It’s Political: The five remaining Republican candidates have a debate in Houston tonight that needs to be a game changer for the four trailing Donald Trump. The question is whether Cruz, Rubio, Kasich, and Carson will savage each other or turn on Trump to bleed him out. What they really need is two or three of them to drop out to give Republicans voters a clear choice to determine whether they really want the New York Mouth to be their candidate.

The party’s 2012 nominee Mitt Romney called out Trump to reveal his tax returns saying, “We have good reason to believe that there’s a bombshell in Donald Trump’s taxes.”

Heavy Weather: Violent storms lashed the mid-Atlantic yesterday bringing high winds, tornadoes, and flooding. Several people were killed, including a three-year-old child.

Advice and Dissent: President Obama told reporters the Republican refusal to consider a Supreme Court nominee puts the entire court system at risk. Obama said, “Not only are we going to see more and more vacancies and the court systems break down, but the credibility of the court itself is diminished because it’s seen as an extension of our politics.”

It is already. Even if Obama gets a hearing, 14 Republicans would have to break with their party to confirm the new justice, and that’s unlikely.

TechBeat: While Apple lawyers fight a court order to unlock the iPhone of a dead terrorist, company engineers are working on even tighter security for its phones, according to the NY Times. Law enforcement can access to the records of landline phones under current law, but it may take action by Congress to force cellphone makers to give investigators a door into encrypted phones.

The federal government has at least 10 other pending requests to open Apple phones and CEO Tim Cook says cracking them would be the “software equivalent of cancer.”

World: The UN says it has carried out its first air drops of humanitarian aid for starving residents in Eastern Syria — With China throwing its weight around the Pacific, Australia is embarking on a $10 billion military buildup with 10 new submarines, as well as new frigates and armored personnel carriers — Austria and nine Balkan states have reached an agreement to block the flow of migrants coming through Greece.

Planet Zero: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates writes in his annual foundation letter that mankind doesn’t need to cut carbon emissions by half to save the planet; he says emissions need to be zero. Gates says, “In short, we need an energy miracle.”

While citing previous technological “miracles” from the polio vaccine to the personal computer, Gates says, “We need a massive amount of research into thousands of new ideas — even ones that might sound a little crazy— if we want to get to zero emissions by the end of this century.”

Party Politics: The leading Republican candidate for president, Donald Trump, is a man who said he’d like to punch a protester in the face. He repeatedly calls rival Ted Cruz a liar. Cruz says that if a Democrat is elected president, religious rights and the Second Amendment will be eradicated. Marco Rubio says he keeps a gun at home in case the Islamic State comes to his door.

They all attack each other.

Some observers say the Republican party is tearing itself apart, like a giant engine running at high speed with a wobbly flywheel. Author Jacob Weisberg writes in the NY Times, “The current field of Republican presidential candidates invokes (Ronald) Reagan as a patron saint, but the characteristics that made him a successful politician seem lost on them. Instead, they’ve turned his party into a swamp of nativism, ideological extremism and pessimism about the country’s future, in direct opposition to Reagan’s example. And they’ve transformed primary season into a reality show of insults, betrayals and open feuds, defying the so-called 11th Commandment that Reagan espoused: Thou shall not speak ill of any fellow Republican.”

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