Victoria Jones created and edits Quick Morning News. She is chief White House correspondent with Washington DC-based Talk Media News, where her insight and analysis are made available to over 400 news talk radio stations around the country and internationally.
• House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis) isn’t running for president. He will not allow his name to be put in for the nomination – and he won’t accept the nomination. “I would encourage
[delegates] to put in place a rule that says you can only nominate someone who actually ran for the job,” Ryan said Tuesday afternoon at a presser at the Republican National Committee HQ (hmmm – Rubio?)
• Ryan took himself out of the running a year ago, but rumors persisted, as he also swore off running for speaker last fall after John Boehner resigned. With speculation swirling after his recent trip to the Middle East, Ryan said, “Let me be clear. I do not want, nor will I accept, the Republican nomination.” (oookaay) But wait. He wasn’t done
• “Let me speak directly to the delegates on this: If no candidate has a majority on the first ballot, I believe you should only choose a person who actually participated in the primary,” Ryan said. “Count me out. I simply believe that if you want to be the nominee – to be the president – you should actually run for it. Therefore, I should not be considered. Period.” (not even?)
• His announcement leaves Republicans without perhaps their most viable alternative if no one is able to secure the 1,237 delegates needed to become the nominee in early rounds. Ryan went on to dismiss the theory that he will eventually cave and accept the nomination, bowing to pressure as his did with the speaker’s gig (bad track record, man)
• “Apples and oranges,” (both fruits…) Ryan said. “Speaker of the House is a far cry from being president of the United States. I was already in the House. I am already a congressman. … That is entirely different than getting the nomination for president of the United States by your party without even running for the job.” “Not running does not mean I am going to disappear.” (aha!)
• Donald Trump’s message: The election is being stolen from him. “These are dirty tricksters,” Trump complained at a rally in Rome, NY, Tuesday evening, blaming the Republican National Committee. “They should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this kind of crap to happen.” (going into a deal without doing the research?)
• Trump went further later during a CNN town hall. “The RNC doesn’t like this happening. They don’t like that I’m putting up my own money because it means they don’t have any control over me,” Trump said, arguing that the deck is “stacked against me by the establishment.” (probably some truth to that)
• In an emailed statement, Sean Spicer, RNC’s chief strategist and spox, said, “Each state and territory submitted a plan on how to allocate and select their delegates last year. Those plans were made available to every campaign. Understanding the delegate selection and allocation is a basic part of the campaign.” (slam – pow – ouch)
• Sen Ted Cruz (R-Texas) blasted rival Trump in a radio interview with Glenn Beck Tuesday, accusing the GOP front-runner of being a bully, inciting violence and using dirty tricks to intimidate voters and delegates. “Donald’s whole pitch is he’s a great businessman,” Cruz said. “It appears he can’t run a lemonade stand.” (Cruz is having a goo-ood time right now)
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• Cruz conceded Trump will do well in New York and other upcoming primaries. Cruz said he’ll fare better when the race shifts back west, including to California. “If and when the people of California vote against Donald Trump, he’s going to scream that they’re stealing the election,” Cruz said. “Apparently when anyone votes against him it’s an act of theft.”
• Cruz unloaded on Trump over reports that his supporters were publishing the home addresses of delegates in Colorado and threatening to make public the hotel room numbers of delegates at the convention. “Donald needs to understand he’s not Michael Corleone. Donald needs to stop threatening the voters. He needs to stop threatening the delegates. He is not a mobster,” Cruz said
• Meanwhile, Gov John Kasich (R-Ohio) on Tuesday urged voters at the Women’s National Republican Club in Manhattan to reject what he called “the path to darkness” in this year’s election. “This path solves nothing,” Kasich said. “It demeans our history, it weakens our country and it cheapens each one of us.” (Kasich trying to be the shining light in the darkness)
• Without naming his rivals, Kasich drew a sharp distinction in terms of tone and policy. He slammed candidates who take advantage of voters’ fears to “feed their own insatiable desires for fame or attention.” That could drive America down into a ditch and not make us great again,” Kasich said, echoing Trump’s campaign slogan
• Hillary Clinton’s spox on Tuesday accused rival Bernie Sanders of seeking to pick off superdelegates. “Really, I think when you talk about rigging the system, that’s what Sen Sanders is trying to do now,” Brian Fallon said on CNN. “Hillary Clinton has won in the popular vote by a wide margin. She’s got more than 2 million votes over Sen Sanders in all the contests.” (friends w/ Trump?)
