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Tag: Assassinations

  • A man arrested with guns outside a Trump rally in California is suing the sheriff

    A man arrested with guns outside a Trump rally in California is suing the sheriff

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    LAS VEGAS (AP) — A Nevada man who was arrested over the weekend with guns at a security checkpoint outside a Donald Trump rally in the southern California desert has filed a lawsuit accusing the sheriff of falsely characterizing his arrest as a thwarted assassination attempt for his own personal gain.

    The man, identified as 49-year-old Vem Miller of Las Vegas, had been driving an unregistered black SUV with a “homemade” license plate when he was stopped by deputies assigned to the rally in Coachella, east of Los Angeles, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said Sunday at a news conference.

    Miller had a shotgun, loaded handgun, ammunition and several fake passports in his vehicle, Bianco said. Miller was released the same day on $5,000 bail.

    The lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Nevada says Bianco lied about the fake passports, and that he “created a narrative so as to be viewed as a ‘heroic’ Sheriff who saved Presidential candidate Trump.” It names as defendants the sheriff, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department and a sheriff’s deputy.

    A call to the sheriff’s executive office for comment Wednesday was deferred to the department’s communications office, which did not respond to an email. The Associated Press also emailed Miller’s lawyer, Sigal Chattah, for comment.

    Security is very tight at Trump rallies following two recent assassination attempts. Last month, a man was indicted on an attempted assassination charge after authorities said he staked out the former president for 12 hours and wrote of his desire to kill him. The Florida arrest came two months after Trump was shot and wounded in the ear during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

    Bianco said that Miller also claimed to be a journalist, but that it was unclear if he had the proper credentials. Deputies noticed the interior of the vehicle was “in disarray” and a search uncovered the weapons and ammo, along with multiple passports and driver licenses with different names, Bianco said.

    Miller’s lawsuit accuses the sheriff’s department of illegally searching the SUV. It also says that he willingly disclosed to officers at the checkpoint that he had weapons but intended to leave them in the vehicle.

    Miller is scheduled to appear in court in January in the weapons case. He was arrested on suspicion of possessing a loaded firearm and possession of a high-capacity magazine, according to online records.

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  • Members of the Kennedy family gather for funeral of Ethel Kennedy

    Members of the Kennedy family gather for funeral of Ethel Kennedy

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    CENTERVILLE, Mass. — Members of the Kennedy family gathered Monday for the funeral of Ethel Kennedy, the wife of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

    Ethel Kennedy, who raised their 11 children after her husband was assassinated and remained dedicated to social causes and the family’s legacy, died on Thursday at age 96.

    Monday’s funeral, which was closed to the public, took place at Our Lady of Victory, in Centerville, Massachusetts, about 28 miles (45 kilometers) north of Boston.

    Mourners gathered at the church under a cool gray sky. Ethel Kennedy died following complications related to a stroke suffered earlier this month.

    “Along with a lifetime’s work in social justice and human rights, our mother leaves behind nine children, 34 grandchildren and 24 great-great-grandchildren, along with numerous nieces and nephews, all of whom love her dearly,” the family statement said in announcing her death.

    President Joe Biden called her “an American icon — a matriarch of optimism and moral courage, an emblem of resilience and service.”

    The Kennedy matriarch, mother to Kathleen, Joseph II, Robert Jr., David, Courtney, Michael, Kerry, Christopher, Max, Douglas and Rory, was one of the last remaining members of a family generation that included President John F. Kennedy. Her family said she had recently enjoyed seeing many of her relatives before falling ill.

    A millionaire’s daughter who married the future senator and attorney general in 1950, Ethel Kennedy had endured more death by the age of 40, for the whole world to see, than most people would in a lifetime.

    She was by Robert F. Kennedy’s side when he was fatally shot in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, just after winning California’s Democratic presidential primary. Her brother-in-law had been assassinated in Dallas less than five years earlier.

    Ethel Kennedy went on to found the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights soon after her husband’s death and advocated for causes including gun control and human rights. She rarely spoke about her husband’s assassination.

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  • Elon Musk makes first appearance at Trump rally casting election in dire terms

    Elon Musk makes first appearance at Trump rally casting election in dire terms

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    Billionaire tech executive Elon Musk cast the upcoming presidential election in dire terms during a Saturday appearance with Donald Trump, calling the Republican presidential nominee the only candidate “to preserve democracy in America.”

    The CEO of SpaceX and Tesla who also purchased X, Musk joined Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, where the former president survived an assassination attempt in July. He warned “this will be the last election” if Trump doesn’t win and, clad in a black-on-black cap bearing the “Make America Great Again” slogan of Trump’s campaign, appeared to acknowledge the foreboding nature of his remarks.

    “As you can see I am not just MAGA — I am Dark MAGA,” he said.

    The appearance marked the first time Musk joined one of Trump’s trademark rallies and represented the growing alliance between the two men in the final stretch of a competitive presidential election. Musk created a super PAC supporting the Republican nominee that has been spending heavily on get-out-the-vote efforts in the final months of the campaign. Trump has said he would tap Musk to lead a government efficiency commission if he regains the White House.

    Trump joined Musk in August for a rare public conversation on X, an overwhelmingly friendly chat that spanned more than two hours. In it, the former president largely focused on the July assassination attempt, illegal immigration and his plans to cut government regulations.

    Before a massive crowd on Saturday, Musk sought to portray Trump as a champion of free speech, arguing that Democrats want “to take away your freedom of speech, they want to take away your right to bear arms, they want to take away your fight to vote, effectively.” Musk went on to criticize a California effort to ban voter ID requirements.

    Saturday’s rally took place at the same property where a gunman’s bullets grazed Trump’s right ear and killed his supporter, Corey Comperatore. The shooting left multiple others injured.

    Several members of Comperatore’s family, as well as other attendees and first responders from the July rally, returned to the site on Saturday. Also appearing with the former president were his running mate Republican Ohio Sen. JD Vance, son Eric Trump, daughter-in-law and RNC co-chair Lara Trump, along with Pennsylvania lawmakers and sheriffs.

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    Kinnard reported from Chapin, South Carolina, and can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP.

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  • Alleged plots against US campaign are only the latest examples of Iran targeting adversaries

    Alleged plots against US campaign are only the latest examples of Iran targeting adversaries

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    DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran has emerged as a twofold concern for the United States as it nears the end of the presidential campaign.

    Prosecutors allege Tehran tried to hack figures associated with the election, stealing information from former President Donald Trump’s campaign. And U.S. officials have accused it of plotting to kill Trump and other ex-officials.

    For Iran, assassination plots and hacking aren’t new strategies.

    Iran saw the value and the danger of hacking in the early 2000s, when the Stuxnet virus, believed to have been deployed by Israel and the U.S., tried to damage Iran’s nuclear program. Since then, hackers attributed to state-linked operations have targeted the Trump campaign, Iranian expatriates and government officials at home.

    Its history of assassinations goes back further. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran killed or abducted perceived enemies living abroad.

    A look at Iran’s history of targeting opponents:

    For many, Iran’s behavior can be traced to the emergence of the Stuxnet computer virus. Released in the 2000s, Stuxnet wormed its way into control units for uranium-enriching centrifuges at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility, causing them to speed up, ultimately destroying themselves.

    Iranian scientists initially believed mechanical errors caused the damage. Ultimately though, Iran removed the affected equipment and sought its own way of striking enemies online.

    “Iran had an excellent teacher in the emerging art of cyberwarfare,” wryly noted a 2020 report from the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Saudi Arabia.

    That was acknowledged by the National Security Agency in a document leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2015 to The Intercept, which examined a cyberattack that destroyed hard drives at Saudi Arabia’s state oil company. Iran has been suspected of carrying out that attack, called Shamoon, in 2012 and again in 2017.

    “Iran, having been a victim of a similar cyberattack against its own oil industry in April 2012, has demonstrated a clear ability to learn from the capabilities and actions of others,” the document said.

    There also were domestic considerations. In 2009, the disputed reelection of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sparked the Green Movement protests. Twitter, one source of news from the demonstrations, found its website defaced by the self-described “Iranian Cyber Army.” There’s been suspicion that the Revolutionary Guard, a major power base within Iran’s theocracy, oversaw the “Cyber Army” and other hackers.

    Meanwhile, Iran itself has been hacked repeatedly in embarrassing incidents. They include the mass shutdown of gas stations across Iran, as well as surveillance cameras at Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison and even state television broadcasts.

    Iranian hacking attacks, given their low cost and high reward, likely will continue as Iran faces a tense international environment surrounding Israel’s conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran’s enrichment of uranium to near weapons-grade levels and the prospect of Trump becoming president again.

    The growth of 3G and 4G mobile internet services in Iran also made it easier for the public — and potential hackers — to access the internet. Iran has over 50 major universities with computer science or information technology programs. At least three of Iran’s top schools are thought to be affiliated with Iran’s Defense Ministry and the Guard, providing potential hackers for security forces.

    Iranian hacking attempts on U.S. targets have included banks and even a small dam near New York City — attacks American prosecutors linked to the Guard.

    While Russia is seen as the biggest foreign threat to U.S. elections, officials have been concerned about Iran. Its hacking attempts in the presidential campaign have relied on phishing — sending many misleading emails in hopes that some recipients will inadvertently provide access to sensitive information.

    Amin Sabeti, a digital security expert who focuses on Iran, said the tactic works.

    “It’s scalable, it’s cheap and you don’t need a skill set because you just put, I don’t know, five crazy people who are hard line in an office in Tehran, then send tens of thousands of emails. If they get 10 of them, it’s enough,” he said.

    For Iran, hacks targeting the U.S. offer the prospect of causing chaos, undermining Trump’s campaign and obtaining secret information.

    “I’ve lost count of how many attempts have been made on my emails and social media since it’s been going on for over a decade,” said Holly Dagres, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who once had her email briefly hacked by Iran. “The Iranians aren’t targeting me because I have useful information swimming in my inbox or direct messages. Rather, they hope to use my name and think tank affiliation to target others and eventually make it up the chain to high-ranking U.S. government officials who would have useful information and intelligence related to Iran.”

