Christopher Furlong / Getty Images

Mike Huckabee was one missed flight away from endorsing Donald Trump.

It was the day after February's Iowa caucuses, and Huckabee had just dropped out of the race. He planned to make a quick stop in Little Rock, Arkansas, to drop off his daughter and her family before heading home to Florida. But then a weather-related flight delay left Huckabee with an extra night in Arkansas — and as it happened, Trump was coming to town the next day for a rally. The late addition of the Little Rock event to Trump's schedule had already uncorked speculation about a potential Huckabee endorsement, and his spokesman Hogan Gidley had moved swiftly to quash the rumors, telling reporters he was "not even thinking about" backing another candidate. But The Donald was undeterred. According to two people close to Huckabee, Trump tried to lure the former governor to the event by promising he wouldn't have to formally endorse — he could simply stop by and, if he felt so inspired, say a few words about the issues they both cared about so deeply.

Huckabee was tempted, but Gidley reminded him that he had just emphatically ruled out an endorsement to the press: To show up at a Trump rally now would make liars out of them both, he argued. Huckabee’s other advisers were similarly adamant that he skip the event, and ultimately they prevailed. After a quiet night at home with his grandkids, Huckabee hopped the first flight out of town the next morning — but his love affair with Trump lives on.

One month later, Trump is heading toward a Super Tuesday blowout thanks in part to the work of Huckabee’s daughter, Sarah, an Arkansas-based Republican strategist who joined the Trump campaign earlier this month. When news of her hire first broke, many conservative Christians were appalled, but it came as little surprise to those who have watched Trump woo the former Baptist minister over the years. Of all the strange bedfellows brought together by this year’s election, few would seem stranger at first glance than the Baptist and the boorish billionaire. But according to a series of recent interviews with people who have firsthand knowledge of the dynamic, Trump has long courted the support of Huckabee and his family — and his success offers key insights into how the billionaire is now winning over vast swaths of the Republican Party.

Even before Huckabee dropped out of the race, people in the Trump campaign began talking about tapping Huckabee as a running mate — and they made sure word got back to the candidate that he was on their list. It's unclear what kind of contact, if any, took place directly between the two campaigns prior to the Iowa caucuses, but three people close to Huckabee said he believes the vice presidency is in the cards for him if Trump wins the nomination. (One source even speculated that if Trump had lost South Carolina, he would have announced Huckabee as his running mate the next week to shore up support from evangelical voters.)

Asked whether he had been approached by the Trump campaign about joining the ticket, Huckabee declined to comment through a spokesman. A Trump spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

But Gidley, a longtime loyal adviser to the former governor, said a hypothetical Trump-Huckabee ticket would make perfect sense.

"If it were to happen, it would not be surprising to me and quite frankly it would be very logical," Gidley told BuzzFeed News. "Donald Trump has said repeatedly that he wants someone who understands politics as a running mate. And [Huckabee] has inroads into voters that Trump would need to get elected."

Gidley rattled off a series of exit polling data points from Huckabee's gubernatorial races in Arkansas to show how he has dramatically outperformed the average Republican candidate among black voters, Latinos, and women.

"And quite frankly," Gidley added, "he has the bona fides and credibility with the evangelical community. Putting Gov. Huckabee on a ticket would foster excitement among the evangelical base.”

Bryan Sanders, Huckabee’s son-in-law and a political strategist, said the two men share a similar brand of Republican populism that’s geared more toward the blue-collar Walmart crowd than affluent suburbanites. They reject the budget-slashing fiscal conservatism that’s spread in the tea party era, and both have argued vigorously against cutting entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.

“If you go back to 2008, the conventional wisdom was that Huckabee’s base was just evangelicals,” Sanders said in an interview last month, before his wife joined Trump’s campaign. “But he also had a message that appealed to working-class people, whether it was on trade, or immigration, or his personal story of growing up poor. I think what Trump has done is he’s tapped into what was the Huckabee base.”

Of course, this is also one of many reasons to be skeptical that Huckabee would actually appear on Trump’s veep short list if he wins the nomination. So far, the frontrunner doesn't need much help attracting evangelical voters: He’s already won that demographic in South Carolina and Nevada, and he appears poised to dominate Tuesday’s SEC primary. It's also unlikely Huckabee's popularity with black voters in Arkansas more than a decade ago would translate nationally today.

But what matters for Trump's purposes is that Huckabee believes he's in the running. Friends say the former governor still resents that John McCain's campaign didn't even bother to vet him in 2008, and grumbles privately that senior strategist Steve Schmidt didn't give him a look because he thought he was a "hick." By contrast, this small show of respect from the Trump campaign has deepened Huckabee’s loyalty to him — and some believe it's already paid off for the billionaire.

Some in Huckabee's orbit point to a moment in mid-December when they believe the candidate effectively threw in the towel on his own bid and decided to use his remaining time in the race to call out what he views as Ted Cruz's hypocrisy. (It was at the same time that Huckabee's long-serving adviser Alice Stewart left abruptly to join the Cruz campaign.) In the final weeks of the race, Huckabee bashed Cruz at every opportunity — calling into question the senator's religious devotion and routinely accusing him of fabricating his stances on social issues. The pro-Huckabee super PAC followed suit, blowing through more than $1 million in the final week of the race with savage attack ads that were focused on primarily on Cruz.

Conservatives have floated conspiracy theories that Huckabee was acting as an undercover agent for Trump, on a mission to take out the billionaire's main rival in Iowa. An adviser for Huckabee's campaign dismissed the allegation, noting that some of the attack ads mentioned Trump as well — but the adviser did say Huckabee's deeply felt disdain for Cruz may have played a role in his last-ditch effort to sink him.

In any case, the last stand against Cruz only further endeared Huckabee to Trump. The two men had known each other for years: When Huckabee announced on his Fox News show in 2011 that he had decided not to run for president the next year, the episode included a rambling pretaped message from Trump saying he would have made a "terrific president."

"Enjoy the show, your ratings are terrific, you're making a lot of money, you're building a beautiful house in Florida — good luck," Trump effused.

More recently, the candidates were spotted warmly palling around before a Fox News hit in Iowa, with one former Huckabee aide claiming, improbably, that he witnessed Trump go in for an "air kiss" with his rival. Even when they were running against each other, Huckabee parted with the rest of the field — who split their time criticizing the frontrunner and trying to ignore him — by declaring during an October debate, "I love Donald Trump. He's a good man. I'm wearing a Trump tie tonight."

Since dropping out, Huckabee hasn't officially endorsed Trump, but that's mainly because doing so would complicate his efforts to get a new contract at Fox News, according to two sources familiar with the situation. The conservative network, where Huckabee hosted a weekly talk show for several years before leaving to run for president, strongly disapproves of on-air talent supporting political candidates, and Fox's relationship with Trump has been especially combative this campaign season. (Huckabee declined to comment on his negotiations with Fox.)

