N.Y. judge finds Trump committed fraud and sanctions his attorneys - The Washington Post

N.Y. judge finds Trump committed fraud and sanctions his attorneys

Shayna Jacobs

By Shayna Jacobs

Updated September 26, 2023 at 8:26 p.m. EDT|Published September 26, 2023 at 5:44 p.m. EDT

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as he seeks a return
to the White House next year.

On Sept. 26, a New York judge held former president Donald Trump liable for fraudulently inflating his net worth in business transactions. (Video: Reuters)

"NEW YORK — A judge overseeing a $250 million lawsuit against Donald Trumpruled the former president and his company committed fraud by inflating his net worth in business transactions, narrowing the scope of what the state’s attorney general must prove at an upcoming civil trial.

New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron also ordered the cancellation of Trump business certificates and imposed sanctions on attorneys representing him, two of his adult children, two other company executives and the business for repeating arguments that failed multiple times previously and were called “borderline frivolous.”

The judge’s ruling represents a significant setback for Trump by revoking his company’s authority to do business in New York, where the Trump Organization is headquartered and where Trump has major real estate interests. It also represents a victory for Attorney General Letitia James (D), who had asked that Engoron simplify the upcoming trial by deciding in advance that fraud was broadly committed so the state would need to prove only specific illegal acts.

Trump and his attorneys have denied any wrongdoing. Trump spokeswoman Alina Habba said the judge’s ruling Tuesday would be appealed.

Five Trump attorneys have been ordered to pay $7,500 each to a state organization that reimburses clients whose attorneys misused funds. One of the attorneys sanctioned by Engoron is Christopher Kise, a former Florida solicitor general who also represents Trump in federal court there in the indictment over the retention and mishandling of classified documents.

The decision orders the parties to suggest candidates for receivers who will oversee the dissolution of the various entities that make up the Trump Organization’s corporate structure — a ruling that appears to mean the collapse of its operations in New York.

Kise issued a statement on behalf of the defense team calling the decision “outrageous” and “completely disconnected from the facts and governing law.”

“Without even conducting a trial, the Court substituted its own judgment for that of nationally recognized experts from the NYU Stern School of Business and beyond,” Kise said. “More importantly, the Court disregarded the viewpoint of those actually involved in the loan transactions who testified that there was nothing misleading, there was no fraud, and the transactions were all highly profitable.”

James filed a lawsuit against Trump and his company last year alleging that the Trump Organization and its executives defrauded lenders and insurance companies from 2011 to 2021 by inflating Trump’s net worth in business transactions.

By manipulating the value of Trump’s property and other real estate assets by up to $2.2 billion annually, the real estate, hospitality and golf resort company obtained better interest and policy rates than it otherwise would have, according to the lawsuit.

Trump is expected to stand trial along with his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, who served as executives, longtime finance chief Allen Weisselberg and long-serving comptroller Jeffrey McConney.

The trial is scheduled to begin Monday but could be postponed because of an ongoing appellate court issue. It is unclear whether Tuesday’s decision will change the schedule.

A preliminary witness list compiled by the attorney general’s office included nearly 60 names, including the former president. Trump is expected to testify at the trial.

In finding that the defendants committed fraud under the state’s civil law, Engoron will now be left to determine at the bench trial whether specific illegal conduct occurred as well as what other penalties the defendants should face. The case is civil so the defendants can only be found liable for engaging in that conduct and do not face prison.

Trump, however, faces the potential of prison in four unrelated criminal cases, one of which was filed in New York. He could stand trial on those cases next year while he campaigns for the 2024 presidential election.

In the decision, Engoron criticized the Trump defense team’s failed arguments that earned it the sanctions because it kept repeating them.

“Defendants’ conduct in repeating these frivolous arguments is egregious,” Engoron wrote. “The defenses Donald Trump attempts to articulate in his sworn deposition are wholly without basis in law or fact.”

