text:
A potentially crippling U.S. debt default was averted as Congress passed legislation to end a political showdown that had rattled financial markets, splintered the Republican Party and showcased Washington dysfunction.
By Gerald F. Seib
We are at that stage in the political cycle when presidential candidates (and those of us who follow them) are obsessed with their ability to win over the "base" of their parties as they seek the nomination. Later, attention will shift to the nominees' ability to appeal to unattached "swing voters" who float between the two parties in the general election.
Those terms—base and swing voters—are in quotes because they are used pretty loosely, often without much precision or an acknowledgment that they shift over time. These aren't constant groups from election to election.
So to get a better sense of which voters actually make up the base of each party in the nominating season, and which voters will constitute the swing voters in the general election, the pollsters who conduct the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll pulled together all the data collected in our surveys throughout 2014 and gave it a closer look.
From the thousands of interviews conducted, it is possible to identify which Americans really constitute the base of each party today, and which groups of swing voters seem unattached and available to shift the balance in 2016. Spoiler alert: The ability to win over single white women will be key, and the loyalties of Hispanics, young voters and working-class white men aren't as fixed as you may think.
One way to identify the size and composition of the base of each party is simply to look at which voters identify themselves as Democrat or Republican. By that standard, Democrats have a slightly larger base nationally; 43% of all voters surveyed called themselves Democrats, 38% Republicans.
It's possible to get a more precise reading of each party's hard-core loyalists by sifting further through those two large groups. Specifically, the pollsters found which self-identified Republicans both voted for Mitt Romney for president in 2012 and say they want Republicans to control Congress now, and which self-identified Democrats both voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and say they want Democrats to control Congress. "That's a pretty hard-core definition of a base Republican and Democrat," says GOP pollster William McInturff, who conducts the Journal/NBC News poll along with Democrat Fred Yang.
By applying those filters, you can see a core Republican base comprising 21% of voters, and a core Democratic base of 25% of all voters.
Who are these core loyalists? Not surprisingly, the Republican core is heavily populated with tea-party supporters and self-identified conservatives. White Southerners, white men generally, rural men specifically, white married women and voters aged 65 and over are all key components of the GOP core.
On the Democratic side, the core loyalists—again not surprisingly—include self-identified liberals and African-Americans. Urban voters, college-educated women, suburban women and voters with postgraduate degrees all are heavily represented in the Democratic core.
Which voters, then, are up for grabs? On that front, there are cautionary notes for both parties, which shouldn't take for granted the loyalties of some groups often assumed to be in their camps.
While young voters aged 18 to 34 are often assumed to be a solid Democratic bloc, for instance, the analysis finds many of them unattached to either party. Similarly, while Hispanics are part of the Democratic base generally, a significant share aren't firmly rooted.
On the Republican side, young men and men with less than a college education aren't as committed to the GOP cause as are other, older men. And while white working-class voters have been tending Republican for years, many appear up for grabs this time.
And here's one early guess: young white women, and women with less than a college education, will be a target audience for both parties, because they don't show strong loyalty to either one.
These pictures of the party bases and swing voters present some tantalizing early questions for the 2016 sweepstakes. Could Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee nail down the support of those crucial young women, and would she have the same appeal to those unattached young voters that Barack Obama did?
And would a Spanish-speaking Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio as a Republican nominee be able to lure away some of those loose Hispanics? Or could a Chris Christie or Scott Walker have the kind of appeal that could nail down those unattached working-class whites? On such questions will the 2016 election turn.
Write to Gerald F. Seib at firstname.lastname@example.com
By Associated Press
WASHINGTON—A man who flew a gyrocopter through some of America's most restricted airspace before landing at the U.S. Capitol pleaded not guilty on Thursday to six criminal charges.
Douglas Hughes, who took off from southwestern Pennsylvania, was arrested April 15 after he landed on the Capitol's West Lawn in his bare-bones aircraft. Mr. Hughes has said he wanted to call attention to the influence of big money in politics.
Mr. Hughes appeared in federal court in Washington. A jury had indicted him on charges that carry up to 9½ years in prison, the U.S. attorney's office for the District of Columbia said.
"We are looking at a case where there was no injury and no property damage, and the requirements as far as what the prosecution is asking for include years of jail time. The penalties that they are demanding aren't consistent with the damage," Mr. Hughes had said Wednesday after the jury indictment became public.
The charges Mr. Hughes now faces include two felonies: operating as an airman without an airman's certificate and violating aircraft registration requirements. Those charges carry a maximum of three years in prison. He also faces three misdemeanor offenses of violating national defense airspace, each carrying a maximum of one year in prison.
Mr. Hughes, 61, who had been employed as a postal carrier and lives in Ruskin, Florida, also faces a misdemeanor charge of operating a vehicle falsely labeled as postal carrier. The tail section of Mr. Hughes' gyrocopter carried a Postal Service logo. That charge carries a statutory maximum of six months in prison.
The charges Mr. Hughes faces also carry potential fines. The indictment says that if he is convicted of one or both of the felonies, prosecutors will ask that a judge order him to forfeit the gyrocopter.
His next court appearance is scheduled for May 27.
–Copyright 2015 Associated Press
By Siobhan Hughes, Kristina Peterson
WASHINGTON—A fight over reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank is bogging down an effort to give President Barack Obama fast-track trade authority, tying the Senate in knots and leaving uncertain the timing for completion of a trade bill that is a top priority for the remainder of his term.
Sen. Maria Cantwell from Washington is a pro-trade Democrat who supports giving Mr. Obama the power to expedite trade deals through Congress. But she is throwing up a number of procedural roadblocks to slow down the trade bill—and even to complicate its prospects for passage—as leverage to win a guarantee that the Ex-Im Bank will also be reauthorized.
The bank, which provides financing for U.S. exports, is important to Boeing Co., the biggest employer in her state. Conservative Republicans have for years been pushing to wind down the bank, whose authority to operate expires on June 30 without congressional action.
"I don't plan to start moving ahead until we stop catering to this minority group that doesn't support the basic tools that the American people want to see when it comes to trade," Ms. Cantwell said Wednesday on the Senate floor. "If the other side of the aisle wants to resolve these problems and move ahead on a trade agreement, they have to stop catering to the conservatives in the House who probably some of them don't even support trade over all."
Conservatives view the agency, which supports some major domestic manufacturers, as "corporate welfare" and inappropriate interference with the market economy. Opponents of the bank include House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R., Texas), House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.). These powerful lawmakers support the fast-track legislation and fear that the addition of the measure to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank would complicate passage of the trade bill in the House.
Business groups, which are lobbying to renew the Ex-Im Bank and to pass the trade bill, have so far sought to avoid tying the two measures together, fearing that the coalitions for each are fragile enough on their own.
At a meeting of conservatives on Wednesday, Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R., Wyo.), said she is currently undecided on the fast-track trade bill but "conceptually" would like to be able to support it. But if an Export-Import reauthorization is added, "it sure makes it an easy decision," she said. "I would solidly vote no." Other conservatives echoed that sentiment, saying an Export-Import amendment would make them decisive no votes, though many are already leaning against voting for the fast-track legislation, also known as Trade Promotion Authority.
The bank's reauthorization pitted Republicans against each other in 2012 and again last year, when Congress opted to reauthorize the agency for just nine months. Unlike previous years, the bank's charter now expires on a different timeline from when the government's funding runs out, making it harder to lump the two issues together to secure more votes.
This year the agency will stop taking on new business if Congress takes no action to reauthorize its charter. The bank's defenders, including Democrats and some Republicans, note that many foreign companies receive help from similar agencies in their own countries, meaning U.S. firms would be at a competitive disadvantage if the Export-Import Bank expires. The Ex-Im Bank helps support U.S. exports through a wide range of programs, including guaranteeing loans to foreign buyers and providing credit insurance.
Ms. Cantwell's leverage has some limits. She can't stop the Senate from eventually voting on fast-track trade legislation. But she has some power because the Senate frequently requires unanimity. She can block votes on a package of amendments by objecting to their consideration. She can prevent the Senate from speeding up a series of votes—thus forcing her colleagues to work on the weekend—by refusing to shorten the amount of time for debate. And she can also vote no on a critical procedural measure to end debate—an especially significant threat given that other pro-trade Democrats are expected to join her, potentially complicating passage of the entire fast-track legislation.
Among them is Sen. Heidi Heitkamp. The North Dakota Democrat will withhold support from proceeding to the fast-track bill until there is an agreement on a path forward to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank before its authority expires on June 30, a spokeswoman said Wednesday.
Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas), the No. 2 Senate Republican, said Wednesday that Ms. Cantwell would be better off to work with Mr. McConnell on finding a path forward for to reauthorize the bank "as opposed to just obstruct" because "unless something extraordinary happens, like it gets attached to a must-pass bill," the Export-Import Bank is "going away." On Tuesday, Mr. McConnell said that while he opposed reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank, "I think they're entitled to a vote on its renewal."
