AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT
Trump caps judiciary remake with choice of Barrett for court
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, capping a dramatic reshaping of the federal judiciary that will resonate for a generation and that he hopes will provide a needed boost to his reelection effort.
Barrett, a former clerk to the late Justice Antonin Scalia, said Saturday that she was “truly humbled” by the nomination and quickly aligned herself with Scalia's conservative approach to the law, saying his “judicial philosophy is mine, too."
Barrett, 48, was joined in the Rose Garden by her husband and seven children. If confirmed by the Senate, she would fill the seat vacated by liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It would be the sharpest ideological swing since Clarence Thomas replaced Justice Thurgood Marshall nearly three decades ago.
She would be the sixth justice on the nine-member court to be appointed by a Republican president, and the third of Trump’s first term in office.
Trump hailed Barrett as “a woman of remarkable intellect and character,” saying he had studied her record closely before making the pick.
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How it happened: From law professor to high court in 4 years
WASHINGTON (AP) — Four years ago, Amy Coney Barrett was a little-known law professor in Indiana. Within weeks, she is likely to be the newest associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Barrett's fast-track rise, set to drive the nation's highest court to the right for a generation or longer, is the fulfillment of a decadeslong effort by conservatives to remake the federal bench that kicked into high gear after President Donald Trump was elected. For Trump, whose 2016 victory was bolstered by white evangelicals’ reluctant support of his candidacy tied to his promise to fill the seat vacated by the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia with a conservative, the latest nomination brings his first term full circle.
Even before Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, Trump was campaigning for reelection in 2020 on his record of confirming more than 200 federal judges during his first term, fulfilling a generational aim of conservative legal activists.
“Today’s nomination is the capstone of a more than four-year process where the president seized upon the issue, stayed focused, and called attention to a small bench of very talented people who he could put on the Supreme Court," said Leonard Leo, of the conservative Federalist Society.
The following account is based on information from five people familiar with the process and the president's thinking who were not authorized to speak publicly about the details.
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Leaders to UN: If virus doesn't kill us, climate change will
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — In a year of cataclysm, some world leaders at this week’s annual United Nations meeting are taking the long view, warning: If COVID-19 doesn't kill us, climate change will.
With Siberia seeing its warmest temperature on record this year and enormous chunks of ice caps in Greenland and Canada sliding into the sea, countries are acutely aware there's no vaccine for global warming.
“We are already seeing a version of environmental Armageddon,” Fiji's Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama said, citing wildfires in the western U.S. and noting that the Greenland ice chunk was larger than a number of island nations.
This was meant to be the year “we took back our planet,” he said. Instead, the coronavirus has diverted resources and attention from what could have been the marquee issue at this U.N. gathering. Meanwhile, the U.N. global climate summit has been postponed to late 2021.
That hasn’t stopped countries, from slowly sinking island nations to parched African ones, from speaking out.
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Morocco faces down COVID spread with tough rules
RABAT, Morocco (AP) — With air and sea borders closed for months and eight cities barring people from entering or leaving, Morocco has been pulling out the stops to stanch the spread of coronavirus.
Still, the kingdom on the Atlantic coast, a magnet for tourists in better times, has registered more than 110,000 positive cases since March and has a death toll of 2,041 — the highest among its North African neighbors.
Morocco first decreed lockdown measures on March 20, but has been gradually easing restrictions. A recent upsurge in infections, however, has forced targeted measures.
Marrakech, a major tourist destination, is at a standstill, while police checks are part of the scenery in hard-hit Casablanca, the country’s economic powerhouse. Police are out in the markets, streets, drug-dealers’ haunts and closed-off beaches, with military vehicles occasionally rolling by. They are a no-nonsense signal for citizens to respect the country's strict orders to contain the virus.
In the northern city of Tangiers, military vehicles were deployed last month to help enforce measures there. Movement between the city and others was stopped, as it was in Casablanca, barring exceptional authorizations.
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Fighting erupts between Armenia, Azerbaijan in disputed area
YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — Fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan broke out Sunday around the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh and the Armenian Defense Ministry said two Azerbaijani helicopters were shot down.
Ministry spokeswoman Shushan Stepanyan also said Armenian forces hit three Azerbaijani tanks. There was no immediate word on casualties.
Nagorno-Karabakh is an ethnic Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan that has been out of Azerbaijan’s control since the end of a war in 1994. Both sides have heavy military presence along a demilitarized zone separating the region from the rest of Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan's defense ministry denied the claim that its helicopters and tanks had been hit. But President Ilham Aliyev said in a televised address to the nation that “there are losses among the Azerbaijani forces and the civilian population as a result of the Armenian bombardment.”
Stepanyan said the fighting Sunday began with an Azerbaijani attack, but Azerbaijan said the Armenian side attacked and that Azerbaijan launched a counteroffensive.
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Some Breonna Taylor protesters out past curfew, fires set
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A diverse crowd of hundreds marched in Louisville's streets chanting “Black Lives Matter" on Saturday night, the fourth night of protests after a grand jury declined to charge officers in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor.
