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    Civilian Prosecutors Rejected Evidence in 9/11 Case That Military Calls Crucial

    The revelation sets in stark relief the decision by military prosecutors to seek to include the evidence, which has opened the door to years of litigation over confessions by the men accused of plotting the attacks.For years, a thorny question has dominated pretrial hearings in the military commissions case over the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: Did the men accused of plotting them voluntarily confess in 2007 after the C.I.A. had stopped torturing them, and could those statements be used as evidence at their eventual death-penalty trial?So it came as a surprise when a veteran F.B.I. analyst revealed that in 2009, when the Obama administration was planning to instead try the men in civilian court, federal prosecutors had decided against trying to offer the statements as evidence.The revelation sets in stark relief the contrary decision by military prosecutors to build their case around summoning the F.B.I. interrogators as witnesses, calling such potential testimony their “most critical” evidence. It also underlines how that decision has opened the door to years of litigation and contributed to a lengthy delay in getting the case to trial.Brig. Gen. Mark S. Martins, the chief prosecutor at Guantánamo from 2011 until his retirement in 2021, did not respond to a request for comment.During a closed hearing on March 6, Kimberly Waltz, a supervisory intelligence analyst at the F.B.I. who works on the Guantánamo prosecution team, disclosed that civilian prosecutors had decided the statements were unnecessary. In 2009, when she helped the civilian prosecution team evaluate the evidence, federal prosecutors rejected using the confessions at trial, according to a transcript of the hearing recently released by the government.“At that time it was my understanding,” she said, that “we were not going to be able to use them; they weren’t admissible.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump Fund-Raiser Rakes In More Than $50.5 Million, Campaign Says

    For several hours on Saturday evening, drivers on a typically scenic stretch of Palm Beach, Fla., had their views of the coast obscured by a line of luxury vehicles whose owners were mingling inside a mansion across the road.The shoreline-blocking Range Rovers, Aston Martins and Bentleys hinted at the deep-pocketed donors attending a fund-raising dinner for former President Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign, which it and the Republican National Committee said had raised more than $50.5 million.The event, hosted by the billionaire John Paulson at his home, followed a concerted push by the Trump campaign to address a longstanding financial disparity with President Biden and Democrats as both parties gear up for the general election.The reported total, which cannot be independently verified ahead of campaign finance filings in the coming months, is nearly double the $26 million that President Biden’s campaign said it raised last month at a celebrity-studded event at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, senior advisers to the former president who are effectively his campaign managers, said in a statement that the total made it “clearer than ever that we have the message, the operation and the money to propel President Trump to victory on November 5.”Mr. Trump’s event, just down the road from his home at Mar-a-Lago, was in some ways a less flashy affair than its Democratic antecedent, one that traded Hollywood star power and New York City energy for a warmer clime, an abundance of palm trees and the manicured lawns typical of an island refuge for the moneyed elite.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Biden, Obama and Clinton Gather, Tieless, for Campaign Fund-Raiser

    Did Presidents Biden, Obama and Clinton, appearing together at a fund-raiser in open-neck shirts, look casual or ‘a little disheveled’? Simultaneously historic and perhaps a big nothing, the shot was snapped on Thursday in New York City when President Biden and former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton gathered, before a Democratic fund-raiser, for the taping of “SmartLess,” a podcast hosted by the comedians Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett.With his beard and rumpled corduroy pants, Mr. Bateman was clearly the odd man out in a group of radiantly healthy alphas dressed in crisp blazers or suits. As one social media quipster put it, Mr. Bateman, the “Arrested Development” star who is soon to appear in a limited series with Jude Law, looked as if he was celebrating his release from the hoosegow. The other dudes were on hand to help cut the cake.It was not Mr. Bateman, though, who generated online buzz with his attire. It was those three presidents appearing without ties. (Messrs. Arnett and Hayes also skipped the neckwear, and as it happened, the three presidents remained without ties straight through the evening’s event.) Were we once again at the precipice, as some commentators seemed to suggest? Was civilization nearing its end? Or were we yet again being reminded of the inexorable march from casual Friday to casual everyday, and to a world in which chief executives dress like field hands and the only people who can be relied on to sport a suit and tie outside a courtroom are bodyguards and limo chauffeurs?Pity the poor tie. Pundits are forever writing its obit. Back in 2022, the doomsayers piled on when, at a G7 summit in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, world leaders including Justin Trudeau, Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson “declared the end of the necktie,” according to Women’s Wear Daily, by posing for a group photo in suits and open-neck shirts.World leaders at a G7 summit in Germany in 2022.Susan Walsh/Associated PressWomen’s Wear Daily, citing the pandemic and the corresponding boom in athleisure and active wear, noted that the formal suit — with that sadly diminished phallic accessory, the necktie — “no longer yields the intellect and vim it once did.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Biden Fund-Raiser and Trump Visit to New York Preview Clashes to Come

