The line of track that brought Green Line service into Somerville opened in late March, 32 years after the state promised to extend the service. Customers will have access to free shuttle buses during the closure. Service will resume on Sept. 19, the MBTA said.
The opening of the Medford branch of the Green Line extension has also been beset by repeated delays. It was slated to begin carrying passengers in December, then May, then this summer. Test trains began operating on the new branch on May 14, the MBTA has said. The MBTA didn’t specify the date in late November that it expects the service to be available.
The Medford branch includes five stations: College Avenue, Ball Square, Magoun Square, Gilman Square, and East Somerville.
Since a Green Line collision in July 2021, the T has experienced a litany of troubles: An escalator malfunctioned at Back Bay Station causing a bloody pileup and injuring nine people, a commuter rail train killed a woman in her car after a crossing signal in Wilmington malfunctioned, another two Green Line trains crashed and derailed injuring four people, and a man was dragged to his death by a Red Line train at Broadway Station after his arm got caught in a subway door.
The death brought intense scrutiny from federal transit safety regulators who began a nearly unprecedented inspection of the subway system in mid-April. The Federal Transit Administration is expected to release its final report about the T this month.
In June, the FTA said it found that the MBTA didn’t have enough dispatchers to safely operate its subway, so the agency cut service on the Orange, Blue, and Red lines by more than 20 percent. Federal inspectors also said the T needed to fix and upgrade large swaths of its subway tracks.
Material from previous Globe stories was used in this report.
A 42-year-old man was arrested Friday in connection with the four homicides early Thursday morning in Laurel, Nebraska, according to the state patrol. Crime scene investigators found evidence that linked Jason Jones, a Laurel resident, to the homicides. After attempts for Jones to exit the home voluntarily, the Nebraska State Patrol SWAT Team entered the home and found Jones with severe burn injuries, according to law enforcement. NSP said he was airlifted to a Lincoln hospital and is in serious condition as of Friday morning. The Nebraska State Patrol also believes gunfire played a role in the deaths at two separate homes in the northeast Nebraska town. Around 3 am, the Cedar County Sheriff’s Office responded to a call about an explosion at a residence in Laurel and fire teams found a person dead inside the home, according to the Nebraska State Patrol. The victim at the first residence was identified as 53- year-old Michele Ebeling, according to the Nebraska State Patrol. As investigators arrived at the scene, a second fire was reported a few blocks away, authorities said. Three people were found dead in the second residence and fire crews worked to preserve evidence while putting out the fire, the state patrol said. The three victims at the second residence were identified as 86-year-old Gene Twiford, 85-year-old Janet Twiford and 55-year-old Dana Twiford. Fire investigators believe that accelerants may have been used in each of the fires, according to authorities. Officials are waiting on autopsies for the cause of death. The Nebraska State Patrol said there is no danger to the Laurel community as a result of the arrest.
LAUREL, Neb. —
A 42-year-old man was arrested Friday in connection with the four homicides early Thursday morning in Laurel, Nebraska, according to the state patrol.
Crime scene investigators found evidence that linked Jason Jones, a Laurel resident, to the homicides.
After attempts for Jones to exit the home voluntarily, the Nebraska State Patrol SWAT Team entered the home and found Jones with severe burn injuries, according to law enforcement. NSP said he was airlifted to a Lincoln hospital and is in serious condition as of Friday morning.
The Nebraska State Patrol also believes gunfire played a role in the deaths at two separate homes in the northeast Nebraska town.
Around 3 am, the Cedar County Sheriff’s Office responded to a call about an explosion at a residence in Laurel and fire teams found a person dead inside the home, according to the Nebraska State Patrol.
The victim at the first residence was identified as 53-year-old Michele Ebeling, according to the Nebraska State Patrol.
As investigators arrived at the scene, a second fire was reported a few blocks away, authorities said.
Three people were found dead in the second residence and fire crews worked to preserve evidence while putting out the fire, the state patrol said.
The three victims at the second residence were identified as 86-year-old Gene Twiford, 85-year-old Janet Twiford and 55-year-old Dana Twiford.
Fire investigators believe that accelerants may have been used in each of the fires, according to authorities.
