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      For an Atlanta Reporter, a Trump Scoop Long in the Making

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      George Chidi’s cameo appearance in the indictment of Donald J. Trump in Georgia was a plot twist, but not an accident.The scoop of a lifetime for George Chidi, a freelance journalist in Georgia, began at the State Capitol on the morning of Dec. 14, 2020, when a longtime source walked briskly past, eyes averted as if he didn’t know him, then disappeared into Room 216.Mr. Chidi, concluding that something odd was taking place on the other side of the door, turned the knob and stepped into history.What he saw, and simultaneously live-streamed from his phone, were six to 10 people who reacted with alarm to his presence. As the source, an 18-year-old Republican activist named CJ Pearson, bustled wordlessly out of the room, Mr. Chidi asked what was going on.“Education,” one of the people said.Mr. Chidi was soon escorted out of the meeting, but once in the corridor he asked who had reserved the room. Eventually, a clerk informed him that it was the House speaker, David Ralston, a Republican, who had done so at the behest of one of President Donald J. Trump’s lawyers, Ray Smith. An hour or so later, the state’s Republican chairman, David Shafer, stepped out and told a gathering crowd of reporters that he and the others in the room were providing an “alternate” slate of electors favoring Mr. Trump as a means of challenging Georgia’s official 2020 election results.As of this week, that challenge is characterized as important evidence of a criminal enterprise in a 98-page indictment, the State of Georgia vs. Donald John Trump and 18 other conspirators. It appears on Page 17 under the heading, “Creation and Distribution of False Electoral College Documents.”David Shafer, then the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, leading a meeting about an alternate slate of electors at the State Capitol in Atlanta on Dec. 14, 2020.Ben Gray/Associated PressRecounting the tableau at a coffee shop in Decatur, Ga., on Tuesday morning, only hours after the indictment was made public at the Fulton County courthouse, Mr. Chidi said he wanted to dispel any notion that his achievement had been a fluke, like a journalistic equivalent of scratching a winning lottery ticket.“It’s not like I just wandered into the Capitol that day,” Mr. Chidi said. “This was years of reporting.”Bald, voluble and insomnia-prone, Mr. Chidi, 50, has a nonlinear but relentless career trajectory that offers an object lesson in how local journalism, imperiled though it may be, can achieve national significance.He is a curious hybrid of old school and new school, an aggressively skeptical journalist but also a man unwilling to remain on the sidelines taking notes. In 2012, he participated in Occupy Atlanta protests that incurred the scorn of Republicans. Five years later, he worked to help close a blighted homeless shelter in the city, to the consternation of some local progressives.Twice he has lost bids for public office, first for state representative and then for county commissioner. He also served two terms on the City Council of Pine Lake, Ga.Mr. Chidi currently makes his living from the 300 or so subscribers who pay $10 a month to read his Substack page, called The Atlanta Objective. The title reflects his animating interest, both in civics and as a writer. He describes a city of enduring promise and vexing inequality, in which the average income of a white household is $80,000 — more than double that of a Black household.In terse but evocative prose and deep reporting, Mr. Chidi examines topics like homelessness and street shootings. He is not shy about contrasting himself with the comparatively polished members of the national press who descended on the Fulton County courthouse to capture the moment of Mr. Trump’s indictment.The son of a Nigerian-born doctor and a stay-at-home mother of Polish descent, Mr. Chidi spent his adolescence as a nerdy Dungeons & Dragons aficionado, one of the only Black students at his school in Northbridge, Mass. After flunking out of the University of Massachusetts, he joined the Army as a reservist in 1991. A slot for a military journalist opened up. As someone with a few English credits who could type over 20 words a minute, Mr. Chidi qualified.Beginning in 1995, he spent the next four years with the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii, a setting that amounted to on-the-job-training for a local reporter.“Chidi always tested the limits,” recalled Dee McNutt, his former supervising editor at The Hawaii Army Weekly. “He would always try for a different angle, and sometimes I’d have to sit him down and talk to him about it. But he made us better.”Mr. Chidi contrasts himself with members of the national press who descended on the Fulton County courthouse this week to capture former President Donald J. Trump’s indictment.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesReturning home to the Boston area in 1999, Mr. Chidi struggled to find regular journalism work. He made ends meet as a substitute teacher while moonlighting as a security guard. Finally, in 2004, he landed a reporting job for The Rocky Mount Telegram in Rocky Mount, N.C., which paid $14 an hour. His profiles of migrant workers in the area’s tobacco fields caught the notice of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which hired him in 2005. An editor for that newspaper, Bill Torpy, recalled strolling through Centennial Olympic Park with Mr. Chidi just after he accepted the new job.“George threw his arms in the air, twirled around and yelled, ‘Atlanta!’” Mr. Torpy said.But the elation proved to be short-lived. Mr. Chidi spent the next two years as a crime reporter, a despairing beat. He said he came to view crime as “a political issue,” one that reflected a city’s social and budgetary choices that all too often came at the expense of a nonwhite underclass. At around the same time, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ceased its practice of endorsing political candidates, which Mr. Chidi interpreted as the paper’s reluctance to risk offending readers during a challenging time for local journalism.“I think he just got tired of it,” Mr. Torpy said. “When you’re working for a newspaper, you’re there to report, and you can’t be an activist. He needed to be where there’s no wall separating the two. And that’s where he is now.”As a self-described independent journalist, Mr. Chidi’s work often takes him to the State Capitol. He was there on Dec. 19, 2016, videotaping demonstrators who marched outside the building while the state’s 16 electoral votes for Mr. Trump were being tallied.Four years later, Mr. Chidi anticipated that the 2020 electoral certification would be far less placid. He attended a “Stop the Steal” rally in which the right-wing personalities Alex Jones, Ali Alexander and Nicholas Fuentes spoke from the Capitol steps and then, the next day, from inside the building. Mr. Chidi recognized many of the attendees as members of far-right local militia groups he had seen squaring off with antiracist protesters months earlier in Stone Mountain, where Mr. Chidi lived.It was with those encounters in mind that he made his way back to the State Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020.Asked the morning after Mr. Trump’s indictment whether he would now leave the story to the national press, Mr. Chidi put down his cup of coffee and thought for a moment.“Hell, no,” he said. “I want to compete with those guys. Come to my home turf and see what happens.” More

