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      Setting the Stage for Iowa: ‘Trump Will Probably be Over 50 Percent’

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      Patrick Healy and The Republican caucuses in Iowa are just five days away, marking the official start of the 2024 presidential election season. To kick-start Opinion Audio’s coverage, Patrick Healy, the deputy editor of Times Opinion, and the Opinion editor Katherine Miller get together to discuss their expectations for Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, where they think the G.O.P. is headed and Donald Trump’s continued dominance. Stay tuned for more on-the-ground analysis from “The Opinions” in the coming weeks.Illustration by Akshita Chandra/The New York Times; Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesThe 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, X (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram.This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Vishakha Darbha. It was edited by Kaari Pitkin, Alison Bruzek and Annie-Rose Strasser. Engineering by Issac Jones with mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. More

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      Severe Weather in U.S., and Crisis in Ecuador

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      The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about five minutes.Heavy rain in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Tuesday.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesOn Today’s Episode:Tornadoes, Blizzards, Floods: Severe Storms Hit Vast Sections of U.S., by Victoria Kim, John Yoon and Mike Ives5 Takeaways From the Appeals Court Hearing on Trump’s Immunity Claim, by Charlie Savage and Alan FeuerEcuador Plunges Into Crisis Amid Prison Riots and Gang Leader’s Disappearance, by Annie Correal, Genevieve Glatsky and José María León CabreraSurprised by New Details About Austin’s Health, White House Orders Review, by Peter BakerFood Assistance for Mothers and Children Faces Funding Shortfall, by Madeleine NgoIn Newark, 16-Year-Olds ‘With Skin in the Game’ Are Set to Get the Vote, by Tracey TullyIan Stewart and More

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      Trump Deploys Familiar Tactic: I’m Rubber. You’re Glue.

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      Whenever Donald Trump is accused of something, he responds by accusing his opponent of that exact thing. The idea is less to argue that Mr. Trump is clean than to suggest that everyone else is dirty.Days before the Iowa caucuses, former President Donald J. Trump is appearing twice in court this week — on Tuesday in Washington and Thursday in New York.He was not required to attend either hearing. But advisers say he believes the court appearances dramatize what is fast becoming a central theme of his campaign: that President Biden — who is describing the likely Republican nominee as a peril to the country — is the true threat to American democracy.Mr. Trump’s claim is the most outlandish and baseless version of a tactic he has used throughout his life in business and politics. Whenever he is accused of something — no matter what that something is — he responds by accusing his opponent of that exact thing. The idea is less to argue that Mr. Trump is clean than to suggest that everyone else is dirty.It is an impulse more than a strategy. But in Mr. Trump’s campaigns, that impulse has sometimes aligned with his political interests. By this way of thinking, the more cynical voters become, the more likely they are to throw their hands in the air, declare, “They’re all the same” and start comparing the two candidates on issues the campaign sees as favorable to Mr. Trump, like the economy and immigration.His flattening moral relativism has undergirded his approach to nearly every facet of American public life, including democracy.In 2017, when the Fox News host Bill O’Reilly described President Vladimir Putin of Russia as a “killer,” Mr. Trump responded that there were “a lot of killers,” adding, “Well, you think our country is so innocent?”And in the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump applied the “I’m rubber, you’re glue” approach to a wide range of vulnerabilities.When Mr. Trump was described by voters as racist in polls after, among other things, he described undocumented immigrants from Mexico as “rapists,” he claimed that his rival, Hillary Clinton, was the true “bigot.”When Mrs. Clinton suggested he was temperamentally unfit to be entrusted with the nation’s nuclear codes, Mr. Trump declared her “trigger happy” and “very unstable.”When Mrs. Clinton called Mr. Trump a “puppet” of Mr. Putin during one of their general election debates, Mr. Trump interrupted: “No puppet. You’re the puppet.”Mr. Trump during a debate with Hillary Clinton in 2016.Damon Winter/The New York TimesA spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to requests for comment.For years, Mr. Trump championed and breathed life into the previously fringe “birther” movement that falsely claimed Barack Obama had been born in Kenya and was therefore an illegitimate president. When he finally renounced the conspiracy theory out of political expediency shortly before Election Day in 2016, he falsely claimed that it was Mrs. Clinton who had started attacking the first Black president with that assertion.Senator Ted Cruz of Texas — “Lyin’ Ted,” Mr. Trump had dubbed him — was a victim of this Trumpian tactic