Trump looks to put rough week behind

Clinton, Sanders promise to include Latinos in cabinet

MILWAUKEE, April 4, (Agencies): Donald Trump is fighting to put a difficult week behind him and finish strong on Tuesday in Wisconsin, a state whose primary contest may prove to be a turning point in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

The Republican front-runner is at risk of losing the Midwestern state to US Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, an outcome that would dent the New York billionaire’s aura of inevitability and make it harder for him to win the 1,237 delegates needed for the party’s nomination for the Nov 8 election.

On the Democratic side, US Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is trying protect his lead over front-runner Hillary Clinton in the opinion polls in Wisconsin and eke out another victory over the former secretary of state.

Trailing Cruz in the polls in Wisconsin, Trump on Sunday night told supporters in West Allis, Wisconsin, that Cruz was a liar and a “dirty rotten cheater” who is weak on immigration and would cut Social Security benefits.

“Wisconsin is going to be such a big surprise on Tuesday. We are doing so well,” Trump said.

A loss would add to Trump’s woes after his campaign was rocked last week by the fallout from his suggestion, which he later dialed back, that women be punished for getting abortions if the procedure is banned.

He also drew fire for comments that he would not rule out using nuclear weapons in Europe and that Japan and South Korea might need nuclear weapons to ease the US financial commitment to their security.

“Was this my best week? I guess not,” Trump told “Fox News Sunday” in an interview conducted Friday. But, he added: “I think I’m doing OK.”

Cruz, speaking to supporters on Sunday in Green Bay, Wisconsin, was eager to capitalize on Trump’s potential missteps.

More Republicans are recognizing, said Cruz, that “nominating Donald

at war, but he received a prisoner-of-war medal in February after son Dan Shifrin dug through old news reports and his father’s military records and pieced together what happened.

“It is an amazing story,” said Missouri Sen Claire McCaskill, who expedited the medal process after hearing about it from Trump would be a train wreck.”

Cruz faces difficulty in winning the delegates needed to secure the nomination, given that the next states to vote, including New York on April 19, are Trump-friendly territory.

Clinton is already eyeing New York, holding campaign stops there on Monday even as other candidates make their final pitches in Wisconsin.

“I’m absolutely confident I will be the nominee,” Clinton told ABC in an interview that aired Monday as she and Sanders continued to spar over scheduling more debates.

Debate

Sanders adviser Tad Devine said the Vermont Senator wanted another primetime debate with Clinton.

“If we can continue to win, if he has a good day tomorrow, we’re going to make his case through New York all the way to California,” he told CNN.

Republicans Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich, third in the race, want to deny Trump enough delegates so that the nominee is determined at the Republican National Convention in July. Over the weekend, Trump complained Kasich was an irritant gobbling up some of the delegates Trump needs.

“The problem is he’s in the way of me, not Cruz,” Trump said.

Kasich, who has vowed to stay in the race, tweeted: “That’s not how our republic works, Donald. We’ll keep fighting until someone reaches a majority of delegates.”

On Monday, RNC strategist Sean Spicer said the party would “never tell any candidate to get in or out of the race.”

“The party is simply the arbiter, the people who put on the show to ensure that these delegates have a system to vote,” he told CNN.

Americans return to the polls for yet another presidential primary election in what has proven the most chaotic Republican contest in recent memory, with Trump now pushing rival John Kasich to leave the White House race saying

Shifrin’s daughter in January. Shifrin received the award during a family-only ceremony in the suburban St Louis apartment that he shares with his wife of 67 years. “This is the very best part of my job,” McCaskill said by phone from her Senate offices in Washington.

Edwin Shifrin’s memory is fading, so the nomination is beyond his grasp. Trying hard to right himself after a difficult week, Trump said it was unfair for Kasich, who has won only one primary in his home state of Ohio, to continue campaigning. He suggested that Kasich, who has pledged to make it to the convention, follow the lead of former candidates Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush — and quit.

“If I didn’t have Kasich, I automatically win,” Trump said Sunday evening in Wisconsin.

