President Obama on Wednesday nominated Merrick Garland to fill the vacancy on the US Supreme Court created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Mr Garland, a veteran judge,  is widely considered a moderate. In doing so, the President sets up a potential conflict with the Republican-controlled Senate, whose leadership had said it would oppose any nominee.

But some Republicans may be already wavering.

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WORLD

After the latest installment of primaries, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are again tightening their grip on the Democratic and Republican races for the nomination respectively.

But the New York Times writes that they may be winning votes, but hardly hearts.

Even as they watched the two candidates amass large margins on Tuesday, historians and strategists struggled to recall a time when more than half the country has held such stubbornly low opinions of the leading figures in the Democratic and Republican Parties.

“There is no analogous election in the modern era where the two top candidates for the nomination are as divisive and weak,” said Steve Schmidt, a top campaign adviser to George W. Bush in 2004 and John McCain in 2008. “There is no precedent for it.”

For home-town GOP candidates Marco Rubio and John Kasich, there were mixed fortunes. Rubio called it a day after losing Florida to Trump while Kasich’s victory in Ohio led to him saying he’d stay in the race until the convention in Cleveland in July.

His #NeverTrump presser a few days ago on Trump’s rhetoric was passionate, honest and too late..

Meanwhile it looks like the next scheduled Fox debate next Monday won’t happen after both Trump and Kasich said they wouldn’t take part.