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Bernie Sanders discovers the challenges of life in California’s Central Valley

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Bernie Sanders continues to campaign across California ahead of the June 7 primary.

  • Sanders campaigns in territory that rarely sees presidential candidates
  • California’s Latino Republicans see shades of the past in Donald Trump’s campaign
  • Donald Trump promises veterans and motorcyclists that U.S. allies will pay fully for protection under a Trump presidency
  • Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson wins the Libertarian nomination
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Bernie Sanders attends Game 7 with Danny Glover as Warriors win

Sen. Bernie Sanders was in Oracle Arena on Monday night as the Golden State Warriors won Game 7 of the NBA’s Western Conference Finals and secured a spot in the NBA Finals.

Sanders, seen taking selfies with fans as the Warriors toppled the Oklahoma City Thunder, has had a busy campaign schedule in California and plans to remain on the trail through Tuesday’s primary.

Sanders supporter Danny Glover, a longtime Bay Area resident and Warriors fan, according to a pool report, sat with the senator after they arrived at halftime.

They sat in section 108, row 15 behind the Thunder basket. Secret Service was on hand as the crowd chanted “Bernie! Bernie!”

Sanders played when he was younger and shot hoops earlier this year to celebrate winning the New Hampshire primary.

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Supreme Court asked to rule on Trump casino bankruptcy

The Supreme Court is being asked to take up a bankruptcy dispute involving the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, N.J., and to decide whether to restore the health and pension benefits of more than 1,000 casino workers.

At issue is a conflict between labor laws that call for preserving collective bargaining agreements and bankruptcy laws that allow a judge to reorganize a business to keep it in operation.

“This is about how a bankruptcy was used to transfer value from working people to the super-rich,” said Richard G. McCracken, general counsel for Unite Here, the hotel and casino workers’ union that appealed to the high court.

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Analysis: Bernie Sanders looks for success in an unlikely place — California’s Central Valley

The long road Bernie Sanders traveled Sunday took him past Buck Owens Boulevard and Merle Haggard Drive, past thousands of acres of grape vines and almond trees, past cattle barns and packing plants and banners declaring that “no water = no food.”

This great expanse, the southern end of the Central Valley, is vastly different territory than the presidential candidates usually traverse. And it shows.

On Friday in Fresno, Donald Trump naively repeated a farmer’s assertion that “there is no drought.” On Saturday in Bakersfield, Sanders expressed shock that many people here cannot drink their tap water because of contamination. The place that feeds the nation a quarter of its food remains pretty much a mystery to outsiders.

As Sanders found out over the course of two days in the valley, it also is the nexus of many of the issues foremost in the campaign, particularly among Democrats: lagging incomes, immigration complications, environmental woes.

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California Latino Republicans see Prop. 187’s ghost in Trump’s campaign

Latino leaders in California working to mend the GOP’s relationship with their community were filled with dread, not joy, as Donald Trump clinched their party’s nomination for the presidency.

The businessman’s campaign, staked on a hard-line approach and incendiary rhetoric about illegal immigration, threatened to unravel the progress they’ve made to repair a schism created by a 1994 ballot measure that sought to deny taxpayer-funded services to those in the country illegally.

The state GOP lost a generation of Latino voters in the aftermath of that ballot measure, Proposition 187. And now Latino Republicans fear they will lose yet another generation as a result of Trump becoming the standard-bearer of their party.

“I am concerned, and I’m saddened, and I’m bewildered,” said Luis Alvarado, a GOP media strategist who, like many other Latino officials in California, said he will not vote for Trump. “We had fought for every inch in changing the minds and hearts of not just fellow Latinos, but also fellow Republicans in understanding how we need to work together. And Trump comes along and everything just gets pushed aside.”

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Decker: California officials ponder: Now that they’re registered, how do we keep new voters interested?

California’s elections officials are waiting for the answer to one question: Will the hundreds of thousands of Californians who recently signed up to vote actually show up for the June 7 primary?

And they are contemplating a second question: If they do, how do we keep them around?

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Bernie Sanders moves toward a fight over Israel, forcing Hillary Clinton to navigate a splintered party

Sen. Bernie Sanders has begun pushing the Democratic Party toward a platform fight over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a departure from his core focus on domestic economic issues that would put pressure on Hillary Clinton to handle a growing divide within her party.

The Democratic Party has long had a policy of support for Israel and its government, but consensus on that subject has frayed in recent years.

Four years ago, the floor of the Democratic National Convention erupted into boos after delegates, acting at the behest of President Obama, restored language to the party platform sought by backers of Israel. The language had been left out of an earlier draft, but White House officials wanted it restored to avoid alienating pro-Israel voters.

Since then, tensions between the administration and Israel have grown and so has unease among liberal Democrats about Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians.

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