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    Judge in Trump Trial Asks Media Not to Report Some Juror Information

    The judge in former President Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial ordered reporters to not disclose employment information about potential jurors after he excused a woman who said she was worried about her identity becoming known.The woman, who had been seated on the jury on Tuesday, told the judge that her friends and colleagues had warned her that she had been identified as a juror in the high-profile case. Although the judge has kept prospective jurors’ names private, some have disclosed their employers and other identifying information in court.She also said that she did not believe she could be impartial.The judge, Juan M. Merchan, promptly dismissed her.Moments later, Justice Merchan ordered the press to not report the answer to two queries on a lengthy questionnaire for prospective jurors: “Who is your current employer?” and “Who was your prior employer?”The judge conceded that the information about employers was necessary for lawyers to know. But he directed that those two answers be redacted from the transcript.Justice Merchan also said that he was concerned about news outlets publishing physical descriptions of prospective or seated jurors, asking reporters to “simply apply common sense.”“It serves no purpose,” Justice Merchan said about publishing physical descriptions, adding that he was directing the press to “refrain from writing about anything you observe with your eyes.”With the loss of the female juror on Thursday morning, six seated jurors remain.In early March, Justice Merchan issued an order prohibiting publicly disclosing the names of jurors, while allowing legal teams and the defendant to know their identities.But before the trial, Mr. Trump’s lawyers requested that potential jurors not be told that the jury would be anonymous unless he or she expressed concerns. Justice Merchan told the parties that he’d “make every effort to not unnecessarily alert the jurors” to this secrecy, merely telling jurors that they would be identified in court by a number.On Thursday, Justice Merchan seemed frustrated by news reports that included identifying characteristics of potential jurors that had been aired in open court. He said: “There’s a reason why this is an anonymous jury, and we’ve taken the measures we have taken.”“It kind of defeats the purpose of that when so much information is put out there,” he said.He added that “the press can write about anything the attorney and the courts discuss and anything you observe us do.”But he also said he had the legal authority to prevent reporters from relaying employer information on prospective jurors. He added that “if you can’t stick to that, we’re going to have to see if there is anything else we can do to keep the jurors safe.” More

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    Trump Demands a Cut of Donations From Campaigns That Use His Name

    The presidential campaign of former President Donald J. Trump said in a letter to Republican vendors that candidates may use his name, image and likeness in campaign materials only if they send at least 5 percent of donations that they receive to Mr. Trump’s campaign.The move in effect imposes a tax on using the Trump brand for campaign purposes. Mr. Trump has sought to close a significant financial gap between him and President Biden, his Democratic rival. The Biden campaign and its political committees reported $192 million in cash on hand at the end of March, more than double the $93 million of Trump and the Republican Party.Danielle Alvarez, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, said in a statement that “it is important to protect small-dollar donors from scammers that use the president’s name and likeness.”In a letter this week signed by Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, who identified themselves as co-campaign managers, the campaign also said it was tightening control of campaign materials that use Mr. Trump’s name, prohibiting strident language that has become common in donor appeals such as “President Trump needs you” or “If you support President Trump, you’ll contribute now.”The letter said the messaging guidelines were part of an effort “to treat our donors with the utmost respect.” After Mr. Trump appeared in court on Monday, the campaign sent a fund-raising pitch falsely claiming in all-capital letters that Mr. Trump had “just stormed out of Biden’s kangaroo court!” Mr. Trump had not actually stormed out of the Manhattan courthouse.The letter added that the campaign would punish campaign vendors if candidates whom they worked with did not comply with the new rules.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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    The Kamala Harris Moment Has Arrived

