This year’s Berkshire Hathaway meeting gave shareholders their best chance yet to hear from the man who will one day take over as CEO when Warren Buffett is gone, but Buffett said for the first time Saturday that Greg Abel should also take responsibility for the company’s investments after he takes over, raising new questions about the succession plan.

Abel put his encyclopedic knowledge of the utility business that he led directly for years on display and delved into railroad operations and potential acquisitions that Berkshire pursued while sharing the stage with Buffett all day. For his part, the 93-year-old billionaire showed investors he is still sharp.

Abel pointed out that it required a major culture shift to get workers at PacifiCorp and the other utilities, who have long focused all their energy on keeping the lights on, to think about shutting the power down at times when the risk that their power lines could spark wildfires is too great. He also said BNSF railroad is working on getting “our cost structure right” after delivering disappointing results.

Succession was clearly top of mind for many of the thousands of people who filled an Omaha arena to listen to the two men after last fall’s death of Vice Chairman Charlie Munger. Buffett, Abel and Ajit Jain, Berkshire’s other top executive who oversees the company’s insurers, reassured investors that Berkshire’s board spends plenty of time focused on “what would happen to the operation if I get hit by a truck,” as Jain put it. Finding the right replacement for any of the three of them will be important.

Previously, Buffett had said that when Abel becomes CEO, investment managers Ted Weschler and Todd Combs, who’s also taken on the responsibility of being Geico’s CEO, would handle Berkshire’s massive portfolio. But Buffett said Saturday that his thinking has evolved, and that “I would probably, knowing Greg, I would leave the capital allocation to Greg.”

And Buffett said because Abel understands businesses so well, he also understands stocks.

But Edward Jones analyst James Shanahan said a good business doesn’t always make a good stock unless you get the timing and position size right, and there is an art to that.

“I think stock picking is hard. I don’t think it’s something you can just start doing and be good at it,” Shanahan said.

Abel does have a history of making multibillion-dollar deals when he was the head of Berkshire’s utility unit for a decade, including the acquisitions of NV Energy and AltaLink, but he’s never been a stock picker. Weschler and Combs might be able to help Abel get the timing right and find opportunities in the stock market, but Buffett didn’t say that Saturday.

Abel just reassured shareholders that “the capital allocation principles that we use today will be maintained.”

“Does that give you more or less confidence post-Buffett? I would say it’s got to give you less — not because it’s a worse circumstance — but because it hasn’t been very transparent and communicated that clearly. You’ve got to start asking, well, what else is going to change?” said Cole Smead with Smead Capital Management.

Abel definitely has the confidence of the CEOs at all of Berkshire’s many varied noninsurance businesses who report to him and ask his advice on any challenges they are facing.

“Greg sees so much more than I do on a daily basis. So his perspective is valued, and his wisdom is something that is such a luxury for all of us to be able to tap into,” said Dan Sheridan, who just became CEO of Brooks Running this year after his predecessor retired. He said Abel is always humble and curious about the business, even while asking challenging questions.

See’s Candies CEO Pat Egan added that Abel reflects all of Berkshire’s core values, with the company’s emphasis on integrity, taking care of customers and strengthening brands, while still giving Berkshire’s subsidiaries the freedom to operate independently.

“He really expects us to know our business, understand the parameters, and to run our business on a day to day basis,” said Tim Baucom, CEO of flooring giant Shaw Industries. “So I feel like I have all the freedom of the world, but with freedom comes responsibility.”

The shareholders who attended the meeting and spent hours shopping and talking with executives at the booths Berkshire subsidiaries set up when they weren’t listening to Buffett and Abel remain confident. Some of them even got the chance to take selfies with Abel, though Buffett no longer tours the exhibit hall in public.

“I think they’ll be fine,” said Michael Grizzard, who made the trip to Omaha from Richmond, Virginia, for the second time. “They’re in good hands, and I think they have a good culture.”

Smead said even Buffett, who is easily one of the greatest investors the world has ever seen, has been having a hard time lately finding good investments big enough to make a difference at Berkshire except for the $135 billion Apple stake that remains its largest investment even after some trimming this year.

So no matter how good an investor Abel is, he will have a hard time finding deals big enough to provide a meaningful boost to Berkshire’s earnings that approached $13 billion in a down first quarter. That challenge is a big part of why Buffett has warned investors not to expect any of the “eye-popping performance” of Berkshire’s past.

But for now, Buffett showed that Abel may not need to take over anytime soon because he looked good and he has long said he has no plans to retire, even if he acknowledged Saturday that he doesn’t have the same energy he used to. CFRA Research analyst Cathy Seifert came away impressed with his stamina.

“There wasn’t anything in that performance that I found worrisome or troubling,” Seifert said.

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For more AP coverage of Warren Buffett look here: https://apnews.com/hub/warren-buffett. For Berkshire Hathaway news, see here: https://apnews.com/hub/berkshire-hathaway-inc. Follow Josh Funk online at https://apnews.com/author/josh-funk,https://www.twitter.com/funkwrite and https://www.linkedin.com/in/funkwrite.

NORWALK, Conn. (AP) — Interstate 95 in Connecticut reopened Sunday after a flaming crash involving a gasoline tanker scorched a bridge and left the roadway closed for days, officials said.

