Pinned
Jonathan Alter
Contributing Opinion Writer
Two Jurors Dislike Trump. One Will Judge Him.
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Two potential jurors who both despise Donald Trump were questioned at his felony trial Thursday. One was dismissed, the other was seated on the jury that will decide his fate. How did that happen?
The courthouse, first of all, was stunned that a jury was selected on the third day of the trial. It was like a baseball game expected to last three hours that’s over in 45 minutes.
The jury includes three lawyers, who as a species dislike Trump at about the same level as Ph.D.s but come naturally to following a judge’s instructions. They and most of the others who were selected left no incriminating digital trail on social media and were smart enough not to insult Trump to his face. But there were two exceptions — people who said the kinds of things about Trump that he routinely says about others.
Juror B430, a longtime paralegal at a major law firm who also worked in theater, was found by Trump’s jury consultants to have called him “a racist, sexist narcissist” in 2016, when she was a self-described “Bernie Gal.”
“I wouldn’t believe Donald Trump if his tongue was notarized,” she wrote. “He is anathema to everything I was taught about love and Jesus. He could not be more fundamentally unchristian.”
When questioned by the judge and lawyers, she apologized to Trump directly and said she no longer holds those positions.
Justice Juan Merchan concluded that the court “couldn’t take a chance” with her, and she was dismissed for cause.
Juror B500, a Harlem resident who works for an apparel company, was candid when questioned by lawyers. “He is selfish, self-serving and I don’t like him,” she said of Trump from a distance of 12 feet. Susan Necheles, one of Trump’s attorneys, said the woman should be dismissed by the judge for cause.
Joshua Steinglass, a prosecutor, argued that the juror was challenging Trump’s persona, just as any prospective juror would do with a defendant who was a skinhead.
The judge said the question wasn’t whether jurors liked accused criminals but whether they could be fair and impartial. But Necheles had a point when she said jurors have preconceived notions about people like sex offenders, since that’s about the crime, not the person. In this case, she said, it’s about Trump, not the crime.
Nonetheless, Merchan overruled her, saying said if courts eliminated all prospective jurors with preconceived notions about people “we would never have juries.”
Unfortunately for Trump, the defense was out of peremptory challenges and Juror B500 was seated. Fortunately for him, he needs only one of her fellow jurors to give him a break and he’ll have a hung jury.
April 18, 2024, 5:35 p.m. ET
Pamela Paul
Opinion Columnist
At Columbia, the Grown-Ups in the Room Take a Stand
There’s plenty to condemn on today’s college campuses, including the behavior of both administrations and students. So it’s a rare pleasure to get a chance to applaud the president of a university, in this case Minouche Shafik of Columbia, who on Thursday called in the police to remove student protesters who have camped out on campus in violation of university policy.
I happened to be on campus Wednesday when this latest wave of protests was getting started. Students marched around outdoors in virtue-signaling masks yelling “N.Y.P.D., K.K.K.!” along with the usual anti-Israel slogans. For this passer-by, the fury and self-righteous sentiment on display was chilling. But for Jewish students on campus, for supporters of Israel or for anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the simplistic good-versus-evil narrative of the anti-settler-colonialism crowd, it must be unimaginably painful. Many of them are at the university to learn in a safe and tolerant environment.
As for tolerance? One can’t help but wonder, no matter what one’s opinion of Israel, or its despicable government under Benjamin Netanyahu or the particulars of its military response, why one rarely hears pro-Palestinian demonstrators condemn the terrorist organization Hamas, which has controlled Gaza without an election since 2006. Or why those who wish Israel’s military campaign in Gaza to end don’t likewise urge Hamas to end the fighting, which it could easily do by freeing the hostages it took during its Oct. 7 rampage.
Lofty, unrealistic goals, all. But no more unlikely than the wholesale eradication of Israel that many of these protesters seem to advocate above all else. As far as I could tell, the word “peace” was notably absent in the student display at Columbia.
On Wednesday, Shafik acquitted herself well under questioning in Congress. When asked about a glossary of politicized language, put together by students at the university’s School of Social Work, which I reported in the fall, Shafik condemned the language that implicitly denigrates Jews. When asked why the document spelled the word “folks” as “folx,” Shafik gave an appropriately sardonic reply: “Maybe they can’t spell.”
Spoken like a real grown-up. And Thursday, with the authority at her disposal and with the courage that too many academic leaders have lacked, Shafik did what any responsible adult should do in her position: She ordered the police to clear Columbia’s campus of the students seemingly unaware of how lucky they are to attend one of the nation’s top universities. Let’s hope this teaches the students a lesson. They clearly still have a lot to learn.
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April 18, 2024, 3:06 p.m. ET
David French
Opinion Columnist
Why Israel Might Want to Retaliate Against Iran
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It’s easy to state a compelling case against the idea that Israel should strike Iran after Iran’s weekend drone and missile attack. Iran’s assault failed, spectacularly. Its vaunted long-range arsenal proved ineffective (at least in that strike), and the attack itself rallied Israel’s allies to its aid. American, British and even Jordanian forces intervened to protect Israel.
In other words, if Israel stops now, then it will have clearly gotten the better of Iran. A direct strike from Israel into Iranian territory carries substantial risk of further escalation, including perhaps a large-scale attack from Hezbollah and a two-front ground war in Gaza and Lebanon. Plus, what’s the real risk in restraint? If Iran attacks again, won’t Israel and its allies simply shoot down the missiles once more?
Perhaps not. While Iran’s bombardment failed, no one should minimize what it tried to do. As Gen. Mark Hertling (I served under his command in Iraq in 2007 and 2008) observed on CNN, Iran’s effort was comparable to the first day of America’s “shock and awe” strike against Iraq in 2003. We fired 500 precision weapons. Iran fired more than 300 against Israel.
