Paul J. Richards / Getty Images

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — Despite introducing Ted Cruz at a rally on Wednesday and previously indicating he favors Rand Paul, South Carolina congressman and former governor Mark Sanford says he might not endorse at all before the South Carolina primary on Feb. 20.

"I don’t know," Sanford, who was circulating around the media center at the North Charleston Coliseum ahead of Thursday night's debate, told BuzzFeed News when asked if he would endorse before the primary. "At this point, no." But, he said, "I don't want to make any promises" and "I might, I don't know."

Sanford gave an enthusiastic introduction for Cruz at a rally on Wednesday night in Dorchester, S.C., outside of Charleston, but he stopped short of endorsing him. At Wednesday's rally, Sanford praised Cruz for supporting "constitutional limited government" and said said he was "impressed" by Cruz's "calling an ace an ace" in Iowa on ethanol subsidies.

He is not endorsing yet but instead "spectating," he told BuzzFeed News on Thursday. "But I’m a southerner so we like to give a welcome introduction to anybody who shows up in the district." Sanford has appeared with Paul and with Ben Carson and John Kasich. "If anybody's in the district and they ask me to introduce them, I do, and I have," he said.

Sanford acknowledged being a Rand Paul sympathizer — "that would be correct" — and he has appeared to come close to endorsing him before, telling Bloomberg in April, "It was not a formal endorsement, but stay tuned. I don't think I will stay neutral over the long run."

On the topic of who's campaigning best in South Carolina, Sanford had praise for Paul — though he acknowledged Paul's backslide and said he was "impressed" by Cruz.

"Rand, going back to my natural inclinations – he had seemingly early momentum and it dissipated maybe in reaction to or as a consequence of the increased conversation about physical security and terrorism," Sanford said. "He had a lot of people that I guess would be his father's followers who were in that libertarian camp that would come out, but not an organized ground game, it was sort of organic in nature."

"Cruz has had, I’ve been impressed, they’ve built a pretty good ground game," Sanford said. "And I think that that matters in South Carolina, having run a couple statewide races."

Cruz has announced several key endorsements over the past week, including Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson and Leadership Institute founder Morton Blackwell. In South Carolina, Cruz has just been endorsed by Charlie Condon, the former state Attorney General, who also appeared with Cruz at the Dorchester rally on Wednesday and is acting as a surrogate for him in the spin room after Thursday's debate.

Timothy A. Clary / AFP / Getty Images

CHARLESTON, South Carolina — Mike Huckabee said Thursday that there is a "convincing and compelling" case to be made that presidential candidate Ted Cruz's Canadian birth makes him ineligible for the presidency, an issue that has been raised by growing number of conservatives.

Donald Trump first raised the issue earlier this month, and while the notion has been largely laughed off by most legal experts and political pundits, it has steadily gained traction on the campaign trail over the past week. Cruz, who was born in Canada, has dismissed the question, arguing that he qualifies for the presidency because his mother is a natural-born United States citizen.

Asked by BuzzFeed News in a post-debate press gaggle whether he thinks Cruz is eligible for the presidency, Huckabee said, "It was never a concern of mine until I started reading the opinions of many constitutional law scholars, who gave a very, very compelling and convincing legal case that this is problematic."

Most legal scholars agree with Cruz's interpretation of the natural-born-citizen clause, but there have been some notable exceptions, and the Supreme Court has never ruled on the specificities of Cruz's case.

Huckabee said he didn't know for sure whether Cruz met the constitutional requirement, and concluded his answer with a joke referencing his shared hometown with former president Bill Clinton.

"I'm not a lawyer, I can't tell you," Huckabee said. "But the one thing I can absolutely give you with assurance: I was born in Hope, Arkansas and I can prove it. And I promise you the country has already established that you can be president if you were born in Hope, Arkansas. I just say let's give Hope one more chance."

Scott Olson / Getty Images

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — After weeks of buildup, the brewing conflict between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump finally spilled into the open at Thursday night’s Republican primary debate — and it left Cruz looking strong and Trump looking flustered.

Cruz had up to this point taken pains to avoid responding to Trump’s baiting him on his Canadian birth. For more than a week, Trump has gone from hinting to stating outright that Cruz isn’t a natural-born citizen. Cruz at first shrugged off the attacks — as he had every time before that Trump had attacked him — then began responding when the issue reached a critical mass. But Thursday night represented the first time Cruz has aggressively taken on Trump to his face, a risky move for a candidate who has tried to stay out of the kind of Trumpian brawls that have so damaged candidates like Jeb Bush. The exchange signals a new phase in the race as the competition in both the establishment and outsider lanes intensifies.

Cruz’s pedigree as a national championship debater at Princeton came through on Thursday, especially in the onstage clashes with Trump. He was unflappable and quick on his feet, firing off a rat-a-tat of shareable one-liners at his opponent.

Some were clearly prepared beforehand, since Cruz had already used them: “I’ve spent my entire life defending the Constitution before the U.S. Supreme Court. And I'll tell you, I'm not going to be taking legal advice from Donald Trump.” (“We came prepared,” Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler told reporters after the debate.)

Others appeared to be improvised. After Trump mused that the eligibility issue would make it difficult for him to pick Cruz as his running mate, the senator grinned and replied, “I’ll tell you what. If this all works out, I’m happy to consider naming you as VP. So if you happen to be right, you could get the job at the end of the day.”

In both cases, Cruz deftly landed the lines, drawing loud applause from the audience while Trump, looking agitated and annoyed, attempted semi-coherent comebacks. (At one point, the crowd even booed Trump during an exchange with Cruz.)

And when asked why he was raising these attacks now, Trump acknowledged flat-out that it's because of Cruz's rise in the polls; "because now he's doing a little bit better," he said.

But Trump had one very strong moment — perhaps his strongest of any debate this year in the most traditional sense — when he forcefully challenged Cruz’s criticism that he embodied “New York values.”

“New York is a great place. It’s got great people, it’s got loving people, wonderful people. When the World Trade Center came down, I saw something that no place on Earth could have handled more beautifully, more humanely than New York,” Trump said. As he went on to recount how his fellow New Yorkers “rebuilt downtown Manhattan” as the world watched in awe, Trump was interrupted with applause several times — including, even, from Cruz, who otherwise had no response.