Authorities shut the highway down in both directions after a three-vehicle crash Thursday involving a gasoline tanker, which burst into flames and damaged an overpass above I-95 in Norwalk. No one was seriously injured.

Workers began demolishing the bridge on Friday and worked to repave damaged parts of the roadway in time for rush hour on Monday.

“It is truly remarkable to complete this work in less than 80 hours,” Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont said Sunday on the social platform X.

The interstate serves as a major link between New England and New York. The closure left drivers jampacked bumper to bumper on some of the detour routes.

NEW YORK (AP) — A $400 million increase in federal funding is available for security in places of worship, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Sunday.

The boost in money comes as concerns rise over threats against Jewish and Muslim communities, fueled in part by the Israel-Hamas war.

Places like synagogues and mosques could apply to use the money to hire security personnel or install cameras under the new increase in funding to the existing federal Nonprofit Security Grant Program, Schumer, a Democrat, said from New York City.

“We’re going to keep funding so that no synagogue or other religious institution is going to have to live in the fear that they now live with,” Schumer said.

The program allocated $305 million last year to nonprofits to help protect their facilities from potential attacks.

Three New York City synagogues and the Brooklyn Museum received bomb threats through email on Saturday, a spokesperson for the New York Police Department said. The threats prompted two synagogues to evacuate, though no explosives were found.

Houses of worship will need to apply by May 21 to tap into the first round of funds.

ATLANTA (AP) — Donald Trump told Republican donors at his Florida resort this weekend that President Joe Biden is running a “Gestapo administration,” the latest example of the former president employing the language of Nazi Germany in his campaign rhetoric.

The remarks Saturday at Mar-a-Lago were described by people who attended the event and spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private session.

The “Gestapo” comment, one person said, came as Trump renewed his complaint that Biden’s White House is behind the multiple criminal prosecutions of the presumptive GOP nominee, including his ongoing hush money and fraud trial in New York and additional cases stemming from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The Gestapo was the secret police force of the Third Reich that squelched political opposition generally and, specifically, targeted Jewish people for arrest during the Holocaust. Trump’s unfounded comparison to Nazi-era tactics comes as he denies and tries to deflect from the charges against him — most notably his effort to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory, before a mob of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Republican Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, appearing Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” essentially confirmed Trump’s statement, but tried to diminish its importance.

“This was a short comment deep into the thing that wasn’t really central to what he was talking about,” said Burgum, who is among the contenders to be Trump’s running mate.

Burgum affirmed that Trump drew the parallel as part of his accusation that Biden’s White House is behind his legal troubles. “A majority of Americans,” Burgum said, “feel like the trial that he’s in right now is politically motivated.”

The New York Times first reported Trump’s comments after obtaining an audio recording of the Mar-a-Lago event.

“These people are running a Gestapo administration,” Trump told GOP donors, according to the newspaper. “It’s the only way they’re going to win.”

Biden’s reelection campaign blasted the reference.

“Trump is once again making despicable and insulting comments about the Holocaust, while in the same breath attacking law enforcement, celebrating political violence, and threatening our democracy,” said James Singer, spokesman for the Democrat’s campaign, in a statement.

Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to an Associated Press request for comment. The AP has not obtained audio of Trump’s speech at the fundraiser.

Previously in the 2024 campaign, Trump has called political opponents “vermin” and said migrants who cross the U.S.-Mexico border are “poisoning the blood of our country,” rhetoric that echoes Adolf Hitler’s statements during his authoritarian rule of Germany.

“I know nothing about Hitler,” Trump insisted in a December interview on conservative talk radio. “I have no idea what Hitler said other than (what) I’ve seen on the news. And that’s a very, entirely different thing than what I’m saying.”

A second person who was at Mar-a-Lago this weekend described to the AP a stem-winding luncheon appearance in which Trump mixed his grievances with optimistic GOP cheerleading.

Speaking for at least 90 minutes, Trump promised “the gloves are coming off” against Biden, the second Republican recalled. At another point, Trump called up several GOP congressional figures to the stage and referred to the many Republicans vying to be his vice presidential pick.

“They’re lining up and begging,” Trump said, according to one attendee.

Several presumed contenders circulated in the crowd and were given strategic speaking roles or lead panel discussions. Among the standouts, the Republican said, were Republican Sens. Tim Scott of South Carolina, Marco Rubio of Florida and JD Vance of Ohio.

Trump, the person said, singled out Rubio for special praise and referenced a “Florida problem,” referring to a constitutional requirement that the president and vice president not claim the same state as their residences.

Rubio and Scott both demurred when asked about their prospects on the Sunday talk shows.

On “Fox News Sunday,” Rubio sidestepped a question about whether he would be willing to move to another state to join the GOP ticket.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., was in attendance, as well, shoring up support from Trump. Johnson coordinated one of the legal challenges against the 2020 election that Trump lost, but the speaker now faces the threat of his own ouster by far-right Republicans led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.

With his time on stage, Johnson said the U.S. needs a “strongman” in the White House, one attendee told the AP.