N.Y. judge finds Trump committed fraud and sanctions his attorneys - The Washington Post

As Haley and Ramaswamy Rise, Some Indian Americans Have Mixed Feelings

Democrats and Republicans have been courting the small but fast-growing and vital demographic in purple suburbs and swing states.

Sept. 25, 2023

For the first time in the nation’s history, there are two Indian Americans who are serious presidential contenders — Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley.Sophie Park and Travis Dove for The New York Times

“Suresh Reddy, a centrist Democrat and city councilman, is watching the Republican presidential primary with a mix of pride and disappointment.

When Mr. Reddy and his wife, Chandra Gangareddy, immigrants from southern India, settled in the Des Moines suburbs in September 2004, they could count the number of Indian American families on one hand. Only one Indian American had ever served in Congress at the time, and none had dared to mount a bid for the White House.

Now, for the first time in the nation’s history, two Indian Americans — Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy — are serious presidential contenders who regularly invoke their parents’ immigrant roots. But their deeply conservative views, on display as they seek the Republican nomination, make it difficult for Mr. Reddy to fully celebrate the moment, he said.

“I’m really proud,” he said. “I just wish they had a better message.”

That disconnect, reflected in interviews with two dozen Indian American voters, donors and elected officials from across the political spectrum — in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina and across the country — may complicate the G.O.P.’s efforts to appeal to the small but influential Indian American electorate.

Indian Americans now make up about 2.1 million, or roughly 16 percent, of the estimated 13.4 million Asian Americans who are eligible to vote, the third largest population of Asian origin behind Chinese and Filipino Americans, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the 2021 American Community Survey. Indian Americans also have tended to lean more Democratic than any other Asian American subgroups, according to Pew.

Though a small slice of the overall electorate, the demographic has become one of the fastest-growing constituencies, and is large enough to make a difference at the margins in swing states and in purple suburbs, including in Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Nevada.

Debate over the prominence of Ms. Haley and Mr. Ramaswamy is playing out in Indian American homes and places of worship in Des Moines and beyond. In interviews, many described their rise as a political triumph at a time when Indian Americans have become more visible in fields beyond medicine, tech and engineering.

Venu Rao, a Democrat and retired engineer and program manager in Hollis, N.H., said Ms. Haley and Mr. Ramaswamy captured the ideological diversity among South Asian Americans, even if he doesn’t agree with their positions.

“I am glad that we have a choice,” Mr. Rao said.

But many of those interviewed also expressed frustration and dismay over the candidates’ hard-line positions on issues like race, identity and immigration. Some worried Mr. Ramaswamy’s pledges to dismantle agencies like the Education Department would destroy the same institutions that had been crucial to Indian American success and upward mobility.

Others said they appreciated Ms. Haley’s attempts to strike a more center-right tone on some topics like abortion and climate change but indicated concern about what they described as her tepid pushback against former President Donald J. Trump and his 2020 election lies.

“It can be really easy to see this as a win and be like, ‘Oh my god — look there, those are two brown faces on national TV. That’s amazing,’” said Nikhil Vootkur, 20, a student at Tufts University in Boston. But, “the diaspora, it has matured, and when a diaspora matures, you have a lot of ideological cleavages.”

Over the past decade, Indian Americans have been rapidly climbing the political ranks. Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat and the daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father, is the first woman, first Black person and the first Asian American to hold her office.

Khimanand Upreti, the priest at a Hindu temple in Madrid, Iowa, described Mr. Ramaswamy as “very fresh and clean” and without former President Donald Trump’s controversies.Rachel Mummey for The New York Times

In 2015, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a onetime rising Republican star, became the first Indian American to run for president. But Mr. Jindal, who changed his name, Piyush, to Bobby and converted to Christianity when he was young, made a push for assimilation that turned off many Indian American voters. Ms. Haley and Mr. Ramaswamy have toggled between proud embraces of their roots and scorching criticism of the “identity politics” that has been known to alienate the Republican Party’s largely white and evangelical Christian base.

Mr. Ramaswamy, 38, a political newcomer and millionaire entrepreneur from Cincinnati, Ohio, uses his Hindu faith to connect with Christian voters and expresses gratitude that his parents immigrated from the southwestern coast of India to the “greatest nation on Earth.”

