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      First Republican Debate: How to Watch and What Time Does It Start

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      The first debate is Wednesday night from 9 to 11 p.m. Eastern. Donald Trump has taped an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that is scheduled to air simultaneously.The first Republican primary debate of the 2024 presidential race will be held Wednesday, Aug. 23, from 9 to 11 p.m. Eastern. The debate, taking place in Milwaukee, is sanctioned by the Republican National Committee and hosted by Fox News. Here are some of the ways you can watch it.Fox News Channel will broadcast the event, with live coverage starting at 8 p.m. Eastern — an hour before the debate itself — and running past midnight.Fox Business Network will broadcast the same coverage simultaneously.The face-off will be streamed at foxnews.com.The online streaming platform Rumble will also show the debate, as an official R.N.C. partner.Which candidates will be onstage?As of the official qualification deadline Monday evening, eight candidates had made the stage. They are: Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, former Vice President Mike Pence, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina.When will they start taking questions?Immediately, according to the debate guidelines. There are no opening statements.What about Trump?Donald J. Trump, the clear front-runner for the nomination, plans to skip the debate. He has, instead, recorded an interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. They plan to post the interview on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, to run concurrently with the debate, according to a person with knowledge of the planning.Mr. Trump’s decision to record an interview with Mr. Carlson to be released while his rivals share a stage was a slap in the face to both the R.N.C., whose leadership tried hard to persuade him to participate in the debate, and to Fox News, which is hosting the debate, and fired Mr. Carlson earlier this year.Who is moderating the debate?The debate will be moderated by two Fox News hosts, Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum. Mr. Baier has previously moderated Republican debates in 2015 and 2016, and he and Ms. MacCallum led a town-hall event with Mr. Trump in 2020.What issues are the candidates likely to focus on?The candidates will undoubtedly be asked about Mr. Trump and the four criminal indictments against him. Other topics of discussion could include inflation, immigration and border security, foreign-policy issues like the situations in Ukraine and China, and abortion. Here is where the candidates stand on those issues and more.Let us know here what you hope the moderators will ask.Maggie Haberman More

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      A Stage of Eight Takes Shape for a Trump-Less First G.O.P. Debate

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      Eight Republican presidential hopefuls will spar on Wednesday night in Milwaukee, without the party’s dominant front-runner.Former President Donald J. Trump won’t be there. But eight other Republicans hoping to catch him are now set for the first debate of the 2024 presidential primary on Wednesday in Milwaukee, according to two officials familiar with the Republican Party’s decision.Those eight include Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has been Mr. Trump’s leading rival in most polling, and Mr. Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence. Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Trump ally turned antagonist, has secured a spot, as has another vocal Trump opponent, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas.Two prominent South Carolina Republicans have also earned places onstage, Senator Tim Scott and Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador. They will be joined by the political newcomer Vivek Ramaswamy and Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota.The candidates will give Republicans a diverse field attempting to take on President Biden: six past or present governors, one Black candidate, two candidates born to Indian immigrants, one woman and one former vice president.A handful of others had been on the bubble heading into Monday evening. The Republican National Committee had imposed a 9 p.m. deadline for candidates to accumulate at least 40,000 donors and hit 1 percent in a certain number of qualifying national and state polls.But the two officials said that three candidates all fell short: Perry Johnson, a businessman who previously tried to run for governor of Michigan; Francis X. Suarez, the mayor of Miami; and Larry Elder, a talk-show host who made a failed run for governor of California. Those campaigns, already all long-shots, now face an even more uncertain future. The Lineup for the First Republican Presidential DebateThe stage is set for eight candidates. Donald J. Trump won’t be there.The R.N.C. had also required candidates to sign a pledge to support whomever the party nominates. At least one candidate has said publicly he would refuse to sign it: Will Hurd, a former congressman from Texas who has said he opposes Mr. Trump.With Mr. Trump opting to skip the debate entirely and citing his significant lead in the polls, much of the attention is expected to fall on Mr. DeSantis, who has steadily polled in second place despite some early struggles.The debate will be broadcast on Fox News at 9 p.m. Wednesday, with Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum serving as moderators.Despite the candidates’ months of campaigning across the early states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina already, the debate represents the first moment that many voters will tune into the contest — or even learn about many of the candidates.“Most of what you do in this process is filtered through media,” Mr. DeSantis said while campaigning in Georgia last week. “Seldom do you get the opportunity to speak directly to this many people.”