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LAS VEGAS — In an election of firsts, there is something else unique, sensitive, and awkward beginning to stir controversy that could shape the Latino vote. With Cuban-American senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz in position to win the Republican nomination, many Hispanic voters may be presented with a novel choice: a Latino candidate for president, but one who probably doesn’t share their family’s cultural background.

While Rubio and Cruz’s fight last week over immigration policy — and their immigration records — were the main event at the last debate, there’s a demographic dimension that is beginning to surface as progressive activists and others begin leveling harsh accusations at both candidates partly informed by shared Latino backgrounds, but fueled by divergent cultural experiences.

Close to two-thirds of Hispanics are Mexican-American, while only 3.7% are Cuban. That disparity, and the ways Mexicans and Cubans have historically been treated by the U.S. government when they reach American soil, have created historic tensions between the two groups — and distinct political experiences. In 2013, when Pew Hispanic asked about leaders in the Latino community, Cuban-Americans identified Rubio, while Mexican-Americans ranked Sonia Sotomayor and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

And that has already begun to fuel ugliness. Just a day before the debate, for instance, tucked away in a room at the East Las Vegas Community Center, past a handful of white senior citizens playing casino card games, national Democratic and progressive groups and local Nevada activists argued that Rubio and Cruz are no different than Donald Trump.

Both candidates were assailed for opposing President Obama’s executive program DACA, which deferred deportation for undocumented youth who came to the country as children, and last year's DAPA, a similar policy aimed at parents, as well. (And, of course, those present also lambasted the Republicans for standard progressive fare: their stances on raising the minimum wage, labor issues, and climate policy.)

It was definitely a partisan gathering — Democrats yelling about Republicans. But the tears and anger flowed from local activists, the kind who play a big role in Nevada politics, and resemble other Latino-based advocacy in other states.

At the head of the table, Dolores Huerta, 85, who worked alongside Cesar Chavez, called Rubio and Cruz "sellouts" towards the end of the event, who had turned their backs not just on the Hispanic community, but the rest of the country.

Then she went further.

"These men may speak Spanish, they may be Latino, but they don't have Latino hearts," Huerta said. "They are traidores (traitors), they don't represent our community."

National Review called it “The Ugly Attempt to Paint Cruz and Rubio as Traitors to Their Ethnicity." The Washington Post interviewed one of the organizers of the event, Cristobal Alex, head of the Latino Victory Project, which has since released ads aimed at both candidates, and basically offered a way for him to explain himself: Are Hispanic progressives really charging Rubio and Cruz with “ethnic treason?”

Alex demurred. And most have avoided direct language.

At the event, Alex had said of Rubio and Cruz, “These two candidates, when they got to the top of the ladder, they kicked it down, so the community couldn’t climb anymore.”

In a swing-state like Nevada, the Latino breakdown of the country is even more pronounced: 78% of Hispanics are Mexican-American (like Huerta and many of the activists at the table), while just 3% are Cuban-American.

Candidates can bridge that cultural divide — though immigration looms large. Rubio's cousin, Mo Denis, for instance, is a Nevada state lawmaker. "Most of my Hispanic supporters are Mexican and Central American," he told BuzzFeed News.

"The real big thing about does a Cuban appeal to a Mexican or Central American is it depends where you stand on issues that are important to them,” Denis sad. “Being Hispanic and being able to speak to them is important, but at the same time if you oppose immigration or you're not strong enough on education it doesn’t matter what you are."

He pointed to Nevada's popular Republican governor, Brian Sandoval, who originally supported Arizona's divisive SB1070, the so-called “show your papers” law in 2010, before embracing immigration policies unpopular with the national party in subsequent years. Working together with Denis, who was the state senate majority leader at the time, the two passed driver's authorization cards for undocumented immigrants and an increased English-language learning initiative, with a budget of $50 million in 2013 and $100 million in 2015.

There was no Nevada governor exit poll in 2014, though Democratic pollster Latino Decisions saw Sandoval's numbers with Hispanics go from 15% in 2010 to 47% on the eve of the election in 2014.

An operative who has worked with Sandoval and Rubio said the Nevada governor has opened the door for Republicans in the state.

"The Hispanic population votes 70-75% Democrat but Brian Sandoval changed that and Marco Rubio can change that," the strategist said. "Rubio has that potential of changing the normal Republican take, we don’t have another candidate, another Republican running, who can do what he can do in Clark County or in Las Vegas."

If Sandoval has helped the Republican cause in Nevada, a Republican candidate may also have to contend with the aftermath of Donald Trump.

Trump has been fond of invoking the policies of presidents past to give cover for his most controversial proposals — like Dwight D. Eisenhower's "Operation Wetback," a 1954 program that forcefully sent Mexican nationals as well as U.S. citizens back to Mexico. The U.S. and its southern neighbor share a checkered immigration history that goes back much further, however.

During the protectionism of the Great Depression, the U.S. deported more than 2 million Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. By World War II, an agricultural labor shortage resulted in the 1942 Bracero Program, an agreement between the two nations that led to 4.5 million Mexicans crossing the border.

They would eventually wear out their welcome, ushering in "Operation Wetback," a term that has been in the news because of Trump, but is now regarded as a slur.

The U.S. government treatment of Cubans differed, and was shaped by a geopolitical context: the Cold War and the Castro regime.

A decade after Eisenhower’s deportation program, Lyndon B. Johnson declared "to the people of Cuba that those who seek refuge here in America will find it. The dedication of America to our traditions as an asylum for the oppressed is going to be upheld." The government relaxed immigration laws for Cubans, including the rules governing permanent residency. The 1990s revision of the law developed the “wet foot, dry foot” policy that allows fleeing Cubans who reach American soil (dry feet) to stay, and apply for permanent residency after one year.

Five academics who spoke with BuzzFeed News from across the country said Cubans are viewed as the most pampered Latino immigrant — that other Hispanic groups “chafe” at their special immigration status.

Geraldo Cadava, a Northwestern University professor writing a book on Hispanic Republicans said "tensions between Cubans and Mexicans threatened to tear apart" the leading advocacy group for Latino conservatives, the Republican National Hispanic Assembly, in the 1970s and ‘80s. He said beyond immigration, issues of race and class were also present because Cuban-Americans have traditionally been more upwardly mobile.

Mark Hugo Lopez of Pew Hispanic said he has found that among Latinos, Cubans are among the most educated and more likely to own their home, while Mexicans experience higher poverty rates and bigger families.

Anna Ochoa O'Leary, the head of the University of Arizona's Mexican-American Studies department, argued there is a “privilege” that accompanies Cuban political candidates.

"Cuban candidates speak from a point of view of privilege where they haven’t struggled like other Latinos," she said. "They come from a very different background and I would say they’re less likely to vote for those candidates after watching them fight over who slams the door the hardest."

But even if Democrats think this cultural history may prove challenging for Republicans, many of them worry about Rubio’s broad appeal: The fully bilingual Republican, equally at home on Fox News or on Telemundo, could speak directly to Hispanics in a way the GOP has previously only dreamt. These Democrats worry their mother or grandmother might like the handsome politician on their television and help remake the Hispanic vote, or at least help shape it for the future in more favorable terms, after Mitt Romney’s untenable 29% in 2012.

"He is best positioned to relate, to connect with the Latino community," said the LIBRE Initiative's Daniel Garza. "Once you relate people trust you and people like you. He certainly has the biggest advantage by far when it comes to the Latino vote."

Garza, who declined to be part of a group of Hispanic Republicans that considered criticizing Ted Cruz in Colorado in November (and blasted him last week in Vegas), has since changed his mind after Cruz ruled out any form of legalization at the debate.

"I was taken aback by his policy position taken during the debate going against what he has said in word and deed," Garza said. "We liked his position two years ago” he said, referring to Cruz in 2013 backing a 500% growth in H1-B visas, “but it's clear that he has changed it and we’re disappointed."

In fact, the change from Garza, whose group is backed by the billionaire Koch brothers, is the latest sign that Hispanic Democrats and Republicans believe he will have no support from community leaders at all — and based purely on his policy positions.