    Iran has vowed to exact revenge against Trump and others in his former administration over the 2020 drone strike that killed the prominent Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad.

    In July, authorities said they learned of an Iranian threat against Trump and boosted security. Iran has not been linked to the assassination attempts against Trump in Florida and Pennsylvania. A Pakistani man who spent time in Iran was recently charged by federal prosecutors for allegedly plotting to carry out assassinations in the U.S., including potentially of Trump.

    Officials take Iran’s threat seriously given its history of targeting adversaries.

    After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, its leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini signaled how Iran would target perceived enemies by saying, “Islam grew with blood.”

    “The great prophet of Islam, he had the Quran in one hand, and a sword in the other hand — a sword to suppress traitors,” Khomeini said.

    Even before creating a network of allied militias in the Mideast, Iran is suspected of targeting opponents abroad, beginning with members of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s former government. The attention shifted to perceived opponents of the theocracy, both in the country with the mass executions of 1988 and abroad.

    Outside of Iran, the so-called “chain murders” targeted activists, journalists and other critics. One prominent incident linked to Iran was a shooting at a restaurant in Germany that killed three Iranian-Kurdish figures and a translator. In 1997, a German court implicated Iran’s top leaders in the shooting, sparking most European Union nations to withdraw their ambassadors.

    Iran’s targeted killings slowed after that, but didn’t stop. U.S. prosecutors link Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to a 2011 plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington. Meanwhile, a suspected Israeli campaign of assassinations targeted scientists in Iran’s nuclear program.

    In 2015, Iran signed a nuclear deal that saw it greatly reduce its enrichment in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. Two years later, Trump was elected pledging to unilaterally withdraw America from the accord. As businesses backed away from Iran, Tehran renewed a campaign of targeting opponents abroad, but this time capturing them and bringing them to Iran for trial.

    Belgium arrested an Iranian diplomat, Assadollah Assadi, in 2018 and ultimately convicted him of masterminding a thwarted bomb attack against an exiled Iranian opposition group. Iran also increasingly has turned to criminal gangs for some attempts, such as what U.S. prosecutors have described as plots to kill or kidnap opposition activist Masih Alinejad.

    Among those targeted after Soleimani’s death was former U.S. national security adviser John Bolton. The U.S. has offered a reward of up to $20 million for information leading to the capture or conviction of a Revolutionary Guard member it said arranged to kill Bolton for $300,000.

    An FBI agent quoted Guard Gen. Esmail Ghaani as saying in 2022 in a court filing, “Wherever is necessary we take revenge against Americans by the help of people on their side and within their own homes without our presence.”

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  • Threats and assassination attempts come with the office Donald Trump once held and is seeking again

    Threats and assassination attempts come with the office Donald Trump once held and is seeking again

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    WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump, following an apparent assassination attempt on him on Sunday, claimed that overheated rhetoric from Democrats was responsible for him being under threat.

    It turns out, records show, that threats come with the office that he once held and is trying to win again, and occur far more frequently than is widely known.

    An examination of Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, known as TRAC, shows that since 1986 when Ronald Reagan was in the White House, the federal government has prosecuted 1,444 cases of threats against presidents or others in line of presidential succession.

    The highest number of prosecutions in a single year came in 1987 during the Reagan years when there were 73. TRAC data shows there were 72 cases brought in 2002 during the George W. Bush administration. The Bush administration also had the highest number of cases over its eight-year span with 383, a time of heightened tension during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Prosecutors brought 343 cases when Bill Clinton was president and 213 during former President Barack Obama’s two terms. There were 68 cases brought in Trump’s first term. Reagan had 200 in the last three years of his presidency and 213 cases were brought during George H.W. Bush’s one term.

    The number of convictions was highest in the George W. Bush and Clinton years.

    TRAC is a widely used database research tool established in the 1980s by the Newhouse School and the Martin J. Whitman School of Management and created with government data obtained through federal open records laws and court litigation.

    Trump falls into numerous categories as a former president and presidential candidate. There are statutes pertaining to threats or attacks on both.

    So far, Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, has been charged with possessing a firearm despite a prior felony conviction and possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number. Additional charges are possible.

    Authorities were continuing to examine Routh’s potential motive and movements in the days and weeks leading up to Sunday, when a Secret Service agent assigned to Trump’s security detail spotted a firearm poking out of shrubbery on the West Palm Beach golf course where Trump was playing. The agent fired, and Routh escaped into a sport utility vehicle, leaving behind a digital camera, a backpack, a loaded SKS-style rifle with a scope and a plastic bag containing food.

    The attempt on Trump is unique because he is a former president seeking to regain the office who has now faced two attempts. But he is not the only former president who survived an assassination attempt trying to retake the office. Teddy Roosevelt was running as a former president in 1912 when he was shot in the chest while campaigning in Milwaukee.

    “This is not unprecedented. People tend to forget how violence has been around the United States for a long time,” said David Head, a historian at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.

    There have been a number of notable instances that are not included in the TRAC data. Reagan was severely wounded in 1982 and then-President Gerald Ford had two attempts on his life in a 17-day period in 1975. George W. Bush was in Tbilsi, Georgia with Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili in 2005 when someone rolled a hand grenade into the room that did not explode.

    Clinton was in the White House on Oct. 29, 1994, when Francisco Martin Duran, then 26, opened fire outside and fired about 20 rounds at the building. No one was injured but Duran was convicted of attempting to assassinate the president and sentenced to 40 years. According to the Bureau of Prisons website, he is in a federal prison in Virginia and is not eligible for release until 2029.

    Earlier this year, a New Hampshire man charged with threatening Republican candidates was found dead while a jury deliberated his case.

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  • Donald Trump doesn’t share details about his family’s cryptocurrency venture during X launch event

    Donald Trump doesn’t share details about his family’s cryptocurrency venture during X launch event

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    WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Monday launched his family’s cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial, with an interview on the X social media platform in which he also gave his first public comments on the apparent assassination attempt against him a day earlier.

    Trump did not discuss specifics about World Liberty Financial or how it would work, pivoting from questions about cryptocurrency to talking about artificial intelligence or other topics. Instead, he recounted his experience Sunday, saying he and a friend playing golf “heard shots being fired in the air, and I guess probably four or five.”

    “I would have loved to have sank that last putt,” Trump said. He credited the Secret Service agent who spotted the barrel of a rifle and began firing toward it as well as law enforcement and a civilian who he said helped track down the suspect.

    World Liberty Financial is expected to be a borrowing and lending service used to trade cryptocurrencies, which are forms of digital money that can be traded over the internet without relying on the global banking system. Exchanges often charge fees for withdrawals of Bitcoin and other currencies.

    Other speakers after Trump, including his eldest son, Don Jr., talked about embracing cryptocurrency as an alternative to what they allege is a banking system tilted against conservatives.

    Experts have said a presidential candidate launching a business venture in the midst of a campaign could create ethical conflicts.

    “Taking a pro-crypto stance is not necessarily troubling; the troubling aspect is doing it while starting a way to personally benefit from it,” Jordan Libowitz, a spokesperson for the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said earlier this month.

    During his time in the White House, Trump said he was “not a fan” of cryptocurrency and tweeted in 2019, “Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity.” However, during this election cycle, he has reversed himself and taken on a favorable view of cryptocurrencies.

    He announced in May that his campaign would begin accepting donations in cryptocurrency as part of an effort to build what it calls a “crypto army” leading up to Election Day. He attended a bitcoin conference in Nashville this year, promising to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the planet” and create a bitcoin “strategic reserve” using the currency that the government currently holds.

    Hilary Allen, a law professor at American University who has done research on cryptocurrencies, said she was skeptical of Trump’s change of heart on crypto.

    “I think it’s fair to say that that reversal has been motivated in part by financial interests,” she said.

    Crypto enthusiasts welcomed the shift, viewing the launch as a positive sign for investors if Trump retakes the White House.

    Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has not offered policy proposals on how it would regulate digital assets like cryptocurrencies.

    In an effort to appeal to crypto investors, a group of Democrats, including Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, participated in an online “Crypto 4 Harris” event in August.

    Neither Harris nor members of her campaign staff attended the event.

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    Gomez Licon contributed from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

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  • 2 charged in plot to solicit attacks on minorities, officials and infrastructure on Telegram

    2 charged in plot to solicit attacks on minorities, officials and infrastructure on Telegram

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    WASHINGTON — Two people who prosecutors say were motivated by white supremacist ideology have been arrested on charges that they used the social media messaging app Telegram to encourage hate crimes and acts of violence against minorities, government officials and critical infrastructure in the United States, the Justice Department said Monday.

    The defendants, identified as Dallas Erin Humber and Matthew Robert Allison, face 15 federal counts in the Eastern District of California, including charges that accuse them of soliciting hate crimes and the murder of federal officials, distributing bombmaking instructions and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.

    Humber, 34, of Elk Grove, California, and Allison, 37, of Boise, Idaho were arrested Friday. Humber pleaded not guilty in a Sacramento courtroom Monday to the charges. Her attorney Noa Oren declined to comment on the case Monday afternoon after the arraignment.

    It was not immediately clear if Allison had an attorney who could speak on his behalf.

    The indictment accuses the two of leading Terrorgram, a network of channels and group chats on Telegram, and of soliciting followers to attack perceived enemies of white people, including government buildings and energy facilities and “high-value” targets such as politicians.

    “Today’s action makes clear that the department will hold perpetrators accountable, including those who hide behind computer screens, in seeking to carry out bias-motivated violence,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, the Justice Department’s top civil rights official, said at a news conference.

    Their exhortations to commit violence included statements such as “Take Action Now” and “Do your part,” and users who carried out acts to further white supremacism were told they could become known as “Saints,” prosecutors said.

    Justice Department officials say the pair used the app to transmit bomb-making instructions and to distribute a list of potential targets for assassination — including a federal judge, a senator and a former U.S. attorney — and to celebrate acts or plots from active Terrorgram users.

    Those include the stabbing last month of five people outside a mosque in Turkey and the July arrest of an 18-year-old accused of planning to attack an electrical substation to advance white supremacist views. In the Turkey attack, for instance, prosecutors say the culprit on the morning of the stabbing posted in a group chat: “Come see how much humans I can cleanse.”

