The Latest: Clinton invokes her Methodism

WASHINGTON – The Latest on the U.S. presidential campaign. (all times EDT):

2:35 p.m.

Hillary Clinton is invoking her religion on the same day Donald Trump questioned it.

The presumptive presidential nominee told supporters in Raleigh, N.C., that, “As we Methodists like to say: do all the good you can for all the people you can in all the ways you can.” That’s a quote credited to John Wesley, the founder of Methodism.

Clinton was campaigning in North Carolina hours after Trump’s scathing critique of her foreign policy record and her qualifications to be president.

According to video of the closed-door speech, Trump told evangelicals in New York that the public doesn’t know “anything about Hillary in terms of religion.”

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2:14 p.m.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is all but acknowledging that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee.

Sanders tells C-SPAN, “It doesn’t appear that I’m going be the nominee.” But he is urging Clinton to pick a running mate who he considers to be liberal. He says it would be a “terrible mistake for her to go to a candidate who has roots in Wall Street or has been backed by Wall Street.”

The senator says he expects to speak at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. He says his campaign is trying to create the “most progressive platform” and change the party’s use of “superdelegates” who help determine the nominee.

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12:40 p.m.

A top Republican official says he is worried that some party leaders may help rebellious delegates who are hoping to derail Donald Trump’s presidential nomination at next month’s GOP national convention.

Bruce Ash is one of Arizona’s three members of the 168-member Republican National Committee, and an expert on party rules.

In a letter he’s distributed to other GOP leaders, Ash says he’s worried that some party officials who will head the convention’s rules committee “might possibly work to deny” Trump the nomination “he has earned.” The letter was obtained by The Associated Press.

Some conservative delegates have begun a long-shot effort to block Trump’s nomination. They want to change the party’s rules and let delegates vote for whichever candidate they want.

Ash writes that party leaders “must stand by our presumptive nominee’s side and defend against all who would threaten our legitimacy as a national party.”

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12:25

Curious about what a two-woman presidential ticket might look like?

Democrats Hillary Clinton and Sen. Elizabeth Warren are offering a glimpse at a campaign event Monday in battleground Ohio.

Warren is on Clinton’s shortlist of prospective running mates. The Massachusetts senator is a favourite of progressives and has emerged as a ferocious critic of presumed Republican nominee Donald Trump. Clinton said Wednesday that the pair will discuss “an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top” at the Cincinnati event.

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12:10 p.m.

Xavier Becerra, a Democratic leader in the House, says he is not currently being vetted as a potential running mate for Hillary Clinton.

“I really don’t have knowledge,” Becerra, of California, said before acknowledging that he has not been notified by the campaign that he is under consideration.

Other potential contenders, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro have been informed that Clinton has begun vetting them for the role.

His colleagues ribbed him for pouring Clinton a glass of water at a meeting with House Democrats on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

“It was a thing of beauty,” joked Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., who shouted, “you’re really working it,” in the meeting.

South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn added: “He absolutely a stand-up kind of guy. If he’s not being vetted, I hope he will be.”

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11:30 a.m.

Donald Trump is laying out a number of goals for the first 100 days of his potential presidential administration.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee says he would “appoint judges who uphold the Constitution,” reform the nation’s immigration policies and repeal the Affordable Care Act.

He also said he would toughen the nation’s trade policies, lift restrictions on energy productions and overhaul the nation’s tax code.

And in a swipe at Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, he says he would “impose tough new ethics rules to restore dignity to the office of the secretary of state.”

Trump’s speech Wednesday at a hotel he owns in Manhattan was largely a wide-ranging attack on Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee.

As part of it, he read a letter from a woman whose son was killed by an illegal immigrant who says Clinton “needs to go to prison to pay for the crimes she has already committed against this country.”

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11:25 a.m.

House Democratic leaders are making a show of unity in their support for Hillary Clinton after the presumptive presidential nominee met with them on Capitol Hill.

They were drawing a comparison with the lukewarm support Donald Trump has received from top Republican lawmakers.

“You saw the stark contrast: unity vs. disorganization, lack of confidence in the other party in their leader,” said Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 Democrat in the House.

Another congressman, Jim McDermott of Washington, said Clinton talked about the importance of winning not just the White House, but elections for the House and Senate.

He said Clinton told lawmakers: “I know the difference between having the House and not having the House, and I want the House.”

Democrats face an uphill battle to retake the House, with better prospects for capturing the Senate.

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11:10 a.m.