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      Georgia Case Against Trump Could Allow Cameras in Courtroom

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      No television cameras or still photographers captured the first three arraignments of former President Donald J. Trump in Manhattan, Washington and Miami. And that will likely continue when those cases go to trial over the next year or so.But in Georgia, where Mr. Trump and 18 co-defendants were indicted on Monday, state courts typically permit cameras in the courtroom. That means the sprawling conspiracy case could present the best opportunity for the public to watch the legal proceedings unfold.“I would expect it, absolutely,” said David E. Hudson, general counsel for the Georgia Press Association. In 40 years of representing the state’s news media, he could not recall one trial that had been closed to cameras, he said.The judge in the Georgia case, Scott F. McAfee, who was randomly assigned after the indictment was handed up on Monday, has not weighed in on court procedures. But the presumption is in favor of openness.“Open courtrooms are an indispensable element of an effective and respected judicial system,” states a 2018 order regarding Georgia’s law on recording devices in courtrooms. “It is the policy of Georgia’s courts to promote access to and understanding of court proceedings, not only by the participants in them, but also by the general public and by news media who will report on the proceedings to the public.”In Georgia, members of the news media must apply to record the proceedings, but most applications are approved, Mr. Hudson said. There may be restrictions, including on photographing the jury or requiring a pool system to avoid overcrowded courtrooms. But even the highest-profile cases have been open, he said.That stands in contrast to what is expected in the two federal cases against Mr. Trump in Miami and Washington. Federal courts generally do not permit cameras.It has yet to be determined whether the court in the Manhattan case, related to hush-money payments, will allow cameras, but trials in the New York state court system are not typically broadcast. In the past, the judge in the Manhattan case, Juan M. Merchan, has been reluctant to permit video of proceedings that have involved Mr. Trump.In the rare occasion that a Georgia judge seeks to close down a courtroom, he or she must offer evidence in a hearing, explaining why recording should be prohibited to protect specific interests, said Derek Bauer, who is head of media litigation at the BakerHostetler law firm and the general counsel of the Georgia Association of Broadcasters.In practice, closing a courtroom is rarely sought, he said, and state appellate courts have frequently reversed trial court decisions when it has happened.He also said he did not expect the Trump trial to be closed. “We recognize the importance of open courtroom proceedings in the state of Georgia, particularly in connection with criminal proceedings,” he said. More

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      This Conservative Thinks America’s Institutions ‘Earned’ the G.O.P.’s Distrust

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      You can’t understand the modern Republican Party without understanding the complete collapse of trust in mainstream institutions that has taken place among its voters over the last half-century.In 1964, 73 percent of Republicans said they trusted the federal government to do the right thing always or most of the time. Today, that number is down to 9 percent. And it’s not just government. Pew found that only 35 percent of Republicans trust national news and 61 percent think public schools are having a negative effect on the country. Many of the issues animating the modern right — from fights over school curriculums and learning loss to media bias and Covid vaccines — are connected to this deep distrust.[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]Mary Katharine Ham is a journalist and conservative commentator who has appeared on CNN, Fox News and ABC News. In Katharine Ham’s view, America’s institutions have “earned” her party’s rampant distrust. Across her writings, she has leveled scathing critiques of numerous mainstream institutions, from the media to the C.D.C. and universities, arguing that these institutions have consistently failed to serve ordinary Americans. So this is a conversation that explores Katharine Ham’s critique in order to understand the distrust at the heart of the Republican Party. This episode was hosted by Jane Coaston, a staff writer at The New York Times Opinion. Previously, she hosted “The Argument,” a New York Times Opinion podcast. Before that she was the senior politics reporter at Vox, with a focus on conservatism and the G.O.P.You can listen to our whole conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.(A full transcript of the episode is available here.)Emily BabcockThis episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Kristin Lin. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Rogé Karma. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero. More

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      Does Information Affect Our Beliefs?

