Green Bay News

LYNCHBURG, Va. (AP) – Sen. Ted Cruz showed he was a candidate in a hurry early Monday morning, announcing his presidential candidacy on Twitter just after midnight, several hours before the official launch at the college founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell Monday morning.

The Texas Republican’s choice of Liberty University for Monday’s speech indicates he plans an aggressive courtship of cultural conservatives and young voters.

Cruz became the first high-profile Republican to officially enter the 2016 contest even though, like others, he has been campaigning in all but name for many months. Ahead of his speech, Cruz turned to social media and tweeted: “I’m running for president and I hope to earn your support!”

In a flashy video that accompanied it, Cruz offered a preview of his nascent campaign’s message.

“I believe in America and her people, and I believe we can stand up and restore our promise,” Cruz said in the web video as images of farm fields, city skylines and American landmarks and symbols played in the background. “It’s going to take a new generation of courageous conservatives to help make America great again, and I’m ready to stand with you to lead the fight.”

Cruz’s decision to launch at Liberty University, a familiar stop for presidential hopefuls that calls itself the world’s largest Christian college, is meant as a marker against potential rivals who are counting on Christian conservatives to fuel their ambitions.

Cruz is not expected to be the sole contender for long. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and two Senate colleagues, Kentucky’s Rand Paul and Florida’s Marco Rubio, are eyeing campaign announcements soon.

For his start, Cruz was bypassing Texas, which he represents in the Senate, as well as early nominating states such as New Hampshire, where Mitt Romney kicked off his own campaign for the GOP nomination in 2012, and Iowa.

By getting in early – and at Liberty – Cruz, 44, was hoping to claim ownership of the influential and incredibly vocal corner of the Republican Party for whom cultural issues are supreme. It was a move aimed at crowding out figures such as former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a former Baptist pastor, and former Sen. Rick Santorum, who has made his Catholic faith a cornerstone of his political identity. It also had a potential impact on Cruz’s contemporaries, including 43-year-old Rubio and 47-year-old Walker.

Cruz’s father, a pastor, is also expected to help the first-term senator make inroads with these voters.

Cruz is already a familiar figure on the circuit for presidential hopefuls, having made repeated visits to the early voting states, the big conservative activist conferences and more. This month, for example, he met party activists in New Hampshire, which hosts the leadoff primary. But, like other presidential prospects, he’s been coy about what he’s doing. That coyness ended Monday when he jumped in.

By announcing what has long been obvious, Cruz triggers a host of accounting and reporting requirements about money he is raising and how he is spending it. To this point, he had operated his political organization through a non-presidential committee that worked under different rules. By officially joining the race, he now operates under a more stringent set of rules, including being able to accept fewer dollars from each supporter.

Following his election to the Senate in 2012, the former Texas solicitor general quickly established himself as an uncompromising conservative willing to take on Democrats and Republicans alike. Criticized by members of his own party at times, he won praise from tea party activists for leading the GOP’s push to shut down the federal government during an unsuccessful bid to block money for President Barack Obama’s health care law.

The son of an American mother and Cuban-born father, Cruz is positioning himself to become potentially the nation’s first Hispanic president. While he was born in Canada, two lawyers who represented presidents from both parties at the Supreme Court recently wrote in the Harvard Law Review that they think Cruz meets the constitutional standard to run.

Should he fail to win the nomination or the presidency, Cruz would retain his Senate seat through 2019. He also could choose to run for re-election in 2018, having broadened his national network of allies and donors during this presidential campaign.

CHILTON – The sounds of a sweet season are underway.

Producers in Northeast Wisconsin are very busy turning sap into maple syrup this time of year.

The Ledge View Nature Center will be hosting Maple Syrup Sunday this Sunday. It’s a chance for families see and learn about the process of making maple syrup first-hand.

The event runs from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The pancake breakfast runs from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

FOX 11’s Pauleen Le spent the morning at Ledge View Nature Center to check out the process.

For more information on Ledge View Nature Center and Maple Syrup Sunday, click here.

GREEN BAY- We’ll deal with cloudy skies Monday morning then partly sunny this afternoon with a high near 38.

Right now it looks like Tuesday night and Wednesday morning we will have some rain, freezing rain and even accumulating snow in our area.

At this point indications are the accumulating snow would be mainly to the north of Green Bay.

This wintry mix will mean it could be slippery for your morning commute Wednesday. By the afternoon, temperatures will climb into the mid 40’s.

