SEDGWICK COUNTY—A Kansas man who admitted his role in a gunfight at a funeral in Wichita is scheduled for sentencing on Monday.

In August, 19-year-old Demetrious Carter pled guilty to aggravated endangering of a child, according to the Sedgwick County District Attorney's office.&nbsp; He had&nbsp; originally been charged with with two counts of aggravated assault.

On June 16, 2023.&nbsp; police were dispatched to a shooting call at Life Center Church in the 1100 block of North Oliver in Wichita, according to Officer Juan Rebolledo.

First responders encountered a chaotic scene and a crowd of more than 50 people running in different directions. During the initial response officers located an 18-year-old victim with a gunshot wound to his right forearm and provided life-saving measures. The 18-year-old victim later identified as Carter was treated for his serious but not life-threatening injuries.

The investigation revealed that several suspects arrived at the parking lot of the church and confronted a large group of people attending a funeral right outside the main door.

After a brief verbal altercation between both groups, an unknown number of people from both groups started to shoot at each other. After initial interviews, officers arrested Carter and transported him to investigations for further questioning before an arrest.

During the incident, several vehicles, and residences around and in front of the church’s parking lot were hit with gunfire. Police also recovered several firearms from the scene.&nbsp;

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2023/6/1687431619099.png" alt="Carter photo Sedgwick Co." />
 <figcaption>Carter photo Sedgwick Co.</figcaption>
 </figure>SEDGWICK COUNTY—A Kansas man who admitted his role in a gunfight at a funeral in Wichita is scheduled for sentencing on Monday.In August, 19-year-old Demetrious Carter pled guilty to aggravated endangering of a child, according to the Sedgwick County District Attorney's office.&nbsp; He had&nbsp; originally been charged with with two counts of aggravated assault.On June 16, 2023.&nbsp; police were dispatched to a shooting call at Life Center Church in the 1100 block of North Oliver in Wichita, according to Officer Juan Rebolledo.<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2024/9/1727350888967.png" alt="First responders at the church -photo courtesy KWCH" />
 <figcaption>First responders at the church -photo courtesy KWCH</figcaption>
 </figure>First responders encountered a chaotic scene and a crowd of more than 50 people running in different directions. During the initial response officers located an 18-year-old victim with a gunshot wound to his right forearm and provided life-saving measures. The 18-year-old victim later identified as Carter was treated for his serious but not life-threatening injuries.The investigation revealed that several suspects arrived at the parking lot of the church and confronted a large group of people attending a funeral right outside the main door.After a brief verbal altercation between both groups, an unknown number of people from both groups started to shoot at each other. After initial interviews, officers arrested Carter and transported him to investigations for further questioning before an arrest.During the incident, several vehicles, and residences around and in front of the church’s parking lot were hit with gunfire. Police also recovered several firearms from the scene.&nbsp;

Sentencing Day for gunfight outside funeral in Kansas

LITITZ, Pa. (AP) —&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a>&nbsp;delivered a profane and conspiracy-laden speech two days before Tuesday's&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024">presidential election</a>, talking about reporters being shot and suggesting he “shouldn't have left” the White House after his 2020 loss to Democrat&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/joe-biden">Joe Biden</a>.

In remarks Sunday that bore little resemblance to the speech he's been delivering at his recent rallies, the former president repeatedly cast doubt on the integrity of the vote and resurrected old grievances after trying to&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/capitol-siege">overturn his 2020 election defeat</a>. Trump intensified his verbal attacks on what he cast as a “demonic” Democratic Party and the American media, steering his rally in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, at one point to the topic of violence against members of the press.

He noted the&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-vance-north-carolina-60de08931c1a964e8e1fb21d3778d35e">ballistic glass</a>&nbsp;that is used to protect him at outdoor events after a gunman's&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/attempted-assassination-of-donald-trump">assassination attempt</a>&nbsp;in July and pointed to openings between the panels.

“I have this piece of glass here,” he said. “But all we have really over here is the fake news. And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news. And I don’t mind that so much.”

It was the second time in recent days that Trump has talked about guns being pointed at people he considers enemies. He&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/election-trump-cheney-war-hawk-14e2037b4fd8d22acf64c8b888ce296d">suggested</a>&nbsp;former Rep. Liz Cheney, a prominent Republican critic, wouldn’t be willing to support foreign wars if she had “nine barrels shooting at her.”

Facing criticism for suggesting violence against the media, Trump's campaign later played down his comments.

“The President’s statement about protective glass placement has nothing to do with the Media being harmed, or anything else,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement. Instead he claimed that Trump was suggesting that reporters were in “great danger themselves, and should have had a glass protective shield, also. There can be no other interpretation of what was said. He was actually looking out for their welfare, far more than his own!”

Trump also revived falsehoods about elections and argued that he can only lose to Democrat Kamala Harris if he is cheated, even though polls suggest a very tight race.

“It’s a crooked country," Trump railed to his crowd on a chilly airport tarmac, returning to the grievance that had defined the early days of his campaign. “They’ll want to put you in jail because you want to make it straight. Think of it, think of it. They cheat in elections and you call them on it and they want to put you in jail.”

Trump was indicted for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in both Washington and Georgia.

Some of his allies, notably former chief strategist Steve Bannon, have encouraged Trump to prematurely declare victory on Tuesday night after polls close even if the race is too early to call. That's&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/jan-6-hearings-day-2-takeaways-5194979c436b3ee567e0dd20c7cc2f2d">what Trump did</a>&nbsp;four years ago, kicking off months of denial and lies that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

For much of this year, Trump had run a relatively disciplined campaign, emphasizing the issues his aides believe can deliver him victory, even as he clung to false theories about voter fraud and frequently went on digressions, stirring controversy. But that discipline is increasingly collapsing.

Trump in recent weeks&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-arnold-palmer-closing-arguments-latrobe-pennsylvania-2bea9620c523e531a55259200215284e">has joked about</a>&nbsp;golfer Arnold Palmer's genitalia,&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-women-harris-closing-message-gender-gap-c4ba3f564e981aec7cd12f24d390aced">continued using gendered or sexist language</a>&nbsp;in his efforts to win over women and staged a rally at New York's Madison Square Garden with speakers who made&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-madison-square-garden-new-york-election-fcfe75be7f8281fde7bffa3adb3bba5d">crude and racist insults</a>&nbsp;that continue to dominate the headlines.

The darker and more profane tone of his campaign has comes as the former president, who has long been a fan of the masculine pageantry of the WWE, has been entering his rallies to the ominous tolling bell music once used by the wrestler known as “The Undertaker."

Trump had nonetheless been delivering what was a fairly consistent stump speech most days, aided by a series of videos that kept him on script, even as he veered from subject to subject in a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/spotlights/2024/inside-the-weave-how-donald-trumps-rhetoric-has-grown-darker-and-windier/">discursive style he has labeled “the weave.”</a>&nbsp;But outside the Lancaster airport, he completely abandoned his planned remarks, skipping his usual points on the economy, immigration and rote criticisms of Harris.

Trump's remarks in Pennsylvania were not planned according to a person familiar with them, who noted Trump is known to ad-lib. While it was unclear exactly what had set Trump off, his campaign had released a memo earlier in the day criticizing new polling from The New York Times again showing the race extremely close in the seven major swing states.

Trump had spoken by phone before he took the stage with two reporters who had mentioned polling, including one who had asked him&nbsp;<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-tells-abc-expects-winner-declared-election-night/story?id=115438086">if he thought there was any way he could lose</a>.

Trump has been frustrated that the campaign remains locked in a close fight to the finish. He thinks Harris is an unworthy opponent and he cannot understand why he isn't dominating, said one Republican familiar with the dynamics of the campaign who, like others, was granted anonymity to discuss it.

Another Republican blamed last-minute anxiety -- and Trump having to trust a system that he believes is rigged against him.

Still, several Trump allies applauded his speech, saying that they were glad he was shining a light on concerns about fraud in the race's final stretch.

Harris pushed back at Trump's characterizations of U.S. elections, telling reporters on Sunday that Trump's comments are “meant to distract from the fact that we have and support free and fair elections in our country.” Those “good systems” were in place in 2020, Harris said, and “he lost.”

The vice president said she trusts the upcoming vote tally and urged voters, “in particular people who have not yet voted to not fall for this tactic, which I think includes suggesting to people that if they vote, their vote won't matter.”

Trump, for his part, acknowledged that he was sidestepping his usual approach with his conspiratorial speech. He repeatedly talked about disregarding the advice of his aides, repeating their feedback in a mocking voice and insisting that he had to talk about election fraud despite their objections.

In his next appearance a few hours later at an airport in Kinston, North Carolina, Trump returned to much of his usual script, alternating between prepared remarks and familiar stories.

At one point, he said, “hopefully, we get rid of Mitch McConnell pretty soon,” undercutting the Senate Republican leader who endorsed Trump earlier this year despite blaming him for the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

“Can you believe he endorsed me?” Trump added a minute later with a laugh. “That must have been a painful day in his life.”

He took the stage a third time Sunday night in Macon, Georgia, sticking more closely to his prepared remarks and focusing heavily on immigration.

Trump told his supporters that in two days, they were going to “save our country" and that they were “on the verge of the four greatest years in American history.”

“You watch. It’s going to be so good. It’s going to be so much fun. It’ll be nasty a little bit at times, and maybe at the beginning, in particular," he said. “But it’s going to be something.”

Cooper reported from Phoenix. Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro in Washington, Darlene Superville in Detroit, Jeff Amy in Macon, Georgia, and Michelle L. Price and Bill Barrow in Washington contributed to this report