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      New studies on social media’s influence tell a complicated story.It was the social-science equivalent of Barbenheimer weekend: four blockbuster academic papers, published in two of the world’s leading journals on the same day. Written by elite researchers from universities across the United States, the papers in Nature and Science each examined different aspects of one of the most compelling public-policy issues of our time: how social media is shaping our knowledge, beliefs and behaviors.Relying on data collected from hundreds of millions of Facebook users over several months, the researchers found that, unsurprisingly, the platform and its algorithms wielded considerable influence over what information people saw, how much time they spent scrolling and tapping online, and their knowledge about news events. Facebook also tended to show users information from sources they already agreed with, creating political “filter bubbles” that reinforced people’s worldviews, and was a vector for misinformation, primarily for politically conservative users.But the biggest news came from what the studies didn’t find: despite Facebook’s influence on the spread of information, there was no evidence that the platform had a significant effect on people’s underlying beliefs, or on levels of political polarization.These are just the latest findings to suggest that the relationship between the information we consume and the beliefs we hold is far more complex than is commonly understood. ‘Filter bubbles’ and democracySometimes the dangerous effects of social media are clear. In 2018, when I went to Sri Lanka to report on anti-Muslim pogroms, I found that Facebook’s newsfeed had been a vector for the rumors that formed a pretext for vigilante violence, and that WhatsApp groups had become platforms for organizing and carrying out the actual attacks. In Brazil last January, supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro used social media to spread false claims that fraud had cost him the election, and then turned to WhatsApp and Telegram groups to plan a mob attack on federal buildings in the capital, Brasília. It was a similar playbook to that used in the United States on Jan. 6, 2021, when supporters of Donald Trump stormed the Capitol.But aside from discrete events like these, there have also been concerns that social media, and particularly the algorithms used to suggest content to users, might be contributing to the more general spread of misinformation and polarization.The theory, roughly, goes something like this: unlike in the past, when most people got their information from the same few mainstream sources, social media now makes it possible for people to filter news around their own interests and biases. As a result, they mostly share and see stories from people on their own side of the political spectrum. That “filter bubble” of information supposedly exposes users to increasingly skewed versions of reality, undermining consensus and reducing their understanding of people on the opposing side. The theory gained mainstream attention after Trump was elected in 2016. “The ‘Filter Bubble’ Explains Why Trump Won and You Didn’t See It Coming,” announced a New York Magazine article a few days after the election. “Your Echo Chamber is Destroying Democracy,” Wired Magazine claimed a few weeks later.Changing information doesn’t change mindsBut without rigorous testing, it’s been hard to figure out whether the filter bubble effect was real. The four new studies are the first in a series of 16 peer-reviewed papers that arose from a collaboration between Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, and a group of researchers from universities including Princeton, Dartmouth, the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford and others.Meta gave unprecedented access to the researchers during the three-month period before the 2020 U.S. election, allowing them to analyze data from more than 200 million users and also conduct randomized controlled experiments on large groups of users who agreed to participate. It’s worth noting that the social media giant spent $20 million on work from NORC at the University of Chicago (previously the National Opinion Research Center), a nonpartisan research organization that helped collect some of the data. And while Meta did not pay the researchers itself, some of its employees worked with the academics, and a few of the authors had received funding from the company in the past. But the researchers took steps to protect the independence of their work, including pre-registering their research questions in advance, and Meta was only able to veto requests that would violate users’ privacy.The studies, taken together, suggest that there is evidence for the first part of the “filter bubble” theory: Facebook users did tend to see posts from like-minded sources, and there were high degrees of “ideological segregation” with little overlap between what liberal and conservative users saw, clicked and shared. Most misinformation was concentrated in a conservative corner of the social network, making right-wing users far more likely to encounter political lies on the platform.“I think it’s a matter of supply and demand,” said Sandra González-Bailón, the lead author on the paper that studied misinformation. Facebook users skew conservative, making the potential market for partisan misinformation larger on the right. And online curation, amplified by algorithms that prioritize the most emotive content, could reinforce those market effects, she added.When it came to the second part of the theory — that this filtered content would shape people’s beliefs and worldviews, often in harmful ways — the papers found little support. One experiment deliberately reduced content from like-minded sources, so that users saw more varied information, but found no effect on polarization or political attitudes. Removing the algorithm’s influence on people’s feeds, so that they just saw content in chronological order, “did not significantly alter levels of issue polarization, affective polarization, political knowledge, or other key attitudes,” the researchers found. Nor did removing content shared by other users.Algorithms have been in lawmakers’ cross hairs for years, but many of the arguments for regulating them have presumed that they have real-world influence. This research complicates that narrative.But it also has implications that are far broader than social media itself, reaching some of the core assumptions around how we form our beliefs and political views. Brendan Nyhan, who researches political misperceptions and was a lead author of one of the studies, said the results were striking because they suggested an even looser link between information and beliefs than had been shown in previous research. “From the area that I do my research in, the finding that has emerged as the field has developed is that factual information often changes people’s factual views, but those changes don’t always translate into different attitudes,” he said. But the new studies suggested an even weaker relationship. “We’re seeing null effects on both factual views and attitudes.”As a journalist, I confess a certain personal investment in the idea that presenting people with information will affect their beliefs and decisions. But if that is not true, then the potential effects would reach beyond my own profession. If new information does not change beliefs or political support, for instance, then that will affect not just voters’ view of the world, but their ability to hold democratic leaders to account.Thank you for being a subscriberRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.I’d love your feedback on this newsletter. Please email thoughts and suggestions to interpreter@nytimes.com. You can also follow me on Twitter. More

