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(NEW YORK) — Apple said on Sunday that COVID-19 restrictions at an iPhone factory in China have “temporarily impacted” shipments of its flagship phone.
The world’s most valuable company said a facility in Zhengzhou run by Foxconn, one of Apple’s largest suppliers, was “currently operating at significantly reduced capacity.”
“We continue to see strong demand for iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max models,” Apple said in a statement. “However, we now expect lower iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max shipments than we previously anticipated and customers will experience longer wait times to receive their new products.”
Foxconn, as Hon Hai Precision Industry is known, turned its Zhengzhou facility into a “closed-loop” factory because of concerns about COVID-19 in the surrounding area, according to a report last week by Morgan Stanley analysts.
About 60% of Foxconn’s iPhone assembly happens in Zhengzhou, Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in the report.
“However, we do believe the impact of the COVID situation in Zhengzhou is showing up in iPhone lead times, as iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max lead times have elongated by ~7 days in the last week, to 26 days as of Tuesday, November 1st,” the analysts wrote.
Taiwan-based Foxconn issued a current-quarter outlook on Monday, saying it was originally “cautiously optimistic,” but “due to the pandemic affecting some of our operations in Zhengzhou, the company will ‘revise down’ the outlook for the fourth quarter.”
The company said the local government had “made it clear that it will, as always, fully support” Foxconn’s local production.
“Foxconn is now working with the government in concerted effort to stamp out the pandemic and resume production to its full capacity as quickly as possible,” the company said in a statement.
Apple said it’s “working closely with our supplier to return to normal production levels while ensuring the health and safety of every worker.”
(NEW YORK) — An estimated $1.9 billion is up for grabs in Powerball’s drawing on Monday night, lottery officials said.
Monday’s jackpot is the world’s largest lottery prize ever offered, according to a press release from Powerball. The cash value is $929.1 million.
The jackpot grows based on game sales and interest. But the odds of winning the big prize stays the same — 1 in 292.2 million, Powerball said.
Monday’s Powerball drawing will be the 41st since the jackpot was last won on Aug. 3, tying the game record for the number of consecutive drawings without a grand prize winner, according to Powerball.
Despite there being no jackpot winner, more than 10.9 million tickets won cash prizes totaling $102.2 million in the latest drawing on Saturday night. The overall odds of winning a prize are 1 in 24.9, Powerball said.
Jackpot winners can either take the money as an immediate cash lump sum or in 30 annual payments over 29 years. Both advertised prize options do not include federal and jurisdictional taxes, according to Powerball.
Tickets cost $2 and are sold in 45 U.S. states as well as Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. More than half of all proceeds remain in the jurisdiction where the ticket was purchased, Powerball said.
Powerball drawings are broadcast live every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday at 10:59 p.m. ET from the Florida Lottery draw studio in Tallahassee. The drawings are also livestreamed online at Powerball.com.
(WASHINGTON) — Former Cranston, Rhode Island Mayor Allen Fung, a Republican, is running a strong campaign in a House district President Joe Biden won by 13 points in 2020, threatening an upset with a message of moderation.
“I’m not into divisiveness. I’m not into spreading any type of election denials. I’m my own person. I’m going to be that voice of moderation down there. And I believe that I will bring that voice of centrism,” Fung told ABC News. “Hopefully, it’s not just myself.”
However, it’s becoming increasingly unclear who would fit the mold of the type of moderate Fung hopes will join him in Congress.
What counts as moderation in a Republican Party transformed under Donald Trump is unclear, as strategists say ideological labels are getting increasingly scrambled by emphasis on personality and attitudes toward the former president.
Some lawmakers, like Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, tout their moderate bona fides, noting their centrist policies on social issues and fiscal conservatism. Candidates like Fung and Colorado GOP Senate nominee Joe O’Dea are deploying similar playbooks as they seek to follow them to Washington.
Yet, the term “moderate” is getting bandied about more broadly, both in the media and among party operators and leaders, though in reality, party members say those cast as moderates are those who have lower key personalities and keep some distance with Trump, the GOP’s de facto leader.
“We’ve redefined conservatism, or I think the media largely has kind of in collusion with Trumpworld, redefined conservatism as Trumpism, and they’re not the same thing,” said former House GOP leadership aide Doug Heye. “And then if you’ve realtered what that term means, well, then moderate has to mean something different as well.”
