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      The Trump Threat Is Growing. Lawyers Must Rise to Meet This Moment.

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      American democracy, the Constitution and the rule of law are the righteous causes of our times, and the nation’s legal profession is obligated to support them. But with the acquiescence of the larger conservative legal movement, these pillars of our system of governance are increasingly in peril. The dangers will only grow should Donald Trump be returned to the White House next November.Recent reporting about plans for a second Trump presidency are frightening. He would stock his administration with partisan loyalists committed to fast-tracking his agenda and sidestepping — if not circumventing altogether — existing laws and long-established legal norms. This would include appointing to high public office political appointees to rubber-stamp his plans to investigate and exact retribution against his political opponents; make federal public servants removable at will by the president himself; and invoke special powers to take unilateral action on First Amendment-protected activities, criminal justice, elections, immigration and more.We have seen him try this before, though fortunately he was thwarted — he would say “betrayed”— by executive branch lawyers and by judges who refused to go along with his more draconian and often unlawful policies and his effort to remain in office after being cast out by voters. But should Mr. Trump return to the White House, he will arrive with a coterie of lawyers and advisers who, like him, are determined not to be thwarted again.The Federalist Society, long the standard-bearer for the conservative legal movement, has failed to respond in this period of crisis.That is why we need an organization of conservative lawyers committed to the foundational constitutional principles we once all agreed upon: the primacy of American democracy, the sanctity of the Constitution and the rule of law, the independence of the courts, the inviolability of elections and mutual support among those tasked with the solemn responsibility of enforcing the laws of the United States. This new organization must step up, speak out and defend these ideals.Leaders of the legal profession should be asking themselves, “What role did we play in creating this ongoing legal emergency?” But so far, there has been no such post-mortem reflection, and none appears on the horizon. Many lawyers who served in the last administration — and many on the outside who occupy positions of influence within the conservative legal community — have instead stood largely silent, assenting to the recent assaults on America’s fragile democracy.We were members of the Federalist Society or followed the organization early in our careers. Created in response to left-liberal domination of the courts, it served a principled role, connecting young lawyers with one another and with career opportunities, promoting constitutional scholarship and ultimately providing candidates for the federal bench and Supreme Court.But the Federalist Society has conspicuously declined to speak out against the constitutional and other legal excesses of Mr. Trump and his administration. Most notably, it has failed to reckon with his effort to overturn the last presidential election and his continued denial that he lost that election. When White House lawyers are inventing cockamamie theories to stop the peaceful transition of power and copping pleas to avoid jail time, it’s clear we in the legal profession have come to a crisis point.We are thankful that there were lawyers in the Trump administration who opted to resign or be fired rather than advance his flagrantly unconstitutional schemes. They should be lauded.But these exceptions were notably few and far between. More alarming is the growing crowd of grifters, frauds and con men willing to subvert the Constitution and long-established constitutional principles for the whims of political expediency. The actions of these conservative Republican lawyers are increasingly becoming the new normal. For a group of lawyers sworn to uphold the Constitution, this is an indictment of the nation’s legal profession. Any legal movement that could foment such a constitutional abdication and attract a sufficient number of lawyers willing to advocate its unlawful causes is ripe for a major reckoning.We must rebuild a conservative legal movement that supports and defends American democracy, the Constitution and the rule of law and that incentivizes and promotes those lawyers who are prepared to do the same. To that end, we have formed a nonprofit organization, the Society for the Rule of Law Institute, to bring sanity back to conservative lawyering and jurisprudence.There is a need and demand for this new legal movement that the legal profession can readily meet. Pro-democracy, pro-rule-of-law lawyers who populate our law school campuses, law firms and the courts decry what is happening in our profession. They deserve an outlet to productively channel these sentiments.Originally formed in 2018 as Checks & Balances during what we took to be the height of Mr. Trump’s threat to the rule of law, the organization spoke out against his transgressions. Since then, the legal landscape has deteriorated to a degree we failed to imagine, with Mr. Trump and his allies explicitly threatening to upend fundamental tenets of the American constitutional system if returned to power.We believe it is necessary to build a legal movement with the capability to recruit and engage dues-paying members, file legal briefs, provide mentorship and career opportunities, convene supporters and speak out as vocally and forthrightly as is necessary to meet the urgency that this moment requires.First and foremost, this movement will work to inspire young legal talent and connect them with professional opportunities that will enable them to fulfill their vast potential without having to compromise their convictions.Second, the movement will focus on building a large body of scholarship to counteract the new orthodoxy of anti-constitutional and anti-democratic law being churned out by the fever swamps. The Constitution cannot defend itself; lawyers and legal scholars must. Conservative scholars like the former federal appellate judges Michael McConnell and Thomas Griffith and the law professor Keith Whittington, who joins Yale from Princeton next year, are models for a new and more responsible conservative legal movement.Third and most important, we will marshal principled voices to speak out against the endless stream of falsehoods and authoritarian legal theories that are being propagated almost daily. To do otherwise would be to cede the field to lawyers of bad faith. We have seen in recent years what the unchecked spread of wildly untrue and anti-democratic lies gets us. We lawyers have a gift for advocacy and persuasion; we must use it.While those in the pro-democracy legal community — many of them progressives — might disagree with our overall legal philosophy, we welcome them with open arms. We are at a point when commitment to fundamental classical liberal tenets of our republican form of government is far more important than partisan politics and political party — and even philosophical questions about the law. Our country comes first, and our country is in a constitutional emergency, if not a constitutional crisis. We all must act accordingly, especially us lawyers.The writers are lawyers. George Conway was in private practice. J. Michael Luttig was a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1991 to 2006. Barbara Comstock represented Virginia’s 10th District in Congress from 2015 to 2019. They serve on the board of the newly formed Society for the Rule of Law Institute, formerly called Checks & Balances.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: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Trump’s Credibility, Coherence and Control Face Test on Witness Stand

