Many death penalty states have struggled to obtain a lethal injection drug that Texas has consistently been able to procure. In a filing Thursday in Oklahoma, lawyers provided evidence that Texas sold pentobarbital to Virginia in August.

Three vials of pentobarbital that Virginia received in August. The purchase order says they were supplied by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

via court filing

The state of Texas is making its own execution drugs and has sold them to at least one other death penalty state, an inmate facing execution in Oklahoma alleges in a court filing Thursday. His attorneys point to documents that show the Texas Department of Criminal Justice sold pentobarbital to Virginia in late August.

Pentobarbital is a sedative that many death penalty states, including Oklahoma, have claimed is impossible for them to get their hands on. As a result, some states have turned to midazolam, a drug that critics argue is significantly less effective. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of midazolam in executions this June.

The records submitted as part of the new filing show that Virginia received 150 milligrams of the drug. Under the heading "Name of Supplier," the Texas Department of Criminal Justice is listed.

The labels do not identify the pharmacy that prepared the drug. However, the lawyers for the Oklahoma inmate state that the labels were created by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which they also allege "is compounding or producing pentobarbital within its department for use in executions."

In the past, Texas has said that it obtains its execution drug "from a licensed pharmacy that has the ability to compound," but would not name the pharmacy.

The purchase order.

via court filing

The lawyers raise these issues to make the argument that Oklahoma could avoid the use of the controversial midazolam drug in its executions. It could do so, they argue, by purchasing pentobarbital from Texas, like Virginia, or by "compounding or producing pentobarbital in the same manner as does TDCJ."

States have struggled to obtain execution drugs for years after makers enacted more stringent guidelines to keep them away from states that would use them for executions.

The idea of a state-run lab making its own death penalty drugs is something Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster raised last year, although many wondered how it could be done. Missouri, like Texas, has had no trouble obtaining pentobarbital.

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After the staff, board, and volunteer leaders of the Human Rights Campaign hear Hillary Clinton speak on Saturday morning, Oct. 3, Biden will address the group’s annual dinner that night.

Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Vice President Joe Biden will give the keynote address at the Human Rights Campaign's national dinner on the evening of Oct. 3, the group announced Friday morning.

The vice president's address will come hours after Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state who is running for president, speaks to the group's staff, board, and volunteer leaders that morning.

Calling Biden "a true champion of LGBT equality," HRC President Chad Griffin said in a statement, "From his historic announcement in support of marriage equality to his ongoing commitment to achieving full federal equality for LGBT Americans, the Vice President has proven time and again that he's a stalwart ally to our community ...."

On May 6, 2012, appearing on Meet the Press, Biden was asked by then-host David Gregory if he was "comfortable with same-sex marriage." In response, Biden first noted that the administration's policy was set by President Obama, but then said, "I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and heterosexual men and women marrying one another are entitled to the same exact rights."

Three days later, Obama — sitting down for an interview with ABC's Robin Roberts that was, in large part, forced by the fallout from Biden's comments — announced his own personal support for marriage equality. Advisers have since said that Obama had planned to endorse marriage equality before the Democratic convention that year, but that the timing had not yet been decided when Biden gave his comments.

Nonetheless, Biden was given significant credit within the LGBT community for his role in pushing Obama — at least in his timing — on the issue.

In recent weeks, significant coverage has focused on whether Biden will enter the presidential race. He has repeatedly said he hasn't made a decision yet.

No other announced presidential candidates are scheduled to speak to the group at its fall board and volunteer leaders meeting or at the national dinner.

The national U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce invited Trump to speak — and some local chambers really, really don’t like it. “I don’t see any reason why any credible Latino organization or leader would give Trump the time of day, much less a forum to speak to the Hispanic community.”

U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce President Javier Palomarez.

Carolyn Kaster / AP

A dispute between national and local Hispanic leaders that has been simmering for weeks spilled into view this week in Houston.

It all started when the president of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce invited Donald Trump to speak to the group.

Weeks ago, the group's president, Javier Palomarez, met with the billionaire in private in New York City — without notifying any local chamber leaders of his plans to do so.

Palomarez emerged from the meeting with a message: While he has disagreements with Trump, he praised his private demeanor, calling him gracious, hospitable, and elegant. He also announced plans to interview Trump during a candidate Q&A session, as he has done with other candidates like Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders, on October 8.

For Frank Garcia, this was too much. Garcia, who is the chairman of a New York state coalition of 26 Hispanic chambers, started a petition to get the Trump session cancelled. He also went on Univision in New York calling for a boycott of the event. Other local chambers' leaders have expressed displeasure, too; they say they began receiving complaints from their members because of the Republican frontrunner's controversial comments disparaging Mexicans and immigrants.

But on Sunday morning in Houston, Garcia confronted Palomarez at a meeting of chamber leaders.

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In the video sent to BuzzFeed News, Garcia tells Palomarez that he wasn't looking to hurt the chamber, but that he wanted the event cancelled.

Garcia claims that he was late to the event the two men were filmed at, because the police were called to keep him out. (The national chamber spokesman said security held him outside for some time before letting him in because they knew Garcia was going to disrupt the event.)

"Trump is a bully and sometimes I feel you're a bully with me," Garcia tells Palomarez, adding that he was a member of the chamber in good standing, but wasn't there to embarrass Palomarez.

"We will meet with Donald Trump, the only person getting embarrassed is you," Palomarez responded, reaching into his pocket to pull out his wallet. "I'm glad to give you the $100 [of chamber dues]."

This isn't the first time that Garcia, the New Yorker, and the national chamber have clashed, something Garcia and officials with the national chamber both said. But the Trump invitation set it all off again. The difference was that it wasn't just New York leaders who were upset by the invitation, however.

Sam Guzman, chairman of 35 Texas chambers, said Palomarez's meeting and upcoming event with Trump sends the wrong message.

"I don't see any reason why any credible Latino organization or leader would give Trump the time of day, much less a forum to speak to the Hispanic community," he said.

In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Palomarez, a former farmworker, echoed the comments he made in the video on Sunday, and said he is the poster child for the kinds of people Trump is most scared of and wants to deport.

But because his association represents 4 million Hispanic-owned businesses, which bring $661 billion to the American economy, Palomarez argued he has to be above the rhetoric and his job is to host candidates from both parties with different views.

"Donald Trump is surging in the polls. There is a possibility that man can be the Republican candidate," he says to Garcia and the assembled chamber leaders in the video. "It's irrelevant whether you feel that it's the right thing to do or not, this is what's going to happen because that's what my association has asked me to do."

Palomarez said most of the local chambers agree with hosting the Trump event and the USHCC said its board of directors unanimously agreed, as did its advisory council made up of corporate members including Macy's, Univision and Comcast, who have cut business ties with Trump.

Palomarez also had Al Aguilar, chairman of the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, by his side during the interview, who said his past experience with voter registration campaigns is what leads him to believe the national chamber is doing the right thing hosting Trump.

"Hearing all candidate's voices, whether you agree or disagree, it's important that we listen," he said. Trump's comments on immigration and building a wall are "stimulating Latinos," he said, and argued that more of them are being activated to register to vote because of him.

Garcia said Palomarez has done a lot to save the national organization, but he said state leaders who feel the same way as he does about Trump are scared to speak out. BuzzFeed News spoke with two leaders in Missouri and California who indicated they wanted to talk and later decided not to.

A former high-ranking official with the USHCC said it's not uncommon for local chambers to fight with the national organization, and said the New York chambers are usually the third rail of the state groups, always ready to start trouble.

