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush most commonly follow...

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Frazer Harrison / Getty Images

Followers of The Donald most commonly follow...

Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images

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Huckabee in 2007: “I think we ought to have some cap and trade.”

Scott Olson / Getty Images

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee on Facebook Monday slammed President Obama’s plan to cut carbon emissions from coal power plants.

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Facebook: mikehuckabee

The Obama administration largely expects this to be done by using a "cap and trade" policy, in which states place a limit on carbon pollution and must purchase permits to exceed it.

States that use the cap and trade system will be rewarded with "financial benefits," and those that achieve their goals of decreasing carbon use can trade in their permits for cash.

Via buzzfeed.com

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“Nothing that I have seen, read, or heard has alleviated any of the skepticism that I had initially.”

Win McNamee / Getty Images

Democratic Rep. Steve Israel from New York said Tuesday that he is still "extremely skeptical" of the nuclear deal with Iran — even after attending three classified briefings and reading "every single word" of the agreement.

"I'm still extremely skeptical," Israel said Tuesday on L.I. in The AM. "Look this is going to be one of the most important, profound foreign policy, national security decisions we make and I want to make sure that we get this right."

"I've now gone through three classified briefings," added Israel. "I just read the classified annex to the deal. I've read every single word of the deal. I've convened meetings with experts on both sides of this issue. Nothing that I have seen, read, or heard has alleviated any of the skepticism that I had initially."

On Monday, fellow New York Democrat Kathleen Rice said she would vote against the agreement. Last week, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs committee, Rep. Eliot Engel, said he thought the agreement would not stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

Israel said that he has not made up his mind yet on how he will vote.

"However, I owe it my constituents," he concluded. "I owe it to my kids and I owe it to myself not to make an announcement based on optics, but to make an announcement based on my own understanding and my own reasoned arguments for and against the deal. As I said, my skepticism has not been relieved. I have a little bit more that I want to do. I have some questions outstanding, having read the classified annex of the report and once I get those answers I will announce my position."

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“That child is more important than Cecil the lion. That child is more important than Shamu the whale at SeaWorld.”

Drew Angerer / Getty Images

Sen. James Lankford, the Republican from Oklahoma who co-authored the bill to defund Planned Parenthood, says the Obama administration cares more about Cecil the lion than they do unborn children.

"It is remarkable to see that they see the value of a lion in Zimbabwe more than they would see a human child that's an American," noted Lankford on Washington Watch with Tony Perkins on Monday when asked about the Obama administration.

"And the focus over and over again is that can't be a child. And I think they just don't want to admit that they can look in and see a beating heart, and see lungs, and see a liver, and see hands, and feet, and count fingers, and toes. They would still say 'that can't be a child' because if they ever admit that that's a child then they have to confront the horrific reality of abortion for so many years in America."

The bill to defund Planned Parenthood failed to overcome a procedural vote Monday evening. The vote took place in response to four videos released over the past month by the Center for Medical Progress, which purport to show Planned Parenthood employees discussing the illegal sale of fetal tissue. Planned Parenthood has said the videos, shot by undercover antiabortion activists, were deceptively edited and merely show legal repayments for handling tissues that are donated for research.

"That child is more important than Cecil the lion," Lankford continued. "That child is more important than Shamu the whale at SeaWorld. That child is more important than wild horses out on federal property. That is a child. And if we are going to say in one moment we care about early childhood education and nutrition supplements for infants, we need to also in the same breath say we care about that child before we can physically see them as well and recognize them as a child."

Here's the audio:

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Jim Cole / AP

WASHINGTON — Hours before the first official Republican debate begins on Thursday in Cleveland, the several other candidates who didn't make the big debate will take the stage hoping to rescue their slim poll numbers.

These candidates are not preparing, according to their campaigns. They are prepared.

"She plays solitaire on her phone when we have downtime," said Sarah Isgur Flores, the spokesperson for Carly Fiorina. "Does that count?"

The Bobby Jindal campaign likewise responded with a certain level of disdain for its fellow undercard debaters.

"Unlike other candidates, Bobby has a tremendous bandwidth for information and policy," said Jindal spokesperson Shannon Dirman. "He's smart, has the backbone to do the right thing, and his experience has prepared him well for debates on any number of policy topics. If anyone thinks they can beat him in a debate I'd love to learn about it."

Most of the discussion of Thursday's debate has revolved around how the top-tier candidates will respond to bomb-throwing Republican frontrunner Donald Trump; Rand Paul, for example, is reportedly practicing with a Trump stand-in. But while everyone's paying attention to this, there's a parallel universe where the candidates who didn't poll high enough to make the cut for the main debate are doing their own expectations-setting and trash-talking.

As for Rick Santorum, who pulled off a surprisingly successful shoestring campaign in 2012 but who has struggled to break into the conversation this time, his campaign says he's not bothering with any special debate prep at all.

"Sen. Santorum's debate prep remains the same as it has always been," said Santorum campaign communications director Matt Beynon. "He does town hall meetings in the days leading up to debates. No question he will get in a debate is tougher than one he will receive from an Iowa or New Hampshire voter."

Beynon said Santorum has never done debate prep in the past either, beyond town hall meetings.

Other campaigns were more circumspect. Lindsey Graham's campaign, for example, declined to share details of their debate preparation process.

The debate for the low-polling candidates is scheduled to take place at 5 p.m. on Thursday in Cleveland, four hours before the 9 p.m. debate featuring the top 10 candidates. It will last one hour, as opposed to the prime-time debate's 90 minutes, and will be moderated by Fox News' Bill Hemmer and Martha MacCallum.

Some of the undercard candidates have criticized the structure of the debates as giving an unfair advantage to candidates who are doing better in polling at a point in the election cycle when polling numbers don't mean much. Santorum called the poll numbers "irrelevant" on ABC's This Week on Sunday, pointing out that he was polling poorly at this point in 2012 but went on to win Iowa as well as 11 other states.

The Fiorina campaign sent around a memo on Monday downplaying the debate, saying, “We know that what polls say in July or August does not predict what voters will say in 2016. We have built an operation that can go the distance and win. Our strategy does not depend on any one single event to propel our candidate forward.”

Graham was more blunt, saying on MSNBC that the qualifications for getting into the debate "suck" and that he's being left out for "no good reason."

But the lower-tier candidates are actually getting a better deal now than they were before. Originally, their debate was scheduled for 1 p.m., when fewer people are tuning into Fox. And for candidates who have little name ID and limited fundraising ability, it constitutes an important free media opportunity. The RNC has defended the two-debate arrangement as "the most inclusive setup in history."

And the 5 p.m. debaters don't have to deal with the wildcard that is Trump, a subject that the higher-polling campaigns are obsessing over.

"Imagine a NASCAR driver mentally preparing for a race knowing one of the drivers will be drunk. That's what prepping for this debate is like," John Weaver, an adviser to Ohio Gov. John Kasich, tweeted last week.

BOOTY BOOTY BOOTY ROCKIN’ EVERYWHERE

The site urges you to contact your senator to tell them to vote against the Iran nuclear agreement:

Via stoptheirandeal.com

If you click a link for Washington Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell it goes to a Twitter account called "@CantwellPress."

Stop The Iran Deal Ted Cruz site

This is NOT Sen. Maria Cantwell. This is a large photo of an ass in a thong.

Via Twitter: @CantwellPress

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