LITITZ, Pa. (AP) —&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a>&nbsp;delivered a profane and conspiracy-laden speech two days before Tuesday's&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024">presidential election</a>, talking about reporters being shot and suggesting he “shouldn't have left” the White House after his 2020 loss to Democrat&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/joe-biden">Joe Biden</a>.<div><blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Former President Trump on bulletproof glass: &quot;To get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news. And I don&#39;t mind that so much.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/4ZgDiRPNds">pic.twitter.com/4ZgDiRPNds</a>&mdash; CSPAN (@cspan) <a href="https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1853233590936772686?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 4, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div>In remarks Sunday that bore little resemblance to the speech he's been delivering at his recent rallies, the former president repeatedly cast doubt on the integrity of the vote and resurrected old grievances after trying to&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/capitol-siege">overturn his 2020 election defeat</a>. Trump intensified his verbal attacks on what he cast as a “demonic” Democratic Party and the American media, steering his rally in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, at one point to the topic of violence against members of the press.He noted the&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-vance-north-carolina-60de08931c1a964e8e1fb21d3778d35e">ballistic glass</a>&nbsp;that is used to protect him at outdoor events after a gunman's&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/attempted-assassination-of-donald-trump">assassination attempt</a>&nbsp;in July and pointed to openings between the panels.“I have this piece of glass here,” he said. “But all we have really over here is the fake news. And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news. And I don’t mind that so much.”It was the second time in recent days that Trump has talked about guns being pointed at people he considers enemies. He&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/election-trump-cheney-war-hawk-14e2037b4fd8d22acf64c8b888ce296d">suggested</a>&nbsp;former Rep. Liz Cheney, a prominent Republican critic, wouldn’t be willing to support foreign wars if she had “nine barrels shooting at her.”Facing criticism for suggesting violence against the media, Trump's campaign later played down his comments.“The President’s statement about protective glass placement has nothing to do with the Media being harmed, or anything else,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement. Instead he claimed that Trump was suggesting that reporters were in “great danger themselves, and should have had a glass protective shield, also. There can be no other interpretation of what was said. He was actually looking out for their welfare, far more than his own!”Trump also revived falsehoods about elections and argued that he can only lose to Democrat Kamala Harris if he is cheated, even though polls suggest a very tight race.“It’s a crooked country," Trump railed to his crowd on a chilly airport tarmac, returning to the grievance that had defined the early days of his campaign. “They’ll want to put you in jail because you want to make it straight. Think of it, think of it. They cheat in elections and you call them on it and they want to put you in jail.”Trump was indicted for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in both Washington and Georgia.Some of his allies, notably former chief strategist Steve Bannon, have encouraged Trump to prematurely declare victory on Tuesday night after polls close even if the race is too early to call. That's&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/jan-6-hearings-day-2-takeaways-5194979c436b3ee567e0dd20c7cc2f2d">what Trump did</a>&nbsp;four years ago, kicking off months of denial and lies that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.For much of this year, Trump had run a relatively disciplined campaign, emphasizing the issues his aides believe can deliver him victory, even as he clung to false theories about voter fraud and frequently went on digressions, stirring controversy. But that discipline is increasingly collapsing.Trump in recent weeks&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-arnold-palmer-closing-arguments-latrobe-pennsylvania-2bea9620c523e531a55259200215284e">has joked about</a>&nbsp;golfer Arnold Palmer's genitalia,&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-women-harris-closing-message-gender-gap-c4ba3f564e981aec7cd12f24d390aced">continued using gendered or sexist language</a>&nbsp;in his efforts to win over women and staged a rally at New York's Madison Square Garden with speakers who made&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-madison-square-garden-new-york-election-fcfe75be7f8281fde7bffa3adb3bba5d">crude and racist insults</a>&nbsp;that continue to dominate the headlines.The darker and more profane tone of his campaign has comes as the former president, who has long been a fan of the masculine pageantry of the WWE, has been entering his rallies to the ominous tolling bell music once used by the wrestler known as “The Undertaker."Trump had nonetheless been delivering what was a fairly consistent stump speech most days, aided by a series of videos that kept him on script, even as he veered from subject to subject in a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/spotlights/2024/inside-the-weave-how-donald-trumps-rhetoric-has-grown-darker-and-windier/">discursive style he has labeled “the weave.”</a>&nbsp;But outside the Lancaster airport, he completely abandoned his planned remarks, skipping his usual points on the economy, immigration and rote criticisms of Harris.Trump's remarks in Pennsylvania were not planned according to a person familiar with them, who noted Trump is known to ad-lib. While it was unclear exactly what had set Trump off, his campaign had released a memo earlier in the day criticizing new polling from The New York Times again showing the race extremely close in the seven major swing states.Trump had spoken by phone before he took the stage with two reporters who had mentioned polling, including one who had asked him&nbsp;<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-tells-abc-expects-winner-declared-election-night/story?id=115438086">if he thought there was any way he could lose</a>.Trump has been frustrated that the campaign remains locked in a close fight to the finish. He thinks Harris is an unworthy opponent and he cannot understand why he isn't dominating, said one Republican familiar with the dynamics of the campaign who, like others, was granted anonymity to discuss it.Another Republican blamed last-minute anxiety -- and Trump having to trust a system that he believes is rigged against him.Still, several Trump allies applauded his speech, saying that they were glad he was shining a light on concerns about fraud in the race's final stretch.Harris pushed back at Trump's characterizations of U.S. elections, telling reporters on Sunday that Trump's comments are “meant to distract from the fact that we have and support free and fair elections in our country.” Those “good systems” were in place in 2020, Harris said, and “he lost.”The vice president said she trusts the upcoming vote tally and urged voters, “in particular people who have not yet voted to not fall for this tactic, which I think includes suggesting to people that if they vote, their vote won't matter.”Trump, for his part, acknowledged that he was sidestepping his usual approach with his conspiratorial speech. He repeatedly talked about disregarding the advice of his aides, repeating their feedback in a mocking voice and insisting that he had to talk about election fraud despite their objections.In his next appearance a few hours later at an airport in Kinston, North Carolina, Trump returned to much of his usual script, alternating between prepared remarks and familiar stories.At one point, he said, “hopefully, we get rid of Mitch McConnell pretty soon,” undercutting the Senate Republican leader who endorsed Trump earlier this year despite blaming him for the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.“Can you believe he endorsed me?” Trump added a minute later with a laugh. “That must have been a painful day in his life.”He took the stage a third time Sunday night in Macon, Georgia, sticking more closely to his prepared remarks and focusing heavily on immigration.Trump told his supporters that in two days, they were going to “save our country" and that they were “on the verge of the four greatest years in American history.”“You watch. It’s going to be so good. It’s going to be so much fun. It’ll be nasty a little bit at times, and maybe at the beginning, in particular," he said. “But it’s going to be something.”___Cooper reported from Phoenix. Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro in Washington, Darlene Superville in Detroit, Jeff Amy in Macon, Georgia, and Michelle L. Price and Bill Barrow in Washington contributed to this report

🎥 Trump slams the media during one of three rallies on Sunday

LOS ANGELES (AP) —<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/quincy-jones">Quincy Jones</a>, the multi-talented music titan whose vast legacy ranged from producing Michael Jackson's historic "Thriller" album to writing prize-winning film and television scores and collaborating with Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles and hundreds of other recording artists, has died at 91.

Jones' publicist, Arnold Robinson, says he died Sunday night at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, surrounded by his family.

“Tonight, with full but broken hearts, we must share the news of our father and brother Quincy Jones’ passing," the family said in a statement. “And although this is an incredible loss for our family, we celebrate the great life that he lived and know there will never be another like him.”

Jones rose from running with gangs on the South Side of Chicago to the very heights of show business, becoming one of the first Black executives to thrive in Hollywood and amassing an extraordinary musical catalog that includes some of the richest moments of American rhythm and song. For years, it was unlikely to find a music lover who did not own at least one record with his name on it, or a leader in the entertainment industry and beyond who did not have some connection to him.

Jones kept company with presidents and foreign leaders, movie stars and musicians, philanthropists and business leaders. He toured with Count Basie and Lionel Hampton, arranged records for Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, composed the soundtracks for "Roots" and "In the Heat of the Night," organized President Bill Clinton's first inaugural celebration and oversaw the all-star recording of “We Are the World,” the 1985 charity record for famine relief in Africa.

Lionel Richie, who co-wrote “We Are the World" and was among the featured singers, would call Jones “the master orchestrator.”

In a career which began when records were still played on vinyl at 78 rpm, top honors likely go to his productions with Jackson: “Off the Wall,” “Thriller” and “Bad” were albums near-universal in their style and appeal. Jones’ versatility and imagination helped set off the explosive talents of Jackson as he transformed from child star to the “King of Pop.” On such classic tracks as “Billie Jean” and “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” Jones and Jackson fashioned a global soundscape out of disco, funk, rock, pop, R&amp;B and jazz and African chants. For “Thriller,” some of the most memorable touches originated with Jones, who recruited Eddie Van Halen for a guitar solo on the genre-fusing “Beat It” and brought in Vincent Price for a ghoulish voiceover on the title track.

“Thriller” sold more than 20 million copies in 1983 alone and has contended with the Eagles’ “Greatest Hits 1971-1975” among others as the best-selling album of all time.

“If an album doesn’t do well, everyone says ‘it was the producers fault’; so if it does well, it should be your ‘fault,’ too,” Jones said in an interview with the Library of Congress in 2016. “The tracks don’t just all of a sudden appear. The producer has to have the skill, experience and ability to guide the vision to completion.”

The list of his honors and awards fills 18 pages in his 2001 autobiography “Q”, including 27 Grammys at the time (now 28), an honorary Academy Award (now two) and an Emmy for “Roots.” He also received France’s Legion d’Honneur, the Rudolph Valentino Award from the Republic of Italy and a Kennedy Center tribute for his contributions to American culture. He was the subject of a 1990 documentary, “Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones” and a 2018 film by daughter Rashida Jones. His memoir made him a best-selling author.

Born in Chicago in 1933, Jones would cite the hymns his mother sang around the house as the first music he could remember. But he looked back sadly on his childhood, once telling Oprah Winfrey that “There are two kinds of people: those who have nurturing parents or caretakers, and those who don’t. Nothing’s in between.” Jones’ mother suffered from emotional problems and was eventually institutionalized, a loss that made the world seem “senseless” for Quincy. He spent much of his time in Chicago on the streets, with gangs, stealing and fighting.

“They nailed my hand to a fence with a switchblade, man,” he told the AP in 2018, showing a scar from his childhood.

Music saved him. As a boy, he learned that a Chicago neighbor owned a piano and he soon played it constantly himself. His father moved to Washington state when Quincy was 10 and his world changed at a neighborhood recreation center. Jones and some friends had broken into the kitchen and helped themselves to lemon meringue pie when Jones noticed a small room nearby with a stage. On the stage was a piano.

“I went up there, paused, stared, and then tinkled on it for a moment,” he wrote in his autobiography. “That’s where I began to find peace. I was 11. I knew this was it for me. Forever.”

Within a few years he was playing trumpet and befriending a young blind musician named Ray Charles, who became a lifelong friend. He was gifted enough to win a scholarship at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, but dropped out when Hampton invited him to tour with his band. Jones went on to work as a freelance composer, conductor, arranger and producer. As a teen, he backed Billie Holiday. By his mid-20s, he was touring with his own band.

“We had the best jazz band on the planet, and yet we were literally starving,” Jones later told Musician magazine. “That’s when I discovered that there was music, and there was the music business. If I were to survive, I would have to learn the difference between the two.”

As a music executive, he overcame racial barriers by becoming a vice president at Mercury Records in the early ’60s. In 1971, he became the first Black musical director for the Academy Awards ceremony. The first movie he produced, “The Color Purple,” received 11 Oscar nominations in 1986. (But, to his great disappointment, no wins). In a partnership with Time Warner, he created Quincy Jones Entertainment, which included the pop-culture magazine Vibe and Qwest Broadcasting. The company was sold for $270 million in 1999.

“My philosophy as a businessman has always come from the same roots as my personal credo: take talented people on their own terms and treat them fairly and with respect, no matter who they are or where they come from,” Jones wrote in his autobiography.

He was at ease with virtually every form of American music, whether setting Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon” to a punchy, swinging rhythm and wistful flute or opening his production of Charles’ soulful “In the Heat of the Night” with a lusty tenor sax solo. He worked with jazz giants (Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Duke Ellington), rappers (Snoop Dogg, LL Cool J), crooners (Sinatra, Tony Bennett), pop singers (Lesley Gore) and rhythm and blues stars (Chaka Khan, rapper and singer Queen Latifah).

On “We are the World” alone, performers included Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder and Bruce Springsteen. He co-wrote hits for Jackson – “P.Y.T (Pretty Young Thing” – and Donna Summer – “Love Is in Control (Finger on the Trigger) – and had songs sampled by Tupac Shakur, Kanye West and other rappers. He even composed the theme song for the sitcom “Sanford and Son.”

Jones was a facilitator and maker of the stars. He gave Will Smith a key break in the hit TV show “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” which Jones produced, and through “The Color Purple” he introduced Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg to filmgoers. Starting in the 1960s, he composed more than 35 film scores, including for “The Pawnbroker,” “In the Heat of the Night” and “In Cold Blood.”

He called scoring “a multifaceted process, an abstract combination of science and soul.”

Jones’ work on the soundtrack for “The Wiz” led to his partnership with Jackson, who starred in the 1978 movie. In an essay published in Time magazine after Jackson’s death, in 2009, Jones remembered that the singer kept slips of paper on him that contained thoughts by famous thinkers. When Jones asked about the origins of one passage, Jackson answered “Socrates,” but pronounced it “SO-crayts.” Jones corrected him, “Michael, it’s SOCK-ra-tees.”

“And the look he gave me then, it just prompted me to say, because I’d been impressed by all the things I saw in him during the rehearsal process, ‘I would love to take a shot at producing your album,’” Jones recalled. “And he went back and told the people at Epic Records, and they said, `No way — Quincy’s too jazzy.’ Michael was persistent, and he and his managers went back and said, `Quincy’s producing the album.’ And we proceeded to make ‘Off the Wall.’ Ironically, that was one of the biggest Black-selling albums at the time, and that album saved all the jobs of the people saying I was the wrong guy. That’s the way it works.”

