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      Hearings in Two Trump Jan. 6 Cases Set for Monday

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      Proceedings before federal judges in Washington and Atlanta could begin to address some of the many complexities and scheduling challenges in the cases against the former president.By the end of Monday, another piece could be put in place in the complicated jigsaw puzzle of the four criminal cases facing former President Donald J. Trump: A date could be chosen for Mr. Trump’s federal trial on charges of seeking to overturn the 2020 election.At a hearing on Monday morning in Federal District Court in Washington, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan was considering widely differing proposals for the date of the trial, and could select one.In dueling court papers filed this month, the government and Mr. Trump’s lawyers each proposed ambitious schedules for the trial, with prosecutors asking for the case to be put before a jury as early as Jan. 2 and the defense requesting that it be put off for more than two years, until April 2026. As Judge Chutkan considered the arguments, another legal proceeding related to Mr. Trump was set to play out on Monday in federal court in Atlanta, underscoring the complexity of bringing the charges against him to trial.Fani T. Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., recently proposed starting a trial in her case against Mr. Trump, on charges of tampering with the 2020 election in that state, in March. But that date remains somewhat uncertain not only because of the jockeying among prosecutors over the timing of the different cases, but also because some of Mr. Trump’s 18 co-defendants in the case have asked for the trial to start as early as this fall while others want to slow things down.At the same time Judge Chutkan took the bench in Washington, a federal judge in Atlanta was scheduled to hold a hearing to determine if one of those co-defendants in the Georgia case, Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s final White House chief of staff, can remove his charges from the state judicial system and have them heard in federal court.Mr. Meadows has argued that he is immune to the state charges because all of the acts underlying the accusations against him were performed as part of his official duties as a federal official. But prosecutors working for Ms. Willis have countered that the charges relate to Mr. Meadows’s political activities during a re-election campaign, which fall outside of his formal government responsibilities.Mr. Meadows was on the line in January 2021, when Mr. Trump placed a call to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, asking him to “find” enough votes for Mr. Trump to win the election there. Prosecutors issued a subpoena last week to have Mr. Raffensperger, among others, testify at the hearing in Atlanta.In most legal proceedings, the selection of a trial date is a largely mundane matter, depending on the number of defendants, the amount of evidence, and the schedules of the judge, prosecutors and defense lawyers.But the timetables for Mr. Trump’s four trials have taken on outsize importance. That is not only because there are so many of them, each one needing a slot, but also because they are unfolding against Mr. Trump’s crowded calendar as the candidate leading the field for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination.As a further complication, Mr. Trump has made no secret in private conversations with his aides of his desire to solve his jumble of legal problems by winning the election. If either of the two federal trials he is confronting is delayed until after the race and Mr. Trump prevails, he could seek to pardon himself after taking office or have his attorney general simply dismiss the matters altogether.At Monday’s hearing in Washington on the federal election charges, Judge Chutkan has said she also intends to discuss a schedule for handling the small amount of classified material that may emerge as evidence in the case. If she ultimately agrees to the government’s request to start the trial in January, it would be the first of Mr. Trump’s four cases to be tested in a courtroom.Prosecutors from the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, brought the case early this month, filing an indictment against Mr. Trump in Washington after months of intense investigation. The indictment charges the former president with three overlapping conspiracies to defraud the United States, to obstruct the certification of the election during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, and to deprive people of the right to have their votes counted.Another one of Mr. Trump’s trials, in which he has been charged with 34 felonies connected to hush money payments to a porn star in the run-up to the 2016 election, is set to start in March in a state court in Manhattan. Another, in which he stands accused of illegally retaining dozens of classified documents after leaving office, is set to go before a jury in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., near the end of May. More

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      Americans Still Put Their Trust in Juries. Will Trump’s Trials Break That Faith?

