WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is out to win votes by scoring some laughs at the expense of Donald Trump, unleashing mockery with the goal of getting under the former president’s thin skin and reminding the country of his blunders.

Like a comic honing his routine, the Democratic president has been testing and expanding his jokes over the past few weeks. It started with jabs about his Republican opponent’s financial problems, and now Biden regularly pokes fun at Trump’s coiffed hair, his pampered upbringing and his attempt to make a few extra bucks by selling a special edition of the Bible.

The jokes are the latest attempt to crack the code on how to clap back at Trump, whose own insult comedy schtick has redrawn the boundaries of what is acceptable in modern politics. Few have had much luck, whether they try to take the high road or get down and dirty with Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president.

“This is a constant challenge,” said Eric Schultz, a senior adviser to former President Barack Obama. Trump is “not someone who plays by the rules. So it’s up to Biden to figure out how to adapt and play by new rules of engagement.”

So far, Biden has been trying to thread a delicate needle to boost his chances of a second term. He uses humor to paint Trump as a buffoon unworthy of the Oval Office, but the president stops short of turning the election into a laughing matter.

Sometimes he finds that a few jokes can energize an audience even more than a major policy victory and draw precious attention away from an opponent who otherwise commands the spotlight even while stuck in a New York courtroom for his first criminal trial.

The latest example came at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday night. After years of Trump constantly needling Biden as “sleepy” and mocking his age (Biden is 81, Trump is 77), Biden lobbed the insult back after Trump appeared to doze off in court.

Biden nicknamed his rival “Sleepy Don,” adding, “I kind of like that. I may use it again.”

”Of course the 2024 election’s in full swing and yes, age is an issue,” he said. “I’m a grown man running against a 6-year-old.”

But jokes at the annual black-tie affair, which also features a professional comedian (this year it was Colin Jost of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live”), are nothing new. The real meat of Biden’s routine comes during campaign speeches in which he devotes a few moments to taking digs at Trump in between recitations of policy proposals and legislative accomplishments.

“Remember when he was trying to deal with COVID? He suggested: Inject a little bleach in your vein,” Biden said Wednesday to a labor union, describing Trump’s guidance from the White House during the pandemic. “He missed. It all went to his hair.”

In Tampa, Florida, the day before, he assailed Trump for the Supreme Court’s ruling that overturned abortion protections — with three justices nominated by Trump voting in the majority of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — and then pivoted to the former president’s hawking of a $60 “God Bless the USA” Bible.

“He described the Dobbs decision as a ‘miracle,’” Biden said of Trump. “Maybe it’s coming from that Bible he’s trying to sell. Whoa. I almost wanted to buy one just to see what the hell is in it.”

Biden rarely references Trump’s court cases, but jokes about financial problems that began soon after the former president was ordered to pay $454 million in a civil case in New York.

“Just the other day,” Biden said at a fundraiser in Dallas last month, “a defeated-looking guy came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, I need your help. I’m being crushed with debt. I’m completely wiped out.’ I had to say, ‘Donald, I can’t help you.’”

Even when Biden tries his hand at humor, he rarely strays far from talking about policies. He likes to note that he signed a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law — after his opponent failed to do so despite repeatedly holding White House events to drum up support for an idea that never materialized.

“He promised ‘Infrastructure Week’ every week for four years and never built a damn thing,” Biden said this month to a group of laughing union members.

The dilemma is that Trump, who tells voters the whole American political system is hopelessly corrupt, can get away with name-calling that would backfire on other candidates. During his rallies, Trump imitates Biden as a feeble old man who cannot find the stairs after giving a brief speech, and he calls the president “crooked” and “a demented tyrant.”

The Republican’s campaign said the insults will only intensify as Biden tries to give them a taste of their own medicine.

Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, said Biden is “shuffling his feet like a short-circuited Roomba,” referring to the robot vacuum, while failing to address the “out-of-control border” and “runaway inflation.”

Rick Tyler, who worked on the presidential campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in 2016, said voters have a double standard because expectations are different for Trump, who first became famous as a real estate developer and the star of the reality TV show “The Apprentice.”

“Celebrities don’t really have standards, and Trump is in that lane,“ Tyler said. For a politician going up against Trump, “it’s like trying to play a sport with the wrong equipment.”

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., found that out the hard way in the Republican primary in 2016. After Rubio joked about Trump having “small hands” — suggesting that another part of him was small, too — Trump swung back by saying, “I guarantee you there’s no problem.”

“Nobody has ever beaten Trump by getting in the ring with him,” said Alex Conant, communications director for Rubio’s campaign.

Karen Finney, who advised Democrat Hillary Clinton in her 2016 White House run, said Trump can bait opponents into “communicating on his terms, not your terms.”

“It’s the kind of thing where you have to have a balance,” she said. “You could spend all day just responding.”

But if Trump’s humor is blunt, Biden sometimes tries to get the most mileage by staying subtle. During a Pittsburgh stop earlier this month, Biden spoke elliptically about Trump’s trial, betting his audience was already in on the joke.

Trump, he said, is “a little busy right now.”

ATLANTA (AP) — As Donald Trump campaigns for a return to the White House, he often reaches back more than 40 years and seven administrations to belittle President Joe Biden by comparing him to 99-year-old Jimmy Carter.

Most recently, Trump used his first campaign stop after the start of his criminal hush money trial in New York to needle the 46th president by saying the 39th president, a recently widowed hospice patient who left office in 1981, was selfishly pleased with Biden’s record.

“Biden is the worst president in the history of our country, worse than Jimmy Carter by a long shot,” Trump said in a variation of a quip he has used throughout the 2024 campaign, including as former first lady Rosalynn Carter was on her deathbed. “Jimmy Carter is happy,” Trump continued about the two Democrats, “because he had a brilliant presidency compared to Biden.”

It was once common for Republicans like Trump to lampoon Carter. Many Democrats, including Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, kept their distance for years, too, after a roiled economy, energy shortages and an extended American hostage crisis led to Carter’s landslide defeat in 1980. The negative vibes waned, though, with the passage of time and reconsideration of Carter’s legacy as a political leader, Nobel laureate and global humanitarian.

That leaves some observers, Democrats especially, questioning Trump’s attempts to saddle Biden with the decades-old baggage of a frail man who closed his public life last November by silently leading the mourning for his wife of 77 years.

