Just because you say you aren't running for president doesn't mean you aren't running for president, at least as far as the Federal Election Commission is concerned. "If potential candidates amass significant funds to support their campaign or conduct activities over a lengthy period of time, they are candidates," according to the chair. "Simply denying one’s candidacy does not provide license to ignore the rules." Those would be the rules on campaign finance -- limits on fundraising and requirements for disclosure.

The real question is how meaningful those rules are. As Matea Gold and Ed O'Keefe report in The Washington Post, Jeb Bush has allied himself with a new organization that can legally raise an unlimited amount of money without disclosing its donors:

The nonprofit group, Right to Rise Policy Solutions, was quietly established in Arkansas in February by a friend and former Bush staffer. The group shares the name of two political committees for which Bush has been aggressively raising money — blurring the line that is supposed to separate a campaign from independent groups. ... Election-law experts predict that the creation of the ­Bush-allied nonprofit will prompt other 2016 contenders to adopt the strategy, injecting more secret money into the political process. ... Aides to Bush, a former Florida governor, declined to comment on the new group. “These questions are premature and speculative as Governor Bush is not a candidate for office at this time,” said his spokeswoman, Kristy Campbell.

Bush is raising money in California this week. On Tuesday night, he was scheduled to attend a dinner and reception where the guests were asked to give $100,000 per couple to a political action committee that supports him.

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What's in Wonkbook: 1) Religious freedom and gay rights 2) Opinions, including Porter on tax expenditures 3) Progress for Nigerian democracy, and more

"Reminder: this is April Fools Day, the one day of the year you should be skeptical of things you read on the Internet" -- @poniewozick

1. Top story: Arkansas lawmakers vote for religious-freedom bill

Arkansas's legislature passed a bill similar to Indiana's controversial one, but it's unclear whether the state's governor will sign it. "The Arkansas legislature on Tuesday passed its version of a bill described by proponents as a religious freedom law, even as Indiana’s political leaders struggled to gain control over a growing backlash that has led to calls to boycott the state because of criticism that its law could be a vehicle for discrimination against gay couples. The Arkansas bill now goes to the state’s Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson, who expressed reservations about an earlier version but more recently said he would sign the measure if it 'reaches my desk in similar form as to what has been passed in 20 other states.' " Campbell Robertson and Richard Pérez-Peña in The New York Times.

There's little precedent for religious-freedom laws shielding discrimination. "So far, legal experts say they are unaware of any high-profile cases in which business owners have successfully used so-called Religious Freedom Restoration Acts as a defense to discrimination claims. ... While business professionals haven’t yet successfully used state religious-freedom laws to deny services to gay or lesbian customers, that could change in the wake of the Indiana law and one passed Tuesday by Arkansas lawmakers, since they are drafted in a way that could more broadly protect businesses in discrimination suits brought by private parties." Nathan Koppel in The Wall Street Journal.

Republican strategists worry that gay marriage will damage Republicans in the general election. "Most top Republican presidential hopefuls this week have moved in lock step, and without pause, to support Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) and his Religious Freedom Restoration Act... But the position puts the Republican field out of step with a growing national consensus on gay rights, handing Hillary Rodham Clinton and other Democrats a way to portray Republicans as intolerant and insensitive. Some Republicans also fear that Indiana is only the first in a series of brush fires that could engulf the party as it struggles to adapt to the nation’s rapidly changing demographics and social mores." Philip Rucker and Robert Costa in The Washington Post.

MILBANK: Republicans look set to alienate voters in next year's election. "The good news for Republicans: They have a path to victory in 2016. The bad news for Republicans: They are not on that path. ... The candidates’ rush to endorse the now-doomed law doesn’t even make much political sense: GOP voters place gay issues at the bottom of their list of concerns." The Washington Post.

BALZ: The debate is a reminder that social issues come first in politics. "Economic and national security issues certainly differentiate Republicans from Democrats, but the most passionate arguments now often grow out of the rapid shifts in cultural attitudes and the dramatic redrawing of the face of an increasingly diverse America. On one side are those who hail those changes as evidence of progress in breaking down barriers and producing a more tolerant and open society. On the other are those who are fearful about the full impact of those changes on their own freedoms and on the values of faith and family." The Washington Post.

CARNEY: Businesses should be allowed to sit out gay weddings. "Religious liberty is the terms of surrender the Right is requesting in the culture war. It is conservative America saying to the cultural and political elites, you have your gay marriage, your no-fault divorce, your obscene music and television, your indoctrinating public schools and your abortion-on-demand. May we please be allowed to not participate in these? But no. Tolerance isn't the goal. Religious conservatives must atone for their heretical views with acts of contrition: Bake me a cake, photograph my wedding, pay for my abortion and my contraception." The Washington Examiner.

YGLESIAS: The debate isn't really about gay weddings. "Liberals feel that if 'religious liberty' can justify anti-gay discrimination, then the case for bans on racial discrimination unravel. Conservatives feel that if conscience does not allow service providers to choose their customers, there is no stopping tyranny of the majority. ... Maybe churches will be forced to choose between losing their tax-exempt status and being forced to perform weddings they regard as theologically illegitimate. ... The question here is ultimately more difficult than most liberals have allowed. ... The answer, ultimately, is that policymaking requires judgments about what is practical and what is important. Conservative fears about slippery slopes are sensible, but the debate ultimately is about discrimination in serving gay clients and isn't about far-fetched hypotheticals." Vox.