In the meantime, Huckabee has spent recent weeks routinely using his pundit perch to defend and champion the billionaire — a task not known for its dignity. On Monday, he went on Morning Joe to defend Trump against the bipartisan onslaught of criticism over his refusal to disavow the Ku Klux Klan during a televised CNN interview.

"Does anybody think Donald Trump is a racist?" Huckabee said. "I don’t. I mean, I really don’t. I don’t know of anything in his life that indicates that this man has racist tendencies."

Nick Everhart, a GOP strategist who produced ads for the pro-Huckabee super PAC Pursuing America's Greatness, said Huckabee's admiration for Trump is likely rooted in the way the billionaire has shredded certain partisan orthodoxies.

"That there would be an alliance shouldn't be surprising. I would say that until now, Mike Huckabee was the mainstream Republican that had come closest to tapping into and harassing that populist anger toward the establishment," said Everhart, noting how Huckabee fused social conservatism with a form of economic populism in his insurgent 2008 presidential bid. "Trump's taken that and gotten to a different level than anyone else has ever achieved. There's got to be some level of affinity to see someone pull that off. "

But the bond may extend beyond politics. In Trump, Huckabee sees the embodiment of a certain fame and fortune that he has idolized ever since he was a poor kid born (as he likes to say) "one generation removed from dirt floors and outdoor toilets."

Huckabee has often recalled, in books and speeches, being fascinated as a child by a worldly uncle named Garvin Elder who came to visit from Houston during the holidays. In the Huckabee canon, Elder is illustrated almost entirely with descriptions of his dazzling and expensive stuff. Uncle Garvin wore a starched white shirt and suit everywhere he went, which meant he was “intelligent.” Uncle Garvin bought fancy out-of-town newspapers like the New York Times to check the stocks, which meant he was a “big shot.” Uncle Garvin carried a “well-traveled but stately brown suitcase” — which made him “pretty important” — and had his own luggage tag, “a sure sign he was someone special.” Even writing about this childhood hero decades later, Huckabee’s descriptions make Uncle Garvin — an unmarried accountant at a Houston-based meatpacking company — sound like the Dos Equis man.

When Huckabee became governor of Arkansas, he reveled in the perks and gifts available to a man in his position. During his first year in office alone, 1999, he listed 73 presents, including a guitar from the band Lynyrd Skynyrd and season tickets to University of Arkansas football games. He took free memberships at five different local country clubs. (Along the way, he was sanctioned or fined five times by the Arkansas Ethics Commission.)

But even as he began to enjoy the lifestyle of the affluent elites he used to envy, he couldn’t escape the condescension of the the upper class. When the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion was under renovation, he and his family moved into a double-wide trailer that they had placed in the backyard — a source of tremendous embarrassment to Republican officials, and endless amusement among the political class at large. Huckabee seethed at the snobbery of the reaction.

Now, years later, Huckabee has amassed his own small fortune as a pundit, author, and tireless lecture-circuit warrior, but a friend says he still carries a “chip on his shoulder” over his economic status. Huckabee, who spent the better part of two decades in the ministry, has clearly not always prioritized moneymaking over other passions. But it should not come as a shock that he is easily dazzled by the billionaire’s attention.

When Trump proclaimed on the night of his victory in Nevada that he “love[s] the poorly educated” — a demographic he consistently wins, according to exit polls — the remark was widely interpreted by skeptical political observers as a virtual admission that his campaign is conning the ignorant. In fact, he was gesturing toward a political reality that too many Ivy grads in the political class have failed to grasp: By treating the uncredentialed, uneducated, and un-rich like they are more important than donors and pundits, Trump has won over wide swaths of the party.

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that Trump is, indeed, trying to con his supporters — a fact certainly not limited to any economic or educational demographic — but even those disenfranchised Republican voters who may realize this on some level still appreciate the effort.

When Trump boycotted the final debate before last month's Iowa caucuses and announced that he would host a fundraiser for veterans instead, he invited other candidates to join him. Two showed up: Rick Santorum and Huckabee.

When Santorum came to the onstage podium — which prominently displayed a Trump campaign placard — he stood a couple feet away and leaned in to the microphone.

"Not to be offensive, but I'll stand a little bit over here so I'm not photographed with the Trump sign," he said, joking, "I'm supporting another candidate for president."

Huckabee showed no such qualms about the photo op when it was his turn at the mic.

"I figure you're gonna get the photo anyway, I might as well just stand here and be done with it," Huckabee said.

Trump, standing nearby, grinned.

David Zalubowski / AP

WASHINGTON — The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed two lawsuits in federal court on Tuesday, alleging that two companies engaged in anti-gay discrimination in violation of existing civil rights laws.

The move is the latest in the EEOC's aggressive efforts in recent years to seek protections for LGBT workers under existing civil rights laws, most notably Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — which bars most private employers from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.

In Maryland, the EEOC sued Pallet Companies, alleging that the company discriminated against Yolanda Boone "by subjecting her to harassment" because she is a lesbian, resulting in her being fired, and by retaliating against Boone when she complained about the harassment.

In Pennsylvania, the EEOC sued Scott Medical Health Center, alleging that the company "subjected [Dale] Baxley to a sexually hostile work environment" by Baxley's manager. The EEOC alleges that Baxley, who is gay, was effectively fired by the company — a legal term called "constructive discharge" — by failing to address the "intolerable working conditions."

This past July, the EEOC ruled that discrimination based on sexual orientation is barred by the sex discrimination ban in Title VII. Earlier this year, the EEOC weighed in with an amicus curiae — or, friend of the court — brief in an ongoing case urging that a federal appeals court hold that sexual orientation discrimination is illegal under Title VII.

Tuesday's filings, however, are the first time the EEOC has used its authority to file its own lawsuits alleging that anti-LGB employment discrimination (based on sexual orientation) is barred under Title VII.

The commission, which operates independent of the Obama administration, previously has filed lawsuits alleging that anti-transgender discrimination (based on gender identity) is barred by Title VII's sex discrimination ban (following a 2012 commission decision on that issue). The Obama administration, through the Justice Department, eventually announced that it agreed with the EEOC's view — later filing supportive court briefs and its own lawsuit on the issue.

The Justice Department has not, however, taken an explicit position in support of the EEOC's view as to coverage of sexual orientation discrimination. Earlier this year, though, it did take a first step toward recognizing the argument by declining to seek outright dismissal of a lawsuit filed against the Transportation Department based on the argument.

The Pennsylvania case has been assigned to Judge Cathy Bissoon, an Obama appointee to the federal bench. The Maryland case has been assigned to Judge Richard D. Bennett, appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush.

Key allegations in the lawsuit against Pallet Companies:

Read the complaint against Pallet Companies:

Key allegations in the lawsuit against Scott Medical:

Read the complaint against Scott Medical:

Jose Luis Magana / AP

FBI Director James Comey acknowledged to lawmakers Tuesday that officials mistakenly reset the password linked to one of the San Bernardino terrorist's phones during their investigation, but maintained his position that Apple should comply with a court order forcing the company to help break into the locked iPhone.

