(Georgia Department of Corrections via AP)

Georgia executed a black man Tuesday convicted of brutally killing a white woman in the mid-1990s, despite a last minute appeal based on one juror's racist comments after the trial.

According to court documents, Fults forced his way into 19-year-old Cathy Bounds' home in 1996 as part of a burglary. She begged for her life and offered up her jewelry, but Fults shot her five times in the back of the head anyway. Fults eventually pleaded guilty to her murder.

However, one of the jurors who sentenced him to death, Thomas Buffington, wrote in a sworn affidavit after the trial that "I don’t know if [Fults] ever killed anybody, but that n****r got just what should have happened. Once he pled guilty, I knew I would vote for the death penalty because that’s what that n****r deserved.”

Before Buffington was allowed to serve as a juror, he was asked if he had any racial prejudices. He said no. He signed the affidavit in 2005 and has since died.

Fults and his attorneys argued Buffington's racism tainted the trial and, as a result, the execution should be canceled. He asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene — a request the state opposed. He also asked for a stay of his execution until the court decides what to do with the case.

The Supreme Court denied the requests Tuesday afternoon.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday also had rejected Fults' clemency petition that he sought on the grounds of his troubled upbringing.

Fults died at 7:37 p.m. Tuesday, according to the state attorney general.

Last week, the high court agreed to hear a case next term concerning a Colorado juror who made racist comments about Mexicans during jury deliberations. Fults asks that the court hear his case or allow his execution to be put off until after the Colorado case, Peña Rodriguez v. Colorado, is resolved.

Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens' office argues the Supreme Court is not the proper court to weigh in on this issue, and that Fults raised the claim of juror bias too late.

Mark Lennihan / AP

JACKSON HEIGHTS - On a recent lazy Thursday afternoon, under the occasional roar of the elevated 7 train, kids in backpacks walked one of the most diverse stretches in the country: from Corona to Jackson Heights.

Neighborhoods like Jackson Heights and Corona are the kind that would be hugely affected by Donald Trump's proposed policies, from the undocumented immigrants who live there to the U.S. citizens with undocumented family members to the immigrants from beyond Latin America who Trump has proposed barring. And walking the streets you could be mistaken for believing everyone is Latino or an immigrant or both.

It’s the kind of neighborhood where outside an Ecuadorian restaurant, a man yells the specials of the day like guatita, or where two Hispanic men sell blood-red sugary piraguas for $1 from a small stand to kids walking home from elementary school. (One of the men said he couldn't talk about Trump because they had just arrived in the United States last week from the Dominican Republic.)

In fact, Corona and Jackson Heights are actually the two parts of the city with the highest number of undocumented immigrants — the group most often targeted by Trump, who is expected to dominate the New York Republican primary next week.

Undocumented immigrants make up 40,000 out of 191,000 residents in Jackson Heights, according to Center for Migration Studies statistics. In Corona, there are 30,000 out of 150,000 residents.

On 102nd Street in Corona, inside MJ Furniture (current deal: dining room set including a table and four chairs for $149), Tonia Perraza, a legal resident from Venezuela, can’t vote in the primary but still had a lot to say about Trump.

"How are you going to be against the immigrants who are the workers of this country?" she said in Spanish, surrounded by mattresses. "Even if you're a citizen, your parents, or grandparents were probably immigrants."

Some longtime legal residents are also choosing this year to become citizens and register to vote against him. Trump, who has famously called — and been derided for — a loosely explained plan to have Mexico pay for a wall along the border between the two countries, recently clarified that he would stop remittances from Mexicans (i.e. money that those in the United States send back to family in Mexico).

In a neighborhood where immigrants are everywhere, sending back money to home countries isn’t unusual. Delgado Travel — a money exchange — dots streets in the area.

The response to Trump here tends to range from barely taking Trump seriously to cursing him out. Romulo, an immigrant from Ecuador selling salchipapas from his home country out of a food cart on a street corner, slowly smiled at the mention of Trump.

"He's discriminating against people, against the immigrants," Romulo said in Spanish. "He's not going to do well."

If he’s the Republican nominee, Trump is expected to lose big. But Trump will do well in New York’s primary; the Queens native is polling with a double-digit lead over his opponents in the liberal state.

"If I saw him out on the street, I would slap the shit out of him," said Jake, 28, an employee at Art Assassins Tattoo Studio, with ink up his arms, and a crisp, deep-blue Golden State Warriors All-Star edition cap.

Jake said Trump calls to mind days from American history that were more backward, when minorities suffered and the country was less open-minded.

"How do you want to become the president when you are stepping on every minority you see, like black people and Hispanics?" Jake said. "To me, he's just a clown — I really do hate him, too, just like he hates us."

"Hispanics have helped his career, they help build his buildings," said Roberto, an Argentine in his 30s who runs a cell phone repair shop among the row of small businesses in the shadow of the 7 train line.

Upon hearing the topic was Trump, Julio Melendez, the owner of Aries Digital — which sells Mexico and Colombia soccer jerseys alongside Batman and Superman hats — lost his good cheer.

"His comments aren't OK. He's not good for this country," Melendez said.

Melendez is a Bernie Sanders supporter ("es buenisimo"), but would vote for Clinton if she ultimately faced off against Trump. Still, Trump who has some Hispanic support across the country, also had a couple admirers in Queens.

Diana Suarez, who works at Buenos Aires bakery on 90th Street, said she likes a lot of the things he says, likening his plans to limit immigration to "people who have so many kids for the state to take care of them."

"If we don't have economic capacity to have children here — that can happen to the government," she said. "I'm going to vote for Trump, he's going to bring the country back to what it was."

William, a tall Colombian security guard at Abuelo Gozon, a Mexican bar and restaurant, said he likes how Trump thinks but wouldn't be voting because it doesn't matter. (As a woman in tight jeans walked by, he looked in her direction and said, "That's what really matters.")

Nobody expects a Queens neighborhood to vote Republican, but Jackson Heights and Corona are just concentrated areas for how he’s viewed by many Latinos — and others.

At 74th Street in Jackson Heights, a major junction where subway riders can go farther into Queens or back toward Manhattan, a small businessman said he respects Trump as a businessman but doesn't see him as ready to be president.

He’s not Hispanic or a New York resident. For 30 years, Zahid has made the trip from his home in New Jersey to his small pharmacy in Jackson Heights, where on a recent day, a Puerto Rican employee talked on the phone with a local customer.

When the general election comes along, "I'll vote for the Democrat," Zahid said, before turning to ring up another customer.

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan delivered a direct message Tuesday on the continuous speculation he might make a late entrance to the presidential race and swoop in as an establishment savior to a potentially contested GOP convention: "Count me out."

The leading Republican in the House and former vice presidential candidate made the statement after weeks of speculation that he might consider being named as a candidate during the Republican convention, should one of the current candidates fail to reach the required number of delegates.

But Ryan tried to put the second-guesses to rest in a press conference Tuesday, saying delegates should consider only those who have thrown their hat in the once-crowded Republican primary.

"I simply believe that if you want to be the nominee for our party, to be the president, you should actually run for it," Ryan said during the short press conference. "I chose not to. Therefore I should not be considered. Period. End of story."

His statements come as the party continues to appear fractured as it heads toward what could be a contested convention in Cleveland.

The long list of Republican candidates has been whittled down to three, and Ryan swore he would not accept his name being tossed into the ring during the convention's nomination process.

"I am not going to be our party's nominee," he said. "I do not want, nor will I accept a nomination."

When a reporter pointed out that, in the search for a House Speaker, Ryan had said then too that he did not want the job, Ryan said it was "apples and oranges."

"That is entirely different than getting the nomination for president of the United States without even running for the job," he said. "I was already a congressman."

Watch an excerpt from Ryan's press conference here:

View Video ›

CNN

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

WASHINGTON — Bill Clinton’s squabble with Black Lives Matter protesters in Philadelphia has riled a bloc of activists inside the movement who are dubious about electoral politics — and are vowing not to vote this year.

