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      What is Behind the Rising Tensions Between Kosovo and Serbia?

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      Clashes in northern Kosovo that injured dozens of ethnic Serbs and NATO soldiers are the latest flare up in a long-running standoff between Kosovo and Serbia.Dozens of NATO peacekeepers were injured this week in northern Kosovo when they clashed with ethnic Serbs, raising fears of a larger escalation between Serbia and Kosovo.The violence came after Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leadership sent heavily armed security forces to take control of town municipal buildings, the latest turn in a dispute that has roots going back to the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s. Kosovo, where a majority of the population is ethnic Albanian and Muslim, declared its independence from Serbia in 2008, almost a decade after NATO’s bombing campaign that drove Serb forces, responsible for years of brutal mistreatment of ethnic Albanians, from Kosovo.Since then, the two countries have clashed over Kosovo’s treatment of its minority ethnic Serb population.The fighting in recent days — mostly skirmishes, but also some shooting — began when the Kosovan government deployed its security forces in several towns to install the ethnic Albanian mayors who had won in local elections last month. Local Serbs had mostly boycotted those votes.Each side has blamed the other for the fighting. NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, called the recent clashes “unacceptable” on Tuesday and said that 700 reserve troops had been deployed to help the peacekeeping mission there, which included 3,800 troops before the conflict. In response to the violence, Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vucic, said in a statement released by his office that he had put the army on the highest level alert.Here is what we know.How did the violence start?The recent clashes were centered on four northern municipalities bordering Serbia that are home to much of Kosovo’s Serb minority.Serbian nationalists living in Kosovo, many of whom still regard the Serbian capital, Belgrade, as their true capital, have staged protests throughout the past decade to resist integrating with Kosovo.The boycott of local elections last month was prompted by a Serbian political party in Kosovo. In a statement posted to Facebook days before the election, the group dismissed the process as “undemocratic” and urged Serbs to stay home on voting day.“Serbs should watch with contempt all those who go out to participate in this illegal and illegitimate process that is against the interest of the Serbian people,” the post said.To ensure that the ethnic Albanians who won recent mayoral elections could take their posts, Kosovo’s central government last week sent in armed security forces to the area, a move that was condemned in unusually strong terms by the United States, Kosovo’s main international backer. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken on Friday accused Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leadership of “escalating tensions in the north and increasing instability.”Over the weekend, Serb protesters gathered outside municipal buildings in a number of Serbian-majority towns, facing off with Kosovo security forces and troops from a NATO-led peacekeeping mission called KFOR.A total of 30 NATO peacekeepers, including 19 Italians and 11 Hungarians, suffered injuries in the clashes. More than 50 Serbs were treated for injuries, Mr. Vucic said.The NATO mission’s commander, Maj. Gen. Angelo Michele Ristuccia, in a statement urged both sides to “take full responsibility for what happened and prevent any further escalation.”A total of 30 NATO peacekeepers, including 19 Italians and 11 Hungarians, suffered injuries in the clashes.Georgi Licovski/EPA, via ShutterstockTensions in the region had been building since the elections last month.In a televised statement early Tuesday, Mr. Vucic blamed Kosovo’s prime minister, Albin Kurti, for fueling hostilities. He also criticized NATO’s peacekeeping mission, saying it had failed to protect the Serbian population and was enabling the “illegal and forceful takeover” of the majority-Serbian municipalities by the Kosovan government.Mr. Kurti, Kosovo’s prime minister, applauded the NATO forces, saying they had been trying to curb the “violent extremism” in the streets. “In a democracy there is no place for fascist violence,” he said in a statement on Twitter. “Citizens of all ethnicities have a right to full & unencumbered service of their elected officials,” he added.What’s behind the conflict?The latest escalation is part of a dispute over the status of Kosovo, which declared its independence 15 years ago, almost a decade after NATO’s 78-day bombing campaign in 1999 that drove Serb forces, then engaged in brutal mistreatment of ethnic Albanians, from Kosovo.While an independent Kosovo has been recognized by the United States and many European countries, Serbia — as well as its key allies, Russia and China — still refuses to recognize Kosovo’s independence. It has called the split a violation of U.N. resolution 1244 that dates back to 1999 and the end of the Kosovo war.President Vucic and other Serbian leaders claim Kosovo as being the “heart” of their country, in part, because it houses many revered Orthodox Christian sites. Mr. Vucic has ruled out recognizing Kosovo and vowed to “protect” ethnic Serbs.Troops from the NATO-led peacekeeping mission secure an area near Zvecan, on Tuesday. Armend Nimani/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSerbian nationalists in Kosovo have been joined by more moderate Serbs in demanding the implementation of a 2013 deal brokered by the European Union that calls for a measure of self-rule for Serb-dominated municipalities in the north, a provision Kosovo has reneged on.In February, leaders of Kosovo and Serbia tentatively accepted a peace deal, which was mediated by the European Union and rejected by nationalists on both sides. It has not been formally signed.What is the regional backdrop to the tensions?Tensions between the two ethnic communities have flared regularly over the past decade, making the region a hub of unpredictable violence.Clashes erupted last July in response to a new law that would require ethnic Serbs living in Kosovo to switch from Serbian license plates to Kosovar ones. The recent escalation of hostilities comes as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has absorbed the attention of Kosovo’s important allies, the United States and the European Union.Serbia, a candidate to join the European Union, has been a close partner with Moscow for centuries. While it voted in favor of a U.N. resolution condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Serbia has refused to join sanctions imposed on Moscow by Western countries.“Serbs are fighting for their rights in northern Kosovo,” Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia said on Monday during a visit to Kenya. “A big explosion is looming in the heart of Europe,” he said.Joe Orovic More

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      How Turkey’s Erdogan Rose to Power

