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      State Dept.’s Fight Against Disinformation Comes Under Attack

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      The Global Engagement Center has become the focus of Republican-led criticism that the U.S. government coerces social media platforms into removing offensive content.A Republican-led campaign against researchers who study disinformation online has zeroed in on the most prominent American government agency dedicated to countering propaganda and other information operations from terrorists and hostile nations.The agency, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, is facing a torrent of accusations in court and in Congress that it has helped the social media giants — including Facebook, YouTube and X — to censor Americans in violation of the First Amendment.The attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton, and two conservative digital news outlets last week became the latest plaintiffs to sue the department and its top officials, including Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken. The lawsuit said the center’s work was “one of the most egregious government operations to censor the American press in the history of the nation.”The center faces a more existential threat in Congress. House Republicans blocked a proposal this month to reauthorize the center, which began in 2011 to counter the propaganda of terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. A small agency, with a regular staff of 125 people, many of them contractors, and a budget of $61 million, the center coordinates efforts across the government to track and expose propaganda and disinformation from Russia, China and other adversaries. With its mandate set to expire at the end of next year, the center is now operating under a shroud of uncertainty, even though its supporters say there is no evidence to back the charges against it.If the Republicans hold firm, as a core bloc in the House appear determined to do, the center would disband amid two major regional wars and a wave of elections in 2024, including the U.S. presidential campaign.James P. Rubin, the center’s coordinator since early this year, disputed the allegations that his organization censored Americans’ comments online. The center’s legal mandate, he said, was to “focus on how foreign adversaries, primarily China and Russia, use information operations and malign interference to manipulate world opinion.”“What we do not do is examine or analyze the U.S. information space,” he said.The center’s fate has become enmeshed in a much broader political and legal campaign over free speech and disinformation that has gained enough traction to reach the Supreme Court.A lawsuit filed last year by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana accused numerous government agencies of cajoling or coercing social media platforms into removing content that spread what officials called false or misleading information about the Covid-19 pandemic, the presidential election of 2020 and other issues.A federal court ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor in July, temporarily barring government officials from contacting officials with the companies except in matters of law enforcement or national security. An appeals court largely upheld the ruling in September but limited its reach, excluding several agencies from the lower court’s injunction against contacts, the Global Engagement Center among them.“There is no indication that State Department officials flagged specific content for censorship, suggested policy changes to the platforms or engaged in any similar actions that would reasonably bring their conduct within the scope of the First Amendment’s prohibitions,” wrote a three-judge panel for the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans.The Global Engagement Center, which is part of the State Department, is facing a torrent of accusations in court and in Congress that it has helped the social media giants to censor Americans.J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressThe Supreme Court is expected to weigh in next spring on the Missouri case, a decision that could have big ramifications for the government and free speech in the internet era. The campaign against researchers who study the spread of disinformation has already had a chilling effect on universities, think tanks and private companies, which have found themselves smothered by subpoenas and legal costs.The efforts have been fueled by disclosures of communications between government officials and social media companies. Elon Musk who released a selection of messages after he purchased Twitter, since rebranded as X, called the Global Engagement Center “the worst offender in US government censorship & media manipulation.”“They are a threat to democracy,” wrote Mr. Musk, who has restored numerous accounts that Twitter had suspended for violating the platform’s guidelines for disinformation, hate speech and other content. (Over the weekend, he allowed the return of Alex Jones, a far-right conspiracy theorist who spent years falsely claiming the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 was a hoax.)The Global Engagement Center has faced criticism before — not over censorship, but for having little effect at a time when global propaganda and disinformation has become more pernicious than ever with the rise of social media.A report by the State Department’s inspector general last year said the center suffered from a sclerotic bureaucracy that limited its ability to manage contractors and failed to create a strategic planning process that could measure its effectiveness. The department accepted the findings and promised to address them, the report said.Mr. Rubin, who was appointed at the end of last year, has sought to bolster the center’s core mission: challenging disinformation from foreign adversaries intent on undermining American democracy and influence around the world.In September, the center released a sweeping report that accused China’s Communist Party of using “deceptive and coercive methods” to try to control the global information environment. A month later it released two reports on Russia’s covert influence efforts in South America, including one intended to pre-empt an operation before it got off the ground.The Global Engagement Center began in 2011 to counter the propaganda of terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.Jon Elswick/Associated PressThe center has had regular interactions with the social media companies, but, the appeals court ruled, there is no evidence that its officials coerced or otherwise influenced the platforms. Federal regulations prohibit any agency from engaging in propaganda at home.