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Social influence refers to the way in which individuals change their ideas and actions to meet the demands of a social group,

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Why do people conform in groups? Why do we obey authority figures? How does your role in society affect your behavior? And how can the pressure to conform sometimes lead people to commit atrocities in the name of 'obeying orders'?

Psychologists have spent decades studying the power of social influence, and the way in which it manipulates people's opinions and behavior. Specifically, social influence refers to the way in which individuals change their ideas and actions to meet the demands of a social group, perceived authority, social role or a minority within a group wielding influence over the majority.

Most of us encounter social influence in its many forms on a regular basis. For example, a student may alter his or her behavior to match that of other students in a class. The majority-held opinions of a group of friends are likely to inform the views of new members to that social group. Furthermore, we are influenced by the requests of people who are seen as holding positions of authority. For instance, an employee will follow the orders of his supervisors in order to please them.

Why people accept social influence

There are a number of reasons why people allow social influences to affect their thoughts and behavior.

One reason is that we often conform to the norms of a group to gain acceptance of its members. Supporters of a football team voluntarily wear shirts of their teams to feel a part of the group. Friends may also wear similar clothing to their peers to experience a sense of belonging and to emphasise their shared ideas.

Group conformity can also encourage cooperation when attempting to achieve a shared goal. When an individual is able to exhibit a minority influence over a wider group, he or she can persuade that group to work collectively. For example, charity organizers recruiting new volunteers advocate improving their community (e.g. litter picking) in a way that cannot be achieved as easily by just one person acting alone.

However, cooperation can lead to a conformity of views, resulting in a phenomenon known as groupthink. When this occurs, team members adopt agreed views and actions in the pursuit of a given goal, but reject criticism from individuals who oppose or question the group's behavior. This lack of critical thinking can have a negative impact on a group's performance as its ability to evaluate its own behavior and adapt to changing conditions is impeded.

Additionally, group conformity enables a sense of cohesion within a society. Laws prohibiting violence and theft help to protect every individual within a community. However, such laws depend on people conforming to the norms of the wider group by acting as law-abiding citizens.

Whilst social influence can have a positive effect on behavior, its disadvantages have been a motivating factor behind research into conformity by psychologists such as Stanley Milgram.

Conformity to a narrow set of behaviors and views can discourage the nurturing of new ideas which could improve the lives of a group. It can discourage its members from questioning and debating the beliefs and held by the majority of a group and its practises. This behavior has been observed in cults, where members are often reluctant to doubt the group's authority publically for fear of being rejected by their peers.

Another form of social influence - minority influence - has also been used historically for malign purposes. The followers of leaders such as Adolf Hitler accepted and often internalized the Nazi leader's fascist views without question.

Following the Second World War, German officer Adolf Eichmann attempted to justify his participation in the Holocaust by claiming that he was merely 'following the orders' of perceived authority figures: in Eichmann's case, his commanders.

People tend to conform for one of two reasons: to act based on a more informed view ( informative social influence) or to match the views and behavior of a social group ( normative social influence):

Informative social influence (or social proof)

People feel the need to be informed by accurate information, and when they lack confidence in their own knowledge, they turn to others in the hope that they will provide them with the correct information. By accepting this information, regardless of whether it is accurate, the person is subjected to social influence.

Social psychologist Muzafer Sherif demonstrated informative social influence in an experiment using the autokinetic effect.

Sherif (1935) placed participants in a darkened room, then projected a single, stationary light onto the wall facing them. In accordance with the autokinetic effect, when a person is unable to see another object to judge the light's relative position, the light appears to move.

One group of participants was then asked individually how far the light had moved. Based on their own perception alone, they reported that the light had shifted widely varying distances.

A second group was also asked how far the light had moved, but gave their answers in front of other members of the group.

Sherif found that participants who gave their answers in a group provided varying distances, but that the reported movement eventually fell into an ever-smaller range. In other words, when participants were unsure of the light's movement and information was available from other members of the group, they used their answers to inform their own opinions, leading to conformity amongst participants.

Normative social influence

A second type of conformity is normative social influence. People want to 'fit in' amongst friends and colleagues, and to be liked and respected by other members of their social group. They value the opinions of other members, and seek to maintain their standing within the group. Therefore, individuals will adjust their own attitudes and behavior to match the accepted norms of the group.

This conformity with the majority may involve following the fashion trends that are popular amongst a group of friends, adopting the rituals of a religious group or watching a particular TV show because classmates at college talk about it.

Social influence and conformity

Social influence takes a number of forms. One type of such influence is conformity, when a person adopts the opinions or behaviors of others. This often occurs in groups, when an individual conforms to the social norms respected by a majority of the group's members.

An individual may conform to the opinions and values of a group. They express support for views accepted by the group and will withhold criticism of group norms. Behavioral conformity can also influence a group member's actions: a person will behave in a way that is similar to others in the group.

Public-versus-private conformity

When conforming to the social norms of a group, a person may disagree with the opinions that they express or the actions that they take, but nonetheless, they adopt the behavior that is expected of them.

Public conformity involves matching one's behavior meet the expectations of others, whilst privately holding a different view. For example, a student may express a liking for a rock band because all of his friends listen to it. Privately, however, he may dislike their music, but conforms in front of his friends to gain their acceptance.

Private conformity occurs when a person internalizes the views of a group, and adopts a majority opinion as his or her own. For instance, the student listens to the music of a rock band that his friends like. Over time, he realises that he too enjoys this type of music. As his private opinion has changed, private conformity has occurred.

Asch's conformity experiments

One of the most-cited researchers into conformity was the Polish psychologist Solomon Asch (1907-1996). In the 1950s, he carried out a series of experiments known as the Asch Paradigms to understand the circumstances which led to people conforming to a majority influence.

In an experiment at Swarthmore College, Asch ( Asch and Guetzkow, 1951) presented participants with a printed line of a given length, and a series of additional lines of varying lengths. One of the lines was the same length as in the initial image, whilst the other two were significantly different.

In a group setting, participants were then asked to individually report which of the lines was the same length as the first. They were unaware that other members of the group were confederates who, in some of the trials, had been instructed to answer that a line which was clearly of a different length matched that of the original line.

Participants were torn between two options: did they report the answer which they had observed to be obviously correct but contradict other members of the group? Or, should they disregard their private opinion and report the answer that other group members were reporting?

Using this experimental design, Asch discounted the potential for informative influence to affect participants' answers. As the matching line length was obvious, they had no need to refer to other group members' opinions.

Even when the correct answer was obvious, Asch found that participants would conform to the group norm and report obviously inaccurate answers.

Asch's studies showed that social influence can lead subjects to doubt their own knowledge when it is contradicted by the majority of their group's members, or to exhibit public conformity and avoid questioning group norms.

Identification

Kelman (1958) distinguished between 3 types of conformity, including identification.

This occurs when an individual identifies with other members of a group and conforms to its opinions and behaviors. In doing so, they may seek to gain the favor of other members and to be accepted into the group.

When identifying with a group, a person does not internalise its norms. When they leave the group, they may assume their own beliefs and behaviors.

For example, an employee joining an office may go bowling as colleagues on her team like to visit the bowling alley once a week. Privately, however, she may dislike the pastime and prefer to spend it reading at home.

Internalization

Internalization is a form of opinion conformity, whereby the opinions of a group, or minority within that group influence an individual's own opinions. The person may not only express the views of the group publically, but also adopts these new views and regards them as being his or her own - a form of private conformity.

The internalization of new beliefs frequently occurs in religious groups, when members privately adopt the spiritual ideas expressed by the authority figures (e.g. a priest or other spiritual leader) as their own personal beliefs.

Compliance

Another form of conformity is achieved through compliance. This involves a request that an individual or group complies with the instructions of another. Unlike internalization, compliance does not require private conformity, as a person may reluctantly comply with a request whilst privately doubting it.

Compliance frequently occurs when a person is asked by an authority figure to meet a particular set of demands. For example, drivers comply with the directions given by traffic wardens, and students comply with the requests of their teacher, who they view as holding a position of authority.

