By MICHELLE L. PRICE, JONATHAN J. COOPER and GABE STERN (Associated Press)
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Donald Trump is expected to sweep Nevada’s GOP caucuses on Thursday, which would give the former president a third straight win in the Republican presidential race and display his dominance over the Republican Party.
His last major Republican challenger, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, rejected the caucuses as rigged and decided to instead run in Tuesday’s purely symbolic GOP primary — where she was overwhelmingly beaten by the “none of these candidates” option chosen by Trump supporters and disaffected voters.
Trump, speaking from his Florida resort Thursday, basked in those results and declared: “We certainly did well in a primary that didn’t matter.” And he said of his prospects in Nevada: “We expect to have a very big night.”
Republicans are increasingly converging behind Trump while he faces a deluge of legal problems, including 91 criminal charges in four separate cases. Trump is flexing his influence both in Congress — where Republicans rejected a border security deal after he pushed against it — and at the Republican National Committee, as chairwoman Ronna McDaniel could resign in the coming weeks after he publicly questioned whether she should stay in the job.
Trump still faces unprecedented jeopardy for a major candidate. A federal appeals panel ruled this week that Trump can face trial on charges that he plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 election, rejecting his claims that he is immune from prosecution. The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday heard arguments in a case trying to keep Trump from the 2024 presidential ballot over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. The justices sounded broadly skeptical of the effort.
But none of those developments seem to be hurting his standing among Republicans, including in Nevada.
Nevada’s GOP decided to bypass a primary election prescribed by the…
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