Elections

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that former President Donald J. Trump is entitled to some level of immunity from prosecution, a decision that may effectively delay the trial of the case against him on charges of plotting to subvert the 2020 election.The vote was 6 to 3, dividing along partisan lines.Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, said Mr. Trump had immunity for his official acts.“The president is not above the law,” the chief justice wrote. “But Congress may not criminalize the president’s conduct in carrying out the responsibilities of the executive branch under the Constitution. And the system of separated powers designed by the Framers has always demanded an energetic, independent executive. The president therefore may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled, at a minimum, to a presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts.”In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the decision was gravely misguided.“Today’s decision to grant former presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the presidency,” she wrote. “It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of government, that no man is above the law.”The justices said there was a crucial distinction between official and private conduct and returned the case to the lower courts for additional analysis.The court’s ruling raises the possibility of further delay in the case against former President Donald J. Trump on charges of plotting to subvert the 2020 election.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

President Biden’s top campaign official is scheduled to hold a crucial call on Monday to convince donors that the president can beat former President Donald J. Trump.President Biden’s top campaign official is scheduled to hold a crucial conference call with donors on Monday to try to convince them that Mr. Biden can still win the race against former President Donald J. Trump.The call with the national finance committee, scheduled hastily on Sunday, is the Biden campaign’s most formal attempt yet to tamp down panic within the ranks of major donors since Thursday’s debate.Some individual donors have received direct communication from campaign officials, and Biden fund-raisers say communication picked up over the weekend, according to people close to the conversations. The call on Monday is to be hosted by Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, the campaign chair.Preserving the donor base will be critical to the president’s argument for staying in the race, many of Mr. Biden’s allies have acknowledged.Mr. Biden huddled out of sight at Camp David on Monday morning as his team remained defiant, promising that he will stay in the race despite last week’s debacle. He plans to return to the White House on Monday evening.Family members and friends spent the weekend urging Mr. Biden to keep fighting, even as some Democrats and others called on him to step aside. At the White House and the campaign, aides tried to press forward as usual, putting out news releases on student loans and the president’s overtime policies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The recording will be his last for four months, but the longtime adviser to Donald J. Trump has no intention of surrendering his influence.Immediately before reporting for a four-month sentence in federal prison on Monday, Stephen K. Bannon, the longtime adviser to former President Donald J. Trump, will host the two final hours of his podcast from just outside the low-security facility in Danbury, Conn.“We’ll be as close to the prison as we can possibly get,” said Mr. Bannon in a high-spirited interview over the weekend. And when the taping, which he cast as an unsubtle troll pointed at the Justice Department, is concluded, “I’ll walk across the street and surrender.”Mr. Bannon on Friday lost his last-ditch bid to avoid incarceration, after the Supreme Court denied a request to postpone the sentence while he appealed a jury verdict that found him guilty of contempt for ignoring a congressional subpoena. As a result, the very public figure will remain out of view — and off the air — until just a few days before the Nov. 5 election.But the right wing firebrand insists that swapping his studio mic for a prison job, and his trademark double-collared shirts for government khakis, will have little impact on his influential “War Room” podcast. In fact, he claims, it will “only get bigger and more powerful” while he’s in custody.He has prepared for this moment for months, Mr. Bannon said, enlisting a team of nearly 20 guest hosts to continue pumping out the show, which streams its distinctive stew of unvaryingly pro-Trump political patter for four hours a day, Monday through Friday, plus two additional hours on Saturdays.That group includes Andrew Giuliani, the son of Mr. Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani; Mr. Bannon’s daughter, Maureen; Noor bin Laden, the niece of Osama bin Laden, who is known for her belief in conspiracy theories; and Jeffrey Clark, who served in the Justice Department under Mr. Trump and faces criminal charges in Georgia in connection with efforts to overturn Mr. Trump’s 2020 election loss there. They’ll be responsible for managing the stream of Republican politicians, consultants, media figures, pollsters, policy wonks, donors, intellectuals and economists who use “War Room” as a bullhorn aimed directly at what is arguably Mr. Trump’s most loyal and engaged base of support.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

