New York
Read the Trump Assassination Plot Criminal Complaint
and committed out of the jurisdiction of any particular State or district of the United States,
FARHAD SHAKERI, CARLISLE RIVERA, a/k/a “Pop,” and JONATHAN LOADHOLT, the
defendants, and others known and unknown, at least one of whom is expected to be first brought
to and arrested in the Southern District of New York, knowingly and willfully did combine,
conspire, confederate, and agree together and with each other to commit murder-for-hire, in
violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1958.
6. It was a part and an object of the conspiracy that FARHAD SHAKERI,
CARLISLE RIVERA, a/k/a “Pop,” and JONATHAN LOADHOLT, and others known and
unknown, would and did knowingly travel in and cause others to travel in interstate and foreign
commerce, and would and did use and cause another to use a facility of interstate and foreign
commerce, with intent that a murder be committed in violation of the laws of the State of New
York or the United States as consideration for the receipt of and as consideration for a promise or
agreement to pay anything of pecuniary value, to wit, SHAKERI, RIVERA, and LOADHOLT
participated in an agreement whereby RIVERA and LOADHOLT would kill Victim-1 in exchange
for payment, and used cellphones and electronic messaging applications to communicate in
furtherance of the scheme.
(Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1958 and 3238.)
COUNT FIVE
(MONEY LAUNDERING CONSPIRACY)
7. From at least in or about December 2023, up to and including the date of
this Complaint, in Iran, the Southern District of New York, and elsewhere, and in an offense begun
and committed out of the jurisdiction of any particular State or district of the United States,
FARHAD SHAKERI, CARLISLE RIVERA, a/k/a “Pop,” and JONATHAN LOADHOLT, the
defendants, and others known and unknown, at least one of whom is expected to be first brought
to and arrested in the Southern District of New York, knowingly and willfully did combine,
conspire, confederate, and agree together and with each other to commit money laundering, in
violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1956.
8. It was further a part and an object of the conspiracy that FARHAD
SHAKERI, CARLISLE RIVERA, a/k/a “Pop,” and JONATHAN LOADHOLT, the defendants,
and others known and unknown, in an offense involving and affecting interstate and foreign
commerce, knowing that the property involved in certain financial transactions represented the
proceeds of some form of unlawful activity, would and did conduct and attempt to conduct such
financial transactions which in fact involved the proceeds of specified unlawful activity, to wit,
the proceeds of the murder-for-hire offenses charged in Counts Three and Four of this Complaint,
knowing that the transactions were designed in whole and in part to conceal and disguise the
nature, location, source, ownership, and control of the proceeds of said specified unlawful activity,
in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1956(a)(1)(B)(i).
9. It was further a part and an object of the conspiracy that FARHAD
SHAKERI, CARLISLE RIVERA, a/k/a “Pop,” and JONATHAN LOADHOLT, the defendants,
and others known and unknown, would and did transport, transmit, and transfer, and attempt to
transport, transmit, and transfer, monetary instruments and funds to a place in the United States
3
The technology industry is obsessed with the future.
Many of our modern marvels are rooted in the legacy of Bell Labs, an innovation powerhouse in suburban New Jersey.
Bell Labs, the once-famed research arm of AT&T, celebrated the centennial of its founding last year.
In its heyday, starting in the 1940s, the lab created a cascade of inventions, including the transistor, information theory and an enduring computer software language. The labs’ digital DNA is in our smartphones, social media and chatbot conversations.
“Every hour of your day has a bit of Bell Labs in it,” observed Jon Gertner, author of “The Idea Factory,” a history of the storied research center.
Bell Labs’ most far-reaching idea — information theory — forms the bedrock of computing. The mathematical framework, known as the “Magna Carta of the information age,” provided a blueprint for sending and receiving information with precision and reliability. It was the brainchild of Claude Shannon, a brilliant eccentric whom the A.I. start-up Anthropic named its chatbot after.
Last month, Nvidia announced a new A.I. chip packed with more than 300 billion transistors — the tiny on-off electrical switches invented in the lab.
Bell Labs became so powerful and renowned that it is entrenched in pop culture. The 1968 sci-fi movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” drew inspiration from Bell Labs, and the father of the titular character in the period dramedy “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” worked there. Most recently, characters in the show “Severance” report to a former Bell Labs building.
Here are some of the labs’ most prominent inventions.
Bell Labs described itself as a wide-ranging “institute of creative technology.” And it was a well-funded one, thanks to the monopoly held by AT&T — with incentive to expand Ma Bell’s phone business.
One invention was Telstar, the first powerful communications satellite, which could receive radio signals, then amplify them (10 billion times) and retransmit them. This allowed for real-time phone conversations across oceans, high-speed data communications and global television broadcasts.