2. Top opinions

PORTER: Tax credits don't actually make government smaller, just less transparent. "Spending through the tax code not only offered the false promise of smaller government. Its most insidious effect was to hide what the government does and, notably, to shield from political debate which people it benefits most. That is clearly not those of middle and low income, who don’t earn enough to qualify for many tax deductions and often don’t even claim them. Built in the shadows, protected from democratic accountability, the government developed into a Rube Goldberg contraption that has only a weak claim to a defensible social purpose. It might not be the smallest government in the advanced world, but it can lay claim to being among the least efficient and the most unfair." The New York Times.

DAYEN: Barack Obama, then president elect, could have forced banks to give mortgage relief to homeowners in 2008. "Barack Obama refused to extract foreclosure relief from the nation’s largest banks, as a condition for their receipt of hundreds of billions of dollars in bailout money. ... The fact that we waited six years to get some semblance of a decent economic recovery traces back directly to the failure to alleviate the foreclosure crisis. Here was a moment, right near the beginning, when both public money and leverage could have been employed to stop foreclosures. Instead of demanding homeowner help when financial institutions relied on massive government support, the Administration passed, instead prioritizing nursing banks back to health and then asking them to give homeowners a break, which the banks predictably declined." Salon.

YONI APPELBAUM: New York passes a special tax break just for people buying really expensive yachts. "New York’s new budget bill includes an obscure provision, tucked inside section SS, exempting the portion of a boat’s price above $230,000 from the sales tax. That’s about four times as much as the median family in the state earns in a year. ... There are almost half a million boats already registered in New York. This tax break isn’t aimed at any of them. Instead, it targets the tiny sliver of sales each year in which the most expensive luxury yachts change hands. To dodge state and local sales taxes, their owners set up offshore shell companies, registering their boats in Caribbean islands. So the tax break is aimed at luring these wealthy individuals into registering their boats in New York." The Atlantic.

GREENHOUSE: What does the Supreme Court actually think about the death penalty? "The court appears to be floundering, ever more tightly enmeshed in what Justice Harry A. Blackmun called the machinery of death. Recent episodes have been both mystifying to the public and embarrassing to the court." The New York Times.

Chart of the day: Fewer countries are carrying out the death penalty. The Economist.

GERSON: The compromise on the "doc fix" is a reminder of how things used to be in Congress. "The Medicare deal is a reminder of the way strong party leaders once regularly made law. The model is now rare. It is also viewed by some partisans as a vice. Leaders who make deals are regarded (particularly on the right) as politically and even morally compromised. ... We are left with highly ideological parties, headed by weakened legislative leaders — a recipe for bitterness and gridlock. And so the solution to the deep division between parties must (in a seeming paradox) involve stronger parties. It is parties that eventually have an interest in creating a broadly accepted public image (in the current Republican case, of reform conservatism), particularly after they lose the presidency a few times." The Washington Post.

3. In case you missed it

For the first time ever, a Nigerian head of state has lost an election. "In a historic moment for Africa’s most ­populous country, former dictator Muhammadu Buhari won Nigeria’s presidency on Tuesday, the first time in 16 years of democracy that an opposition candidate has defeated a sitting president. ... Although a former dictator is an unlikely messenger of democracy, Buhari, a northerner, responded to what many Nigerians have been pleading for. He is a retired general who has promised a concerted counterinsurgency campaign. He has a plan to end endemic corruption, albeit a vaguely articulated one." Kevin Sieff in The Washington Post.

The Obama administration has submitted its plan for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. "The White House just pitched to the United Nations a detailed statement of its goals for cutting climate pollution and how it expects to meet them. ... The U.S. submission reframes the White House’s existing policy within a new top-line goal that President Barack Obama announced in November in Beijing: to cut, by 2025, carbon and other earth-warming emissions by at least 26 percent below 2005 levels. ... The most telling statement is its one-line answer on whether there will be any "use of markets" in speeding along pollution cuts: 'At this time the United States does not intend to utilize international market mechanisms to implement its 2025 target.'" Eric Roston for Bloomberg.

Jeb Bush is relying on two economic advisers with hard-money views. "Glenn Hubbard and Kevin Warsh, veteran Republican economic policymakers and critics of the Fed's ultra-loose monetary policy, have emerged as top economic advisers to likely presidential candidate Jeb Bush, Republican sources said on Tuesday. Hubbard, who served as the top White House economist for former President George W. Bush, was one of the architects of Bush's tax cuts. ... Warsh has criticized the Fed's aggressive monetary easing, and has said he was worried about the risk of a financial bubble. ... For his part, Hubbard has said the Fed's initial bond buying helped stabilize the U.S. economy after the financial crisis, but later on the securities purchases failed to do much to lift the economy and posed too many risks." Steve Holland, Anna Yukhananov and Lauren Tara LaCapra for Reuters.

Obama rejects a congressional resolution, standing by his administration's new rules on unions. "Mr. Obama rejected a resolution passed by both houses of Congress that would have reversed rules to speed up and streamline union elections, the equivalent of a veto. Republicans referred to it as the 'ambush election' rule and argued that it would be unfair to businesses. The showdown over the labor rules represented a new front in the larger battle between Mr. Obama and the Republican-controlled Congress over the scope of his executive power." Peter Baker in The New York Times.