memeorandum: Republican governor of Nevada Brian Sandoval being considered for Supreme Court (Mike DeBonis/Washington Post)

12:30 PM ET, February 25, 2016

Top Items:

Why Chris Christie never went after Donald Trump — Twenty-four hours before Chris Christie dropped out of the presidential race, the New Jersey governor chatted on his campaign bus about taking on Donald Trump the way he went after Marco Rubio. — Three days earlier …

Discussion: Politico and Hullabaloo

Washington Post:

GOP leaders, you must do everything in your power to stop Trump — THE UNTHINKABLE is starting to look like the inevitable: Absent an extraordinary effort from people who understand the menace he represents, Donald Trump is likely to be the presidential nominee of the Republican Party.

Discussion: CNN, NBC News, The Daily Beast, Shakesville, Downtrend, The Last Refuge, New York Times, LawNewz, Talking Points Memo and Mediaite

Daniel Strauss / Politico:

RNC sees leverage over Trump — Donald Trump has steamrolled toward the Republican nomination by lambasting all things political establishment, and now that establishment thinks it can convince their insult-wielding front-runner he needs them. — Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus …

Discussion: Washington Post, AMERICAblog NewsAMERICAblog … and Daily Kos

Ryan Struyk / ABC News:

Donald Trump Leads Marco Rubio by 16 Points in New Florida Poll — With 19 days to go before the Florida Republican primary, GOP front-runner Donald Trump has opened up a 16-point lead over Sen. Marco Rubio. — The Quinnipiac poll result is a red flag for the Rubio campaign.

Discussion: Politico and Associated Press

Ross Douthat / New York Times:

What Is Marco Rubio Waiting For? — New Hampshire has fallen. South Carolina has been overwhelmed. Nevada has surrendered. And the Republican establishment, like the British Empire in the darkest days of 1940, finds its strength scattered on the beach at Dunkirk, desperately awaiting evacuation …

Discussion: Vox, New York Magazine, The Week, RedState, Political Insider blog, U.S. News and Politico

Alex Isenstadt / Politico:
Cruz, Rubio prep for brutal debate night

Discussion: JustOneMinute, Arkansas Blog, Arkansas Times, New York Times and Vox

Tegna / WFAA-TV:
Cruz, Trump tied in WFAA Texas poll

Discussion: Political Insider blog, Guardian, The Hill, Trail Blazers Blog, The Week, Hot Air, Washington Times, The Gateway Pundit, The Federalist and Nashville Scene

Peter Beinart / The Atlantic:
The Ceiling Buster — Last Sunday, Marco Rubio voiced …

Discussion: Washington Post, The Federalist, NBC News, TheStreet.com, Vox and Hot Air

Andrew Kaczynski / BuzzFeed:
David Duke Urges His Supporters To Volunteer And Vote For Trump

Discussion: Politico

Associated Press:
Debate Another Chance for Rubio, Cruz to Try to Slow Trump

Discussion: Politico, ABC News and Associated Press

The Daily Beast:
Pro-Trump Robocall: Don't Vote for Cuban

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, Washington Post, Trail Blazers Blog, Naked Politics, RedState, Mediaite and The Right Scoop

Dan Balz / Washington Post:
Can Donald Trump be stopped?

Discussion: Politico, Business Insider, Washington Examiner, BloombergView.com and Raw Story

Charles C. W. Cooke / National Review:
It's Time for an Anti-Trump Manhattan Project

Discussion: The Last Refuge, John Hawkins' Right Wing News, alicublog, BloombergView.com, Balloon Juice and FiveThirtyEight

Jennifer Bendery / The Huffington Post:
GOP Congressman Circulates Letter Urging Rubio Or Cruz To Drop Out Of Presidential Race

Discussion: Slantpoint

Caitlin MacNeal / Talking Points Memo:
House GOPer Asks Reps. To Sign Letter Urging Cruz Or Rubio To Drop Out

Discussion: The Week

Steven Ertelt / LifeNews.com:
Cecile Richards: “I Appreciate Donald Trump's Kind Words About Planned Parenthood”

Discussion: Washington Monthly, The Resurgent, Politico, RedState and Independent Journal Review

The Hill:

How Obama, Dems plan to win fight on high court — President Obama and Senate Democrats plan to reach deep into their bag of tricks and tactics to ensure the Supreme Court dominates the political debate up until Election Day. — Their strategy is to portray the Senate Republican majority …

Discussion: Politico

Mike DeBonis / Washington Post:

Republican governor of Nevada Brian Sandoval being considered for Supreme Court — Brian Sandoval, the centrist Republican governor of Nevada, is being vetted by the White House for a possible nomination to the Supreme Court, according to two people familiar with the process.

