Presidential Election of 2024

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      Federal Appeals Court Rejects Trump’s Claim of Absolute Immunity

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      The ruling answered a question that an appeals court had never addressed: Can former presidents escape being held accountable by the criminal justice system for things they did while in office?A federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected former President Donald J. Trump’s claim that he was immune to charges of plotting to subvert the results of the 2020 election, ruling that he must go to trial on a criminal indictment accusing him of seeking to overturn his loss to President Biden.The 3-0 ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit handed Mr. Trump a significant defeat, but was unlikely to be the final word on his claims of executive immunity. Mr. Trump is expected to continue his appeal to the Supreme Court — possibly with an intermediate request to the full appeals court.Still, the panel’s 57-page ruling signaled an important moment in American jurisprudence, answering a question that had never been addressed by an appeals court: Can former presidents escape being held accountable by the criminal justice system for things they did while in office?The question is novel because no former president until Mr. Trump had been indicted, so there was never an opportunity for a defendant to make — and courts to consider — the sweeping claim of executive immunity that he has put forward.The panel, composed of two judges appointed by Democrats and one Republican appointee, said in its decision that, despite the privileges of the office he once held, Mr. Trump was subject to federal criminal law like any other American.“For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant,” the panel wrote. “But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as president no longer protects him against this prosecution.”The panel’s ruling came nearly a month after it heard arguments on the immunity issue from Mr. Trump’s legal team and from prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith. While the decision was quick by the standards of a normal appeal, what happens next will be arguably more important in determining when or whether a trial on the election subversion charges — now set to start in early March — will take place.. More

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      Nikki Haley Requests Secret Service Protection as She Faces Rising Threats

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      Nikki Haley, who has been the target of at least two hoax calls that have sent the authorities rushing to her home, has applied for Secret Service protection as the number of threats against her has increased, a campaign spokeswoman confirmed Monday.After losses in Iowa and New Hampshire, Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and a United Nations ambassador under former President Donald J. Trump, is now his only rival left in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. The two have been clashing fiercely on the campaign trail and are headed into a heated primary in her home state on Feb. 24.Mr. Trump’s supporters have been known to attack his political opponents with racist messages, death threats and “swatting” calls, or fake reports of emergencies at their homes. But officials with Ms. Haley’s campaign would not release any more information about the number or kinds of threats she has received. Ms. Haley could also be a target because of her work in Iran as a United Nations ambassador.In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the move, Ms. Haley said only that her team had seen “multiple issues.” “It’s not going to stop me from doing what I need to do,” she said.Presidential candidates typically receive Secret Service protection around the time they win their party’s nomination. In 2007, Barack Obama, then a senator, was assigned protection nine months before voting began in the primaries.Ms. Haley has increased security at her events in recent weeks. In South Carolina, reports filed with the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office show that deputies have responded to at least two bogus reports at her home on Kiawah Island since December.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 Jobs Conundrum: Questions About Wages Persist

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      The latest data on jobs and wages are positive on the surface, but a large group of voters are still downbeat about the state of the economy. Jobs seem plentiful, but a large group of voters are feeling downbeat about inflation and the economy.Spencer Platt/Getty Images‘The job’s not quite done’ The U.S. economy is a paradox. Official figures show that growth is solid, jobs are plentiful and wages are climbing, and yet voters are mostly feeling down and giving President Biden little credit.Friday’s jobs data is adding to that split-screen view, with economists pointing out red flags in an otherwise sterling report.The labor market seems to be performing strongly. Employers added 353,000 jobs last month, almost double economists’ forecasts, and an additional 100,000 via revisions in previous months. Average hourly wages rose, too.But that doesn’t necessarily mean workers are more prosperous. For a start, wintry weather shrank the average workweek to 34.1 hours in January. In particular, nonsalaried employees, especially those in retail, construction and the hospitality sectors, worked fewer hours, which probably ate into their pay, Bill Adams, an economist at Comerica Bank, said in a research note.And Goldman Sachs’s wage tracker for U.S. workers fell after Friday’s report on a quarterly annualized basis.Workers are increasingly anxious about changing jobs. Quit rates have fallen to a four-year low, suggesting employees are feeling less confident that they’ll find a better position elsewhere. If this trend persists, it could also put the chill on wage gains that soared during the so-called Great Resignation.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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      Taylor Swift and the Profound Weirdness of MAGA

