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      Hunter Biden Is Expected to Appeal Conviction on Gun Charges

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      Lawyers for Mr. Biden are considering a number of challenges to the guilty verdict, including one based on the Second Amendment.Hunter Biden is expected to appeal his felony conviction for falsifying a federal firearms application, likely arguing that the judge in the case violated his constitutional rights in her instructions to the jury, according to people in his orbit and legal experts.Mr. Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell has also signaled that any appeal would be based on the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in 2022 that vastly expanded gun rights, a ruling that spawned legal challenges to the part of the federal firearms form at the center of the Biden case. In Mr. Biden’s case, it included a question asking buyers about their drug use.Any appeal would be an uphill climb, and the lawyers representing President Biden’s son cannot officially file one until he is sentenced at the courthouse in Wilmington, Del., within 120 days, or about a month after he is scheduled to go on trial on federal tax charges in Los Angeles.There is still a possibility that David C. Weiss, the special counsel in the case, will seek a plea agreement before the tax trial begins, and would have leverage in negotiations now that Mr. Biden is already a convicted felon, according to former prosecutors. Mr. Biden might have greater incentive to reach a deal to avoid another public airing of his personal ordeal beyond what was presented in Wilmington last week.On Tuesday, after deliberating for a little more than three hours, a jury convicted Mr. Biden of three felony counts related to lying on a federal firearms application and illegally possessing a weapon.Mr. Lowell suggested that he might appeal, vowing to “vigorously pursue all the legal challenges available to Hunter.” President Biden said in a statement that he would “accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Senate Republicans Block Supreme Court Ethics Measure Pushed by Democrats

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      Democrats made what they knew was a doomed attempt as they faced pressure from the left to do more to try to hold the court accountable.Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked an effort by Democrats to quickly pass Supreme Court ethics and transparency legislation they had pushed forward in the wake of disclosures about justices taking unreported gifts and travel and other ethical issues surrounding the high court.The unsuccessful outcome was predetermined, but represented an effort by Senate Democrats to show they were pressing the case against the court. It was also aimed at demonstrating the limits of their power given the narrow divide in the Senate and deep Republican opposition to Congress taking action to impose stricter ethics rules on the justices.“The ethics crisis at the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, is unacceptable,” Senator Richard J. Durbin, the Illinois Democrat who chairs the Judiciary Committee, said in calling for the measure to be approved. “It is unsustainable and it’s unworthy of the highest court in the land.”Republicans assailed the bill as a naked effort by Democrats to undercut the court because of ideological disagreements with its decisions, particularly with major rulings about to be handed down. They accused Democrats of trying to intimidate the justices.“Let’s be clear: This is not about improving the court, this is about undermining the court,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, who lodged the objection to taking up the bill. “This will be an unconstitutional overreach. This would undermine the court’s ability to operate effectively.”The move by Democrats came as progressives have been ramping up their demands for more aggressive action in the Senate.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Justice Alito’s Wife, in Secretly Recorded Conversation, Complains About Pride Flag

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      In a conversation with a woman posing as a conservative supporter, Martha-Ann Alito appeared to push back against having to look at a symbol of L.G.B.T.Q. rights.Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s wife, Martha-Ann, recently told a woman posing as a conservative supporter that she wanted to fly a Catholic flag at the couple’s Virginia home in response to a Pride flag in her neighborhood.“You know what I want?” the justice’s wife said to the woman, Lauren Windsor, who secretly recorded the conversation during a black-tie event last week at the Supreme Court. “I want a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag because I have to look across the lagoon at the Pride flag for the next month.”But Ms. Alito said that after she suggested the Sacred Heart of Jesus flag as a retort to the symbol for L.G.B.T.Q. rights, her husband said, “Oh, please, don’t put up a flag.”She said that she had agreed, for now, but that she had told him that “when you are free of this nonsense,” “I’m putting it up and I’m going to send them a message every day, maybe every week. I’ll be changing the flags.”She added that she would come up with her own flag, which would be white with yellow and orange flames and read, in Italian, “shame.”The comments from Ms. Alito were posted online late Monday by Ms. Windsor, who describes herself as a documentary filmmaker and “advocacy journalist.” Ms. Windsor, who has a reputation for approaching conservatives, including former Vice President Mike Pence, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio and Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, posted edited recordings of Ms. Alito, as well as separate edited recordings of Justice Alito and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., on social media.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Alito and Roberts, Secretly Recorded at Gala, Share Markedly Different Worldviews

