Turkish court sentences opposition politician for inciting hatred, but orders his release

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — A Turkish court on Tuesday sentenced a far-right politician to more than two years in prison for inciting public hatred and hostility, but ordered his release because of time already served.
Umit Ozdag, the leader of Turkey's Victory Party, was detained in January over accusations that he insulted President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with comments that he made during a party meeting.
A day later, Ozdag was formally arrested and charged with inciting hatred against migrants. He was blamed for last year's anti-Syrian refugee riots in the central Turkish province of Kayseri, during which hundreds of homes and businesses were attacked.
Ozdag, a 64-year-old former academic, is an outspoken critic of Turkey's refugee policies, and has previously called for the repatriation of millions of Syrian refugees.
During his trial, Ozdag acknowledged advocating the return of refugees, but strongly denied that he had incited violence against them. He maintained that his imprisonment was politically motivated and aimed at silencing him.
The court sentenced him to two years and four months in prison, but ordered his release, ruling that he has already served a sufficient portion of the sentence.
The trial took place amid a widespread crackdown on the opposition to Erdogan's Justice and Development Party.
Officials from municipalities controlled by the main opposition — the Republican People's Party, or CHP — have faced waves of arrests this year. Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, viewed as the main challenger to Erdogan's two-decade rule, was detained in March over allegations of corruption.
Many people in Turkey consider the cases to be politically driven, according to opinion polls. However, Erdogan's government insists that the courts are impartial and free from political involvement.

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Erdogan vows to boost Turkey's missile production as Israel-Iran war escalates

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he plans to strengthen the country's deterrence capabilities so that no country would dare attack it. Erdogan announced plans this week to step up Turkey's production of medium- and long-range missiles, as the war between Israel and Iran escalates. Erdogan discussed the Iran-Israel war with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in a telephone call on Friday. He told Merz that the Iranian nuclear issue can only be resolved through negotiations, according to Erdogan's office. Despite Turkey's tense relations with Israel, analysts and officials don't see an immediate threat of the conflict spreading into NATO-member Turkey. Still, some see the move by Erdogan as a sign that the Israel-Iran war could trigger a new arms race in the region, with countries not directly involved in the fray ramping up their military efforts to preempt future conflicts. The Israeli army on Friday declined to comment on Turkey's plans to ramp up missile production, but Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar responded to Erdogan's criticisms of Israel over its attack on Iran in an X post on Wednesday. He accused Erdogan of having 'imperialist ambitions' and of having 'set a record in suppressing the freedoms and rights of his citizens, as well as his country's opposition.' Ahmet Kasim Han, a professor of international relations at Istanbul's Beykoz University, said that Turkey was reacting to what he described as an unraveling world order. 'The Turkish government is drifting toward what is the name of the game in the Middle East right now: an escalation of an arms race,' he said, adding that Israel and the U.S. have set a high standard in aerial warfare, creating a technological gap that Turkey and others are eager to close. Importance of air superiority Erdogan said following a Cabinet meeting on Monday that 'we are making production plans to bring our medium- and long-range missile stockpiles to a level that ensures deterrence, in light of recent developments." 'God willing, in the not-too-distant future, we will reach a defense capacity that is so strong that no one will even dare to act tough toward us," Erdogan said. In an separate address days later, he highlighted Turkey's progress in its domestically developed defense industry, that includes drones, fighter jets, armored vehicles and navy vessels, but stressed that continued effort was needed to ensure full deterrence. 'Although Turkey has a very large army — the second largest in NATO — its air power, its air defense, is relatively weaker,' said Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, a Turkey analyst at the German Marshall Fund think tank. The ongoing conflict has reinforced the importance of air superiority, including missiles and missile defense systems, prompting 'countries in the region, including Turkey to strengthen its air power,' he said. Since the start of the conflict, Erdogan has been scrambling to end the hostilities. He has held a flurry of phone calls with leaders, including U.S. President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, offering to act as a 'facilitator' for the resumption of negotiations on Iran's nuclear program. There are deep concerns in Turkey that a prolonged conflict will cause energy disruptions and lead to refugee movement from Iran, with which it shares a 560 kilometer-long (348 mile) border. Turkey relies heavily on energy imports, including from Iran, and rising oil prices due to the conflict could aggravate inflation and further strain its troubled economy. It has strongly criticized Israel's actions, saying Iran has the legitimate right to defend itself against Israel's attacks, which came as nuclear negotiations were ongoing. Turkish influence in Syria Once close allies, Turkey and Israel have grown deeply estranged, especially after the start of the war in Gaza in 2023, with Erdogan becoming one of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's fiercest critics. Relations further deteriorated following the fall of Syrian President Bashar Assad's government as Israel grew increasingly wary of expanding Turkish influence in Syria. Earlier this year, Turkey and Israel established a 'de-escalation mechanism' aimed at preventing conflict between their troops in Syria. The move came after Syria's Foreign Ministry said that Israeli jets had struck a Syrian air base that Turkey reportedly hoped to use. Erdogan's nationalist ally, Devlet Bahceli, suggested that Turkey was a potential target for Israel, accusing the country of strategically 'encircling' Turkey with its military actions. He didn't elaborate. However, analysts say such statements were for 'domestic consumption' to garner support amid growing anti-Israel sentiment in Turkey. 'I don't think that Israel has any interest in attacking Turkey, or Turkey has any interest in a conflict with Israel,' Han said. __ Ibrahim Hazboun contributed from Jerusalem.

