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    Fears of a NATO Withdrawal Rise as Trump Seeks a Return to Power

    For 74 years, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has been America’s most important military alliance. Presidents of both parties have seen NATO as a force multiplier enhancing the influence of the United States by uniting countries on both sides of the Atlantic in a vow to defend one another.Donald J. Trump has made it clear that he sees NATO as a drain on American resources by freeloaders. He has held that view for at least a quarter of a century.In his 2000 book, “The America We Deserve,” Mr. Trump wrote that “pulling back from Europe would save this country millions of dollars annually.” As president, he repeatedly threatened a United States withdrawal from the alliance.Yet as he runs to regain the White House, Mr. Trump has said precious little about his intentions. His campaign website contains a single cryptic sentence: “We have to finish the process we began under my administration of fundamentally re-evaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission.” He and his team refuse to elaborate.That vague line has generated enormous uncertainty and anxiety among European allies and American supporters of the country’s traditional foreign-policy role.European ambassadors and think tank officials have been making pilgrimages to associates of Mr. Trump to inquire about his intentions. At least one ambassador, Finland’s Mikko Hautala, has reached out directly to Mr. Trump and sought to persuade him of his country’s value to NATO as a new member, according to two people familiar with the conversations.In interviews over the past several months, more than a half-dozen current and former European diplomats — speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from Mr. Trump should he win — said alarm was rising on Embassy Row and among their home governments that Mr. Trump’s return could mean not just the abandonment of Ukraine, but a broader American retreat from the continent and a gutting of the Atlantic alliance.“There is great fear in Europe that a second Trump presidency would result in an actual pullout of the United States from NATO,” said James G. Stavridis, a retired four-star Navy admiral who was NATO’s supreme allied commander from 2009 to 2013. “That would be an enormous strategic and historic failure on the part of our nation.”Formed after World War II to keep the peace in Europe and act as a bulwark against the Soviet Union, NATO evolved into an instrument through which the U.S. works with allies on military issues around the world. Its original purpose — the heart of which is the collective-defense provision, known as Article V, that states that an armed attack on any member “shall be considered an attack against them all” — lives on, especially for newer members like Poland and the Baltic States that were once dominated by the Soviet Union and continue to fear Russia.Ukrainian soldiers test-fired the guns of tanks provided by NATO before moving to the frontline in Ukraine. NATO’s purpose as a bulwark against the Soviet Union lives on for newer members in Eastern Europe who continue to fear Russian aggression.David Guttenfelder for The New York TimesThe interviews with current and former diplomats revealed that European officials were mostly out of ideas for how to deal with Mr. Trump other than returning to a previous playbook of flattery and transactional tributes.Smaller countries that are more vulnerable to Russian attacks are expected to try to buy their way into Mr. Trump’s good graces by increasing their orders of American weapons or — as Poland did during his term — by performing grand acts of adulation, including offering to name a military base Fort Trump in return for his placing a permanent presence there.At this point in the campaign, Mr. Trump is focused on the criminal cases against him and on defeating his Republican primary rivals, and he rarely talks about the alliance, even in private.As he maintains a broad lead in his campaign to become the Republican nominee, the implications for America’s oldest and most critical military alliance are not clearly advertised plans from Mr. Trump, but a turmoil of widely held suspicions charged with unknowability.UkraineAmid those swirling doubts, one thing is likely: The first area where Mr. Trump’s potential return to the White House in 2025 could provoke a foreign policy crisis is for Ukraine and the alliance of Western democracies that have been supporting its defense against Russia’s invasion.Helping Ukraine stave off the attempted Russian conquest has become a defining NATO effort. Ukraine is not a NATO member but has remained an independent country because of NATO support.Camille Grand, who was NATO’s assistant secretary general for defense investment early in the war, said that how Mr. Trump handled Ukraine would be the first “big test case” that Europeans would use to assess how reliable an ally — or not — he might be in a second term.“Will he throw Zelensky under the bus in the first three months of his term?” Mr. Grand, now at the European Council on Foreign Relations, asked, referring to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.NATO’s collective response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has helped President Biden, center, rebuild traditional alliances after the turmoil of Mr. Trump’s presidency.