WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously ruled against a man who wants to trademark the suggestive phrase “Trump too small.”

The justices upheld the government’s decision to deny a trademark to Steve Elster, an attorney from Concord, Calif., who sought exclusive use of the phrase on T-shirts and potentially other merchandise.

Government officials said the phrase “Trump too small” could still be used, just not trademarked because Trump had not consented to its use. Indeed, “Trump too small” T-shirts can already be purchased online.

Elster’s lawyers had argued that the decision violated his free speech rights, and a federal appeals court agreed.

At arguments, Chief Justice John Roberts said that if Elster were to win, people would race to trademark “Trump too this, Trump too that.”

Although all nine justices agreed in rejecting Elster’s First Amendment claim, they used differing rationales that stretched over 53 pages of opinions.

Twice in the past six years, the justices have struck down provisions of federal law denying trademarks seen as scandalous or immoral in one case and disparaging in another.

Elster’s case dealt with another measure calling for a trademark request to be refused if it involves a name, portrait or signature “identifying a particular living individual” unless the person has given “written consent.”

The phrase at the heart of the case is a reference to an exchange Trump had during the 2016 presidential campaign with Sen. Marco Rubio, who was then also running for the Republican presidential nomination.

Rubio began the verbal jousting when he told supporters at a rally that Trump was always calling him “little Marco” but that Trump — who says he is 6-foot-3 — has disproportionately small hands. “Have you seen his hands? … And you know what they say about men with small hands,” Rubio said. “You can’t trust them.”

Trump then brought up the comment at a televised debate on March 3, 2016.

“Look at those hands. Are they small hands? And he referred to my hands — if they’re small, something else must be small. I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee you,” he said.

It is one of several cases at the court relating to former President Donald Trump, including major cases related to the violent attack on the Capitol in 2021. Earlier this term, the court laid out standards for when public officials can be sued for blocking critics from their social media accounts. These cases were also related to Trump.

DETROIT (AP) — Just before 2 a.m. on a chilly April night in Seattle, a Chevrolet Silverado pickup stopped at an electric vehicle charging station on the edge of a shopping center parking lot.

The scene that night has become part of a troubling pattern across the country: Thieves have been targeting EV charging stations, intent on stealing the cables, which contain copper wiring. The price of copper is near a record high on global markets, which means criminals stand to collect rising sums of cash from selling the material.

The stolen cables often disable entire stations, forcing EV owners on the road to search desperately for a working charger. For the owners, the predicament can be exasperating and stressful.

Broken-down chargers have emerged as the latest obstacle for U.S. automakers in their strenuous effort to convert more Americans to EVs despite widespread public anxiety about a scarcity of charging stations. About 4 in 10 U.S. adults say they believe EVs take too long to charge or don’t know of any charging stations nearby.

If even finding a charging station doesn’t necessarily mean finding functioning cables, it becomes one more reason for skeptical buyers to stick with traditional gasoline-fueled or hybrid vehicles, at least for now.

America’s major automakers have made heavy financial bets that buyers will shift away from combustion engines and embrace EVs as the world faces the worsening consequences of climate change. Accordingly, the companies have poured billions into EVs.

Stellantis envisions 50% of its passenger cars being EVs by the end of 2030. Ford set a target of producing 2 million EVs per year by 2026 — about 45% of its global sales — though it has since suspended that goal. General Motors, the most ambitious of the three, has pledged to sell only EV passenger cars by the end of 2035.

Any such timetables, of course, hinge on whether the companies can convince more would-be EV buyers that a charge will always be available when they travel. The rise in cable thefts isn’t likely to strengthen the automakers’ case.

Two years ago, according to Electrify America, which runs the nation’s second-largest network of direct-current fast chargers, a cable might be cut perhaps every six months at one of its 968 charging stations, with 4,400 plugs nationwide. Through May this year, the figure reached 129 — four more than in all of 2023. At one Seattle station, cables were cut six times in the past year, said Anthony Lambkin, Electrify America’s vice president of operations.

“We’re enabling people to get to work, to take their kids to school, get to medical appointments,” Lambkin said. “So to have an entire station that’s offline is pretty impactful to our customers.”

Two other leading EV charging companies — Flo and EVgo — also have reported a rise in thefts. Charging stations in the Seattle area have been a frequent target. Sites in Nevada, California, Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas and Pennsylvania have been hit, too.

Stations run by Tesla, which operates the nation’s largest fast-charging network, have been struck in Seattle, Oakland and Houston. So far this year, Seattle police have reported seven cases of cable thefts from charging stations, matching the number for all of 2023. Thieves hit Tesla stations four times this year compared with just once last year, the Seattle police said.

“Vandalism of public charging infrastructure in the Seattle metro area has unfortunately been increasing in frequency,” EVgo said.

The company said law enforcement officials are investigating the thefts while it tries to repair inoperable stations and considers a longer-term solution.

The problem isn’t confined to urban areas. In rural Sumner, Washington, south of Seattle, thieves cut cables twice at a Puget Sound Energy charging station. The company is working with police and the property owner to protect the station.

Until a month ago, police in Houston knew of no cable thefts. Then one was stolen from a charger at a gas station. The city has now recorded eight or nine such thefts, said Sgt. Robert Carson, who leads a police metal-theft unit.

In one case, thieves swiped 18 of 19 cords at a Tesla station. That day, Carson visited the station to inspect the damage. In the first five minutes that he was there, Carson said, about 10 EVs that needed charging had to be turned away.

In very large cities like Houston, charging stations typically contain an especially large number of plugs and cables, so thefts can be particularly damaging.

“They’re not just taking one,” Carson said. “When they’re hit, they’re hit pretty hard.”

Roy Manuel, an Uber driver who normally recharges his Tesla at the Houston station hit by thieves, said he fears being unable to do so because of stolen cables.

“If my battery was really low, I’d have quite an issue with operating my vehicle,” he said. “If it was so low that I couldn’t get to another charger, I might be in trouble. Might even need a tow truck.”