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      Turkey’s leader faced a criminal conviction, mass protests and a coup. Instead of hurting or ending his political career, they helped him accumulate ever more control.From mayor to lawmaker and prime minister to president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan rose through the ranks to Turkey’s highest positions and then made them his own, bringing the country over the course of 20 years closer to one-man rule.On Sunday, Mr. Erdogan will try to secure another term as president, although only after the opposition forced him into a runoff vote. That the election has gone to a second round is a sign that his grip on the country has slipped, if not been broken, amid a host of problems like economic turmoil, widespread corruption and his government’s handling of catastrophic earthquakes this spring.But Mr. Erdogan has navigated crises since the earliest days of his career, including a jail sentence, mass protests and an attempted coup. Several of those episodes illustrate how he not just survived crises, but found opportunities to consolidate power through them.A lifetime ban that lasted a few yearsIn 1998, Mr. Erdogan, then Istanbul’s 44-year-old mayor, was a rising star of Turkey’s Islamist political movement — which was the target of a crackdown by the military-backed authorities. That year, a court convicted him of having called for religious insurrection by quoting an Islamist poem from the 1920s. He was sentenced to 10 months in jail and handed a lifetime ban on political activity.Although predominantly Muslim, Turkey was founded as a secular republic and the traditional political elites felt the Islamists were anathema to those values.Mr. Erdogan when he was mayor of Istanbul in 1998.Murad Sezer/Associated PressMr. Erdogan spent four months in jail, making plans for a comeback despite the ban. In a general amnesty in 2001, Turkey’s Constitutional Court lifted the ban, and he soon assembled a new political party with other reformists from the Islamist movement who promised good governance and sought ties with the West.Allies who changed the rulesMr. Erdogan’s ascent was nearly stopped in 2002 by Turkey’s electoral board, which barred him from an election because of his criminal conviction. But his party colleagues, who had swept into Parliament, amended the Constitution to let him run. Mr. Erdogan won office and became prime minister in 2003.He governed piously at home and pragmatically abroad, winning allies with a mix of charisma and nationalistic fervor. He pushed to lift bans on women’s head scarves in state offices, promoted the construction of mosques, courted the E.U. market and fended off challenges from rivals among Turkey’s military and business elites.Mr. Erdogan promoted the construction of mosques in the country, such as the Taksim Square mosque in Istanbul.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesHis government also began prosecuting some of those figures, in 2008 accusing dozens of people, including retired army generals and journalists, of trying to stage a coup. Mr. Erdogan’s allies called the trial an attempt to reckon with Turkey’s history of violent power struggle. Critics called it an effort to silence the secular opposition.With voters’ approval in a referendum two years later, Mr. Erdogan reshaped the Constitution again. He said the 2010 overhaul brought Turkey closer to Europe’s democracies and broke from its military past, while his opponents said it gave his conservative government greater control over the military and the courts. He won a third term as prime minister in 2011.The mall that provoked protestsMr. Erdogan was not without significant, if disparate, opposition. In 2013, protests that erupted over a proposed mall to replace an Istanbul park morphed into a demonstration of discontent over many issues, including the drift toward Islamist policies and persistent corruption.Mr. Erdogan cracked down, not just on protesters but also on medics, journalists, activists, business owners and officials accused of sympathizing. Some cultural figures were imprisoned and others fled, and for many who remained, an atmosphere of self-censorship descended.People running away as Turkish riot police fire tear gas on Taksim Square during protests in 2013.Bulent Kilic/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAs his term neared its end, Mr. Erdogan faced a problem: His party’s rules prevented him from another turn as prime minister. In 2014, he instead ran for another office — becoming Turkey’s first popularly elected president, opening his term with words of rapprochement.“I want us to build a new future with an understanding of societal reconciliation, while considering our differences as our richnesses and bringing forward our common values,” he said in a victory speech.But rather than limit himself to the mostly ceremonial duties of the role, he moved to maximize its powers, which included a veto on legislation and the ability to appoint judges.The transformative aftermath of a coupMr. Erdogan’s rule nearly ended in 2016, as a chaotic insurrection by parts of the military and members of an Islamist group that had once been his political ally tried to oust him. But he skirted capture, called Turks to protest in the streets and soon re-emerged in Istanbul to reassert control.“What is being perpetrated is a rebellion,” he said. “They will pay a heavy price for their treason to Turkey.”Soldiers involved in a coup attempt surrendering in Istanbul in 2016.Gokhan Tan/Getty ImagesA purge that followed reshaped Turkey: Thousands accused of connections to the coup plot were arrested, tens of thousands lost jobs in schools, police departments and other institutions, and more than 100 media outlets were shuttered. Most of those caught up in the purge were accused of affiliations with the Gulen movement, the Islamist followers of Fethullah Gulen, the cleric accused by Mr. Erdogan of orchestrating the coup while living in exile in the United States.Within a year, Mr. Erdogan had arranged another referendum for voters, this one on whether to abolish the post of prime minister and move power to the president, as well as grant the role more abilities.With his opponents under pressure and his allies reinvigorated, he narrowly won the referendum, calling the changes necessary to make the government more efficient. The next year, he won re-election to another five-year term.A blitz of decrees and growing discontentHours before his inauguration in 2018, Mr. Erdogan published a 143-page decree that changed the way almost every government department operated. He fired another 18,000 state employees and made several major appointments, naming his son-in-law the new finance minister.The decree was just one sign of how far Mr. Erdogan has taken Turkey down the path toward strongman rule. The government announced new internet restrictions and started monumental projects — including soaring bridges, an enormous mosque and a plan for an “Istanbul Canal.”Many of Mr. Erdogan’s supporters hail efforts like these as visionary, but critics say they feed a construction industry that is plagued by corruption and which has wasted state funds.A poster featuring Mr. Erdogan during the election campaign this month in Istanbul.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesThose frustrations have spread among many Turks in recent years. While Mr. Erdogan has raised Turkey’s stature abroad and pursued major projects, his consolidation of power has left some uneasy, and the economy has suffered.That dissent has loosened Mr. Erdogan’s hold over the country.In 2019, his party lost control of some of Turkey’s largest cities — only to contest the results in Istanbul. Turkey’s High Election Council ordered a do-over election, a decision condemned by the opposition as a capitulation to Mr. Erdogan, but his party lost that second vote, too, ending 25 years of dominance in Turkey’s largest city.And now, with his government criticized for its preparation for earthquakes and its response to them, and Turkey’s economy teetering on the verge of crisis, Mr. Erdogan has persisted with major spending and lowering interest rates despite inflation, which has left many Turks feeling far poorer. More

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      He Promised Change in Thailand. But Will He Be Allowed to Lead?