Tensions emerged after Jackson’s death. In 2013,&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/7adb910007e4d705278bed1b7ecb5660">Jones sued Jackson’s estate</a>, claiming he was owed millions in royalties and production fees on some of the superstar’s greatest hits. In a 2018 interview with New York magazine, he called Jackson “as Machiavellian as they come” and alleged that he lifted material from others.

Jones was hooked on work and play, and at times suffered for it. He nearly died from a brain aneurysm in 1974 and became deeply depressed in the 1980s after “The Color Purple” was snubbed by Academy Awards voters; he never received a competitive Oscar. A father of seven children by five mothers, Jones described himself as a “dog” who had countless lovers around the world. He was married three times, his wives including the actor Peggy Lipton.

“To me, loving a woman is one of the most natural, blissful, life-enhancing — and dare I say, religious — acts in the world,” he wrote.

He was not an activist in his early years, but changed after attending the 1968 funeral of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and later befriending the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Jones was dedicated to philanthropy, saying “the best and only useful aspect of fame and celebrity is having a platform to help others.”

His causes included fighting HIV and AIDS, educating children and providing for the poor around the world. He founded the Quincy Jones Listen Up! Foundation to connect young people with music, culture and technology, and said he was driven throughout his life “by a spirit of adventure and a criminal level of optimism.”

“Life is like a dream, the Spanish poet and philosopher Federico Garcia Lorca said,” Jones wrote in his memoir. “Mine’s been in Technicolor, with full Dolby sound through THX amplification before they knew what these systems were.”

Along with Rashida, Jones is survived by daughters Jolie Jones Levine, Rachel Jones, Martina Jones, Kidada Jones and Kenya Kinski-Jones; son Quincy Jones III; brother Richard Jones and sisters Theresa Frank and Margie Jay.

AP Entertainment writer Andrew Dalton and former AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen contributed to this report from Los Angeles.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2024/11/1730717531263.png" alt="" />
 <figcaption></figcaption>
 </figure>LOS ANGELES (AP) —<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/quincy-jones">Quincy Jones</a>, the multi-talented music titan whose vast legacy ranged from producing Michael Jackson's historic "Thriller" album to writing prize-winning film and television scores and collaborating with Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles and hundreds of other recording artists, has died at 91.Jones' publicist, Arnold Robinson, says he died Sunday night at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, surrounded by his family.“Tonight, with full but broken hearts, we must share the news of our father and brother Quincy Jones’ passing," the family said in a statement. “And although this is an incredible loss for our family, we celebrate the great life that he lived and know there will never be another like him.”Jones rose from running with gangs on the South Side of Chicago to the very heights of show business, becoming one of the first Black executives to thrive in Hollywood and amassing an extraordinary musical catalog that includes some of the richest moments of American rhythm and song. For years, it was unlikely to find a music lover who did not own at least one record with his name on it, or a leader in the entertainment industry and beyond who did not have some connection to him.Jones kept company with presidents and foreign leaders, movie stars and musicians, philanthropists and business leaders. He toured with Count Basie and Lionel Hampton, arranged records for Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, composed the soundtracks for "Roots" and "In the Heat of the Night," organized President Bill Clinton's first inaugural celebration and oversaw the all-star recording of “We Are the World,” the 1985 charity record for famine relief in Africa.Lionel Richie, who co-wrote “We Are the World" and was among the featured singers, would call Jones “the master orchestrator.”In a career which began when records were still played on vinyl at 78 rpm, top honors likely go to his productions with Jackson: “Off the Wall,” “Thriller” and “Bad” were albums near-universal in their style and appeal. Jones’ versatility and imagination helped set off the explosive talents of Jackson as he transformed from child star to the “King of Pop.” On such classic tracks as “Billie Jean” and “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” Jones and Jackson fashioned a global soundscape out of disco, funk, rock, pop, R&amp;B and jazz and African chants. For “Thriller,” some of the most memorable touches originated with Jones, who recruited Eddie Van Halen for a guitar solo on the genre-fusing “Beat It” and brought in Vincent Price for a ghoulish voiceover on the title track.“Thriller” sold more than 20 million copies in 1983 alone and has contended with the Eagles’ “Greatest Hits 1971-1975” among others as the best-selling album of all time.“If an album doesn’t do well, everyone says ‘it was the producers fault’; so if it does well, it should be your ‘fault,’ too,” Jones said in an interview with the Library of Congress in 2016. “The tracks don’t just all of a sudden appear. The producer has to have the skill, experience and ability to guide the vision to completion.”The list of his honors and awards fills 18 pages in his 2001 autobiography “Q”, including 27 Grammys at the time (now 28), an honorary Academy Award (now two) and an Emmy for “Roots.” He also received France’s Legion d’Honneur, the Rudolph Valentino Award from the Republic of Italy and a Kennedy Center tribute for his contributions to American culture. He was the subject of a 1990 documentary, “Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones” and a 2018 film by daughter Rashida Jones. His memoir made him a best-selling author.Born in Chicago in 1933, Jones would cite the hymns his mother sang around the house as the first music he could remember. But he looked back sadly on his childhood, once telling Oprah Winfrey that “There are two kinds of people: those who have nurturing parents or caretakers, and those who don’t. Nothing’s in between.” Jones’ mother suffered from emotional problems and was eventually institutionalized, a loss that made the world seem “senseless” for Quincy. He spent much of his time in Chicago on the streets, with gangs, stealing and fighting.“They nailed my hand to a fence with a switchblade, man,” he told the AP in 2018, showing a scar from his childhood.Music saved him. As a boy, he learned that a Chicago neighbor owned a piano and he soon played it constantly himself. His father moved to Washington state when Quincy was 10 and his world changed at a neighborhood recreation center. Jones and some friends had broken into the kitchen and helped themselves to lemon meringue pie when Jones noticed a small room nearby with a stage. On the stage was a piano.“I went up there, paused, stared, and then tinkled on it for a moment,” he wrote in his autobiography. “That’s where I began to find peace. I was 11. I knew this was it for me. Forever.”Within a few years he was playing trumpet and befriending a young blind musician named Ray Charles, who became a lifelong friend. He was gifted enough to win a scholarship at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, but dropped out when Hampton invited him to tour with his band. Jones went on to work as a freelance composer, conductor, arranger and producer. As a teen, he backed Billie Holiday. By his mid-20s, he was touring with his own band.“We had the best jazz band on the planet, and yet we were literally starving,” Jones later told Musician magazine. “That’s when I discovered that there was music, and there was the music business. If I were to survive, I would have to learn the difference between the two.”As a music executive, he overcame racial barriers by becoming a vice president at Mercury Records in the early ’60s. In 1971, he became the first Black musical director for the Academy Awards ceremony. The first movie he produced, “The Color Purple,” received 11 Oscar nominations in 1986. (But, to his great disappointment, no wins). In a partnership with Time Warner, he created Quincy Jones Entertainment, which included the pop-culture magazine Vibe and Qwest Broadcasting. The company was sold for $270 million in 1999.“My philosophy as a businessman has always come from the same roots as my personal credo: take talented people on their own terms and treat them fairly and with respect, no matter who they are or where they come from,” Jones wrote in his autobiography.He was at ease with virtually every form of American music, whether setting Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon” to a punchy, swinging rhythm and wistful flute or opening his production of Charles’ soulful “In the Heat of the Night” with a lusty tenor sax solo. He worked with jazz giants (Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Duke Ellington), rappers (Snoop Dogg, LL Cool J), crooners (Sinatra, Tony Bennett), pop singers (Lesley Gore) and rhythm and blues stars (Chaka Khan, rapper and singer Queen Latifah).On “We are the World” alone, performers included Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder and Bruce Springsteen. He co-wrote hits for Jackson – “P.Y.T (Pretty Young Thing” – and Donna Summer – “Love Is in Control (Finger on the Trigger) – and had songs sampled by Tupac Shakur, Kanye West and other rappers. He even composed the theme song for the sitcom “Sanford and Son.”Jones was a facilitator and maker of the stars. He gave Will Smith a key break in the hit TV show “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” which Jones produced, and through “The Color Purple” he introduced Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg to filmgoers. Starting in the 1960s, he composed more than 35 film scores, including for “The Pawnbroker,” “In the Heat of the Night” and “In Cold Blood.”He called scoring “a multifaceted process, an abstract combination of science and soul.”Jones’ work on the soundtrack for “The Wiz” led to his partnership with Jackson, who starred in the 1978 movie. In an essay published in Time magazine after Jackson’s death, in 2009, Jones remembered that the singer kept slips of paper on him that contained thoughts by famous thinkers. When Jones asked about the origins of one passage, Jackson answered “Socrates,” but pronounced it “SO-crayts.” Jones corrected him, “Michael, it’s SOCK-ra-tees.”“And the look he gave me then, it just prompted me to say, because I’d been impressed by all the things I saw in him during the rehearsal process, ‘I would love to take a shot at producing your album,’” Jones recalled. “And he went back and told the people at Epic Records, and they said, `No way — Quincy’s too jazzy.’ Michael was persistent, and he and his managers went back and said, `Quincy’s producing the album.’ And we proceeded to make ‘Off the Wall.’ Ironically, that was one of the biggest Black-selling albums at the time, and that album saved all the jobs of the people saying I was the wrong guy. That’s the way it works.”Tensions emerged after Jackson’s death. In 2013,&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/7adb910007e4d705278bed1b7ecb5660">Jones sued Jackson’s estate</a>, claiming he was owed millions in royalties and production fees on some of the superstar’s greatest hits. In a 2018 interview with New York magazine, he called Jackson “as Machiavellian as they come” and alleged that he lifted material from others.Jones was hooked on work and play, and at times suffered for it. He nearly died from a brain aneurysm in 1974 and became deeply depressed in the 1980s after “The Color Purple” was snubbed by Academy Awards voters; he never received a competitive Oscar. A father of seven children by five mothers, Jones described himself as a “dog” who had countless lovers around the world. He was married three times, his wives including the actor Peggy Lipton.“To me, loving a woman is one of the most natural, blissful, life-enhancing — and dare I say, religious — acts in the world,” he wrote.He was not an activist in his early years, but changed after attending the 1968 funeral of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and later befriending the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Jones was dedicated to philanthropy, saying “the best and only useful aspect of fame and celebrity is having a platform to help others.”His causes included fighting HIV and AIDS, educating children and providing for the poor around the world. He founded the Quincy Jones Listen Up! Foundation to connect young people with music, culture and technology, and said he was driven throughout his life “by a spirit of adventure and a criminal level of optimism.”“Life is like a dream, the Spanish poet and philosopher Federico Garcia Lorca said,” Jones wrote in his memoir. “Mine’s been in Technicolor, with full Dolby sound through THX amplification before they knew what these systems were.”Along with Rashida, Jones is survived by daughters Jolie Jones Levine, Rachel Jones, Martina Jones, Kidada Jones and Kenya Kinski-Jones; son Quincy Jones III; brother Richard Jones and sisters Theresa Frank and Margie Jay.____AP Entertainment writer Andrew Dalton and former AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen contributed to this report from Los Angeles.

Quincy Jones, musical titan and entertainment icon, dead at 91

DETROIT (AP) —&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/kamala-harris">Vice President Kamala Harris</a>&nbsp;on Sunday declined to say how she voted on a&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/california-crime-ballot-initiative-signatures-theft-fentanyl-e4863b0eb0b8808ea8f5746c60780ba7">key ballot measure</a>&nbsp;in her home state of California that would reverse criminal justice reforms approved in recent years.

Harris punted on a question about the ballot initiative in comments to reporters while campaigning in the battleground state of Michigan. She also confirmed, two days before Election Day, that her mail-in ballot was “on its way to California.”

“I am not going to talk about the vote on that. Because honestly it’s the Sunday before the election and I don’t intend to create an endorsement one way or another around it," said Harris, a former San Francisco district attorney, California attorney general and U.S. senator before she was elected vice president in 2020.