The charging companies say it’s become clear that the thieves are after the copper that the cables contain. In late May, copper hit a record high of nearly $5.20 a pound, a result, in part, of rising demand resulting from efforts to cut carbon emissions with EVs that use more copper wiring. The price is up about 25% from a year ago, and many analysts envision further increases.

Charging companies say there isn’t actually very much copper in the cables, and what copper is there is difficult to extract. Carson estimates that criminals can get $15 to $20 per cable at a scrap yard.

“They’re not making a significant amount of money,” he said. “They’re not going to be sailing on a yacht anywhere.”

Still, the more cables the thieves can steal, the more they can cash in. At $20 a cable, 20 stolen cables could fetch $400.

The problem for the charging companies is that it’s much costlier to replace cables. In Minneapolis, where cables have been clipped at city-owned charging stations, it costs about $1,000 to replace just one cable, said Joe Laurin, project manager in the Department of Public Works.

The charging companies are trying to fight back. Electrify America is installing more security cameras. In Houston, police are visiting recycling centers to look for stolen metal.

But it’s often hard for the scrap yards to determine conclusively whether metal came from a charging cable. Thieves often burn off the insulation and just sell strands of metal.

The Recycled Materials Association, which represents 1,700 members, is issuing scrap-theft alerts from law enforcement officials so that members can be on the lookout for suspects and stolen goods.

Because charging stations are often situated in remote corners of parking lots, Carson suggested that many more security cameras are needed.

In the meantime, Electrify America said Seattle police are trying to track down the thieves in the video. And Carson said the Houston police are pursuing leads in the Tesla theft.

“We’d like to get them stopped,” he said, “and then let the court system do what they’re supposed to do.”

___

AP Video Journalist Lekan Oyekanmi contributed to this report from Houston.

In Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, two Republican members of a county canvassing board last month refused to sign off on the results of an election that led to the recall of three GOP members of the county commission. They did so only after state officials warned them it was their legal duty to record the final vote tally.

In Georgia’s Fulton County, which includes the Democratic-voting city of Atlanta, a group run by members of former President Donald Trump’s administration last week sued so a Republican member of the local elections board could refuse to certify the results of the primary election.

And in Arizona, GOP lawmakers sued to reverse the state’s top Democratic officials’ requirement that local boards automatically validate their election results.

The past four years have been filled with battles over all sorts of election arcana, including one that had long been regarded as an administrative afterthought — little-known state and local boards certifying the results. With the presidential election looming in November, attorneys are gearing up for yet more fights over election certification, especially in the swing states where the victory margins are expected to be tight. Even if those efforts ultimately fail, election officials worry they’ll become a vehicle for promoting bogus election claims.

Trump and his allies have tried to use the tactic to stop election results from being made final if they lose. In 2020, two Republicans on Michigan’s state board of canvassers, which must certify ballot totals before state officials can declare a winner, briefly balked at signing off before one relented and became the decisive vote. Trump had cheered the delay as part of his push to overturn his loss that ultimately culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

During the 2022 midterms, some conservative, rural counties tried to hold up their state election results, citing the same debunked claims of voter fraud that Trump has made.

In New Mexico, rural county supervisors refused to certify the state’s primary vote until they were threatened with prosecution. In Cochise County in southeastern Arizona, two Republican supervisors who refused to certify the local vote totals said they had no doubt their own county’s tally was accurate but were protesting the counts in other counties that gave Democratic candidates for governor, attorney general and secretary of state their victories.

Responding to the certification controversies, Michigan’s Democratic legislature passed a law making clear that state and local canvassing boards must certify election totals. The two Arizona county supervisors are currently facing criminal charges filed by the state’s Democratic attorney general.

Democrats and nonpartisan groups say the thousands of local election oversight boards across the country aren’t the place to contest ballot counts, and that state laws make clear they have no leeway on whether to sign off on their staff’s final tallies.

“Election authorities don’t have the discretion to reject the results of an election because of their vibes,” said Jonathan Diaz of the Campaign Legal Center, adding that lawsuits and recounts are the proper recourse. “They’re there to perform a function. They’re there to certify.”

But some Republicans argue that’s going too far. Kory Langhofer, the attorney suing to overturn the election procedures manual’s directive in Arizona that was issued by the Democratic attorney general and secretary of state, said he didn’t support the effort to block certification in Cochise County in 2022. But, he argued, locally elected boards of supervisors have to have some discretion to police elections.

“It seems to me the system is stronger when you have multiple eyes on it,” Langhofer said. Of the efforts to block certification in 2020 and 2022, he added, “I hope that’s behind us.”

Democrats doubt that’s the case. They note that the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump organization run by former officials from his administration, filed the lawsuit in Georgia to let Fulton County Elections Board member Julie Adams vote against certifying elections. Adams’ four other board members voted to certify last month’s primary but Adams abstained last week, contending she couldn’t accept the results given prior election administration problems in the county.

“This action will re-establish the role of board members as the ultimate parties responsible for ensuring elections in Fulton County are free from fraud, deceit, and abuse,” the institute wrote in its release announcing the lawsuit. The group did not respond to a request for comment.

Fulton County is the heart of the Democratic vote in Georgia, and anything that holds up its totals in November could help make it look like Trump has a large lead in the state.

“Trump and MAGA Republicans have made it clear they are planning to try to block certification of November’s election when they are defeated again, and this is a transparent attempt to set the stage for that fight,” Georgia Democratic Party chair and Rep. Nikema Williams said in a statement.

In Michigan’s Delta County, clerk Nancy Przewrocki, a Republican, said the two GOP canvassers had requested a hand recount of the votes, which is beyond the scope of their position. The canvassers eventually voted to certify the May election after receiving a letter from the State Elections Director Jonathan Brater, which reminded them of their duties and warned them of the consequences of failing to certify.

Still, Przewrocki said she’s concerned about what could happen in November if a similar situation arises.

“I can see this escalating, unfortunately. I’m trying to keep our voters confident in our voting equipment, and this is completely undermining it when there’s really nothing there,” Przewrocki said.

Following the Delta County incident, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Attorney General Dana Nessel, both Democrats, issued a reminder to local canvassing boards throughout the state warning them of their legal obligation to certify election results based solely on vote returns. If they don’t, there will be “swift action to ensure the legal certification of election results,” along with “possible civil and criminal charges against those members for their actions,” Benson warned.

