The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) Police Department (MPD) held a press conference to discuss safety and security on the transit system and provide behind the scenes tours of its Real-Time Crime Center (RTCC) and Emergency Operations Center (EOC) at the Chamblee MARTA station.
During the press conference, MARTA Police Department Chief of Police Scott Kreher aimed to dispel misconceptions about MARTA’s safety, emphasizing its status as one of the safest transit systems in the U.S.
“Hundreds of MARTA police officers patrol rail stations, trains, buses, and parking lots 24-hours a day, cracking down on nuisance behavior, acting swiftly during emergencies, and responding immediately when someone breaks the law on or near the transit system,” Kreher said. “The MARTA Police Department stands ready to protect our customers, the system, and the communities we serve every day.”
Photo by Isaiah Singleton/The Atlanta Voice
Year-to-date crime has decreased significantly: aggravated assaults by 24%, robberies by 18%, and overall crime by 8%, according to Kreher. MARTA employs over 300 officers and utilizes various security measures, including partnerships with the FBI, US Marshals, and TSA, according to Kreher.
He also said the system has suspended over 3,500 people for minor rule violations and issued 224 permanent bans.
“We wanted to dispel any comments made out in the public recently about MARTA not being safe or having a public safety plan, specifically around large events, and that is definitely farthest from the truth,” he said. “We work every day to prepare for events and remain solely committed to the safety of the system.”
Photo by Isaiah Singleton/The Atlanta Voice
Also, with three decades of law enforcement background, Kreher said he’s seen safety used as a political talking point to perpetuate unsafety over the fact MARTA is safe. He says MARTA is one of the safest transit systems in the country and doesn’t work in a vacuum.
“We service four counties within the many cities and communities, and crime and public safety in those areas has a direct impact on the water system, saying that year to date, we’ve seen dramatic decreases in crime, especially violent crime,” he said.
He also says if people truly don’t feel safe, MARTA police “have more work to do” and “the reality of crime and perception of crime is always a battle”.
“We’re working very hard to ensure people’s safety, especially during larger events and crowds,” he said.
Additionally, he says they rely heavily on their technology and system of wide network cameras and portable solar cameras. These methods allow the MARTA police department to have an eye on the system monitored by real time crime center officers.
The focus also remains on enhancing public perception and safety, especially for major events like the World Cup.
“We partner with TSA, our neighboring jurisdiction and we do what’s called Tabletop exercises where we go through various scenarios,” he said. “We will continue to have that partnership into the upcoming Labor Day weekend, the World Cup, and more.”
Furthermore, Kreher says he wants the public to understand and know the perception of crime sometimes misconstrued with people who are unhoused, have mental health challenges, or substance abuse.
“While we don’t condone bad behavior, we want the public to understand being unhoused isn’t a crime, however it is an inconvenience to the riders,” he said. “We’re constantly working with our team of licensed clinicians to help these individuals to get resources.”
Upcoming improvements in September include new fare gates and payment systems to combat fare evasion.
EXCLUSIVE: FBI Director Kash Patel said that his agency will continue pouring resources into combating crime in Washington, D.C. until “every community is safe.”
Patel said in a Wednesday post on X that 550 people have been arrested in Washington, D.C. since President Donald Trump moved to federalize the Metropolitan Police Department. Of those arrests, 66 were on Tuesday.
Patel said the FBI was involved in 41 of the arrests on Tuesday night, with eight drug seizures and six illegal firearms recovered.
FBI Director Kash Patel testifies before the House Appropriations Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill on May 7, 2025 in Washington, D.C. Patel testified before the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Subcommittee about the FBI’s FY2026 budget request.(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“The men and women of the FBI, working side by side with our local law enforcement partners, have taken hundreds of dangerous criminals off the streets of Washington, D.C. This is proof of what happens when good cops are empowered to do their jobs the right way. Under President Trump’s leadership, we’re bringing historic resources to this fight because crime in our nation’s capital is unacceptable – and we will continue until every community is safe,” Patel said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
A White House spokesperson told Fox News Digital that Tuesday night’s efforts by law enforcement yielded 91 arrests, including 25 illegal immigrants. The illegal immigrants arrested on Tuesday night had criminal backgrounds, including burglary, threat to injure or kidnap a person, destruction of property and more.
The FBI and Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) conduct a traffic stop near the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on Aug. 14, 2025. (Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)
An MS-13 member previously convicted of drug possession and driving while intoxicated was arrested in Washington, D.C. on Monday night, Attorney General Pam Bondi posted on X.
“At the direction of [President Donald Trump], our nation’s capital is a SAFER place—and we are just getting started. 52 arrests were made last night, including an MS-13 gang member, and 9 firearms were taken off the streets,” Bondi wrote. “Since our mission began, there have been a total of 465 arrests, 68 guns seized, and charges for homicide, narcotics, and firearm offenses. Nearly half of these arrests occurred in the high-crime areas of DC. Residents and tourists alike appreciate this extraordinary effort by our DC and Federal law enforcement partners.”
The Department of Justice announced on Tuesday it’s investigating whether crime data was manipulated by police in Washington, D.C. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said: “D.C. gave Fake Crime numbers in order to create a false illusion of safety.”
The FBI on Wednesday announced the agency will publish reported crime data monthly, instead of less-frequent updates.
When addressing Trump’s federalization of the Metropolitan Police Department during a town hall on Aug. 12, Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said the president’s actions highlight the need for a Democratic House majority.
Members of the U.S. Secret Service and FBI detain a man outside the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., U.S., Aug. 14, 2025. (REUTERS/Nathan Howard)
“This is a time where community needs to jump in. We all need to, to do what we can in our space, in our lane, to protect our city and to protect our autonomy, to protect our home rule, and get to the other side of this guy, and make sure we elect a Democratic House so that we have a backstop to this authoritarian push,” Bowser said.
Fox News Digital’s Peter D’Abrosca and Emma Colton contributed to this report.
Adam Sabes is a reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to Adam.Sabes@fox.com and on Twitter @asabes10.
We’ve come a long way from Donald Trump routinely notifying administration officials of their termination via tweet. But working in the second Trump White House still sounds pretty unnerving. The administration just announced that Missouri attorney general Andrew Bailey has been tapped to be deputy director of the FBI — which is pretty weird since Dan Bongino is already serving in that role.
Fox News Digital broke the news on Monday that Bailey will serve as co–deputy director alongside Bongino. The report included statements praising Bailey from both FBI director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi.
“I am thrilled to welcome Andrew Bailey as co–deputy director of the FBI,” Bondi said. “He has served as a distinguished state attorney general and is a decorated war veteran, bringing expertise and dedication to service. His leadership and commitment to the country will be a tremendous asset as we work together to advance President Trump’s mission.”
The report did not clarify how the two deputy directors will divide their duties, nor did it allude to the conflict between Patel, Bondi, and Bongino over the administration’s botched release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Or that day Bongino didn’t show up to work in June, amid multiple reports that he was planning to quit because he was furious about the Epstein situation. All of which seems like it may be relevant?
Or not, if you trust Bongino’s one-word, no-exclamation-point response to this news:
The New York Timesreported that Bailey’s mysterious appointment has “bewildered many current and former F.B.I. agents, who said they had never heard of a co–deputy director.”
This strange move isn’t necessarily a dig at Bongino. It could be part of Trump’s maximum-chaos approach to governing. As the Times noted, “Mr. Trump has a tendency to appoint one person to multiple high-level positions, as well as task multiple people with the same role.”
And back in May, Bongino told Fox News that the job was taking a toll on him. So maybe the FBI put another person in the exact same role to help Bongino with his work-life balance?
Hey, it’s possible! Though considering that Trump officials once let it be known that a colleague was on the toilet when he learned he was getting canned, humiliating Bongino does seem like the likeliest explanation.
