Writings believed to have been written by the San Diego mosque shooting suspects contain extremist language including neo-Nazi ideology. The Justice Department indicts former Cuban President Raúl Castro. Plus, an analysis of Texas death row inmates’ last words.
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A 75-page document that appears to have been written by the two teenage suspects in this week’s deadly attack on a San Diego mosque is replete with neo-Nazi ideology, incel rage and racist meme culture from the darkest corners of the internet. And in an echo of the 2019 massacre at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, the gunmen appeared to have worn body cameras that livestreamed their assault, video of which circulated online.
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The gunmen, identified by authorities as Caleb Vazquez and Cain Clark, killed three people in the shooting Monday at the Islamic Center of San Diego before they took their own lives, authorities said.
The purported writings from Vazquez and Clark shed light on the harrowing realities of violent extremism in the early 21st century, a time marked in part by an increase in high-profile, ideologically driven shootings and magnified by the chaotic nature of the modern internet.
Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a university professor who studies domestic terrorism, said the language in the document is “characteristic of the kind of young man who spends far too much time online incubating in hateful spaces and then follows a choose-your-own-adventure path” for violence.
John Lewis, a researcher at George Washington University’s program on extremism, said he was struck by the age of the suspects. “They were seemingly 10 and 12 when the Christchurch shooting happened,” he said.
Houda Eletr is a recent journalism graduate at the University of Central Florida, an aspiring poet — and one of several students who booed a speaker at UCF’s recent graduation ceremony who called AI “the next Industrial Revolution.”
“Genuinely, everyone in here hates that,” she told NBC News’ chief technology analyst Joanna Stern, explaining her reaction to the speech.
Eletr also spoke about her aversion to AI (“It feels like humans are left on the back burner”) and her efforts to go completely analog (she recently bought a cassette player). But not everyone disavows the technology, Stern writes.
At its annual developer conference this week, Google announced roughly 1,670 AI products.
The Justice Department indicted former Cuban President Raúl Castro yesterday in connection with the 1996 shooting of two civilian planes that killed four Cuban exiles. Castro, who is the brother of the late revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, is being charged with conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, murder and destruction of aircraft, according to U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche. Five other men, who were Cuban fighter pilots involved in the shooting, were also indicted.
Cuba is not expected to extradite Castro, who turns 95 next month, to the U.S., but Blanche hinted at the possibility of U.S. action in the island nation when he told reporters that there was a warrant for the former president’s arrest.
Read more about the accusations against Castro and the timing of the charges.
The civilian planes shot down in the 1996 incident belonged to the group Brothers to the Rescue, which would fly over the waters between Cuba and Florida with the aim of rescuing Cubans who had left the country in makeshift rafts.
Read more about the shooting and the political aftermath.
Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, called on the Justice Department to reconsider its openness to “doling out compensation” to Jan. 6 rioters through the Trump administration’s new $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, calling the idea “absurd and offensive.”
In a letter to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and first shared with NBC News, Durbin demanded transparency about who is eligible to receive money from the $1.8 billion pool and asked that the DOJ hand over materials that detail eligibility requirements.
Several other lawmakers, including at least one Republican, have denounced the fund.
Meanwhile, two officers who defended the Capitol during the 2021 riot sued to block the money pool, describing it as a “taxpayer-funded slush fund” to benefit the people and groups that they say committed violence in Trump’s name.
More politics news:
▶️ Tune in to Here’s the Scoop’s special Supreme Court Edition, where Senior Legal Correspondent Laura Jarrett goes deep on major cases.
Last statements are a familiar ritual before death row prisoners are executed. And nowhere during America’s modern era of capital punishment have they been requested more frequently than in Texas, which executed its 600th inmate last week. That number struck me as I thought about what these prisoners — 594 men and six women, all convicted of capital murder — have chosen to say in the moments before they die. Were they angry? Afraid? Ashamed?
Texas archives prisoners’ last statements online. As I reviewed hundreds stretching over five decades, I found common themes of faith and forgiveness, surprising declarations and even moments of levity. Taken together, these final words carry an immeasurable weight, not only to those prisoners who deliver them, but to the many lives affected by each execution. — Erik Ortiz, senior reporter
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