1960
In 1960, Bell Labs launched an earlier orbital communications satellite in collaboration with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration — a passive balloon satellite called Echo that could reflect signals one way.
1962
The lab again teamed up with NASA to launch the smaller Telstar, which was about three feet in diameter and weighed 170 pounds.
1962
Bell Labs also developed some of the rocket technology that launched the satellite, a byproduct of an antiballistic missile project.
1962
Lyndon B. Johnson, vice president at the time, spoke on the first phone conversation bounced off a satellite. “You’re coming through nicely,” he assured Frederick Kappel, the phone company’s chairman.
PRESENT
In the decades since, those groundbreaking inventions from Bell Labs have become ubiquitous and affordable. International phone calls and television broadcasts are part of daily life. Today, more than 11,000 satellites provide internet, surveillance and navigation services, and are crucial for driverless cars and drone warfare.
While developing mobile-phone service, Bell Labs scientists drove around in a van to check transmission quality.
The labs submitted its plan for a working cellular network to the government in 1971, and AT&T opened the first commercial cellular service in Chicago more than a decade later.
1968
An early, simple version of mobile service was essentially a conventional phone on wheels — the car phone. Through radio technology, it connected to the landline network for calls.
1972
Smaller, more powerful chips, radios and batteries made a truly mobile phone possible. It still weighed nearly two pounds.
PRESENT
The technology continued to improve, as cellphones grew smaller and more sophisticated. Smartphones, which gained popularity with the iPhone’s launch in 2007, helped cement the devices as everywhere, ever-present and the dominant device for communication, information and entertainment — for better or worse.
The Picturephone allowed you to see the person you were talking to on a small screen.
1968
And it was heavily promoted. An ad for the Picturephone said it amounted to “crossing a telephone with a TV set.” Its tagline: “Someday you’ll be a star!”
1964
The Picturephone was introduced to great fanfare at the 1964 New York World’s Fair.
1964
Even the White House was enlisted for a publicized demo. Lady Bird Johnson spoke via Picturephone to a Bell Labs scientist, Elizabeth Wood.
1968
But at the cost of $16 for a three-minute call (more than $165 today), the novelty soon wore off. Though a market failure, the Picturephone had a star turn in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
PRESENT
Decades later, tech giants ran with the vision of talking with people on video. Similar technology is now incorporated in every smartphone, allowing families to chat in real time. Video calls have also transformed the way we work — connecting people around the world for meetings.
The light-sensitive electronic sensor, called a charge-coupled device, opened the door to digital imaging. It captured images by converting photons of light into electrons, breaking images into pixels.
1978
Efforts to use the imaging sensors in cameras and camcorders began in the 1970s, and the products steadily improved. The cameras got smaller and the images sharper. Willard Boyle and George E. Smith earned a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics for their invention.
1978
The science is complicated, but the sensor converts light to electrical charges, stores them and then shifts them across the chip to be measured.
PRESENT
By the early 2000s, a smaller, cheaper technology, CMOS, had won out in mass markets like camera phones. But charge-coupled sensors remained the choice for tasks requiring very high resolution, like mapping the Milky Way.
The silicon solar cell was a Bell Labs triumph of material physics.
The solar cell performs a special kind of photon-to-electron conversion — sunlight to energy.
1956
But while a scientific success, the early solar cell technology was a market flop — prohibitively expensive for mainstream adoption. By one estimate at the time, it would have cost $1.5 million for the solar cells needed to meet the electricity needs of the average American house in 1956.
PRESENT
The solar industry would take off decades later, riding the revolution in semiconductor technology, with prices falling and performance soaring. Government subsidies in many countries, eager to nurture clean energy development, helped as well. Today, light-catching panels stretch across fields and deserts.
All computer technology stems from the transistor, the seemingly infinitely scalable nugget of hardware that is essentially an on-off electrical switch that powers digital technology. It was invented at Bell Labs, which licensed the technology to others, paving the way for today’s tech industry.
The versatile transistor can also boost signals by gating electrons and then releasing them.
1956
These transistors — seen on the face of a dime — were the tiniest in their day. The smaller the transistors, the more that can be packed on a chip, using less electricity and enabling faster, more powerful computers.
1950s
Improvements in transistor design led to mass production in the 1950s, helping inspire new products like the portable transistor radio.
1956
The transistor’s inventors — John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley — shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for their creation.
1979
The technology continued to improve as a “computer on a chip” in the late 1970s. It was smaller than a fingernail and a few hundredths of an inch thick.
