Author: openjargon

• President Joe Biden's campaign broke his silence on Thursday about Trump's Manhattan trial verdict.
• Biden and his campaign had been mostly mum about Trump's historic trial.
• The verdict marks a major moment ahead of a brutal fall campaign season.

President Joe Biden on Thursday was mostly muted in responding to the historic news that his predecessor is now the first American president to be convicted of a felony.

The White House offered a perfunctory statement to reporters but otherwise avoided the sweeping presidential statement that some had hoped Biden would issue once the verdict in former President Donald Trump's Manhattan criminal trial was in.

"We respect the rule of law, and have no additional comment," White House Counsel's Office spokesperson Ian Sams said in a statement to the White House press pool.

On the other hand, Biden's campaign showed that it may increasingly lean into the reality that one of the two major parties will put forward a convicted felon as its nominee.

"Donald Trump has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain," Michael Tyler, a spokesperson for the Biden campaign, said in a statement. "But today's verdict does not change the fact that the American people face a simple reality. There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box. Convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president."

Minutes after a Manhattan jury delivered 34 guilty charges against Trump, Biden's campaign posted a fundraising link on X urging people to donate to the incumbent Democrat.

"There's only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: At the ballot box," the post said.

The president's campaign stressed the heightened "threat" they say Trump poses to American democracy.

"He is running an increasingly unhinged campaign of revenge and retribution, pledging to be a dictator 'on day one' and calling for our Constitution to be 'terminated' so he can regain and keep power," the spokesperson said. "A second Trump term means chaos, ripping away Americans' freedoms and fomenting political violence — and the American people will reject it this November."

Biden had previously been reticent to comment directly on Trump's legal struggles, even though the former president's criminal indictments have shaped the course of the 2024 race. Politico reported that last year, Biden directed the White House, the Democratic National Committee, and his reelection campaign to largely avoid commenting on Trump's legal cases.

"I've had a great stretch since the State of the Union. But Donald has had a few tough days lately. You might call it stormy weather, Biden said during the White House Correspondents' Dinner, one of the few oblique the president has made to Trump's trial.

In recent days, Biden's campaign has signaled that deference to the justice system is shifting. The president's reelection campaign literally went there, hosting a news conference right outside the Manhattan courthouse. Biden's campaign tapped actor Robert De Niro and two Capitol police officers to speak to reporters, but none of them directly referenced the historic trial taking place behind them.

"We're not here today because of what's going on over there," Biden campaign communication director Michael Tyler told reporters, according to the Associated Press. "We're here today because you all are here."

Biden's campaign also started selling a "Free on Wednesdays" shirt when the president outlined his plan for general election debates, referencing the trial's weekly day off. Trump was required to be present for his trial, which limited his ability to campaign during the week.

Trump's legal issues have overshadowed the 2024 race. Top Republicans began rallying around Trump following the FBI's August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago and never really stopped as local and federal prosecutors ultimately unveiled four criminal indictments against him. Trump and his campaign also embraced his image as a criminal outlaw, hawking merchandise with his Fulton County, Georgia, mugshot.

But the general election raises new potential risks for Trump. Polling shows voters don't agree with Trump's claim that the trial is a sham. Voters have also responded that they believe Trump did something wrong.

The verdict comes just weeks before Trump and Biden square off in history's earliest televised major presidential debate. It is almost certain that Trump's legal issues will come up again there.

• A jury found Donald Trump guilty of all 34 felony counts in the New York hush-money trial.
• The judge scheduled Trump's sentencing hearing for July 11.
• But it could take months, maybe over a year, until Trump faces any consequences, legal expert says.

A Manhattan jury found Donald Trump guilty of all 34 felony counts in the hush-money criminal trial concerning a clandestine payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.

What comes next? Delays, delays, delays.

The judge, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, set Trump's sentencing hearing for July 11 at 11 a.m. ET.

In that hearing, Trump could face up to a four-year prison sentence for each count.

But don't expect Trump to face any of those consequences before the election.

It will likely be months, maybe even more than a year, before the former president needs to address them, Alex Reinert, a criminal and constitutional law expert from Cardozo School of Law, told Business Insider.

"I think we can expect months, a year, more than a year of potential delays," Reinert said. "It's hard to predict at the outset, but it's going to take some time."

The main reason for delays is because Trump's defense team can be expected to appeal the jury's decision. And there's a number of reasons they can seek to fight the verdict, Reinert said.