As he also noted, the attack failed not just because Israel’s air defenses are so advanced but also because the attack was poorly executed.
As we’ve seen from Russia’s similar barrages against Ukraine, militaries tend to learn lessons from failure. If Iran improves its tactics (as Russia has) or cracks appear in Israel’s air defense, then the consequences could be catastrophic: a potential mass casualty event, making the Middle East a very different place.
Under these circ*mstances, Israel could rationally believe that offense is the best defense. It may not always be able to count on immediate, effective allied help, and degrading Iran’s capabilities could deter Iran, diminish the missile threat and preserve the precious (and expensive) missile defenses that saved so many Israeli lives. Israel recently paid a terrible price for its lost deterrence, and restraint could lead Iran to believe that it could launch missiles at Israel again without paying a terrible price.
No one should understate the difficulty of Israel’s decision, including not just the decision whether to retaliate but also how to strike back. There is no clear, safe path to peace and security. But the wisdom of Israel’s next move may depend on the answer to two key questions: Can diplomacy secure Israel more effectively than an I.D.F. response? And if diplomacy fails, how confident is the I.D.F. that it can stop Iran again if another 300 drones and missiles fall from the sky?
April 18, 2024, 1:38 p.m. ET
Lindsay Crouse
Opinion Writer and Producer
Even Clarkenomics Can’t Solve Sexism in Sports
Caitlin Clark is the most famous female college basketball player in history and was the No. 1 draft pick for the W.N.B.A. this year. But the public has been scandalized to discover what awaits this talented young woman as she enters pro sports: Her first-year salary will be only $76,535.
Her starting salary is far from that of the No. 1 N.B.A. draft pick, which is estimated at $10.5 million. In fact, as Axios reported, next year any random N.B.A. player is set to earn more than Clark’s entire team, the Indiana Fever, combined.
The outrage is refreshing.
Women in sports have been screaming about the athletic wage gap for years. Finally, people get it. On Wednesday even President Biden called on female athletes to be “paid what they deserve.”
He’s right. Sports are the ultimate expression of America’s values when it comes to many things, especially gender. The glass ceiling in women’s sports salaries has been accepted for so long that it’s easy to come up with plausible reasons that the best women are paid so much less than even the average man: lower demand for their games, suboptimal agreements between players and the league, inadequate broadcast deals.
But there are always reasons for blatant inequality. The question is whether America wants to continue to accept them. There’s not some craven force artificially keeping women’s sports salaries down; salaries follow the market. Ever since the dawn of professional women’s basketball, the league has been treated like the J.V. of the men’s game. When we invest in something as though it will never measure up, we effectively ensure it becomes that way. Let’s call it what it is: sexism.
Luckily, the fans see it differently. The W.N.B.A. now has a rising star player who is shattering TV viewership records everywhere she goes, and there are plenty of others ready to share her spotlight. Corporate sponsorships and better broadcast deals, and ultimately, better contracts, follow the fans. As we saw in soccer, where the U.S. women’s national team now makes the same as the men’s team, salary parity is achievable only when the public demands it and delivers the ratings to back it up. The more that goes into the pie, the easier it is for players and the league to get more in turn.
(And it’s not as if Clark were being sent off to the poorhouse. She is said to be closing an eight-figure contract with Nike, and her other endorsem*nt deals are already worth millions.)
Women’s basketball finally has the thing the market wants: attention. And that’s translating to sales. The Fever’s ticket prices are up almost 200 percent from last season, and Clark’s games are already set to pack stadiums. Trickle-down Clarkenomics is on a thrilling rally.
The W.N.B.A. is only going to continue to soar — Clark is already a one-woman rocket booster for its success. But ultimately, Caitlin Clark can’t fix sexism. Only those of us watching can.
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April 18, 2024, 11:06 a.m. ET
Jonathan Alter
Contributing Opinion Writer
The Scent of a Struggling Campaign Is Emerging From Trump’s Courtroom
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The Trump trial hit some speed bumps Thursday morning, with one juror quitting and a second likely to be thrown off, but it is still moving forward at a pace much faster than anyone expected. Jury selection will probably be completed by Friday and opening arguments could get underway on Monday.
So far in this trial, the Trump campaign has lost the states of Delay and Pretrial Motions Denied, with more battleground contests looking iffy for the putative Republican nominee, at least in the short run.
Inevitably, trial coverage is melding with campaign coverage. That’s not because of Donald Trump’s nonsense that his prosecution is being orchestrated by President Biden’s operatives (as if they somehow control state judges), and I have no idea how this 2016 election interference case will ultimately affect the 2024 election. But for now the Trump campaign trail is the Trump criminal trial, and he’s reminding me of some of the wounded candidates I’ve covered over the last 40 years.
While Biden has what his campaign calls “kitchen table conversations” with voters around the country, Trump is stuck having whispered defense table conversations with his lawyers, unable to leave the courthouse and what he considers to be its “disgusting” bathrooms four days a week under penalty of law.
While Biden blasts Trump’s tax cuts for billionaires, Trump is stuck trying to figure out how to beat the rap on the tax fraud charges that could be attached to his falsification of business records. And while Biden’s campaign war chest is devoted to spreading his message, Trump is stuck using his lesser haul to pay for civil judgments and pricey attorneys.
There’s a smell to struggling campaigns that you can pick up on the press bus, which in this case is the press overflow room in the courthouse. The crowds get thin (fewer than a dozen pro-Trump protesters outside the courthouse since Monday) and the attack lines grow stale. Of course Trump will probably keep using “Sleepy Joe” as part of his pattern of accusing others of what he does himself.
