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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) Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

BEIJING (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrapped up his just-concluded latest visit to China with a stop at a Beijing record store where he bought albums by Taylor Swift and Chinese rocker Dou Wei in a symbolic nod to cross-cultural exchanges and understanding he had been promoting for three days. Music, he said at the Li-Pi shop on his way to the airport late Friday, “is the best connector, regardless of geography.” Yet Swift’s “Midnights” and Dou Wei’s “Black Dream” could just as easily represent the seemingly intractable divisions in the deeply troubled relationship between the world’s two largest economies that both sides publicly and privately blame on the other. Blinken and his Chinese interlocutors, including Chinese President Xi Jinping and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, all referred to these rifts even as they extolled the virtues of keeping communication channels open to manage these differences and avoid misunderstandings and miscalculations. Blinken went out of his way to champion the importance of U.S.-China exchanges at all levels. In Shanghai, he ate at a famous soup dumpling restaurant, attended a Chinese basketball playoff game and visited with American and Chinese students at the New York University branch. In his official meetings with Chinese leaders in Beijing, he spoke repeatedly of improvements in ties over the past year. But he also stressed that the U.S. has serious and growing concerns with China’s policies and practices on the local, regional and global stages. And, he said, the U.S. would not back down. “America will always defend our core interests and values,” he said. On several occasions, he slammed Chinese overproduction of electric vehicles that threatened to have detrimental effects on U.S. and European automakers and complained that China was not doing enough to stop the production and export of synthetic opioid precursors. At one point he warned bluntly that if China does not end support for Russia ’s defense industrial sector, something the Biden administration says has allowed Russia to step up its attacks on Ukraine and threaten European security, the U.S. would act to stop it. “I made clear that if China does not address this problem, we will,” Blinken told reporters after meeting with Xi. Chinese officials were similarly direct, saying that while relations have generally improved since a low point last year over the shootdown of a Chinese surveillance balloon, they remained fraught. “The two countries should help each other succeed rather than hurt each other, seek common ground and reserve differences rather than engage in vicious competition, and honor words with actions rather than say one thing but do the opposite,” Xi told Blinken in a not-so-veiled accusation of U.S. hypocrisy. Wang, the foreign minister, said China is fed up with what it considers to be U.S. meddling in human rights, Taiwan and the South China Sea and efforts to restrict its trade and relations with other countries. “Negative factors in the relationship are still increasing and building and the relationship is facing all kinds of disruptions,” he said. He urged the U.S. “not to step on China’s red lines on China’s sovereignty, security, and development interests.” Or, as Yang Tao, the director general of North American and Oceania affairs at the Foreign Ministry, put it, according to the official Xinhua News Agency: “If the United States always regards China as its main rival, China-US relations will continuously face troubles and many problems.” Still, Blinken pressed engagement on all levels. He announced a new agreement to hold talks with China on the threats posed by artificial intelligence but lamented a dearth of American students studying in China – fewer than 900 now, compared to more than 290,000 Chinese in the U.S. He said both sides wanted to increase that number. “We have an interest in this, because if our future leaders – whether it’s in government, whether it’s in business, civil society, climate, tech, and other fields – if they’re going to be able to collaborate, if they want to be able to solve big problems, if they’re going to be able to work through our differences, they’ll need to know and understand each other’s language, culture, history,” he said. But he added a caveat the Chinese were likely to see as a barb. “What I told my PRC counterparts on this visit is if they want to attract more Americans here to China, particularly students, the best way to do that is to create the conditions that allow learning to flourish anywhere – a free and open discussion of ideas, access to a wide range of information, ease of travel, confidence in the safety, security, and privacy of the participants,” Blinken said. Those are issues that neither Taylor Swift nor Dou Wei can overcome. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