Compliance may be achieved using a number of techniques known as compliance strategies. These are often used by salespeople to persuade potential customers to fulfill their request to place orders.

Compliance strategies include the foot-in-the-door technique, which involves a person making a small initial request in order to gain compliance with another question. Once a person has complied with a request, they are more likely to agree to a later, more significant, request. For example, a car sales representative may ask a prospective customer to agree to test-drive a new car. If the person agrees, they may be able to persuade them to extend their compliance by accepting a later request to buy the car.

The door-in-the-face technique is another compliance strategy which takes an opposite approach. An unreasonably large request is made initially, followed by the request that the subject is expected to comply with. A person will almost certainly reject the first request, but the second appears more reasonable when compared to it, and so they may be more inclined to comply with the second proposition.
Read more about compliance strategies here
Obedience

Obedience is a form of public conformity which occurs when a person modifies their behavior to obey the directions of another, often in a position of authority. It does not require a subject to alter his or her private opinion.

Hierarchical relationships often involve one party obeying the orders of another. For instance, a son is expected to obey his parents, a teacher directs students to behave in class and a soldier takes orders from a superior officer. In each instance, the person in a subordinate position obeys the other, often for fear of the consequences of disobeying them.

In 1961, as the Nuremberg trials were taking place in Israel, the Nazi Adolf Eichmann gave testimony in his defense that he was merely following the orders of higher-ranking officials when he carried out war crimes leading to the Holocaust. American psychologist Stanley Milgram questioned how such people could obey the directions of others when such actions would lead to such atrocities. Milgram (1963) conducted an experiment in which participants played the role of 'teacher'.

One participant, a confederate, was asked to learn a set of word pairs and the teacher would test his knowledge of these pairs. They were placed in adjacent rooms and the teacher was positioned in front of a set of controls to administer electric shocks to the learner. The teacher was instructed to punish the learner with a shock after each incorrect he gave (they were unaware that their compliance would not result in an actual shock to the confederate, who enacted responses to the punishments).

Milgram tested participants' willingness to obey by instructing the experimenters to administer higher shocks. When they displayed a reluctance to injure the learner, further encouragement to continue the procedure were given.

The study found that all of the participants obeyed the order to shock the learner, but to varying degrees. His findings suggest that obedience to perceived authority figures can take precedence over one's own morals, and that situational factors, such as the setting participants found themselves in, can influence behavior even when personality factors (e.g. moral objections) oppose it.

Milgram (1974) proposed agency theory to explain the tendency to obey authority. He suggested that an individual may be in one of two states at any one time:

1. Autonomous state - when an individual's behavior is determined by his or her own independent beliefs and responsibility is taken for such actions. When a person regrets their actions, they experience feelings of guilt.

2. Agentic state - a person perceives another as being in a position of authority. They obey orders issued by the authority figure, acting as an 'agent' on their behalf. When this behavior is perceived to be a mistake, the person attributes responsibility to the authority that ordered it, rather than feeling guilt for their role in it.

When a person feels that an authority will take responsibility for the actions that they ask them to carry out, Milgram believed that an agentic shift can occur from an autonomous to an agentic state.

Factors affecting conformity

Conformity rates within a group vary depending upon a number of factors.

The size of a majority can affect conformity rates within a group. Asch (1956) tested conformity rates whilst varying the number of confederates taking a common position. He found that conformity increased in line with the size of the majority, but that the most substantial increases occurred as the majority increased from 1 to 3.

Additionally, Asch found that group consensus and objecting members can affect conformity. Unanimity of opinion amongst members increased conformity, whilst dissenting voices encouraged other members to behave independently.

Cultural differences can also influence conformity. Bond and Smith (1996) found a correlation between conformity levels and societal attitudes in terms of individualism-collectivism. Conformity levels have been found to be lower in cultures where individualism is valued (particularly in Western countries such as the UK and US). In collectivist cultures, where individuals are expected to behave and work in a way that benefits society as a whole, conformity is often higher.

Furthermore, task difficulty can affect the extent to which an individual will consult the majority-held opinion when completing an activity. Lucas et al (2006) found that individuals' reduced confidence in one's own abilities to succeed at a task, or low self-efficacy, can increase his or her conformity.

Social roles

A further form of social influence is the roles in which people find themselves. Each role is associated with a set of attitudes and forms of behavior, and the role that a person is assigned can influence their actions and opinions.

Most of us are influenced by a number of roles at any one time. You may play a professional role - from doctor to wait-staff, naval officer to writer. Each profession is associated with different types of behavior. For example, people expect a doctor or naval office to be more serious than a circus entertainer, and may try fulfill this assumption when given a particular professional role. Other types of role, such as gender, family and societal roles, can also influence behavior.

Zimbardo et al (1973) conducted a well-known study to examine how social roles influence behavior. In the Stanford prison experiment, participants were assigned the role of either prisoner of prison officer, and were asked to play out their roles in a mock prison which Zimbardo had built in the basement of Stanford University, complete with cells for subjects.

During the study, Zimbardo himself assumed the role of prison officer in order to observe the behavior of participants.

He found that the behavior of those assigned to act as prison officers rapidly changed to meet their perceptions of the role. They would punish prisoners by asking them to perform push-ups and in one incident, sprayed a fire extinguisher in an attempt to quell a rebellion.

Similarly, prisoners themselves adopted a subservient role to the officers, treating them as authority figures and reporting on the 'misbehavior' of fellow prisoners.

Zimbardo found that assigned social roles led participants to behave in a way that they would not normally. Having eliminated participants from the experiment who were likely to behave in an offensive manner, he concluded that it was people's preconceptions of their assigned roles and the experimental situation in which they found themselves that influenced their actions.

Minority Influence

Whilst conformity usually occurs in response to the norms of a majority - other members in a social group - individuals or minorities of a group can also exhibit social influence. This is known as minority influence.

Minority influence occurs when an individual presents an opinion that is different to that held by the majority. As this opinion is novel and contrary to group norms, the attention of other members' is drawn to it, and they are led to consider the merits of the minority opinion.

As minority influence runs against the accepted beliefs of a group, it cannot rely upon normative influence to lead other members to comply: individually tend towards a majority-held view to feel as though they are part of a group. Instead, a minority view usually needs to exert informative influence. By presenting new information (e.g. a key fact) as having been overlooked by the majority, a minority can persuade other members to reconsider their opinion. This process is known as conversion. If a minority influence is able to convert a sufficient number of members, the view will eventually become the opinion held by a majority of individuals within the group.

Many social and political movements, such as the civil rights movement in the United States, use minority influence to change the views of the wider population.

Minority influence is more effective when the person expressing the view displays consistency: Moscovici et al (1969) conducted an experiment in which a group was asked to identify the color shown on a series of slides. When a minority of confederates within the group consistently answered that slides were 'green', other participants were more likely to be influenced when giving their own answers than when the confederates were inconsistent in their responses.

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Social Influence: Why We Conform In Groups

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Why do people to conform in groups? A look at how social influence affects opinions and behavior.

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The African-American talent pool remains a troubling problem for baseball

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The African-American talent pool remains a troubling problem for baseball

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A few weeks back, in casual conversation, a player agent told me that he had learned something shocking.

One of his clients, the agent said, was the only African-American pitcher in his team's entire farm system.
"This is crazy," said the agent, who requested anonymity for both he and his client. "It's terrifying."
I responded that the situation almost certainly was not unique, that every other major-league club probably was experiencing a similar void.

So, I contacted all 30 clubs, asking them to disclose the number of African-American pitchers in their respective farm systems. I also asked each to reveal the number of African-American catchers in its organization, knowing that such players were in rarer supply.

Every club responded. And the results were not surprising for a sport that continues to face a shortage of African-American talent as it celebrates on Saturday the 70th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier. The shortage is particularly severe with pitchers and catchers, who occupy the positions of greatest responsibility on the field.