Even after wrapping up trade, the Senate will still need to figure out how to respond to the Patriot Act, a national security law which expires June 1. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have objected to a provision of the law that allows the National Security Agency to collect phone-record data from millions of Americans.
On Wednesday, GOP presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky took to the floor to give an hourslong speech opposing any extension of the Patriot Act that doesn't curb the NSA's activities. The Senate's next procedural vote on the trade bill Thursday will end Mr. Paul's speech, if he doesn't stop speaking earlier.
Write to Siobhan Hughes at firstname.lastname@example.com and Kristina Peterson at email@example.com
The political world was obsessed last week with Jeb Bush's problems in saying whether he would or wouldn't have ordered the invasion of Iraq. But a more provocative statement about projection of American power actually came from a fellow presidential contender, Marco Rubio, in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations.
"As president, I will use American power to oppose any violations of international waters, airspace, cyberspace, or outer space," Sen. Rubio declared. "This includes the economic disruption caused when one country invades another, as well as the chaos caused by disruptions in chokepoints such as the South China Sea or the Strait of Hormuz."
That expansive formula for using American power to protect economic and well as national-security interests was, in turn, followed over the weekend by Sen. Rand Paul staking out a far less aggressive position at a Republican candidate forum in Iowa. He questioned whether ousting Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was a good idea under any conditions: "Is Iraq more stable or less stable after Saddam?"
Combine all that with the fact that Democrat Hillary Clinton seems inclined to show that she would be more aggressive than President Barack Obama has been abroad, while also trying to avoid alienating her party's liberal (and largely anti-interventionist) base, and you can see something very significant breaking out: a wide-open 2016 debate over American intervention in the world.
In this emerging debate, there are no clear lines in either party. "It's not terribly useful to speak of a Democratic foreign policy or a Republican foreign policy because essentially you have Republican foreign policies, plural, and Democratic foreign policies, plural," says Richard Haass, a former State Department and White House aide who now is president of the Council on Foreign Relations.
This debate is the logical extension of a tumultuous decade and a half since the terror attacks of 9/11, when the old rule book about American intervention was thrown out without a new one to take its place. Fair or not, a common rap on President George W. Bush was that he was too eager to intervene abroad, and a common rap on President Barack Obama is that he hasn't been eager enough.
On one level, this isn't a new debate. "American history has been one of oscillation between two extremes: Pulling back from everything or getting involved in everything as if it's our fight," says James Steinberg, former deputy secretary of state who now is dean of the Maxwell School at Syracuse University.
But the backdrop has changed significantly. We now are in a post-Cold War world, where the threats to American security lie as much in nonstate actors as in hostile nations, where economic competition weighs as heavily as military competition, and where the searing experience of long and unresolved wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has shaken easy assumptions about America's ability to steer events.
On the Republican side, those circumstances have opened a path for the arguments of Mr. Paul, who has found some traction within his usually hawkish party with his argument that the U.S. has been too eager to intervene around the world, especially in the Middle East. In essence, he seeks to take the GOP back to its early 20th century skepticism of America as global cop.
But the same circumstances also have produced the diametrically opposed views Mr. Rubio expressed in his speech last week. He laid out perhaps the most aggressive view of American power projection of any of the 2016 contenders. He said he would be guided as president by three "pillars"—a more robust military, use of American power to guard the global economy and use of that same power to promote American values.
In a question-and-answer session after his speech, Mr. Rubio said his formula referred to diplomatic power as much as military power, and the role he envisions "is not world's policeman." Still, his is an aggressive view of using American muscle by any standard. Other Republican candidates fall somewhere in between the Paul and Rubio poles.
For her part, Mrs. Clinton faces some tough decisions. As secretary of state, she pushed for intervention in the civil war in Syria, and, ultimately, became an advocate of an multinational military move into Libya to get rid of Moammar Gadhafi. She's also been a proponent of keeping military options on the table in dealing with Iran's nuclear program.
But she'll also have to defend herself against Republican charges that she and her Obama administration colleagues were too eager to withdraw troops from Iraq, as well as the jibe Mr. Paul delivered from the opposite direction this weekend, that the Libya intervention was misguided.
In short, the debate over global intervention is on. You'll need a new scorecard to keep it all straight.
By Reid J. Epstein
DES MOINES, Iowa—Attacks on Jeb Bush are ramping up even before he enters the 2016 presidential race, with fellow Republicans questioning everything from his conservative bona fides to whether he is prepared for a long campaign to become the party's nominee.
Mr. Bush's rivals, 10 of whom joined him for a Saturday night fundraising dinner for the Iowa Republican Party, have latched onto the former Florida governor's shaky responses last week about the wisdom of his brother's entry into the Iraq war, ensuring the issue will dog him for the foreseeable future.
It highlights the core challenge of Mr. Bush's expected formal entry into the campaign: a family name that has given him outsize attention and access to an unparalleled fundraising network that at the same time could make it difficult for him to forge a political independence.
It also shows that even though Mr. Bush's political standing is weaker in Iowa than elsewhere, he remains the focus of the race, with the other presidential hopefuls implicitly defining themselves against him.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who has positioned himself as the only likely GOP candidate not presenting an aggressive overseas military posture, suggested to the audience of 1,300 Republicans at the state party's Lincoln Day dinner here that Mr. Bush would mount another unpopular war.
"The question was asked of one of our candidates this week, was the Iraq war a mistake? Was it a good idea? Would you do it again?" Mr. Paul said. "It's a valid question, not because we're just talking about history, but we're talking about the Middle East, where history repeats itself."
The other White House contenders spent last week explaining that they wouldn't have started the Iraq war. By the time they arrived in Iowa, the critique expanded to suggest that Mr. Bush, who is expected to raise far more money than anyone else in the field, isn't prepared to be the party's standard-bearer.
"Whoever we nominate as a Republican Party has got to be ready to answer the tough questions," Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who is planning a June presidential announcement, said in an interview.
In a hallway outside the state party dinner, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum said the episode illustrates the need for the party to choose someone who has been through the rigors of a national campaign.
"It just goes to show you, don't try this at home, it's hard," said Mr. Santorum, who placed second to Mitt Romney for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012 and is planning to announce his intentions for a second presidential campaign on May 27. "There's a reason the Republican Party has gone back to folks who have gone through it before, because they tend to be a little better at doing it the next time around."
Only hawkish Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) defended the Iraq war. But in doing so, he made an implicit reminder of mistakes made by President George W. Bush. "President Bush, W., had the same information everybody else in the world did and made the best decision he could," Mr. Graham said. "Bush made mistakes, but he corrected his mistakes."
The issue has proved to be tricky territory for other GOP contenders. In an interview broadcast Sunday on Fox, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio struggled to deliver a straight response to the question of whether the Iraq invasion was worth it.
Mr. Bush's new political problem began early last week when Fox News broadcast an interview in which Mr. Bush said that, knowing what is known now, he would have launched the Iraq war his brother began. During the course of four days, his position evolved, beginning by saying he misheard the question to making a categorical statement that he wouldn't have launched the Iraq war, given today's information.
When he arrived in Iowa, Mr. Bush had no choice but to own the mistake. "I answered the question wrong," he told reporters in Iowa City. "We're all going to make mistakes."
Robert Gates, who was defense secretary under both Mr. Bush's brother and President Barack Obama, said in a CBS interview broadcast Sunday that while he wasn't impressed by the foreign-policy experience of any of Mr. Bush's potential 2016 rivals, the former governor should have been ready for questions about Iraq.
"It was an inevitable question that would be asked," Mr. Gates said in the interview. "And I think that the way to deal with it, frankly, is to say, you don't make policy by going back and reliving old decisions."
Mr. Bush begins every campaign speech by noting his love for his father and brother. He told a Republican National Committee gathering in Arizona last week that he wouldn't be "going out of my way" to criticize either previous President Bush.
Tim Miller, a Jeb Bush spokesman, said he "was the most successful conservative big state governor in the country and he is prepared for the rigors of the campaign should he decide to run."
Also weighing on Mr. Bush's standing in Iowa is his plan, announced by aides last week, to skip the August state straw poll, a major quadrennial fundraiser for the state GOP.
State GOP Chairman Jeff Kaufmann and Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley on Saturday night made explicit pitches to the other candidates to attend the straw poll.
Now, even Iowa Republicans who figure to support Mr. Bush after he formally declares himself a candidate said they were baffled by his Iraq stumbles.
"It's been hard," said Zach Nunn, an Iowa state representative who said he is leaning toward backing Mr. Bush and with whom he had his third one-on-one meeting of the year on Saturday. "It's great to be popular. It's great to raise money. But for me what's going to determine who's the best candidate is, do you have the leadership capability to run the country?"
Write to Reid J. Epstein at email@example.com
By Chris Jacobs
Ironically, President Barack Obama now opposes a policy outcome—the "sequester" spending levels—that he introduced: Multiple fact checkers have confirmed that it was administration officials who proposed the sequester mechanism during debt-ceiling negotiations in the summer of 2011. These histories directly contradict the president's statement in an October 2012 debate with Mitt Romney that "the sequester is not something that I've proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed."