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      Pita Limjaroenrat led his party to victory in the Thai election and seems poised to become the next prime minister, unless the military blocks him.When Pita Limjaroenrat was a student at Harvard in 2008, he shadowed his American classmates who were campaigning at the time for former President Barack Obama. The experience gave him a window into electoral politics, from phone banks and polling data to knocking on doors and putting campaign flags on front lawns.Fifteen years later, Mr. Pita said he used what he learned in Massachusetts to help his recent campaign in Thailand, where he stunned the country’s political establishment by leading his progressive Move Forward Party to a momentous victory.For decades, Thai voters had known only two dominant political forces: one led by conservative royalists and militarists and the other by a populist billionaire living in exile. Supporters saw Mr. Pita, 42, as the candidate who represented change and a return to democracy after nine years of military rule that was preceded by a coup. On the stump, he promised to undo the military’s grip on Thai politics and revise a law that criminalizes criticism of the monarchy.But his path to prime minister remains uncertain.Mr. Pita greeting supporters during a voter thank you parade culminating in Owl Market in Nonthaburi, on Thursday.Lauren DeCicca for The New York Times“What I need to do now is to find a road-map that bridges that gap between a functioning democracy and half-baked democracy at the very end of nine-year rule by a military coup,” he said in an interview with The New York Times.In order to take the role, Mr. Pita needs to gather enough support in the 500-member House of Representatives to overcome a 250-member, military-appointed Senate. To be precise, he needs 376 votes. So far, he only has 314.Already, several senators have said they would not support a candidate who so threatens the status quo. Now, Thais are waiting to see if their choice will be allowed to lead or if he will be blocked from becoming prime minister by prevailing powers, an outcome that could plunge the country into political chaos.Thai generals rewrote the Constitution in 2017 so a Senate stacked with military allies could jointly determine the top leader. Conservatives are counting on an Election Commission complaint that has been filed against Mr. Pita for failing to disclose that he owned shares of a now-defunct media company that he inherited from his father.So far, Mr. Pita has brushed off the petition to investigate him, saying he had already reported the shares to the authorities. He also said he believed there was a group of senators who had “felt their conscience” and understood the consequences of going against the 25 million Thais who voted for change. Only 14 senators have indicated that they would vote for him.Mr. Pita said that watching friends at Harvard campaigning for Barack Obama in 2008 helped inform his campaign this year.Lauren DeCicca for The New York TimesMr. Pita graduated with a joint degree from the Harvard Kennedy School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’ Sloan School of Management. From his time in the United States, he learned how to map out a campaign strategy, which he put to use in this election by using data to reach voters in 160 districts.Most of Mr. Pita’s career was in consulting and business, as a managing director of the rice-bran oil business that his father started, and then as a senior executive for Grab, the ride-hailing company that acquired Uber in Southeast Asia.As a candidate, Mr. Pita developed a reputation for being a clear orator, winning the public over with his speeches and polished looks.He said he admires José Alberto “Pepe” Mujica Cordano, the former president of Uruguay, who was tortured and imprisoned during the country’s military dictatorship. He is reading “It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism” by Senator Bernie Sanders. Some of his favorite bands are Metallica, The Strokes, and Rage Against the Machine. One viral video on TikTok shows a Thai woman holding a mock marriage ceremony with a cutout of Mr. Pita, who is divorced and has a young daughter.Supporters cheer for Mr. Pita and his Move Forward Party during the rally in Nonthaburi on Thursday.Lauren DeCicca for The New York Times“For a lot of the middle class, especially upper-middle class Thais, he’s like the ideal son-in law that you’d like to have — very educated, accomplished, good-looking, poised,” said Duncan McCargo, a political science professor at the University of Copenhagen.Mr. Pita was drawn to the ideas of the founder of the Future Forward party, Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, in 2018, and within a few months was asked to join. He became the leader of Move Forward after Thailand’s Constitutional Court dissolved Future Forward in 2020 and barred its senior executives from politics for 10 years.If his bid for prime minister is successful, Mr. Pita has promised to reset Thailand’s foreign policy, saying the country would “not be part of the Chinese umbrella or the American umbrella,” but will have the ability to determine its own destiny, Mr. Pita said. In March 2022, after Moscow invaded Ukraine, he wrote on Twitter that the Russians must “retrieve” their troops immediately.“A lot of it is personal,” said Fuadi Pitsuwan, a fellow at Chiang Mai University and foreign policy adviser to Mr. Pita, referring to the candidate’s strong reaction to the invasion. “He will be a foreign policy leader, which, in Thailand, is rare.”Mr. Pita takes a moment for an iced latte in Bangkok before heading to Nonthaburi Province on Thursday.Lauren DeCicca for The New York TimesMr. Pita’s reputation has not gone unscathed. His ex-wife, Chutima Teepanart, an actress with whom he shares a daughter, accused him of domestic violence in 2019. A family court found Mr. Pita not guilty of the charge. Ms. Chutima did not respond to multiple requests for comment.In an interview, Mr. Pita said “there was no domestic violence, whether it’s physical abuse or emotional abuse, ever in my family.”Mr. Pita was born to a wealthy, well-connected family. His late father served as an adviser to the agriculture minister, and his uncle was once a close aide to Thaksin Shinawatra, the populist billionaire whose youngest daughter was one of Mr. Pita’s rivals in the election.His uncle was a former commerce minister in the early 1980s but was later jailed for misconduct when he was a banker, a case that Mr. Pita described as politically motivated. A salient childhood memory includes visiting his uncle in prison, which made him see “how dirty or how brutal politics could be,” he said.Over the years, Mr. Pita said he was struck by how Thailand seemed constantly trapped in a cycle of political turmoil, precipitated either by people “using the king to destroy a political opponent or using the monarchy as an excuse to fight for something.”He started studying other countries with constitutional monarchies including England, Japan and Norway, and said he began to see why the relationship between the Thai monarchy and the people was “going downhill” with each passing decade.Mr. Pita entering a news conference on Thursday, to speak with journalists about forming a coalition with other political parties.Lauren DeCicca for The New York TimesWith Move Forward, he wants “to have a comprehensive discussion in Parliament about what the role of the monarchy in a constitutional democracy should be in modern Thailand,” an idea that was once considered taboo among many Thais for whom the royal family has become a fixture in daily life.In a response to calls for checks on the monarchy’s power — precipitated by protests in 2020 — the military and royalists have come together to defend the institution.In the aftermath of the protests, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, the general who led the previous coup and whose party was trounced in the election, ordered a crackdown. More than 200 protesters, including 17 minors, have since been detained for criticizing the monarchy.During a final rally before the vote, Mr. Pita reminded the crowd that even a 15-year-old girl had been among those detained for violating the royal criticism law. On Monday, he spoke in front of thousands of his supporters as they celebrated his election victory.Standing in front of a giant portrait of the king in the center of Bangkok, he addressed the crowd, telling them “a new day for the people has arrived.”Ryn Jirenuwat More