“It’s just a very dated reference,” said pollster Zac McCrary, whose Alabama-based firm has worked for Biden. “It’s akin to a Democrat launching an attack on Gerald Ford or Herbert Hoover or William McKinley. It doesn’t signify anything to voters except Trump taking a cheap shot at a figure that most Americans at this point believe has given a lot to his country and to the world.”

Trump loyalists insist that even a near-centenarian is fair game in the rough-and-tumble reality of presidential politics.

“I was saying it probably before President Trump: Joe Biden’s worse than Jimmy Carter,” said Georgia resident Debbie Dooley, an early national tea party organizer during Obama’s first term and a Trump supporter since early in his 2016 campaign. Dooley said inflation under Biden justifies the parallel: “I’m old enough to remember the gas lines under President Carter.”

Any comparison, of course, involves selective interpretation, and Trump’s decision to bring a third president into the campaign carries complications for all three –- and perhaps some irony for Trump, who, like Carter, was rejected by voters after one term.

Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment about his comparisons; Biden’s campaign was dismissive of them.

“Donald Trump is flailing and struggling to land coherent attacks on President Biden,” spokesman Seth Schuster said.

Carter remains at home in Plains, Georgia, where those close to him say he has kept up with the campaign. Biden is unquestionably the closest friend Carter has had in the White House since he left it. Biden was a first-term lawmaker from Delaware when he became the first U.S. senator to endorse Carter’s underdog campaign. After he won the White House, Biden and first lady Jill Biden visited the Carters in Plains. They saw a grieving Carter privately before Rosalynn Carter’s funeral in Atlanta last year.

Like Carter, Biden is seeking reelection at a time when Americans are worried about inflation. But today’s economy is not the same as the one Carter faced.

The post-pandemic rebound, fueled by stimulus spending from the U.S. and other governments, has been blamed for global inflation. The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates in response.

But the effective federal funds rate is 5.33% right now, while the benchmark was above 17% for a key period before the 1980 election. Rates for a 30-year mortgage are about half what they were at the peak of Carter’s administration; unemployment is less than half the Carter peak. The average per-gallon gas price in the U.S., topping $3.60 this month, is higher than the $3 peak under Trump. It reached $4.50 (adjusted for inflation) during Carter’s last year in office.

Carter and Trump actually share common ground. They are the clearest Washington outsiders in modern history to win the presidency, each fueled by voter discontent with the establishment.

A little-known Georgia governor and peanut farmer, Carter leveraged fallout from Vietnam and the Watergate scandal. Trump was the populist businessman and reality TV star who pledged to “Make America Great Again.” Both men defy ideological labels, standing out for their willingness to talk to dictators and isolated nations such as North Korea, even if they offered differing explanations for why.

Carter cautioned his party about underestimating Trump’s appeal, and the Carters attended Trump’s 2017 inauguration. Jimmy Carter, however, openly criticized Trump’s penchant for lies. After Carter suggested Russian propaganda helped elect Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, Trump began to insult Carter as a failure.

Unlike Carter, Trump never accepted defeat. He falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen, then promoted debunked theories about the election that were repeated by supporters in the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress convened to certify Biden’s victory. Trump left Washington the morning Biden took office, becoming the first president since Andrew Johnson in 1869 to skip his successor’s inauguration.

Carter conceded to Republican Ronald Reagan, attended his inauguration, then returned to Georgia. There, he and Rosalynn Carter established The Carter Center in 1982. They spent decades advocating for democracy, mediating international conflict and advancing public health in the developing world. They built houses for low-income people with Habitat for Humanity. Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Many historians’ judgment of Carter’s presidency has softened.

He is credited with deregulating much of the transportation industry, making air travel far more accessible to Americans, and creating the Department of Energy to streamline and coordinate the nation’s energy research. He negotiated the Camp David peace deal between Egypt and Israel. He diversified the federal judiciary and executive branch. He appointed the Federal Reserve chairman, Paul Volcker, who, along with Reagan, would get credit for the economic growth of the 1980s. Carter was the first president to raise concerns about rising global temperatures. And it was Carter, along with his diplomatic team, who negotiated the release of American hostages in Tehran, though they were not freed until minutes after Carter’s term expired.

Biographies, documentaries and news coverage across Carter’s 10th decade have reassessed that record.

By 2015, a Quinnipiac University poll found 40% of registered voters viewed Carter as having done the best work since leaving office among presidents from Carter through George W. Bush. When Gallup asked voters last year to rate Carter’s handling of his presidency, 57% approved and 36% disapproved. (Trump measured 46% approval and 54% disapproval at the time, the first retroactive measure Gallup had conducted for him.)

“There has long been a general consensus of admiration for Carter as a person — that sentiment that he was a good and decent man,” said Amber Roessner, a University of Tennessee professor who studies collective public memory and has written extensively on Carter. The more recent conclusions about Carter as a president, she added, suggest “we should consider Carter’s presidency as a lens to think about reevaluating about how we gauge the failure or success of any administration.”

How that plays into Biden’s rematch with Trump, Roessner said, “remains to be seen.”

Regardless, the ties between the 39th and 46th presidents endure, whatever the 45th president might say. When the time comes for Carter’s state funeral, Trump is expected to be invited alongside Carter’s other living successors. But it will be Biden who delivers the eulogy.

WASHINGTON (AP) —

The war in Gaza spurred large protests outside a glitzy roast with President Joe Biden, journalists, politicians and celebrities Saturday but went all but unmentioned by participants inside, with Biden instead using the annual White House correspondents’ dinner to make both jokes and grim warnings about Republican rival Donald Trump’s fight to reclaim the U.S. presidency.

An evening normally devoted to presidents, journalists and comedians taking outrageous pokes at political scandals and each other often seemed this year to illustrate the difficulty of putting aside the coming presidential election and the troubles in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Biden opened his roast with a direct but joking focus on Trump, calling him “sleepy Don,” in reference to a nickname Trump had given the president previously.

Despite being similar in age, Biden said, the two presidential hopefuls have little else in common. “My vice president actually endorses me,” Biden said. Former Trump Vice President Mike Pence has refused to endorse Trump’s reelection bid.

But the president quickly segued to a grim speech about what he believes is at stake this election, saying that another Trump administration would be even more harmful to America than his first term.