New York Times:
Senate Republicans Lose Their Minds on a Supreme Court Seat

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, BarbWire.com, The Week, Slantpoint and Above the Law

Carl Hulse / New York Times:
Struggle Over Supreme Court Pick Enters a New Level of ‘Hardball Politics’

Discussion: Politicus USA, The Hill, Daily Kos and NBC News

Amy Brittain / Washington Post:

Justice Scalia spent his last hours with members of this secretive society of elite hunters — When Justice Antonin Scalia died 11 days ago at a West Texas ranch, he was among high-ranking members of an exclusive fraternity for hunters called the International Order of St. Hubertus, an Austrian society that dates back to the 1600s.

Discussion: Mother Jones, Talking Points Memo, Washington Monthly, Gothamist, Trail Blazers Blog, New York Magazine, Fusion, The Week, Little Green Footballs and Althouse

Dan Balz / Washington Post:

Poll: Trump's negatives among Hispanics rise; worst in GOP field … Donald Trump has used the issue of immigration to help make himself the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, but his harsh rhetoric also has earned him the highest negative ratings among Hispanic voters …

Discussion: Washington Times, Business Insider, Politico, Outside the Beltway, ThinkProgressPage Array, Prairie Weather, Daily Kos and Talking Points Memo

Rebecca Savransky / The Hill:

Romney: There's a ‘bombshell’ in Trump's tax returns — Mitt Romney is going after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump — for not yet releasing his taxes. — “Frankly, I think we have a good reason to believe that there's a bombshell in Donald Trump's taxes,” the 2012 GOP nominee told Fox News on Wednesday.

Discussion: Business Insider, AMERICAblog NewsAMERICAblog …, Daily Kos and MichelleMalkin.com

Aaron Blake / Washington Post:
‘The poorly educated’ people of America cut an ad for Donald Trump [Video]

Discussion: RedState and ThinkProgressPage Array

Christopher Cameron / The Statesman:

Political science professor forecasts Trump as general election winner — A professor of political science at Stony Brook University has forecasted that Donald Trump has a minimum 97 percent chance of winning the general election as the Republican nominee. — Professor Helmut Norpoth's …

Discussion: The Moderate Voice, Infowars, The Daily Caller and BizPac Review

New York Times:

Donald Trump Taps Foreign Work Force for His Florida Club — Donald J. Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach describes itself as “one of the most highly regarded private clubs in the world,” and it is not just the very-well-to-do who want to get in. — Since 2010, nearly 300 United States residents …

Discussion: National Review, Mother Jones, New York Magazine, LawNewz, Althouse, Hot Air and Fusion

Natalie Swaby / KING-TV:

Boy removed from plane over allergies, passengers applaud — COUPEVILLE, Wash. - Instead of sightseeing on a ferry, 7-year-old Giovanni, his mom, Christina Fabian, and dad, George Alvarado should have already boarded a flight. — “We were on Flight 171,” said Fabian.

Discussion: Raw Story, WHNT-TV, KTLA, FOX31 Denver, WCMH-TV and KOIN-TV

Jason M. Breslow / FRONTLINE:

Eric Holder: If Sentencing Reform Dies, “I'd Be Ashamed” — As a judge in Washington, D.C. in the '80s and '90s, Eric Holder says it didn't take much to tell that the nation's criminal justice system - especially when it came to low-level drug offenses - was “fundamentally unfair.”

Discussion: Hit & Run, The Daily Caller, Slantpoint, New York Times and Smell the Truth

Tom Angell / Marijuana:
Reschedule Marijuana, Says Former Attorney General Eric Holder

Discussion: ThinkProgressPage Array and Hit & Run

Jeremy Roebuck / Philly.com:

ACLU plans challenge to ruling finding no First Amendment right to film police — Civil rights lawyers said Wednesday that they intend to appeal a federal court ruling in Philadelphia that citizens do not necessarily have a right protected by the First Amendment to record police activity.

Discussion: Washington Times, Fox17, The Week, FOX2now.com and Washington Post

MIT Technology Review:

Google Unveils Neural Network with “Superhuman” Ability to Determine the Location of Almost Any Image — Guessing the location of a randomly chosen Street View image is hard, even for well-traveled humans. But Google's latest artificial-intelligence machine manages it with relative ease.

Discussion: Daily Mail

Post and Courier:

Woman, 50, died after being ‘deprived of water’ at Charleston County jail — A woman who was arrested at a hospital over the summer for failing to pay court fines died the next day because she was deprived of water at the Charleston County jail, her family's attorneys said Wednesday.

Discussion: Raw Story, Shakesville and Fusion