Michigan high court asked to OK ballot question on abortion
LANSING, Mich. — An abortion-rights group on Thursday asked the Michigan Supreme Court to approve a November ballot question on whether a right to abortion should be enshrined in the state constitution. Reproductive Freedom for All filed its request with the high court after the state canvassing board rejected the...
Doug Mastriano sues Jan. 6 committee over deposition authority
HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s Republican nominee for governor on Thursday sued the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, contesting its legal ability to force him to answer questions about it. The lawsuit filed by Doug Mastriano contends that the committee lacks appointees of House Minority...
Jan. 6 panel asks former Speaker Newt Gingrich for information
WASHINGTON — The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection is seeking information from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich about his communications with senior advisers to then-President Donald Trump in the days leading up to the 2021 attack on the Capitol. The committee’s chairman, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, wrote in...
Ginni Thomas emails urged lawmakers to overturn Biden’s win in Wisconsin
MADISON, Wis. — The wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas contacted at least two Wisconsin state lawmakers, including the chair of the Senate elections committee, urging them to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 election win in the tightly contested state, emails obtained Thursday by The Associated Press show....
Florida GOP chair found guilty in vote-siphoning scheme
SANFORD, Fla. — A local Republican Party chairman in central Florida was found guilty Thursday of a misdemeanor campaign finance violation that prosecutors say was part of a larger scheme to siphon off votes from a Democrat in a state senate race. Following the verdict, a judge in Seminole County...
Ex-NYPD officer Thomas Webster gets 10 years in prison for Jan. 6 attack
WASHINGTON — A retired New York Police Department officer was sentenced on Thursday to 10 years in prison for attacking the U.S. Capitol and using a metal flagpole to assault one of the police officers trying to hold off a mob of Donald Trump supporters. Thomas Webster’s prison sentence is...
NYPD union may sue teen punched out by cop in caught-on-camera clashVideo
NEW YORK — An NYPD union may sue the 19-year-old woman who tried to interfere with her boyfriend’s arrest for attempted-murder in Harlem — and was slugged by a city cop as a result. The Detectives Endowment Association is exploring a possible civil suit against Tamani Crum for slapping and...
Putin pays tribute to Gorbachev but won’t attend his funeral
MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin privately laid flowers at Mikhail Gorbachev’s coffin on Thursday, snubbing the weekend’s public funeral in a move reflecting the Kremlin’s uneasiness about Gorbachev’s legacy. Just before departing for a working trip to Russia’s western-most Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, Putin visited a Moscow hospital where...
Watering while Black: anatomy of a pastor’s Alabama arrest
CHILDERSBURG, Ala. — Michael Jennings wasn’t breaking any laws or doing anything that was obviously suspicious; the Black minister was simply watering the flowers of a neighbor who was out of town. Yet there was a problem: Around the corner, Amber Roberson, who is white, thought she was helping that...
Tech tool offers police ‘mass surveillance on a budget’
Local law enforcement agencies from suburban Southern California to rural North Carolina have been using an obscure cellphone tracking tool, at times without search warrants, that gives them the power to follow people’s movements months back in time, according to public records and internal emails obtained by The Associated Press....
U.S. advisers endorse updated covid shots for fall boosters
U.S. health advisers on Thursday endorsed new covid-19 boosters that target today’s most common omicron strains, saying if enough people roll up their sleeves, the updated shots could blunt a winter surge. The tweaked shots made by Pfizer and rival Moderna promise Americans a chance at their most up-to-date protection...
Twitter readies edit feature for premium users
Permanently misspelled tweets might soon be a thing of the past. Twitter said Thursday it will roll out an editing feature to subscribers of its premium Twitter Blue service later this month. In an update on its plans to introduce an edit button, the social media company said it has...
Gov. Wolf starts process to pardon lower-level pot convictions
HARRISBURG — Pennsylvanians with minor, nonviolent marijuana criminal convictions could be pardoned beginning Thursday in a period until the end of the month under a joint effort from Gov. Tom Wolf and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman. The so-called “one-time, large-scale pardon effort” will allow anyone who has been convicted of...
Poland demands $1.3 trillion war reparations from Germany
WARSAW, Poland — Poland’s top politician said Thursday that the government will seek equivalent of some $1.3 trillion in reparations from Germany for the Nazis’ World War II invasion and occupation of his country. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the Law and Justice party, announced the huge claim at the release...
Biden at Independence Hall: Trump, allies threaten democracy
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden warned Thursday night that “equality and democracy are under assault” in the U.S. as he sounded an alarm about his predecessor, Donald Trump, and “MAGA Republican” adherents, labeling them an extremist threat to the nation and its future. Aiming to reframe the November elections as...
Trump documents: No immediate ruling on outside legal expertVideo
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A federal judge heard arguments Thursday on whether to appoint an outside legal expert to review government records seized by the FBI last month in a search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida home. There was no immediate ruling, but the judge had indicated last...
California governor declares heat wave state of emergencyVideo
LOS ANGELES — California’s governor declared a state of emergency Wednesday to increase power production and he urged residents to reduce electricity use as a heat wave spread over the West and officials warned there could possible outages if conditions worsen. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s declaration followed a “Flex Alert” by...
Trump legal team says storage of government documents is no ‘cause for alarm’
WASHINGTON — The storage of sensitive government documents at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida “should have never been cause for alarm,” his lawyers argued in a court filing Wednesday. “The purported justification for the initiation of this criminal probe was the alleged discovery of sensitive information contained...
Sarah Palin loses Alaska House special election to Mary Peltola
JUNEAU, Alaska — Democrat Mary Peltola won the special election for Alaska’s only U.S. House seat on Wednesday, besting a field that included Republican Sarah Palin, who was seeking a political comeback in the state where she was once governor. Peltola, who is Yup’ik and turned 49 on Wednesday, will...
Columbus chief: Man fatally shot by police may have held vape pen
COLUMBUS, Ohio — A man fatally shot by police in Ohio’s capital city appeared to be holding a vape pen in his hand, the city police chief said as an investigation was underway into the shooting. Donovan Lewis, 20, died at a hospital as a result of the shooting early...
Trump lawyer John Eastman advised to plead the Fifth in Georgia probeVideo
ATLANTA — Lawyers for John Eastman, a lead architect of some of Donald Trump’s efforts to remain in power after the 2020 election, said Wednesday they advised their client to assert attorney-client privilege and invoke his constitutional right to remain silent when testifying before a special grand jury investigating possible...
Jackson water crisis forces residents to find alternativesVideo
JACKSON, Miss. — The water pressure at James Brown’s home in Jackson was so low the faucets barely dripped. He couldn’t cook. He couldn’t bathe. But he still had to work. The 73-year-old tree-cutter hauled bags of ice into his truck at a gas station on his way to a...
Reported sexual assaults across U.S. military increase by 13%
WASHINGTON — Reports of sexual assaults across the U.S. military jumped by 13% last year, driven by significant increases in the Army and the Navy as bases began to move out of pandemic restrictions and public venues reopened, The Associated Press has learned. Mirroring the increase in those reports is...
Thousands of Pa. nursing home workers may strike despite $600M for care in state budget
Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media. Sign up for our free newsletters. HARRISBURG — Months after the state approved hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to bolster caregiving in nursing homes, thousands of...
Justice Department is likely to wait past midterms to reveal any charges against Trump, sources sayVideo
WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors are likely to wait until after the November election to announce any charges against Donald Trump, if they determine he broke laws, according to people familiar. The unprecedented prospect of bringing charges against a former U.S. president is creating intense scrutiny of the Justice Department in...