To accommodate a broad and diverse alliance of parties, President Cyril Ramaphosa increased the size of his executive team. Now the challenge is getting a diverse group of politicians to agree.After South Africa’s president announced the largest cabinet in the nation’s democratic history on Sunday, some critics were questioning whether the attempt to pacify diverse political interests would complicate efforts to tackle the country’s myriad economic and social problems.President Cyril Ramaphosa had for years promised to shrink the size of government — partly because of demands by the public and political opponents. But with his party, the African National Congress, having failed in the recent election to secure an absolute majority in Parliament for the first time since the end of apartheid 30 years ago, he has had to incorporate a broad coalition of parties in his executive.He increased the number of cabinet ministers to 32 from 30, and the number of deputy ministers to 43 from 36. The combined 75 ministers and deputy ministers is the most in any administration since the first democratic election in 1994. Now comes the challenge of bringing together this diverse array of politicians to form a coherent policy agenda for a nation struggling with high unemployment, entrenched poverty and the shoddy delivery of basic services.“So every political party had a thorough critique of an unnecessarily bloated cabinet up until the choice was between a bloated executive or their party member not receiving” a position, Moshibudi Motimele, a political studies lecturer at the University of the Free State in South Africa, wrote on social media.“I repeat,” she added, “the politics being played here is about power and positions and absolutely nothing to do with people and policy.”But Mr. Ramaphosa and the leader of the second-largest party, the Democratic Alliance, have insisted that the executive formed out of about a month of negotiations following the election in May will work together to set South Africa on the right path.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The justices returned both cases, which concerned state laws that supporters said were aimed at “Silicon Valley censorship,” to lower courts. Critics had said the laws violated the sites’ First Amendment rights.The Supreme Court on Monday avoided a definitive resolution of challenges to laws in Florida and Texas that curb the power of social media companies to moderate content, leaving in limbo an effort by Republicans who have promoted such legislation to remedy what they say is a bias against conservatives.Instead, the justices unanimously agreed to return the cases to lower courts for analysis. In the majority opinion, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that neither lower appeals court had properly analyzed the First Amendment challenges to the Florida and Texas laws.The laws were prompted in part by the decisions of some platforms to bar President Donald J. Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.Supporters of the laws said they were an attempt to combat what they called Silicon Valley censorship. The laws, they added, fostered free speech, giving the public access to all points of view.Opponents said the laws trampled on the platforms’ own First Amendment rights and would turn them into cesspools of filth, hate and lies.The two laws differ in their details. Florida’s prevents the platforms from permanently barring candidates for political office in the state, while Texas’ prohibits the platforms from removing any content based on a user’s viewpoint.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

10
TRUMP v. UNITED STATES
Opinion of the Court
person who alone composes a branch of government,”
Trump v. Mazars USA, LLP, 591 U. S. 848, 868 (2020). The
Framers “sought to encourage energetic, vigorous, decisive,
and speedy execution of the laws by placing in the hands of
a single, constitutionally indispensable, individual the ulti-
mate authority that, in respect to the other branches, the
Constitution divides among many.” Clinton v. Jones, 520
U. S. 681, 712 (1997) (Breyer, J., concurring in judgment).
They “deemed an energetic executive essential to ‘the pro-
tection of the community against foreign attacks,’ ‘the
steady administration of the laws,’ ‘the protection of prop-
erty,’ and ‘the security of liberty.”” Seila Law, 591 U. S., at
223-224 (quoting The Federalist No. 70, p. 471 (J. Cooke
ed. 1961) (A. Hamilton)). The purpose of a “vigorous” and
“energetic” Executive, they thought, was to ensure “good
government,” for a “feeble executive implies a feeble execu-
tion of the government.” Id., at 471–472.
The Framers accordingly vested the President with “su-
pervisory and policy responsibilities of utmost discretion
and sensitivity.” Fitzgerald, 457 U. S., at 750. He must
make “the most sensitive and far-reaching decisions en-
trusted to any official under our constitutional system.” Id.,
at 752. There accordingly “exists the greatest public inter-
est” in providing the President with “the maximum ability
to deal fearlessly and impartially with’ the duties of his of-
fice.” Ibid. (quoting Ferri v. Ackerman, 444 U. S. 193, 203
(1979)). Appreciating the “unique risks to the effective
functioning of government” that arise when the President’s
energies are diverted by proceedings that might render him
“unduly cautious in the discharge of his official duties,” we
have recognized Presidential immunities and privileges
“rooted in the constitutional tradition of the separation of
powers and supported by our history.” Fitzgerald, 457
U. S., at 749, 751, 752, n. 32.
In Nixon v. Fitzgerald, for instance, we recognized that
as “a functionally mandated incident of [his] unique office,” More