The activists say history has shown the ballot box to be an insufficient vehicle for radical freedom. They continue to be underwhelmed by the candidates. And now they are just furious with Bill Clinton.

If Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, some organizers envision a long crusade this summer against what they call the Clintons' anti-blackness, including a public campaign to tell black Americans not to cast votes for her.

The position isn’t new in the decades-long debate about civil rights tactics. And the idea that young black activists will tell people not to vote upsets the other side: the Civil Rights-era generation of activists who fought for the right to vote.

The former president, who defended the 1994 crime bill and his wife’s usage of the term “superpredator” in front of protesters in Philadelphia, saying the bill reduced crime, is the target of pointed, but hardly new, activist criticism. "I don't know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped on crack and sent them out on the street to murder other African-American children," Bill Clinton said. "Maybe you thought they were good citizens. She didn't. You are defending the people who kill the lives you say matter. Tell the truth."

Activists told BuzzFeed News they are not participating in the election, saying Bill Clinton’s assertion that the movement is defending drug dealers who had killed the people they say matter exhibits a lack of understanding of what the movement is about.

They are frustrated that, despite Hillary Clinton’s engagement with movement leaders, Bill Clinton’s comments seem to ignore or reject a core tenet of the movement: that every black life — even the criminals, drug dealers and nonviolent offenders his administration’s put away for lengthy periods of time — is valuable.

“The presidential election has revealed that there is still a tremendous amount of work that remains and we need to rethink the way in which we engage with the American political process,” Pete Haviland-Eduah, the co-policy chair for Million Hoodies Movement for Justice told BuzzFeed News. “President Clinton's comments have highlighted that less has been done by establishment politicians to truly understand these folks then some may like to believe. Its is clear that the candidates are hearing the movement, but I'm not sure if they are really listening.”

Dante Barry, the founder of Million Hoodies Movement for Justice, expressing his frustration in a series of Facebook posts, seemed to suggest that Bill Clinton’s comments about the movement would trigger a change in course.

“Between Hillary Clinton's bogus apology for calling young [black] people super predators in the 90s, [to] Bill Clinton's crime bill, to Bill Clinton's comments today,” Barry wrote. “This is nothing new. They are anti-black. They believe in anti blackness. This is a fact.”

“You either love Black people or you don’t. If you don’t, be prepared to feel the fire under your feet because...we coming.”

The diffuse, decentralized movement has been quietly strategizing about how to build sustainable systems by bringing the people on the fringes to the forefront of organizing around issues like police brutality, safety for transgender women, and the Flint water crisis.

In this evolution — from "the street to Slack," as one organizer put it — the movement has largely, but not exclusively, sought to characterize the political process as ‘exclusionary,’ while activists have struggled to make the movement radically inclusive. On organizing calls, activists speak of broken promises and political pandering, even as the campaigns have reached out to groups in the movement with varying levels of success.

But Civil-Rights era leaders and politicians who are sensitive to the movement for black lives reject the idea that protesting elections is a good thing.

“What we say to young activists who are not involved [in the election] is the things we are concerned about will either move forward or go backwards based on who’s elected,” the Rev. Al Sharpton told BuzzFeed News after a meeting he and other civil rights leaders attended with President Obama. “All of us should vote, otherwise what Mr. Obama has done as president cannot continue.”

That day, a Black Lives Matter Chicago organizer named Aislinn Pulley declined her invitation to the meeting, saying that she “could not, with any integrity, participate in such a sham that would only serve to legitimize the false narrative that the government is working to end police brutality and the institutional racism that fuels it.”

Rep. Jim Clyburn, the third-ranking member in the House and a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s, criticized that stance, and the position some activists have begun to take on the 2016 election.

“If you really want somebody to have sensitivity for your issue, you can't refuse to sit down with them,” Clyburn told BuzzFeed News in an interview. “If the White House offered you an invitation for you to sit down and talk about what you want to talk about, and you say you aren't going to talk — well, you'd get mad if you ask for a meeting and the White House turned you down."

Clyburn said he hears about a supposed tension between BLM and Civil Rights-era leaders, but he said he doesn't feel it, and that he, in fact, feels connected to them, saying he views them as the SNCC of the 21st century. Tactical disagreements are part of organizing, he said. “People today are a bit nervous about Black Lives Matter. I'm not nervous at all. I embrace them. I do what I can to be helpful to them and I don't have any problem with what they're doing.”

But Clyburn said SNCC was heavily involved in presidential politics and said BLM would be making a “horrible mistake” by boycotting the election.

Clyburn said he remembers similar calls to boycott the election in 1968 and 1980 that he believed siphoned off votes and gave the elections to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, respectively.

“We should not be emotional about this,” Clyburn said. “Young people ought to sit down and think about the consequences of your actions. I think you're shortchanging yourselves and the future when you say you're going to boycott presidential elections. That's the dumbest ass thing I ever heard in my damn life.

“Because somebody next Jan. 20 is going to be sworn in to be president for the next four years, and probably for the next eight years," he continued. "And your boycott of it could cause the most progressive person in the lot to lose the election.”

“He’ll swat her, he’ll swat at her because she made that choice to get in the arena.”

Gary Wiepert / Reuters

w.soundcloud.com

Carl Paladino, the Republican nominee for New York governor in 2010
and currently a co-chair of Donald Trump's campaign in the state, defended Trump's treatment of Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and other women, saying they decided "to enter the arena and box with him."

Asked about Trump's treatment of women, specifically Kelly and Heidi Cruz, on Talk of The Town on 100.7FM WUTQ, Paladino said, "The Donald I know puts women in a very high place. He has total respect for them. I watch on these campaign trips, he treats women with much of a dignity."

"I don't get why the press wants to emphasize a couple of events and take them out of character and out of the context of the situation," he continued. "Megyn Kelly decided to enter the arena and box with him. She has to understand that he's gonna box with her. He'll swat her, he'll swat at her because she made that choice to get in the arena. Obviously Hillary is there too. Anybody else that you know, they want to accuse him enough taking on women, well those are women that chose to get in the arena, and for that reason you're watching the mettle of a man deal with it. Holding them in a special place while they batter you is not necessarily my way either, I mean, any of us would have the same posture with women."

Trump has routinely ridiculed Kelly after she asked at the first Republican debate him about his insults towards women, calling her "crazy Megyn" and saying "she had blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever" during the debate.

AP images composite

Comments from Rep. Raul Grijalva about a housing department policy under HUD Secretary Julian Castro sent shockwaves through the Latino political class on Wednesday.

Grivalja's comments on the HUD policy were included a Politico article that saw activists question whether the Obama cabinet member is progressive enough and qualified to be Hillary Clinton's vice presidential pick.

"Was my letter, my communication, meant to torpedo him? No, it wasn’t," Grijalva told BuzzFeed News, expressing displeasure with the Politico article.

Grijalva noted that he is not new to the issues surrounding the 2010 Distressed Asset Stabilization Program (DASP), which allows HUD to sell mortgages going toward foreclosure to qualified bidders. Grijalva sent a letter to Castro last week saying the program has been selling homes that once belonged to "the families I’ve spoken with at rock-bottom prices to the Wall Street entities that created this situation in the first place." But he said he similarly raised the issue with Castro's predecessor.

Grijalva, who is a high-profile Bernie Sanders supporter, was joined in the article by activists who are Sanders supporters. Matt Nelson from Presente, a Latino advocacy organization, said Castro will be "toxic" to Clinton if he doesn't change his positions on foreclosures and loans. That organization was previously led by Arturo Carmona, who was Latino outreach director for Sanders, before recently being promoted to deputy political director.

"I supported Bernie a long time ago," Grijalva said. "Arturo and Presente being on top of this issue and insisting this disqualifies him, that’s an organizational issue."

The Sanders campaign sent a statement to BuzzFeed News with the first line in bold, stressing that they did not have an opinion on Castro: "The Sanders campaign is not part of this effort being led by grassroots organizations."

