Trump, Donald J

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      Trump Pauses Online Tirade to Preach Unity

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      Of all the many forms Donald J. Trump can take, maybe the most perplexing one is Pious Trump.It is a shape he shifted into shortly after 8 o’clock on Thursday morning to deliver a sermon of sorts on Capitol Hill for the annual National Prayer Breakfast. In the grand amphitheater of National Statuary Hall, members of Congress sat before him. There were leaders of the Republican Party, never so in thrall to him as they are now. There were Democrats, never so lost and powerless in their struggle against him as they are now.“Look at each other,” he urged. He said they were a “great group of people” and beseeched them to come together. “We have to make life better for everyone,” he said.President Trump, appealing to the better angels?Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle filled Statuary Hall on Thursday morning.Eric Lee/The New York TimesThis was somewhat amazing, since the various other forms of Mr. Trump happened to be running around with flamethrowers earlier that morning, torching the federal bureaucracy, the global order, the media, the opposition party in the room and even the messaging coming out of his own White House.Just before his arrival at the Capitol to preach unity, he had gone on a fiery posting spree. He demanded that CBS lose its broadcasting license. He trumpeted a baseless conspiracy theory that Democrats had “STOLLEN” billions of dollars from the U.S. Agency for International Development to pay off media outlets for slanted coverage. “DEMOCRATS CAN’T HIDE FROM THIS ONE,” he wrote. “TOO BIG, TOO DIRTY!” In another post a few minutes before that one, he elaborated upon his desire to grab the Gaza Strip, an idea that drew bipartisan condemnation and shocked even his own staff, who tried to clean it up yesterday, evidently to no avail. He described Senator Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, pejoratively as a Palestinian.This was all difficult to square with the version of Mr. Trump who arrived at the Capitol a little over an hour later and had only warm words to say about Mr. Schumer. “Chuck, thank you very much,” Mr. Trump said as he read out a list of names of lawmakers he believed were present, “thank you.” (In fact, Mr. Schumer had skipped the ceremony to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel).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 Great Capitulation

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      At a press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, Donald Trump described recent visits from Tim Cook, C.E.O. of Apple, Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google, and other tech barons. “In the first term, everyone was fighting me,” he said. “In this term, everyone wants to be my friend.” For once, he wasn’t exaggerating.Since Trump won re-election — this time with the popular vote — many of the most influential people in America seem to have lost any will to stand up to him as he goes about transforming America into the sort of authoritarian oligarchy he admires. Call it the Great Capitulation.Following Jan. 6, Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook co-founder, suspended Trump’s account. But last month at Mar-a-Lago, The Wall Street Journal reported, Zuckerberg stood, hand on heart, as “the club played a rendition of the national anthem sung by imprisoned” Jan. 6 defendants. (It’s not clear if Zuckerberg knew what he was listening to.) He’s pledged a million-dollar donation to Trump’s inauguration, as did the OpenAI C.E.O. Sam Altman and Jeff Bezos’ company Amazon, which will also stream the inauguration on its video platform.After Time magazine declared Trump “Person of the Year,” the publication’s owner, the Salesforce C.E.O. Marc Benioff, wrote on X, “This marks a time of great promise for our nation.” The owner of The L.A. Times, the billionaire pharmaceutical and biomedical entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong, killed an editorial criticizing Trump’s cabinet picks and urging the Senate not to allow recess appointments.Most shocking of all, last week ABC News, which is owned by the Walt Disney Company, made the craven decision to settle a flimsy defamation case brought by Trump.As you may remember, a jury last year found Trump civilly liable for sexually abusing the writer E. Jean Carroll. In a memorandum, the judge in the case explained that while a jury didn’t find that Trump had raped Carroll, it was operating under New York criminal law, which defines rape solely as “vaginal penetration by a penis.” It did find that he’d forcibly penetrated her with his fingers.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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      Netanyahu Tells Trump Israel Must ‘Complete Its Victory’

