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Vietnam was escalating. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had been slain only a year before. And at Niles West High School outside Chicago, a senior who was president of the student council took on an issue of pressing concern to the teenagers of this suburban slice of the North Shore: the right to wear shorts to the un­­airconditioned school during final exams.

It was an era of student strikes and sit-ins, but the student council president, Merrick Garland, chose a different course. He tried to defuse the brewing conflict, turning to hard evidence to make the case. “Who would have thunk to seek out help from a psychologist?” recalled Donald Silvert, a fellow 1969-1970 student council officer.

But that’s what Garland did, enlisting a psychologist to write a letter to the principal, assuring him that there was no research showing that wearing shorts rendered high schoolers any less studious.

The strategy succeeded.

At 17, his handling of the dress-code controversy — working for change from within the system, taking the views of others into account — displayed qualities that have been visible throughout the life of the 63-year-old appellate judge whom President Obama has nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court.

The vacancy on the court, created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, has become a focal point of the nation’s bitterly divided politics, with Senate Republicans refusing to consider anyone Obama had chosen. An examination of Garland’s coming of age and his professional life, based on interviews with more than three dozen relatives, friends, mentors and colleagues, reveals a style and intellectual disposition that offer opponents to his nomination few rough edges to exploit.

Garland is a disciplined rule follower — methodical and meticulous in his adherence to process. He would never dream of accelerating at a yellow light, according to one of his closest friends since fifth grade, Earl Steinberg, and invariably seeks out multiple doctors’ opinions when he or anyone in his family has a medical problem. “It’s check, double-check, triple-check,” Steinberg said.

And yet this understated, systematic style — that of technical mastery, not poetry — is blended with a prodigious work ethic and keen social intelligence to potent effect.

Ever since his youth, Garland has drawn the support of people in a position to further his ambitions. In the high school election for student council president, a classmate stopped collecting petitions to run against him, sensing that the faculty adviser was grooming Garland to win. When Garland worked two college summers back home for the Democratic congressional campaigns of Abner Mikva, writing his press releases and cue cards for his stump speeches, the candidate’s wife made no secret that she hoped Garland would marry one of their daughters. As a third-year law student, Garland was eager to edit a Harvard Law Review article by Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. — and impressed the justice enough to secure a clerkship with him.

Asked to recall instances in which Garland has suffered disappointments — or temporarily veered off course — people close to him hesitate, stumped. The first instance anyone cites came in 1995, when President Bill Clinton tapped him for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit but the nomination was blocked in the Senate for two years. The experience was hard on him, friends said. (Clinton eventually renominated him.) Later, Garland was a finalist for the first two Supreme Court openings of Obama’s tenure but wasn’t chosen and thought his time had passed.

“If there is someone who has his highest dreams fulfilled unexpectedly, it has to be Merrick Garland,” said Mikva, now 90, a friend and mentor, who went on to become chief judge of the D.C. Circuit. It was Mikva’s departure in the mid-1990s to be Clinton’s White House counsel that created the court vacancy that Garland filled.

“I think Merrick must have thought about being on the Supreme Court as long as he’s been old enough to think about it,” Mikva said. Still, “one of the things about Merrick is, he has passions, but he does not use them to get aroused.”

Merrick Brian Garland grew up in a less-fancy part of Lincolnwood, the first child of a couple who had met at a Jewish dance. Cyril and Shirley Garland had both gone to the University of Chicago — he to study business administration, she for social work. The family lived in a brick bi-level, with a bedroom for the only son and another that his two younger sisters shared.

Jill Roter, about 18 months younger than her brother, remembers their father working 12 or 14 hours a day, running a tiny advertising business from an office on their home’s lower level. He designed fliers promoting store sales, took them to a local print shop and then “had little address machines. . . . Merrick and I would sit and help,” Roter recalled. Their father was “not making a lot of money, and working all those hours,” she said.

Childhood friends remember Garland’s father, who died in 2000, as gentle, non­judgmental and affectionate. Friends describe his mother as “brilliant.” She was on the local school board — a post that required her to run in non­partisan elections.

Garland was an achiever early: enrolled in an experimental class for advanced students in fifth grade, president of the Lincoln Hall Junior High student body in eighth grade. By high school at Niles West, he played the challenging lead role in “J.B.,” a play, written in free verse by the poet Archibald MacLeish, based on the biblical story of Job.

 As the student council’s vice president his junior year, he helped organize a mock election; it was the fall of 1968, three months after riots at the Democratic National Convention in downtown Chicago, so the principal was wary, recalled Barry Rosen, another council officer. “Merrick was very cognizant of all this, to make sure this was organized, to make sure all views would be represented,” said Rosen, now a lawyer in Chicago.

Close to graduation, Garland suggested to Rosen and Steinberg that, as student leaders, they take to the senior prom three South American exchange students who might otherwise not be invited. “We triple-dated. I drove,” Rosen said.

Garland and Steinberg both got into Harvard, and they decided to room together in a four-person suite on Harvard Yard. Garland was planning to become a doctor, and he arrived in Cambridge with a large scholarship from G.D. Searle, a pharmaceutical company. It was inside their suite, second semester of their freshman year, that Garland began worrying aloud that he might not have chosen the right path.

As Garland saw it, medicine was a way to help people individually, Steinberg recalls. “What eventually drew him more to the social ­sciences,” Steinberg said, “was the prospect of having an . . . impact on many people, as opposed to one by one.”

Garland, ever the rule follower, knew that he needed to notify the sponsor of the scholarship about his shift in plans, and he feared losing the aid. Searle allowed him to keep it.

By his first winter in college, he was again working within the system. He was elected the sole freshman representative to Harvard’s Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life. The campus was being roiled by disputes over coeducation, following Radcliffe’s recent merger with Harvard College.

Jamie Gorelick, who would later become Garland’s boss at the Justice Department, was a junior on the committee and first remembers him from a fevered debate over whether to change a system that had given tickets to Harvard’s football games only to male students, with women able to go only as men’s dates. Some administrators contended that the proposed change would harm the university’s future fundraising. Gorelick was outspoken that the system was unfair, and Garland, the freshman, agreed with her.

That spring, Garland was accepted into the small social-studies major, a “place to be if you wanted to be on the inside with some” of Harvard’s social science luminaries, said classmate David Johnson. It was rigorous and non-ideological. Every sophomore, Johnson said, “had to read the collective works of some of the great philosophers — Durkheim, Freud, Marx, Max Weber — and sort of synthesize their worldview from different perspectives.”