    A 24-minute documentary that the two had produced, “White Terror,” documented and praised some 105 acts of white supremacist violence between 1968 and 2021, according to the indictment.

    “The risk and danger they present is extremely serious,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, the Justice Department’s top national security official. He added: “Their reach is as far as the internet because of the platform they’ve created.”

    Telegram is a messaging app that allows for one-on-one conversations, group chats and large “channels” that let people broadcast messages to subscribers. Though broadly used as a messaging tool around the world, Telegram has also drawn scrutiny, including a finding from French investigators that the app has been used by Islamic extremists and drug traffickers.

    Telegram’s founder and CEO, Pavel Durov, was detained by French authorities last month on charges of allowing the platform’s use for criminal activity. Durov responded to the charges with a post last week saying he shouldn’t have been targeted personally and by promising to step up efforts to fight criminality on the app.

    He wrote that while Telegram is not “some sort of anarchic paradise,” surging numbers of users have “caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform.”

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    Associated Press reporter Trân Nguyễn contributed from Sacramento, California.

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  • FACT FOCUS: Google autocomplete results around Trump lead to claims of election interference

    FACT FOCUS: Google autocomplete results around Trump lead to claims of election interference

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    With fewer than 100 days until the 2024 election, social media users are claiming that a lack of Google autocomplete results about former President Donald Trump and his attempted assassination is evidence of election interference.

    Many posts include screenshots showing what the autocomplete feature, which predicts what users are trying to type, has generated for text such as “attempted assassination of tr” or “president donald.” Among the pictured results for the former phrase are references to other assassination attempts, including that of Harry Truman and Gerald Ford, but nothing for Trump. The latter provides two options — “president donald duck” and “president donald regan.”

    Multiple high-profile figures, including Trump and sitting members of Congress, promoted the claim across social media platforms, collectively amassing more than 1 million likes and shares by Tuesday. Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Google attributed the situation to existing protections against autocomplete predictions associated with political violence, noting that “no manual action was taken” to suppress information about Trump.

    Search engine experts said there are many reasons that could explain why some autocomplete results concerning the former president were not appearing.

    Here’s a closer look at the facts.

    CLAIM: Google is engaging in election interference by censoring autocomplete results about former President Donald Trump, including the assassination attempt at his Pennsylvania rally on July 13.

    THE FACTS: It is true that Google’s autocomplete feature as of Monday was not finishing certain phrases related to Trump and the assassination attempt as shown in screenshots spreading online, but there is no evidence it was related to election interference.

    By Tuesday, some of the same terms were providing relevant autocomplete results. The text “president donald” now also suggests “Donald Trump” as a search option. Similarly, the phrase “attempted assassination of” includes Trump’s name in autocomplete predictions. Adding “tr” to the same phrase though makes the option disappear.

    Completed searches about Trump and the assassination attempt done on both Monday and Tuesday yielded extensive relevant results regardless of what autocomplete predictions came up.

    Google told the AP that its autocomplete feature has automated protections regarding violent topics, including for searches about theoretical assassination attempts. The company further explained that its systems were out of date even prior to July 13, meaning that the protections already in place couldn’t take into account that an actual assassination attempt had occurred.

    Additional autocomplete results now appearing about Trump are the result of systemic improvements — rather than targeted manual fixes — that will affect many other topics, according to the company.

    “We’re rolling out improvements to our Autocomplete systems to show more up-to-date predictions,” Google told The Associated Press in a statement. “The issues are beginning to resolve, and we’ll continue to make improvements as needed. As always, predictions change over time and there may be some imperfections. Autocomplete helps save people time, but they can always search for whatever they want, and we will continue to connect them with helpful information.”

    Search engine experts told the AP that they don’t see evidence of suspicious activities on Google’s part and that there are plenty of other reasons to explain why there have been a lack of autocomplete predictions about Trump.

    “It’s very plausible that there’s nothing nefarious here, that it’s other systems that are set up for neutral or good purposes that are causing these query suggestions to not show up,” said Michael Ekstrand, an assistant professor at Drexel University who studies AI-powered information access systems. “I don’t have a reason not to believe Google’s claim that this is just normal systems for other purposes, particularly around political violence.”

    Thorsten Joachims, a professor at Cornell University who researches machine learning for search engines, explained that autocomplete tools typically work by looking at queries people make frequently over a certain period of time, providing the most frequent completions of those queries. Beyond that, a search engine may automatically prune predictions based on concerns such as safety and privacy.

    This means that it’s plausible that Google’s autocomplete feature wouldn’t have accounted for recent searches about the assassination attempt on Trump, especially if its systems indeed had not been updated since before the shooting.

    “Depending on how big the window is that they’re averaging over, that may simply not be a frequent query,” Joachims said. “And it may not be a candidate for autocompletion.” He added that it’s typical not to update a search model on a daily basis, given the costs and technical risks involved.

    A 2020 Google blog post about its autocomplete feature describes how the system reflects previous searches and why users might not see certain predictions, including those that are violent in nature. The post also explains that predictions may vary based on variables such as a user’s location, the language they speak or rising interest in a topic.

    Both Ekstrand and Joachims agreed that proving bias in a complex system like Google’s search engine from the outside would be extremely difficult. It would require much more data than just a couple of searches, for example, and would risk setting off the company’s protections against data scraping, reverse engineering and fraud.

    “In general, claims that platforms are taking particular targeted actions against specific people on political bases are hard to substantiate,” Ekstrand said. “They sometimes, I’m sure, happen, but there’s so many other explanations that it’s difficult to substantiate such claims.”

    Joachims noted that the demographics of Google’s user base could impact the results of such a study if they skewed toward one side of the political aisle or another and therefore searched more for their preferred candidates. In other words, the way the system works would make it difficult to probe the system.

    Technical issues aside, limiting autocomplete predictions as a method of political influence could simply be bad for business.

    “Even if Google would like to do that, I think it would be a very bad decision because they could lose a lot of users,” said Ricardo Baeza-Yates, a professor at Northeastern University whose research includes web search and information retrieval.

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    Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

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  • FACT FOCUS: A look at false claims around the assassination attempt on former President Trump

    FACT FOCUS: A look at false claims around the assassination attempt on former President Trump

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    The assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, who is running for reelection, is fueling a range of false claims and conspiracy theories as authorities seek information about the 20-year-old shooter’s background and motive, how he obtained the AR-style rifle he fired at Trump and security at the venue that failed to stop the shooting.

    Here’s a look at the facts.

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    Photo is said to show Trump’s ear with no damage on Monday after shooting. It’s from 2022

    CLAIM: A photo taken on Monday shows former President Donald Trump with no damage to his right ear, contrary to reports that it was injured in an attempted assassination on Saturday.

    THE FACTS: The photo was taken on Sept. 17, 2022, at a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, for then-U.S. Senate candidate JD Vance. Trump appeared at the Republican National Convention Monday night with a large, white bandage on his right ear. Myriad photos show his ear bloodied after a shooter opened fire at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, over the weekend.

    Social media users are sharing the old photo as new, with some falsely presenting it as evidence that Trump was not injured by the gunfire.

    “The top part of his ear grew back,” reads one X post from Monday night that had received approximately 40,000 likes and 13,200 shares as of Tuesday. “(Yes. This is from today)”

    Another X post from Monday night states: “This image of Trump was taken today. There is absolutely nothing wrong with his ear, and it has zero damage, FROM A BULLET. Everything about Trump is a con or a grift.” It received approximately 26,000 likes and 8,600 shares.

    But the photo was taken nearly two years ago.

    It is from a Sept. 17, 2022, rally in Youngstown, Ohio, for Vance during his Senate campaign. The image appeared in multiple articles published around that time. Trump chose Vance, now a U.S. senator, as his running mate on Monday.

    The version spreading online is cropped to show only Trump and is zoomed in on the former president’s ear. In the original, Vance can be seen speaking at a podium while Trump stands behind him.

    Trump appeared at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Monday night with a large, white bandage on his right ear. Numerous photos from the aftermath of the shooting show the same ear bloodied.

    Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old nursing-home employee from suburban Pittsburgh, fired multiple shots at Trump with an AR-style rifle from a nearby roof at a rally for the Republican nominee on Saturday. He was killed by Secret Service personnel, officials said.

    The attempted assassination left Trump and two other men wounded. Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old fire chief, was killed while protecting his family. The FBI said it was investigating the attack as a potential act of domestic terrorism, but has not identified a clear ideological motive, The Associated Press has reported.

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    Online posts falsely claim sharpshooter was told not to fire on suspect in Trump shooting

    CLAIM: A law enforcement sniper assigned to Trump’s rally Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania, says the head of the Secret Service ordered him not to shoot the suspect accused of attempting to assassinate Trump.

    THE FACTS: No such order was made. Snipers killed the suspected shooter moments after he opened fire on the former president, bloodying Trump’s ear, killing one rally attendee and injuring two. The Secret Service and the Butler Police Department say they have no agents, officers or employees with the name of the person claiming to be the sharpshooter.

    Following Saturday’s attempt on Trump’s life, a poster on the online message board 4chan wrote that they were a sniper assigned to the rally, and that they can be seen in a photo of two law enforcement officers on the roof at the rally.

    “My name is Jonathan Willis,” the poster wrote. “I came here to inform the public that I had the assassin in my sights for at least 3 minutes, but the head of the secret service refused to give the order to take out the perp. 100% the top brass prevented me from killing the assassin before he took the shots at president Trump,” the post claimed.

    But there is no agent or officer by the name of Jonathan Willis working for the Secret Service or the Butler police, and no internet records of such an officer could be located.

    A spokesman for the Secret Service said snipers are trained and instructed to act whenever they see a threat, and do not await instructions before taking a shot to neutralize a suspect. He said he couldn’t discuss the specifics of agency communication or the details of the ongoing investigation, but said the post was false.

    Witnesses at the rally alerted law enforcement to the suspect, identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, after they saw him perched atop a nearby roof. A local law enforcement officer climbed to the roof and found Crooks, who pointed the rifle at the officer. The officer retreated, and the gunman quickly fired toward Trump, the officials said. That’s when U.S. Secret Service gunmen shot him, officials have said.