The 30 major-league teams opened the season with a combined total of 54 African-American pitchers in the minors, or less than two per team. The total number of African-American minor-league catchers in all of baseball was five, or one every six clubs.
"The numbers are low, but it is not a phenomenon that is shocking to me," commissioner Rob Manfred said Thursday when I informed him what the clubs had reported. "We're aware of the fact that the numbers are low. That's why we have in place programs that are designed not only to increase the number of African-Americans playing the game, but also to specifically address the pitcher-catcher issue."
Those programs include the inaugural Dream Series, an event that was attended by a diverse group of more than 60 high-school pitchers and catchers in January in Tempe, Az., all expenses paid.

Such development camps take place mostly in obscurity, but the focus on baseball's efforts could rise sharply if Hunter Greene, a pitcher-shortstop from Notre Dame (Ca.) H.S., becomes the first African-American pitcher since 1991 chosen first in the amateur draft.

Greene, the No. 1 draft prospect according to MLB.com, is a product of a number of baseball's youth programs, including Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) and the Urban Youth Academy in Compton, Ca.

His arrival will be welcome, to say the least.

Seven teams opened the season with neither an African-American pitcher nor catcher in their minor-league systems. Eight had one African-American pitcher and zero catchers. Half the clubs, in other words, were practically barren at those spots.

The numbers reflect a snapshot in time - the Athletics, for example, had zero African-American minor-league pitchers at the start of the season after graduating one to the majors, right-hander Jharel Cotton.

Seven more African-American pitchers and one catcher are in extended spring training, recovering from injuries in some cases, awaiting assignment to minor-league clubs, the teams said.

Still, the numbers show that baseball's initiatives are years away from making a significant impact at the major-league level.

Major-league rosters on Opening Day included 13 African-American pitchers and one African-Canadian catcher, the Blue Jays' Russell Martin.

The overall percentage of African-American or African-Canadian major leaguers was 7.73 percent, down from 8.27 percent in 2015 and '16, according to MLB.

The difference in those percentages is four players, and Ian Desmond, David Price and Tyson Ross are among the African-American players who opened the season on the disabled list.

The numbers, then, are essentially flat, as they have been for at least 10 years.

The United States in 2015 was 13.3 percent African-American, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program. Baseball peaked at 19 percent African-American in 1986, according to Mark Armour from the Society of American Baseball Research, whose work was cited by the New York Times.
Some ask, why does any of this matter? Why is the racial makeup of the sport significant at a time when Opening Day major-league rosters and disabled, restricted and suspended lists featured a record number of players born outside the U.S. - 259 of 868, or 29.8 percent? The answer is simple: Every professional sport wants to attract the best athletes, and in turn the widest possible audience. And baseball, as the first major professional sport to integrate, traditionally has embraced a higher level of social responsibility.
In 2016, baseball spent approximately $30 million on youth development for underserved communities, according to league officials.

What is the end game? What is the goal?
"Numbers in this area, they have another word for them - they're called quotas," Manfred said. "I don't think that is something we should embrace as an institution. Quotas are divisive and have questionable legality.
"I think about our goals in two parts. No. 1, we want to do everything that we can within the limits of our economic resources to make playing opportunities available to kids in diverse communities and underserved areas. No. 2, we want a diverse workforce, particularly at the major-league level, that is representative of American society. And we want that diverse workforce because we believe that diversity is good for business."

Pirates right fielder Andrew McCutchen, in a MLB Network roundtable airing Sunday at 8 p.m. (ET), issues a telling response when host Harold Reynolds mentions that teams rarely include as many as six black players anymore.

"The question is, why?" McCutchen says.

He then raises his right arm and rubs his thumb against his other fingers, making the universal gesture for money.
"This right here, this right here," McCutchen says, continuing to gesture. "This is the main reason that you don't see it anymore. "It starts at a young age in the game of baseball. If you can't afford it, if you can't pay for it, we're thrown away, we're thrown out, we move to something else."
McCutchen is talking about the culture of youth baseball, which is shutting out low-income players of all races due to the rising costs of showcases and travel ball.

MLB, while dealing with circumstances beyond its control, is trying to combat the problem.

In March 2015, Manfred appointed former Angels general manager Tony Reagins, an African-American, as the league's senior vice-president for youth programs.

Reagins became the point man that MLB was lacking, league officials say, and his agenda includes creating programs for underserved youth to receive top-level instruction as well as exposure to professional scouts and college recruiters.

Over the past two years, baseball has joined with USA Baseball to establish showcase-type events that young players can attend at no cost.

The Dream Series was one. The Prospect Development Pipeline, an invitation-only series of 17 events across the U.S., is another. The Elite Development Invitational, an annual two-week camp for more than 200 minority or underserved players ages 13 to 17 in Vero Beach, Fl., is a third (the players' union is a partner in the invitational as well).

In addition, Reagins said, baseball is working with private scouting and development companies like Perfect Game to incorporate young African-Americans even if the players cannot afford the fees for tournaments and other events.
"Perfect Game has been willing to scholarship under-served kids in those programs. We did that last year, and we're going to do that this year as well," Reagins said. "We're trying to take that financial piece out of it, so that these kids have access to the things that the kids with means have access to."
Reagins said the idea is to broaden the talent pool. Darrell Miller, an African-American and former major leaguer who is baseball's vice-president of youth and facility development, said the goal is to reach "critical mass."

If baseball achieves that objective, an increase in the number of African-American pitchers and catchers naturally will follow.

Miller said that African-American pitchers and catchers do not suffer from the same stigma that once held back black quarterbacks in the NFL - an institutional belief that such players are not intelligent enough to handle decision-making positions.

The bigger problem, in Miller's view, has been baseball losing such athletes to other sports. Case in point: Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Jameis Winston, a pitcher/outfielder whom the Rangers could not persuade to play baseball after selecting him in the 15th round of the 2012 draft.

Slowly, though, the momentum might be shifting.

In the past five drafts, 20.2 percent of the first-round picks were African-American. Five of those 34 selections (Marcus Stroman, Touki Toussaint, Justus Sheffield, Dillon Tate and Justin Dunn) were pitchers. None was a catcher.

The Dream Series, which included a number of African-American instructors - former pitchers Dave Stewart, LaTroy Hawkins and Darren Oliver, former catchers Charles Johnson and Lenny Webster - showed a different kind of progress.
"It was just mind-blowing to me that there are so many African-American kids out there who taking an interest in pitching and catching," Hawkins said.
Miller, too, said he senses the "tide turning" at those positions.

"Guys are actually buying in," Miller said. "They're beginning to understand that you're running the game if you're a pitcher or a catcher. You're the quarterback. You're in charge.

"The young African-American players we're seeing are embracing that."

What else can be done?

Every year around Jackie Robinson Day, it's the same refrain. Baseball is trying harder. Baseball is doing better. Baseball is finding more African-American talent.

Yet, the raw numbers in the majors indicate little change.

Skepticism is warranted. Some within the sport remain frustrated. An issue that did not surface overnight will not disappear overnight, and is too complex for anyone to identify one cause or one solution.

Still, there are a number of additional avenues for baseball to explore:
*An increase in college scholarships.
MLB wants this to happen; the NCAA allows only 11.7 scholarships per institution for Division I baseball, compared to 13 for men's basketball and 85 for football.

How damaging are the limits for baseball?

Consider that 74 percent the players in last year's draft came from four-year schools and junior colleges, according to league officials - and that only 3.3 percent of Division I players in 2015-16 were African-American, according to the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport.

Baseball is willing to spend millions to fund additional Division I scholarships for those in need, if only the NCAA would allow it.

"It's extraordinarily difficult, given the NCAA's rules on amateurism, for a professional sport to directly provide scholarships," Manfred said. "We have had conversations with the NCAA about scholarship programs and we haven't been able to come to an agreement that was workable given the NCAA regulations."

Those conversations will continue, Manfred said. MLB and the NCAA would need to determine how to properly distribute the scholarships. Title IX requirements likely would necessitate that MLB fund an equal number of scholarships for both softball and baseball.
*An adjustment in the draft.
Baseball introduced spending restrictions on domestic amateurs with the 2012 collective-bargaining agreement, prompting agent Scott Boras to say that the new rules would drive elite athletes to other sports.

