RUTHFULLY YOURS

Washington, D.C. — It was meant to be Bernie Sanders’s chance to demonstrate his familiarity with the issues facing African Americans. But when Sanders met with civil-rights leaders at the National Urban League’s D.C. headquarters on Thursday, all eyes were on Al Sharpton.

The reverend had participated in a similar gathering with Hillary Clinton earlier in the week, and seemed to suggest then that Clinton had already earned his endorsement. “Only you know, and you’re not telling,” he said playfully, pointing to Clinton as they left their Harlem meeting on Tuesday.

That exchange gave the wrong impression, Sharpton says Thursday. “I told her and Sanders that I was not making an endorsement until after we have put forward what is in our interest as a community,” he tells National Review, saying he wants the issues to take precedence over the horse race — at least for now.

Still, it looks almost certain that Sharpton will endorse one of the two remaining Democratic candidates. And he made it abundantly clear Thursday that he plans to use his clout with the African American community on behalf of whomever he ultimately chooses to support. When National Urban League president Marc Morial stressed that the leaders in attendance represented non-partisan organizations that do not endorse a candidate, Sharpton was quick to add a caveat. “Even though each organization does not endorse, some of us may individually,” he said. He later told reporters he’d be making up his mind between Clinton and Sanders “in the next day or so.”

“He has the ear of black America,” says Dominic Hawkins, a Sharpton spokesman, pointing out that the reverend is syndicated in over 40 media markets, “including many in South Carolina.” Though he says Sharpton could still decide to forgo a “formal endorsement,” Hawkins promises that the reverend has every intention of using his public platform to influence the Democratic race’s outcome in South Carolina and beyond.

Saturday’s death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and the controversy over Senator Ted Cruz’s birth status could become a perfect legal and political storm.

If the Texas Republican were born to two Americans in Houston, his natural-born citizenship would be beyond debate. Conversely, if he were born to two non-Americans in Havana, his natural-born non-citizenship would be indisputable. But as someone born to an American mother and a Cuban father in Calgary, Canada, Cruz — at least for some — occupies a gray area.

This ambiguity means that one could argue that Cruz is constitutionally unqualified to become president of the United States. And Democrats sure can argue. So, if Cruz secures the Republican nomination, don’t be surprised if — soon after the GOP Convention — Democrats in every state file lawsuits to block Cruz’s access to general-election ballots.

“Even though the majority of lawyers who have studied the issue think Cruz is on solid legal ground, there are some cracks of uncertainty in that ground,” says one attorney familiar with the matter. “That sliver of doubt is enough to launch a lawsuit, regardless of the outcome.”

Thus, Republican lawyers will have to spend time, money, and mental energy in courtrooms from coast to coast to dismiss these suits. Even if most judges believe Cruz is natural-born, it takes only a couple of narrowly partisan or majestically open-minded judges to agree to hear such cases, take testimony, weigh both sides’ arguments, and noodle the matter for days or weeks. This could trigger breathless TV coverage, vitriolic debates, raucous protests, and a Ringling Bros. ambiance. Even if Democrats eventually lose, Cruz and the GOP could spend precious time discussing legal niceties rather than conservative reforms. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton (if she is on the Democrat ticket rather than in jail) could avoid defending Obama’s wreckage while, instead, Americans watch Republicans extinguish legal fires.

The worst-case scenario sounds preposterous — but so was the 2000 Florida recount.

As Shakespeare wrote in King Lear, “Jesters do oft prove prophets.” But this maxim retains the possibility that the best jesters are also sometimes fools.

On Sunday, one of America’s most famous funnymen, Last Week Tonight host John Oliver, ridiculed states that would require voters to show picture identification to cast a ballot. Over the course of his 14-minute bit, Oliver pulled out every predictable talking point against voter ID, including the idea that “studies show” that such laws “disproportionately impact African-American and Latino voters.”

Naturally, Oliver’s frequently funny tirade was hailed by his progressive fans for doing all sorts of violence to an esoteric concept. (“John Oliver decimates public funding for stadiums! John Oliver decapitates patent trolling! John Oliver sets fire to, disembowels, then urinates on the pharmaceutical pricing framework!”)

On Tuesday, however, it was the state of Wisconsin that had the last laugh. Just one business day after Oliver predicted mass disenfranchisement due to voter-ID laws, Wisconsin held its first election with the voter-ID requirement. And according to a study by the University of My Eyeballs, turnout increased 55 percent statewide over the last similar spring-primary election.

In 2013 — the last contested statewide supreme-court election — around 364,000 voters turned out in Wisconsin. On Tuesday night, that number skyrocketed to about 564,000 voters. Even the 2011 Supreme Court primary, which took place during the electric Wisconsin public-union battle, drew only around 420,000 voters — well short of Tuesday’s total.

And the turnout bump wasn’t due to rural Caucasians flocking to the polls en masse. In the city of Milwaukee, which is 53 percent ethnic minority, the vote nearly doubled, from 34,000 to 65,000. Earlier, local election watchers had predicted a turnout of about 30,000.

Further, there were scant reports of people denied the right to vote on Election Day. One short story in a local Madison progressive paper reported that a college student was unable to vote because the student lacked an in-state driver’s license. What the story did not mention was that the student was entitled to cast a provisional ballot, which would have allowed him to prove his residency by Friday of this week.

Tim O’Brien did not set out to write a conclusive assessment of Donald Trump’s wealth. But it was those three pages in a 275-page book that occasioned what is, even in the annals of frivolous Trump lawsuits, a special display of petty, thin-skinned litigiousness.

In October 2005, O’Brien, then a business reporter for the New York Times, published a book about Donald Trump, TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald. The book was not a hatchet job. Not only did O’Brien interview friends and employees and business associates and political rivals and much of the rest of the Who’s Who of the World of Donald, he also chatted with the man himself — repeatedly. They met for formal interviews in Trump’s various homes and offices. Trump drove O’Brien around in his Ferrari and in his Mercedes. They watched Pulp Fiction together on Trump’s gold-laden private jet. It all went into the book, from which emerges a portrait of a complex, fickle, charming, self-obsessed, cinematic American original.

Of course, no book about Trump can avoid the quasi-impenetrable question of his wealth. In 2004, O’Brien had co-authored a piece for the Times detailing Trump’s financial woes — he had recently filed for the third of what would be four Chapter 11 bankruptcies — and quoted anonymous sources who reported that Trump’s wealth was not nearly what he claimed; in fact, it was in the hundreds of millions, they said. (Contemporaneous reports in the Washington Post and Time magazine suggested the same.) Trump, meanwhile, notoriously unreliable in his own estimates, offered figures ranging from $1.7 billion to $9.5 billion. In TrumpNation, O’Brien cited those numbers, alongside “three people with direct knowledge of Donald’s finances” who estimated his wealth was “somewhere between $150 million and $250 million.” Trump denied it, in his usual colorful fashion: “You can go ahead and speak to guys who have four-hundred-pound wives at home who are jealous of me, but the guys who really know me know I’m a great builder.”

Despite his having included all of this information, including Trump’s denial, Trump accused O’Brien of cherry-picking his information to hurt Trump’s reputation. He sued him for $5 billion in damages.