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      Trump’s Trial Challenge: Being Stripped of Control

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      The mundanity of the courtroom has all but swallowed Donald Trump, who for decades has sought to project an image of bigness and a sense of power.“Sir, can you please have a seat.”Donald J. Trump had stood up to leave the Manhattan criminal courtroom as Justice Juan M. Merchan was wrapping up a scheduling discussion on Tuesday.But the judge had not yet adjourned the court or left the bench. Mr. Trump, the 45th president of the United States and the owner of his own company, is used to setting his own pace. Still, when Justice Merchan admonished him to sit back down, the former president did so without saying a word.The moment underscored a central reality for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. For the next six weeks, a man who values control and tries to shape environments and outcomes to his will is in control of very little.Everything about the circumstances in which the former president comes to court every day to sit as the defendant in the People v. Donald J. Trump at 100 Centre Street is repellent to him. The trapped-in-amber surroundings that evoke New York City’s more crime-ridden past. The lack of control. The details of a case in which he is accused of falsifying business records to conceal a payoff to a porn star to keep her claims of an affair with him from emerging in the 2016 election.Mr. Trump in court on Friday.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesOf the four criminal cases Mr. Trump is facing, this is the one that is the most acutely personal. And people close to him are blunt when privately discussing his reaction: He looks around each day and cannot believe he has to be there.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Columbia Students Who Were Arrested Face Uncertain Consequences

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      Students who camped in tents to protest the war in Gaza, including the daughter of Representative Ilhan Omar, may be barred from finishing the semester.Many of the more than 100 Columbia University and Barnard College students who were arrested after refusing to leave a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus on Thursday woke up to a chilly new reality this week: Columbia said that their IDs would soon stop working, and some of them would not be able to finish the semester.The students who were arrested were released with summonses. The university said all of the 100 or so students involved in the protest had been informed that they were suspended.For some of those students, that means they must vacate their student housing, with just weeks before the semester ends.Yet whatever the consequences, several of the students said in interviews that they were determined to keep protesting Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.They said that after being loaded onto buses with their hands tied, they had sung all the way to police headquarters. Many expressed a renewed belief in their cause, and were glad that the eyes of the nation were on Columbia and Barnard, its sister college.The protests, the arrests and the subsequent disciplinary action came a day after the congressional testimony this week of Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, at a hearing about antisemitism on campus. Columbia has said there have been a number of antisemitic episodes, including one attack, and many Jewish students have seen the protests as antisemitic.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Max Azzarello’s Path to Setting Himself on Fire Outside Trump Trial Began in Florida

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      Friends of Max Azzarello, who set himself on fire outside Donald J. Trump’s trial, said he was a caring person whose paranoia had led him down a dark path.The journey that ended with a man setting himself on fire on Friday outside the Manhattan courthouse where Donald J. Trump was being tried seemed to have begun in Florida, with a series of increasingly bizarre outbursts.Standing in the afternoon chill, the man, Max Azzarello, 37, of St. Augustine, Fla., threw pamphlets into the air before dousing himself with an accelerant and setting his body ablaze. The police hurried to extinguish the flames, but officials said his injuries were grave, and he was being treated at a hospital burn unit.The fire just a block or two from the courthouse appeared calculated to draw widespread attention, horrifying bystanders and temporarily overshadowing the momentous trial of a former president.But a closer look at the path the man had traveled to this moment of self-destruction revealed a recent spiral into volatility, one marked by a worldview that had become increasingly confusing and disjointed — and appeared to be unattached to any political party. His social media postings and arrest records suggest the immolation stemmed instead from a place of conspiracy theories and paranoia.Until last summer, Mr. Azzarello seemed to have lived a relatively quiet life. After high school, where he was a member of a bowling team, he graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2009, with degrees in anthropology and public policy.As a student at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., where he received a master’s degree in city and regional planning in 2012, he was known for leaving supportive Post-it notes for classmates in the hallways and for his karaoke performances of Frank Sinatra and Disney tunes, said a former classmate, Katie Brennan.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Columbia Sends In the N.Y.P.D. to Arrest Protesters in Tent City

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      The university president broke with a decades-long tradition and called in the police to quell the pro-Palestinian protest. The encampment was then dismantled.For about a day and a half, pro-Palestinian activists at Columbia University set up what they called a “Liberated Zone,” a temporary community with the spirit and values they wished existed on campus always.It was an impromptu tent village, with more than 50 tents, pitched on a large green lawn just outside the school’s imposing main library. It had a gathering area under a white awning heaped with supplies donated by fellow students. A red spray-painted sign announced its name: “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.”For those hours, living and gathering in the encampment felt purposeful and important, the activists said. A film screening was held after midnight; there was a teach-in. Hundreds of students marched around the encampment to show support.“It really feels like we’ve taken over the university and made it into the vision that students want it to be, and not what these bigwigs who want to encroach on academic freedom want it to be,” said Maryam Alwan, one of the organizers.But for Columbia University, the encampment was anything but an Eden. The university’s president, Nemat Shafik, fresh from a congressional hearing in which she had pledged to enforce the university’s rules on protests, tried to get the students to stand down. When they did not, she decided to break with a decades-long norm in the university’s approach to quelling protests.She gave the police a green light to come in.“The current encampment violates all of the new policies, severely disrupts campus life, and creates a harassing and intimidating environment for many of our students,” she wrote in a letter to the Columbia community sent around 1:15 p.m. on Thursday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Columbia University President Faces Difficult Road Ahead as Students Protest on Campus