UNION GROVE, Wis. (AP) – Authorities are searching for a 20-year-old man suspected of firing a gun at a sheriff’s deputy outside a grocery store in Union Grove.

The man officials are looking for is Stantavious Sillas.

The Racine County Sheriff’s Office says shots were fired in the parking lot of a Piggly Wiggly on Sunday afternoon when deputies approached a man who had reportedly abducted a woman at gunpoint from a nearby rehabilitation center. The sheriff’s office says the man left the woman unharmed in the parking lot and fled.

The store was on lockdown for two hours as authorities searched for the suspect.

Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling issued a warning Sunday night, asking Union Grove residents to lock their homes and stay indoors.

He says the suspect is considered armed and dangerous.

MADISON – Three local area boys basketball teams competed in the 2015 WIAA State Tournament at the Kohl Center in Madison this week.

N.E.W Lutheran fell to Hillsboro in the Division 5 semifinal Thursday, 59-57. On Friday, West De Pere met a similar fate in the Division 2 semifinal, dropping a 65-53 decision to Mount Horeb.

Xavier defeated East Troy 70-69 to advance to their first Division 3 championship game. However, they would settle for a silver ball Saturday after falling 74-60 to Brown Deer.

Click on the link above for the best highlights from this year’s tournament action.

Fresh off their first win of the season, the Green Bay Blizzard (2-1) continued their hot play Sunday afternoon, topping Iowa 47-46 at the Resch Center.

James Walker’s 2-yard touchdown run with under six minutes to play capped a late comeback in this yearly rivalry.

Green Bay quarterback Donovan Porterie threw for 230 yards and four touchdowns in the win. Two of those scores going to wide receiver Donte Sawyer.

The Blizzard will look to extend their winning streak to three games next Sunday, when they host the Bemidji Axemen at 3 p.m.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) – Sam Dekker scored 17 points to lead four Wisconsin players in double figures, and the No. 1-seeded Badgers are headed back to the Sweet 16 after defeating Oregon 72-65 in the NCAA Tournament on Sunday night.

The Badgers (33-3) beat the Ducks (26-10) in the round of 32 for the second straight year and will go to Los Angeles to play fourth-seeded North Carolina in the Sweet 16 on Thursday. It’s the fourth time in five years the Badgers made the regional semifinals.

Wisconsin played with the lead all game until Dwayne Benjamin tied it at 52 with a high-arcing 3-pointer from in front of his bench with 5:27 left. The Badgers took the lead right back, though, with Dekker’s reverse layup and 3-pointer to make it 58-52.

Joseph Young, who scored 27 points in a win over Oklahoma State on Friday, had 30 against the Badgers.

GREEN BAY – Family members of a man killed by Green Bay police, in the midst of a confrontation, say they want to know what happened that night.

It all unfolded late last month during a welfare check at Joseph Biegert’s apartment on the city’s west side.

Police say Biegert stabbed one officer and injured another before the officers shot and killed the 30-year-old.

FOX 11 spoke with Biegert’s mother about her son and the many questions that remain.

“His laugh, his beautiful eyes, his beautiful smile,” said Toni Biegert, as she openly cried.

Biegert says those are the things she’ll miss most about her son Joseph.

“He didn’t get to live life the way we all wanted him to live, like we just wanted him to get better,” said Toni Biegert.

Joseph Biegert’s family says he had his struggles. He was out of work, had previously been homeless and was also battling depression for the last few years.

“There were times where he would tell us that he didn’t want to live anymore and I would call the police,” Toni Biegert explained.

Biegert says that’s what happened after a phone conversation with her son the night of February 24th.

“He just told me he loved me, and he said he was sorry he was a disappointment to the family and himself, and that maybe he should just take his pills,” said Toni Biegert.

Biegert says Joseph hung up on her, so she called police to go check on him. Like she has done before. Although this time her son would end up dead.

“It’s the hardest thing that I’ll ever deal with in my whole entire life. Because I made that phone call. I made that call. He didn’t even take his pills,” said Toni Biegert.

Green Bay Police confirm two officers, 24-year-old Matthew Dunn and 28-year-old Brian Krueger went to Joseph Biegert’s apartment.

A physical struggle broke out inside the residence.

Police say Biegert had a knife and stabbed Officer Dunn in the upper arm. Police reports show Biegert also injured Officer Krueger during the struggle.

According to police, the officers then shot and killed Biegert to stop the threat.