    One of Kamala Harris’s most memorable moments during the 2020 presidential election cycle was when, during a Democratic primary debate, she sharply criticized Joe Biden for working with segregationists in the Senate in their shared opposition to busing.She personalized her criticism, saying: “There was a little girl in California who was a part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.”The power in the attack was not only the point being made but that she — a person affected from a group affected — was making it. Although some of Biden’s defenders saw her remark as a gratuitous broadside, there was an authenticity to the way she confronted the issue.The verbal jab also aligned with the national zeitgeist at a time when calls for racial justice and the Black Lives Matter movement were ascendant.She ticked up in the polls, and donations poured in. Ultimately, her candidacy didn’t catch fire, but the following summer, Biden, the eventual nominee, made a historic offer to Harris to join his ticket, leading to her becoming the first woman, first Black person and first Asian American to be vice president.Fast-forward to now, when Vice President Harris has served nearly a full term alongside President Biden, and she is moving into another moment when the political stars are aligned for her as the perfect messenger on a subject that has fixed Americans’ attention and is central in the 2024 presidential campaign: reproductive rights.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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    Trump Leaves His Trial to Rail Against Crime and Jab at Prosecutor

    In his first campaign stop since his criminal trial in Manhattan began, former President Donald J. Trump on Tuesday visited a bodega in Harlem where he made a pointed attack on the district attorney prosecuting him and portrayed himself as tough on crime, a central theme of his 2024 run.His visit to the store — the site of a case that prompted political controversy for Manhattan’s district attorney when an employee was charged after fatally stabbing a man after a confrontation — made for a striking juxtaposition.After spending much of the day in a Manhattan courtroom as a criminal defendant, Mr. Trump immediately traveled uptown both to criticize the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, for being too lenient on crime and to play up his “law and order” message.Mr. Trump has for months tried to draw a distinction between his frequently expressed tough-on-crime stance and the felony charges he faces in four separate cases. Outside the bodega, he again tried to dismiss his charges as political persecution, arguing that Mr. Bragg was too focused on Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign sex scandal cover-up trial and was ignoring crime in the city.“It’s Alvin Bragg’s fault,” Mr. Trump said. “Alvin Bragg does nothing.”Though Mr. Trump is prevented by a gag order from attacking witnesses, prosecutors and jurors in his New York case, the order does not cover Mr. Bragg or the judge overseeing his trial.Before he arrived at the bodega, his campaign attacked Mr. Bragg over his handling of the 2022 incident, in which Jose Alba, a clerk, was charged with second-degree murder after stabbing a man, Austin Simon, in an altercation.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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    Melania Trump Avoids Hush-Money Trial but Shares Her Husband’s Anger

    Melania Trump has long referred to the hush-money case involving Stormy Daniels as her husband’s problem, not hers. But she has privately called the trial a “disgrace” that could threaten his campaign.In January 2018, when she first saw reports that her husband had paid off a porn star, Melania Trump was furious. She jetted off to Palm Beach, leaving the president to languish in Washington. She eventually returned, only to take a separate car to Donald J. Trump’s first State of the Union address.As a criminal trial against Mr. Trump opened on Monday, on charges that he had falsified records to cover up that sex scandal involving Stormy Daniels, Mrs. Trump did not appear. She has long privately referred to the case involving Ms. Daniels as “his problem” and not hers.But Mrs. Trump, the former first lady, shares his view that the trial itself is unfair, according to several people familiar with her thinking.In private, she has called the proceedings “a disgrace” tantamount to election interference, according to a person with direct knowledge of her comments who could not speak publicly out of fear of jeopardizing a personal relationship with the Trumps.She may support her husband, but Mrs. Trump, whose daily news habit involves scouring headlines for coverage of herself, is bound to see headlines involving Mr. Trump and Ms. Daniels that could reopen old wounds. On Monday, Justice Juan M. Merchan, the judge presiding over the case, also said that Mrs. Trump could be among the potential witnesses as the trial gets underway.All of this could put Mr. Trump on shaky ground with his wife, who has defended him in some critical moments — including when he bragged on tape about grabbing women by their genitals — and withheld her public support in others, like when she did not appear alongside him as he locked up victories on Super Tuesday.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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    Inside the Manhattan Courtroom Where Trump Is on Trial

