AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT
GOP expecting Trump to tap Barrett for Supreme Court
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans are expecting President Donald Trump to announce Saturday that he is nominating Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court as he aims to put a historic stamp on the high court just weeks before the election.
Conservative groups and congressional allies are laying the groundwork for a swift confirmation process for Barrett, even before Trump makes the selection official in a Rose Garden ceremony Saturday evening. They, like the president, are wasting little time moving to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, organizing multimillion-dollar ad campaigns and marshalling supporters both to confirm the pick and to boost Trump to a second term.
For days, White House officials have indicated to congressional Republicans and outside allies that Barrett is Trump's pick, but Trump aides have offered no official word as they try to maintain some suspense before the official announcement.
The likely shift in the court’s makeup — from Ginsburg, a liberal icon, to an outspoken conservative — would be the sharpest ideological swing since Clarence Thomas replaced Justice Thurgood Marshall nearly three decades ago.
For Trump, it will provide a much-needed political assist as he tries to fire up his base. For conservatives, it will mark a long-sought payoff for their at-times uncomfortable embrace of Trump. And for Democrats, it will be another moment of reckoning, with their party locked in a bitter battle to retake the White House and the Senate.
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Probe into 'discarded' ballots becomes campaign outrage fuel
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The news release from a U.S. attorney in Pennsylvania was provocative: Nine mailed-in military ballots had been “discarded” by the local election office in a swing county of one of the most important presidential battleground states.
All of them were marked for President Donald Trump, it said. Then came another news release with key details changed but still little explanation of what had happened and whether investigators believed a criminal act had occurred.
Despite the information vacuum, the White House press secretary told reporters “ballots for the president” had been “cast aside.” The Trump campaign’s rapid response arm pushed out the release from Trump’s own Justice Department under the headline “Democrats are trying to steal the election” — ignoring the fact that the local government, Luzerne County, is controlled by Republicans. Conservative voices used the news release as rocket fuel to amplify the investigation on social media.
Thursday’s kerfuffle and accompanying internet outrage over a handful of ballots is likely a taste of what’s to come in the month left before the presidential election, which is being held amid a global pandemic that has triggered a wave of absentee ballot requests as Trump continues to launch unsubstantiated attacks on mail voting.
It was Trump, after being briefed on the case by Attorney General William Barr, who first revealed publicly that the discarded ballots had been cast for him. He did so in an interview earlier Thursday with Fox News Radio in which he used the investigation to further sow doubt about mail-in voting. The radio interview was hours before the U.S. attorney's office in Pennsylvania issued its news release about the probe to reporters.
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Virus cases rise in US heartland, home to anti-mask feelings
MISSION, Kan. (AP) — It began with devastation in the New York City area, followed by a summertime crisis in the Sun Belt. Now the coronavirus outbreak is heating up fast in smaller cities in the heartland, often in conservative corners of America where anti-mask sentiment runs high.
Elsewhere around the country, Florida's Republican governor lifted all restrictions on restaurants and other businesses Friday and all but set aside local mask ordinances in the political battleground state, in a move attacked by Democrats as hasty.
Meanwhile, confirmed cases of the virus in the U.S. hit another milestone — 7 million — according to the count kept by Johns Hopkins University, though the real number of infections is believed to be much higher.
The spike across the Midwest as well as parts of the West has set off alarms at hospitals, schools and colleges.
Wisconsin is averaging more than 2,000 new cases a day over the last week, compared with 675 three weeks earlier. Hospitalizations in the state are at their highest level since the outbreak took hold in the U.S. in March.
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Ginsburg makes history at Capitol amid replacement turmoil
WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg lay in state Friday at the U.S. Capitol as the first woman ever so honored, making history again as she had throughout her extraordinary life while an intensifying election-year battle swirled over her replacement.
The flag-draped casket of Ginsburg, who died last week at 87, drew members of Congress, top military officials, friends and family, some with children in tow, to the Capitol's grand Statuary Hall, paying respect to the cultural icon who changed American law and perceptions of women's power.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, joined other invited guests. His vice presidential running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris said that “RBG,” as she is known by many, cleared a path for women like her in civic life.
“She, first of all, made America see what leadership looks like -- in the law, in terms of public service -- and she broke so many barriers,” Harris told reporters at the Capitol. “And I know that she did it intentionally knowing that people like me could follow.”
Biden, who was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee when Ginsburg was confirmed 27 years ago this month, said he was brought back to when he met her back then. “Wonderful memories,” he said.
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Family demands release of evidence in Breonna Taylor's case
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Breonna Taylor’s family demanded Friday that Kentucky authorities release all body camera footage, police files and the transcripts of the grand jury hearings that led to no charges against police officers who killed the Black woman during a March drug raid at her apartment.
As Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, stood close by in a shirt that had “I (heart) Louisville Police” with bullet holes in the heart emoji, Taylor's lawyers said they have seen the evidence, and there is much state Attorney General Daniel Cameron got wrong. They did not give specifics.
Taylor’s aunt read a statement on behalf of Palmer, saying the entire justice system failed her, and Cameron was just the final person in the chain that included the officer who sought the no-knock warrant, the judge who signed it, and the police who burst into her Louisville apartment. The warrant was connected to a suspect who did not live there, and no drugs were found inside.
Taylor was shot multiple times by white officers after her boyfriend fired at them, authorities said. He said he didn’t know who was coming in and opened fire in self-defense, wounding one officer. Cameron, who is the state’s first Black attorney general, said the officers were not charged with Taylor's killing because they acted to protect themselves.