The attorneys can raise issues with the jury instructions that were given by Justice Merchan, evidentiary issues, or even challenge whether the Manhattan District Attorney's office attempted to use New York state law to prosecute a federal campaign violation, Reinert said.

"I don't know if any of these arguments will ultimately have merit, but I think these are all potential," he said.

With an appeal, which can come after Trump's sentencing, Reinert said it's almost certain that any sentence will be stayed pending the appeal, meaning Trump won't have to face the consequences until the appeal is resolved.

Reinert added that there are plenty of people who are sitting in prison today as they wait on the status of their appeal but that's highly unlikely to happen given the nature of the crime and who the defendant is: a former and running president.

"I'd be shocked if that happens here," Reinert said. "Shocked because of who the defendant is, and I think there's a tendency to treat crimes like this differently than crimes of violence."

• The Constitution doesn't stop candidates from running for president while serving jail time.
• Two previous candidates, Eugene V. Debs in 1920, and Lyndon LaRouche in 1992, both ran from prison.
• If Trump is convicted, it's still possible he could run for president from behind bars.

Former President Donald Trump was found guilty on Thursday of all 34 criminal counts related to a hush-money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels. It's the first time a former president has been convicted of a felony. With sentencing scheduled for July 11, Trump could face prison time. But as the presumptive Republican nominee in the 2024 presidential race, could Trump still run for office from behind bars?

Legal experts told Insider there's nothing in the Constitution preventing him from doing just that.

Michael Gerhardt, a constitutional law professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill, said: "If he happens to be in prison at the time of the next presidential election, the fact that he's in prison will not prevent him from running."

Running for president from jail isn't exactly unprecedented — it's been done twice before.

Socialist Eugene V. Debs ran from behind bars over 100 years ago

In 1920, Socialist Eugene V. Debs ran for the Oval Office from the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, where he was known as "prisoner 9653," according to Smithsonian Magazine. Debs was a so-called "radical" at the time, decrying capitalism and the World War I draft. The latter got him locked up, but Debs earned plenty of supporters during his imprisonment. He had also run for president on the Social Party ticket five prior times, often campaigning what historians attributed as more a symbolic race. 

On election night in 1920, Debs didn't make a speech, and instead, he wrote a statement, the Washington Post reported.

"I thank the capitalist masters for putting me here," he wrote, according to The Post. "They know where I belong under their criminal and corrupting system. It is the only compliment they could pay me." 

Debs ended up earning about 3.5% of the national vote for president, Smithsonian Magazine reported. 

Fringe candidate Lyndon LaRouche tried for the Democratic Party nomination and then switched tickets

Over 70 years later, another convicted candidate ran for the president from jail: political fringe and conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche.

LaRouche was no stranger to campaigning — he ran in every election from 1976 to 2004 — but his 1992 campaign from federal prison garnered particular attention.

USA Today reported in 2019 that in the lead-up to the 1992 election, LaRouche was behind bars serving a 15-year sentence for committing mail fraud and campaign fraud conspiracy, the latter involving $30 million in loans from supporters that prosecutors said LaRouche had never attempted to repay. But that didn't stop him from seeking out the Democratic Party nomination.

When Bill Clinton won the primary, LaRouche switched to the National Economic Recovery ticket, campaigning on overhauling the world's financial and baking systems. He ultimately received over 26,000 votes in the election, about 0.02% of the popular vote. 

Beyond his economic viewpoints, LaRouche's other beliefs often played into conspiracy theories and apocalyptic visions about the world, Reuters reported in 2019. He had a variety of confounding views of the AIDS crisis —including that it was first spread by the International Monetary Fund — and believed the Holocaust was "mythical," Reuters and USA Today reported.

What would it look like for Trump to campaign from prison?

While Debs and LaRouche were both unsuccessful in their campaigns, they were still able to run for president while behind bars. Their supporters, running mates, and parties spread the word, bolstering their messages when they couldn't.

And support for Trump, who announced his 2024 campaign late last year, is still surging. Recent polling puts him well ahead of his GOP rivals, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. 

But how Trump navigates his bolstering legal challenges could determine how successful his campaign is. 

Earlier this year, Trump was charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a 2016 payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels. Months of witness testimonies to a New York grand jury, including some by Trump's former fixer Michael Cohen, spoke to the decade-long timeline between Trump, Daniels, and the $130,000 payment he said was made ahead of the 2016 election. 