For his honors thesis as a senior, Garland chose to write about industrial mergers in Britain in the 1960s. His thesis adviser, a young professor in the government department named Peter Gourevitch, said the topic fit within debate circulating at the time about the role of government in the economy. The 235-page thesis is akin to the judicial opinions Garland would produce decades later, evaluating competing interpretations of the forces­ that led to automobile and computer industry mergers, and then laying out which interpretation he found to carry the greatest weight.
When he finished, Gourevitch, now an emeritus professor at the University of California at San Diego, did something he never did for any other Harvard student: He took Garland to lunch — at the No Name Restaurant, a fish place on Boston’s waterfront — to celebrate his achievement.

Susan Estrich remembers meeting Garland at a picnic for the 20 second-year law students whose grades had won them a spot on the Harvard Law Review. “We all sort of eyed each other,” said Estrich, a University of Southern California law professor who also has worked in Democratic politics. “We were all smart, but some people were . . . more cosmopolitan. He had a sense of being a winner.”

The next spring, Estrich beat Garland in a five-way competition to become the law review’s president. He became one of the law review’s four article editors, splitting up the hundreds of articles that arrived for consideration, recalls Kate Stith, now a Yale law professor. The article Brennan submitted was on rights granted by state constitutions that, in some cases, exceed those under the U.S. Constitution. Garland was eager to edit it, Stith and others recalled. The article ran in the law review’s January 1977 issue. By the time Garland graduated that spring, Brennan, who typically chose one Harvard law student as a Supreme Court clerk each year, had selected him.

Garland not only clerked for the liberal lion Brennan but also for another luminary: Judge Henry J. Friendly, a conservative on the New York-based Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. The judge drafted opinions by working at his large desk with his secretary taking stenography and his two clerks in front of him, expected to chime in if they had an idea.

After his clerkships, Garland became a special assistant to Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti. When Ronald Reagan was elected president, Garland was three years out of school and had not yet practiced law. He joined the D.C. firm Arnold & Porter, focusing on anti­trust work. He helped to defend electrical contractors on trial in Montana for alleged bid-rigging; they were acquitted.

Four years after becoming a partner, Garland left in 1989 for a stint in the office of U.S. Attorney Jay Stephens. According to a friend at the time, Garland was allowed to bypass new prosecutors’ petty-crime rotation and jump into larger drug and corruption ­cases.

Three years later, he went back to his old law firm — temporarily.

Garland’s return to the Justice Department, as principal associate deputy attorney general, opened one of the defining chapters of his life, leading the investigation of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Watching on television as rescuers removed bodies from the wreckage of the federal building in the hours after the explosion, Garland asked Attorney General Janet Reno to dispatch him to take charge of the inquiry into a crime scene covering several city blocks.
A half-dozen people who watched him work there recall that he consoled victims and families, and pushed a large law enforcement community to begin a disciplined inquiry that amassed evidence meticulously while ensuring that the bombing suspects were arraigned, questioned and prosecuted according to a strict interpretation of the criminal code.

His lesser-known role in another case perhaps best illustrates the adherence to process that has characterized him since he was a teenager: the troubled investigation of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing. An internal Justice Department report examined complaints surrounding the FBI’s interview of security guard Richard Jewell, whose name was leaked as a potential suspect. And it found that Garland, who was not in charge of the case, repeatedly urged that Jewell be given his Miranda rights and complained to his bosses­ after learning that FBI agents had used a ruse, telling Jewell erroneously that the interview was being taped for training purposes.

Since Garland arrived on the D.C. Circuit in 1997, the qualities he first evinced as a youngster and the lessons he absorbed along the way have been much in evidence.

As he learned as a clerk for Friendly, Garland involves his own clerks in a meticulous polishing of an opinion. His custom is to ask the clerk assigned to the case to be beside him at his standing desk while he reviews the opinion, word by word. Once they finish, the judge then summons a second clerk — one with no role in drafting the opinion — to stand alongside him for a final reading. “It could take hours,” recalled Karen Dunn, a clerk a decade ago who is a lawyer in the District.

And, as he did decades ago with his wary high school principal, Garland has a facility for forging consensus among the 11-member D.C. Circuit.

Garland employs a mastery of the law and a strategy of defining contentious issues in ways that limit the scope of debate, according to interviews with four clerks and two fellow judges, including Judge Laurence Silberman, a noted conservative appointed by Reagan.

Garland’s ability to achieve consensus was apparent in a case last year, Wagner v. Federal Election Commission, a challenge to a federal ban on campaign donations from government contractors. The plaintiff’s lawyer, Alan B. Morrison, contended that the law violated the constitutional rights of individual contractors.

The opinion Garland wrote, however, upheld the contractors ban. It emphasized the narrow nature of the plaintiff’s claim and the statute’s limited reach. His opinion used the word “narrow” 11 times. Morrison, who expected his argument to be attractive to judges on both the left and the right, was stunned.

Garland’s opinion was signed by every other active judge on the appellate court.

Alice Crites contributed to this report.

Amy Goldstein, Tom Hamburger - The Washington Post

More than 25,000 people have signed a petition to allow firearms inside the Republican National Convention being held in Cleveland in July.

Firearms are currently not permitted inside the Quicken Loans Arena, known as "the Q," where the gathering will take place.

The petition, posted Monday on Change.org, sought only 5,000 signatures but has since quintupled, topping 25,000 Saturday afternoon. It was posted by an author identified only as "N.A." from Cleveland, but the user profile appears to have been deleted from the website.

It was not clear whether the person posting the petition was backing the proposal or attempting to put the party, which strongly backs gun rights, in an awkward position.

Among the petition's five goals, it calls upon Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, to mount a "concerted effort to use his executive authority to override the "gun-free zone" loophole being exploited by the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio."

The name of the group purportedly behind the effort — Americans for Responsible Open Carry — does not appear anywhere else online and accepts online message only from networked supporters, the Akron Beacon Journal reported.

The Ohio Republican Party said it was not aware of the petition, the Journal reported, nor was the host committee overseeing the convention, although it noted that the Secret Service, in conjunction with Cleveland, Cuyahoga County and state and federal authorities, is handling security for the event.

“They are coordinating and will be continuously refining security plans leading up to the national convention,” said Alee Lockman, a spokesperson for the Republican National Convention, the Journal says.

In 2012, firearms were banned by the Secret Service at the Republican convention in Tampa.

The Journal says the National Rifle Association declined to comment on the petition.

The petition states:

This is a direct affront to the Second Amendment and puts all attendees at risk. As the National Rifle Association has made clear, "gun-free zones" such as the Quicken Loans Arena are "the worst and most dangerous of all lies." The NRA, our leading defender of gun rights, has also correctly pointed out that "gun free zones... tell every insane killer in America... (the) safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk."