in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries at a time when Mr. Trump was being called out for almost constant falsehoods. Mr. Cruz once summarized the injustice in a fit of indignation, saying of Mr. Trump: “He lies — practically every word that comes out of his mouth. And in a pattern that I think is straight out of a psychology textbook, his response is to accuse everybody else of lying.”Now, Mr. Trump is repurposing his favored tool to neutralize what many see as his worst offense in public life and greatest political vulnerability in the 2024 campaign: his efforts, after he lost the 2020 election, to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power and remain in office.And his campaign apparatus has kicked into gear along with him, as he baselessly claims Mr. Biden is stage-managing the investigations and legal action against him. Mr. Trump’s advisers have coined a slogan: “Biden Against Democracy.” The acronym: BAD.Steve Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist, said he thought his onetime client was on to something. Mr. Trump is now fighting Mr. Biden over an issue that many Republican consultants and elected officials had hoped he would avoid. They had good reason, given that candidates promoting election denial and conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol cost their party winnable races in the 2022 midterm elections.Mr. Bannon sees it differently.“If you can fight Biden almost to a draw on this, which I think you can, it’s over,” Mr. Bannon said in an interview, referring to the imperiling of American democracy. “He’s got nothing else he can pitch. This is his main thing.”Mr. Bannon added, “If Biden wants to fight there, about democracy and all this kind of ephemeral stuff, Trump will go there in a second.”It was Mr. Bannon who pushed for Mr. Trump to “go on offense” after a tape leaked of him boasting to the TV host Billy Bush about grabbing women’s genitals. Mr. Bannon helped arrange for three women who had accused former President Bill Clinton of sexual harassment or assault to join Mr. Trump at a news conference shortly before a debate with Mrs. Clinton. It created a disorienting effect at a moment of acute vulnerability for Mr. Trump.“You’ve got to remember something,” Mr. Bannon said of the Trump campaign’s “Biden Against Democracy” gambit. “This is the whole reason he’s actually running: to say he believes that, burned into his soul, is the 2020 election was stolen, and that Jan. 6 was a setup by the F.B.I.”It’s unclear whether Mr. Trump actually believes that Jan. 6 was orchestrated by the “deep state.” His explanations of that day have shifted opportunistically, and he was a relative latecomer to the baseless far-right conspiracy theory that the Capitol riot was an inside job by the F.B.I.Mr. Trump has also sought to muddy the waters on voter concerns about corruption, by trying, along with his allies, to neutralize his liabilities on that front by attacking Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter, for foreign moneymaking while his father was vice president.But some of Mr. Trump’s advisers think there is less to gain from the Hunter Biden angle than from the “Biden Against Democracy” theme. They recognize that Hunter Biden is not the president and doubt the issue will move voters significantly without the emergence of a connection to the president strong enough to convince Senate Republicans who remain skeptical that there is a basis for impeachment.Mr. Trump has also privately expressed concern about overplaying personal attacks on the president’s son to such an extent that they backfire and make Mr. Biden look like a caring father, according to a person who has heard Mr. Trump make these remarks.In a 2020 general election debate, Mr. Trump made such an error, when he mocked Hunter Biden’s past drug use, prompting a humanizing response from Mr. Biden: “My son, like a lot of people, like a lot of people you know at home, had a drug problem. He’s overtaken it. He’s fixed it. He’s worked on it. And I’m proud of him.”President Biden has repeatedly said Mr. Trump is a threat to American democracy. Mr. Trump has been lately saying the same of Mr. Biden. Pete Marovich for The New York TimesMr. Trump and his advisers are hoping to do more than paper over his liabilities related to his election lies and the violent attack on the Capitol, which Democrats are confident remain deeply troubling to a majority of voters. They hope they can persuade voters that Mr. Biden is actually the problem.Voter attitudes related to Mr. Biden have shifted as Mr. Trump has tried to suggest that efforts to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his actions are a threat to democracy. In an October 2022 New York Times/Siena College poll, among voters who said democracy was under threat, 45 percent saw Mr. Trump as a major threat to democracy, compared with 38 percent who said the same about Mr. Biden. The gap was even wider among independent voters, who were 14 percentage points more likely to see Mr. Trump as such a threat.But Mr. Trump’s rhetoric seems to have already altered public opinion, even before the campaign deployed his new slogan. In another more recent survey, 57 percent of Americans said Mr. Trump’s re-election would pose a threat to democracy, and 53 percent said the same of Mr. Biden, according to an August 2023 poll by the Public Religion Research Institute. Among independent voters, nearly identical shares thought either candidate would be a threat to democracy.The repetition that Mr. Trump has used consistently in his public speeches is a core part of his approach.