PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Mariel Galdiano posted a 7-under 65 in one of the first groups Thursday in The Standard Portland Classic, and watched it hold up for a one-stroke lead at Columbia-Edgewater Country Club.
Augusta National Women’s Amateur champion Maria Jose Marin of Colombia was tied for second with fellow afternoon starter Arpichaya Yubol and morning players Olivia Cowan, Grace Kim, Hye-Jin Choi, Lauren Walsh and Bianca Pagdanganan.
Haeran Ryu, the winner of consecutive majors this year at the KPMG Women’s PGA and Evian Championship, topped a large group at 67.
The 20-year-old Marin had five straight birdies on the front nine. She’s preparing for her senior season at Arkansas, where she was the 2025 NCAA individual champion.
“I think I reached like a flow state that I haven’t reached in a while,” Marin said. “After the British Open I didn’t play my best golf, and I think getting that confidence back with this round is all that I needed."
Her father is working as her caddie.
“I fully trust every break that he gave me,” she said.
Galdiano is making her fourth LPGA Tour start of the year. The 28-year-old from Hawaii played at UCLA.
“Every start on the LPGA means a lot to me, so just enjoy the moment really,” Galdiano said.
Playing in the second group of the day off the first tee, Galdiano had nine birdies and two bogeys on the on the tree-lined layout.
“I love coming up to the Pacific Northwest,” Galdiano said “Like great weather, good food. It’s kind of close to Hawaii for me, so I feel pretty relaxed out here.”
Lexi Thompson opened with a 73, two days after announcing that she's going to be a mother. Thompson posted on Instagram a photo with husband Max Provost and photos of the sonogram of a girl due in February.
See AP’s full golf coverage here
FILE - Lexi Thompson chips to the green on the first hole during the first round of the Chevron Championship LPGA golf tournament, April 23, 2026, in Houston. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis, File)
LAS VEGAS (AP) — The yearslong case against six Nevada Republicans who were accused of submitting a bogus certificate that falsely declared Donald Trump the winner of the state’s 2020 presidential election has been dismissed, a judge ruled Thursday.
The dismissal marks the latest setback in swing states’ efforts to prosecute fake electors who tried to keep Trump in the White House after he lost to Joe Biden in 2020.
Three other fake elector cases in Arizona, Michigan and Georgia have been dismissed. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes recently dismissed her office’s criminal case but vowed to bring it back to a grand jury in hopes of securing another indictment. The dismissal was a legal maneuver aimed at getting around a deadline for starting new grand jury proceedings after Mayes lost an appeal earlier in June.
Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, who is also running for governor as a Democrat, brought charges relating to forgery and “offering a false instrument for filing or record” against the six Nevada Republicans, who pleaded not guilty.
His office plans to appeal the ruling.
The defendants included Michael McDonald, the chair of the Nevada Republican Party, and Jesse Law, the former chair of the Clark County Republican Party.
In a Thursday statement, McDonald’s defense attorney Richard Wright called the attorney general’s plans to appeal “hasty” and “premature” and said continuing the case was politically motivated.
After the 2020 election, the six Republican electors gathered outside of the Nevada Legislature to sign a certificate giving the state’s six electoral votes to Trump, despite Biden winning the state by more than 30,000 votes. The ceremony was broadcast online, and the video footage was used as evidence in the case.
The case has revolved around the defendants’ intent behind submitting the certificate.
Prosecutors argue the defendants intended for their documents to be mistaken for actual electoral votes that then-Vice President Mike Pence would count on Jan. 6, 2021.
The defendants say submitting the certificate was an act of “political theater” designed to publicize their concerns about the election. They were preserving their rights to challenge the official election results and had no intent to deceive a government agency into accepting the GOP certificate as real, their attorneys argued.
Nevada Judge Mary Kay Holthus agreed.
She found there was a lack of evidence that showed the electors intended to deceive government officials, and she determined that the state failed to disclose exculpatory evidence to the grand jury.
“The fact that Defendants openly announced both their actions and their asserted purpose, rather than concealing their conduct or attempting to secretly induce governmental reliance, weighs against a reasonable inference that they acted with fraudulent intent,” Holthus wrote in her ruling.
Jurisdiction had also been an issue, but the case eventually landed in Clark County, which is home to Las Vegas and leans Democratic.
Courts have dismissed similar cases in Michigan and Georgia, and a special prosecutor dropped a federal case in late 2024 that charged Trump with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. Those cases ended after Trump defeated Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024. A fake electors case is ongoing in Wisconsin.
FILE - Nevada GOP chair Michael McDonald walks on stage before speaking ahead of Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump at a campaign event, Jan. 27, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)