Michigan is an example of the futility of the tactic. The new state law makes it clear that canvassing boards can’t block certification, but Benson said in an interview that she still worries such an effort, even if legally doomed, would help spread false allegations about the November election.

“Misinformation and talking points emerge that enable others — particularly politicians — to continue to cast doubt on the accuracy of election results,” she said.

Riccardi reported from Denver and Cappelletti from Lansing, Michigan. Associated Press writers Jeff Amy in Atlanta and Morgan Lee in Santa Fe, New Mexico, contributed to this report.

Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda apologized Monday for massive cheating on certification tests for seven vehicle models as the automaker suspended production of three of them.

The wide-ranging fraudulent testing at Japan’s top automaker involved the use of inadequate or outdated data in collision tests, and incorrect testing of airbag inflation and rear-seat damage in crashes. Engine power tests were also found to have been falsified.

Toyota Motor Corp., based in Toyota city, central Japan, suspended production in the country of the Corolla Fielder, Corolla Axio and Yaris Cross. The deceptive tests were also found on discontinued models.

The company said the wrongdoing does not affect the safety of the vehicles already on roads, which include the Corolla subcompact and Lexus luxury vehicles.

“We sincerely apologize,” Toyoda told reporters, bowing deeply and holding the position for several seconds, as is customary in Japan at news conferences where companies apologize for misbehavior.

A Japanese government investigation into Toyota began in January. The issue does not affect Toyota’s overseas production.

Also Monday, Toyota’s Japanese rival Mazda Motor Corp. reported similar irregular certification testing, and halted production of two models, the Roadster and Mazda 2. It said incorrect engine control software was used in the tests.

Mazda, based in the southwestern city of Hiroshima, also acknowledged violations on crash tests on three discontinued models. None of the violations affect the vehicles’ safety.

Tokyo-based Honda Motor Co. also apologized Monday for improper tests, such as those on noise levels and torque, on a range of models. Honda said affected older models — the Accord, Odyssey and Fit — are no longer in production. The safety of the vehicles is not affected, it said.

Certification problems starting surfacing two years ago at Toyota group companies, truck maker Hino Motors and Daihatsu Motor Co. — specializing in small models — and Toyota Industries Corp., which makes machinery and auto parts.

The apparent unraveling of the testing systems at Toyota and its group companies is an embarrassment for an automaker that’s prided itself for decades on production finesse and a corporate culture based on empowering workers to make “ever-better cars.”

Toyoda, the grandson of the company’s founder, suggested some certification rules might be overly stringent, noting such tests differed around the world. But he repeatedly said he wasn’t condoning the violations.

“We are not a perfect company. But if we see anything wrong, we will take a step back and keep trying to correct it,” said Toyoda.

He said the company may have been too eager to get the tests done and abbreviated them at a time when model varieties were burgeoning.

Toyota sells more than 10 million vehicles around the world.

NEW YORK — A U.S. federal court of appeals panel suspended a venture capital firm’s grant program for Black women business owners, ruling that a conservative group is likely to prevail in its lawsuit claiming that the program is discriminatory.

The ruling against the Atlanta-based Fearless Fund is another victory for conservative groups waging a sprawling legal battle against corporate diversity programs that have targeted dozens of companies and government institutions.

The case against the Fearless Fund was brought last year by the American American Alliance for Equal Rights, a group led by Edward Blum, the conservative activist behind the Supreme Court case that ended affirmative action in college admissions.

Blum applauded the ruling, saying “programs that exclude certain individuals because of their race such as the ones the Fearless Fund has designed and implemented are unjust and polarizing.”

Fearless Fund CEO and Founder Arian Simone said the ruling was “devastating” for the organizations and the women it has invested in.

“The message these judges sent today is that diversity in Corporate America, education, or anywhere else should not exist,” she said in statement. “These judges bought what a small group of white men were selling.”

Alphonso David, Fearless Fund’s legal counsel who serves as president and CEO of The Global Black Economic Forum, said all options were being evaluated to continue fighting the lawsuit.

The legal effort to dismantle workplace diversity programs has suffered its share of setbacks as well, reflecting polarized opinions among liberal and conservative judges on the issue. Last week, for example, a federal district judge in Ohio dismissed a lawsuit against the insurance company Progressive and fintech platform Hello Alice challenging a program that offers grants to help Black-owned small businesses purchase commercial vehicles. Similar lawsuits have been dismissed against Amazon, Pfizer and Starbucks.

The case against the Fearless Fund has been closely watched by civil rights groups, philanthropic organizations, employment lawyers and the venture capital industry as a bellwether for how the courts are viewing programs intended to level the playing field for racial minorities and other groups that have historically faced discrimination in businesses and workplaces.

In a 2-1 ruling, the panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Miami found that Blum was likely to prevail in his lawsuit claiming the grant program violates section 1981 of the 1866 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race when enforcing contracts. The Reconstruction-era law was originally intended to protect formally enslaved people from economic exclusion, but anti-affirmative action activists have been leveraging it to challenge programs intended to benefit minority-owned businesses.

The court ordered the Fearless Fund to suspend its Strivers Grant Contest, which provides $20,000 to businesses that are majority owned by Black women, for the remainder of the lawsuit that is being litigated in a federal court in Atlanta. The ruling reversed a federal judge’s ruling last year that the contest should be allowed to continue because Blum’s lawsuit was likely to fail. However, the grant contest has been suspended since October after a separate panel of the federal appeals court swiftly granted Blum’s request for an emergency injunction while he challenged the federal judge’s original order.

The appeals court panel, consisting of two judges appointed by former President Donald Trump and one appointed by former President Barack Obama, rejected the Fearless Fund’s arguments that the grants are not contracts but charitable donations protected by the First Amendment right to free speech.

“The fact remains, though, that Fearless simply —and flatly — refuses to entertain applications from business owners who aren’t ‘black females,’” the court’s majority opinion said, adding “every act of race discrimination” would be deemed expressive conduct under the Fearless Fund’s argument.