“We are not in the business of deciding what is true or not true,” Mr. Rubin said, adding that the center’s role was to identify “the hidden hand” of foreign propaganda.Since the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in January, however, the Global Engagement Center has faced numerous subpoenas from a subcommittee investigating the “weaponization of government,” as well as depositions in lawsuits and requests for records under the Freedom of Information Act.At public hearings, House Republicans have repeatedly threatened not to renew the center’s expiring mandate and have grilled department officials about Americans whose accounts have been suspended. “The onus on you is to change my mind,” Representative Brian Mast, a Republican from Florida, told Daniel Kimmage, the center’s principal deputy coordinator, at a hearing in October.The Democrats in both houses of Congress and the Republicans in the Senate reached an agreement to extend the center’s mandate as part of the defense authorization act — one of the few pieces of legislation that might actually pass this year — but House Republicans succeeded in stripping the provision out of the broader legislation.The plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed last week in Texas argued that the department had in effect sidestepped its legal constraints by providing grants to organizations that routinely identify sources of disinformation in public reports and private interactions with social media platforms. The organizations include the Global Disinformation Index, a nonprofit based in London; and NewsGuard, a company in New York.The two news organizations that joined Texas in filing the suit — The Federalist and The Daily Wire — were both listed by the Global Disinformation Index in a December 2022 report as having a high risk for publishing disinformation. (The New York Times was among those rated as having a minimum risk. The Times’s website, the report said, “was not always free of bias, but it generally avoided targeting language and adversarial narratives.”)The center’s grant to the group — $100,000 in total — went to a project focused on disinformation in Southeast Asia. But the lawsuit claimed that its support injured the outlets “by starving them of advertising revenue and reducing the circulation of their reporting and speech — all as a direct result of defendants’ unlawful censorship scheme.”Josh Herr, The Daily Wire’s general counsel, said the outlet might never know “the full extent of the business lost.”“But this lawsuit is not about quantifying those losses,” he said. “We are not seeking damages. What we are seeking is to protect our rights, and all publishers’ rights, under the First Amendment.”Nina Jankowicz, a researcher who briefly served as the head of a disinformation advisory board at the Department of Homeland Security last year before controversy scuttled her appointment and the board itself, said the argument that the State Department was responsible for the impact of research it did not finance was absurd.Ms. Jankowicz said that the campaign to cast efforts to fight disinformation as a form of censorship had proved politically effective even when evidence did not support the claims.“I think any American, when you hear, ‘Oh, the administration, the White House, is setting up something to censor Americans, even if that has no shred of evidence behind it, your ears are going to prick up,” she said. “And it’s really hard to disprove all that.” More

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      Ramaswamy Pushes Fringe Idea About Jan. 6 at Town Hall in Iowa

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      The Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy repeated his claim, without specific evidence, that the attack on the Capitol was an “inside job.”In the final weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur and Republican presidential candidate, is pressing an unusual strategy: leaning into conspiracy theories.At a CNN town hall on Wednesday evening in Des Moines, Abby Phillip, the CNN anchor, asked Mr. Ramaswamy about previous comments in which he had said that the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was an “inside job” — a claim for which there is no evidence, and which has been refuted by numerous criminal indictments and bipartisan congressional investigations.Instead of walking back his remarks, he dug in.“The reality is, we know that there were federal law enforcement agents in the field. We don’t know how many,” Mr. Ramaswamy told the audience at Grand View University, at which point Ms. Phillip interrupted him to clarify. “There’s no evidence that there were federal agents in the crowd,” she said. Mr. Ramaswamy suggested, without providing specific details, that he had seen “multiple informants suggesting that they were.”He turned to another conspiracy theory — involving the kidnapping plot against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat of Michigan. He claimed, of some defendants in that case, that “government agents put them up to do something they otherwise wouldn’t have done.” (That claim also has no evidence to support it.)“I don’t want to have to interrupt you, I really don’t, but I don’t want you to mislead the audience here —” Ms. Phillip began, before Mr. Ramaswamy redirected and claimed that it was “mainstream media” outlets that were misleading.Mr. Ramaswamy, who has continued to praise former President Donald J. Trump while competing against him for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, has slipped in polls. At the same time, on the campaign trail, during debates and at the CNN event, he has pushed conspiracy theories, including ones on the origin of Covid-19 as well as the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.Ms. Phillip’s question on Wednesday referred to Alan Hostetter, a Jan. 6 defendant who invoked Mr. Ramaswamy’s debate remarks during his sentencing hearing last week in claiming that conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being stolen “are no longer fringe.”Mr. Ramaswamy did not address Mr. Hostetter’s remarks and instead reiterated false claims, to favorable responses from the crowd.Mr. Ramaswamy’s combative demeanor in public appearances was brought up by Rylee Miller, a law student who said that Mr. Ramaswamy seemed to have “somewhat abandoned the tact and diplomacy that I would look for in a president.” He then asked a question about how Mr. Ramaswamy would balance authenticity with a “presidential demeanor.”Mr. Ramaswamy, in answering, referred to his role as a parent who would strive to “make our children proud” as president. But, he continued, voters should not “want a wilting flower in the White House.”Mr. Ramaswamy also repeated several disputed proposals he has called for on the campaign trail. He said he would end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, effective from January 2025 onward. He reiterated his call to end aid to Ukraine and to back a deal “with some territorial concessions” for the country.He also said that he would support the Supreme Court if it ruled to take mifepristone, a commonly used abortion pill facing a legal challenge, “off the market.” More

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      La Corte Suprema analizará el cargo de obstrucción en el caso de Trump por el asalto del 6 de enero