But the statement went on to say that while a Latino vice presidential candidate would be "truly historic," the most important test "we must have for any nominee is whether they will put the needs of working and middle-class families before the interests of large corporations."

"Any major Democratic Party candidate should put working families before Wall Street greed and should oppose trade agreements like the TPP," the statement continued. "Displacing families from their homes and supporting outsourcing jobs is not a position that majority of America's working class can support."

Advocates are critical of, in particular, the fact that distressed homes are being sold to big banks rather than non-profit organizations.

In a statement, an official for HUD said providing an option for homeowners to remain in their homes was one of the reasons the DASP program was created. Feedback led them to make changes "including the creation of non-profit only pools and delaying foreclosure for a year."

A source familiar with Castro's thinking said he and Grijalva have a good relationship and he is happy to meet with him to discuss the issue. The criticism was seen by those close to Castro as advocates being driven by Sanders supporters within the particular organizations.

Furthermore, two sources with knowledge of the situation said HUD is set to roll out another set of changes to the program next week (previous changes were made in 2015), and they believe the activists had gotten wind of the coming announcement.

"They want to look like the beastslayer," one of the two sources said. "We did this and then a few days later they made changes."

A source from within the Clinton campaign said the criticism they view as transparently from Sanders campaign was evidence that Castro and his brother Joaquin have been effective surrogates and noted that it comes on the heels of Rosario Dawson criticizing Dolores Huerta, and Luis Gutierrez coming under fire for endorsing Clinton.

"They are systematically attacking our surrogates," the source argued.

The Latino political complex sprung into action to defend Castro's progressive bonafides, including Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa and Latino Victory Project president Cristobal Alex, noting that he championed universal pre-K and passed an LGBT non-discrimination ordinance. Castro is, of course, one of if not the most prominent young Latino Democrat.

"Let’s be clear: Julian Castro is a known quantity to the Latino community," said National Council of La Raza president Janet Murguia. She said he opposed Texas' anti-marriage equality law and as a mayor in a state as red as Texas he was pragmatic, building "a bipartisan, private-public coalition that successfully got the voters of San Antonio to vote for a sales tax increase" in order to pay for the pre-K program.

Some were also critical of the optics of non-Latino organizations (Presente was the only Hispanic organization) attacking an up-and-coming Mexican-American Democrat in a party short on high-profile Latinos.

Calling the attacks on Castro "completely unfounded" and "short sighted," Alex said they "only serve to pit us against each ocher. These groups should be ashamed of targeting one of our own who has devoted his life to standing up for our community and for those in need."

League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) president Roger Rocha said the attacks were driven by Sanders supporters. "To me, it was just another way of attacking the Clinton campaign and that was very obvious," he said. "If Bernie was looking at Julian, do you think this article would have been written the same way?"

For his part, Grijalva said Castro has done good work opening up housing opportunities for LGBT people and people with prison records, but made it clear that he still has more questions for Castro should he be in the running to be vice president in the future.

"Politically, I would like to know more about a future vice president than I know now," Grijalva said. "I think that’s a fair request: on issues like climate change, empowerment for our community, and on immigration reform."

Gov. Pat McCrory

Davis Turner / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — When North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed a controversial LGBT law, dozens of major corporations quickly came out and condemned it, telling him in a letter they were “disappointed” in his decision to “sign this discriminatory legislation into law."

But many of those companies and influential trade associations that represent them will likely continue to financially support the group backing McCrory’s re-election bid, the Republican Governors Association.

RGA, which is set up as a 527 political organization and therefore eligible for corporate donations, has raised millions over the years from companies such as Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Dow Chemical, Pfizer, Citigroup, and Pepsi Co. — all of whom signed a letter to McCrory last month criticizing the law, which limits protections for the LGBT community and requires people to use bathrooms based on the sex listed on their birth certificate. McCrory attempted to clarify the law on Tuesday, allowing private companies to set their own policies on restrooms, but his executive order kept the contentious elements intact.

Although the group supports Republican governors across the country, RGA will spend a significant amount of its resources in 2016 focusing on the Tar Heel state. McCrory’s re-election battle against Democrat Roy Cooper is expected be one of the closest gubernatorial contests in the country this cycle. Another state where the RGA will spend some resources is Indiana, where some of the same companies criticized Indiana Gov. Mike Pence’s decision to sign a religious freedom law last year.

BuzzFeed News reached out to nearly two dozen companies and trade groups that have given to RGA in the past to become corporate members of the group and have come out against the North Carolina law. None of them said they would be making any changes in their giving over the law. (Felicia McLemore, a spokeswoman for Marriott International, was the only one to say the company “did not anticipate making such contributions this year,” but said that wasn’t necessarily a result of the law).

A few, including California-based tech company Cisco, said their giving would continue. "Cisco has had equal membership in both the Republican and Democratic Governors Associations for many years,” said spokeswoman Andrea Duffy said in an email.

"Our involvement has never been about any specific party or candidate,” Duffy wrote. “We use our memberships to educate members on issues of importance to the tech industry and our funds are directed towards non-political purposes. We anticipate continued focus on these areas, and don’t expect our support to go up or down based on partisan topics.”

(Duffy didn’t respond to a follow-up on how it ensures its contributions to RGA are only used for "non-political purposes.”)

Others either declined to comment on their plans to give to RGA, beyond their public criticism of the law, or did not respond to repeated calls and emails.

RGA also declined to comment.

Most major companies looking to influence policy or maintain their relationship with lawmakers on the state level typically give to both Democratic and Republican gubernatorial groups. Although they didn’t waste any time in criticizing McCrory’s decision, not giving to to the RGA — especially at a time when Republicans control the majority of statehouses and governorships — is a much more difficult decision.

Companies could risk missing out on facetime with governors and further straining the party’s coalition of pro-business and social conservatives, GOP fundraisers say. Even though shareholders for public corporations are becoming increasingly curious about political giving, it could set a precedent where companies have re-evaluate their contributions anytime there’s a controversial bill.

“These big corporations have been acting in bad faith,” said Brad Todd, a GOP consultant who worked for now-Sen. Thom Tillis’ campaign in North Carolina in 2014, about the business community siding with the left on religious and LGBT issues. “Large businesses would be wise to be very careful."

McCrory signed the bill late last month in response to an ordinance from Charlotte allowing transgender people to use bathrooms based on the gender they identify with. The passage of the law has already resulted in PayPal canceling plans to invest in the state, which could reportedly cost North Carolina 400 jobs. Musicians like Bruce Springsteen have also canceled appearances in the state, citing the law.

Despite the criticism and attacks from Democrats, Republicans who have experience handling statewide races in North Carolina insist McCrory made the right political calculation — one that might seem odd outside of the Tar Heel state but makes sense in a purple state that still has a sizable number of conservative Democrats.

Republicans point to a survey by right-leaning think tank Civitas Institute, which found in a poll that 69% of those surveyed believed the Charlotte ordinance to be “unreasonable and unsafe.”

Most acknowledge that it wasn't ideal for this issue to come up in an election year, but believe the Republican base would have viewed vetoing the bill as McCrory caving. Some are even pushing back on attacks that McCrory is hurting the state’s economy by blaming the companies, alleging they are being hypocritical in condemning the North Carolina law while continuing to operate and invest in countries with bad human rights records.

“They do business in Cuba, which has a horrible human rights record,” said Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the NC GOP, when asked about PayPal. “People don’t want PayPal telling them what to do when it comes to their kids bathrooms and locker rooms.”

Ferrell Blount, a businessman and former NC GOP chairman, made a similar argument: “Bank of America operates in Saudi Arabia. I mean we know what goes on in Saudi Arabia with gay people.”

LINK: North Carolina Governor Issues Executive Order In Attempt To “Clarify” Anti-LGBT Law

LINK: Sanders And Clinton Light On Details For Challenging Anti-LGBT State Laws

LINK: Feds “Ready” For Transgender Discrimination Complaints In North Carolina

Carlos Barria / Reuters

A conservative anti-Trump group launched a new radio ad Wednesday ahead of the New York primary that features the billionaire joking about dating his daughter, Ivanka.