“I hope you never know the pain of your child being murdered 191 days in a row,” said Bianca Austin, reading the statement while wearing her niece’s emergency medical technician jacket.
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Appeals court hears fight over Trump tax returns — again
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal appeals court tested the waters on a potential compromise, but didn't immediately rule Friday after arguments in President Donald Trump’s long-running fight to prevent a top New York prosecutor from getting his tax returns — a battle that seems destined to return to the Supreme Court.
A Trump lawyer argued that a subpoena for the records is overly broad but balked when an appellate judge suggested the court might be able to alleviate that concern by limiting the scope of documents being sought.
Trump's lawyer, William Consovoy, signaled they will be satisfied only if Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. is barred from getting all of the requested records. Consovoy is seeking to have the case sent back to a lower court that last month rejected his attempt to quash the subpoena, arguing that judge erred in his ruling.
If the three-judge panel refuses to put a hold on the enforcement of the subpoena, Trump’s lawyers will be forced to ask the Supreme Court to prolong the legal fight. The high court, which ruled 7-2 against the president in July, is down to eight justices after the death last week of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The matter may not be fully resolved before the November election.
Trump’s lawyers appealed to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after a district court judge last month rejected their renewed efforts to invalidate a subpoena that the Vance's office issued to Trump's accounting firm as part of a grand jury investigation into his financial and business dealings.
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Trump's $200 prescription cards won't hit mailboxes just yet
WASHINGTON (AP) — If you’re on Medicare, don’t run to the mailbox looking for a $200 prescription drug card courtesy of President Donald Trump.
Government officials said Friday that key details of Trump's election-year giveaway still have to be fleshed out, including the exact timing and how Medicare's cost would be covered — a sum that could approach $7 billion.
It's also unclear which Medicare enrollees will get the promised cards. Trump said 33 million beneficiaries would receive cards in the mail, but more than 60 million people are covered by the federal health insurance program for seniors.
Trade groups representing the two industries most affected by the plan — drug companies and insurers — said they have received no specifics from the Trump administration. Public policy experts called it an attention-grabbing move — weeks before the presidential election — that won't change much in the end.
“Providing a coupon does absolutely nothing to address the underlying problem of high and rising drug prices,” said Tricia Neuman, a Medicare expert with the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. “The administration has had nearly four years to work with Congress or go through the regulatory process to adopt proposals that could have a real and sustained impact on drug prices.”
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Takeaways: Labor abuses in the palm oil industry
PENINSULAR MALAYSIA (AP) — Palm oil is almost impossible to avoid. It can be found in roughly half the products on supermarket shelves, from Dove soap and Oreo cookies to instant noodles and hand sanitizer. While most shoppers know little about the commodity or the human toll, the $65 billion industry has long been criticized for environmental destruction and labor abuses. And big companies and banks have been profiting.
Associated Press reporters spoke to more than 130 current and former workers from two dozen companies across wide swaths of Malaysia and Indonesia, the two biggest producing countries. The men, women and children interviewed came from eight different countries and included some of the most vulnerable people on the planet, including Rohingya Muslims who fled ethnic cleansing in their homeland.
Key takeaways from the AP’s Investigation:
LABOR ABUSES: As global demand for palm oil surges, plantations are struggling to find enough laborers, frequently relying on brokers who prey on the most at-risk people. The most serious abuses found by AP included child labor, outright slavery and allegations of rape. Some workers said they were cheated, threatened, held against their will or forced to work off unsurmountable debts or swept up in raids and detained in crowded government facilities.
They included Rohingya Muslims, who fled ethnic cleansing in Myanmar only to be sold into the palm oil industry. Fishermen who escaped years of slavery on boats also described coming ashore in search of help, only to be trafficked onto plantations — sometimes with police involvement. They said they worked for little or no pay and were trapped for years.
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Trump's coronavirus remarks weigh on minds of senior voters
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s remarks at a campaign event in Ohio this week reverberated all the way to a sparkling waterfront in Florida, where senior citizens parsed his assessment of the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump said that COVID-19 was seriously affecting “virtually nobody” under the age of 18 and sought to frame the pandemic as largely impacting older Americans, as he argued for school districts to resume in-person learning.
“Now we know it affects elderly people with heart problems and other problems,” Trump said. “If they have other problems, that’s what it really affects. That’s it.”
Florida, where 34 percent of the population is over the age of 55, is a potential swing state for Trump’s re-election campaign. Democratic challenger Joe Biden has made some inroads among older voters here, according to recent polls, but the coronavirus could affect the race in profound ways.
Trump’s recent remarks made Liz Cillo, a 72-year-old retiree from St. Petersburg, laugh bitterly. “We’re dispensable. We’re old. I feel as though he’s never showed any empathy or compassion toward us.”
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Desk shortage forces people to get creative about workspaces
NEW YORK (AP) — First it was toilet paper. Disinfectant wipes. Beans. Coins. Computers. Now, desks are in short supply because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Millions of kids logging onto virtual school this fall has parents scrambling to find furniture for them. It’s a small indignity compared with the kids who don’t even have home internet or computers, but it’s a hassle for parents lucky enough to have the space and money to afford desks just the same.
At the same time, some people are realizing they'll be working from home for the long haul and require new furniture. To find desks, people are scouring stores near and far and even making their own.
Elizabeth Rossmiller, a teacher working from home for the first time, needed to upgrade from her temporary setup: an upside-down laundry basket on a nightstand.
The desk she wanted from Amazon was out of stock. None were available for under $200 at Target or Walmart. Her husband found a floor model at a store 45 minutes away from their home in Gresham, Oregon.