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      A Generation of Women Named for Connie Chung

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      More from our inbox:The Dangerous Debt Limit DebateRon DeSantis, AuthoritarianForming a Community With Homeless NeighborsU.S. Role in Sex Exploitation in South KoreaConnie Chung, center, is one of the most famous Asian women in the U.S. Connie Aramaki for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “I Got My Name From Connie Chung. So Did They,” by Connie Wang (Opinion guest essay, May 14), about the many Asian women named after the TV journalist:It feels strange to know that there are so many Asian Connies out there, all close in age range in our 30s and 40s. But it’s a good strange feeling. It feels as if I have serendipitously entered a vast sisterhood, where the profound bond among us was formed by the influence of one woman on our mothers over 30 years ago.In my family, watching Connie Chung host “CBS Evening News” in the early ’90s was a family event. There were barely any Asian faces on TV at the time, let alone on a major news program. Connie Chung stood out in every way.“You can’t be what you can’t see.” When Ms. Chung came on the screen, my mom saw what was possible for the next generation right in front of her, far from the sights of Asian women working in menial jobs that defined my mom’s day-to-day life as a new immigrant.So when I suggested Connie as my English name, my mother liked it right away. “Keep it. It’s good, it’s just like Connie Chung,” she would say. With that choice of a name, my mom had poured all her hopes for me. Little did I know then that across the country people were being named Connie for that very same reason.Times are different now. There is a lot more diversity in the media and other professions. While we still have much work ahead of us, let us take a moment to celebrate this progress.Connie WuSan FranciscoTo the Editor:My daughter was adopted from Guangdong Province, China, in 1998 when she was 13 months old. She has no memory of the following story except through my retelling.It was a spring afternoon in the year 2000 at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, N.C. My toddler and I took our places on the open-air train for a ride through the grounds.“It’s who you think it is,” the ticket taker whispered, nodding over her shoulder. Two seats ahead, surrounded by visitors, were Maury Povich and Connie Chung.Celebrity watching prevailed over scenery and animal sighting during that ride. Afterward, as a cluster of visitors lingered with Mr. Povich, Ms. Chung strolled ahead alone. But not for long. My daughter, rarely more than an inch from my side, leery of all strangers, let go of my hand and trotted up to grab Connie’s leg. Surprised, smiling, Ms. Chung lifted my daughter into her arms.Connie Wang’s wonderful article describes the surprise that Ms. Chung expressed when told: “There are so many of us out here. Named after you.” Something about that surprise, of not knowing her effect on others, stays with me.Anne TooheyChapel Hill, N.C.The Dangerous Debt Limit Debate Kiersten EssenpreisTo the Editor:Re “Ignoring the Debt Limit Would Be Dangerous” (Opinion guest essay, May 15):I disagree with my longtime friend Michael McConnell about the politics of the debt ceiling.Of course Congress has the power of the purse. But the problem here is not Congress as a whole; it is a slim majority in the House. And that majority is controlled by a handful of its most extreme members.The debt ceiling debate is certainly not politics as usual. It is a threat to destroy the country’s finances and its position of world leadership unless the Senate and the president give in to that faction’s extreme demands.Neither the country nor the Constitution can function if every choke point in the system of checks and balances is exploited for maximum leverage without regard to consequences. If one side is willing to wreck the economy unless it gets its way, why not both sides? If one faction, why not many different factions with inconsistent demands?The House, the Senate and the president bargain over spending in the budget and appropriations process, not through threats to destroy the economy if I don’t get my way.Douglas LaycockCharlottesville, Va.The writer is a professor at the University of Virginia Law School.Ron DeSantis, AuthoritarianGov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has long been a presumptive but undeclared rival to former President Donald J. Trump.