The pair secured their hold on frontrunner status with big victories in the New York primary that muddy the future of the Sanders, Cruz and Kasich campaigns
The night that was: Clinton wins decisive victory over Sanders
The live results: track the votes in New York, county by county
Richard Wolffe: Clinton triumphs – now the real race can begin
Christopher Barron: Trump’s back and there’s nothing the GOP can do
10.57pm BST
Following news that three Michigan government officials are facing charges in connection with the Flint water crisis, former secretary of state and Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton issued a statement.
“Senate Republicans have pushed through today’s energy bill at the expense of the people of Flint, who are still waiting for clean water and critical aid for rebuilding their infrastructure,” Clinton said. “It is unconscionable for this bill to move forward without this desperately-needed aid. It’s important that people be held responsible for the water poisoning in Flint - but it’s not enough. I will not stop fighting for the families of Flint until they receive the help all Americans should expect, and the justice all people deserve.”
Clinton is referring to the Senate’s passage of an energy bill that does not contain $250 million in aid for Flint, the result of a Republican hold on the aid package.
10.33pm BST
Ted Cruz echoed Mark Antony on Wednesday: “John Kasich is a decent and honorable man.” Of course, in Cruz’s opinion, Kasich was trying to kill the Republican Party in November by serving as a lackey of Donald Trump, suggesting that the Ohio governor was only staying in the presidential race because “it may be John is auditioning to be Donald’s vice president.”
Cruz, who once again openly admitted that “we are on a path to a contested convention,” shrugged off both disappointing election results in New York Tuesday night and all but conceded the Acela primary states on April 26. Instead he assured reporters “I am not gong to reach 1237 delegates but Donald isn’t going to reach 1,237 delegates either.”
10.18pm BST
The mothers and family members of children who were killed by gun violence greeted each other like old friends outside St Paul’s Baptist Church in Philadelphia.
They’d come to see Hillary Clinton hold a roundtable on gun violence with former US Attorney General Eric Holder ahead of the state’s primary next week. The women wore buttons with the faces of their loved ones. Aleida Garcia wore a sash filled with pins of mostly young people from Philadelphia who’d been killed by gun violence. On the largest button was a photo of her son, Alex Rojas-Garcia, who was shot to death by a gunman with a semiautomatic weapon in January 2015.
Mothers and families of victims of gun violence outside the church where Clinton will hold a convo with Eric Holder pic.twitter.com/zaZvwiqfQj
10.08pm BST
Want to work for a potential president? You’ll need to pony up.
9.32pm BST
The Associated Press is backing up Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump’s assertion that Texas senator Ted Cruz has no concrete path to the party’s nomination, describing Trump’s primary opponent as “mathematically eliminated” from winning the nomination before the party’s national convention in Cleveland this summer.
“Donald Trump is now the only Republican candidate with any chance of clinching the nomination before the convention,” the newswire declared this morning. “Ted Cruz was mathematically eliminated Tuesday after Trump’s big win in the New York primary.”
9.02pm BST
Silver linings!
Bernie Sanders has so far won every county named Clinton County pic.twitter.com/CdNVdd9fwU
8.36pm BST
Michelle Dean has a fascinating look back at Roy Cohn, Donald Trump’s “mentor in shamelessness”:
Related: A mentor in shamelessness: the man who taught Trump the power of publicity
7.42pm BST
The New York Times has published excerpts of a revealing interview with Donald Trump conducted after he voted for himself for president Tuesday. He talks about the feeling of voting for himself, a recent campaign transition that pushed campaign manager Corey Lewandowski aside, and his penchant for winning.
Here’s a snippet of the interview:
On the race for delegates: It’s a rigged system. It’s a disgraceful, disgusting rigged system in the Republican Party. Worse than the Democratic Party, because in the Democratic case it’s obvious with superdelegates. Look at Bernie. He wins every week, and everyone says he can’t win. In the Democrat Party, it’s obvious because they have a superdelegate, that’s like throwing it in your face. The Republican Party is worse, the Republican Party has a system where you can buy the delegates if you want. And you can do anything you want with a delegate, except give them cash. I can play the game better — I can fly them on a 757 to Mar-a-Lago, I can fly them to California where I own a place that’s unbelievable, on the Pacific Ocean. But it’s a bad system. You’re buying the election. It’s really wrong, and I’m looking into it, legally.
7.31pm BST
Trump is meeting with the Indiana governor ahead of a rally in Indianapolis, Fox News reports:
Indianapolis- @realDonaldTrump set to meet with @GovPenceIN at his residence at 1pm. Pence will not be attending Trump 3pm rally.
Off to Indiana! #Trump2016 pic.twitter.com/zqUdaaSaXD
7.24pm BST
Bernie Sanders’ Twitter account praises the announcement earlier today by the Treasury that emancipation hero Harriet Tubman will replace president Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill.
I cannot think of an American hero more deserving of this honor than Harriet Tubman. https://t.co/GL64NPrOL1
A woman, a leader, and a freedom fighter. I can't think of a better choice for the $20 bill than Harriet Tubman: https://t.co/YcsZC4ZrKg -H
Related: Harriet Tubman will appear on $20 bill, leaving Alexander Hamilton on $10
7.21pm BST
Here’s video of Ted Cruz at his Hershey, Pennsylvania, rally earlier today minimizing Trump’s New York win. See our transcription here.
7.09pm BST
An internal Trump campaign memo projects that Trump will capture the nomination with 1,400 delegates voting in his favor in the first round of voting at the national convention in Cleveland in July.
“Our projections call for us to accumulate over 1400 delegates and thus a first ballot nomination win in Cleveland,” the memo reads, according to the Washington Post, which first obtained it.