“We have to take this serious — eight years ago we could have written it off as ‘Trump talk’ but not after January 6,” Biden told the audience, referring to the supporters of Trump who stormed the Capitol after Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 election.

Trump did not attend Saturday’s dinner and never attended the annual banquet as president. In 2011, he sat in the audience, and glowered through a roasting by then-President Barack Obama of Trump’s reality-television celebrity status. Obama’s sarcasm then was so scalding that many political watchers linked it to Trump’s subsequent decision to run for president in 2016.

Biden’s speech, which lasted around 10 minutes, made no mention of the ongoing war or the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

One of the few mentions came from Kelly O’Donnell, president of the correspondents’ association, who briefly noted some 100 journalists killed in Israel’s 6-month-old war against Hamas in Gaza. In an evening dedicated in large part to journalism, O’Donnell cited journalists who have been detained across the world, including Americans Evan Gershkovich in Russia and Austin Tice, who is believed to be held in Syria. Families of both men were in attendance as they have been at previous dinners.

To get inside Saturday’s dinner, some guests had to hurry through hundreds of protesters outraged over the mounting humanitarian disaster for Palestinian civilians in Gaza. They condemned Biden for his support of Israel’s military campaign and Western news outlets for what they said was undercoverage and misrepresentation of the conflict.

“Shame on you!” protesters draped in the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh cloth shouted, running after men in tuxedos and suits and women in long dresses holding clutch purses as guests hurried inside for the dinner.

“Western media we see you, and all the horrors that you hide,” crowds chanted at one point.

Other protesters lay sprawled motionless on the pavement, next to mock-ups of flak vests with “press” insignia.

Ralliers cried “Free, free Palestine.” They cheered when at one point someone inside the Washington Hilton — where the dinner has been held for decades — unfurled a Palestinian flag from a top-floor hotel window.

Criticism of the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s military offensive in Gaza has spread through American college campuses, with students pitching encampments and withstanding police sweeps in an effort to force their universities to divest from Israel. Counterprotests back Israel’s offensive and complain of antisemitism.

Biden’s motorcade Saturday took an alternate route from the White House to the Washington Hilton than in previous years, largely avoiding the crowds of demonstrators.

Saturday’s event drew nearly 3,000 people. Celebrities included Academy Award winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Scarlett Johansson, Jon Hamm and Chris Pine.

Both the president and comedian Colin Jost, who spoke after Biden, made jabs at the age of both the candidates for president. “I’m not saying both candidates are old. But you know Jimmy Carter is out there thinking, ‘maybe I can win this thing,’” Jost said. “He’s only 99.”

Law enforcement, including the Secret Service, instituted extra street closures and other measures to ensure what Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said would be the “highest levels of safety and security for attendees.”

Protest organizers said they aimed to bring attention to the high numbers of Palestinian and other Arab journalists killed by Israel’s military since the war began in October.

More than two dozen journalists in Gaza wrote a letter last week calling on their colleagues in Washington to boycott the dinner altogether.

“The toll exacted on us for merely fulfilling our journalistic duties is staggering,” the letter stated. “We are subjected to detentions, interrogations, and torture by the Israeli military, all for the ‘crime’ of journalistic integrity.”

One organizer complained that the White House Correspondents’ Association — which represents the hundreds of journalists who cover the president — largely has been silent since the first weeks of the war about the killings of Palestinian journalists. WHCA did not respond to a request for comment.

According to a preliminary investigation released Friday by the Committee to Protect Journalists, nearly 100 journalists have been killed covering the war in Gaza. Israel has defended its actions, saying it has been targeting militants.

“Since the Israel-Gaza war began, journalists have been paying the highest price — their lives — to defend our right to the truth. Each time a journalist dies or is injured, we lose a fragment of that truth,” CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna said in a statement.

Sandra Tamari, executive director of Adalah Justice Project, a U.S.-based Palestinian advocacy group that helped organize the letter from journalists in Gaza, said “it is shameful for the media to dine and laugh with President Biden while he enables the Israeli devastation and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.”

In addition, Adalah Justice Project started an email campaign targeting 12 media executives at various news outlets — including The Associated Press — expected to attend the dinner who previously signed onto a letter calling for the protection of journalists in Gaza.

“How can you still go when your colleagues in Gaza asked you not to?” a demonstrator asked guests heading in. “You are complicit.”

___ Associated Press writers Mike Balsamo, Aamer Madhani, Fatima Hussein and Tom Strong contributed to this report.

By Jarrett Renshaw

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden delivered an election-year roast on Saturday night at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner as protesters outside criticized his support for Israel’s war against Hamas.

Biden used the annual black-tie event to chide his Republican rival Donald Trump for immaturity, poke fun at his own advanced age and take on the Washington press corps.

“Yes, age is an issue. I’m a grown man, running against a 6-year-old,” Biden joked.

Biden, 81, later added of former President Trump, 77: “Age is the only thing we have in common. My vice president actually endorses me.”

Trump reacted to the event by calling it “really bad” in a post on his Truth Social platform. “Crooked Joe was an absolute disaster! Doesn’t get much worse than this!” he said.

Demonstrators holding banners outside the gathering at the Washington Hilton chanted about journalists’ deaths in Gaza. Hundreds of protesters encouraged journalists to boycott the annual event and shouted down administration officials as they entered.

Biden avoided the large protests at the front of the hotel by arriving through a back entrance, where he was greeted by smaller groups of protesters calling for a ceasefire.

At the century-old event, often referred to as Washington’s “nerd prom,” hundreds of journalists, politicians and celebrities rubbed elbows in a massive banquet hall. It often features friendly jabs from the president in a closing speech that takes aim at reporters and other guests in the audience.

Biden offered some advice to the press corps.

“I’m sincerely not asking you to take sides. I’m asking you to rise up to the seriousness of the moment. Move past the horse race numbers and the gotcha moments and the distractions, the sideshows that have come to dominate and sensationalize our politics, and focus on what’s actually at stake,” Biden said.

This year, the event was hosted by “Saturday Night Live” cast member Colin Jost.

Grassroots movement CODEPINK marched to the venue from a nearby park. “The United States media perpetuates anti-Palestinian narratives and ignores Israeli war crimes,” the group said on its website.

A growing movement against the war in Gaza has dogged Biden this year including at a $250-per-ticket March fundraiser at New York’s Radio City Music Hall that was disrupted by protesters.

