Arizona indicts 18 in case over 2020 election in Arizona, including Giuliani and Meadows
PHOENIX (AP) — An Arizona grand jury has indicted former President Donald Trump ‘s chief of staff Mark Meadows, lawyer Rudy Giuliani and 16 others for their efforts to use so-called fake electors to try to overturn Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
The indictment released Wednesday names 11 Republicans who submitted a document to Congress falsely declaring that Trump won Arizona in 2020, including the former state party chair, a 2022 U.S. Senate candidate and two sitting state lawmakers. They’re charged with nine counts each of conspiracy, fraud and forgery. The identities of seven other defendants, including Giuliani and Meadows, were not immediately released because they had not yet been served with the charges.
Trump, who is described in the indictment as an unindicted co-conspirator, has argued that he can’t be prosecuted for acts he committed while serving as president. The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday will hear arguments on his bid to avoid federal prosecution over his efforts to reverse his loss.
With the indictments, Arizona becomes the fourth state where allies of the former president have been charged with using false or unproven claims about voter fraud related to the election. Heading into a likely November rematch with Biden, Trump continues to spread lies about the last election that are echoed by many of his supporters.
“I will not allow American democracy to be undermined,” Democratic state Attorney General Kris Mayes said in a video released by her office. “It’s too important.”
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Dozens arrested on California campus after students in Texas detained as Gaza war protests persist
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Police peacefully arrested student protesters at the University of Southern California on Wednesday, hours after police at a Texas university aggressively detained dozens in the latest clashes between law enforcement and those protesting the Israel-Hamas war on campuses nationwide.
While tensions rose between police and protesters at USC earlier in the day, in the evening a few dozen demonstrators standing in a circle with locked arms were detained one by one without incident.
Police officers encircled the dwindling group, which sat in defiance of an earlier warning to disperse or be arrested. Beyond the police line, hundreds of onlookers watched as helicopters buzzed overhead. The school closed the campus.
While universities struggling to defuse unrest have quickly turned to law enforcement, the arrests in California were in sharp contrast to the chaos that ensued just hours earlier at the University of Texas at Austin.
Hundreds of local and state police — including some on horseback and holding batons — pushed into protesters, at one point sending some tumbling into the street. Officers made 34 arrests at the behest of the university and Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott, according to the state Department of Public Safety.
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Key moments in the Supreme Court’s latest abortion case that could change how women get care
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court heard its first test on Wednesday of state abortion bans that have been enacted since the court upended the Roe v. Wade constitutional right to abortion. While the current case involves an Idaho abortion ban, the court’s ruling could have implications beyond that state.
Idaho lawmakers have banned abortion except when a mother’s life is at risk. The Biden administration says the state law conflicts with a federal law requiring emergency room doctors to stabilize patients, no matter what, even if that means an abortion.
How the court will rule is uncertain. The justices could make a major ruling — or they could rule narrowly on how Idaho’s state law interacts with the federal law, the the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act ( EMTALA ).
A look at the key points in Wednesday’s arguments.
Attorneys for both sides warned that the justices’ ruling could affect women and doctors far beyond Idaho, changing how emergency rooms treat patients in many other states.
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To pass Ukraine aid, ‘Reagan Republican’ leaders in Congress navigated a party transformed by Trump
WASHINGTON (AP) — For Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Mike Johnson, the necessity of providing Ukraine with weapons and other aid as it fends off Russia’s invasion is rooted in their earliest and most formative political memories.
McConnell, 82, tells the story of his father’s letters from Eastern Europe in 1945, at the end of World War II, when the foot soldier observed that the Russians were “going to be a big problem” before the communist takeover to come. Johnson, 30 years younger, came of age as the Cold War was ending.
As both men pushed their party this week to support a $95 billion aid package that sends support to Ukraine, as well as Israel, Taiwan and humanitarian missions, they labeled themselves “Reagan Republicans” an described the fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin in terms of U.S. strength and leadership. But the all-out effort to get the legislation through Congress left both of them grappling with an entirely new Republican Party shaped by former President Donald Trump.
While McConnell, R-Ky., and Johnson, R-La., took different approaches to handling Trump, the presumptive White House nominee in 2024, the struggle highlighted the fundamental battle within the GOP: Will conservatives continue their march toward Trump’s “America First” doctrine on foreign affairs or will they find the value in standing with America’s allies? And is the GOP still the party of Ronald Reagan?
“I think we’re having an internal debate about that,” McConnell said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I’m a Reagan guy and I think today — at least on this episode — we turned the tables on the isolationists.”
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What to know in the Supreme Court case about immunity for former President Trump
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has scheduled a special session to hear arguments over whether former President Donald Trump can be prosecuted over his efforts to undo his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden.
The case, to be argued Thursday, stems from Trump’s attempts to have charges against him dismissed. Lower courts have found he cannot claim immunity for actions that, prosecutors say, illegally sought to interfere with the election results.
The Republican ex-president has been charged in federal court in Washington with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, one of four criminal cases he is facing. A trial has begun in New York over hush money payments to a porn star to cover up an alleged sexual encounter.
The Supreme Court is moving faster than usual in taking up the case, though not as quickly as special counsel Jack Smith wanted, raising questions about whether there will be time to hold a trial before the November election, if the justices agree with lower courts that Trump can be prosecuted.