The decision by the Democratic nominee for president not to publicly stake out a position on the high-profile initiative could leave her open to criticism from Republican Donald Trump that she is being soft on crime and from some left-leaning voters who would like to see her speak out forcefully against what they perceive as draconian anticrime efforts.

The initiative, if passed, would make the crime of shoplifting a felony for repeat offenders and increase penalties for some drug charges, including those involving the synthetic opioid fentanyl. It also would give judges the authority to order people with multiple drug charges to get treatment.

Proponents said the initiative is necessary to close loopholes in existing laws that have made it challenging for law enforcement to punish shoplifters and drug dealers.

Opponents, including Democratic state leaders and social justice groups, said the proposal would disproportionately imprison poor people and those with substance use issues rather than target ringleaders who&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2024/02/16/san-diego-county-woman-charged-as-ringleader-of-retail-scheme-involving-millions-in-stolen-beauty-products/">hire large groups of people to steal</a>&nbsp;goods for them to resell online.

California’s approach to crime is a central issue in this election cycle.

Beyond the ballot measure, San Francisco Mayor London Breed, a Democrat, is in&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/san-francisco-mayor-reelection-ba594461c1dd3863e350960fedcafb38">a difficult reelection fight</a>&nbsp;against challengers who say she has allowed the city to spiral out of control.

The moderate Democratic mayor faces four main challengers on the Nov. 5 ballot, all fellow Democrats, who say Breed has squandered her six years in office. They say she allowed San Francisco to&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-sports-business-health-lifestyle-538efc664e9da0d2f0831f3f3ed9a4d7">descend into chaos</a>&nbsp;and blamed others for her inability to rein in homelessness and erratic&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/crime-california-san-francisco-opioids-government-and-politics-54b7b35cdca54d4640c1d5dbf28f7b9a">street behavior</a>, all while burglarized businesses pleaded for help.

Meanwhile, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price faces a recall election, and Los Angeles District Attorney&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/los-angeles-district-attorney-george-gascon-ea268049373d9ac27a02b4d08585dda7">George Gascón</a>&nbsp;is running against a rival who has criticized the incumbent’s progressive approach to crime and punishment.

Crime data shows the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles saw a steady increase in shoplifting between 2021 and 2022, according to a study by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.

Across the state, shoplifting rates rose during the same time period but were still lower than the pre-pandemic levels in 2019, while commercial burglaries and robberies have become more prevalent in urban counties, the study says.

Harris, in the final days of the 2024 campaign, has urging Americans in battleground states to make a voting plan to get themselves, friends and loved ones to the polls.

But the vice president, and her campaign team, until her comments Sunday, had avoided speaking in detail about when she would cast her ballot and had sidestepped questions about how she would vote on the California measure.

Last month, she suggested to reporters that&nbsp;<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/10/16/remarks-by-vice-president-harris-before-air-force-two-departure-detroit-mi/">she would disclose</a>&nbsp;her position on the ballot measure.

“I’ve not voted yet and I’ve actually not read it yet,” Harris told reporters at the end of an Oct. 16 campaign stop in Detroit. “But I’ll let you know.”

DETROIT (AP) —&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/kamala-harris">Vice President Kamala Harris</a>&nbsp;on Sunday declined to say how she voted on a&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/california-crime-ballot-initiative-signatures-theft-fentanyl-e4863b0eb0b8808ea8f5746c60780ba7">key ballot measure</a>&nbsp;in her home state of California that would reverse criminal justice reforms approved in recent years.<div><blockquote class="twitter-tweet">.<a href="https://twitter.com/dsupervilleap?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@dsupervilleap</a>: &quot;How did you vote on Prop 36?&quot; VP Harris: &quot;I&#39;m not going to talk about the vote on that because honestly it&#39;s the Sunday before the election and I don&#39;t intend to create an endorsement one way or another around it.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/i3s4YwEJza">pic.twitter.com/i3s4YwEJza</a>&mdash; CSPAN (@cspan) <a href="https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1853151482670886958?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 3, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div>Harris punted on a question about the ballot initiative in comments to reporters while campaigning in the battleground state of Michigan. She also confirmed, two days before Election Day, that her mail-in ballot was “on its way to California.”“I am not going to talk about the vote on that. Because honestly it’s the Sunday before the election and I don’t intend to create an endorsement one way or another around it," said Harris, a former San Francisco district attorney, California attorney general and U.S. senator before she was elected vice president in 2020.The decision by the Democratic nominee for president not to publicly stake out a position on the high-profile initiative could leave her open to criticism from Republican Donald Trump that she is being soft on crime and from some left-leaning voters who would like to see her speak out forcefully against what they perceive as draconian anticrime efforts.The initiative, if passed, would make the crime of shoplifting a felony for repeat offenders and increase penalties for some drug charges, including those involving the synthetic opioid fentanyl. It also would give judges the authority to order people with multiple drug charges to get treatment.Proponents said the initiative is necessary to close loopholes in existing laws that have made it challenging for law enforcement to punish shoplifters and drug dealers.Opponents, including Democratic state leaders and social justice groups, said the proposal would disproportionately imprison poor people and those with substance use issues rather than target ringleaders who&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2024/02/16/san-diego-county-woman-charged-as-ringleader-of-retail-scheme-involving-millions-in-stolen-beauty-products/">hire large groups of people to steal</a>&nbsp;goods for them to resell online.California’s approach to crime is a central issue in this election cycle.Beyond the ballot measure, San Francisco Mayor London Breed, a Democrat, is in&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/san-francisco-mayor-reelection-ba594461c1dd3863e350960fedcafb38">a difficult reelection fight</a>&nbsp;against challengers who say she has allowed the city to spiral out of control.The moderate Democratic mayor faces four main challengers on the Nov. 5 ballot, all fellow Democrats, who say Breed has squandered her six years in office. They say she allowed San Francisco to&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-sports-business-health-lifestyle-538efc664e9da0d2f0831f3f3ed9a4d7">descend into chaos</a>&nbsp;and blamed others for her inability to rein in homelessness and erratic&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/crime-california-san-francisco-opioids-government-and-politics-54b7b35cdca54d4640c1d5dbf28f7b9a">street behavior</a>, all while burglarized businesses pleaded for help.Meanwhile, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price faces a recall election, and Los Angeles District Attorney&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/los-angeles-district-attorney-george-gascon-ea268049373d9ac27a02b4d08585dda7">George Gascón</a>&nbsp;is running against a rival who has criticized the incumbent’s progressive approach to crime and punishment.Crime data shows the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles saw a steady increase in shoplifting between 2021 and 2022, according to a study by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.Across the state, shoplifting rates rose during the same time period but were still lower than the pre-pandemic levels in 2019, while commercial burglaries and robberies have become more prevalent in urban counties, the study says.Harris, in the final days of the 2024 campaign, has urging Americans in battleground states to make a voting plan to get themselves, friends and loved ones to the polls.But the vice president, and her campaign team, until her comments Sunday, had avoided speaking in detail about when she would cast her ballot and had sidestepped questions about how she would vote on the California measure.Last month, she suggested to reporters that&nbsp;<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/10/16/remarks-by-vice-president-harris-before-air-force-two-departure-detroit-mi/">she would disclose</a>&nbsp;her position on the ballot measure.“I’ve not voted yet and I’ve actually not read it yet,” Harris told reporters at the end of an Oct. 16 campaign stop in Detroit. “But I’ll let you know.”___

🎥 Harris won't say how she voted on California’s tough-on-crime measure

KANSAS CITY– A Kansas City man was sentenced in federal court last week for his role in a conspiracy to distribute fentanyl, which resulted in the deaths of three persons, according to the United State's Attorney.

Luis Manuel Morales, 24, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Roseann Ketchmark to 15 years in federal prison without parole.

On May 8, 2024, Morales pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute fentanyl and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Morales admitted that he was a source of supply of fentanyl pills for co-defendant Tiger Dean Draggoo, 24, of Kansas City. On occasion, Draggoo also served as a source of supply of fentanyl pills for Morales. Morales also introduced Draggoo to additional sources of fentanyl pills.

Morales sold at least 1,764 pills to Draggoo over 15 separate transactions from Jan. 17 to Oct. 29, 2022, for which he was paid $2,320 through Cash App and an additional amount in cash. Morales also purchased at least 100 fentanyl pills from Draggoo during this time period, for which he paid $750. In total, those 1,864 pills contained approximately 205 grams of fentanyl.

Morales and Draggoo conspired to conceal and disguise the nature of the transfer of funds through Cash App by referring to the payments as “rent,” “food clothes,” “clothes,” “food and beer,” “food,” “apt rent,” “reimbursement for mechanic,” and “reimbursement car payment.”

Morales was on probation at the time that he was supplying Dragoo with fentanyl pills, following his guilty plea in state court to attempted armed robbery after he and another person robbed a victim at gunpoint.

Morales is the first defendant in this case to be sentenced. On Oct. 16, 2024, Draggoo pleaded guilty to his role in the fentanyl conspiracy and to three counts of distributing fentanyl resulting in death. Five additional defendants have pleaded guilty and await sentencing.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2022/1/1641841246356.png" alt="Photo U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration" />
 <figcaption>Photo U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration</figcaption>
 </figure>KANSAS CITY– A Kansas City man was sentenced in federal court last week for his role in a conspiracy to distribute fentanyl, which resulted in the deaths of three persons, according to the United State's Attorney.Luis Manuel Morales, 24, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Roseann Ketchmark to 15 years in federal prison without parole.On May 8, 2024, Morales pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute fentanyl and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2023/9/1696014760468.png" alt="Draggoo-photo Lee's Summit PD" />
 <figcaption>Draggoo-photo Lee's Summit PD</figcaption>
 </figure>Morales admitted that he was a source of supply of fentanyl pills for co-defendant Tiger Dean Draggoo, 24, of Kansas City. On occasion, Draggoo also served as a source of supply of fentanyl pills for Morales. Morales also introduced Draggoo to additional sources of fentanyl pills.Morales sold at least 1,764 pills to Draggoo over 15 separate transactions from Jan. 17 to Oct. 29, 2022, for which he was paid $2,320 through Cash App and an additional amount in cash. Morales also purchased at least 100 fentanyl pills from Draggoo during this time period, for which he paid $750. In total, those 1,864 pills contained approximately 205 grams of fentanyl.Morales and Draggoo conspired to conceal and disguise the nature of the transfer of funds through Cash App by referring to the payments as “rent,” “food clothes,” “clothes,” “food and beer,” “food,” “apt rent,” “reimbursement for mechanic,” and “reimbursement car payment.”Morales was on probation at the time that he was supplying Dragoo with fentanyl pills, following his guilty plea in state court to attempted armed robbery after he and another person robbed a victim at gunpoint.Morales is the first defendant in this case to be sentenced. On Oct. 16, 2024, Draggoo pleaded guilty to his role in the fentanyl conspiracy and to three counts of distributing fentanyl resulting in death. Five additional defendants have pleaded guilty and await sentencing.

Man admits selling fentanyl that killed three in Kansas City

SEDGWICK COUNTY —Police arrested a Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office Detention Deputy on Thursday.

Dominick Reyes, 20, is accused of Aggravated Domestic Battery and Misdemeanor Domestic Battery, according to a statement from sheriff's department spokesman Eric Slay.&nbsp; He was booked into jail just before 10p.m. Thursday and has bonded out.

Reyes has been employed by the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office since June 2023.&nbsp; He is currently suspended from duty, pending the outcome of the criminal case and an internal investigation.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2024/11/1730555777242.png" alt="Reyes photo Sedgwick County Jail" />
 <figcaption>Reyes photo Sedgwick County Jail</figcaption>
 </figure>SEDGWICK COUNTY —Police arrested a Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office Detention Deputy on Thursday.Dominick Reyes, 20, is accused of Aggravated Domestic Battery and Misdemeanor Domestic Battery, according to a statement from sheriff's department spokesman Eric Slay.&nbsp; He was booked into jail just before 10p.m. Thursday and has bonded out.Reyes has been employed by the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office since June 2023.&nbsp; He is currently suspended from duty, pending the outcome of the criminal case and an internal investigation.

