Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton applauds as she speaks at a campaign rally at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, California. Photo by Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

LOS ANGELES — Already the presumptive Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton pressed for victory in California and five other states Tuesday, while Bernie Sanders hoped a strong showing would raise doubts about her historic achievement and spur superdelegate to rally around him instead.

The Democratic race was coming to an end amid new turmoil in the Republican Party. GOP leaders recoiled at Donald Trump’s comments about a Hispanic judge, with one senator even pulling his endorsement of the presumptive GOP nominee. Trump insisted his words had been “misconstrued” as an attack on people of Mexican heritage.

Clinton secured the 2,383 delegates she needed for the nomination on the eve of Tuesday’s voting, according to an Associated Press tally. Her total is comprised of pledged delegates won in primaries and caucuses, as well as superdelegates — the party officials and officeholders who can back a candidate of their choosing.

“We are at the brink of a historic, historic unprecedented moment,” she said during a rally in California on Monday.

Clinton was waiting until most of the voting was complete Tuesday night before fully reveling in becoming the first woman nominated by a major U.S. political party. She was to address supporters at a victory party in Brooklyn, where her campaign planned to run a gauzy video highlighting the achievements of women who helped clear a path.

Still, she was wasting no time moving toward the general election. Her campaign announced that she would make stops next week in Ohio and Pennsylvania, states that will be pivotal in November.

Sanders spent Tuesday making a final round of campaign stops in California, the biggest prize of the day. The Vermont senator hoped a victory would help in his so-far-unsuccessful bid to get Clinton superdelegates to switch their support.

“I think we’ve got a shot,” Sanders said of his prospects in California.

Superdelegates who were counted in Clinton’s total told the AP they were unequivocally supporting her.

Trump, after vanquishing his last opponents about a month ago, has continued to make controversial statements, frustrating party leaders.

The latest cause for GOP concern was his insistence that a judge handling a legal case involving the businessman was being unfair in his rulings. Trump has said U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel can’t be impartial because the jurist’s parents were born in Mexico and Trump wants to build a wall along the border.

Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk, who is locked in a close re-election fight, became the first lawmaker to pull his endorsement of Trump. House Speaker Paul Ryan said the businessman’s assertion was the “textbook definition of a racist comment” but he would continue to support Trump.

Trump released a statement saying he does “not feel one’s heritage makes them incapable of being impartial.” But he still questioned whether he was receiving fair treatment in the case involving the now-defunct Trump University.

If some Republicans harbored hopes of edging Trump off the Republican ticket at the party convention, that was likely to be dashed in Tuesday’s uncontested GOP primaries. Trump should end the night with enough delegates who are required by party rules to vote for him, whatever their personal views.

Trump’s shaky support among Republicans stands in stark contrast to the Democratic leaders mobilizing behind Clinton.

The former secretary of state, first lady and New York senator secured support Tuesday from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who represents a California district. And Clinton will soon have help on the campaign trail from President Barack Obama. Her 2008 foe is to endorse her as early as this week, a move meant to signal to Sanders and his supporters that it’s time to unify behind her.

Obama and Sanders spoke by phone Sunday. While the content of the call is unknown, Sanders did appear to slightly soften his rhetoric the next day, saying he would return to Vermont after the California contest and “assess where we are.”

As for any Sanders plan to keep fighting until the Democratic National Convention, Dianne Feinstein of California said Sanders and Clinton should “march on to a general election together,” and any Sanders plan to keep fighting until the Democratic national Convention “is going to make that much more difficult.”

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said that for Sanders “I think the math is unforgiving.” She said she’s hopeful he will “help us focus on making sure Donald Trump never sets foot in the Oval Office.”

Sanders’ achievements have been remarkable for a candidate who was unknown to most Americans before the 2016 campaign. He has drawn massive crowds to rallies around the country and built a fundraising juggernaut based largely on small donations online. The Vermont senator has been particularly popular with young voters, an important piece of the Democratic coalition.

Still, Clinton’s victory has been broadly decisive. She leads Sanders by more than 3 million cast votes, by 291 pledged delegates and by 523 superdelegates. She won 29 caucuses and primaries in states and U.S. territories to his 21 victories.

Heading into Tuesday’s voting, Clinton had 1,812 pledged delegates and the support of 571 of the 714 superdelegates, according to the AP count. The AP surveyed the superdelegates repeatedly in the past seven months.

New Jersey and California are the biggest prizes up for grabs Tuesday, with Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota also holding contests. The final Democratic primary will be held next week in the District of Columbia.

Pace reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Catherine Lucey in Compton, California, and Hope Yen, Stephen Ohlemacher, Lisa Lerer and Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report.

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People celebrate the passage of the minimum wage for fast-food workers by the New York State Fast Food Wage Board during a rally in New York July 22, 2015. As of Tuesday, Washington, D.C. will now join the ranks of New York in adopting a $15 minimum wage. Photo by Brendan McDermid/Reuters

D.C. lawmakers approved a measure Tuesday that would raise the hourly minimum wage to $15, joining lawmakers in New York and California who have passed similar proposals in recent months.

In an unanimous vote, the Washington, D.C. City Council approved a bill that would gradually increase the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020. From there, future increases would be linked to inflation, the Washington Post reported. In the same time frame, the base pay for tipped workers will also increase from $2.77 an hour to $5 an hour.

District Mayor Muriel Bowser pledged today to sign the measure, which is expected to hit her desk in the summer.

“I see how much it costs to live in Washington, D.C., and that cost is only going up,” the Associated Press quoted Bowser as saying. “Even at $15, it’s tough to be able to afford to live in Washington, D.C.”

On Twitter, the mayor said this latest victory in the “Fight for 15” movement would “directly benefit 127,000 workers.”

There should be an embedded item here. Please visit the original post to view it.

The call for better benefits and conditions for low-wage workers stemmed from a 2012 rally of hundreds of fast-food workers in New York demanding fair pay.

In the years since, the movement’s efforts have culminated in a series of victories for service industry workers in cities like Los Angeles and Seattle, while California and New York became the first states to adopt a statewide $15 an hour minimum wage, which will occur over several years.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: Now a different take on the 2016 presidential election.

It comes from the Senate majority leader, Republican Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. He has just published his memoir, “The Long Game,” after five terms in the U.S. Senate. He is the longest-serving senator in Kentucky history.

I sat down with the senator this morning at the offices of the National Republican Senatorial Committee here in Washington.

Senator Mitch McConnell, thank you very much for talking with us.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY), Majority Leader: Glad to be with you.

JUDY WOODRUFF: We’re here to talk about your memoir, “The Long Game.”

There’s a lot going on right now at this moment politically. And I want to get to that.

You write about the people who influenced you, of course, your mother, your father. You write about a senator from Kentucky, John Sherman Cooper, Mike Mansfield.

When you think about these people and their influence in your life, how does Donald Trump compare?

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: Well, he’s certainly a different kind of person in politics, totally different.

The Republican voters wanted somebody from outside, and they picked somebody from outside. We will see in the end whether that works out. They don’t seem to be happy with either candidate. They don’t care for Hillary Clinton and they don’t care for Donald Trump, but the American people, at least in the Republican primaries and caucuses, clearly wanted somebody totally different. And that’s who they nominated.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, and you mentioned Hillary Clinton. Today, we learned that she apparently has done something historic, become the first woman to clinch enough delegates to become the nominee of a major political party in this country.

You know her. What do you think of her?

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: Well, Hillary Clinton is a very, very experienced insider.

So, you’re going to have a race between the ultimate outsider and a long-term insider. And the American people, I think, are going to have to make a big decision about whether they’re satisfied where the country is now. If they are, then I think Hillary Clinton would get another four years, and it would be very similar to the last eight.

If, on the other hand the country, wants to dramatically go in a different direction, they’re certainly going to have the opportunity by voting for Donald Trump.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You do write also, Senator, throughout the book about your commitment to racial diversity, among other things, about your marriage to Elaine Chao, who happens to be of Chinese heritage.

You have been asked in the last few days about what Donald Trump said about the judge, federal judge of Mexican heritage, and his denouncing him. You have said you don’t in any way accept what Donald Trump has said, but when you were asked if it was racist, you didn’t answer.

Now that you have had some time to think…

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: Well, what he said was — it was outrageous and inappropriate. And I couldn’t more strongly condemn that.

The implication here is that those who came to America legally over the years are somehow second-class citizens. My wife came here at age 8 not speaking a word of English and ended up in the president’s Cabinet.

We all got here from somewhere else going back in our lineage. And I think these gratuitous attacks on Americans who got here recently or whose parents got here recently need to stop.

JUDY WOODRUFF: At this point, Donald Trump is doubling down on that statement. He is not backing off of it. If he doesn’t back off, what are the implications?

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: Well, he needs to back off. This is a time he ought to be reaching out and talking about things that the American people are consumed with, like the slow growth in the country, the lack of opportunity for all of us, the fact that they’re falling behind.

There are plenty of things he ought to be talking about, rather than taking shots at Americans because of their ethnicity.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, again, if he doesn’t back off of this and say that it was a mistake, what are the implications?

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: Well, he needs to — he needs to quit doing this.

This is not the way to bring America together. It’s not the way to unify the Republican Party, and it’s not the way to win the fall election.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And what if he doesn’t?

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: It’s not the way to win the fall election by doing what he’s been doing. It needs to stop.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson wrote today that you don’t believe Donald Trump is fit to be president. Do you believe he’s fit to be president?

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: The American people are going to make that decision. And they’re in the process of determining who the next president is going to be.

And I think, you know, it’s been pretty clear that, in the right-of-center world, that is, the primaries and caucuses, conducted among Republicans, they wanted to do something different, and that’s our nominee, and in the fall, we will see what the American people decide.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Do you think he’s fit to be president?

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: I think we need to respect the wishes of voters.

They have been busily at work making these decisions in primary after primary after primary. We will find out in the fall.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Do you believe, Senator, there’s any chance the Republicans could choose another nominee at the convention in Cleveland?

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: I think the nomination fight is over, and our nominee ought to accept that graciously and begin to reach out to other members of our party who didn’t support him and pull them together and discontinue these attacks on citizens based on their ethnicity.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What has his nomination done to the Republican Party?

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: Well, right now, we’re in great shape. We have a record number of U.S. House members, 54 senators, 31 governors, more legislators and control of legislatures, too, that at any time since the ’20s.