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      Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said he had told President-elect Donald J. Trump in a telephone conversation over the weekend that Israel needed to “complete its victory” over Iranian proxies and bring back hostages held in Gaza.Mr. Netanyahu, who described Mr. Trump as a friend, said in a statement on Sunday that their latest discussion had been “very friendly, warm and important.” The Israeli prime minister has been quick to cultivate his relationship with Mr. Trump, and was among the first leaders to call him after his victory in November.Many analysts have said that the incoming president, who has called for a halt to the war in Gaza, is broadly supportive of the Israeli government’s goal of ending the conflict with Hamas on its terms. This month, Mr. Trump threatened “hell to pay” if the hostages in Gaza were not freed before his inauguration on Jan. 20, prompting praise from Mr. Netanyahu, who said the statement added to pressure on Hamas.Mr. Netanyahu said that he had explained to Mr. Trump in their call on Saturday that Israel had dealt “a tough blow” to both the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and to Hamas, which attacked Israel in October 2023, setting off the war in Gaza. Both groups have been supported by Iran. Mr. Trump did not immediately comment on the call.Israel has largely destroyed Hamas as a military organization, and killed its leader, Yahya Sinwar, in an offensive that has shattered the enclave and killed tens of thousands of people. It also launched an intense campaign of airstrikes and ground attacks in Lebanon that severely weakened Hezbollah, killing its leader, Hassan Nasrallah. The two sides began observing a cease-fire last month. In recent days, amid the fall of Syria’s longtime leader, Bashar al-Assad, Israeli forces have also moved into Syria beyond the Golan Heights and launched airstrikes on military targets in that country.Mr. Netanyahu said he had told Mr. Trump that Israel was “committed to preventing Hezbollah’s rearmament” and used the statement to repeat a warning to Hezbollah and Iran that Israel “will continue acting against you as much as necessary, on any front and at any time.”The Biden administration, in its final weeks, has intensified efforts to reach a cease-fire in Gaza. The White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said last week that the administration aimed to seal a deal this month that would halt fighting in exchange for a return of hostages, although months of talks involving Israel and Hamas have failed to reach a breakthrough. More

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      A Constitutional Convention? Some Democrats Fear It’s Coming.

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      Some Republicans have said that a constitutional convention is overdue. Many Democratic-led states have rescinded their long-ago calls for one, and California will soon consider whether to do the same.As Republicans prepare to take control of Congress and the White House, among the many scenarios keeping Democrats up at night is an event that many Americans consider a historical relic: a constitutional convention.The 1787 gathering in Philadelphia to write the Constitution was the one and only time state representatives have convened to work on the document.But a simple line in the Constitution allows Congress to convene a rewrite session if two-thirds of state legislatures have called for one. The option has never been used, but most states have long-forgotten requests on the books that could be enough to trigger a new constitutional convention, some scholars and politicians believe.Some Democratic officials are more concerned than ever. In California, a Democratic state senator, Scott Wiener, will introduce legislation on Monday that would rescind the state’s seven active calls for a constitutional convention, the first such move since Donald J. Trump’s election to a second term.Mr. Wiener, who represents San Francisco, and other liberal Democrats believe there is a strong possibility of a “runaway convention.” They say that Republicans could call a convention on the premise, say, of producing an amendment requiring that the federal budget be balanced, then open the door for a free-for-all in which a multitude of other amendments are considered, including some that could restrict abortion access or civil rights.“I do not want California to inadvertently trigger a constitutional convention that ends up shredding the Constitution,” Mr. Wiener said in an interview.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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      Are Trump’s Tariffs Inevitable?

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      World leaders and C.E.O.s are struggling to convince President-elect Donald Trump to shift his position on imposing new levies against America’s trade partners and its rivals.Advisers for Donald Trump are telling businesses to take the president-elect at his word on tariffs.Doug Mills/The New York TimesUnyielding on tariffs Investors appear largely unfazed by President-elect Donald Trump’s tough talk on tariffs, with the S&P 500 up more than 5 percent since Election Day.But world leaders and C.E.O.s are worried he could disrupt global trade and pummel profits — and feel they’re making little headway in warning him of the consequences.Companies have stepped up their lobbying to persuade Trump to go easy on tariffs, according to The Wall Street Journal. The president-elect warned last month that he would impose 25 percent levies on the country’s biggest trading partners, Canada and Mexico, if they didn’t tighten their borders and stem the flow of illegal migration to the U.S.In subsequent social media posts, he went after China and BRICS countries, too.Trump’s team is warning businesses to take him at his word on tariffs, The Journal reports. That suggests that Trump, who has called tariffs “the most beautiful word in the dictionary,” isn’t merely using tariff warnings as an opening salvo in trade negotiations.It also calls into question how much say Jamieson Greer, Scott Bessent, Howard Lutnick and Marco Rubio — Trump’s picks for trade representative, and to run the Treasury, Commerce and State departments — will have in shaping Trump’s trade policy if his mind is already made up.Trump conceded that he “can’t guarantee” tariffs won’t hit consumers hard. That’s a concern among economists and big companies such as Walmart and Costco, who fear that levies could lead to price rises. This earnings season, analysts have been peppering corporate leaders about how tariffs might affect their businesses.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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      A Chaotic Start