His second album, “God Said No,” delves into a breakup with all its complications, transformed into pensive alt-R&B.A failing romance can spark enduring breakup songs. Consider Taylor Swift, Shakira, Bob Dylan, Beck, Joni Mitchell, Björk, Fleetwood Mac and, now, Omar Apollo, with his second full-length album, “God Said No.”Apollo, 27, was born and grew up in Indiana, the son of immigrant parents — his given last name is Velasco — who shared their Mexican traditions with him. He emerged on SoundCloud in the late 2010s as an alt-R&B songwriter with echoes of Prince, hip-hop and indie-rock, singing largely in English and occasionally in Spanish. Apollo’s full-length debut album in 2022, “Ivory,” gave him a TikTok-powered, platinum-certified hit: “Evergreen (You Didn’t Deserve Me at All),” a self-questioning ballad with echoes of the 1950s and electronic overtones.“God Said No” plunges more deeply into the raw, unsettled, often contradictory emotions of a crumbling relationship. Apollo sings about sorrow, regret, doubt and disbelief, along with bitterness, anger and lingering desire. It’s not a clean break with one side to blame; it’s far more complicated.Teo Halm, one of Apollo’s co-producers on “Evergreen,” is an executive producer (with Apollo) on “God Said No,” which retains and expands that song’s pensive mood. Most of the new album sounds deliberately modest, verging on low-fi. Its tone suggests troubled thoughts and uncomfortable conversations, small-scale and introspective — seemingly private, not overtly theatrical.One model for “God Said No” is probably Frank Ocean’s 2016 “Blonde,” another heartbreak album awash in vulnerability; Apollo’s reedy tenor often resembles Ocean’s voice. On “God Said No,” the guitars and keyboards are tamped down and reticent; drumbeats are present but not pushy. Even when the production deploys strings, horns or Apollo’s own backup vocal harmonies, they’re subdued and distant, more like apparitions than reinforcements.The partial exception is “Less of You,” a metronomic synth-pop track that harks back to Giorgio Moroder (along with some Daft Punk-style filtered and harmonized vocals), with Apollo wondering, “Was last night the end of me and you?” Even with a blippy hook and a chorus that shifts into a major key, Apollo sounds increasingly alone and forlorn.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

The ruling could amplify the impact of a separate decision overturning the Chevron doctrine, which had required courts to defer to executive agencies’ interpretations of statutes.The Supreme Court on Monday gave companies more time to challenge many regulations, ruling that a six-year statute of limitations for filing lawsuits begins to run when a regulation first affects a company rather than when it is first issued.The case was one of several this term challenging the power of executive agencies, and the ruling could amplify the effect of a blockbuster decision last week overturning a foundational doctrine known as Chevron deference.The vote was 6 to 3, along ideological lines.In dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that the decision, along with the case on Chevron, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, was part of an assault on the power of administrative agencies.“At the end of a momentous term,” she wrote, “this much is clear: The tsunami of lawsuits against agencies that the court’s holdings in this case and Loper Bright have authorized has the potential to devastate the functioning of the federal government.”The case on time limits, Corner Post v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, No. 22-1008, arose from a challenge to a 2011 regulation of debit-card swipe fees brought by two trade associations in 2021. After the government moved to dismiss the case on statute of limitations grounds, the associations added a third plaintiff: Corner Post, a truck stop and convenience store in Watford City, N.D., that had opened for business in 2018.The amended suit said Corner Post could not have sued within the six-year period after the issuance of the regulation because it did not yet exist. It said the six-year clock should have started running when the regulation first affected the company.Lower courts disagreed, dismissing the case.When the case was argued in February, Justice Elena Kagan asked a government lawyer how important a decision extending the statute of limitations would be if the court overruled a seminal administrative-law decision, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council. The decision established the Chevron doctrine, which required federal courts to defer to agencies’ reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutes.“Has the Justice Department and the agencies considered whether there is any interaction between these two challenges?” Justice Kagan asked.The lawyer, Benjamin W. Snyder, responded, “I want to be careful here.”Then he added that the consequences could be enormous. “I think what I’d say is that a decision for petitioner here would magnify the effect of any other decisions changing the way that this court or other courts have approached administrative law questions,” he said, “because it would potentially mean that those changes would then be applied retroactively to every regulation that an agency has adopted in the last, I don’t know, 75 years or something.”In a Supreme Court brief, the government wrote that the challengers’ approach “would allow a far broader set of potential plaintiffs to pursue belated challenges to agency regulations.” More