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JUDY WOODRUFF: We turn now to the refugee crisis overwhelming Europe.

New border restrictions have left more than 10,000 migrants stranded at the crossing between Greece and Macedonia. Food and supplies are running low, and conditions worsened with an overnight downpour.

The backup also stretches south, to Athens, where hundreds spent another day in an open square. European Union and Turkish leaders will discuss the crisis at a summit on Monday.

I’m joined now by David O’Sullivan. He’s the E.U.’s ambassador to the United States.

Mr. Ambassador, welcome back to the program.

DAVID O’SULLIVAN, Ambassador, European Union: Thank you very much.

JUDY WOODRUFF: From where we sit in the United States, this migrant crisis looks like it’s gone from a disaster to a catastrophe. How do you see it?

DAVID O’SULLIVAN: Well, this is the greatest refugee crisis we have faced since the Second World War. And, of course, it’s a global crisis, not just a crisis facing Europe.

The neighboring countries of Syria have suffered hugely, large numbers of migrants in Lebanon, Jordan and, of course, Turkey. And, of course, the European Union has seen an unprecedented increase in the number of refugees and asylum seekers, 1.25 million last year alone, which is double from the previous year.

And this has certainly put our systems and our structures under strain. I think there has been a huge outpouring of compassion and good will by European citizens, but the fact is our systems are straining under the pressure of the outflows. And we have been struggling over the last few weeks to find a comprehensive solution.

President Tusk has been touring the region of the Balkans.

JUDY WOODRUFF: He’s the head of the European Council.

DAVID O’SULLIVAN: President of the European Council.

And he has been touring in the Balkans and meeting, as you just ISIS , with the Turkish leaders. And he has just issued a letter ahead of the very important meeting which will take place on Monday, which is not only with Turkey, but also a further meeting of the European Council, indicating that he thinks there is a growing consensus emerging as to how we can find a comprehensive solution to this humanitarian tragedy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And how would that work?

DAVID O’SULLIVAN: Well, it’s a solution which necessarily has many parts.

First of all, of course, we have to try and solve the problem in Syria, which is at the origin of this. We have had the cessation of hostilities. We’re very grateful for what the United States in particular is doing in trying to broker a political settlement in Syria.

We need to assist the neighboring countries, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. We’re the largest donor of humanitarian assistance to those countries. And we have just reached a new agreement to give Turkey an additional three billion euro in order to facilitate their management of the refugees within Turkey.

In addition, we’re hoping that Turkey will limit the outflow of migrants across the Aegean into Greece, because Greece is, as you have said, clearly facing unprecedented numbers and straining to cope.

And we are working to help Greece and the other front-line states better to manage the situation. We have just agreed additional funds for humanitarian purposes within the European Union, which is an unprecedented step.

And, of course, we are also looking at relocating refugees and asylum-seekers from the front-line states to other parts of the European Union in order better to distribute the burden of looking after these people.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But as country after country is either closing or severely tightening their borders, doesn’t that make it much harder to find a solution here?

DAVID O’SULLIVAN: Well, I think we are seeing the closure of a number of frontiers or greater restrictions, but the fact is, we have managed to set up now reception centers in Greece, in Italy.

We are starting the process of relocating people from those centers into other parts of the European Union. We hope that these closures or these restrictions at frontiers are temporary and that they will in due course be removed once we get the situation more under control.

We will, of course, need to tighten our controls at the external frontier, not to close them, not to turn away refugees…

JUDY WOODRUFF: Right.

DAVID O’SULLIVAN: … but just to make sure that the reception of refugees takes place in a more orderly and structured way.

And, of course, we will have to address the issue of economic migrants, who will probably not be accepted as refugees, and who will then have to return to the countries from which they came in due course.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What proportion of these migrants we’re watching stranded at the border are people who are genuinely fleeing a war zone? And how many or what percentage or, as you describe them, are looking for better economic opportunity, and they come from…

DAVID O’SULLIVAN: Difficult to have very precise numbers, but I would say the majority are indeed people fleeing from conflict, whether in Syria or in other parts of the world.

But there is also a substantial minority who clearly are trying to make their way to Europe, for understandable reasons of trying to make a better life, but not necessarily fleeing from a conflict, and they would probably not qualify under international law for refugee status or asylum.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Is this — we heard President Francois Hollande of France say a couple of weeks that this crisis threatens to break up the European Union. Do you think it’s that close to dissolving this organization, this European Union?

DAVID O’SULLIVAN: I don’t think the European Union is going to dissolve anytime soon.

It’s a very robust commitment of European people to the integration we have achieved to the single currency, to the economic interests and political values which bind us together. But it is true, this crisis is creating strains and stresses between our member states. And we have to absolutely find a way better to manage the crisis in order avoid that these strains become too severe.

That’s what we hope will happen at the meeting Monday. It’s a tedious process. We have 28 sovereign member states. We have the Western Balkans with Turkey trying to get a coordinated response through these different interests. Does take time, and sometimes decision-making in Europe can be slow.

But I do believe that we are slowly moving towards a new phase in the crisis, where we will be able much better to manage it from Monday on.

JUDY WOODRUFF: David O’Sullivan, the European Union ambassador to the United States, thank you very much for being with us.

DAVID O’SULLIVAN: Thank you.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: And, finally tonight, our “NewsHour” Shares: something that caught our eye that might be of interest to you, too.

Last year, 30-year-old Darius Nabors decided to quit his job to go on a journey of a lifetime, his goal, to visit all 59 national parks in 59 weeks. The trip was inspired by his father, a former park ranger, and is timed to celebrate the centennial anniversary of the National Park Service.

We spoke to Nabors by phone this week as he and his friend Trevor Kemp visited Death Valley, their 34th park so far.

DARIUS NABORS, 59in59: My name is Darius Nabors. And I am visiting all 59 national parks in 59 weeks to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service.

We started our trip in Virginia, and then we drove to Ohio, to Cuyahoga Valley National Park. And then we kind of went north through Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, and up to Alaska.

One of the great things that we saw in Alaska in Katmai National Park was the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. So, in 1912, there was the largest volcanic eruption in the 20th century. And the scale was just huge. And we hiked onto this valley that had 700 feet of ash and pumice. So you went from being in this, like, verdant green Alaska forest to walking on the moon in just a matter of minutes.

We came to Washington and did one of my all-time favorite hikes, where we hiked around Mount Rainier on the Wonderland Trail. While we were there, there was also the super blood moon eclipse. And so one of the nights, we hiked back out and saw the moon as it was coming out of the eclipse and kind of rising over Mount Rainier.

And just came from Sequoia National Park, where they have some of the largest trees in the world, and the scale and immensity of these trees is really indescribable. You’re standing at the base of it, looking up, and the tree’s as tall as a football field, and you just can’t — you can’t get a sense of scale because it is so tall.

And right now, we’re actually in Death Valley. We lucked out, because once about every 10 years, Death Valley has what’s called a superbloom. And, so, when they have really big rains in the fall, the wild flowers will bloom really well in the spring. And so we’re going to go and visit fields of wild flowers in the hottest and driest place in the United States.

A lot of my friends ask me for great photos of the parks, and they ask me what my favorite park is or what’s the coolest experience, and I think that’s the really special part about it. I can’t explain to you, at least not in words, what it’s like to see Denali, the mountain, rise 7,000 feet above the surrounding mountains.

It’s one of those places where a photograph just doesn’t do it justice. And that’s the thing with a lot of these parks, is, we try and capture some great photographs, but if you want to truly see these parks, you have to get out there and visit them yourself.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Great pictures, though.

Darius Nabors and Trevor Kemp plan to finish their journey at Acadia National Park in Maine on August 25. That’s the National Park Service’s 100th birthday.

On the “NewsHour” online: Banksy, the elusive artist behind the million-dollar works of political graffiti, may have been tagged. A new mathematical analysis claims to have identified the anonymous street artist. You can see why they think they have uncovered one of the biggest mysteries in the art world. That’s on our home page.

All that and more is on our Web site, PBS.org/NewsHour.

And a reminder about some upcoming programs from our PBS colleagues.

Gwen Ifill is preparing for “Washington Week,” which airs later this evening. Here’s a preview:

GWEN IFILL: According to his foes, the Republican front-runner is a con man, a liar, and, worst of all, unelectable. Then, why have all the remaining Republican candidates promised to support him if becomes the nominee? Welcome to the world of rocks and hard places.

We sort through the latest amazing twists and turns in the 2016 campaign tonight on “Washington Week” — Judy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: On tomorrow’s edition of “PBS NewsHour Weekend,” continuing coverage of the presidential election, as voters in five more states head to the polls.

And we will be back, right here, on Monday, as I join “The Atlantic”‘s James Fallows on his trek across the country to explain how America is putting itself back together.

That’s the “NewsHour” for tonight. I’m Judy Woodruff.

Have a great weekend. Thank you, and good night.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: Loving this and hating that. When everyone’s a critic on social media, what’s a professional critic to do?

Jeffrey Brown has our “NewsHour” Bookshelf conversation.

SAMUEL L. JACKSON, Actor: Gentlemen, what are you prepared to do?

JEFFREY BROWN: When the movie “The Avengers” came out in 2012, with a cast of big stars, including Samuel L. Jackson, New York Times film critic
A.O. Scott wrote: “The secret of ‘The Avengers” is that it is a snappy little dialogue comedy dressed up as something else, that something else being a giant ATM for Marvel and its new studio overlords, the Walt Disney Company.”

A.O. SCOTT, Author, “Better Living Through Criticism”: So, the day that review appeared, Samuel L. Jackson sent out a tweet saying, “Avengers fans, we need to find A.O. Scott a new job, one he can actually do.”

JEFFREY BROWN: One he can actually do?

A.O. SCOTT: One he can actually — yes.

And I thought, well, there is probably isn’t any job I could — other job I could actually do. And I thought, well, what is this job and how do you actually do it?

JEFFREY BROWN: Scott’s answer comes in the new book “Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think About Art, Pleasure, Beauty, and Truth.”

He’s been reviewing films for The Times since 2000. But his first love was literature. He never took a film class. And his book goes well beyond film, to all kinds of art forms, to how we see the world, how we make judgments.

Is this where you write the reviews?

A.O. SCOTT: Sometimes. There have been reviews written here.

JEFFREY BROWN: We talked about it at Gorilla Coffee near his home in Brooklyn.