“If people think he’s inconsistent on message, he ain’t inconsistent on this message,” Mr. Bannon said of Mr. Trump’s effort to brand Mr. Biden as the real threat to democracy. “Go back and just look at how he pounds it. Wash, rinse, repeat. Wash, rinse, repeat. It’s very powerful.”David Axelrod, a former top adviser to Mr. Obama, said polling indicated Mr. Trump had “made headway with his base in this project.” But a general election, he said, is a “harder” race to convince people that his lies about Jan. 6, 2021, are true.It is “one of the reasons he’s so desperate to push the Jan. 6 trial past the election,” Mr. Axelrod said of the federal indictment charging Mr. Trump with conspiracy to defraud the United States.“A parade of witnesses, including his own top aides, White House lawyers and advisers, testifying, followed by a guilty verdict, would damage him outside the base,” Mr. Axelrod said.Ruth Igielnik More

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      As Political Theater, Trump’s Court Appearance Wasn’t a Showstopper

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      The former president plans to continue showing up at various legal proceedings against him, but in this case the spotlight stayed largely on the judges and their skepticism about his immunity claims.If Donald J. Trump’s goal on Tuesday was to turn a weighty legal proceeding in Washington into a de facto campaign appearance that galvanized media attention, he fell short.Six days before the Iowa caucuses, the former president used the arguments before a federal appeals court over whether he is immune from prosecution to hone a strategy he has deployed repeatedly over the past year and intends to use more as the political season heats up and his legal problems come to a head: standing in or near a courthouse, portraying himself as a victim.But in this case, the federal courthouse was a relatively inhospitable setting. The security protocols and the ban on cameras in federal courthouses did not lend themselves easily to the kind of displays Mr. Trump has made at the four arraignments for the indictments he is facing, where he has commanded intensive coverage and the chance to cast the prosecutions as political persecution.The headlines went instead to the sharp questioning by the three judges. They did not overtly acknowledge Mr. Trump’s presence in the courtroom but expressed great skepticism about his legal team’s argument that even a president who ordered the killing of a political rival could not be prosecuted unless he or she was first convicted in an impeachment proceeding.Instead, Mr. Trump was left to hold a short appearance at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue — what had been the Trump International Hotel before he sold it after leaving office.“I feel that as president you have to have immunity, very simple,” said Mr. Trump, standing with a handful of lawyers who had gone with him to the hearing. Saying he had done nothing wrong, Mr. Trump said there would be “bedlam” in the country if the courts did not uphold the concept of presidential immunity.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      What Will Happen at the Iowa Caucuses? Here’s What to Expect

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      A win isn’t always win in the Iowa caucuses. In the final days, the candidates are scrambling to beat each other — and expectations.It may feel as if there is little suspense over who is likely to win the Republican presidential caucuses in Iowa on Monday.But in Iowa, the unexpected can be the expected and a win is not always a win. The result could shape the future of the Republican Party at a time of transition, and the future of the Iowa caucuses after a difficult decade. It could help determine whether Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador, presents a serious obstacle to Donald J. Trump’s return to power — or whether Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, will be forced out of the race.Here’s a guide to some possible outcomes and what they mean for the contenders:A Trump victoryAll the assumptions about a big Trump night mean that the former president’s biggest opponent may turn out to be expectations — and not his two main rivals on the ballot, Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis. Mr. Trump and his campaign have set the bar high. Mr. Trump has run as an incumbent, not even debating his opponents. His aides say they think he can set a record for an open race by finishing at least 12 points ahead of his nearest rival.And for Mr. Trump, that could be a problem.“Trump has been polling around 50 percent plus or minus,” said Dennis J. Goldford, a political science professor at Drake University in Des Moines. “If he were to come in at 40, that’s a flashing yellow light. That suggests weaknesses and uncertainty.”Two forces could complicate Mr. Trump’s hopes for the night. Those same polls that show him heading for victory, the polls he boasts about at almost every rally he does in Iowa, could feed complacency among his supporters. Why come out and caucus — Caucus Day temperatures are projected to reach a high of zero degrees in places — if Mr. Trump is going to win anyway?And unlike Democrats’ caucuses, this is a secret ballot; Republicans do not have to stand and divulge their vote to their neighbors. That could matter if there really is a hidden anti-Trump sentiment out there that Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley have been banking on.Of course, these are just what-ifs. Mr. Trump has appeared to take a lesson from 2016, when, after leading in the polls, he lost the caucus to Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. This time, he has deployed an immense field organization and traveled across Iowa, urging his supporters to vote. “He’s coming back to the state again and again,” said Jeff Angelo, a former Republican state senator who now hosts a conservative talk show on WHO-AM. “They are not going to take it for granted this time.”A weak showing by Mr. DeSantisGov. Ron DeSantis is hoping for a strong second-place finish in Iowa, though he trails the field in most public and private polls in New Hampshire.