Huckabee announces 2016 White House bid, with focus on economy and security

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee announced Tuesday he is running for president, delivering an economy- and security-centered message that he hopes will appeal to everyday Americans and distinguish him from the already-crowded Republican field.
Huckabee, who is embarking on his second presidential run, made the announcement in his hometown of Hope, Ark. In a 30-minute speech that focused on his humble beginnings, Huckabee vowed to end “stagnant wages,” protect Medicare and defeat radical Islamic terrorism.
“Folks cannot seem to get ahead or even stay even,” he said.
Huckabee, a former Baptist minister, ran for president in 2008, winning eight states including the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses before running out of money and exiting the race.
“Folks, it’s a long way from a little brick rented house on Second Street in Hope, Arkansas, to the White House,” he said. "But here in this small town called Hope, I was raised to believe where a person started didn't mean that is where he had to stop. I always believed that kid could go from hope to higher ground."
The 59-year-old Huckabee has a strong following among the party’s evangelical Christian base but this time will face stiff competition for that vote from such primary candidates as Dr. Ben Carson and Sen. Ted Cruz, of Texas.
He frequently repeated the phrase, “Hope to higher ground,” which appears to be a slogan of sorts for his 2016 campaign.
He also took a swipe at President Obama for declining to recognize the Islamic State group as radical Islamic terrorists and vowed to stop them.
"I wonder if he can watch a Western from the '50s and be able to figure out who the good guy and the bad guys really are," Huckabee said. "As president, I promise you, we will no longer try to contain Jihadism. We will conquer it.”
He also vowed to protect Medicare and give states more of a say in government and education.
Huckabee, who left his job as a Fox News host earlier this year in preparation for a potential 2016 run, was Arkansas governor from 1996 to 2007, serving after Bill Clinton, who also is from Hope. And he was the state’s lieutenant governor from 1993 to 1996.
Even before the speech, Huckabee was trying to position himself as the GOP candidate best equipped to defeat Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner.
In a recent campaign video, Huckabee argued that in his more than 10 years as governor, he took on Democrats in "Bill Clinton's Arkansas" after then-candidate Bill Clinton won election to the White House in 1992.
"Every day in my life in politics was a fight," Huckabee says in the video, released as a preview of his Tuesday announcement. "But any drunken redneck can walk into a bar and start a fight. A leader only starts a fight he's prepared to finish."
The field of confirmed and potential GOP presidential candidates includes more than a dozen people.
A new NBC/ Wall Street Journal poll of GOP primary voters shows 23 percent picked former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush as their first choice.
Bush is followed in the poll by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio with 18 percent, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker with 14 percent, Cruz and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul with 11 percent, Carson with 7 percent, Huckabee and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at 5 percent, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry at 2 percent and former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina at 1 percent.
Huckabee is the third Republican this week to announce a 2016 White House bid, following Fiorina and Carson, a retired neurosurgeon They join Cruz, Paul and Rubio.
Campaign aides say Huckabee’s path to winning the party nomination this time will be to appeal to working-class cultural conservatives, pitching their candidate as an economic populist and foreign affairs hawk who holds deeply conservative views on social issues such as abortion and gay marriage.
Huckabee advocates a national consumption tax, which is similar to a sales tax, to replace the existing federal taxes on personal income and payrolls. He rejects calls for a minimum wage hike, saying his proposals will yield a "maximum wage" for workers.
On immigration, he insists on a secure border and bemoans the presence of millions of people who are living in the country illegally, though he favors a creating a path to citizenship for children of immigrant parents who brought them to the U.S. illegally.
Like other Republican White House hopefuls, Huckabee is sharply critical of Obama's foreign policy. He has called for "bombing the daylights" out of Islamic State targets in the Middle East, though he says American troops should be deployed to the region only as part of an international coalition that includes nations such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
But whatever the issue, Huckabee, also an author, wraps his appeal as a pitch to everyday Americans who he says "don't feel like anybody understands or knows who they are, much less cares what's happening to them."
Evangelical Christian voters helped Huckabee win the Iowa caucuses in 2008 and finish a strong second in South Carolina, the largest of the early-voting states.
He would need to replicate that early success to create an opening to build a wider coalition and compete deep into the primary schedule.