"Donald Trump says a lot of stupid stuff," the ad's narrator begins. "In 2006, he said on The View, 'If Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.' He told Rolling Stone that if he weren’t happily married and his daughter’s father, he’d… well, he didn’t finish the thought, but you can guess what he meant."

The ad, which is airing on seven radio stations in the Buffalo area and western New York, was created by Make America Awesome, a sparsely funded conservative super PAC whose self-described "guerrilla" tactics against Trump have generated bipartisan controversy.

Last month, the group ran a Facebook ad featuring a nude photo of Melania Trump that sarcastically declared her "your next First Lady." That ad was widely panned as sexist by commentators across the ideological spectrum, but it riled Trump, who (wrongly) accused Ted Cruz of being behind the smear — and then went on to attack Cruz's wife, Heidi. The spat preoccupied the political press for days, and earned the anti-Trump ad an enormous amount of free media.

Liz Mair, the Republican strategist who made both anti-Trump ads, did not hold back when describing the thinking behind the group's latest provocation.

“Obviously, in this political environment, there’s a demand for ‘authenticity,’" Mair told BuzzFeed News. "So we figured we’d give the voters what they want and put on display the real, authentic Donald Trump: a guy who’s padded out his inherited fortune by screwing average working people like those he’s begging to vote for him, financially, on a regular basis for decades now."

Here is the full radio ad:

youtube.com

And here's the full script of the ad:

Donald Trump says a lot of stupid stuff.

In 2006, he said on The View, “If Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.”

He told Rolling Stone that if he weren’t happily married and his daughter’s father, he’d… well, he didn’t finish the thought, but you can guess what he meant.

Here’s some other stupid stuff Trump has said.

Trump thinks Americans get paid too much.

Trump said in a debate, “Wages [are] too high… we’re not going to be able to compete against the world.”

Trump complains about the influx of foreign workers and claims negative effects from immigration.

But he admitted to CNN that he hires foreigners at his swanky Palm Beach resort, not Americans because “American people, they want full-time jobs.”

Trump supports eminent domain-- using government power to take ordinary people’s property so people like him can make more money.

Trump said “I think eminent domain is wonderful.”

Trump.

Stupid Stuff.

Make the smart choice, and support Ted Cruz.

Make America Awesome paid for this ad and is solely responsible for its contents. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits” — not Albert Einstein.

Carlo Allegri / Reuters

Among the insults and boasts that litter Donald Trump's Twitter feed are fortune cookie-esque nuggets of wisdom from famous figures in history.

One of Trump's go-to sages is theoretical physicist Albert Einstein. whose wisdom Trump has quoted several times. A review of Trump's tweets, however,
reveals that many of the quotations Trump has attributed to Einstein have been found by experts to not actually have come from the famous scientist.

View Entire List ›

“There is no easy route for him to be the nominee.”

Mark Wilson / Getty Images

w.soundcloud.com

Republican Sen. Dan Coats of Indiana said on the radio Wednesday that John Kasich is the best equipped GOP candidate to be president, but acknowledged that the Ohio governor has no path to win the nomination without "very" a contested convention.

Coats added that he could't tell which of the remaining candidates could possibly unite the party. Indiana holds its primary on May 3.

"Well, I know you keep asking me that," said Coats on local radio on Wednesday morning. "Look, I want somebody who has the experience and that I think we can put trust in terms knows how to get us through this mess. In my opinion, and it's no secret, I supported Marco Rubio because I knew the Democrats feared him the most, they've told me so. They thought he was the future of the the Republican Party. That didn't work out."

"Right now, I think, John Kasich brings the experience that neither Ted Cruz or Donald Trump has to deal with tough issues," Coats continued. "He's proven that in his service both in Congress and as governor and made tough decisions. But you know there is no easy route for him to be the nominee, it would have to go to a very contested convention."

The senator said he didn't have any idea who could unite the party in a general election.

"That takes me to point, well, who can best win in November, who also can draw the most support to unite the party, and I'm still waiting to see how that plays out because right now I can't tell you who that is."

Sue Ogrocki / AP

The Oklahoma Department of Corrections almost used the wrong drug in an execution scheduled for September 2015 — more than six months after it was informed it had done the same thing in an execution it carried out earlier that year.

The state medical examiner’s office provided the corrections department with Charles Warner’s autopsy in April 2015, BuzzFeed News has learned, giving the department clear evidence it had used the wrong drug in Warner’s January execution. Despite that, the state once again obtained the wrong drug in September for the planned execution of Richard Glossip. The mistake was caught at the last minute by the doctor overseeing the scheduled execution.

BuzzFeed News discovered this, and several other key facts not previously made public in the 15 months since Oklahoma executed Charles Warner on Jan. 15, 2015, through a review of state emails obtained this week.

The grand jury, which has been investigating the subject behind closed doors since this past October, is meeting again currently and could release a report as soon as this week.

Since the grand jury investigation began more than six months ago, no information has been provided about the specifics of the investigation.

In January 2015, Oklahoma executed Charles Warner for raping and murdering an 11-month-old child in 1997. The state was supposed to inject him with potassium chloride, but instead injected him with potassium acetate, according to the autopsy report. Among Warner’s last words were “My body is on fire.”

In late September, the state intended to execute Richard Glossip for arranging the murder of his boss, but had to call the execution off at the last minute after discovering officials had received the wrong drug. Executioners “briefly considered” using the wrong drug again.

While the grand jury has been investigating the state’s execution process, three individuals have resigned. The head of the Department of Corrections, Robert Patton, who presided over three botched execution attempts, announced his resignation in December. Anita Trammell, the warden at the prisons where the executions took place, also resigned, as well as Gov. Mary Fallin’s general counsel, Steve Mullins.

The emails provided to BuzzFeed News this week came in response to a public records request made this past fall and provide a first glimpse into several of the issues that could be a part of the ongoing grand jury investigation.

The documents show that the Department of Corrections received Charles Warner’s autopsy report — showing the wrong drug had been used — in April, months before the mistake was disclosed to the public, attorneys for other death row inmates, and the courts.

A nursing manager in the corrections department requested the autopsy Jan. 26, 2015, a couple weeks after Warner was executed, and received the autopsy April 1. BuzzFeed News requested the autopsy in June, but did not receive it until October — after the Department of Corrections had nearly used the wrong drug again.

When asked about the autopsy report, the Department of Corrections said it was looking into the matter.

The department attempted to carry out Glossip’s execution in late September, but called it off after it once again received the wrong drug, potassium acetate. Days later, the state released Warner’s autopsy showing the potassium acetate actually was used in his execution. The emails obtained by BuzzFeed News this week provide the first evidence that the corrections department had been informed months earlier that the wrong drug had been used in Warner’s execution.

After the Glossip execution was called off — but before Warner’s autopsy was made public — Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt announced the multi-county grand jury his office oversees would be investigating the mistakes the state made in carrying out executions.

The documents, however, imply that the attorney general’s office may have been aware of the Warner execution drug mix-up weeks before the scheduled Glossip execution.

In August, attorneys in Pruitt’s office asked for a log of all physical evidence in Warner’s execution.

“I received a weird request” from the attorney general’s office, a medical examiner employee wrote in an email in early September. “Do we have any extra vials of drugs (?) that may have been sent with executed inmate, Charles Warner?”

Several emails between officials in the medical examiner’s office then followed, in which they discussed an attached list of what items were sent with Warner. This email chain, along with an attachment of evidence, was then forwarded to the attorney from Pruitt’s office on September 2.

The medical examiner’s office told BuzzFeed News that the attachment was part of Warner’s case file, and would take a court order for them to release it to the public.

The attorney general’s office declined to comment while the grand jury is continuing its investigation.

Once the drug mistake was made public in October, the documents also show the attorney general’s office was interested in receiving more information about the drugs used on Warner in his execution.

An agent with the attorney general’s office asked the medical examiner’s office if they still had Warner’s blood samples.

