Photo: Steph Chambers/Getty Images On March 15, 2020, in the hallowed pages of the New York Times, I published one of the dumbest things I’ve ever written. (And there are many contenders for that title.) Four days after that fateful March 11 night when the NBA shut down, then-President Trump made his sniffly, error-filled, and super-not-reassuring Oval Office speech about COVID-19, and we all learned that Tom Hanks was sick, I (and others, it should be said) worried that sports themselves might be in some sort of existential peril. If you promise to be gentle, I will quote myself: [N]o one kn ..read more

Illustration: Jane Rosenberg/REUTERS If a normal person fell asleep during a high-profile trial over hush-money payments they made to cover up an affair with a porn star, how would they react? It’s a bit hard to say, since a normal person would never be in this scenario. But it seems likely they’d be embarrassed or angry at themselves. Of course, Donald Trump doesn’t experience those emotions. So instead he has “privately raged” at the journalists who informed the public that he’s been unable to keep his eyes open in court, according to three sources who spoke to Rolling Stone. The magazine re ..read more

Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images When you have a presidential candidate who is struggling to generate enthusiasm in the party base, it’s natural to look for some external stimulation. In the case of Joe Biden, the most obvious source of a 2024 boost is the deep antipathy that nearly all Democrats, many independents, and even a sizable sliver of Republicans feel toward Donald Trump. But in case that’s not enough, Team Biden is looking at another avenue of opportunity, albeit a risky one: the possibility of “reverse coattails” taking him past Trump on a wave of turnout that incidentally b ..read more

Anadolu via Getty Images As of early April, at least 224 aid workers have been killed in Gaza — a small number of the estimated 34,000 people killed since Israel began bombarding the territory after October 7. Thousands more aid workers still toil to distribute food, fuel, and medical supplies inside the occupied territory, which the United Nations says is on the brink of famine. In early April, UNICEF spokesperson Tess Ingram spent two weeks in Gaza helping to deliver aid. The riskiness of her mission was underscored on April 9 — the week after seven members of World Central Kitchen wer ..read more

Photo: Stephen Voss As a matter of preference, Mehdi Hasan likes a smart opponent. “It’s no fun interviewing village idiots,” he says, for instance, of Marjorie Taylor Greene. He recounts some of his favorite interviews during his three years as the host of The Mehdi Hasan Show on MSNBC and Peacock with the pride of a grizzled prizefighter: the short-lived Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, Texas congressman Dan Crenshaw, Elon Musk’s newfound mouthpiece Matt Taibbi. Many of them began as Twitter arguments. They would trade barbs and hyperlinks and quote-tweets, and invariably H ..read more

Art: Isabelle Brourman There was a simple question at the heart of Monday morning’s opening arguments in Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan: What’s the big deal? You may think it would be unnecessary to establish the stakes of the first prosecution of an ex-president, taking place amid a campaign that could very well return him to office. If Trump were going on trial for any of the other crimes, in other jurisdictions, that he is accused of committing — violating the Espionage Act, using political pressure to try to overturn the election in Georgia, subverting the peaceful transfer of ..read more

Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images As House Speaker Mike Johnson basked in gushing bipartisan praise for his successful stewardship of a foreign-aid package that included crucial aid to Ukraine, despite the thinly disguised pro-Russia sentiments of many of his mega-MAGA colleagues, I wasn’t the only one who immediately thought of Mike Pence. New York Times congressional correspondent Annie Karni noted that Johnson was getting the same relieved adulation that Donald Trump’s vice-president received after an isolated act of statesmanship: [A] speaker’s entire job is to move legislation t ..read more

Photo by Jabin Botsfordages/The Washington Post via Getty Im Melania Trump does not seem that interested in standing by her husband on the 2024 campaign trail or during his numerous court appearances. But she’s finding other ways to support Donald Trump at this financially difficult time. On Sunday, the former First Lady announced that she is selling a $245 necklace to celebrate Mother’s Day on May 12. Let’s honor and celebrate all mothers with love and gratitude. https://t.co/ESihnAQ8kg pic.twitter.com/Nj3IKfwzG1 — MELANIA TRUMP (@MELANIATRUMP) April 21, 2024 “Being a mother is one of the m ..read more

Photo: Victor J. Blue-Pool/Getty Images Donald Trump spent Monday morning in state criminal court in lower Manhattan, where his attorneys and lawyers for District Attorney Alvin Bragg gave opening statements in his hush-money case. But just two blocks away, Trump was granted a reprieve in another suit, his civil-fraud case, of which he was found liable in February for $464 million, including interest, for lying about the value of his properties. In the civil case, Justice Arthur Engoron allowed a California surety company to post bond after resolving issues about the money — and other legal is ..read more

Photo: Mike Stobe/Getty Images Baseball fans can watch the sport for decades yet on any given day witness something they’ve never seen before. A perfect example of this truism arrived on Monday afternoon when Yankees manager Aaron Boone was ejected from a game for yelling something he didn’t yell. Thankfully, microphones picked up the whole thing. Aaron Boone listened to the umpire and was ejected anyway. You can hear the entire interaction here pic.twitter.com/12RTZvdwDl — Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) April 22, 2024 It all went down in the top of the first inning during a tilt between the A’s ..read more