Johnson, who often talks about the need to return to the national security principle of “peace through strength,” explained the necessity of having a “strong, resolute” president at a time of conflict around the world, said a person familiar with the speaker’s remarks. This person was not authorized to publicly discuss Johnson’s comments and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Republican National Committee said after the event that joint fundraising efforts by the RNC and the campaign for April topped $76 million, by far the best monthly effort of this campaign cycle and a step toward closing Biden’s financial advantage. RNC Chairman Michael Whatley hailed an uptick in small-dollar donors, but the Mar-a-Lago event clearly focused on the party’s deepest pockets. At one point, one attendee said, Trump offered an open microphone to anyone who immediately pledged a $1 million contribution to the party. Two people eventually agreed, the source said.

Additionally, the Times reported that Trump told his audience that Democrats effectively purchase votes through economic safety net programs, while repeating his false claims that U.S. elections are riddled with systemic fraud.

“When you are Democrat, you start off essentially at 40% because you have civil service, you have the unions and you have welfare,” Trump said, according to the Times. “And don’t underestimate welfare. They get welfare to vote, and then they cheat on top of that — they cheat.”

Biden’s victory was affirmed by multiple recounts across many battleground states, and Trump’s assertions of fraud were rejected by multiple state and federal courts, including by judges he nominated to the bench. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election and his role in his supporters’ riot on Jan. 6 are the subject of two additional indictments.

Trump is not the first Republican presidential candidate to privately connect social programs with Democrats’ electoral fortunes. In 2012, then-GOP nominee Mitt Romney was captured on tape at a fundraising event declaring that Democrat Barack Obama had a built in advantage because of people he said did not have to pay federal income taxes.

“There are 47% of the people who will vote for the president (Obama) no matter what” because they are “dependent upon government” and “believe that they are victims,” Romney said, adding that “my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

Obama’s campaign, with Biden as vice president, used those comments to bolster Democrats’ argument that Romney, a wealthy businessman, was out of touch with most Americans. Obama was reelected.

___

Mascaro reported from Washington.

WILMINGTON, N.C. (AP) — This North Carolina voter is nervous.

Will Rikard, a 49-year-old father of two, was among several hundred Democrats who stood and cheered for Joe Biden as the first-term president delivered a fiery speech recently about the billions of dollars he has delivered to protect the state’s drinking water.

But afterward, the Wilmington resident acknowledged he is worried about Biden’s political standing in the looming rematch with former Republican President Donald Trump.

“There’s not enough energy,” Rikard said of Biden’s coalition. “I think people are gonna need to wake up and get going.”

Exactly six months before Election Day, Biden and Trump are locked in the first contest in 112 years with a current and former president competing for the White House. It’s a race that is at once deeply entrenched and highly in flux as many voters are only just beginning to embrace the reality of the 2024 campaign.

Wars, trials, the independent candidacy of Robert Kennedy Jr. and deep divisions across America have injected extraordinary uncertainty into a race for the White House in which either man would be the oldest president ever sworn in on Inauguration Day. At the same time, policy fights over abortion, immigration and the economy are raging on Capitol Hill and in statehouses.

Hovering over it all is the disbelief of many voters, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Biden and Trump — their respective parties’ presumptive nominees — will ultimately appear on the general election ballot this fall.

“I think we have an electorate that’s going through the stages of grief about this election,” said Sarah Longwell, who conducts regular focus groups with voters across the political spectrum as co-founder of Republican Voters Against Trump. “They’ve done denial — ‘Not these two, can’t possibly be these two.’ And I think they’re in depression now. I’m waiting for people to hit acceptance.”

Trump is in the midst of the first of potentially four criminal trials and facing felony charges. The Constitution does not prevent him from assuming the presidency if convicted — or even if he is in prison.

Biden, who will turn 82 years old just weeks after Election Day, Nov. 5, is already the oldest president in U.S. history; Trump is 77.

Privately, Democratic operatives close to the campaign worry constantly about Biden’s health and voters’ dim perceptions of it. In recent weeks, aides have begun walking at Biden’s side as he strolls to and from Marine One, the presidential helicopter, on the White House South Lawn in an apparent effort to help mask the president’s stiff gait.

Still, neither party is making serious contingency plans. Whether voters want to believe it or not, the general election matchup is all but set.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, said many voters are recovering from what he called “a knock-down, drag-out fight” that was the 2020 presidential election.

“Many of them have not wrapped their heads around the fact that it is, in fact, going to be a rematch,” Cooper said in an interview. “When they do, I don’t think there’s any question that Joe Biden is going to win the day.”

Even before voters begin paying close attention, the political map in the fight for the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency is already taking shape.

Biden’s campaign is increasingly optimistic about North Carolina, a state he lost by just 1 percentage point in 2020. Overall, the Democratic president’s reelection campaign has several hundred staff in more than 133 offices in the seven most critical states: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin and North Carolina.

Trump’s team has barely begun to roll out swing-state infrastructure, although he campaigned in Wisconsin and Michigan over the past week, sending a clear signal that he wants to block Biden’s path to reelection via the Democrats’ Midwestern “blue wall.”

Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita said Trump is making plans to invest new resources in at least two other Democratic-leaning states.

At a private donor retreat in Florida on Saturday, LaCivita discussed the campaign’s plans to expand its electoral map into Virginia and Minnesota, based on the Trump team’s growing optimism that both states are within reach.

