1/6 hearings fuel the question: Did Trump commit a crime?

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Jan. 6 committee has heard dramatic testimony from former White House aides and others about Donald Trump’s relentless efforts to overturn the 2020 election — and his encouragement of supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol bent on achieving his goal. But the big question remains: Was any of it criminal?

Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide in Trump’s White House, added fresh urgency to the question Tuesday as she delivered explosive new testimony about Trump’s actions before and during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. She said Trump was informed that there were armed protesters at his morning rally before he stood onstage and told them to “fight like hell” at the Capitol. Then he argued with his security detail, she said, trying to go with the crowd.

Trump's aides knew there could be legal consequences. Hutchinson said White House Counsel Pat Cipollone told her “we're going to get charged with every crime imaginable” if Trump had gone to the Capitol that day as Congress was certifying President Joe Biden’s win. Cipollone said Trump could be exposing himself to obstruction of justice charges or defrauding the electoral count, she said.

On the heels of Hutchinson's public testimony, the House committee on Wednesday issued a subpoena for Cipollone, saying in a letter that while he had provided an “informal interview” on April 13, his refusal to provide on-the-record testimony made their subpoena necessary.

The Justice Department has recently expanded its investigation into the Jan. 6 attack, targeting some of Trump’s allies in Washington and around the country who participated in his scheme to invalidate Biden's victory. But prosecutors have not indicated whether they will bring a case against the former president.

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R. Kelly sentenced to 30 years in sex trafficking case

NEW YORK (AP) — Disgraced R&B superstar R. Kelly was sentenced Wednesday to 30 years in prison for using his fame to sexually abuse young fans, including some who were just children, in a systematic scheme that went on for decades.

Through tears and anger, several of Kelly's accusers told a court in New York City, and the singer himself, that he had misled and preyed upon them.

“You made me do things that broke my spirit. I literally wished I would die because of how low you made me feel,” said one unnamed survivor, directly addressing Kelly, who kept his hands folded and his eyes downcast.

“Do you remember that?” she asked.

Kelly, 55, didn't give a statement and showed no reaction on hearing his penalty, which also included a $100,000 fine. He has denied wrongdoing, and he plans to appeal his conviction.

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Lone surviving attacker in Paris massacre guilty of murder

PARIS (AP) — The lone survivor of a team of Islamic State extremists who terrorized Paris in 2015 was convicted Wednesday of murder and other charges and sentenced to life in prison without parole for the deadliest peacetime attacks in French history.

The special terrorism court also convicted 19 other men involved in the assault on the Bataclan concert hall, cafes and the national stadium, which killed 130 people and injured hundreds, some permanently maimed. It also led to intensified French military action against extremists abroad and a lasting shift in France's security posture at home.

Survivors and victims' families emerged from the packed courtroom dazed or exhausted after an excruciating nine-month trial that's been crucial in their quest for justice and closure.

Chief suspect Salah Abdeslam was found guilty of murder and attempted murder in relation to a terrorist enterprise. The court found that his explosives vest malfunctioned, dismissing his argument that he ditched the vest because he decided not to follow through with his part of the attack on the night of Nov. 13, 2015.

The other nine attackers either blew themselves up or were killed by police that night.

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Dictator's son Marcos Jr taking oath as Philippine president

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the namesake son of an ousted dictator, is to be sworn in as Philippine president Thursday in one of history's greatest political comebacks but which opponents say was pulled off by whitewashing his family’s image.

His rise to power, 36 years after an army-backed “People Power” revolt booted his father to global infamy, upends politics in the Asian democracy, where a public holiday, monuments and the Philippine Constitution stand as reminders of his father’s tyrannical rule.

Activists and survivors of the martial law-era under his father plan protests timed to Marcos Jr.'s inauguration at the steps of the National Museum in Manila. Thousands of police officers, including anti-riot contingents, SWAT commandos and snipers, were deployed in the bayside tourist district for security.

Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, are among foreign dignitaries attending the noontime ceremony.

“Wow is this really happening?” asked Bonifacio Ilagan, a 70-year-old activist who was detained and severely tortured by counterinsurgency forces during the elder Marcos’s rule. “For victims of martial law like me, this is a nightmare.”

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Jan. 6 panel subpoenas counsel who resisted Trump schemes

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection issued a subpoena Wednesday to former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, whose reported resistance to Donald Trump's schemes to overturn his 2020 election defeat has made him a long-sought and potentially revelatory witness.

Cipollone is said to have stridently and repeatedly warned the former president and his allies against their efforts to challenge the election, at one point threatening to resign as Trump eyed a dramatic reshuffling atop the Justice Department. One witness said Cipollone referred to a proposed letter making false claims about voter fraud as a “murder-suicide pact.” Another witness said Cipollone had warned her that Trump was at risk of committing “every crime imaginable.”

It's the first action from the committee since Tuesday's dramatic testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, whose gripping account of what she saw and heard as an aide in the White House raised new questions about whether Trump or some of his allies could face criminal liability. As Trump's top White House lawyer, Cipollone was present for key meetings in the turbulent weeks after the election when Trump and associates — including GOP lawmakers and lawyer Rudy Giuliani — debated and plotted ways to challenge the election.

The subpoena sets the stage for a possibly protracted legal fight between a Congress determined to assert its authority and a former executive branch employee privy to intimate and sensitive Oval Office deliberations. As White House counsel, effectively the administration’s chief lawyer, Cipollone could try to argue that his conversations with the president are privileged and that he is therefore exempt from testifying, though such claims would likely need to be resolved in the courts.