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMr. Trump has repeatedly declared that he would somehow settle the war “in 24 hours.” He has not said how, but he has coupled that claim with suggestions that he could have prevented the war by making a deal in which Ukraine simply ceded to Russia its eastern lands that President Vladimir Putin has illegally seized.Mr. Zelensky has said Ukraine would never agree to cede any of its lands to Russia as part of a peace deal. But Mr. Trump would have tremendous leverage over Ukraine’s government. The United States has supplied huge quantities of vital weapons, ammunition and intelligence to Ukraine. European countries have pledged the most economic assistance to Ukraine but could not make up the shortfall if America stopped sending military aid.Some of Mr. Trump’s congressional allies, who have followed his lead in preaching an “America First” mantra, already oppose sending further military assistance to Kyiv. And in a broader sign of waning support, Senate Republicans last week blocked an emergency spending bill to further fund the war in Ukraine after demanding unrelated immigration policy concessions from Democrats as a condition of passing it.But even if Congress appropriates further aid, Mr. Trump could withhold delivery of it — as he did in 2019 when trying to coerce Mr. Zelensky into announcing a criminal investigation into Mr. Biden, the abuse-of-power scandal that led to Mr. Trump’s first impeachment.Against that backdrop, Russia’s battlefield strategy for now appears to be biding its time; it is carrying out attacks when it sees opportunities and to tie up Ukrainian forces but is not making paradigm-shifting moves or negotiating, officials said. That stasis raises the possibility that Mr. Putin has calculated he could be in a much better position after the 2024 U.S. election.‘Everybody Owes Us Money’Mr. Trump likes to brag that he privately told leaders of NATO countries that if Russia attacked them and they had not paid the money they owed to NATO and to the United States, he would not defend them. He claimed at a rally in October that after he had declared that “everybody owes us money” and was “delinquent,” he made that threat at a meeting and so “hundreds of billions of dollars came flowing in.”That story is garbled at best.There was a spending-related dispute, but it was over Europeans’ meeting their spending commitments to their own militaries, not money they somehow owed to NATO or to the United States. They did increase military spending during the Trump administration — though by nowhere near the amounts Mr. Trump has claimed. And their spending rose significantly more in 2023, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.But Mr. Trump’s exuberance for retelling his story, coupled with his past displeasure with NATO, is giving fresh alarm to NATO supporters.Pressed by The New York Times to explain what he means by “fundamentally re-evaluating” NATO’s mission and purpose, Mr. Trump provided a rambling statement that contained no clear answer but expressed skepticism about alliances.“It is the obligation of every U.S. president to ensure that America’s alliances serve to protect the American people, and do not recklessly endanger American blood and treasure,” Mr. Trump’s statement read.Some Trump supporters who are pro-NATO have argued that Mr. Trump is bluffing. They said he was merely looking to put more pressure on the Europeans to spend more on their own defense.“He’s not going to do that,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and a Trump supporter, said of the prospect of Mr. Trump’s withdrawing from NATO. “But what he will do is, he will make people pay more, and I think that will be welcome news to a lot of folks.”Robert O’Brien, who served as Mr. Trump’s final national security adviser, echoed that view.“President Trump withdrawing from NATO is an issue that some people in D.C. discuss, but I don’t believe it’s a real thing,” Mr. O’Brien said. “He understands the military value of the alliance to America, but he just feels — correctly, I might add — like we’re getting played by the Germans and other nations that refuse to pay their fair share for their own defense.”But John Bolton, a conservative hawk who served as national security adviser from 2018 to 2019, wrote in his memoir that Mr. Trump had to be repeatedly talked out of withdrawing from NATO. In an interview, Mr. Bolton said “there is no doubt in my mind” that in a second term, Mr. Trump would withdraw the United States from NATO.Germany has increased its defense spending but will still fall short of the 2 percent target European members of the alliance agreed to.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesAs a legal matter, whether Mr. Trump could unilaterally withdraw the United States from NATO is likely to be contested.The Constitution requires Senate consent to ratify a treaty but omits procedures to annul one. This has led to debate about whether presidents can do so on their own or need lawmakers’ authorization. There are only a few court precedents regarding the issue, none definitive.Decisions to revoke treaties by President Jimmy Carter in 1978 and by President George W. Bush in 2001 led members of Congress to file lawsuits that were rejected by courts, partly on the grounds that the disputes were a “political question” for the elected branches to work out. While the legal precedents are not perfectly clear, both of those presidents effectively won: the treaties are widely understood to be void. Still, any attempt to withdraw from NATO would likely invite a broader challenge.In reaction to Mr. Trump’s threats, some lawmakers — led by Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, and Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida — put a provision in the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which Congress is likely to vote on this month. It says the president shall not withdraw the United States from NATO without congressional approval. But whether the Constitution permits such a tying of a president’s hands is also contestable.And European diplomats say that even if Mr. Trump were to nominally keep the United States in NATO, they fear that he could so undermine trust in the United States’ reliability to live up to the collective-defense provision that its value as a deterrent to Russia would be lost.A Transactional AttitudeThe uncertainty stemming from Mr. Trump’s maximalist and yet vague rhetoric is bound up in his past displays of consistent skepticism about NATO and of unusual solicitude to Russia.As a candidate in 2016, Mr. Trump rattled NATO allies by saying that if Russia attacked the Baltic States, he would decide whether to come to their aid only after reviewing whether they had “fulfilled their obligations to us.” He also repeatedly praised Mr. Putin and said