“I don’t think there are many moderates, if any, in the Republican party today,” added Republican National Committee member Bill Palatucci. “It’s kind of an extinct breed. These days, the fight is between what I consider true conservatives and Trump apologists.”
Among those who have gotten slapped with the label of “moderate” include lawmakers like retiring Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and outgoing Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., who lost her primary to a Trump-backed challenger this year. Both supporting Trump’s impeachment after last year’s Capitol riot, but Toomey boasts a 92% rating from the American Conservative Union, and Cheney has a 77% rating, based on their voting records.
Another Republican touted as a modern moderate is Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who won his seat in 2021 with a laser focus on education while refusing to bear hug Trump.
Yet Youngkin has pushed for bans on the teaching of “divisive concepts” in schools, called for requiring transgender students to have formal parental permission to identify with their gender identity and has looked to pull out of an agreement with other states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Rumored to have an eye on a White House run in 2024, he’s also been campaigning with people like Arizona GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, who has spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.
Strategists say the misidentification of moderates is on the rise as voters become less attuned with policy priorities.
“If you’re not raising your voice with pithy one liners on cable news, you’re a moderate. In our politics it’s become tone over substance. We do focus groups, raise your hand if you’ve been to the candidate’s website, no one ever raises their hand,” said one GOP strategist working on House races.
“So, how could Pat Toomey be a moderate? Well, because he doesn’t come across as an asshole. That’s it, period, end of discussion. We are living in a cable news, social media political time.”
And even for voters who remain invested in conservative policies, Trump thoroughly revamped what counts as Republican orthodoxy.
On domestic issues, Trump threw fiscal conservatism out the window, favoring heavy government spending that increased the debt. And on the global stage, he overhauled the GOP’s preference for free trade for one focused on “fair trade” forwarded by tariffs. And militarily, Trump shunned foreign interventions, a reversal for a party that historically advocated for a muscular armed presence overseas.
“I remember conservatives complaining about Ronald Reagan and big spending and some of his nominees and so forth. They held his feet to the fire. No one helped Donald Trump’s feet to a matchstick,” Heye said. “Donald Trump loves spending government money. And part of what that did is it exploded our deficit and our debt. And Republicans were put in the position of going along with Donald Trump on pretty much everything.”
To be sure, Democrats are facing an identity schism of their own. Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., have thwarted marquee Democratic policies in the 50-50 Senate and kept alive an ongoing ideological tug-of-war.
Republicans’ divides, meanwhile, are largely driven less by policy and more by Trump’s vice-like grip on the GOP grassroots.
“If anyone has ever discussed publicly, Donald Trump, as an existential threat to the Republican Party, they are outside the tent and will find no flap to bring them back in,” said one former Trump administration official.
“Those of us who are around Trump, I wouldn’t cross the street to put Liz Cheney out if she was on fire. And it’s almost entirely because she just couldn’t find it in her devotion to the Republican Party to support the Republican president of the United States. I mean, she did for quite some time and then she just fell off the wagon. From our perspective, it’s because when she walked away from Trump, she walked away from the Republican Party,” the former official said.
However, some party strategists and members express concern that such rigidity could leave races in some parts of the country off the table.
O’Dea, the GOP Senate nominee in Colorado, has voiced repeated opposition to Trump and taken moderate stances on issues like abortion and healthcare. That tact has made the race against Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, in a blue-leaning state surprisingly competitive, while GOP gubernatorial nominee Heidi Ganahl, who early in her campaign flirted with election conspiracies, is anticipated to lose her challenge to Democratic Gov. Jared Polis by double digits.
“I do think that to Joe represents a kind of Republican that will need to be nominated in future elections if Republicans are ever going to come back,” said former Colorado GOP Chair Dick Wadhams. “Heidi got in trouble early on because she threw in with the election conspiracy crowd. She has been paying a price for that ever since.”
“If he pulls an upset, which I still think could happen, I think that there could be a lot of lessons drawn from Joe’s campaign in other states,” Wadhams said.
However, the label “moderate” is increasingly associated with the derogatory moniker “RINO,” or Republican in name only, Wadhams said, threatening ideologically moderate candidates like O’Dea in primaries and making it harder to ultimately win office.