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      The former president will testify Monday in a trial that threatens the business empire that created his public persona. He will be out of his element and under oath.Donald J. Trump took the rally stage on a scorching August day in New Hampshire, a political shark, brazen and sly, as he ridiculed his legal opponents as “racist” and “deranged.”On Monday, the former president will come face-to-face with one of those opponents, but on a stage where he is far less comfortable.New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, will call Mr. Trump to the witness stand at his own civil fraud trial in Manhattan, where, under oath and under fire, the former president will try to convince a single skeptical judge — not a jury — that he did not inflate his net worth to defraud banks and insurers.Attorney General Letitia James has already won the central contention of the case, that the defendants committed fraud.Doug Mills/The New York TimesPrivately, Mr. Trump has told advisers that he is not concerned about his time on the stand. He held preparation sessions when he was in New York attending the trial and will again over the weekend before he makes his appearance after court begins on Monday morning, according to people briefed on the matter.The former president believes he can fight or talk his way out of most situations. Frequent visits to the courtroom have also given Mr. Trump familiarity with the unwieldy proceeding, where he projects control, often whispering in his lawyers’ ears, prompting their objections to the attorney general’s questions.Yet Mr. Trump is deeply, personally enraged by this trial — and by the fact that his children have had to testify, several people who have spoken with him said — and he may not be able to restrain himself on the stand.The testimony will push Mr. Trump far outside his comfort zone of social media and the rally stage, where he is a master of mockery, a no-holds barred flamethrower who relishes most opportunities to attack foes. He leveraged that persona during his days as a tabloid businessman and fixture of New York’s tabloids and found that it worked just as well in the 2016 presidential race. He has since taken control of the Republican Party, and his style has become a defining influence in contemporary politics.The witness stand is a different venue. It’s a seat that requires care and control, where lying is a crime and emotional outbursts can land you in contempt of court. Another risk during his time on the stand: Mr. Trump, 77, has been showing signs of strain and age on the campaign trail, mixing up the names of foreign leaders and at one point confusing which city he was in.The test of the former president’s credibility, coherence and self-control could supply his opponents with ammunition on the campaign trail, where Mr. Trump is the leading Republican contender for the White House.Along with the civil fraud trial, Mr. Trump faces four criminal indictments from prosecutors up and down the East Coast. While the varied legal woes present a costly distraction in the midst of his third White House run, Mr. Trump has managed to bring the campaign trail to the courthouse, where he casts himself as a political martyr under attack from Democrats like Ms. James.Mr. Trump, of course, is no stranger to the courtroom. He has taken the witness stand in at least two other civil trials, most recently a decade ago, in a Chicago case related to his property there. He was cranky and sometimes combative, but ultimately won.Justice Arthur F. Engoron has barred the former president from commenting on court staff and fined him $15,000.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesDuring a long and litigious career, he has also testified under oath in numerous depositions — more than 100 by his own estimate — and he has made it something of a sport to spar with his interrogators. His spontaneity under oath may have cost him: He has lost several lawsuits, and his depositions have often been used against him.A trial is far weightier than a deposition, and it takes place in a more controlled environment. Mr. Trump’s lawyers have long highlighted for him the perils of speaking under oath to those seeking to hold him to account. Mr. Trump, eschewing his instinct to talk and bully his way out of a problem, has chosen silence when the legal stakes are highest.He declined to appear before a Manhattan grand jury that ultimately indicted him on charges related to a hush-money deal with a porn star. He rejected an interview with a special counsel investigating his campaign’s ties to Russia, submitting written responses instead. And he initially invoked his right against self-incrimination rather than answer Ms. James’s questions about his net worth.He eventually had a change of heart in the attorney general’s case, answering questions under oath in a deposition this spring. Although he could have continued to invoke his constitutional right not to testify, he had a strong incentive to talk: In a civil case, a jury or judge is allowed to draw negative conclusions from a defendant’s refusal to testify. Doing so would have almost certainly spelled doom for his defense and further exposed him to the harshest of the penalties that Ms. James is asking for, including a $250 million fine.Still, his testimony at trial is unlikely to do him much good.Mr. Trump got off on the wrong foot with the judge, Arthur F. Engoron, who will decide the outcome of the trial. Justice Engoron barred the former president from commenting on court staff after Mr. Trump criticized the judge’s law clerk, and already fined him $15,000 for twice violating the order.At one point, Justice Engoron summoned Mr. Trump to the witness stand to determine whether he had broken the rule. After three minutes, the judge concluded the former president’s statements in his own defense were “hollow and untrue.”Even before the trial, the judge ruled that the former president had persistently committed fraud. What is left to be determined is any penalty Mr. Trump might have to pay and whether he will be banished from the world of New York real estate that made him famous.At the heart of Ms. James’s case is the accusation that Mr. Trump, his adult sons and their family business manipulated the former president’s net worth on annual financial statements. Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, submitted the statements to banks, duping them into issuing favorable loans, Ms. James says.Last week, Mr. Trump’s elder sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr., took the stand, seeking to shift blame for the financial statements onto others, including the company’s external accountants.When Donald Trump Jr. was shown a message he had sent to the accountants that certified that the statements were accurate, he referred to it dismissively as a “cover-your-butt letter.”And Eric Trump was defiant when asked whether he had intended to tell lenders the truth about the value of the family’s assets. He certainly had, he said, adding, “I think my father’s net worth is far higher than that number.”Eric Trump, the former president’s son, was among three of his children who will testify in the case.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesThe former president’s testimony is expected to follow the pattern set out in his deposition in April: He is likely to insist that there was a disclaimer on the financial statements — which he refers to as a “worthless” clause — that made it clear that banks should do their own due diligence. He will also probably cling to the principle that real estate valuations are an art, not a science.“Many lawyers have come to me and said, ‘You have the greatest worthless clause I’ve ever seen,’” Mr. Trump said in the deposition. “‘How can they be using this statement against you?’”Mr. Trump’s obsession with his wealth is a defining feature of his celebrity. He once posed as one of his own aides to claim a higher net worth to a Forbes magazine reporter helping assemble the publication’s famous annual list of the wealthy, according to the reporter who took the call.He used the image of an enormously rich titan of industry — despite a relatively small portfolio compared with New York’s largest developers — to sell his book “The Art of the Deal” in 1987. That ghostwritten portrait was the basis for putting Mr. Trump on the reality television show “The Apprentice,” which enhanced his fame and forged a durable national identity that propelled his run for president in 2015.The questions he’ll face on the stand threaten the heart of that identity.But this is not the first case to tackle Mr. Trump’s exaggerations of wealth. In 2006, Mr. Trump sued the journalist Timothy L. O’Brien for writing a book that cast doubt on his net worth, and in a deposition, Mr. Trump made damaging admissions, including that his net worth “can vary actually from day to day,” and that he determined it by gauging “my general attitude at the time.”“Have you ever exaggerated in statements about your properties?” Mr. O’Brien’s lawyer asked him.“I think everyone does,” Mr. Trump replied.A judge later dismissed Mr. Trump’s lawsuit. More

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      Jenna Ellis Could Become a Star Witness Against Trump