While it's difficult to prove Boras' point, the bonuses in the NFL and NBA drafts are capped at higher numbers than the bonuses in baseball. What's more, NFL and NBA picks begin their earning cycles immediately, without spending time in minor leagues.

The draft-pool system remained intact in baseball's new CBA, but why not consider a change that would entice players from underserved communities, perhaps by allowing a certain number to sign for unrestricted amounts?

*The construction of more urban youth academie s.

Nine such academies currently are in operation or in development in the U.S. But some players note that major-league teams operate a far greater number of facilities in Latin American countries.

"Infrastructure. That's the main thing," Orioles center fielder Adam Jones says in the MLB Network roundtable. "MLB, all the teams, you go to the Dominican, Venezuela, those respective countries, they're out there searching.

"Their facilities in the Dominican and Venezuela are outstanding. The baseball fields in Baltimore are horrible. The money that they pour into RBI (Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities) is great. But the money they pour into Latin America is grand."
*An expansion of the White Sox model.
Every team sponsors youth initiatives, but the White Sox, with their Amateur City Elite (ACE) program, have set the standard for what teams might accomplish in developing young African-American players.

The White Sox spend more than $400,000 per year on their program, which includes approximately 180 inner-city youths who play on teams ranging from 12-and-under to 17-and-under, according to Christine O'Reilly-Riordan, the executive director of White Sox charities.

The Sox pay for uniforms, coaches, facilities and extra equipment, and since the program's inception in 2007 have added educational support and strength and conditioning programs, O'Reilly-Riordan said.

The results have been stunning.

One-hundred forty-eight of the program's participants have earned college scholarships, O'Reilly-Riordan said. Outfielder Corey Ray is poised to become the biggest success story from ACE, if he isn't already.

The Brewers selected Ray out of the University of Louisville with the fifth overall pick in last year's draft.

* A renewal of outside-the-box thinking.

Hawkins, a seventh-round pick of the Twins in 1991 who spent 21 years in the majors, said his own story is instructive.

"I think teams have to go off of the normal path and find guys," Hawkins said. "I think about myself. I wasn't a pitcher. I was a thrower. I just played baseball. But there were guys who looked at me and said, 'You know what? That kid has a chance to be a pitcher.' And they took a chance on me.
"I don't think teams are taking enough chances on African-American guys who are good athletes, or giving them a chance to find themselves once they do get them in an organization."
The bottom line: Baseball can always do more.

Come June, the sport can showcase Greene as an example of what the sport's diversity initiatives can accomplish, particularly if he is selected first by the Twins.

"That will be a catalyst for kids to say, 'What the heck? I can do that?'" Miller said. "He's not only a great talent, but he's a really good human being."

Baseball also can promote itself as a safer alternative to the NFL, which faces ongoing concerns about the long-term health of its players.

Baseball officials do not typically comment on problems that other leagues face. Still, it's not exactly a secret that the NFL's issues are creating opportunity for other sports.

The question that must be asked, on Jackie Robinson Day and every other day, is whether the man who broke the sport's color barrier would be satisfied with the current state of affairs.

Baseball cannot stop until the answer is yes.

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The African-American talent pool remains a troubling problem for baseball

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A few weeks back, in casual conversation, a player agent told me that he had learned something shocking. One of his clients, the agent said, was the only African-American pitcher in his team's entire farm system. "This is crazy," said the agent, who requested anonymity for both he and his client.

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On average, nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States.

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NATIONAL STATISTICS
View state-by-state statistics
Download the National Statistics Domestic Violence Fact Sheet

View all our domestic violence fact sheets

On average, nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States. During one year, this equates to more than 10 million women and men.

1 in 4 women and 1 in 9 men experience severe intimate partner physical violence, intimate partner contact sexual violence, and/or intimate partner stalking with impacts such as injury, fearfulness, post-traumatic stress disorder, use of victim services, contraction of sexually transmitted diseases, etc.

1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have experienced some form of physical violence by an intimate partner.This includes a range of behaviors (e.g. slapping, shoving, pushing) and in some cases might not be considered "domestic violence."

1 in 7 women and 1 in 25 men have been injured by an intimate partner.

1 in 10 women have been raped by an intimate partner. Data is unavailable on male victims.1

1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men have been victims of severe physical violence (e.g. beating, burning, strangling) by an intimate partner in their lifetime.

1 in 7 women and 1 in 18 men have been stalked by an intimate partner during their lifetime to the point in which they felt very fearful or believed that they or someone close to them would be harmed or killed.

On a typical day, there are more than 20,000 phone calls placed to domestic violence hotlines nationwide.

The presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation increases the risk of homicide by 500%.

Intimate partner violence accounts for 15% of all violent crime.

Women between the ages of 18-24 are most commonly abused by an intimate partner.

19% of domestic violence involves a weapon.

Domestic victimization is correlated with a higher rate of depression and suicidal behavior.

Only 34% of people who are injured by intimate partners receive medical care for their injuries.

RAPE

1 in 5 women and 1 in 71 men in the United States has been raped in their lifetime.

Almost half of female (46.7%) and male (44.9%) victims of rape in the United States were raped by an acquaintance. Of these, 45.4% of female rape victims and 29% of male rape victims were raped by an intimate partner.

STALKING

19.3 million women and 5.1 million men in the United States have been stalked in their lifetime. 60.8% of female stalking victims and 43.5% men reported being stalked by a current or former intimate partner.

HOMICIDE

A study of intimate partner homicides found that 20% of victims were not the intimate partners themselves, but family members, friends, neighbors, persons who intervened, law enforcement responders, or bystanders.

72% of all murder-suicides involve an intimate partner; 94% of the victims of these murder suicides are female.

CHILDREN AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

1 in 15 children are exposed to intimate partner violence each year, and 90% of these children are eyewitnesses to this violence.

ECONOMIC IMPACT

Victims of intimate partner violence lose a total of 8.0 million days of paid work each year.

The cost of intimate partner violence exceeds $8.3 billion per year.

Between 21-60% of victims of intimate partner violence lose their jobs due to reasons stemming from the abuse.

Between 2003 and 2008, 142 women were murdered in their workplace by their abuser, 78% of women killed in the workplace during this timeframe.

PHYSICAL/MENTAL IMPACT

Women abused by their intimate partners are more vulnerable to contracting HIV or other STI's due to forced intercourse or prolonged exposure to stress.

Studies suggest that there is a relationship between intimate partner violence and depression and suicidal behavior.

Physical, mental, and sexual and reproductive health effects have been linked with intimate partner violence including adolescent pregnancy, unintended pregnancy in general, miscarriage, stillbirth, intrauterine hemorrhage, nutritional deficiency, abdominal pain and other gastrointestinal problems, neurological disorders, chronic pain, disability, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as well as noncommunicable diseases such as hypertension, cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Victims of domestic violence are also at higher risk for developing addictions to alcohol, tobacco, or drugs.

Printable Fact Sheets

Click on any of the following to find easily printable and shareable domestic violence fact sheets.
National Statistics Domestic Violence and Physical Abuse Domestic Violence and Psychological Abuse Domestic Violence and Economic Abuse Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Domestic Violence and Stalking Domestic Violence and the Impact on Children Dating Violence and Teen Domestic Violence Male Victims of Intimate Partner Violence Domestic Abuse in Later Life Domestic Violence and Guns
American Indian/Alaskan Native Women and Domestic Violence

Additional Topics
Who is Doing What to Whom? Why do Women Use Force or Violence in Intimate Partner Relationships?
Additional Sources for Statistics on Domestic Violence
Intimate Partner Violence, Sexual Violence & Stalking (CDC) Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Crime Victimization Survey Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Data on Intimate Partner Violence, Sexual Violence, and Stalking National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey Summary Report (2010) Prevalence and Characteristics of Sexual Violence, Stalking, and Intimate Partner Violence Victimization - National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, United States, 2011

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NCADV | National Coalition Against Domestic Violence

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NCADV is the voice of victims and survivors. We are the catalyst for changing society to have zero tolerance for domestic violence. We do this by affecting public policy, increasing understanding of the impact of domestic violence, and providing programs and education that drive that change.