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      In Blow to Junta, Thai Voters Overwhelmingly Back Opposition Parties

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      Thais on Sunday cast votes against their military leaders, backing instead a populist political mainstay and a progressive upstart bent on shaking up the status quo.Voters in Thailand overwhelmingly sought to end nearly a decade of military rule on Sunday, casting ballots in favor of two opposition parties that have pledged to curtail the power of the country’s powerful conservative institutions: the military and the monarchy.With 97 percent of the votes counted early Monday morning, the progressive Move Forward Party was neck and neck with the populist Pheu Thai Party. Move Forward had won 151 seats to Pheu Thai’s 141 in the 500-seat House of Representatives.In most parliamentary systems, the two parties would form a new governing coalition and choose a prime minister. But under the rules of the current Thai system, written by the military after its 2014 coup, the junta will still play kingmaker.The election had widely been seen as an easy victory for Pheu Thai, the country’s largest opposition party founded by former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. A billionaire tycoon, Mr. Thaksin, 73, was ousted in a coup in 2006 after accusations of corruption, but he is still fondly remembered as a populist champion for the rural poor. Polls had showed that Mr. Thaksin’s youngest daughter, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, 36, was the leading choice for prime minister.But in a surprise, the Move Forward Party, a progressive political party that called for upending old power structures and amending a law that criminalizes public criticism of the monarchy, made stunning strides, capturing young urban voters, and the capital, Bangkok.“We can frame this election as a referendum on traditional power centers in Thai politics,” said Napon Jatusripitak, a visiting fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. “People want change, and not just a change of government, they want structural reform.”Supporters of the Move Forward Party react as they watch results come in at the party headquarters in Bangkok on Sunday night.Jack Taylor/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe key question that many Thais now have is whether the military establishment, which has long kept an iron grip on Thailand’s politics, will accept the result.Move Forward has targeted institutions and policies once considered sacrosanct in Thai society, including mandatory military conscription and the laws that protect the king from criticism. And having the Pheu Thai Party in government could effectively place the party’s founder and one of the military’s top rivals, Mr. Thaksin, back at the center of the country’s politics.The results were a humbling blow for Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, the general who governed Thailand for almost nine years, the longest stretch of military governance in a nation used to coups.Mr. Prayuth has presided over a lagging economy, and in 2020 waged a harsh crackdown on protesters who gathered in the streets of Bangkok to call for democratic reforms. Although Thailand is one of two formal U.S. allies in Southeast Asia, he distanced himself from Washington and leaned closer to Beijing.As of early Monday, it remained unclear who would ultimately lead the country. The junta rewrote the country’s Constitution in 2017 so that selecting the prime minister would come down to a joint vote between the 250-member military-appointed Senate and the popularly elected House of Representatives. The decision could take weeks or months.Because both Pheu Thai and Move Forward do not have enough seats to form a majority, they will need to negotiate with each other and other parties to establish a coalition. Analysts said Move Forward’s stance on changing the royal protection law might complicate negotiations for forming a coalition. Before the vote, Move Forward attempted to moderate its position on the measure, toning down its calls for reform.Pheu Thai Party’s prime ministerial candidates Paetongtarn Shinawatra, center, and Srettha Thavisin, third from left, in Bangkok on Sunday night.Manan Vatsyayana/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut on Sunday, Pita Limjaroenrat, the leader of Move Forward made it clear that the amendment was still high on his party’s agenda, saying they now have enough members of Parliament to push it forward.“So it’s not conditional, it’s already absolute that we are going with it,” he said.Mr. Pita, 42, a former businessman, was fielded as Move Forward’s leader after the country’s Constitutional Court dissolved the party’s previous iteration, the Future Forward Party, in 2020, and barred the party’s senior executives from politics for 10 years. A graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr. Pita is a charismatic speaker, who called on voters to create “a new history in Thai politics.”His background as a technocrat contrasts with the leading contender from Pheu Thai, which has sought to promote Ms. Paetongtarn, Mr. Thaksin’s youngest daughter.Ms. Paetongtarn, an executive in her family’s hotel management company with little political experience, was selected to run after her father said people “wanted to see a Shinawatra family representative as a force in the party.”She proved to be an effective campaigner, stumping even in the last weeks of her pregnancy. (She gave birth on May 1 and quickly returned to the campaign trail.) The strong showing for Move Forward was remarkable for a party that was thought to be too radical for the general population. Move Forward ran on a platform that included legalizing same-sex marriage and a $13 daily minimum wage.The election was cast as an existential struggle for the future of the country. Both Pheu Thai and Move Forward campaigned on pledges to return Thailand to the path of electoral democracy, calling on people to reject the “uncles” or the “Three Ps,” referring to the generals who have governed Thailand since the coup: Mr. Prayuth, Deputy Prime Minister General Prawit “Pom” Wongsuwan and Interior Minister General Anupong “Pok” Paochinda.United Thai Nation Party’s candidate Prayut Chan-O-Cha in Bangkok on Sunday.Lillian Suwanrumpha/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMove Forward was even more emphatic in saying that it would never work with military-backed parties, a stance that drew more voters to the party. Several youths who had joined the 2020 protests campaigned as first-time candidates for Move Forward in the election.The vote underscored just how politically fragmented the nation of 72 million is now. No longer is it split between the “red shirt” pro-Thaksin protesters from the rural north and the “yellow shirt” anti-Thaksin faction made up of royalists and the urban elite. Now it is divided along generational lines.On Sunday, millions of Thais lined up in roughly 100-degree heat to cast their vote.“I really hope for change,” said Saisunee Chawasirikunthon, 48, an employee at a telecommunications company. “We have lived with the same old thing for the past eight years.”During his final rally on Friday, Mr. Prayuth, the former general, urged voters to choose continuity, playing a video that showed graffiti on the Democracy Monument in Bangkok and a young girl uploading a pornographic clip of herself because she had “freedom.”“We don’t need change that flips the country,” he said.For the past century, Thailand has swung between civilian democracy and military control, with the armed forces engineering a dozen coups within that period. On Thursday, Narongpan Jitkaewthae, Thailand’s army chief, took pains to assure the public that things would be different this time.He said that the country had learned its lessons from its past, and that “politics in a democratic system must continue,” although he added that he “cannot guarantee” that another coup would not happen. More

