In private conference call, top Clinton aide says Trump is ‘tripping on himself’

Several staffers from Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign held an invitation-only conference call with 1,000 current and former aides to President Barack Obama on Wednesday night. During the “off-the-record” conversation, Clinton’s director of states and political engagement, Marlon Marshal, discussed Republican nominee Donald Trump’s tendency to “spout off at the mouth” and its effect on the race.

“Obviously, I don’t need to tell you all Donald Trump is kind of tripping on himself right now and continues to say just things that no one running for no one should say, period. But particularly if you’re running for the office of president of the United States,” Marshall said in an apparent reference to recent remarks Trump has made that drew criticism in the media and among members of the Republican party.

Yahoo News listened to the call, which featured Marshall and other staffers discussing Clinton’s plans for the next month and her challenges with wooing young voters. At multiple points during the call, Clinton’s relentlessly cheerful staff asked the Obama alumni to use weeks of their vacation time to become what they called “Clinton closers” and volunteer for the campaign in the final months of the election.

Marshall warned that Clinton supporters “have a lot of work to do” to ensure victory even though Trump continually courts controversy.

“Those thoughts and those statements are just not worthy of the office,” Marshall said of Trump’s comments. “That being said, this election, we cannot just leave it to Donald Trump’s mouth to assume this election is all said and done.”

The conference was declared “off the record and not for press purposes,” and was reportedly intended for people who were Obama administration staffers, appointees and people who worked on the president’s 2008 and 2012 campaign staff.

Marshall said a major purpose of the call was to generate a “sense of urgency” and prevent complacency among Clinton supporters.

“I think sometimes when, you know, you see some of the craziness from the other side, it’s like, ‘Oh, OK, you know, Hillary should win,’” Marshall said. “We cannot be deterred from doing the organizing that we need to be successful. We want to engage all of you in getting involved in that organization.”

Lauren Crawford, the campaign’s director of expansion state programs came on next and detailed ways the conference call listeners could volunteer for Clinton. Given their experience working for Obama, Crawford said the people on the call would be “super vols.” She encouraged them to phone bank and to travel to battleground states, but she said the biggest way to help would be as a “Clinton Closer.”

“We’re here because you’re the all-stars and you’re going to go above and beyond. … We’re asking you to take time off that you can in October and November,” Crawford explained.

Crawford said the listeners would get a “follow-up email” where they could sign up to join the “Clinton Closer” volunteer program.

“That’s someone who can take two, three, four weeks. I mean, I might even ask for six if you’re feeling, you know, ambitious. Someone who can go into any of our states [to] really help,” Crawford said.

Another staffer later encouraged the people on the call to “make sure you have saved up some vacation time” to volunteer for Clinton in the fall.

Marshall also pointed out that the Clinton campaign is “hiring” for paid positions. He offered the listeners a preview of the campaign’s plans for August and said it would be an “economic month,” with Clinton and her running mate, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, traveling the country and “driving home our economic message.” Marshall said this would include outlining Clinton’s economic platform and attacking Trump for some of his businesses that sell products that aren’t made in America.

“Sometimes, he can spout off at the mouth for certain things, but people also think he’s a successful business person,” Marshall said of Trump. “We’re going to remind voters more of the economy that Hillary Clinton wants to build as president of the United States. But also, Trump’s success really comes at the expense of others. … He talks about ‘Made in America’ or ‘Make America Great Again.’ That should start with the things that he has that he sells, which are actually made in other countries.”

At the end of the call the Clinton staffers took questions. One came from Kal Penn, an actor best known for his role in the “Harold & Kumar” stoner comedies, who has also worked in the Obama White House as an associate director of public engagement. Penn said he was personally getting “a lot of questions from folks about youth vote.”

“They were feeling like … the anti-Trump stuff wasn’t really working with young people,” Penn said.

The youth vote is a major concern for the Clinton campaign. Clinton’s primary rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, earned more votes among 18 to 29-year-olds. Trump polls well with younger men.