But the former official said the organization has also switched from a policy focus to a focus on marketing itself nationally and positioning itself as a political player.

A USHCC spokesman disagreed with the characterization, noting that the organization worked in favor of the recent trade deal, working with the Hispanic caucus and calling members of Congress.

"We care more about policy than politics, but you have to have a say politically to shape policy," a spokesman said. "During an election cycle that's the biggest contribution we can make."

Local leaders said they were troubled by the Trump event because while it isn't an endorsement, Palomarez seemed to be telling Latinos that Trump is OK, he's not a bad guy. While they want the event cancelled, they at least want the bombastic businessman challenged.

Palomarez said he will be civil, but is up for the task, at least when it comes to Trump's plan to build a costly wall on the border and deport all undocumented immigrants.

"You're a Republican, supposedly running on being fiscally responsible and the first thing you're going to do is spend $300 to $400 billion?" he said. "We represent corporations in hospitality, construction, and agriculture — what are you going to tell them when you send their workforce out the door? How are you going to round up 11.5 million people that don't want to be found? Those are the kinds of questions we're going to ask."

The former official wasn't surprised by the Trump drama.

Palomarez, the former official said, has been a strong influence in stabilizing and growing the organization after it had a cavalcade of ineffective leaders.

"Javier has been very competent," the former official said. "But he's attention hungry and has sharp elbows."

And while the fight has been over Trump, the personal nature of the disagreement is also hard to miss.

As the video concluded, after Garcia confronted Palomarez and he responded Sunday, Garcia can be heard asking, "How did I do?"

"Perfect," another New York City leader answered.

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Say Bay-ner.

George Bush Presidential Library and Museum

When Speaker of the House John Boehner announced his resignation this morning, he surrendered one of the highest political offices in the land -- a perch at the top of the House of Representatives, behind only the vice president in the line of presidential succession.

But before he began his long climb to the top of the Republican ranks, Boehner first had to teach everyone how to pronounce his last name.

In an August 1990 letter from Boehner to White House Chief of Staff John Sununu printed on Boehner's official letterhead, "John Boehner* U.S. Congress" is written at the top.

Why the asterisk? Running diagonally across the top-left corner is a set of instructions: "*Say Bay-ner."

Written in the final months before Boehner's election to Congress, the letter implores Sununu to come to Ohio to stump with the then-candidate.

"I am writing to ask for your assistance in fighting an uphill battle," Boehner begins. "The state and local Democrat organizations see their first opportunity in a number of years to claim the 8th District seat and are going all out to provide my opponent with support. Additionally, my opponent has a very well known and well liked relative who happens to be a popular television actor on the NBC series 'Cheers'."

Boehner would win that race, but getting people to stop pronouncing his last name as "boner" would prove to be an uphill battle:

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Here's the full letter:

George Bush Presidential Library and Museum

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Outgoing Speaker of the House John Boehner is one of the most famous cigarette smokers in Washington — and when the federal government considered cracking down on smoking in the workplace in 1991, the Ohio Republican decided to take a stand.

Larry Downing / Reuters

When outgoing Speaker of the House John Boehner – famously a smoker – learned that George H.W. Bush was considering signing an Executive Order banning workplace smoking by federal employees, he decided to take a stand for "individual rights and freedoms."

"I has come to my attention that OMB is circulating a proposed Executive Order, drafted by HHS, which would 'establish a smoke-free environment in all work space occupied by Federal employees,'" Boehner wrote to then-White House Chief of Staff John Sununu in 1991.

"I understand the concerns expressed by Secretary Sullivan surrounding the dangers of smoking, but I feel this proposed order is unnecessary and I strongly urge its rejection," he wrote.

"The proposed Executive Order does not seek to accommodate in any fashion, the individual rights of employees or visitors to federal buildings who choose to smoke," Boehner continued. "I find such a policy to be in extreme and direct conflict with the long accepted belief of individual rights and freedoms. Granted, a nonsmoker has the right to choose not to be inundated with tobacco smoke," Boehner ceded, "but this right does not extend to the point where non-smokers dictate that another individual cannot choose to smoke."

"I respectfully request that you continue the present policy of allowing federal agencies to work with their employees to establish smoking policies in the workplace," Boehner concluded. "I believe this is preferable to an insensitive government-wide ban that treats federal employees as second class citizens and denies smokers their rights."

Boehner won the battle, but ultimately lost the war. The Bush administration abandoned their anti-smoking push, but Bill Clinton signed an Executive Order banning smoking in all federal buildings in 1997.

Not all was lost, however. As CNN reported at the time, the 1997 ban "didn't banish smokers from government-owned doorways and courtyards," and still allowed for indoor smoking "in enclosed, separately ventilated areas."

Here's the full letter

George Bush Presidential Library and Museum

Astrid Riecken / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — There’s still a lot President Obama wants to do before he leaves the White House in early 2017, and as the nation’s capital processed the surprise resignation of House Speaker John Boehner, Obama and his allies wondered aloud what impact the end of the Boehner era will have on the end of the Obama era.

In short, they don’t know. But they don’t think it’s good.

“First guess: Harder,” former top Obama adviser David Axelrod told BuzzFeed News when asked if Boehner’s resignation would make life easier or tougher for the administration moving forward.

That Boehner wanted to leave was widely known around town. That he would do it in the middle of his term, a year before a presidential election year while conservative criticism of both his leadership in the House and Mitch McConnell’s in the Senate was reaching a fever pitch, was not. The timing leaves the Republicans to choose a new leader.

Obama long ago moved away from attempting to cut deals for big legislation with the Republican-controlled Congress toward a “pen-and-phone” executive action-focus White House that tries to leave an Obama legacy on many parts of government and policy largely without Congress. That will likely continue into the post-Boehner House, though some in the White House worry that a Congress without him could be even tougher to deal with than the House with him has been.

The White House fear is that an already unfriendly Congress could become more unpredictable. With things as they are, Obama strongly signalled that he’s not expecting much from the changing of the guard in the House. At a press conference at the White House Friday, he took pains to say “I’m not going to pre-judge who the next Speaker will be,” while also suggesting there isn’t a big untapped compromise wing in the House GOP waiting to be unleashed.

“It’s not as if there’s been a multitude of areas where the House Republican caucus has sought cooperation previously,” Obama told reporters at a White House press conference Friday. “So I don’t necessarily think there’s going to be a big shift.”

Obama praised Boehner in the press conference, saying that the two men are “politically opposite ends of the spectrum,” but saying the House speaker had always perpetuated “courtesy and civility.”

“John Boehner is a good man. He is a patriot, he cares deeply about the house, he cares about his constituents and he cares about America,” Obama said. He said he would reach out “immediately” to whomever House Republicans choose to lead them next, and urged that person not to return to the policies government shutdowns and fights over the debt limit that had defined Boehner’s tenure.

One former top aide said it was too soon to know how things would shake out. “To be honest, I don't have a great sense of it yet,” the aide said.

“The victory isn’t in the change in speaker,” Rep. Matt Salmon told reporters. “It’s in the change in direction. And I hope that we do that.”

Astrid Riecken / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — After years of being treated as nothing but a nuisance for Republican leaders, a group of conservative House members finally felt vindicated — but still not yet satisfied — when in a closed-door meeting Friday morning, Speaker John Boehner stunned his colleagues by announcing his retirement.

