The Latest on the 2016 presidential campaign, with voters in five states getting their say Saturday in nominating contests (all times Eastern Standard Time):
From National Public Radio:
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has won the Kansas GOP caucus, notching an important victory over Donald Trump.
He's the first winner on a day when five states went to the polls, and it's an important pick-up for Cruz. He beat Trump in a closed GOP caucus, where only registered Republicans could vote. In open primaries, Trump has done better by pulling in independent and crossover voters.
Trump made a last-minute stop in the state this morning, canceling a planned appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference in favor of a rally in Wichita.
In the Kansas Democratic caucuses, the race was too early to call between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Maine GOP results are beginning to trickle in, where Cruz has an early lead. Trump campaigned there this week and hoped to have a strong showing, touting his endorsement from Maine Gov. Paul LePage. But Cruz also stumped in the state on Friday, and the more favorable closed GOP caucus format appears to have played to Cruz's strengths.
The Kentucky GOP caucuses, where results are expected after 7 p.m. ET, wereorchestrated by home state Sen. Rand Paul when he was in the race as a way to protect his White House chances and his re-election hopes. But Paul dropped out of the race after a poor showing in Iowa. Polls show Trump has an big lead in the Republican caucuses now, and the GOP front-runner got in a final dig at Paul on Saturday too:
To the people of Kentucky,
Rand Paul didn't want you. Now he runs back due to his presidential failure. #VoteTrump#MakeAmericaGreatAgain
Louisiana is the only state holding a traditional primary; results in one of the most delegate-rich states of the night are expected after polls close at 9 p.m. ET. Surveys have shown both Trump and Clinton with a sizable edge in their respective contests.
5:58 p.m.
Two former Walt Disney World employees who say they lost their jobs and were forced to train foreign workers with H1-B visas are endorsing Donald Trump and slamming rival Marco Rubio.
The two spoke Saturday before a cheering crowd at Trump's rally in Orlando, Florida, home to Walt Disney World. Dena Moore and Leo Perrero say they feel "betrayed" by the Florida senator.
The two former technology employees at Walt Disney World are suing Disney and the outsourcing companies they say colluded to break the law and replace workers with cheaper immigrant labor. Disney has rejected their claims.
Perrero and Moore say their pleas for help to their home-state senator went unanswered.
Perrero says Rubio has betrayed American workers because he wants to expand the H1-B visa program. Rubio supports raising the number of highly skilled immigrants through the H1-B visa program from 65,000 to 110,000 annually.
In Thursday night's Republican debate, Trump retreated from a position paper on his website, saying he had swung in favor of more temporary H1-B visas. His stance against that had been one of the few specific policies he had laid out.
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5:35 p.m.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has won the Republican presidential caucuses in Kansas, adding to his wins in Iowa, Alaska, Oklahoma and his home state of Texas.
Cruz's victory in Kansas is the first result on a day in which Republicans are voting or holding caucuses in four states.
Among his supporters in Kansas was a 52-year-old engineer at an aviation company, David Cox. He caucused for Cruz in Wichita and says he picked Cruz because he believes he "stands for strong morals, conservative values."
Cox says he initially favored Ben Carson for the GOP nomination, but switched his vote to Cruz after the retired neurosurgeon dropped out of the race this week.
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5:30 p.m.
Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio is playing up his support for military spending and veterans health care.
The approach makes plenty of sense in Jacksonville, Florida, a GOP stronghold with a military presence that rivals any American city. And Florida is Rubio's home state.
Rubio told more than a 1,000 supporters Saturday that "if there is a city that understands the importance of the military, it's right here in northeast Florida."
The senator also introduced his older brother, a Vietnam veteran who lives in the area. Rubio frequently tells of his brother injuring himself jumping from a plane during his military service and repeatedly struggling to navigate the federal bureaucracy for care.
Rubio is under tremendous pressure to defeat Donald Trump in Florida's March 15 primary and is expected to continue hammering the GOP front-runner as unfit to be commander-in-chief.
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5 p.m.
Campaigning in his home state of Florida, Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio is reminding voters in Jacksonville that they've helped him as an underdog candidate before.
Behind in the delegate count to GOP front-runner Donald Trump, the Florida senator is under pressure to win the state's March 15 primary. The victor will claim all of the state's 99 delegates.
Rubio is a Miami native, and he reminded more than 1,000 supporters in Jacksonville on Saturday that when he ran for the Senate in 2010 "there was one other city that believed in me."
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4:55 p.m.
Republican front-runner Donald Trump says he will clinch the GOP nomination if he wins Florida's March 15 primary.
He tells thousands of supporters in Orlando on Saturday that "if we win Florida, believe me, it's over."
Cheers erupted from the capacity-crowd inside the University of Central Florida campus arena. At one point, Trump got the crowd to raise their right hands and pledge to vote for him.
He delivered his speech the same day early voting began statewide in Florida. GOP voters have already mailed in more than 457,000 absentee ballots.
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4:20 p.m.