So, we’d like the keep it that way. The way to finish changing America is to win the White House. And I hope we can do it this fall.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Senator, people are looking at the character of their two choices this fall, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. What do they see? What should they see?

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: Well, we’re going the find out this fall. The American people have a big decision to make. We couldn’t have two more different candidates than these two.

Neither one of them are very popular, so it’s going to be for many Americans a difficult choice.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Finally, Senator, let’s talk about this remarkable book. You write very poignantly about when you were very young, having polio. Your mother lovingly took care of you. You got through that. And you refer back to it throughout the book. How has that affected your political life and your philosophy?

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: It’s bound to have had a huge impact.

I mean, my mother was confronted with the following situation. Her husband was in Europe fighting the Germans. She was — moved to be with her sister in a rural community in Alabama. And there was a big polio epidemic, I subsequently found out, in 1944. And I was one of them.

And it hits you like the flu, and then, when the flu went away, you could have all different kinds of outcomes, from dying to complete recovery. Happily enough, we were one hour’s drive from Warm Springs, where President Roosevelt had set up the polio treatment center.

My mother took me over there. They trained her how to do a physical therapy regimen and said, do it four times a day. The hard part was, don’t let him start trying to walk.

And can you imagine dealing with a 2-year-old and subsequently a 3-year-old, keeping him off his feet? My first memory in life was the last visit to Warm Springs, where they told my mother I was going to be OK, I wouldn’t have to wear a brace, and I would have a normal childhood.

So, I think it was a — it had to have been an early lesson that tenacity and hard work and sticking to it that I learned from my mother, and I have tried — applied that over and over again throughout my life.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, the book is “The Long Game.” It’s a memoir and really a wonderful read.

Thank you, Senator.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: Thank you. Appreciate it.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: Good evening. I’m Judy Woodruff. Gwen Ifill is away.

On the “NewsHour” tonight: It’s the last Super Tuesday of the primary election season. Six states cast their votes, just as Hillary Clinton crosses the delegate threshold. But Bernie Sanders says it’s still not over.

Also ahead this Tuesday:

Do you believe he’s fit to be president?

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY), Majority Leader: The American people are going to make that decision.

JUDY WOODRUFF: I sit down with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to talk about Donald Trump, the race for the White House, and the Kentucky senator’s new book.

And as states battle the federal government over which bathrooms transgender people should use, one student is pushing her school to be on the frontier of change.

MADDIE DALTON, Student, Atherton High School: It all comes down to being respected as a person. Now, that’s all relying on the fundamental assumption that you respect being transgender as a legitimate, like, concept, as a legitimate thing.

JUDY WOODRUFF: All that and more on tonight’s “PBS NewsHour.”

(BREAK)

JUDY WOODRUFF: It’s the last Super Tuesday of the 2016 primary season, and it’s something of an anticlimax. According to new delegate counts, Hillary Clinton wrapped up the Democratic nomination overnight, hours before polls opened in six states.

Meanwhile, Republican Donald Trump was the center of a firestorm in his own party over his comments about a federal judge of Mexican descent. We will have a full report after the news summary.

In the day’s other news: A car bombing killed 11 people and wounded 36 in Istanbul, Turkey. The target was a police vehicle, and seven of the dead were officers. The blast shook a neighborhood that houses universities and ancient Roman sites. It was the city’s fourth attack this year, but the Turkish president vowed not to be intimidated.

PRESIDENT RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN, Turkey (through interpreter): These terrorist activities, these steps are being taken against those responsible for providing security. This is unforgivable, inexcusable. We will continue our struggle against the terrorists until the end, fearlessly and tirelessly.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The escalation in violence is blamed mostly on Kurdish rebels and Islamic State militants.

The leaders of the world’s two largest democracies met today, with climate change high on the agenda. President Obama welcomed India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the White House. They discussed getting India to join a landmark climate change agreement this year, among other things. India is the world’s third largest carbon emitter, after China and the U.S.

Another set of high-level talks between the U.S. and China wrapped up today in Beijing. Secretary of State John Kerry urged the Chinese to reduce barriers for foreign businesses. The Chinese, in turn, agreed to stop flooding global markets with excess steel. There was no progress reported on territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

Here in the U.S., the Pacific Northwest kicked off a major earthquake and tsunami drill today. The four-day event dubbed Cascadia Rising assumes a catastrophic quake just 95 miles off the Oregon coast. The affected area would include the cities of Seattle and Portland. Both U.S. and Canadian agencies are taking part in the drill.

KENNETH MURPHY, FEMA: These type of events are survivable. If you take the time to make some personal preparations, and work with your family and how you’re going to communicate, and then how you’re going to help your neighbors and your community and so forth, that will make probably the biggest difference.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Some 20,000 people will be involved in the exercise.

On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones industrial average gained about 18 points to close at 17938. The Nasdaq fell seven points, and the S&P 500 added two. And oil closed above $50 a barrel for the first time since July.

And the last surviving 9/11 search dog has died in Texas at age 16. In 2001, Bretagne, a golden retriever, helped hunt for human remains at the World Trade Center site. She was euthanized Monday at a clinic outside Houston, after suffering kidney failure. First-responders lined the sidewalk and draped an American flag over Bretagne’s coffin.

Still to come on the “NewsHour”: six states vote as Hillary Clinton crosses the delegate threshold; Mitch McConnell on whether Donald Trump is fit to be president; mafia-linked businesses exploiting migrants in Italy; and much more.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: First up: the 2016 contest for president.

From one end of the country to the other, it was a day for voting, for delegate-counting, distancing, and a little explaining.

WOMAN: You think you’re going here today?

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS, Democratic Presidential Candidate: I think we got a shot.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Senator Bernie Sanders making one last push in California this morning, in San Francisco, hoping not just for votes, but for an argument to keep his campaign going.

Overnight, the Associated Press declared Hillary Clinton now has enough delegates to nail down the Democratic nomination. She touted the news in Long Beach, but urged her supporters not to relax.

HILLARY CLINTON (D), Democratic Presidential Candidate: I got to tell you, according to the news, we are in the brink of a historic, historic, unprecedented moment.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

HILLARY CLINTON: But we still have work to do, don’t we?

JUDY WOODRUFF: All told, another 694 delegates are at stake in the states voting today.

Bernie Sanders appealed to his voters to disregard the delegate count.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: That’s really not accurate. And that’s not me talking. That is the Democratic National Committee, who says that the media shouldn’t lump together the pledged delegates, which are real delegates pledged to a candidate, and superdelegates, who will not be voting until July 25, and who have the right to change their mind.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But any way you count delegates, Clinton was well ahead going into the day’s primaries. Significantly, if you look at just pledged delegates, the one Sanders sees as real delegates, Clinton led Sanders by 291 this afternoon.

When superdelegates are included, the Associated Press had Clinton at the magic number, 2,383, more than 800 ahead. One of the most prominent superdelegates lined up behind her this morning. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California officially ended her neutrality on ABC.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), Minority Leader: I have voted for Hillary Clinton for president of the United States, and proud to endorse her for that position.

JUDY WOODRUFF: It is history eight years to the day since Clinton conceded the nomination in 2008 to then-Senator Barack Obama.

But as camp Clinton celebrated today, Republican Donald Trump came under intense new criticism from within his own party, at issue, his claim that a Latino judge overseeing a lawsuit against Trump University is biased against him and his claim days later that Muslim judges could also be biased.

In Washington, House Speaker Paul Ryan took Trump to task, but stopped short of rejecting the presumptive nominee.

REP. PAUL RYAN (R-WI), Speaker of the House: I disavow these comments. I regrets those comments that he made.

I don’t think — claiming a person can’t do the job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment. I think that should be absolutely disavowed. It’s absolutely unacceptable. But do I believe that Hillary Clinton is the answer? No, I do not.

Do I believe that Hillary Clinton is going to be the answer to solving these problems? I do not. I believe that we have more common ground on the policy issues of the day and we have more likelihood of getting our policies enacted with him than we do with her.

JUDY WOODRUFF: A former Trump rival, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, went further, in The New York Times. He said: “This is the most un-American thing from a politician since Joe McCarthy. If anybody was looking for an off-ramp, this is probably it.”

But, in New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie, another former rival and now a Trump backer, came to his defense.

GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE (R), New Jersey: Donald Trump is not a racist. And so the allegations that he is are absolutely contrary to every experience I have had with him over the last 14 years.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Late this afternoon, Trump himself defended his criticism of Judge Curiel, saying in a statement that his comments had been — quote — “misconstrued as a categorical attack against people of Mexican heritage.”

This even as Republican U.S. Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois reversed his earlier endorsement of the presumptive nominee, announcing that he had — quote — “concluded that Donald Trump has not demonstrated the temperament necessary to assume the greatest office in the world” — end quote.

Well, now we turn back to the Democrats, with our John Yang in Santa Monica, California, and political director Lisa Desjardins. She is in Brooklyn, New York.

Thanks to both of you for being here.

Lisa, to you first. It is a historic moment for Hillary Clinton, but, as we reported, she is telling her supporters not to relax. Is that a real worry for them?

LISA DESJARDINS: Clinton doesn’t seem worried about clinching the nomination. In fact, on background, her staff has told me that they think tonight is the night, an historic night.

They will proclaim themselves as having clinched the nomination tonight on this stage behind me. But, Judy, they want to win California. They want to go into the general election with a sign of strength. Losing California, that wouldn’t be such a sign of strength. Right now, they’re pivoting to going after Trump even more.

On her schedule, the next two public events are in Ohio and in Pennsylvania in one week. What’s significant about those states? Oh, a little thing called swing voters. Those two states will be critical to whomever wins the presidential election this year in the fall.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, John, in California, shoe on the other foot, how concerned are the Sanders — is the Sanders camp that their supporters may just fade away if they think this contest is over?

JOHN YANG: Well, Judy, if you go by social media, it may have done the other — gone the other way.

Overnight, Facebook, Twitter full of messages accusing the media of conspiring to suppress the Sanders vote here in California. Whether that translates into a big surge or a big turnout for Sanders remains to be seen.