“I have to tell you,” Trump concluded, “that was a very insulting statement that Ted made.”

Trump is at his best when he has room for performances like this. Cruz may triumph in the fast-paced back-and-forth of the debate stage, but it’s unclear how well he will fare once Trump is back to performing for the cameras — and he is able to really get going on stage and tear into the senator.

But it’s clear that the Trump-Cruz War is finally, officially on with just 17 days to go until the Iowa caucuses. Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler described the exchange as a natural consequence of this stage in the race, when candidates differentiate themselves.

“I thought you’d be so happy,” Tyler told reporters. “You’ve wanted this fight for so long.”

Tyler said he thinks Cruz’s response in the debate settled the birther question.

“I thought with the American people he put it to rest, maybe Donald Trump might not think it’s to rest,” Tyler said. “He should put it to rest, it’s not a strategic decision, because it hasn’t moved a single number. So he can persist in it, but all of our numbers show it hasn’t worked at all.”

Tyler insisted that the conflict “wasn’t nasty. It just was a contrast” and said he didn’t think it would intensify, saying “they respect and admire each other.”

Trump, on the other hand, seemed ready for open warfare.

“I guess the bromance is over, because he hit me, I didn’t hit him… There was no reason for him to be that aggressive,” Trump told reporters.

Brian Snyder / Reuters

In the world of birtherism, those who have long questioned Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president, saying he is not a natural born citizen as defined by the Constitution, are now turning their sights on Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz.

The Texas senator has never shied away from the fact he was born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father. But since Donald Trump first questioned Cruz’s eligibility, a cascade of Republicans from John McCain to Rand Paul to Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad have also cast doubt on the constitutionality of Cruz’s candidacy.

Article Two of the U.S. Constitution states that “no person except a natural born citizen...shall be eligible to the Office of the President.” What constitutes a “natural born citizen” has never been established in the courts, but to those in the birther movement the definition is clear.

Most birthers believe that, in order to be eligible to become president, a person must be born on U.S. soil to parents who are both U.S. citizens. Fulfilling only part of those requirements is generally considered insufficient.

“[Cruz] was not born in the United States to two U.S. citizen parents. It is pretty elementary,” said a spokesperson for Birther Report, a website that publishes and aggregates stories pushing birther theories about both Cruz and Obama. It also posts theories that Obama is a secret Muslim and posts doctored photos of him with a Hitler mustache in front of a swastika emblazoned flag. The spokesperson declined to provide their real name.

To Cruz skeptics, his ineligibility is based on the fact that he was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in 1970. The mere fact that he was born on foreign soil would be enough, but, many believe his father was a Canadian citizen at the time of Cruz’s birth, and that Cruz’s Delaware born mother may have applied for and received Canadian citizenship before her son was born too. From their perspective, this supplementary evidence should make it clear Cruz is ineligible.

Andy Martin, an attorney who sued the governor of Hawaii in 2008 to force the release of Obama’s long-form birth certificate, said that Cruz is likely even less eligible than Obama.

“You need three sticks to meet the citizen requirement to become president: One stick is mom, one is dad, and one is the birthplace,” Martin told BuzzFeed News. “I never believed in the Kenya stuff,” he continued, referring to the conspiracy theory among many birthers that Obama was born in the African country, “and we know the mom was born in this country, so he had two sticks out of three.”

“Cruz,” on the other hand, “was born in Canada. His father was a Cuban citizen, and there’s some doubt to his mother’s citizenship,” Martin said, thereby throwing into doubt the constitutionality of his presidential run.

Montgomery Blair Sibley, who filed a lawsuit against Obama in 2012 seeking to clarify his eligibility status, agrees with Martin’s interpretation.

“Assuming Cruz is a citizen, and it’s not certain he is, under no circumstances is he a natural-born citizen, because his father was not an American citizen at the time of his birth,” Sibley said.

“It doesn’t matter that he was born in Canada,” Sibley continued, “he would be ineligible to be president if was born on the Washington Monument, as long as he only had one parent who was a citizen.”

In addition to his lawsuit against Obama, Sibley is also known for representing the so-called “D.C. Madam” in 2007, and for running a long-shot presidential write-in campaign in 2012.

Orly Taitz, a Soviet-born dentist and lawyer who has filed multiple lawsuits challenging the legality of Obama’s presidential campaigns, is suspicious that Cruz hasn’t released more information about when his father obtained Canadian citizenship. Like Sibley and Martin, she also isn’t convinced that Cruz’s mother was a U.S. citizen when Cruz was born because she may have surrendered her American citizenship to obtain Canadian citizenship.

Taitz also dismisses critics of birthers who say their complaints are trivial, saying that Article Two was included in the Constitution for national security.

“Let’s imagine the wife of Ayatollah Khamenei comes to the U.S. and gives birth here, then takes the kid back to Iran,” Taitz said. “The kid comes back to the U.S., resides here for 14 years, and is over 35 years old. He would become citizen. This child would have allegiance to another country but could still run for president. You wonder which side he’s gonna be on.”

She thinks the same can be said of a potential child by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS.

Cruz isn’t the only candidate that birthers are skeptical of. Many think Marco Rubio and Bobby Jindal (who has now dropped out) are also ineligible because their parents were Cuban citizens, and Indian citizens, respectively.

Many birthers who filed lawsuits against Obama, to either obtain his long-form birth certificate, or to bar him from being listed on election ballots, think their cases against the president were too easily dismissed, including Philip Berg, a disbarred lawyer who currently serves as a driver for the ride-hailing company Lyft.

“I filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Obama, but Eric Holder was one of the individuals investigating him,” Berg said, “and Holder was later confirmed as Obama’s attorney general, so if that’s not a conflict of interest then I don’t know what is.”

Berg has filed other lawsuits against federal officials in the past, including one holding George W. Bush responsible for the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

Berg used to drive mostly for Uber, but the company told him they had received complaints from customers after he talked about his conspiracy theories.

Berg hasn’t filed any lawsuits against Cruz, though he is certain the Senator is ineligible to become president.

