Trump’s Liability

Happy Thursday! You may not have enjoyed his performance as much as we did, but you have to admit it made for some riveting television at 8 p.m. last night—and he certainly seemed to have his mojo back.

Seriously: Just look at this go-ahead home run from Cubs third baseman Patrick Wisdom to take the lead over the lowly St. Louis Cardinals.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• Federal prosecutors arraigned GOP Rep. George Santos of New York Wednesday on 13 federal charges including money laundering, wire fraud, theft of public funds, and making false statements to the House of Representatives. Most of the charges stem from Santos’ solicitation of at least $50,000 in campaign donations, which prosecutors allege he spent on personal expenses including designer clothing. The congressman also allegedly collected more than $24,000 in unemployment payments in 2020 while earning $120,000 a year working for an investment company. Santos pleaded not guilty to all charges Wednesday and was released on $500,000 bail. He told reporters he will not resign from his seat and plans to run for reelection next year, but House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said he will not back his bid.
• Republicans on the House Oversight Committee released a memo Wednesday accusing members of Joe Biden’s family—including his brother James and son Hunter—of influence peddling during his vice presidency by creating more than 20 shell companies to conceal more than $10 million in payments from foreign nationals to the family, business associates, and related companies. The Oversight probe has yet to directly link President Biden to the activity himself.
• NBC News reported Wednesday that the Biden administration plans to release migrants caught crossing the border into the United States without court dates or a way to track them. Border enforcement and processing resources are at capacity amid record border crossings this week—including 11,000 on Tuesday alone—as the administration’s power under Title 42 to quickly turn away asylum seekers ends today.
• The Consumer Price Index rose 0.4 percent month-over-month and 4.9 percent annually in April, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. The figures represent a shift from 0.1 percent and 5 percent, respectively, in March, and came in lower than economists’ expectations. Despite the monthly acceleration, the annual decrease could encourage the Federal Reserve to pause its rate-hike campaign at the central bank’s next meeting in June.
• Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters yesterday he opposes GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s hold on more than 180 military promotions. Tuberville has blocked the nominations in protest of the Department of Defense’s post-Dobbs decision to offer administrative leave and pay travel costs for female service members and qualifying dependents seeking abortions. 
• A U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel voted Wednesday to endorse allowing birth control pills to be sold over the counter. The agency is expected to decide on final approval of the panel’s recommendation sometime this summer. 

Jury Rules for Carroll

About a quarter century ago, according to writer E. Jean Carroll, Donald Trump pinned Carroll against a wall in the changing area of a Bergdorf Goodman luxury department store in Manhattan, pulled down her tights, and sexually assaulted her.

Trump denies this claim, but on Tuesday a jury largely sided with Carroll, concluding the former president is liable for sexual abuse and subsequent defamation and ordering him to pay Carroll about $5 million. He’ll likely appeal—and he’s already issued more denials—but the verdict adds to an ever-growing stack of legal troubles and ethical baggage that have the potential to make him unelectable in a general election. But given the Republican Party’s tepid response over the past two days, it’s far from clear Trump’s standing in the GOP presidential primary will take a hit.

Prigozhin Picks A Fight

On Wednesday, the French National Assembly called on the European Union to designate the Russian paramilitary Wagner Group as a terrorist organization. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the group’s leader, responded in the measured and thoughtful way you’d expect from a brutal mercenary. “We can pull out rotten teeth from those bad mouths with pliers,” Prigozhin said on Telegram. “We can pull out [French President Emmanuel] Macron’s teeth and, generally, everyone’s teeth who spill pathogenic filth [about Wagner].”

Prigozhin’s been on a roll lately. Since Thursday, he’s made a series of increasingly inflammatory statements about the failures of the Russian military’s top brass, deepening an ongoing feud between the Wagner Group and the defense ministry and exposing cracks in the Russian war effort. 

In a graphic, expletive-laden video posted to the messaging platform Telegram last Thursday, Prigozhin stood in front of a pile of dead bodies he claimed were his men. He accused Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the military’s chief of staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov—with some basis, it’s been reported—of refusing to provide sufficient ammunition, and argued they were personally responsible for the Wagner casualties. “They came here as volunteers and are dying so you can sit like fat cats in your luxury offices,” he said. 

In a second video posted Friday, he doubled down. “The dead and wounded—and that’s tens of thousands of men—lie on the conscience of those who did not give us ammunition,” Prigozhin said, dressed in fatigues while in front of several men in combat gear and carrying weapons. “And this is Defense Minister Shoigu and this is Chief of the General Staff Gerasimov.” Then, he gave the defense ministry an ultimatum: Provide the necessary ammunition or he would pull his mercenaries out of the embattled eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut by May 10. 

