AP News in Brief at 9:04 p.m. EDT
Final results in NY, Kentucky primaries could be days away
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Voters endured 90-minute waits in Kentucky's second-largest city, but the biggest hurdle in Tuesday's congressional primaries seemed to be what wasn't happening: quick counting of mail-in ballots in that state and New York. Final results in top races seemed unlikely for days.
In the day's foremost contests, two young African American candidates with campaigns energized by nationwide protests for racial justice were challenging white Democratic establishment favorites for the party's nominations.
First-term state legislator Charles Booker was hoping a late surge would carry him past former Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath for the Democratic Senate nomination from Kentucky. And in New York, political newcomer Jamaal Bowman was seeking to derail House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel's bid for a 17th term in Congress.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky easily won the Republican nomination for a seventh Senate term on Tuesday and will be favored in November against McGrath or Booker. McConnell, 78, is loathed by Democrats for advancing President Donald Trump's agenda and conservative judicial nominees.
In Virginia, retired Army Col. Daniel Gade won the GOP nomination to challenge Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, who seems certain of reelection. Republican Scott Taylor will face Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., in a rematch between two Navy veterans in a Virginia Beach district from which she toppled him two years ago.
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Fauci: Next few weeks critical to tamping down virus spikes
WASHINGTON (AP) — The next few weeks are critical to tamping down a disturbing coronavirus surge, Dr. Anthony Fauci told Congress on Tuesday — issuing a plea for people to avoid crowds and wear masks just hours before mask-shunning President Donald Trump was set to address a crowd of his young supporters in one hot spot.
Fauci and other top health officials also said they have not been asked to slow down virus testing, in contrast to Trump’s claim last weekend that he had ordered fewer tests be performed because they were uncovering too many infections. Trump said earlier Tuesday that he wasn't kidding when he made that remark.
“We will be doing more testing,” Fauci, infectious disease chief at the National Institutes of Health, pledged to a House committee conducting oversight of the Trump administration's response to the pandemic.
The leading public health officials spent more than five hours testifying before the committee at a fraught moment, with coronavirus cases rising in about half the states and political polarization competing for attention with public health recommendations.
Fauci told lawmakers he understands the pent-up desire to get back to normal as the U.S. begins emerging from months of stay-at-home orders and business shutdowns. But that has “to be a gradual step-by-step process and not throwing caution to the wind,” he said.
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With student gathering, Trump gets a more boisterous crowd
PHOENIX (AP) — It wasn’t quite one of his signature big-stadium rallies.
But President Donald Trump drew something closer to the jam-packed audience of political supporters he’s been craving as hundreds of young conservatives filled a Phoenix megachurch Tuesday to hear his call for them to get behind his reelection effort.
The crowded Dream City Church for the gathering of Students for Trump offered a starkly different feel compared to Trump’s weekend rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, his first of the coronavirus era, which drew sparser attendance.
Trump hailed the “patriotic young Americans who stand up tall for America and refuse to kneel to the radical left.”
“You are the courageous warriors standing in the way of what they want to do and their goals,” he told the boisterous crowd. “They hate our history. They hate our values, and they hate everything we prize as Americans.”
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Powerful earthquake shakes southern Mexico, at least 5 dead
MEXICO CITY (AP) — A powerful earthquake centered near the southern Mexico resort of Huatulco on Tuesday killed at least five people, swayed buildings in Mexico City and sent thousands fleeing into the streets.
Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said one person was killed in a building collapse in Huatulco, Oaxaca. Otherwise he said reports were of minor damage from the magnitude 7.4 quake, including broken windows and collapsed walls. Oaxaca Gov. Alejandro Murat said a second person was killed in an apparent house collapse in the mountain village of San Juan Ozolotepec and a third died in circumstances he did not explain.
Federal civil defense authorities reported two more deaths: a worker at the state-run oil company, Pemex, fell to his death from a refinery structure, and a man died in the Oaxaca village of San Agustin Amatengo when a wall fell on him.
Pemex also said the quake caused a fire at its refinery in the Pacific coast city of Salina Cruz, relatively near the epicenter. It said one worker was injured and the flames were quickly extinguished. Churches, bridges and highways also suffered damage during the quake.
López Obrador said there had been more than 140 aftershocks, most of them small.
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Baptists and Walmart criticize rebel-themed Mississippi flag
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The Confederate-themed Mississippi flag drew opposition Tuesday from two big forces in the culturally conservative state: Southern Baptists and Walmart.
Walmart said it will stop displaying the Mississippi flag while the state debates whether to change the design. The Mississippi Baptist Convention said lawmakers have a moral obligation to remove the Confederate battle emblem from the state flag because many people are “hurt and shamed” by it.
“We believe it’s the right thing to do, and is consistent with Walmart’s position to not sell merchandise with the confederate flag from stores and online sites, as part of our commitment to provide a welcoming and inclusive experience for all of our customers in the communities we serve," company spokesperson Anne Hatfield said.
The announcements increase pressure for change in a state that is slow to embrace it. Protests against racial injustice across the U.S. are focusing new attention on Confederate symbols.