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      The two justices were surreptitiously recorded at a Supreme Court gala last week by a woman posing as a Catholic conservative.Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. told a woman posing as a Catholic conservative last week that compromise in America between the left and right might be impossible and then agreed with the view that the nation should return to a place of godliness.“One side or the other is going to win,” Justice Alito told the woman, Lauren Windsor, at an exclusive gala at the Supreme Court. “There can be a way of working, a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised.”Ms. Windsor pressed Justice Alito further. “I think that the solution really is like winning the moral argument,” she told him, according to the edited recordings of Justice Alito and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., which were posted and distributed widely on social media on Monday. “Like, people in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that, to return our country to a place of godliness.”“I agree with you, I agree with you,” he responded.The justice’s comments appeared to be in marked contrast to those of Chief Justice Roberts, who was also secretly recorded at the same event but who pushed back against Ms. Windsor’s assertion that the court had an obligation to lead the country on a more “moral path.”“Would you want me to be in charge of putting the nation on a more moral path?” the chief justice said. “That’s for people we elect. That’s not for lawyers.”Ms. Windsor pressed the chief justice about religion, saying, “I believe that the founders were godly, like were Christians, and I think that we live in a Christian nation and that our Supreme Court should be guiding us in that path.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Here’s Where Trump’s Other Cases Stand

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      After being convicted in a Manhattan courtroom, the former president still faces charges in three criminal prosecutions, all of which are tangled up in procedural delays.Former President Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan came to an end this week when a jury found him guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in an effort to cover up a sex scandal that threatened to upset his 2016 presidential campaign.But Mr. Trump is still facing federal charges, brought by a special counsel, in two cases: one in Florida, where he is accused of illegally holding on to classified documents after leaving office and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them, and one in Washington, D.C., where he’s accused of plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He faces similar election-tampering charges in a third case brought by a local prosecutor in Georgia.The proceedings — all of which are bogged down in delays — can be confusing to keep track of. Here are updates on where each of them stands.Federal Documents CaseThe federal indictment against Mr. Trump in the documents case.Jon Elswick/Associated PressIn this case, Mr. Trump is accused of illegally holding on to a large amount of sensitive national security material after leaving office and then plotting to obstruct repeated efforts by the government to get it back. The charges were brought by Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed to oversee the federal investigations into Mr. Trump.The case is tied up in efforts by Mr. Trump’s lawyers to have the charges against him dismissed before they go to trial. To that end, the lawyers have filed a barrage of motions attacking the indictment on a number of grounds. Those include claims that Mr. Smith was improperly appointed to his job and that he filed the charges as part of a politicized effort to harm Mr. Trump.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Supreme Court Clears Way for N.R.A. to Pursue First Amendment Challenge