he would consider recognizing Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea.As president in July 2018, Mr. Trump not only nearly withdrew from NATO at an alliance summit but denounced the European Union as a “foe” because of “what they do to us in trade.” He then attended a summit with Mr. Putin, after which he expressed skepticism about the idea that the United States should go to war to defend a tiny NATO ally, Montenegro.Mr. Trump held a summit in Helsinki with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in 2018 after repeatedly praising him and displaying an unusual solicitude toward Russia.Doug Mills/The New York TimesWith no prior experience in the military or government, Mr. Trump brought a transactional, mercantilist attitude to interactions with allies. He tended to base his views of foreign nations on his personal relationships with their leaders and on trade imbalances.Mr. Trump particularly disliked Angela Merkel, the former German chancellor, and often complained that German automakers were flooding America with their products. His defenders say his anger was in some ways justified: Germany hadn’t been meeting its military spending commitments, and over his objections, Ms. Merkel pushed ahead with a natural-gas pipeline to Russia. Germany only suspended that project two days before Russia invaded Ukraine.Mr. Trump’s allies also point out that he approved sending antitank weapons to Ukraine, which President Obama had not done after Russia seized Crimea in 2014.Still, in 2020, Mr. Trump decided to withdraw a third of the 36,000 American troops stationed in Germany. Some were to come home, as he preferred, with others redeployed elsewhere in Europe. But the following year, as Russia built up troops on Ukraine’s border, Mr. Biden canceled the decision and added troops in Germany as a show of support for NATO.A Supportive MovementIf he returns to power, Mr. Trump will be backed by a conservative movement that has become more skeptical of allies and of U.S. involvement abroad.Anti-interventionist foreign policy institutes are more organized and better funded than they were during Mr. Trump’s time in office. Those groups include the Center for Renewing America, a Trump-aligned think tank that published a paper titled “Pivoting the U.S. Away From Europe to a Dormant NATO,” which provides a rationale for minimizing America’s role in NATO.On Nov. 1, the Heritage Foundation — a traditionally hawkish conservative think tank that has lately refashioned itself in a Trumpist mold, on matters including opposition to aid to Ukraine — hosted a delegation from the European Council on Foreign Relations.The Europeans exchanged views with ardent nationalists, including Michael Anton, a National Security Council official in the Trump administration; Dan Caldwell, who managed foreign policy at the Center for Renewing America; and national security aides to Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio and other Trump-aligned senators.According to two people who attended, Mr. Anton told the Europeans he could imagine Mr. Trump setting an ultimatum: If NATO members did not sufficiently increase their military spending by a deadline, he would withdraw the United States from the alliance. As the meeting broke up, Eckart von Klaeden, a former German politician who is now a Mercedes-Benz Group executive, implored Mr. Anton to ask Mr. Trump to please talk to America’s European allies as he formulated his foreign policy.That seems like wishful thinking.In his statement to The Times, Mr. Trump invoked his slogan “America First” — a phrase once popularized by American isolationists opposed to getting involved in World War II.“My highest priority,” Mr. Trump said in the statement, “has always been, and will remain, to America first — the defense of our own country, our own borders, our own values, and our own people, including their jobs and well-being.”Steven Erlanger More

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    In Iowa, Nikki Haley Looks Beyond Her Rivals’ Attacks

    In her first campaign stop since Wednesday’s heated Republican debate, Ms. Haley suggested that fierce criticism from her opponents continued to not be worth her time.In her first campaign stop since Wednesday’s contentious Republican debate, Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador and former governor of South Carolina, largely ignored the many attacks that her fellow candidates, aware of her rise in the polls, had lobbed at her. What she did discuss suggested she continued to feel that the criticism wasn’t, as she said on Wednesday night, “worth my time.”Speaking to about 100 people in a convention center conference room in Sioux City, Iowa, on Friday, Ms. Haley stuck to the topics that have become the cornerstones of her campaign — her foreign policy experience and her willingness to tell “hard truths.” She railed against China, pledged to be a fiscally responsible president and even answered a question about fears that Venezuela could invade its South American neighbor, Guyana.Despite her growing rivalry with Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida to become the chief alternative to former President Donald J. Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, Ms. Haley did not mention Mr. DeSantis by name, nor did she mention the debate — where she was in the line of fire for much of the evening — until the final minutes of the event.Responding to a voter’s question about her standing in the race, Ms. Haley said she did not think she needed to win the Iowa caucus to be successful.