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      Trump’s Bet: Criminal Case Could Help His Campaign, and Vice Versa

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      The former president aims to apply political pressure to prosecutors — while revving up support for his campaign by portraying himself as a victim of Democratic persecution.PALM BEACH, Fla. — At one end of the palatial Donald J. Trump Grand Ballroom at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday, the former president made his first public comments about his arrest. At the opposite end of the hall — a space illuminated by 16 crystal chandeliers and bigger than four professional basketball courts — were several cardboard boxes stuffed with white campaign T-shirts.The shirts read “I STAND WITH TRUMP,” and had a date printed on them in bold type: 03-30-2023 — the day Mr. Trump was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury for his role in a hush-money scandal.After Mr. Trump’s indictment, it has become impossible to tell where his legal defense ends and his presidential campaign begins.The blurring of the lines between his White House bid and his mounting court battles is at the center of a high-stakes, norm-shattering bet from Mr. Trump: that he is capable of swaying public opinion to such a degree that he can simultaneously bolster his legal case and gin up enthusiasm — and campaign contributions — from his supporters.His legal calculation, according to aides and allies close to him, is that his pressure campaign against the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, will lead to his acquittal and deter other prosecutors from seeking additional indictments — though some of his lawyers have warned him that’s unlikely.Politically, Mr. Trump’s strategy is to paint himself as a victim of Democratic persecution, generating sympathy and good will to aid his campaign for a third consecutive Republican presidential nomination.Trump supporters outside the Manhattan courthouse where Mr. Trump was arraigned on Tuesday over his role in a hush-money payment.Ahmed Gaber for The New York Times“President Trump isn’t just right to speak this way, he has a duty to use his bully pulpit to expose corrupt and uncontrolled prosecutors,” said Rod R. Blagojevich, a former Democratic governor of Illinois who was imprisoned for corruption until Mr. Trump commuted his sentence in 2020. “I applaud him for it.”Mr. Trump and his allies repeatedly have made baseless accusations of wrongdoing by Mr. Bragg.No one can say for certain whether a recent uptick for Mr. Trump in presidential primary polls has been the result of his braiding of legal and political tactics, or the recent stumbles by his chief potential Republican rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, or some combination of the two.But Mr. Trump’s conflation of his political and legal campaigns has been on display for weeks.His public remarks about his arrest on Tuesday were made from the same stage — surrounded by the same “Make America Great Again” banners and American flags — where he announced his 2024 White House bid nearly five months earlier. One of the lawyers seated near Mr. Trump during his arraignment in the New York courthouse was Boris Epshteyn, who has provided both political and legal advice to the former president and other Republican candidates.At Mr. Trump’s first major rally of the race last month in Texas, his campaign distributed “Witch Hunt” signs for the crowd to wave. The campaign has sent more than three dozen fund-raising appeals to supporters this week — each one referring to Mr. Trump’s legal battles. On Tuesday, one email solicited campaign contributions in return for T-shirts printed with a fake mug shot of the former president and the words “not guilty.” (The authorities in New York opted not to take an actual mug shot.)“Donald Trump has been masterful at blurring the line between his own potential legal and political peril,” said Rob Godfrey, a longtime Republican strategist based in South Carolina. “But now that he faces actual legal peril, it will be fascinating to see how loyal his supporters are, whether they have the same tolerance for chaos he continues to and whether any of his opponents figure out a way to peel anyone away from him.”Mr. Trump has long viewed public opinion as the solution to an increasingly lengthy list of personal dramas, political scandals and legal crises. He used similar tactics as president during the 22-month investigation led by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, and his approval rating was virtually unchanged. Mr. Trump’s legal advisers had urged him to create a team outside the White House structure to respond publicly to the Mueller inquiry, but he declined.One of Mr. Trump’s political high-water marks — in terms of re-election polling and fund-raising — came in February 2020, after a Republican-controlled Senate acquitted him in his first impeachment trial.More recently, he has spent months seeking to make state and federal prosecutors investigating his behavior appear indistinguishable from the Democratic and Republican opponents actively trying to stunt his political career.Mr. Trump has proved his skills at using investigations, impeachments and indictments to inflate his campaign coffers (and using a portion of those contributions to pay legal fees). His campaign has claimed to have raised more than $12 million from online contributions during the past week since he was indicted by the grand jury.But his strategy in the hush-money case to mingle his legal troubles with