American presidents have traduced civil liberties, committed perjury, obstructed justice, and fostered corruption. They have acted in contempt of Congress, condoned arms smuggling and violated campaign-spending laws. They have committed and covered up crimes. But never before has anyone who occupied the country’s highest office – one who has sworn in public to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” – been criminally indicted.

With this presidential precedent shattered by the indictment of Donald Trump, American politics is entering uncharted waters, without buoys, day beacons, safe-water marks or fog signals.

Mariners and swimmers know that the Potomac River, which runs through Washington and defines the capital’s boundary on the left descending bank, is regarded as perhaps the most dangerous of navigable waters. Until now, presidents – who from Abraham Lincoln (who suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War) and Grover Cleveland (accused of rape) to John F. Kennedy (implicated in the assassination of a president of Vietnam) and Richard Nixon (who presided over the Watergate cover-up if not the crime itself) – have negotiated the strong underwater currents of one of the nation’s most fabled rivers. All of Mr. Trump’s 43 predecessors have avoided criminal indictment, none has been arrested, and most have even evaded serious threats to their reputations in the court of public opinion.

Mr. Trump, who signalled that he expected the dramatic development, has called on his supporters to undertake protests to “take our nation back,” a potentially incendiary prompt that was as an echo of his remarks minutes before the 2021 siege at the Capitol and that could lead to fresh dangerous street confrontations

He faces new, extraordinary and unparalleled legal threats even as he embarks on his third White House campaign, leads the race to win the Republican presidential nomination, and is a strong contender to become the first chief executive since Cleveland himself to win nonconsecutive presidential terms in next year’s general election.

The legal action against Mr. Trump comes in the face of long-standing custom that presidents are not charged with crimes; for generations, Americans have resisted criminalizing political behaviour, and in 1973, as the Watergate scandal was unfolding, an internal memo prepared by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Council argued that sitting presidents could not be indicted. A quarter century later, the independent counsel in the Bill Clinton imbroglio growing out of his affair with a White House intern decided to pass on the option of indicting the president.

Neither the Justice Department nor the Supreme Court has ruled on whether former presidents can legally face indictment. There are, moreover, no bars to an indicted or convicted individual becoming president or continuing to serve as president. The Constitution provides such a barrier only through impeachment in the House of Representatives and conviction in the Senate. Mr. Trump was impeached twice but was not convicted in either occasion.

Now Mr. Trump – and the country he led for four stormy years – must navigate waters that the former president already has roiled with his incendiary style, his devoutly loyal political base, and his quiet signals of approbation to his sliver of violence-prone vigilantes.

All this in a New York case that even Mr. Trump’s most ardent critics might concede is a peripheral crime, far less publicly consequential than encouraging the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection on Capitol Hill, seeking to overturn the 2020 election, or squirrelling away secret government documents at his Mar-a-Lago home.

Mr. Trump will be charged with involvement in a $130,000 hush-money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels, with whom he is alleged to have conducted a sexual affair – a relative misdemeanour, in the view of his opponents, after a presidency of felonies, the political equivalent of indicting the gangster Al Capone, implicated in bootlegging and mass gang murders, for tax evasion in 1931. The indictment comes as separate criminal charges are being weighed in investigations in Georgia and by the U.S. Justice Department.

In the first breath of the First World War, the German battleship Goeben escaped British Royal Navy pursuit across the eastern Mediterranean and found safe refuge in Constantinople, prompting Winston Churchill to reflect in his war memoir that “The terrible ‘Ifs’ accumulate.” Now, “The terrible ‘Ifs’ accumulate” in peacetime American politics – and many of the heretofore forbidden, and incontrovertibly forbidding, questions are accumulating in the choppy waters of United States civic life.

Could Mr. Trump face imprisonment? Will the Trump indictment on a peripheral charge seem gratuitous and vengeful? Will it hurt the former president’s political prospects?

Or will it, in a bizarre twist, enhance his appeal among members of his base the way the twin indictments – for bribery and mail fraud – of Boston Mayor James Michael Curley, whose political style shared elements of Mr. Trump’s, only boosted his supporters’ devotion after his imprisonment in 1947. (The Republican governor of Massachusetts and the state’s Republican legislature feared that declaring the mayoralty vacant would create a populist backlash that would only increase Mr. Curley’s popularity. The mayor eventually was pardoned by President Harry Truman, a course that president Gerald Ford followed after Mr. Nixon resigned in 1974 and that President Joe Biden might find himself considering in this case.)

Mr. Trump’s opponents, his closest aides, the Manhattan district attorney’s office, New York State court officers and the Secret Service all have anticipated this moment, with the various parties, suddenly transformed into contending interests, conducting the civilian equivalent of military war games on how to handle this development and its fallout. There are few if any precedents to confront the political dimensions of this development – and no buoys to guide Americans’ passage.