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      Trump Calls for Recusal of Judge as His Lawyer Denies Pence’s 2020 Claims

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      Former President Donald J. Trump spent the weekend on the attack on Truth Social while his lawyer, John F. Lauro, ran through a gantlet of interviews Sunday morning.Appearing on five television networks Sunday morning, a lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump argued that his actions in the effort to overturn the 2020 election fell short of crimes and were merely “aspirational.”The remarks from his lawyer, John F. Lauro, came as Mr. Trump was blanketing his social media platform, Truth Social, with posts suggesting that his legal team was going to seek the recusal of Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, the federal judge overseeing the case, and try to move his trial out of Washington.With his client facing charges carrying decades in prison after a federal grand jury indicted Mr. Trump for his role in trying to overturn the election, his third criminal case this year, Mr. Lauro appeared in interviews on CNN, ABC, Fox, NBC and CBS. He endeavored to defend Mr. Trump, including against evidence that, as president, he pressured his vice president, Mike Pence, to reject legitimate votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr. in favor of false electors pledged to Mr. Trump.“What President Trump didn’t do is direct Vice President Pence to do anything,” Mr. Lauro said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “He asked him in an aspirational way.”Mr. Lauro used the same defense on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” when asked about Mr. Trump’s now-infamous call to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger. During that call, President Trump pressured Mr. Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” to win the state and suggested that Mr. Raffensperger could face criminal repercussions if he did not.“That was an aspirational ask,” Mr. Lauro said.His portrayal of Mr. Trump’s approach is at odds with two key moments in the indictment.In one, prosecutors say that on Jan. 5, 2021, Mr. Trump met alone with Mr. Pence, who refused to do what Mr. Trump wanted. When that happened, the indictment says, “the defendant grew frustrated and told the Vice President that the defendant would have to publicly criticize him.”Mr. Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, then alerted the head of Mr. Pence’s Secret Service detail, prosecutors said.That same day, after The Times reported that Mr. Pence had indeed told Mr. Trump that he lacked the authority to do what Mr. Trump wanted, the president issued a public statement calling the report “fake news.” According to the indictment, Mr. Trump also falsely asserted: “The Vice President and I are in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act.”As Mr. Lauro made the rounds on all five Sunday news shows — what is known as the “full Ginsburg,” from when Monica Lewinsky’s lawyer, William Ginsburg, did the same amid allegations about her affair with President Bill Clinton — Mr. Trump waged his own campaign on Truth Social.“WOW, it’s finally happened! Liddle’ Mike Pence, a man who was about to be ousted as Governor Indiana until I came along and made him V.P., has gone to the Dark Side,” Mr. Trump wrote on Saturday. A few days earlier, he mocked Mr. Pence, now a 2024 rival, for “attracting no crowds, enthusiasm or loyalty from people who, as a member of the Trump Administration, should be loving him.”Mr. Trump went on: “I never told a newly emboldened (not based on his 2% poll numbers!) Pence to put me above the Constitution, or that Mike was ‘too honest.’”His attack came after a judge warned Mr. Trump against intimidating witnesses and after prosecutors flagged another Truth Social post by Mr. Trump as potentially threatening.On Sunday, Mr. Trump also attacked Jack Smith, the special counsel in the Jan. 6 case, and Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, calling Mr. Smith “deranged” and Ms. Pelosi “sick” and “demented.”In one all-caps message, Mr. Trump accused Mr. Smith of waiting to bring the case until “right in the middle” of his election campaign.In the other posts, Mr. Trump attacked Ms. Pelosi, the former House speaker, who recently said that the former president had seemed like “a scared puppy” before his arraignment. “She is a sick & demented psycho who will someday live in HELL!” Mr. Trump wrote.And he channeled his grievances with the court process toward Judge Chutkan and toward the population of Washington, D.C., writing that he would never get a “fair trial.”For his part, Mr. Pence has been criticizing Mr. Trump’s actions in carefully calibrated terms. He has repeatedly used the same phrases, arguing that anyone who “puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.” He repeated similar lines on Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” following Mr. Lauro’s appearance, and on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”“What I want the American people to know is that President Trump was wrong then and he’s wrong now: that I had no right to overturn the election,” Mr. Pence told the CNN anchor Dana Bash. “I had no right to reject or return votes, and that, by God’s grace, I did my duty under the Constitution of the United States, and I always will.”Maggie Haberman More

