Scientists have developed a spit test that could “turn the tide” on prostate cancer worldwide by spotting the disease earlier, detecting where men are at high risk and sparing others unnecessary treatment.

The number of men diagnosed with prostate cancer worldwide is projected to double to 2.9 million a year by 2040, with annual deaths predicted to rise by 85%. It is already the most common form of male cancer in more than 100 countries.

Early diagnosis is crucial but experts say the current standard PSA blood tests can miss men who do have cancer and also cause others to go through needless treatment or pointless further checks and scans.

Now researchers from the Institute of Cancer Research, London (ICR) and the Royal Marsden NHS foundation trust appear to have found a better alternative.

A study shows their new saliva test, which involves a DNA sample being collected in seconds, is more accurate than the current standard blood test. The findings are being presented this weekend at the world’s largest cancer conference.

“With this test it could be possible to turn the tide on prostate cancer,” said Ros Eeles, a professor of oncogenetics at the ICR. “We have shown that a simple, cheap spit test to identify men at higher risk due to their genetic makeup is an effective tool to catch the cancer early.”

Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Chicago, Eeles said the breakthrough came after decades of research into the genetic markers of the disease.

“Our study shows that the theory does work in practice – we can identify men at risk of aggressive cancers who need further tests, and spare the men who are at lower risk from unnecessary treatments.”

Scientists and doctors developed the spit test after studying the DNA of hundreds of thousands of men. It works by looking for genetic signals in the saliva that are linked to prostate cancer.

In the Barcode 1 trial, researchers recruited more than 6,000 European men to trial the spit test. All were recruited from their GP surgeries and were aged between 55 and 69 – an age at which the risk of prostate cancer is increased.

Once the saliva had been collected, the test calculated the polygenic risk score (PRS) of each of the men. The score is based on 130 genetic variations in DNA code that are linked to prostate cancer.

In those with the highest genetic risk, the test returned fewer false positives than the PSA test, picked up people with cancer who would have been missed by the PSA test alone, and picked up a higher proportion of the aggressive cancers than the PSA test, the ICR said.

The test also accurately identified men with prostate cancer that had been missed by an MRI scan.

Dheeresh Turnbull, 71, from Brighton, was one of the first men in the world to try the spit test, and discovered he had prostate cancer when he got the results.

He said: “I was completely shocked when I received my diagnosis as I had absolutely no symptoms at all, so I know I would never have been diagnosed at this stage if I hadn’t joined the trial.”

Turnbull underwent robotic surgery to remove part of his prostate and is doing well.

He said: “Because the saliva test revealed that I had a high genetic risk of developing the disease, my younger brother, who would have been too young to join the study directly, signed up and discovered that he also had an aggressive tumour in the prostate. It’s incredible to think that because of this study two lives have now been saved in my family.”

Eeles, a consultant in clinical oncology and cancer genetics at the Royal Marsden NHS foundation trust, cautioned that further research would be required before the test could be rolled out widely.

“Our next step will be for us to test the genetic markers we have identified that are associated with a risk of prostate cancer in diverse populations, to ensure this test can benefit all men.”

Ageing populations and increasing life expectancy mean the number of older men worldwide who are living for longer is rising. As the main risk factors for prostate cancer – such as being 50 or older and having a family history of the disease – are unavoidable, experts believe it will be impossible to prevent the surge in cases simply via lifestyle changes or public health interventions.

However, better testing and earlier diagnosis could help reduce the burden and save lives.

“Cancers that are picked up early are much more likely to be curable,” said Prof Kristian Helin, the chief executive of the ICR. “And with prostate cancer cases set to double by 2040, we must have a programme in place to diagnose the disease early.

“We know that the current PSA test can cause men to go through unnecessary treatments, and more worryingly it’s missing men who do have cancer. We urgently need an improved test to screen for the disease. This research is a promising step towards that goal, and it highlights the role that genetic testing can play in saving lives.”