New York Times

an hour ago

• New York Times

Trump Is Vulnerable. Democrats Still Need a Strategy.

transcript Trump Is Vulnerable. Democrats Still Need a Strategy. I can't tell you the number of people I've talked to who are like yeah, he goes a little far, but at least he's getting stuff done. But critically, even Trump is subject to it, right. Like he's not really getting stuff done. I mean, that's a very good point. As seen by the fact that the courts are kind of tearing his agenda apart. One of Trump's top campaign promises was to crack down on illegal immigration, which was a big selling point for many of his voters. But in the past week, both of you have written about how this — one of Trump's strongest issues — is shaping up to be one of his biggest liabilities. Does that seem like a fair portrayal of where you guys are with this? I think that's right. Yeah, he's squandered his goodwill in many ways on immigration. Imagine that. Jamelle, why don't you start us off with what you wrote about his response to the protests against the ICE raids Sure. I think the important thing to remember here when thinking about Trump and immigration and his standing with the public. You can't conflate public support for deportations, public support for stricter border controls with a draconian crackdown on immigrants. Those are two separate things. I think that sometimes those of us in this business don't give the public enough credit for its ability to treat different things differently and have some measure of sophistication. And immigration is one of those places where the public broadly says: We like the idea of deportations, of removing people from the country who are not supposed to be here. But when they say this, there is, I think, a lot of evidence to suggest that what they're thinking of is actual criminals. They believe that there's a large population of undocumented immigrants who are like gang bangers in an L.A. set movie in the 90s. Lowriders and tank tops and all. I wasn't about to say tank tops. I was about to use the un-PC version for that item of clothing. Do not do that, Jamelle. No! I know where you're going with that. Tank top seems fine. Tank tops. Yeah doesn't have the right anyway. Tank tops. Yeah, I know it's not as edgy. That's what they imagine. But that population doesn't really exist. And so when they see what this looks like in practice, which are a bunch of draconian crackdowns on grandmothers and soccer coaches and business owners and people who are just regular members of their communities. They don't like that. They think it's excessive. And what you're seeing, I think in public opinion, and what I argued in my piece this week, is that that delta between what the public kind of likes in the abstract And what they're seeing in practice is the source of Trump's growing weakness on immigration. They actually want Trump to be — this sounds like a crazy thing to expect out of this president — but they want Trump to be compassionate about immigration enforcement. I think the public kind of intuitively says to themselves: Well, if you have family here, if you're working if you're hardworking, if you have a business, then you're basically already assimilated. So you should be able to have some kind of path to being a citizen. And if you're not doing those things right, the public's like you should get out. And so when they see the president deporting the kinds of people in, again, really harsh and draconian ways that they think should be here, should be allowed to stay here, they're like, well, I don't like how this is actually playing out in practice. And so what the polling showed like last month maybe was this support deportations don't like the execution. And now that's simply becoming a general negative view of Trump on immigration, period. I totally am with you on the theory versus practice. I mean, this is always a big thing in politics. Everybody talks about how great it would be to cut the deficit, lower the debt, do all of these wonderful things. But then when it comes time to do it, they realize that it's hard and the devil's in the details. And you can't do it without pain and fallout. And I think that anybody who is surprised by what Trump is doing with these immigration raids hasn't really been paying attention. But I guess at this point, that shouldn't surprise me either. I think if Trump had done border security and then a concentrated effort on deporting criminal illegal aliens, which would not be that different from previous presidents, I mean, Obama deported millions of people, criminal and not criminal. He would be flying very high right now on the immigration issue. I'm not going to, lets put to the side a bunch of other elements of chaos for the moment. But he would be flying high because that's the bottom line as Jamelle said. That's what people wanted. And I'd also add that I think people also have a perception that undocumented aliens tend to be all on welfare or receiving public assistance, which is not the case. Millions and millions are very hardworking folks. What people are looking for is a secure border, low levels of disorder, and readily available goods and services. So if you put all of those things together, what you're then dealing with is a set of trade offs and then the trade offs when people start to feel pain, such as we saw this flip-flop, flip-flop about the hospitality industry and the agricultural industry, which is a direct result of people being worried that they're going to feel some economic pain as a result of deportations, or actually feeling economic pain as a result of deportations. You see Trump, even Trump, start to waver a little bit, and you see that internal battle in the administration with this flip-flop flip. And so I think Jamelle is exactly right. There was a path for Trump, a very clear and I would say not that difficult of a path for him to take to be smelling like a rose on this issue. Instead, it's just chaotic. And that's one of the core elements that people voted, people were voting in November. A lot of people were voting for order, not chaos. And this is an element of chaos that is souring people on Trump on this issue and many, many others. So I have a question for