A.O. SCOTT: One of the things you often hear about critics is that we’re failed artists, kind of taking revenge on…

JEFFREY BROWN: You couldn’t make a movie, so you’re…

A.O. SCOTT: I couldn’t make a movie. But I would never want to make a movie. It would be terrible.

So, I kind of wanted to think about, well, but what is this? I think criticism is something that helps to sustain and support creativity and art and the appreciation of it.

So, I wanted to kind of explain how that works and what the basis of it is, and have criticism properly understood as something that we’re always doing that is a part of our lives and a part of our culture and a part of how the whole messy human enterprise of figuring out who we are and what our lives means. It moves forward.

JEFFREY BROWN: But in making the case for criticism as a kind of way of thinking and judging, there’s an implicit, actually explicit critique of our culture, right, that we don’t do that enough, right, that we don’t value looking hard or judging.

A.O. SCOTT: Right. Yes, I mean, that was one of the impulses behind the book, was to make a case for that kind of thinking, that kind of discussion, that kind of discourse, because I think there is so much premature certainty and overinflated argument.

And I just also wanted to push back against, I think, the passivity that sometimes befalls us as consumers.

JEFFREY BROWN: The other thing that you run up against all the time is the everyone’s a critic today, right, in the age of social media.

A.O. SCOTT: Right. Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: I don’t have to go to you, obviously. I can go to a million other places, and I can damn well write my own review if I want.

A.O. SCOTT: Right, and you can.

But I think that’s a good thing. And I think that what it means is that critics in positions like mine can’t just sort of assume — can’t rest on our laurels, can’t just figure, well, I’m in The New York Times, so I’m going to say what I say without challenge.

We’re going to say it, we’re going to be challenged, and we’re going to have to prove ourselves, or outwrite the competition day in and day out.

JEFFREY BROWN: We’re in an age of sequels and reboots and packaging of everything.

A.O. SCOTT: Yes. Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: What do — where do you see the world of film nowadays?

A.O. SCOTT: It’s a complicated question, because, you know, it’s easy to complain generally, and it’s correct to complain about the lack of originality, the sequels, the endless recycling of all these products.

But I think that there is, even within that system, the possibility of some real creativity. And I think also…

JEFFREY BROWN: You have to hope so, right, since you’re going to be watching a lot of movies.

A.O. SCOTT: I do hope so.

And one of the most interesting things and, in a way, confusing things about doing my job now is that the boundaries between what is — what are movies and what is TV are less and less clear.

So, there’s a lot — I don’t feel like there is any shortage of really interesting and kind of novel stuff to watch. I think the challenge is finding it and helping it, in a way, helping those movies or TV shows or whatever they are, wherever they come from, find some kind of audience.

JEFFREY BROWN: Which is part of the job of the critic.

A.O. SCOTT: Yes.

And it’s a very important job now, because we’re in the state of kind of cultural superabundance of glut.

JEFFREY BROWN: Sort of wonderful and horrifying at the same time.

A.O. SCOTT: It’s wonderful and horrifying at the same time.

It’s paralyzing. And we need to figure out how to help ourselves and how to help each other kind of navigate that. And it’s also true that no single critic in any discipline can kind of take it all in and then dole it out.

So, you — it’s sort of like you have to find someone, I think, who you can trust to kind of accompany you along that path and sorting through all that stuff.

JEFFREY BROWN: Find someone you trust, and get yourself to a screen, book or work of art, but, first, have another coffee.

From Gorilla Coffee in Brooklyn, I’m Jeffrey Brown for the “PBS NewsHour.”

JUDY WOODRUFF: You can find more of our book conversations on our Arts page at PBS.org/NewsHour.

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Country music doyenne Loretta Lynn’s first studio album in 12 years, “Full Circle,” is released today. Photo by David McClister

A gaggle of Canadian tourists interrupt a scheduled TV interview with Loretta Lynn. They file through the front door of her stately mansion in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, many with cameras dangling from their necks. Some sing “Coal Miner’s Daughter” to Lynn, who remains poised in her seat. She smiles as they repeat her life story back to her.

The “queen of country music” joins in, until a few tourists start to cry. “Now, don’t cry,” Lynn says. “Sing it to me.”

The scene appears around the midway mark of PBS’ “Loretta Lynn: Still a Mountain Girl,” part of the “American Masters” series. The documentary airs tonight as “Full Circle,” Lynn’s first studio album in the past 12 years, is released. Four songs into the album, the 83-year-old is preoccupied with an uncertain future.

“If there’s one thing I’ve done, I’d like to know I left someone who’s gonna miss me when I’m gone,” she sings.

The tearful tourists in her foyer will.

Loretta Lynn on a tractor. Photo provided by Loretta Lynn Enterprises Inc.

Lynn has been one of America’s most accessible celebrities. Decades before social media allowed stars to connect with fans with a tweet or behind-the-scenes Instagram photo, Lynn opened up her Tennessee ranch in the 1970s to curious fans across the nation.

Over time, she made additions to accommodate a growing fanbase. Campgrounds were installed to welcome families who made the pilgrimage by horse or RV. An 18,000-square-foot museum is filled with memorabilia, including the country superstar’s sequined, floor-length gowns. Rodeos and annual concerts are a fixture there. Gift shops sell “You Ain’t Woman Enough” t-shirts. Today, the ranch is billed as the “7th Largest Attraction in Tennessee.”

This manicured paean to Lynn is the result of a performer who toured hundreds of days, performed several shows a day, at her peak. She was known to stay hours after a show to sign autographs.

Loretta Lynn and John Carter Cash perform at the Ernest Tubb Record Shop in Nashville, Tennessee in “American Masters: Loretta Lynn: Still a Mountain Girl.” Image provided by Yap Films Inc.

“I think people should be available to all the fans. They’re the ones making the living. When you think about it, why wouldn’t you be nice to them?” Lynn said in the documentary.

Her music is also much more than a peek into someone’s life. The adulation of the Loretta Lynn Ranch hinges on a story that the singer has been telling across a towering discography, two memoirs and one Oscar-winning film: the rags-to-riches life of a coal miner’s daughter to a star turn on the Grand Ole Opry stage in Nashville.

Near the lily-white museum on the ranch property is a replica of Lynn’s ramshackle home in Butcher Hollow (or, “Holler”), a small community embedded in the coal-mining hillsides of Van Lear, Kentucky. Also recreated is “Coal Mine No. 5,” where her father worked. Lynn never forgot her roots.

“I feel it, smell it, and taste it,” Lynn said of Butcher Hollow in her second memoir, “Still Woman Enough.” “I take a little bit of Butcher Holler everywhere I go,” she said.

“Sometimes, when I’m on a giant stage in front of thousands of people, I close my eyes and drift back to the swaying trees and bubbling streams of the only home I knew until I was fourteen,” Lynn wrote.

Loretta Lynn’s childhood home in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky. Photo provided by Loretta Lynn Enterprises Inc.

One of eight children, the Appalachian mountain girl grew up in a home with no electricity or running water. But as Lynn describes it, she didn’t grow up thinking she was poor, and mountain life meant being resourceful.

“They wasted nothing and they was loyal,” Lynn wrote.

Lynn’s family was also musical. Brother Herman Webb, 81, told the NewsHour that the kids in their community were often handed an old mandolin, guitar or fiddle so families could get together and play.

A shrinking coal town, Van Lear is also known as the birthplace of Lynn, her sisters Crystal Gayle and Peggy Sue Wright, who are also professional country music singers, and her brother Jay Lee, who played lead guitar for Lynn’s band.

Webb lives several hundred feet from the 100-year-old childhood home. And, just like his sister, welcomes any visitors who comes searching for the out-of-the-way cabin on a hill. Webb said people as far-reaching as England, Germany and Japan came looking for the four-room home. On TripAdvisor, someone called it “country music’s Mount Rushmore.”

Loretta Lynn and her husband Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn with their twins, Patsy & Peggy. Photo provided by Loretta Lynn Enterprises Inc.

When Loretta married Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn at 15, she left her humble beginnings behind. Lynn taught herself to play a $17 guitar Doo bought her. They had four children by the time she was 20. After recording her first songs, she and Doo drove across the country, stopping at any radio station they could find. As recounted in the documentary, Lynn would talk them into playing her songs, sometimes waiting three or four hours before they did.

When people speak of Lynn, they credit the singer with a blunt approach to her songcraft. She wrote lyrics that rammed headfirst into topics that weren’t typical discussions for the dining table, including details of her rocky marriage to Doo.

“She is a straight shooter. She tells it like it is,” Webb said of his sister.

Even then, not many country artists were seen as controversial as Lynn. “Before her, there wasn’t too many women singers,” Webb said, adding that Lynn joined a small group of women, including Kitty Wells and Patsy Cline, who were able to break out in the industry.

Loretta Lynn on stage. Photo provided by Loretta Lynn Enterprises Inc.

Country stations banned several of Lynn’s songs, including 1975’s “The Pill,” in which she defends birth control. “Wings Upon Your Horns” chronicles a teenager losing her virginity. “Rated X” understood the double standards against divorced women. “The women all look at you like you’re bad, and the men all hope you are,” Lynn sang in 1972.

In 1971, she released “One’s On the Way,” which was a reminder the women’s liberation movement hadn’t yet reached everywhere in the country. She ends the song with a wink: “Oh, gee, I hope it ain’t twins again!” (Lynn had twins in 1964, six children in all.)

There are also many kiss-offs in Lynn’s repertoire, often from a woman on a warpath in the face of a cheating husband. She promised to take a woman eye-ing her man to “Fist City,” admitting, “I’m not sayin’ my baby is a saint, ‘cause he ain’t.” And “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind)” is as plainspoken as can be.

“She’s never been afraid to speak her mind,” said actress Sissy Spacek, who portrayed Lynn in the 1980 film, “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” in the documentary. “Say what you will, but she’s a feminist.”

Her songs dealt with femininity and motherhood, and the most intimate details of her life, including her difficult marriage with Doo, were available for the public to hear. Lynn remained with Doo until he died in 1996, and their marital strife was the basis for many of her songs.

“I’ve always admitted that I can be mean as a snake,” Lynn said in “Enough.” “Yes, Doo hit me sometimes. And yes, I’ve been known to knock the fire out of him. I told him, ‘You hit me once and I’ll hit you back twice.’”

In the documentary, Lynn recounts a time she accidentally knocked two teeth out of Doo’s mouth.

