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  • A timeline of Elijah McClain's death and the trials of the officers and paramedics accused of wrongdoing | CNN

    A timeline of Elijah McClain's death and the trials of the officers and paramedics accused of wrongdoing | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Three police officers and two paramedics have faced juries on charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide stemming from the 2019 death of Elijah McClain in Aurora, Colorado.

    But the path to court was anything but straightforward.

    McClain, a 23-year-old massage therapist, was confronted by police officers on August 24, 2019, after someone reported seeing a person wearing a ski mask who “looks sketchy.” After officers wrestled him to the ground and paramedics injected him with a potent sedative, McClain suffered a heart attack on the way to a hospital and died days later, authorities said.

    Prosecutors initially declined to bring charges in his death, but the case received renewed scrutiny following the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests in spring 2020. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis appointed a special prosecutor to reexamine the case, and in 2021 a grand jury indicted three officers and two paramedics in McClain’s death.

    The defendants have now faced juries in three separate trials in 2023, to different results. Officer Randy Roedema was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide and assault, while officers Jason Rosenblatt and Nathan Woodyard were acquitted of all charges. Paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec will soon learn their fate.

    Here’s a timeline of McClain’s death, the resulting investigation, the protests that brought renewed attention to the case and the criminal trials.

    Three White officers stopped McClain in Aurora on August 24, 2019, while he was walking home from a convenience store in the Denver suburb after 10:30 p.m., according to a police overview of the incident.

    Carrying iced tea in a plastic bag, McClain eventually was in a physical struggle with the officers after, police say, he resisted arrest.

    Early in the encounter, an officer told McClain to stop, and when McClain kept walking, two officers grabbed his arms, the overview reads. McClain says, “Let me go … I’m an introvert, please respect the boundaries that I am speaking,” according to body camera footage from one of the officers.

    After an officer asked him to cooperate so they could talk, McClain tells officers he had been trying to pause his music so he could hear them, and tells them to let him go, the overview reads.

    Eventually, one officer is heard telling another that McClain tried to grab his gun.

    All three officers tackled McClain to the ground, and Woodyard placed him in a carotid hold – in which an officer uses their biceps and forearm to cut off blood flow to a subject’s brain – police said in the overview document. McClain briefly became unconscious, and Woodyard released the hold, the document reads, citing the officers.

    Body camera video of the encounter shows McClain at some point saying he couldn’t breathe.

    Because the hold was used, department policy compelled the officers to call the fire department for help, authorities said. Aurora Fire Rescue paramedics arrived and saw McClain on the ground and resisting officers, the overview says.

    Paramedic Cooper diagnosed McClain with “excited delirium” and decided to inject him with the powerful sedative ketamine, the overview says.

    McClain suffered a heart attack on the way to a hospital, authorities said. Three days later, he was declared brain-dead and taken off life support.

    The Adams County coroner’s office submitted an autopsy report on November 7, stating the cause and manner of death were “undetermined.” The report cited the scene investigation and examination findings as factors leading to that conclusion.

    Roughly two weeks later, the Adams County district attorney, Dave Young, declined to file criminal charges against any of the first responders. In a letter to the Aurora police chief on November 22, Young referred to the undetermined cause of death as one of the factors.

    “The evidence does not support a conclusion that Mr. McClain’s death was the direct result of any particular action of any particular individual,” Young wrote. “Under the circumstances of this investigation, it is improbable for the prosecution to prove cause of death beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury of twelve. Consequently, the evidence does not support the prosecution of a homicide.”

    Also on November 22, after the district attorney’s decision, Aurora police released the officers’ body camera videos.

    “We certainly recognize and understand that this has been an incredibly devastating and difficult process for them over these last several weeks,” then-Police Chief Nick Metz said.

    A police review board concluded that the use of force against McClain, including the carotid hold, “was within policy and consistent with training.”

    City officials announced on February 6 they would hire an independent expert to review the case.

    George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was fatally restrained by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25. Bystander video of the encounter sets off outrage and leads to widespread protests, including in Aurora, under the Black Lives Matter movement.

    In early June, the three officers who confronted McClain were assigned to administrative duties, primarily due to safety concerns because police and city employees were receiving threats, a police spokesperson said.

    On June 9, Aurora police and city officials announced changes to police policies, including a ban on carotid holds.

    Ten days later, Gov. Polis signed police accountability legislation into law, requiring all officers to use activated body cameras or dashboard cameras during service calls or officer-initiated public interactions. The measure also barred officers from using chokeholds.

    Polis also signed an executive order appointing Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser to investigate McClain’s case, the governor announced on June 25. More than 2 million people had signed a petition urging officials to conduct a new investigation.

    Demonstrators carried a giant placard during protests on June 27, 2020, outside the police department in Aurora.

    On June 27, protesters in the Aurora area gathered on Highway 225, temporarily shutting it down in a demonstration calling for justice in McClain’s death.

    On June 30, the US attorney’s office for Colorado, the US Department of Justice’s civil rights division and the FBI’s Denver division announced they have been reviewing the case since 2019 for potential federal civil rights violations.

    Aurora police on July 3 fired two officers who they say snapped selfie photographs at McClain’s memorial site, located where he was killed, while they were on duty.

    Officer Rosenblatt also was fired, with police saying he received the photo in a text and replied, “ha ha,” and did not notify supervisors. The photos were taken on October 20, 2019.

    A third officer seen in the photos resigned days before a pre-disciplinary hearing, police said.

    On July 20, the Aurora City Council approved a resolution for an independent investigation of McClain’s death to proceed.

    A mural of Elijah McClain, painted by Thomas

    The McClain family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city of Aurora on August 11.

    “Aurora’s unconstitutional conduct on the night of August 24, 2019, is part of a larger custom, policy, and practice of racism and brutality, as reflected by its conduct both before and after its murder of Elijah McClain, a young Black man,” the lawsuit stated.

    On the same day, Aurora city officials announced the police department would undergo a “comprehensive review” by external experts on civil rights and public safety.

    Aurora city officials released a 157-page report on February 22, detailing the findings of the independent investigation it commissioned into McClain’s death.

    The report asserted that officers did not have the legal basis to stop, frisk or restrain McClain. It also criticized emergency medical responders’ decision to inject him with ketamine and rebuked the police department for failing to seriously question the officers after the death.

    01 elijah mcclain

    Elijah McClain’s mom has watched the bodycam video ‘over and over’

    Sheneen McClain, Elijah’s mother, cried while reading the report.

    “It was overwhelming knowing my son was innocent the entire time and just waiting on the facts and proof of it,” Sheneen McClain told CNN at the time. “My son’s name is cleared now. He’s no longer labeled a suspect. He is actually a victim.”

    Elijah McClain’s father said the report only confirmed what the family already knew. “The Aurora police and medics who murdered my son must be held accountable,” LaWayne Mosley said after the report’s release.

    In response to the report, city officials began work on establishing an independent monitor to scrutinize police discipline, Aurora City Manager Jim Twombly said.

    “I believe the investigative team has identified the issue that is at the root of the case: the failure of a system of accountability,” Twombly said after the report’s release.

    On September 1, the state attorney general announced a grand jury indicted officers Roedema, Rosenblatt and Woodyard and paramedics Cichuniec and Cooper.

    Each was charged with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide as part of a 32-count indictment.

    The five people charged in the case are (clockwise, from top left): Randy Roedema, Nathan Woodyard, Jeremy Cooper, Peter Cichuniec and Jason Rosenblatt.

    Roedema and Rosenblatt also were indicted on one count of assault and one count of crime of violence. Cooper and Cichuniec were further indicted on three counts of assault and six counts of crime of violence.

    “Our goal is to seek justice for Elijah McClain, for his family and friends and for our state,” Weiser, the state attorney general, said. “In so doing, we advance the rule of law and our commitment that everyone is accountable and equal under the law.”

    The charges brought McClain’s parents to tears. “I started crying because it’s been two years,” Sheneen McClain said. “It’s been a long journey.”

    “Nothing will bring back my son, but I am thankful that his killers will finally be held accountable,” Mosley, his father, said through the attorney’s release.

    On September 15, the Colorado attorney general’s office released a 112-page report that found the Aurora police had a pattern of practicing racially biased policing, excessive force, and had failed to record legally required information when interacting with the community. The report also found the police department used force against people of color almost 2.5 times more than against White people.

    The state investigation also revealed the fire department had a pattern and practice of administering ketamine illegally, the attorney general’s office said.

    The state attorney general’s office and the city of Aurora agreed November 16 on terms of a consent decree to address the issues raised in the office’s report two months earlier.

    On November 19, the city finalized an agreement to pay $15 million to McClain’s family to settle the federal civil rights lawsuit.

    The cause of death in McClain’s case was changed in light of evidence from the grand jury’s investigation, according to an amended autopsy report publicly released September 23.

    The initial autopsy report had said the cause of death was undetermined. But the amended report listed “complications of ketamine administration following forcible restraint” as the cause of death.

    The manner of death remained undetermined in the amended report.

    “Simply put, this dosage of ketamine was too much for this individual and it resulted in an overdose, even though the blood ketamine level was consistent with a ‘therapeutic’ concentration,” pathologist Dr. Stephen Cina wrote in the amended autopsy report. “I believe that Mr. McClain would most likely be alive but for the administration of ketamine.”

    Cina could not determine whether the carotid hold contributed to the death, but “I have seen no evidence that injuries inflicted by the police contributed,” he wrote.

    On September 20, Roedema and Rosenblatt, two of the officers who arrested McClain, stood trial on charges of manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and assault.

    Prosecutors said they used excessive force on McClain, failed to follow their training and misled paramedics about his health status. In contrast, defense attorneys placed blame on McClain for resisting arrest and on the paramedics who treated him.

    Roedema was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide and assault. Rosenblatt was acquitted of all charges.

    On October 16, the third officer, Woodyard, stood trial on charges of reckless manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. Like in the earlier trial, prosecutors argued he used excessive force on McClain, while defense attorneys argued the force was necessary and blamed the paramedics.

    Woodyard was found not guilty on all charges.

    McClain’s mother Sheneen told CNN affiliate KUSA she no longer has faith in the justice system after Woodyard’s acquittal.

    “It lets us down, not just people of color, it lets down everybody,” she said. “They don’t do the right thing, they always do the bare minimum.”

    Cooper and Cichuniec, the paramedics who treated McClain, stood trial on charges of reckless manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.

    Both paramedics testified they believed McClain was experiencing “excited delirium” during his confrontation with Aurora police officers, and their treatment protocol was to administer a ketamine dose they believed was safe and would not kill a person.

    Prosecutors said the paramedics “didn’t take any accountability for any single one of their actions” while testifying at their trial.

    “They both stood there while Elijah got worse and worse and did nothing,” Colorado Solicitor General Shannon Stevenson said. “They are both responsible.”

    Cooper and Cichuniec were found guilty of criminally negligent homicide Friday.

    Cichuniec was also found guilty of a second-degree unlawful administration of drugs assault charge.

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  • Ketamine infusions improve symptoms of depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation, study says | CNN

    Ketamine infusions improve symptoms of depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation, study says | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    People who got intravenous ketamine at three private ketamine infusion clinics had “significant improvement” in symptoms of depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation, a study says.

    The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, adds to a growing body of research showing ketamine’s promise in treating these conditions.

    It “gives some more real-world data, which is incredibly important” because it helps show its potential to work in a more general population, said Dr. Gerard Sanacora, a psychiatry professor at the Yale School of Medicine.

    But the study leaves some critical gaps, including data on adverse effects and direct comparisons to other options, that make it difficult to conclude how it should be used, he said.

    Ketamine is a powerful medication used in hospitals primarily as an anesthetic. It’s also used illegally as a club drug that creates an intense high and dissociative effects. Because it’s not approved to treat depression and thus is used for that purpose “off-label,” it is not covered by insurance, even when it’s recommended by a doctor.

    The researchers looked at data on 424 people with treatment-resistant depression who were treated between November 2017 and May 2021 at three ketamine infusion clinics in Virginia that specialize in people with suicidal ideation, depression or anxiety. During each visit to the clinic, the patients filled out physical and mental health surveys. The patients were given six infusions within 21 days.

    Within six weeks of beginning infusions, the researchers say, half of the participants responded to the treatment, and 20% had depressive symptoms in remission. After 10 infusions, response and remission rates were 72% and 38%, respectively.

    Half of the patients who had suicidal ideation were in remission after six weeks, and there was a 30% reduction in anxiety symptoms over the course of treatment, according to the study.

    Response rates in the initial phase of treatment were similar to those of oral medication and transcranial magnetic stimulation for treatment-resistant depression, the researchers say. Remission rates were on par with transcranial stimulation but weren’t quite as helpful as optimized trials of electroconvulsive therapy, both of which can be more expensive and carry added risk.

    Limitations of the research include that it was not a blind study with a control group. It didn’t look at people who declined to have infusions, and it relied on self-reported surveys.

    The researchers also note that they didn’t systematically assess side effects or adverse events of the treatment, but previous studies have not found long-term or permanent side effects on memory or cognitive decline.

    The lack of information about adverse effects is “disappointing,” Sanacora said. Ketamine comes with a “unique set of risks, both to the individual but also to society,” including the potential for drug abuse and unknown effects of frequent use, especially at higher levels.

    But without the adverse effects data – and without comparing outcomes to a control group or otherwise – it’s hard to know how to weigh the benefits against the risks.

    “My point is, I think this is an incredibly important treatment to add to our armamentarium to fight severe mood disorders and psychiatric illnesses, but we have to use it responsibly and carefully,” he said.

    In 2019, the US Food and Drug Administration approved a nasal spray that uses esketamine, a cousin of ketamine, for treatment-resistant depression. The researchers on the new study say that infusions of racemic ketamine (which uses two forms of ketamine molecules, in contrast with esketamine’s single form) are cheaper than esketamine and could result in savings if they were covered by insurance.

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  • What? You're calling my kid a simp? | CNN

    What? You're calling my kid a simp? | CNN

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    Editor’s note: After we first published this story in 2021, we received reader feedback about the term’s derivation and use in pop culture. We updated the story to reflect those additional details.



    CNN
     — 

    Shannon was used to her socially awkward son being bullied by other boys at the private school he attends.

    But when she picked him up from school and he told her he was being called a “simp,” Shannon, who’s only using her first name to protect her son’s identity, didn’t know what to think.

    “He’s telling me this and I’m driving and I’m trying to make sense of it,” she said. “I’d never heard the word.”

    “He told me, ‘It basically means that I’m just being nice to girls because I like them,’” she said. “I was like, wait, my kid is being picked on for being nice to girls?”

    Her son had told her he had recently been put in the “friend zone” by one of the girls, who made it clear she wasn’t interested in dating him. They had continued to be friendly.

    “You do all these things as a parent to raise your kid right, to be nice to everyone, especially kids without many friends,” Shannon said. “And you never think that by making your kid the nice one you could be making them a target for bullies.”

    Many parents might be unfamiliar with the word “simp,” but chances are your tween or teen has used or at least heard the term.

    Simp hashtags are rampant on TikTok. Instagram has more 600,000 posts tagged #simp, and there are Facebook groups devoted to simps and simping. (It can be a verb, too.)

    Depending on whom you talk to, there is some debate on the word’s usage and how much (if at all) it has evolved over time. While simp’s origins are connected to the word “simpleton,” its current usage is linked to West Coast American rappers such as Too Short, who first used it in the mid-1980s in a way that denotes the opposite of “pimp” in his song “Pimpology.”

    In 1992, Boyz II Men released a song called “Sympin’ Ain’t Easy,” offering a different spelling of the word and evoking frustrated yearning.

    Urban Dictionary’s top definition of a simp is “someone who does way too much for a person they like.” Other definitions on the crowdsourced online dictionary include “a guy that is overly desperate for women, especially if she is a bad person, or has expressed her disinterest in him whom which he continues to obsess over.”

    “‘Simp’ is slang for a person (typically a man) who is desperate for the attention and affection of someone else (typically a woman),” said Connor Howlett, then a digital strategist in New York City in 2021, in an email to CNN.

    “Think the energy of puppy dog eyes but manifested in a romantic, human form,” Howlett said. “It’s used in an insulting manner. Though typically playful, there are definitely undertones of toxic masculinity since it’s related to showing too much emotion.”

    Karen McClung first encountered the word in group chats she closely monitors with her daughter and son.

    “I saw the word and quickly looked it up,” McClung said. “I asked my kids what they thought it meant and my son said, ‘It’s basically if you had $1,000 and you could do anything with it, you’d use it to get the attention of a girl — then everyone would make fun of you.”

    “I blocked the thread,” she said.

    McClung said her son wasn’t being called a simp in the thread, but she said she’s “curious to see how it impacts my son because he’s very chivalrous by nature.”

    A word that emerged into Generation Z vernacular from social media usage, as simp is thought to have arrived, is bound to get muddled and continue to evolve.

    And simp can have different contexts depending on the age group using it, said Laura Capinas, a clinical social worker in Sonoma County, California.

    “Depending on if it’s a middle schooler or a high schooler using it, it could be different,” she said, and it’s not just boys talking about simps and simping either.

    “Girls in high school sometimes throw out the term to their high school girlfriends,” Capinas said. “Some kids I’ve talked to have said it’s not a derogatory term. It’s sort of like teasing someone, like ‘You’ve left us to go hang out with your friends, you’re simping us.’”

    “If you have someone saying it who’s used to being a bully, it will be received as a bully comment,” she said.

    She hasn’t heard kids or parents in her practice be overly concerned about the word, but Capinas often hears kids use it in describing their day or their peer groups.

    Myra Fortson said she has discussed the word with her daughter and thinks such words often “spread more quickly than their meaning.”

    “Kids will also own their language by refusing to go back to its original meaning,” said the mother of three. “They will say things like, ‘Maybe that’s where it comes from, but it doesn’t mean that anymore.’ And they keep using the term the way they want.”

    One way to think of a simp, said Sean Davis, a marriage and family therapist in California, is “simply someone who is ahead of their time.”

    “Though it hurts in the moment, in the big picture, a boy who is called a ‘simp’ can wear it as a badge of honor,” Davis said.

    “Today’s boys are being raised in the middle of the biggest redefinition of male gender roles in recent history,” Davis said. “Should I be kind and sensitive or distant and aloof when trying to win a partner over?”

    As with all bullying, teens and tweens should first tell their parents or a trusted adult who may be able to intervene on their behalf, he said. “Otherwise, simply owning it and refusing to be ashamed can help.”

    It’s important for parents to remember that there have always been slang terms to navigate for kids and parents alike, Capinas said, and the goal is to “make sure it’s being received in a playful manner and used playfully.”