“We anticipate having to test Charles Warner’s blood for the chemicals contained therein… and also test any remaining chemicals left in the vials and syringes for identification,” chief agent Terry Cronkite wrote in an email.

The chief forensic toxicologist responded that his blood was not tested for levels of potassium acetate (the drug that was mistakenly used), and that now, months later, testing might not be helpful.

via Oklahoma Office of the Chief Medical Examiner

In addition, the vials and syringes were not tested at the time of Warner’s execution, the toxicologist said, and added that it is “unclear” if the unused drugs would be stable enough to be tested. “They may be,” he said.

Nearly two months after the grand jury investigation was announced, the documents reveal that questions remained about whether the attorney general’s office had been given access to potentially relevant evidence.

In one email, a Department of Corrections inspector general agent wrote to a medical examiner investigator on Nov. 25, asking about evidence in the Warner execution.

“Had a quick question regarding Charles Warner: The AG's Office is conducting an investigation into the execution of Charles Warner and I was advised they had made arrangements to retrieve all the evidence associated with the case,” chief agent Carl Wilks wrote. “Can you tell me what the evidence is, and whether or not the AG has been advised of the evidence?”

The medical examiner employee responded that same day with three pages of evidence, writing, “As far as I know, the AG's office is not aware of this evidence.”

The medical examiner’s office said they could not turn over the evidence list to BuzzFeed News without a court order. The attorney general’s office declined to comment on the exchange, and the department of corrections said it was looking into the issue.

Read the documents:

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

When it came up on the debate stage, Hillary Clinton didn’t flinch.

“In 1996, you used to term ‘superpredators’ to describe some young kids,” said that night’s moderator Don Lemon, referring to a speech the candidate gave as first lady. “Some feel like it was a racial code. Was it? And were you wrong to use that term?”

Clinton repeated the answer she and her aides have given reporters — that in context, the “superpredators” quote referenced drug cartels specifically; that it was nonetheless a “poor choice of words,” a term she didn’t and wouldn’t ever use again — and then, quickly, easily, the candidate moved on. “To go back to what I was saying…”

But on the campaign trail, when confronted with the same piece of history by young black activists seeking a deeper and more difficult conversation about Bill and Hillary Clinton’s role in the 1994 crime bill, both the candidate and her husband have struggled to engage with their concerns about the remark and the legacy it encapsulates.

Even as Clinton runs with the broad support of people of color, a string of recent “superpredator” protests — culminating last week in an uncomfortable interaction between Bill Clinton and demonstrators in Philadelphia — reflects a remaining generational divide between the Clinton campaign and a network of young activists galvanized by police brutality against blacks. For many Black Lives Matter activists, the candidate’s early record as a civil rights advocate, for instance, is an seen insufficient or irrelevant to questions about the structural injustices rooted in 1990s policy.

On three separate occasions this spring, activists linked to the Black Lives Matter movement have surprised the Clintons with questions about the “superpredator” remark. Each time, the conversation has become tense and abrupt — less give-and-take than two sides talking about the same topic, but from two irreconcilable angles.

After the encounter in Philadelphia, where Bill Clinton criticized the demonstrators and defended his wife’s use of the term, “superpredators,” the former president declined to apologize for the comments, but acknowledged a gulf between him and his questioners: “I realized finally I was talking past [a protester] the way she was talking past me,” he said. “We gotta stop that in this country. We gotta listen to each other.”

The recent string of incidents began the week before the South Carolina primary, at a private fundraiser, 23-year-old activist named Ashley Williams stepped to the front of the room and brandished a sign quoting another remark from Clinton’s 1996 speech: “We have to bring them to heel.” Video of the encounter, shared widely online, shows Clinton growing irritated by the interruption. “Do you want to hear the facts, or do you just want to talk,” Clinton asks tartly, before turning away from Williams as a man escorts her out of the room. “Okay, back to the issues,” Clinton says.

About a week later, at a campaign stop in Minneapolis, another young activist named Stacey Rosana approached Clinton in the back of a downtown coffee shop and brought up the “superpredator” quote. “Have you changed?” Rosana asked Clinton in a quiet voice.

Again, Clinton seemed to disagree with the premise of every question — and the activist with every response. “That comment was made one time in my life,” Clinton said.

“How do we know you’re going to be accountable to black communities now?” Rosana replied.

“Well, I think, you now, you can look at my record.”

Rosana said she’d looked at the record — “and that’s not what happened.”

By then, as with the Williams protest, it was Clinton, voice rising, who sounded a note of agitation. “Well, you know what? You haven’t looked at the whole thing.”

For Williams, a North Carolina native and student in a Master’s program at UNC-Charlotte, what stuck out about her South Carolina protest was Clinton's parting remark. “When I was being escorted out, she said, ‘Now, back to the issues.’ To me, this means mass incarceration is not one of [her] issues,” she said in an interview. (Rosana, the Minneapolis activist, declined to be interviewed through a Black Lives Matter spokesperson.)

Ashley Williams protests Clinton earlier this year.

YouTube

Williams describes herself as part of a generation of Americans acutely affected by the Clinton era. The 1994 crime bill, she said, “is something that I’ve always been aware of.”

“We haven't only heard bad things about her,” Williams said of Clinton. “We've seen our dads and our sisters and our brothers be taken out of our communities and stay out. We know what it's like when our people come back into our community and they're socially dead — and sometimes literally die. We know and experience that.”

Since well before her campaign began, Clinton has shown she’s aware of Black Lives Matter and the changing perceptions about criminal justice. She voiced support for the movement, declaring “yes, black lives matter,” as early as December 2014. She dedicated her first campaign speech to the problem of mass incarceration, acknowledging that parts of the 1994 crime bill her husband signed into law had disproportionately harmful effects on the black community. And of all the candidates in the race, Clinton has spoken the most often and bluntly about systemic racism and what she’s described as the “special burden” of white people to better understand “the daily experience” of black people.

Still, Clinton aides acknowledge an ongoing struggle to win over young black voters, particularly those in the politically engaged activist class. (In an NBC News poll of Super Tuesday states, which favored the southern states where Clinton has performed best, she carried young black voters 61% to 36%. By comparison, Clinton won black voters aged 30 to 59 by a 72-point margin on the same day, and black voters over 60 by a staggering 86-point margin.)

In the wake of the Williams video, Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s communications director, stressed that better connecting to those young people is “constantly” on the candidate’s mind: “She's not necessarily going to win them all over, but by starting this conversation, we want by the time we get to the general have comfort in [the dialogue],” Palmieri said. “She wants them to know her better. She understands they have a lot of doubts about her. They’ve heard a lot of bad things about her.”

After the Williams action, aides took on the superpredator comment directly, focusing on the context of the remark — that Clinton was talking about drug cartels working with gangs. (The term was popularized in the 1990s by a political scientist who theorized that, based on the spike in youth homicides at the time, there would be a new generation of “superpredators.” The theory was criticized at the time, and the political scientist’s predictions did not bear out.)

During her husband’s administration, Clinton talked up the era’s tough-on-crime policies often — but the “superpredator” remark in particular has found a wide audience. This spring, as Clinton and Bernie Sanders competed for black voters the Southern states, with each side accusing the other of some form of racial pandering, Sanders supporters seized on the “superpredator” quote, as well.

Before a Clinton rally in Alabama, held at a historically black college just outside Birmingham, a young white Sanders volunteer, 21-year-old Ben Gillilan from Coleman, Ala., stood outside the event next to a large white sign reproducing the “superpredator” remarks in full. He placed two smaller signs nearby: one showing a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. about Barry Goldwater’s “morally indefensible” stance on civil rights; the other reminding passers-by that Clinton was a Goldwater girl in her youth. Gillilan, wearing a “Bernie” sticker on his red flannel, identified himself as an active volunteer, phone-banking regularly for the campaign, but stressed that he was an “independent protester.”

Ben Gillilan, an Alabama college student and Bernie Sanders supporter, protests Clinton earlier this year.