Fernando Romero, who the Bush campaign once included in a list of prominent Latino supporters before he publicly stated that he was actually supporting Rubio, said he knows hundreds of Hispanics in Nevada and none of them are supporting Cruz. And he treaded into the sensitive ethnic space.

"Ted Cruz in our eyes is more dangerous than Donald Trump," he said. "When it comes to the Latino community, he is is someone we cannot trust because he’s so anti-everything we stand for. I don’t think many people even look at him as being Latino."

In the eyes of these Latino Republicans, conversely, Rubio shined.

Jesus Marquez, a conservative radio host in Nevada who supports Bush said that when he talks to Mexican Americans all they want is a permit to work, the ability to visit their family in Mexico, and then come back and work again.

"Most Latinos here in Nevada, the feedback I get, not just from my radio show but also from my grassroots canvassing — most Mexican-Americans favor Rubio over Cruz," he said.

BuzzFeed News has learned that Democrats are considering polling on Hispanic attitudes towards Rubio. Democratic pollster Fernand Amandi said that Republicans would suffer if they ran a Cuban-centric Latino campaign, but a pan-Hispanic approach could do well.

"A positive for Rubio or Cruz is that they would potentially be the first Hispanic president of the United States. That may be something to poo poo right now but let's not forget how important it was for black Republicans back then," he said, referring to the historic nature of Obama's candidacy, where commentators often wondered if African-Americans would identify with his life story. "It certainly was enough to sway Colin Powell.”

Yvanna Cancela, the political director of the majority Hispanic 55,000 member strong Culinary Workers Union in Nevada, is Cuban-American and was one of the activists at the Vegas event. She said there’s a shared sense of Latino values that transcends country of origin, like focus on family.

This opens the door for Latino candidates to have a conversation regardless of ethnicity but "if you’re not talking about the issues in a way that advances those values I don’t think it makes a difference," she said. "Rubio and Cruz are talking in a way about immigration and the economy that doesn’t open the door for Latinos to be middle class, so you’re not really speaking to Latino values."

While much of this will come down to the issues the candidates support, as appears to already be the case with Cruz, it is also true that it is in the best interest of Democrats to derail any appeal Rubio or Cruz may have among Hispanics, as the left-leaning professor Cadava mused.

"As liberal Latinos, in most areas of our lives, we are speaking solidarity with one another. We want to talk about our common culture, or worker's solidarity, this idea that workers should find solidarity despite different backgrounds," he said.

"But as soon as there is a specter, a threat, of a Latino conservative running and appealing to Hispanics we want to carve up the Latino electorate."

“I’m not gonna let any network or anybody tell me we’re not a first-tier campaign.”

Brian Frank / Reuters

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Rand Paul said on Wednesday that he will refuse to participate in a "second-tier" debate if he is relegated to the undercard stage by the Fox Business Network.

Politico reported on Tuesday that the network's criteria to make the main stage could possibly put candidates John Kasich, Carly Fiorina, and Rand Paul in the undercard.

"I won't participate in any kind of second-tier debate," the Kentucky senator said on Kilmeade and Friends. "We've got a first-tier campaign. I've got 800 precinct chairman in Iowa. I've got a 100 people on the ground working for me. I've raised 25 million dollars. I'm not gonna let any network or anybody tell me we're not a first-tier campaign. If you tell a campaign with three weeks to go that they're in the second-tier, you destroy the campaign. This isn't the job of the media to pick who wins. The voters ought to get a chance."

Paul said limiting the number of candidates lays "it up in a lap" for Donald Trump, adding that he is the only candidate who would challenge the businessman. He said the network relegating him to the second-tier debate is a designation as an unserious campaign, and attacked the use of what he called imprecise polling to determine which candidates get on the stage.

"I frankly just won't be told by the media which tier I'm in, and we're not willing to accept that, because we're a first-tier campaign and we're in it to win it and we won't be told that we're in a tier that can't win," he said.

Asked about high viewership for the undercard debate, Paul said it was about the perception of not being a competitor. "It's the kids table and at that table you're not considered to be a competitor," Paul said. "Not considered to be having a chance."

He said early on, candidates could move freely between debates, but now it was too late in the election cycle to benefit from being in the undercard debate. Paul said fundraising and organization should be taken into account in qualifying for the main-stage debate.

"Without question, we have a first-tier campaign and we just can't accept the designation of being artificially told that we don't have a chance with three weeks ago. So we won't stand for it and we will protest any such designation," he said.

“It’s what he says in New York to a fundraiser and then what he says in a speech in Iowa.”

Brian Snyder / Reuters

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Marco Rubio on Wednesday criticized his opponent Ted Cruz for portraying himself as the only "principled conservative" in the Republican presidential race, arguing that Cruz' positions are instead based on political calculation.

"It's not personal," Rubio told New Hampshire radio host Jack Heath. "Look, I think what it is is, obviously, there's a difference between principle and calculation. And I think Ted has shown throughout his career that he's been calculating in his position on some issues. Immigration is one of them, but it's not just immigration. It's national security."

"It's what he says in New York to a fundraiser and then what he says in a speech in Iowa," Rubio said, alluding to Cruz telling donors at New York fundraiser in December that he would not make opposing gay marriage a "top-three priority."

"It's, you know, not voting to fund the military and then talking about bombing ISIS and making the sands glow. It's about weakening our intelligence program and then talking tough on ISIS," Rubio continued. "So there are differences on the issues and then there's also this notion that he's portrayed himself as the only principled conservative in the race when in fact his position on issues like trade and immigration and others have been tempered by the political winds.

"So we'll have a discussion about that because that's an important difference especially if you're gonna attack others and hold yourself up as the only principled conservative in the race."

Gary Cameron / Reuters

The Justice Department has suspended $1.2 billion in payments of asset forfeiture revenues to police departments across the country, citing budget constraints.

In a letter to state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies Monday, the Justice Department said it was deferring all future payments from the federal Equitable Sharing Program, which distributes asset forfeiture revenues to hundreds of police departments across the country.

"The Department does not take this step lightly," the letter reads. "We explored every conceivable option that would have enabled us to preserve some form of meaningful equitable sharing while continuing to operate the Program and meet our other fiscal obligations. Unfortunately, the combined effect of the two reductions totaling $1.2 billion made that impossible."

The Equitable Sharing Program allows state and local police, working in conjunction with federal law enforcement, to keep 80% of the proceeds from seized property, while the other 20% goes back into the federal program.

The Justice Department cited budget constraints due to the recently passed appropriations bill in Congress as the reason for the suspension of the program. In the letter, the Justice Department said it hopes "to resume equitable sharing payments at a later date should the budget picture improve."

Under civil asset forfeiture laws, police can seize property connected to a suspected crime — cash, cars, houses, etc. — even if the property owner has not been convicted, or sometimes even charged, with a crime. Police departments began using the practice in the 1980s under the auspices of disrupting drug traffickers and other organized crime.

Civil liberties groups argue the practice of civil asset forfeiture deprives citizens of due process and creates perverse incentives for police to seize property. In light of such claims, as well as a multitude of critical news investigations, several states have restricted police from profiting from the practice.

“Law enforcement revealed that its true interest in forfeiture is policing for profit—not public safety,” said Lee McGrath, legislative counsel for the Institute for Justice, said in a statement Wednesday. “The recently enacted Consolidated Appropriations Act does not stop police and prosecutors from chasing criminals. They’re frustrated because Congress put on hold their chasing cash.”

However, law enforcement organizations say it is a vital tool in their arsenal.

In an email to its members Tuesday obtained by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the International Association of Chiefs of Police said: "We want to make clear that neither the IACP, nor any of our law enforcement partners, were consulted regarding this announcement. The position of the IACP is this decision is detrimental to state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve."

