President Biden to apologize for 150-year Indian boarding school policy; AP, October 24, 2024

GRAHAM LEE BREWER, AP; President Biden to apologize for 150-year Indian boarding school policy

"President Joe Biden said he will formally apologize on Friday for the country’s role in forcing Indigenous children for over 150 years into boarding schools, where many were physically, emotionally and sexually abused, and more than 950 died...

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland launched an investigation into the boarding school system shortly after she became the first Native American to lead the agency, and she will join Biden during his first diplomatic visit to a tribal nation as president as he delivers a speech Friday at the Gila River Indian Community outside Phoenix.

“I would never have guessed in a million years that something like this would happen,” Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna in New Mexico, told The Associated Press. “It’s a big deal to me. I’m sure it will be a big deal to all of Indian Country.”...

The forced assimilation policy launched by Congress in 1819 as an effort to “civilize” Native Americans ended in 1978 after the passage of a wide-ranging law, the Indian Child Welfare Act, which was primarily focused on giving tribes a say in who adopted their children."

As Election Looms, Disinformation ‘Has Never Been Worse’; The New York Times, October 23, 2024

Steven Lee Myers , The New York Times; As Election Looms, Disinformation ‘Has Never Been Worse’

"Numerous factors have contributed to the surge in disinformation, which Ms. Easterly and other officials have warned will continue far beyond Election Day. 

Social media platforms have helped to harden media ecosystems into distinct, disparate partisan enclaves where facts contradicting preconceived narratives are often unwelcome. Artificial intelligence has become an accelerant, making fake or fanciful content ubiquitous online with merely a few keystrokes."

Trump calls John Kelly a "lowlife" after Hitler praise revelations; Axios, October 24, 2024

 

• Ivana Saric, Axios; Trump calls John Kelly a "lowlife" after Hitler praise revelations

"Former President Trump on Wednesday night blasted his former White House chief of staff John Kelly as a "lowlife" and "total degenerate" after Kelly gave a series of critical interviews about his former boss.

Why it matters: Trump's Truth Social posts mark his first public remarks about Kelly since his ex-chief-of-staff divulged the GOP presidential nominee's alleged praise for Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

State of play: "John Kelly is a LOWLIFE, and a bad General," Trump wrote on Truth Social Wednesday.

• "The story about the Soldiers was A LIE, as are numerous other stories he told," Trump added, though he did not specifically address his alleged praise of Hitler."

WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE OR CONSENT; ProPublica, October 24, 2024

Corey G. Johnson , ProPublica; WITHOUT KNOWLEDGEOR CONSENT

"FOR YEARS, America’s most iconic gun-makers turned over sensitive personal information on hundreds of thousands of customers to political operatives.

Those operatives, in turn, secretly employed the details to rally firearm owners to elect pro-gun politicians running for Congress and the White House, a ProPublica investigation has found.

The clandestine sharing of gun buyers’ identities — without their knowledge and consent — marked a significant departure for an industry that has long prided itself on thwarting efforts to track who owns firearms in America.

At least 10 gun industry businesses, including Glock, Smith & Wesson, Remington, Marlin and Mossberg, handed over names, addresses and other private data to the gun industry’s chief lobbying group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The NSSF then entered the gun owners’ details into what would become a massive database.

The data initially came from decades of warranty cards filled out by customers and returned to gun manufacturers for rebates and repair or replacement programs.

A ProPublica review of dozens of warranty cards from the 1970s through today found that some promised customers their information would be kept strictly confidential. Others said some information could be shared with third parties for marketing and sales. None of the cards informed buyers their details would be used by lobbyists and consultants to win elections."

Immigrants were revitalizing tiny Charleroi. Then Donald Trump’s attacks brought white supremacists and conservative influencers.; The Philadelphia Inquirer, October 14, 2024

Aliya Schneider, The Philadelphia Inquirer; Immigrants were revitalizing tiny Charleroi. Then Donald Trump’s attacks brought white supremacists and conservative influencers.

"Her customers hadn’t been going out much since Trump began disparaging andspreading lies about Haitian immigrants, first in Springfield, Ohio, and soon after, in Charleroi, where he falsely said Haitian immigrants brought a crime surge and financial strain to the town, claiming that it’s on the precipice of bankruptcy.

Quickly, the former president’s claims thrust the small town, where, in reality, crime was down and bankruptcy was nowhere on the horizon, into an unwanted national spotlight, exposing fault lines and ratcheting up anxiety and tensions that show little sign of abating weeks later.

