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Good Friday morning, as the United States reopens its embassy in Cuba and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida travels to New York to condemn the move. But most of the campaigns are in Iowa, where the State Fair offers soapboxes to speak from, and where the Democrats will gather to chow down as they press the flesh.

Not since the Iowa steak fry last fall has Hillary Rodham Clinton faced such an important testing ground for retail politics and her affinity for fried food. On Friday, she will join her Democratic opponents, including Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor, and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, to speak at the annual Wing Ding Dinner in Clear Lake, Iowa, an event that includes raising money for Democrats and raising cholesterol levels with chicken wings.

The event is just the start of Mrs. Clinton’s high-calorie swing through the state. On Saturday, she will join a dozen other presidential candidates at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, where the menu includes apple pie on a stick, deep fried nacho balls and pumpkin spice funnel cake.

It’s not all fun and games. At the steak fry last September, Mrs. Clinton (who took the podium with a prolonged “Iowa, I’m baaaaaack!”) struggled to connect on the kind of grass-roots retail level that is critical in the early nominating state.

On Saturday, she will not speak on the “soapbox” at the fair grounds where most candidates will deliver remarks, but will instead visit booths to talk directly to Iowans, her campaign said. Mrs. Clinton’s decision not to jump on the soapbox and its bipartisan crowd, which Mr. O’Malley embraced on Thursday evening and Mr. Sanders will address on Saturday, has drawn some criticism from opposing campaigns that say she is avoiding the tough venue.

After all, ordering the ultimate bacon explosion (a piece of brisket wrapped in bacon on a stick) and corn in a cup is not enough to deliver a caucus victory. And Mrs. Clinton, coincidentally, is on a diet.

— Amy Chozick

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The three Marines who took down the United States flag when the embassy in Havana was closed in 1961 will put it back up as the embassy is reopened as part of the Obama administration’s push to restore diplomatic ties with Cuba.

And Jeb Bush, who has regained some of the spotlight from Donald J. Trump after a speech blaming the rise of the Islamic State on President Obama and Mrs. Clinton, will take his turn at the Iowa soapbox.

As some of his rivals for the Republican nomination are already arriving at the Iowa State Fair to help drum up support ahead of the state’s caucuses, Mr. Rubio will first stop in New York, where he is set to deliver a speech to outline how as president he would undo crucial pieces of Mr. Obama‘s foreign policy agenda relating to Cuba and Iran.

His remarks will coincide with Secretary of State John Kerry‘s visit to Cuba on Friday to celebrate the reopening of the embassy there after more than a half-century. But, as Mr. Rubio is preparing to say to the Foreign Policy Initiative, he does not think this is a moment for celebration.

“On Day 1, I will give the Castros a choice: Either continue repressing your people and lose the diplomatic relations and benefits provided by President Obama, or carry out meaningful political and human rights reforms and receive increased U.S. trade, investment, and support,” he will say, according to text released by his campaign.

Mr. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, also plans to outline how he would rescind the deal the president has struck with Iran over its nuclear program, restore sanctions the president has vowed to lift, and position the United States military presence in the Middle East “to signal readiness and restore a credible military option.”

— Jeremy W. Peters

A New Hampshire poll this week showing Mr. Sanders and Mrs. Clinton in a statistical tie caught the eye of many Democrats.

But Mrs. Clinton’s campaign has a message for supporters who may be nervous about the survey, conducted by Franklin Pierce University and the Boston Herald: Don’t buy it.

In a “friends and allies” memo, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign offered a set of talking points to minimize the poll. The poll, the memo said, undercounts the amount of older voters and Democrats (unaffiliated voters can vote in either party’s primary). Further, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign noted that for 30 years, no candidate from a neighboring state, Republican or Democrat, had finished worse than second in the New Hampshire primary.

“Relying on any one or two public primary polls is an usually unreliable approach — especially during the summer,” the Clinton camp said.

