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      Ukraine’s Latest Challenge: Festering Tension Among Top Leaders

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      Rampant speculation that President Volodymyr Zelensky will fire his top military commander has consumed Ukraine’s capital at a precarious moment in the war.As Ukraine fights against a fierce Russian offensive and its leaders wait to see whether the West will approve more than $100 million in much-needed assistance, the government in Kyiv is dealing with a festering distraction: tumult in its top ranks centered on the fate of the top military commander.Speculation raged on Monday in political and military circles, the news media and online that President Volodymyr Zelensky had fired the commander, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhny, with rumors becoming so widespread that the president’s office was forced to issue a public denial.“There was no dismissal,” the president’s spokesman, Serhiy Nikiforov, told the Ukrainian media.“I cannot say anything else,” he said. When asked whether the president intended to dismiss the general, Mr. Nikiforov replied: “I repeat to you once again — there is no subject of conversation.”The curt response only fueled further speculation, and on Tuesday the capital was still consumed with whether the general would be staying or going.A former senior Ukrainian official said Mr. Zelensky’s government had been planning on dismissing the general, but backed off Monday evening when the news was leaked. Now they were slowing down the process, the official said. A Ukrainian member of Parliament who had been briefed on the plans gave a similar account, saying the two men met Monday night but no decision was made. One of the sticking points for the government was that there was no immediate replacement to take General Zaluzhny’s place, the person said.Both spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal military matters.The general’s job has been in doubt since it became clear in the autumn that Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the country’s south had failed.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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      On Donald Trump, E. Jean Carroll and the Limits of Libel Law

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      In the days since a New York jury ordered Donald Trump to pay $83.3 million in damages to the libel plaintiff E. Jean Carroll, the question has been whether the dollar amount was high enough to put a stop to his lies.That we must ask this question tells us something important about the moment in which we find ourselves. And it tells us something important about both the value and the limits of libel law.Doubt about what will come next is well placed. As Ms. Carroll’s lawyers argued, Mr. Trump has bragged of wealth far exceeding this amount. He has publicly resolved to repeat the falsehood “a thousand times.” Indeed, he doubled down on his false claims about Ms. Carroll on social media and on the campaign trail even as the jury was hearing his case.But this “will he or won’t he?” speculation is only the latest data point in a larger, more alarming trend of libel damages simply not seeming to carry the deterrent effect that defamation law presupposes they will have. We have entered an era in which the incentives to serve up lies for politics or profit are so strong that libel damage awards and settlements may not meaningfully change behaviors.Several examples show a stark break from the past. For most of the long history of libel law, a jury determination that material was false and defamatory settled the question, and defendants facing that liability would take every possible step not to repeat the lie — both because it would be socially reprehensible to do so and because the risk of punitive damages was a powerful deterrent unlikely to be overcome by any stronger incentive. In short, libel law used to stop the libel.But recent cases have revealed some defendants who seem motivated to defame even as their assets are depleted or made unreachable to plaintiffs. Rudy Giuliani, who reasserted his defamatory allegations against two Georgia poll workers outside the courthouse as the jury decided his case, filed for bankruptcy just days after he was ordered to pay $148 million for those lies. Alex Jones did the same less than two months after a jury ordered him and his Infowars parent company to pay close to $1 billion for years of lies about the Sandy Hook families. He had used his broadcasts to rail against the suits throughout the proceedings and to seek audience donations to fund them.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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      Swatting Is a Political Problem