There are about — it’s hard to judge from the polling places. The estimates are that more than half the ballots cast in today’s primary will have been mail-in ballots, mail-in votes. A check — I have been calling around to — very random, unscientific check of polling places, of poll observers in Northern California, here in the Los Angeles area, here in Santa Monica, say that the polls have been slower than they were even four years ago, when there was no real Democratic contest, in the renomination of Barack Obama.

So, we will know in a few hours what the effect is — Judy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Interesting.

So, Lisa, you were saying the Clinton folks focused on what’s next.

What are you learning about whether her message is changing, given the fact that we’re at this turning point in the campaign?

LISA DESJARDINS: Yes, Judy, tonight, Hillary Clinton is going to go all in on the women message.

She’s going to debut a video which shows repeated images of women. In fact, looking at this video, there’s almost no images of men, where she’s talking about being a woman, promoting women, and about this historic moment tonight for her.

It’s no secret she wants to win the presidency with women and also in this video minorities. So, she is pivoting fully that way, which is different than in 2008, Judy, you remember, where she said, I happen to be a woman, but I’m not running as a woman.

It seems tonight, Judy, they’re launching a message where she’s running full stop as a woman, no doubt about it. And it’s a little different. I remember being at that speech eight years ago where she conceded to Barack Obama. The campaign tonight feels like they want to really flex their muscles.

And to be honest, Judy, they are expecting Senator Sanders eventually to be magnanimous. They say they will reach out to Sanders voters, but no decision yet on whether he will be mentioned by name, at least when I talked to staff recently, tonight or not. We will have to wait and see.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, John, what are Sanders people saying about what comes next? Everybody wants to know, is he taking this all the way to the convention or not?

JOHN YANG: Well, they acknowledge their only path to a nomination is if they can convince superdelegates to switch from Hillary Clinton to support Senator Sanders, and that their argument would be that he is the stronger candidate against Donald Trump in the fall.
They also acknowledge that no superdelegates — they cannot name a single superdelegate who has switched. They say that they were hoping obviously for a win in California to bolster that argument. They would also argue that they had a West Coast sweep, winning Washington, Oregon state as well, but they also say that no decisions are going to be made about how to keep going forward until tomorrow, after the votes are — the results are known here.

They also say that the campaigns have been talking, the two campaigns have been talking at the staff level about the way to move forward, and they acknowledge those talks will intensify after tomorrow — Judy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, whatever the delegate count at this point, we are all on the edge of our seats, and we will be talking to both of you through the night.

John Yang, Lisa Desjardins, thanks.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: Public schools are caught in the middle of a political debate over bathrooms. The Obama administration says restricting a transgender student’s access to restrooms and locker rooms based on biological sex is discrimination and can be grounds for withholding funding.

But that directive has set off some angry reaction. Kentucky is one state where many leaders don’t agree with the president. And we look at how one school in Louisville decided to act proactively before the bigger debate began.

Special correspondent Yasmeen Qureshi of Education Week has the story. It’s part of our weekly education series, Making the Grade.

YASMEEN QURESHI: What’s it like to question your gender?

MADDIE DALTON, Student, Atherton High School: It’s a little bit scary in the very beginning, I suppose, because you know that you’re going to have to face a lot of discrimination.

Like, go through the YouTube comments on any video about trans people, and you will see, like, just how many people are still, like, openly hostile to this idea.

YASMEEN QURESHI: Seventeen-year-old Maddie Dalton is transgender. She says she’s always been a girl, but didn’t know it.

CASSANDRA KASEY, Parent: Forever, she had that little widow’s peak.

YASMEEN QURESHI: She came out to her parents when she was 15 years old.

CASSANDRA KASEY: It was chaotic at first.

And the way I felt it in the very beginning, when I was still coming to terms with it, was, if I had a friend who came to me and said that their child had come out to them as transgender, I would have thought, hooray. You know, your — this young person is becoming who they are.

So, why would I not afford my own child that same — that same blessing? So, even though it was difficult, it was the only right thing to do.

YASMEEN QURESHI: Maddie is a junior at Atherton High School in Louisville, Kentucky. She was the first openly transgender student at the school.

MADDIE DALTON: I was a little bit hesitant right at first, but I knew that, being at Atherton, I would be — I would be pretty safe.

YASMEEN QURESHI: A public high school with about 1,300 students, Atherton is one of the highest-ranked schools in the state. It’s known for its international studies program and as a place where diversity is embraced.

TONY PRINCE, Teacher, Atherton High School: Developing a safe climate for students is fundamental. And I think that we did — we were doing that here before we ever started on the transgender issue.

YASMEEN QURESHI: Humanities teacher Tony Prince supervises the school’s LGBT student group. Maddie confided in him about her newly realized gender identity.

TONY PRINCE: I asked her what that means. You know, what would the school look like to her if it were accepting of her as a transgender person? And so she wrote a little list of things.

MADDIE DALTON: I wanted it to be enforced that students and teachers should use my name and pronouns and to use the space that I identify with, so bathrooms and locker rooms.

YASMEEN QURESHI: Atherton didn’t have a protocol for transgender students. The decision was left to principal Dr. Thomas Aberli.

THOMAS ABERLI, Principal, Atherton High School: Our school protects all students, and that the issue of gender identity has simply been a demonstration of the school’s commitment to respecting all individuals in our school.

YASMEEN QURESHI: Aberli agreed to Maddie’s requests and, after much consideration, so did the school council, making it the first school in Kentucky to adopt an official policy for transgender students.

MAN: This policy is completely disregarding the privacy of all of their students.

YASMEEN QURESHI: A group of parents, students and community members publicly objected and hired an attorney to appeal the decision.

WOMAN: The girls at this school expect to be able to go into a restroom and feel safe. Because of this policy, we no longer have that assurance.

YASMEEN QURESHI: The group called for transgender students to use a private or unisex bathroom.

Why would that be a problem for you?

MADDIE DALTON: First of all, it makes you a target for bullying and, like, harassment. It puts it in everyone’s minds that you are different, and you are something to be looked at, not as, like, a person, but as whatever characteristic is differentiating you, like being trans.

YASMEEN QURESHI: After months of debate at Atherton High School, the policy was upheld, but the opposition didn’t stop there.

KENT OSTRANDER, Executive Director, The Family Foundation: Young ladies, girls, may not want a biological male in their bathroom. That’s kind of the traditional way we have done things since the founding of this nation.

YASMEEN QURESHI: Kent Ostrander is the director of The Family Foundation of Kentucky, a conservative advocacy organization. Last year, it supported a statewide bill that would have overturned Atherton’s policy. But it was never passed into law.

KENT OSTRANDER: The legislation simply said that schools could do all kinds of accommodations for their students, including transgender students. But the one thing that they could not do is put — is mix the biological sexes in a bathroom, a locker room at the same time.

SUZANNE ECKES, Indiana University: According to guidelines coming from the U.S. Department of education and the U.S. Department of Justice, that is discrimination.

YASMEEN QURESHI: Education policy professor Suzanne Eckes is referring to a letter the Obama administration sent to schools last month. It directed them to allow transgender students access to bathrooms and locker rooms based on their gender identity.

SUZANNE ECKES: The department has interpreted gender identity to fall under the Title IX law, which prohibits discrimination based on sex. We don’t have a lot of court guidance on it. So, if you’re in a state that has no litigation on this particular topic, the only thing you really have to go on is the recent “Dear Colleague” letter.

YASMEEN QURESHI: However, several Republican state leaders are advising schools to ignore the guidance, putting them at risk of losing federal funding.

KENT OSTRANDER: Why does there have to be a new federal government law telling everybody how they’re going to do the bathrooms? That’s just crazy. Why is the federal government interested in bathrooms?

Because states can make that decision on their own. Parents can make that decision.

SUZANNE ECKES: I don’t think this is a Democrat or Republican or liberal or conservative issue. This is a civil rights issue. This isn’t a states’ rights issue. This is a civil rights issue. Transgender students, for years, have been ostracized in public schools.

YASMEEN QURESHI: Nearly half of transgender teens report having suicidal thoughts. And their rates of depression and anxiety are far higher than the average.

MAN: Good morning, Atherton High School.

YASMEEN QURESHI: It’s been over two years since Atherton High School adopted its bathroom policy, and several students at the school have since come out as transgender.

Principal Aberli says that, despite early objections to the policy, most students have embraced it.

NATALIE STASTNY, Student, Atherton High School: It’s just going to the bathroom. You go do your business, then you wash your hands, and then you leave. It’s just simple. And when people make a big deal about it, it just kind of gets blown out of proportion.

NIJA MACKEY, Student, Atherton High School: Coming from, like, a religious background, like, I am Christian, and people don’t necessarily agree with that type of stuff. But I have been going to this school for two years, and it’s just routine. Like, everyone gets to the restroom, everyone gets out. It’s nothing, nothing. It’s not a big deal.

DR. THOMAS ABERLI: Something I struggled with originally was just understanding the difference between what it meant to discriminate vs. accommodate when it came to this issue. If any student said that they were uncomfortable with using a restroom, then they can choose an alternate restroom.

But we’re not to compel other people to act differently just because they make someone else feel uncomfortable. That is not what our country is about. That is not a right to privacy.

YASMEEN QURESHI: The school provides access to private faculty restrooms for any student who requests it.

MADDIE DALTON: It all comes down to being respected as a person and accepted. Now, that’s all relying on the fundamental assumption that you respect being transgender as a legitimate, like, concept, as a legitimate thing. And I think that’s where most of the trouble comes in.

YASMEEN QURESHI: In Louisville, Kentucky, this is Yasmeen Qureshi of Education Week reporting for the “PBS NewsHour.”

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JUDY WOODRUFF: Now: the sentencing in a sexual assault case at Stanford University attracting international outrage.

Last week, 20-year-old Brock Turner was sentenced to six months in jail for the assault of an unconscious woman. Turner, who was a competitive swimmer with Olympic hopes, was convicted on three felony counts, including intent to commit rape of an intoxicated woman.

The judge, who said he weighed Turner’s lack of criminal history and remorsefulness, gave him a lenient sentence. The unidentified victim read a letter in court that she later released to the news Web site BuzzFeed. It went viral.

In it, she wrote — quote — “How fast Brock swims does not lessen the severity of what happened to me, and should not lessen the severity of his punishment. If a first-time offender from an underprivileged background was accused of three felonies and displayed no accountability for his actions other than drinking, what would his sentence be?”