The petition also claims that forcing attendees to leave firearms at home puts everyone in attendance at risk. It also notes the convention could be a potential target for an attack.

Without the right to protect themselves, those at the Quicken Loans Arena will be sitting ducks, utterly helpless against evil-doers, criminals or others who wish to threaten the American way of life.(USA TODAY)

 

Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner, said that if elected, he might halt purchases of oil from Saudi Arabia and other Arab allies unless they commit ground troops to the fight against the Islamic State or “substantially reimburse” the United States for combating the militant group, which threatens their stability.

“If Saudi Arabia was without the cloak of American protection,” Mr. Trump said during a 100-minute interview on foreign policy, spread over two phone calls on Friday, “I don’t think it would be around.”
He also said he would be open to allowing Japan and South Korea to build their own nuclear arsenals rather than depend on the American nuclear umbrella for their protection against North Korea and China. If the United States “keeps on its path, its current path of weakness, they’re going to want to have that anyway, with or without me discussing it,” Mr. Trump said.

And he said he would be willing to withdraw United States forces from both Japan and South Korea if they did not substantially increase their contributions to the costs of housing and feeding those troops. “Not happily, but the answer is yes,” he said.

Mr. Trump also said he would seek to renegotiate many fundamental treaties with American allies, possibly including a 56-year-old security pact with Japan, which he described as one-sided.

In Mr. Trump’s worldview, the United States has become a diluted power, and the main mechanism by which he would re-establish its central role in the world is economic bargaining. He approached almost every current international conflict through the prism of a negotiation, even when he was imprecise about the strategic goals he sought. He again faulted the Obama administration’s handling of the negotiations with Iran last year — “It would have been so much better if they had walked away a few times,” he said — but offered only one new idea about how he would change its content: Ban Iran’s trade with North Korea.

Mr. Trump struck similar themes when he discussed the future of NATO, which he called “unfair, economically, to us,” and said he was open to an alternative organization focused on counterterrorism. He argued that the best way to halt China’s placement of military airfields and antiaircraft batteries on reclaimed islands in the South China Sea was to threaten its access to American markets.

“We have tremendous economic power over China,” he argued. “And that’s the power of trade.” He made no mention of Beijing’s capability for economic retaliation.

Mr. Trump’s views, as he explained them, fit nowhere into the recent history of the Republican Party: He is not in the internationalist camp of the elder President George Bush, nor does he favor George W. Bush’s call to make it the mission of the United States to spread democracy around the world. He agreed with a suggestion that his ideas might best be summed up as “America First.”

“Not isolationist, but I am America First,” he said. “I like the expression.” He said he was willing to reconsider traditional American alliances if partners were not willing to pay, in cash or troop commitments, for the presence of American forces around the world. “We will not be ripped off anymore,” he said.

In the past week, the bombings in Brussels and an accelerated war against the Islamic State have shifted the focus of the campaign trail conversation back to questions of how the candidates would defend the United States and what kind of diplomacy they would pursue around the world.

Mr. Trump explained his thoughts in concrete and easily digestible terms, but they appeared to reflect little consideration for potential consequences around the globe. Much the same way he treats political rivals and interviewers, he personalized how he would engage foreign nations, suggesting his approach would depend partly on “how friendly they’ve been toward us,” not just on national interests or alliances.

At no point did he express any belief that American forces deployed on military bases around the world were by themselves valuable to the United States, though Republican and Democratic administrations have for decades argued that they are essential to deterring military adventurism, protecting commerce and gathering intelligence.

Like Richard M. Nixon, Mr. Trump emphasized the importance of “unpredictability” for an American president, arguing that the country’s traditions of democracy and openness had made its actions too easy for adversaries and allies alike to foresee.

“I wouldn’t want them to know what my real thinking is,” he said about how far he was willing to take the confrontation over the islands in the South China Sea, which are remote and uninhabited but extend China’s control over a major maritime thoroughfare. But, he added, “I would use trade, absolutely, as a bargaining chip.”

Asked when he thought American power had been at its peak, Mr. Trump reached back 116 years to the turn of the 20th century, the era of another unconventional Republican, Theodore Roosevelt, who ended up leaving the party. His favorite figures in American history, he said, include two generals, Douglas MacArthur and George S. Patton — though he insisted that, unlike MacArthur, he would not advocate the use of nuclear weapons except as a last resort. (He suggested that MacArthur had pressed during the Korean War to use atomic weapons against China as a means “to negotiate,” adding, “He played the nuclear card, but he didn’t use it.”)

Mr. Trump denied that he had had trouble recruiting senior members of the foreign policy establishment to advise his campaign. “Many of them are tied up with contracts working for various networks,” he said, like Fox or CNN.

He disclosed the names of three advisers in addition to five he announced earlier in the week: retired Maj. Gen. Gary L. Harrell, Maj. Gen. Bert K. Mizusawa and retired Rear Adm. Charles R. Kubic. Asked about the briefings he receives and books he has read about foreign policy, he said his main source of information was newspapers, “including yours.”

Until recently, Mr. Trump’s foreign policy pronouncements have largely come through slogans: “Take the oil,” “Build a wall” and ban Muslim immigrants, at least temporarily. But as he has pulled closer to capturing the nomination, he has been called on to elaborate.

Pressed about his call to “take the oil” controlled by the Islamic State in the Middle East, Mr. Trump acknowledged that this would require deploying ground troops, something he does not favor. “We should’ve taken it, and we would’ve had it,” he said, referring to the years in which the United States occupied Iraq. “Now we have to destroy the oil.”

Mr. Trump did not rule out spying on American allies, including foreign leaders like Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, whose cellphone was apparently a target of the National Security Agency. President Obama said that the United States would no longer target her phone but made no such commitments about the rest of Germany, or Europe.

“I’m not sure that I would want to be talking about that,” Mr. Trump said. “You understand what I mean by that.”

Mr. Trump was not impressed with Ms. Merkel’s handling of the migrant crisis, however: “Germany is being destroyed by Merkel’s naïveté, or worse,” he said. He suggested that Germany and the Gulf nations should pay for the “safe zones” he wants to set up in Syria for refugees, and for protecting them once built.

Throughout the two conversations, Mr. Trump painted a bleak picture of the United States as a diminished force in the world, an opinion he has held since the late 1980s, when he placed ads in The New York Times and other newspapers calling for Japan and Saudi Arabia to spend more money on their own defense.

Mr. Trump’s new threat to cut off oil purchases from the Saudis was part of a broader complaint about the United States’ Arab allies, which many in the Obama administration share: that they frequently look to the United States to police the Middle East, without putting their own troops at risk. “We defend everybody,” Mr. Trump said. “When in doubt, come to the United States. We’ll defend you. In some cases free of charge.”

