A Missouri teenager who was brutally beaten in what officials called a “deranged display of violence” by another teen is out of the intensive care unit but has limited speech and trouble walking on her own, an attorney for the family said.
Kaylee Gain has been hospitalized since a March 8 fight near Hazelwood East High School in St. Louis that was captured in a viral social media video.
The footage shows several people brawling in the street near the intersection of Norgate and Claudine drives, the St. Louis County Police Department said in a March 11 Facebook post.
Kaylee Gain.Courtesy Bryan Kaemmerer
One person is seen repeatedly punching Gain and slamming her head to the ground. A 15-year-old girl was arrested a day after the fight on assault charges, authorities said.
Police said the victim was found “suffering a severe head injury” and was taken to the hospital in critical condition.
In an update Friday, an attorney for Gain’s family said she was out of the intensive care unit and “has been able to engage in limited verbal conversations.”
“Kaylee also recently began speech therapy, and has gone on a few short walks with the assistance of hospital staff as she is still unable to ambulate on her own,” attorney Bryan Kaemmerer said. “However, Kaylee does not have any recollection of the altercation that led to her hospitalization.”
Kaemmerer addressed several social media rumors about the altercation, denying reports that Gain’s mother drove her to the location of the fight.
He said Gain’s mother was at work and was driven to the hospital by a co-worker after police informed her of what happened.
The attorney, however, did confirm reports that Gain had been involved in a fight on March 7 with a different teenager. Both girls were suspended after that incident, Kaemmerer said.
He said it was unclear whether the March 8 brawl was retaliation.
Gain’s parents are calling for the 15-year-old to be tried as an adult. Kaemmerer said in his statement that “the family believes trying the accused as an adult is the most appropriate way to provide the justice that Kaylee deserves.”
Authorities have not said if the 15-year-old would be tried as an adult.
St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell said in a post on X that the fight was “sickening” and the video was “difficult to watch.”
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey called the actions in the video a “deranged display of violence that must be punished to the full extent of the law.”
On Thursday, police announced that eight more teenagers were referred to St. Louis County Family Court for consideration of assault charges, NBC affiliate KSDK of St. Louis reported. They include a 17-year-old girl, a 17-year-old boy, two 16-year-old girls, three 16-year-old boys, and one 14-year-old girl. None of the teens have been taken into custody.
Breaking down Trump’s free speech claims in Georgia election case – CBS News
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A judge in the Georgia 2020 election case heard arguments Thursday over whether former President Donald Trump’s First Amendment rights shield him from prosecution. CBS News campaign reporter Katrina Kaufman joins “America Decides” with key takeaways.
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As the U.S. 2024 presidential election gets underway, social media companies are caught in an unenviable position: trying to stop the spread of misinformation while also facing more and more allegations of censorship.
Claims of censorship online have, in some cases, stymied efforts to combat false election news shared online. The problem is not unique to the U.S.: high-stake elections are being held in dozens of countries around the world this year and some worry that misinformation could influence the results.
“Half of the world is voting this year and the world could stick with democracy or move toward authoritarianism,” Darrell West, a senior fellow of technology innovation at the Brookings Institution, said. “The danger is, disinformation could decide the elections in a number of different countries.”
How combating misinformation online has changed in recent years
Academic researchers began working closely with social media platforms after evidence surfaced of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Big tech companies have wrestled with keeping false and harmful information off their platforms for years. They’ve suspended and banned accounts. The companies have removed or labeled posts deemed “misinformation,” sometimes adding warnings.
Darrell West, a senior fellow of technology innovation at the Brookings Institution
60 Minutes
Fighting misinformation became a key tenet of the internet as the COVID-19 pandemic began. Robert Kennedy Jr. was temporarily banned from Instagram after posting false coronavirus vaccine claims. Over on Twitter, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was suspended after she claimed COVID vaccines and masks didn’t work.
Misinformation continued to spread online during the 2020 election.
“We were very specifically looking at misinformation about election processes, procedures and election results,” said Kate Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington and a leader of the Election Integrity Partnership, a group she helped launch in 2020. “If we saw something about that, we would pass it along to the platforms if we thought it violated one of their policies.”
Researchers flagged a November 2020 tweet saying that election software in Michigan switched 6,000 votes from Trump to Biden. Twitter labeled the post with a warning.
Starbird said her research has found that more misinformation is spread by conservatives.