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      NatWest C.E.O. Resigns Amid Nigel Farage’s Feud With Coutts Bank

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      Nigel Farage, a political insurgent and ally of Donald J. Trump, exposed his bank for dropping him over “reputational risks.” Some analysts say he could parlay his situation into a comeback.When Nigel Farage campaigned for a fellow populist, Donald J. Trump, in 2020, he seemed like a faded star seeking the spotlight abroad after it had swung past him at home. Mr. Farage, who helped mobilize the pro-Brexit vote in 2016, was marginalized in Britain, then consumed by the pandemic.No longer: For three weeks, Mr. Farage, has been back on the front pages of British papers, with an attention-grabbing claim that his exclusive private bank, Coutts, dropped him as a customer because of his polarizing politics.Early on Wednesday, after Mr. Farage’s allegations were largely vindicated, the chief executive of his bank’s parent, NatWest Group, resigned after she admitted improperly discussing his bank account with a BBC journalist. The chief executive, Alison Rose, said she was guilty of a “serious error of judgment.”For Mr. Farage, who expertly stoked the dispute on social media and with appearances on the TV network GB News, the drama catapulted him back into the limelight. It was a striking turn of events for a political insurgent who became, for many, a reviled symbol of Brexit, and later, a culture warrior on right-wing television.Now, facing expulsion from Coutts, a bank founded in 1692 that serves members of the British royal family, Mr. Farage suddenly began getting expressions of sympathy from some improbable places.“He shouldn’t have had his personal details revealed like that,” Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition Labour Party said on the BBC Radio 5 Live show. “It doesn’t matter who you are; that’s a general rule,” Mr. Starmer said, adding that Ms. Rose’s departure was warranted by her mishandling of the case.Among Mr. Farage’s stoutest defenders was Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who said on Twitter, “No one should be barred from using basic services for their political views. Free speech is the cornerstone of our democracy.”Pressure from Mr. Sunak and the chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, hastened Ms. Rose’s downfall after she confessed to being the source for the BBC report, which claimed, erroneously, that Mr. Farage had been dropped because he did not have enough money in his accounts. The government owns 39 percent of NatWest, which in turn owns Coutts.Alison Rose resigned her position at NatWest Group after saying she spoke to the BBC about Mr. Farage’s bank account.Simon Dawson/ReutersThe episode, analysts said, underscores the power that Mr. Farage, a former head of the U.K. Independence Party, still wields over the Conservatives. The Tories have long feared losing the votes of Brexiteers, who were critical to their electoral landslide in 2019, to whatever populist party is currently identified with Mr. Farage.Though Mr. Farage, 59, stepped down in 2021 as head of his latest party, Reform U.K., he is the host of a GB News talk show and remains an outspoken voice on issues like asylum seekers crossing the English Channel in small boats. Prodded partly by Mr. Farage’s commentary, Mr. Sunak has made curbing the influx of small boats one of the five major goals of his government.“They’re very aware they need to hold on to the Farage-friendly voters they picked up in 2019,” said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, “They’re being driven in that direction, too, by the right-wing print media. This isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened — and it won’t be the last.”Mr. Farage isn’t satisfied yet. He is demanding the ouster of NatWest’s chairman, Howard Davies, and the chief executive of Coutts, Peter Flavel. And he says he will fight on behalf of thousands of other people whose accounts he says have been unfairly closed.“You can’t live or survive in the modern world without a bank account — you become a nonperson,” Mr. Farage said on GB News on Wednesday. “The whole banking industry culture has gone wrong. We need big changes in the law.”What exactly Mr. Farage has in mind is not clear. But his campaign plays into a fervid political climate in Britain, which suggests that his critique might gain traction. The Conservatives, trailing Labour in opinion polls by double digits, are seizing on social and culture issues to try to galvanize their voters.Mr. Sunak asserted this week that the Labour Party was in league with criminal gangs and unscrupulous lawyers in promoting the flow of asylum seekers across the channel. He presented himself as the bulwark against this illegal immigration, the kind of claim Mr. Farage might have made when he was in politics.Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain onboard Border Agency cutter HMC Seeker, last month ahead of a news conference on immigration. Pool photo by Yui Mok“If Farage is smart, he will use this as a runway to some kind of political comeback,” said Matthew Goodwin, a professor of politics at the University of Kent whose recent book, “Values, Voice and Virtue,” claims that Britain is ruled by an out-of-touch elite that is well to the left of the broader population.“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Mr. Goodwin said. “The institutions, like the banks, are dominated by people who lean much further to the cultural left than many voters and who often do not even realize they are being political.”Such sweeping assertions are open to debate, of course. In the United States, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has had mixed results going after what he calls the “woke” policies of corporate giants like the Walt Disney Company.What makes Mr. Farage’s story striking is that he turned out to be right on the facts of the banking case — and some bastions of the British banking and media establishment turned out to be wrong.In late June, Mr. Farage said on social media that his bank told him it planned to close his account in July. Seven other banks, he said, turned him down when he tried to open a new account. He said he believed he had been flagged as a “politically exposed person,” meaning he was vulnerable to bribery by foreign governments, and therefore a risk to the bank.In early July, the BBC reported that the bank, now identified as Coutts, dropped Mr. Farage because he was not maintaining adequate account balances — and that his politics had nothing to do with it. But on July 18, Mr. Farage made public a 40-page document he obtained from the bank, which painted a different picture.A branch of Coutts Bank in London.Susannah Ireland/ReutersMr. Farage, the report said, is “considered by many to be a disingenuous grifter,” often criticized for racist or xenophobic statements. Such statements, it said, put Mr. Farage at odds with the bank’s goal of being an “inclusive organization.” The report also noted that he is an ally of Mr. Trump’s and a fan of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, though the bank’s risk committee found no evidence of “direct links” between him and the Russian government.“There are significant reputational risks to the bank in being associated with him,” the report concluded, recommending that Coutts wind down its relationship with Mr. Farage after the expiration of a mortgageThe BBC’s economics editor, Simon Jack, and the chief executive of BBC News, Deborah Turness, apologized to Mr. Farage — as did Ms. Rose, who confirmed that she was the source for its report. She expressed regret for discussing his account, as well as for “the deeply inappropriate language contained in those papers.”For Mr. Farage, who has sometimes seemed adrift since Britain left the European Union, it seemed the springboard to a new cause, if not a return to politics.“It signals a big campaign on behalf of the huge number of ordinary people who’ve been de-banked and have had no one to speak up for them,” Mr. Farage said through a spokeswoman at GB News. More