NEW YORK (AP) — Students protesting the Israel-Hamas war at at universities across U.S., some of whom have clashed with police in riot gear, dug in Saturday and vowed to keep their demonstrations going, while several school faculties condemned university presidents who have called in law enforcement to remove protesters. As Columbia University continues negotiations with those at a pro-Palestinian student encampment on the New York school’s campus, the university’s senate passed a resolution Friday that created a task force to examine the administration’s leadership, which last week called in police in an attempt to clear the protest, resulting in scuffles and more than 100 arrests. Though the university has repeatedly set and then pushed back deadlines for the removal of the encampment, the school sent an email to students Friday night saying that bringing back police “at this time” would be counterproductive, adding that they hope the negotiations show “concrete signs of progress tonight.” As the death toll mounts in the war in Gaza, protesters nationwide are demanding that schools cut financial ties to Israel and divest from companies they say are enabling the conflict. Some Jewish students say the protests have veered into antisemitism and made them afraid to set foot on campus. The decisions to call in law enforcement, leading to hundreds of arrests nationwide, have prompted school faculty members at universities in California, Georgia and Texas to initiate or pass votes of no confidence in their leadership. They are largely symbolic rebukes, without the power to remove their presidents. But the tensions pile pressure on school officials, who are already scrambling to resolve the protests as May graduation ceremonies near. California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, gave protestors who have barricaded themselves inside a building since Monday until 5 p.m. Friday to leave and “not be immediately arrested.” The deadline came and went. Only some of the protesters left, others doubled down. After protesters rebuffed police earlier in the week, the campus was closed for the rest of the semester. In Colorado, police swept through an encampment Friday at Denver’s Auraria Campus, which hosts three universities and colleges, arresting around 40 protesters on trespassing charges. Students representing the Columbia encampment, which inspired the wave of protests across the country, said Friday that they reached an impasse with administrators and intend to continue their protest. After meetings Thursday and Friday, student negotiators said the university had not met their primary demand for divestment, although there was progress on a push for more transparent financial disclosures. “We will not rest until Columbia divests,” said Jonathan Ben-Menachem, a fourth-year doctoral student. In the letter sent to Columbia students Friday night, the university’s leadership said “we support the conversations that are ongoing with student leaders of the encampment.” Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, faced significant criticism from faculty Friday, but retained the support of trustees. A report by the university senate’s executive committee, which represents faculty, found Shafik and her administration took “many actions and decisions that have harmed Columbia University.” Those included calling in police and allowing students to be arrested without consulting faculty, misrepresenting and suspending student protest groups and hiring private investigators. “The faculty have completely lost confidence in President Shafik’s ability to lead this organization,” said Ege Yumusak, a philosophy lecturer who is part of a faculty team protecting the encampment. In response, university spokesperson Ben Chang said in the evening that “we are committed to an ongoing dialogue and appreciate the Senate’s constructive engagement in finding a pathway forward.” Also Friday, Columbia student protester Khymani James walked back comments made in an online video in January that recently received new attention. James said in the video that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” and people should be grateful James wasn’t killing them. “What I said was wrong,” James said in a statement. “Every member of our community deserves to feel safe without qualification.” James, who served as a spokesperson for the pro-Palestinian encampment as a member of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, was banned from campus Friday, according to a Columbia spokesperson. Protest organizers said James’ comments didn’t reflect their values. They declined to describe James’ level of involvement with the demonstration. Police clashed with protesters Thursday at Indiana University, Bloomington, where 34 were arrested; Ohio State University, where about 36 were arrested; and at the University of Connecticut, where one person was arrested. The University of Southern California canceled its May 10 graduation ceremony Thursday, a day after more than 90 protesters were arrested on campus. The university said it will still host dozens of commencement events, including all the traditional individual school ceremonies. Universities where faculty members have initiated or passed votes of no confidence in their presidents include Cal Poly Humboldt, University of Texas at Austin and Emory University. ___ Perry reported from Meredith, New Hampshire. Associated Press journalists in various locations contributed, including Aaron Morrison, Stefanie Dazio, Kathy McCormack, Jim Vertuno, Acacia Coronado, Sudhin Thanawala, Jeff Amy, Jeff Martin, Mike Stewart, Collin Binkley, Carolyn Thompson, Jake Offenhartz, Jesse Bedayn and Sophia Tareen. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

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. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