“You can put this statement on the record: I challenge you, Senator Cruz, to open up all the records of your parents to prove he is an American Citizen,” Berg said in an interview with BuzzFeed News.

When it comes to candidates Cruz skeptics do support, Donald Trump gets the most endorsements. Taitz endorsed Trump’s campaign for president, though more because of his anti-free trade stance than his immigration views, as did the spokesperson for Birther Report, and Philip Berg, though the latter identifies as a Democrat. And Martin is running a longshot campaign to be the Republican nominee, though in his words, “I’m not exactly packing my things up for the White House.”

All agree though that their challenges aren’t based on racial prejudice, as many liberals allege.

“With all due respect, you should be ashamed for even asking that question,” the Birther Report spokesperson said when asked.

Taitz echoed that view. “I didn’t challenge Obama because he is black, just like I didn’t challenge Cruz or Rubio because they are Cuban, or Jindal because he is Indian,” she said.

Martin said he is less active in the birther movement because it was “taken over by crazies” who he believes are racist and believe in what he thinks are fringe theories such as Obama being Kenyan or a secret Muslim. Berg and Taitz however sincerely believe Obama is a member of the Islamic faith.

Martin has resigned himself to the fact though, that it might not even matter whether Cruz is constitutionally eligible or not.

“According to de facto interpretations of the constitution, Cruz may not be eligible to be president, but modern interpretations of Article II might let him,” he said, despite his own disagreements with the latter interpretation. “I put integrity above the process.”

Sibley echoed Martin’s interpretation of of Article Two.

“It boils down to this: either we operate under a rule of law or a rule of whim and caprice," he said. "The former was what our country was founded on, the latter is a bastion of tyrants.”

“There probably has not been a more racially divisive, economic divisive president in the White House since we had presidents who supported slavery,” said Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks.

Drew Angerer / Getty Images

w.soundcloud.com

Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks said on Thursday that Barack Obama is the most "racially divisive" president since the days when American presidents supported slavery.

"There probably has not been a more racially divisive, economic divisive president in the White House since we had presidents who supported slavery," said Brooks, who is the chairman of presidential candidate Ted Cruz's Alabama leadership team.

Speaking on The Dale Jackson Show on Alabama radio, Brooks said that while President Obama is not more racially divisive than the presidents who supported slavery, he's "probably the worst one since the Civil War."

"He's clearly the most racially divisive president we've had since I've been alive," the congressman said. "But again, we did have presidents in the first 80 to 100 years of our country that supported slavery. And you cannot say that Barack Obama was worse than them. But he's probably the worst one since the Civil War and the passages of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments."

He argued that Obama had "honed" the Democratic Party's campaign strategy of dividing Americans based race and sex "to a level of perfection not heretofore seen."

Brooks also offered support for Ted Cruz's comment that Donald Trump embodies "New York Values."

"He's also a creature of the entertainment society on the left coast," Brooks said of Trump. "He's also from New York City with the kinds of values that people in New York City have that are often quite different from the kinds of values over the rest of the country that they belittle by calling 'flyover country' as they go from East Coast to West Coast and back. The heart of America. So I would focus on those kinds of distinctions."

Troll or serious?

Jewel Samad / AFP / Getty Images

w.soundcloud.com

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus says he would prefer the Republican nominee face Hillary Clinton in the general election over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

When asked Thursday on the John Gibson Show which candidate he thought would be easier to run against, Priebus said, "Probably Hillary Clinton, it's a tough call, but I always like the known commodity."

The RNC chairman, noting Clinton's slide in the polls, said Sanders was on the rise.

"The deal with Hillary is she is stuck in a ditch and people are lining behind her like drones, at least as of recently," he said. "And now they're looking at these numbers, they're not moving, she's not liked, and people are saying, 'well now what are we gonna do?' So they're looking around her and they're looking at Bernie Sanders, who's now ahead of her in New Hampshire and tied with her in Iowa, and they're kind of stuck."

"It's a tough call, but I guess I would take Hillary," he added. "Although, I do think the sort of wild, socialistic, liberal Bernie Sanders would be fairly easy to beat as well."

Priebus added that he thought Vice President Joe Biden would have been a much tougher candidate for Democrats.

"Joe Biden would have been far better for the Democrats, he's much more difficult because he's likable — at least most the time — and he doesn't have the baggage that Hillary has," he said. "Who knows what the FBI is going to do."

“He was trying to make a cheap appeal to the people of Iowa around that. I think he misjudged where he used the term ‘values.’”

Alex Wong / Getty Images

New York Republican Rep. Peter King says presidential candidate Ted Cruz is a hypocrite and a fraud for attacking Donald Trump's "New York values" and called Cruz's comments a "cheap appeal to the people of Iowa."

"I'm convinced and know that he's a fraud and a hypocrite," King said in an interview with BuzzFeed News on Friday. "There's absolutely no moral, there's no basis for any of what Ted Cruz is all about. He was a fraud when he led the effort to shut down the government over Obamacare, but had no plan at all as to what to do once the government was shutdown."

"Coming to New York and basically begging for money from the same so-called rich people that he attacks," King continued. "Talking about New York's lack of values when New York was the inspiration for the country. All of Americans were New Yorkers after 9/11. I don't know any other city in the country or region that could have responded the way New York did to 9/11. There was no panic, there was no fear. There was no crying and complaining."

Earlier this week, Cruz criticized Trump, saying, "Donald comes from New York and he embodies New York values." At Thursday's Republican debate, Trump responded by invoking New York City's resilience in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

The New York congressman said Cruz was using a "cheap shot" on New York to appeal to the people of Iowa for votes.

"He was trying to make a cheap appeal to the people of Iowa around that. I think he misjudged where he used the term 'values.' I give Trump tremendous credit for the way he used 9/11 last night and used it in a proper way, because after 9/11 Americans everywhere were New Yorkers."

"I think it backfired," said King, noting that the crowd cheered for Trump.

Cruz "did a total panic and reverse, he started clapping also. Which is really ironic, here he is clapping for Donald Trump defending New York values," he said.

