Good Wednesday morning from Salt Lake City. Today is the 160th day of the year. There are 206 days left in 2016.
Hillary Clinton wins California, cementing her hold on the Democratic nomination. Donald Trump tries to walk back his racially-tinged statements about a federal judge. Orrin Hatch urges reporters to cut Trump some slack.
The clock:
- 20 days to the 2016 Utah primary election – (6/28/2016)
- 40 days to the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland (7/18/2016)
- 46 days to the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia (7/25/2016)
- 153 days until the 2016 presidential election – (11/8/2016)
- 229 days until the first day of the 2017 Utah Legislature – (1/23/2017)
- 274 days until the final day of the 2017 Utah Legislature – (3/9/2017)
Ten talking points for Wednesday:
- Hillary Clinton wins California, the biggest prize in Tuesday’s primary elections, cementing her hold on the Democratic nomination [Associated Press, Politico, Washington Post].
- Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump hammer each other in their acceptance speeches Tuesday night, giving a preview of what could be a nasty general election contest [The Hill].
- As his campaign grinds to its inexorable end, Bernie Sanders plans to lay off more than half of his campaign workers [Politico].
- Donald Trump tries to unring the racism bell, saying he would stop talking about a federal judge of Mexican heritage [Washington Post].
- Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk withdraws his endorsement of Donald Trump saying he could no longer support the GOP nominee [Politico].
- Sen. Orrin Hatch says Donald Trump is not a racist, but he’s prone to saying “outrageous” things. Hatch also urges reporters to go easy on Trump because he’s never run for elected office before [Utah Policy, Tribune].
- Even though they are no longer in the public arena, Utahns still give former Governor Mike Leavitt, former Rep. Jim Matheson, and former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney high approval ratings [Utah Policy].
- Low-income advocates say Utah’s bare-bones Medicaid expansion proposal doesn’t do enough to help the neediest Utahns [Associated Press].
- The Salt Lake City Council gives the thumbs-up to a proposal allowing a 375-foot tall convention hotel in downtown Salt Lake [Tribune, Deseret News].
- Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams says the budget is in good shape heading into the second half of the year [Tribune].
On this day in history:
- 1789 – James Madison proposed the Bill of Rights, which led to the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
- 1953 – The Supreme Court ruled that restaurants in the District of Columbia could not refuse to serve blacks.
- 1968 – James Earl Ray was arrested in London and charged with the April 4 assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
- 1982 – In the first speech by an American president to a joint session of the British Parliament, President Ronald Reagan predicted that Marxism-Leninism would wind up on the “ash heap of history.”
