Elections

I can’t remember when I’ve been more disturbed by a criminal trial than I have been by the Manhattan trial of Donald Trump. The prosecutors are painting a vivid picture of Trump as a vile and dishonest person, and the daily pilgrimages of Republican politicians to the Manhattan courthouse, in spite of horrific testimony against Trump, demonstrates that the party has a broken soul.At the same time, the underlying legal theory supporting the prosecution’s case remains dubious. The facts may be clear, but the law is anything but — and that could very well mean that the jury convicts Trump before the election, an appeals court reverses the conviction after the election, and millions of Americans, many of them non-MAGA, face yet another crisis of confidence in American institutions.Let’s first discuss the dreadful facts. Stormy Daniels’s testimony crystallized, better than that of any other witness, the prosecution’s theory that Trump ordered Michael Cohen to pay off Daniels to save his campaign and then fraudulently disguised the reimbursements. It helped answer a key question: Why would a known playboy, a person who has boasted of his affairs with his friends’ wives, suddenly be so keen to suppress details of his encounter with a porn star?Consider the timeline. On Oct. 7, 2016, the “Access Hollywood” story broke. The Washington Post released the infamous recording in which Trump told Billy Bush, one of the show’s hosts, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” Trump went on, saying he could grab women by the genitals. “You can do anything.”The next day, a representative for Daniels told The National Enquirer that Daniels was willing to talk on the record about her encounter with Trump. We now know from Daniels’s sworn testimony that her story was going to essentially affirm the “Access Hollywood” tape. Trump used his star power to draw in Daniels and then exploited her.At trial, she did not testify to a frivolous or joyful encounter with Trump; she testified to something far more distressing. He invited her to his hotel room, and after she went to the bathroom, she walked out to find Trump on the bed in just his boxers and a T-shirt. She did not claim he forced himself on her, but she said she left “shaking” and testified that she was ashamed.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

It’s not Joe Biden’s poll numbers that worry me, exactly. It’s the denial of what’s behind them.Among likely voters, Biden is trailing Donald Trump by one point in Wisconsin and three points in Pennsylvania. He’s ahead by a point in Michigan. Sweeping those three states is one route to re-election, and they’re within reach.Still, Biden is losing to Trump. His path is narrowing. In 2020, Biden didn’t just win Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He also won Arizona, Georgia and Nevada. Now he’s behind in those states by six points, nine points and 13 points in the latest Times/Siena/Philadelphia Inquirer poll. Have those states turned red? No. That same poll finds Democrats leading in the Arizona and Nevada Senate races. The Democrats are also leading in the Senate races in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.National polls find Democrats slightly ahead of Republicans for control of congress. The “Never Biden” vote now looks larger than the “Never Trump” vote. The electorate hasn’t turned on Democrats; a crucial group of voters has turned on Biden.This week, the Biden team appeared to shake up the race by challenging Trump to two debates. One will take place early, on June 27. The other will be in September. Biden’s video was full of bluster. “Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020,” he said. “Since then, he hasn’t shown up for a debate. Now he’s acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal. I’ll even do it twice.”Biden, it seemed, was calling Trump’s bluff. He wanted the fight. But Biden wants fewer debates, not more. On the same day, he pulled out of the three debates scheduled by the Commission on Presidential Debates for September and October. He rebuffed the Trump campaign’s call for four debates. “I’ll even do it twice” is misdirection. He’ll only do it twice.This is bad precedent and questionable politics. Debates do more to focus and inform the public than anything else during the campaign. Biden is cutting the number of debates by a third and he’s making it easier for future candidates to abandon debates altogether.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

Adrienne Hurst and Tanya Pérez and Sophia Lanman and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | SpotifyHave you heard the song “Brett Martin, You a Nice Man, Yes”?Probably not. On Spotify, “Brett Martin, You a Nice Man, Yes” has not yet accumulated enough streams to even register a tally. Even Brett Martin, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and the titular Nice Man, didn’t hear the 1 minute 14 second song until last summer, a full 11 years after it was uploaded by an artist credited as Papa Razzi and the Photogs.When Martin stumbled on “Brett Martin, You a Nice Man, Yes,” he naturally assumed it was about a different, more famous Brett Martin: perhaps Brett Martin, the left-handed reliever who until recently played for the Texas Rangers; or Brett Martin, the legendary Australian squash player; or even Clara Brett Martin, the Canadian who in 1897 became the British Empire’s first female lawyer. Only when the singer began referencing details of stories that he made for public radio’s “This American Life” almost 20 years ago did he realize the song was actually about him. The song ended, “I really like you/Will you be my friend?/Will you call me on the phone?” Then it gave a phone number, with a New Hampshire area code.So, he called.There are a lot of ways to listen to ‘The Daily.’ Here’s how.We want to hear from you. Tune in, and tell us what you think. Email us at [email protected]. Follow Michael Barbaro on X: @mikiebarb. And if you’re interested in advertising with The Daily, write to us at [email protected] production for The Sunday Read was contributed by Isabella Anderson, Anna Diamond, Sarah Diamond, Elena Hecht, Emma Kehlbeck, Tanya Pérez, Frannie Carr Toth and Krish Seenivasan. More