“I heard teeth hitting the the floor, and I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m dead. I know I’m dead,” Lynn said. “But, you know, he laughed. He went around forever with two teeth missing. He was kind of proud of it,” she said.

On his deathbed, he told Lynn that she was the only woman he’s ever slept with.

Her response? When Lynn walked out of the room, she turned to Ernest Ray Lynn, one of her sons. “Did you hear that shit? He’s gonna stick to it, ain’t he?” her son quoted her as saying in the documentary.

Loretta Lynn sings “I Can’t Hear the Music,” a tribute to Doo. It contains the line, “God knows he wasn’t perfect. Ah, but then again, nobody is.” Video by YouTube user RonjaZaZa

“I’m a little sad that we’re so cosmopolitan now that we don’t write about relationships in that way,” singer Sheryl Crow said in the documentary, adding that Lynn was a “spitfire.”

Lynn has taken the same no-holds-barred approach to mortality in “Circle,” offering a smattering of new songs along with re-recordings of earlier hits, “Fist City” and “Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven.” The album also kicks off with an introduction to the first song Lynn ever wrote, as if she’s sharing a story right in your living room. It’s a legend taking stock of her legacy.

In 2004’s “Van Lear Rose,” Lynn offered a condensed song about her life. In fewer than three minutes, she touches on her Kentucky roots, her Nashville fame, her babies, the Hollywood movie and her marriage to Doo. After the musical recap, she ends on a modest note.

“I have to say that I’ve been blessed. Not bad for this ol’ Kentucky girl, I guess.”

Watch the new documentary “American Masters — Loretta Lynn: Still a Mountain Girl,” which premieres at 9 p.m. Friday on PBS. Check your local listings.

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Supporters of U.S. Republican presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz wave their signs at the Kansas Republican Caucus at the Century II Performing Arts and Convention Center in Wichita, Kansas March 5, 2016. Credit: Dave Kaup/Reuters

Watch the results as they come in live on PBS NewsHour’s election page

WICHITA, Kan. — Eager to lock up the GOP nomination without a convention fight, Donald Trump battled Saturday to pad his lead in the delegate count as four more states delivered verdicts on the fractious Republican race for president. Democrats in three states were choosing between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

Saturday’s GOP races in Maine, Kansas, Kentucky and Louisiana and Democratic contests in Nebraska, Kansas and Louisiana were largely overshadowed by Super Tuesday contests in the rear-view mirror and critical contests soon to come. But with front-runner Trump yet to win states by the margins he’ll need in order to secure the nomination before the GOP convention, every one of the 155 GOP delegates at stake on Saturday was worth fighting for.

Trump skipped a promised appearance at a convention of conservatives in the Washington area to get in one last morning rally in Kansas.

“After making this huge U-turn to Kansas, if I lose, I’m going to be so angry at you,” Trump told a crowd in Wichita.

It was anger that propelled many of his voters to the polls.

“It’s my opportunity to revolt,” said Betty Nixon, a 60-year-old Trump voter in Olathe, Kansas. She said she liked the businessman because “he’s not bought and paid for.”

In Louisiana’s primary, 74-year-old Stan Register in Baton Rouge voted for Ted Cruz – “a real conservative.”

“I don’t feel comfortable with Trump,” Register said. “Trump has not actually told what he plans on doing” as president.

Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump waves to the crowd at the end of a Trump campaign rally in New Orleans, Louisiana March 4, 2016. Credit: Layne Murdoch Jr.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, too, bid for Republican votes. But both had higher hopes for winner-take-all contests on March 15 in their home states.

On the Democratic side, Clinton hoped that strong support among African Americans in Louisiana would propel her to victory. Vermonter Sanders, trailing far behind Clinton in the delegate count, had higher hopes of making progress in Nebraska and Kansas, where the Democratic electorate is less diverse.

Heading into Saturday’s round of voting, Clinton had 1,066 delegates to Sanders’ 432, including superdelegates – members of Congress, governors and party officials who can support the candidate of their choice. It takes 2,383 delegates to win the Democratic nomination. There were 109 at stake on Saturday.

With the GOP race in chaos, establishment figures frantically are looking for any way to stop Trump, perhaps at a contested convention if none of the candidates can roll up the 1,237 delegates needed to snag the nomination.

“The Republicans are eating their own. They’ve got to be very careful,” Trump said in Wichita. “We have to bring things together.”

A Trump backer had a stern warning for those trying to block the Trump juggernaut: “If the big, fat GOP don’t like him, they don’t like me,” said 65-year-old Connie Belton, a retired homemaker from Wichita.

Kasich, lagging far behind among the Republicans, acknowledged that a sure way to grab the spotlight for his campaign would be to hurl insults at Trump. But he wasn’t biting.

“I’m with Harry Potter: I’m not going to the dark side,” he told reporters after a rally in Traverse City, Michigan, where Kasich hopes for a strong showing in Tuesday’s primary.

Rubio, for his part, has had no qualms denouncing Trump as a fraud and a “con artist.”

“It’s not enough to say, ‘Vote for me because I am angrier and over the top and am going to do and say things no one is going to do,'” he told conservatives at the conference that Trump had skipped.

Going into Saturday’s voting, Trump led with 329 delegates. Cruz had 231, Rubio 110 and Kasich 25. In all, 155 GOP delegates were at stake in Saturday’s races.

Rubio, going all-out for victory in Florida on March 15, planned to campaign in Jacksonville on Saturday afternoon.

Cruz’s schedule had him in Kansas and Idaho, which votes Tuesday.

Kasich, looking for political survival with victories in the Midwest, said Ohio would be “the crown jewel” for him.

Ahead of a debate Sunday night in Flint, Michigan, Clinton met with about 20 African-American ministers in Detroit on Saturday and said “the future” of the Supreme Court was on the ballot in November’s general election.

Sanders had events in Ohio on Saturday as the Democrats kept close watch on those two big states and their upcoming delegate hauls.

—

Benac reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Bil Barrow in Oxon Hill, Maryland; Catherine Lucy in Detroit; Melinda Deslatte in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and John Flesher in Traverse City, Michigan.

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Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump shakes hands with Maine Governor Paul LePage (R) after LePage introduced him at a campaign rally in Portland, Maine March 3, 2016. Photo by Joel Page/Reuters

PORTLAND, Maine — Before there was Donald Trump, there was Paul LePage, a brash businessman with a blunt style who bonded with blue-collar workers in an economically lagging state that previously was a reliable bastion of Democrats and moderate Republicans.

“I was Donald Trump before Donald Trump became popular,” LePage joked after throwing his endorsement behind Trump last month. Indeed, the two-term governor has taken credit for providing a template, saying he and Trump are cut from “the same cloth.”

Maine, in many ways, represents just the kind of state where Trump has resonated.

“It’s a rural state and it’s suffering through the process of post-industrialism, and that’s leaving a lot of people behind,” said Mike Cuzzi, a Democratic strategist and Maine resident. “A lot of people are feeling angry, like both the political parties have let them down.”

The Maine GOP caucuses on Saturday coincide with Republican voting in Kansas, Kentucky and Louisiana. With no public polling, there are few indicators how well Trump might fare, but he won neighboring New Hampshire.

Trump has proven especially resonant with white, working-class voters who feel left behind by an economy that has shifted away from manufacturing jobs. In Maine, Trump and LePage have drawn from voters who’ve watched as paper mills, textile mills and shoe factories have closed because of overseas competition, said Allen Holmes, a Trump supporter from Rockland. Their blunt language and promises to shake up the establishment make sense to those voters.

“They’re tapping into the frustration of Mainers,” said Holmes, a certified public accountant. He said ruffling a few feathers “is not such a bad thing.”

Like Trump, LePage started his career in business, launching a consulting firm and eventually becoming the general manager of a local chain of discount stores.

But unlike Trump, he comes from humble roots.

LePage grew up poor, and ran away from home when he was young, briefing living on the street. He shined shoes and washed dishes, and struggled with college because his first language was French. Trump, in contrast, grew up the son of a highly successful New York real estate developer.

Yet both have shaken the GOP establishment, developed reputations as sometimes crude speakers and shown a deep disdain for the media.

LePage once said he’d tell President Barack Obama to “go to hell,” and told the Portland chapter of the NAACP to “kiss my butt.”

He recently said drug dealers with names like “D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty” were coming into Maine to sell heroin and “impregnate a young white girl before they leave.” He later apologized, calling the racially charged statements a slip of the tongue.

“Donald Trump is a little bit like I am. He says what needs to be said,” LePage said Thursday as he introduced Trump at a Portland rally. “Most of all folks, he’s not afraid of the United States liberal media,” LePage said, adding: “They dislike him nearly as much as they hate me.”

LePage had originally endorsed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who dropped his bid after a disappointing showing in New Hampshire. After Christie shocked supporters by endorsing Trump, LePage followed the same day.

Justin Baggs, a young father from South Berwick who attended Trump’s rally, said LePage and Trump resonate because they say what others might think but are unwilling to say aloud.

“They know what they’re going to say is going to offend others, but they’re saying what the majority of people believe to be true,” said Baggs, 34.

Josh Tardy, a Republican activist and former lawmaker from Newport, said voters appear infatuated with the outspoken style the two share.

“They’re both bare-knuckle brawlers,” said Tardy, who supports Trump rival Marco Rubio. “They’re not ambiguous about what they say. … That’s both good and bad. But you never have to question where they’re coming from.”

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Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Barack Obama at their bilateral meeting alongside the APEC Summit in Manila, Philippines, November 19, 2015. Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

TORONTO — Justin Trudeau, the new, young prime minister of Canada with movie-star looks, is bringing his star power to the White House.

The tall, dark-haired, 44-year-old scion of one of Canada’s most famous politicians was sworn into office in November. Within weeks, President Barack Obama granted Trudeau one of the highest honors the U.S. reserves for close allies: a pomp-filled visit with plenty of time in private talks and in front of cameras with Obama, who remains popular in Canada.

Trudeau, accompanied by his wife, Sophie Gregoire, will be feted Thursday at a sparkly state dinner, the first of Obama’s final year in office and the first for Canada since April 1997.

“Obama was delighted that Trudeau got elected,” said Nelson Wiseman, a University of Toronto political science professor, offering perspective on Trudeau’s speedy invitation. “They’re both liberals. They both like to talk the same kind of language.”

Stephen Harper, Trudeau’s predecessor, is a conservative who held office for nearly a decade. His relations with Obama were strained over various issues, most notably the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline that would have run from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. After years of U.S. government reviews, Obama killed the project last year.