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      We cover the people who will surround Donald Trump in his second term. Donald Trump has named most of the advisers and cabinet officials whom he wants to surround him in a second term. To make sense of the team, I asked for help from three of my colleagues who cover Trump: Maggie Haberman, Charlie Savage and Jonathan Swan. Our exchange follows.David: I’ve talked with you three in the past about the likelihood that Trump’s second term would be more consequential than his first because his team would have more experience and more detailed plans. But does his list of cabinet selections make you wonder whether the second term may end up being almost as chaotic as the first? Pete Hegseth (the Fox News host Trump wants to run the Pentagon) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (the pick for Health and Human Services) don’t have much experience operating a bureaucracy.Maggie: There are some people with minimal government experience running large organizations in positions of power, so there will be a basic question about their preparation to oversee complex departments. But cabinet secretaries aren’t the only people who matter.The team that Trump is putting in place, as deputies or chiefs of staff or senior advisers at agencies, are people who’ve proved some form of loyalty to him in other situations. All administrations do that to some degree. This version is much more sweeping.Charlie: For all the chaos of Trump’s first term, he was occasionally constrained — by traditional Republicans in Congress and inside his own administration, by a federal judiciary he had not yet transformed and by career officials. All those constraints will be weaker this time.An important thing is that Trump is planning to reinstate a change from the end of the first administration, one that the Biden administration rolled back. This change, known as Schedule F, would make it easier for cabinet officials to fire career civil servants and replace them with loyalists. So there is reason to believe that the second Trump administration will be more chaotic — but also that it will implement more of his agenda.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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      Don’t Cut an Agency So Vital to Our Health

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      More from our inbox:Needed: More Maternity WardsRacial Inequities in the Overdose CrisisVet the Presidential CandidatesTech Tycoons in ChargeA building on the N.I.H. campus in Bethesda, Md. The agency comprises 27 institutes and has a budget of $48 billion.Hailey Sadler for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Long Government’s ‘Crown Jewel,’ Health Institute Is Becoming a Target” (news article, Dec. 3):Your article describes the National Institutes of Health as a “crown jewel” of the federal government based on its track record of success in driving medical and health research and innovation. The article also captures the longstanding bipartisan support for the agency and its work.When asked in a national survey we commissioned this year, Americans of all political persuasions expressed their support for federally funded research:Eighty-eight percent of Americans agree that basic scientific research is necessary and should be supported by the federal government.Some 62 percent would be willing to pay $1 per week more in taxes to support additional medical and health research.And 89 percent say it is important that the U.S. is a global leader in research to improve health.Continuing to treat the N.I.H. as a top national priority is a strategy that will spur new treatments and cures for the health threats facing our population. It will also drive U.S. business and job growth across the life science, technology, manufacturing and service sectors that in the end will keep us globally competitive.Mary WoolleyNew YorkThe writer is the president and C.E.O. of Research!America.To the Editor:The suggestion to cut infectious disease funding displays dangerous historical amnesia. Just as the 1918-20 flu pandemic killed millions of people globally, Covid-19’s emergence in 2020 demonstrated how quickly a novel pathogen can upend society. While vaccines helped curb Covid-19’s impact, we face an equally urgent crisis: antibiotic resistance.Currently, drug-resistant bacteria infect over two million Americans annually, causing more than 20,000 deaths. Without sustained funding and research, projections show antimicrobial resistance could cause 10 million annual deaths globally by 2050.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 Trouble Began Where #MeToo Became #ChurchToo

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      When did we know that the #MeToo moment was truly over?At its most compelling, #MeToo tried to change a culture that both concealed and enabled the illegal abuse of women and imposed hypocritical double standards, holding women to one standard of behavior while celebrating and elevating unscrupulous men.But events in 2024 have told us loudly and clearly that the moment has passed.Perhaps it was when reports emerged that Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s choice to be the next secretary of defense, had paid an accuser to settle a sexual assault claim. He denies wrongdoing, but his defense — that he had consensual sex with a married woman — was still dreadful. His philandering and mistreatment of women have been so egregious that his mother called him an “abuser of women,” in an email to him (she has since disavowed her statement) — and yet somehow his chances of being confirmed by the Senate appear to be increasing.Perhaps it was when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who is married to the actress Cheryl Hines, allegedly had an improper “personal relationship” via smartphone with Olivia Nuzzi, a political reporter who is much younger, and she lost her job while he was picked to run the Department of Health and Human Services.But I think it happened earlier, when a jury found Donald Trump responsible for sexual abuse, and he was ultimately re-elected to the presidency. After years of rightfully arguing that combating sexual assault and sexual abuse can’t override due process, many conservatives not only disregarded the jury verdict, they actually reveled in how little his voters cared about the scandal, or just dismissed it as another instance of “lawfare” against Trump.I distinctly remember the mood on the right when the #MeToo movement got going. There was a sense of schadenfreude. The morally bankrupt, sexualized culture of Hollywood and the liberal media had finally been exposed. For all their talk about feminism and respecting women, many famous liberals proved to be dangerous hypocrites — or much, much worse.Yes, there was leakage into right-wing media. Roger Ailes was pushed out at Fox News in 2016, and Bill O’Reilly suffered the same fate after my Times colleagues Emily Steel and Michael Schmidt reported that O’Reilly or Fox had paid $13 million to settle claims of sexual misconduct made by five different women against him.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