EXCLUSIVE: Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel are bringing on Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey as an additional deputy director of the bureau, Fox News Digital has learned.
Bailey will serve as a co-deputy director, alongside Deputy Director Dan Bongino, Fox News Digital has learned.
“I am thrilled to welcome Andrew Bailey as Co-Deputy Director of the FBI,” Bondi told Fox News Digital. “He has served as a distinguished state attorney general and is a decorated war veteran, bringing expertise and dedication to service. His leadership and commitment to country will be a tremendous asset as we work together to advance President Trump’s mission.”
“The FBI, as the leading investigative body of the federal government under the Department of Justice, will always bring the greatest talent this country has to offer in order to accomplish the goals set forth when an overwhelming majority of American people elected President Donald J. Trump again,” Patel told Fox News Digital, adding that Bailey will be an “integral part of this important mission” and said he looks forward to “the continued fight to save America together.”
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey will serve as a co-deputy director of the FBI, alongside Deputy Director Dan Bongino. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Bailey, as Missouri’s attorney general, launched an anti-human trafficking task force and addressed more than 1,100 reported incidents in Missouri. He also cleared the backlog of Sexual Assault Forensic Evidence (SAFE) kits to improve prosecution of sexual assault cases.
Bailey’s office also defended the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department in civil litigation and has consistently advocated for law enforcement. Bailey was endorsed by the Missouri Fraternal Order of Police.
Bailey’s office also reported a 133% increase in trial court-level criminal prosecutions.
Bailey also has held public officials accountable during his time as attorney general. He demanded the resignation of a sheriff for financial mismanagement and misconduct, and, separately, announced a grand jury indictment against a St. Louis county executive for stealing and election law violations.
Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks during a news conference at the DEA headquarters on July 15, 2025, in Arlington, Virginia. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
“I am eternally grateful for the opportunity to serve as the Co-Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Bailey told Fox News Digital. “I extend my deepest gratitude to President Trump, U.S. Attorney General Bondi and Director Patel for the privilege to join in their stated mission to Make America Safe Again.”
A senior administration official told Fox News Digital that President Donald Trump “wants to see bad guys prosecuted, illegals deported, and corrupt politicians held accountable.”
“We need all hands on deck to accomplish all of these important goals,” the official said. “Andrew Bailey will serve as another set of credible, experienced hands to help Attorney General Bondi and FBI Director Patel carry out the President’s mission.”
FBI Director Kash Patel with Attorney General Pam Bondi are bringing on Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey as an additional deputy director of the bureau.(Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The FBI, under Patel’s leadership, already has seen 19,000 arrests nationwide — that’s double the arrests made in all of 2024.
Of those, 1,600 individuals have been arrested for violent crimes against children — including 270 arrests for human traffickers, according to the FBI. One thousand have been arrested from investigations of foreign terrorist organizations, and three of the “Top 10 Most Wanted” have been arrested in 2025.
Patel’s FBI has rescued 4,000 child victims — a 33% increase from 2025; seized 1,500 kilos of fentanyl; and seized 6,300 kilos of methamphetamines.
A senior official told Fox News Digital that the murder rate is currently on track to be the lowest ever recorded in history.
Dan Bongino getting sworn in to serve as the deputy director of the FBI under Director Kash Patel.(@FBIDDBongino on X)
“President Trump wants to see America quickly become the safest country in the world, and he has put together the best law and order focused team in the business to accomplish that goal,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News Digital.
The addition of Bailey comes amid the expanding nature of Trump’s law and order agenda. As for the federal takeover of Washington, D.C., Bondi is in charge, and the FBI is playing a large role.
Bondi, on Friday, announced there have been nearly 200 arrests “and counting” in the nation’s capital, including those of murder suspects and illegal gun offenders, since the Trump administration federalized the city to tackle crime.
Among those arrested were two homicide suspects, 17 suspected drug traffickers, 39 suspected illegal gun offenders and two sexual predators, according to Bondi.
Fox News Digital’s Alexandra Koch contributed to this report.
Brooke Singman is a political correspondent and reporter for Fox News Digital, Fox News Channel and FOX Business.
Buy American: First-Ever Made-in-USA Helmet Meets Highest German Standard, Now Available to U.S. Law Enforcement
HEBRON, Ohio, May 20, 2025 (Newswire.com)
– ArmorSource, a leading manufacturer of advanced ballistic head protection, proudly announces the launch of the AS-223 – a groundbreaking ballistic helmet engineered and built entirely in the United States. Designed with U.S. law enforcement in mind, the AS-223 sets a new standard in trauma reduction, ballistic performance and comfort.
The AS-223 is the first U.S.-made helmet to exceed the ballistic requirements of the most demanding international and domestic standards, including:
U.S. DEA/FBI Ballistic Protocols
German VPAM-3 – the highest European standard for head protection
NIJ Level IIIA (National Institute of Justice, USA)
Built with the proven Advanced Combat Helmet geometry, the AS-223 delivers minimal back-face deformation in the event of ballistic impact, significantly reducing the risk of blunt trauma to officers in the line of duty. Unlike other “one-size-fits-all” systems available, the ArmorSource helmet is offered in four sizes providing a comfortable fit tailored to the user. The regular, mid, and high-cut profiles are available with both bolted and boltless configurations to meet mission-specific needs.
“We designed the AS-223 specifically for the needs of U.S. law enforcement,” said Pete Costanzo, Director of Sales, North America at ArmorSource. “It’s a premium ballistic helmet system that was previously only available as an import from Europe. Now, like all ArmorSource head protection systems, the AS-223 is fully produced in Hebron, Ohio, using American manufacturing and technology.”
Previously, helmets capable of meeting the rigorous German VPAM-3 standard were manufactured exclusively in Europe, with some units imported in pieces and assembled in the U.S. With the AS-223, ArmorSource becomes the first American manufacturer to fully construct VPAM-3-certified helmets on U.S. soil – making this high-level protection system more accessible to domestic law enforcement agencies without relying on imports.
ArmorSource is a trusted provider of ballistic head protection to U.S. military and law enforcement organizations, as well as global partners across Europe and beyond. The company’s next-generation helmets offer ultra-lightweight protection with enhanced ballistic, environmental, and mechanical performance.
For more information or to request a demo of the AS-223 helmet, please contact: Pete Costanzo Director of Sales, North America Email: pcostanzo@armorsource.com Phone: 740-928-0070 X129
The FBI says people who receive racist text messages should continue to report them to federal investigators.
The FBI said that they are aware of the offensive messages received by people in African-American and Black communities around the country and have gotten in contact with the Justice Department and other federal authorities.
“The reports are not identical and vary in their specific language, but many say the recipient has been selected to pick cotton on a plantation,” the FBI said.
It was reported that the text messages have expanded to high school students, as well as Hispanic and LGBTQIA+ communities. Some recipients reported being told that they had been selected for deportation or to report to a re-education camp.
“Although we have not received reports of violent acts stemming from these offensive messages, we are evaluating all reported incidents and engaging with the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division,” the FBI said.
Recipients of messages consistent with those described are encouraged to report the details to the FBI by phone at 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324) or online at tips.fbi.gov.
“As always, we encourage members of the public to remain vigilant and report threats of violence or anything they consider suspicious to law enforcement immediately, call their local FBI office, or submit a report to tips.fbi.gov,” the FBI said in a statement.
Racist text messages invoking slavery raised alarm across the country this week after they were sent to Black men, women and students, including middle schoolers, prompting inquiries by the FBI and other agencies.
The messages, sent anonymously, were reported in several states, including New York, Alabama, California, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennesee. They generally used a similar tone but varied in wording.