Film actor Robert De Niro was scheduled to accept a leadership award from the National Association of Broadcasters, but the group has rescinded the award after the celebrity spoke out against Donald Trump outside his criminal trial in New York this week, the Hill and the Huffington Post report.

The National Association of Broadcasters did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A spokesperson for the group told The Hill on Thursday that their event was “proudly bipartisan” and said: “While we strongly support the right of every American to exercise free speech and participate in civic engagement, it is clear that Mr. De Niro’s recent high-profile activities will create a distraction from the philanthropic work that we were hoping to recognize. To maintain the focus on service of the award winners, Mr. De Niro will no longer be attending the event.”

In a statement to the Hill, De Niro did not protest the decision, and said he continued to appreciate the group.

“I support the work of the NAB Leadership Foundation and would like to express my appreciation and gratitude for what the Foundation has done and will continue to do for the good of us all, and I wish them well for their continued good work,” the Hill reported him as saying in the statement.

On Tuesday, De Niro, a longtime Democrat who recently voiced an ad for Democratic President Joe Biden, attended a Biden campaign event outside the Manhattan courtroom with two former law enforcement officers, Harry Dunn and Michael Fanone, who were at the US Capitol when it was attacked by Trump supporters on 6 January 2021.

Referring to Trump’s successful 2016 run for president, the Academy Award winner said Trump’s candidacy was initially laughed off as a joke.

“We’ve forgotten the lessons of history that showed us other clowns who weren’t taken seriously until they became vicious dictators,” he said. “With Trump, we have a second chance and no one is laughing now. This is the time to stop him by voting him out once and for all.”

If Trump returns to the White House, he said, Americans could see the civil liberties they take for granted evaporate as well as the end of elections.

“If he gets in, I can tell you right now, he will never leave,” said De Niro.

Fanone and Dunn delivered emotional remarks, saying violence at the Capitol had been fueled by Trump’s lies that the 2020 election was stolen. The speakers were heckled by a Trump supporter as pro-Trump demonstrators chanted in the background.

Trump campaign officials said the De Niro event showed desperation in the Biden camp.

“Joe Biden is losing nationally,” said Jason Miller, another Trump spokesperson. “President Trump’s numbers continue to rise. And the best that Biden can do is roll out a washed-up actor.”

In his most biting comments, De Niro spoke of Trump through the lens of the largely Democratic city whose voters know Trump well and roundly rejected him at the polls.

“We New Yorkers used to tolerate him when he was just another grubby real estate hustler masquerading as a big shot, a two-bit playboy lying his way into the tabloids,” he said. “A clown … No one took him seriously. They take him seriously now.”

Reuters contributed to this report

Robert Pickton, a notorious Canadian serial killer who fed his victims’ remains to his pigs on his farm near Vancouver, has died after being assaulted in prison.

The Correctional Service of Canada said in statement that Pickton, 71, died in hospital on Friday, following the attack on 19 May by another inmate of Port-Cartier Institution in the province of Quebec.

A 51-year-old inmate was in custody for the assault on Pickton, a police spokesman, Hugues Beaulieu, said earlier this month.

Robert “Willie” Pickton was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison in 2007, with the maximum parole ineligibility period of 25 years, after being charged with the murders of 26 women.

Police began searching the Pickton farm in the Vancouver suburb of Port Coquitlam more than 22 years ago in what would be a years-long investigation into the disappearances of dozens of women.

The remains or DNA of 33 women, many picked up from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, were found on Pickton’s farm in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia. He once bragged to an undercover police officer that he killed a total of 49 women.

During his trial, prosecution witness Andrew Bellwood said Pickton told him how he strangled his victims and fed their remains to his pigs. Health officials once issued a tainted meat advisory to neighbors who might have bought pork from Pickton’s farm, concerned the meat might have contained human remains.

Cynthia Cardinal, whose sister Georgina Papin was murdered by Pickton, said she was “overwhelmed” with happiness when she received a text message earlier this month with the news that he had been attacked. She called it “karma”.