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is expected to draw a lot of attention at the debate, as the highest-polling candidate taking part.Christian Monterrosa for The New York TimesYet it remains unclear how much the debate will transform a race where Mr. Trump remains the prohibitive front-runner, leading the field by large double-digit margins. The hosts have said they plan to turn Mr. Trump into a presence, with quotes and clips from the former president, even though he will not be on the stage. So far, much of the race has revolved around Mr. Trump, with the candidates repeatedly questioned on his denial of the 2020 election results, his four indictments and his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.The other candidates have prepared for weeks. Mr. DeSantis brought on a well-known debate coach, Mr. Pence has been holding practice sessions with mock lecterns in Indiana and Mr. Ramaswamy has been holding sessions with advisers on his private plane (Mr. Ramaswamy also posted a shirtless video of himself smashing tennis balls on Monday, calling it “three hours of solid debate prep”). Only Mr. Christie and Mr. Pence have previously participated in presidential-level debates, giving those two an advantage over less experienced rivals.Some of those onstage are nationally known, including Mr. Pence, who participated in two vice-presidential debates that were widely watched. But for Mr. Burgum and others, the event will be their national introduction and a chance to sell their biographies or bona fides, such as Mr. Hutchinson, a former congressman who has emerged as one of the party’s most vocal Trump critics.Breaking through the media attention surrounding the former president will require a viral moment — a surprise attack or notable defense — and the candidates have been reluctant to publicly signal their strategy. The release of memos from Mr. DeSantis’s super PAC last week was viewed as a significant tactical error that heightened the pressure on the Florida governor while limiting his avenues of attack.Some of Mr. Trump’s rivals have mocked him for skipping the debate, with Mr. Christie calling him a “coward.” Those taunts were unsuccessful in luring Mr. Trump in, though Mr. Christie has signaled his eagerness to swing at him in absentia.It is far from clear how much fire the rest of the field will focus on the missing front-runner, or whether they will skirmish among themselves in a bid to claim second place as his leading challenger.Mr. DeSantis’s aides have said they expect him to bear the brunt of attacks on Wednesday because he will be the leading candidate on the stage.Mr. Scott and his allies have aired a heavy rotation of advertising in Iowa and he has risen there to third place in some polling, including a Des Moines Register/NBC News survey this week. But those ads have not helped him catch Mr. DeSantis yet, let alone Mr. Trump.Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina before she served as ambassador under Mr. Trump, has sought to find middle ground, arguing that the party needs to move past the former president yet doing so without being overly critical of an administration she served in.Mr. Pence has searched for traction in a race where he has been typecast as a betrayer to Mr. Trump by some voters, for standing up to his bid to block certification of Mr. Biden’s victory. That confrontation has established Mr. Pence as a critical witness in one federal indictment against Mr. Trump.Mr. Trump, of course, is not giving up the spotlight entirely. He has recorded an interview with Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, as counterprogramming to the network’s debate. And on Monday his lawyers agreed to a $200,000 bail ahead of his expected surrender to the authorities in Georgia later this week after he was charged as part of a criminal conspiracy to overturn the election result there in 2020.The criminal indictment was Mr. Trump’s fourth of the year, though the accumulation of charges has done little to slow or stop his consolidation of support in polls so far. More

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      Trump’s Bail Set at $200,000 in Georgia Election Interference Case

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      Mr. Trump, who said he would turn himself in on Thursday, was told not to intimidate or threaten any witnesses or co-defendants in the case.A judge in Atlanta set bail for former President Donald J. Trump at $200,000 on Monday in the new election interference case against him, warning Mr. Trump not to intimidate or threaten witnesses or any of his 18 co-defendants as a condition of the bond agreement.Mr. Trump, who posted on Truth Social that he would surrender to the authorities in Atlanta on Thursday, is also sorting out logistical details in three other criminal cases that have been filed against him this year. Earlier in the day, federal prosecutors pushed back on a request from his lawyers to postpone a separate election interference trial in Washington, D.C., until at least April 2026.Under his bond agreement in Georgia, Mr. Trump cannot communicate with any co-defendants in the case except through his lawyers. He was also directed to “make no direct or indirect threat of any nature against the community,” including “posts on social media or reposts of posts made by another individual.”The terms were more extensive than those set for other defendants in the case so far, which did not specifically mention social media. In the past, Mr. Trump has made inflammatory and sometimes false personal attacks on Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, who is leading the case.Bond was set at $100,000 for John Eastman, one of the architects of a plan to use fake electors to keep Mr. Trump in power. according to court filings; a lawyer for Kenneth Chesebro, who also developed that plan, said the same amount was set for Mr. Chesebro.Mr. Trump’s attacks continued on Monday ahead of his bond being set. In a post on Truth Social, he called Ms. Willis “crooked, incompetent, & highly partisan” and wrote that she “has allowed Murder and other Violent Crime to MASSIVELY ESCALATE.” In fact, homicides have fallen sharply in Atlanta in the first half of the year.From front left, Donald Trump’s lawyers Marissa Goldberg, Jennifer Little and Drew Findling outside the Fulton County Government Center in Atlanta.Kendrick Brinson for The New York TimesWhile Mr. Trump did not have to pay bail in the other criminal cases against him, the agreements posted for him and several of his co-defendants in Georgia on Monday require five- and six-figure sums. The defendants have to come up with only 10 percent of the bail amount, but even that could prove difficult for some, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former personal lawyer for Mr. Trump, who is running out of money because of an array of legal entanglements.Racketeering cases like this one can be particularly long and costly for defendants — in another racketeering case in the same court, involving a number of high-profile rappers, jury selection alone has gone on for seven months.The costs clearly worry some of the defendants in the Trump case; one of them, Cathy Latham, a former Republican Party official in Georgia who acted as a fake elector for Mr. Trump in 2020, has set up a legal-defense fund, describing herself as “a retired public-school teacher living on a teacher’s pension.” The $3,645 she has initially raised is well short of a $500,000 goal.Jenna Ellis, a lawyer who assisted Mr. Giuliani in his efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power after he lost in 2020, expressed frustration over the looming legal costs a few days after her indictment in the case. “Why isn’t MAGA, Inc. funding everyone’s defense?” she asked last week on X, formerly known as Twitter.Mr. Trump and the other defendants were indicted last