At least Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Bob Dole and the other losers I’ve covered had members of their families with them when the trail turned rough. Not Trump.
Of course, there’s still plenty of time for Trump to recover. Don’t forget that Bill Clinton survived in 1992 after tabloid sex stories almost derailed his campaign.
April 18, 2024, 5:07 a.m. ET
David Wallace-Wells
Opinion Writer
Our Carbon-Hungry World Has Already Cost Us
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Even if carbon emissions stopped on a dime tomorrow, new research published in Nature on Wednesday suggests, the economic damage to come from climate change would be jaw-dropping and indeed world-shaping: a 19 percent reduction in global incomes by midcentury.
As climate economists are careful to point out, this does not suggest that in 2050, the world will be 19 percent poorer than the one we inhabit today. It’s projecting a world in 2050 that is 19 percent poorer than the one we might’ve been living in, had we not put trillions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere. The proposition is basically this: Imagine being presented in, say, 2000, with two maps of the future economy, one which landed the world at today’s level of overall wealth and one which made it 19 percent poorer. Just the warming we have already ensured, the authors write, means that we will be following the poorer path rather than the more prosperous one. And because we are still emitting — indeed, doing so at record rates — there is also more warming to come.
Disconcertingly, the authors write, this will happen whether the world decarbonizes quickly or not. Although their estimate lands at the very high end of published research, it also joins a growing number of papers emphasizing the accumulation of climate costs over time; even small climate effects, tabulated across several decades, really begin to add up.
One bit of encouraging news from climate research over the last decade has been that scientists have largely turned against what was often called “warming in the pipeline” — the idea that, even if emissions went to zero tomorrow, the planet might continue to warm as natural feedback loops played themselves out.
Instead, climate scientists have generally coalesced around a more reassuring thesis, which suggests that whenever the world hits net-zero, temperature rise will stop soon thereafter. But this does not mean that damages will stop. Stabilizing temperatures at 1.5 degrees implies decades of damage, and stabilizing the climate at 2 degrees or higher implies decades of more intense damage.
This is one of the reasons that the effort to estimate the global economic consequences of future warming has produced a disorientingly wide array of intensely debated estimates. Some models, making certain assumptions, project that even very high-end warming would only cost the global economy a few percentage points of G.D.P.; others, using different assumptions, project far higher costs. But even the moderate estimates are increasingly eye-popping.
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April 17, 2024, 5:21 p.m. ET
Peter Coy
Opinion Writer
Biden’s Steel Tariffs Are Merely Symbolic
The most important thing to know about President Biden’s request for fresh tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum is that they will make almost no difference.
In case you missed it: On Wednesday, the White House announced that Biden would use a campaign speech to steelworkers in Pittsburgh to ask his trade representative to more than triple some tariffs on steel and aluminum products from China.
The reason it doesn’t matter much is that, last year, just 2 percent of steel imported to the United States and about 3.5 percent of imported aluminum came from China, according to the Global Steel Trade Monitor and the Global Aluminum Trade Monitor of the U.S. International Trade Administration.
Customers have switched away from China because tariffs on its steel and aluminum are already high, averaging 7.5 percent, and Chinese imports are further subject to anti-dumping and countervailing duties.
So Biden’s gambit is primarily symbolic. On the downside, it won’t save many steelworker jobs, if any. On the upside, it also probably won’t cost many jobs at companies that make products from steel, since so few of them are using Chinese steel in the first place.
“This is all politics,” Paul Nathanson, the executive director of the Coalition of American Metal Manufacturers and Users, which opposes high tariffs on imported metals, told me.
Nathanson said there are approximately 68 jobs in industries that use steel for every one job in steel-making itself, which is a shadow of its former self. He said the United States has some of the highest steel prices in the world, which puts his members at a disadvantage against fabricators of steel products in other countries.
This is basic economics, but it seems to elude Biden as it eluded Donald Trump before him. Last month, Biden opposed the purchase of U.S. Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel — even though Nippon is seeking to revitalize the tired American company.
Biden’s move Wednesday is primarily symbolic, as I said. But the symbolism isn’t good.
April 17, 2024, 4:43 p.m. ET
David Firestone
Deputy Editor, the Editorial Board
An Absurd Impeachment Reaches a Satisfying End
Senate Republicans pretended to be aghast Wednesday that anyone would think of dismissing their hopes for an impeachment trial of the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas.
“Tabling articles of impeachment would be unprecedented in the history of the Senate,” sputtered Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader. “It’s as simple as that.”
But Democrats nonetheless quickly dismissed the absurd charges against Mayorkas, preventing a trial with a satisfying snap of closure. A 51-vote majority of the Senate agreed the charges were unconstitutional, because they failed to specify a high crime or misdemeanor that Mayorkas had committed. And with that, the whole sorry case ended.
There was nothing particularly unprecedented about the Senate’s rejection. In 2021, after Donald Trump helped lead an insurrection against Congress, 45 Republicans (McConnell among them) voted to dismiss the impeachment charges against Trump before a trial. They failed because they lacked the numbers, but their goal was precisely the same.
What was unprecedented was the impeachment effort itself, the first against a sitting cabinet official and the first time the House had abused the Constitution’s impeachment provisions for nakedly political reasons against an executive branch official without bothering to state a significant high crime. House Republicans claimed Mayorkas had lied to Congress about the security of the southern border; in fact, they simply disagreed with him and the Biden administration about how to define a secure border, and they decided to create a fake election-year impeachment process to once again wave the immigration flag before voters.
Senate Republicans looked equally ridiculous Wednesday, frantically making repeated motions to adjourn the trial, having realized they couldn’t stop the dismissal. But Democrats held firm and did future senators a favor by setting down a marker that impeachment charges have to be serious to be considered.