The National Sheriffs Association also said in a statement Wednesday that Congress and the Obama administration "should be ashamed because this decision will have severe and direct consequences for our communities. While Congress and the President vacation in peace and tranquility, law enforcement knows all too well that the criminals, terrorists, and criminal aliens do not take a holiday. Those seeking to do us harm can rest easier knowing one less tool can be used against them."

The Institute for Justice and other groups argue that the Equitable Sharing Program allowed police to circumvent state laws restricting police departments from funneling asset forfeiture revenues back into their budgets.

“State legislators from Florida to Ohio to California should take notice of law enforcement’s reaction to the DOJ’s announcement” McGrath said. “Many police, sheriffs and prosecutors want to circumvent state laws because outsourcing forfeiture litigation to the federal government is lucrative."

In January, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced new restrictions on the equitable sharing program.

A protester eats Christmas dinner in front of the Lexmark plant.

John Stanton / BuzzFeed News

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — “This is a difficult Christmas. It is very sad,” Maria Duran said, tears welling in her eyes.

Rather than spending Christmas Eve with her husband and four children in their small home in Juarez’s southeastern edge, Maria was sitting inside a makeshift shelter at the gates of a factory that belongs to her former employer, Lexmark.

“I was fired suddenly; I had hoped to maintain the job. Everything happened very quickly,” she explained. “I don’t have any money.”

Still, Duran and dozens of other former workers have established an encampment here to protest poor working conditions and low wages and to demand that Kentucky-based Lexmark allow workers to form an independent union.

The protests at Lexmark were sparked earlier this month after the company allegedly broke a promise to increase pay by 35 cents to $4.38 a day. The decision angered employees of the printer giant, prompting demands that they be allowed to form a union — something activists here say hasn’t happened in some 50 years.

Now, some of them are on the leading edge of what activists hope will bloom into an historic unionization push in a city that for decades has been known for it’s business friendly tax policies, low wages, and willingness to bus in tens of thousands of Mexico’s poorest residents to work.

“In 15 years, they didn’t raise the wages,” said Susana Prieto Terrazas, a Juarez labor attorney who is representing former workers at Lexmark and Eaton Bussmann, a second maquiladora that protesters have targeted.

On Dec. 8, 700 workers at the Lexmark plant participated in a work slow-down — a remarkable act of defiance in a city where workers are easily replaced.

The reaction was swift: Lexmark officials fired 90 workers, including all of those who had asked for a union.

“The people are poor, they are suffering,” Prieto said. “This is the first time this has happened in Juarez, and they know that.”

Maria Duran, at right.

John Stanton / BuzzFeed News

Duran — a 36-year-old soft spoken woman with wide, shinny smile — was one of the workers terminated on Dec. 9.

“It’s unfair inside the plant … we don’t have any opportunities” for advancement, Duran said, her hands folded in her lap.

The problems at Lexmark extend well beyond pay, she added, saying she was routinely passed over for promotion by supervisors who use plum jobs as a way to woo younger, more attractive women.

“It’s discrimination because the opportunities inside the maquiladora are for women with good bodies," she said. "Young women … the decision is made by the supervisors and they decide the young women.”

In a statement to BuzzFeed News about the protests at the plant, Lexmark’s Corporate Communications Vice President Jerry Grasso said the company was committed to maintaining an open dialogue with employees regarding the workplace.

“It’s not human. They work too much for these stupid salaries."

“At Lexmark, we take our values very seriously, including the value of mutual respect. We embrace individual differences and listen to all voices," Grasso said. "We are committed to engaging in open and honest conversations with our employees to ensure Lexmark continues to be a rewarding place to work.”

In a letter to Lexmark CEO Paul Rooke that was obtained by BuzzFeed News, the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) raised serious concerns with the situation in Juarez.

"If these reports are true, they are in violation of Mexican law and the minimum labor standards of the International Labor Organization, as well as Lexmark’s own code of conduct,” ILRF Executive Director Judy Gearhart wrote.

A clearly frustrated Prieto was more blunt.

“It’s not human," he said. "They work too much for these stupid salaries. Something must change."

For her part, Duran urged Lexmark’s officials to consider the conditions workers in Juarez are living under.

“I’d say simply, they should for one day, one day, live in my shoes, on my salary of 600 pesos per week," she said.

The back of the protesters' makeshift shelter.

John Stanton / BuzzFeed News

So far, few of Lexmark’s workers have taken up the cause of their fired coworkers, something that Duran chalks up to fear.

“They want to continue living the same way. They don’t want to have a better life. Because they are scared,” she said.

The decision to fight Lexmark has cost Duran more than just her job and Christmas Eve with her family. Her husband — who periodically works as a construction worker — had demanded she not make waves.

“He disapproved that I was fighting,” Duran said. “He preferred I quit.”

When she didn’t, her husband put her out of her house. Now, she lives with a sister and her brother-in-law, and helps man the protest site outside Lexmark’s front gate.

“I want to defend our rights," Duran said defiantly. "I will continue."

Rebecca Cook / Reuters

WASHINGTON — Old-guard racists like David Duke aren’t the only white nationalists to have been encouraged by Donald Trump’s candidacy this year: His bid has also provided a tremendous boost to a newer movement calling itself the “alt right.”

Up until now, the alt right labored mostly in obscurity, its internal fights and debates hidden from anyone who wasn’t directly looking for them. But all that’s starting to change, and it’s only getting stronger.

“This is really a phenomenon that’s been happening over the last year,” said Richard Spencer, president of the white nationalist National Policy Institute. “2015 has been huge.”

The movement probably doesn’t look like anything you’ve seen before. The alt right is loosely connected, and mostly online. The white nationalists of the alt right share more in common with European far-right movements than American ones. This is a movement that draws upon relatively obscure political theories like neoreaction or the “Dark Enlightenment,” which reject the premises on which modernity is built, like democracy and egalitarianism. But it’s not all so high-minded as that. Take a glance at the #altright hashtag on Twitter or at The Right Stuff, an online hub of the movement, and you’ll find a penchant for aggressive rhetoric and outright racial and anti-Semitic slurs, often delivered in the arch, ironic tones common to modern internet discourse. Trump is a hero on the alt right and the subject of many adoring memes and tweets.

In short, it’s white supremacy perfectly tailored for our times: 4chan-esque racist rhetoric combined with a tinge of Silicon Valley-flavored philosophizing, all riding on the coattails of the Trump boom.

Spencer himself can claim credit for coining the term “alt right”; in 2010, he founded AlternativeRight.com, which is now RadixJournal. But he says the term has gotten a second life in the past year due to a confluence of external factors. “I think it has a lot to do with Trump,” he said. “I think the refugee crisis is also an inspiration. I just think things have gotten so real.”

Jared Taylor, the American Renaissance founder who along with Spencer is considered one of the chiefs of the intellectual wing of white nationalism, also acknowledged Trump’s influence, but said, “It doesn’t have to do only with Trump,” citing Black Lives Matter and “the current rowdiness on college campuses” as other inspirations.

“I think it goes by a lot of different names,” Taylor said. “I consider it a dissident right as well.”

Spencer believes the alt right is “deeply connected” with his work. “I would say that what I’m doing is we’re really trying to build a philosophy, an ideology around identity, European identity,” he said, “and I would say that the alt right is a kind of the take-no-prisoners Twitter troopers of that.”

The alt right’s targets don’t just include liberals, blacks, Jews, women, Latinos, and Muslims, who are all classified a priori as objects of suspicion. (Though this has not gone unnoticed: “It’s definitely something we’re aware of and tracking,” said Marilyn Mayo, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. “There are more white supremacists who are defining themselves as part of the alt right.”)

The alt right’s real objective, if one can be identified, is to challenge and dismantle mainstream conservatism.

It’s in part responsible for the spread of the “cuckservative” slur that gained currency over the summer and likely originated in forums on sites like My Posting Career and The Right Stuff, and has come to define a far-right contempt for conservatives they view as weak or sellouts — often those who oppose Trump.

So far, they haven’t garnered much attention from mainstream conservative figures, though they’ve begun to intersect a bit with national political commentary.