The administration can say that it did not propose the sequester mechanism. It can also say—with more accuracy—that sequestration was an action-forcing mechanism that was never intended to take effect. But neither argument changes the fact that the Budget Control Act remains the law of the land. The specter of Mr. Obama vetoing spending bills—potentially setting up another government shutdown this fall—because they fail to nullify an act that he signed into law could present an optics problem for his administration.
Chris Jacobs is policy director of America Next, a conservative think tank. He is on Twitter: @chrisjacobshc
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The Real 2016 Role of Mike Huckabee, Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson
By Janet Hook, Laura Meckler
More than a decade after it began, the war in Iraq is still tying American politicians in knots, posing awkward questions for 2016 presidential candidates of both parties.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, after recasting his answers to questions about the war during the past few days, tried to put the issue to rest Thursday by saying he wouldn't, in hindsight, have supported the invasion his brother launched in 2003 based on flawed intelligence.
With that, he joined an array of potential GOP rivals who had scrambled this week to distance themselves from a war their party supported at the time.
The issue also is complicated for Hillary Clinton, the leading Democratic presidential candidate. She faces lingering liberal skepticism for voting for the war while in the Senate, as well as GOP criticism of Obama administration policies that left Iraq unstable after U.S. troops withdrew in 2011.
Few people in either party seem eager to make the Iraq war central to the 2016 campaign. But the long, inconclusive conflict has shadowed U.S. politics for more than a decade, much as the Vietnam War did in the 1968, 1972 and 1976 elections in its aftermath.
The Iraq war already is surfacing again in the 2016 campaign, as a bludgeon for candidates to attack each other and as a proxy measure of their judgment and willingness to take risks and use military force.
Democrats will use Republicans' past support for the war to accuse them "of being way too ready to use military power," said Aaron David Miller, a former State Department official under Democratic and Republican administrations. "On the Republican side, it is a way to blast [President Barack] Obama and his first secretary of state for heading to the exits too fast."
One risk for Republicans is that, while polls show that voters generally trust them more than Democrats to handle defense and foreign policy, the Iraq war debate shifts attention to past policy blunders.
"A clear message about the future is obscured by the bickering back and forth about the past," said Phil Musser, a GOP political consultant. "This election could well be a foreign policy election, and, if it is, it will be a vision for the future that prevails, not a re-hash of the past."
The Iraq war debate was abruptly thrust to center stage this week as Mr. Bush was asked on several occasions whether he would have supported the Iraq invasion if he knew what is known today: That his brother, George W. Bush, was mistaken in believing that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
Mr. Bush handled the issue awkwardly.
In an interview that aired Monday he said, "I would have.'' The next day, he said he had misunderstood the question but didn't say whether he would have acted differently than his brother. On Wednesday, he said it would be a disservice to people who lost family members to consider such hypothetical questions.
On Thursday, Mr. Bush said: "Knowing what we know now … I would have not engaged, I would not have gone into Iraq."
The flap gave his rivals fresh ammunition for arguing it is too risky for Republicans to nominate a third Bush for president.
"That's a real problem if he can't articulate what he would have done differently," said Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.), who is a presidential candidate and said he opposed the Iraq war from the outset.
Although the majority of the public supported the war at first, polls show it since has soured.
A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll taken in October, 2014, found that a record high 66% of adults thought the war wasn't worth it, up from 37% in December 2003.
The war was a central issue in two other presidential elections—in 2004, when George W. Bush faced re-election, and in 2008, when Mr. Obama's early opposition to the war gave him a winning issue on which to challenge Mrs. Clinton in the Democratic primary.
At the time, Mrs. Clinton wouldn't call her vote a mistake, an unpopular position among Democrats furious about the war's toll. She belatedly did so in her 2014 book, "Hard Choices."
"I thought I had acted in good faith and made the best decision I could with the information I had," she wrote. "And I wasn't alone in getting it wrong. But I still got it wrong."
Even so, Mrs. Clinton faces lingering resentment among some Democrats.
"I don't think we should have a president of the United States who voted for the huge mistake that is the Iraq war," former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee said last month in announcing he may run for the White House.
Criticism of Mrs. Clinton from the left may not resonate as it did in 2008. She has since recanted the vote, time has passed and no strong challengers have emerged to take her on.
Republicans, however, are likely to criticize Mrs. Clinton for opposing the 2007 surge in military troops that helped turn the course of the war. They already are trying to blame her for the Obama administration's withdrawal of troops from Iraq, which they say occurred to too quickly and early, fueling the rise of Islamic State.
Some Democrats see that as a toothless argument among voters, because most Americans were pleased to see U.S. troops leave, even given the disarray that followed.
In her book, Mrs. Clinton said she opposed the additional troops because she didn't think then-president Bush had the proper diplomatic strategy to match the military moves and because Americans were so deeply opposed to the war.
Write to Janet Hook at firstname.lastname@example.com and Laura Meckler at firstname.lastname@example.com
Five months ago this week, Jeb Bush got a beat on the world by announcing he was forming a committee to explore running for president. That means enough time has passed to frame the Bush paradox: He is the establishment favorite in a party that almost always picks that candidate, but has walked into an election cycle in which that isn't necessarily the case.
The powerful assets Mr. Bush brings to the table have been on full display since his December move. He can raise prodigious amounts of money from the party's business and finance wings, and enjoys the backing of many GOP power brokers and most of his family's network of supporters. He is an articulate candidate with a conservative record as Florida's governor, yet crossover appeal to moderates. He is better than other governors and former governors at discussing the national-security issues that are rising on GOP voters' priority list.
But as the weeks have gone by, it's also been easy to see Mr. Bush's problems within his party. Conservative skepticism is higher than some anticipated, based largely on his support for Common Core education standards and broad immigration reforms. Rival candidates—Mike Huckabee and Sen. Rand Paul in particular—have tapped into an antiestablishment strain within the party that works against Mr. Bush. The loss of two elections to Barack Obama has left some yearning for a generational change that is being exploited by—ironically enough—Sen. Marco Rubio, something of a Jeb Bush protégé.
Any rational analysis has to rate Mr. Bush as the slight favorite within an exceptionally crowded field of Republican contenders, though it's way too early to draw definitive conclusions. What is possible, based on an analysis of polling data and the shape of the race ahead, is to define two significant problems Mr. Bush faces, as well as two big advantages:
First, the problems:
–The Republican party has changed. Since his brother and father were elected, the party has become more populist and has been altered by the rise of the tea-party movement and the absorption of its messages and foot soldiers.
In a broad examination of party-identification trends, Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm that helps conduct the Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey, found that the party's three largest subgroups now are tea-party supporters, self-identified conservatives and white Southerners. Moreover, in the last few years, the Republican party has become more male in composition.
These trends don't necessarily work to Mr. Bush's favor. In the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, he is the top choice among Republicans overall, by a small margin, but scores somewhat better among women than among men, better among moderates than among conservatives, and is the top choice of just 6% of self-described tea-party supporters.
–The Romney experience left a bitter aftertaste. The nomination, followed by the defeat, of Mitt Romney in 2012 has left some Republicans questioning the party's tendency to nominate the big name whose time has come. Democrats didn't do that when they picked Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in 2008, the argument goes, and they won the White House twice as a result.
Mr. Bush isn't quite the same next-in-line choice that Mr. Romney was. Still, the Romney experience has opened the way for rivals such as Sen. Ted Cruz to argue that Republicans lose general elections because they don't excite and turn out their conservative base. While that analysis is open to question, the Journal/NBC News poll found Mr. Bush behind both Sen. Paul and Sen. Cruz among Republican primary voters who didn't vote for Mr. Romney.
Here are two big Bush advantages:
–The conservative anti-Bush vote is being splintered. There is no single populist/antiestablishment/tea-party/evangelical alternative to Mr. Bush, but rather a whole series of them. That reduces the chances that any one rival can, at least for a while, reach the critical mass necessary to be seen as the singular alternative. Which leads to the second big advantage:
–A long nomination contest benefits Jeb Bush. The longer a fight goes on, the more important it is to have a lot of money to wage it. Mr. Bush is tops in that category.
More than that, Mr. Bush has a plausible answer to conservative criticism of his support for Common Core education standards—that he's for high standards at the state level, not federal coercion in imposing them—that will benefit from more time and opportunity to deliver it.
And to the extent the nominating contest moves into big swing states on the March and April calendar—Ohio, Florida, Illinois, Missouri, Pennsylvania—it will reach relatively more natural Bush voters than may be found in some of the early states. A marathon may suit Jeb Bush just fine.
By Janet Hook
GREENVILLE, S.C.—Republicans running for president face an electorate riddled with anxiety about national security and terrorism—a big mood swing from 2012 and a mixed blessing for the GOP in 2016.
As a weekend candidate forum here illustrated, voters' heightened interest in world affairs gives Republicans a fresh opportunity to lambaste President Barack Obama and show some hawkish swagger toward terrorists.