Trump’s attacks on the Western Pennsylvania town appear to have emboldened people whose views once seemed to sit on the fringes...

Joe Manning, the borough manager in Charleroi, said the town that originally seemed to welcome immigrants has been tainted since Trump’s comments.

“By and large, these folks have received a lot of support in this community,” Manning said. " … But now, that seems to have changed. I don’t know if it’s ever going to go back to the way it was.”

And while the former president’s comments were directed at the Haitian community in Charleroi, his claims impact immigrants from across the globe."

L.A. Times Editorial Chief Quits After Owner Blocks Harris Endorsement; The New York Times, October 23, 2024

Katie Robertson , The New York Times; L.A. Times Editorial Chief Quits After Owner Blocks Harris Endorsement

"The head of The Los Angeles Times’s editorial board resigned on Wednesday after the paper’s owner quashed a presidential endorsement for Vice President Kamala Harris.

In an interview with Columbia Journalism Review, Mariel Garza, who held the title editorials editor, said she had quit because “I want to make it clear that I am not OK with us being silent. In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”

Ms. Garza said that the editorial board had planned to endorse Ms. Harris, but that Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of The Los Angeles Times, decided this month that the newspaper would not make any endorsement for president. The paper did not explain to readers why it was not issuing an endorsement."

Is Trump a fascist? 8 experts weigh in.; Vox, October 23, 2024

 Dylan Matthews, Vox; Is Trump a fascist? 8 experts weigh in.

"Five years have now passed, and the fascism questions have only grown more frequent. Trump has had time to implement quite anti-immigrantand anti-Black policies, and refused to denounce his most extreme and violent supporters, from the neo-Nazis and white nationalists in Charlottesville to the Proud Boys group. And every week, I receive dozens of emails from readers wondering if I stand by my conclusion in 2015, that Trump is simply a bigot with an authoritarian streak, not a fascist.

So I reached out to the experts I talked to back then. Four of the five replied, and I also got in touch with a few more scholars who have researched fascism to get a broader view.

The responses were, again, unanimous, albeit tinged with much greater concern about Trump’s authoritarian and violent tendencies. No one thinks Trump is a fascist leader, full stop. Jason Stanley, a Yale philosopher and author of How Fascism Works, came closest to that conclusion, saying that “you could call legitimately call Trumpism a fascist social and political movement” and that Trump is “using fascist political tactics,” but that Trump isn’t necessarily leading a fascist government."

Mother says AI chatbot led her son to kill himself in lawsuit against its maker; The Guardian, October 23, 2024

Blake Montgomery , The Guardian; Mother says AI chatbot led her son to kill himself in lawsuit against its maker

"The mother of a teenager who killed himself after becoming obsessed with an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot now accuses its maker of complicity in his death.

Megan Garcia filed a civil suit against Character.ai, which makes a customizable chatbot for role-playing, in Florida federal court on Wednesday, alleging negligence, wrongful death and deceptive trade practices. Her son Sewell Setzer III, 14, died in Orlando, Florida, in February. In the months leading up to his death, Setzer used the chatbot day and night, according to Garcia."

Former OpenAI Researcher Says the Company Broke Copyright Law; The New York Times, October 23, 2024

Cade Metz, The New York Times; Former OpenAI Researcher Says the Company Broke Copyright Law

"Mr. Balaji believes the threats are more immediate. ChatGPT and other chatbots, he said, are destroying the commercial viability of the individuals, businesses and internet services that created the digital data used to train these A.I. systems.

“This is not a sustainable model for the internet ecosystem as a whole,” he told The Times."

Mark Esper: Trump 'has those inclinations' toward fascism; Politico, October 23, 2024

GRETA REICH , Politico; Mark Esper: Trump 'has those inclinations' toward fascism

"Mark Esper, who served as secretary of Defense under Donald Trump, backed former colleague John Kelly’s recent remarks that he believes Trump meets the definition of a fascist.

Esper told CNN Wednesday that he has no reason to doubt Kelly’s “honesty or integrity” in relaying Trump’s previous comments. He encouraged the audience to look up the definition of fascism, as Kelly did, and ask whether Trump falls “into those categories.”