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      When Jenna Ellis last week became the most recent lawyer to join in an accelerating series of guilty pleas in the Fulton County, Ga., prosecution of Donald Trump and his co-conspirators, she offered a powerful repudiation of the “Big Lie” that could potentially cut the legs out from under Donald Trump’s defense, make her a star witness for prosecutors and a potent weapon against the former president’s political ambitions.Ms. Ellis admitted that the allegations of election fraud she peddled as an advocate for the effort to overturn the 2020 election were false. Two other plea deals, from Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, have been important, but Ms. Ellis is in a unique position to aid prosecutors in the Georgia case and possibly even the parallel federal one — as well as Mr. Trump’s opponents in the court of public opinion.Ms. Ellis pleaded guilty to a felony count of aiding and abetting the false statements made by co-defendants (including Rudy Giuliani) to the Georgia Senate about supposed voting fraud in the 2020 presidential election. These included that “10,315 or more dead people voted” in Georgia, “at least 96,000 mail-in ballots were counted” erroneously and “2,506 felons voted illegally.”These lies were at the cutting edge of Mr. Trump’s assault on the election. Both the state and federal criminal prosecutions allege that Mr. Trump and his co-conspirators knowingly deployed falsehoods like these in their schemes to overturn the election.Ms. Ellis emerged from her plea hearing as a likely star witness for prosecutors, starting with the one who secured her cooperation, the Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis. Unlike Mr. Chesebro and Ms. Powell, in pleading guilty Ms. Ellis spoke in detail about her “responsibilities as a lawyer.” Tearing up, she talked about the due diligence that “I did not do but should have done” and her “deep remorse for those failures of mine.” The judge, a tough former prosecutor, thanked her for sharing that and noted how unusual it was for a defendant to do so.Trials are about the evidence and the law. But they are also theater, and the jury is the audience. In this case, the jury is not the only audience — the Georgia trials will be televised, so many Americans will also be tuned in. Ms. Ellis is poised to be a potent weapon against Mr. Trump in the courtroom and on TVs.That is bad news for her former co-defendants — above all, Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Trump. Ms. Ellis was most closely associated with Mr. Giuliani, appearing by his side in Georgia and across the country. If her court appearance last week is any indication, she will be a compelling guide to his alleged misconduct. She will also add to what is known about it; she and Mr. Giuliani undoubtedly had many conversations that are not yet public and that will inform the jury. And because Mr. Giuliani was the senior lawyer on the case, her pointed statement that she was misled by attorneys “with many more years of experience” hits him directly.Ms. Ellis’s likely trial testimony will also hit Mr. Trump hard. She has now effectively repudiated his claims that he won the election — an argument that is expected to be a centerpiece of his trial defense. Coming from a formerly outspoken MAGA champion, her disagreement has the potential to resonate with jurors.It also builds on substantial other evidence against the former president, which includes voluminous witness testimony collected by the House Jan. 6 committee indicating that many advisers told him the election was not stolen — and that in private he repeatedly admitted as much.Ms. Ellis’s testimony may also compromise one of Mr. Trump’s main defenses. He has made clear he intends to claim he relied on advice of counsel. But that defense is available only if the lawyers are not part of the alleged crimes. Ms. Ellis’s plea puts her squarely within the conspiracy, as do those of Mr. Chesebro and Ms. Powell. That will hamper Mr. Trump’s effort to present a reliance-on-counsel defense.In comparing Ms. Ellis to the two other lawyers who pleaded guilty, it is also critical to note that she is promising full cooperation with Ms. Willis. Mr. Chesebro and Ms. Powell have important contributions to make to the prosecution, but they merely agreed to provide documents, preview their testimony and testify truthfully if called.Ms. Ellis took the additional step of also agreeing “to fully cooperate with prosecutors,” which could include doing interviews with prosecutors, “appearing for evidentiary hearings, and assisting in pretrial matters.”To our knowledge, Ms. Ellis is not yet cooperating with prosecutors in the federal case led by the special counsel Jack Smith, but if she does, she would have a comparative advantage for the prosecution over Mr. Chesebro and Ms. Powell: They are identified as unindicted co-conspirators in that case and would be more problematic for Mr. Smith to deal with. He may not, for example, be willing to immunize them should they assert their privilege against self-incrimination, since that would hamper prosecuting them. But because he has not named Ms. Ellis among Mr. Trump’s alleged federal co-conspirators, he may feel more free to extend immunity to secure her valuable testimony. (He has reportedly done just that with Mark Meadows, a former Trump White House chief of staff.)Ms. Ellis’s guilty plea may also have political reverberations. It is riveting to see a MAGA champion who helped lead the election assault tearfully admitting she and that effort misled the American people. Her court appearance was live-streamed and repeated in a loop on television and social media.Looking ahead in the Georgia case, the judge just got back the five months that he had set aside for the Chesebro and Powell trial. Even if Mr. Trump manages to postpone appearing before a Georgia jury during that window, the trial of other defendants could begin within it — and certainly during 2024. That means Ms. Ellis and other existing and potential witnesses against Mr. Trump will likely be critical not only in the legal arena, but the political one.With Mr. Trump showing no signs of backing down from his claims of 2020 election fraud and a new election upon us, Ms. Ellis’s plea — like the televised Jan. 6 committee testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, another Trump insider who turned on him with powerful effect — could be a potential turning point in the court of public opinion. When Mr. Trump’s lies are repeated in the future, in whatever venue, expect to see Ms. Ellis often.Norman Eisen was special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the first impeachment of Donald Trump. Amy Lee Copeland, a former federal prosecutor, is a criminal defense and appellate lawyer in Savannah, Ga.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: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Donald Trump Is Going to Get Someone Killed

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      Donald Trump’s life has been a master class in the evasion of consequences. Six of his businesses have declared bankruptcy but he is still acclaimed as a business visionary; he’s been married three times but is still beloved by evangelicals; he’s been impeached twice but still remains a leading candidate for president. For years, Mr. Trump’s critics have believed that a moment of accountability was just over the horizon, thanks to, say, a Bob Woodward takedown or a Robert Mueller investigation; disappointment followed.Now, Mr. Trump confronts another moment of apparent peril as he begins to face his accusers in criminal and civil court proceedings. The verdicts in these cases remain months away, but he is reacting in apparent confidence that the consequences of his actions will, as ever, turn out well for him. But it’s equally important to ask how Mr. Trump’s response to his latest predicament will affect others, especially those who are now targets of his wrath.Over the past two weeks, the judges in Mr. Trump’s civil fraud case in New York and his criminal prosecution in Washington have issued limited gag orders forbidding him from trying to intimidate witnesses and other participants in the trials. Mr. Trump is appealing at least one of the orders, but even if he abides by them, which is by no means certain, the directives do not prohibit the vast range of threats and attacks Mr. Trump has made and shows every sign of continuing to make. The former president’s current language represents an imminent threat to his rhetorical targets and those around them.Mr. Trump has always employed invective as a political tool, but as his days of courtroom reckoning have arrived, his rhetoric has grown more menacing. He’s suggested that Gen. Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, could have been executed; that shoplifters should be shot; that the judge’s clerk in the civil case against him is Sen. Chuck Schumer’s girlfriend; and that “you ought to go after” the state attorney general who is prosecuting him. In language evoking Nazi eugenics, he has accused immigrants of “poisoning the blood of our country.”Mr. Trump’s adversaries often look to the courts for relief, but there’s no remedy there for his tirades. The First Amendment protects all but the most explicit incitements to violence, so Mr. Trump has little reason to fear that prosecutors will bring charges against him for those remarks.The most notorious moment of Mr. Trump’s presidency also demonstrated the limits of relying on the courts as a meaningful check on his own provocations. In his speech on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021, Mr. Trump urged his supporters to “fight like hell,” and many did just that at the Capitol. But they paid a price, and he didn’t. In yet another example of Mr. Trump’s life without consequences, more than 1,000 people have been charged for their conduct on Jan. 6, and many if not most of them broke the law because they thought that’s what the president at the time wanted. Still, the special counsel Jack Smith refrained from charging Mr. Trump with inciting the violence, undoubtedly because of the Constitution’s broad protection for freedom of speech. Incitements like Mr. Trump’s, even if they are not crimes in themselves, can have dangerous consequences, as they did on Jan. 6.Angry people, especially those predisposed toward violence, can be set off by encouragement that falls well short of the legal standard for criminal incitement. To see the consequences of such constitutionally protected provocation, one need only look to the case of Timothy McVeigh, who set off the bomb at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people on April 19, 1995. More than a decade before the attack, when Mr. McVeigh was still in high school, he first read “The Turner Diaries,” a novel about a right-wing rebellion against the federal government. Earl Turner, the hero and narrator of the novel, ignites a civil war by setting off a truck bomb next to the F.B.I. building in Washington — the act that planted the idea for what Mr. McVeigh later did in Oklahoma City. But once Bill Clinton took office in 1993, McVeigh’s revulsion at the new president prompted him to move the idea from the back of his mind to a definite plan of attack.Mr. McVeigh was specifically outraged at the F.B.I.’s raid on the Branch Davidian complex, near Waco, Texas, which led to the death of 82 Branch Davidians and four federal agents and ended on April 19, 1993, and at Mr. Clinton’s signing of a ban on assault weapons, which took place the following year.Mr. McVeigh’s anger was boiling at a time of incendiary political language in the mid-1990s, when, for example, Newt Gingrich, who would go on to become speaker of the House in 1995, said: “People like me are what stand between us and Auschwitz. I see evil all around me every day.” In particular, on his long drives across the country, Mr. McVeigh became a dedicated listener to Rush Limbaugh, whose radio talk show was in its heyday. Mr. Limbaugh was saying things like, “The second violent American revolution is just about — I got my fingers about a quarter of an inch apart — is just about that far away.” Of course, all of this rhetoric, from the words of the novel to those of Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Limbaugh, was protected by the First Amendment.One person who understood the possible connection between the language on the airwaves and the violence it spawned was Mr. Clinton himself, who had seen repeated examples of extreme right-wing violence during his days as governor of Arkansas. In a speech shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing, Mr. Clinton said, “We hear so many loud and angry voices in America today whose sole goal seems to be to try to keep some people as paranoid as possible and the rest of us all torn up and upset with each other.” He went on: “They spread hate. They leave the impression that, by their very words, that violence is acceptable … I’m sure you are now seeing the reports of some things that are regularly said over the airwaves in America today. Well, people like that who want to share our freedoms must know that their bitter words can have consequences.” Then as now, from Mr. Limbaugh to Mr. Trump, the act of calling out their provocations produces the same cries of wounded innocence. In response to Mr. Clinton’s speech, Mr. Limbaugh denounced “irresponsible attempts to categorize and demonize those who had nothing to do with this. … There is absolutely no connection between these nuts and mainstream conservatism in America today.” Mr. Trump used the same rhetorical dodge regarding his responsibility for the violence he fomented on Jan. 6. In his answer to the report of the congressional committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol, he said in a post on his Truth Social website: “The unselect committee [sic.] did not produce a single shred of evidence that I in any way intended or wanted violence at our Capitol. The evidence does not exist because the claim is baseless and a monstrous lie.”Mr. Trump, like Mr. Limbaugh before him, uses the Constitution’s broad protections for inflammatory speech as a shield against any sort of accountability. The implicit argument is that unless a criminal prosecution establishes a direct cause and effect between his words and the violence that follows, then there is no connection at all. But that isn’t true, nor can it be. Mr. Clinton was just reflecting common sense when he said, “words can have consequences,” and Mr. McVeigh’s story illustrates the effect that constitutionally protected words can have. But Mr. Trump never acknowledges that his words have any outcome other than those he chooses to recognize.The temptation with Mr. Trump, for President Biden and others, has always been to ignore the former president’s more outrageous statements in favor of the high (or at least higher) road. But that restraint is a disservice to the public and, in all likelihood, bad politics, too. If Mr. Trump isn’t called out for his encouragement of violence before it actually takes place, that will bolster his proclamations of innocence when the worst happens; he shouldn’t have that opportunity. Mr. Trump’s statements represent an immediate danger to the targets of his rage and the public at large; it’s Mr. Biden’s responsibility, as well as a political opportunity, to issue that warning.Mr. Trump has never respected the norms of political behavior and there’s little reason to think gag orders will provide meaningful discipline either. As on Jan. 6, his supporters shed traditional rules as well. The day is fast approaching when someone picks up a gun or builds a bomb and then seeks to follow through on Mr. Trump’s words. If and when that happens, he will say that he did not specifically direct or cause the violence, and he will probably escape without criminal charges — but the blood will be on his hands.Jeffrey Toobin is the author of “Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism.”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: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Democrats Need to Pick Up the Pace of Putting Judges on the Bench

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      With the outcome of the 2024 elections for the president and control of the Senate very much up in the air, Democrats must make a concerted effort to fill federal judicial vacancies before next November.Republicans did this very effectively before the end of the Trump presidency, leaving few vacancies for President Biden to fill when he took office. Now the Democrats must emulate that approach. And they must do so now.At the moment, there are two vacancies without nominees on appeals courts and 37 on district courts. Because the evaluation process of nominees takes time, it is imperative that the Biden administration quickly name nominees to those and future vacancies. The Senate then must work expeditiously to confirm those deemed suitable for the lifetime appointments.Mr. Biden has nominated 186 people to Article III judgeships, which include the Supreme Court and the federal appeals and district courts, according to the White House. At this point in their tenures, George W. Bush had nominated 211, followed by Mr. Trump’s 206, according to the Heritage Foundation’s Judicial Appointment Tracker. There have been inexplicable and troubling delays in this process. For example, two years ago, Judge Diana Motz of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va., announced that she would take senior status, a form of semiretirement, when a successor was confirmed. She took senior status last year, though no replacement had been named at that time. And still no one has been nominated for this important judgeship.Time may be running out for the Biden administration.It is critical for federal judges who would like to be replaced by a Democratic president to take senior status so that Mr. Biden can appoint their successors with sufficient time to allow them to be confirmed by the current Senate. A federal judge or justice may take senior status after meeting the age and service requirements of the “Rule of 80” — the judge must be at least 65 years old, and the judge’s age and years of service must add up to 80. A total of 121 federal judges are now eligible for senior status but have not announced their