Testifying in front of the House Judiciary Committee, Comey said “there was a mistake made” when the iCloud password attached to Syed Rizwan Farook's iPhone was reset at the direction of the FBI.

Though, Comey was quick to add that, according to experts who have spoken to him, the FBI would still have challenged Apple in court because, he said, a backup from iCloud would not have restored all of the phone’s data.

"There is already a door on that iPhone," he said. "Essentially we are asking Apple: 'Take the vicious guard dog away. Let us try and pick the lock.'"

Last month, Apple executives said that if the password hadn’t been been changed, a backup of the phone would have been accessible. But the FBI has downplayed the effect of the password reset, claiming that it does not impact Apple’s ability to comply with the court order, and adding that “the government’s objective was, and still is, to extract as much evidence as possible from the phone.”

When asked why it took 50 days for the FBI to serve a warrant on Apple, Comey said there were “a whole lot of conversations going on in the interim.”

Comey also acknowledged to lawmakers that the San Bernardino case could set a legal precedent, influencing how other prosecutors and judges approach search requests of additional, locked iPhones.

In framing the debate over granting the government privileged access to encrypted devices, Comey insisted that the San Bernardino case boils down to one important terrorism investigation — not an effort to weaken encryption or create backdoors.

LINK: FBI Admits It Urged Change Of Apple ID Password For Terrorist’s iPhone

LINK: Apple’s FBI Privacy Fight Is A Battle For Our Trust

LINK: Apple Helped The Government Extract Data Before. Here’s Why Things Are Different Now

You’ve got to hand it to the governor of Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has had a lot of time on his hands since he stopped running for president in September.

Cliff Owen / AP

He was most likely sub-tweeting Donald Trump, who's had some nasty things said about the apparently freakishly small size of his hands.

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MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — Near the back of Mapps Coffee shop in Minneapolis, as part of a last-minute trip to sway caucus-goers in this Super Tuesday state, a cheerful Hillary Clinton greeted voters with the usual pleasantries of retail politics.

“Hey, how are ya!”

“Good to see you!”

“Please caucus tonight!”

One by one, for some 15 minutes, people approached Clinton for a picture or a quick handshake, receiving-line style, before heading back to the front of the small café. But one voter, a young black woman who waited silently for her chance to speak with the candidate, stepped forward with a more contentious question — one that has now dogged Clinton on the trail during two separate confrontations.

“Hi,” Clinton greeted her. “How are you today?”

“I’d like to ask you a question,” the woman said.

“Sure.”

The voter spoke quietly. Her first question, only partially heard by reporters close enough to observe the full back-and-forth, concerned Clinton’s support for Somali immigrants, many of whom live in Minnesota — and what the woman referred to as “your super predator comments.” The exchange ended on a tense note, marking the second time in one week that a voter has questioned Clinton face-to-face about her 1996 speech referring to young people in gangs as “super-predators.”

Last week, a Black Lives Matter activist surprised Clinton with a question about the remark during a fundraiser in South Carolina. The exchange, videotaped and shared widely online, has since sparked further debate in the election over Clinton's role in and responsibility for 1990s criminal justice policy.

On Tuesday, the Minneapolis woman mentioned Clinton’s “super predator comments,” then asked, “Somalis are being stigmatized or criminalized [and] didn't have the chance to get acquainted with being an American. So I wanted to ask you, do you support this? Have you changed?”

“Look, first of all, that comment was made one time in my life,” Clinton said. The candidate could be heard telling the voter that she has “always been in favor” of supporting communities and “giving more people opportunities.”

The young woman was silent as Clinton spoke. “The first speech I gave in this campaign was about criminal justice reform, including ending profiling, banning the box, doing things that I think would be very helpful —"

“How do we know you’re going to be accountable to black communities now?” the woman said quickly.

“Well,” Clinton replied, “I think, you know, you can look at my history. I always have been, and you can look at the people —"

The woman indicated that she’d looked at the former first lady’s history. “And that’s not what happened,” she told Clinton flatly.

“Well, you know what? You haven’t looked at the whole thing,” Clinton responded. “And I'd be happy to give you more information. And the reason that so many black women across America support me is because they know me, they know what I’ve done, and they know that I mean what I say, and I will have a very comprehensive agenda to deal with a lot of the problems. And I'm very proud to have met with the Somali-American community, to have a lot of support in the Somali-American —"

The conversation, now a visibly uneasy exchange, drew aides and other reporters in closer.

“Who in the Somali-American community?” the woman asked.

“A lot of people, including a young councilman who was here who has helped me,” Clinton said, referring to Abdi Warsame, a Somali-American councilman here who came to Mapps Coffee shop to see Clinton and also sits on her campaign’s Minnesota Leadership Council. During a visit to the state in December, Clinton met privately with Warsame and a group of Minnesota Muslim leaders who have worked to stem domestic terrorism.

When the woman in the cafe indicated that Warsame, the councilman, is not in “the Somali community,” Clinton’s voice rose.

“You know what, dear? You have a different opinion. He is a Somali-American, elected to the City Council. I'm really proud of that,” Clinton said.

“Well, why don't you go run for something then,” said Clinton, responding to a comment from the Minneapolis woman that could not be heard by reporters or a Clinton aide who witnessed the conversation. There was one last remark from the questioner — also inaudible — before she turned, parted ways with Clinton, and exited the Minneapolis coffee shop before she could be identified.

“Good luck to you,” Clinton told her.

As if to dispel the tension, the candidate let out a small laugh, then greeted the next voter in line.

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

The Hillary Clinton campaign has hired Sylvia Ruiz from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) to serve as its director of Hispanic paid media, BuzzFeed News has learned.

Ruiz will will work with James Aldrete, who runs the campaign's Spanish-language paid media operation.

"Sylvia brings a wealth of experience to our diverse team and we look forward to having her coordinate our Hispanic paid media efforts including television, radio, digital and mail," said Jorge Silva, the campaign's Hispanic media director.

Ruiz served as the SEIU's immigrant justice campaign director, where she worked on the national immigration overhaul effort and against hardline immigration legislation.

Clinton's Spanish-language paid media team has produced ads in Nevada and Texas on television and radio such as "Valentía," which juxtaposed Ted Cruz and Donald Trump's rhetoric with Clinton's Nevada event with DREAMers last May in Nevada.

The Hispanic paid media team also had a hand in the Nevada ad that emerged after Clinton comforted a young girl who cried while telling the story of her parent's deportation order.

As the race begins to narrow after Super Tuesday, Clinton has begun looking toward a possible general election matchup with Trump. Aldrete previously told BuzzFeed News the campaign would start looking to contrast Clinton with the Republican frontrunner.

“The unfortunate part is that Hispanics are on the receiving end of negative stuff, which has put sides down, made it ‘who is on your side?’” Aldrete said when he was hired.

Clinton Hires Veteran Obama Operative To Run Paid Spanish-Language Media Operation

Trump Jr. says 400. Eric says 10.