Wisconsin law allows police to use deadly force if they reasonably believe such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm.

Toni Biegert says she sent police to her son’s apartment because she felt officers could get there more quickly than she could.

Biegert says agents with the state’s Division of Criminal Investigation have briefed her on what happened that night.

She tells FOX 11, according to that briefing, her son Joseph willingly let the police inside his apartment. She maintains her son was harmless.

“I just want it to be known that he did not have a knife, he may have ended up with a knife, I don’t know that for sure, but I know when he opened up that door he did not have a knife,” Biegert said.

DCI is leading the investigation.

The agency would neither confirm nor deny Toni Biegert’s statements about what she was told happened.

Biegert tells FOX 11 agents she met with also shared details about the struggle.

“They fought somehow. They say he was able to get a knife after being Tazed and getting hit with a baton. I don’t know.”

I asked: “A kitchen knife?”

“It was a kitchen knife, yes,” said Biegert.

A DCI spokesperson said she is “unable to share specifics of the investigation while it remains open.”

Green Bay police also said they cannot comment because of the ongoing review by the state.

Another view to the story is what police face when doing welfare checks. Larry Kamholz, a former Madison police officer who now runs a private crisis management firm, explains.

“There’s times when you go to a situation and someone is unstable, and you can see that, and you can see that it’s not necessarily drugs or alcohol but there just – there is some instability with them – and so it’s a matter of using those skills and training we receive to help them do things to minimize a situation,” said Kamholz.

Kamholz says officers do that by watching behavior, eliminating any threats, and talking about any issues or problems that person might be dealing with.

“There’s a lot of things we go through at training to help identify not only the verbal things that people may say, but also the non-verbal cues that we can look at and say, ok that person, he may not be saying much, but I can tell by his actions that there are some psychological issues that are there that we need to look in and pursue further and get that individual some help,” Kamholz explained.

Kamholz says oftentimes the person will end up talking with police. Officers might then take the person to a treatment facility.

“We take additional steps to make sure that they’re getting the help so that we don’t have to come back to that house and work with that individual,” said Kamholz.

Toni Biegert says her son Joseph had a hard time following through with treatments for depression, and would occassionally skip his medications and therapy appointments.

Kamholz says that can make a person even more unstable.

“It’s very plausible that five incidents that you’ve dealt with this individual, it’s been fine. But the sixth time this individual is on a whole different level and is ready to engage in a violent way. And, of course, once that happens, officers have to defend themselves,” said Kamholz.

Kamholz says that hasn’t happened often in his career.

Toni Biegert says she can’t make sense of it all, adding in the last two years, police have done welfare checks on her son roughly 10 times.

She tells FOX 11 every previous encounter her son had with officers ended without incident.

“They’ve come out, they’ve talked to him, he was very cordial always very cooperative, and if they took him to the crises center, he went willingly,” said Biegert.

Biegert says she thinks something happened that night that scared Joseph.

She adds, even if her son did stab an officer, as police say, she does not believe law enforcement was justified in shooting her son.

“I don’t understand how two officers couldn’t have got him down. It doesn’t make sense to me,” Biegert said.

Over the last 12 months, Green Bay metro area law enforcement has done nearly 500 welfare checks. Kamholz says it’s part of the job.

“Police departments, our role is to serve and protect, so when we have calls where individuals – there’s a potential of them harming them self or others – that’s the role of the police to check on them,” said Kamholz.

He adds checks that involve situations where somebody is unstable or suicidal can be dangerous.

“You haven’t evaluated them yet and you don’t know what level they’re at and you don’t know if there’s weapons in there, you don’t know if he’s got a weapon on him or if he’s sitting on a weapon. It, initially when you go into those situations, it could be bad,” Kamholz said.

Biegert says she’s positive Joseph did not want to die that night, adding his call to her was his way of crying for help.

“I just don’t want people to think my son is a bad person because he’s not, he never was. He had a really big heart, just because you have depression doesn’t mean you are a bad person,” said Biegert.

Joseph Biegert’s family members are waiting for answers, but say they’ve been told it will be a long time before the state releases its report.

“I just want the truth,” his mother said.

The officers involved have been moved to administrative duty, which is standard procedure.

FONTANA, Calif. (AP) – Brad Keselowski roared past Kurt Busch on the final lap and held off streaking Kevin Harvick to win at Fontana on Sunday, earning his first NASCAR victory of the season in a wild finish.