week on charges that they were part of a conspiracy to subvert the election results in Georgia, where Mr. Trump narrowly lost to Joseph R. Biden Jr.The Fulton County jail in Atlanta, where Mr. Trump will be booked.Audra Melton for The New York TimesThe indictment laid out eight ways the defendants were accused of trying to reverse the election results as part of a “criminal enterprise”: by lying to the Georgia legislature, lying to state officials, creating fake pro-Trump electors to circumvent the popular vote, harassing election workers, soliciting Justice Department officials, soliciting Vice President Mike Pence, breaching voting machines and engaging in a cover-up.Mr. Trump has not been required to pay cash bail in the three other criminal cases he has been charged in this year — one in Manhattan and two federal cases brought by the special counsel, Jack Smith, in Miami and Washington, D.C.In Atlanta, prosecutors and law enforcement officials have emphasized a desire to treat the defendants as other accused felons would typically be treated in the city’s criminal justice system, with mug shots, fingerprinting and cash bails. But the Secret Service is sure to have security demands regarding the booking of a former president.On Monday, lawyers for a number of the defendants were seen walking in and out of a complex of connected government buildings, including the Fulton County courthouse and a government office building, where they met with representatives from the district attorney’s office. The lawyers had little to say, including about when Mr. Trump might surrender.“You’ll find out everything soon enough,” Drew Findling, Mr. Trump’s lead local lawyer, told reporters. “Patience is a virtue.”The lawyer Scott Grubman, left, who is representing Kenneth Chesebro, outside the Fulton County Courthouse on Monday.Kendrick Brinson for The New York TimesMs. Ellis worked with Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, in the weeks after Mr. Trump lost the election, traveling with him to various states to push claims of widespread fraud that were quickly debunked. But she has been a target of online attacks by allies of Mr. Trump for months, as she has been critical of the former president and has made supportive statements about his closest competitor in the Republican presidential primary, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.“I was reliably informed Trump isn’t funding any of us who are indicted,” Ms. Ellis posted on X last week. “Would this change if he becomes the nominee? Why then, not now?”Asked about her post, Ms. Ellis replied in a text message, “Mounting a defense in these circumstances is exorbitantly expensive. I don’t have great personal wealth and am doing this on my own. I have been overwhelmed and blessed with the generosity and support of Christians and conservatives across the nation who want to help me.”A person briefed on the matter said that Ms. Ellis had not asked for help from a legal-defense fund formed recently by Mr. Trump’s advisers but that she had sought help earlier and had been denied.Mr. Trump has used a political action committee that is aligned with him, and that is replete with money he raised in small-dollar donations as he falsely claimed he was fighting widespread fraud after the 2020 election, to pay the legal bills of a number of allies, as well as his own.But other defendants have been denied help with mounting legal bills long before they were charged. Among those asking for help are Mr. Giuliani; Mr. Trump’s political action committee, which has spent roughly $21 million on legal fees primarily for Mr. Trump but also for others connected to investigations into him, has so far covered only $340,000 for Mr. Giuliani.All 19 defendants are required to turn themselves in by noon on Friday.“The order said it had to be by Friday, I believe, and he plans to follow the order,” Mr. Grubman said of Mr. Chesebro.Sean Keenan contributed reporting from Atlanta. More

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      What Will Chris Christie Do Without Trump at the GOP Debate?

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      The former New Jersey governor has relentlessly taunted Donald Trump, hoping for a dramatic onstage confrontation. It appears he is not going to get what he wants.After months of relentless taunting and hyping a debate clash with former President Donald J. Trump, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey turned to chiding.“If you qualify for the stage, which Trump has, not showing up is completely disrespectful to the Republican Party, who made you their nominee twice, and to the Republican voters, whose support you’re asking for again,” Mr. Christie told reporters on Friday outside the famed Versailles Cuban restaurant in Miami.Mr. Christie built his entire presidential candidacy toward a marquee confrontation with Mr. Trump, relentlessly goading him and needling him as a coward in a clear effort to tempt the quick-to-anger former president into showing up to the debate on Wednesday in Milwaukee.It appears Mr. Trump will not take the bait, other than swiping back at Mr. Christie on social media and in speeches. Last week, he signaled that he planned to skip the first Republican debate and instead sit for an interview with Tucker Carlson that will be broadcast online at the same time.Mr. Trump’s absence could lead to an anticlimactic scene at the debate, with Mr. Christie forced to launch unrequited broadsides through the airwaves without the fireworks of a Trump response.Mr. Christie and his campaign say there’s upside for him if Mr. Trump does not appear onstage. John Tully for The New York Times“They have been taunting each other back and forth on Twitter and campaign town halls, so it robs Christie of a big moment that he is looking for if Trump doesn’t show up onstage,” said Ryan Williams, a Republican strategist and veteran of two presidential campaigns. “You can use the debate to get the anti-Trump message out that he’s pushing, but you’re going to lack that viral moment if the two of them aren’t looking at each other face to face.”Yet Mr. Christie and his team also see an opportunity if the pugnacious and unpredictable former president is not onstage. Mr. Christie, a confident debater and the only Trump critic in the Republican field with any kind of foothold, could shine in the vacuum, using candidates who have been far more deferential to Mr. Trump as a stand-in for him.Mr. Christie tried out that kind of approach at a town hall event in Miami on Friday, chastising Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida over his super PAC’s disclosure of debate strategy memos, which called for him to defend Mr. Trump against Mr. Christie’s attacks onstage.If Mr. DeSantis ends up doing so, Mr. Christie said he had one piece of advice: “Get the hell out of the race.”In an interview this month during his surprise visit to Ukraine, Mr. Christie said he was not particularly bothered by the prospect of a debate without Mr. Trump.