“We’re not asking for anything other than what’s fair and equitable across the board, but if you have a biased moderator up there, it’d be like asking Debra Wasserman Schultz to be a moderator.”

Scott Olson / Getty Images

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Donald Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, on Tuesday compared Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly to DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Shultz, calling Kelly a "biased" moderator who leveled "unacceptable" personal attacks against Trump.

"You've got a network that is rewarding bad behavior, I don't understand it," Lewandowski said Tuesday afternoon on the John Fredericks Show. "The first debate which she participated in she leveled a serious of personal attacks on Mr. Trump. Her show has been increasingly negative toward Mr. Trump."

On Tuesday evening, Trump pulled out of this week's Fox News Debate, citing his past issues with Kelly and a cheeky Fox News press release. In the radio interview, which took place before Trump decided to pull out of the debate, Lewandowski said Trump "had no problem" debating, pointing to his frequent television appearances, but said Kelly wanted the make the debate about her, not the candidates.

"Megyn Kelly made that first debate about herself and now they're rewarding her with another opportunity to participate in a nationally-televised debate," Lewandowski said.

"The personal attacks leveled by Megyn Kelly in the past were unacceptable," he added, saying Trump would happily answer "fair" and "equitable" questions.

"We're not asking for anything other than what's fair and equitable across the board, but if you have a biased moderator up there, it'd be like asking Debra Wasserman Schultz to be a moderator. Maybe that's not the right thing to do when we're trying not to have the moderators make the news but the we're to have the candidates answer the questions so the American people can decided who they want to support."

“Look, $22 million spent attacking me is $22 million Hillary Clinton isn’t gonna have to spend.”

Brendan Hoffman / Getty Images

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Marco Rubio said on Tuesday that the millions of dollars being spent on negative advertising against him, specifically by Jeb Bush backers, amounts to "almost free advertising for Hillary Clinton."

"If you add up all the money that's been spent against every other candidate, it does not equal to what's been spent against me: over, close to 30 million dollars now of attack ads, mostly from Jeb Bush," Rubio told Iowa radio host Simon Conway. "No one else has faced anything close to that, not Donald Trump or Ted Cruz or anyone else."

Rubio was referring to money being spent by Right to Rise, the super PAC supporting Bush. The Rubio campaign said last week that $20 million of the $22 million spent against it had come from Right to Rise.

In the interview, Rubio said that personal attacks against him would ultimately help Clinton as the Democratic nominee.

"Look, if there are policy differences, that should be debated and discussed," the Florida senator said. "But when it gets to the personal stuff, which is what we're starting to see now, that's not good for the Republican party and it's almost free advertising for Hillary Clinton."

Rubio initially raised the attack ads in response to a question about whether he was "the establishment candidate," a label he has sought to distance himself from.

"If you look at it, Jeb Bush, for example, is spending one million dollars a day attacking me, a million dollars a day attacking me," Rubio said. "Every penny of that came from establishment donors. He's raised over a hundred million dollars for a super PAC."

Rubio compared the attacks to those he faced when running against Florida Gov. Charlie Crist for Senate in 2010, a race in which Rubio received Jeb Bush's endorsement.

"Look, $22 million spent attacking me is $22 million Hillary Clinton isn't gonna have to spend," Rubio said. "In the end, the attacks often are maybe not effective, but that's not the point — the point is, I'm not complaining, this is part of the process. I'm more than happy to take this on. I knew I would. It's not dissimilar from what I faced when I ran against Charlie Crist in Florida. They spent a lot of money there as well."

Rand Paul said this about Donald Trump: “If you watch him do interviews with women, he bullies them, he runs roughshod over them, and he doesn’t like a strong, assertive woman.”

CNBC

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Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul says Republican frontrunner Donald Trump backed out of Thursday's Fox News debate because he is scared of strong women.

"I think Megyn Kelly is a tough interviewer, and she is not a pushover, and I think he wants something a little bit easier, and he's afraid that she might point out or ask him a question about his bankruptcies, his treatment of women, a variety of things he doesn't want to talk about," Paul told radio show Kilmeade and Friends on Wednesday

"If you watch him do interviews with women, he bullies them, he runs roughshod over them, and he doesn't like a strong, assertive woman," added Paul. "I think that's more of what this is about. The things he said about her are things I can't repeat on radio or in front of people. So no, I think he is taking it to a level of the gutter and we will see what the American public thinks of it."

On Tuesday evening, Trump pulled out of this week's Fox News Debate, citing his past issues with Megyn Kelly and a cheeky Fox News press release.

"I think delusions of grandeur have sort of taken over in his brain and he's decided he's all powerful, he gets to dictate who the moderators are," Paul said, noting Trump's previous crusaded against newspapers like the New Hampshire Union Leader. "So we do think that ultimately he's gotten a little out of control."

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Jim Young / Reuters

IOWA CITY, Iowa — Shortly before former Texas governor Rick Perry dropped out of the presidential race months ago, one Washington Post article depicted him as a zombie candidate, artificially propped up by a super PAC but stumbling lifelessly onward anyway.

But Perry’s back. This week, after endorsing Ted Cruz, he’s hit the trail in Iowa for his fellow Texan. For another politician, it might be humbling to campaign on behalf of a former rival whom one has in the past dismissed as an inexperienced senator unprepared for the presidency, but if Perry feels that way, he isn’t showing it. He in fact appears to be having a pretty good time.

“I never left,” Perry told reporters after a campaign stop with Rep. Steve King in Burlington, Iowa, on Wednesday morning. Perry and King did two appearances on behalf of Cruz on Wednesday, sans Cruz. “You didn’t see me up here a lot but I was engaged in conversations.”

Perry spoke at length about Cruz at both stops, and fully admitted to not knowing the guy very well until Cruz started contacting him during the campaign — an unusual move for an endorser.

“I really didn’t know Ted Cruz,” Perry said in Burlington. “I knew who Ted Cruz was, I knew he was a smart lawyer. But I really didn’t know him. And after I got out of the race he called a number of times and said I’d like to come and speak with you.” Perry praised Cruz for taking the time to spend a day with him in the busy campaign season, and said Cruz is the “best listener I have ever been around in my life.”

Asked about who else besides Cruz wooed him for an endorsement, Perry said, “A lot of people knew my phone number.”

When Perry suspended his campaign in September, he urged the party to reject Trumpism in his dropping out speech, saying “we cannot indulge nativist appeals that divide the nation further. The answer to our current divider-in-chief is not to elect a Republican divider-in-chief.” In a speech in July, he had called Trump a “cancer” on conservatism.

Back on the trail again, Perry didn’t hesitate to criticize Donald Trump again. (The Cruz campaign has been increasingly aggressive towards Trump after a long period of detente between the two candidates was broken a few weeks ago when Trump began raising questions about Cruz’s eligibility to be president.)