Recently, that movement has expanded to college campuses in the U.S., signifying a growing revolt inside the Democratic base that Biden needs to defeat Trump, who is now the Republican frontrunner.

Kelly O’Donnell, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, declined to comment on security measures for the dinner.

“The safety and security of our protectees is the U.S. Secret Service’s top priority,” said U.S. Secret Service spokesperson Alexi Worley, who declined to comment further.

Israel’s six-month old war against Hamas in Gaza, in response to the Oct. 7 attack by the militant group in southern Israel, has killed more than 34,000 people, Palestinian health authorities say, and caused a humanitarian disaster for the enclave’s more than 2 million inhabitants.

The Hamas attack killed 1,200 people in Israel, and led to 253 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

The White House Correspondents Association was founded in 1914 and has held a dinner nearly every year since 1921 to celebrate the reporters who cover the presidency and raise money for scholarships.

(Reporting by Stephanie Kelly and Jarrett Renshaw; Additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt, Joey Roulette and Maria Ponnezhath; Editing by Heather Timmons, Diane Craft, Deepa Babington, Jamie Freed and William Mallard)

NEW YORK (AP) — Even by Donald Trump’s standards, this was a dizzying week.

The first criminal prosecution of a former president began in earnest with opening statements and testimony in a lower Manhattan courtroom. But the action quickly spread to involve more than half a dozen cases in four states and the nation’s capital. Twice during the week, lawyers for Trump were simultaneously appearing in different courtrooms.

The collision of so many cases within a five-day span underscores the challenges Trump will face as he campaigns again for the White House while his legal matters intensify. While the presumptive Republican nominee sought to talk about the economy and other issues, his intended message was repeatedly overshadowed by the latest developments popping up across the country.

Here’s how the week broke down and what’s ahead:

The week began with a moment for the history books, with prosecutors for the first time presenting a jury with a criminal case against a former American president. In opening statements, prosecutors told jurors that hush money payments made to an adult film actor were “a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election” while Trump’s lawyers argued the case is baseless. Testimony then began with former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker giving the public the most tangible look yet at the allegations.

It also gave the clearest picture yet of Trump’s defense and how he is blending his roles as candidate and criminal defendant. Trump is starting and ending the day appearing before waiting reporters at the courthouse, offering complaints that he is required to be there and commentary on how cold it is in the courtroom or remarks on unrelated national news.

In a separate but nearby courthouse, one of Trump’s lawyers struck a deal with New York state lawyers over a $175 million bond that Trump posted to pause a large civil fraud judgment he’s appealing in a separate case.

Trump returned to court where prosecutors began by urging the judge to hold Trump in contempt for social media posts that they said violated a gag order that bars him from attacking witnesses, jurors and others involved. The judge did not immediately rule on the request but seemed skeptical of defense arguments that Trump was just responding to others’ attacks.

Pecker, a longtime Trump friend, testified the rest of the day and said he pledged to help suppress harmful stories about Trump during the 2016 election.

Trial proceedings were not scheduled for Wednesday so Trump didn’t trek to the Manhattan courthouse from his namesake penthouse tower. But he did fire off a post at 2 a.m. on Truth Social, his social media platform, criticizing the judge and did it again later in the day in an interview with Fox News Digital.

Meanwhile, more court documents were unsealed in Florida in another criminal case in which federal prosecutors have charged Trump and two of his employees with mishandling classified documents after he left the White House. Though the case has proceeded at a plodding pace in recent months and seems unlikely to reach trial this year, the documents show, among other things, the warnings that Trump received from associates to return the sensitive files he was later charged with possessing.

Beyond cases in which Trump is charged as a defendant, Arizona’s attorney general on Wednesday indicted 18 of his associates for their roles in an effort to overturn Trump’s loss in that state to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Trump was referred to in the Arizona case as an unindicted co-conspirator.

In a similar case in Michigan, a state investigator testified that he considers Trump to be an uncharged co-conspirator in that state’s case against fake electors.

Trump’s hush money case in New York state court resumed Thursday. But prosecutors began the day by arguing before the judge that Trump had again violated the gag order with social media posts and comments he made early that morning at a dawn campaign stop in the city.

New York state Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan has not yet ruled on whether to hold Trump in contempt. Pecker later resumed testimony. Boris Epshteyn, a longtime Trump aide who was among the 18 charged in Arizona a day earlier, was listening in the courtroom.

At the same time in Washington, the U.S. Supreme Court weighed whether Trump can be prosecuted over his efforts to undo his loss to Biden. The justices in their questions seemed skeptical of Trump’s claims of absolute immunity from prosecution, but a few seemed to signal they had reservations about the charges, and that could result in a delay in that trial beyond November’s election.

In New York federal court on Thursday, a judge rejected Trump’s request for a new trial in a defamation case in which he was ordered to pay $83.3 million to an advice columnist for his social media attacks over her claims that he sexually assaulted her.

The hush money trial continued in New York on Friday, with Pecker wrapping up testimony and Trump’s lawyers seeking to discredit him. Two other witnesses, Trump’s longtime executive assistant Rhona Graff and Gary Farro, a banker for former Trump attorney Michael Cohen. Epshteyn again was seated in the courtroom.

The New York hush money case is not expected to resume until Tuesday because of a long-scheduled day off Monday. Testimony is expected to continue Thursday and Friday, giving Trump a chance to make campaign stops in Michigan and Wisconsin on Wednesday.

On Thursday, the judge has scheduled a morning hearing on prosecutors’ most recent push to punish Trump over the gag order.

And in the Arizona case, details could emerge about the charges against Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows and former lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

Sixteen of the 18 people indicted by a grand jury have been charged with conspiracy, fraud and forgery for their role in submitting a false slate of electors to Congress; the state attorney general has yet to confirm charges against the two remaining defendants. The indictment makes clear, based on their statements and positions, that they are Giuliani and Meadows, but the charges against them are still redacted.

___

Associated Press writers Eric Tucker in Washington and Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix contributed to this report.

BRIGHTON, Colo. (AP) — Republican activists gathered in a school lunchroom last month to hear political pitches from candidates and agreed on the top issue in the Denver suburbs these days: immigration.

The area has been disrupted by the arrival of largely Venezuelan migrants coming north through Mexico, they said. Virtually everyone in the meeting said they were uncomfortable with the new population, which has overwhelmed public services and become a flashpoint in local and national elections.