The northern town of Jabaliya had already come under fierce attacks from the Israeli military earlier in the war, killing many civilians and demolishing large parts of the suburb. So, as Israeli ground forces moved to other parts of the Gaza Strip and military strikes focused elsewhere, residents thought they had experienced their worst days.But last week, the Israeli military dropped leaflets again over Jabaliya, where tens of thousands of people are living, ordering them to leave as it prepared to launch a renewed offensive.“When the Israelis dropped the leaflets, people were terrified, especially given what they experienced previously,” said Iman Abu Jalhum, 23, who graduated from medical school two months before the war began and has been volunteering in hospitals treating the wounded. “We thought given that we have already been attacked that we were safe; the Israelis have already been here.”Soon after the leaflets dropped, so too did the bombs, she said. Ms. Abu Jalhum, her 16-year-old sister and her parents fled their home under bombardment. She only had time to throw a few items of clothing into a bag and put on her prayer shawl.Her father, who has back issues, struggled to walk along the road. Eventually, they found a donkey cart to take him the rest of the way, a few miles south.Israel said it had renewed the offensive in Jabaliya on May 11 because Hamas was trying to reassemble its infrastructure and operatives in the area. Hamas accused Israel of “escalating its aggression against civilians all across Gaza” and vowed to continue fighting. 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

El presidente Luis Abinader llega a las elecciones de este domingo como el claro favorito, impulsado por políticas migratorias nativistas, una economía fuerte y un esfuerzo anticorrupción.Este año, República Dominicana está deportando decenas de miles de personas de Haití, a pesar de las peticiones de las Naciones Unidas de que no lo hagan, mientras los migrantes huyen de una anarquía impulsada por bandas criminales. El presidente dominicano, Luis Abinader, está incluso aplicando medidas adicionales, como la construcción de un muro fronterizo entre las dos naciones que comparten la isla caribeña La Española.Los votantes dominicanos acudirán a las urnas este domingo para unas elecciones generales y las políticas migratorias severas, junto con un impulso anticorrupción y un crecimiento del turismo, han convertido a Abinader, quien busca un segundo mandato, en el claro favorito.Las elecciones dejan en evidencia cómo República Dominicana, con una de las economías más sólidas de América Latina, se diferencia de otros países de la región, donde muchos líderes que llegaron al poder en el mismo periodo que Abinader tienen índices de aprobación sombríos.El uso por parte de Abinader de restricciones polémicas contra los migrantes haitianos también deja en evidencia un enfoque de mano dura hacia la migración que convierte a República Dominicana en un escenario atípico en la región.“Estas sin duda no son unas elecciones de ‘cambio’, como lo han sido muchas otras en América Latina recientemente”, dijo Michael Shifter, miembro de Diálogo Interamericano, una organización de investigación con sede en Washington.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

Former President Donald J. Trump, accepting the endorsement of the National Rifle Association on Saturday, cast himself as a powerful ally for gun owners and gun businesses, contending that under President Biden the right to bear arms was “under siege.”“If the Biden regime gets four more years, they are coming for your guns,” Mr. Trump said in Dallas, where he headlined the N.R.A.’s annual meeting.Mr. Trump addressed the group as he is on trial in Manhattan on criminal charges that he falsified business records related to a hush-money payment to a porn star. Onstage in Dallas, he contended that he knew “better than anybody” what it was like to have rights taken away.“In my second term, we will roll back every Biden attack on the Second Amendment,” he said to loud applause.The annual gun rights gathering appeared far more muted than the last time Mr. Trump attended it, in 2022, in Houston, just days after the mass shooting of 19 children and two adults at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Greg Abbott, the state’s governor, and John Cornyn, its senior senator, did not attend that year’s convention, citing other commitments. Several marquee musical performers pulled their participation out of respect, they said, for the victims and their families.The N.R.A., the nation’s most prominent gun rights group and once a potent political force, has found itself in a hobbled state. In recent years, it has shed members and been besieged by setbacks, defections and internal strife. In February, a Manhattan jury ruled that its leaders had engaged in a yearslong pattern of financial misconduct and corruption.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

