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Wake Up To Politics - April 11, 2016

Monday, April 11, 2016
8 Days Until the New York Primary
211 Days Until Election Day 2016I'm Gabe Fleisher for Wake Up To Politics, and reporting from WUTP world HQ in my bedroom - Good morning: THIS IS YOUR WAKE UP CALL!!!
To send me questions, comments, tips, new subscribers, and more: email me at wakeuptopolitics@gmail.com. To learn more about WUTP and subscribe, visit the site: wakeuptopolitics.com, or like me on Twitter and Facebook. More ways to engage with WUTP at the bottom.    2016 Central

  • Saturday Contests Continue Sanders, Cruz Winning Streaks A pair of electoral contests on Saturday, one in each party, brought big losses for frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, instead rewarding challengers Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz, to continue their strings of victories.
  • On the Democratic side, Sanders defeated Clinton in the Wyoming caucuses, taking 55.7% of the vote to Clinton’s 44.3%. With Wyoming under his belt, the Vermont senator has now won eight of the last nine Democratic contests, swinging the momentum of the race onto his side.
  • However, even if Saturday’s caucuses added to Sanders’ momentum, it gave him no headway in the race that really matters: delegates. Wyoming offered 14 pledged delegates, and they were allocated evenly between the two candidates, giving both Sanders and Clinton seven.
  • Wyoming is the picture of a prime Sanders state: rural, mostly-white, caucuses, that have delivered him a number of wins. The only problem? There are not many more of them left, as the race heads east to Clinton territory.
  • Meanwhile, Republicans gathered in Colorado for the state’s party assembly in Colorado Springs. The state was one of a handful that opted not to hold a binding primary or caucus this year, which is why no candidates contested Colorado’s “beauty contest” caucus on Super Tuesday. But maximum attention was paid to the state over the weekend, as its 34 delegates were chosen.
  • Especially as the Republican race seems headed to a contested convention, every delegate matters, and it is key for campaigns to ensure their supporters are chosen as delegates. However, only Ted Cruz’s camp made a full-court effort to muscle his delegates through: Cruz was the only of the three candidates to speak at the convention, and his ground game was far more advanced than Trump’s or Kasich’s.
  • And it paid off: 30 of Colorado’s 37 delegates are pledged to Cruz, and four of the seven unbound delegates are supporters of his. Meanwhile, frontrunner Donald Trump was shut out: the result of a string of logistical errors in listing supportive delegate candidates, that also lost him five of six South Carolina delegates up for grabs at Saturday district conventions.
  • Trump complained about the delegate rules Sunday, attacking Cruz at a New York rally. “They’re trying to subvert the movement,” Trump said. “They can’t do it with bodies, so they’re trying to subvert the movement with crooked shenanigans.”
  • The billionaire can complain all he wants, but rules are rules: and if his campaign doesn’t master them quick, it will deal great damage to his chances at a contested convention.
  • Polling Roundup: Trump, Clinton Lead in Coming Contests Even coming off of a string of losses in recent contests, both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton lead in the two next big prizes on the primary calendar, according to the latest Fox News poll.
  • The poll, released Sunday night, showed Trump and Clinton with large leads in New York’s April 19 primary and Pennsylvania’s April 26 primary. Trump took 54% in New York, to John Kasich’s 22% and Ted Cruz’s 15%; Trump had a similarly large lead in Pennsylvania, with 48% to Kasich’s 22% and Cruz’s 20%.
  • Meanwhile, Clinton led Sanders 53% to 37% in New York, and 49% to 38% in Pennsylvania.
  • Fox News also polled the potential general election matchup of Trump vs. Clinton in both states, showing a large Clinton lead in their shared home state of New York (52% to 37%) and a tie between the two in Pennsylvania (44% to 44%).White House Watch
  • The President’s Schedule At 3pm, President Obama will sit for a rare meeting with Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen to “discuss the state of the American and global economy, Wall Street reform, and the long term economic outlook,” according to the White House.
  • According to CBS’ Mark Knoller, this is Obama’s first meeting with Yellen since November 2014 (nine months after she assumed office). Vice President Joe Biden will also attend today’s meetings.

Capitol Hill News

  • Senate: Today At 4pm, the upper chamber will continue consideration of a bill to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Under its current budgeting mechanism, the agency is funded through July 15; this bill would extend funding through September 2017.
  • So far, the Senate has approved almost a dozen amendments to the leiglsation, including two bipartisan amendments: one heightening security at foreign airports with direct U.S. flights, and another increasing the bomb-sniffing dogs at unsecured areas of the airport.
  • Today, the Senate will continue consideration of amendments to the FAA bill, including a measure authored by Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) to ban using U.S. airspace to move Guantanamo Bay detainees to the United States.
  • At 5pm, the Senate will finally vote to confirm President Obama’s judicial nominee…but not the one you think. The chamber will be voting on Waverly Crenshaw to be U.S. District Judge for the Middle District of Tennessee.
  • While it’s no Supreme Court nominee, the vote on Crenshaw is still significant as the first judicial nominee vote in the Senate since Justice Antonin Scalia died in February. Crenshaw’s nomination has been pending since February 2015, and he is supported by Tennessee’s Republican Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker.
  • Pressure from Alexander and Corker allowed Crenshaw to move forward on the Senate floor, and it could make the Tennessean one of the last federal judges confirmed in the Obama Administration.
  • House: Today The lower chamber will hold no votes today, and meet only for a pro forma session. The chamber will return from two-week recess Tuesday.
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For more on Wake Up To Politics, listen to Gabe on NPR's "Talk of the Nation, the Political Junkie podcast, and St. Louis Public Radio; watch Gabe on MSNBC's "Up with Steve Kornacki, and read about Gabe in Politico, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Globe, and the St. Louis Jewish Light