“The momentum is on our side,” she said. “The way I look at it is, we just need to have a good showing in Iowa. I don’t think that means we have to win, necessarily, but I think that we have to have a good showing.”Ms. Haley also appeared to indicate that she would not accept an offer to be Mr. Trump’s running mate, if he were to win the nomination and ask her. “I’ve never played for second,” she said.Ms. Haley’s campaign has gained prominence in recent weeks. Many national polls now put her in a heated race for second place with Mr. DeSantis, and she is running at a similar level in Iowa, at roughly 17.5 percent. (Mr. Trump is well ahead of them both, at more than 45 percent.)Late last month, Americans for Prosperity Action, the conservative political network founded by the billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch, endorsed Ms. Haley, which gave her campaign access to the network’s financial might and to a pool of staff members to knock on doors and make phone calls.During the Republican debate in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on Wednesday, Ms. Haley’s increasing prominence made her the target of frequent attacks from Mr. DeSantis and the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. Mr. Ramaswamy in particular assailed her, calling her a “fascist,” asserting that she was in the pocket of business interests and at one point holding up a notepad on which he had written, “Nikki = Corrupt.”“I love all the attention, fellas,” Ms. Haley quipped at one point, even as she appeared, at least at moments, to fade into the debate’s background. Some analysts suggested afterward that Ms. Haley had not mounted a strong enough defense of herself.Unlike former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who rehashed his debate zingers during his campaign stops in New Hampshire on Thursday, Ms. Haley appeared to have moved on. She said the debates had served to winnow the field, and she predicted that another candidate — evidently Mr. DeSantis, though she did not name him — would drop out of the race after the Iowa caucuses.“We’ve got three major people that are going to go into Iowa, and I think after Iowa, one’s going to drop,” Ms. Haley said. “And then I think you’re going to have a play with me and Trump in New Hampshire, and then we’re going to go to my home state in South Carolina, and then we’re going to take it.”Many in attendance in Sioux City appeared to agree with Ms. Haley’s decision to largely ignore the attacks from her opponents, saying they had admired her debate performance on Wednesday.“She did so well at the debate,” said Adrienne Dunn, a 48-year-old Sioux City resident who is leaning toward voting for Ms. Haley but has not made a final decision. “She was prepared. She had good answers.” More

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    In Las Vegas, Biden Speaks the Name He Often Doesn’t

    The president openly attacked his predecessor, former President Donald J. Trump, deploying direct criticism he has frequently avoided, at an event announcing billions for high-speed rail service.Just a few months ago, President Biden rarely said the name of his likely opponent in the 2024 presidential election — former President Donald J. Trump — instead invoking other Republicans as proxies during public events or, on occasion, referring simply to “the former guy.”But speaking in Las Vegas on Friday, Mr. Biden didn’t hold back.“Trump just talks to talk,” he said at the Carpenters International Training Center in Las Vegas, a union hub favored by Democrats. “We walk the walk.”And then his words turned even sharper: “He likes to say America is a failing nation. Frankly, he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.”Mr. Biden was in Las Vegas to announce $8.2 billion in funding for passenger rail projects, and he used the opportunity to criticize his predecessor’s approach to infrastructure, saying that “the last administration tried to cancel” a rail project in California and that his latest investments “stand in stark contrast.”“He always talked about ‘infrastructure week,’ four years of ‘infrastructure week,’ but it failed — he failed,” Mr. Biden said, referring to Mr. Trump. “On my watch, instead of infrastructure week, America’s having ‘infrastructure decade.’”The shift comes as officials for the Biden campaign have taken an interest in trying to use Mr. Trump, and his actions and words both during and after his presidency, as a foil to bolster Mr. Biden’s re-election effort. That strategy is one that some other elected Democrats across the country have been less keen on, arguing that Mr. Biden needs to do more to promote his own accomplishments while in office.A poll released last month by The New York Times and Siena College found that Mr. Trump was leading Mr. Biden in Nevada by 10 points, the largest margin across six critical battleground states surveyed.Mr. Trump, who in most national polls leads the field of Republican primary candidates by more than 40 percentage points, will hold a rally in Reno later this month.Mr. Biden’s visit to Las Vegas came on the heels of two tragedies in the state: the killing of two state troopers in a hit-and-run last week, and a shooting on Wednesday at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, that killed three faculty members. Mr. Biden met with the university’s president and some of its students and other community members before delivering his remarks on the infrastructure funding, according to the White House.For a few minutes during his speech, he paused to address gun violence, renewing his calls for Congress to “step up” and pass legislation that would include restrictions on assault rifles and universal background checks.“Folks, we got to get smart,” he said. “There have been over 600 mass shootings in America this year alone, plus daily acts of gun violence that don’t even make the national news.” He added, “This is not normal.”But the event’s primary focus was to promote his administration’s agenda, and in doing so, indirectly make his pitch for another four years in office to a friendly audience.Mr. Biden, who earned the nickname Amtrak Joe after commuting by train between Delaware and Washington, D.C., for decades, particularly praised an allocation for a 218-mile high-speed rail line between Las Vegas and Los Angeles.He also talked up the latest employment figures released Friday by the Labor Department — which reported that employers had added 199,000 jobs in November — briefly acknowledging that “we know the prices are still too high for too many things.”Mr. Biden appeared alongside several members of Nevada’s congressional delegation, including Senator Jacky Rosen, a Democrat who is facing a competitive re-election next year after defeating an incumbent herself in 2018.Nevada is one of several key states where Democrats will need to succeed next year to retain control of the White House and the Senate. While Nevada has voted for Democrats in the last several presidential elections — including Mr. Biden in 2020 — other races have been more inconsistent.Senator Catherine Cortez Masto won re-election in the 2022 midterms in a narrow victory, helping the Democrats maintain control of the Senate. But that same year, voters ousted the state’s Democratic governor, Steve Sisolak, in favor of his Republican challenger, Joseph Lombardo. More