“You are on fire tonight, Alt Right!” conservative commentator Ann Coulter tweeted in August at an account called @_AltRight_ whose current avatar is a photo of Front National scion Marion Maréchal-Le Pen. Coulter’s rant about Jews over the summer was met with approval by Spencer. Her public persona has become more and more tied to a kind of white identity politics; Coulter’s book Adios America! may have had some influence on Donald Trump’s hard right turn on immigration, and her Twitter feed has lately seemed of a piece with alt right ideas about America being a white nation (“All trying to imitate Trump on immigration, but it's not just security!!! Its CULTURE!!!! See Miami, Houston, Nashville etc etc”) and secretive Jewish influence (“I love how the media assumes all Americans know Yiddish.”)

Asked about the alt right and Trump, Coulter told BuzzFeed News in an email: “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but Trump’s support is quite a bit larger than any one small slice of the electorate, much less a small slice of the right-wing electorate. how about covering the surprisingly large support for trump in the black community? THAT’S a story.” Coulter told BuzzFeed News later that she wasn’t familiar with the movement and is “not a member of any group that calls itself the ‘alt right,’ and don’t know anyone who calls himself ‘alt-right.’”

(Upon receiving explanation of what the alt right is, including a link to a description in a Daily Beast piece, Coulter wrote the following: "Oh a 'white power' movement. okay, I see where this is going. if there are people out there who support trump because they are for 'white power' (daily beast) that says nothing about me or donald trump, any more than it says something about bernie sanders that some of his supporters were undoubtedly fans of stalin’s show trails, the soviet invasion of hungary and the assassination of raoul wallenberg. Hillary endorsed #blacklivesmatter, but I will allow that the majority of hillary’s supporters probably don’t support the murder of police. lots of her supporters absolutely do – and cop-killers have murdered a lot more ppl this year than any 'white power' types have. I retweeted that tweet because it’s funny.")

Rush Limbaugh praised the alt right on his show earlier this month, though he didn’t appear to know what it was; a caller called in and described a vague version of it, saying “there’s a group of younger people called ‘the alt right.’ And it started in the last few years in Europe because of the Muslim invasion.” Still, it put the term on the air for Limbaugh’s millions of listeners to hear.

Despite these glimmers of something approaching recognition, the alt right remains proudly outside of the mainstream. For Richard Spencer, the alt right is a rejection of the intellectual conservatism of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

“We don’t have a starting point with William F. Buckley, we don’t have the same starting point as Richard Lowry and Jonah Goldberg and National Review,” Spencer said. The alt right is “radically different from George W. Bush, the conservative movement, etc. It really was a notion of an alternative.”

The alt right’s current moment in the sun has actually been a long time coming. The movement is undergirded by some of the ideas espoused by “Dark Enlightenment” or neoreactionary thinkers like the English philosopher Nick Land and the the American computer programmer Curtis Yarvin (aka “Mencius Moldbug”). Land and Yarvin have for years espoused a rejection of democracy and a return to traditional authoritarian structures. But the Dark Enlightenment thinkers are the definition of inaccessible; both Land and Yarvin’s writings are eye-glazingly verbose. A representative Land sentence, from his manifesto on the Dark Enlightenment: “The war on political incorrectness creates data-empowered, web-coordinated, paranoid and poly-conspiratorial werewolves, superbly positioned to take advantage of liberal democracy’s impending rendezvous with ruinous reality, and to then play their part in the unleashing of unpleasantnesses that are scarcely imaginable (except by disturbing historical analogy).”

The alt right’s genius is in dispensing with the self-marginalizing pseudo-intellectual stuff and getting straight to the point, and not in the creaky hit-you-over-the-head fashion of, say, Stormfront, but the slangy and freewheeling argot of the internet in 2015. The Right Stuff has a page devoted to the lexicon of the alt right, a collection of terms that pop up frequently on Twitter once you know what to look for. “Fash,” for example, for fascist. “Merchant” for Jews. “Dindu nuffins” for “an obviously guilty black man.” Where neoreactionary thinkers refer to “the Cathedral” as shorthand for the politically correct elite establishment, The Right Stuff is more pointed in calling it “the Synagogue.” Rare Pepes, the frog meme native to 4chan, are common. The Right Stuff forums are rife with memes targeting, for example, Jeb Bush as a weakling (a recent Bush-related thread is titled “Suicide Watch Headquarters”) and portraying Trump as a hero (see “Memes of Der Trumpenfuhrer”). The culture clearly draws on 4chan — the /pol/ board is another hub.

This can all make it difficult to discern who’s a real racist and who’s a troll doing it to be edgy, as Ken White, the lawyer and blogger at Popehat and a keen observer of politics on the Internet, pointed out. The Popehat Twitter feed, co-run by White, has described alt right as “white supremacy for people with soft hands.”

“It’s really hard to tease out the genuine white nationalists from the trolls,” White told BuzzFeed News, but, “at a certain point, the distinction isn’t meaningful. If you spend all day saying white nationalist things online but you claim you’re doing it ironically, it’s not clear to me what the difference really is.”

“They’re a lot more internet savvy, a lot more immersed in internet culture as well as mainstream culture, and they’re relatively good at using those tools to get their message out,” White said.

One of the central figures on the alt right internet is Paul Ramsey, a 52-year-old in Oklahoma who makes YouTube videos as RamzPaul. He agreed to an interview with BuzzFeed News on one condition: that he would record it.

I agreed to his terms, and interviewed him over the phone about the alt right movement and his role in it. Right after we got off the phone, Ramsey started tweeting about me and the interview. Immediately, a stream of anti-Semitic tweets came my way, without a word of this story having yet been written or published: “Oy vey! Look at that nose! I can’t imagine this ending well,” read one. “She looks like she echos,” read another, using a slang term on the alt right for being Jewish (see: The Right Stuff’s glossary). “She @RosieGray interviewed me once my .1% Jewish DNA results were published. We MOTs stick together,” Ramsey himself tweeted. Ramsey tweeted about my being “nice” and exhorted his followers to be nice to me in turn, but he also tweeted about how he planned to post the recording online so his followers could assess it — a not-so-subtle invitation to troll me.

Ramsey characterized the alt right as being neither mainstream conservatism nor neo-Nazism. As an example of the differences between the alt-right and neo-Nazis he stated that the 14/88 crowd (14 for the “14 words” white supremacist slogan and 88 as shorthand for “Heil Hitler”) don’t like Trump because his daughter is Jewish (Ivanka Trump converted to Judaism), whereas the alt right doesn't care about this and generally support Trump for his policies. Ramsey objects to the word “supremacist,” saying he’s a nationalist and doesn’t hate other people or think he’s better than them. He repeatedly invoked the example of Israel as a template of the kind of nationalism he seeks for the United States. In keeping with the alt right’s affinity for European identity movements, Ramsey often visits Europe and said he has recently been in Romania and Hungary, though he said he isn’t affiliated with any specific groups there.

I pressed him on the ideological specifics of the alt right. For example, does he believe that the Holocaust happened?

“I believe it should be able to be discussed, let me put it that way,” Ramsey said. “And that’s because — and it depends what you mean by the Holocaust. Do you mean that 6 million figure? You know that 6 million figure has been used many times before World War II, did you know that?”

Ramsey framed the alt right is part of a nationalist struggle against globalism — “Do we want to have a global entity or self-determination?” But on the topic of how his ideal United States, a country of people of white European heritage, could be achieved despite the fact that the country is currently racially diverse — a topic that inevitably leads to questions about the use of violence — Ramsey was vague. “These things are kind of organic in that when people are free, they tend to organically make communities,” he said, citing Trump’s immigration policy as the kind of move that constitutes an important first step.

He’s not the only one for whom the actual political project is a little hard to pin down.

“If I had to take a political position, I'd say that I'm pro-secession,” said Jack Donovan, a writer associated with the alt right who is known for his writings about masculinity. “America is too big. The U.S. government is bloated and there is too much money in the game. I think smaller is better, and I'd like to see America break up along its natural dividing lines.”