“Why would he not come debate?” Perry told reporters about Trump’s decision to skip the debate this Thursday in Des Moines. “The affront to the people of Iowa is pretty overwhelming. From my perspective he’s saying, ‘I’m too important to have to turn to Iowa and lower myself to do that.’” Iowa caucus goers won’t buy it, Perry said.

Cruz, Perry said, “bases his belief system in two documents, the Bible and the Constitution. And neither one of those change. And so I know that he’s going to be a consistent individual, I know what he’s going to do. Mr. Trump, I don’t. And that’s not just me making that observation, that’s Donald Trump in his own words.”

Perry’s Bible-and-Constitution line echoed a similar one used by King, who carried inside his pocket a plastic spoon, which he waved around while talking about Cruz having been “spoon-fed” the two documents as a child. Perry also appears to have quickly absorbed some other lines that one frequently hears on the Cruz trail; at both stops on Wednesday, he gave a version of a joke Cruz often tells about encouraging voters to vote 10 times, but not to actually commit voter fraud because “we’re not Democrats.” In Iowa City, Perry repeated a story Iowa evangelical leader and Cruz endorser Bob Vander Plaats tells about meeting a Benjamin Netanyahu adviser who encouraged him and Iowans to “choose well” in the presidential race, though in Perry’s telling it was “someone” who told the story and Netanyahu himself who made the exhortation to choose well.

Perry declined to say whether he thinks others in the still-crowded field should drop out like he did, saying, “Listen, the last thing for me is to be giving anybody advice on whether or not they need to get out.”

A few hours later, Perry and King appeared again at the Hamburg Inn in Iowa City, a spot famous for its “pie shakes” (a milkshake made of pie). Perry, clutching a pie shake, lingered for a few moments outside afterward, going back and forth with two young Rand Paul supporters.

“Where are y’all on weed? Y’all for weed?” Perry asked.

“Oh yeah, we know you are, too,” one of them responded. “We saw you decriminalize it in Texas. Good work there.”

“No, you didn’t, no, you didn’t,” Perry said, jovially. “You guys need to get educated, man, y’all are way off line.” (Perry has voiced support in the past for lighter marijuana penalties, though he did not decriminalize it in Texas.)

Perry, the zombie candidate re-animated, then got on the campaign bus.

via Indiana Department of Correction / Via in.gov

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Indiana Department of Correction on Wednesday agreed to a proposed settlement that would, with a few exceptions, end the practice of solitary confinement for those prisoners with serious mental illnesses.

The news comes two days after President Obama announced significant limits on the use of solitary confinement in federal prisons, including banning solitary confinement for juvenile offenders.

In the proposed settlement in Indiana, "segregation," or "restrictive housing" — commonly known as solitary confinement — would generally be ended for seriously mentally ill prisoners or for those who become seriously mentally ill while in solitary confinement.

The settlement comes out of a lawsuit brought in October 2008 by the ACLU of Indiana and the Indiana Protection and Advocacy Services Commission. In the suit, the groups alleged the state was violating the Eighth Amendment rights of seriously mentally ill prisoners by housing them "in segregated or excessively isolated and harsh conditions where they failed to receive adequate mental health care."

After a trial, the federal judge overseeing the case concluded in late 2012 that the groups suing the state "prevailed as to their Eighth Amendment claim." Since then, however, the groups have been trying to resolve the case with a settlement, and Wednesday's agreement includes no admissions by Indiana officials that inmate rights were violated.

Ken Falk, the legal director at the ACLU of Indiana, told BuzzFeed News that the settlement agreement represented a significant step for the state — providing for more interaction and contact for those seriously mentally ill prisoners who previously would have been subject to solitary confinement, in addition to increasing mental health services to those prisoners most in need of them.

"Previously, we had a system that did not address their mental health needs and put them at a severe disadvantage when they got out — and put society at a severe disadvantage — in additional to treating them very cruelly while they were in prison," he said. "This is not making the prison into a country club, it's still a prison."

Among the exceptions to the ban in the agreement is a provision allowing for segregation for up to 30 days "if, and only if" mental health professionals agree that it is safe to do so and preferable to a temporary transfer to a mental health unit.

"I think everyone has concerns about how this is going to work," Falk said of the exception.

He added, however, that the state Department of Correction has been "extremely diligent" in making sure it does work.

"We will continue to monitor it," Falk said.

The other two exceptions are for when a person waives transfer to the mental health facilities or when "exceptional circumstances" — specifically, "real and substantial security or safety concerns" — prevent a transfer out of solitary confinement.

Falk estimated that roughly 600 people in Indiana prisons were seriously mentally ill and in solitary confinement at the time of the 2011 trial in the case They were part of a total prison population of just shy of 30,000 people.

"If you look at the people who were spending inordinately long periods of time in segregation, you would have a disproportionate number of people who are mentally ill," he said.

Because the case was certified by the court overseeing it as a class action, the proposed settlement requires court approval before it becomes final.

Here is the key provision in the proposed settlement:

Read the proposed settlement:

“Many people in the media have predetermined that if you’re black and you’re a conservative that you’re bad. That’s just their narrative.”

Scott Olson / Getty Images

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Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson says the media has been more critical of his candidacy because he's a black conservative.

"Many people in the media have predetermined that if you're black and you're a conservative, that you're bad. That's just their narrative," Carson said on SiriusXM's Urban View on Wednesday when asked by host Armstrong Williams, who is also his adviser and business manager, about how the media views him.

Asked if his race has affected how he is portrayed in the media, Carson said, "I think it does have some role, absolutely. If I were a white conservative they wouldn't be concerned."

Carson, once briefly the Republican frontrunner, has in recent months seen his support diminish in both national and state polls.

Donald Trump: “When it comes to immigration, you have to do the right thing.”

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From the very start of his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump has appealed to hardliners and nativists on the issue of immigration, calling undocumented Mexican immigrants "murderers" and "rapists," proposing the construction of a wall on the United States' southern border that Mexico will pay for, and promising as president to deport the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the country.

Immigration has become Trump's signature issue and a major part of his appeal, but the businessman did not always speak about the issue as he now does as a presidential candidate. At an event in Iowa less than two months after the Senate passed a bipartisan immigration bill, Trump made an appeal to "do the right thing" on immigration, emphasizing the humanity of immigrants while also cautioning that any solution must be "smart and methodical."

"When it comes to immigration, you have to do the right thing," Trump said at the FAMiLY Leadership Summit in Ames in 2013. "You have to, in your own heart, you're dealing with lives, you're dealing with human beings, you have to do the right thing. But it's got to be done in a very, very smart and methodical method."

Trump did issue a warning to Republicans that any solution giving undocumented immigrants the right to vote could be disastrous for the party.

