Trump Will Not Apologize for Calling for Death Penalty Over Central Park Five (2019)
www.nytimes.com

... Mr. Trump's remarks about the Central Park Five were strikingly similar to comments he made in reaction to the deadly violence at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. A woman was killed after a driver slammed his vehicle into counterprotesters. At the time, the president said, "There was blame on both sides."

In 1989, Mr. Trump placed full-page advertisements in four New York City newspapers, including The New York Times, calling for the state to adopt the death penalty for killers. He made clear that he was voicing this opinion because of the rape and assault of Trisha Meili, a woman who had been jogging in Central Park.

"I want to hate these murderers and I always will," Mr. Trump wrote in the May 1989 ad. "I am not looking to psychoanalyze or understand them, I am looking to punish them."

He wrote in all caps: "Bring back the death penalty and bring back our police!" ...

So, a distinction without a difference?

Navajo Code Talkers - World War II Fact Sheet
www.history.navy.mil

... Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Peleliu, Iwo Jima: the Navajo code talkers took part in every assault the U.S. Marines conducted in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945. They served in all six Marine divisions, Marine Raider battalions and Marine parachute units, transmitting messages by telephone and radio in their native language a code that the Japanese never broke.

The idea to use Navajo for secure communications came from Philip Johnston, the son of a missionary to the Navajos and one of the few non-Navajos who spoke their language fluently. Johnston, reared on the Navajo reservation, was a World War I veteran who knew of the military's search for a code that would withstand all attempts to decipher it. He also knew that Native American languages notably Choctaw had been used in World War I to encode messages.

Johnston believed Navajo answered the military requirement for an undecipherable code because Navajo is an unwritten language of extreme complexity. Its syntax and tonal qualities, not to mention dialects, make it unintelligible to anyone without extensive exposure and training. It has no alphabet or symbols, and is spoken only on the Navajo lands of the American Southwest. One estimate indicates that less than 30 non-Navajos, none of them Japanese, could understand the language at the outbreak of World War II.

Early in 1942, Johnston met with Major General Clayton B. Vogel, the commanding general of Amphibious Corps, Pacific Fleet, and his staff to convince them of the Navajo language's value as code. Johnston staged tests under simulated combat conditions, demonstrating that Navajos could encode, transmit, and decode a three-line English message in 20 seconds. Machines of the time required 30 minutes to perform the same job. Convinced, Vogel recommended to the Commandant of the Marine Corps that the Marines recruit 200 Navajos.

In May 1942, the first 29 Navajo recruits attended boot camp. Then, at Camp Pendleton, Oceanside, California, this first group created the Navajo code. They developed a dictionary and numerous words for military terms. The dictionary and all code words had to be memorized during training.

Once a Navajo code talker completed his training, he was sent to a Marine unit deployed in the Pacific theater. The code talkers' primary job was to talk, transmitting information on tactics and troop movements, orders and other vital battlefield communications over telephones and radios. They also acted as messengers, and performed general Marine duties.

Praise for their skill, speed and accuracy accrued throughout the war. At Iwo Jima, Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division signal officer, declared, "Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima." Connor had six Navajo code talkers working around the clock during the first two days of the battle.

Those six sent and received over 800 messages, all without error. ...

Mitch's private tears and sweet college revenge
www.axios.com

... Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is known for his stoic public face. But in private, he cried tears of joy when he broke a record he long chased: Longest-serving Senate party leader.

Why it matters: McConnell's teary moment is one of several revealing scenes unearthed by Michael Tackett in his new McConnell biography. "The Price of Power," out later this month ...

Exonerated Central Park 5' member Yusef Salaam wins New York City Council seat (November 2023)
www.pbs.org

... Exonerated "Central Park Five" member Yusef Salaam won a seat Tuesday on the New York City Council, marking a stunning reversal of fortune for a political newcomer who was wrongly imprisoned as a teenager in the infamous rape case. ...

'They admitted their guilt': 30 years of Trump's comments about the Central Park Five (2019)
www.usatoday.com

... President Donald Trump has repeatedly commented on a case that wrongly accused a group of black and Latino men of assaulting a white female jogger in Central Park in 1989.

