Jane Mayer, "Trump in the Crosshairs," The New Yorker, March 15, 2021. - Ruth Ben-Ghist, New York University historian, has said that "Trumpism isn't just about 'him.' It's a whole new way of being in the world. It's about secrecy, domination, trickery, and fraud." "Now he [Trump] is pitted against a D.A. who regards the law as the politically blind foundation of democracy."
Jane Mayer writes that Allen Weisselberg, who managed Trump's money for decades, will be a star witness; however, she also acknowledges that tax cases are "notoriously difficult to prosecute, because the details are dull and complicated; ignorance can be an effective defense." Mayer believes that prosecutors "will likely create a time line and compare it with various financial representations made by the Trump Organization, looking for inconsistencies."
District Attorney Cy Vance's office learned that condominium owners at the Trump SoHo believed that they had been cheated by Donald Trump's children, Donald Jr. and Ivanka, who were managing the project for the family business. The buyers alleged that the Trumps had lied to them by inflating the number of apartments they had sold, thereby misleading them into thinking the condominiums were better investments than they were.
Mary Trump, the daughter of Donald's brother, believes that her uncle had swindled her and other family members out of a fair share of the financial distribution of her grandfather's estate. Mary told Jane Mayer that "Vance let two of my cousins off the hook. If he hadn't, he may well have kept Donald from running for President when two of his children were indicted for fraud."
As for the argument that heads of state can't be prosecuted for what they did while in office, Anne Appelbaum, author of 'Twilight of Democracy', wrote that "it's not uncommon for heads of state to be prosecuted." She warned that the lesson for democracies under strain elsewhere around the world is that failing to lay down the law "is dangerous -- it creates long-tern feelings of impunity, and incentives for Trump and those around him to misbehave again!"
#Eliana Dockerman, Moms on a mission," TIME, March 29/April 5, 2021. - "Now, inconsistent monitoring of falsehoods by social media and a politically polarized atmosphere -- in addition to genuine confusion about the COVID-19 virus -- has created a perfect storm for vaccine hesitancy. The Center for Countering Digital Hate found that the 147 biggest anti-vaccine accounts on social media gained 7.8 million followers in 2020." Forty-four percent of white evangelical Americans, who make up a significant portion of epidemiologist Emily Smith's following, say they will not get the vaccine, according to a January Washington 'Post'-ABC poll. "In 2019, pre-COVID-19, 19.5% of children had a parent who reported being 'hesitant' about childhood shots, according to a study published in 'Pediatrics.' "
#Cady Lang, "Silent no more," TIME, March 29/April 5, 2021. - "The violence that has long targeted their community is rarely seen for what it is. Since the start of the pandemic last spring, Asian-Americans have faced racist violence at a much higher rate than in previous years. Stop AAPIHate, a reporting data-base created at the beginning of the pandemic as a response to the increase in racial violence, received 3,795 reports of anti-Asian discrimination between March 19, 2020, and February 28, 2021; women reported hate incidents at 2.3 times the rate of men's."
"A 2018 report from the American Psychological Association outlined the ways in which Asian-American women are exoticized and objectified as 'faceless, quiet, and invisible', or as sexual objects." "A 2018 study by the Pew Research Center found that Asian-Americans experience the largest income-inequality gap [among] ethnic and racial groups in the U.S."
ADDENDUM:
*"Vatican: No same-sex union blessings," TIME, March 29/April 5, 2021. - "While calling for LGBTQ people to be treated 'with respect and sensitivity,' the Vatican's doctrinal watchdog said on March 15 that Catholic priests cannot bless same-sex unions."
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