    “I think we are always looking to stop our kids from being hurt,” she said. “We don’t like language that’s slang and has potential for negative connotation.”

    One tactic she teaches kids in her therapy sessions, she said, is the “humor tool.”

    “It’s comic relief. You practice not putting down the other person, you put down the situation,” she said.

    If someone is being called out for always “simping the girls,” Capinas said, “he could turn it around and say, ‘It’s tough being the lone soldier simp nice guy, who wants to join me?’”

    “You can turn it and make it into comedy,” she said.

    Davis pointed to a similar approach.

    “Telling the bully, ‘That’s right,’ while holding your head up high and walking away can help, as bullies usually give up if they don’t succeed in tearing the other person down,” he said. “And you can tell yourself that being bullied is simply the price a revolutionary has to pay for standing up for what’s right.”

    Shannon said her son’s therapist advised similar tactics, but the boy said he only comes up with the perfect retort three hours later.

    “It’s just been really heartbreaking, especially because I know a lot of these boys bullying him. He’s been at the school since second grade,” Shannon said. “If their moms knew, they’d be horrified. But my son doesn’t want me to tell them because it will just get worse.”

    This story was originally published in February 2021 and has been updated.

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  • 2023 In Review Fast Facts | CNN

    2023 In Review Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here is a look back at the events of 2023.

    January 3 – Republican Kevin McCarthy fails to secure enough votes to be elected Speaker of the House in three rounds of voting. On January 7, McCarthy is elected House speaker after multiple days of negotiations and 15 rounds of voting. That same day, the newly elected 118th Congress is officially sworn in.

    January 7 – Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, is pulled over for reckless driving. He is hospitalized following the arrest and dies three days later from injuries sustained during the traffic stop. Five officers from the Memphis Police Department are fired. On January 26, a grand jury indicts the five officers. They are each charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression. On September 12, the five officers are indicted by a federal grand jury on several charges including deprivation of rights.

    January 9 – The White House counsel’s office confirms that several classified documents from President Joe Biden’s time as vice president were discovered last fall in an office at the Penn Biden Center. On January 12, the White House counsel’s office confirms a small number of additional classified documents were located in President Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home.

    January 13 – The Trump Organization is fined $1.6 million – the maximum possible penalty – by a New York judge for running a decade-long tax fraud scheme.

    January 21 – Eleven people are killed in a mass shooting at a dance studio in Monterey Park, California, as the city’s Asian American community was celebrating Lunar New Year. The 72-year-old gunman is found dead the following day from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

    January 24 – CNN reports that a lawyer for former Vice President Mike Pence discovered about a dozen documents marked as classified at Pence’s Indiana home last week, and he has turned those classified records over to the FBI.

    January 25 – Facebook-parent company Meta announces it will restore former President Donald Trump’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram in the coming weeks, just over two years after suspending him in the wake of the January 6 Capitol attack.

    February 1 – Tom Brady announces his retirement after 23 seasons in the NFL.

    February 2 – Defense officials announce the United States is tracking a suspected Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon over the continental United States. On February 4, a US military fighter jet shoots down the balloon over the Atlantic Ocean. On June 29, the Pentagon reveals the balloon did not collect intelligence while flying over the country.

    February 3 – A Norfolk Southern freight train carrying hazardous materials derails in East Palestine, Ohio. An evacuation order is issued for the area within a mile radius of the train crash. The order is lifted on February 8. After returning to their homes, some residents report they have developed a rash and nausea.

    February 7 – Lebron James breaks the NBA’s all-time scoring record, surpassing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

    February 15 – Payton Gendron, 19, who killed 10 people in a racist mass shooting at a grocery store in a predominantly Black area of Buffalo last May, is sentenced to life in prison.

    February 18 – In a statement, the Carter Center says that former President Jimmy Carter will begin receiving hospice care at his home in Georgia.

    February 20 – President Biden makes a surprise trip to Kyiv for the first time since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost a year ago.

    February 23 – Disgraced R&B singer R. Kelly is sentenced to 20 years in prison in a Chicago federal courtroom on charges of child pornography and enticement of a minor. Kelly is already serving a 30-year prison term for his 2021 conviction on racketeering and sex trafficking charges in a New York federal court. Nineteen years of the 20-year prison sentence will be served at the same time as his other sentence. One year will be served after that sentence is complete.

    February 23 – Harvey Weinstein, who is already serving a 23-year prison sentence in New York, is sentenced in Los Angeles to an additional 16 years in prison for charges of rape and sexual assault.

    March 2 – SpaceX and NASA launch a fresh crew of astronauts on a mission to the International Space Station, kicking off a roughly six-month stay in space. The mission — which is carrying two NASA astronauts, a Russian cosmonaut and an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates — took off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

    March 2 – The jury in the double murder trial of Alex Murdaugh finds him guilty of murdering his wife and son. Murdaugh, the 54-year-old scion of a prominent and powerful family of local lawyers and solicitors, is also found guilty of two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime in the killings of Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh and Paul Murdaugh on June 7, 2021.

    March 3 – Four US citizens from South Carolina are kidnapped by gunmen in Matamoros, Mexico, in a case of mistaken identity. On March 7, two of the four Americans, Shaeed Woodard and Zindell Brown, are found dead and the other two, Latavia McGee and Eric Williams, are found alive. The cartel believed responsible for the armed kidnapping issues an apology letter and hands over five men to local authorities.

    March 10 – The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation announces that Silicon Valley Bank was shut down by California regulators. This is the second largest bank failure in US history, only to Washington Mutual’s collapse in 2008. SVB Financial Group, the former parent company of SVB, files for bankruptcy on March 17.

    March 27 – A 28-year-old Nashville resident shoots and kills three children and three adults at the Covenant School in Nashville. The shooter is fatally shot by responding officers.

    March 29 – Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich is detained by Russian authorities and accused of spying. On April 7, he is formally charged with espionage.

    March 30 – A grand jury in New York votes to indict Trump, the first time in American history that a current or former president has faced criminal charges. On April 4, Trump surrenders and is placed under arrest before pleading not guilty to 34 felony criminal charges of falsifying business records. Prosecutors allege that Trump sought to undermine the integrity of the 2016 election through a hush money scheme with payments made to women who claimed they had extramarital affairs with Trump. He has denied the affairs.

    April 6 – Two Democratic members of the Tennessee House of Representatives, Rep. Justin Jones and Rep. Justin Pearson, are expelled while a third member, Rep. Gloria Johnson, is spared in an ousting by Republican lawmakers that was decried by the trio as oppressive, vindictive and racially motivated. This comes after Jones, Pearson and Johnson staged a demonstration on the House floor calling for gun reform following the shooting at the Covenant School. On April 10, Rep. Jones is sworn back in following a unanimous vote by the Nashville Metropolitan Council to reappoint him as an interim representative. On April 12, the Shelby County Board of Commissioners vote to confirm the reappointment of Rep. Pearson.

    April 6-13 – ProPublica reports that Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, conservative activist Ginni Thomas, have gone on several luxury trips involving travel subsidized by and stays at properties owned by Harlan Crow, a GOP megadonor. The hospitality was not disclosed on Thomas’ public financial filings with the Supreme Court. The following week ProPublica reports Thomas failed to disclose a 2014 real estate deal he made with Crow. On financial disclosure forms released on August 31, Thomas discloses the luxury trips and “inadvertently omitted” information including the real estate deal.

    April 7 – A federal judge in Texas issues a ruling on medication abortion drug mifepristone, saying he will suspend the US Food and Drug Administration’s two-decade-old approval of it but paused his ruling for seven days so the federal government can appeal. But in a dramatic turn of events, a federal judge in Washington state says in a new ruling shortly after that the FDA must keep medication abortion drugs available in more than a dozen Democratic-led states.

    April 13 – 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard is arrested by the FBI in connection with the leaking of classified documents that have been posted online.

    April 18 – Fox News reaches a last-second settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, paying more than $787 million to end a two-year legal battle that publicly shredded the network’s credibility. Fox News’ $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems is the largest publicly known defamation settlement in US history involving a media company.

    April 25 – President Biden formally announces his bid for reelection.

    May 2 – More than 11,000 members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) go on strike for the first time since 2007. On September 26, the WGA announces its leaders have unanimously voted to authorize its members to return to work following the tentative agreement reached on September 24 between union negotiators and Hollywood’s studios and streaming services, effectively ending the months-long strike.

    May 9 – A Manhattan federal jury finds Trump sexually abused former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in the spring of 1996 and awards her $5 million for battery and defamation.

    June 8 – Trump is indicted on a total of 37 counts in the special counsel’s classified documents probe. In a superseding indictment filed on July 27, Trump is charged with one additional count of willful retention of national defense information and two additional obstruction counts, bringing the total to 40 counts.

    June 16 – Robert Bowers, the gunman who killed 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, is convicted by a federal jury on all 63 charges against him. He is sentenced to death on August 2.

    June 18 – A civilian submersible disappears with five people aboard while voyaging to the wreckage of the Titanic. On June 22, following a massive search for the submersible, US authorities announce the vessel suffered a “catastrophic implosion,” killing all five people aboard.

    June 20 – ProPublica reports that Justice Samuel Alito did not disclose a luxury 2008 trip he took in which a hedge fund billionaire flew him on a private jet, even though the businessman would later repeatedly ask the Supreme Court to intervene on his behalf. In a highly unusual move, Alito preemptively disputed the nature of the report before it was published, authoring an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in which he acknowledged knowing billionaire Paul Singer but downplaying their relationship.

    June 29 – The Supreme Court says colleges and universities can no longer take race into consideration as a specific basis for granting admission, a landmark decision overturning long-standing precedent.

    July 13 – The FDA approves Opill to be available over-the-counter, the first nonprescription birth control pill in the United States.

    July 14 – SAG-AFTRA, a union representing about 160,000 Hollywood actors, goes on strike after talks with major studios and streaming services fail. It is the first time its members have stopped work on movie and television productions since 1980. On November 8, SAG-AFTRA and the studios reach a tentative agreement, officially ending the strike.

    July 14 – Rex Heuermann, a New York architect, is charged with six counts of murder in connection with the deaths of three of the four women known as the “Gilgo Four.”

    August 1 – Trump is indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington, DC, in the 2020 election probe. Trump is charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.

    August 8 – Over 100 people are killed and hundreds of others unaccounted for after wildfires engulf parts of Maui. Nearly 3,000 homes and businesses are destroyed or damaged.

    August 14 – Trump and 18 others are indicted by an Atlanta-based grand jury on state charges stemming from their efforts to overturn the former president’s 2020 electoral defeat. Trump now faces a total of 91 charges in four criminal cases, in four different jurisdictions — two federal and two state cases. On August 24, Trump surrenders at the Fulton County jail where he is processed and released on bond.

    August 23 – Eight Republican presidential candidates face off in the first primary debate of the 2024 campaign in Milwaukee.

    September 12 – House Speaker McCarthy announces he is calling on his committees to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Biden, even as they have yet to prove allegations he directly profited off his son’s foreign business deals.

    September 14 – Hunter Biden is indicted by special counsel David Weiss in connection with a gun he purchased in 2018, the first time in US history the Justice Department has charged the child of a sitting president. The three charges include making false statements on a federal firearms form and possession of a firearm as a prohibited person.

    September 22 – New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menendez is charged with corruption-related offenses for the second time in 10 years. Menendez and his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, are accused of accepting “hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes” in exchange for the senator’s influence, according to the newly unsealed federal indictment.

    September 28 – Dianne Feinstein, the longest-serving female US senator in history, dies at the age of 90. On October 1, California Governor Gavin Newsom announces he will appoint Emily’s List president Laphonza Butler to replace her. Butler will become the first out Black lesbian to join Congress. She will also be the sole Black female senator serving in Congress and only the third in US history.

    September 29 – Las Vegas police confirm Duane Keith Davis, aka “Keffe D,” was arrested for the 1996 murder of rapper Tupac Shakur.

    October 3 – McCarthy is removed as House speaker following a 216-210 vote, with eight Republicans voting to remove McCarthy from the post.

    October 25 – After three weeks without a speaker, the House votes to elect Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana.

    October 25 – Robert Card, a US Army reservist, kills 18 people and injures 13 others in a shooting rampage in Lewiston, Maine. On October 27, after a two-day manhunt, he is found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot.

    November 13 – The Supreme Court announces a code of conduct in an attempt to bolster the public’s confidence in the court after months of news stories alleging that some of the justices have been skirting ethics regulations.

    November 19 – Former first lady Rosalynn Carter passes away at the age of 96.

    January 8 – Supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro storm the country’s congressional building, Supreme Court and presidential palace. The breaches come about a week after the inauguration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who defeated Bolsonaro in a runoff election on October 30.

    January 15 – At least 68 people are killed when an aircraft goes down near the city of Pokhara in central Nepal. This is the country’s deadliest plane crash in more than 30 years.

    January 19 – New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden announces she will not seek reelection in October.

    January 24 – President Volodymyr Zelensky fires a slew of senior Ukrainian officials amid a growing corruption scandal linked to the procurement of war-time supplies.

    February 6 – More than 15,000 people are killed and tens of thousands injured after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake strikes Turkey and Syria.

    February 28 – At least 57 people are killed after two trains collide in Greece.

    March 1 – Bola Ahmed Tinubu is declared the winner of Nigeria’s presidential election.

    March 10 – Xi Jinping is reappointed as president for another five years by China’s legislature in a ceremonial vote in Beijing, a highly choreographed exercise in political theater meant to demonstrate legitimacy and unity of the ruling elite.

    March 16 – The French government forces through controversial plans to raise the country’s retirement age from 62 to 64.

    April 4 – Finland becomes the 31st member of NATO.

    April 15 – Following months of tensions in Sudan between a paramilitary group and the country’s army, violence erupts.

    May 3 – A 13-year-old boy opens fire on his classmates at a school in Belgrade, Serbia, killing at least eight children along with a security guard. On May 4, a second mass shooting takes place when an attacker opens fire in the village of Dubona, about 37 miles southeast of Belgrade, killing eight people.

    May 5 – The World Health Organization announces Covid-19 is no longer a global health emergency.

    May 6 – King Charles’ coronation takes place at Westminster Abbey in London.

    August 4 – Alexey Navalny is sentenced to 19 years in prison on extremism charges, Russian media reports. Navalny is already serving sentences totaling 11-and-a-half years in a maximum-security facility on fraud and other charges that he says were trumped up.

    September 8 – Over 2,000 people are dead and thousands are injured after a 6.8-magnitude earthquake hits Morocco.

    October 8 – Israel formally declares war on the Palestinian militant group Hamas after it carried out an unprecedented attack by air, sea and land on October 7.

    November 8 – The Vatican publishes new guidelines opening the door to Catholic baptism for transgender people and babies of same-sex couples.

    November 24 – The first group of hostages is released after Israel and Hamas agree to a temporary truce. Dozens more hostages are released in the following days. On December 1, the seven-day truce ends after negotiations reach an impasse and Israel accuses Hamas of violating the agreement by firing at Israel.

    Awards and Winners

    January 9 – The College Football Playoff National Championship game takes place at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. The Georgia Bulldogs defeat Texas Christian University’s Horned Frogs 65-7 for their second national title in a row.

    January 10 – The 80th Annual Golden Globe Awards are presented live on NBC.

    January 16-29 – The 111th Australian Open takes place. Novak Djokovic defeats Stefanos Tsitsipas in straight sets to win a 10th Australian Open title and a record-equaling 22nd grand slam. Belarusian-born Aryna Sabalenka defeats Elena Rybakina in three sets, becoming the first player competing under a neutral flag to secure a grand slam.

    February 5 – The 65th Annual Grammy Awards ceremony takes place in Los Angeles at the Crypto.com Arena.

    February 12 – Super Bowl LVII takes place at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. The Kansas City Chiefs defeat the Philadelphia Eagles 38-35. This is the first Super Bowl to feature two Black starting quarterbacks.

    February 19 – Ricky Stenhouse Jr. wins the 65th Annual Daytona 500 in double overtime. It is the longest Daytona 500 ever with a record of 212 laps raced.

    March 12 – The 95th Annual Academy Awards takes place, with Jimmy Kimmel hosting for the third time.

    March 14 – Ryan Redington wins his first Iditarod.

    April 2 – The Louisiana State University Tigers defeat the University of Iowa Hawkeyes 102-85 in Dallas, to win the program’s first NCAA women’s basketball national championship.

    April 3 – The University of Connecticut Huskies win its fifth men’s basketball national title with a 76-59 victory over the San Diego State University Aztecs in Houston.

    April 6-9 – The 87th Masters tournament takes place. Jon Rahm wins, claiming his first green jacket and second career major at Augusta National.

    April 17 – The 127th Boston Marathon takes place. The winners are Evans Chebet of Kenya in the men’s division and Hellen Obiri of Kenya in the women’s division.

    May 6 – Mage, a 3-year-old chestnut colt, wins the 149th Kentucky Derby.

    May 8-9 – The 147th Annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show takes place at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, New York. Buddy Holly, a petit basset griffon Vendéen, wins Best in Show.

    May 20 – National Treasure wins the 148th running of the Preakness Stakes.

    May 21 – Brooks Koepka wins the 105th PGA Championship at Oak Hill County Club in Rochester, New York. This is his third PGA Championship and fifth major title of his career.

    May 22-June 11 – The French Open takes place at Roland Garros Stadium in Paris. Novak Djokovic wins a record-breaking 23rd Grand Slam title, defeating Casper Ruud 7-6 (7-1) 6-3 7-5 in the men’s final. Iga Świątek wins her third French Open in four years with a 6-2 5-7 6-4 victory against the unseeded Karolína Muchová in the women’s final.

    May 28 – Josef Newgarden wins the 107th running of the Indianapolis 500.

    June 10 – Arcangelo wins the 155th running of the Belmont Stakes.

    June 11 – The 76th Tony Awards takes place.

    June 12 – The Denver Nuggets defeat the Miami Heat 94-89 in Game 5, to win the series 4-1 and claim their first NBA title in franchise history.

    June 13 – The Vegas Golden Knights defeat the Florida Panthers in Game 5 to win the franchise’s first Stanley Cup.

    June 18 – American golfer Wyndham Clark wins the 123rd US Open at The Los Angeles Country Club.

    July 1-23 – The 110th Tour de France takes place. Danish cyclist Jonas Vingegaard wins his second consecutive Tour de France title.

    July 3-16 – Wimbledon takes place in London. Carlos Alcaraz defeats Novak Djokovic 1-6 7-6 (8-6) 6-1 3-6 6-4 in the men’s final, to win his first Wimbledon title. Markéta Vondroušová defeats Ons Jabeur 6-4 6-4 in the women’s final, to win her first Wimbledon title and become the first unseeded woman in the Open Era to win the tournament.

