WASHINGTON -- Republicans roundly scolded their own presidential candidate Monday, demanding that Donald Trump apologize for -- and stop -- talking about the ethnic background and alleged partiality of the American judge overseeing a lawsuit against Trump University.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has enough delegates to pass the threshold of the 2,383 needed to clinch the Democratic nomination heading into today's primaries in six states, including California and New Jersey, according to a count by The Associated Press.

Clinton has 1,812 pledged delegates won in primaries and caucuses. She also has the support of 571 superdelegates, party leaders who are free to back the candidate of their choice, according to an Associated Press count.

The AP surveyed all 714 superdelegates repeatedly in the past seven months, and only 95 remain publicly uncommitted.

Clinton added victories over the weekend in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico although officials in Puerto Rico say final results won't be known until today at the earliest.

Leading the roll call criticizing Trump were two former rivals for the Republican presidential nomination.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich tweeted that Trump's attacking the impartiality of U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel "is flat-out wrong."

Trump, Kasich wrote, should "apologize to Judge Curiel & try to unite this country."

Chimed in Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, "It's wrong and I hope he stops."

Other prominent Republicans piled on, drawing a solid line between themselves and the billionaire candidate with whom they've developed a fragile peace. But that detente comes with caveats -- chief of which is the understanding that Trump, nomination nearly in hand, will now focus on uniting the fractured GOP.

Trump, too, showed some deference for the truce, declining to immediately hit back at the Republican lawmakers who have demanded he change focus.

But in a conference call with some of his most visible supporters, Trump urged them to defend his attacks while also ordering them to question the judge's credibility and impugn reporters as racists.

"We will overcome," Trump said, according to two supporters who were on the call and requested anonymity to share their notes with Bloomberg Politics. "And I've always won and I'm going to continue to win. And that's the way it is."

There was no mention of apologizing or backing away from his widely criticized remarks about Curiel.

When former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer interrupted the discussion to inform Trump that his own campaign had asked surrogates to stop talking about the lawsuit in an email on Sunday, Trump repeatedly demanded to know who sent the memo, and immediately overruled his staff.

"Take that order and throw it the hell out," Trump said.

Told the memo was sent by Erica Freeman, a staff member who circulates information to surrogates, Trump said he didn't know her. He openly questioned how the campaign could defend itself if supporters weren't allowed to talk.

"Are there any other stupid letters that were sent to you folks?" Trump said. "That's one of the reasons I want to have this call, because you guys are getting sometimes stupid information from people that aren't so smart."

Brewer, who was on the call with prominent Republicans like Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, interjected again. "You all better get on the page," she told him.

In response, Trump said that he aspired to hold regular calls with surrogates in order to coordinate the campaign's message, a role usually reserved for lower ranking staff members than the nominee himself.

The emailed memo, sent by Freeman on Sunday, was cc'd to campaign manager Corey Lewandowski; Hope Hicks, Trump's top communications staff member; and Rick Gates, a top aide to campaign Chairman Paul Manafort. It informed surrogates that "they're not authorized to discuss matters concerning the Trump Organization including corporate news such as the Trump University case."

"The best possible response is 'the case will be tried in the courtroom in front of a jury--not in the media,'" according to the email, obtained by Bloomberg Politics.

Trump also told his supporters to attack journalists who ask questions about the lawsuit and his comments about the judge.

"The people asking the questions--those are the racists," Trump said. "I would go at 'em."

Last week, Trump denied on CNN that his remarks are racist.

"Public Service Announcement: Saying someone can't do a specific job because of his or her race is the literal definition of 'racism,'" tweeted Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., a longtime Trump critic.

Curiel is a former federal prosecutor who was born in Indiana to parents who came from Mexico in the 1940s. He has not responded to Trump's attack, and Trump's legal team has not sought his removal from the case. Judges generally are thought to have conflicts of interest only in more specific situations, such as a financial interest in the outcome of the case.

Trump University is the target of two lawsuits -- in San Diego and New York -- which accuse the business of fleecing students with unfulfilled promises to teach them secrets of success in real estate. Trump has maintained that customers were overwhelmingly satisfied. Curiel is presiding over the suits in California.