They did the country a favor, too, by sparing the public a farcical trial, in which we would all have been subjected to the sight of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene on the floor of the Senate as an impeachment manager. That would bring back too many uncomfortable memories of Jan. 6, 2021.
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April 17, 2024, 2:17 p.m. ET
Michelle Cottle
Opinion Writer
The Real Reasons Trump Set Foot in a Bodega
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With this season of “Law and Order: Presidential Campaign Hush Money” underway, Donald Trump is looking to make the most of his time back in his hometown New York, preferably not too far from the Manhattan courthouse.
After catnapping in the courtroom on Tuesday, Sleepy Don had enough pep in his step to head uptown to Harlem to drop by, as the advance announcement trumpeted, a “Bodega Victimized By Soros-Funded D.A. Alvin Bragg.”
But I should let the exquisite hyperbole of the news release speak for itself:
“Today, President Trump will be visiting the New York City bodega where Jose Alba, a New York bodega clerk, was robbed, attacked, and, ultimately, wrongfully accused of murder after being forced to defend his life. President Trump’s visit to one of New York City’s bodegas comes at a time when retail theft is skyrocketing and the New York City police force is on track to fall to its lowest numbers since the 1990s by 2025. Bodegas are a lifeline to underserved communities, and President Trump believes that only by undoing the Democrat party’s soft-on-crime policies can law and order be fully restored to every borough throughout New York City.”
For background purposes: Alba did indeed lethally stab a robber in self-defense in 2022. He was brought up on murder charges, which were dropped not three weeks later.
No matter. This Trumpian stunt is a genius bit of political theater, allowing the former president to do several things at once: Smear the granddaddy of Dem-run cities as a crime-infested hellhole; imply the city is anti-law enforcement; attack the prosecutor overseeing his criminal trial as the puppet of one of the right’s favorite supervillains; claim common cause with a fellow victim of misguided prosecutorial zeal; and, perhaps most impressive of all, pander to Hispanic voters with his oily ode to bodegas.
Seriously, when was the last time this guy set foot in a bodega? How would he know anything about an “underserved” community?
That said, if this is how the campaign wants to play things, just think of the opportunities for future field trips to places with which the defendant presumably has little or no familiarity. How about visiting a day care center next? A homeless shelter? A public school? A library? A mosque — any house of worship, really?
Would such establishments appreciate the chaos that the MAGA king invariably brings? Does it matter? These little drive-bys, like everything Trump does, are all about serving his own needs. Everyone else is just an extra in his endless melodrama.
April 17, 2024, 12:45 p.m. ET
Farah Stockman
Editorial Board Member
The Split Screen Democrats Have Been Dreaming About
For a few fleeting seconds on Tuesday, CNN showed the view of the two campaigns that the Biden campaign must be fantasizing about. On one side of the screen, President Biden was disembarking from a plane in Scranton, Pa., to give a speech about making billionaires pay their fair share of taxes. On the other side, Donald Trump was glowering in a New York courtroom, accused of falsifying business records and paying hush money to a p*rn star.
But CNN’s split screen didn’t last long. The network quickly switched back to dissecting the New York courtroom drama. I switched to C-SPAN to watch Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania introduce Biden — a speech that reminded voters that the Trump administration tried to pass a rule that would have allowed bar and restaurant owners to pocket the tips of waitresses and bartenders.
Then a local educator talked about the importance of the expanded child tax credit, remarking, “It’s pretty nice to have a president who sees the view from Scranton.” Then came Biden, who hammered home the message of stark contrast.
“I don’t see things from the eyes of Mar-a-Lago,” he told his audience. “I see things through the eyes of Scranton, where honesty and decency matter.”
Under a sign that read, “Tax fairness for all families,” Biden noted that there were about 1,000 billionaires in the United States and that they pay an average federal tax rate of 8.3 percent — a lower rate than most Americans pay.
His plan would require billionaires to pay at least 25 percent of their income in taxes to fund the Medicare trust fund permanently, he said. Trump, on the other hand, intends to extend his 2017 tax cuts, which simplified taxes for many people but had the principal effect of helping the wealthiest.
I suspect that coming a day after Tax Day, that message will hit home with many — if they saw it. Probably far more eyeballs were glued to news about Trump’s day in court than Biden’s day in Pennsylvania. But it is worth remembering that no matter what is happening on television, this split screen is real life.
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April 17, 2024, 10:00 a.m. ET
David French
Opinion Columnist
When a Mob Gets to Veto a Valedictorian’s Speech
On Tuesday the University of Southern California canceled a planned graduation speech by its valedictorian, a young woman named Asna Tabassum. My newsroom colleague Stephanie Saul reported that the “school said the decision stemmed from security concerns based on emails and other electronic communications warning of a plan to disrupt the commencement, including at least one that targeted Ms. Tabassum.”
Shortly after Tabassum had been named valedictorian, two student groups, Trojans for Israel and Chabad, objected. Her social media bio apparently included a link to a group that condemns Zionism as a “racist settler-colonial ideology.” Trojans for Israel said Tabassum “openly traffics antisemitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric.”
Oddly enough, Andrew T. Guzman, the university’s provost, claimed the decision to cancel Tabassum’s address “has nothing to do with freedom of speech. There is no free-speech entitlement to speak at a commencement.” While Guzman may be correct as a matter of broad legal principle — there is no right to be a graduation speaker — he is completely wrong that the decision to cancel has nothing to do with free speech.