American creating deepfakes targeting Harris works with Russian intel, documents show; The Washington Post, October 23, 2024

Catherine Belton , The Washington Post; American creating deepfakes targeting Harris works with Russian intel, documents show

"The more than 150 documents — which were shared with The Post to demonstrate the extent of Russian interference through Dougan and focus mostly on the period between March 2021 and August 2024 — for the first time expose some of the inner workings of a network that researchers and intelligence officials say has become the most potent source of fake news emanating from Russia and targeting American voters over the past year.

Disinformation researchers say Dougan’s network was probably behind a recent viral fake video smearing Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz, which U.S. intelligence officials said Tuesday was created by Russia. It received nearly 5 million views on X in less than 24 hours, Microsoft said.

Since September 2023, posts, articles and videos generated by Dougan and some of the Russians who work with him have garnered 64 million views, said McKenzie Sadeghi, who has closely followed Dougan’s sites and is a researcher at NewsGuard, a company that tracks disinformation online."

The Sad, Pathetic Spectacle of John Kelly’s Critics; The Bulwark, October 23, 2024

SARAH LONGWELL, The Bulwark; The Sad, Pathetic Spectacle of John Kelly’s Critics

"WHEN GEN. JOHN KELLY WENT PUBLIC about Trump’s praise for Hitler and his fears about a dictatorial second Trump term, he joined a growing list of former Trump officials ringing the alarm.

He also sparked what has become a pathetic if not predictable pattern, in which a chorus of Trump sycophants obediently rush forward to explain away the alarming revelation and impugn the witness’s credibility.

Here’s reliable Trump lickspittle Scott Jennings telling us that Kelly probably made the whole thing up and that the real Hitlers are on college campuses. Trump apologist ​​Ryan James Girdusky said, “I, honest to God, like most Americans, do not care about Gen. Kelly’s farewell tour.”

Brian Kilmeade on Fox and Friends said of Trump’s praise for Nazi generals: “I can absolutely see him go, ‘It'd be great to have German generals that actually do what we ask them to do,’ maybe not fully being cognizant of the third rail of German generals who were Nazis, or whatever.” (Not a parody.)

Trump confidante Mike Davis called Kelly “Gen. Christine Blasey Ford”—get it? Chris Sununu is unbothered: “We’ve heard a lot of extreme things from Donald Trump. With a guy like that, it’s kinda baked into the vote.” Sen. Bill Hagerty, on CNN, downplayed the entire revelation as a matter of personal dispute between two men. Kelly and Trump, he said, “were not a good fit.”

There is something deeply pernicious to this routine. These people want you to forget the cumulative weight of the accusations against Trump, especially when those accusations are coming from his own former employees—many of them high-ranking military officers. They’re doing so not because they don’t believe the accusations but because they know how harmful they could be.

You know how we know this? Because the claims of Kelly and others are backed up by what we’ve seen with our own eyes over the last nine years."

Likenesses Of Michael Douglas, Amy Schumer And Chris Rock Warn Voters Of Election “Deepfakes” In New PSA; Deadline, October 22, 2024

Ted Johnson , Deadline; Likenesses Of Michael Douglas, Amy Schumer And Chris Rock Warn Voters Of Election “Deepfakes” In New PSA

"A new public service announcement featuring likenesses of celebrities including Michael Douglas, Chris Rock and Amy Schumer aims to warn voters about AI deepfakes, including those that could be unleashed on Election Day to try to suppress the vote.

The spot is from RepresentUS, a nonpartisan anti-corruption organization that includes figures like Ed Helms and Jennifer Lawrence on its board."

Rattled Elon Musk goes on late-night attack against Tim Walz after ‘dips***’ comments; Independent, October 23, 2024

Gustaf Kilander , Independent; Rattled Elon Musk goes on late-night attack against Tim Walz after ‘dips***’ comments

"Elon Musk went on a late-night attack against Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz after he called the billionaire a “dips***” during a rally in Madison, Wisconsin. 

“Elon’s on that stage, jumping around, skipping like a dips***,” Walz said on Tuesday, referring to Musk as former President Donald Trump’s“running mate.”...

“That guy is literally the richest man in the world, spending millions of dollars to help Donald Trump buy an election,” the Minnesota governor said.

Musk responded to Walz on X on Tuesday afternoon, writing: “You’re gonna lose, @Tim_Walz. Saving the American people from the torture of hearing you speak for four years was worth it.”...

Walz also criticized Musk’s $75 million donation to a new political action committee to which he’s so far the only donor. The billionaire has also been giving out checks for $1 million to people who sign his PAC’s petition. It’s a lottery that some experts have called illegal and an attempt to buy votes."