"If you do something where they get a vote — and just remember, and I think I was the first one to say it, I don't know if you remember, but I said this a long time ago when this first came up — everyone of those people, virtually, will be voting Democratic. They're not voting Republican. And whether Sen. Rubio is leading the fight — and that's the immigration fight — or not, it's irrelevant. They're just going to be voting Democratic. That's the way it is, and the Democrats have taken hold of this issue, and they love the issue."

"Do what's right," Trump said again. "But be very careful cause it could be a death wish for the Republican Party."

Earlier in the speech, Trump underscored the importance of border security, saying, "You either have a country, or you don't."

On Tuesday, Mike Huckabee released a full three-minute parody song of Adele's "Hello" but about Iowa.

But now the song has been muted due to a copyright claim.

And I think not all the words were in the subtitles?

So now it's just a silent film of a free association poem.

The end.

Illustration by BuzzFeed News

Shortly before each execution in Missouri, a high-ranking corrections official takes envelopes filled with thousands of dollars in cash to the state’s executioners. The cash limits the paper trail — and helps keep the identities of the executioners hidden.

Most of the envelopes are filled with hundred dollar bills. And on the outside, the envelopes carry instructions: They aren’t to be opened until “completion of services rendered.”

The executioners are given pseudonyms to protect their identities: M2, the nurse, gets $2,400, while M3, the anesthesiologist, gets the envelope marked $3,000. M7, the drug supplier, gets the most, an envelope filled with $7,178.88.

Missouri Director of Adult Institutions David Dormire has handed out nearly a hundred envelopes filled with cash since November 2013. Over that span of time, Dormire delivered $284,551.84 in cash to the small group of individuals who help the state carry out the death penalty, according to a BuzzFeed News review of receipts, an audit of the payments, a spreadsheet showing cash withdrawals, and memos marked “confidential” in which the payments were discussed.

“It seems very strange to me,” said Sandy Freund, a law professor at Rutgers School of Law-Newark. “How could they possibly be paying in cash? That seems so ridiculous.”

In fact, several experts who spoke with BuzzFeed News said the state’s methods raise serious questions about whether the state has followed federal tax law.

The Internal Revenue Service requires those who pay contractors $600 or more to file a disclosure called a 1099 with the agency, as well as with the person receiving the money. The disclosures notify the IRS that the agency should be checking to make sure the recipient is paying taxes on those payments.

But in response to a BuzzFeed News open records request, the Department of Corrections said it had no records about 1099s for the executioners. The department’s internal procedures make no mention of 1099s or any other notice to the IRS.

David Dormire

via Missouri Department of Corrections / Via doc.mo.gov

Dormire, who handles the cash payments, said in a 2014 deposition that he was unaware of any 1099s being issued to the executioners or the IRS.

“You provide the Internal Revenue Service with proof they’ve been paid, do you not?” an attorney representing death row inmates asked him.

“I do not know,” he responded.

The department of corrections was given more than 24 hours to respond to a request for comment, which it did not do. A spokesperson said only that the department was reviewing the inquiry.

Without informing the IRS that the state is handing out this amount of cash, the federal government has no way to ensure that the recipients are paying taxes. Experts BuzzFeed News spoke with said Missouri could be contributing to considerable tax evasion.

“I can’t imagine why the state wouldn’t be issuing 1099s here,” said Bryan Camp, a former IRS employee who is now a law professor at Texas Tech. “I can’t think of a good answer.”

Freund echoed that, adding that she saw no exception that would exempt the state from issuing a 1099 in these circumstances.

The penalties for the state not issuing 1099s are relatively modest, the experts said — starting at $100 per 1099. But it can add up, especially if the violation was intentional. Another expert BuzzFeed News spoke with said he recently had advised a government entity that the IRS had assessed a penalty of more than $800,000 for not issuing 1099s.

These would be penalties for the state. But there are other penalties for the recipient if they did not disclose the cash payments to the IRS and pay taxes on them. Without a 1099, however, the IRS would not have a way to know to check if the recipients had paid their taxes.

“If they aren’t state employees, then they should be receiving 1099s,” Thomas Brennan, a law professor at Harvard who specializes in tax law, said bluntly.

Questions about the cash payments have been raised before. A February 2015 audit by the Missouri Auditor’s Office found that the Department of Corrections was not following its procedures for cash payments.

“The DOC did not record the amount of the cash payments on receipt forms signed by execution team members and did not always require the exchange of the cash payments to be acknowledged by a witness signature, as required by DOC procedures,” the audit found.

That audit dealt with a small portion — $21,266 — of the cash that the Department of Corrections dispensed between March 2013 and February 2014.

“I can’t imagine why the state wouldn’t be issuing 1099s here.”

An auditor that worked on the case told BuzzFeed News that they did not check to see if 1099s were being issued.

Dormire told the auditors that the problems the auditor found were “an oversight,” and the Department of Corrections said it would enact stricter guidelines to ensure compliance.

But “confidential execution team member receipts” from well after the audit still show discrepancies. Some are lacking a witness signature, others are entirely blank, and many of the witnesses signed the receipts on different days than Dormire.

The department of corrections has not provided any explanation of the discrepancies.

In a brief statement, Auditor Nicole Galloway said that “it is the expectation of this office that audit recommendations are implemented.” She also pointed to other audits that have criticized government agencies for not issuing 1099s. Galloway was appointed by Gov. Jay Nixon in April 2015, and, as such, did not oversee the department of corrections audit.

Nixon also appointed the head of the department of corrections, George Lombardi. Nixon’s office declined to comment on this story, instead directing questions to the department of corrections.

Lombardi defended paying the executioners in cash before a state legislative committee on government oversight in 2014. The committee did not ask about tax issues.

The top corrections official appeared frustrated that he had to appear before the committee. At the time, he was facing questions over the state’s practice of executing inmates while appeals were still pending in the courts, as well as the purchase of execution drugs from a pharmacy that was not licensed to sell in the state.

“Yes, it is cash money,” Lombardi told the committee. “They’ve made it clear that we wouldn’t have the people required to carry out the death penalty” if it wasn’t cash.

Lombardi is the person who signs off on the procedures governing the cash payments, and he said it has been longstanding policy to pay those who participate in executions in cash.

In a statement, Attorney General Chris Koster’s office said “By law, we are charged with representing the Department of Corrections, and so we decline to comment.”

Missouri is not the only state that pays its executioners in cash. BuzzFeed News has found evidence that, at the least, Arizona and Oklahoma do as well.

Arizona, though, has provided 1099s in conjunction with its executions. The state turned over redacted 1099s as part of ongoing litigation. The state’s medical team leader, who was paid $18,000 per execution, also said in a deposition that Arizona gave him a 1099.

via Arizona Department of Corrections

Oklahoma uses cash payments as well — but in that state, the payments are much smaller. Each executioner in Oklahoma is paid only $300 per lethal injection.

