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Estos son algunos de los momentos más importantes de la comparecencia del expresidente ante la corte.NUEVA YORK — El expresidente Donald Trump se sentó en silencio en la sala del juzgado de Manhattan, el martes, mientras los fiscales formulaban las acusaciones en su contra. El procedimiento fue su primera experiencia como acusado penal.Una transcripción de 32 páginas de la audiencia solo ofrece un indicio de las consecuencias dramáticas de la comparecencia y el largo proceso legal que se avecina. Es uno de los procesos judiciales más esperados del mundo. Y, sin embargo, solo lo vieron de primera mano las pocas decenas de personas que estuvieron presentes en la sala donde se dieron a conocer los delitos que se le imputan a Trump.A continuación, presentamos algunos de los momentos más importantes de la audiencia:La audiencia comienza y Trump hace su declaraciónEL TRIBUNAL: Vamos a instruir al señor Trump.EL SECRETARIO DEL JUZGADO: Donald J. Trump, el Gran Jurado del condado de Nueva York ha presentado la acusación formal 71543 del año 2023 en la que se le imputan los delitos de 34 cargos de falsificación de registros empresariales en primer grado. ¿Cómo se declara ante esta acusación formal: culpable o no culpable?TRUMP: No culpable.En la sala del tribunal, las persianas estaban cerradas cuando Trump entró cerca de las 02:30 p. m., con un traje azul marino, corbata roja y un semblante inexpresivo. Estuvo flanqueado por agentes judiciales armados, mientras caminaba por el pasillo hacia el frente. Se autorizó a los fotógrafos para que entraran al palco del jurado para tomarle una foto, y él giró la cabeza y miró fijamente a las cámaras hasta que los fotógrafos tuvieron que marcharse.La comparecencia de Trump no comenzó de inmediato. Se vio obligado a esperar unos 10 minutos, sentado en silencio en la mesa de la defensa, mientras un abogado que representaba a organizaciones de medios de comunicación pedía que se concediera a los periodistas más acceso al procedimiento. El exmandatario hizo una mueca de burla cuando ese abogado afirmó que se podía confiar en los periodistas profesionales.Cuando el abogado terminó de hablar, el juez Juan Merchan, quien en la transcripción es identificado como “El tribunal”, pidió que Trump compareciera. Al expresidente se le leyeron los cargos que se le imputaban: 34 delitos graves de falsificación de registros empresariales. En la silenciosa sala, Trump se inclinó hacia delante y, hablando por el micrófono de la mesa de la defensa, dijo que era no culpable.Un fiscal presenta el casoSR. CONROY: El acusado, Donald J. Trump, falsificó registros empresariales de Nueva York con el fin de ocultar una asociación delictiva para socavar la integridad de las elecciones presidenciales de 2016 y otras violaciones a las leyes electorales.Chris Conroy, fiscal de la oficina del fiscal del distrito de Manhattan, se levantó y comenzó a detallar los cargos. Se derivan del pago de una suma de dinero para silenciar a una actriz porno, Stormy Daniels, que Michael Cohen, quien era un colaborador de Trump, pagó en el periodo previo a las elecciones de 2016. Trump reembolsó el dinero a Cohen después de ser elegido. Los fiscales acusan al exmandatario de orquestar la creación de registros empresariales falsos relacionados con los reembolsos.La falsificación de registros empresariales solo es un delito grave en el estado de Nueva York cuando se comete con la intención de “cometer u ocultar” otro delito. Al decir que Trump había falsificado registros “para ocultar una asociación delictiva”, Conroy ofreció un posible avance del caso más amplio de la fiscalía contra Trump.Los miembros del equipo de la defensa recibieron copias de la acusación. Trump le entregó una copia a uno de sus abogados, Joseph Tacopina. El exmandatario fue la única persona en la mesa de la defensa que no aceptó una copia.Las recientes publicaciones de Trump en las redes sociales se incorporan al expedienteUn momento extraordinario sucedió cuando Conroy comenzó a referirse a las publicaciones recientes que Trump ha hecho en las redes sociales. El expresidente prometió que en caso de que lo acusaran habría “muerte y destrucción” y publicó lenguaje racista e imágenes amenazantes dirigidas contra el fiscal de distrito Alvin Bragg.SR. CONROY: Nos preocupa mucho el peligro potencial que este tipo de retórica supone para nuestra ciudad, para los posibles jurados y testigos, así como para el proceso judicial.A continuación, Conroy repartió copias impresas de los mensajes de Trump al juez y al equipo de la defensa. El expresidente le dio su copia a Tacopina, pero un minuto después se la pidió de vuelta, haciéndole señas con la mano derecha. Otro de sus abogados, Todd Blanche, se opuso enérgicamente a los comentarios de Conroy sobre las publicaciones en las redes sociales.SR. BLANCHE: Es cierto que el expresidente Trump ha respondido y que lo ha hecho con contundencia. Es cierto que, como parte de esa respuesta, está absolutamente frustrado, molesto y cree que su presencia en esta sala del tribunal es una grave injusticia.Blanche afirmó que Trump “tiene derechos y se le permite pronunciarse públicamente”.Eso pareció incitar a Merchan, quien habló con calma y seriedad, cuando respondió que no tenía la intención inmediata de imponerle una “orden de mordaza” a Trump, en contra de las preocupaciones expresadas recientemente por el equipo jurídico del expresidente. Los fiscales no han solicitado una orden de mordaza.EL TRIBUNAL: Ciertamente, el tribunal no impondría una orden de mordaza en este momento aunque se solicitara. Esas restricciones son las más serias y menos intolerables sobre los derechos de la Primera Enmienda. Eso aplica por partida doble al señor Trump, porque es candidato a la presidencia de Estados Unidos. Así que es evidente que esos derechos de la Primera Enmienda tienen una importancia crítica.Pero Merchan, quien es juez de la Corte Suprema estatal desde 2009, le advirtió a la defensa que hablara con Trump “y cualquier otra persona con la que sea necesario y les recuerden que, por favor, se abstengan de hacer declaraciones que puedan incitar a la violencia o a los disturbios civiles”.La fiscalía detalla las posibles restricciones a TrumpSRA. MCCAW: El acusado no puede proporcionar los materiales que recibe a través del proceso de presentación de pruebas a terceros, lo que incluye a la prensa, y no puede publicarlos en las redes sociales.Mientras Trump seguía sentado en silencio, Catherine McCaw, otra fiscal, le dijo al juez que su equipo estaba trabajando con los abogados de Trump para redactar una orden de protección, un documento que le pondría ciertas restricciones al exmandatario.La fiscal explicó que una de esas restricciones le prohibiría al expresidente publicar material