Trump's Half-Billion-Dollar Nightmare

 Yesterday’s $354.9 million fine in Trump’s New York business fraud case, combined with his more than $88.3 million in fines in two separate judgments in the E. Jane Carroll defamation case, plus his reported $50 million+ in legal fees to date brings Donald Trump’s criminal financial penalties within virtual pocket change of a half billion dollars.

Trump has always bragged that he is a very rich man, but even if true, which many experts doubt is the case, these assessments will cut a major slice away from his pie of wealth.

The judge in New York yesterday did not dissolve the Trump Corporation or permanently suspend his license to do business in the state, which is almost the only silver lining for the former president in that matter. But he did take control of the company away from Trump and his sons and place it under the supervision of an independent monitor.

Trump will appeal as many aspects of the financial penalty as he can, but remember that these are all judgments rendered in state courts, not federal, so even should he win re-election, he cannot pardon his way out of these legal obligations. It is likely, however, that some of the financial penalty from the fraud ruling will be reduced on appeal, so the final damage awaits the appeals process.

Meanwhile, the penalties assessed yesterday are accruing interest as long as they remain unpaid. According to the New York attorney general, that interest is already over $100 million. It is not clear how much liquidity Trump has to deal with this but he will need to post a sizable bond while he appeals the ruling.

Ad it seems likely he will have to sell property as collateral against that bond.

So these are dark days down at Mar-e-Lago. Most significantly, so far he’s only faced civil penalties; his felony criminal cases are still to come.

(Read yesterday’s ruling.)

HEADLINES:

• Judge orders Trump and his companies to pay $355M in New York civil fraud case (AP)

• Alexey Navalny’s fight for Russia (New Yorker)

• Biden says 'Putin and his thugs' caused Navalny's death (Reuters)

• Tucker Carlson Days Ago on Navalny and Assassinations: ‘Leadership Requires Killing People’ (Rolling Stone)

• Jake Sullivan says the U.S. is engaging with allies, and Russia, on the space threat (NPR)

• Ukraine’s Zelensky Turns to France, Germany as U.S. Aid Stalls (WSJ)

• Netanyahu rejects international pressure on peace plan, Palestinian state (WP)

• Satellite photos show Egypt building a wall near Gaza Strip (ABC)

• Trump’s NATO Threat Reflects a Wider Shift on America’s Place in the World (NYT)

• U.S. political uncertainty looms over key security conference in Munich (WP)

• This week showed Democrats can flip the script on immigration (MSNBC)

• West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin announces he won’t run for president in 2024 (AP)

• Why my faith in Fani Willis has been at least partially restored (MSNBC)

• It’s Not Just the End for Journalism. It’s a Beginning. (Mother Jones)

• OpenAI collapses media reality with Sora, a photorealistic AI video generator (ArsTechnica)

• OpenAI shows off life-like videos made with AI (WP)

• This Company Says Conversational AI Will Kill Apps and Websites (Wired)

• Hello is building a platform toward more home robots (TechCrunch)

• You sound like a bot (Verge)

• Child Entertained For 5 Minutes By Plastic Toy That Will Take 1,000 Years To Biodegrade (The Onion)

Sideshow

I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen a more dramatic moment in a court hearing than when Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis suddenly appeared in the courtroom yesterday and said she wanted to testify about questions over whether she had had an “inappropriate” relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.

This is, of course, the sidelight drama in the massive election fraud case Willis is waging against Donald Trump and his many co-conspirators for seeking to overturn the result’s of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

The questioning of Willis repeatedly ventured into the salacious details of her love affair with Wade, but the attorneys alleging that she committed financial irregularities failed to substantiate their case.

Therefore, I doubt the judge will rule to disqualify either Willis or Wade from the case, barring some new evidence coming forward.

It all amounts to a sideshow, frankly, and the sooner it ends the better. Then we can get back to the real scandal here, which is Donald Trump’s effort to steal the election. 