plans, according to the group Balls and Strikes, which tracks that information. Of those, 44 were appointed by Democratic presidents. By Jan. 20, 2025, the date of the next presidential inauguration, that number could rise to 69.There is little reason for judges not to take senior status. They can continue to hear cases, even carry a full load of cases. And taking senior status allows the president to fill that seat on the bench. The judge can condition taking senior status on the confirmation of a successor. A senior judge typically is not allowed to participate in en banc decisions, where all (or a significant number) of the judges on the court review a matter that is particularly significant or complex. But that is the main restriction on what a senior judge may do.We are long past the time when it could be said that judges appointed by Republican and by Democratic presidents were indistinguishable. This was made clear in an analysis of Supreme Court rulings published in July 2022 by the data-driven news site FiveThirtyEight, which found the partisan divide among the current justices “is deeper than it’s been in the modern era.”And this partisan divide is not confined to the Supreme Court. There are often huge differences between how judges in the lower courts who were appointed by Democratic and by Republican presidents decide cases. For example, a federal appeals court recently upheld Tennessee and Kentucky laws prohibiting gender-affirming care for transgender minors, with the two Republican-appointed judges siding with the states and a judge initially nominated by President Bill Clinton dissenting. Whether it is reproductive rights or gun rights or employee rights, or in countless other areas, the outcome often depends on which president appointed the judge or judges hearing the case.For that reason, I wrote an opinion article in The Los Angeles Times in March 2014 urging Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, then 81, to retire so that President Barack Obama could replace her while there was a Democratic Senate and someone with progressive values would take her seat. She took offense at the suggestion, also raised by others, and remained on the bench until she died in September 2020, when President Trump replaced her with the conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Justice Ginsburg gambled, and America lost.Likewise, I think of the liberal federal court of appeals judges who did not take senior status, though they were eligible during the Obama presidency. For example, Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit declined to take senior status; when he died at age 87 in 2017 President Trump replaced him with a conservative judge. By the time another liberal Ninth Circuit judge, Harry Pregerson, decided to take senior status in late 2015, he was 92, and though Mr. Obama quickly nominated a replacement, it was late in his term and got caught up in politics and President Trump ended up appointing another conservative to the seat.Creating vacancies will matter only if Mr. Biden quickly names replacements and the Senate confirms the nominees. If the president is not re-elected, the Republican president will fill any vacancies that exist upon taking office. And regardless of the outcome of the presidential election, if the Republicans take control of the Senate, the confirmation of judicial candidates nominated by a Democratic president will be far more difficult. That is why immediate action is imperative.A president’s most long-lasting legacy is arguably the judges he appoints. Many will serve for decades after the president leaves office. Republicans have tended to recognize this much more than Democrats. That needs to change, and quickly.Erwin Chemerinsky is the dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley.Source photographs by John Slater and SergeyChayko/Getty ImagesThe 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: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Request for Gag Order on Trump Raises Free Speech Dilemma

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      By putting the prospect of political violence at the heart of their argument to limit the former president’s statements about the election case, federal prosecutors raised issues that have little precedent.The request by prosecutors that a judge impose a gag order on former President Donald J. Trump in the federal election-subversion case presents a thorny conflict between the scope of his First Amendment rights and fears that he could — intentionally or not — spur his supporters to violence.There is little precedent for how the judge overseeing the case, Tanya S. Chutkan, should think about how to weigh strong constitutional protections for political speech against ensuring the functioning of the judicial process and the safety of the people participating in it.It is one more example of the challenges of seeking to hold to account a norm-shattering former president who is being prosecuted in two federal cases — and two state cases — as he makes another bid for the White House with a message that his opponents have weaponized the criminal justice system against him.“Everything about these cases is making new law because there are so many gaps in the law,” said Paul F. Rothstein, a law professor at Georgetown University and a criminal procedure specialist. “The system is held together by people doing the right thing according to tradition, and Trump doesn’t — he jumps into every gap.”Citing a spate of threats inspired by the indictment of Mr. Trump in the election case, the special counsel overseeing the prosecutions for the Justice Department, Jack Smith, asked Judge Chutkan this month to order the former president to cease his near-daily habit of making “disparaging and inflammatory or intimidating” public statements about witnesses, the District of Columbia jury pool, the judge and prosecutors.A proposed order drafted by Mr. Smith’s team would also bar Mr. Trump and his lawyers from making — or causing surrogates to make — public statements, including on social media, “regarding the identity, testimony or credibility of prospective witnesses.” The motion cited Mr. Trump’s attacks on former Vice President Mike Pence and former Attorney General William P. Barr, who refused to go along with his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.The draft order would allow Mr. Trump to say he denies the charges “without further comment.”Jack Smith, the special counsel, asked the judge to order Mr. Trump to cease his habit of making “disparaging and inflammatory or intimidating” public statements about witnesses, the District of Columbia jury pool, the judge and prosecutors.Doug Mills/The New York TimesA version of the motion was unsealed late last week. Judge Chutkan, of the Federal District Court in Washington, has ordered Mr. Trump’s legal team to file any opposition to it by Monday and is likely to hold a hearing on the request next month. A spokesman for Mr. Trump has called the request “blatant election interference” and a corrupt and cynical attempt to deprive the former president of his First Amendment rights.Gag orders limiting what trial participants can say outside of court are not uncommon, especially to limit pretrial publicity in high-profile cases. Courts have held that orders barring participants from certain public comments are constitutional to avoid prejudicing a jury, citing the public interest in the fair and impartial administration of trials.The context of the gag request for Mr. Trump, though, is different in fundamental ways.Mr. Smith’s filing nodded to the potential for Mr. Trump’s statements to complicate the process of seating an unbiased jury in the case, which is scheduled to go to trial in March. But the request for the gag order focused primarily on a different concern: that Mr. Trump’s angry and vengeful statements about the proceedings against him are putting people in danger now.The motion cited “multiple threats” to Mr. Smith. It noted that another prosecutor, Jay I. Bratt, had been subject to “intimidating communications” after the former president targeted him in “inflammatory public posts,” falsely saying Mr. Bratt had tipped off the White House before Mr. Trump’s indictment in the case accusing him of mishandling classified documents.And it cited the case of a Texas woman who has been charged with making death threats to Judge Chutkan last month. She left the judge a voice message using a racist slur, court filings show, and said, “You are in our sights — we want to kill you.”“If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you, so tread lightly, bitch,” the message said, adding that “you will be targeted personally, publicly, your family, all of it.”Prosecutors connected their request to the threats and harassment that election officials and other people carrying out election-related duties experienced after Mr. Trump attacked them in late 2020 as part of his false claims that the election had been stolen.