Penn said the “folks” asking him about the election were looking for “talking points” about things Clinton has achieved that would appeal to Obama supporters. According to Penn, the various people talking to him about the race felt positive messages about Clinton were more persuasive than attacks on Trump.

“They wanted to know what are some good resources to sort of talk about Sen. Clinton’s successes tied into the Obama stuff,” said Penn.

Marshall responded by noting Clinton has “a whole millennial/youth outreach team” and there are “some folks who we’ve added who were on Sen. Sanders’ team.” He also addressed Penn’s critique of “anti-Trump” messaging.

“Obviously there’s a lot of reasons why someone should not, in my opinion, support Donald Trump,” Marshall said. “I think everyone on this call probably agrees with that. We also know that we’re not going to win the election by just saying why Donald Trump would be a bad president, but we need to and will continue to make the case of … why Hillary Clinton would make a fantastic president.”

Marshall directed Penn to Clinton’s website to find policies that might appeal to young voters. Lierman specifically cited Clinton’s “college affordability plan.”

The call closed with Clinton staffers breaking into loud cheers.

“Whoooo! Yeah! Whoooo! Please Believe! Yeah!”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify which Clinton campaign staffers were involved in organizing the conference call.

Yahoo NEWS

Bernie Sanders Seizes 3 States, Sweeping Democratic Contests

Senator Bernie Sanders routed Hillary Clinton in all three Democratic presidential contests on Saturday, infusing his underdog campaign with critical momentum and bolstering his argument that the race for the nomination is not a foregone conclusion.

Mr. Sanders found a welcome tableau in the largely white and liberal electorates of the Pacific Northwest, where just days after resoundingly beating Mrs. Clinton in Idaho he repeated the feat in the Washington caucuses, winning 73 percent of the vote. He did even better in Alaska, winning 82 percent of the vote, and in Hawaii, he had 71 percent with a few precincts still be counted, according to The Associated Press.

Washington, the largest prize Saturday with 101 delegates in play, was a vital state for Mr. Sanders, whose prospects of capturing the nomination dimmed after double-digit losses to Mrs. Clinton across the South and weak showings in delegate-rich Ohio, Florida and North Carolina this month. As of Saturday evening, Mrs. Clinton had roughly 280 more pledged delegates, who are awarded based on voting, and 440 more superdelegates — party leaders and elected officials — than Mr. Sanders.

At a rally in Madison, Wis., late Saturday afternoon, Mr. Sanders assured supporters that his victories had cleared a viable path to the nomination. “We knew from day one that politically we were going to have a hard time in the Deep South,” Mr. Sanders said. “But we knew things were going to improve when we headed west.”

Noting the “huge” voter turnout — in Washington, party officials estimated more than 200,000 people participated on Saturday, close to the record set in 2008 — he told the crowd, “We are making significant inroads into Secretary Clinton’s lead.”

The victories on Saturday only slightly narrowed the gulf with Mrs. Clinton in the quest for the 2,382 delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination.

But the wins are likely to bestow on the Sanders campaign a surge of online donations with which to buy advertising in the expensive media markets of New York and Pennsylvania, which hold primaries next month. The victory will also embolden Mr. Sanders to stay in the race and continue challenging Mrs. Clinton on her ties to Wall Street and her foreign policy record.

Establishment GOP rallies around Cruz

A year after launching his presidential campaign to dismantle a clubby "Washington cartel" of money and influence, the Texas senator is now the only man standing between the party's snake-bitten leadership and a hostile takeover by Donald Trump.

at Trump could be headed for the nomination, even as the polls tighten and the maverick billionaire descends into ever more coarse attacks on Twitter - the most recent featuring an unflattering photo of Cruz's wife Heidi.

The nasty feud - culminating in Trump's tweet juxtaposing his supermodel wife with the photo of Heidi Cruz - has only further estranged GOP elites who fear he is alienating women, young people and minorities, dragging the party into an electoral flameout in the fall.

The episode, dubbed "wifegate," appeared to be retaliation for an anti-Trump Super PAC ad using 15-year-old images of Trump's wife, Melania, in a nude photo shoot for British GQ.