"We will look for you. We will find you. And we will kill you," said Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, borrowing lines from the action movie "Taken" and getting robust applause from the conservative audience of about 2,200.
But the GOP contenders also face pressure to explain how they—governors, senators and political outsiders with little experience managing world affairs—could shoulder the burden of being leader of the free world.
"Commander in chief is not an entry-level position," said former Sen. Rick Santorum, in a line that could cast doubt on the credentials of the entire GOP field, including Mr. Santorum who lost his Senate seat in 2006.
A spirited foreign policy debate allows Republicans to unify in attacking their likely Democratic opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But it also opens a split within the GOP.
That division is best illustrated by two presidential contenders who didn't attend Saturday's candidate forum: Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who argues for greater restraint in U.S. military intervention than most Republicans, and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of the most hawkish members of the party.
Mr. Graham, who is expected to announce his bid for the presidency June 1, has drawn his differences with Mr. Paul in unusually personal terms.
"He is one step behind leading-from-behind," Mr. Graham said in a USA Today interview broadcast Sunday. "I think he'd be the worst possible person to send into the ring when it came to foreign policy."
South Carolina is a particularly welcoming place for Republicans staking out a hawkish platform. The state, which hosts the third presidential nominating contest in 2016 after Iowa and New Hampshire, has eight military bases, more than 74,000 military personnel, including nearly 58,000 military retirees, according to a recent report by the University of South Carolina.
But voters' concern about national security isn't just limited to military-connected communities. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found voters nationally are more concerned about security issues than they were four years ago, before the last presidential election. Asked what issues should be the government's top priority, 21% of poll participants said national security and terrorism—up from 6% in 2012. The shift is especially big for Republicans, who made it their No. 1 issue: 27% named it the top priority, up from 8% in 2012.
That could make this the first election since 2004, when the Iraq war weighed on voters, that candidates' foreign affairs credentials and defense policy stands could factor heavily into presidential politics.
Just in the past year, Americans have been rattled by the rise of Islamic State, also known as ISIS, and the beheadings of the militant group's captives, Russia's takeover of part of Ukraine, and hostilities in the Middle East.
Chad Groover, chairman of the Greenville County Republican Party, said those developments have made national security more important than ever among voters here. "If you had asked me a year ago, I would not have said that. I would have said bread-and-butter issues were primary," Mr. Groover said. "But the way the world is going, with the advent of ISIS, we see the need to have a strong focus."
Adding to voter anxiety is the recent episode in Garland, Texas, where two gunman, believed to be inspired by Islamic State, were killed as they prepared to attack a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest. "When it's right in your backyard, it wakes you up," said Terri Russ, a health-care worker from Columbia, S.C., who attended the Greenville summit.
Republicans, in their speeches, applauded the police officer who foiled the plot by killing the attackers.
"Thankfully, one police officer helped those terrorists meet their virgins," said Sen. Ted Cruz (R.,Texas).
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who spoke at the South Carolina event before traveling to Israel for the first time, acknowledged his need to study up on international issues. "It's something that, even though as a governor I don't deal with it day in and day out, it has increasingly become one of the most important things for me to focus in on," said Mr. Walker, who hasn't yet formally announced his campaign for president.
Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina said that as a business woman she had dealt directly with more heads of state—including Russian President Vladimir Putin—than any other GOP candidate. "The world is a more dangerous and a more tragic place when America is not leading," she said.
While few candidates gave many specifics about what policies they would implement, Ms. Fiorina did. She called for a series of steps to flex U.S. military muscle, including rebuilding the Sixth Fleet in Europe, restoring the missile defense program, and conducting military exercises in the Baltics.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush also didn't attend the South Carolina forum Saturday, instead delivering a commencement address at Liberty University in Virginia. But he weighed in Sunday on a question concerning the use of military force that poses a unique challenge to him among GOP candidates, defining his views compared to his brother's, former President George W. Bush.
In an interview with Fox News, Mr. Bush said that he would have authorized the 2003 U.S. war in Iraq, although he acknowledged that it was a mistake that more was not done to guarantee security in Iraq after Saddam Hussein was removed from power. He reminded the interviewer that Mrs. Clinton, then a U.S. senator also supported the Iraq invasion. And he said his brother agreed that mistakes were made after Saddam's fall.
"So just for the news flash to the world, if they're trying to find places where there's big space between me and my brother, this might not be one of those," he said.
Mr. Paul didn't attend the GOP summit because he was in California to open a Silicon Valley campaign office. Although Mr. Paul is not an isolationist in the mold of his father, libertarian Ron Paul who ran multiple long-shot campaigns for president, the senator is more cautious about U.S. military intervention than other 2016 candidates. Early polls suggest he is in a weaker position in South Carolina among Republicans than in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Mr. Graham, who didn't attend the summit in his home state because of family obligations, has been, with his hawkish close ally Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a frequent critic of Mr. Paul.
Mr. Paul could not be reached for comment Sunday on the latest Graham criticism, but in an April interview with Fox News about similar criticism, he said Messrs. McCain and Graham were part of a group he considered "lapdogs" for Mr. Obama's military initiatives overseas.
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By Nick Timiraos
The Senate passed a budget agreement Tuesday, following its adoption last week by the House, making it the first joint budget resolutionto be approved by Congress since 2009.
The proposal, which outlines deep cuts to eliminate deficits over the coming decade, passed 51-48. All 46 members of the Democratic caucus voted no.
For now, there are few indications those spending cuts will take hold. Lawmakers have already begun to look for ways to loosen more-modest constraints, established in a 2011 budget law, as they consider their spending measures for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.
Republican leaders have said their budget serves as an ideological marker designed to lay out the party's principles—namely, a commitment to balancing the budget without increasing taxes. It also fulfilled a promise to restore civics-class rules known as "regular order."
To get there, the Republican leaders held together an uneasy union between fiscal hawks and defense hawks. The budget resolution kept in place across-the-board curbs known as the sequester while adding nearly $90 billion to a supplemental war fund that isn't subject to the curbs.
"No budget will ever be perfect, but this is a budget that sensibly addresses the concerns of many different members," said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday.
Budget resolutions don't go to the White House for the president's signature and are instead used to set overall spending levels for separate appropriations bills that Congress will send to the White House later this year.
President Barack Obama has said he won't accept spending measures that keep the sequester. He has also insisted that military and domestic spending be allocated equal increases.
The budget's passage also unlocks an important procedural tool known as reconciliation, which allows legislation to pass both chambers with a simple majority vote. Most bills in the Senate require 60 votes to overcome procedural hurdles. Republicans control 54 seats.
Republican lawmakers say they hope to use that tool to repeal parts of Mr. Obama's health-care law. Congress could use reconciliation, for example, to respond to any fallout from a challenge before the Supreme Court over how the law was established. The court's ruling, expected next month, could upend the health-care law if the justices side with the plaintiffs. Mr. Obama is almost certain to veto any such measure by Congress.
Still, Republican lawmakers have played down in recent days the reach of reconciliation, which must pertain to fiscal policy. "It's not a silver bullet," said House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R., Ga.) last week.
The types of policies Republicans would support if the Supreme Court upends the health-care law might not be achievable under reconciliation, Mr. Price said, because of strict limits enforced by the Senate parliamentarian over how the procedural tool can be used.
The focus will turn now to whether Republicans and Democrats can forge an accord that would ease the sequester, possibly by replicating a deal reached in December 2013 between Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.) that increased discretionary spending with some offsetting cuts elsewhere.
Several Republican lawmakers have said they hope to reach a similar deal between now and Oct. 1, when the government's current funding expires.
House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) and Mr. McConnell pledged to avoid shutdowns and debt-limit brinkmanship when they celebrated Republicans' electoral wins last fall.
Ultimately, that desire to avoid a crisis "will make everyone begin to think that Ryan-Murray is the best alternative," said Greg Valliere, chief political strategist at Potomac Research Group in Washington.
But getting there won't be easy. Fiscal hawks are likely to push back against any effort that is at odds with the budget resolution passed on Tuesday. The 2013 deal came together only after a 16-day federal government shutdown, and control of Congress was split between Republicans and Democrats.
This time around, Republicans control both chambers, and Republican presidential contenders—including at least three senators—are likely to rally against spending increases as they compete in party primaries. "That's a real obstacle, and we didn't have that dynamic last time," said Mr. Valliere.
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Politicians like to say they are debating what should happen tomorrow, but way too often they are instead locked in argument about something that happened yesterday. A classic case: the current immigration debate.
In three years of trying, Congress has failed in high-profile efforts to overhaul the nation's immigration laws. Meanwhile, the early 2016 Republican presidential sweepstakes are heavily colored by debate over what candidates will or won't do, or have or haven't done, about immigration.
Yet the premise of this immigration debate—that waves of Hispanic immigrants are sweeping across our southern border, swelling the nation's population of undocumented immigrants and transforming the culture and economy—is caught in a kind of time warp, dominated by trends of decades past and largely missing the immigration issues that really matter today.