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    Appeals Court Upholds Trump Gag Order in Election Case, but Narrows Terms

    The decision largely left in place an order limiting what the former president can say about his upcoming federal trial but allowed him more leeway to criticize Jack Smith, the special counsel.A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the gag order imposed two months ago on former President Donald J. Trump in the criminal case accusing him of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, but narrowed its terms to allow him to keep attacking one of his main targets: Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing his federal prosecutions.The fight over the gag order has pitted the First Amendment rights of a presidential candidate against fears that his vitriolic language could spur his supporters to violence against participants in the case. While the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed that a gag order was justified, its adjustments gave Mr. Trump broader latitude to lash out at some of the people he has been targeting for months.In its ruling, a three-judge panel sought to strike a cautious balance between what it called “two foundational constitutional values”: the integrity of the judicial system and Mr. Trump’s right to speak his mind.To that end, the panel kept in place the gag order’s original measures restricting Mr. Trump from attacking any members of Mr. Smith’s staff or the court staff involved in the case. It also preserved provisions that allowed Mr. Trump to portray the prosecution as a political vendetta and to directly criticize the Biden administration and the Justice Department.And in one respect, the court expanded the restrictions, adding a measure barring Mr. Trump from commenting on the relatives of lawyers or court staff members involved in the case if the remarks were intended to interfere with how the trial participants were doing their jobs.“We do not allow such an order lightly,” Judge Patricia A. Millett wrote for the panel. “Mr. Trump is a former president and current candidate for the presidency, and there is a strong public interest in what he has to say. But Mr. Trump is also an indicted criminal defendant, and he must stand trial in a courtroom under the same procedures that govern all other criminal defendants. That is what the rule of law means.”But the court cut back on the gag order in two important ways. In addition to freeing Mr. Trump to go after Mr. Smith, the public face of the prosecution, it relaxed a flat restriction against targeting witnesses — allowing Mr. Trump to criticize them if his remarks were not connected to their roles in the case.After the trial judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, first imposed the gag order on Mr. Trump in Federal District Court in Washington in October, Mr. Trump appealed seeking to get it overturned entirely as unconstitutional. As it hinted it might do at oral arguments last month, the appellate panel instead kept a version in place, but modified some of its terms.The modifications to the order mean that Mr. Trump can now return to using some of his favorite social media epithets and refer to Mr. Smith, as he has numerous times, as a “thug” or as “deranged.” The alterations also mean that Mr. Trump can lash out in a limited way against those of his political adversaries who also may be witnesses in the election interference trial, including former Vice President Mike Pence and former Attorney General William P. Barr.Asked for comment, the Trump campaign issued a statement saying the appeals court had struck down “a huge part of Judge Chutkan’s extraordinarily overbroad gag order.” Mr. Trump’s lawyers have promised to challenge the gag order all the way to the Supreme Court.The appeals court’s ruling rejected many of Mr. Trump’s legal team’s arguments for lifting the gag order entirely, including that his remarks are all constitutionally protected as political speech, that he could not be held responsible for his listeners’ responses to his speech, and that the court could not proactively gag him before any harm was shown to have occurred.“Many of former President Trump’s public statements attacking witnesses, trial participants, and court staff pose a danger to the integrity of these criminal proceedings,” Judge Millett wrote. “That danger is magnified by the predictable torrent of threats of retribution and violence that the district court found follows when Mr. Trump speaks out forcefully against individuals in connection with this case and the 2020 election aftermath on which the indictment focuses.”But the original order, she said, “sweeps in more protected speech than is necessary,” so the First Amendment required a narrower tailoring of the restriction.Judge Millett and her two colleagues on the panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia — Judges Cornelia Pillard and Brad Garcia — were appointed by Democratic presidents. Judge Chutkan was also put on the bench by a Democrat.While gag orders are not uncommon in criminal prosecutions, the order imposed in the election interference case has resulted in a momentous clash. Mr. Smith’s prosecutors have sought to protect themselves and their witnesses from Mr. Trump’s “near-daily” social media barrages, while the former president has argued that the government has tried to censor his “core political speech” as he mounts another bid for the White House.Mr. Trump has often blurred the lines between his criminal cases and his presidential campaign, using court appearances to deliver political talking points and employing public remarks to assail his prosecutions as a form of persecution.Complicating matters, several of his political adversaries, including Mr. Pence, are likely to be witnesses against him when the election subversion case goes to trial as early as March.The decision by the appeals court means that the two gag orders placed on Mr. Trump — one in the federal election case and the other in his civil fraud case in Manhattan — have now been reinstated after judges had temporarily paused them.Late last month, a state appeals court in New York put back in place a gag order barring Mr. Trump from attacking the court staff in his civil trial. 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    ¿Cómo cubrir a Trump? Univision, como otros medios, busca una respuesta

