Snippets From, and Links To, Some of Today's Most Interesting News...

A gunman opened fire at a Southern Florida high school today, leaving "numerous" people dead and sending students running for their lives, Broward County Public Schools superintendent Robert Runcie told a local ABC affiliate.

At least 14 victims are being taken to hospitals from the incident at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, the Broward Sheriff's Office said, though their conditions were not immediately clear.

The suspect is in custody but the scene is still active as SWAT teams clear the school, the sheriff's office said. The suspect is not a current student; he had attended the school but it is not clear when he left, the sheriff's office said.

Florida high school shooting leaves 'numerous fatalities,' superintendent says; suspect in custody

John Kasich’s brand is built around the idea of “two paths” for the Republican Party: one for center-right pragmatists like him, the other for flamethrowers like Donald Trump.

But as the Ohio governor considers a rematch with Trump in 2020, he is weighing two more-tactical paths. Does he challenge Trump, the sitting president, in primaries where Kasich won’t find much institutional GOP support? Or does he leave the party, go down a route littered with ballot-access hurdles and fundraising challenges, and run as an independent?

Sources close to Kasich’s political team have told BuzzFeed News in recent weeks that both options are in play. Deliberate or not, Kasich’s moves as the 2018 midterms approach reflect that. In Massachusetts, his still-active Kasich for America committee and Doug Preisse, one of his longtime advisers, have donated to Rick Green, who is seeking an open House seat as a Republican. In California, Kasich has encouraged Steve Poizner, who this week launched a campaign for state insurance commissioner as an independent.

John Kasich’s Recent Moves Reflect His 2020 Options: Primarying Trump Or Fleeing The GOP

Just after six a.m. on January 21, 2017, at his home in Alexandria, Virginia, Reince Priebus was watching the cable morning news shows, getting ready to leave for the White House. Suddenly his cell phone went off. It was Donald Trump. The new president, sworn in less than 24 hours earlier, had just seen The Washington Post, with photos showing Trump’s inaugural crowd dwarfed by that of his predecessor, Barack Obama.

The president was livid, screaming at his chief of staff. “He said, ‘This story is bullshit,’ ” recalled Priebus. “He said, ‘There’s more people there. There are people who couldn’t get in the gates. . . . There’s all kind of things that were going on that made it impossible for these people to get there.’ . . . The president said, ‘Call [Interior Secretary] Ryan Zinke. Find out from the Park Service. Tell him to get a picture and do some research right away.’ ” The president wanted his chief of staff to fix this story. Immediately.

Priebus tried to talk Trump off the ledge. “It doesn’t matter,” Priebus argued. “It’s Washington, D.C. We’re in an 85 percent Democrat area. Northern Virginia’s 60 percent. Maryland’s 65 percent. . . . This is a Democrat haven, and nobody cares.” But Trump was having none of it. Priebus thought, “Is this something that I really want to go to battle over on day one? Who needs a controversy over the inauguration?” Priebus realized he faced a decision: “Am I going to go to war over this with the president of the United States?

Hours later, Press Secretary Sean Spicer stepped into the White House briefing room. “What happened,” Priebus remembered, “was Spicer decided to say that actually, if you combine online and television, radio, and in-person, it was the most watched inauguration.” The trouble with that reasoning was that Spicer’s response—a belligerent, Orwellian performance beamed around the world—was a lie. From the very start, the credibility of the Trump presidency became a laughingstock, immortalized by actress Melissa McCarthy in her devastating parody of Spicer on Saturday Night Live.


“Who Needs a Controversy Over the Inauguration?”: Reince Priebus Opens Up About His Six Months of Magical Thinking

NEW YORK (AP) — Stormy Daniels, the porn star whom Donald Trump’s attorney acknowledges paying $130,000 just before Election Day, believes she is now free to discuss an alleged sexual encounter with the man who is now president, her manager told The Associated Press Wednesday.

At the same time, developments in the bizarre case are fueling questions about whether such a payment could violate federal campaign finance laws.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, believes that Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, invalidated a non-disclosure agreement after two news stories were published Tuesday: one in which Cohen told The New York Times he made the six-figure payment with his personal funds, and another in the Daily Beast, which reported that Cohen was shopping a book proposal that would touch on Daniels’ story, said the manager, Gina Rodriguez.

“Everything is off now, and Stormy is going to tell her story,” Rodriguez said.

Porn star who alleged Trump affair: I can now tell my story

President Donald Trump signaled support for a 25-cent gas tax increase to help pay for infrastructure at a meeting with lawmakers on Wednesday, a source in the room told POLITICO.

Trump's support, though not confirmed by the White House, represents a stark departure from recent administrations and congressional leaders that have tip-toed around the issue because raising the gas tax is considered politically dangerous.

It's also a surprising turn from Trump, considering that most believed the best chance to hike the gas tax with the least amount of political pain was as part of the tax overhaul, H.R. 1 (115), whose ship has now sailed — and also because the splashy infrastructure plan the administration rolled out two days ago contained no mention of such a thing.

Trump told members he would lead on promoting a 25-cent hike to the federal levy, the source said. A second source familiar with the meeting said Trump backed the concept.

If Trump follows through on that promise, it could mean billions of dollars in new revenue for infrastructure and help solve a problem that has bedeviled policymakers for at least a decade: The gas tax, which pays for most federal surface transportation spending, has not been keeping pace with needs. But policymakers have not had the political will to raise the gas tax or find another source of revenues, leaving an increasing number of states to raise their own gas taxes to compensate.

Source: Trump endorsed 25-cent gas tax hike in White House confab

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