AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT
Rights activists, political leaders mourn Rep. John Lewis
Rights activists, politicians from both parties and many other people touched by the legacy of John Lewis mourned the congressman and pillar of the civil rights movement Saturday, lauding the strength, courage and kindness of a man whose lifelong struggle against racial discrimination took him from a bridge in Selma to the nation's Capitol.
“As a young man marching for equality in Selma, Alabama, John answered brutal violence with courageous hope,” said former President George W. Bush. “And throughout his career as a civil rights leader and public servant, he worked to make our country a more perfect union.”
Former President Barack Obama, America's first Black president, recalled being sworn in for his first term: “I hugged him on the inauguration stand before I was sworn in and told him I was only there because of the sacrifices he made.”
Lewis died Friday, several months after the Georgia Democrat announced that he had been diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer.
Lewis, 80, often recalled his upbringing in the segregated South, including how he was denied a library card because the library was for “whites only.” He was determined to destroy segregation, joining with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to help plan the 1963 March on Washington.
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Virus deaths top 600,000 as cases rise in India, SAfrica
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Countries from the U.S. to South Africa to India were struggling to hold down rising rates of the coronavirus, as global deaths from COVID-19 surged past 600,000 in a sign of how far off the world remains from a return to normalcy.
While the U.S. leads global infections, South Africa now ranks as the fifth worst-hit country in the pandemic with 350,879 cases — roughly half of all those confirmed on the African continent. Its struggles are a sign of trouble to come for nations with even fewer health care resources.
India on Sunday reported a 24-hour record surge of 38,902 new cases, taking the country's total to 1,077,618. Elsewhere in Asia, China confirmed 13 new cases in the northwestern city of Urumqi while South Korea reported less than 40 additional cases for a second straight day.
The Urumqi outbreak is the latest to pop up since China largely contained the domestic spread of the virus in March. At least 30 people have been infected and authorities are conducting universal testing in communities where cases were discovered, later to be expanded to other parts of the city and major businesses.
South Korean authorities are also struggling to suppress an uptick in local infections, with 34 additional cases, 21 of them domestic and 13 from overseas, raising the country’s total to 13,745 with 295 deaths.
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Congress confronts new virus crisis rescue as pandemic grows
WASHINGTON (AP) — It stands as the biggest economic rescue in U.S. history, the $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief bill swiftly approved by Congress in the spring. And it's painfully clear now, as the pandemic worsens, it was only the start.
With COVID-19 cases hitting alarming new highs and the death roll rising, the pandemic's devastating cycle is happening all over again, leaving Congress little choice but to engineer another costly rescue. Businesses are shutting down, schools cannot fully reopen and jobs are disappearing, all while federal emergency aid expires. Without a successful federal plan to control the outbreak, Congress heads back to work with no endgame to the crisis in sight.
“It’s not going to magically disappear,” said a somber Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., during a visit to a hospital in his home state to thank front-line workers.
Lawmakers return Monday to Washington to try to pull the country back from the looming COVID-19 cliff. While the White House prefers to outsource much of the decision-making on virus testing and prevention to the states, the absence of a federal intervention has forced the House and Senate to try to draft another assistance package.
It's a massive undertaking, hardly politically popular, but the alternative is worse. Experts predict an even more dire public health outlook for winter. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease official, says the U.S. needs to “regroup.”
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Trump talks less about virus, states look inward for answers
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has taken an increasingly hands-off approach to the coronavirus crisis in recent days even as COVID-19 cases and deaths have surged to record highs in a huge slice of the country, including areas where he has enjoyed strong support.
Meanwhile, governors and big city mayors in much of the United States are sending a blunt message to their constituents: Don’t expect a federal cavalry to save the day.
Throughout the crisis, the president has been quick to convey certitude, with threats to state and local officials who did not heed his warnings. But as the pandemic has continued to ravage the nation, his actions have largely been muted.
Large districts in Los Angeles, Houston and suburban Washington are among those to defy Trump's demand that schools fully reopen this fall. They announced this past week that the escalating virus cases will cause them to delay opening their buildings for in-person learning. Others districts, including New York City and Chicago, have laid out initial plans for a combination of in-person and online learning.
At the same time, governors and mayors have largely stopped pleading for more federal government help. Instead, they are making it clear that it will be on the shoulders of communities to stem the accelerating spread of the virus.
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One reporter, two executions and haunting last words
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — Daniel Lewis Lee, a condemned man and convicted murderer, was asked if he wanted to make a final statement from the execution chamber, with its institutional green-tiled walls and plate-glass interior window, moments before he too would die.
He did. He leaned his head up and we locked eyes.
“You’re killing an innocent man,” Lee said, looking directly at me.
Those were his last words. He said them to me.