“I think the traditional conservative or moderate labels don’t really apply in today’s Republican Party because I don’t think there’s an ideological difference on issues of the day. A conservative Republican and a moderate Republican are still going to be, nine times out of 10, about the same on every issue facing the country,” GOP pollster Robert Blizzard said.
That’s firmly shifting the ideological spectrum of lawmakers still in the party further to the right.
When asked who would be considered a moderate in today’s GOP, the former Trump administration official pointed to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
McConnell has a lifetime 87% rating from the American Conservative Union.
(ORLANDO, Fla.) — While a distinctive “H” tattooed on his neck may not stand for happiness, a fugitive on the run for a year was captured in the “Happiest Place on Earth,” according to authorities.
The wanted man, Quashon Burton, 32, of Brooklyn, New York, charged with scamming the government out of COVID-19 relief funds, was on a family vacation at Disney World when he caught the eye of another park visitor — the federal agent who signed his arrest warrant, officials said.
While strolling around the park’s Animal Kingdom, U.S. Postal inspector Jeff Andre spotted the familiar inked letter on Burton’s neck and alerted Disney World security and the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, who arrested Burton, according to the sheriff’s office.
Andre was involved in the investigation of Burton and had signed Burton’s arrest warrant, officials said.
The stroke of luck at the Orlando, Florida, park occurred on Oct. 20, according to the sheriff’s office. After Burton left the park, sheriff’s deputies confronted him at a bus stop with two family members and took him into custody when he allegedly tried to resist arrest and gave them a fake name, the sheriff’s office said.
Burton was charged last year with stealing the identities of at least four people to fraudulently obtain almost $150,000 in coronavirus relief loan applications, according to federal authorities.
An arrest warrant was issued for Burton last November after federal agents went to his home in Brooklyn several times and his mother told them he was not planning to surrender, officials said.
The Walt Disney Company is the parent company of ABC News.
(NEW YORK) — The Powerball jackpot has risen to an estimated $1.9 billion for Monday’s drawing after no ticket won the world-record pot on Saturday, Powerball said.
Monday’s drawing has a cash option of $929.1 million, the lottery said.
The winning Powerball numbers drawn Saturday night for the estimated $1.6 billion prize were 28, 45, 53, 56, 69 and the Powerball was 20. The Powerplay was 3X.
“Like the rest of America, and the world, I think we’re all eager to find out when this historic jackpot will eventually be won,” Drew Svitko, Powerball Product Group Chair and Pennsylvania Lottery Executive Director, said in a statement.
Powerball said 16 tickets, including three sold in California, two in Colorado and Pennsylvania and one each Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York and South Dakota, won $1 million by matching all five white balls.
The Powerball jackpot reached an estimated $1.6 billion on Friday, making it the largest jackpot ever, lottery officials said.
The record-setting jackpot has ballooned after 39 consecutive drawings yielded no grand prize winner, lottery officials said.
The Saturday drawing marked the 40th Powerball drawing since the jackpot was last won in Pennsylvania on Aug. 3. The cash value of Saturday’s jackpot would have been $782.4 million, according to the latest figures.
If a player’s ticket had matched all six numbers drawn on Saturday night, it would have been the largest jackpot won in U.S. lottery history — surpassing the previous world-record-setting $1.586 billion Powerball jackpot in 2016.
Monday’s drawing will tie the game record for the number of drawings in a row without a grand prize winner, Powerball said.
The jackpot grows based on game sales and interest. But the odds of winning the big prize stays the same — 1 in 292.2 million, Powerball said.
Jackpot winners can either take the money as an immediate cash lump sum or in 30 annual payments over 29 years. Both advertised prize options do not include federal and jurisdictional taxes, Powerball said.
Tickets cost $2 and are sold in 45 U.S. states as well as Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. More than half of all proceeds remain in the jurisdiction where the ticket was purchased, according to Powerball.
Powerball drawings are broadcast live every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday at 10:59 p.m. ET from the Florida Lottery draw studio in Tallahassee. The drawings are also livestreamed online at Powerball.com.
Ashley Chan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(KYIV, Ukraine) — When Andy Huynh watched the news of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, he started losing sleep. All he could think about was the struggle of the Ukrainian people against an aggressor he felt was violating their sovereignty and opening the world up to a third World War.