Ms. Stewart had appeared on CNN as a conservative commentator since the 2016 presidential race. A seasoned political strategist, she also had worked for Republican presidential candidates.Alice Stewart, a Republican strategist and political commentator on CNN, has died. She was 58.Her death was announced by CNN. The company said the police found Ms. Stewart’s body outdoors in Northern Virginia early Saturday morning. The authorities believe she had a medical emergency.Mark Thompson, CNN’s chief executive, described her in an email to staff members as “a political veteran and an Emmy Award-winning journalist who brought an incomparable spark to CNN’s coverage” and who was known not just “for her political savvy, but for her unwavering kindness,” CNN reported.Ms. Stewart had appeared on the cable news outlet as a conservative commentator since the 2016 presidential race. Before that, Ms. Stewart had worked on several Republican presidential campaigns.She was the communications director for the 2008 presidential campaign of Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, and went on to serve in similar roles for Republican candidates in two following elections, including Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Ted Cruz, according to her LinkedIn profile.Ms. Stewart served as the deputy secretary of state in Arkansas, according to the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, where she was a fellow in 2020. She had also done work for the Republican Party and conservative organizations.At CNN, Ms. Stewart viewed herself as a faithful promoter of conservatism while the Republican Party reshaped itself under the leadership of former President Donald J. Trump.“I don’t think everything that he does is great, and I don’t think everything that he does is bad,” Ms. Stewart said of Mr. Trump in a 2020 interview with Harvard Political Review. “My position at CNN is to be a conservative voice yet an independent thinker.”In an opinion piece published on CNN last year, Ms. Stewart asked Republican voters to reconsider their unconditional support for Mr. Trump’s 2024 election bid given the various criminal charges he faces.“This is a campaign about self-preservation, not selfless public service,” Ms. Stewart wrote. “I’m not convinced that’s how you Make America Great Again.”Ms. Stewart had experience presenting ideas on live television long before she joined CNN.Before transitioning to politics in 2005 with a job as press secretary in the administration of Mr. Huckabee, Ms. Stewart was a news anchor and reporter for seven years at an NBC television affiliate in Little Rock, Ark., according to LinkedIn.“I loved covering politics. I loved courts. I loved breaking news,” Ms. Stewart said in a 2020 interview with Harvard International Review. “But, several years ago, I just realized that there might be something different for me to do.”Ms. Stewart was born on March 11, 1966, in Atlanta, according to CNN. She earned a degree in broadcast news and political science from the University of Georgia, according to Harvard International Review.Ms. Stewart last appeared on CNN on Friday on “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer,” CNN said.A list of survivors was not immediately available. More

President Biden declared on Saturday that his challenger, former President Donald J. Trump, represented an “unhinged” threat to the future of the country and asked Black voters at two campaign events in Atlanta to see the election as a choice between protecting democracy and letting it backslide.This message was a preview of sorts for a speech he was scheduled to deliver on Sunday at Morehouse College, an all-male, historically Black institution whose students, alumni and faculty had been divided over inviting Mr. Biden as the war in Gaza continues.Mr. Biden laid out his argument to a powerful slice of the electorate that has been drifting away from him during a campaign reception on Saturday afternoon: “We cannot let this man become president. We have to win this race, not for me but for America.”For months, the president has tried to define Mr. Trump as an unstable force whose second term would be about exacting revenge on his enemies. But despite trying to present himself as a guardian of the international order and politics as usual, Mr. Biden has low approval ratings and is trailing Mr. Trump in several battleground states including Georgia, according to recent polls.The strategy in Georgia this weekend seemed to be to take his own political brand out of the equation, asking key voters to instead consider what could happen if Mr. Trump wins.“He’s clearly unhinged,” Mr. Biden said while talking about a recent interview granted by the former president. “Buy Time magazine this week. Take a look at what he has said. He said, ‘A lot of people liked it when I said I would be a dictator on Day 1.’”Earlier in the day, Mr. Biden also took a swipe at the recent polling. “You hear about how, you know, we’re behind in the polls,” he said. “So far the polls haven’t been right once. We’re either tied or slightly ahead or slightly behind, but what I look at is actual election results and election results are in the primaries.”He added that Nikki Haley, who is no longer in the race, peeled away votes from Trump in several primary elections.“It’s not about me,” Mr. Biden told a group of supporters, including several Morehouse graduates, gathered at a popular restaurant in Atlanta. “It’s about the alternative as well.” More