    July 16-23 – Brian Harman wins the 151st Open Championship at Royal Liverpool in Hoylake, Wirral, England, for his first major title.

    July 20-August 20 – The Women’s World Cup takes place in Australia and New Zealand. Spain defeats England 1-0 to win its first Women’s World Cup.

    August 28-September 10 – The US Open Tennis Tournament takes place. Coco Gauff defeats Aryna Sabalenka, and Novak Djokovic defeats Daniil Medvedev.

    October 2-9 – The Nobel Prizes are announced. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to jailed Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi for “her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all,” according to the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

    November 1 – The Texas Rangers win the World Series for the first time in franchise history, defeating the Arizona Diamondbacks 5-0 in Game 5.

    November 5 – The New York City Marathon takes place. Ethiopia’s Tamirat Tola sets a course record and wins the men’s race. Kenya’s Hellen Obiri wins the women’s race.

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  • Sandy Hook School Shootings Fast Facts | CNN

    Sandy Hook School Shootings Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in Newtown, Connecticut. On December 14, 2012, six adults and 20 children were killed by Adam Lanza, who had earlier killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, in their home.

    Birth date: April 22, 1992

    Death date: December 14, 2012

    Birth place: Kingston, New Hampshire

    Birth name: Adam Lanza

    Father: Peter Lanza, an accountant

    Mother: Nancy (Champion) Lanza

    Lanza’s parents were divorced in September 2009.

    A 2014 report by the Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate described Lanza as a young man with deteriorating mental health who had a fascination with mass shootings.

    Weapons found at the scene were legally purchased by Nancy Lanza.

    Lanza used a Bushmaster Model XM15-E2S rifle during the shooting spree. Three weapons were found next to his body; the semiautomatic .223-caliber rifle made by Bushmaster, and two handguns. An Izhmash Saiga-12, 12 gauge semi-automatic shotgun was found in his car.

    December 14, 2012 – At an unknown time, 20-year-old Adam Lanza kills his mother Nancy, 52, with a .22 caliber Savage Mark II rifle. Lanza then drives his mother’s car to Sandy Hook Elementary, about five miles away.

    At approximately 9:30 a.m., Lanza arrives at Sandy Hook Elementary, a school with about 700 students. The principal, Dawn Hochsprung, had installed a new security system that required every visitor to ring the front entrance’s doorbell for admittance. Lanza shoots his way through the entrance.

    Hochsprung and school psychologist Mary Sherlach step out to the hall to see what is going on, and are followed by Vice Principal Natalie Hammond. Hochsprung and Sherlach are killed, and Hammond is injured.

    The first 911 calls to police are made at approximately 9:30 a.m. Police and first responders arrive approximately five minutes later.

    Lanza enters the classroom of substitute teacher Lauren Rousseau. Lanza kills 14 children as well as Rousseau and a teacher’s aide.

    He then enters the classroom of teacher Victoria Soto. Six children in the room, as well as Soto and a teacher’s aide, are killed. Lanza dies by suicide in the same classroom, ending the rampage in less than 11 minutes.

    At about 3:15 p.m., an emotional President Barack Obama gives a televised address, “We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.” He orders flags to be flown at half-staff at the White House and other federal buildings.

    December 15, 2012 – Connecticut State Police release the names of the victims: six adult women and 12 girls and eight boys, all ages six and seven.

    December 16, 2012 – Obama visits with the relatives of those who were killed. He also attends an interfaith vigil. “We can’t tolerate this anymore,” he says. “These tragedies must end, and to end them we must change.”

    December 17, 2012 – Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy announces a statewide moment of silence on December 21. He also requests that bells be tolled 26 times in memory of the victims.

    December 18, 2012 – Newtown Superintendent of Schools Janet Robinson announces Sandy Hook students will remain out of school until January. At that time, they will be taught in a converted middle school.

    January 8, 2013 – Malloy announces the names of the people who will serve on the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission, to review current policy and make recommendations on public safety, mental health and violence prevention policies.

    March 2013 – A new police report reveals Lanza possessed a list of 500 of the world’s most notorious mass murderers, and was trying to rack up the greatest number of kills in history.

    November 25, 2013 – Connecticut state officials release a report closing the investigation into the shooting and confirm that Lanza had no assistance and was the only shooter.

    December 4, 2013 – Audio recordings of the 911 calls from Sandy Hook Elementary are released.

    December 27, 2013 – The final report on the investigation into the shooting is released.

    November 21, 2014 – The Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate, as directed by the State Child Fatality Review Panel, releases a report profiling Lanza’s developmental and educational history. The report notes “missed opportunities” by Lanza’s mother, the school district and multiple health care providers. It identifies “warning signs, red flags, or other lessons” that could be learned.

    December 15, 2014 – The families of nine children killed, along with one teacher who survived the attack, file a wrongful death suit against the manufacturers and distributors of the Bushmaster rifle, as well as the retail store and dealer who sold the firearm used in the shooting.

    March 6, 2015 – The final report of the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission is released.

    December 17, 2015 – In a final agreement, 16 plaintiffs will share in a $1.5 million settlement against the estate of Nancy Lanza. The plaintiffs are from eight separate lawsuits filed in early 2015.

    April 14, 2016 – A superior court judge rules that the wrongful death suit against gun manufacturers can proceed. The judge denies a motion to dismiss the case on the basis that firearms companies have limited liability when their products are used by criminals, according to a federal law passed in 2005.

    October 14, 2016 – Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis dismisses a lawsuit that families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims had filed against a gun manufacturer, invoking a federal statute known as PLCAA, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. The law prohibits lawsuits against gun manufacturers and distributors if their firearms were used in the commission of a criminal act.

    November 15, 2016 – The Sandy Hook families file an appeal, asking the Connecticut Supreme Court to consider their case against the gun manufacturer.

    March 14, 2019 – The Connecticut Supreme Court rules that the families of the Sandy Hook victims can go forward with their lawsuit against Remington, which makes the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle used in the shooting.

    April 5, 2019 – Remington files an appeal with the US Supreme Court, asking the high court to decide on the state’s interpretation of a federal statute that grants gun manufacturers immunity from any lawsuit related to injuries that result from criminal misuse of their product.

    November 12, 2019 – The US Supreme Court declines to take up the Remington appeal.

    July 27, 2021 – Remington offers nearly $33 million to nine families of victims killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in a proposed lawsuit settlement.

    November 15, 2021 – The families suing InfoWars founder Alex Jones win a case against him after a judge rules that Jones, and the entities owned by him, are liable by default in the defamation case against them. Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis cites the defendants’ “willful noncompliance” with the discovery process as her core reasoning behind the ruling. The case stems from past claims that the 2012 mass shooting was staged. Jones has since acknowledged that the shooting was real.

    February 15, 2022 – A settlement is reached between the nine families of victims killed and the now-bankrupt Remington and its four insurers, according to court records. The plaintiffs’ attorneys say the $73 million settlement also includes “thousands of pages of internal company documents that prove Remington’s wrongdoing and carry important lessons for helping to prevent future mass shootings.”

    August 4, 2022 – A jury decides that Jones will have to pay Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, the parents of a Sandy Hook shooting victim, a little more than $4 million in compensatory damages.

    October 12, 2022 – A Connecticut jury decides Jones should pay eight family members of Sandy Hook shooting victims and one first responder $965 million in compensatory damages caused by his lies regarding the shooting. On November 10, a Connecticut judge orders Jones to pay an additional $473 million in punitive damages.

    November 13, 2022 – The Sandy Hook Permanent Memorial, designed by Dan Affleck and Ben Waldo, is unveiled publicly in Newtown, Connecticut.

    October 19, 2023 – A federal bankruptcy judge rules that bankruptcy proceedings will not shield Jones from more than $1.1 billion in damages he owes the families of Sandy Hook shooting victims.

    November 22, 2023 – In a court document, the families of Sandy Hook shooting victims offer Jones a “path out of bankruptcy” if he pays them a “small fraction” of the more than $1 billion he owes in damages, which could help resolve the bankruptcy cases of both Jones and Free Speech Systems. The families suggest Jones pay at least $85 million over 10 years — $8.5 million per year for a decade, in addition to half of any annual income over $9 million, “with a proportionate reduction of liabilities for each year of full payment.”

    The Victims at Sandy Hook Elementary School

    Allison Wyatt, 6
    Ana Marquez-Greene, 6
    Anne Marie Murphy, 52 (Teacher)
    Avielle Richman, 6
    Benjamin Wheeler, 6
    Caroline Previdi, 6
    Catherine Hubbard, 6
    Charlotte Bacon, 6
    Chase Kowalski, 7
    Daniel Barden, 7
    Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, 47 (Principal)
    Dylan Hockley, 6
    Emilie Parker, 6
    Grace McDonnell, 7
    Jack Pinto, 6
    James Mattioli, 6
    Jesse Lewis, 6
    Jessica Rekos, 6
    Josephine Gay, 7
    Lauren Rousseau, 30 (Teacher)
    Madeleine Hsu, 6
    Mary Sherlach, 56 (Psychologist)
    Noah Pozner, 6
    Olivia Engel, 6
    Rachel D’Avino, 29, (Therapist)
    Victoria Soto, 27 (Teacher)

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  • Michael Chertoff Fast Facts | CNN

    Michael Chertoff Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here is a look at the life of Michael Chertoff, former secretary of Homeland Security.

    Birth date: November 28, 1953

    Birth place: Elizabeth, New Jersey

    Birth name: Michael Chertoff

    Father: Gershon Chertoff, rabbi

    Mother: Livia Chertoff

    Marriage: Meryl (Justin) Chertoff (1988-present)

    Children: Two

    Education: Harvard University, BA, 1975; Harvard University, JD, 1978

    Religion: Jewish

    Helped write the Patriot Act after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

    Played a key role in the government investigations of WorldCom, Enron and Arthur Andersen.

    Prosecuted the former boss of the Genovese crime family, Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno; the founder of Crazy Eddie electronics, Eddie Antar; and Jersey City Mayor Gerald McCann.

    1978-1979 – Law clerk to Judge Murray Gurfein, US Court of Appeals Second Circuit, New York.

    1979-1980 – Serves as a law clerk to Justice William Brennan, US Supreme Court.

    1980-1983 – Associate at Latham & Watkins in Washington, DC.

    1983-1987 – Assistant US attorney for the Southern District of New York.

    1987 – Recipient of the John Marshall award from the US Department of Justice.

    1987-1990 – First assistant US attorney for the District of New Jersey.

    1990-1994 – US attorney for the District of New Jersey.

    1994-1996 – Special counsel for Senate Whitewater Committee.

    2001-2003 – Assistant US attorney general, the criminal division.

    2003-2005 – Judge for the US Court of Appeals Third Circuit.

    January 11, 2005 – Is nominated as secretary of Homeland Security by President George W. Bush.

    February 15, 2005-January 21, 2009 – Serves as the second secretary of Homeland Security.

    March 26, 2009-present – Senior counsel at the DC law firm Covington & Burling LLP.

    2009-present – Chairman and co-founder of the Chertoff Group, a global security advisory firm.

    May 1, 2012-December 2021 – Chairman of the board of directors of BAE Systems, Inc.

    April 27, 2022 – Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says that DHS has established a Disinformation Governance Board, with the intention of coordinating department activities related to disinformation aimed at the US population and infrastructure. In May, the disinformation board initiative is halted after weeks of attacks, and Chertoff is named co-chair of the Homeland Security Advisory Council subcommittee which later issues a set of recommendations to the secretary, including its assessment that there is “no need for a separate Disinformation Governance Board.” The disinformation board is formally terminated on August 24, 2022.

    January 2023 – CNN reports that the Supreme Court did not disclose its longstanding financial relationship with Chertoff, even as it touted him as an expert who independently validated its investigation into who leaked the draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade.

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  • Woody Allen Fast Facts | CNN

    Woody Allen Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at the life of Oscar-winning filmmaker Woody Allen.

    Birth date: December 1, 1935

    Birth place: Brooklyn, New York

    Birth name: Allan Stewart Konigsberg

    Father: Martin Konigsberg, worked various jobs

    Mother: Nettie (Cherry) Konigsberg, bookkeeper

    Marriages: Soon-Yi Previn (December 22, 1997-present), Louise Lasser (divorced), Harlene Rosen (divorced)

    Children: daughters adopted with Soon-Yi Previn: Manzie Tio Allen (2000), Bechet Dumaine Allen (1998); with Mia Farrow: Satchel Farrow (1987, now goes by Ronan), Dylan O’Sullivan Farrow (1985, adopted daughter), Moses Farrow (1978, adopted)

    Education: Attended New York University and City College of New York.

    He legally changed his name at 17 to Heywood Allen.

    Allen has worked as a comedy writer, stand-up comic, screenwriter, actor, playwright, musician and director.

    He has 24 Oscar nominations and four wins: 16 for writing, with three wins; seven for directing, with one win; and one nomination for acting.

    Allen has one Emmy nomination for writing.

    Allen has appeared in dozens of the movies he’s directed and claims to have never watched his films once they are released.

    Although Allen is best known for comedies, he has explored different genres including dramas (“Interiors”), thrillers (“Match Point”) and musicals (“Everyone Says I Love You”).

    Most of his movies have been filmed in and around New York.

    He plays the jazz clarinet and piano.

    1950-1960 – Comedy writer.

    1961-1964 – A standup comic.

    July 1964 – Releases his first comedy album, “Woody Allen.”

    June 22, 1965 – The first movie he wrote and performed in, “What’s New Pussycat?” is released.

    November 17, 1966 – “Don’t Drink the Water,” Allen’s first play, opens on Broadway.

    February 12, 1969-March 14, 1970 – “Play It Again, Sam,” his second play, runs on Broadway with Allen in the lead. In 1972, he reprises his role in the movie adaptation.

    1978 – “Annie Hall” wins four Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay Written for the Screen and Best Actress. Allen earns two of the four Oscars as writer and director. He is also nominated for Best Actor but does not win.

    1987 – Wins the Academy Award for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen for “Hannah and Her Sisters.” He is also nominated for Best Director for the same film.

    1992 – His 12 year relationship with actress Mia Farrow ends when she discovers his affair with her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn. Subsequently, allegations of sexual molestation are made by their adopted daughter, Dylan, 7. A two-year custody battle for their three children Satchel, Dylan and Moses ensues, which Farrow wins.

    April 1998 – The documentary, “Wild Man Blues,” is released, showcasing Allen’s love for the jazz clarinet and his association with the Eddy Davis New Orleans Jazz Band.

    2002 – Makes his only appearance at an Academy Awards ceremony. He appeals for the continued use of New York as a setting for movies after September 11, 2001.

    2012 – Wins an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for “Midnight in Paris.”

    February 1, 2014 – An open letter written by Dylan Farrow is published in the New York Times, recounting her allegation that Allen sexually assaulted her when she was a child. A representative for Allen releases a statement the next day, denying the charges.

    February 7, 2014 – Allen responds in an op-ed column released by The New York Times. He says the allegations are untrue and rooted in his acrimonious breakup with Mia Farrow.

    September 30, 2016 – Allen’s first video streaming series, “Crisis in Six Scenes” debuts on Amazon.com.

    January 2018 – Several actors who appeared in Allen’s latest film, “A Rainy Day in New York,” announce they will be donating their salaries to charity amid questions about longstanding sexual abuse claims against Allen. The movie has yet to be released.

    September 16, 2018 – In a New York magazine profile, Soon-Yi Previn defends Allen against allegations of molestation.

    February 7, 2019 – Allen and his production company file a lawsuit against Amazon claiming the company backed out of a $68 million four-picture deal.

    November 8, 2019 – Allen and his production company reach a settlement with Amazon in a breach of contract lawsuit.

    March 23, 2020 – Allen’s memoir “Apropos of Nothing” is published by Arcade Publishing. Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group, originally acquired the rights to the book but canceled their plans to publish it after employees walked out in protest.

    February 21, 2021 – “Allen v. Farrow,” a four-part HBO docuseries that examines Allen’s relationship with Farrow and sexual-assault allegations by their daughter Dylan premieres.

    March 28, 2021 – In an interview for “CBS Sunday Morning,” Allen denies the sexual abuse allegation by his daughter Dylan.

    June 7, 2022 – “Zero Gravity,” Allen’s new essay collection is published.

    September 27, 2023 – Allen releases his 50th film and first French-language film, “Coupe de Chance.”

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  • Janet Napolitano Fast Facts | CNN

    Janet Napolitano Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at the life of the former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano.

    Birth date: November 29, 1957

    Birth place: New York, New York

    Birth name: Janet Ann Napolitano

    Father: Leonard Michael Napolitano, anatomy professor and Dean, University of New Mexico School of Medicine

    Mother: Jane Marie (Winer) Napolitano

    Education: Santa Clara University, B.S., 1979; University of Virginia, J.D., 1983

    Grew up in Pennsylvania and New Mexico.

    First female valedictorian at Santa Clara University in California.

    Lifetime member of the Girl Scouts of America.

    Enjoys hiking and tennis.

    Is a big fan of Arizona professional basketball and baseball teams.

    Founder and faculty director of the Center for Security in Politics at the University of California, Berkeley.

    1983-1984 – Law clerk for Judge Mary Schroeder of the US Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

    1984-1993 – Associate, and later partner at Lewis & Roca in Phoenix.

    1991 – Member of the legal team representing Anita Hill during the sexual harassment investigation of US Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.

    1993-1997 – US Attorney for the District of Arizona.

    1999-2002 – Attorney General of Arizona. She is the first woman to hold this position.

    July 25, 2000 – Undergoes a successful mastectomy on her right breast for cancer.

    January 6, 2003-January 21, 2009 – The first Democrat in 12 years to be governor of Arizona.

    August 7, 2006-July 23, 2007 – First female chair of the National Governors Association.

    December 1, 2008 – President-elect Barack Obama nominates Napolitano to be the Secretary of Homeland Security.

    January 15, 2009 – Napolitano’s confirmation hearing before the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee begins.

    January 21, 2009 – The third Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and the first woman to hold the position.

    July 12, 2013 – Announces her resignation.

    September 6, 2013 – Napolitano leaves the Department of Homeland Security.

    September 30, 2013 – Becomes the 20th, and first female president of the University of California.

    May 17, 2016 – The Department of Homeland Security hosts an official portrait unveiling ceremony honoring Napolitano. The portrait is displayed in the Department of Homeland Security Headquarters in Washington.

    January 16, 2017 – Napolitano is hospitalized, suffering side effects from cancer treatment. She was diagnosed with cancer last August.