“It doesn’t change my perspective or my tactical approach,” he said. “Because if he’s not there, it just means two things. One, he’s afraid to be on the same debate stage and defend his record. And two, you know, this is a guy who, by not showing up, just gives me more time. So it’s OK. Either way, I win.”Mr. Christie and his advisers see the debate as a forum built to the former governor’s strengths. Comfortable in unscripted moments in front of cameras, Mr. Christie has a confrontational style, hewed from years in the trenches of New Jersey politics, that has served him well in past debates, and he has over a decade of experience participating in them through two campaigns for governor and his 2016 run for president.To prepare for Wednesday, he has been huddling with close advisers to go over topics at the heart of the campaign and anticipate different scenarios that may arise as he navigates the chaos of an eight-lectern stage. He has been heavily focused on the debate, bringing it up in casual conversations with both advisers and political acquaintances as he takes the temperature of the race.At the same time, his preparations have a bare-bones nature. There are no mock debates, no fake stages with podiums, no advisers suiting up for the roles of Mr. Trump or Mr. DeSantis.Mr. Christie and his advisers see the debate as a forum built to the former governor’s strengths. David Degner for The New York TimesIn part, he is informed by his experience during the 2016 presidential debates, when he notably avoided attacking Mr. Trump. (He has said on the campaign trail that he was the only candidate to go speak to Mr. Trump during commercial breaks.) Mr. Christie was quick to pounce on his other rivals, including a now-famous exchange with Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.“There it is,” Mr. Christie said, interrupting Mr. Rubio, who had pivoted to a line about former President Barack Obama during an exchange with Mr. Christie. “The memorized 25-second speech. There it is, everybody.”That dismissive riposte sent the Rubio campaign spiraling, with headlines concluding that Mr. Christie had exposed Mr. Rubio as a robotic candidate reliant on consultants and that the Florida senator had “choked.” After polling near second or third place in New Hampshire before the debate, Mr. Rubio finished fifth in the state’s primary race less than a week later.Built into the question of how Mr. Christie treats this week’s debate is just how much Republican voters want to see someone caustically rip into Mr. Trump, whether he is onstage or not.Despite his mounting legal problems, Mr. Trump remains exceptionally popular within the party. And Mr. Christie’s constant provocations, beyond endearing the former governor to some moderate Republicans, have also turned him into something of a #Resistance hero among liberals who will not be voting in a G.O.P. primary.Waiting for a flight at Kennedy International Airport in New York early this month, Mr. Christie was approached for a photo by a fellow traveler, Jessica Rutherford, who told him she appreciated his broadsides against Mr. Trump and hoped he would continue.“You’re like Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re our only hope!” she told him.But Ms. Rutherford, an intellectual property lawyer from Wilton, Conn., and a Democrat, conceded that she was unlikely to vote for Mr. Christie in November 2024 if he were to win the Republican primary.Undaunted, Mr. Christie made his pitch. “I’ll be awake in meetings with foreign leaders,” he offered, in a jab at President Biden’s age.“Reagan wasn’t awake in meetings with foreign leaders,” Ms. Rutherford shot back.“I bet you didn’t vote for him, either,” Mr. Christie replied.Patricia Mazzei More

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      Prosecutors Criticize Trump’s Request for 2026 Trial Date in Jan. 6 Case

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      Defense lawyers had said they needed years to wade through 11 million pages of evidence, but the Justice Department, which is seeking to go to trial in January, said they were exaggerating the burden.Federal prosecutors pushed back on Monday against former President Donald J. Trump’s request to postpone his election interference trial in Washington until well into 2026, asserting that his main reason for the delay — the amount of evidence his lawyers have to sort through — was vastly overstated.Mr. Trump’s lawyers, in an extremely aggressive move last week, asked Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is overseeing the case, to put the trial off until at least April 2026. That schedule would call for a jury to be seated nearly a year and a half after the 2024 election and almost three years after the charges against Mr. Trump were originally filed.The lawyers said they needed so much time because the amount of discovery evidence they expect to receive from the government was enormous — as much as 8.5 terabytes of materials, they told Judge Chutkan, totaling over 11.5 million pages.As part of their filing to the judge, the lawyers included a graph that purported to show how a stack of 11.5 million pages would result in a “tower of paper stretching nearly 5,000 feet into the sky.” That, the lawyers pointed out, was “taller than the Washington Monument, stacked on top of itself eight times, with nearly a million pages to spare.”Responding to these claims in court papers on Monday, Molly Gaston, one of the prosecutors in the case, told Judge Chutkan that Mr. Trump’s characterization of the discovery evidence “overstates the amount of new and nonduplicative” material his lawyers will get and “exaggerates the challenge of reviewing it effectively.”Ms. Gaston said that Mr. Trump should already be familiar with much of the materials, noting that about three million pages came from unnamed “entities associated with” him. Hundreds of thousands of other pages, she added, have been publicly available for some time — among them, “the defendant’s tweets, Truth Social posts, campaign statements and court papers involving challenges to the 2020 election by the defendant or his allies.”Ms. Gaston also said that about one million pages of discovery came from the House select committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. That trove of evidence included hundreds of transcripts of interviews or depositions, a majority of which, she asserted, “are already public in redacted form.”Moreover, Ms. Gaston said, the government turned over a large trove of materials — including more than three million pages of documents from the Secret Service — that “should not require substantial time or attention from the defense team.”All of the material, she added, was given to Mr. Trump’s lawyers in a way that the defense could review quickly and easily “through targeted keyword searches and electronic sorting.”Mr. Trump’s proposed trial date, Ms. Gaston wrote, “rests on the faulty assertion that it is necessary for a lawyer to conduct a page-by-page review of discovery for a defendant to receive a fair trial.”