Lee's execution, one of two that I witnessed this past week at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, played out slowly, after painstaking hours of final, futile legal appeals, before prison officials administered a lethal injection and the federal government carried out capital punishment for the first time in almost two decades. A third execution came later in the week.
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14 hours later, Trump says he is 'saddened' by Lewis' death
WASHINGTON (AP) — In the hours after the death of American civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to retweet old missives about Democratic rival Joe Biden and lash out at his former national security adviser and his niece for writing tell-all books about him.
Trump then headed to his golf course in northern Virginia with a political confidant, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, for a nearly four-hour outing.
Shortly after 2 p.m., as Trump was returning from his golf outing — and more than 14 hours after Lewis' death was announced — he offered his and the first lady’s condolences in a two-sentence Twitter message.
“Saddened to hear the news of civil rights hero John Lewis passing. Melania and I send our prayers to he and his family,” Trump wrote.
By that point all four living former U.S. presidents, Vice President Mike Pence and scores of lawmakers had publicly remarked on the passing of the lawmaker whose brutal beating on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, 50 years earlier marked a turning point in the civil rights movement.
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Fires set, fences moved: Police call Portland protest a riot
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Protesters broke into a building, set it on fire and started dumpster fires late Saturday night in Oregon's largest city, police said, as demonstrations that have been taking place since the death of George Floyd intensified for another night in Portland.
The fire at the Portland Police Association building was put out a short time later, Portland police said on Twitter. The department declared the gathering a riot, and began working to clear the downtown area.
Tear gas was deployed, according to pictures and video from the scene. Fencing that had been placed around federal courthouse had also been removed by protesters and made into barricades, police tweeted.
President Donald Trump has decried the demonstrations, and Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf blasted the protesters as “lawless anarchists” in a visit to the city on Thursday.
Before the aggressive language and action from federal officials, the unrest had frustrated Mayor Ted Wheeler and other local authorities, who had said a small cadre of violent activists were drowning out the message of peaceful protesters in the city. But Wheeler said the federal presence in the city is now exacerbating a tense situation and he has told them to depart.
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Given a chance, Trump would push court pick before election
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have tried to make it clear: Given the chance, they would push through a Supreme Court nominee should a vacancy occur before Election Day.
The issue has taken on new immediacy with the disclosure Friday that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is receiving chemotherapy for a recurrence of cancer after four earlier bouts with the disease. The 87-year-old liberal, who apologized in 2016 for her pointed public criticism of Trump during his first campaign, says she has no plans to retire.
The development has focused even more on what's at stake this election, with the winner in position to help shape the trajectory of the court for years to come.
Trump administration officials have underscored that Trump would not hesitate to fill an opening before voters have their say Nov. 3, less than four months away, on whether to give him a second term.
Four years ago, also in a presidential election year, the GOP-controlled Senate refused to hold a hearing or vote when President Barack Obama, a Democrat, nominated federal judge Merrick Garland to succeed Justice Antonin Scalia after his death in February. Nine months before that year's election, McConnell said voters should determine who would nominate the person to fill that seat.
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Cost, hassle of stamps questioned as mail-in voting surges
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Even if it weren't for her disability and fear of catching COVID-19, Delinda Bryant said getting the necessary postage to cast a ballot this year will be a struggle.
Bryant, 63, doesn't have $10 for a book of stamps, a printer to make them at home or a working car.
“My car needs its transmission fixed, but my utilities are so high I can’t afford it,” the south Georgia woman said in testimony for a federal voting rights lawsuit. “Ten dollars for a book of stamps is a hardship.”
As more states embrace mail-in voting amid the coronavirus pandemic, the often overlooked detail of postage has emerged as a partisan dividing line.
Questions over whether postage will be required for absentee ballot applications and the actual ballots, who pays for it and what happens to envelopes without stamps are the subject of lawsuits and statehouse political brawls.
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Dress rehearsal: MLB holds first COVID-era exhibitions
NEW YORK (AP) — Didi Gregorius watched over the top of his face mask as his drive off Washington ace Max Scherzer sailed into empty outfield seats.
Fake cheers — meant to encourage the hometown Nationals — accidentally piped through the stadium as the Philadelphia Phillies shortstop rounded the bases. After touching home plate, he pantomimed air-fives to teammates.
“This is 2020 baseball,” Scherzer said. “Embrace it and have fun with it.”
Exhibition games in Washington, New York and Pittsburgh on Saturday gave Major League Baseball its first look at coronavirus-era games — cardboard cutouts for fans, sound effects for crowds and more. Still, for clubs limited to practices and intrasquads in their own ballparks for the past two weeks, Saturday stood as an important mile marker as the sport tries to start a shortened 60-game season next Thursday amid a pandemic.
“In some ways, this is very much a dress rehearsal for the new world we’re in,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said before an exhibition at the crosstown Mets.