Kansas jail deputy accused of domestic battery

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Whether scenic or slightly sinister —&nbsp;<a href="https://www.michigan.gov/sos/elections/voting/2024-i-voted-sticker-contest">angry werewolf</a>, anyone? — the designs on the front of “I Voted” stickers are attracting a lot of attention this year. But have you ever considered the back of your&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024">Election Day</a>&nbsp;souvenir?

“Garment-safe adhesive, it’s incredibly important,” said Janet Boudreau, one sticker designer. “You can ruin leather, silk, fine wool if you don’t use garment-safe adhesive on any sticker that goes on fabric.”

Boudreau should know. She designed the iconic sticker that has been a polling place staple for decades: a simple ellipse featuring a rippling red, white and blue American flag. And while the company she once owned now has competition, she is delighted by the new versions cropping up around the country, many of them designed by children.

“I am all for it,” she said. “And I’m all for younger people getting involved and understanding the power of voting and having faith in it.”

Two years ago, a New York county’s stickers featuring a wild-eyed crab-like creature created by a 14-year-old boy became an online sensation. This year the smash hit — one of nine designs distributed in Michigan — depicts a werewolf shredding its shirt in front of an American flag.

The 12-year-old Michigan designer declined an interview request, but other young artists described rewarding experiences.

In Milton, New Hampshire, 10-year-old Grace was treated like a celebrity when she visited the polls for the presidential primary in January and town elections in March.

“I definitely did see a difference in everyone’s attitude, like everyone seemed happier and more excited to vote because they’d get a cool sticker that I designed,” she said. “And I really think it was cool that I made an impact on the way people vote and how they feel about voting.”

New Hampshire’s contest was open to fourth graders and more than 1,000 submitted entries. Grace, whose design features the state’s fallen but not forgotten Old Man of the Mountain rock formation, not only got to attend a pizza party at the Statehouse but has since become pen pals with one of the other two winners.

While Grace settled on her design quickly, 11-year-old Rilynn drafted three versions and had her family vote on their favorite. The winner? A moose standing on a ledge overlooking colorful fall foliage and the state’s highest mountain.

Like Grace, she was excited to see her stickers in action earlier this year.

“They had a huge pile of stickers and people were literally picking out my sticker,” she said. “By the time my dad got there, he didn’t get one.”

Not all of the new stickers are designed by children.

In Denver, incarcerated individuals designed two stickers, one featuring the Colorado flag with a brick building, sun and purple mountains comprising the “D” in “voted.” The design competition was aimed at promoting civic engagement and fostering a sense of purpose and community.

In King County, Washington, a graphic designer developed a sticker showcasing the Seattle cityscape on the top and the countryside on the bottom. In New York City, those who voted on Halloween got stickers showing a pigeon wearing a witch's hat. And a contest open to adults and college students in San Francisco was won by illustrator Hollis Callas, who included flowers, birds, a seal, the Golden Gate Bridge and “I voted” in multiple languages.

“I love it,” said Allison Tichenor, who picked up a sticker when she voted earlier this week. “It’s beautiful, just like the city.”

Tichenor and others said they enjoy wearing the stickers to remind others to cast their ballots.

“I think they are important because you never know who it might inspire to vote,” said Deanna Long of Raleigh, North Carolina, who went to a Kamala Harris rally Wednesday with a voting sticker on her bag depicting a child riding a purple-maned unicorn.

“The designs have been fun and are from young kids, who have to rely on others to vote for their needs,” Long said. “The value of voting is hopefully becoming clearer to the younger generations, and I hope the artwork is inspiring to them as well.”

In 2019, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission launched a national contest for the best sticker as part of its efforts to honor innovative best practices in election administration. The latest batch of winners includes the Santa Fe County Clerk’s Office in New Mexico, where the contest focused specifically on “Future Voter” and “First Time Voter” stickers.

“Running elections is hard, and those ‘I voted’ sticker contests are both a nice way to potentially engage the community, but also some creativity and some fun,” said Benjamin Hovland, chairman of the nonpartisan federal commission.

Jason Wickersty certainly showed creativity with the sticker he fashioned out of pork roll, a type of processed meat favored in New Jersey also known as Taylor ham. He shared a photo on the social platform X in 2020 of the meat stuck to his shirt and explained himself in an email this week.

“We Jersey people are fiercely proud and loyal to our state, and since they haven’t yet made official ‘I Voted’ slices of pork roll, I took an x-acto knife to a slice and carved my own quintessentially Jersey ‘I Voted’ badge,” he said.

Though a writer once called her a “veritable Betsy Ross” of “I Voted” stickers, Boudreau wasn’t the first to produce them. But she did come to dominate the market. By 2000, some 13 years after she sketched out the design at her kitchen table, her election supply company was selling more than 100 million stickers every two years before she sold the company in 2015. Officials there did not respond to an email seeking current sales figures.

The stickers started as a way to diversify the company’s offerings and attract new business, said Boudreau, who remembers her 6-year-old son affixing the colorful stickers to the black-and-white ads she mailed to potential clients.

“But this just made people happy,” she said. “It opened doors for us, and it made the voters happy.”

Associated Press journalists Haven Daley in San Francisco, Hallie Golden in Seattle, Isabella Volmert in Lansing, Michigan, and Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2024/11/1730470072069.png" alt="-Voters enrolled in BallotTrax ahead of the 2024 General Election will receive a new digital “I Voted” sticker this year. This artwork was submitted by Cosmo Bell from Compass Community Collaborative School in Fort Collins" />
 <figcaption>-Voters enrolled in BallotTrax ahead of the 2024 General Election will receive a new digital “I Voted” sticker this year. This artwork was submitted by Cosmo Bell from Compass Community Collaborative School in Fort Collins</figcaption>
 </figure>CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Whether scenic or slightly sinister —&nbsp;<a href="https://www.michigan.gov/sos/elections/voting/2024-i-voted-sticker-contest">angry werewolf</a>, anyone? — the designs on the front of “I Voted” stickers are attracting a lot of attention this year. But have you ever considered the back of your&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024">Election Day</a>&nbsp;souvenir?“Garment-safe adhesive, it’s incredibly important,” said Janet Boudreau, one sticker designer. “You can ruin leather, silk, fine wool if you don’t use garment-safe adhesive on any sticker that goes on fabric.”Boudreau should know. She designed the iconic sticker that has been a polling place staple for decades: a simple ellipse featuring a rippling red, white and blue American flag. And while the company she once owned now has competition, she is delighted by the new versions cropping up around the country, many of them designed by children.“I am all for it,” she said. “And I’m all for younger people getting involved and understanding the power of voting and having faith in it.”Two years ago, a New York county’s stickers featuring a wild-eyed crab-like creature created by a 14-year-old boy became an online sensation. This year the smash hit — one of nine designs distributed in Michigan — depicts a werewolf shredding its shirt in front of an American flag.The 12-year-old Michigan designer declined an interview request, but other young artists described rewarding experiences.In Milton, New Hampshire, 10-year-old Grace was treated like a celebrity when she visited the polls for the presidential primary in January and town elections in March.“I definitely did see a difference in everyone’s attitude, like everyone seemed happier and more excited to vote because they’d get a cool sticker that I designed,” she said. “And I really think it was cool that I made an impact on the way people vote and how they feel about voting.”<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2024/11/1730471158066.png" alt="" />
 <figcaption></figcaption>
 </figure>New Hampshire’s contest was open to fourth graders and more than 1,000 submitted entries. Grace, whose design features the state’s fallen but not forgotten Old Man of the Mountain rock formation, not only got to attend a pizza party at the Statehouse but has since become pen pals with one of the other two winners.While Grace settled on her design quickly, 11-year-old Rilynn drafted three versions and had her family vote on their favorite. The winner? A moose standing on a ledge overlooking colorful fall foliage and the state’s highest mountain.Like Grace, she was excited to see her stickers in action earlier this year.“They had a huge pile of stickers and people were literally picking out my sticker,” she said. “By the time my dad got there, he didn’t get one.”Not all of the new stickers are designed by children.In Denver, incarcerated individuals designed two stickers, one featuring the Colorado flag with a brick building, sun and purple mountains comprising the “D” in “voted.” The design competition was aimed at promoting civic engagement and fostering a sense of purpose and community.In King County, Washington, a graphic designer developed a sticker showcasing the Seattle cityscape on the top and the countryside on the bottom. In New York City, those who voted on Halloween got stickers showing a pigeon wearing a witch's hat. And a contest open to adults and college students in San Francisco was won by illustrator Hollis Callas, who included flowers, birds, a seal, the Golden Gate Bridge and “I voted” in multiple languages.“I love it,” said Allison Tichenor, who picked up a sticker when she voted earlier this week. “It’s beautiful, just like the city.”Tichenor and others said they enjoy wearing the stickers to remind others to cast their ballots.“I think they are important because you never know who it might inspire to vote,” said Deanna Long of Raleigh, North Carolina, who went to a Kamala Harris rally Wednesday with a voting sticker on her bag depicting a child riding a purple-maned unicorn.“The designs have been fun and are from young kids, who have to rely on others to vote for their needs,” Long said. “The value of voting is hopefully becoming clearer to the younger generations, and I hope the artwork is inspiring to them as well.”In 2019, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission launched a national contest for the best sticker as part of its efforts to honor innovative best practices in election administration. The latest batch of winners includes the Santa Fe County Clerk’s Office in New Mexico, where the contest focused specifically on “Future Voter” and “First Time Voter” stickers.“Running elections is hard, and those ‘I voted’ sticker contests are both a nice way to potentially engage the community, but also some creativity and some fun,” said Benjamin Hovland, chairman of the nonpartisan federal commission.Jason Wickersty certainly showed creativity with the sticker he fashioned out of pork roll, a type of processed meat favored in New Jersey also known as Taylor ham. He shared a photo on the social platform X in 2020 of the meat stuck to his shirt and explained himself in an email this week.“We Jersey people are fiercely proud and loyal to our state, and since they haven’t yet made official ‘I Voted’ slices of pork roll, I took an x-acto knife to a slice and carved my own quintessentially Jersey ‘I Voted’ badge,” he said.Though a writer once called her a “veritable Betsy Ross” of “I Voted” stickers, Boudreau wasn’t the first to produce them. But she did come to dominate the market. By 2000, some 13 years after she sketched out the design at her kitchen table, her election supply company was selling more than 100 million stickers every two years before she sold the company in 2015. Officials there did not respond to an email seeking current sales figures.The stickers started as a way to diversify the company’s offerings and attract new business, said Boudreau, who remembers her 6-year-old son affixing the colorful stickers to the black-and-white ads she mailed to potential clients.“But this just made people happy,” she said. “It opened doors for us, and it made the voters happy.”___Associated Press journalists Haven Daley in San Francisco, Hallie Golden in Seattle, Isabella Volmert in Lansing, Michigan, and Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed.

Creative 'I Voted' stickers branch out beyond the familiar flag design

Kansas’ Republican House and Senate committees and Gov. Laura Kelly’s PAC invested hundreds of thousands in competitive legislative races.

BY:&nbsp;<a href="https://kansasreflector.com/author/akaminski/">ANNA KAMINSKI</a> <a href="https://kansasreflector.com/">Kansas Reflector</a>

TOPEKA — Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly’s PAC and the Kansas Republican Senatorial Committee have poured around a half-million dollars each into competitive legislative races across Kansas, campaign finance reports released this week show. The Republican House Campaign Committee spent almost $1 million.

More than $470,000 from Kelly’s Middle of the Road PAC has been spent since the August primary on Democrats embroiled in battleground races, according to records published Monday through the Kansas Secretary of State’s campaign finance reporting system. The Republican Senatorial committee spent more than $498,000 during the same time period on the four races at risk of flipping to Democrats. The Republican House committee has spent its $978,000 since August on advertising-related costs for a dozen candidates and the state Republican party, finance records show.