Some instructed the recipient to show up at an address at a particular time “with your belongings,” while others didn’t include a location. Some of them mentioned the incoming presidential administration.
It wasn’t yet clear who was behind the messages and there was no comprehensive list of where they were sent, but high school and college students were among the recipients.
The FBI said it was in touch with the Justice Department on the messages, and the Federal Communications Commission said it was investigating the texts “alongside federal and state law enforcement.” The Ohio Attorney General’s office also said it was looking into the matter, as did the New York attorney general’s office.
Tasha Dunham of Lodi, California, said her 16-year-old daughter showed her one of the messages Wednesday evening before her basketball practice.
The text not only used her daughter’s name, but it directed her to report to a “plantation” in North Carolina, where Dunham said they’ve never lived. When they looked up the address, it was the location of a museum.
“It was very disturbing,” Dunham said. “Everybody’s just trying to figure out what does this all mean for me? So, I definitely had a lot of fear and concern.”
Her daughter initially thought it was a prank, but emotions are high following Tuesday’s presidential election. Dunham and her family thought it could be more nefarious and reported it to local law enforcement.
“I wasn’t in slavery. My mother wasn’t in slavery. But we’re a couple of generations away. So, when you think about how brutal and awful slavery was for our people, it’s awful and concerning,” Dunham said.
About six middle school students in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, received the messages too, said Megan Shafer, acting superintendent of the Lower Merion School District.
“The racist nature of these text messages is extremely disturbing, made even more so by the fact that children have been targeted,” she wrote in a letter to parents.
Students at some major universities, including Clemson in South Carolina and the University of Alabama, said they received the messages. The Clemson Police Department said in a statement that it had been notified of the “deplorable racially motivated text and email messages” and encouraged anyone who received one to report it.
Fisk University, a historically Black university in Nashville, Tennessee, issued a statement calling the messages that targeted some of its students “deeply unsettling.” It urged calm and assured students that the texts likely were from bots or malicious actors with “no real intentions or credibility.”
Missouri NAACP President Nimrod Chapel said Black students who are members of the organization’s Missouri State University chapter received texts citing Trump’s win and calling them out by name as being “selected to pick cotton” next Tuesday. Chapel said police in the southeastern Missouri city of Springfield, home of the university, have been notified.
“It points to a well-organized and resourced group that has decided to target Americans on our home soil based on the color of our skin,” Chapel said in a statement.
Nick Ludlum, a senior vice president for the wireless industry trade group CTIA, said: “Wireless providers are aware of these threatening spam messages and are aggressively working to block them and the numbers that they are coming from.”
David Brody, director of the Digital Justice Initiative at The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said that they aren’t sure who is behind the messages but estimated they had been sent to more than 10 states, including most Southern states, Maryland, Oklahoma and even the District of Columbia. The district’s Metropolitan Police force said in a statement that its intelligence unit was investigating the origins of the message.
Brody said a number of civil rights laws can be applied to hate-related incidents. The leaders of several other civil rights organizations condemned the messages, including Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center, who said, “Hate speech has no place in the South or our nation.”
“The threat — and the mention of slavery in 2024 — is not only deeply disturbing, but perpetuates a legacy of evil that dates back to before the Jim Crow era, and now seeks to prevent Black Americans from enjoying the same freedom to pursue life, liberty, and happiness,” said NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson. “These actions are not normal. And we refuse to let them be normalized.”
Racist text messages invoking slavery raised alarm across the country this week after they were sent to Black men, women and students, including middle schoolers, prompting inquiries by the FBI and other agencies.Video above: Black University of Alabama students, parents outraged after getting racist text messageThe messages, sent anonymously, were reported in several states, including New York, Alabama, California, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. They generally used a similar tone but varied in wording.Some instructed the recipient to show up at an address at a particular time “with your belongings,” while others didn’t include a location. Some of them mentioned the incoming presidential administration.It wasn’t yet clear who was behind the messages and there was no comprehensive list of where they were sent, but high school and college students were among the recipients.The FBI said it was in touch with the Justice Department on the messages, and the Federal Communications Commission said it was investigating the texts “alongside federal and state law enforcement.” The Ohio Attorney General’s office also said it was looking into the matter.Tasha Dunham of Lodi, California, said her 16-year-old daughter showed her one of the messages Wednesday evening before her basketball practice.The text not only used her daughter’s name, but it directed her to report to a “plantation” in North Carolina, where Dunham said they’ve never lived. When they looked up the address, it was the location of a museum.“It was very disturbing,” Dunham said. “Everybody’s just trying to figure out what does this all mean for me? So, I definitely had a lot of fear and concern.”Her daughter initially thought it was a prank, but emotions are high following Tuesday’s presidential election. Dunham and her family thought it could be more nefarious and reported it to local law enforcement.“I wasn’t in slavery. My mother wasn’t in slavery. But we’re a couple of generations away. So, when you think about how brutal and awful slavery was for our people, it’s awful and concerning,” Dunham said.About six middle school students in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, received the messages too, said Megan Shafer, acting superintendent of the Lower Merion School District.“The racist nature of these text messages is extremely disturbing, made even more so by the fact that children have been targeted,” she wrote in a letter to parents.Students at some major universities, including Clemson in South Carolina and the University of Alabama, said they received the messages. The Clemson Police Department said in a statement that it been notified of the “deplorable racially motivated text and email messages” and encouraged anyone who received one to report it.University of Alabama freshman Alyse McCall told sister station WVTMM that she was in class when she got the text, and it brought her to tears.“I can say, ‘Oh, it’s a spoof message, oh, it’s a spam message,’ but that’s truly scary,” McCall said. “These messages are going out to thousands of young African-American students who fought just as hard to get into college as everybody else did and make opportunities for themselves to thrive, and getting those messages and then walking around or not even going to class because you’re scared to walk on your own campus. It’s not fair.”Fisk University, a historically Black university in Nashville, Tennessee, issued a statement calling the messages that targeted some of its students “deeply unsettling.” It urged calm and assured students that the texts likely were from bots or malicious actors with “no real intentions or credibility.”Nick Ludlum, a senior vice president for the wireless industry trade group CTIA, said “wireless providers are aware of these threatening spam messages and are aggressively working to block them and the numbers that they are coming from.”David Brody, director of the Digital Justice Initiative at The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said that they aren’t sure who is behind the messages but estimated they had been sent to more than 10 states, including most Southern states, Maryland, Oklahoma and even the District of Columbia. The district’s Metropolitan Police force said in a statement that its intelligence unit was investigating the origins of the message.Brody said a number of civil rights laws can be applied to hate-related incidents. The leaders of several other civil rights organizations condemned the messages, including Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center, who said, “Hate speech has no place in the South or our nation.”“The threat — and the mention of slavery in 2024 — is not only deeply disturbing, but perpetuates a legacy of evil that dates back to before the Jim Crow era, and now seeks to prevent Black Americans from enjoying the same freedom to pursue life, liberty, and happiness,” said NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson. “These actions are not normal. And we refuse to let them be normalized.”
Racist text messages invoking slavery raised alarm across the country this week after they were sent to Black men, women and students, including middle schoolers, prompting inquiries by the FBI and other agencies.
Video above: Black University of Alabama students, parents outraged after getting racist text message
The messages, sent anonymously, were reported in several states, including New York, Alabama, California, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. They generally used a similar tone but varied in wording.
Some instructed the recipient to show up at an address at a particular time “with your belongings,” while others didn’t include a location. Some of them mentioned the incoming presidential administration.
It wasn’t yet clear who was behind the messages and there was no comprehensive list of where they were sent, but high school and college students were among the recipients.
The FBI said it was in touch with the Justice Department on the messages, and the Federal Communications Commission said it was investigating the texts “alongside federal and state law enforcement.” The Ohio Attorney General’s office also said it was looking into the matter.