Mississippi has the last state flag that includes the Confederate battle emblem: a red field topped by a blue X with 13 white stars. The NCAA, the Southeastern Conference, prominent business organizations and other religious groups have already called for the state to adopt a more inclusive banner.
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Prosecutor: Trump ally Roger Stone was 'treated differently'
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal prosecutor is prepared to tell Congress on Wednesday that Roger Stone, a close ally of President Donald Trump, was given special treatment ahead of his sentencing because of his relationship with the president.
Aaron Zelinsky, a career Justice Department prosecutor who was part of special counsel Robert Mueller's team and worked on the case against Stone, will say he was told by supervisors that political considerations influenced the decision to overrule the recommendation of the trial team and propose a lighter prison sentence, according to testimony released by the House Judiciary Committee.
Zelinsky now works in the U.S. attorney’s office in Maryland, and his testimony will feature the extraordinary spectacle of a current prosecutor castigating decisions made by the leadership of the Justice Department where he still serves. The hearing is likely to add to scrutiny of Attorney General William Barr, who has alarmed Democrats in recent months with his efforts to scrutinize, and even undo, some of the results of Mueller's Russia's investigation.
“What I heard — repeatedly — was that Roger Stone was being treated differently from any other defendant because of his relationship to the president,” Zelinsky says in the prepared testimony.
The panel subpoenaed Zelinksy and John Elias, a career official in the department’s antitrust division, as part of its probe into the politicization of the department under Barr. The Democratic-led panel and Barr have been feuding since shortly after he took office in early 2019, when he declined to testify about Mueller's report.
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No charges in NASCAR noose incident involving Black driver
The noose found hanging in Bubba Wallace's garage stall at Talladega Superspeedway had been there since at least last October, federal authorities said Tuesday in announcing there will be no charges filed in an incident that rocked NASCAR and its only fulltime Black driver.
U.S. Attorney Jay Town and FBI Special Agent in Charge Johnnie Sharp Jr. said an investigation determined “although the noose is now known to have been in garage number 4 in 2019, nobody could have known Mr. Wallace would be assigned to garage number 4 last week.”
A crew member for Richard Petty Motorsports discovered the noose Sunday at the Alabama race track. NASCAR was alerted and contacted the FBI, which sent 15 agents to the track to investigate. They determined no federal crime was committed.
The statement said the garage stall was assigned to Wallace last week in advance of the race scheduled for Sunday but held Monday because of rain. Through video confirmed by NASCAR it was discovered the noose “was in that garage as early as October 2019."
The agencies said the evidence did not support federal charges. NASCAR said a check of every other stall in the garage showed the one for Wallace's car was the only one in which the pull down rope had been fashioned into a noose.
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Trump's brother seeks to halt family tell-all book
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s brother is asking a New York City judge to prevent the president’s niece from publishing a tell-all book, which is expected to be released later this month.
In court papers, Robert Trump’s lawyers argue that Mary Trump and others had signed a settlement agreement in the late 1990s that included a confidentially clause explicitly saying they would not “publish any account concerning the litigation or their relationship,” unless they all agreed.
The settlement agreement related to the will of Donald Trump’s father, New York real estate developer Fred Trump.
“Confidentiality was at the essence of the Settlement agreement,” the court papers say.
Robert Trump argues the publication of the book is prohibited by the settlement agreement reached in 2001 and he never consented to it being published. Mary Trump is the daughter of Fred Trump Jr., the president's older brother, who died in 1981.
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White House wins ruling on health care price disclosure
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration won a court ruling Tuesday upholding its plan to require insurers and hospitals to disclose the actual prices for common tests and procedures in a bid to promote competition and push down costs.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar called the decision in federal court in Washington, D.C., “a resounding victory" for President Donald Trump's efforts to open up the convoluted world of health care pricing so patients and families can make better-informed decisions about their care.
But the American Hospital Association, which sued to block the Trump administration regulation and was on the losing side, announced it would appeal. Industry argues that forcing the disclosure of prices negotiated between hospitals and insurers amounts to coercion.
That means the decision by U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols may not be the final word.
“American patients deserve to be in control of their healthcare,” Azar said in a statement. “Especially when patients are seeking needed care during a public health emergency, it is more important than ever that they have ready access to the actual prices of health care services.”
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Obama raises $7.6 million at fundraiser for Biden's campaign
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Barack Obama warned Democrats against being “complacent or smug” about the presidential race at a grassroots fundraiser Tuesday for presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, calling on viewers to learn the lessons from 2016 and not take the election for granted.
Referencing what he called a “great awakening” going on among younger Americans pushing for reforms, Obama said that “just because this energy is out there does not mean that it assures our victory and it does not mean that it gets channeled in a way that results in real change.”
“There’s a backlash, that is fierce, against change,” Obama added.
The former president referenced the division among Americans that he said President Donald Trump “exploits,” as well as new challenges to voting rights in recent years.
“We can’t be complacent or smug or suggest that somehow it's so obvious that this president hasn’t done a good job because, look, he won once, and it’s not like we didn't have a good clue as to how he was going to operate the last time,” Obama said.