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      Takeaways From Day 3 of Trump’s Hush Money Criminal Trial

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      The third day of Donald J. Trump’s trial started with drama and ended with a jury.After two jurors were dismissed on Thursday morning, a flurry of afternoon activity produced a full panel of 12 jurors who will decide the former president’s fate. Several alternates remain to be seated on Friday, with opening statements expected on Monday.Their work will be a unique challenge: the first prosecution of a former American president. Mr. Trump, 77, is charged with falsifying 34 business records in an attempt to cover up a payment to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, who has said she had a brief sexual encounter with him in 2006. He has denied the charges; he could face probation or prison time if convicted.Here are five takeaways from Mr. Trump’s third day on trial:Things slowed down fast.Court officials had earlier thought jury selection might take as long as two weeks. But hopes were high on Thursday that the 12 members might be seated by close of business after seven members were picked Tuesday. Justice Juan M. Merchan had suggested that, if the fast pace continued, the prosecution and defense would offer introductory remarks on Monday morning.Then Thursday began as a slog, with both sides angling to gain any advantage, or — conversely — to get rid of any problems. For the prosecutors, that meant challenging a previously seated juror who they had discovered had credibility issues. Justice Merchan spent a long sidebar discussing the issue with lawyers from both sides and the juror. In the end, the juror was excused.By lunchtime, the jury was shrinking, not growing.Who Are Key Players in the Trump Manhattan Criminal Trial?The first criminal trial of former President Donald J. Trump is underway. Take a closer look at central figures related to the case.They sped up fast, too.Justice Merchan was quick to get back on track. After 18 potential jurors were seated in the jury box, he kept them moving as they navigated a lengthy questionnaire with Mr. Trump looking on.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Judge in Documents Case Rejects Dismissal Motions by Trump Co-Defendants

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      Judge Aileen M. Cannon denied requests by Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira to have the charges against them dropped.The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case on Thursday denied initial attempts by Mr. Trump’s two co-defendants to have the charges against them dismissed.The ruling by the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, was the first time she had rejected dismissal motions by the two men, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, both of whom work for Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida.Prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, say that Mr. Nauta, one of Mr. Trump’s closest personal aides, and Mr. De Oliveira, the property manager of Mar-a-Lago, conspired with the former president to hide from the government boxes of classified materials that Mr. Trump had removed from the White House, and then took part in a related plot to destroy security camera footage of the boxes being moved. The men have also been charged with lying to investigators working on the case.At a hearing last week in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., lawyers for the two men tried to convince Judge Cannon that their clients had no idea that the boxes they had moved on Mr. Trump’s behalf contained classified materials. The lawyers also said they needed more details about the evidence against the men than what was contained in the 53-page superseding indictment.Mr. Nauta’s lawyer, Stanley Woodward Jr., raised an additional claim: that the obstruction statute his client was charged with violating was unconstitutionally vague.On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard somewhat similar arguments about that law, which has been used not only against hundreds of pro-Trump rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but also against Mr. Trump himself in both the classified documents case and the federal case in which he stands accused of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Question of Transgender Care

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      Hilary Cass is the kind of hero the world needs today. She has entered one of the most toxic debates in our culture: how the medical community should respond to the growing numbers of young people who seek gender transition through medical treatments, including puberty blockers and hormone therapies. This month, after more than three years of research, Cass, a pediatrician, produced a report, commissioned by the National Health Service in England, that is remarkable for its empathy for people on all sides of this issue, for its humility in the face of complex social trends we don’t understand and for its intellectual integrity as we try to figure out which treatments actually work to serve those patients who are in distress. With incredible courage, she shows that careful scholarship can cut through debates that have been marked by vituperation and intimidation and possibly reset them on more rational grounds.Cass, a past president of Britain’s Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, is clear about the mission of her report: “This review is not about defining what it means to be trans, nor is it about undermining the validity of trans identities, challenging the right of people to express themselves or rolling back on people’s rights to health care. It is about what the health care approach should be, and how best to help the growing number of children and young people who are looking for support from the N.H.S. in relation to their gender identity.”This issue begins with a mystery. For reasons that are not clear, the number of adolescents who have sought to medically change their sex has been skyrocketing in recent years, though the overall number remains very small. For reasons that are also not clear, adolescents who were assigned female at birth are driving this trend, whereas before the late 2000s, it was mostly adolescents who were assigned male at birth who sought these treatments.Doctors and researchers have proposed various theories to try to explain these trends. One is that greater social acceptance of trans people has enabled people to seek these therapies. Another is that teenagers are being influenced by the popularity of searching and experimenting around identity. A third is that the rise of teen mental health issues may be contributing to gender dysphoria. In her report, Cass is skeptical of broad generalizations in the absence of clear evidence; these are individual children and adolescents who take their own routes to who they are.Some activists and medical practitioners on the left have come to see the surge in requests for medical transitioning as a piece of the new civil rights issue of our time — offering recognition to people of all gender identities. Transition through medical interventions was embraced by providers in the United States and Europe after a pair of small Dutch studies showed that such treatment improved patients’ well-being. But a 2022 Reuters investigation found that some American clinics were quite aggressive with treatment: None of the 18 U.S. clinics that Reuters looked at performed long assessments on their patients, and some prescribed puberty blockers on the first visit.Unfortunately, some researchers who questioned the Dutch approach were viciously attacked. This year, Sallie Baxendale, a professor of clinical neuropsychology at the University College London, published a review of studies looking at the impact of puberty blockers on brain development and concluded that “critical questions” about the therapy remain unanswered. She was immediately attacked. She recently told The Guardian, “I’ve been accused of being an anti-trans activist, and that now comes up on Google and is never going to go away.”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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What We Know About the 12 Jurors in Donald Trump’s Criminal Trial