And joining us now is Michelle Anderson. She’s the dean of the School of Law at the City University of New York.

Dean Anderson, thank you very much for being here.

I want to read just a part of what Brock Turner’s father wrote in a letter to the judge.

He said — quote — “This is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20-plus years of life.”

How does the sentence that 20-year-old Brock Turner receive compare to other sexual assault — people who were convicted of sexual assault in similar circumstances? How do they compare?

MICHELLE ANDERSON, Dean, CUNY School of Law: Well, it’s a challenging question, because courts are really all over the map in terms of how they sentence sexual assault.

Cases like this not infrequently receive very light sentences. Sometimes, if the circumstances are different, they receive heavier sentences.

What’s interesting about this case is that it’s an unusual case, in that it’s not a he said/she said. It’s a case in which the two witnesses found the incident happening as it was occurring, and chased the defendant down, and held him until the police came. There was physical evidence corroborating the victim’s story. So, it was unusual in that sense.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The district attorney had argued for six years. As we said, the judge said six months.

What does a judge take into consideration in coming up with sentencing?

MICHELLE ANDERSON: So, judges frequently take into consideration obviously the prior history of the defendant, whether or not he or she has been convicted of other offenses, sometimes, the age of a defendant and the circumstances of the offense, how much violence was used at the time.

These are the kinds of factors that are taken into account. And so taking those factors into account is not unusual. Taking into account the duration of time that the father mentioned in his statement wouldn’t be something that would necessarily be part of — would be an ordinary factor that would be assessed.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And what about the fact that this 20-year-old man comes from what appears to be an upper-middle-class background?

MICHELLE ANDERSON: So, that’s an interesting element of this case.

What you have got is a circumstance that doesn’t comport with the stereotype of what many people believe rape is like. It’s a white defendant, someone who is — comes from a privileged background. Whatever his financial status before he attended Stanford, he certainly comes from an elite institution, was considered an All-American swimmer, an athlete of great import to the Stanford community, and with hopes of becoming an Olympic athlete.

So, those are the kinds of factors, I think, that color the way that the media and the public have responded to this case, someone who comes from extraordinary privilege, in a case that’s fairly straightforward, from a — from the — given the fact that there were witnesses and the evidence in the form of corroborative evidence on the victim’s body.

These are unusual aspects of the case. And the disparity in privilege between the defendant and the victim is also — heightens the interest in this kind of a case.

JUDY WOODRUFF: I want to ask you finally about the letter the victim read to the accused.

We haven’t identified — she hasn’t been identified, but she read out loud in the courtroom to the accused man. She said — and this is part of it — she said: “I want to show people that one night of drinking can ruin two lives, you and me. You are the cause, I am the effect. You have dragged me through this hell with you, dipped me back into that night again and again. If you think I was spared, came out unscathed, that today I ride off into sunset, while you suffer the greatest blow, you are mistaken.”

What are we left with? We know most victims don’t speak out like this. What do we — what should we take away from this?

MICHELLE ANDERSON: Well, the case is unusual because of the extraordinary articulateness of this particular victim, and the fact that she used the opportunity to say some important things about how rape is experienced by its victims.

The part of the victim’s statement that really hit home with me and I think with many other people is the part where she says, “I didn’t want my body anymore.”

And we know that rape and sexual assault can be an invasion of privacy. It can be something that degrades somebody and takes away their dignity. But the notion that it takes away one’s possession of one’s own body and that one wants to reject one’s own body, I found that very powerful, and that quotation has come up and been reposted again and again.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, it is certainly — this is a case that has certainly left, I think, an impact on many, many people.

Dean Michelle Anderson with the City University of New York Law School, thank you very much.

MICHELLE ANDERSON: Thank you.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: But, first: Europe’s problems in coping with the refugee crisis have taken a new, ominous twist, the involvement of the mafia.

Authorities in Sicily have uncovered a $4 billion fraud scheme involving a reception center for migrants. This comes as humanitarian groups predict a grim summer in the Western Mediterranean, as thousands of migrants and refugees attempt to reach Europe. Many have already died.

From Sicily, special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports.

MALCOLM BRABANT: This Norwegian tanker pulling into the Sicilian port of Augusta is a lifesaver. Its crew rescued 220 people whose overcrowded vessel sank off the southern Greek island of Crete after setting off from Egypt.

As many as 300 others are feared to have drowned, among them, the mothers of two Egyptian girls aged 3 and 7. Eighty of those on board the tanker were children. The ruthlessness of the people smugglers in North Africa dismays Giovanna Di Benedetto of Save the Children.

GIOVANNA DI BENEDETTO, Save the Children: It’s all very dangerous because people traffickers don’t have any respect for human beings, for human life, for pregnant women or children or babies. So these people are forced to do this travel in very dangerous boats.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Having survived the perilous crossing from North Africa, these unaccompanied children are attempting to phone home to let their relatives know they are safe.

This Eritrean boy begged to use a mobile phone to call his brother in Holland; 17-year-old Eliyas Bahra from Eritrea was with six friends on board an unpowered boat that was being towed by another craft. When it began to take on water, the line was cut. This was just one disaster that made May this year one of the deadliest months on record, as this footage from the Italian navy shows.

ELIYAS BAHRA, Eritrean Refugee: The first boat had a motor. Our boat not have a motor. This water full — our boat is full of water. Me and six friends are not dead. Me and six friends, altogether seven, seven not dead, 450 person dead, people.

MALCOLM BRABANT: These teenagers from Gambia in West Africa are exploring a town near the center where they are living while their asylum cases are being considered; 17-year-old Alieu Kah has dreams of furthering his education and following in the footsteps of Italian soccer star Francesco Totti. They have all witnessed too much.

ALIEU KAH, Gambian Refugee: I saw people shouting inside the river, shouting, “Help, help.” But we couldn’t help them, because our own boat is full. It’s around 120 people in one boat, 120 people. I feel very sad, because my fellow human beings are dying, and we cannot help. It’s very sad. It made me very sad.

MALCOLM BRABANT: The journey to reach Sicily was perilous on land, as well as sea. They traveled from Gambia, through Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, to Niger, and then they had to cross the Sahara Desert to Libya, where they encountered violent smugglers, who forced the migrants onto overcrowded boats.

ALIEU KAH: Libyan people, some are good, but some are not good. They shot many of our friends in their legs. They would break all their legs.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Giuseppe Bonanno Conti wants to stop the influx. He’s a regional leader of a right-wing party called New Force, and is urging Europe to emulate the uncompromising tactics of Australia, which turned back migrants vessels and eventually deterred boat people coming from South Asia.

GIUSEPPE BONANNO CONTI, President, Forza Nuova Party (through interpreter): Our navy should act like Australia’s, close our sea and not allow anyone in, so that people traffickers realize that no one can enter Italy anymore. There would no longer be mass immigration, and we would save human lives. In such an awful way, these people are fed to the fish in the Mediterranean.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Listening into the conversation was Vincenzo Rizzo, who’s concerned that Sicily has the highest unemployment rate in the European Union.

VINCENZO RIZZO, Pensioner (through interpreter): The only thing that’s planned is for refugees, Muslims, and Africans. There are no longer laws for Italians, nothing to counter unemployment. It’s as if Italians no longer existed.

MALCOLM BRABANT: But these Africans feel anything but privileged. The younger ones spend their days cycling around the countryside near Europe’s largest permanent refugee camp, where some of them have been waiting three or four years to find out whether they can stay or will be deported.

There’s a history of trouble here, because frustrations occasionally boil over. The guards are heavily armed.

Madil Sano is an I.T. graduate from Senegal who would only allow us to film him in profile.

MADIL SANO, Senegalese Refugee (through interpreter): This place is appalling. It’s like hell. It’s a huge prison. They believe that Africans are illiterate, that we don’t understand anything, that we’re like animals.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Accordion players strike up the iconic “Godfather” theme to remind tourists of Sicily’s deep-rooted mafia connections.

Across the island, small businesses have to pay protection money. The alternative is to have their livelihoods extinguished. There’s no doubt that the mafia is involved in most, if not all aspects of immigration. This week, the authorities closed down this reception center because they discovered links between the so-called nonprofit organization running it and well-known mafia families.

The finance police investigated the money trail for supplies of food, clothes and cleaning materials, and uncovered a $4 billion fraud. Local chief prosecutor Francesco Paolo Giordano is convinced that this is just the tip of a mob-controlled iceberg.

FRANCESCO PAOLO GIORDANO, Chief Prosecutor, Siracusa (through interpreter): The mafia has total control of the territory. It would be absurd not to think they have infiltrated the business of clandestine immigration.

MALCOLM BRABANT: The mafia aside, Europe is struggling to cope with the strain of the migration crisis and is doing what it can to stop a repeat of last year’s record influx, when a million people cross the Mediterranean in search of sanctuary or new opportunities.

Angela Lupo, a lawyer with the Italian Council for Refugees is predicting a long, fatal summer.

ANGELA LUPO, Italian Council for Refugees (through interpreter): There will be more and more deaths. The people traffickers are reorganizing themselves to make the highest profit, which is fundamental to them.

MALCOLM BRABANT: Some migration experts believe that these latest disasters in the Mediterranean are a direct consequence of the European Union’s deal with Turkey, which has so far stemmed the flow of migrants and refugees to Greece.

But the pressure to reach Europe has not diminished. And so traffickers and their desperate clientele are being forced to find different and more dangerous routes.

Fate has been kind to these people. After being saved from the deep, they have the gift of life. But Europe’s internal borders are being tightened with every passing day. Their struggle for a new existence is just beginning.

For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m Malcolm Brabant in Sicily.

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Hockey legend Gordie Howe watches practice for the NHL All-Star hockey game in Dallas January 22, 2007. The NHL will hold the 2007 All-Star game on Wednesday. Photo by Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters

Gordon “Gordie” Howe, professional hockey’s Iron Man, passed away Friday. He was 88.

Howe was one of the most durable athletes in history, with a career that spanned six decades and 32 professional seasons. His competitiveness and commitment earned him the nickname “Mr. Hockey.” At the time of his passing, the Hall of Famer held the records for most games (1,767) and seasons played (26) in the National Hockey League. Howe also set career milestones for goals, assists and points — all of which were broken by the hockey legend Wayne Gretzky.