Republicans have held a supermajority in the Kansas House since 2010, and Senate Republicans have held a supermajority since 1997. Democrats must flip two seats in the house and three in the senate while holding their existing cache in order to break the supermajorities.

The Senatorial committee’s treasurer, Michelle Schroeder, said the group’s spending was “focused solely on protecting and expanding our Republican supermajority.”

Kelly, a Democrat, launched the Middle of the Road PAC in&nbsp;<a href="https://kansasreflector.com/2023/08/07/gov-laura-kelly-forms-pac-to-support-moderate-gop-democratic-legislative-candidates/">August 2023</a>&nbsp;to back moderate candidates, from either major party, and in an attempt to break the Republican legislative supermajority. Recipients of the nearly $500,000 were 12 Democrats. Those expenditures are just a fraction of the nearly $1.5 million the PAC has spent since late July.

Senate District 5 incumbent Sen. Jeff Pittman, a Leavenworth-area Democrat, received the highest cumulative dollar amount from the Middle of the Road PAC. Election forecasts favor a Pittman win over his opponent, Republican Jeff Klemp, of Lansing, by a thin margin. The senatorial committee spent almost twice as much on Klemp as Middle of the Road spent on Pittman.

Mike Pompeo, the U.S. Secretary of State during the Trump Administration and former Kansas GOP congressman, endorsed Klemp on Oct. 30.

Both the Middle of the Road PAC and the Senatorial committee spent on the other three toss-up Senate races in Johnson County. Middle of the Road PAC also spent on another Johnson County-area district, Senate District 35, with an open seat that’s been held by the same Republican for the past decade.

Middle of the Road PAC spent the least on Rep. Jason Probst, a Hutchinson Democrat running for reelection. His Republican opponent, Kyler Sweely, was recently the subject of a Wichita police investigation and online backlash after a video circulated in which he appears to jump on and hold a pillow over the head of a motionless woman on a bed. The Republican House committee spent just under $9,000 on Sweely while Middle of the Road spent more than $13,000 on Probst, according to campaign finance records.

Will Lawrence, senior advisor for the Middle of the Road PAC, said in a statement that the PAC “invested in hard-working candidates” and those “who aligned with Governor Kelly’s values.”

“The PAC deployed a strategic program that included mail, digital ads, and support for GOTV (get out the vote) efforts,” Lawrence said. “Supporters of our PAC can rest assured their investments were well spent.”

Representatives for the Republican House committee did not respond to Kansas Reflector’s requests for comment Friday.

The final day for voting in legislative races as well as for U.S. president is Tuesday.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2024/11/1730582245512.png" alt=" Gov. Laura Kelly tours the Axe Shedd during an April 25, 2024, visit to Emporia. Her Middle of the Road PAC since August has spent $470,000 on a dozen Democrats seeking legislative seats. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)" />
 <figcaption> Gov. Laura Kelly tours the Axe Shedd during an April 25, 2024, visit to Emporia. Her Middle of the Road PAC since August has spent $470,000 on a dozen Democrats seeking legislative seats. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)</figcaption>
 </figure><h2>Kansas’ Republican House and Senate committees and Gov. Laura Kelly’s PAC invested hundreds of thousands in competitive legislative races.</h2>BY:&nbsp;<a href="https://kansasreflector.com/author/akaminski/">ANNA KAMINSKI</a> <a href="https://kansasreflector.com/">Kansas Reflector</a>TOPEKA — Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly’s PAC and the Kansas Republican Senatorial Committee have poured around a half-million dollars each into competitive legislative races across Kansas, campaign finance reports released this week show. The Republican House Campaign Committee spent almost $1 million.More than $470,000 from Kelly’s Middle of the Road PAC has been spent since the August primary on Democrats embroiled in battleground races, according to records published Monday through the Kansas Secretary of State’s campaign finance reporting system. The Republican Senatorial committee spent more than $498,000 during the same time period on the four races at risk of flipping to Democrats. The Republican House committee has spent its $978,000 since August on advertising-related costs for a dozen candidates and the state Republican party, finance records show.Republicans have held a supermajority in the Kansas House since 2010, and Senate Republicans have held a supermajority since 1997. Democrats must flip two seats in the house and three in the senate while holding their existing cache in order to break the supermajorities.The Senatorial committee’s treasurer, Michelle Schroeder, said the group’s spending was “focused solely on protecting and expanding our Republican supermajority.”Kelly, a Democrat, launched the Middle of the Road PAC in&nbsp;<a href="https://kansasreflector.com/2023/08/07/gov-laura-kelly-forms-pac-to-support-moderate-gop-democratic-legislative-candidates/">August 2023</a>&nbsp;to back moderate candidates, from either major party, and in an attempt to break the Republican legislative supermajority. Recipients of the nearly $500,000 were 12 Democrats. Those expenditures are just a fraction of the nearly $1.5 million the PAC has spent since late July.<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2024/11/1730582200042.png" alt="" />
 <figcaption></figcaption>
 </figure>Senate District 5 incumbent Sen. Jeff Pittman, a Leavenworth-area Democrat, received the highest cumulative dollar amount from the Middle of the Road PAC. Election forecasts favor a Pittman win over his opponent, Republican Jeff Klemp, of Lansing, by a thin margin. The senatorial committee spent almost twice as much on Klemp as Middle of the Road spent on Pittman.Mike Pompeo, the U.S. Secretary of State during the Trump Administration and former Kansas GOP congressman, endorsed Klemp on Oct. 30.Both the Middle of the Road PAC and the Senatorial committee spent on the other three toss-up Senate races in Johnson County. Middle of the Road PAC also spent on another Johnson County-area district, Senate District 35, with an open seat that’s been held by the same Republican for the past decade.Middle of the Road PAC spent the least on Rep. Jason Probst, a Hutchinson Democrat running for reelection. His Republican opponent, Kyler Sweely, was recently the subject of a Wichita police investigation and online backlash after a video circulated in which he appears to jump on and hold a pillow over the head of a motionless woman on a bed. The Republican House committee spent just under $9,000 on Sweely while Middle of the Road spent more than $13,000 on Probst, according to campaign finance records.Will Lawrence, senior advisor for the Middle of the Road PAC, said in a statement that the PAC “invested in hard-working candidates” and those “who aligned with Governor Kelly’s values.”“The PAC deployed a strategic program that included mail, digital ads, and support for GOTV (get out the vote) efforts,” Lawrence said. “Supporters of our PAC can rest assured their investments were well spent.”Representatives for the Republican House committee did not respond to Kansas Reflector’s requests for comment Friday.The final day for voting in legislative races as well as for U.S. president is Tuesday.

Kansas Republican committees, Democratic governor’s PAC spend big on battleground races

WASHINGTON (AP) — For the millions of Americans on the radar of the&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/kamala-harris">Kamala Harris</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a>&nbsp;campaigns and those of their allies, the apocalypse is only a text message away.

The very future of the republic is at stake, some of the texts say and many others imply. But you — yes, YOU, Sally, Jose or insert-your-first-name here — can save it. For as little as $7.

Texting is a cheap and easy way to reach potential voters and donors, without all the rules meant to keep traditional paid broadcast advertising a bit honest. Both sides are working the texting pipeline aggressively. In the&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024">last days of the campaign</a>, the pinging of phones can be relentless.

“All day, every day,” Robyn Beyah said of the torrent as she stood in line to get into a&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/harris-obama-springsteen-perry-mix-master-atlanta-1ef1c592180db8fcbe0d0480248f9fe6">Kamala Harris rally</a>&nbsp;outside Atlanta last week. “They have my number. We’re practically besties.”

Beyah is cool with that. She considers the text bombing “harmless” because it’s for a candidate she believes in. She even invites the Harris campaign to “harass me with text messages.” Not all voters are so charitable.

“To be honest with you, at this point, I’ve tuned it out of my brain," said Ebenezer Eyasu of Stone Mountain, Georgia, standing in the same Harris rally line. He said the dozen or so texts he gets each day have become “background noise."

Sarah Wiggins, a 26-year-old graphic designer from Kennesaw, Georgia, who supports Harris, prefers face to face persuasion. “I feel like it’s all about people around you," she said. "Word of mouth is underrated.” As for the texts, “I just delete, to be honest. I don’t want to read it.”

Many Trump supporters also get pestered. Several at his rally in Tempe, Arizona, last week professed low-grade aggravation about that.

“They’re more of an annoyance than anything else,” said Morse Lawrence, 57, a physician assistant from Mesa, Arizona. "I get bombarded by text messages outside of political things as well. People wanting to buy my house, people wanting to sell me insurance, it’s all of it.”

He figures it's an effective marketing strategy for campaigns even if the great majority of recipients don't bite. “You go fishing and you catch two fish, you’ve got a meal for the day.”

Jennifer Warnke, 57, of St. John's, Arizona, also at the Trump rally, expressed mixed feelings about what's happening on her phone.

“They’re at least reaching out, because for years nobody ever called me,” she said. “I've been a registered Republican all my life and nobody ever called.”

She added: “It’s annoying, but it’s almost over.”

Trump's campaign, although uniquely fixated on selling hats via text, shares certain traits with the Democrats.

Both sides traffic in dire warnings should the other side win. Both cook up phony deadlines to get you to hurry up with your money. Both play on the fantasy that luminaries — whether Harris, Trump,&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/george-clooney">George Clooney</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/nancy-pelosi">Nancy Pelosi</a>&nbsp;or Donald Trump Jr. — are texting you personally, instead of the machinery that really is.

Texts under the name of Trump Jr. come with a twist, if a transparent one: “Please don’t give $5 to help dad before his critical deadline. I’m serious. Don’t. ... Let me explain."

The explanation is a link to a page asking for lots more than $5. You can choose $20.24 if you are a basic Trump supporter in 2024 or $47 if you think the 45th president was the greatest ever and want to make him the 47th.

Trump himself seems to be heavily into merch. “I'm shipping you a Gold MAGA Hat!” say texts in his name. “Should I sign it?”

Tap through and you see the MAGA hat with gold lettering will cost you $50. But there's more.

“Here's my offer to you," the digital Trump says. "If you place your order before the midnight deadline, I may add my signature and a quick personal note right on the brim!” May — or may not.

Thirteen days from Election Day, as she prepared to take the stage for a CNN town hall, Harris took a moment to confide in a Virginian she doesn’t know at all. At least that's the scene sketched by a text in her name.

“Hi Chris, it’s Kamala Harris,” says the message. “It would mean the world to me if you added another donation to our campaign before my town hall on CNN tonight. Donald Trump and his allies are currently outspending us across the battleground states.”

A donation of $40 is suggested. No hat is offered. Despite the message's angst over cash, Harris' campaign and affiliated Democratic groups have raised&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/kamala-harris-third-quarter-fundraising-september-donald-trump-f8a21ae87b7a1c7127e8a3b6420dac7d">over $1 billion</a>&nbsp;in mere months and kept a large financial advantage over Trump in the campaign's last leg.

Ping: “It’s&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/elizabeth-warren">Elizabeth Warren.</a>&nbsp;”

Ping: “From Trump: I JUST LEFT MCDONALD’S."

Ping: “We’ve asked NINE TIMES if you support&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/kamala-harris">Kamala Harris</a>&nbsp;… but you never completed the poll.”

Ping: “I just got off the debate stage.” — signed by Harris running mate, Minnesota Gov.&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/tim-walz">Tim Walz</a>.

Ping: “This is a BIG F#@%ING DEAL.” — in the name of Democratic strategist James Carville.

Ping: "It's Nancy Pelosi. I need you to see this."

Ping: “But you haven’t stepped up to defend our Senate majority!?! Rush $7 now.”

Ping: “I have a McGift for you! It's President Trump. Want to take a look?”

Despite the sucker-born-every-minute undertone of some of the presidential campaign texts, experts say you can be reasonably confident that donations to the official candidate campaigns or the main party organizations will be used for your intended purpose.