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      Your Wednesday Briefing: Trump Liable for Sexual Abuse

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      Also, protests in Pakistan after the arrest of Imran Khan.E. Jean Carroll, center, leaving court yesterday.Brittainy Newman for The New York TimesTrump found liable for sexual abuseA Manhattan jury found Donald Trump liable yesterday for the sexual abuse and defamation of the writer E. Jean Carroll and ordered him to pay $5 million in damages.The jury determined that Carroll had proven Trump sexually abused her, but they rejected the accusation that she had been raped. The findings were civil, not criminal, meaning Trump has not been convicted of any crime and faces no prison time. Trump said he would appeal the decision.By finding Trump liable, the jury declared that the “preponderance of the evidence” supported Carroll’s accusation that he attacked her in the dressing room of a New York department store in the mid-1990s.Carroll is one of more than a dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct over the years — allegations he has always denied — but hers is the first to be successfully tested before a jury.Trump did not attend the two-week trial. The unanimous verdicts came after three hours of jury deliberation.Context: Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, faces other legal cases. Here’s where they stand.Analysis: Trump had been thriving politically before the verdict and it is not clear how — or whether — the jury’s determination will affect his momentum. Criminal investigations against him have done little to hurt him with his supporters. It remains to be seen whether the verdict will be a different story.Supporters of Imran Khan clashed with police in Karachi yesterday.Shahzaib Akber/EPA, via ShutterstockProtests in Pakistan after Khan’s arrestParamilitary troops arrested Pakistan’s former prime minister, Imran Khan, yesterday in Islamabad, in connection with one of the dozens of corruption cases against him. Soon after the arrest in the capital, Khan’s supporters took to the streets in several cities, including Lahore and Karachi.His arrest represents a major escalation in a political crisis that has engulfed the country since Khan was removed from power by a no-confidence vote in April last year. Khan has accused the military and government of conspiring against him.The drama surrounding Khan seems only to have buoyed his popularity, analysts said. He has staged a comeback since being ousted, openly challenging the military, which for decades has been the invisible hand wielding power behind the government.Christina Goldbaum, our Afghanistan and Pakistan bureau chief, told us, “For many people in Pakistan, this feels like a turning point, political tensions that have been simmering for months finally boiling over.”“The protests we saw today at the army’s headquarters in Rawalpindi and the ransacking of the official residence of an army commander in Lahore — direct confrontations with the country’s powerful military by the public — were in many ways unprecedented,” she said.Details: Khan’s arrest was in connection with a case involving the transfer of land for Al-Qadir University, near Islamabad, officials said. Khan is accused of granting favors to a powerful real-estate tycoon, with the university getting land and donations in return.What’s next: Khan will be presented before a court today, officials said. Protests are expected to continue this week, raising the possibility of violent clashes between the police and Khan’s supporters.Who is Khan? A former cricket star turned prime minister.Even as China reopens, security visits spook foreign businesses.Aly Song/ReutersChina raids another firm with foreign tiesFor weeks, little was known about why Chinese authorities were raiding prominent international consulting firms.Now a reason is coming to light after raids on American firms such as the Mintz Group and Bain & Company, and most recently Capvision Partners, a consulting company with headquarters in New York and Shanghai.State media said the raids were in the name of national security and accused Western countries of stealing key intelligence as part of a “strategy of containment and suppression against China.” Beijing has also moved to limit the availability of financial data to foreign customers and expanded a counterespionage law.The big picture: The campaign has sent a chill through the business community and threatens to undercut Beijing’s attempts to persuade foreign businesses to reinvest in China at a time when the Chinese economy is still trying to recover from tough Covid restrictions.Related: LinkedIn said it would pare down its operations in China.Tit-for-tat: China expelled a Canadian diplomat from Shanghai after Canada ejected a Chinese official who was accused of gathering information on a Canadian lawmaker.THE LATEST NEWSAround the WorldA funeral in Gaza City for people killed in the airstrikes.Mohammed Salem/ReutersIsrael launched airstrikes against Islamic Jihad in Gaza, killing three of the group’s leaders and ending an uneasy weeklong cease-fire.President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey is facing what is shaping up to be the toughest elections of his career. Polls suggest a tight race this weekend, perhaps even a defeat.Wireless carriers in dozens of U.S. states are tearing out Chinese equipment as China and the U.S. jockey for tech primacy.The War in UkraineMuch of the spectacle was missing from this year’s Victory Day parade in Red Square.Pelagiya Tikhonova/Moscow News Agency, via ReutersRussia’s annual Victory Day celebrations were muted, reflecting the uneasy moment that the country faces in the war.President Vladimir Putin kept to his usual talking points during a speech, accusing Kyiv and its Western allies of “pursuing the dissolution and the destruction of our country.”William Burns, the director of the C.I.A. and a key figure in bolstering U.S. support for Ukraine, has amassed influence far beyond most previous agency leaders.Other Big StoriesDavid B. Torch for The New York TimesNorway has embraced electric vehicles. Its air is already cleaner.The detaining of protesters during the coronation of King Charles III is fueling a national debate in Britain about a new anti-protest law.A Morning ReadBudget tour groups from China are returning to Hong Kong, bringing frustration and limited economic benefit.Anthony Kwan for The New York TimesWith China’s borders opened after the lifting of pandemic restrictions, budget tour groups from the mainland have been coming back to Hong Kong in droves. Their return has revived old tensions — and a touch of snobbery — in a city starved for business.“Can we have some good quality tour groups?” a Hong Kong lawmaker asked during a recent legislative session while holding up pictures of tourists overrunning parts of the city.ARTS AND IDEASPhotograph by Esther Choi. Set design by Jocelyn CabralThe language of food textureEnglish has many words for flavor. But when it comes to words for texture, it’s far behind Chinese, which has 144, according to a 2008 report. Japanese has more than 400. For example, English basically has “crunchy” and “crispy.” While in Chinese, there’s a word for food that “offers resistance to the teeth but finally yields, cleanly, with a pleasant snappy feeling.” There’s a phrase for crisp but tender, like young bamboo shoots. For a “dry, fragile, fall-apart crispness,” like deep-fried duck skin. For brittle then soft, like pastry that dissolves at the touch.Some English speakers tend to value a narrower range of textures, too. People in the U.S. seem to mostly crave crunchy or creamy. They shun many textures beloved elsewhere, like the chewiness of tripe or the jellified tendon in pho. Even as the national texture palate slowly expands, the foods on offer may outstrip the language’s powers of description.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookDavid Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.Add a buttery orange syrup to these delicate crepes to make Crêpes Suzette.What to WatchThe rom-com “Down With Love” is getting new life 20 years after it flopped at the box office.What to Read“African Studies,” a large-format photo book, captures the toll of industrialization on sub-Saharan Africa.Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Catches on fire (five letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you tomorrow. — Justin and AmeliaP.S. Our colleague, Corina Knoll, won a top award from the Asian American Journalists Association for her profile of an older Chinese woman who was attacked in New York City.“The Daily” is about U.S. immigration.Was this newsletter useful? Send us your feedback at briefing@nytimes.com. More