But his rationale for abandoning the region was that “the reason we’re in the Middle East is for oil, and all of a sudden we’re finding out that there’s less reason to be there now.” He made no mention of the risks of withdrawal — that it would encourage Iran to dominate the Gulf, that the presence of American troops is part of Israel’s defense, and that American air and naval bases in the region are key collection points for intelligence and bases for drones and Special Operations forces.

Mr. Trump seemed less comfortable on some topics than others. He called the United States “obsolete” in terms of cyberweaponry, although the nation’s capabilities are generally considered on the cutting edge.

In the morning interview, asked if he would seek a two-state or a one-state solution in a peace accord between the Israelis and the Palestinians, he said: “I’m not saying anything. What I’m going to do is, you know, I specifically don’t want to address the issue because I would love to see if a deal could be made.”

But in the evening, saying he had been rushed earlier, Mr. Trump reverted to a position he outlined on Monday before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobbying group. “Basically, I support a two-state solution on Israel,” he said. “But the Palestinian Authority has to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.”

In his discussion of nuclear weapons — which he said he had learned about from an uncle, John G. Trump, who served on the faculty of M.I.T. and died in 1985 — Mr. Trump seemed fixated on the large nuclear stockpiles amassed in the Cold War. While he referred briefly to North Korean and Pakistani arsenals, he said nothing about a danger that is a cause of great consternation among international leaders: small nuclear weapons that could be fashioned by terrorists.

In criticizing the Iran nuclear deal, Mr. Trump expressed particular outrage at how the roughly $150 billion released to Iran was being spent. “Did you notice they’re buying from everybody but the United States?” he said.

Told that sanctions under United States law still prevent most American companies from doing business with Iran, Mr. Trump said: “So, how stupid is that? We give them the money and we now say, ‘Go buy Airbus instead of Boeing,’ right?”

But Mr. Trump, who has been pushed to demonstrate a basic command of international affairs, insisted that voters should not doubt his foreign policy fluency.“I do know my subject,” he said.

By DAVID E. SANGER and MAGGIE HABERMAN- The New York Times

In a mathematical squeeze to make up ground in the Democratic presidential race, Bernie Sanders is preparing to ratchet up his attacks on Hillary Clinton ahead of a New York showdown that could establish how easily the party can pull itself back together for the general election.

The Empire State’s April 19 primary looms as potentially determinative: A win by Clinton, who is favored, would further narrow Sanders’s path, while a loss in the state she represented as a senator would embarrass her and hand Sanders a rationale to continue campaigning until the final votes are cast in June.

Clinton had enjoyed a lead of roughly 300 in pledged delegates, but Sanders narrowed the gap Saturday with victories in at least two of three Western caucuses. In one of the most successful days of his campaign, the senator from Vermont easily won in Alaska and Washington state and was well positioned to carry Hawaii.

To capitalize on his fresh momentum, Sanders plans an aggressive push in New York, modeled after his come-from-behind victory a few weeks ago in Michigan. He intends to barnstorm the state as if he were running for governor. His advisers, spoiling for a brawl, have commissioned polls to show which contrasts with Clinton — from Wall Street to fracking — could do the most damage to her at home.

“We’ll be the underdog, but being the underdog in New York is not the worst situation in politics,” said Tad Devine, the chief strategist for Sanders. “We’re going to make a real run for it.”

The intensified and scrappy approach by Sanders comes as Clinton is eager to pivot to the general election. Clinton keenly understands the imperative to unite Democrats for the fall campaign and, thinking that the nomination is nearly locked up, wants to spend the spring building bridges to the Sanders wing.

A potentially ugly primary in New York threatens to derail those efforts. Clinton’s advisers are all but urging Sanders to lay off his attacks.

“We’re going to run to win delegates and run to win the primary,” Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta said in an interview Friday. “We intend to win this thing with a majority of pledged delegates. Senator Sanders is going to have to make up his mind about what he wants to do and what kind of campaign he wants to run.”

Podesta noted that Sanders took a more negative turn in the Midwestern states that voted on March 15 — Illinois, Ohio and Missouri — and lost all three. “It didn’t work,” he said.

Clinton, her aides and her allies in recent weeks have avoided sharply attacking Sanders, wary of saying or doing anything that would make it more difficult to engineer an eventual coming together.

In particular, the Clinton forces have been careful not to be seen as pushing Sanders to quit the race. A group of pro-Clinton senators recently considered writing an open letter to Sanders saying the time had come for him to end his campaign. But when two Clinton allies, Sens. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) and Barbara A. Mikulski (Md.), caught wind of the idea, they persuaded their colleagues to nix it, according to two people familiar with the letter.

Assuming that Clinton stays on course to secure the nomination, her team sees wooing the Sanders coalition as a pressing mission, especially young people and independents, to ensure that they don’t sit out the November election altogether. Key would be whether and how soon Clinton wins Sanders’s endorsement — and how enthusiastic he is in giving it. Clinton’s vocal support for then-Sen. Barack Obama following their divisive 2008 primary helped unite Democrats.

Two popular Democrats currently on the sidelines — President Obama and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) — could help bring the two sides together. David Axelrod, a former Obama adviser, pointed to a third unifying figure: Donald Trump. He noted that Warren last week fired off a flurry of tweets attacking Trump, which he read as an important signal.

“She was sending a message to Democrats that there are bigger things at stake here,” Axelrod said, adding: “There probably is going to be a very vivid choice in the general election and one that very much unifies Democrats.”

With that in mind, the Clinton team has been trying to foster trust with the Sanders base. Long lines at Arizona polling places last Tuesday led Sanders supporters to speculate online that the Clinton campaign was in cahoots with the Democratic National Committee in creating obstacles for them to vote.

Rather than responding with indignation, Clinton’s campaign counsel, Marc Elias, wrote a post on Reddit — in an online public square for Sanders fans — sharing in their outrage and explaining that the lines were the result of Republican-led voter restrictions in Maricopa County.

“What happened in Arizona is bad for BOTH Senator Sanders and Secretary Clinton, and supporters of both campaigns should come together to make sure this is addressed before November,” Elias wrote. “By the way, if you’re wondering, Secretary Clinton’s got a plan to address this, but I’m really not here to plug my boss!”

Clinton supporter Jay Jacobs likened the courtship of Sanders backers to making Thanksgiving dinner. “You can’t cook a turkey too fast by turning up the heat,” he said. “You’ve got to cook it at the right temperature for the right amount of time, and it’ll come out fine — but you’ve got to do a lot of basting along the way.”