HEADLINES:

• Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has died, the prison service of the Yamalo-Nenets region where he had been serving his sentence said. According to the statement, Navalny "felt unwell" after a walk on Friday, and "almost immediately lost consciousness". (Reuters)

• Fani Willis takes the stand as she fights to stay on Trump criminal case (Politico)

• Why the Case Against Fani Willis Feels Familiar to Black Women (NYT)

• Former FBI informant charged with lying about the Bidens’ role in Ukraine business, undercutting GOP impeachment inquiry (CNN)

• How Tom Suozzi Won the Border Debate to Retake a House Seat (WSJ)

• Special counsel asks Supreme Court to let Trump’s D.C. trial proceed (WP)

• Shooting after Chiefs Super Bowl parade seemed to stem from dispute among several people, police say (AP)

• Why are so many Chinese crossing the southern border? (Yahoo)

• Israeli special forces raid largest functioning hospital in Gaza (CNN)

• Israeli airstrikes killed 10 Lebanese civilians in a single day. Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate (AP)

• Hundreds Flee One of Gaza’s Last Working Hospitals, Fearing Israeli Attack (NYT)

• Israel Gaza: Netanyahu vows to press ahead with Rafah offensive (BBC)

• Senate poised to pass biggest piece of tech regulation in decades (WP)

• Sundar Pichai: AI can strengthen cyber defences, not just break them down (Financial Times)

• True Source unveils AI LLM service based on The Wheel of Time (VentureBeat)

• OpenAI introduces Sora, its text-to-video AI model (Verge)

• How AI is resurrecting dead Indian politicians as election looms (Al Jazeera)

• The AI Industry Is Stuck on One Very Specific Way to Use a Chatbot (Atlantic)

• Man Scrambling To Furnish Apartment Before Date Shows Up (The Onion)

 

Mixed Emotions

(This is from Feb. 2012.)

At long last, I joined the world of smart phones yesterday afternoon, but at a cost. For years, I've carried three lines for my teenagers, one for myself, and one for another person, who no longer is part of our family plan.

When so-called "updates" came along, as the cell phone carriers like to call them, first I upgraded the kids' phones. But this time, they urged me to upgrade mine, so I did, to an iPhone 4S.

Meanwhile, I gave my old phone to my daughter, to replace the one she has had for a couple years; that had been her first phone. It was covered with stickers and filled with photos.

Neither of us realized that by turning in her phone (for a $30 discount on mine), we were losing her childhood photo album. The phone would be wiped, all data expunged.

Last night, after what should have been a joyous occasion for both of us, she was near tears as she recognized what had been lost.

I should have known better, but the agent who helped us tended to mumble, and I couldn't really hear some of what he said. he almost certainly explained that all her data would be lost (once her contacts were transferred over to her new phone), but I doubt he said that her photos would be too.

So it ended up a decidedly mixed experience, with me angry at myself -- what is $30 when we were throwing away her first photo album?

It's a confusing time to be a consumer, and I'm not the world's best or savviest consumer by a long stretch. There couldn't be a better reminder of that than what happened yesterday.

HEADLINES:

• House Intel Chairman announces ‘serious national security threat,’ sources say it is related to Russia (CNN)

• GOP warning of 'national security threat' is about Russia wanting nuclear weapon in space: Sources (ABC)

• Trump's first criminal trial set to begin March 25 as judge denies bid to dismiss "hush money" case (CBS)

• Leaning Into Migrant Woes, Suozzi Paves Election-Year Path for Democrats (NYT)

• New York Triumph Gives Joe Biden the Blueprint To Take Down Trump (Newsweek)

• Donald Trump Makes Republican’s Defeat In Special Election All About Him (HuffPost)

• Impeaching Mayorkas Was a Violation of the Constitution (TNR

• Kansas City shooting: 1 dead, multiple injured near Super Bowl parade, officials say (WP)

• Progressive Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) is facing a multimillion-dollar barrage of advertising funded by wealthy donors seeking to ensure she doesn’t qualify for the top-two runoff election against front-runner Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) in next month’s primary. [HuffPost]

• The Tangled Fates of Fani Willis and Her Biggest Case — Will the Fulton County D.A.’s “clandestine” relationship derail her effort to prosecute Trump? (New Yorker)

