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Pete Buttigieg is dropping out of the 2020 presidential primary race, a senior campaign aide told CNBC. He is flying to South Bend, Indiana to make the announcement, where he served as mayor for two terms. The Indiana Democrat waged an unlikely campaign that saw a little-known mayor overpower governors and U.S. senators in the race for the party nomination. Along the way, Buttigieg assembled a substantial war chest and a vast national operation. A two-term mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Buttigieg was the first openly gay major presidential contender. He scored a narrow delegate edge over Sen. Bernie Sanders...

Multiple sources breaking out on the Twitter. Beto seems happy.

Plains, Georgia - Former President Jimmy Carter suggested Pete Buttigieg's campaign is searching for answers after a disappointing fourth-place finish in Saturday's South Carolina primary, the first test of candidates' support in a state with predominantly African-American voters. Buttigieg and his husband Chasten paid a visit to Carter and former first lady Rosalynn Carter on Sunday morning, joining them for breakfast here in Georgia, which holds its Democratic primary on March 24. Carter told reporters at Buffalo Cafe in Plains that he is fond of Buttigieg, mentioning their work on a Habitat for Humanity project in South Bend, Indiana, where...

SEATTLE - The coronavirus may have been circulating for weeks undetected in Washington state, a preliminary finding that could mean hundreds of undiagnosed cases, researchers said Sunday after analyzing genetic samples from two people. Washington state, home of the nation’s first confirmed infection, saw the nation’s first death from the virus this weekend. Trevor Bedford, an associate professor who announced the preliminary findings on the virus in Washington state, said on Twitter late Saturday that genetic similarities between the state’s first case on Jan. 20 and a case announced Friday indicated the newer case may have descended from the earlier...

The owners of a Mexican restaurant in Tucson, Arizona faced social media backlash this past week over a photo that showed them attending a Trump rally.

Until the press decides that it wants to help the country instead of destroy Trump, it needs to be quarantined.

It's not often that a White House appointee gets mocked on both "Saturday Night Live" and a major daily newspaper before he makes his first public appearance. But Obama's hand-picked Ebola Response Coordinator Ron Klain's low-profile first week has become another attack point for a White House struggling to show it's on top of the global Ebola crisis. Klain was seen once, in a photo op on his first day, with health officials from the CCD and NIH — and Obama himself. The White House has declined to give details about his activities, especially what role he played to keep...

Congregants of a historically black church in Selma, Alabama, turned their backs on Democrat presidential hopeful Mike Bloomberg on Sunday as he addressed them. The protest, which remained silent and peaceful, took place as Bloomberg was giving a speech on the 55th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” a day when police attacked black citizens during a civil rights march in the town. Several images shared to social media on Sunday showed both black and white voters standing with their backs turned to Bloomberg in Selma’s Brown Chapel AME Church. Multiple attendees at #BloodySunday service are turning their backs on @MikeBloomberg as...

Below I summarize the primary races taking place this Tuesday by state; delegates up for grabs; whether the primary is open, mixed, or closed; latest RCP averages for the top three candidates; major newspaper endorsements; and major (cough cough) Republicans running against Trump in the Republican primary: Alabama; 52; open; no polls; Time-Daily (Bloomberg); Weld Arkansas; 31; open; no polls; no endorsements; Weld California; 416; mixed; Sanders-35, Warren-17, Biden-11; San Diego Union Tribune-Buttigeg, Mercury News (San Jose) and San Francisco Chronicle-Klobuchar, San Francisco Bay Guardian and The Times Standard (Eureka)- Sanders; Weld Colorado; 67; open; Sanders-31, Warren-18, Butt and Bloomberg-...

Local health officials confirmed two more cases Sunday of COVID-19 in King County, saying that two men in their 60s with underlying health conditions were hospitalized in critical condition.a The announcement that the two men were being treated for the respiratory illness raised the total number of COVID-19 cases to six in King County, where officials said a man in Kirkland became the first person in the United States on Friday to die of it. Health officials so far have identified 12 cases treated in Washington. King County has monitored more than 500 people for signs of the illness, and...

The Big Picture: who is really running the show in the culture war, and its nature and trajectory. Major policies of liberals are contrary to Scripture and have the devil as their author.While it is easy to focus on personalities and daily events in the on-going culture war, the larger picture is that this is a spiritual war in which liberals, to varying degrees, are simply proxy servants for the devil. Who uses these servant to “progressively” transform the world into an alternative world order of perversions of what God has ordained. Thus the real reason for liberal's attack...

