AP News in Brief at 9:04 p.m. EDT
States reverse openings, require masks amid virus resurgence
Arizona's Republican governor shut down bars, movie theaters, gyms and water parks Monday and leaders in several states ordered residents to wear masks in public in a dramatic course reversal amid an alarming resurgence of coronavirus cases nationwide.
Among those implementing the face-covering orders is the city of Jacksonville, Florida, where mask-averse President Donald Trump plans to accept the Republican nomination in August. Trump has refused to wear a mask during visits to states and businesses that require them.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey's order went into effect immediately and for at least 30 days. Ducey also ordered public schools to delay the start of classes until at least Aug. 17. Most Arizona bars and nightclubs opened after the governor's stay-at-home and business closure orders were allowed to expire in mid-May.
Arizona health officials reported 3,858 more confirmed coronavirus cases Sunday, the most reported in a single day in the state so far and the seventh time in the past 10 days that daily cases surpassed the 3,000 mark. Since the pandemic began, 74,500 cases and 1,588 deaths stemming from the virus have been reported in Arizona.
“Our expectation is that our numbers next week will be worse,” Ducey said Monday.
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Roberts a pivotal vote in the Supreme Court's big opinions
WASHINGTON (AP) — The biggest cases of the Supreme Court term so far have a surprising common thread.
On a court with five Republican appointees, the liberal justices have been in the majority in rulings that make workplace discrimination against gay and transgender people illegal, protect young immigrants from deportation and, as of Monday, struck down a Louisiana law that restricted abortion providers.
As surprising, Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative nominated by President George W. Bush who has led the court for nearly 15 years, has joined his liberal colleagues in all three.
Since the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy in 2018, Roberts has played a pivotal role in determining how far the court will go in cases where the court's four liberals and four conservatives are closely divided.
Here's a look at where Roberts stood in the abortion, immigration and LGBT cases, his history on the court and what's at stake in coming decisions in which Roberts could play a key role:
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Distancing from Trump? Some Republicans step up critiques
WASHINGTON (AP) — For more than three years, President Donald Trump instilled such fear in the Republican Party's leaders that most kept criticism of his turbulent leadership or inconsistent politics to themselves.
That's beginning to change.
Four months before voters decide the Republican president's reelection, some in Trump's party are daring to say the quiet part out loud as Trump struggles to navigate competing national crises and a scattershot campaign message.
“He is losing,” former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Trump friend and confidant, said Sunday of Trump’s reelection prospects on ABC’s “This Week.” “And if he doesn’t change course, both in terms of the substance of what he’s discussing and the way that he approaches the American people, then he will lose.”
Beyond politics, Trump's allies — even some in his own administration — are distancing themselves from his policies.
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Fed's program for loaning to Main Street off to slow start
WASHINGTON (AP) — Michael Haith, owner and CEO of a Denver-based restaurant chain called Teriyaki Madness, is in an unusual position for people like him: He's making money through food delivery and pickup and wants to borrow funds so he can expand.
Yet so far, a Federal Reserve lending program set up specifically for small and medium-sized businesses like his hasn't been much help. He can't find a bank that's participating in the program, and he isn't clear on a lot of the details about how it works. For example, he isn't sure how much he could borrow.
“We are trying to figure it out, and trying to find a bank that is working with the government on this,” Haith said. “The guidance is pretty convoluted, and the banks seem a little wary.”
Haith's experience underscores banks' surprising lack of interest in the Fed's Main Street Lending program, as well as the challenges potential borrowers are having accessing the program. Fed officials say more than 200 banks have signed up to participate since the program began two weeks ago, but that's a small slice of the nation's roughly 5,000 lenders. None have made any loans yet.
The sluggish start is in sharp contrast to the reaction that greeted the Treasury Department’s small business lending efforts, known as the Paycheck Protection Program. That facility, launched in early April, set off a frenzied response from millions of desperate small companies seeking a loan. The first $350 billion in PPP funding ran out in just two weeks before being replenished. Congress agreed to forgive the loans if they were mostly spent paying workers.
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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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AP FACT CHECK: Actually, 20% of US lives in a virus hot spot
WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s been a frequent Trump administration talking point on the recent spike in COVID-19 infections: Don’t worry, only a small sliver of U.S. counties is at greater risk.
In offering this reassurance, Vice President Mike Pence and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar have said that only 3% or 4% of counties in the country are seeing a surge in cases. Focus on the “encouraging signs," Pence told senators last week.
But they and other administration officials are skirting a key fact: More than 20% of Americans live in those relatively few counties.
The White House has repeatedly cited the low county tally, and Pence reaffirmed the point in a televised interview Sunday. He argued that states, not the federal government, should take the lead with reopening guidelines because virus outbreaks are happening in about “4% of all the counties in this country.”
Azar asserted Friday only 3% of counties represent “hot spots” that are “very concerning."
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'White power' flare-up in retirement haven reveals tensions
THE VILLAGES, Fla. (AP) — There has always been a low-boil tension in The Villages retirement community between the Republican majority and the much smaller cohort of Democrats, but a veneer of good manners in “Florida's Friendliest Hometown" mostly prevailed on golf courses and at bridge tables.
Those tensions, though, flared two weeks ago during a golf-cart parade for President Donald Trump's birthday in which a man shouted, “White Power,” when confronted by anti-Trump protesters. A video clip of that confrontation in America’s largest retirement community was tweeted approvingly by Trump last weekend and then taken down.
Some residents say they've never seen anything like the politically inspired hostilities that have surfaced over the past several months.
“It's like a powder keg here," said resident Alan Stone. “And Trump is just stirring the pot."
In the past, when conflicting political views came up in The Villages, residents said it was best to say, “I disagree,” and quickly change the topic. But the emphasis on good manners has been tested like never before in recent months with the spread of the new coronavirus, the resulting stock market gyrations for a population that largely lives off retirement investments, the presidential race and the calls for racial justice following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.
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A how-to: BET pulls off artistic, virtual, political success
NEW YORK (AP) — You’d think trying to produce the 2020 BET Awards during the coronavirus pandemic would be filled with restrictions, but instead, show producers took another approach: We’re not limited to a single stage, so sky’s the limit and let your creative minds run free.
That’s the model the producers of the show ran with when crafting the special event, which was a major success Sunday night and one of the first virtual awards shows of the coronavirus era. While abiding by safety guidelines and rules set in place by government officials to prevent the virus from spreading, the BET Awards featured highly produced, artsy pre-taped performances from DaBaby, Megan Thee Stallion, John Legend and Alicia Keys, while also addressing current issues in the world about the Black Lives Matter movement, police brutality and inequality.
“The irony of it is that we are in a situation where we are ‘locked down’ and can’t do this and can’t do that. But the truth is that, in this particular platform, it’s actually very freeing,” Jesse Collins, the longtime BET Awards producer, said in an interview Monday. “Creatively, it’s very freeing.”
Connie Orlando, BET’s executive vice president of specials, music programming and music strategy, echoed Collins’ thoughts.
“A show with COVID is challenging because of all the regulations and safety. Also, it takes the guardrail off. You’re not limited to just being in a venue on a 100-foot stage. You can kind of let your imagination go wild and really create art and pieces that are epic,” she said.