Tasha Dunham of Lodi, California, said her 16-year-old daughter showed her one of the messages Wednesday evening before her basketball practice.
The text not only used her daughter’s name, but it directed her to report to a “plantation” in North Carolina, where Dunham said they’ve never lived. When they looked up the address, it was the location of a museum.
“It was very disturbing,” Dunham said. “Everybody’s just trying to figure out what does this all mean for me? So, I definitely had a lot of fear and concern.”
Her daughter initially thought it was a prank, but emotions are high following Tuesday’s presidential election. Dunham and her family thought it could be more nefarious and reported it to local law enforcement.
“I wasn’t in slavery. My mother wasn’t in slavery. But we’re a couple of generations away. So, when you think about how brutal and awful slavery was for our people, it’s awful and concerning,” Dunham said.
About six middle school students in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, received the messages too, said Megan Shafer, acting superintendent of the Lower Merion School District.
“The racist nature of these text messages is extremely disturbing, made even more so by the fact that children have been targeted,” she wrote in a letter to parents.
Students at some major universities, including Clemson in South Carolina and the University of Alabama, said they received the messages. The Clemson Police Department said in a statement that it been notified of the “deplorable racially motivated text and email messages” and encouraged anyone who received one to report it.
University of Alabama freshman Alyse McCall told sister station WVTMM that she was in class when she got the text, and it brought her to tears.
“I can say, ‘Oh, it’s a spoof message, oh, it’s a spam message,’ but that’s truly scary,” McCall said. “These messages are going out to thousands of young African-American students who fought just as hard to get into college as everybody else did and make opportunities for themselves to thrive, and getting those messages and then walking around or not even going to class because you’re scared to walk on your own campus. It’s not fair.”
Fisk University, a historically Black university in Nashville, Tennessee, issued a statement calling the messages that targeted some of its students “deeply unsettling.” It urged calm and assured students that the texts likely were from bots or malicious actors with “no real intentions or credibility.”
Nick Ludlum, a senior vice president for the wireless industry trade group CTIA, said “wireless providers are aware of these threatening spam messages and are aggressively working to block them and the numbers that they are coming from.”
David Brody, director of the Digital Justice Initiative at The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said that they aren’t sure who is behind the messages but estimated they had been sent to more than 10 states, including most Southern states, Maryland, Oklahoma and even the District of Columbia. The district’s Metropolitan Police force said in a statement that its intelligence unit was investigating the origins of the message.
Brody said a number of civil rights laws can be applied to hate-related incidents. The leaders of several other civil rights organizations condemned the messages, including Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center, who said, “Hate speech has no place in the South or our nation.”
“The threat — and the mention of slavery in 2024 — is not only deeply disturbing, but perpetuates a legacy of evil that dates back to before the Jim Crow era, and now seeks to prevent Black Americans from enjoying the same freedom to pursue life, liberty, and happiness,” said NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson. “These actions are not normal. And we refuse to let them be normalized.”
While Americans will choose between former President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee, and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, they will also be choosing who takes 435 U.S. House and 34 U.S. Senate seats.
However, as the nation awaits the news of who wins the presidential election on Tuesday, November 5, regular TV programming could be impacted, and many popular shows will skip their weekly runtime completely.
Newsweek has compiled a full list of schedule changes you should expect for your favorite shows from Dancing With the Stars (DWTS) and FBI to late night TV.
Dancing With the Stars
Fans of DWTS will have to wait until Tuesday, November 12 to watch another episode because of Election Day.
During the show’s regularly scheduled time, ABC will instead be airing its election night coverage Election Night 2024: Your Voice/Your Vote. This will keep Americans updated with real-time updates on the Electoral College map and which candidate secures enough votes to become president.
FBI
FBI is also not airing as usual on Tuesday, November 5 because of Election Day coverage.
The show will be back on its regularly scheduled programming Tuesday, November 12, but for Election Day, viewers will instead be able to watch theCBS News: America Decides: Campaign ’24 Election Night program.
It often makes the most sense for TV networks to delay airing the next week’s episode as most Americans will be glued to election night coverage and would miss a new episode if it was scheduled as usual.
The Real Housewives of New York City
For those who rely on a dose of reality TV to get through any election season anxiety, there’s good news.
Bravo will continue to air The Real Housewives of New York City all throughout Election Night, from roughly 4 to 11 p.m., with a new episode airing at 9 p.m.
Married at First Sight
Fans of a different reality show, Lifetime’s Married at First Sight, have less than ideal scheduling news for the week of the election, however.
The show, which brings strangers together to marry upon their first meeting, is skipping a week, with episodes to return Tuesday, November 12.
1,000-lb Sisters
Another popular TLC reality show, 1,000-lb Sisters, will be pausing its programming this week as well.
So that means viewers will have to wait an extra week to catch up on what’s happening in the Slaton sisters’ lives.
The Voice
The Voice is also taking a break this week due to Election Night coverage. NBC will instead be keeping track of all breaking news updates related to the 2024 election.
Fans of the singing competition show will have to be patient, as the next episode resumes next week on Tuesday, November. 12.
Stickers sit on a table during in-person absentee voting on November 1 in Little Chute, Wisconsin. Election Day could impact your regularly scheduled TV programs. Stickers sit on a table during in-person absentee voting on November 1 in Little Chute, Wisconsin. Election Day could impact your regularly scheduled TV programs. Scott Olson/Getty Images
Is Jimmy Kimmel on This Week?
While Jimmy Kimmel Live! is a fixture on ABC, he will not be airing his late-night episode as usual.
This is due to ABC blocking off the time for election night coverage instead.
However, starting on Wednesday, November 6, Kimmel will be back on his usual schedule, with guests Jon Favreau, Jon Lovitz, Dan Pfeiffer and Tommy Vietor as well as musical guest Alessia Cara.
Is Stephen Colbert on This Week?
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is also following suit and opting against airing a new episode on Election Night.
The next episode is scheduled for Wednesday, November 6 with guest George Stephanopoulos and a music performance by Lenny Kravitz.
Is Seth Meyers on This Week?
Late Night With Seth Meyers is likewise taking a break on Tuesday for NBC’s Election Night coverage.
However, fans don’t have to wait long because Meyers will be back with his regularly scheduled episodes beginning Wednesday.
Is Jimmy Fallon on This Week?
Taking a nod from the other late night TV hosts, Jimmy Fallon is delaying the next episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon due to Election Day coverage.
But the next episode airing on Wednesday will be action packed with guests Whoopi Goldberg, Rosie Perez and Bailey Zimmerman.
Other Election Coverage
While the final results of this year’s election may not be available for several days, Tuesday’s vote counts will help Americans learn who’s leading in key swing states as well as across America.
ABC News will begin its coverage at 8 a.m. Tuesday, while CNN starts its election show at 5 p.m. Monday.
Fox News will also air its election coverage beginning at 6 p.m. on Monday, while MSNBC starts airing its election show at 5 a.m. Tuesday morning.
The last presidential election in 2020 took four days for officials to make a final call, mostly due to the prominence of mail-in ballots due to the coronavirus pandemic and social distancing.
For this year’s Election Day, most polling locations close around 7 p.m. or 8 p.m.
U.S. officials believe another two fake videos circulating online and publicly identified by the FBI as an attempt to push false election security claims are likely part of a Russia-backed malign influence campaign ahead of Tuesday’s presidential election, two sources familiar with the process told CBS News.
The news comes after the FBI said in a statement Saturday that the videos “are not authentic, are not from the FBI, and the content they depict is false.”
The agency said that one of the videos falsely claims “the FBI has apprehended three linked groups committing ballot fraud, and the second relates to first gentleman Doug Emhoff.”