Shifting strategy

Adding to the sense of crisis was a National Enquirer story based on anonymous sources implicating Cruz in a series of extramarital affairs. The Texas senator flatly denied the story and labeled it a Trump smear.

"It is garbage, complete and utter lies," Cruz told reporters Friday in Wisconsin, where he was campaigning. "It is a tabloid smear and it has come from Donald Trump and his henchmen."

Trump denied any involvement in the story. "Ted Cruz's problem with the National Enquirer is his and his alone," Trump said.

The ongoing dust-up comes as the Republican primary schedule enters a lull - the next contest is in Wisconsin on April 5, followed by New York on the 19th. It has allowed both leading candidates to shift from a singular focus on voters to a strategy of cultivating inside players to generate the momentum needed to break the 1,237-delegate barrier to win the nomination - especially if no candidate gets a majority by July and it breaks into a rare contested convention.

"The campaigns that are still viable would be well advised to start preparing for the convention," said James McGrath, a veteran GOP strategist in Houston with long ties to the Bush family.

The quaint retail politics of Iowa and New Hampshire are now a gauzy memory.

Trump, whose populist campaign has fed off huge rallies and media buzz, did something unprecedented at the start of the week: He met with lawmakers in Washington and gave a scripted speech where he relied on Teleprompters to deliver carefully parsed phrases on foreign policy.

"Trump's been the master of reinvention," said California GOP strategist Sal Russo, a Tea Party Express leader who worked on Ross Perot's 1992 campaign. "Are we going to see a more responsible, more presidential candidate?"

Cruz backers don't think so. Cruz spokeswoman Alice Stewart, commenting on the Twitter feud over the candidates' wives, called Trump's attacks "conduct unbecoming" of a presidential candidate.

But even as he brawls publicly with Trump, behind the scenes Cruz and his aides are focused on the inside game of shepherding supporters through the intricate party machinery of delegate selection.

Each candidate is playing to his strengths. Trump is using his salesman's bravado in personal settings on Capitol Hill to wear down official party resistance. Cruz, deeply distrusted by his Senate colleagues, is relying on the organization skills of his activist base inside the party.

Their objectives are mutually exclusive: Each needs to unify a fractured party, or at least enough of it to get the delegates required to win.

Neither would be the establishment's top pick. "They're pinching their noses, the same way I pinched my nose when I voted for Trump," said Florida GOP consultant Chris Ingram.

The third candidate standing, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, has managed to win only his home state and has no mathematical chance of winning enough delegates to become the Republican nominee.

'He's not Trump'

That makes Cruz the face of the Stop Trump movement. The tea party hero remains the next-closest thing to a Washington outsider and Trump's closest rival in the all-important delegate count.

"The ironies abound," said Geoffrey Skelley, an analyst at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "It suggests they're trying to rally around the candidate who has the best shot at stopping Trump, and I think it's definitely Cruz."

Punctuating the political force field developing around Cruz is a new $1 million ad campaign by the anti-tax Club for Growth, the political action committee of which never before has endorsed in a presidential race.

"Your choice comes down to this. Math," a narrator says. "Only Ted Cruz can beat Donald Trump. John Kasich can't do it."

The ad is starting this weekend in Wisconsin, where 42 delegates are at stake. Cruz, looking for a bounce in the race, has spent three days campaigning in Wisconsin over the past week.

Beltway Republicans who remember Cruz's leading role in the 2013 government-shutdown to block Obamacare still have been slow to come around. South Carolina U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, who likened the Trump-Cruz rivalry as a choice between being "shot or poisoned," has now decided to back Cruz.

Why? "He's not Trump," Graham said last week on "The Daily Show with Trevor Noah," while struggling to give a full-throated endorsement of Cruz. Acknowledging his reluctance, he said, "I'm getting better at this."

While Graham called Cruz his "15th choice," Bush brother Neil Bush gave only a slightly less backhanded endorsement in a CNN interview. "Ted Cruz wasn't my second or third choice," Neil Bush said. "I don't particularly like his style. He went to Washington to be disruptive. He clearly did that and he's lost a lot of friends in Washington. [But] he'll rebuild friendships when he becomes president."