Ms. Haley, 51, a former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador from Bamberg, S.C., has written and spoken extensively about her experience as the daughter of Sikh immigrants from northern India, including the pain of watching her father, who wears a turban, endure racism and discrimination.

Mr. Ramaswamy, who is running in the mold of Mr. Trump, has made a concerted effort to appeal to Indian Americans in the primary. He has made several appearances at the Hindu Temple and Cultural Center of Iowa, where many patrons have met his parents, and he has drawn the independent support of its Hindu priest, Khimanand Upreti, who in an interview described Mr. Ramaswamy as “very fresh and clean” and without Mr. Trump’s controversies.

On the trail, Ms. Haley has talked less about her identity and often describes her immigrant family in general terms. But in a response to a voter question at a town hall in Hampton, N.H., on Thursday night, she explained how her father’s experience with prejudice helped her connect with a hurting community and persuade state lawmakers to take down the Confederate battle flag at the South Carolina State House, after a white supremacist shot and killed nine Black parishioners in Charleston. She also used her parents’ immigrant background to tear into President Biden’s decision to provide temporary protected status and work permits for Venezuelan migrants.

“My mom would always say if you don’t follow the laws to get into this country, you won’t follow the laws when you are in this country,” she said.

At their home in Waukee, west of Des Moines, Nishant Kumar and Smita Nishant, who immigrated from New Delhi and Mumbai some two decades ago, and their daughter, Anika Yadav, 17, said the 2024 Iowa caucuses would be the first election they would all be able to participate in. The Nishants have only recently obtained citizenship, and Ms. Yadav will be old enough to vote in the next presidential election.

The Nishant family in Waukee, Iowa: Smita Nishant and her husband, Nishant Kumar, with Anika Yadav and Atiksh Yadava. They are looking forward to voting next year.Rachel Mummey for The New York Times

The family first became politically engaged when Barack Obama ran for president in 2008 — and would have backed Democrats in the past few elections if they could have voted. But as they weigh the 2024 presidential contenders, they have found Mr. Ramaswamy smart and refreshing, they said.

They have seen less of Ms. Haley, but Ms. Yadav says she likes Ms. Haley’s experience on foreign policy and the way she holds herself on the national stage, even if she has not made her Indian American identity central to her campaign.

“I think a lot of women, specifically young women, are leaning toward Nikki Haley — even young women who are Democrats,” she said.

Still, some Indian American Democratic-leaning voters and prominent Indian American Democrats expressed concern or sadness over Mr. Ramaswamy’s and Ms. Haley’s approaches to issues of race and identity, saying they fed into “model minority” stereotypes and carried dog whistles that minimized or diminished the specific systematic racism faced by Black Americans.

Both, when discussing their life story, tend to emphasize their successes as evidence of racial and ethnic progress in the United States. Both promote hard-line immigration measures and denounce race-conscious policies such as affirmative action in school admissions.

Mr. Ramaswamy in particular has generated criticism for suggesting white supremacy was an exaggerated “boogeyman” and for pledging to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants. Ms. Haley has said she opposes birthright citizenship for people who have illegally entered the country.

Representative Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, criticized their approach on immigration and faulted them for ignoring the history of Asian exclusion in the nation’s immigration laws. The work of Indian and Black leaders during the civil rights movement helped open the pathways to migration and citizenship for Indian families to enter the United States, he said.

“Their story about the Indian American experience will not fully connect because it has so many omissions,” Mr. Khanna said.

But Bhavna Vasudeva, a longtime friend of Ms. Haley’s in Columbia, S.C., argued that Ms. Haley’s Republican values held real appeal for second-generation Indian Americans, adding that her approach to her family’s racial struggles exhibited a strong sense of “Chardi Kala,” an expression that for Punjabi and Sikh Indians and Indian Americans has become synonymous with “resilience” and a “positive attitude” in the face of fear or pain.

