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D.C. Deputy Mayor of Public Safety and Justice Lindsey Appiah told lawmakers this week that the District has completed a review of grants and contracts in the violence-intervention space — a review prompted by bribery allegations against D.C. Council member Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8) — and did not find evidence of wrongdoing.

Appiah appeared before council member Brooke Pinto’s public safety committee as part of a hearing Monday probing how the Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (ONSE) awards lucrative grants and whether oversight needs to be strengthened. The hearing was sparked by allegations that White took bribes to pressure city officials to extend an associate’s violence-intervention contracts at ONSE, sparking broader concerns abut the impact on the agency.

Appiah told Pinto (D-Ward 2) that the D.C. Office of Risk Management issued a preliminary report after reviewing the arrangements with violence intervention grantees — including two companies linked to the White bribery case — and did not find that ONSE employees did anything improper.

“There’s no finding of illegality or findings of rampant misuse or abuse or malfeasance by ONSE or others,” Appiah said.

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Appiah said the report also made recommendations to strengthen grant management at the agency, building on major recent changes Appiah and ONSE interim director Kwelli Sneed said they made to bolster the staffing infrastructure. Those changes will allow the agency to strengthen performance monitoring and oversight of violence intervention grantees, they said — something critics Monday said has been missing for too long.

Pinto stressed that the recent allegations involving White and the two organizations should not reflect on dozens of other violence interrupters — some of whom expressed fear that thebribery scandal could be used to delegitimize the work. In violence intervention, in which employees known as “violence interrupters” seek to defuse neighborhood conflicts, many work long, unpredictable hours in stressful, oftentimes dangerous environments.

Still, Pinto said, the programs are in serious need of “much more oversight and a stronger adherence to consistency and best practices,” to ensure the violence interrupters are effective.

“Millions of taxpayer dollars are at stake with these programs, and even more pressing, residents’ lives,” Pinto said. “These allegations also highlight for me the need for the executive to devote much more time and attention to the office, which has been without a permanent director for almost a year and a half now.”

That lack of permanent leadership, council member Brianne K. Nadeau (D-Ward 1) said, is “a deficiency that appears to have set the stage for a lack of vision and organizational structure at the agency, and now the agency finds itself in the spotlight due to allegations of illegal activities by one of its contractors, Life Deeds.”

Appiah said Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s administration made some offers to applicants for the permanent ONSE director role but they fell through, and Bowser (D) is continuing the search.

Appiah also stressed that while the former head of Life Deeds has pleaded guilty to crimes, that fact should not undermine violence intervention work in general. Appiah credited violence interrupters with helping to reduce gun violence by roughly one-third in ONSE priority areas and insisted the Bowser administration was invested in the program’s success.

“We really are focused on the work, and the impropriety or indictment of individuals for wrongdoing doesn’t change that fact, nor does it tank the entirety of violence intervention work. It’s something we still believe in,” Appiah said.

The Monday hearing — one of two Pinto has planned this fall — marked the first time that ONSE leadership publicly addressed any of the issues related to White’s indictment.

According to the indictment, White sought to pressure a top interim official at ONSE, among others. He allegedly told the official he would not support her for the permanent director role if Bowser nominated her — unless the official gave the contracts to White’s associate.

Asked by a reporter Monday if White tried to pressure her, Sneed said she could not discuss the case.

“I can tell you I’ve always, in my personal and professional experience, have always worked and operated with integrity,” Sneed said.

The informant who allegedly bribed White was Allieu Kamara, the founder of Life Deeds, a company that had multiple agreements with ONSE to perform violence-intervention work across D.C., according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

Kamara also pleaded guilty to bribing another D.C. employee and also defrauding the pandemic-era federal Paycheck Protection Program after he and his accountant submitted phony applications for a dozen businesses. The businesses included Life Deeds and Kamara’s other company District Services Management, which also had over $3 million in contracts to do violence-intervention work for ONSE over the last several years.

Kelly Winston, who is listed as executive director of District Services Management in a ONSE grant document, also has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud as part of the same scheme, court records show.

Attorneys for Kamara and Winston have declined to comment on those cases.

White, who is running for reelection, has pleaded not guilty to bribery and is due back in court next month.

Appiah told reporters that the city’s review of Life Deeds and District Services Management’s performance did not surface problems, although some who testified Monday described some concerns.