California regulators approve unprecedented water cutbacks to combat drought

California regulators approved sweeping, unprecedented restrictions Tuesday on how people, governments and businesses can use water amid the state’s ongoing drought in the hope of enticing residents to conserve more water.
The State Water Resources Control Board approved rules forcing cities to limit watering on public property, encouraging homeowners to let their lawns die and imposing mandatory water-savings targets for hundreds of local agencies and cities that supply water to California customers.
Gov. Jerry Brown sought to tighten the already strict regulations, arguing that voluntary conservation efforts have not yielded the water savings needed amid a four-year drought. Brown ordered water agencies to cut urban water use by 25 percent from levels in 2013, the year before the drought emergency was declared.
"It is better to prepare now than face much more painful cuts should it not rain in the fall," board Chairwoman Felicia Marcus said Tuesday as the panel voted 5-0 to approve the new rules
Although the rules are called mandatory, it’s still unclear what punishment the state water board and local agencies will impose for those who do not meet the targets. Board officials expect dramatic water savings as soon as June and are willing to add even more penalties for those who do not meet the targets.
However, the board lacks the staff to oversee each of the hundreds of water agencies, which range dramatically in size and scope. Some local agencies tasked with achieving savings do not have the resources to issue tickets to waste water.
It is also unclear whether Californians have grasped the seriousness of the state’s drought situation and the need for conservation. Data released by the board Tuesday showed that Californians conserved little water in March, and local officials were not aggressive in cracking down on waste.
Under the new rules, each city must cut water use by as much as 36 percent compared with 2013. Some local water departments have called the proposal unrealistic and unfair, arguing that achieving steep cuts could cause higher water bills and declining property values. Critics also say it could dissuade projects to develop drought-proof water technology.
Representatives of San Diego-area water agencies have been especially critical of the water targets, noting that the region has slashed consumption and agencies have spent $3.5 billion to prepare for dry periods after facing severe cuts in earlier droughts.
"San Diego has lived the horror of what the state is going through right now," Mark Weston, the board chairman of the San Diego County Water Authority, told state regulators Tuesday.
After a 10-hour hearing that included more than 5 hours of public testimony, the water board again on Tuesday rejected calls to create easier targets for communities in drier areas or for cities that have been conserving since before the drought.
Private water utilities and local water departments would lose a total of about $1 billion in revenue through lost water sales if they failed to meet the set goals, an economic analysis of the water board’s proposal estimated.
Residents and businesses use less than a fifth of the water withdrawn from the state's surface and groundwater supplies. Farms in the state's agricultural heartland have had deliveries from government reservoir systems slashed and some have been ordered to stop diverting water that is normally available to them from streams and rivers.
Brown said last week he would push for legislation boosting authorizing fines of up to $10,000 for extreme wasters of water, but he needs legislative approval to do so, and no bill has been introduced. Another tool -- tiered pricing, in which the price rises as water use goes up -- is in question after a court struck down water rates designed to encourage conservation in San Juan Capistrano in Orange County.

Feds were investigating Texas gunman at time of cartoon contest attack

Federal authorities were investigating one of the gunmen involved in Sunday's attack on a Texas cartoon contest featuring images of the Muslim prophet Muhammad, as counterterrorism investigators worked to determine whether the men had any formal ties to the Islamic State terror group.
A federal law enforcement official told the Associated Press that authorities had an open investigation into Elton Simpson at the time of the shooting, in which Simpson and his roommate Nadir Soofi wounded a security guard before being killed by a Garland, Texas police officer. The official was not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.
It has previously been reported that Simpson was on investigators' radar because of his social media presence. A final tweet from an account linked to Simpson was posted about 20 minutes before the attack and said: "May Allah accept us as mujahideen," or holy warriors. Among the hashtags used by the account was "#texasattack."
Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said Tuesday that authorities had been tracking that Twitter account. He also said that the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI had issued a joint intelligence bulletin to local law enforcement April 20 warning that the Garland event was a possible target for a terrorist attack. The bulletin said that social media accounts linked to extremists had been focusing on the contest.
McCaul said that the bulletin had resulted in increased security around the event. According to mainstream Islamic tradition, any physical depiction of the Prophet Muhammad — even a respectful one — is considered blasphemous.
The Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, claimed responsibility for the attack in an audio statement Tuesday. The statement on the extremist group's Syria-based Al Bayan radio station called the men "two soldiers of the caliphate."
McCaul said Tuesday that the evidence does not indicate the attack was directed by the Islamic State group, "but rather inspired by them ... This is the textbook case of what we're most concerned about."
However, a counterterrorism source told Fox News Tuesday that data mining in the wake of the Texas attack has revealed a striking connection between at least one of the gunmen and established twitter handled overseas, suggesting that ISIS operatives had knowledge of the attack beforehand, and that the same fighters mentored or encouraged at least one of the shooters.  
Within several hours of the attack, the source said, established ISIS twitter handles had "timely knowledge of the attack," suggesting foreknowledge of the plot. Those handles included a British jihadi in Syria who does not tweet on a regular basis, yet praised both gunmen within an hour of the shooting.
A second established ISIS Twitter handle suggested he had been in contact with one of the shooters prior to the attack, using phrases suggesting that he tried to reach the attacker but just missed him. The source said the social media appeared to show encouragement and mentoring.
The law enforcement official told AP investigators will be studying the contacts Simpson and Soofi had prior to the shooting, both with associates in the U.S. and abroad, to determine any terror-related ties.
The families of Simpson and Soofi say they were shocked by what happened and never saw any signs that either of them was capable of such violence.
Simpson, who was born in Illinois, was arrested in 2010 after being the focus of a four-year terror investigation. But despite amassing more than 1,500 hours of recorded conversations, including Simpson's discussions about fighting nonbelievers for Allah and plans to link up with "brothers" in Somalia, the government prosecuted him on only one minor charge — lying to a federal agent. He was sentenced to three years of probation and ordered to pay $600 in fines and court fees.
It's unclear at what point in his life Simpson turned radical, nor was it immediately clear when or how he met Soofi.
Soofi did not appear to leave as big an online footprint as Simpson. However, , according to a Facebook account that has now been disabled, the 34-year-old had a longstanding hatred of police and had studied overseas in Pakistan.
Soofi, who was born in the Dallas area, was an undergraduate pre-medicine major at the University of Utah from fall of 1998 to the summer of 2003, said university spokeswoman Maria O'Mara. She said he did not earn a degree.
Utah court records show Soofi had several brushes with police during his time in the state. He pleaded to possession of alcohol by a minor, alcohol-related reckless driving and driving on a suspended license in 2001, court records show, and misdemeanor assault the following year.