Sanders, meanwhile, is hoping for another win in Wisconsin, which holds its primary on April 5. Sanders won two of Wisconsin’s neighboring states — Michigan to the east and Minnesota to the west — and the state’s overwhelmingly white electorate and the progressive, reformist roots of Democrats there should give him an advantage.

“If we’re going to have a serious shot at the nomination, we’re going to have to defeat her in Wisconsin,” Devine said.

Sanders then hopes to slingshot into New York, which will award a whopping 247 delegates — second only to California.

In New York, a diverse and pulsating center of Democratic power which has not hosted a truly competitive presidential primary since the 1980s, Democrats are buzzing with anticipation over the showdown.

“Everybody thinks it’ll be big,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a New York-based strategist and former Clinton adviser. “If the turnout by African Americans is large, Secretary Clinton will win well. If the turnout is not large, she will not win. Is the opportunity with her? Yes. But this is a test. . . . If it’s tight, it means the left is still aggravated against her.”

The Clinton team is readying for a competitive race and is not taking New York for granted.

“If [Sanders] sneaks up on her, then shame on the Clinton campaign,” Axelrod said. “The city is a bastion of progressivism, and there should be pockets of Sanders supporters. . . . But I have to believe that the relationships she’s forged there in the last 15 years mean something.”

Sanders was born and raised in Brooklyn and plans to highlight his “New York values,” Devine said, and the campaign’s ads would have “a good feel for the state.” Sanders also is likely to go after Clinton over her ties to Wall Street, an issue he has raised for several months now, and Devine said the team is testing attacks on other issues, including fracking.

Sanders wants to ban fracking, the practice of pumping water containing chemicals deep underground at high pressures to release oil and natural gas. Clinton, who has ties to the fossil-fuel industry, says she does not support fracking where it is causing environmental damage — or in states like New York, where it is banned — though she has stopped short of opposing the practice outright.

“The basic frame of his whole campaign — the economy’s rigged, the campaign finance system is corrupt — will continue, but there are other issues, as well,” Devine said. “Fracking is something New York state has outlawed, and there’s a big difference between Hillary and Bernie.”

The Clinton team is preemptively crying foul.

“We fully expect him to continue waging a spirited campaign, but it’s disappointing he is preparing a fresh round of attacks to use against Hillary Clinton in her own back yard, rather than focusing on how to stand up against the dangerous rhetoric and ideas coming from the Republican candidates,” Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said in an email.

Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), a Clinton backer, sounded a similar note in an email: “Bernie has every right to stay in the race and bring his campaign to New York and fight hard here. But New Yorkers do not want to see him go on the attack against Hillary when Democrats should be focused on the big threat we face from Donald Trump.”

The New York primary, by definition, should draw considerable media attention, but Sanders wants to raise the stakes even higher. His campaign is lobbying the DNC to organize a debate in New York the week before the primary. “We don’t mind being the away team in the Hillary home game in New York,” Devine said.

The Clinton campaign has objected to having a debate in the state, according to Devine. Fallon declined to comment on debate negotiations.

For now, at least, Clinton’s backers are confident that any damage caused by Sanders will not be lasting. “I think this primary is going to make our Democratic nominee even stronger heading into the general election, and I believe Democrats will come together in November,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (Ohio) said in an email.

Asked about bridge building, Devine suggested that such outreach was a ways off.

“I’m not great at reading the tea leaves,” he said. But he added, “I know Podesta has my number, because he’s called it before — and it wasn’t to build bridges, in case you’re wondering.”

Podesta would not characterize his recent conversation with Devine.

“We’re in a contest,” the Clinton chairman said. “We both understand it.”

Anne Gearan and Abby Phillip contributed to this report.

Philip Rucker- The Washington Post

DETROIT — From the pulpit of an African-American church in Detroit not long ago, Bishop Corletta Vaughn offered a rousing endorsement of Hillary Clinton that went far beyond politics.

 

With a smiling Clinton sitting a few feet away in the purple-walled Holy Ghost Cathedral, Vaughn said she had seen Clinton "take a licking and keep on ticking." Alluding to Bill Clinton's past infidelity, she added: "I'm not talking about politically. I'm talking about as a wife and a mother. That's when I said: I love that woman. She taught so many of us as women how to stand in the face of adversity."

During a primary season in which she has faced surprisingly strong competition and been bombarded with criticism of her trustworthiness, Clinton has maintained a strong bond with one significant bloc of Democratic Party voters. Black women, part of President Barack Obama's winning coalition in 2008 and 2012, have locked arms behind Clinton, hailing her as a Democratic standard-bearer, survivor and friend.

"That determination and strength, particularly has meaning to African-American women," said Sharon Reed, 60, a community college teacher from North Charleston, South Carolina. "Who has overcome more obstacles and darts and arrows than she has? And she's still standing and she's still strong."

Though the primary contest is not over, Clinton, the former secretary of state, holds a big delegate lead over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and is considered likely to win the Democratic nomination. African-American women have played a big part: About 8 in 10 across all the states where exit polling has been conducted have voted for her, and in some cases support has been above 90 percent.

Clinton has fared less well with other groups, in particular with younger voters and white men, many of whom have preferred Sanders. But, as in past years, black women are demonstrating that they are motivated. So far, they have made up at least a slightly larger share of the electorate than black men in almost all states with significant black populations, and a significantly larger share in seven of those states.

She'll need those women in November. When Democrat Obama won the past two elections, he counted on black women's votes, and he got them. In 2008, some 68 percent voted in the general election, and 70 percent came out in 2012. According to exit polling, the vast majority voted for Obama.

Clinton's campaign has sought to reinforce these bonds. At black churches and businesses, she has stressed her ties to the popular president and touted endorsements from leaders such as Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, a civil rights icon. She has emphasized issues like criminal justice reform and gun control and is campaigning alongside black women who have lost children to gun violence.

"I really got the sense that she could really relate to us, as being mothers and women and daughters," said Lucy McBath, whose teenage son Jordan Davis was shot and killed at a Jacksonville, Florida, gas station in 2012. Lucy McBath was part of a group of mothers who met with Clinton privately in the fall and has been out campaigning for her.

These efforts have been headed by LaDavia Drane, who joined the campaign last year as director of African-American outreach. She has sought out female pastors like Vaughn for Clinton's church visits. She organized the meeting between Clinton and the mothers impacted by gun violence. And she has worked to establish grass-roots networks for black women such "Heels for Hillary" in cities around the country.

Drane described Clinton's connection to mothers, particularly black mothers, as "a secret sauce, it's a match made in heaven."

Before black audiences, Clinton appears at ease. At the Detroit church, she opened up about her personal struggles.