Vancouver police were criticized for not taking the cases seriously because many of the missing were sex workers or drug users.

Canada’s correctional service said it was conducting an investigation into the Pickton attack.

“The investigation will examine all of the facts and circumstances surrounding the assault, including whether policies and protocols were followed,” the service said in the statement.

“We are mindful that this offender’s case has had a devastating impact on communities in British Columbia and across the country, including Indigenous peoples, victims and their families. Our thoughts are with them,” the statement said.

Pickton’s confirmed victims were six: Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Ann Wolfe, Papin and Marnie Frey.

At the time of Pickton’s sentencing, the British Columbia supreme court justice James Williams said it was a “rare case that properly warrants the maximum period of parole ineligibility available to the court”.

Donald Trump’s paper fortune dropped by hundreds of millions of dollars on Friday as shares in his media firm came under pressure in the wake of his conviction in his New York hush-money trial.

Trump Media & Technology Group’s stock finished the day down 5.3% on Wall Street, denting the value of the former president’s vast stake in the business.

By the time markets closed for the day, Trump’s stake stood at about $5.6bn. The previous day, it was closer to $6bn.

An extraordinary market debut in March by Trump Media, the owner of Truth Social, bolstered Trump’s paper fortune by billions of dollars – and propelled him, for the first time, into the ranks of the world’s 500 wealthiest people – as he grapples with hefty legal costs.

But shares in Trump Media are prone to volatile fluctuations, and Trump is unable to start offloading his stake until September, due to a lock-up agreement.

When New York’s Nasdaq stock exchange closed on Thursday, about an hour before Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in a criminal hush-money scheme, his stake in Trump Media was worth more than $5.9bn. At one point on Friday, as the company’s stock fell, his stake was worth less than $5.5bn. His fortune recovered some ground near the end of the day.

Trading in Trump Media has been prone to fluctuation since its listing. While the stock stumbled on Friday, it rose over the course of the week. The company’s financial returns have yet to match its success on the market. Net losses at Trump Media widened from $210m to $328m in the first three months of this year. Revenue dropped 31% to $770,500 over the same period.

The company has become a so-called meme stock, boosted by chatter and enthusiasm on social media – posted, in its case, on platforms including Truth Social – urging retail investors to buy into it. Some Trump supporters called for others to buy shares the day after his conviction.

The ex-president will need Trump Media to continue to trade at the levels to which it has surged in recent months if he is to raise billions of dollars by selling his majority stake in the firm.

The British ambassador to Mexico was quietly removed from his post earlier this year after he pointed an assault rifle at a local embassy employee, it emerged when footage of the incident was posted on social media.

The Financial Times reported that Jon Benjamin was on an official trip to Durango and Sinaloa, two states with strong organised crime groups, when he looked down the gun’s sights at a colleague, who gestures uncomfortably in the five-second clip.

The firearm presumably belonged to the security detail accompanying the diplomat, who was sacked soon after the incident in April.

The video was released by an anonymous account on X, formerly known as Twitter. “In a context of daily killings in Mexico by drug dealers, he dares to joke,” wrote the account.

Mexico has seen more than 30,000 homicides a year for the last six years – one of the highest homicide rates in Latin America – as organised crime groups fight to control territory and businesses across the country.

Benjamin, 61, is no longer listed as the ambassador on the UK government website.

Benjamin became UK ambassador to Mexico in 2021, having previously held posts in Chile, Turkey, Ghana, Indonesia and the US over a career of almost four decades.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment by the Guardian, but told the FT: “We are aware of this incident and have taken appropriate action. Where internal issues do arise, the FCDO has robust HR processes to address them.”

Diplomatic relations between the UK and Mexico, Latin America’s second-largest economy, have tended to be cordial and uncontroversial. They have been negotiating a new free trade agreement since 2022.

This Sunday Mexican voters appear all but certain to elect Claudia Sheinbaum as their first female president, taking over from her popular predecessor of the same party, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The campaign trail has been blighted by violence, with more than 30 candidates killed and hundreds more dropping out as organised crime groups vie to install friendly leaders.