LOS ANGELES (AP) — On a recent afternoon, Grant Oh zigzagged across the University of Southern California campus as if he was conquering an obstacle course, coming up against police blockade after police blockade on his way to his apartment while officers arrested demonstrators protesting the Israel-Hamas war. In many ways, the chaotic moment was the culmination of a college life that started amid the coronavirus pandemic and has been marked by continual upheaval in what has become a constant battle for normalcy. Oh already missed his prom and his high school graduation as COVID-19 surged in 2020. He started college with online classes. Now the 20-year-old will add another missed milestone to his life: USC has canceled its main commencement ceremony that was expected to be attended by 65,000 people. His only graduation ceremony was in middle school and there were no caps and gowns. “It’s crazy because I remember starting freshman year with the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which came after senior year of high school when the Black Lives Matter protests were happening and COVID, and xenophobia,” he said “It feels definitely surreal. It still shocks me that we live in a world that is so fired up and so willing to tear itself apart.” Oh, who is getting a degree in health promotion and disease prevention, added that his loss of a memorable moment pales in comparison to what is happening: “At the end of the day, people are dying.” College campuses have always been a hotbed for protests from the civil rights era to the Vietnam war to demonstrations over apartheid in South Africa. But students today also carry additional stresses from having lived through the isolation and fear from the pandemic, and the daily influence of social media that amplifies the world’s wrongs like never before, experts say. It’s not just about missed milestones. Study after study shows Generation Z suffers from much higher rates of anxiety and depression than Millennials, said Jean Twenge, a psychologist and professor at San Diego State University, who wrote a book called “Generations.” She attributes much of that to the fact that negativity spreads faster and wider on social media than positive posts. “Gen Z, they tend to be much more pessimistic than Millennials,” she said. “The question going forward is do they take this pessimism and turn it into concrete action and change, or do they turn it into annihilation and chaos?” Protesters have pitched tents on campuses from Harvard and MIT to Stanford and the University of Texas, Austin, raising tensions as many schools prepare for spring commencements. Hundreds of students have been arrested across the country. Inspired by demonstrations at Columbia University, students at more than a dozen U.S. colleges have formed pro-Palestinian encampments and pledged to stay put until their demands are met. The campus will be closed for the semester at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, which has been negotiating with students who have been barricaded inside a campus building since Monday, rebuffing an attempt by the police to clear them out. USC announced Thursday that it would be calling off its main graduation ceremony after protests erupted over not only the Israel-Hamas war but the school’s decision earlier this month to call off the commencement speech by its valedictorian Asna Tabassum, who expressed support for Palestinians. Officials cited security concerns. “By trying to silence Asna, it made everything way worse,” Oh said, adding that he hopes there will be no violence on graduation day May 10 when smaller ceremonies will be held by different departments. Maurielle McGarvey graduated from high school in 2019 so was able to have a ceremony but then she took a gap year when many universities held classes only online. McGarvey, who is getting a degree in screenwriting with a minor in gender and social justice studies at USC, called the cancellations “heartbreaking,” and said the situation has been grossly mishandled by the university. She said police with batons came at her yelling as she held a banner while she and fellow demonstrators said a Jewish prayer. “It’s definitely been like an overall diminished experience and to take away like the last sort of like typical thing that this class was allowed after having so many weird restrictions, so many customs and traditions changed,” she said. “It’s such a bummer.” She said the email by the university announcing the cancellation particularly stung with its link to photos of past graduates in gowns tossing up their caps and cheering. “That’s just insult to injury,” she said. Students at other universities were equally glum. “Our grade is cursed,” said Abbie Barkan of Atlanta, 21, who is graduating from the University of Texas in two weeks with a journalism degree and who was among a group of Jewish students waving flags and chanting at a counter-protest Thursday near a pro-Palestinian demonstration on campus. University of Minnesota senior Sarah Dawley, who participated in pro-Palestinian protests, is grateful graduation plans have not changed at her school. But she said the past weeks have left her with a mix of emotions. She’s been dismayed to watch colleges call in police. But she said she also feels hope after having gone through the pandemic and become part of a community that stands up for what they believe in. “I think a lot of people are going to go on to do cool things because after all this, we care a lot,” she said. ____ Watson reported from San Diego. AP journalists Stefanie Dazio and Eugene Garcia in Los Angeles, Mark Vancleave in Minneapolis, Jim Vertuno and Acacia Coronado in Austin, Texas, and Rodrique Ngowi in Boston contributed to this report. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com