Trump says he’d drop out if he fell in the polls
Donald Trump said Sunday that if he drops in the polls, he will drop out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination. “I’m not a masochist,” Trump said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “And if I was dropping in the polls where I saw that I wasn’t going to win, why would I continue?” Sunday’s comment — the second time Trump said he could stop his campaign came as the Republican front-runner’s standing in polls has leveled off. Trump remains ahead in Iowa and New Hampshire, but his lead has shrunk in the past month, according to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll.
New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan to run for U.S. Senate
New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan has announced she’s running for the U.S. Senate. In an online video released Monday morning, the Democratic governor says she’s running to get a response from Washington that matches progress New Hampshire has made in promoting business innovation and expanding economic opportunity. She says Washington has given in to powerful special interests and lobbyists “who rigged the system for themselves and against the middle class.” The second-term governor is the first Democrat to announce she’s in the race to challenge Republican U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte. The 57-year-old Hassan is considered the best challenger for Ayotte in a swing state that could be pivotal in the contest to control the Senate. Ayotte was elected in 2010. She says she expects a “very spirited campaign.”
Ben Carson calls liberal critics ‘skillful liars’
DES MOINES, Iowa — Ben Carson doesn’t think hardship and hurdles are necessarily bad, but he says he disagrees with liberal critics who claim he wants to pull away government safety nets that provide opportunities for many Americans to escape poverty. “Nothing could be further from the truth. Some people are very skillful liars. They think they will throw out a headline and people will believe it,” the Republican presidential candidate told a Des Moines Rotary Club breakfast crowd of more than 100 people Friday. He added, “What I would like to do is to provide a ladder for people on the lower rungs of society to climb up and not be dependent on something else. I think that is what is destroying our society. We are going from a ‘can-do’ society to a ‘what-can-you-do-for-me’ society?” Carson, who grew up poor in Detroit and became an internationally known neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, spoke passionately about his belief that education can help anyone become successful in America.
Biden backs transgender military service
Vice President Joe Biden is throwing his unequivocal support behind letting transgender people serve openly in the U.S. military, as the Obama administration considers whether and when to lift the longstanding ban. Biden’s declaration at the Human Rights Campaign’s annual dinner Saturday goes further than anything the Obama administration has said before, evoking memories of when Biden outpaced President Barack Obama in endorsing gay marriage. Although the White House says Obama supports a Pentagon review aimed at ending the transgender ban, neither Obama nor the military has said definitively that the policy will be changed. “No longer is there any question transgender people are able to serve in the United States military,” Biden told a crowd of 3,000 gay rights activists at the group’s star-studded gala. Biden, who is considering running for president, declared transgender rights to be “the civil rights issue of our time” as he delivered the keynote speech, just hours after Hillary Rodham Clinton — his top rival if he enters the race — gave a rousing address elevating LGBT rights as a main pillar of 2016 bid. Biden said gays and lesbians shouldn’t fear “those shrill voices” trying to undo gay marriage and other advances because Americans “have moved so far beyond them and their appeals to prejudice and fear and homophobia.”
Education Secretary Arne Duncan leaving Obama Cabinet
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced last week that he would leave the Obama Cabinet in December, after nearly seven years of attempting to reshape and bring more accountability to public schools and universities with a controversial emphasis on standardized testing, teacher evaluation, the value of a college degree and reducing sexual assaults on campuses. Duncan, an original member of the Obama administration and former head of Chicago Public Schools, won praise from supporters for pushing higher standards, supporting charter schools, significantly expanding federal financial aid and cracking down on corrupt for-profit colleges. But he angered teachers unions, otherwise key Democratic allies, with his proposals to change the way instructors are evaluated and he eventually abandoned his efforts to create a ratings system for the nation’s colleges amid opposition. President Barack Obama said he would appoint Duncan’s deputy secretary, John B. King Jr., the former schools chief of New York state, to succeed Duncan.At a White House news conference, Obama praised Duncan, saying: “Arne’s done more to bring our educational system — sometimes kicking and screaming — into the 21st century more than anyone else. America is going to be better off for what he has done. It’s going to be more competitive and more prosperous. It is going to be more equal and more upwardly mobile.”
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