• U.S. Probes Israeli Strikes That Killed Civilians in Gaza, Possible Use of White Phosphorus in Lebanon (WSJ)

• Bibi declines to send Israeli delegation to Egypt for more hostage talks (Axios)

• Oil prices give up advance as U.S. crude stockpile surges (CNBC)

• Things are going badly for Ukraine — really badly (Business Insider)

• Amazon rainforest could reach ‘tipping point’ by 2050, scientists warn (Guardian)

• Polar bears are rapidly losing weight as Arctic food supply changes, study says (AP)

• A new look at our linguistic roots (ArsTechnica)

• A brief history of Silicon Valley’s fascination with drugs (Vox)

• Your AI Girlfriend Is a Data-Harvesting Horror Show (Gizmodo)

• AI Girlfriends’ Are a Privacy Nightmare (Wired)

• AI is shaking up online dating with chatbots that are ‘flirty but not too flirty’ (CNBC)

• A new way to let AI chatbots converse all day without crashing (MIT)

• Don't tell your AI anything personal, Google warns in new Gemini privacy notice (ZDNet)

• Founding OpenAI Member Andrej Karpathy Leaves Company (Gizmodo)

• Friendship Bracelet Flashed At Bar To Repel Anyone Seeking Platonic Companionship (The Onion)

 

Getting Ready

Democrats won a huge victory in New York last night that may portend good things this election year. Republicans, meanwhile, were busy impeaching the homeland security secretary in a meaningless display of political tomfoolery. The difference in the parties could not be more stark.

***

Way back before the pandemic, when I lived alone in a flat in San Francisco, I used to stockpile reserves of canned foods, bottled water, candles, pain meds and emergency supplies.

The ostensible reason I did this was for earthquake preparedness, but really I just liked to have extra stuff around, figuring it might turn out to be useful someday somehow.

Then Covid came along and everybody became aware of how quickly basic supplies could fly off the shelves — something people in hurricane country have known forever.

When I moved in with my daughter and her family in March 2020, I brought along some stuff deemed useful — toilet paper, coffee filters, canned soups — because I had it on-hand and she wanted it.

And since then we’ve all become familiar with supply chain shortages and how minor perturbations in shipping or trucking lanes can create big distribution problems in the store closest to you.

Anyway, this is all a long-winded way of noting that the era of pandemic panic buying has now officially been replaced by the era of survivalist buying in preparation for global war. As the Times reports, “Bunkers, survival guides and iodine pills are flying off the shelves.”

So that’s progress I guess. Or as one guy put it to me recently. “You know, I was just thinking we were over with that one darned thing (Covid) when this new one (nuclear war) came along.”

Yep. Life seems to be working that way these days, sort of like we’re all living in some old Bod Dylan song.

Well, you can visit my bomb shelter if I can visit yours…I said that.

(This is from 2022.)

HEADLINES:

• House Republicans impeach Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas (CNBC)

• Democrat Tom Suozzi edges out GOP in closely watched New York House race )(Politico)

• No One Is Prepared for a New Era of Global Migration (Atlantic)

• How San Francisco staged a surprising comeback (Economist)

• Supreme Court Gives Prosecutors a Week to Respond in Trump Immunity Case (NYT)

• A former US Army general says Trump wants the US to abandon NATO because he's a 'mafia type' that 'hates alliances' (Business Insider)

• How Donald Trump reduced the GOP to groveling sycophants (Salon)

• Big Burden of Migrant Influx Strains Denver (NYT)

• Israel Gaza: Ceasefire talks resume as Rafah under fire (BBC)

• France has delivered a written proposal to Beirut aimed at ending hostilities with Israel and settling the disputed Lebanon-Israel frontier. (Reuters)

• Senate approves Ukraine, Israel foreign aid package (CBS)

• House speaker rejects Israel, Ukraine aid package (WP)

• Winter Storm Lorraine Live Updates: Hundreds Of Flights Canceled, Major School Closures (Weather.com)

• Climate experts sound alarm over thriving plant life at Greenland ice sheet (Guardian)

