Lawmakers who voted against Biden are denounced back home
Republican members of Congress who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory, even after a mob broke into the Capitol, are being denounced by critics in their home districts who demand that they resign or be ousted. Protesters, newspaper editorial boards and local-level Democrats have urged the lawmakers to step...
Pelosi: House ‘will proceed’ with impeachment of TrumpVideo
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday the House will proceed with legislation to impeach President Donald Trump, calling him a threat to democracy after the deadly assault on the Capitol. Pelosi made the announcement in a letter to colleagues. She said the House will act with solemnity but...
Trump remains defiant amid calls to resignVideo
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump enters the last days of his presidency isolated and shunned by former allies and members of his own party as he faces a second impeachment and growing calls for his resignation after his supporters launched an assault on the nation’s Capitol in an effort to...
Capitol police were overrun, ‘left naked’ against rioters
WASHINGTON — Despite ample warnings about pro-Trump demonstrations in Washington, U.S. Capitol Police did not bolster staffing on Wednesday and made no preparations for the possibility that the planned protests could escalate into massive violent riots, according to several people briefed on law enforcement’s response. The revelations shed new light...
Virginia town places 2 officers on leave over D.C. rally
ROCKY MOUNT, Va. — A Virginia town put two officers on leave after they went off-duty to events in Washington that led to a deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol. The town of Rocky Mount issued a statement Sunday saying that two off-duty officers from the Rocky Mount Police Department...
Coronavirus infections top 90 million confirmed cases
BALTIMORE — Coronavirus infections have now surpassed 90 million confirmed cases around the world, as more countries braced for wider spread of more virulent strains of a disease that has now killed nearly 2 million worldwide. The number of infections worldwide has doubled in just 10 weeks, according to a...
Schwarzenegger compares attack on Capitol to Nazi violenceVideo
Arnold Schwarzenegger likened this week’s siege of the U.S. Capitol to Nazi attacks on Jews in Europe ahead of World War II in a scathing video in which the former California governor also called President Trump “the worst president ever.” Schwarzenegger wasn’t yet alive when Nazis rampaged through Germany and...
Vaccine rollout confirms public health officials’ warnings
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Public health officials sounded the alarm for months, complaining that they did not have enough support or money to get covid-19 vaccines quickly into arms. Now the slower-than-expected start to the largest vaccination effort in U.S. history is proving them right. As they work to ramp up...
Sens. Toomey, Murkowski urge Trump to resign; impeachment gains support
WASHINGTON — Two Republican senators now say Donald Trump should resign and a third says the president should be “very careful” in his remaining days in office as the House prepares to impeach Trump in the wake of deadly riots at the Capitol. Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey on Sunday joined...
Indonesian divers find parts of plane wreckage in Java Sea
JAKARTA, Indonesia — Authorities said they determined the location of the crash site and black boxes of a Boeing 737-500 on Sunday, a day after the aircraft crashed into the Java Sea with 62 people on board shortly after taking off from Indonesia’s capital. The head of Indonesia’s National Search...
Oaths questioned as Trump’s backers fight against loss
Before they take office, elected officials swear to uphold the U.S. Constitution. But what happens when they are accused of doing the opposite? As some Republicans continued to back President Donald Trump’s doomed effort to overturn the election, critics — including President-elect Joe Biden — accused them of violating their...
In wake of Capitol riot, Americans struggle for answers
This past week, Americans watched as the hallowed chambers of the Capitol were overrun and defiled, not by some foreign enemy of democracy but a mob of their fellow citizens. And then they tried to make sense of it. In letters to the editor and posts on social media, they...
Police: Man shoots 7 in series of Chicago-area attacks
CHICAGO — A man killed three people and wounded four others in a series of shootings over roughly four hours that started on Chicago’s South Side and ended with his death in a shootout with police in a parking lot just north of the city. Investigators are trying to determine...
Parler squeezed as Trump seeks new online megaphone
President Donald Trump has been kicked off of most mainstream social media platforms following his supporters’ siege on the U.S. Capitol. But it remains to be seen how fast or where — if anywhere — on the internet he will be able to reach his followers. The far right-friendly Parler...
Trump legacy on race shadowed by divisive rhetoric, actions
CHICAGO — President Donald Trump repeatedly claimed in the final months of his presidency — and without a trace of irony — to have done more for Black Americans than anyone with the “possible exception” of Abraham Lincoln. He boasted that the African American unemployment rate dropped to record lows...
Squelched by Twitter, Trump seeks new online megaphone
BOSTON — 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...
Lawmakers complete work on bills to limit Kentucky governor’s power
FRANKFORT, Ky. — In a stinging rebuke of the Democratic governor’s response to COVID-19, Republican lawmakers on Saturday gave final passage to bills limiting his emergency powers to impose restrictions meant to contain the coronavirus. After months of fuming from the sidelines as Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear restricted some business...
Dems’ momentum builds to impeach Trump; Pelosi hits rioters
WASHINGTON — 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...
Toomey calls on Trump to resign, says it’s what’s best for countryVideo
Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania is calling on President Donald Trump to resign for what Toomey says would be the good of the country after the Capitol riot that was carried out by supporters of the president. Toomey says resignation is the “best path forward, the best way to get...
Maine marijuana shops report brisk business despite pandemic
PORTLAND, Maine — Maine’s rollout of legal marijuana sales has been muted compared with other states because of the coronavirus pandemic, but shops are reporting brisk business nonetheless. Maine wasn’t able to replicate the grand opening scenes that have followed the first sales in other states. But regulators reported more...
U.S. motions expand drug claims against Honduras president
NEW YORK — U.S. federal prosecutors have filed motions saying that Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández took bribes from drug traffickers and had the country’s armed forces protect a cocaine laboratory and shipments to the United States. The documents quote Hernández as saying he wanted to “‘shove the drugs right...
AP 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...
Georgia’s GOP governor under fire after U.S. Senate losses
ATLANTA — Even though he wasn’t on the ballot, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has been painfully bruised by the 2020 elections. In a state long dominated by Republicans, Democrats won Georgia’s electoral votes for president in November and two U.S. Senate seats in runoff elections Tuesday, defeating Kemp’s hand-picked Senate...
More arrests in Capitol riot as more video reveals brutality
Police charged more Capitol rioters on Saturday, including a man who carried off the House speaker’s lectern, as more graphic details of the insurrection emerged, revealing the violence and brutality of the mob that stormed a seat of American political power. A bloodied officer was crushed in a doorway screaming...
Queen Elizabeth II and husband receive covid-19 vaccinations
LONDON — Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, have received their covid-19 vaccinations, royal officials said Saturday. Buckingham Palace officials said in a statement that the 94-year-old monarch and Philip, 99, received their jabs Saturday, joining some 1.5 million people in Britain who have been given a first...