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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

ATLANTA — One presidential candidate pledged to "Stand up for America." Two generations later, another promises to "Make America Great Again." Their common denominator: convincing certain Americans that their version of the United States is under threat.

Donald Trump, leader for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, has never said he's following the playbook of Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who achieved national stature on his promise of "segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever," then made four failed bids for the White House from 1964 to 1976.

Instead, Trump invokes the anger of "the silent majority," a phrase he's resurrected from the era of Wallace and President Richard Nixon, who won in 1968 and 1972 in part by co-opting Wallace's racially charged populism.

Trump detractors hear more than a faint echo of Wallace in Trump's anti-establishment mix of economic protectionism and blunt nativism, and they note that the brash billionaire, like Wallace, has drawn similar results in the campaign: tense rallies that often involve violent clashes among protesters, police and the candidate's supporters.

"Trump is taking his campaign straight to the haters, and he's gotten the roots of that old Wallace crowd," says Joe Reed, a black Democratic Party broker in Alabama who came to know the four-term governor toward the end of his life, when he had abandoned his segregationist positions, long after a would-be assassin left him paralyzed.

The comparison offends Trump backers.

"George Wallace was a racist," said Debbie Dooley, a national tea party leader. "It's totally ridiculous for anybody to think the same about Donald Trump." She argues Trump's independence from "the money that controls Washington, D.C." outweigh his caustic rhetoric on immigration, Muslims and the protesters — many of them young and black — who interrupt his rallies.

"Donald Trump is not preaching hate," Dooley said. "He's standing up for the American workers and the American people."

Trump offers his outsized personality as an all-purpose antidote to a country that is "falling apart" and "never wins anymore."

The overwhelmingly white throngs at Trump rallies roar at his mention of a border wall and heartily approve his call to stop all non-citizen Muslims from entering the United States. Supporters cheer his promises to protect gun rights and share his lament that Christianity is under attack. They applaud his threats of punitive tariffs on imports from countries "killing us on trade."

Wallace, meanwhile, fueled his strongest campaigns in 1968 and 1972 with a wide-ranging critique of a society in decline. He modified the overtly racist language he used in his Alabama campaigns, fashioning himself instead as a "states' rights" conservative. He complained of rising crime and a "sick Supreme Court" that outlawed compulsory school prayer and allowed pornography.

Wallace, political historian Dan T. Carter said, "had all these ways of getting across what he meant" without explicitly mentioning race or class. "He said 'inner-city thugs,' and everybody knew he was talking about young black men in the cities."

Tom Turnipseed, who managed Wallace's 1968 campaign and became a civil rights activist, assigned the same motivation to Trump and Wallace. "Fear," he told The Associated Press.

"You can scare folks with that line that the Mexicans are coming because everyday working people ... see Mexicans in the labor market and it hurts their wages — they think of it that way, at least," Turnipseed said. "Governor Wallace, you know, did the same with African-Americans."

In his book "The Politics of Rage," Carter identifies Wallace and his play for working-class white votes as the model for the "Southern strategy" that Nixon and Ronald Reagan would use to win four landslide elections in 20 years.

Nixon wrote in his memoirs of having to navigate Wallace so he would not "draw a large number of conservative votes from me." Nixon protected his right flank by criticizing court-ordered busing of schoolchildren to accomplish integration, vowing to impose "law and order" and declaring the "War on Drugs," which an aide later described as a targeting of "hippies" and blacks.

Trump is the latest heir of all this, Carter said.

"When you hear Trump supporters say he 'tells like it is' or 'he's not politically correct,'" Carter said, "what they're really saying, many of them, is ... 'I love it, because it's what I believe, too.'"

Protesters, meanwhile, become evidence of the national decay that only the candidate's tough leadership can reverse.

When activists interrupted his rally at Madison Square Garden in 1968, Wallace asked why Democratic and Republican leaders "kowtow to these anarchists." He added, "We don't have riots in Alabama. They start a riot down there, first one of 'em to pick up a brick gets a bullet in the brain, that's all."

Trump has pined for "the old days" when such "animals" would be "carried out on a stretcher, folks." He orders security to "get 'em the hell outta here" and said of one protester, "I'd like to punch him in the face."

Reed acknowledged there are "working white folks who are mad" but says Trump, like Wallace, has them "turning their arrows at the wrong folks."

Trump denies he is playing to racism or xenophobia. His supporters "aren't angry people," he says, just frustrated "about the way the country is being run."

