OFF TO THE RACES: Where will the Republican Party go after 2016?
Don't miss the third installment of our United States of Trump series by Leigh Ann Caldwell and Benjy Sarlin, with photos from Mark Peterson and video by Matt Rivera. In this chapter, our team looks at where the GOP will go from here. "We asked more than a dozen prominent minds in the Republican Party, including Trump supporters and Trump critics, fiscal conservatives and social conservatives, tea party rabble-rousers and veteran establishment hands, to assess the impact of Trump’s emergence and where the party goes from here... In the course of these conversations, four broad paths emerged, each pointing to different agendas, different messages, different coalitions of voters and a different conception of what it means to be a Republican."
Trump is openly weighing a huge shift on immigration. From Sarlin: "In what would be a stunning reversal on an issue central to his candidacy, Donald Trump floated a possible process to allow undocumented immigrants to remain in America in a town hall that aired Wednesday. "No citizenship," Trump told Fox News' Sean Hannity in an interview taped Tuesday afternoon in Austin, Texas. "Let me go a step further — they'll pay back-taxes, they have to pay taxes, there's no amnesty, as such, there's no amnesty, but we work with them." Trump said he was moved by concerns from fans who opposed his previous calls for a "deportation force" to remove all of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country."
Is the reversal bothering his supporters? Maybe not?
And/but: Check out conservative activist Ann Coulter's Twitter feed from last night.
As POLITICO points out, Team Cruz is saying "told you so" on Trump's apparent immigration flip.
Trump called Hillary Clinton "a bigot" during an appearance in Jackson, MS, last night.
Writes the New York Times: "After months of flailing attempts, Donald J. Trump has begun to recast his political message in more structured terms and wrestle with his temptation to go off script, as his campaign seeks to revive his fading candidacy and turn the focus this fall to Hillary Clinton’s honesty and integrity."
Trump will meet with the RNC’s Republican Leadership Initiative fellows in New York today. The program trains activists to organize and develop volunteer networks in key states in the field. Here’s more on the program.
Alex Seitz-Wald writes that there's an awkward fight coming for Hillary Clinton over trade policy.
Bill Clinton says he's proud of the Clinton Foundation despite criticisms of the potential conflicts of interest it has prompted.
Ethicists are not so impressed with the Clinton family's plan to transition the foundation, POLITICO finds.
Hillary Clinton is calling for some changes to the rules for small banks, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Black voters say they don't recognize the lives that Donald Trump says he envisions them to have.
A progressive group will run bilingual anti-Trump ads in Arizona, Florida and North Carolina, the New York Times writes.