Trump said Kasich could ask to be considered at the Republican convention even if he stopped competing in the remaining nominating contests. He said earlier Sunday that he had shared his concerns with Republican National Committee officials at a meeting in Washington last week.

Trump’s prediction that the US economy was on the verge of a “very massive recession” hit a wall of skepticism on Sunday from economists who questioned the Republican presidential frontrunner’s calculations.

In an interview with the Washington Post published on Saturday, the billionaire businessman said a combination of high unemployment and an overvalued stock market had set the stage for another economic slump. He put real unemployment above 20 percent.

Recession

“We’re not heading for a recession, massive or minor, and the unemployment rate is not 20 percent,” said Harm Bandholz, chief US economist at UniCredit Research in New York.

The official unemployment rate has declined to 5 percent from a peak of 10 percent in October 2009, according to government statistics. But a different, broader measure of unemployment that includes people who want to work but have given up searching and those working part-time because they cannot find full-time employment is at 9.8 percent.

Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders vowed to nominate Latinos into key

his son Dan shared his story:

Assigned to the Army’s 30th Infantry Division, 1st Battalion, 117th Infantry Regiment, Company C, Shifrin landed on France’s Normandy beach in June 1944 a week after the D-Day invasion and then fought the Germans in battles at St. Lo and Mortain. The Germans captured him on cabinet posts in their administrations if elected, according to their answers to a questionnaire organized by the nation’s largest Latino coalition.

The 20-question survey was submitted by the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda to all US presidential candidates on Feb 25, but received responses only from the two Democratic contenders and none from the Republicans, according to the results reviewed by Reuters.

“From special assistants to cabinet members, Latinos will play a key role in helping to shape my policy priorities and be effectively represented in our agencies,” former US Secretary of State Clinton wrote.

US Senator from Vermont Sanders promised to make his administration “reflect the diverse make-up of the country... I can think of no place more vital for such diversity than in the cabinet and the Senior Executive Service of the President of the United States of America.”

Both have already promised comprehensive immigration reform, appealing to Hispanic voters ahead of presidential nominating contests in minority-heavy states. Leading Republican hopefuls Donald Trump and US Senator Ted Cruz of Texas have promised to tighten up the borders and deport undocumented immigrants.

The responses come as the Democratic contest for the party’s presidential nomination is poised to roll into a slate of diverse states - including New York later this month and minority-heavy California in June. Latinos and AfricanAmericans have emerged as key voting blocs so far this election, helping boost Clinton ahead of the Senator in the race for pledged delegates so far.

The NHLA will use the questionnaires to guide voter engagement ahead of the November election, and to hold the winner to promises made during the campaign, said Hector Sanchez, the chairman of the NHLA. “This is not just a piece of paper that we’re going to put out there,” Sanchez said. “If they want the Latino vote, they must engage with us.”

Aug 7, and Shifrin was sent from a prison camp to his final stop, Poland lockup Stalag IIIC, which was about 90 miles from Berlin. Telegrams to US family members notified them he was missing in action.

Shifrin was among the camp’s roughly 1,000 prisoners, many of whom formed “an escape committee” and drew up a getaway plan.

Each morning when the Germans did simply a numerical headcount — no actual names were called out — a prisoner designated by the committee would hide, touching off what turned out to be a futile search by guards. The hiding prisoner would later quietly rejoin the others, but the befuddled guards would lower the next day’s headcount by one.

On the second day, two prisoners would hide, touching off another futile search and getting the guards to lower the next day’s head count by one again. That continued with three and four prisoners hiding and the guards classifying them as escaped. Eventually, four men actually escaped, but the guards didn’t notice because they had already lowered the rollcall numbers to account for the prisoners who had hidden.

Shifrin and some other prisoners got their chance in mid-January 1945, just weeks before the Russians liberated the camp. Dan Shifrin said “the rest of their journey is pretty hazy,” but what’s known is they hitchhiked on Allied supply trucks and purloined rides on horses and bikes on their way to Italy. By that April, Shifrin was back on US soil, in Boston. (AP)