his 2024 presidential campaign carries significant risks and masks, at least for now, potential problems.While the Trump team has celebrated the recent influx of campaign cash, there have been questions about how many more new donors he can tap and whether he can maintain his fund-raising prowess without an immediate crisis to leverage. His only public campaign finance report so far showed a less-than-stellar haul for such a prominent political figure.The bigger question for the former president is how attacks on the court system and law enforcement — on Wednesday he called on his party to defund the F.B.I. and Justice Department in response to his criminal indictment — will help him win back moderate Republicans and independent voters who have abandoned him, and his preferred candidates and causes, for three consecutive election cycles.At Mr. Trump’s first big campaign rally of the 2024 race, in Waco, Texas.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesMr. Trump has used his standing as a former president — and as the front-runner for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination — to repeatedly describe the felony charges in New York (and open criminal investigations in Georgia and Washington) as a politically motivated attack aimed at undermining his White House bid.But that message ignores a series of electoral disappointments for Republicans since Mr. Trump’s 2016 victory made him the face of the party. Those defeats — in 2018, 2020 and 2022 — have been largely the result of a Democratic base motivated to vote against him and a significant defection of moderate Republicans turned off by his antics.Additionally, every major investigation focusing on Mr. Trump started well before he announced his third presidential campaign. By the time he opened his White House bid in November, Mr. Trump had spent months pushing for an unusually early campaign introduction, a move intended in part to shield him from a stream of damaging revelations emerging from the investigation into his attempts to cling to power after losing the 2020 election.Similarly, Mr. Trump has been using his legal battle to energize his enthusiastic backers and coalesce support in a divided Republican Party. While public opinion polls show Mr. Trump has a wide lead over most other primary contenders and potential rivals, about half of the party remains opposed to his candidacy.In the Mar-a-Lago ballroom on Tuesday, Mr. Trump’s campaign set up the room with a center aisle for the former president and his V.I.P.s to walk to their seats.The aisle resembled something a wedding party might use to make an entrance. But it also appeared to embody the very line that Mr. Trump has sought to blur: Mr. Epshteyn, one of Mr. Trump’s legal counselors, smiled and waved as the crowd cheered his arrival along with several campaign aides and family members.“The only crime that I have committed,” Mr. Trump said a few minutes later from center stage, “is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it.” More

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      Virginia Rolls Back Voting Rights for Ex-Felons, Bucking Shaky Bipartisan Trend

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      State after state has eased restrictions on voting for former felons in recent years. But Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s reversal suggests growing wariness on the right.WASHINGTON — For more than a decade, states around the country have steadily chipped away at one of the biggest roadblocks to voting in the United States — laws on the books that bar former felons from casting a ballot.But there are now signs that trend could be reversing.Last month, Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, a Republican who took office a year ago, revealed that he had rescinded a policy of automatically restoring voting rights to residents who have completed felony sentences.In a February hearing, North Carolina’s Supreme Court, which has a 5-2 Republican majority, appeared deeply skeptical that a lower court had constitutional authority when it restored voting rights last year to people who had completed their sentences. A ruling is expected soon.And then there’s Florida — whose Republican-dominated Legislature effectively nullified a citizen ballot initiative granting voting rights to a huge number of former felons in 2020. That left all three states on a path toward rolling back state policies on restoring voting rights for former felons close to where they were 50 and even 100 years ago.Experts say that Virginia’s reversal, which does not affect people who have had their rights already restored, is unlikely to represent a dramatic change in the long-term trend among states toward loosening restrictions on voting by people with felony records. Such restrictions still deny the vote to some 4.6 million voting-age Americans — one in 50 potential voters. But that number is down nearly 25 percent since 2016.Last month, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, a Democrat, signed legislation expanding voting rights for former felons in the state, and the New Mexico State Legislature, also Democratic, enacted a law doing the same.What is clear, though, is that a shaky bipartisan consensus — that those who have paid their debts to society should be able to cast a ballot — has eroded, as political polarization has risen. The action by Mr. Youngkin is especially notable because it leaves Virginia as the only state in the nation that disenfranchises everyone who commits a felony. Under the State Constitution, a former felon’s rights can be restored only with the governor’s authorization.