The group known as the House Freedom Caucus had in recent days threatened a government shutdown over funding for Planned Parenthood and sent a clear signal to Republican leaders that Boehner's speakership could soon be in jeopardy if their demands were not met.

To avert a shutdown, Boehner, in a meeting with House Republicans Friday morning, laid out a proposal to keep the government open. And then, he took himself out of the equation. The Ohio Republican, who was first elected to Congress in 1990, told his party he would retire at the end of October without giving even his closest colleagues much of a heads up.

Boehner got a long standing ovation from Republicans in the room for his service.

Conservatives and the speaker finally agreed on something, said Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas — a member of the House Freedom Caucus who has been itching to boot Boehner out of his position: "It's time for new leadership."

"I don't know why he did this," Huelskamp said. "But it's clear that if a vote was called, he didn't have the votes to sustain himself as speaker if Nancy Pelosi didn't help him out. That put him in a very vulnerable position."

Rep. John Fleming of Louisiana said he believed it was the "groundswell" of discontent among the Republican base against the speaker that led to his resignation.

"We heard about it constantly throughout August. And it wasn't just the core conservatives out there. It was Republicans across the board," Fleming said.

"Y'all have probably seen the polls — 62% of our base of Republicans feel like they've been abandoned and betrayed, so I think it was the statesman-like thing to do for our speaker to go ahead and accept the fact that there is discontent, and we need to change leadership."

But conservatives aren't entirely satisfied and plan on doubling down on their battle against establishment Republicans.

Boehner's retirement has set up a scramble for the top leadership slots in the House, and they want to make sure their wing is represented among those ranks.

Despite leadership elections over the last few years in which conservatives have said this time they'd win, though, there is not an obvious candidate to run against Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy for the position.

Huelskamp said House conservatives were going to meet soon and figure out which one of them they should rally behind for a leadership position. "When I first came up here in 2010, there was no competition for these slots, there will be competition now hopefully," he said.

Boehner's resignation is just the start, Rep. Matt Salmon of Arizona stressed.

"The victory isn't in the change in speaker," Salmon told reporters. "It's in the change in direction. And I hope that we do that."

Much of the talk in the House was less about who will succeed Boehner, and instead on shifting ire onto Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Senate at large.

"Boehner has been tarnished by McConnell's lack of leadership on numerous occasions," Salmon said. "Look, I think John Boehner has done the right thing putting the interests of the country ahead of his own personal interests. I applaud that. It's being a real standup guy. But a lot of the problems we are engaged in is because the Senate doesn't take any action on anything."

Rep. Bill Flores of Texas added: "The problems that Congress is having are not from the House. The problems are from the Senate...In my view, the speaker fell on the sword for all of Congress. And I hope that the Senate starts to get things done."

Whether Boehner's resignation is really a victory for the Freedom Caucus, however, is something that allies dispute. Some blasted the conservative wing of the House and the power they've been able to wield, following Boehner's resignation.

"You just can't continue to have a super-ultra minority continue to try to dictate what happens in the House of Representatives," Rep. Devin Nunes of California told reporters. "It's a big problem."

In a press conference Friday, Boehner said him stepping down was always his plan. He intended to resign last year, but he decided to stick around longer after then-Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his seat in a primary last July.

Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, another Boehner ally, rejected the assumption that conservatives had pushed him out.

"Nobody ever made John Boehner buckle in their lives," he said. "I think he always strives to do what he thinks is the right thing, and he thought this was it. I respect that decision."

Looking ahead, Flores admitted he didn't know if much was going to change in the House — and that the new speaker would be in a very different position.

"Because he or she is going to know you got a group of people that's going to take their head off," he said.

Trump has made disparaging remarks about Mexicans and immigrants, but data given first to BuzzFeed News shows that Spanish-language giants Univision and Telemundo have covered him more than all other major broadcast networks combined.

Courtesy MRC Latino

Spanish-language television giants Univision and Telemundo have given GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump more coverage than all of the other major broadcast networks combined, according to data put together by the Spanish-language conservative media watchdog MRC Latino.

"If Americans that don't watch news in Spanish think they're getting a lot of Trump, wait until you see Spanish-language news," MRC Latino director Ken Oliver-Mendez told BuzzFeed News.

MRC Latino researchers combed through nightly news coverage starting on June 16, the day Trump announced his candidacy to September 15, the day before the second GOP debate. They found that Trump received 304 minutes of coverage on Univision and Telemundo, compared to 271 minutes total on ABC, CBS and NBC.

Trump announced his candidacy for president with remarks disparaging Mexicans and immigrants, and he supports an immigration policy of deporting all undocumented immigrants and building a wall on the border.

While Trump shot up to first place in GOP primary polls on the back of such comments, Latinos' views of him have cratered. An August Gallup poll found his favorability with the group at -50. A September MSNBC/Telemundo poll found that 70% of Hispanics had a negative opinion of him.

Oliver-Mendez said the coverage hurts Republicans who are being painted with a broad brush as anti-immigrant and plays into a Democratic narrative being pushed by candidates like Hillary Clinton and Martin O'Malley.

"Trump is being consistently depicted as a racist and an existential threat to the people in this country who are seeking legalized status," Oliver-Mendez said. "The characterizations of Republicans as being anti-immigrant, that's something they're going to have to deal with and push back on."

He added that he's concerned when reporters and anchors weigh in with editorial judgments of Trump, which he saw in the coverage.

But it's also true that Trump didn't just stop with remarks perceived as derogatory. He also made it personal with the networks, taking on Telemundo anchor Jose Diaz-Balart at a press conference in Laredo, Texas, not allowing him to ask a question. He also kicked Univision anchor Jorge Ramos out of his press conference in a high-profile August incident. Trump's "Go back to Univision!" remark to Ramos was widely seen by Hispanics as similar to common "Go back to Mexico" comments made towards immigrants.

MRC Latino included instances like this, as well as coverage of when Trump criticized Jeb Bush for speaking Spanish on the trail, and when two Boston men allegedly used Trump's words as inspiration for the alleged beating of a Hispanic man, in their analysis.

Inclusion Matters, a progressive Media Matters project that also monitors Spanish-language media said the beating is an example of why the two networks are just doing their job when it comes to Latinos.

"This kind of hateful rhetoric carries dangers," said Kristian Ramos, Inclusion Matters director.

"Hispanics are the core audience for Univision and Telemundo; that's who these networks serve," he continued. "While coverage of policy issues should not suffer, their coverage of Trump's attacks and anti-immigrant venom is consistent with their commitment to the Hispanic community."

Here is an MRC Latino highlight video of some of the strongest Univision/Telemundo coverage of Trump:

View Video ›

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“To me, my interpretation of that it had nothing to do with climate change,” said Inhofe.

CSPAN

Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe -- a vocal skeptic of climate change and the author of The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future -- says Pope Francis never addressed climate change when he spoke before Congress on Thursday.

"He wasn't strong at all when he talked about this," the Inhofe said on Washington Watch on Thursday. "He never used the term 'climate change' or 'global warming.' I can tell you right now, the liberal Democrats that were sitting there were very disappointed in him. Now when he talks about the most serious effects of environmental deterioration, well you got to keep in mind, that goes back to the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendment."

Inhofe cited the Clear Air Act as a "success" saying it lowered the pollution in the air while the population grew and electricity use increased.

"To me, my interpretation of that it had nothing to do with climate change," said Inhofe.

"All they wanted him to do was say the term global warming or climate change," the Oklahoma senator added, saying Democrats glossed over other parts of the pope's message.