People in the crowd also chanted “No justice, no peace” as cars honked along a busy downtown artery in this Kentucky city that has seen more than 120 days of demonstrations over the death of the 26-year-old Black woman in a police raid gone wrong.
A few police cars followed behind, with officers telling protesters to stay on the sidewalk and out of the street before the march ended. Many briefly ended up back at a downtown square that has been a focal point of protests.
But as a 9 p.m. curfew time approached, a police loudspeaker announced that anyone who remained in the park would be arrested for a curfew violation. The square emptied out as people departed, many dispersing though one group headed to a nearby church where protesters had found refuge on previous nights.
As a crowd gathered outside the First Unitarian Church late Saturday, fires were set in a street nearby after 11 p.m. Police said fireworks burned a car, and windows had been broken at Spalding University and Presentation Academy buildings close by.
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Late night protest in Portland, Oregon, declared unlawful
PORTLAND (AP) — Law enforcement declared an unlawful assembly late Saturday, forcing protesters from downtown Portland, Oregon, and making several arrests, just hours after demonstrations earlier in the day ended without many reports of violence.
Hundreds of people were gathered downtown in Oregon's largest city when the unlawful assembly was announced just before midnight by the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office.
Images showed protesters crowded in and around a park near the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse — the same courthouse that had been the scene of nightly unrest over the summer. A protester was seen burning an American flag.
Earlier, protesters had shot fireworks at police. Video posted by KOIN-TV showed officers warn that protesters who hurl projectiles will be subject to arrest.
Several arrests were made, according to reporters at the scene, but a specific number was not immediately available.
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The U.S. reckoning on race, seen through other nations' eyes
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — It's not only in the United States where protests against racial injustice are part of the national conversation. A handful of America's critics have taken note too, using recent months' demonstrations and graphic images of police violence to denounce the country at the United Nations' gathering of world leaders this year.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani invoked the killing of George Floyd, the Black American man who died after a white police officer in Minneapolis pressed his knee against his neck even as he repeatedly said he could not breathe. Floyd’s death, caught on video, set off nationwide protests in support of Black lives.
Rouhani said the scene was “reminiscent” of Iran's own experience in its quest for freedom and liberation from domination, and that Iran instantly recognized "the feet kneeling on the neck as the feet of arrogance on the neck of independent nations.”
Similarly, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said U.S. sanctions were “an inhumane attempt to suffocate Syrians, just like George Floyd and others were cruelly suffocated in the United States."
Cuba and Venezuela also took jabs at the U.S., making specific references to the protests during words delivered to the U.N. General Assembly.
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GOP invests $10M in boosting Trump with Barrett confirmation
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican National Committee is putting Amy Coney Barrett's Supreme Court confirmation fight front and center with voters just weeks before Election Day.
The confirmation battle will be featured in a new $10 million RNC digital ad campaign to encourage battleground state voters to return vote-by-mail ballots or go to the polls. The national party, in concert with President Donald Trump's campaign, is planning local events and protests across the country to support Barrett’s confirmation as well.
The party is also incorporating Barrett’s nomination into its scripts that staffers and volunteers use when calling or knocking on voters’ doors, with a focus on social conservative Catholic and evangelical voters — particularly in swing states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida.
Filling the vacancy created by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been an unexpected political opportunity for Trump, who won the White House in 2016 in large part because conservatives were animated around filling the seat opened by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
The RNC on Saturday unveiled a website, ConfirmBarrett.com, to allow supporters to contact lawmakers to urge them to put Barrett on the court. It also anticipates trying to fundraise off the confirmation fight, including Democratic vice president nominee Kamala Harris' position on the Senate Judiciary committee.
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After a year of drama, the Lakers reach NBA Finals anyway
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) — Here’s a list of just some of the things the Los Angeles Lakers have gone through in the last 12 months: playing through a politically charged situation in China during the preseason and more massive fallout after returning home, the death of Kobe Bryant in a helicopter crash, a pandemic and four-plus-month suspension of play, the season being moved to a bubble 2,500 miles from their homes, the ongoing battle against racial inequality in this country and emotions fraying to the point where giving up was considered.
And here they are.
After all that drama, all that angst, all those challenges, the NBA Finals await.
A most unpredictable season has a very predictable finalist. LeBron James, the once-perennial Beast of the East, is now the Best in the West. James and the Lakers are the Western Conference champions, the team’s best player now set to go to the finals for the 10th time — the first nine of those coming during his Eastern Conference stints with Cleveland and Miami — and his team set to hit the title series for the first time in 10 years, when Bryant won his fifth and final championship.
“Every time you put on purple and gold, you think about his legacy," James said. “You think about him and what he meant to this franchise for 20-plus years. What he stood for, both on the floor and off the floor. What he demanded out of his teammates, what he demanded out of himself. We have some similarities in that sense."