both of you. So I take that the polls don't look good for him right now in terms of how he's handling L.A. That said, Republicans in the Senate are using these protests to argue that this is why you have to push through his Big, Beautiful Bill. And Republicans running for office in the midterms are using this to hammer their Democratic opponents, because while some people are looking at this as an overreach, one of the reasons that Trump was put back in office is people don't like chaos at the border. They don't like these images of people scrawling graffiti on street walls and whether or not there is a lot of violence or just a little bit of disorder, it comes down to who can spin that the best. And I think what we have seen from the Trump administration, and specifically the president, is nobody knows how to milk fear and chaos better than this man. That is just that's his bread and butter. So I guess I'm just I'm skeptical of Republican spin here and the administration's spin here. I think of course, of course, the White House is going to say that they're in command of the situation. Of course, Republicans are going to say: Yeah, this is great for us. We might be down eight on the generic ballot, and the Big Beautiful Bill might be ruinously unpopular with both voters, but this totally is going to work for us. What I see in the polling, at least, is that the public is basically divided on the protests and very unhappy with the deployment of the National Guard, with the deployment of Marines, with the militarization of the response to protests, with the draconian ICE tactics. On everything relating to this, it's a double digit net disapproval for the administration and for Republicans. And so I just don't think I'm just not convinced by the spin. Right? A thing to keep in mind here is that in 2020, when there were larger protests with more chaos and disorder, those protests contributed to Trump losing. They did not benefit him in the general election. He lost, in part, because of his inability to handle the perceived chaos of the protest. And here we are again, with protests for which there may be perceived chaos. And it's clear Trump isn't handling them. And there's no reason - I see no reason to think that the outcome is going to be any different for him or for Republicans this go around than the previous go around. The other thing I think David mentioned something about the trade offs in immigration reform. And I think that what the mainstream political conversation is missing about real trade offs when it comes to border security and internal immigration control, is that there's actually no way to do this without the kind of painful impacts on regular citizens that you cannot actually control the external borders of the United States without making internal, creating internal pressures on existing citizens. The two things are connected, and that I think that the conversation is missing the perspective that's basically like, if you like the idea of a free society where there aren't immigration agents roaming around neighborhoods, you have to actually be comfortable with a little less immigration control. Because if what you want is tight immigration control, then that necessitates, that necessitates, the kind of heightened scrutiny by state forces about who you hire, about who you have in your home, about who you have in your church. Like you can't separate the two. I would say there's a couple of factors here in play as a general matter, Americans - now this is going to come across a little bit weird after Trump has been elected twice - but in any given moment, as a general matter, Americans don't like bullies. They don't like the people who are seen to be as heavy handed and as seen to be disproportionate. They also don't like chaos. They like order. And so to Jamelle's point, from 2020, there was an awful lot of chaos on Trump's watch that at times he responded to with an awful lot of bullying. It hurt him on both fronts, that he wasn't seen as somebody who could bring order. He was seen as somebody who was fomenting additional chaos. Chaos was his enemy in the 2020 election. And so I think a lot of this depends on what actually happens in the streets. And I think MAGA has a very dangerous assessment of this situation, because I think if you're going to be around MAGA people, their theory of the case is that the far left wants to burn America's cities, and that any sensible immigration policy is going to result in the far left wanting to burn America's cities. And so then the only person who can stand in the gap there is Donald Trump. And so the first brick that is thrown, the first Waymo car that gets set on fire, that starts to lock in that part of the MAGA mindset that says: OK, the fires are about to start, the cities are about to burn. And the one big regret that they have - and Trump has expressed this - the big regret that they have is not bringing in the troops under federal control sooner in 2020. And so that's why right after this initial army deployment, I wrote that Trump administration is spoiling for a fight. I think elements of the MAGA coalition are spoiling literally for a fight in the streets. They think that fight in the streets, that assertion of dominance and control will be A) politically beneficial to them. And B), also, again, in their worldview, the only way to really stop the far left from torching American cities. And so I think that this is the problem that we face is that there are an awful lot of people who are eager, they are eager to see some confrontation. And I agree with Jamelle on the political effect of a confrontation isn't necessarily going to redound to Trump's benefit. It creates this, contributes to this, sense that America is in a state of chaos, that it's out of control. But in the short term, I think it is very dangerous for America that we have people we have an administration that in many ways seems to be spoiling for that fight. And I'm incredibly grateful and thankful that these millions of people who came out for the No Kings protest did so incredibly peacefully. And I think that kind of protest really drains the power from the MAGA argument, and it drains the power from the MAGA case that