    The epicenter of the presidential campaign shifted to New York on Thursday, as the incumbent president and three of his predecessors descended on the area for dueling events that illustrated the kinds of political clashes that could come to define the general election.For Democrats, it was a high-profile, celebrity-studded fund-raiser for President Biden in Manhattan. On Long Island, former President Donald J. Trump attended a wake for a New York City officer who was killed during a traffic stop on Monday. Together, the day’s events struck an unusual contrast in a general election campaign that has so far been largely defined by appearances in courtrooms and at small, invitation-only events.Mr. Biden, along with Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, appeared before 5,000 donors at a Radio City Music Hall event that campaign aides said raised $25 million. The eye-popping number set a record for a single political event, according to the aides, and offered a star-studded show of Democratic unity as the president heads into a difficult re-election campaign.The three Democratic presidents spent much of their time in New York City wrapped in the glitz of their celebrity supporters. Tieless and in matching white shirts, they sat for an interview on a celebrity podcast, were roasted by the comedian Mindy Kaling and interviewed by Stephen Colbert, a late-night host.Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, made his own appearance in the area several hours earlier, at a funeral home on Long Island surrounded by hundreds of police officers and family members of the slain officer. While not officially a campaign stop, aides used the appearance to draw a sharp contrast with Mr. Biden, attacking the Democrats for spending their evening with donors and celebrities. In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has spent far more time battling in court than in battleground states.Former President Donald J. Trump attending a wake for a New York City police officer on Long Island.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Biden Will Campaign Alongside Bill Clinton and Barack Obama

    President Biden will depart Washington today for a two-day trip to New York, turning his attention away from swing states to campaign and raise funds in a liberal stronghold.Mr. Biden, 81, will be joined tonight at a campaign fund-raiser in Manhattan by his two most recent Democratic predecessors: Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.The star-studded event, at Radio City Music Hall, is aimed at building on the already significant financial advantage Mr. Biden has over his opponent, former President Donald J. Trump. Campaign finance records released last week showed that Mr. Biden’s campaign had more than twice as much cash on hand as Mr. Trump’s campaign — a gap of nearly $40 million.And it is likely to be just the beginning of the effort by Mr. Obama, 62, who left office seven years ago, and Mr. Clinton, 77, who left office over 23 years ago, to lift the president’s re-election campaign ahead of his rematch against Mr. Trump in the fall.Mr. Obama in particular has expressed grave concerns that Mr. Biden could lose to Mr. Trump and is making regular calls to top aides at the White House to strategize and offer advice. He had previously played a crucial role in wrapping up the 2020 primaries after it became nearly certain that Mr. Biden would be the nominee.Mr. Obama and Mr. Clinton both campaigned on Mr. Biden’s behalf in the 2020 race and made main-stage speeches at that year’s Democratic National Convention. The two have since offered the president their counsel during his term and have visited the White House and promoted their policy achievements alongside Mr. Biden.Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, had meanwhile made some effort to eschew campaign politics during her own appearance at the New York Public Library on Wednesday evening. But Mrs. Clinton could not entirely avoid questions about Mr. Trump and the coming election. She said that Americans should ensure that Mr. Trump “is never president ever again.” She was also asked whether she found Mr. Trump’s felony indictments “gratifying.”“I am not answering that question,” she said with a smile and a vigorous shake of her head. More

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    Poll Ranks Biden as 14th-Best President, With Trump Last