PRESENT
Today’s microscopic transistors animate the chips that go into our phones, computers and cars. The artificial intelligence boom is powered by chips of almost unimaginable scale. Jensen Huang, president of Nvidia, recently showed off the company’s new Rubin A.I. chip, with 336 billion transistors.
The first primaries for the 2026 midterm elections are scheduled for early March. For Republican and Democratic state lawmakers still trying to redraw district maps for the U.S. House of Representatives, where Republicans have a razor-thin margin, there is not much time left.
While legal challenges remain — including a potentially seismic Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act — here is a breakdown of states where maps affecting November’s election have already been redone, or states have taken action to make changes.
These states have changed their maps
Texas could add 5 Republican seats in the midterms
The first group to heed President Trump’s call last year to reshape Congress was the Republican majority in Texas.
Democrats staged a two-week walkout, arguing that the new districts would illegally dilute Black and Hispanic representation. But Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed the measure into law in August, and the Supreme Court upheld the map in December.
California could add 5 Democratic seats
In response, Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, persuaded the legislature in August, and voters in November, to counterpunch.
The Supreme Court, echoing its Texas order, upheld California’s new map in February, dismissing Republican claims that it illegally favored Latino voters.
Missouri could add 1 Republican seat
Gov. Mike Kehoe, a Republican, in late September signed into law a new map that would split Kansas City, a Democratic stronghold, into rural and largely Republican districts.
Republicans hope to oust the longtime Representative Emanuel Cleaver, who was the first Black mayor of Kansas City. But lawsuits are in progress.
North Carolina could add 1 Republican seat
The Republican-controlled legislature approved a new map in October that imperils the re-election chances of Representative Don Davis, a Democrat, who represents the northeastern corner of the state.
Under the state Constitution, Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, cannot veto the new map.
Ohio could add 1 to 2 Republican seats
Even before Mr. Trump’s push, Ohio was required, under its state Constitution, to redraw its congressional maps. So in October, a state commission approved plans to dilute Democratic-held districts near Toledo and Cincinnati.
Utah could add 1 Democratic seat
A state judge in November tossed out a map drawn by the Republican-dominated legislature as being unfairly tilted against Democrats. The judge then adopted an alternative proposed by a centrist group that preserved a Democratic-leaning district surrounding Salt Lake City.
The Utah legislature has appealed to the Utah Supreme Court, while two of state’s congressional Republicans have filed a federal lawsuit to void the map.
These states are trying to change their maps
Florida could add 2 to 4 Republican seats in the midterms
Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has proposed that a special legislative session be convened in late April on redistricting. Republicans, who control most of the state’s congressional seats, are eyeing a gain of two to four more in central and South Florida.
Virginia could add 2 to 4 Democratic seats
The Democratic legislature has passed a constitutional amendment allowing lawmakers to redraw congressional districts before the midterms. If voters say yes to a referendum on April 21, the Democrats could net between two and four seats under a proposed new map.
A state judge initially blocked the effort to change the map. But the Virginia Supreme Court has allowed the referendum to proceed, and says that it will rule afterward on whether the plan is legal.
New York could add 1 Democratic seat
A state judge has ruled that a district represented by Nicole Malliotakis, New York City’s only Republican member of Congress, disenfranchises Black and Latino voters. The judge has ordered an independent redistricting commission to come up with new maps for the district, which includes Staten Island and part of Brooklyn. Republicans are appealing.
Maryland could add 1 Democratic seat
In Maryland, a latecomer, the House of Delegates has approved a plan that would ask voters to ratify new congressional boundaries in November — while also choosing the candidates to represent those districts.
The State Senate appears reluctant, so far. But if the plan proceeds, Democrats could turn what is now a 7-1 advantage into 8-0.
Reporting contributed by Nick Corasaniti.
How can people possibly afford to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet? It’s a question New Yorkers hear a lot, often delivered with a mix of awe, pity and confusion.
We surveyed hundreds of New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save. We found that many people — rich, poor or somewhere in between — live life as a series of small calculations that add up to one big question: What makes living in New York worth it?
When Erika Fernandez-Pacheco was a child growing up in New York City, her family lived largely paycheck to paycheck. Her parents, both immigrants, met at a factory in Manhattan. Her father later worked as a taxi driver and a bodega owner.
These days, Ms. Fernandez-Pacheco and her husband, Manuel Pacheco, are far from rich, but they’re more than comfortable.
Ms. Fernandez-Pacheco works as a sports journalist and content creator, and Mr. Pacheco works in food service at a Manhattan hotel. Together, they earn between $165,000 and $170,000 in a typical year. They have two daughters, 4 and 1.
“We’re not just getting by,” Ms. Fernandez-Pacheco said. “We have a life.”
