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      Where’s the Vicuña Outrage?

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      Three men walk into a courtroom, as August heats up.WASHINGTON — For a quiet summer Friday, there was quite a cacophony. Donald Trump crashing around. Clarence Thomas cashing in. Hunter Biden spinning out.News about these men rocked the capital. Yet there is something inevitable, even ancient, about the chaos enveloping them. Fatal flaws. Mythic obsessions. Greed. Revenge. Daddy issues. Maybe a touch of Cain and Abel.It’s all there, part of a murky cloud reaching from the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Court House to the Supreme Court to the Justice Department to the White House.On Thursday, ProPublica dropped a scalding piece about the abominable behavior of Clarence Thomas, following up on its revelations about Harlan Crow paying for Thomas’s luxury trips, his mother’s house in Georgia and private school tuition for his grandnephew. This one is headlined: “The Other Billionaires Who Have Treated the Supreme Court Justice to Luxury Travel.”In the old days, there was shame attached to selling your office. There was a single word that encapsulated such an outrage: vicuña. President Dwight Eisenhower’s chief of staff, Sherman Adams, accepted a vicuña coat from a Boston textile manufacturer doing business with the federal government. He lost his job and scarred his reputation.Now Thomas sneers at the law by failing to disclose gifts from billionaires eager to gain influence. (The gifts also benefited his wife, Ginni Thomas, who tried to help Trump overthrow the government.)ProPublica told the ka-ching: “At least 38 destination vacations … 26 private jet flights … a dozen V.I.P. passes to professional and college sporting events … two stays at luxury resorts … and one standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast.”Thomas is abiding by the adage that living well is the best revenge. He never got over the humiliation of the Anita Hill hearings, even though his allies smeared Hill as he lied his way to Senate confirmation. (Thanks, Joe Biden!) He came out of it feeling angry and vindictive. He got on the court, muscling past questions about his legal abilities and ethical compass by pushing the story that he was a guy who worked his way up from poverty.The justice polished that just-folks image over the years by going on R.V. vacations with his wife to escape the “meanness” of Washington. But as The Times reported last weekend, the $267,230 Prevost Le Mirage XL Marathon R.V., which Thomas told friends he had scrimped and saved to afford, was actually underwritten by Anthony Welters, a friend who made a bundle in health care.Thomas is ruining the court’s image and, with the help of other uber-conservatives, he’s undoing our social constructs, causing many Americans to rebel.At a hearing Friday, the federal judge overseeing the case against Trump for conspiring to purloin Biden’s election victory made a brisk start. “The fact that he is running a political campaign has to yield to the administration of justice,” Judge Tanya Chutkan informed Trump’s lawyers. “And if that means he can’t say exactly what he wants to say in a political speech, that is just how it’s going to have to be.”This will be tough for Trump because, as David Axelrod says, “the sense that he is being tried for political reasons is the essence of his campaign.”The judge warned Trump’s lawyers, “To the extent your client wants to make statements on the internet, they have to always yield to witness security and witness safety,” adding, “I will take whatever measures are necessary to safeguard the integrity of these proceedings.”Trump was warped by a father who told him, You’re either a killer or a loser. He couldn’t tolerate losing in 2020 so he concocted a scheme to become a killer — of democracy.Trump reminds me of fairy-tale figures — like Midas or the ballerina in “The Red Shoes,” a movie drawn from a fairy tale — who crave something so badly, they follow it down a destructive path. Trump refused to let go of the spotlight. He wanted all the attention and now it’s going to crush him.Like Thomas, Trump is driven by revenge. We shouldn’t hand power to people whose main motive is doing bad stuff to other people.A few blocks from Judge Chutkan’s courthouse, Merrick Garland emerged Friday with an announcement that surprised the White House — he was elevating the Hunter Biden prosecutor to a special counsel.This ratchets up the White House family drama. Beau was the ballast for the Bidens. Now he is his father’s hero, which is bound to make the troubled Hunter feel like a zero.Joe Biden should have reined in Hunter when he began living off his dad’s positions and connections. But the president, who lost two kids and nearly lost this one, is clearly paralyzed when it comes to Hunter.With Hunter likely going on trial, and the 2024 race underway, it will be harder for the president to argue that Trump is the one with all the legal and ethical albatrosses.Hunter is staining his father’s campaign, as Thomas is smearing the Roberts court, as Trump is dragging down the G.O.P.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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      Are the Elite Anti-Trumpers the ‘Bad Guys’?