    President Biden may owe his place in the top third to his predecessor: Mr. Biden’s signature accomplishment, according to the historians, was evicting Donald J. Trump from the Oval Office.President Biden has not had a lot of fun perusing polls lately. He has a lower approval rating than every president going back to Dwight D. Eisenhower at this stage of their tenures, and he trails former President Donald J. Trump in a fall rematch. But Mr. Biden can take solace from one survey in which he is way out in front of Mr. Trump.A new poll of historians coming out on Presidents’ Day weekend ranks Mr. Biden as the 14th-best president in American history, just ahead of Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan and Ulysses S. Grant. While that may not get Mr. Biden a spot on Mount Rushmore, it certainly puts him well ahead of Mr. Trump, who places dead last as the worst president ever.Indeed, Mr. Biden may owe his place in the top third in part to Mr. Trump. Although he has claims to a historical legacy by managing the end of the Covid pandemic; rebuilding the nation’s roads, bridges and other infrastructure; and leading an international coalition against Russian aggression, Mr. Biden’s signature accomplishment, according to the historians, was evicting Mr. Trump from the Oval Office.“Biden’s most important achievements may be that he rescued the presidency from Trump, resumed a more traditional style of presidential leadership and is gearing up to keep the office out of his predecessor’s hands this fall,” wrote Justin Vaughn and Brandon Rottinghaus, the college professors who conducted the survey and announced the results in The Los Angeles Times.Mr. Trump might not care much what a bunch of academics think, but for what it’s worth he fares badly even among the self-identified Republican historians. Finishing 45th overall, Mr. Trump trails even the mid-19th-century failures who blundered the country into a civil war or botched its aftermath like James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce and Andrew Johnson.Judging modern-day presidents, of course, is a hazardous exercise, one shaped by the politics of the moment and not necessarily reflective of how history will look a century from now. Even long-ago presidents can move up or down such polls depending on the changing cultural mores of the times the surveys are conducted.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    The Trauma of the Trump Years Is Being Rewritten

    Americans rehabilitate ex-presidents all the time.It was fascinating to see the rebranding of George W. Bush — the man who took us into the disastrous Iraq war and horribly bungled the response to Hurricane Katrina — into a charming amateur artist who played buddies with and passed candy to Michelle Obama.And it didn’t just happen for him. The Monica Lewinsky scandal faded in our consideration of Bill Clinton. Barack Obama’s reliance on drone strikes and his moniker “deporter in chief” rarely receive mention now.This is because our political memories aren’t fixed, but are constantly being adjusted. Politicians’ negatives are often diminished and their positives inflated. As Gallup noted in 2013, “Americans tend to be more charitable in their evaluations of past presidents than they are when the presidents are in office.”Without a doubt, Donald Trump benefits from this phenomenon. The difference is that other presidents’ shortcomings pale in comparison to his and his benefit isn’t passive: He’s seeking the office again and, as part of that, working to rewrite the history of his presidency. His desperate attempts, first to cling to power, then to regain it, include denying the 2020 election results and embracing the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection that his denials helped fuel.His revisionism has worked remarkably well, particularly among Republicans. A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll conducted in December found that Republicans “are now less likely to believe that Jan. 6 participants were ‘mostly violent,’ less likely to believe Trump bears responsibility for the attack and are slightly less likely to view Joe Biden’s election as legitimate” than they were in 2021.This is one of the truly remarkable aspects of the current presidential cycle: the degree to which our collective memory of Trump’s litany of transgressions have become less of a political problem for him than might otherwise be expected. Even the multiple legal charges he now faces are almost all about things that happened years ago and, to many citizens, involve things that the country should put in the rearview mirror.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Why Iowa Turned So Red When Nearby States Went Blue

