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      Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce and a MAGA Meltdown

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      The fulminations surrounding the world’s biggest pop icon — and girlfriend of Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce — reached the stratosphere after Kansas City made it to the Super Bowl.For football fans eager to see a new team in the Super Bowl, the conference championship games on Sunday that sent the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers back to the main event of American sports culture were sorely disappointing.But one thing is new: Taylor Swift. And she is driving the movement behind Donald Trump bonkers.The fulminations surrounding the world’s biggest pop icon — and girlfriend of Travis Kelce, the Chiefs’ star tight end — reached the stratosphere after Kansas City made it to the Super Bowl for the fourth time in five years, and the first time since Ms. Swift joined the team’s entourage.The conspiracy theories coming out of the Make America Great Again contingent were already legion: that Ms. Swift is a secret agent of the Pentagon; that she is bolstering her fan base in preparation for her endorsement of President Biden’s re-election; or that she and Mr. Kelce are a contrived couple, assembled to boost the N.F.L. or Covid vaccines or Democrats or whatever.“I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month,” Vivek Ramaswamy, the conspiratorial presidential candidate, turned Trump surrogate, pondered on social media on Monday. “And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall.”The pro-Trump broadcaster Mike Crispi led off on Sunday by claiming that the National Football League is “rigged” in order to spread “Democrat propaganda”: “Calling it now: KC wins, goes to Super Bowl, Swift comes out at the halftime show and ‘endorses’ Joe Biden with Kelce at midfield.”Other detractors of Ms. Swift among Mr. Trump’s biggest fans include one of his lawyers, Alina Habba, one of his biggest conspiracy theorists, Jack Posobiec, and other MAGA luminaries like Laura Loomer and Charlie Kirk, who leads a pro-Trump youth organization, Turning Point USA.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 Rages at U.A.W. President After Biden Endorsement

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      A few days after the United Auto Workers endorsed President Biden for re-election, former President Donald J. Trump raged at the union’s leader, Shawn Fain, on Sunday night.Mr. Trump wrote on his social media platform that Mr. Fain “is selling the Automobile Industry right into the big, powerful, hands of China.”He claimed that Mr. Biden’s support for electric vehicles would destroy the American auto industry and send jobs overseas. “Shawn Fain doesn’t understand this or have a clue,” he wrote. “Get rid of this dope & vote for DJT. I will bring the Automobile Industry back to our Country.”The provocation for Mr. Trump’s comments appeared to be a CBS News interview on Sunday in which Mr. Fain said that Mr. Biden had “a history of serving others and serving the working class,” while Mr. Trump had “a history of serving himself and standing for the billionaire class.”Mr. Fain also emphasized Mr. Biden’s decision to meet with striking U.A.W. workers in September, which made him the first sitting president to join a picket line. Mr. Trump has sought to position himself as a champion of the workers’ interests, and he tried to court blue-collar workers with a speech the same week — but at a nonunion factory.Michael Tyler, a spokesman for Mr. Biden’s campaign, said in a statement, “Apparently losing the U.A.W. endorsement to Joe Biden has left Donald Trump’s wounded ego with quite the SCAB.” He argued that the corporate tax changes Mr. Trump signed as president had themselves encouraged companies to move jobs overseas. 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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      Nikki Haley Isn’t Going Anywhere

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      What is Nikki Haley doing? What are her real intentions? Those questions have dominated every aspect of her candidacy.So much of what’s been said about Ms. Haley the last few months has been about what she’ll do after she loses — even that the original premise of the campaign must have contained hidden ambitions or total delusion. There’s been an assumption, even from would-be allies, that there must be another angle to the campaign, that she must want the vice presidency.That’s partly because, in her speeches, Ms. Haley often resists giving her listeners satisfaction, withholding the obvious point, allowing them to fill in what they want, both to Ms. Haley’s benefit and peril. She did not make a strong moral case against Donald Trump last year.But here we are after her big loss in New Hampshire, framed by many as the definitive end. Right now, Ms. Haley’s unwillingness to publicly engage with the obvious works differently, reveals different things.For instance, in a hotel ballroom by the Charleston, S.C., airport, with people decked out in “SC ❤️ NH” stickers, cheerfully wanting something they and everybody else know they probably won’t get, she proceeded as normal, giving that homecoming crowd primarily her normal remarks. She layered in critiques of Mr. Trump that dealt with inarguable surface realities, like how he talked about her the night before rather than about solutions to the nation’s problems: “He didn’t talk about the American people once; he talked about revenge!” (When she ran through a variety of problems he could have talked about, one woman yelled, “He don’t know!”)Insofar as she engaged with the obvious, literal reason that people in the room seemed so amped — that she was still in the race — it was this: “You know, the political elites, in this state and around the country, have said that we just need to let Donald Trump have this.” That was clearly what people in the room, who dropped into a long “noooo,” had come to hear discussed.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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      In South Carolina, Biden Tries to Persuade Black Voters to Reject Trump

