The GOP soul-searching about what Donald Trump’s prospects of becoming the next Republican presidential nominee mean for the party—and its long-term positioning on vital issues like immigration reform—grew more urgent in the aftermath of Thursday night’s crass debate. Politico resurfaced a memo written by party leaders in the aftermath of Mitt Romney’s 2012 defeat, which specifically urged the GOP to adopt a more inclusive tone toward women and minorities, or risk long-term irrelevance. The Republican frontrunner, the article notes, is running in the other direction.

With Ben Carson announcing his next role will be heading up a group devoted to turning out the Christian vote, the remaining four contenders head into a new round of contests over the weekend—in Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, and Puerto Rico—with Hawaii, Idaho, Michigan and Mississippi weighing in on Tuesday. A week later, on March 15, such delegate-rich states as Florida and Ohio hold winner-take-all contests. The results of that day’s balloting will be crucial in determining whether the “Never Trump” movement can generate enough momentum to stop him from arriving at this summer’s nominating convention with an overwhelming advantage.

Advocates took note of Trump’s decision to walk back comments about his determination to kill the families of terrorists and torture terrorist suspects. “I will not order a military officer to disobey the law,” Trump said Friday, in a reversal shared by The Constitution Project and the Center for American Progress, among other grantees. Trump critic and former GOP presidential contender Lindsey Graham wrote to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, seeking to flesh out their clear guidance on targeting family members of terror suspects and using extreme interrogation techniques.

Trump also changed his view on H-1B visas during the Detroit debate; after previously indicating he favored limiting the number of such visas handed out, he said he favored their usage as a means of getting more “highly skilled people in this country.”  

The Supreme Court scheduled oral arguments in US v Texas, the legal challenge to President Obama’s immigration executive actions, for April 18.

MoveOn.org organized a March 21 “national day of action” to pressure the Senate to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the sudden passing of Justice Scalia. Plans call for senators’ constituents to present members with a “Civics 101 course registration form,” along with copies of the Constitution highlighting Article II. The group hopes to have over 100 events. This follows on a similar effort conducted in recent days by Organizing for Action, the nonprofit emerging from President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, which showcased polling—sponsored by grantee the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, among others—showing that a majority of those surveyed were less likely to vote for a member of the Senate who declined to take up a nomination to replace Scalia.  

America’s Voice was among the grantees decrying a news report in the Washington Post on a key player in the Justice Department unit that trains immigration judges who testified in a deposition that three- and four-year-olds “can learn immigration law well enough to represent themselves in court,” the Post account said. The story, about a case initiated by the ACLU, further inflamed tensions over whether unaccompanied minors have due process rights, let alone have access to sufficient legal resources to help them if engaged by immigration enforcement officials.

A Wheaton College professor who made national news by saying Christians and Muslims worshipped the same God and wound up leaving her job under pressure because of it, landed a new position at the University of Virginia named for an historic Muslim scholar.

The New York Times magazine cover story is about a Mexican youth shot by the US Border Patrol, and the concerns the case raises about the agency’s practices.

Among other grantee activities:

--The National Day Laborer Organizing Network helped arrange a soft launch of a new app aimed at helping day laborers keep track of payments, guard against wage theft, and share information with one another about dangerous work sites.

--The Brennan Center pushed op-eds arguing for the Obama administration to give weight to diversity as a factor in its selection of a nominee to replace the late Justice Scalia.

--National Council of La Raza and United We Dream are discussed in an excerpt of a new book about the lasting impact of non-violent protests focusing on the 2006 immigration protests.