Officials are waiting on autopsies for the cause of death.
The Nebraska State Patrol said there is no danger to the Laurel community as a result of the arrest.
A small-town library is at risk of shutting down after residents of Jamestown, Michigan, voted to defund it rather than tolerate certain LGBTQ+-themed books.
Residents voted on Tuesday to block a renewal of funds tied to property taxes, Bridge Michigan reported.
The vote leaves the library with funds through the first quarter of next year. Once a reserve fund is used up, it would be forced to close, Larry Walton, the library board’s president, told Bridge Michigan – harming not just readers but the community at large. Beyond books, residents visit the library for its wifi, he said, and it houses the very room where the vote took place.
“Our libraries are places to read, places to gather, places to socialize, places to study, places to learn. I mean, they’re the heart of every community,” Deborah Mikula, executive director of the Michigan Library Association, told the Guardian. “So how can you lose that?”
“We are champions of access,” she added, including materials that might appeal to some in the community and not others. “We want to make sure that libraries protect the right to read.”
The controversy in Jamestown began with a complaint about a memoir by a nonbinary writer, but it soon spiraled into a campaign against Patmos Library itself. After a parent complained about Gender Queer: a Memoir, by Maia Kobabe, a graphic novel about the author’s experience coming out as nonbinary, dozens showed up at library board meetings, demanding the institution drop the book. (The book, which includes depictions of sex, was in the adult section of the library.) Complaints began to target other books with LGBTQ+ themes.
One library director resigned, telling Bridge she had been harassed and accused of indoctrinating kids; her successor of her also left the job. Though the library put Kobabe’s book behind the counter rather than on the shelves, the volumes remained available.
“We, the board, will not ban the books,” Walton told the Associated Press on Thursday.
The library’s refusal to submit to the demands led to a campaign urging residents to vote against renewed funding for the library. A group calling itself the Jamestown Conservatives handed out flyers condemning a library director who “promoted the LGBTQ ideology” and called for making the library “a safe and neutral place for our children.” On Facebook, the group says it exists to “keep our children safe, and protect their purity, as well as to keep the nuclear family intact as God designed”.
Residents ultimately voted 62% to 37% against a measure that would have raised property taxes for roughly $24 in order to fund the library, even as they approved similar measures to fund the fire department and road work. The library was one of just a few in the state to suffer such a loss, Mikula said: “Most passed with flying colors, sometimes up to 80%.”
The vote comes as libraries across the US face a surge in demands to ban books. The American Library Association identified 729 challenges to “library, school and university materials and services” last year, which led to about 1,600 challenges or removals of individual books. That was up from 273 books the year before and represents “the highest number of attempted book bans since we began compiling these lists 20 years ago”, the ALA president, Patricia Wong, said in a press release.
“We’re seeing what appears to be a campaign to remove books, particularly books dealing with LGBTQIA themes and books dealing with racism,” Deborah Caldwell-Stone, head of the ALA’s office for intellectual freedom, told the Guardian last year. Celebrated books by Toni Morrison, Alison Bechdel and Ibram X Kendi are among those facing bans.
“I’m not quite sure what instigated the culture wars that we’re seeing, but libraries are certainly at the front end,” Mikula said. Indeed, as states across the US move to deny LGBTQ+ rights, the ALA’s No 1 “most challenged” book last year was Gender Queer.
“When you remove those books from the shelf or you challenge them publicly in a community, what you’re saying to any young person who identified with that narrative is, ‘We don’t want your story here,’” Kobabe told the New York Times in May.
Each library chooses its own collection, Mikula noted, an intensive process that involves staying abreast of what’s new, listening to what’s being requested, and “weeding out” selections that are rarely on loan.
“Our librarians are qualified. They have advanced degrees,” she said. “We want to make sure that the people who have been hired to do this work are trusted and credible, and that they’re making sure that the full community is represented within their library. And that means having LGBTQ books.”
If community members oppose the inclusion of certain books, there are formal means of requesting their removal, involving a review committee and ascertainment that the person making the appeal has actually read the book in question. But recently, she said, people have been “going to board meetings, whether it’s a library board meeting or a school board meeting and saying, ‘Here’s a list of 300 books. We want them all to be removed from your library.’ And that’s not the proper channel, but they’re loud and their voices carry.”
