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Dad who faked infant's kidnapping gets 25 years to life

admin - Latest News - November 4, 2025
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Dad who faked infant’s kidnapping gets 25 years to life



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November 21, 2025
Nov. 21, 2025, 6:00 PM ESTBy The Politics DeskWelcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, a newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.In today’s edition, Kristen Welker breaks down an unexpectedly warm meeting between President Donald Trump and New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. Plus, Ben Kamisar explores how the redistricting fight is scrambling campaigns ahead of the midterms. Sign up to receive this newsletter in your inbox every weekday here.— Adam WollnerProgramming note: We’re taking a holiday break next week. We’ll be back on Dec. 1. Have a happy Thanksgiving!Trump and Mamdani find a surprising amount of common ground in their first meetingAnalysis by Kristen WelkerTheir improbable victories were fueled by populist messages, serving as direct repudiations of their parties’ elder statesmen and inspiring voters who normally sit on the sidelines. In countless ways — their backgrounds, their policies, their ages — President Donald Trump and New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani could not be more different. But the similar manner in which the two men rose to power provided the backdrop for their first face-to-face meeting in the Oval Office today. In an extraordinary reversal, the insults Trump and Mamdani have been trading for months evaporated in an instant this afternoon, with the two political foes shaking hands and showering each other with praise. Trump called his meeting with Mamdani “very productive,” adding that it “surprised” him — in a positive way. “We agree on a lot more than I would have thought,” said Trump, a native New Yorker. Trump and Mamdani downplayed their differences and played up their shared goals — on affordability, on peace in the Middle East and on wanting the best for New York City. “There were more New Yorkers who voted for President Trump in the most recent presidential election because of that focus on cost of living. And I’m looking forward to working together to deliver that affordability agenda,” Mamdani said, noting that about 1 in 10 of his voters backed Trump in 2024.Asked by reporters about the past attacks they’ve lobbed at each other, both politicians brushed them off. “I’ve been called worse than a despot,” Trump quipped in response to a question about Mamdani’s past criticism. And while Trump had previously floated cutting off federal funding to the city in response to Mamdani’s policy proposals, he told reporters today: “I don’t think that’s gonna happen. … I expect to be helping him, not hurting him.” The warm encounter between the two stands in stark contrast to how they treated each other in the run-up to this month’s mayoral election. Trump cast Mamdani, a democratic socialist, as a “communist” and issued a last-minute endorsement to his main opponent in the race, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Meanwhile, Mamdani called the administration “authoritarian” and memorably addressed Trump directly during his victory speech, telling him to “turn the volume up.”Today’s meeting is yet another way the 34-year-old Mamdani has stayed in the national spotlight since his election, perhaps sending a signal of the role he will play moving forward in a party that is still trying to find its footing following the 2024 election. His affordability-centric message has already inspired Democrats to follow a similar path heading into next year’s midterms. He publicly discouraged an ally who launched a primary challenge to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. — one of the party leaders who was slow to embrace Mamdani’s candidacy. And Mamdani will sit down with me for an exclusive interview that will air on “Meet the Press” this Sunday. I will also speak with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. I hope you’ll join us.Read more on the Trump-Mamdani meeting →How the redistricting fight has scrambled dozens of midterm campaigns across the countryBy Ben KamisarThe national redistricting battle has cast a long shadow over the race for control of Congress next year — not only fundamentally reshaping the battlefield, but also creating a domino effect that’s pushing candidates into new seats, ushering longtime lawmakers to the exits and exposing deep political rifts in state parties across the country.The fight is still playing out across courtrooms, back rooms and President Donald Trump’s social media accounts, as Republicans and Democrats tinker with district lines. Developments like this week’s federal court ruling blocking the new Texas maps from going into effect — leaving the ultimate decision to the Supreme Court — also show how much remains to be determined in the redistricting fight.Texas: The map Texas enacted over the summer adds more Republicans to the battleground districts represented by Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, while redrawing two districts in Houston and Dallas in a way that will likely force incumbent Democrats into primaries against each other. It also split Austin to create one deep-blue seat and one additional Republican-leaning seat that stretches toward San Antonio. The Supreme Court’s eventual decision will have a significant impact on a spate of races, starting with whether Austin-area Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett decides to retire. There’s also the question of whether the winner of January’s special election to succeed the late Democratic Rep. Sylvester Turner will have to immediately run against a longtime Democratic incumbent, and how Democratic