“We’ve lived here our whole lives, and now we have to pay for hotels and debit cards and health care” for the migrants, through government spending, said Toni Starner, a marketing consultant. “My daughter’s 22 and she can’t even afford to buy a house.”

Some 1,200 miles to the south, migrants are also transforming the prosperous industrial city of Monterrey, Mexico. Haitian migrants speak Creole on downtown streets and Central American migrants ask motorists for help at intersections.

But the new arrivals aren’t even part of Mexico’s political conversation as the country gears up for its presidential vote on June 2.

“If it were a problem, the politicians would already be mentioning it in their campaigns,” said Ingrid Morales, a 66-year-old retired academic who lives on Monterrey’s south side.

Every 12 years, the coincidence of presidential elections in the U.S. and Mexico provides a valuable comparative snapshot. The different ways migration is resonating in the two countries’ elections this year reflects the neighbors’ very different styles of democracy.

Mexican politics are still dominated by institutional political parties, while Donald Trump disrupted the United States’ two-party system with his more populist approach, and moved anti-immigration sentiment to center stage in U.S. politics.

Mexican politics also revolve more around “bread-and-butter” issues like the economy than in the wealthier United States, which is increasingly consumed with questions of national identity, said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute.

What’s more, just about every Mexican family has an immediate experience with migration, with many still having relatives living in other countries. While migrants must travel through Mexico to enter the U.S., they are more dispersed as they travel and have not generated similar scenes of an overwhelmed Mexican side of the border.

“In Mexico, there isn’t that same perception of chaos,” Selee said.

Trump is making that perception of chaos his campaign’s main theme as he tries to return to the White House. AP VoteCast, a survey of the national electorate, found immigration was a top issue among voters in the Republican presidential primary’s initial states. An AP-NORC poll conducted last month found that 58% of Americans say immigration is an extremely or very important issue for them personally.

In contrast, Mexico’s presidential frontrunner, Claudia Sheinbaum, didn’t even include a mention of immigration when she announced 100 campaign commitments last month. When she came to the state where Monterrey sits — Nuevo Leon — in February she talked about security and the water supply. Her main opponent, Xochitl Gálvez, visited the city last month and talked about her proposals to raise police salaries and combat gender violence.

But Monterrey, a three-hour drive from the Texas border, has increasingly become a critical waystation, even destination, for tens of thousands of migrants. Local authorities and international organizations have scrambled to find a place for the new arrivals.

Femsa, the owner of the ubiquitous convenience store chain Oxxo, has hired hundreds of migrants to work in its stores through a program with the United Nations refugee agency.

An annual survey of Nuevo Leon found last year that nearly nine in 10 residents noticed an increase in migrants and about seven in 10 felt that they should be provided work. It’s not as if Mexicans aren’t divided over the issue: Those surveyed in Nuevo Leon were split over whether Mexico should admit more migrants or stop the flow.

The lack of clear political advantage could explain why politicians have stayed away from talking about immigration, said Luis Mendoza Ovando, a political analyst and columnist with the main local newspaper, El Norte.

“Ultimately, society says if there are more migrants, give them work and everything is good,” he said.

Ricardo Cobián, 30, runs a beauty salon in downtown Monterrey. The next administration will have to deal with immigration but it is not a top priority for the nation, he said.

“The main issues for the candidates must be resolving security and ensuring economic stability,” said Cobián, adding that he has sympathy for migrants because he knows of his own relatives’ recent struggles to reach the United States.

Colorado became a stop on the migrant trail even more recently than Monterrey. In late 2022, Venezuelans crossing into Texas from Mexico found that it costs less to take a bus from the border city of El Paso to Denver than many of the United States’ better-known metropolises. And Denver — a liberal, fast-growing city — offered migrants food and shelter.

Now, Denver’s mayor, Mike Johnston, reports that his city of 710,000 has received nearly 40,000 migrants, what he calls the highest number of new migrants per capita of any city in the United States. The largely Venezuelan population is mainly confined to Denver but has started to trickle into surrounding suburbs like Brighton, often selling flowers or window-washes at streetcorners.

Unlike in Monterrey, where many migrants found jobs with established employers, paperwork hassles and federal regulations have prevented most migrants in Denver from receiving authorization to work. Irregular labor like yard work or housecleaning is their only way of making a living.

That’s led to a heavy burden on Denver’s coffers, and other cities in Colorado have watched in alarm. The two next largest after Denver, Aurora and Colorado Springs, both passed resolutions saying they don’t want large numbers of migrants sent to their cities.

The migrants in Denver say they feel increased pressure in the form of fewer city benefits and stepped up warnings from local police that they can’t sell windshield washes, flowers or home-cooked food from streetcorners without a permit. The wary feelings towards them extend to the heavily Hispanic suburbs just north of Denver that comprise the state’s 8th congressional district, likely to be one of the most heated fights in this year’s battle for control of the House of Representatives.

State Rep. Gabe Evans, one of the Republicans competing for the party’s nomination against Democratic Rep. Yadira Caraveo, said that the district’s residents are fed up.

Evans’ grandfather immigrated from Mexico and earned his U.S. citizenship by serving in World War 2.

“The citizenship for the Chavez family was paid for in blood,” Evans said. “Then you have people crossing the border and just getting handed things.”

Cynthia Moreno, a Democrat, said her father came from Mexico legally in the 1920s. Though she has personal sympathy for the migrants’ plight, she’s aghast they’re allowed to stay.

“If I lived in Denver, I’d be pissed right now,” Moreno said, calling immigration “the nation’s top priority.”

Far from everyone in the area says it’s overwhelmed.

Alex Marvin lives in the 8th Congressional District but works in personnel for the city of Denver and watches buses drop off new arrivals outside his municipal office building. He thinks the federal government needs to compensate the city for the influx, but is proud the city is welcoming the new arrivals.

“We need to support people and help people the most we can,” said Marvin, a 35-year-old Democrat.

Rep. Caraveo was born in Colorado, but her parents were Mexican immigrants living in the U.S. illegally who obtained legal status under the 1986 immigration bill signed by then-President Ronald Reagan. Caraveo became a pediatrician and state legislator before running for Congress in 2022 and winning by only 1,600 votes.