Luck be a landlord
Having a good landlord in New York City is the best kind of luck.
Ms. Fernandez-Pacheco, 37, and Mr. Pacheco, 38, moved to East Elmhurst, in Queens near LaGuardia Airport, during the Covid pandemic. Ms. Fernandez-Pacheco was pregnant, and they were in search of more space and cheaper rent. They found both in a three-family home on a quiet street.
Their 700-square-foot apartment has two bedrooms and lots of closet space. The landlords, who live downstairs, have not raised the couple’s $1,800 monthly rent since 2021, when they moved in.
But their apartment is far from public transit. Mr. Pacheco has to leave for work by 4:15 most mornings, before the bus starts running. So he uses his monthly Lyft membership to take a car to the nearest subway, which is a half-hour walk away. It’s a $10 expense, even before he swipes his transit card.
The couple looked for apartments closer to the subway but found that rents were $2,500 or more for cramped spaces. They decided to stay put, content with their affordable apartment in their affordable neighborhood.
Recently, Ms. Fernandez-Pacheco has been scrolling a Reddit page where New York parents vent about how expensive it is to live here. Sometimes, their complaints make her roll her eyes.
“The amount of people who are like, ‘I can’t afford to live in New York’ — I’m like, duh, you live in Park Slope!” she said. “Move to Queens, move to the Bronx.”
Grandparents make the best babysitters
The couple have never paid for a babysitter, relying instead on both sets of grandparents to help care for their daughters.
It’s a lot to ask of their aging parents, but the nearby day care centers charge about $2,500 a month, more than the family’s rent.
The system isn’t exactly foolproof. Ms. Fernandez-Pacheco works from home part of the week and watches her children when she has breaks.
She’ll never forget the morning when she was logging on for an important Zoom meeting and her older daughter started vomiting. Ms. Fernandez-Pacheco’s parents were still en route to the house, so she had to slam her laptop shut and rush to her daughter.
When her younger child had a bad case of the respiratory infection R.S.V., Ms. Fernandez-Pacheco worked from the hospital.
The family has found real relief in the city’s free prekindergarten program. The couple’s older daughter attended 3-K last year, and after a tough transition to being dropped off at school, she came to love it. She’s in pre-K this year, which has helped relieve the burden on the grandparents, and will attend a local public school come fall.
The family’s medical costs are minimal. Because Mr. Pacheco is a member of the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, one of the city’s most powerful unions, the entire family has access to free insurance offered at the union’s dedicated health centers.
The couple is selective about which activities they send the girls to. They’ve signed their older daughter up for swim lessons at a local pool, which cost $45 a week. In the winter, when it’s too cold to take the kids to the playground, they visit a bouncy house nearby, which costs $17 for two hours.
‘Not taking this money to the grave’
The family’s ability to relax enough to enjoy their lives requires long-term planning and diligent saving.
The couple aims to put away about $1,200 a month, hoping to someday have enough saved for a down payment on a house. Sometimes, though, they manage only $500 or so.
They are strategic about their grocery shopping.
The couple uses Ms. Fernandez-Pacheco’s father’s wholesale account at Jetro, a wholesale shop for people in the food business, left over from his days as a bodega owner. They shop there twice a year to buy frozen chicken and beef in bulk, typically spending $150 per trip. The family spends another $250 or so on groceries a month, splitting their shopping between Costco, which Ms. Fernandez-Pacheco thinks has the best prices, and BJ’s, which she believes has the better coupons.
“I feel like I’ve turned into my parents,” Ms. Fernandez-Pacheco said. “I ask around about how much a head of lettuce costs” at different stores.
They waited to buy new tires for their car, which is now paid off, so they could save $600 on a new set during a Black Friday sale.
That budgeting allows them to spend on what they really care about.
They threw big parties for each daughter’s first birthday, with more than 100 guests, top-shelf liquor and lots of food, including homemade ceviche from Ms. Fernandez-Pacheco’s parents, sourced from a seafood market in Flushing, Queens. The total cost for their older daughter’s party, including the venue rental, was about $4,500, which the couple thought was worth it to mark a major milestone for their family.
The couple asked their guests to contribute to their daughters’ college savings accounts in lieu of gifts.
And they try to take one big family vacation a year, most recently to Barbados, which cost about $4,000 between flights and hotels.
It has taken some time for Ms. Fernandez-Pacheco to feel comfortable splurging on herself and her family from time to time. When she frets over a decision, she thinks of her mother-in-law’s encouragement to live a little: “You’re not taking this money to the grave.”
We want to hear from you about how you afford life in one of the most expensive cities in the world. We’re looking to speak with people of all income ranges, with all kinds of living situations and professions.
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