The pope did, however, reference climate change in his speech, as has been widely-reported. The pope even referenced his June encyclical about fighting climate change.

He did not, as the senator said, use the word "climate change" however.

"I call for a courageous and responsible effort to redirect our steps, and to avert the most serious effects of the environmental deterioration caused by human activity," the pope said at one point.

"We need a conversation which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all," he said at another.

After radio host Tony Perkins read some of the pope's remarks on climate change to Congress to Inhofe, the Oklahoma senator said he didn't believe that was in the pope's remarks but he couldn't understand the pope.

"The total statement that you just read I don't think was in his remarks, my problem was, you guys in the press had a copy of it and I didn't," added Inhofe. "I was sitting on the floor and I didn't understand 3/4ths of what he said."

The senator added he was happy the pope didn't address climate change specifically and he was glad Democrats and the media were disappointed.

"You're gonna find not just individuals in the Senate who are wishing he'd say something and therefore going to put their interpretation on it, but also members of the media who were anxious for him to say more than he said," he concluded. "And so they're going to put that interpretation on it. That's what's happening and I'm glad to see those people disappointed."

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Astrid Riecken / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — When Republicans took control of the House in 2010, they knew their new majority would be a challenge to control. The new generation of Republicans cared little for compromise or the institution’s traditions, and even less for anyone they viewed as accommodating to President Obama.

Fueled by the fires of the Tea Party and general anxiety over the economy, endless wars, and the looming start of Obamacare, the new generation was in no mood for slow and steady approach of political elders. It was a calculated risk for Republicans, who after four years in the minority with a brand deeply scarred by Bush-era overspending, scandals, and missteps, desperately needed an injection of energy.

Initially, Speaker John Boehner seemed the perfect person to bridge the gap between the two sides: while an institutionalist, he’d been cast into the wilderness in 1997 after a failed coup against then-Speaker Newt Gingrich. And although Boehner was committed to compromise, he had solid social conservative bona fides and was leading the charge against the practice of earmarks.

But it became clear almost immediately that these new Republicans weren’t going to be easily tamed. Within months of taking the gavel, Boehner was struggling to keep his conference from forcing a government shutdown in the Spring of 2011.

Still, Boehner and his team would insist repeatedly over the next three years that if they could just educate their conference a little more and convince them that the political realities of divided government limited their options, the next potential crisis would be averted.

But instead of reining in conservatives, Boehner’s handling of the conference only seemed to embolden them. In 2012, a handful of Republicans openly opposed his bid to be re-elected speaker. Although he won, Boehner was weakened, and a government shutdown in 2013 led by Sen. Ted Cruz only served to further embolden his critics.

At the same time, the ranks of the old guard continued to shrink, as Republicans unwilling to toe the new stridently conservative line were either primaried out of office or simply retired in frustration.

By the time the new Congress convened in January, most of the country club set had been purged, and Boehner was left with a small, but loud faction of ideological purists on one hand and a pool of incumbent rank and filers whose chief concern had increasingly become avoiding a primary at all costs — even if it meant bucking leadership.

If Boehner represented a bridge between old guard Reagan Republicans and the upstart hardline conservatives, his resignation is an acknowledgement that the not only has the bridge been crossed, it’s been lit on fire.

“Crazies have taken over the party,” Rep. Peter King, an old line Republican and Boehner ally, told CNN’s Dana Bash Thursday.

For their part, Boehner’s critics were jubilant.

“Today the establishment lost,” Rep. Tim Huelskamp tweeted gleefully following Boehner’s announcement on Friday. Huelskamp, a hardline conservative and consistent thorn in Boehner’s side, was stripped of his committee assignments by leadership in part because of his hostility to Boehner.

If Boehner’s critics are guilty of not learning the ins and outs of legislating, Boehner and his team are equally guilty of not acknowledging the political realities they faced.

For most of the last two years, Boehner’s aides have insisted the repeated challenges to his power are the insane ravings of a vocal minority, and that the vast majority of his conference would do the “right” thing and back the speaker.

Even as late as Wednesday, Boehner’s spokesman Kevin Smith was adamant that the speaker was safe.

“If there’s a small crew of members who think that he’s just going to pick up and resign in the middle of his term, they are going to be sadly mistaken,” Smith told Time’s Jay Newton Small Wednesday — even as his boss was deciding to retire.

“He deserved better than this.”

Darren Mccollester / Getty Images

Rep. Peter King, a Republican from New York, says Tea Party Republicans like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz are to blame for the resignation of House Speaker John Boehner.

"I think he could of been influenced by the pope being here yesterday and that it's just time to end the fighting that's gone on, the needless fighting that's gone on," King said to radio host John Grambling on Friday. "But having said that I'm disappointed. I think John was as good as a speaker that you could find and he's undermined by people in his own party from day one. It's truly tragic."

King singled out "people like" Cruz as the culprits of Boehner's demise.

"Yes. Yes, people like Ted Cruz, who believe in shutting down the government, want to shutdown the Department of Homeland of Security at a time when the ISIS has been highest," added King, saying Boehner couldn't get much done because there was a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate.

"Whenever the tough decisions had to be made, John made them," said King. "And at every stage though, he was undercut by people in his own party. And there's 40 or 50 and that's it. A small minority, but they were willing to hijack and blackmail the party."

King said California Rep. Kevin McCarthy would probably be speaker, but "the Ted Cruz-people" would push for an ally as Majority Leader. King said he found it "really offensive" there was a push to remove Boehner.

"He deserved better than this," added King. "I feel kinda bad for him. He's probably better off."

The Long Island Republican, who earlier called Boehner's resignation a "victory for the crazies" on social media, said those who opposed Boehner had unrealistic expectations.

"I mean seriously they basically want to shut the government down over the whole issue of Planned Parenthood," King said. "The National Right to Life Committee and the most pro-life members of Congress say that shutting down the government would not advance the cause of the anti-abortion movement whatsoever."

"But these guys have latched onto that as a reason to, they were going to basically attempt to remove the speaker if he was not able to get Planned Parenthood defunded even though the president would veto the bill and the Senate would not be able to pass it and that in that case we should shut the government down."

"And that's why I said it was a victory for the crazies," he concluded.

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Sean Rayford / Getty Images

OKLAHOMA CITY, Oklahoma — Republican frontrunner Donald Trump said that he couldn’t become a Mexican citizen if he wanted to because Mexicans “don’t like WASPs” during a speech at the Oklahoma State Fair here on Friday.

During a passage of a long speech in which Trump was describing how other countries’ immigration laws are tougher than those of the U.S., he said, “If you want to be a citizen of Mexico, it’s one of the hardest countries in the world. To be a citizen of Mexico is almost impossible.”

“I can’t be a citizen,” Trump said. “Because they don’t like WASPs. They don’t like white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, I think. They don’t want me. I don’t think I could become a citizen of Mexico.”

Trump has made opposition to illegal immigration a centerpiece of his campaign, and frequently casts Mexico as a villain in his public comments. He has been accused of racism for saying that Mexico sends rapists and murderers across the border.

Though Trump has been showing signs that his momentum might not be what it was over the summer, this wasn’t evident in Oklahoma, where he was greeted by a large crowd of fans on a hot, windless day. He was mobbed as he moved around the fair, shaking hands and answering a few questions from the press (the Pope is a “great guy, I think he’s fantastic,” he said, and “I think it’s fine” that he’s been talking about climate change and immigration, something that has drawn criticism from other conservatives). One supporter, Joanna Whipple, an 18-year-old Oklahoma City University student, was “absolutely” excited because Trump had touched her face, she said later.