On Wednesday – the final day of the campaign – a gunman filmed himself shooting dead the opposition mayoral candidate José Alfredo Cabrera in the town of Coyuca de Benítez, Guerrero, before in turn being gunned down by bodyguards.

Neighbors of Samuel Alito and his wife described how a disagreement over political lawn signs put up in the wake of the 2020 presidential election quickly devolved into “unhinged behavior towards a complete stranger” by the supreme court justice’s wife.

Emily Baden says she never intended to get into a fight with Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann, her powerful neighbors who live on the same suburban cul-de-sac as her mother outside Washington DC.

Then a large black car, part of the Alitos’ security detail, started parking in front of her mother’s house instead of theirs, and Baden understood the perils of being an ordinary citizen going up against one of the most powerful men in the country.

The two sides do not agree on much, but Baden, a staunch liberal, and Martha-Ann Alito, a staunch conservative, concur that they began exchanging words in late 2020, almost two months after Joe Biden’s election victory over Donald Trump. Soon after, according to Baden, the Alitos’ security detail began parking a car directly in front of her mother’s house – several houses down from its usual spots either directly in front of the Alitos or across the street from them.

“This happened a handful of times,” Baden now recalls. “I took that as directly threatening.”

Baden and her husband both say that the security detail’s car showed up in front of her mother’s house again two weeks ago, after the New York Times broke the story about an upside-down American flag hanging on the Alitos’ flagpole in the days before Biden’s inauguration – a symbol associated with the January 6 insurrection that sought to prevent Biden from taking office at all.

Baden was no longer living with her mother by that point – she is now a mother herself and living on the west coast. Neither she nor her mother were mentioned by name in the initial Times story. Still, she found the message that this sent disturbing.

“I couldn’t say who was in the car because of the tinted glass, and nobody ever said anything. I took it as a general threat,” she said. “The message was, we could do terrible things to you, and nobody would be able to do anything about it. When it comes to justices at the supreme court, they make the laws, but the laws don’t apply to them.”

Baden’s husband, who did not want to be identified by name, said he, too, remembered a large black security SUV parking in front of their house, most memorably after Martha-Ann Alito confronted the couple in February 2021 and Baden let an expletive fly at the justice’s wife.

“Right after, a security vehicle moved in front of our house and stayed for the remainder of the night,” he recalled.

The Alitos did not immediately respond to a request from the Guardian for comment.

Baden is an unusual witness to the Alito flag controversy and furore it has unleashed, because she never saw the upside-down flag flying outside the Alitos’ house and did not hear about it until the story hit the headlines two weeks ago.

When the Times first contacted her, she said she didn’t want to be in any story because she had nothing to add. That changed when Alito put out a statement saying that his wife had briefly hung the flag in response to a neighbor’s use of “objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs”.

Baden realised this was a reference to her. It both incensed and frightened her.

“He’s lying about many, many things in that statement,” she claims. Contrary to Alito’s assertions, she alleged, it was not true that she had initiated any confrontation. She said it was also untrue that her lawn signs were directed personally at the justice or his wife.

In Baden’s version of events, Martha-Ann Alito first approached her to complain about a home-made cardboard sign that said “Bye Don” on one side and “Fuck Trump” on the other – sentiments found on many similar signs around their neighborhood in Alexandria, Virginia, and in the rest of the country.

Alito took further umbrage after January 6 when Baden erected signs that read “Trump Is a Fascist” and “You Are Complicit” – the latter intended, Baden says, as a condemnation of all Trump supporters, not as a message to the Alitos, who had no direct view of it from their house.

The next day, according to Baden, Martha-Ann Alito pulled up in front of their house in her car and glared at her and her partner (now her husband). The security detail started parking outside the house around the same time, and the dispute continued for more than a month, culminating in the swearing incident in mid-February and a police report that the Badens filed right after.

