WASHINGTON -- Ted Cruz, the tea party-backed GOP candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas, will face establishment-backed David Dewhurst in a run-off this summer that will test conservative strength.

Dewhust, the Texas lieutenant governor, failed to achieve the 50% threshold needed to cinch the nomination for a seat that is expected to remain Republican-held in the general election this fall. The runoff is July 31, a mid-summer date that is likely to lead to a relatively low, and unpredictable, turnout, according to Texas political analysts.

"This is the outcome we have been working so hard to achieve and it's a major victory for the conservative movement," Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, the conservative leader who backed Cruz's candidacy, said in a fundraising pitch on Wednesday morning.

Cruz, a former state solicitor general, was the lesser known of the candidates, but gained conservative backing from Sarah Palin, Tea Party Express and other conservatives as millions poured...

WASHINGTON -- Ever since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 struck down restrictions on the ability of corporations to spend money in political campaigns, Democrats have been warning their followers that a tidal wave of conservative cash threatened to swamp liberal candidates.

With this year’s Republican primaries, the image of plutocrats ready to empty their bank accounts on behalf of favored conservatives got more concrete as money from Sheldon Adelson, Foster Friess, Harold Simmons and other multimillionaires kept candidates on the market long after their sell-by dates.

But are the rich really so one-sidedly behind Republicans — and conservative Republicans, in particular? Many conservative commentators have fought back against that idea, pointing to wealthy donors on the left — George Soros makes a favorite target — and have argued that, if anything, America’s 1% leans left.

Luckily, amid the finger-pointing, some actual data...

We might have spoken too soon.

On Monday, we wrote that “birther” conspiracies about President Obama had mostly been laid to rest when the White House released his long-form Hawaiian birth certificate last April, but that some detractors are focusing on his college transcripts, hoping to prove Obama is not as smart as he seems.

But it turns out there’s a subset of Americans (and we have heard from many of them) who fervently wish to read President Obama’s college transcripts for a different reason. It’s not because they give a rip about his grades, or his intelligence,  but because when he applied to Occidental College, located in the Los Angeles suburb of Eagle Rock, they allege that he claimed to be a foreign student and may have received some sort of special benefit as a result.

According to the urban myth-debunking website, Snopes.com, it appears this rumor got started in 2009, when a fake story – it went out disguised as an Associated Press item...

LAS VEGAS -- Mitt Romney celebrated clinching the GOP presidential nomination Tuesday night, telling donors that he was honored to cross the 1,144 delegate threshold, but he predicted a long battle through the fall.

“This was a big day, by the way -- 1,144, we finally got there,” Romney told donors who had raised as much as $250,000 to attend the fundraiser with Donald Trump at a hotel just off the Las Vegas strip. “It is a great honor.”

Romney acknowledged the drawn-out fight, which took much longer for him to secure than many expected.

“I know the road to 1,144 was long and hard, but I also know the road to 11/06, Nov. 6, is also going to be long, it’s going to be hard,” he said, in remarks that could be heard by reporters in the hotel lobby. “It’s going to be worth it because we’re going to take back the White House and get America working again.”

This fundraiser and a second one at an undisclosed location were expected...

LAS VEGAS — Mitt Romney, campaigning at a furniture warehouse in the desert heat on Tuesday, did not mention the two big issues of the day – that he was likely to clinch the GOP presidential nomination within hours, or the fundraiser he planned to attend this evening with controversial mogul Donald Trump.

All attention in the political world has been focused on the Trump event, because of Trump’s continued insistence that President Obama was not born in the United States, a claim that has been repeatedly disproved. Romney has maintained that the president was born in Hawaii and is eligible to be the nation’s commander in chief, but he added a new line to his standard stump speech about the requirements to hold the office.

Romney said he was speaking to a restaurant owner earlier in the day who said he believed that another prerequisite should be added to become president in addition to the age, citizenship and birthplace requirements in the Constitution – a...

LAS VEGAS — Tuesday should have been a milestone moment for Mitt Romney -- after a primary battle that went on longer than nearly everyone expected, he was poised to finally clinch the GOP nomination. And he tried to turn the page on attacks by Democrats over his record as the head of a private equity firm by unveiling a new argument that President Obama is hostile to business.

But then came The Donald.

Romney was scheduled to raise as much as $2 million with Donald Trump at two events Tuesday evening, but his public schedule was designed to avoid highlighting his relationship with the controversial mogul, who continues to espouse disproven theories that Obama was not born in the United States.

That was a challenge from the moment Romney landed at Las Vegas-McCarran International Airport. As Romney’s chartered plane taxied down the runway, a private plane emblazoned with Trump’s surname sat parked near the terminal. Romney’s staffers tried to move photographers and...

Tea partyers riding high off of their successful efforts to further shake up the Republican establishment in Nebraska and Indiana have turned their eyes to Texas, where challenger Ted Cruz has a chance to at least force another vote in the hunt for the state’s open Senate seat.

A number of prominent tea party figures -- including Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum and Rand Paul – have recently joined groups such as the Tea Party Express and FreedomWorks in coalescing their support around Cruz, who polls show currently trails his most prominent rival, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. But because of the nature of the state’s primaries, the former Texas solicitor general stands a chance of at least getting a second shot at the electorate even if he loses Tuesday.

If Dewhurst fails to gather 50% of the vote, the election will move to a runoff July 31. The most recent poll out of Texas shows Dewhurst falling below that crucial line, leading Cruz 46% to 29% in a poll conducted May 22 and 23....

WASHINGTON -- Folk singer Bob Dylan and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright were awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in a ceremony at the White House on Tuesday afternoon.

A number of figures from the struggles and shifts of the 1960s were recognized Tuesday. Civil rights campaigner Dolores Huerta and astronaut John Glenn also received the medal.

The year 1962 looms especially large in President Obama’s picks: That was the year Dylan put out his first album, when Huerta cofounded the National Farm Workers Assn. and when Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth.

Photos: The 2012 Medal of Freedom recipients

The medal is the country’s highest civilian honor and the president has wide latitude in picking recipients. It is awarded to people who have made major contributions to the security of the United States, world peace, culture or who have undertaken “other significant public or private endeavors.”

Huerta and Cesar Chavez founded the...