The appeals panel also rejected the Fearless Fund’s contention that Blum had no standing because the lawsuit was filed on behalf of three anonymous women who failed to demonstrate that they were “ready and able” to apply for the grant or that they had been injured by not being to do so.

Judge Robin Rosenbaum, an Obama appointee, disagreed in a blistering dissent, likening the plaintiffs’ claims of harm to soccer players trying to win by “flopping on the field, faking an injury.” Rosenbaum said none of the plaintiffs demonstrated that they had any real intention to apply for the grants in what she called “cookie-cutter declarations” that were ”threadbare and devoid of substance.”

The court’s ruling wasn’t surprising because of its conservative leaning and previous skepticism towards the argument presented by the Fearless Fund, said David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at New York University’s School of Law.

“We are going to see some pro-DEI outcomes in liberal circuits and anti-DEI outcomes in conservative circuits,” Glasgow said.

Glasgow said he expects one of the lawsuits to land in the conservative-dominated Supreme Court. Even so, he said it’s unlikely that any one ruling could settle the legal debate over corporate DEI because of the complexity and wide-ranging programs and policies that fall under the category.

The Strivers Grant Fund is one of several programs run by the foundation arm of the Fearless Fund, which was founded to address the wide racial disparity in funding for businesses owned by women of color. Less than 1% of venture capital funding goes to businesses owned by Black and Hispanic women, according to the nonprofit advocacy group digitalundivided.

The National Venture Capital Association, an trade group with hundreds of member VC firms, filed an amicus brief defending the Fearless Fund’s grant program as “modest but important” step to toward creating equal opportunity in an industry that has historically excluded Black women.

Only 2% of investment professionals at venture capital firms were Black women in 2022, according to a study conducted every two years by Deloitte and Venture Forward, the nonprofit arm of the National Venture Capital Association, and the consulting firm Deloitte. Just 1% of investment partners were Black women, according to study, which surveyed of 315 firms with 5,700 employees representing $594.5 billion in assets under management.

But in his statement, Blum said “our nation’s civil rights laws do not permit racial distinctions because some groups are overrepresented in various endeavors, while others are under-represented.”

Philanthropic groups are also watching the case because of its possible implications for charitable giving.

“If legal decisions curtail people’s ability to give in ways that align with their values or their experience, it’s going to hurt not only philanthropy and nonprofits, but our own country as a whole,” said Kathleen Enright, president and CEO of the Council on Foundations, whose organizations filed an amicus brief supporting the Fearless Fund with the nonprofit Independent Sector.

AP Writers Thalia Beaty and Haleluya Hadero in New York contributed to this story.

The Associated Press’ women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

It was a quiet weekend at North American movie theaters, dominated once again by Sony’s “The Garfield Movie,” Warner Bros.’ “ Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga ” and a slew of holdovers. Flipping the script from their Memorial weekend openings, the animated orange cat crept ahead of the wasteland warrior in their second outing.

“ The Garfield Movie ” earned a chart-topping $14 million in ticket sales while “Furiosa” settled into third place in a close race with “IF,” according to studio estimates on Sunday. Both “IF” and “Furiosa” are estimated to have earned $10.8 million, with “IF” getting the slight edge.

“Garfield” fell only 42% in its second weekend in North America. It also topped the global box office adding $27 million from international territories, bringing its running worldwide to $152.2 million. The animated pic featuring the voice of Chris Pratt will essentially have the market to itself until “Inside Out 2” arrives on June 14.

“Furiosa,” meanwhile, fell 59% from its first weekend, adding just under $10.8 million from 3,864 locations in the U.S. and Canada. That puts its running domestic total at $49.7 million and its global sum at $114.4 million against a $168 million production budget.

There were several new releases that opened on over 1,000 screens this weekend: Sony/Crunchyroll’s anime “Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle”; IFC’s horror “In a Violent Nature”; Roadside Attractions’ Diane Keaton-Alfre Woodard-Kathy Bates comedy “Summer Camp”; And Bleecker Street’s father-son drama “Ezra.” None managed to crack the top five, however.

Disney also released the well-reviewed “ Young Woman and the Sea,” starring Daisy Ridley as the first woman to swim the English Channel, but did not report its ticket sales. Likewise, Richard Linklater’s “ Hit Man ” is currently playing in select theaters around the country before it comes to streaming next week, but Netflix does not release box office numbers.

Second place went to Paramount’s “ IF,” with $10.8 million in its third weekend. John Krasinski’s imaginary friends fantasy starring Ryan Reynolds and Cailey Fleming has now made over $80.4 million domestically and $138 million worldwide. Disney/20th Century Studios’ “ Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes ” landed in fourth place in its fourth weekend with $8.8 million. It has now made $140 million domestically and $337.1 million globally.

And the Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt action-comedy “ The Fall Guy, ” which is currently available to purchase at home, rounded out the top five with $4.2 million, bringing its domestic total to $80.3 million. Globally, the Universal release has made $157.9 million.

“Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle,” based on the Japanese high school volleyball series, made an estimated $3.5 million from 1,119 locations. The slasher “In a Violent Nature” opened to $2.2 million from 1,426 locations (a massive release for IFC Films and Shudder). And, “Ezra,” about a stand-up comedian (Bobby Cannavale) and his autistic son, earned $1.2 million from 1,320 screens.

The 2024 box office is struggling compared to both last year (down 23.9%) and pre-pandemic standards (down 42.2% from 2019 and 46.4% from 2018), according to data from Comscore. On this weekend last year, “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” opened to $120.7 million while “The Little Mermaid” was still pulling in over $41.4 million in its second weekend. This year has yet to have any film open to over $100 million domestically.

While “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” had yet to storm theaters at this point last year, there had been several substantial hits including “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” ($1.36 billion global total), “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” ($845.5 million) and “Fast X” ($704.7 million).

“It should come as no surprise given the nature of this year’s trajectory that we are running this far behind,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “I understand why people are concerned about where this year is going, but it’s never too late to get things running again.”

“It’s a momentum business,” he added. “The attention right now is focused on what will be the big movie to get the summer moving in the right direction.”