"What has always guided me and supported me has been my faith," she said. She recalled the parable of the prodigal son and seemed to reference her husband, now diligently campaigning for her. "When someone who has disappointed you, who has often disappointed themselves, decides to come home, it is human nature to say you're not wanted ... but that's not what the father in this parable did."

Evelyn Simien, a professor at the University of Connecticut who studies black voting patterns, said Clinton's outreach has been savvy. But she also stressed that black women have long been active Democratic voters and they know Clinton far better than Sanders. She said this year's support is not just about personal connection, but that "it comes down to politics and the issues."

Clinton's close relationships with black women date back to one of her first political mentors, Marian Wright Edelman, the founder of the Children's Defense Fund. Black women have held top positions with Clinton over the years, including Maggie Williams, who was chief of staff when Clinton was first lady, and Cheryl Mills, chief of staff when she was secretary of state. In the current campaign, black women are in key roles, including senior spokeswoman Karen Finney and senior policy adviser Maya Harris. Strategist Minyon Moore has long served as an outside consultant.

"I feel a kinship to who she is. She knows and understands the battle that we fight every day," said Ohio Congresswoman Marcia Fudge, a past chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus. "She has a special place for us because she really gets it."

___

Emily Swanson contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Bernie Sanders pushed for a trifecta of wins in Saturday's Democratic presidential caucuses in Hawaii, Alaska and Washington state, hoping to stoke a spring comeback against the commanding front-runner, Hillary Clinton.

The Vermont senator spent much of the week on the West Coast, trying to build his enduring support among liberal activists into a Saturday sweep that could help him narrow a gap of 300 delegates won in primaries behind Clinton. That's about double the margin that then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama held over Clinton in the 2008 primaries.

While Sanders faces a steep climb to the nomination, a string of losses for Clinton would highlight persistent vulnerabilities within her own party. Sanders continues to attract tens of thousands to his rallies — drawing more than 17,000 in Seattle this week — and has collected more than $140 million from 2 million donors.

But turning that passionate support into the party nomination is growing increasingly difficult. Clinton has a delegate lead of 1,223 to 920 over Sanders, according to an Associated Press analysis, an advantage that expands to 1,691-949 once the superdelegates, or party officials who can back either candidate, are included.

Based on that count, Sanders still needs to win 58 percent of the remaining delegates from primaries and caucuses to have a majority of those delegates by June's end.

His bar is even higher when the party officials are considered. He needs to win more than 67 percent of the remaining delegates overall — from primaries, caucuses and the ranks of uncommitted superdelegates — to prevail.

"I have gotten 2.6 million more votes than Bernie Sanders," Clinton told supporters crowded into a union hall in Everett, Washington, this week. "We are on the path to the nomination, and I want Washington to be part of how we get there."

Sanders implored thousands of supporters in Spokane to come see him speak again Saturday — at a caucus. "Get there early," he said. "Let's have a record-breaking turnout."

On Tuesday, Sanders won caucuses in Utah and Idaho but lost Arizona — the largest delegate prize — to Clinton. Because Democrats allocate their delegates on a proportional basis, meaning that the popular vote loser can still pick up a share, those victories netted Sanders a gain of about 20 delegates.

He hopes to avoid a repeat of that performance by pulling out a win in Washington, which awards more than double the number of delegates than Hawaii and Alaska combined. He's also looking to contests that follow in Wisconsin on April 5 and Wyoming on April 9 as a way to build momentum.

Most of his dozen primary-season wins have been in states with largely white populations and in caucus contests, which tend to attract the most active liberal Democrats. He's heavily favored by younger voters, who were a key part of the coalition that boosted Obama to victory twice.

Sanders dispatched his wife, Jane, to Alaska and Hawaii. Clinton, who held a conference call with supporters in Hawaii, did not send any high-profile supporters to campaign on her behalf.

Both candidates held several events in Washington state earlier this week.

Clinton has been looking past the primary contests and aiming at potential Republican challengers. In interviews, rallies and speeches this week, she largely focused on Tuesday's deadly attacks in Brussels, casting GOP front-runner Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz as unqualified to deal with complicated international threats.

Her campaign sees the April 19 contest in New York as an important one, not just because of the rich delegate prize but because losing to Sanders in a state she represented in the Senate would be a psychological blow. She hopes to lock up an even larger share of delegates in five Northeastern contests a week later.

____

Associated Press writer Hope Yen contributed to this report.

By LISA LERER, Associated Press

Rolled oats propelled Hillary Clinton to victory in 1992. They were the game-changing ingredient in her recipe for chocolate chip cookies, which she submitted to Family Circle magazine in a bake-off against then-incumbent first lady Barbara Bush.

The bake-off was an attempt to appeal to stay at home moms following her controversial response to California governor Jerry Brown’s criticism that she owed her professional success to her husband, Bill. “I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had tea,” she told a reporter in a soundbite that was reported around the world. “But what I decided to do was fulfill my profession.” Many women responded with outrage, and perhaps that’s why, shortly thereafter, Clinton participated in the traditional Family Circle first lady bake-off. And won.

Clinton’s cookies are good: my best friend’s mom used to make them for her school lunches. No doubt Hillary could have won any number of bake-offs with her recipe, but politics have paid off far more for her: in less than a year, she may be the first female president of the United States. But if that happens, she won’t be the only one breaking a gender barrier: her husband Bill will step into a role no man has ever held before. So what kind of first lady will Bill Clinton be? (Besides, of course, a manly one).

The role of first lady is officially unofficial: there’s no constitutional requirement that the president have a partner, and the person occupying the role has never received a salary. The job has evolved over the years. In the 18th and 19th century, the first lady was primarily expected to be a lovely and capable hostess, just like any wife of a distinguished, wealthy American man. These women were expected to bake cookies, host teas, select china patterns, manage household staff and smile graciously at fancy dinners. In the twentieth century, however, things began to shift, and some first ladies began to dig in to more substantial issues than menus and flower arrangements.
Different women leveraged the position in different ways: some argue that Lady Bird Johnson was the first to modernize the job when she campaigned on behalf of her husband Lyndon B Johnson in the mid 60s, but others wielded significant political clout before her. Eleanor Roosevelt’s work as a writer, activist, public speaker and social reformer is perhaps most famous. But other notably hard-working first ladies include Florence Harding, wife of Warren G, a passionate suffragette who edited all of her husband’s important speeches and pushed hard to influence his appointments.