Ethan Miller / Getty Images

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Donald Trump's sons in radio interviews this week both defended their father's vacillating statements on former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, with Eric Trump saying his father had disavowed Duke 10 times and Donald Trump Jr. saying Trump's disavowals totaled 400.

"It's crazy," Eric said on The Eric Metaxas Show on Monday of the controversy surrounding his father's comments on the former grand wizard Ku Klux Klan. "Somebody comes and says, 'Hey I want to endorse this person,' you don't want to take their endorsement, he doesn't even know who the person is, he disavows him 10 different times."

His brother Donald Jr. expressed the sentiment even more adamantly on Tuesday in an interview with Opie with Jim Norton.

"Honestly, it's such B.S.," he said. "Gimme a break. I saw him — you know, after the debate, we walk into the spin room, 300 reporters were there, 'What about—' he goes, 'are you kidding me,' like, he said it 400 times. But, like, you know the media. It's never enough. We'll ask the question again, we'll ask the question again, we'll ask the question again."

He went on to describe his father's interview with Jake Tapper on Sunday.

Trump Jr. said, "Eventually there's a faulty earpiece, he's like, 'what do you--,' and he wasn't like, 'I don't renounce,' it was like, 'I don't know what you're talking about with the David Duke'--it's ridiculous. It's almost like they're trying to make it seem like they've had conversations about this endorsement. I mean, and it's not even endorsement apparently. It's been this fabricated nonsense. And but of course everyone runs with it."

In his interview, Eric Trump said it was "totally disgusting" to "even use those three letters" in the same sentence as his father's name.

"Sometimes this stuff actually affects a family more than it affects a candidate," he said. "And I couldn't tell you how upset I was by the whole thing. My father's an amazing, he's the greatest, I mean, he's absolutely the greatest, he's my best friend in the world. And you know, to even use those three letters in the same sentence as him to me is totally disgusting."

w.soundcloud.com

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Eric Gay / AP

Hillary Clinton rolled on Super Tuesday, racking up wins across the South powered by black and older voters. And in Texas, where Hispanics made up 31% of the electorate according to exit polls, she won over 70% of their vote.

Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders won the Democratic caucus in Colorado, where Latinos make up 15% of eligible voters, but entrance polls were not available.

HUD Secretary Julian Castro, often mentioned as a possible vice presidential pick by Clinton, cautioned that exit polls are not definitive, but lauded her strength in states across the country as different as Nevada, Iowa, South Carolina, and now Texas.

“It’s not surprising," Castro told BuzzFeed News. "Hillary Clinton has had strong support in the Latino community in Texas and throughout the country for a very long time, and tonight's results in Texas and her strong support from Latinos are one more affirmation that she appeals to diverse communities. It says a lot about her ability to win in November.”

In 2008, Clinton showed similar strength with Hispanics against Barack Obama, beating him in Texas and 2-to-1 across the country.

During that race, Latinos made up 30% of the electorate in the state, and she beat Obama 66% to 33% among Latinas and 58% to 40% among Hispanic men.

With exit polls showing Latinos making up 31% of the Texas electorate this time, Clinton beat Sanders 72% to 27% among Latinas and 69% to 30% among Hispanic men.

Of course, Latinos are not a monolithic group. While Colorado and Texas both have sizable Hispanic populations, the profiles of their Latino electorates are different.

Colorado has a lot of Hispanics whose family roots go back many generations and has far fewer undocumented immigrants than Texas. It has about 180,000 undocumented immigrants, whereas Texas has 1.7 million, the second most in the nation. This matters because these undocumented immigrants are often part of mixed-status families, and the issue of immigration is of higher importance.

More of Colorado's Latinos are born in the U.S., evidenced by 60% speaking only English at home, according to Pew Hispanic data. In Texas, that number is only 27%. And 88% of Texas Hispanics are of Mexican origin. That number is only 66% in Colorado — with a much higher percentage of Latinos identifying as having Spanish origin than in other states.

The Sanders campaign did well with young Hispanic voters in Nevada, and the campaign's Colorado director Dulce Saenz told BuzzFeed news she hoped the Bern being felt on her Facebook newsfeed was reflective of the overall state as the results poured in.

"We’re a state that values being pioneers of the West," she said. "In the Latino community we're seeing so much excitement and one of Senator Sanders' policy platforms they're excited about is his plan to combat climate change."

She agreed that Colorado has its own unique Hispanic voter profile.

"Our Latino demographic is distinct to other parts of the country," she said. "We have a strong Chicano population — 'the border crossed me' types. Denver has a strong Chicano history of civil rights activism going back to the '60s."

The problem for Sanders has quickly become that because of Clinton's strength with black voters, he will struggle to beat her unless his support from Hispanic voters is similarly impressive. Those numbers haven't consistently been there for Sanders.

The New York Time's Nate Cohn said Clinton "won 69 to 28 percent in counties where Hispanics are a majority of adult citizens" and "66 percent where they're more than 20 percent."

The only other Super Tuesday state with a noteworthy Hispanic electorate was Massachusetts where 8% of eligible voters are Latino. Clinton won 61% of minority voters there in a close race.

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — On Tuesday night as return after return came in and Marco Rubio failed to break through, many establishment Republicans grew angrier that John Kasich was still in the race.

One of them was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has become increasingly frustrated with Kasich behind closed doors, three sources told BuzzFeed News. In the coming days, McConnell will be urged to more aggressively try behind the scenes to push Kasich out, sources say. One of McConnell's closest allies, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, is still backing Kasich.

McConnell has become frustrated with establishment Republicans’ inability to rally behind a single candidate as Donald Trump continues to march toward the Republican nomination. McConnell has indicated he will allow Senate candidates to run ads distancing themselves from Trump, according to the New York Times, which also first reported McConnell's frustrations with Kasich. With the Senate majority on the line, several vulnerable Republicans would face an even harder path to re-election if Trump is at the top of the ticket.

Kasich’s presence in the race almost certainly damaged Rubio on Tuesday night. As of late Tuesday, Kasich took 9.4% of the vote in Virginia — a state where Rubio likely lost by five points or less. Kasich also took 18% of the vote in Massachusetts; the same as Rubio.

The Florida senator’s backers are livid that the Kasich's showing in Virginia may have kept their candidate from winning and will continue to hurt them in upcoming primaries; Kasich has indicated he will not drop out until after Ohio, and may be aiming to stay in as long as it takes to be a Trump alternative.

A Senate GOP insider openly questioned in an interview with BuzzFeed News whether Kasich had some inside deal with Trump. "You have to believe Kasich has made a deal with the devil. Why else is he still in the race? Kasich needs to look GOP voters in the eye and tell us whether he has a deal — explicit or implicit — with Donald Trump for a spot on the ticket."

Other Republicans echoed similar sentiments.

"I like John Kasich, but no one is doing more to elect Donald Trump than Kasich is right now,” said Curt Anderson, who previously ran Bobby Jindal’s campaign. Jindal has since endorsed Rubio.

"He will be in single digits in most states tonight, and there is no route to victory for him, regardless of what fiction [Kasich chief strategist] John Weaver tries to spin," Anderson said. "If he stays in this race, Donald Trump will forever be in his debt.”