That 1986 immigration bill was the last significant one passed by Congress, which has deadlocked for decades over whether to legalize additional generations of people living in the country illegally. In a sign of how the politics of immigration have shifted, that issue didn’t even come up in the bipartisan immigration bill that Trump killed earlier this year. Instead, the proposal focused on border enforcement.

The legislation never made it to the floor of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. But Caraveo, who introduced her own package of immigration measures last month that included a proposal to legalize those brought to the country illegally as children, said she would have supported the bipartisan immigration bill anyway.

“The process is broken. We’re seeing the brokenness of it in front of our faces,” she said.

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Martínez reported from Monterrey, Mexico.

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https://apnews.com/hub/global-elections/

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By Nathan Layne

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Meetings with foreign dignitaries at Trump Tower. A staged visit to a convenience store in the New York City Democratic stronghold of Harlem. Daily remarks broadcast on national cable television from outside the courtroom, and a blizzard of angry posts on his Truth Social platform.

In the midst of his New York hush money trial, Republican former president Donald Trump is testing the boundaries of the saying that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Even if you are running for the highest office in the land.

Making his third White House run, Trump is using the elevated media attention to amplify his claims of judicial persecution while simultaneously trying to appear presidential by meeting leaders or envoys from U.S. allies, who have proven willing to call on him despite his facing dozens of charges in four separate criminal cases.

Media are barred from televising Trump’s trial and he is a mute observer in the proceedings. Before the trial started on April 15, debate centered on how Trump would balance his candidacy with his dual role as a criminal defendant trapped in court out of public view for most of four days a week.

His movements curtailed, Trump and his campaign have capitalized on the “audience of millions” afforded by cameras that follow his every move, said Republican consultant Jeanette Hoffman, including his staged visits to the convenience store, or bodega, in Harlem and with union workers at a construction site in Midtown Manhattan.

“No campaign would want to have their candidate in the courtroom instead of with voters on the campaign trail,” Hoffman said. “But I also think they’re smart to maximize their moments of support in front of the camera during the trial.”

Still, Trump has not had a campaign rally since the trial started, although two are planned for next week in the battleground states of Michigan and Wisconsin. An incoming storm forced him to abruptly postpone a North Carolina rally on April 20. On his one day off from the trial this week he played golf.

Opinion polls suggest that however Trump tries to make the best of a bad situation, the trial carries political risks. They show some Republican voters could turn against him if he becomes a convicted felon, costing him crucial support in a close Nov. 5 election rematch with Democratic incumbent Joe Biden.

The tawdry details being aired at the trial – the case revolves around payoffs to women Trump is alleged to have slept with – could repel the women voters he needs to win in November, said Tricia McLaughlin, former communications director for former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

EMBRACING THE ‘SPLIT SCREEN’

The Biden White House has embraced a split-screen effect, seeking to draw a sharp contrast between Trump the criminal defendant with Biden the president talking up his work on behalf of Americans in battleground states that decide U.S. elections.

Trump has also taken to Truth Social, his social media platform where he has just shy of 7 million followers, to portray the trial as a “witch hunt” and election interference while accusing the judge of being conflicted.

He unleashed a barrage of 74 posts on April 15, when the trial kicked off with jury selection, more than double his daily average this year, according to an analysis by Josephine Lukito, an assistant professor at University of Texas at Austin.

More important than the limited readership of Truth Social, political analysts say, is the amplifying effect of TV broadcasters which regularly report on Trump’s posts, some of which prosecutors say have violated the judge’s gag order prohibiting attacks on witnesses.

However, Trump’s repeated accusations of a witch hunt could have diminishing returns in the form of less media coverage if he persists in saying the same thing every day.

Nevertheless, “the idea that he is silenced is a joke,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania. “What the trial is giving him is the opportunity to bookmark his appearances with on-camera access, underscored by Truth Social.”

Trump faces criminal charges in New York of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, a move prosecutors say was meant to influence the 2016 election.

When the charges were first announced a year ago Trump immediately began campaigning on them, painting himself as a victim of a two-tiered justice system that targeted Republicans. Prosecutors have dismissed the claims as untrue.

Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt predicted the case would backfire. “As this witch-hunt continues, President Trump’s support from Americans of all backgrounds will continue to grow as they watch Joe Biden and the Democrats put on this bogus show trial six months before the election,” she said.

The charges were brought by the Manhattan district attorney, an elected Democrat; the Biden administration is not involved.

MIXING HARLEM WITH FOREIGN POLICY

Trump’s trial has not deterred some foreign dignitaries from stopping by his home in Trump Tower to see him, allowing his aides to orchestrate a series of campaign-friendly moments that show him engaged in major issues such as the war in Ukraine.

Polish President Andrzej Duda and former Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso have held talks with Trump there, while British Foreign Secretary David Cameron met him at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort the week before the trial started.

But it was Trump’s visit last week to the Harlem bodega that stood out for Republican strategist Charlie Gerow, who is not involved in the Trump campaign.

Gerow said it was a remarkable feat to orchestrate a stop in an area generally unfriendly to Republicans and have the resulting coverage be positive.

“The little side trip to the bodega last week was pure political genius,” he said.

(Reporting by Nathan Layne in New York; Editing by Ross Colvin and Howard Goller)

HOSCHTON, Ga. (AP) — May’s election for the Georgia Supreme Court is playing out as races for the state’s highest court have for decades: sitting justices running uncontested.

But there is an exception, and it’s driven by the issue that has roiled politics across the country for the past two years: abortion.

Justice Andrew Pinson is the only one of four incumbents seeking election to draw a challenge, and it’s a formidable one. Former U.S. Rep. John Barrow, a Democrat, hopes to harness a voter backlash to abortion restrictions to unseat Pinson in what could be a model for future Georgia court contests in a state that has become a partisan battleground.

The May 21 general election for a six-year term is nonpartisan, and a Barrow victory wouldn’t change the conservative leanings of the court. Eight of the nine justices, including Pinson, were appointed by Republican governors. The other won his seat unopposed after being appointed to a state appellate court by a Democratic governor.

Barrow’s bid is seen as a longshot. Pinson, appointed two years ago by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, appears to be raising more campaign money as the state’s legal establishment closes ranks around him.

But Barrow hopes a voter backlash against Georgia’s near-total abortion ban is the path to an upset.

In talks primarily to Democratic groups, Barrow says that when Pinson was Georgia’s solicitor general, he was the lawyer most responsible for the state supporting the Mississippi case that led to the U.S. Supreme Court overturning a constitutional right to abortion in 2022.