President Trump on Sunday urged Michael R. Bloomberg not to pay his campaign consultants, saying they “led you down a very dark and lonely path,” as the former New York City mayor’s campaign spending eclipsed $500 million. Democratic spending on the 2020 presidential primary campaign topped $1 billion last week, with Mr. Bloomberg responsible for the lion’s share at more than $500 million, according to multiple media analyses. “Mini Mike Bloomberg’s consultants and so-called ‘advisors’ (how did that advice work out? Don’t ask!), are on the ‘gravy train’ and all making a fortune for themselves pushing Mini hard, when they...

Here’s where you can stuff your plastic-bag ban. New Yorkers were forced to begin grappling with a new shopping reality Sunday as the state’s ban on plastic shopping bags kicked in — and not many people were happy about it. “I think it’s ridiculous,” letter-carrier Scott Kimmel, 56, said while shopping at the Whitestone Target in College Point, Queens. “I understand about ‘conserve, take care of the environment,’ but c’mon!” About half the shoppers seen by The Post on the first day of the bag ban, including Kimmel, were compensating by bringing their own bags from home, while another quarter...

A common, and emotionally potent, criticism of incarceration in the United States is that it harms children by taking parents and siblings—mostly fathers and brothers, since men account for more than 90 percent of prisoners—out of their homes, depriving families of caregivers, role models, and breadwinners. “More than 2.3 million people are incarcerated in the United States,” writes Black Lives Matter cofounder Alicia Garza, in an essay published by the Brennan Center for Justice. “That’s 2.3 million families that have been torn apart.” In that same Brennan Center compendium, Van Jones, cofounder of the #Cut50 initiative to reduce the incarcerated...

Attorneys for Nick Sandmann intend to file complaints against five additional media outlets, a status report filed earlier this week says. The report states that lawyers for the Covington Catholic High School senior intend to file lawsuits against Gannett, ABC, ViacomCBS, The New York Times and Rolling Stone. "All of the future defendants listed above have published or republished statements made by Nathan Phillips and others that Nicholas blocked or otherwise restricted Phillips’ free movement and would not allow Phillips to retreat at the National Mall on January 18, 2019. Nicholas reserves his right to file complaints in this Court...

The United States badly bungled coronavirus testing—but things may soon improve. Speed is critical in the response to COVID-19. So why has the United States been so slow in its attempt to develop reliable diagnostic tests and use them widely? The World Health Organization (WHO) has shipped testing kits to 57 countries. China had five commercial tests on the market 1 month ago and can now do up to 1.6 million tests a week; South Korea has tested 65,000 people so far. The U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in contrast, has done only 459 tests since...

A federal judge ruled that Ken Cuccinelli, who previously headed the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), was unlawfully appointed to run the agency. D.C. District Judge Randolph Moss, an Obama appointee, decided the Trump administration violated the Federal Vacancies Reform Act when Cuccinelli, the current deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), was appointed to lead USCIS in June 2019. He also ruled that Cuccinelli’s policy that accelerated the screenings for immigrants seeking asylum should be eliminated, according to the ruling obtained by The Hill. The Federal Vacancies Reform Act regulates who the president can put in...

A federal judge on Sunday ruled that it was unlawful to appoint Ken Cuccinelli to lead the agency responsible for processing US immigration requests. The judge also invalidated a set of policies for the asylum seekers who are part of the case. Advocacy groups filed a federal lawsuit last year challenging the legitimacy of his role as acting director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, asking the court to set aside asylum policy changes issued shortly after he took office. Cuccinelli is currently serving as the acting Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees USCIS. The lawsuit...

Continuation of the thread. Previous Thread 6 here. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3820357/posts

A warming planet has major ramifications on winter snowpack across the globe, including a long-term drying trend for many. That's a concern for winter sports enthusiasts and communities that depend on snow throughout the year. Not many understand this better than the climate advocacy group known as Protect Our Winters (POW). The group is an organization of professional athletes and like-minded individuals fighting for policy to protect winter sports and mountain communities. "Increased temperatures are melting away both my sport and my livelihood," professional ski mountaineer and POW representative Caroline Gliech told the US Senate late last year. This year...