King continued, "When I hear people taking cheap shots at these guys, are they talking about the cop that ran into the building or the firefighter that ran into the building, or the construction worker that ran into the building? Or, they talking about the social workers who go into these poor neighborhoods? There is this whole cross-section of New York of people who do so much good. And to have these cheap-shot artists like Cruz take shots at us is really despicable."

King, who told BuzzFeed News he would support Trump over Cruz, said he didn't understand how anyone from New York could be a supporter of Cruz.

"I don't see how anyone from New York can give Cruz money, I really don't," he said. "Here's a guy who has voted against New York. Here's a guy who has questioned our values, attacks our values, who has achieved nothing in the United States Senate. He has no support in the Senate at all."

"What anyone from New York sees in Ted Cruz is beyond me, and again, the hypocrisy of him getting a million-dollar loan from Goldman Sachs and his wife is working there," said King, noting Cruz's attacks on big Wall Street banks.

"Anyway you look at this guy, he's a fraud," King said.

And a Cruz nomination would be nightmare, he added, noting he's most in line with "Rubio or Bush."

"Ted Cruz could be the nominee, it would be terrible," said King. "I would feel like I was home and I was having a nightmare and was gonna wake up. It's dangerous, it's damaging to the Republican Party. It's damaging to the country, he's just not equipped to be president."

Arizona’s supply of midazolam expires at the end of May. The state is hoping that a challenge brought by death row inmates can be wrapped up with enough time to carry out the executions.

Arizona is trying to carry out more executions after a brief moratorium brought about after the state carried out the longest execution in American history.

In that execution, Joseph Wood took nearly two hours to die, and witnesses reported him gasping during that time.

After the state commissioned a review, U.S. District Judge Neil Wake is allowing a lawsuit brought by five death row inmates challenging the state's new methods to go forward.

The problem for Arizona: They need the case to wrap up soon because their sedative expires at the end of May.

At a status hearing on Tuesday, Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Sparks said the state was having problems getting more.

via transcript

The judge seemed receptive to speeding up the case, saying he would be "expecting accelerated discovery."

via transcript

As of yet, the inmates haven't even filed their new complaint yet — but summarized it at the hearing as asking for more transparency and asking that the second drug be removed.

The second drug in a three-drug protocol is a paralytic, and is used to cover any movement or twitching by the inmate. The inmates seem prepared to argue that it's a "cosmetic" drug used only to mask any pain the inmate may be feeling due to the other drugs.

View Entire List ›

Republicans will get “slaughtered” if Trump wins, he says.

Win Mcnamee / Getty Images

w.soundcloud.com

Rand Paul says he's going to spend "every waking hour" trying to stop Donald Trump from getting the Republican nomination, saying Trump as the nominee would guarantee a Republican loss in the general election.

"Think if we, the Republican Party, becomes the party of angry people, that insinuate that most immigrants are drug dealers or rapists, that's a terrible direction for our party," the Kentucky senator and presidential candidate told the Alan Colmes Show on Thursday. "We are never going to grow as a party, we are never going to increase our vote among the Hispanic population, the black population, among women, all of those things we need to expand our party, Donald Trump takes us in the wrong direction.

"He would be a disaster," he added. "We'll be, we'll be slaughtered, in a landslide. That's why my every waking hour is to try to stop Donald Trump from being our nominee."

Still, Paul said he would support Trump should he win the nomination.

"I'm a Republican, and I think if you don't support the nominee, it harms even those like myself, because for example, I was not the establishment pick when I ran for the U.S. Senate, but I agreed that I would support them if they won," he said. "But they also agreed to support me. So it works both ways. It sounds terrible, 'who are you going to support? Donald Trump.' But I expect Donald Trump to support me as well, if I win."

Asked if he has more in common with Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson than Donald Trump, the Kentucky senator said yes and no.

"In some ways yes and in some ways no," he said. "I don't really know his platform, but I do know that the Republican Party has allowed a libertarian-leaning person like myself to actually become a U.S. Senator, and that I've worked very hard to make the party more libertarian and more constitutionally conservative. And I think it's been for a good thing."

Paul said the pundits who question if he is "libertarian enough" are speaking nonsense.

"You know, I think I always just tried to be who I am," said Paul. "Everybody, every pundit out there tries to say 'oh you're not libertarian enough," but if the problem were if I'm not libertarian enough, and that's why the poll numbers are not higher, that would be an argument that oh, 'libertarians are voting for Donald Trump,' so it doesn't really make any sense. But I have to be who I am. I'm a limited government constitutional conservative. I have some libertarian feelings ,and it's harder if there's a purity test for everything to determine what is purely right or wrong."

The Ohio governor said he still believes he can be the nominee if he emerges from the New Hampshire primary “a major story.” But if he gets “smoked,” then it’s over.

Scott Olson / Getty Images

w.soundcloud.com

John Kasich said on Friday that if he gets "smoked" in the New Hampshire primary his bid for the Republican presidential nomination will be effectively over.

"But if I get smoked in New Hampshire then, you know, kinda the ballgame's over," the Ohio governor told radio host Rita Cosby. "Because then it becomes very hard to raise money. And I'm not gonna ask people to do things that, uh, that I think are not fair to them."

Kasich said, however, that he does not think that will happen, citing confidence in his campaign's "ground game" in New Hampshire. He said he still believes that if his campaign comes out of the primary as "a major story, I believe I will be the nominee."

"It's gonna depend on the way we interpret it on the 10th of February," Kasich said of his performance in the Feb. 9 primary. "If all of a sudden, I become very well known because we do well here, then you know, it's gonna solve a lot of our problems. And our problems are related to a low name ID because I've been the governor of Ohio, not the governor, you know, of a place where the media got to easy. So I don't have a big name ID. And that hurts you a little bit on fundraising, but you know what, we're doing just fine."

Kasich, who lags near the back of the GOP field in national polls, is currently polling in third place in New Hampshire, according to the Real Clear Politics average.

In the interview, the Ohio governor also answered a question about the controversy swirling around Ted Cruz's criticism that Donald Trump embodies "New York values," saying that "there's no place" like the Big Apple.

"New York is, you know, there's no place like it," he said. "And I was just in — I'm in New York all the time, even now, and it's always exciting to go."