essentially they're the last bulwarks against our cities aflame. What's happening instead is you have these peaceful protests, and then you have the administration ramping up to create more chaos, this is not I really don't think this is working in their political favor. I mean, I would like to be more optimistic. And what I've seen from the Trump administration is that the reality on the ground. Doesn't matter that much because they spin it the way they want to. So it is AP orbital after a certain point. So you can have 99.9 percent of peaceful protesters. And what they're going to do is, it's like what they do with immigration. They find the one hideous murder committed by an undocumented immigrant. And so that proves that undocumented immigrants are the real danger here. Maybe it's an indictment of the Democratic Party that I'm thinking that they just don't have it in them to fight that PR battle. And you can I mean, you guys are right. You can see the Trump administration getting more and more aggressive. I mean, we're looking at on Tuesday, New York City controller and the mayoral candidate, Brad Lander, was arrested by federal agents in an immigration courthouse when he was trying to escort a migrant out to prevent his arrest. And as we saw in California when Senator Padilla got manhandled, this was kind of aggressive and thuggish. And they were not trying to be delicate at all. And my sense is that they know this plays well with a lot of their voters, and that the rest of the country will be upset by it. Maybe but when it comes time to say, pull the lever in the midterms, they're not going to be voting on it. So they just kind of ramp this up. And one of the things that makes me even more nervous is they're focusing on Big Blue cities. Because they want these confrontations in La, in Chicago, in New York, where they can push out their urban hellscape narrative, which the guy running one of the guys running for Senate in Georgia has been saying, we better pay attention to this because it could come to our state next. So it makes me really twitchy. I understand that nervousness and worry. But I think my view is that I think the administration I think the White House, in addition to missing some of the dynamics that David describes about the American public not liking bullies, the American public not liking chaos, and the Americas public attributing Trump himself with chaos. I think they just have a fundamental misunderstanding of what their coalition is and why they won in November. They did not win in November because they convinced swing voters that the right thing to do was to have all these confrontations and crackdowns they won in November because of inflation. You ask people consistently what was your top issue. Majorities, inflation, what they want from the administration is lowering prices. And so if you're just on a pure electoral calculus, if Trump wants to hold his coalition together and wants to have that coalition show up to preserve Republican majorities in Congress, then the first thing he has to do, first thing he should be focusing on is lowering prices. Notably, Trump has not done that. Notably, the public expects prices to go up because of tariffs. And so he's not doing the things that he was elected to do. And he's approaching the other issue on which the public had a favorable view in a way that is turning the public against him. And so I think the administration is actually making a fatal and hubristic calculation about its coalition and its political standing that yeah, they might be able to cut some videos that are going to do great on X, but the kinds of voters who delivered in the White House aren't on X, they aren't watching Fox, they're not watching Fox News. They barely tune in to politics. And I don't know what he's doing for them. In fact, I think he's doing a lot of stuff to antagonize them. I would say about the only people who have as much of a political problem right now as Donald Trump are Democrats because the Yes, there is a backlash against Trump, but there isn't much indication. There's growing regard for the Democratic Party. And I do expect that there will be some backlash to Trump in the midterms. I'm absolutely expecting that. But we're in this really in the Trump era. We have this cycle of that shows why Trump is vulnerable and why he's resilient. At the same time, he's vulnerable because once people experience the actual Trump, he starts to alienate some people who voted for him. But then the problem is, if the people who voted, if Trump is still the main person articulating the concerns that the people have who voted for him, then it's very hard to squelch MAGA completely and entirely. And so on the immigration issue, it's really not enough to say, well, Trump is just way overboard. There are people who have real concerns if the border is too wide open, and who are they going to trust to deal with that. And so I think that's one of the issues here is that, Yeah, Trump is really incredibly effective at squandering his own goodwill, not with his core base, of course. And the Democrats are really ineffective at taking advantage of that, except under terms that are very short term in duration. So yeah, they can win a midterm when Trump squanders the goodwill. But can they hold people. The answer. So far has been Absolutely not. So the point you made that gives me a little bit more optimism than I've been projecting here, David, is the difference between Trump in theory and in memory and in actual in-your-face every day. I think that the four years he was out of office with Joe Biden in office, people then reverted back to the more hazy oh, he's a television figure. Sure, he's got a lot of bluster, but he's a man of action. And was it really that bad. I mean, at least he I was getting stuff done. And so they were willing to give Trump another shot. But then the second he gets back into your living room every single day doing all this nonsense and breaking all those eggs they like to talk about can't make an omelet without breaking those eggs. Then people are like oh, this is a lot. Yeah, and it's funny, you could see this actually, in the 2024 campaign, Trump, in theory, were the big broadcast ads that he