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      A new survey provides a portrait of the type of American who serves on a jury and a rare window into the thoughts of the kinds of people who may decide Donald Trump’s fate.At a time when trust in institutions is at an all-time low, Americans still seem to have faith in their fellow citizens serving on juries.Nearly 60 percent of Americans say they have at least a fair amount of trust in juries, according to a new survey — higher than for any other group in the judicial system.But that trust may soon be put to the test, as former President Donald J. Trump appears to be headed for multiple trials in the coming year.When asked specifically about Mr. Trump’s upcoming trials, a majority of Americans — Democrats, Republicans and independents — said they did not think the courts would be able to seat impartial jurors.And those jurors will, no doubt, face intense scrutiny, which for many is reason enough to not want to serve. In fact, a majority of Americans said they were not personally interested in serving on a jury for Mr. Trump.The study, conducted in July by the polling firm Ipsos, focused on Americans who have served on a jury at some point in the last 10 years, providing a portrait of the type of American who serves and a rare window into the thoughts of the kinds of people who may decide Mr. Trump’s fate.It found that jurors were far more likely than the general public to trust those in the criminal justice system, such as judges at the federal, state, and Supreme Court level, attorneys, nonlegal staff members and law enforcement.The demographics of those who have served also differ notably from those of the general public. They are more likely to be older, wealthier and more educated. Two thirds of those who have served on a jury are over 50, compared with less than half of the general public. Former jurors skew slightly more Democratic than all Americans, and men are more likely than women to have served.But it appeared that the elevated levels of trust in the judicial system displayed by former jurors (the survey did not ask about nonlegal groups and institutions, such as Congress) were more a result of the jurors’ experience within the system than a reflection of their differing demographics.Jurors were 20 percentage points more likely than Americans overall to say they trusted defense attorneys, and 30 percentage points more likely to say they trusted prosecuting attorneys such as district or state attorneys.Jurors were also more likely than members of the general public to say that they trust judges, though a partisan gap emerged when they were asked about their trust in Supreme Court justices, with Republicans expressing more trust than Democrats. That partisan divide largely did not exist among jurors, or the general public, when asked about state and federal judges.“Having interviewed many jurors, their jury service does bring a more positive view of the system,” said Stephen Adler, the former editor in chief of Reuters and legal reporter who wrote a book about the jury system, “The Jury: Trial and Error in the American Courtroom,” and worked with Ipsos on the study.“If you’re sitting on a jury, even for a day or two, you get a window into a very serious and focused environment” Mr. Adler said. “Having that actual contact makes people, regardless of their preconceived notions, feel better about every actor in the process, all the way up to the judges.”Even as 58 percent of Americans trusted juries, 71 percent of Americans — including a majority of Democrats and Republicans — said they were not confident the courts would be able to find jurors “willing to put aside their prior beliefs about Donald Trump and decide the case based on the evidence presented.”And when asked about how different groups get treated by the justice system, 71 percent of Americans said current or former elected officials get special breaks, including similar shares of Democrats and Republicans. Jurors were even more likely than nonjurors to think officials get special treatment.The only group that the public at large was more likely to think got special treatment was wealthy people.Mr. Trump’s upcoming trials will pull jurors from the places where the cases were filed, and, depending on the location, the makeup of the jury pool could prove challenging for the former president. In the case in Georgia, potential jurors would come from left-leaning Fulton County. The federal case over the events of Jan. 6, 2021, will be held in Washington, a liberal city where the day is still remembered viscerally, and the hush money case involving Stormy Daniels will be held in Manhattan, also known for being highly Democratic in makeup. The classified documents case, however, is likely to take place in Fort Pierce, Fla., and the jury will likely be pulled from the surrounding counties, all of which Mr. Trump won in 2020.Prosecutors and defense attorneys will surely be very careful in jury selection. In the cases, prosecutors will need a unanimous verdict to succeed; for Mr. Trump to secure a mistrial, he needs just one holdout.Mr. Adler points out that political views are not disqualifying. “The law doesn’t say you have to know nothing about the case,” he said. “The law says that you have to be able to be fair and impartial.”Americans were split regarding their own interest in serving on any of the Trump juries. A little over 50 percent said they were not personally interested in serving, with little difference along partisan lines.Prior jury service did not increase Americans’ expectations that Trump could get a fair jury, but former jurors were more open to jumping into the ring themselves: Just over half said they would be interested in serving on a jury for one of his trials. More

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      How Free Speech and Willful Blindness Will Play Out in the Trump Prosecution

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      More than a decade ago, a divided Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Alvarez that an elected member of a district water board in California could not be prosecuted criminally for lying to an audience about winning the Medal of Honor. The court ruled that efforts to criminalize mere lying, without linking the lie to an attempt to gain a material advantage, posed an unacceptable threat to robust exercise of First Amendment rights.Given that decision, Jack Smith, the special prosecutor investigating former President Donald Trump, was right in concluding that Mr. Trump has a First Amendment right to lie to the general public.So, where’s the legal beef in the indictment arising from the events that culminated in the storming of the Capitol brought by Mr. Smith against Mr. Trump? It’s in the fact that Mr. Smith isn’t merely charging the former president with lying; he is contending that Mr. Trump lied to gain an unlawful benefit — a second term in office after voters showed him the exit. That kind of speech-related behavior falls comfortably within what the justices call “categorical exceptions” to the First Amendment like true threats, incitements, obscenity, depictions of child sexual abuse, fighting words, libel, fraud and speech incident to criminal conduct.As the court put it in 1949 in the case of Giboney v. Empire Storage and Ice Co., “it rarely has been suggested that the constitutional freedom for speech and press extends its immunity to speech or writing used as an integral part of conduct in violation of a valid criminal statute.”That is why Mr. Smith will most likely seek to prove that the former president was engaged in “speech incident to criminal conduct” when he and his co-conspirators lied to state legislators, state election officials, gullible supporters, Justice Department lawyers and Vice President Mike Pence in an illegal effort to prevent Joe Biden from succeeding him as president. Since Mr. Trump is charged with, among other crimes, conspiracy to defraud the United States and to deprive people of the right to have their votes counted, Mr. Smith would clearly be right in arguing that the Alvarez decision doesn’t apply.Characterizing Mr. Trump’s words as “speech incident to criminal conduct” would neatly solve Mr. Smith’s First Amendment problem, but at a substantial cost to the prosecution. To win a conviction, the government must persuade 12 jurors to peer inside Mr. Trump’s head and find beyond a reasonable doubt that he knew he was lying when he claimed to be the winner of the 2020 election. If Mr. Trump actually believed his false assertions, his speech was not “incident to criminal conduct.”How can Mr. Smith persuade 12 jurors that no reasonable doubt exists that Mr. Trump knew he was lying? The prosecution will, no doubt, barrage the jury with reams of testimony showing that the former president was repeatedly told by every reputable adviser and administration official that no credible evidence of widespread electoral fraud existed, and that Mr. Pence had no choice but to certify Mr. Biden as the winner.But there also will likely be evidence that fervent supporters of Mr. Trump’s efforts fed his narcissism with bizarre false tales of result-changing electoral fraud, and frivolous legal theories justifying interference with Mr. Biden’s certification as president-elect. Those supporters could include Rudy Giuliani; Sidney Powell, a lawyer and purveyor of wild conspiracy theories; Jeffrey Clark, the acting head of the Justice Department’s civil division, who apparently plotted with Mr. Trump to unseat the acting attorney general and take control of the department; and John Eastman, the lawyer who hatched the plan that Mr. Pence refused to follow to keep Mr. Trump in power.Maybe Mr. Trump himself will swear to his good faith belief that he won. With all that conflicting testimony, how is a conscientious juror to decide for sure what was really going on inside his head?The answer lies in the Supreme Court’s doctrine of “willful blindness.” A dozen years ago, in the case of Global-Tech Appliances v. SEB, Justice Samuel Alito, writing for all but one justice, ruled that proof of willful blindness is the legal equivalent of proving guilty knowledge.As Justice Alito explained it: “Many criminal statutes require proof that a defendant acted knowingly or willfully, and courts applying the doctrine of willful blindness hold that defendants cannot escape the reach of these statutes by deliberately shielding themselves from clear evidence of critical facts that are strongly suggested by the circumstances.”In other words, when a defendant, like Mr. Trump, is on notice of the potential likelihood of an inconvenient fact (Mr. Biden’s legitimate victory), and closes his eyes to overwhelming evidence of that fact, the “willfully blind” defendant is just as guilty as if he actually knew the fact. While this argument is not a slam dunk, there’s an excellent chance that 12 jurors will find, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Mr. Trump hid from the truth by adopting willful blindness.Burt Neuborne is a professor emeritus at New York University Law School, where he was the founding legal director of the Brennan Center for Justice. He was the national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1981 to 1986.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, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      A Former French President Gives a Voice to Obstinate Russian Sympathies