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      In Belarus, the Protests Were Three Years Ago. The Crackdown Is Never-Ending.

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      The recent high school graduate selected her wardrobe carefully as she headed off to a summer folk festival.She dressed all in white, as is customary for the event, and wore a large flower wreath in her golden hair. But when it came to choosing a sash for her skirt, she grabbed a brown leather band, avoiding the color red.In Belarus, red and white are the colors of the protest movement against the country’s authoritarian leader, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko. And even the smallest sign of protest can land a person in jail. “I worry about attracting the wrong kind of attention from the authorities,” said the young woman, who spoke on the condition that her name not be used so she would not draw scrutiny.After claiming victory in a widely disputed presidential election three years ago — and violently crushing the outraged protests that followed — Mr. Lukashenko has ushered in a chilling era of repression.He is moving ever closer to his patron, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, positioning himself as an invaluable military ally to Russia in its war against Ukraine, but also cracking down on dissent in a way that is invisible to much of the world but rivals that of Mr. Putin’s punitive regime.Children in the Minsk region playing near the “Mound of Glory,” a memorial to those who fought in World War II.An exhibit at the Belarusian State Museum of the history of the Great Patriotic War.Belarusian security forces are rounding up opposition figures, journalists, lawyers and even people committing offenses like commenting on social media memes or insulting Mr. Lukashenko in private conversations with acquaintances that are overheard and reported.In particular, activists and rights groups say, the country’s security forces are intent on finding and punishing the people who participated in the 2020 protests. Belarusians are getting arrested for wearing red and white, sporting a tattoo of a raised fist — also a symbol of the protest movement — or for just being seen in three-year-old photographs of the anti-government demonstrations.“In the last three years, we went from a soft autocracy to neo-totalitarianism,” said Igor Ilyash, a journalist who opposes Mr. Lukashenko’s rule. “They are criminalizing the past.”Belarusians interviewed by The New York Times over three days this month echoed that sentiment, expressing fear that even a slight perceived infraction related to the revolution could bring prison time.The crackdown has made people much more cautious about overtly showing their anger at the government, said Mr. Ilyash. That, in turn, has prompted the authorities to focus on participation in old protests in an attempt to intimidate and stifle dissent.Scrutiny of Mr. Lukashenko’s repressive reign has increased since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, and in particular in recent months.Belarus let the Kremlin invade Ukraine from its territory last year. In March, Russia announced it would station tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory. Video evidence suggests Belarus is now housing forces from Russia’s Wagner paramilitary group, and on Thursday, the government said Wagner forces were training special Belarusian operations units only a few miles from the border with Poland.The security crackdown has thinned the ranks of lawyers: More than 500 have been stripped of their law licenses or left the profession or the country.And Belarus has become particularly perilous for journalists. There are now 36 in jail, according to the Belarusian Association of Journalists, after the arrest on Monday of Ihar Karnei, 55. He has written for the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which Belarus has banned as an “extremist” organization. People can be sentenced to up to seven years in prison for just sharing its content.“In the last three years, we went from a soft autocracy to neo-totalitarianism,” said Igor Ilyash, a journalist whose wife, also a journalist, is imprisoned.Mr. Ilyash does not leave his apartment without a small backpack holding essentials that he would need in case he were detained and imprisoned.According to Viasna, a human rights group that shared the Nobel Peace Prize last year, security forces raided Mr. Karnei’s home and seized his electronic devices. He is in Belarus’s notorious Okrestina detention center, the group said, and neither his family nor his lawyers have had access to him.Belarus has criminalized most independent news outlets and the journalists’ association as “extremist,” which makes following them on social media a crime.Mr. Ilyash’s wife, the award-winning journalist Katsiaryna Andreyeva, was sentenced to eight years in prison in two separate cases and now labors in a penal colony as a seamstress, earning less than $4 a month, her husband said.In the prison, she is forced to wear a yellow badge on her chest identifying her as a political prisoner. When she is released in 2028, if the same government is still in power, she will still be considered an “extremist” and barred from certain activities, including