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      In a year with so much political and legal tension, law enforcement is seeing a disturbing trend: targeting public officials with swatting, or false emergency calls intended to draw a heavily armed police response. This conduct isn’t a harmless prank; it’s a symptom of a deeper disorder in American politics. Recent incidents involving officials who have taken stands seen as hostile to Donald Trump and bomb threats in multiple state capitols are signs of a troubling escalation in political violence.These hoaxes pose real dangers. Sending armed police officers to someone’s home on the ruse that violence is occurring there risks tragic outcomes, including fatalities, as we saw in Kansas in 2017, when swatting led to a police officer shooting an unarmed man. In addition, swatting diverts law enforcement resources from real emergencies. But more insidiously, these tactics are tools of intimidation, designed to silence voices in the political process.The frequency and visibility of these incidents suggest that swatting and political violence require prosecutors to prioritize their efforts to stop it. Recent targets of swatting include Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is presiding over the federal election interference case and whom Mr. Trump has accused of election interference; the special counsel Jack Smith, whom Mr. Trump has called “deranged” and a “thug”; and Gabriel Sterling, a Republican election official in Georgia who rejected Mr. Trump’s claims of fraud in the 2020 election. Justice Arthur Engoron, who is presiding over Mr. Trump’s New York civil fraud trial, received a bomb threat at his home on the day of closing arguments. Maine’s secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, became a victim of swatting shortly after she removed Mr. Trump from the presidential ballot in her state under the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment. She rightly sees these acts as attempts to chill efforts to enforce the law, calling the incident at her home “designed to scare not only me but also others into silence, to send a message.”Public officials are human. Threats and the specter of violence can get into their heads. The possibility that a loved one might be unnerved, injured or worse as a result of one’s official duties isn’t easily shrugged off for most of us. The husband of Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, retired from his dental practice about eight years earlier than planned because of threats he received at his office. The risks can go beyond words. A federal judge in New Jersey suffered the loss of her 20-year-old son in 2020 when a gunman, apparently dressed as a delivery driver, came to her home looking for her and killed her son instead. We cannot forget that threats can escalate into violence. Fear of placing family members in harm’s way can make public officials shrink from making unpopular decisions and can even cause some good people to avoid serving altogether.Of course, this phenomenon isn’t entirely new. At the dawn of the American Revolution, some colonists harassed tax collectors and published the names of those who refused to boycott British goods. And we have experienced bomb threats for decades, learning to live with the disruptions caused by evacuations that result when a threat is phoned in or posted online.But the recent uptick in swatting can be attributed, at least in part, to the dangerous drumbeat of disinformation and dehumanization, a tactic long employed by authoritarians. Political extremists engage in what is known as the either-or fallacy. By framing issues as binary conflicts and demonizing opponents, they create a climate in which violence becomes normalized. Recent statements by Mr. Trump exemplify this strategy. He uses Truth Social posts to make unfounded accusations and express disdain for rivals. These posts do more than spread disinformation. They foster an environment in which violence against perceived enemies becomes not just conceivable but justified.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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      Trump Has Made Claims About Caucus Fraud. What if He Underperforms?

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      The last time Donald J. Trump participated in competitive Iowa caucuses, he lost narrowly, accused Senator Ted Cruz of Texas of stealing the contest, claimed fraud, demanded that Iowa Republicans nullify the results, and called for a rerun.While Iowa has a history of troubles with its caucus results, there’s been no evidence of fraud. The 2016 Republican contest was, in fact, the only one since 2008 that had gone off without a hitch.And yet if Monday night ends with Mr. Trump underperforming expectations, both his history and his rhetoric during this year’s campaign suggest he won’t hesitate to cry foul and refuse to accept the result.Mr. Trump has already accused Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida of “trying to rig” the caucuses. Laura Loomer, a far-right and anti-Muslim activist whom Mr. Trump last year considered hiring for a campaign post, suggested on social media that “the deep state” was engaging in “weather manipulation” to instigate Iowa’s Friday snowstorm and subzero temperatures to depress Trump turnout on Monday. And Donald Trump Jr. suggested in a Telegram video that “we can’t take anything for granted, or assume that everything is going to be on the up and up. We’ve seen this rodeo before.”Those claims are not likely to be met with much support from Iowa Republicans and the party volunteers who will operate the 1,657 caucus sites across the state.“If Trump says it’s fraud, he’s full of crap,” said A.J. Spiker, a former chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa who is backing Mr. DeSantis.Still, Iowa Republicans aim to protect themselves from campaigns claiming foul play at the caucuses.At each site, caucusgoers mark their presidential preferences on paper slips. Those slips are then counted in full view of whoever wants to watch. Typically a representative from each campaign watches the counting, and recording is allowed.“It’s the most transparent straw vote you could possibly do,” Mr. Spiker said.The Trump campaign’s headquarters in Urbandale, Iowa, on Saturday.Jon Cherry for The New York TimesMr. Trump’s pre-emptive Iowa fraud claims last month followed a flub by Mr. DeSantis’s wife, Casey DeSantis. She called on supporters to “descend upon the state of Iowa to be a part of the caucus.”“You do not have to be a resident of Iowa to be able to participate in the caucus,” she said.That earned Ms. DeSantis a rebuke from the state Republican Party.Only Iowans can participate in the caucuses. Republican volunteers are supposed to check for photo identification at the caucus sites. Still, Mr. Trump’s campaign suggested then that the DeSantis campaign had professed a “plot to rig the caucus through fraud.”Another candidate who has trafficked in conspiracies and has been sowing doubt about Iowa’s caucuses is Vivek Ramaswamy, who failed to qualify for recent debates.“The mainstream media is trying to rig the Iowa G.O.P. caucus in favor of the corporate candidates who they can control,” Mr. Ramaswamy said in a campaign video this week. “Don’t fall for their trick. They don’t want you to hear from me about the truth.”Voting rights groups and disinformation experts say the pre-emptive cries about fraud and rigged elections have become something of a new normal.“This follows the general playbook, the election denier playbook of just pre-emptively laying the groundwork for claims of fraud in the event of a loss,” said Emma Steiner, the Information Accountability Project Manager at Common Cause, a left-leaning voting rights organization. “It’s sort of future-proofing.”Indeed, Mr. Trump has long trumpeted baseless claims of fraud or rigging before an election. In 2016, weeks before Election Day, Mr. Trump started questioning the veracity of mail ballots in Colorado, citing little evidence. After he won the 2016 election, Mr. Trump claimed that widespread fraud cost him the popular vote (it did not), and he launched a commission to investigate voter fraud in the country (it folded without any significant findings).The Trump team has called elections rigged even when he is not participating in them. When the 2020 Democratic caucuses melted down because of a faulty app and a disorganized state party, Mr. Trump’s campaign questioned whether the results were “being rigged against Bernie Sanders.” His sons went further.“Mark my words, they are rigging this thing,” Eric Trump wrote on Twitter the night of the 2020 caucuses. “What a mess.” More