Trudeau’s election has ushered in a new era in Canada’s politics that he and others hope will help strengthen relations with the U.S.

“I think we’ve seen the incredible excitement that Justin generated during his campaign in Canada,” Obama said after their first meeting at a summit in the Philippines last fall. “We’re confident that he’s going to be able to provide a great boost of energy and reform to the Canadian political landscape. And we’re looking forward very much to working with him.”

Added Trudeau: “It’s going to be a wonderful time of strengthening ties between our two countries both on the economic, on the security, on the engagement with the world and on the personal level.”

Nik Nanos, a Canadian pollster, said more Americans have become interested in Canadian politics because of Trudeau.

“Not all Canadian prime ministers have star power. Justin Trudeau has star power,” Nanos said.

Trudeau channels the charisma of his father, the late Pierre Trudeau, who often flashed his intelligence and wit. Trudeau aims to restore his father’s legacy as leader of the Liberal Party, a record that was under siege during 10 years of Conservative rule under Harper.

Pierre Trudeau swept into power in 1968 on a wave of support dubbed “Trudeaumania” and, with a short interruption, served until 1984. He was often compared to John F. Kennedy and remains one of the few Canadian politicians who are recognized in America.

Justin Trudeau is a former teacher, nightclub bouncer and snowboard instructor who has three young children with his wife, a former model and TV host. The second-youngest prime minister in Canada’s history, Trudeau’s rivals made his youth an issue, but he came from behind to win a sweeping mandate.

He tapped into a desire for change among many Canadians with an unexpectedly popular campaign promise to spend billions on infrastructure in an effort to stimulate the slowing Canadian economy. He has cut taxes for the middle class and increased them for the wealthy. He delivered on a major campaign promise by taking in 25,000 Syrian refugees amid terrorism fears after the Paris attacks. He also pulled Canada’s fighters from the U.S.-led mission against the Islamic State group but more than doubled the number of military trainers on the ground.

Trudeau has also signaled seriousness about climate change, and not just Canada’s oil sector.

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Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton listens to a question as she testifies before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, on Capitol Hill in Washington October 22, 2015. Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton’s work-related emails from her private account are now public, more than 52,000 pages detailing her tenure as secretary of state but failing to resolve questions about how she and her closest aides handled classified information.

Several investigations continue into her exclusive use of a nongovernment email account and homebrew server while she was in government, an issue that has dogged her presidential campaign, even though she seems well-positioned to capture the Democratic nomination.

The correspondence between Clinton and her advisers, friends and political acquaintances offers no shocking revelations, but it sheds light on a management style she would take with her to the White House.

Some of the things we learned:

Classified information

The emails are full of sections that the State Department decided were improper for release and blanked out, ranging from personal information to national secrets.

In the end, State Department reviewers classified more than 2,000 emails, mostly at the lower “confidential” and “secret” levels. Twenty-two emails were withheld entirely from publication on grounds that they were “top secret.” None of these bore classification markings at the time they were sent and most were written by other officials.

Most of the time, Clinton and aides appeared keenly aware of the limitations of operating over an unclassified, nongovernment account. Sometimes they were frustrated by the constraints.

In a February 2010 message, Clinton exclaimed: “It’s a public statement! Just email it.” Sent moments later, the document merely said U.S. and British officials would cooperate to promote peace. “Well that is certainly worthy of being top secret,” Clinton responded sarcastically.

But the State Department’s Freedom of Information Act reviewers found plenty of cases where releasing the emails in uncensored form today, more than three years after Clinton left office, would pose diplomatic or national security concerns.

Many were written by advisers and experts, and then forwarded to Clinton by one of three close aides: Cheryl Mills, her chief of staff; Jake Sullivan, her director of policy planning; and Huma Abedin, her longtime personal assistant. All three remain in Clinton’s inner circle.

Officials describe Sullivan at the center of the most sensitive chain, concerning CIA drone strikes. These were the “top secret” emails the department would not make public even in heavily censored form.

Other messages show top aides working around the restrictions.

In February 2010, Abedin writes to Clinton about a scheduled call with Ecuador’s new foreign minister. Abedin says she is trying to get her boss a “call sheet,” but it’s classified.

In June 2011, Clinton tells Sullivan to convert talking points meant for a secure fax into “nonpaper” with “no identifying heading and send nonsecure.”

High-tech challenges

Clinton hardly comes across as a technological whiz.

At one point, she asks her communications adviser how to charge her iPad and update an app. Asked if she has wireless Internet, the secretary replies: “I don’t know if I have wi-fi. How do I find out?”

Clinton tells another aide that she is “never sure which of my emails you receive, so pls let me know if you receive this one and on which address you did.”

In her final year on the job, she apologizes to someone for being slow to respond to an email, describing her BlackBerry as having “a nervous breakdown on my dime!”

Technological problems included the State Department’s unclassified email system, too.

The department’s technology is “so antiquated that NO ONE uses a State-issued laptop and even high officials routinely end up using their home email accounts to be able to get their work done quickly and effectively,” policy chief Anne-Marie Slaughter laments in 2011.

Mills describes how hackers tried to get into her account, but says, “I am not sure we want to telegraph how much folks do or don’t do off state mail b/c it may encourage others who are out there.”

In another chain, Clinton asks assistant Nora Toiv for her email address, prompting Toiv to respond: “You’ve always emailed on my State email.” Clinton replied: “Even weirder – I just checked and I do have your State but not your gmail – so how did that happen. Must be the Chinese!”

Even though Clinton’s home email was unsecure, she and her aides expressed concern about the practices of other department officials.

Receiving a long Libya analysis, Clinton asks where the author works. Sullivan tells her it comes from one of her employees, and she responds with surprise that “he used personal account if he is at State.”

After a news story appears based on leaked classified cables, Mills states solemnly: “The leaking of classified material is a breach not only of trust, it is also a breach of the law.”

Benghazi

There was no smoking gun.

The congressional investigation into the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, may have alerted the public to Clinton’s private account, but the emails themselves offer little that wasn’t already known.

Still, it has provided significant fodder for her political opponents.

“Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an al-Qaida-like group: The Ambassador, whom I handpicked, and a young communications officer on temporary duty w(ith) a wife and two young children,” Hillary Clinton wrote to her daughter, who used an account under the alias “Diane Reynolds.”

“Very hard day and I fear more of the same tomorrow,” the secretary wrote.

Republicans on the House Benghazi Committee seized on that email as evidence Clinton quickly saw the attack as the work of Islamic extremists, not a spontaneous street protest against an anti-Muslim video – a description provided by then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice.

Sullivan assured her in later email that she never echoed that assessment.

“You never said ‘spontaneous’ or characterized the motives,” he wrote.

A year earlier, after rebels ousted and killed their longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi, Sullivan hailed his boss as “the public face” of the U.S. military intervention. While subsequent emails point to the growing post-war chaos, none cited a specific threat against the Benghazi mission.

Outside advisers

An interesting set of characters has Clinton’s ear.

No one was more prolific than 2008 campaign adviser Sid Blumenthal. He was barred from government by the Obama administration but his “sbwhoeop” email handle pops up 1,030 times in Clinton’s total email correspondence.

Clinton last year called his would-be intelligence reports “unsolicited.” But she replied to one in August 2012 with “keep ’em coming.”

Many dealt with Libya, apparently written by a former CIA official with whom Blumenthal coordinated. Others delved into Afghanistan, Egypt, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and domestic U.S. politics. Clinton often asked aides to print out Blumenthal’s advice or forwarded it to key State Department officials.

Not all were welcome.

“This one strains credulity,” Clinton wrote about a report claiming French and British intelligence services were trying to cut up Libya. “A thin conspiracy theory,” Sullivan responded. Gene Cretz, U.S. ambassador there at the time, termed another such memo “odd.”

Blumenthal worked for the Clinton family foundation and advised entrepreneurs trying to win contracts from Libya’s transitional government, and his regular missives to the secretary of state suggest a possible blurring of the lines between personal relationships and private business ventures. Such criticism has been levied repeatedly against the Clintons as they and their friends have reaped tens of millions of dollars since Bill Clinton’s presidency.

But if Blumenthal had favorable access, no email points to any favors he received.

Plenty of other individuals outside of government chimed in with advice, solicited or not, for Clinton.

They include such trusted holdovers from Bill Clinton’s presidency such as John Podesta, now heading Hillary Clinton’s campaign; think tank officials who would conceivably join a Hillary Clinton presidency, such as Neera Tanden, the Center for American Progress’ president; and foreign policy veterans, including Henry Kissinger.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a frequent interlocutor, praises her for doing the “Lord’s Work.” Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar asks for technological help. Former President Jimmy Carter pitches in on North Korea negotiations.

U.S. politics 

Domestic politics were never far from Clinton’s mind.

Secretaries of state love to describe themselves as above politics, but Clinton kept close tabs on President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, gay marriage rulings, congressional and presidential elections, and much more.

She hoped Republicans would put to rest the “‘absurd’ death panels argument” during the health care debate.

With the GOP set to crush Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections, Clinton declared herself “bewildered” by how poorly her party was delivering its message. Losing the House, she said, would be a “disaster in every way.”

When longtime Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley announced he wouldn’t run for re-election, Clinton was “in shock.” After asking a childhood friend, Betsy Ebeling, to share “all insights into this huge news,” Clinton gets a response the next day about “Rahm rumors everywhere.” White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel would later become mayor.

Clinton doesn’t hold back on Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, even ascribing nicknames to the president’s potential rivals. Mitt Romney = “Mittens.” Newt Gingrich = “Grinch.”

From Clinton’s early days as secretary of state, several emails from her inner circle viewed her public actions with an eye toward the 2016 election.

In September 2010, communications adviser Philippe Reines tells Clinton to avoid the furor over a proposed mosque near the site of the destroyed World Trade Center in New York.

“You’ll be kicking the President when he’s down. Waay down,” Reines writes. “There will be a day you need to publicly disagree with him, but that day is not Wed, Sep 8, 2010 and that issue is not the mosque.”

Rock star diplomat

Clinton was surrounded by people who cheered her every move.

“I’m being flooded with emails about how you rocked,” Abedin writes after her boss testified in January 2013 before two congressional panels on the Benghazi attack.

She wasn’t kidding.