“Not just our research, research across the board looking at the 2020 election found that there was more misinformation spread by people that were supporters of Donald Trump or conservatives,” Starbird said. “And the events of January 6th kind of underscore this.”
Kate Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington and head of the Center for an Informed Public
60 Minutes
But some researchers like Starbird, who says she received a death threat for her work on misinformation, have stopped communicating with social media platforms.
Confronted with criticism from conservatives, who claim their views were being censored, and because of cost-cutting, social media platforms began downsizing their fact-checking teams.
Why some in Congress say combating misinformation is stifling freedom of speech
House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio, argues that tech companies shouldn’t remove most of what they call misinformation.
“I think you let the American people, respect the American people, their common sense, to figure out what’s accurate, what isn’t,” Jordan said in an interview.
While Jordan acknowledges there is misinformation online, he sees a bigger problem in what he views as an attack on First Amendment liberties. His committee last year produced a report that concluded there was a “censorship industrial complex” where the federal government and tech companies colluded with academic researchers to disproportionately silence conservatives — an allegation that Starbird vigorously denies.
Jordan said her group has unfairly flagged posts, such as one by Newt Gingrich, who in 2020 tweeted: “Pennsylvania democrats are methodically changing the rules so they can steal the election.”
Jordan also complains that government officials put pressure on social media companies directly.
Rep. Jim Jordan
60 Minutes
“You can’t have the government say, ‘Hey, we want you to do X,'” Jordan said. “Government who has the ability to regulate these private companies, government which has the ability to tax these private companies.”
Katie Harbath, who spent a decade at Facebook working on the company’s policies around election misinformation, said the platforms have their own First Amendment rights.
She said that while she was at Facebook, it was not unusual for the government to ask the company to remove content, something she said was appropriate as long as the government is not coercing.
“Conservatives are alleging that the platforms were taking down content at the behest of the government, which is not true,” Harbath said. “The platforms made their own decisions.”
Many times, the companies pushed back. In 2019, a doctored video of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was posted online, slowed down to make it seem as if she was slurring. The video stayed up because it didn’t violate Facebook’s policies, Harbath said.
“She was definitely not pleased,” Harbath said of Pelosi.
Court battles over misinformation, free speech online-
The conservatives’ campaign faced a setback at the Supreme Court on Monday when a majority of the justices seemed poised to reject their effort to limit attempts by the government to influence social media.
In other cases, the court will look at laws passed in Texas and Florida to determine whether tech companies are like news organizations —with a First Amendment right to control who and what information appears on their sites— or like telephone companies, entities merely transmitting speech.
If those state laws are upheld, the platforms could be forced to carry hate speech and false medical information, some warn. West, the senior fellow of technology innovation at the Brookings Institution, said the clash over what’s true is fraying our institutions and threatening democracies around the world.
“The toothpaste is out of the tube and we have to figure out how to deal with the resulting mess,” West said.
Lesley Stahl
One of America’s most recognized and experienced broadcast journalists, Lesley Stahl has been a “60 Minutes” correspondent since 1991.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was met with jeers from the crowd while delivering remarks in his home state at the annual “Fancy Farm Picnic” on Saturday.
In widely-circulated video clips on social media, the crowd is heard chanting boos,” “retire” and “lost the Senate” as McConnell, who has long been criticized by his party’s right wing but that has grown since his criticism of former President Donald Trump, said that he and his wife, Elaine, are “excited to be back” at the event featuring Democratic and Republican speakers.
“My friends, I’ll be honest, it’s not hard for Republicans to look good these days,” McConnell said amid audible boos from the crowd.
McConnell did not acknowledge the jeers from the crowd throughout his speech. He criticized Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who sat behind him during his remarks and is up for re-election this year, for Covid-19 restrictions.
McConnell’s office did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment.
Trump, whom McConnell fell out with after he condemned the then-president after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, mocked the GOP leader in a Truth Social post on Monday.
“I AGREE!,” Trump, a Republican presidential candidate wrote.
“BOOOOO—RETIRE, RETIRE, RETIRE—BOOOOO!!!”
McConnell spoke at the annual event amid intensified concerns over his health. He appeared to freeze for 19 seconds during a weekly Republican leadership news conference last month, went silent and was walked away by Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, a top McConnell deputy.
He walked back to the news conference a few minutes later. Asked about his health, he said he was fine. Asked whether he can do his job, he said: “Yeah.” His office said he felt lightheaded and stepped away briefly.