Texas county reverses classification of Indigenous history book as fiction; Texas county reverses classification of Indigenous history book as fiction, October 22, 2024

Daniel Wu , The Washington Post; Texas county reverses classification of Indigenous history book as fiction

"CORRECTION

A previous version of this article incorrectly said that the book "Colonization and the Wampanoag Story" detailed the Wampanoag tribe's encounters with Christopher Columbus and the Pilgrims. The Wampanoag tribe never encountered Columbus. The book details encounters between the Wampanoag tribe and the Pilgrims, as well as encounters between Columbus and other Indigenous tribes. The article has been corrected...

A Texas county on Tuesday reversed a decision to reclassify a children’s book on Native American history as fiction after the move drew anger from authors, advocates and one of the world’s largest publishing companies.

A citizen committee in Montgomery County, just north of Houston, moved the nonfiction book “Colonization and the Wampanoag Story” from the county library system’s juvenile nonfiction collection to its fiction collection last week, according to an email from a librarian shared with The Washington Post. The book details encounters between the Wampanoag tribe and the Pilgrims, as well as encounters between Christopher Columbus and other Indigenous tribes.

Advocates and nonprofits, including the Texas Freedom to Read Project, Authors Against Book Bans and the American Indian Library Association, blasted the move in an open letter Wednesday asking the county to move the book back to the nonfiction collection. They were joined by Penguin Random House, which published the book by author and Indigenous historian Linda Coombs."

Real men reject fascism; The Ink, October 23, 2024

ANAND GIRIDHARADAS, The Ink; Real men reject fascism

"Two things have grown increasingly clear: Donald Trump is a fascist, and he is winning the support of most American men. But it doesn’t have to be like this. There is a way out.

Yesterday, a breathtaking report arrived in The New York Times. John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, warned in the starkest terms that Trump is a fascist with a real authoritarian vision and confirmed the murmurs about Trump being jealous not to have had the kind of generals Hitler did...

The distressing thing is that a majority of American men are looking at all of this and saying, “Yeah, let’s do that.” We are dude-bro-ing our way into democratic death...

So now here we are in a country that is changing a lot, has changed a lot — indeed, has, over the past few generations, done more to change the status and rights and dignity of women than hundreds of prior generations did. And we have done the right things while failing to manage social and psychological change — failing to manage the minds and hearts of those who experience these worthy changes as headwinds.

This seems to me central to the story of how a majority of men could do what populations bewildered by change and anxious about the future and their place in it have done: support fascism, support dictatorship, support tyranny to smash it all...

Yes, change is scary. Yes, it sometimes feels like you don’t know how to be these days. Don’t know what to say. Yes, it’s tempting to shake things up when you’re scared. When you feel attacked by the future itself.

But don’t. Because men worthy of the word don’t outsource the care and protection of their families to dictators. Men worthy of the word don’t depend for their self-esteem on the crushing and marginalizing of Others. Men worthy of the word don’t need women to be locked in the fourteenth century legally to feel whole. Men worthy of the word don’t hand over the keys to the future to billionaires who pull the strings.

However one might reject their premises, some fraction of the mass of American men who have succumbed to the lure of Trump’s fascism need to feel seen and heard and recognized in their stress and anxiety and sense of dislocation in the future that is coming. And they need to be invited into a contrary story of progress. Saving the country from tyranny needs to become aspirational for men. Not a lecture.

They need to remember, and become excited to say, that real men reject fascism."

TRUMP: ‘I NEED THE KIND OF GENERALS THAT HITLER HAD’; The Atlantic, October 22, 2024

Jeffrey Goldberg , The Atlantic; TRUMP: ‘I NEED THE KIND OF GENERALS THAT HITLER HAD’

"The personal qualities displayed by Trump in his reaction to the cost of the Guillén funeral—contempt, rage, parsimony, racism—hardly surprised his inner circle. Trump has frequently voiced his disdain for those who serve in the military and for their devotion to duty, honor, and sacrifice. Former generals who have worked for Trump say that the sole military virtue he prizes is obedience. As his presidency drew to a close, and in the years since, he has become more and more interested in the advantages of dictatorship, and the absolute control over the military that he believes it would deliver. “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” Trump said in a private conversation in the White House, according to two people who heard him say this. “People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.” (“This is absolutely false,” Pfeiffer wrote in an email. “President Trump never said this.”)...

