Senator Ted Cruz and his family held a walk-through on Sunday of his announcement at Liberty University.Credit Andrew Harnik/Associated Press
Good Monday morning from Washington. Congress will be tending to some budget business before a break, and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private emails about attacks in Benghazi, Libya are unearthed. President Obama begins the week hosting a science fair at the White House, and the race to succeed him begins in earnest with a big speech from a certain Texas senator.
The 2016 race was officially joined just after midnight on Monday, not by either of the front-runners from major political dynasties, but by Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican firebrand whose egging on of the 2013 partial government shutdown enraged the establishment and enthralled the grassroots.
In a tweet that included a 30-second video, Mr. Cruz said he was running for president and that he wanted to stand with “courageous conservatives” to lead the fight to restore America’s greatness.
Mr. Cruz is to give a speech at Liberty University, a Christian institution in Lynchburg, Va., that has played host to other presidential candidates, including Senator John McCain of Arizona in 2007. Mr. Cruz’s midmorning speech will make the case for why he wants to run the country.
In reality, Mr. Cruz is only beating others to the punch by a few weeks. Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to start a campaign early next month, and aides to the Republican senators Rand Paul and Marco Rubio have indicated that they will do the same. But Mr. Cruz is alone on center stage for the time being.
Mr. Cruz is seeking to draw early attention in a crowded Republican field, one that has several conservative candidates looking for support from donors and voters.
So far, the conversation has focused primarily on former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, who’s seeking to become the choice of the establishment, and Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who impressed Republican opinion makers with a speech at an Iowa meeting in January.
Aides to Mr. Cruz say in private conversations that they believe Mr. Walker will fade as a candidate over time, and that the Texas senator will be able to attract enough grass-roots and evangelical support to keep going well into the primary season.
The main question is whether Mr. Cruz will be able to raise the $1 million in the first week that his aides expect him to. Small donations can only go so far, and after a certain point, Mr. Cruz will need to shore up institutional donor support.
– Maggie Haberman
Stay tuned throughout the day @NYTpolitics for First Draft updates
Clinton’s Benghazi Emails Shed Light on Her Concerns
The roughly 300 emails from Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private account that were turned over last month to a House committee investigating the attacks on Benghazi, Libya, showed the secretary of state and her aides closely monitoring the fallout from the tragedy, which threatened to damage her image and to reflect poorly on the State Department.
“Did we survive the day?†she wrote to a close adviser after a top State Department official was grilled by House Republicans a month after the September 2012 attack on the United States diplomatic compound in Benghazi.
As The Times reported early on Monday, according to senior American officials, the emails provided no evidence that Mrs. Clinton issued a “stand down†order to American forces responding to the violence in Benghazi, as the most incendiary Republican attacks suggested, or that she took part in a broad cover-up of the administration’s response.
But they did show that Mrs. Clinton’s top aides at the time corresponded with her about State Department matters from their personal email accounts, raising questions about her recent assertions that she made it her practice to email aides at their government addresses so that the messages would be preserved, in compliance with federal record-keeping regulations.
The emails have not been made public, but four senior government officials described some of them, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to jeopardize their access to secret information.
– Michael S. Schmidt
Congress Faces Budget Showdown Before Spring Break
The House and Senate are in for one last week before a two-week spring recess and congressional Republicans have internal budget divisions to overcome before they leave town.
Republican leaders in both chambers want to push through a budget resolution by the end of the week so that they have a chance of meeting the April 15 deadline for reaching an overall deal.
The divide between fiscal and conservative hawks is complicating things. On both sides of the Capitol rotunda, top Republicans are resorting to budget gimmicks to mollify members of their party who are demanding tens of billions of dollars more for the Pentagon without losing so many fiscal conservatives that they cannot pass a budget. Members of the leadership know they are going to be attacked by both Democrats and conservatives for using trickery to pad military spending, but they prefer those attacks to the embarrassment of failing to reach a deal.
Beginning with a vote in the Senate this evening on offshore tax breaks, Democrats will try to make life even more difficult for Republicans by forcing them to cast politically charged votes on entitlement spending, income equality, campaign finance and other possible campaign commercial fodder. Republicans are getting a real taste of the trade-offs that can be required of a party in charge.
– Carl Hulse
What We’re Watching Today
President Obama hosts the 2015 White House Science Fair at 11 a.m.
Hillary Rodham Clinton will be the keynote speaker for the award celebration of the Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting in Washington.
Secretary of State John Kerry hosts President Ashraf Ghani of Aghanistan at Camp David.
The Supreme Court will be hearing arguments.
Liberty University Has a History of Hosting Republican Candidates
As Senator Ted Cruz makes his entry into the 2016 presidential race, the backdrop isn’t a New Hampshire farm or the Old State Capitol where Abraham Lincoln once stood, but rather the cavernous Vines Center at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., a familiar place for the Texas senator.
Mr. Cruz spoke at the Christian university just last April, delivering a convocation based on “the simple principle that faith and freedom are intertwined†and filled with tales of family, faith and American history.
While his speech today announcing his candidacy will no doubt be more political, the religious principles central to the university will help frame his announcement.
Founded by Dr. Jerry Falwell in 1971, Liberty University has been intertwined with presidential politics for decades. Ronald Reagan stopped at the university in October of 1980, as Mr. Falwell’s Moral Majority political group was a vociferous supporter for the candidate who went on to victory that November. George Bush delivered the commencement address at the university in 1990, and John McCain spoke there in 2006.
Even after Mr. Falwell’s death in 2007, the university has been an important place for Republican candidates to reach out to evangelical voters. Courting the religious vote in 2012 after defeating Rick Santorum in the primary, Mitt Romney delivered a commencement address with an emphasis on faith and values, strongly stating his opposition to same-sex marriage while repeatedly invoking God and quoting Christian leaders.
Despite their familiarity with politicians, the campus of more than 13,500 students has been buzzing since Mr. Cruz “dropped the bomb that he’s going to make a big announcement,†said Warren Martin, a junior who is chairman of the Liberty University chapter of College Republicans.
“We’ll definitely be packing out convo tomorrow,†explained Mr. Martin, using the campus term for convocation. “There’s a bunch of buzz. Everyone’s talking about it.â€
– Nick Corasaniti
Our Favorites From Today’s Times
Senator Ted Cruz is hoping to grab the spotlight by jumping into the 2016 race early.
Thanks to Chelsea Clinton’s husband, Mark, the Clintons have a hedge fund in the family.
President Obama is hopeful that Afghanistan’s new president will build a less fractious relationship with Washington.
The conservative group Freedom Partners is introducing a lobbying campaign against the Export-Import Bank.
What We’re Reading Elsewhere
The Boston Globe investigates Senator Ted Cruz’s Harvard Law School days and finds that his personality is remarkably consistent.
The Houston Chronicle reports that Mr. Cruz will focus his new campaign on money and Iowa.
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey warned Republican donors over the weekend to be wary of candidates who flip-flop on big issues, according to Zeke Miller of Time magazine.
Mother Jones recently took a look back at what can happen when presidential candidates forget to buy their domain names.
The Washington Post checks in on how President Obama‘s efforts to curb the influence of lobbyists have fared.
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