Good morning. It's May 14th. It is a bright and warming morning in New York City. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. On the front page of this morning's New York Times, underneath a wrapper section, advertising whiskey. Now that they only use plastic bags on the rainiest of days, those wrappers are a nice little protective layer when they do.

to come between the actual front page and whatever is on the stoop. Anyway, on the front page of the Times, the weed story is about Michael Cohen's testimony at Donald Trump's Manhattan criminal trial for business fraud. There didn't seem to be any real twists involved, as the president's former fixer told the same story of fixing that was widely reported before anyone even got around to making this criminal case out of it.

Just another one of those days where the big thing that happened gets covered as such, even though it all happened more or less as expected. Next to that, in dialogue with the news of Trump's criminal trial, is new polls find Trump in lead in swing states. The story is front -loaded with the most alarming version of the poll possible, going with registered voters, among whom the poll found Biden trailing badly.

in five out of six battleground states. Switching over to likely voters, Biden was still behind in five of six, but ahead in Michigan and close in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, which the Times notes would be a set of three states that Biden could win with if he also wins in the non -battleground states that he won in 2020. Down below those at the bottom of the page is a look at West Virginia Governor Jim Justice as he prepares to run for Senate.

and as a host of allegedly unpaid creditors close in on his business fortune. In Trumpian fashion, he's reportedly defaulted on so many things that his creditors are fighting among one another. Among the liabilities of the times' rights are more than $300 million in defaulted loans to a Virginia bank, millions of dollars in liens for unpaid West Virginia taxes, and tens of millions of dollars in an unpaid judgment in Kentucky. The West Virginia primary is today.

And a glance at the 538 polling page shows Justice more or less doubling up on the competition. Above the jump on the Justice story, on page A14 is a look at the violence unleashed on the Dartmouth campus by President Sian Lee Bailock when she decided to immediately call in heavy police against a nonviolent protest encampment as soon as it was set up. The Times writes, as the police arrested student protesters at Dartmouth College,

A 65 year old professor ended up on the ground. Two student journalists reporting that night ended up arrested themselves and a bystander visiting his father who lives near Dartmouth College found himself with a fractured shoulder. The story goes on to note, Dr. Bailock, a cognitive scientist who studies why people choke under pressure has been facing a campus uproar ever since. Extremely good sentence there. Meanwhile, the incumbent at Cornell after being left alone by the administration.

shut down and packed up without incident. The University of Wisconsin -Milwaukee likewise shut down its camp after coming to an agreement with the administration. The Times reports, under the agreement with the group of protesters, known as the UWM, Popular University for Palestine Coalition, the university pledged to join calls for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas to announce the destruction by Israeli forces of schools and universities in Gaza.

and meet with protest leaders over their concerns about university investments. Imagine that. People protest. You talk to them about what they're protesting. The protest is resolved. That is the news. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe to Indignity to keep us going. And if all goes well, we will talk again tomorrow.