AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT
Florida site of GOP convention orders wearing of masks
The city of Jacksonville, Florida, where mask-averse President Donald Trump plans to accept the Republican nomination in August, ordered the wearing of face coverings Monday, joining the list of state and local governments reversing course to try to beat back a resurgence of the coronavirus.
Less than a week after Mayor Lenny Curry said there would be no mask requirement, city officials announced that coverings must be worn in “situations where individuals cannot socially distance.”
White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany responded by saying the president's advice is to “do whatever your local jurisdiction requests of you.”
Trump has refused to wear a mask during visits to states and businesses that require them.
In recent weeks, the Republicans moved some of the convention pageantry to Jacksonville after Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina objected to the holding of a large gathering in Charlotte without social-distancing measures. The convention will be in late August.
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Tracking coronavirus cases proves difficult amid new surge
HOUSTON (AP) — Health departments around the U.S. that are using contact tracers to contain coronavirus outbreaks are scrambling to bolster their ranks amid a surge of cases and resistance to cooperation from those infected or exposed.
With too few trained contact tracers to handle soaring caseloads, one hard-hit Arizona county is relying on National Guard members to pitch in. In Louisiana, people who have tested positive typically wait more than two days to respond to health officials — giving the disease crucial time to spread. Many tracers are finding it hard to break through suspicion and apathy to convince people that compliance is crucial.
Contact tracing — tracking people who test positive and anyone they've come in contact with — was challenging even when stay-at-home orders were in place. Tracers say it's exponentially more difficult now that many restaurants, bars and gyms are full, and people are gathering with family and friends.
“People are probably letting their guard down a little ... they think there is no longer a threat,” said Grand Traverse County, Michigan, Health Officer Wendy Hirschenberger, who was alerted by health officials in another part of the state that infected tourists had visited vineyards and bars in her area.
Her health department was then able to urge local residents who had visited those businesses to self-quarantine.
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Abortion foes vent disappointment after Supreme Court ruling
NEW YORK (AP) — Abortion opponents vented their disappointment and fury on Monday after the Supreme Court issued a 5-4 decision to strike down a Louisiana law that would have curbed abortion access.
The ruling delivered a defeat to anti-abortion activists, but President Donald Trump's reelection campaign quickly invoked it as part of a new appeal to voters — signaling its power to motivate religious conservatives who are a key part of his base ahead of November's election.
Vice President Mike Pence summed up that argument, tweeting that the Supreme Court's decision made one thing clear: "We need more Conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.” Underlining his case, Pence added “#FourMoreYears."
Top pro-Trump religious conservatives noted pointedly that both justices he named to the high court dissented from Monday's decision, aligning with Pence in making the case that Trump should get another term in office to potentially tap more conservative nominees.
The Rev. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life and a member of Trump’s Catholic voter outreach effort, said the president’s “two appointees voted the right way” in supporting Louisiana’s ability to require doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.
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Billions of dollars in aid for small businesses go unclaimed
NEW YORK (AP) — Billions of dollars offered by Congress as a lifeline to small businesses struggling to survive the pandemic are about to be left on the table when a key government program stops accepting applications for loans.
Business owners and advocacy groups complain that the money in the Paycheck Protection Program was not fully put to work because the program created obstacles that stopped countless small businesses from applying. For those that did seek loans, the ever-changing application process proved to be an exercise in futility.
“It was a flawed structure to begin with,” said John Arensmeyer, CEO of Small Business Majority, an advocacy group. “It favored established businesses. It was set up to give money to people with strong banking relationships.”
The program’s shortcomings also made it more difficult for minority businesses to get loans, according to a report from the Center for Responsible Lending, a research group.
The loans were designed to give companies devastated by government-ordered shutdowns money to pay staffers and survive. The money was aimed at small businesses such as restaurants, retailers and salons that are desperately trying to stay afloat as the U.S. economy reopens in fits and starts.
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White House: Trump not briefed on 'unverified' bounties
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House said Monday that President Donald Trump wasn't briefed on U.S. intelligence assessments earlier this year that Russia secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing American troops in Afghanistan because the information had not been verified.
Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany added that Trump — even now — had not been briefed on the allegations because the intelligence “would not be elevated to the president until it was verified."
However, the White House seemed to be setting an unusually high bar for bringing the information to Trump, since it is rare for intelligence to be confirmed without a shadow of doubt before it is presented to senior government decision-makers.
The result was an odd situation in which eight Republican lawmakers attended a briefing at the White House on Monday about explosive allegations that the president himself was said to have not been fully read in on. McEnany declined to say why a different standard of confidence in the intelligence applied to briefing lawmakers than bringing the information to the president.
A White House official said Democrats also were invited to a White House briefing. It was scheduled to take place Tuesday morning, according to two Democratic aides.
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Judge warns of possible move of trial in George Floyd death
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A Minnesota judge on Monday warned that he's likely to move the trials of four former police officers charged in George Floyd's death out of Minneapolis if public officials, attorneys and family members don't stop speaking out about the case.
Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill stopped short of issuing a gag order against attorneys on both sides, but he said he likely will if public statements continue that make it hard to find an impartial jury. Cahill said that would also make him likely to grant a change-of-venue motion if one is filed, as he anticipates.
“The court is not going to be happy about hearing comments on these three areas: merits, evidence and guilt or innocence,” Cahill said.