One of 11 children, Howe was born in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan on March 31, 1928. He showed a natural gift on the ice from an early age, playing on five teams at once during his childhood. He developed a dexterity that allowed him to shoot a puck with either hand.

Howe attended his first National Hockey League camp at the age of 15 and signed a contract with the Detroit Red Wings two years later in 1945. His career with the Red Wings spanned 25 years, during which he won four Stanley Cup trophies and six Hart Trophies for league MVP.

Edmonton Oilers Wayne Gretzky (L) receives the Art Ross Trophy from hall of fame player Gordie Howe during the NHL Awards in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on June 10, 1987. Photo by Gary Hershorn/File Photo/Reuters

Howe retired from the NHL in 1971, but then returned to professional sports two years later to play with his two sons, Marty and Mark, in the the upstart World Hockey Association. The three Howes ultimately moved onto the WHA’s New England Whalers, which was ultimately absorbed by the NHL. The senior Howe retired for good in 1980, at the ripe age of 52.

Neurological disorders featured heavily in the later stages of Howe’s life. For many years, Howe cared for his wife, Colleen, who suffered from Pick’s disease, a rare form of progressive dementia. She passed away in 2009 at the age of 76.

Gordie Howe was diagnosed with dementia three years later. He had two disabling strokes in 2014, but he seemed to recover after receiving a stem cell transplant last summer.

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The House passed a bill Thursday to help ease Puerto Rico’s debt. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Help for debt-stricken Puerto Rico may be just weeks away as a strong House vote bolstered prospects in the Senate for a rescue package to ease the U.S. territory’s crippling $70 billion debt.

The U.S. territory owes a $2 billion payment to creditors July 1. Puerto Rico has already missed several payments to creditors while a lengthy recession has forced businesses to close, driven up the unemployment rate and sparked an exodus of hundreds of thousands of people to the U.S. mainland. Some schools on the island lack proper electricity and some hospitals have said they can’t provide adequate drugs or care.

In a rare display of political unity, the House bill had the support of President Barack Obama, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who see it as the best hope for the 3.5 million Americans on the island. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has indicated that he would like the Senate to take up the House bill.

“I suspect that now that the House has passed it, we’re going to look for an opportunity to take it up here,” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said Friday.

Some senators have opposed the legislation, though, and a single member of the Senate can slow down proceedings in the next three weeks. New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez has spoken out strongly against the House bill, saying the control board would take away the rights of ordinary Puerto Ricans and has colonialist overtones.

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said the rescue package would “make a terrible situation even worse.” He has introduced his own bill to help the territory.

The legislation would allow the seven-member control board to oversee negotiations with creditors and the courts over reducing some debt, but bill does not provide any taxpayer funds to reduce that debt. Like all U.S. states and territories, Puerto Rico cannot declare bankruptcy under federal law.

The bill would also require the territory to create a fiscal plan. Among other requirements, the plan would have to provide “adequate” funds for public pensions, which the government has underfunded by more than $40 billion.

Blumenthal said he has some concerns with the bill, including a provision that would allow the Puerto Rican government to temporarily lower the minimum wage for some younger workers. But he said he’s realistic about what may be possible, and the size of the House vote is encouraging.

“A vote of that magnitude eases a lot of the doubts here,” Blumenthal said of the Senate.

The overwhelming, bipartisan vote in favor of the bill was a victory for Ryan, who had urged his colleagues, especially reluctant conservatives in the GOP caucus, to back the bill. He participated closely in negotiations on the legislation, which was one of the first major bills he shepherded through the House since becoming speaker last fall.

Some of those conservatives did vote against the legislation, expressing concern for the bondholders and saying it could set a precedent for financially strapped states. But more than half of Republicans voted for it, joining 158 Democrats.

“The Puerto Rican people are our fellow Americans. They pay our taxes, they fight in our wars. We cannot allow this to happen,” Ryan said in a floor speech just before the bill passed.

After the vote, the White House urged the Senate to follow the House’s lead quickly.

Puerto Rico Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla has opposed the legislation but said after the vote that it is the least harmful alternative for Puerto Rico. “This will protect us from the chaos that will result from an inevitable default that looms on July 1,” he said.

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A U.S. Navy sailor, left, walks with soldiers in Joint Task Force Guantanamo’s Camp VI at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on March 22, 2016. A Senate bill would prohibit the detention facility from closing. Photo by Lucas Jackson/Reuters

WASHINGTON — The Senate is heading toward passage of a defense policy bill that would authorize $602 billion in military spending, prohibit the closing of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and require young women to register for a potential draft.

In a rare Friday session, the Senate voted 68-23 to proceed with the National Defense Authorization Act.

A vote on the legislation had been scheduled for earlier this week as lawmakers sought to resolve differences over potential amendments to the bill. Among them are measures that would allow Afghan civilians who assisted the American-led coalition to resettle in the United States, alter the military justice system to curb sexual assaults, and prohibit the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens.

The White House has threatened to veto the bill, objecting to the Guantanamo provision and others — including one that would limit the size of the president’s National Security Council staff.

Even as progress in the Senate loomed, a prominent conservative group on Friday called for the legislation to be rejected over the female draft registration requirement and a lack of funding to modernize the military after 15 years of non-stop demands.

“Regardless of whatever merits the bill may have, it deserves to be defeated because lawmakers should not force young women into military services through the Selective Service,” Heritage vice president Dan Holler said in an emailed statement.

A dispute that erupted late Thursday underscored divisions among Republicans, many of whom have called for the bill to be passed urgently.

A bipartisan group of senators is pushing to extend and expand a program that gives visas to Afghans who defied the Taliban and worked for the coalition as interpreters, firefighters and construction laborers. Without the option to leave, they and their families risk being harmed or killed by militants, the top American commander in Afghanistan has warned.

Despite broad backing, an amendment to keep the so-called special immigrant visa program from expiring bogged down after Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, objected to a vote being held.

Lee, who said he supports the Afghan visa program, demanded that senators also agree to a vote on his amendment that prevents the government from detaining indefinitely U.S. citizens apprehended on American soil for being suspected of supporting a terrorist group.

But Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., objected to a vote on Lee’s amendment, leading to a stalemate. Graham said Lee’s amendment could lead to terrorists being treated as criminals instead of enemy combatants.

The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Republican John McCain of Arizona, on Friday lamented the objections, saying that’s not the way the Senate is supposed to operate.

“I have reached a level of frustration that I would even consider changing the rules of the Senate (so) that one individual out of 100 can’t bring everything to a screeching halt,” McCain said.

Due to the Senate’s procedural rules, McCain said he was forced to object to an amendment by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., that would make a major change in how the military handles allegations of sexual misconduct.

Her measure would strip senior military officers of their authority to decide whether sex crimes and other serious offenses go to trial. That responsibility would be given instead to independent military trial counsels. Proponents of Gillibrand’s amendment say a seismic change is needed to end sexual assaults in the ranks.

But the Pentagon has objected. U.S. military officials said curbing a commander’s power to punish or pardon service members will send a message there is a lack of faith in the officer corps. They’ve also argued that removing the prosecution decision from the chain of command will mean fewer victims of sexual assault get justice.

Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, is seeking a vote on his amendment that would bar the Defense Department from spending money on the design, construction or modification of facilities in the United States to house Guantanamo detainees. Moran’s measure is spurred by the possibility of detainees being moved to the Army prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

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The 70th annual Tony Awards will air on Sunday night and all eyes will be on “Hamilton,” the story of America’s founding fathers, who threw off the yoke of monarchy. That musical will be honored at the ceremony alongside another work involving British royalty: “King Charles III,” Mike Bartlett’s fictional exploration of Britain’s most famous family, written in the style of one of Shakespeare’s history plays.

The show is nominated for five Tony Awards, including Best Play, Best Direction of a Play for director Rupert Goold, and Best Costume Design of a Play for costume designer Tom Scutt. Tim Pigott-Smith, who plays Charles, the Prince of Wales, is nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role, and Richard Goulding, who plays Prince Harry, received a nod for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role.

Theater-goers the world over remain fascinated by Britain’s royal family, which accounts for the play’s success, said Ben Brantley, chief theater critic for The New York Times. “It becomes the stuff of serious historical tragedy,” he said.

He joined Jeffrey Brown to discuss the play and other nominated productions. For more, watch the PBS NewsHour tonight.

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Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at the Crete Civic Centre in Plattsburgh, New York, on April 15, 2016. Photo by Christinne Muschi/Reuters

NEW YORK — Weary Republicans are looking for assurances that Donald Trump can maintain the discipline needed to stay on message as he prepares for a bruising general election run-up against Hillary Clinton.

As he kicks off his general election campaign with a scheduled speech Friday, a thorny question has arisen: How does the party keep Trump in check?

“A primary campaign against 16 opponents is very different and combative in a different way than a general election against a well-organized, well-funded Clinton machine,” said Rep. Chris Collins, who has been helping to coordinate Trump’s outreach to Congress.

Collins said he understood there would be lingering questions about Trump after the distracting episode, but said the speech was part of what he sees as a “total pivot” by the candidate.

“Mr. Trump is a very smart guy and wants to win,” he said after a weekly gathering with Trump staff on Thursday. “I’m convinced we’ll see a very disciplined GOP nominee moving forward.”

The judge episode arguably marked the biggest crisis of Trump’s campaign to date, and sparked a series of phone calls from concerned Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, pressing the gravity of the situation.

“I explained exactly what I thought about that comment. I said it publicly and I said it privately,” Ryan said in an interview that aired on “Good Morning America” Friday.

“I don’t know what’s in his heart,” he added. “But I do think, hope and believe that he’s going to improve the tenor of the campaign, the tone of the campaign, the kind of campaign that he’s going to run.”

It remains to be seen, however, how deeply Trump has internalized the message. Since launching his campaign, Trump has pushed back against calls by some of his closest aides and family members to adopt a more “presidential tone.” His fiery language and penchant for controversy has earned him endless free media attention and energized voters during the primaries, helping him secure victory.

“You think I’m going to change? I’m not changing,” he boomed at a press conference recently.

Again and again, he has delivered conciliatory victory speeches, only to turn up the heat against his rivals in his campaign speeches. Trump’s first test comes Friday evening as he appears in Richmond, Virginia — his first campaign rally since the primary season came to a close.

Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski dismissed the idea of an intervention, and downplayed the significance of the victory speech, noting that Trump has used teleprompters on multiple occasions to deliver specific remarks.