That big summer movie could arrive in the form of “Inside Out 2,” which could open to over $85 million according to early projections, and propel other juggernauts like “Despicable Me 4” (July 3) and “Deadpool & Wolverine” (July 26).

Dergarabedian also noted that absent a big superhero movie, it’s the family-oriented films that have been resonating recently. They might not open to the biggest numbers, but as “IF” and “The Gafield Movie” have proven, they have staying power.

The top-grossing movie of this year remains “ Dune: Part Two,” which Warner Bros. released in early March and has made over $711 million globally. Its domestic take of $282.1 million represents 10.5% of the overall box office for 2024.

“Dune” filmmaker Denis Villeneuve over the weekend said that he was “disappointed to still be number one” while at the Canadian Screen Awards in Toronto where he was collecting an award.

“I hope soon that there will be other successes at the box office,” Villeneuve said, as reported by Yahoo. “I hope sooner or later that this summer box office will be much better.”

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. “The Garfield Movie,” $14 million.
2. “IF,” $10.8 million.
3. “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” $10.8 million.
4. “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” $8.8 million.
5. “The Fall Guy,” $4.2 million.
6. “The Strangers: Chapter 1,” $3.6 million.
7. “Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle,” $3.5 million.
8. “In a Violent Nature,” $2.1 million.
9. “Ezra,” $1.2 million.
10. “Sight,” $1.1 million.

WASHINGTON — The Democratic National Committee was watching earlier this year as campaigns nationwide were experimenting with artificial intelligence. So the organization approached a handful of influential party campaign committees with a request: Sign onto guidelines that would commit them to use the technology in a “responsible” way.

The draft agreement, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, was hardly full of revolutionary ideas. It asked campaigns to check work by AI tools, protect against biases and avoid using AI to create misleading content.

“Our goal is to use this new technology both effectively and ethically, and in a way that advances – rather than undermines – the values that we espouse in our campaigns,” the draft said.

The plan went nowhere.

Instead of fostering an agreement, the guidelines sparked a debate about the value of such pledges, particularly those governing fast-evolving technology. Among the concerns expressed by the Democratic campaign organizations: Such a pledge might hamstring their ability to deploy AI and could turn off donors with ties to the AI industry. Some committee officials were also irked that the DNC gave them only a few days to agree to the guidelines.

The proposal’s demise highlighted internal divisions over campaign tactics and the party’s uncertainty over how to best utilize AI amid warnings from experts that the technology is supercharging the proliferation of disinformation.

Hannah Muldavin, a senior spokesperson at the Democratic National Committee, said the group is not giving up on finding a consensus.

The DNC, she said, “will continue to engage with our sister committees to discuss ideas and issues important to Democratic campaigns and to American voters, including AI.”

“It’s not uncommon for ideas and plans to shift, especially in the midst of a busy election year, and any documents on this subject reflect early and ongoing conversations,” Muldavin said, adding the “DNC and our partners take seriously the opportunities and challenges presented by AI.”

The wrangling comes as campaigns have increasingly deployed artificial intelligence — computer systems, software or processes that emulate aspects of human work and cognition — to optimize workloads. That includes using large language models to write fundraising emails, text supporters and build chatbots to answer voters’ questions.

That trend is expected to continue as November’s general election approaches, with campaigns turning to supercharged generative AI tools to create text and images, as well as clone human voices and create video at lightning speeds.

The Republican National Committee used AI-generated images in a television spot last year predicting a dystopian future under President Joe Biden.

Much of that adoption, however, has been overshadowed by concerns about how campaigns could use artificial intelligence in ways that trick voters. Experts have warned that AI has become so powerful that it has made it easy to generate “deep fake” videos, audio snippets and other media targeting opposing candidates. Some states have passed legislation regulating the way generative artificial intelligence can be used. But Congress has so far failed to pass any bills regulating artificial intelligence on the federal level.

In the absence of regulation, the DNC sought a set of guidelines it could point to as evidence the party was taking seriously the threat and promise of AI. It sent the proposal in March to the five Democratic campaign committees that seek to elect House, Senate, gubernatorial, state legislative and state attorneys general candidates to office, according to the draft agreement.

The goal was to have each committee agree to a slate of AI guardrails and the DNC proposed issuing a joint statement proclaiming such guidelines would ensure that campaigns could use “the tools they need to prevent the spread of misinformation and disinformation, while empowering campaigns to safely, responsibly use generative AI to engage more Americans in our democracy.”

The Democratic committee had hoped the statement would be signed by Chair Jaime Harrison and the leaders of the other organizations.

Democratic operatives said the proposal landed with a thud. Some senior leaders at the committees worried that the agreement might have unforeseen consequences, perhaps constricting how campaigns use AI, according to multiple Democratic operatives familiar with the outreach.

And it might send the wrong message to technology companies and executives who work on AI, many of whom help fill campaign coffers during election years.

Some of the Democratic Party’s most prolific donors are top tech entrepreneurs and AI evangelists, including Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, and Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google.

Altman has donated over $200,000 to the Biden campaign and his aligned Democratic joint fundraising committee since the start of last year, according to data from the Federal Election Commission, and Schmidt’s contributions to those groups have topped $500,000 over the same time.

Two other AI proponents, Dustin Moskovitz, the co-founder of Facebook, and Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, donated more than $900,000 to Biden’s joint fundraising committee this cycle, according to the same data.

The DNC plan caught the committees off guard because it came with little explanation, other than a desire to get each committee to agree to the list of best practices within a few days, said multiple Democratic operatives who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter. Aides to the Democratic Congressional Campaign and Democratic Senatorial Campaign committees said they felt rushed by a DNC timeline that urged them to sign quickly.

Representatives from the Democratic Attorneys General Association did not respond to the Associated Press’ request for comment. Spokesmen from the Democratic Governors Association and Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee declined to comment.

The Republican National Committee did not respond to questions about its AI guidelines. The Biden campaign also declined to comment when asked about the DNC effort.

The four-page agreement — “Guidelines on Responsible Use of Generative AI in Campaigns” — covered everything from ensuring that artificial intelligence systems were not trusted without a human checking its work to notifying voters when they are interacting with AI-generated content or systems.

