NOTE TO EDS: THIS PIECE IS DESIGNED AS A COMPANION TO ANYTHING YOU RUN ABOUT HILLARY'S ANTICIPATED SUCCESS IN TUESDAY'S PRIMARIES. BEST, SIMON
Intro: While Hillary Clinton prepares to celebrate victory and become the first woman ever to lead a major party in a US Presidential campaign, Donald Trump is trying to contain the damage done to his campaign by fresh allegations of racism.
Republican leaders are furious over comments Mr. Trump has made about a federal judge with Mexican ancestry who is overseeing a lawsuit against one of the Trump organization's many businesses.
Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House of Representatives - who only endorsed Donald Trump's Presidential bid last week - called the comments "textbook racism".
Our Washington Correspondent Simon Marks reports.
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TAKE SOUND UP
It must have seemed like a good idea at the time - take Donald Trump's proven expertise as a property developer and train other people in the art of real estate and asset management.
Call the business "Trump University" ….and tell people they too could one day be living the dream.
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But Trump University closed its doors about 5 years ago…and shortly thereafter became the subject of an ongoing inquiry by the New York Attorney General into possibly illegal business practices.
Some of those people who signed up for courses at Trump University then decided to sue Donald Trump….going public with their claims that they'd never received the education they were promised.
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Mr. Trump insists his now defunct university did graduate - as he puts it - thousands and thousands of satisfied customers.
But he has preserved a special form of fury for the federal judge who is overseeing the lawsuit against him.
Judge Gonzalo Curiel was born in Indiana.
He is an American citizen.
But in interview after interview over the past week, Donald Trump has portrayed him as a "Mexican" with a grudge.
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Those comments on CNN, and others in which Mr. Trump has maintained that no Muslim judge could fairly oversee a case against him….have brought widespread accusations of racism.
And some of them are coming from Republican leaders who, only a matter of days ago, finally decided to endorse Donald Trump's Presidential bid.
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That's Paul Ryan, the most powerful Republican in Washington.
He's the speaker of the House of Representatives….the man who would step in and run the country if Barack Obama and Joe Biden became simultaneously indisposed.
So he's not an insignificant figure on the political landscape here.
But he now finds himself dogged by questions about whether he made a huge mistake last week when he finally gave Mr. Trump his backing.
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Donald Trump is not in any sense backing down, though he did issue a statement claiming his comments had been "misconstrued".
He's left top aides like Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, struggling to explain how the Republican party can possibly now unify.
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But that's clearly not the view of a growing number of Republicans….and those who have not already endorsed Donald Trump must be thinking twice about whether to take the political risk.
Five months of campaigning lies ahead before Americans cast their ballots in November….and there are 5 weeks left before the Republican convention, after which the Party will be firmly stuck with its standard bearer.
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