    October 26, 2017 – Napolitano announces the National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement. The new endeavor hopes to facilitate a “concerted educational, research and advocacy effort that will center on the First Amendment’s critical importance to American democracy.” Napolitano will chair the center which will be housed at the University of California’s Washington, DC location.

    March 26, 2019 – Napolitano’s book co-authored with Karen Breslau, “How Safe Are We?: Homeland Security Since 9/11,” is published.

    September 18, 2019 – Announces that she will step down as president of the University of California in August 2020. After a sabbatical, she will continue in her position at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, where she is a tenured professor.

    May 4, 2022 – President Joe Biden appoints Napolitano to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.

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  • Far-right conspiracy theorists accused a 22-year-old Jewish man of being a neo-Nazi. Then Elon Musk got involved | CNN Business

    Far-right conspiracy theorists accused a 22-year-old Jewish man of being a neo-Nazi. Then Elon Musk got involved | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Ben Brody says his life was going fine. He had just finished college, stayed out of trouble, and was prepping for law school. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Elon Musk used his considerable social media clout to amplify an online mob’s misguided rants accusing the 22-year-old from California of being an undercover agent in a neo-Nazi group.

    The claim, Brody told CNN, was as bizarre as it was baseless.

    But the fact he bore a vague resemblance to a person allegedly in the group, that he was Jewish, and, that he once stated in a college fraternity profile posted online that he aspired to one day work for the government, was more than enough information for internet trolls to falsely conclude Brody was an undercover government agent (a “Fed”) planted inside the neo-Nazi group to make them look bad.

    For Brody, the fallout was immediate. Overnight, he became a central character in a story spun by people seeking to deny and downplay the actions of hate groups in the United States today.

    The lies and taunts, which Musk engaged with on social media, turned his life upside down, Brody said. At one point, he said, he and his mother had to flee their home for fear of being attacked.

    Now, he’s fighting back.

    Brody filed a defamation lawsuit last month against Musk, the owner of X, formerly known as Twitter. The suit seeks damages in excess of $1 million. Brody says he wants the billionaire to apologize and retract the false claims about him.

    Brody’s lawyer—who is the same attorney who successfully sued conspiracy theorist Alex Jones over his lies about the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre —said he hopes the suit will force one of the world’s richest and most powerful men to reckon with his careless and harmful online behavior.

    “This case strikes at the heart of something that I think is going really wrong in this country,” attorney Mark Bankston said in an interview with CNN. “How powerful people, very influential people, are being far too reckless about the things they say about private people, people just trying to go about their lives who’ve done nothing to cause this attention.”

    Asked for comment on the lawsuit, an attorney for Musk told CNN “we expect this case to be dismissed.” Musk’s lawyers have until Jan 5, 2024, to file their response in court.

    On the night of Saturday, June 24, 2023, Ben Brody was in Riverside, California.

    About 1,000 miles away, a gay pride event was being held near Portland, Oregon. In recent years, the city has become a flashpoint for often violent clashes over the country’s ongoing culture wars.

    It was no great surprise then that the event became a target for rival far-right groups and neo-Nazis who began fighting among themselves while protesting. Video of the skirmish, where the far-right protesters pushed and pulled at each other, quickly spread across social media.

    Online conspiracy theorists soon jumped into the fray.

    Rather than accept the fact that two far-right groups who have previously embraced violence were responsible for the clash, online trolls insisted it must be a so-called “false flag” event – a set-up of some kind to make the neo-Nazis look bad.

    That’s when they found Ben Brody.

    The day after the Pride event, Brody began getting text messages from his friends telling him to check out social media.

    “You’re being accused of being a neo-Nazi fed,” he recalled some of his friends telling him.

    Somehow, someone on social media had found a photo of Brody online and decided he looked like one of the people involved in the clash.

    Anonymous people online, self-appointed internet detectives, began digging and found out Brody was Jewish and had been a political science major at the University of California, Riverside. On his college fraternity’s webpage, he had once stated he wanted to work for the government.

    “I put that I wanted to work for the government. And that’s just because I didn’t know specifically what part of the government I wanted to work for. You know, I was like, I could be a lawyer,” Brody recalled in an interview with CNN.

    His being Jewish was relevant to them because conspiracy theories are often steeped in antisemitism – suggesting there’s a Jewish plan to control the world.

    Brody’s social media inboxes filled up with messages, such as “Fed,” “Nazi,” and “We got you.” He and his mom were forced to leave their family home after their address was posted online, he said.

    Some of Brody’s friends began posting online, trying to correct the record and explain this was a case of mistaken identity. Brody himself posted a video to Instagram where he desperately tried to prove his innocence. He even went as far as getting time-stamped video surveillance footage showing him in a restaurant in Riverside, California, at the time of the brawl in Oregon, as proof he could not have been at the rally.

    But to no avail. The conspiracy theory kept spreading across the internet, including on X. But it wasn’t just anonymous trolls fueling the lie. Musk, the platform’s owner, had joined in, amplifying the lie to his millions of followers.

    Video from the Oregon event showed the masks of at least one protester being removed during the fight between the opposing far-right groups. Musk asked on X on June 25, “Who were the unmasked individuals?”

    Another X user linked to a tweet alleging Brody was one of the unmasked individuals. The tweet highlighted a line from Brody’s fraternity profile that noted he wanted to work for the government after graduation.

    The tweet claimed the unmasked alleged member of the far-right group was Brody, pointing out he was a “political science student at a liberal school on a career path towards the feds.”

    “Very odd,” Musk responded.

    Another user shared the tweet alleging Brody’s involvement and commented, “Remember when they called us conspiracy theorists for saying the feds were planting fake Nazis at rallies?”

    “Always remove their masks,” Musk replied.

    On June 27, having engaged with conspiracy theories about the subject over a number of days, Musk alleged that the Oregon skirmish was a false flag. “Looks like one is a college student (who wants to join the govt) and another is maybe an Antifa member, but nonetheless a probable false flag situation,” he tweeted.

    “I knew that this was snowballing, but once Elon Musk commented, I was like, ‘boom, that’s the final nail in the coffin,’” Brody recalled.

    Musk has more followers than anyone else on X – approximately 150 million at the end of June, around the time he tweeted about the fight in Oregon, according to records from the Internet Archive. That tweet has been viewed more than 1.2 million times, according to X’s own data.

    Brody worried his name would forever be associated with neo-Nazism, that he wouldn’t be able to get a job. Though he had finished college, he hadn’t yet graduated, and he said some of the accounts messaging him were threatening to contact his university. “My life is ruined,” he thought.

    Attempting to clear his name, he gave an interview to Vice.com, which caught the attention of Mark Bankston.

    Bankston is best known as the lawyer who successfully took on the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in court on behalf of parents who lost their children in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting.

    Bankston said Brody’s case is not only an opportunity to help clear the young man’s name but could also force what he views as a necessary conversation about the vitriolic nature of online discourse.

    The lawsuit filed last month in Travis County, Texas (the same county in which Bankston successfully sued Jones), alleges Musk’s claims about Brody are part of a “serial pattern of slander” by the billionaire.

    Musk, the suit argues, is “perhaps the most influential of all influencers, and his endorsement of the accusation against Ben galvanized other social media influencers and users to continue their attacks and harassment, as well as post accusations against Ben that will remain online forever.”

    Soon after he took over Twitter in 2022, Musk said the platform must “become by far the most accurate source of information about the world.”

    But, on the contrary, the suit alleges, “Musk has been personally using the platform to spread false statements on a consistent basis while propping up and amplifying the most reprehensible elements of conspiracy-addled Twitter.”

    The suit outlines how Musk has engaged with accounts that traffic in racism and antisemitism and lists instances in which he publicly shared or engaged with conspiracy theories – including last October when he shared false claims about the attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

    The suit alleges that in August after Musk was made aware through his lawyers about Brody’s case for defamation, Musk refused to delete his tweets.

    Bankston and his client said the lawsuit is about a lot more than money.

    “I just want to make things right,” Brody told CNN. “It’s not about vengeance. I’m not angry. It’s not resentment. I just want to make things right, to get an apology, so that this doesn’t happen again to anyone else.”

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  • ‘All I wanted to do was live’: After years of debate, a suicide safety net for the Golden Gate Bridge is nearing completion. Survivors say it’ll give many a 2nd chance at life | CNN

    ‘All I wanted to do was live’: After years of debate, a suicide safety net for the Golden Gate Bridge is nearing completion. Survivors say it’ll give many a 2nd chance at life | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    On September 25, 2000, Kevin Hines climbed over the rail of the Golden Gate Bridge.

    White fog hung below the gray skies that day. He recalled looking down at the rough, green waters below moments before he did the unthinkable: He jumped.

    “My hands left the rail and I had an instantaneous regret for my actions,” Hines told CNN.

    Hines fell 220 feet at a speed of 75 miles per hour – “equivalent to a pedestrian being struck by a car that is traveling that fast,” according to the Bridge Rail Foundation, a nonprofit working to prevent suicides on the bridge.

    During the 4-second fall, Hines said the feeling of depression left his mind, and was replaced by a survival urge he described as almost instinctual.

    “And at that time, all I wanted to do was live.”

    After he was rescued from the water, Hines needed three vertebrae replaced with a titanium metal plate and pins, ultimately undergoing four and half weeks of recovery. And in the years since, Hines has been traveling the world to share his rare testimony.

    “I have met thousands of people who have survived mild, moderate to extreme suicide attempts who have all said they each had the same instant regret,” Hines said. “They recognized their thoughts didn’t have to become their actions.”

    More than a confirmed 1,800 people have jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge since it was built in 1937, according to the Bridge Rail Foundation. The very first incident happened that same year.

    Hines is one of 39 people known to survive the deadly leap. “Nineteen have come forward to say they all had the exact same instant regret that I had,” Hines said.

    After years of debate over installing a suicide deterrent on the iconic bridge, a net is now nearing completion.

    In 2018, the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District began building a net along the perimeter of the 1.7 mile long bridge.

    The $217 million project consists of the installation of a stainless steel net, 20 feet below the sidewalk on both sides of the bridge, according to Golden Gate Bridge spokesperson Paolo Cosulich-Schwartz.

    “The amount of net that we’re installing is the equivalent of seven football fields,” Cosulich-Schwartz told CNN.

    It’s a project proponents hope will offer many people a second chance at life.

    While Hines noted not all those who jump may feel regretful, he said he can’t help but empathize with those who did experience the same feeling but never got another chance to choose life.

    “Recognizing that all the people that passed away might have wished they were still here… it’s a very troubling thing to think about,” he said.

    ‘A symbol of hope and care’

    Kevin Berthia attempted to jump off the Golden Gate on March 11, 2005. But after jumping, he ended up clinging to a railing for over an hour and a half.

    “I swung myself around and smacked into the railing, and got on that 4-inch cord,” Berthia recalled.

    Mental health advocate Kevin Berthia, who has survived his own suicide attempts, poses in 2021 in Sacramento, California.

    And he held onto that cord as California Highway Patrol Officer Kevin Briggs talked to him about reasons to choose life. It was in this 92-minute conversation that Berthia began to experience regret.

    If you suspect someone may be suicidal:

  • 1. Do not leave the person alone.
  • 2. Remove any firearms, alcohol, drugs or sharp objects that could be used in a suicide attempt.
  • 3. Call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
  • 4. Take the person to an emergency room or seek help from a medical or mental health professional.
  • Source: American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. For more tips and warning signs, click here.

While he credits Briggs for saving his life, Berthia also said he believes a safety net would have made a world of difference that day.

“I looked over that rail and all I saw was the water,” Berthia told CNN. “If I saw a deterrent, I would have probably been like, ‘OK, maybe this is not meant to be.’”

He desperately needed a sign that someone cared about him, Berthia added: “I needed something to say no.”

While the purpose of the net is “to reduce the number of injuries and deaths from jumping off the bridge,” bridge spokesperson Cosulich-Schwartz said it’s also meant to serve as that sign Berthia was looking for 18 years ago.

“The net is a symbol of hope and care for people who may be experiencing the worst day of their lives,” Cosulich-Schwartz said.

“It is a large, visible and permanent symbol that there are people in the community that care about you,” he continued. “And, if necessary, offer people a second chance.”

The net is currently 80% built, and is set to be completed in December, according to the bridge officials.

The construction of this deterrent won’t be a temporary solution in suicide prevention, according to researchers.

A 1978 study of Golden Gate Bridge suicide attempters found more than 90% of those who were stopped remained alive decades later, and didn’t go on to take their own lives.

Sabrina Hernandez, Golden Gate Bridge District Board President, touches a net during a press on May 16, 2019.

Since the Golden Gate’s opening, suicide prevention groups and nonprofits like the Bridge Rail Foundation have continuously pushed for a deterrent of some sort on the bridge.

“Originally, we wanted to raise the rail,” Hines said, which would be similar to the 11-foot steel fence that encloses the George Washington Bridge in New York City.

The transportation district invited public comment on the potential project, and the opinions of the board and local residents were deeply divided.

“We got shut down with that because it was obstructing the view and people didn’t want to ruin the aesthetics of the bridge,” Hines told CNN. “And I always say, what are the aesthetics of a bridge compared to one human life?”

In 2014, the bridge’s board of directors unanimously approved the funding for the safety net construction.

“Engineers designed the Net to minimize impacts to Bridge views and appearance,” according to a Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District release, which noted the addition would still “slightly diminish the integrity of the the historic features.”

Berthia acknowledged many people enjoy the beauty and history of the Golden Gate. “And I get that, but we don’t listen to enough people that have lost loved ones off that bridge,” he said.

Thirty people or more die by suicide at the bridge each year on average, according to the release, with hundreds more stopped by law enforcement or other citizens.

“Ultimately, a physical barrier is needed to stop this tragedy,” the release said. “The selected design allows open, scenic vistas to remain intact, while preventing anyone from easily jumping to the water below.”

“I’m so grateful that not one more beautiful person with loved ones, and family and friends who care for them is ever again, gonna die by their hands off of the Golden Gate Bridge,” Hines said. “I thank God every day I get to be alive to see it.”

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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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  • China is using the world’s largest known online disinformation operation to harass Americans, a CNN review finds | CNN

    China is using the world’s largest known online disinformation operation to harass Americans, a CNN review finds | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The Chinese government has built up the world’s largest known online disinformation operation and is using it to harass US residents, politicians, and businesses—at times threatening its targets with violence, a CNN review of court documents and public disclosures by social media companies has found.

    The onslaught of attacks – often of a vile and deeply personal nature – is part of a well-organized, increasingly brazen Chinese government intimidation campaign targeting people in the United States, documents show.

    The US State Department says the tactics are part of a broader multi-billion-dollar effort to shape the world’s information environment and silence critics of Beijing that has expanded under President Xi Jinping. On Wednesday, President Biden is due to meet Xi at a summit in San Francisco.

    Victims face a barrage of tens of thousands of social media posts that call them traitors, dogs, and racist and homophobic slurs. They say it’s all part of an effort to drive them into a state of constant fear and paranoia.

    Often, these victims don’t know where to turn. Some have spoken to law enforcement, including the FBI – but little has been done. While tech and social media companies have shut down thousands of accounts targeting these victims, they’re outpaced by a slew of new accounts emerging virtually every day.

    Known as “Spamouflage” or “Dragonbridge,” the network’s hundreds of thousands of accounts spread across every major social media platform have not only harassed Americans who have criticized the Chinese Communist Party, but have also sought to discredit US politicians, disparage American companies at odds with China’s interests and hijack online conversations around the globe that could portray the CCP in a negative light.

    Private researchers have tracked the network since its discovery more than four years ago, but only in recent months have federal prosecutors and Facebook’s parent company Meta publicly concluded that the operation has ties to Chinese police.

    Meta announced in August it had taken down a cluster of nearly 8,000 accounts attributed to this group in the second quarter of 2023 alone. Google, which owns YouTube, told CNN it had shut down more than 100,000 associated accounts in recent years, while X, formerly known as Twitter, has blocked hundreds of thousands of China “state-backed” or “state-linked” accounts, according to company blogs.

    Still, given the relatively low cost of such operations, experts who monitor disinformation warn the Chinese government will continue to use these tactics to try to bend online discussions closer to the CCP’s preferred narrative, which frequently entails trying to undermine the US and democratic values.

    “We might think that this is confined to certain chatrooms, or this platform or that platform, but it’s expanding across the board,” Rep. Mike Gallagher, chairman of the House Select Committee on the CCP, told CNN. “And it’s only a matter of time before it happens to that average American citizen who doesn’t think it’s their problem right now.”

    When trolls disrupted an anti-communism Zoom event organized by New York-based activist Chen Pokong in January 2021, he had little doubt who was responsible. The trolls mocked participants and threatened that one victim would “die miserably.” Their conduct reminded Chen of repression by the government of China, where he spent nearly five years in prison for pro-democracy work.

    But his suspicions about who was behind the interruption were solidified when the US Department of Justice charged more than 30 Chinese officials earlier this year with running a sprawling disinformation operation that had targeted dissidents in the US, including those in the Zoom meeting Chen says he hosted in 2021.

    It was just one of multiple indictments the Justice Department unsealed in April exposing alleged Chinese government plots to target its perceived critics and enemies, while impugning the sovereignty of the United States. Two alleged Chinese operatives were charged with running an “undeclared police station” in New York City. Last year, another indictment outlined how Chinese agents allegedly tried to derail the congressional campaign of a Chinese dissident.

    “They want to deprive my freedom of speech, so I feel like it’s not only an attack on me,” said Chen, who was ejected from his own meeting during the disruption. “They also attack America.”

    The DOJ complaint named 34 individual officers with China’s Ministry of Public Security and published photographs of them at computers, allegedly working on the disinformation campaign known as the “912 Special Project Working Group.” The operation, primarily based in Beijing, appears to involve “hundreds” of MPS officers across the country, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit.

    The complaint does not refer to the cluster of fake accounts as “Spamouflage,” but private researchers and a spokesperson for Meta told CNN that the social media activity described by the DOJ is part of that network. As part of a mission “to manipulate public perceptions of [China], the Group uses its misattributed social media accounts to threaten, harass and intimidate specific victims,” the complaint states.

    When asked about Spamouflage’s reported links to Chinese law enforcement, a spokesperson for China’s embassy in Washington, Liu Pengyu, denied the allegations.

    “China always respects the sovereignty of other countries. The US accusation has no factual evidence or legal basis. It is entirely politically motivated. China firmly opposes it,” Liu said in a statement to CNN. He claimed that the US “invented the weaponizing of the global information space.”