Donald Trump says, “no secretary of state has been more wrong, more often, and in more places than Hillary Clinton.”

Trump is slamming Clinton during a speech in New York, saying the decisions made by his general election foe at the State Department “spread death, destruction and terrorism everywhere she touched.”

In particular, Trump blamed the death of four Americans at a U.S. facility in Benghazi, Libya, on Clinton. Among those who died was U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.

Trump says Clinton “slept soundly in her bed” while Stevens was killed.

A Senate investigation later found that Stevens had asked for more security, which went unheeded. But he also twice declined the U.S. military’s offer of a special operations team to bolster security and otherwise help his staff.

The month after the fatal assault, Clinton said she had been responsible for the safety of those serving in Benghazi, but did not acknowledging any specific mistakes on her part.

President Barack Obama also said the blame ultimately rested on his shoulders as president.

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11 a.m.

Donald Trump is suggesting that “our country lost its way” when it began to prioritize globalism over a focus on the United States’ own interests.

Speaking Wednesday at one of his Manhattan hotels, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee says that has “devastated” the American middle class. He says that’s largely due to trade policies enacted under President Bill Clinton’s administration.

Trump says the trade policies were “to the detriment of the American worker,” and he’s linking his general election opponent, Hillary Clinton, to her husband’s policies.

He claimed that Hillary Clinton “sold out our workers” and “she gets rich by making you poor.”

He also played off Clinton’s “I’m with her” campaign slogan, by declaring: “I’m with you, the American people.”

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10:55 a.m.

Donald Trump says Hillary Clinton is “a world-class liar.”

In a speech he’s delivering Wednesday in New York, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee criticized what he called several lies made by his general election opponent.

Among them: Trump says Clinton misrepresenting the danger she faced during an airport arrival in Bosnia, which she said happened in a combat zone.

Trump also slammed Clinton and her husband for using their public sector influence to enrich themselves.

He said Clinton spent “her entire life” raising money for special interests and has “taken plenty of money out for herself.”

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10:49 a.m.

Donald Trump says the country’s problems “can only be fixed by me,” and not his general election opponent, Hillary Clinton.

The presumptive Republican nominee says in a speech he’s delivering Wednesday in New York that change is needed in Washington, because “we will never be able to fix a rigged system by counting on the people who rigged it in the first place.”

Trump called for the supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, whom Clinton defeated in the Democratic primary, to join his campaign.

He says, “together, we can fix the system for all Americans.”

The celebrity businessman said that he is running for president “to give back” to the country that has been “so very good” to him.

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10:40 a.m.

Hillary Clinton is on Capitol Hill meeting with House Democrats.

She is looking to shore up her already strong support among Democratic lawmakers now that she’s the party’s presumptive nominee.

The meeting comes as her likely Republican rival, Donald Trump, is set to deliver a speech attacking Clinton as a failed secretary state who is out of touch with Americans.

That follows Clinton’s speech Tuesday in which she warned that Trump, if elected, would send the U.S. economy into a recession. She plans to lay out her own economic agenda in a speech in North Carolina later Wednesday.

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6:35 a.m.

Hillary Clinton will lay out “ambitious new goals” on the economy in a speech Wednesday in Raleigh, North Carolina. Clinton will follow up on an address in Columbus, Ohio, in which she said Donald Trump would lead the country in a recession.

Clinton said in a preview of her North Carolina speech that she would work with both parties to develop good-paying jobs in infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, clean energy and small business.

She says she will tackle “the twin problems” of college affordability and student debt and ensure Wall Street and the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes.

Clinton will be speaking shortly after Trump’s address on Clinton’s qualifications for president.

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3:20 a.m.

Seeking to refocus his presidential campaign, Donald Trump will lambaste Democratic rival Hillary Clinton as a failed secretary of state who is out of step with Americans on trade and immigration.

Trump’s address Wednesday morning at his hotel in New York’s SoHo neighbourhood marks his official opening salvo against Clinton, the prospective Democratic presidential nominee, in the general election. It comes as Trump faces growing questions about his readiness not just for the presidency, but for the campaign he will need to run to get there.

The Trump campaign is hoping the speech can quiet those concerns and rally Republicans around their shared opposition to Clinton. The billionaire businessman plans to focus in particular on Clinton’s tenure at the State Department, arguing that her foreign policy is in part responsible for the creation of the Islamic State militant group.

On Monday, Trump fired his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, hours before a new fundraising report showed that the billionaire’s campaign had just $1.3 million in the bank at the start of June.