Timothy A. Clary / AFP / Getty Images

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz apologized in the midst of days of coverage over his comments about "New York values" — but not because he's sorry about what he said.

"Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bill de Blasio, and Andrew Cuomo have all demanded an apology, and I’m happy to apologize," Cruz said. "I apologize to the millions of New Yorkers who have been let down by liberal politicians in that state."

Speaking to reporters after a campaign event here on Friday in a brief press availability in which he took no follow-up questions, Cruz had been asked if he would apologize for the "New York values" jabs as New York City's mayor, de Blasio, and New York's governor, Cuomo, have called him in to do.

Cruz then reeled off a list of New York-specific policy complaints in the form of apologies, apologizing to New Yorkers for Cuomo's fracking ban, to small businesses "driven out of New York City by crushing taxes and regulations," to "all of the African-American children who Mayor de Blasio tried to throw out of their charter schools that were providing a lifeline to the American dream," and "to all the cops and the firefighters and 9/11 heroes who had no choice but to stand and turn their backs on Mayor de Blasio because Mayor de Blasio over and over again stands with the looters and criminals rather than the brave men and women of blue."

"I apologize to all the pro-life and pro-marriage and pro-Second Amendment New Yorkers who are told by Gov. Cuomo that they have no place in New York because that’s not who New Yorkers are," Cruz said.

Cruz has been criticized for his remarks about Donald Trump having "New York values," which have been interpreted as innuendo for various things. "Everyone understands that the values in New York City are socially liberal or pro-abortion or pro- gay-marriage, focus around money and the media," Cruz said during Thursday night's debate in South Carolina.

Trump responded with a stirring description of New Yorkers' resilience after 9/11, for which Cruz had no response other than applause.

His comments on Friday appear to be a way to demarcate criticism of New York politics from criticism of New Yorkers in general, in the wake of Trump's response to him on Thursday.

Timothy A. Clary / AFP / Getty Images

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is facing the first legal challenge to his candidacy after a Houston lawyer filed a lawsuit in court on Thursday requesting a judge to clarify the Canadian-born Cruz’s citizenship status.

Newton B. Schwartz Sr. filed a complaint in a federal district court alleging that Cruz “was and is neither a natural born or native born U.S. citizen at the time of his birth." Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in 1970. His mother was an American citizen at the time of his birth. Donald Trump and several other conservatives have raised the possibility that Cruz is ineligible to run for president because he wasn't born in the U.S.

In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Schwartz said he filed his lawsuit because “nobody else did.”

“Time’s running out,” Schwartz says. “The first caucus is on Feb. 1. Then there are primaries in 12 states, including Texas on March 1.”

Schwartz told BuzzFeed News that he has not been in contact with any political campaigns.

The 85-year-old got his law license in Texas in 1954 and has given nearly $10,000 to Democratic campaigns and PACs since 1999, according to the Federal Elections Commission. He says he’s not certain who he’ll support for president in 2016, but is leaning towards Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

When explaining why he filed his lawsuit, Schwartz recalled how right-wing activists questioned Obama’s eligibility in 2008 and 2012.

“You had people like Rush Limbaugh, Ted Cruz, and other Republicans saying Obama was born in Kenya,” Schwartz said. “Even if that were true, he would still be just as eligible as Cruz because Obama had an American mother.”

News that Schwartz filed the complaint comes after last night’s Republican presidential debate in which Cruz brushed of Donald Trump’s insistence that question’s over Cruz’s citizenship threatened his campaign.

“There was nothing to this birther issue,” Cruz said during the debate. “Under longstanding U.S. law, the child of a U.S. citizen born abroad is a natural-born citizen.”

Sen. Cruz has never publicly called Obama’s eligibility to be president into question, though his father and frequent campaign surrogate, Rafael Cruz, did say in 2012 that Obama should, “go back to Kenya.”

Schwartz himself doesn’t deny Obama’s eligibility or citizenship status, though despite being a liberal Democrat, denies that he filed his lawsuit as retribution against Cruz and Republicans, whose policies he strongly disagrees with.

“I just filed it to determine one way or the other whether or not [Cruz] is eligible. I’m just wanting the court to clarify.” Schwartz says he gives his lawsuit a “less than 50-50 chance it will be successful.”

In his complaint he filed, he wrote in the list of plaintiffs that he was filing on behalf of “qualified voters for voting in the 2016 fifty state election primaries and in the Nov. 1, 2016, general presidential and vice presidential 2016 elections." The presidential election is on Nov. 8, not Nov. 1.

When pointed out this error, Schwartz said he was sure the election was on the first Tuesday of November. It actually occurs on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

Read the lawsuit:

Inset: Alabama Department of Corrections

WASHINGTON — Just six days before his scheduled execution, the lawyer for Christopher Brooks has asked the Alabama Supreme Court to put Brooks's execution on hold so the court can assess whether its capital sentencing laws remain constitutional following this week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down Florida’s capital sentencing scheme.

Alabama, like Florida, places the final decision of whether to impose death on the judge — not a jury. On Jan. 12, the U.S. Supreme Court held that "Florida’s sentencing scheme, which required the judge alone to find the existence of an aggravating circumstance, is therefore unconstitutional."

Since that ruling, Alabama officials have defended their state's law as having been previously upheld as constitutional and as being distinguishable from the part of the Florida law struck down this week. Criminal defense attorneys have said otherwise, and now — in Brooks's case — one of those lawyers is asking the Alabama Supreme Court to step in.

"Mr. Brooks’ death sentence might be unconstitutional under Hurst v. Florida and, if it is unconstitutional, he is entitled to relief," the lawyer for Brooks wrote, referring to this week's decision. "Mr. Brooks' death sentence should not be carried out while critical questions concerning the constitutionality of Alabama's capital sentencing scheme remain unanswered."

Brooks was sentenced to death in 1993 for the 1992 murder of Jo Deann Campbell, a sentence imposed by Judge James Hard. The jury had recommended a death sentence to the judge on an 11-1 vote.

