Newsletter: Essential Politics: Trump’s path to the GOP nomination is increasingly clear

Barring major upsets, Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee when the GOP convention wraps up -- perhaps amid the scent of tear gas -- in Cleveland late in July.

Trump’s remaining opponents, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, have possible scenarios for blocking Trump. But all of them are long shots.

By contrast, multiple paths exist that Trump can use to follow up his victories in four out of five contests on Tuesday.

Good afternoon, I’m David Lauter, Washington Bureau chief. Welcome to the Friday edition of our Essential Politics newsletter, in which we look at the events of the week in the presidential campaign and highlight some particularly insightful stories.

About those pathways:

Trump could nail down the 1,237 delegates needed for a first-ballot victory by winning California’s primary on June 7. To understand the ins and outs, read this piece in which Seema Mehta and Cathy Decker took a close look at California’s first definitive GOP primary since 1964.

If Trump falls short in California, he could pick up the delegates he needs by winning over unbound delegates in the six weeks between the end of the primaries and the start of the convention. Between candidates who have dropped out and states that elect delegates without binding them to a candidate, dozens of unbound delegates exist who can be wooed.

Or he could close the deal at the convention, itself.

By contrast with Trump’s multiple pathways, the avenues open to Cruz and Kasich are few and difficult. If they can win enough delegates from now through June 7, they could deny Trump an outright majority. But in some states, Kasich and Cruz will simply split the anti-Trump vote, which could be fatal to both their hopes in winner-take-all contests.

The next tests will come Tuesday in Arizona, where Cruz will have a lot at stake, and in Utah, where Kasich has the backing of many former Mitt Romney supporters.

You can follow the outcome of all the primaries, as we post live results, speeches and analysis on Trail Guide.

And as the race unfolds, keep watch on the delegates in both parties with our Delegate Tracker, which shows where each candidate stands and where they have won support.

If they do block Trump from a majority at the convention, the anti-Trump forces could try to wrest the nomination from him on a second or subsequent ballot. They hope to prepare for that in the coming weeks by getting Trump opponents elected as convention delegates, even in states where he won primaries. Those delegates would be bound to vote for Trump on the first ballot but, depending on state law, could be free to vote for someone else later.

Trump has already darkly hinted that “riots” could take place if convention maneuvers deny him the nomination. Leaving the threat of violence aside, such scenarios require careful planning, deft execution and strong leadership -- qualities that the anti-Trump efforts have lacked so far.

Meantime, on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton finally got the big, decisive win she needed, as she swept all five contests. The most important was Ohio, where Sen. Bernie Sanders had hoped to repeat the upset he pulled off in Michigan the week before.

In the next few weeks, Sanders likely will win a number of the smaller, mostly white, states. But most of those states have few delegates at stake. Clinton demonstrated in Ohio, as she did earlier in Massachusetts, that she can beat Sanders in states where he hoped to prevail. He has yet to show that he can expand his map, and the time is rapidly slipping away.

As strategists in both parties look ahead to the general election, the huge gender gap in Trump’s support looms large, as Evan Halper explained. Republican women who can’t abide Trump pose an enormous hurdle for him.

The reaction from women is one reason why the threat of violence at Trump rallies has proved helpful to Clinton, Decker explained in an analysis of Tuesday night’s voting.

And one more on that topic: Kate Linthicum and Kurtis Lee took this look at how black, Latino and Muslim students mobilized against Trump in Chicago.

Democratic strategists hope, and many Republicans fear, that the battle over the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Merrick Garland could turn into another rallying cry for Democratic voters, both in the presidential election and key Senate races. Lisa Mascaro and Mike Memoli examined that issue in this piece on the politics of the Garland nomination.

And if you want to know more about the man Obama wants to put on the high court, check out this profile of Garland by David Savage and Del Wilber, as well as this piece by Savage on the effect Garland would have on the court.

Mascaro took a good look back at the decline and fall of Sen. Marco Rubio, who, only a few weeks ago, was still being touted as the Republican party’s transformational figure for 2016.

Finally, two more for your weekend reading: If Trump were elected, his wealth would create vast and unprecedented conflict-of-interest problems, Don Lee and Jim Puzzanghera report.

And Matt Pearce takes readers inside the bitter infighting at the conservative news site Breitbart over its friendliness toward the Trump campaign.

What we’re reading

As I noted, one of the big problems for Kasich and Cruz is that their efforts may interfere with each other’s attempts to bring down Trump. At Real Clear Politics, Sean Trende analyzed the potential for Kasich, in particular, to play the spoiler.

And Ben Ginsberg, the Republican election lawyer who knows the GOP rulebook better than anyone -- mostly because he wrote a large chunk of it -- explains the many routes to potential chaos in Cleveland.

That wraps up this week. My colleague Christina Bellantoni will be back Monday with the weekday edition of Essential Politics. Until then, keep track of all the developments in the 2016 campaign with our Trail Guide, at our politics page and on Twitter at @latimespolitics.

Send your comments, suggestions and news tips to politics@latimes.com.