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesThe governor of Florida was once seen as Mr. Trump’s biggest threat and Iowa was the state where he could seize the mantle of being the Trump alternative. But Mr. DeSantis has not lived up to his billing, and the rise of Ms. Haley has forced him to the edge of the stage.The test for Mr. DeSantis, earlier this campaign season, was whether he could use Iowa to create a two-way race with Mr. Trump. Now, he is struggling to make certain that he at least scores what he was always expected to score: a strong second-place finish.Mr. DeSantis’s supporters say they remain confident he will come in second — and perhaps even upset Mr. Trump. “If you believe in polls, hopefully he comes in a solid second,” said Bob Vander Plaats, an influential evangelical leader in Iowa who has endorsed Mr. DeSantis. “If you believe the ground game, there’s a potential he could upend the former president in Iowa. He has by far the best on-the-ground operation I’ve seen.”“A lot of people are waiting to write DeSantis’s obituary,” he said. “I just see DeSantis having a good night on caucus night.”Coming in second place could propel the DeSantis campaign on to New Hampshire. But a weak second-place showing — if he just barely edges out Ms. Haley, or the results are still in dispute as he leaves Iowa — could confirm Republican concerns about his political appeal, and force him to drop out. And coming in third?“Look, he told all of us that he’s all in for Iowa,” said Mr. Angelo. “You finish third in Iowa, I don’t see how you continue.”But even with a second-place showing — which his campaign would call a win — it’s hard to see how Mr. DeSantis builds on that. He trails the field in most public and private polls in New Hampshire. In fact, Mr. DeSantis is not competitive in any of the upcoming states. In a recent interview on NBC News, he declined to list any other states where he could win. He is not putting much effort, in terms of spending or ground game, in any other state. His best hope, it would seem, is that Mr. Vander Plaats is correct and he somehow pulls off an upset victory over Mr. Trump.A strong showing by Ms. HaleyNikki Haley could present herself as a real alternative for Republicans looking for another candidate besides Mr. Trump to lead the party this November if she comes in a solid second in Iowa.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesIf Ms. Haley does come in a solid second, this becomes a different race. She would head into New Hampshire, a state where she has strong institutional support, with the wind at her back, even after a few weeks that have been marked by stumbles on the campaign trail. She could present herself as a real alternative for Republicans looking for another candidate besides Mr. Trump to lead the party this November.And her supporters would almost certainly turn up the pressure on Mr. DeSantis to step aside to allow the party to unify around her. “That becomes the story of the caucus,” said Jimmy Centers, a longtime Iowa Republican consultant. “She becomes the alternative to former President Trump. And then I think the chorus is going to say, it’s time for the field to winnow so they can go head-to-head.”If Ms. Haley finishes in third place, Mr. DeSantis will presumably try to push her out of the race. But why should she leave? She will only be moving on to politically friendlier territory, as the campaign moves first to New Hampshire then to her home state, South Carolina.If Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley continue their brawling into New Hampshire, Mr. Trump will be the beneficiary. “If you don’t have a clear second-place person who can claim the mantle of where the ‘not-Trump’ vote goes in subsequent states, I don’t see where Trump is facing any challenges going forward,” said Gentry Collins, a longtime Iowa Republican leader.Another rough night for Iowa?This has been a tough decade for the Iowa caucuses. In 2012, Mitt Romney, the governor of Massachusetts, was declared the winner of the Republican caucus, but 16 days later, the state Republican Party, struggling to count missing votes, said that Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania, had actually finished first.The 2020 Democratic caucus turned into a debacle, riddled with miscounts and glitches, and the brigade of reporters who had descended on Iowa left before the final results were known. (Quick quiz: Who won the 2020 Iowa Democratic caucus?)When there is already so much distrust of the voting system, fanned by Mr. Trump, the last thing Iowa needs is another messy caucus count. That would arguably be bad for Iowa, but also for the nation.“What I’m concerned about is that you could have a repeat of 2012,” said David Yepsen, the former chief political correspondent for The Des Moines Register who in 2020 predicted that the meltdown — which robbed Pete Buttigieg of momentum from his narrow victory — would spell the end for Iowa’s Democratic caucus.“You have 180,000 people voting in a couple of thousand precincts on little slips of paper that are hand-tabulated,” he said. “The doomsday scenario is that they have problems with their tabulations. With all this talk about voting being rigged, I just think the country is going to feel jerked around if Iowa Republicans don’t get this right.” More