Neil Bush, like others in the party's anti-Trump faction, have made clear that it's now a binary decision based on a cold strategic calculation.

"Even the folks who were not that comfortable with Ted Cruz when he was working the Senate fighting Obamacare realize that he's got the best chance for them to win the White House, or at least make it close," said Club for Growth President David McIntosh.

Reaction to acrimony

A number of polls give Cruz a decided edge over Trump in a hypothetical matchup against Clinton, though the many polls also show Clinton beating both. Of the three Republicans left, only Kasich beat Clinton in a new Monmouth University poll.

But some of the movement toward Cruz also is a reaction to the acrimony and violence surrounding the Trump campaign. Jeb Bush, while praising Cruz as a "consistent, principled conservative," also spelled out what he sees as the danger in a Trump candidacy.

"For the sake of our party and country," Jeb Bush said, "we must move to overcome the divisiveness and vulgarity Donald Trump has brought into the political arena."

For Cruz, the risk of being cast as an establishment favorite is offset by the suspicions of conservative supporters who point to Trump's past record of supporting liberal politicians and causes. For conservatives, if Cruz is not the face of the anti-Trump movement, he's the only vehicle they have left.

"He's just the guy that's there that's a strong conservative, that has won a bunch of states, has a real organization, has raised money, and run a really good campaign," said Austin Barbour, who has served as a strategist for former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and later for Jeb Bush.

The tepid establishment endorsements might also minimize any downside for Cruz with his disenchanted base. "Frankly, I don't think that it hurts Senator Cruz to have a lot of, quote-unquote, establishment figures say 'I'm going to support him, but I don't love him,' " McGrath said.

Meanwhile, those endorsements also are opening new doors for the money that will be needed to take on the largely self-funding real estate mogul and reality TV star.

"I know it didn't go unnoticed among the network of donors and grassroots supporters who were working very hard for Jeb," McGrath said. "Throughout the extended Bush political family, there's no doubt that Jeb's endorsement is going to carry a lot of weight."

Deal reached to take California minimum wage to $15 an hour

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California legislators and labor unions have reached a tentative agreement that will take the state’s minimum wage from $10 to $15 an hour, a state senator said, a move that would make for the largest statewide minimum in the nation by far.

“This is not a done deal,” Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, told The Associated Press on Saturday. “Everyone’s been operating in good faith and we hope to get it through the Legislature.”

Leno said if an agreement is finalized, it would go before the Legislature as part of his minimum-wage bill that stalled last year.

If the Legislature approves a minimum-wage package, it would avoid taking the issue to the ballot. One union-backed initiative has already qualified for the ballot, and a second, competing measure is also trying to qualify.

“This is an issue I’ve been working on for many years,” Leno said. “The governor and stakeholders have all been negotiating earnestly and in good faith for some time.”

Leno did not confirm specifics of the agreement, but most proposals have the wage increasing about a dollar per year until it reaches $15 per hour.

The Los Angeles Times, which first reported the deal, said the wage would rise to $10.50 in 2017, to $11 an hour in 2018, and one dollar per year to take it to $15 by 2022. Businesses with fewer than 25 employees would have an extra year to comply.

At $10 an hour, California already has one of the highest minimum wages in the nation along with Massachusetts. Only Washington, D.C., at $10.50 per hour is higher. The hike to $15 would make it the highest statewide wage in the nation by far, though raises are in the works in other states that might change by the time the plateau is reached in 2022.

Some states have passed higher minimums for government employees and state-contracted workers, and some cities including Seattle have already passed $15 an hour increases.

And Oregon officials approved a law earlier this month that will increase that state’s minimum wage to nearly $15 in urban areas over the next six years.

California union leaders, however, said they would not immediately dispense with planned ballot measures.

Sean Wherley, a spokesman for SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, confirmed that the SEIU parent union was involved in the negotiations. He said SEIU-UHWW’s leadership will decide whether to push ahead with its initiative that has already qualified for the ballot.