    Los reclamos contra Univision comenzaron en cuanto se emitió su entrevista con Donald Trump. Un mes después, aún no han cesado.Para los críticos de Univision, la entrevista del 9 de noviembre —con sus preguntas fáciles y pocas preguntas de seguimiento del entrevistador, Enrique Acevedo— ha confirmado sus temores desde que la cadena, tradicionalmente de tendencia de izquierda, se fusionó con la cadena mexicana Televisa a principios del año pasado en un acuerdo de 4.800 millones de dólares. La cadena, argumentan ellos, estaba dando un preocupante giro a la derecha con sus nuevos propietarios, que tienen fama de cultivar relaciones con los principales políticos de México, donde Televisa ha sido un temido artífice de figuras de influencia durante más de 50 años.Las maniobras de última hora de Univision levantaron aún más sospechas. Pocas horas antes de la emisión de la entrevista, la cadena retiró su invitación a la campaña de Biden para emitir anuncios durante el especial de una hora con Trump, citando lo que parecía ser una nueva política de la empresa. Apenas una hora después, Univision canceló abruptamente una entrevista con el director de medios hispanos de la campaña de Biden.Pero la razón de los cambios en la cadena no puede explicarse solo por consideraciones políticas, según las entrevistas con más de una decena de periodistas y ejecutivos actuales y retirados de Univision, entre ellos Acevedo y Daniel Coronell, presidente de noticias de la cadena.Los medios de comunicación hispanos son susceptibles a la misma inquietud que afecta a otras redacciones estadounidenses. Las audiencias de las noticias de televisión en español están en declive, lo que se suma a la presión de una economía desigual. Y el dilema sobre cómo cubrir a Trump —¿debe tener una cobertura exhaustiva, mínima o incluso alguna?— preocupa a Univision tanto como a sus homólogos en inglés.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?  More

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    ‘What the Heck?’ CNN’s Debate Plans Leave New Hampshire Officials Confused.

    The news network said it would host a Republican primary debate in New Hampshire at Saint Anselm College. That was news to Saint Anselm.With great fanfare this week, CNN announced it would host the network’s first debate of the 2024 presidential campaign, gathering the Republican candidates for a marquee event on Jan. 21 at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire.There was only one problem: Saint Anselm had no idea what CNN was talking about.“We were surprised to be included on a press release by a network about a debate which we had not planned or booked,” Neil Levesque, executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm, said in a statement on Friday.The chairman of New Hampshire’s Republican Party, Chris Ager, went a little further.“The CNN thing came out and everybody’s like, ‘What the heck?’” Mr. Ager said in an interview. “I’m still scratching my head. And I still haven’t been contacted by CNN at all.”There is, however, a competing debate scheduled to take place three days earlier, hosted by CNN’s rivals at ABC News. The ABC debate, on Jan. 18, is set to be held at Saint Anselm, and it has the approval of both the college and state Republican officials. “We’ve been working for months planning with ABC,” Mr. Ager said. “We’ve already done a run-through of the facility. We’ve agreed on a lot of the details.”The CNN announcement, Mr. Ager said, caught his team off guard. “For a big, professional organization like that, putting out a location on this date and the location doesn’t know — something’s not quite right,” he said.A CNN spokeswoman said on Friday: “We can’t speak to any miscommunication within Saint Anselm, but we are moving forward with our plans to host a debate in New Hampshire on Jan. 21.”ABC is the traditional host of presidential debates in New Hampshire ahead of the state’s first-in-the-nation primary. Its local station, WMUR-TV in Manchester, N.H., which is a co-host of the Jan. 18 debate, is New Hampshire’s only affiliate of the Big Three broadcast networks.Mr. Ager said he also had concerns about CNN holding a debate just two days before the Jan. 23 primary, which he said would leave candidates little time to respond to any major moments onstage.“In New Hampshire, we like to give everybody a fair shot as much as possible,” he said.The apparent debate snafu came as the Republican National Committee announced that candidates were free to appear at any debate, eliminating a previous requirement that the candidates could participate only in debates formally approved by the party. The rule change, announced Friday, will potentially offer more national exposure to the remaining candidates, as they try to make inroads against the front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Trump has so far refused to appear at any of the four televised Republican primary debates. He has not signaled if he will appear at the ABC event in New Hampshire on Jan. 18.CNN also said this week that it would host a televised debate in Des Moines on Jan. 10 at Drake University, ahead of the Iowa caucuses.Drake University issued a news release promoting that event, so it appears the institution was aware of the network’s plans.Shane Goldmacher More