journalism.Mr. Ilyash himself spent 25 days in prison, and with one criminal case against him still open, he is barred from leaving the country. He does not leave his apartment without a small backpack that contains the essentials for prison, in case he is detained: a toothbrush, toothpaste, spare underwear and socks.Activists and opposition figures are also being targeted. This month, the artist Ales Pushkin died in a penal colony at age 57. He is believed to be the third political prisoner to die in Belarusian custody since the protests began in 2020.Several of the country’s best-known political prisoners, like the leading opposition figure Maria Kolesnikova, have neither been seen by their family members or lawyers, nor permitted to write letters, meaning they have been out of touch for months.Viasna, the rights group, has identified almost 1,500 political prisoners in Belarus today, and a further 1,900 people convicted in what the group calls “politically motivated criminal trials.”“Arrests for what happened in 2020 are occurring practically every week, almost every day,” said Evgeniia Babayeva of Viasna, a human rights group that shared the Nobel Peace Prize last year.The Okrestina detention center in Minsk. Former inmates who spent time there described beatings and horrific conditions. “The security services are still watching people’s videos, and scouring social media and photos of the protests all these years later,” said Evgeniia Babayeva, a Viasna staff member who catalogs politically motivated detentions in Belarus from exile in Lithuania.Ms. Babayeva was arrested in July 2021, on the same day as the group’s founder, Ales Bialiatski, along with a handful of other colleagues. She was released only because she signed an agreement to collaborate with the security services, but she said she fled Belarus the same day.In March, Mr. Bialiatski was sentenced to 10 years in prison for “cash smuggling” and “financing actions and groups that grossly violated public order,” charges widely viewed by watchdog groups as spurious and intended to discredit the organization.On the surface, visitors to the country’s capital would have to look closely to see any signs that the protests in 2020 happened at all. Minsk, which takes pride in its cleanliness, is tidy, with a modern city center. Billboards trumpet 2023 as the “year of peace and creation,” and the roadside public gardens are manicured in national Belarusian motifs.But residents say a more ominous sensibility hangs over the city and the country. Cameras with facial recognition ability watch over public spaces and residential elevators, keeping tabs on ordinary Belarusians carrying out day-to-day activities.One evening in June, a Minsk resident was out for a walk when she was approached by the police, who reprimanded her for a simple administrative violation, less serious than jaywalking.A Belarusian military billboard in Minsk. Belarus and Russia have grown closer over the past few years, especially when it comes to the military.A Minsk resident who was jailed for a simple administrative violation while she was out walking.The officer searched her name in the police database, turning up evidence of previous detention for participation in the 2020 protests. Police officers soon drew up an accusation that she had cursed in their station — which she denies — and she was put into the Okrestina detention center for 10 days on a “hooliganism” charge.She shared a small cell with 12 other women, she said. There were no mattresses or pillows, and the light was on 24 hours a day. Though everyone became sick — she contracted a bad case of Covid — they had to share toothbrushes. There were no showers, and if a woman got her period, she was given cotton balls rather than pads or tampons.(The woman’s name and her offense are being withheld at her request because the information could identify her and draw retribution. Her identity was confirmed by The Times, and friends confirmed that she had given similar accounts to them.)The repressive environment is stifling people and prompting many to leave. The high school graduate who went to the celebration of the summer solstice and the Belarusian poet Yanka Kupala said she had attended because of a dearth of public events since 2020.“There is nowhere for us to go anymore,” she said, complaining that control was so tight that even traditional songs had been approved in advance by the authorities. She said most good musicians have been named “extremists” and left the country.Floral headwear was a popular choice for festival attendees.The festival in the Minsk region celebrated Kupalle, which is tied to the summer solstice.The girl said she planned to follow them, hoping to continue her studies in Cyprus or Austria. At least half of her classmates had already left Belarus.Another festivalgoer, Vadim, 37, said he had the impression that at least half of his friends had spent time in prison because of their political views.He said his wife had already emigrated, and he was contemplating joining her.“The war was a trigger for many people to leave,” he said.“Before, we thought this situation would eventually end,” Vadim said, “but once the war started, we knew it would only get worse.”A tour group near the Lenin Monument in Minsk. More