That decision cleared the way for a 2019 Georgia law to take effect banning most abortions after fetal cardiac activity can be detected, usually in about the sixth week of pregnancy. That’s before many women know they are pregnant.

At an April 15 Democratic meeting in a retirement community northeast of Atlanta, Barrow attacked Pinson’s former membership in the Federalist Society and his term as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, drawing boos from the 50 attendees.

Barrow said he believes Georgians have a state constitutional right to abortion and that voters would boost their chances of restoring broader access to abortion by doing something they’ve never done before: defeating an incumbent state justice.

“I happen to believe that the Georgia Constitution does provide a right of privacy, and that encompasses everything that we associate with what was the law under Roe vs. Wade. And then it’s probably wider,” Barrow said. “That would mean the current statute, the current ban we’re living with right now, violates that provision of the Constitution.”

Opponents of the six-week ban are challenging it in state court, arguing Georgia’s unusually well-developed law protecting privacy should void it. That case is almost certainly headed back to the Georgia Supreme Court

Pinson said it would be inappropriate to discuss his views on abortion or other topics that might come before the court.

“If judges start talking about issues in cases that come before the court, or that could come before the court and opine, ‘Personally, I think this; personally I think that,’ man, it just starts chipping away at people’s confidence in our judiciary,” Pinson said in an interview.

State supreme court races have become more expensive in recent years as courts have weighed issues like political gerrymandering. The U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning the right to abortion has put those races under even greater scrutiny in the past two years as the divisive issue has returned to the states.

Public polling shows the majority of people in the U.S. support a right to abortion, and voters have affirmed abortion rights in seven states over the past two years since Roe v. Wade was overturned, including in Republican-leaning states such as Kentucky, Montana and Ohio.

Douglas Keith, who tracks state supreme courts for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, said money has poured into races from groups on the left and right, creating contests like the one last year in Wisconsin. There, a liberal judge backed by Democrats flipped the court after defeating a former justice supported by Republicans and anti-abortion groups in the most expensive state Supreme Court race ever.

“We are seeing money like we’ve never seen before in these races. Candidates and groups are adopting messages that they’ve never used in judicial elections before, and there’s just generally more attention on these races,” Keith said.

Pinson, 37, graduated first in his law school class at the University of Georgia and served four years as solicitor general, helping Georgia win a long-running water rights dispute. Kemp named Pinson to the state Court of Appeals in 2021 and elevated him to Georgia’s high court a year later. Many lawyers, including some Democrats, have endorsed him for election.

Meaningful electoral challenges to sitting Georgia judges are rare. Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University, said that reflects a “small club dynamic” prevailing within Georgia’s legal establishment.

“I just think that we’re dealing with a kind of old-school mentality, where people don’t really want to engage in the kind of partisan warfare over judicial seats like we’ve seen in some other states,” Kreis said.

Barrow, 69, served five terms in Congress and for a time was the only white Democratic representative from the Deep South. He finally lost in 2014 after Republicans gerrymandered his district a second time. In 2018, he narrowly lost a statewide race for Georgia secretary of state to Republican Brad Raffensperger.

Although justices are elected, the pattern has been for a justice to resign and let the governor appoint a successor. A newly appointed justice then gets two years on the bench before facing voters.

Barrow was denied a chance to run in 2020 after a justice announced he would resign after the election date before his term ended. A challenge arguing the election should be held anyway was rejected. Barrow calls the system of appointments “dysfunctional” and pledges that if elected he will let voters choose his replacement.

“If the voters give me the office, I’m going to give it back to the voters,” he said.

While his victory wouldn’t change the overall political composition of the court, Barrow said it would send the state’s justices a message on abortion rights. He referenced the decision earlier this year by the Alabama Supreme Court that declared frozen embryos created through in vitro fertilization could legally be considered children and an Arizona Supreme Court decision earlier this month reviving an abortion ban from 1864, before Arizona was a state.

“We’re getting an education right now all across the country as to how important the office of state supreme court justice is,” Barrow said.

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — In deep red Indiana, where Republicans hold a supermajority in both chambers of the state legislature and most top offices are held by GOP politicians, the May 7 primary will determine the outcome of the general election in many races.

The most-watched is the GOP race for governor, a six-way competition of office-seekers who all have cast themselves as outsiders in an appeal to conservative voters.

Indiana also will send at least three new representatives to the U.S. House following a series of retirements.

Here’s a look at the key races:

Six Republicans are vying for the seat being vacated by outgoing Gov. Eric Holcomb, who is term-limited. Holcomb has not endorsed a candidate.

The race is the most expensive primary in Indiana history, with about $20 million spent in the first three months of 2024 alone.

The winner of the GOP primary will face long-shot bids in November from the sole Democratic candidate, Jennifer McCormick, and the Libertarian nominee, Donald Rainwater.

All six Republican candidates have cast themselves as outsiders, yet five are well-established figures who hold or previously served in statewide roles.

U.S. Sen. Mike Braun has been endorsed by Republican former President Donald Trump. Trump won the state by 16 percentage points in the 2020 general election.

Braun has name recognition and money; his campaign spent over $6 million in 2024, according to the latest summary report. He also is known for flipping a Democratic Senate seat when he beat Joe Donnelly in 2018.

Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch, known for running alongside Holcomb twice, has campaigned to slash the state’s income tax and boost addiction and mental illness services. She ended the most recent fundraising period with the most cash on hand of the candidates with $3 million as of April 1, but spent less — $2.1 million — in the first three months of the year.

A Crouch victory likely would ensure Indiana has its first female governor. McCormick, the Democratic nominee, is unchallenged in her primary.

Businessman and former commerce secretary Brad Chambers spent $6.7 million this year and reports show he has contributed $9.6 million to his campaign. Chambers’ messaging has been comparatively more moderate, focusing on the economy and support for law enforcement. He has avoided criticizing Holcomb where other candidates have knocked his administration on COVID-19 pandemic-era policies.

Eric Doden has a similar resume, with a stint as the state’s commerce secretary. His top priorities include a plan invest in Indiana’s “Main Street,” or small towns. He spent $5.2 million in the first three months of this year and last reported having about $250,000 of cash on hand.