Republican insiders say prominent figures within the party are going to be putting more pressure on Kasich — and his supporters — in the coming days, with some even making public calls for him to drop out. Mitt Romney has already reportedly tried to push Kasich out of the race, to little avail.

"I’m sure Gov. Kasich is going to get some private calls, and if he doesn’t get out, those private calls will turn into public calls,” said Ryan Williams, a former Bush backer who worked for Romney in 2012.

Williams, who has worked for years in New Hampshire politics — a state where Kasich had his best showing — called the Ohio governor's efforts a “vanity campaign at this point.”

“People should realize that a vote for Kasich at this point is a vote for Trump. It's time for John Kasich to take a hint and read the handwriting on the wall."

In his remarks Tuesday night, Kasich didn’t show any signs he was considering exiting the race. “We have absolutely exceeded expectations,” he said at his election night event in Jackson, Mississippi.

Former Ohio Rep. Steve Latourette, who has endorsed Kasich, denied that party leaders' calls for the governor to drop out will be getting louder after Super Tuesday. “The pundits have anointed Rubio as the establishment guy, but Kasich is the only one who has proven he can govern,” he said. "As we approach the winner take all states, I expect people will be asking your question to Rubio.”

And in a memo Tuesday night, Kasich’s campaign made the case that the Ohio governor had a better shot at the nomination than Rubio.

"Sen. Rubio has been more hyped than Crystal Pepsi, but he has flopped even worse,” the memo stated.

Erich Schlegel / Getty Images

STAFFORD, Texas — Super Tuesday could have been a disaster for Ted Cruz, and it wasn’t.

Cruz’s wins in Texas and Oklahoma on Tuesday will keep him alive in the race and fortify his argument that he is the most viable alternative to Donald Trump.

But it’s still a far cry from the outcome his campaign expected when Cruz was referring to the SEC primary as his “firewall” to a gathering of Koch network donors last summer. The most realistic outcome of Tuesday is a continuation of the increasingly bitter three-man race between the top three candidates, as Trump continues to dominate.

A loss in his home state especially would have hurt Cruz’s rationale for staying in the race in every way, by his own logic. Cruz himself, earlier on Tuesday, told reporters outside his polling place in Houston that anyone who fails to win their home state has "real problems" — clearly a message to Rubio, who is behind in the polls in his home state of Florida ahead of its primary on March 15. But Cruz’s message could have come back to bite him if he had not pulled out a win in Texas.

Cruz’s campaign schedule in the days leading up to March 1 was an indicator of where his team thought they could win: Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas. Even privately, the Cruz campaign was confident about Texas and argued that Cruz would rack up more delegates on Tuesday than any other non-Trump candidate. In the last few weeks, Cruz locked down some of the biggest endorsements in the state, including former governor Rick Perry and current governor Greg Abbott.

Cruz’s team made it clear early and often that Super Tuesday would be the linchpin of their strategy; the candidate, with his anti-establishment appeal and strong messaging to evangelical Christians, seemed a natural fit to clean up on March 1st. Cruz repeatedly in recent weeks referred to Super Tuesday as the most important day of his campaign, and to Texas as the “crown jewel” of Super Tuesday.

But Trump changed everything. Trump has dominated among working-class white voters in the South and even beat Cruz among evangelicals in South Carolina, where he won decisively overall. As of this writing, Trump had won six of the states up for grabs on Super Tuesday — including southern states that had been a key part of the “firewall.” Despite polling indicating that Super Tuesday would largely belong to Trump, Cruz’s team ratcheted up expectations ahead of March 1, making it clear they expected to win Texas and considered it essential. “He’s going to win Texas,” Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Cruz surrogate, at Cruz’s election night party the night of the Nevada caucuses, where Cruz came in third after a disappointing third-place finish in South Carolina.

Meanwhile, Cruz disappeared from the central media narrative for most of the last week after Marco Rubio finally took on Trump in a debate — and then attacked him repeatedly in Trumpian style, mocking his fingers and suggesting he had wet himself. The attacks hit home and Trump’s responses to Rubio grew yet more heated, and for days the central narrative became the flame war between the two, with cable news flipping back and forth between competing Rubio and Trump rallies. Another blow came when Sen. Jeff Sessions, the pre-eminent immigration hardliner in the Senate, endorsed Trump over Cruz. Meanwhile, Cruz stuck to his now-familiar lines of attack on Trump, casting him as a covert liberal, insincere on immigration, and a “Washington dealmaker” who would sell out conservative principles.

A senior Cruz aide said on Monday there were no plans to try a similar line of attack on Trump as Rubio has done.

“That’s no way to run a railroad. It’s not really a way to pick a president,” the aide said. “It’s beneath Ted, that whole scene. Can you imagine him doing that?” The aide said there was “no evidence that it works.”

Cruz is back in the spotlight now. But the problem is that the process doesn’t get any more favorable to him going forward than it was on March 1. The most realistic outcome of tonight will be the race continuing to be split among several candidates divvying up delegates but failing to knock out Trump — an outcome that Cruz urged his rivals to prevent during his speech here on Tuesday.

Speaking to supporters gathered at the Redneck Country Club, Cruz did not refer to Rubio by name but called on his rivals to clear his path.

“So long as the field remains divided, Donald Trump’s path to the nomination remains more likely,” Cruz said. “That would be a disaster for Republicans, for conservatives and for the nation. After tonight we have seen that our campaign is the only campaign that has beaten, that can beat and that will beat Donald Trump.”

“For the candidates who have not yet won a state, who have not racked up significant delegates, I ask you to prayerfully consider uniting," Cruz said.

Going forward, Cruz’s team plans to make a play for Florida, Rubio’s must-win state, hoping to benefit from a cage match there between Trump and Rubio.

“We will actively campaign in Florida,” said a senior Cruz aide. “A food fight between those two in Florida, that’s a good opportunity. We’re gonna make a strong play in Florida.” They also think they could do well in Ohio, where Rick Santorum came within two points of Mitt Romney in 2012.

Speaking to reporters after Cruz’s party, Patrick argued that “the momentum has changed tonight” and that “After today everything changes because people will now coalesce around Ted.”

“The media should ask Marco Rubio, why are you staying in the race after tonight?” Patrick said. But he was vague about where else Cruz could win during the rest of the month.

Some evidence of rallying behind Cruz did come from an unlikely corner: Lindsey Graham, who said on CBS that “we may be in a position where we have to rally around Ted Cruz as the only way to stop Trump.”

But Rubio, who has mostly consolidated establishment support and who did end up winning Minnesota on Tuesday, is showing no signs of planning to leave the race anytime soon.

Chris Geidner/BuzzFeed

WASHINGTON — The absence of late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia at Wednesday’s oral arguments in a Texas abortion case made it resoundingly clear that the court will not set a national rule upholding strict abortion provider restrictions this term.

Further still, the liberal justices were aware of that reality and brought an aggressive, self-assured tone to the questioning — particularly of Texas' lawyer — in a sign of the new, if delicate, balance on the nation's high court.