“We have a real opportunity to expand the map here,” LaCivita told The Associated Press. “The Biden campaign has spent tens of millions of dollars on TV ads and in their ‘vaunted ground game’. And they have nothing to show for it.”

Biden’s campaign welcomed Trump’s team to spend money in Democratic states. “The Biden campaign is going to relentlessly focus on the pathway to 270 electoral votes, and that’s what our efforts represent,” campaign communications director Michael Tyler said.

Biden has been spending far more aggressively on election infrastructure and advertising heading into the six-month stretch toward Election Day.

In the eight weeks since Trump essentially clinched the Republican nomination, his campaign has spent virtually nothing on television advertising, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact. Outside groups aligned with Trump have spent just over $9 million.

Over the same period, AdImpact found, Biden and his allies have spent more than $29 million spread across Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Trump’s team has been unusually conservative, in part, to avoid the perceived mistakes of 2020, when his campaign essentially ran out of money and was forced to cut back on advertising in the election’s critical final days, but also because it has struggled to reignite its appeal with small donors and because of the diversion of some dollars to the former president’s legal defense.

Trump’s team insists it will soon ramp up its advertising and on-the-ground infrastructure, although LaCivita refused to offer any specifics.

It is clear that Biden and Trump have serious work to do to improve their standing with voters.

While optimistic in public, Biden allies privately acknowledge that his approval ratings may be lower than Democrat Jimmy Carter’s numbers at this point in his presidency. Trump’s ratings are not much better.

Public polling consistently shows that voters don’t like their 2024 options.

Only about 2 in 10 Americans say they would be excited by Biden (21%) or Trump (25%) being elected president, according to an AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in March. Only about one-quarter of voters in the survey say they would be satisfied about each.

A CNN poll conducted in April found that 53% of registered voters say they are dissatisfied with the presidential candidates they have to choose from in this year’s election.

Another major wild card is Kennedy, a member of the storied political dynasty and an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist who is running as an independent. Both major campaigns are taking him seriously as a potential spoiler, with Trump’s allies notably ramping up their criticism of Kennedy in recent days.

For now, Biden’s team is most focused on reminding voters of Trump’s divisive leadership. Three years after Trump left office, there is a sense that some voters may have forgotten what it was like with the former reality television star in the Oval Office — or his efforts to overturn the 2020 election that have landed him in legal peril.

“The plan is reminding voters of what life was like with Trump and also demonstrating to voters that the ways in which the world feels uncertain to them now are not, in fact, caused by the president, but can actually be navigated by this president,” Biden pollster Mary Murphy told the AP. “Voters will trust his leadership and stewardship, knowing that things can be a lot worse if it’s Donald Trump.”

Biden’s team is also betting that fierce backlash to new restrictions on abortion, which Trump and Republicans have largely championed, will drive voters to Democrats like it did in the 2022 midterm election and 2023 state races.

But Biden’s success also is dependent on the Democrat’s ability to reassemble his winning coalition from 2020 at a time when enthusiasm is lagging among critical voting blocs, including Blacks, young voters and Arab Americans unhappy over the president’s handling of the war in Gaza.

Trump has been forced to adapt his campaign to his first criminal trial in New York. Prosecutors allege he committed financial fraud to hide hush money payments to a porn actor, Stormy Daniels, who says she had a sexual encounter with Trump. He denies her claim and has pleaded not guilty.

For now, Trump is forced to attend the trial most weekdays. A verdict is likely still weeks away. And after that, he faces the prospect of more trials related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents. The Supreme Court is weighing whether Trump should be granted immunity, or partial immunity, for the actions he took while in office.

Trump over the past week wedged in campaign stops around his court schedule, rallying voters in Wisconsin and Michigan, where the abortion debate is raging.

Trump seemed to be searching for a way to lessen the political sting from the upheaval over the Supreme Court’s overturning of national abortion rights. The former president suggested the issue will ultimately bring the country together as states carve out differing laws.

“A lot of bad things will happen beyond the abortion issue if you don’t win elections, with your taxes and everything else,” he told Michigan voters.

Trump’s camp privately maintains that his unprecedented trial in New York will dominate the news — and voters’ attention — for the foreseeable future. His campaign has largely stopped trying to roll out unrelated news during the trial.

Even if Trump were to be convicted by the New York jury, his advisers insist the fundamentals of the election will not change. Trump has worked aggressively to undermine public confidence in the charges against him. Meanwhile, more traditional issues work in his favor, including stubbornly high inflation and the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border, in the view of the Trump team.

LaCivita said that such issues constantly reinforce Biden’s weakness as “the news of the day keeps getting worse.”

Both sides seem to agree that the dynamics of the race may yet shift dramatically based on any number of factors, from how the economy fares or the course of the wars in Gaza and Ukraine to crime or migration trends or other foreseen events. Potential candidate debates this fall could be another wild card.

Such uncertainty, said Biden’s battleground states director Dan Kanninen, can play to their favor.

“That dynamic is an opportunity as much as a challenge for us,” he said, “because we will have the resources, the infrastructure and the operation built to be engaging voters throughout all those difficult waters.”