In fact, canceling a speech because of future safety concerns is a more egregious form of censorship than the classic “heckler’s veto,” when protesters silence speakers by disrupting their speeches. U.S.C.’s decision to cancel Tabassum’s speech was a form of anticipatory heckler’s veto. U.S.C. canceled the speech before the heckling could even start.
To support Tabassum’s ability to speak is not to minimize very real safety concerns in a tense and volatile time. In February, for example, a violent mob at the University of California, Berkeley, forced attendees to evacuate an event featuring a speaker from Israel. But it is the responsibility of the state and the university to protect both the liberty and the security of their students and guests.
I disagree strongly with condemnations of Zionism as racist, and I think it would be a serious mistake if Tabassum chose to commandeer her commencement platform to express such views. But I’m far more concerned about setting yet another precedent showing that threats and intimidation work than I am about the content of a single graduation speech. It is exactly when security feels most precarious that American institutions must be most vigilant in the defense of freedom.
The alternative is grim. If a fail-safe method of silencing speech is summoning a mob, or even merely threatening to summon a mob, then expect to see more mobs.
April 16, 2024, 6:23 p.m. ET
Jesse Wegman
Editorial Board Member
The Supreme Court May Side With Jan. 6 Rioters and Their Leader
Because of a couple of ambiguous words in a federal law, a majority of the Supreme Court seems poised to throw out hundreds of convictions of Jan. 6 attackers. That was the main takeaway after oral arguments Tuesday morning in a case challenging the Justice Department’s reliance on an Enron-era law in prosecuting some of the more than 1,200 rioters who broke down barricades and stormed the Capitol in a violent effort to overturn the 2020 election.
The right-wing justices, who sound increasingly as if they were dictating replies to a MAGA social media thread, expressed concern about the risk of selective prosecution. Why, they asked, hasn’t the same law been used against Black Lives Matter protesters or, say, Representative Jamaal Bowman, the Democratic lawmaker who pulled a fire alarm in Congress last year?
It’s fair to ensure that laws are applied equally, but this line of questioning from these particular justices was, at best, disingenuous. They seemed to forget that there is no precedent for a violent mob invading Congress in an attempt to block a constitutionally mandated vote count and overthrow an election. (Bowman, in contrast, was censured by his colleagues for his stupid and reckless but not insurrectionist act.)
The bigger question looming behind Tuesday’s arguments involved the man who incited the Jan. 6 mob: Donald Trump, the former and perhaps future president. Jack Smith, the special counsel, included violations of the same law in one of his federal indictments of Trump, and if the court tosses the charge in the cases of the relatively low-level attackers, Trump will surely exploit that in his case.
Of course, Trump’s own Jan. 6 trial, which was supposed to begin in early March, has been on hold for months, thanks to his outrageous claim of absolute immunity, which the justices agreed last month to hear on an oddly relaxed schedule. Oral arguments are more than a week off, and a ruling might not come until late June.
If there’s any silver lining in all this, it’s that Smith will know by then what the court thinks of this obstruction charge, and he can adapt his Jan. 6 prosecution accordingly.
In the meantime, Congress may want to update the federal criminal code for the age of Trumpism.
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April 16, 2024, 5:23 p.m. ET
Jonathan Alter
Contributing Opinion Writer
Trump’s Plan to Expose the Secret Bias of Jurors Isn’t Working
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It isn’t easy being orange in Manhattan, but it helps to have a bunch of jury consultants scouring the web for anyone with a sense of humor about you. Even spouses making bad orange jokes.
Donald Trump’s legal team isn’t wrong to be concerned about bias. In the first batch of potential jurors in his hush-money trial, more than half volunteered that they could not be fair and were dismissed. And when a former Lands’ End employee was found to have posted in 2017 on Facebook to “lock him up,” Justice Juan Merchan rightly dismissed the potential juror for cause. Same for a bookseller who posted an A.I. parody video of Trump saying he is “dumb as ….”
But as the court seated seven jurors on Tuesday (out of 12, plus a half-dozen alternates), Trump and his lawyers tried the judge’s patience.
I wish there were audio footage of the angry voice from the bench when Merchan told Trump’s lawyers that the defendant “was audible, he was gesturing and he was speaking in the direction of the juror. I will not tolerate that. I will not have any jurors intimidated in this courtroom.”
A few minutes later, the still-irritated judge said he thought that Trump’s lead lawyer, Todd Blanche, was using the jury selection process to — wait for it — delay the proceedings. When Blanche tried to have a high school teacher from the Upper West Side dismissed for cause because she had taken a cellphone video of a street dance party on 96th Street celebrating Joe Biden’s victory, the judge summoned the potential juror. After ascertaining that she was sincere in her assurance that she could be fair, he refused to dismiss her for cause.
And Merchan rebuked Blanche for also offering a video the juror took of New Yorkers saluting health care workers by banging pots and pans each night at the start of the Covid pandemic. Blanche suggested the video was disqualifying, but the judge said there was “nothing offensive” about it, adding that making such irrelevant challenges was a waste of everyone’s time.
When the defense wanted Juror No. 3 dismissed for cause because her husband posted three joking photos (one during the transition from Barack Obama to Trump with the caption “I don’t think this is what they meant by ‘orange is the new black’”), the judge was not amused.
“If this is the worst thing you were able to find,” he said, “that her husband posted this not very good humor from eight years ago, it gives me confidence that this juror could be fair and impartial.”
Will Trump finally get the message that he’s not calling the shots? Not likely, but the judge will almost certainly keep delivering it for the duration of this trial.
April 16, 2024, 11:35 a.m. ET
Bret Stephens
Opinion Columnist
The Assault on American Jews Is Getting Worse
Ten years ago, the Anti-Defamation League released its annual audit of antisemitic incidents in the United States. The group reported just 751 incidents targeting Jews in 2013, a 19 percent drop from the previous year.