The FBI in its statement did not say who was behind the videos, and when reached by CBS News, declined to comment further.
It added that the two videos — using Justice Department and FBI signage within them and images of Emhoff — were being circulated as part of “attempts to deceive the public with false content about FBI operations.”
The FBI did not attribute the creation of the propaganda to any actor.
Saturday’s disclosure brings to four the number of fake videos produced and distributed by Russia to mislead the American electorate that have been publicly identified in recent days by the U.S. government.
On Thursday, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said a video which purports to show Haitians claiming that they illegally voted for Harris is fake and likely the work of a Russian troll farm.
And in a joint statement Friday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said the intelligence community “assesses that Russian influence actors” manufactured the video.
Another fake video that appears to show someone destroying mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania’s Bucks County is also fake, both state and federal officials said.
The ODNI, the FBI and the CISA said a statement Friday that “Russian actors manufactured and amplified” that video.
In recent weeks, U.S. intelligence and Microsoft have assessed that U.S. adversaries have been conducting influence campaigns to mislead voters in the 2024 election.
Both the U.S. government and Microsoft have said that Russia favors former President Donald Trump, while Iran favors Vice President Kamala Harris.
Margaret Brennan is the moderator of CBS News’ “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.” Based in Washington, D.C., Brennan is also the Network’s chief foreign affairs correspondent and a contributing correspondent to 60 Minutes.
The U.S. Department of Energy has pledged over $9.6 million for the FBI to make energy-efficient renovations to agent housing at the FBI Academy in Quantico.
The U.S. Department of Energy has pledged over $9.6 million for the FBI to make energy-efficient renovations to agent housing at the FBI Academy in Quantico.
The grant funding was awarded through the Department of Energy’s Assisting Federal Facilities with Energy Conservation Technologies, or AFFECT, program, which was created by the bipartisan infrastructure law.
The renovations will include upgrades to major mechanical, electrical, plumbing and fire and life safety systems at Jefferson Dormitory, which houses agents during intensive training at the FBI Academy, according to U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger’s office. Spanberger’s 7th Congressional District of Virginia includes Quantico.
The federal grant dollars will also help upgrade the building’s physical infrastructure to allow for the installation of rooftop and carport solar panels to support electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
“Smart investments in renewable energy sources are investments in our clean energy future. Not only will these federal dollars support the law enforcement professionals at FBI Quantico and help make the campus more energy efficient, but these infrastructure upgrades will save Virginia taxpayers money on energy costs,” Spanberger, who helped negotiate and supported the infrastructure law, said in a news release. “I’m proud to see that the bipartisan infrastructure law continues to make real investments to bring our aging physical infrastructure into the future.”
Managed by the Department of Energy’s Federal Energy Management Program, the AFFECT initiative was created under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — or bipartisan infrastructure law — to support the federal government’s transition to net-zero emissions at federal facilities. The second and final disbursement of funding for 67 energy conservation and clean-energy projects at federal government-owned facilities across 28 states and territories brings the total federal investment under the program to $250 million, according to Spanberger’s office.
Since ZachXBT began pursuing his career as a crypto vigilante, he has also kept his mask firmly in place. Online, he appears only as his avatar, a kind of platypus cartoon figure in a detective’s trench coat or sometimes a hoodie. To avoid retaliation from his many enemies in the world of crypto criminals and con artists, he has never publicly shown his face nor revealed his real name or exact age. He would only speak to WIRED on the condition that I not try to dig up those identifying details.
On some of their early conference calls, McGill says, ZachXBT would not only keep his camera off but even use a voice-changer application, sometimes sounding like a high-pitched “South Park character,” as McGill puts it, or on other occasions deepening his voice’s pitch until it reminded him of something out of a horror film. “It was very odd, initially,” says McGill, who at the time worked at the crypto-tracing firm TRM Labs. “But I respected his privacy, because this anonymous guy was doing really great work.”
ZachXBT exposes so many crypto criminal scams and thefts on a near-weekly basis, often working far faster than law enforcement agencies, says Nick Bax, a cryptocurrency investigator and founder of the firm Five I’s, that Bax has wondered half-jokingly if he might be some kind of bot.
“He is a machine,” Bax says.
As part of one investigation last year where they collaborated to trace a $60 million theft from a crypto project called AnubisDAO in 2021, Bax gave ZachXBT a list of 500 transactions on a Saturday night, each of which needed to be manually analyzed along with all its connected blockchain addresses. “I figured that would keep him busy for at least a few days,” Bax says. Instead, by early the next afternoon, ZachXBT had gone through every transaction and identified which ones were tied to the theft. “I was shocked,” Bax says. “He definitely had to have been on his computer for 12 hours straight.”
Many of the results of ZachXBT’s investigations are unceremoniously posted to his account on X. Over time, however, his findings have increasingly gained attention from law enforcement agencies—several of which he now often shares his findings with prior to publication. The result has been real and growing consequences for the targets of that detective work. “As Zach has gotten bigger, there have been financial repercussions and legal repercussions,” says Taylor Monahan, a security researcher at crypto firm MetaMask and one of ZachXBT’s closest collaborators on investigations, including the $243 million theft case. “If Zach posts a thread about someone now, and it’s a good one, that person is going to get arrested.”
From Victim to Whistleblower
So how has ZachXBT managed to outrace and out-trace even law enforcement’s crypto investigators, despite having no formal training or organizational support? Even he isn’t entirely sure. “That’s a tough question. I don’t know why I’m good,” ZachXBT tells WIRED in a phone interview. He chalks it up to a willingness to work around the clock—crypto markets never close, after all—and a familiarity with analyzing cryptocurrency blockchains that comes from years of poring over those vast ledgers of transactions. “The more you look at the blockchain, like when you eat, sleep, and breathe it, it starts to make more sense over time,” he says. “You can just start to pick up on those connections. I can look at a wallet, and I can profile it and tell you if it’s a bad actor within seconds.”
ZachXBT says that familiarity with blockchains comes from his years of experience as a crypto enthusiast and trader—and as a victim himself of some of the crypto economy’s many traps for unwary investors. Around 2017, he says, he was naively buying thousands of dollars worth of crypto tokens that would all eventually tank in value—often due to so-called “rug pulls,” when a crypto token’s creator sells off their holdings and all the other investors are left with a worthless asset. “I was buying in like, ‘This is going to change the world.’ I just held it and never sold,” ZachXBT says. As a result, he says, “I was the person getting scammed.”
Credit: U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
When the FBI originally released the “final” crime data for 2022 in September 2023, it reported that the nation’s violent crime rate fell by 2.1%. This quickly became, and remains, a Democratic Party talking point to counter Donald Trump’s claims of soaring crime.
But the FBI has quietly revised those numbers, releasing new data that shows violent crime increased in 2022 by 4.5%. The new data includes thousands more murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults.
The Bureau – which has been at the center of partisan storms – made no mention of these revisions in its September 2024 press release.
RCI discovered the change through a cryptic reference on the FBI website that states: “The 2022 violent crime rate has been updated for inclusion in CIUS, 2023.” But there is no mention that the numbers increased. One only sees the change by downloading the FBI’s new crime data and comparing it to the file released last year.
After the FBI released its new crime data in September, a USA Today headline read: “Violent crime dropped for third straight year in 2023, including murder and rape.”
It’s been over three weeks since the FBI released the revised data. The Bureau’s lack of acknowledgment or explanation about the significant change concerns researchers.
“I have checked the data on total violent crime from 2004 to 2022,” Carl Moody, a professor at the College of William & Mary who specializes in studying crime, told RealClearInvestigations. “There were no revisions from 2004 to 2015, and from 2016 to 2020, there were small changes of less than one percentage point. The huge changes in 2021 and 2022, especially without an explanation, make it difficult to trust the FBI data.”