“Ours is on the ballot. We want to be certain of what all this is,” Wherley said. “If some agreement is signed into law, then our executive board would decide what to do. They would only make that decision after any agreement is signed into law.”

The union proposal that has already qualified for the ballot calls for reaching the $15 mark by 2021. The second proposed measure would reach $15 by 2020. Businesses and Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown have said such a steep wage increase would be incredibly costly.

A spokesman for Brown, Evan Westrup, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Kevin Liao, a spokesman for Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Paramount, 

Dalton reported from Los Angeles.

Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.declined to comment.

Missing U.S. couple died in Brussels attacks, family says

This story has been updated.

Stephanie and Justin Shults, an American couple living in Brussels who had been missing since the attacks in the Belgian capital, were declared dead on Saturday, according to members of Justin Shults’s family.

“We found out today that cowards took my brother’s life,” Shults’s brother, Levi Sutton, posted on his Twitter profile. In another posting, he wrote: “The world lost two amazing people today. It’s not fair.”

Relatives and friends of Justin Shults also posted memorials and notices of the couple’s death on his mother, Sheila Shell’s Facebook page.

The Shultses never planned on living abroad, but when the chance to move to Brussels fell in their lap two years ago, they decided to embrace the spirit of adventure and go.

On Tuesday morning, the pair were at the airport, dropping off Stephanie’s mother, Carolyn Moore, to catch a flight home to Kentucky after a week’s visit. They parked the car, walked her into the terminal to get her boarding pass, said goodbye and walked away, according to Moore’s sister and Stephanie’s aunt, Betty Gragg Newsom. Then the first blasts of coordinated terrorist attacks in Brussels by the Islamic State ripped through the airport’s departure hall.

The couple’s car was found, Sutton posted on Twitter Saturday, but the family continued to wait without word about the couple, as they had for several days.

There was much the family didn’t know about what the Shults couple did after they parted ways with Moore. If they exited the airport to retrieve their car, they might have been far enough from the explosions to be injured but alive. If they opted instead to wait and watch Moore’s flight take off, they could have been much closer to the deadly blasts.

Newsom wasn’t sure where Moore was during the explosions, save that she had not yet gone through airport security. But the force of the blasts knocked Moore off her feet and left her with strange, dusty substances in her hair and without hearing in one ear, Newsom said.

Moore was taken to a nearby hotel, and was later joined in Brussels by her husband, Geary Moore. Shell, Justin’s mother, also traveled to the Belgian capital, to find out what happened to the couple.

On Friday morning, State Department officials said that at least two Americans had been confirmed dead in the blasts without listing their identities — raising speculation that Stephanie and Justin, the only American citizens to have been identified in the news media, might be among the deceased. But as the day wore on, it appeared that the announcement also could be referring to Alexander Pinczowski, 29, and Sascha Pinczowski, 28, Dutch nationals who lived in New York.

But all involved had already ridden out a heartbreaking moment of dashed hope, after some of Justin’s family reported receiving information that the couple had been found alive.

n Wednesday afternoon, Sutton took to his Twitter account to announce that an official from the State Department had contacted his mother to tell her that the Shultses had been found. The news spread quickly — even the mayor of Lexington, Ky., Stephanie’s hometown, joined in the online cheering.But it was confusing for Stephanie’s relatives, who had been in regular touch with officials and hadn’t heard anything. It soon became clear that the celebration was premature, and that Justin and Stephanie wSutton apologized later Wednesday via his Twitter account, saying he was “disgusted” that his family had received bad information and explaining that an official social worker helping Carolyn Moore in Belgium had helped straighten things out.

On Thursday, State Department spokesman Mark C. Toner told reporters that “we certainly apologize for any misunderstanding,” but he would not confirm that any department officials had contacted Shell or told her that her son had been found.

“They’re seeking information; we’re trying to respond and get them accurate information,” Toner said. “It’s incumbent on us to really try to get accurate information, and we just, we don’t have that yet . . . as soon as we have accurate information, we’ll obviously be back in touch with those families.”

