Plus: The flags of the Alitos.
• Has anyone checked if there are any oval cells at Rikers Island?
• A Manhattan jury convicted Donald Trump on all 34 counts of fraudulently falsifying business records. The verdict was historic but unsurprising. District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a progressive Democrat whose campaign touted his record of filing lawsuits against Trump in the state attorney general’s office, pursued a manifestly selective prosecution. The 34 counts involved bookkeeping infractions from seven years ago—at most trivial inaccuracies that are misdemeanors normally not prosecuted in New York and charges for which should have been time-barred by the two-year statute of limitations. Bragg inflated them into felony counts with a six-year limitation period by alleging that Trump had been concealing another crime. In blatant violation of basic due process, Bragg refused to describe this other crime with specificity. This caginess owed to the fact that Bragg planned to allege that Trump had violated federal campaign law—a corpus that Bragg has no jurisdiction to enforce and that the federal agencies that do have enforcement authority for, the DOJ and the FEC, concluded Trump had not violated. Bragg was abetted in this stratagem by Judge Juan Merchan, an activist Democrat who contributed to Biden’s 2020 campaign against Trump and whose daughter is a progressive operative who does lucrative election work for top Democrats, including Biden, Kamala Harris, and Adam Schiff. Judge Merchan gave Bragg’s prosecutors every bounce of the ball. That included allowing them to call porn star Stormy Daniels for gratuitous, graphic testimony about what she alleges was a tryst with Trump in 2006; denying the defense’s motion to call as an expert former FEC commissioner Brad Smith, who would have testified that the payments for nondisclosure agreements to Daniels and another woman who claims a long-ago affair with Trump were not cognizable campaign expenditures under federal law; and allowing Bragg’s team to establish a conspiracy to violate federal campaign law by stressing the guilty pleas of Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, even though, under rudimentary legal principles, the guilty pleas were not admissible against Trump. The coup de grace was Merchan’s jury instructions, a road map to conviction that the jury dutifully followed. Trump faces a maximum 20-year prison sentence but should get no jail time for a nonviolent crime manufactured by a DA notorious for not prosecuting serious crime. Naturally, Merchan has scheduled sentencing for July 11, four days before the start of the 2024 Republican convention.
• Four New York Times reporters and the Democrats just keep hounding Justice Samuel Alito over an upside-down American flag that flew at his Virginia home and a 1775 “Appeal to Heaven” (Pine Tree) flag that flew at his Jersey Shore beach house. Yet the more that gets reported, the weaker the story gets. Alito says that his wife flew both flags, in one case over his objections. It is plain from reporting dating back to 2021 that the flag in Virginia was part of a dispute between Mrs. Alito and profane, harassing neighbors. The Washington Post’s Supreme Court reporter even witnessed Justice Alito trying to defuse a confrontation involving his wife, which is why the Post didn’t print the story then, having concluded that the upside-down flag was not a political statement by the justice. Meanwhile, it was only in the past week that San Francisco—no MAGA hotbed!—took down the Appeal to Heaven flag that had flown for years without controversy in front of its city hall. That, along with a vote by Maine’s Democratic-controlled legislature in 2023 to hold a referendum on the question of reinstating a similar design for the state flag, suggests that the symbol is not the “stop the steal” icon that the Times imagines. Alito, in his election rulings, has already demonstrated that he can be impartial; the Times’ reporting adds to the voluminous evidence that it cannot.
• When Democrats announced that their Chicago convention would be in late August, observers noted that Alabama and Ohio both require political parties to pick their presidential nominees by 90 days before Election Day. Alabama’s legislature passed a technical fix—this is historically common practice—but Ohio’s refused to move on a similar bill. The matter was rendered moot this week when Democrats announced they would formally nominate Biden several weeks before the convention. Joe Biden will be on Ohio’s ballot in November, as he should be, and the state’s voters will surely exercise their right to reject him emphatically.