CNBC analyst Rick Santelli was beside himself on Friday as he reacted on the air to the latest federal data showing that American employers added 528,000 new jobs in July — more than double the anticipated number.
“It is a whopper!” Santelli told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Friday.
Economists expected that there would be an additional 250,000 jobs in July, prompting Santelli to say: “528,000! 528,000, basically double the expectations! And 528,000 is the best number since February when we were over 700,000, revisions to the last two months are 28,000.”
Maria Bartiromo, the Fox Business news anchor, was similarly stunned when the latest jobs figures were announced on Friday morning.
“Wow, that’s pretty incredible,” Bartiromo, a strident critic of the Biden administration, said live on the air as she was told about the numbers.
While the strong jobs market and the record low levels of unemployment persist, analysts said that it does not necessarily bode well for the Fed’s efforts to bring down sky-high levels of inflation.
The major indexes on Wall Street fell in response to the latest jobs report as investors gird for more aggressive interest rate hikes by the central bank.
“The tinder-box hot job market indicates that the Federal Reserve’s resolve to fight inflation is not bearing fruit yet,” Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at Loyola Marymount University, told The Post.
Son cited labor shortages in key sectors of the economy including airlines, leisure and hospitality, and restaurants.
“The lethargic labor participation rate shows that workers are not yet worried about a recession and willing to wait for better opportunities,” Sohn said.
“It is a whopper,” Santelli said upon learning that the US added 528,000 new jobs in July.Twitter/@SquawkCNBC
“The 5.2% wage gain from a year ago is not enough to entice them to get back to work.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.05% as of 10:23 am on Friday while the S&P 500 fell 0.08%. The Nasdaq shed 0.04%.
“This is a job market that just won’t quit,” Becky Frankiewicz, the president and chief commercial officer for ManpowerGroup, told The Post.
“The economic indicators are signaling caution, yet American employers are signaling confidence.”
Jeffrey Roach, the chief economist for LPL Financial based in Charlotte, told The Post: “The decline in unemployment and the participation rate will frustrate central bankers since a tighter labor market adds inflation risk to the economy.”
WINDSOR HILLS, Calif. (KABC) — Authorities on Friday identified a pregnant woman and her unborn child as two of the six people who were killed in a fiery crash after a speeding car ran a red light and plowed into cars in a crowded intersection of Windsor Hills.
Los Angeles County coroner’s officials said Asherey Ryan and her unborn son died in the collision.
Shortly after 1:30 pm, a Mercedes-Benz sedan caused a crash involving as many as six cars near a gas station in, according to the California Highway Patrol.
Several people were ejected from the cars and two vehicles caught fire. News video from the scene showed the charred and mangled cars, as well as a child’s car seat among the debris covering the street.
Surveillance showed the Mercedes careening through an intersection, striking at least two cars that exploded in flames and were sent hurtling onto a sidewalk, winding up against the gas station’s corner sign. A fiery streak led to one car. One vehicle was sheared in half.
“It looked like the whole intersection from corner to corner was on fire,” said witness Harper Washington. “A lot of sparks and electricity. I was under the impression that, really at first I thought they dropped a bomb on us. I thought another world war had started. Then I realized it was a car into the sign.”
“Once the fire went away and the booming left, I realized it was two cars there. You could see the people on fire and that’s just sad. I really pray for the people and the community.”
Bystanders tried to help but had trouble dealing with the flames.
Witness Alfonso Word choked up as he described seeing the pregnant woman and a child after the crash.
“It hurts. It does,” Word said. “Because I have a grandson. I know people that have children. For a mother to be pregnant… that child never had a chance.”
Just days after Mayor Eric Adams turned down Greg Abbott’s invitation to visit the southern border, the Texas governor sent a taste of the ongoing migrant emerging to NYC’s doorstep — with the first busload of border-crossers arriving in Manhattan Friday morning.
The Republican governor revealed in a statement that the migrant bus arrived at Gate 14 of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, but did not provide any additional details — such as how many people were on board or their countries of origin.