“We’d reached a point for the first time in recent memory, maybe ever, where there was not a single state in the country that disenfranchised everyone,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, the director of the voting rights program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. “It is disappointing that on an issue in Virginia that had gotten support from both sides of the aisle, they do seem to be taking a step backwards.”The backtracking spotlights the often-overlooked significance — legally and also politically — of a practice that has likely had a far greater impact on access to the ballot than more notorious voter suppression measures have.Voting rights battles are usually fought over cogs in the election machinery — ID requirements, drop boxes, absentee ballots — that can make it easy or hard to vote, depending on how much sand is tossed into them. The extent to which those battles shrink or expand the pool of voters is often impossible to measure.Not so with restoring the vote to former felons: Minnesota’s new law gives about 56,000 people access to the ballot; the North Carolina court ruling last year made another 56,000 eligible. The law awaiting the signature of New Mexico’s governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, would add another 11,000 to the list.The rollbacks, however, are significant. In 2020, Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature enacted a law that effectively negated a 2018 citizen ballot initiative that restored voting rights to perhaps 934,000 residents, according to the latest estimate. The law limits the vote only to former felons who pay all court costs, restitution and other fees, a yearslong task for many, made surpassingly difficult by the state’s jumbled record-keeping on court cases.That legislative change not only halted the nation’s largest rights-restoration effort but also led to the arrest — in what Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, billed as a crackdown on fraud — of 20 former felons who had registered or voted illegally — many, if not all, out of confusion over their eligibility.In Virginia, governors have used their constitutional powers to restore the vote to more than 300,000 former felons since Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, first made restoration automatic for some in 2013. Two Democratic governors, Terry McAuliffe and Ralph Northam, expanded that policy to include anyone freed from prison.By the time Mr. Northam left office in January 2022, a huge backlog of people eligible for restoration had been wiped out, said Kelly Thomasson, the official who handled rights restoration during Mr. Northam’s tenure as governor, in an interview. She said that roughly 1,000 to 2,000 newly eligible felons were being released from prison each month.After succeeding Mr. Northam, Mr. Youngkin initially restored voting rights to nearly 3,500 people in just his first four months in office. But that pace slowed dramatically to just 800 others in the next five months.A spokeswoman for Mr. Youngkin, Macaulay Porter, said in a statement that the governor “firmly believes in the importance of second chances for Virginians who have made mistakes,” and that he judges individual cases based on the law and the “unique elements of each situation.”She did not respond to requests to explain why new grants dropped sharply, or whether Republican resistance to restoring voting played a role in that decline.Although a Republican state legislator had once led Minnesota’s effort to give the vote to former felons, the policy became law this year with only a handful of Republican votes. In 2020, the Republican governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds, used her executive power to implement an automatic restoration policy much like the one Virginia had in place before Mr. Youngkin changed it.Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa reacts after signing an executive order granting former felons the right to vote in August 2020.Charlie Neibergall/Associated PressBut Iowa, Virginia and Kentucky, another Republican state whose governors’ executive orders have loosened restrictive restoration policies temporarily, have been unable to win legislators’ support for amendments to state constitutions that would make those orders permanent.Some experts say that the resistance stems in part from the common but questionable belief among Republican partisans that allowing former felons to vote would boost Democratic turnout.Although an outsize share of those who complete felony sentences are members of minority groups that broadly tend to vote Democratic, most felons are white, and those with their demographic characteristics — below-average income and education, to name two — increasingly skew Republican.Disenfranchisement has complex legal roots, including the 14th Amendment, which, in addition to granting citizenship and equal civil and legal rights to formerly enslaved people, forbids withholding the right to vote “except for participation in rebellion, or other crime.”In Virginia, there are also antecedents that reflect the state’s history of suppressing the African American vote. The policy on rights restoration that Mr. Youngkin revived is rooted in a 1902 Virginia constitutional convention in which keeping Black residents from voting was an overriding priority.Experts say the potentially fleeting nature of executive actions like those in Kentucky — where Gov. Andy Beshear now automatically restores voting rights to former felons who had committed nonviolent crimes — and in Virginia sows confusion about voting rights. Critics say that bestowing a basic civic privilege becomes subject to the political whim of whoever is governor.Virginians who complete their prison sentences this year may wonder why those who left prison in 2021 are more entitled to cast a ballot than they are, said Christopher Uggen, a University of Minnesota sociologist and an expert on the disenfranchisement of former felons.“It harkens to an era when the king can give a thumbs up or thumbs down,” he said. “We wouldn’t necessarily accept this if it were happening in another area.”Kirsten Noyes More