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesTo the Editor:The efforts by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida to harass Disney for exercising its rights of free speech and to ban books from the classroom that do not support his political or racial beliefs are the mark of an authoritarian tyrant. They show that right-wing politicians are the perpetrators, not the victims, of “cancel culture.”Republicans should consider how they would react if a Democratic governor retaliated against a corporation for opposing a Democratic program or embarked upon a program to ban conservative books.This is not the sort of person who belongs anywhere near the White House, and this is not the sort of person whom anyone should support. Hard to believe that Mr. DeSantis attended two fine academic institutions — Yale and Harvard Law — and learned so little about free speech, democracy and American constitutional values.David S. ElkindGreenwich, Conn.The writer is a lawyer.Forming a Community With Homeless NeighborsIntensive mobile treatment teams meet mentally ill clients where they are. Chris Payton and Sonia Daley visited M in Lower Manhattan.To the Editor:“In New York City, Making the Invisible Visible” (The Story Behind the Story, May 7) yields a question: To what extent is the mental illness we see in homeless people the result of — not the cause of — their being homeless?Hundreds of people silently pass them by each day, turning away, ignoring a hand held out for a donation. In plain sight, day after day, they live in public solitary confinement, the sort that is now being attacked in the courts as an inhumane, cruel and unusual punishment that often leads to mental illness when used in prisons.A civic organization I belong to in Florida recently began refurbishing a public park, long known as the home of the homeless in our city, by organizing periodic cleanups by volunteers and painting a mural honoring a local eccentric woman, long dead.After a while, the homeless folks began approaching our volunteers and the painter, viewing the art and then striking up tentative conversations. One homeless woman turned out to be an amateur painter, and a small portion of the mural was turned over to her to design and paint.Within weeks, the homeless frequenting the park began policing it — picking up trash and chastising people who dropped it. And, most important, collectively and individually, some bizarre behaviors faded away, replaced by social interaction.I now wonder what the results would be if the public at large began acknowledging the homeless, even by saying, “Hello,” or “I don’t have any cash with me today, sorry,” rather than simply walking on.As someone who lived in New York City for 30 years, I know that the city is filled with visible-yet-invisible people and am, frankly, ashamed that I didn’t catch onto this notion earlier.Stephen PhillipsSt. Petersburg, Fla.U.S. Role in Sex Exploitation in South KoreaTo the Editor:Re “South Korea Created a Brutal Sex Trade for American Soldiers” (front page, May 3):As your article so painfully makes clear, the brutal forced prostitution of young and vulnerable South Korean women and girls was caused not just by the government of South Korea but by the United States as well.There is much that the U.S. can and should do. It should be paying reparations. The government and the armed services chiefs should offer apologies to the women who went through this and to their families.And those who are in charge of curbing sexual harassment in the military today should redouble their efforts as they grow to understand just how systemic sexual assaults and misogyny have been in the armed forces for so long.Jean ZornFort Lauderdale, Fla. 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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      The Trump Inevitability Question

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      Listen and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicOutside a Manhattan courtroom, on the day of former President Donald Trump’s arraignment, Astead spoke to two camps of spectators. Supporters cast Mr. Trump as the victim of prosecutorial overreach, while opposing voices hoped this was just the beginning of his legal troubles. With an ever-shifting political landscape as America heads toward the 2024 election, what do Mr. Trump’s mounting legal woes mean for his electoral viability? Is success for the former president, despite it all, an inevitability?Astead speaks with Nate Cohn, The New York Times’s chief political analyst, about what the polls do — and do not — tell us.Photo Illustration by The New York Times; Pool photo by Andrew KellyOn today’s episodeNate Cohn, chief political analyst for The New York Times. About ‘The Run-Up’First launched in August 2016, three months before the election of Donald Trump, “The Run-Up” is The New York Times’s flagship political podcast. The host, Astead W. Herndon, grapples with the big ideas already animating the 2024 presidential election. Because it’s always about more than who wins and loses. And the next election has already started.Last season, “The Run-Up” focused on grass-roots voters and shifting attitudes among the bases of both political parties. This season, we go inside the party establishment.New episodes on Thursdays.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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      8 Years in Trump Prison and Still Waiting on Parole