Two days later, he said his troops would stay, suggesting in another video the military had acceded to his demands of more ammunition and operational freedom. But as Victory Day celebrations commemorating the end of World War II kicked off in Moscow Tuesday, Prigozhin claimed in yet another video the defense ministry had “simply and brazenly deceived us” by failing to send additional ammunition and threatening him with treason charges should he order his men out of Bakhmut. 

The dizzying back-and-forth could have serious implications for Russia’s success in Ukraine. Prigozhin became the Kremlin’s golden child when Wagner stepped in to ramp up the war effort in Bakhmut last fall as Russian regular troops faltered elsewhere, even retreating from the port city of Kherson. The fight in Bakhmut has now ground to a stalemate, though, and reports yesterday indicated the Ukrainians may have regained some ground in the industrial city. 

If Prigozhin followed through on his threat to turn tail (as he accused the Russian military of doing in one of his numerous video screeds), the battlefield adjustments necessary to continue fighting for Bakhmut would spell trouble for Moscow. “[The Russians] could deploy some units from other directions that are currently prioritizing defensive postures, but it could be an issue for their defensive operations theater-wide,” Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russia analyst with the Institute for the Study of War, told TMD. “Russia has been so set on winning Bakhmut, it’s almost like an incarnational victory for them. I don’t think that they would back out from the capture of Bakhmut at this point, given that it would be such a big information space failure for them.”

But for now, it seems as though Prigozhin and his men will remain in Bakhmut. A spokesperson for Ukrainian military intelligence suggested the public kerfuffle was meant to shift the blame to Moscow for Wagner’s failure to take the embattled Ukrainian city by Victory Day. It may have also been a way to strongarm the military into coughing up additional arms—a risky and apparently failed gamble. 

“Prigozhin likely anticipated he could scare the Russian Ministry of Defense into obliging and giving him all the resources that he was asking for, but they did not do that,” Stepanenko said, noting they denied his requests and threatened him with treason charges. “The Russian Ministry of Defense played an ‘Uno Reverse’ on him.” 

Worth Your Time

• Artificial intelligence researchers have taken the first steps toward mindreading. Should they? Writing for Bloomberg, F.D. Flam explores the promise, the peril, and the perplexing questions for a world where human thought can be decoded. “The lead researcher on the project, computational neuroscientist Alexander Huth, called his team’s sudden success with using noninvasive functional magnetic resonance imaging to decode thoughts ‘kind of terrifying,’” writes Flam. “And yet their advance opens prospects that are both scary and enticing: A better understanding of the workings of our brains, a new window into mental illness, and maybe a way for us to know our own minds. Balanced against that is the concern that one day such technology may not require an individual’s consent, allowing it to invade the last refuge of human privacy.”
• Consider this Washington Post piece—a collection of writers sharing their favorite parts of having kids—an early reminder that Mother’s Day is this weekend. “Children are unashamed of their big feelings and enormous capacity to love,” Leah Libresco Sargeant writes. “When I travel around on our Bunch Bike with my 3-year-old and 1-year-old, I call out hellos to neighbors, to our parish church, to a particularly beautiful tree. People might think I’m doing it to entertain the girls, but I love how taking care of small kids is a permission slip for me to take more joy, louder joy in the givenness of the world.” Hannah Grieco, meanwhile, recounts a long night waking up on the sofa after taking care of a sick 7-year-old: “It was 5 a.m., and my 3-year-old was holding my hand and kissing each fingertip one at a time. I asked her why she was up so early, and she said, ‘I couldn’t sleep because I just needed to love my mommy.’ And she crawled into my arms. I was so tired, and she was so beautiful.”

Presented Without Comment 

Mediaite: Pro-Trump Pundit Tests Out New Attack: ‘No One Would’ve Stormed the Capitol for Ron DeSantis’

Also Presented Without Comment 

The Drinks Business: U.S. Bud Light Sales Down 21.4 Percent Following Dylan Mulvaney Endorsement

Also Also Presented Without Comment 

ESPN: [West Virginia Basketball Coach] Bob Huggins Takes $1M Salary Reduction for Anti-Gay Slur

Toeing the Company Line

• In the newsletters: The Dispatch Politics crew outlines the efforts of pro-choice groups to ensure abortion is on the ballot in Republican states, Scott explains (🔒) how reforming our immigration policies to attract more skilled labor could give America a competitive edge over China, Jonah explores (🔒) narratives surrounding Jordan Neely and Trump, and Nick breaks down (🔒) the depressing Republican response to the verdict in Carroll trial.
• On the podcasts: Jonah and Steve talk with former Buzzfeed editor-in-chief and Semafor co-founder Ben Smith about the media landscape and his new book, and Sarah and David discuss Carroll’s case against Trump.
• On the site: Geoffrey Cain looks at Microsoft’s artificial intelligence double standard and Gary Schmitt argues that character counts in the 2024 presidential election.

Let Us Know

Did you follow the latest Trump legal battle? Were you surprised by the decision?