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Dakar, Senegal – Prominent opposition leader Ousmane Sonko is scheduled to face charges of libel in a Dakar court on Thursday. If found guilty, the political leader could be barred from running in the 2024 presidential elections.

Originally set for March 16, the hearing was postponed to March 30 after state security services forcibly removed Sonko from his vehicle and escorted him to court on the day of the hearing. Shortly after, clashes erupted between police forces and Sonko’s supporters.

Sonko, 48, said he inhaled a harmful substance during the altercations which impaired his eyesight and breathing, claiming the altercation amounted to an assassination attempt.

Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, Senegal’s Attorney General Ibrahima Bakhoum said a suspect had been arrested in relation to the case.

Yarga Sy, an airport security agent, allegedly gave Sonko a scarf soaked with a harmful substance. The substance was in fact vinegar, said Bakhoum.

The incident has escalated tensions in Senegal as the country braces for potential unrest ahead of Sanko’s court hearing on Thursday. Ousseynou Fall, one of Sonko’s lawyers was suspended by the Senegalese Bar Association on Wednesday after a complaint by a case judge and will be unable to appear in court.

“The ongoing tensions have led to a worsening of the situation, fueling political violence as the opposition rallies around the Sonko…case,” said Alioune Tine, Senegalese political analyst and founder of think tank AfrikaJom Centre.

The opposition leader faces libel charges brought against him by Senegal’s Tourism Minister Mame Mbaye Niang after accusing him of stealing 29 billion CFA francs ($47 million) from a government agency. Sonko also faces separate charges of raping a beauty salon employee and making death threats to her in 2021.

He denies the accusations and claims incumbent President Macky Sall is using the judiciary to quash his presidential run. A presidential spokesperson denied commenting on Sonko’s court hearing.

A former tax inspector who transitioned to politics and became the leader of the Pastef opposition party, Sonko became even more popular after finishing third in the 2019 presidential election, becoming Sall’s foremost political opponent.

Stifling opposition with the judiciary

Previous opposition figures such as former Dakar Mayor Khalifa Sall and Karim Wade, the son of former President Abdoulaye Wade, were both charged with corruption and barred from running against Sall in 2019.

The opposition coalition has argued that these disqualifications are part of a broader pattern in which the ruling coalition is leveraging the judiciary to sideline opposition candidates and clear the path for the incumbent president’s reelection.

Senegal has enjoyed relative political stability since it gained independence from France in 1960. Unlike many of its neighbours, it has avoided military coups, earning it a reputation as a beacon of democracy in the region. Despite these credentials, the country has experienced significant political turbulence ahead of the election.

In the past few months, there has been a wave of opposition arrests, including El Malick Ndiaye, spokesperson for Sonko’s Pastef party. He was accused of spreading fake news and spent five days in prison before being released with an electronic ankle bracelet.

Thus, there are concerns that a potential Sonko disqualification or another Sall presidential run could signal a descent into chaos.

“Our current political situation is the most dangerous since decolonisation,” Cheikh Fall, a Senegalese political activist, told Al Jazeera, “Macky Sall is the one and only person responsible for this situation.”

Amnesty International has warned about the increased violence with which security forces have cracked down on protesters ahead of the 2024 elections.

“An escalation of tensions, and further violent clashes between opposition supporters and security forces may damage Senegal’s democratic reputation,” said Renna Hawili, a Dakar-based analyst with geopolitical consultancy Control Risk.

A controversial third term

In 2016, the Senegalese constitution was amended, restricting the length of presidential terms to five years. An earlier amendment in 2001 had limited consecutive terms to two.

But now there is uncertainty about whether Sall will be running for a third mandate.

The president is yet to confirm or deny any such ambitions but he recently discussed the possibility in an interview with French magazine L’Express. He stated that should he choose to run, it would be constitutional as his first term extended beyond the scope of the reform, lasting for seven years rather than five.

“Legally speaking, the debate has been settled for a long time,” said Sall, who claims he consulted the Constitutional Council before the 2016 amendment. “Now, should I run for a third term or not? It’s a political debate, I admit.”

If he does run, it would be a “political bomb” that would further deteriorate the country’s already tense political situation, Tine said.

The issue of tenure elongation is an old one in Senegal – and indeed West Africa.

In 2012, Sall’s predecessor Wade also attempted to circumvent the 2001 amendment and run for a third term. Like Sall today, he claimed that because he had been elected before the amendment, it did not apply to his first tenure. That triggered violent protests.

Sall was an opposition leader then and, buoyed by his support of anti-Wade protests, gained the popularity that helped him eventually become president.

At the time, he said he would not allow presidents to run for more than two terms, which led to the law signed four years later.