• Meanwhile, Clinton said, on Equal Pay Day: “If talking about equal pay and paid family leave and more opportunities for women and their children is playing the gender card, then deal me in.” “The last time I checked, there is no discount for being a woman.” Clinton spoke during a roundtable on equal pay in New York
• Sanders’s campaign dredged up Clinton’s 2007 opposition to New York granting driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants. “It’s easy now in 2016 to support DREAMers, it is easy to say, ‘Yes, I support immigration reform,’ but leadership does not come from changing positions just for the sake of a political climate, said Cesar Vargas, Sanders’ director of Latino outreach
• “The reality is Sec Clinton as my U.S senator and as a candidate who ran for president, she has demonstrated she not only does not understand the urgency of immigrant families and what they go through, she’s not a champion when we need a leader.” (meanwhile, Sanders is getting ready to head to the Vatican for an environmental conference on Friday)
• The push comes just one week before the pivotal New York primary next Tuesday, and as Clinton and Sanders both push to make inroads with the minority communities in the state. Clinton has historically done better with minority voters, but a new poll found them effectively tied with Hispanic Democrats nationally – (pretty much tied generally)
• Watch: Was this skit featuring Hillary Clinton, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio and Leslie Odom Jr, a black actor who plays Aaron Burr in “Hamilton, racially insensitive? Clinton takes the stage at a gala and teases de Blasio for being late to endorse her. “Sorry, Hillary, I was running on CP time.” Ref to “colored people” time? “I don’t like jokes like that, Bill,” Odom says – in on it. Clinton: “Cautious politician time. I’ve been there.” Social media/media didn’t like it. You decide (AP, me)
• Merrick Garland, President Obama’s Supreme Court selection, failed to persuade Senate Judiciary Committee chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) during a private breakfast meeting Tuesday, held in the Senate dining room, to hold confirmation hearings on his nomination (well, Grassley had already made up his mind and the Mitch McConnell woodshed awaited…)
• “As he indicated last week, Grassley explained why the Senate won’t be moving forward during this hyper-partisan election year,” Grassley’s office said in a statement. Meeting was “cordial and pleasant.” Grassley two decades ago sought to block Garland’s nomination to the federal appeals court on which he currently serves as chief judge (very pleasant, then)
• Grassley, who is up for reelection and who has the power as Judiciary chair to convene confirmation hearings, has come under pressure in DC and Iowa for refusing to do so. Grassley never seemed entirely comfortable with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky) all-out blocking effort, but signed a written pledge not to act on the nomination
• The WH released a letter written by 15 former presidents of the American Bar Assn to Senate leaders urging a timely hearing and a vote. The former ABA leaders said since the 1980s, every Supreme Court appointee until now had been given a hearing and vote within 100 days of being nominated
• Democrats, meanwhile, gleefully released news coverage that the Ritual Cafe coffee shop in Des Moines, Iowa, was renaming menu items after the owner was approached by liberal groups. Listings included Obstruction Oats, oatmeal topped with hemp nuts; Garland Granola; and the Justice Delayed Bowl, which was steamed eggs roasted with peppers and olives (ewww)
• President Obama will convene his national security council at CIA headquarters in Virginia this afternoon “to review our efforts to degrade and destroy ISIL and advance prospects for peace and stability in Syria.” This comes as fighting has increased in Syria ahead of planned peace talks
• Gov Pat McCrory (R) of North Carolina, whose state has been the subject of withering criticism since its legislature passed a law limiting bathroom use by transgender people and eliminating anti-discrimination protections for gay and transgender people, on Tuesday retreated from his full-throated defense of the measure (money, money, money)
• But he stopped short of opposing limits on bathroom access and left other elements of the law intact. He signed an executive order altering the equal employment policy for state workers to cover discrimination claims related to sexual orientation and gender identity. He said he would urge lawmakers to reverse course and allow people to bring discrimination cases in state court
• “I have listened to the people of North Carolina, and the people of North Carolina are entitled to both privacy and equality,” McCrory, who is seeking reelection this fall, said as he announced the executive order (which is a bait and switch that does basically nothing much to fix the law and is designed to fool businesses/tourists into coming, staying – or coming back)
• The effects of McCrory’s order are modest. The most disputed provision of the law, which limited bathroom access for transgender people, will stand. The ACLU of North Carolina immediately criticized the order, calling it a “poor effort to save face after his sweeping attacks on the LGBT community, and they fall far short of correcting the damage done.”
