[Top articles via PSW, followed by article snippets courtesy of BillMoyers.com]
Weekend News in Politics
Source: Huffington Post, screenshot.
Sanders romps in Washington, Alaska, Hawaii (Politico)
Bernie Sanders swept all three Democratic caucuses Saturday — scoring victories in Hawaii, Alaska and delegate-rich Washington state.
While the underdog’s West Coast wins are not nearly enough to trip up former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's path to the nomination, Sanders' wide margin of victory provides his campaign with a burst of momentum heading into a 10-day break before the next primary contest. The Vermont senator's big victories are also typically followed by a considerable fundraising bump.
John Kerry: Republican presidential candidates' rhetoric on Muslims is 'an embarrassment' to the US (Business Insider)
Secretary of State John Kerry said that the Republican presidential candidates' rhetoric on Muslims is an "embarrassment" to the US.
In an interview with CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday, Kerry said that world leaders are "shocked" by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's proposal to bar Muslims from entering the US and bring back waterboarding, as well as Sen. Ted Cruz's proposal to ramp up surveillance of "Muslim neighborhoods."
In Syria, militias armed by the Pentagon fight those armed by the CIA (LA Times)
Syrian militias armed by different parts of the U.S. war machine have begun to fight each other on the plains between the besieged city of Aleppo and the Turkish border, highlighting how little control U.S. intelligence officers and military planners have over the groups they have financed and trained in the bitter five-year-old civil war.
Trump: Fighting Assad And ISIS At The Same Time Is “Idiocy;” Allies Are Funding Terrorists (Zero Hedge)
Given voters’ generalized lack of insight into the specifics and overarching desire to be left in the dark about anything that suggests modern geopolitics can’t be summed up as a black and white, West versus everyone, good versus evil, struggle to restore a benevolent American hegemony, candidates must be careful to convey a deep understanding of the issues without confusing a largely ignorant electorate. That will be difficult for Hillary Clinton, a veteran of modern statecraft who knows a thing or two about how complex the world is and how easy it is to screw things up (see Libya).
For Trump, on the other hand, developing a foreign policy platform is much easier.
The Syrian army just took the beautiful city of Palmyra from ISIS (Reuters, via Business Insider)
Syrian government forces recaptured Palmyra on Sunday, state media and a monitoring group said, inflicting a significant defeat on the Islamic State group which had controlled the desert city since May last year.
A mysterious letter has set President Xi Jinping on a manhunt (Business Insider)
The president of China is looking for the authors of a mysterious editorial published earlier this month, accusing him of becoming an authoritarian and turning his back on the Communist Party.
That means people are disappearing.
How Much Should We Care About Ted Cruz’s Alleged Affairs? (Politico)
You may not be interested in the alleged affairs of the presidential candidates, but the affairs of the candidates are very interested in you. Our media flask is now overflowing with smutty stories primed by the forthcoming issue of the National Enquirer, which alleges on its cover that Ted Cruz has had “5 Secret Mistresses.” Only by depositing yourself in a news quarantine this weekend will you escape the story’s heavy breathing.
[Jack Shafer, the author, makes a point at the end pertaining to why no one cares about Trump’s sex life – Trump never presented himself as moral. Good choice.]
It’s hard to imagine Trump losing a step in his campaign if such charges were tossed at him because sexual boasting is so integral to his personality. Also, Trump has laundered his promiscuous past with a third marriage and a fifth child and, unlike Cruz, he has never presented himself as anybody’s moral compass.
Morning Reads: Dems Way Out West Caucus Saturday; Muslim Americans Organize Against Trump, Cruz
This post first appeared on BillMoyers.com
The Muslim vote –> Alan Rappeport at The New York Times: "Organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, known as CAIR, the Islamic Circle of North America and the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations are encouraging mosques to turn themselves into voter registration centers before the November election so that Muslims can make their voices heard at the polls. Registration drives are expected to ramp up significantly in June, during Ramadan, when attendance at Islamic centers peaks. 'The fear and apprehension in the American Muslim community has never been at this level,' said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for CAIR."
Opposing free trade –> It's the one thing common to voters in this election, according to a survey finding that almost two-thirds of Americans favored "more restrictions on imported goods instead of fewer. The latest Bloomberg Politics national poll shows the issue unites the country like few others, across lines of politics, race, gender, education, and income."
Full disclosure –> Ernest Scheyder at Reuters: "The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has ruled Exxon Mobil Corp must include a climate change resolution on its annual shareholder proxy, a defeat for the world's largest publicly traded oil producer, which had argued it already provides adequate carbon disclosures." Shareholders repeatedly have asked the fossil fuel giant to reveal the risks that both climate change and regulations to deal with it could have on the oil and gas business, but the company has resisted. This latest effort is spearheaded by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
Get ready –> Mike Konczal at The Nation: "The left needs to stop laughing and start preparing for the likely Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump. Trump appeals to voters that the Democrats will need and want in the general election because he speaks to their anxieties, especially around jobs. And even if his campaign implodes, leading to a Democratic blowout, we should be concerned about Trumpism without Trump: the set of economic arguments that will remain part of the political landscape for the foreseeable future." Konczal crunches the numbers to demonstrate that, in reality, Trump's proposed policies would not deliver on his populist promises.
What Donald Trump believes –> Franklin Foer at Slate argues that Trump has only one core belief: "It’s not limited government. He favored a state takeover of health care before he was against it. Nor is it economic populism. Despite many years of arguing the necessity of taxing the rich, he now wants to slice their rates to bits. Trump has claimed his nonlinear approach to policy is a virtue. Closing deals is what matters in the end, he says, not unbleached allegiance to conviction. But there’s one ideology that he does hold with sincerity and practices with unwavering fervor: misogyny."
Terror attack foiled –> The Associated Press: "A Frenchman in the 'advanced stages' of a plot to attack the country was arrested Thursday northwest of Paris and security forces locked down the area during a major search, France's interior minister said. Bernard Cazeneuve said there were no links 'at this stage' between the plot and the attacks against Brussels this week or Paris in November."
Wonder who he has in mind? –> Scott Walker's got some thoughts on what the Republican party should do at a contested convention — and they don't involve nominating Trump, Cruz or Kasich. "I think if it’s an open convention, it’s very likely it would be someone who’s not currently running," Walker told reporters Thursday, according to the Madison Capital Times.
AND: During the state's April 5th primaries, Wisconsin's new voter ID law, pushed by the Walker administration, will be in effect for the first time. And it could be a disaster, Sarah Smith reports for ProPublica: "The law mandates that the state run a public-service campaign 'in conjunction with the first regularly scheduled primary and election' to educate voters on what forms of ID are acceptable. But Wisconsin has failed to appropriate funds for the public education campaign. The result is that thousands of citizens may be turned away from the polls simply because they did not understand what form of identification they needed to vote."
Pay up –> Corinthian Colleges, the predatory for-profit college chain that allegedly scammed its students, will have to pay $1.1 billion in a suit brought by California Attorney General Kamala Harris. Earlier this month, Sarah Jaffe reported for us that many of the school's students remain crippled by debt after paying for worthless degrees.
Staying on message? –> Milo Beckman at FiveThirtyEight has a list of the phrases Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton say most. Surprisingly, "millionaires and billionaires" did not break the top 30 but "health care to all," "a corrupt campaign finance system" and "more people in jail than any other country" were big hits for Sanders, and "comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship," "to do more" and "what I will do" were Clinton favorites.
Morning Reads was written by John Light and edited by Michael Winship. See a story that you think should be included in Morning Reads? Tell us in the comments!
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