    Crooks, a nursing-home employee from suburban Pittsburgh, fired multiple shots at Trump with an AR-style rifle. A spectator was killed and two others were critically injured.

    Authorities said the shooting was an attempted assassination, but haven’t yet determined what motivated Crooks to try to kill Trump, the AP has reported.

    ___

    Posts misrepresent photo to claim Trump was shot in the chest and saved by a bulletproof vest

    CLAIM: A photo shows a bullet hole in Trump’s suit jacket, proving that he was shot in the chest during the attempted assassination.

    THE FACTS: The photo actually shows a fold in the suit jacket of a Secret Service agent protecting Trump. Another Associated Press image taken moments before clearly shows there is no hole in Trump’s jacket. What appears to be a hole can be seen diminishing as the agent moves in video of the shooting’s aftermath.

    Social media users are sharing the photo from the assassination attempt to claim that the former president was shot in the chest. Some posts suggest he survived because he was wearing a bulletproof vest.

    In the image, what seems to be a small hole appears inches below Trump’s right underarm. Many posts use a zoomed-in version of the photo that has a circle around the supposed hole to emphasize the hard-to-notice detail.

    “#Trump was also shot in the chest,” reads one X post. “The bulletproof vest saved him #We support Trump.

    Another X post similarly reads, “It appears that Trump was shot in the chest, as the bullet seem to have pierced his suit; he was wearing a bulletproof vest.”

    But the apparent hole is actually a fold in the sleeve of the Secret Service agent’s jacket, not the aftermath of a bullet.

    The photo taken by an AP photographer shows the agent bending over as she protects Trump, her jacket appearing slightly darker than the former president’s. The fold can be seen by following the edge of the agent’s jacket from her neck to just below her left shoulder.

    Moreover, another AP image taken moments before the one with the supposed hole clearly shows the right side of Trump’s jacket as he raises his fist. No hole can be seen in the jacket.

    Trump wrote on his social media platform that he was “shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear.” Photos and video from the rally show blood on his right ear and on the right side of his face.

    The Secret Service declined to comment on details of the shooting, including where the bullets hit, and did not respond to a follow-up inquiry about whether Trump was wearing a bulletproof vest. Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

    ___ Photo edited to make it appear Secret Service agents were smiling after attempt on Trump’s life

    CLAIM: A photo from the attempted assassination of Trump shows Secret Service agents smiling as they surround him after the shooting.

    THE FACTS: The photo was edited to make it appear the agents were smiling. In the original, taken by an Associated Press photographer, the same agents can be seen with neutral expressions.

    After the shooting, social media users shared the altered image, with some suggesting it was evidence that the assassination attempt had been staged.

    The photo shows Trump with blood on his face and ear, pumping his fist in front of an American flag while Secret Service agents surround him. Three agents whose faces are visible seem to be grinning as they protect the former president.

    “Why are all 3 Secret Service agents smiling, at least that is how it appears to me,” reads one post on X. “Do to the seriousness of the situation, I would think their expressions would be grim + determined. Now, if it was a staged event, these expressions would make more sense.”

    But the agents were not smiling at that moment. The photo was edited to make it appear otherwise.

    The original image shows the same three agents with neutral expressions. One man is positioned behind Trump, a second man stands by his left shoulder and a woman is bent over on his right side, beneath his raised arm.

    ___

    Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

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  • Minutes after Trump shooting, misinformation started flying. Here are the facts

    Minutes after Trump shooting, misinformation started flying. Here are the facts

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Within minutes of the gunfire, the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump spawned a vast sea of claims — some outlandish, others contradictory — reflecting the frightening uncertainties of the moment as well as America’s fevered, polarized political climate.

    The cloudburst of speculation and conjecture as Americans turned to the internet for news about the shooting is the latest sign of how social media has emerged as a dominant source of information — and misinformation — for many, and a contributor to the distrust and turbulence now driving American politics.

    Mentions of Trump on social media soared up to 17 times the average daily amount in the hours after the shooting, according to PeakMetrics, a cyber firm that tracks online narratives. Many of those mentions were expressions of sympathy for Trump or calls for unity. But many others made unfounded, fantastical claims.

    “We saw things like ‘The Chinese were behind it,’ or ‘ Antifa was behind it,’ or ‘the Biden administration did it.’ We also saw a claim that the RNC was behind it,’” said Paul Bartel, senior intelligence analyst at PeakMetrics. “Everyone is just speculating. No one really knows what’s going on. They go online to try to figure it out.”

    Here’s a look at the claims that surfaced online following the shooting:

    Claims of an inside job or false flag are unsubstantiated

    Many of the more specious claims that surfaced immediately after the shooting sought to blame Trump or his Democratic opponent, President Joe Biden, for the attack.

    Some voices on the left quickly proclaimed the shooting to be a false flag concocted by Trump, while some Trump supporters suggested the Secret Service intentionally failed to protect Trump on the White House’s orders.

    The Secret Service on Sunday pushed back on claims circulating on social media that Trump’s campaign had asked for greater security before Saturday’s rally and was told no.

    “This is absolutely false,” agency spokesman Anthony Guglielmi wrote Sunday on X. “In fact, we added protective resources & technology & capabilities as part of the increased campaign travel tempo.”

    Videos of the shooting were quickly dissected in partisan echo chambers and Trump supporters and detractors looked for evidence to support their beliefs. Videos showing Secret Service agents moving audience members away from Trump before the shooting were offered as evidence that it was an inside job. Images of Trump’s defiantly raised fist were used to make the opposite claim — that the whole event was staged by Trump.

    “How did the USSS allow him to stop and pose for a photo opp if there was real danger??” wrote one user, using the abbreviation for the U.S. Secret Service.

    Social media bots helped amplify the false claims on platforms including Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok, according to an analysis by the Israeli tech firm Cyabra, which found that a full 45% of the accounts using hashtags like #fakeassassination and #stagedshooting were inauthentic.

    An image created using artificial intelligence — depicting a smiling Trump moments after the shooting — was also making the rounds, Cyabra found.

    Moments like this are ‘cannon fodder’ for extremists

    Conspiracy theories quickly emerged online that misidentified the suspected shooter, blamed other people without evidence and espoused hate speech, including virulent antisemitism.

    “Moments like this are cannon fodder for extremists online, because typically they will react with great confidence to whatever has happened without any real evidence” said Jacob Ware, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “People will fall into spirals and will advance their own ideologies and their own conclusions.”

    Before authorities identified the suspect, photos of two different people circulated widely online falsely identifying them as the shooter.

    In all the speculation and conjecture, others were trying to exploit the event financially. On X on Sunday morning, an account named Proud Patriots urged Trump supporters to purchase their assassination-attempt themed merchandise.

    “First they jail him, now they try to end him,” reads the ad for the commemorative Trump Assassination Attempt Trading Card. “Stand Strong & Show Your Support!”

    Republicans cast blame on Biden

    After the shooting, some Republicans blamed Biden for the shooting, arguing sustained criticisms of Trump as a threat to democracy have created a toxic environment. They pointed in particular to a comment Biden made to donors on July 8, saying “it’s time to put Trump in the bullseye.”

    Ware said that comment from Biden was “violent rhetoric” that is “raising the stakes,” especially when combined with Biden’s existential words about the election. But he said it was important not to make conclusions about the shooter’s motive until we know more information. Biden’s remarks were part of a broader approach to turn scrutiny on Trump, with no explicit call to violence.

    Trump’s own incendiary words have been criticized in the past for encouraging violence. His lies about the 2020 election and his call for supporters to “fight like hell” preceded the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, which led to his second impeachment on charges of incitement of insurrection. Trump also mocked the hammer attack that left 80-year-old Paul Pelosi, the husband of the former House speaker, with a fractured skull.

    Surveys find that Americans overwhelmingly reject violence as a way to settle political differences, but overheated rhetoric from candidates and social media can motivate a small minority of people to act, said Sean Westwood, a political scientist who directs the Polarization Research Lab at Dartmouth College.

    Westwood said he worries that Saturday’s shooting could spur others to consider violence as a tactic.

    “There is a real risk that this spirals,” he said. “Even if someone doesn’t personally support violence, if they think the other side does, and they witness an attempted political assassination, there is a real risk that this could lead to escalation.”

    ___

    The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Trump’s escape from disaster by mere inches reveals a tiny margin with seismic impact

    Trump’s escape from disaster by mere inches reveals a tiny margin with seismic impact

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    NEW YORK (AP) — Jarring, chaotic and sudden, the bullet whizzed toward the stage where former President Donald Trump stood behind a podium speaking. In its wake: the potential for a horrifying and tragic chapter in American history.

    But the Republican presidential candidate had a narrow escape — mere inches, possibly less — in Saturday’s assassination attempt. The projectile from the shooter on a nearby rooftop left Trump with just a bloodied right ear, initially shaken but otherwise unharmed as he dropped down and Secret Service swarmed, his campaign continuing as the Republican National Convention got underway.

    A tiny margin for survival, with a potentially seismic impact. And an unforgettable example of something many were talking about Monday — a hard truth about the events that shape us, our daily lives, and our society:

    Sometimes, it’s all about chance, about circumstances falling in one direction and not another, about interventions in the nick of time or missteps that allow for disruption.

    Sometimes history can come down to inches.

    Near misses and the hinge of history

    It’s a truth that often gets obscured as we look over dates, places, people and events with the perspective of hindsight and blanket media coverage. The past gets covered with a patina of inevitability — as if it could have only occurred the way it did.

    But “what just happened to us is a kind of humbling lesson about how contingent all of this is,” says Susan Schulten, a history professor at the University of Denver. “And nothing’s foreordained.”

    No matter what, of course, there will be fallout and an impact from the attempted assassination of Trump on Saturday at a Pennsylvania rally, where an attendee was killed and two others wounded, and law enforcement killed the shooter. But what it will be, in this election year and in the years to come, will unfold differently than it would have in an America where events had gone differently.

    History is filled with examples of chance, randomness or luck playing a part in how things turn out, says Mark Rank, a professor of social welfare at Washington University in St. Louis and author of “The Random Factor: How Chance and Luck Profoundly Shape Our Lives and the World around Us.”