"Mr. Brooks respectfully requests that this Court temporarily stay his execution currently scheduled for January 21, 2016, direct the parties to present briefs on the applicability of Hurst, and undertake a thorough consideration of Hurst's impact on Alabama’s capital sentencing scheme," attorney Leslie S. Smith, from the Federal Defenders' Office in the Middle District of Alabama, wrote in the petition to the Alabama Supreme Court.

After detailing at length the comparisons between the Florida and Alabama death sentencing laws, the Friday filing for Brooks cites to a friend-of-the-court brief filed by Alabama's own lawyers in the Florida case, stating that the arguments made by the state there showed it "recognized that the Supreme Court’s rejection of Florida’s sentencing scheme ... would mean that Alabama's nearly identical scheme would almost certainly fail to meet constitutional standards."

Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange’s office, however, maintains that the state’s death sentencing statute — which only requires the judge to give “consideration” to the jury’s sentencing recommendation — remains constitutional.

More than 20 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Alabama’s death sentencing scheme in a case brought by Louise Harris in which she questioned whether the state’s law violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments.

“The Constitution permits the trial judge, acting alone, to impose a capital sentence,” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote for the court. “It is thus not offended when a State further requires the sentencing judge to consider a jury's recommendation and trusts the judge to give it the proper weight.”

Since that time, however, an entire area of caselaw has developed at the Supreme Court regarding the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a jury trial. A 1999 decision noted that the court has "suggest[ed]" that "any fact (other than prior conviction) that increases the maximum penalty for a crime must be charged in an indictment, submitted to a jury, and proven beyond a reasonable doubt." In the landmark Apprendi v. New Jersey case in 2000, that principle was made law.

Two years later, in Ring v. Arizona, the court expanded that reasoning to the capital sentencing realm. Overturning a prior decision of the Supreme Court holding Arizona’s death sentencing scheme to be constitutional, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the court, "Capital defendants, no less than non-capital defendants, we conclude, are entitled to a jury determination of any fact on which the legislature conditions an increase in their maximum punishment."

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court responded to any perceived ambiguity in Ring, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor writing for the court: "The Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact necessary to impose a sentence of death. A jury’s mere recommendation is not enough."

Nonetheless, on Wednesday, a spokesperson for Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange told BuzzFeed News that the “ruling regarding the Florida death penalty does not affect Alabama’s law” — relying in part upon the Eighth Amendment-based decision from 1995 in explaining why that was so.

"The U.S. Supreme Court specifically upheld Alabama’s current system as constitutional in the case of Harris v. Alabama in 1995," spokesperson Joy Patterson wrote. She also pointed to other cases to buttress her point — three of which were cases from recent years in which the Supreme Court declined to hear challenges to the Alabama system, which is not a decision on the merits of the issue. The other two were lower court decisions addressing the Alabama law that were handed down before the Supreme Court even accepted the Florida case.

Patterson also attempted to distinguish Alabama's system from the parts of the system held to be unconstitutional in Florida.

"In the Florida case, the holding is that a jury must find the aggravating factor in order to make someone eligible for the death penalty. Alabama's system already requires the jury to do just that," she stated. "The jury must unanimously find an aggravating factor at either the guilt or sentencing phase—such as when the murder was committed during a robbery, a rape, or a kidnapping."

In response, attorney John Palombi — also from the Federal Defenders' Office in the Middle District of Alabama — told BuzzFeed News on Friday night, "That is the same argument that Florida made in the Supreme Court and was rejected. In Alabama, just like in Florida, there is no death sentence until the judge makes the finding of the aggravating circumstance."

As Brooks's lawyer put it in the Friday filing, "As with Timothy Hurst, in the absence of the trial court's fact-findings and imposition of sentence, Christopher Brooks would not have received a death sentence."

Read Brooks's filing:

Supreme Court of Florida

WASHINGTON — The Florida Supreme Court appears to want to move quickly on addressing the effect of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that the state's death penalty scheme is unconstitutional.

Earlier this week, the state high court told state officials and lawyers for Cary Michael Lambrix, scheduled for execution on Feb. 21, to submit briefing on the effect of the Supreme Court's ruling in Hurst v. Florida on Lambrix's death sentence.

Lambrix was convicted and sentenced to death in 1984 for the murders of Clarence Moore and Aleisha Bryant.

In Hurst, the U.S. Supreme Court held 8-1 that Florida's death sentencing scheme was unconstitutional under the Sixth Amendment because it violated the right to a jury by making the imposition of a death sentence — specifically, the finding of aggravating circumstances — the responsibility of a judge and not a jury.

On Friday, the state high court announced it would be not be putting Lambrix's scheduled execution on hold at this time, as his lawyers requested. Instead, the court scheduled arguments for 9 a.m. Feb. 2 on the Hurst-related questions.

The court told the parties to be prepared to discuss the effect of Hurst on Lambrix's convictions and death sentences. Specifically, it wants to hear arguments on whether the U.S. Supreme Court's decision is retroactive to cover Lambrix's 1984 conviction, whether it applies given the specific facts of Lambrix's case, and whether any error that was committed by the state is harmless.

No one can stop the Trump train he says.

Mark Wilson / Getty Images

w.soundcloud.com

Former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele says he believes Donald Trump will be the Republican Party's nominee in the general election.

"I'm gonna say, and I know people are gonna scratch their heads and go, 'what?' but I don't you can," Steele said to radio host Rich Zeoli on 1210 WPHT when asked if someone could stop Donald Trump. "That window has closed and I think Donald Trump effectively closed it over the last couple of months."

Asked if he thought Trump would be the nominee, "you tell me who stops him and when do they do it," said Steele. "He's polling anywhere from 33 to 35, 36% in every poll in the country. He's now tightened the space between him and Cruz in Iowa. Cruz is still in the lead, but Cruz is slipping. He's down two points and Trump is up a couple points."

"So, you tell me who does it and you tell me when they do it. Folks start voting in two and a half weeks. You tell me that 33%, that 40% nationally, he didn't just drill it down to a New Hampshire or an Iowa, where he's leading by double digits, except against Cruz in Iowa where he's much closer, but he's at 27, 25. Cruz is at 24, 23, and he's at 22, 21. You think those percentages are just going to dissipate."

