AP News in Brief at 12:04 a.m. EDT
Pence, Harris spar over COVID-19 in vice presidential debate
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Trading barbs through plexiglass shields, Republican Mike Pence and Democrat Kamala Harris turned the only vice presidential debate of 2020 into a dissection of the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, with Harris labeling it “the greatest failure of any presidential administration.”
Pence, who leads the president’s coronavirus task force, acknowledged that “our nation’s gone through a very challenging time this year,” yet vigorously defended the administration’s overall response to a pandemic that has killed 210,000 Americans.
The meeting, which was far more civil than last week’s chaotic faceoff between President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden, unfolded against an outbreak of coronavirus now hitting the highest levels of the U.S. government. Trump spent three days at the hospital before returning to the White House on Monday, and more than a dozen White House and Pentagon officials are also infected, forcing even more into quarantine.
With less than four weeks before Election Day, the debate was one of the final opportunities for Trump and Pence to reset a contest that could be slipping away. They're hoping to move the campaign's focus away from the virus, but the president's infection — and his downplaying of the consequences — are making that challenging.
Trump and Biden are scheduled to debate again on Oct. 15, though the status of that meeting is unclear. The president has said he wants to attend, but Biden says it shouldn't move forward if Trump still has coronavirus.
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AP FACT CHECK: Claims from Pence and Harris VP debate
WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris tussled Wednesday in the first and only vice presidential debate before the Nov. 3 election, coming as the coronavirus sidelined President Donald Trump at the White House.
A look at how the running mates' statements from Salt Lake City stack up with the facts:
RUSSIA INVESTIGATION
PENCE, on the conclusions of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation: “It was found that there was no obstruction, no collusion. Case closed. And then, Sen. Harris, you and your colleagues in the Congress tried to impeach the president of the United States over a phone call."
THE FACTS: That’s a mischaracterization of Mueller’s nearly 450-page report and its core findings.
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The Latest: Harris says Breonna Taylor didn't get justice
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on the 2020 presidential election (all times local):
10:40 p.m.
Democrat Kamala Harris says she doesn’t believe justice has been done in the case of Breonna Taylor, who was killed in a police drug raid that went bad.
Taylor was shot multiple times in March after being roused from sleep by police at her door. A grand jury did not charge any officers for their role in Taylor’s death.
Addressing criminal justice reform at Wednesday’s vice presidential debate, Harris says a Joe Biden administration would ban chokeholds and require a national registry for police officers who break the law. She says George Floyd would be alive if such a ban existed.
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VP Debate Takeaways: Pandemic looms over a more civil fight
WASHINGTON (AP) — In normal times, vice presidential debates don't matter much. But in an election year as wild as 2020, everything is magnified.
Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday faced considerable pressure to boost coronavirus-stricken President Donald Trump's flagging reelection hopes as he trails in national and battleground state polls.
California Sen. Kamala Harris stepped on stage having to balance her role as Joe Biden's validator with her own historic presence as the first Black woman on a major party national ticket.
The candidates were separated by plexiglass out of concern for spread of the coronavirus from cases emanating from the White House.
Here are key early takeaways from the only vice presidential debate ahead of the Nov. 3 Election Day.
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Busy 2020 hurricane season has Louisiana bracing a 6th time
MORGAN CITY, La. (AP) — For the sixth time in the Atlantic hurricane season, people in Louisiana are once more fleeing the state's barrier islands and sailing boats to safe harbor while emergency officials ramp up command centers and consider ordering evacuations.
The storm being watched Wednesday was Hurricane Delta, the 25th named storm of the Atlantic's unprecedented hurricane season. Forecasts placed most of Louisiana within Delta's path, with the latest National Hurricane Center estimating landfall in the state on Friday.
The center's forecasters warned of winds that could gust well above 100 mph (160 kph) and up to 11 feet (3.4 meters) of ocean water potentially rushing onshore when the storm's center hits land.
"This season has been relentless,” Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said, dusting off his now common refrain of 2020 - “Prepare for the worst. Pray for the best.”
So far, Louisiana has seen both major strikes and near misses. The southwest area of the state around Lake Charles, which forecasts show is on Delta's current trajectory, is still recovering from an Aug. 27 landfall by Category 4 Hurricane Laura.
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No charges for Wisconsin officer in killing of Black teen
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Black Wisconsin police officer who fatally shot a Black teenager outside a suburban Milwaukee mall in February won't be charged because he had reasonable belief that deadly force was necessary, a prosecutor said Wednesday.
Wauwatosa Officer Joseph Mensah shot 17-year-old Alvin Cole outside Mayfair Mall on Feb. 2 after police responded to a reported disturbance at the shopping center.
Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, in a 14-page letter laying out his rationale, said evidence showed Cole fled from police carrying a stolen 9 mm handgun. He cited squad car audio evidence, along with testimony from Mensah and two fellow officers, that he said showed Cole had fired a shot while fleeing and refused commands to drop the gun.
