Donald Trump is stumbling ahead of Wisconsin’s primaries.
- Donald Trump is polling worse than any politician in three decades
- John Kasich fights for his campaign in Wisconsin
- Trump is going through one of the toughest stretches of his campaign
- Trump’s support among women is on the decline
Feel the Burn: A play on Bernie Sanders’ slogan becomes an ad promoting STD testing
With some sexually transmitted diseases on the rise locally and nationally, a local AIDS advocacy group is turning to a popular political phrase to get out the message on safe sex.
The AIDS Healthcare Foundation has new billboards across Los Angeles with the phrase “Feel the Burn?,” a play on the Bernie Sanders campaign slogan “Feel the Bern.”
The billboards have some motorists doing double takes -- but that is the purpose.
When it comes to foreign policy, Donald Trump ‘doesn’t know much,’ Obama says
President Obama put it simply when it comes to Donald Trump’s nuclear know-how: The Republican “doesn’t know much.”
Closing out a two-day nuclear security summit in Washington, D.C., Obama was asked Friday about Donald Trump’s recent comments suggesting that, rather than rely as they have for decades on the American nuclear umbrella in the face of regional threats, Japan and South Korea might be better off seeking their own nuclear weapons.
Such comments “tell us that the person who made the statements doesn’t know much about foreign policy, or nuclear policy, or the Korean peninsula, or the world generally,” Obama said at an evening news conference.
Obama called America’s alliances with Japan and South Korea “one of the cornerstones of our presence in the Asia-Pacific region,” responsible for much of the peace and prosperity of the region that benefits the U.S. economy, and has at its roots Americans’ sacrifices in World War II.
“You don’t mess with that,” he said. “We don’t want someone in the Oval Office who doesn’t recognize how important that is.”
Rather than react to Trump specifically, as he has been willing to before, Obama spoke generally about the fact that other world leaders have raised concerns about some of the more unorthodox policy statements from candidates.
“What we do is really important to the rest of the world,” Obama said. “Even those countries that are used to a carnival atmosphere in their own politics want sobriety and clarity when it comes to U.S. elections.”
John Kasich has won one primary. But he’s going to campaign hard in California anyway
Republican presidential candidate John Kasich is hiring staff and looking for office space in California in preparation for the state’s June 7 primary, according to his new California co-chairman.
“His team is mobilizing out here. They’re going to make a big push here,” said developer Rick Caruso, who signed on to the Ohio governor’s presidential campaign this week.
Caruso, the billionaire behind developments such as the Grove, said he met with the all of the Republican candidates but avoided backing anyone early to allow the field to settle. He decided to join Kasich’s campaign because he believes he is the sole candidate left in the race who can compete with Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton and because his resume includes work as a governor, as a congressman and in the private sector.
“He can win, and he’s the best candidate and he’ll make the best president,” Caruso said. “There are two boxes – who actually has the experience and could do a really good job, and two, who can win. The only person who can check those two boxes is John Kasich.”
Caruso predicted no GOP candidate would win the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination by the end of the state contests, and that Kasich ultimately would be picked as the nominee at the Republican National Convention.
In the delegate count and the polls, Kasich is a distant third behind front-runner Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. The only state he has won is his home state of Ohio.
In California, Kasich has the support of 12% of GOP voters, trailing Trump and Cruz by double digits, in a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll.
Caruso argued that once the state’s voters got to know Kasich, his message would resonate with them.
“He’s going to play very well here. First of all, he’s much more moderate on social issues,” Caruso said. “The California Republican base, I think for the first time, has someone they can rally behind, and your vote does matter for the first time in many years. I think there is going to be a big outpouring” of support for Kasich.
Ted Cruz to address California Republicans
Presidential candidate Ted Cruz will address California Republicans at their April convention, party officials announced Friday.
The Texas senator will speak to hundreds of the party’s leaders and most passionate activists at a luncheon on April 30.
“This year we have an opportunity to return to the founding principles of our nation -- free markets, fiscal responsibility and individual liberty,” Cruz said in a statement. “I’m excited to speak to California Republican delegates, activists and voters about how we can get our country back on track.”
The other two Republican candidates still in the race -- businessman Donald Trump and Ohio Gov. John Kasich -- have also been invited to the three-day gathering in Burlingame.
The announcement comes as California’s June 7 primary has grown increasingly important in the presidential race.
The late date was expected to make the contest an afterthought in the GOP nomination fight, but the divided nature of the electorate means that California will likely be key in determining whether Trump can win the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination before the party’s national convention.
A new poll by USC and the Los Angeles Times finds that Trump leads Cruz, 37% to 30%, among the state’s registered Republican voters, but that his lead shrinks to one percentage point among likely GOP voters.
Among the Republican candidates, Cruz is by far the best organized in California. He started signing up volunteers in the state last summer. He visited the state this week, raising money in Orange County, rallying potential delegates and appearing on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
More people need to feel progress of Obama years, Bill Clinton says
While stumping for his wife at Lawrence University on Friday, Bill Clinton said too many people haven’t shared in the progress made under President Obama.
The former president’s comments came as he was rattling off the accomplishments that Obama cited in his last State of the Union speech, such as expanded healthcare and reduced unemployment.
Clinton said, “That’s all true. The only problem is, too many people can’t find themselves in that pretty picture he’s painting. That’s what this election is about. How do we put everybody in the picture? How do we all rise together?”