One doctor complained about his compensation for the 2014 botched execution of Clayton Lockett, a 43-minute lethal injection in which the inmate writhed and sat up on the gurney. Even though that execution was botched, and a second one scheduled for that night wasn’t carried out, the doctor was paid $600 — the price for both.

“Well I know the doctor was” paid for both, then-Warden Anita Trammell told investigators afterward. “‘cause [redacted] got blood all over his jacket and I mean, it was a bloody mess. [Redacted] was complaining about that. [Redacted] says [redacted] gotta get enough money out of this to go buy a new jacket.”

LINK: See a spreadsheet of the cash payments:

Read the documents:

Timothy A. Clary / AFP / Getty Images

DES MOINES, Iowa — He’s a regular politician with a “long string of flip-flops.” But he’s also a pie-in-the-sky progressive, with proposals that “sound good on paper that will never make it to the real world.” Though he’s also part of the experienced political “establishment” he’s fighting against — while being inexperienced and naive on foreign policy. Oh, and he wants to dismantle your health care, too.

Between speeches, press releases, television ads, and interviews this month, this is the Clinton campaign’s muddled picture of Bernie Sanders.

Eight months into the primary, with just four days until the Iowa caucuses, Clinton and her aides still don’t have a clear way to talk about Sanders. Inside and outside the campaign, Clinton backers acknowledge that her team has struggled to define and shape a narrative around the Vermont senator, going back to her events last fall, when she first began directly invoking her main rival months after rarely saying his name.

The tone has vacillated between aggressive and soft. And the focus, to varying degrees of effect, has touched on the senator’s policies, preparedness, and experience — but not always toward a clear, single argument against Sanders and for Clinton.

"From the beginning, Bernie Sanders has known exactly what he wanted to say about himself and exactly what he wanted to say about her,” said one former Clinton adviser.

“He was always the guy who was going to blow up the entrenched interests that were screwing the little guy and she was going to represent the entrenched. A lot of us have been concerned because we haven't seen that clarity from her on either side of the ledger."

Back in October, without mentioning Sanders by name, Clinton asked voters to consider two questions of any candidate: First, how realistic are their proposals? Second, how will they be paid for? Months later, Clinton is still pursuing the argument, and more aggressively. She now tells crowds, as she did in Cedar Falls on Tuesday, for instance, “I do put my plans on my website, and I do tell you how much it will cost because I do want you to know that I’m not just shouting slogans. I’m not just engaging in rhetoric. I’ve thought this through. I have a plan.”

But even this month, as she’s tried to cast herself as the candidate with pragmatic proposals — with “the experience and determination to get the job done," as a new campaign ad put it on Wednesday — the candidate and her staff have pursued other lines of attack against Sanders that appear at times to be at cross-purposes.

Sanders casts himself as an insurgent, fighting against mainstream forces and the hard-to-define “establishment.” Clinton aides, meanwhile, have at turns called that dangerously naive. The candidate has also noted to Iowa voters, as evidence that his brand of politics is ineffective. that Sanders has “introduced his health care plan nine times, but he never got even a single vote in the House, or a single Senate co-sponsor,” she said in Indianola last week. “Not one.” At other times, Clinton has suggested Sanders’s anti-establishment stance is artifice coming from a longtime member of Congress whom she recently suggested is more of a creature of Washington than she is.

"They're launching so many attacks and so many of them are contradictory,” said Jeff Weaver, the senator’s campaign manager. “It's clear that the coherent strategy is to say as many negative things as possible, whether they make sense or not."

"You have the attack that he's part of the establishment and you have the attack that he's too far out of the mainstream. It's contradictory," Weaver said.

Weaver said the campaign enjoyed watching the public spat between top Clinton officials and one of their top allies, David Brock, head of the pro-Clinton group Correct the Record, over whether to make issue of Sanders’s age by calling for the release of his medical records. (Sanders released the records on Thursday.)

"That was obviously an amusing day when you had various parts of the Clinton campaign attacking one another in public over strategy," Weaver said. "It just speaks to the sort of scattershot approach to attacks that they've been choosing."

The issue of health care — and the single-payer system that Sanders advocates — perhaps best encapsulates the approach. Sanders calls for vastly more money spent on social programs than the mainstream Democratic Party is generally willing to embrace — and his health care plan, which would nationalize Medicare and raise taxes across the board is no different.

At times, the Clinton campaign has neatly made the case that Sanders is more political fantasy than practical politician capable of pushing ideas through the actual structure of Washington. But when attacking Sanders for being a universal health care advocate, the campaign has made three different critiques: They’ve said Sanders favors eliminating popular social programs he actually wants to expand; they’ve attacked him for advocating tax increases while promising bigger savings for American families (a standard progressive political vision); and they’ve said he wants a replay of the health care debate that snarled up President Obama’s first years in office.

“The Affordable Care Act now has gotten to 90% coverage. We’re 10% away from universal coverage,” Clinton said at the Cedar Falls event on Tuesday. “We can’t start all over again. We can’t start a contentious national debate. Both Sen. Sanders and I have the same goal. We want universal coverage. I just happen to think starting from where we are, moving from 90% to 100%, fixing the problems with the Affordable Care Act is a lot more likely to happen than starting from zero.”

The Clinton campaign has also repeatedly tried to say Sanders has broken his “no negative campaigning” pledge. Most recently, about a week ago, aides held a press call to attack a new Sanders ad that framed the race as a debate between two Democratic “visions” — one that said a candidate can take Wall Street money and be tough on Wall Street, and one that says a candidate can’t. “One says it's OK to take millions from big banks, and then tell them what to do,” the Sanders ad script reads in part.

The Clinton campaign said that the ad was negative, and a clear violation of Sanders’s pledge. The ad certainly did not fit the traditional mold of a negative TV commercial, and the Clinton outrage took a drubbing in the press. "The idea that he was going to take away everybody's health care when he's been an advocate of universal health care for his entire life was ludicrous. It went nowhere,” said Weaver. “The fake moral indignation about his ad talking about Wall Street and trying to convince everybody it was negative."

Clinton’s campaign has tried hard to quash Sanders after barely talking about him for much of 2015. Polls in Iowa show a neck-and-neck race, with turnout the deciding factor in the end.

That Sanders is within striking distance of actually winning Iowa, which could not be considered anything but a huge upset, is itself a kind of victory for Sanders. But he hasn’t won yet. And Clinton’s constant barrage of attacks — no matter how lacking in a central methodology they seem to be — could prove effective. There is some method to the madness, said one longtime Democratic strategist not aligned with either campaign. "That is actually a smart strategy," the operative said. "It's called 'muddy the water.'”