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      On Monday a friend breathlessly and sheepishly emailed: “Yes, I admit it: I’m watching the motorcade from La Guardia to Trump Tower. It’s like O.J.’s Bronco ride! And I swear, the lead car in the motorcade looks like a white Bronco! Could this be an inside joke by the N.Y.P.D.?”As delicious — indeed, bewitching — a possibility as this might be, I found myself shrugging. I didn’t watch the motorcade, nor could I watch the arraignment, though long have I fantasized about seeing Donald Trump perp-walked, mug-shot, fingerprinted, shackled, summarily convicted and motorcaded directly from court to the South Street Seaport and put aboard a ship for St. Helena.Why am I not jubilating, wallowing in a deep, warm bubble bath of schadenfreude? Why, instead of humming “Ding, dong, the witch is dead!” am I pressing buttons on the remote control to see what else is on — some politically themed movie, say, in which the president more or less gracefully accepts proof of his villainy, resigns and helicopters off to exile in, say, California? Those were the days. Instead, what’s currently on more resembles “Groundhog Day,” a replay of a movie about replay.Much as I hope to see justice served — if not, at this late point, piping hot — it feels as though we’re the ones who are already in jail. Mr. Trump came down that escalator into the lobby in 2015, making this the eighth year of our sentence in Trump Prison.Is there hope of parole? Remains to be seen. Despair is a mortal sin, and yet … who knows? We are relentlessly, remorselessly told by some constitutional pooh-bah that even if convicted, a person can 1) run for president and 2) be president. Who knew?Mr. Trump’s fame came largely from a reality TV show, every episode of which concluded with his snarling at people and telling them they were fired. His genius was to make us participants in this garish melodrama. Though many of us — but, alas, apparently not enough of us — yearn fervently to fire him, he has proved unfireable. Teflon, Kevlar, whatever your metaphor for “unassailable” — he endures. The show is renewed for another season. The concept of becoming ridiculous and tiresome by jumping the shark does not apply. The bigger the shark, the higher the jump. On to the Capitol! Hang Mike Pence! (who was last heard bemoaning the “weaponization” of justice). Oh, the humanity!I didn’t tune in live, but I did see a photo of Mr. Trump on Monday, entering the lobby of his namesake tower, where eight years ago he sentenced us to imprisonment. He didn’t look happy. Who would? Yet one wondered if, deep down inside, he was. Despite the circumstances — WITCH HUNT! — he was exactly where he craves to be: the orange omphalos of our world.Years ago, a now disgraced network television C.E.O. observed without shame that Donald Trump’s first run for office might not be good for the country but he was sure good for his network. These ratings are through the roof!Whom the gods would destroy, first they bestow upon them monster ratings. When Tucker Carlson lays his head upon his pillow after another day of bread and circuses, does he reconcile defending a man about whom he confided to colleagues, “I hate him passionately,” with suggesting to viewers that now might not be a good time to hand in their AR-15s? If he succeeds at this contradictory jujitsu, he deserves a black belt in cognitive dissonance.Democrats, it’s said, never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. It may be time to revise this hoary axiom, for it’s the Republicans who’ve blown one opportunity after another. Not just two impeachments. As the historian Jon Meacham points out in The New Yorker, Republicans in Congress could have invoked the clause in the 14th Amendment that bars from public office anyone who attempts to overthrow the government.This was the lowest hanging fruit of all, but the party of Lincoln and Reagan didn’t raise a hand. In the same interview Mr. Meacham, the author of an admiring biography of George H.W. Bush, also expressed utter bafflement that Mr. Bush’s lifelong close friend and consigliere James Baker admitted to voting for Mr. Trump — whom Mr. Baker despises almost as much as Mr. Carlson does — not once but twice. Much as I miss Mr. Bush, I’m grateful he’s not around to hear this.The show will go on, endlessly renewed for another season. There will be more indications — sorry, indictments. The dogs will bark, but athwart the old proverb, the caravan will not move on.Christopher Buckley is a novelist and a humorist.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 calls to protest fall on weary, wary ears.

