Subject: Negative Clips 5.18.2016
From: "Price, Jenna" <[email-masked]>
To: "Miranda, Luis" <[email-masked]>
Cc: "Palermo, Rachel" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 May 2016 04:47:58 -0700

NEGATIVE-REPUBLICANS

Where Republican Dreams Die?<http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/18/opinion/where-republican-dreams-die.html>

NEW YORK TIMES // FRANK BRUNI

Ohio and Florida. Florida and Ohio. What a pair of election-year divas, always preening for the pundits. Enough. There are other comely swing states on the stage. Let’s gawk at North Carolina. If Donald Trump drags down Republicans across the board, this is one of the places where they’ll flail. Its Republican governor, nearing the end of a tumultuous first term, is in trouble. One of the state’s two Republican senators is facing a tougher re-election battle than was predicted just months ago. Democrats are circling. Make that drooling. Although purple, North Carolina turned deceptively red over the last few years, and Republican lawmakers have behaved with a potentially suicidal swagger. In the process they’ve managed to enrage corporate America, exposing a newly profound tension in the G.O.P. between its business-minded wing and the religious right. Some of the most interesting crosswinds of American politics blow through this state. In 2008 it voted for Barack Obama — by a margin of just .32 percent. Enthusiasm for him helped to propel Democratic women to the Senate and the governor’s office. Both are gone now, replaced by Republican men, and Mitt Romney won the state narrowly in 2012. But the more sweeping change has been in the state legislature, where an overwhelming Republican majority took hold and hurtled forward (or, rather, backward).

Donald Trump: Stonewaller, shape-shifter, liar<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trump-stonewaller-shape-shifter-liar/2016/05/17/954129bc-1c49-11e6-9c81-4be1c14fb8c8_story.html>

WALL STREET JOURNAL // RUTH MARCUS

The past few weeks have offered Americans a chilling glimpse of three faces of Donald Trump: the stonewaller, the shape-shifter and the liar. Trump the stonewaller has been on display in his refusal to release his tax returns. “It’s none of your business,” Trump flatly told ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos when asked about his effective tax rate. Stephanopoulos: “Yes or no, do you believe voters have a right to see your tax returns before they make a final decision?” Trump: “I don’t think they do. But I do say this, I will really gladly give them.” Sure, he’d be happy to — except that he isn’t. And it is our business. Voters are entitled to know this information about a candidate for president, a person who would help steer the nation’s finances. For decades, presidential candidates have routinely made this material available. It is astonishing that Trump believes he is exempt from this norm — that a pending audit makes his returns less important to see, not more, or that he is not obliged to find some other way of providing the information, such as returns from earlier years or summary data for the years still under review.

Donald Trump faces June deposition in restaurant lawsuit<http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2016/05/trump-faces-june-deposition-in-restaurant-case-223297>

POLITICO // JOSH GERSTEIN

Expected Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump appears likely to be forced off the campaign trail in June to be deposed under oath in at least one of two lawsuits he filed after prominent chefs backed away from plans to open restaurants at the luxury Trump International Hotel under development in Washington. A D.C. Superior Court judge approved a plan Tuesday to briefly extend court deadlines to allow Trump to give testimony June 16 in the case Trump's development company filed against a firm set up by restaurateur Geoffrey Zakarian to open a dining establishment called "The National." The lawsuits against Zakarian's company and another created by chef Jose Andres were filed last August after the chefs said anti-immigrant remarks by Trump on the campaign trail made the planned restaurants unviable.