específico del caso en las redes sociales o compartirlo con los reporteros. Si Trump viola alguna de las restricciones establecidas, Merchan decidiría si lo sanciona y cómo hacerlo.Trump vuelve a hablarA medida que se desarrollaba su audiencia de instrucción, Trump se mostraba cada vez más inquieto. Entrelazaba y desentrelazaba los dedos una y otra vez. Cruzaba y descruzaba los brazos. Golpeó la mesa con los nudillos. En una ocasión, infló las mejillas en un suspiro impaciente.Por último, más de media hora después de que hizo su declaración de inocencia, habló de nuevo —tras la indicación de sus abogados—, pero solo para responderle al juez cuando informó sobre su derecho a estar presente en el proceso y de las formas en que podía perder ese derecho.EL TRIBUNAL: Si perturba hasta tal punto que afecte a mi capacidad para presidir este caso y mi capacidad para garantizar que el caso se juzgue de la manera que debe juzgarse para ambas partes, tengo la autoridad para sacarlo de la sala y continuar en su ausencia, ¿comprende?ACUSADO SR. TRUMP: Sí, comprendo.El juez solicita la presencia de TrumpEL TRIBUNAL: Espero que todos los demás acusados comparezcan ante el tribunal, incluso los acusados de alto perfil.Teniendo en cuenta que Trump estaba acusado de delitos no violentos, los fiscales tenían prohibido siquiera solicitar su encarcelamiento. Mientras Merchan se preparaba para dejar ir al expresidente, Blanche insinuó que Trump podría no comparecer a su próxima cita con el tribunal, prevista para el 4 de diciembre. Cuando se le preguntó por su razonamiento, Blanche citó “el increíble gasto y esfuerzo y los problemas de seguridad” que conllevó la comparecencia.El juez reconoció que había sido una empresa enorme para todos los implicados. Pero señaló que faltaba “bastante para diciembre”. Por último, señaló que “en aras de la transparencia y para garantizar la imparcialidad de las normas jurídicas”, iba a discrepar de Blanche. La implicación: en la medida de lo posible, el juez pretende tratar a Trump como a cualquier otro acusado.Cuando se levantó la sesión alrededor de las 03:25 p. m., Trump fue la persona de la mesa de la defensa que se levantó con más lentitud. Se alisó las solapas de la chaqueta de su traje azul, ordenó un montón de papeles que había frente a él y salió de la sala.Embed Only More

Republican lawmakers are putting limits on progressive prosecutors.A fight has erupted in several states between Republican lawmakers and locally elected Democrats over how to respond to crime.Democratic district attorneys (often serving cities with many Black and Latino voters) say they are prioritizing serious crimes. In response, Republicans (often representing mostly white and rural areas) have accused them of ignoring criminal law and are making it easier to remove them from office.Today, I’ll explain what’s happening and why it matters.The policy fightSince 2015, dozens of prosecutors promising progressive reforms have taken office across the country. They vowed to send fewer people to prison and reduce the harms to low-income communities that are associated with high incarceration rates.To achieve that goal, many of these prosecutors said they would use the discretion the law generally allows them to decline to charge categories of crimes, like low-level marijuana offenses. About 90 prosecutors, out of more than 2,000 nationwide, also pledged not to prosecute violations of abortion bans. Many of these prosecutors have been re-elected, a sign of sustained voter support.Still, conservatives argue that the district attorneys are shirking their duty. Declining to prosecute a particular case is legitimate, they say; ruling out charges for a category of offenses is not. As a Republican legislator in Tennessee put it, “A district attorney does not have the authority to decide what law is good and what law isn’t good.” The conservative Heritage Foundation devotes a section of its website to attacking “rogue prosecutors.”Challenging local controlIn Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee and elsewhere, Republican lawmakers have moved to oust or constrain prosecutors and officials who oversee the court system. The Republicans, who largely represent rural areas, are often aiming to thwart voters in cities, including many Black and Latino residents, who elected candidates on platforms of locking up fewer people.Examples include:In February, the Mississippi House passed a bill that establishes a new court system in part of the state capital, Jackson, a majority Black city run mostly by Black officials. In the neighborhoods where most of Jackson’s white residents live, the legislation would effectively replace locally elected judges with state-appointed ones and city police with a state-run force.Tennessee lawmakers in 2021 gave the state attorney general the authority to ask a judge to replace local prosecutors in cases in which they refuse to bring charges. Republican lawmakers criticized the district attorney in Nashville, Glenn Funk, who said he would no longer prosecute simple marijuana possession. Funk also said he would not charge businesses that ignored a state law requiring them to post signs saying transgender people could be using single-gender bathrooms.When Deborah Gonzalez, a progressive, ran for district attorney in Athens, Ga., in 2020, Gov. Brian Kemp tried to cancel the election. Kemp lost in court, and Gonzalez won the seat.In Florida last August, Gov. Ron DeSantis ousted Andrew Warren, the elected Democratic prosecutor in the district that includes Tampa, who had pledged not to prosecute offenses related to abortion or transgender health care.Changing the rulesThese actions upend a longstanding tradition of local control over criminal justice. In the 19th century, many states embraced local elections of prosecutors to ensure that they “reflect the priorities of local communities, rather than officials in the state capital,” according to one history. Criminal laws are largely enacted at the state level, and prosecutors, meant to be accountable to their communities, decide how to enforce them.Since prosecutors lack the resources to bring charges for every arrest, their discretion is a feature of the system. In the past, prosecutors usually used their discretion to act tough on crime. “Now you’re seeing a state effort to subvert the will of local voters who have elected prosecutors who use their discretion for a more compassionate and equitable system,” Marissa Roy, a lawyer for the Local Solutions Support Center, said. “It’s inherently undemocratic.”The new state billsIn a few states, Republicans are considering legislation that would give them power to remove local prosecutors. Georgia legislators recently passed a bill that would create a commission with the power to remove prosecutors. It awaits