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Fox News headed for trial, again, over 2020 election fraud claims
Fox News appears headed for trial over false election fraud claims made after the 2020 election, after a New York state appellate court chose not to dismiss a lawsuit brought by voting tech company Smartmatic.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
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Spencer Platt/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
Fox News appears to be headed once more to court over the lies involving election fraud it aired about the 2020 presidential race. This time, it’s over the false claims that election tech company Smartmatic sabotaged the re-election of then-President Donald Trump.
In April 2023, on the eve of a trial in Delaware in which Fox founder Rupert Murdoch was set to testify, the network and its parent corporation agreed to pay $787.5 million to settle a defamation suit filed by Dominion Voting Systems.
A flood of revelations from the pre-trial process of discovery yielded damning internal communications. The judge found that network figures from junior producers to primetime hosts, network executives, Murdoch and his son Lachlan knew that Joe Biden had won the election fairly. Yet, they allowed guests to spread lies that Trump had been cheated of victory to win back Trump viewers. Some hosts amplified and even embraced the claims.
Now, an appellate court ruling in New York state is allowing Smartmatic’s parallel, $2.7 billion suit to press ahead. The same ruling also dismissed some counts against the network’s parent company, Fox Corp.
Pro-Trump Fox hosts including Maria Bartiromo and the late Lou Dobbs invited guests making unsubstantiated and wild claims about Smartmatic on the air, and at times appeared to endorse those allegations themselves.
Fox forced Dobbs off the air just a day after Smartmatic filed its suit in February 2021. Two weeks later, Fox News and Fox Business Network ran an awkward segment with a voting tech expert, Edward Perez, to present viewers with a rebuttal to those outlandish claims. Newsmax, a right-wing channel in competition with Fox for viewers who supported Trump, did much the same.
“Today, the New York Supreme Court rebuffed Fox Corporation’s latest attempt to escape responsibility for the defamation campaign it orchestrated against Smartmatic following the 2020 election,” Smartmatic’s lead attorney, Erik Connolly, said in a statement. “Fox Corporation attempted, and failed, to have this case dismissed, and it must now answer for its actions at trial. Smartmatic is seeking several billion in damages for the defamation campaign that Fox News and Fox Corporation are responsible for executing. We look forward to presenting our evidence at trial.”
Unlike Dominion, whose voting machines were used in two dozen states, Smartmatic says its technology was used only in Los Angeles County in 2020. Fox has sharply questioned the value of Smartmatic and the contracts it says were jeopardized and lost.
“We will be ready to defend this case surrounding extremely newsworthy events when it goes to trial,” a network spokesperson said in a statement. “As a report prepared by our financial expert shows, Smartmatic’s damages claims are implausible, disconnected from reality, and on their face intended to chill First Amendment freedoms.”
In the Dominion case, Fox also relied on arguments that its shows and hosts were simply relaying inherently newsworthy allegations from inherently newsworthy people — the then-president and his allies. The presiding judge in Delaware, Eric M. Davis, rejected that argument; he found that Fox’s executives, stars, and shows had broadcast false claims and defamed Dominion in doing so.
Fox has said that the New York case offers a new venue, with slightly different implications, although Davis applied New York defamation law in his Delaware proceedings.
Fox settled, as it has in many other cases, before opening arguments of the trial with Dominion. It maintains it will fight the allegations Smartmatic is making in court.
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Woman died after riding Revenge of the Mummy coaster at Universal Orlando, report says
A 70-year-old woman died in November after riding the Revenge of the Mummy roller coaster at Universal Studios in Orlando, according to a report from the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
The woman became unresponsive while riding the attraction on Nov. 25, the state agency said in its latest quarterly report on injuries at theme parks, which covers the last three months of 2025. She later died at a hospital, it said. The report did not provide additional details about the circumstances surrounding her death.
CBS News has reached out to Universal Orlando.
Revenge of the Mummy is an elaborate-looking indoor ride that incorporates elements of a typical roller coaster, strapping riders into conjoined carts that whisk them along a dimly-lit track filled with jerks and jump scares, as promotional materials for the experience show.
According to a description of the ride published in a Universal Studios safety guide, Revenge of the Mummy “is a high-speed roller coaster ride that includes sudden and dramatic acceleration, climbing, tilting, and dropping.” At times, the ride reaches speeds of up to 45 mph, CBS affiliage WKMG reported.
The ride has a minimum height requirement of 4 feet tall and isn’t suitable for passengers with a variety of medical conditions, including those who are susceptible to motion sickness or dizziness, or who have histories of heart conditions, abnormal blood pressure, back issues, neck issues, medical sensitivities to strobe effects, medical sensitivities to fog effects and any “other conditions which may be aggravated” by the ride, the safety description says.
