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      Accepting N.R.A. Endorsement, Trump Pledges to Be Gun Owners’ Ardent Ally

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      Former President Donald J. Trump, accepting the endorsement of the National Rifle Association on Saturday, cast himself as a powerful ally for gun owners and gun businesses, contending that under President Biden the right to bear arms was “under siege.”“If the Biden regime gets four more years, they are coming for your guns,” Mr. Trump said in Dallas, where he headlined the N.R.A.’s annual meeting.Mr. Trump addressed the group as he is on trial in Manhattan on criminal charges that he falsified business records related to a hush-money payment to a porn star. Onstage in Dallas, he contended that he knew “better than anybody” what it was like to have rights taken away.“In my second term, we will roll back every Biden attack on the Second Amendment,” he said to loud applause.The annual gun rights gathering appeared far more muted than the last time Mr. Trump attended it, in 2022, in Houston, just days after the mass shooting of 19 children and two adults at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Greg Abbott, the state’s governor, and John Cornyn, its senior senator, did not attend that year’s convention, citing other commitments. Several marquee musical performers pulled their participation out of respect, they said, for the victims and their families.The N.R.A., the nation’s most prominent gun rights group and once a potent political force, has found itself in a hobbled state. In recent years, it has shed members and been besieged by setbacks, defections and internal strife. In February, a Manhattan jury ruled that its leaders had engaged in a yearslong pattern of financial misconduct and corruption.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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      In Atlanta, Biden Warms Up His Pitch to Black Voters

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      President Biden declared on Saturday that his challenger, former President Donald J. Trump, represented an “unhinged” threat to the future of the country and asked Black voters at two campaign events in Atlanta to see the election as a choice between protecting democracy and letting it backslide.This message was a preview of sorts for a speech he was scheduled to deliver on Sunday at Morehouse College, an all-male, historically Black institution whose students, alumni and faculty had been divided over inviting Mr. Biden as the war in Gaza continues.Mr. Biden laid out his argument to a powerful slice of the electorate that has been drifting away from him during a campaign reception on Saturday afternoon: “We cannot let this man become president. We have to win this race, not for me but for America.”For months, the president has tried to define Mr. Trump as an unstable force whose second term would be about exacting revenge on his enemies. But despite trying to present himself as a guardian of the international order and politics as usual, Mr. Biden has low approval ratings and is trailing Mr. Trump in several battleground states including Georgia, according to recent polls.The strategy in Georgia this weekend seemed to be to take his own political brand out of the equation, asking key voters to instead consider what could happen if Mr. Trump wins.“He’s clearly unhinged,” Mr. Biden said while talking about a recent interview granted by the former president. “Buy Time magazine this week. Take a look at what he has said. He said, ‘A lot of people liked it when I said I would be a dictator on Day 1.’”Earlier in the day, Mr. Biden also took a swipe at the recent polling. “You hear about how, you know, we’re behind in the polls,” he said. “So far the polls haven’t been right once. We’re either tied or slightly ahead or slightly behind, but what I look at is actual election results and election results are in the primaries.”He added that Nikki Haley, who is no longer in the race, peeled away votes from Trump in several primary elections.“It’s not about me,” Mr. Biden told a group of supporters, including several Morehouse graduates, gathered at a popular restaurant in Atlanta. “It’s about the alternative as well.” More

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      Stefanik to Denounce Biden, and Praise Trump, in Speech to Israel’s Parliament

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      Representative Elise Stefanik of New York will be the highest-ranking House Republican to address the Israeli Parliament since the Oct. 7 terrorist attack with a speech on Sunday that is expected to deliver a forceful rebuke of President Biden and his fellow Democrats while presenting her party as the true allies of the Jewish state.Ms. Stefanik’s speech comes as the Biden White House is urging Israel to end the war in Gaza, and it builds on the Republican political strategy to capitalize on Democratic divisions over Israel’s response to the terrorist attacks.That strategy, which has played out in Congress for the past six months, has included a largely symbolic House vote on Thursday aimed at rebuking Mr. Biden for pausing an arms shipment to Israel and compelling his administration to deliver those weapons quickly.Mr. Biden recently put a hold on military aid out of concern that Israel would use the weapons on Rafah, a crowded city in southern Gaza. The administration has also told Congress that it plans to sell more than $1 billion in new weapons to Israel.“I have been clear at home, and I will be clear here,” Ms. Stefanik is expected to say in her speech, according to a prepared version of her remarks reviewed by The New York Times. “There is no excuse for an American president to block aid to Israel.”Her remarks also appear designed to curry favor with former President Donald J. Trump, who has mentioned Ms. Stefanik, a former George W. Bush White House aide and staunch defender of Mr. Trump, as a potential vice-presidential candidate.While a time-honored adage of American politics has held that partisanship ends at the water’s edge, Ms. Stefanik’s remarks may help strengthen her bona fides with the former president by paying little mind to the principle and decorum behind that unwritten rule.Ms. Stefanik has positioned herself as one of Mr. Trump’s most loyal defenders in Congress, a role she first staked out during his first impeachment in 2019. Her prepared remarks for Sunday mention Mr. Trump by name three times while highlighting several of his administration’s accomplishments, including a package of Middle East deals known as the Abraham Accords and moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.“We must not let the extremism in elite corners conceal the deep, abiding love for Israel among the American people,” Ms. Stefanik plans to say. “Americans feel a strong connection to your people. They have opened their hearts to you in this dark hour.”In addition to her remarks at Jerusalem Hall in the Knesset, Ms. Stefanik will meet with Israeli officials, visit religious sites and tour locations targeted in the Oct. 7 attacks.Ms. Stefanik has played a high-profile role in the congressional investigations into antisemitism on college campuses. Her questioning of the Harvard and University of Pennsylvania presidents ultimately lead to their resignations, delivering to Ms. Stefanik her biggest star turn this Congress. More