    A report released by Meta in August illustrates how the posts from the network often align with the workday hours in China. The report described “bursts of activity in the mid-morning and early afternoon, Beijing time, with breaks for lunch and supper, and then a final burst of activity in the evening.”

    And while Meta detected posts from various regions in China, the company and other researchers have found centralized coordination that relentlessly pushed identical messages across multiple social media platforms, sometimes repeatedly insulting the same individuals who have questioned the Chinese government.

    One of those individuals is Jiayang Fan, a journalist for The New Yorker who told CNN she began facing harassment by the network when she covered pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019.

    Jiayang Fan, a US-based journalist, says the online harrassment against her began when she covered the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

    Attacks directed at Fan – which ranged from cartoons of her painting her face white as though rejecting her identity to accusations that she killed her mother for profit – carry telltale signs of the Spamouflage network, said Darren Linvill of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson University. Linvill’s group found more than 12,000 tweets attacking Fan using the same hashtag, #TraitorJiayangFan.

    Although she hasn’t lived in China since she was a child, Fan believes such messages have been levelled against her to spark fear and silence others.

    “This is part of a very old Chinese Communist Party playbook to intimidate offenders and aspiring offenders,” said Fan, who questioned what her distant relatives in China may think when they see such content. “It is uncomfortable for me to know that they are seeing these portrayals of me and have no idea what to believe.”

    Experts who track online influence campaigns say there are signs of a shift in China’s strategy in recent years. In the past, the Spamouflage network mostly focused on issues domestically relevant to China. However, more recently, accounts tied to the group have been stoking controversy around global issues, including developments in the United States.

    Spamouflage accounts – some of which posed as Texas residents – called for protests of plans to build a rare-earths processing facility in Texas and spread negative messages about a separate US manufacturing company, according to a report by cybersecurity firm Mandiant last year. The report also described how the campaign promoted negative content about the Biden administration’s efforts to hasten mineral production that would curb US reliance on China.

    Other posts by the network have referenced how “racism is an indelible shame on American democracy” and how the US committed “cultural genocide against the Indians,” according to a Meta report in August. Another post claimed that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is “riddled with scandals.”

    Chinese government-linked accounts have also posted messages that included a call to “kill” President Biden, a cartoon featuring the so-called QAnon Shaman who rioted at the US Capitol as a symbol of “western style democracy,” and a post that suggested US defense contractors profit off the deaths of innocent people, according to a Department of Homeland Security report in April obtained through a records request.

    The DOJ complaint filed against Chinese officials alleged that last year they sought to take advantage of the second anniversary of George Floyd’s death and post on social media about his murder to “reveal the law enforcement brutality” in the US. They also received a task to “work on 2022 US midterm elections and criticize American democracy.”

    Spamouflage is “evolving in tactics. It’s evolving in themes,” said Ben Nimmo, the global lead for threat intelligence at Meta. “Our job is to keep on raising our defenses and keep on telling people about it, especially as we get closer to the election year.”

    Yet as social media companies race to stop disinformation and the US government files complaints against those allegedly responsible, accountability can be elusive.

    “This is the rub with a lot of cybercrimes, that it becomes very, very difficult to actually put the perpetrators in jail,” said Lindsay Gorman, the head of technology and geopolitics at the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy.

    But, Gorman added, that doesn’t mean there are no consequences for China.

    “Even if individuals have a degree of impunity because they are never planning on coming to the United States anyway, that doesn’t mean that the party operation has impunity here – certainly not in terms of public opinion, certainly not in terms of US-China relations,” she said.

    Meta, Google, and other companies that have published reports outing Spamouflage stress that most of the social media accounts within the network receive little or no engagement, meaning they rarely go viral.

    But Linvill of Clemson University argues that the network uses a unique strategy of “flooding” conversations with so many comments that posts from genuine users receive less attention. This includes posting on platforms typically not associated with disinformation, such as Pinterest.

    “They are operating thousands of accounts at a time on a given platform, often to drown out conversations, just with sheer volume of messaging,” Linvill said. “When we think of disinformation, we often think of pushing ideas on users and making ideas more salient, whereas what China is doing is the opposite. They are trying to remove conversations from social media.”

    When Beijing hosted the 2022 Winter Olympics, for example, human rights groups began promoting the hashtag #GenocideGames to bring attention to accusations that China has detained more than a million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in internment camps.

    But then something surprising happened. Accounts that Linvill and his colleagues believed were part of Spamouflage started tweeting the hashtag too.

    It might be counterintuitive for a pro-Chinese government group to start spreading a hashtag that brought attention to the Chinese government’s human rights’ abuses, Linvill explained. But by using the hashtag repeatedly in tweets that had nothing to do with the issue itself, Spamouflage was able to reduce views on the legitimate messages.

    Jiajun Qiu, whose academic work focused on elections and who fled China in 2016, showed CNN what happens when he types his name into X, formerly known as Twitter. There are sometimes dozens of accounts pretending to be him by using his name and photo.

    Jiajun Qiu, who fled China in 2016, has faced an onslaught of Spamouflage trolls.

    They are designed by the operators of Spamouflage, Linvill explained, to confuse people and prevent them from finding Qiu’s real account by muddying the waters.

    Now living in Virginia, Qiu runs a pro-democracy YouTube channel and has faced an onslaught of homophobic, racist and bizarre insults from social media accounts that Linvill’s team and others have tied to Spamouflage.

    Some accounts have posted cartoons that convey Qiu as an insect working on behalf of the US government. Another image depicts him being stomped by a cartoon Jesus. Yet another paints him as a dog on the leash of an American rat.

    “I tell people the truth, so they want to do anything possible to insult me,” Qiu said.

    Linvill and his team have tracked hundreds of these cartoons across the internet, and said they are a “tell” of Spamouflage. Cartoons, Linvill explained, can be more effective than text because they are “eye-catching” and “you have to stop and look at it.” In addition, these original cartoons can easily be translated into hundreds of languages at a very low cost.

    Beyond the online smears, Qiu says he has also faced threats via other online messages and escalatory calls from unidentified sources who he believes have ties to the Chinese government. One anonymous message told him he would be arrested and brought to justice for breaking Chinese law. An email referenced the church he attends in Manassas, Virginia and said, “for his own safety and that of the worshippers, he would do well to find another place to stay.”

    Qiu told CNN that the FBI has interviewed him four times regarding these threats, and that he has been instructed to contact local police if he is ever followed.

    “Every day I live in a sense of fear,” Qiu said.

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  • Arizona fake electors led vocal campaign to overturn the 2020 election — they’re now part of a ‘robust’ state investigation | CNN Politics

    Arizona fake electors led vocal campaign to overturn the 2020 election — they’re now part of a ‘robust’ state investigation | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    They called it “The Signing.” Eleven fake electors for President Donald Trump convened at the state Republican Party headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona, on December 14, 2020. They broadcast themselves preparing to sign the documents, allegedly provided by a Trump campaign attorney, claiming that they were the legitimate representatives of the state’s electoral votes.

    By that time, Trump’s loss in the state – by less than 11,000 votes – had already been certified by the state’s Republican governor affirming that Joe Biden won Arizona in the 2020 presidential election.

    But in the weeks that followed, five of Arizona’s 11 “Republican electors,” as they called themselves, pushed an unusually vocal campaign, compared to other fake electors from states across the country, for Vice President Mike Pence to reject the legitimate Democratic slate of electors.

    Instead, they called on Pence to accept them or no electors at all, according to a CNN KFile review of their interviews, actions and comments on social media.

    Much attention has been drawn to the fake elector schemes in Georgia and Michigan where local and state authorities charged some participants for election crimes this past summer. But in no other state were there fake electors more active in publicly promoting the scheme than in Arizona.

    Now those fake electors find themselves under new legal scrutiny as the Arizona attorney general announced a broad investigation into their actions and their public campaign that could open the electors up to increased legal liability, according to experts who spoke with CNN.

    “They were more brazen,” Anthony Michael Kreis, an expert on constitutional law at Georgia State University told CNN. “There is no difficulty trying to piece together their unlawful, corrupt intent because they publicly documented their stream of consciousness bread trail for prosecutors to follow.”

    Attorney General Kris Mayes, in an interview with CNN, said she has been in contact with investigators in Michigan and Georgia and the Department of Justice.

    “It’s robust. It’s a serious matter,” Mayes, a Democrat, said of her ongoing investigation. “We’re going to make sure that we do it on our timetable, applying the resources that it requires to make sure that justice is done, for not only Arizonans, but for the entire country.”

    All 11 electors took part in multiple failed legal challenges, first asking a judge to invalidate the state’s results in a conspiracy theory-laden court case and then taking part in a last-ditch, desperate plea seeking to force Pence to help throw the election to Trump. The cases were dismissed.

    Of the 11 fake electors in Arizona, five were the most publicly vocal members advocating the scheme in the state: Kelli Ward, the chairperson of the state party and her spouse, Michael Ward; state Rep. Anthony Kern, then a sitting lawmaker; Jake Hoffman, a newly elected member of the Arizona House; and Tyler Bowyer, a top state official with the Republican National Committee.

    Each of these five publicly pushed for the legitimate electors to be discarded by Pence on January 6, 2021. One of the fake electors, Kern, took part in “Stop the Steal” rallies and was photographed in a restricted area on the Capitol steps during the riot at the Capitol.

    “The Arizona false electors left a trail here that will surely interest prosecutors,” Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University who previously served as the special counsel to the general counsel at the Department of Defense, told CNN.

    Electors, a part of the Electoral College system, represent the popular vote in each state. When a candidate wins a state, the party’s designated slate of electors gets to participate in the Electoral College process. The electors meet in a ceremonial process and sign certificates, officially casting their vote for president.

    CNN reached out to all of the electors, but only received comment from two of them.

    The most publicly vocal of the fake electors, Kelli Ward called the group the “true electors,” and provided play-by-play updates on the Arizona Republican Party’s YouTube. Falsely saying the state’s electoral votes were “contested,” even though legal challenges to the count had been dismissed, she urged supporters to call on Arizona’s state legislature to decertify the state’s results.

    “We believe our votes are the ones that will count on January 6th,” she said in one interview on conservative talk radio, two days after signing the fake documents.

    Ward’s comments were echoed in tweets by her husband, Michael, also an elector and a gadfly in Arizona politics known for spreading conspiracy theories. In a post sharing a White House memo that urged Pence to reject the results from states that submitted fake electors, Michael Ward hinted at retribution for Republicans who failed to act.

    “My Holiday prayer is that every backstabbing ‘Republican’ gets paid back for their failure to act come Jan 20th!” he wrote in a tweet on December 22.

    Another prominent elector was the RNC Committeeman Bowyer, who on his Twitter account pushed false election claims and conspiracies.

    “It will be up to the President of the Senate and congress to decide,” Bowyer tweeted after signing the fake electors documents.

    In repeated comments Bowyer declared the decision would come down to Pence.

    “It’s pretty simple: The President of the United States Senate (VP) has the awesome power of acknowledging a specific envelope of electoral votes when there are two competing slates— or none at all,” wrote Bowyer in a December 28 tweet.

    “We don’t live in a Democracy. The presidential election isn’t democratic,” he added when receiving pushback.

    A spokesperson for Bowyer said that he was simply responding to a question from a user on what next steps looked like and maintained that there was precedent for a competing slate of electors.

    Bowyer urged action in the lead up to the joint session of Congress on January 6.

    “Be a modern Son of Liberty today,” he said late in the morning of January 6 – a post he deleted following the riot at the Capitol.

    The spokesperson for Bowyer said he had not directly been contacted by Mayes’s office or the DOJ.

    Newly elected state representative Hoffman sent a two-page letter to Pence on January 5, 2021, asking the vice president to order that Arizona’s electors not be decided by the popular vote of the citizens, but instead by the members of the state legislature.

    Rep. Jake Hoffman is sworn in during the opening of the Arizona Legislature at the state Capitol in 2021.

    “It is in this late hour, with urgency, that I respectfully ask that you delay the certification of election results for Arizona during the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021, and seek clarification from the Arizona state legislature as to which slate of electors are proper and accurate,” wrote Hoffman.

    In interviews, Hoffman repeatedly argued no electors be sent at all because “we don’t have certainty in the outcome of our election,” and to contest Democrat electors if they were sent.

    Then-state Rep. Kern, who lost his seat in the 2020 election, spent his final weeks in office sharing “stop the steal” content and participating in their rallies. He said he was “honored” to be a Trump elector.

    “On January 6th, vice President Mike Pence gets a choice on which electors he’s going to choose,” Kern told the Epoch Times in an interview in December.

    “There is no president elect until January 6th,” he added.

    Kern hadn’t changed his tune in an interview with CNN.

    “Why, why would you think alternate electors are a lie?,” Kern said.

    Kern repeatedly promoted the January 6, 2021, rally preceding the Capitol riot. Kern was in DC that day and shared a photo from the Capitol grounds as rioters gathered on the steps of the Capitol.

    “In DC supporting @realDonaldTrump and @CNN @FoxNews @MSNBC are spewing lies again. #truth,” he wrote in a tweet.

    Later Kern was seen in a restricted area of the Capitol steps during the riot. There is no indication he was violent, and he has not been charged with any crime.

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  • Controversial Police Encounters Fast Facts | CNN

    Controversial Police Encounters Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at controversial police encounters that have prompted protests over the past three decades. This select list includes cases in which police officers were charged or a grand jury was convened.

    March 3, 1991 – LAPD officers beat motorist Rodney King after he leads police on a high-speed chase through Los Angeles County. George Holliday videotapes the beating from his apartment balcony. The video shows police hitting King more than 50 times with their batons. Over 20 officers are present at the scene, mostly from the LAPD. King suffers 11 fractures and other injuries.

    March 15, 1991 – A Los Angeles grand jury indicts Sergeant Stacey Koon and Officers Laurence Michael Powell, Timothy Wind and Theodore Briseno in connection with the beating.

    May 10, 1991 – A grand jury refuses to indict 17 officers who stood by at the King beating and did nothing.

    April 29, 1992 – The four LAPD officers are acquitted. Riots break out at the intersection of Florence and Normandie in South Central Los Angeles. Governor Pete Wilson declares a state of emergency and calls in the National Guard. Riots in the next few days leave more than 50 people dead and cause nearly $1 billion in property damage.

    May 1, 1992 – King makes an emotional plea for calm, “People, I just want to say, can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it horrible for the older people and the kids?”

    August 4, 1992 – A federal grand jury returns indictments against Koon, Powell, Wind, and Briseno on the charge of violating King’s civil rights.

    April 17, 1993 – Koon and Powell are convicted for violating King’s civil rights. Wind and Briseno are found not guilty. No disturbances follow the verdict. On August 4, both Koon and Powell are sentenced to 30 months in prison. Powell is found guilty of violating King’s constitutional right to be free from an arrest made with “unreasonable force.” Koon, the ranking officer, is convicted of permitting the civil rights violation to occur.

    April 19, 1994 – King is awarded $3.8 million in compensatory damages in a civil lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles. King had demanded $56 million, or $1 million for every blow struck by the officers.

    June 1, 1994 – In a civil trial against the police officers, a jury awards King $0 in punitive damages. He had asked for $15 million.

    June 17, 2012 – King is found dead in his swimming pool.

    November 5, 1992 – Two white police officers approach Malice Wayne Green, a 35-year-old black motorist, after he parks outside a suspected drug den. Witnesses say the police strike the unarmed man in the head repeatedly with heavy flashlights. The officers claim they feared Green was trying to reach for one of their weapons. Green dies of his injuries later that night.

    November 16, 1992 – Two officers, Larry Nevers and Walter Budzyn, are charged with second-degree murder. Sgt. Freddie Douglas, a supervisor who arrived on the scene after a call for backup, is charged with involuntary manslaughter and willful neglect of duty. These charges are later dismissed. Another officer, Robert Lessnau, is charged with assault with intent to do great bodily harm.

    November 18, 1992 – The Detroit Free Press reports that toxicology tests revealed alcohol and a small amount of cocaine in Green’s system. A medical examiner later states that Green’s head injuries, combined with the cocaine and alcohol in his system, led to his death.

    December 1992 – The Detroit police chief fires the four officers.

    August 23, 1993 – Nevers and Budzyn are convicted of murder after a 45-day trial. Lessnau is acquitted. Nevers sentence is 12-25 years, while Budzyn’s sentence is 8-18 years.

    1997-1998 – The Michigan Supreme Court orders a retrial for Budzyn due to possible jury bias. During the second trial, a jury convicts Budzyn of a less serious charge, involuntary manslaughter, and he is released with time served.

    2000-2001 – A jury finds Nevers guilty of involuntary manslaughter after a second trial. He is released from prison in 2001.

    August 9, 1997 – Abner Louima, a 33-year-old Haitian immigrant, is arrested for interfering with officers trying to break up a fight in front of the Club Rendez-vous nightclub in Brooklyn. Louima alleges, while handcuffed, police officers lead him to the precinct bathroom and sodomized him with a plunger or broomstick.

    August 15, 1997 – Police officers Justin Volpe and Charles Schwarz are charged with aggravated sexual abuse and first-degree assault.

    August 16, 1997 – Thousands of angry protesters gather outside Brooklyn’s 70th Precinct to demonstrate against what they say is a long-standing problem of police brutality against minorities.

    August 18, 1997 – Two more officers, Thomas Wiese and Thomas Bruder, are charged with assault and criminal possession of a weapon.

    February 26, 1998 – Volpe, Bruder, Schwarz and Wiese are indicted on federal civil rights charges. A fifth officer, Michael Bellomo, is accused of helping the others cover up the alleged beating, as well as an alleged assault on another Haitian immigrant, Patrick Antoine, the same night.

    May 1999 – Volpe pleads guilty to beating and sodomizing Louima. He is later sentenced to 30 years in prison.

    June 8, 1999 – Schwarz is convicted of beating Louima, then holding him down while he was being tortured. Wiese, Bruder, and Bellomo are acquitted. Schwarz is later sentenced to 15 and a half years in prison for perjury.

    March 6, 2000 – In a second trial, Schwarz, Wiese, and Bruder are convicted of conspiring to obstruct justice by covering up the attack. On February 28, 2002, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals overturns their convictions.

    July 12, 2001 – Louima receives $8.75 million in a settlement agreement with the City of New York and the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association.

    September 2002 – Schwarz pleads guilty to perjury and is sentenced to five years in prison. He had been scheduled to face a new trial for civil rights violations but agreed to a deal.

    February 4, 1999 – Amadou Diallo, 22, a street vendor from West Africa, is confronted outside his home in the Bronx by four NYPD officers who are searching the neighborhood for a rapist. When Diallo reaches for his wallet, the officers open fire, reportedly fearing he was pulling out a gun. They fire 41 times and hit him 19 times, killing him.

