New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) is expected to appoint his former chief of staff, George Helmy, to replace Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) for the remaining four and a half months of his term, according to a person with direct knowledge of the decision.

Menendez, a three-term senator, previously announced that he would resign from office effective Aug. 20, after being found guilty of 16 criminal counts of bribery, obstructing justice, acting as a foreign agent for Egypt, extortion and conspiring to commit those crimes.

Murphy is expected to call Helmy on Thursday with the offer to fill the vacancy, the person with knowledge of the decision said. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss deliberations that have not been publicly announced.

Helmy, 44, is a veteran of New Jersey politics. He served as an aide to Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey and later worked as a member of senior staff for Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.).

After serving as Murphy’s chief of staff for more than four years, Helmy left the New Jersey governor’s office last year to serve as executive vice president and chief external affairs and policy officer at RWJBarnabas Health, a large health-care system in the state.

He is also a commissioner of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Helmy, who grew up in Jersey City, received his bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University and a master’s degree from Harvard University.

Upon Helmy’s exit from the governor’s office last year, Murphy praised his outgoing chief of staff as someone who had “put his heart and soul into serving the people of New Jersey.”

“I don’t know where we would be without George,” Murphy said at the time.

Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.), who won the Senate Democratic primary for Menendez’s seat, had indicated that he would accept the temporary appointment to the Senate if the governor asked. The governor’s wife, Tammy Murphy, who dropped out of the Senate race before primary votes were cast, took herself out of consideration for the temporary Senate appointment.

If appointed by Murphy as expected, Helmy will occupy the Senate seat until Menendez’s term ends in early January. Helmy will be succeeded by the person New Jerseyans elect this November to a full six-year term.

Kim, the Democratic Senate candidate in New Jersey, will face hotelier Curtis Bashaw, the Republican, for the full six-year term.

There was a reason that Republicans entered last month’s convention with a sense of confidence. Polling showed Donald Trump with consistent-if-narrow leads nationally and in swing states. The Democrats were demoralized, unhappy about their presumptive nominee and fretting about the prospect of Trump returning to office. Both candidates were generally unpopular, with a significant number of voters turning to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a possible alternative.

Then, immediately after the convention, President Joe Biden withdrew his candidacy. Vice President Kamala Harris earned his endorsement and locked up the support of their party. And just like that, the entire shape of the campaign shifted.

That’s reflected in polling released on Wednesday from Pew Research Center. Harris leads Trump by 1 point, a 5-point shift in the Democrats’ favor since Pew’s July poll. That’s driven in part by a huge surge in enthusiasm among Democrats for their new candidate.

In July, Pew found that only 43 percent of Biden supporters said that they strongly supported the incumbent president. Now, more than 6 in 10 Harris supporters say their support is “strong.” Across demographic groups, that enthusiasm has jumped by double-digit margins.

White Harris supporters are 21 points more likely to describe their support as “strong” than White Biden supporters were last month. Harris supporters under 30 are 26 points more likely to describe their support as “strong.”

There’s also been a surge in motivation. In July, 63 percent of Biden supporters said they were “extremely motivated” to cast a ballot. This month, 70 percent of Harris voters say the same thing, with a 13-point increase among Black supporters of the Democratic candidate and a 19-point increase among those under 30.

At the same time, though, motivation among Trump voters has also increased. Last month, an equivalent 63 percent of supporters of the Republican nominee said they were “extremely motivated.” Now, 72 percent do. Among Hispanic Trump supporters, the percentage who described themselves as “extremely motivated” jumped 15 points.

There is one noteworthy gap: 61 percent of Harris supporters under the age of 30 say they’re extremely motivated to cast a ballot, compared to 42 percent of Trump supporters in that same age range. Should the gap persist, it’s potentially quite significant. Polling continues to suggest that results in swing states will be close, meaning that voter motivation could play a big role in the outcome, driving more or less turnout. If younger Trump voters — of whom there are fewer — are less motivated to vote, that’s an advantage for Harris.