“He did not surrender the weapon and was fired upon by Officer Mensah causing his death,” Chisholm wrote. He concluded: “(T)here is sufficient evidence that Officer Mensah had an actual subjective belief that deadly force was necessary and that belief was objectively reasonable.”
Cole was the third person Mensah has fatally shot since becoming an officer, and his death has sparked periodic protests in Wauwatosa and the Milwaukee area. Gov. Tony Evers announced earlier Wednesday that he had activated National Guard members as a precaution, though he didn't say how many or how they were being used. Guard spokesman Maj. Joe Trovato later said “hundreds” of troops were at the ready.
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Appellate judges let 2020 census continue through October
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — A panel of three appellate judges on Wednesday upheld a lower court order allowing the 2020 head count of every U.S. resident to continue through October. But the panel struck down a provision that had suspended a year-end deadline for submitting figures used to decide how many congressional seats each state gets.
The ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel in San Francisco upheld part of U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh’s preliminary injunction last month, and rejected part of it.
Koh’s preliminary injunction suspended a Sept. 30 deadline for finishing the 2020 census and a Dec. 31 deadline for submitting numbers used to determine how many congressional seats each state gets — a process known as apportionment. Because of those actions, the deadlines reverted back to a previous Census Bureau plan that had field operations ending Oct. 31 and the reporting of apportionment figures at the end of April.
By issuing the injunction, Koh sided with a coalition of civil rights groups and local governments which had sued the Trump administration, arguing minorities and others in hard-to-count communities would be missed if the counting ended in September instead of October. But Trump administration attorneys had argued the Census Bureau was obligated to meet the congressionally mandated requirement to turn in apportionment numbers by Dec. 31.
Koh also struck down an Oct. 5 end date that the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, had pushed after the injunction, saying it violated her order.
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Mail-in ballot mix-ups: How much should we worry?
BOSTON (AP) — Several high-profile cases of voters getting incorrect blank absentee ballots in the mail are raising questions about how often such mix-ups occur and whether they could affect this year's presidential election.
Mail-in ballots are under heightened scrutiny this year as voters request them in record numbers amid the coronavirus pandemic and President Donald Trump launches baseless attacks against the process.
Snafus occur during every election, but experts say there should be adequate time between now and the close of polls on Nov. 3 to resolve them. U.S. elections are massive, decentralized undertakings involving hundreds of thousands of election workers and multiple contractors. Mistakes happen.
“In a normal election year, there are stories of voting machines configured for the wrong precinct. As voters shift to voting by mail, the equivalent error is a batch of ballots mailed out with the wrong ballot style,” said Doug Jones, a University of Iowa election technology expert.
Elections officials, ballot suppliers and security researchers say such problems do occur with some regularity. They don’t indicate fraud, they say, but rather human error.
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Republicans see 'grim' Senate map and edge away from Trump
WASHINGTON (AP) — Vulnerable Republicans are increasingly taking careful, but clear, steps to distance themselves from President Donald Trump, one sign of a new wave of GOP anxiety that the president's crisis-to-crisis reelection bid could bring down Senate candidates across the country.
In key races from Arizona to Texas, Kansas and Maine, Republican senators long afraid of the president’s power to strike back at his critics are starting to break with the president — particularly over his handling of the pandemic — in the final stretch of the election. GOP strategists say the distancing reflects a startling erosion of support over a brutal 10-day stretch for Trump, starting with his seething debate performance when he did not clearly denounce a white supremacist group through his hospitalization with COVID-19 and attempts to downplay the virus's danger.
Even the somewhat subtle moves away from Trump are notable. For years, Republican lawmakers have been loath to criticize the president — and have gone to great lengths to dodge questions — fearful of angering Trump supporters they need to win. But with control of the Senate in the balance, GOP lawmakers appear to be shifting quickly to do what’s necessary to save their seats.
“The Senate map is looking exceedingly grim,” said one major GOP donor, Dan Eberhart.
Republican prospects for holding its 53-47 majority have been darkening for months. But recent upheaval at the White House has accelerated the trend, according to conversations with a half-dozen GOP strategists and campaign advisers, some of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose internal deliberations.
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Low tech talk in Google, Oracle high tech copyright clash
WASHINGTON (AP) — The topic was high tech: the code behind smartphones.
But on Wednesday the Supreme Court looked to more low tech examples, from the typewriter keyboard to restaurant menus, try to resolve an $8 billion-plus copyright dispute between tech giants Google and Oracle.
The case, which the justices heard by phone because of the coronavirus pandemic, has to do with Google's creation of the Android operating system now used on the vast majority of smartphones worldwide. In developing Android, Google used some of Oracle's computer code.
Some justices seemed concerned that a ruling for Oracle could stifle innovation.
Chief Justice John Roberts was among the justices who turned to examples beyond technology to try to get a handle on the dispute, asking Oracle's lawyer to imagine opening a new restaurant and creating a menu.