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      Hatred makes people gullible and foolish. That’s a key lesson of the MAGA right’s deeply strange turn against Taylor Swift and her boyfriend, the Kansas City Chiefs’ star tight end Travis Kelce. In fact, that’s a key lesson from this entire sorry era in American political and cultural life.There’s nothing new about partisan anger at celebrities. And Swift has dabbled in politics. In 2018, she endorsed the Democratic candidate for Senate in Tennessee, Phil Bredesen, over Republican Marsha Blackburn, and in 2020 she endorsed Joe Biden for president. Kelce, for his part, appeared in ads for the Pfizer Covid vaccine. By MAGA’s calculation, between them the couple express the most infernal combination of affiliations — Democrats and vaccines.Moreover, “shut up and sing” (or, in Kelce’s case, shut up and catch) has been such a consistent theme in right-wing cancel culture that it was the title both of Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s 2003 book and of a 2006 documentary about the Dixie Chicks (now just the Chicks). But Republican opposition to celebrity engagement has always been highly selective. Even as he condemned Swift, one prominent MAGA figure recently boasted that his “side” still had Kid Rock, Ted Nugent and Jon Voight. And it was the G.O.P., after all, that elected both a movie star (Ronald Reagan) and a reality TV celebrity (Donald Trump) to the presidency.But while traditional partisan pettiness can explain the knee-jerk negative reaction to Swift, it can’t come close to explaining the incredible weirdness of the recent theory emanating from people with some of the largest platforms in MAGA America. According to them, Taylor Swift’s extraordinary popularity isn’t the organic outcome of a talented and appealing superstar’s bond with her fans. No, according to them, Swift’s rise is an “op” or a “psyop” engineered by the deep state in order to benefit Joe Biden.A central part of the plot, of course, is Swift’s fake, deep-state-invented relationship with Kelce. Thus when the Chiefs struggled earlier in the season, it was a source of right-wing schadenfreude. But now that they’ve surged into a berth in the Super Bowl, it has all been revealed as part of The Plan.Again, it’s all just so dumb and strange. But dumb and strange is par for the course with MAGA. If we imagined conspiracy theories as movies, we’d say “Taylor Swift: Psyop” was brought to you by the same studio that produced cult classics such as “Pizzagate” and “The Seth Rich Conspiracy,” not to mention the tentpole franchises “QAnon” and “Stop the Steal.”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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      Nikki Haley Appears on ‘Saturday Night Live’

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      Ayo Edebiri hosted in a show that focused much of its energy on politics, along with Taylor Swift conspiracy theories and a “Dune” popcorn bucket.“Saturday Night Live” resumed its election-season tradition of bringing on political candidates to play themselves, inviting Nikki Haley for a cameo in its opening sketches this weekend.Haley, who has tried to make use of comedy and popular culture as she trails former President Donald J. Trump in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, appeared in a segment that was presented as a CNN town hall event with Trump (played by the show’s resident Trump impersonator, James Austin Johnson).Johnson fielded questions from other “S.N.L.” cast members, explaining how he planned to beat President Biden and would “stop Taylor Swift from infiltrating the Super Bowl.” The town hall moderators then introduced a question from an audience member “who describes herself as a concerned South Carolina voter.”That voter turned out to be Haley, the former governor of South Carolina (as well as an ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump administration). “Yes, hello,” Haley said to Johnson. “My question is, why won’t you debate Nikki Haley?”“Oh my God, it’s her!” Johnson said. “The woman who was in charge of security on Jan. 6. It’s Nancy Pelosi.”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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      South Carolina Democratic Primary Results 2024: Biden Wins