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      Mel King, Whose Boston Mayoral Bid Eased Racial Tensions, Dies at 94

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      The first Black finalist for mayor of the city, he was credited, along with the eventual winner, Raymond Flynn, with running a respectful, calming campaign.Mel King, a Black community activist whose barrier-breaking campaign for mayor of Boston in 1983 helped ease racial tensions there that had been caused in part by court-ordered busing to desegregate public schools, died on March 28 at his home in Boston. He was 94.His wife, Joyce (Kenion) King, confirmed the death.In the decade before he ran for mayor, Mr. King had been a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, where he led the passage of laws creating nonprofit agencies that helped finance and renovate substantial amounts of affordable housing,“He’s the father of affordable housing in Boston,” Lewis Finfer, a longtime community organizer in Boston who is director of Massachusetts Action for Justice, said by phone.During his mayoral campaign, Mr. King drew support from what he called a “Rainbow Coalition” — a core that included Black, Hispanic, Asian and progressive white supporters. That term was soon adopted and expanded nationally by the Rev. Jesse Jackson.Mr. King narrowly finished second to Raymond Flynn in a nonpartisan nine-candidate primary and was then soundly defeated by Mr. Flynn in the runoff general election.Still, Mr. King, the first Black mayoral finalist in the city’s history, received a strong 20 percent of the ballots cast by white voters. (Boston has never elected a Black mayor, but for several months in 2021 Kim Janey served as the acting mayor.)Mr. King and Mr. Flynn, both sons of longshoremen, ran an issues-oriented campaign that focused on working-class voters and reflected their long friendship, which began when they were teammates on a semipro basketball team.The campaign was free of rancor about their opposing positions on enforced school busing between predominantly white and predominantly Black sections of the city — Mr. King was for it, Mr. Flynn was against it. That issue had divided the city, sometimes with violence, since 1974, when a federal court ordered the measure as a remedy to racial segregation.“We set a civil tone, one of good will that changed the racial dynamic and toned it down,” Mr. Flynn said in a phone interview. “It wasn’t what people expected, but they were able to say if these two guys can do this for the city, we can do it as well.”Pat Walker, the field director of Mr. King’s campaign, said in an interview that “both campaigns kept the violence and ugliness from breaking out.”Mr. King himself told The Boston Globe a decade after his mayoral run: “What I believe people want more than anything else is a sense of a vision that’s inclusive and respectful and appreciative of who they are. What the Rainbow Coalition did was to put that right up front, because everybody could be a member.”Mr. King joined a singalong while running for mayor of Boston in 1983. He and his opponent, Raymond Flynn, ran a rancor-free campaign that focused on working-class voters and reflected their long friendship.John Blanding/The Boston Globe, via Getty ImagesMelvin Herbert King was born on Oct. 20, 1928, in Boston, one of 11 children. His father, Watts Richard King, who was from Barbados, was a union secretary in addition to working on the docks. His mother, Ursula (Earle) King, was from Guyana.Mr. King attended Claflin University in Orangeburg, S.C., a historically Black school, where he was captain of the football team. He had to adapt to the realities of living, even temporarily, in the Jim Crow South.“I stopped going to the theater where Black people had to sit upstairs and started patronizing the Black theater instead,” he wrote in his 1981 book, “Chain of Change: Struggles for Black Community Development.” “I rode in the back of the bus once and it felt so crummy that from then on I hitchhiked.”He graduated in 1951 with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and a year later received a master’s in education from Boston Teachers College (later Boston State College). He taught at two local high schools before becoming a social worker, first as director of boys’ activities at the Lincoln House settlement house and later as director of youth opportunities for United South End Settlements, a nonprofit social services agency that serves mostly low-income families and that had absorbed Lincoln House.When he was fired in 1967 over a policy dispute with the agency, local residents protested, saying that he had been helping them overcome poverty. An editorial in The Globe called him a “deeply respected leader” of the community.His profile in the city grew.In 1968, Mr. King led a successful demonstration by more than 1,000 people against a city plan to build a parking garage on the site of housing that had been demolished as part of an urban renewal project on the city’s South End; in 1988, a development of 269 mixed-income apartments opened at the site under the name Tent City, a nod to the tents that protesters had earlier pitched and occupied on the property.In 1989, Mr. King, who by then was executive director of the New Urban League, joined with other members of that group to disrupt an awards luncheon of the United Fund, a major local philanthropy, which had recently reduced its financial allocation to the league. Mr. King scooped half-eaten rolls and pieces of coconut pie into a laundry bag marked “Our Unfair Share — Black Crumbs,” held it over his head and dumped it on the head table.“We’ve been getting crumbs,” he said at the time. “We’re no longer going to accept crumbs.”In 1979, when Pope John Paul II visited Boston, Mr. King led a march to express outrage over the shooting of a Black high school football player during a game. The player’s wounds left him a quadriplegic. Three white teenagers were charged.“This walk,” he said during the event, “is to indicate that the pope should not come here without helping his flock to overcome their racism and to get the leaders of this city involved in that kind of dialogue that will put an end to the racism in this city.”During his mayoral campaign, Mr. King took controversial positions. He told a mostly Jewish audience that he would welcome Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, to Boston if he came peacefully. Given the choice between President Ronald Reagan and the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, he told a radio station, he would take Castro, because he had done more for the poor.Mr. King’s other work included teaching in the urban studies and planning department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1970 to 1996. There, he started a Community Fellows Program for leaders nationwide.In 1997, he created the South End Technology Center at Tent City, which offers community residents free or low-cost training in computer technology. He was its volunteer director.In addition to his wife, Mr. King’s survivors include his daughters, Pamela, Judith and Nancy King; his sons, Melvin Jr., Michael and Jomo; and his sister, Olga King. More

