January 10, 2021 8:12 am
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. The far right-friendly Parler may be the leading candidate, though Google and Apple have both removed it from their app stores and Amazon decided to boot it off its web hosting service. That could knock it offline for a week, Parler’s CEO said. 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.
January 10, 2021 8:09 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats’ momentum for a fresh drive to quickly impeach outgoing President Donald Trump has gained support, 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 Saturday he believed Trump had committed “impeachable offenses.” But he did not explicitly say 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. Late Saturday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to her Democratic colleagues reiterating that Trump must be held accountable — but stopped short of committing to an impeachment vote. Still, she told her caucus, “I urge you to be prepared to return to Washington this week.”
January 10, 2021 8:07 am
Pennsylvania on Friday released an updated coronavirus vaccine plan that makes more people eligible for shots in the initial phases of the rollout. Health care workers and nursing home residents remain at the front of the line, followed by people 75 years and older and “essential workers” like police officers, grocery store clerks and teachers. With COVID-19 continuing to rage throughout Pennsylvania, health officials cautioned the state is still months away from having enough doses of the two approved vaccines to inoculate the general public. To date, the federal government has allocated to Pennsylvania more than 827,000 doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. More than 235,000 shots have been given, though Levine said the actual number is certain to be higher because reporting by hospitals and pharmacies lags by one to three days. Doctors, nurses and other health workers, and residents and staff at nursing homes and long-term care facilities — a group that numbers about 1 million — are rolling up their sleeves first. State officials have not offered a timeline for when that initial phase of the vaccination campaign, which began last month, will be completed.
January 9, 2021 9:33 am
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) – A Sriwijaya Air passenger jet carrying 62 people has lost contact with air traffic controllers after taking off from Indonesia’s capital on a domestic flight. Indonesian Transportation Ministry spokesperson Adita Irawati said the Boeing 737-500 took off from Jakarta at about 1:56 p.m. Saturday and lost contact with the control tower at 2:40 p.m. A statement released by the airline said the plane was on an estimated 90-minute flight from Jakarta to Pontianak, the capital of West Kalimantan province on Indonesia’s Borneo island. There were 56 passengers and six crew members onboard.
January 9, 2021 6:27 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – Democrats in Congress are swiftly laying plans to impeach President Donald Trump and ensure an “unhinged” commander-in-chief can do no further damage in his remaining days in office. They are trying to send a message to the nation, and the world, that mob violence inspired by a White House will not stand. This after the shocking siege of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters left five dead. Some Republicans are joining, saying Trump must go. Impeachment proceedings could begin in a matter of days. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she also has spoken to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff about preventing Trump from ordering a nuclear strike in his final days.
January 9, 2021 6:25 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – John Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, is taking definitive steps toward running for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat in 2022. Fetterman said Friday he’s exploring a run for U.S. Senate. Previously, Fetterman had said that he was considering running for either governor or U.S. Senate in 2022. But Fetterman says he’s no longer interested in running for governor. He says he’ll have a final decision in the coming weeks. Both offices, governor and U.S. Senate, are coming open in 2023. Fetterman, the former mayor of small-town Braddock, near Pittsburgh, came in third in 2016’s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate before running successfully for lieutenant governor in 2018.
January 9, 2021 5:33 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – The Twitter account realDonaldTrump, which grew from the random musings of a reality TV star into the cudgel of a president, died Friday. It was not quite 12 years old. The provocative handle was given birth by a New York real estate tycoon who later became the 45th U.S. president. It started on May 4, 2009, with a tweet promoting Donald Trump’s upcoming appearance on David Letterman’s show. It departed more than 57,000 tweets later, with Trump using some of his final postings to commiserate with a pro-Trump mob that besieged the halls of Congress as lawmakers were set to certify his election defeat.
January 9, 2021 5:18 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump says he won’t attend President-elect Joe Biden’s Inauguration on Jan. 20. He will be the first incumbent president since Andrew Johnson to skip his successors inauguration. In a Friday tweet Trump said, “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.” Trump offered no clues for how he would spent his final hours in office. Biden will become president at noon regardless of Trump’s plans. Vice President Mike Pence is expected to attend the inauguration, although a spokesman said no decision had been made.
January 9, 2021 5:15 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – U.S. employers shed jobs last month for the first time since April, cutting 140,000 positions, clear evidence that the economy is faltering as the viral pandemic tightens its grip on consumers and businesses. The unemployment rate stayed at 6.7%, the first time it hasn’t fallen since April. Friday’s figures from the Labor Department suggest that employers have rehired roughly all the workers they can afford to after having laid off more than 22 million in the spring – the worst such loss on record. The economy still has 9.9 million fewer jobs than it did before the pandemic sent it sinking into a deep recession nearly a year ago.
January 9, 2021 5:15 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she has spoken to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff about preventing President Donald Trump from ordering a nuclear strike in his final days in office. She said she spoke to the top general about “precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike.” Democrats are discussing whether to act quickly to impeach Trump as soon as next week. This comes after Trump encouraged loyalists who ransacked the Capitol in a siege that has left five people dead.
