May 1 (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will hold rallies in Wisconsin and Michigan on Wednesday, a day after the judge in his New York criminal trial fined him for violating a gag order and warned he could be jailed for further infractions.
Trump's visit to the two battleground states will mark his first major campaign events since the April 15 start of the New York trial, in which he is accused of falsifying business records concerning a hush money payment to a porn star.
Trump, the first former U.S. president to stand trial on a criminal charge, is having to schedule his signature campaign events around court proceedings that are expected to last through May.
The rallies on Wednesday in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and Freeland, Michigan, will give him an opportunity to speak about the gag order penalties, as well as the pro-Palestinian protests that have erupted on college campuses across the United States.
On Tuesday, Justice Juan Merchan in Manhattan fined Trump $1,000 for each of nine online statements that Merchan said violated his order not to criticize trial witnesses.
Trump is charged with falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 payment in the waning days of the 2016 presidential campaign to buy the silence of porn star Stormy Daniels about a 2006 sexual encounter she has said they had. Trump has denied having sex with Daniels and has pleaded not guilty.
Polls show Trump is locked in a close race with Democratic President Joe Biden ahead of the Nov. 5 election.
In Waukesha, Trump will talk about crime and the impact of inflation on households, and will contrast his plans to crack down on immigration with Biden's "weak border policies," the campaign said last week in an email announcing the rally.
Trump is also expected to address the pro-Palestinian protests, which have spread across the U.S. in recent days and taken on political overtones, with Republicans accusing some university administrators of turning a blind eye to antisemitic rhetoric and harassment.
Last week Trump described the protests as driven by "tremendous hate" while asserting that the violence at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, when he was president was small by comparison. He has sought to blame the unrest on Biden.
Biden’s aides have said the president supports peaceful protests but stands against violent rhetoric, hate speech and physical intimidation, placing special emphasis on condemning antisemitism on college campuses.
Wisconsin and Michigan are among the six or seven swing states expected to determine the outcome of the election. Trump lost Wisconsin to Biden by just 20,000 votes and lost Michigan by 154,000 votes.
Biden's campaign said on Wednesday that he would travel to Detroit, Michigan, on May 19. (Reporting by Nathan Layne, Trevor Hunnicutt and Susan Heavey in Washington; editing by Colleen Jenkins, Lincoln Feast and Jonathan Oatis)