Kemp’s signature.The Missouri House passed a bill to allow the governor to appoint a special prosecutor for violent crimes for five years. The bill was originally written to target St. Louis, where the elected city prosecutor, Kimberly Gardner, is a progressive Black Democrat.In Texas, dozens of such bills are in play. One, which passed the Texas Senate this week, would bar prosecutors from adopting policies that refrain from prosecuting a type of offense. Another would create a council dominated by political appointees that could refer prosecutors to a trial court to be dismissed for incompetence. Republican supporters of the legislation targeted five district attorneys, from large metropolitan areas, who said they would not prosecute certain offenses, including some related to abortion or transgender medical treatments for minors.When a new type of legislation pops up in different states, a national policy organization sometimes promotes it. That may be happening with these bills. Last July, a Heritage Foundation staff member met by video with Republican lawmakers about curbing prosecutors’ authority, according to a person familiar with the Texas bills. The legislation became a priority of the Texas House speaker and lieutenant governor. “The Heritage Foundation meets with a variety of people and organizations about public policy topics,” a spokeswoman said.Given the conservative momentum behind the bills, Roy expects to see more. “All of this is connected to the backlash to the movement for racial justice and criminal justice reform,” she said.THE LATEST NEWSPoliticsThe Tennessee representatives Justin Jones, left, and Justin Pearson before a vote to expel them.Jon Cherry for The New York TimesTennessee House Republicans voted to expel two Democrats who protested in the legislative chamber for stricter gun laws.For decades, Justice Clarence Thomas has taken luxury vacations funded by a Republican megadonor, ProPublica reported.The U.S. should have evacuated Americans and others from Afghanistan earlier at the end of the war in 2021, the Biden administration acknowledged.The Supreme Court ruled that a transgender girl in West Virginia could compete on girls’ sports teams at her middle school while her appeal moved forward.Separately, the Biden administration proposed a rule that would bar schools from categorically banning transgender athletes but that would leave room for individual exclusions.The I.R.S. is planning to improve its customer service and to crack down on wealthy tax evaders.Trump IndictmentThe judge in Donald Trump’s case asked him to refrain from making incendiary comments. Trump responded by going after the judge’s family.The new publisher of the National Enquirer says the tabloid no longer buys stories to bury them. The practice put the company at the center of Trump’s indictment.Other Big StoriesGaza City last night.Mohammed Abed/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIsraeli jets struck southern Lebanon and Gaza overnight in response to an unusually heavy rocket barrage from militias in Lebanon. The violence ebbed after sunrise.New textbooks in India have purged parts of the country’s Muslim history that conflict with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist vision.Secret documents detailing American and NATO plans for building up the Ukrainian military have appeared on Twitter and Telegram.A French minister has posed (with her clothes on) in Playboy. Critics are questioning her choice of publication.“Refilled with love and titanium”: The actor Jeremy Renner described his recovery from a snow plow accident that broke 30 of his bones.OpinionsMath and literature often seem like opposites. But whether it’s needing structure or searching for truth, they have a lot in common, Sarah Hart says.Economic competition, protectionism and even trade wars aren’t barriers to solving climate change; they’re assets, Robinson Meyer argues.The deaths of children — from guns, suicide and car crashes — are fueling America’s falling life expectancy, David Wallace-Wells writes.MORNING READSThe classic Peeps.Christopher Payne for The New York TimesPeeps: Visit the factory that makes the fluffy marshmallow chicks.Sonny Angel: These tiny dolls offer stress relief.Modern Love: Seduced by a charming chatbot.Advice from Wirecutter: Clean your phone. (It’s probably getting gross.)Lives Lived: Mimi Sheraton, the food writer and restaurant critic, was the first to wear a disguise to get a normal diner’s experience for her Times reviews and worked for many publications in a six-decade career. She died at 97.SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETICThe Masters: After shooting a 2-over-par 74 yesterday, Tiger Woods — who is struggling with leg issues — is in danger of missing the cut. It was part of an exhilarating first round in Augusta, Ga.N.B.A.’s regular season closes: The top of the Eastern Conference is set, as the Bucks, Celtics, 76ers, Cavaliers, Knicks and Nets have clinched postseason spots. The Western Conference, though, is wide open.ARTS AND IDEAS Mario and Princess Peach.Nintendo/Nintendo and Universal Studios, via Associated PressThe original ‘Mario’ movie“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” is now in theaters, and it faithfully recreates the colorful Mushroom Kingdom. Everything looks and sounds as it does in the games (except maybe Mario himself, who sounds an awful lot like Chris Pratt).Thirty years ago, the first big-screen adaptation of the video game series tossed aside the cartoonish setting in favor of a live-action, dystopian version of New York. The film was largely shot in an abandoned cement factory; sticky fungus was key to the plot. The movie was a flop.For The Times, Darryn King revisited that original film and the small but dedicated fan group who consider it a cult classic.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookLinda Xiao for The New York TimesRoasted radishes are juicy and sweet.What to WatchA new documentary about the director Alan Pakula has the feel of an A-list memorial service.TravelWhat to do for 36 hours in Tokyo.Late NightThe hosts discussed Marjorie Taylor Greene’s visit to New York.News QuizHow well did you keep up with the headlines this week? Test your knowledge.Now Time to PlayThe pangrams from yesterday’s Spelling Bee were diabolic and diabolical. Here is today’s puzzle.Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Useless stuff (four letters).And here’s today’s Wordle.Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.P.S. The New York Times Presents is back on TV tonight with an episode about the hip-hop producer J Dilla, at 10 p.m. Eastern on FX and Hulu.Here’s today’s front page.“The Daily” is about migration.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at [email protected]. More

