In the American justice system, those accused of criminal conduct are presumed innocent until proved guilty and convicted by a jury of their peers. Yet many people might be surprised to learn that some federal defendants are punished for charges that they were actually acquitted of.

During arguments Tuesday, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit expressed appropriate skepticism about Donald Trump’s claim of immunity from charges that he attempted to overturn the 2020 election. But what happened afterward may have been even worse for Trump than the hearing itself: The former president refused to rule out violence if the appeals court’s decision goes against him, as he appears to think it will.

When doom and gloom drive headlines, it’s easy to think that 2023 was a year of nothing but conflict and chaos. But for animals, who endure so much suffering at the hands of humans, the year just past brought many positive changes.

Nikki Haley, former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, represents the Republican Party’s best hope to vanquish Donald Trump. While many foes and pundits have piled on Haley for her recent Civil War-slavery “gaffe,” the reality is in the Republican primary, voters are unlikely to punish her considering the overall party’s recent crusades against subjects like “critical race theory.”

As we enter a presidential election year, pundits are focused on the incessant drama — criminal and otherwise — swirling around a potential rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. But there’s more at stake — in particular, the U.S. Senate.

In recent weeks, Congress has stripped a senator of his committee chairmanship pending a bribery investigation, expelled a House member for egregious frauds, and fired a staffer for making a sex tape in a committee room — all for the good, given the embarrassment each has brought on the institution. But there are deeper ethics challenges facing Congress, as the case of Representative Elise Stefanik shows.

Tax rates do matter. Consider the financial implications of baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani’s new contract.

Nearly two years ago, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine unified European nations, reinvigorated the trans-Atlantic alliance and forged a spirit of rare bipartisanship in Washington. Now that resolve is fraying. President Joe Biden’s administration and the European Union are struggling to deliver aid for Ukraine’s military and budget, with even some of the country’s staunchest supporters expressing doubts about its battlefield prospects and calling for negotiations to end the war.

I was stunned by the early morning headline that appeared in my email. According to The New York Times, Israeli officials had known about Hamas’ plan for more than a year before it launched its Oct. 7 attacks.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is up to it again, signing an unlawful new state law to make crossing into the country illegally a state misdemeanor. We don’t expect it to last much beyond when the ink has dried.

I went hunting once—on a friend’s farm in southwest Georgia. Some 50 years after I fired into a squirrel’s nest, I recall the shock of seeing them plummet lifelessly to the ground as vividly as if it were only a moment ago. I’m thinking about it now.

In this space we do the talking, about what the Daily News deems important and worthy. But today we are giving a good chunk of our space to Secretary of State Tony Blinken. America’s top diplomat gave his year-end press conference Wednesday before he left for another trip to the Mideast for the Israel-Hamas war that the terror gang launched from Gaza on Oct. 7.

Once again, the U.S. Supreme Court finds itself at the center of a national case involving access to abortion, this time around the drug mifepristone, which along with misoprostol forms part of the regimen for a so-called medication abortion. Its ruling is expected in June, and that ruling should be clear, if only to help clean up the mess it created with its overturning of Roe v. Wade a year and a half ago.