“Personally, I am focused on building tribal networks of interdependent people who share my values, culture, and heritage — using immigrant communities as an example. I can't control what hand-puppet legislators do or say, but I can control my own social world,” Donovan said.

Michael Anissimov, another writer associated with the neoreactionary movement, recently proposed a solution in an ebook manifesto titled The Idaho Project. It’s about his plan to move to a rural area in Idaho and invite other people to live with him whom he “personally gets along with.”

“This book proposes an alternative point of view called enclavism, the idea that we should create our own desired societies by coalescing in low-population, defensible regions of the United States like Idaho,” the book’s blurb on Amazon states.

Nebulous future secession plans aside, the real juice for the alt right is in today’s political moment. Donald Trump has been the Republican front-runner for over five months, and shows few signs of slowing down. For Spencer, this is a vindicating moment.

“He’s bigger than the conservative movement, he’s bigger than the GOP establishment, and he’s proven that you don’t have to play their game,” Spencer said. “And I think that’s inspiring and liberating for a lot of alt righters.”

A spokesperson for the Trump campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment.

“If you don’t want to do your job as a U.S. Senator, then please resign your seat and stop taking taxpayer money for a job you’re not doing anymore.”

Rebecca Cook / Reuters

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Donald Trump's campaign manager criticized Marco Rubio on talk radio last week for missing the final vote on the government spending bill, saying the senator from Florida should resign from office if he isn't going to do his job.

"You've got a member of the U.S. Senate who is running for president who didn't even have the courtesy to show up and make a vote on the budget," said Corey Lewandowski on the John Fredericks Show. "There's something fundamentally wrong with that. If you don't want to do your job as a U.S. Senator, then please resign your seat and stop taking taxpayer money for a job you're not doing anymore."

Rubio's Senate attendance record has been fodder for several of his opponents, including Jeb Bush and Rand Paul, who have also suggested Rubio should resign for missing votes. Rubio argues that missing votes is a byproduct of running a presidential campaign, and has pointed to candidates in past elections who also had to miss votes while campaigning for president.

"You can be opposed to a lot of things, but at the end of the day, you are being paid by the taxpayers to do a job and that job is to show up in Washington D.C. and represent your constituents to the best of your ability," Lewandowski continued. "And I think it's fair to say an individual who has missed 40% of the votes in the U.S. Senate this year is not doing that. And I understand he wants to be the next president of the United States, but does current performance equate to future performance? Potentially."

Lewandowski said Rubio might decide as president that he didn't like it anymore and might just stop showing up.

"Do the job that the taxpayers are paying, or you have the opportunity to just resign that seat and go do something else," he added.

“The only person that’s been listed in ISIS magazine as an enemy of ISIS is me.”

Mark Kauzlarich / Reuters

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Rick Santorum would like to clear something up: he is the only candidate in the Republican presidential race that has been featured in ISIS propaganda.

During December's Democratic presidential debate, Hillary Clinton erroneously claimed that ISIS was "showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists." No evidence has emerged to back this claim.

Santorum set the record straight in an interview with Breitbart News Radio last week.

"Contrary to what Barack Obama has said and even some Republicans have said, some of the more isolationist Republicans say, 'well, we're the reason, because we, because Donald Trump wants to not allow Muslims to come in, that incites the jihadists. They use it as a recruiting tool,'" the former senator from Pennsylvania said. "I heard this the other day, Hillary Clinton say, 'oh they use it as a recruiting tool.' That's ridiculous. The only person that's been listed in ISIS magazine as an enemy of ISIS is me. And you know why they listed me? If you go back and read the article that was in the April edition of ISIS magazine online, it wasn't because I was criticizing or taking on the Muslim religion, or I was pontificating on what we need to do to make Muslims like us. The reason I was identified as an enemy was because I identified who they are."

Santorum was quoted talking about ISIS in Dabiq, the group's online magazine aimed at recruiting westerners.

"Over the last month, a number of crusaders voiced their concerns over the power and drive of the Islamic State, its revival of Islam and the Caliphate, and its eventual expansion into Europe and the rest of the world," reads the introduction.

"The Catholic crusader and American politician Rick Santorum had the following to say," it reads, before showing an infographic with Santorum's quote and a picture of him.

Santorum added that he was featured in their magazine as an enemy because ISIS's enemies "are people who understand them and know how to defeat them."

The article from ISIS' magazine Dabiq is below:

Dabiq

View Entire List ›

“But he’s not a great president.”

Nancy Wiechec / Reuters

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Before he was the Republican presidential front-runner, Donald Trump was a pro-Obama blogger, a pro-Obama TV talking head, and a pro-Obama author.

As the president's popularity began to fade dramatically in the months following the passage of Obamacare and in the lead up to the 2010 midterms, Trump slowly shifted to became a mendacious critic of Obama.

But Trump's past support presented a problem for The Donald in his quest to be a player in Republican presidential politics. In an 2011 interview, conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh confronted Trump, saying, "three years ago, you thought Obama had the potential to be great."

"I was hoping," Trump responded. "Three years ago, or, you know, he got elect—he gets—he wins the election, right? And people came to me, and I said, 'I hope he's great. I think he's gonna be great. We all love him.'"

"I want him to do great, Rush, and I'll go a step further," he continued, "I'm a Republican, but if I had my choice of running or having Obama—or somebody, but Obama, even Obama—be a great president, the greatest president ever, I'd be so happy for the country."

But, Trump said, Obama wasn't great.

"But he's not a great president," he said. "He won't be a great president. He doesn't have the capability to be a great president, and the world is laughing. We're like a joke. As a country, we're becoming like a joke."

"Everybody is ripping us off," he added. "But honestly, I love my business. I love it. Like you love your business, I love what I'm doing, I'm doing great—and, by the way, if I run, then you'll see how great I've done. Because I'll put in a financial statement which will knock people's socks off. Just knock their socks off—and, you know, I'm very proud of it. So I'll make a decision prior to June, and we'll see what happens."

Huckabee in May: “Josh’s actions when he was an underage teen are as he described them himself, ‘inexcusable,’ but that doesn’t mean ‘unforgivable.’”

Twitter: @joshduggar

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Republican presidential candidate and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said last week that he never supported or defended Josh Duggar after allegations surfaced in May that the former reality TV star had molested his sisters as a teenager.

"I really didn't support Josh," Huckabee told Iowa radio host Simon Conway on Dec. 23. "I supported his parents, if you'll go back and look at what I said. There's no support for what he did."

Huckabee has long enjoyed the political support of the Duggar family and said as recently as June that he would be open to having them join his presidential campaign. On May 22, he wrote a Facebook post condemning Josh Duggar's actions, but saying he did not think they were "unforgivable."

"Josh's actions when he was an underage teen are as he described them himself, 'inexcusable,' but that doesn't mean 'unforgivable,'" Huckabee said. "He and his family dealt with it and were honest and open about it with the victims and the authorities. No purpose whatsoever is served by those who are now trying to discredit Josh or his family by sensationalizing the story. Good people make mistakes and do regrettable and even disgusting things."

At the time, Huckabee suggested that Josh Duggar's behavior was a result of the immature judgment of a minor.

"The reason that the law protects disclosure of many actions on the part of a minor is that the society has traditionally understood something that today's blood-thirsty media does not understand—that being a minor means that one's judgement is not mature," he said. "No one needs to defend Josh's actions as a teenager, but the fact that he confessed his sins to those he harmed, sought help, and has gone forward to live a responsible and circumspect life as an adult is testament to his family's authenticity and humility."

In last week's Iowa radio interview, Huckabee repeated his criticism of the media for what he characterized as its exploitation of Josh Duggar's sisters, but but added that he felt their brother's behavior was "despicable" and "dishonest."

"I think in subsequent months, as more things came out, what he did was despicable, it was dishonest," Huckabee said. "He did some things that totally defy everything he supposedly stood for. But he certainly defied what his parents not only have stood for, but continue to. So my support was for his sisters, who were the real victims; I felt like they were being exploited by the media. The media didn't care what was happening to them and the emotional trauma they were going through."