    March 24, 1999 – More than 200 protestors are arrested outside NYPD headquarters. For weeks, activists have gathered to protest the use of force by NYPD officers.

    March 25, 1999 – A Bronx grand jury votes to indict the four officers – Sean Carroll, Edward McMellon, Kenneth Boss and Richard Murphy – for second-degree murder. On February 25, 2000, they are acquitted.

    January 2001 – The US Justice Department announces it will not pursue federal civil rights charges against the officers.

    January 2004 – Diallo’s family receives $3 million in a wrongful death lawsuit.

    September 4, 2005 – Six days after Hurricane Katrina devastates the area, New Orleans police officers receive a radio call that two officers are down under the Danziger vertical-lift bridge. According to the officers, people are shooting at them and they have returned fire.

    – Brothers Ronald and Lance Madison, along with four members of the Bartholomew family, are shot by police officers. Ronald Madison, 40, who is intellectually disabled, and James Brisette, 17 (some sources say 19), are fatally wounded.

    December 28, 2006 – Police Sgts. Kenneth Bowen and Robert Gisevius and officers Robert Faulcon and Anthony Villavaso are charged with first-degree murder. Officers Robert Barrios, Michael Hunter and Ignatius Hills are charged with attempted murder.

    August 2008 – State charges against the officers are thrown out.

    July 12, 2010 – Four officers are indicted on federal charges of murdering Brissette: Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon and Villavaso. Faulcon is also charged with Madison’s murder. Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon and Villavaso, along with Arthur Kaufman and Gerard Dugue are charged with covering up the shooting.

    April 8, 2010 – Hunter pleads guilty in federal court of covering up the police shooting. In December, he is sentenced to eight years in prison.

    August 5, 2011 – The jury finds five officers guilty of civil rights and obstruction charges: Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon, Villavaso and Kaufman.

    October 5, 2011 – Hills receives a six and a half year sentence for his role in the shooting.

    April 4, 2012 – A federal judge sentences five officers to prison terms ranging from six to 65 years for the shootings of unarmed civilians. Faulcon receives 65 years. Bowen and Gisevius both receive 40 years. Villavaso receives 38 years. Kaufman, who was involved in the cover up, receives six years.

    March 2013 – After a January 2012 mistrial, Dugue’s trial is delayed indefinitely.

    September 17, 2013 – Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon, Villavaso and Kaufman are awarded a new trial.

    April 20, 2016 – Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon, Villavaso and Kaufman plead guilty in exchange for reduced sentences.

    November 25, 2006 – Sean Bell, 23, is fatally shot by NYPD officers outside a Queens bar the night before his wedding. Two of his companions, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, are wounded. Officers reportedly fired 50 times at the men.

    March 2007 – Three of the five officers involved in the shooting are indicted: Detectives Gescard F. Isnora and Michael Oliver are charged with manslaughter, and Michael Oliver is charged with reckless endangerment. On April 25, 2008, the three officers are acquitted of all charges.

    July 27, 2010 – New York City settles a lawsuit for more than $7 million filed by Bell’s family and two of his friends.

    2009 – Oakland, California – Oscar Grant

    January 1, 2009 – San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) officer Johannes Mehserle shoots Oscar Grant, an unarmed 22-year-old, in the back while he is lying face down on a platform at the Fruitvale BART station in Oakland.

    January 7, 2009 – Footage from station KTVU shows demonstrators vandalizing businesses and assaulting police in Oakland during a protest. About 105 people are arrested. Some protesters lie on their stomachs, saying they are showing solidarity with Grant, who was shot in the back.

    January 27, 2010 – The mother of Grant’s young daughter receives a $1.5 million settlement from her lawsuit against BART.

    July 8, 2010 – A jury finds Mehserle guilty of involuntary manslaughter. At the trial, Mehserle says that he intended to draw and fire his Taser rather than his gun. On November 5, 2010, Mehserle is sentenced to two years in prison. Outrage over the light sentence leads to a night of violent protests.

    June 2011 – Mehserle is released from prison.

    July 12, 2013 – The movie, “Fruitvale Station” opens in limited release. It dramatizes the final hours of Grant’s life.

    July 5, 2011 – Fullerton police officers respond to a call about a homeless man looking into car windows and pulling on car handles. Surveillance camera footage shows Kelly Thomas being beaten and stunned with a Taser by police. Thomas, who was mentally ill, dies five days later in the hospital. When the surveillance video of Thomas’s beating is released in May 2012, it sparks a nationwide outcry.

    May 9, 2012 – Officer Manuel Ramos is charged with second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, and Cpl. Jay Patrick Cicinelli is charged with involuntary manslaughter and felony use of excessive force. On January 13, 2014, a jury acquits Ramos and Cicinelli.

    May 16, 2012 – The City of Fullerton awards $1 million to Thomas’ mother, Cathy Thomas.

    September 28, 2012 – A third police officer, Joseph Wolfe, is charged with involuntary manslaughter and excessive force in connection with Thomas’ death. The charges are later dropped.

    July 17, 2014 – Eric Garner, 43, dies after Officer Daniel Pantaleo uses a department-banned chokehold on him during an arrest for allegedly selling cigarettes illegally. Garner dies later that day.

    August 1, 2014 – The New York City Medical Examiner rules Garner’s death a homicide.

    December 3, 2014 – A grand jury decides not to indict Pantaleo. Protests are held in New York, Washington, Philadelphia and Oakland, California. Demonstrators chant Garner’s last words, “I can’t breathe!”

    July 14, 2015 – New York settles with Garner’s estate for $5.9 million.

    August 19, 2019 – The NYPD announces Pantaleo has been fired and will not receive his pension.

    August 21, 2019 – Pantaleo’s supervisor, Sgt. Kizzy Adonis, pleads no contest to a disciplinary charge of failure to supervise, and must forfeit the monetary value of 20 vacation days.

    August 9, 2014 – During a struggle, a police officer fatally shoots Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old.

    August 9-10, 2014 – Approximately 1,000 demonstrators protest Brown’s death. The Ferguson-area protest turns violent and police begin using tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd. Black Lives Matter, a protest movement that grew out of the Trayvon Martin shooting in 2012, grows in visibility during the Ferguson demonstrations.

    August 15, 2014 – Police identify the officer as 28-year-old Darren Wilson. Wilson is put on paid administrative leave after the incident.

    August 18, 2014 – Governor Jay Nixon calls in the Missouri National Guard to protect the police command center.

    November 24, 2014 – A grand jury does not indict Wilson for Brown’s shooting. Documents show that Wilson fired his gun 12 times. Protests erupt nationwide after the hearing.

    November 29, 2014 – Wilson resigns from the Ferguson police force.

    March 11, 2015 – Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson resigns a week after a scathing Justice Department report slams his department.

    August 9-10, 2015 – The anniversary observations of Brown’s death are largely peaceful during the day. After dark, shots are fired, businesses are vandalized and there are tense standoffs between officers and protestors, according to police. The next day, a state of emergency is declared and fifty-six people are arrested during a demonstration at a St. Louis courthouse.

    June 20, 2017 – A settlement is reached in the Brown family wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Ferguson. While the details of the settlement are not disclosed to the public, US Federal Judge Richard Webber calls the settlement, “fair and reasonable compensation.”

    October 20, 2014 – Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke shoots and kills Laquan McDonald, 17. Van Dyke says he fired in self-defense after McDonald lunged at him with a knife, but dashcam video shows McDonald walking away from police. Later, an autopsy shows McDonald was shot 16 times.

    April 15, 2015 – The city agrees to pay $5 million to McDonald’s family.

    November 19, 2015 – A judge in Chicago orders the city to release the police dashcam video that shows the shooting. For months, the city had fought attempts to have the video released to the public, saying it could jeopardize any ongoing investigation. The decision is the result of a Freedom of Information Act request by freelance journalist, Brandon Smith.

    November 24, 2015 – Van Dyke is charged with first-degree murder.

    December 1, 2015 – Mayor Rahm Emanuel announces he has asked for the resignation of Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy.

    August 30, 2016 – Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson files administrative charges against six officers involved in the shooting. Five officers will have their cases heard by the Chicago Police Board, which will rule if the officers will be terminated. The sixth officer charged has resigned.

    March 2017 – Van Dyke is indicted on 16 additional counts of aggravated battery with a firearm.

    June 27, 2017 – Three officers are indicted on felony conspiracy, official misconduct and obstruction of justice charges for allegedly lying to investigators.

    October 5, 2018 – Van Dyke is found guilty of second-degree murder and of 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm, but not guilty of official misconduct. Though he was originally charged with first-degree murder, jurors were instructed on October 4 that they could consider second-degree murder. He is sentenced to six years and nine months in prison. On February 3, 2022, Van Dyke is released early from prison.

    January 17, 2019 – Cook County Associate Judge Domenica Stephenson finds three Chicago police officers not guilty of covering up details in the 2014 killing of McDonald. Stephenson’s ruling came more than a month after the officers’ five-day bench trial ended.

    July 18, 2019 – The Chicago Police Board announces that four Chicago police officers, Sgt. Stephen Franko, Officer Janet Mondragon, Officer Daphne Sebastian and Officer Ricardo Viramontes, have been fired for covering up the fatal shooting of McDonald.

    October 9, 2019 – Inspector General Joseph Ferguson releases a report detailing a cover-up involving 16 officers and supervisors.

    April 4, 2015 – North Charleston police officer Michael Slager fatally shoots Walter Scott, 50, an unarmed motorist stopped for a broken brake light. Slager says he feared for his life after Scott grabbed his Taser.

    April 7, 2015 – Cellphone video of the incident is released. It shows Scott running away and Slager shooting him in the back. Slager is charged with first-degree murder.

    October 8, 2015 – The North Charleston City Council approves a $6.5 million settlement with the family of Walter Scott.

    May 11, 2016 – A federal grand jury indicts Slager for misleading investigators and violating the civil rights of Walter Scott.

    December 5, 2016 – After three days of deliberations, the jury is unable to reach a verdict and the judge declares a mistrial in the case. The prosecutor says that the state will try Slager again.

    May 2, 2017 – Slager pleads guilty to a federal charge of using excessive force. State murder charges against Slager – as well as two other federal charges – will be dismissed as part of a plea deal. On December 7, 2017, Slager is sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.

    April 12, 2015 – Police arrest 25-year-old Freddie Gray on a weapons charge after he is found with a knife in his pocket. Witness video contains audio of Gray screaming as officers carry him to the prisoner transport van. After arriving at the police station, Gray is transferred to a trauma clinic with a severe spinal injury. He falls into a coma and dies one week later.

    April 21, 2015 – The names of six officers involved in the arrest are released. Lt. Brian Rice, 41, Officer Caesar Goodson, 45, Sgt. Alicia White, 30, Officer William Porter, 25, Officer Garrett Miller, 26, and Officer Edward Nero, 29, are all suspended.

    April 24, 2015 – Baltimore police acknowledge Gray did not get timely medical care after his arrest and was not buckled into a seat belt while being transported in the police van.

    April 27, 2015 – Protests turn into riots on the day of Gray’s funeral. At least 20 officers are injured as police and protesters clash on the streets. Gov. Larry Hogan’s office declares a state of emergency and activates the National Guard to address the unrest.

    May 21, 2015 – A Baltimore grand jury indicts the six officers involved in the arrest of Freddie Gray. The officers face a range of charges from involuntary manslaughter to reckless endangerment. Goodson, the driver of the transport van, will face the most severe charge: second-degree depraved-heart murder.

    September 10, 2015 – Judge Barry Williams denies the defendants’ motion to move their trials out of Baltimore, a day after officials approve a $6.4 million deal to settle all civil claims tied to Gray’s death.

    December 16, 2015 – The judge declares a mistrial in Porter’s case after jurors say they are deadlocked.

    May 23, 2016 – Nero is found not guilty.

    June 23, 2016 – Goodson is acquitted of all charges.

    July 18, 2016 – Rice, the highest-ranking officer to stand trial, is found not guilty on all charges.

    July 27, 2016 – Prosecutors drop charges against the three remaining officers awaiting trial in connection with Gray’s death.

    August 10, 2016 – A Justice Department investigation finds that the Baltimore Police Department engages in unconstitutional practices that lead to disproportionate rates of stops, searches and arrests of African-Americans. The report also finds excessive use of force against juveniles and people with mental health disabilities.

    January 12, 2017 – The city of Baltimore agrees to a consent decree with sweeping reforms proposed by the Justice Department.

    2016 – Falcon Heights, Minnesota – Philando Castile

    July 6, 2016 – Police officer Jeronimo Yanez shoots and kills Philando Castile during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights. Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, live-streams the aftermath of the confrontation, and says Castile was reaching for his identification when he was shot.

    November 16, 2016 – Yanez is charged with second-degree manslaughter and two felony counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm.

    December 15, 2016 – The Justice Department announces it will conduct a review of the St. Anthony Police Department, which services Falcon heights and two other towns.

    February 27, 2017 – Yanez pleads not guilty.

    June 16, 2017 – A jury finds Yanez not guilty on all counts. The city says it will offer Yanez a voluntary separation agreement from the police department.

    June 26, 2017 – It is announced that the family of Castile has reached a $3 million settlement with the city of St. Anthony, Minnesota.

    November 29, 2017 – The city of St. Anthony announces that Reynolds has settled with two cities for $800,000. St. Anthony will pay $675,000 of the settlement, while an insurance trust will pay $125,000 on behalf of Roseville.

    September 16, 2016 – Tulsa Police Officer Betty Shelby fatally shoots Terence Crutcher, a 40-year-old unarmed black man, after his car is found abandoned in the middle of the road.

    September 19, 2016 – The Tulsa Police Department releases video of the incident captured by a police helicopter, showing Shelby and other officers at the scene. At a news conference, the police chief tells reporters Crutcher was unarmed. Both the US Department of Justice and state authorities launch investigations into the officer-involved shooting.

    September 22, 2016 – Officer Shelby is charged with felony first-degree manslaughter.

    April 2, 2017 – During an interview on “60 Minutes,” Shelby says race was not a factor in her decision to open fire, and Crutcher “caused” his death when he ignored her commands, reaching into his vehicle to retrieve what she believed was a gun. “I saw a threat and I used the force I felt necessary to stop a threat.”

    May 17, 2017 – Shelby is acquitted.

    July 14, 2017 – Shelby announces she will resign from the Tulsa Police Department in August. On August 10, she joins the Rogers County, Oklahoma, Sheriff’s Office as a reserve deputy.

    October 25, 2017 – A Tulsa County District Court judge grants Shelby’s petition to have her record expunged.

    June 19, 2018 – Antwon Rose II, an unarmed 17-year-old, is shot and killed by police officer Michael Rosfeld in East Pittsburgh. Rose had been a passenger in a car that was stopped by police because it matched the description of a car that was involved in an earlier shooting. Rose and another passenger ran from the vehicle, and Rosfeld opened fire, striking Rose three times, Allegheny County police says.

    June 27, 2018 – The Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, district attorney charges Rosfeld with criminal homicide.

    March 22, 2019 – A jury finds Rosfeld not guilty on all counts.

    October 28, 2019 – A $2 million settlement is finalized in a wrongful death lawsuit filed against Rosfeld and East Pittsburgh.

    September 1, 2018 – During a traffic stop, O’Shae Terry is gunned down by an Arlington police officer. Terry, 24, was pulled over for having an expired temporary tag on his car. During the stop, officers reportedly smelled marijuana in the vehicle. Police video from the scene shows officer Bau Tran firing into the car as Terry tries to drive away. Investigators later locate a concealed firearm, marijuana and ecstasy pills in the vehicle.

    October 19, 2018 – The Arlington Police Department releases information about a criminal investigation into the incident. According to the release, Tran declined to provide detectives with a statement and the matter is pending with the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office. Tran is still employed by the police department but is working on restricted duty status, according to the news release.

    May 1, 2019 – A grand jury issues an indictment charging Tran with criminally negligent homicide. On May 17, 2019, the Arlington Police Department announces Tran has been fired.

    March 13, 2020 – Louisville Metro Police officers fatally shoot Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT, after they forcibly enter her apartment while executing a late-night, no-knock warrant in a narcotics investigation. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker III, is also in the apartment and fires one shot at who he believes are intruders. Taylor is shot at least eight times and Walker is charged with attempted murder of a police officer and first-degree assault. The charges are later dismissed.

    April 27, 2020 – Taylor’s family files a wrongful death lawsuit. In the lawsuit, Taylor’s mother says the officers should have called off their search because the suspect they sought had already been arrested.

    May 21, 2020 – The FBI opens an investigation into Taylor’s death.

    June 11, 2020 – The Louisville, Kentucky, metro council unanimously votes to pass an ordinance called “Breonna’s Law,” banning no-knock search warrants.

    August 27, 2020 – Jamarcus Glover, Taylor’s ex-boyfriend and the focus of the Louisville police narcotics investigation that led officers to execute the warrant on Taylor’s home, is arrested on drug charges. The day before his arrest, Glover told a local Kentucky newspaper Taylor was not involved in any alleged drug trade.

    September 1, 2020 – Walker files a $10.5 million lawsuit against the Louisville Metro Police Department. Walker claims he was maliciously prosecuted for firing a single bullet with his licensed firearm at “assailants” who “violently broke down the door.” In December 2022, Walker reaches a $2 million settlement with the city of Louisville.

    September 15, 2020 – The city of Louisville agrees to pay $12 million to Taylor’s family and institute sweeping police reforms in a settlement of the family’s wrongful death lawsuit.

    September 23, 2020 – Det. Brett Hankison is indicted by a grand jury on three counts of wanton endangerment in the first degree. The other two officers involved in the shooting are not indicted. On March 3, 2022, Hankison is acquitted.

    April 26, 2021 – Attorney General Merrick Garland announces a Justice Department investigation into the practices of the Louisville Police Department.

    August 4, 2022 – Garland announces four current and former Louisville police officers involved in the raid on Taylor’s home were arrested and charged with civil rights violations, unlawful conspiracies, unconstitutional use of force and obstruction. On August 23, one of the officers, Kelly Goodlett, pleads guilty.

    May 25, 2020 – George Floyd, 46, dies after pleading for help as Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneels on Floyd’s neck to pin him – unarmed and handcuffed – to the ground. Floyd had been arrested for allegedly using a counterfeit bill at a convenience store.

    May 26, 2020 – It is announced that four Minneapolis police officers have been fired for their involvement in the death of Floyd.

    May 27, 2020 – Gov. Tim Walz signs an executive order activating the Minnesota National Guard after protests and demonstrations erupt throughout Minneapolis and St. Paul.