“But the defendant can, should and apparently will adopt the benefits of electronic review to reduce the volume of material needed to be searched and manually reviewed,” she said.Mr. Trump has made no secret in private conversations with his aides that he is looking to win the next election as a way to try to solve his array of legal problems. To that end, he has often sought to slow down prosecutors in all four of the criminal cases he is facing.Indeed, if the former president, and the current front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, can push his two federal trials — in Washington and Florida — until after the election and prevail, he could seek to pardon himself after taking office or have his attorney general dismiss the matter altogether.Mr. Trump will not be able to pardon himself if he is ultimately convicted in Manhattan, where he faces state charges related to hush money payments to a porn star before the 2016 election. That is also true in Fulton County, Ga., where he stands accused with 18 co-defendants of tampering with the results of the election in that state.Prosecutors in the office of the Justice Department’s special counsel, Jack Smith, filed their own election interference case against Mr. Trump this month in Federal District Court in Washington. That indictment accused Mr. Trump and six unidentified co-conspirators of three overlapping plots to defraud the United States, to disrupt the final certification of the election and to deprive people of their rights to have their votes counted.Mr. Smith’s team has asked Judge Chutkan to set their case for trial in January. If that schedule holds — which is not a certainty — the federal election interference case would be the first to go before a jury.Judge Chutkan is expected to consider — and perhaps issue a ruling — on the question of a trial date when the two sides meet for a hearing in her courtroom on Aug. 28.The Manhattan case is set to go to trial in late March while Mr. Trump’s other federal case — one in which he stands accused of illegally retaining dozens of classified documents after leaving office — is scheduled to go to trial in Fort Pierce, Fla., in May.Last week, Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., said she hoped to take Mr. Trump to trial in her case as early as March 4. More

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      Compassionate Release for Those Aging Behind Bars

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      More from our inbox:Living Well, and Pursuing One’s Passion, With Parkinson’sThe ‘Absurd Contradictions’ of the Migrant SystemA Civilized Argument A Debate QuestionCecilia CarlstedtTo the Editor: Re “Inside a Dementia Unit in a Federal Prison” (Opinion guest essay, Aug. 13):Katie Engelhart vividly describes the absurdity and cruelty of incarcerating frail elders with debilitating dementia. It would be a mistake, though, to conclude simply that expanding compassionate release is the answer. Certainly, that’s warranted, but policymakers should be proactive, not just reactive.As a former parole commissioner, I know that dementia is just the tip of the iceberg of the problem of mass aging behind bars.Countless people (not just men) effectively face a slow death penalty behind bars because of extreme sentences or repeated denials of parole release despite these individuals’ complete transformations. Far from being helpless, many are violence interrupters, mentors, scholars and artists, including people previously convicted of causing serious harm. They have changed.Enacting elder parole bills, which do not guarantee release based on age but rather allow older adults to be individually considered for release by a parole board, can help resolve the crisis of aging behind bars, save substantial money, and return people to the community to repair the harm they long ago caused — before they are on death’s doorstep.Carol ShapiroNew YorkTo the Editor:Dementia units in prisons should primarily serve as a conduit to helping achieve compassionate release. As physicians volunteering with the Medical Justice Alliance, we review the medical care of numerous patients with dementia who are undiagnosed and untreated in the prison system. Patients wake up unsure why they are in prison, hoping that President Nixon might pardon them.We must consider the high cost of normalizing the imprisonment of elderly patients with dementia. Financially, developing “dementia-friendly” prison units incurs significant costs; that money could instead be used to improve community resources such as nursing facilities. Ethically, we must grapple with punishing people who do not pose a threat to others and are unable to understand why they are being punished.Compassionate release laws at the state and federal levels should make dementia an explicit criterion for early release. Facilities should also screen older patients for dementia on a regular basis and develop protocols for requesting compassionate release and expediting placement in memory care facilities. The U.S. prison population is aging and change is urgently needed.Caitlin FarrellNicole MusheroWilliam WeberTo the Editor:As a person who has served three federal prison terms for antiwar protests for a total of almost three years, I found myself shaking my head that the Federal Bureau of Prisons maintains Federal Medical Center Devens to hold men with dementia.The essay noted that most of the men in the dementia unit have no memories of their crimes or why they are incarcerated, yet few are deemed eligible for compassionate release. The United States incarcerates nearly two million people in our thousands of jails and prisons. The U.S. prison system is primitive, lacks redemption and only metes out punishment. The term rehabilitation is simply not part of this cruel system.In my time in more than a half dozen federal prisons, I never met a man I would not have to my home as a dinner guest. Our jails and prisons are filled mostly with people convicted of nonviolent crimes. Many — perhaps the majority — of incarcerated people are poor, mentally ill or substance abusers. Most need medical treatment, not incarceration.I agree with F.M.C. Devens’s clinical director, Dr. Patricia Ruze, who thinks it would be “totally appropriate” to release the whole unit on compassionate grounds and relocate the men to community nursing homes.I’d go one step further: Let’s release all nonviolent people from prison with appropriate community support to help them prosper and avoid recidivism, as well as offer programs of human uplift to the remaining prisoners using the money we save by closing the prisons we will no longer need.Patrick O’NeillGarner, N.C.Living Well, and Pursuing One’s Passion, With Parkinson’sThe pianist Nicolas Hodges has continued to perform and record — with alterations and tough decisions — after receiving a Parkinson’s disease diagnosis.Roderick Aichinger for The New York TimesTo the Editor: Re “Pianist Adapts His Life to Parkinson’s” (Arts & Leisure, Aug. 13):Thank you for demonstrating how the pianist Nicolas Hodges is adapting to life with Parkinson’s disease. Mr. Hodges is testament to the fact that it is possible to continue to live well with Parkinson’s, and the article highlights two key ways to manage symptoms: consistently taking medications (dopamine) and reducing commitments or stress. Exercise and physical activity are also critical to managing symptoms.Recent research published by the Parkinson’s Foundation shows that the number of people in the U.S. diagnosed with Parkinson’s annually has increased by 50 percent, from approximately 60,000 to 90,000. This means that every six minutes, someone in the U.S. is diagnosed with the disease and may encounter similar challenges to those faced by Mr. Hodges.Further funding to support research and drug development are needed in order to find a cure, and the Parkinson’s Foundation and other organizations work tirelessly to advance this.In the meantime, we applaud Mr. Hodges for speaking about his experience with the disease and continuing to pursue his passion. Play on, Mr. Hodges.John L. LehrNew YorkThe writer is president and C.E.O. of the Parkinson’s Foundation.The ‘Absurd Contradictions’ of the Migrant SystemTo the Editor: We have millions of square feet of office space no longer being used and tens of thousands of homeless people and displaced immigrants needing shelter. Many employers cannot fill open jobs while the talents and proven determination of immigrants sit untapped in detention.We can strengthen our economy and confirm our commitment to human dignity and decency by correcting these absurd contradictions.It would be far more cost-effective to use the migrant detention system funds to create a system where people can be quickly helped and trained to be productive contributors to society instead of expensive drains on us all.Even if common decency is not a motivation, pure selfish economic need dictates that we end the waste and do the right thing.Michael E. MakoverGreat Neck, N.Y.A Civilized Argument Christopher Smith for The New York TimesTo the Editor: Re “Imagining the Face-Off in Trump’s Jan. 6 Case,” by David French (column, Aug. 12):I started feeling odd as I read Mr. French’s column. It was so quiet! Two measured, rational voices speaking through the ink, each backing up their arguments with researchable references and free of bitter, ad hominem jabs. A few bits of pique and tooth grinding to humanize both the defense and the prosecution, but all for the sake of clarifying a complex position.How civilized! How rare! It’s a shame that the essay was the voice of one man working his careful way through a thicket of legal complexity and not a real-life exchange of ideas in search of a mutually arrived at truth.Leslie BellDavenport, IowaA Debate QuestionTo the Editor: At the Republican debate I would like to see the moderator ask each of the participants if as president they would pardon Donald Trump if he is convicted of federal crimes.Walter RonaghanHarrison, N.Y. More

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      The Trump Indictments Are an Indictment of America

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      There are two ways to read the stack of indictments and impeachments the 45th president of the United States has amassed so far. They can be regarded, accurately, as America’s case against Donald Trump. Indictment is a legal action whereas impeachment is a political act, but when taken together the texts provide a singular and consistent case. They capture the progression of transgression evident in Trump’s political campaigns, his presidency and its aftermath, with each escape from accountability yielding a bolder and more reckless iteration of Trump.But the documents also reveal Trump’s case against the United States — dismissing America as a nation where politics serves as a defense against law and repudiating its people as easily and willingly misled, by ever escalating levels of deceit.Trump’s first indictment, for allegedly falsifying business records to conceal payments to women with whom he had extramarital affairs, offers an early and straightforward example of his deception. Concerned that the revelations would hurt his presidential campaign — or make him lose to Hillary Clinton by even more than expected or just antagonize Melania — he “orchestrated a scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him to suppress its publication,” per the statement of facts compiled by the district attorney of New York County. Whether or not that effort also involved violations of electoral or tax law, it succeeded in hiding “damaging information from the voting public.” In short, the indictment contends, Trump obscured the truth.Once in office, Trump’s power to deceive grew and his fear of exposure diminished. His attempted strong-arming of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in 2019 — dangling security assistance and a possible White House visit in exchange for “a favor” — was in keeping with his actions during the 2016 race, just more daring. He was still trying to improve his electoral prospects. But instead of using his own money to suppress negative stories, Trump was now withholding congressionally appropriated funds from Ukraine in order to generate negative stories about his potential 2020 general-election opponent, Joe Biden, and to feed the notion that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered in the 2016 U.S. election. The first article of impeachment in the Ukraine affair asserts that Trump “engaged in this scheme” — there’s that word again — “for corrupt purposes in pursuit of personal political benefit.”Another scheme, a bigger lie. This time, Trump didn’t just hide the truth; he sought to distort it. And even when “faced with the public revelation of his actions,” the articles of impeachment note, the president continued to “openly and corruptly” urge Ukraine to open investigations that would help Trump politically. Such shamelessness is possible only from a president confident that enough voters will share it.The recent indictment by the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., covers a multitude of alleged crimes — like issuing false statements and filing false documents, forgery, conspiracy to defraud the state, solicitation of the violation of an oath by a public officer — but it comes down to a single corrupt purpose: Once Trump lost the 2020 election, the outgoing president sought to reverse or at least delegitimize the outcome.We experience Trump’s impeachments and indictments only in the order in which they came out, a sequence that does not neatly track the chronology or intensity of his misdeeds. Trump progressed from hiding reality with the hush-money payments (indictment No. 1), to remaking reality