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      Readers react to David Brooks’s suggestion that the elite are partly to blame for Trumpism.To the Editor:Re “What if We’re the Bad Guys Here?,” by David Brooks (column, Aug. 4):I am sick and tired of people like Mr. Brooks telling me that I am the problem or the “bad guy” because I am educated (and no, I was not educated at an Ivy League school, and neither of my parents finished high school) to justify the fact that 35 percent of the population are fervent supporters of Donald Trump, no matter what he says or does.Moreover, Mr. Trump is also part of the elite, but his supporters simply ignore this. This is not because he identifies with them in any way (as a golden-haired billionaire living in a mansion), but because Fox, Newsmax, and other right-wing TV and radio media outlets, right-wing militias and Trump puppet politicians in Congress essentially brainwashed them with their daily dose of propaganda about how the “left wing socialists and communists,” “elites,” the “woke,” etc., are all conspiring to take their country and only Donald Trump can stop them.In my opinion, this is the biggest problem, Mr. Brooks, not educated Americans who as you correctly state are “are earnest, kind and public spirited.”So, let’s not beat ourselves up because the other side has been completely brainwashed, does not accept facts, scientific and otherwise, is obsessed with conspiracies and lives in a right-wing echo chamber.Michael HadjiargyrouCenterport, N.Y.To the Editor:While I grew up in a small Midwestern town in a middle-class family, education has offered me a satisfying life with a secure retirement. Many of my classmates who chose a more blue-collar life path have endured more struggles, starting with military service in Vietnam. I am quite confident that many of them today support Donald Trump, at least partly for the reasons that David Brooks suggests.Mr. Brooks’s column was a brilliant, moving description of the unspoken arrogance of many of us who are left-leaning. I believe that some sincere humility and understanding with regard to the concerns of many who feel left behind would go a long way to healing some of our divisions. Thanks to Mr. Brooks for his insight.David MahanSebring, Fla.To the Editor:Fine: I’ll accept David Brooks’s plea that we not blame the logic-defying viability of Donald Trump on the wrongheadedness of tens of millions of Americans. I get the class resentment. I share the rage against excessive political correctness and the feeling that immigration is unchecked and overwhelming. I see his point that the elite stoke these resentments by voicing our support for the nonelite while spending most of our energy and resources protecting our own class privilege.But let’s not gloss over the main factor here: Mr. Trump is the latest version of a leader who is little more than a self-obsessed expert at exploiting and inflaming the fear and resentments of the masses to benefit his own power and ego. Such a leader cares nothing about those who harbor these resentments, and certainly does not share the same fears.On a more practical note, those who resent wokeism are shooting themselves in the foot by supporting someone who so many Americans, elite and otherwise, would vote for over their proverbial dead bodies.Brian SmithDayton, OhioTo the Editor:The irony behind the case that David Brooks makes for Donald Trump’s support is that this support is based entirely on words (primarily offensive) and not actions. What did Mr. Trump do as president to help his supporters and make their lives better?His major accomplishment was the tax reform enacted in 2017, which heavily favored the rich and elites (including himself). His supporters love the way he attacks his “enemies” and anyone who disagrees with him and feel he speaks for them. The lack of actual benefits they have enjoyed seems not to matter.Ellen S. HirschNew YorkTo the Editor:Donald Trump, as loathsome as he is, has done one significant service for this country. He has made clear the great social divide that David Brooks describes in his excellent column. Now, how to fix it?As a former naval officer and Vietnam veteran, I would suggest universal national service, with almost no exemptions. Being forced to live with, eat with, work with people from all over the country would teach all of us to be more tolerant. This would not just be military service; it would include working in national parks, teaching in underserved schools, and many other forms of service to the nation.The only thing standing in the way is a timid Congress. Is there anyone in Congress brave enough to take this on?Jeffrey CallahanClevelandTo the Editor:David Brooks makes a familiar and not unreasonable argument about how the fear, resentment and sense of alienation that fuel the cult of Trumpism proceed from economic and cultural realities for which liberal elites are, in large part, responsible.When Mr. Brooks asks, however, whether anti-Trumpers should consider whether they are the “bad guys,” he embarks on an analysis that completely excludes millions of people like me who find Donald Trump and Trumpism appalling, without being “elite” at all.I was raised in a row home in northeast Philly by a single mom who was a cop. My dad was a union construction worker. I’ve been a musician and a bartender for most