The increase in motivation seems to suggest that voters are suddenly viewing the race as real or contested in a way they didn’t last month. If you think Trump is going to win in a walk or if you are exasperated about Biden, you might not be too worried about voting. But if you suddenly think your party can win — or might lose — that changes.

It also clearly undercuts Kennedy. Last month, Pew found him getting 15 percent of the vote. Now, he’s in the single digits.

When they asked people who’d preferred Biden, Trump and Kennedy last month who they back now, nearly two-thirds of Kennedy voters had shifted to one of the major-party candidates. By a 2 to 1 margin, they preferred Harris.

This also reflects a shift we noted on Wednesday, that fewer Americans view both candidates negatively. Kennedy was appealing in part because a lot of people who might be expected to back Biden were unenthusiastic about doing so. Now, they’re enthusiastic about Harris.

Here’s where we offer the perennial caveat: All of this can change. We will note, too, that it is not uncommon for the nature of a race to shift as Election Day draws closer and people are paying more attention. But this year it is obvious that the midsummer shift in the race is more dramatic than it usually is.

The result is a more engaged and motivated electorate — and one that is for now less likely to return Trump to the White House.

Former Donald Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway offered a recipe this week for Trump’s struggling 2024 campaign: “The winning formula for President Trump is very plain to see: It’s fewer insults, more insights and [a] policy contrast.”

Fellow former Trump adviser Peter Navarro echoed that. “When Trump attacks [Vice President Kamala] Harris personally rather than on policy, Harris’s support among swing voters rises — particularly among women,” Navarro said.

Trump is not listening.

At a rally Wednesday in Asheville, N.C., Trump called Harris “crazy,” “stupid” and a “lunatic,” adding that “she’s not smart, she’s not intelligent.” He repeatedly derided her laugh, including saying that it’s “career-threatening. That’s a laugh of a person with some big problems.”

And while the event was billed as a speech on economic policy, Trump made clear that wasn’t really his preferred topic.

“They wanted to do a speech on the economy,” Trump said, suggesting this wasn’t his idea and adding: “Today we’re going to talk about one subject. And then we’ll start going back to the other, because we sort of love that.”

He mused at another point: “They say it’s the most important subject. I’m not sure it is.”

Recent days have featured a familiar sight: a coterie of Trump allies taking to broadcast outlets such as Fox News, seemingly to send a message to Trump — in the apparent belief that this is how you get through to the cable-news-junkie former president. They’ve practically begged him to change it up. They’ve sought to push him away from talk of crowd sizes and personal attacks on Harris, and toward policy.

But whether because he refuses to or he can’t, that message is going unheeded by the “audience of one.”

And the contrast continues to loom large as Trump prepares to hold another news conference Thursday in New Jersey.

The pleas have gone well beyond Conway and Navarro. For example:

• Former Trump primary opponent Nikki Haley said Trump is “not going to win” by talking about things like crowd sizes or Harris’s race and intelligence. (Trump has repeatedly suggested that Harris has hidden her Black identity, despite all the evidence to the contrary.)
• Another former Trump primary opponent, Vivek Ramaswamy, called for a reset and a “stronger focus on policy.”
• Former House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) urged Trump to “stop questioning the size of her crowds” and focus on Harris’s record.
• Fox News host Sean Hannity said “we don’t have time for” Trump’s attacks on Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R).
• Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly said of Trump’s focus on crowd sizes: “So stupid. Just focus on the damn border.”

Trump hasn’t repeated his ridiculous claim Sunday that Harris’s crowd in Detroit was “A.I.’d” and “nobody was there.” But in both an event on X on Monday and speaking to reporters Wednesday, he played up his own crowd sizes.

“We have the biggest crowds ever in the history of politics,” Trump said Wednesday. “We have crowds that nobody’s ever seen before. And we continue to have that.”