Trump's comments surrounding the case, many of which were made in his capacity as a New York business mogul, have resurfaced following a Netflix series on the men who were charged with the assault. The men are commonly referred to as the Central Park Five.

Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam and Korey Wise were all boys when they were convicted of raping Trisha Meili. They were then found innocent of the crime after convicted murder Matias Reyes in 2002 confessed to raping Meili, which was confirmed by DNA evidence. The city awarded the men $41 million in 2014, a decade after some of the men initially sued the city for how it handled the case.

Trump, now president, has doubled down on his stance that some involved in the attack were guilty.

On Tuesday, he dodged questions about apologizing for a 1989 ad calling for the death penalty for those involved in an assault.

'You have people on both sides of that':Trump doesn't apologize to Central Park Five

Here is a history of Trump's comments and actions surrounding the Central Park jogger case:...

"Maybe hate is what we need if we're gonna get something done" ...

The men who had since been exonerated for the crime were in an ongoing legal battle with New York City for how they handled the case. Richardson, Santana, and McCray sued the city in 2003. ...

Trump in a June 5, 2013 tweet referred to the Central Park Five as "muggers."

When asked by a Twitter user how Trump felt that the five men who were convicted of the crime were actually innocent, Trump in a tweet on June 29, 2013 responded: "Innocent of what-how many people did they mugg?" ...

"It's a disgrace"

After the city awarded the five men $41 million in a settlement, Trump maintained that the men " who were young teenagers when convicted " were still guilty.

Trump in an op-ed published in the New York Daily News suggested that "settling doesn't mean innocence."

"My opinion on the settlement of the Central Park Jogger case is that it's a disgrace," Trump began his op-ed. "A detective close to the case, and who has followed it since 1989, calls it "the heist of the century."

"Forty million dollars is a lot of money for the taxpayers of New York to pay when we are already the highest taxed city and state in the country," he continued in the op-ed. "The recipients must be laughing out loud at the stupidity of the city." ...

Elon Musk's PAC Is Paying $47 For Each Solicited Petition Signature From A Swing State Voter -- Here's Why It's Controversial
www.forbes.com

... Is It Legal To Pay Someone To Recruit Petition Signatures?

Yes. It is legal to compensate signature gatherers, or circulators, who collect petition signatures, though the exact laws vary by state. Some states, like Arizona, Florida and Utah, have made it illegal for campaigns or other employers to pay based on the number of signatures gathered"known as pay-per-signature compensation"but it is almost always legal to pay by the hour for time spent soliciting signatories. The America PAC is based in Texas, where there are no specific laws about pay-per-signature compensation. ...

Is It Legal To Pay Someone To Register To Vote?

No. Federal law prohibits anyone from paying or offering to pay someone to vote or register to vote, but, like paying petition circulators, it is legal to pay people to encourage others to do so. The America PAC, for instance, pays $30 per hour to people working to increase voter turnout. Earlier this year, the Biden Administration said it would pay college students to help register voters through the Federal Work-Study Program. ...

Trump calls Schiff and Pelosi enemy from within' even after allies defend past comments
abc17news.com

... Donald Trump called Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi each "an enemy from within," even as the former president's Republican allies attempt to argue that his previous comments labeling political opponents as such are being misinterpreted.

"These are bad people. We have a lot of bad people. But when you look at Shifty Schiff' and some of the others, yeah, they are, to me, the enemy from within," Trump said in an interview on Fox News' "MediaBuzz" that aired Sunday.

Trump also called Pelosi an "enemy from within," falsely claiming the then-speaker of the House had the opportunity to protect the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. ...

Trump, in a separate interview on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures" last week, had suggested using the military to handle what he called "the enemy from within" on Election Day. "I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within, not even the people that have come in and destroying our country." ...

The 2010 Supreme Court decision further tilted political influence toward wealthy donors and corporations. (2019)
www.brennancenter.org

... January 21, 2020 will mark a decade since the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a controversial decision that reversed century-old campaign finance restrictions and enabled corporations and other outside groups to spend unlimited funds on elections.

While wealthy donors, corporations, and special interest groups have long had an outsized influence in elections, that sway has dramatically expanded since the Citizens United decision, with negative repercussions for American democracy and the fight against political corruption. ...