Reps. Marc Veasey, Julie Johnson and Jasmine Crockett handle a potentially significant redraw in North Texas that could leave one of them out of a job. The redistricting plan already has Crockett weighing a Senate bid.California: The Democratic-drawn map voters approved earlier this month has similar potential to upend the Republican caucus in the state. The districts represented by GOP Reps. Doug LaMalfa, Darrell Issa, Kevin Kiley, Ken Calvert and David Valadao are becoming significantly more vulnerable to being flipped by Democrats, according to an analysis from the University of Virginia Center for Politics.One early bit of fallout: Calvert’s decision to seek re-election in a nearby district currently represented by fellow Republican Rep. Young Kim, which will likely trigger an expensive primary between two prominent incumbents. In an early show of force, Kim has already announced plans to spend more than $3 million on ads ahead of the 2026 primary.Utah: A court decision to enact a new map over the protests of Republicans created a new blue seat in the Salt Lake City area — one that could spark a primary focused on ideology as well as electability, an unusual position for Utah’s Democratic minority. Read more from Ben →🗞️ Today’s other top stories🌏 Russia-Ukraine update: Trump said he wants Ukraine to accept a new peace deal by Thanksgiving, after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned the proposal was forcing his country to choose between its “dignity” and a “key partner.” Read more →🗣️ War of words: Trump said that he’s “not threatening death” toward a group of Democratic members of Congress whom he accused of committing “seditious behavior,” which he said a day earlier was “punishable by death.” Read more →🛥️ Reality check: Drug cartels operating vessels in the Caribbean, where roughly 50% of U.S. airstrikes have taken place, are mainly moving cocaine from South America to Europe — not to the U.S., according to current and former U.S. law enforcement and military officials as well as narcotics experts. Read more →🛢️ Drill, baby, drill: The Trump administration announced new oil drilling off the California and Florida coasts for the first time in decades. Read more →🗳️ Special election watch: The Democratic group House Majority PAC is putting more than $1 million into TV and digital ad reservations ahead of the Dec. 2 special election in Tennessee’s deep-red 7th District. Democrat Aftyn Behn raised more than $1 million from Oct. 1 to Nov. 12, while Republican Matt Van Epps brought in about $591,000. Read more →💰 Money moves: The Democratic National Committee took out a $15 million loan in October, an unusually large amount of debt for this point in the political calendar, as the party looks to rebuild its brand and infrastructure under new leadership. Read more →🔵 2026 watch: Rep. Eric Swalwell announced that he will run for California governor, the latest Democrat to join the crowded race to succeed outgoing Gov. Gavin Newsom. Read more →🗽 2026 watch, cont.: 72-year-old Rep. Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y., will not seek re-election next year, telling The New York Times that “now is the right moment to step aside and allow a new generation of leaders to step forward.” Read more →🔴 2028 watch: Long-simmering tensions between Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz are boiling over, with White House allies convinced that the Texas Republican is aiming to boost his 2028 presidential prospects at the expense of Vice President JD Vance. Read more →💲 It’s still the economy: In Nevada, concerns about the direction of the economy and high costs are threatening to wipe away the gains Trump and the GOP have made with Latino voters. Read more →That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner.If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at politicsnewsletter@nbcuni.comAnd if you’re a fan, please share with everyone and anyone. They can sign up here. The Politics Desk    
October 31, 2025
Oct. 31, 2025, 5:00 AM EDTBy Tyler KingkadeOOLOGAH, Okla. — Musician Zach Bryan broke a record for the largest ticketed concert in the U.S. when he drew more than 112,000 fans to Michigan Stadium in September. But here in his hometown of well under 2,000 people, opinions on the country star are divided — particularly after he posted a snippet of a new song this month that seemed to denounce immigration agents busting down someone’s door.In this tiny northeastern Oklahoma town 30 miles north of Tulsa, which voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump last fall, talk of border control usually comes with nods of agreement, even though more than a dozen people who spoke with NBC News said they had never seen an immigration officer in their midst. The highways stretch out flat, winding around small cattle farms and churches. Many here see themselves as defenders of law and order, and some already soured on Bryan after he criticized police during a 2023 arrest. Others have celebrated him for his giveaways to locals.Now, Bryan’s latest song has stirred debate over how far immigration enforcement should go and who gets caught in its reach, and whether their hometown country star crossed a line by wading into politics.The lyrics on Bryan’s new track, which has not been released in its entirety, include the line, “ICE is gonna come bust down your door / Try to build a house, no one builds no more.” He captioned it on Instagram, “the fading of the red, white and blue.”At the Iron Horse Saloon — a roadhouse on Highway 169 in Oologah that hosted some of Bryan’s first live performances — bar owner Connie Keck said she is reserving judgment until the full song is released, and believes that he’s “using vivid, confrontational imagery” to describe how divided America is right now.“Zach’s just telling a story, and folks around here get that,” Keck said.