While the justice in the middle — Justice Anthony Kennedy — didn't tip his hand clearly as to where he ultimately would come down in the case, the tenor of his questions made it unlikely that he would join his three more conservative colleagues in a decision wholly upholding the challenged Texas abortion provider restrictions.

At issue was a law Texas passed in 2013 that, among other provisions, requires abortion facilities there to meet the same standards as ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs), where outpatient surgery is performed. Under the new law, doctors who perform abortions also must have admissions privileges at a nearby hospital. Abortion providers and advocates have said the law would result (and has resulted) in many Texas clinics closing because they do not meet standards.

While Justice Anthony Kennedy's ruling in the case will control the fate of the Texas law, the four liberal justices made it abundantly clear that they believed the two provisions at issue in the case were clearly unconstitutional under a key prior Supreme Court decision on abortion rights written by Kennedy.

As a result, even if Kennedy disagreed with them, there nonetheless could be no majority opinion upholding the law because in that situation, the court would be split 4-4. In such a situation, the lower court ruling would stand. Here, that would mean Texas’ law would be upheld, as well as enabling similar laws in the 5th Circuit (Louisiana and Mississippi). While that’s not a result abortion rights supporters want, it would avoid a national ruling allowing such laws.

On Wednesday, however, Kennedy asked about whether the case might appropriately be sent back down to the trial court for further factual development, the justice also asked a handful of skeptical questions to the lawyer representing Texas.

More than what Kennedy said today, though, it was what he wrote in 1992 (along with Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and David Souter) that controlled the discussion. Everyone — from the lawyers to his colleagues to Kennedy himself — was focused on how the Texas provisions should be treated under Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, the last big abortion case at the Supreme Court, when the court said it reaffirmed the central holding of Roe v. Wade protecting a woman's right to an abortion against "undue burdens" by government.

The Texas case was seen as the most high-profile abortion rights case to reach the court in more than 20 years, but Scalia's death in February changed the dynamics of the case significantly.

This past June, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the restrictions, but later that month, on a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court granted a stay of the lower court ruling, putting the restrictions on hold while the Supreme Court considers the case.

Because the court had granted the stay — suggesting that five justices, including Justice Anthony Kennedy, viewed the restrictions as constitutionally suspicious — the case already was an uphill battle for the law's supporters. With Scalia's death, however, the supporters' battle became an even more uphill one because the best case scenario for abortion opponents was a 4-4 split of the court.

Following the arguments in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt on Wednesday, however, even that seemed an unlikely outcome — with Kennedy more likely to join the more liberal justices in striking down the provisions, write his own opinion staking out a middle ground, or seek a way to send the case back to lower courts for further factual developments than to join the conservatives in wholly upholding the provisions.

The liberals came to the arguments ready to present a full-throated case for why, under Casey, the Texas provisions had to be seen as unconstitutional.

At one point during Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller's argument time, Justice Stephen Breyer asked about the need for the admitting privilege provision.

"[G]o back in time to the period before the new law was passed, where in the record will I find evidence of women who had complications, who could not get to a hospital, even though there was a working arrangement for admission, but now they could get to a hospital because the doctor himself has to have admitting privileges?" Breyer asked. "Which were the women? On what page does it tell me their names, what the complications were, and why that happened?"

"Justice Breyer, that is not in the record," he replied.

"What evidence is there that under the prior law, the prior law was not sufficiently protective of the women's health?" Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked of the ASC requirements. "What was the problem that the legislature was responding to that it needed to improve the facilities for women's health?"

Keller noted a prior admission from Planned Parenthood in a prior case that "over 210 women annually are hospitalized because of abortion complications," prompting Ginsburg to note that childbirth — without the ASC requirement — is "much riskier." When Keller responded that there was a brief from the conservative American Center for Law and Justice disputing that, Ginsburg essentially dismissed Keller, saying, "Is there really any dispute that childbirth is a much riskier procedure than an early stage abortion?"

A decision in the case is expected by late June.

LINK: Read the oral argument transcript from Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt.

“When he gets with Howard Stern, who’s a friend of his, he’ll joke around, because it’s a comedy show.”

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Donald Trump Jr. says his father's degrading comments towards women on the Howard Stern Show were not misogynistic, but just jokes his father was sharing with a friend.

BuzzFeed News reviewed hours of audio of Trump on Stern's program. In several appearances, the businessman ranked, rate, and degraded women, notably Princess Diana and the cast of Desperate Housewives.

"People talk, 'oh your father's a misogynist look what he said about women,' like, on Howard Stern. When he gets with Howard Stern, who's a friend of his, he'll joke around, because it's a comedy show," Trump Jr. told Kilmeade and Friends. "He's allowed to have a personality. He will."

To counter claims his father was a sexist, Trump Jr. cited his dad hiring a woman to head up construction of Trump Tower.

"My father in 1982, Trump Tower, the head of construction was a woman, in 1982," said Trump Jr.

That woman, Barbara Res, wrote a column for the New York Daily News titled "Donald Trump, my boss: The billionaire developer gave women like me a chance, but he also leered at attractive employees and only let the prettiest secretaries greet guests and serve coffee."

In her op-ed, Res made the case Trump would hire women over men if merit required it, but noted Trump denigrated women, even in front of her.

"He leered at attractive female employees," she wrote. "Yet I would call him more of a womanizer than a sexist, sort of like Bill Clinton. Trump says he loves women and I suspect he does, in his own way. But his public denigration of women and his association with objectifying activities like Playboy and pageants have the overall effect of blunting any assertion that he is not sexist, regardless of how many women Trump has hired."

Eric Fehrnstorm says he doesn’t think Romney will jump in the race.

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A former aide and senior adviser to Mitt Romney says he expects the former Republican nominee to address his anger with the direction of the party in his much anticipated speech on Thursday.

Eric Fehrnstorm, who noted that he hadn't spoken to Romney recently, said his earlier conversations with the former GOP nominee indicated that he was "discouraged and dismayed" by the party's direction.

"I do know from earlier conversations that he is discouraged and dismayed by the direction the party is going in, and that what he looks for in a candidate is someone with an even temperament who has the capability and the skills to guide the country particularly as it relates to our nation's foreign policy," Fehrnstrom told Boston Herald Radio on Wednesday. "He's made it clear, especially in the last few days, that he doesn't think Donald Trump is that person. So I suspect that's what he's going to be addressing in his speech tomorrow."

Fehrnstrom said he found it difficult to believe Romney would be announcing his candidacy, adding that he suspected no one would be able to catch Trump in the delegate count.

"I find it hard to believe," added Fehrnstrom, Romney would "parachute in on the premise that there's going to be an open convention."

Romney's speech is expected to be about the direction of the party and not an endorsement or announcement he's jumping in the race.

“Outsourcing Creates Jobs in the Long Run.”

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In his speech after his victory on Super Tuesday Republican frontrunner Donald Trump said he'd stop American jobs from moving overseas and win minority votes by bringing jobs back.