    Protesters railed outside, media and security swarmed the area, and inside the courtroom, Donald J. Trump appeared to nod off.It was about 2:30 on Monday afternoon when the first 96 potential jurors filed into a drab courtroom in Lower Manhattan to encounter the world’s most famous defendant: Donald J. Trump.Some craned their necks to catch a glimpse, an indication of the undeniable power of Mr. Trump’s celebrity.But not long after, more than 50 of those same prospective jurors — drawn from one of the nation’s most liberal counties — were dismissed because they said they could not be impartial about the 45th president.The beginning of the first criminal trial of a former American president drew intense security, loud demonstrations and smothering media coverage to a dingy Lower Manhattan courthouse that will be the unlikely center of American politics for the next six weeks.Who Are Key Players in the Trump Manhattan Criminal Trial?The first criminal trial of former President Donald J. Trump began Monday. Take a closer look at central figures related to the case.And if the first day is any indication, the trial may well be a surreal experience, juxtaposing the case’s mundane-sounding criminal charges — falsifying business records — against the potentially seismic effect it could have on the presidential race.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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    With Nuclear Deal Dead, Containing Iran Grows More Fraught

    The U.S., Europe, Russia and China worked together on a 2015 deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program. The arrangement’s unraveling and the spike in superpower tensions make this a dangerous moment.When Iran agreed to a deal in 2015 that would require it to surrender 97 percent of the uranium it could use to make nuclear bombs, Russia and China worked alongside the United States and Europe to get the pact done.The Russians even took Iran’s nuclear fuel, for a hefty fee, prompting celebratory declarations that President Vladimir V. Putin could cooperate with the West on critical security issues and help constrain a disruptive regime in a volatile region.A lot has changed in the subsequent nine years. China and Russia are now more aligned with Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” to an American-led order, along with the likes of North Korea. When President Biden gathered the leaders of six nations for a video call from the White House on Sunday to plot a common strategy for de-escalating the crisis between Israel and Iran, there was no chance of getting anyone from Beijing or Moscow on the screen.The disappearance of that unified front is one of the many factors that make this moment seems “particularly dangerous,” said Vali Nasr, an Iranian-born professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, “maybe the most dangerous in decades.”But it is hardly the only one.President Donald J. Trump’s decision to pull out of the Obama-era nuclear deal triggered a predictable counterreaction from Tehran, and after a long pause, Iran resumed enriching uranium — some to near-bomb-grade quality. Today it is far closer to producing a bomb than it was when the accord was in effect.Iran has moved forward with its ballistic missile programs, and some of those weapons were used against Israel this weekend.Arash Khamooshi 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

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    Sununu Says Trump ‘Contributed’ to Insurrection, but Still Has His Support

    Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire said on Sunday that former President Donald J. Trump “absolutely contributed” to an insurrection and that Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election were “absolutely terrible” — but that nothing, not even felony convictions, would stop him from voting for Mr. Trump because the economy, border security and “culture change” were more important.The interview, on ABC News’s “This Week,” showcased Mr. Sununu’s transformation from Trump critic — while supporting Nikki Haley in the Republican primary, he said Mr. Trump was “worried about jail time” and “not a real Republican” — to loyal foot soldier.It is a transformation that has repeated itself time and again within the Republican Party, and one that Mr. Sununu previewed in January, when he was campaigning for Ms. Haley but said he would support Mr. Trump if he won the nomination.“No one should be surprised by my support,” he said on Sunday. “I think the real discussion is, you know, Americans moving away from Biden. That’s how bad Biden has become as president. There’s just no doubt about it, right? You can’t ignore inflation. You can’t ignore the border and say that these issues in the courthouse are going to be the one thing that brings Biden back into office.”The interviewer, George Stephanopoulos, pressed Mr. Sununu on why he was supporting a man who he said had “contributed to the insurrection” on Jan. 6.Mr. Sununu affirmed that he still believed that. But he said it shouldn’t surprise anyone that a Republican governor would support a Republican nominee, and suggested that Mr. Stephanopoulos was out of touch with public opinion if he thought concerns about democracy or felony convictions would sway voters.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