November 29, 2025
Nov. 29, 2025, 7:00 AM ESTBy Mirna Alsharif and Doha MadaniThe day after Morgan Geyser cut off her ankle monitor and fled her group home, Illinois police unknowingly found her crouched against a wall at a truck stop two hours away Sunday night.Huddled next to her friend, Geyser told officers that she was worried about being separated from 43-year-old Chad Mecca, who was shaking from the cold and occasionally struggling to speak. The pair evaded questions about their identity as Geyser told officers that she had done “something really wrong.”Geyser, 23, later “suggested that officers could ‘just Google’ her name” to find out who she is, according to the Posen Police Department incident report.An internet search would reveal that 11 years prior, Geyser stabbed her sixth-grade classmate, Payton Leutner, more than a dozen times with a kitchen knife to appease the fictional horror character “Slender Man” while their other friend, Anissa Weier, watched. All three girls were 12 years old at the time.The case spent years making national headlines and spawning documentaries as Geyser endured a prolonged court battle. A jury found that Geyser was mentally ill after her attorneys presented expert testimony that the girl was suffering from undiagnosed schizophrenia at the time of the stabbing. In an effort to avoid prison, Geyser agreed to a plea deal in 2017 that would have her institutionalized instead.Though she had been sentenced to a maximum of 40 years in a mental institution, Geyser had just been granted conditional release in January after spending seven years at the Winnebago Mental Health Institute in Wisconsin. She fled the group home she’d been placed in over fears of being separated from her friend, Mecca, according to body camera footage and police reports.Carrying a backpack and a pink journal with the words “homeless couple’s guidebook” written in it, police allege, the two took a Greyhound bus from Wisconsin on Saturday night. They were eventually found more than 165 miles away in Illinois and arrested Sunday evening. Mecca was later released on a citation and is due to appear in court Jan. 15. NBC News was unable to reach Mecca; it is unclear whether Mecca has retained an attorney. Urgent search underway for ‘Slender Man’ stabbing attacker01:26At her extradition hearing Tuesday, Geyser was brought out in a blue jumpsuit and dark glasses. She waived her extradition and will be held in Cook County without bail.Wisconsin has a month to take Geyser back to the state. Waukesha County District Attorney Lesli Boese told reporters Monday that the state would have to decide whether to file a petition to revoke Geyser’s conditional release, a move they would support, she said.The Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne said on Monday that they had not received a referral regarding Geyser’s case, but may receive one from the Madison Police Department “at some point.”An attorney for Geyser did not immediately respond to a request for comment.An attack ordered by ‘Slender Man’The May 31, 2014, attack on Leutner began as a Saturday morning game of hide-and-seek in the woods of a suburban Milwaukee park.Then, prosecutors say, Geyser and Weier pinned down Leutner before Geyser stabbed her 19 times. The knife barely missed an artery near her heart, coming “one millimeter away from certain death,” the criminal complaint said. After the attack, Geyser and Weier fled the scene, leaving Leutner to die. The middle schooler managed to crawl out of the woods and find a bicyclist on a sidewalk. Geyser and Weier were arrested five hours after the attack, still armed with the knife.During the trial, Geyser’s attorneys told the court that the girl had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, which is why she believed the fictional horror character “Slender Man” was speaking to her. Geyser believed the boogeyman would harm their families if they didn’t stab Leutner.Anissa Weier listens as her attorney Maura McMahon questions a witness in Waukesha County, Wis., in September 2017. Michael Sears / Pool via APWeier, who did not stab Leutner but was accused of “egging” Geyser on, pleaded guilty in 2017 to being a party to attempted second-degree homicide and was sentenced to 25 years in a mental hospital. She was released in 2021.Geyser was 15 when she was sentenced to decades in a mental institution, spending nearly seven years at the Winnebago Mental Health Institute. In January, a judge ruled that she should be released to a group home.Three experts testified at the time that Geyser was no longer a threat to the public and had made considerable progress in her treatment.Wisconsin judge orders release of ‘Slender Man’ attacker02:08Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren upheld the conditional release plan in March after some objection from the district attorney’s office, which had concerns that Geyser had sent violent artwork to a man. It appeared that Geyser had stopped contact with that individual, Bohren said in his decision.