In fact, the nation's immigration flows have undergone a fundamental change, as have the issues that are relevant now, even if the political conversation hasn't. Consider some data points:
—In 2013, China replaced Mexico as the top country sending immigrants to the U.S., according a new Census Bureau study. Indeed, immigration from both China and India has been increasing for a decade, and inflows from other Asian countries are climbing as well, while immigration from Mexico has been declining, the study notes.
—During the first six months of the current fiscal year, the number of apprehensions of immigrants coming illegally across the southwest border—a strong indicator of efforts to cross the border illegally—was 28% lower than in the prior year, the Department of Homeland Security reported late last month. Overall, apprehensions today are "a fraction of where they were 15 years ago," the department says, and data confirm that.
—The influx of young and unaccompanied minors from Central America, which generated much attention and alarm a year ago, has declined dramatically, partly the result of a serious effort by Mexico to clamp down on use of its territory as a transit point. The number of unaccompanied minors from Central America that Mexico has deported rose 56% in the first five months of the current fiscal year, according to a Pew Research Center analysis.
A clear sign of substantial change arrived three years ago this spring, when Pew reported that, after four decades of a steady inflow of illegal Mexican immigrants into the U.S., the influx had begun to reverse—that is, more Mexicans were returning to Mexico than were coming into the U.S., according to data from both countries.
A combination of factors—steady improvements in Mexico's economy, strengthened border enforcement and deportations, a decline in Mexican birth rates—has come together over a period of years to change the picture.
Yet that change has barely made a dent in the political rhetoric that shapes the national immigration conversation. "The immigration debate seems to be stuck around the year 2006, and before then," says Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute. "Almost all the negative comments I get are, 'Why do you want illiterate Mexicans here?' "
The new face of American immigrants is more likely to be Asian, and Mr. Nowrasteh notes that the Asian arrivals bring a significantly different profile than did Hispanic immigrants of recent decades: They are better educated and more economically successful. "Asian immigrants are doing amazingly well in this country," he says.
At this point, says William Frey of the Brookings Institution, "the growth of the Hispanic population in this country is coming largely from natural increase, not from immigration."
In a new book and other writings, Mr. Frey explores the demographic shifts that really are shaping 21st century America, and that ought to be shaping its immigration debate. The country's white population is barely growing, he writes, and in a decade or so will begin to decline. The U.S. is on its way to becoming a country with no clear racial majority—a true patchwork nation.
In that economy, Mr. Frey notes, immigrant contributions become "absolutely necessary….We need to understand what our labor force really needs in this country."
That's the subject that should be the crux of today's immigration debate. Yet, Mr. Frey says, "none of this is being discussed in a rational way."
Instead, the discussion is fixated on securing a southwest border that, evidence indicates, is significantly more secure than it was a decade ago, and on deciding what to do about the 11 million undocumented aliens already here, who, everybody really knows, aren't going anywhere, unless they choose to leave. Should they be given a "path to citizenship" or a "path to legal status," and would either of those represent a form of "amnesty"?
Those are important and emotional questions, to be sure—but also more of the past than the future.
By Andrew Grossman
WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama plans to nominate the Coast Guard's second-ranking officer to run the Transportation Security Administration, the White House said Tuesday.
If confirmed by the Senate, Vice Admiral Peter Neffenger, currently the vice commandant of the Coast Guard, will take over the agency responsible for aviation security amid heightened concerns about threats posed by terrorists and illegal activity by airport employees.
Adm. Neffenger is a three-decade veteran of the Coast Guard whose experience includes helping run the response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and leading security at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
"I have no doubt that his skills, intellect and energy that have up to now been devoted to maritime security will be easily translatable to aviation security," Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Tuesday.
Adm. Neffenger will be responsible for overseeing TSA's growing PreCheck program, which offers expedited security screening to travelers who submit to background checks ahead of time. And he'll also have to implement plans announced by Mr. Johnson to increase screening of airport employees. That group has been under scrutiny since law enforcement uncovered a gun-smuggling ring late last year that allegedly relied on an Atlanta baggage handler handing off bags of guns to an accomplice, who carried them on flights to New York.
If he's confirmed, Adm. Neffenger will fill a job vacated by John Pistole, who stepped down at the end of 2014 after four years running the TSA, making him the longest-serving leader of the agency, which was created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
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By Heather Haddon
WAUKEE, Iowa—Nine Republican candidates drew from their personal experiences and spoke about the depth of their faith in seeking to appeal to religious voters who face a broad slate of 2016 Republican presidential candidates.
Speaking before more than 1,000 attendees of a multicandidate forum here Saturday, the declared and potential Republican contenders voiced concerns about religious freedoms being under threat in the U.S., and expressed the need to protect Christianity at home and abroad. They also emphasized the need to further America's strength overseas and pivot sharply from the policies of the Obama administration.
"Religious liberty is an issue that unifies us," said Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who drew some of the loudest applause of the night. "We embrace the liberty of the Bill of Rights for each and every American to worship God."
Saturday's Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition summit was the latest multicandidate event for Republicans to view their potential 2016 options. Unlike earlier "cattle calls," the summit took place after several contenders have declared their candidacy or are slated to do so in coming days.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Mr. Cruz have officially announced they are running for president, while former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Carly Fiorina and neurosurgeon Ben Carson plan to announce decisions in early May.
In contrast to a Republican summit in New Hampshire last week, Saturday's event was largely devoid of attacks on the national Common Core education standards and overhauling entitlement programs. There were far fewer references to tax policy, trade or regulation.
Instead, speakers gave full-throated endorsements of their religious beliefs and the role Christianity has played in shaping American values. Speaking at an evangelical church with a large wooden cross near the stage, would-be candidates detailed the role of faith in their life, quoted Biblical passages and gave personal anecdotes about the power of prayer.
Mr. Jindal opened his speech by asking for an "Amen" from the crowd, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker held a devotional "Jesus Calling" book while on stage and Mr. Cruz said the crowd should "fall to our knees and pray" when the U.S. Supreme Court takes up oral arguments on gay marriage on Tuesday.
Even Mr. Paul mixed his civil liberties platform with the need to protect Christians persecuted in nations such as Pakistan, and to protect the rights of the unborn.
"Countries that persecute Christians shouldn't get one penny of our dollars," Mr. Paul said.
Mr. Huckabee defended controversial comments he had made earlier in the week that same-sex marriage was "criminalizing Christianity in this country." He got applause in response.
The speakers didn't attack each other at the summit. Instead, some lauded other candidates while on stage. Mr. Huckabee praised a recent opinion piece written by Mr. Jindal against gay marriage, while Mr. Cruz huddled with Mr. Walker after he left the stage.
"What a tremendous array of candidates," Mr. Cruz said. "I don't know about you but I'm inspired."
Speakers reserved their fire for Hillary Clinton. The Democratic presidential candidate was attacked for supporting abortion rights, for running a campaign that speakers said has already shown to be out-of-touch with voters and for being the equivalent of eight more years of Mr. Obama's policies.
Ms. Fiorina said it wasn't being a woman that would keep Mrs. Clinton out of the White House. Rather, Ms. Fiorina said, "She can't be a president of the United States because she's not trustworthy."
Several attendees said they left the five hours of speeches feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of choosing between so many candidates who they considered strong.
Messrs. Walker and Cruz are expected to do well in Iowa if both choose to run, and some attendees said Saturday further solidified their support behind the men.
But Mr. Jindal and Ms. Fiorina appeared to be the surprises of the evening. Many caucusgoers said they walked away impressed by their speeches after they hadn't been on their radar.
State GOP leaders sought to stress that the unusually large field was an asset for the party, and offered a point of contrast with a Democratic Party that has largely united behind Mrs. Clinton.
"Which one is in the spirit of the caucuses and which one is coroneted," said Jeff Kaufmann, the chairman of the Iowa GOP, in speaking about the two fields. "Iowa is going to be red, not purple."
Saturday's summit was one of the largest candidate forums in Iowa so far this year. Contenders held events with Iowa voters on their own in the days leading up to the summit: Mr. Rubio attended an ice cream social with an Iowa state senator Saturday, Mr. Walker spoke before hundreds of Republicans gathered in the state's conservative northwest Friday, and Ms. Fiorina traveled more than a thousand miles across the state during the week.
"I will take Casey's pizza in the car to Chipotle takeout anytime," said Ms. Fiorina, a dig at Mrs. Clinton's recent stop at the chain restaurant.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Mr. Carson didn't attend the event but sent surrogates in their place. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham taped a video that was shown. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie also declined to attend the summit but had no representative.
The evangelical ministry that hosted Saturday's event, Point of Grace Church, has played a prominent role in Republican politics in Iowa. Its pastor, Jeff Mullen, endorsed Michelle Bachman when the Minnesota Republican ran for president in 2012. The church also held the multicandidate forum before the 2012 Republican primary.
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By Jeffrey Sparshott
WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama took swipes at the field of candidates looking to succeed him in the White House, and joked about Congress, Joe Biden, Dick Cheney, Donald Trump, journalists and himself in his remarks at the White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday.