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      Judges Lean Toward Rejecting Trump’s Immunity Claim in Court

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      The judges seem likely to reject a key element of Trump’s defense in the election case.It looks like Donald Trump ran into a wall today while pushing his position that he cannot be charged criminally for his efforts to remain in power after losing the 2020 election. It came in the form of three federal appeals court judges.With Trump looking on from beside his lawyers in the courtroom in Washington, the judges poked holes in the legal reasoning behind his claims that presidents cannot be prosecuted for actions they take in office. By the time they were done, there was not much doubt they were leaning toward rejecting this central element of Trump’s defense in the election subversion case.“I think it’s paradoxical to say that his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate criminal laws,” said Judge Karen Henderson, the lone Republican appointee on the three-judge panel hearing the arguments.The court seemed especially dismissive of an assertion by Trump’s lawyer, D. John Sauer, that the only way to hold a president accountable for crimes was to first secure a conviction in an impeachment proceeding.“I’m asking a yes or no question: Could a president who ordered SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival, who was not impeached, would he be subject to criminal prosecution,” asked Judge Florence Pan.“If he were impeached and convicted first,” Sauer replied — a response that amounted to an audacious “no.”How expansively the judges might rule on the issue of presidential immunity remains to be seen.The matter is almost certain to land in the lap of the Supreme Court, which is already scheduled to take up a separate case next month on whether Trump can be disqualified from state ballots for his role in encouraging the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.No cameras, no showTrump’s motorcade arriving at the courthouse today.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesThe day did not go terribly well either for Trump’s attempt to turn the appeals proceeding into a bit of political theater, counter-programming to the more traditional campaigning underway in Iowa, where the caucuses will get the 2024 voting underway in less than a week.He did not have to attend the hearing — indeed, it is unusual for any defendant, much less a former president, to be present for appeals court arguments. But Trump chose to do so as part of his accelerating effort to cast all of the legal cases against him as politically motivated, a recurring theme that he has used to rally support as the Republican primary season gets underway.In this case, though, the protocols of a federal courthouse worked against him — no cameras were allowed, for starters — and his brief post-hearing appearance took place with little notice to journalists at the downtown hotel that he owned during his presidency but then sold after leaving office.Instead, it was the appeals court judges who got the headlines, especially Judge Pan, whose probing of Trump’s immunity claim led to the hypothetical situation that even non-lawyers could grasp onto: What if a president ordered Navy commandos to carry out the killing of a rival politician?Sauer, the former president’s lawyer, responded that a president who did such a thing would surely be impeached and convicted. And yet, remarkably, he insisted that the courts would have no jurisdiction to take matters into their own hands and oversee a murder trial unless there was a guilty verdict during the impeachment case.To rule otherwise, he said, would open the door to the routine prosecutions of former presidents whenever the White House changes partisan hands. (He did not mention that Trump, calling on the campaign trail for “retribution” against his opponents, has already repeatedly hinted that he would do just that if he takes power again.)A ‘frightening future’Trump supporters outside the courthouse in Washington.Valerie Plesch for The New York TimesJames Pearce, a lawyer for the special counsel Jack Smith, seemed horrified by Sauer’s argument, pointing out that, under his theory, presidents could literally get away with murder if they simply resigned before impeachment charges were brought. Advocating for that sort of unbounded version of presidential immunity wasn’t just wrong, Pearce said, but also a vision for “an extraordinarily frightening future.”Pearce further rejected the idea that allowing the case to go forward would be a “sea change” that would open the door to “vindictive tit-for-tat prosecutions in the future.” Instead, he reminded everyone in court, Trump was the first former president in American history ever to be charged with crimes, underlining the “fundamentally unprecedented nature” of the Trump prosecutions.