    In his book, he recounts an incident during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when a submarine from what was then the Soviet Union came close to firing a nuclear-tipped torpedo at U.S. forces out of a belief it was being attacked. But a circumstantial delay in getting the order carried out allowed enough time for another officer to recognize that wasn’t the case.

    There are plenty of other moments where there can be endless “what-if” discussions, from assassinations of figures like Abraham Lincoln and John and Robert Kennedy to other attempted killings such as the attack on President Ronald Reagan in 1981, two months after he assumed the presidency.

    Police snipers return fire after shots were fired while Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump was speaking at a campaign event in Butler, Pa., on Saturday, July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

    It’s also events like the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, Rank points out, when there were ordinary people who “missed their subway connection or were late or were early and just missed being killed in that disaster, whereas other folks were not as lucky.”

    Trying to find meaning

    Often, people respond to events like these by trying to make sense of them through a belief in coherence — to summon some kind of universal meaning, or divine plan.

    That’s because people want a sense of control, says Daryl Van Tongeren, a professor of psychology at Hope College in Michigan. It’s too unnerving, he says, to admit that life is random and chance-filled. “It’s safer for us to think that we can just control everything that happens.”

    Image

    A campaign rally site for Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is empty and littered with debris Saturday, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

    Image

    Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is covered by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign rally, Saturday, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

    And in the United States of America, where part of the national mythology is the idea that we are masters of our own destinies — that we can pull ourselves up by our own efforts — the idea of randomness can land as particularly unnerving, Rank says.

    “In the United States, we’re really steeped in the idea of rugged individualism and self-reliance and meritocracy and you do it on your own, and you’re in control, and you have agency,” he says. “And to some extent, we are in control. We do make decisions. But another aspect of life is that … there are things that happen to you that you have no control over.

    “That’s kind of unsettling,” he says. “But that’s the way life plays out. That’s the world.”

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  • What to watch as the Republican National Convention kicks off days after Trump assassination attempt

    What to watch as the Republican National Convention kicks off days after Trump assassination attempt

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    MILWAUKEE (AP) — The Republican National Convention starts Monday in Milwaukee, two days after Donald Trump was injured in an assassination attempt, with the violent scene at his campaign rally horrifying the country and amplifying already intense political divisions.

    Trump and his advisers are pledging resilience in the face of the attack, with plans going forward for the event to showcase the former president and his platform as his party formally chooses him to be its nominee.

    It was not immediately clear if and how Saturday’s attack would alter the four-day event, which normally has a celebratory atmosphere. Republican officials have said they want to defy the threat Trump has faced and stick to their plans and their schedule. But at the very least, the event is expected to include a heightened focus on security and a grim recognition of how stunningly close the presumptive Republican nominee came to losing his life.

    AP correspondent Jackie Quinn reports on the opening day of the Republican National Convention, just days after an apparent assassination attempt against Donald Trump.

    Here’s what to watch for on the first day of the Republican National Convention:

    How the attack impacts the tone of speeches

    The shooting has drawn bipartisan condemnation and bipartisan calls for unity. But it has also led to some Republicans blaming President Joe Biden, pointing to his words casting Trump as a threat to democracy. Some have demanded that prosecutors now drop the criminal cases Trump faces, including one in which he’s been convicted. Two other cases are pending and one was dismissed by a judge Monday.

    As elected officials, politicians and a few regular Americans address the conference, the question is which tone will prevail in the aftermath of the attack: Will it make speeches even more fiery or will calls for calm prevail?

    A show of GOP unity

    Even before the attempt on Trump’s life Saturday, Republicans were largely firmly aligned with him and planned to show party unity at the convention. But that message is expected to be even more pronounced as the former president and GOP officials look to project resolve, with Trump saying Sunday that “it is more important than ever that we stand United, and show our True Character as Americans, remaining Strong and Determined, and not allowing Evil to Win.”

    The show of unity is a departure from the party’s recent history. In 2016, the first time Republicans formally crowned Trump as their nominee, the opening day of their convention was marked by angry dissent from anti-Trump delegates on the floor of the event. After his turbulent presidency concluded with an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by his supporters, his political standing seemed weaker than ever when he launched his third White House campaign in 2022. But Trump flattened a field of GOP challengers and his legal problems have galvanized his supporters.

    Running mate

    What to know about the 2024 Election

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    Trump has still not named a running mate, and an announcement could come as soon as Monday. His top three contenders, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, are scheduled to speak to Republican delegates at some point this week, according to event organizers. And per tradition, the person Trump selects as his vice-presidential running mate is expected to give an address Wednesday night.

    Trump has compared his search for a new vice president to his former reality TV show, “The Apprentice,” leading to speculation that the showman might opt for an onstage reveal of his pick at the convention. He could also make the announcement on social media, as he did in 2016 when he selected Mike Pence to be his running mate.

    Greater focus on Harris as questions surround Biden

    Before the shooting, the 2024 race was rocked by upheaval among Democrats after Biden’s shaky debate performance last month led members of his party to start staging a public intervention calling for him to bow out as their nominee and raising the real possibility that Trump may be running against someone else.

    Republicans have long sought to paint Biden as incompetent, but since Biden’s campaign has become seriously questioned, Trump and the GOP have stepped up their criticisms of Vice President Kamala Harris. That’s expected to continue as the convention kicks off, with more references to “the Biden-Harris administration.”

    Economic policies to get spotlight

    The theme for Monday’s program is “Make America Wealthy Once Again,” according to Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee. Focusing on economics not only makes sense because it can be a key issue for swing voters, but it’s an area where Trump might have an edge over Biden when it comes to voter views on job creation and cost of living.

    Look for Republicans to focus on Trump’s proposals to impose higher tariffs on foreign-made goods along with extending the tax cuts he signed into law in 2017, which expire next year. Biden wants to extend the middle-class tax cuts while raising taxes on highly profitable companies and the richest Americans.

    Expect Republicans to also focus on inflation, even though the worst price spike in four decades is steadily fading, according to a new report from the Labor Department. Biden claims Trump’s tariffs would only aggravate the problem.

    Appeal beyond the base to moderates

    As Trump tries to win over undecided and middle-of-the-road voters, one of the key questions is to what degree he’ll feature some of the far-right characters in his orbit, his lies about his loss in the 2020 election, his calls for retribution against his opponents and his embrace of those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

    Key messages of Trump’s third campaign for the White House have included venting his grievances from the past election and decrying his legal problems. He has said that if he’s elected president, he expects to pardon many of those arrested or convicted for their roles in the violent siege on the Capitol and has even played a song at his rallies that he recorded with some of the jailed defendants.

    Though candidates typically try to moderate their message as they move into the general election, Trump has rarely been typical — or moderate — and some of the messages he’s featured in his campaign could be jarring to the voters he’s looking to sway.

    Biden gets back to counterprogramming

    Biden is getting his own slice of the prime-time spotlight Monday when he appears in an interview on NBC with Lester Holt as he continues to try to reassure members of his party about his candidacy.

    He canceled a planned Monday trip to Texas and his reelection campaign temporarily suspended its television ads after Saturday’s shooting. But the pause in Democratic counterprograming to the Republican convention won’t last.

    After the NBC interview, he’ll fly later Monday to Nevada, where he will address the NAACP convention in Las Vegas on Tuesday and do an interview with the BET network.

    The president has made decrying Trump as a threat to democracy and the nation’s founding values a centerpiece of his campaign. He had to soften that message in the shooting’s immediate aftermath, but plans to use the trip to highlight what his campaign calls stark contrasts between himself and Trump.

    In addition to hoping to defuse some of the GOP criticism coming from Milwaukee, the campaign hopes the trip could help Biden reclaim standing with some Democrats who are still skeptical he’s up to the rigors of the campaign.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Will Weissert contributed to this report.

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  • In a world of moving pictures, photographs capture indelible moments in Trump assassination attempt

    In a world of moving pictures, photographs capture indelible moments in Trump assassination attempt

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    The photograph of a bloodied Donald Trump with his fist in the air and an American flag looming in the background is quickly emerging as the pivotal image of Saturday’s shooting, and it wouldn’t exist without a journalist who acted quickly and on a hunch.

    Video of the assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally filled television screens before it was even clear what had happened. Yet the work of The Associated Press’ Evan Vucci, Getty’s Anna Moneymaker and Doug Mills of The New York Times — whose picture caught apparent evidence of a bullet whizzing past Trump’s head — proved the enduring potency of still photography in a world driven by a flood of moving pictures.

    Associated Press photojournalist Evan Vucci has covered former President Donald Trump for years, but what occurred on Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania was a time stopping moment in history, and Vucci recounts his experience from the rally with Trump.

    Vucci’s image, one of many he took on Saturday, could also have political implications from many directions — as indelible images often do in the days and years after seismic events happen.

    “Without question, Evan’s photo will become the definitive photo from the (assassination) attempt,” said Patrick Witty, a former photo editor at Time, The New York Times and National Geographic. “It captures a range of complex details and emotions in one still image — the defiantly raised fist, the blood, the agents clamoring to push Trump off stage and, most importantly, the flag. That’s what elevates the photo.”

    The New York Post ran the photo across the tabloid’s front page on Sunday with a headline describing the former president as “bloodied but unbowed.” Time magazine has put it on its cover. “A legendary American photograph,” The Atlantic wrote in a headline over a story about the image.

    It all made one thing clear: After more than 175 years of photography, freezing a moment in time for posterity remains as powerful as recounting it in video — and, sometimes, even more so.

    An immediate recognition of the power of the captured moment

    Many news photographers, including AP’s Gene Puskar, were on assignment in various locations around Saturday’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, about 30 miles north of Pittsburgh. Vucci was one of four stationed between the stage and audience. Covering a political rally is a routine assignment the Washington-based journalist has done hundreds of times; left unspoken is the duty to be in position if history beckons in the manner that it did Saturday.

    When he heard popping sounds, Vucci, who has covered combat situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, said he knew instantly it was gunfire. He rushed to the stage at Trump’s right, but his view of the former president was quickly blocked by Secret Service agents. He sensed that the agents would try to hustle Trump offstage and into a vehicle from the other side, so he darted over there.