And in the past few months, Trump was hit with an initial and superseding indictment in Miami related to his handling of classified documents. In June, the Justice Department's special counsel Jack Smith brought 37 counts against him, and according to the indictment, accused Trump of violating the Espionage Act 31 times by illegally holding onto sensitive national security documents, conspiring to obstruct justice, lying to law enforcement, and violating three different statutes related to withholding and concealing government records. 

Then, in late July, a superseding indictment added three additional charges against Trump. 

And just Monday, Fulton County DA Willis hit Trump with his greatest legal threat yet, with Georgia prosecutors alleging he and 18 other defendants plotted to overturn the state's 2020 presidential election results. In particular, the most significant of the 28 charges against the former president are under the Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act, which carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. 

In all of these cases, the timeline for a trial isn't entirely clear, and it's possible they could occur after the 2024 election. 

But if convicted, Trump "would be subject to the same rules as other prisoners, which could restrict their communications and ability to appear at events," Barbara McQuade, a law professor at the University of Michigan and a former US attorney, previously told Insider. "He would need to rely on proxies to campaign for him." 

But he could still run. And, if he wins the nomination and the presidency in 2024, Trump may well test a presidential power that's never been needed before: a self-pardon.

The term "Asian American" was first coined in 1968 amid the rising voices of the Third World Liberation Front student movements in California.

With tensions from protests against the Vietnam War and calls for universities to invest in ethnic studies programs, the Asian American identity was born out of advocacy for multiethnic unity among the Asian diaspora. The new identity also became a form of resistance against the otherness of being labeled as "Orientals" and fighting back against US imperialism in Asia.

Historical photographs showcase the history of Asian American resistance movements from the 1960s to the 1980s, demonstrating the strength and resilience of the Asian American community among tenants, students, and laborers.

The impassioned fight for justice depicted in the photos contrasts the societal stereotype of the obedient and subservient Asian. They also remind us of the civil rights and labor rights won by Asian Americans with the sheer power of the collective.

Delano Grape Strike (1965)

One of the most important labor movements in US history was the Delano Grape Strike, a collaborative effort between Filipino American and Mexican American farm workers in California.

On September 8, 1965, Filipino-American farm workers, members of the Agricultural Labor Organizing Committee, walked out and declared a strike against Delano-area table and wine grape growers in Bakersfield, California.

They demanded a raise in their hourly wage from $1.25 to $1.40 and in the pay rate per packed box of grapes from 10 cents a box to 25 cents.

Labor organizers of the Agricultural Labor Organizing Committee enlisted the help of the National Farm Workers Association, and in 1966, the two unions merged to form the United Farm Workers.

For the next five years, Filipino and Mexican American workers continued to strike for economic justice for all farm workers.

In his statement before the US Senate Subcommittee on Migratory Labor in 1966, Cesar Chavez, a labor organizer with the National Farm Workers Association, said the "whole system of occupational discrimination must be killed just like the discrimination against people of color is being challenged in Washington."

"This, and nothing more, is what farmworkers want," Chavez added.

Third World Liberation Front Strikes (1968)

The Third World Liberation Front strikes ignited the first Asian American activist movement.

Held at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1968, the five-month strike was led by a coalition of student groups demanding ethnic-focused courses be added to the university's curriculum.

Though initiated by the Black Student Union, the coalition was made up of African-American, Asian-American, Latin-American, and Native-American students. These students were unified not only through their shared colonial and imperial struggles across Asia, Africa, and Latin America but also their experiences as people of color in a predominantly white, Eurocentric institution.

During the strikes, the students conducted large rallies, teach-ins, sit-ins, and picketing on the campus. In response, the university called the police, and riot squads began mass arrests of students.

The same year, Yuji Ichioka and Emma Gee, both graduate students and key organizers of the Asian American Political Alliance, coined the term "Asian American." This term was created to "unify Asian ethnicities together based on their shared experiences under Orientalist US racism."

In 1969, the first Asian American studies curricula were established at the UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Protests Against the I-Hotel Evictions (1977)

International Hotel, or I-Hotel, in San Francisco's Kearny Street was a residential hotel for older Filipino and Chinese people, immigrant workers, and families who had been there since they immigrated in the 1920s.

With real estate development rapidly growing in the late 1970s, what was once a 10-block stretch of Manilatown was reduced to a single block anchored by I-Hotel.

At 3 a.m. on August 4, 1977, the San Francisco police went in and staged a mass eviction of the I-Hotel residents. At least 3,000 residents confronted 400 riot-geared police outside the building. Over 100 tenants and supporters barricaded themselves inside the building. Police broke into the windows of apartments and removed the remaining older tenants.