Mr. Obama, enjoying a degree of freedom that comes with being near the end of a second term, was particularly animated when discussing climate change. Playing off a Comedy Central sketch, Mr. Obama tapped his "anger translator" to deride Sen. Jim Inhofe's (R., Okla.) use of a snowball on the Senate floor in February to question climate change.
"Instead of doing anything about it, we've got elected officials throwing snowballs in the Senate," Mr. Obama said, usurping his anger translator's comedic rage. "It is crazy. What about our kids? What kind of stupid, shortsighted irresponsible…"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hey," Keegan-Michael Key interjected. Mr. Key had been rephrasing the president's low-key comments into a furious commentary but was outdone during that particular moment of Mr. Obama's stand-up routine.
The president also referenced his recent actions on immigration, efforts to thaw relations with Cuba, negotiate with Iran and other initiatives widely derided by Republicans.
"After the midterm elections, my advisers asked me, Mr. President, do you have a bucket list?" Mr. Obama said to laughs. "I said, well I have something that rhymes with bucket list. Take executive action on immigration? Bucket."
And in a reference to graying hair and a recent invitation by House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before Congress, Mr. Obama joked: "I look so old, John Boehner has already invited Netanyahu to speak at my funeral."
On the economy and Hillary Clinton's presidential aspirations: "For many Americans, this is a time of deep uncertainty. For example, I have one friend, just a few weeks ago she was making millions of dollars a year. And she is now living out of a van in Iowa."
About 2,700 guests in black ties and evening gowns packed into the Washington Hilton ballroom for the event with journalists, politicos, small-screen celebrities and comedic headliner Cecily Strong of Saturday Night Live.
Ms. Strong didn't receive the same yuks as the president, in part because—having to follow the president—she trod on some of the same comedic ground, including jokes about Vice President Biden's shoulder rubs.
In one bit, she referred to the Secret Service, responsible for protecting the president and his family, as the only law enforcement agency that would get in trouble if a black man were to get shot.
In a similar vein, she quipped: "Your hair is so white now it can talk back to the police."
Ms. Strong also drew a forced smile from Mr. Obama when she noted gains by the terrorist group that calls itself Islamic State, also known as ISIS. "If anyone is guilty of taking ISIS too lightly it's, um, you know," she said, giving an exaggerated nod toward Mr. Obama.
She poked fun as presidential hopefuls, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas). She said it is like the Republicans are trying to pick someone who is the opposite of President Obama: "a Canadian Latino who will never be president." Of Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.), she said, if he runs and loses, at least he can say "I ran'd."
The White House Correspondents Association marked its 100th anniversary last year. The first spring dinner was in 1920 and has grown to include a series of events and parties throughout the weekend. Today, it is best known as an annual occasion when the president cracks jokes before a room of media moguls, journalists and their guests. Informally, reporters call it "nerd prom."
Many reporters take sources to the dinner and organizations often invite celebrities to sit at their tables, and the event has been criticized for portraying reporters as too close to the powerful people they cover.
But the number of big-screen stars appears to be tailing off well into Mr. Obama's second term. "With the exception of Bradley Cooper…the number of high-wattage film stars who used to be the evening's big draw is continuing to dwindle," the Hollywood Reporter said.
Among those spotted at the event: Oscar-winner Jane Fonda, real estate mogul Donald Trump, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson, Orange is the New Black actress Laverne Cox, Modern Family's Julie Bowen, actress Tea Leoni and model Adriana Lima. The number of attendees in the "famous for Washington" category was abundant.
While the red carpet and celebrity-spotting capture much of the evening's attention, the dinner raises money for scholarships and recognizes some of the year's best journalism.
"The first and most important mission of the White House Correspondents' Association is to promote journalism education," according to the group's website. Money raised at this dinner will help fund 16 scholarships as well as programs in local Washington, D.C., high schools.
This year, the association awarded prizes recognizing the work of Peter Baker of the New York Times, Josh Lederman of the Associated Press, Jim Avila of ABC News, Carol Leonnig of The Washington Post, and Gary Fields, John R. Emshwiller, Rob Barry and Coulter Jones of The Wall Street Journal.
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By Damian Paletta
Several secretive government intelligence programs appear to have narrowed in 2014, particularly on the quantity of phone numbers monitored under the National Security Agency's telephone metadata surveillance.
Just 161 "selectors," such as telephone numbers or email addresses, were approved to be monitored by intelligence agencies in 2014, down from 423 in 2013, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence revealed in an annual report that provides data about certain surveillance programs.
One likely reason for the sharp reduction is the White House's policy, rolled out in January 2014, that required requests for this data to first be approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Previously, such a hurdle wasn't required.
The data only tell so much: The intelligence director's release doesn't reveal which phone numbers were monitored, how long they were monitored, or how many led to arrests.
The release also said 16,348 "national security letters" were issued in 2014, down from 19,212 in 2013.
A national security letter is a correspondence, typically from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to a business seeking specific information on a customer or entity as part of a national security investigation.
Of the various requests, 227 "known or presumed U.S. persons were the subject of queries of information collected in bulk or who were subject to a business records application." That is down from 248 in 2013, the director's release said.
Details of many government surveillance programs are secret, though the now-declassified data could be studied as lawmakers decide what to do with the bulk telephone-data program.
That program, which the NSA has designed under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, will end on June 1 if it isn't reauthorized by Congress, the White House has said.
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By Siobhan Hughes
WASHINGTON—The top Democrat in the House, Nancy Pelosi, threw her weight behind a Democratic alternative to a White House-backed trade bill, adding a new barrier to the administration's trade ambitions on the eve of a pair of critical votes in the House and Senate.
The California congresswoman settled on her position after a meeting of the House Democratic leadership, who all agreed to support a bill that would impose added restrictions on the White House's push to pass a major Pacific trade pact.
Debate in Congress is now centered on legislation, known as fast track, that's designed to ease passage of complex trade deals.
Ms. Pelosi's stance on the trade legislation means the top echelons of Democratic leadership in both chambers now oppose a simpler version of fast track being pushed by Republicans and President Barack Obama. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) has already said he opposes the White House-backed bill, as does his presumed successor, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N. Y.)
Mrs. Pelosi portrayed her decision to back an alternative from Rep. Sandy Levin (D., Mich.), the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, as a step toward "finding a path to yes" on approving some form of fast track.
But as a practical matter, her move represents a setback for Republicans and the president, who support legislation that is up for a vote later Wednesday in the Senate Finance Committee and early Thursday in the House Ways and Means Committee.
The lawmakers on the Senate Finance Committee are now planning to work late into the night to vote on the measure, which would give the president the power to speed trade deals through Congress with an up-or-down vote without amendments. Its House counterpart takes up the bill on Thursday.
Republicans and the White House are hoping to push through the bill in order to speed adoption of the Trans-Pacific Partnership between the U.S. and 11 other nations, including Japan, Malaysia, and Vietnam. The president has made the trade pact a centerpiece of his efforts to pivot toward Asia and to counter the rise of China, which is not part of the agreement.
In an effort to win over Democrats, the authors of that package already tried to satisfy demands for greater transparency through a requirement that the legislative text of the deal be made public 60 days before the president signs the deal.
Mr. Levin's alternative would create an advisory board that would have to certify that the administration has followed negotiation instructions from Congress before a trade pact can be put on a fast track. The White House-backed bill would allow the administration to do that certifying itself.
The alternative also backs enforceable rules in the Pacific trade deal that would punish countries blamed for manipulating their currencies to gain trade advantage. Such currency rules are backed by Mr. Schumer and other Democrats as well as some Republicans from traditional manufacturing states, unions and the Detroit auto industry. But Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew objected to such currency rules Wednesday, saying trading partners in the Pacific talks aren't on board. Most business groups oppose binding currency rules out of fears they could sour the trade negotiations.
The Levin bill, which includes initiatives popular among labor groups and the Detroit automakers, could also draw support among the administration's trade critics in the Senate. "I generally would support something Levin did," said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio), adding that he hadn't yet seen Mr. Levin's proposal.
–Will Mauldin contributed to this article.
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By Rebecca Ballhaus
KEENE, N.H.—Hillary Clinton offered a grim outlook for the U.S. economy and small business Monday, saying growth has "stalled out," as she focused on issues facing working families in a round-table discussion with employees at a furniture manufacturer.
Speaking with seven workers at Whitney Brothers here, she sought to underscore her presidential campaign's commitment to hearing about what matters to everyday Americans, casting herself as a champion of small businesses and workers.
"In order to put together a set of policies for my campaign, I really want to make sure that they are in line with the real lives and the real working experiences of the people that I would love to represent as your president," she said.
"I want people to know that I'm listening, and I'm accessible, and that I'm running a campaign that is about them," she told reporters after the discussion.
During the round-table talk, Mrs. Clinton also addressed child care, calling for a universal prekindergarten system. She also spoke about substance abuse issues, and called for better treatment options for people looking for help.