The crowd reacted with glee to nearly every Trump applause line during a characteristically meandering speech that jumped from birthright citizenship to the Iran deal to Russia’s involvement in Syria and back again, at times repeating points he had made earlier.

Trump continued his recent pattern of attacking Marco Rubio, whom he called “one of these real dopes” and, repeatedly, a “lightweight” during his speech. He also criticized Rubio’s attendance record in the Senate. The crowd seemed more enthusiastic about his attacks on Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton, though they did not boo his insults to Rubio as attendees of the Values Voter Summit reportedly did on Friday morning.

Trump went after the media several times, accusing them of distorting crowd sizes and of being “terrible people.”

In a testament to his popularity among conservatives, Trump was able to make an admission that he “used to be, like, total establishment” and get away with it; Trump frequently slams other candidates for taking money from big donors, but openly admits that he used to be one of those donors.

At one point, he brought out Duck Dynasty’s Willie Robertson, who declared, “I do like me some Trump.”

About 50 minutes after he began, he made his grand exit, leaving the stage to Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It.”

If McAuliffe allows the execution of serial killer Alfredo Prieto to go forward on Oct. 1, it will be the state’s first in more than 30 months. It would also make McAuliffe only the third sitting Democratic governor to execute someone.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe

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WASHINGTON — On Oct. 1, Alfredo Prieto, a serial killer sentenced to death by juries in two different states, is scheduled to be executed by the Commonwealth of Virginia. If Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe allows the execution to go forward, it will make him only the third sitting Democratic governor to execute someone.

Death penalty opponents have asked Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who has the sole authority to grant clemency in Virginia, to "grant a temporary reprieve of his execution" so that Prieto can be transferred to California, where he has challenged his second death sentence by claiming intellectual disability.

Prieto also has a case pending before the Supreme Court about the conditions he faces in Virginia's prisons — death row inmates are automatically placed in solitary confinement — but that case, obviously, will come to an end should Prieto be put to death.

All signs at the moment point to the commonwealth preparing to move forward with the execution. This past week, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring's office said that there were no challenges pending to his Virginia convictions that would prevent him from being executed.

Earlier this year, McAuliffe supported an effort to shield information about how Virginia obtained its lethal injection drugs. The measure failed, however, and on Thursday lawyers in an unrelated case in Oklahoma claimed in a court filing there that public records from Virginia show that the commonwealth purchased its current supply of its execution drug, pentobarbital, from the state of Texas.

On Friday, Virginia confirmed the claim, with its department of corrections spokesperson specifying that the drug purchase was intended to be used to execute Prieto next week.

In a story earlier this year addressing his support for the pending secrecy legislation, spokesman Brian Coy told The Washington Post that McAuliffe does not support the death penalty but would enforce it: "He is a Catholic, so there is a moral component to his position on the issue, but he's governor, and he will enforce the law."

Coy did not immediately respond to a request Saturday for comment on whether McAuliffe is considering using his clemency authority to stop Prieo's execution.

As The Washington Post reported last year, Prieto "has been convicted of murdering three people, raping two of them, and DNA or ballistics link him to another six homicides and two rapes."

Nonetheless, his execution in Virginia would both be unusual and is a sign of the changing landscape for the death penalty.

Historically, in the period since the Supreme Court ended its four-year moratorium on executions in 1976, Virginia has been one of the more active death penalty states in the country, having conducted 110 executions—14 in one year, 1999.

In the past five years, however, the commonwealth has only executed two people. McAuliffe's predecessor, Bob McDonnell, conducted both. The most recent execution in Virginia took place more than two-and-a-half years ago, when Robert Gleason was electrocuted for the murders of two men.

McAuliffe is not quite half-way through his single term-limited four-year term, but the commonwealth has yet to conduct an execution under his watch. Likewise, while several recent Virginia governors have granted clemency to at least one person on death row under their watch — including Govs. Douglas Wilder, George Allen, Jim Gilmore, Mark Warner, and Tim Kaine — McAuliffe has not.

This issue has not come up, in part, because only eight people remain on Virginia's death row. In addition to the significant number of executions carried out by the commonwealth between 1995 and 2000, there has been a large decrease in the number of people added to Virginia's death row. No one in the commonwealth has been sentenced to death since McAuliffe became governor in January 2014. Mark Lawlor was the last person added to Virginia's death row back in 2011.

While the diminishing role of the death penalty in Virginia is one element of why Prieto's execution would be unusual, another is the national political scene. Among Democratic governors in America, only two have allowed executions to proceed under his or her watch.

McAuliffe would be the third. The only other two sitting Democratic governors to execute anyone are Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, whose state tied Texas in 2014 for the most executions in the country, and Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, whose state had two executions in his first term in office. Markell, however, has said he would sign death penalty abolition legislation that was passed by the state's senate, but stalled in the house, earlier this year.

Among other Democratic governors, seven are running states with no death penalty, including one — Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy — who signed legislation ending the death penalty into law. The others are Hawaii Gov. David Ige, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin, and West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin.

Four Democratic governors have put a moratorium on executions in place: Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper; Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, who extended the previous governor's moratorium; Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf; and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee.

Markell and one other governor, New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan, said they would sign death penalty abolition legislation considered in their respective states this year, and a third, California Gov. Jerry Brown has said he opposes the death penalty. Neither Hassan nor Brown have conducted any executions. Finally, no execution have taken place during the terms of Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear or Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, and no executions are expected to be set during their time in office.

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A previously undisclosed email chain, provided this week to the State Department, presents an apparent contradiction to Hillary Clinton’s account of when she began using a personal email address as secretary of state — and raises questions about whether other records could be missing from the ones she already provided.

Since March, when the personal account came to light, Clinton and her aides have outlined the same sequence of events surrounding her email setup: At the start of 2009, when she became secretary of state, Clinton continued to email for about two months from the same AT&T BlackBerry address she used in her previous role as U.S. senator. Then, on March 18, 2009, she started using the personal address, hdr22@clintonemail.com, which she maintained until the end of her term.

The cache of email records that Clinton sent the State Department late last year, totaling 55,000 pages, begin on March 18, 2009, with the emails from the hdr22@clintonemail.com address. (Clinton, her aides have said, no longer has access to two months of messages from the AT&T BlackBerry account.)

But this week, as first reported by the Associated Press on Friday, State Department officials were provided copies of an email chain showing that Clinton used her hdr22@clintonemail.com account as early as Jan. 28, 2009.

The thread includes messages between Clinton and David Petraeus, then commander of U.S. Central Command. The back-and-forth begins on Jan. 10, 2009, and ends on Feb. 1, 2009 — about a week into Clinton's tenure as secretary of state.

As described by a State official, the chain includes fewer than 10 emails total between Clinton and Petraeus. The emails from Clinton begin on the AT&T BlackBerry account and, the official said, "about halfway through the chain," starting on Jan. 28, the correspondence switches to the hdr22@clintonemail.com.

The early use of hdr22@clintonemail.com runs counter to prior statements by Clinton aides, as well as the "Q&A" document they drafted for reporters in March.

An excerpt from a "Q&A" document Clinton aides prepared for reporters in March.

Aides from Clinton’s presidential campaign have yet to explain or address the discrepancy. Clinton is scheduled to appear on Meet the Press on Sunday morning, where she will likely face new questions surrounding the email setup.

A spokesman declined to comment on Saturday afternoon.