“All my personal problems didn’t feel important anymore … It felt wrong just to sit back and do nothing,” he said. “I had to go.”
The Alabama man was not alone. Two days after the invasion, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for “friends of Ukraine, freedom and democracy” to serve as volunteers in the Ukrainian military. More than 20,000 volunteers from 52 countries responded, many of whom had served in the U.S. Army, British Army, and, like Huynh, the U.S. Marine Corps, according to Ukrainian officials.
Their experience is credited by Zelenskyy for bolstering the war effort for Ukraine, especially since NATO countries have rejected sending ground troops in fears of starting their own conflict with Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in March that 16,000 volunteers from the Middle East would be joining his country’s fight.
Tanya Mehra, a senior research fellow at the International Centre for Counterterrorism at The Hague, said the mobilization of foreign fighters on battlefields dates to 1816 and they have played prominent roles in conflicts in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya and Somalia since the 1980s.
The evolution of foreign-born fighters has created distinct classes of fighters, from mercenaries who join conflicts primarily for financial gain, Mehra said, and others who are driven by ideological reasons. Mercenaries, she said, who are outsourced contractors for small governments, tend to be associated to “increases in violence and higher civilian casualties,” which can prolong the conflict, whereas foreign fighters become part of the state military, which makes them “accountable for the acts they have committed.”
Many of those foreign fighters serving in Ukraine tend to be older than your average soldier, and in a stage in their lives where they felt they could help through their years of experience.
John Harding, 59, joined the Ukrainian military in 2018, when the country was fighting Russian-backed separatists. As a professional combat medic who served in Syria, the British-born Harding put his experience to use on the battlefield. But he also found he was in demand as a trainer for other medics who had no idea how to apply first aid in a hostile combat environment
“Medics are notorious for getting themselves killed,” Harding said. “You may know how to apply a torniquet, but you also need to know how to apply a tourniquet while watching out for snipers.”
One American, who did not want to use his name because he is still fighting in Ukraine, said he joined the Ukrainian military in April because he felt “it is important for the world to stand up with the Ukrainians and resist aggression.” Having grown up in a military family and a U.S. Air Force veteran himself, the man took leave of his job in IT while living in central Europe to join the fight.
Today, he uses his background in engineering systems, cybersecurity and computer networks to operate drones in anti-tank and stinger missions. He said his squad was responsible for taking down a Mil Mi-28 Russian helicopter on July 18. The man said his homemade bombs and grenades are constructed using Coke cans and some of the 60 kilograms of TNT captured during an offensive in September. They take flight via off-the-shelf commercial drones.
The man said that the number of foreign fighters he encounters, the majority of whom were from the U.S., has decreased since the spring. The intensity of the fighting weeded away what he called the “TikTok warriors” who were not prepared for the danger, or length, of the missions. He remains fighting after seven months because of ideological reasons, but also because of the survivor’s guilt he felt when two men from his squad — Huynh and Alex Drueke, also from Alabama — were captured on June 9 following a firefight.
“I felt I lost my two brothers. They followed me to this unit. I felt very guilty,” he said. “Part of the reason I stayed this long is because of them.”
Huynh and Drueke, a U.S. Army veteran, spent 105 days in captivity, including a month in a Russian “black site,” where they endured daily torture. In late September they were released, along with eight other foreign-born volunteer fighters from England and Canada and more than 200 Ukrainian soldiers.
Harding was among those men released. He met Huynh and Drueke in a prison cell after having been captured in May when a Ukrainian unit he was with in Mariupol was forced to surrender. The torture he suffered has led to a diagnosis of permanent neurological damage to his hands, along with broken ribs and damage to his sternum. One aftereffect is “more psychological”: “I have mood swings which I don’t have control of,” he said.
He now lives close to family in Luton, a town in the southeast of England. The results of ongoing medical treatment will determine his ability to work.
“Would I do it again? Knowing what I know, probably not. Would I do it again if I didn’t know? Yes, I would,” he said. “The only thing I would have done different is I wouldn’t have surrendered. I would have fought to the very last round.”