“You can’t tell anyone who is a brown woman about racism and discrimination,” Ms. Vasudeva, a donor to Ms. Haley’s campaign, said. “We have faced it all with our heads high and crown straight.”

Audio produced by Adrienne Hurst.

Jazmine Ulloa covers national politics from Washington. Before joining The Times, she worked at The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times and various papers in her home state of Texas. More about Jazmine Ulloa“

Judge rules Donald Trump defrauded banks and insurers while building real estate empire | AP News

Judge rules Donald Trump defrauded banks, insurers while building real estate empire

"Former President Donald Trump pauses before ending his remarks at a rally in 

Summerville, S.C., Sept. 25, 2023. A New York judge ruled, Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2023, 

that the former president and his company committed fraud for years while building 

the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House. 

(AP Photo/Artie Walker Jr., File)

BY MICHAEL R. SISAK

Updated 6:40 PM EDT, September 26, 2023

"NEW YORK (AP) — A judge ruled Tuesday that Donald Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House.
Judge Arthur Engoron, ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, found that the former president and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing financing.Judge Arthur Engoron, ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, found that the former president and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing financing.

Engoron ordered that some of Trump’s business licenses 

be rescinded as punishment, making it difficult or impossible 

for them to do business in New York, and said he would 

continue to have an independent monitor oversee the 

Trump Organization’s operations."Engoron ordered that some 

of Trump’s business licenses be rescinded as punishment, 

making it difficult or impossible for them to do business in 

New York, and said he would continue to have an independent 

monitor oversee the Trump Organization’s operations."

Judge rules Donald Trump defrauded banks and insurers while building real estate empire | AP News

Inside the spending cuts House Republicans are fighting for - The Washington Post

"One quarter of all the savings House Republicans’ bills would achieve comes from cutting a single program that provides funding for low-income schools, known as Title I education grants.

House Republicans want to cut Title I by nearly 80 percent, saving $14.7 billion.

The cuts are even steeper than education funding reductions proposed by the Center for Renewing America, a think tank led by Russ Vought, former president Donald Trump’s White House budget director.

The think tank put out a budget proposal in December that called for cutting $8.2 billion from the Department of Education’s elementary and secondary education programs, which include Title I grants. (House Republicans would cut $14.7 billion from Title I in the 2024 fiscal year compared with the previous year, while the Center for Renewing America proposed cutting $8.2 billion from almost 30 elementary and secondary education programs in the 2023 fiscal year compared with the 2021 fiscal year.)

The Title I cuts are included in one of two appropriations bills that haven’t made it out of committee yet. The House Appropriations Committee is expected to meet today to discuss how to move forward, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Democrats have warned that Republicans’ proposed cuts could cost up to 224,000 teachers their jobs, and teachers unions have mobilized to lobby against them.

“Title I funding helps fill in the gaps that have existed in all our systems for generations, especially in our public schools,” Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, said in a statement to The Early. “It is unconscionable that House Republicans would try to strip away desperately needed funds from our most vulnerable, most marginalized students.”

Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), chairman of the appropriations subcommittee behind the proposed Title I cuts, said Republicans want to cut the program so deeply for two reasons.

First, that’s where the money is. It’s a relatively big program, and Republicans could achieve a lot of savings by cutting it deeply.

Second, Washington sent more than $100 billion in relief funds to public schools during the pandemic, and some of the money remains unspent.

• “There was $27 billion that was provided from pandemic legislation that is still in the pipeline, so to speak,” Aderholt said in an interview this month. “Therefore, you would expect that that money be spent before you would be going and asking for more money.”

Democrats say any unspent relief funds are needed to help schools and students recover from the pandemic. The legislation was designed so that schools don’t need to spend the money until next year.

• “We need the money to fight learning loss,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee and the subcommittee that Aderholt leads.

What’s more, House Republicans’ cuts don’t take into account how much schools have left in pandemic relief funds.