“The defendant knows that when he publicly attacks individuals and institutions, he inspires others to perpetrate threats and harassment against his targets,” the motion said, adding: “Given the defendant’s history described above and the nature of the threats to the court and to the government, it is clear that the threats are prompted by the defendant’s repeated and relentless posts.”In that sense, the request for the gag order was as much about what is sometimes called stochastic terrorism — the idea that demonizing someone through mass communication increases the chances that a lone wolf will be inspired to attack the target — as it was about more traditional concerns of keeping a jury from being influenced by statements outside of court.The request raises both legal and political issues and carries the risk of playing into Mr. Trump’s hands.The former president and his defense team have made clear that they want people to think the case is about whether he had a First Amendment right to say whatever he wanted about the election. Mr. Smith sought to head off that move by acknowledging in the indictment that Mr. Trump had a right to lie to the public and by not charging him with inciting the Capitol riot.But the gag order request is directly about what Mr. Trump is allowed to say. Moreover, it has given him more fodder to portray the case as intended to undercut his presidential campaign — and, if he is under a gag order and loses again in 2024, to once again tell his supporters that the election was rigged.Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the Federal District Court in Washington has ordered Mr. Trump’s legal team to file any opposition to the motion by Monday.Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, via Associated PressWhen the motion became public, Mr. Trump riffed on it with apparent glee.“They want to see if they can silence me. So the media — the fake news — will ask me a question. ‘I’m sorry, I won’t be able to answer’ — how do you think we’ do in that election?” Mr. Trump said at a summit of religious conservatives. “So we are going to have a little bit of a fun with that, I think. That’s a tough one. Can you imagine?”Implicit in the ways he could “have a little bit of a fun” is the question of how Judge Chutkan could enforce any such order if Mr. Trump skirted its edges or even boldly defied its limits. It would be one thing for her to impose a fine, but if he refused to pay or to tone down his statements, a next step for a judge in a normal case would be to order imprisonment.Any such step in this case would be legally and politically explosive.At a hearing last month, Judge Chutkan vowed to “take whatever measures are necessary to protect the integrity of these proceedings” and warned lawyers for Mr. Trump that they and their client should consider their public statements in the case.“I intend to ensure the orderly administration of justice in this case, as I would with any other case,” she said, “and even arguably ambiguous statements from parties or their counsel, if they could reasonably be interpreted to intimidate witnesses or to prejudice potential jurors, can threaten the process.”The judge also suggested that she could speed up the trial date as an alternative penalty. “The more a party makes inflammatory statements about this case, which could taint the jury pool or intimidate potential witnesses,” she said, “the greater the urgency will be that we proceed to trial quickly to ensure a jury pool from which we can select an impartial jury.”Most cases about gag orders affecting criminal defendants have focused on limits imposed on what their lawyers, not the defendants themselves, can say outside of court — in part because defense lawyers typically order their clients to say nothing in public about their cases anyway. That is one of many ways Mr. Trump operates from a different playbook.In a 1991 case, which prosecutors cited in their motion, the Supreme Court upheld local court rules that bar defense lawyers from making comments outside court that are substantially likely to materially prejudice a jury. Such a regulation, it said, “constitutes a constitutionally permissible balance between the First Amendment rights of attorneys in pending cases and the state’s interest in fair trials.”But the Supreme Court also suggested that greater speech restrictions might be permissible on lawyers because they are officers of the court. The justices have never addressed what standard a gag order on a defendant must meet to pass First Amendment muster. A handful of appeals courts have addressed gag orders imposed on trial participants who are not lawyers and set different standards.Margaret C. Tarkington, a law professor at Indiana University, Indianapolis, and a specialist in lawyers’ free-speech rights, predicted that any gag order would be more likely to survive on appeal if Judge Chutkan barred Mr. Trump only from attacking witnesses and jurors. The First Amendment provides particularly strong protections for criticism of government officials, she noted.Still, Professor Tarkington acknowledged that a gag order that still permitted demonizing the judge and prosecutors would not address much of the concern that prosecutors are raising. She also said past gag-order cases offered few guideposts because Mr. Trump is such a unique figure: His megaphone and its potential impact on his more extreme supporters — as demonstrated by the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021 — puts him in a different realm.“It’s a really hard argument in normal circumstances to say the government, who is prosecuting someone, can shut them up from defending themselves in public,” Professor Tarkington said. “What makes this backward from everything else is that normally, in every criminal prosecution I can think of, the power imbalance is that the state has all the power and the defendant has none. But in this case, you have a defendant who has very significant power.”In their motion to Judge Chutkan, prosecutors also cited an appeals court ruling in 2000 that involved a rare example of a defendant who challenged a gag order. A judge had prevented all trial participants from making statements outside the court “intended to influence public opinion” about the case’s merits, and the defendant, an elected insurance commissioner in Louisiana named Jim Brown, wanted to be exempted. But the appeals court upheld it.The motion said the Brown precedent showed that the reasoning of the 1991 Supreme Court case upholding gag orders on defense lawyers “applies equally” to defendants. But prosecutors omitted another seemingly relevant factor: The gag order was lifted for about two months to avoid interfering with Mr. Brown’s re-election campaign and reimposed only after the election was over.“Brown was able to answer, without hindrance, the charges of his opponents regarding his indictment throughout the race,” the appeals court noted, adding, “The urgency of a campaign, which may well require that a candidate, for the benefit of the electorate as well as himself, have absolute freedom to discuss his qualifications, has passed.” More

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      Donald Trump’s Abortion Shell Game

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      As a candidate for president in 2016, Donald Trump promised to put “pro-life justices” on the Supreme Court. He even issued a list of potential nominees that featured some of the most conservative judges in the country.As president, Trump made good on his promise, appointing three of the six justices who voted last year to overturn the Supreme Court’s precedent in Roe v. Wade and end, after years of erosion, the constitutional right to an abortion.Each of these appointments — Neil Gorsuch in 2017, Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 and Amy Coney Barrett in 2020 — was a landmark occasion for the Trump administration and a major victory for the conservative movement. Trump used his court picks to energize Republican voters ahead of the 2020 presidential election and, later, took credit for the court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that made Roe obsolete.The Dobbs decision, Trump said in a statement, was “the biggest WIN for LIFE in a generation” and was “only made possible because I delivered everything as promised, including nominating and getting three highly respected and strong Constitutionalists confirmed to the United States Supreme Court.” It was, he continued, “my great honor to do so!”As recently as last week, in remarks to the Concerned Women of America Summit, Trump bragged about the anti-abortion record of his administration. “I’m also proud to be the most pro-life president in American history,” he said. “I was the first sitting president ever to attend the March for Life rally right here in Washington, D.C.” The biggest thing, he emphasized, was his appointment of three Supreme Court justices who “ruled to end the moral and constitutional atrocity known as Roe v. Wade.”