AP News in Brief at 9:04 p.m. EST
Trump pardons former campaign chairman Paul Manafort
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday pardoned former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law, in the latest wave of clemency to benefit longtime associates and supporters.
The actions, in Trump's final weeks at the White House, bring to nearly 50 the number of people whom the president in the last two days has granted clemency. Pardons are common in the final stretch of a president's tenure, but Trump has proven himself determined to use his clemency power not only to reward his allies but to support the causes of convicts championed by his friends.
The pardons of Manafort and Roger Stone, who months earlier had his sentence commuted by Trump, underscore the president's desire to chip away at the results of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation and to come to the aid of associates he feels were wrongly pursued. He has now pardoned four people convicted in that investigation, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn and campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
Manafort, who led Trump's campaign during a pivotal 2016 period before being ousted over his ties to Ukraine, had been sentenced to more than seven years in prison for financial crimes related to his work in Ukraine. He was among the first people charged as part of Mueller's investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. He was released to home confinement last May because of coronavirus concerns in the federal prison system.
Though the charges against Manafort did not concern the central thrust of Mueller's mandate — whether the Trump campaign and Russia colluded to tip the election — he was nonetheless a pivotal figure in the investigation. His close relationship to a man U.S. officials have linked to Russian intelligence, and with whom he shared internal campaign polling data, attracted particular scrutiny during the investigation, though Mueller never charged any Trump associate with conspiring with Russia.
___
'Mom's worth it': US holiday travel surges despite outbreak
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Some are elderly and figure they don’t have many Christmases left. Others are trying to keep long-distance romance alive. Some just yearn for the human connection that’s been absent for the past nine months.
Millions of Americans are traveling ahead of Christmas and New Year’s, despite pleas from public health experts that they stay home to avoid fueling the raging coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 320,000 nationwide.
Many people at airports this week thought long and hard about whether to go somewhere and found a way to rationalize it.
“My mom’s worth it. She needs my help,” said 34-year-old Jennifer Brownlee, a fisherman from Bayou La Batre, Alabama, who was waiting at the Tampa airport to fly to Oregon to see her mother, who just lost a leg. “I know that God’s got me. He’s not going to let me get sick.”
Brownlee said that she would wear a mask on the plane “out of respect” for other passengers but that her immune system and Jesus Christ would protect her.
___
With a video filmed in secret, Trump keeps sowing chaos
WASHINGTON (AP) — The video message that plunged Washington into chaos was filmed in secret.
President Donald Trump stood in the White House's Diplomatic Reception Room, holiday garland and gleaming ornaments draped on the fireplace behind him. He spoke into the camera not to deliver warm Christmas wishes, but to threaten to detonate Congress’ $900 billion COVID-19 relief and year-end package.
The video was released without warning Tuesday night, its recording orchestrated by White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and kept from all but a handful of aides. On Wednesday, few Republicans or even White House staffers knew what Trump plans next, in a return to the around-the-clock chaos of his first months in office.
The moment was also a flashback to the start of Trump's political career, when he delivered direct assaults on GOP leadership and the party’s establishment. Now Trump appears willing to do that again on his way out of office, potentially sabotaging his party’s chances of controlling the Senate as he lashes out in anger at those he believes have not supported his efforts to overturn the election.
Since his defeat by Democrat Joe Biden, Trump has been holed up in the White House with an ever-shrinking circle of aides and allies, including some pushing fraudulent conspiracy theories about the election. He has ignored the surging pandemic that is killing 3,000 Americans a day, and has mostly left it to others to promote vaccines being counted on to bring it to an end.
___
A season of fear, not cheer, as virus changes Christmas
Montserrat Parello lost her husband eight years ago, and Christmas gatherings with children and grandchildren had helped her deal with her loneliness. But this year, the 83-year-old will be alone for the holiday at her home in Barcelona, due to the risk of infection from the coronavirus.
“In these days of pandemic, I feel loneliness and anger,” Parello said, expressing fears that “I will leave this life devoid of affection, of warmth.”
All most people wanted for Christmas after this year of pandemic uncertainty and chaos was some cheer and togetherness. Instead many are heading into a season of isolation, grieving lost loved ones, worried about their jobs or confronting the fear of a new potentially more contagious virus variant.
Residents of London and surrounding areas can't see people outside their households. Peruvians won't be allowed to drive their cars over Christmas and New Year to discourage visits even with nearby family and friends. South Africans won’t be able to go to the beach on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day or New Year’s Day.
The patchwork of restrictions being imposed by local and national governments across the world varies widely — but few holiday seasons will look normal this year.
___
Trump vetoes defense bill, setting up possible override vote
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday vetoed the annual defense policy bill, following through on threats to veto a measure that has broad bipartisan support in Congress and potentially setting up the first override vote of his presidency.
The bill affirms 3% pay raises for U.S. troops and authorizes more than $740 billion in military programs and construction.
The action came while Trump was holed up at the White House, stewing about his election loss and escalating his standoff with Republicans as he pushed fraudulent conspiracy theories and tried to pressure them to back his efforts to overturn the results.
The House was poised to return Monday, and the Senate on Tuesday, to consider votes to override the president’s veto of the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA.
Trump's move provoked swift condemnation, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling it “an act of staggering recklessness that harms our troops, endangers our security and undermines the will of the bipartisan Congress.”