with the attempted shakedown of Ukraine (impeachment No. 1), to ignoring reality with his insistence that he had won re-election and that other officials should affirm that belief (indictment Nos. 3 and 4). The next step was obvious — to change reality by force. So came Jan. 6 (addressed in impeachment No. 2 as well as indictments Nos. 3 and 4, for those keeping score at home).Trump’s mendacity about the 2020 election was legal; as Jack Smith, the latest special counsel appointed by the Justice Department to investigate him, put it, “the Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud.” His alleged actions and conspiracies in furtherance of those lies — pushing officials to ignore the popular vote in their states, disenfranchising voters, encouraging fake slates of electors — were not, according to the indictment. And once the attempts to claim a counterfactual victory were rejected in the courts, in the states and by his own vice president, the call for violence was all that was left. “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” Trump declared on Jan. 6.That line was quoted in Trump’s second impeachment, in support of its lone article, incitement of insurrection. It was one of three utterances by the president included in the document. The other two were, “We won this election, and we won it by a landslide” (also from Jan. 6) and then a single word, “find,” from Trump’s request to the secretary of state of Georgia to manufacture more votes for him, just enough to win. Those quotes also show the Trumpian progression: The lie, the scheme to support it and the brutishness to enforce it.Trump’s indictment for retaining and concealing classified information after leaving office — and for obstructing the investigations into the matter — nicely captures the former president’s attitude toward truth and law. According to the document, when he consulted his lawyers about how to respond to a grand jury subpoena for any classified material in his possession, Trump asked, “What happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them?” (As if you can just ghost a federal grand jury.) He also wondered aloud, “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”Isn’t it better just to lie? For Trump, the answer is almost always yes.Rusty Bowers, a former speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, who resisted Trump’s blandishments.Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesIn early 2018, the political activist Amy Siskind published “The List: A Week-By-Week Reckoning of Trump’s First Year.” Faithful to its title, the book numbered various misdeeds of the early Trump presidency — each norm and institution degraded, every truth or conflict of interest ignored — totaling thousands of offenses, large and small. The work was especially useful in a refresher-course sort of way; as I wrote then, “it is remarkable how much we can forget, in the shock of the moment, about the previous shock of the moment.”I thought about “The List” once again while reading and rereading the Trump indictments and impeachments. The descriptions of the former president’s alleged actions in these documents — even just a sampling of the verbs — offer their own refresher on the past seven years:Abused. Compromised. Persisted in openly and corruptly urging and soliciting. Served to cover up. Threatened the integrity. Betrayed his trust. Repeatedly and fraudulently falsified. Disguised. Endeavored to obstruct. Did knowingly combine, conspire, confederate. Pursued unlawful means. Used knowingly false claims. Publicly maligned. Refused to accept. Hid and concealed. Constituted a criminal organization. Falsely accused. And, of course, spread lies.One of the Trump era’s recurring questions (a bit quaint now) has been whether Trump lies knowingly or truly believes the untruths he professes. These documents leave little doubt that Trump was told, repeatedly, that his lies were just that, and by officials close to him. David French summarized the latest indictment against Trump in The Times this way: “The Georgia case is about lies. It’s about lying, it’s about conspiring to lie, and it’s about attempting to coax others to lie.”Much the same could be said of the other Trump indictments and of his impeachments, too. They’re all about his lies and about the country’s willingness to countenance them.There are individuals in these documents like Rusty Bowers, a former speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, who, when Trump urged him to appoint new presidential electors from the state, responded: “I voted for you. I worked for you. I campaigned for you. I just won’t do anything illegal for you.” But there are many who believe and enable Trump’s lies, whether out of conviction, allegiance or expedience. His overwhelming lead in the early polling for the next Republican nomination and his current tie with Biden in a possible 2024 rematch exist despite — or, at times, because of — those lies.Trump’s impeachments in 2019 and 2021 did not yield convictions in his Senate trials, and now, after the indictments of 2023, new trials await. Yet even criminal convictions would not ease the political challenge that Trumpism poses. They may even exacerbate it.Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, in his individual statement appended to the 1974 report by the Senate committee on Watergate, warned that “law alone will not suffice to prevent future Watergates.” Ervin wrote that “the only sure antidote” is to elect leaders who understand the principles of our government and display the intellectual and moral integrity to uphold them. Their election is not in the hands of prosecutors or lawmakers, but of voters. Our choices, as Smith might put it, are also outcome-determinative.It is fitting that legal as well as political remedies have been brought to bear on Trump. His transgressions span both worlds and play out in the haze between them. Trump seems to hope that politics can save him from law. That belief is his indictment of both.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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      Democrats Root for a Rowdy G.O.P. Debate