"What are we looking for, OK, all of us?" Trump asked after declaring that families, jobs, homes and health care face existential threats. "We're looking for security. We're looking for safety. We're looking for family, and taking care of our family, right?"

By BILL BARROW, Associated Press

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

NEW YORK — In television news, a telephone interview is typically frowned upon. Donald Trump's fondness for them is changing habits and causing consternation in newsrooms, while challenging political traditions.

Two organizations are circulating petitions to encourage Sunday morning political shows to hang up on Trump. Some prominent holdouts, like Fox's Chris Wallace, refuse to do on-air phoners. Others argue that a phone interview is better than no interview at all.

Except in news emergencies, producers usually avoid phoners because television is a visual medium — a face-to-face discussion between a newsmaker and questioner is preferable to a picture of an anchor listening to a disembodied voice.

It's easy to see why Trump likes them. There's no travel or TV makeup involved; if he wishes to, Trump can talk to Matt Lauer without changing out of his pajamas. They often put an interviewer at a disadvantage, since it's harder to interrupt or ask follow-up questions, and impossible to tell if a subject is being coached.

Face-to-face interviews let viewers see a candidate physically react to a tough question and think on his feet, said Chris Licht, executive producer of "CBS This Morning." Sometimes that's as important as what is being said.

Trump tends to take over phone interviews and can get his message out with little challenge, Wallace said.

"The Sunday show, in the broadcast landscape, I feel is a gold standard for probing interviews," said Wallace, host of "Fox News Sunday." ''The idea that you would do a phone interview, not face-to-face or not by satellite, with a presidential candidate — I'd never seen it before, and I was quite frankly shocked that my competitors were doing it."

Since Trump announced his candidacy in June 2015, Wallace has conducted three in-person interviews with him on "Fox News Sunday," and four via satellite.

Chuck Todd, host of NBC's "Meet the Press," has done phoners with Trump but now said he's decided to stick to in-person interviews on his Sunday show. He's no absolutist, though.

"It's a much better viewer experience when it's in person," Todd said. "Satellite and phoners are a little harder, there's no doubt about it. But at the end of the day, you'll take something over nothing."

Morning news shows do phoners most frequently. At the outset of the campaign, Trump was ratings catnip. The ratings impact of a Trump interview has since settled down, but it's still hard to turn him down. He's the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination. He's news.

There appear to be no network policies; different shows on the same network have different philosophies. Licht has turned Trump down for phoners on CBS but concedes there may be exceptions for breaking news. "CBS This Morning," in fact, aired Trump commenting by phone following Tuesday's attack in Belgium.

Since the campaign began, Trump has appeared for 29 phone interviews on the five Sunday political panel shows, according to the liberal watchdog Media Matters for America. Through last Sunday, ABC's "This Week" has done it 10 times, CBS' "Face the Nation" seven and six times each on "Meet the Press" and CNN's "State of the Union."

On Sunday, Trump phoned in an 11th time to "This Week," calling from Florida. The program repeatedly flashed a stock Trump photo while the candidate demanded an overhaul of NATO, blamed rival Ted Cruz for the bitter feud targeting each other's wife and complained about the Republican Party's delegate selection process.

None of the news shows have done phoners with Cruz, John Kasich, Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, said Media Matters, which is urging that the practice be discontinued. Cruz and Clinton declined ABC's invitation to speak by phone or in person for the network's most recent Sunday program.

The activist group MomsRising said the disparity "sends the message that some candidates can play by different rules, without consequences, and that's just un-American." A study by mediaQuant and The New York Times estimated that Trump has received the equivalent of $1.9 billion in free advertising given the media attention paid to his campaign.

A Trump spokeswoman did not immediately return a request for comment.

What's unclear is whether other candidates were denied opportunities given to Trump.

CNN chief executive Jeff Zucker said Trump opponents frequently turn down interview requests. During an appearance on CNN last week, former GOP candidate Carly Fiorina complained about media attention paid to Trump, leading Anderson Cooper to shoot back: "Donald Trump returned phone calls and was willing to do interviews, which was something your campaign, frankly, was unwilling to do."

Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier tweeted last week that she saw Trump being interviewed via phone on "Fox & Friends" a day after Cruz was told that he couldn't do a phone interview with the show.

Fox said that since then, "Fox & Friends" has offered to conduct a phone interview with Cruz five times and has been turned down each time. Cruz did appear in the studio Wednesday. Frazier did not return requests for comment.