Earlier in his speech, Clinton said government needs to do more to help coal miners who lose their jobs as the country shifts toward cleaner sources of energy.
“The coal miners and their families didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. “We, as a country, have done a terrible job of helping people in coal country make a transition.”
His wife, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, raised eyebrows last month with her impolitic remark that “we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business” in the fight against climate change.
Students are standing up for Trump
Hunkered behind a MacBook decorated with stickers that read “This laptop was brought to you by capitalism” and “TRUMP 2016,” Jake Lopez bounces T-shirt slogans off his friend Ian McIlvoy.
“Trumplicans,” he says, nodding with satisfaction. “I think it’ll take off.”
Lopez is the California director of Students for Trump. Working from his dorm at Westmont College, he helps marshal the thousands of students who are pounding out phone calls, taping up fliers and blanketing Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat in an effort to persuade their peers that Donald Trump is the man.
Donald Trump’s unprecedented unpopularity
For months, as Donald Trump lurched from controversy to controversy, commentators marveled that his voters remained loyal: Trump is impervious to political attack, some said.
Not so. Trump wasn’t immune; analysts were just failing to look at the whole board.
Controversy over Trump has failed to dent his standing with his core supporters in the Republican primaries, but his image among the rest of the electorate has plunged.
Bernie Sanders tops fundraising record with $44 million in March
Bernie Sanders’ campaign said it had another record-breaking month in March with $44 million in donations.
On Friday, Sanders’ campaign announced that its total for the month topped the $43.5 raised in February and brings his first-quarter campaign contributions to about $109 million. Sanders touts that his donations come mostly from small, grass-roots contributors.
“What this campaign is doing is bringing together millions of people contributing an average of just $27 each to take on a billionaire class which is so used to buying elections,” Sanders said in a statement.
Hillary Clinton still leads Sanders in the delegate race heading into Tuesday’s primary in Wisconsin.
In New York, Sanders drags Clinton back into battle
Hillary Clinton has tried ignoring Bernie Sanders, she has tried embracing him, she has tried co-opting him. And now she is returning to wrangling with him as the Vermont senator rattles her campaign in New York, a state where a loss for Clinton would create a fresh round of problems for the Democratic presidential front-runner.
In the place both candidates can claim as home -- Sanders was born there and Clinton represented New York in the Senate – the underdog is digging in, using his vast resources to rally one of the more liberal electorates of the race to make a defiant stand for Democratic socialism.
On Thursday evening, a diverse crowd of about 18,500 showed up to cheer for Sanders in the South Bronx, a show of force that undermined Clinton’s argument that he lacks appeal among the African American and Latino voters crucial to winning in November.
Later that night, the Sanders campaign announced that it had a record fundraising month in March, hauling in an eye-popping $44 million in a month during which the candidate’s electoral losses have put the nomination almost out of his reach.
All that money will create headaches for Clinton leading up to voting on April 19, creating competition in an expensive media market her campaign had initially not expected to have to work hard to win.
Clinton’s strategy came into focus Thursday as she took the gloves back off and starting swinging.
Clinton tangled with pro-Sanders protesters from the podium at a suburban college not far from her hometown. She accused Sanders of not showing enough outrage over GOP front-runner Donald Trump’s remark, since rescinded, that women who receive abortions should be punished if the procedure is banned.
She angrily scolded a Greenpeace activist about what she described as lies propagated by the Sanders campaign when the activist confronted her about campaign contributions from people who work in the fossil fuel industry.
By Friday, Clinton was off to Syracuse with plans to highlight her work as a senator in helping revive manufacturing companies upstate – and to take more shots at Sanders.
Unlike Sanders, who has served in Congress longer than she has, Clinton “actually has a real history on supporting manufacturing and manufacturers,” Clinton advisor Jake Sullivan said in a call with reporters.
“Unlike her opponent, she actually has a real strategy for how to create the good paying jobs of the future and not just re-fight battles from 20 years ago.”
Cruz has a joke for Trump on April Fools’ Day
Ted Cruz and Rick Astley teamed up on Friday to profess a truth to Donald Trump — he’s never gonna give him up.
As an April Fools’ Day prank, the Texas senator tweeted a video link joking that Trump accepted his invitation to debate anywhere, anytime. It cuts together images of Cruz asking the GOP presidential front-runner to go one-on-one and Trump refusing — and then in comes Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.”
Of course, it’s a day of pranks, so, no, Trump did not in fact accept Cruz’s invitation.
John Kasich is fighting to avoid being the presidential campaign’s one-hit wonder
It’s no longer Mr. Nice Guy for John Kasich, at least by his relentlessly sunny standard during this presidential campaign.
Shortly after kicking off one of his typical town hall meetings here, the Ohio governor launched into a criticism of what he called Donald Trump’s “absurd” plan to ban Muslim immigration. Then he flew east to tee off on the Republican front-runner on Trump’s home turf of Manhattan.
“He is really not prepared to be president of the United States,” Kasich said Thursday.
In a campaign marred by mudslinging, Kasich’s criticisms were mild, but they nonetheless represent an ongoing shift for a candidate who has struggled to gain traction with Republican voters and whose string of losses leave open the question of why he persists in running.
“I’m still here,” he said this week. “Maybe you’ll warm up to me.”
Kasich, who’s won nowhere except his home state, appears all but assured to lose Wisconsin’s primary on Tuesday, and trails in polls in New York and Pennsylvania, which vote in late April.