On Friday, campaign spokesman Brian Fallon maintained on Twitter that Clinton didn't begin using the hdr22@clintonemail.com until March of 2009. In a tweet to a reporter from the Associated Press, Fallon wrote, "We always said the emails given to State dated back only to March [']09. That was when she started using clintonemail.com."

(Although Clinton has said she didn't begin using hdr22@clintonemail.com until March 18, 2009, reviews of the online registry information for "clintonemail.com" indicate that the domain was registered as early as Jan. 13, 2009.)

Clinton has said repeatedly this year that she has turned over all her work-related email to the State Department. In a sworn statement in August, she wrote that she had “directed that all my emails on clintonemail.com in my custody that were or are potentially federal records be provided to the Department of State, and on information and belief, this has been done.”

According to John Kirby, a State Department spokesman, copies of the email chain were provided in "the last several days" by its inspector general and separately by the Department of Defense. A State official declined to comment on what led the Defense Department or State inspector general to discover the records.

The State Department has no plans, an official said, to submit an additional records request to Clinton — or to inquire as to whether additional records exist from the hdr22@clintonemail.com account dating prior to March 18, 2009. The State official said the agency remains focused on executing Clinton's request to review and publish the 55,000 pages of correspondence she turned over late last year.

The posture from the State Department is consistent with their response to the discovery in June, amid the House Select Committee's Benghazi investigation, that Clinton had failed to hand over 15 emails or portions of emails that she received from Sidney Blumenthal, a close friend and occasional adviser.

Kirby, the State spokesman, told reporters at the time that the department did not intend to open an inquiry into the 15 missing emails.

"Is there going to be any sort of investigation into the disparity at this point," one reporter asked in a State Department briefing on June 26.

"For the 15?" Kirby asked.

"Yeah."

"I know of no such investigation," he said, adding, "certainly not by the State Department, no."

Evan McMorris-Santoro / BuzzFeed News

DES MOINES, Iowa — Before the crowd gathered around a small platform outside the “civic engagement tent” at the Iowa Latino Heritage Festival on Saturday heard from the man they came to see, they had to hear a few words from the pope.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent currently running second in the Democratic presidential race, opened his remarks by reading a verbatim Pope Francis quote from a folded piece of yellow legal pad paper he pulled from his back pocket. (Sanders is known to write his own speeches longhand on yellow legal pads.)

“The other day I was in the White House and then later on in the halls of Congress listening to Pope Francis," were the first words out of Sanders’ mouth in Des Moines. "The remarks that he made, moved me very much and I think that there are words that he gave us that we should heed."

Then came the reading.

“Let me just mention what he said a few weeks ago. He appealed to the world’s leaders to 'seek a new economic model to help the poor and to shun policies that sacrifice human life on the altar of money and profit.’ That’s Pope Francis,” Sanders said. “And essentially what he is saying in so many words is there is something very wrong in this world, and I am saying in this country, when so few have so much and so many have so little.”

The pope has long been a staple of Sanders stump speeches. Francis, with his focus on economic inequality, has fired up many corners of the American left — none more so than the corner where Sanders sits. There seemed no politician in Washington more excited to see the pope in person than Sanders was last week, and there was no candidate who mentioned Francis more on the presidential stump before his visit to the U.S. than Sanders had. When Sanders boldly went to Liberty University to argue to evangelicals that Christian doctrine requires a focus on the economic justice he advocates, Sanders referred more than once to Francis.

The pope’s speech to Congress, with its celebration of radical economic leftist Dorothy Day, dialed the Sanders love for the Francis up to 11. A beaming Sanders celebrated the speech in interviews moments after it ended. His Senate office ran a day-long campaign to tie the pope and the senator together, posting a tweet at 9 a.m. Thursday that linked to “10 Times Bernie Sanders and Pope Francis Sounded Alike." His presidential campaign fired off a fundraising email at the end of the day signed by Sanders that urged supporters to give because, like Sanders, Francis is "is asking us to create a new society where the economy works for all, and not just the wealthy and the powerful."

The next step came In Iowa Saturday, when the pope became a kind of Sanders campaign mascot. And, possibly, his introduction to the Latino electorate — with whom Sanders has struggled with low name I.D. and polling that shows him well behind the Democratic frontrunner, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

At back-to-back stops, Sanders opened his remarks by talking about meeting the pope and celebrating his economic message. In Des Moines, at the Latino Heritage Festival, his speech was almost more about the pope than it was about anything else. Sanders brought up Francis more than once in a 13-minute version of his usually hour-long stump speech that put front and center support for a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and condemning the “racism and demagoguery” that he said characterizes GOP rhetoric on immigration.

The Sanders crowd at the Latino Heritage Festival numbered around 100, and, as most Iowa political crowds are, it was overwhelmingly white. But there was more diversity than is usually found at a Sanders Iowa event. Watching the 74-year-old Sanders talk about the pope and his message were two of the young Latino voters Democrats are desperate to bring into the fold. They were both impressed with Sanders’ speech and said pointing out political agreements with the pope was the right strategy for finding Latino votes.

“Most of us, I’d say the majority are Catholic or Christian,” Natalia Tinoco, a 19-year-old native of Colombia and sophomore at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, told BuzzFeed News. She said she plans to vote for the first next fall and is undecided about who to support.

Francis was a good way to win Latino votes, Tinoco said. “I feel it’s a good connection, she said. “It got my attention.”

Standing next to her, in a UNI Hispanic Latino Student Union t-shirt, was fellow sophomore Andrew Jessip, native of Sioux Falls. He said he will caucus in February for the Democrats but is undecided about which candidate he’ll end up supporting. Sanders appearance at the Latino Heritage Festival and his Latino-focused speech there resonated with Jessip though he explained watching candidates try to win Latino votes can sometimes be frustrating.

“I don’t think that there’s some umbrella over everybody. It’s easy to say you need to reach out to the Latino community but what does that mean? There’s so much diversity within the Latino community. You have documented citizens, you have undocumented citizens,” he said. "But if you’re going for a young Latino vote, I think what Sanders did was really big. He touched on immigration, incarceration, and education.”

He agreed with Tinoco, however, that the more Pope Francis in Sanders outreach campaign, the better.

“I think a lot of people are connecting with this pope regardless of their religion,” he said. "I think this pope is a groundbreaking pope in a lot of his views."

Sanders's affinity for talking about the pope, though, is universal. At a town hall meeting in Newton, Iowa — to a crowd that lacked even the diversity of the earlier event — Sanders again opened his remarks by talking about the pope and meeting him in Washington.

A top aide to Sanders said that Sanders’ Francis focus could help win Latino support, but noted that Sanders talks about the pope constantly and has been doing it for months.

“He thinks the pope is a tremendous leader whose importance goes beyond the Catholic Church,” said Michael Briggs, Sanders's communications strategist. "He’s talking about issues that Bernie thinks are important, from income inequality to climate change. I’ve heard him say, and you probably have too, ‘You think I’m radical?'"

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In two interviews over the weekend, Bill and Hillary Clinton both sought to link this year's ongoing email inquiry to what they described as the long-running string of baseless scandals and “accusations” they’ve been beating back since the ‘90s.

On Sunday, in a lengthy exchange on Meet the Press about the personal email account she used as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton invoked the scandals that dogged her husband’s administration. “During the ‘90s, I was subjected to the same kind of barrage,” she said. "And it was, it seemed to be at the time, endless."