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      Remarks by Nicolas Sarkozy have raised fears that Europe’s pro-Putin chorus may grow louder as Ukraine’s plodding counteroffensive puts pressure on Western resolve.PARIS — Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French president, was once known as “Sarko the American” for his love of free markets, freewheeling debate and Elvis. Of late, however, he has appeared more like “Sarko the Russian,” even as President Vladimir V. Putin’s ruthlessness appears more evident than ever.In interviews coinciding with the publication of a memoir, Mr. Sarkozy, who was president from 2007 to 2012, said that reversing Russia’s annexation of Crimea was “illusory,” ruled out Ukraine joining the European Union or NATO because it must remain “neutral,” and insisted that Russia and France “need each other.”“People tell me Vladimir Putin isn’t the same man that I met. I don’t find that convincing. I’ve had tens of conversations with him. He is not irrational,” he told Le Figaro. “European interests aren’t aligned with American interests this time,” he added.His statements, to the newspaper as well as the TF1 television network, were unusual for a former president in that they are profoundly at odds with official French policy. They provoked outrage from the Ukrainian ambassador to France and condemnation from several French politicians, including President Emmanuel Macron.The remarks also underscored the strength of the lingering pockets of pro-Putin sympathy that persist in Europe. Those voices have been muffled since Europe forged a unified stand against Russia, through successive rounds of economic sanctions against Moscow and military aid to Kyiv.The possibility they may grow louder appears to have risen as Ukraine’s counteroffensive has proved underwhelming so far. “The fact the counteroffensive has not worked up to now means a very long war of uncertain outcome,” said Nicole Bacharan, a political scientist at Sciences Po, a university in Paris. “There is the risk of political and financial weariness among Western powers that would weaken Ukraine.”A destroyed bridge in Bohorodychne, Ukraine. It is now used as a foot crossing for residents.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesIn France, Germany, Italy and elsewhere, not even the evident atrocities of the Russian onslaught against Ukraine have stripped away the affinity for Russia traditionally found on the far right and far left. This also extends at times to establishment politicians like Mr. Sarkozy, who feel some ideological kinship with Moscow, blame NATO expansion eastward for the war, or eye monetary gain.From Germany, where former Social Democrat Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is the most prominent Putin supporter, to Italy where a former prime minister, Giuseppe Conte of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement has spoken out against arms shipments to Ukraine, some politicians seem unswerving in their support for Mr. Putin.France, like Germany, has always had a significant number of Russophiles and admirers of Mr. Putin, whatever his amply illustrated readiness to eliminate opponents — most recently, it seems, his sometime sidekick turned upstart rival, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, who led a brief mutiny two months ago.The sympathizers range from Mr. Sarkozy’s Gaullist center right, with its simmering resentment of American power in Europe and admiration for strong leaders, to Marine Le Pen’s far right, enamored of Mr. Putin’s stand for family, faith and fatherland against a supposedly decadent West. The extreme left, in a hangover from Soviet times, also has a lingering sympathy for Russia that the 18-month-long war has not eradicated.Still Mr. Sarkozy’s outspokenness was striking, as was his unequivocal pro-Russian tone and provocative timing.“Gaullist equidistance between the United States and Russia is an old story, but what Sarkozy said was shocking,” Ms. Bacharan said. “We are at war and democracies stand with Ukraine, while the autocracies of the world are with Mr. Putin.”The obstinacy of the French right’s emotional bond with Russia owes much to a recurrent Gallic great-power itch and to the resentment of the extent of American postwar dominance, evident in the current French-led quest for European “strategic autonomy.” Even President Macron, a centrist, said as recently as 2019 that “Russia is European, very profoundly so, and we believe in this Europe that stretches from Lisbon to Vladivostok.”President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, left, during a meeting with President Emmanuel Macron of France in Moscow in February 2022.Sputnik, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWith Mr. Putin, Russian rapprochement has also been about money. Ms. Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party took a Russian loan; former Prime Minister François Fillon joined the boards of two Russian firms (before quitting last year in protest at the war); and Mr. Sarkozy himself has been under investigation since 2021 over a €3 million, or about $3.2 million, contract with a Russian insurance company.This financial connection with Moscow has undermined Mr. Sarkozy’s credibility, but not made him less vocal.He urged Mr. Macron, with whom he regularly confers, to “renew dialogue” with Mr. Putin, called for the “ratification” of Crimea’s annexation through an internationally supervised referendum, and said referendums should also be organized in the eastern Donbas region to settle how land there is divided between Ukraine and Russia.Rather than occupied territory, the Donbas is clearly negotiable territory to Mr. Sarkozy; as for Crimea, it’s part of Russia. Dmitri Medvedev, the former Russian president and now virulent assailant of the West, hailed Mr. Sarkozy’s “good sense” in opposing those who provide missiles “to the Nazis of Kyiv.”Commenting on Mr. Sarkozy in the daily Libération, the journalist Serge July wrote: “Realism suggests that the meager results of the Ukrainian counteroffensive have suddenly redrawn the Russia map. Supporters who had remained discreet are finding their way back to the microphones. One recalls the words of Edgar Faure, a star of the Fourth Republic: ‘It’s not the weather vane that turns but the wind.’”If the West’s goal was to leverage major military gains through the Ukrainian counteroffensive into a favorable Ukrainian negotiating position with Moscow — as suggested earlier this year by senior officials in Washington and Europe — then that scenario looks distant for the moment.A member of the Ukrainian Marine Brigade getting into position on the southern front this month.Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York TimesThis, in turn, may place greater pressure over time on Western unity and resolve as the U.S. presidential election looms next year.Mr. Putin, having apparently shored up his 23-year-old rule through the killing of Mr. Prigozhin, may be playing for time. It was not for nothing that Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state who clashed with Donald J. Trump over the former president’s demands that Mr. Raffensperger change the results of the 2020 election, was bizarrely included in a list of people banned from Russia that was published in May.As nods and winks to Mr. Trump go, this was pretty conspicuous.Mr. Macron responded to Mr. Sarkozy by saying their positions were different and that France “recognizes neither the annexation by Russian of Ukrainian territory, nor the results of parodies of elections that were organized.” Several French politicians expressed outrage at Mr. Sarkozy’s views.Over the course of the war, Mr. Macron’s position itself has evolved from outreach to Putin, in the form of numerous phone calls with him and a statement that Russia should not be “humiliated,” toward strong support of the Ukrainian cause and of President Volodymyr Zelensky.There have been echoes of Mr. Sarkozy’s stance elsewhere in Europe, even if Western resolve in standing with Ukraine does not appear to have fundamentally shifted.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, left, and former President Nicolas Sarkozy of France in 2007 in Moscow.ReutersMr. Schröder, Germany’s former chancellor and, in retirement, a Russian gas lobbyist close to Mr. Putin, attended a Victory Day celebration at the Russian embassy in Berlin in May. Tino Chrupalla, the co-chairman of the far-right Alternative for Deutschland, or AfD, as it is known in Germany, was also present.A significant minority in Germany’s Social Democratic party retains some sympathy for Moscow. In June, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who has overseen military aid to Ukraine worth billions of dollars and views the Russian invasion a historical “turning point” that obliges German to wean itself of its post-Nazi hesitation over the use of force, faced heckles of “warmonger” as he gave a speech to the party.This month, in a reversal, Mr. Scholz’s government retreated from making a legal commitment to spending two percent of GDP on defense annually, a NATO target it had previously embraced, Reuters reported. Disquiet over military rather than social spending is rising in Europe as the war in Ukraine grinds on.Many people in what was formerly East Germany, part of the Soviet imperium until shortly before German unification in 1990, look favorably on Moscow. A poll conducted in May found that 73 percent of West Germans backed sanctions against Russia, compared with 56 percent of those living in the East. The AfD has successfully exploited this division by calling itself the peace party.“I could not have imagined that German tanks would once again head in the direction of Russia,” said Karsten Hilse, one of the more voluble Russia sympathizers within the AfD, alluding to tanks provided to Ukraine.In Italy, the most vocal supporter of Mr. Putin was Silvio Berlusconi, the four-time prime minister who died a few months ago. Giorgia Meloni, who as prime minister leads a far-right government, has held to a pro-Ukrainian line, despite the sympathies of far-right movements throughout Europe for Mr. Putin.Mr. Conte, the former Italian prime minister, declared recently that “the military strategy is not working,” even as it takes a devastating financial toll.In France, Ségolène Royal, a prominent former socialist candidate for the presidency who has denounced Ukrainian claims of Russian atrocities as “propaganda,” announced this week that she intended to lead a united left-wing group in European Parliament elections next year. It was another small sign of a potential resurgence of pro-Russian sentiment.Mr. Putin has used frozen conflicts to his advantage in Georgia and elsewhere. If there is no victory for either side in Ukraine before the U.S. election in November 2024, “the outcome of the war will be decided in the United States,” Ms. Bacharan said.Reporting was contributed by Christopher F. Schuetze in Berlin, Juliette Guéron-Gabrielle in Paris and Gaia Pianigiani in Rome. More

