Sanders, in a raspy voice, hammered into his standard campaign speech, calling for the need to end income inequality, institutional racism and mass incarceration.

"The reason we're doing so well in this campaign is we're telling the truth," he said to chants of "Bernie!"

"This is an economy that is rigged and meant to benefit those on top. We need an economy that works for all people," he said, as attendees stomped their feet on packed bleachers.

"There is no president that will fight harder to end institutional racism," he said.

Sanders, who has been interrupted on several occasions in other cities by Black Lives Matter demonstrators, allowed the group to open his rally in Los Angeles.

-- Kurtis Lee

For the most part, the senator from Vermont has not directly criticized Hillary Rodham Clinton. But he has alluded to voters being weary of establishment politics, an indirect poke at the former secretary of State, who also served in the Senate and is a former first lady.

"All across this country, people are sick and tired of establishment politics, establishment economics, and they want real change,” Sanders said in Seattle a few days ago. “The people of America understand that corporate greed is destroying our country."

Los Angeles Times photographer Marcus Yam asked Bernie Sanders supporters at the rally why he's their man. Here are some responses.

Marilynn Manderscheid, a retired elementary school teacher, drove up from Orange County to see Sanders.

“What's happening here is a lot of optimism around a candidate who is genuine and believes in truly helping the American people,” said Manderscheid, 69, a life-long Democrat. “He's fighting a real difficult battle to get money out of politics and help bring back civility to the political process.”

Gabe Carcamo, 31, stood several feet behind Manderscheid in line and shared similar views.

“He's the only one talking to young people and really meaning it. If you look at his record, all of his time in office, his positions haven't changed. He's been for civil rights. He's been for same-sex marriage,” said Carcamo, who came up from San Diego.

-- Kurtis Lee

Hillary Rodham Clinton made a forceful defense Monday of President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran, warning lawmakers that "all bets are off" if Congress rejects the deal. The Times' Michael A. Memoli has the details from the campaign trail in New Hampshire:

Bernie Sanders has traveled the country much of the summer tapping into liberal grass-roots support. From Madison, Wis., to Seattle, staunchly liberal crowds intrigued by an alternative to Hillary Rodham Clinton have arrived by the thousands to hear Sanders speak. And it looks like the rally in L.A. will be no different.

Tonight's rally is in contrast to a low-key meeting Clinton had in L.A. last week with eight women to discuss home healthcare.

Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that she would respect whatever decision Vice President Joe Biden made about a run for the presidency. A Biden candidacy could pose the biggest threat to her status as front-runner in the Democratic presidential field.

Any consideration over a possible third run for the presidency by Biden has been put off since the death of his eldest son, Beau, who had brain cancer. Clinton said she last spoke with Biden at Beau's funeral in early June.

"We should all just let the vice president be with his family and make whatever decision he believes is right for him," Clinton said in response to a question Monday.

Amid heightened speculation about his plans, Biden is spending this week on vacation with his wife, Jill, in South Carolina. How she views the possibility of a campaign and the effects it might have on the family will be a major factor in what the vice president decides.

A decision is expected in September, but aides have not ruled out it could be after that.

Republican Party officials aren't the only ones eager to turn the focus of the political world away from Donald Trump. Hillary Rodham Clinton does too, though not for the same reason.

Speaking with reporters Monday after a town hall meeting here in Exeter, N.H., Clinton, the Democratic presidential hopeful, said that as offensive as Trump's comments were in recent days about Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, she hoped more voters would focus on the ways in which other Republicans' policies would be harmful to women.

Clinton singled out Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for suggesting during Thursday's Republican debate and in a subsequent interview that he would support legislation to outlaw abortions even in cases of rape or incest.

"That is as offensive and as troubling a comment as you can hear from a major candidate running for the presidency," Clinton said. "The language may be more colorful and more offensive [from Trump]. But the thinking, the attitude toward women is very much the same. It just is delivered in a different package."

Rubio sought to clarify his views in an interview Sunday on NBC's "Meet The Press," after he disputed a moderator's assertion that he had supported abortion legislation that made such exceptions.

Rubio said he would support "any legislation that reduces the number of abortions." "What I've never done is said I require that it must have or not have exceptions," he said.

"I personally and deeply believe that all human life is worthy of the protection of our laws. I do. And I believe that irrespective of the conditions by which that life was conceived or anything else," he said.

In a brief Q&A; with reporters, Clinton was asked multiple times about Trump, who took umbrage during the debate with Kelly asking him about previous statements he'd made about women, and who later said Kelly had "blood coming out of her wherever," a comment largely interpreted to be a reference to menstruation. Trump said in a defensive-sounding statement that he was talking about Kelly's nose and "only a deviant" would think otherwise.

For her part, Clinton kept trying to broaden the focus to the GOP field at large.

"I know it makes great TV. I think the guy went way overboard. Offensive, outrageous -- pick your adjective," she said of Trump. "But what Marco Rubio said has as much of an impact in terms of where the Republican Party is today as anybody else on that stage. And it is deeply troubling, and it should be to the press, not just to those of us who've been doing this work for so long."

Rubio responded in a statement later Monday that Clinton herself has “radical views” on abortion, citing her support for funding of both Planned Parenthood and abortions overseas.