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      La decisión de admitir el caso complicará y quizá retrase el inicio del juicio de Trump, que ahora está previsto que se celebre en Washington en marzo.La Corte Suprema aceptó el miércoles analizar un caso que podría poner en entredicho el procesamiento de cientos de alborotadores que irrumpieron en el Capitolio el 6 de enero de 2021 y retrasar —o limitar el alcance— del juicio del expresidente Donald Trump por cargos federales de intentar anular su derrota electoral.Lo que está en juego es si el gobierno puede acusar a los imputados en los casos en virtud de una ley federal que tipifica como delito la obstrucción corrupta de un procedimiento oficial. La ley está en el centro de los procesamientos de muchos partidarios de Trump que, en 2020, trataron de bloquear la certificación de la victoria de Joe Biden en el Congreso. También es una parte clave del proceso federal que acusa a Trump de conspirar para mantenerse en el poder, a pesar de la voluntad de los votantes.La decisión de admitir el caso complicará y quizá retrase el inicio del juicio de Trump, que ahora está previsto que se celebre en Washington en marzo. Es probable que la sentencia definitiva de la Corte Suprema, que es posible que no se produzca hasta junio, aborde la viabilidad de dos de los principales cargos contra Trump. Y podría obstaculizar de manera grave los esfuerzos del fiscal especial, Jack Smith, para responsabilizar al expresidente de la violencia desatada por sus partidarios en el Capitolio.La eventual decisión de la corte también podría invalidar las condenas que ya se han dictado contra decenas de seguidores de Trump que participaron en el asalto. Eso supondría un duro golpe para las acusaciones del gobierno en los casos de los disturbios del 6 de enero.El caso que la corte admitió afecta a Joseph Fischer, acusado de siete cargos por su participación en el ataque al Capitolio. Los fiscales afirman que agredió a la policía mientras el Congreso se reunía para certificar los resultados de las elecciones de 2020. Al igual que otros cientos de alborotadores cuyas acciones perturbaron el procedimiento de certificación en el Capitolio, Fischer fue acusado del cargo de obstrucción, formalmente conocido como 18, USC, 1512.Fischer solicitó la desestimación de una parte de la acusación presentada en virtud de la ley de obstrucción, que se aprobó como parte de la Ley Sarbanes-Oxley de 2002, una medida dirigida principalmente contra los delitos de cuello blanco. Los fiscales han utilizado habitualmente la acusación de obstrucción, en lugar de cargos más polémicos como insurrección o conspiración sediciosa, para describir cómo los miembros de la turba pro-Trump perturbaron el traspaso pacífico del poder presidencial.El año pasado, el juez Carl J. Nichols, del Tribunal Federal de Distrito de Washington, accedió a la petición de desestimación de Fischer, afirmando que la ley exigía que los acusados realizaran “alguna acción con respecto a un documento, registro u otro objeto”, algo que, según él, faltaba en la conducta de Fischer en el Capitolio.Un panel dividido de tres jueces del Tribunal de Apelaciones de EE. UU. para el Circuito del Distrito de Columbia revocó finalmente la decisión del juez Nichols, dictaminando que la ley “se aplica a todas las formas de obstrucción corrupta de un procedimiento oficial”. Tres acusados del 6 de enero, entre ellos Fischer, le pidieron finalmente a la Corte Suprema que decidiera si la ley se había aplicado correctamente en el caso del Capitolio.La acusación de obstrucción nunca fue fácil de incluir en los casos derivados del asalto al Capitolio. Cuando se aprobó a principios de la década de 2000, la ley pretendía frenar la prevaricación empresarial al prohibir cosas como la destrucción de documentos o la manipulación de testigos o pruebas.Los abogados defensores que representan a los alborotadores del 6 de enero han argumentado que los fiscales federales ampliaron indebidamente su alcance para abarcar la violencia que estalló en el Capitolio e interfirió en el procedimiento en el que los legisladores se habían reunido para certificar los resultados de las elecciones.Los abogados también discreparon con el uso de la acusación contra las personas que irrumpieron en el Capitolio, afirmando que muchas no actuaban de forma “corrupta”, como exige la ley, porque creían que protestaban contra unas elecciones robadas.“La ley se ha utilizado para criminalizar en exceso los casos del 6 de enero”, dijo Norm Pattis, abogado de Jake Lang, uno de los tres acusados que recurrieron a la Corte Suprema. “El Congreso nunca pretendió eso”.Pattis dijo que la revisión de la corte era “significativa” en cientos de causas penales derivadas de la revuelta del Capitolio y que era “una razón más para retrasar la causa de 2024 contra Donald Trump”.Dos de los cuatro cargos de la acusación federal de interferencia electoral contra Trump se basan en el cargo de obstrucción. Se le acusa de obstruir personalmente el procedimiento de certificación en el Capitolio el 6 de enero y también se enfrenta a un cargo de conspirar con otras personas para obstruir el procedimiento.La revisión de la corte, aunque es potencialmente perjudicial para la acusación, no afectaría a los otros dos cargos contra Trump. Uno de ellos lo acusa de conspirar para defraudar a Estados Unidos mediante la mentira de que le habían robado las elecciones, en un esfuerzo por revertir su derrota. El otro lo acusa de conspirar para privar a millones de estadounidenses del derecho a que se cuenten sus votos.Sin embargo, si la Corte Suprema determina que la ley de obstrucción no se aplica al ataque de la turba en el Capitolio, podría paralizar los planes de Smith de responsabilizar a Trump de la violencia.Documentos judiciales recientes sobre el caso de las elecciones han sugerido claramente que los fiscales planeaban utilizar la acusación de obstrucción para mostrar al jurado videos gráficos del ataque al Capitolio y tal vez introducir el testimonio de los alborotadores que afirman que asaltaron el edificio siguiendo instrucciones de Trump.La posibilidad de que la corte revise —y pueda invalidar— el recuento de obstrucción se ha cernido sobre el caso de las elecciones de Trump durante meses. Pero la reciente decisión de la corte se produjo en un momento especialmente delicado: dos días después de que Smith pidiera a los jueces que aceleraran la apelación de los distintos intentos de Trump de anular el caso basándose en alegaciones de inmunidad presidencial.Aunque la Corte Suprema aún no ha decidido si considerará los argumentos de inmunidad de Trump, en una semana se ha visto profundamente implicado en el procedimiento de injerencia electoral. Sus decisiones sobre la acusación de obstrucción y sobre la inmunidad podrían alterar radicalmente la forma, el alcance y el calendario del caso, que durante mucho tiempo ha parecido que sería la primera de las cuatro acusaciones a las que se enfrentaría Trump.La fiscala general, Elizabeth Prelogar, había instado a los jueces a denegar la revisión del caso, alegando que la ley era lo suficientemente amplia como para abarcar las acciones de Fischer aunque no se vieran afectados documentos u otros objetos.“Un acusado obstruye un procedimiento oficial impidiendo físicamente que se lleve a cabo, como ocurrió aquí cuando los demandantes y otras personas ocuparon violentamente el Capitolio durante varias horas e impidieron así que la sesión conjunta del Congreso realizara su trabajo”, escribió.Añadió que, en cualquier caso, se trataba de documentos.