Trump’s die-hard supporters show no signs of straying
Trump’s die-hard supporters show no signs of straying
NEW YORK (AP) — They wash their hands of neo-Nazis and wag their fingers at leftists. They denounce a press corps they see as biased and controversies they view as manufactured. But in the frenzied blame game over the deadly violence at a rally of white supremacists, Donald Trump’s loyal base is happy to absolve the president himself.
Even as Trump’s zig-zag response to the weekend bloodshed in Charlottesville, Virginia, has brought criticism from some Republican lawmakers, many men and women who helped put him in office remain unmoved by the latest uproar.
“He has done nothing to turn me away from him,” said Patricia Aleeyah Robinson, of Toledo, Ohio.
Robinson is black and her support of Trump has put her at odds with many in her life, costing her friendships and straining family relationships.
But the 63-year-old retired truck driver sees the controversy over Trump’s response to Charlottesville as being driven by those seeking to disrupt his agenda and push backers like her away. She said she knows he pays no deference to racists and feels he is the only president who has ever spoken directly to blacks. She admires his refusal to sugarcoat his beliefs.
Families wait in rain to ID lost loved ones in Sierra Leone
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — Hawa Stevens spoke through tears of the 28 family members she lost after surging mudslides and floodwaters swept through Sierra Leone’s capital, killing hundreds and leaving hundreds more missing.
“Mother, father, sisters, brothers, cousins all gone. My life has been shattered. … Please help me, God,” she sobbed as she waited in a long line in the pouring rain Wednesday outside Freetown’s overwhelmed mortuary to try to identify the corpses of her loved ones.
She was surrounded by hundreds of others, some wearing face masks to try to ward off the smell of death and blue hospital booties over their shoes. Many clutched photos in the desperate hope that they would be among those fortunate enough to find their loved ones and give them a proper burial.
More than 300 people were confirmed dead — a third of them children — from the devastating mudslides that struck before dawn on Monday, triggered by days of heavy rain. Red Cross officials estimated some 600 others remained missing more than 48 hours after the storm hit while most of the victims slept. Thousands of people lost their homes.
On Wednesday, crews continued the grim work of digging out bodies from the tons of mud and debris that came roaring down the hillsides onto impoverished, low-lying areas of Freetown and surrounding settlements. Many were volunteers who dug with shovels, pick axes and, at times, only their hands.
At the city’s Connaught Hospital morgue, firefighters, military personnel, police and volunteers tried to help grieving survivors with the difficult process of finding their dead relatives, many too mangled and decomposed to be identified. President Ernest Bai Koroma’s office has said that all unidentified corpses will be given a “dignified burial” in the coming days. He called for seven days of mourning starting Wednesday.
Corporate chiefs flee Trump; he disbands WH advisory panels
NEW YORK (AP) — With corporate chieftains fleeing, President Donald Trump abruptly abolished two of his White House business councils Wednesday — the latest fallout from his combative comments on racially charged violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Trump announced the action via tweet, although only after one of the panels had already agreed to disband earlier in the day. A growing number of business leaders on the councils had openly criticized his remarks laying blame for the violence at a white supremacists rally on “both sides.”
“Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both. Thank you all!” Trump tweeted from New York.
The embarrassing decision came as the White House tried to manage the repercussions from Trump’s defiant remarks a day earlier. Presidential advisers hunkered down, offering no public defense while privately expressing frustration with his comments.
Some Republicans and scores of Democrats denounced Trump’s statements as putting white supremacists on equal moral footing with counter-protesters in Charlottesville and called for an apology. Most of those Republicans, including congressional leaders, did not specifically criticize the president.
Charlottesville victim’s mother urges ‘righteous action’
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — The mother of the young woman mowed down while protesting a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville urged mourners at a memorial service Wednesday to “make my daughter’s death worthwhile” by confronting injustice the way she did.
“They tried to kill my child to shut her up. Well, guess what? You just magnified her,” said Susan Bro, receiving a standing ovation from the hundreds who packed a downtown theater to remember 32-year-old Heather Heyer.
Heyer’s death Saturday — and President Donald Trump’s insistence that “both sides” bear responsibility for the violence — continued to reverberate across the country, triggering fury among many Americans and soul-searching about the state of race relations in the U.S. The uproar has accelerated efforts in many cities to remove symbols of the Confederacy.
Heyer was eulogized as a woman with a powerful sense of fairness. The mourners, many of them wearing purple, her favorite color, applauded as her mother urged them to channel their anger not into violence but into “righteous action.”
State troopers were stationed on the surrounding streets, but the white nationalists who had vowed to show up were nowhere to be seen among the residents, clergy and tourists outside the Paramount Theater, just blocks from where Heyer died.
Federal court: Arkansas can block Planned Parenthood money
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — A federal appeals court panel ruled Wednesday that Arkansas can block Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood, two years after the state ended its contract with the group over videos secretly recorded by an anti-abortion group.
In a 2-1 ruling, an 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel vacated preliminary injunctions a federal judge issued preventing the state from suspending any Medicaid payments for services rendered to patients from Planned Parenthood. Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson ended the state’s Medicaid contract with the organization in 2015.
The court ruled the unnamed patients suing the state did not have the right to challenge the defunding decision. The panel did not directly address Arkansas’ reason for terminating the contract.
The decision could potentially lead to a showdown before the U.S. Supreme Court over efforts by Arkansas and several other states to defund Planned Parenthood that have been blocked by other courts. In a dissenting opinion to Wednesday’s ruling, Judge Michael Melloy noted that several other federal courts have ruled the opposite way on defunding and said the patients have a right to challenge the end of Planned Parenthood’s contract.
U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker initially ordered the state to continue the payments to three patients who had sued over the move and later expanded that order to anyone who seeks or wants to obtain services from the organization’s health centers in Arkansas.
At least 7 dead in alleged gang attack on Guatemala hospital
GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Attackers stormed one of Guatemala’s largest hospitals with guns blazing Wednesday to free an imprisoned gang member, officials said. At least seven people were killed and five were arrested.
Carlos Soto, director of Roosevelt Hospital in the capital, said an unknown number of gunmen entered the facility in the morning and began shooting. The jailed suspect, who was taken to the hospital for lab tests, disappeared during the chaos.
Deputy hospital director Marco Antonio Barrientos told reporters that 12 people were wounded, including a child who underwent surgery and was in critical condition.
National Civil Police said the five men in custody were members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang. Via Twitter, the agency showed photographs of assault rifles seized from the attackers.
The Interior Ministry said in a statement that the attack was staged to free a gang member identified as Anderson Daniel Cabrera Cifuentes.
Cifuentes, 29, who was not listed among the people in custody, was brought to the hospital by three guards from prison on a judge’s order. Two of his guards were killed and one was wounded, according to a statement from the prison system.