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      Top Democrats, suddenly feeling a bit better about 2024, would love to see Republicans talk about a national abortion ban. They’re less excited about the inevitable Hunter Biden tirades.After a year of fretting about President Biden’s political standing and their electoral chances in 2024, Democrats are at a moment of high confidence as Republicans prepare for their first presidential debate on Wednesday.They will be watching with bated breath in hopes that the Republican candidates embrace the likely-to-be-absent Donald J. Trump, defend him over his four criminal indictments, endorse national restrictions on abortion and — in the Democrats’ dream scenario — call for cuts to Social Security and Medicare.Even without Mr. Trump onstage, Democrats see the Republican White House hopefuls as avatars for what they describe as a party in thrall to its extreme elements. Nobody is rooting for the debate to go off the rails more than Democrats praying for Mr. Biden’s re-election.“All I want these people to do is say the same stuff they’ve been saying on the campaign trail on national TV,” said Jim Messina, the campaign manager for President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election bid. “Please continue to double down on a six-week abortion ban. That would be wonderful. Thank you for doing this.”Mr. Biden probably won’t watch the debate, a spokesman said, but odds are that his compatriots will. Here’s what Democrats are looking for from the Republicans on the debate stage in Milwaukee.Will they rally around a national abortion ban?Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, Democrats have used the abortion issue to turbocharge their voters — particularly in red and purple states like Kansas, Wisconsin and, this month, Ohio.Nothing would make Democrats happier than to see Republicans embrace a national ban on abortion during a nationally televised debate. When Mr. Trump held a CNN town hall event in May, the moment that had Democrats doing cartwheels afterward was not his continued denial of the 2020 election results, but when he took a victory lap for the Supreme Court’s decision.“I’d like to see a huge defense of President Trump and a full-on assault on reproductive freedom and abortion,” said Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, a Democrat. “To me, that would be a gift that would keep on giving.”In reality, many of the Republican candidates have tended to be more cagey about the issue.Mr. Trump, at the CNN event, declined to call for a national abortion ban, and Gov. Ron DeSantis has also treaded carefully despite signing a six-week prohibition into law in Florida this year. But avoiding the subject may be tricky given former Vice President Mike Pence’s enthusiastic support for limiting abortion rights.How much do Republicans cozy up to Trump?Mr. Trump probably won’t be at the debate, but Democrats expect nearly all of the candidates onstage to make explicit plays for his share of the Republican base — a move Democrats hope will focus attention on their own efforts to brand the entire G.O.P. as the party of MAGA.“It doesn’t matter who ‘wins’ the debate on Wednesday, the MAGA Republican presidential candidates have all chosen a losing strategy that is extreme and out of touch with the American people,” Michael Tyler, the communications director for Mr. Biden’s campaign, wrote in memo to supporters on Friday.Mr. Biden has for months been on a mission to paint all Republicans as marching in lock step with Mr. Trump’s most loyal, hard-right supporters. On Wednesday, Democrats are hoping to see Republicans engaged in stylistic efforts to attract Trump voters.“I’m a wrestling fan,” said Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. “I’m imagining a royal rumble on the debate stage, sort of a rehash of the debates in 2016 where they’re talking about each other’s mamas and all kinds of craziness.”But one lesson that has been abundantly clear in the Trump era of politics is that no other Republican can get away with the type of outrage and public shamelessness that Mr. Trump regularly evinces.Mr. DeSantis’s efforts to be a drama-free, more competent version of Mr. Trump have flopped so far. Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech executive who has sought to portray himself as a millennial version of Trump, has risen in early polling but remains largely unknown.Will the Trump indictments be a focus?The biggest story about Mr. Trump is the one Mr. Biden won’t talk about — the four criminal indictments the former president is facing.The problem for the Republicans running against Mr. Trump is that many of their voters agree with his belief that the cases against him are politically motivated.Democrats on the sidelines have been left waiting, to little avail, for Mr. Trump’s G.O.P. rivals to make a case to their voters that the legal problems are politically disqualifying.“Normally candidates would be more than happy to point out if their opponent has been indicted four times!” Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota wrote in a text message. “They ARE running against him after all.”That plea is unlikely to get much airtime on Wednesday. Of the candidates onstage, only former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey — who is running an anti-Trump campaign that has won him new respect from Democrats — has made an explicit case that Mr. Trump’s indictments have merit and are bad for the party.What about Hunter Biden?One thing the Republican candidates are all but certain to do is equate Mr. Trump’s legal problems with those of Hunter Biden, the president’s son, who is facing his own special counsel investigation after a plea agreement on tax and gun charges fell apart last month.Democrats aren’t exactly popping popcorn for this scenario — it is an intensely painful episode for the president, and the prospect of a criminal trial isn’t appealing to them — but they are confident that any detour down a Hunter Biden rabbit hole will take emphasis away from issues that moderate and independent voters care about.“If Republicans want to make this election about attacks on the president’s family, it’s a losing strategy,” said Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat. “It would be a mistake for them to make that an issue.”Democrats hope to dispel with the fiction that it won’t be Trump.Democrats widely view Mr. Trump as the easiest Republican candidate to defeat next year. Mr. Biden beat him once already, they reason, and Mr. Trump’s cascading legal problems and singular ability to repel moderate Republicans and swing voters make him the one they’d like to face.Mr. Trump’s dominance in polls of the Republican primary and the reluctance of most of his G.O.P. rivals to attack him have led most Democrats to conclude that Wednesday’s debate, along with much of the primary, are an academic exercise being held before next year’s Trump-Biden rematch.“I was just going to watch it for comic relief,” said Representative Jasmine Crockett, a Texas Democrat. “This is done. We are going to have Trump versus Biden 2.0. That’s what’s about to happen. Anyone who is kidding themselves into believing that they have a shot is just delusional.”And for the cast of candidates who barely qualified for the Republican stage, hoping that a standout debate performance would propel them to relevance — a TV show, a future cabinet post or maybe a campaign for some other office — a former presidential long shot had a piece of advice.“Learn how to count to 200,” said Representative Eric Swalwell of California, who, many people may have forgotten, ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. “Because that’s about the amount of seconds that you’re going to have to speak.” More