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State: No evidence of conflict in Clinton Foundation gifts

The State Department said Monday it has no evidence that any actions taken by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton when she was secretary of state were influenced by donations to the Clinton Foundation or former President Bill Clinton's speaking fees.
Spokesman Jeff Rathke said the department received requests to review potential conflicts primarily for proposed speech hosts or consulting deals for Bill Clinton and found no conflicts.
Rathke said, however, that the department welcomes new commitments from the Clinton Foundation to disclose its donors and to support additional efforts that ensure all of those donations are public.
The State Department's comment comes as Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign grapples with criticism that foreign entities traded donations to the family charity for favors at the State Department. Hundreds of paid speeches given by Bill Clinton, which can command as much as $500,000 or more per appearance, have also come under attack from Republican opponents.
Speaking during a nine-day tour of Clinton Foundation projects in Africa with his daughter, Chelsea, Clinton defended his foundation, saying there's nothing "sinister" about getting wealthy people to help poor people in developing countries and that the organization had never done anything "knowingly inappropriate."
"There's been a very deliberate attempt to take the foundation down," Clinton said. "And there's almost no new fact that's known now that wasn't known when she ran for president the first time."
Bill Clinton said 90 percent of donors give $100 or less. But over half of the donors giving $5 million or more are foreign, including foreign governments. Under pressure, the foundation recently announced it will only take money from six Western countries.
"It's an acknowledgment that we're going to come as close as we can during her presidential campaign to following the rules we followed when she became secretary of state," he said.
He added: "I don't think that I did anything that was against the interest of the United States."
Bill Clinton has largely stayed on the sidelines during the early weeks of his wife's presidential bid, opting to focus on his foundation work instead of visiting early primary states with his wife. His decision to re-enter the political fray, with an appearance on NBC's "Today" show, reflects concerns that the intense scrutiny -- and Republican attacks -- on the family charity are having a negative impact on Hillary Clinton's presidential aspirations. An Associated Press-GfK poll released last week found that more than six in 10 independents agreed that "honest" was not the best word to describe the second-time presidential candidate.
"Bill Clinton is saying what Hillary Clinton has said on many occasions: just trust us, just trust us. And unfortunately trust is earned through transparency, and I think they have not been particularly transparent on a whole host of things," said Republican Carly Fiorina, a former technology CEO who announced her presidential candidacy on Monday.
The Republican organization America Rising released a web video that uses footage of Clinton's confirmation hearings for secretary of state to raise questions about her integrity. The video uses 2009 footage of Clinton saying "there is not an inherent conflict of interest in any of my husband's work at all," juxtaposed with a list of foreign countries that have donated to the foundation.