Harvick fell just short of a three-race West Coast sweep, but finished second to extend his remarkable streak of top-two Sprint Cup finishes to eight races dating to last season.

Keselowski led only one lap, but capitalized on two late restarts to a green-white-checkered finish.

After getting four tires on the first late caution, Keselowski then slipped underneath Busch for the decisive pass, taking full advantage of the California speedway’s wide track for his first career win at Fontana in his Team Penske Ford.

Busch finished third in his second race back from a suspension.

(Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

MILWAUKEE (AP) – A former Milwaukee police officer who was fired after he shot and killed a man in a park last April testified Sunday that he followed proper protocol, and he believes he was wrongfully terminated.

Christopher Manney testified during the fourth day of a hearing Sunday before a Fire and Police Commission panel. It was the first time he has spoken publicly about the April 30 fatal shooting of Dontre Hamilton.

“I did what I was supposed to do,” Manney testified.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported (http://bit.ly/1DLBYin ) that Manney told the panel he was wrongfully terminated and he wants to return to duty, but his doctors say he can’t. He has applied for duty disability retirement.

Manney shot Hamilton after responding to a call of a man sleeping in Red Arrow Park. Manney found Hamilton on the ground and tried to frisk him. According to Manney’s account, Hamilton grabbed Manney’s baton and attacked him with it, forcing him to fire.

Hamilton, 31, had paranoid schizophrenia, but his family has said he wasn’t dangerous.

The shooting was deemed self-defense by Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, who did not issue criminal charges.

Police Chief Edward Flynnn did not discipline Manney for the use of force but fired him in October for the pat-down. Flynn has said that Manney didn’t follow training on how to deal with emotionally disturbed people.

“Either way, his bad decision-making created a chain of events which would ultimately place him in a situation of using deadly force,” Flynn testified Saturday.

Manney testified Sunday that Hamilton’s leg was twitching, so he thought he could be using drugs or alcohol, or was mentally ill. He also testified he saw a bulge in Hamilton’s pocket and thought it could be a weapon.

Mike Knetzger, a Green Bay police officer who teaches training on how police can improve interactions with people in mental crisis, testified earlier Sunday that Manney’s approach was consistent with that type of training.

Manney’s disciplinary appeal is in the first phase, during which the panel must determine whether Manney broke a rule. If so, the appeal moves to a second phase in which the panel determines whether Manney was appropriately disciplined.

The hearing is expected to continue on Monday.

GREEN VALLEY – Firefighters from multiple departments tried to get two fires under control Sunday.

The first fire started on Larsen Road in the town of Green Valley.

The Shawano County Sheriff’s department says the fire started just before noon as a small grass fire. It then spread to a nearby barn.

No injuries have been reported from that fire.

Another grass fire started shortly thereafter near the corner of County Road C and Nichols Drive, about 15 minutes south of Green Valley.

That fire was still burning strong into the afternoon.

We will update this story with more information when it becomes available.

MILWAUKEE (AP) – LeBron James scored 28 points and sparked a key second-half run with an emphatic dunk, leading the Cleveland Cavaliers to a 108-90 victory over the Milwaukee Bucks on Sunday.

J.R. Smith added 23 points for Cleveland, which has won three in a row. Smith made three straight 3s to close out the Cavs’ decisive run that turned a six-point deficit into a 93-78 lead with 6:19 left in the game.

Milwaukee has dropped six in a row.

Giannis Antetokounmpo had 15 points and nine rebounds for the Bucks. The lanky forward muscled his way to the bucket against James early in the game to help Milwaukee build an 11-point lead.

James had his way late. His dunk off an offensive rebound got the Cavs going.

(Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

APPLETON – For the first time in more than 25 years, Ed Rathsack won’t be organizing a free Easter meal.

“It just wasn’t enough to do it,” said Rathsack.

Money is what is lacking.

We Care Meals has been serving a free meal on Easter and Christmas since the mid-80s.

Last Christmas, We Care Meals served 2,300 hot meals. That’s 2,000 more than when Rathsack first started the program.

“You watch TV and what’s it about?” said Rathsack. “Family and friends and holidays and getting together. What if you don’t have all them people? That’s what pushed us to start it off in the first place.”

Private donations have helped pay for the meals. Recently, fewer donations have come in.

For many years, you could either eat the meal at the Moose Lodge in Appleton or have it delivered to you.

“It was good,” said Larry Becher of Appleton. “They were good meals.”

Becher is one of many people at Oneida Heights who’ve had the meal delivered to them.