“Never before has there been allegations that a sitting president has, with private individuals and using the levers of power, sought to fundamentally subvert the democratic republic and the electoral system,” he said.“Frankly if that kind of fact pattern arises again,” Pearce went on, “I think it would be awfully scary if there weren’t some sort of mechanism by which to reach that criminally.”While the appeals court rushed through the holiday season to be ready for today’s hearing, it’s not clear when the panel will hand down its ruling. Depending on its outcome, either Trump or prosecutors could appeal it. The case could be challenged in front of the full court of appeals — all 11 active judges — or directly to the Supreme Court.Either one of those courts could decide whether to take up the matter or decline to get involved and leave the ruling by the panel in place.How quickly all of this plays out could be nearly as important as the ultimate result. After all, the trial judge, Tanya Chutkan, has frozen the underlying case until the immunity issue is resolved. For now, the case is set to go in front of a jury in early March, but protracted litigation could push it back — perhaps even beyond the November election.If that were to happen and Trump were to win the election, he could try to pardon himself or otherwise use his control of the Justice Department to end the case against him.Your questionsWe’re asking readers what they’d like to know about the Trump cases: the charges, the procedure, the important players or anything else. You can send us your question by filling out this form.What impact does the Supreme Court cases have on the Georgia trial? — Matt Brightwell, York, South Carolina.Alan: The Supreme Court’s ultimate decision on Trump’s claims of immunity in the federal case accusing him of seeking to overturn the 2020 election could affect the similar state criminal charges in Georgia. This week, in fact, his Georgia lawyer raised an immunity defense against that indictment that was very close to the one his lawyers in Washington are trying. If the Supreme Court ends up considering the immunity defense, it could have a direct effect on the defense in Georgia. But there’s one caveat: the defense the Supreme Court is likely to review is specifically geared toward shielding Trump from federal charges.Where does each criminal case stand?Trump is at the center of at least four separate criminal investigations, at both the state and federal levels, into matters related to his business and political careers. Here is where each case currently stands.The New York TimesWhat to watch next weekA trial to determine how much money Trump will have to pay the writer E. Jean Carroll after being found liable for defaming and sexually abusing her begins on Tuesday, one day after the Iowa caucuses.On the same day, Trump’s lawyers are scheduled to file court papers asking for additional discovery in the Florida classified documents case. The papers will give a sense of how he intends to defend himself against charges that he illegally held on to dozens of highly sensitive national security records and then obstructed the government’s efforts to get them back.More Trump coverageA woman praying during a Trump rally in Iowa.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesWhite evangelical Christian voters have lined up behind Republican candidates for decades, but no Republican has had a closer relationship with evangelicals than Trump.In a speech in Iowa on the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack, Trump said those who stormed the Capitol had acted “peacefully and patriotically.”Trump’s escalating attacks on Nikki Haley captured the turbulent dynamics ahead of the first votes of the 2024 Republican presidential primary.Trump pressured state and federal officials to overturn results of the 2020 election in more than 30 phone calls or meetings, according to a Times analysis. See a timeline of events.Thanks for reading the Trump on Trial newsletter. See you next time. — Alan and MaggieRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. More

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      5 Takeaways From the Appeals Court Hearing on Trump’s Immunity Claim

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      A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Washington heard arguments on Tuesday in a momentous case over former President Donald J. Trump’s claim that he is immune from criminal charges for the efforts he took to overturn the 2020 election.A ruling by the court — and when it issues that decision — could be a major factor in determining when, or even whether, Mr. Trump will go to trial in the federal election case.Here are some takeaways:All three judges signaled skepticism with Trump’s position.The judges on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit appeared unlikely to dismiss the charges against Mr. Trump on grounds of presidential immunity, as he has asked them to do. The two Democratic appointees on the court, Judge J. Michelle Childs and Judge Florence Y. Pan, peppered John Sauer, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, with difficult questions.Judge Karen L. Henderson, the panel’s sole Republican appointee, seemed to reject a central part of Mr. Trump’s argument: that his efforts to overturn his loss to President Biden cannot be subject to prosecution because presidents have a constitutional duty to ensure that election laws are upheld.