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    Conundrum of Covering Trump Lands at Univision’s Doorstep

    The howls of protest against Univision began as soon as its interview with Donald J. Trump aired. A month later, they still haven’t stopped.To critics of Univision, the Nov. 9 interview — with its gentle questioning and limited follow-ups from the interviewer, Enrique Acevedo — has confirmed their fears since the traditionally left-leaning network merged with the Mexican broadcaster Televisa early last year in a $4.8 billion deal. The network, they said, was taking a troubling turn to the right under its new owners, who have a reputation for cultivating relationships with leading politicians in Mexico, where Televisa has been a feared kingmaker for more than 50 years.Last-minute maneuvering at Univision raised further suspicions. Just hours before the interview aired, the network reversed its invitation to the Biden campaign to run ads during the hourlong special with Mr. Trump, citing what appeared to be a new company policy. Scarcely an hour later, Univision abruptly canceled an interview with the Biden campaign’s director of Hispanic media.But the reason for changes at the network can’t be explained by political considerations alone, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former Univision journalists and executives, including Mr. Acevedo and Daniel Coronell, the network’s president of news.Hispanic media is proving susceptible to the same upheaval straining other American newsrooms. Spanish-language television news audiences are in decline, compounding pressure from an uneven economy. And the dilemma over how to report on Mr. Trump — should he get exhaustive, minimal or even no coverage? — is vexing Univision just as it is its English-language counterparts.Univision executives have said they are making a pivot toward the center — a strategy that reflects the split political preferences of the Hispanic electorate and the need to broaden their audience.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?  More

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    Hunter Biden Charged With Evading Taxes on Millions From Foreign Firms

    The Justice Department charged President Biden’s son after a long-running and wide-ranging investigation with substantial political repercussions.A federal grand jury charged Hunter Biden on Thursday with a scheme to evade federal taxes on millions in income from foreign businesses, the second indictment against him this year and a major new development in a case Republicans have made the cornerstone of a possible impeachment of President Biden.Mr. Biden, the president’s son, faces three counts each of evasion of a tax assessment, failure to file and pay taxes, and filing a false or fraudulent tax return, according to the 56-page indictment — a withering play-by-play of personal indulgence with potentially enormous political costs for his father.The charges, filed in California, came five months after he appeared to be on the verge of a plea deal that would have avoided jail time and potentially granted him broad immunity from future prosecution stemming from his business dealings. But the agreement collapsed, and in September, he was indicted in Delaware on three charges stemming from his illegal purchase of a handgun in 2018, a period when he used drugs heavily and was prohibited from owning a firearm.The tax charges have always been the more serious element of the inquiry by the special counsel, David C. Weiss, who began investigating the president’s son five years ago as the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for Delaware. Mr. Weiss was retained when President Biden took office in 2021.Mr. Biden “engaged in a four-year scheme to not pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019,” Mr. Weiss wrote.“Between 2016 and Oct. 15, 2020, the defendant spent this money on drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature, in short, everything but his taxes,” he added.If convicted, he could face a maximum of 17 years in prison, Justice Department officials said.Read the Tax Indictment Against Hunter BidenThe president’s son was indicted on nine counts accusing him of evading federal taxes on millions of dollars he has made in his work with foreign companies.Read Document 56 pagesThe charges, while serious, were far less explosive than ones pushed by Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans, who have been angry with the department for failing to find wider criminal wrongdoing by the president’s son and family.But the failure of Mr. Biden’s lawyers to reach a new settlement after talks with Mr. Weiss fell apart has now subjected Mr. Biden to the perils of two criminal proceedings in two jurisdictions, with unpredictable outcomes.Many of the facts laid out in Thursday’s indictment were already widely known, and the litany of Mr. Biden’s actions tracks closely with a narrative he drafted with prosecutors in the plea deal that collapsed over the summer under the withering scrutiny of a federal judge in Delaware.Prosecutors said that he “subverted the payroll and tax withholding process of his own company,” Owasco PC, by withdrawing millions from the coffers that he used to subsidize “an extravagant lifestyle rather than paying his tax bills.” They also accused him of taking false business deductions.Mr. Weiss called out Mr. Biden for failing to pay child support and his reliance on associates, including the Hollywood lawyer Kevin Morris, to pay his way. Prosecutors included a chart that tracked the cash he siphoned from Owasco’s coffers — $1.6 million in A.T.M. withdrawals, $683,212 for “payments — various women,” nearly $400,000 for clothing and accessories, and around $750,000 for restaurants, health and beauty products, groceries, and other retail purchases.Throughout the document, Mr. Weiss presented an unflattering split-screen of Mr. Biden, scooping up millions in income and gifts from friends while stubbornly refusing to pay his taxes. That pattern even persisted into 2020, after he had borrowed money to pay off his tax liabilities from the previous few years, prosecutors wrote.