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      8 Years in Trump Prison and Still Waiting on Parole

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

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      The Republican Party Sorts Through Its Mess

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      Listen and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicIt may feel too early to be thinking about the 2024 presidential election — but it’s the perfect time to understand where the parties are at, and how their plans for the next election cycle are shaping up.In our first episode, we join the Republican National Committee in Dana Point, Calif., as it gathers for its winter meeting. After a disappointing midterms, fractures have formed within the committee’s ranks. After targeting Kevin McCarthy in the fight for House speaker, the grass roots turned their ire on Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the R.N.C.The effort to replace Ms. McDaniel at this year’s winter meeting is emblematic of what the party is at this moment: a mess of tangled lines and scrambled allegiances.Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAbout ‘The Run-Up’First launched in August 2016, three months before the election of Donald Trump, “The Run-Up” is The New York Times’s flagship political podcast. The host, Astead W. Herndon, grapples with the big ideas already animating the 2024 presidential election. Because it’s always about more than who wins and loses. And the next election has already started.Last season, “The Run-Up” focused on grass-roots voters and shifting attitudes among the bases of both political parties. This season, we go inside the party establishment.New episodes on Thursdays.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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      Nikki Haley Raises Over $11 Million to Start Her 2024 Campaign

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      Former President Donald J. Trump, in comparison, raised only $9.5 million during the same period after announcing his third presidential run.Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, raised more than $11 million in the first six weeks of her presidential run, her campaign said on Wednesday, a sizable sum that easily eclipses what former President Donald J. Trump was able to raise during the same period after announcing his candidacy.Ms. Haley received 70,000 donations, from all 50 states, the vast majority of which were under $200, her campaign said in a news release that described the contributions as a sign of her broad appeal and effective fund-raising efforts.Ms. Haley was the first major Republican candidate to enter the race with Mr. Trump, who announced his third bid for the White House shortly after the midterm elections in November. He raised only $9.5 million in his first six weeks, his campaign said in February, a relatively weak showing.But the announcement of criminal charges against him in a hush-money case appears to be helping him make up for the sluggish start: He has pulled in more than $12 million since his indictment on Friday, his campaign said on Wednesday.Early polling has shown Ms. Haley trailing significantly behind Mr. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has not yet formally entered the race. She has sought, in her early and energetic campaign stops, to position herself as a “tough-as-nails woman” who could offer a seasoned, reasonable alternative.The fund-raising sum reflects the six-week period between Feb. 14, when Ms. Haley formally entered the race, and the end of March. An official figure will be released in the coming weeks as part of the campaign’s required quarterly filing. She had about $7.8 million cash on hand at the end of the quarter, her campaign said.Eric J. Tanenblatt, a Georgia-based Republican strategist and fund-raiser who has supported Ms. Haley since her state campaigns, said the numbers “solidify” her as a serious candidate and give her “a good foundation to build on.”“It is a robust number,” said Mr. Tanenblatt, who hosted a fund-raiser for Ms. Haley last month. “I don’t think anyone should underestimate her.”The numbers released Wednesday do not include money raised by Stand for America PAC, the political action committee she created in 2021 and which is aligned with her campaign. Such groups can raise unlimited funds from donors, while funds raised by the campaign committees are held to strict caps for individual donors.Her super PAC had raised $17 million and reported $2 million on hand at the end of 2022, filings show. The next round of figures is due in July.A super PAC supporting Mr. Trump reported having $54.1 million on hand at the end of 2022. As for Mr. DeSantis, a super PAC aligned with him said Tuesday it had raised $30 million since March 9. He also had at least $80 million in a state committee at the end of February, Florida records show.But it is the funds raised by campaign committees, despite the restraints, that are considered a more critical measure of a candidate’s popular appeal. The money they raise goes further — for example, federal law allows political candidates to pay the lowest available price for broadcast ads, while super PACs have no such protections.