The arrival of the migrants comes as Abbott has dispatched dozens of buses to Washington DC since April, transporting more than 6,100 migrants to the nation’s capital in “response to the Biden administration’s open border policies overwhelming Texas communities.”
“Because of President Biden’s continued refusal to acknowledge the crisis caused by his open border policies, the State of Texas has had to take unprecedented action to keep our communities safe,” Abbott said in his Friday statement.
“In addition to Washington, DC, New York City is the ideal destination for these migrants, who can receive the abundance of city services and housing that Mayor Eric Adams has boasted about within the sanctuary city. I hope he follows through on his promise of welcoming all migrants with open arms so that our overrun and overwhelmed border towns can find relief,” he continued.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced the first bus full of migrants has arrived at the Port Authority Bus Terminal.foxnewsTexas Gov. Greg Abbott hopes Mayor Eric Adams will welcome the migrants arriving in the Big Apple.foxnewsTexas Gov. Greg Abbott accused Democrats of causing a “historic and preventable crisis.”foxnews
In the governor’s announcement, his office pointed to New York City’s right to housing laws which require the local government to provide “emergency shelter for every unhoused person.”
Already, Adams has warned that the homeless shelters in the city are being overloaded with migrants. Previous reporting by The Post confirmed a Department of Homeless Service intake center in the Bronx as well as the Bellevue men’s shelter in Manhattan have seen a growing number of migrants arrive in recent days.
City Hall Press Secretary Fabien Levy later told The Post, “Governor Abbott is finally admitting to what we’ve known he’s been doing all along. His continued use of human beings as political pawns is disgusting, and an embarrassing stain on the state of Texas.”
“New York will continue to welcome asylum seekers with open arms, as we have always have, but we are asking for resources to help do so. We need Washington, DC’s assistance in dealing with the cruel political games being played by inept politicians like the governor of Texas,” Levy added.
Fox & friends interviews a migrant.foxnews
Last month, Adams claimed Texas and Arizona had already been transporting migrants to the Big Apple, and called on President Biden to provide federal resources to handle the influx.
However, that assertion was rejected by both Abbott and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, who insisted it was the federal government sending migrants to New York.
In response, Abbott Adams invited to visit the southern border to “see firsthand the dire situation.”
The Post has previously reported that Manhattan shelters are experiencing a high volume of migrants seeking refuge.foxnews
“Your recent interest in this historic and preventable crisis is a welcomed development – especially as the President and his Administration have shown no remorse for their actions nor desire to address the situation themselves,” Abbott said this week.
“As Governor, I invite you to visit our border region to see firsthand the fire situation that only grows more urgent with each passing day, and to meet with the local officials, who like yourselves, realize this matter deserves immediate federal action.”
Abbott reiterated his invitations to Adams and DC Mayor Muriel Bowser during an appearance on Fox News Thursday night.
“I really wish they would [come down] because public officials across the country, they do need to realize the magnitude of the chaos created by Biden’s open-border policies,” Abbott told host Jesse Watters. “They’re up in arms about a few thousand people coming into their communities over the past few months? Listen, in any one sector in the state of Texas, we have more than 5,000 people coming across [the border] in that sector every single day.”
“We’re full in the state of Texas,” Abbott added. “Our communities are overrun, and I start busing people to Washingon DC, when local officials could not handle the number of people that had come across our border.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott claimed the migrants can find shelter thanks to New York City’s housing laws.foxnews
All of the migrants who have arrived in Washington and New York via the governor’s bus transportation have gone there voluntarily, since they are permitted to travel within the US after being processed by Customs and Border Protection.
Typically, when migrants are released from federal custody after crossing the border and evading expulsion, they are given paperwork allowing them to stay in the US as well as an order to appear in immigration court when their cases can be heard.
In July, Bowser requested help from the National Guard to address the influx of migrants arriving in the city.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott argued he had no choice but to send the migrants to New York after sending busloads to Washington, DC.foxnewsA migrant gives a thumbs up after arriving at the Port Authority Bus Terminal.foxnews
“Our collective response and service efforts have now become overwhelmed,” Bowser wrote in a July 19 request to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
“[O]our homeless services system is already under great strain; and tragically, many families arrive in Washington, DC with nowhere to go, or they remain in limbo seeking onward destinations across the United States.
