Trump labeling House health care bill ‘mean’ frustrates GOP
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s labeling of a House-passed health care bill as “mean” is aggravating some of the conservatives he pressed to back it, even as Senate attempts to reshape the measure increasingly threaten to spill into July.
“In terms of strategery, I hope he’s just trying to motivate the Senate,” Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., said Wednesday, employing a mangled word used by former President George W. Bush. “Because he put all sorts of pressure on us to move the bill we passed.”
Congressional sources said Trump described the House bill as mean at a closed-door White House lunch Tuesday with 15 Republican senators. It was an extraordinary slap at a bill Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., guided through the House and that Trump himself had championed and praised. At a Rose Garden ceremony minutes after the bill’s 217-213 House passage on May 4, Trump called it “a great plan.”
“To call a bill that he pushed ‘mean’ leaves us scratching our heads,” Brat said.
The president’s criticism also came as Senate Republican leaders’ attempts to write their own health care package have been slowed by disagreements between their party’s conservatives and moderates. Trump said he wants the Senate version to be “more generous,” the sources said.
Death toll rises to 12 in London apartment building inferno
LONDON (AP) — They banged on windows, screamed for help, dropped children from smoky floors in a desperate attempt to save them. Terrified residents of the Grenfell Tower said there was little warning of the inferno that engulfed their high-rise apartment building and left 12 people dead — a toll that officials said would almost certainly rise.
The blaze early Wednesday in the 24-story building in west London’s North Kensington district also injured 74 others, 18 of them critically, and left an unknown number missing. A tenants’ group had complained for years about the risk of a fire.
More than 200 firefighters worked through the night and were still finding pockets of fire inside later in the day. A huge plume of smoke wafted across the London skyline and left a burned-out hulk in the working class, multi-ethnic neighborhood.
“In my 29 years of being a firefighter, I have never, ever seen anything of this scale,” Fire Commissioner Dany Cotton said.
Up to 600 people lived in 120 apartments in the Grenfell Tower. After announcing the updated death toll of 12 in the afternoon, Cmdr. Stuart Cundy said that “we believe this number will sadly increase.”
Poll shows most doubt Trump’s respect for institutions
WASHINGTON (AP) — Most Americans say they think President Donald Trump has little to no respect for the country’s democratic traditions, according to a new poll that underscores the difficulty Trump faces in uniting a country deeply divided about his leadership.
The new survey, conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, found more than 6 in 10 Americans disapprove of the job Trump is doing as president, and nearly half strongly disapprove. The poll was conducted before a shooting spree at a Washington-era baseball field on Wednesday left a congressman wounded and renewed calls for more civil political discourse.
“We may have our differences, but we do well in times like these to remember that everyone who serves in our nation’s capital is here because, above all, they love our country,” Trump said Wednesday, responding to the shooting.
The survey suggests Trump faces considerable challenges as he seeks to position himself as a unifying figure.
Two-thirds of Americans, or 65 percent, think Trump doesn’t have much respect for the country’s democratic institutions and traditions or has none at all. Just a third of Americans, or 34 percent, thinks he has a great deal or even a fair amount of respect for them.
Cosby jury reviews accuser’s testimony amid deliberations
NORRISTOWN, Pa. (AP) — Jurors in Bill Cosby’s sexual assault trial reviewed portions of his accuser’s testimony Wednesday as they deliberated for a third day over whether the 79-year-old star drugged and molested her at his suburban Philadelphia estate.
Jurors made the request to have portions of Andrea Constand’s testimony read back to them after deliberating about 21 hours without reaching a verdict in a case that has already helped demolish Cosby’s nice-guy reputation.
Constand, 44, who spent seven hours on the stand last week, was in the gallery as the jury scrutinized her story.
She testified that Cosby gave her pills that left her woozy, helped her to a couch and then violated her while she was passed out, unable to say no or fight his advances.
The jury had previously reviewed Cosby’s version of events, contained in a deposition he gave in 2005 and 2006 as part of Constand’s lawsuit against him and introduced by prosecutors at the criminal trial.
Panicked UPS workers flee California gunfire that killed 4
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A UPS employee opened fire at one of the company’s package delivery facilities in San Francisco on Wednesday, killing three co-workers and then himself as officers closed in and workers ran frantically into the streets, police and company officials said.
Fleeing a barrage of gunfire, some workers sought refuge on the roof of the 4-story facility and others ran outside and pounded on the windows of a public bus, witnesses said.
“They were banging on the bus and they were screaming, “Go! Go! Go!’” said Jessica Franklin, 30, who was riding the bus to work when it made a regular stop in front of the UPS facility. “As they got on the bus, they were all ducking.”
Two other United Parcel Service employees were wounded in the shooting that prompted a massive police response in one of the city’s industrial neighborhoods, about 2 miles from downtown San Francisco, Assistant Police Chief Toney Chaplin told reporters.
Officials, UPS employees and witnesses described other scenes of chaos as shots rang out during a morning meeting before drivers were sent on their delivery routes. Neighbor Raymond Deng said he heard up to eight rapid gunshots.