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      In Lower Manhattan on Tuesday morning, near the courthouse where Donald J. Trump was to be arraigned, Dion Cini, a Trump merchandise entrepreneur from Brooklyn and frequent presence at Trump rallies, waved an enormous flag that read TRUMP OR DEATH.“We’re living in history right now,” he told a scrum of mostly European reporters.But the crowd — for a demonstration convened by the New York Young Republican Club, where Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene would soon speak — was overwhelmingly made up of journalists. Trump supporters were so outnumbered that anyone in Make America Great Again attire was quickly swarmed by cameras.On Truth Social last month, Mr. Trump exhorted his supporters: “WE MUST SAVE AMERICA! PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!” But while his indictment has been met with outrage across right-wing media and social media, the offline response has so far been a far cry from the turnouts at his campaign rallies — much less the tens of thousands he drew to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, for the rally that became a violent attempt to avert the end of his presidency.Pro-Trump organizers and outside observers have pointed to a range of factors to explain the low turnout. They include the relatively short notice of the arraignment, the mixed messages from right-wing media figures and politicians like Ms. Greene — who last month stoked fear that an indictment protest could be infiltrated by “Feds/Fed assets” — and the question of what, exactly, a demonstration would accomplish.But the small crowds are also a testament to a political landscape that has changed since the explosive finale of Mr. Trump’s presidency.“The right has zero interest in repeating anything that even remotely resembles Jan. 6,” said Dustin Stockton, an organizer of the pro-Trump Stop the Steal rallies that culminated at the Capitol that day.The riot drew its incendiary force from its particular combination of rank-and-file Trump supporters and a smaller cohort of extremists who had found a footing in the Republican mainstream in the Trump years. Those constituencies grew closer in 2020, as Covid-19 lockdowns, racial justice protests and riots and finally Mr. Trump’s claims of a stolen election drew them together around a common set of grievances — grievances that were converted into a call to action by right-wing media and influencers, Republican politicians and Mr. Trump himself.Jon Lewis, a research fellow in the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, said those conditions would be extraordinarily hard to replicate, even after a development as extraordinary as Mr. Trump’s indictment.“The further away we get from Jan. 6, the more it is being recognized as a unique perfect storm of events, of actors, of circumstances,” Mr. Lewis said.Since Jan. 6, rallies similar to those that gathered large crowds in 2020 have struggled to produce significant turnouts. An annual gun-rights rally in Richmond, Va., which brought tens of thousands of gun owners and militia members into the streets in January 2020, drew only hundreds in late January 2021. The crowds were similarly sparse at Inauguration Day protests in Washington and statehouses across the country days later.Demonstrations against Covid-19 vaccine mandates in late 2021 and early 2022 sought to recapture the energy of the “re-open” protests in the spring of 2020, and did draw several thousand to the National Mall in January 2022. But they mostly evaporated after states eased their Covid-19 policies that spring.Claims of a stolen 2020 election animated many prominent Republican candidates and grass-roots groups in last year’s midterm elections. But the most prominent election deniers lost, and the most significant demonstration over the candidates’ defeats, in Phoenix, drew only a couple of hundred people.A crucial missing element in all of these events was Mr. Trump himself. His ability to draw supporters to the new cause of his prosecution remains to be seen.But participants and observers have also pointed to the chilling effect of the law enforcement crackdowns and congressional investigations since Jan. 6. F.B.I. domestic terrorism investigations have more than doubled since 2020, according to the Government Accountability Office. Under the Biden administration, “you have seen the early signs of a sea change in how the U.S. government is approaching domestic violent extremism,” Mr. Lewis said.High-profile federal prosecutions related to Jan. 6 have swept up the national leaderships of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, some of whom have been convicted of sedition and other serious crimes. Individual rioters, many of whom documented their activities on Jan. 6 on social media, have faced detention and prosecution on lesser charges, or at least visits from federal agents.The result has been a climate of paranoia around the open social media organizing that was critical to the Stop the Steal demonstrations, as well as around large offline gatherings. This is particularly true in Washington, with its large federal law enforcement presence, and New York, where prosecutors have become particularly reviled figures on the right for their legal proceedings against the Trump Organization, the National Rifle Association, the former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon and now Mr. Trump himself.Among right-wing organizers, “the overwhelming consensus is D.C. is a no-go zone, and New York has weaponized lawfare against everyone on the right,” said Mr. Stockton, who was raided in 2020 by federal agents for his role in a border-wall fund-raising venture involving Mr. Bannon, who has been charged by Manhattan prosecutors with defrauding contributors. (Mr. Bannon has pleaded not guilty and Mr. Stockton was never charged. Timothy Shea, another participant, was convicted of related federal charges in October.) “Everyone assumes there are traps everywhere.”While denunciations of the charges against Mr. Trump have dominated the conservative and right-wing media for weeks, the question of whether to protest them has been met with less unanimity.While some, like the former Trump administration official Sebastian Gorka, have called the moment a “time of sorting” and urged Trump supporters to “peacefully protest,” others have warned that the political risk of such a protest’s turning violent far outweighs the potential reward.“DO NOT PROTEST IN NYC TOMORROW,” the talk radio host John Cardillo, a former New York police officer, wrote on Twitter on Monday. “The Democrats want you to do that. They want people to get out of hand, be arrested, and be able to claim another J6.”And to some people and groups closely associated with the Jan. 6 riot, Mr. Trump is a more ambivalent cause than he once was.“Remember what happened last time Trump called a protest? He threw everyone under the bus,” a local Proud Boys chapter in Illinois posted on Telegram last month, amid a series of memes depicting Trump protest organizers as undercover federal agents.But Joe McBride, a lawyer for a number of Jan. 6 defendants who said he has served as an intermediary between their families and Mr. Trump’s circle, said that “there’s certainly a sense of brotherhood” with the former president after his indictment.Karen Lichtbraun, a preschool teacher from New York who attended Tuesday’s demonstration in Manhattan, said the fear of arrest was one reason for the relatively modest turnout. “Look what’s happening with the people who participated in Jan. 6,” she said.But she noted that the rally site in deep blue Manhattan played a role as well.“It’s New York, unfortunately,” she said.Alexandra Berzon More

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      Trump Will Be Indicted Today. Clinton Will Be Honored.