“With pledges from Texas and Arizona to continue these abhorrent operations indefinitely, the situation is dire,” the mayor added, “and we consider this a humanitarian crisis – one that could overwhelm our social support network without immediate and sustained federal intervention.”
Police have arrested several people who were in a large SUV that drove through a Native American celebration in New Mexico, causing multiple injuries along a parade route crowded with families. Two local police officers were among those hurt.
Videos show the large brown vehicle speeding down a main street in Gallup, close to the border with Arizona, against the direction of the parade.
Children performing traditional dances at the parade, to celebrate the town’s 100th annual inter-tribal ceremony, appear to have been among the first to see the vehicle rushing toward them.
They ran to the side as people screamed and families scrambled to get out of the way.
The vehicle then swerved on to a side street and pulled into a parking spot before trying to pull out again, hitting a police car. Officers then converge on the vehicle, pulling at least two people out and handcuffing them on the pavement.
Lt Mark Soriano of the state police said no one was killed, but could not elaborate on the extent of the injuries, the Albuquerque Journal reported.
New Mexico state police said on Twitter the driver was in custody.
“Multiple people, including two Gallup police officers, injured and are being treated on scene,” the tweet said.
The parade and celebration were founded in 1922 to honor Native American and Indigenous heritage.
A small-town library is at risk of shutting down after residents of Jamestown, Michigan, voted to defund it rather than tolerate certain LGBTQ+-themed books.
Residents voted on Tuesday to block a renewal of funds tied to property taxes, Bridge Michigan reported.
The vote leaves the library with funds through the first quarter of next year. Once a reserve fund is used up, it would be forced to close, Larry Walton, the library board’s president, told Bridge Michigan – harming not just readers but the community at large. Beyond books, residents visit the library for its wifi, he said, and it houses the very room where the vote took place.
“Our libraries are places to read, places to gather, places to socialize, places to study, places to learn. I mean, they’re the heart of every community,” Deborah Mikula, executive director of the Michigan Library Association, told the Guardian. “So how can you lose that?”
“We are champions of access,” she added, including materials that might appeal to some in the community and not others. “We want to make sure that libraries protect the right to read.”
The controversy in Jamestown began with a complaint about a memoir by a nonbinary writer, but it soon spiraled into a campaign against Patmos Library itself. After a parent complained about Gender Queer: a Memoir, by Maia Kobabe, a graphic novel about the author’s experience coming out as nonbinary, dozens showed up at library board meetings, demanding the institution drop the book. (The book, which includes depictions of sex, was in the adult section of the library.) Complaints began to target other books with LGBTQ+ themes.
One library director resigned, telling Bridge she had been harassed and accused of indoctrinating kids; her successor of her also left the job. Though the library put Kobabe’s book behind the counter rather than on the shelves, the volumes remained available.
“We, the board, will not ban the books,” Walton told the Associated Press on Thursday.
The library’s refusal to submit to the demands led to a campaign urging residents to vote against renewed funding for the library. A group calling itself the Jamestown Conservatives handed out flyers condemning a library director who “promoted the LGBTQ ideology” and called for making the library “a safe and neutral place for our children.” On Facebook, the group says it exists to “keep our children safe, and protect their purity, as well as to keep the nuclear family intact as God designed”.
Residents ultimately voted 62% to 37% against a measure that would have raised property taxes for roughly $24 in order to fund the library, even as they approved similar measures to fund the fire department and road work. The library was one of just a few in the state to suffer such a loss, Mikula said: “Most passed with flying colors, sometimes up to 80%.”
The vote comes as libraries across the US face a surge in demands to ban books. The American Library Association identified 729 challenges to “library, school and university materials and services” last year, which led to about 1,600 challenges or removals of individual books. That was up from 273 books the year before and represents “the highest number of attempted book bans since we began compiling these lists 20 years ago”, the ALA president, Patricia Wong, said in a press release.