It was the second pretrial hearing for the officers, who were fired after Floyd’s May 25 death. Derek Chauvin, 44, is charged with second-degree murder and other counts, while Thomas Lane, 37, J. Kueng, 26, and Tou Thao, 34, are charged with aiding and abetting Chauvin.
Floyd died after Chauvin, a white police officer, pressed his knee against the handcuffed 46-year-old Black man’s neck for nearly eight minutes. The officers were responding to a call about a man trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill at a nearby store. Floyd's death sparked protests around the world.
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China cuts Uighur births with IUDs, abortion, sterilization
The Chinese government is taking draconian measures to slash birth rates among Uighurs and other minorities as part of a sweeping campaign to curb its Muslim population, even as it encourages some of the country’s Han majority to have more children.
While individual women have spoken out before about forced birth control, the practice is far more widespread and systematic than previously known, according to an AP investigation based on government statistics, state documents and interviews with 30 ex-detainees, family members and a former detention camp instructor. The campaign over the past four years in the far west region of Xinjiang is leading to what some experts are calling a form of “demographic genocide."
The state regularly subjects minority women to pregnancy checks, and forces intrauterine devices, sterilization and even abortion on hundreds of thousands, the interviews and data show. Even while the use of IUDs and sterilization has fallen nationwide, it is rising sharply in Xinjiang.
The population control measures are backed by mass detention both as a threat and as a punishment for failure to comply. Having too many children is a major reason people are sent to detention camps, the AP found, with the parents of three or more ripped away from their families unless they can pay huge fines. Police raid homes, terrifying parents as they search for hidden children.
After Gulnar Omirzakh, a Chinese-born Kazakh, had her third child, the government ordered her to get an IUD inserted. Two years later, in January 2018, four officials in military camouflage came knocking at her door anyway. They gave Omirzakh, the penniless wife of a detained vegetable trader, three days to pay a $2,685 fine for having more than two children.
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Dems push campaign-season health care bill through House
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats pushed a package expanding “Obamacare” coverage through the House on Monday, a measure that's doomed to advance no further but spotlights how the coronavirus pandemic and President Donald Trump's efforts to obliterate that law have fortified health care's potency as a 2020 campaign issue.
While the legislation had no chance of survival in the Republican-led Senate and faced a White House veto threat for good measure, Democrats plunged ahead anyway. It joins a pile of bills they've compiled that highlight their priorities on health care, jobs, ethics and voting rights, issues they intend to wield in this year’s presidential and congressional elections.
The bill cleared the House by a mostly party-line, 234-179 vote over solid GOP opposition. Republicans, who've never relented since unanimously opposing former President Barack Obama's 2010 statue, called the measure a blow to the nation's health care system during a pandemic and a political stunt.
“This bill attempts to exploit the coronavirus pandemic to resuscitate tired, partisan proposals,” the White House wrote in its statement. It said provisions curbing prescription drug costs would cut pharmaceutical company revenues and “undermine the American innovation the entire globe is depending on” by crimping their research on developing vaccines and treatments.
GOP lawmakers' votes against the House measure seemed certain to pop up in campaign spots this fall. In a taste of those ads, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday's vote gave lawmakers a choice between strengthening health care protections or being “complicit" in Trump's effort to dismantle it.
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Golden State Killer admits to dozens of rapes, murders
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A former police officer who terrorized California as a serial burglar and rapist and went on to kill more than a dozen people while evading capture for decades pleaded guilty Monday to murders attributed to a criminal dubbed the Golden State Killer.
Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. had remained almost silent in court since his 2018 arrest until he repeatedly uttered the words “guilty” and “I admit” in a hushed and raspy voice as part of a plea agreement that will spare him the death penalty for a life sentence with no chance of parole.
DeAngelo, 74, had never publicly acknowledged the killings, but offered up a confession of sorts after his arrest that cryptically referred to an inner personality named “Jerry” that he said forced him to commit the wave of crimes that ended abruptly in 1986.
“I did all that,” DeAngelo said to himself while alone in a police interrogation room after his arrest in April 2018, Sacramento County prosecutor Thien Ho said.
“I didn’t have the strength to push him out,” DeAngelo said. “He made me. He went with me. It was like in my head, I mean, he’s a part of me. I didn’t want to do those things. I pushed Jerry out and had a happy life. I did all those things. I destroyed all their lives. So now I’ve got to pay the price.”
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Reddit, Twitch clamp down Trumpist forums for hate speech
Reddit, an online comment forum that is one of the internet's most popular websites, on Monday banned a forum that supported President-Donald Trump as part of a crackdown on hate speech.
The Trump forum, called The_Donald, was banned because it encouraged violence, regularly broke other Reddit rules, and defiantly “antagonized” both Reddit and other forums, the company said in a statement. Reddit had previously tried to discipline the forum.
Reddit's action against The_Donald was part of a larger purge at the San Francisco-based site. The company said it took down a total of 2,000 forums, known as the site as “subreddits,” most of which it said were inactive or had few users.
Social-media companies have long struggled to deal with hate speech on their platforms. A growing number of large advertisers have said they are pausing social-media spending after a campaign by a group of civil-rights and other groups called for an ad boycott of Facebook, saying it has failed to curb racist and violent content and misinformation.
On Monday, Ford Motor Co. put the brakes on all national social media advertising for the next 30 days. The company says hate speech, as well as violent and racial injustice content need to be eradicated from the sites.