Hillary email scandal is going to loom large over the next several months. If anyone else had done what she had done, they would already be in prison.
6.36pm BST
Ted Cruz has urged John Kasich to get out of the race because he has no path to 1,237 delegates. But why, NBC News asked him, doesn’t the same logic apply to Cruz?
.@HallieJackson asked Cruz about squaring past statements urging Kasich to exit due to 1237 math vs. his own #s now. pic.twitter.com/gVbxOdOT8P
6.24pm BST
Trump’s hand gestures repertoire is impressively deep.
The funny-cuz-it's-true vid you must see:@MattNegrin names @realDonaldTrump's hand gestures https://t.co/bo4Qsbdy3Mhttps://t.co/G8VCthlzQt
6.21pm BST
A new Bernie Sanders fundraising email insists, “we still have a path to the nomination”:
Bernie Sanders fundraising email: "We still have a path to the nomination." pic.twitter.com/zl95wLc3IV
New @AP delegate math shows Clinton can lose every remaining contest and still win. by @llerer and @hopeyen1 https://t.co/ej7T7K1Qus
6.12pm BST
Stephen Colbert had House speaker Paul Ryan on last night, and took an entertaining shot at getting Ryan to admit that, adamant denials notwithstanding, he is running for president.
Ryan: Let me say it in clear English: No!
5.35pm BST
Donald Trump’s authoritative win in New York’s primary Tuesday kept him on a path to notching the 1,237 delegates required to claim the Republican presidential nomination outright. But it’s a narrow path, and it increasingly appears to run through a Midwestern state not accustomed to a starring role in presidential politics: Indiana.
Indiana’s status this year as a presidential power-broker is owing to its placement on the calendar and its uniqueness as a tossup state among the 15 states yet to hold Republican contests. These comprise seven states where Trump is expected to perform very well, three winner-take-all western states Trump is expected to lose, four western states expected to divide delegates... and Indiana.
3.56pm BST
At his Hershey, Pennsylvania, rally, Cruz argues that Donald Trump’s New York win was insignificant compared to Cruz’s recent wins.
“You may have heard there was an election last night,” Cruz says to applause:
Donald Trump won his home state. Truly a remarkable feat. Upon winning his home state, Donald, with a characteristic display of humility, declared this race is over, Manhattan has voted, and if the rest of the voters would quietly go home now and allow him to give the general election to Hillary, all would be better.
[What they don’t want you to know is], the state of Wisconsin – I won 13,000 more votes in Wisconsin than Donald Trump did last night in New York. The state of Texas – we won more than twice as many votes in Texas as Donald did in New York. There’s a reason Donald wants all of the lapdogs in the media to say that the race is over. Because in the three weeks that preceded yesterday, there were a total of five states that voted... in all five, we won a landslide. 1.3m people voted in those five states... You want to talk about different states, you have the mountain West [Utah]... upper midwest and industrial blue collar [Wisconsin], a state like Colorado, a libertarian-ish purplish state that just legalized pot...
3.30pm BST
Ted Cruz has just begun a rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Lots of clapping. “I’m thrilled to be here with so many patriots who love our nation,” Cruz says.
Let’s listen:
3.25pm BST
In reply to Cruz’s argument that Trump can’t get to 1,237 delegates, Trump tweets that Cruz can’t get to 1,237 delegates – which the Cruz camp tacitly admits. It’s not the most dynamic intellectual tug-of-war.
But Trump has his eye on the general election, a fight that he has been inviting the Republican party for months to prepare for by unifying around him. Would a Trump nominee who cleanly cleared the 1,237 hurdle be stronger against the Democrats than a Trump nominee who kicked the hurdle down in a stumble to the finish? Trump may have larger difficulties in a general election fight against Clinton than the taint of a messy nominating race.
Ted Cruz is mathematically out of winning the race. Now all he can do is be a spoiler, never a nice thing to do. I will beat Hillary!
3.13pm BST
Ted Cruz has taken to Philadelphia radio this morning – Pennsylvania votes next Tuesday – to address the results in New York, where he came away with a glistening goose egg, delegates-wise.
Cruz’s basic case is that Donald Trump won’t get to 1,237 delegates, the convention will witness a contest and he will emerge as the victor thanks to his campaign’s success at seeding delegate slates with loyalists eager to vote for him in a second round of convention action, no matter whom they might be bound to in the first round.
.@TedCruz on Philadelphia radio: "Last night Donald Trump had a good night. He won his home state." Everyone expected him to.
“We are headed to a contested convention. At this point, nobody is getting 1,237.”
@TedCruz suggests those supporting Trump “might as well put a Hillary sticker on your car.”
.@tedcruz spokesman: @realDonaldTrump campaign is 'one hot mess after another' pic.twitter.com/MHev3R7udt
2.05pm BST
Hello, and welcome to our live-wire coverage of the 2016 race for the White House. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton scored very big victories in New York on Tuesday – every bit as big as the candidates hoped for and their adversaries feared – to significantly advance their respective nomination quests.
Trump captured at least 89 of the 95 Republican delegates at stake, although he lost on his own Manhattan turf, in congressional district 12, to John Kasich. Clinton won at least 139 of the 247 Democratic delegates at stake, although Bernie Sanders beat her soundly in most upstate districts.
Average poll had Clinton winning by 12 points. She won by 16 points. Average poll had Trump by 32. He won by 35.
Related: Hillary Clinton wins decisive victory over Bernie Sanders in New York primary
Related: Donald Trump secures essential home-state win in New York
It's funny watching CW pendulum swing from def-contested after WI to inevitably-Trump after NY. We're all better off waiting til Indiana.
We're screwed https://t.co/8SNfkGiy63
Continue reading...