AP News in Brief at 9:04 p.m. EST
Top Republican says Trump committed 'impeachable offenses'
WASHINGTON (AP) - Democrats' momentum for a fresh drive to quickly impeach outgoing President Donald Trump gained support Saturday, and a top Republican said the president's role in the deadly riot at the Capitol by a violent mob of Trump supporters was worthy of rebuke.
Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said he believed Trump had committed "impeachable offenses." But he stopped short of saying whether he would vote to remove the president from office at the conclusion of a Senate trial if the House sent over articles of impeachment.
"I don´t know what they are going to send over and one of the things that I´m concerned about, frankly, is whether the House would completely politicize something," Toomey said Saturday on Fox News Channel, speaking of the Democratic-controlled House.
"I do think the president committed impeachable offenses, but I don´t know what is going to land on the Senate floor, if anything," Toomey said.
The new Democratic effort to stamp Trump's presidential record - for the second time and days before his term ends - with the indelible mark of impeachment gained momentum Saturday.
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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.
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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."
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Body parts, debris found after Indonesia plane crash
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - Indonesian rescuers pulled out body parts, pieces of clothing and scraps of metal from the Java Sea early Sunday morning, a day after a Boeing 737-500 with 62 people onboard crashed shortly after takeoff from Jakarta, officials said.
Officials were hopeful they were honing in on the wreckage of Sriwijaya Air Flight 182 after sonar equipment detected a signal from the aircraft.
Transportation Minister Budi Karya Sumadi told reporters that authorities have launched massive search efforts after identifying "the possible location of the crash site."
"These pieces were found by the SAR team between Lancang Island and Laki Island," National Search and Rescue Agency Bagus Puruhito in a statement.
Indonesian military chief Air Chief Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto said teams on the Rigel navy ship equipped with a remote-operated vehicle had detected a signal from the aircraft, which fit the coordinates from the last contact made by the pilots before the plane went missing.
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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 and Apple both removed it from their app stores.
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.
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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.
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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.
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'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, and got a positive early response.
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.
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The Latest: Austin will treat patients at convention center
AUSTIN, Texas -- Health officials in Austin say they will open space in the Austin Convention Center for COVID-19 patients because they expect that the area's health care system will soon be overwhelmed.
The state health department reported a record number of hospitalizations for the 13th consecutive day. Nearly 14,000 COVID-19 patients were hospitalized statewide on Saturday.
The Alternate Care Site in Austin was initially established during a summer surge of the coronavirus, but has not yet taken patients, according to a statement from the Austin-Travis County Health Authority.
"Activating the Alternate Care Site means that we believe that it is inevitable that the healthcare system in Central Texas will exceed capacity and will soon be overwhelmed," said Dr. Jason Pickett, deputy medical director of the health authority.
The site is for patients who do not need high-level or intensive care, according to the statement. Patients who require such care will remain at hospitals. As of Saturday, there have been more than 1.9 million virus cases in Texas and 29,691 deaths since the pandemic began.
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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 in Wednesday's siege, which forced lawmakers to go into hiding for hours and halt their voting to affirm President-elect Joe Biden´s victory. Another officer tumbled over a railing into the crowd below after being body-slammed from behind. Members of the media were cursed, shoved and punched.
A vast number of photos and videos captured the riot, which left five people dead. Many of the images were taken by the rioters themselves, few of whom wore masks that would have lowered not only their chances of contracting the coronavirus, but their chances of being identified. Some took pains to stand out.
Jacob Anthony Chansley, an Arizona man seen in photos and video of the mob with a painted face and wearing a costume that included a horned, fur 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.