of my adult life. In short, I’m hardly part of the elite class that Mr. Brooks seems to equate with the anti-Trump movement, and yet I’m passionately anti-Trump!Maybe this particular piece simply wasn’t aimed at people like me, and that’s fine. But all too often I see this oversimplified, false duality that leaves out all the decent working-class people who have themselves been hurt by neoliberal policies and narratives, and yet would never channel their frustration into an odious movement like Trumpism. When we condemn Mr. Trump and his followers, we do so with a clean conscience.James A. LeponeTelford, Pa.To the Editor:David Brooks identifies the privileges enjoyed by the highly educated class and the resentment of the less educated class that might cause them to be ardent supporters of Donald Trump. Mr. Brooks concludes with a warning that history is the graveyard of classes with preferred caste privileges.What he fails to consider is that in the United States his identified “upper” class encourages, both by words and action, members of the “lower” class to join it. Nothing would make those with college or graduate degrees happier than if every capable child joined their class. This differs very much from any true caste system.Jack SternSetauket, N.Y.To the Editor:David Brooks’s column gave me a new perspective regarding why people support this obvious con man named Donald Trump. Although Mr. Brooks makes excellent points regarding the anger that people feel, is it not the Democrats who advocate and pass legislation regarding the minimum wage, infrastructure, child care, education, the environment, middle-class tax relief, financial assistance with community colleges and technical schools, etc., all for the benefit of working- and middle-class Americans?Mr. Trump and the current crop of Republicans have done nothing to help these people. In light of this, isn’t propaganda from Mr. Trump and his followers, as well as the cynical right-wing media, also to blame for this misplaced anger and anti-democratic sentiment?We’re not the bad guys. Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch are.Phillip L. RosenVenice Beach, Calif.To the Editor:David Brooks does an excellent job of setting up a straw man to bring down. Most liberals aren’t part of the “elite,” no matter how many right-wingers parrot that lie.Exit polls from 2020 found that Joe Biden outpaced Donald Trump significantly among voters making less than $100,000 a year, while Mr. Trump did better among those making $100,000 or more. Mr. Trump is no friend to the working class, and polls like these give me confidence that a majority of the working class recognizes this. And any member of the working class who supports him or today’s extreme-right Republican Party is going against their own best interests.It’s liberals and Democrats (usually but not always the same) who support policies to empower workers and reduce economic inequality, and the other side doesn’t give a damn. Liberals are not the elite and are not the enemy of the working class.Trudy RingBend, Ore. More

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      Trump and DeSantis Appear at the Iowa State Fair in a Rare Candidate Convergence

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      Former President Donald J. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida will arrive at the Iowa State Fair on Saturday, a convergence of the two leading Republican presidential candidates that will highlight the busiest day of state politicking amid farm animals, corn dogs and oversize lemonades.The fair is a throwback to an earlier era of politics more dominated by in-person interactions than cable news appearances, featuring a mix of speechifying and politicians flipping pork chops, and it is drawing most of the 2024 field.Mr. Trump, who famously brought a helicopter to the fair in 2015 and gave children rides during his first primary campaign, is flying to Iowa for a single day of campaigning. In an effort to poke his leading rival, he is bringing along a host of prominent Florida Republicans who have endorsed him over Mr. DeSantis.Mr. DeSantis, who replaced his campaign manager earlier in the week, is focused on turning around his political fortunes in Iowa. He has spent two full days campaigning in the state ahead of the fair and ticking off visits to more of Iowa’s 99 counties, all of which he has pledged to visit.In fact, while recording a podcast in downtown Des Moines, Mr. DeSantis predicted on Thursday that he would complete that feat by October, a timeline that suggests a particularly aggressive next two months of events in the state.On Friday, a number of lower-polling candidates fanned out across the fairgrounds, including former Vice President Mike Pence, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, Perry Johnson, Larry Elder and Mayor Francis X. Suarez of Miami, all seeking attention from potential Iowa caucusgoers.