2:43 p.m.: This story was updated with Rubio's response.

Despite - or maybe because of - the controversies swirling around him, Donald Trump continues to hold the loyalties of about 1 in 5 Republican voters, according to two new polls that show him still in the top position in the field of GOP presidential hopefuls.

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll released Monday afternoon showed Trump with 24% of the GOP vote -- the same level he had before Thursday's first Republican debate. That's roughly the same level of support Trump got in an online poll for NBC conducted by Survey Monkey, the Internet survey company.

In the Reuters poll, Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, came in second, at 12%, down several points from his standing before the debate. The other candidates in the 17-person GOP field were all at 8 points or less.

Bush fared more poorly in the NBC poll, holding support in the single digits.

Polls that follow quickly after an event such as a debate often prove evanescent, so Trump's standing could well change as more organizations take the temperature of potential voters. The data so far indicate that he is holding onto his supporters but also that he has not picked up any additional support.

The Reuters poll showed Hillary Rodham Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, beating Trump or any of the potential GOP candidates, all by roughly the same margins, something other recent surveys have shown.

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush lands in California today for a three-day trip that mixes policy and political fundraising.

The sole public event is a foreign policy speech Tuesday evening at the Reagan Library, the site of next month's presidential debate. The former Florida governor plans to discuss radical Islam, “the greatest national security threat we face,” Bush said earlier this month.

The speech will "relate to how we take out ISIS," Bush told wealthy donors at a closed-door retreat organized by the Koch brothers in Dana Point this month. "It will have broader implications, because we can't do this alone. We have to do this in concert with our allies, we have to do this in a way that it over the long haul."

The bulk of Bush's time in California will be devoted to raising money and courting donors. On Monday night, Bush is attending a private event in San Diego.

On Tuesday, he will headline a breakfast fundraiser at the Newport Beach mansion of Glenn Stearns, the founder of a mortgage lending company, and his wife, Mindy. The host committee includes notable GOP donors such as Mission Inn owner Duane Roberts, homebuilder William Lyon and former Ambassador Bob Tuttle.

Tickets start at $1,000. Donors who raise $27,000 will receive two tickets to the Reagan Library speech and to a policy briefing in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

Bush's rivals are also heading to California for cash. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida is fundraising at the Petroleum Club in Long Beach tomorrow, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich will be raising money in California later this month.

From a brief chat with reporters after a town-hall meeting in Nashua, N.H.:

Donald Trump may be feuding with Fox News' Megyn Kelly and still smarting about his treatment at the the network's debate last week, but it's not going to keep him off the cable network most trusted by GOP primary voters.

Trump is scheduled to appear on Fox News' morning show Tuesday, host Steve Doocy announced Monday afternoon.

Negotiations about the appearance seemed to have been in the works. Trump tweeted earlier Monday that he had spoken with Fox News chief executive Roger Ailes.

Trump has maintained that Kelly and her two co-moderators in the GOP primary debate asked him unfair questions. In particular, he's railed against Kelly for asking him about his past statements about women. Kelly was out to get him, he said on Friday. “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”

On Monday, Trump said he wasn't going to apologize for the comment, which was widely taken as a suggestion that Kelly asked him the questions because she was having her period. (Trump says by “wherever” he meant her nose. )

“She asked me a very inappropriate question,” Trump said Monday on MSNBC's “Morning Joe.” “She should really be apologizing to me, to tell you the truth.”

The Times' Evan Halper has this smart look at how Hillary Rodham Clinton is rankling Silicon Valley with tough talk about clamping down on terrorist networks online.

"The remarks haven't been particularly controversial in the early voting states where Clinton is stumping. But across the country in the Bay Area, the social media industry is anxious about what exactly Clinton has in mind," Halper writes. "Her focus comes as tech companies are engaged in a pitched battle with their state's senior senator, Dianne Feinstein, over her push to require Internet companies to become government informants when they come across potentially troublesome communications."

From Madison, Wis., to Seattle, staunchly liberal crowds intrigued by an alternative to Hillary Rodham Clinton have arrived by the thousands to hear Bernie Sanders speak.

Sanders, a self-described socialist , has weaved together a populist message that touches on issues such as tuition-free college and raising the federal minimum wage.

And on Monday, the Vermont senator and long shot contender for the Democratic presidential nomination is scheduled to bring that message to the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena.

Sanders' Los Angeles rally comes on the heels of a weekend swing through Seattle and Portland, Ore., in deeply blue states that have not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1984.

Before his Los Angeles visit, Sanders plans to stop in Oakland on Monday for a brunch meeting with leaders of National Nurses United, a union that represents nearly 185,000 nurses from California to Florida. Last week, Clinton traveled to Los Angeles to visit with healthcare workers and do a round of fundraisers.

Both Sanders and Clinton are vying for support from big labor unions. Each appeared before the executive council of the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., last month in an effort to court support.

Donald Trump remained at center stage in the Republican presidential contest Sunday, clarifying his rebuke of a Fox News anchor while wielding new broadsides against his rivals, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

With polls showing Trump atop the crowded Republican field, the billionaire real estate impresario was interviewed on four political talk shows.

Read more of this report by The Times' David Willman, who wraps up Trump's Sunday show appearances.