• “Take a look at where he comes from,” said Donald Trump. He was referring to Judge Juan Merchan, who was presiding over Trump’s trial in Manhattan. Merchan was born in Colombia, and he emigrated with his family when he was six. He grew up in Queens (just like Trump). In a poetic twist, the judge in another Trump case, the Trump-appointed Aileen Cannon, was also born in Colombia. Presumably, that is kosher. Holding a rally in the Bronx, Trump called onto the stage two rappers: Sheff G and Sleepy Hallow. The rappers have rap sheets, and one of the men is facing attempted-murder charges. We are reminded of what Trump said in 2016 when the boxer Mike Tyson endorsed him: “You know, all the tough guys endorse me. I like that, okay?” (Tyson was convicted of rape in 1992.) In a characteristic message, Trump wrote, “Happy Memorial Day to All, including the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country.” Every day, one is reminded of what one signs up for when one signs up with Trump.
• Right before President Biden’s State of the Union address, the administration promised to build a pier off the coast of Gaza to use for offloading humanitarian aid. The administration promised “no boots on the ground” but has kept that promise only in the most technical of terms, by having U.S. forces on the pier itself but not on shore. Despite widespread concern that Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad would attack the pier or U.S. forces building and operating it, it was wind and waves that struck first. On May 25, four U.S. Army vessels, essentially motorized pier sections, broke free from their anchors and beached ashore. The rest of the pier was damaged; sections of it need rebuilding and repairing and are being towed back to Israel for at least a week of work. The Pentagon built the pier in a location where any bout of bad weather could break the structure apart. During the week or so that the pier was operating, crowds of Palestinians stopped and ransacked the trucks full of aid before they could reach warehouses. The plan was to build a pier on the front door of a war zone, in the absolute minimally acceptable environmental conditions, and hope for the best. This has Joe Biden’s fingerprints all over it.
• French president Emmanuel Macron joined NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg this week in calling on Ukraine’s allies to lift restrictions on Kyiv’s use of Western military aid to attack military targets inside Russia. That seemed to have at last broken the Biden administration’s prohibition on the use of U.S. weapons in attacks on Russian targets. Secretary of State Antony Blinken previously claimed that the United States had imposed no restrictions on Ukrainian attacks on the staging areas for Moscow’s war of conquest. But he added that the U.S. had “not encouraged or enabled strikes outside of Ukraine.” That position became untenable given the number of NATO allies warming to the prospect of strikes on Russian military installations and infrastructure—allies including the U.K., Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the Czech Republic. The administration’s new license extends to the use of U.S. ordnance against Russian troops and weapons trained on targets in and around Kharkiv. Presumably, the administration’s prohibition on attacks against Russian infrastructure outside that theater stands, particularly on attacks against oil-refining facilities, the disruption of which could raise global energy prices in an election year.
• Intimidation by nuclear-weapon tests is costly, North Koreans might have discovered, and so the so-called Democratic People’s Republic has floated a new idea. It reportedly sent 200 balloons carrying sundry garbage and animal waste to decorate roads and sidewalks in South Korea, mostly near the demilitarized zone between the two states. “We have tried something they have always been doing,” said the supreme leader’s younger sister, an official of the North Korean Publicity and Information Department. She was referring to the fact that defectors from Kim Jong-un’s state, and other activists in South Korea, have long sent northward balloons full of political brochures, food, and flash drives of K-pop. Pyongyang has responded with the exports it can manage.
• On May 28, Harvard University announced that it would hereafter “refrain from taking official positions on controversial public policy issues.” This marks a distinct change from its prior policy of positioning itself publicly on matters of social justice; the crisis point came with 10/7, when Harvard conspicuously declined to denounce the mass slaughter of Israelis but some students and professors demanded that it criticize Israel. Many have noted that Harvard’s new position seems to be little more than a restatement of the conclusions of the University of Chicago’s famous Kalven Report, which prescribed a policy of pure “institutional neutrality” during an era when protests against the Vietnam War were tearing campuses apart nationwide. Gaza splits the Democratic Party; let’s wait to see how Harvard behaves on issues that unite it.