Steele said he talked to people in Iowa and many first time voters were going to go out and support Trump.

"So, I don't see how that momentum gets stopped right now, I don't know who breaks it. Come on, you had eight months. You had eight months to take him down."

Fernando Leon / Getty Images

CHARLESTON, South Carolina — Bernie Sanders said Saturday night he supports repealing a 2005 bill he voted for that has been at the center of gun control-centered attacks on Sanders by Hillary Clinton.

Rep. Adam Schiff, one of the Democrats behind the new bill to repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), said Sanders's backing of the bill puts him among those trying to correct a "serious mistake."

"I welcome support from anyone in Congress who now recognizes the need to repeal the immunity Congress granted the gun industry in 2005," Schiff told BuzzFeed News. "PLCAA was a serious mistake and has done tremendous damage to efforts to secure responsible business practices in the gun industry, and to reduce gun violence."

Schiff has endorsed Clinton and is supporting her bid for the Democratic nomination.

Over the past several months, Sanders has repeatedly said he'd revisit his 2005 vote for the PLCAA, which protects gun manufacturers from most lawsuits designed to hold them liable for gun deaths. Clinton's campaign has said that the 2005 vote shows Sanders is too close to the gun-rights crowd for a Democratic primary.

Sanders has said his votes on gun control legislation differ from many progressives because he hails from Vermont, a state wary of regulations on firearms. He backs an assault weapons ban and touts his low rating from the NRA when saying there is no real distance between him and President Obama on guns.

The 2005 PLCAA vote, Sanders said, was cast over concerns that small business gun stores would be driven out of business by lawsuits. His support for the repeal bill comes with a demand: that an amendment be added to monitor how repeal affects what his proposed text describes as "rural mom and pop hunting stores."

"I’m pleased to support the legislation and should it come up for consideration I would work to make sure it includes a provision that allows us to monitor its impact so that we may determine if it is having any unintended consequences," Sanders said in a statement.

"The media — about 70% of them are liars, they lie, they're bad people — will try to tell you it happened in a disgusting barn. Not true. Not true.

"Here's how it happened. One of my guys sees this beautiful young girl. Very charming. Very, very charming. And he goes, 'What are you doing in this filthy barn?'

"And she tells him — get this — there's no room at the inn. No room at the inn for this beautiful girl, pregnant, too. Very pregnant. And my guy, he can't believe it. No room at the inn? It's disgraceful. She's out here in the dark with the donkeys, she's very pregnant. I mean, disgraceful.

"Now, she's not married. Very funny situation. There's an older guy with her, but —you know me. You know Trump. My guy, he's a good kid, he says to himself, well, sometimes you gotta look the other way. I mean, this is a very, very sad scene. Beautiful young girl, very charming, pregnant, and she's in this disgusting barn.

"So my guy, he's good kid, smart kid, went to a very fine school. He tells her, Listen, Mary — this is her name — get out of this filthy barn and come with us.

"Twenty minutes later, this young woman is in a luxurious — lux-ur-io-us — room at one of my properties, giving birth to Christ.

"That's how it happened. And we're hosting kings, wise men, all kinds of important people, really dignified people. Angels are telling everyone, You gotta see this. You won't believe it. The son of God, up at the Trump Bethlehem. It was a beautiful thing.

"The media — and you know, I've got some friends who are journalists, but most of them lie, they're scum — they won't tell you that."

Pool / Getty Images

CHARLESTON, South Carolina — Bernie Sanders is the most electable person running in the Democratic presidential field. Or he’s the least. He’s a dangerous new threat to Republicans trying to retake the White House after two straight terms of Democratic rule. Or he’s a blessing that can bring the GOP a much-needed victory.

The latest Sanders rise in the polls, coming as it has so close to the start of actual voting in the Democratic primary, has thrown a lot of things for a loop. Hillary Clinton, who just a few weeks ago was notably not mentioning her rivals for the nomination on the campaign trail, now talks about Sanders all the time. His aides talk about polls showing their man out-performing Clinton in hypothetical matchups with GOP candidates.

But Republicans themselves haven’t quite settled on a central tone, offering a mix of seemingly genuine concern over Sanders, scoffing at his chances, and the same kind of classic concern trolling over his candidacy that Democrats use against the GOP regarding Donald Trump.

Friday, RNC chair Reince Preibus appeared to offer up a big helping of that kind of response to Sanders. “It’s a tough call, but I guess I would take Hillary,” he told a conservative radio show host when asked if he’d rather face Clinton or Sanders in November. “Although, I do think the sort of wild, socialistic, liberal Bernie Sanders would be fairly easy to beat as well.”

At the Republican debate in South Carolina Thursday night, conversely, John Kasich didn’t play that game. “We're going to win every state if Bernie Sanders is the nominee. That's not even an issue,” he said. “I know Bernie, and I can promise you he's not going to be president of the United States.”

Trump, the man handily beating Kasich (and the rest of the field) in Republican primary polls, has weaved between dismissing Sanders and spending a lot of time taking him seriously. Sanders is convinced his campaign can steal some of Trump’s disaffected white, working-class voters, and at times Trump has shown at least some worry about what Sanders can do. In October, he launched an anti-Sanders Instagram ad and calling him out at a January campaign stop in Burlington, Vermont, where Sanders’s political career began.

But he’s also been pretty dismissive of Sanders.

“I think beating him ultimately would be easier than beating her,” Trump told Byron York last week.

On Sean Hannity’s radio show, Trump went further — saying a Sanders nomination would be a great day for the GOP.

“I would imagine beating a socialist or a communist in this country should be pretty easy. And I would certainly love to do that,” he said. “I would think he’d be the weaker of the candidates.”

Loving the idea of facing Sanders in a general election is not a new thing for Republicans. Over the summer, top Republicans spent so much time praising Sanders — a self-proclaimed socialist — that The Guardian published a long story about it. At the time, Republican operatives were happy to watch Sanders damage Clinton’s appeal in a way that Republicans, despite millions of dollars and years of effort, had largely failed to do. The article was filled with praise for Sanders from Republican voices.