“Twitterverse abuzz with Hillary-kvelling,” Brookings Institution president Strobe Talbott wrote, using the Yiddish word for gushing praise.

“You looked fabulous,” Abedin chimed in.

After a meme of Clinton reading her BlackBerry became a sensation, Mills told her boss: “You look cute.”

“DAMN – I LOVE YOU!” wrote Capricia Marshall when Obama nominated the longtime Clinton supporter for State Department protocol chief. “Thank you for holding firm for me — always in my foxhole! xxooo”

Former policy chief Slaughter provides many of the most obvious examples.

“I have NEVER been prouder of having worked for you,” she tells Clinton in March 2011, as the U.S. intervened in Libya. “Turning POTUS around on this is a major win for everything we have worked for.”

“Please tell HRC that she was a ROCK STAR yesterday,” Slaughter tells Sullivan after the Benghazi sessions, having since left office.

Political consultant Mark Penn was a lone dissenter, suggesting Republicans could use one moment where she pounded the desk in frustration as evidence she was rattled.

Communications adviser Philippe Reines leapt to Clinton’s defense:

“Give

Me

A

Break

You did not look rattled. You looked real. There’s a difference. A big one.”

Sullivan said Penn gave her the same advice in her losing 2008 presidential campaign. Clinton replied, “BINGO!”

Sense of humor

Clinton likes a good laugh.

So often buttoned-down on the campaign trail or diplomatic circuit, her sense of humor pours forth in emails.

When Afghanistan looks at a stricter code of conduct for women, she writes: “WHAT??? Or, more to the point, WTF??”

Clinton tries in February 2010 to call the White House herself, only to reach a disbelieving operator. She resigns to calling “like a proper and properly dependent Secretary of State – no independent dialing allowed.”

She tells Reines, disappointed to be uninvited to an all-woman gathering, that his “message cannot go through this female-only channel which is required to operate in perpetuity in a vain attempt to balance the gender scales. Try again in the next millennium. Thank you for your understanding.”

And after receiving the colorful complaints of a former Capitol colleague, Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, Clinton offers empathy, referencing the musical, “The Music Man”: “Oh, Barb, we got trouble w a capital “T” in River City.”

“Keep going,” she tells Mikulski, invoking their “home girl” Harriet Tubman, the runaway slave.

At 6 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, Clinton asks an aide: “Anything else I need to know before this year ends?”

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A man lies on the ground as others run as Turkish anti-riot police officers use tear gas to disperse supporters in front of the headquarters of the Turkish daily newspaper Zaman in Istanbul on March 5, 2016. Protests erupted after Turkish authorities seized the newspaper’s headquarters in a midnight raid. Photo by Ozan Kose/Getty Images.

Turkish residents took to the streets of Istanbul Saturday for a second day to protest the government takeover of the country’s most widely circulated newspaper.

Violent clashes between riot police and hundreds of supporters, including many employees, of the newspaper Zaman continued as bloodied and injured protestors were met with a rubber bullets, water canons and tear gas.

On Friday, hours after a Turkish court ruled control of Zaman would be wrested from its owners and handed to court-appointed trustees, police broke through a gate at the newspaper’s headquarters in Istanbul to allow a new management team to enter the building, also forcing employees to leave the premises.

The trustees will oversee the Feza Media Group, which along with Zaman daily also includes an English-language newspaper and Today’s Zaman and the Cihan news agency.

“Today, we are experiencing a shameful day for media freedom in Turkey,” said Sevgi Akarçeşme, Today’s Zaman Editor-in-Chief. “Our media institutions are being seized.”

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The court decision was handed down after a prosecutor claimed the newspaper, which has links to a moderate United States cleric Fethullah Gulen, was attempting to oust the current government, led by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Gulen has been critical of the government.

Turkey has been widely criticized for clamping down on press freedoms. The country’s media is largely controlled by media favoring the president’s administration.

On Friday, White House Spokesperson John Kirby said Turkey’s latest crackdown on the press and others was “troubling.”

Riot police use tear gas to disperse protesting employees and supporters of Zaman newspaper at the courtyard of the newspaper’s office in Istanbul, Turkey, late March 4, 2016. Selahattin Sevi/Zaman Daily/Reuters

“We urge Turkish authorities to ensure their actions uphold the universal democratic values enshrined in their own constitution, including freedom of speech and especially freedom of the press,” Kirby said. “In a Democratic society, as I’ve said many, many times, critical opinions should be encouraged, not silenced.”

The European Union also denounced the news group’s takeover, while the European Commission said in a statement the move may hurt Turkey’s chance of entering the EU.

“Any country, and in particular those negotiating EU accession, needs to guarantee fundamental rights, including freedom of expression, and due judicial process, in line with the European Convention on Human Rights,” the statement read, according to Reuters.

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Using the Hubble Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers have captured images of the farthest galaxy ever seen.

NASA said in a statement released on Thursday the galaxy, called GN-z11, formed 13.4 billion years ago, or about 400 million years after the the Big Bang took place.

The discovery brings astronomers that much closer to spotting the first galaxies that formed in the universe.

Yale University’s Pascal Oesch, a senior investigator involved in the project, said until the discovery was made the team of researchers did not believe the Hubble telescope was capable of reaching such distances.

“We’ve taken a major step back in time, beyond what we’d ever expected to be able to do with Hubble,” Oesch said. “We see GN-z11 at a time when the universe was only three percent of its current age.”

Hubble Space Telescope image shows the Galaxy GN-z11, shown in the inset, as it was 13.4 billion years in the past, just 400 million years after the big bang, when the universe was only three percent of its current age, in this image released by NASA on March 3, 2016. The galaxy is ablaze with bright, young, blue stars, but looks red in this image because its light has been stretched to longer spectral wavelengths by the expansion of the universe. Handout via Reuters

NASA will soon release the Hubble’s successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, which may help astronomers detect those first galaxies. The James Webb telescope will launch in October 2018, and if Hubble survives until then, the star explorer’s mission will be just over 28 years old.

“This new record will likely stand until the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope,”said Pieter van Dokkum, a researcher with Yale University. “This is an extraordinary accomplishment for Hubble. It managed to beat all the previous distance records held for years by much larger ground-based telescopes.”

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Ted Cruz supporters cheer on their candidate as he closes his speech during the Kansas GOP caucus at Century II in Wichita, Kan., on Saturday, March 5, 2016. Photo by Bo Rader/Wichita Eagle/TNS via Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump has won the Republican presidential primary in Louisiana.

8:57 p.m. 

Ted Cruz claimed an easy victory in Kansas, and Republicans said he won Maine in Saturday’s four-state round of Republican voting, fresh evidence that there’s no quick end in sight to the fractious GOP race for president. Cruz and Trump were in a tight race for Kentucky.

Kansas Democrats gave Bernie Sanders a win, as voters in three states chose between the Vermont senator and Hillary Clinton.

“God bless Kansas,” Cruz declared during a rally in Idaho, which votes in three days. “The scream you hear, the howl that comes from Washington D.C., is utter terror at what we the people are doing together.”

The Texas senator defeated Trump by more than a 2-to-1 margin in Kansas, and early returns showed he and Trump were in a tight races for Kentucky. Cruz, a tea party favorite, attributed his strong showing to conservatives coalescing behind his candidacy, calling it a “manifestation of a real shift in momentum.”

With the GOP race in chaos, establishment figures frantically are looking for any way to derail Trump, perhaps at a contested convention if no candidate can get enough delegates to lock up the nomination in advance. Party leaders — including 2012 nominee Mitt Romney and 2008 nominee Sen. John McCain — are fearful a Trump victory would lead to a disastrous November election, with losses up and down the GOP ticket.

“Everyone’s trying to figure out how to stop Trump,” the billionaire marveled at an afternoon rally in Orlando, Florida, where he had supporters raise their hands and swear to vote for him.

Despite the support of many elected officials in Kansas, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio came up short, raising serious questions about his viability in the race. Cruz suggested it was time for some Republican candidates to quit the race.

In Maine, party officials gave Cruz a win over Trump. Republicans also were voting in Louisiana on Saturday.

On the Democratic side, meanwhile, Kansas party officials announced that Sanders had won the state’s caucuses, but did not release a tally of the vote. Democrats also were voting Saturday in Nebraska and Louisiana.

With Republican front-runner Trump yet to win states by the margins he’ll need in order to secure the nomination before the GOP convention, every one of the 155 GOP delegates at stake on Saturday was worth fighting for.

Count Wichita’s Barb Berry among those who propelled Cruz to victory in Kansas, where GOP officials reported extremely high turnout. It was Cruz’ fifth win of the nominating race. Cruz had won Alaska, Oklahoma, Iowa and his home state of Texas.

“I believe that he is a true fighter for conservatives,” said Berry, a 67-year-old retired AT&T manager. As for Trump, Berry said, “he is a little too narcissistic.”

It was anger that propelled many of Trump’s voters to the polls.

“It’s my opportunity to revolt,” said Betty Nixon, a 60-year-old Trump voter in Olathe, Kansas. She said she liked the businessman because “he’s not bought and paid for.”

Overall, Trump had prevailed in 10 of 15 contests heading into Saturday’s voting. Rubio had one win in Minnesota.

Rubio and Ohio Gov. John Kasich both pinned their hopes on winner-take-all contests on March 15 in their home states.

On the Democratic side, Clinton hoped that strong support among African-Americans in Louisiana would propel her to victory. Vermonter Sanders, trailing far behind Clinton in the delegate count, had higher hopes of making progress in Nebraska and Kansas, where the Democratic electorate is less diverse.

Tara Evans, a 52-year-old quilt maker from Bellevue, Nebraska, said she was caucusing for Clinton, and happy to know that the former first lady could bring her husband back to the White House.

“I like Bernie, but I think Hillary had the best chance of winning,” she said.

Heading into Saturday’s voting, Clinton had 1,066 delegates to Sanders’ 432, including superdelegates — members of Congress, governors and party officials who can support the candidate of their choice. It takes 2,383 delegates to win the Democratic nomination. There were 109 at stake on Saturday.

Clinton and Sanders both campaigned in Michigan, a sign of the importance both attach to the state’s primary on Tuesday.

Clinton met with about 20 African-American ministers in Detroit and said “the future” of the Supreme Court was on the ballot in November’s general election.

Sanders, at a rally in suburban Warren, stressed his opposition to “disastrous” trade agreements that he said cost U.S. jobs. He’s hoping his emphasis on reducing income inequality plays well in a state hit hard over the years by shifting economic trends and globalization.