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      The opinion, by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, found that the gun rights group had plausibly claimed a First Amendment violation.The Supreme Court sided with the National Rifle Association on Thursday, saying it could pursue a First Amendment claim against a New York state official who had encouraged companies to stop doing business with it after the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Fla.Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for a unanimous court, found that the N.R.A. had plausibly claimed a violation of the First Amendment, sending the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, for further proceedings.The N.R.A., in asking the Supreme Court to hear the case, cited what it described as the enormous regulatory power of the state official, Maria T. Vullo, a former superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services. The N.R.A. accused Ms. Vullo of applying “pressure tactics — including back-channel threats, ominous guidance letters and selective enforcement of regulatory infractions” and warned of wide-ranging consequences of a ruling against it. A court decision siding with Ms. Vullo, the group warned, would open the door to government officials making similar pleas about hot-button issues like abortion and the environment.Ms. Vullo, in court filings, has pushed back again the N.R.A.’s allegations that she undermined the First Amendment.The case began in 2017, when the New York Department of Financial Services started investigating an insurance product known as Carry Guard, which provided coverage for various issues arising from the use of a firearm, such as personal injury and criminal defense.The program was brokered, serviced and underwritten by insurance companies and included the N.R.A.’s name, logo and endorsement.The department regulates more than 1,400 companies and more than 1,900 financial institutions. It concluded that Carry Guard violated state insurance law, in part by providing liability coverage for injury from the wrongful use of a firearm. The department entered into consent decrees with the insurance groups and imposed civil penalties.After a mass shooting in 2018, when a former student opened fire at a high school in Parkland, Fla., the department began to re-evaluate “the implications of regulated entities’ relationships with gun-promotion organizations,” according to legal filings for Ms. Vullo.The department issued two memos, one to insurance companies and another to financial institutions, titled “Guidance on Risk Management Relating to the N.R.A. and Similar Gun Promotion Organizations.”These documents encouraged regulated institutions “to review any relationships they have with the N.R.A. or similar gun promotion organizations.”The Vullo case is one of two concerning when government advocacy crosses a constitutional line into coercion.The other, Murthy v. Missouri, involves a push by Republican-led states to curb the Biden administration’s efforts to crack down on what it viewed as misinformation on social media. More

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      Justices’ ‘Disturbing’ Ruling in South Carolina Gerrymandering Case

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      More from our inbox:Questions for RepublicansThe Case Against the PurebredChatbot TherapyCriticism of Israel Caroline Gutman for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “In Top Court, G.O.P. Prevails on Voting Map” (front page, May 24):The action of the conservative wing of the Supreme Court, anchoring the 6-to-3 decision to allow the South Carolina Legislature to go forward with redistricting plans that clearly marginalize African American representation in the state — and after a meticulous review by an appellate court to preclude the plan — is disturbing.The persistent erosion of voting rights and apparent denial that racism is still part of the fabric of American society are troubling.Surely there can be deference to decisions made by states; concocting “intent” to deny true representative justice in an apparent quest to return to the “Ozzie and Harriet” days of the 1950s seems too transparent an attempt to “keep America white again” — as they may perceive the challenge of changing demographics.This particular ruling cries out for the need to expand court membership.Raymond ColemanPotomac, Md.To the Editor:Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito presumes the South Carolina lawmakers acted “in good faith” in gerrymandering the voting district map for the purpose of favoring the Republicans, and not for racial reasons, an improbable rationale on its face.Astoundingly, he further reasons that the gerrymander is acceptable because it was for partisan rather than race-based reasons (acknowledging that redistricting based on race “may be held unconstitutional.”)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Supreme Court Sides With Republicans Over South Carolina Voting Map

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      The case concerned a constitutional puzzle: how to distinguish the roles of race and partisanship in drawing voting maps when Black voters overwhelmingly favor Democrats.The Supreme Court cleared the way on Thursday for South Carolina to keep using a congressional map that a lower court had deemed an unconstitutional racial gerrymander that resulted in the “bleaching of African American voters” from a district.The vote was 6 to 3, with the court’s three liberal members in dissent.A unanimous three-judge panel of the Federal District Court in Columbia, S.C., ruled in early 2023 that the state’s First Congressional District, drawn after the 2020 census, violated the Constitution by making race the predominant factor.The panel put its decision on hold while Republican lawmakers appealed to the Supreme Court, and the parties asked the justices to render a decision by Jan. 1. After that deadline passed, the panel said in March that the 2024 election would have to take place under the map it had rejected as unconstitutional.“With the primary election procedures rapidly approaching, the appeal before the Supreme Court still pending and no remedial plan in place,” the panel wrote, “the ideal must bend to the practical.”In effect, the Supreme Court’s inaction had decided the case for the current election cycle.The contested district, anchored in Charleston, had elected a Republican every year since 1980, with the exception of 2018. But the 2020 race was close, with less than one percentage point separating the candidates, and Republican lawmakers “sought to create a stronger Republican tilt” in the district after the 2020 census, the panel wrote.The lawmakers achieved that goal, the panel found, in part by the “bleaching of African American voters out of the Charleston County portion of Congressional District No. 1.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More