did talking about low inflation, secure borders. But then the rally, Trump was Trump in practice it was Trump in all of his weird weirdness. And the people he's losing right now are not the rally Trumpists. They're the TV ad Trumpists who are thinking, I wanted less inflation, I wanted less chaos. That's what I wanted. And now we have, I'm worried about inflation because of tariffs. I'm worried about chaos because of what I'm seeing in Angeles. And by the way, we haven't even touched on this of sense that I thought Trump was going to come in and things were going to be more peaceful in the world that the world was going to be less, was going to be more calm. David, you're not feeling more calm globally. exactly. And so a lot of what people thought they were voting for, they're not getting right now. So one of the things that I think is also happening with the focusing on the blue cities is I think he's trying to divide the nation even more. Like, there's just been no sign I've talked to a few Republican apologists, they're like oh, well, he's so different this time around. That's why I don't have a problem with him, which just strikes me as utter horseshit. I'm sorry, but we just got an E rating, right. They just think you can beep me out later. But especially on the immigration issue, we see him going as hard as he can to divide the nation into of blue urban centers and red rural America. We can talk about politically what this will mean down the road. But I think even between now and the midterms next year, there's so much damage he's trying to do in dividing people as a way to exert power and find a justification for that. It's so mind boggling. No, this is an extremely dangerous game he's playing. And I don't think that Republican apologists for him appreciate the kind of real damage it does to basically the civic bonds of the nation to utilize the power of the federal government to punish Democratic controlled states, not because they've done anything wrong, not because they're violating the Constitution. None of that, simply because they don't agree with your partisan agenda, simply because they are exercising the sovereignty they have as states. You do that enough. And people start to ask themselves, well, what's the point in being part of a union if this is how we're going to be treated. What's like what do I have in common with my fellow American in a red state. If this is how their leader is going to treat me and I don't, I'm always wary of making these sorts of comparisons and analogies. But, I mean, this is the kind of stuff that makes civil conflict like this is how you get that ball rolling by convincing a part of the population of the country that there's nothing they can do to receive equal regard or equal status, and that by virtue of their political allegiance or by their ethnicity or by their sexual orientation, by virtue of whatever that's been devalued by the regime in power, they can expect to receive scrutiny and disregard from the state. Look, if your goal, if your goal is I want to go to communities where there are the most undocumented immigrants and wanting to remove the people from the places where they're the most undocumented immigrants. You're not singling out like four or five blue cities for that. There are giant red cities, not the cities are blue, but in red states, giant red state cities that have an awful lot of undocumented immigrants in them. And yet, no, we're going after Chicago. Why Because he is trying to stoke conflict. And here's the thing that's particularly disturbing that I have experienced, that I think a lot of people have experienced is that, amongst Republicans, Donald Trump is either the most trusted voice or among the most trusted voices. In other words, when Donald Trump speaks, Republicans tend to believe him. And when Trump uses rhetoric like people hate America. They're trying to destroy America. Members of his coalition believe those words. And some of the rhetoric you hear, especially in the darkest corners of the religious is beyond imagination. There's a word that people use to describe Democrats. They call them demoncrats. If you're in that bubble if you're in that cocoon, well Yeah. You want to see the Marines. Yeah you want to see the army because you're taking on people under the influence of demons. I mean, that's the level of rhetoric we're dealing with here, and that's why this country is a tinderbox. And Trump just keeps pouring gasoline on it intentionally. So before I let you guys go, I'm going to bring it back to politics and opportunities. So what opportunity with all of this churn and protest and backlash do Democrats have on this issue. I mean, we're talking about even immigrant voters. Polls show now trust Republicans more than they do the Democrats. So this is an opening for them. Where do they go. I mean, my thought is that this is a real opportunity to actually be aggressive and try to define the terms of the debate, you have the president underwater on every single issue of note, including his two previously stronger ones, immigration and the cost of living. So now is like the opportunity to just like, aggressively try to seize the terrain for yourself, to try to define redefine the party as the party that can handle these problems, that it can handle. The actual issues facing most Americans. But part of that is going to require from Democrats a willingness to get in the fight, which I still don't necessarily see. There seems to be this hesitancy, especially among congressional Democrats, about trying to make a splash. Make it make noise. Some of this is beginning with the Padilla or detention last week. And with Brad Lander, you're beginning to see Democrats realize that, if they make a scene, that's a lot of press. That captures attention, that allows them to seize the stage for a bit. And that can be beneficial. But that's the kind of energy that they need. They're not going to be able to choose the battles they want to fight necessarily. By virtue of having state power, the administration kind of has the ability to choose the terrain. But that doesn't mean they're not. They're unable to shape the contours of that fight, especially when the administration makes so many