Politics
MARCH 28, 2016
WASHINGTON
The Most Unorthodox Campaign in Political History
Inside the pink-marble lobby of Trump Tower, tourists were snapping pictures of the giant waterfall that ripples down the wall of the atrium, while a visiting high-school brass band played in the “Trump Parlor.” At the welcome desk, copies of Trump’s book Crippled America were for sale alongside placards that read make america great again! and the silent majority stands with trump. Security guys patrolled everywhere. The place is a microcosm of Trump’s campaign thus far: cheesy, quaint, and menacing.
I was well aware that Trump runs a bare-bones operation, but college-newspaper offices have more robust infrastructure than his national campaign headquarters—to say nothing of Hillary Clinton’s 80,000-square-foot headquarters in Brooklyn Heights. As I tried to square all this in my mind, Hope Hicks strode over in five-inch heels. “He’s ready for you.” We took the elevator to the 26th floor. “It’s been so crazy,” she said. “I haven’t really been home since Thanksgiving.”
A guard outside Trump’s executive suite waved a wand over me before opening the locked doors. Trump stood and shook my hand, wearing his usual uniform: crisp navy suit and bright-red tie. Not surprisingly, given the state of the race — this was a few days after Trump trounced Marco Rubio in Florida — his mood was good, boastful even. “So much for the face of the Republican Party—that’s the end of that!” he said of Rubio. “He was going to be president. By the way, Jeb Bush was going to be president. Walker was going to be president. They were all going to be president, except for the fact I got in their way!” Continue Reading →
Reading The Polls 
PHOTO: Jabin Botsford / Washington Post
E.J. DIONNE JR / WASHINGTON POST
The evidence is in, and it shows that the dominant media narratives about 2016 are wrong. Our country is not roiled with across-the-board discontent, and Donald Trump is not the most important voice in our politics. Turmoil in one of our political parties is being misread as reflecting a deep crisis well beyond its boundaries.
The most revealing and underplayed development of the week is Gallup’s finding that President Obama’s approval rating hit 53 percent (not once, but three times). This was its highest level since April 2013. If the people of the United States had lost all confidence in their institutions, the president wouldn’t be enjoying such a surge in popularity. Continue Reading →
SIFTING AND WINNOWING 
HIllary Clinton does some quick shpping on State Street, in Madison, Wisconsin. PHOTO: John Hart / Wisconsin State Journal
Hillary Clinton urges voters to think of Supreme Court pick
Molly Beck / Wisconsin State Journal
TECHNOLOGY
Words of warning — not celebration — in Silicon Valley after FBI ends Apple fight
DAVE PARESH / LOS ANGELES TIMES That legal mess between the FBI and Apple over the last two months? The tech world wants to make sure it doesn’t happen again. The FBI’s declaration Monday that it could hack into an iPhone without Apple’s help — a device the agency had insisted carried security measures only the tech giant could defeat — at least temporarily ends the clash between Washington and Silicon Valley.
Though a momentary reprieve for Apple and its peers, the tech industry’s reaction to the FBI’s decision contained more warning than celebration.
Perhaps with good reason: The FBI’s move to dismiss legal actions against Apple in the investigation of the San Bernardino attack does little to settle the heated back-and-forth between law enforcement agencies seeking to expand their crime-fighting toolbox and tech firms fearful of being compelled to work at the behest of the government, executives and experts said. Continue Reading →
LEADERSHIP
President Harry Truman, in 1945. (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)
U.S.leadership matters today, just as it did after World War II
FRED HIATT / WASHINGTON POST
What would the world look like today if Harry Truman or Dwight Eisenhower had shared the foreign policy inclinations of Barack Obama or, far more dangerous, Donald Trump? Obama has presided over an experiment in withdrawal from the Middle East, a region that the United States had long considered vital. Trump would accelerate the withdrawal, and make it global, because “we’re a poor country now,” as he told The Post’s editorial board last week. Continue Reading →
CONGRESS
Donald Trump’s Success Upends Battle for Control of Congress
ALEXANDER BURNS / NEW YORK TIMES
Donald J. Trump’s dominance in the Republican primary is upending the campaign for control of Congress, as Republican lawmakers seek to distance themselves from him while Democrats seize on the chance to run against a candidate who has offended huge sections of the American electorate.