“It was always nice to get that,” said Becher. “There is a lot of people here that can’t get out to get their own stuff, so they look forward to that meal coming.”

The Christmas and Easter meals have been in danger of not happening before. However, Rathsack has always found a way to put the food on the table, sometimes even at his own expense.

“We’ve given up five vacations that we’d been saving for and taken out loans two times,” said Rathsack.

In the past, the community has stepped up after hearing of Rathsack’s personal investment to keep the meal going. This time, he is just hoping the money is there for Christmas.

“I just pray everybody has a good Easter, gets a good meal,” said Rathsack. “Things will work out. Christmas we’ll come back strong.”

While the meals have traditionally been at the Moose Lodge, it did close last year. Last Christmas, the meal was served at the Camelot.

Rathsack says Riverside Gardens has already offered up its space for this Christmas.

NEW LONDON – FOX 11 is learning more about the recent rescue of an 18-year-old man in New London.

The teen is alive thanks to quick response by the New London Fire Department’s rescue team and a man who lives near the Wolf River.

On Friday evening, around 20 minutes before sunset, a call came into the New London Fire Department.

“The fire department was dispatched to a call of a boy floating down the river on a piece of ice just upstream from the Shawano Street bridge,” said New London Fire Chief Bart Roloff.

John Faucher caught the entire rescue on video.

“I grabbed the camera, and there was a woman who asked why I was running and I said, ‘Call the fire department, there’s a boy floating down the river,'” said Faucher.

He ran up to a park near the river kept recording.

A few minutes later a rescue crew and a man who lives nearby pulled the teen onto a flat bottom boat and headed to shore.

“This time of the year when the ice goes out the water’s extremely cold. It’s barely above freezing. The water’s high, there’s a lot of current. You wouldn’t want to be in the water this time of year,” said Roloff.

Officials say the teen stepped onto the ice up river and it floated away from shore.

No one was injured.

FOX 11’s Gabrielle Mays will have the full story tonight on FOX 11 News at Nine.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) – Travis Trice scored 23 points, and Michigan State knocked second-seeded Virginia out of the NCAA Tournament for the second straight year, 60-54 on Sunday.

Branden Dawson added 15 points and nine rebounds for the seventh-seeded Spartans, who advanced to the Sweet 16 for the seventh time in the last eight seasons under coach Tom Izzo. The Spartans will play the winner of the Oklahoma-Dayton game in Syracuse, New York on Friday.

With top seed Villanova having lost Saturday, it is the first time a No. 1 and 2 seed from the same region didn’t advance to the Sweet 16 since Kentucky and Gonzaga in 2004.

The Spartans stole a page from last year’s regional semifinal win, limiting the Cavaliers to 29.8 percent shooting. Virginia finished 2 of 17 from 3-point range.

Last year, the Spartans upset the top-seeded Cavaliers in the regional semifinal by holding Virginia to 35.1 percent shooting.

The Cavaliers (30-4) were led by Anthony Gill’s 11 points and Darion Atkins’ 10 points and 14 rebounds.

(Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

MADISON, Wis. (AP) – The Madison police officer who shot and killed an unarmed 19-year-old had been highly praised for acts of heroism and professionalism in his 13 years on the force.

Officer Matt Kenny’s personnel file contains 46 accolades, mostly from supervisors.

The file obtained by the Wisconsin State Journal shows Kenny had one reprimand letter, for accidentally leaving his gun in a public bathroom in 2007.

Kenny is on paid leave pending the investigation into the March 6 shooting of Tony Robinson. Kenny is white, Robinson is biracial. The killing prompted protests and allegations of racism.

The Associated Press sought Kenny’s file through an open-records request. Kenny authorized the Wisconsin Professional Police Association to release the file to the newspaper. The union declined to immediately give the documents to the AP.

MANITOWOC – One person was killed and two others were injured in a rollover accident Saturday night.

It happened in the City of Manitowoc on Interstate 43, near the Calumet Avenue exit.

Few details are being released at this time.

Officers say three people were in one vehicle when it rolled over on the Interstate.

One person was pronounced dead at the scene, the other two passengers were taken to nearby hospitals.

We will continue to update this story as more information becomes available.

UNDATED (AP) – Starbucks baristas will no longer write “Race Together” on customers’ cups starting Sunday, ending as planned a visible component of the company’s diversity and racial inequality campaign that had sparked widespread criticism in the week since it took effect.