While acknowledging, as she has stated repeatedly in recent weeks, that she takes “responsibility” for the questions raised about her personal email setup, Clinton added that she’s been “involved from the receiving side in a lot of these accusations” for decades.

“In fact, as you might remember during the ‘90s, there were a bunch of them. And you know, all of them turned out to be not true. That was the outcome.”

Clinton added that, in spite of the controversies — the Gennifer Flowers scandal, the “Travelgate” questions, and the Whitewater investigation — she was still elected to the U.S. Senate following her husband’s two terms in the White House. “When I ran for the Senate, the voters of New York — they overlooked all of that and they looked at my record,” she said, “and I was elected senator after going through years of this kind of back and forth."

"And it is, you know, it’s regrettable,” Clinton said. “But it’s part of the system."

At various points this summer, before her campaign began to engage more with the substance of the email inquiry, Clinton also likened the issue to the Republican-led congressional investigation into the Benghazi terrorist attack — both results, she said, of “the usual partisanization” of “anything that goes on” in presidential politics.

The majority of the Meet the Press interview was spent on questions about Clinton's emails.

Clinton dismissed the theory that she set up the private server in an attempt to evade Freedom of Information Act requests or congressional investigators:

"It's totally ridiculous. That never crossed my mind. And in fact, since more than 90% of my work-related emails were on the system, they are subject to FOIA or any other request. That's how the Benghazi committee got the emails even before we, you know, went through our exhaustive process."

She addressed a previously undisclosed email chain with David Petraeus, then commander of U.S. Central Command — which dates prior to March 18, 2009, when aides have long said Clinton began using her personal email account:

"Well, everything that we had access to was certainly out there... There was a transition period. You know, I wasn't that focused on my email account to be clear here."

She spoke about the server in her Chappaqua, N.Y., home, and the time it took for the account to be set up during the stated "transition period" in 2009:

"...It was already there. It had been there for years. It is the system that my husband's personal office used when he got out of the White House. And so it was sitting there in the basement. It was not any trouble at all. I know there are a lot of people who are questioning that. But the fact is that it was there. I added my account to it. It apparently took a little time to do that. And so there was about a month where I didn't have everything already on the server and we went back, tried to, you know, recover whatever we could recover. And I think it's also fair to say that, you know, there are some things about this that I just can't control."

And she said she took no part in the review of her correspondence, conducted by her attorneys last year, to sort her personal emails from her work-related emails:

"I wanted them to be as clear in their process as possible. I didn't want to be looking over their shoulder. If they thought it was work-related, it would go to the State Department. If not, then it would not."

In a separate interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria, which aired on Sunday, Bill Clinton also called these scandals a “regular feature” of presidential politics.

"It always happens. We're seeing history repeat itself. And I actually am amazed that she's borne up under it as well as she has,” he said. "But I have never seen so much expended on so little."

“All of a sudden, something nobody thought was an issue — Whitewater — that turned out never to be an issue, winds up being a $70 million investigation,” Bill Clinton said. “So this is just something that has been a regular feature of all of our presidential campaigns, except in 2008 for unique reasons.”

When Zakaria asked if the questions are really part of a “Republican plot” — calling back to Hillary Clinton’s infamous “vast right-wing conspiracy” charge in 1998 — Bill Clinton said no, because “a plot makes it sound like it’s a secret.”

"There are lots of people who wanted there to be a race for different reasons,” he said. "And they thought the only way they could make it a race was a full-scale frontal assault on her. And so this email thing became the biggest story in the world.”

On Meet the Press, when asked about her husband's comments to Zakaria, Clinton replied, "I love my husband, and you know, he does get upset when I am attacked. I totally get that. But we also get the fact that look, this is a contest."

LINK: New Emails Appear To Contradict Hillary Clinton Timeline

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Late last year, Hillary Clinton gave the State Department copies of her work email from her four-year tenure as secretary of state. The records begin on March 18, 2009 — a day aides had long identified as the point at which Clinton started using the personal email account she maintained on a home server in Chappaqua, N.Y.

Clinton actually began using the account, hdr22@clintonemail.com, about two months earlier than previously stated, in January 2009, an official with her campaign confirmed on Sunday. The clintonemail.com domain, the aide said, was not housed on the Clintons' Chappaqua server until March 2009 — at which point the server began storing Clinton's emails, starting with messages on March 18, 2009.

The federal records archived on the server — and provided by Clinton to the State Department late last year — begin on March 18, 2009, as a result, the official said.

(The campaign official did not identify the day in March that the hdr22@clintonemail.com account was transferred to the Chappaqua server. But the first email following the move, the official said, came on March 18, 2009.)

The early use of hdr22@clintonemail.com came to light on Friday, when the State Department announced it had been given copies of a previously undisclosed email chain showing that Clinton used the personal account as early as Jan. 28, 2009. The string of emails, an exchange between Clinton and David Petraeus, starts on Jan. 10, 2009, and ends on Feb. 1, 2009.

The Petraeus emails were not among those Clinton submitted to the State Department late last year. According to the campaign official, Clinton only has access to emails she sent or received after March 2009, when the hdr22@clintonemail.com account was moved to her home server.

The Petraeus emails, first reported by the Associated Press, conflict with the account given by the Clinton campaign this year about the sequence of events surrounding her email.

On Sunday, during an interview on Meet the Press, NBC News's Chuck Todd asked Clinton to address the discrepancy. "Well, everything that we had access to was certainly out there," Clinton told Todd. "And the reason we know about the email chain with General Petraeus is because it was on a government server."

When pressed to comment on the fact that she'd used hdr22@clintonemail.com earlier than previously stated, Clinton said, "There was a transition period."

The campaign official addressed the issue in more detail on Sunday, laying out a timeline of the hdr22@clintonemail.com setup during that "transition period": In January of 2009, the clintonemail.com domain was registered; shortly thereafter, Clinton began using hdr22@clintonemail.com; and by at least March 18, 2009, the account was moved to the server the Clintons kept at their house.

From January to March 18, 2009, as she moved to the State Department, Clinton also continued to email from the AT&T Blackberry account she used in her previous job as U.S. senator. (The old account was set up as a forwarding address, before being shut down altogether, a campaign spokesman said this summer.)

In the case of both the AT&T Blackberry and hdr22@clintonemail.com accounts, aides said, Clinton no longer has access to messages she sent or received as secretary of state from January to March 18, 2009.

LINK: New Emails Appear To Contradict Hillary Clinton Timeline

LINK: Bill And Hillary Clinton Link Emails To Controversies Of The ’90s

In Iowa, Sanders lays out his case for what’s wrong in Congress, why John Boehner quit, and how to fix what he says is broken.

At stops in Iowa this weekend, Sanders was asked by voters for his take on why Washington isn't working. In Des Moines on Saturday, a voter asked if he supported "filibuster reform" in the Senate.

Win Mcnamee / Getty Images

"The Senate right now, for a wide variety of reasons, is fairly dysfunctional. And we need to create a body that can move with some speed to address the major issues facing our country," he said. "And the idea that one person can put a hold on a nominee is really not acceptable in the year 2015."

Sanders has long called for an end to the Senate practice of requiring 60 votes to allow most legislation to proceed through the chamber, though he doesn't talk much about filibuster reform in his standard presidential stump speech. In 2013, Sanders' Senate office posted a short explanation of how Sanders wants to change the Senate:

Sanders supports a so-called talking filibuster. With the support of 51 senators such a change in Senate procedure would force opponents of a bill to stand up on the Senate floor and explain their reasons, at length if they desired, for opposing a bill. The change would put an end to the current practice of routinely requiring a 60-vote majority to even consider a bill through the exercise of a silent objection.