“Impedir que los miembros del Congreso validaran los certificados estatales constituye, por tanto, una obstrucción centrada en las pruebas”, escribió, añadiendo que la revisión era prematura. “Como mínimo, debería permitirse al gobierno presentar su caso ante un jurado y demostrar que los peticionarios obstruyeron un procedimiento impidiendo (en parte) que los responsables de la toma de decisiones pertinentes vieran las pruebas en el momento y lugar especificados para ese efecto”.Independientemente de cómo se pronuncie finalmente la Corte Suprema, es probable que los abogados de Trump utilicen su decisión de revisar la acusación de obstrucción para reforzar sus argumentos de que el juicio en Washington debería aplazarse, quizá hasta después de que se decida la campaña presidencial de 2024.Desde el inicio del caso, Trump ha seguido una persistente estrategia de retraso. Si puede retrasar el juicio hasta después de las elecciones y ganar la contienda, estaría en condiciones de ordenar sencillamente que se retiraran los cargos contra él.Alan Feuer cubre el extremismo y la violencia política para el Times, centrándose en los casos penales relacionados con el atentado del 6 de enero en el Capitolio y contra el expresidente Donald Trump. Más sobre Alan FeuerAdam Liptak cubre la Corte Suprema y escribe Sidebar, una columna sobre novedades jurídicas. Licenciado por la Facultad de Derecho de Yale, ejerció la abogacía durante 14 años antes de incorporarse al Times en 2002. Más sobre Adam Liptak More

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      Trump and His Allies Descend on Iowa

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      The former president will also campaign in New Hampshire and Nevada, a burst of activity less than five weeks before voting begins.Former President Donald J. Trump kicked off a flurry of campaign activity on Wednesday with an eye toward a decisive victory in Iowa that would crush his Republican rivals’ hopes of emerging with any kind of momentum in the presidential primary.He’ll have a little help from his friends.Mr. Trump gave a speech in Coralville, a small city in eastern Iowa, on Wednesday, before planned stops in New Hampshire, the second nominating state, and Nevada, third on the primary calendar, over the weekend. Mr. Trump will return to Iowa on Tuesday for a speech in Waterloo, a city in the northeastern part of the state.But as Mr. Trump is shoring up support in the other early states, prominent surrogates will hit the ground in Iowa on his behalf in a display of the particular advantages he enjoys as the former president and the primary’s dominant front-runner. In the coming week, his campaign will hold events in Iowa with Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, a conservative firebrand and one of Mr. Trump’s closest allies in Congress, and Ben Carson, the former president’s secretary of housing and urban development.Mr. Trump enters this campaign stretch buoyed by recent polling that shows him holding his edge in the primary and in a strong position against President Biden in next year’s general election should the pair meet for a rematch. Mr. Trump’s allies in the Republican-led House of Representatives have approved a formal impeachment inquiry of Mr. Biden that could have ramifications for the president’s campaign even as their investigations thus far have failed to produce evidence of high crimes or misdemeanors.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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      Mort Engelberg, Producer of Hit Films and Presidential Campaigns, Dies at 86

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      A celebrated “advance man” — responsible for logistics and camera-ready moments in campaigns — he forged a lasting bond with Bill Clinton.Mort Engelberg, a movie producer behind such hits as “Smokey and the Bandit” and “The Big Easy,” who drew on his Hollywood expertise to stage-manage appearances for politicians, notably a bus tour for Bill Clinton and Al Gore following the 1992 Democratic convention, died on Saturday at a hospital in Los Angeles. He was 86.His brother, Steven Engelberg, said the cause was lung cancer.Mr. Engelberg toggled between film and political advance work, setting up campaign trips meant to produce photo-ready moments and drawing on the tropes of road movies to help invent the modern presidential bus tour. It featured the gregarious Mr. Clinton and his sidekick Mr. Gore on a journey through Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kentucky and other heartland states.“Mort came in with basically the same formulation as the Hollywood buddy movie he so perfected in his ‘Smokey and the Bandit’ series,” said Josh King, a colleague of Mr. Engelberg’s on campaigns and during Mr. Clinton’s presidency.Presidential candidates had long made whistle-stop tours, originally by train. By the 1980s, though, the trips were made in chartered jets with brief airport stops — “basically, nothing but some white men on tarmac,” as Mr. Engelberg said in a 2011 podcast.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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      Justices to Decide Scope of Obstruction Charge Central to Trump’s Jan. 6 Case

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      A ruling by the Supreme Court could affect the cases of hundreds of people charged in connection with the Capitol attack — and potentially the prosecution of Donald J. Trump.The Supreme Court agreed on Wednesday to hear a case that could upend the prosecutions of hundreds of rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and delay — or limit the scope of — former President Donald J. Trump’s trial on federal charges of trying to overturn his election defeat.At issue is whether the government can charge defendants in the cases under a federal law that makes it a crime to corruptly obstruct an official proceeding. The law is at the heart of the prosecutions of many members of the pro-Trump mob that sought to block the congressional certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in 2020. It is also a key part of the federal indictment accusing Mr. Trump of plotting to remain in power despite the will of the voters.The decision to hear the case will complicate and perhaps delay the start of Mr. Trump’s trial, now scheduled to take place in Washington in March. The Supreme Court’s ultimate ruling, which may not arrive until June, is likely to address the viability of two of the main counts against Mr. Trump. And it could severely hamper efforts by the special counsel, Jack Smith, to hold the former president accountable for the violence of his supporters at the Capitol.The court’s eventual decision could also invalidate convictions that have already been secured against scores of Mr. Trump’s followers who took part in the assault. That would be an enormous blow to the government’s prosecutions of the Jan. 6 riot cases.The case the court agreed to hear involves Joseph Fischer, who was indicted on seven charges for his role in the Capitol attack. Prosecutors say he assaulted the police as Congress met to certify the results of the 2020 election. Like hundreds