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      Hours after Donald Trump appears in court, his former opponent, Hillary Clinton, will be the honoree at a dinner 10 blocks from Trump Tower.Good morning. It’s Tuesday. We’ll look at one of those coincidences in scheduling that can only happen in New York. We’ll also look at whether a court ruling might prompt prosecutors to abandon difficult cases.Mark Kauzlarich/The New York TimesToday New York will be focused on the arraignment of a former president, the first proceeding of its kind in American history.But other things are on the day’s agenda besides Donald Trump’s scheduled appearance for booking, fingerprinting and entering a plea in court. This evening a private club on East 66th Street will continue a tradition dating to the 1870s with a black-tie dinner.The honoree will be Hillary Clinton, who lost the presidency to Trump in 2016.The timing is a coincidence, said John Sussek III, the president of the Lotos Club. The date was chosen around the beginning of the year, long before the grand jury hearing the case against Trump voted on the indictment that brought Trump to Manhattan from Mar-a-Lago, his resort in Florida.“We have had princes and princesses, senators and congressmen,” Sussek said, noting that one recent honoree was Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leader in the federal response to the pandemic. Another past honoree was Robert Morgenthau, a predecessor of Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, whose office brought the case against Trump.The criteria, Sussek said, “are essentially an individual who has made great contributions in whatever field or fields they’re in. It’s recognition of their accomplishments in society.”The club, which took its name from the lotos-leaf-eaters in a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson, has held state dinners since the 1870s. Its early members included Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, who took a nap during the 12-course meal lauding him. Also on the club’s membership roll in its early years was John Hay, who held a job that Clinton later took; he was secretary of state under President William McKinley and President Theodore Roosevelt.Democrats and Republicans have been cheered at state dinners, as the club calls gatherings like the one tonight. Former President Harry Truman, a Democrat, and former President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, were each hailed at state dinners after leaving the White House. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court was celebrated at one in 1996, a couple of years after President Bill Clinton nominated her to the court.Over the years, the club has invited people with no political connections, including the Yankees star Joe DiMaggio, the astronaut John Glenn and at least two musical theater teams: Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (of “Oklahoma!” and “South Pacific,” among others) and John Kander and Fred Ebb (of “Cabaret” and “Chicago”).Lotos gives state dinner honorees lifetime memberships ($4,800 a year for regular resident members). Clinton will also be presented with a small bust of Ginsburg by the sculptor Zenos Frudakis, a Lotos member who did the larger busts of Twain and Ulysses S. Grant at the club.“You may recall what Donald Trump said in 2016, that if we voted for Hillary Clinton we’d have a criminal president under constant investigation and who would soon be indicted,” Sussek said in the speech he planned to deliver tonight. “And you know what? Trump was right. I voted for Hillary Clinton and ended up with a criminal president under constant investigation and has now just been indicted.”WeatherIt’s a partly sunny day near the high 60s. Expect a chance of showers at night, with temps around the low 50s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until Thursday (Passover).The latest New York newsJustin Lane/EPA, via ShutterstockTrump indictmentTrump in New York: Donald Trump arrived in New York on Monday, kicking off a 24-hour visit that will culminate with a polarizing arraignment in the city where he grew up and rose to the fame that catapulted him to the presidency.Jan. 6: Trump’s arraignment differs from the Capitol riot, but law enforcement’s response is informed by lessons learned on Jan. 6, as well as the nationwide protests against police violence.CrimeA cold-case detective’s quest: Jasmine Porter’s 4-year-old son watched as a man killed her in their Bronx apartment in 1996. In 2020, a police investigator began trying to crack the case.Arrests made for murders and robberies: Three men were arrested and charged in connection with a series of killings and robberies at Manhattan gay bars.More local newsConstruction workers dead: Two workers were killed at Kennedy International Airport when they were buried under construction rubble inside a trench, officials said.Yeshiva University scrutiny on funding: A lawmaker asked a state inspector to look at millions given to Yeshiva University, which