“I think it’s paradoxical to say that his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate the criminal law,” Judge Henderson said.U.S. District Court via Associated PressStill, Judge Henderson also expressed worry that allowing the case to proceed could “open the floodgates” of prosecutions of former presidents. She raised the possibility of sending the case back to the Federal District Court judge overseeing pretrial proceedings, Tanya S. Chutkan, for greater scrutiny of how to consider Mr. Trump’s actions.A lawyer for Trump took a sweeping position on a hypothetical assassination.Judge Pan asked Mr. Sauer to address a series of hypotheticals intended to test the limits of his position that presidents are absolutely immune from criminal prosecution over their official acts, unless they have first been impeached and convicted by the Senate over the same matter.Among them, she asked, what if a president ordered SEAL Team 6, the Navy commando unit, to assassinate a president’s political rival? Mr. Sauer said such a president would surely be impeached and convicted, but he insisted that courts would not have jurisdiction to oversee a murder trial unless that first happened.To rule otherwise, Mr. Sauer said, would open the door to the routine prosecutions of former presidents whenever the White House changes partisan hands.U.S. District Court via Associated PressA prosecutor argued that absolute immunity would be ‘frightening.’Picking up on the hypothetical of a president who uses SEAL Team 6 to kill a rival and then escapes criminal liability by simply resigning before he could be impeached or by avoiding a conviction in the Senate, James I. Pearce, a lawyer for the special counsel Jack Smith, denounced Mr. Sauer’s argument. Such a rationale, he added, put forth an understanding of presidential immunity that was not just wrong but also a vision for “an extraordinarily frightening future.”He also rejected the idea that allowing the case to go forward would be a “sea change” that opened the door to “vindictive tit-for-tat prosecutions in the future.” Instead, he said, the fact that Mr. Trump is the first former president ever to be charged with crimes underlined the “fundamentally unprecedented nature” of the criminal charges. He continued: “Never before has there been allegations that a sitting president has, with private individuals and using the levers of power, sought to fundamentally subvert the democratic republic and the electoral system.”Mr. Pearce added, “Frankly if that kind of fact pattern arises again, I think it would be awfully scary if there weren’t some sort of mechanism by which to reach that criminally.”U.S. District Court via Associated PressTrump tried to engage in political theater.In an unusual move, Mr. Trump showed up in person at the appeals court hearing, even though he was not obliged to be there. But if he was hoping to turn the appearance to his political advantage, the effort fell a little flat.He was ushered into the federal courthouse through a heavily guarded back entrance and did not address the dozens of reporters covering the proceedings. And during the hearing itself, he was silent, doing little more than exchanging notes with his lawyers and staring at the judges who will decide his fate.Afterward, Mr. Trump was driven a few blocks away to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, which once operated under his name, and denounced his prosecution on the election interference charges. He also repeated his false claims that there had been widespread fraud in the 2020 election.“We had a very momentous day in terms of what was learned,” he told reporters. “I think it’s very unfair when a political opponent is prosecuted.”What’s next: The judges will rule, but the timing is not clear.It is not clear when the appellate panel will hand down its ruling. Depending on its outcome, either Mr. Trump or prosecutors could appeal it. The case could be appealed to the full court of appeals — all 11 active judges — or directly to the Supreme Court.Either one of those courts could decide whether to take up the matter or decline to get involved and leave the ruling by the panel in place.How quickly all of this plays out could be nearly as important as the ultimate result. After all, the trial judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, has frozen the underlying case until the immunity issue is resolved. For now, the case is set to go in front of a jury in early March, but protracted litigation could push it back — perhaps even beyond the November election.If that were to happen and Mr. Trump were to win the election, he could try to pardon himself or otherwise use his control of the Justice Department to end the case against him.Christina Kelso More

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      Fox News and Trump Go Live Wednesday for First Time in 2 Years