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      A Week of Youthful Activism Sends Out Political Shockwaves

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      After Donald Trump’s indictment on Tuesday, progressives cemented two crucial victories in Wisconsin and Chicago, and, in Nashville, a firestorm erupted after the expulsion of two liberal lawmakers.A surge of youthful activism powered major liberal victories in Wisconsin and Chicago and a boisterous legislative uprising in Tennessee this week, as Republicans absorbed a string of damaging political blows, beginning with the arraignment of their leading presidential contender on criminal charges in Manhattan.The drumbeat of news seemed to batter the G.O.P.’s brand by the hour: Donald J. Trump became the first American president to be led into a courtroom to hear his indictment. Voters in Wisconsin handed Democrats a landslide victory and a one-seat majority on the state’s Supreme Court, with the fate of abortion and Wisconsin’s heavily gerrymandered political map at stake.And liberal activists helped one of their own rise to mayor of Chicago, defeating a more moderate Democrat who had the backing of Republicans in and around the nation’s third-largest city, and overcoming conservative-tinged arguments about crime and policing.A coda, or perhaps an own-goal, came on Thursday in red-state Tennessee, when the overwhelmingly Republican Legislature voted to expel two young, Black male representatives for their roles in leading youthful protests calling for gun control, after a mass shooting at a Christian school in Nashville, but narrowly allowed a white female lawmaker who had stood with them to remain.The three Tennessee state representatives who were subject to expulsion votes on Thursday, Mr. Pearson, Justin Jones and Gloria Johnson. Ms. Johnson was the only one not expelled.Jon Cherry for The New York TimesIn so doing, Tennessee Republicans achieved little besides catapulting the representatives, Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson, as well as Gloria Johnson, onto the national stage: Both men could be reappointed to their seats by officials in their Nashville and Memphis districts as soon as next week, as they await special elections in which they are favored to win.“If my job, along with other members of the R.N.C., is to protect the brand of the Republican Party, this didn’t help,” said Oscar Brock, a Republican National Committeeman from Tennessee. “You’ve energized young voters against us. Worse than squandering support, you’ve made enemies where we didn’t need them.”To be sure, there were bright spots for Republicans: They won a special election giving them a supermajority in the Wisconsin Senate, which entails broad impeachment powers. And a Democrat’s switch to the G.O.P. in the North Carolina House of Representatives handed Republicans a two-chamber legislative supermajority in the only Southern state where abortion is broadly legal, granting Republicans in Raleigh the ability to override the vetoes of Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat.But in an odd-numbered year and a season when Americans are more taken with daffodils than with politics, the clamor of youthful activism and anger may have left the more lasting impression.“The right wing understands that time is not on their side,” said Representative Maxwell Frost, 26, a Florida Democrat who last year became the first member of Generation Z to be elected to the House. “What we saw in Chicago and Wisconsin, and what we saw in the backlash in Tennessee, is young people rising, and all of this played out in one week.”A “die-in” at the Tennessee State Capitol on Thursday. “It was a shameful day, but it will also wake people up, especially young people,” said Steve Cohen, a Tennessee congressman.Jon Cherry for The New York TimesFew Republicans defended the decision by their compatriots in Tennessee to try to silence elected Democrats by chucking them from the state house. Democrats, for their part, seized the moment.Representative Steve Cohen, the lone Democrat in Tennessee’s congressional delegation after the gerrymandering of district lines before last November’s election, recalled the one and only time he got any attention from the national press as a member of the State Legislature: with a vote against displaying the Ten Commandments. Even so, he said, it amounted to just a quote in Time magazine. Mr. Pearson and Mr. Jones became national celebrities over the course of 24 hours.“It was a shameful day, but it will also wake people up, especially young people,” Mr. Cohen said.Worrywarts in either party looking for ill omens could find plenty.Mr. Trump’s arraignment on felony charges that he falsified business records to hide hush money to a porn star in the final days of the 2016 election set off a bonanza of fund-raising for his campaign and rallied many Republicans around his third run for the presidency. And a spate of new polling pointed to Mr. Trump’s improving competitiveness against President Biden in 2024.Not even his rivals for the Republican nomination dared question the indictment’s underlying allegations that Mr. Trump engaged in extramarital dalliances with a pornographic film actress and a Playboy Playmate.“No matter how tawdry the charges and whether true or false, making a sexual encounter between two consenting adults the focal point of a criminal indictment or an impeachment strikes most Americans as an abuse of power and a distraction,” said Ralph Reed, a veteran political strategist and voice of Christian conservatives.Janet Protasiewicz at her election night party in Wisconsin after an easy victory for a Supreme Court seat.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesOne of the week’s through-lines was the awakening of the young, who are often neglected because, for all their activism, they often fail to vote. Young voters were not only crucial to the easy victory of Janet Protasiewicz, the liberal candidate for Wisconsin’s open Supreme Court seat, they also powered the liberal candidate for mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, to an upset victory over the more moderate law-and-order candidate, Paul Vallas.And in the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville, the chants of young protesters boomed through the hallways before, during and after the votes to oust the two state representatives, Mr. Jones, 27, and Mr. Pearson, 29.The drama in Nashville on Thursday was incendiary on multiple levels, a political cauldron of young versus old, Black versus white, a marginalized minority against an overwhelming majority — all playing out against the backdrop of gun violence in schools.Then there were the issues: guns and abortion.Addressing her party’s defeat in Wisconsin a day later on Fox News, Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, conceded, “Where you’re losing by 10 points, there is a messaging issue. Abortion is still an issue, and we can’t allow the Democrats to define Republicans on it.”Her comments, however, elicited a storm of protest from anti-abortion voices in her party, which has showed no letup in its push for abortion curbs. Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida and a potential rival of Mr. Trump’s for the presidential nomination, appears intent on signing a bill in Tallahassee to ban abortions after six weeks. Idaho’s Republican governor, Brad Little, signed legislation this week prohibiting minors from traveling outside the state for an abortion without parental consent.Still, Ms. McDaniel stood by her comments: “We can’t put our heads in the sand going into 2024,” she said on Fox News.Mr. Brock, the national committeeman from Tennessee, similarly warned his party on its response to gun violence after the shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville left six dead, including three children. Republicans, he said, can stay true to the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms and still respectfully listen to the arguments for more gun-safety regulation.“Even in Tennessee, we have swing districts in the State House and Senate,” he said, “and if you’ve angered tens of thousands of students and presumably their parents, you could theoretically expose yourself to a united front.” More