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      A Pro-Trump Crowd, Sensing Disloyalty, Drowns Out Dissent

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      A day after former President Donald J. Trump headlined the Turning Point conference in Florida, two of his Republican opponents were booed and heckled at the same event.Not long ago, the names on the marquee would have been right at home on Fox News: Stephen K. Bannon, Tucker Carlson and Roger J. Stone Jr.But Fox News ousted Mr. Carlson three months ago, and Mr. Bannon, Mr. Stone and a boisterous pro-Trump crowd at the Turning Point Action Conference were eager to take shots at the conservative network, arguing that it has not been sufficiently supportive of former President Donald J. Trump as he seeks to regain the office he lost in 2020.At the two-day gathering, with thousands of pro-Trump activists in attendance this weekend in South Florida, jeers flew on Sunday at the mention of Rupert Murdoch, the Fox media mogul, as well as Speaker Kevin McCarthy.Donald J. Trump spoke to roughly 6,000 attendees for more than an hour and a half on Sunday.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesAnd after Mr. Trump spoke to this crowd on Saturday, any of his Republican rivals for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination took the stage at their own peril.In a speech on Sunday, Mr. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s onetime chief strategist who was found guilty of contempt of Congress, suggested that Mr. Murdoch had been using Fox News to hype Republican governors from battleground states to undermine Mr. Trump’s candidacy. He cited Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Mr. Trump’s main rival in the party, who trails him by roughly 30 percentage points in national polls, as a cautionary tale.“Come on down,” Mr. Bannon said. “Bring it because we’ll destroy you just like we destroyed DeSantis.”Mr. Bannon — the host of a right-wing podcast, which he has used to promote election falsehoods and conspiracy theories — criticized Fox News for its lack of coverage of the pro-Trump conclave and called Mr. Trump’s political battles a “jihad.”“Donald Trump is our instrument for retribution,” he said.While Fox News did not carry the event on its main network, it did show conference speeches by Mr. Trump and the other Republican candidates on Fox Nation, its subscription streaming service. A Fox Corporation spokesman declined to comment on behalf of Mr. Murdoch.Two of Mr. Trump’s long-shot Republican opponents — Asa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor; and Francis X. Suarez, the mayor of Miami — experienced the wrath of Mr. Trump’s supporters firsthand on Sunday when they were heckled and booed.When Mr. Suarez, whom The Miami Herald has reported as being under F.B.I. investigation in a corruption case, stepped up to the microphone, a few people in the crowd yelled “traitor.”He responded by mentioning his Cuban American heritage and saying that dissenting voices were welcome in America, unlike in his ancestors’ home country.A woman yelling at Francis X. Suarez, the Miami mayor and Republican presidential candidate.Saul Martinez for The New York Times“It’s OK to have a little bit of hate,” Mr. Suarez told the crowd.Saul Martinez for The New York Times“It’s OK to have a little bit of hate,” Mr. Suarez said. Later, he asked conservative activists to chip in to his campaign.Mr. Hutchinson paused his remarks as the crowd began chanting Mr. Trump’s name, and one of his biggest applause lines came when he mentioned his successor in the Arkansas governor’s office: Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Mr. Trump’s onetime White House press secretary.Contending with cross-talk for much of his speech, Mr. Hutchinson said that Republicans needed to have respect for people with different opinions.At the conference, attendees could attach sticky notes to cutouts of the Republican candidates’ heads.A man placed one with a homophobic slur on the face of Mike Pence, Mr. Trump’s former vice president. Later, it appeared to have been removed. But a number of stickers branding Mr. Pence a “traitor” for refusing to overturn the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021, covered his face.On a cutout of Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and Mr. Trump’s United Nation’s ambassador, one sticky note said: “Woman in Politics? Cringe.”At the event’s apex on Saturday, about 6,000 people filled the Palm Beach County Convention Center to hear Mr. Trump speak for nearly 100 minutes. Mr. Carlson ruminated about his dismissal from Fox News in April.Roger J. Stone Jr. speaking to the pro-Trump crowd.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesIn a speech on Sunday, Mr. Stone, who had a felony conviction pardoned by Mr. Trump, claimed that federal prosecutors had offered him a deal to dredge up dirt implicating Mr. Trump in wrongdoing and recalled a predawn F.B.I. raid at his home in South Florida in 2019 during which he was arrested.“I said, ‘You can go to hell,’” he said. More