In 2013, when Democrats led the Senate, they changed the way the filibuster works for many executive nominations, preventing in most cases the kinds of single-senator holds of nominees Sanders railed against in Des Moines. When Republicans took over in 2015, they didn't show any interest in changing the rules back. Those rule changes are not without their risk or criticism: Removing the 60-vote threshold for most nominees results in more presidential nominees receiving confirmation — but, when one party holds the presidency and the Senate majority, a 51-vote threshold allows that party to essentially control most nominations. Regardless, so far, neither party's leaders have embraced the kind of sweeping changes Sanders wants.

In Newton, a voter asked Sanders what he thought about House Speaker John Boehner's surprise resignation from Congress last week.

Win Mcnamee / Getty Images

"Boehner is a conservative guy, but he's not crazy," Sanders said. "And now you have, maybe a couple dozen extreme, extreme right wing Republicans who really don't much believe in government. And there's nobody in that group that would ever support anything that Barack Obama would sign. And therefore the Republican Party — if you get rid of these people, 20 or 30 of them, the Republican Party's majority is not big enough to be able to pass anything, and that's what they threatened Boehner with. And he's been having to deal with this for five years."

"Then he has to go to the Democrats to get the votes that he needs and then he's hated even more," Sanders went on. "So I think basically — I know Boehner, I've known him for years — I guess he probably said 'enough is enough, I'm not going to deal with this craziness.' He can go out and make a whole lot more money than he's making and not have to deal with this horrendous pressure that he's under. That would be my guess. But we will see what happens. The problem is not going to go away and the Republican Party will have to decide whether it is an extremely conservative party or, even worse, a right-wing extremist party. That's where they are right now and we'll see how they come out."

On the day Boehner announced his resignation last week, Sanders's Senate office put out a less detailed version of essentially the same take on the House.

"It appears that even a very conservative speaker like John Boehner is unable to control the extreme right-wing drift of Republicans in the House. This is a party whose ideology is way out of touch with the American people. Without Boehner, it may get even worse."

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So far this month, in an effort to engage more with the press and connect with wider audiences, Hillary Clinton has sat for as many as 14 interviews with a range of outlets: television (MSNBC, ABC News), local (Cedar Rapids Gazette, WMUR), and a mix of entertainment and non-traditional (Jimmy Fallon, Refinery29).

The latest comes on Tuesday with the launch of Lenny Letter, a newsletter co-founded by HBO star Lena Dunham. For the debut, Dunham interviewed Clinton about her presidential campaign, "millennials," feminism, marriage, and miscellaneous topics such as the widely shared video and photos of the moment Lenny Kravitz's pants seam split open on stage during a recent concert.

The interview presents a light venue for Clinton as she and her campaign aides continue to field questions about the email account she used as secretary of state.

At the end of her interview, in a portion shared in advance of the Lenny Letter debut, Dunham asked Clinton to comment on the Donna Karan dress she wore to a White House governors' dinner soon after she became first lady in 1993.

The black dress, which Karan sent Clinton unsolicited, left bare both shoulders. The design became known as the "cold shoulder dress," spurring much outside commentary at the time, including a New York Times piece that noted, "A bare shoulder radiates demure sexuality, like Grace Kelly's in To Catch a Thief."

Dunham, seated across from Clinton, presented her with a photo from the 1993 dinner. Clinton clasped her hands. "That is one of my favorite dresses," she said. "Can I tell you?"

"Please tell us," said Dunham.

"I wore it for one of our first big events at the White House in 1993. It was a design of my friend, Donna Karan," Clinton said. "You know, like everything I do, it turned out to be controversial. I’m hardly a fashion icon… I absolutely admit that."

"To us you are," said Dunham.

"But I do like to fool around with fashion and have some fun with it, and so I wore this and, you know, a lot of the political pundits [were saying], 'What does that mean?' You know, 'What is the meaning of this,' and everything?"

Clinton shrugged: "I thought it would be fun. You’ve got to still have fun in all of these different roles that you’re in or I’m in or anybody is in their life. So, this was one of my favorites. It’s in the Clinton Library if anybody ever wants to see it."

When Dunham described the dress as "extremely chic," Clinton said, "Oh, maybe I should..." She paused. "Well, I'd have to really work out a lot, and, yeah..."

Dunham picked up on the suggestion:

Dunham: "I think you should bust it back out for a potential inauguration."

Clinton: "Do you think I should? Do you think I should try to get back into it?"

Dunham: "I do, I do."

Clinton: "I mean, like... retro?"

Dunham: "Yeah, I think it’s back. It’s circled back."

Clinton: "Well, you know, Donna says that no matter your age, your size, your shoulders always look good."

Dunham: "So?"

Clinton: "So? So... don’t you think we ought to be working on this?"

[Dunham and Clinton bump fists.]

Clinton: "I think we should do more, like, shoulder stuff."

Dunham: "Let’s do more shoulder stuff."

Clinton: "I’m really motivated my friend. This is exciting."

Instagram / NYT Styles

Other portions of the Lenny Letter interview — previewed in various news outlets last week — include comments from Clinton on the following questions:

"Do you consider yourself a feminist?" (via Politico)

"Yes, absolutely. I’m always a little bit puzzled when any woman of whatever age, but particularly a young woman, says something like, 'Well, I believe in equal rights but I’m not a feminist.' Well, a feminist is by definition someone who believes in equal rights."

“Did you see the footage where [Kravitz's] pants split?" (via Funny or Die)

“No, I missed that... Do you think I could get that… on YouTube? Yeah, I’ll look for that.”

"How do you convince [young women] that their voice, their vote, can actually make a difference?" (via MSNBC)

“You kind of can cut through that and say, 'Look, I not only have a right, I have an obligation to make a choice.' That’s part of the service I pay for living in our country. So I’m going to vote for X or Y. Not because I think that person is perfect, but it’s going to be better than the alternative. If you can’t get excited, be pragmatic and do it anyway."

About that.

Scott Olson / Getty Images

Former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, while defending the veracity of her own life story, said that no in the media ever checked if President Obama was ever a community organizer.

Fiorina was speaking on the Hugh Hewitt Show on Friday responding to a Washington Post fact check that claimed her story of going from "secretary to CEO" was misleading, and that her career really began after received her masters in business. The story never disputed Fiorina's claim that she was in fact a secretary.

"My campaign team talked to this reporter. It's like no, no, no, actually, she was a secretary," Fiorina stated. "She was a Kelly girl. These are the jobs she had. And then she worked full time as a secretary in a real estate firm. I mean, what do you say when the liberal media is so threatened by you, and so threatened apparently by my true life story, that they honestly try and convince people that actually, I wasn't a secretary."

The former HP CEO then turned to President Obama, saying nobody examined his resume at all.

"And why, on top of everything else, I find so amazing is remember Barack Obama," she said. "There was no examination of his resume at all. Nobody actually checked whether he was a community organizer or not, or how long he sat in the pew of that church. But suddenly, I'm not a secretary."

Obama's organizing and church attendance, however, were covered by the media extensively. Obama's work for Illinois Project Vote in the 1990s and his organizing on the South Side of Chicago were the subject of numerous profiles both during his 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns along with his 2004 run for Senate in Illinois.

A New York Times story from very early in the 2008 presidential campaign (April 2007) noted Obama had been a member of controversial pastor Jeremiah Wright's church for over 20 years.

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