In the overall race for GOP delegates, including partial results for Kansas, Trump led with 338 and Cruz had 254. Rubio had 115 delegates and Kasich had 25.

Cruz will collect at least 23 delegates for winning the Republican caucuses in Kansas, Trump at least nine and Rubio at least five.

It takes 1,237 delegates to win the Republican nomination for president.

Benac reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Bill Barrow in Jacksonville, Florida; David Eggert in Warren, Michigan; Catherine Lucey in Detroit; Melinda Deslatte in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; John Hanna in Olathe, Kansas, and John Flesher in Traverse City, Michigan, contributed to this report.

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U.S. President Barack Obama delivers remarks about health insurance marketplace enrollments and the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin March 3, 2016. Relentless opposition to the president’s policies may have helped lead to the rise of Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy. Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

WASHINGTON — Republicans can blame their united stand against President Barack Obama for their party’s splintering.

Conservatives’ gut-level resistance to all things Obama – the man, his authority, his policies – gave birth to the tea party movement that powered the GOP to political success in multiple states and historic congressional majorities. Yet contained in the movement and its triumphs were the seeds of destruction, evident now in the party’s fracture over presidential front-runner Donald Trump.

Obama’s policies, from the ambitious 2010 law overhauling the health care system to moving unilaterally on immigration, roiled conservatives who decried his activist agenda and argued about constitutional overreach. “Quasi-socialist,” says Tea Party Express.

Republicans rode that anger to majority control of the House in 2010 and an eye-popping net gain of 63 seats as voters elected tea partyers and political outsiders. Four years later, the GOP claimed the Senate, too.

For all the numbers, though, Republicans were unable to roll back Obama administration policies or defeat the Democratic president in 2012, further infuriating the GOP base.

Now the party of Abraham Lincoln is engaged in a civil war, pitting establishment Republicans frightened about a election rout in November against the unpredictable Trump, who has capitalized on voter animosity toward Washington and politicians.

“There would be no Donald Trump without Barack Obama,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. No fan of Trump, Graham argued that resentment of Obama plus his own party’s attitude toward immigrants are responsible for the deep divide and the billionaire businessman’s surge.

Mainstream Republicans are hard-pressed to figure out a way forward with Trump, who has pledged to build a wall on the Mexican border, bar Muslims from entering the United States and equivocated over former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke’s support. The candidate has assembled a growing coalition of blue-collar workers, high-school educated and those craving a no-nonsense candidate.

“I think they are at a loss to try to reconcile this nihilist wing of the Republican Party with conservative principles,” said Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate.

U.S. President Barack Obama (L) sits next to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) during a meeting with the bipartisan leaders of the Senate to discuss the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia at the White House in Washington March 1, 2016. Yuri Gripas/Reuters

The health care fight proves illustrative.

The disaffected Americans embracing Trump echo the angry voices that filled town halls in the summer of 2009 as fearful voters taunted lawmakers over efforts to overhaul health care. Obama and Democrats were undaunted, pushing ahead on a remake of the system despite unified Republican opposition.

In January 2010, thanks to tea party backing and conservative outrage, Republican Scott Brown won a special election in Massachusetts, claiming the seat that liberal Sen. Ted Kennedy had held for 47 years.

That sent people a message that “if you could win in blue Massachusetts, we could win in my state,” said Sal Russo, co-founder and chief strategist of Tea Party Express. “That changed the movement from a protest movement to a political movement.”

Three months later, in March 2010, Democrats rammed Obama’s health reform through Congress as mobs of protesters chanted outside the Capitol. Not a single Republican backed it.

“Completely partisan,” said Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo.

That November, the tea party propelled Republicans shouting repeal health care to victory, among them Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand Paul of Kentucky. They defeated establishment GOP candidates more likely to compromise in Washington. Dozens of other tea party candidates captured House seats; many were making their first foray in politics.

Losers in 2010 were some of the moderate and conservative Democrats who had backed the health care law.

Along with Obama’s re-election in 2012 came another group of congressional tea partyers, including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. The movement’s strength ran headlong into Washington reality: Obama was president and Democrats still controlled the Senate. Efforts by Cruz and House conservatives to torpedo the health care law led to a partial, 16-day government shutdown in 2013.

Republicans triumphed a year later, capturing control of the Senate and knocking out some of the more moderate Democrats such as Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu and Arkansas’ Mark Pryor. In the House last year, they toppled House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, a victim of his pragmatism.

Expectations among uncompromising conservatives were sky-high. So was the disappointment. Obama’s health care plan remained the law of the land.

“It definitely led to a wave in 2010 that gave us the majority, and then, what have we done since then,” said Rep. Dennis Ross, R-Fla. “That’s our responsibility to show what we have done since then, in spite of this president.”

Trump has tapped into voter frustration even though he’s not considered tea party. At the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, made clear that their man was Cruz.

Still, Republicans recognize the power of his candidacy and the ramifications.

“The American people are fed up,” said Rep. Tom Marino, R-Pa., one of a handful of Trump backers in Congress, “and if elected officials don’t realize it, we’ll be out of jobs.”

Associated Press writers Alan Fram, Matthew Daly and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

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Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally held at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida March 5, 2016. His GOP rivals are attacking his policy shifts on immigration and torture. Kevin Kolczynski/Reuters

WARREN, Mich. — With an eye on the general election – and suddenly “flexible” on immigration – Donald Trump has backed off from some of the hardline rhetoric that has fueled his presidential campaign, at least for the moment.

“Believe it or not, I’m a unifier,” Trump offered during a raucous rally Friday in suburban Detroit. “We are going to unify our country.”

Republican adversary Ted Cruz wasn’t having it. “Donald is telling us he will betray us on everything he’s campaigned on,” he said as he campaigned in Maine, one of five states voting in weekend primaries and caucuses.

Trump’s apparent outbreak of moderation on several fronts, including the most inflammatory one, immigration, comes after a dominant Super Tuesday performance that extended his reach for the Republican nomination and as GOP establishment figures stepped up to assail him.

In the rollicking Republican debate Thursday night, Trump retreated from a position paper on his website, saying he had swung in favor of more temporary H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers. His stance against that had been one of the few specific policies he had laid out.

“I’m changing, I’m changing,” he said. “We need highly skilled people in this country.” Hours later, his campaign released a statement backing away from the new position, deepening the sense that Trump’s agenda may be less strategic than improvisational.

More broadly, he spoke of the virtues of compromise.

“In terms of immigration – and almost anything else – there always has to be some, you know, tug and pull and deal,” Trump added. “You have to be able to have some flexibility, some negotiation.”

Cruz and others lashed out at Trump’s sudden embrace of flexibility on the central issue of his campaign. “Flexible is Washington code word that he’s going to stick it to the people,” Cruz said Friday.

Republican U.S. presidential candidate Texas Senator Ted Cruz speaks at the 2016 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at National Harbor, Maryland March 4, 2016. Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Campaigning in Kansas, rival Marco Rubio said Trump has shown “constant movement” on the issue, a “pattern” the Florida senator says is “disrespectful to voters.”

“He finally took a position on … guest workers coming from abroad, and then as soon as the debate was over he changed back,” Rubio said in Topeka, Kansas. He added, “I think it indicates that this is a person who has spent zero time thinking about public policy.”

Mitt Romney, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee, followed up a lacerating speech against Trump by declaring Friday he would not vote for the billionaire if he became the standard-bearer in the fall.

Romney told NBC’s “Today” show he would “do everything within the normal political bounds to make sure we don’t nominate Donald Trump.” He also said, “I’m not running for president and I won’t run for president.”

Still, some members of Romney’s vast donor network said they were ready should he reconsider. Chicago Republican donor Bill Kunkler said he had recently spoken to Romney’s 2012 finance chairman, Spencer Zwick, and told him he would support Romney again.

“Mitt is the guy who will put the party before himself,” Kunkler said.

Also this week, Republican foreign-policy luminaries from diverse flanks of the party wrote an open letter opposing Trump’s candidacy, for his “hateful, anti-Muslim rhetoric,” his “embrace of the expansive use of torture” and more.

Trump is showing new sensitivity on these matters.

He said Friday he understands the U.S. is “bound by laws and treaties” and he will not order U.S. military officials to violate or disobey those laws if elected president. His statement attenuated earlier comments that he would revive waterboarding in interrogations – which is now illegal – and “a lot worse,” and that he would target the wives and children of suspected extremists.

This was a switch of sorts from the debate the night before.

“These animals over in the Middle East, that chop off heads, sitting around talking and seeing that we’re having a hard problem with waterboarding?” he offered in the debate. “We should go for waterboarding and we should go tougher than waterboarding.”

Despite the softened tone on some issues, though, Trump is still Trump.

He canceled an appearance at the American Conservative Union’s Conservative Political Action Conference, often a can’t-miss event for candidates catering to the right. It was there Friday that Ben Carson brought a formal end to his campaign for president, where he drew an adoring standing ovation and said there are “a lot of people who love me, they just won’t vote for me.”

Trump’s decision to skip the meeting, meanwhile, “sends a clear message to conservatives,” the unhappy group tweeted.

Trump showed no mercy for his critics when he spoke at the Detroit-area rally.

He repeatedly called Marco Rubio “Little Marco,” Cruz “Lying Ted,” and introduced a new pet name for Romney: “Stupid Mitt.”

“He is a stupid person,” the 2016 Republican front-runner said of the party’s 2012 nominee.

—

Associated Press writer Bill Barrow contributed to this report from Topeka, Kansas.

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U.S. Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders waves to the crowd at a campaign rally in Kansas City, Missouri February 24, 2016. Sanders won the Democratic caucus in Kansas on Saturday. Brian Snyder/Reuters

WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton wins Democratic presidential primary in Louisiana, her 11th state win in the 2016 presidential race.

9:04 p.m.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has won Nebraska’s Democratic presidential caucus, defeating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The victory for Sanders on Saturday marks the second time Clinton has lost the Nebraska Democratic caucuses. In 2008, then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama defeated Clinton by a 2-to-1 ratio in the state.

Both Sanders and Clinton sent organizers to Nebraska and campaigned in the state, where Democrats often get little attention given the Republican Party’s dominance.

Nebraska’s Democratic caucuses were among contests held by one or both parties Saturday in five states.

Nebraska Republicans will vote for the GOP nominee in the state’s May 10 primary.