NBC's Todd believes that complaints about phoners are a surrogate for people who want to blame the media for Trump's success.

"You're shooting the messenger while you're ignoring what he is tapping into," he said. "It becomes a little silly when you look at the bigger picture here. The media is getting criticized for interviewing Donald Trump. If we weren't questioning him, we'd be criticized for not questioning him."

For years, cautious candidates have tended to be stingy with press access. Trump is the complete opposite. In a fast-moving information age, he may be changing the expectations for how often a candidate submits to interviews.

Todd doesn't believe it's a coincidence that he's had more access to Clinton during the past six weeks than he had during the six years she was in the Obama administration. Both Clinton and Cruz appeared in phone interviews following the Belgium attacks.

"Trump's opponents fall into two camps: Those who complain and continue to get crushed by the media wave, or those who grab a surfboard and try to ride it," said Mark McKinnon, veteran Republican political operative and co-host of Showtime's political road show, "The Circus."

___

Associated Press writer Stephen Braun in Washington contributed to this report.

By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Sunday slammed rival Ted Cruz for the recent ad produced by an anti-Trump super-PAC featuring a photo of Trump's wife posing nude.

 "From what I hear, he and his campaign went out and bought the cover shoot.  Melania did a cover story for 'GQ,' a very strong modeling picture.  No big deal," Trump said on ABC's "This Week."

"But it was a cover story for 'GQ,' a big magazine.  And it was, you know, fine.  And from what I hear, somebody bought the rights to it and he was the one or his campaign bought the rights and they gave it to the super PAC."

Trump said Cruz knew about the ad, adding he started the latest fight between the two. Last week, Trump threatened to "spill the beans" on Cruz's wife in response to the ad featuring Melania Trump. He then shared a tweet featuring a photo of his wife next to a photo of Cruz's wife, stating, "A picture is worth a thousands words."

Cruz has denied knowing anything about the ad, and called it deplorable on Sunday.

But Trump said the super PAC that produced the ad is "very friendly to Ted Cruz."

"He knew all about it, 100 percent," he said.

"There's no way in a million years that super PAC did that without his absolute knowledge."

[ Rebecca Savransky/ The Hill ]

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."

___

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

By NICHOLAS RICCARDI, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Exasperated by a long-running fight over judicial nominees, a Republican senator pleaded with his colleagues to confirm Merrick Garland to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, often considered the second most important court in the nation.

"Playing politics with judges is unfair, and I am sick of it," Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah said prior to the vote on March 19, 1997.

Fast forward 19 years and Garland is President Barack Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, ensnared in a high-stakes, election-year fight over a vacancy that Republicans insist should be filled by the next president. No confirmation hearings and no votes this year, says the GOP in its blanket argument that the American people must have a say in November elections before a judge is chosen.

Republicans who once praised Garland — and voted for him — say it's not the person, it's the principle.

"He may very well be a very good nominee, I voted for him earlier," said Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas. "But it's not about the nominee, it's about the process."

In fact, seven current Republican senators voted in 1997 to confirm Garland, a former Justice Department attorney who coordinated the prosecution in the Oklahoma City bombing case and was tapped by President Bill Clinton for the appeals court. The nomination had been caught up in an extended, nearly two-year dispute over the size of the lower court until Hatch, then the powerful chairman of the Judiciary Committee, negotiated to secure a vote.

"I would like to see one person come to this floor and say one reason why Merrick Garland does not deserve this position," Hatch challenged his fellow senators. Of Garland, Hatch said: "I know of his integrity, I know of his legal ability, I know of his honesty, I know of his acumen, and he belongs on the court."

The Senate confirmed Garland, 76-23.

The other Republican senators still in office who voted for Garland were Indiana Sen. Dan Coats, Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran, Maine Sen. Susan Collins, Arizona Sen. John McCain and Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe.

Today, several say they see no inconsistency between their 1997 votes and 2016 opposition, engineered by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Hatch said the nominee would be better served after this "toxic" election.

"There's a difference between the courts," he says of the appeals court and the Supreme Court. "This is the court of final resort and it makes final decisions on what the law is."

He also bemoaned the current climate, saying he was "sick and tired of the Supreme Court being treated like a political football."

The White House is certainly not backing down despite the strong opposition. Garland returned to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to meet with New York Sen. Charles Schumer, the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate. A meeting with Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey was scheduled for later in the day.

After meeting with the nominee, Schumer predicted Republicans will relent.

"Momentum is on the side of having hearings and having a vote and it's growing," Schumer said.