Like Harding, Drueke and Hyunh also say they have no regrets. Back home in Alabama, they are adjusting to their former lives. Hyunh is engaged and will marry soon, while Drueke is contemplating his next career move. They have bonded, not just with one another, but with Harding and the other men in their unit who are either still in Ukraine or returned home. One day they hope to reunite, either in the U.S. or in England — or even Ukraine itself to help rebuild.
“Honestly, Ukraine has really surprised the world. We did not expect them to be that feisty, that strong, that determined,” said Drueke. “They are amazing people.”
(SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt) — Negotiators from around the world are gathering in Egypt this week for this year’s biggest international climate summit, called COP27.
The United Nations recently warned the world is far from its goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than before the industrial revolution, the goal set by the Paris Climate Agreement.
Current policies would lead to 2.8 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the century, according to the UN Emissions Gap Report, meaning countries need to reduce emissions significantly more to keep the Paris Agreement goal within reach. If every country and private company meets its climate goals, warming could be limited to 1.8 or 1.9 degrees Celsius, but there are still questions about whether enough is being done to make those goals a reality.
“Every degree does matter, 1.5 degrees is the scientific goal of a climate [that] remains stable. After that, things become exponentially more difficult,” Ani Dasgupta, president and CEO of the World Resources Institute, told ABC News.
“So it’s true, that argument the world won’t stop in 2030 if you did or didn’t reach 1.5, but it becomes that much more difficult and that much more risky for human life. So our goal is to be within that.”
Dasgupta said the pressure is more on the largest emitters like the US, Europe, China, and India to be more ambitious because they contribute far more greenhouse gas emissions.
President Joe Biden is scheduled to attend the summit in Egypt and is expected to tout his domestic policy wins on climate this year, including the infrastructure bill and Inflation Reduction Act which included historic amounts of money for clean energy and climate programs.
The meeting takes place with the backdrop of several climate-driven disasters this year, including the devastating flooding in Pakistan and severe drought and famine conditions in East Africa. The world is about 1.2 degrees Celsius higher than the pre-industrial average and experts said this year proves most countries are not prepared for even that amount of warming.
Dasgupta said many of these crises are not just weather disasters but they also bring huge economic impacts, which is one reason there will be so much focus on providing more finance for countries feeling the impacts of climate change.
“This particular year that we are ending, or almost ending, has been devastating in climate-related weather disasters, like a banner year,” he said.
“That is the context of what a 1.2-degree world looks like … so we’ve talked about 1.1, 1.2 [degrees] it always seemed like something you have to imagine. Literally this year you don’t have to imagine, you could just read the newspaper or watch television to see.”
Countries already experiencing dangerous and expensive impacts of climate change, like flooding or food and water insecurity, are expected to pressure wealthier countries like the U.S. to provide more funding to help them adapt or relocate.
This idea known as “loss and damage” financing suggests that countries that contributed emissions that have led to global warming should do more to help communities who contributed less to the problem, but are already feeling the impacts. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry said the U.S. is committed to “engaging constructively” to find a way to address the issue but the U.S. has not yet supported a proposal for a new fund for loss and damage.
Kerry, who will represent the US at the summit, says he still believes the world can meet its climate goals but there are still big political and financial challenges to getting it done. Kerry said the transition underway now is bigger than the industrial revolution and will result in a cleaner and more secure energy system.
“While many of us are chagrined it has taken so long for us to get to a place where more and more people are accepting what’s happening, we are there. And the only way to be able to organize ourselves and get the job done when you have 200 or so nations that are involved in this is to come together somewhere and work at it,” he said at a press briefing this week.
The COP27 begins in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt on Nov. 6 and is scheduled to conclude Nov. 18.
(PHILADELPHIA) — Nine people were wounded, two critically, when multiple gunmen fired a barrage of at least 40 shots at a crowd gathered on a sidewalk outside a Philadelphia bar Saturday night, authorities said.
The assailants fled the chaotic scene in the Kensington section of the city in a vehicle and remained at large Sunday morning.
Asked at a news conference whether the gunmen posed a threat to the community, Deputy Commissioner John Stanford noted the number injured and shell casings littering the street outside Jack’s Famous Bar and said, “I think that’s a public safety threat.”
The shooting unfolded around 10:45 p.m. as the neighborhood was bustling with more people than usual out enjoying an unseasonably warm November night, Stanford said.