“I don’t find that in and of itself a reason to find she’s at risk for herself or at risk to harm the community in a conditional release plan,” he said, adding that just because she participated in the contact “doesn’t mean she encouraged it.”Bohren also said that the group home would, in some ways, be “more strict” than being institutionalized, given the “substantial supervision” Geyser would be under.Details of Geyser’s conditional release are sealed, but her attorney, Tony Cotton, had previously told the court that there was difficulty finding Geyser a place to land. A letter filed by Cotton in August said that a home in Sun Prairie declined to take Geyser due to the “publicity surrounding the placement.”Disappearance from the group homePolice say Geyser was last seen around Kroncke Drive at 8 p.m. Nov. 22 with another adult. A little over an hour later, the Department of Corrections became aware that Geyser had tampered with her monitoring bracelet. By 11:30 p.m., authorities learned that Geyser had removed the ankle bracelet and was not at the group home. By around 9 p.m. the next day, she was found at the truck stop more than 165 miles away in Illinois with Mecca, who was also arrested and charged with criminal trespass and obstructing identification, according to the Posen Police Department. Geyser told officers that she met Mecca at a Wisconsin church a couple of months ago and that she was upset Mecca was unable to visit her at the group home, according to the Posen police incident report. Geyser alleged that she was treated poorly at the home, and that Mecca visited her there on multiple occasions by “climbing her window and sneaking in.”The Wisconsin Department of Health Services said it could not comment on Geyser, who is being treated at one of its facilities, because of patient privacy protections. The Department of Corrections is similarly limited when it has been contracted by health services for supervision and monitoring activities, it added.Geyser said Saturday that she and Mecca had taken the Greyhound bus from Wisconsin to Illinois and had discussed heading to Nashville, Tennessee, according to the incident report. It is not immediately clear what specifically motivated the two to leave Saturday. Body camera footage from Sunday night showed Geyser pleading with officers not to separate her from Mecca, asking if they would at least promise to let her say goodbye to Mecca “no matter what I did.”Geyser told officers in the footage that Mecca is transgender and repeatedly refers to Mecca using “she” and “her” pronouns. During the search, officers found the pink notebook in the backpack, according to the footage. One officer flipped through the journal and read out the words “homeless couple’s guidebook.”Mecca told ABC affiliate WKOW that they prefer to go by the name “Charly” and that Geyser ran away because of the visitation restrictions. The two had developed a strong friendship after meeting at church months ago, Mecca told the news station.After their Sunday truck stop arrest, body camera footage showed Geyser and Mecca being transported through the interior cameras of separate patrol cars. Geyser remained silent throughout her ride and looked out the window quietly.An officer talked with Mecca during their ride, saying that his colleagues would get them meals. Mecca thanked the officer and appeared to be dejected.“We really do just wanna be on our way, we’re sorry to have caused trouble,” Mecca said.The officer then told Mecca they would send the pair on their way once they find out who they are. Mecca simply responded, “That’s not gonna happen.” Mirna AlsharifMirna Alsharif is a breaking news reporter for NBC News.Doha MadaniDoha Madani is a senior breaking news reporter for NBC News. Pronouns: she/her.Emilie Ikeda contributed.