"I've never defended Josh, and I don't defend him now, because there's nothing to defend," he added. What he did was absolutely hideously wrong and despicable."

Before the report that he had molested his sisters came out, Duggar was also executive director of the Family Research Council's FRC Action group, a position he subsequently resigned.

“Are we gonna take somebody who’s raised 100 million dollars, has organizations in 50 states, and put them in the second tier?”

CHRIS KEANE / Reuters

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Faced with the possibility that he could be relegated to the undercard debate in January, Rand Paul said on Monday that the "real question" should be whether Jeb Bush, who has raised millions, would be bumped from the main stage.

"The good news is, you know, the most recent polling has me in sixth place in Iowa—I think in fifth place in Iowa and sixth place nationally," Paul told Iowa radio host Jeff Angelo. "And the real question should be, are they gonna relegate Jeb Bush to a second-tier debate? Are we gonna take somebody who's raised 100 million dollars, has organizations in 50 states, and put them in the second tier? What that does right before an election is tells all the voters that why bother voting for Bush or why bother voting for somebody in the second tier?"

Politico reported last week that Fox Business Network could whittle down the primetime field to six candidates for the next debate. Paul reiterated on Monday that he thinks such a narrowing process is unfair.

"So no, I do think it's unfair and I'm not going to let the media define who I am or whether I have a chance," the Kentucky senator said. "I think it's really a rotten thing for the party to be involved with. The thing is, the polls have been so inaccurate that we should not base our decisions on who has a chance based on faulty numbers."

Except that Muslim ban thing. Not that.

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Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, offered measured praise this week for Republican front-runner Donald Trump, saying that he likes a lot of what the businessman has said on the campaign trail.

"I like a lot of what he's saying," Chaffetz told UtahPolicy.com this week. "Sometimes, like he said that there should be a religious litmus test on entering the country. I happen to think that's way over the top, uncalled for, I totally disagree with that. But, there are a lot of things that he says that I actually really do like, that I think other people should be talking about and, how he does it is his own style. There's only one Donald, that's for sure."

Earlier this month, Chaffetz publicly denounced Trump's call to ban Muslims from entering the country, saying in a visit to mosque Trump's comments were "intolerance that should not stand."

"If he wins, he wins," Chaffetz said earlier in the interview. "I think people are attracted to him for a variety of reasons. They want results. They want somebody who's gonna blow through the red tape; who actually will get things done in Washington D.C. And to that extent, more power to him."

Still, Chaffetz said, it is unclear if Trump supporters will eventually go to the polls.

"There's a sobering moment when we turn in to the new year and people start to think about whether or not they'll actually check that box, and you know, it starts in Iowa before we know it, and then off to New Hampshire and it's a whole different game after that," he said.

Watch the full video below:

youtube.com

“This was a terrible loss of life and it’s just one of those things, horrible tragedy. And in terms of how people view this, we hope they’ll view it with calm.”

Lucas Jackson / Reuters

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Ohio Gov. John Kasich said in a radio interview on Monday that there will be disappointment in the Cleveland community over a grand jury's decision to not press criminal charges against the two police officers who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice.

Kasich said on Boston Herald Radio that he had been in touch with the mayor of Cleveland but that it would be inappropriate for him to immediately react, saying, "for me to be making comments or having opinions on this I don't think would be appropriate at this point."

Still, Kasich did offer some reaction, saying, "The mayor will give the proper reaction and the people in Cleveland, we're very hopeful, will accept this decision and we will not have violence. Cleveland's come a very long way here in the last four, five, six years. We're really doing very well and there's gonna be disappointment in that community. This was a terrible loss of life and it's just one of those things, horrible tragedy. And in terms of how people view this, we hope they'll view it with calm."

"This is a terrible tragedy with a loss of a young life," continued Kasich, noting "it takes everyone" to rebuild trust in the community.

Kasich, in a formal statement on Monday, said he hopes the decision doesn't "divide" the community.

Tamir Rice's death was a heartbreaking tragedy and I understand how this decision will leave many people asking themselves if justice was served. We all lose, however, if we give in to anger and frustration and let it divide us. We have made progress to improve the way communities and police work together in our state, and we're beginning to see a path to positive change so everyone shares in the safety and success they deserve. When we are strong enough together to turn frustration into progress we take another step up the higher path.

President Obama waves to a crowd outside Island Snow Shave Ice Dec. 27, 2015.

Hugh Gentry / Reuters

The job of a White House pool reporter can be boring, mundane, thankless, and devoid of much attention. Multiply that by several factors for reporters trailing a president on vacation.

It's a duty — or some say burden — shared by a rotating cast of White House reporters from various media outlets, such as the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, and, yes, BuzzFeed News. But things got weird and went "terribly awry" on Sunday when a certain New York Times reporter took over pool reporting duties.

First, let's set a baseline for a typical pool report. There's the updates on the president's motorcade as it rolls through the day's itinerary, which usually involve the reporter waiting outside.

Take this Dec. 24 dispatch from New York Times' Julie Hirschfeld Davis:

We have not seen POTUS, but the White House informs us that Barack, Malia and Sasha Obama are on a "beach outing with friends" here. The sun is shining through the clouds and the water is that inviting blue-green color the Obamas put on their china and called "Kailua blue."

First Lady Michelle Obama looks on as President Obama speaks at Marine Corp Base Hawaii on Dec. 25.

Evan Vucci / AP

Or this dispatch filed on Christmas Day by Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post:

Obama spoke in the base’s cafeteria, which was full of mostly Marines and their families who filled the tables and booths. Obama dressed in a white polo shirt and green pants spoke from the front of the room. The first lady, dressed in a black dress, stood next to him.

It's not the fault of the reporter — whose job it is to literally write on the news equivalent of water boiling — but as you can see, the baseline is set one notch above complete boredom.

Which brings us to the epic Sunday pool reports filed by Gardiner Harris at the New York Times.

Subject: Pool 1

We are rolling to an undisclosed location heading west. Your pooler has no idea what's in store.

Gardiner Harris

Nor did we, apparently.

The next stop for the motorcade was Bellows Air Force Base, possibly for some beach time. And that's when things started to get...colorful.

Gardiner Harris

Hugh Gentry / Reuters

As the motorcade pulled away from the beach excursion, Harris turned his creative attention to the "Dodger blue" sky and color of the ocean — "a cyan blue – the kind of inviting tropical color."

"But beyond the break, the ocean snarls into a sapphire blue – the kind of dark, forbidding color that speaks of great depth and sharp teeth," Harris wrote.

We are then treated to an epic story of Harris taking an early morning swim in said ocean and the pinching sensation from the hotel key he had tucked into his briefs?

Gardiner Harris

Harris then pivoted his breathless coverage of Obama's itinerary to the next stop — a shave ice joint.

Hugh Gentry / Reuters

The shop, Harris wrote, has a flavor called Snowbama, a combination of lemon, lime, cherry, and passion-guava.

Obama was accompanied by his daughters, but not his wife, who Harris observed "rarely seems to enjoy publicly eating frozen garishly colored sugar water with little of the mouth appeal that cream brings."

From there, Harris reported that the Obamas took a "100-minute" breather back at the compound before departing yet again — "destination unknown."

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

Turns out, the Obama's were headed out to the upscale Hoku's restaurant at the Kahala Hotel and Resort.

To get there, the motorcade cut across a mountain range where, according to Harris, the peaks looked like "teeth on a long-dead horse: ridged, steeply-sloped, top-worn and dark green."

Then we got another personal aside:

Your pooler has become entranced by this island's extraordinary beauty. Next to DC, Oahu is an SI swimsuit model with a PhD in astrophysics and a stint behind her at the Cordon Bleu. Or she's Donna Reed (always had a thing for her).

Harris went on to report on the night's menu and how the pool was well fed with chicken in black truffle sauce, mashed potatoes, and an "unusually good bread pudding."