“It feels wrong,” the operative went on. “But for voters, it’s meaningful.”

“Portrait of young soldier,” by Dmytro Konstantynov.

The link takes you to his site:

Donald Trump Veterans Site

It's "portrait of young soldier," a stock image of an Ukrainian actor.

dreamstime.com

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“Once you’ve gotten that ruling from the federal judge and you’re the last man standing in this presidential contest next to Donald Trump, we’ll be happy to have a debate with you one-on-one, anywhere you want.”

Scott Olson / Getty Images

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Donald Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said on Thursday that his candidate would be "happy" to debate Ted Cruz once the Texas senator gets a federal judge to rule him eligible to run for president.

"Once you've gotten that ruling from the federal judge and you're the last man standing in this presidential contest next to Donald Trump, we'll be happy to have a debate with you one-on-one, anywhere you want, because that's the way the system works," Lewandowski said. "But, as it stands right now, we don't even know if Ted Cruz is legally eligible to run for president of the United States."

Trump and his supporters have argued that Cruz, who was born in Canada to a U.S. citizen, is not natural born and therefore ineligible to run for president under the Constitution.

Cruz challenged Trump to debate him one-on-one after Trump announced that he would not be attending the Fox News Republican presidential debate Thursday night because of objections to the presence of anchor Megyn Kelly and a statement Fox issued in response to his complaints.

"What this is, is a publicity stunt by Senator Cruz who is continuing to fall in the polls in the state of Iowa," Lewandowski told Boston radio host Jeff Kuhner, before unleashing a slew of attacks at Cruz, arguing that he had used "dark money donors" through his super PAC to offer a donation to charity if Trump agreed to the debate.

"If Ted Cruz were able to disclose the loans that he's taken out from Goldman Sachs and Citi, then maybe he would use his own money for this, but instead he's using super PAC money which I don't even know if he can do legally," Lewandowski said, referring to loans Cruz took out during his 2012 run for Senate that he did not disclose in campaign filings. "And the bottom line is, you know what we've said to Ted Cruz, go into court, seek a declaratory judgment to find out if you're even legally eligible to run for president of the United States."

In the interview, Lewandowski addressed his remark that Megyn Kelly had a "rough couple of days after that last debate" and "would hate to have her go through that again," which some at Fox News interpreted as a threat.

"That's not a threat. It's a factual statement," Lewandowski said. "And the bottom line, was, she did have a rough couple days after the debate because what she did during that first presidential debate was she made sure the debate was about her and not about the candidates who were actually on the stage."

Toward the end of the interview, Lewandowski took another shot at Cruz, this time over Cruz's criticism of Trump's support for eminent domain. Lewandowski said that eminent domain would be required to build the Keystone Pipeline, which Cruz supports.

"The Keystone Pipeline, as you know, starts where Ted Cruz was born, in the country of Canada, and runs right down to where he lives now, in the state of Texas, and eminent domain is an issue that you know what unfortunately, sometimes you need to use it to get projects like that done," Lewandowski said.

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The Arizona Department of Corrections has enlisted the help of a national law firm in its fight against the federal government to import execution drugs, BuzzFeed News has learned.

Alston & Bird, an Atlanta-based law firm with more than 700 lawyers and offices across the country, has taken on representation of the department in its fight against the Food and Drug Administration, which has detained 1,000 vials of sodium thiopental since this past summer that were slated for delivery to the department.

Arizona, Texas, and Nebraska purchased the drug from a man in India named Chris Harris — a man without a pharmaceutical background. Harris has been the subject of ongoing BuzzFeed News coverage.

The FDA warned Arizona and the other states that importing the drug would be illegal, as it is an unapproved new drug and has no FDA-approved manufacturer. The states ordered the sodium thiopental anyway.

Nebraska's shipment never left India, but Texas and Arizona's shipments did cross the ocean — only to be stopped by the FDA at U.S. airports.

Alston & Bird, which identifies itself as "counsel for the Arizona Department of Corrections," is arguing on behalf of the department that the FDA should release the drugs since they would be used "only for law enforcement."

"The restrictive legend on the label ('For law enforcement purpose only') makes that clear," Alston & Bird partner Daniel Jarcho wrote in a letter to the FDA dated Oct. 23, 2015. "The purpose of [the statutes] is to provide warnings to patients as they take their own drugs."

"Here there will be no lay patient 'users' taking the detained drugs. This is a circumstance in which the imported substance is a drug that will not be used for medicinal purposes at all," Jarcho, based out of the firm's D.C. office, wrote.

Arizona is arguing that, since the drugs are for lethal injection, they are exempt from the requirements the FDA cited in detaining the shipment.

In the letter, Jarcho also "demand[ed]" that the FDA and Customs and Border Protection redact or omit information about the drug supplier "unless required by law to release it," citing Arizona's secrecy law surrounding executions.

BuzzFeed News, however, previously was able to determine that Arizona and Texas purchased the drugs from Harris' company, Harris Pharma. Harris registered a site with the FDA claiming that it could be used to manufacturer drugs, although that site was just a small office space. The location he has provided to the DEA is an old apartment building he no longer lives in — and that he left while still owing rent.

According to FDA documents, the drugs Harris sold were manufactured by a company in India called Health Biotech Limited.

Arizona's letter to the FDA made no mention of a 2012 federal court order that the FDA had "a mandatory obligation … to refuse to admit the misbranded and unapproved drug, thiopental, into the United States.” The order also directed the FDA to stop “permitting the entry of, or releasing any future shipments of, foreign manufactured thiopental that appears to be misbranded or [an unapproved new drug]." A federal appeals court upheld the order in 2013.

Arizona, like Texas and Nebraska, has also enlisted the help of a former FDA employee named Ben England who testified on the other side of the 2012 case. In that case, he argued on behalf of death row inmates that the drugs violated federal law.

In a statement, an Alston & Bird spokesperson would only say, "[W]e are not at liberty to discuss the matter." According to his firm bio, Jarcho previously represented the FDA "in federal court civil and criminal litigation" while working as a trial attorney at Justice Department.

England, who is cc'ed on the Jarcho letter and identified as "Co-counsel" to the Arizona Department of Corrections, has not responded to numerous requests for an interview. England, who previously was a longtime investigator for the FDA, also has been the subject of ongoing BuzzFeed News coverage.

The FDA is continuing to detain the shipments, the Arizona Department of Corrections said. In a recent hearing in a death penalty case, an attorney with Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich's office said that the state would sue if the FDA did not release the drugs.

"There's no further administrative exhaustion needed [if the FDA denies the request]?" U.S. District Judge Neil Wake asked.

"No. At that point we would proceed in court to challenge," assistant attorney general Jeffrey Sparks said.