With the last vestige of Manilatown destroyed after the building was demolished in 1979, community members and supporters of the former I-Hotel residents continued to resist local real estate developers. Organizations such as the Chinatown Community Development Center and the Manilatown Heritage Foundation formed as a result of the community's efforts to fulfill social needs and fight for grassroots housing for their fellow residents.

Garment Worker Strikes (1982)

One of the largest protests in New York City's Chinatown history took place in 1982 when 20,000 garment workers went on strike.

Whispers of striking spread among the workers, predominantly young Chinese immigrant women. They no longer tolerated the low wages, little to no benefits, dangerous working conditions, and long hours.

In late June, they crowded Columbus Park and made their demands, and their employers signed the new International Ladies Garment Workers Union contract. With the help of city councilmen, local businesses, and community advocates, the garment shop employers began to sign the contract. They managed to get the signatures of every manufacturer by mid-afternoon.

Despite the swiftness and scale of the strike, May Chen, one of the ILGWU strike organizers, said she believes the strike's success remained "invisible up to the millennium" given the limited media coverage on Asian American communities and issues at the time.

Conviction of Chol Soo Lee (1982)

Chol Soo Lee, a 21-year-old Korean immigrant, was wrongfully convicted of first-degree murder in 1974 after a local gang member, Yip Yee Tak, was shot to death in Chinatown.

After being misidentified by eyewitnesses, Lee was sentenced to life in prison.

K.W. Lee, founder of the Korean American Journalists Association, brought Lee's case to public attention. After investigating the case, he was convinced of Lee's innocence and began a series of writings advocating for his freedom.

This caught on with Asian Americans nationwide, and the "Free Chol Soo Lee Defense Committee" was created. The committee raised more than $120,000 to support Chol Soo's appeal of his initial murder conviction. The collective effort of Lee's supporters won him a retrial, which successfully led to the overturning of his murder conviction.

After spending a decade in prison, Lee spent the next 30 years working as a union organizer and advocate for the Asian American community.

"When you go through that kind of experience, and you see inhumane acts of violence … going through that brings out deeper humanity and compassion for other people," Lee said in a 2008 interview with Asian Week.

Murder of Vincent Chin (1982)

On the night of his bachelor party on November 2, 1983, Vincent Chin, then 27, was brutally beaten to death by two white men in Detroit.

Chin, who was Chinese-American, was targeted by the men who blamed Asians for job losses in the American auto industry amid the success of Japanese automakers.

Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz denied the attack was racially motivated and were charged with manslaughter after pleading to a second-degree murder charge. They left with three years of probation and a $3,000 fine and did not spend a single day in jail.

The judge presiding over the trial said Ebens and Nitz "aren't the kind of men you send to jail … You fit the punishment to the criminal, not the crime."

As a result of this sentencing, Asian Americans in Detroit protested the sentence and denounced the city's legal system. A second investigation was initiated by the Department of Justice and the FBI after mass mobilization.

In 1983, a federal grand jury ruled that the attack against Chin was racially motivated and found Ebens guilty, sentencing him to 25 years in prison.

Chin's murder contributed to the landmark passing of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which expanded federal civil rights protections to safeguard American minorities against hate crimes.

• Former President Donald Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts in New York.
• Now a convicted felon, he is also the presumptive Republican nominee for president in 2024.
• A presidential candidate can still run for office despite being convicted of a crime.

Donald Trump is now officially a convicted felon. But can he still become president? 

Short answer: Yes, according to the Constitution.

A New York jury convicted the former president on 34 felony counts on Thursday, reigniting a wave of questions about what it means for his 2024 presidential campaign.

A presidential candidate can, indeed, still run for office despite being convicted of a crime, according to the US Constitution. 

Article II of the constitution lays out the requirements for any presidential candidate: They must be at least 35 years of age, they must have resided in the US for at least 14 years, and they must be a natural-born US citizen.

The Constitution does not bar presidential candidates who have been charged or convicted of crimes.

In fact, the Constitution does not even disqualify presidential candidates who are incarcerated, legal experts previously told Insider.

Two presidential candidates — Eugene Debs in 1920 and Lyndon LaRouche in 1992 — ran for the Oval Office from behind bars, though neither won. Debs had been serving time in a federal prison for violating the Espionage Act, and LaRouche had been convicted of committing mail fraud and campaign fraud conspiracy.

The jury found Trump guilty on all 34 felony charges of falsifying business records ahead of the 2016 election to cover up an alleged affair with adult film star Stormy Daniels.

