What you missed this weekend

Hours after billionaire conservative Charles Koch said he might prefer Hillary Clinton to a Republican nominee, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz announced an alliance to divide resources to conquer to GOP front-runner Donald Trump by denying him the delegates he needs to secure the GOP nomination before it’s too late.

The campaigns made the move after multiple polls this weekend showed Trump with a statistically significant lead in the crucial, winner-take-all primary state of Indiana. A win there, and the 57 delegates that come with it, following on expected victories in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, would likely give Trump the delegates he needs to win on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention in July. If he can’t stop a second ballot, he is probably toast: Cruz continues to ensure a convention full of delegates who will switch to him on a second ballot.

All eyes on Indiana: With polls showing Trump on pace to win most of the 172 delegates up for grabs in Tuesday’s primaries, Indiana’s delegates look like they may determine whether Trump can win the nomination outright, or fall short and face a brokered convention with the establishment and odds against him.

The Cruz-Kasich deal is an acknowledgement of the need to stop Trump in the Hoosier state after Trump’s expected romp Tuesday. Cruz’s campaign chair said Sunday that “this particular stretch of states in the Northeast,” is likely to be the “low point of the campaign in terms of our ability to win delegates.” Several super PACs, already taking aim at Trump in Indiana, expressed support for the pact.

The deal includes Cruz’s agreement to avoid spending campaign funds to compete with Kasich in New Mexico and Oregon. But those states don’t matter much. The point of the deal is that Kasich agreed to cede Indiana in the hopes of increasing Cruz’s odds of denying the state’s delegates to Trump.

Denouncing the deal Sunday, Trump called Cruz and Kasich “mathematically dead and totally desperate.” There’s truth to that claim. Neither Kasich nor Cruz can win the nomination before the convention. So neither much needs the Indiana delegates. It’s more important that they stop Trump from getting them. With Trump at around 40 percent in Indiana polls, Cruz can catch up if he can add around half of Kasich’s 20 percent to his total.

The news upset Trump’s attempt to have a relatively quiet weekend. Leaving television hits to surrogates, he tried for the switch to presidential mode his campaign has touted. But the Cruz-Kasich compact drew a familiar string of exclamation and all-caps ridden tweets from Trump and his aides.

Clinton cruises while Bernie boils: Italian Prime Minister Renzi and Koch, two men with little in common beyond expensive cloths, both offered Clinton some degree of support Sunday. Renzi was effusive, while Koch’s compliment was backhanded. But each showed why Clinton, if not quite inevitable again, is the probable next president, despite a widespread lack of enthusiasm for the prospect. She could afford to spend the weekend mostly off television, starting to vet veeps, (an activity Kasich said he also began) and letting love and kindness come to her.

Clinton rival Bernie Sanders, his hopes diminishing, raged at the Democratic National Committee, which he said treats him unfairly, at proposals to tax sugary soda, which Clinton backs but Bernie says would fall largely on poorer people, and at cigarettes, the legality of which Sanders said could be in question.

Sander also declared, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” that “poor people don’t vote.” The Vermont senator made that argument to explain why Clinton is beating him. It’s a dubious claim. While poor people do vote at lower rates than richer ones, those that are voting in Democratic primaries have broken toward Clinton.

Sanders vowed to fight on through the California and D.C. primaries that conclude the Democratic primary calendar in June. He said that if Clinton wins, he will back her. But he insisted it will be on her to win over his supporters, not on him to sell them on her.

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, through a thin veneer of impartiality, urged Sanders to shut it.

“We need to make sure that the rhetoric that each candidate uses is such that it doesn’t make it more difficult for us to reunify,” the Florida congresswoman said on “Fox News Sunday.” Wasserman-Schultz also urged Americans to get over Clinton’s use of a private email account, while noting she is “not counting” the actual number of messages Clinton sent and received via a private server.

Europe, North Korea and Saudi Arabia: On CNN Sunday, Renzi also offered kind words for President Obama, praising his deals to resume relations with Cuba and win Iran’s pledge to freeze its nuclear weapons program.

“Everyone in Europe considers the Obama presidency as a great presidency,” Renzi said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel did not do much to dispute that view during a press conference with Obama in Germany. Obama reciprocated the continent’s affection. In London, between meeting with a bathrobe-clad Prince George celebrating the Queen’s birthday and golfing with David Cameron, Obama urged the United Kingdom to remain in the European Union, in a rare foray into domestic politics of a foreign state — though one Obama said had impacts on the United States. In Germany, he praised Merkel’s welcome of refugees from the Middle East, along the way taking shots at Republicans in the United States who oppose his plan to let tens of thousands of Syrians into the country.

Obama also rejected an alleged offer from North Korea to suspend nuclear activities if the U.S. stops military exercises with South Korea. “They’re going to have to do better than that,” he said.

Obama’s trip abroad also included a stop in Saudi Arabia. The president faced calls Sunday to release 28 still-secret pages of the otherwise public 9/11 Commission report, and reports suggested the White House is preparing to do so. Former Sen. Bob Graham said Sunday that the Saudis supported the 9/11 attacks and that the pages would support that claim. Other officials familiar with the report have called Graham’s claims overstated.

Ryan teases tax plan: House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., may really not be angling for the GOP presidential nomination, this year, but he won’t convince anyone of that by pledging to unveil what is likely to be a big tax cut plan.

“We are going to roll out very comprehensive tax reform to get these rates down across the board — for all businesses, not just the big corporations like some people have argued,” Ryan said in a speech last week that he touted Sunday on Twitter.