mistakes all the time. And so I would see this as just like a big opportunity to begin to erase some of the perception of the Democratic Party as passive and responsive to events and create the impression that it is aggressive and willing to seek conflict. Because one thing about its low approval ratings, a lot of that's with actual Democratic voters, right. People who are going to vote for the Democrat, but kind of don't. They're like don't associate me with these people. Recovering with just like Democrats would be an important political gain at this point. I think the Democrats opportunity is also their risk, because here's the way I'd put it. Trump's mistakes give an opposing party and Trump's overreach. And Trump's the way he's chewing through his goodwill at a remarkable rate. You can be just anybody on the other side, and you're going to be the alternative to that. And you could have some electoral success. I mean, however, there are still underlying policy issues and underlying economic and geostrategic issues that people care about. And so the question then is, do you have the answers there too. And here's another issue. And this is something that we need to I think Democrats have not fully absorbed better than Trump does not equal. Good O.K. And so for example, when you had all of the lying, and all of the corruption around Trump, which is unlike anything I've ever seen. And then when you would point out the lying around Joe Biden and the lying around Joe Biden's condition, and then to have partisans jump at you and say, well, it's not as bad as Trump, that's not a good answer. Don't answer bad with less bad. Answer bad with something that's affirmatively good. And I think that is one of the problems we have and why we've been stuck in about a 2025 year cycle of these parties just trading off, because nobody has really solved for the problems, the actual policy problems that people care about. And so Yeah, Trump is going to give Democrats a lot of short term opportunity if they just sees it as a short term opportunity without providing long term policy solutions, then their opportunity is also a risk of their next loss. See, this is what keeps me up at night a little bit. I've said this before. Last time around, the Democrats on immigration were like, just happy to say we're not Trump. But they didn't figure out what they believed or what they wanted to do. And so when the Biden team got in there, they completely blew it, totally blew it for the bulk of the administration. And that came back to bite them. And that played a role in Trump's return. So now is the time. Now is the time for Democrats to be figuring out what they believe and what they stand for. Aside from just that, well, we're not draconian and cruel. Well, I mean, this does get the structural issues in American governance. Not just what the parties are doing, but what the actual system of government allows. And so part of I mean, I agree with David that if you win power, you actually have to do things. You have to respond to people's problems. But that may require. What are considered to be perhaps radical approaches to the structures of American government that make that possible. Maybe you get rid of the filibuster. You end it outright to make majoritarian policymaking possible again. So you can do stuff like. My view is that Trump is, in part, an epiphenomenon of the fact that for 10 years, Congress was gridlocked and deadlocked and couldn't do anything because of abuse of the filibuster. And so the one thing I would throw out there is that part of this challenge isn't simply an absence of will from the respective parties, but they are conforming to a set of structural aspects of the American system. And maybe it's worth thinking about changing those structural aspects to make government more responsive to people's concerns, to create more direct translation between what people vote for and what they get. Well, that's why Trump's blowing everything up. People, I can't tell you the number of people I've talked to who are like, yeah, he goes a little far, but at least he's getting stuff done. But critically, even Trump is subject to it, right. Like he's not really getting stuff done. I mean, that's a very good point. I mean, by the fact that the courts are getting everything done, but he's breaking a lot of crap. He's breaking a lot of crap, but he's not really affirmatively doing things for people. And that gets to the issue. The American system designed around legislative action. And we have a broken legislature. And so got to fix that. And that's like a structural problem. There's our next sit down, guys. That's right. That could be an entire summer series. So start prepping now. But thank you for joining me. Thank you for having us. Thanks so much, Michelle. Given the recent protests against ICE raids, is President Trump alienating some of his supporters? In this episode, the Opinion national politics writer Michelle Cottle and the columnists David French and Jamelle Bouie convene to discuss. Below is a transcript of an episode of 'The Opinions.' We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player above or on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Michelle Cottle: I'm Michelle Cottle. I write about national politics for Times Opinion, and I am back with the fabulous columnists Jamelle Bouie and David French. Guys, welcome. David French: It's good to be with y'all. Jamelle Bouie: Yes, pleasure to be here as always. Cottle: Well, I'm not sure the topic is going to bring you much pleasure because we're going to talk immigration. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

CNN

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• CNN

The kings of Queens: Andrew Cuomo seeks restoration months after Donald Trump's