The jury's decision to convict Trump makes him the first former president in US history to be convicted of a felony. Trump has denied the affair and any wrongdoing, saying he's a "very innocent man" and that he's been targeted by his political foes.

• Costco still won't raise its membership fee, saying it's still a matter of when, not if.
• The wholesale club last raised fees in 2017, and about every five years before that.
• Membership fees represent more than half the company's operating income.

Costco is once again kicking the can on raising its membership fee.

"I would really kind of revert back to some of the comments that Richard shared previously," CFO Gary Millerchip told investors Thursday, referring to his predecessor, Richard Galanti, who said last year that a Costco membership fee increase would "happen at some point."

"There's nothing about anything that we see within how the business is performing that's changing our view on that," Millerchip said.

The wholesale club last raised fees in 2017, and analysts have noted that an increase is long overdue, based on the typical five- to six-year interval of prior hikes.

Because Costco sells merchandise at extremely low mark-ups, membership fees are a key way the company is able to turn a profit.

Costco reported nearly $1.1 billion in revenue from membership fees last quarter, representing more than half its operating income.

Costco now boasts nearly 134 million member cardholders, up 7.4% from a year ago, and said more than 90% of members renew each year.

The company has resisted a fee increase in favor of alternatives like encouraging entry-level members to upgrade and last year's Netflix-style crackdown on shoppers improperly sharing membership cards.

"It's something that is still a case of when we increase the fee, rather than if we increase the fee, but we're still evaluating those considerations to determine what the right timing is," Millerchip said.

In addition, a fee increase would put Costco's $60 basic Gold Star membership even more ahead of competitors BJ's Wholesale and Sam's Club, who charge $55 and $50, respectively.

• Trump's odds of going to jail for his 'hush-money' conviction are slim to none, experts said.
• "I do not see a scenario where Donald Trump spends one minute in jail," one defense attorney told Business Insider.
• It's more possible Trump could face a fine, community service, or probation, experts said.

The chances of Donald Trump spending any time behind bars after a jury found Trump guilty on all counts in his New York hush-money trial are slim to none, legal experts told Business Insider. 

The jury in Trump's historic trial found him guilty on Thursday of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up a $130,000 hush-money payment to adult film actor Stormy Daniels. A sentencing hearing is expected in July, and the president can still appeal the verdict.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg could technically seek to lock up Trump during sentencing, given that felony falsifying of business records allows a sentence of anywhere from zero jail time up to a maximum of four years in prison.

But first-time offenders virtually never go to jail for these kinds of non-violent, low-level felonies. Prosecutors can also ask for other penalties — including a hefty fine, community service, and probation.

"I can't say for absolute 100% certainty there can't be jail because on the books, he can go to jail," said high-profile defense attorney and former Brooklyn prosecutor Arthur Aidala.

But, Aidala said, "I do not see a scenario where Donald Trump spends one minute in jail."

Aidala and other defense attorneys told Business Insider that it is beyond rare for a defendant in New York to get locked up on a non-violent, first-offense, E-level felony. 

"In New York State and in particular New York County, it is extraordinarily rare for a 70-something-year-old man, first arrest, who was convicted of a low-level non-violent felony to be incarcerated," said Mark Bederow, a defense attorney and former prosecutor for the Manhattan district attorney's office.

But Bederow noted that there is "no comparison" to this "unprecedented" case as Trump — a frontrunner in the 2024 presidential election.

"If there was anyone who would be incarcerated over this type of crime, it would be an elected official," said former Manhattan prosecutor, Jeremy Saland, now a lawyer in private practice. "That said, to think for a moment that Trump is going to be incarcerated? That would shock me, for practical reasons and for reasons of allowing anger and divisiveness to fester."

Aidala said that Bragg — a Democrat who has instructed prosecutors in his office to only seek jail or prison time for the most serious of crimes — "would lose all credibility in the entire legal community" if his prosecutors sought to put Trump behind bars. 

"It would be so beyond normal," Aidala said. "It would fly in the face of everything that [Bragg's] doing in that office, which is to try and keep people out of jail."

Bederow predicted there would even be  Trump detractors who would speak out to say incarcerating him is "dangerous" and a "bad precedent."

Defense attorneys told Business Insider that besides jail time, prosecutors could try to impose a large fine, community service, or probation on the former president.

Aidala said if prosecutors "really want to embarrass" the former president "they may ask for community service."

Any kind of community service would likely be "private," so Trump couldn't be "out there cleaning a park or picking up garbage," Aidala said.