When asked if they would consider being Trump’s vice presidential running mate, prominent Republicans offer responses ranging from “Never” (spokesman for John Kasich) to “That’s like buying a ticket on the Titanic” (Lindsey Graham) to “I’m not ruling myself in” (Senator Tim Scott) to “Hahahahahahahah” (senior adviser to Jeb Bush). Hundreds of protestors storm Baghdad’s Green Zone and force their way into parliament, waving flags, breaking furniture, and demanding an end to government corruption. The Reverend Daniel Berrigan dies at age ninety-four. Bobby Knight, former Indiana basketball coach, says, “There has never been a more honest politician than Donald Trump.” Larry Wilmore concludes his remarks at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner with a tribute to Obama, pounding his chest and exclaiming, “Yo, Barry, you did it, my nigga!” Obama responds with a chest pound and dap for Wilmore. Hillary Clinton embraces Trump’s “woman card” comment, and over the last three days of April raises a record-setting $2.4 million by offering a bright pink “Hillary for America Woman Card” to each contributor to her campaign. “Deal Me In” T-shirts and a deck of cards with statistics such as “Only 5 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women” are also soon offered. In Germany, the nationalist Alternative for Germany party calls for a ban on minarets, muezzin calls, and head scarves for women and girls. An unsubstantiated story appears in the National Enquirer alleging that Rafael Cruz, the father of Ted Cruz, can be seen in a photo with Lee Harvey Oswald taken three months before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. “His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being—you know, shot,” Trump tells Fox & Friends on the day of the Indiana primary. “What was he doing—what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death—before the shooting? It’s horrible.” Cruz, in response, calls Trump “a pathological liar.”
INDIANA PRIMARIES
Democratic
Sanders: 52.5%
Clinton: 47.5%
Republican
Trump: 53.3%
Cruz: 36.6%
Kasich: 7.6%
Cruz suspends his campaign, and Kasich does the same a day later. “Donald Trump spells big trouble for the Republican Party,” says one Democratic strategist, commenting on Democrats’ hopes of taking control of the Senate and House. In Austria, a far-right nationalist candidate comes within three-tenths of a percentage point of being elected head of state. The World Bank releases a report asserting that water shortages due to climate change could result in “sustained negative growth” in some parts of the world by 2050. In a letter to Governor Pat McCrory, the U.S. Department of Justice warns that North Carolina’s new law limiting restroom access violates the civil rights of transgender people. Mary Matalin, veteran strategist for the Republican Party and former president George H. W. Bush’s campaign director in 1992, switches her party registration from Republican to Libertarian, and tells Bloomberg Politics that she is a Republican in the “Jeffersonian, Madisonian sense,” and that her move has nothing to do with Trump being the presumptive Republican nominee. House Speaker Paul Ryan says he’s “not ready” to endorse Trump, and that there is no point in trying to “fake” party unity. Former Texas governor Rick Perry, who once called Trump’s candidacy “a cancer on conservatism,” endorses Trump and says he would consider being Trump’s running mate. Cruz returns to the Senate and refuses to endorse Trump. A Public Policy Polling survey finds that 72 percent of Republicans are comfortable with Trump as the GOP nominee, that two-thirds of voters with a favorable opinion of Trump believe that Obama is a Muslim, and that a quarter believe that Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia was murdered. Sadiq Khan, the son of a bus driver from Pakistan, is elected mayor of London, making him the first Muslim to lead a major Western capital city. Despite earlier assurances that he would release them, Trump tells the Associated Press that he doesn’t expect to release his tax returns before the election, and says “there’s nothing to learn from them.” Three ISIS car bombings in three different neighborhoods kill ninety-three in Baghdad. George Zimmerman attempts to sell in an online auction the gun he used to kill Trayvon Martin, saying that a portion of the proceeds would go toward fighting what Zimmerman calls violence by the Black Lives Matter movement against law enforcement officers, and combating the antigun rhetoric of Hillary Clinton. Mitt Romney, William Kristol, and Erick Erickson are among a group of Republicans plotting to run an independent presidential candidate as an alternative to Trump; potential recruits include John Kasich, Condoleezza Rice, Stanley McChrystal, and Dallas Mavericks owner and Shark Tank costar Mark Cuban. As of May 6, Obama has been at war longer