“This was unhinged behavior towards a complete stranger, who had done nothing except put up a yard sign,” Baden charged. “I became truly afraid of what they might do.”

That fear also made her hesitate about agreeing to be named publicly. She knows how quickly people can be vilified when stepping into a high-profile political controversy, and she has thought of Anita Hill, who tried in vain to stop Clarence Thomas being named to the supreme court in the early 1990s, and of Christine Blasey Ford, who testified against Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings in 2018, also to no avail.

“I was scared for myself, for my mother, for my family, for anyone who shares my last name,” Baden said.

Then news broke of a second flag affiliated with the “Stop the Steal” movement being flown at a second Alito home, and she felt she had no choice but to speak out.

“That other flag sealed the deal for me,” she said. “I thought, if I don’t use my name, I will not be true to myself and my lifelong convictions. I believe in resistance to fascism. My grandpa fought in world war two … he was a person who quite literally fought against fascism.”

Her view of Alito was further coloured by the fact that he wrote the majority opinion in the 2022 Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization – the decision that overturned Roe v Wade and ended a constitutional right to an abortion. She happened to be in Virginia when the news broke, and participated in street protests outside the Alitos’ home, at which point her signs (and almost everyone else’s) were indeed personally directed at the justice.

Now, she feels compelled to add her voice to the growing calls for Alito to recuse himself from Trump-related cases before the supreme court and is willing to testify before Congress, as Hill and Blasey Ford did before her.

“This story is not about me. I didn’t do anything except put a sign in my front yard,” she said. “The story is that one of the most powerful men in the country showed allegiance to an insurrection … I’m horrified by this behaviour, and want to see at least a modicum of accountability.

“If I’m coming forward, it is to encourage other people to resist. I want to galvanise people and let them know they have the power. It truly gives me chills to think how close we came to a coup, and Christian fascists taking over our country. [But] this is still a democracy.”

Juan Merchan, the judge who oversaw the New York hush-money trial of Donald Trump, is facing fresh threats to his safety after false reports about jury instructions have circulated online.

Several rightwing pundits, including a Fox News anchor, have incorrectly reported that Merchan told jurors they did not need to be unanimous in finding Trump guilty in order to convict him, NBC News reported.

“Judge Merchan just told the jury that they do not need unanimity to convict,” Fox News anchor John Roberts posted to X on Wednesday. “4 could agree on one crime, 4 on a different one, and the other 4 on another. He said he would treat 4-4-4 as a unanimous verdict.”

Roberts’s post has been viewed almost 6m times.

Misinformation on Merchan’s instructions have drawn threats of violence, especially after Trump was found guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in the hush-money trial on Thursday.

On Gab, a social media site popular among far-right users, one person said it was “time to find out where that judge lives and protest as the left calls it”, NBC reported.

Others in pro-Trump forums accused Merchan of treason, and suggested that he should be hanged for his participation in the trial, an echo of rioters at the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by extremist Trump supporters who called for Mike Pence, then the vice-president, to be hanged for refusing to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.

In actuality, Merchan repeatedly told jurors that they had to reach a unanimous decision on whether Trump was guilty in order to convict him, but “need not be unanimous as to what those unlawful means were” in the perpetration of any crime.

Trump trial coverage: read more

Prosecutors had alleged that Trump falsified reimbursement records to his former lawyer Michael Cohen, who paid adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to bury her claim of having sex with Trump when he was married to Melania.

Prosecutors argued that the hush-money cover-up was apart of a scheme to sway the 2016 election and an attempt to hide Trump’s violation of New York state election law, which bans the promotion of any person’s election to office through unlawful means.

Merchan told jurors that they did not have to be unanimous on what “unlawful means” Trump used, meaning jurors could choose which of the three laws Trump violated in his attempts to win the 2016 election.

In a Thursday interview, Roberts sought to clarify his comments and said that he never meant to suggest that jurors were told they did not need to unanimously convict Trump, the New York Times reported.