“In just six weeks, Nikki Haley’s massive fund-raising and active retail campaigning in early voting states makes her a force to be reckoned with,” Ms. Haley’s campaign manager, Betsy Ankney, said in a statement Wednesday. “Voters and donors are clearly responding to Nikki’s conservative message and her call for a new generation of leadership to make America strong and proud.”Ms. Haley has made a big ground-level push in early primary states. In February and March, she made several trips to Iowa and New Hampshire for town halls, meetings with local lawmakers, and other voter events. More

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      For Now, Trump and Allies Focus on Political Upside of a Criminal Case

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      The indictment of the former president has unlocked a rush of fund-raising and has frozen the 2024 Republican primary, but he faces deeper legal peril in multiple inquiries.Just hours after he became the first former president in American history to be indicted, Donald J. Trump sat on the patio of his private club in Palm Beach, Fla., on Tuesday night and played disc jockey.Sitting with a group that included his daughter Tiffany and her husband, as well as his longest-serving adviser, Roger J. Stone Jr., Mr. Trump used an iPad to choose the music blaring over speakers: “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” by James Brown — one of Mr. Trump’s favorite performers — “Macho Man” by the Village People and the national anthem sung by a choir of inmates arrested after storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.When the anthem played, people rose to their feet, put their hands over their hearts and sang along, according to two attendees. In the song, Mr. Trump’s own voice periodically cut into the soundtrack to chant the Pledge of Allegiance, a recording experience he has boasted about as the song topped Billboard’s digital song chart.Mr. Trump’s campaign said that by Wednesday afternoon it had raised more than $12 million in online donations since news of his indictment broke last Thursday, according to a person briefed on the numbers, which won’t be available to be checked in filings for weeks. Roughly a third of those donors had never given to Mr. Trump before, two other people briefed on the data said, a statistic that suggested he might be able to gain new Republican supporters in the 2024 presidential primary race.In the long term, an indictment is not something any candidate seeks, a fact that some of Mr. Trump’s close associates acknowledge privately. Its impact on the months ahead remains unclear, particularly if Mr. Trump is also indicted in other investigations, which are being conducted in Georgia and by the Justice Department.Some of Mr. Trump’s close associates concede that in a general election indictments are unlikely to draw more moderate suburban and independent voters who have been wary of the former president for several election cycles. And all of that is outside of the substantial legal peril Mr. Trump now faces.Watching at Mar-a-Lago. Mr. Trump held court at his club on Tuesday night playing music.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesSeveral people in his orbit have privately acknowledged that, absent a recession, it is hard to visualize the circumstances that would lead an independent voter who supported Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020 because they were fed up with chaos to turn around — four years and potentially multiple indictments later — and look at Mr. Trump and figure he’s worth another shot.But Mr. Trump and some of his allies and advisers view politics through a narrow, and short, lens, and for the moment, they are looking for the upside of an undesirable situation. For now, they are treating the indictment brought by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, as a political gift, and one that contained nothing that surprised them.Mr. Trump’s adviser Jason Miller said prosecutors had “awakened a sleeping giant” with what he said was a “weaponized” justice system. “It served as a reminder to Americans from all walks of life, including those who don’t normally follow politics, that this is a fight to save our country, and if we want to save our country, we need to rally around our strongest fighter,” he said.The day of the arrest had been “exhausting” but “energizing,” aides said. Before Mr. Trump began playing music on Tuesday night, he said to several people, “Don’t you know I’m tired.” He then went on to deliver roughly 20 minutes of remarks lighting into the Manhattan district attorney, the judge overseeing the case, investigators in Georgia and the special counsel, Jack Smith, who he seemed to suggest goes by a fake name, a claim he has made privately as well..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Besides the money pouring in to bolster what had been a slow start to his 2024 campaign’s fund-raising, influential voices on the right who had been gravitating away from Mr. Trump, or outright criticizing him, have become more muted or said they are now supporting him.Mr. Trump’s advisers have gleefully noted that it has become politically painful for a Republican to attack Mr. Trump after the indictment. Doing so now, they say, makes those Republican critics co-conspirators with Democrats who Mr. Trump says are bent on destroying him. Some of his allies have painted him in starkly martyr-like terms, comparing him to Jesus Christ.