of other rioters whose actions disrupted the certification proceeding in the Capitol, Mr. Fischer was charged with the obstruction count, formally known as 18 U.S.C. 1512.Mr. Fischer sought dismissal of a portion of the indictment brought under the obstruction law, which was passed as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, a statute aimed primarily at white-collar crime. Prosecutors have routinely used the obstruction charge, in lieu of more politically contentious counts like insurrection or seditious conspiracy, to describe how members of the pro-Trump mob disrupted the peaceful transfer of presidential power.Last year, Judge Carl J. Nichols of the Federal District Court in Washington granted Mr. Fischer’s motion to dismiss, saying that the law required defendants to take “some action with respect to a document, record or other object” — something he said was missing from Mr. Fischer’s conduct at the Capitol.A divided three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit eventually reversed Judge Nichols’s decision, ruling that the law “applies to all forms of corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding.” Three Jan. 6 defendants, including Mr. Fischer, ultimately asked the Supreme Court to decide whether the law had been properly applied to the Capitol attack.The obstruction charge was never an easy fit in the cases stemming from the storming of the Capitol. When it was passed in the early 2000s, the law was aimed at curbing corporate malfeasance by outlawing things like destroying documents or tampering with witnesses or evidence.Defense lawyers representing Jan. 6 rioters have argued that federal prosecutors improperly stretched its scope to cover the violence that erupted at the Capitol and interfered with the proceeding in which lawmakers had gathered to certify the results of the election.The lawyers also took issue with using the charge against people who stormed the Capitol, saying that many were not acting “corruptly,” as the law requires, because they believed they were protesting a stolen election.“The statute has been used to over-criminalize the Jan. 6 cases,” said Norm Pattis, a lawyer for Jake Lang, one of the three defendants who appealed to the Supreme Court. “Congress never intended that.”Mr. Pattis said the Supreme Court’s review was “significant” in hundreds of criminal cases stemming from the Capitol riot and was “yet another reason the 2024 case against Donald Trump should be delayed.”Two of the four counts in the federal election interference indictment against Mr. Trump are based on the obstruction charge. He has been accused of personally obstructing the certification proceeding at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and faces a separate count of conspiring with others to obstruct the proceeding.The Supreme Court’s review, while potentially damaging to the indictment, would not affect the other two charges against Mr. Trump. One accuses him of conspiring to defraud the United States by using relentless lies that the election had been stolen from him in an effort to reverse his defeat. The other charges him with plotting to deprive millions of Americans of the right to have their votes counted.Still, if the Supreme Court finds that the obstruction law does not apply to the mob attack at the Capitol, it could cripple plans by Mr. Smith to pin the violence on Mr. Trump.Recent court papers in the election case have strongly suggested that prosecutors were planning to use the obstruction charge as a way to show the jury graphic videos of the Capitol attack and perhaps even introduce testimony from rioters claiming that they stormed the building on Mr. Trump’s instructions.The possibility that the Supreme Court could review — and one day invalidate — the obstruction count has been looming over Mr. Trump’s election case for months. But the court’s decision to act on Wednesday came at a particularly delicate moment: two days after Mr. Smith asked the justices to fast-track an appeal of Mr. Trump’s separate attempts to have the case tossed out on broad claims of presidential immunity.While the Supreme Court has not yet decided whether to consider Mr. Trump’s immunity arguments, it has — in the span of a week — become deeply entangled in the election interference proceeding. Its decisions on the obstruction charge and on immunity could radically alter the shape, scope and timing of the case, which has long seemed as though it would be the first of the four indictments Mr. Trump is facing to go before a jury.Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar had urged the justices to deny review in the case, saying the law was broad enough to cover Mr. Fischer’s actions even if no documents or other objects were affected.“A defendant obstructs an official proceeding by physically blocking it from occurring — as happened here when petitioners and others violently occupied the Capitol for several hours and thereby prevented the joint session of Congress from doing its work,” she wrote.She added that documents were at issue in the case in any event.“Preventing the members of Congress from validating the state certificates thus constitutes evidence-focused obstruction,” she wrote, adding that review was premature. “At a minimum, the government should be permitted to present its case to a jury and prove that petitioners obstructed a proceeding by (in part) preventing the relevant decision makers from viewing the evidence at the time and place specified for that purpose.”Regardless of how the Supreme Court ultimately rules, Mr. Trump’s lawyers are likely to use its decision to review the obstruction charge to bolster their arguments that the trial in Washington should be postponed, perhaps until after the 2024 presidential race is decided.From the start of the case, Mr. Trump has pursued a persistent strategy of delay. If he can push the trial until after the election and win the race, he would be in a position to simply order the charges against him to be dropped. More

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      Trump ‘Could Tip an Already Fragile World Order Into Chaos’

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      Two weeks ago, The Washington Post published “A Trump Dictatorship Is Increasingly Inevitable. We Should Stop Pretending,” by Robert Kagan.Four days later, The Times published “Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First,” by Charlie Savage, Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, one in an ongoing series of articles.On the same day, The Atlantic released the online version of its January/February 2024 issue; it included 24 essays under the headline “If Trump Wins.”While the domestic danger posed by a second Trump administration is immediate and pressing, Russia, China, North Korea and Iran — sometimes referred to as the “alliance of autocracies” — have an interest in weakening the global influence of the United States and in fracturing its ties to democracies around the globe.