“It is up to the FBI to explain what they have done, and they haven’t explained these large changes,” Dr. Thomas Marvell, the president of Justec Research, a criminal justice statistical research organization, told RCI.
The FBI did not respond to RCI’s repeated requests for comment.
Extensive Revisions in Violent Crime Stats
The actual changes in crimes are extensive. The updated data for 2022 report that there were 80,029 more violent crimes than in 2021. There were an additional 1,699 murders, 7,780 rapes, 33,459 robberies, and 37,091 aggravated assaults. The question naturally arises: should the FBI’s 2023 numbers be believed?
Revised FBI Data Showing Crime Rate Increase – via RCI
Without the increase, the drop in violent crime in 2023 would have been less than half as large – only 1.6% instead of the reported drop of 3.5%.
The FBI isn’t the only government agency that has been revising its data. The Bureau of Labor Statistics massively overestimated the number of jobs created during the year that ended in March by 818,000 people.
The FBI’s crime stats revisions reveal how much guesswork is involved in even the “final” numbers often seized on by politicians. The FBI doesn’t simply count reported crimes. Instead, it offers estimates by extrapolating data from police departments that report only partial-year data. The Bureau also makes estimates for cities that report no data. The FBI’s method of generating these estimates changes over time, and it affects the figures they report.
“The [FBI’s] processes, such as how it tries to ‘estimate’ unreported figures, has long been a black box, even to the Bureau of Justice Statistics – the Department of Justice’s actual statistical agency,” says Jeffrey Anderson, who headed the DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Statistics from 2017 to 2021.
Anderson said when he headed the Bureau of Justice Statistics, “We definitely would have highlighted in a press release or a report the 6.6% change recorded for 2022, which moved the numbers from a drop to a rise in violent crime.”
Many Crimes Are Unreported
Another problem with FBI crime data is its reliance on reported crimes. Most crimes go unreported, with only about 45% of violent crimes and 30% of property crimes brought to the police’s attention, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey. Since the FBI only tracks reported incidents and this gap is so large, researchers argue that when the media discusses crime rates based on FBI data, they should clarify that it reflects “reported” crime, not give the impression that total crime is changing.
Nonreporting of crime doesn’t affect all crimes equally. Nonreporting of murder and motor vehicle theft is relatively rare. In murder cases, victims can’t be overlooked, and for auto theft, insurance claims require police reports. However, it’s difficult to fully trust even these numbers because the FBI underreported 1,699 murders and 54,216 motor vehicle thefts in 2022, casting doubt on the reliability of the data.
Although recent attention has focused on the decline in murder rates, even with the revised numbers, the 16.2% drop from 2020 to 2023 still leaves murder rates 9.6% higher than pre-COVID levels.
A half-century ago, the DOJ provided a total crime measure, including both reported and unreported crime. The results of the department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics 2023 National Crime Victimization Survey, released in mid-September, tell a very different story from the FBI data.
The NCVS interviews 240,000 people each year about their personal experiences.
Instead of the FBI’s 3.5% drop in the reported violent crime rate in 2023, the NCVS found a 4.1% increase in the reported violent crime rate. Even with the revised FBI numbers, in 2022, the FBI’s 4.5% increase pales in comparison to the NCVS’s 29.1% increase.
FBI – Change In Reported Crime Rates – via RCI
Over the past few years, the number of police officers has declined because of cuts in budgets and many retirements. One result is that police departments nationwide – from Charlottesville and Henrico County, Va., to Chicago, Ill. and Olympia, Wash. – are no longer responding to calls unless the perpetrator is still there actively committing the crime. Instead of police coming out to investigate and take a report, residents in those jurisdictions can still go to the police station and wait in line to get a police report filled out. In addition, despite the widespread belief that calling 911 is enough to report a crime, the FBI officially doesn’t tally 911 calls. It only counts crimes when police make out an official report.
While the FBI claims that serious violent crime has fallen by 5.8% since Biden took office, the NCVS numbers show that total violent crime has risen by 55.4%. Rapes are up by 42%, robbery by 63%, and aggravated assault by 55% during Biden’s term. Since the NCVS started, the largest previous increase over three years was 27% in 2006, so the increase under Biden was slightly more than twice as large.
The increases shown by the NCVS during the Biden-Harris administration are by far the largest percentage increases over any three years, slightly more than doubling the previous record.
Comparing 2023 rates with 2019 pre-COVID violent crime rates, the FBI’s new 2023 data show virtually no improvement – just a 0.2% drop – while the NCVS shows a 19% increase over that period. But the news media didn’t cover the crime survey when it was released last month.
“With the media using the 2022 FBI data to tell us for a year that crime was falling, it is disappointing that there are no news articles correcting that misimpression,” Moody told RCI. “We will have to see whether the FBI later also revises the 2023 numbers.”
At the beginning of this year, the media was running headlines like National Public Radio’s: “Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. – even if Americans don’t believe it.” “At some point in 2022 … there was just a tipping point where violence started to fall and it just continued to fall,” NPR claimed. But now the FBI has itself admitted its violent crime numbers were way off.
Even as polls show that Americans are concerned about crime, the FBI and the media are making it difficult to see how crime rates have changed over the last few years. A Gallup survey late last year found that 92% of Republicans and 58% of Democrats thought crime was increasing. A February Rasmussen Reports survey found that, by a 4.7-to-1 margin, likely voters say violent crime in the U.S. is getting worse (61%), not better (13%). A Gallup poll found in March that “crime and violence” was Americans’ second biggest concern, after inflation. But the media and politicians used the inaccurate FBI data to try to convince people that they were wrong.
“This FBI report is stunning because it now doesn’t state that violent crime in 2022 was much higher than it had previously reported, nor does it explain why the new rate is so much higher, and it issued no press release about this large revision,” said David Mustard, the Josiah Meigs Distinguished Professor at the University of Georgia who researches extensively on crime. “This lack of transparency harms the FBI’s credibility.”
John R. Lott Jr. is president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and he lives in Missoula. He served as senior adviser for research and statistics in the Office of Justice Programs and the Office of Legal Policy at the Justice Department.
A former Florida congressional candidate was charged for an election-related threat to kill his primary opponent, U.S. Representative Anna Paulina Luna.
An indictment was recently unsealed charging the Florida Republican with threatening to kill his primary opponent in the 2021 election for the 13th Congressional District of Florida and a private citizen and acquaintance of his opponent.
According to the indictment, 41-year-old William Robert Braddock III, of St. Petersburg, and Victim 1 were candidates in the Republican primary election to represent the 13th Congressional District of Florida in the U.S. House of Representatives. Victim 2 was a private citizen and acquaintance of Victim 1.
According to 2021 court documents, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna reported that Braddock was stalking her and wanted her dead.
On June 8, 2021, Braddock made several threats to injure and kill Victim 1 and Victim 2 during a telephone call with Victim 2. Specifically, Braddock threatened, in part, to “call up my Russian-Ukrainian hit squad” and make Victim 1 disappear. After making the threats, Braddock left the United States and was later found to be residing in the Philippines. Braddock was recently deported from the Philippines to the United States and made his first court appearance in Los Angeles.
The former Republican Florida congressional candidate is charged with one count of interstate transmission of a true threat to injure another person. If convicted, Braddock faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri, head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, and U.S. Attorney Roger B. Handberg for the Middle District of Florida made the announcement.
The FBI Tampa Field Office is investigating the case with support from the St. Petersburg Police Department. The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs, FBI’s Office of the Legal Attaché in Manila, and U.S. Marshals Service provided substantial assistance. The investigation also benefited from foreign law enforcement cooperation provided by the Philippine Department of Justice and Philippine Bureau of Immigration.