“From time to time, he’ll use it. But’s a function of the audience and what he wants to say. I can guarantee you this: in Richmond tonight, it will not be a teleprompter speech,” he said.

Indeed, Trump was already showing signs on Friday that general election Trump will sound a lot like the Trump displayed through the primaries.

“Pocahontas is at it again!” he Tweeted Friday morning, using his favored nickname for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who officially endorsed Clinton Thursday evening and met with her Friday, fueling speculation that she’s being considered for a running mate. “Goofy Elizabeth Warren, one of the least productive U.S. Senators, has a nasty mouth. Hope she is V.P. choice.”

To try to keep Trump, who is notoriously resistant to advice, on track, some on his team are turning more to his grown children — Eric, Don Jr. and Ivanka, as well as Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner — in the hope that they can exert influence. In addition to giving them more public roles, some campaign aides have been pushing for them to travel more with the candidate, according to a person familiar with the efforts, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about private discussions.

The goal is to try to keep Trump on message, while asserting more control over Lewandowski, who is a constant presence by Trump’s side. Lewandowski led Trump to victory in the primary with the motto “Let Trump be Trump,” and has long resisted suggestions that Trump needs to change his tone.

Lewandowski pushed back against the notion that Republicans are looking for Trump to tone down his rhetoric and stressed the candidate is not going to change.

“I don’t know if they’re saying we need to rein him in. They are not used to a presidential candidate who speaks from the heart and talks the way the American public speaks. They are used to politicians who are all talk and not action. That’s not Mr. Trump,” Lewandowski told the Associated Press, adding, “His messaging is not going to change going forward.”

Still, supporters say they’re confident that Trump is growing into his new role.

“I think Donald is learning how to be a candidate,” said John Catsimatidis, a major New York donor, as he left a closed-door gathering with Trump on Thursday. “I think he’s getting better and better at it.”

Others, however, remain doubtful.

“You know, I think everybody can change. The question is does he have the self-discipline and some control over his ego to be able to say ‘I’m wrong’ every now and then?” said former Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma on “Morning Joe” Thursday. “And I haven’t seen that.”

Colvin reported from Washington.

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View your family as a business, and as the Family CFO, manage it the way a CFO manages a business. Photo by Gary Cameron/Reuters

Americans are constantly bombarded with financial advice from well-intentioned organizations attempting to educate them on how to achieve financial security.

Unfortunately, such attempts regularly fall short. Most of this advice will not bring people any closer to financial security. While well-intentioned, most personal finance advice is ineffective because of three common shortcomings: it is too narrowly focused on financial assets; it is too simplistic to address the complex financial challenges most families face; and it is too tactical at the expense of holistic strategic planning.

Too narrow: Today’s financial education focuses exclusively on the narrow definition of managing money such as budgeting, saving, borrowing and investing. While these are critical skills required for financial security, they neglect the largest and most important asset owned by most families — their labor assets. Depending on skills and career choices, an individual can reasonably expect to generate between $1 and $3 million dollars in today’s purchasing power throughout a professional lifetime. Choices regarding education, industry, job selection and entrepreneurship impact a family’s financial health and security as much as any other decision they make. Financial literacy education must include labor management skills as a key pillar to achieving financial independence.

Too simplistic: Almost all of today’s financial literacy training is aimed at our least-educated and most financially-at-risk demographic, which means the material and content is appropriately basic. While this at-risk demographic is in dire need of appropriate advice, the rest of the population also needs sound advice as they navigate complex financial choices. Financial planning has become more complicated over the past several decades as individuals assume more risk and responsibility for their education, employment, health care and retirement. It’s time our financial literacy initiatives address such needs as we navigate this new reality.

Tactics without strategy: Today’s financial education offers tactical advice without a holistic framework for making financial decisions that are consistent with an overall customized strategy.  Advice for budgeting, saving, managing debts and risk and retirement should be considered suspect if not offered in the context of a strategic financial plan that specifically acknowledges a family’s objectives, all of their assets (including labor), risks and time horizon.

Narrow, oversimplified personal finance advice without an overall strategy might make for catchy sound bites, but it does not leave Americans equipped to manage their real-world finances. True financial literacy is the result of identifying the key decisions that impact your family’s financial security, seeing how those choices are related and ensuring that they are part of an overall strategy that is customized to the family’s unique circumstances. To achieve this, I recommend viewing your family as a business — what I call Family Inc. — and, as the Family CFO, managing it the way a CFO manages a business.

The Family CFO is responsible for managing two primary assets: labor and financial capital. The labor business involves “selling” family members’ skills and energy for money, while the asset management business involves growing that money to support your spending needs today and in the future, long after you retire. This new paradigm allows the Family CFO to use many of the time-tested tools of the world of business to identify life’s important decisions, understand how to customize your financial plan to your unique circumstances and monitor your progress on the way to winning the financial game of life. This personal finance framework results in eight principles that will help the Family CFO manage and grow their family’s wealth:

1) Play defense before offense: Given that your labor is your largest asset, the first and most important investment is to protect this asset through insurance. Disability insurance, life insurance and liability insurance protects the family from the “going out of business” scenario.

2) Long-term planning starts with short-term contingency funds: Before you can evaluate investments for your long term financial security, you must have a cash reserve to buffer your family from unexpected setbacks. This is the most important role of your financial assets.

3) Maximize the value of your largest asset: There is greater opportunity to create significant wealth from investments in your labor than investments in financial assets. Your labor must be actively managed, and the principles of investing can be applied to your career choices to increase your expected lifetime compensation.

4) Adopt a real-world asset allocation program:  Your asset allocation program must consider labor, Social Security and real estate assets — not just the value of your investments.

5) Adopt a risk profile consistent with your time horizon: With the exception of contingency funds or expected near-term large purchases such as a house, your time horizon for selling your investments is likely very long. Given this, you should be heavily invested in stocks versus bonds. In the long run, stocks are likely to deliver greater expected purchasing power with less risk than bonds.

6) Don’t confuse debt with consumption: Basic financial education often advises to avoid all debt. High-cost debt incurred to fund discretionary consumption — i.e. shopping and vacations — is best avoided, but not all debt is bad! Debt can be an important tool for the CFO to finance investments in labor development or appreciating assets.

7) Understand your risks in retirement: Volatility of investment returns is a significant risk for retirees. However, outliving your money, high costs of health care and inflation are often more problematic. These competing risks are best managed through an equity heavy portfolio complemented by insurance and annuities.

8) Family Inc. is only as secure as your succession plan:  Your family’s financial security depends on someone at the helm who is knowledgeable and competent — don’t make the mistake of putting your family at risk because you haven’t trained your replacement.

While well-intentioned, the current tools and framework for financial advice are inadequate.  Financial security is not achieved through simplistic saving tricks and stock picks, but through a holistic perspective of the financial game of life — Family Inc. — that promotes strategic and rigorous decision making about the major factors that impact long-term financial security such as education, career, spending, investing, insurance and retirement.

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Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump addresses The Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road To Majority” conference in Washington. Photo by REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

It was one of those brief exchanges that perfectly summed up the current mood in the campaign. The moment when Donald Trump tries to soften his approach and still be tough. And when evangelicals want to (politely) ask him to ease up on the punches.

Following Donald Trump’s speech to evangelical Republicans at the Road to the Majority Conference in Washington Friday, a handful of leading pastors and conservative Christian leaders met privately with the apparent nominee.

Richard Lee, a well-known minister and national religious broadcaster, was among them. The evangelical leader told PBS NewsHour that he saw Trump’s speech as reassuring – offering more specific commitments to the religious right.

And then Lee relayed a story of an exchange after the speech, with the smaller group of Christian leaders.

“Someone made some comment about well, perhaps you shouldn’t be so abrasive in certain ways,” Lee recalled, “And (Trump) very frankly said, well, ‘Thank you for that, I’ll try to do that better, but I am who I am.’”

It was a softer Trump, but, the candidate was telegraphing, the same essential Trump.

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Nick Denton, founder of Gawker, talks with his legal team before Terry Bollea, aka Hulk Hogan, testifies in court in St. Petersburg, Florida, on March 8, 2016. Bollea sued online news outlet Gawker for posting a video of him having sex with a friend’s wife. Photo by Tampa Bay Times/John Pendygraft/Reuters

Gawker Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Friday and put itself up for auction, as the company’s legal battle with former wrestler Hulk Hogan continues.

Forbes reporter Ryan Mac tweeted a press release stating that Ziff Davis LLC, which owns PC Magazine, AskMen, IGN and other publications, had “entered into an asset purchase agreement” to buy Gawker Media’s properties.

Reports earlier on Friday said that Ziff Davis LLC, the first bidder, had offered $90 to $100 million for Gawker Media. But other bidders could name a higher price for the company, according to the press release.

There should be an embedded item here. Please visit the original post to view it.

Vivek Shah, CEO of Ziff Davis, wrote in a memo to staff that he would welcome adding Gawker’s online properties to the company.

“There’s a tremendous fit between the two organizations, from brands to audience to monetization. We look forward to the possibility of adding these great brands—and the talented people who support them—to the Ziff Davis family,” Shah wrote.

Hogan, whose legal name is Terry Bollea, sued the company for invasion of privacy after it published part of a video that showed him having sex in 2012. A Florida court awarded him $115 million in March and an additional $25 million in May.

The bankruptcy filing prevents Gawker’s assets from being turned over to Bollea while Gawker appeals that decision. If that decision is upheld on appeal and Gawker is sold as part of a bankruptcy process, then a bankruptcy court will decide how the company’s assets will be redistributed to creditors — which includes Bollea.

Gawker founder Nick Denton estimated last year that the company was worth $250 to $300 million.

Last month, reports emerged that Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel had contributed $10 million to Bollea’s legal fees. Thiel, who co-founded PayPal, has a history with Gawker that stretches back to 2007, when the website published a report outing him as gay. The report was titled “Peter Thiel is totally gay, people.”

Writer Owen Thomas, who authored that report, has said it was meant to address a larger culture of homophobia in Silicon Valley. “I did discuss his sexuality, but it was known to a wide circle who felt that it was not fit for discussion beyond that circle,” Thomas told The New York Times. “I thought that attitude was retrograde and homophobic, and that informed my reporting. I believe that he was out and not in the closet.”