"I'm going to do great with virtually every group," stated Trump. "The reason is I'm going to bring jobs back."

Back in the days of Trump's blog on the website of his now-defunct Trump University website, however, he wrote a post in defense of outsourcing titled, "Outsourcing Creates Jobs in the Long Run."

"We hear terrible things about outsourcing jobs — how sending work outside of our companies is contributing to the demise of American businesses," wrote Trump. "But in this instance I have to take the unpopular stance that it is not always a terrible thing."

"I understand that outsourcing means that employees lose jobs," continued Trump. "Because work is often outsourced to other countries, it means Americans lose jobs. In other cases, nonunion employees get the work. Losing jobs is never a good thing, but we have to look at the bigger picture."

Trump turned to a study by Lawrence Klein, a former economic adviser to Jimmy Carter, who said outsourcing jobs increased wages and created jobs in the IT sector.

"Last year, Nobel Prize-winning economist Dr. Lawrence R. Klein, the founder of Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates, co-authored a study that showed how global outsourcing actually creates more jobs and increases wages, at least for IT workers," wrote Trump. "The study found that outsourcing helped companies be more competitive and more productive. That means they make more money, which means they funnel more into the economy, thereby, creating more jobs.

"I know that doesn't make it any easier for people whose jobs have been outsourced overseas, but if a company's only means of survival is by farming jobs outside its walls, then sometimes it's a necessary step," he continued. "The other option might be to close its doors for good."

Here's the blog post:

Via web.archive.org

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WASHINGTON — Members of the Congressional Black Caucus met Wednesday off campus so that members could have a "Democratic political conversation," that briefly touched on the of Rep. Donna Edwards, Rep. Gregory Meeks, the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus political action committee told BuzzFeed News.

Members, prohibited from using government resources for political reasons, discussed President Obama's pending nomination to the Supreme Court and the presidential election, Meeks said.

Meeks pushed back at the notion that the caucus discussed the content of an email petition by Color of Change criticizing the caucus's political arm for its decision to not endorse Democratic Maryland Rep. Donna Edwards' run for the Senate. He was, however, aware of the petition saying that he was pleased

Politico reported last month that the CBC PAC voted not to endorse Edwards, citing among other unknown factors a lack of support among black leadership in Maryland. The non-endorsement came on the heels of the CBC PAC's endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president.

"Endorsements are never automatic for the PAC — no endorsement," Meeks told BuzzFeed News. "This is not something that hasn't happened before. It's just now it's been reported."

Meeks said he viewed the CBC PAC's decision to pass on endorsing her as a non-story because similar action has been taken in the past. Meeks denied that the meeting focused on Edwards much at all, and did not refer to the petition, as had been previously reported by BuzzFeed News.

“What I went through is...the candidates that had been endorsed and candidate's that are still pending. It was then [someone] it up brought up briefly in relation to Donna’s candidacy. Some independent members said they would endorse" Edwards, Meeks said.

But Meeks said he can "absolutely understand" sentiment by Color of Change and others who have questioned the CBC PAC's decision to not endorse Edwards. While he declined to get into the PAC's internal deliberations, Meeks said he applauded the fact that Edwards has strong support — and that the grassroots group was getting involved.

"I'd like to get the facts out," about the deliberations regarding Edwards, Meeks continued, "but I like the fact that people are looking, inquiring and making a message and trying to get involved. Because they should care about their government. I think it's good. I want folks to be involved. I just want to make sure we get the facts and do the proper research and understand better [rather] than just make certain presumptions or assumptions without the facts."

Color of Change's email campaign, first reported by BuzzFeed News Monday, asked supporters to sign a petition demanding that the CBC remake its board and "cut ties with industries that harm Black people, including Private Prison lobbyists, Big Tobacco, and the anti-worker National Restaurant Association."

"If corporate lobbyists on the CBC PAC's board can decide to withhold support from someone like Rep. Edwards, why are they being allowed to operate under the banner of the Congressional Black Caucus?" the email blast read.

On Wednesday, Politico reported that the PAC's chairman, Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, said the critique by Color of Change was overblown because the board members represent themselves, "not their companies or clients."

But the impact was still being felt. On Wednesday, the New Republic published a widely shared piece titled "Has The Congressional Black Caucus Lost Its Conscience?"

Politics365 reported earlier Wednesday the caucus discussed the forthcoming Supreme Court nomination by President Obama and the 2016 election.

On Tuesday night, Michelle Alexander, the author of The New Jim Crow, a seminal text on mass incarceration in the U.S., got behind the petition, calling it "critically important."

"Two weeks ago, the CBC PAC, with it's lobbyist-dominated board, made a high-profile endorsement of Hillary Clinton and quietly decided NOT to endorse fellow CBC member Rep. Donna Edwards' historic bid to become only the second Black woman to be elected to the Senate," Alexander wrote on Facebook.

"Read this petition to learn why Donna Edwards wasn't endorsed and get a small glimpse of how utterly corrupt our politics have become," she continued. "The Congressional Black Caucus presents itself as the 'moral conscience' of our government, yet its PAC exemplifies so much of what is wrong with our withering democracy."

Rashad Robinson, the executive director of Color of Change, said Alexander's involvement lent legitimacy to the campaign.

"I think Michelle Alexander's points underscore why we launched this campaign, knowing that we are going against the current and could potentially lose some friends," Robinson told BuzzFeed News. "We've heard from too many folks that this is how it is done in Washington or this is just part of the system — and we are tired. 'Business as usual' doesn't serve black people and our communities and, in fact, it hurts us. So CBC members have a choice, force the CBCPAC to clean up its business or risk squandering reputation, trust and moral authority."

Members also discussed low voter turnout among Democrats, a source said.

Utah Sen. Steve Urquhart speaks during a news conference on Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2016, in Salt Lake City.

Rick Bowmer / AP

The Utah Senate on Wednesday passed legislation to repeal the death penalty in the conservative state, and its Republican sponsor says he expects the bill to pass the state's House as well.

The 15-12-2 vote in the overwhelmingly Republican body came just eight days after a state Senate committee passed the legislation on a 5-2 vote.

If passed by the House as well, the bill would go to Utah Gov. Gary Herbert. This past year, Herbert signed a bill into law bringing back the electric chair as a potential method of execution in the state should lethal injection be unavailable.

Asked about this new legislation, a spokesperson for Herbert, Jon Cox, said in a statement on Wednesday only that the governor "continues to be a supporter of the death penalty but has concerns over the excessive length of time it often takes from the date of conviction to the actual punishment."

The bill is not retroactive to those already on the state's death row, the sponsor, Sen. Stephen Urquhart, noted. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the state had nine people on death row as of July 2015.

The legislation passed the Senate on Wednesday with a bare majority support of the upper chamber's 29 members: 4 of the Senate's 5 Democrats and 11 Republicans. It had support from only two of the seven Republican members of the Senate leadership and was opposed by one of the four Democratic members of the minority's leadership. Senate President Wayne Niederhauser and Sen. David Hinkins were absent or did not vote, according to the Senate record of the vote.