Once seen as a probable Hoosier governor, former Attorney General Curtis Hill has struggled to compete. Hill lost the Republican delegation nomination in 2020 following allegations he groped four women at a party in 2018. Jamie Reitenour also is running, with backing of Hamilton County Moms For Liberty and has said she would appoint its leader to head the state education department.

Braun’s decision to leave the Senate and run for governor created a domino effect in Indiana’s congressional delegation. U.S. Rep. Jim Banks is the sole Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, leaving his office in Indiana’s 3rd Congressional district.

A series of legal battles ultimately removed egg farmer John Rust from the Republican ballot.

Banks, an outspoken Trump supporter, will face either Marc Carmichael or Valerie McCray as the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in November.

Indiana will send at least three new representatives to the U.S. House.

Congressmen Greg Pence, brother of former Vice President Mike Pence, and Larry Bucshon both announced they will forgo reelection earlier this year.

Eight Republican candidates are vying for Banks’ former seat in northeast Indiana. The matchup includes former U.S. Rep. Marlin Stutzman, state Sen. Andy Zay, former Allen Circuit Court judge Wendy Davis and a well-funded but relatively unknown nonprofit executive, Tim Smith.

Voters in Pence’s 6th district in east Indiana are the target of an expensive contest between staunch Second Amendment conservative state Rep. Mike Speedy, and Jefferson Shreve, a businessman who pumped $13 million into an unsuccessful campaign for Indianapolis mayor last year.

Shreve has loaned $4.5 million to his congressional campaign and entered the final weeks of campaigning with $1.49 million of cash on hand, while Speedy entered with just over $153,000 in the bank, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

In Bucshon’s district in southern Indiana, eight candidates seek to replace the congressman who took office in 2011.

The Republican Jewish Coalition has shelled out $1 million to attack former U.S. Rep. John Hostettler, who has long opposed the U.S. allyship with Israel. A spokesperson said the group is urging support for state Sen. Mark Messmer.

Messmer entered the final weeks with roughly $121,000 of cash on hand, far outpacing Hostettler’s about $29,000.

In central Indiana’s 5th district, U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz faces a tough primary after reversing her plan to leave Congress.

Spartz’s main competition, state Sen. Chuck Goodrich, has outpaced her in spending this year by millions of dollars.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The Utah Republican Party on Saturday selected Trent Staggs as its nominee to replace Mitt Romney in the U.S. Senate, hours after the local official received former President Donald Trump’s endorsement.

While the endorsement carried Staggs through convention with more than two-thirds of delegate votes, that support may not translate to success at the ballot box. The mayor from Riverton, just south of Salt Lake City, still must face other top contenders in the June 25 GOP primary, including U.S. Rep. John Curtis and former Utah House Speaker Brad Wilson.

Republican Party nominations historically have had little bearing on the decisions of Utah voters.

Curtis, who is more moderate, and Wilson, a Trump supporter, already qualified for the primary by gathering signatures. The winner will proceed to the November general election to face Democrat Caroline Gleich, a mountaineer and environmental activist who earned her party’s nomination earlier Saturday.

Staggs, 49, built his base by calling delegates personally and courting the endorsements of Trump and many of his allies nationwide. The embattled former president wrote Saturday morning on his Truth Social platform that Staggs is a “100% MAGA” candidate who knows how to stop inflation, grow the economy and secure the U.S.-Mexico border.

Staggs was the first candidate to enter the Senate race, even before Romney announced he was not seeking reelection.

“Let’s replace Joe Biden’s favorite Republican with Donald Trump’s favorite Republican in Utah,” Staggs said Saturday, criticizing Romney for being a moderate who often has challenged Trump and other Republican leaders.

Staggs’ strategy of aligning with the brash, far-right president does not guarantee victory in Utah, one of the few red states that has been reluctant to embrace Trump.

Staggs supporter Eric Buckley said he is confident the endorsement will be well received by Utah voters. The Davis County delegate said that even before Trump’s recommendation he already had chosen to back Staggs for being the first to challenge Romney.

“It was his stance on the corruption in D.C. that exists and his promise to stand up against the moderate Republicans and the Democrats pushing through their agenda without any type of resistance,” Buckley said.

Curtis, 63, is expected to have broader appeal among primary voters. He has been compared to Romney for pushing back against hardliners in his party, particularly on climate change.

Davis County delegate Jonathan Miller, who donned a “Team Mitt” baseball cap, said Curtis is his pick because he has proven his willingness to work across the aisle to get results in Congress.

Although Wilson, 55, did not earn Trump’s backing, he has endorsed the president’s reelection bid and has promised to be a “conservative fighter” on Capitol Hill. His elaborate expo booth in the convention hall featured a tractor plowing through a pile of cinder blocks labeled the “Biden Agenda.”

The nearly 4,000 delegates overwhelmingly supported “convention-only” candidates such as Staggs and state Rep. Phil Lyman, who was chosen as the party’s gubernatorial nominee over incumbent Gov. Spencer Cox, for opting not to collect signatures. The practice is viewed by many as circumventing the convention.

“That’s a cheap way out,” Cache County delegate Tim Lindsay said. “I respect a candidate who respects the convention process.”

Party picks also were among the farthest-right candidates in their contests. Delegates booed moderates such as Cox and Curtis as they took the stage.

The governor laughed it off, noting that many great leaders before him were booed at past conventions but won at the polls. Cox, who has qualified for the primary with signatures, pushed back against criticisms of his initiative to reduce political polarization.

“Maybe you hate that I don’t hate enough,” he said.

Political observers say Cox remains the likely favorite in the primary. Lyman, his challenger, is a former county commissioner turned legislator best known for organizing an illegal ATV ride in protest of a federal land decision.

The 2014 protest ride came after federal officials closed a southeast Utah canyon to motorized vehicles to protect Native American cliff dwellings, artifacts and burials. Lyman argued the closure constituted overreach by the federal government.

A judge in 2015 sentenced him to 10 days in jail and three years of probation after a jury found him guilty of misdemeanor illegal use of ATVs and conspiracy. He reminded delegates of his short sentence just before the vote and pledged to continue fighting federal overreach if elected.

The state party’s two major factions — the farther-right Trump supporters and the moderates who are losing their most prominent figure with Romney’s departure — are set to continue sparring at the polls this summer. The primary will test Trump’s popularity in the Beehive State as he tries to fight his way back to the White House during legal proceedings including an ongoing hush money trial.