Thiel said that contributing to Bollea’s lawsuit was a “philanthropic” act, one meant to deter the publication from releasing stories that he said bullied their subjects.

“It’s less about revenge and more about specific deterrence,” Thiel told The New York Times. “I saw Gawker pioneer a unique and incredibly damaging way of getting attention by bullying people even when there was no connection with the public interest.”

He said Gawker’s reporting was “very painful and paralyzing for people who were targeted.”

Jason Tanz, editor-at-large for WIRED, told the NewsHour’s Hari Sreenivasan that the lawsuit was raising alarm among journalists who see Thiel’s actions as a tactic to destroy a media property through expensive litigation.

“He is not suing them for outing him. He’s suing them for Hogan, and based on his actions and based on Hogan’s actions, it doesn’t seem that what’s motivating him is justice for Hogan. It seems that what’s motivating him is, essentially, crushing Gawker through the court system. And there are a lot of people, a lot of people in the press in particular, who see that and get very, very scared.”

In an open letter to Thiel published May 26, Denton suggested that the two of them have a moderated discussion, which he said would be a “constructive exchange.”

“We can hold the discussion in person with a moderator of your choosing, in front of an audience, under the auspices of the Committee to Protect Journalists, or in a written discussion on some neutral platform such as Medium. Just tell me where and when,” Denton wrote.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: A historic week for Hillary Clinton. Bernie Sanders stays in the race, but pledges his support. And Donald Trump’s campaign tries to recover from a stumble.

That brings us to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Welcome to you both.

So, let’s talk a little bit about the history. It took, what, just 240 years, but we do now have a woman as the nominee for president of a major political party.

Did you feel the history, David, this week?

DAVID BROOKS, The New York Times: Weirdly not. Maybe I’m a chauvinist or something.

But, you know, obviously, the transformation of the role of women is the biggest event of our lifetime. It’s the biggest transformation after thousands of years of human history to getting closer to equality on that front.

But Hillary Clinton, it was so long in coming, it didn’t, to me, feel like the big seismic shift, frankly, the way Barack Obama felt in ’08, I think because she’s such a familiar figure and because the social trend has been gradual in coming, that it didn’t feel like sort of this huge, momentous breakthrough moment.

And I think it’s in part because — and this maybe speaks well of the situation we’re in — it wasn’t like a feminist tide. It was a tide of her own grit, a lot of issues, the Democratic establishment. If you polled Sanders voters vs. Clinton voters, Sanders voters were more likely to think there was structural discrimination against women than Clinton voters.

And so she rode on the tide of merit, on issues, but not necessarily a feminist tide. And so this particular event didn’t feel a seismic opening, at least to me, that, say, the Obama did — thing did.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: I’m a feminist.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: No, Golda Meir is my guide on this. The only woman prime minister of Israel said, “that women are better than men, I cannot say, but what I can say is they certainly are not worse.”

And I think we have come to that point of equality in our politics. I have to confess that, 32 years ago, when Geraldine Ferraro was named by Walter Mondale, I was emotional. I thought of my mother. I thought of my wife. I thought of my daughter. I thought — it was just very in large part, I think, because — David said it — it was such a surprise. It was such a pioneer. And this has been.

JUDY WOODRUFF: This was less of a…

MARK SHIELDS: This was. And Hillary Clinton has been a formidable, significant political figure and actor for 25 years.

And — but there was genuine emotion in that hall. You could feel it if you watched it, when she accepted that nomination, and she obviously reciprocated it. But it was done not just as a sisterhood is powerful campaign. It was a political campaign and it was an effective one.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, let’s bring it down to the politics of it.

Quite a good week for the Democrats, whether it was history or not, David. You had Hillary Clinton finished. She won California, pretty big margin. She got the president’s endorsement. She got the endorsement of the vice president. Bernie Sanders is not getting out of the race, but he now is signaling he’s going to support her.

Democrats seem to have pulled it together this week. What did you make of that?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, California was a big one. If she had lost California, then we have a whole different gestalt. We don’t have a different nominee, but we have a different feeling to the whole thing.

And so winning California, winning very convincingly, is a reminder, for all that we have been surprised by Sanders, she did win this. She won it cleanly and in a big way over the whole course of the primary season. And so she clearly deserves to be the nominee. And the Democratic big chieftains are coming together now.

The questions I would have for Clinton are that people are coming together, and they’re uniting and they’re strong, people like Warren, but this is not a year where the establishment is doing particularly well with the voters. And so I’m not sure how much it will help her in the campaign.

And while Trump’s poll numbers are really taking a hit, hers are sort of steady and they’re not steady at a great place. In three-way races — I’m really struck by the three-way races all the sudden, where she’s at 39 or 40, and Trump is at like 35, and then suddenly Gary Johnson, Libertarian candidate, is like at a 10.

And one can see there is so much dissatisfaction with those two that if Johnson could run a good campaign, he could stick around in the double digits and really he will be a big story as we talk about the rest of the year.

JUDY WOODRUFF: How much do you think, Mark, the fact that they sort of — the White House orchestrated this, this week, in a way that they just — they gave Bernie Sanders gave the space to get out when he wants to.

MARK SHIELDS: Democrats, historically, when they form a firing squad, from a circle. This was a total exception.

It was brilliantly choreographed. In addition to the president’s endorsement, a man not noted for his self-doubt, to say that she was the most qualified presidential candidate in his lifetime was quite an admission and statement.

I thought the other part of it, Judy, was the deference and respect and space they gave — given to Bernie Sanders, that he’s paid homage, he’s paid tribute, and I think deservedly so. He lost the nomination, but he won the future of the Democratic Party.

And I think the awareness of this and the awareness of the need for him not to be a Gene McCarthy, as Gene McCarthy was in 1968 when Hubert Humphrey lost the presidency to Richard Nixon by 511,000 votes, and Gene McCarthy waited, the great anti-war candidate, until six days before the election to endorse Humphrey, when, undoubtedly, that would have made a difference in the outcome.

And Bernie Sanders is not going to play this role. I think — I think all of that was good and positive and encouraging. And the idea that the Democrats are going to have a peaceful convention, they’re on the love boat now. A week ago, it looked like a civil war, or two weeks ago.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Yes.

MARK SHIELDS: And the Republicans, who looked were going to have a boring convention, now there’s a restiveness and restlessness in the ranks.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, the two of you have been saying, I think, for some weeks that you don’t think Hillary Clinton has a single message for her campaign. And, David, you were just hinting that that is still the case.

Where do you come down, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, she doesn’t.

The reality is, this is a change election year. As popular as Barack Obama, and he’s at 51 percent favorable rating, some — four out of five American voters want the country to head in the right, a different direction. They’re not satisfied with the economy. Barack Obama could not win a third term on a referendum.

He could if he was running against Donald Trump. But — so, there’s a change — you know, after two terms, there’s a desire for change in the country. And Hillary Clinton is a candidate of continuity. And that’s a problem. And her message as of now is the change of Donald Trump is so reckless and so dangerous, that I am the safe and sensible alternative.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Is that enough?

DAVID BROOKS: Oh, yes, probably.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

I mean, people — I still sense people will be sick of Donald Trump and they will go for her. At least she will be competent and she will be normal. But one — it’s not sufficient for the country. It’s enough politically. But it’s not sufficient for — as Sanders even spoke this week, I was really struck by how he opened the campaign really well with a core message.

But the message just sat there. He had the same message from beginning to end, the same few talking points from beginning to end. It would have been interesting to know, if he had expanded that message or taken it the next step, a different kind of issues, if he would have done better.

But Clinton has not had those issues. And her incrementalism is not sufficient, as Mark said. And what will be interesting, if she can take some of the left-wing policies — one of the things we have seen from Trump is how ideologically flexible the country is right now, that they just want different, and they’re willing to grab from column A and column B.

Trump is a flawed messenger, but if Clinton could grab some column A from the left column and some unpredictable things from the right column that could appeal like to the family we just saw in Kai’s piece, suddenly, that’s a real message.

But, as I say, a lot of this is characterological. We just haven’t seen imagination from her over the course of her political campaign. We have seen determinedness, industriousness, but we haven’t seen the unexpected.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, let’s talk about Trump. He has had a really bad week, as his campaign has gone.

Mark, he really has not backed down from the comments he made about the judge of Hispanic heritage, Mexican heritage. And you see the Republican Party struggling to try to figure out what to do about it. What shape is he in right now?

MARK SHIELDS: He’s in bad shape.

And I say that, Judy, because think about this, if you’re a Republican. A week ago, the Democrats had a terrible, terrible week. The inspector general’s reports from the State Department came through on Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail. It showed that the Clinton people had disassembled, that they had not cooperated, that they had actually made it more difficult for the investigation and had not been forthcoming.

But, in addition to that, we had the worst job creation numbers we’d had in six years. And yet Donald Trump dominated the news the whole week, and Hillary Clinton made the news and dominated it in a positive sense with her speech critical of him.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Right.

MARK SHIELDS: So, you know, Donald Trump now is going to a teleprompter, as we saw today and we saw on election night.

Donald Trump on a teleprompter is about as electrifying as the recorded message you get calling the airlines and saying, calls will be answered in the order by which they were received.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: He loses all of Donald Trump.

JUDY WOODRUFF: David, how much damage has been done? Is he going to be able to pick himself up and keep going? What do you see?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, he will be able to pick up. There will be ebbs and flows.

But we have — he’s had so many bad weeks with no effect in the polls, but, this week, there was an effect in the polls. So, he was dropped, I don’t know, six, 10 points. There was a chunk down.

And then the flaking way of the Republicans, the Ryans and even the Mitch McConnells are beginning to grow wobbly, Scott Walker. The whole party is, like, oh, no, what are we going to do?

And I understand why Ryan is trying to hang in there. He wants unity. His theory is that, if we get unified, we will — that’s the only way we can win as a party. And his theory is, I have got a policy agenda. If I hug Donald Trump, maybe he will take part of it, but if I push him away, he will never embrace my agenda, and I care most about my agenda.

But I think that is unworkable and frankly not morally sound, that policy. It’s unworkable because you can’t share a stage with Donald Trump. He’s not a sharing guy. He’s a sole figure who doesn’t do collaboration. He doesn’t do reciprocity. He doesn’t do teamwork. And you can’t have unity with a guy like that.