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Miller reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Linley Sanders in Washington and Michelle L. Price in Freeland, Michigan, contributed to this report.

By Rich McKay

(Reuters) – Los Angeles police cleared a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of Southern California without making arrests on Sunday following turmoil at universities across the United States over the Israel-Hamas war.

Various U.S. universities with graduation ceremonies being held on Sunday braced for potential protests after dozens of people were arrested on campuses the previous day.

After USC requested assistance, police officers entered the encampment at about 5 a.m. local time (1200 GMT) and worked with the university’s Department of Public Safety to remove tents as dozens of student demonstrators peacefully left the area, police said.

USC President Carol Folt said in a statement “the occupation was spiraling in a dangerous direction over the last several days,” leading her to call for police intervention. She said the camp was cleared peacefully, with no arrests, in 64 minutes.

Los Angeles police also said in a statement there were “no arrests, no use of force, and no injuries to officers or protesters.”

In an intervention at USC last month, police arrested 93 people without incident as demonstrators surrendered without resistance.

The experience at USC stood in contrast to confrontations at other campuses where the protests have emerged as a political flashpoint during a contentious U.S. election year as Democratic President Joe Biden seeks a second term in office.

Police have arrested more than 2,000 people during protests at dozens of campuses around the country.

Across town at UCLA, where pro-Israeli demonstrators clashed with students last week in a pro-Palestinian encampment, and where police arrested more than 200 people in clearing the encampment a day later, Chancellor Gene Block on Sunday announced the creation of a new Office of Campus Safety and appointed a leader, former Sacramento police chief Rick Braziel, who will report directly to Block.

“Our campus has been shaken by events that have disturbed this sense of safety and strained trust within our community,” Block said in a statement announcing the appointment.

The unrest led Democratic U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders to compare campus protests to those against the Vietnam War that contributed to Democratic President Lyndon Johnson’s decision not to seek re-election in 1968. “This may be Biden’s Vietnam,” Sanders said.

Mitch Landrieu, the national co-chair for Biden’s re-election campaign, on Sunday pushed back against that comparison, calling it “an over-exaggeration.”

“However, that is not to say that this is not a very serious matter,” Landrieu said on CNN.

Under mounting political pressure, Biden on Thursday broke his silence on the campus unrest over the war in Gaza, saying Americans have the right to demonstrate but not to unleash violence.

Many colleges, including Columbia University in New York City, have called in police to quell protests.

At the University of Texas in Austin on Sunday, drones deployed by police circled overhead as about 200 pro-Palestinian demonstrators rallied, with about 50 onlookers, local media reported. The speakers advised fellow demonstrators to remain peaceful and not engage the police.

Students and other protesters have called upon universities to divest their financial ties to Israel and push for a ceasefire in Gaza.

More than 34,600 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military operations in Gaza, according to health officials in the Hamas-ruled Palestinian enclave. The war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and abducting 252 others, of whom 133 are believed to remain in captivity in Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

(This story has been refiled to fix the spelling of Los Angeles in paragraph 5)

(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; additional reporting by Daniel Trotta in Carlsbad, California, and Emily Rose in Jerusalem; Editing by Lisa Shumaker, Will Dunham, Deepa Babington and Andrea Ricci)

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s New York criminal trial is full of terms you don’t typically hear in a courtroom.

Centering on allegations Trump falsified his company’s records to conceal the nature of hush money reimbursements, it’s the first ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president and the first of Trump’s four indictments to go to trial. It also has some unique terminology.

Here are some examples:

DEFINITION: According to Merriam-Webster, it’s money paid so that someone will keep information secret. In other words, money that a person pays someone to hush up something.

EXAMPLE: Three payments that prosecutors say were made on Trump’s behalf to bury marital infidelity claims during his 2016 presidential campaign. They are the National Enquirer’s $30,000 payment to a Trump Tower doorman and $150,000 payment to former Playboy model Karen McDougal, and the $130,000 that Trump’s then-lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen arranged to pay porn actor Stormy Daniels.

Paying hush money isn’t illegal on its own, but authorities say the payments made to suppress stories about Trump amounted to illegal campaign contributions. Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to a federal campaign violation, among other unrelated crimes. The National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., entered into a nonprosecution agreement in exchange for its cooperation with prosecutors. The Federal Election Commission fined the company $187,500, declaring that the McDougal deal was a “prohibited corporate in-kind contribution.”

DEFINITION: As prosecutor Matthew Colangelo told jurors in his opening statement, “catch-and-kill” is when a tabloid newspaper such as the National Enquirer “buys up damaging information about someone, demands that the source sign a nondisclosure agreement to prevent them from taking that information or that story anywhere else, and then the tabloid declines to publish the story to prevent it from ever seeing the light of day.” A nondisclosure agreement is also known as a confidentiality agreement.

EXAMPLE: Tabloids typically pay sources and story subjects for information they end up publishing. But sometimes they pay for stories to prevent their publication. Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker testified that he agreed, at a Trump Tower meeting in August 2015, to be the “eyes and ears” of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Under the arrangement, Pecker said he would notify Cohen of women who were seeking to sell stories about Trump so Trump’s team could “take them off the market or kill them in some manner.”