8:28 p.m.

The Kansas Democratic Party says Bernie Sanders has won its presidential caucuses.

The party made the announcement Saturday night, but did not release any vote count or results. The Associated Press has not called the race in Kansas as it waits for those results.

A pre-caucus rally Thursday for the Vermont senator in the liberal bastion of Lawrence drew several thousand people.

His backers overcame support for rival Hillary Clinton from former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and other Democratic establishment figures in the state.

Read the party’s statement below:

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U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at the Michigan Democratic Party meeting in Detroit, Michigan March 5, 2016. Clinton won Saturday’s contest in Louisiana. Carlos Barria/Reuters

WICHITA, Kan. — Ted Cruz cinched double-barreled victories in Kansas and Maine, and Donald Trump captured Louisiana in Saturday’s four-state round of Republican voting, fresh evidence that there’s no quick end in sight to the fractious GOP race for president.

Bernie Sanders notched a win in Nebraska and state party officials gave him a victory in Kansas, while Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton snagged Louisiana.

“God bless Kansas,” Cruz declared during a rally in Idaho, which votes in three days. “The scream you hear, the howl that comes from Washington D.C., is utter terror at what we the people are doing together.”

The Texas senator defeated Trump easily in Kansas and Maine, and Trump rolled to victory in Louisiana, underscoring that his appeal knows no geographic limitation. Early returns showed Cruz and Trump were in a tight race for Kentucky.

Cruz, a tea party favorite, attributed his strong showing to conservatives coalescing behind his candidacy, calling it a “manifestation of a real shift in momentum.”

With the GOP race in chaos, establishment figures frantically are looking for any way to derail Trump, perhaps at a contested convention if no candidate can get enough delegates to lock up the nomination in advance. Party leaders — including 2012 nominee Mitt Romney and 2008 nominee Sen. John McCain — are fearful a Trump victory would lead to a disastrous November election, with losses up and down the GOP ticket.

“Everyone’s trying to figure out how to stop Trump,” the billionaire marveled at an afternoon rally in Orlando, Florida, where he had supporters raise their hands and swear to vote for him.

Despite the support of many elected officials in Kansas, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio came up short, raising serious questions about his viability in the race. Cruz suggested it was time for some Republican candidates to quit the race.

In Maine, Cruz won by a comfortable margin over Trump. Republicans and Democrats also were voting in Louisiana on Saturday.

Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump showing off a painting a supporter gave him at a campaign rally held at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida March 5, 2016. Trump won Louisiana’s GOP primary. Kevin Kolczynski/Reuters

On the Democratic side, meanwhile, Sanders won by a solid margin in Nebraska and Kansas officials said he’d won the state caucuses, giving him seven victories so far in the nominating season. Clinton, who’s been doing well with African-American voters, had an easy win in Louisiana.

With Republican front-runner Trump yet to win states by the margins he’ll need in order to secure the nomination before the GOP convention, every one of the 155 GOP delegates at stake on Saturday was worth fighting for.

Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders waves to the crowd as he arrives to speak at a campaign rally in Warren, Michigan, March 5, 2016. Jim Young/Reuters

Count Wichita’s Barb Berry among those who propelled Cruz to victory in Kansas, where GOP officials reported extremely high turnout. It was Cruz’ fifth win of the nominating race. Cruz had won Alaska, Oklahoma, Iowa and his home state of Texas.

“I believe that he is a true fighter for conservatives,” said Berry, a 67-year-old retired AT&T manager. As for Trump, Berry said, “he is a little too narcissistic.”

It was anger that propelled many of Trump’s voters to the polls.

“It’s my opportunity to revolt,” said Betty Nixon, a 60-year-old Trump voter in Olathe, Kansas. She said she liked the businessman because “he’s not bought and paid for.”

Overall, Trump had prevailed in 10 of 15 contests heading into Saturday’s voting. Rubio had one win in Minnesota.

Rubio and Ohio Gov. John Kasich both pinned their hopes on winner-take-all contests on March 15 in their home states.

On the Democratic side, Clinton hoped that strong support among African-Americans in Louisiana would propel her to victory. Vermonter Sanders, trailing far behind Clinton in the delegate count, had higher hopes of making progress in Nebraska and Kansas, where the Democratic electorate is less diverse.

Tara Evans, a 52-year-old quilt maker from Bellevue, Nebraska, said she was caucusing for Clinton, and happy to know that the former first lady could bring her husband back to the White House.

“I like Bernie, but I think Hillary had the best chance of winning,” she said.

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz speaks at the Kansas Republican Caucus at the Century II Performing Arts and Convention Center in Wichita, Kansas March 5, 2016. REUTERS/Dave Kaup – RTS9GJH

Heading into Saturday’s voting, Clinton had 1,066 delegates to Sanders’ 432, including superdelegates — members of Congress, governors and party officials who can support the candidate of their choice. It takes 2,383 delegates to win the Democratic nomination. There were 109 at stake on Saturday.

Clinton and Sanders both campaigned in Michigan, a sign of the importance both attach to the state’s primary on Tuesday.

Clinton met with about 20 African-American ministers in Detroit and said “the future” of the Supreme Court was on the ballot in November’s general election.

Sanders, at a rally in suburban Warren, stressed his opposition to “disastrous” trade agreements that he said cost U.S. jobs. He’s hoping his emphasis on reducing income inequality plays well in a state hit hard over the years by shifting economic trends and globalization.

In the overall race for GOP delegates, including partial results for Kansas, Trump led with 347 and Cruz had 267. Rubio had 116 delegates and Kasich had 28.

Cruz will collect at least 36 delegates for winning the Republican caucuses in Kansas and Maine, Trump at least 18 and Rubio at least six and Kasich three.

It takes 1,237 delegates to win the Republican nomination for president.

This report was written by the Associated Press.

Benac reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Bill Barrow in Jacksonville, Florida; David Eggert in Warren, Michigan; Catherine Lucey in Detroit; Melinda Deslatte in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; John Hanna in Olathe, Kansas, and John Flesher in Traverse City, Michigan, contributed to this report.

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Former first lady Nancy Reagan died Sunday at the age of 94. 1999 file photo by Reuters

Former First Lady Nancy Reagan died Sunday morning at her home in Los Angeles. She was 94.

The cause was congestive heart failure, according to a statement by her spokeswoman, Joanne Drake.

While she may have appeared to be a traditional first lady, she evolved into an integral power player in her husband’s political success.

She was born Anne Frances Robbins in New York in 1921 — the only child of a salesman and an actress. After graduating from Smith College, Nancy became a professional actress herself. Billed as Nancy Davis, she landed a role on Broadway and went on to act in 11 films. It was in Hollywood that she met her future husband — then-actor Ronald Reagan — in 1951.

PBS NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff sat down with Mrs. Reagan back in 2010 for the PBS documentary entitled “Nancy Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime” which aired in 2011. It would be one of her last major televised interviews.

“He was unlike any actor I’d ever known. He never talked about himself,” Mrs. Reagan said. “He was very appealing to me. Good looking and attractive. I just wanted to know more about him.”

They were married in a small ceremony that following year. It was Ronald Reagan’s second marriage. The couple went on to have two children, Patti and Ron.

Actress Nancy Davis poses for a publicity photo taken in 1950. Photo from Reagan Presidential Library

On screen, the Reagans starred opposite one another on only one occasion: the 1957 movie “Hellcats of the Navy” set during WWII. But after years in the Hollywood backlots, Ronald Reagan decided to enter the Republican political arena, and became the governor of California in 1967, serving two terms. He then set his sights on the presidency in 1980, winning the election in a landslide and defeating sitting Democrat Jimmy Carter.

Nancy Reagan became the First Lady of the United States in 1981 when Mr. Reagan took office as the nation’s 40th president. Mrs. Reagan played a pivotal role behind-the-scenes throughout his two terms in office, serving as his sounding board and often weighing in on major personnel decisions.

She told an Associated Press Luncheon back in 1985, “I see the first lady as another means to keep a president from becoming isolated. I talk to people. They tell me things. And if something is about to become a problem, I’m not above calling a staff person and asking about it. I’m a woman who loves her husband and I make no apologies for looking out for his personal and political welfare.”

President Reagan and Nancy Reagan during the Inaugural Parade on Jan. 20, 1981. Reagan Presidential Library

“She was the indispensable person in his political success — save and except he himself,” recalled James Baker, President Reagan’s chief of staff. “She could be very instrumental and helpful, not that he would accept her judgment all the time because he wouldn’t, but she could nudge and gently cajole and find a way to move him forward.”

In one such example, Mrs. Reagan was able to nudge her husband toward a historic policy shift, a warming in relations with the then-Soviet Union and its leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

The Reagan administration would face a major test just 69 days into his presidency. An assassination attempt was made on Mr. Reagan’s life as he left an event in downtown Washington. The president was shot in the chest and lower arm, narrowly surviving the attack. Three others were shot and wounded, including Reagan’s press secretary James Brady who was left paralyzed. The first lady would become even more fiercely protective of her husband in the wake of that incident. She even consulted an astrologer to help determine the president’s schedule.

Nancy Reagan poses for Vogue magazine in the White House Red Room in 1981.

At the same time, the Reagans also ushered in a new era of glamour at the White House. Mrs. Reagan’s sense of style would become one of her trademarks — donning high-end designer gowns and suits, often in her signature color red. But her expensive tastes quickly became fodder for critics. With the White House in a state of disrepair after years of neglect, Nancy Reagan decided to renovate and redecorate. She was subsequently criticized for her lavish spending and entertaining in the midst of a recession.

Mrs. Reagan also used her platform as first lady to passionately speak out on a number of social issues. In 1982, she launched her major initiative — the “Just Say No” drug awareness campaign. She traveled nearly 250,000 miles around the United States and abroad speaking out against drug abuse.

After eight years in the White House, the Reagans returned to California and retired in the affluent Los Angeles neighborhood of Bel Air. In 1994, Ronald Reagan penned a letter to the nation revealing he’d been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. The former first lady became his primary caregiver as his health declined.

In 2004, former President Reagan died at the age of 93. His long illness prompted Mrs. Reagan to become a strong advocate for stem cell research and finding a cure for Alzheimer’s. She also devoted much of her later years to preserving her husband’s legacy through her work at his presidential library.

Their son — Ron Reagan — said his mother also leaves behind an important legacy of her own. “I hope that history remembers her as somebody who was dedicated to the person she loved more than anybody else on earth,” Reagan said. “That’s what her life has been about. And she did her very best to make sure that he could do his very best.”