“This is amazing — I feel like I’m at Disneyworld,” Mr. Suarez, who is likely to miss the first debate later this month, said in a chat with Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa, who invited every candidate to a friendly Q. and A. session she is billing as “fair-side chats.”Almost everyone accepted the invitation, with the notable exception of Mr. Trump. He has criticized Ms. Reynolds for her plans to stay neutral in the primary and tried to take credit for her election.Mr. DeSantis has sought to take advantage of Mr. Trump’s comments about Ms. Reynolds, with his allies and advisers arguing that Mr. Trump has provided an opening by demeaning the popular Republican governor.On Friday, Mr. DeSantis scored the formal endorsement of a prominent conservative radio host in the state, Steve Deace, who has been open about his hope that the party won’t nominate Mr. Trump again.While Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Trump are not expected to cross paths on Saturday, it is not clear when they will next be in the same location. Mr. Trump has vacillated about attending the first debate of the primary — less than two weeks away — suggesting that he does not need to, given his polling lead. He has also said that he won’t sign the required loyalty pledge.“You have to earn this nomination, and you have to show up,” Mr. DeSantis said on the “Ruthless” podcast on Thursday. “You have to debate. You’ve got to be willing to answer questions. You’ve got to be willing to defend your record, and you’ve got to articulate a vision for the future.” More

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      Republican 2024 Candidates Cast Doubt on Hunter Biden Special Counsel

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      Republican presidential candidates, some of whom were stumping in the early-caucusing state of Iowa on Friday, largely derided the news that the prosecutor investigating President Biden’s son Hunter had been elevated to special counsel status.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, during a campaign stop in Audubon, Iowa, cast doubt on the independence of the special counsel, David C. Weiss, who had already been overseeing a yearslong investigation of the president’s son. “It just seems to me that they’re going to find a way to give him some type of soft-glove treatment,’’ he said. And Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, spoke disdainfully of the new title and power for Mr. Weiss.“I don’t think the American people trust the Department of Justice or anything this is going to do,” Ms. Haley said in an appearance on Fox News. “I think this was meant to be a distraction.”At the same time, she called it a “response to the pressure that the Biden family is feeling” and called on House Republicans who have been investigating the Bidens “to keep their foot on the gas.” So far, the investigations have found no hard evidence that President Biden used his influence while vice president to benefit his son’s business deals.Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota also said he doubted the independence of Mr. Weiss. In an interview while twirling around on the Iowa State Fair’s Ferris wheel, he called the move “too little, too late” and said few Republicans would view the step as a serious development, given Mr. Weiss’s role in offering Hunter Biden a plea deal in the case. That plea deal has fallen apart.Mr. Weiss is a federal prosecutor in Delaware who was originally appointed by former President Donald J. Trump. He was left in his position by President Biden to continue the Hunter Biden inquiry to avoid the appearance that the president would seek special treatment for his son.In a statement attributed to a spokesperson, Mr. Trump, who is being investigated by the special counsel Jack Smith, claimed without evidence that the Department of Justice has protected President Biden, Hunter Biden and other family members “for decades.” The statement cast doubt on Mr. Weiss’s independence and criticized him for not already bringing “proper charges after a four-year investigation” of Hunter Biden.Mr. Smith has brought two indictments against Mr. Trump.Not all of the candidates were disdainful of the appointment of the special counsel, which Republicans have urged for some time. Vivek Ramaswamy, who said last month that a special counsel was warranted, called the appointment of Mr. Weiss “good” on X, the site formerly known as Twitter. “Now let’s see if it’s more than a fig leaf,” he added.Former Vice President Mike Pence, who was flipping cuts of pork at the Iowa State Fair on Friday, said he approved of the Department of Justice’s move to upgrade Mr. Weiss’s power.“I think it’s about time that we saw the appointment of a special counsel to get to the bottom of not only what Hunter Biden was doing, but what the Biden family was doing,” Mr. Pence said. “The American people deserve answers, and I welcome the appointment.”Anjali Huynh More

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      The Iowa State Fair Continues Friday, as Republican Candidates Seek a Moment