Paul Jones, CEO of the Columbia Heights Village Tenant Association, said that Life Deeds was expected to set up a fatherhood program in the neighborhood this year but that there was “minimal follow-up and communication,” leaving the association wondering what came of the program or the funds. Life Deeds representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

“We’re deeply concerned about the current level of oversight on grantees,” added Cynthia Hall, the tenants’ association chief operating officer.

Sneed said the agency heard the feedback “loud and clear” about the need for more in-house performance monitoring of grantees and believed the recent changes in grant management and internal staffing would allow ONSE to do more robust oversight.

Pinto praised that progress. But she said the administration needs to think deeply about why there appears to be a “disconnect” with community groups and others in the violence-intervention space, some of whom on Monday described feeling a lack of investment and direction from the Bowser administration. “We keep hearing this,” Pinto said.

Multiple people called for a comprehensive strategic plan to reduce gun violence that included strengthening funding and resources for violence intervention work and bolstering emergency housing support for people at risk of retaliatory gun violence — funds cut in the recent budget.

“It is so patently obvious that this city has no fundable, coordinated, strategic vision around prevention,” said Delonte Gholston, pastor of Peace Fellowship Church.

A pair of academic researchers conducting a long-term study of the effectiveness of the ONSE violence intervention program also described overworked violence interrupters who are spread too thin to be effective, in a program that had “no real structure” to guide the work.

“Staffing levels are nowhere remotely close to what other cities have used in neighborhoods to drive down gun violence,” said Daniel Webster, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who studies gun violence reduction programs.

It was also problematic, they said, that the mayor’s office and the D.C. attorney general’s office had different violence-intervention programs, contributing to the lack of a uniform, citywide approach to drive down gun violence. Pinto has pushed the Bowser administration to work more urgently with the attorney general to merge the two programs, something that Appiah said remains on the table.

Only two violence intervention grantees refused to participate in Richardson and Webster’s study, something the researchers said Monday was unusual and that they had not encountered with other organizations in D.C. or any other city they worked in. The two that did not participate were Life Deeds and District Services Management.

Jenny Gathright contributed to this report.

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NEW YORK/WASHINGTON, Oct 8 (Reuters) - TikTok faces new lawsuits filed by 13 U.S. states and the District of Columbia on Tuesday, accusing the popular social media platform of harming and failing to protect young people.

The lawsuits filed separately in New York, California, the District of Columbia and 11 other states, expand Chinese-owned TikTok's legal fight with U.S. regulators, and seek new financial penalties against the company.

The states accuse TikTok of using intentionally addictive software designed to keep children watching as long and often as possible and misrepresenting its content moderation effectiveness.

"TikTok cultivates social media addiction to boost corporate profits," California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement. "TikTok intentionally targets children because they know kids do not yet have the defenses or capacity to create healthy boundaries around addictive content."

TikTok seeks to maximize the amount of time users spend on the app in order to target them with ads, the states say.

"Young people are struggling with their mental health because of addictive social media platforms like TikTok," said New York Attorney General Letitia James.

TikTok said on Tuesday that it strongly disagreed with the claims, "many of which we believe to be inaccurate and misleading," and that it was disappointed the states chose to sue "rather than work with us on constructive solutions to industrywide challenges."

TikTok provides safety features including default screentime limits and privacy defaults for minors under 16, the company said.

Washington D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb alleged TikTok operates an unlicensed money transmission business through its live streaming and virtual currency features.

"TikTok's platform is dangerous by design. It's an intentionally addictive product that is designed to get young people addicted to their screens," Schwalb said in an interview.

Washington's lawsuit accused TikTok of facilitating sexual exploitation of underage users, saying TikTok's live streaming and virtual currency "operate like a virtual strip club with no age restrictions."

Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Vermont and Washington state also sued on Tuesday.

In March 2022, eight states including California and Massachusetts, said they launched a nationwide probe of TikTok impacts on young people.

The U.S. Justice Department sued TikTok in August for allegedly failing to protect children's privacy on the app. Other states previously sued TikTok for failing to protect children from harm, including Utah and Texas. TikTok on Monday rejected the allegations in a court filing.

TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance is battling a U.S. law that could ban the app in the United States.

Reporting by Jody Godoy in New York and David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Jamie Freed and Emelia Sithole-Matarise

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Jody Godoy reports on tech policy and antitrust enforcement, including how regulators are responding to the rise of AI. Reach her at jody.godoy@thomsonreuters.com

Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, postponed a visit to Washington on Wednesday to meet with Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III to discuss Israel’s military response to Iran’s recent missile barrage, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

Sabrina Singh, the deputy Pentagon press secretary, declined to say why Mr. Gallant had postponed the visit and referred all questions to the Israeli Defense Ministry, which, she said, had informed the Pentagon of the decision on Tuesday.

