AP News in Brief at 6:09 p.m. EDT
Postal Service halts some changes amid outcry, lawsuits
WASHINGTON (AP) — Facing mounting public pressure and a crush of state lawsuits, President Donald Trump's new postmaster general announced Tuesday he is halting some operational changes to mail delivery that critics blamed for widespread delays and warned could disrupt the November election.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said he would “suspend” several of his initiatives — including the removal of the distinctive blue mail boxes that prompted an outcry — until after the election “to avoid even the appearance of impact on election mail.”
“We will deliver the nation’s election mail on time,” DeJoy said in a statement.
The abrupt reversal from DeJoy, who is set to testify Friday before the Senate, comes as more than 20 states, from New York to California, announced they would be suing to stop the changes. Several vowed they would press on, keeping a watchful eye on the Postal Service ahead of the election.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pushing ahead with Saturday's vote to prevent election-year mail changes and provide emergency postal funds.
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Democrats' Day 2 focus: Trump's global leadership deficit
NEW YORK (AP) — Joe Biden is drawing on a collection of his party's most experienced leaders at the Democratic National Convention to underscore what he calls a current global leadership deficit that threatens U.S. national security under Donald Trump.
Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State John Kerry are among the heavy hitters on a Tuesday night schedule that emphasizes a simple theme: Leadership matters. Former President Jimmy Carter, now 95 years old, will also make an appearance.
“Donald Trump says we’re leading the world. Well, we are the only major industrial economy to have its unemployment rate triple,” Clinton says in excerpts of his remarks released ahead of the convention's second night. “At a time like this, the Oval Office should be a command center. Instead, it’s a storm center. There’s only chaos.”
On a night he will formally earn his party’s presidential nomination, former Vice President Biden will also introduce his wife, Jill Biden, to the nation for the first time as the prospective first lady.
Biden is fighting unprecedented logistical challenges to deliver his message during an all-virtual convention this week as the coronavirus epidemic continues to claim hundreds of American lives each day and wreaks havoc on the economy.
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AP Exclusive: Cindy McCain video on Joe Biden to air at DNC
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Cindy McCain is going to bat for Joe Biden, lending her voice to a video set to air during Tuesday night’s Democratic National Convention programming focused on Biden’s close friendship with her late husband, Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
She’s just the latest Republican to join in the convention, after a number of notable GOP former elected officials — including former Ohio Gov. John Kasich — endorsed the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee on Monday night. It's a continuation of a major theme that Democrats have pushed through the first night of the convention — an effort to broaden the party's appeal to occasional Republicans and disaffected Trump voters.
In an advance clip from the video shared with The Associated Press, Cindy McCain talks about how Biden, then a Delaware senator, met her husband when John McCain was assigned to be a military aide for him on a trip overseas. The two became friends, and the families would gather for picnics in the Bidens’ backyard.
“They would just sit and joke. It was like a comedy show, sometimes, to watch the two of them,” she says in the clip.
Cindy McCain is not expected to offer an explicit endorsement, but her involvement in the video is her biggest public show of support yet for Biden’s candidacy. McCain was the 2008 Republican presidential nominee against Democrat Barack Obama, who won the election with Biden as his vice presidential running mate.
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Trump campaign's Russia contacts 'grave' threat, Senate says
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump campaign’s interactions with Russian intelligence services during the 2016 presidential election posed a “grave” counterintelligence threat, a Senate panel concluded Tuesday as it detailed how associates of Donald Trump had regular contact with Russians and expected to benefit from the Kremlin’s help.
The nearly 1,000-page report, the fifth and final one from the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee on the Russia investigation, details how Russia launched an aggressive effort to interfere in the election on Trump's behalf. It says the Trump campaign chairman had regular contact with a Russian intelligence officer and says other Trump associates were eager to exploit the Kremlin's aid, particularly by maximizing the impact of the disclosure of Democratic emails hacked by Russian intelligence officers.
The report is the culmination of a bipartisan probe that produced what the committee called “the most comprehensive description to date of Russia’s activities and the threat they posed.” The investigation spanned more than three years as the panel's leaders said they wanted to thoroughly document the unprecedented attack on U.S. elections.
The findings, including unflinching characterizations of furtive interactions between Trump associates and Russian operatives, echo to a large degree those of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and appear to repudiate the Republican president’s claims that the FBI had no basis to investigate whether his campaign was conspiring with Russia.
Trump, who has repeatedly called the Russia investigations a “hoax," said Tuesday he “didn't know anything about” the report, or Russia or Ukraine.
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S&P 500 closes at a record, erasing last of pandemic losses
Wall Street clawed back the last of the historic, frenzied losses unleashed by the new coronavirus, as the S&P 500 closed at an all-time high Tuesday.
The day’s move was a relatively mild one, nudging the index up 7.79 points, or 0.2%, to 3,389.78. That eclipses the S&P 500′s previous record closing high of 3,386.15, which was set Feb. 19, before the pandemic shut down businesses around the world and knocked economies into their worst recessions in decades.
The S&P 500′s milestone caps a furious, 51.5% rally that began in late March. The index, which is the benchmark for many stock funds at the heart of 401(k) plans, is now up nearly 5% for the year.
The stock market’s sprint back to an all-time high also means that the gut-wrenching, nearly 34% plunge for the S&P 500 from Feb. 19 through March 23 was the quickest bear market on record, clocking in at just one month. By comparison, it's taken the average bear market 19.6 months to bottom out, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.