Stephanie Shults’s relatives also want the mystery cleared up.

“We’re just trying to find out who she had gotten her information from,” Betty Gragg Newsom said of Justin’s mother. She took a deep breath before adding, “It was a little frustrating.”

Stephanie Moore, from Lexington in the heart of bluegrass country, and Justin Shults, from the mountain town of Gatlinburg, Tenn., met in graduate school while they were studying for master’s degrees in accounting at Vanderbilt University, where Justin had received a bachelor’s degree in economics in 2008. Both were remarkably bright, Newsom said. They married two years after graduation, in 2011.

Stephanie worked for the Mars company, in its pet-food division, and Justin for Clarcor, which makes filtration systems. They were based in Nashville, but they headed for Europe after Stephanie, who had majored in business and French at Transylvania University in Lexington, was offered a three-year position in Brussels by her company, Newsom said. Justin’s company let him make the move, too, in order to handle its international business accounts.

In Brussels the Shultses lived near the center of town, Newsom said, and they weren’t scared even as the Belgian capital began to gain a reputation as a hub for terrorist activity in Europe in recent months.

“They’ve just really enjoyed the experience of being in Europe,” Newsom said. “They had not mentioned feeling unsafe at all.”

Whenever they weren’t working, Newsom said, they traveled — to the running of the bulls in Spain, to London, to Paris, to Germany and other parts of Europe. They had been enjoying “the 30-something lifestyle before they have children,” Newsom said.

Justin Shults turned 30 this month, while Stephanie’s 30th birthday is in September.

Moore, who is retired, had made a few trips to Brussels to visit the couple and was squeezing one more in before the expected birth of her first grandchild — Stephanie’s older sister is due to have a baby soon.

Bernie Sanders' big day

Clinton built up her delegate lead on the back of a strong run in the South, and Sanders argued Saturday his campaign always knew those states would be tough. In Madison, he said the map now offers more opportunities for his campaign as the contest progressed, largely because his wins are being powered by huge turnout among younger voters.

"With your help we're going to win right here in Wisconsin," he said. "So don't let anyone tell you we can't win the nomination, or win the general election. We're going to do both of those things."

But even with his big victories on Saturday, Sanders faces steep hurdles in catching Clinton in the delegate count. While Washington had 101 delegates up for grabs, and both candidates spent a significant amount of time there, Hawaii and Alaska were relatively small prizes -- with just 25 and 16 delegates at stake respectively.

Clinton's campaign privately acknowledged that Saturday would be a good one for Sanders, and her efforts in Washington were aimed mostly at trying to keep the race relatively close, as delegates are distributed proportionally. But with over 90% delegates accounted for, Sanders held a wide lead over Clinton in Washington, 72% to 28%. Alaska was more lopsided: Sanders won 80% to 20%.

Even though Wisconsin could be fertile territory for Sanders on April 5, Clinton is poised to do well in her home state of New York on April 19 with its 247 pledged delegates. She also faces favorable territory in the upcoming Super Tuesday contest on April 26 when Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island and Maryland voters head to the polls and nearly 400 pledged delegates are at stake.

While Sanders shaved Clinton's lead in the delegate count, the former secretary of state had amassed 1,711 of the 2,383 delegates she would need to clinch the nomination before Saturday's contests, according to CNN estimates. Before the voting Saturday, Sanders had notched 952 delegates to date. That means he would need to win 75% of the remaining pledged delegates to defeat her.

Warning shot to Clinton

Clinton did not address the results publicly on Saturday, but her campaign sought to raise money off her losses in Saturday's contests, portraying them as a warning to donors. A short time after CNN projected Alaska as a win for Sanders, Clinton Campaign Manager Robby Mook circulated an email to her supporters billed as a "quick update on Bernie Sanders."

"We haven't caught up in online fundraising, and our opponent could do very well in today's caucuses in Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii," Mook said in the email before the Washington and Hawaii results had been called. "Now, I don't want to paint too gloomy a picture -- you've been amazing. Thanks to you, we still have a commanding delegate lead, and we can secure this nomination for Hillary with your help," he said, asking them to "chip in."

fundraising capabilities could help them pull off an upset -- arguing that the process for Clinton was "frontloaded" and that they have grassroots fundraising resources that past campaigns have lacked.