The bill for this fare could be considerable, but your pooler's conscience is clear, given the day's challenging circumstances.

At 11:19 p.m., Harris finally called it a night: "We have a lid."

When reached by BuzzFeed News, Harris acknowledged that he got a little carried away.

"The presidential press pool is a group of incredibly talented journalists who are often stuck together for days in what can be somewhat ridiculous circumstances," he said in an email. "I failed to distinguish between the wonderful camaraderie that develops in that bubble and the pool reports that get relayed to a larger (and if you publish them, vastly larger) audience."

No matter. On Monday, the mundane had already reasserted itself on the pool report beat.

Six minutes later, the president arrived at Marine Corps Base Hawaii for a Monday-morning workout.

As usual, Obama is at the gym, and the pool is at McDonald's.

Colleen McCain Nelson

The Wall Street Journal

“At the end of the day, I knew that what was being produced in the Senate was not what ultimately needed to become law.”

Brian Snyder / Reuters

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Marco Rubio said on Monday that the bipartisan immigration bill he helped craft in 2013 needed the House of Representatives to make it a "good bill."

The Florida senator, who was a member of the so-called "Gang of Eight" senators who drafted the bill, told Iowa radio host Simon Conway that he knew at the time the bill "was not what ultimately needed to become law."

"For 30 years, this country's been debating immigration and nothing is done on it. And so I figured, let's try to get something going in the Senate, the best possible, given the fact that Harry Reid controls the Senate. We'll then send it to the House, run by conservatives, and they're going to make it a good bill," Rubio said. "And then we'll present it to the president and say, if you want to act on immigration, here's the Republican offer. Take it or leave it."

Conway then asked Rubio if he felt like he was "conned," to which Rubio replied, "No, look, at the end of the day, I knew that what was being produced in the Senate was not what ultimately needed to become law. It most certainly was the best we could do under the circumstances we faced at the time because Harry Reid was the majority leader. And the hope was we could make it as strong as possible and then get the House to do something better."

Rubio made similar comments to Sean Hannity in November, saying, "I was trying to produce the most conservative bill possible in a Senate controlled by Democrats and had hoped a more conservative House would make it even better."

In the interview with Conway, Rubio said that, if he is elected president, immigration legislation will not have to go through that process, but will be done "the way I want to do it."

Rubio's role in promoting the 2013 immigration bill has been widely criticized by conservative Republicans, including his presidential opponent Ted Cruz, who has accused Rubio of supporting amnesty. Rubio added in the interview that, during his presidency, "there isn't going to be any amnesty."

"But when I'm president of the United States, we won't have to do any—we can do it the way I want to do it," he said. "And here's how we're going to do it: number one, there isn't going to be any amnesty. There's going to be real consequences for violating our law and people who are criminals are going to be deported."

Rubio also argued that the immigration debate has "dramatically shifted" since 2013.

"Today, the issue of immigration has dramatically shifted. It's no longer a debate about people coming here because they want to work. We now know that there are radical terrorist groups around the world that are trying to use both our legal immigration system and our illegal immigration problem to infiltrate terrorists into the United States," the Florida senator said.

“I know Hillary”

David Becker / Reuters

Less than a decade ago, Donald Trump could be spotted on TV or in print gushing over Hillary Clinton. He publicly praised her health care plan (it had an individual mandate). He said he liked Clinton and her husband "very much." He said she would do a good job negotiating with Iran.

During the heat of the 2008 campaign, Trump took to his own blog to praise Clinton, writing that she'd make a great president.

"Hillary Clinton said she'd consider naming Barack Obama as her vice-president when she gets the nomination, but she's nowhere near a shoo-in," wrote The Donald about the heated Democratic primary in 2008. "For his part, Obama said he's just focused on winning the nomination, although at least one member of his team said Clinton would make a good vice-president. (I know Hillary and I think she'd make a great president or vice-president.)"

BuzzFeed News previously uncovered past Hillary Clinton praise on his Trump University blog, calling her a "great trouper."

Read the full blog post below:

Via web.archive.org

“It’s basically that he’s not the social conservative that he’s portraying himself to be…”

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Rick Santorum on Monday accused his opponent Ted Cruz of not being a social conservative.

The former senator from Pennsylvania told NewsmaxTV's Steve Malzberg Show that social conservative votes are going to Cruz and Republican front-runner Donald Trump, neither of which, he said, "are particularly strong social conservatives."

"Donald Trump has never been a social conservative up until the last few months, and Ted Cruz takes the position, very much a 10th Amendment, states rights, which is, you know, very much Rand Paul, Ron Paul position," Santorum said.

"They're being sold, Ted Cruz says, 'Oh, I'm this social conservative,'" Santorum continued, saying people haven't had a chance to actually look the candidates positions on social issues.

Citing an article in the Iowa Republican which declared Cruz "False Prophet Of Social Conservatism," the former senator said many would look at Cruz and say, "what a minute, he says he's these things, but he's not."

"It's basically that he's not the social conservative that he's portraying himself to be and is the answer is he's not," added Santorum, citing a Politico story where Cruz said on a secret tape at a fundraiser that he wouldn't make fighting same-sex marriage a top three priority in his administration.

"If people want to do drugs in Colorado, it's fine with him," said Santorum. "If people want have different kind of marriages, it's fine with him. He doesn't agree with it. If you want to have an abortion, it's fine with him, he doesn't agree with it, but he's not gonna fight it. That's not what people are looking for. They're looking for someone who has a very clear vision of what's right and what's wrong and be able to lay that vision out for the American people."

Trump also said in the late ’90s that Bill Clinton would be considered a hero if he cheated on Hillary with a supermodel.

Brian Snyder / Reuters

Republican front-runner Donald Trump revived Bill Clinton's past marital indiscretions this week, attacking Hillary Clinton on Twitter and on TV for playing the "women's card" and saying her husband's past affairs would be fair game.

Trump took a different tact in the late '90s, when the scandal was at its peak, defending then-President Bill Clinton against the "moralists" and hypocrites in Congress and arguing that the scandal wouldn't have been that bad if only Clinton had chosen to carry on an affair with a supermodel instead.

"I got a chuckle out of all the moralists in Congress and in the media who expressed public outrage at the president's immoral behavior," wrote Trump in The America We Deserve . "I happen to know that one U.S. senator leading the pack of attackers spent more than a few nights with his twenty-something girlfriend at a hotel I own. There's also a conservative columnist, married, who was particularly rough on Clinton in this regard. He also brought his girlfriend to my resorts for the weekend. Their hypocrisy is amazing."

Trump also wrote that Clinton should have refused to talk about his personal life.

"When confronted with the Lewinsky matter, Clinton should have stoutly refused to discuss his private life," wrote Trump. "He should also have declined to answer, rather than perjure himself. If the Clinton affair proves anything it is that the American people don't care about the private lives and personal of our political leaders so long as they are doing the job."

The Republican front-runner, who has his own history of extra-marital relations, also wrote in his 2000 book that the American people were tired of hearing about Clinton's private life. "Think for a second about what the entire political world was obsessing over throughout 1998 and part of 1999: Monica," wrote Trump. "I think the national consciousness has been deeply scarred. Americans have been drained of their spirit by the entire Clinton-Lewinsky impeachment fiasco. I think the voters want both Clintons offstage and want to put the whole sordid mess behind us. That's what they mean by Clinton fatigue."

Trump at one point compared himself directly to Bill Clinton, telling CNBC in 1998, "Can you imagine how controversial I'd be? You think about him with the women. How about me with the women? Can you imagine?"

In a 2000 interview with Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Trump even suggested people would have been more forgiving if Clinton had cheated on Hillary with a beautiful woman of sophistication.

"He handled the Monica situation disgracefully. It's sad because he would go down as a great president if he had not had this scandal," said Trump. "People would have been more forgiving if he'd had an affair with a really beautiful woman of sophistication. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe were on a different level. Now Clinton can't get into golf clubs in Westchester. A former president begging to get in a golf club. It's unthinkable.''