than any U.S. president in history. Four ISIS car bomb attacks kill at least sixty-nine in Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad. The Earth’s average temperature for April was 56.7 degrees, setting a heat record for an unprecedented twelfth straight month. Sanders supporters disrupt the Nevada State Democratic Convention, shouting down Clinton delegates and threatening the state party chairwoman. An EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo crashes into the Mediterranean Sea after making a series of abrupt turns; Egypt’s aviation minister says the possibility of a terrorist attack is “higher than the possibility” of a technical failure. Protestors storm Baghdad’s Green Zone for a second time, and are repelled by security forces firing live ammunition and tear gas, killing four protestors and injuring ninety. Jesse Oliveri of Ashland, Pennsylvania, is shot and wounded by Secret Service agents after he approaches a checkpoint outside the White House and refuses to drop his gun. Mark Cuban says that he would consider offers from both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to be their vice presidential running mate. Seven closely coordinated blasts kill at least eighty people in the Syrian coastal towns of Tartus and Jableh, both pro-government strongholds; ISIS claims responsibility. Former Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr bemoans the loss of civility in contemporary politics, and regrets “the unpleasantness” that led to the impeachment of former president Bill Clinton for lying about his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Three days after these comments, Starr is ousted as president of Baylor University over his handling of sexual assault cases involving Baylor students. In a report delivered to Congress, the State Department’s inspector general strongly criticizes Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, saying that she had not sought permission for the server and would not have received it if she had. The attorneys general of Texas and nine other states sue the federal government over the Obama administration’s order to public schools to let transgender students use restrooms that match their gender identity. With pledges of support from a handful of unbound delegates, Trump’s delegate total reaches 1,239, two more than the 1,237 needed to win the Republican nomination. In a letter to the World Health Organization, more than one hundred physicians, bioethicists, and scientists urge moving or delaying the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games because of the Zika outbreak. An estimated seven hundred migrants and asylum seekers drown while attempting to reach Italy from Libya. “Sometimes you get the feeling they’re in a professional boxing match,” the Reverend Al Sharpton says of Clinton’s campaign team, “and he [Trump] is in a street fight, and they’re coming in with their gloves on. This is a street fight with a guy with a razor and a broken Coca-Cola bottle, and you’ve got to fight him like that.” Former Massachusetts governor William Weld compares Trump’s immigration plan to Kristallnacht, and the Washington Post publishes an op-ed on Trump titled “This Is How Fascism Comes to America.” “There is nobody less of a fascist than Donald Trump,” says Donald Trump. At the Cincinnati Zoo, a four-hundred-pound male lowland gorilla named Harambe is shot and killed after a four-year-old boy falls into the animal’s exhibit, and on his radio show Rush Limbaugh argues that the existence of gorillas disproves the theory of evolution: “A lot of people think that all of us used to be gorillas, and they’re looking for the missing link out there. The evolution crowd. They think we were originally apes. I’ve always had a question: if we were the original apes, then how come Harambe is still an ape, and how come he didn’t become one of us?” Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a possible Trump vice presidential pick, says he is “deeply offended” by analogies comparing Trump to twentieth-century fascist leaders. “He [Trump] doesn’t have the sort of ideology that they did. He has nobody who resembles the brownshirts. This is all just garbage.” Iranian military advisers and intelligence officers assume leading roles in the Iraqi army’s attempt to retake Fallujah from ISIS. President Obama visits Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park and calls for “a moral revolution.” Sanders wins caucuses and primaries in Wyoming, Oregon, and West Virginia, and attempts to win over superdelegates with polls that show him performing substantially better than Clinton in a general-election matchup with Trump. “I will be the nominee for my party,” Clinton tells CNN. “That is already done, in effect. There is no way that I won’t be.” Vice President Joe Biden tells Good Morning America, “I think I would have been the best president.”