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      In Taiwan’s Elections, China Seems to Want a Vote

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      The first time I covered a Taiwan “election,” 38 years ago, the island was a dictatorship under martial law, with members of the opposition more likely to be tortured than to gain power.Government officials explained that modern democracy wasn’t fully compatible with Chinese culture, and one of my minders made a vague inquiry about paying me — apparently to see if a Times correspondent could be bribed.Taiwan lifted martial law the next year, 1987, and helped lead a democratic revolution in Asia, encompassing South Korea, Mongolia, Indonesia and others. Taiwan now ranks as more democratic than the United States, Japan or Canada, according to the most recent ratings by the Economist Intelligence Unit, and the island is now caught up in boisterous campaigning for presidential and legislative elections on Saturday.(The campaigning has mostly gone smoothly but not entirely so: As a gimmick, one Taiwanese party handed out 460,000 laundry detergent pods to win support. Some voters unfortunately mistook the pods for food.)The stakes here are enormous, for President Biden has repeatedly said that the United States would defend Taiwan from a military assault by China, and the policies of the new government may shape the risk of such a confrontation. The importance of the outcome to China is reflected in Beijing’s efforts to manipulate it — and perhaps we Americans can learn something here about resisting election interference.“What China has been trying to do is use Taiwan as a test ground,” Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu, told me. “If they are able to make a difference in this election, I’m sure they are going to try and apply this to other democracies.”China resisted Asia’s democratic tide — yet it seems to want a vote in Taiwan’s election.Flags representing different political parties.An Rong Xu for The New York Times“Whenever Taiwan holds an election, China interferes — but this time it’s the most severe,” Vice President William Lai, who is leading in the presidential polls, told foreign reporters.The Chinese government has made no secret of its unhappiness with Lai’s candidacy, because he and his Democratic Progressive Party view Taiwan as effectively independent rather than as part of China. Beijing sees Lai as a secessionist, calling him a “destroyer of peace” and warning that he could be “the instigator of a potential dangerous war.”Paradoxically, China’s Communist Party appears to favor a victory by its historical enemy, the Kuomintang. That’s because the Kuomintang welcomes closer economic ties with China and opposes Taiwan’s becoming an independent country.In an effort to increase the chances of the Kuomintang presidential candidate, Hou Yu-ih, China appeared to pressure a billionaire businessman, Terry Gou, who operates factories in China making Apple products, to drop out of the race. Gou claimed to have backing from Mazu, a sea goddess, but the Communist Party must have prevailed over the goddess: Gou did indeed drop out.Meanwhile, networks on Facebook and TikTok are spreading Chinese propaganda in Taiwan as part of an election manipulation strategy, according to a research organization here. The networks mostly disparage Lai and other Democratic Progressives while raising suspicions about the United States.China has lately sent a series of intimidating large balloons — perhaps weather or surveillance balloons — over Taiwan. Some see the purpose as rattling the Taiwanese in the run-up to the election and warning them of the risks of electing Democratic Progressives.Then there are other accusations that are more difficult to assess. A Democratic Progressive candidate accused China of circulating a deepfake video of him engaged in a sex act. The cabinet called for an investigation.The best antidote to Chinese manipulation may be calling attention to it. In the past, Chinese election meddling in Taiwan has backfired, and Lai seems happier talking about Chinese manipulations than about the frustration voters feel about out-of-control Taiwan housing prices and government corruption.Presidential candidate William Lai, at a rally.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesOne reason for the global attention on Taiwan’s election is the backdrop of concern about the risk of conflict in the Taiwan Strait. Some in the Taiwan opposition warn that the danger will be greater if the next president is someone who flirts with Taiwan independence, like Lai. Partly because of accusations that he might poke China unnecessarily, Lai has gone out of his way to say that he will continue the policies of President Tsai Ing-wen — whom Beijing also can’t stand but who has been cautious about provoking China.The White House has called on “outside actors” — read: “China”— to avoid interfering in Taiwan’s elections, and I hope that Beijing will get the message that manipulations can backfire. Unfortunately, I suspect that the reality is nuanced: Blatant election bullying is counterproductive, but more subtle manipulations on TikTok or Facebook may succeed if they elude scrutiny. We in the press didn’t pay enough attention to foreign manipulation in the 2016 U.S. election; we must do better.One last thought: As I cover these Taiwan elections and think back to the first one I covered in Taiwan, I keep reflecting: When will change ever come to China?It wasn’t obvious in the 1980s which countries in Asia would democratize and which wouldn’t — and then rising education levels and a growing middle class led to a flowering in countries near China even as the Middle Kingdom itself became more repressive, especially in recent years under Xi Jinping.Beijing feels bleak today — but considering the transformation on an island once under prolonged martial law and a similarly autocratic regime, it may be that the place where it’s easiest to be optimistic about China is actually here in the thriving young democracy of Taiwan during election week.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, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      Elections and Disinformation Are Colliding Like Never Before in 2024