has argued it is a religious institution, not an educational one, to justify its ban on an L.G.B.T.Q. club.The suburbs and the housing debate: Gov. Kathy Hochul is promoting a housing plan that she says could create 800,000 new homes across the state over the next decade. Officials from Westchester County and Long Island are resisting the effort.Could a recent ruling give prosecutors a reason to abandon difficult cases?Christopher Lee for The New York TimesA recent decision by New York State’s highest court invalidated a rape conviction. Advocates for sexual assault survivors worry that the ruling could give prosecutors a reason not to bring sexual assault charges when the victim and the defendant know each other and there are no other witnesses.My colleague Maria Cramer writes that the 4-to-2 ruling by the New York Court of Appeals could also give defendants a reason to do everything they can to resist investigations and run out the clock.That is because the court threw out the first-degree rape conviction of Andrew Regan, noting that it took 31 months to obtain a warrant for a DNA sample. Judge Rowan Wilson wrote in the majority opinion that prosecutors had violated Regan’s rights to speedy prosecution, as guaranteed by a state law intended to prevent prosecutors from slow-walking cases without good reason.The court acknowledged that vacating his conviction could create “a genuine risk that a guilty person will not be punished, or, as in this case, not finish out his full sentence.” Regan was in the ninth year of a 12-year sentence when the ruling was handed down last month.The case began in 2009, when two couples went drinking after attending a wedding. At the end of the night, one of the four, a 22-year-old woman, invited her boyfriend and the other couple to stay at her home in upstate Norwood, N.Y.The woman went to sleep alone but woke during the night to find the other man, Regan, crushing her beneath him, according to court documents. She woke her boyfriend and told him she had been sexually assaulted, and they called the police. Regan was interviewed and released. At a hospital, a nurse collected evidence with a rape kit.The investigation dragged on for four years, in part because prosecutors in St. Lawrence County said they did not know how to obtain a warrant to get a DNA sample from Regan, something he repeatedly refused to provide. The police had taken a DNA sample from the woman’s boyfriend after she reported the assault and found that it did not match the semen on her underwear. Regan told the police he had not had sex with her.The prosecutors struggled for at least a year over how to obtain his DNA, a straightforward procedure that involves submitting an affidavit to a judge. The woman said that in the years that followed the incident, she had called the district attorney’s office in St. Lawrence County or the police at least once a month to find out what was happening with the case. She said that new investigators were assigned to the case at least three times, but no one provided a clear explanation for the delays.Gary Pasqua, who became the St. Lawrence County district attorney in 2018, said he did not believe that the ruling would set a precedent — even though Judge Madeline Singas wrote in a dissenting opinion that the decision would “be weaponized against victims.”She said the court “fails to appreciate the practice implications of the precedent they are creating: If law enforcement negligently delays rape investigations, women’s voices will continue to be stifled, rapists held unaccountable and jury verdicts discarded.”METROPOLITAN diaryDirtDear Diary:At Prince StreetI suck a smalltart found in apocket nest oftobacco and lintfrom last winter.The train pulls in.A woman isfolding a mapmouthing the routeto herself,girls in dark lipsticksget on, talkingloudly of rats,drowning the chime.The doors shudderthen close, openand shut once more.I’m nodding offby 34thand top out atTimes Square, each spotlighted a show:saxophone playerin shorts blows outworkable riffscasting for earswith a brass pole.A conductresstelling stories.An old sailorconsiders fakeson black velvet.Further up agospel singerin beads and gown,a man rentinga telescope aimedat the moon.— William ClarkIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

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      in Elections

      New York Already Knows a Lot About Donald Trump

      by