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      Twelve Manhattanites have been chosen to serve on the jury for the first criminal trial of a U.S. president.The judge ordered that the jurors’ identities be kept confidential during the trial and that reporters withhold some information that could identify them.According to their statements in court during three days of jury selection, here is what we know about the jurors:Juror 1, who will be the foreman, works in sales and lives in West Harlem. He said that he enjoys outdoor activities. He said he gets his news from The New York Times and watches Fox News and MSNBC. He said he had heard about some of former President Donald J. Trump’s other criminal cases, but he did not have an opinion about him.Juror 2 works in finance and lives in Hell’s Kitchen. He said he likes hiking, music, concerts and enjoying New York City. He said he follows Mr. Trump’s former fixer, Michael D. Cohen, who is expected to be a key witness, on social media. But he also said he follows figures like former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway. He said he believed Mr. Trump had done some good for the country, adding “it goes both ways.”Juror 3 works in the legal field and lives in Chelsea. He said he does not follow the news closely but, when he does, he reads The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and finds articles using Google. He added that he was not very familiar with Mr. Trump’s other criminal cases.Juror 4 is an engineer from the Upper West Side. Asked how he was during jury selection, he responded, “I am freezing.” When a lawyer asked if he had strong feelings about Mr. Trump, he responded “No, not really.”Who Are Key Players in the Trump Manhattan Criminal Trial?The first criminal trial of former President Donald J. Trump is underway. Take a closer look at central figures related to the case.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Judge in Trump Trial Asks Media Not to Report Some Juror Information

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      The judge in former President Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial ordered reporters to not disclose employment information about potential jurors after he excused a woman who said she was worried about her identity becoming known.The woman, who had been seated on the jury on Tuesday, told the judge that her friends and colleagues had warned her that she had been identified as a juror in the high-profile case. Although the judge has kept prospective jurors’ names private, some have disclosed their employers and other identifying information in court.She also said that she did not believe she could be impartial.The judge, Juan M. Merchan, promptly dismissed her.Moments later, Justice Merchan ordered the press to not report the answer to two queries on a lengthy questionnaire for prospective jurors: “Who is your current employer?” and “Who was your prior employer?”The judge conceded that the information about employers was necessary for lawyers to know. But he directed that those two answers be redacted from the transcript.Justice Merchan also said that he was concerned about news outlets publishing physical descriptions of prospective or seated jurors, asking reporters to “simply apply common sense.”“It serves no purpose,” Justice Merchan said about publishing physical descriptions, adding that he was directing the press to “refrain from writing about anything you observe with your eyes.”With the loss of the female juror on Thursday morning, six seated jurors remain.In early March, Justice Merchan issued an order prohibiting publicly disclosing the names of jurors, while allowing legal teams and the defendant to know their identities.But before the trial, Mr. Trump’s lawyers requested that potential jurors not be told that the jury would be anonymous unless he or she expressed concerns. Justice Merchan told the parties that he’d “make every effort to not unnecessarily alert the jurors” to this secrecy, merely telling jurors that they would be identified in court by a number.On Thursday, Justice Merchan seemed frustrated by news reports that included identifying characteristics of potential jurors that had been aired in open court. He said: “There’s a reason why this is an anonymous jury, and we’ve taken the measures we have taken.”“It kind of defeats the purpose of that when so much information is put out there,” he said.He added that “the press can write about anything the attorney and the courts discuss and anything you observe us do.”But he also said he had the legal authority to prevent reporters from relaying employer information on prospective jurors. He added that “if you can’t stick to that, we’re going to have to see if there is anything else we can do to keep the jurors safe.” More