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Obama Launches Initiative To Combat Rape

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Obama Launches Initiative To Combat Rape

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‘I Want Every Young Man To Feel Some Strong Peer Pressure’

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On Wednesday, President Obama announced a new White House initiative to tackle the issue of sexual assault on college campuses. The president unveiled the results of a new government report on the issue that found that one in five U.S. women have been assaulted in college, and created a task force to come up with policy solutions to make campuses safer.

The president placed the issue in context of a larger push to address sexual violence, noting that his administration has already cracked down on the rapes that occur in the military and expanded the protections in the Violence Against Women Act. He called for reforms to the criminal justice system, like ending the rape kit backlog, to ensure that sexual assault cases are taken more seriously.

But Obama specifically emphasized the sexual assault crisis on college campuses, an issue that has gained prominence over the past several years as college activists have filed dozens of federal complaints against their universities for failing to protect victims. Citing the one in five statistic in the new report, Obama called the sexual assault rate among college students "totally unacceptable."

The president won praise from progressive activists for framing the issue without resorting to victim-blaming, ultimately emphasizing the ways in which rapists are primarily responsible for preventing rape.

"I want every young man in America to feel some strong peer pressure, in terms of how they're supposed to behave and treat women," Obama said on Wednesday. "That starts before they get to college. Those of us who are fathers have an obligation to transmit that information. We can do more to make sure that every man out there - in junior high, high school, and college - understands what's expected of them, and what it means to be a man, and to intervene if they see someone else acting inappropriately."

"We need to encourage young people, both men and women, to realize that sexual assault is unacceptable," the president continued. He is asking the new task force to deliver policy recommendations within 90 days.

Sexual assault prevention groups welcomed the president's new initiative. "The actions the Obama administration has taken have been remarkable," Tracey Vitchers, the communications coordinator for Students Active For Ending Rape (SAFER), told ThinkProgress. "It was encouraging to hear President Obama speak about campus sexual violence in terms of a culture of consent rather than place the onus of preventing sexual violence solely on young women."

Still, Vitchers noted that it's important to push for inclusive policies to combat sexual violence that also take into account male and LGBT students, who are certainly also at risk for assault. And she pointed out that the new task force should partner with the student activists who are already working on the ground.

"For the task force to be effective, it must involve the voices of current college students and recent college graduates. Students, better than anyone, understand what is happening on college campuses in regards to sexual violence and will be an asset in shaping any goals or guidelines the task force will eventually publish for institutions to reference," Vitchers explained.

Indeed, there are some concrete policies that groups like SAFER are already pushing for on college campuses - like education campaigns to help teach students about consent, healthy relationships, and effective bystander intervention. According to a recent report released by SAFER and the international group V-Day, the vast majority of colleges haven't implemented these policies yet.

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Obama Launches Initiative To Combat Rape: 'I Want Every Young Man To Feel Some Strong Peer Pressure'

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On Wednesday, President Obama announced a new White House initiative to tackle the issue of sexual assault on college campuses. The president unveiled the results of a new government report on the issue that found that one in five U.S.

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subscribe to NPR Politics Podcast podcast

The Trump administration Tuesday formally announced it will end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program - also called DACA - putting an expiration date on the legal protections granted to roughly 800,000 people known as "DREAMers," who entered the country illegally as children.

President Trump issued a statement, saying, "I do not favor punishing children, most of whom are now adults, for the actions of their parents. But we must also recognize that we are nation of opportunity because we are a nation of laws."

He also said he looks forward to working with Republicans and Democrats in Congress to address immigration issues "in a manner that puts the hardworking citizens of our country first."

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump "wrestled" with the decision to end DACA over the weekend. In an afternoon briefing, she denied the decision was "coldhearted," painting it as the alternative to an immediate shutdown of the program by a federal court. She said the president wants DACA made permanent as part of "comprehensive" immigration legislation that would end illegal immigration, prevent visa overstays and create a "merit based" system of immigration.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a longtime opponent of the policy, made the formal announcement Tuesday morning. He called DACA "unilateral executive amnesty" and said the Obama administration "deliberately sought to achieve what the legislative branch specifically refused to authorize on multiple occasions. Such an open-ended circumvention of immigration laws was an unconstitutional exercise of authority by the executive branch." He said DACA "denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same illegal aliens to take those jobs."

Sessions added, "We cannot admit everyone who would like to come here. It's just that simple."

Former President Barack Obama issued a statement on Facebook, calling the decision "cruel" and "self-defeating."

"Let's be clear: the action taken today isn't required legally. It's a political decision, and a moral question," he said. Obama added, "Whatever concerns or complaints Americans may have about immigration in general, we shouldn't threaten the future of this group of young people who are here through no fault of their own, who pose no threat, who are not taking away anything from the rest of us."

Homeland Security Acting Secretary Elaine Duke said the administration, facing legal challenges to the program, "chose the least disruptive option," letting the program wind down in six months and placing the onus on a sharply divided Congress to enact Obama's executive action into law.

In a statement, Duke said no current beneficiaries will be affected before March 5 of next year. But "No new initial requests or associated applications filed after today will be acted on," she said.

Duke said the administration's decision to terminate DACA "was not taken lightly. The Department of Justice has carefully evaluated the program's constitutionality and determined it conflicts with our existing immigration laws."

Trump signaled the decision earlier on Tuesday, tweeting, "Congress, get ready to do your job - DACA."

Congress, get ready to do your job - DACA!
- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2017

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., responded to the announcement in a statement saying,"It is my hope that the House and Senate, with the president's leadership, will be able to find consensus on a permanent legislative solution that includes ensuring that those who have done nothing wrong can still contribute as a valued part of this great country."

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York called the administration's decision "heartless." He said Democrats "will do everything we can to prevent President Trump's terribly wrong order from becoming reality."

Former Vice President Joe Biden tweeted that the move was "cruel."

Brought by parents, these children had no choice in coming here. Now they'll be sent to countries they've never known. Cruel. Not America.
- Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 5, 2017

DACA allowed individuals who were brought to the U.S. as children or teens before mid-2007 to apply for protection from deportation and work permits if they met certain requirements. Beneficiaries had to be under the age of 16 upon entering the country; no older than 31 as of June 15, 2012; lived continuously in the U.S. since mid-2007; be enrolled in high school or college, already have a diploma or degree, have a GED certificate or be an honorably discharged veteran of the U.S. military; and have no felony criminal convictions, significant misdemeanor convictions, no more than three other misdemeanor convictions or otherwise pose a threat to national security or public safety.

The program did not provide lawful immigration status. Instead, through what the Obama administration characterized as the exercise of prosecutorial discretion, it granted a deferral from possibly being removed from the U.S. to those who qualified; it also granted work permits. The deferrals and permits were granted for two-year periods and could be renewed for additional two-year periods.

The Department of Homeland Security says existing DACA participants whose eligibility expires between now and March 5 have until Oct. 5 to apply for renewal. The department will also "adjudicate on an individual case-by-case basis" requests to enroll in the program and for renewal that were received as of Tuesday. However, new applications will not be accepted going forward.

Valid permits will remain in effect until they expire, "unless terminated or revoked" before then, according to a fact sheet on the DHS website.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement says its enforcement priorities have not changed. It has no plans to target DACA holders as their permits expire. They will be eligible for deportation, but remain a low priority.

The USCIS generally has not referred cases in which a person's DACA application is denied to immigration enforcement authorities unless the case involves a criminal offense, fraud or a threat to national security or public safety.

The DREAMers had been in legal limbo since the start of the current administration. Throughout his campaign, Trump railed against the 2012 executive order signed by Obama - and pledged to "immediately terminate the policy" once he took office.

But after being sworn in, he expressed some compassion toward DACA recipients. In an interview with ABC News on Jan. 25, Trump said, "They shouldn't be very worried. I do have a big heart. We're going to take care of everybody."

The Obama program was thrown into the center of a looming court battle in late June when a coalition of 10 state attorneys general, led by Texas' Ken Paxton, threatened to sue the Trump administration as early as Sept. 5 if it refused to phase out DACA. They argued that Obama had overstepped his authority in creating and implementing the program. Only Congress has the authority to legislate such a change in U.S. immigration law, they contended.