After the Republican Party’s disappointing performance in the 2022 midterms, fueled in large part by a backlash to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the Republican National Committee recommitted itself to anti-abortion maximalism.A resolution adopted at the R.N.C.’s winter meeting in January urges Republican lawmakers “to pass the strongest pro-life legislation possible.” Addressing their party’s poor showing in November, it said that Republicans hadn’t been aggressive enough in defending anti-abortion values, urging them to “go on offense in the 2024 election cycle.”The 11-point loss of the Republican-aligned candidate in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election on Tuesday has influential conservatives rethinking this strategy. “Republicans had better get their abortion position straight, and more in line with where voters are, or they will face another disappointment in 2024,” said a Wall Street Journal editorial.Ann Coulter tweeted, “The demand for anti-abortion legislation just cost Republicans another crucial race,” and added, “Please stop pushing strict limits on abortion, or there will be no Republicans left.” Jon Schweppe, policy director of the socially conservative American Principles Project, lamented, “We are getting killed by indie voters who think we support full bans with no exceptions.”But having made the criminalization of abortion a central axis of their political project for decades, Republicans have no obvious way out of their electoral predicament. A decisive majority of Americans — 64 percent, according to a recent Public Religion Research Institute survey — believe that abortion should be legal in most cases. A decisive majority of Republicans — 63 percent, according to the same survey — believe that it should not. When abortion bans were merely theoretical, anti-abortion passion was often a boon to Republicans, powering the grass-roots organizing of the religious right. Now that the end of Roe has awakened a previously complacent pro-choice majority, anti-abortion passion has become a liability, but the Republican Party can’t jettison it without tearing itself apart.The reason voters think Republicans support full abortion bans, as Schweppe wrote, is that many of them do.In the last Congress, 167 House Republicans co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act, conferring full personhood rights on fertilized eggs. In state after state, lawmakers are doing just what the R.N.C. suggested and using every means at their disposal to force people to continue unwanted or unviable pregnancies. Idaho, where almost all abortions are illegal, just passed an “abortion trafficking” law that would make helping a minor leave the state to get an abortion without parental consent punishable by five years in prison. The Texas Senate just passed a bill that, among other things, is intended to force prosecutors in left-leaning cities to pursue abortion law violations. South Carolina Republicans have proposed a law defining abortion as murder, making it punishable by the death penalty.In Florida, which already has a 15-week abortion ban, Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to soon sign a law banning almost all abortions at six weeks. This isn’t something Florida voters want — polls show a majority of them support abortion rights — but it’s a virtual prerequisite for his likely presidential campaign.Republican attempts to moderate abortion prohibitions even slightly have, for the most part, gone nowhere. Last year, the Idaho’s Republican Party defeated an amendment to the party’s platform allowing for an exception to the state’s abortion ban to save a woman’s life. In the weeks before the Wisconsin election on Tuesday, Republican lawmakers introduced a bill providing some narrow exceptions to the state’s abortion prohibition for cases of rape, incest and grave threats to a pregnant person’s health, but they lacked the votes in their own party to pass it.It’s true that this week Tennessee’s Legislature passed a bill permitting abortion to save a patient’s life or prevent “serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.” But the legislation is meaningless to the point of perversity, since it places the burden of proof on doctors rather than on the state, so that they must still fear prosecution for treating pregnant people in severe medical distress. Language that would allow women to end “medically futile pregnancies” was stripped out.It’s not surprising that voters have reacted with revulsion to being stripped of rights they’d long taken for granted, and to seeing the health of pregnant women treated so cavalierly. But the backlash seems to have caught Republicans off guard. Last May, when the Supreme Court’s draft decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization leaked, Coulter assured her readers that the end of Roe wouldn’t help Democrats. “Outside of the media, no one seems especially bothered by the decision,” she wrote.Part of what happened here is that conservatives fell for their own propaganda about representing “normal” Americans. (This, incidentally, is the same reason many on the right can’t admit to themselves that Donald Trump lost in 2020.) Coulter was sure Americans would be turned off by those outraged by the end of Roe, writing, “Everybody hates the feminists.” When a poll last year showed that 55 percent of Americans identified as pro-choice, a piece in National Review told readers not to worry: “Many of our policy goals enjoy strong public support.”Untethered to actual Republican voters, Coulter was able to pivot, but the Republican Party cannot. Instead, its leaders are adopting a self-soothing tactic sometimes seen on the left, insisting they’re being defeated because they’ve failed to make their values clear, not because their values are unpopular. “When you’re losing by 10 points, there is a messaging issue,” the Republican Party chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, said on Fox News, explaining the loss in Wisconsin.But you can’t message away forced birth. Republicans’ political problem is twofold. Their supporters take the party’s position on abortion seriously, and now, post-Roe, so does everyone else.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