Trial Attorney Alexandre Dempsey of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section (PIN) and Assistant U.S. Attorney Carlton Gammons for the Middle District of Florida are prosecuting the case.
This case is part of the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force. Announced by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and launched by Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco in June 2021, the task force has led the department’s efforts to address threats of violence against election workers, and to ensure that all election workers — whether elected, appointed, or volunteer — are able to do their jobs free from threats and intimidation. The task force engages with the election community and state and local law enforcement to assess allegations and reports of threats against election workers, and has investigated and prosecuted these matters where appropriate, in partnership with FBI Field Offices and U.S. Attorneys’ Offices throughout the country. Three years after its formation, the task force is continuing this work and supporting the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and FBI Field Offices nationwide as they carry on the critical work that the task force has begun.
Under the leadership of Deputy Attorney General Monaco, the task force is led by PIN and includes several other entities within the Justice Department, including the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, Civil Rights Division, National Security Division, and FBI, as well as key interagency partners, such as the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
To report suspected threats or violent acts, contact your local FBI office and request to speak with the Election Crimes Coordinator. You may also contact the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI (225-5324) or file an online complaint.
Complaints submitted will be reviewed by the task force and referred for investigation or response accordingly. If someone is in imminent danger or risk of harm, contact 911 or your local police immediately.
FILE – An FBI seal is seen on a wall on Aug. 10, 2022, in Omaha, Neb. Violent crime in the US dropped again in 2023, according to FBI statistics that show a continued trend downward after a coronavirus pandemic-era crime spike. The report released Monday shows overall violent crime ticked down an estimated 3% in 2023 from the year before, according to the FBI. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI has arrested an Afghan man who officials say was inspired by the Islamic State militant organization and was plotting an Election Day attack targeting large crowds in the U.S.
That’s according to a Justice Department announcement Tuesday.
Officials say 27-year-old Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi of Oklahoma City had taken steps in recent weeks to advance his attack plans, including by ordering AK-47 rifles, liquidating his family’s assets and buying one-way tickets for his wife and child to travel home to Afghanistan.
After he was arrested, the Justice Department said, Tawhedi told investigators he had planned an attack for Election Day that would target large gatherings of people.
NEW YORK (WABC) — First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright has resigned Tuesday, and is expected to be replaced by Deputy Mayor for Housing, Economic Development and Work Force Maria Torres-Springer, who has decades of government experience.
The announcement is expected to be made by Mayor Eric Adams at his weekly briefing later Tuesday morning.
Wright could serve for the rest of the month.
“We are grateful for First Deputy Mayor Wright’s years of service to the city and all she has done to deliver for children, families, and working-class New Yorkers. She is an exceptional leader who assembled a strong team and constantly demonstrated a bold vision for this city,” Adams said in a statement.
Wright has served in the administration since January 2022 and moved into her current role in January of 2023. She worked alongside the mayor very closely on a number of initiatives.
FILE – Mayor Eric Adams, right, is flanked by deputy mayor Sheena Wright, left, during a press conference at City Hall in New York, Dec. 12, 2023.
AP Photo/Peter K. Afriyie, File
Last month, federal investigators seized her phones and searched her home — along with several other officials who have since resigned.
The announcement that Wright is stepping down comes after her brother-in-law, Deputy Mayor of Public Safety Philip Banks, announced his resignation Monday.
Joining the deputy mayor leaving Monday were Winne Greco, Rana Abbasova and Mohammed Bahi.
Greco and Bahi resigned, and Abbasova was terminated. All three served as community liaisons for the administration.
Other notable names to step down from their roles previously include former police commissioner Edward Caban, outgoing school chancellor David Banks, health commissioner Ashwin Vasan, advisor to the mayor Tim Pearson, and legal advisor Lisa Zornberg.
“This comes directly from Governor Hochul. She said to clean house. She wants to see changes and that’s what she’s seeing right now,” he said.
Meanwhile, David Birdsell, Kean University Provost, said many people are under the assumption that the corruption within the administration is being carried out by people with key roles.
“It looks like, right now, that administration is losing its most senior officials. At least many people believe because there is some corruption at the heart of the administration,” Birdsell said.
It all comes as the Mayor continues to reassure residents across New York City that he can govern while defending himself against the federal government.
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Pig butchering, the crypto-based scammer scourge that has pulled in an estimated $75 billion from victims globally, is spreading beyond its roots in Southeast Asia, with operations proliferating across the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and West Africa.
The UK’s National Crime Agency disclosed new details about the identities of the Russian ransomware group known as Evil Corp—as well as the group’s ties to Russian intelligence agencies and even its direct participation in espionage operations targeting NATO allies.
A WIRED investigation revealed how car-mounted automatic license plate reader cameras are capturing far more than just license plates, including campaign yard signs, bumper stickers, and other politically sensitive text, all examples of how a system for tracking vehicles threatens to become a broader surveillance tool.
In other news, ICE signed a $2 million contract with Paragon Solutions, a known vendor of spyware including the hacking tool Graphite. And the Pentagon is increasingly adopting handheld controllers for weapons systems in an effort provide more intuitive interfaces to soldiers who have grown up playing Xbox and PlayStation consoles.
And there’s more. Each week, we round up the privacy and security news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.
As the politics of America’s biggest city have been turned upside down by the criminal charges against New York mayor Eric Adams, there’s still a “significant wild card” in the corruption case against him, prosecutors said in court this week: The FBI can’t manage to get into his phone.
Prosecutors in the case against Adams, which centers on alleged illegal payments the mayor received from the Turkish government, revealed that the FBI still hasn’t cracked the encryption on Adams’ personal phone, nearly a year after it was seized. That phone is one of three that the bureau has taken from Adams, but agents seized Adams’ personal phone a day later than the other two devices he used in an official capacity. By that time, Adams had not only changed the passcode on the phone from a four digit PIN to six digits—a measure he says he took to prevent staffers from intentionally or unintentionally deleting information from the device. He also claims he immediately “forgot” that code to unlock it.
That very convenient amnesia may leave the FBI and prosecutors in a situation similar to their investigation into the San Bernardino mass shooting carried out by Syed Rizwan Farook in 2016, when the US government demanded Apple help unlock the shooter’s encrypted iPhone, leading to a high-profile standoff between the Apple and the FBI. In that case, the cybersecurity firm Azimuth eventually used a closely guarded—and expensive—hacking technique to unlock the device. In Adams’ case, prosecutors hinted that the FBI may have to resort to similar measures. “Decryption always catches up with encryption,” a prosecutor in the case, Hagan Scotten, told the judge.
Face recognition is one of only a few technologies that even Facebook and Google have hesitated to integrate into products like Google Glass and the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses—and rightly so, given the privacy implications of a device that would allow anyone to look at a stranger on the street and immediately determine their phone number and home address. Now, however, a group of Harvard students has shown how easy it is to bolt that face recognition onto Meta’s augmented-reality eyewear. The project, known as I-XRAY, integrates with the face-recognition service Pimeyes to let Ray-Ban Meta wearers learn the name of virtually anyone they see and then immediately scour databases of personal information to determine other info about them, including names of family members, phone numbers, and home addresses. The students say they’re not releasing the code for their experiment, instead intending it as a demonstration of the privacy-invasive potential of augmented-reality devices. Point made.
If that warning about the privacy risks of AR eyewear needed more reinforcement, Meta this week also conceded to TechCrunch that it will use input from users’ smart glasses to train its AI products. Initially, Meta declined to answer TechCrunch’s questions about whether and how it would collect information from Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses for use as AI training data, in contrast to companies like OpenAI and Anthropic that explicitly say they don’t exploit user inputs to train their AI services. A couple of days later, however, Meta confirmed to TechCrunch that it does in fact use images or video collected through its smart glasses to train its AI, but only if the user submits them to Meta’s AI tools. That means anything that a user sees and asks Meta’s AI chatbot to comment on or analyze will become part of Meta’s massive AI-training data trove.