Urquhart said on Wednesday that he believes there is time to pass the bill through the state's House, according to Fox 13's Ben Winslow.

Urquhart said House Speaker Greg Hughes supports the bill and that the chair of the House committee overseeing criminal justice issues, Rep. Eric Hutchings, has agreed to co-sponsor the legislation in the chamber, Winslow also reported.

"We're going to pass it," Urquhart said.

“I’ve already looked into it,” Maine Gov. Paul LePage says of whether his daughters, who were born in Canada, are eligible to run for president.

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Maine Gov. Paul LePage, who endorsed Donald Trump for president last Friday, claimed on Wednesday that Ted Cruz, like his Canadian-born daughters, is ineligible to be the president.

Asked on The Howie Carr Show why he endorsed Trump over Ted Cruz, LePage replied, "Very simple. It's very simple. I am the most conservative governor that there is. He's a first time senator. He's not ready. Number one. Number two is I also have two daughters who were born in Canada. They had to be naturalized. They couldn't be natural. And so, I have a question there."

LePage was then asked if he thinks his daughters can run for president.

"They can't," he said. "I know they can't. I've already looked into it."

LePage, who confirmed that he is bilingual, said he lived in Canada between 1972 and 1979 and worked in the lumber industry.

Cruz was born in Canada to a natural-born U.S. citizen, his mother. The widely held legal view is that he is therefore a natural-born citizen and therefore eligible to be president. Nevertheless, Trump has made an issue of Cruz's Canadian birth.

The senior strategists for Sanders’ campaign made their case Wednesday morning.

Two of the top architects of the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, strategist Tad Devine and campaign manager Jeff Weaver, addressed reporters Wednesday at the Bernie HQ in Burlington, Vermont.

Jason Connolly / AFP / Getty Images

The topic was Super Tuesday, where Sanders won four of the 11 states up for grabs and came close in a fifth, Massachusetts. He was shellacked in the South, where black voters continued to turn out against for Hillary Clinton in huge numbers.

The Sanders campaign had largely avoided the Deep South after South Carolina and ahead of Super Tuesday, focusing instead on on states with whiter populations. They won four of their five targets, narrowly losing Massachusetts. But Clinton's states — including Massachusetts — provided a huge number of pledged delegates to add to her already sizable super delegate lead. It was a bad enough result for Sanders that Clinton's general election strategy is now a coverage topic.

"We understand that we have a long road ahead of us that we're going to have to take if we want to win the nomination of the Democratic Party," he said. "Super Tuesday, in my view, was perhaps the the single best day on the calendar for Hillary Clinton."

Devine said observers should look at "the demographics" of the states that come up next. Basically, that means there are more of the white, working-class voters the Sanders team thinks are best for him coming up. Sanders has also said that black voters outside the deep south are more likely to back him. The campaign looks to states like Michigan, Kansas, and Nebraska to rebuild the momentum they've lost after New Hampshire to give Sanders a boost ahead of the big delegate prizes in California and New York.

Michigan is next on the calendar. Public polling shows Sanders trailing badly there, but the Sanders aides said a message focused on Sanders long-running opposition to free trade deals will close the gap. There hasn't been much polling of California and New York yet.

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WASHINGTON — An anti-Iran deal group is launching an ad casting Donald Trump as an ally of the Obama administration on Iran policy.

The group behind the ad, given to BuzzFeed News in advance of its release, is Veterans Against the Deal, a 501c4 that was formed over the summer. The group's nonprofit structure means it does not have to disclose its donors.

The ad comes as Republicans, after months of inaction, are finally starting to mount organized attacks on Trump, who is leading in delegates, has won 10 states, and is at this point the likely nominee.

The ad seeks to tie Trump, who does not hew to Republican Party orthodoxy on several issues, to the foreign policy of the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton. It shows a clip of him telling Wolf Blitzer, "Hillary's always surrounded herself with very good people, I think Hillary would do a good job" in negotiating with Iran.

"Donald Trump is the most erratic and unpredictable presidential candidate in American history," former intelligence officer Michael Pregent, executive director of Veterans Against the Deal, said in a statement. "To make him commander-in-chief is a very dangerous roll of the dice, particularly at a time when America has never been more under threat."

Pregent told BuzzFeed News that the ad would begin as an online-only ad and then also go on TV.

Pregent said he was not yet sure of the size of the buy but said the TV version of the ad would be 30 seconds and go on the air in Florida and Ohio, states that will both hold primaries on March 15.

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WASHINGTON — Speaking to a group of college students on Wednesday night, Mike Huckabee did not rule out the idea of being Donald Trump's running mate, but seemed to defer to Trump about whether it's a possibility.

Huckabee, who dropped out of the presidential race the day after the Iowa caucuses, was asked at a forum organized by the Georgetown Institute of Politics by moderator Mo Eleithee, former DNC communications director, for his "instant reaction" to this idea: Trump-Huckabee 2016.

"Ask Trump," Huckabee responded. "Because he makes that decision, I don’t. I'm not sitting around thinking that that’s likely to happen."

Huckabee indicated he wasn't ruling the idea out, but "nor am I ruling it in; not my call to make."

Huckabee allied himself with Trump even before he ended his own campaign. The former Arkansas governor spoke from behind a Trump podium at an event in Iowa before the Iowa caucuses. His daughter Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who managed his campaign, has joined the Trump campaign. And Huckabee is said to have come close to endorsing Trump after Iowa but has held off because it could hurt his chances at a new TV contract, two sources told BuzzFeed News earlier this week.

However, he did not attend a rally in Arkansas that Trump held after the Iowa caucuses. "He never invited me to come," Huckabee said. "There was never any presumption that I would go. I made it very clear that I had no intentions to endorse anybody in the primary, certainly not immediately."

Huckabee has instead become a frequent defender of Trump, something he continued on Wednesday night, when he again excused Trump's failure to immediately disavow the Ku Klux Klan in a TV interview.

He blasted establishment Republicans who are saying they will not support Trump as the nominee, saying he was "outraged" about it.

"Remember when Donald Trump was famously paraded in front of the cameras to sign this pledge that he would support the Republican nominee, that he wouldn't run a third party campaign?" Huckabee said. "In the Republican Party, last time I checked we picked our candidate by way of an election, not a selection."

"If Donald Trump or Mike Huckabee or Jeb Bush or anybody else has to pledge loyalty to the party, shouldn’t the party pledge a loyalty to whoever the candidate is that’s selected by the people who actually went out and voted?" Huckabee said. "Because if that’s not going to happen then we don’t have a party."

Speaking to two reporters afterward, Huckabee said he wished Republicans who would reject a Trump nomination would be "team players" and that they "should respect the people who voted."

Huckabee said the Trump campaign had not reached out to him about the VP possibility and that "I have a feeling they've not been doing that at all as it's a little premature for them, and certainly premature for me."

Huckabee said he wasn't sure what's next for him, saying "Nothing's closed out at this point, I’ll keep all my options open."