But many more groups are pitching for your election-season cash, not all of them are legit and sorting that out takes work. Some voter-mobilization groups that claim to be funded by the left, for example, may be mischief-makers from the right, or just out to collect personal information on you.

This month, the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin wrote to the U.S. and state attorneys general to report that thousands of fraudulent text messages from an anonymous source were sent to young people threatening $10,000 fines or prison time if they vote in a state where they are not eligible to cast ballots.

The scam was meant to intimidate students from out of state who are legally entitled to vote in Wisconsin if they are attending college there, or to vote back at home instead, the letter said.

Last weekend, thousands of Pennsylvania voters received a text message that falsely claimed they had already voted in the election, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Monday. It was from AllVote, which election officials have repeatedly flagged as a scam, the paper said. The group said the false claim was the result of a typo.

Experts say to read the fine print at the bottom of any fundraising link you open. It must outline the name of the group and where the money will go.

From there, people can go to sites such as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/outside-spending">OpenSecrets</a>&nbsp;or the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fec.gov/data/browse-data/?tab=spending">Federal Election Commission</a>&nbsp;to see breakdowns of revenue and spending by groups that are registered political action committees. High overhead and low or no spending on ads or canvassing are red flags.

For all those traps, Beverly Payne of Cumming, Georgia, who has already voted for Harris and volunteers for her, welcomes the pings.

“I get texts every 30 minutes and I answer every single one of them,” Payne said. One favorite was about an ice cream flavor rolled out for Harris by Ben &amp; Jerry’s, Kamala’s Coconut Jubilee layered with caramel and topped with red, white and blue star sprinkles. “I had to donate to that,” she said.

“It’s our culture now, we’re all addicted,” Payne said of texts and Harris' use of them. “Maybe that’s why she has a billion dollars."

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2024/10/1730390125982.png" alt="Campaign text sent October 19 from the Trump campaign" />
 <figcaption>Campaign text sent October 19 from the Trump campaign</figcaption>
 </figure>WASHINGTON (AP) — For the millions of Americans on the radar of the&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/kamala-harris">Kamala Harris</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a>&nbsp;campaigns and those of their allies, the apocalypse is only a text message away.<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2024/10/1730389833422.png" alt="Campaign text sent October 25th from the Harris Campaign" />
 <figcaption>Campaign text sent October 25th from the Harris Campaign</figcaption>
 </figure>The very future of the republic is at stake, some of the texts say and many others imply. But you — yes, YOU, Sally, Jose or insert-your-first-name here — can save it. For as little as $7.Texting is a cheap and easy way to reach potential voters and donors, without all the rules meant to keep traditional paid broadcast advertising a bit honest. Both sides are working the texting pipeline aggressively. In the&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024">last days of the campaign</a>, the pinging of phones can be relentless.“All day, every day,” Robyn Beyah said of the torrent as she stood in line to get into a&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/harris-obama-springsteen-perry-mix-master-atlanta-1ef1c592180db8fcbe0d0480248f9fe6">Kamala Harris rally</a>&nbsp;outside Atlanta last week. “They have my number. We’re practically besties.”Beyah is cool with that. She considers the text bombing “harmless” because it’s for a candidate she believes in. She even invites the Harris campaign to “harass me with text messages.” Not all voters are so charitable.“To be honest with you, at this point, I’ve tuned it out of my brain," said Ebenezer Eyasu of Stone Mountain, Georgia, standing in the same Harris rally line. He said the dozen or so texts he gets each day have become “background noise."Sarah Wiggins, a 26-year-old graphic designer from Kennesaw, Georgia, who supports Harris, prefers face to face persuasion. “I feel like it’s all about people around you," she said. "Word of mouth is underrated.” As for the texts, “I just delete, to be honest. I don’t want to read it.”Many Trump supporters also get pestered. Several at his rally in Tempe, Arizona, last week professed low-grade aggravation about that.“They’re more of an annoyance than anything else,” said Morse Lawrence, 57, a physician assistant from Mesa, Arizona. "I get bombarded by text messages outside of political things as well. People wanting to buy my house, people wanting to sell me insurance, it’s all of it.”He figures it's an effective marketing strategy for campaigns even if the great majority of recipients don't bite. “You go fishing and you catch two fish, you’ve got a meal for the day.”Jennifer Warnke, 57, of St. John's, Arizona, also at the Trump rally, expressed mixed feelings about what's happening on her phone.“They’re at least reaching out, because for years nobody ever called me,” she said. “I've been a registered Republican all my life and nobody ever called.”She added: “It’s annoying, but it’s almost over.”<h2>The campaigns spin a fantasy</h2>Trump's campaign, although uniquely fixated on selling hats via text, shares certain traits with the Democrats.Both sides traffic in dire warnings should the other side win. Both cook up phony deadlines to get you to hurry up with your money. Both play on the fantasy that luminaries — whether Harris, Trump,&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/george-clooney">George Clooney</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/nancy-pelosi">Nancy Pelosi</a>&nbsp;or Donald Trump Jr. — are texting you personally, instead of the machinery that really is.Texts under the name of Trump Jr. come with a twist, if a transparent one: “Please don’t give $5 to help dad before his critical deadline. I’m serious. Don’t. ... Let me explain."The explanation is a link to a page asking for lots more than $5. You can choose $20.24 if you are a basic Trump supporter in 2024 or $47 if you think the 45th president was the greatest ever and want to make him the 47th.Trump himself seems to be heavily into merch. “I'm shipping you a Gold MAGA Hat!” say texts in his name. “Should I sign it?”Tap through and you see the MAGA hat with gold lettering will cost you $50. But there's more.“Here's my offer to you," the digital Trump says. "If you place your order before the midnight deadline, I may add my signature and a quick personal note right on the brim!” May — or may not.Thirteen days from Election Day, as she prepared to take the stage for a CNN town hall, Harris took a moment to confide in a Virginian she doesn’t know at all. At least that's the scene sketched by a text in her name.“Hi Chris, it’s Kamala Harris,” says the message. “It would mean the world to me if you added another donation to our campaign before my town hall on CNN tonight. Donald Trump and his allies are currently outspending us across the battleground states.”A donation of $40 is suggested. No hat is offered. Despite the message's angst over cash, Harris' campaign and affiliated Democratic groups have raised&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/kamala-harris-third-quarter-fundraising-september-donald-trump-f8a21ae87b7a1c7127e8a3b6420dac7d">over $1 billion</a>&nbsp;in mere months and kept a large financial advantage over Trump in the campaign's last leg.<h2>The pings keep coming</h2>Ping: “It’s&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/elizabeth-warren">Elizabeth Warren.</a>&nbsp;”Ping: “From Trump: I JUST LEFT MCDONALD’S."Ping: “We’ve asked NINE TIMES if you support&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/kamala-harris">Kamala Harris</a>&nbsp;… but you never completed the poll.”Ping: “I just got off the debate stage.” — signed by Harris running mate, Minnesota Gov.&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/hub/tim-walz">Tim Walz</a>.Ping: “This is a BIG F#@%ING DEAL.” — in the name of Democratic strategist James Carville.Ping: "It's Nancy Pelosi. I need you to see this."Ping: “But you haven’t stepped up to defend our Senate majority!?! Rush $7 now.”Ping: “I have a McGift for you! It's President Trump. Want to take a look?”<h2>Are they legit?</h2>Despite the sucker-born-every-minute undertone of some of the presidential campaign texts, experts say you can be reasonably confident that donations to the official candidate campaigns or the main party organizations will be used for your intended purpose.But many more groups are pitching for your election-season cash, not all of them are legit and sorting that out takes work. Some voter-mobilization groups that claim to be funded by the left, for example, may be mischief-makers from the right, or just out to collect personal information on you.This month, the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin wrote to the U.S. and state attorneys general to report that thousands of fraudulent text messages from an anonymous source were sent to young people threatening $10,000 fines or prison time if they vote in a state where they are not eligible to cast ballots.The scam was meant to intimidate students from out of state who are legally entitled to vote in Wisconsin if they are attending college there, or to vote back at home instead, the letter said.Last weekend, thousands of Pennsylvania voters received a text message that falsely claimed they had already voted in the election, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Monday. It was from AllVote, which election officials have repeatedly flagged as a scam, the paper said. The group said the false claim was the result of a typo.Experts say to read the fine print at the bottom of any fundraising link you open. It must outline the name of the group and where the money will go.From there, people can go to sites such as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/outside-spending">OpenSecrets</a>&nbsp;or the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fec.gov/data/browse-data/?tab=spending">Federal Election Commission</a>&nbsp;to see breakdowns of revenue and spending by groups that are registered political action committees. High overhead and low or no spending on ads or canvassing are red flags.For all those traps, Beverly Payne of Cumming, Georgia, who has already voted for Harris and volunteers for her, welcomes the pings.“I get texts every 30 minutes and I answer every single one of them,” Payne said. One favorite was about an ice cream flavor rolled out for Harris by Ben &amp; Jerry’s, Kamala’s Coconut Jubilee layered with caramel and topped with red, white and blue star sprinkles. “I had to donate to that,” she said.“It’s our culture now, we’re all addicted,” Payne said of texts and Harris' use of them. “Maybe that’s why she has a billion dollars."___

Ping! Harris and Trump are blowing up phones with political texts 

Tenants in two Kansas City-area buildings launched a rent strike on Oct. 1 in protest of poor maintenance and rising rents.&nbsp;They plan to add more tenants to their strike

BY:&nbsp;<a href="https://missouriindependent.com/author/milimansaray/">MILI MANSARAY</a>