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      In Iowa, a Voter Asks DeSantis: Why Should I Choose You Over Trump?

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      The Florida governor was reluctant to attack the former president too directly as he navigated the tricky waters of the Republican primary.In a rural Iowa town, Ethan Masters asked Ron DeSantis the most pressing question of the primary season: Why would he make a better president than Donald Trump?Standing next to a yellow-and-green tractor at J&J Ag Solutions Machine Shop in Estherville, Iowa, Mr. Masters, a 21-year-old real estate agent, was a stand-in for many Republican voters. He went for Mr. Trump in 2020, but he’s open to another candidate. He plans to caucus but did not have time to watch the Republican primary debate on Wednesday night. He’s also not familiar with the details of Mr. Trump’s various criminal cases.Though Mr. Masters’s question on Friday was brief and straightforward, the Florida governor spoke for nearly three minutes, before he was interrupted by another voter, a rarity on Iowa’s normally staid political circuit.A Question for Ron DeSantis“You could probably consider me the average voter. I haven’t done a lot of research on you. I voted for Trump, and I didn’t mind what he did. So I wouldn’t mind either of you getting voted in. So what’s your biggest selling point when I’m in the voting stage and it’s between you and Trump?”The SubtextMr. DeSantis almost never criticizes Mr. Trump, who is leading him by double digits in Iowa and by nearly 40 points nationwide, unless prompted to do so. He has the difficult task of navigating the Trump Triangle, appealing to voters who like Mr. Trump’s policies and brash manner; those who are aligned with his policies, but are tired of his legal troubles; and the Never Trump Republicans who want a return to the pre-Trump party.The question from Mr. Masters was a rare chance for the governor to make his single best argument in one place.DeSantis’s Answer“Well, I think a few things. One is, I think I’m much more likely to actually get elected, which is very important. I could serve two terms. He’d be a lame duck on Day 1 even if he could get elected. I have a track record of appointing really good people to office. I think he appointed a lot of duds to office, and it really hurt his ability to get his agenda done. I also think I’m more likely to follow through on doing what I said I would do. You look in Florida, everything I promised, I did. I never made a promise that I didn’t follow through on, and that’s just how I am. I am not going to sit there and tell you something that you want to hear to try to get your vote, and then get in and just forget that it ever happened.”The SubtextThat was only the first 45 seconds of Mr. DeSantis’s answer, in which he listed not just one of his selling points but many, contrasting his record of success in Florida with Mr. Trump’s failure to build the border wall or “drain the swamp.” But his argument felt more like a series of bullet points than a comprehensive political vision. He went on for much longer, mentioning Mr. Trump’s unrealized promise to “lock up” Hillary Clinton and accusing him of handing over his congressional agenda to Paul Ryan, the former Republican speaker of the House who is now seen by some in the G.O.P. as insufficiently conservative.True to his debate performance and campaign trail events, Mr. DeSantis never delivered a real punch.Why It MattersThe governor’s path to victory is based on a slow-and-steady approach. While Mr. DeSantis may not have had a breakout moment at the debate on Wednesday, Republican voters thought he performed best of all the candidates, according to a snap poll by the Washington Post, FiveThirtyEight and Ipsos. And his campaign said he raised more than $1 million the following day, the most it has raised in 24 hours, apart from the day Mr. DeSantis announced he was running.“Ron DeSantis’s path to victory isn’t going to run through flashy, sugar-high moments that fade in and out of the national narrative,” Andrew Romeo, the campaign’s communications director, said in a statement. “We have challenged the opposition to try to keep up in terms of pace and organization.”Iowa voters listened to Mr. DeSantis speak at Frontier Bank in Rock Rapids, Iowa, on Friday.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesWhat the Voter SaidIn a follow-up interview, Mr. Masters said that he was impressed by Mr. DeSantis overall but not blown away by his answer.“I asked for his biggest selling point, and he gave me a list,” said Mr. Masters. “But it was a pretty good list.” More

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      Why Trial Dates for Trump’s Georgia Case Are So Uncertain