I wrote in my column today it’s like trying to hug a tornado. It’s just not going to work, because you will get what we just saw. And it’s immoral, or amoral, at least, because you can’t embrace somebody who says racist things because he happens to agree with your defense budget.

The character is foundational. And Ryan is trying to paper over a moral chasm with policy. And it’s just not — it’s not the right thing to do, in my view.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Pretty tough.

MARK SHIELDS: It was tough. It was a good column. And it was — David said it well.

Donald Trump, to quote David, which I’m always reluctant to do…

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: … but he has no horizontal relationships. And I think that’s true.

Mo Udall, a wonderful congressman from Arizona, said, always beware of any presidential candidate who doesn’t have friends his own age who can tell him to go to hell and — when you’re wrong. And I just don’t see that in Donald Trump.

I mean, I see a lot of relationships and a lot of vertical relationships and good relationships with his family. But, I mean, I think, Judy, the vote for president is a very personal one. And people are going to make their decisions based on, as Heraclitus said 25 centuries ago, character is destiny, and it will be in 2012 (sic).

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, he’s going to — I guess next week, he is going to try to talk about Hillary Clinton’s character.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

MARK SHIELDS: OK.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And we will see what he says.

Mark Shields, David Brooks, thank you both.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: Broadway’s 70th annual Tony Awards air Sunday night with all eyes on the musical “Hamilton.”

But, as Jeffrey Brown reports, there are many more stage productions which may provide surprises.

JEFFREY BROWN: No question about it, it was the year of “Hamilton,” and the hip-hop musical about America’s first treasury secretary received a record 16 Tony nominations.

It also took in over a billion dollars in ticket sales and helped make this a profitable, as well as buzzed-about year on Broadway. Another contender in the best musical category, “Shuffle Along,” with an all-star cast led by Audra McDonald, also got much buzz, even if it faces tough Tony odds.

In the best play category, “The Humans” and “Eclipsed” were among the standouts. The former presents a Thanksgiving gathering where tensions reach a boiling point and family fault lines are exposed.

“Eclipsed,” starring Lupita Nyong’o is a drama set amidst the Liberian civil war. The best revival of a musical category includes new takes on two well-known stories. “The Color Purple,” based on Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, centers on African-American women in the 1930s South.

And Tevye and tradition returned in “Fiddler on the Roof,” first produced on Broadway in 1964. And in the best revival of a play category, famed playwright Arthur Miller faces off against himself, as well as others.

There’s “The Crucible,” about the Salem Witch Trials and an allegory of McCarthyism in later years, and “A View From the Bridge,” Miller’s 1956 drama of a Brooklyn longshoreman.

And as it happens, both Miller revivals were directed by Ivo Van Hove.

And for a further look at a most interesting year on Broadway, I’m joined by Ben Brantley, chief theater critic for The New York Times.

Welcome to you.

So, let’s start with the “Hamilton” phenomenon. There is really no other way to refer to it, I guess.

BEN BRANTLEY, Chief Theater Critic, The New York Times: No, you can’t avoid it.

Well, there is a song from “Hamilton,” “I Want to Be in the Room When It Happens,” which is referring to sort of the political ambitions of Aaron Burr. But it became sort of the mantra for everyone.

I have never received so many questions from people sort of crawling out of the woodwork of my past asking if I could get them tickets, because they’re hard to come by.

(LAUGHTER)

BEN BRANTLEY: And that kind of feeds the fuel.

And this is one case, though, in which that kind of hype is justified. It really is unlike anything that’s come on Broadway before and it’s drawing audiences that Broadway hasn’t really brought in en masse in many years.

JEFFREY BROWN: One aspect to it much noted “Hamilton” and other plays is the diversity in theater.

BEN BRANTLEY: The Oscars look especially pale by comparison to Broadway this year.

Well, the point of “Hamilton,” or one of the many points of “Hamilton,” which is a multi-leveled production in so many ways, is that this country was founded by immigrants. And one of the strokes of genius was casting all the dead white founding fathers with very vital young men and women of color.

It fuses the language of hip-hop, sort of the braggadocio in that, the energy in that, the kind of show-off aspect of it as the natural language for young people who would be revolting.

JEFFREY BROWN: OK, other plays aside from “Hamilton” this year, right?

Let’s talk about the new play category. And we mentioned “The Humans” and “Eclipsed.” What stood out for you?

BEN BRANTLEY: “The Humans” is lovely. It’s probably an old-fashioned play in many ways.

But Stephen Karam, he’s a very interesting playwright. It’s perfectly balanced. It’s a portrait of family dysfunction, which is what American plays, significant American dramas, tend to be like. But there’s kind of a nimbus of the supernatural within it that suggests that the ghost, what really haunts us, the horror, the monsters, are us.

“Eclipsed” is its own creature. I never — I don’t think there has been ever been a play like this on Broadway before, woman playwright, all-female cast. And it’s about African brides, basically, who have been kidnapped by revolutionaries in a time of civil war. And it’s their very limited existences and their hopes of escaping it.

It’s sort of a conventional play in the way it’s told, but I think it’s really good. And the accents are thick, the lingo is thick. The historical context or the topical context is thick in a way that you really have to pay attention to follow it. And when you do, you’re hooked.

A young actress named Cynthia Erivo in the musical “The Color Purple,” which came in from London, it had been on Broadway not that long ago, but this is the pared-down revival from John Doyle. And she is extraordinary.

She plays — it’s based on Alice Walker’s novel. And she plays a repressed, young girl really, who grows into her sense of herself. And watching Cynthia Erivo grow in presence on stage is like watching a star being born before your eyes. It’s just thrilling.

JEFFREY BROWN: Let me ask you briefly, finally, to sum up the year.

There’s some years where the talk about Broadway is, oh, blockbuster musicals, nothing all that new and really exciting. Where do you think we’re at right now?

BEN BRANTLEY: This year, “Hamilton” is so singular, that it really does sort of put everything else in the shade, but it’s good that something this original — and it is truly original — is what’s casting that shadow.

Aside from that the fact we had Ivo Van Hove, a radically experienced director, bringing two Arthur Miller plays to Broadway, “The Crucible” and “A View From the Bridge,” and making them seem so new and so startling and so emotionally engaging, in a way, yes, any show that contains those, and “The Humans” and this great reinvented revival of “The Color Purple,” it’s a season to give thanks for.

JEFFREY BROWN: Ben Brantley of The New York Times, thanks very much.

BEN BRANTLEY: Thank you for having me.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: The famous and the anonymous alike paid tribute today to Muhammad Ali. Their final farewell came in his hometown, Louisville, Kentucky.

It was a day-long tribute befitting the man known as the greatest. Muhammad Ali began his final journey at a Louisville funeral home. The casket, draped in an Islamic shroud, was guided into a hearse by pallbearers who included actor Will Smith and former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson. A butterfly symbol, a nod to Ali’s signature phrase, float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, adorned the windshield.

From there, the 17-car motorcade wound its way through Louisville, with thousands lining the streets.

CROWD: Ali! Ali! Ali!

WOMAN: His impact transcends across the world. It’s just a blessing and it makes us as Louisvillians proud that he’s from our city and our hometown.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Some even touched the hearse, while others ran alongside it. And the procession paused at sites of significance, such as the Ali Center in downtown Louisville, and the boxing legend’s childhood home.

The 19-mile procession ended at Cave Hill Cemetery on a road strewn with flower petals. Muhammad Ali chose the site a decade ago as his final resting place, with a headstone to be inscribed simply “Ali.”

WOMAN: He spoke to the people. He spoke to all people. All people came together regardless of race and gender and religion. Everyone came together.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The burial service was private, but 15,000 people turned out for the public memorial service that followed. Ali himself had requested the event be open to ordinary fans, and hundreds of celebrities, dignitaries and sports greats joined them.

They ranged from Jesse Jackson to Arnold Schwarzenegger, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, whom Ali befriended in the 1980s and who spoke at the service.

The formal eulogies began with Ali’s widow, Lonnie:

LONNIE ALI, Muhammad Ali’s Widow: The boy from Grand Avenue in Louisville, Kentucky, grew in wisdom from his journeys. He discovered something new, that the world really wasn’t black and white at all. It was filled with many shades of rich colors, languages and religions.

And, as he moved with ease around the world, the rich and powerful were drawn to him, but he was drawn to the poor and the forgotten.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And there was comedian Billy Crystal, dubbed little brother by the three-time heavyweight champion. Crystal’s famous 1979 routine “15 Rounds” was about Ali.

BILLY CRYSTAL, Comedian: It’s great to look at clips, and it’s amazing that we have them, but to live in his time, watching his fights, experiencing the genius of his talent, was absolutely extraordinary. Every one of his fights was an aura of a Super Bowl. He did things nobody would do. He predicted the round that he would knock somebody out, and then he would do it.

(LAUGHTER)

BILLY CRYSTAL: He was funny. He was beautiful. He was the most perfect athlete you ever saw, and those were his own words.

(LAUGHTER)

JUDY WOODRUFF: Journalist Bryant Gumbel met Ali as a teenager, and in 1991 interviewed him about the Parkinson’s disease that he battled for decades.

BRYANT GUMBEL, Host, HBO’s “Real Sports”: Some of us like him took pride in being black, bold and brash. And because we were so unapologetic, we were in the eyes of many way too uppity. We were way too arrogant. Yet we reveled in being like him. By stretching society’s boundaries as he did, he gave us levels of strength and courage we didn’t even know we had.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Former President Bill Clinton presented Ali with a Citizens Medal in 2001, and spoke at the dedication of the Ali Center four years later. He gave the day’s final eulogy.

FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: I think he decided, before he could possibly have worked it all out, and before fate and time could work their will on him, he decided that he wouldn’t be ever disempowered.

He decided that not his race, nor his place, nor the expectations of others, positive, negative or otherwise, would strip from him the power to write his own story.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Muhammad Ali died one week ago today at the age of 74.

The post In Louisville, thousands of mourners remember ‘The Greatest’ appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

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In our news wrap Friday, the White House confirmed that U.S. airstrikes against Taliban targets in Afghanistan will expand, and that American troops will join Afghan units on more missions — though the U.S. will not be assuming direct combat roles. Also, food aid reached civilians in Daraya, a besieged rebel suburb of the Syrian capital of Damascus, for the first time in four years.

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