Fidel Castro a drug kingpin? Ex-bodyguard claims Cuban leader directed illegal operations

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro had a perfectly constructed persona shown to the world: a ragtag revolutionary who bowed to no one.
But a former bodyguard to the longtime leader shares in a new book about Castro’s alleged luxurious lifestyle and drug-smuggling schemes to the United States.
In “The Double Life of Fidel Castro: My 17 Years as Personal Bodyguard to El Lider Maximo,” Juan Reinaldo Sanchez opens up about how he became disillusioned with the ex-Cuban leader after 17 years of service.
In an excerpt posted in the New York Post, Sanchez claims he overheard a Castro meeting with former Cuban Gen. Jose Abrantes, who was later stripped of his ranks, in which the two discussed the drug trafficking business to the United States.
“Their conversation centered on a Cuban lanchero (someone who smuggles drugs by boat) living in the United States, apparently conducting business with the government,” Sanchez writes. “And what business! Very simple, a huge drug-trafficking transaction was being carried out at the highest echelons of the state.”
Sanchez, 88, went on to describe the conversation – he allegedly heard through the closed-circuit security televisions monitoring Castro’s office building – in which Castro seemed to be “directing illegal operations like a real godfather.”
“(Castro’s) reasoning was as follows: If the Yanks were stupid enough to use drugs that came from Colombia, not only was that not his problem … it served his revolutionary objectives in the sense that it corrupted and destabilized American society,” he wrote in the book.
Furthermore, Sanchez accuses Castro of covering up his involvement in the drug trafficking scheme by engineering sham trials in 1986 that led to the death of Abrantes and army Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa.
“The Machiavellian Fidel, while declaring himself ‘appalled’ by what he pretended to have discovered, claimed that ‘the most honest imaginable political and judicial process’ was under way,” wrote Sanchez.
Instead, Castro pulled the strings behind the scenes, censoring the filmed trials and even going as far as dictating when there would be a break, Sanchez claimed.
Sanchez has previously said he lost trust in the Castro regime after his brother escaped from Cuba in 1994.
He said he sought retirement and refused transfers, which led to imprisonment for two years for insubordination. Sanchez escaped the island via boat to Mexico before crossing into the United States across the Texas border in 2008.

Marine General Joseph Dunford chosen as Joint Chiefs chairman

U.S. officials said Monday that President Obama will nominate Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr. as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
A combat-hardened commander, Dunford led the Afghanistan war coalition during a key transition in 2013-2014 and has served as an infantry officer at all levels.
The move cuts short Dunford's service as the commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, a job he began last October. But the rapid promotion is one of several that have marked Dunford's fast-tracked military career, which saw him leap from a one-star brigadier general to four stars in about three years.
Obama is tapping Air Force Gen. Paul J. Selva, a pilot and current head of U.S. Transportation Command, to be vice chairman.
A defense official told Fox News that a formal announcement is expected at the White House Tuesday.
Dunford has been a leading contender for the chairman's job for months, and his time in the commandant's post was critical. Generally, to be considered for the chairman's job an officer must serve as the head of one of the Pentagon's combatant commands or as chief of one of the military services.
Dunford's most visible role came in 2013 when he was chosen to take over the job as top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan. During his 18 months there, Dunford oversaw the ongoing drawdown of U.S. troops, the transition to Afghan military lead in combat operations, and the tumultuous Afghan elections that dragged on and stalled efforts to reach an agreement on the U.S. military's future presence in the country.
He left Afghanistan last August, preparing to take on his new role as commandant.
Dunford's rise through the ranks has been rapid, particularly compared to many of his peers, who would normally spend several years at each rank before getting promoted.
In December 2007, he was nominated for a second star, and the rank of major general. But just two months later, before he actually got the formal promotion, he got the nod for a third star and was appointed the deputy Marine Corps commandant, effectively skipping the two-star grade entirely. He held the rank of lieutenant general (three stars) for about two years, until President Barack Obama appointed him as assistant commandant of the Marine Corps in October 2010, earning him a fourth star.
Dunford, 59, is a Boston native and is a graduate of the U.S. Army Ranger School, Marine Amphibious Warfare School, and the U.S. Army War college. He also holds Master's degrees in government from Georgetown University and international relations from Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

'It's time to roll': Suspected Texas shooter had been monitored by FBI since 2006