"This is not something we can just brush under the rug and it will go away," she said, adding that she had heard about similar substance abuse issues in her trip to Iowa last week.
The New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services said last year that heroin addiction in the state had reached epidemic proportions.
She also criticized attacks on Social Security benefits, calling the benefits a "necessity," not a luxury. Several Republican presidential candidates or potential candidates, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, have called for raising the retirement age or other changes to Social Security in an effort to put the program on more solid financial footing.
For Mrs. Clinton, her two-day swing through the Granite State marks a return to the state that gave her a boost in her 2008 campaign. After placing third in the Iowa caucuses behind then-Sen. Barack Obama and John Edwards in 2008, she surged to finish first in New Hampshire just days later. She later lost the nomination to Mr. Obama.
In her New Hampshire stop, Mrs. Clinton also deflected questions about a soon-to-be-released book that alleges moves by the State Department coincided with donations to the Clinton Foundation. "I know that unfortunately comes with the territory," she told reporters after the discussion, adding, "I'm ready for that."
As in Iowa last week, the Clinton campaign in New Hampshire employed a markedly different strategy from her last presidential bid, opting for smaller, tightknit gatherings over blaring rallies. No campaign signs were hung outside the warehouse, and even the room where the round-table was held was devoid of any Clinton-related logos. The only sign of her impending arrival were clusters of fans who had gathered to welcome her.
New Hampshire voters who gathered outside the warehouse in the pouring rain Monday to welcome Mrs. Clinton to the state said they were eager to hear more from the recently launched candidate, but appeared comfortable with the prospect of Mrs. Clinton easily clinching the Democratic nomination.
Barbara Brown, a retired registered nurse from Grantham, N.H., who held a bright sign outside the warehouse, said Mrs. Clinton addresses issues that affect "everyday people." She said that though she is eager to hear more from Mrs. Clinton on the policy front, the former secretary of state has been around long enough to make Ms. Brown comfortable with her set of positions. "I've been following her for a long time," she said.
Ms. Brown, who also supported Mrs. Clinton over Mr. Obama in the Democratic primary in 2008, said she wasn't concerned about Mrs. Clinton's apparent lock on the Democratic nomination this time around. "If there were other candidates who thought they could do as good a job as her, they would've come forward," she said. "But they haven't."
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Hillary Clinton's nascent presidential campaign is billed as a test of how the Democratic Party's centrist, establishment machine will do in pacifying a progressive wing unhappy with her ties to financial interests and hungry for some alternative.
In fact, a test of that very struggle was conducted just this month. The setting was the mayor's race in Chicago, where incumbent Rahm Emanuel—veteran of Bill Clinton's presidential campaigns and White House, and inheritor of the Clinton family's inclination to build bridges to the financial community—was challenged by an unabashed liberal, Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, a Cook County commissioner.
Like Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Emanuel was the object of deep skepticism on his party's left—a skepticism that in his case ranged up to outright hostility. The skepticism was born both of what he had done and what he had failed to do while in office. On top of substantive disputes, his record of maintaining good ties—and a hefty donor base—among Chicago's business and financial leaders was seen as both a sign and cause of misplaced priorities.
Unlike Mrs. Clinton thus far, Mr. Emanuel also faced a real, live opponent, who became the vessel for all that progressive angst and anger.
Result? Mr. Emanuel won easily, 56% to 44%, in a runoff election on April 7. He won the white vote handily but also every African-American ward in the city, despite intense unhappiness there over his closure of almost 50 schools. He won in wards heavily represented by officers of the police and fire departments, despite intense controversy over reductions in city pension programs that are running deep in the red. He didn't win the Hispanic vote, but, while running one-on-one against a Latino foe, won nearly the same share as four years earlier.
How did he do it? In part by running as a kind of modified progressive, one who embraced the same priorities as his party's liberal wing but with policies moderated enough to prevent scaring off moderates and business interests who would consider a more strident progressive agenda a declaration of class warfare.
In essence, Mr. Emanuel's pitch was that he was offering working-class, poor and minority voters programs that improved their chances of succeeding without breaking the bank in the process. He terms it a choice between "opportunity-based progressivism" and the liberal wing's "class-based, resentment-based progressivism."
There are limits to how much of this story applies to a national presidential campaign, of course. David Axelrod, a friend of Mr. Emanuel's and a longtime Chicago political operative, cautions that it's easy to overstate the parallels between a mayor's race and a national political debate. Mayoral elections tend to be more focused on personalities, competence and local issues than on ideology. "Most Chicagoans were basically measuring these guys as mayors," Mr. Axelrod says.
Still, unions and national progressive groups went some distance to nationalize the Chicago campaign by aggressively backing Mr. Garcia and seeking to upend Mr. Emanuel. Certainly the mayor was highly vulnerable to attacks from the left. That was largely because of the anger stirred up by his decision to deal with a budget crisis by closing schools, many in African-American communities, and his decision to push for a longer school day. Those moves put him at odds with minority leaders and powerful teacher unions, a spat that became bitterly personal and led to a brief teacher strike.
That alone was enough to set a fire, but additional kindling came from Mr. Emanuel's famously cozy relations with the moneyed interests of downtown Chicago, and his equally famously abrasive personality. Put it all together and you had the formula for a center-vs.-left conflagration.
Mr. Emanuel tried to douse it by crafting his own version of his progressive credentials, trying to show he embraced the same goals as the movement but with more achievable tactics for moving toward them. He raised the city's minimum wage (though not as much as progressives wanted). He provided universal full-day kindergarten (though not the universal all-day prekindergarten some wanted).
He also tried to counter the perception that in closing elementary and secondary schools he had undercut his city's poor and minority students. He did so by emphasizing a different education initiative: a program to waive community college costs for city high school graduates with a B average, a program especially beneficial for minority students.
It worked, in the sense that Mr. Emanuel won with relative ease after an early scare.
For Mrs. Clinton, the lesson may be that it is possible to craft a progressive narrative that is different from, though not necessarily at odds with, the one pushed by those who would rather have Sen. Elizabeth Warren running. Chicago shows she ignores Democrats' new energy on the left at her peril; less clear is whether she, more than Mr. Emanuel, can find a way to actually channel it.
By William Mauldin
WASHINGTON—Lawmakers introduced fast-track trade legislation into the House and Senate Thursday that could pave the way for President Barack Obama to conclude a major agreement with 11 nations around the Pacific.
The bill, the result of a compromise between Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee, is expected to escalate an already-bitter fight with some Democrats and labor unions over what could become a key part of Mr. Obama's legacy. The committee is expected to vote on the plan next week.
Along with Japanese and other officials from Canada to Vietnam, Mr. Obama is seeking to open up the barriers that businesses face at the borders around the Pacific to spur economic growth and blunt China's influence in the region, part of a strategic rebalancing toward Asia.
"If we want to maintain our nation's economic leadership and promote American values around the world, we must reach beyond our borders, and this bill is a strong first step," Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) said.
Mr. Hatch introduced the legislation, commonly known as fast track, along with Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.). The Senate committee was set to reconvene Thursday afternoon for a hearing on the bill.
Labor leaders and top Democrats protested the measure Wednesday on Capitol Hill, and its fate is unclear in Congress. Most Democrats oppose it while most Republicans back the legislation, along with Mr. Obama. Trade bills often clear Congress by a narrow margin with support from both political parties.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), likely the next Senate Democratic leader, on Thursday came out strongly against the Pacific trade deal, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the fast-track legislation.
If enacted, the legislation would allow a completed TPP deal and other trade agreements to pass Congress without amendments or procedural delays, a process said to lend more certainty to the U.S. following through on trade terms negotiated between countries.
Opponents ranging from union leaders to some conservative Republicans and most Democratic lawmakers have rejected renewing the legislation, saying it would cede congressional authority to Mr. Obama or pave the way for a trade agreement they oppose.
The bill comes after months of contentious negotiations among Mr. Hatch, Mr. Wyden and Rep. Paul Ryan (R, Wis.). The public clashes between Messrs. Hatch and Wyden delayed a bill that backers of free trade had hoped would clear the new Republican-led Congress earlier this year.
Mr. Wyden had sought changes in the bill that would appeal to more Democrats, and in the end Mr. Hatch agreed to let legislation known as trade adjustment assistance, popular among Democrats, move in parallel with the fast-track bill. The measure helps those whose jobs may have been displaced by international trade.
The bill contains other changes meant to appeal to Democrats and others cautious about opening up trade, without turning off broad Republican support.
Lawmakers backing the legislation and business groups are seeking to get the fast-track bill approved before Congress's next recess in May. That would allow trade ministers an opportunity to conclude a Trans-Pacific Partnership pact this spring that could come up for a final vote in Congress this year, before the height of the U.S. presidential campaign further complicates the politics of trade.
Progress toward passing the legislation could help U.S. and Japanese officials sew up a bilateral deal to be included in the broader TPP, a step officials are seeking before Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visits later this month.