“Clearly, this coalition threatens global security and deterrence and requires policies suited to the assaults Russia and China regularly conduct,” Stephen Blank, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, wrote in a recent column published in The Hill, “The ‘No Limits’ Russo-Chinese Alliance Is Taking Flight.”In a 2020 essay, Michael O’Hanlon, the director of foreign policy research at Brookings, pointed out that “many Americans” question whethera global economy and alliances around the world are good for them. As the election of Donald Trump had proved in 2016, numerous voters are willing to rethink our place in the world. If we do not listen to that message, the entire domestic basis for a strong United States and an engaged foreign policy leadership role could evaporate.This conversation, “more than any other,” O’Hanlon wrote, “is the debate we need to have as a country.”If Donald Trump is re-elected, how will the former president — who has openly praised dictators like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, who has questioned the value of NATO and who has denigrated key allies — deal with the “the 4 plus 1 threat matrix — the five main threats of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and transnational violent extremism or terrorism”?To gauge the range of possible developments in a second Trump administration, I asked specialists in international affairs a series of questions. On the basic question — how damaging to American foreign policy interests would a second Trump administration be? — the responses ranged from very damaging to marginally so.Constanze Stelzenmüller, director of the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings, is quite worried.Asked if Trump would withdraw from NATO — a major blow to European allies and a huge boost for Vladimir Putin — Stelzenmüller replied by email:Very likely. We know that from [former ambassador to the United Nations, John] Bolton’s book and from recent reporting out of Trump’s inner circle. Sumantra Maitra’s dormant NATO article, much read at NATO, suggests a suspension or withdrawal-lite option — but even that would fatally undercut the credibility of Article V.(Article V of the NATO agreement asserts that “the parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them.”)Sumantra Maitra is a visiting senior fellow at Citizens for Renewing America, a pro-Trump think tank. His essay calls for retrenchment of America’s financial and logistical support of NATO, just short of withdrawal:A much more prudent strategy is to force a Europe defended by Europeans with only American naval presence and as a logistics provider of last resort with the U.S. reoriented toward Asia. West Europe will not be serious about the continent’s defense as long as Uncle Sam is there to break the glass during a fire.Stelzenmüller wrote that she sees little or no chance that a Trump administration would join an alliance of Russia, China, North Korea and other dictatorships, “but would Trump see himself as a friend of the authoritarians? Absolutely.” Under Trump, “the spectrum would clearly shift to a much more transactionalist, pro-authoritarian or even predatory mode. That alone could tip an already fragile world order into chaos.”Sarah Kreps, a political scientist at Cornell, suggested that “if past is prologue, we could expect Trump to harp on the issue of free riding but not actually do anything different. He’ll probably do a lot of heckling that’s unmatched by actual policy change.”In this context, Kreps continued, “it will be left to the career diplomats to do the heavy lifting behind the scenes to provide the alliance glue while Trump is hammering the capitals about burden sharing.”How about NATO?“The alliance has such deep roots now and has ebbed and flowed in terms of its strength, but the structural factors present right now will be more powerful than any individual president.”I asked Kreps whether it was conceivable that Trump could join a Russia-China-North Korea coalition.“Again, past being prologue here, we have good reason to think that he talks friendly to autocrats, but won’t act.”How would Trump change the role of the United States in foreign affairs?“I would expect to see more of what we saw in the last administration: a lot of bluster, a lot of braggadocious declarations about how countries are taking the United States seriously now, but not a lot of change.”Kreps was the least alarmed of those I contacted concerning a second Trump administration.Philipp Ivanov, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, staked out a middle — but hardly comforting — ground. In an email, he wrote that because of their conflicting interests, “it’s highly unlikely China, Russia, North Korea and Iran will ever form an alliance.”Instead, he described their ties as “a network of highly transactional bilateral relationships — a marriage of convenience — that lacks basic trust, let alone the kind of common strategic vision and military interconnectedness that characterize the U.S. alliances.”Their only commonality, Ivanov argued,is an autocratic or dictatorial governance and a shared objective to disrupt and undermine U.S. power. All four actors realize that individually or together they cannot seriously challenge American hegemony or compete with its alliance system, but they can wreak havoc, threaten and weaken resolve in their respective spheres of interest.The re-election of Trump would, in Ivanov’s view,undermine the significant efforts of the Biden administration to rebuild, strengthen and reimagine American alliance system in Europe and Asia — from rallying the Europeans to support Ukraine to a comprehensive strengthening of strategic and military relations with Korea, Australia, Japan and Philippines to balance Chinese power.Ivanov believes Trump would face insurmountable obstacles if he attempted to withdraw from NATO, but thatUnder Trump, America’s international image in a democratic world is likely to suffer. The biggest risks to U.S. foreign policy are Trump’s disdain for alliances, transactional approach to foreign and security policy, overly aggressive approach to China and Iran, and a more forgiving attitude to Putin and Kim.Pyongyang, Moscow, Beijing and Tehran will cheer his re-election, but its leaders will be quietly anxious about his next moves.Jonathan M. Winer, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement, who is now a scholar at the Middle East Institute, put it this way:Trump’s election would, of course, help Russia, threaten Ukraine and threaten western alliances, starting with NATO itself. Trump has it in for Ukraine, as reflected in the fraying of Ukrainian support within the elements of the Republican congressional caucus that is closest to Trump.Trump has repeatedly expressed his admiration for autocrats. He also already threatened to pull out of NATO during his first term, and attacked democratic European leaders almost as often as he praised the autocratic leadership of China, North Korea, and Russia.Trump is an authoritarian nationalist. He fits right into the mold of the “autocrats,” as his teasing statement to Sean Hannity — and in a very recent Iowa town hall — that he would only behave in a dictatorial fashion on ‘day one’ of his presidency.While it is inconceivable that Trump could realign the United States with China, Russia and North Korea, Winer wrote, “what he could do is make the U.S. ‘neutral,’ just as the American First movement professed ‘neutrality’ in relation to the fascist threat prior to Pearl Harbor.”Some experts pointed out that Trump could make specific policy decisions that might not appear significant to Americans, but that have great consequence for our allies — consequences that could lead in at least one case to further nuclear proliferation.Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation, wrote to me in an email that “many in the Republic of Korea national security community are concerned about the North Korean nuclear weapon threat and whether they can really trust the United States security commitment in the aftermath of the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan, which hit the ROK much harder than I think most Americans realize.”Bennett cited the “fear that if Trump is elected president in 2024, he will talk about removing some U.S. forces from Korea. Whether or not such action actually begins, there is a risk that the Republic of Korea would react to such talk by once again starting a covert nuclear weapon development effort.”James Lindsay, senior vice president at the Council on Foreign Relations, referring in an email to the perceived threat emanating from the “alliance of autocrats,” observed:If “alliance” is only intended to mean general cooperation among China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, then that is clearly happening. North Korea and Iran are supplying Russia with artillery shells and drones. Russia is supplying China with energy. China is supplying Russia with political cover at various international venues over the war in Ukraine.Lindsay argued:Trump could effectively gut NATO simply by saying he will not come to the aid of NATO allies in the event they are attacked. The power of Article V rests on the belief that alliance members, and specifically, the most powerful alliance member, will act when called upon. Destroy that belief and the organization withers. Walking away from Ukraine would damage the alliance as well even though Ukraine is not a member of NATO. Member countries would read it as a signal that Trump is abandoning Europe.One of the major risks posed by a second Trump administration, Lindsay wrote, is thatTrump’s hostility toward alliances, skepticism about the benefits of cooperation writ large, and his belief in the power of unilateral action will lead him to make foreign policy moves that will unintentionally provide strategic windfalls to China, Russia, Iran or North Korea. The scenario in which he withdraws the United States from NATO or says he will not abide by Article V is the most obvious example. His intent will be to save money and/or free the United States from foreign entanglements. But Vladimir Putin would love to see NATO on the ash heap of history.Lindsay described decisions and policies Trump may consider:It’s easy to imagine other steps Trump might take, given his past actions and current rhetoric, that would similarly give advantage to Beijing, Moscow, Tehran or Pyongyang: abandoning Ukraine; questioning the wisdom of defending Taiwan; terminating the alliance with South Korea; ignoring Iranian aggression in the Middle East; recognizing North Korea as a nuclear power; and imposing a 10 percent, across-the-board tariff on all goods.On a larger scale, it would be difficult to overestimate the degree to which a second Trump term would represent a major upheaval in the tenets underlying postwar American foreign policy.Mark Medish is a former senior director of the National Security Council for Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian Affairs. He argued in an email that “Trump’s rise represented a repudiation of the so-called ‘bipartisan consensus.’ For decades during the Cold War, there was a broad agreement in the US elite and our political culture that we had a clear enemy, the U.S.S.R. and the rest of the Communist bloc.”While there was significant disagreement within this consensus, Medish wrote, “we always knew who the enemy was, whether the Soviet Union or the perpetrators of 9/11.”During the 2016 campaign and his term in office, according to Medish, Trumptook on the establishment and attacked this bipartisan consensus, pointing to failures from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan. The outside world, particularly our rivals and enemies, perceived this shift as a turning point toward U.S. detachment and decline and made them eager to push the envelope — to test whether the U.S. had indeed lost its “strategic depth.”Trump’s re-election, according to Medish, “would provide further evidence — in the eyes of Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang and Tehran — of U.S. disarray and the decline of the West.”Medish made the claim that “the challenge for the U.S./West is less military/economic than political. If the political and institutional center does not hold, the rest does not matter so much.”Why?Because our unmatchable power and vitality has been civilizational — the West has thrived through organic growth and it has prevailed globally by attraction, not primarily by force or threats. We are not the Roman Empire, we are the Roman Republic. Trump is a Rubicon-crosser not only on foreign policy, but also domestically. This disruption is the biggest threat to our security.Paul Poast, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, forthrightly agreed that “there is absolutely a push against the U.S.-led ‘liberal international order’ and that this push is being led by China, Russia, along with ‘junior partners’ like North Korea and Iran.”Poast, however, disagreed with many of his colleagues on the prospects for NATO under a second Trump administration.Trump had actually become a “NATO fan” by the end of his term. The key is whether NATO allies, and specifically the next Secretary General, take measures that appease Trump’s demands. In many respects, Trump would just be taking to the extreme what the U.S. has long done with NATO: push and manipulate the allies to do what is in the U.S.’s interest.I asked Robert Kagan what foreign policy might look like in a second Trump administration.“What will Trump do? Who knows?,” Kagan replied. “Who knows whether Trump himself has a foreign policy.” Trump “will certainly not have pro-liberal prejudices as most previous U.S. presidents have, at least since World War II. He will make common cause with right-wing forces in Europe, as he did in his first term.”Kagan’s conclusion?“Trump’s foreign policy will be unpredictable because we haven’t had a dictator as commander in chief. It will be uncharted territory.”During Trump’s term in office, virtually everyone — his adversaries, his allies, the media — consistently underestimated his willingness to break rules. He is a man without borders, without conscience, without dignity, ethics or integrity, committed only to what he perceives to be in his own interest. He admires dictators who rule without constraint, and if he believes it would be to his advantage to join them, there is nothing — in his mind or his character — that would stop him.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, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      Political Debate Is Rife on TikTok. Politicians? Not So Much.