Doctors are hailing “off the chart” trial results that show a new drug stopped lung cancer advancing for longer than any other treatment in medical history.

Lung cancer is the world’s leading cause of cancer death, accounting for about 1.8m deaths every year. Survival rates in those with advanced forms of the disease, where tumours have spread, are particularly poor.

More than half of patients (60%) diagnosed with advanced forms of lung cancer who took lorlatinib were still alive five years later with no progression in their disease, data presented at the world’s largest cancer conference showed. The rate was 8% in patients treated with a standard drug, the trial found.

The results are the longest progression-free survival (PFS) outcomes ever recorded in patients with non-small cell lung cancer, the world’s most common form of the disease. They were presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (Asco) in Chicago on Friday.

“To our knowledge these results are unprecedented,” said the study’s lead author, Dr Benjamin Solomon, a medical oncologist at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Australia.

In the phase 3 trial, 296 patients with advanced forms of non-small cell lung cancer were randomly assigned to receive either lorlatinib (149 patients) or crizotinib (147 patients, of whom 142 ultimately received treatment).

Just over half of the patients were women. In about 25% of them their lung cancer had already spread to the brain when the study began.

The participants all had ALK-positive non-small cell lung cancer. Lorlatinib and crizotinib are both ALK tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs). ALK TKIs are targeted treatments that bind to the ALK protein found in ALK-positive non-small cell lung cancer and stop the growth of tumour cells.

“Despite significant advancements with newer generation ALK TKIs, the majority of patients treated with second-generation ALK TKIs will have progression of their disease within three years,” said Solomon.

“Lorlatinib is the only ALK TKI that has reported five-year progression-free survival, and even after this time, the majority of patients continue to have their disease controlled, including control of disease in the brain.”

The five-year progression-free survival (PFS) rate was 60% in patients who took lorlatinib and 8% in the crizotinib group.

“You don’t need a magnifying glass to see the difference between these two drugs,” said Dr Julie Gralow, Asco’s chief medical officer. “Sixty per cent five-year progression-free survival in non-small cell lung cancer is just unheard of.”

Dr David Spigel, the chief scientific officer of the Sarah Cannon Research Institute in London, a world-leading clinical trials facility specialising in new therapies for cancer patients, welcomed the findings. “These long-term data results are off the chart,” he said.

Most of the patients experienced some side-effects. Treatment-related issues occurred in 77% of patients on lorlatinib and in 57% of patients on crizotinib. The most common side-effects reported in the trial that was funded by Pfizer were swelling, high cholesterol and elevated lipid levels.

Cancer Research UK’s chief clinician, Prof Charles Swanton, who was not involved with the study, said the “groundbreaking” results would offer fresh hope for patients with advanced lung cancer.

“Despite progress in our understanding of the disease, it can be incredibly challenging to control cancers that have spread and there are limited treatment options for lung cancer,” he said.

“Showcasing the power of cancer-growth blocker drugs, this study could present us with an effective way of stopping cancer in its tracks and preventing it from spreading to the brain.

“The groundbreaking results show that over half of the patients who took lorlatinib did not suffer a progression in their disease after five years. In contrast, over half of the patients who took crizotinib experienced disease progression after just nine months.

“Research like this is vital to find new ways to treat lung cancer and help more people survive for longer.”

Donald Trump’s good fortune with his criminal cases ended in dramatic fashion on Thursday afternoon, when a New York jury convicted him of concealing a criminal hush-money scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.

The former president for months had extraordinary luck with his legal problems: one by one, the other three criminal cases became bogged down with intermediate appeals, and none is currently set for trial before the election in November.

In the federal criminal case over his retention of classified documents, Trump drew a judge who has been so slow to make rulings on straightforward issues that it is running four months behind schedule.

In the federal criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, Trump succeeded in getting the US supreme court to hear his claim of presidential immunity, so it is nowhere near ready to go to trial.