"[T]he program represents an unconstitutional exercise of legislative power by the Executive Branch," Paxton wrote in an op-ed for USA Today in late July. "Phasing out DACA is about the rule of law, not the wisdom of any particular immigration policy," Paxton also wrote at the time before emphasizing the principle of separation of powers at the heart of the structure of the federal government.

Sessions had advocated for the termination of DACA but, as BuzzFeed reported in March, he was often outargued by former chief of staff Reince Priebus and former chief strategist Steve Bannon, who like Trump wanted to see it preserved.

Bannon, who held hard-line views on immigration that aligned more closely with the attorney general on other policy issues, reportedly had persuaded the president to spare DREAMers and use them "as a strategic asset in the coming immigration policy battles."

But with Bannon and Priebus now gone from the West Wing, it appears the position held by Sessions and Stephen Miller, another Trump White House aide with ties to Sessions, has won out - under the pressure exerted by Paxton and some of his fellow state attorneys general.

Trump's decision leaves Congress facing increasing pressure to find a solution for a population that was estimated in 2012 to include as many as 1.8 million immigrants - of which about 800,000 have been granted deferred status under DACA.

At the moment there are at least two bipartisan bills that could grant legal status or create a pathway to citizenship for those who were eligible for DACA. In July, Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., introduced a new version of the DREAM Act, after which the DREAMers are named. And a companion bill was filed in the House by Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., and Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif.

Additionally, Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., introduced the American Hope Act, while Rep. Carlos Curbelo, R-Fla., introduced the Recognizing America's Children Act, a plan that has some support in his party.

In a press conference on Tuesday alongside Graham, Durbin said, "We need to pass in this month of September a DREAM Act, a permanent law in this country, that says these young people will have their chance to become part of America's future."

Graham added, "The Congress is going to have to up its game." He said he agreed with the Trump administration that Obama's executive action was an "unconstitutional overreach," and said President Trump was "also right to give us six months to figure out a solution to this."

Durbin introduced an earlier version of the DREAM Act - the "Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act" - in late 2010; that bill failed to get enough votes to allow a floor vote. But the legislative project goes back much longer than the middle of Obama's first term as president. Durbin first filed legislation about the DREAMers in 2001. "Other versions passed the House in 2010 and in the Senate, as part of a larger immigration bill, in 2013. But no bill has ever been passed by both chambers," according to the Washington Post.

In 2012, Obama stepped in with the DACA program when Congress failed to pass a version of the DREAM Act then. At the time, Obama justified his action, saying, "These are young people who study in our schools, they play in our neighborhoods, they're friends with our kids, they pledge allegiance to our flag. They are Americans in their heart, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper."

In an interview with Wisconsin talk radio WCLO on Friday, Ryan said that he opposes the Trump administration ending DACA and that it is up to Congress to find a legislative fix to the question of what to do with the DREAMers. The speaker said that Obama was wrong to act without Congress and that Trump should defer to Congress to fix the issue.

"Having said all of that there are people who are in limbo. These are kids who know no other country, who were brought here by their parents and don't know another home," Ryan said. "And so I really do believe there needs to be a legislative solution, that's one that we're working on, and I think we want to give people peace of mind."

Responding to Ryan's comments, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wrote Ryan, according to Politico, asking that he meet with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and other House Democratic leaders "to discuss a comprehensive legislative solution for our country's DREAMers." In her letter, the top Democrat in the House also said legislative action was necessary "to shield ... [the] DREAMers from the arbitrary cruelty of deportation."

Whatever Congress may do, another consequence of Trump's action is that it brought his predecessor, who is arguably the country's most high-profile Democrat, back into the political debate over the fate of the DREAMers.

In his final news conference as president and just days before Trump was inaugurated, Obama said he would remain largely silent for the next year on most political issues - with a few exceptions where the nation's "core values" might be at stake, in his view. Among those was taking action against the DREAMers, including deportation.

"The notion that we would just arbitrarily or because of politics punish those kids, when they didn't do something themselves ... would merit my speaking out," he said.

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Trump Ends DACA, Calls On Congress To Act

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subscribe to NPR Politics Podcast podcast The Trump administration Tuesday formally announced it will end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program - also called DACA - putting an expiration date on the legal protections granted to roughly 800,000 people known as "DREAMers," who entered the country illegally as children.

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Man beaten by white supremacists in Charlottesville is arrested

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Man beaten by white supremacists in Charlottesville is arrested

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man beaten by white supremacists in charlottesville is arrested - cnn

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Man beaten by white supremacists in Charlottesville is arrested

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DeAndre Harris, who was beaten by several white attackers during August's rally by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, faces allegations that he injured a man that day.

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Lincoln Park lead singer, Chester Bennington commits suicide

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Lincoln Park lead singer, Chester Bennington commits suicide

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A 64-year-old retiree with no real criminal history and no known affiliations with terror groups rained bullets down into a crowd at a country music festival Sunday, killing at least 59 people and injuring hundreds more in the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.

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LAS VEGAS - Perched in his suite at a high-rise hotel overlooking the Vegas Strip, a 64-year-old retiree with no real criminal history and no known affiliations with terror groups rained bullets down into a crowd at a country music festival Sunday, killing at least 59 people and injuring hundreds more in the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.

The attack, at least initially, was as inexplicable as it was horrifying. Law enforcement officials said they could not immediately tell what drove Stephen Paddock to fire at thousands of unsuspecting concertgoers from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino before killing himself.

Authorities said a sweep of law enforcement databases showed Paddock had no known run-ins with police, and - despite the Islamic State's repeated claims otherwise - investigators also could not find any connections to international terrorist groups. He was the son of a notorious bank robber and his own crime demonstrated some amount of sophisticated planning.
[Route 91 Harvest festival: The Las Vegas 'sleepover' that ended in a nightmare]
Police said he stayed in a large hotel suite for several days and aroused no suspicion, bringing with him an arsenal of 23 guns - their calibers ranging from .223 to .308, some with scopes - authorities said. One of the weapons he apparently used in the attack was an AK-47 type rifle, with a stand used to steady it for firing, people familiar with the case said. He fired, without warning, from an elevated position on an open-air venue, leaving his victims few options to avoid harm.

"I can't get into the mind of a psychopath," said Joseph Lombardo, the sheriff of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, which is leading the investigation.

Investigators on Monday searched Paddock's home and another piece of property he owned, and they hoped to review surveillance footage and other electronic equipment to determine how and why Paddock perpetrated an unprecedented massacre.

Among the questions they have: How a former accountant with a penchant for high-stakes gambling obtained a weapon that sounded to those on the ground like it could fire as an automatic, and how he was able to bring it and many other weapons into a Vegas hotel suite undetected.

Lombardo said hotel staff had been in and out of the two-room suite, which Paddock had stayed in since Sept. 28, and spotted nothing "nefarious," though he had more than 10 suitcases.

"It wasn't evident that he had weapons in his room" before the shooting, Lombardo said.

Investigators believe at least one of the guns functioned as if it were fully automatic, and they are now trying to determine if he modified it or other weapons to be capable of spitting out a high volume of fire just by holding down the trigger, people familiar with the case said.

Gun purchase records indicate Paddock legally bought more than two dozen firearms across a period of years, according to a person close to the investigation. Guns & Guitars, a store in Mesquite, Nev., said in a statement that Paddock purchased some of his weapons there, but employees followed all procedures required by law, and Paddock "never gave any indication or reason to believe he was unstable or unfit at any time." Lombardo said Paddock also seemed to have purchased guns in Arizona.

Investigators also found at least 19 additional firearms, thousands of rounds of ammunition and the chemical tannerite, an explosive, at Paddock's home in Mesquite, Nev. They also found ammonium nitrate, a chemical that can be used in bomb-making, in Paddock's vehicle, Lombardo said.

More than 22,000 people had been at the Route 91 Harvest festival, a three-day country music concert with grounds across the street from the Mandalay Bay resort, when the shooting began about 10 p.m. Sunday, according to police. As country star Jason Aldean played what was expected to be one of the last sets of the night, Paddock opened fire - his bullets flying from a window on the casino's golden facade, which Paddock had smashed with some type of hammer.

