AP interview: Ginsburg doesn’t want to envision a Trump win
AP interview: Ginsburg doesn’t want to envision a Trump win
WASHINGTON (AP) — Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she doesn’t want to think about the possibility of Donald Trump winning the White House, and she predicts the next president — “whoever she will be” — will have a few appointments to make to the Supreme Court.
In an interview Thursday in her court office, the 83-year-old justice and leader of the court’s liberal wing said she presumes Democrat Hillary Clinton will be the next president. Asked what if Republican Donald Trump won instead, she said, “I don’t want to think about that possibility, but if it should be, then everything is up for grabs.”
That includes the future of the high court itself, on which she is the oldest justice. Two justices, Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer, are in their late 70s.
“It’s likely that the next president, whoever she will be, will have a few appointments to make,” Ginsburg said, smiling.
She didn’t sound as though she is preparing to step down soon and shows no signs of slowing down. Ginsburg said she has been catching up on sleep since the court finished its work last week before a busy summer of travel that will take her to Europe and, as is her custom, to see as much opera as she can fit in.
NATO leaders gear up for threats from Russia, south
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — NATO leaders geared up Friday for a long-term standoff with Russia, ordering multinational troops to Poland and the three Baltic states as Moscow moves forward with its own plans to station two new divisions along its western borders.
Alliance Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that on the first day of a landmark two-day summit, U.S. President Barack Obama and leaders of the 27 other NATO countries also declared the initial building blocks of a ballistic missile defense system operationally capable, recognized cyberspace as a domain for alliance operations, committed to boosting their countries’ civil preparedness, and renewed a pledge to spend a minimum of 2 percent of their national incomes on defense.
“We have just taken decisions to deliver 21st-century deterrence and defense in the face of 21st century challenges,” Stoltenberg told a news conference. He said deployment of the new NATO units to Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania on a rotational basis would start next year, with no end date.
“It’s an open-ended commitment and will last as long as necessary,” he said. “And it is a new reality because we didn’t have that kind of presence in the eastern part of the alliance before.”
He announced plans as well for an enhanced NATO presence in the Black Sea region, where Russia has also reasserted its influence, with creation of a multinational brigade under Romanian and Bulgarian command.
GOP to Clinton: Email investigations will go on
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans signaled they’re not done with election-year investigations of Hillary Clinton and whether she lied to Congress, even after a House committee signed off Friday on its report into the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya.
The 800-page report by the GOP-led Benghazi Committee found no wrongdoing by the former secretary of state, but the two-year inquiry had revealed that she used a private email server for government business, triggering a yearlong FBI investigation that continues to shadow the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
FBI Director James Comey said this week there weren’t grounds to prosecute Clinton but that she and her aides had been “extremely careless” in their handling of classified information.
The committee’s 7-4 vote Friday was split along party lines, reflecting partisanship that emerged even before the panel’s creation in May 2014 and only escalated since then. Democrats have submitted their own report on the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks that killed four Americans, including U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens.
The vote is unlikely to be the final word in the inquiry that has lasted more than two years and cost $7 million. The panel’s chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., said lawmakers may seek a federal investigation into whether Clinton lied to the committee in testimony last year.
Authorities: 911 caller ambushed, shot officer in Georgia
A man who called 911 to report a car break-in Friday ambushed a south Georgia police officer dispatched to the scene, sparking a shootout in which both the officer and suspect were wounded, authorities said. Both are expected to survive.
The shooting in Valdosta, just north of the Georgia-Florida state line, happened hours after five police officers were killed Thursday night in an ambush in Dallas. Despite saying the officer was lured to the scene by the gunman, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said there was no immediate evidence the shootings were related.
“We’re putting pieces together to understand what happened and why, developing witnesses,” said Scott Dutton, spokesman for the GBI, which is handling the case at the request of local police. “There’s nothing to indicate there’s a connection to that.”
Officer Randall Hancock was shot multiple times as he responded to a 911 call about a car break-in outside the Three Oaks Apartments just after 8 a.m. Friday, Valdosta Police Chief Brian Childress said at a news conference.
“The officer called out on the radio screaming for assistance,” Childress said, and officers from multiple law enforcement agencies swarmed the apartment complex.
US Rep. Corrine Brown indicted after fraud investigation
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown of Florida and her chief of staff pleaded not guilty Friday to multiple fraud charges and other federal offenses in a grand jury indictment unsealed after an investigation into what prosecutors call a phony charity turned into a personal slush fund.
Brown, a 69-year-old Democrat, and Chief of Staff Elias “Ronnie” Simmons, 50, entered pleas in Jacksonville federal court on charges of mail and wire fraud, conspiracy, obstruction and filing of false tax returns.
She has represented a Jacksonville-based congressional district since 1993 — one of the first three African-Americans elected to Congress from Florida since Reconstruction— and is seeking re-election in a newly redrawn district. Later Friday, Brown released a statement saying she was temporarily stepping down as ranking member of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, in accordance with House rules.
The 24-count indictment comes after an investigation into the purported charity One Door for Education Foundation Inc., which federal prosecutors say was billed as a way to give scholarships to poor students but instead filled the coffers of Brown and her associates.
After the hearing, Brown predicted she would be cleared at trial. She was surrounded by supporters outside the courthouse, some carrying signs. One read, “Justice or else. Corrine matters.”