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      The butter cow is carved. The pork chops are prepped. And the candidates who weren’t at the Iowa State Fair on Thursday are on their way.Six candidates for the Republican presidential nomination will be circulating through the fairgrounds on Friday, as they try to woo voters months ahead of this crucial first nominating contest.A day at the fair — one of the largest in the nation — has long been one of Iowa’s quirkiest political traditions. Presidential aspirants make their campaign pitch but also flip pork chops at a grill sponsored by the state’s pork industry, pay homage to a sculpture of a cow made of 600 pounds of butter and eat their share of fried foods — all while navigating hecklers and a media throng.It doesn’t always go as planned: In 2007, Mitt Romney flipped his chop into the gravel. (He lost the caucuses that year but won the party’s nomination four years later.) And in 2015, Donald J. Trump, walking through the fair in a navy blazer and buffed white dress shoes, offered rides at random to handfuls of Iowa children in his helicopter parked nearby. (He, too, lost the caucus but won the nomination.)Five months before the 2024 caucuses, Iowa has already emerged as a make-or-break contest in this race. With Mr. Trump leading by a double-digit margin, the state represents the best opportunity for his rivals to stop his march to the nomination. If one of them can take him down — or even come close to beating him — it would show cracks in his support and potentially undercut the narrative that he still has a stranglehold on the Republican base. If Mr. Trump wins in Iowa, party strategists say, it will be difficult to slow his momentum, particularly as the race broadens out to states across the country.Friday’s lineup at the fair is a list of Republican candidates who have been struggling to break into the top tier of the nomination race, including former Vice President Mike Pence, former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, Mayor Francis X. Suarez of Miami and Larry Elder, the conservative commentator.Several candidates are scheduled to deliver speeches at the political soapbox, a small podium open to the public and sponsored by the Des Moines Register. Others will participate in public Q. and A. sessions with Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa, opting for a more scripted encounter with a fellow Republican.While Saturday will bring Mr. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida to the event, the Friday attendees are likely to enjoy a day basking in the Iowa attention without the former president stealing the show. More

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      Trump’s Political Orbit, Amid Spiraling Legal Bills, Faces a Cash Crunch

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      The former president’s political orbit, including the super PAC that backs him, is already spending more than it is taking in — an unusual trajectory this far out from an election.Donald J. Trump’s legal problems aren’t just piling up — his legal bills are, too.New financial reports show that the former president’s various political committees and the super PAC backing him have used roughly 30 cents of every dollar spent so far this year on legal-related costs. The total amounts to more than $27 million in legal fees and other investigation-related bills in the first six months of 2023, according to a New York Times analysis of federal records. That $27 million in legal costs includes Mr. Trump paying at least eight law firms more than $1 million each in the first half of 2023, part of a sizable set of legal billings expected to spiral upward in the coming months as his overlapping criminal cases wind their way toward courtrooms in New York, Florida and Washington, D.C.The new disclosures revealed the remarkable degree to which Mr. Trump’s political and legal cash are intermingled, much like his own political and legal fate.Mr. Trump’s complex political orbit is already spending more than it is taking in, and tapping into money it raised years ago — an unusual trajectory this far out from an election. And the burn rate raises questions about whether such an approach is untenable, or whether Mr. Trump will eventually need to dip into his own fortune to pay for his lawyers, his 2024 campaign or both.It is a step that the famously tightfisted Mr. Trump has resisted taking, even as his advisers have begun planning behind the scenes for a potential political cash crunch months before the primaries begin.Mr. Trump is not known for long-term planning, so it remains unclear how much he has focused on the intricate challenges of financing his campaign in the coming months. Some close to him say they are reassured by the fact that if he becomes the presidential nominee again, he can rely on the Republican Party to provide financial support. “President Trump continues to be the campaign fund-raising leader due to the support from voters who recognize this as an illegal witch-hunt,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, in a statement. “As President Trump has said, he will spend whatever it takes to defeat the Deep State and Crooked Joe Biden.”All told, the political committees that Mr. Trump directly controls, along with the independently operated super PAC devoted exclusively to helping him, are spending more than they raised so far in 2023 — largely because of his legal expenditures, the filings show.Those entities brought in $67.2 million in new donations in the first half of the year and spent about $90 million in the same period. Most of the money that went to legal fees did not come from new donations, the records show. Save America, the PAC doing the bulk of the legal spending, raised much of its funds in the aftermath of the 2020 election and plunged $16 million into legal expenses in 2022. It’s nearly been bled dry.“This is going to be an incredibly expensive proposition,” said Ben Brafman, a prominent criminal defense lawyer who is not involved in Mr. Trump’s cases. Of Mr. Trump’s three indictments, he added, “Not only is he now dealing with three separate jurisdictions, and nobody really knows which case is going to come first, but they all need to be investigated, researched and prepared at the same time by his attorneys.”Trump Entities Have Plunged Millions Into Legal ExpensesData is for Jan. 1 through June 30. More