November 13, 2025
Nov. 13, 2025, 6:05 AM ESTBy Kevin CollierA bipartisan group of former Federal Communications Commission leaders has petitioned the agency to repeal the policy the Trump administration invoked in discussions surrounding Jimmy Kimmel at ABC and in the investigation of “60 Minutes” at CBS.The group — which includes five Republican and two Democratic former FCC commissioners, as well as several former senior staffers — calls for eliminating the agency’s longstanding “News Distortion” policy. The policy, according to the FCC’s website description, allows the agency to sanction broadcasters if “they have deliberately distorted a factual news report.”The policy is not codified, but grew out of a standard used by the FCC to evaluate broadcasters. It was rarely invoked for decades until this year, when President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the FCC, Brendan Carr, cited it in several high-profile disputes with networks his agency regulates.A representative for the FCC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. According to the FCC, invoking the policy “must involve a significant event and not merely a minor or incidental aspect of the news report,” and that “expressions of opinion or errors stemming from mistakes are not actionable.” The petition was filed on Thursday by the Protect Democracy Project, a legal nonprofit “dedicated to defeating the authoritarian threat.”Any interested person or group can petition a federal agency to create, adjust or repeal a rule, according to the Administrative Conference of the United States. But agencies are not required to use specific procedures when receiving or responding to petitions.If the FCC chair declines to act — for instance, by directing the FCC to invite public comment — Gigi Sohn, an advisor to the petition, said that would give the Protect Democracy Project a stronger basis for a lawsuit over the issue. Sohn was a longtime public advocate in telecommunications policy and counsel to Tom Wheeler, the chair of the FCC during President Barack Obama’s second term. She was nominated to serve as an FCC commissioner under President Joe Biden, but withdrew her candidacy after a wave of personal attacks. Sohn said that Carr’s use of the policy illustrates the risk of government overreach.“In the right hands, it could stop misinformation, disinformation, what have you. But the problem is, it’s never been used that way, and the FCC has other tools,” she said. “Right now, it’s being used as a cudgel. And this is not just about Chair Carr. This is about future chairs or commissioners who want to use this as a tool of censorship.”The petition cites several incidents that it says illustrate the policy’s potential for abuse.In February, the FCC invoked the policy in its investigations into CBS over allegations that the news program “60 Minutes” intentionally deceived its viewers with its editing of an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. Before the investigation began, Trump sued CBS’s parent company, Paramount, for $20 billion over the interview. In July, the parties settled for $16 million.Paramount at the time was pursuing an $8 billion merger with Skydance Media, which required FCC approval. The agency approved it later that month.In a September interview with conservative influencer Benny Johnson, Carr said that local ABC affiliates could be in violation of the News Distortion policy if they continued to air Jimmy Kimmel Live after the host’s remarks about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.In the episode, Kimmel criticized conservatives as “doing everything they can to score political points” from the killing.Licensed broadcasters that aired Kimmel risked “the possibility of fines or license revocations from the FCC if [they] continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of news distortion,” Carr said.ABC suspended Kimmel a few hours later. The network reinstated Kimmel the next week after substantial backlash, including from conservatives who criticized Carr. Ted Cruz, R-Texas called Carr’s remarks “dangerous as hell“ and Rand Paul, R-Ky. said they were “absolutely inappropriate.” Carr later denied his comments were intended as a threat.“What I spoke about last week is that when concerns are raised about news distortion there’s an easy way for parties to address that and work that out,” Carr said at the Concordia media summit in September. “In the main, that takes place between local television stations that are licensed by the FCC and what we call national programmers like Disney. They work that out, and there doesn’t need to be any involvement of the FCC.”But the former FCC chairs petitioning for the policy reversal say they took the comments as a threat.“Wielding the news distortion policy, the FCC has already opened or threatened to open investigations against private broadcasters due to disagreements with editorial decisions or statements made in a comedic monologue,” the petition said. “Because the FCC has no legitimate interest in correcting or punishing what it considers to be slanted news coverage, the news distortion policy lacks a meaningful function.”U.S. law, rooted in the First Amendment, generally prohibits the FCC from engaging in government censorship of speech.The FCC’s jurisdiction is limited to broadcast organizations like network television and radio stations, and cannot police cable news, newspapers or online-only news outlets. The agency didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.The petition says it is not designed to overturn the “hoax” rule, which bans broadcasters from deliberately presenting wholly false information about a crime or catastrophe without a disclaimer that it’s fiction.The signatories of the petition include: Thomas Wheeler, a Democratic chair appointed by Barack Obama; Rachelle Chong, a Republican commissioner appointed by Bill Clinton; Alfred Sikes, a Republican chair appointed by George H.W. Bush; Republican Andrew Barrett and Democrat Ervin Duggan, both commissioners appointed by H.W. Bush; Mark Fowler, a Republican chair appointed by Ronald Reagan; and Dennis Patrick, a Republican commissioner appointed by Ronald Reagan.Kevin CollierKevin Collier is a reporter covering cybersecurity, privacy and technology policy for NBC News.
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