Ms. Singh played down the notion that any tensions between Mr. Austin and Mr. Gallant were behind the postponement, and did not comment on whether internal Israeli political machinations might have prompted the decision.

“We’re in constant communication with the Israeli government at different levels, including the secretary to Minister Gallant,” Ms. Singh told reporters. “We’re going to keep talking to them about their response.”

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President Biden has said he would not support an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear or energy sites in response to the missile attack on Israel last week, saying that any response should be “proportionate,” essentially acknowledging that some counterstrike is appropriate.

The president and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel last spoke on Aug. 21 by phone, according to a White House statement.

In a phone call on Sunday, Mr. Austin made clear to Mr. Gallant that the United States wanted Israel to avoid retaliatory steps that would result in a new escalation by the Iranians, a senior Pentagon official said on Monday. The two men had been expected to discuss options in more detail in the face-to-face meeting on Wednesday.

As Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon expands to include ground incursions and intensifying airstrikes, senior Pentagon officials are mulling whether the enhanced American military presence in the region is containing a widening war, as they had hoped, or inflaming it.

In the 12 months since Hamas has attacked Israel, opening a conflict that includes Yemen, Iran and Lebanon, the Pentagon has sent a bristling array of weaponry to the region, including aircraft carriers, guided-missile destroyers, amphibious assault ships and fighter squadrons. But Pentagon officials complain that the Israelis have not been completely candid or timely in alerting the United States to impending Israeli operations, including its assassination of Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

Mr. Gallant had informed Mr. Austin during a phone call as the Israeli operation was underway. Pentagon officials said Mr. Austin was seething that the Israelis had not given more notice to allow American troops in the region to increase defensive measures against likely Iranian retaliation.

When asked about Mr. Austin’s reaction, Ms. Singh told reporters that “he was caught off guard.”

Ephrat Livni contributed reporting.

Coordinated legal actions from 14 attorneys general allege TikTok is harming the mental health of children.

Lawsuits filed in state and district superior courts by the attorney general offices of California, New York, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Jersey, Oregon, South Carolina, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia of intentionally designing its social media platform to be “addictive and harmful to young users” and being untruthful about efforts to keep its platform safe for U.S. users.

The complaints allege that although TikTok’s own internal research and data indicates "excessive and compulsive" use of the platform causes mental and physical harm to young users, it still employs "coercive" design features such as infinite scroll and constant push notifications to “hook youth into spending as much time as possible on its platform – more than they would otherwise choose – to their detriment.”

"Massachusetts will not tolerate a future where companies exploit the vulnerabilities of young people for profit," Massachusetts attorney general Andrea Joy Campbell said in an official statement. "Today’s lawsuit further demonstrates my office’s focus on the wellbeing of our children by laying out arguments that TikTok, primarily driven by greed, designed technology that leads young people to become compulsive and addicted users of the platform, harming their wellbeing and contributing to the ongoing youth mental health crisis across our country."

The lawsuits seek to bar TikTok from continuing to engage in what they call “unfair and deceptive practices that harm young people.”

In addition, the attorney general’s office of the District of Columbia is filing suit accusing TikTok of violating Washington, D.C. law requiring a license to act as a money transmitter with its “coins” virtual currency system.

In a post on the official TikTok Policy account on X (the social network formerly known as Twitter), the company said it strongly disagrees with what it called “inaccurate and misleading” lawsuit claims.

"We're proud of and remain deeply committed to the work we've done to protect teens and we will continue to update and improve our product," TikTok said in the post. "We provide robust safeguards, proactively remove suspected underage users, and have voluntarily launched safety features such as default screentime limits, family pairing, and privacy by default for minors under 16."

TikTok also said it has been working with the attorneys general for more than two years.

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TikTok faces legal challenges

TikTok has been the focus of a variety of legal actions and accusations from federal and state U.S. lawmakers. In April 2024, President Biden signed a law requiring TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance to divest its U.S. TikTok operation by the end of January 2025, or else U.S. app stores and Internet hosting services will not be allowed to support TikTok or any other ByteDance apps.

The law, which TikTok is currently appealing on constitutional grounds, was passed in response to longstanding concerns over possible ties between ByteDance and the Chinese Communist Party and possible risks to U.S. user privacy (ByteDance and TikTok have publicly denied the validity of these concerns).