“We’re seeing what appears to be a campaign to remove books, particularly books dealing with LGBTQIA themes and books dealing with racism,” Deborah Caldwell-Stone, head of the ALA’s office for intellectual freedom, told the Guardian last year. Celebrated books by Toni Morrison, Alison Bechdel and Ibram X Kendi are among those facing bans.
“I’m not quite sure what instigated the culture wars that we’re seeing, but libraries are certainly at the front end,” Mikula said. Indeed, as states across the US move to deny LGBTQ+ rights, the ALA’s No 1 “most challenged” book last year was Gender Queer.
“When you remove those books from the shelf or you challenge them publicly in a community, what you’re saying to any young person who identified with that narrative is, ‘We don’t want your story here,’” Kobabe told the New York Times in May.
Each library chooses its own collection, Mikula noted, an intensive process that involves staying abreast of what’s new, listening to what’s being requested, and “weeding out” selections that are rarely on loan.
“Our librarians are qualified. They have advanced degrees,” she said. “We want to make sure that the people who have been hired to do this work are trusted and credible, and that they’re making sure that the full community is represented within their library. And that means having LGBTQ books.”
If community members oppose the inclusion of certain books, there are formal means of requesting their removal, involving a review committee and ascertainment that the person making the appeal has actually read the book in question. But recently, she said, people have been “going to board meetings, whether it’s a library board meeting or a school board meeting and saying, ‘Here’s a list of 300 books. We want them all to be removed from your library.’ And that’s not the proper channel, but they’re loud and their voices carry.”
AUSTIN, Texas — A Texas jury on Thursday awarded the parents of a child killed in the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School more than $4 million in compensatory damages from the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, the first time he has been held financially liable for defaming the victims’ parents by spreading lies that they were complicit in a government plot to stage the shooting as a pretext for gun control.
The decision was the first in a series of potential awards against Mr. Jones. On Friday the jury will consider evidence of Mr. Jones’s net worth to determine how much, if anything, to award the parents, Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, in punitive damages.
Two other trials by Sandy Hook parents seeking damages from Mr. Jones have been scheduled for next month, though they may be delayed because his company filed for bankruptcy last week.
Mr. Jones has become increasingly emblematic of how misinformation and false narratives have gained traction in American society. He has played a role in spreading some of recent history’s most pernicious conspiracy theories, such as Pizzagate — in which an Infowars video helped inspire a gunman to attack a pizzeria in Washington, DC — as well as coronavirus myths and “Stop the Steal” falsehoods about election fraud before the Capitol assault on Jan. 6, 2021.
The verdict came after several days of emotional testimony, including 90 minutes on Tuesday when Ms. Lewis personally addressed Mr. Jones, asking him why he knowingly spread lies about the death of her child, Jesse, 6, who died along with 19 other first graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
“Jesse was a real boy. And I am a real mom,” Ms. Lewis told Mr. Jones. Later she admonished him: “Alex, I want you to hear this. We’re more polarized than ever as a country. Some of that is because of you.”
But the most explosive revelation came Wednesday, when the family’s lawyer, Mark Bankston, revealed that Mr. Jones’s legal team had mistakenly sent him the entire contents of Mr. Jones’s cellphone, including at least two years’ worth of incriminating text messages now of interest. to the House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol. The committee is scrutinizing Mr. Jones’s role in planning events surrounding the insurrection, and Mr. Bankston is now seeking the judge’s approval to deliver the text records to prosecutors and the Jan. 6 committee.
Ms. Lewis and Mr. Heslin had requested $150 million in damages, and Mr. Bankston said he was optimistic about what the jury would award on Friday. “You can probably imagine that if a jury returns a verdict exceeding $4 million for these plaintiffs in compensatory damages, I think punishment is probably going to be in that range or higher,” Mr. Bankston said. “I think it’s perfectly expected that we’re going to see an over nine-figure judgment against Mr. Jones.”
He added: “It’s been a long journey, and it’s really, really nice to able to turn and look at my clients, and say ‘he can’t get off scot-free for this. He can not. You had a defendant who went into that courtroom and said, ‘I think I should have to pay them a dollar.’ And this jury said no.”