Ruby Cramer / BuzzFeed News

Gillilan, a native of Cullman, Ala., spent that morning talking to voters about the video of Williams’s protest. Asked if he’d spoken with any black voters, Gillilan said he’d been approached by five or so. “They didn’t even know who Goldwater was,” he said, gesturing toward the two small signs at his feet. “That’s surprising to me. Like, you don’t know that your candidate, the person you’re supporting, campaigned for someone who was advocating for segregation?” (Goldwater voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act and objected to federal intervention to desegregate, though he opposed segregation itself.)

At another rally, this one in Orangeburg, S.C., two white men interrupted Clinton’s speech, shouting questions about the “superpredator” quote — only to be booed to leave by black audience members. One of the protesters was Mike Ferguson, a 32-year-old from Washington state who came to South Carolina to volunteer full-time for the Sanders campaign there, and ran into the crowd at Clinton’s rally with a pillowcase, bearing a message in black sharpie. One side read, “We came here to heal. Not to be ‘brought to heel.’”

After he’d been escorted out by security, Ferguson explained to a questioning Secret Service agent that he, too, had been inspired by Williams. He showed the other side of the pillowcase to the agent. “This says, ‘We are brothers and sisters together in this fight for justice.’ So we are,” Ferguson said. “This is activism. This is building off of — I’m not black obviously, I’m an Alaska native, so I guess you could call me a person of color — this is following in the footsteps of what Black Lives Matter is doing.”

Mike Ferguson, a Sanders supporter, protests Clinton in South Carolina.

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

Inside the Orangeburg rally, the other protester, Rod Webber of Boston, was still standing in the back of the gymnasium, holding a handheld video camera where he’d first interrupted the rally by yelling, “What is a superpredator? What is a superpredator?”

Eventually, an elderly black man in glasses and a baseball cap approached the protester, took his hat off, and held it in the air, blocking Webber’s camera.

“Leave,” he told Webber. “Leave.”

“Stop touching me,” said Webber, an activist who has become a familiar figure on the campaign trail this year. “Identify yourself and stop touching me.”

“Just leave,” the man said.

“Stop touching me.”

“Just leave. Leave.”

Behind Webber, a group of reporters leaned over the ropeline. He turned toward the reporters, keeping one arm in the air, still holding the videocamera. “Hillary Clinton is not the person for the black man, I’ll tell you that much,” Webber said. “I don’t understand what black people want, but I know that she hasn’t supported black people in the past,” Webber told them. “You take a look at the quote…”

In front of him, the older man stood silent, still holding his hat to the camera.

For Williams, the superpredator language can’t be explained — not in a way that would make “someone want to vote” for Clinton. “I want to make sure that people know this is the kind of propaganda that was being passed around to slave catchers and to people in the antebellum South,” Williams said. She said she'd meet with Clinton if allowed to set the terms, but feared being co-opted by the campaign. “In that sense, I ain't with it,” she said. (Williams had also been contacted by a member of the Sanders campaign via Facebook, a source familiar with the communication said; ultimately, representatives for the Sanders campaign said they didn't work with her because they didn't want to be accused of planting her.)

As to whether she regrets that her protest encouraged others to seize on the remark, including those like Gillilan and Ferguson, Williams says no. “I've been asked a lot if I feel if I'm wrong, or if I feel like I'm taking it out of context, but I don’t feel like I'm taking anything out of context,” she said. “I knew that I was doing the right thing.”

“I really believe that we deserve an apology,” Williams added. “I believe all of the things I was telling her, all of things I was asking her so I think what helped me carry everything out was just standing in that truth and believing in myself, like, you belong here. You're supposed to ask her this. You're supposed to stand up in this way.”

Prosecutors have decided not to move forward with a battery case against Corey Lewandowski, who allegedly manhandled former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields. She reportedly is now exploring the possibility of a defamation lawsuit against both Trump and Lewandowski.

Joe Raedle / Getty Images

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Florida prosecutors have reportedly decided not to move forward with a battery case against Donald Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who was accused of manhandling a reporter.

The decision not to prosecute Lewandowski is expected to be announced Thursday afternoon by Palm Beach County State Attorney David Aronberg, Politico first reported. Aronberg did not immediately respond to a BuzzFeed News request for comment.

Lewandowski was charged with simple battery after allegedly grabbing Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields and nearly knocking her to the ground at a campaign event in Florida. A Washington Post reporter saw the incident and said Lewandowski was responsible.

Fields tweeted Wednesday that prosecutors approached her about a deal, and that she had been open to the idea.

View Entire List ›

Mark Wilson / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — A Democratic outside group is launching ads in five states, calling on vulnerable GOP senators and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring Judge Merrick Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court up for a vote.

Majority Forward, the non-profit arm of the Democratic super PAC focused on taking back control of the upper chamber, will run digital ads targeting McConnell in Kentucky, Sen. Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, Sen. Rob Portman in Ohio, Sen. Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, and Sen. Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania.

"Putting Washington politics over people, refusing to vote over the nominee, ignoring Ohioans and the constitution," the ad focused on Portman says. "We need the senator to do his job."

The pre-roll ads, which are backed by $350,000, will run on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other websites.

“When it comes to Merrick Garland’s nomination, Americans want senators to stop playing politics and start doing their jobs,” said Shripal Shah, a spokesman for Majority Forward. “It’s time for these senators to get to work and end their unprecedented, partisan obstructionism.”

Democrats have been attacking Republicans in swing states for not moving on Garland's nomination for weeks. Although several GOP lawmakers have agreed to meet with President Obama's nominee, still only two senators — Sens. Mark Kirk of Illinois and Susan Collins of Maine — have called for a vote.

A conservative group, Judicial Crisis Network, is launching its own digital ads on the issue in 10 states, Politico reported.

Eric Gay / AP

The fallout continued Wednesday after an attack by liberal groups on Julian Castro's progressive bonafides and qualifications to be vice president.

Earlier this week, progressive groups criticized Castro for a federal mortgage policy. Since then, BuzzFeed News has learned the criticism led one prominent Latino to resign from the board of a progressive group involved, and that the leading national coalition of Hispanic groups plans to kick out member organization Presente, for their part in ripping Castro.

Joe Velasquez, a former deputy political director in the Clinton administration, submitted his resignation letter from the board of American Family Voices (AFV), which was part of the coalition of groups that hit Castro for a HUD policy the groups argue is too friendly to financial institutions looking to buy distressed homes heading toward foreclosure.

Calling it "untenable" to continue serving on the board he was on for eight years, Velasquez denounced the attacks on Castro, called on America Family Voices to apologize, and argued that ties between Presente and the Sanders campaign fuel the belief that the criticism was part of a "political hatchet job."

The Sanders campaign on Tuesday denied having any part in the effort to discredit Castro.

The resignation came after Velasquez privately lobbied AFV founder Mike Lux to retract the comment and apologize in an email, obtained by BuzzFeed News.

"I apologize, I should have talked to you about it first. But it wasn't discriminatory and I was following the lead of Grijalva and Presente and Color of Change," Lux wrote. "I just think he has been wrong on the way he has handled distressed housing, has gone with Wall St. way too much on it."

With Grijalva and those groups leading the charge on the mortgage issue, Lux ultimately didn't think it was wrong to raise these issues. "It was wrong, however, not to talk it over with you first, and I am very sorry about that," Lux concluded.

"That’s what I think is the worst part of this," Velasquez said. "Every white guy thinks it's OK to jump in because a Hispanic organization is involved."

Two sources said the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda (NHLA), a coalition of 40 Latino groups, plans to kick out Presente for the attacks on Castro. The argument for doing so is that one of NHLA's stated purposes is to promote federal Hispanic appointments and the group is seen as subverting that agenda.

The decision comes after NHLA fielded complaints from outside progressives as well as Latinos on the boards of groups inside the coalition.