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      Why the Manhattan Trial Is Probably Helping Trump

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      Throughout the Republican primary campaign (such as it was), it was perfectly clear that the multiple indictments of Donald Trump helped him consolidate support. This was a source of moral exasperation to liberals, but their bafflement coexisted with the hope that what played well with the MAGA faithful would have the opposite effect in the general election. Trump’s cries of persecution might rally conservatives in a primary, but the trials themselves would help Joe Biden cruise to re-election.The trial that we’re actually getting, the prosecution of Trump for falsified business records related to hush money payments related to his assignation with the porn star Stormy Daniels, could theoretically still have that effect; a guilty verdict could shake loose a couple of points from Trump’s modest but consistent polling lead.But watching the trial play out so far, it seems just as likely that as in the primaries, so now in the general election: Any political effect from being charged and tried is probably working marginally in Trump’s favor.First, consider how this trial plays if you are not paying close attention to the legal details. Follow the coverage casually, the headlines about Daniels’s testimony especially, and it appears that Trump is on trial for cheating on his wife in a distinctly sordid way and then trying to conceal it — for being a political figure, a candidate for high office, and lying about sex.As it happens, America spent a pretty important period of time litigating the question of whether it’s a serious offense for a lecherous politician (one whose campaign apparatus notoriously labored to prevent “bimbo eruptions”) to conceal an inappropriate sexual liaison. Indeed, we even litigated the question of whether committing brazen perjury while trying to conceal a sexual liaison is a serious offense. And the country answered this question by embracing the consensus position of American liberalism at the time and offering Bill Clinton tolerance, forgiveness, absolution.Admittedly some politically engaged Americans are too young to directly recall the Clinton presidency. But the Lewinsky affair still casts a meaningful cultural shadow, and many of the Trump trial’s headlines cast the prosecutors in a Kenneth Starr-like part. Nothing really new is being revealed about Trump’s conduct here; the country already knows that he’s a philanderer and scoundrel. Instead the revelations are about the seeming hypocrisy of his political enemies, and how easily the former Democratic indifference to lying-about-sex gave way to prurience when it offered a path to getting 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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      Ethics Panel Cautions Juan Merchan, Judge in Trump Trial, Over Political Donations

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      Justice Juan M. Merchan, the judge overseeing Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan, donated modest amounts to Democratic groups in 2020.A state ethics panel quietly dismissed a complaint last summer against the New York judge presiding over the criminal trial of Donald J. Trump, issuing a warning over small donations the judge had made to groups supporting Democrats, including the campaign of Joseph R. Biden Jr.The judge, Juan M. Merchan, donated a total of $35 to the groups in 2020, including a $15 donation earmarked for the Biden campaign, and $10 to a group called “Stop Republicans.”Political contributions of any kind are prohibited under state judicial ethics rules.“Justice Merchan said the complaint, from more than a year ago, was dismissed in July with a caution,” the spokesman for the court system, Al Baker, said in a statement.A caution does not include any penalty, but it can be considered in any future cases reviewed by the state’s Commission on Judicial Conduct. A letter outlining the caution was not released because of the commission’s rules, and Justice Merchan did not make the letter available.“The Commission on Judicial Conduct is governed by a confidentiality statute and cannot comment on nonpublic dispositions,” said Robert Tembeckjian, the commission’s administrator.The commission’s decision was first reported by Reuters.In its 2024 annual report, the commission said it was made aware of dozens of New York judges who had violated the rules against political contributions in recent years. Most were modest amounts, the report said, and many appeared to stem from the misperception that the rules only apply to state campaigns. In fact, judges are prohibited from contributing to any campaigns, including for federal office.“Like so much of the misconduct the Commission encounters, making a prohibited political contribution is a self-inflicted mistake,” the commission wrote in the report.For Justice Merchan, the stakes of such a mistake are considerably higher than most: He is the first judge in American history to preside over the criminal trial of a former president.The donations in part fueled Mr. Trump’s efforts to have Justice Merchan removed from the case before the trial began. Mr. Trump’s lawyers also focused on Justice Merchan’s adult daughter and her work at a Democratic consulting firm.But Justice Merchan declined to recuse himself, appeals court judges declined to step in, and the trial is now nearing its conclusion.The case centers on a hush-money payment to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, in the last days of the 2016 presidential campaign. Ms. Daniels says she had a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, but a $130,000 payment from Mr. Trump’s fixer bought her silence. Mr. Trump is accused of falsifying business records to cover up his reimbursement of the fixer, Michael D. Cohen, casting them as routine legal expenses.Mr. Trump has denied the accusations against him — and has lashed out at Justice Merchan and the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, who brought the case, noting that both are Democrats. More