• “Title I is a formula grant based on how poor the school district is,” Kogan, who previously worked in the Biden White House as an OMB adviser, wrote in an email to The Early. “House Republicans didn’t modify it to be based on how much money is left over. So, if your school district is very poor and so is most likely to have used up all its [American Rescue Project] money, this 80 percent cut will simply leave you without money for this coming year.”

Aderholt, who represents a poor district himself, said he understood DeLauro’s argument. But as Republicans looked to make deep spending cuts, he said, he tried to prioritize what he believed schools truly needed as opposed to “what would really be nice to have.”

“When you’re forced to make cuts and you’re given a budget and you see [pandemic relief] money that’s already in there, it’s just hard to give more money into an area where you see there’s money that’s already available,” he said.

Biden is heading to Michigan this morning, where he’ll appear with the striking United Auto Workers and become the first president to walk a picket line — a day before “former president Donald Trump will arrive in the next county over, trying to tap into the same angst among industrial workers,” as our colleagues Matt Viser and Isaac Arnsdorf write.

We’ll be watching what Biden — who is known for going off script — says and does when he shows up on the picket line.

“White House officials on Monday did not specify what would occur during Biden’s visit, including whether he planned to address the crowd, hoist a sign or meet with auto company representatives,” Matt and Isaac write.

We’re watching how many more Democratic senators urge Sen. Robert Menendez(D-N.J.) to resign after he was indicted on Friday on bribery charges. Sens. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and John Fetterman (D-Pa.) have done so already — and we expect every other Democrat to face a barrage of Menendez questions in the hallway as senators return to Washington today.

One Democrat who’s certain to be swarmed by reporters: Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.), who hasn’t weighed in so far.

What is affected by a government shutdown and how it could affect you

The United States is barreling toward a government shutdown, and “basic federal services hang in the balance,” our colleague Jacob Bogage reports. Here’s some of what to expect if the government shuts down on Oct. 1: 

• Funding for food assistance could run out: “Programs like SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program) or WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children) have contingency funds that can carry over past the government funding deadline,” Jacob writes. “But that funding only lasts so long, meaning a protracted shutdown of a month or more could make some aid disbursements difficult.”
• Military service members would work without pay: “The roughly 1.3 million active-duty U.S. military service members would remain on the job without pay during a government shutdown. They would receive backpay after the shutdown ends, as would all the other federal workers forced to keep working during the period.”
• Veteran benefits, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will continue: Ninety-six percent of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ “nearly 414,000 employees would continue working, either because their pay doesn’t depend to annual appropriations or because they are exempt from furloughs,” Jacob writes. “Medicare and Medicaid, like Social Security, are funded separately from annual appropriations, so those benefits will continue uninterrupted.”

Ralph Nader, wary of Trump, offers to help Biden win

Our colleague Michael Scherer sat down with political firebrand Ralph Nader,who, despite being exiled from the U.S. Senate by then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) in 2000, wants everyone to know that defeating Trump “has become his overriding political mission.” 

Inside the spending cuts House Republicans are fighting for - The Washington Post

Opinion | Clarence Thomas Should Not Get Away With It - The New York Times

Clarence Thomas Should Not Get Away With It

Sept. 26, 2023

James Leynse/Corbis, via Getty Images

"It is hard to think of a comparison point for the corrupt behavior of Justice Clarence Thomas.

We have had partisan justices; we have had ideological justices; we have had justices who favored, for venal reasons, one interest over another. But it is difficult to think of another justice, in the history of the Supreme Court, who has been as partisan and as ideological and as venal as Thomas, to say nothing of the fact that significant parts of his life have been subsidized by the largess of some of the wealthiest men in the country.

Most recently, for example, Thomas was found to have attended a 2018 gathering of conservative donors convened by Stand Together, a political organization founded by the billionaires Charles and David Koch, part of what has come to be known as the Koch network. Thomas arrived at the event by private jet — paid for by an unknown benefactor — in an appearance that was arranged with the help of Leonard Leo, then the vice president of the Federalist Society. “The justice was brought in to speak,” ProPublica reports, “in the hopes that such access would encourage donors to continue giving.”