Michael Rothfeld had just hours to annotate 29 pages of documents related to the charges against Donald J. Trump.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Just after 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, a news release from the Manhattan district attorney’s office landed in the inbox of Michael Rothfeld, an investigative reporter on the Metro desk of The New York Times: The indictment of Donald J. Trump had been unsealed. It was go time.Over the next several hours, Mr. Rothfeld combed through the 16-page indictment charging Mr. Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, a low-level felony in New York State. The charges center on a hush-money deal with the porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign. (Mr. Trump pleaded not guilty.) Mr. Rothfeld also scrutinized a 13-page “statement of facts” in which the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, outlined a larger scheme that he said Mr. Trump and others orchestrated during the 2016 campaign to avoid negative press.Mr. Rothfeld, who was part of the team at The Wall Street Journal that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2019 for reporting on hush-money deals made on behalf of Mr. Trump, got to work annotating each document for an interactive Times piece, which allowed readers to see the files alongside expert context. The format was built by Charlie Smart, an editor on the Graphics desk; he started brainstorming for it in mid-March. “We weren’t sure when it would come,” Mr. Smart said of the indictment. “But we wanted to be ready.”As Mr. Rothfeld completed each annotation, Mr. Smart and Dagny Salas, a deputy Metro editor, reviewed it and added it to the article. In addition to the online display, the annotated document appeared in some print issues on Wednesday.In an interview, Mr. Rothfeld shared how he approached the annotation process and why it was beneficial for readers to see the actual documents.After receiving the documents, what was your first step?I skimmed the indictment first. It had a lot of echoes, so I didn’t read every word. All 34 counts were identical, but there were some differences in the types of records Trump was accused of falsifying.Once I had absorbed how the document was structured and what was repeated, I chose one example to annotate and pointed out how the context we were providing also applied to the other charges.Charlie had created a Google Doc, and that’s where I inputted my copy: the page number of the indictment, the section I wanted to highlight and the text of my annotation. The text was edited in the Google Doc before Charlie put it into the actual document.How long did it take you to get the first version of the article published?Not long after getting the documents, we posted them — without any annotations — just to get them up so people could see them. After that, I kept adding annotations. I’ve done a lot of reporting on legal issues and on the Trump hush-money payments, so I already had that knowledge base.Were you able to prewrite any annotations?We couldn’t prewrite anything without knowing what was in the indictment.How did you balance explaining general legal terminology with providing context on details specific to this indictment?I wanted to include some basic things like how this indictment came about, the fact it was voted on by a grand jury made up of regular New Yorkers who had been sitting for months. Then I highlighted the first instance of the particular crime Trump was charged with 34 times and explained that it’s more than a misdemeanor but the lowest felony you can have. I didn’t want to use technical jargon. I wanted people to understand the context and importance in the clearest possible terms.What is the benefit of readers’ being able to see the actual documents?It helps people trust what they’re looking at when they’re reading the actual document versus if they’re just relying on what I was choosing to highlight if I were writing a traditional article. It gives them a better window into the process of what’s happening in the case, with a little expertise to guide them through what they’re looking at.Were you surprised by anything?I was surprised that the second document, the statement of facts, contained a lot of color and narrative. That one was more fun to annotate because I could try to signpost the story being told by the district attorney of how hush money was paid by Trump throughout the 2016 election to various unnamed characters. I could go through the document and say, “OK, this begins the story of Stormy Daniels, who’s here referred to as Woman 2,” so you could follow along as you were reading the document. I felt like a narrator. More

State after state has eased restrictions on voting for former felons in recent years. But Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s reversal suggests growing wariness on the right.WASHINGTON — For more than a decade, states around the country have steadily chipped away at one of the biggest roadblocks to voting in the United States — laws on the books that bar former felons from casting a ballot.But there are now signs that trend could be reversing.Last month, Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, a Republican who took office a year ago, revealed that he had rescinded a policy of automatically restoring voting rights to residents who have completed felony sentences.In a February hearing, North Carolina’s Supreme Court, which has a 5-2 Republican majority, appeared deeply skeptical that a lower court had constitutional authority when it restored voting rights last year to people who had completed their sentences. A ruling is expected soon.And then there’s Florida — whose Republican-dominated Legislature effectively nullified a citizen ballot initiative granting voting rights to a huge number of former felons in 2020. That left all three states on a path toward rolling back state policies on restoring voting rights for former felons close to where they were 50 and even 100 years ago.Experts say that Virginia’s reversal, which does not affect people who have had their rights already restored, is unlikely to represent a dramatic change in the long-term trend among states toward loosening restrictions on voting by people with felony records. Such restrictions still deny the vote to some 4.6 million voting-age Americans — one in 50 potential voters. But that number is down nearly 25 percent since 2016.Last month, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, a Democrat, signed legislation expanding voting rights for former felons in the state, and the New Mexico State Legislature, also Democratic, enacted a law doing the same.What is clear, though, is that a shaky bipartisan consensus — that those who have paid their debts to society should be able to cast a ballot — has eroded, as political polarization has risen. The action by Mr. Youngkin is especially notable because it leaves Virginia as the only state in the nation that disenfranchises everyone who commits a felony. Under the State Constitution, a former felon’s rights can be restored only with the governor’s authorization.