Mr. Jones said in his bankruptcy filing that he had paid $15 million so far in legal costs for the Sandy Hook litigation. Citing the damages that Ms. Lewis and Mr. Heslin had requested, Mr. Jones called the award a “major victory” in a video posted on Infowars on Thursday night, even as he urged viewers to buy products from his website to stave off what I have portrayed financial ruin.
“I admitted I was wrong,” he said. “I admitted it was a mistake. I admitted that I followed disinformation but not on purpose. I apologized to the families. And the jury understood that.”
Mr. Jones lost a series of Sandy Hook defamation suits by default last year after repeatedly failing to provide court-ordered documents and testimony. Those rulings set the stage for the trial this summer.
More important than money, the Sandy Hook families have said, is society’s verdict on a culture in which viral misinformation damages lives and destroys reputations.
“Speech is free, but lies you have to pay for,” Mr. Bankston told the jury last week. “This is a case about creating change.”
At the heart of the trial was a June 2017 episode of NBC’s “Sunday Night With Megyn Kelly” that profiled Mr. Jones. In the broadcast, Mr. Heslin protested Mr. Jones’s denial of the shooting. He recalled his last moments of him with Jesse, saying, “I held my son with a bullet hole through his head of him.”
Afterward, Mr. Jones and Owen Shroyer, an Infowars host, aired shows implying that Mr. Heslin had lied.
“Will there be a clarification from Heslin or Megyn Kelly?” Mr. Shroyer said on Infowars. “I wouldn’t hold your breath.”
During the trial, Mr. Jones’s lawyer, F. Andino Reynal, said that Mr. Jones was essentially running his own defense. After much uncertainty about whether the conspiracy broadcaster would testify, he was adamant that he would appear as the sole witness in his defense of him.
Mr. Heslin and Ms. Lewis deployed a variety of experts. The trial opened with testimony from Dan Jewiss, a retired Connecticut State Police investigator who led the Sandy Hook case; a forensic psychiatrist and the psychologist who treated Mr. Heslin and Ms. Lewis; and several Infowars employees, whose dubious statements allowed the family’s lawyers to submit evidence that was damaging to Mr. Jones, including a televised version of the full interview with Ms. Kelly, in which Mr. Jones advanced incendiary false claims.
Mr. Jones’s audience and corresponding revenues have risen sharply, to more than $50 million annually, in the decade since Sandy Hook.
His defense of the Second Amendment after the mass shooting brought attention from mainstream news organizations. But it was Mr. Jones’s alliance with former President Donald J. Trump, who appeared on Infowars in December 2015, that moved him from the far-right fringes to the center of Republican Party populism.
Mr. Jones and Mr. Trump have often echoed the same incendiary false claims, including the racist “birther” lie that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States; that Muslims in the New York area “celebrated” the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; and the 2020 election falsehoods that brought violence to the Capitol last year.
AUSTIN, Texas — A Texas jury on Thursday awarded the parents of a child killed in the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School more than $4 million in compensatory damages from the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, the first time he has been held financially liable for defaming the victims’ parents by spreading lies that they were complicit in a government plot to stage the shooting as a pretext for gun control.
The decision was the first in a series of potential awards against Mr. Jones. On Friday the jury will consider evidence of Mr. Jones’s net worth to determine how much, if anything, to award the parents, Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, in punitive damages.
Two other trials by Sandy Hook parents seeking damages from Mr. Jones have been scheduled for next month, though they may be delayed because his company filed for bankruptcy last week.
Mr. Jones has become increasingly emblematic of how misinformation and false narratives have gained traction in American society. He has played a role in spreading some of recent history’s most pernicious conspiracy theories, such as Pizzagate — in which an Infowars video helped inspire a gunman to attack a pizzeria in Washington, DC — as well as coronavirus myths and “Stop the Steal” falsehoods about election fraud before the Capitol assault on Jan. 6, 2021.
The verdict came after several days of emotional testimony, including 90 minutes on Tuesday when Ms. Lewis personally addressed Mr. Jones, asking him why he knowingly spread lies about the death of her child, Jesse, 6, who died along with 19 other first graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
“Jesse was a real boy. And I am a real mom,” Ms. Lewis told Mr. Jones. Later she admonished him: “Alex, I want you to hear this. We’re more polarized than ever as a country. Some of that is because of you.”
