Ted Cruz

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz met with voters across Iowa last week, discussing immigration, ethanol and how lousy he is at golf.

(Patrick Semansky, Associated Press)

Today's Ted Cruz news: If Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz wins the presidency, he won't order "jackboots" to round up unauthorized immigrants and deport them, he said this weekend. He wants deportations -- a position he resisted until recently -- but says law enforcement agencies should find the immigrants through the course of their regular duties.

"No, I don't intend to send jackboots to knock on your door and every door in America. That's not how we enforce the law for any crime," Cruz told CNN's Jake Tapper as his campaign bus ambled across northern Iowa.

Donald Trump, Cruz's current main rival for the Republican nomination, has promised to authorize a "deportation force" to remove those immigrants from the U.S., pledging to do it "humanely." Earlier this week, BuzzFeed captured Cruz on video arguing that his plan was stronger than Trump's because he would not allow those back into the U.S., while Trump's would. But on the actual act of deportation, Cruz is taking a softer stance: CNN.

The "natural born citizen" issue continued for Cruz over the weekend, with Trump unrelenting. "Is he a natural-born citizen?" Trump asked several thousand gathered in a Reno ballroom. Members of the crowd shouted back, "No!" For his part, Trump repeated that he personally doesn't know -- but that the lingering question could be a problem if Cruz were elected: Washington Post.

Cruz meantime kept up his defense. He was born in Canada but his mother was a United States citizen born in Delaware.

"The substance of the issue is clear and straightforward. As a legal matter, the Constitution and federal law are clear that the child of a U.S. citizen born abroad is a natural-born citizen," Cruz said in the CNN interview.

Cruz said his mother had not voted in a Canadian election because she was a U.S. citizen, despite media reports that her name appeared on a Canadian government document listing Canadians eligible to vote in 1974. Cruz also became a Canadian citizen because he was born in the country. After the Dallas Morning News revealed Cruz's dual citizenship in 2013, he renounced his Canadian citizenship: Washington Post.

Another from the Washington Post: At least eight independent political groups are now jockeying to support Cruz as it appears possible that he could actually win the GOP presidential nomination. The dynamic has confused wealthy donors and brought disarray to the otherwise orderly political operation that surrounds the freshman senator from Texas. The Post's headline: "You want to give to Ted Cruz's super PAC? First figure out which one": Washington Post.

What's the fuss about? The Constitution says that to be president of the United States, you must be a "natural born citizen." But it provides no definition. So how you read and interpret the Constitution can inform your opinion. In a Los Angeles Times op-ed, Fordham constitutional law professor Thomas Lee explains that to a constitutional originalist, Cruz is not eligible to become president. Those who ascribe to a textualist or "living Constitution" theory disagree.

Lee adds a bit of his own context, and mischief: "It's a neat irony: The most conservative constitutional interpreters must find Cruz ineligible to be president; liberals must grin and bear him. Cruz himself purports to embrace originalism as the correct view of the Constitution. To be faithful to his understanding of what the Constitution means, the senator may have to disqualify himself": Los Angeles Times.

Six days, 28 stops -- that was Cruz's recent Iowa bus tour, which wrapped up Saturday. What did we learn from it?

First, says ABC News, we learned the question from voters that followed Cruz was not about constitutional eligibility but, rather, ethanol. Cruz wants to phase out the federal Renewable Fuel Standard, which is popular in Iowa because it guarantees that a certain level of biofuels -- particularly corn-based ethanol right now -- gets blended with gasoline.

Also, "Cruz possesses the ability to give the same stump speech down to the word, using the same emotion and inflection in his voice with the crowd feeding off of it, often shouting an 'Amen' or 'Yes' as he speaks." Cruz provides comedic relief, folding in impressions of JFK and quoting movies like "The Usual Suspects" and "Jerry Maguire."

And Cruz is a lousy golfer.

"I do own clubs and I occasionally whack them into the ground and dig holes," he said in in Waukon. "But I think golf involves actually making contact with the ball and sending it in the direction of the hole and so by that definition, no, I don't golf": ABC News.