“As the explosive rise of generative AI transforms every corner of public life – including political campaigns – it’s more important than ever that we limit this new technology’s potential threat to voters’ rights, and instead leverage it to build innovative, efficient campaigns and a stronger, more inclusive democracy,” the proposal said.

The guidelines were divided into five sections that included titles such as “Offering Human Alternatives, Consideration and Fallback” and “Providing Notice and Explanation.” The proposed rules would have required the committees to ensure “a real person should be responsible for approving AI-generated content and be accountable for how, where, and to whom it is deployed.”

The directive outlined how “users should always be aware when they are interacting with an AI bot” and stressed that any images or video created by AI “should be flagged” as such. And it stressed that campaigns should use AI to assist staffers, not replace them.

“Campaigns are a human-driven and human motivated business,” read the agreement. “Use efficiency gains to teach more voters and focus more on quality control and sustainability.”

This story is part of an Associated Press series, “The AI Campaign,” exploring the influence of artificial intelligence in the 2024 election cycle.

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The Associated Press receives financial assistance from the Omidyar Network to support coverage of artificial intelligence and its impact on society. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org

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The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement allowing OpenAI access to part of the AP’s text archives.

WASHINGTON (AP) — As president, Donald Trump imposed a 25% tariff on foreign steel, which hurt Clips & Clamps Industries, a Michigan auto supplier — raising its materials prices, making it harder to compete with overseas rivals and costing it several contracts.

Jeff Aznavorian, the company president, thought he might enjoy some relief once Joe Biden entered the White House. Instead, Biden largely preserved Trump’s tariffs — on steel, aluminum and a mass of goods from China.

“It was a little surprising that an ideologically different administration would keep the policies so intact,’’ Aznavorian said, recalling how a previous Democratic president, Bill Clinton, had fought for freer trade. “That’s just so different from a 2024 Biden administration.’’

Trump and Biden agree on essentially nothing, from taxes and climate change to immigration and regulation. Yet on trade policy, the two presumptive presidential nominees have embraced surprisingly similar approaches. Which means that whether Biden or Trump wins the presidency, the United States seems poised to maintain a protectionist trade policy — a policy that experts say could feed inflation pressures.

Last week, in fact, Biden announced some new tariffs, on Chinese electric vehicles, advanced batteries, solar cells and other products, that he said would keep Beijing from flooding the United States with cheap imports.

The protectionist tilt of the two presidential contenders reflects the widespread view that opening the nation to more imports — especially from China — wiped out American manufacturing jobs and shuttered factories. It’s an especially potent political topic in the Midwestern industrial states that will likely decide who wins the White House.

“If you look at the election, it’s obvious,’’ said William Reinsch, a former trade official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Where are the deciding states? Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin — right there, you can see that trade is going to have an outsize role.’’

In their own ways, the two candidates have ditched a U.S. commitment to relatively frictionless trade — low barriers and scant government interference — that were a bedrock of American policy for decades after World War II. The idea was that free trade would hold down costs and aid consumers and businesses across the world.

In recent years, though, the perception grew that while free trade benefited households and companies, it hurt workers, with American jobs falling victim to cheaper foreign labor.

“The once nearly unanimous Washington consensus on free trade is dead,” Robert Lighthizer, who was Trump’s lead trade negotiator, crowed in his 2023 book, “No Trade Is Free.’’

Yet like free trade, trade protectionism carries its own economic price. It can raise costs for households and businesses just as the nation is struggling to fully tame inflation. It tends to prop up inefficient companies. It spurs retaliation from other nations against American exporters. And it typically sours relations with allies and adversaries alike.

Trump, who brazenly labeled himself “Tariff Man,’’ tried to pummel America’s trading partners with import taxes, vowing to shrink America’s trade deficits, especially with China.

He did pressure Mexico and Canada into rewriting a North American trade deal that Trump insisted had destroyed U.S. manufacturing jobs. He also persuaded China to agree to buy more American farm goods. But his efforts didn’t revive the manufacturing base — factory jobs make up a smaller share of U.S. employment than they did before his presidency — or shrink America’s trade deficits.

Trump has vowed more of the same in a second term. He’s threatening to impose a 10% tariff on all imports — and a 60% tax on Chinese goods.

“I call it a ring around the country,’’ Trump said in an interview with Time magazine.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, warns that the consequences would be damaging. Trump’s tariff plans, Zandi said, “would spark higher inflation, reduce GDP and jobs and increase unemployment, all else equal.”

A year after the import taxes were imposed, Zandi estimates, average consumer prices would be 0.7 percentage points higher than they would otherwise be. A report out Monday, from Kimberly Clausing and Mary Lovely of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, estimates that for families in the middle of the U.S. income distribution, Trump’s tariff proposals would amount to a tax of at least $1,700 a year.

For his part, Biden favors subsidizing such key industries as chipmaking and EV manufacturing to give them a competitive edge. It’s a stance that reflects worry that China’s rising military and technological might imperils America’s national security. As last week’s announcement showed, Biden isn’t averse to new tariffs, either. His top trade negotiator, Katherine Tai, has opened an investigation into Chinese trade practices in the shipbuilding industry, likely a prelude to imposing further sanctions on Beijing.

“The laissez-faire economic model of trade wasn’t working for the United States,’’ said Elizabeth Baltzan, a senior adviser to Tai. “We want to correct for that. The measures you take in order to get a fairer (economy) may involve measures that could be labeled protectionist. But I think you have to ask what you’re protecting” — notably working-class communities.

Dani Rodrik, a Harvard economist who was an early critic of the globalization of the 1990s and 2000s, views Biden trade policies more favorably than he does Trump’s approach.

“Trump’s was knee-jerk and incoherent; there is little evidence that his trade restrictions on China did any good to workers or the middle class in the U.S.,’’ Rodrik said.

By contrast, he said, “Biden’s approach is strategic and based on rebuilding U.S. manufacturing capacity and investing in the green transition, so fundamentally strengthening the U.S. economy rather than crass protectionism.”