    What to know about the 2024 Election

    From that position, he said, “everything kind of opened up for me.”

    Trump’s attempts to rise to his feet and pump his fist gave Vucci a clear view of the ex-president. He said the blue sky and flag in the background were an important part of the composition. “I think that kind of told the story of where we are right now,” he said.

    Witty, like some others, compared it to Joe Rosenthal’s AP photo of U.S. Marines raising the American flag on Iwo Jima in World War II — an image so memorable to so many that it inspired a memorial.

    “I think it will last and come to symbolize the time that we’re in,” said Ron Burnett, former president of the Emily Carr University of Art and Design and an expert on images.

    The intersection of imagery and politics

    The presence of the flag may prove a lightning rod, because it also makes the photo a potent political image — in keeping with the increased politicization of the Stars and Stripes in the years since the 9/11 attacks. “Already one of the most iconic photographs in American history — and one that I suspect will propel Donald Trump back to the White House,” British journalist Piers Morgan wrote on X.

    The photo with the full flag from Saturday has already been used 2,327 times by Sunday evening, while another Vucci image — one without the full flag — had been used 1,759 times by AP media customers, the news organization said. Typically, the most-used photo for a full week is seen 700 or 800 times.

    It’s not hard to imagine the flag-draped image being seen in Trump campaign advertisements or paraphernalia, much like his mug shot from his Georgia arrest quickly did. At least one website was already selling T-shirts with the photo on them.

    “I can see it being used in a whole variety of ways as part of the entourage of images that he surrounds himself with,” said Burnett, who marveled at Trump’s ability to seemingly be conscious of how it would all look in the midst of such a traumatic experience.

    Vucci said that how the image is used in the public discourse is not for him to worry about. “The way I look at it is, I was present and I did my job,” said Vucci, who won a 2021 Pulitzer Prize for his work covering demonstrations following the George Floyd shooting. “I kept my head and I told the story.”

    There was other impressive work by photographers at the scene. Getty’s Moneymaker, for example, caught an extraordinarily intimate image of Trump on the floor of the stage, taken peephole-style through the legs of a Secret Service agent shielding him.

    Mills’ photograph for The Times is one of a series that shows Trump reaching for his ear after it had been hit. In one of them, barely visible unless the photo is blown up, there’s a streak behind Trump’s head that likely illustrates the displacement of air from a fast-moving projectile, according to a retired FBI special agent quoted in the newspaper. The Times did not discuss the issue on Sunday.

    The agent, Michael Harrigan, told the newspaper: “Given the circumstances, if that’s not showing the bullet’s path through the air, I don’t know what else it would be.”

    ___

    David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://twitter.com/dbauder.

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  • Trump Media shares surge on 1st day of trading after assassination attempt on the former president

    Trump Media shares surge on 1st day of trading after assassination attempt on the former president

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    Shares of Trump Media surged in the first day of trading following an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.

    Also on Monday, a federal judge presiding over Trump’s classified documents trial in Florida dismissed the case because of her concerns over the appointment of the special prosecutor who brought the case.

    Shares in the owner of social networking site Truth Social soared more than 31% to close Monday at $40.58.

    The U.S. Secret Service is investigating how a gunman armed with an AR-style rifle was able to get on a nearby roof and shoot and injure the former president at a rally Saturday in Pennsylvania.

    The gunman, who officials said was killed by the Secret Service, fired multiple shots at the stage from an “elevated position outside of the rally venue,” the agency said. Trump was bloodied and says he was “shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear.” A spectator was killed.

    In the classified documents case, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon granted a defense motion to dismiss the case Monday, voiding a prosecution that at the time it was brought was seen as the most perilous of the multiple legal threats Trump faced.

    The stock of Trump Media & Technology Group Corp., which trades under the ticker symbol “DJT,” has been extraordinarily volatile since its debut in late March, joining the group of meme stocks that are prone to ricochet between highs and lows as small-pocketed investors attempt to catch an upward momentum swing at the right time.

    Its shares swung wildly both on the day after Biden’s terrible debate performance, and a day after Trump’s conviction in his hush money trial. A New York jury found Trump guilty of falsifying business records in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through hush money payments to a porn actor who said the two had sex.

    The stock frequently makes double-digit percentage moves either higher or lower in a single day. It peaked at nearly $80 in intraday trading on March 26. For context, the S&P 500 is up 18% year to date.

    Trump Media reported in May that it lost more than $300 million last quarter, according to its first earnings report as a publicly traded company.

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  • What we know about the 20-year-old suspect in the apparent assassination attempt of Donald Trump

    What we know about the 20-year-old suspect in the apparent assassination attempt of Donald Trump

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    WASHINGTON — The man identified as the shooter in the apparent assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump was a 20-year-old from a Pittsburgh suburb not far from the campaign rally where one attendee was killed.

    Investigators were working Sunday to gather more information about Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, who they say opened fire from a rooftop outside the rally venue in Butler. An FBI official said late Saturday that a motive had not yet been determined.

    Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, said on social media the upper part of his right ear was pierced in the shooting. Two spectators were critically injured, authorities said.

    Relatives of Crooks didn’t immediately respond to messages from The Associated Press. His father, Matthew Crooks, told CNN late Saturday that he was trying to figure out “what the hell is going on” but wouldn’t speak about his son until after he talked to law enforcement.

    A blockade had been set up Sunday preventing traffic near Crooks’ house, which is in an enclave of modest brick houses in the hills outside blue-collar Pittsburgh. Police cars were stationed at an intersection near the house and officers were seen walking through the neighborhood.

    Crooks graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022, the school district said in a statement to KDKA-TV. The school district said it will cooperate fully with investigators. In 2022, Crooks was among several students given an award for math and science, according to a Tribune-Review story at the time.

    Crooks’ political leanings were not immediately clear. Records show Crooks was registered as a Republican voter in Pennsylvania, but federal campaign finance reports also show he gave $15 to a progressive political action committee on Jan. 20, 2021, the day President Joe Biden was sworn in to office.

    Public Pennsylvania court records show no past criminal cases against Crooks.

    The FBI released his identity early Sunday morning, hours after the shooting. Authorities told reporters that Crooks was not carrying identification so they were using DNA and other methods to confirm his identity.

    Law enforcement recovered an AR-style rifle at the scene, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation.

    An AP analysis of more than a dozen videos and photos from the scene of the Trump rally, as well as satellite imagery of the site, shows the shooter was able to get close to the stage where the former president was speaking.

    A video posted to social media and geolocated by the AP shows the body of a person wearing gray camouflage lying motionless on the roof of a building at AGR International Inc., a manufacturing plant just north of the Butler Farm Show grounds where Trump’s rally was held.

    The roof where the person lay was less than 150 meters (164 yards) from where Trump was speaking, a distance from which a decent marksman could reasonably hit a human-sized target. For reference, 150 meters is a distance at which U.S. Army recruits must hit a scaled human-sized silhouette to qualify with the M-16 rifle.

    Investigators believe the weapon was bought by the father at least six months ago, two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press.

    The officials said federal agents were still working to understand when and how Thomas Crooks obtained the gun. The officials were not authorized to publicly discuss details of the investigation and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity

    _____

    Associated Press journalists Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Julie Smyth and Joshua Bickel in Bethel Park, Michael R. Sisak in New York, Mike Balsamo in Chicago and Colleen Long in Washington contributed.

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  • House of the Dragon season 2’s premiere lets side characters take the spotlight in a way the book never could

    House of the Dragon season 2’s premiere lets side characters take the spotlight in a way the book never could

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    House of the Dragon has always been about how the smallest decisions can have unforeseen consequences, but rarely has that theme been as clear as it was in the season 2 premiere. In the show’s first episode back from break, Daemon Targaryen decides to take matters into his own hands with a plot that probably could have used a little more planning (classic Daemon). But while the book’s version of these events is fittingly brutal, the show’s approach is quieter, more human, and arguably a little more horrifying.

    [Ed. note: This story contains spoilers for House of the Dragon season 2 episode 1.]

    In the book version of the story, the assassins at the center of this episode’s action are named Blood and Cheese. And while they don’t get these silly names in the show, they do get a level of horror and humanity that the book doesn’t have time to afford them. The book versions are boogeymen, terrifying lowlifes who kill a handmaiden and a handful of guards, and seem gleefully cruel in the way they slay Prince Jaehaerys — tricking Queen Helaena into first naming her younger son for death before killing her firstborn instead.

    Image: HBO

    And while those versions of the characters are significantly more stomach-churning, the show’s approach feels much more appropriate thematically. Rather than the murderous wraiths of the book, who slip into the queen mother’s chambers, leaving a pile of bodies behind them, House of the Dragon’s assassins simply move through the castle unnoticed, a pair of hired hands of low status and low intelligence, functionally invisible to the royalty who own the halls. When they reach difficult junctures in the castle’s tunnels, or difficult choices, they panic and bicker and bumble. The Blood and Cheese of the show aren’t gifted killers, they’re just amoral men sent to do something too disgusting for anyone to have imagined possible.

    Adding to all of this is the sense of desperation that the pair’s meeting with Daemon seems to have instilled in them. According to showrunner Ryan Condal, the team wanted the set-piece to play out like a “heist gone wrong,” and as the scene stretches on, we can feel their worry set in, making them more reckless, cruel, and hurried in the process. While the show cleverly leaves Daemon’s final words a mystery, the pair’s fear over what Daemon will do to them if they fail is palpable.

    “We know who Daemon is; I don’t think he necessarily directly ordered the death of a child,” Condal said in a roundtable. “But he clearly said, If it’s not Aemond, don’t leave the castle empty-handed.”

    So when they can’t find their initial target, it makes sense that these two decide to settle for the first royal son they can find. It’s the kind of hurried decision that only these two brutes could make. And, in a scene that’s both grotesque and funny, the two assassins realize that they can’t even tell the two children asleep in their beds apart, and have to riddle their way through Helaena’s answer. The whole thing is a ridiculous farce from two people barely competent enough to pull any of this off.

