AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EST
Dems' momentum builds to impeach Trump, Pelosi hits rioters
WASHINGTON (AP) — Momentum built among Democrats on Saturday for a fresh and fast push to impeach President Donald Trump, even as the House speaker accused his backers who violently invaded the Capitol of choosing “their whiteness over democracy.”
Nancy Pelosi's remark came as Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., one of the chief sponsors of draft impeachment articles accusing Trump of inciting insurrection, said at midday that his group's draft had collected 176 co-sponsors. The lawmakers plan to formally introduced the proposal Monday, with a vote possible by Wednesday.
Pelosi, addressing her hometown San Francisco constituents during an online video conference, shed no fresh light on Democrats' plans. Her party seems intent on pressing ahead against Trump, even though there is virtually no chance the Republican-led Senate will act to remove him before his term ends Jan. 20.
“Justice will be done. Democracy will prevail. And America will be healed. But it is a decision that we have to make," Pelosi said.
A largely white throng of Trump supporters broke through police lines and rampaged through the Capitol on Wednesday, forcing lawmakers to scatter as they put the final, formal touches on Democrat Joe Biden's Electoral College victory over Trump. The crowd surged to the Capitol after being urged by Trump to march there in force during remarks in which he repeated his bogus claim that his election defeat was fraudulent.
___
Once again, job losses fall unequally across the US economy
WASHINGTON (AP) — Ten months into America’s viral outbreak, low-income workers are still bearing the brunt of job losses — an unusual and harsh feature of the pandemic recession that flattened the economy last spring.
In December, the nation shed jobs for the first time since April. Once again, the layoffs were heavily concentrated in the industries that have suffered most because they involve the kind of face-to-face contact that is now nearly impossible: Restaurants, bars and hotels, theaters, sports arenas and concert halls.
With the virus transforming consumer spending habits, economists believe some portion of these service jobs won't return even after the economy has regained its footing. That trend will likely further widen the economic inequalities that have left millions of families unable to buy food or pay rent.
Typically in a recession, layoffs strike a broad array of industries — both those that employ higher- and middle-income workers and those with lower-paid staff — as anxious consumers slash spending. Economists had worried that the same trend would emerge this time.
Instead, much of the rest of the economy is healing, if slowly and fitfully. Factories, while not fully recovered, are cranking out goods and have added jobs every month since May. Home sales have soared 26% from a year ago, fueled by affluent people able to work from home who are looking for more space. That trend has, in turn, bolstered higher-paying jobs in banking, insurance and real estate.
___
No surprise: Trump left many clues he wouldn't go quietly
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump left plenty of clues he'd try to burn the place down on his way out the door.
The clues spread over a lifetime of refusing to acknowledge defeat. They spanned a presidency marked by raw, angry rhetoric, puffed-up conspiracy theories and a kind of fellowship with “patriots” drawn from the seething ranks of right-wing extremists. The clues piled on at light speed when Trump lost the election and wouldn't admit it.
The culmination of all that came Wednesday when Trump supporters, exhorted by the president to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell” against a “stolen” election, overran and occupied the building in an explosive confrontation that left a Capitol Police officer and four others dead.
The mob went there so emboldened by Trump's send-off at a rally that his partisans live-streamed themselves trashing the place. Trump, they figured, had their back.
This was, after all, the president who had responded to a right-wing plot to kidnap Michigan's Democratic governor last year with the comment: “Maybe it was a problem. Maybe it wasn't.”
___
The Latest: California sees record COVID-19 deaths
LOS ANGELES -- California health authorities on Saturday reported a record high of 695 coronavirus deaths as many hospitals strained under unprecedented caseloads.
The state Department of Public Health said the number raises the state’s death toll since the start of the pandemic to 29,233.
A surge of cases following Halloween and Thanksgiving produced record hospitalizations in California, and now the most seriously ill of those patients are dying in unprecedented numbers.
Already, many hospitals in Los Angeles and other hard-hit areas are struggling to keep up and warned they may need to ration care as intensive care beds dwindle.
___
___
Squelched by Twitter, Trump seeks new online megaphone
BOSTON (AP) — One Twitter wag joked about lights flickering on and off at the White House being Donald Trump signaling to his followers in Morse code after Twitter and Facebook squelched the president for inciting rebellion.
Though deprived of his big online megaphones, Trump does have alternative options of much smaller reach, led by the far right-friendly Parler — even if Google removed it from its app store Friday and Apple threatened the same.
Trump may launch his own platform. But that won't happen overnight, and free speech experts anticipate growing pressure on all social media platforms to curb incendiary speech as Americans take stock of Wednesday’s violent takeover of the U.S. Capitol by a Trump-incited mob.
Twitter ended Trump’s nearly 12-year run on Friday. In shuttering his account it cited a tweet to his 89 million followers that he planned to skip President-elect Joe Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration that it said gave rioters license to converge on Washington once again.
Facebook and Instagram have suspended Trump at least until Inauguration Day. Twitch and Snapchat also have disabled Trump’s accounts, while Shopify took down online stores affiliated with the president and Reddit removed a Trump subgroup. Twitter also banned Trump loyalists including former national security advisor Michael Flynn in a sweeping purge of accounts promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory and the Capitol insurrection. Some had hundreds of thousands of followers.
___
Trump pressured Georgia to 'find the fraud' in earlier call
ATLANTA (AP) — While election officials in Georgia were verifying signatures on absentee ballot envelopes in one metro-Atlanta county, President Donald Trump pressed a lead investigator to “find the fraud” and said it would make the investigator a national hero.