McConnell swiftly sought to tamp down speculation about his future and vowed to serve his full term as Republican leader after the health incident. His two-year term as Senate GOP leader ends in early January 2025. He became the longest-serving Senate party leader in U.S. history earlier this year.
The health incident added to a series of others this year, which began in March when he was hospitalized with a concussion and a minor rib fracture and was discharged days later before he entered rehab. He didn’t return to the Senate, however, until mid-April. Earlier this month, he tripped and fell at a Washington, D.C., airport, NBC News reported. He was not seriously injured.
Summer Concepcion
Summer Concepcion is a politics reporter for NBC News.
The UK foreign secretary has accused Russia of hitting “a new low” by “deliberately burning food stocks” while millions of people are “struggling to eat”.
James Cleverly is visiting Africa, as part of a mission to combat the growing influence of Russia and China.
In a speech in Lagos, Nigeria, he set out the UK’s “vision” for partnerships with African countries.
It follows last week’s military coup in neighbouring Niger.
Mr Cleverly, whose mother was born in Sierra Leone, said he was “proud” of his roots and of the UK’s contribution to the history of Africa.
“As the UK’s foreign secretary I’m not allowed to have a favourite continent. But if I did, it would be Africa,” he said.
Russian flags
Niger’s President Mohamed Bazoum – an ally of the West – was deposed in last week’s military coup.
Some supporters of the coup were reportedly waving Russian flags.
The UK government has criticised what it calls an attempt to “undermine stability and democracy” in Niger and has advised against all travel there.
The Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, who chairs the Economic Community of West African States, has also condemned the military takeover.
In his speech in Lagos, Mr Cleverly said the UK shared democratic values with Nigeria, adding that Russia’s invasion of of Ukraine was an attack on those values.
He said: “This month Russia has hit a new low. We are witnessing the grotesque spectacle of a G20 nation, deliberately burning food stocks whilst there are millions of people around the world struggling to eat.”
James Cleverly’s tour follows a Russia-Africa summit in St Petersburg last week, hosted by President Putin, in which he promised to provide some African countries with free grain.
Training with UK forces
The Russian private military group, Wagner, has an increasing presence in Africa and has welcomed the Niger coup.
The Foreign Affairs Committee criticised the government last week for under-playing Wagner’s activities and called for a “genuinely compelling alternative” for countries in need of security partnerships.
In an interview with the Financial Times before the trip, James Cleverley said he would “look with seriousness” at any requests from African leaders “to work on capacity building and training with the British armed forces”.
James Cleverly told the FT some countries had turned to Wagner to meet an “unfulfilled need”.
During his tour, Mr Cleverly is announcing a package of financial support to help Nigeria develop crops with increased tolerance to heat and floods.
According to the World Bank Nigeria is one of the 10 countries most vulnerable to the impact of climate change due to “more intense and untimely” rainfall – with many Nigerians living in “fear and despair”.
More than 600 people were killed and at least a million displaced in Nigeria last year following the worst flooding in a decade, which also washed crops away.
Nigeria is accustomed to temperatures of 40 degrees although the forecast for the capital Abuja during the Foreign Secretary’s visit is for thundery showers and a high of 29 degrees.
X Corp., the parent company of the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, filed a lawsuit in San Francisco federal court Monday against a nonprofit organization that monitors hate speech and disinformation, following through on a threat that had made headlines hours earlier.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accuses the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) of orchestrating a “scare campaign to drive away advertisers from the X platform” by publishing research reports claiming that the social media service failed to take action against hateful posts. The service is owned by the technology mogul Elon Musk.
In the filing, lawyers for X. Corp alleged that the CCDH carried out “a series of unlawful acts designed to improperly gain access to protected X Corp. data, needed by CCDH so that it could cherry-pick from the hundreds of millions of posts made each day on X and falsely claim it had statistical support showing the platform is overwhelmed with harmful content.”
The complaint specifically accuses the nonprofit group of breach of contract, violating federal computer fraud law, intentional interference with contractual relations and inducing breach of contract. The company’s lawyers made a demand for a jury trial.
The lawsuit was filed just hours after the CCDH revealed that Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, had sent the organization a letter on July 20 saying X Corp. was investigating whether the CCDH’s “false and misleading claims about Twitter” were actionable under federal law.
In a statement to NBC News, CCDH founder and chief executive Imran Ahmed took direct aim at Musk, arguing that the Tesla and SpaceX tycoon’s “latest legal threat is straight out of the authoritarian playbook — he is now showing he will stop at nothing to silence anyone who criticizes him for his own decisions and actions.”