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      Trump Demands a Cut of Donations From Campaigns That Use His Name

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      The presidential campaign of former President Donald J. Trump said in a letter to Republican vendors that candidates may use his name, image and likeness in campaign materials only if they send at least 5 percent of donations that they receive to Mr. Trump’s campaign.The move in effect imposes a tax on using the Trump brand for campaign purposes. Mr. Trump has sought to close a significant financial gap between him and President Biden, his Democratic rival. The Biden campaign and its political committees reported $192 million in cash on hand at the end of March, more than double the $93 million of Trump and the Republican Party.Danielle Alvarez, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, said in a statement that “it is important to protect small-dollar donors from scammers that use the president’s name and likeness.”In a letter this week signed by Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, who identified themselves as co-campaign managers, the campaign also said it was tightening control of campaign materials that use Mr. Trump’s name, prohibiting strident language that has become common in donor appeals such as “President Trump needs you” or “If you support President Trump, you’ll contribute now.”The letter said the messaging guidelines were part of an effort “to treat our donors with the utmost respect.” After Mr. Trump appeared in court on Monday, the campaign sent a fund-raising pitch falsely claiming in all-capital letters that Mr. Trump had “just stormed out of Biden’s kangaroo court!” Mr. Trump had not actually stormed out of the Manhattan courthouse.The letter added that the campaign would punish campaign vendors if candidates whom they worked with did not comply with the new rules.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Kamala Harris Moment Has Arrived

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      One of Kamala Harris’s most memorable moments during the 2020 presidential election cycle was when, during a Democratic primary debate, she sharply criticized Joe Biden for working with segregationists in the Senate in their shared opposition to busing.She personalized her criticism, saying: “There was a little girl in California who was a part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.”The power in the attack was not only the point being made but that she — a person affected from a group affected — was making it. Although some of Biden’s defenders saw her remark as a gratuitous broadside, there was an authenticity to the way she confronted the issue.The verbal jab also aligned with the national zeitgeist at a time when calls for racial justice and the Black Lives Matter movement were ascendant.She ticked up in the polls, and donations poured in. Ultimately, her candidacy didn’t catch fire, but the following summer, Biden, the eventual nominee, made a historic offer to Harris to join his ticket, leading to her becoming the first woman, first Black person and first Asian American to be vice president.Fast-forward to now, when Vice President Harris has served nearly a full term alongside President Biden, and she is moving into another moment when the political stars are aligned for her as the perfect messenger on a subject that has fixed Americans’ attention and is central in the 2024 presidential campaign: reproductive rights.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Leaves His Trial to Rail Against Crime and Jab at Prosecutor

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      In his first campaign stop since his criminal trial in Manhattan began, former President Donald J. Trump on Tuesday visited a bodega in Harlem where he made a pointed attack on the district attorney prosecuting him and portrayed himself as tough on crime, a central theme of his 2024 run.His visit to the store — the site of a case that prompted political controversy for Manhattan’s district attorney when an employee was charged after fatally stabbing a man after a confrontation — made for a striking juxtaposition.After spending much of the day in a Manhattan courtroom as a criminal defendant, Mr. Trump immediately traveled uptown both to criticize the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, for being too lenient on crime and to play up his “law and order” message.Mr. Trump has for months tried to draw a distinction between his frequently expressed tough-on-crime stance and the felony charges he faces in four separate cases. Outside the bodega, he again tried to dismiss his charges as political persecution, arguing that Mr. Bragg was too focused on Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign sex scandal cover-up trial and was ignoring crime in the city.“It’s Alvin Bragg’s fault,” Mr. Trump said. “Alvin Bragg does nothing.”Though Mr. Trump is prevented by a gag order from attacking witnesses, prosecutors and jurors in his New York case, the order does not cover Mr. Bragg or the judge overseeing his trial.Before he arrived at the bodega, his campaign attacked Mr. Bragg over his handling of the 2022 incident, in which Jose Alba, a clerk, was charged with second-degree murder after stabbing a man, Austin Simon, in an altercation.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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More