Either way, a consensus formed in recent years that U.S. trade policy had to change. Moving factories to low-wage countries like Mexico and China in the 1990s and early 2000s, critics say, fattened corporate profits and enriched executives and investors but devastated American factory towns that couldn’t compete with cheap imports.

David Autor, a leading economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and two colleagues concluded in a 2016 paper that from 1999 to 2011, cheap Chinese imports wiped out 2.4 million American jobs.

More recently, China’s rise as America’s No. 1 geopolitical rival has created a bipartisan effort to reduce America’s reliance on Beijing for supplies of everything from pharmaceuticals to “rare earth’’ minerals for electric cars and cellphones.

Though this sea change in policy may have started with Trump, discontent with free trade and with an increasingly combative China had been building for years. One of Trump’s first presidential acts was to dump a free trade agreement the Obama administration had negotiated with 11 Pacific Rim countries.

Then Trump really got going. He imposed taxes on foreign washing machines and solar panels. Next, he labeled steel and aluminum imports a threat to national security and hit them with tariffs.

Finally, he started perhaps the biggest trade war since the 1930s: He hammered $360 billion of Chinese products with tariffs for Beijing’s efforts to surpass U.S. technological supremacy through illicit tactics, including cybertheft. China lashed back with retaliatory taxes of its own: It targeted American farmers, in particular, to try to hurt Trump’s constituency in rural America.

Did Trump’s tariff war achieve anything?

A study by Autor and colleagues at the University of Zurich, Harvard and the World Bank concluded that Trump’s import taxes failed in their goal to return jobs to the American heartland. The tariffs, the study found, “neither raised nor lowered U.S. employment’’ where they were supposed to protect jobs.

Worse, the retaliatory taxes imposed by China and other nations on U.S. goods had “negative employment impacts,’’ especially for farmers. These were only partly offset by billions in government aid that Trump bestowed on farmers to cushion their pain.

The Trump tariffs also damaged companies that relied on supplies that were affected by the tariffs. In Plymouth, Michigan, Clips & Clamps doesn’t even use much imported steel. Yet it was still hurt by the tariffs because they allowed American steel producers to raise their prices.

“Our raw material prices here in the United States tend to be 20% higher than Europe and Mexico and 40% to 60% higher than China,’’ Aznavorian said. His overseas rivals, he said, enjoy “significantly cheaper’’ costs.

If Trump’s trade war fizzled as policy, though, it succeeded as politics. Autor’s study found that support for Trump and Republicans running for Congress rose in the areas most exposed to the import tariffs — the industrial Midwest and manufacturing-heavy Southern states like North Carolina and Tennessee.

After entering office, Biden retained many of Trump’s trade policies and made no effort to revive Obama’s old Pacific Rim trade pact. He kept Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs, while letting some trading partners avoid it until they reached a quota. He also retained China tariffs. Biden even turned up the heat on Beijing by restricting its access to advanced computer chips and the equipment to make them.

“Trade and national security have been combined into one thing,’’ Reinsch said. “This is the first time we’ve had an adversary that posed both an economic and a security challenge. The Soviet Union was a security challenge, but it was never an economic threat. Japan was an economic threat in the ’80s, but it was never a security threat; they were an ally. China is both, and it’s been complicated trying to figure out how to deal with that.’’

Biden’s China policies are “grounded in national security,’’ said Peterson’s Lovely. “That makes it harder to critique because national security is always this black box that only those with the highest security clearance get to see.’’

The Biden administration has rankled some U.S. allies by offering subsidies to encourage U.S. companies to manufacture goods in America. Under Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, for instance, auto buyers can receive a $7,500 tax credit for purchasing an electric vehicle. But the credit applies only to EVs assembled in North America. And the full credit goes only to EVs in which at least 60% of battery parts are made in North America and 50% of the “critical minerals’’ used in the vehicle — like cobalt, copper and lithium — come from the United States or a country with which the U.S. has a free trade deal.

“It’s important that the United States develop its own clean energy sector, in collaboration with its allies and partners, thereby not becoming dependent on Chinese technologies,” said Wendy Cutler, a former U.S. trade negotiator who is vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute. “When trade is increasingly being weaponized, it’s important that the U.S. does not become overly dependent on China for strategic products.’’

Biden’s initiatives — including incentives to produce green technology and computer chips in the United States — have spurred what looks like a surge of investment in manufacturing. Karen Dynan of the Peterson Institute has reported that investment in U.S. factories surged at an 80% annual rate in the January-March period compared with the final three months of 2023, helping fuel the economy’s unexpectedly strong performance.

The United States seems unlikely to reverse its tilt toward protectionism anytime soon. China, struggling to revive its own economy, is trying to export its way out of trouble, threatening to overwhelm world markets with cheap EVs and other products.

As for Aznavorian, he hopes the U.S. mends trade relations with its allies.

“We need friendly trade partners in order to compete against China,’’ he said.

Yet when it comes to China and other U.S. adversaries, Aznavorian said, he’s convinced that protectionist trade policies are “definitely here to stay.’’

SACRAMENTO — Investments in weapons manufacturers and a wide array of other companies by the University of California targeted by students protesting the Israel-Hamas war represent $32 billion – or nearly one-fifth – of the system’s overall assets, the system’s chief investment officer says.

UC Chief Investment Officer Jagdeep Singh Bachher unveiled the estimate Tuesday at the first public Board of Regents meeting since nationwide pro-Palestinian student protests began in April. The calculation was in response to a letter he received last month from the UC Divest Coalition, which is scrutinizing the system’s overall $175 billion in assets.

RELATED: Pro-Palestinian protesters take over abandoned UC Berkeley building

The group asked for the system to halt its investments in weapons manufacturers, the investment firms Blackstone and BlackRock, and two dozen companies across the entertainment, technology and beverage industries.

Bachher said that would apply to investments that include: $3.3 billion in holdings from groups with ties to weapons manufacturers; $12 billion in U.S. treasuries; $163 million in the investment firm BlackRock and $2.1 billion in bonds that BlackRock manages; $8.6 billion from Blackstone and $3.2 billion from the other 24 companies.

“We pride ourselves on a culture of transparency,” Bachher said, adding that it is important to listen to and engage with students.