Washington and Alaska had always looked to be favorable territory for Sanders, because they are predominantly white and rural -- states with the kind of demographic makeup that has favored Sanders.

"He's obviously doing well in these Western caucus states, because you get a very committed base of younger voters who are willing to show up and stand in line in states like Idaho and Utah for hours," said veteran Democratic strategist Bill Carrick, who is unaligned in the presidential race this cycle. "The message that Sanders has is a classic western populist message: Wall Street is sticking it to us, these big money interests are sticking it to us, and we're out here scrambling, paying pretty heavy negative dividends for their behavior."

But Clinton had campaigned in Washington after losing to Barack Obama by about a 2-1 margin in 2008. Her campaign made a major push to get voters to return Washington's version of absentee ballots -- known as "surrogate affidavits" --- mailing them directly to voters with postage-paid return envelopes.

Given those efforts, the size of Sanders's margins on Saturday served as a warning shot to Clinton, allowing him to make the argument at his rally in Madison that he was "making significant inroads" into Clinton's delegate lead.

Superdelegate strategy

That is key to the Sanders strategy going forward, particularly when it comes to swaying superdelegates, who could be key at the Democratic Convention in July. Currently Clinton has the edge with some 482 superdelegates pledging to support her, according to CNN estimates. But Sanders allies point out those people can always change their minds.

"There are hundreds of other superdelegates, by the way, who are uncommitted," Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver told CNN's Suzanne Malveaux in an interview Saturday. "For them, it would be very easy for them to be with the Secretary, but they're not which tells you something about where they probably are."

"Superdelegates want to win in November," Weaver continued, "and as we demonstrate in the second half of this primary season that we have the momentum, that we can carry with large margins these states, and with the public polls which have shown consistently that Bernie Sanders does better against every single possible Republican than does Hillary Clinton -- I think superdelegates are going to begin to take another look."

The excitement for Sanders, marked by a large rally at Seattle's Safeco Field Friday evening, is something Sanders is counting on as he heads in to the delegate-rich contests that favor Clinton on the East Coast.

Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, said Sanders wins in small and medium-sized states "almost certainly will not be enough to derail Clinton from the nomination," but adds there's more to it for the Vermont senator.

"For all practical purposes, winning states like these are talking points for Sanders," Schnur said. "But for what he's after at this point, talking points might be good enough. In other words, winning Alaska and Hawaii isn't going to keep Clinton from getting the nomination, but it keeps his supporters enthused; it keeps the money coming in; and allows him to continue having a platform."

Big turnout in Hawaii

Polling had been scarce in Hawaii and Alaska, making it difficult to predict the outcome of those contests heading in to Saturday, but Sanders outspent Clinton on the airwaves.

Sanders's wife Jane campaigned in Hawaii last Sunday and Monday with popular Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who broke with Democratic Party leadership to show her support for Sanders.

Still, Clinton's ties to Hawaii date back to 1992 when she campaigned in Honolulu for her husband. Her campaign is well organized in Hawaii and she has racked up endorsements from key state leaders including Sens. Mazie Hirono and Brian Schatz, as well as former Gov. George Ariyoshi.

This week Sanders released an emotional ad featuring Gabbard, who served a 12-month tour in Iraq, talking about the importance of Sanders' vote against the Iraq War and his pledge to "take the trillions of dollars that are sent on these interventionist, regime change, unnecessary wars, and invest it here at home."

"The American people are not looking to settle for inches," Gabbard says in the ad. "They're looking for real change."

As in other states, turnout was high in Hawaii on Saturday. There were long lines outside Manoa Elementary in Honolulu as voting got started at 1 p.m. local time Saturday.

Officials were expecting at least 15% more Democratic voters than eight years ago when 37,583 Democrats voted. This year, the party protectively printed 100,000 ballots, Hawaii Democratic spokesperson Ethan Oki said.