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      Some defendants have already sought to move the case to federal court, while others are seeking speedy or separate trials.Even as former President Donald J. Trump and his 18 co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case turned themselves in one by one at an Atlanta jail this week, their lawyers began working to change how the case will play out.They are already at odds over when they will have their day in court, but also, crucially, where. Should enough of them succeed, the case could split into several smaller cases, perhaps overseen by different judges in different courtrooms, running on different timelines.Five defendants have already sought to move the state case to federal court, citing their ties to the federal government. The first one to file — Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff during the 2020 election — will make the argument for removal on Monday, in a hearing before a federal judge in Atlanta.Federal officials charged with state crimes can move their cases to federal court if they can convince a judge that they are being charged for actions connected to their official duties, among other things.In the Georgia case, the question of whether to change the venue — a legal maneuver known as removal — matters because it would affect the composition of a jury. If the case stays in Fulton County, Ga., the jury will come from a bastion of Democratic politics where Mr. Trump was trounced in 2020. If the case is removed to federal court, the jury will be drawn from a 10-county region of Georgia that is more suburban and rural — and somewhat more Trump-friendly. Because it takes only one not-guilty vote to hang a jury, this modest advantage could prove to be a very big deal.The coming fights over the proper venue for the case are only one strand of a complicated tangle of efforts being launched by a gaggle of defense lawyers now representing Mr. Trump and the 18 others named in the 98-page racketeering indictment. This week, the lawyers clogged both state and federal court dockets with motions that will also determine when the case begins.Already, one defendant’s case is splitting off as a result. Kenneth Chesebro, a lawyer who advised Mr. Trump after the 2020 election, has asked for a speedy trial, and the presiding state judge has agreed to it. His trial is now set to begin on Oct. 23. Another defendant, Sidney Powell, filed a similar motion on Friday, and a third, John Eastman, also plans to invoke his right to an early trial, according to one of his lawyers.Soon after Mr. Chesebro set in motion the possibility of an October trial, Mr. Trump, obviously uncomfortable with the idea of going to court so soon, informed the court that he intended to sever his case from the rest of the defendants. Ordering separate trials for defendants in a large racketeering indictment can occur for any number of reasons, and the judge, Scott McAfee, has made clear the early trial date applied only to Mr. Chesebro.Mr. Trump’s move came as no surprise. As the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, he is in no hurry to see the Georgia matter, or the other three criminal cases against him, go to trial. In the separate federal election interference case Mr. Trump faces in Washington, D.C., his lawyers have asked that the trial start safely beyond the November 2024 general election — in April 2026.In Georgia, the possibility that even a portion of the sprawling case may go to trial in October remains up in the air. The removal efforts have much to do with that.There is a possibility that if one of the five defendants seeking removal is successful, then all 19 will be forced into federal court. Many legal scholars have noted that the question is unsettled.“We are heading for uncharted territory at this point, and nobody knows for sure what is in this novel frontier,” Donald Samuel, a veteran Atlanta defense attorney who represents one of the defendants in the Trump case, Ray Smith III, wrote in an email. “Maybe a trip to the Supreme Court.”The dizzying legal gamesmanship reflects the unique nature of a case that has swept up a former president, a number of relatively obscure Georgia Republican activists, a former publicist for Kanye West and lawyer-defendants of varying prominence. All bring their own agendas, financial concerns and opinions about their chances at trial.And of course, one of them seeks to regain the title of leader of the free world.Some of the defendants seeking a speedy trial may believe that the case against them is weak. They may also hope to catch prosecutors unprepared, although in this case, Fani T. Willis, the district attorney, has been investigating for two and a half years and has had plenty of time to get ready.Fani T. Willis, the district attorney, has been investigating the case for two and a half years. Kenny Holston/The New York TimesAnother reason that some may desire a speedy trial is money.Ms. Willis had originally sought to start a trial in March, but even that seemed ambitious given the complexity of the case. Harvey Silverglate, the lawyer for Mr. Eastman, said he could imagine a scenario in which a verdict might not come for three years.“And Eastman is not a wealthy man,” he said.Mr. Silverglate added that his client “doesn’t have the contributors” that Mr. Trump has. “We are going to seek a severance and a speedy trial. If we have a severance, the trial will take three weeks,” he predicted.How long would a regular racketeering trial take? Brian Tevis, an Atlanta lawyer who negotiated the bond agreement for Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, said that “the defense side would probably want potentially a year or so to catch up.”“You have to realize that the state had a two-year head start,” he said. “They know what they have, no one else knows what they have. No discovery has been turned over, we haven’t even had arraignment yet.”In addition to Mr. Meadows, Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official, is already seeking removal, as is David Shafer, the former head of the Georgia Republican Party; Shawn Still, a Georgia state senator; and Cathy Latham, the former chair of the Republican Party in Coffee County, Ga. Mr. Trump is almost certain to follow, having already tried and failed to have a state criminal case against him in New York moved to federal court.Former President Donald J. Trump informed the court that he intended to sever his case from the rest of the defendants.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe indictment charges Mr. Meadows with racketeering and “solicitation of violation of oath by public officer” for his participation in the Jan. 2, 2021 call in which Mr. Trump told the Georgia secretary of state that he wanted to “find” enough votes to win Georgia. The indictment also describes other efforts by Mr. Meadows that prosecutors say were part of the illegal scheme to overturn the 2020 election.Mr. Meadows’s lawyers argue that all of the actions in question were what “one would expect” of a White House chief of staff — “arranging Oval Office meetings, contacting state officials on the president’s behalf, visiting a state government building, and setting up a phone call for the president” — and that removal is therefore justified.Prosecutors contend that Mr. Meadows was in fact engaging in political activity that was not part of a chief of staff’s job.The issue is likely to be at the heart of Mr. Trump’s removal effort as well: In calling the secretary of state and other Georgia officials after he lost the election, was he working on his own behalf, or in his capacity as president, to ensure that the election had run properly?Anthony Michael Kreis, an assistant law professor at Georgia State University, said that the indictment may contain an Easter egg that could spoil Mr. Trump’s argument that he was intervening in the Georgia election as part of his duty as a federal official.The indictment says that the election-reversal scheme lasted through September 2021, when Mr. Trump wrote a letter to Georgia’s secretary of state asking him to take steps to decertify the election.Mr. Trump, by that point, had been out of federal office for months.“By showing the racketeering enterprise continued well beyond his time in office,” Mr. Kreis said in a text message, “it undercuts any argument that Trump was acting in a governmental capacity to ensure the election was free, fair and accurate.” More