But when Hillary Clinton moved into the White House in 1993, she was not granted the same flexibility. As the chair of the Task Force on National Health Care reform, she was slammed in the press for stepping beyond the reaches of her role, in spite of her clear qualifications to work on policy: the implication was that she was being unladylike. To many Americans, the revelations about her husband’s extramarital sexual proclivities confirmed their belief that Hillary was failing to fulfill the remit of the first lady: to be a pleasant and decorative hostess who represents a “traditional” and anachronistic family: a man in charge, a faithful and helpful woman by his side (even though a number of other presidents and First Ladies have also had notable affairs). Indeed, Clinton blamed the affair in part on herself for failing as a wife.

Michelle Obama – also a highly-qualified lawyer, and an expert in health care – has, by contrast, taken a less policy-oriented approach to the role. She’s championed family-oriented causes like healthy eating, and kept her distance from Capitol Hill. (In this, she followed more closely the model set by her predecessor Laura Bush, who campaigned for literacy and rarely expressed an opinion.) But Obama has nevertheless been the subject of gendered and racist criticism: of her clothes, of her hair, for being “scary”, for giving Queen Elizabeth a hug and for needing to “drop a few pounds”. That’s a lot to take for a volunteer job.

Ultimately, the base state of the job of first lady is gendered, a model of wifeliness. The women who have given the role breadth and depth have done so by reimagining or extending the role of a wife – a role that only exists because of a relationship to a husband. What, then, will happen to this anachronistic role if it’s filled by man?

The idea of a former president championing America’s dental health, giving tours of White House Christmas decorations or pledging to “take care of the President” as Jacqueline Kennedy did, seems preposterous. It’s notable, but not surprising, that the male partners of female world leaders aren’t burdened with the same kind of responsibilities that women are. Though he’d be smashing the glass floor for men in America by becoming the first gentleman (or whatever they will call him), Bill Clinton would be far from the world’s first first man. In Germany, Angela Merkel’s husband, Joachim Sauer, has continued his work as a chemistry professor, although he does attend state occasions alongside her. Earlier, Margaret Thatcher’s husband, Denis Thatcher, was known for his total devotion to his wife, his remove from politics, and his expression of hard-right views in private. No one ever cared about what he wore.

The Clintons have alluded to some possible routes that Bill could take: in September, Hillary even said appointing him as her vice-president had crossed her mind. More recently, at the Democratic debate in South Carolina, she stated that he’d be one of her key advisors: “I’m going to ask for his ideas, I’m going ask for his advice, and I’m going to use him as a goodwill emissary to go around the country to find the best ideas we’ve got, because I do believe, as he said, everything that’s wrong with America has been solved somewhere in America,” she said. What he’ll be called in that role remains unclear: Bill himself has suggested Adam, after the Biblical first man.

American women are increasingly taking the breadwinning roles in their households, but is the model of the dominant wife and supportive husband one that we’re ready to find palatable in the White House? Since the conclusion of his presidency, much of his time has been taken up with his eponymous foundation, which is run out of an office in New York: it’s raised nearly $2bn. Would propriety and tradition really require him to step aside from his work during his wife’s term in office, as Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton gave up their jobs to move to Washington with their partners? In an America that had achieved gender equality, one might hope that this would happen. But that’s not an America in which we live. It seems unlikely that anyone is going to ask Bill Clinton for his best cookie recipe, and not just because he’s a vegan.

-- Jean Hannah Edelstein / The Guardian

WASHINGTON — A Republican senator's remarks expressing support for Senate consideration of President Barack Obama's Supreme Court pick have angered conservatives and underscored the passion the issue stirs in GOP and Democratic activists.

The comments by Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran put him at odds with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and other GOP leaders, who have said the chamber won't hold hearings or a vote on the nominee. Only a handful of Senate Republicans have diverged from that stance.

Moran's statements prompted a leader of one conservative group to warn that her organization was preparing an advertising campaign "to remind Senator Moran that he represents the people of Kansas and neither President Obama nor the Democratic Party." Others didn't rule out that the comments might prompt a conservative to challenge Moran in the state's GOP primary.

Obama nominated federal judge Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court vacancy on March 16.

The fuss over Moran's comments came as the White House announced that Garland will have his first courtesy meeting next week with a Republican senator, Mark Kirk of Illinois.

Kirk faces a difficult re-election in November in Democratic-leaning Illinois. Until Moran's remarks, Kirk was the only GOP senator to call for a Senate vote on Obama's pick and one of two — with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine — to favor Senate Judiciary Committee hearings.

Moran, former head of the Senate GOP's campaign organization, faces re-election this fall in a deeply conservative state that has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since the 1930s. While he is so far unopposed in the Aug. 2 Republican Senate primary, the filing deadline for candidates who might run against him is not until June 1.

According to the Dodge City Daily Globe, Moran said Monday at the Dodge City Rotary Club, "I think we have the responsibility to have a hearing, to have the conversation and to make a determination on the merit."

The Garden City Telegram reported that on the same day, Moran told a small gathering in Cimarron, Kansas, that there should be a hearing and said, "I would rather have you (constituents) complaining to me that I voted wrong on nominating somebody than saying I'm not doing my job."

Moran said it was extremely unlikely he'd back the nominee and expressed doubt that McConnell would let the Senate process proceed, according to both reports.

A Moran spokeswoman said Friday that the lawmaker was not reachable for comment, but released a written statement in which he did not retreat from his earlier remarks.

"I believe I have a duty to ask tough questions and demand answers. I am certain a thorough investigation would expose Judge Garland's record and judicial philosophy, and disqualify him in the eyes of Kansans and Americans," Moran said.

Carrie Severino, chief counsel of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, said "caving into" Obama was not serving Kansans and said her group was preparing a "robust" television and digital ad campaign aimed at Moran.

David Christensen, lobbying for the anti-abortion Family Research Council, said Moran had earned a perfect score in the group's rating of lawmakers' votes last year and said, "Now we have this extremely important Supreme Court debate, and now is not the time for him to go wobbly."

Asked if the episode might encourage a conservative challenge to Moran, Christensen said, "I think this definitely raises concerns among conservatives." Asked the same question, spokesman Dan Holler of Heritage Action for America said, "This is certainly a point of frustration."

Dr. Milton Wolf, whose tea party-backed campaign nearly captured the GOP nomination in 2014 from long-time incumbent Sen. Pat Roberts, tweeted this week, "How much of a coward is @JerryMoran?"

McConnell spokesman Donald Stewart declined to comment on Moran's remarks.

The White House said Garland, who met with five Democratic senators last week, will meet with Kirk on Tuesday. He will also meet with four additional Democrats next week, the White House said.

In Las Vegas, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., predicted the Senate will confirm Garland after Democrat Hillary Clinton is elected president in November.

Reid chided McConnell's strategy of opposing Senate consideration of the nominee this year, saying he couldn't comprehend what senator would follow that "dumb advice."