In another Times story in 1999, Trump said Clinton would have been considered a hero if he cheated with a supermodel:

For example, Trump disapproves of President Clinton's behavior in the White House over the past four years, though he suggested that he was bothered less by what Clinton did, than by whom he did it with.

"It was his choice," Trump said. "It was Monica! I mean, terrible choice." Trump, who showed off fashion magazines displaying cover-art of the latest in a line of models he has dated, suggested that if Clinton had confessed an improper relationship ( Trump offered a more earthy phrase to get the idea across) with a supermodel, as a opposed to a White House intern, "he would have been everybody's hero."

"I'm not making any justification for cheating on your wife," added Trump, whose own extracurricular marital activities have been a tabloid staple.

On Tuesday, Trump attacked the Clintons on Today, saying, "Well, if you look at the different situations; of course, we can name many of them. I can get you a list and I'll have it sent to your office in two seconds."

"But there were certainly a lot of abuse of women," Trump added. "And you look at whether it's Monica Lewinsky or Paula Jones or many of them, and that certainly will be fair game, certainly if they play the woman's card with respect to me, that will be fair game."

And on Twitter Monday, he said this:

“We’re not targeting any particular campaign. That’s ridiculous, absurd, and it’s beneath you to say it. It’s beneath you to say it.”

Facebook: John Whitbeck

Republican Party of Virginia chairman John Whitbeck last week pushed back hard against the notion that the state GOP is trying to sabotage Donald Trump's presidential campaign by demanding that primary voters sign a statement saying they are Republicans.

"You keep going back to this notion that somehow this is about one campaign or one candidate," he told radio host John Fredericks on December 21. "It's not. And the evidence is clear and you know it."

The statement has been the subject of a brewing controversy over the past week, peaking on Sunday, when Donald Trump unleashed a series of tweets bashing the Republican Party of Virginia for requiring those who want to vote on the Republican side of the state's open primary to sign the statement.

In the radio interview, host John Fredericks also lambasted the RPV chairman, saying "the whole thing is designed to stop Trump."

"Oh, come on," Whitbeck replied. "Oh, for crying out loud. You know what? That is most absurd statement that's been made in this entire exchange. That somehow we were targeting one candidate. That's absurd and you know it. Come on. I'm not even going to dignify that with a response."

After being told that he didn't respond "because you don't have a response," Whitbeck said the argument was "ridiculous, absurd, and it's beneath you to say it."

"No, my response is that that's absurd," the chairman said. "You know that's absurd. You know it's absurd, you're just trying to increase the anger of your listeners out there and get them all riled up. You know full well that's absurd. We're not targeting any particular campaign. That's ridiculous, absurd, and it's beneath you to say it. It's beneath you to say it."

Whitbeck also said the Republican Party of Virginia notified all presidential campaigns, including Donald Trump's, by e-mail of its intention to present voters with the statement on September 8th. Whitbeck said that, while the Trump campaign didn't respond, those campaigns that did respond said, "We're fine with this."

On Christmas Eve, however, Fredericks had Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski on his show and asked him about the e-mail.

"That's just not accurate," Lewandowski said of the assertion that the Trump campaign had received and not objected to an e-mail about the pledge.

Lewandowski went on to say that the statement would require voters to promise both that they were Republicans and that they would support the party's eventual nominee. He added that the State Board of Elections had changed the initial language of the statement without the knowledge of the Virginia GOP.

"So we've asked them to come back to us with what the final language is going to be," Lewandowski said. "And as of right now, nobody knows what that final language is going to be."

The Republican Party of Virginia did not reply to repeated requests for comment about Lewandowski's claims. The executive director of the Virginia GOP said on December 17 that the statement would read, "My signature below indicates that I am a Republican." The RPV denied that the statement was "an 'oath' or 'pledge' in any way."

In his spat with the RPV chairman, Fredericks, the radio host, was particularly incensed by the possibility that the statement might deter an independent voter or conservative Democrat from voting in the Republican primary.

"Are you kidding me, John?" he asked Whitbeck. "Are you insane?"

"You've come to all of our conventions, you've seen this done a thousand times," Whitbeck replied. "And the only reason you're losing your mind over it because you think that it impacts your candidate disproportionately, which just isn't true."

"To say it was targeting one particular campaign is ridiculous, it's absurd, and there's no way you can back that up with any hard evidence," the chairman continued. "And so I would stop saying it before you look silly."

The interview did end on a pleasant note, however.

"I kicked your butt on this argument, but I'm still gonna vote for your reelection for chairman," the host said.

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A fence surrounds the state prison in Florence, Ariz., where the botched execution of Joseph Rudolph Wood took place in 2014.

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered the re-sentencing of James McKinney, sentenced to death in Arizona in 1993, in a decision that several judges warned calls into question 15 years of death sentences handed down in the state.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, sharply split on a 6-5 vote, granted McKinney's request that his death sentence — though not his underlying murder conviction — be tossed out unless the state re-sentences him under a constitutional system or imposes a lesser sentence than death "within a reasonable period."

The decision, written by Judge William Fletcher, was issued more than a year after the 11 judges heard arguments in McKinney's case.

As the five dissenting judges warn, however, the decision "calls into question every single death sentence imposed in Arizona between 1989 and 2005."

At issue is Arizona's "causal nexus" test, at use from from 1989 until 2005, in which evidence of a "difficult family background or mental disorder" only could be considered a mitigating factor — diminishing responsibility — during the sentencing phase of a death penalty trial "if it had a causal effect on the defendant’s behavior in the commission of the crime at issue."

Under prior U.S. Supreme Court cases, however, the person imposing a sentence cannot "refuse to consider, as a matter of law, any relevant mitigating evidence."

McKinney was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1991 murders of two people during the commission of armed robberies. The Arizona Supreme Court, reviewing his case, "accepted the factual conclusion of the trial judge that, as an evidentiary matter, there was no causal nexus between McKinney’s PTSD and his crimes."

In Tuesday's decision, the 9th Circuit held that, once the Arizona Supreme Court did so, it then "refused, as a matter of law, to treat his PTSD as a mitigating factor." Such a decision, Fletcher wrote, "was contrary to clearly established federal law as established" in the prior Supreme Court rulings. The "clearly established" holding was key to overcoming the hurdle for federal court intervention in a state's death sentences in the wake of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA).

As such, the court granted McKinney's requested relief.

The dissenting opinion from Judge Carlos Bea — joined by Judges Alex Kozinski, Ronald Gould, Richard Tallman, and Consuelo Callahan — takes aim at all parts of the majority decision, from how PTSD was considered at sentencing to the Arizona Supreme Court's use of the "causal nexus" test to the 9th Circuit's application of the standards for review of AEDPA to the implications for the state's death sentences.

Writing that "the majority wrongly smears the Arizona Supreme Court," Bea writes that the decision "calls into question every single death sentence imposed in Arizona between 1989 and 2005 and our cases which have denied habeas relief as to those sentences."

Nearly half of the 119 people currently on death row in Arizona were sentenced during the time the majority held that the "causal nexus" test was in use, although it was not immediately clear how many of those on death row had potential mitigating evidence ignored because of the test.

One of the lawyers who submitted a brief in the case on behalf of the federal public defenders echoed the dissent's notice of the potential effect of the ruling — but not as the warning the dissenting judges presented.

"This ruling provides guidance to courts reviewing claims presented by Arizona death-sentenced prisoners whose mitigation was not properly considered," Assistant Federal Public Defender Robin Konrad told BuzzFeed News.

Fletcher was joined in the majority decision by Chief Judge Sidney Thomas and Judges Kim McLane Wardlaw, Marsha Berzon, Morgan Christen, and Jacqueline Nguyen.

Because of the vast size of the 9th Circuit, Tuesday's decision was not a full en banc decision of the court. It was, instead, the result of the limited en banc procedure established in that 9th Circuit. Arizona officials could seek a full en banc review of the decision, ask the Supreme Court to review the decision, or accept the decision.

A request for comment was left with Gov. Doug Ducey's office.