    Aemond, flying among blue skies and clouds, looks stunned after his dragon bit the head off another dragon in House of the Dragon

    Image: HBO

    All of this builds into the show’s fantastic slippery slope of assumptions. While the audience may know that Aemond’s slaying of Lucerys Velaryon in the skies over Storm’s End was an accidental consequence of not understanding his own dragon’s power, for Daemon, it seems like an act of clear and predetermined aggression. He probably didn’t expect the assassins to come away with the head of a toddler prince, but he thinks letting two assassins loose in the Red Keep with less-than-clear orders is nothing more than a slight escalation.

    These are the kind of spiraling, misinformed decisions that House of the Dragon builds its beautiful, flawed, and deeply human history out of. Sure, the show is elevated to the heights of fantasy, but it’s still fundamentally a story of broken, furious, and faulty characters making rash decisions and then dealing with the consequences — those consequences just often happen to involve dragons and war.

    All of this is true to Martin’s vision, of course. It’s the same kind of storytelling he employs constantly in A Song of Ice and Fire, but while the original Game of Thrones series frequently had to cut down on the humanness of its story simply by virtue of its massive scale, it’s constantly thrilling to see how effectively House of the Dragon goes the opposite direction, expanding on Martin’s written history in Fire & Blood and turning these quasi-mythical historical figures into flesh-and-blood people and incredible characters, up to and including the lowlife assassins who don’t even need their silly little names.

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    Austen Goslin

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  • Slovak PM has been released from hospital after he was shot in assassination attempt

    Slovak PM has been released from hospital after he was shot in assassination attempt

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    Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has been released from the hospital after he was shot in an assassination attempt

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  • JFK assassination remembered 60 years later by surviving witnesses to history, including AP reporter

    JFK assassination remembered 60 years later by surviving witnesses to history, including AP reporter

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    DALLAS — Just minutes after President John F. Kennedy was fatally shot as his motorcade rolled through downtown Dallas, Associated Press reporter Peggy Simpson rushed to the scene and immediately attached herself to the police officers who had converged on the building from which a sniper’s bullets had been fired.

    “I was sort of under their armpit,” Simpson said, noting that every time she was able to get any information from them, she would rush to a pay phone to call her editors, and then “go back to the cops.”

    Simpson, now 84, is among the last surviving witnesses who are sharing their stories as the nation marks the 60th anniversary of the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination on Wednesday.

    “A tangible link to the past is going to be lost when the last voices from that time period are gone,” said Stephen Fagin, curator at The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, which tells the story of the assassination from the Texas School Book Depository, where Lee Harvey Oswald’s sniper’s perch was found.

    “So many of the voices that were here, even 10 years ago, to share their memories — law enforcement officials, reporters, eyewitnesses — so many of those folks have passed away,” he said.

    Simpson, former U.S. Secret Service Agent Clint Hill and others are featured in “JFK: One Day in America,” a three-part series from National Geographic released this month that pairs their recollections with archival footage, some of which has been colorized for the first time. Director Ella Wright said that hearing from those who were there helps tell the “behind the scenes” story that augments archival footage.

    “We wanted people to really understand what it felt like to be back there and to experience the emotional impact of those events,” Wright said.

    People still flock to Dealey Plaza, which the presidential motorcade was passing through when Kennedy was killed.

    “The assassination certainly defined a generation,” Fagin said. “For those people who lived through it and came of age in the 1960s, it represented a significant shift in American culture.”

    On the day of the assassination, Simpson had originally been assigned to attend an evening fundraising dinner for Kennedy in Austin. With time on her hands before she needed to leave Dallas, she was sent to watch the presidential motorcade, but she wasn’t near Dealey Plaza.

    Simpson had no idea that anything out of the ordinary had happened until she arrived at The Dallas Times Herald’s building where the AP’s office was located. Stepping off an elevator, she heard a newspaper receptionist say, “All we know is that the president has been shot,” and then heard the paper’s editor briefing the staff.

    She raced to the AP office in time to watch over the bureau chief’s shoulder as he filed the news to the world, and then ran out to the Texas School Book Depository to track down more information.

    Later, at police headquarters, she said, she witnessed “just a wild, crazy chaotic, unfathomable scene.” Reporters had filled the hallways where an officer walked through with Lee Harvey Oswald ‘s rifle held aloft. The suspect’s mother and wife arrived, and at one point authorities held a news conference where Oswald was asked questions by reporters.

    “I was just with a great mass of other reporters, just trying to find any bit of information,” she said.

    Two days later, Simpson was covering Oswald’s transfer from police headquarters to the county jail, when nightclub owner Jack Ruby burst forth from a gaggle of news reporters and shot the suspect dead.

    As police officers wrestled with Ruby on the floor, Simpson rushed to a nearby bank of phones “and started dictating everything I saw to the AP editors,” she said. In that moment, she was just thinking about getting out the news.

    “As an AP reporter, you just go for the phone, you can’t process anything at that point,” she said.

    Simpson said she must have heard the gunshot but she can’t remember it.

    “Probably Ruby was 2 or 3 feet away from me but I didn’t know him, didn’t see him, didn’t see him come out from the crowd of reporters,” she said.

    Simpson’s recollections are included in an oral history collection at the Sixth Floor Museum that now includes about 2,500 recordings, according to Fagin.

    The museum curator said Simpson is “a terrific example of somebody who was just where the action was that weekend and got caught up in truly historic events while simply doing her job as a professional journalist.”

    Fagin said oral histories are still being recorded. Many of the more recent ones have been with people who were children in the ’60s and remembered hearing about the assassination while at school.

    “It’s a race against time really to try to capture these recollections,” Fagin said.

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  • 60 years after JFK’s death, today’s Kennedys choose other paths to public service

    60 years after JFK’s death, today’s Kennedys choose other paths to public service

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    NEW YORK — Patrick Kennedy, son of Sen. Ted Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy, remembers being a young state legislator in Rhode Island some 30 years ago and hearing encouraging words from the opposition leader at the time.

    “I just want you to know that no matter what you do, nothing’s going to take away from everyone’s memory and appreciation of what your family has done for this country,” Republican David Dumas told him.

    “He meant that ’Don’t preoccupy yourself with worrying about whether you’re a good representative of your family or not,’” Patrick Kennedy, now a former congressman, said in a recent Zoom interview.

    Kennedy spoke shortly before the 60th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy, a seismic national event that predates most American lives but remains an inflection point in the country’s history — as a wellspring of modern conspiracy theories, as a debate over what JFK might have achieved, as an emotional cornerstone of the Kennedy story.

    The anniversary arrives at an unusual moment for the Kennedys. It is a moment when the family’s mission to uphold a legacy of public service and high ideals competes for attention with the presidential candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose anti-vaccine advocacy and inflammatory comments about everything from the Holocaust to the pandemic have led to a rare public family breach.

    Robert’s sister, Kerry Kennedy, has cited her differences with him “on many issues,” while Jack Schlossberg, grandson of President Kennedy, has called Robert’s candidacy “an embarrassment.”

    “We haven’t seen this happening before in the Kennedy family,” says historian Thurston Clarke, author of books on President Kennedy and his brother Robert. “In the past,” Clarke says, “they were very reluctant to attack each other.”

    The current prominence of Robert Kennedy Jr. — what Patrick expects will be a footnote to a larger narrative — doesn’t stand out merely because of what he says and how it departs from family history. It stands out because he is the rare Kennedy these days engaged in national electoral politics.

    For generations, the Kennedy dynasty ranked with the Adamses, the Roosevelts and the Bushes. Their time in public office dates to the 1890s, to Rep. (and future Boston Mayor) John Francis “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, JFK’s grandfather, and grew throughout the first half of the 20th century.

    During JFK’s 1960-63 presidency, governing was decidedly a family affair. Robert Kennedy was attorney general and the president’s closest adviser, brother-in-law Sargent Shriver was heading the newly formed Peace Corps and brother-in-law Stephen Smith was White House chief of staff. Youngest brother Ted Kennedy was elected to John F. Kennedy’s former Senate seat in Massachusetts.

    The death of President Kennedy, and Jacqueline Kennedy’s remembrance of his administration as a lost golden age, “Camelot,” intensified feelings about the family and longings for their presence. Ted Kennedy became a revered liberal voice and legislator, while Shriver was chosen as George McGovern’s running mate in their unsuccessful 1972 presidential campaign.

    Patrick Kennedy was an eight-term congressman from Rhode Island; Joseph Kennedy II, Robert’s son, served 6-terms as a congressman from Massachusetts; and Joseph’s sibling Kathleen Kennedy Townsend was a two-term Maryland lieutenant governor. Arnold Schwarzenegger, married at the time to JFK’s niece Maria Shriver, was California’s governor for two terms.

    But the Kennedys have mostly withdrawn from electoral politics in the 21st century; no Kennedy or Kennedy in-law currently serves in Congress or as a governor. Caroline Kennedy, JFK’s daughter and only surviving child, had been open in 2009 to replacing Hillary Clinton in the U.S. Senate after Clinton was appointed secretary of state by President Barack Obama. She soon stepped back amid signs New York Gov. David Paterson would not select her. He didn’t.

    “Given what happened to their father and uncle, and given the tough road Ted Kennedy had to travel, who can blame them for finding another road?” ” says historian Sean Wilentz. He says the assassinations of JFK and Robert Kennedy may have led to there being “too much of a burden on the next generation to carry on and complete what was left unfinished.”

    Patrick Kennedy, who left Congress in 2011 amid struggles with substance abuse and bipolar disorder, agrees the current political atmosphere is far removed from the 1960s, when leaders such as JFK had a sense of “common purpose.” But he still believes public office worth pursuing and notes that his wife Amy ran for Congress in 2020 — unsuccessfully.

    “When we got out there and campaigned, it was very inspiring,” Patrick Kennedy says. “There were tons of people in the grass roots who were so inspiring — to see how they were so passionate about changing the world.”

    The Kennedy administration now lives on in more in spirit than in firsthand memory. One of the last prominent White House aides, speechwriter Richard Goodwin, died in 2018. The last of President Kennedy’s surviving siblings, former U.S. ambassador to Ireland Jean Smith, died in 2020. Robert F. Kennedy’s widow, Ethel, is in her 90s and rarely comments publicly.