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      A town hall in Iowa on Wednesday is the network’s first live interview with the former president in nearly two years, the latest twist in a long-running drama.One of television’s longest-running soap operas is about to start a new chapter.Donald J. Trump has not appeared for a live interview on Fox News since April 2022, a nearly two-year stretch of chilliness between the former president and the channel whose airwaves he once relied on to cement his status atop the American right.In that period, all of Mr. Trump’s Fox News interviews were pretaped, a notable precaution for a network that paid $787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit fueled by the former president’s mendacious claims about the 2020 election. That changes on Wednesday, when Mr. Trump will appear live on the network for a town hall in Des Moines ahead of the Iowa caucuses.The relationship between Mr. Trump and the Rupert Murdoch-owned network has featured more drama than a season of “Real Housewives.” But Wednesday’s event is not only a turning point and a potential ratings winner for Fox News: It is also the former president’s first live interview on any major news network since he went on CNN last May, an event that drew harsh criticism for the volume and velocity of his unfiltered false claims.Mr. Trump has not exactly been silenced. He refused the invitations of several networks to participate in live Republican primary debates. And he has agreed to numerous pretaped interviews, including an appearance on NBC in September that also prompted complaints from viewers who berated the network for providing him a platform.His relationship with Fox News, however, is especially complicated. In fact, it wasn’t that long ago when parts of the network seemed to be moving on.Back in 2022, Fox News snubbed Mr. Trump’s rallies while offering admiring coverage to a rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. After Mr. Trump announced in November 2022 that he would again run for president, the network kept him off its airwaves for a full five months. When Mr. Trump did return, for a taped interview last March with Sean Hannity, he received a cool reception from other Fox hosts; one network contributor called his appearance “absolutely horrific.”The slights angered Mr. Trump, who has harbored resentment toward Fox over its early projection of Arizona for Joseph R. Biden Jr. on election night in 2020. Over the past year, the former president has lobbed crude insults at Mr. Murdoch and denounced Fox as “fake news” and “hostile” in posts on Truth Social, his preferred social media platform. He has also grumbled to allies that the network erred in settling the defamation suit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, saying it offered ammunition to other potential litigants.In an interview, Bret Baier, Fox News’s chief political anchor, who is moderating the Wednesday event alongside the anchor Martha MacCallum, did not shy away from acknowledging the volatility of the relationship.“We’re one Truth Social post away from some different feeling,” he said.Despite the wariness, both sides found reasons to agree to Wednesday’s town hall.Judging by his poll numbers, many conservatives remain enthralled by Mr. Trump, and keeping the potential Republican nominee at arm’s length would erode Fox News’s credibility with a core audience. While Mr. Trump has told confidants that he believes Fox News has lost some influence with Republican voters, it remains the highest-rated cable network and home to influential conservatives like Mr. Hannity and Jesse Watters.Furthermore, the town hall gives Mr. Trump a chance to dunk on both his presidential rivals and one of his media bêtes noires: CNN.CNN had previously announced that it would sponsor a Republican debate in Iowa on the same night, in the same city, at the same time (9 p.m. Eastern). Mr. DeSantis and Nikki Haley, Mr. Trump’s closest rivals in state polls, will be at that debate, but Mr. Trump boycotted. Fox’s town hall allows him to siphon away attention and potentially deliver a TV ratings victory over CNN — which would also please Fox News.Given the rough-and-tumble nature of a presidential campaign, Wednesday’s telecast is unlikely to represent a lasting détente. One person with direct knowledge of interactions between the Trump camp and Fox News, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the relationship remained chilly.The televisions on Mr. Trump’s plane once constantly aired Fox News, but that is no longer the case, the person said. The former president often requests to watch Mr. Hannity’s program, but sometimes prefers Newsmax, particularly its host Greg Kelly, an old acquaintance from New York political circles. Mr. Trump remains a fan of Mr. Hannity — and of Mr. Watters and Maria Bartiromo — but he has soured on the “Fox & Friends” host Steve Doocy, whom he recently described as “not nice like he should be.”Mr. Baier said he had studiously courted Mr. Trump in recent weeks, pitching him on the idea of a town hall over the phone and at least once in person at his Florida mansion, Mar-a-Lago.“It’s not easy,” he said of the efforts required to coax Mr. Trump into an interview. He said he had encouraged the former president to take “tough but fair” questions in a live setting.“This is getting to the playoffs,” Mr. Baier said. “This is a time when voters need to see him live, in person, when it happens.”So what happens if Mr. Trump repeats on live TV his baseless claim that the 2020 election was rigged?“We’re ready to deal with it,” Mr. Baier said, noting that he disputed Mr. Trump’s claims when the subject arose at their pretaped interview last June. “But if he’s spending all of his town hall time dealing with 2020, and not talking about what he wants to do as president, he’s got other issues.” (At the time, Mr. Trump was not thrilled about Mr. Baier’s real-time fact-checking, calling it “nasty.”)For Mr. Baier, the next person on his list for a live, unfiltered interview is President Biden. “We’ve had a request in every two weeks since South Carolina, when candidate Joe Biden won the primary,” he said. “We would love to do a town hall with the president. We would do that in a heartbeat.”Jonathan Swan More