Buckets of brown sink water, overflowing roach traps and photographs of clogged bathtubs lined the entrance to the leasing office at Quality Hill Towers. At their most recent rally, tenants brought their frustrations straight to management’s door.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2024/11/1730601147932.png" alt=" At their Oct. 18 rally, Quality Hill tenant union members demanded to meet with Federal Housing Finance Authority director Sandra Thompson, depicted in the poster on the right (Mili Mansaray/The Beacon)." />
 <figcaption> At their Oct. 18 rally, Quality Hill tenant union members demanded to meet with Federal Housing Finance Authority director Sandra Thompson, depicted in the poster on the right (Mili Mansaray/The Beacon).</figcaption>
 </figure><h2>Tenants in two Kansas City-area buildings launched a rent strike on Oct. 1 in protest of poor maintenance and rising rents.&nbsp;They plan to add more tenants to their strike</h2>BY:&nbsp;<a href="https://missouriindependent.com/author/milimansaray/">MILI MANSARAY</a>Buckets of brown sink water, overflowing roach traps and photographs of clogged bathtubs lined the entrance to the leasing office at Quality Hill Towers. At their most recent rally, tenants brought their frustrations straight to management’s door.George Pacheco carried two-gallon jugs of murky water from his apartment.“I gave my daughter a glass of water out of my sink and it was so dirty that she refuses to even come and stay in the apartment,” he said.On Oct. 1, tenants at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.qualityhilltowers.com/" target="_blank">Quality Hill Towers</a>&nbsp;and Independence Towers launched a rent strike, demanding maintenance repairs, collectively bargained leases and a national 3% rent cap on all buildings that receive federal financing.At their Oct. 18 rally, tenants said they plan to recruit more tenants to join the rent strike if the director of the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fhfa.gov/" target="_blank">Federal Housing Finance Agency</a>&nbsp;does not engage with them and meet their demands. Although Missouri offers no legal protections for striking tenants and they face risks of eviction or lawsuits, leaders with&nbsp;<a href="https://kctenants.org/home" target="_blank">KC Tenants</a>&nbsp;say the unions are preparing to rally more renters to join their movement.The tenants “don’t believe that they’re going to necessarily win this in the courts,” said Jaden Powell, a tenant attorney giving KC Tenants legal advice. “The courts are not set up to make these kinds of wide-scale changes. The power is in organizing and public pressure, and that’s where they think they’re going to win.”Meanwhile, housing finance experts say that a rent strike only hurts landlords, not the FHFA, and they find it unlikely that the Federal National Mortgage Association, known as Fannie Mae, would risk its investment based on actions at two local apartment buildings.They also say that a national rent cap would make it harder for landlords to keep up with maintenance and mortgage costs and would perhaps shrink the amount of rental housing on the market.An annual 3% rental cap “would just kill the rental market,” said Ted Tozer, a fellow at the left-leaning Urban Institute’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/housing-finance-policy-center" target="_blank">Housing Finance Policy Center</a>. “Lenders would be going bankrupt.”<h2>What’s going on with the rent strike?</h2>At the Oct. 18 rally, tenant union members said they met with FHFA director Sandra Thompson in May to discuss their living conditions. The agency says Thompson is unavailable to travel to Kansas City. Negotiations are ongoing about a meeting with KC Tenants and other FHFA officials.The union is putting pressure on the agency because it is the regulator of Fannie Mae, the company that backs the loans in federally financed buildings.Tenants are organizing a strike drive set for Nov. 1 to recruit more participants.Later in October, KC Tenants and&nbsp;<a href="https://cleaver.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/rep-cleaver-announces-1350000-independence-towers-address-desperately" target="_blank">U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s office</a>&nbsp;announced that Fannie Mae&nbsp;<a href="https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article294555904.html" target="_blank">gave Trigild Inc. $1.35 million</a>&nbsp;for repairs at Independence Towers.But they say that money is not enough.“While we celebrate this step, we remain committed to our rent strike,” the Independence Towers tenant union said in a statement. “This is a one-off bailout for the parties that have neglected their tenants.”As of Oct. 29, nearly 24% of the 234 occupied units at Quality Hill Towers are on strike, KC Tenants said, while 57% of the 63 occupied units at Independence Towers are on strike.Tenants said their apartment buildings&nbsp;<a href="https://thebeaconnews.org/stories/2024/10/08/kansas-city-tenant-union-rent-strike-against-federally-backed-landlords/" target="_blank">need dramatic repairs</a>&nbsp;and better maintenance. Management has said work is underway to fix those problems.Neither&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sentinelcorp.com/" target="_blank">Sentinel Real Estate Corp</a>., which owns Quality Hill Towers, nor&nbsp;<a href="https://www.trigild.com/" target="_blank">Trigild Inc</a>., which manages Independence Towers, responded to The Beacon’s requests for comment.<h2>What is KC Tenants’ strategy?</h2>The tenant strike aims to pressure the FHFA to meet renters’ demands at all federally backed-properties.“If the federal government is going to be involved with private businesses and financing their profits, we expect the government to exercise every available avenue to protect tenants’ rights,” said Tara Raghuveer, the director of KC Tenants.But because the funds don’t come from public tax dollars, the FHFA and Fannie Mae don’t have control over their properties in the same way that, for example, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has control of the government-funded buildings it manages.Mark Willis, the senior policy fellow at the&nbsp;<a href="https://furmancenter.org/" target="_blank">New York University Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy</a>, said that Fannie Mae typically has the right under the mortgage to pursue legal action when landlords let properties fall into disrepair. Fannie Mae buys and sells mortgages with the expectation that the property will be properly maintained. And when owners neglect repairs, they’re breaking their mortgage terms.That gives Fannie Mae the option to declare a default or foreclosure on the property, Willis said. As an alternative to taking ownership of poorly maintained buildings, Fannie Mae can give money to a receiver to step in for the landlord and handle repairs.In February, Fannie Mae<a href="https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article292599874.html" target="_blank">&nbsp;filed a lawsuit</a>&nbsp;against 728 N Jennings Rd Partners LLC, the owner of Independence Towers, for not properly paying back loans for building repairs and failing to maintain living conditions according to the standard outlined in its loan agreement. A Jackson County judge appointed Trigild Inc. as the receiver in charge of managing repairs of the property in May.Fannie Mae cannot directly instruct the receiver, but it can provide funding and offer guidance.But Raghuveer argues that the federal backing gives landlords better terms than they’d get in the private market. Since the landlords benefit from public support, she said federal properties should offer more protections for tenants.“If the government is going to be involved in backing a loan,” she said, “that should come with strings attached.”In 2023, loans to landlords from Fannie Mae and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., known as Freddie Mac, were capped at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fhfa.gov/news/news-release/fhfa-announces-2023-multifamily-loan-purchase-caps-for-fannie-mae-and-freddie-mac" target="_blank">$150 billion</a>. Raghuveer said that those contracts offer landlords lower interest rates and other perks but offer very few safeguards for tenants. That, she said, can attract slumlords.So tenants want Fannie Mae to impose the cap on new contracts and apply it to existing contracts when landlords refinance their mortgages.Raghuveer said the initial financial burden of the strike will fall on landlords, with Sentinel losing at least $3,000 monthly at Quality Hill. And while Sentinel is a large corporation with a broad portfolio, she said nearly a fourth of the occupied units are participating and they will try to recruit more people on Nov. 1.“It’s not a financial hit that (Sentinel) can sustain long-term,” she said.While the prospect of altering a national market by pressuring Sentinel appears remote, Raghuveer said that KC Tenants is trying to get tenant unions across federally backed properties in Michigan, North Carolina, South Carolina, Montana, Illinois and Kentucky to launch their own strikes.<h2>What’s at stake for KC tenants who strike?&nbsp;</h2>In Missouri, striking tenants risk eviction. They could be sued for unpaid rent, but Powell said that tenants can argue that their rent isn’t owed because the landlord has failed to maintain habitable living conditions, which is part of the lease agreement. That defense doesn’t fully protect them.Tenants can also be sued if they remain in the home after their lease ends. Missouri law does not protect tenants from landlords evicting them with or without cause at the end of a lease.“If a tenant isn’t on a lease or is on a month-to-month lease, they really run the risk of their landlord retaliating against them,” Powell said.Kansas City ordinance also prohibits retaliatory evictions for any reason, including&nbsp;<a href="https://www.kcmo.gov/home/showdocument?id=5360" target="_blank">joining a tenants’ union</a>. But Powell said that law has not been widely enforced in court cases because there are really no defenses in unlawful detainer cases beyond whether the landlord followed proper protocol in ending the tenancy.She said that tenants have limited legal defenses when withholding their rent, aside from using uninhabitable conditions as a defense in rent possession cases.Missouri law also&nbsp;<a href="https://ago.mo.gov/wp-content/uploads/attachments/landlord-tenantlaw.pdf?sfvrsn=4" target="_blank">allows tenants to make repairs themselves</a>&nbsp;if landlords don’t respond within 14 days of a complaint. They can deduct up to $300 or half a month’s rent, whichever is higher, from their payment. However, Powell said that this approach is insufficient for larger issues.“When we’re thinking about places like Quality Hill, a lot of the issues are building-wide,” she said, “like plumbing issues, folks without hot water, folks with bathrooms and tubs that won’t drain. And that’s not something that you could fix for $300.”Because the law doesn’t provide striking tenants with many protections, Powell said the campaign is relying on public support to put pressure on the landlords and the FHFA.In an Oct. 3&nbsp;<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DAreZ83pR3a/?img_index=1" target="_blank">solidarity letter,</a>&nbsp;Kansas City Council member&nbsp;<a href="https://www.kcmo.gov/city-hall/city-officials/city-council-members/councilman-johnathan-duncan-6th-district" target="_blank">Johnathan Duncan</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;and seven other City Council members called on the FHFA to negotiate with the tenant union and refrain from any “retaliatory actions against the tenants.”“The lease is a legal agreement that is supposed to work both ways,” he said. “There are always accountability measures for tenants. There are very few accountability measures for landlords and these federal regulators.”<h2>What’s at stake for landlords?</h2>Tozer said a national 3% rent cap on all federally financed buildings isn’t feasible. Instead, it would place a financial strain on landlords that would hurt the market.“You’d have no more apartments being built,” he said. “And you’d have landlords not renting to people anymore.”He pointed out that landlords face rising operational costs — including property taxes, insurance and maintenance — which typically go up more than 3% annually.A rent increase cap would leave property owners unable to cover these rising costs. That could produce even more maintenance issues for tenants.“If they’re not going to pass that on to tenants,” he said, “then that means that they’re going to&nbsp; have to start cutting other places.”Tozer said a rent cap would come with immediate pushback from property owners.“I would sue over that,” he said. “You would have to get congressional action to put on a rent cap.”Housing finance experts say that measures like a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fhfa.gov/blog/insights/new-multifamily-tenant-protections" target="_blank">grace period for late fees or rent increase notices</a>&nbsp;don’t impact mortgage payments, but rent caps are a different matter.And hurting landlords’ ability to pay their mortgages would put Fannie’s and Freddie’s investments at risk, which Tozer said the FHFA would want to avoid.Financial analysts say that a rent cap might also push landlords to seek loans from other sources.“Whether it’s good policy or not, it probably would mean that no one would borrow from Fannie and Freddie,” said Willis.He said that Fannie can pursue legal avenues against owners who don’t maintain property standards. But a rent cap could create challenges for all owners.“The one thing you want to do is make sure landlords who want to maintain their buildings well are able to do it,” he said. “You don’t want to set up a system where they can’t even afford to do the right thing.”<h2>Who’s responsible for these living conditions?</h2>Tozer said that the FHFA is several steps removed from tenants and landlords in these situations. Fannie Mae invests in mortgages and shares the risk with a local lender if the landlord defaults. Local lenders handle payments, foreclosures and other mortgage processing on behalf of Fannie.But federal law prohibits Fannie Mae from direct contact with landlords. Instead, Tozer said, the lender is supposed to play an active role in inspecting the building to make sure the landlord is meeting property standards as required by their loan agreement and complying with local housing codes.And while these properties receive federal support, Tozer argued that the responsibility for enforcing maintenance standards largely rests with local government agencies.“General protections should come from the local, county or city code enforcement regarding violations,” he said. “Where are the building code officials in your community? Why are they letting people live this way? They’re the first line of defense.”<a href="https://www.kcmo.gov/city-hall/departments/health/healthy-homes-rental-inspection-program" target="_blank">The Healthy Homes Rental Inspection program</a>, run by the Kansas City Health Department, inspected Quality Hill&nbsp;<a href="https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/healthy-homes-finds-violations-at-quality-hill-towers-amid-rent-strike" target="_blank">after the rent strike began</a>. The program identified several violations, though none was severe enough to require tenant relocation.Independence Towers has been inspected by Independence’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.independencemo.gov/government/city-departments/community-development/business-license-liquor-license-and-employee-permitting/rental-ready-program" target="_blank">Rental Ready program</a>. But despite various complaints, the building&nbsp;<a href="https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article291221045.html" target="_blank">passed its most recent inspection</a>&nbsp;in December.Brent Schondelmeyer, a former Kansas City Star reporter, told the Independence City Council he’d&nbsp;<a href="https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article291221045.html" target="_blank">found that 99%</a>&nbsp;of inspections from May 2022 to May 2023 received a perfect score. Critics argue that the inspection process, which relies on third-party inspectors<a href="https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article291221045.html" target="_blank">&nbsp;hired by landlords</a>, may fall short in addressing safety issues.Raghuveer said that the FHFA has the power to improve conditions for tenants in federally backed buildings. She said that the issues in these properties are too widespread for local efforts alone to provide adequate protection.“This problem is not going to be solved work order by work order,” she said. “It’s not going to be solved building by building.”This&nbsp;<a href="https://thebeaconnews.org/stories/2024/10/31/kc-tenants-rent-strike-plans-to-add-more-people/" target="_blank">article</a>&nbsp;first appeared on&nbsp;<a href="https://thebeaconnews.org/" target="_blank">Beacon: Kansas City</a>&nbsp;and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<figure>
 <img src="https://thebeaconnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/iconbeacon-150x150.png?crop=1" alt="" />
 <figcaption></figcaption>
 </figure><figure>
 <img src="https://thebeaconnews.org/?republication-pixel=true&amp;post=25337" alt="" />
 <figcaption></figcaption>
 </figure>