The justices ruled earlier this term in another case that arose from Trump’s actions following the election, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The court unanimously held that states could not invoke a provision of the 14th Amendment known as the insurrection clause to prevent Trump from appearing on presidential ballots.
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Russia vetoes a UN resolution calling for the prevention of a dangerous nuclear arms race in space
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Russia on Wednesday vetoed a U.N. resolution sponsored by the United States and Japan calling on all nations to prevent a dangerous nuclear arms race in outer space, calling it “a dirty spectacle” that cherry picks weapons of mass destruction from all other weapons that should also be banned.
The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 13 in favor, Russia opposed and China abstaining.
The resolution would have called on all countries not to develop or deploy nuclear arms or other weapons of mass destruction in space, as banned under a 1967 international treaty that included the U.S. and Russia, and to agree to the need to verify compliance.
U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said after the vote that Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Moscow has no intention of deploying nuclear weapons in space.
“Today’s veto begs the question: Why? Why, if you are following the rules, would you not support a resolution that reaffirms them? What could you possibly be hiding,” she asked. “It’s baffling. And it’s a shame.”
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Blinken, in Shanghai, begins expected contentious talks with Chinese officials
SHANGHAI (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken opened his first full day of meetings in China on Thursday by talking with local government officials in Shanghai.
Blinken discussed local and regional issues with Chen Jining, the Chinese Communist Party Secretary of Shanghai. He also planned to speak to students and business leaders before flying to Beijing for what are expected to be contentious talks with national officials, including Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
Blinken arrived in Shanghai on Wednesday shortly before President Joe Biden signed a $95 billion foreign aid package that has several elements likely to anger the Chinese, including $8 billion to counter China’s growing aggressiveness toward Taiwan and in the South China Sea. It also seeks to force TikTok’s China-based parent company to sell the social media platform.
China has railed against U.S. assistance to Taiwan, the self-governing island that it regards as a renegade province, and immediately condemned the move as a dangerous provocation. It also strongly opposes efforts to force TikTok’s sale.
Still, the fact that Blinken made the trip — shortly after a conversation between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, a similar visit to China by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and a call between the U.S. and Chinese defense chiefs — is a sign the two sides are at least willing to discuss their differences.
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How US changes to ‘noncompete’ agreements and overtime pay could affect workers
NEW YORK (AP) — For millions of American workers, the federal government took two actions this week that could bestow potentially far-reaching benefits.
In one move, the Federal Trade Commission voted to ban noncompete agreements, which bar millions of workers from leaving their employers to join a competitor or start a rival business for a specific period of time. The FTC’s move, which is already being challenged in court, would mean that such employees could apply for jobs they weren’t previously eligible to seek.
In a second move, the Biden administration finalized a rule that will make millions more salaried workers eligible for overtime pay. The rule significantly raises the salary level that workers could earn and still qualify for overtime.
The new rules don’t take effect immediately. And they won’t benefit everyone. So what exactly would these rules mean for America’s workers?
Noncompete agreements, which employers have deployed with greater frequency in recent years, limit an employee’s ability to jump ship for a rival company or start a competing business for a stated period of time. The idea is to prevent employees from taking a company’s trade secrets, job leads or sales relationships to a direct competitor, who could immediately capitalize on them.
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Relatives of those who died waiting for livers at now halted Houston transplant program seek answers
DALLAS (AP) — Several relatives of patients who died while waiting for a new liver said Wednesday they want to know if their loved ones were wrongfully denied a transplant by a Houston doctor accused of manipulating the waitlist to make some patients ineligible to receive a new organ.
Officials at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center have said they are investigating after finding that a doctor had made “inappropriate changes” in the national database for people awaiting liver transplants. Earlier this month, the hospital halted its liver and kidney programs.
Susie Garcia’s son, Richard Mostacci, died in February 2023 after being told he was too sick for a transplant. He was 43. “We saw him slipping away, slipping away and there was nothing that we could do, and we trusted, we trusted the doctors,” Garcia said at a news conference.
She’s among family members of three patients who retained attorneys with a Houston law firm that filed for a temporary restraining order Tuesday to prevent Dr. Steve Bynon from deleting or destroying evidence. Attorney Tommy Hastings said that some interactions with Bynon had caused “concerns about maybe some personal animosities and that maybe he may have taken it out on patients.”
“Again, we’re very early in this investigation,” Hastings said.
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Australia and New Zealand honor their war dead with dawn services on Anzac Day
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Hundreds of thousands of people gathered across Australia and New Zealand for dawn services and street marches Thursday to commemorate their war dead on Anzac Day.
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon attended a dawn service in his country’s largest city, Auckland, while Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese saw the sun rise at a World War II memorial in the wilds of Australia’s nearest neighbor, Papua New Guinea.
April 25 is the date in 1915 when the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps landed on the beaches of Gallipoli, in northwest Turkey, in an ill-fated campaign that was the soldiers’ first combat of World War I.
Albanese trekked to the memorial in the town of Isurava over two days with Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape. Isurava was the site of a major battle where United States and Australian troops fought the Japanese in August 1942.
“Those who enlisted for the Second World War grew up in an Australia scarred by the memory of the first,” Nine Network reported Albanese telling the gathering.
The Associated Press