They are two men from the outer boroughs of New York – both with the Queens accent to prove it, each with his own distinctive rhythm – born of domineering fathers who chose their careers for them and made them righthand men. They revered their fathers but also saw them as not quite ready to do what it took to truly get ahead. One brought his father's real estate empire into Manhattan and turned it into a global brand. The other took his father's political mantle and built a career in both Washington and New York, winning three governor's elections of his own. Both revel in finding weakness and needling those they don't respect. Both can be abrasive, then charming a moment later. Both present themselves as forever underestimated. Both have faced a litany of scandals and been accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women in allegations they both deny and dismiss as politically motivated. Both have small circles of ultra-loyalists and much longer lists of enemies who want them to fail. Now, seven months after Donald Trump won a second White House term that he presented as part vindication, part retribution, Andrew Cuomo is seeking his own restoration. Ahead of Tuesday's Democratic primary for New York mayor, Cuomo has centered his bid on the idea that he alone has the stature and experience to fight Trump. Their lives have intersected and crashed into each other for 40 years – over politics and policy, literal questions of life and death during the Covid-19 pandemic, but also personality and self-assurance that each knows better what their parties, and Americans, want. That worries some who have clashed with both. 'Seeing what I see from Washington, DC, which is only focused on retribution and revenge, there are a lot of similarities in certain people running for the mayor of the city of New York, and I don't need those same characteristics to be revealed in the office of the mayor or the city,' said New York Attorney General Tish James, a longtime Cuomo and Trump critic. For decades, they were competing Macy's Thanksgiving Parade balloon-sized personalities who made the motions of friendship to get what they really wanted. Trump recorded a video played at Cuomo's bachelor party warning him not to cheat. Nineteen years later, Cuomo was one of the guests watching Trump walk his daughter Ivanka down the aisle at her wedding to Jared Kushner. Over that time, Trump donated a total of $64,000 to Cuomo's campaigns. A few days after Cuomo won his third term as governor in 2018, he flew to Washington to have lunch with Trump, where the president greeted him like an old friend. Before walking out of the Oval Office grabbed Cuomo's arm and said, 'Hey Andrew, can you believe this?' The year that defined them both was 2020. As they faced off over immigration, Covid-19, racial justice protests and federal funding for the state of New York, Cuomo would return to the Oval Office for what would be the first of three in-person meetings, along with dozens of phone calls and quite a few tweets. A dozen aides to Trump and Cuomo revealed new details about those run-ins to CNN. They spoke on condition to anonymity to discuss private meetings. Those details may be the guide for what may be ahead if Cuomo becomes mayor and they inevitably meet again. The meeting started with a warm handshake, with the White House photographer right up close to get the smiles. 'You should sit here,' Trump said, pointing Cuomo to one of the chairs in front of the Resolute Desk, according to one person in the room. That morning before heading to the White House, Cuomo had accused Trump of 'extortion': The president was threatening to revoke 'trusted traveler' status for New York, which allowed for Global Entry speeding travelers through customs, if the governor didn't give the administration access to the state's driver's license database. Immigrants without legal authorization can get licenses in New York. Cuomo didn't want the database to be used for immigration raids, but he also didn't want to lose all the international travel business. In the meeting, Trump held up a sheet with three columns of states, arranged by color. All green were giving Trump all the information he wanted. Green and red were mixed. New York, Trump pointed out, was all red. He shoved the chart across the desk at Cuomo. Trump name-checked a few rich New Yorkers who didn't want to have their access to Global Entry shut down. 'It's good leverage,' he pointed out to Cuomo, according to the person in the room. 'You can do this, but we will sue you,' Cuomo told him. By the end, neither the president nor the governor had conceded anything, and aides to both thought they'd outmaneuvered and cornered the other. Trump slid a small stack of red MAGA hats toward Cuomo at the end, talking about his poll numbers and how great his re-election campaign was going to be. Cuomo glanced at them and did not pick them up. Eventually, the administration produced a memorandum of understanding that did not admit doing anything wrong but did back off the threats. A court reinstated 'trusted traveler' later that year. But within weeks, no one was traveling much at all. Trump was on the phone quickly after the first confirmed coronavirus cases hit New York. He had been yelling at rallies that the virus was a Democratic hoax, but to Cuomo, he was asking what the state needed, what he could do to help. Within days, their daily dueling briefings began. Cuomo liked the attention, the sudden nationalization that made him both a social media hero for locked-down liberals, driving Democratic speculation that he could sub in as the Democratic presidential nominee for a man already showing his age, then-former Vice President Joe Biden. Cuomo and Trump watched each other on TV. They went in front of cameras to respond to mock and undermine each other. Then they got on the phone and blew past whatever had been part of the show to talk about what they were going to do. Trump was giving Cuomo's team access to statisticians and academics trying to figure out what was happening. Cuomo was grateful, often telling aides who were running into problems that he'd walk into his office and call the president directly to get them cleared, enjoying being able to bypass what he'd felt was too many steps in dealing with the previous administration of Democratic President Barack Obama. When Trump toyed with blockading New York City, Cuomo wrote a New York Times op-ed with one reader in mind. Trump called him as soon as he saw it and talk of a blockade stopped. Cuomo felt like he was in the catbird's seat, his aides say, of being in a crisis needing something out of a president he was convinced he knew how to work. 