Author: Lance Garrison
President Biden is campaigning on four more years of yummy stew. A lot of voters are saying, “I like you, but I don’t like your stew.”The performance of the U.S. economy should be a winning issue for Biden. I don’t know what the next half year holds in store, but as of now, unemployment is low and inflation, while still elevated, is way down from its 2021 peak. Economic growth is so strong that the Federal Reserve is putting off plans to lower interest rates.Biden can’t credibly promise to turn things around — to make things much better in the…
Mr. Trump’s vision of an American legal system that protects his interests goes beyond his trial, of course, and extends in particular to the Justice Department. He has been explicit about his desire, if elected in November, to bring the Justice Department more fully under his control, to use it to protect his friends and, more important, punish his enemies. As president, Mr. Trump had an unparalleled record of abusing presidential pardons, and if he is re-elected, he appears likely to order the Justice Department to drop the criminal cases against him or to try to pardon himself for potential…
To the Editor:Re “The Problem With Saying ‘Sex Assigned at Birth,’” by Alex Byrne and Carole K. Hooven (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, April 3):Mr. Byrne and Ms. Hooven argue that use of “assigned sex” terminology “creates doubt about a biological fact when there shouldn’t be any.” But sex characteristics are not “a biological fact”; they are rather a series of facts — anatomical, hormonal and genetic — that are not always in alignment.The term “sex assignment” derives from the medical literature of the 1940s and 1950s, in which physicians grappled with what was then called “hermaphroditism” and is now called…
David French, a Times columnist, hosted a written online conversation with the former federal prosecutors Mary McCord and Ken White to discuss and debate the Trump criminal trial in Manhattan and how, or if, the outcome will matter to voters.David French: Before we start, just a quick refresher on the case. Donald Trump is charged with falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments made to Stormy Daniels, a porn film actress, to cover up a sexual relationship that Daniels said she had with Trump in 2006.Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, claims that Trump falsely recorded the hush money…
A few years ago, when researchers at Boston College and Harvard set out to review all of the existing research on educational apps for kids in preschool through third grade, they were surprised to find that even though there are hundreds of thousands of apps out there that are categorized as educational, there were only 36 studies of educational apps in the databases they searched. “That is not a strong evidence base on which to completely redesign an entire schooling system,” Josh Gilbert, one of the co-authors of the study, told me over the phone.That said, their meta-analysis of the…
This week Donald Trump was put on trial by a liberal prosecutor on what seems like the most nakedly political of the multiple charges that he’s facing. To protest this outrage against their glorious leader, the MAGA faithful gathered outside the New York courthouse in the thousands, ready to storm into the halls of justice … well, perhaps in the hundreds, ready to get in the face of Trump’s legal persecutors … well, no, actually it was a few dozen Trump supporters, waving signs and outnumbered by the gawking press.This fairly pitiful scene made an interesting accompaniment to the country’s…
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, newsrooms across the world scrambled to send their reporters to the front lines. Journalists gave the international public firsthand experience of the conflict. Air raid sirens blared during live on-air reports. Reporters flinched at nearby explosions. They brought the world to the heart of the fighting: “20 Days in Mariupol,” a documentary that showcased an Associated Press report on the attack on the city, won an Oscar last month. That report, among other things, helped debunk Russian claims that the bombing of a maternity hospital, in which three people were killed, was “staged.”No such…
There were glimpses of it, though. It’s tough to identify the nadir of Mr. Trump’s bad behavior in New York, but I believe it was in 1989, when he took out ads in major media outlets (including this one) calling for the death penalty to be reinstated in New York State after five Black and Latino teenagers were accused of raping a jogger in Central Park. The five men had their convictions vacated in 2002, but Mr. Trump still refuses, out of malice or vanity, to apologize or acknowledge their innocence. When asked whether he believes they should have been…
Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan has begun, and while the former president is adamant that it’s a sham, the Times editorial board member Jesse Wegman begs to differ. In this audio essay for “The Opinions,” Wegman argues that Trump’s jury trial is an example of one of the most important features of the American Constitution on display.Below is a lightly edited transcript of the audio piece. To listen to this piece, click the play button below.JESSE WEGMAN: I’m Jesse Wegman and I’m a member of the Times editorial board.[MUSIC BEGINS]The editorial board is a group of journalists from different…
As a result, the Venezuelan economy experienced the single largest peacetime collapse of any country in at least 45 years. Millions of Venezuelans have fled to Peru, Colombia, and other Latin American countries, while hundreds of thousands have ended up on the doorsteps of the United States. For years now, Venezuela’s most noteworthy export has been people, not oil. About a third of Venezuelan households get remittances from abroad.The oil sanctions have hurt ordinary people, as many predicted they would, and they have failed to topple Mr. Maduro, which was also predictable. Yet, the funny thing about sanctions is that,…