    Starting in 1968, after the assassination of Robert Kennedy, Ted Kennedy was the family’s standard bearer and chosen orator. But no one has succeeded him since his death in 2009. The death of Caroline’s brother John F. Kennedy Jr. in a 1999 plane crash ended the life of his generation’s most prominent family member, the one most discussed as a possible presidential candidate. Caroline Kennedy has maintained a low profile as ambassador to Japan during the Obama administration and ambassador to Australia in the Biden administration.

    “That’s an awesome responsibility and a huge yoke around your neck to try and have to carry that,” Patrick Kennedy says of his father’s stature. “And Dad really did it — he really kept it together. But it was an incredible personal toll it took on him.”

    Asked if he would have liked to take on his father’s role, Kennedy says no: “That chapter is closed.”

    In the absence of any old-style family elder, the Kennedy most talked about is RFK Jr., who has attracted a larger following than most independent candidates. Historian Julian E. Zelizer, author of numerous works on contemporary politics, sees JFK and his brother Robert as “unifying figures” while finding Robert Jr. a symbol of “division, distrust, and a kind of skepticism about the public culture.”

    Patrick Kennedy, who otherwise declined to discuss his cousin at length, called Zelizer’s comments “a pretty fair statement.” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did not immediately respond to requests for comment but issued a statement on the anniversary and on his uncle’s legacy.

    “During his term in office, he upheld a vision of America as a nation of peace, a vision that was abandoned after his death,” said Kennedy, who promised to “put us back on the road to peace.”

    Other family members remain active in various causes, though in a less publicized way than in JFK’s time.

    Besides Caroline, several Kennedys hold positions in the Biden administration, including Joseph Kennedy III, grandson of Robert Kennedy, who is special envoy to Northern Ireland; and Victoria Reggie Kennedy, Ted Kennedy’s widow and now ambassador to Austria.

    Patrick Kennedy is founder of the mental health advocacy group Alignment for Progress and notes that the last bill signed into law by JFK, the Community Mental Health Act, is “the foundation of a modern day movement to restore a community based approach to our mental health and addiction crisis.”

    Timothy Shriver chairs the board of the Special Olympics, which his mother (and President Kennedy’s sister) Eunice Shriver helped establish in the 1960s. Kerry Kennedy, Robert’s daughter, is a human rights lawyer who heads the non-profit RFK Human Rights. Kerry’s sister Rory Kennedy is a prize-winning documentary maker whose subjects have ranged from rural Mississippi and the Iraq War to a film about her mother, Ethel.

    “There are many other ways to serve the public than running for elective office,” says political analyst Larry Sabato. “No one could say the Kennedy family hasn’t made many contributions to public life — and sacrifices, too.”

    “I can literally go through all of my family and there isn’t one who’s not out there doing something,” says Patrick Kennedy, who finds his name still holds great influence in his current work. “I’ve been out of office since 2011, and I can get anyone to return my call.”

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  • Academy Awards Fast Facts | CNN

    Academy Awards Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here is some background information about the Academy Awards, also known as the “Oscars.”

    March 10, 2024 – The 96th Annual Academy Awards ceremony is scheduled to take place, with Jimmy Kimmel hosting.

    March 12, 2023 – The 95th Annual Academy Awards ceremony takes place, with Jimmy Kimmel hosting.

    Best Picture

    “Everything Everywhere All at Once”

    Actor in a Leading Role

    Brendan Fraser, “The Whale”

    Actress in a Leading Role

    Michelle Yeoh, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”

    Actor in a Supporting Role

    Ke Huy Quan, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”

    Actress in a Supporting Role

    Jamie Lee Curtis, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”

    Director

    Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”

    The full list of winners

    Best Picture
    “CODA”

    Actor in a Leading Role
    Will Smith, “King Richard”

    Actress in a Leading Role
    Jessica Chastain, “The Eyes of Tammy Faye”

    Actress in a Supporting Role
    Ariana DeBose, “West Side Story”

    Actor in a Supporting Role
    Troy Kotsur, “CODA”

    Director
    Jane Campion, “The Power of the Dog”

    The full list of winners

    PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm has tallied the ballots since 1934. Newspaper headlines announced the winners before the ceremony until 1941, when the sealed envelope system was put in place. Prior to a PwC envelope mix-up in 2017, when an error was made during the award announcement for Best Picture, only two partners from the firm knew the results until the envelopes were opened. After 2017, new procedures were adopted, which include adding a third balloting partner to also memorize the list of winners. The third partner sits with Oscar producers in the control room while the other two balloting partners are posted on opposite sides of the stage. Additionally, the PwC partners are prohibited from using cellphones and social media backstage during the show.

    Walt Disney is the most honored person in Oscar history. He received 59 nominations and 26 competitive awards throughout his career.

    Composer John Williams is the most nominated living person – 52 nominations (including five wins).

    Meryl Streep is the most nominated performer in Academy history with 21 nominations.

    Jack Nicholson is the most nominated male performer in Academy history with 12 nominations.

    Katharine Hepburn had the most Oscar wins for a performer, with four.

    Daniel Day-Lewis is the only person to have three Best Actor Oscars.

    Tatum O’Neal is the youngest person to ever win a competitive Oscar at 10 years, 148 days old.

    Only three films have won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Writing: in 1934, “It Happened One Night”; in 1975, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”; and in 1991, “The Silence of the Lambs.”

    No one film has ever taken home all six top prizes, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress.

    Scientific and Technical Awards are given out in a separate ceremony for methods, discoveries or inventions that contribute to the arts and sciences of motion pictures.

    May 16, 1929 – The first Academy Awards are held in the Blossom Room at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Tickets cost $5.

    1929 – The first Best Picture award goes to “Wings.”

    1929 – The first statuette ever presented is to Emil Jannings, for his Best Actor performance in “The Last Command.”

    1937 – The first presentation of the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award is given to Darryl F. Zanuck.

    1938 – Due to extensive flooding in Los Angeles, the ceremony is delayed for one week.

    March 19, 1953 – First televised ceremony is from the Pantages Theater in Hollywood.

    1966 – The awards are first broadcast in color.

    1968 – Due to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the ceremony is moved forward two days as the original date is the day of King’s funeral.

    1976-present – ABC broadcasts the Oscars.

    1981 – Due to the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, the ceremony is postponed 24 hours.

    2001 – The Best Animated Feature Film category is added.

    June 23, 2009 – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announces that beginning in 2010, 10 films will receive nominations in the Best Picture category, instead of five.

    June 26, 2009 – The Academy announces that beginning in 2010, new rules governing the Best Song category may eliminate that category in any given year. Also, the Irving G. Thalberg and Jean Hersholt honorary awards will be given at a separate ceremony in November.

    June 14, 2011 – The Academy announces new rules governing the Best Picture category, the number of movies nominated may vary from 5 – 10 in any given year and will not be known until the nominees are announced. The new rule goes into effect in 2012.

    November 9, 2011 – Eddie Murphy drops out as host of the Oscars in February 2012, one day after producer Brett Ratner quits the show, because of a remark he made that was considered homophobic.

    January 18, 2016 – Following criticism two years in a row about the lack of diversity with Oscar nominees, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the president of the Academy, issues a statement saying that “in the coming days and weeks we will conduct a review of our membership recruitment in order to bring about much-needed diversity in our 2016 class and beyond.”

    January 24, 2017 – The romantic musical, “La La Land,” picks up 14 Oscar nominations, tying the record held by “All About Eve” and “Titanic.” After complaints in 2016 about a lack of diversity, six Black actors receive nominations for their performances, a record.

    February 26, 2017 – Following the moment “La La Land” is mistakenly announced as best picture, “Moonlight” becomes the first film with an all-Black cast to win the Academy Award for best picture. Additionally, Mahershala Ali is the first Muslim actor to win best supporting actor.

    August 8, 2018 – In a letter to members, the Academy announces that it is adding a new category in 2019 for outstanding achievement in popular film. The letter doesn’t specify the criteria for a “popular” film.

    September 6, 2018 – The Academy announces that it is rethinking the decision to add a popular film category. Academy CEO Dawn Hudson says in a statement, “There has been a wide range of reactions to the introduction of a new award, and we recognize the need for further discussion with our members.”

    December 6, 2018 – Kevin Hart steps down from hosting the Oscars after past homophobic tweets surface.

    February 5, 2019 – ABC confirms that the Academy Awards will be hostless. This will be the first time in 30 years that the ceremony will be without a host.

    February 9, 2020 – “Parasite” becomes the first non-English film to win an Oscar for Best Picture. It is also the first film to win both Best International Feature and Best Picture.

    February 9, 2020 – The 92nd Academy Awards draws an average of 23.6 million views, the lowest ratings in the show’s history.

    June 15, 2020 – For the first time in 40 years, the Academy postpones the 93rd Oscars. The last time the Oscars were postponed was in 1981, when the ceremony was delayed 24 hours because of an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan. In addition to the delay, the Academy agrees to extend the eligibility window for films, which usually corresponds to the calendar year. For the 2021 Oscars, the new window will be extended until February 28, 2021.

    September 8, 2020 – The Academy announces that movies must meet certain criteria in terms of representation in order to be eligible for the Academy Award for best picture beginning in 2024. Introduced under an initiative called Aperture 2025, the organization says the goal is to “encourage equitable representation on and off screen in order to better reflect the diversity of the movie-going audience.”

    April 25, 2021 – Yuh-jung Youn is named best supporting actress for her role in “Minari” and becomes the first Korean actress to win an Oscar. Chloe Zhao is named best director for “Nomadland” and becomes the first woman of color and the first woman of Asian descent to earn the award. She is also only the second woman to win.

    May 27, 2021 – The Academy announces that the 2022 Academy Awards ceremony will be held in March 2022, a month later than originally scheduled.

    March 27, 2022 – Will Smith slaps Chris Rock on the face after Rock makes a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head while presenting the award for best documentary. Smith then says “Keep my wife’s name out of your f***ing mouth!” twice. Censors muted the verbal part of the exchange for viewers at home in the United States.

    March 12, 2023 – Michelle Yeoh is named best actress for her role in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” becoming the first woman of Asian descent to win the award.

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