The University of California system said last month it would not boycott or divest from Israel, and the regents have not indicated a change in position during this week’s meetings.

In 1986, the regents voted to divest $3.1 billion from companies doing business with South Africa’s apartheid government after more than a year of student protests. The system also dropped its investments in fossil fuels in 2020.

For weeks, students at campuses across the country have been protesting and setting up encampments at their universities to call on them to be more transparent about their investments and to divest from companies that financially support Israel. The demonstrations have led to disruptions, arrests and debates over free speech rights. Tensions between protesters, law enforcement and administration at the University of California, Los Angeles, have garnered some of the most attention.

The protests stem from the current Israel-Hamas conflict which started on Oct. 7 when Hamas launched an attack on southern Israel in which militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched an offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 34,500 Palestinians, around two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory. Israeli strikes have devastated the enclave and displaced most of Gaza’s inhabitants.

In a letter provided to The Associated Press by the UC president’s office, the UC Divest Coalition — which is made up of anti-war student advocates across UC campuses — asked the university system to end any investments in “companies that perpetuate war or weapons manufacturing, including companies that give economic support to the state of Israel, and therefore perpetuate the ongoing occupation and genocide of the Palestinian people.”

“Investment in arms production is antithetical to the UC’s expressed values and the moral concerns of the students, workers, and faculty that the Regents represent,” the letter says.

The United Nation’s top court in January ruled that Israel must do all it can to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza but did not order an end to Israel’s military activities in the territories. The ruling was in response to a case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of committing genocide in violation of international law. Israel has denied that it is committing genocide.

The coalition did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent via email and social media on the letter and the $32 billion estimate.

At a meeting that lasted nearly two-and-a-half hours Tuesday, some students and faculty called for the system to divest from groups with ties to Israel, some faculty raised concerns about antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus, and regents asked investment committee members what it would mean to divest.

RELATED: Pro-Palestinian encampment at UC Berkeley ends, while tents remain at SJSU, USF

Holly Yu, a student studying ethnic studies at the University of California, Merced, urged officials to recognize that students are “expected to continue our everyday lives” as the death toll rises in Gaza.

“Please listen to the voices of your students and stand in solidarity with us by divesting immediately,” Yu said.

Regents said that the question of what it would mean to divest does not have a straight-forward answer.

“We need to be able to articulate to our students that are demanding divestment as to why it’s not so simple,” Regent Jose M. Hernandez said. “It’s not just a matter of selling a coupon and saying ‘okay, we don’t want this, so we’re going to invest in another company.’”

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Austin is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Austin on the social platform X: @sophieadanna

The action by the Wonderful Co. comes as it battles the United Farm Workers over a newly formed UFW local of 640 workers at one of its businesses. The $6 billion company founded by Stewart and Lynda Resnick, who have donated to President Joe Biden and Newsom, makes a host of products recognizable to most grocery store shoppers, including Halos mandarin oranges, Wonderful Pistachios, POM Wonderful pomegranate juice and Fiji Water brands.

Farmworkers aren’t covered by federal rules for labor organizing in the United States. But California, which harvests much of the country’s produce, enacted a law and created a special board in 1975 to protect their right to unionize. That came after the storied work of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta to organize farmworkers across California under what later became the United Farm Workers.

But farmworker unionization has dropped precipitously in the years since, and today few such workers are organized in California.

The new law lets farmworkers unionize by collecting a majority of signatures without holding an election at a polling place — a condition proponents say protects workers from employers applying pressure or trying to retaliate against employees who vote to unionize. A union is formed if more than half of workers sign an authorization card.

Wonderful argues the law is unconstitutional by going too far in cutting employers out of the process.

Newsom’s office said it was reviewing the lawsuit before responding and included his statement from when he signed the legislation that “California’s farmworkers are the lifeblood of our state, and they have the fundamental right to unionize and advocate for themselves in the workplace.”

Farm industry leaders have argued the lack of a secret ballot under the law makes workers vulnerable to coercion by unions and the elections susceptible to fraud. Wonderful said under the prior system, employers and union representatives were present at polling places to ensure a transparent process.

So far, four unions have formed under the new law. No other company has taken any legal action. Wonderful said it is best equipped to spearhead the battle since other companies are much smaller.

The law does not require union authorization cards to be dated or that an employee identify his or her employer, Wonderful said in its lawsuit.

Wonderful said under the law there is no independent verification process to prove majority support for a union, violating due process rights.

Wonderful said it also is asking Kern County Superior Court to issue an injunction to stop the law from being enforced until the court rules on its claim that it’s unconstitutional.

Wonderful is up against the clock.

Under the law, once a union is certified, employers must enter into collective bargaining within 90 days, Wonderful said in its lawsuit. That would be June 3 for the newly formed union at Wonderful Nurseries in Wasco, Calif., that was certified by the state’s Agricultural Labor Relations Board.

Wonderful filed a complaint with the board, saying its workers didn’t want a union. The company says many employees thought the cards they signed were to access $600 payments under a federal pandemic relief program administered by the UFW, the largest farmworker union in the U.S. The UFW denied the allegation.

“Wonderful Nurseries now wants to get rid of the law that protects farm workers,” said UFW spokesperson Elizabeth Strater.

The case is being played out before an administrative law judge who is taking testimony from workers during a weekslong hearing.

Wonderful Nurseries contends the board has failed to ensure an honest process for the unit’s 60 permanent employees and as many as 1,500 seasonal workers. The company’s only workers to unionize are at Wonderful Nurseries, which grows table grapes and wine grape vines as well as other plants. The company has roughly 10,000 employees, according to its website.

Wonderful said its employees are paid well and the 1975 protections have worked.

Before Newsom in 2022 signed the new law, he and his two predecessors had vetoed similar legislation over concerns about the voting process. The Democratic governor had announced plans to veto it again in 2022, but he reversed course after Biden announced support for the change. He signed it on condition that another method of forming a union, through mail-in ballots, was later removed.

Biden, who keeps a bust of Chavez in the Oval Office, said in a statement in 2022 that “in the state with the largest population of farmworkers, the least we owe them is an easier path to make a free and fair choice to organize a union.”