Donald Trump is battling to pad his lead in the delegate count as four more states deliver verdicts on the fractious Republican race for president. Democrats in three states are choosing between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
Saturday's GOP races in Maine, Kansas, Kentucky and Louisiana, and Democratic contests in Nebraska, Kansas and Louisiana, have been overshadowed by Super Tuesday contests in the rear-view mirror and critical contests to come.
But with front-runner Trump yet to win states by the margins he'll need in order to secure the nomination before the GOP convention, every one of the 155 GOP delegates at stake on Saturday is worth fighting for.
In very early returns, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz led in Kansas.
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4:10 p.m.
Republican presidential hopeful John Kasich has released his partial tax returns for the past several years, joining Sen. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz among the GOP candidates to make public such personal financial records.
The Ohio governor posted tax returns from 2008 to 2014 on his campaign website on Saturday.
The records show that in the past seven years, Kasich has paid roughly 31 percent of his income in federal taxes.
Like Rubio and Cruz, Kasich only released the first two pages of his federal 1040 form. Not included in the disclosure are other parts of his returns, including the documents that detail his deductions.
Those records would shed additional light on Kasich's charitable contributions, for example.
GOP front-runner Donald Trump has not release his personal tax records, citing an ongoing IRS audit of his returns dating back a dozen years.
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2:40 p.m.
Donald Trump's rally in Florida has heard from a Texas woman whose 18-year-old son was killed by a classmate who was in the country illegally.
A tearful Laura Wilkerson told her story to a hushed crowd of thousands in Orlando.
Throughout her speech, the crowd chanted "Build That Wall!" and "Trump! Trump! Trump!"
Wilkerson praised the GOP front-runner and denounced Republican rival Marco Rubio, a Florida senator who faces Trump in the state's big March 15 primary.
She says Rubio "lied to every single Florida voter" when he pushed his comprehensive immigration bill in as part of the "Gang of Eight" in Congress. The bill would have provided a path to citizenship for people living in the country illegally. It passed the Senate and failed in the House.
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2:30 p.m.
In Wichita, Kansas, turnout's been so heavy at the Republican presidential caucuses that some voters waited in lines outside one event center for more than two hours before they got in.
About 100 protesters congregated outside an earlier rally for GOP front-runner Donald Trump before the caucuses opened, but their numbers had thinned out by late morning to about a dozen. They waved signs saying, "Trump Makes America Hate Again" and "A Bridge Not a Wall."
Voters in Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine and Nebraska are holding presidential nomination contests Saturday.
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1:45 p.m.
John Kasich is showing a rare quality in the 2016 presidential campaign: humility.
In a low-key campaign speech in Traverse City, Michigan, he said: "I'm not really worthy, to tell you the truth."
The contrast with cockier candidates could not have been greater. Supporters praise Kasich's authenticity and maturity. But some say his refusal to join the Republican melee is keeping him off center stage.
Susan Mendenhall is 62 and describes herself as a "one-woman media campaign" who posts information about the Ohio governor on social media. She says, "He's got to get his face out there somehow."
Twenty-six-year-old Kurtis Berry acknowledges Kasich is a longshot in the Republican race. But Berry says Kasich has a chance if, as he puts it, "people wake up and realize we can't have in essence a little kid being president." That's an apparent reference to his view that front-runner Donald Trump is childish.
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1:40 p.m.
The review is in from Bernie Sanders. The Democratic presidential contender says the wild Republican debate Thursday night looked like a sixth-grade food fight.
Sanders is in Cleveland for an event at a historic black church. Speaking from his Cleveland campaign office, he said of the GOP debate: "I hope most sixth-graders understand we don't act like that."
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1:20 p.m.
Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio isn't tipping his hand on the prospect he'll get the endorsement of Jeb Bush before the March 15 primary in their home state of Florida.
Winning the state would be crucial for Rubio as he tries to chase down GOP front-runner Donald Trump. Florida will award all of its 99 delegates to the winner of its primary.
A former Florida governor, Bush remains an influential figure in state Republican circles. He's also a face of the GOP establishment and an unsuccessful candidate for president this year, making his potential support tricky for Rubio given how primary voters have embraced outsiders such as Trump.
Rubio said Saturday at conservative gathering in suburban Washington that he believes Bush was "the greatest governor in Florida history."
The Florida senator confirmed the two allies-turned-rivals have spoken since Bush ended his White House bid on Feb. 20, but he said he won't discuss private conversations he has with anyone.
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1:15 p.m.
Marco Rubio is promising he would not nominate a Supreme Court justice in the final year of any four-year term he serves in the White House.
The Florida senator made the promise Saturday in response to a question at a gathering of conservative activists in the Washington suburbs.
As have his fellow Republican presidential candidates and many GOP senators, Rubio has argued that President Barack Obama shouldn't attempt to fill the seat vacated by the Feb. 13 death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
Rubio says the Supreme Court can "function with eight justices." He adds, "There's no magic No. 9."
Rubio did not discuss the practical effects of 4-4 rulings from the court, which result in leaving the decisions of lower courts in place.