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      President Biden sought to energize his base in the state that propelled him to the White House, but some local leaders said he needed to do more to highlight his achievements.Hoping to revitalize the momentum that propelled him to the White House, President Biden told a largely Black audience on Saturday night that “you’re the reason Donald Trump is a defeated former president,” in what was effectively his first appearance related to the Democratic primaries.Mr. Biden made clear in his remarks at a South Carolina Democratic Party dinner in Columbia, S.C., that he viewed the forthcoming week as not just a contest but a pivotal moment to energize a frustrated base of Black voters across the nation. And in the run-up to the state’s Feb. 3 Democratic presidential primary, which the party’s national committee selected last year to be the first in the nation, Democrats believe they have entered an opportune time.With former President Donald J. Trump having won both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary for the Republican nomination, Mr. Biden’s allies plan to emphasize not just the president’s record but also the urgency of the moment: The general election effectively starts now, they say.“He has made it known what he’s going to do if he gets back into office,” Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, said of Mr. Trump in an interview. “And to see that blooming as a possibility and see him running as well as he is in the polls, I’m concerned about it.”“Do what you did before,” Mr. Clyburn said in an appeal to the Black electorate. “Turn that election around and save this democracy.”The sense of urgency is rooted in rising concerns over polls showing Mr. Biden underperforming among Black voters in battleground states, particularly among men. Some Democrats are also concerned that the high death toll in Gaza resulting from Israel’s offensive against Hamas will fuel frustration among younger voters. Twice during Saturday’s event, protesters shouting the number of civilian casualties in Gaza were removed, as attendees chanted over them, “Four more years!”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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      Key Network of Republican Megadonors to Meet With Trump and Haley Camps

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      Assessing the presidential race, the American Opportunity Alliance has invited representatives from both the Trump and Haley campaigns to make their pitches at a meeting next week.A network of Republican megadonors has invited aides to both Donald J. Trump and Nikki Haley to make presentations at the group’s winter meeting next week, as the wealthy contributors assess the presidential race with just nine months until Election Day.The network, known as the American Opportunity Alliance, is expected to hear from Ms. Haley’s campaign manager, Betsy Ankney, and Mr. Trump’s top adviser, Susie Wiles, at the gathering in Palm Beach, Fla., according to two people familiar with the event.The group’s meeting was reported earlier by Puck.The network was founded a decade ago by a group of wealthy donors, including members of the Ricketts family, which owns the Chicago Cubs, and the investors Paul Singer and Kenneth Griffin.But the donors in the American Opportunity Alliance do not move in unison, and people supporting Ms. Haley — and who had supported Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who dropped out of the race last Sunday — are part of the network. Some members of the group have been open about wanting a candidate other than Mr. Trump.But even when officials representing Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis presented at the group’s meeting in Dallas in early October — when their campaigns were the only two whose advisers had been invited — some people working with A.O.A. were clear that the focus was more on the general election than on the primary cycle. A Republican strategist working with the group called Mr. Trump’s path to the nomination “straightforward” at the time.Since then, Mr. Trump has won both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, beating Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley in the first contest and Ms. Haley in the second, despite having little by way of major donor money. He also has some supporters who have worked with A.O.A. in the past, such as Linda McMahon, who led the Small Business Administration under President 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?  More

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      E. Jean Carroll Promises to Do ‘Something Good’ With Money Won From Trump

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      The writer was awarded $83.3 million for his defamation. Now, she will have to figure out how to use it.As soon as E. Jean Carroll heard the verdict on Friday — $83.3 million in defamation damages against Donald J. Trump — a world of possibility opened before her: How to use the money?The amount vastly eclipsed the $5 million awarded to her by a jury last spring in a different trial against Mr. Trump. It could take years before she sees the money, as Mr. Trump has said he will appeal, but she is already considering how she might use the money once she obtains it.“I’m not going to waste a cent of this,” she said. “We’re going to do something good with it.”Figuring that out will take some time, she added. But she will splurge on one luxury, she said — for her Great Pyrenees and her pit bull. “I’m going to be able to buy some premium dog food now,” she said.Ms. Carroll, appearing relaxed and happy in her lawyers’ offices on Saturday, spoke in her first interview since the Manhattan jury’s award in her favor a day earlier.Ms. Carroll, 80, sued Mr. Trump, 77, for defamation after he called her a liar in June 2019, when she first publicly accused him, in a magazine article, of sexually assaulting her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room decades earlier. Mr. Trump continued to attack Ms. Carroll, in posts on his Truth Social website that lasted right into the trial, as well as in news conferences and on the campaign trial.After the verdict on Friday, Mr. Trump, issued a new attack on social media: “Our Legal System is out of control, and being used as a Political Weapon.” But he avoided criticizing Ms. Carroll, a silence that spoke volumes. Ms. Carroll said she was not ready to assume that the former president was finished with her.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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      Nikki Haley Was Target of ‘Swatting’ Incident in December, Authorities Say

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      A bogus account of a shooting at a South Carolina home owned by Nikki Haley sent the authorities scrambling in late December, but the Republican presidential candidate and a former governor of the state, was not there at the time, Reuters reported on Saturday.The news service published details about the Dec. 30 “swatting” incident at Ms. Haley’s home on Kiawah Island, S.C., one intended to draw a heavily armed law enforcement response. Reuters obtained the information as part of a public records request, which included an email from Craig Harris, the town’s public safety director, discussing the incident with local officials.The email said that an unknown person had called 911 and “claimed to have shot his girlfriend and threatened to harm himself while at the residence of Nikki Haley.” The case remains under investigation, according to the email, which did not discuss a motive for the call.The details of the incident took nearly a month to emerge, a stark contrast to a series of high-profile “swatting” attempts that targeted politicians and government buildings in late December and early January.The Haley campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday. When reached by Reuters, the campaign declined to address the report.Ms. Haley, who served as ambassador to the United Nations in former President Donald J. Trump’s administration, is the last serious candidate battling him for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. She lost to Mr. Trump in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday by 11 percentage points, and they have increasingly clashed over her decision to stay in the 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?  More