“We’d reached a point for the first time in recent memory, maybe ever, where there was not a single state in the country that disenfranchised everyone,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, the director of the voting rights program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. “It is disappointing that on an issue in Virginia that had gotten support from both sides of the aisle, they do seem to be taking a step backwards.”The backtracking spotlights the often-overlooked significance — legally and also politically — of a practice that has likely had a far greater impact on access to the ballot than more notorious voter suppression measures have.Voting rights battles are usually fought over cogs in the election machinery — ID requirements, drop boxes, absentee ballots — that can make it easy or hard to vote, depending on how much sand is tossed into them. The extent to which those battles shrink or expand the pool of voters is often impossible to measure.Not so with restoring the vote to former felons: Minnesota’s new law gives about 56,000 people access to the ballot; the North Carolina court ruling last year made another 56,000 eligible. The law awaiting the signature of New Mexico’s governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, would add another 11,000 to the list.The rollbacks, however, are significant. In 2020, Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature enacted a law that effectively negated a 2018 citizen ballot initiative that restored voting rights to perhaps 934,000 residents, according to the latest estimate. The law limits the vote only to former felons who pay all court costs, restitution and other fees, a yearslong task for many, made surpassingly difficult by the state’s jumbled record-keeping on court cases.That legislative change not only halted the nation’s largest rights-restoration effort but also led to the arrest — in what Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, billed as a crackdown on fraud — of 20 former felons who had registered or voted illegally — many, if not all, out of confusion over their eligibility.In Virginia, governors have used their constitutional powers to restore the vote to more than 300,000 former felons since Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, first made restoration automatic for some in 2013. Two Democratic governors, Terry McAuliffe and Ralph Northam, expanded that policy to include anyone freed from prison.By the time Mr. Northam left office in January 2022, a huge backlog of people eligible for restoration had been wiped out, said Kelly Thomasson, the official who handled rights restoration during Mr. Northam’s tenure as governor, in an interview. She said that roughly 1,000 to 2,000 newly eligible felons were being released from prison each month.After succeeding Mr. Northam, Mr. Youngkin initially restored voting rights to nearly 3,500 people in just his first four months in office. But that pace slowed dramatically to just 800 others in the next five months.A spokeswoman for Mr. Youngkin, Macaulay Porter, said in a statement that the governor “firmly believes in the importance of second chances for Virginians who have made mistakes,” and that he judges individual cases based on the law and the “unique elements of each situation.”She did not respond to requests to explain why new grants dropped sharply, or whether Republican resistance to restoring voting played a role in that decline.Although a Republican state legislator had once led Minnesota’s effort to give the vote to former felons, the policy became law this year with only a handful of Republican votes. In 2020, the Republican governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds, used her executive power to implement an automatic restoration policy much like the one Virginia had in place before Mr. Youngkin changed it.Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa reacts after signing an executive order granting former felons the right to vote in August 2020.Charlie Neibergall/Associated PressBut Iowa, Virginia and Kentucky, another Republican state whose governors’ executive orders have loosened restrictive restoration policies temporarily, have been unable to win legislators’ support for amendments to state constitutions that would make those orders permanent.Some experts say that the resistance stems in part from the common but questionable belief among Republican partisans that allowing former felons to vote would boost Democratic turnout.Although an outsize share of those who complete felony sentences are members of minority groups that broadly tend to vote Democratic, most felons are white, and those with their demographic characteristics — below-average income and education, to name two — increasingly skew Republican.Disenfranchisement has complex legal roots, including the 14th Amendment, which, in addition to granting citizenship and equal civil and legal rights to formerly enslaved people, forbids withholding the right to vote “except for participation in rebellion, or other crime.”In Virginia, there are also antecedents that reflect the state’s history of suppressing the African American vote. The policy on rights restoration that Mr. Youngkin revived is rooted in a 1902 Virginia constitutional convention in which keeping Black residents from voting was an overriding priority.Experts say the potentially fleeting nature of executive actions like those in Kentucky — where Gov. Andy Beshear now automatically restores voting rights to former felons who had committed nonviolent crimes — and in Virginia sows confusion about voting rights. Critics say that bestowing a basic civic privilege becomes subject to the political whim of whoever is governor.Virginians who complete their prison sentences this year may wonder why those who left prison in 2021 are more entitled to cast a ballot than they are, said Christopher Uggen, a University of Minnesota sociologist and an expert on the disenfranchisement of former felons.“It harkens to an era when the king can give a thumbs up or thumbs down,” he said. “We wouldn’t necessarily accept this if it were happening in another area.”Kirsten Noyes More