He said a group was mingling on the sidewalk outside the bar when multiple gunmen exited a black vehicle sitting in the middle of East Allegheny Avenue, near Kensington Avenue, and opened fire on the crowd without warning.
“At this point in time, it just looks like these individuals may have spotted someone they wanted to shoot at, exited the vehicle and just began firing,” Stanford said, adding investigators don’t yet know who was targeted or a motive for the attack.
Stanford said the shooting occurred despite a heavy police presence already in the area. He said officers walking a beat heard the gunfire and rushed to help the men and women injured as the shooters ran back to the dark vehicle and fled. He also noted that a narcotics task force was conducting an investigation a half-block from where the shooting occurred.
“We have some brazen individuals in this city that don’t care. They don’t care how many police officers are out here and some don’t care in terms of how many people are out here,” Stanford said.
He said investigators recovered at least 40 pieces of ballistic evidence from the scene and plan to comb through surveillance video from businesses in the area in hopes of identifying the assailants.
He said seven of the victims were in stable condition and two were critical.
The shooting came amid 5% drops in both homicides and aggravated gun assaults in Philadelphia in the first 10 months of this year, compared to the same time period in 2021, according to the lasted police department crime statistics. Philadelphia surpassed its annual homicide record in 2021, recording of 562 slayings.
ABC News’ Victoria Arancio contributed to this story.
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(NEW YORK) — When the FBI alerted New Jersey synagogues to a “broad threat” against their houses of worship, Jewish community centers and synagogues across the country heeded the warning.
On the other side of the nation, Los Angeles areas worked with law enforcement to send extra patrols to their synagogues, though there was no known threat to the community at the time.
“We know that hate speech often leads to acts of hate and violence and are very concerned by the growing amount of antisemitic rhetoric,” Rabbi Noah Farkas, president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, told ABC News. “We are committed to fighting this rising scourge locally and globally and know that in the end, there is more that unites us than divides us.”
The threat follows antisemitic rhetoric from celebrities like Kanye West and Kyrie Irving, as well as the ongoing hate speech promoted by white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups online.
As antisemitism and other forms of hate continue to spotlight discrimination in the U.S., some researchers say addressing hate and extremism needs to be a priority.
Preventing hate should also be community-based, researchers say
Researchers from Harvard University recently found an important detail in how hate and prejudice manifest in different communities.
Based on hate crime data from the FBI for 20 years, researchers found that when a marginalized group grew in size relative to another group in a community, it was more likely to be the target of discrimination.
When different neighborhoods, cities and regions have different demographics, it can affect what marginalized groups are receiving hate and how they’re receiving it, experts say. This insight could help policy makers address the specific needs, and tailor messaging to what’s being seen in their community.
“Effects seem to be really local,” said Mina Cikara, associate professor of psychology at Harvard University, to ABC News. “While we do have countrywide statistics on which groups are most likely to be targeted … The people you think are most likely to get victimized may not actually be the people who are.”
Standing up for community
Researchers also called on communities to form local, interfaith and multicultural forces, coalitions and strategies to fight back against hate.
Activists found that comradery between neighbors in the aftermath of past bias incidents may have deterred more hate incidents through sheer support. Filmmaker Patrice O’Neill created the advocacy group Not In Our Town after documenting the growth of hate groups in Billings, Montana, in the early 1990s.
The town became a symbol for community togetherness – and the Billings Coalition for Human Rights was born.
When neighbors banded together with victims of racist and antisemitic violence, they found it as an effective tactic in reducing hate incidents.
“The town started learning what can happen if they work together,” said O’Neill to ABC News. “People in the community started seeing what could happen if they could work together so that when there was an attack on Black church members, other denominations showed up and the attacks stopped.”
She continued, “When a Native American woman’s home is plastered with racist graffiti, 30 members of the painters union showed up to painted over it and 100 neighbors were there to watch.”
Targeting radicalization online
According to Susan Corke, the director of legal advocacy organization Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, researchers say the internet can be a dangerous rabbit hole for people vulnerable to radicalization.
Conspiracies, misinformation, disinformation – research has shown that in 2016, social media played a role in the radicalization process of nearly 90% of extremists in the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.