But the most explosive revelation came Wednesday, when the family’s lawyer, Mark Bankston, revealed that Mr. Jones’s legal team had mistakenly sent him the entire contents of Mr. Jones’s cellphone, including at least two years’ worth of incriminating text messages now of interest. to the House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol. The committee is scrutinizing Mr. Jones’s role in planning events surrounding the insurrection, and Mr. Bankston is now seeking the judge’s approval to deliver the text records to prosecutors and the Jan. 6 committee.
Ms. Lewis and Mr. Heslin had requested $150 million in damages, and Mr. Bankston said he was optimistic about what the jury would award on Friday. “You can probably imagine that if a jury returns a verdict exceeding $4 million for these plaintiffs in compensatory damages, I think punishment is probably going to be in that range or higher,” Mr. Bankston said. “I think it’s perfectly expected that we’re going to see an over nine-figure judgment against Mr. Jones.”
He added: “It’s been a long journey, and it’s really, really nice to able to turn and look at my clients, and say ‘he can’t get off scot-free for this. He can not. You had a defendant who went into that courtroom and said, ‘I think I should have to pay them a dollar.’ And this jury said no.”
Mr. Jones said in his bankruptcy filing that he had paid $15 million so far in legal costs for the Sandy Hook litigation. Citing the damages that Ms. Lewis and Mr. Heslin had requested, Mr. Jones called the award a “major victory” in a video posted on Infowars on Thursday night, even as he urged viewers to buy products from his website to stave off what I have portrayed financial ruin.
“I admitted I was wrong,” he said. “I admitted it was a mistake. I admitted that I followed disinformation but not on purpose. I apologized to the families. And the jury understood that.”
Mr. Jones lost a series of Sandy Hook defamation suits by default last year after repeatedly failing to provide court-ordered documents and testimony. Those rulings set the stage for the trial this summer.
More important than money, the Sandy Hook families have said, is society’s verdict on a culture in which viral misinformation damages lives and destroys reputations.
“Speech is free, but lies you have to pay for,” Mr. Bankston told the jury last week. “This is a case about creating change.”
At the heart of the trial was a June 2017 episode of NBC’s “Sunday Night With Megyn Kelly” that profiled Mr. Jones. In the broadcast, Mr. Heslin protested Mr. Jones’s denial of the shooting. He recalled his last moments of him with Jesse, saying, “I held my son with a bullet hole through his head of him.”
Afterward, Mr. Jones and Owen Shroyer, an Infowars host, aired shows implying that Mr. Heslin had lied.
“Will there be a clarification from Heslin or Megyn Kelly?” Mr. Shroyer said on Infowars. “I wouldn’t hold your breath.”
During the trial, Mr. Jones’s lawyer, F. Andino Reynal, said that Mr. Jones was essentially running his own defense. After much uncertainty about whether the conspiracy broadcaster would testify, he was adamant that he would appear as the sole witness in his defense of him.
Mr. Heslin and Ms. Lewis deployed a variety of experts. The trial opened with testimony from Dan Jewiss, a retired Connecticut State Police investigator who led the Sandy Hook case; a forensic psychiatrist and the psychologist who treated Mr. Heslin and Ms. Lewis; and several Infowars employees, whose dubious statements allowed the family’s lawyers to submit evidence that was damaging to Mr. Jones, including a televised version of the full interview with Ms. Kelly, in which Mr. Jones advanced incendiary false claims.
Mr. Jones’s audience and corresponding revenues have risen sharply, to more than $50 million annually, in the decade since Sandy Hook.
His defense of the Second Amendment after the mass shooting brought attention from mainstream news organizations. But it was Mr. Jones’s alliance with former President Donald J. Trump, who appeared on Infowars in December 2015, that moved him from the far-right fringes to the center of Republican Party populism.
Mr. Jones and Mr. Trump have often echoed the same incendiary false claims, including the racist “birther” lie that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States; that Muslims in the New York area “celebrated” the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; and the 2020 election falsehoods that brought violence to the Capitol last year.