Aldean fled the stage. Thousands began racing for safety under the neon glow and glitz of the Vegas Strip.
[Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock enjoyed gambling, country music, lived quiet life before massacre]
"People were getting shot at while we were running, and people were on the ground bleeding, crying and screaming. We just had to keep going," said Dinora Merino, 28, a dealer at the Ellis Island casino who was at the concert with a friend. "There are tents out there and there's no place to hide. It's just an open field."

The death toll in Las Vegas was massive, surpassing the 49 people slain by a gunman in Orlando in June 2016. That shooter, who later said he was inspired by the Islamic State, opened fire inside a crowded nightclub. And Lombardo said the number of dead from Sunday's concert shooting could rise, as an additional 527 were thought to have been injured.

The dead included a behavioral therapist who was soon to be married, a nursing assistant from Southern California, a commercial fisherman and an off-duty Las Vegas city police officer. Two other officers who were on duty were injured, police said; one was in stable condition after surgery, and the other sustained minor injuries. Another off-duty officer with the Bakersfield Police Department in Southern California also sustained non-life threatening injuries, according to a statement from the department.

Some of the wounded were injured not by gunfire, but in the ensuing chaos. One 55-year-old California woman who declined to give her last name said she was "trampled" trying to flee what she initially thought were fireworks. Clark County Fire Chief Greg Cassell said responders saw a "wide range" of injuries, including gunshot victims, those wounded by shrapnel, people who were trampled and people who were hurt jumping fences.

But those who ran said they could clearly see the gunman's toll in the bullet wounds on those around them.

Taylor Benge, 21, said that when the lights came on he realized that "about five feet to the left of me there was a man with a bullet wound to his chin."

"He was just lifeless on the ground," he said. He said he and his sister threw themselves on the ground as the gunfire continued, then ran for the exit. "My jeans are covered in someone's blood, my T-shirt is covered in someone's blood, my sister's whole leg was covered in blood," Benge said.
[Are we doing enough to prevent mass shootings? Share your thoughts.]
Jonathan Smith - who came to Vegas to celebrate his brother's 43rd birthday - was shot at least twice, including once in the neck.

"I really didn't want to die," Smith said.

Syed Saquib, a surgeon on duty Sunday night at University Medical Center, said the hospital treated 104 patients, most of whom had gunshot wounds.

"Those that could be saved, were saved," Saquib said. "There were a few that came in with devastating, non-survivable injuries."

Police and hotel security ultimately scoured several floors of the hotel looking for the shooter and came upon Paddock's suite, Lombardo said. At some point, Paddock fired through the door and hit a security guard in the leg, he said, adding that the guard is expected to survive. SWAT officers ultimately stormed the room and some fired shots, though Paddock is believed to have killed himself, Lombardo said. He was not counted in the death toll that authorities reported.

President Trump ordered flags flown at half-staff and said he would visit Las Vegas on Wednesday. He praised the "miraculous" speed with which local law enforcement responded to the shooting - asserting that their actions saved lives - though he noted that hundreds were still mourning the loss of loved ones. Answers for them, he said, would "not come easy."

"It was an act of pure evil," Trump said during remarks from the White House.
[What we know about the Las Vegas shooting]
Visitors, residents and officials filled the pews at the Guardian Angel Cathedral on Monday looking for comfort and unity during an emotional interfaith service. Hundreds of people wiped tears and embraced, and during a moment of silence, community religious leaders rang a gong 59 times to honor the dead.

Steve Sisolak, Clark County Commission Chair from Las Vegas, praised the police for their quick response and commended the outpouring of support from the community; more than 25,000 people have donated to a fundraising effort for victims and people have been waiting eight hours in line to donate blood, he said.

"Las Vegas will never be quite the same as a result of this," Sisolak said. But, he said, "We'll be back."

Eric Paddock, Stephen Paddock's brother, said he was stunned to learn that his brother could be responsible for such violence.

Stephen Paddock had no history of mental illness nor did he have problems with drugs or alcohol, Eric Paddock said, noting that his brother was a high-stakes gambler, sometimes wagering hundreds of dollars on a single hand of video poker.

When he spoke to the FBI, Eric Paddock said he showed agents three years of text messages from his brother, including one that mentioned winning $250,000 at a casino. A federal law enforcement official said investigators had reviewed reports suggesting Paddock engaged in high-dollar gambling, and they are trying to determine whether he faced financial strains.

Eric Paddock said his brother was "wealthy," in part because he had no children to support. Stephen Paddock had worked in the past as an accountant, and he had real estate investments in the Orlando area, Eric Paddock said.

Eric Paddock said he knew his brother had guns - Stephen once took Eric's children skeet shooting - though not the sort of weaponry that police discovered.

Police said they believe Paddock was a "lone wolf" attacker, though they were still interested in speaking more with a woman named Marilou Danley who lived with him in Mesquite, Nev., a little more than an hour outside of Las Vegas on the Arizona border. Police had said they were searching for Danley, Paddock's girlfriend, in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, but they later said she was outside the country - as of Monday afternoon, in Tokyo - and not involved in the shooting.

"We still consider her a person of interest," Lombardo said Monday. He said investigators also are exploring a report that Paddock attended a different music festival in September.

Not long after the shooting, the Islamic State claimed responsibility, though law enforcement authorities were quick to reject that assertion. "We have determined, to this point, no connection with an international terrorist group," Aaron Rouse, the special agent in charge of the FBI in Las Vegas, said at a news briefing.

The FBI was involved in the case - and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was helping trace the weapons - but they said they were supporting local authorities in Las Vegas. Homeland Security officials said there were no specific, credible threats to other public venues across the country.
[A fire alarm from gun smoke led police to the Las Vegas shooter's room, retired officer says]
The FBI had a previous dealing with the Paddock family, though it did not initially seem to involve Stephen. Eric Paddock said his father was Benjamin Hoskins Paddock, a convicted bank robber and con-man described in a wanted poster as "psychopathic'' with suicidal tendencies. But Eric Paddock said that his father, who escaped from prison in 1969 and was at one point on the FBI's list of most-sought-after and dangerous criminals, was not around during their childhood. Benjamin Paddock was apprehended in 1978, according to news reports.

Relatives said Stephen Paddock, a licensed pilot who owned two airplanes, was a quiet man who often went to Las Vegas to gamble and view concerts. In a statement, Lockheed Martin, the defense giant, said that Paddock worked for them for three years in the 1980s.

A former neighbor of Stephen Paddock's recalled that his home in a 55-and-over community in Florida looked more akin to a college freshman's dorm, with nothing on the walls and only a few pieces of furniture.

"One of the first times we met him, he told me he lived there, in Vegas," Don Judy, his next-door neighbor in the community until two years ago, recalled. "He explained that he was a gambler, and a prospector. He said he was buying this house to check it out for his mother ... and that if she liked it, he planned to buy another next door with a floor plan like ours."

Soon, Judy said, Paddock put up a for-sale sign and was gone, saying that he was moving back to Las Vegas.
Zapotosky, Barrett and Berman reported from Washington. Tim Craig, Felicia Mello and Heather Long in Las Vegas; Barbara Liston in Orlando; Justin Glawe in Mesquite, Tex.; and Derek Hawkins, Travis M. Andrews, Brian Murphy, Wesley Lowery and Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.

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At least 59 killed in Las Vegas shooting rampage, more than 500 others injured

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LAS VEGAS - Perched in his suite at a high-rise hotel overlooking the Vegas Strip, a 64-year-old retiree with no real criminal history and no known affiliations with terror groups rained bullets down into a crowd at a country music festival Sunday, killing at least 59 people and injuring hundreds more in the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.

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Trump swears in as 45th President of The United States 

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Trump swears in as 45th President of The United States 

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Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States, ushering in a new era that he vowed would shatter the established order and reverse a national decline that he called “this American carnage.”

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WASHINGTON - Donald John Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States on Friday, ushering in a new era that he vowed would shatter the established order and reverse a national decline that he called "this American carnage."

