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April 1, 2022
This week, we looked at Thursday's historic indictment of former President Donald Trump. Plus: President Biden pushes for an assault weapons ban and the conspiracy trial of former Fugees musician Pras Michel begins.
The Big Picture: Indicted
ESA/NASA via Getty Images
There’s that moment when you’re on the beach, it’s beautiful out, but something feels off. Something is brewing, then it starts to get windy and lightly rains a little.
We are heading into a more turbulent time in the presidential primary over the next several months, and the Republican front-runner for the nomination, former President Donald Trump, was just hit with an indictment related to hush money payments made to allegedly cover up an affair Trump was having before the 2016 presidential election.
A grand jury voted to indict, and Trump is likely to face those charges Tuesday at an arraignment hearing in New York. We’re not likely to see Trump in handcuffs or frogmarched into a courtroom, like the kind of AI-generated photos that went viral earlier.
Trump is the first former president in U.S. history to face charges, and it’s possible it won’t be the last indictment or the most serious charges he could face. So far, Republicans have unified behind Trump, and his base has bought it.
But, as the GOP primary becomes more intense and candidates running against Trump become more desperate, there may come a moment when one or several start to become more vocally critical of Trump. None of them, though, want to be the first – because there’s no guarantee it will work, and they don’t want to hand the nomination to Trump or someone other than themselves.
That leaves them in a very tricky position, as the clock ticks on the primary and Trump is in an ever-stronger position.
Biden pushes assault weapon ban: The president called on Congress to ban assault weapons after a school shooting in Nashville, Tenn., left three students and three staff members dead earlier this week. The shooter, who was killed by police, legally bought the weapons used in the attack.
1,000+ insurrectionists charged: The Justice Department has so far charged over 1,000 people for their roles in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Judges hearing the cases have emphasized that being “sucked into a vortex of misinformation” doesn’t excuse an individual’s crimes.
Senate votes to repeal Iraq War AUMFs: The Senate voted 66-30 Wednesday to formally repeal two war authorizations against Iraq from 1991 and 2003. House Speak Kevin McCarthy has signaled the House Foreign Affairs Committee would hold its own markup on a bill before it gets to the floor.
NPR's Scott Detrow, Domenico Montanaro, Carrie Johnson and Susan Davis consider how American politics will change now that a former president is facing criminal prosecution for the first time in U.S. history. Listen to the episode.
The Shot: The 'Ghost villages' of the Himalayas
Raksha Kumar/NPR
NPR’s Raksha Kumar traveled to India to report on how “ghost villages” of the Himalayas are changing the country. There are approximately 1,200 of these nearly villages, which have 10 or so people inhabiting them, in northern India. But at least 1,000 of those villages have been completely abandoned since the latest census in 2011, Kumar reports.
Residents, many of whom are farmers, have moved to cities over the years to provide better lives for their children, Kumar writes. But with the villages younger members leaving for good, elders struggle to maintain the land and their way of life.
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