Some of the seven GOP senators who supported Garland in 1997 have shown such openness, despite McConnell declining to even meet with the nominee. Hatch says he will meet with Garland and could envision hearings and possibly a vote after the election, if a Democrat wins the presidency, although McConnell has rejected that idea.

Inhofe, too, said he would be open to meeting with Garland, though he made it clear it wouldn't influence his vote. He said he talked to Garland on the phone shortly after Obama nominated him, telling him, "it has nothing to do with you," but he will oppose his nomination.

Collins has called for regular order, including hearings, and says she will meet with Garland in April. The Maine Republican, who was elected to the Senate in 1996, says Garland's confirmation was her first vote on a judicial nomination.

"I felt he was extremely well-qualified, I liked his prosecutorial background, I was aware of his work to put in prison the Oklahoma city bomber as well as Marion Barry, and he was very well-regarded," Collins said.

As a prosecutor, Garland led the investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing and prosecutions and also did early work on the drug case against then-D.C. Mayor Marion Barry.

Sens. Coats and McCain declined questions about Garland's nomination last week. Cochran's office would not comment on the 1997 vote.

In 1997, two Republicans who voted against Garland were McConnell and current Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa. McConnell didn't speak on the nomination then, but Grassley made it clear his objections were not personal, but about the size of the court.

"Mr. Garland seems to be well-qualified and would probably make a good judge — in some other court," Grassley said.

___

Associated Press writers Alan Fram and Kathleen Hennessey contributed to this report.

By MARY CLARE JALONICK, Associated Press

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) will deliver a speech on Capitol Hill on Wednesday about the "state of American politics."

Ryan's office did not offer details about the contents of the speech or say if it will be related to the presidential race.

The Speaker has weighed in on the contentious GOP presidential primary on a few strategic occasions. Without explicitly mentioning Donald Trump by name, Ryan has condemned the front-runner's call for banning Muslims from entering the country and failure to immediately disavow support from the Ku Klux Klan, and he urged Trump to take responsibility for the violent tenor at some of his campaign rallies.

The Speaker has been floated as a possible unity candidate for Republicans if the party faces a contested convention this summer. Ryan, however, has repeatedly shot down the notion that he could become his party's presidential standard-bearer instead of one of the candidates running official campaigns.

Nonetheless, Tuesday's announcement that he will deliver the speech immediately fueled facetious speculation among some political commentators on Twitter that Ryan will announce he's running for president.

"You guys are funny," Ryan spokesman Brendan Buck tweeted.

The 11 a.m. address will take place in the House Ways and Means Committee room, the panel that Ryan chaired until he was recruited to replace former Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) last year.

It will be open only to members of the media and House interns.

Cristina Marcos - The Hill

 Senator Ted Cruz of Texas angered American Muslims on Tuesday with a call to “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods” in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Brussels.

Arguing that politicians had “tried to deny this enemy exists out of a combination of political correctness and fear,” Mr. Cruz said that Europeans were “seeing what comes of a toxic mix of migrants who have been infiltrated by terrorists and isolated, radical Muslim neighborhoods.”
He continued, in a statement released by both his campaign and his Senate office, “We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.”

Senate and campaign aides to Mr. Cruz did not respond to questions seeking clarification on how the proposal might be carried out.

The comments drew immediate rebukes from Muslim groups who were already wary of Mr. Cruz. Last week, he came under fire after announcing a team of national security advisers that included Frank Gaffney Jr., a former Reagan administration official who is perhaps best known for holding extreme views about Islam. (He once wrote an op-ed in The Washington Times suggesting that President Obama is a Muslim.)

In a phone interview on Tuesday, Nihad Awad, the national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, called Mr. Cruz a “religious zealot” with little regard for civil liberties.

“We do not have the problem that Ted Cruz envisions,” Mr. Awad said of Muslims in the United States. “He wants to bring to our memories checkpoints in the streets. That’s really going to be similar to third-world countries and to what happened in Nazi Germany.”

Mr. Cruz has at times stopped short of some of Donald J. Trump’s most controversial suggestions — opposing, for instance, calls for a national database of Muslims.

Speaking to reporters in Washington on Tuesday, he deflected when asked if he supported Mr. Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States.

“It is time for us to implement serious vetting,” Mr. Cruz said, “and we should not be allowing anyone to come to this country that we cannot vet to make sure that they are not radical Islamic terrorists.”

|| By MATT FLEGENHEIMER - The New York Times