“We the American people need to stand behind this guy,” said Mark Levin, the influential conservative television and radio host, hours after Mr. Trump’s arraignment in Lower Manhattan. “There’s not another Republican I can think of that can fight back, and fight back this way.”At Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday night. The crowd was highly supportive of the former president.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesThe New York Post, which, like other properties owned by the media mogul Rupert Murdoch, has been campaigning aggressively against the former president and playing up Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, on Wednesday gave Mr. Trump his best coverage in its pages in a long while, splashing his face on the front page with the big block headline declaring Mr. Bragg’s charges “Trumped Up.”Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, one of Mr. Trump’s most vocal critics within the party who voted to convict the former president in his two impeachment trials, said after the arraignment that he took issue with the case.“I believe President Trump’s character and conduct make him unfit for office. Even so, I believe the New York prosecutor has stretched to reach felony criminal charges in order to fit a political agenda,” Mr. Romney said. “No one is above the law, not even former presidents, but everyone is entitled to equal treatment under the law.”Even a string of frequent critics of Mr. Trump, including on the left, have raised questions about the strength of Mr. Bragg’s case, which rests on a novel legal theory aimed at proving Mr. Trump falsified business records with an intent to defraud while he was a presidential candidate in 2016 with regard to hush-money payments to a porn star made by Mr. Trump’s former fixer and lawyer, Michael D. Cohen.The statement of fact accompanying the indictment, however, offers less-than-flattering details for Mr. Trump. It lays out Mr. Trump’s reimbursing Mr. Cohen while he was president and speaking with him in the Oval Office about it. It also describes Mr. Trump’s hosting David Pecker — the former chief executive of the parent company of the tabloid National Enquirer, which is said to have killed articles detailing questionable personal conduct by Mr. Trump — at a White House meeting to thank him for his help during the campaign.Mr. Trump’s support in public opinion polls has jumped among Republicans, showing his perceived limits in gaining back those voters is higher than some of his opponents had believed. Some of Mr. DeSantis’s allies have been surprised at the extent of the bump Mr. Trump has garnered.In the lead-up to Mr. Trump’s arraignment, he and his team devoured media coverage around his impending arrest, trading screen grabs of the news. Mr. Trump monitored cable news while his aides took note of how much the coverage was blotting out almost everything else.Mr. Trump, after what was described as some snappishness before he walked into the courtroom in Manhattan for his arraignment, described the experience as relatively pleasant in a statement Wednesday.“The GREAT PATRIOTS inside and outside of the Courthouse on Tuesday were unbelievably nice, in fact, they couldn’t have been nicer. Court attendants, Police Officers, and others were all very professional, and represented New York City sooo well,” he wrote. “Thank you to all!” More

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      Defendant Trump Has the G.O.P. Just Where He Wants It

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      It was perhaps inevitable that, with Donald Trump’s historic arraignment taking place in the run-up to Easter Sunday, one of his most zealous disciples, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, would aim to drag Jesus into this mess.The former president “is joining some of the most incredible people in history being arrested,” the MAGA chaos agent blathered to a conservative news outlet just hours before Mr. Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts related to a hush-money deal with a porn star. “Jesus! Jesus was arrested and murdered by the Roman government!” proclaimed Ms. Greene.As a lapsed Southern Baptist, I’ll leave it to the more devout to debate whether this comparison qualifies as outright blasphemy or is merely idiotic. Regardless, it was a perfect distillation of Mr. Trump’s longstanding political refrain and current legal defense: He is the faultless victim of political persecution — a righteous martyr beset on all sides by America-hating, baby-eating Democrats and Deep Staters. In the Gospel According to the Donald, any bad thing he is ever accused of is just more proof that the forces of evil are out to get the MAGA messiah.It’s a great story if you can sustain it. Unless you’re a Republican presidential hopeful not named Donald Trump, in which case being required to shovel this grade of malarkey to please the base is increasingly awkward — at least for anyone hoping to retain a shred of credibility beyond the hard-core MAGAverse.This uncomfortable reality is actually something for every member of the G.O.P. to think about. Again. Because, if Mr. Trump’s prime-time, post-arraignment remarks on Tuesday were any indication, this is going to be a central theme of his third presidential run — one that promises to relegate