The coffee chain’s initiative will continue more broadly without the handwritten messages, Starbucks spokesman Jim Olson said.

The cups were always “just the catalyst” for a larger conversation and Starbucks will still hold forum discussions, co-produce special sections in USA TODAY and put more stores in minority communities as part of the Race Together initiative, according to a company memo from CEO Howard Schultz said.

The campaign has been criticized as opportunistic and inappropriate, coming in the wake of racially charged events such as national protests over police killings of black males. Others questioned whether Starbucks workers could spark productive conversations about race while serving drinks.

The phase-out is not a reaction to that pushback, Olson said. “Nothing is changing. It’s all part of the cadence of the timeline we originally planned.”

He echoed the company memo, saying of the Race Together initiative, “We’re leaning into it hard.”

Schultz’s note acknowledged the skeptics as an anticipated part of the outreach.

“While there has been criticism of the initiative – and I know this hasn’t been easy for any of you – let me assure you that we didn’t expect universal praise,” it read.

He said the campaign at its core aims to make sure that “the promise of the American Dream should be available to every person in this country, not just a select few.”

WASHINGTON (AP) – Texas Sen. Ted Cruz will announce Monday his plans to run for president, becoming the first high-profile Republican formally to enter the 2016 presidential contest.

Cruz has hinted openly at his intentions to seek the White House for months, and his intention to jump into the race was confirmed by a strategist for the first-term Republican senator, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity so as not to preclude the formal announcement.

While Cruz is the first Republican to declare his candidacy, he is sure to be followed by several big names in the GOP, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and two Senate colleagues, Kentucky’s Rand Paul and Florida’s Marco Rubio.

Details about Cruz’s Monday campaign launch were first reported by The Houston Chronicle.

Cruz, 44, has considerable appeal among the Republican Party’s base of conservative voters.

Following his election to the Senate in 2012, the former Texas solicitor general quickly established himself as an uncompromising conservative willing to take on Democrats and Republicans alike. Criticized by members of his own party at times, he won praise from tea party activists for leading the GOP’s push to shut down the federal government during an unsuccessful bid to block funding for President Barack Obama’s health care law.

One of the nation’s top college debaters while a student at Princeton University, Cruz continues to be a leading voice for the law’s repeal. He also promises to abolish the Internal Revenue Service, scrap the Education Department and curtail federal regulators, likening them to locusts.

Cruz has left little doubt about his 2016 intentions in recent weeks. He made his first trip to New Hampshire earlier this month to help lay the groundwork for a presidential campaign, having already begun to ramp up outreach to party activists and donors.

While in New Hampshire, Cruz told voters his daughter, Caroline, had given him permission to join the presidential race in the hopes that the family puppy would get to play on the White House lawn instead of near their Houston high-rise condo.

“If you win, that means Snowflake will finally get a backyard to pee in,” Cruz said his daughter told him.

Cruz is set to release a book this summer that he said would reflect themes of his White House campaign.

In a recent Associated Press interview, he said he wants to counter the “caricatures” of the right as “stupid,” ”evil” or “crazy.”

“The image created in the mainstream media does not comply with the facts,” he said.

The son of an American mother and Cuban-born father, Cruz would be the nation’s first Hispanic president. While born in Canada, two lawyers who represented presidents from both parties at the Supreme Court recently wrote in the Harvard Law Review that Cruz meets the constitutional standard to run.

Cruz would retain his Senate seat through early 2019 if he fails to win the presidency.

Ingredients:

2 boxes (3.4 ounces) instant banana cream pudding
3 cups cold milk
1 container (12 ounces) frozen whipped topping, thawed
1 box (12 ounces) vanilla wafers
5 bananas

Directions:
In a bowl beat together pudding mix with milk until it starts to thicken. Fold all but about one-third of the whipped topping into the pudding. Put one-third of the cookies on the bottom of a trifle dish or clear glass bowl. Slice 4 of the bananas. Sprinkle some of the bananas on top of the cookies. Next, carefully spread one-third of the pudding on top of the bananas. Repeat layers, saving a few extra cookies and ending with the pudding mixture on top. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate 8 hours or overnight to soften cookies. Just before serving, uncover and top with a “cloud” of the remaining whipped topping. Slice the remaining banana. Decorate the top with extra wafers and banana slices. Notes:

You can also layer this dessert in mini trifle dishes, juice or wine glasses or clean glass canning jars to make mini trifles. That way everyone has their own dessert.