In December 2022, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) introduced bipartisan legislation to ban TikTok from operating in the U.S. And in May 2023, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte signed legislation that would make Montana the first state in the U.S. to completely ban any mobile app store from providing TikTok to any users in the state, but it is currently on hold by a federal judge's order.

TikTok may already be taking a new look at creating a separate U.S. operation that would include Walmart and Oracle. Media reports have also indicated that U.S.-based buyer groups including celebrities such as "Shark Tank" star and venture capital investor Kevin O’Leary and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are considering making offers to acquire TikTok’s U.S. operation.

[READ MORE: One-third of Americans have shopped at TikTok Shop, according to survey]

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The Washington D.C. Office of Lottery and Gaming, along with D.C. Lottery, reported all-time monthly highs of $8.1 million in sports betting revenue and $58.1 million handle for September.

The OLG reported its numbers Tuesday, while D.C. Lottery had reported its monthly figures for GambetDC earlier. The access to mobile sports betting in the nation's capital increased dramatically over the summer after the Sports Wagering Amendment Act of 2024 was included in the District's budget for Fiscal Year 2025. The expansion took effect in mid-July, with FanDuel, DraftKings, Caesars and BetMGM all available to D.C. bettors.

The $8.1 million in operator winnings smashed the previous record of $5.4 million established in May when FanDuel first entered the market operating on behalf of the D.C. Lottery. Sportsbooks thrived despite the Washington Commanders getting off to a 3-1 start behind rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels. The Commanders were also 3-1 against the spread in September, highlighted by a 38-33 road upset at Cincinnati in Week 3 when they were 7.5-point underdogs.

September's handle was up 43.1% from August's short-lived record of $40.6 million, with such an increase expected due to the wider mobile availability and the start of the NFL and college football seasons. Handle and revenue were both more than four times higher than they were in September 2023.

With record revenue comes record tax receipts, and the district coffers saw an inflow of nearly $2 million for the month. D.C. is now taxing Class A operators FanDuel, BetMGM and Caesars at 20% and DraftKings — a Class C licensee as a standalone mobile operator — at 30%, leading to the notable bump in tax revenue.

Bettors Only Find Success Versus BetMGM

Running September Top 10 #SportsBetting handles by state:

1 WASHINGTON DC $58.09M <-NEW2 Maine $51.82M3 West Virginia $46.39M4 Montana $6.78M5 TBD6 TBD7 TBD8 TBD9 TBD10 TBD#SportsBettingX#GamblingX

— Chris Altruda (@AlTruda73) October 8, 2024

Three of the district's four mobile operators posted holds of 14% or better, with Caesars leading the trio at 17.9%. That contributed to its first seven-figure monthly revenue haul since October 2022, as it claimed $36,500 above that amount while taking $5.8 million worth of bets.

FanDuel surpassed $4 million in revenue for the second time since being unleashed beyond Audi Field, totaling close to $4.4 million while notching a 14.4% win rate from a record $30.5 million handle. The start of football season provided a huge bump for DraftKings, as both revenue and handle more than doubled from August. The sportsbook reported $2.1 million in winnings, attaining a 14.1% hold from $14.9 million in wagers.

BetMGM was the only mobile book to struggle in September, finishing with a 5.9% hold after claiming $352,700 in revenue from almost $6 million wagered. Revenue was still up 23.7% compared to last year, as handle more than doubled. The amount of wagers placed almost doubled as well, surging from 50,700 to 110,900, the second-highest total in its history.

Year-to-Date Tax Figures Finally Showing Growth

The increase in tax rates for mobile sports betting operators finally showed the type of revenue the nation's capital had long sought when it legalized this form of gambling back in 2020.

September's receipts were $1.2 million more than the same month last year, and the $7.3 million in receipts through the first nine months of 2024 is running $1.1 million ahead of 2023.

Both revenue and handle have more than doubled over the first three quarters, with the $34 million in revenue up 155.8% and the $261.4 million handle marking an increase of 116.1%. The 13% hold attained by all operators for the year is more than two percentage points higher than 2023.

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About the Author

Chris is a Senior Analyst at Better Collective US and his focus is breaking down monthly sports betting revenue figures from state agencies across the United States. Prior to joining Better Collective in November 2019, Chris acquired more than two decades worth of experience at three national sports news wire services.

Follow Chris Altruda @altruda73 on Twitter/X.

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