    With the Iowa caucuses six days away, politicians will be crisscrossing the state, blowing through small-town Pizza Ranches, filling high school gyms, and flipping pancakes at church breakfasts.What Iowans will not be seeing are Democrats. President Biden spoke Friday in Pennsylvania, and he and Vice President Kamala Harris both were in South Carolina over the weekend and on Monday. But Iowa, a state that once sizzled with bipartisan politics, launched Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008 and seesawed between Republican and Democratic governors, has largely been ceded to the G.O.P. as part of a remarkable sorting of voters in the Upper Midwest.There is no single reason that over the past 15 years the Upper Midwest saw Iowa turn into a beacon of Donald J. Trump’s populism, North and South Dakota shed storied histories of prairie populism for a conservatism that reflected the national G.O.P., and Illinois and Minnesota move dramatically leftward. (Sandwiched in between, Wisconsin found an uncomfortable parity between its conservative rural counties and its more industrial and academic centers in Milwaukee and Madison.)No state in the nation swung as heavily Republican between 2012 and 2020 as Iowa, which went from a six-percentage-point victory for Barack Obama to an eight-point win for Mr. Trump in the last presidential election.Deindustrialization of rural reaches and the Mississippi River regions had its impact, as did the hollowing out of institutions, from civic organizations to small-town newspapers, that had given the Upper Midwest a character separate from national politics.Susan Laehn, an Iowa State University political scientist who lives in the small town of Jefferson, Iowa, recounted how an issue that once would have been handled through discussions at church or the Rotary Club instead became infected with national politics, with her husband, the libertarian Greene County attorney, stuck in the middle: New multicolored lighting installed last summer to illuminate the town’s carillon bell tower prompted an angry debate over L.G.B.T.Q. rights, leaving much of the town soured on identity politics that they largely blamed on the national left.Another issue: Brain drain. The movement of young college graduates out of Iowa and the Dakotas to the metropolises of Chicago and Minneapolis-St. Paul made a mark on the politics of all five states.Michael Dabe, a 19-year-old business and marketing major at the University of Dubuque, near the western bank of the Mississippi River, has found a comfortable home in Iowa, where life is slower and simpler than in his native Illinois and politics, he said, are more aligned with his conservative inclinations.But he expressed little doubt what he will be doing with his business degree once he graduates, and most of his classmates are likely to follow suit, he said.“There are just so many more opportunities in Chicago,” he said. “Politics are important to me, but job security, being able to raise a family more securely, is more important, for sure.”Michael Dabe, a freshman at the University of Dubuque, in his room at his parents’ home on Sunday. He expects to move to Chicago after graduation.Kayla Wolf for The New York TimesAn analysis in 2022 by economists at the University of North Carolina, the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago of data gleaned from LinkedIn showed how states with dynamic economic centers are luring college graduates from more rural states. Iowa loses 34.2 percent of its college graduates, worse than 40 of the 50 states, just below North Dakota, which loses 31.6 percent. Illinois, by contrast, gains 20 percent more college graduates than it produces. Minnesota has about 8 percent more than it produces.Even when young families look to move back to the rural areas they grew up in, they are often thwarted by an acute housing shortage, said Benjamin Winchester, a rural sociologist at the University of Minnesota extension in St. Cloud, Minn.; 75 percent of rural homeowners are baby boomers or older, and those older residents see boarded-up businesses and believe their communities’ best days are behind them, he said.As such older voters grow frustrated and more conservative, the trend is accelerating. Iowa, which had a congressional delegation split between two House Republicans, two House Democrats and two Republican senators in 2020, now has a government almost wholly under Republican control, which has enacted boldly conservative policies that ban almost all abortions and transition care for minors, publicly fund vouchers for private schools and pull books describing sexual acts from school libraries. (The library and abortion laws are now on hold in the courts.) The congressional delegation is now entirely Republican after a 2022 G.O.P. sweep in House races and the re-election of Senator Charles E. Grassley.Meantime on the east bank of the Mississippi, in Illinois, high-capacity semiautomatic rifles have been banned, the right to an abortion has been enshrined in law and recreational marijuana is legal. Upriver in Minnesota, pot is legal, unauthorized immigrants are getting driver’s licenses, and voting access for felons and teens is expanding.Such policy dichotomies are influencing the decisions of younger Iowans, said David Loebsack, a former Democratic House member from eastern Iowa.