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Donald Trump’s latest indictment could reshape the 2024 race

    For the second time in two months, Donald Trump will surrender to authorities to face legal charges and drop another bombshell in the 2024 presidential race. Within minutes, he was raising money based on the news.

    The charges won’t be unsealed until next week, but some details are known. The former president and frontrunner for the Republican nomination faces seven criminal charges of mishandling classified documents from his time in the White House and obstructing the administration’s efforts to recover them. He is expected to turn himself in to authorities on Tuesday.

    mr. Trump himself broke the news himself last nighta sign that his inner circle had been bracing for the charges for weeks.

    On his Truth Social platform, Mr. Trump called the allegations “election interference at the highest level,” adding, “I am an innocent man.”

    Mr. Trump’s legal troubles continue to pile up. But this charge carries greater “legal gravity and political danger,” writes The Times’ Peter Baker. Not only is it a first in American history for a former president, but it also deals with the secrets of the nation.

    Here’s a summary of the other legal issues he’s facing:

    • A federal grand jury last month ordered Mr. Trump to pay $5 million to journalist E. Jean Carroll in a civil suit that he sexually assaulted and then defamed her; Carroll’s legal team has again sued Mr. Trump over later comments he made about her.

    • In April, New York authorities charged Mr Trump with falsifying business records related to hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.

    • Mr. Trump is also under investigation in Georgia for possible election fraud in the state; a decision is expected later this summer.

    Mr. Trump’s Republican challengers came to his aid. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, his closest rival in the polls, accused the Biden administration of arming the Justice Department to take on a political rival. And Vivek Ramaswamy, the anti-woke financier, said he would pardon Mr Trump if elected president.

    Mr Trump won in the polls the last time he was indicted. It is unclear whether the public will be so supportive this time. A Yahoo-YouGov poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans view the allegations of removing classified documents and obstructing the investigation as a serious criminal matter; a similar percentage believe he should not serve as president if convicted.

    So far, moneyed conservative donors have kept quiet about the latest charges. Many have abandoned Mr. Trump after endorsing him in previous election cycles.

    The wildfire haze is moving from the northeast. Air conditions have improved in cities such as New York and Philadelphia, though noxious smoke is spreading south and west; The FAA has lifted ground stops at LaGuardia and Newark airports. But scientists confirmed that the El Niño weather phenomenon has begun, predicting temperatures will warm next year.

    China is suffering from one lack of inflation. New monthly data shows that producer prices fell 4.6 percent in May, the sharpest annual decline in seven years, while consumer prices rose just 0.2 percent. While this contrasts with Western countries struggling with rapid inflation, the trend suggests that China’s faltering economy may face deflation soon.

    The White House is reportedly bracing for the death of its student loan forgiveness program. Biden administration officials are privately concerned that the Supreme Court could scrap its proposal, which would eliminate up to $20,000 in education debt per person per person, according to The Wall Street Journal. The White House is preparing less legally risky alternatives to help borrowers.

    GM electric vehicles will gain access to Tesla’s charging network. The move, which follows a similar announcement by Ford, will vastly increase charger accessibility for GM. the EV market.

    Investors shrugged off poor labor market data and another round of inflation warnings to push the S&P 500 into bull market territory Thursday. But that enthusiasm appears to be waning Friday morning as stock futures suggest markets will open lower.

    The bear market lasted 248 trading days, the longest such run since 1948. Since bottoming out in October, the S&P 500 has gained 20.04 percent, just enough to tip into a bull market. The reference index is still about 10 percent from a record high; some market observers therefore say it is premature to call this a true bull market.

    Investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence has supported this rally. According to Deutsche Bank analysts, the FANG+ Index — a collection of large-cap tech stocks, many of which are expanding into AI — is up nearly 80 percent since ChatGPT launched in November.

    Now the bad news… A growing number of economists believe next week’s Consumer Price Index report will show an increase in core inflation. That could put pressure on the Fed to raise rates further — if not next week, in July.

    And there are signs of economic weakness. The Labor Department reported 261,000 new jobless claims on Thursday, the highest number since October 2021.

    Expect a prolonged period of economic uncertainty. That was the message of Mario Draghi, the former Italian prime minister and president of the ECB, in a speech at MIT on Thursday

    The economist, who once famously vowed to “do whatever it takes” to save the euro, has a bearish view of the future. He warned that industrialized economies face a “volatile cocktail” of sustained inflation, high budget deficits, high interest rates and low potential growth as central banks grapple with a climate crisis, the reshoring of supply chains and the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

    Regulators and crypto executives are arguing in the court of public opinion after the SEC this week sued Binance and Coinbase, two of the industry’s largest exchanges, in an intensified crackdown on the industry.

    “We’ve seen this story before,” SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said Thursday at a fintech conference, likening widespread cryptocurrency non-compliance to the era of “peddlers” and fraud a century ago. He rejected claims that digital asset companies can’t comply with existing rules or don’t realize they apply: believe it.”

    Coinbase boss says new regulations are needed. Addressing the event on Wednesday, its CEO, Brian Armstrong, said the rules are opaque and need updating. The SEC case is certainly a drag on his business: Moody’s, the credit rating agency, downgraded Coinbase from stable to negative on Thursday because of the charges.

    Binance is regrouping. The company’s US division said on Thursday it would no longer allow customers to trade in US dollars after banks shut down. At the same time, the SEC says it is trying to find “alternative means” to provide legal documents to Binance and Changpeng Zhao, the company’s CEO, telling a federal court it was difficult to determine where he was.

    Who judges? The SEC’s case against Coinbase in New York was assigned to District Judge Jennifer Rearden. Her nomination last year angered some Democratic lawmakers because she represented Chevron as an attorney at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. She is also handling the government’s appeal against the sale of failed crypto broker Voyager to Binance’s US arm and put the deal on hold in March.

    Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the Federal District Court for DC is presiding over the Binance case and is best known for overseeing the criminal proceedings against two Mr. Trump advisers, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone. Next week, she will hold a hearing on an SEC request to freeze Binance’s assets.

    — Stephen Schwartz, a lawyer who has worked in New York for 30 years. He told a federal judge he regretted using the chatbot to write a legal brief that turned out to be filled with false court opinions and legal citations.

    Apple unveiled its first augmented/virtual/mixed reality headset this week, but none of those words appear in a nine-minute video on its website about the $3,500 Vision Pro glasses. Instead, the company preferred a more obscure term: “spatial computing.”

    Apple is trying to put its own stamp on the category. When it comes to spatial computing, “no one knows what that is — and that gives Apple the ability to define it,” Marcus Collins, the author of “For the Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do and Who We Want to be,” DealBook told me.

    Apple has done this successfully in the past. Before the App Store, people didn’t talk about apps; they talked about “software programs.”

    And the iPhone and AirPods were neither the first mobile phone nor the first earbuds, but they became big hits (despite being more expensive than the competition).

    Jim Posner, a communications consultant who has led teams at Twitter and Google, said the target audience is investors and the media rather than consumers. “They’re pitching a product to people,” he said. “In front of the technical press, industry analysts and investors, they pitch a concept.”

    • Elsewhere, Mark Zuckerberg gave his take on Apple’s Vision Pro glasses. “I was very curious to see what they would ship,” Meta’s CEO told employees Thursday, “and it’s a good sign for our own development that they don’t have magical solutions to the laws of physics that we have.” already explored.

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    Policy

    • Louisiana passed a bill that would block online services — including Instagram, TikTok, and Fortnite — for children under the age of 18 without parental consent. (NYT)

    • The Supreme Court ruled unanimously against a dog toy manufacturer whose product closely resembles a bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey. (NYT)

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