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      Polls close at 7 p.m. Eastern time. In 2020, results began to come in soon after, and about 98 percent of votes had been reported by midnight. South Carolina does not have voter registration by party, but those who participate in the Democratic election may not vote in the Republican election on Feb. 24. Voter […] More

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      Biden to Sit Out Super Bowl Interview

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      President Biden is sitting out the Super Bowl for the second year in a row.CBS said on Saturday that the White House had turned down a request for Mr. Biden to participate in a televised interview with its news division, which would have aired in the highly rated hours ahead of the big game on Feb. 11.In a tradition dating to 2009, presidents have recorded an interview with the network that broadcasts the Super Bowl, although there have been exceptions. Donald J. Trump did not appear on NBC in 2018. Last year, Mr. Biden declined to appear on Fox, home of cable hosts like Sean Hannity who are sharply hostile toward him.But the White House has been receptive to CBS News in the past. The president was interviewed by the “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell ahead of the 2021 Super Bowl, and he participated in two lengthy “60 Minutes” pieces, in 2022 and 2023, with the correspondent Scott Pelley.“We hope viewers enjoy watching what they tuned in for — the game,” Ben LaBolt, the White House communications director, said in a statement on Saturday.The Super Bowl, typically the most-watched telecast of the year, offers an unusually large audience for a sitting president to address current events and advance his agenda to the public.And there is plenty of news for Mr. Biden to comment on. Starting on Friday, the United States carried out military strikes in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Three American soldiers were killed last Sunday in Jordan. The government just released a positive jobs report. And Mr. Biden is ramping up his re-election campaign as Mr. Trump has moved closer to clinching the Republican nomination.In 2021, Mr. Biden’s pregame interview with Ms. O’Donnell was seen live by about 10.2 million viewers; millions more viewed clips that aired on other CBS programs in the days surrounding the game.For this year’s event, CBS offered the White House about 15 minutes for an interview with Mr. Biden, with three to four minutes airing live during the pregame coverage on the network, according to a person familiar with the discussions.Mr. Biden has conducted fewer media interviews than his most recent predecessors. The president’s last major network interview took place in October, with Mr. Pelley of CBS. His State of the Union address is scheduled for March 7.Katie Rogers More

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      Germany Braces for Decades of Confrontation With Russia

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      Leaders are sounding alarms about growing threats, but Chancellor Olaf Scholz is wary of pushing the Kremlin, and his own ambivalent public, too far.Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has begun warning Germans that they should prepare for decades of confrontation with Russia — and that they must speedily rebuild the country’s military in case Vladimir V. Putin does not plan to stop at the border with Ukraine.Russia’s military, he has said in a series of recent interviews with German news media, is fully occupied with Ukraine. But if there is a truce, and Mr. Putin, Russia’s president, has a few years to reset, he thinks the Russian leader will consider testing NATO’s unity.“Nobody knows how or whether this will last,” Mr. Pistorius said of the current war, arguing for a rapid buildup in the size of the German military and a restocking of its arsenal.Mr. Pistorius’s public warnings reflect a significant shift at the top levels of leadership in a country that has shunned a strong military since the end of the Cold War. The alarm is growing louder, but the German public remains unconvinced that the security of Germany and Europe has been fundamentally threatened by a newly aggressive Russia.The defense minister’s post in Germany is often a political dead end. But Mr. Pistorius’s status as one of the country’s most popular politicians has given him a freedom to speak that others — including his boss, Chancellor Olaf Scholz — do not enjoy.As Mr. Scholz prepares to meet President Biden at the White House on Friday, many in the German government say that there is no going back to business as usual with Mr. Putin’s Russia, that they anticipate little progress this year in Ukraine and that they fear the consequences should Mr. Putin prevail there.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More