“In the last decade we have witnessed a significant and encouraging decline in the number of antisemitic acts in America,” Abraham Foxman, the A.D.L.’s director at the time, said in a news release. “The falling number of incidents targeting Jews is another indication of just how far we have come in finding full acceptance in society.”
That was then. On Tuesday, the A.D.L. released its audit for 2023. It recorded 8,873 antisemitic incidents in the United States — a 140 percent increase over 2022 and a tenfold increase over a decade ago. The numbers include 161 physical assaults, 2,177 acts of vandalism and 1,009 bomb threats against synagogues and other Jewish institutions, as compared to 91 bomb threats for 2022. Jewish cemeteries were desecrated 13 times last year, up from four times the year before.
Much of the increase came after Hamas’s massacre in Israel on Oct. 7, and the A.D.L. changed its methodology somewhat to take account of anti-Zionist expressions it deemed to be effectively antisemitic. But even without the methodology changes, the A.D.L. would still have recorded 7,523 antisemitic incidents last year.
What do some of these incidents look like? The report offers dozens of examples.
In February 2023, a man shot two Jewish men as they were leaving a synagogue. In May, “swastikas made of feces were smeared in a residence hall bathroom at the University of California, San Diego.” In July, a group of about 20 people assaulted three Jewish teens at New York’s Rockaway Beach after noticing that one of the teens was wearing a Star of David. In October, Jemma DeCristo, a professor in American studies at the University of California, Davis, threatened “Zionist journalists”: “they have houses w addresses, kids in school,” she wrote, before signing off with knife, hatchet and blood emojis.
Antisemitism can be difficult to define — a fact that has long offered antisemites an opportunity to hide their prejudice behind terminology. But as Justice Potter Stewart once said about p*rnography — “I know it when I see it” — so it could be said about hatred of Jews.
To see it in America today, you don’t have to look very far.
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April 16, 2024, 5:03 a.m. ET
Mara Gay
Editorial Board Member
New York’s Flawed Housing Deal Still Deserves Approval
New York’s politicians have finally struck a deal to address the state’s disastrous housing crisis, the most pressing issue facing the region.
The deal, announced by Gov. Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers Monday, is solicitous of real estate interests. But it may help accomplish some of what the state and its tenants need anyway.
Under the compromise, which would be included in the state budget, developers would receive generous tax incentives to build more housing. In exchange, developers would make 20 percent of the units affordable. A limit on building sizes would be raised, providing an incentive for more construction in New York City. Owners of rent-stabilized buildings could charge higher rents for making improvements. Hochul officials say the plan would lead to just under 190,000 units of new housing in the state over the next decade.
Tenants in New York City would win new protections against evictions, a long-sought goal. But other benefits for tenants are weak. Municipalities outside the city would have to opt in to the protections, which would prohibit owners of market-rate buildings from increasing the rent by more than 10 percent over the previous year, or 5 percentage points above the rate of inflation. There is a feast of exemptions, including properties with 10 or fewer units, and new units built wouldn’t be covered under the protections for the first 30 years. The weakness of these tenant protections, which have been fought hard by groups like the Real Estate Board of New York, is a reflection of the industry’s continued outsize sway on state politics.
But as flawed as this compromise is, walking away from it entirely would be irresponsible.
Four in 10 New York State residents are spending 30 percent of their income or more on housing. More than half of New York City residents are doing the same. Evictions are up nearly 200 percent.
Doing nothing isn’t an option. Instead, lawmakers and state officials can work quickly to make the deal better. Tenant protections can be strengthened. Allowing residents to rent accessory dwelling units, known as in-law apartments, would also be a win.
Truly facing this crisis will require bigger fights, like confronting restrictive zoning laws in Westchester and Long Island that have made it almost impossible to build multifamily housing. It’s also past time to reform New York City’s embarrassingly regressive property tax system, in which renters get stuck with most of the bill.
Residents, voters and businesses invested in New York City need to build a powerful pro-housing coalition, one that not even Albany can ignore.
April 15, 2024, 5:44 p.m. ET
Peter Coy
Opinion Writer
Trump Beats Biden on the Economy, Voters Say. Are They Right?
President Biden must be tearing his hair out over the latest New York Times/Siena College poll of likely voters. Half of the respondents describe economic conditions as “poor.” Only 20 percent say they strongly approve of Biden’s handling of the economy, while 45 percent strongly approve of Donald Trump’s handling of the economy as president.
This would make sense if the economy were in recession, but the opposite is true. The Covid-19 recession happened while Trump was still in office, and the economy has snapped back powerfully since. On Monday, the Census Bureau released retail sales data for March that economists described as “solid,” “strong” and “booming.”
To be clear, what this means is that there are some likely voters whose opinions and actions don’t line up. They’re saying the economy is poor, but they’re behaving as if things are really good. How is Biden supposed to respond to this in his economic speech in Scranton, Pa., on Tuesday, without antagonizing voters by telling them they’re wrong?
Here’s a chart I made based on the Times/Siena poll about the two presidents’ handling of the economy:
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And here’s one about economic conditions, which only 5 percent of likely voters rate as excellent:
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I asked Ludovic Subran, the chief economist of Allianz Research in Germany, for his explanation of the divergence between the economy’s performance and voters’ perceptions. He put it into an international perspective. Around the world, he said, voters have turned against people who were in office when the inflation shock hit. Biden’s predicament doesn’t look unusual from that point of view.
Subran also said that inequality has increased during the recovery from the pandemic because the strong stock market has lifted the wealth of the stock-holding class. He attributed part of the stock market gains to the Biden administration’s policies, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, which directed government aid to companies that are investing in the fight against climate change. (Partially offsetting that, wage gains have been strongest at the bottom end of the income scale.)