Pecker testified that he had suppressed stories about other celebrities and politicians over the years using the same “catch and kill” methods, including actor and ex-California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and golfer Tiger Woods. Pecker said he sometimes suppressed stories simply to help a friend or further his business interests, but often he did so to leverage the story subject into doing something else, like agreeing to an interview or posing for a magazine cover.

DEFINITION: This is the criminal charge that’s being decided at Trump’s New York trial. He is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. It is a felony punishable by up to four years in prison, though there is no guarantee Trump would be sentenced to any time if convicted. He has pleaded not guilty.

Under New York law, a person is guilty of falsifying business records in the first degree when he makes or causes a false entry to be made in a company’s business records and does so with an intent to defraud, including intent to commit or hide another crime.

EXAMPLE: Prosecutors allege Trump misrepresented payments to Cohen in Trump’s company records as legal fees when they were actually a reimbursement for the $130,000 that Cohen arranged to pay Daniels. The records at issue include general ledger entries, invoices and checks. Prosecutors argue Trump’s actions were a way of hiding the hush money scheme and concealing other crimes arising from it, including alleged election law violations. Trump denies the allegations. His lawyers have said the payments to Cohen were for legitimate legal expenses.

DEFINITION: Trump isn’t charged with the crime of conspiracy, but prosecutors at his New York trial have used the term repeatedly to describe his “eyes and ears” agreement with Pecker and the hush money arrangements that ensued.

According to Merriam-Webster, conspiring involves joining “in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or an act which becomes unlawful as a result of the secret agreement.” Under New York law, a conspiracy involves at least two people acting with intent to commit a crime.

EXAMPLE: Colangelo, the prosecutor, said in his opening statement that Trump’s trial involves “an illegal conspiracy to undermine the integrity of a presidential election.” To convict Trump of felony falsifying business records, prosecutors must show that he had intent to commit another crime. Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass said in court that one of the crimes Trump intended to commit was a violation of a New York election law — a misdemeanor involving a conspiracy to promote or prevent an election.

DEFINITION: Any attempt to alter the outcome of an election through nefarious means, such as fraud, voter intimidation or efforts to overturn the outcome of a race.

EXAMPLE: Prosecutors allege the hush money scheme amounted to election interference because it involved a concerted effort to hide important information from voters in order to boost Trump’s chances in the 2016 race.

Not only was the National Enquirer acting as the “eyes and ears” of Trump’s campaign, identifying negative stories so they could be suppressed, Pecker testified that the tabloid, at Cohen’s behest, printed stories that tarred Trump’s opponents. It also published stories that boosted Trump’s image.

It’s a different kind of election interference allegation from what Trump is charged with in his Washington and Georgia cases, where he’s accused of attempting to subvert his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Meanwhile, Trump claims that being put on trial while he’s campaigning as this year’s presumptive Republican nominee is its own form of election interference.

DEFINITION: Generally speaking, a gag order is “a judicial ruling barring public disclosure or discussion (as by the press) of information related to a case,” according to Merriam-Webster. In Trump’s case, it’s known as an Order Restricting Extrajudicial Statements, with extrajudicial meaning outside of court.

EXAMPLE: Judge Juan M. Merchan, acting on a request from prosecutors, imposed a limited gag order on Trump on March 26. It bars the former president from making or directing other people to make public statements on his behalf about potential witnesses regarding their participation in the case. It also prohibits comments about jurors, prosecutors other than District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and any statements meant to interfere with or harass the court’s staff, prosecution team or their families.

Merchan expanded the order on April 1, barring Trump from commenting about his family or Bragg’s family. The change came after Trump assailed the judge’s daughter and made false claims about her on social media.

Last Tuesday, Trump was assessed a $9,000 fine — $1,000 for each of nine separate gag order violations that the judge identified. Prosecutors later requested an additional $4,000 penalty for what they said were additional breaches of the order.

Merchan lamented that $1,000 per violation is the maximum fine allowed by law and floated the possibility of jailing Trump if he continues to run afoul of the gag order, an unprecedented outcome for a former American president.

Trump’s lawyers insist he needs leeway to respond to criticism, including from witnesses like Cohen and Daniels, and that the gag order impedes his ability to answer questions and defend himself amid a crush of media coverage of his case and his candidacy.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Virtually every day of his hush money criminal trial, former President Donald Trump talks about how he can’t talk about the case.

A gag order bars Trump from commenting publicly on witnesses, jurors and some others connected to the matter. The New York judge already has found that Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, repeatedly violated the order, fined him $9,000 and warning that jail could follow if he doesn’t comply.

But the order doesn’t stop Trump from talking about the allegations against him or commenting on the judge or the elected top prosecutor. And despite a recent Trump remark, it doesn’t stop him from testifying in court if he chooses.

As he fights the felony charges against him while running for president, Trump has at times stirred confusion about what he can and can’t do in the case. He has pleaded not guilty.

So what does the order do, what doesn’t it and where did it come from?

Generally speaking, a gag order is a judge’s directive prohibiting someone or people involved in a court case from publicly commenting about some or all aspects of it. In Trump’s case, it’s titled an “Order Restricting Extrajudicial Statements,” with “extrajudicial” meaning outside of court.