• Six months in, journalist-owned tech publication 404 Media is profitable (Nieman)

• Inside the Last Days of the Local Paper (TNR)

• Early Adopters of Microsoft’s AI Bot Wonder If It’s Worth the Money (WSJ)

• OpenAI CEO warns that 'societal misalignments' could make artificial intelligence dangerous (WP)

• Google’s Gemini assistant is a fantastic and frustrating glimpse of the AI future (Verge)

• Google Gemini could become your invisible AI friend soon thanks to headphones support (TechRadar)

• OpenAI's Eve humanoids make impressive progress in autonomous work (New Atlas)

• Carlson Was Drafted Into The Russian Infantry: You show up on Russian soil, you leave with a rifle in your hand. (The Onion)

 

Age

“The difference between humans and animals? Animals would never allow the dumbest ones to lead the pack.” — Major Michael Haley.

One thing is for certain about how an election year will unfold — the situation this early in the cycle is likely to change substantially by November. Right now, for example, Republicans are making a big deal of Joe Biden’s age (81), but I’m not so sure that will age very well as an issue. :)

Yes, Biden is old, but so is Trump. And as long as it seems somebody else (like Nikki Haley) could win either party’s nomination, the age issue will be in play, but once it becomes certain that the choice is between these same two old men, it will begin to fade away as a factor.

At that point, faced with the binary choice of Biden or Trump, I trust that the majority of voters will make the rational decision.

It is impossible to believe that most Americans would vote for a man who promises to rule like a dictator, rounding up immigrants and imprisoning them in camps, withdrawing from Nato and encouraging Putin to invade our allies, appoint an attorney general who goes after his political opponents, seeking revenge, ending support for Ukraine, cozying up to dictators in North Korea, China and elsewhere, and ending our democracy.

It is similarly impossible to believe that most Americans would support a convicted sexual predator, an insurrectionist, a tax cheat, a liar, a man who belittles our military heroes, and who preaches hate as his religion.

Compared to all of this Trumpian baggage, Biden’s age should become a trivial issue. Age can easily be spun to wisdom and the experience necessary to do the job. As you can see, I’m an optimist.

Anyway, let’s hope I’m right. The fate of our democracy depends on it.

HEADLINES:

• Israeli airstrikes kill more than 100 in Rafah as international alarm mounts over anticipated ground offensive (CNN)

• Panic mounts in Rafah over looming Israeli offensive after night strikes (WP)

• 2 freed Israeli hostages 'back home' with family kidnapped from safe room (USA Today)

• Senate passes $95 billion foreign aid package, large hurdles remain in House (CBS)

• Pakistan’s shocking election result shows authoritarians don’t always win (WP)

• How China Miscalculated Its Way to a Baby Bust (WSJ)

• Short on Soldiers, Ukraine Debates How to Find the Next Wave of Troops (NYT)

• Maj. Michael Haley Hits Back At Donald Trump's Insult With Scathing Animal Fact “The difference between humans and animals? Animals would never allow the dumbest ones to lead the pack.” (HuffPost)

• An Outburst by Trump on NATO May Push Europe to Go It Alone (NYT)

• Trump’s incendiary NATO remarks send very real shudders through Europe (CNN)

• Georgia judge moves forward with hearing on Fani Willis misconduct claims (WP)

• 20 years ago, Gavin Newsom, who had taken office as mayor of San Francisco the month before, directed the city clerk to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, the first in California. More than 4,000 gay couples were married at San Francisco City Hall over the next month, in what supporters called the “Winter of Love.” (Cal Today)

• Kamala Harris Says She Is Ready to Serve as Biden Faces Age Scrutiny (WSJ)

• Clarence Thomas Broke the Law. Why Is He Not Being Prosecuted? (The Nation)

• Nextdoor has gotten way out of hand (WP)

• Crowd sets Waymo self-driving vehicle ablaze in San Francisco (Reuters)

• Bob Edwards, radio host who built NPR’s ‘Morning Edition,’ dies at 76 (WP)

• As AI ceates more 6-figure, remote work opportunities, ‘the upside is high, but so are the risks,’ experts say (CNBC)

• Google Issues Serious New Warning For All Android And iPhone Users (Forbes)

• Google Prepares for a Future Where Search Isn’t King (Wired)

• Depressed Taylor Swift Going To Miss Being In The Spotlight Now That Super Bowl Over (The Onion)

 

What We (Don't) See

One of most immersive experiences you can have as a reporter is to cover a trial. Usually from the part of the courtroom reserved for the press you can see everybody -- the judge, the jury, the prosecution, the defense, and the spectators.