The good news for Biden in the Times/Siena poll is that the two candidates are nearly tied in terms of whom voters would pick if the election were held today. But if Biden can’t persuade voters that he’s better than Trump on the economy — or at least somewhere in that neighborhood — his re-election campaign will remain in peril.
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April 15, 2024, 2:47 p.m. ET
Jonathan Alter
Contributing Opinion Writer
Justice Merchan Starts to Hold Trump Accountable
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Beyond seeing its historical importance, those of us covering the Trump trial expected the first day to be relatively uneventful, with housekeeping details and rules of the road for jury selection. But it turned out that the morning also had the first stirrings of accountability for Donald Trump.
As part of the pretrial housekeeping, Justice Juan Merchan delivered the so-called Parker warnings on courtroom behavior directly to the defendant, reminding him that he could be jailed if he disrupted the proceedings.
Trump, who earlier seemed to be dozing, muttered, “I do,” when asked if he understood this and the other elements of the warning, which Merchan was delivering to Trump for a second time — now orally — just to make sure it sank in.
Then the former president had to sit and listen to a discussion of the admissibility of his years of witness intimidation, his arguably illegal social media posts and his efforts to use The National Enquirer to destroy his rivals. The jury didn’t hear any of this, but Trump and everyone else in the courtroom did.
All morning, Trump’s side only won once: when Merchan ruled that during the testimony of Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, there could be no mention in front of the jury of Trump’s wife being pregnant and then being with a newborn (Barron Trump) at home when McDougal says they were having a long-running affair.
At one point, Todd Blanche, Trump’s lead attorney, saw that his slumped client was looking straight ahead, dejected. He reached out and patted Trump on the back.
Merchan said he would hold a hearing on April 23 on the prosecution’s motion that Trump be held in contempt of court and possibly jailed for three Truth Social posts attacking Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels, which seemed to be a clear violation of Merchan’s gag order preventing Trump from trying to intimidate witnesses.
Merchan indicated that he would reject Trump’s go-to argument that he was just responding in kind.
In the meantime, Merchan was also concerned about the logistics of accommodating Trump’s desire to be heavily involved in jury selection. Part of that process can take place in conference, outside the courtroom, if a potential juror wants to talk to Merchan and the lawyers in private. The unspoken worry hanging over the courtroom: Would a potential juror feel intimidated if Trump, exercising his right, was there, too?
Merchan is working that out. He reminds me of the old deodorant ad for Ice Blue Secret. The bespectacled, snow-haired Merchan is “cool, calm and collected” and will do a terrific job in this trial.
April 15, 2024, 11:26 a.m. ET
Frank Bruni
Contributing Opinion Writer
Have Voters Really Forgotten Trump’s Presidency?
Memory plays tricks on us. It’s famously unreliable. That’s the bane of estranged lovers weighing the wisdom of reconciliation. Of jurors determining the credibility of a witness.
And of Americans deciding how to vote in a presidential election? The latest poll by The New York Times and Siena College makes me wonder.
The poll, published Saturday, shows Donald Trump holding on to a slight edge of 46 percent to 45 percent over President Biden. And it includes this detail: When survey respondents were asked whether they remember the years of Trump’s presidency as “mostly good,” “mostly bad” or “not really good or bad,” 42 percent said “mostly good,” while just 33 percent said “mostly bad.”
Mostly good? Which part? His first impeachment? His second? All the drama at the border (because, yes, there was drama at the border then, too)? All the drama in the West Wing? The revolving door of senior administration officials, his good-people-on-both-sides response to the violence in Charlottesville, Va., his wishful musings about violent attacks on journalists and Democrats, his nutty soliloquies at news conferences early in the coronavirus pandemic, his recklessly cavalier handling of his own Covid infection, his incitement of the Jan. 6 rioting, the rioting itself?
Those were the days.
I realize that the “mostly good” camp comprises many MAGA loyalists who will simply answer any Trump-related question in a Trump-adoring way. Tribalism triumphs. I realize, too, that Americans tend to prioritize economic realities in assessments of this kind, and that much of what they’re remembering and referring to are the lower prices of housing, food and other essentials during Trump’s presidency.
But I fear that they’re forgetting too much else in a wash of voter nostalgia. A fresh presidential bid by someone who was in and then away from the White House isn’t just highly unusual. It’s a memory test — and, in the case of a politician as potentially destructive as Trump, a profoundly important one.
Americans unhappy with Biden’s presidency need no reminders about why. They’re living it every day. But their present discontent may be claiming the space on their mental hard drives where their past discontent was stored, purging all the discord and disgrace that created Biden’s opening.
Absence makes the Trump grow stronger.
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April 15, 2024, 9:29 a.m. ET
Jonathan Alter
Contributing Opinion Writer
As History Is Made, Trump Can Only Glare in Silent Fury
It’s on.
On Monday morning, those of us fortunate enough to have a seat in the courtroom will feel the hush of history as Justice Juan Merchan opens the People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump. This will be the first time since the founding of the American republic that a president of the United States has gone on trial in a criminal court.
As jury selection begins, my thoughts will inevitably turn to this striking lack of precedent. Richard Nixon was pardoned, Bill Clinton was disbarred, and Ulysses S. Grant paid a ticket for speeding in his carriage, but none faced a criminal trial.
This case is about highly credible charges that Trump falsified business records as part of a scheme to silence an adult film star and tilt the outcome of the 2016 election.
The prosecution’s argument that this is a 2016 election interference case is prompting Trump to pursue his usual I’m-rubber-you’re-glue strategy and claim that it’s really the judge and the Manhattan district attorney who are interfering — in the 2024 election. But he won’t be able to make that argument inside the courtroom.