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      LIV Golf Has Embraced Trump, but Others Are Keeping Their Distance

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      LIV Golf has embraced the former president. But much of golf’s establishment is keeping its distance, even as LIV and the PGA Tour seek a détente.Walking toward a tee box in Virginia in May, former President Donald J. Trump offered an awfully accurate assessment of the way many golf executives viewed him.“They love the courses,” he said, forever the salesman for his family company’s portfolio of properties, “but I think they probably consider me a little bit controversial right now.”As much as some leaders of men’s golf are trying to patch the rupture created by the Saudi-backed LIV Golf circuit, a tour Trump has championed, they seem to be in no rush to end the former president’s exile from their sport’s buttoned-up establishment. Even in an era of gaudy wealth and shifting alliances in golf, Trump remains, for now, a measure too much for many.The consequences have been conspicuous for a figure who had expected to host a men’s golf major tournament in 2022. Now, his ties to the sport’s elite ranks often appear limited to LIV events and periodic rounds with past and present professionals. Jack Nicklaus, the 18-time major champion, caused a stir in April when he publicly stopped short of again endorsing a Trump bid for the White House.Nevertheless, on Thursday, when he was playing a LIV pro-am event at his course in Bedminster, N.J., Trump insisted he was in regular conversations with golf executives about top-tier tournaments.“They think as long as you’re running for office or in office, you’re controversial,” he said.Golf has been a regular respite for Democratic and Republican commanders in chief. But no American president has had a more openly combustible history with the sport than Trump, and perhaps no president besides Dwight D. Eisenhower, who is thought to have averaged about 100 rounds annually when he was in the White House, has had so much of his public image linked to golf.In the years before Trump won the presidency, he had at last started to make significant headway into the rarefied realms of golf.Trump watched his shot from the fairway.Doug Mills/The New York TimesIn 2012, the U.S. Golf Association picked the Bedminster property for the 2017 U.S. Women’s Open. Two years later, the P.G.A. of America said it planned to take the men’s P.G.A. Championship to the course in 2022. Also in 2014, Trump bought Turnberry, a mesmerizing Scottish property that had hosted four British Opens, and he imagined golf’s oldest major championship being contested there again.Once in the White House, Trump played with a parade of golf figures (though some of them appeared more attracted to the magic of the presidency than to Trump himself): Tiger Woods; Rory McIlroy; Ernie Els; Jay Monahan, the commissioner of the PGA Tour; and Fred S. Ridley, the chairman of Augusta National Golf Club.Trump’s 2016 campaign and presidency had given some in golf heartburn. But it was the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol that most clearly chiseled away at his golf dreams. The P.G.A., which is distinct from the PGA Tour, which has dueled with LIV for supremacy over men’s professional golf, immediately moved its 2022 championship from Bedminster. The R&A, which organizes the British Open, made clear that it would not be bound for Turnberry anytime soon.LIV soon emerged as something of a life raft, an insurgent league with a craving for championship-quality courses and plenty of money to spend. It did not hurt that Trump had been strikingly cozy with the government in Riyadh whose wealth fund was ready to pour billions of dollars into LIV — and let some of those dollars, in turn, roll toward the Trump Organization for reasons that have been the subject of widespread speculation.Trump became a fixture at LIV events held at his courses, routinely jawing about the PGA Tour with variable accuracy. (He did, however, predict something like the planned transaction between the wealth fund and the PGA Tour.) This week’s event in New Jersey is his family’s fourth LIV tournament, and a fifth is planned for the Miami area in October.But the budding détente between the Saudis and the PGA Tour does not seem to be leading to an immediate one between Trump and the broader golf industry, which the Saudis could have enormous sway over in the years ahead.The PGA Tour has not publicly committed to maintaining the LIV brand if it reaches a conclusive deal with the wealth fund, and the tentative agreement says nothing about the future of men’s golf’s relationship with Trump. The PGA Tour has a history with Trump but ended its relationship with his company during the 2016 campaign. Tim Finchem, who was the tour’s commissioner then, denied at the time that the decision was “a political exercise” and instead called it “fundamentally a sponsorship