The accused sits in the front row next to or just behind his or her attorney. If it is a criminal proceeding, the victim or victim's family sits behind the prosecutor.

As an observer, you note the facial expressions, the body language, the whisperings, every gesture of the various parties and, if the trial lasts for days, you pick up the rhythm of the thing. You get a pretty good sense of which side is winning its case or if it's actually too close to call.

Although they are often admonished to not react visibly to what they hear, the members of the jury are human beings just like you and me -- they smile, frown, nod their heads in agreement or stare in disbelief.

Then again, people vary. Those who would be much better poker players than the others keep their expressions inscrutable.

In many courtrooms, an illustrator is also present and he or she captures some of the visual narrative, usually by focusing on the principals. As an editor, I've purchased the work of illustrators and I love the way they enhanced the written narrative my reporters produced.

In most courtrooms, we cannot tape the proceedings so there is little audio or video to share with our audiences. This deeply affects television and radio coverage, removing their technical advantage over written accounts.

So for me, being forced to watch Trump’s impeachment trial almost exclusively through a static camera with a single frame provided too narrow a view on what was happening in the Congressional chamber. Anecdotal accounts suggest some Republican senators were doodling or reading newspapers or otherwise clearly indicating their disinterest in the proceedings; and I'd have liked to watch that.

If I were in the courtroom as your correspondent, that is some of what I would cover, plus who is dozing off or staring into space.

What we were given instead was a TV show with one permitted prop -- blow-up slides with quotes highlighted and some stunning video clips.

This guy Trump is clearly guilty but we need to be able to study the expressions of the jurors during this testimony. After all, we are the ones with the greatest stake in the outcome.

(This is from three years ago in February 2021 and concerns the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump.)

HEADLINES:

• Egypt threatens to suspend Camp David Accords if Israel pushes into Gaza border town (Politico)

• Terrified Gazans Await an Israeli Advance in the City They Fled To (NYT)

• Russia launches 45 drones in mass barrage of Ukraine as Kyiv continues war cabinet reshuffle (AP)

• Ukraine supporters need to find a way around the MAGA obstructionists (WP)

• Favoring Foes Over Friends, Trump Threatens to Upend International Order (NYT)

• Nikki Haley denounces Donald Trump's attack on her husband - who is deployed overseas (USA Today)

• Haley says president can't be someone who "mocks our men and women who are trying to protect America" (CBS)

• Why the Age Issue Is Hurting Biden So Much More Than Trump (NYT)

• What is a typical degree of cognitive ability for a person in their 80s? (CNN)

• A bookstore in North Carolina rescued thousands of books banned in Florida (WP)

• Morocco dinosaur discovery gives clues on why they went extinct (The Conversation)

• Atmospheric river storms are getting stronger, and deadlier. The race to understand them is on (Guardian)

• How the FBI Infiltrated Denver’s Racial Justice Movement (Mother Jones)

• The Incompetent Bosses Driving American Journalism Into the Ground (TNR)

• This AI Paper from Stanford and Google DeepMind Unveils How Efficient Exploration Boosts Human Feedback Efficacy in Enhancing Large Language Models (MarkTechPost)

• How Tech Giants Turned Ukraine Into an AI War Lab (Time)

• Pakistan’s Imran Khan uses AI to make victory speech from jail (Politico)

• Tech companies axe 34,000 jobs since start of year in pivot to AI (Financial Times)

• Woman Suspects Hidden Camera In Public Restroom After Noticing Boom Mic Operator In Corner (The Onion)

 

Passing It On

 One recent night, my three-year-old granddaughter asked me to draw a picture of her as a “fairy warrior.” This was immediately after she’d asked me to draw a picture of her as a queen.