The FBI had spent nearly a decade investigating one of the men who attempted to attack an event featuring cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad, it was revealed Monday as investigators attempted to determine whether the attack was directed by any overseas terror groups.
That suspect, identified by authorities as Elton Simpson, was killed by police officers in the Dallas suburb of Garland, Texas Sunday evening after shooting a school district security guard in the leg outside a center where a cartoon contest was being held. Simpson's fellow attacker and roommate, identified as Nadir Soofi, was also killed.
Authorities said Simpson and Soofi carried rifles and were wearing body armor. Garland police spokesman Joe Harn said Monday that a single Garland police officer subdued the two gunmen but that after his initial shots, SWAT officers nearby also fired at the two men. Harn said police don't know who fired the lethal shots.
A convert to Islam, Simpson first attracted the FBI's attention in 2006 because of his ties to Hassan Abu Jihaad, a former U.S. Navy sailor who had been arrested in Phoenix and was ultimately convicted of terrorism-related charges, according to court records. Jihaad was accused of leaking details about his ship's movements to operators of a website in London that openly espoused violent jihad against the U.S.
In the fall of that year, the FBI asked one of its informants, Dabla Deng, a Sudanese immigrant, to befriend Simpson and ask for advice about Islam. Deng had been working as an FBI informant since 2005 and was instructed to tell Simpson he was a recent convert to the religion.
Over the next few years, Deng would tape his conversations with Simpson with a hidden recording device accumulating more than 1,500 hours of conversations, according to court records.
Simpson was arrested in 2010, one day before authorities say he planned to leave for what he said were religious studies at a madrassa in South Africa. But despite the hours of recordings, the government prosecuted him on only one minor charge -- lying to a federal agent. Years spent investigating Simpson for terrorism ties resulted in three years of probation and $600 in fines and court fees.
"I have to say that I felt like these charges were completely trumped up, that they were just trying to cover up what had been a very long and expensive investigation and they just couldn't leave without some sort of charges," Simpson's attorney, Kristina Sitton, told the Associated Press.
Sitton described Simpson as so devout that he would not even shake her hand and would sometimes interrupt their legal meetings so he could pray. She said she had no indication that he was capable of violence and assumed he just "snapped."
In recent years, Simpson, described as quiet and devout, had been on the radar of law enforcement because of his social media presence, but authorities did not have an indication that he was plotting an attack, one federal official familiar with the investigation told the Associated Press.
In a statement released late Monday by Phoenix law firm Osborn Maledon, Simpson's family said it is "struggling to understand" how the incident happened.
"We are sure many people in this country are curious to know if we had any idea of Elton's plans," the statement says. "To that we say, without question, we did not."
The statement, which does not identify the relatives, also says the family is "heartbroken and in a state of deep shock" and sends prayers to everyone affected by this "act of senseless violence," especially the security guard who was injured.
The recordings played at Simpson's trial featured him talking about fighting against non-Muslims, to whom he referred as "kuffar."
"Allah loves someone who is out there fighting [non-Muslims] and making difficult sacrifices such as living in caves, sleeping on rocks rather than sleeping in comfortable beds and with his wife, children and nice cars," Simpson told the informant in a recording played at his trial. "If you get shot, or you get killed, it’s [heaven] straight away…That’s what we here for…so why not take that route?"
The Dallas Morning News reported that one recording featured Simpson saying his planned studies in South Africa were "just a front" and said he was ready to "bounce" if he had to.
In an apparent reference to the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Simpson said at one point. "They trying to bring democracy over there man, they’re trying to make them live by man-made laws, not by Allah’s laws. That’s why they get fought. You try to make us become slaves to man? No we slave to Allah, we going to fight you to the death."
"I'm telling you, man, we can make it to the battlefield," Simpson is recorded saying on May 29, 2009. "It's time to roll."
Simpson, a longtime resident of the Phoenix area, had worshipped at the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix for about a decade, but he quit showing up over the past two or three months, the president of the mosque told The Associated Press.
Simpson was quiet, never angry and a regular on the basketball court playing with young members of the mosque, said Usama Shami. He asked questions about prayer and marriage, Shami said. And he was rattled by the FBI investigation into him years earlier. Shami said most people at the mosque knew Deng was an informant because he showed such little interest in learning about Islam.
"I've never seen him angry," Shami said of Simpson. "That's the honest truth. He was always having a grin."
Less was known about Soofi, who appeared to have never been prosecuted in federal court, according to a search of court records.
Sharon Soofi, his mother, who now lives in a small town southwest of Houston, told The Dallas Morning News that she had no idea that he would turn to violence.
She said her son was "raised in a normal American fashion" and "was very politically involved with the Middle East. Just aware of what's going on."
"I don't know if something snapped," she said.
She said the last time she had communicated with her son was last month, sending a text to wish her grandson a happy birthday.
"He put his son above everything, I thought," she told the newspaper. "The hard thing is to comprehend is why he would do this and leave an eight-year-old son behind."