Calls for protests

Sonko’s trial comes less than a year before the 2024 presidential elections. If found guilty on Thursday, he will be disqualified from running in the next election, which could tip the scales in favour of the incumbent.

But there is a growing sense that the trials have galvanised the opposition and led to a significant shift in the political landscape as more youth, frustrated by rising unemployment, flock to Sonko.

The Yewwi Askan Wi coalition, translating to “Liberate the People” in the local Wolof language, led protests in Dakar on March 29 and has planned nationwide demonstrations for Thursday – and April 3. These protests are scheduled to take place despite a lack of government authorisation.

Whether Sonko’s trial will mark the start of a new era of political unrest or whether it will strengthen the grip of the incumbent president will become apparent on Thursday, analysts say.

“It is the first time that our collective actions since independence have allowed us to build such a solid democratic system,” said Fall the activist, “but that is in danger of crumbling like a house of cards”.

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Protests in Israel force the government to backtrack, US attacks Iran-aligned fighters in Syria, and Lebanon’s two timezones. Here’s your round up of our coverage, written by Abubakr Al-Shamahi, Al Jazeera Digital’s Middle East and North Africa editor.

After five elections in less than four years, it’s perhaps not surprising that Israel finds itself in yet another political crisis. After coming to power at the end of last year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken advantage of his coalition government’s majority in parliament, slim though it is, to try and push through legislation that would weaken the independence of the judiciary, a long-time demand of the political right.

But maybe, just maybe, Netanyahu has misjudged the depth of his opposition’s outrage. They argue that, along with giving the religious far-right an opportunity to impose its views on other Israelis, the new legislation would also give Netanyahu more leeway in his fight against corruption charges (which, for the record, he denies).

After weeks of protests, matters came to a head this week, and Netanyahu’s ability to get the various pieces of legislation through parliament now looks shaky. First, his own attorney general called his actions illegal. Then, his defence minister publically asked him to stop trying to overhaul the judiciary. Netanyahu didn’t like the perceived insubordination, and fired the minister on Sunday. Cue bedlam.

Large demonstrations took place in several cities, and carried on through Monday, eventually prompting the prime minister to backtrack, sort of. While he refused to withdraw his plan for the judiciary altogether, he did suspend proceedings, saying he was “taking a timeout for dialogue”.

It’s been a crisis without precedent. That’s because of the opposition by army reservists, and the fear among some that it could compromise Israel’s military preparedness. Secular Israelis are also becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the dominance of religious Jewish voices. There’s even been talk, on Netanyahu’s part, of the risk of a ‘civil war’.

And in the midst of all this, there have been the Palestinians. While there has been a small, anti-occupation bloc within the latest protests, many Palestinians question why the Israeli public has largely failed to show a similar outrage when it comes to the ongoing occupation and treatment of Palestinians. And there are also significant fears over what happens if Netanyahu’s far-right minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, gets his own national guard to command. The founder of one American Jewish peace organisation called the force a “militia [that] will be used to … terrorise Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank”.

 

US air attacks in Syria

The US military in Syria has had several run-ins with Iran-aligned forces over the past few years, but the latest incident appears to be one of the worst. As many as 19 fighters were reportedly killed in US attacks in eastern Syria, after a US contractor was killed in a drone attack. While both the Iranian and Syrian governments condemned the US, there are few if any signs that the Americans are planning on leaving Syria anytime soon. The US says the presence of its forces is necessary to prevent the re-emergence of ISIL (ISIS).

What time is it in Lebanon?

In parts of Beirut this week you could have asked two people on opposite sides of the street what time it was, and they could each have given you a different answer—and both been technically correct. Just when the Lebanese thought their state couldn’t be any more dysfunctional, the government failed to implement its decision to delay the start of daylight savings time, after the Maronite Church rejected it.

Although the split wasn’t strictly across religious lines, the general impression was that, for a few days at least, Lebanon operated on either “Muslim” or “Christian” time. The government has since backed down, and brought forward the introduction of daylight savings, but the debacle added to the economic crisis, power cuts and depreciating currency by illustrating just how poorly run Lebanon has become.

And Now for Something Different

For Muslims, the holy month of Ramadan is a time of giving. In Egypt, that continues to be the case — even though inflation has made it harder for many people to donate. But those who can are trying to step up and fill the gap, funding charity tables called ‘mawaed al-rahman’, where people can gather to break their fast.

Ramadan recipes

Sticking to the Ramadan theme — here’s the first of our Fork the System series, where chefs tell us about their favourite recipes for the month. Yemeni American Akram Said shares his (delicious) recipe for chicken zorbiyan, as well as his memory of his mother, and why his journey into Yemeni cuisine is partly a way of coping with her death.

 

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