He said once Democrats win the presidential election, Republicans would choose to confirm the moderate Garland over a Clinton nominee, who might be more liberal. McConnell has said the Senate will not consider Garland during a post-election lame duck session.

___

Associated Press reporters Kathleen Hennessey in Washington and Michelle Rindels in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

FOUNTAIN HILLS, Ariz. — David Rau wasn't sure about Donald Trump. So the landscape contractor strolled over to the main park in this Phoenix suburb to watch one of the businessman's recent rallies and decide for himself.

Demonstrators pulled their cars across an access road to block people driving to the event. Dozens marched to the park and stood by Rau, chanting "Stop the hate!" as he tried to listen. He left a Trump convert. "I've got the right to listen to somebody speak, don't I?" Rau asked.

Trump's rise in the Republican presidential contest has sparked increasingly confrontational protests, mobilized his opponents and drawn scrutiny of the GOP front-runner's rhetoric and the sometimes rough way his campaign handles dissent. But as demonstrators escalate their tactics, they also risk helping Trump, especially among Republican voters his rivals are furiously trying to persuade to reject the billionaire businessman.

"I encourage people to speak out against Trump in a forceful but respectful manner because some of these protests are only serving to help him," said Tim Miller, a spokesman for a Republican group trying to stop Trump. "He continues to dominate the news, he can play the 'us vs. them' card when liberals disrupt his events and that serves as a rallying point for his candidacy."

Even Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, running for the Democratic presidential nomination, has been troubled by protesters' tactics, as well as by Trump's response.

"In America, people have a right to hold rallies," Sanders told MSNBC. "It is absolutely appropriate for thousands of people to protest at a Trump rally, but I am not a great fan of disrupting rallies."

Trump engages the demonstrators vigorously, mocking them, calling them bad people and sometimes feeding the anger of his supporters in the crowd.
The Phoenix demonstration followed one in Chicago the prior weekend, when hundreds of Trump foes flooded into the Chicago location of one of his rallies and Trump canceled the event and one in Ohio the following day, citing security concerns. That infuriated Trump backers, who blamed the demonstrators.

"To me, it's disgusting and insulting," said Claudia Young, an Argentinian-born U.S. citizen in Muncie, Indiana, who said she and her husband had arrived at the Dayton, Ohio, rally site at 6:30 a.m. after a 90-minute drive. "We're supposed to have freedom of speech in this country, but the people who came to see Trump couldn't listen to what they wanted to hear."

In Arizona, activists gathered about 3 miles from the site of the Trump rally, along one of two roads that wind through the mountains north of Phoenix into central Fountain Hills. The protesters — mainly a coalition of local immigrant rights groups who have a long history of demonstrations against Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was speaking at the rally — then maneuvered their cars across the intersection. Three were arrested, and many Trump supporters had to walk to the rally or missed it.

Carlos Garcia of Puente, one of the immigrant right groups, said demonstrators handed out water bottles to Trump supporters and did not want to antagonize them.

"I hope people see beyond their two-hour inconvenience," he said, adding that activists were motivated by the support Trump has drawn from Arpaio and former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer. "Their rhetoric," he said of that duo, "turned into policies that destroyed thousands of families, and we see Trump trying to go national with it. People are willing to put their bodies on the line to keep their families together."

When Garcia and other demonstrators made it to the park where Trump was holding his rally they were met with jeers and cries from Trump supporters gathered on the hillside, outside the fenced-off perimeter where the event was occurring. "Learn to speak English!" one person yelled at the protesters. "Gotta get off the welfare check," called another.

The demonstrators chanted back: "Stop the hate!" Despite some heated scrums, no fights broke out and eventually the candidate finished and protesters and supporters alike trickled away.

Sharon Groves, a 69-year-old retired social worker, came to the rally with a group of Fountain Hills' few other liberals. The crowd spilled out from the controlled area onto a hillside where Groves stood silently wearing a shirt that read "Prays well with others" and included symbols of world religions. Some other demonstrators silently held up homemade signs that read: "Love Trumps Hate."

Afterward, Groves was horrified at the demonstrators who blocked traffic and then marched in. "It was uncalled for," Groves said. "People have the right to come and see him if they want to."

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Associated Press writers Jacques Billeaud in Fountain Hills and Daniel Sewell in Dayton, Ohio, contributed to this report.

By NICHOLAS RICCARDI, Associated Press

© YouTube/Anonymous Operations Anonymous Donald Trump

Hackers affiliated with the Anonymous hacktivist collective have vowed to relaunch cyber-operations against US presidential candidate Donald Trump from 1 April. They threaten to 'dismantle his campaign' by taking his election websites offline in a large-scale and orchestrated distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.

In December 2015, Anonymous officially 'declared war' on Trump after a radical speech in which he said Muslims should be banned from entering the United States. The operation at the time resulted in a number of websites being targeted by hackers, but failed to have lasting impact.

A new video statement has been posted to YouTube which claims the 'loyalists and veterans' of Anonymous have decided to ramp up cyber-operations against Trump – dubbed #OpTrump – on a far larger scale than ever before.

"Dear Donald Trump, we have been watching you for a long time and what we see is deeply disturbing. Your inconsistent and hateful campaign has not only shocked the United States of America [but] you have shocked the entire planet with your appalling actions and ideas. You say what your audience wants to hear but in reality you don't stand for anything except for your personal greed and power."

The video, which features the traditional Guy Fawkes mask-wearing spokesperson speaking directly to camera, called the operation a "call to arms" for hacktivists across the globe.

"We need you to shut down his websites, to research and expose what he doesn't want the public to know. We need to dismantle his campaign and sabotage his brand. We are encouraging every able person with a computer to participate in this operation. This is not a warning, this is a declaration of total war. Donald Trump – it is too late to expect us."

In a separate written message posted online, Anonymous listed a number of websites chosen to be the initial targets in the attack including trump.com, donaldjtrump.com and trumphotelcollection.com.

Alongside these chosen targets, the post lists a slew of unverified personal information purporting to belong to Donald Trump, including a social security number, personal phone number and the contact details of his agent and legal representation.

This is not the first time a hacking group has attempted to take on Donald Trump. In January 2016 a separate group called the New World Hackers carried out multiple DDoS attacks on his official election campaign website – effectively taking it offline for a short period of time. Recently, Anonymous leaked messages from his phone's voicemail account which included personal communications from journalists, sports stars and boxing promotors.

Anonymous, which is a loose collective of hacktivists, routinely engages high-profile targets as part of its cyber-campaigns. Previous subjects have included the Islamic State (IS), the Vatican and most recently the Turkish government.