“Nobody thought that could be done,” Trump said.Whether or not Trump is personally opposed to abortion is immaterial. The truth, established by his record as president, is that he is as committed to outlawing abortion in the United States as any other conservative Republican.There is no reason, then, to take seriously his remarks on Sunday, in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” where he criticized strict abortion bans and tried to distance himself from the anti-abortion policies of his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination. “I think what he did is a terrible thing and a terrible mistake,” Trump said, taking aim at Gov. Ron DeSantis’s decision to sign a six-week ban into law in Florida in April. Trump also rejected the 15-week federal ban pushed by his former vice president, Mike Pence, and promised to negotiate a compromise with Democrats on abortion. “Both sides are going to like me,” he said. “I’m going to come together with all groups, and we’re going to have something that’s acceptable.”Trump is triangulating. He sees, correctly, that the Republican Party is now on the wrong side of the public on abortion. By rejecting a blanket ban and making a call for compromise with Democrats, Trump is trying to fashion himself as an abortion moderate, a strategy that also rests on his pre-political persona as a liberal New Yorker with a live-and-let-live attitude toward personal behavior.There is a real chance this could work. In 2016, voters did not see Trump as a conservative figure on either abortion or gay rights, despite the fact that he was the standard-bearer for the party that wanted restrictions on both. It would be a version of the trick he pulled on Social Security and Medicare, where he posed as a defender of programs that have been in the cross-hairs of conservative Republicans since they were created.But there’s an even greater chance that this gambit falls flat. There are the Democrats, who will have his record to highlight when they go on the offensive next year, assuming he’s on the ballot as the Republican nominee. There is the political press, which should highlight the fact that Trump is directly responsible for the end of Roe (so far, it mostly has). And there are his rivals, like DeSantis, who are already pressing Trump to commit to further anti-abortion policies in a second term.It’s probably no accident then that Trump went to Iowa — where the Florida governor is investing the full resources of his campaign — to remind voters of his role in ending Roe. “They couldn’t get the job done. I got the job done,” Trump said. “I got it done. With the three Supreme Court justices that I appointed, this issue has been returned to the states, where all legal scholars on both sides said it should be. Of course, now the pro-life community has tremendous negotiating power.”Trump is no longer the singular figure of 2016. He is enmeshed within the Republican Party. He has real commitments to allies and coalition partners within the conservative movement. He is the undisputed leader of the Republican Party, yes, but he can’t simply jettison the abortion issue, which remains a central concern for much of the Republican base.“We’re at a moment where we need a human rights advocate, someone who is dedicated to saving the lives of children and serving mothers in need. Every single candidate should be clear on how they plan to do that,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement issued in response to Trump’s comments on “Meet the Press.”Trump will have to talk about abortion again and again, in a context that does him no political favors.There is a larger point to make here. Because we are almost certain to see a rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, it is easy to think that the next election will be a replay of the previous one in much the same way that the 1956 contest between Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson was virtually identical to the one in 1952.But conditions will be very different in 2024 from what they were in 2020. Trump will not be an incumbent and, according to my colleague Nate Cohn, he may not have the same scale of Electoral College advantage he enjoyed in his previous races. He’ll be under intense legal scrutiny and, most important, he’ll be a known quantity.The public won’t have to imagine a Trump presidency. It will already know what to expect. And judging from Trump’s attempt to get away from his own legacy, he probably knows that a majority of the voting public isn’t eager to experience another four years with him at the helm.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: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Democracy in Bangladesh Is Quietly Being Crushed

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      Bangladesh’s multiparty democracy is being methodically strangled in crowded courtrooms across this country of 170 million people.Nearly every day, thousands of leaders, members and supporters of opposition parties stand before a judge. Charges are usually vague, and evidence is shoddy, at best. But just months before a pivotal election pitting them against the ruling Awami League, the immobilizing effect is clear.About half of the five million members of the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, are embroiled in politically motivated court cases, the group estimates. The most active leaders and organizers face dozens, even hundreds, of cases. Lives that would be defined by raucous rallies or late-night strategizing are instead dominated by lawyers’ chambers, courtroom cages and, in Dhaka, the torturously snail-paced traffic between the two.One recent morning, a party leader, Saiful Alam Nirob, was ushered into Dhaka’s 10-story magistrate court in handcuffs. Mr. Nirob faces between 317 and 394 cases — he and his lawyers are unsure exactly how many. Outside the court, a dozen supporters — facing an additional 400 cases among them — waited in an alley whose bustle was cleared only by intermittent monsoon downpours and the frequent blowing of a police whistle to open the way for another political prisoner.The police ushering Saiful Alam Nirob, an opposition leader, to court in Dhaka in June. He faces hundreds of court cases.A rally by supporters of the ruling Awami League in July.“I can’t do a job anymore,” said one of the supporters, Abdul Satar, who is dealing with 60 cases and spends three or four days a week in court. “It’s court case to court case.”In recent years, Bangladesh has been known mostly as an economic success story, with a strong focus on a garment export industry that brought in a steady flow of dollars, increased women’s participation in the economy and lifted millions out of poverty. A country once described by American officials as a basket case of famine and disease appeared to be overcoming decades of coups, countercoups and assassinations.But under the surface, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has waged a campaign of political consolidation whose goal, opposition leaders, analysts and activists say, is to turn the South Asian republic into a one-party state.Over her 14 years in office, she has captured Bangladesh’s institutions, including the police, the military and, increasingly, the courts, by filling them with loyalists and making clear the consequences for not falling in line.She has wielded these institutions both to smother dissent — her targets have also included artists, journalists, activists and even the Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus — and to carry out a deeply personal campaign of vengeance against her political enemies.With an election expected in December or January, the country again feels on the verge of eruption. The opposition sees the vote as a last fight before what could be its full vanquishing. Ms. Hasina’s lieutenants, for their part, say in no uncertain terms that they cannot let the B.N.P. win — “they will kill us” if they come to power, as one aide put it.When asked during an interview in her Dhaka office about using the judiciary to harass the opposition, Ms. Hasina sent an aide out of the room to retrieve a photo album. It was a catalog of horrors: graphic pictures of maimed bodies after arsons, bombings and other attacks.Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at her office in Dhaka in June.Bangladesh’s economic success story in recent years has overshadowed its slide toward a one-party state. “It is not political, it is not political,” the prime minister said of the court cases, pointing to the visuals as examples of the “brutality” of the B.N.P. “It is because of their crime.”B.N.P. leaders say that about 800 of their members have been killed and more than 400 have disappeared since Ms. Hasina came to power in 2009. In the interview, Ms. Hasina said the B.N.P., when it was in power, had done much the same to her party, jailing and killing her supporters by the thousands.