November 12, 2020 4:02 am
PHILADELPHIA (AP) – Loyalists of President Donald Trump have filed at least 15 legal challenges in Pennsylvania alone in an effort to reclaim the state’s 20 electoral votes. There’s action, too, on the legal front in Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Michigan as the president insists without evidence that the election was stolen from him. Yet election officials nationwide from both parties say there’s been no conspiracy. In court, his lawyers must walk a precarious line between advocating for their client and upholding their professional oath. Experts doubt the suits can reverse the outcome in a single state, let alone the election. Trump aides and allies have privately admitted as much, suggesting the challenges are designed more to stoke his base.
November 12, 2020 4:00 am
(AP) – With coronavirus running rampant, a suburban Philadelphia county says it will consider ordering schools to pause in-person instruction for two weeks. The state’s largest teachers union, meanwhile, is demanding that school districts in nearly two dozen Pennsylvania counties with the worst outbreaks tell students to temporarily learn from home. Pennsylvania has been setting daily case records, with confirmed cases are up 75% in two weeks to 3,400 per day. Statewide, hospitalizations have more than tripled since the beginning of October. Montgomery County says it plans to meet Thursday to consider whether to order all schools in the county to go online for two weeks beginning Nov. 23.
November 12, 2020 2:14 am
PHILADELPHIA (AP) – Philadelphia police say a woman who was nine months pregnant is in critical condition after she was shot, but doctors managed to save her baby. The shooting happened Wednesday in the city’s Kensington section. Family members told police the 39-year-old was standing in the front doorway when a gunshot rang out. Chief Inspector Scott Small says the woman suffered a single gunshot wound to her abdomen. She was taken to Temple University Hospital, where an emergency caesarean section was performed. Small says the baby survived. Small says the woman may have been hit by a stray bullet.
November 11, 2020 3:41 pm
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) – Men who have made allegations of abuse by former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick expressed shock, outrage and anger after an internal Vatican report revealed the scale of what was known about the clergyman’s behavior and what was ignored. The internal investigation, released Tuesday, found that bishops, cardinals and popes downplayed or dismissed multiple reports of sexual misconduct by the now-90-year-old McCarrick. The men who say McCarrick abused them are demanding that the Vatican institute changes to ensure that nothing like what was described in the report can happen again. Groups that advocate for survivors of clergy sex abuse joined the calls for broader reforms.
November 11, 2020 3:37 pm
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump has won the state of Alaska. The Republican nominee was awarded the state’s three electoral votes, pushing his Electoral College tally to 217. His Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, was declared the winner of the presidential election on Nov. 7 after flipping Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Trump won those states in 2016. Biden has 290 electoral votes. The Associated Press has not called Georgia and North Carolina. Control of the Senate won’t be decided until the new year after Republicans won a seat in Alaska on Wednesday. Incumbent Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan defeated Al Gross, an independent running as a Democrat. Neither party can lock the Senate majority until January runoffs in Georgia.
November 11, 2020 4:34 am
Officials in Charleroi Borough have taken some heat after their “Virtual Community Days” celebration featured a band that displayed a Confederate Flag on stage. At Tuesday’s council meeting, David Hunter, president of the Mon Valley NAACP, addressed council after he said residents contacted them about the event that took place on borough property and in the presence of borough officials back in October. Hunter said, “it sends a very bad message because that flag is a symbol of the Confederacy, slavery, and discrimination.” Council President, Mark Alterici, offered an apology on behalf of council and said the videos have since been removed from social media. It is estimated that 10-15 thousand viewers watched the virtual concerts due to the pandemic. The band, Six Gun Sally, is a local Southern/Classic Rock band. Both council and the NAACP say they want to work together to prevent issues like these from happening again and to address the lack of diversity among borough employees and regional police officers.
November 11, 2020 4:08 am
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) – President-elect Joe Biden is promising that “we’re going to get right to work” and is downplaying concerns that President Donald Trump’s refusal to acknowledge his victory could undermine national security. Trump has blocked his Democratic rival from receiving the intelligence briefings traditionally shared with incoming presidents, according to someone with knowledge of the situation but not authorized to disclose private conversations. Asked Tuesday about the Republican resistance, Biden says it “does not change the dynamic at all in what we’re able to do.” He says additional intelligence briefings “would be useful,” but “we don’t see anything slowing us down.”
November 11, 2020 4:06 am
NEW YORK (AP) – The U.S. has hit a record number of coronavirus hospitalizations and surpassed 1 million new confirmed cases in just the first 10 days of November. The grim milestones Tuesday come amid a nationwide surge of infections that shows no signs of slowing. The new wave appears bigger and more widespread than the surges that happened in the spring and summer – and threatens to be worse. Deaths are climbing again, reaching an average of more than 930 a day. However, experts say medical and testing advances give them reason to believe the nation is better able to deal with the virus this time.
November 11, 2020 4:04 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – Democrats have clinched two more years of controlling the House. But they’ll do it with a potentially razor-thin majority. That would mean a bittersweet finale to last week’s elections that’s leaving them divided and with scant margin for error for advancing their agenda. The Associated Press has determined that Democrats have now nailed down at least 218 seats in the 435-member chamber. They could still win several others when more votes are counted. But while they will control the House, they had expected to win perhaps 15 new seats until they were blindsided by a surge of Republican voters in districts around the country.
November 11, 2020 4:03 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump’s campaign has been blasting out emails and text messages to supporters, raising money for an “election defense fund” to contest the outcome of last week’s election. But a close read of the fine print reveals the messages are misleading. Much of the money has instead paid down Trump’s campaign debt, replenished the Republican National Committee and, more recently, helped get Save America, a new political action committee Trump founded, off the ground. The unusual way the Trump campaign is divvying up the contributions has drawn scrutiny from election watchdogs, who say Trump and his family could financially benefit from the arrangement.