In a ceremony that capped a remarkable rise to power, Mr. Trump presented himself as the leader of a populist uprising to restore lost greatness. He outlined a dark vision of an America afflicted by "the ravages" of economic dislocation and foreign exploitation, requiring his can-do approach to turn around.

"I will fight for you with every breath in my body, and I will never, ever let you down," Mr. Trump told hundreds of thousands of rain-soaked admirers and onlookers in a forceful 16-minute Inaugural Address from the West Front of the Capitol. "America will start winning again, winning like never before. We will bring back our jobs. We will bring back our borders. We will bring back our wealth. And we will bring back our dreams."

Mr. Trump's ascension amounted to a hostile takeover of a capital facing its most significant disruption in generations. While officially a Republican, he has taken on leaders of both parties and, with no prior political career of his own, made clear that he saw himself as the ultimate outsider not beholden to the current system.

"We will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action, constantly complaining but never doing anything about it," he said. "The time for empty talk is over. Now arrives the hour of action. Do not allow anyone to tell you that it cannot be done."

Mr. Trump's view of the United States was strikingly grim for an Inaugural Address - a country where mothers and children are "trapped in poverty in our inner cities," where "rusted-out factories" are "scattered like tombstones across the landscape" and where drugs and crime "have stolen too many lives."

"This American carnage," he declared, "stops right here and stops right now."

He got started right away with rolling back the policies of his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, by issuing orders freezing new regulations from recent weeks and ordering agencies to "ease the burden" of the Affordable Care Act during the transition from repealing to replacing the law. More orders are planned for next week.

Wearing a dark suit and red tie and accompanied by his wife, Melania, in a powder-blue suit and matching gloves, Mr. Trump took the 35-word oath administered by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. precisely at noon. Michael Richard Pence, a former governor and congressman from Indiana, was sworn in minutes before as vice president by Justice Clarence Thomas.

Mr. Trump assumed the presidency of a country still unsettled after a polarizing election and entered office with less support in polls than any other president in recent history. It was clear from the day that there would be no grace period either for or by the new president. The Senate confirmed two cabinet nominations - James N. Mattis as defense secretary and John F. Kelly as secretary of homeland security - but Democrats temporarily held up Mike Pompeo's confirmation as C.I.A. director.

Throughout the day, there were mostly peaceful protests against the new president. Sporadic violence broke out as demonstrators smashed shop windows and burned a limousine, while police officers in riot helmets responded with tear gas. More than 200 people were arrested. Liberal groups prepared for a women's march on Saturday that they said could draw hundreds of thousands.

Mr. Trump made only passing efforts to reach out to Democrats beyond thanking Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, for their handling of the transition. "They have been magnificent," he said in his speech.

He later praised his defeated opponent, Hillary Clinton, at a lobster-and-beef luncheon with congressional leaders, asking her and former President Bill Clinton to stand for applause. "I have a lot of respect for these two people," he said.

Democrats were not impressed. "I was pretty shocked by how dark it was," Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, said of Mr. Trump's Inaugural Address. "I love this country, and I don't understand how a president of the United States that loves his country could paint a picture of its failures."

He added, "It was interesting sitting up onstage with a bunch of billionaires hearing him say how bad the country was."

The National Mall was filled with supporters, many wearing "Make America Great Again" hats and chanting "Trump! Trump! Trump!" But the lingering animosity from the presidential campaign was on display, too. When Mrs. Clinton arrived, some in the crowd chanted, "Lock her up," mimicking Mr. Trump's campaign rallies. As he took the oath, a cluster of people blew whistles and screamed, "Not my president," before being escorted out.

While large, the crowds on a soggy day did not rival the energetic throngs at Mr. Obama's first inauguration eight years ago, according to aerial photographs. The Washington Metrorail system recorded fewer than half as many rides on Friday morning as in 2009, and knots of bystanders along the inaugural parade route were not as thick. In a city that gave just 4 percent of its vote to Mr. Trump, many residents left town and about 60 House Democrats boycotted the event.

Mr. Obama made his exit after the ceremony, flying by helicopter to Joint Base Andrews in the Maryland suburbs, where he thanked former aides and members of his administration before boarding the presidential jet, no longer designated Air Force One, to fly to Palm Springs, Calif., for vacation. He will return to Washington to a rental house while his daughter Sasha finishes high school, the first president to stay in the capital since Woodrow Wilson.

Hours before his departure, Mr. Obama posted on Twitter to thank followers and hint that he would not fade away. "I won't stop," he said. "I'll be right there with you as a citizen, inspired by your voices of truth and justice, good humor, and love."

Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his wife, Jill, rode an Amtrak train to Delaware and the home they have there. But they, too, planned to return, at least part time, to Washington, where Mrs. Biden teaches at a community college in the Virginia suburbs.

The United States has never seen a president quite like Mr. Trump, the son and grandson of immigrants who grew up to become a real estate magnate, casino owner, beauty pageant operator and reality television star whose tumultuous love life played out in the tabloids.

Never has the oath been administered to a president who had never served either in public office or as a general in the military. At age 70, Mr. Trump became the oldest president sworn in for the first time and the first born in New York since Franklin D. Roosevelt.

He was also one of the wealthiest presidents ever to enter the White House, with far-reaching business connections that have already raised questions about where his interests end and the country's begin. He arrived in the Oval Office dogged by reports about Russian interference in the election on his behalf.

But Mr. Trump overcame skeptics when he embarked on what seemed like a quixotic bid for the presidency. An Ivy League-educated mogul who lives in a New York tower named after himself with an 80-foot-long living room, he transformed himself into the unlikely leader of a working-class movement anchored in rural areas far removed from the coasts.

His bracing candor, disregard for convention and willingness to offend whole sections of the population to make a point came across as refreshing truth-telling to many Americans disenchanted with Washington elites.

For the nation's 58th inauguration, though, the untraditional president opted to follow tradition. He and Mrs. Trump, a former model from Slovenia who became the first foreign-born first lady since John Quincy Adams's wife, Louisa, started the day with a service at St. John's Episcopal Church adjacent to Lafayette Square, then joined the Obamas, Bidens and Pences for coffee at the White House.

From there, the two presidents shared a limousine to the Capitol, where three other presidents waited: Mr. Clinton, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush, all of whom opposed Mr. Trump's election. Former President George Bush remained hospitalized in Houston, recovering from pneumonia, but a spokesman said he watched the ceremony on television.

Mr. Pence, 57, was sworn in at 11:54 a.m., placing his hand on Ronald Reagan's Bible, which was held by his wife, Karen, as their three adult children, Michael, Charlotte and Audrey, watched.

For his oath, Mr. Trump placed his hand on two Bibles held by his wife, one given him by his mother in 1955 just before his ninth birthday and another used by Abraham Lincoln in 1861 and again by Mr. Obama in 2009 and 2013.

Standing nearby were his adult children from two previous marriages, Donald Jr., Eric, Ivanka and Tiffany. Also there was Barron, his 10-year-old son with the first lady. Joining them was Ivanka's husband, Jared Kushner, who will serve as an unpaid senior adviser.

As Mr. Trump approached the podium, rain began to fall. It was not a conventionally Republican speech, with nothing about tax cuts or restraining government. Instead, he laid out a protectionist agenda, saying his rule will be "buy American and hire American." He did pledge to "eradicate from the face of the Earth" Islamic terrorism. Responding to charges that he demonized Mexicans and Muslims, Mr. Trump said, "There is no room for prejudice."

Mr. Trump said the inauguration was not merely the transfer of power from one president to another. "We are transferring power from Washington, D.C., and giving it back to you, the people," he said.

"For too long," he continued, "a small group in our nation's capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished but the people did not share in the wealth." He added, "That all changes starting right here and right now."

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump, Sworn In, Issues a Call: 'This American Carnage Stops'. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Donald Trump Is Sworn In as President, Capping His Swift Ascent

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WASHINGTON - Donald John Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States on Friday, ushering in a new era that he vowed would shatter the established order and reverse a national decline that he called "this American carnage."