everyone else in the party, including those considering a 2024 run themselves, to being minor players in this latest, tawdriest season of “The Trump Show.”Tuesday night was Mr. Trump’s first chance to address the criminal charges against him — his first real opportunity to counterpunch — since the New York indictment came down. Safely back in the gilded cocoon of Mar-a-Lago, surrounded by American flags and supporters sporting red hats and campaign signs, he delivered a half-hour battle cry that was painfully on brand: a greatest hits of his witch-hunt grievances interwoven with his dark take on how the country is “going to hell” without him. As he tells it, “all-out nuclear World War III” is just around the corner. “It can happen! We’re not very far away from it!” He also suggested that the investigation into his squirreling away sensitive documents at Mar-a-Lago could somehow lead to his being executed.Precisely the kind of responsible rhetoric one likes to hear from a political leader.It was not one of Mr. Trump’s more compelling speeches. The Mar-a-Lago crowd, while friendly, wasn’t the kind of roaring mass of fans from which Mr. Trump draws energy, and the former president sounded heavily scripted. Even so, the address was impressively offensive in its attacks on the justice system in general and the individuals leading the investigations of Mr. Trump in particular — as well as their families. (Seriously, what was with all the wife bashing?) He sniped about the “racist in reverse” officials out to get him. He went on a bizarre riff about how President Biden had hidden a bunch of documents in Chinatown. And his repeated attacks on the “lunatic” Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing the federal investigations of Mr. Trump, suggest that whole business is really chafing the former president’s backside.Get ready for more of this magic. As Mr. Trump’s legal troubles heat up, with possibly more indictments to come, these investigations are going to eat at him and distract him. A hefty chunk of his campaign is likely to be an extended whine about his ongoing martyrdom, constantly putting other Republicans in the awkward position of having to defend him. And they won’t really have any choice as he whips his devoted followers into a frenzy over his persecution — and, of course, by extension, theirs.That is certainly what we have seen happening. Republicans have been lining up to trash the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg. It was in no way surprising to see Representative Lauren Boebert comparing the indictment of Mr. Trump to the actions of Mussolini and, yes, Hitler. But one might have expected slightly more from Gov. Ron DeSantis, widely regarded as the biggest threat to Mr. Trump’s 2024 ambitions, than his pathetic vow to refuse to assist any effort to extradite Mr. Trump to New York. Weak, Ron. Very weak.A long-shot candidate or two, like Asa Hutchinson, a former governor of Arkansas, may try to distinguish themselves by not smooching Mr. Trump’s backside so sloppily. But this is a risky path that few contenders seem inclined to tread. Having bowed to Mr. Trump so low and for so long, the party has left itself few, if any, good options for dealing with him now.Anyone looking to lead the G.O.P. beyond its Trump era was already at a disadvantage before the charges. Be it Nikki Haley or Mike Pence or Mr. DeSantis, the political world is busy assessing potential 2024 contenders in Trump terms, obsessing over where they fall on the MAGA spectrum and how delicately they are or are not handling the former president.Team Trump, meanwhile, is happy to play the martyr card for all it’s worth. They have been boasting about using the former president’s legal troubles to fund-raise and sign up volunteers.Any day now, look for the campaign to start hawking bracelets asking: WWDTD? (What would Donald Trump do?) Ms. Greene will surely snap up several. What classier, more tasteful Easter present for the MAGA faithful in one’s life?The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Wisconsin Supreme Court Election: Protasiewicz Wins With Abortion Message

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      Janet Protasiewicz prevailed in the state’s highly consequential contest for the Supreme Court, which will now be likely to reverse the state’s abortion ban and end the use of gerrymandered legislative maps.MILWAUKEE — Wisconsin voters on Tuesday chose to upend the political direction of their state by electing a liberal candidate to the State Supreme Court, flipping majority control from conservatives, according to The Associated Press. The result means that in the next year, the court is likely to reverse the state’s abortion ban and end the use of gerrymandered legislative maps drawn by Republicans.Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee County judge, defeated Daniel Kelly, a conservative former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who sought a return to the bench. With more than 75 percent of votes counted, Judge Protasiewicz led by more than 10 percentage points, though the margin was expected to narrow as rural counties tallied ballots.