She is an inquisitive child, to put it mildly, and she urged me to tell her the stories behind the drawings.

It was close to bedtime, and we were both tired. And though I extricated myself from the queen story rather quickly, the fairy warrior request was another matter entirely.

First, I wasn’t familiar with fairy warriors so it sort of threw me momentarily for a loop. But as I improvised a response to her request, I felt myself warming to the topic.

Since the fairy warrior in my story was of course a stand-in for my granddaughter, I found myself inventing various scenarios whereby she could act valiantly on behalf of her villagers. In one part, a vicious wolf showed up at the edge of the village, determined to eat some of the children.

The fairy warrior used her large staff-like wand to ward off the wolf and banish it to the wilderness where it could do no further harm. The wolf simply disappeared into a swarm of harmless bubbles.

In another part of our story, the fairy warrior gathered cherries from a cherry tree and chocolates from a chocolate tree and bananas from a banana tree to feed the hungry people of her village.

Then, best of all, she led all the younger kids, including her baby brother, on various expeditions to the mountain near to where they all lived, exploring the natural wonders and bringing back descriptions of what they’d seen to entertain everybody back home.

Thinking back on this after she went to bed, I knew there was nothing particularly original about any of the stories I’d spun, but that also they were instinctively based one way or another in my aspirations for her future.

As she matures, I hope she uses her considerable intelligence and charm for the good of others. Maybe that will involve fighting off the bad guys in some way or feeding the hungry. Or maybe it will be as a scientist or a reporter, helping others in her community better understand the world outside of their immediate surroundings.

After she went to bed, I couldn’t help spinning more scenarios for her fairy warrior self because I knew what would be coming. Sure enough, the next morning there she was, ready to go: “Tell me some more stories about me as the fairy warrior, Grandpa.”

This could be the start of something special for us as she does her job and I do mine. She is pulling an imagined future out of me and I’m helping her craft a set of shared hopes and ideals.

It’s our way of passing it on.

(I originally published this two years ago, The girl in the story is now five. She is an avid reader now but still loves to be told stories.)

HEADLINES:

• Is the Media Prepared for an Extinction-Level Event? Ads are scarce, search and social traffic is dying, and readers are burned out. The future will require fundamentally rethinking the press’s relationship to its audience. (New Yorker)

• Donald Trump says he would encourage Russia to attack Nato allies who pay too little (Guardian)

• Special counsel's report on classified documents has echoes of the 2016 election (NPR)

• How Justice Dept. special counsel policies let Hur critique Biden’s memory (WP)

• The Most Galling Thing About the Supreme Court’s Trump Ballot Arguments (Slate)

• Hawaii top court upholds gun laws, criticizes US Supreme Court (Reuters)

• How your memory really works, and how it changes as you age (WP)

• Flipping the script: Biden promises to hit Trump 'every day' over southern border (USA Today)

• Einstein on the run: how the world’s greatest scientist hid from Nazis in a Norfolk hut (Guardian)

• In Private Remarks to Arab Americans, Biden Aide Expresses Regrets on Gaza (NYT)

• Israeli strikes kill 44 Palestinians in Rafah after Netanyahu says ground invasion is coming there (AP)

• US says it will not back unplanned Rafah offensive (BBC)

• Outmanned and outgunned: Ukraine’s new army chief faces big challenges in taking the fight to Russia (CNN)

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy's big gamble (Reuters)

• Atlantic Ocean circulation nearing ‘devastating’ tipping point, study finds (Guardian)

• Parents Are Highly Involved in Their Adult Children’s Lives, and Fine With It (NYT)

• Why Are People Saying Google Gemini Is ‘Full of Ghosts?’ (Gizmodo)

• What to know about landmark AI regulations proposed in California (ABC)

• Google’s Gemini assistant is a fantastic and frustrating glimpse of the AI future (Verge)

• Clothes Come To Forefront As Major Theme In This Year’s New York Fashion Week (The Onion)