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      in Elections

      The Republican Debate Proved That Trump Has What It Takes

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      Like far too many of you, I watched the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night, during which all of the most popular contenders in the field tried to stand out and establish themselves as a serious alternative for the Republican presidential nomination.An alternative to whom? Donald Trump, who wasn’t on stage for the debate. And yet, despite his absence, there was no way that any of the candidates could escape his presence. The former president loomed over the proceedings, not the least because he is, so far, the uncontested leader in the race for the nomination. His nearest competitor, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, still trails him by nearly 40 points.There’s also the fact that the candidates had no choice but to answer questions about Trump, who has been indicted on state and federal charges related to the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The pretense of the debate was that the candidates could talk about themselves and the future of the Republican Party without the former president, but that was simply impossible.But the issue wasn’t just that Trump was unavoidable; it was that none of the other candidates had much to say for themselves. Even the most dynamic of the contenders, Vivek Ramaswamy, was doing little more than his own spin on Trump’s persona. As I argued in our post-debate recap, none of the candidates had any of the charisma or presence or vision that might mark them as something more than just another governor or legislator.Far from giving the other Republicans a chance to shine, Trump’s absence underscored the extent to which he is the only Republican of national stature with the political chops to appeal to Republican voters as well as a considerable chunk of the American electorate.It is obviously true that a major reason for Trump’s dominance in the Republican primaries is the fact that at no point since the 2020 election have Republican officeholders and other figures tried to set him aside as the leader of the party. But we can’t underestimate the extent to which Trump has it what it takes — and most of his competitors simply don’t.Now ReadingRuqaiyah Zarook on the network of lawyers, accountants and other fixers who shield the wealth of the super-rich from taxation, for Dissent magazine.Ratik Asokan on the long struggle of India’s sanitation workers for The New York Review of Books.Clare Malone on David Zaslav for The New Yorker.Ellen Meiksins Wood on capitalism and human emancipation for New Left Review.Marcia Chatelain on the persistence of American poverty for The Nation.Photo of the WeekJamelle BouieI was up in the Adirondacks for the first time this summer and obviously spent a lot of time walking around and photographing lakes. This is a picture of Mirror Lake in Lake Placid, which was very picturesque.Now Eating: Masala Black-Eyed PeasAmong the things I hope to accomplish with this newsletter is getting people to eat more beans and field peas, both of which are versatile and affordable staple foods. This recipe, from NYT Cooking, for black-eyed peas in an Indian style, is very easy and very filling. I would serve with flatbreads, a green vegetable and a carrot raita. But by itself with steamed rice would be just as good and just as filling.Ingredients3 tablespoons ghee or neutral oil1 medium yellow or red onion, finely chopped1 ½ teaspoons ginger paste or freshly grated ginger1 ½ teaspoons garlic paste or freshly grated garlic1 teaspoon cumin seeds¾ teaspoon Kashmiri or other mild red chile powder¼ teaspoon ground turmeric3 Roma tomatoes, finely chopped or 1 (15-ounce) can crushed tomatoes1 teaspoon fine sea salt3 cups of cooked black-eyed peas, frozen or from dried3 fresh green Thai or serrano chiles, chopped2 tablespoons lemon juice (from about half a lemon)½ teaspoon garam masala2 tablespoons chopped cilantroDirectionsHeat ghee or oil in a medium-sized pot for 30 seconds on medium-low. Add onion, ginger and garlic, and cook on high heat, stirring frequently, until onions are transparent, 5 to 7 minutes.Stir in cumin seeds, chile powder and turmeric. Add tomatoes and salt. Continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes break down and the oil separates, 5 to 7 minutes. (If you want your finished dish to be less saucy, cook the tomatoes a little longer.)Stir in black-eyed peas and bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium and simmer 5 minutes to allow the flavors to meld. Top with green chiles, lemon juice, garam masala and cilantro, if you like. More

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      Can Liberalism Save Itself?