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      For Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, a hearing on antisemitism went relatively well. But on campus, intense protests suggest a difficult road ahead for the university.Representative Elise Stefanik leaned into the microphone and volleyed a series of questions at the university president sitting in front of her. It was about three hours into a congressional hearing examining antisemitism at Columbia University, and the president, Nemat Shafik, paused, sighed and gave a nervous laugh.Ms. Stefanik had asked whether the university would remove a professor who praised the Oct. 7 Hamas attack from a role as chair of the university’s academic review committee.After a few seconds, Dr. Shafik responded. “I think that would be — I think, I would, yes. Let me come back with yes,” she said.Republican lawmakers on the House Committee on Education and the Work Force had come ready to pounce. They tested for weaknesses and prodded vulnerabilities, while their witnesses, a group of Columbia leaders, seemed conciliatory.And yet, by the end, it seemed Dr. Shafik and other campus leaders had successfully diffused Republican lines of attack, repeatedly and vigorously agreeing that antisemitism was a serious problem on their campus and vowing that they would do more to fight it.But as Dr. Shafik spoke, the tempest that she had been brought in to account for appeared to intensify. Back on campus in Manhattan, pro-Palestinian students erected an encampment with dozens of tents on a central campus lawn, vowing not to move until Columbia divested from companies with ties to Israel and met other demands. Hundreds of other students joined them to rally throughout the day.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Eric Adams’s Top Aide, Timothy Pearson, Is Hit With a Second Harassment Lawsuit

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      The aide, Timothy Pearson, was accused of harassing and retaliating against a second police sergeant under his watch.One of Mayor Eric Adams’s closest confidants was sued on Wednesday for the second time in a month over accusations that he harassed and retaliated against a New York Police Department sergeant he oversaw.The confidant, Timothy Pearson, was so prone to sexually harassing women that he was secretly placed under watch to try to prevent him from being alone with female colleagues, the suit says.The allegations, made by a retired sergeant, Michael Ferrari, in a complaint filed Wednesday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, support similar accusations by one of Mr. Ferrari’s former colleagues in the unit, Roxanne Ludemann.Ms. Ludemann filed suit against Mr. Pearson last month, alleging that he often put his hands on female colleagues and retaliated against those who complained.Ms. Ludemann retired in January after she said she was subject to harassment and retaliation. Her departure came roughly seven months after Mr. Ferrari retired; he said in the lawsuit that Mr. Pearson’s harassment and retaliation had effectively ended his career.Mr. Ferrari also asserted that Mr. Pearson was privately given the nickname “Crumbs” when he expressed anger after a contractor had been paid.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kisa Brings South Korean Roadside Fare to the Lower East Side

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      Rosemary’s offers pizza and a family-style meal in Midtown, the owners of Oxalis open Laurel Bakery in the Columbia Street waterfront district, Brooklyn, and more restaurant news.OpeningKisaIn South Korea, roadside diners that cater to taxi drivers are called kisa sikdang, or “driver’s restaurants,” and serve baekban (homestyle) fare like bibimbap, spicy pork or local, fresh seafood with rice and banchan. Kisa serves most of these as well as bulgogi and spicy squid. The owners, David JoonWoo Yun, Steve JaeWoo Choi and Yong Min Kim, all South Korean natives, are behind C as in Charlie in the NoHo. (Taxi drivers prefer rice dishes to soups, they say, because bathroom breaks are rare.) The room’s vintage touches include Korean calendars, wall-mounted fans and a machine that dispenses free coffee. (Opens Saturday)205 Allen Street (East Houston Street), 656-866-8622, kisaus.com. Rosemary’sHail a tractor to head for the third of Carlos Suarez’s farmhouse-style Italian restaurants, named for his mother and incongruously installed among glass and steel towers. The airy dining room opens to sidewalk seating, and a small retail area and a private dining room are tucked in the back. La Sagra, a new family-style spread of assorted antipasti followed by pasta and dessert, is $39 per person with $1 going to God’s Love We Deliver. Pizzas, including one with spring peas and artichokes, are also new. Much of the produce comes from McEnroe Organic Farm in the Hudson Valley which is co-owned by the Durst Organization, the owner of the building.825 Third Avenue (50th Street), 212-870-6137, rosemarysnyc.com. Bar Primi Penn DistrictThe Madison Square Garden and Manhattan West area, steps from the Moynihan Train Hall, was once a restaurant desert. It is now bustling with dining options, including this uptown edition of the Italian Bowery restaurant from NoHo Hospitality, the chef Andrew Carmellini’s team. It’s in a former warehouse with a thickly planted patio.349 West 33rd Street, 212-233-6100, barprimi.com. Chica & the DonThis luxurious Flatiron district venue, which feels like a supper club, offers a richly interpreted menu of Latin American food and drinks, featuring dishes like short rib and maduro quesadilla, and fried red snapper in a coconut-tomato sauce. Tropical fruits flavor the drinks. Music and dancing are on the agenda. (Friday)24 East 21st Street, 646-649-4805, chicadon.com. Panko PizzaMany pizzaiolos strew a handful of semolina on the pan for a crisp crust that doesn’t stick. At his new pizzeria, Fran Garcia, best known as the owner of Artichoke Basille’s with many locations, coats his crusts with olive oil and dips them in panko for the same effect.1104 NJ-35 (New Monmouth Road), Middletown Township, N.J., 848-225-3080, pankopizzeria.com. On the MenuJapanese WinesLeo Lê has expanded the Momoya wine list to include bottles from Japan.Mark HigashinoWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More