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      A wave of elections coincides with state influence operations, a surge of extremism, A.I. advances and a pullback in social media protections.Billions of people will vote in major elections this year — around half of the global population, by some estimates — in one of the largest and most consequential democratic exercises in living memory. The results will affect how the world is run for decades to come.At the same time, false narratives and conspiracy theories have evolved into an increasingly global menace.Baseless claims of election fraud have battered trust in democracy. Foreign influence campaigns regularly target polarizing domestic challenges. Artificial intelligence has supercharged disinformation efforts and distorted perceptions of reality. All while major social media companies have scaled back their safeguards and downsized election teams.“Almost every democracy is under stress, independent of technology,” said Darrell M. West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank. “When you add disinformation on top of that, it just creates many opportunities for mischief.”It is, he said, a “perfect storm of disinformation.” More

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      Fox News and Trump Go Live Wednesday for First Time in 2 Years

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      A town hall in Iowa on Wednesday is the network’s first live interview with the former president in nearly two years, the latest twist in a long-running drama.One of television’s longest-running soap operas is about to start a new chapter.Donald J. Trump has not appeared for a live interview on Fox News since April 2022, a nearly two-year stretch of chilliness between the former president and the channel whose airwaves he once relied on to cement his status atop the American right.In that period, all of Mr. Trump’s Fox News interviews were pretaped, a notable precaution for a network that paid $787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit fueled by the former president’s mendacious claims about the 2020 election. That changes on Wednesday, when Mr. Trump will appear live on the network for a town hall in Des Moines ahead of the Iowa caucuses.The relationship between Mr. Trump and the Rupert Murdoch-owned network has featured more drama than a season of “Real Housewives.” But Wednesday’s event is not only a turning point and a potential ratings winner for Fox News: It is also the former president’s first live interview on any major news network since he went on CNN last May, an event that drew harsh criticism for the volume and velocity of his unfiltered false claims.Mr. Trump has not exactly been silenced. He refused the invitations of several networks to participate in live Republican primary debates. And he has agreed to numerous pretaped interviews, including an appearance on NBC in September that also prompted complaints from viewers who berated the network for providing him a platform.His relationship with Fox News, however, is especially complicated. In fact, it wasn’t that long ago when parts of the network seemed to be moving on.Back in 2022, Fox News snubbed Mr. Trump’s rallies while offering admiring coverage to a rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. After Mr. Trump announced in November 2022 that he would again run for president, the network kept him off its airwaves for a full five months. When Mr. Trump did return, for a taped interview last March with Sean Hannity, he received a cool reception from other Fox hosts; one network contributor called his appearance “absolutely horrific.”The slights angered Mr. Trump, who has harbored resentment toward Fox over its early projection of Arizona for Joseph R. Biden Jr. on election night in 2020. Over the past year, the former president has lobbed crude insults at Mr. Murdoch and denounced Fox as “fake news” and “hostile” in posts on Truth Social, his preferred social media platform. He has also grumbled to allies that the network erred in settling the defamation suit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, saying it offered ammunition to other potential litigants.In an interview, Bret Baier, Fox News’s chief political anchor, who is moderating the Wednesday event alongside the anchor Martha MacCallum, did not shy away from acknowledging the volatility of the relationship.