• The sponsor of a Tennessee transgender bathroom bill told a state Senate committee Tuesday that he wants another day to consider an opinion from the state AG that more than $1.2 billion in federal education funding could be placed at risk if the measure becomes law. CMT country music TV station and parent company Viacom have come out against the bill (AP)
• The North Carolina law, which state legislators pursued after Charlotte, the state’s largest city, approved new legal protections for transgender people, prohibits people from using bathrooms that don’t match the sex listed on their birth certificates – it’s an anti-discrimination law, but without specific protections based on sexual orientation or gender identity (so not really, then)
• More than 130 corporate CEOs signed a letter urging repeal of the law. PayPal said that it would abandon plans for a global ops center in the state, the NBA suggested it could move its 2017 All-Star Game. Tuesday, Deutsche Bank said it wasn’t bringing in 250 new jobs. In Charlotte, tourism officials said organizers of at least four major events had canceled because of the law
• The Obama admin has argued that gay, lesbian and transgender people are protected by federal laws forbidding sex discrimination. Some federal agencies, including Education and Transportation Depts, have been studying whether the law makes the state ineligible for the billions of aid dollars it receives each year (here we go)
• The measure is also the subject of a lawsuit, and McCrory’s general election opponent, AG Roy Cooper, has declined to defend the law in federal court. McCrory previously argued that out-of-state interests and media were stripping the law of its context and complained of a “vicious, nationwide smear campaign.”
• President Obama will decide whether to declassify 28 pages of sealed docs – which some suspect show a Saudi connection to the 9/11 attacks – within 60 days, according to former Sen Bob Graham (D-Fla), who co-chaired the joint congressional investigation into the attacks. Graham said the WH had informed him a decision would be made in one to two months (Fox News)
• In his speech Tuesday commemorating the designation of a new national monument in DC honoring women’s equality, President Obama said: “I want young girls and boys to come here 10, 20, 100 years from now to know that women fought for equality, it was not just given to them. I want them to come here and be astonished that there was ever a time when women could not vote.”
• Obama made his remarks at the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument, which served as the headquarters of the National Woman’s Party since 1929. “I want them to be astonished that there was ever a time when women earned less than men for doing the same work.”
• Obama, speaking on Equal Pay Day, then said: I want them to be astonished that there was ever a time when women were vastly outnumbered in the boardroom or in Congress, that there was ever a time when a woman had never sat in the Oval Office.” Obama hasn’t endorsed a candidate in the Democratic primary – though he has praised Hillary Clinton
• Obama called equal pay for equal work “a simple idea, a simple principle” but “one where we still fall short,” noting that the “gap is even wider for women of color.” “Congress needs to pass the paycheck fairness act.” To applause, he added, “I’m not here just to say we should close the wage gap. I’m here to say we will close the wage gap.”
Obama praised suffragist Alice Paul as a “brilliant strategist” and recalled the daily picketing of the WH to demand women’s suffrage. “They were mocked; they were derided; they were beaten,” he said. But they prevailed. “Today, I am very proud to designate it [Sewall-Belmont House] as America’s newest national monument.”
• The National Weather Service announced Tuesday on Twitter that beginning 1 May: “@NOAA’S NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE FORECASTS WILL STOP YELLING AT YOU.” In other words, it will start phasing out using all caps – which it’s been doing since – – – 1849… (NYT, me)