“These people are going, and I fear they’re going to keep going, given the policies that have been adopted,” he said.The politics of rural voters in the Upper Midwest may simply be catching up to other rural regions that turned conservative earlier, said Sam Rosenfeld, a political scientist at Colgate University and author of “The Polarizers,” a book on the architects of national polarization. Southern rural white voters turned sharply to the right in the 1960s and 1970s as Black southerners gained power with the civil rights movement and attendant legislation, he noted.But rural voters in the Upper Midwest, where few Black people lived, held on to a more diverse politics for decades longer. North Dakota, with its state bank, state grain mill and state grain elevator, has retained vestiges of a socialist past, when progressive politicians railed against rapacious businessmen from the Twin Cities. Even still, its politics have changed dramatically.“Until relatively recently, there was a Midwestern rural white voter who was distinct from a southern rural white voter,” Mr. Rosenfeld said. “There was a real progressive tradition in the Midwest uncoopted by Jim Crow and racial issues.”The rural reaches of Iowa now look politically similar to rural stretches in any state, from New York to Alabama to Oregon. And rural voters simply appreciated what Mr. Trump did for them, said Neil Shaffer, who chairs the Republican Party of Howard County, Iowa. Located along the Minnesota border, it was the only county in the nation to give both Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump 20-percentage-point victories.Iowans like outsiders, and Mr. Obama’s charisma was winning, Mr. Shaffer said. But the self-employed farmers and small-business owners of Howard County were burdened by the Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration’s regulation of fresh water runoff, and depressed commodity prices.There was skepticism of Mr. Trump and his abrasive, big-city behavior, Mr. Shaffer said, “but there’s that individual spirit in the Midwest that likes the Don Quixote railing against the big bad government, And people knew what they were getting.”Kyle D. Kondik of the University of Virginia Center for Politics explains polarization as a tale of the top half versus the bottom half of the population scale. If more than half a state’s vote comes from dominant metropolitan areas, as is the case in Illinois and Minnesota, states tend to be Democratic. If smaller, rural counties dominate, states tend to move right.Of the nine largest counties in Iowa, only one, Dubuque, switched from Mr. Obama to Mr. Trump in 2016. President Biden’s margin in those counties in 2020 was only three percentage points lower than Mr. Obama’s winning 2012 margin.But Mr. Obama also carried 31 of the 90 smaller counties; Mr. Biden won none. As a group, Mr. Obama lost those rural counties by 2.5 percentage points to his Republican rival, Mitt Romney. Mr. Biden lost them to Mr. Trump by nearly 30 percentage points.Former President Barack Obama carried Iowa in 2008 and 2012, while President Biden lost it by 8 percentage points in 2020.Joshua Lott for The New York TimesMr. Kondik attributed some of that to Mr. Trump, whose anti-immigrant, protectionist policies diverged from traditional Republican positions. “He was a good fit for the Midwest,” he said.Laura Hubka, who co-chairs the Howard County Democrats, remembered high school students driving trucks around town in 2016 with large Trump flags. It felt intimidating, she said.“It was scary for a lot of people and scared a lot of Democrats inside,” Ms. Hubka said. “Trump spoke to a certain kind of people. People who felt like they were left behind.”Chased by the shifting politics, she said, at least one of her children now plans to move his family across the border to Minnesota.But the sweeping Republican victories in Iowa in 2022, when Mr. Trump was not on the ballot and the G.O.P. faltered in much of the country, point to other factors. Christopher Larimer, a political scientist at the University of Northern Iowa, again pointed to demographics. The huge groundswell of first-time 18-year-old voters who propelled Mr. Obama in 2008 were 22 and graduating college in 2012. By 2016, many of them had likely left the state, Mr. Larimer said.“I don’t know if Iowa is any different from anywhere else; it’s caught up in the nationalization of politics,” he said. “Young people are moving into the urban core, and that’s turning the outskirts more red.”If that urban core is in state, statewide results won’t change. If it is elsewhere, they will.Mr. Winchester, the rural sociologist, said the perception of rural decline is not reality; regional centers, like Bemidji, Minn., or Pella and Davenport, Iowa, are thriving, and even if small-town businesses have closed, housing in those towns is filled.But, he said, “many towns don’t know their place in the larger world. That concept of anomie, a sense of disconnection, is out there.”Gary Hillmer, a retired U.S. Agriculture Department soil conservationist in Hardin County, Iowa, has drifted away from his Republican roots and said he struggled to understand the views of his Trump-supporting neighbors in the farm country around Iowa Falls.“It’s hard to have a conversation with them to figure out why,” he said. “It’s frustrating, in that regard, because we ought to be able to talk to each other.”Charles Homans More