'They both understood why each of them was taking the public approach and it didn't really bother them why the other one was saying what they were saying publicly,' a former state official told CNN. Cuomo and a few aides were back in the Oval Office two weeks later to ask for more help. Each state was being allocated 20,000 tests per day, and Cuomo felt the severity in New York should get their allocation boosted to 40,000. Going in, Cuomo had been amused that he and his aides had to test multiple times before seeing the president themselves. Trump was behind the desk again, Cuomo and aides in chairs in front. According to three people in the room, the president kept the conversation loose, armed again with charts and a marker to make points. Trump asked Cuomo if he'd seen the 'Bikers for Trump' rally that had just happened. He asked how Cuomo's mother was doing. Cuomo sat back, letting him go on before interjecting to bring him back to a specific ask. He even brought the president a bottle of New York-branded hand sanitizer. 'They always did that charm dance with each other because they were Queens brawlers,' one Cuomo aide at the time told CNN. Trump asked Cuomo how 'our hospitals' back in Queens were doing. Eventually he agreed to the extra tests, but not extra disaster aid Cuomo wanted too. Trump offered to put Cuomo on the phone with the doctor who'd treated then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who had just recovered from coronavirus. On the way out, Cuomo and his retinue ran into Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, according to two people who saw the interaction. Cuomo asked about the disaster relief money, and when he heard it wasn't resolved, brought them back into the Oval Office. Trump, already back in his private dining room watching TV, came back in and agreed to the request. As they left, he gave Cuomo a few extra rapid testing machines they had in the White House for his own use. Cuomo aides convinced themselves that they were being strung along so that Trump would cajole Cuomo to join his own briefing that evening. Trump aides say that was never a possibility. They each did their own briefings after, Cuomo when he returned to New York. Two days after George Floyd was killed, Cuomo was back in the Oval Office. He wanted to get Trump thinking that more federal money for infrastructure projects could 'supercharge' the projects while giving Trump potential accomplishments for an ongoing re-election campaign that appealed to him personally and politically. The meeting did not go well – Trump came in incensed that the New York attorney general had subpoenaed his children and was convinced that Cuomo had orchestrated it, according to top Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa, who detailed the encounter in her book, 'What's Left Unsaid: My Life at the Center of Power, Politics & Crisis.' But afterward, Cuomo went a few blocks over to the National Press Club in Washington and said it was a 'good conversation.' 'The president is from New York, so he has a context for all these things we're talking about,' Cuomo said. The money never arrived. They talked more when the summer of protests sparked by Floyd's murder began to grow violent in New York. Though things were never as intense there as in other parts of the country, Cuomo responded with a stronger hand than his rival, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio, pushing de Blasio to establish a curfew, moving to send in state police and openly considering sending in the National Guard himself. A few weeks later, Trump was dangling the threat to send troops into more cities. Cuomo called him and told him not to. Trump told him to stop criticizing him publicly. Cuomo backed off. The troops never came. The relationship dissolved again later that summer, when Trump was furious about Cuomo's recorded speech to the Democratic National Convention. Far from the famous rallying keynote Mario Cuomo delivered against Ronald Reagan in 1984, it was still a call to action, and a call to kick out 'a dysfunctional and incompetent' Trump. The president spent the night tweeting furiously about 'the horrible governor.' Since Trump moved troops into Los Angeles two weeks ago to quell protests over immigration enforcement, Cuomo has repeatedly said that Trump didn't do that when he was governor and wouldn't do it if he were mayor. Trump aides question both claims, but Cuomo does have the 2020 parallel to point to. Trump has made clear he wants the operations in Los Angeles to be the first in a series of moves into blue cities. Cuomo has spent the closing weeks of his campaign leaning heavily into anti-Trump talk and warning about repeats of Los Angeles in TV ads, in mailed materials and in comments on the trail. Last month, when word leaked that the Department of Justice was stepping up its investigation into him for possible perjury in congressional testimony over his handling of Covid-19, he linked himself to other Democratic politicians the president has targeted. 'We know Mr. Trump, because this is Trump II. I was there for Trump I,' Cuomo boasted on Thursday at a stop. 'Don't ever forget that we beat Trump once. We're gonna beat him again.' Cuomo's opponents, meanwhile, have said he wouldn't stand up enough, and 'I think New Yorkers are hungry for a different kind of politics,' progressive challenger Zohran Mamdani began one campaign video standing outside of Trump Tower, drawing comparisons between the two of them. Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who is seeking reelection as an independent, and others say Cuomo is only running for to line himself up for Trump's current job in 2028. Cuomo, in turns, says his rivals aren't tough enough and recently suggested Trump would cut through Mamdani, a 33-year-old state assemblyman, 'like a hot knife through butter.' He argues repeatedly that his experience is a main reason to elect him. The president was asked in April about Cuomo. Aboard Air Force One, Trump claimed credit for helping New York during the pandemic before offering an apt summary of their relationship. 'I've always gotten along with him,' Trump said. 'We've had our ins and outs a little bit.'