Write to William Mauldin at email@example.com
By Andy Pasztor
The international space station "continues to be the perfect role model" for cooperation between Russia and the U.S., America's top space official told a House panel Thursday, confirming that Moscow has committed to keeping the orbiting laboratory operating through 2024.
Despite various diplomatic clashes between Moscow and Washington, Charles Bolden, head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, told lawmakers that the two countries continue to work closely together on space station operations. Testifying before a House Science subcommittee, Mr. Bolden provided the Obama administration's most specific official statement yet indicating that Russian space authorities have pledged to support U.S. plans to maintain the space station for nearly another decade.
Kremlin officials previously indicated they backed such plans, but Russian news reports at the time were confusing and included references to Russian proposals to assemble an independent space station after 2024. NASA now relies on Russian rockets and spacecraft to transport U.S. astronauts to and from the orbiting laboratory.
The Kremlin's plans prompted renewed attention Thursday, because Russian President Vladimir Putin said that by 2023 "we plan to create our own national space station in orbit." Mr. Putin didn't elaborate during his marathon call-in session with the nation, but Russian space authorities have said they were considering dismantling parts of the existing station and using them as the core of a new Russian replacement.
On Thursday, Mr. Bolden reiterated that NASA's priorities include funding development of commercial space taxis to ferry U.S. astronauts into low earth orbit starting in 2017. "We have to get away from our reliance on the Russians," Mr. Bolden said.
But in response to repeated questions from lawmakers about potential NASA contingency plans to accelerate that shift, the NASA chief said 2017 is the earliest possible date to take over that role. Boeing Co. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. are working on separate contracts for manned transportation systems.
The hearing was marked by continued friction between NASA and the bipartisan leaders of the panel over funding levels and timetables to develop a heavy-lift rocket and manned capsule designed to eventually take astronauts to Mars. Lacking congressional consensus for the agency's plans to move the first manned flight of the Orion capsule to 2018 from 2017, Mr. Bolden fended off criticism from members of the panel.
"America is losing ground and could arguably no longer be the pre-eminent space program," said Rep. Mo Brooks, the Alabama Republican who is vice chairman of the space and aeronautics subcommittee.
Regardless of how broader U.S.-Russian relations evolve, Mr. Bolden said, "I am going to work with my Russian partners" to maintain the space station. But at the same time, he said, NASA continues to spend on internal technical and management capabilities to ensure that "we will continue to be the dominant operator" of systems aboard the space station.
NASA's assessment of Russian motivations was less certain last month, when Mr. Bolden told another House subcommittee about receiving mixed messages from the Kremlin. "Rhetoric on the political side is not the same [as] when you talk about space exploration," Mr. Bolden testified in early March, adding that the U.S. was proceeding with plans for alternative propulsion systems for the space station if Russian modules eventually were removed.
During his testimony Thursday, Mr. Bolden also laid out his view of the federal government's difficult challenge in trying to keep up with fast-moving advances in commercial drone technology. Unless federal spending in this area grows, he told the panel, "I am not confident that we will stay ahead of industry and entrepreneurs" pushing to expand uses of unmanned aircraft. Additional taxpayer investments will be essential to help shape and oversee the budding industry, Mr. Bolden testified, "otherwise they will dwarf us."
Write to Andy Pasztor at firstname.lastname@example.com


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Everyday FREE SHIPPING for Orders Over $80 | U.S. Postal Service 3 Day
This incredibly versatile Alpha Psi Lambda backpack is all about intelligent organization with its cavernous main compartment and a place for everything. Convenient fleece-lined valuables stash pocket, and dual side beverage/accessory holsters. Great for Alpha Psi Lambda fan gear.

subset: commoncrawl


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Photo gallery: James Garner, 1928-2014
Actor James Garner, whose whimsical style in the 1950s TV Western "Maverick" led to a stellar career in TV and films such as "The Rockford Files" and his Oscar-nominated "Murphy's Romance," has died. He was 86.
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Singapore, Singapore
My Rating
I enjoyed the tour very much.There was not enough time allowed to do any of the walks. We only had time to the dinner, tram tour and one show. You should start one hour earlier.
Singapore, Singapore
My Rating
I loved the interaction between the orangutans and ourselves. Also with the boa constrictor..
The breakfast was good.
Singapore, Singapore
My Rating
This tour was so good because we had such an excellent guide. I learned so much about the history, politics and the economy of Singapore
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Winter!: Prepare for holiday gaming!
First of the Assassin's Creed games, you are thrown into both a medieval setting at the cusp of the crusades interweaving history and fiction, while engaging in conspiracy theories of modern day. Elements of sci-fi mixed in to create an immersive 'game within a game' ui, on top of beautiful landscapes and optional methods of engaging (or avoiding) the enemy and parkour style interaction with the environment make this game a great play.
Game Traits applied to Assassin's Creed: Director's Cut Edition (PC) by docfaust
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Special Correspondent
TIRUCHI: About 95 kilometres of city roads would be built anew with drains under a Rs.24.30-crore project funded by German development bank KfW.
The Tiruchi Corporation Council on Thursday approved the tenders for 168 works to be executed under the project in 40 packages.
Mayor Sarubala R.Tondaiman informed an urgent meeting of the council that the works would begin shortly and the project would give a fillip to civic infrastructure. A consultant had been appointed. Commissioner T.T.Balsamy, responding to some suggestions from the councillors, said that the roads to be developed under the project would be laid end-to-end along with drains on both sides.
The Corporation would contribute 10 per cent of the total project cost, amounting to Rs.2.43 crore. KfW would provide a long-term credit of Rs.16.87 crore and Rs.5 crore as capital subsidy.
More major projects were on the anvil, she said. The Corporation had forwarded proposals worth over Rs.100 crore under the Tamil Nadu Urban Road Infrastructure Project (TURIP), Mrs.Tondaiman said and was hopeful of getting the funds soon.


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What to do after the TESOL conference
Many of us return from a big conference like TESOL 2012 full of energy and excitement. It's invigorating to be around other professionals and to share ideas. But once we get home and sort out the laundry and get our … Continue reading
Posted in TESOL Blog, TESOL Convention Blog Tagged as brown bag, business card, catalog, conference, contact, convention, EFL, ELT, ESL, exhibits, handout, Joe McVeigh, program book, publsher, TESOL 3 Comments


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He did look a little sluggish in his fight. I just thought it was his first fight back & maybe was a little nervous. I'm glad he pulled that fight off. Atta boy Nick. GET WELL SOON!
According to GracieFighter.com, Nick Diaz was admitted to a hospital after the EliteXC fight in Hawaii for Staph infection.
"I felt pretty crappy in my match in Hawaii but I figured it was jet lag or maybe something I had eaten the night before. When I left Hawaii the next day I was getting chills and had to be covered with several blankets on the plane but I just kept having cold sweats. By the time I got to Vegas the infection had ballooned up and so I went to the hospital to have it checked out. They admitted me and I've been here ever since".
He did look a little sluggish in his fight. I just thought it was his first fight back & maybe was a little nervous. I'm glad he pulled that fight off. Atta boy Nick. GET WELL SOON!
Yeah, I thought he looked slow and like he was just sparring. I didnt know what was going on. Then Jude, did you happen to hear his interviews after the fight. I think Sherdog asked him one question, something like "do you think you didnt perform well in this fight and do you think you won?" He went into a 15 minute ramble that was just all over the place. It was funny to hear though.
I heard that. He always rambles on like he has something to say but never really gets to the point. Weird dude but I love to watch him fight. Those little punches he throws just killes me, I'm like "hit the dude already!', but by the end of the fight, you can see the damage he's done to the guys face. I use to get so mad 'cause a lot of his fights would go to the judges & I think he was cheated out of a few wins. Glad that didn't happen this time.
He did say he wasn't feeling right, but he thought it was the long trip to Hawaii that did it, NOW he knows what it was. Just happy he pulled it off.


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I know her lasso is magic and her bracelets are magic and when she spins lightning happens and she changes into her outfit, but is Wonder Woman/Diana Prince herself magic? Without the lasso and bracelets and the lightning, can she do anything?
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Timbaland confesses working on Michael Jackson's new LP was a "trying" experience.
The late King of Pop's second posthumous album Xscape was released on May 13.
Timbaland executive produced the new offering and he says working on it was tough because all he thought of was dead friends while composing songs.
"This was very trying, not because it was just a Michael Jackson
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Timbaland admits he had several emotional breakdowns throughout the Xscape recording process.
"I forgot about Michael for a moment," he recalled. "And then when I kept hearing his voice, it was like, I'm doing Michael Jackson. It got emotional. I had to tell my engineer to stop — we gotta go to something else. It took about a week process to really grasp what I'm doing. And once I grasped what I'm doing, I had to call my mom for prayer like, I need some help, I need some guidance on this, 'cause this is hard."
Ultimately Timbaland learned a lot from the experience.
Now that the project is complete, the musician feels spiritually renewed.
"It really helped me deal with a lot of thoughts that always been in the back of my mind," he said. "I dealt with 'em, and I still deal with 'em."
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