— Maggie Haberman

Ben Carson traveled to Harlem on Wednesday for a meal and a meeting with business and community leaders, followed by a revealing walk in the neighborhood.

Based in part on his moderate stands, Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio is rising in the polls in New Hampshire, winning endorsements and drawing the attention of potential voters who were impressed with his debate performance.

As Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. vacationed on a South Carolina beach this week, he and those who support him moved to set up the pieces for a possible presidential run.

Mrs. Clinton‘s $350 billion proposal to cut student debt in higher education has put pressure on her campaign opponents to propose their own solutions.

Though Mr. Rubio said during the Republican presidential debate that he opposed abortion even in cases where rape or incest were involved, he had previously backed legislation allowing those exceptions, a move that has frustrated groups taking a zero-abortion stance.

“Straight Outta Compton,” the movie about the 1980s hip-hop group N. W. A’s debut album of the same name, was released this week. Then there were the online copycats, in which the movie’s title and poster became inspiration for “Straight Outta Toilet Paper” and “Straight Outta Chapstick.”

But now comes perhaps the most surprising of “Straight Outta” memes. On Thursday, @TheIranDeal, the Twitter account set up by White House staff members to lobby Congress to support the nuclear agreement, posted the following:

“Thanks to the #IranDeal, Iran will be…” followed by a picture of a nuclear power plant with “Straight Outta Uranium” written over the top.

It may be the prime example of Mr. Obama’s desire to reach young adults by using the social media tools that have become an essential part of growing up in America. But it’s also testimony to how the silly side of the Internet can be a place for the most serious of subjects.

Will it work to help persuade a skeptical Congress — most of whom are most decidedly not part of the younger generation — to approve the Iran deal? Tune in (to Twitter?) in mid-September.

— Michael D. Shear

The financial troubles of Rick Perry‘s campaign, National Journal reports, can be tied to his donors from 2012, who are leaving him this year in favor Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.

ProPublica takes an in-depth look at Gov. Chris Christie‘s decision to abandon an $8.7 billion project for a new commuter rail tunnel from New Jersey to New York City, an issue reverberating with frustrated commuters and on the campaign trail.

Stepping into territory that got Michele Bachmann, a Minnesota congresswoman at the time, in trouble during her 2012 presidential bid, Carly Fiorina says parents should have a right not to vaccinate their children, Time reports.

News outlets like CNN are giving a reality check to BuzzFeed’s report about a possible presidential run by Al Gore.

Mr. Trump is actually building up one of the largest campaign staffs in Iowa, suggesting he’s in the race for the long haul, The Washington Post reports.

The mystery of whether President Warren G. Harding really did have a love child was solved at least in part because of a modern politician with a wandering eye: former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina.

Mr. Edwards ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 and 2008, but his political career ended with the revelation that he had fathered a child with a campaign aide while his wife was battling terminal cancer. Among his disenchanted admirers was Peter Harding, the grandnephew of the 29th president.

“I was a fan of John Edwards,” Mr. Harding, 72, a physician living in Big Sur, Calif., recalled in an interview. But he was outraged by Mr. Edwards’s initial denial of paternity. “I got furious. I was so angry.”

It encouraged doubts Mr. Harding had long nursed about his own family and its decades-long denial that Nan Britton’s daughter, Elizabeth Ann Blaesing, was Harding’s child. “What I discovered when I went deeper is, I don’t like it when men have children, and they deny paternity,” Mr. Harding said. “It’s an awful, awful damaging thing to do.”

Harding died in office in 1923 before Ms. Britton went public with her story, so he never publicly admitted or denied it. By her account, he had provided financial support. But after his death, the Harding family disputed Ms. Britton’s account, arguing that he was sterile and could not be Elizabeth Ann’s father.

In deciding to get DNA testing that genealogists say has now confirmed the paternity, Peter Harding figured he was righting a historical wrong. “My family has denied paternity all this time and I wasn’t sure they were right,” he said. “I broke away from a lot of the family beliefs.”

— Peter Baker