Listen to This ArticleAudio Recording by AudmOn the evening of Nov. 19, 2020, Rupert Murdoch was watching TV and crawling the walls of his 18th-century mansion in the British countryside while under strict pandemic lockdown. The television hosts at Murdoch’s top cable network, Fox News, might have scoffed at such unyielding adherence to Covid protocols. But Jerry Hall, his soon-to-be fourth ex-wife and no fan of Fox or its conservative hosts, was insisting that Murdoch, approaching his 90th birthday, remain cautious.The big story that day, as it had been every day in the two weeks since the election, was election theft, and now Rudolph W. Giuliani was giving a news conference at the Republican National Committee. With Sidney Powell, the right-wing attorney and conspiracy theorist, at his side, Giuliani, sweating profusely, black hair dye dripping down the side of his face, spun a wild fantasy about Joe Biden’s stealing the election from President Donald J. Trump. Dizzying in its delusional complexity, it centered on a supposed plot by the Clinton Foundation, George Soros and associates of Hugo Chávez to convert Trump votes into Biden votes by way of software from Smartmatic and voting machines from Dominion Voting Systems.Murdoch wasn’t pleased. He had built the most powerful media empire on the planet by understanding what his audience wanted and giving it to them without fear or judgment. But Trump now appeared to be making a serious bid to overturn a legitimate election, and his chaos agents — his personal lawyer Giuliani chief among them — were creating dangerous new appetites. Now Murdoch was faced with holding the line on reporting the facts or following his audience all the way into the land of conspiracy theories. Neither choice was necessarily good for business. At 5:01 p.m. London time, he sent an email to his friend Saad Mohseni — an Afghan Australian media mogul sometimes referred to as the Afghan Rupert Murdoch — from his iPhone. “Just watched Giuliani press conference,” he wrote. “Stupid and damaging.” Shortly after, he sent another email, this one to his Fox News chief executive, Suzanne Scott: “Terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear. Probably hurting us, too.”Murdoch had for weeks — for years, really — avoided making a choice. Trump and his supporters were already furious at Fox News for being the first network to call Biden the victor in Arizona, and two newer cable networks were offering them a version of reality more fully on Trump’s terms. One of them, Newsmax, was moving up in the ratings while refusing to call Biden the winner. When Murdoch’s own paper, The Wall Street Journal, reported a few days before Giuliani’s news conference that Trump allies were considering pouring money into Newsmax to help it mount a stiffer challenge to Fox, Murdoch alerted Scott to the piece. Fox would have to play this just right, he said in an email. Take Giuliani with “a large grain of salt,” he wrote, but also be careful not to “antagonize Trump further.”The network’s coverage of the Giuliani news conference showed just how impossible this balancing act would be. Immediately afterward, a Fox News White House correspondent, Kristin Fisher, went to the network’s camera position outside the West Wing and fact-checked the allegations. “So much of what he said was simply not true,” she told Fox viewers. Giuliani, she said, provided no hard proof for a claim that “really cuts to the core of our democratic process.” Fox’s opinion hosts, who had been broadcasting the Giuliani-Powell Dominion fantasies to varying degrees themselves — some appearing to endorse them outright — had been complaining internally that the news division’s debunking efforts were alienating the core audience. An executive at the Fox Corporation, the network’s parent company, had recently started a brand protection effort to, among other tasks, “defend the brand in real time.” After Fisher’s segment, the group sent an alert to top news executives. In a follow-up email, Scott vented to a deputy. “I can’t keep defending these reporters who don’t understand our viewers and how to handle stories,” she wrote. “We have damaged their trust and belief in us.” One of Fisher’s bosses told her that she needed to do a better job of “respecting our audience,” and Fisher later complained of feeling sidelined. More

On Monday a friend breathlessly and sheepishly emailed: “Yes, I admit it: I’m watching the motorcade from La Guardia to Trump Tower. It’s like O.J.’s Bronco ride! And I swear, the lead car in the motorcade looks like a white Bronco! Could this be an inside joke by the N.Y.P.D.?”As delicious — indeed, bewitching — a possibility as this might be, I found myself shrugging. I didn’t watch the motorcade, nor could I watch the arraignment, though long have I fantasized about seeing Donald Trump perp-walked, mug-shot, fingerprinted, shackled, summarily convicted and motorcaded directly from court to the South Street Seaport and put aboard a ship for St. Helena.Why am I not jubilating, wallowing in a deep, warm bubble bath of schadenfreude? Why, instead of humming “Ding, dong, the witch is dead!” am I pressing buttons on the remote control to see what else is on — some politically themed movie, say, in which the president more or less gracefully accepts proof of his villainy, resigns and helicopters off to exile in, say, California? Those were the days. Instead, what’s currently on more resembles “Groundhog Day,” a replay of a movie about replay.Much as I hope to see justice served — if not, at this late point, piping hot — it feels as though we’re the ones who are already in jail. Mr. Trump came down that escalator into the lobby in 2015, making this the eighth year of our sentence in Trump Prison.Is there hope of parole? Remains to be seen. Despair is a mortal sin, and yet … who knows? We are relentlessly, remorselessly told by some constitutional pooh-bah that even if convicted, a person can 1) run for president and 2) be president. Who knew?Mr. Trump’s fame came largely from a reality TV show, every episode of which concluded with his snarling at people and telling them they were fired. His genius was to make us participants in this garish melodrama. Though many of us — but, alas, apparently not enough of us — yearn fervently to fire him, he has proved unfireable. Teflon, Kevlar, whatever your metaphor for “unassailable” — he endures. The show is renewed for another season. The concept of becoming ridiculous and tiresome by jumping the shark does not apply. The bigger the shark, the higher the jump. On to the Capitol! Hang Mike Pence! (who was last heard bemoaning the “weaponization” of justice). Oh, the humanity!I didn’t tune in live, but I did see a photo of Mr. Trump on Monday, entering the lobby of his namesake tower, where eight years ago he sentenced us to imprisonment. He didn’t look happy. Who would? Yet one wondered if, deep down inside, he was. Despite the circumstances — WITCH HUNT! — he was exactly where he craves to be: the orange omphalos of our world.Years ago, a now disgraced network television C.E.O. observed without shame that Donald Trump’s first run for office might not be good for the country but he was sure good for his network. These ratings are through the roof!Whom the gods would destroy, first they bestow upon them monster ratings. When Tucker Carlson lays his head upon his pillow after another day of bread and circuses, does he reconcile defending a man about whom he confided to colleagues, “I hate him passionately,” with suggesting to viewers that now might not be a good time to hand in their AR-15s? If