Trump’s singularly corrosive approach to military tradition was in evidence as recently as August, when he described the Medal of Honor, the nation’s top award for heroism and selflessness in combat, as inferior to the Medal of Freedom, which is awarded to civilians for career achievement. During a campaign speech, he described Medal of Honor recipients as “either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead,” prompting the Veterans of Foreign Wars to issue a condemnation: “These asinine comments not only diminish the significance of our nation’s highest award for valor, but also crassly characterizes the sacrifices of those who have risked their lives above and beyond the call of duty.” Later in August, Trump caused controversy by violating federal regulations prohibiting the politicization of military cemeteries, after a campaign visit to Arlington in which he gave a smiling thumbs-up while standing behind gravestones of fallen American soldiers...

One former Trump-administration Cabinet secretary told me of a conversation he’d had with Trump during his time in office about the Vietnam War. Trump famously escaped the draft by claiming that his feet were afflicted with bone spurs. (“I had a doctor that gave me a letter—a very strong letter on the heels,” Trump told The New York Times in 2016.) Once, when the subject of aging Vietnam veterans came up in conversation, Trump offered this observation to the Cabinet official: “Vietnam would have been a waste of time for me. Only suckers went to Vietnam.”...

Trump, those who have worked for him say, is unable to understand the military norm that one does not leave fellow soldiers behind on the battlefield. As president, Trump told senior advisers that he didn’t understand why the U.S. government placed such value on finding soldiers missing in action. To him, they could be left behind, because they had performed poorly by getting captured."

As Election Nears, Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator; The New York Times, October 22, 2024

Michael S. Schmidt, The New York Times; As Election Nears, Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator

"Few top officials spent more time behind closed doors in the White House with President Donald J. Trump than John F. Kelly, the former Marine general who was his longest-serving chief of staff.

With Election Day looming, Mr. Kelly — deeply bothered by Mr. Trump’s recent comments about employing the military against his domestic opponents — agreed to three on-the-record, recorded discussions with a reporter for The New York Times about the former president, providing some of his most wide-ranging comments yet about Mr. Trump’s fitness and character...

Here are excerpts from, and audio of, Mr. Kelly’s comments...

Trump told him that “Hitler did some good things.”

Mr. Kelly confirmed previous reports that on more than one occasion Mr. Trump spoke positively of Hitler.

“He commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too,’” Mr. Kelly said Mr. Trump told him...

Kelly said Trump looked down on those who were disabled on the battlefield.

In response to a question about previous stories about Mr. Trump having disdain for disabled veterans, Mr. Kelly said Mr. Trump did not want to be seen in public with those who had lost limbs on the battlefield.

“Certainly his not wanting to be seen with amputees — amputees that lost their limbs in defense of this country fighting for every American, him included, to protect them, but didn’t want to be seen with them. That’s an interesting perspective for the commander in chief to have.”

“He would just say: ‘Look, it just doesn’t look good for me.’”

He said Trump called service members who were injured or killed “losers and suckers,” despite denials from Trump and some aides.

Confirming a statement he gave to CNN last year, Mr. Kelly said that on multiple occasions Mr. Trump told him that those Americans wounded, captured or killed in action were “losers and suckers.”

“The time in Paris was not the only time that he ever said it,” Mr. Kelly said, referring to reports that Mr. Trump told him that he did not want to visit a cemetery where American service members killed during World War I were buried...

Mr. Kelly had nothing good to say about Mr. Trump

Mr. Kelly was asked whether Mr. Trump had any empathy

“No,” Mr. Kelly said.""

Is X a threat to American democracy?; The Tufts Daily, October 16, 2024

 Olivia Bye, The Tufts Daily; Is X a threat to American democracy?

"Park’s experience on the site mirrors that of X’s roughly 550 million monthly users and can largely be attributed to X’s acquisition by multi-billionaire businessman and investor Elon Musk in October 2022. In the two years following Musk’s purchase of X, the site has seen unprecedented levels of misinformation and disinformation clouding its user base, a trend that has only been exacerbated in recent months by the 2024 presidential election. The combination of growing artificial intelligence capabilities and a social media platform that has, in nearly every sense, exonerated its regulations of what can or cannot be shared to the site has raised the question: Is X a threat to American democracy?...