CNN's Sara Sidner in Seattle, Paul Vercammen in Anchorage, Jason Carroll in Olympia Washington, Bill Kirkos in Honolulu; and Kevin Bohn, Brianna Keiler, Elizabeth Landers, Dan Merica and Gabe Ramirez contributed to this report

Obama: Stigmatizing Muslims 'plays into hands' of jihadists

Washington (AFP) - President Barack Obama has urged Americans not to stigmatize Muslims following this week's deadly attacks in Brussels, saying that doing so is "counterproductive" in the fight against radical Islam.

"That's why we have to reject any attempt to stigmatize Muslim-Americans, and their enormous contributions to our country and our way of life," Obama said.In his weekly media address, Obama said Muslim-Americans are "our most important partners in the nation's fight against those who would wage violent jihad.

"Such attempts are contrary to our character, to our values, and to our history as a nation built around the idea of religious freedom. It's also counterproductive," he said.

"It plays right into the hands of terrorists who want to turn us against one another -- who need a reason to recruit more people to their hateful cause."

Obama made his remarks as the global community continues to reel from Tuesday's attacks in Belgium, claimed by the Islamic State group, which killed 31 dead, including two Americans, and wounded 300.

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US President Barack Obama said Muslim-Americans are "our most important partners" in the f …

"At least 14 Americans were injured, and we pray for their full recovery, along with everyone else affected by these attacks," Obama said.

The remarks by the Democratic president follow controversial statements in the wake of the Brussels bombings by the two top Republicans vying to succeed him in the White House.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz demanded this week that police "patrol and secure" Muslim neighborhoods in the US in the aftermath of the Brussels attacks, and reiterated an earlier call to suspend the relocation of Syrian refugees to the country.

Donald Trump, meanwhile, repeated his demand for the government to temporarily bar all Muslims from entering the US.

The billionaire real estate baron first called for a ban on entry into the US by Muslims back in December, following a deadly shooting attack in San Bernardino, California.

Clinton skipped special cyber briefing in 2011, documents show

Even as then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was warning department employees about the threat from cyber-attacks, she opted to skip a special 2011 cyber briefing that the department security team put together just for her, according to congressional investigators and an unclassified letter from the State Department.

The briefing was a sign of how serious the cybersecurity threat to U.S. government systems had become. The briefing was drawn up during the same year an internal 2011 State Department cable from Clinton, first reported by Fox News, told State Department employees not to use personal email because of the hacking threat.

Yet, Clinton was conducting all official government business on her unsecured personal account. And in mid-February, Julia Frifield, the assistant secretary for legislative affairs, confirmed to Congress the existence of the 2011 cyber briefing and the fact that Clinton skipped it. The details were revealed in a March 3 congressional letter to Secretary of State John Kerry.

The letter says: "On February 18, 2016, Ms. Julia Frifield, the Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs, sent us that classified PowerPoint presentation used in the cybersecurity briefing, along with an unclassified cover letter. The unclassified cover letter noted that 'although the PowerPoint indicated the briefing was for former Secretary Clinton, we understand from the testimony of the briefers, that she was not in attendance.'"

The letter is part of the ongoing oversight of the State Department by Republican Sens. Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley, who signed the letter to Kerry. Grassley is asking that the PowerPoint presentation be declassified. The senator’s investigation of State Department practices began four years ago and is not limited to current questions about Clinton's use of personal email for government business. 

In the last year since the email account became public, more than 2,000 messages containing classified information have been identified by the intelligence community and State Department, including another 22 emails considered too damaging to national security to release under any circumstances.

Boy who gave soldier $20 he found wins high honor

ARLINGTON, Va. -- Friday is National Medal of Honor Day. At a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, a special award was presented to a young man you first met on "CBS Evening News."

The Medal of Honor, presented by the president, is reserved for this country's bravest military heroes. But every year, past Medal of Honor recipients get together to recognize civilians who have gone above and beyond the call of duty.

For the first time this year, one of those Citizen Honor awards went to a kid -- a 10-year-old boy named Myles Eckert.