“They started this,” Ms. Hasina said.The SurvivorsThe story of Bangladesh over the past three decades has largely been one of bitter rivalry between two powerful women — Ms. Hasina, 75, and Khaleda Zia, 77, the leader of the B.N.P. and the country’s first female prime minister.Ms. Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was Bangladesh’s most prominent independence leader when the country broke away from Pakistan in 1971. He was killed four years later in a military coup, and much of his family was massacred.Ms. Zia was married to Ziaur Rahman, the army chief who came to power in the bloody chaos that followed Sheikh Mujib’s murder. Mr. Rahman himself was assassinated by soldiers in 1981.For much of the time since, the two surviving women have been locked in a fight over who defines Bangladesh’s democracy — and who is entitled to rule over it.“Actually it was my struggle to establish democracy,” Ms. Hasina said. Pointing to Ms. Zia’s husband, she added: “This opposition, you know, was created by a military dictator.”The B.N.P. says it was the one that restored multiparty democracy after Ms. Hasina’s father declared the country a one-party state — an unfinished project that the B.N.P. says Ms. Hasina is determined to complete.The story of Bangladesh in recent decades has largely been one of bitter rivalry between two powerful women: Ms. Hasina and Khaleda Zia, seen on a large poster inside the office of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party in Dhaka. Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, the B.N.P.’s secretary general and de facto leader.“They don’t believe in democracy,” said Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, the B.N.P.’s secretary general.In 2018, Ms. Zia was jailed on graft charges. Today, she lives under house arrest, where, in deteriorating health, she is reduced to watching television and reading the newspaper, her aides say.Her son Tarique Rahman, who was implicated in a 2004 attack in which a dozen grenades were hurled at Ms. Hasina during a rally — a charge the B.N.P. denies — lives in exile in London. Mr. Alamgir, the party’s de facto leader in their absence, spends much of his time dealing with the 93 court cases he faces.Ms. Hasina has intensified her assault on the opposition as she has found herself in her most politically vulnerable position in years.Just as Bangladesh was working to get its garment industry back on track after the pandemic disrupted global demand, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused a spike in the cost of imported energy and food, pushing the country’s supply of dollars perilously low.“It has put tremendous pressure on our economy,” Ms. Hasina said.Bangladesh was working to get its garment industry back on track after the pandemic when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused a spike in the cost of imported energy and food.Anger has risen in Bangladesh over the rising food prices and power cuts.The battered opposition saw an opportunity in anger over rising food prices and power cuts, and, fearing an unfair election, was eager to take the showdown to the streets after Ms. Hasina refused to appoint a neutral caretaker administration to oversee the vote.During a rare large rally in June, B.N.P. speakers demanded free elections and the release of political prisoners. But as supporters marched across Dhaka, their chants offered an indication of the bubbling tensions: “Set fire to Hasina’s throne” and “A flood of blood will wash away the injustice.”As the police held back and allowed the rally and march to proceed, ruling-party leaders staged a rival rally where speakers acknowledged that the European Union and the United States were watching Bangladesh’s democracy. The U.S. government has imposed sanctions on Ms. Hasina’s senior security officers and threatened visa restrictions, and American and European officials have made several visits to Bangladesh in recent months.A few weeks after the B.N.P. rally, though, an unsettled Ms. Hasina responded with force. When the party’s supporters tried to hold another large rally, the police met them with clubs and tear gas — and 500 fresh court cases. The crackdown showed that, even as the West issues warnings, it ultimately has limited sway over a leader who has deftly balanced ties with Asia’s two giants, China and India.Opposition supporters during their rally against the governing party in June.Ms. Hasina has governed Bangladesh since 2009 and is seeking re-election in the coming months.Increasingly, the government’s powers are wielded en masse, said Ashraf Zaman, a Bangladeshi lawyer and activist in exile who works with the Asian Human Rights Commission. The police round up scores of people in one case — accusing them of “anti-state activities” or of blocking police work — and leave room for more to be added by listing dozens or even hundreds of “unnamed persons” in the same case. Each individual case can involve multiple charges.By the time the evidence, often flimsy, is put in front of a judge, the accused have spent months in jail, often at risk of harassment or torture in custody, human rights activists say. Bail, lawyers and legal experts said, has become harder to get in political cases. If the accused does get released, the government presents it as a magnanimous gift, not as acknowledgment that the person should not have been detained in the first place.Defense lawyers argue in court that their client “has a family, he has already spent this long time, if you kindly give him bail it would be appreciated, and the prosecution ‘allows’ it,” Mr. Zaman said.The CourtOne of the busiest places for political cases is Dhaka’s magistrate court, where Mr. Nirob, the B.N.P. leader facing more than 300 cases, was taken one morning in June. Syed Nazrul, Mr. Nirob’s lawyer, said his client had at least one case filed against him in every police station in the city.Before proceedings begin each morning, about a dozen lawyers cram into Room 205 at the bar association building, where Mr. Nazrul checks papers one last time. On June 12, the office’s large ledger showed that the team was defending clients in 33 cases that day, 32 of them involving the B.N.P.Lawyers crammed into a room at the bar association building in Dhaka in June. Many represent political prisoners. Syed Nazrul, a lawyer, inspecting documents for cases filed against a B.N.P. leader.Then the lawyers make their way through the narrow alley — buzzing with vendors selling anything from chicken to marigold to replacement teeth — that connects the bar association with the crowded courthouse.“The hearing takes, maximum, 20 minutes. All day is spent back and forth in this harassment,” Mr. Nazrul said.Even those fighting for causes beyond the bitter rivalry between the two political parties increasingly pay a heavy price.Didarul Bhuiyan, a computer engineer, returned to Dhaka after completing his studies in Australia. He set up a small software company, got married and raised three sons. But a question nagged at him: Had he made the right decision in returning?Mr. Bhuiyan became active in a civil society movement aimed at strengthening checks in the system, so his children would not be forced to pursue a life abroad. “Whenever someone gets to power, they go above the law,” he said.After Mr. Bhuiyan’s group criticized the management of relief funds during the pandemic, security forces in civilian clothes took him away in a van with tinted windows.Didarul Bhuiyan with his family in Dhaka in July. He spent five months in jail after criticizing the government’s management of Covid relief money. A woman and her relatives waving at people on a bus leaving court in Dhaka.“The incidents of disappearances were common; we worried about what could happen to him,” said his wife, Dilshad Ara Bhuiyan.As Ms. Bhuiyan went from court to court hoping to apply for bail for her husband, they refused to hear his case, even though the government had filed no charges against him. “The judge would see the name, the case, and say, ‘Sorry, I can’t,’” Mr. Bhuiyan said.After five months in jail, he got bail. The police did not file charges until about a year after his arrest, leveling vague accusations of treason and conspiracy against the state. As a central piece of evidence, the police submitted a Facebook post by Mr. Bhuiyan — which he had written months after his release. A time stamp marked a screenshot as having been taken three hours before.A fellow activist, Mushtaq Ahmed, who was detained around the same time as Mr. Bhuiyan, died in jail. A large portrait of Mr. Ahmed sits on a drawer in Mr. Bhuiyan’s home office.Mr. Bhuiyan called Mr. Ahmed’s death political murder.“Putting someone in jail for 10 months without any trial whatsoever is good enough to kill someone,” he said. More