    May 27, 2020 – Surveillance video from outside a Minneapolis restaurant is released and appears to contradict police claims that Floyd resisted arrest before an officer knelt on his neck.

    May 28-29, 2020 – Several buildings are damaged and the Minneapolis police department’s Third Precinct is set ablaze during protests.

    May 29, 2020 – Chauvin is arrested and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter, according to Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman.

    June 3, 2020 – Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announces charges of aiding and abetting second-degree murder for the three previously uncharged officers at the scene of the incident. According to court documents, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng helped restrain Floyd, while officer Tou Thao stood near the others. Chauvin’s charge is upgraded from third- to second-degree murder.

    October 21, 2020 – Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill drops the third-degree murder charge against Chauvin, but he still faces the higher charge of second-degree unintentional murder and second-degree manslaughter. On March 11, 2021, Judge Cahill reinstates the third-degree murder charge due to an appeals court ruling.

    March 12, 2021 – The Minneapolis city council unanimously votes to approve a $27 million settlement with Floyd’s family.

    April 20, 2021 – The jury finds Chauvin guilty on all three counts. He is sentenced to 22 and a half years.

    May 7, 2021 – A federal grand jury indicts the four former Minneapolis police officers in connection with Floyd’s death, alleging the officers violated Floyd’s constitutional rights.

    December 15, 2021 – Chauvin pleads guilty in federal court to two civil rights violations, one related to Floyd’s death, plus another case. Prosecutors request that he be sentenced to 25 years in prison to be served concurrently with his current sentence.

    February 24, 2022 – Lane, Kueng and Thao are found guilty of depriving Floyd of his civil rights by showing deliberate indifference to his medical needs. The jurors also find Thao and Kueng guilty of an additional charge for failing to intervene to stop Chauvin. Lane, who did not face the extra charge, had testified that he asked Chauvin twice to reposition Floyd while restraining him but was denied both times.

    May 4, 2022 – A federal judge accepts Chauvin’s plea deal and will sentence him to 20 to 25 years in prison. Based on the plea filed, the sentence will be served concurrently with the 22.5-year sentence tied to his murder conviction at the state level. On July 7, Chauvin is sentenced to 21 years in prison.

    May 18, 2022 – Thomas Lane pleads guilty to second-degree manslaughter as part of a plea deal dismissing his murder charge. State and defense attorneys jointly recommend to the court Lane be sentenced to 36 months.

    July 27, 2022 – Kueng and Thao are sentenced to three years and three and a half years in federal prison, respectively.

    September 21, 2022 – Lane is sentenced to three years in prison on a state charge of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter in Floyd’s death.

    October 24, 2022 – On the day his state trial is set to begin on charges of aiding and abetting in George Floyd’s killing, Kueng pleads guilty.

    December 3, 2022 – Kueng is sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for his role in the killing of Floyd.

    May 1, 2023 – A Minnesota judge finds Thao guilty of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter, according to court documents. He is sentenced to four years and nine months in prison.

    June 12, 2020 – Rayshard Brooks, 27, is shot and killed by Atlanta police officer Garrett Rolfe outside a Wendy’s restaurant after failing a sobriety test, fighting with two officers, taking a Taser from one and running away.

    June 13, 2020 – Rolfe is terminated from the Atlanta Police Department, according to an Atlanta police spokesperson. A second officer involved is placed on administrative leave.

    June 14, 2020 – According to a release from the Fulton County, Georgia, Medical Examiner’s Office, Brooks died from a gunshot wound to the back. The manner of death is listed as homicide.

    June 17, 2020 – Fulton County’s district attorney announces felony murder charges against Rolfe. Another officer, Devin Brosnan, is facing an aggravated assault charge for standing or stepping on Brooks’ shoulder while he was lying on the ground. On August 23, 2022, a Georgia special prosecutor announces the charges will be dismissed, saying the officers acted reasonably in response to a deadly threat. Both officers remain on administrative leave with the Atlanta Police Department and will undergo recertification and training, the department said in a statement.

    May 5, 2021 – The Atlanta Civil Service Board rules that Rolfe was wrongfully terminated.

    November 21, 2022 – The family of Brooks reaches a $1 million settlement with the city of Atlanta, according to Ryan Julison, a spokesperson for Stewart Miller Simmons Trial Attorneys, the law firm representing Brooks’ family.

    April 11, 2021 – Daunte Wright, 20, is shot and killed by Brooklyn Center police officer Kimberly Potter following a routine traffic stop for an expired tag.

    April 12, 2021 – During a press conference, Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon announces Potter accidentally drew a handgun instead of a Taser. According to Gannon, “this was an accidental discharge, that resulted in a tragic death of Mr. Wright.” Potter is placed on administrative leave. According to the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office, Wright’s death has been ruled a homicide.

    April 13, 2021 – Gannon submits his resignation. CNN is told Potter has also submitted a letter of resignation.

    April 14, 2021 – Potter is arrested and charged with second degree manslaughter. Washington County Attorney Pete Orput issues a news release which includes a summary of the criminal complaint filed against Potter. According to the release, Potter shot Wright with a Glock handgun holstered on her right side, after saying she would tase Wright. Later, the state amends the complaint against Potter, adding an additional charge of manslaughter in the first degree.

    December 23, 2021 – Potter is found guilty of first and second-degree manslaughter. On February 18, 2022, she is sentenced to two years in prison. In April 2023, Potter is released from prison after serving 16 months.

    June 21, 2022 – The city of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, agrees to pay $3.25 million to the family of Wright. The sum is part of a settlement deal the family struck with the city, which also agreed to make changes in its policing policies and training, the Wright family legal team said in a news release.

    2022 – Grand Rapids, Michigan – Patrick Lyoya

    April 4, 2022 – Patrick Lyoya, 26-year-old Black man, is shot and killed by a police officer following a traffic stop.

    April 13, 2022 – Grand Rapids police release video from police body camera, the police unit’s dashcam, a cell phone and a home surveillance system, which show the police officer’s encounter with Lyoya, including two clips showing the fatal shot. Lyoya was pulled over for an allegedly unregistered license plate when he got out of the car and ran. He resisted the officer’s attempt to arrest him and was shot while struggling with the officer on the ground.

    April 19, 2022 – An autopsy commissioned by Lyoya’s family shows the 26-year-old was shot in the back of the head following the April 4 encounter with a Grand Rapids police officer, attorneys representing the family announce. The officer has not been publicly identified.

    April 21, 2022 – Michigan state officials ask the US Department of Justice to launch a “pattern-or-practice” investigation into the Grand Rapids Police Department after the death of Lyoya.

    April 25, 2022 – The chief of Grand Rapids police identifies Christopher Schurr as the officer who fatally shot Lyoya.

    June 9 ,2022 – Schurr is charged with one count of second-degree murder in the death of Lyoya. Benjamin Crump. the Lyoya family attorney says in a statement, “we are encouraged by attorney Christopher Becker’s decision to charge Schurr for the brutal killing of Patrick Lyoya, which we all witnessed when the video footage was released to the public.” On June 10, 2022, Schurr pleads not guilty.

    January 7, 2023 – Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, is hospitalized following a traffic stop that lead to a violent arrest. Nichols dies three days later from injuries sustained, according to police.

    January 15, 2023 – The Memphis Police Department announces they immediately launched an investigation into the action of officers involved in the arrest of Nichols.

    January 18, 2023 – The Department of Justice says a civil rights investigation has been opened into the death of Nichols.

    January 20, 2023 – The five officers are named and fired: Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith.

    January 23, 2023 – Nichols’ family and their attorneys view police video of the arrest.

    January 26, 2023 – A grand jury indicts the five police officers. They are each charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, two charges of aggravated kidnapping, two charges of official misconduct and one charge of official oppression, according to both Shelby County criminal court and Shelby County jail records.

    January 27, 2023 – The city of Memphis releases body camera and surveillance video of the the traffic stop and beating that led to the Nichols’ death.

    January 30, 2023 – Memphis police say two additional officers have been placed on leave. Only one officer is identified, Preston Hemphill. Additionally, the Memphis Fire Department announces three employees have been fired over their response to the incident: emergency medical technicians Robert Long and JaMichael Sandridge and Lt. Michelle Whitaker.

    May 4, 2023 – The Shelby County medical examiner’s report shows that Nichols died from blunt force trauma to the head. His death has been ruled a homicide.

    September 12, 2023 – The five police officers involved are indicted by a federal grand jury on several charges including deprivation of rights.

    November 2, 2023 – Desmond Mills Jr., one of the five former Memphis police officers accused in the death of Nichols, pleads guilty to federal charges and agrees to plead guilty to related state charges as part of a plea deal with prosecutors.

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  • Before he became a politician, House Speaker Mike Johnson partnered with an anti-gay conversion therapy group | CNN Politics

    Before he became a politician, House Speaker Mike Johnson partnered with an anti-gay conversion therapy group | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Speaker of the House Mike Johnson closely collaborated with a group in the mid-to-late 2000s that promoted “conversion therapy,” a discredited practice that asserted it could change the sexual orientation of gay and lesbian individuals.

    Prior to launching his political career, Johnson, a lawyer, gave legal advice to an organization called Exodus International and partnered with the group to put on an annual anti-gay event aimed at teens, according to a CNN KFile review of more than a dozen of Johnson’s media appearances from that timespan.

    Founded in 1976, Exodus International was a leader in the so-called “ex-gay” movement, which aimed to make gay individuals straight through conversion therapy programs using religious and counseling methods. Exodus International connected ministries across the world using these controversial approaches.

    The group shut down in 2013, with its founder posting a public apology for the “pain and hurt” his organization caused. Conversion therapy has been widely condemned by most major medical institutions and has been shown to be harmful to struggling LGBTQ people.

    At the time, Johnson worked as an attorney for the socially conservative legal advocacy group, Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). He and his group collaborated with Exodus from 2006 to 2010.

    For years, Johnson and Exodus worked on an event started by ADF in 2005 known as the “Day of Truth” – a counterprotest to the “Day of Silence,” a day in schools in which students stayed silent to bring awareness to bullying faced by LGBTQ youth.

    The Day of Truth sought to counter that silence by distributing information about what Johnson described as the “dangerous” gay lifestyle.

    “I mean, our race, the size of our feet, the color of our eyes, these are things we’re born with and we cannot change,” Johnson told one radio host in 2008 promoting the event. “What these adult advocacy groups like the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network are promoting is a type of behavior. Homosexual behavior is something you do, it’s not something that you are.”

    In print, radio and on television, Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, frequently disparaged homosexuality, according to KFile’s review. He advocated for the criminalization of gay sex and went so far as to partially blame it for the fall of the Roman Empire.

    “Some credit to the fall of Rome to not only the deprivation of the society and the loss of morals, but also to the rampant homosexual behavior that was condoned by the society,” Johnson told a radio host in 2008.

    Johnson’s office did not respond to a CNN request for comment asking about his work with Exodus.

    Exodus International joined ADF’s Day of Truth event in 2006 and the groups worked together on promotional material for the event, including a standalone website which pointed users to Exodus’ conversion ministries. Documents on that website cited the since-repudiated academic work in support of conversion therapy. Exodus Youth, the group’s youth wing, promoted the event within its blogs.

    Videos put out by Exodus and ADF on their standalone Day of Truth website featured two Exodus staffers speaking about how teens didn’t need to “accept” or “embrace” their homosexuality. The videos featured testimonials of a “former-homosexual” and “former lesbian.”

    Documents on the website were not archived online but were saved by anti-conversion therapy groups such as Truth Wins Out in 2007 and 2008. The website featured a FAQ on homosexuality provided by Exodus and sold t-shirts saying, “the Truth cannot be silenced.”

    One video featured Johnson, who was later quoted in a press release on Exodus International’s website ahead of the event, saying, “An open, honest discussion allows truth to rise to the surface.”

    Johnson promoted the event heavily in the media – through radio interviews, comments in newspapers, and an editorial. In interviews, he repeatedly cited the case of a teen who went to school after the Day of Silence wearing a shirt that read, “Be ashamed. Our school has embraced what God has condemned” and “Homosexuality is shameful.” The teen was suspended and ADF represented him in legal action over the incident. The case was dismissed because the teen graduated, and the court found he no longer had standing to challenge the dress code.

    “Day of Truth was really established to counter the promotion of the homosexual agenda in public schools,” Johnson told a radio host in 2008.

    Those who worked to counter ADF and Exodus at the time, said the event was dangerous to confused youth.

    “This directly harmed LGBTQ youth,” Wayne Besen, the executive director of Truth Wins Out and an expert on the ex-gay industry, told CNN. “This is someone whose core was promoting anti-gay and ex-gay viewpoints. He wouldn’t pander to anti-gay advocates, he was the anti-gay and ex-gay advocate.”

    Randy Scobey, a former executive vice president at Exodus, who worked on the Day of Truth in the organization’s collaboration with ADF, called the event one of his biggest regrets.

    “It was bullying those who were trying to not be bullied,” said Scobey, who now lives openly as a gay man. “That was one of the public ways that the Alliance Defense Fund worked with us.”

    Ties between Exodus and ADF extended beyond the event.

    ADF, which has since changed its name to the Alliance Defending Freedom, touted Exodus International in promotional brochures in 2004, crediting it as an organization that “played an instrumental role in helping thousands of individuals come out of homosexual behavior.”

    Scobey recalled Johnson as quiet, but firm in his beliefs that homosexuality was wrong. He said Johnson and ADF provided crucial legal advice to Exodus and its “member ministries.”

    “We worked with them behind the scenes a lot,” Scobey told CNN, saying the group offered them legal guidance over their ex-gay counseling. “They were very important to us as far as helping us to feel more secure legally and politically.”

    Exodus International stopped sponsoring the Day of Truth event in 2010, saying it became adversarial and counterproductive.

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  • As antisemitism grows, so does its dangers to everyone. Here’s how you can fight against it | CNN

    As antisemitism grows, so does its dangers to everyone. Here’s how you can fight against it | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    In the wake of the war between Israel and Hamas, antisemitic incidents in the US are on the rise.

    The Anti-Defamation League reported over 300 antisemitic incidents in US since the Hamas attack on October 7. That’s an increase of almost 400% when compared with October 2022.

    College campuses are seeing an increase of antisemitic activities as well, like the threats against Cornell University’s Jewish community. The growing number of incidents on campuses compelled the Biden administration to take action.

    The White House outlined measures the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and the Department of Education plan to take with campus and local law enforcement to provide support and resources.

    It’s not just the US, however, that is dealing with this problem. The ADL is tracking a rise in antisemitic incidents across the world.

    Vlad Khaykin, National Director of Programs on Antisemitism for the Anti-Defamation League, says hostility against Jews tends to gain ground during times of uncertainty: be that economic depression, war or pandemic. If there is anxiety, some people will turn to antisemitism as “an answer for why things are going wrong in the world.”

    In the United States, Jews make up just over 2 percent of the population. But antisemitism affects everyone, and everyone should be concerned.

    Khaykin points out that historically, persistent and patently untrue canards against the Jewish people reflect and amplify fundamental flaws in a society.

    “It breeds conspiracy theories that distort our ability to make informed decisions, which are central to any democracy,” he says. “It is anti-democratic. It is anti-intellectual. It leads to contempt for knowledge, learning, expertise.”

    Former US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power described it as the “canary in the coal mine.”

    Here are a few things that everyone can do to help fight antisemitism.

    Educate yourself and be an advocate

    No matter where you live, you can help. As Khaykin points out, “you don’t need to know any Jews” to want to make the world a better place for everyone.

    The ADL has many educational online programs and resources available. They range from anti-bias training to anti-Semitism education.

    Advocate for others’ education and protection. Approach schools and centers of learning about adding programs and curriculums on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism. Echoes & Reflections is an online program that focuses on Holocaust education in the classroom. Tennessee school officials said their vote to ban Holocaust graphic novel “Maus” was meant to shelter students from foul language and nudity. But advocates say books like these are important tools in teaching younger generations.

    The US Holocaust Memorial Museum is another resource where one can learn not only about the Holocaust but find educational information on anti-Semitism and its impact today.

    This means not just speaking out against hate speech you hear, but reporting what you see on social media. The pandemic has fueled a lot of conspiracy theories, and several prominent people have compared vaccine requirements or mask mandates to the Holocaust. This type of rhetoric demeans the actual atrocities of the Holocaust.

    “Attempts to minimize through absurd comparisons, to minimize the horror and enormity of the Holocaust, are really pernicious,” Khaykin said. “Scholars of genocide have said that the final act of genocide is the denial of the genocide.”

    Germany has strict laws against hate speech and Holocaust denials, but in the US such speech is harder to regulate. Private companies like Facebook, however, have rules against it. You just need to report it when you see it – every time you see it.

    Be involved and aware of what is happening in your community. In August of 2021, the ADL, the Los Angeles Police Department and the FBI held a community outreach event raising awareness about how they work together to combat anti-Semitism. The ADL has 25 regional offices around the country and work closely with law enforcement agencies. As interest in communities grows about what is being done to combat hate, these type events are more likely to happen in the future.

    Members and supporters of the Jewish community come together for a candlelight vigil in remembrance of those who died during a shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.

    Report it immediately. The ADL has an online form where you can report any incidents of “anti-Semitism, extremism, bias, bigotry or hate.” Note, this is not just for people who experienced anti-Jewish hostility. This is for anyone targeted for their “religion, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin or level of ability.” Reportable activity could be anything from seeing a hate symbol on the street to kids getting bullied at school or online.

    Here you can upload video and photos of the incident and someone will contact you. The ADL keeps track of all reported anti-Semitic and hate crime incidents.

    Khaykin said, “Anti-Semitism doesn’t just show up in our schools, in our workplaces. It’s everywhere. It pervades every aspect of our civilization.”

    The only way to stop the cycle of ignorance and hate is through knowledge and love.

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  • She lost her mother to gun violence. 5 years later, this vibrant fourth grader was killed while getting ice cream | CNN

    She lost her mother to gun violence. 5 years later, this vibrant fourth grader was killed while getting ice cream | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: This story is part of a series profiling American youth killed this year by guns, a leading cause of death of children in the US. Read more about the project here.



    CNN
     — 

    Every morning since the school year started, before teacher assistant Madelyn Cedeno shuts the front door of Peter A. Reinberg Elementary School at the start of classes, she peers out one last time.

    She hopes she’ll see Serabi Medina running late, with her playful smile, her big red hair flying and her father trailing just behind her. The teacher and student first bonded over their ginger hair when Serabi began kindergarten four years ago. “She just reminded me of me at her age with that color hair,” Cedeno said. “I pretty much told her, ‘All of us gingers around the world, we stick together in any kind of weather, so you and I are stuck together forever.’”