      If Donald J. Trump seems a little on edge lately, so does the city where he made his name.The former president, after largely eluding legal accountability of any kind for decades, has now been indicted by a grand jury in a case brought by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg.So far Mr. Trump has handled the investigation, which has looked into whether he broke laws while paying hush money to a porn star ahead of the 2016 election, exactly as one might imagine: with the minimum amount of class and the maximum use of racist slurs. Not only has he made sure everyone knows Mr. Bragg is Black, he has also suggested he is subhuman.“HE IS A SOROS BACKED ANIMAL,” the former president told his followers on Truth Social while waiting for the indictment, using anti-Black racism as well as antisemitism to describe Mr. Bragg. Mr. Trump also called for widespread protests before he was indicted and predicted “death and destruction,” forcing law enforcement agencies to prepare for possible violence in the streets on Tuesday, when he is expected to be arraigned.All of this has made New York City, his former hometown, a bit anxious, too. The wait for Mr. Trump’s arraignment and any backlash that may come from it has the city unnerved.Few Americans have seen Mr. Trump shimmy his way out of a jam more often than New Yorkers. We’ve seen him bounce back from bankruptcy six times, and he has never been truly held to account for his long history of excluding Black people from the rental properties that helped make him rich. We’ve seen his political fortunes soar despite credible claims of sexual assault and tax fraud. We’ve watched up close his gravity-defying, horrifying metamorphosis from a tacky real estate developer and tabloid fixture into a C-list celebrity and, finally, a one-term president with authoritarian aspirations.Given that history, the idea that Mr. Trump will soon be fingerprinted and booked in a New York courthouse has left many in disbelief. A kind of collective angst over the Trump prosecution has settled over New York City, where many deeply disdain him but seem unconvinced he will ever truly be held to account.During a recent stage performance of “Titanique,” the hit musical comedy and glitter-filled parody of the 1997 film about the doomed ship, Russell Daniels, the actor playing Rose’s mother, let out a kind of guttural scream. “It’s not fair that Trump hasn’t been arrested yet!” Mr. Daniels cried. Inside the Manhattan theater, the audience roared.In Harlem recently, the Rev. Al Sharpton held a prayer vigil for Mr. Bragg, who received threats after Mr. Trump used his social media platform to share a menacing photograph of himself with a baseball bat juxtaposed with a photo of the district attorney, in a clear hint of his violent mind-set.“We want God to cover him and protect him,” Mr. Sharpton said, referring to Mr. Bragg. “Whatever the decision may be, whether we like it or not, but he should not have to face this kind of threat, implied or explicit. Let us pray.”New Yorkers, weary and still recovering from the pandemic Mr. Trump badly mismanaged, are also now bracing themselves for the possibility of demonstrations by the former president’s supporters. In the hours after the indictment on March 29, N.Y.P.D. helicopters hovered over the courthouses of Lower Manhattan and officers set up barricades along largely empty streets. The Police Department ordered all roughly 36,000 uniformed members to report for duty amid bomb threats and the arrest of one Trump supporter with a knife.The inevitable spectacle began on Monday, when television helicopters tracked every inch of Mr. Trump’s motorcade from LaGuardia Airport to Manhattan, as if he were visiting royalty. The courthouse area downtown is expected be largely closed to traffic on Tuesday. All Supreme Court trials in the Manhattan Criminal Courts Building will be adjourned early. There are also police lines and TV trucks around Trump Tower, where the former president stayed on Monday night. Meanwhile, Republican groups and Trump supporters are planning or sponsoring rallies nearby, one of which will be addressed by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who will bring her destructive rhetoric up from Georgia.Of the four known criminal investigations Mr. Trump faces, the Manhattan case is seen by some legal experts as the least serious, in part because it may involve allegations of campaign finance violations before his presidency rather than attempts to abuse his office by overturning the results of an election or inciting supporters to effectively overthrow the United States government. Fair enough.Still, it’s a poetic irony that the former president will face his first criminal indictment in New York City, the town where he sought to burnish his “law and order” credentials. In 1989, Mr. Trump took out a notorious ad in several newspapers, including The New York Times, calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty when a group of Black and Latino teenagers were accused of the sexual assault of a jogger in Central Park. After serving prison sentences that varied from six to 13 years, the teens were exonerated.“What has happened to the respect for authority, the fear of retribution by the courts, society and the police for those who break the law, who wantonly trespass on the rights of others?” Mr. Trump wrote in the 1989 ad. “How can our great society tolerate the continued brutalization of its citizens by crazed misfits?”Over many years, New York has learned a painful lesson. Mr. Trump and his many misdeeds are best taken seriously.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