The Arizona attorney general's office told BuzzFeed News this week that it was not representing the Department of Corrections on the FDA appeal, but it did not immediately respond when asked if the office would represent the Department of Corrections if they chose to sue.

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NEWTON, Iowa — At the end of a "Get Out The Caucus" event on Thursday night, near the front of the audience here at Berg Middle School, a young woman asked Hillary Clinton to respond to the "misperception" plaguing her campaign.

"I think that there is a misperception that young voters are not as adamant supporters of you as perhaps one of your opponents," she told Clinton. "As an adamant supporter of you for the past eight years, I have to ask: In these last few days before the caucuses, what do you have to say to my generation?"

The woman, who identified herself as a student, alluded of course to Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose campaign boasts major youth support and 2.5 million "grassroots" donations. Clinton and her aides, over the course of their nine-month campaign, have sought to dispel the impression that she lacks enthusiasm from young voters.

Clinton nodded along to the question, then argued that her campaign does in fact enjoy the same kind of support as her main rival in the caucuses.

"I feel very honored to have the enthusiastic support of so many young people across Iowa. They are working in my campaign. They are volunteering in my campaign. They are organizing on campuses," Clinton said. "And it means the world to me."

A Quinnipiac poll this week shows that likely Democratic caucus-goers from the age of 18 to 44 back Sanders over Clinton by a wide margin — 78% to 21%. The campaign addressed the enthusiasm question on Thursday in a email to supporters from the candidate: "Our opponent just doesn't seem to think we have the fight and enthusiasm to take this across the finish line," the email reads. "I disagree."

In Newton, Clinton acknowledged that young people often tell her at events how torn they feel between her campaign and the Sanders campaign.

"I’m also seeing more young people come to my events," Clinton said, "and frankly tell me — I’m going to shake hands with everybody now — they frankly say, I can’t make up my mind between you and Sen. Sanders, and you know, I try to give them some of the reasons why I hope they will support me and, you know."

Then she launched into her case to young voters, a mix of economics, Obama's presidency, and protecting rights:

I want you to take advantage of what has happened in our country in the last years. To really open it up to more respect and more tolerance, and let’s move away from all this mean-spiritedness and this insulting — that’s not how we want to show our children and our young people how to live. I feel so strongly about that. And that comes from getting the economy going again, so you don’t feel like you’re not gonna have the chance to get a good job, a good middle-class life. It means getting those college loans paid off, getting those college bills down. It means making sure we’ve got health care and we don’t rip it away from you. It means protecting your rights. I mean, the Republicans are against civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, voter rights, worker rights — it’s a long list.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch

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WASHINGTON — On Thursday, the Justice Department took the first step toward backing the view of a federal commission that sexual orientation is a type of sex discrimination barred under existing civil rights law.

In response to a lawsuit filed by a former Federal Aviation Administration employee claiming that he was illegally discriminated against on the basis of his sexual orientation, Justice Department attorneys on Thursday chose to answer his complaint rather than seeking to have it dismissed outright.

In his complaint, filed this past October, David Baldwin alleged that he was discriminated against because of his sexual orientation and that such discrimination was illegal because it is a type of sex discrimination barred by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Although such claims used to regularly fail, advocates — supported by a growing body of law and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — have pressed in recent years for the claims to be revisited and for courts to find that sexual orientation discrimination should be barred as a type of sex discrimination.

"The Justice Department made the correct call by defending this case on the facts rather than making the outdated and conservative legal argument that the Civil Rights Act does not protect gays and lesbians from workplace discrimination," Tico Almeida, the civil rights attorney who founded Freedom to Work, told BuzzFeed News.

Justice Department lawyers had faced a deadline of Thursday to decide whether to answer Baldwin's allegations or file a motion to dismiss them. A motion to dismiss them most likely would have been filed on grounds arguing that Baldwin could not "state a claim" that the FAA violated Title VII because sexual orientation discrimination is not barred by Title VII.

By answering the complaint, the Justice Department bypassed the option of seeking a dismissal on those grounds — in other words, an attempt to toss out the case before the back-and-forth of litigation begins.

This past July, the EEOC — in response to a complaint filed by Baldwin — issued a decision in his favor. The EEOC found that "allegations of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation necessarily state a claim of discrimination on the basis of sex" that are barred by Title VII.

From there, Baldwin chose to file suit against the FAA in October. In December, the parties agreed to an extension through Thursday for the Justice Department to respond to the lawsuit.

A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the filing reflected a larger change in the department's view on the issue.

The move comes in the midst of a significant and growing effort from advocates, the EEOC, and others to provide federal protections for LGBT people under existing laws, as new legislative efforts have stalled in Congress.

The EEOC ruled in 2012 that anti-transgender discrimination is covered by the sex discrimination ban in Title VII. The independent agency was later joined by the Justice Department, which announced its agreement with the position in late 2014. Both have since been urging courts to take that position.

On Wednesday, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, heard arguments over the issue of transgender coverage in the context of Title IX's education protections. The Justice Department backed the transgender student, Gavin Grimm, who is suing his school district for alleged sex discrimination.

Until Thursday, however, the Obama administration had not made any public signals as to whether it similarly would join the EEOC in advancing the argument that sexual orientation discrimination should be barred under existing law.

But the Justice Department's move on Thursday — answering the complaint — is such a signal.

Notably, the move comes a year after the Justice Department had opposed Saks Fifth Avenue for having filed a motion to dismiss in an employment discrimination case brought by a former employee of the department store who is transgender.

Saks, initially, had argued that the employee had failed to state a claim in that case, but later withdrew the filing, noting that it would instead "litigat[e] the matter on the merits."

Now it appears, as to Baldwin's claims, that the Justice Department has decided to do the same.

Charlie Neibergall / AP

Republican presidential candidates faced their toughest and most substantive policy questions on immigration yet on the debate stage Thursday night, as candidates were forced to watch old video clips of themselves discussing the issue and reconcile comments at odds with their current stances.

At Thursday's Fox News debate, just four days out from the Iowa caucus, moderator Megyn Kelly began by showing Florida Sen. Marco Rubio a video from before he was elected to the Senate, where he said he never had and never will support any effort to grant "blanket legalization amnesty" to people that have entered or stayed in the country illegally. On a second video he was shown saying legalization is unfair to those who have come to the country legally, something he has also said in past debates.

Hadn't Rubio, Kelly asked, already shown that he can't be trusted on immigration by then going on to support a 2013 immigration overhaul?

Rubio, as he has began doing in the new year, tied his tougher immigration stance to the rise of ISIS. And without Donald Trump at the debate — he declined to participate — Rubio made the only reference to him on the issue of immigration.

"We are not going to round up and deport 12 million people, but we're not going to hand out citizenship cards, either," Rubio said.