"This isn’t the first time they’ve played rough in the sandbox," said Brent Wilkes, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) executive director. He noted that Presente has attacked Cecilia Muñoz, National Council of La Raza, and his group. "If you’re a Latino organization, you should go after hatemongers and anti-immigrant groups, not fellow Latino advocates."

Matt Nelson of Presente said Hispanics lost two-thirds of their wealth during the housing crisis and are still trying to recover from the devastation it wrought. "The political landscape won’t accept progressivism in name only," Nelson said, referring to the climate that has buoyed Sanders insurgent candidacy. "In the instance of HUD, Mr. Castro has the power to improve the policy."

In the fierce pushback against Presente by established Latino groups, Nelson saw echoes of the criticism they received when they were one of the first to call President Obama the "deporter-in-chief."

"The usual political response is not to attack President Obama because he's progressive or a Democrat or Julian Castro because he's a Democrat or has done good things, but I don't think that's what Americans want," Nelson said, noting that 45 members of Congress signed on to Grijalva's letter to Castro.

Nelson disputed comments made by LULAC's Wilkes that Presente only has one employee (Nelson said the number is fewer than 10). He chose not to address that Presente is funded and its board controlled by Citizens Engagement Lab.

"The pushback on it has been that it's a Latino organization front group for a non-Latino organization going after Secretary Castro," Wilkes said.

NHLA declined to comment on its internal deliberations but said that it has always been supportive of Castro, releasing a statement in favor of his nomination to Obama's cabinet in May 2014 and recently sitting down with him after he accepted an invitation to discuss Latino issues on Feb. 26.

While Presente argued the issues it takes up are "inspired by our membership who tell us everyday what they are facing," Velasquez called the criticism a "smokescreen for fucking with Castro."

"They’re attacking one of our guys for stupid reasons and using poor people as a cover to do it," he said.

Marty Chavez, the former mayor of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and a board member of the Mexican American Legal Defense And Education Fund (MALDEF), which is part of NHLA, had his message for liberals.

“It’s not progressive to tear down Latino leaders," he said.

Joe Velasquez resignation letter from American Family Voices board:

Board, American Family Voices:

I regretfully tender my resignation from the Board of American Family Voices.

It’s untenable for me to serve on the Board of AFV after the organization contributed to the ad hominem attacks on a fellow Latino to disqualify him for consideration for Hillary Clinton’s VP; on the odd basis he’s not progressive enough. Julian Castro was born a progressive and he knows social injustice first hand. He has stronger progressive credentials than most of the signatories to the attack letter. But that aside, he’s one of the leading Latino leaders in the country. An attack on him is an attack on the Latino community.

Make no mistake; this is not a debate on the merits of the HUD regulation intended to protect poor homeowners. This is about the tactic these groups are using to further their own political agenda. Some observers believe this a blatant political hatchet job perpetrated by the Sanders campaign. The fact a top political aide to Senator Sanders was the former head of Presente, the sole Latino organization in the cabal, fuels that thinking. And it’s unfortunate Presente is active in this caper. They give the white people license to attack a progressive Latino.

It would be appropriate for the Board to make a public apology to the Secretary.

Respectfully.

Joe Velasquez

“We will have a battle on the floor.”

Carlo Allegri / Reuters

w.soundcloud.com

Ted Cruz says the Republican primary is likely now going to a contested Republican convention where he will most likely beat Donald Trump.

"What I believe is gonna happen, I think we are very likely to go to contested convention in Cleveland," Cruz said on the Michael Medved Show earlier this week. "If that happens, I'll come in with a ton of delegates, Donald will come in with a ton of delegates. We will have a battle on the floor and I think we are in a much stronger position to prevail to earn a majority of the delegates who are elected by the people."

Cruz remarked he'd then work to unify disaffected voters whose candidate lost at the convention for the November general.

"If that happens we're then gonna work very, very hard to bring of the other side who didn't prevail in the election to come together and unify," Cruz remarked.

In recent weeks, Cruz has won a number of nominating contests, including sweeping the delegates at the Colorado convention. Though many of the delegates are "bound" to support a candidate on the first ballot at the convention, on the second many are free to support any candidate they like.

Last month, Cruz was much more dismissive of the idea of a contested convention saying the way to beat Trump was at the ballot box.

“He could have run as a Democrat candidate for the nomination of the Democrat Party and switched a few positions here or there, but kept most of his positions, and riled up the fears of people by talking about immigrants are criminals and rapists, roused our fears.”

Neil (far left) with the squad.

Reuters Photographer / Reuters

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According to Neil Bush, Donald Trump could have run as a Democrat and been just as popular.

The brother of George W. Bush and Jeb Bush has started doing media appearances on the behalf of Ted Cruz in recent weeks since backing the Texas senator after his brother left the race. Neil Bush

"Donald Trump, is — first of all, I don't think he's a Republican, honestly," Bush said speaking on Frankly Speaking a weekday mornings radio show in upstate New York on 1450 WENY. "He could have run as a Democrat candidate for the nomination of the Democrat Party and switched a few positions here or there, but kept most of his positions, and riled up the fears of people by talking about immigrants are criminals and rapists, roused our fears and said that China's beating us and Mexico's — all these kind of ludicrous statements — and he would have been just as popular on the Democrat side as is on the Republican side."

Bush said he believed Trump didn't represented the values of this country.

"The values of Donald Trump are not the values of the United States of America," continued Bush, saying he didn't represented upstate New York and Trump's rhetoric was the reason he backed Cruz.

"Trump is all about self, maybe that's what New York City is like, you know, it's kind of you have to have a little arrogance, a little cockiness, a little kind of a bully type attitude to be a good New Yorker like Donald Trump," stated Bush. "But that values of the people that are ultimately gonna elect the president of the United States."

Mike Segar / Reuters

Anti-Donald Trump forces in the Republican Party have recently made significant gains in their quest to deny Trump the nomination. But don’t expect a big effort in New York.

Instead, campaigns and outside groups are largely holding their fire, ruling out a major campaign as a poor use of resources when Trump is likely to dominate his delegate-rich home state.

“We have to maximize where we get the biggest impact per delegate and New York isn’t it,” said Tim Miller, communications director of Our Principles PAC, a super PAC launched in 2016 to oppose Trump’s candidacy. (Miller said on Thursday he meant biggest impact per dollar.)

“We assumed his ability to get the delegates out of New York as part of the strategy for preventing him to get to 1,237,” Miller said.

Miller said the group has no plans to make large TV buys in New York’s expensive media markets, but that if they identify congressional districts that could be swayed by targeted digital buys, mail, and phone calls, they may do that.

Other outside groups, like Liz Mair’s Make America Awesome PAC, have made small buys, but also don’t have plans to mount large-scale opposition to Trump in New York.

“New York is tricky for a variety of reasons,” Mair said. “It’s demographically a very complex state, it’s very diverse, it’s big, it’s expensive, it’s his home state.”

“We don’t have 15 million to spend, first of all,” Mair said. “Our attitude has always been that our job is to prevent Donald Trump from amassing every single delegate that he can conceivably be deprived of.”

The relative inactivity comes on the heels of a successful showing in Wisconsin, where Ted Cruz won by 13 points and where outside groups were very active. Our Principles PAC, for example, spent $2 million on broadcast and cable TV advertising there. And the Trump campaign has showed itself to be woefully underprepared for the delegate fights taking place at state conventions around the country — last weekend, he won zero delegates in Colorado.

That kind of money, though, doesn’t go as far in New York. A major GOP donor who gives to several groups with New York connections also said that many anti-Trump donors see taking on the real estate mogul in his home state as a waste of their money. “These are not stupid people. The only compelling reason would be to keep that narrative going that Trump’s campaign is in mess right now. But given how far ahead Trump is in New York, why would you spend there?”

“If you look overall at the New York map, Donald Trump is clearly in a good position on his home turf,” said Rory Cooper, senior adviser to the #NeverTrump PAC, which is currently running a digital ad in New York City attacking Trump for his use of post-9/11 recovery money. “Factor that in with the resources it takes to run a broad campaign in New York and look at opportunities down the road” in Maryland, Delaware and other states, Cooper said, and “It makes sense to prioritize that” over New York. Cooper said the #NeverTrump PAC was likely to do advertising focusing on strategic voting in districts where the PAC believes Cruz or Kasich could hold Trump under the threshhold.