The ease in which hate can move through social media was highlighted when Brooklyn Nets star Irving tweeted a link to a film that critics say promotes antisemitic tropes to his millions of followers. He later stated that he meant no harm by it.
“A number of these far-right actors are enriching themselves online,” Corke said to ABC News. “The impact of that has been that group affiliation is less important, there is this wider spread and embrace of conspiratorial violent ideology and rhetoric, and that’s very mainstreamed within the Republican Party.”
The SPLC has focused its efforts on youth – creating guides to understanding how youth is radicalized and how to prevent or fight against it.
These guides discuss media literacy opportunities children can learn from, talking about the news in age-appropriate ways, and how to speak to children and help them navigate away from extremist online materials, and more.
“What we found is that people don’t need a huge amount of tools or background than just reading the guide for seven minutes,” said Corke. “More than 80% of parents and caregivers felt better equipped to entertain, intervene and engage with young people for becoming susceptible to manipulative hate-fueled violence.”
Similar educational opportunities and campaigns for people of all ages can better prepare the general public against bad-faith actors of extremist hate, Corke said.
The SPLC found that focusing on community investment and prevention may be more important than investing solely in a law enforcement-forward approach, which is more of a reactionary tactic to hate crimes and bias incidents.
(PHOENIX) — A campaign staffer for Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor in Arizona, allegedly opened an envelope holding a suspicious white substance delivered to Lake’s campaign headquarters in Phoenix, her campaign told ABC News.
“Yesterday, a member of the Kari Lake staff opened an envelope delivered to our campaign office that contained suspicious white powder. It was one of two envelopes that were confiscated by law enforcement and sent to professionals at Quantico for examination, and we are awaiting details,” Lake campaign spokesperson Colton Duncan told ABC News in a statement. He added that the staff member is currently under medical supervision.
“Officers responded to a found property call at an office building near 40th St. and Camelback Road,” Sgt. Phil Krynsky of the Phoenix Police Department told ABC News on Sunday. “When officers arrived, they learned there were suspicious items located inside the mail. Additional resources responded to collect the items and secure the area. There have been no reports of injury and the investigation remains active.”
Krynsky told ABC News the additional resources who responded to the incident with Phoenix PD’s were their hazmat team, Bomb Squad and the FBI.
“Early this morning, Sunday, November 6th, the FBI, along with our local law enforcement partners, responded to a report of suspicious letters at an office building near 40th Street and Camelback Road,” the FBI National Press Office said in a statement. “No further information will be released at this time.”
Duncan, noting that Lake’s campaign headquarters remains under active investigation – and therefore shut for staffers’ use just two days out from the 2022 midterm elections – said: “We look forward to law enforcement completing their investigation as quickly as possible.”
“Rest assured, we are taking this security threat incredibly seriously and we are thankful for the Phoenix PD, FBI, first responders, bomb squad, and hazmat crews that responded to this incident,” he added. “In the meantime, know that our resolve has never been higher and we cannot be intimidated. We continue to push full speed ahead to win this election on Tuesday.”
The incident occurred less than a week after a man allegedly broke into Lake’s opponent, Democratic candidate for governor Katie Hobbs’ campaign headquarters.
Lake mocked the burglary, dubbing it “Jussie Smollett part two.”
A tweet from Lake campaign’s War Room on Sunday following the incident with the suspicious substance, questioned if the press would “immediately accuse our opponent of being responsible for this like they did to us over@katiehobbsWaterGate?”
Hobbs —- who is also Arizona’s current secretary of state— condemned Lake’s rhetoric in a statement confirming the break-in, which ultimately had no ties to the Lake campaign.
“The reported incident at Kari Lake’s campaign office is incredibly concerning and I am thankful that she and her staff were not harmed,” Hobbs said in a statement to ABC News on Sunday. “Political violence, threats, or intimidation have no place in our democracy. I strongly condemn this threatening behavior directed at Lake and her staff.”
Lake was at a rally with the GOP ticket Saturday evening after making bus tour stops earlier in the day. On stage there, she mentioned previously having her car tires slashed.
“You know that we crisscross the state. We’ve gone through tires, so many tires. We’ve had to change our tires on the car. We’ve actually had our tire slashed a few times, probably by, you know, people who’ve been brainwashed by the left. We have had all kinds of crazy things happen on the campaign trail,” she said.