The committee pressed ahead anyway, saying Cipollone could have information about several efforts by Trump allies to subvert the Electoral College, from organizing so-called alternate electors in states Biden won to trying to appoint a loyalist as attorney general who championed false theories of voter fraud. While Cipollone has sat for an informal interview in April, the committee said it required his cooperation on the record after it obtained evidence about which he was “uniquely positioned to testify.”

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Mexican migrant in Texas tragedy hoped to reach kin in Ohio

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The two cousins returned to the tiny, hardscrabble hamlet they grew up in in southern Mexico about two weeks ago to say goodbye in what has become a rite of passage for generations of migrants from their remote, impoverished mountainous region in Oaxaca state.

After the farewells in the community of Cerro Verde, Javier Flores López and Jose Luis Vásquez Guzmán began their trek north to the U.S-Mexico border and toward their final destination in Ohio, where construction jobs and other work awaited.

Flores López is now missing, his family said, while Vásquez Guzmán is hospitalized in San Antonio after surviving stifling heat inside a tractor-trailer near the Texas city that killed at least 53 people in the deadliest smuggling episode ever in the U.S. The perilous trip for migrants who climbed into what would become a death chamber for many reflects the growing risks people face in fleeing abject poverty, violence and other desperate situations in Mexico and Central America to seek a better life.

Cerro Verde is a community of about 60 people that has largely been abandoned by the young. Those who remain work earning meager livings weaving sun hats, mats, brooms and other items from palm leaves. Many live on as little as 30 pesos a day (less than $2).

“The truth is people leave here out of necessity,” said Felicitos García, who owns a small grocery store in nearby San Miguel Huautla, adding that he saw the two men about two weeks ago. “Life is tough here. People survive by growing their own crops like corn, beans and wheat. Sometimes the land gives and sometimes it doesn’t, when the rains arrive late. There is nothing in place for people to have other resources. People live one day to the next.”

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Russians fight to encircle Ukraine's last eastern stronghold

KREMENCHUK, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces battled Wednesday to surround the Ukrainian military’s last stronghold in a long-contested eastern province, as shock reverberated from a Russian airstrike on a shopping mall that killed at least 18 in the center of the country two days earlier.

Moscow’s battle to wrest the entire Donbas region from Ukraine saw Russian forces pushing toward two villages south of Lysychansk while Ukrainian troops fought to prevent their encirclement.

Britain’s defense ministry said Russian forces were making “incremental advances” in their offensive to capture Lysychansk, the last city in the Luhansk province under Ukrainian control following the retreat of Ukraine's forces from the neighboring city of Sievierodonetsk.

Russian troops and their separatist allies control 95% of Luhansk and about half of Donetsk, the two provinces that make up the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas.

The latest assessment by the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said the Ukrainians were likely in a fighting withdrawal to seek more defensible positions while draining the Russian forces of manpower and resources.

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Louisiana AG warns doctors against performing abortions

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Arizona’s Republican attorney general on Wednesday said that a total ban on abortions that has been on the books since before statehood can be enforced, putting him at odds with GOP Gov. Doug Ducey, who says a 15-week abortion ban he signed in March takes precedence.

Attorney General Mark Brnovich has been reviewing the law that’s been on the books since at least 1901 since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision last week. Abortion clinics across Arizona immediately stopped performing the procedure after Friday’s court ruling out of fear of prosecution.

Other states are also grappling with when and how to enforce bans that had been blocked nationwide under Roe. Louisiana’s attorney general on Wednesday issued a warning to doctors against performing abortions, despite a judge’s order blocking the state from enforcing its ban on the procedure.

In a letter to the Louisiana State Medical Society, Attorney General Jeff Landry said that the state judge’s Monday order blocking enforcement “has limited reach” and abortion has been a crime since Friday’s decision giving states the power to outlaw abortions.

“It is incumbent on this office to advise you that any medical provider who would perform or has performed an elective abortion after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs is jeopardizing his or her liberty and medical license,” Landry wrote, referencing the Friday decision.

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Most say nation on wrong track, including Dems: AP-NORC poll

WASHINGTON (AP) — An overwhelming and growing majority of Americans say the U.S. is heading in the wrong direction, including nearly 8 in 10 Democrats, according to a new poll that finds deep pessimism about the economy plaguing President Joe Biden.

Eighty-five percent of U.S. adults say the country is on the wrong track, and 79% describe the economy as poor, according to a new survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The findings suggest Biden faces fundamental challenges as he tries to motivate voters to cast ballots for Democrats in November’s midterm elections.

Inflation has consistently eclipsed the healthy 3.6% unemployment rate as a focal point for Americans, who are dealing with high gasoline and food prices. Even among Democrats, 67% call economic conditions poor.

“He’s doing the best he can — I can’t say he’s doing a good job,” said Chuck McClain, 74. “But his opposition is so bad. I just don’t feel the Democratic Congress is doing enough.”

The Las Vegas resident is a loyal Democrat who said he doesn't miss an election, but he said the price of gas and groceries, Russia's war in Ukraine and the country's deep political divides have led more Americans to feel as though Washington is unresponsive to their needs.

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EXPLAINER: Abortion landscape under state 'heartbeat' laws

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Laws banning most abortions at the point of the “first detectable heartbeat” are beginning to take effect across the country, following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision Friday to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized the procedure in 1973.

Such laws, often referred to as “fetal heartbeat bills,” ban abortions once cardiac activity is detected, which can happen around six weeks into pregnancy, although a timeframe typically isn't specified in the measures.

Swift court actions in states including Ohio, South Carolina and Tennessee revived laws stalled under Roe in the decision's wake. That has left some people who were planning abortions — and the clinics lined up to provide them — scrambling.

Here's a look at what has happened following the ruling, where that leaves residents of affected states, and what may come next:

WHERE ARE THE LAWS IN EFFECT?

News from © The Associated Press, 2022