“Defendant spent $17,500 each month, totaling approximately $200,000 from January through Oct. 15, 2020, on a lavish house on a canal in Venice Beach, Calif.,” they wrote, adding that “the I.R.S. stood as the last creditor to be paid.”In a statement, Abbe Lowell, Mr. Biden’s lawyer, said Mr. Weiss had “bowed to Republican pressure” and accused him of reneging on their previous agreement. He said the special counsel had not responded to his request for a meeting a few days ago to discuss the details of the case.“If Hunter’s last name was anything other than Biden, the charges in Delaware, and now California, would not have been brought,” he said.The indictment includes a more detailed description of Mr. Biden’s activities and tangled business deals than the government had previously made public. Taken in its totality, the filing paints a damning portrait of personal irresponsibility by a man who leveraged his last name to finance his vices while willfully ignoring his tax liabilities.The Hunter Biden case sits at the crowded intersection of America’s colliding political and legal systems. There is now a very real prospect that President Biden’s son will be defending himself in two federal criminal trials during a presidential election year — as former President Donald J. Trump, his father’s likely opponent, confronts the possibility of two federal criminal trials in his classified documents and election interference cases.The additional charges come on the cusp of a vote by the Republican-led House to formalize its impeachment inquiry into President Biden, which is largely based on unsubstantiated allegations that he benefited from his son’s lucrative consulting work for companies in Ukraine and China.Republican leaders in the House released draft text of a procedural impeachment resolution against President Biden on Thursday, just hours before word of the new charges started to percolate through official Washington. It is not clear what effect the indictment will have on their inquiry.The indictment contains no reference to President Biden. But prosecutors pointed out that Hunter Biden’s compensation from Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, dropped from $1 million a year in 2016, when his father was still in office, to $500,000 in March 2017, two months after he left office.The decision to indict the president’s troubled son was an extraordinary step for Mr. Weiss, who was named a special counsel in August by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.The Justice Department has been investigating Mr. Biden since at least 2018. Despite examining an array of matters — including Hunter Biden’s work for Burisma, ties to oligarchs and business deals in China — the investigation ultimately narrowed to questions about his taxes, like his failure to file his 2017 and 2018 returns on time, and the gun purchase.The special counsel, David C. Weiss, has been investigating an array of issues surrounding Hunter Biden.Will Oliver/EPA, via ShutterstockThe investigation appeared to have come to a conclusion in June when Mr. Weiss and Mr. Biden’s lawyers announced that Mr. Biden would plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges.As part of the deal, prosecutors charged Mr. Biden with lying about whether he was using drugs but, under a so-called pretrial diversion agreement, agreed not to prosecute Mr. Biden on that. In return, Mr. Biden agreed to admit that he had used drugs at the time of the purchase and the deal remained contingent on him remaining drug free for the next two years.But the deal abruptly imploded.At a hearing in July, Judge Maryellen Noreika of the Federal District Court in Wilmington, Del., sharply questioned elements of the deal, telling the two sides repeatedly that she had no intention of being “a rubber stamp.”One objection centered on a provision that would have offered Mr. Biden broad insulation against further prosecution on matters under scrutiny during the federal inquiry. Mr. Weiss’s prosecutors and Mr. Biden’s lawyer at the time, Christopher J. Clark, disagreed on whether that shielded him from being prosecuted in connection with his foreign business dealings.The other objection had to do with the diversion program on the gun charge, under which the judge would play a role in determining whether Mr. Biden was meeting the terms of the deal.Judge Noreika said she was not trying to sink the agreement, but to strengthen it by ironing out ambiguities and inconsistencies. But by the end, the sides had splintered, prosecutors filed paperwork indicating they would proceed with a prosecution and the embattled Mr. Weiss requested to be named special counsel, which requires him to file a report at the conclusion of the investigation.Since taking control of the House in January, top Republicans have used their new investigative power to push the narrative that the president has been complicit in an effort engineered by Hunter Biden to enrich his family by profiting from their positions of power, especially through business and investment transactions abroad.The investigation has become a central focus of House Republicans, and of Mr. Trump, who has seized upon it as a counter to his own legal woes. Earlier this year, two former I.R.S. agents who worked on the investigation testified before a House committee that they had been discouraged from fully investigating interactions of Hunter Biden and his father, and that Mr. Weiss had complained that he did not have the authority to expand the investigation to other jurisdictions.Mr. Weiss denied those claims.On Thursday, Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the chairman of the House oversight committee, credited the “two brave I.R.S. whistle-blowers” for forcing Mr. Weiss to abandon plea negotiations and file charges.“The Department of Justice got caught in its attempt to give Hunter Biden an unprecedented sweetheart plea deal,” Mr. Comer said in a statement, adding that the men should be applauded “for their courage to expose the truth.”Luke Broadwater More