If you can’t arrest Russian hackers, at least you can nab their web domains. That, at least, is the approach this week of the US Justice Department, which along with Microsoft and the NGO Information Sharing and Analysis Center used a lawsuit to take control of more than a hundred web domains that had been used by Russian hackers working for the Kremlin’s intelligence and law enforcement agency known as the FSB. Those domains had been exploited in phishing campaigns by the Russian hacker group known as Star Blizzard, which has a history of targeting the typical victims of geopolitical spying such as journalists, think tanks, and NGOs. The domain seizures seem designed in part to head off threats of foreign interference in next month’s US election. “Rebuilding infrastructure takes time, absorbs resources, and costs money,” Steven Masada, the assistant general counsel of Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit, said in a statement. “Today’s action impacts [the hackers’] operations at a critical point in time when foreign interference in US democratic processes is of utmost concern.”
With the holiest days in Judaism approaching and nearly one year after the Hamas attack on Israel, Bay Area synagogues are on high alert.
Last year, Rabbi Mark Bloom’s biggest worry was finding enough chairs for the High Holidays. This year, it’s making sure every door is locked twice.
“This past year has undoubtedly been the most challenging I’ve ever had to face as a rabbi,” he told CBS News Bay Area.
With the anniversary of the October 7th Hamas attack coinciding with Judaism’s holiest days, anxiety at Oakland’s Temple Beth Abraham is at an all-time high.
“I wake up at night thinking about it still. I think about what if I was taken hostage. I have nightmares about it. I think it’s changed the relationships I have with people,” said congregant Elan Masliyah.
For the anniversary, Bloom is increasing security, adding extra guards with additional support from the city’s police department.
“The key thing that October 7th changed was the realm of the possible started to seem like the realm of the probable,” said Rafael Brinner, a counterterrorism analyst for the Bay Area Jewish Federation which oversees security for Jewish institutions in Northern California.
Brinner believes Iran’s recent attack on Israel has added a new layer of unpredictability to an already precarious situation.
“We’re living under the sense of, ‘When is something going to happen next?’ and the key thing for us to do is prepare so that we’re not thinking of it every minute of the day, but we’ve done our preparation,” he told CBS News Bay Area.
For Bloom, it’s about reminding people that even amidst all the sorrow and fear there’s at least one silver lining.
“It really has brought our community together,” he said.
New data from the FBI shows that violent crime fell significantly in 2023, but motor vehicle thefts soared for the second year in a row. Motor vehicle theft increased by more than 12.5%, the highest rate recorded since 2007. Former FBI special agent Daniel Brunner joins CBS News to examine what’s driving the uptick.
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The week was dominated by news that thousands of pagers, walkie-talkies and other devices were exploding across Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday in an attack targeting the militant group Hezbollah. At least 32 people were killed, including at least four children, and more than 3,200 people were injured. The covert campaign has widely been attributed to Israel, though none of the country’s government agencies have commented.
In addition to the carnage, the attacks have—seemingly by design—had the effect of sowing paranoia and fear, not just among members of Hezbollah but also in the general Lebanese public. Hardware and warfare experts say that the incident is unlikely to establish a global precedent that people’s most trusted communication devices and electronics, like smartphones, are rigged with explosives left and right. But it does create the potential to inspire copycats and puts defenders on notice that such attacks are possible.
And there’s more. Each week, we round up the privacy and security news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.
Last month, media outlets, Microsoft, and Google warned that an Iranian state-sponsored hacking group known as APT42 had targeted both the Joe Biden and Donald Trump political campaigns, and that it had successfully stolen emails from the Trump campaign that were later shared with reporters. Now the FBI has chimed in with the added revelation that the same hackers also sent those stolen Trump communications to the Democrats, too—though for now there’s no sign that the Democrats solicited those emails from the Iranians or necessarily even received the Iranians’ message.
Republicans were nonetheless quick to compare the news to accusations that the Trump campaign “colluded” with the Russian hackers, part of the Kremlin’s GRU military intelligence agency, who breached the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton Campaign in 2016 to carry out a hack-and-leak operation. In a statement, the Trump campaign demanded that the Democrats “must come clean on whether they used the hacked material.” The Harris campaign told CNN that it has cooperated with law enforcement and that it was “not aware of any material being sent directly to the campaign,” believing the emails to be spam or phishing attempts. “We condemn in the strongest terms any effort by foreign actors to interfere in US elections, including this unwelcome and unacceptable malicious activity,” Morgan Finkelstein, the national security spokesperson for the Harris campaign, told CNN.
The FBI announced this week that it had taken down a network of hacked machines being secretly controlled by a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group known as Flax Typhoon. The botnet, made up of 260,000 routers and internet-of-things devices, was allegedly being run by a Chinese contractor known as the Beijing Integrity Technology Group, a rare instance of a known, publicly traded company operating essentially a massive collection of hacked devices on behalf of the Chinese state. The botnet, according to the FBI and security firm Black Lotus Labs, had been used to hack government agencies, defense contractors, telecoms, and other US and Taiwanese targets. At the time of its takedown, the botnet still encompassed 60,000 machines, making it the largest Chinese state-sponsored botnet ever, according to Black Lotus Labs.
On Wednesday night, two young men were arrested after they allegedly stole hundreds of millions of dollars of cryptocurrency and spent the earnings on luxury cars, watches, jewelry, and designer handbags. In an unsealed indictment, the US Department of Justice charged Malone Lam, 20, known online as “Anne Hathaway” and Jeandiel Serrano, 21, aka “VersaceGod,” with stealing $243 million in cryptocurrency and laundering the proceeds through mixing services to conceal the origin.
CoinDesk reported that the men allegedly tricked the heist’s victim, a creditor of the now-defunct trading firm Genesis, using a social engineering scam that led them to reset their Gemini two-factor authentication and transfer 4,100 bitcoin to a compromised wallet. An analysis of the transaction by blockchain investigator ZachXBT revealed that the $243 million was divided among multiple wallets and then distributed to over 15 exchanges.
On Thursday, TechCrunch reported that Apple’s latest desktop operating system update, macOS 15 (Sequoia), breaks some functionality of major security tools made by CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, and Microsoft. It’s unclear what specifically in the update is causing the issues, but social media posts and internal Slack messages reviewed by the tech outlet show that the update has frustrated engineers working on macOS-focused security tools.
A CrowdStrike sales engineer informed colleagues via Slack, as seen by TechCrunch, that the company would not be able to support Sequoia on day one, despite its usual practice of quickly supporting new OS releases. While they hope for a quick patch, they will likely need to scramble to resolve the issue with an update in their own code, assuming no immediate fix is available from Apple, which has not yet commented on the issue.
Cryptocurrency theft has become practically a common-garden form of cybercrime. But one brutal gang took that form of thievery to a new level of cruelty and violence, breaking into a series of victims’ homes to threaten and extort them into handing over their crypto holdings, sometimes even resorting to kidnapping and torture. This week, that disturbing story came to a close with the sentencing of the group’s ring leader, a Florida man named Remy St. Felix, to 47 years in prison. St. Felix is one of 12 members of the gang to have now been charged, convicted, and sentenced. Prior to the home invasions that St. Felix led, another member of the group named Jarod Seemungal allegedly stole millions with more traditional crypto hacking techniques. But St. Felix’s more violent, offline extortion attempts netted his gang only around $150,000 in cryptocurrency before they were caught and sentenced to years behind bars. The lesson: Crime doesn’t pay—or at least, not the physical kind.