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      Liberalism is under siege. It is not just a problem for America’s Democratic Party, which once again may face either losing an election to Donald Trump or claiming victory with a bare majority. Around the world, the entire outlook of political liberalism — with its commitments to limited government, personal freedom and the rule of law — is widely seen to be in trouble.It wasn’t long ago that liberals were proclaiming the “end of history” after their Cold War victory. But for years liberalism has felt perpetually on the brink: challenged by the rise of an authoritarian China, the success of far-right populists and a sense of blockage and stagnation.Why do liberals find themselves in this position so routinely? Because they haven’t left the Cold War behind. It was in that era when liberals reinvented their ideology, which traces its roots to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution — and reinvented it for the worse. Cold War liberalism was preoccupied by the continuity of liberal government and the management of threats that might disrupt it, the same preoccupations liberals have today. To save themselves, they need to undo the Cold War mistakes that led them to their current impasse and rediscover the emancipatory potential in their creed.Before the Cold War, President Franklin Roosevelt had demanded the renovation of liberalism in response to the Great Depression, emphasizing that economic turmoil was at the root of tyranny’s appeal. His administration capped more than a century in which liberalism had been promising to unshackle humanity after millenniums of hierarchy — dismantling feudal structures, creating greater opportunities for economic and social mobility (at least for men) and breaking down barriers based on religion and tradition, even if all of these achievements were haunted by racial disparities. At its most visionary, liberalism implied that government’s duty was to help people overcome oppression for the sake of a better future.Yet just a few years later, Cold War liberalism emerged as a rejection of the optimism that flourished before the mid-20th century’s crises. Having witnessed the agonizing destruction of Germany’s brief interwar experiment with democracy, liberals saw their Communist ally in that battle against fascism converted into a fearful enemy. They responded by reconceptualizing liberalism. Philosophers like the Oxford don Isaiah Berlin emphasized the concept of individual liberty, which was defined as the absence of interference, especially from the state. Gone was the belief that freedom is guaranteed by institutions that empower humanity. Instead of committing to make freedom more credible to more people — for example, by promising a bright future of their own — these liberals prioritized a fight against mortal enemies who might crash the system.This was a liberalism of fear, as another Cold War liberal intellectual, the Harvard professor Judith Shklar, said. In a way, fear was understandable: Liberalism had enemies. In the late 1940s, the Communists took over China, while Eastern Europe fell behind an Iron Curtain. But reorienting liberalism toward the preservation of liberty incurred its own risks. Anyone hostage to fear is likely to exaggerate how dangerous his foes actually are, to overreact to the looming threat they pose and to forsake better choices than fighting. (Ask Robert Oppenheimer, who signed up to beat the Nazis only to see paranoia spoil the country he volunteered to save.)During the Cold War, concern for liberty from tyranny and self-defense against enemies sometimes led not just to the loss of the very freedom liberals were supposed to care about at home, it also prompted violent reigns of terror abroad as liberals backed authoritarians or went to war in the name of fighting Communism. Millions died in the killing fields of this brutal global conflict, many of them at the hands of America and its proxies fighting in the name of “freedom.”Frustratingly, the Soviet Union was making the kinds of promises about freedom and progress that liberals once thought belonged to them. After all, in the 19th century liberals had overthrown aristocrats and kings and promised a world of freedom and equality in their stead. Liberals like the French politician and traveler Alexis de Tocqueville, though concerned about possible excesses of government, imagined democracy as a form of politics that offered startling new opportunities for equal citizenship. And while such liberals placed too much faith in markets both to emancipate and to equalize, they eventually struggled to correct this mistake. Liberals like the English philosopher John Stuart Mill helped invent socialism, too.The Cold War changed all that. It wasn’t just that socialism became a liberal swear word for decades (at least before Senator Bernie Sanders helped revive it). Liberals concluded that the ideological passions that led millions around the world to Communism meant that they should refrain from promising emancipation themselves. “We must be aware of the dangers which lie in our most generous wishes,” the Columbia professor and Cold War liberal Lionel Trilling explained.The Cold War transformation of liberalism wouldn’t matter so profoundly now if liberals had seized the opportunity to rethink their creed in 1989. The haze of their geopolitical triumph made it easy to disregard their own mistakes, in spite of the long-run consequences in our time. Instead, liberals doubled down. After several decades of endless wars against successor enemies and an increasingly “free” economy at home and around the world, American liberals have been shocked by blowback. History didn’t end; in fact, many of liberalism’s beneficiaries in backsliding new democracies and in the United States now find it wanting.A great referendum on liberalism kicked off in 2016, after Mr. Trump’s blindsiding election victory. In books like Patrick Deneen’s best-selling “Why Liberalism Failed,” there was an up-or-down vote on the liberalism of the entire modern age, which Mr. Deneen traced back centuries. In frantic self-defense, liberals responded by invoking abstractions: “freedom,” “democracy” and “truth,” to which the sole alternative is tyranny, while distracting from their own errors and what it would take to correct them. Both sides failed to recognize that, like all traditions, liberalism is not take it or leave it. The very fact that liberals transformed it so radically during the Cold War means that it can be transformed again; liberals can revive their philosophy’s promises only by recommitting to its earlier impulses.Is that likely? Under President Biden’s watch, China and Eastern Europe — the same places where events shocked Cold War liberals into their stance in the first place — have attracted a Cold War posture. Under Mr. Biden, as under Mr. Trump before him, the rhetoric out of Washington increasingly treats China as a civilizational threat. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine has once again made Eastern Europe a site of struggle between the forces of freedom and the forces of repression. Some like to claim that the war in Ukraine has reminded liberals of their true purpose.But look closer to home and that seems more dubious. Mr. Trump is the likely 2024 Republican presidential nominee (if not the potential winner of the election). Yet liberals seem to be betting their success less on a positive vision for America’s future and more on the ability of courts to protect the nation. Even if one of Mr. Trump’s many prosecutors manages to convict him, this will not rescue American liberalism. The challenge cuts deeper than eliminating the current enemy in the name of our democracy if it is not reimagined.Since his election in 2020, Mr. Biden has been championed by some pundits — and by his administration itself — as the second coming of Franklin Roosevelt. But Roosevelt warned that “too many of those who prate about saving democracy are really only interested in saving things as they were. Democracy should concern itself also with things as they ought to be.”Mr. Biden, despite an ambitious agenda of so-called supply-side liberalism, doesn’t seem to have internalized the message. And for their part, voters do not yet seem fully convinced. A liberalism that survives must resonate with voters who want something to believe in. And liberalism once had it, revolving not around fear of enemies but hope in institutions that lead to what Mill called “experiments in living.” He meant that people everywhere would get the chance from society to choose something new to try in their short time. If their hands are forced — especially by a coercive and unequal economic system — they will lose what is most important, which is the chance to make themselves and the world more interesting.If there is any silver lining in the next phase of American politics, which Mr. Trump continues to define, it is that it provides yet another opportunity for liberals to reinvent themselves. If they double down instead on a stale Cold War ideology, as they did after 1989 and 2016, they will miss it. Only a liberalism that finally makes good on some of its promises of freedom and equality is likely to survive and thrive.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, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.Samuel Moyn is a professor at Yale and the author of the forthcoming book “Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times.” More