“The Center for Countering Digital Hate’s research shows that hate and disinformation is spreading like wildfire on the platform under Musk’s ownership and this lawsuit is a direct attempt to silence those efforts,” Ahmed added in part. “Musk is trying to ‘shoot the messenger’ who highlights the toxic content on his platform rather than deal with the toxic environment he’s created.
“The CCDH’s independent research won’t stop — Musk will not bully us into silence,” Ahmed said in closing.
The research report that drew particular ire from X Corp. claimed that the platform had failed to take action against 99% of 100 posts flagged by CCDH staff members that included racist, homophobic and antisemitic content.
Musk has drawn fierce scrutiny since buying Twitter last year. Top hate speech watchdog groups and activists have blasted him for loosening restrictions on what can be posted on the platform, and business analysts have raised eyebrows at his seemingly erratic and impulsive decision-making.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate’s research has been cited by NBC News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and many other news outlets.
Musk, who has been criticized for posting conspiratorial or inflammatory content on his own account, has said he is acting in the interest of “free speech.” He has said he wants to transform Twitter into a “digital town square.”
Musk has also claimed that hate speech on the platform was shrinking. In a tweet on Nov. 23, Musk wrote that “hate speech impressions” were down by one-third and posted a graph — apparently drawn from internal data — showing a downward trend.
X Corp., the parent company of the social media app formerly known as Twitter, sent a letter this month to a nonprofit organization that researches digital hate speech and misinformation, accusing the group of making a “series of troubling and baseless claims that appear calculated to harm Twitter generally, and its digital advertising business specifically.”
The Center for Countering Digital Hate uploaded screenshots of the letter to its website Monday under the heading, “Musk threatens CCDH with brazen attempt to silence honest criticism.” In the three-page letter, dated July 20, Musk’s lawyer described the organization’s research as “false, misleading, or both” and argued that its methodologies were flawed.
Elon Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, cited one research report claiming that Twitter had failed to take action against 99% of the 100 posts flagged by CCDH staff members for “tweeting hate,” including racist, homophobic and antisemitic content. Twitter Blue is the name of the subscription program for users who pay a monthly fee in exchange for account verification and other perks.
Spiro said the company was investigating whether the CCDH’s “false and misleading claims about Twitter” were actionable under federal law. “Please be advised that Twitter will employ any and all legal tools at its disposal to prevent false or misleading claims from harming its users, platform, or business,” Spiro said in closing.
In a response to Spiro, a lawyer for the CCDH defended the organization’s research and blasted his assertions as “ridiculous.”
“Your clients, of course, are free to pursue litigation if they choose to do so,” Roberta A. Kaplan said in a letter to Spiro on Monday, which was also uploaded to the CCDH’s website. “But they should be mindful of the risks involved in bringing frivolous claims to intimidate thoughtful critics and stifle legitimate commentary on issues of clear public interest.”
In a statement that accompanied the letters, the CCDH said, “Elon Musk’s actions represent a brazen attempt to silence honest criticism and independent research in the desperate hope that he can stem the tide of negative stories and rebuild his relationship with advertisers.”
The media relations team at X.com did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment Monday.
Musk has drawn intense scrutiny since purchasing Twitter last year. Hate speech watchdog groups and activist organizations have excoriated him for loosening restrictions on what can be said on the platform, and business analysts have raised eyebrows at his seemingly erratic and impulsive decision-making.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate has been cited by NBC News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and many other news outlets.
The tech mogul, who has been criticized for posting conspiratorial or inflammatory content on his own account, has said he is acting in the interest of “free speech.” He has said he wants to transform Twitter into a “digital town square.”
Musk has also claimed that hate speech on the platform was shrinking. In a tweet on Nov. 23, Musk wrote that “hate speech impressions” were down by one-third and posted a graph — apparently drawn from internal data — showing a downward trend.
In a statement Monday, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who is running for U.S. Senate, said that “Twitter has become a megaphone for antisemitism and anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech” since Musk took over the service.
“Notwithstanding his claims about content moderation and free speech, Musk has done nothing to stop the hate, but instead has focused on silencing critics,” Schiff said. “Now, he’s trying to use his lawyers to go after a nonprofit organization for holding him to account.”
“The Center for Countering Digital Hate continues to do important work exposing the hate and disinformation proliferating on the platform,” Schiff added. “Instead of attacking them, he should be attacking the increasingly disturbing content on Twitter.”