A spokesman for the Koch network denied to ProPublica that Thomas was “present for fund-raising conversations.” But by any imaginable standard a just society would set for an ostensibly impartial judge, Thomas’s presence was unacceptable, all the more so because members of the Koch network often have business before the Supreme Court and are deeply involved in efforts to shape the federal judiciary.

The question, as always with these revelations, is “So what?” The justices of the Supreme Court are not bound by an ethics code other than the one they say they have voluntarily adopted, and there is no legal sanction for misconduct. Shame and political pressure have worked, in the past, to push at least one ethically compromised justice off the court, but Clarence Thomas appears as immune to shame as the most recent Republican president. And he has also made it clear, over the course of his career on the court, that there is essentially nothing his opponents could do that would pressure him off the bench.

The only official recourse is impeachment, which would be a nonstarter even if there weren’t a Republican-led House of Representatives. There has not been an impeachment of a Supreme Court justice since the failed attempt by the Jeffersonian Republican-controlled Congress to remove Samuel Chase in 1804 (incidentally, on a charge of excessive partisanship). And as Thomas Jefferson — who was involved in the case against Chase — observed in multiple letters reflecting on the problem of the court’s power, impeachment was “an impracticable thing, a mere scare-crow” and a “bug-bear” that the justices “fear not at all.” They consider themselves “secure for life,” Jefferson wrote, and they “skulk from responsibility to public opinion.”

Jefferson was right about the nullity of impeachment as it relates to the Supreme Court. At the same time, the process can still serve an important political role. There might still be something to gain, in other words, from calling for and pursuing impeachment even if it fails.

The Chase example is instructive here. While Jefferson’s Republican Party failed to remove the Federalist justice from the bench, it successfully limited judicial participation in partisan politics.

In the absence of a Democratic majority in the House, there’s little chance that congressional critics of Justice Thomas could initiate the impeachment process. Still, a steady demand that Thomas either resign or be impeached might pressure him to respond — forcing him to do the minimum and explain his actions to the public. And if stories of misconduct continue to mount, then a call for impeachment could even begin to shift his conduct. If nothing else, a regular focus on Thomas’s corrupt behavior through the lens of congressional action would remind the public that Congress does, in fact, have the power to sanction individual justices.

These may seem like minor benefits, but any long-term effort to restrain the Supreme Court necessarily includes an effort to emphasize the role of Congress in structuring, regulating and disciplining the court.

As for the potential charge against Justice Thomas? The Constitution says that federal judges, including members of the Supreme Court, “shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour.” It seems obvious to this observer that Thomas’s behavior has been anything but “good.”

It is important to note, here, that impeachment is not a legal remedy. It is political — a way to address serious wrongdoing that nonetheless falls outside the scope of the law.

There are, admittedly, complications in this account. Impeachment cannot be so political as to become little more than a tool for partisan revenge — see the House Republican effort to impeach President Biden over a whole host of nothing. This means that impeachable conduct must meet some standard that lies between illegality and ordinary partisan disagreement. That this line is difficult to discern in practice is perhaps one reason the impeachment power, as it relates to the Supreme Court, is essentially vestigial.

Even in light of this conceptual problem, however, Thomas’s behavior is, to my mind, clearly impeachable under the standard the Constitution sets. His opponents, which is to say Democrats and their supporters, should say so, loud and clear.

As it stands, though, most congressional Democrats have restricted themselves to making calls for an ethics code. “Justices Thomas and Alito have made it clear that they’re oblivious to the embarrassment they’ve visited on the highest court in the land,” Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said earlier this year. “Now it’s up to Chief Justice Roberts and the other justices to act on ethics reform to save their own reputations and the Court’s integrity.”

This is all well and good. But if Democrats truly want to establish the severity of Thomas’s misconduct, if they want to raise the issue in the minds of Democratic voters, if not the public as a whole, then they should not be afraid to put impeachment on the table.

Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va., and Washington. @jbouie"

Opinion | Clarence Thomas Should Not Get Away With It - The New York Times