| A report from lower Manhattan, as the former President arrives to face charges.  Photograph by Drew Angerer / Getty Donald Trump will be arraigned today in a New York City courtroom, to face what is reported to be more than thirty felony counts. The case, brought by the Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, marks the first time that a former American President has been charged with a crime. Yesterday, our intrepid local correspondent Eric Lach was No. 5 in line for press passes for Trump’s arraignment, joining the queue outside of the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse around 2 P.M. This morning, after receiving one of the prized green tickets for a spot inside, he sent word from the scene, noting that the “city isn’t ‘bracing,’ ‘buzzing,’ or appearing ‘tensed’ for the Trump indictment. The mood in the little demonstration outside the courthouse in lower Manhattan is like an open-air job fair for a travelling carnival.” Lach reported seeing Trump supporters in costume, and some anti-Trump demonstrators “mingling and enjoying the attentions of the international press.” The Democratic congressman Jamaal Bowman, of New York, was chatting with reporters. The Republican representative George Santos appeared, and “nearly caused a stampede” before quickly departing. Just after 10:30, the Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, the self-appointed Trump defender-in-chief, showed up, giving what Lach described as a “five-minute speech through a megaphone that could barely be heard above the people whistling and shouting.” “She left,” Lach added, “pursued by cameras.” Yesterday, the former President travelled to Manhattan from Palm Beach—S.U.V. motorcade to Trump-branded airplane to S.U.V. motorcade to Trump-branded skyscraper—a journey breathlessly charted by all of the major cable news networks. Some called the coverage overkill, evidence of the press unlearning all the lessons about Trump overexposure that it had claimed to learn after January 6, 2021. But what was cable for, others noted, if not to capture every angle of the indictment of a former President? The staff writer Clare Malone has examined the media’s muddled motivations and responsibilities as we reënter the non-stop Trump news cycle. “It’s important to cover deviations from historical norms that Trump and others have made and will make,” Malone writes. “The challenge of covering Trump was that his entire Presidency was a deviation.” And so the deviation continues. | 
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