issue.”To no one’s surprise, the tour’s 2024 schedule, which the circuit released on Monday, features no events at Trump properties. And although Trump said a few months ago that he thought the Irish Open might be interested in his Doonbeg course, the DP World Tour, which is also a part of the agreement with the Saudi wealth fund, has said the course is not under consideration.Other top golf figures who are not bound by any deal with the Saudis somehow appear even less interested.Trump Turnberry in Scotland won’t be hosting the British Open anytime soon, according to the chief executive of the R&A.Mary Turner for The New York Times“Until we’re confident that any coverage at Turnberry would be about golf, about the golf course and about the championship, until we’re confident about that, we will not return any of our championships there,” Martin Slumbers, the chief executive of the R&A, said on the same day last month when he signaled that the Open organizer might be willing to accept a Saudi investment.Seth Waugh, the P.G.A. of America’s chief executive, declined to comment this week, but the organization has given no signal that it is reconsidering its thinking about Trump courses. The U.S.G.A. said it did not have a comment.Some players, many of whom at least lean conservative, have suggested they would like to see Trump courses be in the mix for the majors.“There’s no reason you couldn’t host P.G.A.s, U.S. Opens out here,” said Patrick Reed, who won the Masters Tournament in 2018 and played with Trump on Thursday. “I mean, just look at it out here: The rough is brutal.”Even a sudden rapprochement, which would require executives setting aside the views of players like Reed that politics should not shape sports decisions, would almost certainly not lead to Trump’s strutting around a major tournament in the near future.The next U.S. Open in need of a venue is the one that will be played in 2036; Trump would turn 90 on the Saturday of that tournament. P.G.A. Championships are booked through 2030. Between last month’s announcement that the 2026 British Open will be held at Royal Birkdale and the R&A’s sustained public skepticism of Trump, the last major of the calendar year seems unlikely to head to a Trump property anytime soon. And the Masters, which is always played at Augusta National in Georgia, is not an option.Women’s golf offers a few more theoretical possibilities since its roster of venues is not as set, but Trump would face much of the same reluctance.Trump has mused about the financial wisdom of golf’s keeping its distance from him. A few months ago, he argued that avoiding his courses was “foolish because you make a lot of money with controversy.”He may be right.But it seems golf is reasoning that it is making plenty of money anyway. Its political bent, some figure, might be better managed outside the glare of its major tournaments — and, moreover, beyond the shadow of Trump.Trump has mused about the financial wisdom of golf’s keeping its distance from him. Doug Mills/The New York Times More

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      Conservative Case Emerges to Disqualify Trump for Role on Jan. 6

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      Two law professors active in the Federalist Society wrote that the original meaning of the 14th Amendment makes Donald Trump ineligible to hold government office.Two prominent conservative law professors have concluded that Donald J. Trump is ineligible to be president under a provision of the Constitution that bars people who have engaged in an insurrection from holding government office. The professors are active members of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group, and proponents of originalism, the method of interpretation that seeks to determine the Constitution’s original meaning.The professors — William Baude of the University of Chicago and Michael Stokes Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas — studied the question for more than a year and detailed their findings in a long article to be published next year in The University of Pennsylvania Law Review.“When we started out, neither of us was sure what the answer was,” Professor Baude said. “People were talking about this provision of the Constitution. We thought: ‘We’re constitutional scholars, and this is an important constitutional question. We ought to figure out what’s really going on here.’ And the more we dug into it, the more we realized that we had something to add.”He summarized the article’s conclusion: “Donald Trump cannot be president — cannot run for president, cannot become president, cannot hold office — unless two-thirds of Congress decides to grant him amnesty for his conduct on Jan. 6.”A law review article will not, of course, change the reality that Mr. Trump is the Republican front-runner and that voters remain free to assess whether his conduct was blameworthy. But the scope and depth of the article may encourage and undergird lawsuits from other candidates and ordinary voters arguing that the Constitution makes him ineligible for office.