Trump has continued to attack Kemp, despite many in his party urging him to ease off a feud with the governor of such a vital swing state.

Despite GOP concerns over his previous attack on Harris’s racial identity, Trump re-upped that attack in a news conference last week.

“I think it’s very disrespectful to both, really,” he said. “Whether it’s Indian or Black, I think it’s very disrespectful to both.”

And despite many Republicans and Trump allies urging him to focus more intently on Harris’s record, Trump has generally spoken only in platitudes about how Harris is bad, without keying on specific policies she advocated — including liberal ones she took during her 2020 presidential campaign.

Indeed, Trump often appears more focused on his former opponent, President Joe Biden, than Harris. A transcript of Trump’s X event Monday with Elon Musk shows Trump referenced Biden by name 21 times and Harris by name only eight times.

Trump’s campaign has thus far shrugged off the calls for a change in approach. Top adviser Chris LaCivita on Fox News on Wednesday avoided directly responding to Haley’s criticism when prompted. But he suggested that the problem was more about the media not covering it when Trump does talk about policy.

GOP vice-presidential nominee JD Vance was more defiant Wednesday.

“To the people who say that Donald Trump should do something different, they had an opportunity to make Donald Trump do something different by challenging him over three separate primaries — every single one of which he won,” Vance told reporters. “So I think that Donald Trump has earned the right to run the campaign that he wants to run.”

Vance insisted that he and Trump are talking about policy, but he added that “we’d much rather have an American president who is who he is” and “who’s willing to offend us” and “lets the American people see exactly who he is.”

There’s a lot of truth in those statements for the Republican Party. Trump is indeed who he is, and he’s demonstrated very limited ability or willingness to adjust his approach. And Republicans have clearly made the decision to own that Trump, for better or worse.

It’s just that it’s mostly been for worse throughout Trump’s time in politics, and the 2024 campaign isn’t looking great either.

NEW YORK — Lawyers for Donald Trump this week asked a judge to delay sentencing scheduled Sept. 18 for the former president on his criminal convictions on 34 counts of falsifying business records until after the election in November.

The sentencing in the case involving hush money payments to an adult-film actress is set two days after New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan is to rule on whether a U.S. Supreme Court decision that broadly defined presidential immunity should influence Trump’s conviction.

Trump’s attorneys wrote in a letter to Merchan dated Wednesday that the short turnaround between the justice’s Sept. 16 immunity decision and the sentencing puts Trump’s team in an unfair position that would hamper his ability to pursue appeals or other legal avenues.

Trump, the Republican nominee for president, was originally supposed to be sentenced July 11. Merchan postponed the date to give the defense time to argue that the conviction and the indictment should be thrown out because the process was poisoned by evidence related to the former president’s official White House acts.

Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove said the timeline set by Merchan means that the prosecution will likely file a damaging sentencing memo around the time of the immunity decision even though there’s a chance the guilty verdict will get tossed out.

“The requested adjournment is also necessary to allow President Trump adequate time to assess and pursue state and federal appellate options in response to any adverse ruling,” Blanche and Bove wrote, adding that a day “is an unreasonably short period of time” for Trump to begin appeals or other legal maneuvers if Merchan rules against him on immunity.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office declined to comment Thursday.

A jury found Trump guilty in May of attempting to cover up the nature of hush money payment to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels in the lead-up to the 2016 election while his campaign was scrambling to mitigate the impact of other sexual scandals.

Daniels was paid $130,000 to keep quiet about her claim that she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 at a celebrity golf tournament where the pair where photographed together. Trump denies that an encounter occurred.

Blanche and Bove have argued that much of the prosecution’s case relies on documents and testimony that is out of bounds given the standards that the Supreme Court set in its July 1 opinion. Prosecutors have said that the case is strong enough without those aspects to hold up a conviction on which Trump faces up to four years in prison.

