US House Speaker Paul Ryan, the top Republican in Congress, said Thursday he was not ready to support Donald Trump as the party’s presumptive presidential nominee in November’s general election.
“To be perfectly candid with you, I’m not ready to do that yet,” Ryan told CNN in a bombshell interview that heightened concerns about whether conservatives will be able to rally around Trump in his expected matchup against Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Ryan, the Republican vice presidential nominee in 2012, stressed that he hoped he would be able to support Trump in the future, provided the brash billionaire is able to show leadership in unifying the party.
“He’s got some work to do,” Ryan said, noting that the burden was on Trump to begin the healing process after a brutal primary campaign and Trump’s long string of insulting remarks.
Ryan has expressed criticism of Trump before. But Thursday’s comments were all the more startling because Trump has now emerged as the party’s standard bearer and Ryan, as speaker of the House of Representatives, will oversee the Republican presidential nominating convention in July.
“I think that he needs to do more to unify the party... then to go forward and appeal to all Americans from every walk of life and background, and a majority of independents,” Ryan said.
He insisted, however, that no Republicans should support Clinton—as several have pledged to do after Trump’s rivals dropped out.
“To be the party and climb the final hill and win, we need a standardbearer that can unify all—all conservatives and the wings of the party—and then go to the country with an appealing agenda,” he said. “The nominee has to lead in that effort.”
Both Bush presidents—George H.W. Bush and his son George W. Bush—have signalled they will not endorse Trump in 2016, while Mitt Romney, the 2012 nominee on the ticket with Ryan, is reportedly not going to attend the Republican convention.
Republican hopefuls Ted Cruz and John Kasich announced a deal Sunday not to compete with one another in certain state primaries in an effort to put the brakes on fellow Republican White House rival Donald Trump’s march towards the party’s nomination.
Cruz’s campaign said in a statement that the Texas Senator would focus his efforts on the May 3 primary in Indiana and “in turn clear the path for Governor Kasich to compete in Oregon and New Mexico”, which hold their primaries on May 17 and June 7 respectively.
Kasich’s campaign put out a similar statement saying he would allow Cruz a clear path to victory against Trump in Indiana.
The move is designed to prevent controversial billionaire Trump from gaining the 1,237 delegates required to secure the nomination outright and instead force the nomination contest to go a second ballot at the Republican National Convention in July, where delegates would be allowed to switch sides.
“Our goal is to have an open convention in Cleveland, where we are confident a candidate capable of uniting the party and winning in November will emerge as the nominee,” Kasich’s campaign strategist John Weaver said in a statement.
Too little, too late?
Some of the extreme views espoused by Trump during his campaign – including building a wall along the Mexican border and blocking Muslims from entering the country – have caused consternation among the Republican hierarchy who fear the impact him winning the presidential nomination could have on the party's image and their chances of securing the White House in November's election.
“Having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in November would be a sure disaster for Republicans. Not only would Trump get blown out by [Hillary] Clinton or [Bernie] Sanders, but having him as our nominee would set the party back a generation," Cruz’s campaign manager, Jeff Roe, said in a statement Sunday.
Some Republican strategists have been packing a united effort to thwart Trump for some time, but with the New York-born businessman's already substantial lead in the race for delegates, it could be a case of too little, too late for Cruz and Kasich.
With 845 pledged delegates, Trump is currently just 392 short of the magic number of 1,237. Cruz, his closest rival, has 559 delegates to his name, while Kasich lags well behind with 148.
Trump's easy victory in the key New York primary earlier this month swung momentum in the race for the presidential nomination firmly back in his favour after a string of defeats, notably to Cruz.
He is also expected to do well in a string primaries across five northeastern states – Maryland, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Delaware – all voting on Tuesday.
Trump's reaction to the news of the pact between the two was to ridicule them on Twitter.
"Wow, just announced that Lyin' Ted and Kasich are going to collude in order to keep me from getting the Republican nomination. DESPERATION!," he said.
There may be some truth to Trump's comments. Cruz's campaign has previously dismissed approaches by Kasich’s team to form an anti-Trump alliance. Doing so now is an admission that Cruz has almost no chance of securing more delegates than Trump while both he and Kasich are acknowledging that time is rapidly running out to turn the tide.
But their newfound spirit of cooperation could prove pivotal, particularly in Indiana where there are a potentially significant 57 delegates up for grabs in a winner-takes-all vote.
Both Cruz and Kasich had both been targeting Indiana as a potential turning point in the race. A recent Fox survey in Indiana suggested Trump had 41 percent of support compared to 33 percent for Cruz and 16 percent for Kasich. The pact now potentially gives Cruz enough votes to deny Trump victory in the state.