Gag orders, particularly in high-profile cases, are intended to prevent information presented outside a courtroom from affecting what happens inside.

Trump also is subject to a gag order in his federal criminal election interference case in Washington. That order limits what he can say about witnesses, lawyers in the case and court staff, though an appeals court freed him to speak about special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the case.

In his recent New York civil fraud trial, Trump was fined a total of $15,000 for comments he made about that judge’s law clerk after a gag order barred participants in the trial from “posting, emailing or speaking publicly” about the court’s staff.

The U.S. Supreme Court has acknowledged that gag orders can pit fair trial rights against free speech rights. The court has struck down some orders that barred the press from reporting on certain cases or court proceedings and rejected as too vague a Nevada court rule that limited what all lawyers could say out of court.

Yes. Before the trial, he asked a state appeals court to postpone the trial while he appeals the gag order, but the court refused. His appeal of the order itself is ongoing.

Initially imposed March 26, the gag order bars Trump from making or directing others to make public statements about any juror and about any “reasonably foreseeable” witness’ participation in the investigation or the trial.

It also bars any statements about lawyers in the case, court staffers, prosecution aides and relatives of all of the above, to the extent that the statements are intended to “materially interfere with, or to cause others to materially interfere with” their work on the case “or with the knowledge that such interference is likely to result.”

The order doesn’t apply to Judge Juan M. Merchan or to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office is bringing the case. It does apply to comments about their family members, however. Merchan added that provision on April 1 after Trump lashed out on social media at the judge’s daughter, a Democratic political consultant, and made a claim about her that was later repudiated by court officials.

Trump is also allowed to talk about his political opponents, as Merchan made clear on Thursday.

The order also doesn’t bar witnesses from commenting on Trump. Michael Cohen, Trump’s ex-lawyer and an expected witness, has routinely attacked his former boss, leading Trump to complain about not being able to respond in kind.

Yes. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that criminal defendants have a constitutional right to take the stand in their own defense — or not to.

There was some confusion after Trump said Thursday that because of the gag order, he was “not allowed to testify.” In context, it appeared he was actually referring to his ability to respond to a reporter’s court-hallway question about a witness’ testimony that afternoon.

Trump clarified to reporters Friday that he understood the order wasn’t a bar on testifying. Merchan emphasized the same in court.

“I want to stress, Mr. Trump, you have an absolute right to testify at trial, if that’s what you decide to do after consultation with your attorneys,” Merchan said.

Merchan found that Trump violated the gag order with social media posts that laid into Cohen. Among the offending posts: one that asked whether “disgraced attorney and felon Michael Cohen been prosecuted for LYING,” a repost of a New York Post article that described Cohen as a “serial perjurer,” and a Trump post referring to Fox News host Jesse Watters’ claim that liberal activists were lying to infiltrate the jury.

Merchan noted that Trump’s comment on the Watters segment misstated what the host had actually said, making the comment “the words of Defendant himself.”

On the other hand, Merchan declined to sanction Trump for an April 10 post that referred to Cohen and Stormy Daniels, the porn performer who got a $130,000 hush money payment that’s at the heart of the case, as “sleaze bags.”

Trump contended that he was responding to previous comments by Cohen, and the judge said the back-and-forth gave him pause as to whether that post met the bar for a violation.

When Merchan fined Trump $1,000 apiece for nine violations — the maximum fine allowed by law — he wrote that “jail may be a necessary punishment” for some wealthy defendants who won’t be deterred by such a sum.

Merchan added that he “will not tolerate continued willful violations” of the gag order and that, if “necessary and appropriate,” he “will impose an incarceratory punishment,” meaning jail.

It’s unclear what would rise to the level of “necessary and appropriate.”

Defense lawyer Todd Blanche indicated in court Friday that he plans to appeal the judge’s finding this past week that Trump violated the gag order.

Prosecutors have asked Merchan to hold Trump in contempt again and fine him $1,000 for each of four alleged violations from April 22-25. But the prosecution isn’t asking for the former president to be locked up over those comments because they happened before Merchan’s jail warning and because “we’d prefer to minimize disruption to this proceeding,” prosecutor Christopher Conroy said.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A church volunteer stood at an apartment door, beckoning inside a Congolese family for their first look at where they would live in America.

“Your new house!” volunteer Dan Davidson exclaimed as the couple and the woman’s brother stepped into the two-bedroom apartment in South Carolina’s capital, smiling tentatively at what would come next.

Inside, church volunteers had made quilts for the beds and set out an orange and yellow plastic dump truck and other toys for the couple’s son. The family watched closely as a translator showed them key features in their apartment: which knob matched which burner on the stovetop, how the garbage disposal and window blinds worked. They practiced working the thermostat and checked the water in the shower.

“We are so happy to get this place,” Kaaskile Kashindi said through a translator.

Now 28, Kashindi was born in Congo and fled with his family at age 3 to a refugee camp in Tanzania, where he lived until this spring. That’s when he, his wife, little boy and brother-in-law moved to Columbia, a university town of 140,000 people.

“We’re still new. We just need help right now,” Kashindi said.

