Donald Trump kept a firm grip on his lead in the Republican race for the White House on Sunday, but US Senator Ted Cruz emerged as his strongest challenger in weekend primaries with mixed outcomes.
Former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton extended her frontrunner status in the Democratic contests, but Senator Bernie Sanders showed he is still in the race with a few victories.
Sanders won the Maine Democratic caucuses, according to US media projections.
Photo: EPA / CNN
Clinton and Sanders also faced off in a televised debate in Flint, Michigan, just two days before a crucial primary in that delegate-rich northern industrial state.
They tackled the scandal surrounding the lead-contaminated water in the city, with Sanders railing against the “disgrace beyond belief” and both calling for more accountability.
Sanders hit Clinton hard for her pro-trade policies and accused her of taking cash from Wall Street, as well as the fossil fuel and pharmaceutical industries, while she accused him of voting against the bailout of the auto industry, which is a major employer in Michigan, prompting a feisty exchange.
Clinton also took aim at Trump, saying: “Donald Trump’s bigotry, his bullying, his bluster are not going to wear well on the American people.”
“I will do whatever I can as the Democratic nominee to run a campaign you’ll be proud of,” she said. “I don’t intend to get in to the gutter with whoever they nominate.”
Republicans saw a stormy week in which panicked party leaders trained their biggest guns on Trump, who has galvanized disaffected voters with an anti-immigrant, anti-free trade campaign filled with insults, attacks on minorities and mockery of the political establishment.
US Senator Marco Rubio won by a whopping 71 percent the Republican primary election in Puerto Rico, a US commonwealth where residents do not vote in November’s general election.
However, the victory — only the second, after Minnesota, for Rubio — hands the youthful Cuban American contender the 23 party convention delegates at play.
Trump now has 384 delegates to 300 for Cruz and 151 for Rubio. Kasich has 37 delegates.
To win the Republican nomination outright, a candidate must win 1,237 delegates.
Failure to hit that number would result in a Republican nominating convention in July that could require multiple rounds of voting by delegates, something not seen in decades, but which could conceivably throw the race to someone other than Trump.
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, the Republicans’ 2012 presidential nominee, said he expected to endorse one of the three other candidates before the party convention.
Asked if he would reject the nomination if drafted, Romney said such a scenario would be “absurd” but left the door open to it, in an interview with CBS’ Face the Nation.
On Saturday, only Cruz scored victories against Trump — in Kansas and Maine. Trump won in Louisiana and Kentucky, but Cruz picked up more delegates overall.
Rubio picked up only a few delegates, unable to capitalize on the establishment assault on Trump, who called on Rubio to step aside.
“I would love to be able to take on Ted one on one,” Trump said in Florida, minutes after winning in Kentucky on Saturday.
“That will be easy,” he said.
Cruz also urged Rubio and Ohio Governor John Kasich to drop out, arguing that the anti-Trump vote will be split as long as they remain in the race.
“If we’re divided, Donald wins,” he said. “The field needs to continue to narrow.”
However, Rubio and Kasich were expected to stay in at least until the primaries in their winner-take-all home states.
The next big day on the electoral calendar is tomorrow, when Michigan and Mississippi have Democratic and Republican primaries. Republican-only nominating contests also are being held that day in Idaho and Hawaii.
Puerto Rico holds a Republican primary on Sunday.
After Saturday’s contests, Clinton had 1,121 delegates, nearly half the 2,383 needed to win the Democratic nomination.
She won in Louisiana, the biggest prize of the night, but Sanders won in Kansas and Nebraska, pushing his total to seven victories in 18 contests.
Clinton was favored in Louisiana thanks to overwhelming support from African-American voters, while Sanders has tended to do best in states with largely white voters.
“What we are seeing in many cases is not just a racial divide but a generational divide. We are doing better and better with younger people whether they’re black, Latino or white,” Sanders said on CNN’s State of the Union show. “If the turnout is high in Maine today, I think we have a good chance of winning there as well. So I think we’re showing strength all across this country.”
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of