Contested convention
If Cruz and Kasich's gamble pays off it would see the Republican domination go down to a vote at the July Convention where, thanks to the complicated rules of the Republican primary race, Trump may go in with the most delegates but come away the loser.
The convention sees delegates vote to select the party's presidential nominee. In the first round of voting nearly all are bound to vote according to the primary result of their respective state. But if there is no outright winner in the first vote – likely, if Trump fails to reach 1,237 pledged delegates in the primary – voting then goes to a second round where delegates can switch their votes to another candidate.
Votes can be switched for a variety of reasons, from what delegates think is best for the party's electoral prospects to the outcome of a flurry of back-channel deals and negotiations.
Such a scenario could put Cruz, who has long been canvassing delegates to switch their votes to him in the event of a second ballot, in a strong position to beat Trump to the nomination.
There is even a possibility the nomination could go to none of the current candidates.
A current Republican party rule dictates that a candidate must have the support of a majority of delegates from eight different states in order to win the nomination.
But there is nothing to stop the party scrapping the rule, introduced in 2012 and known as Rule 40, before the convention, allowing delegates to vote for someone else entirely.
House Speaker Paul Ryan and former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney have both been mentioned as possible last-minute candidates.
Trump, meanwhile, has been focusing on making sure such a scenario remains purely theoretical.
"We want to put it (nomination) away," Trump said at a campaign rally in Hagerstown, Maryland, on Sunday. "I only care about the first ballot. We're not going for the second and third and fourth and fifth."
The number of people caught trying to enter the United States illegally from Mexico rose in the first months of this year compared to the same period last year, officials said Monday.
The US authorities detained 33,335 people in March, up 11 percent from the same month in 2015, the US Border Patrol said, providing no explanation for why.
Detentions in October and November were similar to levels in the same months of 2013, when the number of attempted entries spiked, especially by unaccompanied minors.
That wave triggered an outpouring of concern for the children among Americans, prompting the government to take emergency measures to look after them in mid-2014.
Many of the migrants come from Central America, a region plagued by poverty, street gangs and drug-related violence.
Countries there are due to receive 750 million dollars in US aid this year to boost security and living standards and discourage people from embarking on dangerous trips through Mexico to the United States.
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed that the decapitated head of a Caucasian male recovered Monday night in the southern Philippines belongs to one of two Canadians taken hostage by Abu Sayyaf militants in September.
Trudeau identified the victim as John Ridsdel of Calgary, Alberta and said his government will work with the government of the Philippines and international partners to pursue those responsible for this “heinous act.”
Two men on a motorcycle left Ridsdel’s head, placed inside a plastic bag, along a street in Jolo town in Sulu province and then fled, Jolo police chief Supt. Junpikar Sitin said.
Abu Sayyaf militants had threatened to behead one of three men - two Canadians and a Norwegian - they kidnapped last September from a marina on southern Samal Island if a large ransom was not paid by 3 p.m. Monday (0800 GMT).
Jolo Mayor Hussin Amin condemned the beheading, blaming Abu Sayyaf militants, who have been implicated in past kidnappings, beheadings and bombings.
“This is such a barbaric act by these people and one would be tempted to think that they should also meet the same fate,” Amin said by telephone.
Philippine forces were moving to rescue the abductees, also including a Filipino woman who was kidnapped with them, as the Abu Sayyaf’s deadline for the ransom payment lapsed, the military said.
The militants reportedly demanded 300 million pesos ($6.5 million) for each of the foreigners, a reduction from their earlier demands.
The hostages were believed to have been taken to Jolo Island in Sulu, a jungled province where the militants are thought to be holding a number of captives, including 14 Indonesian and four Malaysian crewmen who were abducted at gunpoint from three tugboats starting last month.
“Maximum efforts are being exerted ... to effect the rescue,” the military and police said in a joint statement, without divulging details of the rescue operation, which was ordered by President Benigno Aquino III.
About 400 Abu Sayyaf militants were involved in the kidnappings, it said.
In militant videos posted online, Ridsdel and fellow Canadian Robert Hall, Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad and Filipino Marites Flor were shown sitting in a clearing with heavily armed militants standing behind them. In some of the videos, a militant positioned a long knife on Ridsdel’s neck. Two black flags hung in the backdrop of lush foliage.
The abductions highlight the long-running security problems hounding the southern Philippines, a region with bountiful resources that also suffers from poverty, lawlessness and decades-long Muslim and communist insurgencies.
The Abu Sayyaf began a series of large-scale abductions after it emerged in the early 1990s as an offshoot of a separatist rebellion by minority Muslims in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation’s south.
It has been weakened by more than a decade of Philippine offensives but has endured largely as a result of large ransom and extortion earnings. The United States and the Philippines have both listed the group as a terrorist organization.