Scenes like this are becoming more common as the American refugee program, long a haven for people fleeing violence around the world, rebounds from years of cutbacks under Donald Trump’s administration. The Biden administration has worked to streamline the process of screening and placing people in America while refugee resettlement agencies have opened new sites across the country.

If President Joe Biden meets his target of 125,000 refugees admitted this year, it would be the highest number of arrivals in more than three decades.

Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee in a 2020 rematch with Biden this fall, has pledged to bar refugees from Gaza and reinstate his Muslim ban if elected, while also putting in place “ideological screening” for all immigrants. Trump’s website highlights his first-term decision to temporarily suspend the refugee program.

Even with immigration — legal or not — a divisive campaign issue, many who help refugees settle in the United States say the growing numbers of refugees have been generally welcomed by communities and employers in need of workers.

The word refugee is sometimes broadly used to refer to anyone fleeing war or persecution. Often it’s conflated with asylum-seekers who come directly to the U.S.-Mexico border. People like the family from Congo are coming through a different process, starting with an application abroad and with thorough vetting that can take years.

Usually they are referred to U.S. officials by the U.N. refugee agency, then interviewed by American immigration officials. There are background checks and medical screening.

The lucky few who are approved fly to towns across America to start new lives with the help of a nationwide network of resettlement agencies. They are eligible to become citizens eventually.

For decades, America led the world in refugee admissions in a program that had wide bipartisan support. Trump cut the program to the quick. By the time he left office in January 2021, he had set a record low goal of 15,000 refugees admitted a year. But even that mark wasn’t hit: Only 11,814 refugees came to the U.S. in Trump’s last year, compared with 84,994 at the end of the Obama administration.

Biden said he would reestablish the U.S. as a haven for refugees. It took a while.

His administration is now admitting more refugees and added about 150 new resettlement sites nationwide, said Sarah Cross, deputy assistant secretary for the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.

To reach a goal of 125,000 refugees admitted this year — the highest number since 1992 — the department has been increasing its overseas processing and making changes that streamline all the checks refugees undergo while keeping screening rigorous, Cross said. It has hired more staff and is doing more trips to interview prospective refugees overseas.

In 2020, Lutheran Services Carolinas resettled about 40 refugees in Columbia. This year, the organization expects to welcome about 440, said Seth Hershberger, the nonprofit’s refugee resettlement and immigration director. It has opened new sites in Charleston, Greenville and Myrtle Beach.

“It is chaotic sometimes,” Hershberger said from the agency’s office, tucked into a Lutheran church. “But with the support we’ve had … it’s been a good, good journey.”

The office is a bustle of case managers, employment specialists and other staffers; some were once refugees themselves. These staff and volunteers usually meet arriving refugees, making sure a meal they recognize is waiting for them.

From there, it’s a whirlwind of medical appointments, registration at government offices, opening a bank account, enrolling kids in school and eventually moving into permanent housing such as the Kashindi family’s apartment. They take classes in what is called “survival English” — how to call 911 if someone is sick, for example, or remembering your address so you can tell someone if you get lost.

In one recent class, five refugees sat at desks at a local church. Down the hall, a volunteer watched their kids so they could work on learning a new language.

The lesson was focused on calendars and days of the week, interspersed with a bit of American culture.

“In America, the calendar is very important. … There’s a lot of dates you’ll need to know,” said teacher Sarah Lewis, such as their children’s birthdays, doctor’s appointments and much more.

Two students were sisters from Honduras who had fled their homes and traveled to Mexico, where they lived for about a year until they learned they had been approved to come to South Carolina.

Leliz Bonilla Castro said she didn’t know much about Columbia when she arrived but she liked the warm weather and welcoming people. She said the refugee program had given her and her three children a future.

“For those who want and have the opportunity to come (to this country), it is the best way to save your life and to have a better future for your kids, which are the ones we think about the most as parents,” she said through a translator.

It wasn’t too long ago that South Carolina was one of many Republican-leaning states that balked at efforts to bring in Syrian refugees.

Hershberger, the Lutheran Services resettlement chief, pointed to another event — the U.S. evacuation of tens of thousands of Afghans from Kabul during the 2021 troop withdrawal — as a game-changer. It led to an outpouring from Americans wanting to help.

“When they saw people grabbing onto the planes and fleeing for their lives, I think that really struck a chord with a lot of people,” he said.

The nonprofit also hears from employers eager for workers, Hershberger said.

One of them is Jordan Loewen, whose Columbia-based company cleans facilities or fleets like big garbage trucks. It’s “dirty, hard work,” he said.

During the pandemic when it was tough to find workers, someone suggested he hire refugees. Loewen gave it a shot, and now refugees account for nearly half his staff. He also recommends the resettlement program to other employers.

In addition to getting workers, he said, “It’s amazing hearing what these guys have come out of and the struggles that they’ve gone through in their life to get to this point of being in America.”

Global Refuge, one of 10 national resettlement agencies that work with local networks like the one in Columbia, is preparing for what a Trump presidency might mean for its work.

“It’s a huge cloud. We feel like we may be running up against a cliff here,” said Megan Bracy, the organization’s resettlement director.

Cross, from the State Department, said the focus is on the momentum in bringing more refugees and the nationwide support that’s followed.

“It’s also a program that we see so many Americans eager to continue,” she said.