Hush, hush: Yesterday, a judge in New York set the first Donald Trump trial date for March 25.
This trial involves alleged hush money payments that the former president paid porn star Stormy Daniels back in 2016 and the falsified business records Trump used to cover up the payments while president. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg is the one bringing the charges in this low-level felony case, the first of several that Trump faces over the coming months.
"And as a matter of raw political optics ahead of Election Day, the hush-money trial going first means a month of intense media attention focused on matters the public may be less troubled by than they would have if the federal election-subversion trial in Washington had gone first, as had been expected," reports The New York Times. The former president plans to stay in New York over the course of the trial, as he will be needed in court, but also to conduct campaign events in the evenings.
Though this will remove him from the campaign trail, he's been interested in attending many of his court proceedings, even those that are not strictly mandatory; political analysts say he sees appearances in court as campaign events, showing how embattled and persecuted he is.
Another crisis at the border: Yesterday, U.S. Border Patrol acting Deputy Chief Joel Martinez was suspended following accusations of misconduct reported by The Washington Post. Martinez was not arrested, and it's unclear what he's being accused of.
Still, this is a P.R. problem for a law enforcement agency already facing extreme scrutiny for its handling, or lack thereof, of the massive migrant influx at the southern border.
Pew polling data released yesterday shows that 78 percent of Americans say the influx at the border constitutes either a "major problem" (32 percent) or a "crisis" (45 percent). But around 70 percent of Republicans describe the overwhelmed border as a "crisis" while only 22 percent of Democrats do the same, so the two parties are not quite agreeing on how to characterize the present situation.
A little less than one-quarter of total respondents say they're worried about migrants straining social services, and similar numbers say they have "security concerns."
Pew reports that "a majority of Americans (57%) say the large number of migrants seeking to enter the country leads to more crime" and "just 18% say the U.S. government is doing a good job dealing with the large number of migrants at the border, while 80% say it is doing a bad job, including 45% who say it is doing a very bad job." (Emphasis theirs.)
No matter the word choice you want to use, cities like New York—tasked with shouldering much of the migrant-sheltering burden—are souring on the influx while red-state governors deem their migrant-busing stunts a success. Denver officials are telling all other city departments to cut their budgets so the city can accommodate paying for welfare for migrants. Our politics will surely get more toxic as government actors prove, time and time again, that they cannot create order out of present chaos, and as residents of blue cities grow resentful that their public services are being cut to pay for newcomers who have no particular claim to the places they're seeking funds from.
Scenes from New York: In case you missed it, The Cut published an incredible piece about how their personal finance writer (truly!) fell for a scam and gave away $50,000 of her savings, in cash, to a man claiming to be a CIA agent.
This is, naturally, a very New York story, great for some rubbernecking, and the subject is beautifully eviscerated here:
Obviously the best comment on the cut article pic.twitter.com/iROJc7dwLn
— leyla (@leylaaa31) February 16, 2024
QUICK HITS
- Ahem, you know the house rules: No more complaining about paywalls. ARCHIVE.PH, for those who need it. (And be sure to tip your girl Liz with all that money you're saving from refusing to subscribe to Bloomberg and The New York Times.)
- This morning, Russian state media announced that Vladimir Putin critic Aleksei A. Navalny has died in prison.
- Amazing:
"I think you're asking for a little more detail than I can give at this moment." -- @sarahkateellis after @ErikWemple asked her to explain what exactly was wrong with Emily Bazelon's story. GLAAD should apologize for this nasty smear campaign against good journalists. https://t.co/gnXRBVpArv
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) February 15, 2024
- OpenAI released a text-to-video model, Sora:
AI assisted or otherwise, there's something so empty about CGI. I've never been moved by it. Things filmed in actual physical space, with real people, objects, and nature, are irreplaceable. Terrence Malik's New World made believe in God, this makes me believe in Kaczysnki. https://t.co/6yCTFJHc2L
— River Page (@river_is_nice) February 15, 2024
- Why did the Jewish reggae artist Matisyahu have his Arizona shows canceled?
- "In the most critical cases, climate anxiety disrupts the ability to function day to day," reports Bloomberg. "Children and young people in this category feel alienation from friends and family, distress when thinking about the future and intrusive thoughts about who will survive, according to Hickman's research. Patients obsessively check for extreme weather, read climate change studies and pursue radical activism. Some, devastatingly, consider suicide as the only solution."
- "In Munich, [Vice President Kamala] Harris aims to reassure European allies as Trump disparages NATO," reads a recent headline from The New York Times. I'm sorry, but nothing about the bumbling lady cop Harris instills any confidence. Though I appreciate the idea that you can easily dupe the French and Germans, let's not be delusional.
- Rolling Stone seems quite unhappy that conservative journalist Bethany Mandel is running for school board as a Democrat:
NEW: Bethany Mandel, the controversial right-wing pundit and prolific social media poster, is running for school board — as a Democrat.
Story: https://t.co/r9Xyy0987Q pic.twitter.com/G2VwiNVcYD
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) February 15, 2024
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