___
Politicians and vaccines: Set an example or cut in line?
WASHINGTON (AP) — As the first round of COVID-19 vaccinations trickled out across the United States, many members of Congress lined up at the Capitol physician's office to get inoculated.
President-elect Joe Biden got vaccinated, too, as did Vice President Mike Pence. Both rolled up their sleeves live on television to receive their shots.
For some of America's political leaders, there are practical imperatives for getting vaccinated early: their own risk factors, ensuring continuity at the highest reaches of the U.S. government and helping build public confidence in the vaccine. But there are also tricky optics for politicians to navigate, particularly with supplies of the vaccines still exceedingly limited and millions of elderly Americans and essential workers weeks away from being inoculated.
“We want to ensure that everyone feels safe about this vaccine and sees some of the more prominent members of society getting it, but also ensure people don’t say ‘what about us?’” said Utibe R. Essien, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh.
With the pandemic raging across the country, and more than 320,000 Americans already dead, some lawmakers with access to the vaccine said they were indeed planning to wait until more Americans could get their shots before getting theirs.
___
Pardons in killings of Iraqi civilians stir angry response
WASHINGTON (AP) — The courtroom monitors carried the image of a smiling 9-year-old boy as his father pleaded for the punishment of four U.S. government contractors convicted in shootings that killed that child and more than a dozen other Iraqi civilians.
“What’s the difference," Mohammad Kinani al-Razzaq asked a Washington judge at an emotional 2015 sentencing hearing, "between these criminals and terrorists?”
The shootings of civilians by Blackwater employees at a crowded Baghdad traffic circle in September 2007 prompted an international outcry, left a reputational black eye on U.S. operations at the height of the Iraq war and put the government on the defensive over its use of private contractors in military zones. The resulting criminal prosecutions spanned years in Washington but came to an abrupt end Tuesday when President Donald Trump pardoned the convicted contractors, an act that human rights activists and some Iraqis decried as a miscarriage of justice.
The news comes at a delicate moment for the Iraqi leadership, which is trying to balance growing calls by some Iraqi factions for a complete U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq with what they see as the need for a more gradual drawdown.
“The infamous Blackwater company killed Iraqi citizens at Nisoor Square. Today we heard they were released upon personal order by President Trump, as if they don’t care for the spilled Iraqi blood,” said Saleh Abed, a Baghdad resident walking in the square.
___
Video released in police killing of Black man holding phone
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Body camera footage released Wednesday shows Andre Hill, a 47-year-old Black man, emerging from a garage and holding up a cellphone in his left hand seconds before he is fatally shot by a Columbus police officer.
About six seconds pass between the time Hill is visible in the video and when the officer fires his weapon early Tuesday. There is no audio because the officer hadn't activated the body camera; an automatic “look back” feature captured the shooting without audio.
Without audio, it's unclear whether the officer, identified as Adam Coy, yelled any commands at Hill, whose right hand isn't visible in the video. Authorities say no weapon was recovered from the scene. The city says Hill was visiting someone at the time.
Hill lay on the garage floor for several minutes without any officer on the scene coming to his aid. That violates policy requiring officers to help the injured, said Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther on Wednesday, calling for Coy to be fired as a result.
Coy also violated departmental policies requiring his camera's full video and audio functions to have been activated, Ginther said.
___
A child so sick they feared the worst, now they urge change
MONTPELIER, Idaho (AP) — Kale Wuthrich watched doctors surround his son in the emergency room, giving him fluids though IV tubes, running a battery of tests and trying to stabilize him. He was enveloped by the confusion and fear that had been building since his 12-year-old suddenly fell ill weeks after a mild bout with the coronavirus.
“He was very close at that point to not making it, and basically they told me to sit in the corner and pray,” Wuthrich said. “And that’s what I did.”
Shortly after Thanksgiving, the boy from a secluded valley in Idaho became one of hundreds of children in the U.S. who have been diagnosed with a rare, extreme immune response to COVID-19 called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children. Cooper Wuthrich’s fever spiked as his joints and organs became inflamed, including his heart, putting his life at risk, his father said.
“Cooper had it in every organ, in his joints; his feet were swelled up the size of mine, his poor eyes were red, bugged out of his head and very lethargic, very scared," Kale Wuthrich said. “Cooper would never, has never complained about pain, but that’s all he could do was tell me how bad he hurt.”
After days in the hospital, Cooper is back home. But the kid who loves sledding and skiing spent much of the following days on the couch in the lounge of the Montpelier, Idaho, truck stop that his parents partly own. A short walk left him with a bloody nose, and he’s still on medications that require twice-daily injections.
___
Studies find having COVID-19 may protect against reinfection
Two new studies give encouraging evidence that having COVID-19 may offer some protection against future infections. Researchers found that people who made antibodies to the coronavirus were much less likely to test positive again for up to six months and maybe longer.
The results bode well for vaccines, which provoke the immune system to make antibodies — substances that attach to a virus and help it be eliminated.
Researchers found that people with antibodies from natural infections were “at much lower risk ... on the order of the same kind of protection you’d get from an effective vaccine,” of getting the virus again, said Dr. Ned Sharpless, director of the U.S. National Cancer Institute.
“It’s very, very rare” to get reinfected, he said.
The institute's study had nothing to do with cancer — many federal researchers have shifted to coronavirus work because of the pandemic.