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      Trump Plans a Campaign Event in the Deep Blue Bronx

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      Former President Donald J. Trump, who has been spending much of his time recently as a criminal defendant in a Manhattan courtroom, will be in a different New York borough next Thursday, when he will hold a campaign event in the Bronx.The gathering is scheduled to take place at Crotona Park, his campaign announced in a statement on Friday evening, declaring that Mr. Trump would “ease the financial pressures placed on households and re-establish law and order in New York!”It is an unusual location for a Republican presidential campaign event: The area went for President Biden by about 77 percentage points in the 2020 election. And despite a shift to the right in some of New York State’s congressional districts and neighborhoods, including in the Bronx, in recent years, the state as a whole is not considered a general-election battleground.But Mr. Trump’s aides have been discussing an event in the South Bronx for weeks. The gathering, they said, would not be a traditional rally.The idea has been to make appearances around New York City during Mr. Trump’s required attendance at his criminal trial in Manhattan, on charges he falsified business records to cover up a hush-money payment to a porn star during the 2016 presidential election.Last month, in his first campaign stop since the start of the trial, Mr. Trump visited a bodega in Harlem, attacking the district attorney prosecuting him and casting himself as tough on crime.The former president told donors at a Manhattan fund-raiser this week that he was planning something in the South Bronx, making a joke that he might get hurt in the neighborhood.“We’re going to have a tremendous rally. You may never see me again,” he said, prompting laughter, according to an attendee who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private event. “That could be a tricky one.”Representative Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat who represents the South Bronx, wrote on social media that the area had “no greater enemy than Donald Trump,” casting him as a threat to the social safety net “on which Bronx families depend for their survival.”“The South Bronx — the most Democratic area in the nation — will not buy the snake oil that he is selling,” Mr. Torres wrote. More

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      Transcript of Trump Manhattan Trial, May 16, 2024

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      M. Cohen
      –
      Cross/Blanche
      3839
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      And you had been hearing on television that they were
      dangling pardons. So, you directed your lawyer, hey, find out
      if I can get a pardon. I want this nightmare to end, right?
      A Not if I can get a pardon. If the President was going
      to be doing these pre-pardons.
      But you
      —
      you testified that you were 100 percent
      open to accepting it, anything to end this, right?
      8
      A
      Yes, sir.
      9
      And so
      —
      and you did that with a couple of your
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      A
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      A
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      lawyers, Mr. Ryan and Mr. Costello, correct?
      Mr. Costello was never my lawyer.
      Well, you asked Mr. Costello, putting aside whether he
      was your lawyer, you asked Mr. Costello to reach out to people
      in the administration, including Mr. Giuliani, about the
      possibility of a pardon?
      A We spoke about it.
      And as part of your conversation with him, you asked
      him to reach out to Mr. Giuliani and explore it, correct?
      Yes, sir.
      And so, when you testified under oath less than one
      year later, February, on February 27th, 2019, that you never
      asked for, nor would you ever accept a pardon, that was a lie,
      wasn’t it?
      24
      A
      At the time it was accurate.
      25
      Well, the very next day so, again, February 27th,
      Susan Pearce-Bates, RPR, CCR, RSA
      Principal Court Reporter More

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      In the Aging Senate, 80-Somethings Seeking Re-election Draw Little Criticism

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      While President Biden tries to assuage voter concerns about his age in a presidential race that includes the two oldest men ever to seek the White House, a couple of miles away in the U.S. Senate, the gerontocracy remains alive and well — and little commented upon.The recent news that two octogenarians — Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont, 82, and Angus King of Maine, 80 — are each running for another six-year term generated little in the way of criticism or worry over age of the kind that Mr. Biden has faced.Their races, which both men are likely to win, are a reminder of how the Senate’s roster is chock-full of lawmakers staying in office at an age when most people are well into retirement. At the start of this Congress last year, the average age of elected officials was 64 in the Senate and 57.9 in the House.“They’re not in short supply around here,” Senator Peter Welch of Vermont, 77, said of octogenarians.Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader who swept aside concerns about his health after experiencing two freezes on camera last year, plans to step down from leadership at the end of this year. But Mr. McConnell, 82, has not committed either way to retiring or running again when his term ends in 2027.President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump are the two oldest men ever to seek the White House.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesWe 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