he succeeds at this contradictory jujitsu, he deserves a black belt in cognitive dissonance.Democrats, it’s said, never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. It may be time to revise this hoary axiom, for it’s the Republicans who’ve blown one opportunity after another. Not just two impeachments. As the historian Jon Meacham points out in The New Yorker, Republicans in Congress could have invoked the clause in the 14th Amendment that bars from public office anyone who attempts to overthrow the government.This was the lowest hanging fruit of all, but the party of Lincoln and Reagan didn’t raise a hand. In the same interview Mr. Meacham, the author of an admiring biography of George H.W. Bush, also expressed utter bafflement that Mr. Bush’s lifelong close friend and consigliere James Baker admitted to voting for Mr. Trump — whom Mr. Baker despises almost as much as Mr. Carlson does — not once but twice. Much as I miss Mr. Bush, I’m grateful he’s not around to hear this.The show will go on, endlessly renewed for another season. There will be more indications — sorry, indictments. The dogs will bark, but athwart the old proverb, the caravan will not move on.Christopher Buckley is a novelist and a humorist.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

A blowout in Wisconsin, an indictment in New York and a progressive victory in Chicago.Supporters of the victorious Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate, Janet Protasiewicz, on Tuesday night in Milwaukee. Abortion was a key issue. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesIt has been a big — even historic — week in American politics. Donald J. Trump was indicted. The liberal candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court, Janet Protasiewicz, easily prevailed over a conservative, Daniel Kelly. And Brandon Johnson, a progressive, was elected the mayor of Chicago.What did we learn? While in some cases it’s too soon to say much, here are a few early takeaways:It’s still 2022, at least in WisconsinIf the 2022 midterm elections offered any lesson, it was that liberals excel when abortion and democracy are on the ballot. Liberal voters turn out en masse. A crucial sliver of voters — perhaps as few as one in every 30 or 40 — will flip to vote for the Democrat when they otherwise would have voted Republican.That pattern continued in Wisconsin on Tuesday, when the liberal candidate won by 11 points, a striking margin for Wisconsin. Like many of the best Democratic showings of 2022, the Wisconsin race seemed likely to decide the fate of the state’s abortion ban and its gerrymandered legislative maps.Interestingly, Wisconsin was not a state where Democrats excelled last November. They didn’t fare poorly, but Senator Ron Johnson still won re-election and the incumbent Democratic governor won by just three points. The 2022 showing was no Democratic romp like in Pennsylvania or Michigan, where a stop-the-steal candidate or abortion referendum helped Democrats.This time, the issues facing Wisconsin voters were more like those in Michigan and Pennsylvania. As a result, Wisconsin liberals won a Pennsylvania-like and Michigan-like landslide.Too early to tell on Trump, but a short-term bumpIt’s still far too soon to say how the indictment of Mr. Trump will play out. But there are already plenty of signs that he has gained among Republican primary voters since last Thursday, when news of the indictment broke. Indeed, all four polls taken over this period showed Mr. Trump gaining compared with their previous survey.We’ll probably return to this question in more depth next week. After all, none of these polls were taken after his flight to New York or his surrender to authorities in Manhattan. And he was already gaining before the news of his indictment, so it’s hard to distinguish his latest gains from the continuation of a longer-term trend.Still, it would be no surprise if Mr. Trump is benefiting from the indictment. For days, the conservative media ecosystem has been dominated by a chorus of his defenders, including none other than his chief rival, Ron DeSantis. This is about as favorable of a media environment as it gets for a Republican primary candidate.How this will play over the longer term — especially if Mr. Trump faces other indictments — remains to be seen.Brandon Johnson, a progressive, as he concluded his victory speech on Tuesday in Chicago.Evan Cobb for The New York TimesBlack voters are the fulcrum of a divided Democratic electorateThe Chicago mayoral race wasn’t a Democratic primary, but it was about as close as it gets for a general election: Both candidates were Democrats, and 82 percent of Chicago voters backed Mr. Biden in 2020. Like many Democratic primaries over the last decade, it pitted an activist-backed progressive against a more moderate candidate.But while we’ve grown accustomed to victories for moderate Democrats in most of these intra-primary fights, in Chicago it was the progressive candidate Brandon Johnson who prevailed. That’s in no small part thanks to the backing of Black voters, who have often offered decisive support to high-profile establishment-backed candidates, from Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden to Eric Adams.With many examples of Black voters backing moderate candidates over the years, it can be tempting to assume that they are the reliable moderate allies of the establishment. In reality, it’s not so simple. In particular, Black voters have often backed Black progressives over white moderates and liberals.In the New York mayoral race, Black voters overwhelmingly backed Mr. Adams over the liberal Kathryn Garcia, even though they also preferred the Black progressive Maya Wiley over Ms. Garcia, based on data from ranked choice balloting. When Black voters side with progressives, the establishment’s position suddenly looks a lot weaker: Black voters represent around 20 percent of Democratic voters.Mr. Johnson, who is Black, routinely won 80 percent of the vote in the South Side’s majority Black wards, helping him squeak past the moderate Paul Vallas, who won a lot of the rest of the city.Mr. Johnson’s success doesn’t necessarily mean that Black Democrats are feeling the Bern, or otherwise itching to support progressive candidates. In this year’s primary, Mr. Johnson fared best in relatively young and white progressive areas on Chicago’s North Side, while the incumbent, Lori Lightfoot, carried the South Side wards where Mr. Johnson would dominate just a month later.But the importance of Black voters to progressive fortunes might offer a lesson for activists who hope one of their own might win a Democratic presidential primary.After all, the last candidate to beat the Democratic establishment in such a Democratic primary was none other than Barack Obama. More