The December call, described by a person familiar with it who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to describe the sensitive nature of the discussion, is yet another link in the chain of the extraordinary pressure campaign waged by Trump on state officials as he sought to overturn the results of the November election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
It is one of at least three phone calls, held over the course of a month between early December and early January, where Trump sought help from high-level Georgia officials in subverting the election — only to be rebuffed each time. Trump lost to Biden in Georgia by 11,779 votes.
The call to the investigator preceded Trump’s Jan. 2 call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger where he asked election officials to “find” enough votes to overturn Biden’s win in the state. It occurred as election officials were conducting an audit of signatures on absentee ballot envelopes in Cobb County.
The audit, which reviewed more than 15,000 signatures, found no cases of fraud. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation helped conduct the signature audit.
___
VIRUS TODAY: California in dire need of more medical workers
Here’s what’s happening Saturday with the pandemic in the U.S.:
— California desperately needs more medical workers at facilities swamped by coronavirus patients, and almost no help is coming from a volunteer program that Gov. Gavin Newsom created at the start of the pandemic. An army of 95,000 initially raised their hands, but just 14 are now working in the field. Newsom said very few volunteers met qualifications for the California Health Corps, and only a tiny sliver have the high-level experience needed to help with the most serious virus cases. Other states have faced similar difficulties making volunteer programs work. California health authorities reported a record high of 695 coronavirus deaths Saturday, raising the state’s death toll since the start of the pandemic to 29,233.
— Health officials in Anchorage, Alaska, say appointments for residents eager to receive their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine filled up in a matter of hours, leading to frustration for people still trying to sign up. Anchorage Health Department Director Heather Harris told KTUU-TV that all 1,800 available time slots were reserved by residents within a four-hour period Thursday. Clinics are not accepting walk-ins. Residents 65 and older are now able to receive the vaccine; about 33,000 people fall in that category. Harris said Anchorage is expecting about 14,600 doses this month and vaccination clinics were planned throughout the weekend and early next week.
— An Oklahoma judge has extended a temporary restraining order allowing bars and restaurants across Oklahoma to stay open past an 11 p.m. curfew Gov. Kevin Stitt issued in November in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus. District Judge Susan Stallings heard arguments in the case Friday and extended the Dec. 29 order while she considers ruling in a lawsuit by bar owners who argue the governor doesn’t have legal authority to impose the curfew, according to court records. Attorneys for the governor say state law gives Stitt “broad and flexible authority needed” to combat the virus' spread. On Saturday, Oklahoma had the sixth most new cases per capita in the nation with 1,218.16 per 100,000 residents, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
THE NUMBERS: According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the seven-day rolling average for daily new deaths in the U.S. rose over the past two weeks, going from 2,368.1 on Dec. 25 to 2,982.7 on Friday.
___
'Brian did his job': Family remembers fallen Capitol officer
SOUTH RIVER, N.J. (AP) — From his early days growing up in a New Jersey hamlet, Brian Sicknick wanted to be a police officer.
He enlisted in the National Guard six months after graduating high school in 1997, deploying to Saudi Arabia and then Kyrgyzstan. Joining the Guard was his means to joining law enforcement, his family said.
He would join the U.S. Capitol Police in 2008, serving until his death Thursday after being attacked as rioters seething over President Donald Trump’s election loss stormed the U.S. Capitol, believing the president's false claims of a rigged election.
“His brother told me, ‘Brian did his job,’” said John Krenzel, the mayor of Sicknick’s hometown of South River, New Jersey. A congresswoman has asked top military officials that he be buried with honors at Arlington National Cemetery.
Sicknick's death has shaken America as it grapples with how an armed mob could storm the halls of the U.S. Capitol as the presidential election results were being certified, sending hundreds of lawmakers, staff and journalists fleeing for safety. Videos published online show vastly outnumbered Capitol Police officers trying in vain to stop surging rioters, though other videos show officers not moving to stop rioters in the building.
___
2 men in high-profile photos among latest charged in DC riot
Two men accused of joining a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters that stormed the nation’s Capitol — one wearing a horned, fur hat and the other carrying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s lectern — were charged Saturday, the latest arrests in Wednesday’s mayhem that left five people dead.
The arrests come as more images emerge showing just how violent the riots were: a bloodied officer crushed in a doorway screaming; another tumbling over a railing into the crowd below after being body-slammed from behind; members of the media being cursed, shoved and punched.
Jacob Anthony Chansley, an Arizona man seen in photos and video of the mob with a painted face and wearing a costume that included the horned hat, was taken into custody Saturday and charged with counts that include violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.
Chansley, more commonly known as Jake Angeli, will remain in custody in Arizona pending a detention hearing that will be scheduled during an initial court appearance early in the coming week, Assistant U.S. Attorney Esther Winne told The Associated Press by email. Chansley did not immediately respond to messages left via email and telephone.
Chansley, who had become a staple in his costume at pro-Trump protests across the country, is now among dozens of people arrested in the wake of the Capitol invasion by a large mob of Trump supporters enraged over his election loss.
___
EXPLAINER: Who has been charged in the deadly Capitol riot?
Dozens of people have already been arrested and prosecutors across the U.S. have vowed to bring to justice those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, sending lawmakers into hiding as they began their work to affirm President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
The top federal prosecutor for the District of Columbia has said “all options are on the table” for charging the rioters, many of whom were egged on by President Donald Trump’s speech hours earlier at a rally over his election loss. Investigators are combing through photos, videos and tips from the public to track down members of the violent mob.
A Capitol Police officer died after he was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher as rioters descended on the building and many other officers were injured. A woman from California was shot to death by Capitol Police and three other people died after medical emergencies during the chaos.
Some questions and answers about the investigation into the Capitol breach:
HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE BEEN CHARGED?