“There are many ways that this could become a lawsuit presenting a vital constitutional issue that potentially the Supreme Court would want to hear and decide,” Professor Paulsen said.Mr. Trump has already been indicted twice in federal court, in connection with his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his retention of classified documents. He is also facing charges relating to hush money payments in New York and may soon be indicted in Georgia in a second election case.Those cases could give rise to prison time or other criminal punishment. The provision examined in the new article concerns a different question: whether Mr. Trump is eligible to hold office.There is, the article said, “abundant evidence” that Mr. Trump engaged in an insurrection, including by setting out to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election, trying to alter vote counts by fraud and intimidation, encouraging bogus slates of competing electors, pressuring the vice president to violate the Constitution, calling for the march on the Capitol and remaining silent for hours during the attack itself.“It is unquestionably fair to say that Trump ‘engaged in’ the Jan. 6 insurrection through both his actions and his inaction,” the article said.Steven G. Calabresi, a law professor at Northwestern and Yale and a founder of the Federalist Society, called the article “a tour de force.”But James Bopp Jr., who has represented House members whose candidacies were challenged under the provision, said the authors “have adopted a ridiculously broad view” of it, adding that the article’s analysis “is completely anti-historical.”(Mr. Bopp’s clients have had mixed success in cases brought under the provision. A state judge, assuming that the Jan. 6 attacks were an insurrection and that participating in them barred candidates from office, ruled that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, had not taken part in or encouraged the attacks after she took an oath to support the Constitution on Jan 3. A federal appeals court ruled against Representative Madison Cawthorn, Republican of North Carolina, on one of his central arguments, but the case was rendered moot by his loss in the 2022 primary.)The provision in question is Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Adopted after the Civil War, it bars those who had taken an oath “to support the Constitution of the United States” from holding office if they then “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”Congress can remove the prohibition, the provision says, but only by a two-thirds vote in each House.The new article examined the historical evidence illuminating the meaning of the provision at great length, using the methods of originalism. It drew on, among other things, contemporaneous dictionary definitions, other provisions of the Constitution using similar language, “the especially strong evidence from 1860s Civil War era political and legal usage of nearly the precise same terms” and the early enforcement of the provision.The article concluded that essentially all of that evidence pointed in the same direction: “toward a broad understanding of what constitutes insurrection and rebellion and a remarkably, almost extraordinarily, broad understanding of what types of conduct constitute engaging in, assisting, or giving aid or comfort to such movements.”It added, “The bottom line is that Donald Trump both ‘engaged in’ ‘insurrection or rebellion’ and gave ‘aid or comfort’ to others engaging in such conduct, within the original meaning of those terms as employed in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.”Though the provision was devised to address the aftermath of the Civil War, it was written in general terms and continues to have force, the article said. Congress granted broad amnesties in 1872 and 1898. But those acts were retrospective, the article said, and did not limit Section 3’s prospective force. (A federal appeals court agreed last year in the case involving Mr. Cawthorn.)The provision’s language is automatic, the article said, establishing a qualification for holding office no different in principle from the Constitution’s requirement that only people who are at least 35 years old are eligible to be president.“Section 3’s disqualification rule may and must be followed — applied, honored, obeyed, enforced, carried out — by anyone whose job it is to figure out whether someone is legally qualified to office,” the authors wrote. That includes election administrators, the article said.Professor Calabresi said those administrators must act. “Trump is ineligible to be on the ballot, and each of the 50 state secretaries of state has an obligation to print ballots without his name on them,” he said, adding that they may be sued for refusing to do so.(Professor Calabresi has occasionally strayed from conservative orthodoxy, leading to an unusual request from the group he helped found. “I have been asked not to talk to any journalist who identifies me as a co-founder of the Federalist Society, even though it is a historical fact,” he said. I noted the request and ignored it.)Some of the evidence the article considered overlapped with what was described in the recent indictment of Mr. Trump accusing him of conspiring to subvert the 2020 election. But that case and Section 3 address “completely separate questions,” Professor Baude said.“The question of should Donald Trump go to jail is entrusted to the criminal process,” he said. “The question of should he be allowed to take the constitutional oath again and be given constitutional power again is not a question given to any jury.” More