“Our state is taking a step forward to a better and brighter future where our rights and freedoms will be protected,” Judge Protasiewicz told jubilant supporters at her victory party in Milwaukee.The contest, which featured over $40 million in spending, was the most expensive judicial election in American history. Early on, Democrats recognized the importance of the race for a swing seat on the top court in one of the country’s perennial political battlegrounds. Millions of dollars from out of state poured into Wisconsin to back Judge Protasiewicz, and a host of national Democratic groups rallied behind her campaign.Judge Protasiewicz, 60, shattered long-held notions of how judicial candidates should conduct themselves by making her political priorities central to her campaign. She made explicit her support for abortion rights and called the maps, which gave Republicans near-supermajority control of the Legislature, “rigged” and “unfair.”Her election to a 10-year term for an officially nonpartisan seat gives Wisconsin’s liberals a 4-to-3 majority on the court, which has been controlled by conservatives since 2008. Liberals will hold a court majority until at least 2025, when a liberal justice’s term expires. A conservative justice’s term ends in 2026.As the race was called Tuesday night, the court’s three sitting liberal justices embraced at Judge Protasiewicz’s election night party in Milwaukee, as onlookers cried tears of joy. During her speech, the judge and the other three liberal justices clasped their hands together in the air in celebration.“Today’s results mean two very important and special things,” Judge Protasiewicz said. “First, it means that Wisconsin voters have made their voices heard. They have chosen to reject partisan extremism in this state. And second, it means our democracy will always prevail.”Justice Kelly, 59, evinced the bitterness of the campaign with a testy concession speech that acknowledged his defeat and portended doom for the state. He called his rival’s campaign “truly beneath contempt” and decried “the rancid slanders that were launched against me.”“I wish that I’d be able to concede to a worthy opponent, but I do not have a worthy opponent,” Justice Kelly told supporters in Green Lake, Wis. He had not called Judge Protasiewicz by the time she delivered her victory remarks.He concluded the final speech of his campaign by saying, “I wish Wisconsin the best of luck, because I think it’s going to need it.”Judge Protasiewicz made a calculation from the start of the race that Wisconsin voters would reward her for making clear her positions on abortion rights and the state’s maps — issues most likely to animate and energize the base of the Democratic Party.In an interview at her home on Tuesday before the results were known, Judge Protasiewicz (pronounced pro-tuh-SAY-witz) attributed her success on the campaign trail to the decision to inform voters of what she called “my values,” as opposed to Justice Kelly, who used fewer specifics about his positions.“Rather than reading between the lines and having to do your sleuthing around like I think people have to do with him, I think I would rather just let people know what my values are,” she said. “We’ll see tonight if the electorate appreciates that candor or not.”Over the last dozen years, the court has served as an important backstop for Wisconsin Republicans. It certified as constitutional Gov. Scott Walker’s early overhauls to state government, including the Act 10 law that gutted public employee unions, as well as voting restrictions like a requirement for a state-issued identification and a ban on ballot drop boxes.In 2020, Wisconsin’s Supreme Court was the only one in the country to agree to hear President Donald J. Trump’s challenge to the presidential election. Mr. Trump sought to invalidate 200,000 ballots from the state’s two largest Democratic counties. The Wisconsin court rejected his claim on a 4-to-3 vote, with one of the conservative justices siding with the court’s three liberals on procedural grounds.That key vote gave this year’s court race extra importance, because the justices will weigh in on voting and election issues surrounding the 2024 election. Wisconsin, where Mr. Trump’s triumph in 2016 interrupted a string of Democratic presidential victories going back to 1988, is set to again be ferociously contested.The court has acted in Republicans’ interest on issues that have received little attention outside the state.In 2020, a year after Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, succeeded Mr. Walker, conservative justices agreed to limit his line-item veto authority, which generations of Wisconsin governors from both parties had used. Last year, the court’s conservatives allowed a Walker appointee whose term had expired to remain in office over Mr. Evers’s objection.Once Judge Protasiewicz assumes her place on the court on Aug. 1, the first priority for Wisconsin Democrats will be to bring a case to challenge the current legislative maps, which have given Republicans all but unbreakable control of the state government in Madison.Jeffrey A. Mandell, the president of Law Forward, a progressive law firm that has represented Mr. Evers, said he would file a legal request for the Supreme Court to hear a redistricting case the day after Judge Protasiewicz is seated.“Pretty much everything problematic in Wisconsin flows from the gerrymandering,” Mr. Mandell said in an interview on Tuesday. “Trying to address the gerrymander and reverse the extreme partisan gerrymandering we have is the highest priority.”The state’s abortion ban, which was enacted in 1849, seven decades before women could vote, is already being challenged by Josh Kaul, Wisconsin’s Democratic attorney general. This week, a circuit court in Dane County scheduled the first oral arguments on Mr. Kaul’s case for May 4, but whichever way a county judge rules, the case is all but certain to advance on appeal to the State Supreme Court later this year.Dan Simmons More