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      You Could Have Walked a Block Away and Had No Clue Trump Just Got Arrested

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      I missed George Santos at the protest outside the courthouse where Donald Trump was later arraigned on Tuesday, and I couldn’t hear a thing Marjorie Taylor Greene said over the screams of counter-demonstrators and the incessant blowing of whistles. They were the two biggest names who turned out to show their support for Trump on a day that felt at once historic and very small.The police put up metal barriers dividing a block-sized park near the courthouse in two, with dozens of Trump opponents on one side, dozens of Trump acolytes on the other, and cops everywhere. Altogether, there were hundreds of people, often screaming at each other across the divide, chants of “U.S.A.” competing with chants of “Lock Him Up!” Some characters were familiar from the Trump campaign road show, including Dion Cini, a peddler of Trump merchandise who flew a giant “Trump or Death” flag, and Maurice Symonette, founder of the groupuscule Blacks for Trump and onetime member of a violent Black supremacist cult. “He had sex with a prostitute,” Symonette said of Trump, apparently referring to the adult film star Stormy Daniels. “How is that against the law? Who hasn’t done that?”Representative George Santos.Mark Peterson for The New York TimesRepresentative Marjorie Taylor Greene.Mark Peterson for The New York TimesOf course, Trump wasn’t indicted for his affairs, but for the steps he allegedly took to cover them up. Before the indictment was unsealed, rumors flew across Twitter that it included a conspiracy count, but in the end, all 34 counts were for falsifying business records in connection with the payoff to silence Daniels, which Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg argued was connected to a broader scheme to squelch negative stories about Trump.According to the indictment, the business record falsifications were done “with intent to defraud and intent to commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission thereof.” Though no other crime is charged, the statement of facts accompanying the indictment accuses Trump of violating election laws. It’s the connection to another crime that turns falsifying business records from a misdemeanor into a felony.Observers from across the political spectrum have been skeptical of the legal theory that underlies Bragg’s case. As The New York Times reported in March, “Combining the criminal charge with a violation of state election law would be a novel legal theory for any criminal case, let alone one against the former president, raising the possibility that a judge or appellate court could throw it out or reduce the felony charge to a misdemeanor.” Trump, in other words, may still wriggle out of this predicament.As I’ve argued before, if Trump’s role in the hush-money payments broke the law, it’s a serious matter, because those payments helped him get elected, and the plot to cover them up sent his former lawyer to prison. Trump, the statement of facts says, “orchestrated a scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him to suppress its publication and benefit the defendant’s electoral prospects.” If this is true, it’s perverse to suggest that Trump’s success in this scheme — represented by him winning the presidency — is a reason not to prosecute him.Nevertheless, for all the hype going into Tuesday, the indictment feels anticlimactic. “True and accurate business records are important everywhere, to be sure,” said Bragg in his news conference after the arraignment. “They are all the more important in Manhattan, the financial center of the world.” Trump, like everyone else, should be held accountable if he failed to keep such records. We’re not owed an indictment commensurate with his depravity. Still, these are hard charges to get excited about.Indeed, what’s struck me over the last two days in New York is a distinct lack of excitement. Many who detest Trump, I suspect, have lost faith in the ability of the legal system to hold him to account. And while his supporters may threaten civil war, not many of them seem willing to brave Manhattan, which they’ve been told is a crime-ridden hellhole.Earlier this week, Roger Stone, the political dirty trickster and longtime Trump ally, promoted a Monday rally outside Trump Tower. When I went there, only a handful of people had shown up. Tuesday’s turnout was larger, but still felt more desultory than menacing, despite some threatening rhetoric. (One man carried a sign with a noose affixed to it, signifying his hopes for members of the “Liberal Biased News Media.”) You could walk a block away and be unaware that anything was happening.Mark Peterson for The New York TimesMaybe this is to be expected: Many of the people who might have led mob violence have been either indicted or convicted for their involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection. And certainly, there remains an acute danger from Trump fanatics acting alone. The way the Trump camp has targeted the daughter of the judge overseeing the Trump case has been particularly unconscionable. Arguing that the daughter’s political work constituted a conflict for her father, people including Greene, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump shared a story featuring her photograph on social media, and Trump went after her in his post-arraignment speech, likely putting her safety at risk.But while Trump still has an obsessive following, he can no longer command the country’s stunned attention, even by getting arrested. Maybe that’s the consolation of an arraignment that doesn’t feel at all momentous.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