And in the Georgia case brought by the Fulton county district attorney, Trump lucked out with the revelation that the top prosecutor had had an affair with her deputy, so there is not even a trial date on the docket.

Such was Trump’s success in playing the judicial system, people close to him joked he had lived up to the “Teflon Don” nickname – nothing seemed to stick – and that there should be a rule where delaying three cases past an election should result in them all being dismissed.

That run of good luck came to a sticky end on Thursday.

Around 4.15pm, Trump strode into the courtroom at 100 Centre Street, cheerful that the jury had not returned a verdict. He chatted with his lead lawyer, Todd Blanche, and the pair giggled together at the defense table.

The mood dramatically shifted 10 minutes later, when the judge told the room he would not be sending the jury home at 4:30pm as he had planned because they had reached a verdict and needed just a bit more time to fill out the verdict forms.

Trump’s demeanor darkened: his brow suddenly furrowed, his eyes narrowed and he frowned as quiet descended on the courtroom. When the jury returned guilty verdicts on all 34 counts, Trump looked miserable.

In some ways, the outcome was not surprising. With echoes of Al Capone, the judicial system in New York has a history of catching up with politically powerful figures who believe they might be insulated from the law.

Trump and his advisers for years had thought there was no way the Manhattan district attorney’s office would even bring a case tied to his hush-money payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels.

Trump almost forgot about the case even after he was indicted last March, people close to him said. The general belief was that it was the weakest of the cases and would likely be put on hold while the federal cases went first.

The Trump legal team – which broadly consists of the same lawyers across all four cases – were concerned most about the federal cases because they were brought by the special counsel Jack Smith, who carried the weight of the US justice department.

If they had to try one of the cases before the election, the Trump lawyers’ preference was always the documents case, having drawn a judge that Trump had appointed, and the ruby-red leanings of the jury pool of Fort Pierce, Florida.

Rather, they were far more concerned about the 2020 election interference case, because of the difficulty in defending against the core conspiracy charges and their nature might more readily suggest to voters Trump was a threat to democracy.

To that end, Trump’s lawyers mounted a full-court press to have that trial pushed until after the November election. In January, the US supreme court agreed to hear his claim of presidential immunity, and indefinitely paused the case.

That left the schedule open for the New York criminal trial to proceed – and the “zombie case”, as prosecutors inside the Manhattan district attorney’s office termed it, abruptly became the trial with the potential to sink Trump’s 2024 campaign.

Still, even when the case was set for trial six weeks ago, Trump and his advisers thought there was an even chance that it would end with a hung jury and a mistrial. In such an event, Trump had planned to declare that a victory, people familiar with the situation said.

Trump’s advisers believed that a mistrial might even be the political equivalent of an acquittal, and all but guarantee Trump the presidency. Instead, Trump now finds himself forced to grapple with the politically perilous situation of what damage the conviction does to his campaign.

In internal and public polling, Trump has remained notably constant even after particularly damaging testimony during the trial from star witnesses like Daniels and his infamous former lawyer Michael Cohen.

Trump currently leads Joe Biden in five crucial battleground states that are expected to decide the election, according to a New York Times/Sienna poll in May. And Trump had the advantage that voters found the hush-money case the least serious of the four.

But Trump’s advisers concede the polls may be deceptive: voters could turn against Trump now that he is formally convicted, voters could turn against Trump when he is sentenced on 11 July, and voters may not have been well surveyed.

As recently as the day before the verdict, senior officials at the Trump 2024 campaign and his Super PAC were concerned Trump could lose support – and they were in the blind because of the difficulty of accurately polling the effect of a guilty verdict.

The Trump campaign and the Super PAC have internally read little into their own polls after realizing the difficulty in assessing voters’ perceptions without knowing the severity of the conviction and how Trump would react.

Trump’s advisers suggested that ultimately, the conviction could have little effect on voters when they cast their ballots in around six months, an eternity in politics. But Trump was clearly concerned about perception on Thursday, and quickly scheduled a press conference for the morning after.