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      President Biden and the White House regularly post to millions of followers on social media, talking about the economy on Facebook, sharing Christmas decorations on YouTube, showcasing pardoned turkeys on Instagram, posting about infrastructure on the X platform. They’re even on Threads.But they aren’t speaking directly to 150 million Americans on TikTok. There’s no official @POTUS, White House or Biden-Harris 2024 account. You’ll find only one of the Republican presidential candidates there — and just 37 sitting Congress members, according to a New York Times review of accounts.Some pundits call next year the “TikTok election” because of the ballooning power and influence of the video app. TikTok may have been known for viral dances in 2020, but it has increasingly become a news source for millennials and Gen Z-ers, who will be a powerful part of the electorate. But less than a year from the election, most politicians are keeping their distance from the app, as efforts grow in Washington and elsewhere to restrict or ban it because of its ownership by the Chinese company ByteDance. Many lawmakers and regulators have expressed concern that TikTok could put users’ information into the hands of Beijing officials — an argument that the company disputes.By passing up a huge microphone because of those concerns, however, politicians are running the risk that they and their campaigns will not directly reach young people on the app. They might also be upstaged by savvy challengers who may not feel so conflicted and who can figure out how to use TikTok to their advantage.Many campaigns are trying to hedge their bets by turning to a growing network of TikTok political influencers to share their messages or by making short videos on YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels in hopes that they’ll end up trending on TikTok. They have to give up some control to do that, and they need to persuade creators to work with them, often for little to no pay.To many political consultants, the politicians’ absence on TikTok is perhaps untenable.“The discourse is being shaped by this thing even if you yourself don’t use it,” said Teddy Goff, a top digital strategist for President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.Eric Wilson, a Republican digital strategist, said that he was telling candidates “if you didn’t get it banned in 2023, you need to get on in 2024.”Several Republican presidential candidates have slammed TikTok at their recent debates and criticized Vivek Ramaswamy, the one candidate who has joined the app despite previously referring to it as “digital fentanyl.” He has defended joining TikTok, saying he did it to reach young voters.Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign team said that it did not need its own TikTok accounts to reach voters.“The reality is us having an account would not make a substantial difference in what we need to do on TikTok,” said Rob Flaherty, Mr. Biden’s deputy campaign manager and the former White House director of digital strategy. “The most important thing you can do is work through influencers.”TikTok arrived as a political force during the 2022 midterm campaign, when Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, successfully roasted his opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, in a flurry of cutting videos, and Representative Jeff Jackson, Democrat of North Carolina, used a video filter to make his head look like a piece of broccoli while talking about reaching younger audiences.Annie Wu Henry, a 27-year-old digital strategist who helped run Mr. Fetterman’s TikTok account in 2022, said his use showcased TikTok’s potential reach and influence. She said she was amazed as she watched clips and memes that Mr. Fetterman’s campaign posted on the app take off “and become actual parts of conversation or picked up by traditional media sources.”Annie Wu Henry helped run social media for John Fetterman’s Senate campaign last year.Michelle Gustafson for The New York TimesWeeks after the elections, though, Washington’s sentiment toward the company turned sour. The Biden administration, as well as most states, some cities and some college campuses, has barred the app from being used on official devices. Some lawmakers have called for a national ban.Today, just 7 percent of the 533 Senators and Representatives have verified accounts on TikTok, and some have never posted, according to the analysis by The Times. None are Republican. The few who have joined often post to the app from separate “TikTok phones” because of security concerns, said Mike Nellis, a Democratic digital strategist.Mr. Jackson is the most popular, with 2.5 million followers, and Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, comes in second, with 1.4 million. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota each have over 200,000 followers.Ms. Wu said campaigns, including Mr. Biden’s, were potentially leaving major audiences on the table.“It needs to be figured out, and there’s almost this rush right now of who’s going to do it,” she said.The White House has tapped into TikTok in the past few years by working with social media stars to promote access to Covid-19 vaccines and to brief viewers on the Russia-Ukraine war and the Inflation Reduction Act. Several stars told The Times they weren’t paid but were eager to participate.That sort of workaround is expected to be even more popular next year. “There’s this booming industry under the surface of both agencies and platforms that are helping political organizations, social impact groups and politicians themselves sponsor content on TikTok and partner with creators and influencers to put out messaging,” said Brian Derrick, a political strategist and co-founder of Oath, a platform for guiding donations to Democratic campaigns.TikTok prohibits paid political ads, including paying creators for endorsements. It doesn’t encourage politicians to join the platform, though it does verify official accounts.A White House spokesperson, when asked about the use of TikTok, pointed to a rule barring the app from being used on federal devices as of March and declined to comment further.Harry Sisson, a 21-year-old junior at New York University and a political commentator on TikTok, is a rising creator, sharing news and opinions against backdrops of social media posts and articles.Yuvraj Khanna for The New York TimesHarry Sisson, a 21-year-old junior at New York University and a political commentator on TikTok, started posting in 2020, when he was a high school senior, to help Mr. Biden’s campaign for president. He has amassed 700,000 followers.Mr. Sisson said that in the past year and a half, Democratic groups had offered him more opportunities, including filming voting videos with Mr. Obama and watching the State of the Union at the White House. He wasn’t paid but was thrilled to be involved.With the White House in particular, he said, “They’ve always stressed, we’re not here to tell you guys what to say, if you disagree with us, we’re not going to be upset.”Mr. Sisson said he earned money through views on his TikTok videos and accepted some paid collaborations with advocacy groups that he believed in like Planned Parenthood, but his goal was to help elect Democrats. A.B. Burns-Tucker, a political TikTok creator, believes that her content has influenced voters, pointing to the approval of a recent Ohio ballot measure that enshrined a right to abortion in the State Constitution.Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesA.B. Burns-Tucker, 34, is another political content creator who has joined White House briefings. She posts on TikTok as @iamlegallyhype, and has over 700,000 followers. She said her account took off after she made a popular explainer video about the Russia-Ukraine war, which colloquially referred to world leaders as “Big Daddy Biden” and “Big Bad P.” She says she’s now a news source for people who don’t tune in elsewhere.“I talk about current events with my friends all the time, but most of them are like, ‘Girl, I don’t watch the news, if you don’t tell me I don’t know,’” she said. “I took that and ran with it.”Ms. Burns-Tucker believes that she has influenced voters, pointing to the approval of a recent Ohio ballot measure that enshrined a right to abortion in the State Constitution. She was paid by Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights to make a TikTok video that urged people to vote for the ballot measure, which aligned with her personal beliefs, she said. “A lot of people in the comment section were like, I didn’t even know, I’ll be in line first thing tomorrow,” she added. The video passed 45,000 views.People like Mr. Sisson and Ms. Burns-Tucker don’t have a parallel among conservatives, said Amanda Carey Elliott, a digital consultant for Republicans.Ms. Elliott said that she was firmly against using TikTok based on the party’s stance on China — but that there was also less incentive for Republicans to use it.“There’s not a huge culture of TikTok influencers on the right — it’s just not the same for us,” she said.Still, some Republican consultants say the opportunity is too big to pass up. Mr. Wilson, the Republican strategist, has been trying to guide candidates on how to sign up for the app after criticizing it.“Candidates drive in cars all the time — that doesn’t mean they want cars to be unregulated,” he said. “There’s not necessarily a hypocrisy there if you’re clear about what your position is and how you’re using it.” More