A tussle ensued when former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who has struggled to gain oxygen on immigration when faced with Trump's loud, controversial stances, reminded Rubio that the bipartisan Senate bill did support a path to citizenship. Bush set up Rubio with credit for being part of the effort, which has not been popular in the Republican primary, before hitting him.

"He led the charge to finally fix this immigration problem that has existed now for, as Marco says, for 30 years," Bush said. "And then he cut and run because it wasn't popular amongst conservatives, I guess."

Bush being Bush, he then reminded the audience that they can buy his book about immigration on Amazon for $2.99.

"It's not a bestseller, I can promise you," he said to light laughter.

Rubio, who in 2013 gave impassioned floor speeches about the place of immigration in his life and in American society, and Bush, who has said undocumented immigrants cross the border as "an act of love" for their families, knew the drill by this point in the primary and took turns criticizing each other for flip-flopping on stances they have both supported in the past.

"It's interesting that Jeb mentions the book," Rubio said. "That's the book where you changed your position on immigration because you used to support a path to citizenship."

"So did you," Bush countered.

Then it was Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's turn to be haunted by old videos from 2013.

"I don't want immigration reform to fail," he said in one clip. "I want immigration reform to pass."

Cruz argued in the 2013 video that his amendment, which would have stripped a path to citizenship from the bill but kept legal status, would allow "for those 11 million people who are here illegally, a legal status, with citizenship off the table."

Cruz has maintained this was all a bluff to show that Democrats weren't serious about bringing people out of the shadows but instead were interested in millions of new voters.

In one of the rare instances where many of the candidates were given a chance to respond, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul called Cruz the "king of saying, 'You're for amnesty.' Everybody's for amnesty except for Ted Cruz."

Cruz repeatedly sought cover by invoking names of his hardline immigration supporters — Sen. Jeff Sessions and Rep. Steve King — as well as conservative radio hosts Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh.

"If it wasn't for Ted Cruz, the Gang of Eight Rubio/Schumer bill would have passed," Cruz said, invoking Sessions' defense of him. "But because Ted stood up and helped lead the effort, millions rose up to kill it."

Cruz again told Rubio that when the "battle was waged, my friend Senator Rubio chose to stand with Barack Obama and Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer and support amnesty."

Writing furiously as Cruz used his stock argument against him, Rubio shot back, "This is the lie that Ted's campaign is built on," that Cruz is the most conservative and everyone else is a RINO.

Rubio sought to tie Cruz to his old comments on reaching "compromise" on immigration and wanting to "bring people out of the shadows."

"Now you want to trump Trump on immigration," Rubio parried.

When they both joined the Senate they made the same promise, Cruz argued: "If you elect me, I will lead the fight against amnesty." But Cruz said only he kept that promise.

Making his oft-repeated argument for executive experience as a governor against the two senators, Chris Christie jumped in.

"I feel like I need a Washington to English dictionary converter, right?" he said as the crowd laughed.

While Democrats have only had one back-and-forth on immigration during their four debates, with two debates completely ignoring the issue, the Republican exchange on immigration was one of the most robust sections of the night, leading Google searches of the term "amnesty" to spike 380%.

A YouTube question from Dulce Candy, a young woman who came to the country from Mexico, served in the armed forces, became a citizen and now has her own company, broke up the back-and-forth and provided one of the lighter moments of the night from Ben Carson.

The campaign's rhetoric has made immigrants who contribute positively to the American economy question their place in the country, Candy said. "If America does not seem like a welcoming place for immigrant entrepreneurs, will the American economy suffer?" she asked.

"Dr. Carson, that's one — that one's for you," Kelly said.

"Oh, great," Carson cracked, the crowd laughing.

Bush's response to the young woman invoked hopes more prominent before the rise of Trump that, as part-wonk, part compassionate conservative, he could unite the party once again under the Bush name and take on Hillary Clinton in the general election.

"We should be a welcoming nation," Bush said, adding that as a young woman who served in the military she deserved everyone's respect. "Our identity is not based on race or ethnicity, it's based on a set of shared values. That's American citizenship."

"Dulce Candy — a pretty cool name, actually," he added.

Christopher Furlong / Getty Images

DES MOINES, Iowa — Donald Trump's decision to skip the last primary debate before the Iowa caucuses seemed like one of his riskiest moves yet. But Trump came out as a winner (or at least not a loser) anyway, simply because no one else did.

Trump's absence posed an opportunity for the other candidates: Here, finally, they could launch attacks without fear of Trump's immediate reprisal — or at least pretend he didn't exist at all.

The reality was more muddled. Though Trump, who backed out of the debate because of complaints about the Fox News moderators and held a veterans-themed event instead, loomed large over the proceedings in absentia, most of the candidates settled for just one or two shots at him.

The very first question, to Ted Cruz, was about Trump: Cruz responded by jokingly playing Trump's role, saying, "Let me say I'm a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat, and ugly. And Ben, you're a terrible surgeon."

"Chris, let's begin by being clear what this campaign is about. It's not about Donald Trump. He's an entertaining guy. He's the greatest show on earth," Marco Rubio chimed in later.

"I kind of miss Donald Trump," said Jeb Bush, the subject of much of Trump's mockery. "He was a little teddy bear to me."

After that, though, Trump, didn't really come up that much — or at least there wasn't much Trump-bashing. Bush seemed relieved, and Rand Paul got more opportunities to talk. The recipient of the most incoming was probably Cruz, who, along with Rubio, was faced with a tough video montage of his past statements on immigration. The mutual finger-pointing made it difficult for any candidate to truly stand out in Trump's stead. And Trump got to avoid the montages that were so brutal for Rubio and Cruz.

Meanwhile, the absent Trump was the most mentioned candidate on Twitter, according to statistics sent by Twitter's communications office, and gained the most followers. Trump also dominated Google searches.

After the debate, rival campaigns said they benefited from Trump's not being there.

"It did, absolutely," said Rubio spokesman Alex Conant when asked if Trump's absence had benefited Rubio. "Because we got more time to speak. In previous debates, Marco's been towards the bottom in terms of how much time he got to speak, tonight he was at the top in terms of how much time he had."

"It was the best debate we've had, it was the most substantive, we weren't distracted with people being called fat, ugly or stupid," said Rand Paul.

"Everybody got more time, so that was probably pretty helpful for everybody," said Cruz campaign manager Jeff Roe, who said that nonetheless Trump was "the elephant in the room."

"It was more unpredictable without him in," Roe said. "Oddly enough, it's more predictable when he's there, even though he is purposely not predictable."

But not everyone agreed that it was a boon; Iowa congressman Steve King, who has endorsed Cruz and was acting as a surrogate for him after the debate, said he thought it stole an opportunity for Cruz to draw contrast with Trump.

"I don't think it did," said King when asked if Trump's absence benefited Cruz. "Because we were looking for that head-to-head."