• The arrest of Scottie Scheffler, the No. 1 golfer in the world, was a surprise, to say the least. On the second day of the PGA Championship, held in Louisville, Ky., he was trying to drive around the scene of an accident that turned out to be fatal. He thought he was following the orders of the police. But he was stopped, arrested, and treated roughly. Suddenly, he was facing four charges, including second-degree assault of a police officer. The charges seemed . . . bizarre. The officer, Bryan Gillis, was reprimanded by his department for failing to turn on his body camera during the arrest. Scheffler’s lawyer threatened a civil suit against the department. All charges against Scheffler were soon dropped. The golfer issued a statement of exquisite diplomacy, noting the difficulty of police work. Still, the incident stank, and we are reminded that law and order should apply to the keepers of law and order as well.
• A reported settlement agreement between the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the so-called Power Five major collegiate athletic conferences, and hundreds of former athletes headed by former Arizona State swimmer and plaintiff Grant House may change college sports forever. For the first time, as part of a yet-to-be-determined revenue-sharing agreement, the NCAA will allow colleges to pay athletes. House and other former athletes will split $2.75 billion in damages for the lost opportunity to profit from “name, image, and likeness” rights in years past. Will the students be university employees, independent contractors, or some new class of workers? Will they unionize? We are entering a new era of college athletics.
• Major League Baseball decided, in 2020, to recognize the Negro Leagues as major leagues on par with the all-white leagues that existed before 1947. Nobody now doubts that the best Negro League ballplayers were the equals of the best white players, that on an invidious basis they were denied opportunities, and that they played an elite brand of baseball. Negro League stars spent the bulk of their time barnstorming, but when they played their peers, the games were as serious and competitive as the Yankees playing the A’s. Now, MLB is integrating Negro League records into the official record book. This is where things get dicey. Record-keeping for black baseball was spotty, its schedules irregular. That becomes an issue in the case of percentage-based records. Catcher Josh Gibson, an undoubted immortal, now outranks Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth for batting and slugging averages—but even after heroic efforts to reconstruct them, we currently have records of only around 2,500 plate appearances for Gibson, compared with over 13,000 for Cobb and over 10,000 for Ruth. Moreover, these statistics are likely to remain a moving target for years, corroding the stability of the game’s hallowed record book. Prudence would suggest some recognition of these inherent obstacles.
• Alerted by officials at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain’s culture ministry in 2021 blocked the auction of an oil painting attributed to the 17th-century artist José de Ribera. Some experts suspected that the artist was Caravaggio, the Italian Renaissance master known for his adept use of chiaroscuro. Earlier this month the Prado announced that the painting, Ecce Homo (Behold the Man), depicting Christ crowned with thorns and mocked by a Roman soldier at the trial before Pilate, is “without a doubt” a Caravaggio and a national treasure, “one of the greatest discoveries in the history of art.” Only about 60 of Caravaggio’s paintings are extant. The suggested opening bid for the work was 1,500 euros in 2021. A British national living in Spain is reported to have bought it for 36 million euros and have committed to keeping it in circulation and on public display instead of on a living-room wall. Behold the masterpiece, but also the philanthropy that will enable countless viewers to do so.
• Bill Walton, a garrulous mophead free spirit with a stutter and friends among the Grateful Dead, played center for the UCLA Bruins in the 1970s. He helped power them to two NCAA championships under John Wooden, the legendarily buttoned-down, old-school basketball coach. The two had surprising odd-couple chemistry. When Walton was jailed after a protest against the Vietnam War, Wooden came to bail him out. Walton called Wooden often in retirement, just to chat. “I love talking to him,” Wooden told a reporter, although “I don’t do much of the talking.” Sports announcer Marty Glickman had helped Walton overcome his stutter decades earlier. In 14 seasons in the NBA, Walton was named to two All-Star teams, won both the finals (1977) and regular-season (1978) MVP awards, and played for two championship teams, the 1977 Portland Trailblazers and the 1986 Boston Celtics. Longstanding foot and knee injuries impeded but did not stop him. As a basketball color commentator for national TV networks, he often delivered stream-of-consciousness digressions, sometimes controversial, never boring, often stimulating. “English is my fourth language,” he said, “after Stumbling, Stammering, and Bumbling.” Enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1993, at age 40; dead at 71. R.I.P.