Nominating Mr. Trump could create a political battlefield of extraordinary breadth and volatility. Polling shows that he would enter the general election trailing badly against Hillary Clinton, and he has become deeply unpopular outside of his white, heavily male political base. Continue Reading →
TABLOID CAMPAIGN
Why some Republicans are feeling shame
SEAN SULLIVAN and DAVID WEIGAL / WASHINGTON POST
GREEN BAY, MARCH 27 – Back in the fall, when Donald Trump dubbed Jeb Bush “low-energy,” Carlos Gimenez grew a little concerned. By last month, when Marco Rubio and Trump engaged in childish name-calling, the Republican mayor of Miami-Dade County thought the GOP presidential race had gotten “out of hand.” Now, after a tawdry week that has focused on the wives of Trump and Ted Cruz, Gimenez is certain that the race has moved totally “out of bounds.”
The luridness has weighed not only on Republican elected officials but on voters as well. In a recent CBS News-New York Times poll, 60 percent of Republican primary voters said the campaign has made them mostly embarrassed for the party rather than mostly proud. The survey was conducted before the Cruz-Trump fight involving their spouses erupted.
Campaign 2016 
How Clinton’s email scandal took root
ROBERT O’HARROW JR / WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON, MARCH 27 – Hilary Clinton’s email problems began in her first days as secretary of state. She insisted on using her personal BlackBerry for all her email communications, but she wasn’t allowed to take the device into her seventh-floor suite of offices, a secure space known as Mahogany Row.
For Clinton, this was frustrating. As a political heavyweight and chief of the nation’s diplomatic corps, she needed to manage a torrent of email to stay connected to colleagues, friends and supporters. She hated having to put her BlackBerry into a lockbox before going into her own office.
Her aides and senior officials pushed to find a way to enable her to use the device in the secure area. But their efforts unsettled the diplomatic security bureau, which was worried that foreign intelligence services could hack her BlackBerry and transform it into a listening device. Continue Reading →
Campaign 2016 
From South Carolina to Southern Illinois, voters weigh in on ‘The Establishment’
Nor can they understand why the U.S. Senate is taking a 17-day break for Easter after spending much of their time last week fuming over the Supreme Court vacancy. Somehow, people all over America are saying loudly and clearly this election year, Washington and its enablers – the media, the political pros and Wall Street – don’t understand us.
That’s why, all over this slice of middle America, exasperated people got up before dawn on a cold, 37-degree morning recently to spend four hours in a line so long that from its end people couldn’t even see the Peabody Opera House, where they would hear Donald Trump. And it wasn’t just Trump. In the next two days, other folks nearby lined up to hear the outsider talk from Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Bernie Sanders, Ind.-Vt.
They share the same grievance. In 2016 America, the deepest divide is not between Democrats and Republicans. It’s not even between conservatives and liberals. It’s between Us and Them – the people versus “The Establishment.” Continue Reading →
SOURCE: Los Angeles TImes: From South Carolina to Southern Illinois, voters weigh in on ‘The Establishment’
Why so many voters are drawn to Donald Trump
Steve Lopez / Los Angeles Times
The people who spend two bucks for chili at the Courtesy Diner in St. Louis can’t fathom why anyone would pay Hillary Clinton $225,000 to make a speech.
Nor can they understand why the U.S. Senate is taking a 17-day break for Easter after spending much of their time last week fuming over the Supreme Court vacancy. Somehow, people all over America are saying loudly and clearly this election year, Washington and its enablers – the media, the political pros and Wall Street – don’t understand us.
That’s why, all over this slice of middle America, exasperated people got up before dawn on a cold, 37-degree morning recently to spend four hours in a line so long that from its end people couldn’t even see the Peabody Opera House, where they would hear Donald Trump. And it wasn’t just Trump. In the next two days, other folks nearby lined up to hear the outsider talk from Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Bernie Sanders, Ind.-Vt.
They share the same grievance. In 2016 America, the deepest divide is not between Democrats and Republicans. It’s not even between conservatives and liberals. It’s between Us and Them – the people versus “The Establishment.” Continue Reading →
SOURCE: Los Angeles TImes: From South Carolina to Southern Illinois, voters weigh in on ‘The Establishment’
Three ways the unpredictable GOP presidential race could shake out
Mark Z. Barazak / Los Angeles Times
After 39 contests and more than 20 million votes cast, the Republican presidential race has narrowed to three candidates and three possible scenarios.
The first, and most likely, is that Donald Trump wins the delegates he needs to mathematically clinch the GOP nomination ahead of the party’s national convention this summer.
The second, testing Trump’s much-vaunted deal-making skills, has the businessman and reality TV star coming up just shy but bargaining his way to the 1,237 delegates he needs to take the nomination.
The third scenario, and the hope of rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich and other forces arrayed against Trump, is forcing an open convention that picks the nominee on the floor of the convention in downtown Cleveland.
SOURCE: Los Angeles TImes: 3 ways the unpredictable GOP presidential race could shake out