“[W]ith Bernie, voters are seeing someone who is everything Hillary is not; inauthentic, not seen as trustworthy, overly cautious,” one strategist told The Guardian. “With Bernie it’s not that way so you get these big crowds, get him moving up in the polls.”

There’s less praise now that Sanders is performing well. Now there’s more “Sanders is a dangerous socialist radical” kind of talk. But the party has clearly picked its Democratic candidate.

“Why Bernie Sanders won last night’s Democrat debate,” the RNC posted to its blog Oct. 13.

An unaligned Republican operative who asked to remain nameless because of a client list that includes Republicans from all over the spectrum, warned conservatives stoked for Sanders to win to be careful what they wish for. For one thing, Sanders is showcasing a desire among progressives to take over the Democratic Party, the operative said. A left-leaning Democratic party could move the political poles, and tilt electoral gravity to the liberals, the operative warned.

“In the short term, Republicans would prefer to run against Sanders but only on the condition that Republicans have a strategy for thwarting the leftward movement of the Democratic Party,” the operative said.

For now, Republicans are reveling in what has proven to be a much tougher primary for Clinton than anyone expected. Sanders, 74 years old and a democratic socialist, is certainly not the candidate the Democratic establishment would have hand-built if creating the ultimate 2016 standard-bearer. Republicans would be happy to see him get the nomination.

But they’re especially excited to see the Democratic primary become a slugfest.

“I hope they will run as a ticket. We are thrilled to run against a committed socialist and a person under investigation by the FBI,” said Matt Moore, South Carolina Republican Party chair. “They need each other politically. The divisions in the Democrat's voter base are real.”

BuzzFeed News correspondents Evan McMorris-Santoro and Ruby Cramer reported from Charleston, South Carolina.

• Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders had several sharp exchanges — especially on healthcare and Wall Street — during Sunday night's Democratic debate, the fourth of the campaign season.
• Overall, most of the debate's focus was on Sanders and his positions, especially his tax plan. He took many first questions and seemed to be the biggest presence on the stage.
• The stakes were high — the debate came just weeks before the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries, and Sanders has been closing the gap on Clinton in polls.
• Clinton found herself on the defensive after Sanders pointed out she received speaking fees from Goldman Sachs. Sanders in turn had to defend his healthcare plan that he released earlier in the night.
• Sanders also explained why he called former President Bill Clinton's "indiscretions" while in office "disgraceful."
• Former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley criticized both Clinton and Sanders' position on guns — and defended his tough-on-crime record while mayor of Baltimore and whether that was linked to the unrest after Freddie Gray's death.
• The viewing public could not get over this epic side-eye from Sanders.
• And all three candidates kept talking over each other before the commercial breaks.

First off, in case you missed it, you can watch the whole thing here:

youtube.com

Spoiler: Most candidates named more than three.

Sanders:
1) Healthcare for all
2) Raise the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour
3) Create millions of jobs by replacing crumbling infrastructure

Clinton:
1) Creating more good jobs in manufacturing, clean energy, and other sectors
2) Raise the minimum age, guarantee equal pay for women's work
3) Build on Obamacare and improve upon it
4) "Bring our country together. We have too much division."

O'Malley:
(this was all under 1) Make wages go up again; equal pay for equal work; make it easier to join labor unions; comprehensive immigration reform; raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour
2) Move us to a 100% clean electric grid
3) Setting a new agenda for America's cities

Andrew Burton / Getty Images

View Entire List ›

“We’ve achieved this historic progress through diplomacy,” the president said, “without resorting to another war in the Middle East.”

Jacquelyn Martin / AP

President Obama said Sunday that the formal implementation of the Iranian nuclear deal, combined with a successfully negotiated prisoner exchange with Tehran, shows what is possible through "strong American diplomacy."

Fending off attacks from his critics that he has not been strong enough with Iran, Obama highlighted the weekend's progress with Tehran as part of an impassioned defense of his administration's emphasis on diplomacy following decades of minimal communication between the two nations.

"We've achieved this historic progress through diplomacy, without resorting to another war in the Middle East," the president said.

His speech at the White House came a day after the U.S. formally lifted its sanctions on Iran in connection with the country's nuclear program. The move was taken after the U.N. nuclear watchdog verified that Iran had lived up to its end of a deal struck with six world powers in July and dismantled large swathes of its nuclear sector.

The president said that the agreement has ensured Iran won't have enough material to create even one nuclear weapon, and vowed the U.S. will make sure the Iranians don't cheat on the deal.

"We have now cut off every single path that Iran could have used to build a bomb," he said.

"The region, the United States, and the world will be more secure."

There are sanctions remaining on Iran, though, including new sanctions on its ballistic missile program announced by the Treasury Department on Sunday.

Jason Rezaian.

Vahid Salemi / AP

Also on Saturday, the U.S. and Iran each announced they were releasing prisoners as part of an exchange agreement.

The Americans released in the deal were Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post reporter; former Marine Amir Hekmati; Saeed Abedini, a pastor; and Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari.

A fifth American, Matthew Trevithick, was also released separately.

The U.S. offered clemency to seven Iranians in return for the prisoners. Many Republican contenders for the president were critical of the swap, saying the U.S. shouldn't have returned people who had been through the American justice system for detainees facing trumped up charges in Iran.

Obama, though, said he had spent much time with the families of the released prisoners, and was thrilled to welcome them back to the U.S.

"Today, we're united in welcoming home sons and husbands and brothers who in lonely prison cells have endured an absolute nightmare," the president said.

A senior administration official who later briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity said negotiations to secure the prisoners' release began some 14 months ago on the sidelines of the nuclear discussions. The discussions were mostly held in Switzerland in secrecy, the official said.

Obama said the U.S. was still committed to searching for Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent who disappeared while in Iran in 2007. The senior administration official said the U.S. and Iran would "continue a dialogue through multiple channels" to facilitate the return of missing people, including Levinson.

Highlighting the brief detention and release of 10 U.S. Navy sailors who strayed into Iranian waters last week, Obama said the quick resolution to the matter was further evidence of a better relationship with Iran than in previous years.

"That could have sparked a major international incident," he said. "Instead, we worked directly with the Iranian government and secured the release of our sailors in 24 hours."

View Entire List ›