"That's why Trump wasn't here," King said. "He wanted to avoid the direct conflict between Ted Cruz. It wasn't about Megyn Kelly, that was his ruse. Kelly was the ruse for Cruz."

William Edwards / AFP / Getty Images

Donald Trump has repeatedly called for the deportation of all 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, but in a 2011 television interview, Trump said that he supported allowing some immigrants to stay in the country based on their background and references.

Trump appeared on the O'Reilly Factor in April 2011, in the midst of his flirtation with a presidential run in 2012. In the interview, O'Reilly pressed Trump on what he would do with the millions of undocumented immigrants already in the United States.

“Do you give them a pathway to citizenship? Or do you put them on a bus and drive ‘em out of here?” O’Reilly asked.

“I think right now you’re gonna have to do something, and, you know, it’s hard to generalize, but you’re gonna have to look at the individual people,” Trump said, “see how they’ve done, see how productive they’ve been, see what their references are, then make a decision.”

Some of Trump’s rivals for the Republican presidential nomination have criticized the businessman's current mass deportation plan. During a GOP debate in November, Ohio Gov. John Kasich said it was a “silly” argument, while Jeb Bush said the proposal went against American values.

Trump, who in the past has called Mexicans crossing the border are “rapists” who are bringing crime and drugs into the U.S., disagreed, saying he would create an "immigration force" and pointed to an Eisenhower-era policy that deported more than a million immigrants.

In 2011, however, when O’Reilly pointed out looking at each individual on a case-by-case basis would be extremely time consuming, Trump agreed, but said it was worth it.

“You know, you have some great productive people that came [here],” Trump said, before concluding, “And then you have some total disasters that should probably be in prison.”

Watch the interview below:

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“Where the extra rights come in is when the gays in the military become somewhat militaristic to the detriment of unit cohesion.”

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Ben Carson campaign chairman General Robert Dees argued on Thursday that gay people in the military who "flaunt" their sexuality "disrupt cohesion" among troops.

Dees has in the past expressed skepticism on having gay people openly serve in the armed forces and argued against other, as he calls them, "experiments in the military," such as having women in combat. Carson has said he would examine the evidence to determine whether he would reenact a prohibition on gay troops.

On Thursday, when asked whether he would advise Carson to reenact a gay ban in the military, Dees told radio host Alan Colmes, "Well the ultimate test for military effectiveness is readiness, it's cohesion, and anything that detracts from that is important. Dr. Carson often says it's important for people to have rights in accordance with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the U.S. Constitution, but no particular group ought to have extra rights."

Pressed on how being able to openly serve, as straight people are, constituted "extra rights," Dees contended that "the gays in the military" can "become somewhat militaristic."

"Where the extra rights come in is when the gays in the military become somewhat militaristic to the detriment of unit cohesion," he said.

Dees added that a question to be considered in determining policy toward gay people in the military was, "whether they, in the military, flaunt it and disrupt cohesion."

Asked whether he supported a reinstatement of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the policy put in place under President Bill Clinton that banned gay troops from revealing their sexuality, Dees said, "Well, all other soldiers don't go around talking about their sexuality."

He went on to say that, "I think Dr. Carson, you'll find him very loving and supportive of people and different interest groups. But most of all, he recognizes his primary status is to protect the American people. And he will do that to ensure we have proper readiness within the military forces."

Later in the interview, Dees expressed support for Carson's comment earlier in the campaign that any Muslim who wanted to be president should renounce Sharia law. Asked whether that standard should apply to Muslim members of Congress, Keith Ellison and Andre Carson, Dees replied, "Well, we should ask them what they think about Sharia."

Patrick Semansky / AP

Democratic presidential candidate and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley has secured the endorsement of one of the most well-known DREAMer immigration activists, just three days before the Iowa caucus.

In an op-ed that will run on Univision.com provided to BuzzFeed News ahead of its publication, Gaby Pacheco said she first noticed that O'Malley spoke so much about immigration, then that he confronted "the hateful Sheriff Joe Arpaio" and later broke bread with undocumented immigrants.

She opens the piece with questions about O'Malley's actions that opened the eyes of activists and members of the Hispanic community.

"Why does he tweet in Spanish so that my parents can be engaged in conversation?" Pacheco writes. "Why does he take the 10 seconds given to him at a debate to talk about our fellow citizens on the island of Puerto Rico when he knows their votes, unjustly, don’t count."

Pacheco adds that in watching O'Malley since 2011, "his failures and triumphs" as mayor and governor of Maryland "humbled" him and writes of O'Malley's public clash with the Obama administration on the treatment of unaccompanied minors from Central America in the summer of 2014, invoking Hillary Clinton's response that most of the minors should ultimately be sent back.

"I was there when immigrant advocates e-mailed each other in disbelief that someone would challenge both the President and the Secretary of State on how we were treating refugee children," she writes. "We hadn’t seen anything like it."

O'Malley who has badly trailed Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders in the polls nationally and in Iowa, hopes caucus-goers in the first state will validate him as a credible candidate for the Democratic nomination going forward.

Recent polls have shown that O'Malley's supporters who don't meet a 15% threshold at caucus sites are more likely to move to Sanders than Clinton. The polls have led the campaign to push supporters to hold their ground, using the hashtag #HoldStrong on social media.

Pacheco also writes that she's supporting O'Malley "because if it wasn't for him, there would be no discussion of immigration in the Democratic Party."

Clinton changed much of the immigration calculus in the race with a May 5 event last year that surprised advocates with how much was in it that they wanted. In June, O'Malley followed with an immigration white paper that was hailed by advocates, leading influential Univision anchor Jorge Ramos to call it the best plan out. Sanders, playing catch up, hired high-profile immigration advocates who also helped his campaign produce a plan to the left of Clinton's.

DREAMers, undocumented youth brought to the country as children have come a long way from their common refrain that they and other undocumented immigrants were "coming out of the shadows," playing a key role in the Democratic campaigns so far.

Besides Pacheco's endorsement, Lorella Praeli leads Clinton's Latino outreach and Sanders hired Erika Andiola and Cesar Vargas to do Hispanic press and work in Nevada.

Pacheco rose to prominence when she took part in the "trail of dreams" — a 4-month walk from Miami to Washington D.C. to bring attention to the plight of undocumented immigrants.

She later played a key role in helping advocates secure Obama's first immigration executive action, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in 2012, leveraging her relationship with Sen. Marco Rubio who was working on a competing plan and repeatedly meeting with the White House to discuss the prospects of the policy.

Because Pacheco has worked closely with Republicans, Democrats have at times whispered that she supports them or will one day endorse a Republican.

But now, she supports O'Malley.

"His campaign’s heart beats with ours," she said.

When Rubio Worked To Stop DREAMer Deportations Before Obama Got Around To It