Trump will probably have to settle for sitting silently and glaring at the judge. He is a domineering client, even when it’s not in his interest, and he’ll probably weaken his case by forcing his lawyers to back his ridiculous claim that the whole extramarital affair is made up. They’ll have a better shot arguing that the hush-money payments were not illegal and Trump did not intentionally break tax and campaign finance laws.
Among the witnesses expected to testify are Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime fixer turned major accuser, whose credibility will be a big issue; Hope Hicks, Trump’s former press secretary, who could help corroborate Cohen’s testimony; Stephanie Clifford (Stormy Daniels), the p*rn star who received $130,000 in payments Trump is charged with laundering through Cohen; Karen McDougal, a former Playboy playmate of the year who also received hush money; and David Pecker, the National Enquirer chief testifying for the prosecution, whose catch-and-kill scheme to bury dirt on Trump will open a window on how tabloid journalism, well, changed world history.
Trump claimed on Friday that he’s willing to testify, but that may be just his usual posturing. If he rejects the pleading of his attorneys and takes the stand, cross-examination about his many lies would be admissible.
I’ll be back on Monday afternoon with a report on how the day went.
April 15, 2024, 5:04 a.m. ET
Patrick Healy
Deputy Opinion Editor
Could These Two Twists Change the 2024 Race?
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Every Monday morning on The Point, we kick off the week with a tipsheet on the latest in the presidential campaign. Here’s what we’re looking at this week:
Donald Trump has spent this year projecting political strength. His renomination was inevitable, and he has been ahead of Joe Biden in many battleground state polls and national polls. Keep in mind: Trump rarely led in general election polls 2016 and 2020, making his strength in the first quarter of 2024 notable. It’s one reason there’s so much talk of him winning the presidency this year.
But this week? It’s the start of the Trump vulnerability chapter of the campaign. I haven’t seen him looking this vulnerable since his 2022 Senate endorsem*nts blew up in his face. The reasons are two twists in the race: the Trump trial and abortion.
As everyone knows, Trump’s trial in the Stormy Daniels hush money trial is set to start Monday in Manhattan. Trump has never faced a criminal jury trial in his life. I don’t think he ever thought one of these criminal trials would actually happen — he’s been an escape artist his whole life. The big question: Will this trial actually change anyone’s opinion of Trump when so much about his bad behavior is already baked into our brains? I think a conviction might — there’s some polling that suggests that independents and some Trump leaners would be less likely to vote for him if he’s convicted, especially of a criminal cover-up. Based on a lot of years reporting with voters, and our Times Opinion focus groups, I think voting for a recently convicted criminal for president will be a bridge too far for some Americans otherwise inclined to back him.
On issues, Trump has boxed himself into a position on abortion that he thought was awfully clever when he rolled it out: Let each state decide its abortion law. Then Arizona’s Supreme Court did just that, upholding a ban from 1864. I’ve rarely seen Trump look as slippery and untrustworthy with his own base, and he’s running away from abortion as far as he can. Do swing voters really believe him when he says he wouldn’t sign a national abortion ban if he had the chance? Doubt it.
As you’ll keep hearing, the election is more than six months away, and so much can change: we barely know how the Iranian attack on Israel might affect things, for instance. But for all those known unknowns, one thing is clear: Trump is entering his riskiest phase yet of the race.
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April 12, 2024, 2:55 p.m. ET
Jonathan Alter
Contributing Opinion Writer
Trump and O.J.: Antiheroes in a Cracked Mirror
In the mid-1990s, I spent an afternoon in the courtroom covering O.J. Simpson’s criminal trial in Los Angeles. The effect of being there — like the effect of seeing Donald Trump in court during pretrial proceedings in New York — was to shrink the whole spectacle into something more quotidian. In person, the carnival looks not just smaller than it does on TV but also a little pathetic.
I’ll be covering Trump’s hush-money trial in New York beginning Monday for Times Opinion. It won’t be televised, but the comparisons between the two cases and two men are already so common that The Los Angeles Times made a typo — or Freudian slip — on Thursday, referring to Trump when the obit writer meant Simpson.
Yes, both cases are media circuses revolving around shameless and manipulative antiheroes who have exploited race for their advantage. Both tap into the weakness Americans have for toxic celebrities who play victim as they stick it to the man. Both lead millions to despair over whether justice can ever prevail.
But the similarities can be misleading and not just because the Simpson trial was for murder and the Trump case is about falsifying business records.
While murder is obviously more serious legally and morally, the fate of a former president of the United States indicted on 88 counts across four criminal cases in four jurisdictions is more serious and important historically than the fate of a former N.F.L. star who did TV ads for Hertz.
Simpson’s epic journey — with its mix of fame, race and violence — was a quintessentially American story. The Trump saga has all of that plus immense political stakes, but the fundamental question remains: Is he un-American or in the American grain?
Trump’s shocking victory in 2016 did not settle the matter. We will learn in this trial what almost every political consultant in both parties agrees on: that Trump would have lost that year and been reduced to a footnote if Stormy Daniels had told her story on the heels of the “Access Hollywood” debacle, which sent his campaign reeling. He won only because the 2016 election ended with the focus on Hillary Clinton’s emails.
So beyond legal culpability and political maneuvering, what’s at stake in this trial and this election is whether Trump is an aberration or the embodiment of a new, darker American identity.
Both Simpson and Trump are mirrors reflecting two images of America — one Black, one white, in Simpson’s case; one Democratic, one Republican, in Trump’s. All of the mirrors are cracked and coming apart, with the shards sharp enough to puncture any remaining illusions we have about ourselves.