“We’re one Truth Social post away from some different feeling,” he said.Despite the wariness, both sides found reasons to agree to Wednesday’s town hall.Judging by his poll numbers, many conservatives remain enthralled by Mr. Trump, and keeping the potential Republican nominee at arm’s length would erode Fox News’s credibility with a core audience. While Mr. Trump has told confidants that he believes Fox News has lost some influence with Republican voters, it remains the highest-rated cable network and home to influential conservatives like Mr. Hannity and Jesse Watters.Furthermore, the town hall gives Mr. Trump a chance to dunk on both his presidential rivals and one of his media bêtes noires: CNN.CNN had previously announced that it would sponsor a Republican debate in Iowa on the same night, in the same city, at the same time (9 p.m. Eastern). Mr. DeSantis and Nikki Haley, Mr. Trump’s closest rivals in state polls, will be at that debate, but Mr. Trump boycotted. Fox’s town hall allows him to siphon away attention and potentially deliver a TV ratings victory over CNN — which would also please Fox News.Given the rough-and-tumble nature of a presidential campaign, Wednesday’s telecast is unlikely to represent a lasting détente. One person with direct knowledge of interactions between the Trump camp and Fox News, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the relationship remained chilly.The televisions on Mr. Trump’s plane once constantly aired Fox News, but that is no longer the case, the person said. The former president often requests to watch Mr. Hannity’s program, but sometimes prefers Newsmax, particularly its host Greg Kelly, an old acquaintance from New York political circles. Mr. Trump remains a fan of Mr. Hannity — and of Mr. Watters and Maria Bartiromo — but he has soured on the “Fox & Friends” host Steve Doocy, whom he recently described as “not nice like he should be.”Mr. Baier said he had studiously courted Mr. Trump in recent weeks, pitching him on the idea of a town hall over the phone and at least once in person at his Florida mansion, Mar-a-Lago.“It’s not easy,” he said of the efforts required to coax Mr. Trump into an interview. He said he had encouraged the former president to take “tough but fair” questions in a live setting.“This is getting to the playoffs,” Mr. Baier said. “This is a time when voters need to see him live, in person, when it happens.”So what happens if Mr. Trump repeats on live TV his baseless claim that the 2020 election was rigged?“We’re ready to deal with it,” Mr. Baier said, noting that he disputed Mr. Trump’s claims when the subject arose at their pretaped interview last June. “But if he’s spending all of his town hall time dealing with 2020, and not talking about what he wants to do as president, he’s got other issues.” (At the time, Mr. Trump was not thrilled about Mr. Baier’s real-time fact-checking, calling it “nasty.”)For Mr. Baier, the next person on his list for a live, unfiltered interview is President Biden. “We’ve had a request in every two weeks since South Carolina, when candidate Joe Biden won the primary,” he said. “We would love to do a town hall with the president. We would do that in a heartbeat.”Jonathan Swan More

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      Clashing Over Jan. 6, Trump and Biden Show Reality Is at Stake in 2024

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      In dueling sets of speeches, Donald Trump and President Biden are framing the election as a battle for the future of democracy — with Mr. Trump brazenly casting Mr. Biden as the true menace.Rarely in American politics has a leading presidential candidate made such grave accusations about a rival: warning that he is willing to violate the Constitution. Claiming that he is eager to persecute political rivals. Calling him a dire threat to democracy.Those arguments have come from President Biden’s speeches, including his forceful address on Friday, as he hammers away at his predecessor. But they are also now being brazenly wielded by Donald J. Trump, the only president to try to overthrow an American election.Three years after the former president’s supporters stormed the Capitol, Mr. Trump and his campaign are engaged in an audacious attempt to paint Mr. Biden as the true menace to the nation’s foundational underpinnings. Mr. Trump’s strategy aims to upend a world in which he has publicly called for suspending the Constitution, vowed to turn political opponents into legal targets and suggested that the nation’s top military general should be executed.The result has been a salvo of recriminations from the top candidates in each party, including competing events to mark Saturday’s third anniversary of the attack on the Capitol.The eagerness from each man to paint the other as an imminent threat signals that their potential rematch this year will be framed as nothing short of a cataclysmic battle for the future of democracy — even as Mr. Trump tries to twist the very idea to suit his own ends.“Donald Trump’s campaign is about him — not America, not you,” Mr. Biden said Friday, speaking near Valley Forge in Pennsylvania. “Donald Trump’s campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future. He’s willing to sacrifice our democracy, put himself in power.”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