This was the second death linked to a Universal Studios ride last year, Florida’s previous theme park injury report showed. On Sept. 17, a 32-year-old man died after riding the park’s Stardust Racers roller coaster. Citing a medical examiner’s report, WKMG reported that the man’s cause of death was determined to be “multiple blunt impact injuries.”
Earlier, in August, a 32-year-old woman was injured on the Revenge of the Mummy ride, according to the report, which said she suffered neck pain and motion sickness.
Florida law requires theme parks in the state to report ride-related injuries that require hospital stays of at least 24 hours.
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Parts of Florida receive rare snowfall as freezing temperatures linger
A protective coating of ice clings to a strawberry plant in sub-freezing temperatures at a field on Friday in Plant City, Fla.
Chris O’Meara/AP
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Chris O’Meara/AP
A rare snowfall covered parts of the Sunshine State on Sunday for the second year in a row, while freezing temperatures will continue to grip parts of Florida into early this week.
A storm system brought up to 2 inches of snow to southern portions of Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, including Pensacola, on Sunday morning, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).
The snowfall occurred almost a year to the day after parts of Florida received record snow in mid-January 2025 — when Pensacola received between 6 to 8 inches of snow.

And while Sunday’s snowfall is over in Florida, a blast of arctic cold that has been felt across parts of the state since Friday is not.
Orlando and other areas will face a freeze warning Sunday night into Monday morning, with temperatures falling to at least 25 degrees and wind chills in the low 20s in some places, according to the NWS. Further south, Naples and surrounding areas will be under a cold weather advisory Sunday night into Monday morning, where 29-degree wind chills are expected.

Cold temperatures coupled with snow are abnormal for Florida but the cold weather will be “short-lived,” said Joe Wegman, a NWS meteorologist.
“We’re only expecting this level of cold for tonight. And then, even by tomorrow night, we’ll have lows in the upper 30s. So, just still cold, well below normal,” Wegman told NPR on Sunday. “By Tuesday night, lows are back up into the upper 40s.”
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Did Hunter S. Thompson Really Kill Himself?
Almost from the moment Hunter was laid to rest, his widow and his son began to feud, over everything from the future of Owl Farm to Juan’s belief that his father had been mistreated by Anita in his last days.
The estrangement deepened with time, and now, Anita’s suspicions have taken the feud to a more pointed place, revealing a long, bitter fight over the legacy of the man who pioneered the personal, participatory style of reporting known as gonzo journalism.
But they were all together the weekend Hunter died.
Juan wrote in his memoir that he was in another room and heard a thump that sounded like a book hitting the floor. Anita was at a health club in Aspen waiting for a yoga class to start. She later told the news media she was on speakerphone with her husband before he shot himself, and heard the “clicking” of the gun.
Looking back, there were signs from that last weekend that Hunter had planned to take his own life, Juan and Jennifer said in interviews.
He insisted on watching one of his favorite movies, “The Maltese Falcon,” with his 6-year-old grandson, Will. He gave away gifts — an old clock that had belonged to his mother and a signed copy of “Fire in the Nuts,” a short book with his frequent collaborator, the artist Ralph Steadman.
“So there is nothing new to know about Hunter’s actual death,” said Juan, 61. “So I do not know why she raised this. And I can’t imagine that the C.B.I. would find anything to act on.”
He and Jennifer said they did not have any role in Hunter’s death. “This is really shocking,” Jennifer said. “It’s been disruptive to our family. It’s obviously been very traumatic to be revisiting this.” She said she believed Anita knew that her husband took his own life, and added, “we hope this brings her closure.”
Jennifer Winkel
Anita had been an assistant to Hunter, and was 35 years younger than him. At the time of his death, they had been married for less than two years — it was Hunter’s second marriage — and that last weekend they fought constantly. In his memoir, Juan wrote that Hunter shot a pellet gun at a gong in the living room the night before he killed himself, just missing Anita, prompting her to threaten to call the police and have him put in a nursing home.
Hunter was also in poor health. He had difficulty moving and suffered occasional seizures, the result of decades of heavy drinking.
“Hunter’s body was giving out,” said Debra Fuller, who worked as an assistant to Hunter and helped manage Owl Farm for almost 20 years before Hunter married Anita. “He was having more difficulty writing as well.”
Hunter had often talked of suicide. Like many of Hunter’s friends, Joe DiSalvo, who was undersheriff of Pitkin County at the time of his death, had conversations with him about how his life would end. He recalled that Hunter would demonstrate his intentions by pointing a loaded gun at his head.
“Hunter talked about suicide,” Mr. DiSalvo said. “He talked about the way he was going to kill himself.”
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