Tremendous amounts of aid from the Federal Reserve and Congress helped launch the rally, which built higher on signs of budding growth in the economy. More recently, blowout corporate profit reports from technology giants such as Apple and Microsoft and earnings from harder-hit industries that weren’t as bad as expected have helped boost stock prices.
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Teens struggle to balance school, family, work amid COVID-19
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — With her baby brother in her arms, Kara Apuzzo tried to follow along in an online class as he squirmed or slept. Other times, the 18-year-old rushed to get ready for work at a front-line job at Target as her virtual high school lessons were still wrapping up.
Last school year was further complicated by computer issues that kept her from logging in and online tools that bedeviled even her teachers. Before the coronavirus pandemic, Apuzzo, who lives in New Haven, Connecticut, knew she wanted to go to college right after high school. Now, she's not so sure.
“Right now, I don’t know where I want to go with my life,” she said. “I feel so behind when it comes to what do college kids actually do. ... It’s scary, it’s so new — I don’t have any idea what I’m even doing.”
Educational disruptions forced by the pandemic are hurting teenagers at a time when many families also are struggling with layoffs and child care for young kids — challenges that are expected to persist as a new school year gets underway, largely with remote learning.
Some teens have to share computers with siblings or sign in to classes in crowded households or from their cars. Others have been laid off from after-school jobs that help provide for their families or work extra hours in essential industries, leaving less time for school. Students whose parents can't work from home also have less structure to push them to get their work done.
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Colleges grapple with coronavirus as students return
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) — Notre Dame University became the latest college to move classes online due to the coronavirus, after nearly 150 students tested positive.
“It is very serious, and we must take serious actions,” university president the Rev. John Jenkins said in an address to students and staff Tuesday.
Tuesday’s action follows the decision by officials of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to switch to remote learning starting Wednesday, as the virus makes its mark on colleges — and college towns — across the United States. Some universities are reconsidering plans to hold in-person classes or implementing new testing regimes. Others are threatening crackdowns on students who get too close with others, in violation of social distancing rules.
The University of Oklahoma is requiring its sororities to recruit new members virtually after learning of students attending large social events without taking precautions against the virus.
Notre Dame canceled in-person undergraduate classes for two weeks. Jenkins said he decided against sending students home after consulting with health care experts. Instead, the university is imposing restrictions on student activity, including limiting access to dormitories to residents and barring students from major gathering places on campus.
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Ballot drop boxes seen as a way to bypass the post office
PHOENIX (AP) — With the Trump administration openly trying to undermine mail-in voting this fall, some election officials around the country are hoping to bypass the Postal Service by installing lots of ballot drop boxes in libraries, community centers and other public places.
Such boxes have been used with success for several years in states like Oregon, Washington and Colorado that rely largely or entirely on ballots that must be sent in. But their use is being expanded because of the coronavirus outbreak and, more recently, concerns about the post office’s ability to do its job.
State or local authorities in places such as Arizona, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are pressing for more boxes or drop-off sites that would enable ballots to reach election officials without going through the mail.
“Donald Trump continues to undermine the legitimacy of mail-in absentee ballots by attacking the U.S. Postal Service,” said New York state Sen. Brad Hoylman, a Democrat who is sponsoring legislation to set up drop boxes beyond the usual confines of voting sites and local election offices. “New York can hit back on this anti-democratic fearmongering by establishing absentee ballot drop boxes across the state to help ensure the integrity of these ballots.”
In the potential battleground state of Wisconsin, the five biggest cities won a $6.3 million grant from the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life to help administer the November election, including installation of drop boxes. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said his city will use some of its $2.1 million share to buy more than a dozen to install at libraries and other locations.
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Suffrage anniversary commemorations highlight racial divide
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — As the U.S. marks the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage, many event organizers, mindful that the 19th Amendment originally benefited mostly white women, have been careful to present it as a commemoration, not a celebration.
The amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified on Aug. 18, 1920, but many women of color were prevented from casting ballots for decades afterward because of poll taxes, literacy tests, overt racism, intimidation, and laws that prevented the grandchildren of slaves from voting. Much of that didn’t change until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
From exhibits inside the Arizona Capitol Museum to a gathering on the North Carolina Statehouse lawn, many commemorations, including those that moved online because of the coronavirus pandemic, have highlighted a more nuanced history of the American women’s suffrage movement alongside the traditional tributes to well-known suffragists such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
The 100th anniversary has arrived during a year of nationwide protests against racial inequality that have forced the United States to once again reckon with its uncomfortable history.
“Like many movements, the stories are complicated and I think it’s important, as we have an opportunity to reflect and to celebrate, that we also are honest about how we didn’t meet all of our aspirations,” said Rhode Island Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea, a Democrat born and raised in Puerto Rico who has helped to organize her state’s suffrage commemoration efforts. “It’s important to have these conversations so we can do a better job of going forward.”
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Britney Spears asks court to curb father's power over her
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Britney Spears on Tuesday asked a court to keep her father from reasserting the broad control over her life and career that he has had for most of the past 12 years.
In documents filed by her court-appointed lawyer that give a rare public airing to the wishes of the 38-year-old pop superstar, she asked that her father not return to the role of conservator of her person, which gave him power over her major life decisions from 2008 until 2019, when he temporarily stepped aside, citing health problems.
“Britney is strongly opposed to James return as conservator of her person,” the document says.
James Spears has kept his separate role as conservator over his daughter's finances. For the first 11 years of the conservatorship, he served as co-conservator with attorney Andrew M. Wallet, who resigned from the role early last year.
That briefly left James Spears with sole power over Britney Spears' life, money and career, a situation she says she very much wants to avoid repeating.