However, Associate Professor of Political Science Michael Beckley is skeptical that the increase in political misinformation sets this year’s presidential election apart, citing comparable patterns that have occurred throughout history. “We’ve seen similar things when radio first came out. [People wondered], was this going to allow strong men to rally people behind their cause? We saw the same thing with TV,” he said. “So [the misinformation] is jarring, but I don’t see it as a unique factor. It is rather a pretty chronic factor in a democratic system.”

Kelly Greenhill, an associate professor of Political Science, identifies the normalization of false information spread by notable figures as a key reason behind increased disinformation in the media... 

Greenhill suggests that possibly the best solution to avoid X’s abundance of misinformation is, simply, to leave. “People don’t have to use X. They can leave. They can delete their accounts. They can also leave social media. They may not want to, and they may not choose to, but they can,” she wrote. Some users are choosing to do just that; social media sites that have advertised themselves as alternatives to X, such as Bluesky and Mastodon, have amassed popularity in recent years."

Elon Musk expands his empire of misinformation; CNN, October 15, 2024

 Allison Morrow, CNN; Elon Musk expands his empire of misinformation

"At any Tesla event, you have to go in expecting a good amount of smoke and mirrors. This is the company run by Elon Musk, after all — its self-anointed Technoking who’s made overpromising and underdelivering a theme of his career.

But Thursday’s “Cybercab” robotaxi unveiling was, even by Musk-ian standards for bluster, one giant optical illusion. The kind of spectacle that should remind everyone that the world’s richest person is someone who promotes and appears to relish misinformation and hyperbole on a mass scale, whether he’s speaking to investors, his millions of followers on X or whichever politician he feels is most likely to agree with his increasingly right-wing and conspiracy-laden worldview...

The robotaxis, Tesla’s fully driverless vehicles that it hopes to put into service next year, were the main event. But the company’s humanoid Optimus robots stole some of the spotlight as they danced and mingled with the crowd, pouring drinks and playing charades.

That all would have been impressive if not for a few liiiittttle things. Like, the fact that the robots were not actually autonomous and were being operated remotely by humans, which was first reported by Bloomberg. At one point, an attendee even got a bartending bot to admit that it was being assisted by a human.

“This was not disclosed, and many thought they were operating autonomously,” Gordon Johnson, a longtime Tesla critic and short-seller, said in a note Monday.  “In our view, this is very deceptive.”

The event — rather appropriately held on a Hollywood stage — was light on details about how Tesla plans to improve its “Full Self Driving” system, or how it plans to actually get its driverless cars on the road."

Central Park 5 sue Trump for defamation over debate comments; The Hill, October 21, 2024

 ZACH SCHONFELD , The Hill; Central Park 5 sue Trump for defamation over debate comments 

"The exonerated Central Park Five sued former President Trump for defamation Monday over his comments at the recent presidential debate about the group’s wrongful convictions for rape and assault.

During a segment on race and politics at the Sept. 10 debate against Vice President Harris, Trump said “they admitted — they said, they pled guilty.

“And I said, well, if they pled guilty they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately. And if they pled guilty — then they pled we’re not guilty,” Trump continued. 

The five Black and Hispanic teenagers were wrongfully convicted of the 1989 rape and assault of a woman jogging in New York City’s Central Park. They spent years in prison before their convictions were overturned in 2002, once the true culprit confessed and was corroborated by DNA evidence. 

The lawsuit notes the five members never pleaded guilty and the victim wasn’t killed, claiming Trump’s comments were made with a “reckless disregard for their falsity” to the tens of millions of Americans who tuned into the debate."

Former GOP lawmakers, officials urge Garland to investigate Musk; The Washington Post, October 21, 2024

 Perry Stein, The Washington Post; Former GOP lawmakers, officials urge Garland to investigate Musk

"Former Republican lawmakers, advisers and Justice Department officials have called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate tech billionaire Elon Musk for awarding cash prizes to voters in swing states if they sign his political organization’s petition, according to a letter obtained by The Washington Post and sent to Garland on Monday.

The letter argues that the large prizes set up by Musk, a vocal supporter of Republican nominee Donald Trump, violate federal voting laws that prohibit paying people to register to vote.

Musk announced Saturday that his political group, America PAC, would use a lottery to award $1 million each day until the election to a registered voter who signs a petition saying they support free speech and the right to bear arms. Only voters registered in seven swing states — including Pennsylvania, Georgia and Nevada — are eligible for the prizes."