Hillary Clinton Minivans Her Presidential Campaign to Iowa

Now that Hillary Clinton has formally announced that she’s seeking the Democratic nomination for president in 2016, the former U.S. secretary of state and senator from New York is traveling cross-country in a minivan to Iowa, where she’ll hold a campaign event on Tuesday. “This was her idea, and she’s been really excited about it since she came up with it,” longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin said in a conference call, according to The Associated Press.

Clinton’s past positions suggest that she’ll show strong support for action on climate change, reforming the nation’s immigration system, and a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians, according to The New York Times.

Advance word of Clinton’s entry into the race “dropped like a gift from the heavens” on her Republican cohorts attending the National Rifle Association’s annual convention in Nashville, Tennessee, according to the Boston Herald. Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida, criticized the “liberal, progressive worldview of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder, and all of the other people who want to take the guns out of the hands of the good guys,” while former Texas Gov. Rick Perry sideswiped Clinton with a name-free reference to “our failed foreign policy.”

When reporters asked President Obama if he hoped Clinton would run on his record, the president deflected the question but made his support for Clinton clear, according to the New York Daily News. “She was a formidable candidate in 2008. She was a great supporter of mine in the general election. She was an outstanding secretary of state,” Obama said during a press conference at the Summit of the Americas in Panama City, Panama.

“She is my friend,” he went on. “I think she would be an excellent president.”

In other news...

Coral Reef Crisis: The Philippines says China's island-building efforts in the South China Sea have destroyed 300 acres of coral reef, and the damage to biodiversity and fisheries is irreversible. (via The New York Times)

Another Fatal Shooting: Police deputy Robert Bates said that he thought he was holding a Taser, not his handgun, when he shot and killed Eric Harris, an unarmed black man, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, earlier this month. (via The Washington Post)

Conscience of a Nation: Günter Grass, the Nobel-winning German novelist, died at age 87. He grappled in his work with social justice, peace, the environment, and Germany’s Nazi past. (via The Guardian)

Save the Children: In the wake of seven teenage suicides in recent months, the Oglala Sioux Tribe is intensifying suicide-prevention efforts on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. (via Picayune Leader)

Dirty Power Protest: About 10,000 people in Heyuan, a city in northeastern Guangdong, China, wore surgical masks and chanted, “Give me back my blue sky,” as they marched on Sunday to protest regional coal-fired power and the smog problem it has created. (via International Business Times)