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Republican U.S. presidential candidate Marco Rubio speaks as rival candidate Donald Trump (R) listens at the U.S. Republican presidential candidates debate in Detroit, Michigan, March 3, 2016. After Saturday’s election results, Trump called for Rubio to end his campaign for the presidency. Photo by Jim Young/Reuters

WEST PALM BEACH, Florida  — Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Saturday called on rival Marco Rubio to drop out of the White House race after the billionaire businessman won in Louisiana and Kentucky — and the Florida senator ended yet another election night with no wins.

“Marco has to get out of the race. Has to,” Trump said at a news conference at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, where dozens of friends and club members mixed in with reporters covering his campaign.

Rubio finished no better than third in any of Saturday’s four Republican primary elections and caucuses. Meanwhile, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz won in Maine and Kansas.

Trump said that Rubio had “a very, very bad night,” and said that it’s time for the race to be a two-man contest between him and Cruz.

“You’ve got to be able to win. And he has not been able to win. And I think it’s time that he drops out,” he said of Rubio. “I would love to take on Ted one-on-one. That would be so much fun.”

Rubio’s campaign promptly rejected Trump’s call and continued to attack his business record and conservative credentials.

“Trump’s history as a con artist is being exposed,” said spokesman Alex Conant. “Trump knows that Marco has the momentum in Florida and is afraid because he knows losing those 99 delegates to Marco will be a turning point in this race.”

At his news conference in Florida, where Rubio is under intense pressure to win later this month, Trump also congratulated Cruz for his victories. But he joked that it’s natural that Cruz won Maine because “it’s very close to Canada, let’s face it.”

Trump has questioned Cruz’s eligibility to be president, because the Texas lawmaker was born on Canadian soil. Many legal experts have said that Cruz is a natural born citizen who is eligible to serve as president.

With 123 delegates, Rubio is 255 delegates behind Trump in the race for the 1,237 needed to win the Republican nomination for president. Trump is leading with 378, while Cruz has 295. Ohio Gov. John Kasich has 33.

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Workers prepare the stage for the U.S. Democratic presidential candidates debate in Flint, Michigan, March 6, 2016. Photo by Jim Young/Reuters

FLINT, Mich. — The economy was taking center stage Sunday as Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders prepared to debate one another in a city in tough shape long before residents learned their drinking water was tainted with lead.

The Democratic candidates were set to face off in devastated Flint just two days before Michigan’s presidential primary, and were eager to highlight their differences on economic policy: Clinton claiming only she had a “credible strategy” for raising wages and Sanders hammering at her past support for trade deals that he says had “disastrous” consequences for American workers.

In recent days, Clinton has laid out a plan for a “clawback” of tax benefits for companies that ship jobs overseas, using the money to encourage investment in the United States.

Sanders wrote in Sunday’s Detroit Free Press that nowhere are his differences with Clinton, a former secretary of state and senator, stronger than on trade. The Vermont senator renewed his criticism of her support for the North American Free Trade Agreement and normalized trade relations with China.

“Not only did I vote against them,” he said, “I stood with workers on picket lines in opposition to them. Meanwhile, Secretary Clinton sided with corporate America and supported almost all of them.”

With Clinton continuing to widen her considerable lead in the Democratic delegate count, Sanders sees upcoming Midwestern primaries as a crucial opportunity to slow her momentum by highlighting his trade policies. After Michigan’s vote on Tuesday, the March 15 primaries include Ohio, Illinois and Missouri.

In Michigan, manufacturing jobs have rebounded from the depths of the Great Recession, but their numbers are still much lower than they were 20 years ago. Wages are lower, after adjusting for inflation, than when the recession started in December 2007.

The state’s unemployment rate has fallen to 5.1 percent, its lowest mark in more than a decade, but is still slightly higher than the national average of 4.9 percent.

Democratic presidential candidates Senator Bernie Sanders (L) and Hillary Clinton participate in the PBS NewsHour Democratic presidential candidate debate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on February 11, 2016 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The rivals will be meeting again on Sunday night in Flint, Mich. Win McNamee/Getty Images

Sanders, interviewed Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” pledged to keep his campaign going to the Democratic convention this summer even if Clinton already has clinched enough delegates to claim the nomination.

“Every state has the right to vote for the candidate of their choice,” he said.

Clinton has at least 1,121 delegates to Sanders’ 481, including superdelegates – members of Congress, governors and party officials who can support the candidate of their choice. It takes 2,383 delegates to win the nomination.

Maine Democrats were making their choices on Sunday.

It was a safe bet that the candidates would devote considerable time during their debate to the water crisis in Flint, which got scant attention from Republican candidates when they debated last week in Detroit.

Both Democrats have been outspoken about the horror of the city’s lead-tainted water. Both have visited the city and called for a strong government response.

Sanders has urged Michigan’s Republican governor, Rick Snyder, to resign over his handling of the crisis, faulting him for a “dereliction of duty.” Clinton has not.

Clinton has made it a point to frame the crisis in majority-black city in racial terms, saying it never would have taken so long to address the problem in a wealthy, white area.

Clinton, while visiting black churches in Detroit on Sunday, said she had asked that the debate be held in Flint “because we want to continue to shine a bright spotlight on what happened in that community.”

“One hundred thousand souls neglected, treated with indifference and insensitivity and finding themselves, particularly their children, suffering because your state government wanted to save money more than they wanted to help keep young kids’ lives whole,” she told church members.

The city’s water became tainted when officials switched its supply from Detroit’s system to the Flint River in 2014 to save money. The impoverished city’s government was under state control at the time. Even before the water problem was revealed, the city faced considerable challenges. Some 42 percent of residents live in poverty, according to census data, and across the city, the average per capita income is just $14,527.

—

Benac reported from Washington. Associated Press writer David Eggert in Flint contributed to this report.

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Republican presidential candidates (Lto R) Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Donald Trump and Ohio Gov. John Kasich greet each following a debate sponsored by Fox News at the Fox theatre on March 3, 2016 in Detroit, Michigan. The GOP establishment continues pushing to get Trump out of the race. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Offering anything but clarity, Republicans delivered a split verdict between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz in the latest round of presidential voting, offering fresh evidence of the turmoil still roiling the GOP after 19 states have had their say.

Trump, still the front-runner in the delegate count, bagged Kentucky and Louisiana on Saturday. Cruz, cementing his claim to be the Trump alternative, captured Kansas and Maine.

Trump said it was time for Marco Rubio to exit the race. But the Florida senator insisted he was still fixing to win his home state of Florida on March 15.

Democrats also split their votes on Saturday, with Hillary Clinton picking up a victory in Louisiana’s primary while Bernie Sanders grabbed caucus wins in Nebraska and Kansas. Even so, Sanders fell further behind in his effort to overtake Clinton’s commanding lead in delegates.

The state tally sheets so far: 12 wins for Trump; six for Cruz and one for Rubio. For the Democrats, 11 for Clinton and seven for Sanders. Trump and Clinton hold the edge in the more-important delegate count.

Puerto Rico Republicans will add their voices to the conversation on Sunday, as will Maine Democrats.

With the GOP race in chaos, establishment figures are frantically looking for any way to derail Trump, perhaps at a contested convention if no candidate can get enough delegates to lock up the nomination before the party meets in July.

Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP nominee, pushed the idea of a convention fight during a blistering anti-Trump speech this week. Romney’s address raised questions about his own willingness to seek the nomination at a convention.

Romney fueled the speculation further during an appearance Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press.” While he said he “can’t imagine” being elected by delegates at the party’s Cleveland convention in July, he added, “I don’t think anyone in our party should say, ‘Oh no, even if the people in the party wanted me to be president, I would say no to it.'”

For months, Republican leaders have linked Trump and Cruz together, arguing that neither could win in November’s general election. But the GOP elite’s fear of Trump could be stronger than its disdain of Cruz, who has cultivated a reputation for tangling with his own party’s leaders.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, also appearing on NBC, said Cruz “has made the best case thus far that he can be the alternative to Trump.” Graham, who ended his own White House bid earlier this year, said Rubio and Ohio Gov. John Kasich “have got to decide among themselves” whether they can be a realistic alternative to front-runner Trump.

Trump, at a postelection news conference in West Palm Beach, Florida, flatly predicted he’d win the nomination outright before the convention, likening it to a knockout blow in boxing.

“The way I guarantee victory is get enough delegates, so I don’t have to worry,” he said.

Cruz, for his part, said his strong showing was “a manifestation of a real shift in momentum.”

“What it represents is Republicans coalescing, saying it would be a disaster for Donald Trump to be our nominee,” he said.

Kasich, also still in the mix but far behind, was holding out hope for a better showing next week in Michigan and in his home state of Ohio on March 15.

“I will win Ohio,” Kasich said on ABC’s “This Week.” ”And it’ll be a whole new ballgame and I’ll be able to compete in a lot of these states.”

Clinton, campaigning in Detroit, said she was thrilled to add to her delegate count and expected to do well in Michigan’s primary on Tuesday.

“No matter who wins this Democratic nomination,” she said, “I have not the slightest doubt that on our worst day we will be infinitely better than the Republicans on their best day.”

Sanders, who won by comfortable margins in Nebraska and Kansas, said in an interview with The Associated Press that his solid victories were evidence his political revolution is underway.

Stressing the importance of voter turnout, he said, “when large numbers of people come — working people, young people who have not been involved in the political process — we will do well, and I think that is bearing out tonight.”

The two Democrats were preparing to spar in their seventh debate on Sunday in Flint, Michigan, with trade and economic policy sure to be prime subjects.

Clinton picked up at least 55 delegates to Sanders’ 47 in Saturday’s contests, with seven delegates yet to be allocated.

Overall, Clinton had at least 1,121 delegates to Sanders’ 479, including superdelegates — members of Congress, governors and party officials who can support the candidate of their choice. It takes 2,383 delegates to win the Democratic nomination.

Cruz won at least 64 delegates Saturday, making a small dent in Trump’s lead for Republican convention delegates. Trump picked up at least 49, Rubio at least 13 and Kasich nine.

Overall, Trump led with at least 378, Cruz had at least 295, Rubio 123 and Kasich 34. It takes 1,237 delegates to win the Republican nomination for president.

Benac reported from Washington. AP White House Correspondent Julie Pace contributed to this report.

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