“Anything short of a sweep [for Trump] is moving us in the right direction,” Cooper said.

The pro-Kasich super PAC New Day for America is airing two controversial ads targeting Cruz and Trump in New York, but both are part of seven-figure buy that includes Pennsylvania. Cruz is running a radio ad attacking New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, and the pro-Cruz Trusted Leadership PAC is running an anti-Kasich ad upstate.

Kellyanne Conway, who runs Keep the Promise 1, one of the pro-Cruz super PACs associated with Trusted Leadership, said her group was spending $500,000 in New York and emphasized their anti-Kasich activities. "Kasich has been living in NY and should be doing better in NY and simply is not," Conway said. "So we see vulnerability and opportunity there."

"Looking ahead, we plan to be continuously active in the upcoming contests, slicing and dicing states like MD that award proportionally, and going deep into PA, NE, WV, IN and CA. Our dual track has us fighting for delegates now - in primaries, caucuses and conventions, through radio, TV and digital ads and ground game, and preparing for a contested convention in Cleveland," Conway said.

Trump’s lead in the state is overwhelming enough (polls have him up by as much as 35 points) that none of his competitors are aiming to win the state. Instead, Cruz and John Kasich are trying to identify and target enough likely Republican primary voters to snatch delegates away from Trump where they can.

New York’s primary does hold some potential when every delegate matters: The state assigns three delegates for each congressional district; if a candidate does not win 50% of a district’s vote, then the delegates are split. In parts of state — like New York City, where there are few registered Republicans — small numbers of voters could help push Cruz or Kasich to win one or two delegates here and there. In a state where Cruz and Kasich are polling equally, though, it may be tougher for anti-Trump voters to know which candidate they should consolidate around.

“With it being Trump’s home state, and right now we’re fighting a two front battle with Kasich and Trump, our evaluation has become far more targeted in terms of our approach there,” said a senior Cruz aide. “There was never an ambitious plan for New York, it was always Trump’s home state.”

“Going back to post-Arizona, we did not expect to probably win as many delegates as we have,” the aide said. “What’s sort of unexpected is we’re a little further along” than anticipated.

The aide added that the campaign is “targeting individual districts, maybe some in Long Island, some upstate.”

Both Cruz and Kasich spent time, for instance, in the Bronx, where there are only about 46,000 registered Republicans in a borough where 1.4 million people reside.

They’ve also moved on to campaigning in other states. Cruz, for his part, campaigned in Pennsylvania on Wednesday after two days off the trail.

Days before the New York primary, Kasich spent Wednesday in Maryland, which doesn’t hold its primary until April 26. But anti-Trump groups and campaigns believe they have a better shot at getting a portion of the state’s 38 delegates and in keeping Trump from getting closer to securing the 1,237 delegates he needs for the nomination, especially given the fact that Maryland’s popular Republican governor, Larry Hogan, is a Trump critic. (The latest Monmouth and Marist polls show Trump with a double-digit lead in the state.)

Despite the polling disadvantage in that state too, Kasich told voters “to think about what this Republican Party is offering” and contrast it with his campaign, as he made the case that that they could help him enter a contested convention with a higher delegate count.

“We’re going to an open convention,” Kasich said at a town hall on Wednesday in Savage, Md. “It’s all about accumulating delegates and the fact is they’re going … to try to figure who actually can win in the fall.”

Even some in the crowd, however, doubted that Maryland could do much to help those against Trump. “We don’t have that many delegates, unfortunately,” said Michael Kogut, an architect who attended the Kasich event in Savage. “We’re not California.”

Chris Schrimpf, a spokesman for Kasich, said the campaign had spent two weeks all over New York and was not holding fire like the rest of the anti-Trump groups. “It is inexplicable that the ‘Never Trump’ movement is apparently ceding the state and over 90 delegates to Trump. That strategy doesn't make any sense. Fortunately we aren't following their strategy.”

A spokesperson for the Cruz campaign declined to comment.

But some argue the campaigns and the outside groups don’t appear to be trying as hard as they can to reach registered Republicans in New York.

“I should be somebody that is targeted,” said Susan Del Percio, a Republican strategist in New York who has worked for Rudy Giuliani and Andrew Cuomo, on Tuesday. “I am a prime Republican voter in Manhattan. I literally just got my first voter contact, from Trump.”

Del Percio said it was to be expected that there isn’t an extensive air war in New York, considering the expense. But “what we should be hearing a lot more about is direct voter contact from the candidates.” It’s more surprising that there hasn’t been more of that, Del Percio said, than it is that anti-Trump outside groups haven’t been more active, given their focus is more on television ad buys.

Ed Cox, the chairman of the state Republican Party, said there is “a lot of campaigning to do in a short period so I’m not surprised there are opportunities [the candidates] haven’t taken yet.”

“In a short period of time it has really been each of the candidates in his own way out here finding where they can pick up delegates in specific congressional districts,” Cox said, adding that a competitive Republican primary in New York is unusual and that the state party had been in contact with all three campaigns to assist them with various aspects of the process.

Cox noted that the Trump campaign has raised expectations for how many delegates they’ll gain out of New York — “his people have set a high bar for themselves here.”

“Because from a religious standpoint and as a hypothetical question, posed the way it was posed, a lot of people thought that was a very good, a very good answer.”

Eduardo Munoz Alvarez / Getty Images

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Donald Trump said on Wednesday that many people thought that his widely criticized comment — if abortion were illegal, women who get them should be punished — in a March interview with Chris Mathews was a "very good answer" "from a religious standpoint."

In a March 30 town hall with MSNBC's Chris Mathews, Trump said, "There has to be some form of punishment" for women who get abortions, garnering immediate criticism from all sides of the political debate, including strong objections from a wide array of pro-life groups.

Trump's campaign later released a statement saying that the Republican frontrunner did not believe that women should be punished for getting abortions, part of a three-day period where Trump articulated several positions on the issue.

On Wednesday on The Tom Bauerle Show on New York radio, the host asked why Trump agreed to be interview by Mathews and why he did not have a "better answer ready for the inevitable question on abortion."

"First of all, from a religious standpoint, you know — and as you know, I redefined that answer — but many people, very religious people, thought that, because it was a hypothetical question, and they thought that answer was a very good answer," Trump replied. "Because from a religious standpoint and as a hypothetical question, posed the way it was posed, a lot of people thought that was a very good, a very good answer."

"I wanted to pull it back, because I thought it was too strong an answer actually. And I did pull it back. And it's been, I haven't heard about, frankly, since you mentioned it right now," he continued, adding that he has "never had a problem with Chris Mathews."

In the interview, Trump also commented on his propensity for tweeting controversial things, saying that "every once in a while you hit a clinker."

"You know, I've been good at social media," Trump said. "Now, you give out hundreds of tweets and some retweets and every once in a while you hit a clinker. And that can happen. But that can happen with life."

“We can learn a lot from the Bible, that I can tell you.”

Aaron Josefczyk / Reuters

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Donald Trump said in a radio interview on Thursday that his favorite teaching in the Bible is the Old Testament punishment of an "eye for eye."

"Is there a favorite Bible verse or Bible story that has informed your thinking or your character through life, sir?" asked host Bob Lonsberry on WHAM 1180 AM.

Trump responded, "Well, I think many. I mean, when we get into the Bible, I think many, so many. And some people, look, an eye for an eye, you can almost say that. That's not a particularly nice thing. But you know, if you look at what's happening to our country, I mean, when you see what's going on with our country, how people are taking advantage of us, and how they scoff at us and laugh at us. And they laugh at our face, and they're taking our jobs, they're taking our money, they're taking the health of our country. And we have to be firm and have to be very strong. And we can learn a lot from the Bible, that I can tell you."