"All I'm trying to do is figure out why I'm being treated so unfairly by a judge," Trump said Monday on Fox News Channel.

The Republican establishment responded in rare unison: Just stop.

"He needs to stop saying it. That man is an American -- born in the United States," Rubio, son of Cuban immigrants, told Orlando television station WFTV. "I don't think it reflects well on the Republican Party. I don't think it reflects well on us as a nation."

Added Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine: "Donald Trump's comments on the ethnic heritage and religion of judges are absolutely unacceptable. His statement that Judge Curiel could not rule fairly because of his Mexican heritage does not represent our American values."

South Dakota Sen. John Thune, a member of the Senate GOP leadership, said: "Yeah, he's going to have to adapt. This is not working for him. They were inappropriate comments."

Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, who is in a competitive re-election race, emphasized that he's running "a very independent campaign" from Trump's.

"To suggest somebody is not capable of doing a job because of their ancestry is wrong and unacceptable," said Portman.

Said Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the Senate's No. 2 Republican, "I'm not going to be sucked into talking about Trump 24/7."

And former House Speaker Newt Gingrich pointedly suggested that Trump start acting like "a potential leader of the United States."

Trump already has rejected calls for him to adjust his approach.

"I'm not changing," he said last week at a news conference at Trump Tower.

On Sunday, Trump doubled down on the idea. Asked on CBS whether a Muslim judge would be unfair given Trump's plan to ban Muslims from entering the U.S., Trump responded: "Yeah. That would be possible, absolutely."

Democrats

Eight years to the day after conceding she was unable to "shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling," Clinton is poised to embrace her place in history as the Democratic presidential nominee.

Clinton has been cautious about emphasizing her trailblazer status. But as she campaigned in California in recent days, the former secretary of state signaled she was ready to acknowledge her distinction tonight.

"Starting next Tuesday we're on our way to breaking the highest and hardest glass ceiling," Clinton said last week in Culver City, Calif., echoing the speech she made in 2008 when she conceded the Democratic primary to Barack Obama.

"Having a woman president will make a great statement, a historic statement about what kind of country we are, about what we stand for," Clinton told reporters at a community center in Compton on Monday. "It's really emotional and I am someone who has been very touched and really encouraged by this extraordinary conviction people have."

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders made no mention of Clinton's delegate count during a Monday evening rally in San Francisco. "Let me just talk to you after the primary here in California, where we hope to win," he said.

Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said Clinton's support was dependent upon superdelegates who could still change their minds.

"Our job from now until the convention is to convince those superdelegates that Bernie is by far the strongest candidate against Donald Trump," Briggs said in a statement, adding that calling the Democratic contest before the July convention was a "rush to judgment."

Sanders' supporters urged the senator to continue on. "We're going to keep fighting until the last vote is counted," said Kristen Elliott of San Francisco, who attended the rally.

Said another attendee, Patrick Bryant of San Francisco: "It's what bookies do. They call fights before they're over."

Sanders had said over the weekend that the Democratic convention would be contested if no one wins the nomination solely on the basis of delegates awarded in the primaries and caucuses.

President Barack Obama, meanwhile, is now ready to aggressively campaign for Clinton, starting with a formal endorsement of her candidacy as early as this week.

The White House is in active conversations with Clinton's campaign about how and where the president would be useful to her, according to senior aides to Obama.

Advisers say the president, who sees a Democratic successor as critical to his legacy, is impatient to begin campaigning. They say he is taking nothing for granted.

"I want us to run scared the whole time," Obama told a group of donors Friday night in Miami.

Obama is particularly enthusiastic, aides said, about taking on Trump, who has personally offended the president with his conduct on the campaign trail -- Trump referred Friday to a black man in one of his crowds as "my African-American" -- and as the most visible champion of the "birther" conspiracy theories that falsely hold that Obama was born in Kenya rather than Hawaii.

Information for this article was contributed by by Laurie Kellman, Alan Fram, Catherine Lucey, Lisa Lerer and Ken Thomas of The Associated Press; by Kevin Cirilli, Michael C. Bender and Jennifer Jacobs of Bloomberg News; by Robert Costa of The Washington Post; by Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear of The New York Times.

A Section on 06/07/2016