    “We were the gingers of Reinberg,” she said.

    The two often chatted in the school hallways and in the mornings, when Cedeno stood outside the school to greet students. And every day, before Serabi walked into school, she would tell Cedeno she loved her.

    They saw each other again in early August, after Serabi had finished a summer class she took before she was set to start fourth grade. Cedeno told her the upcoming school year would be fantastic. They hugged and said goodbye with their special, signature wave.

    Less than a week later, the vibrant 9-year-old was shot and killed, allegedly by a neighbor, in front of her Chicago home – one of at least 1,400 children and teens killed by a firearm so far in 2023, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Firearms became the No. 1 killer of children and teens in America in 2020, surpassing motor vehicle accidents, which had long been the leading cause of death among America’s youth, federal data shows.

    Serabi had been riding her scooter and had just returned from a nearby ice cream truck carrying two ice-creams: one for herself and one for her dad, who was outside with her. As she reached the door of their apartment building, authorities say neighbor Michael Goodman approached her and fired his gun, fatally striking Serabi in the head.

    He has pleaded not guilty and is being held without bond on first-degree murder charges. Goodman’s public defender, Kathryn Lisco, told CNN Goodman has been “plagued by debilitating and documented mental health issues over the course of his life.”

    “The real question we should be asking is why, despite Michael Goodman’s mental health history was he ever able to legally obtain a gun?” Lisco said.

    At every court hearing, Serabi’s family has been there, waiting for justice. It’s been rough, her father says. But that doesn’t even begin to describe it: Serabi was his “light,” the little girl he had devoted his life to after his partner, Serabi’s mom, was shot and killed five years ago right in front of their eyes. Chicago police say that investigation is ongoing, and no suspect is in custody.

    “Once I lost her mom, I lost half of myself, so my focus was all on my daughter,” Michael Medina told CNN in a recent interview.

    “She was just a beautiful girl, my light. She was my life.”

    Braids and press-on nails

    Even for those who knew her best, putting Serabi into words isn’t easy: She was unstoppable.

    Serabi was always happy, always active. She was a dodgeball champion, a YouTube enthusiast, an animal lover. She didn’t shy away from saying hello to strangers.

    “She was full of life,” her cousin, Jaleesa Medina, 29, said. “She wouldn’t need music to dance.” She loved to dress up during Halloween – last year, she dressed up in a Ghostbusters theme, her cousin recalled.

    Serabi is seen here with her cousin, Jaleesa Medina, in an undated picture.

    And she was creative, often putting press-on nails and pouring time into braiding her hair and coming up with new hairstyles, her father recalled. She’d often ask Medina for help, directing him to hold one braid as she worked on another. “Daddy, just do it, you can do it, don’t worry,” she’d encourage him.

    Serabi was fearless, never afraid to learn something new or stand up to someone decades older than her when she felt picked on. She was always cracking jokes to make others laugh, and often enjoyed sassy exchanges with family members, they said. At school, even the eighth graders knew her, her father says, and she was always trying to be “a comedian.”

    “She walked in the room with a big smile on her face and everyone just kind of turned and looked,” her principal, Edwin Loch, said.

    Five days after her death, Loch helped organize a candlelight service in her honor. He asked everyone to wear purple, her favorite color. More than a hundred people gathered to say goodbye.

    “She was never mean to anybody, always wanted to be the person that got people together, and have fun,” Loch recalled. “She just wanted to live.”

    Serabi Medina's favorite color was purple, her family said.

    To John Hogue Jr., her half-brother, Serabi was, first and foremost, his “baby sister.”

    John, 16, was the second person to ever hold her when she was born. He fed her when she was a baby, rocked her to sleep and watched cartoons like “Paw Patrol” and Barbie, just to spend time with her. When their mom, Blanca Miranda, was still alive, the three of them would often go to water parks and the movies.

    He had felt excited, he told CNN, to be a big brother to Serabi and wanted to take care of her. But often, it felt like she took care of him, he said.

    “She was always caring, and if something happened, she’d be there and help me talk,” John, a high school junior, said. “She’d talk like a grown-up, she was loving like a grown-up.”

    Serabi with her mother, Blanca, and brother, John, seen in an undated picture.

    It’s something many of her loved ones point out: Despite her young age, Serabi always seemed wise beyond her years, and quick to offer words of comfort to those who needed it most, though she was hurting from her own loss. Serabi saw her mother’s fatal shooting, alongside John and her father, when she was just 4 years old.

    “I don’t know if it was like a little sister feeling that she would get inside, but it seemed at times when I’d be hurting the most, she would reach out and say, ‘Hey, I love you,’” Serabi’s half-sister, Lacey Tatro, said. The two hadn’t seen each other in years but would video call almost every night. “That was my best friend,” Tatro said.

    After her mother’s killing, Serabi would also often console her aunt Juanita Miranda, Blanca’s sister. “Mommy’s okay,” Serabi would remind her, urging her not to cry.

    More about Serabi

  • She was shot and killed on August 5, 2023
  • She was 9 years old and preparing for fourth grade
  • Her neighbor, Michael Goodman, has been charged with murder and is expected again in court on December 6, according to jail records.
  • A verified GoFundMe has been set up for her family
  • Online, her family uses #justiceforSerabi for updates in the case

    • “She raised us,” Miranda said. “She taught me to be strong in a lot of ways, no matter what. And she still teaches me to this day.”

    The two shared a special bond, Miranda said, since the very moment Serabi was born. “She came out with her eyes open, and I’ll never forget that,” she said of that moment. “She was just open to the world. She was my baby before I even had a daughter.”

    Together, they made YouTube videos that never got posted, did internet challenges, and regularly ordered their favorite drink: iced coffee, extra caramel. Three days before Serabi was killed, she spent the night with her aunt, and they ate snacks, scrolled through TikToks and watched the Barbie movie.

    Her niece’s loss, Miranda says, has left her deeply traumatized. But she’s determined to join other family members in court once the trial in Serabi’s killing begins. “I just want to know why,” Miranda said.

    At school, faculty members are preparing to dedicate a permanent memorial on the campus Serabi once roamed. The past two months have been very difficult, Cedeno says.

    “Her reminder, her presence is very, very strong,” she said. Mornings are the toughest.

    At home, Medina misses his daughter’s voice, the brief arguments they’d share in the morning as they got ready to start the day, their walks to school, their bike rides in the evenings. Since losing her mother, Serabi and her father had become inseparable. Even when he spent time fixing cars in their garage during the frigid Chicago winters, Serabi was there, passing him the tools.

    Serabi, left, and her father, Michael Medina.

    “My baby was always with me,” Medina said. “That’s why I’m so lost now.”

    After she died, Serabi was laid to rest with her mother.

    John said he promised her he’d visit every weekend, but the visits are devastating reminders of the two losses the teen has suffered in the past five years: his mom, and his only little sister.

    “When I go over there, I cry,” he said. “I just think about the times me and her had together.”

    “She always loved me, her big brother.”

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  • This middle-schooler ‘knew how to be a best friend to everybody.’ Then gunfire erupted while she was out to buy milk | CNN

    This middle-schooler ‘knew how to be a best friend to everybody.’ Then gunfire erupted while she was out to buy milk | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: This story is part of a series profiling American youth killed this year by guns, a leading cause of death of children in the US. Read more about the project here.



    CNN
     — 

    It’s been almost nine months since Brexi Torres-Ortiz and her mom sang together – hitting every note, feeling every emotion with every word of a gospel tune that happened to be the 11-year-old’s favorite song.

    Take me to the King. I don’t have much to bring.

    My heart is torn in pieces; it’s my offering.

    Take me to the King.

    “You will cry just listening to her sing it,” said Brexi’s mom, Brenlee “Bre” Ortiz. “It’s like, she was so young, how did she know what this song was saying?”

    Back then, even Ortiz didn’t realize the depth of those lyrics, she said.

    Sometimes she wishes she still didn’t.

    The hymn’s power, though, has become clear, Ortiz said, since Brexi – short for Brexialee – was fatally shot while grabbing a gallon of milk from a corner store in Syracuse, New York – one of more than 1,300 youth killed by a gun this year in the US, according to the Gun Violence Archive, as firearms surpassed motor vehicles in 2020 as the nation’s No. 1 killer of children and teens.

    January 16 was supposed to have been a cozy night at home for Brexi, with a movie on the projector and blankets covering the floor after her favorite dinner of macaroni and cheese made from scratch by her grandmother. Brexi’s two sisters and their mom, after she got home from work, would have been with them.

    Instead, Brexi spent her last hours in a hospital bed on life support while Ortiz tried to make sense of how her middle daughter – while she was out to buy milk for the meal – got caught in what police described as a storm of bullets no more than 40 feet from her home.

    Three suspects – then ages 16, 18 and 20 – were arrested within 10 days of the shooting, an Onondaga County senior assistant district attorney told CNN, and indicted by a grand jury on second-degree murder and other charges, a court record shows. Two have pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and the third is due to go to trial early next year, according to prosecutor Anthony Mangovski and court filings.

    4 things you can do today about the US gun violence epidemic

    As the justice system’s response to Brexi’s killing unfolds, Ortiz attends every hearing.

    But still, she struggles.

    Every day.

    And every hopeless night.

    “As soon as I open my eyes, it’s her on my mind,” Ortiz said. “And as soon as I’m finally able to close my eyes, I don’t fall asleep but my body turns off and she’s in my mind and I can see her in my dreams.

    “But they’re not dreams; they’re nightmares.”

    She was everybody’s ‘best friend’

    The warmth of her smile, the way she made you feel after a hug and her ability to empathize with both her peers and adults are on the never-ending list of what made Brexi special, Ortiz said.

    “You never get to know a person, even if it’s your own kid, until stuff like this happens,” she said. “I didn’t want to find out like this.”

    At Brexi’s funeral, Ortiz received condolences from so many children, she said. “She was my best friend,” her mom heard more times than she could count.

    Brexi's image, stuffed animals and other decorations adorn her grave.

    Brexi “knew how to be a best friend to everybody and give each one of them what they needed,” Ortiz said. “She will be a way with you that she wouldn’t be with me because we don’t have the same needs.”

    The middle schooler also was student council president of her sixth-grade class, a “shining star” on the after-school dance team and “always encouraged others to make the right choice,” educators from her school said.

    Brexi’s death stole all that – while it also drove home her generation’s gun-violence reality, said her school’s psychologist, who discovered a broader horror as she went classroom-to-classroom to help the kids confront the killing.

    Brenlee Ortiz, left, prepares ice cream for students at her late daughter's school on

    “It was that every single child already knew what to do,” Kayla Gallagher said. “They had T-shirts, lanyards, hats, all sorts of clothing with her name and image. They created a shrine at her locker. They went to the vigils.”

    More about Brexialee Torres-Ortiz

  • Died January 16
  • Age 11
  • Shot while out buying milk at a corner store as three people, each with a semi-automatic handgun, opened fire on another person, according to her mom and a grand jury indictment.
  • Two teens and a young adult were arrested in the shooting, an Onondaga County prosecutor told CNN. All were indicted by a grand jury with second-degree murder in her killing, second-degree attempted murder in the non-fatal wounding of their intended target, plus second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, the court record shows.
  • Both teens pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in return for 20 to 25 years in prison, according to the prosecutor and court records. The older suspect pleaded not guilty and is set to go to trial in February

    • “The children are so used to this violence that they helped the adults in the building grieve,” Gallagher said.

    Now, Brexi’s school community honors her life every month on “Brexi Day,” with activities like putting on a talent show, decorating the campus with flowers or enjoying an ice cream treat.

    “We choose to remember her not for the sorrow of her passing but for the joy, determination and the sense of belongingness she brought to our school,” Leeza Roper, a teacher at Syracuse STEM at Blodgett Middle School told CNN.

    “Her legacy lives on in the hearts of those she touched.”

    Read other profiles of children who have died from gunfire

    At the Boys and Girls Club at Central Village where Brexi spent so much of her free time, her name was added to a sign outside the building and her photo hung in the entryway to commemorate the “wonderful impression” she left on the organization, said Stacey Nichols, spokesperson for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Syracuse.

    “I want that all the kids that go there not be sad when they see her picture,” Ortiz said. “I want them to be motivated to do more and to be better.”

    And the Syracuse Police Department worked with the Syracuse Housing Authority to purchase a bench that sits in front of the building in Brexi’s memory so her friends and family have a place to reflect and remember her, Syracuse Police Sgt. Brad Giarrusso said.

    “Brexi came from a forgotten community,” Gallagher said, “but she will not be forgotten by her community.”

    The Boys and Girls Club at Central Village renamed its site after Brexi.

    On October 7, Brexi’s loved ones celebrated what would have been her 12th birthday. But there was no cake and no Brexi to blow out the candles after the birthday song.

    Instead, relatives and friends gathered around her grave in the evening and released white balloons in her honor.

    “I gotta go celebrate my baby’s birthday at the cemetery,” Ortiz said. “There is no justice. Justice will be bringing my daughter back.”

    And though Ortiz would give anything for one more hug from Brexi or one more verse sung together, she takes an ounce of comfort, she said, knowing her daughter “finally made it to the King.”

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  • California man sentenced to 1-year in federal prison for cyberstalking, harassing parent of Parkland school shooting victim | CNN

    California man sentenced to 1-year in federal prison for cyberstalking, harassing parent of Parkland school shooting victim | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A California man who sent hundreds of harrowing messages to an activist against gun violence whose daughter was killed in the 2018 Parkland, Florida, school shooting has been sentenced to 1 year in federal prison, according to prosecutors and court documents.

    James Catalano, 62, of Fresno, California, pled guilty to cyberstalking on March 28, according to the court documents. CNN has reached out to his attorney.

    In December 2021, a parent of one of the students killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School “began receiving a slew of harassing messages” with references to “his daughter, the manner of her death, her pain and suffering as she was murdered and his advocacy against gun violence.” The parent is identified only with the initials “F.G.” in court documents.

    According to a complaint, on June 21, 2022, “F.G.” tweeted, “Three weeks after the Parkland shooting, & on the day that gun safety legislation was passed in Florida, I stood with @marcorubio & asked him to support what was about to happen in Florida. He refused. He was a waste then and he is a waste now. Florida will elect @valdemings.”

    CNN has found that the tweet and others mentioned in the complaint were sent by Fred Guttenberg – who has dedicated his life to “fighting for gun safety in America” after his 14-year-old daughter, Jaime, was among the 17 people killed at Parkland, his Twitter profile reads.

    Catalano replied to Guttenberg’s tweets and continued to send harassing messages through July 2022 via multiple online platforms. Catalano sent “hundreds of disparaging messages, which graphically described the victim’s daughter’s death, and focused on the debate surrounding gun control and the victim’s activism against gun violence,” according to a news release Monday from the US Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Florida.

    Federal authorities were informed of the messages and traced two IP addresses to Catalano’s workplace and home in Fresno, according to court documents.

    On July 20, 2022, Catalano met with law enforcement after waiving his Miranda rights, according to a complaint. He admitted to sending the messages.

    Guttenberg tweeted following the sentencing Friday, saying it “sends a message to those who cyberstalk the families of shooting victims that they will be caught and punished.”

    CNN has reached out to Guttenberg for comment.

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  • Lawsuit to block Trump from Colorado 2024 ballot survives more legal challenges | CNN Politics

    Lawsuit to block Trump from Colorado 2024 ballot survives more legal challenges | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A judge has rejected three more attempts by former President Donald Trump and the Colorado GOP to shut down a lawsuit seeking to block him from the 2024 presidential ballot in the state based on the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban.”

    The flurry of rulings late Friday from Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace are a blow to Trump, who faces candidacy challenges in multiple states stemming from his role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection. He still has a pending motion to throw out the Colorado lawsuit, but the case now appears on track for an unprecedented trial this month.

    A post-Civil War provision of the 14th Amendment says US officials who take an oath to uphold the Constitution are disqualified from future office if they “engaged in insurrection” or have “given aid or comfort” to insurrectionists. But the Constitution does not spell out how to enforce the ban, and it has been applied only twice since the 1800s.

    A liberal watchdog group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed the Colorado case on behalf of six Republican and unaffiliated voters. The judge is scheduled to preside over a trial beginning October 30 to decide a series of novel legal questions about how the 14th Amendment could apply to Trump.

    In a 24-page ruling, Wallace rejected many of Trump’s arguments that the case was procedurally flawed and should be shut down. She said the key question of whether Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold has the power to block Trump from the ballot based on the 14th Amendment “is a pivotal issue and one best reserved for trial.”

    Wallace also swatted away arguments from the Colorado GOP that state law gives the party, not election officials, ultimate say on which candidates appear on the ballot.

    “If the Party, without any oversight, can choose its preferred candidate, then it could theoretically nominate anyone regardless of their age, citizenship, residency,” she wrote. “Such an interpretation is absurd; the Constitution and its requirements for eligibility are not suggestions, left to the political parties to determine at their sole discretion.”

    Wallace also cited a 2012 opinion from Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, when he was a Denver-based appeals judge, which said states have the power to “exclude from the ballot candidates who are constitutionally prohibited from assuming office.” She cited this while rejecting Trump’s claim that Colorado’s ballot access laws don’t give state officials any authority to disqualify him based on federal constitutional considerations.

    Trump already lost an earlier bid to throw out the case on free-speech grounds.

    The current GOP front-runner, Trump denies wrongdoing regarding January 6 and has pleaded not guilty to state and federal charges stemming from his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. His campaign has said these lawsuits are pushing an “absurd conspiracy theory” and the challengers are “stretching the law beyond recognition.”

    In a statement on Saturday, the Trump campaign criticized Wallace and her rulings, saying she “got it wrong.”

    “She is going against the clear weight of legal authority. We are confident the rule of law will prevail, and this decision will be reversed – whether at the Colorado Supreme Court, or at the U.S. Supreme Court,” a Trump campaign spokesperson said. “To keep the leading candidate for President of the United States off the ballot is simply wrong and un-American.”

    The 14th Amendment challenges in Colorado and other key states face an uphill climb, with many legal hurdles to clear before Trump would be disqualified from running for the presidency. Trump is sure to appeal any decision to strip him from the ballot, which means the Supreme Court and its conservative supermajority might get the final say.

    In recent months, a growing and politically diverse array of legal scholars have thrown their support behind the idea that Trump is disqualified under the “insurrectionist ban.” The bipartisan House committee that investigated the January 6 attack recommended last year that Trump be barred from holding future office under the 14th Amendment.

    The Colorado challengers recently revealed in a court filing that they want to depose Trump before trial. Trump opposes this request, and the judge hasn’t issued a ruling.

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