Trump’s attorneys have said Trump’s election obstruction case in D.C. shows that Merchan’s timeline is problematic. In that case, which was the impetus for the Supreme Court ruling, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan is not expected to set a schedule for new motions related the high court’s ruling until Sept. 5, making it essentially certain that a trial would not take place before the election.

The lawyers wrote that “setting aside naked election-interference objectives, there is no valid countervailing reason for the Court to keep the current sentencing date on the calendar. There is no basis for continuing to rush.”

PHOENIX — Mark Meadows, who was Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, has asked that the Arizona election-subversion-related prosecution against him be moved from state court to federal court — the same legal maneuver he unsuccessfully tried in a separate election interference case in Georgia.

The U.S. District Court in Arizona has set a Sept. 5 hearing to consider his request, which argues that he was acting as a federal officer and that his actions were within the scope of the president’s chief of staff.

“Mr. Meadows has the right to remove this matter because he has a federal defense of Supremacy Clause immunity to the State charge and Congress has provided that federal courts are the appropriate forum to adjudicate such issues,” his attorneys said in a July 26 motion. “The conduct giving rise to the charges in the indictment all occurred during his tenure and as part of his service as White House Chief of Staff.”

Meadows lawyer George J. Terwilliger III echoed that sentiment Thursday, saying in a statement that “the Constitution and laws as passed by Congress dictate” the case should be considered by the federal judiciary. The function of federal officials, “let alone a White House Chief of Staff, are not subject to supervision and control by state authorities,” Terwilliger said.

A spokesperson for Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D), who brought the case against Meadows, declined to comment.

Meadows has pleaded not guilty to nine felonies related to his alleged role in trying to subvert Joe Biden’s win in Arizona after the 2020 presidential election. He is one of 18 defendants indicted in April by a state grand jury, which determined that the defendants engaged in crimes including conspiracy, forgery and fraud when they tried to deliver the state’s 11 electoral votes to Trump instead of Biden.

Some grand jurors wanted to indict Trump, according to a motion filed last week by state prosecutors, who urged the grand jury not to indict him. Trump was described in the indictment as an unindicted co-conspirator.

Jenna Ellis, a legal adviser to Trump’s 2020 campaign, reached a cooperation agreement last week that allows her to avoid jail time. Another defendant — Loraine Pellegrino, a GOP elector and political activist — saw most of the charges against her dismissed last week after she pleaded guilty to a lesser misdemeanor charge.

In the final days of Trump’s presidency, Meadows was among those close to Trump who allegedly evaluated a plan for how legislatures could overturn the will of voters through appointing alternate slates of Trump electors. Rep. Andy Biggs (Ariz.) was among the GOP members of Congress who communicated with Meadows about a version of such a strategy, according to text messages obtained by a U.S. House committee that investigated the origins of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Meadows was charged last year in Fulton County, Ga., with criminally conspiring to try to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss in that state and solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer for his involvement in Trump’s January 2021 phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) during which Trump tried to pressure the official to reverse Biden’s victory. The latter charge was dismissed this year, with the judge overseeing the case saying the indictment lacked “sufficient detail.”

Meadows testified in federal court that he had no role in the effort. Prosecutors in Georgia, however, have introduced evidence that showed Meadows in December 2020 emailing about the elector plan with a longtime Trump campaign aide.

In July, he took his fight to try to throw out the charges against him in Georgia to the U.S. Supreme Court. He asked the justices to overturn a lower-court ruling that rejected claims that his alleged conduct was tied to his official federal duties. His request came after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit upheld a lower-court ruling that found Meadows had not proved that his alleged conduct, charged as part of a sweeping criminal racketeering case, was related to his official duties as Trump’s most senior White House aide.

Meadows’s petition to the Supreme Court sharply criticized the 11th Circuit decision, describing it as “the first court ‘in the 190-year history of the federal officer removal statute’ to hold that the statute offers no protection to former federal officers facing suit for acts taken while in office.”

Holly Bailey contributed to this report.