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1:05 p.m.
It can be a dilemma for Donald Trump's rivals: Hit back or walk away.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich (KAY'-sihk) says a sure way to grab the spotlight for his campaign would be to hurl insults at the Republican presidential front-runner.
But Kasich won't take the bait.
"I'm with Harry Potter - I'm not going to the dark side." That's what Kasich tells reporters after a rally in Traverse City, Michigan.
But Marco Rubio — who's called Trump a "con artist" — takes a different approach:
"Where I grew up, if someone keeps punching people in the face, eventually someone's going to have to stand up and punch them back."
The Florida senator got loud cheers from an audience at a conference of conservatives outside Washington.
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12:35 p.m.
How does Donald Trump compare running for president with his other job — businessman and developer?
"This is better than real estate. This is more fun," he tells a crowd in Wichita, Kansas, before the start of the state's Republican presidential caucuses.
Trump ditched a planned speech at a conference of conservatives in the Washington area so he could make one last stop in Kansas.
The GOP front-runner tells his supporters: "After making this huge U-turn to Kansas, if I lose, I'm going to so angry at you."
Establishment figures are frantically looking for any way to stop Trump, perhaps at a contested convention.
Trump says "the Republicans are eating their own. They've got to be very careful. We have to bring things together."
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12:25 p.m.
Republican presidential candidate John Kasich (KAY'-sihk) says a sure way to grab the spotlight for his campaign would be to hurl insults at front-runner Donald Trump — but he won't take the bait.
"I'm with Harry Potter — I'm not going to the dark side." That's what he tells reporters after a rally in Traverse City, Michigan. The state's presidential primary is Tuesday.
The Ohio governor says voters care about substance and experience and he insists that his prospects are improving as the campaign moves into his home turf.
He calls Ohio "the crown jewel."
Kasich says he expects to win enough delegates elsewhere to help deny Trump a majority and enable the GOP convention to select the nominee.
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12:15 p.m.
Hillary Clinton says the Supreme Court is "on the ballot" in November's general election.
And she's criticizing Republicans for their opposition to restoring important parts of the Voting Rights Act that were struck down by the high court in 2013.
The Democratic presidential candidate tells African-American ministers in Detroit that "my name may be on the ballot," but so, too, is the future of the Supreme Court.
She says the GOP-run Senate must do its "constitutional duty" and "make a decision" about any nominee President Barack Obama may submit.
Clinton is set to debate rival Bernie Sanders in Flint, Michigan, on Sunday night. The state holds its primary on Tuesday.
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9:35 a.m.
A Donald Trump backer in Kansas has a stern warning for the establishment figures in the Republican Party who are frantically looking for any way to stop the billionaire businessman from grabbing the presidential nomination.
"If the big, fat GOP don't like him, they don't like me."
Those are the words of 65-year-old Connie Belton, a retired homemaker from Wichita, Kansas.
She's come out for a Trump rally in Wichita on Saturday morning before heading to the party's caucuses to give her support for the front-runner.
Belton says she "adores Trump." She thinks "his heart is as big as his hands."
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9:30 a.m.
Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign is planning to air a five-minute ad on the Univision television network ahead of Florida's Democratic primary on March 15.
The goal: show Sanders' appeal with Hispanic voters.
His campaign says the ad will air Thursday night on the Spanish language network. The campaign says the spot will feature Sanders' advocacy for workers in Florida's agricultural sector.
Sanders is trying to overcome a delegate deficit against Hillary Clinton in the upcoming Democratic contests and the ad aims to reach new voters and Latinos.
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8:55 a.m.
Some Republican leaders in Kentucky are worried about a low turnout for the state's presidential caucuses on Saturday — perhaps because their home-state candidate no longer is in the race.
The caucuses were tailor-made — and paid for — by Rand Paul. They were created so Paul could run for president and re-election to the Senate without violating a state law that bans candidates from appearing on the ballot twice in one day.
The senator is long gone from the presidential race, but he's still on the hook to pay $250,000 plus other expenses for a contest among four people not named Paul.
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8:40 a.m.
A series of election contests this weekend in the 2016 presidential race will divide up 175 delegates among the Republican candidates and 134 delegates between Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
Going into the weekend round, Donald Trump leads in the GOP race with 329 delegates. Ted Cruz has 231, Marco Rubio has 110 and John Kasich (KAY'-sihk) has 25.
It takes 1,237 delegates to win the Republican nomination.
On the Democratic side, Clinton leads with 1,066 delegates to 432 for Sanders. It takes 2,383 to win the party's nomination.
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8:25 a.m.
The hunt for delegates by the presidential candidates is resuming Saturday.
Voters in five states are getting their say in the 2016 race.
Democrats and Republicans have contests in Kansas and Louisiana. Republicans in Maine and Kentucky are holding caucuses, as are Democrats in Nebraska.
The polls have already opened in Louisiana.
And there's more on Sunday, when Maine Democrats and Puerto Rico Republicans are up.
