Poll: Shutdown drags Trump approval to yearlong low
WASHINGTON — A strong majority of Americans blame President Donald Trump for the record-long government shutdown and reject his primary rationale for a border wall, according to a new poll that shows the turmoil in Washington is dragging his approval rating to its lowest level in more than a year.
Overall, 34 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s job performance in a survey conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That’s down from 42 percent a month earlier and nears the lowest mark of his two-year presidency. The president’s approval among Republicans remains close to 80 percent, but his standing with independents is among its lowest points of his time in office.
“Trump is responsible for this,” said poll respondent Lloyd Rabalais, a federal contractor from Slidell, Louisiana, who’s not affiliated with either political party.
The 47-year-old has been furloughed for more than a month. He said he’d need to start drawing on his retirement savings next week to pay his bills if the shutdown continues.
“I do support a wall, but not the way he’s handling it,” Rabalais added. “Trump guaranteed everybody that Mexico would pay for the wall. Now he’s holding American workers like me hostage.”
Death toll rises in Venezuelan unrest
CARACAS, Venezuela — Authorities say at least seven people protesting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government were killed in a violent day of demonstrations throughout the country.
Opposition spokesman Freddy Superlano said Wednesday that four people were killed by gunfire in the southwestern city of Barinas.
Tens of thousands in the capital of Caracas and throughout Venezuela rallied around opposition politician Juan Guaido, who declare himself interim president and called elections.
Superlano said members of the National Guard and police were dispersing protesters at the end of an opposition march when the gunfire erupted. He said another three people were injured.
A spokesperson for the Civil Protection office in the state of Tachira said the number of deaths in unrest in the city of San Cristobal rose to at least three.
Police: 5 fatally shot inside Florida bank, suspect arrested
SEBRING, Fla. — A gunman who opened fire inside a Florida bank Wednesday afternoon killed five people before surrendering to SWAT negotiators, police said.
Zephen Xaver, 21, was arrested after the shooting at a SunTrust branch, Sebring police Chief Karl Hoglund said at a news conference.
“Today’s been a tragic day in our community,” Hogland said. “We’ve suffered significant loss at the hands of a senseless criminal doing a senseless crime.”
The victims were not immediately identified.
A man called police dispatch Wednesday afternoon and reported that he had fired shots inside the bank, Hoglund said. Initial negotiations failed to persuade the barricaded man to leave the bank, so the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office SWAT team entered the building to continue negotiations, and the man eventually surrendered, he said.
Government shutdown poses increasing risk to wider economy
WASHINGTON — At this time of year, John Sprinkle and his wife would normally be planning their summer vacation. Not now. Sprinkle, a furloughed federal employee, is about to miss his second paycheck since the partial government shutdown began just before Christmas.
With no end in sight to the longest shutdown in American history, Sprinkle and his family are postponing all manner of spending.
“We were thinking of getting a new computer, but that’s not going to happen,” he said. “We’re not really eating out like we normally would be. We are not going out to events like we would be.”
Multiply those decisions by 800,000 federal employees across the country and hundreds of thousands of government contractors who aren’t being paid either, and the shutdown looms as an accelerating threat to the wider economy.
The shutdown’s biggest effect on the economy is likely to be the cutback in federal spending. But consumer spending, which is critical to growth, is another important factor.
Kentucky school comes under fire after Washington incident
PARK HILLS, Ky. — Less than a week ago, Covington Catholic High School was known mostly for its seven state titles in football and its rousing motto, “A spirit that will not die.”
By Tuesday, its phones had been shut off, its website and social media accounts had gone dark, police cars were barricading its entrances, and classes were canceled along with a basketball game as the overwhelmingly white, all-boys school found itself a symbol of the nation’s deep divisions over race, class and culture.
The transformation began with an online video that appeared to show a group of Covington Catholic boys in “Make American Great Again” hats mocking a Native American protester as he beat a ceremonial drum at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on Friday. Subsequent videos showed a more complicated three-way confrontation, involving a cluster of men calling themselves the Black Hebrew Israelites who hurled insults at the boys and the Native Americans.
“People saw the original video and took an early side, and they are just not budging from that side,” said Hayden Bode, who graduated from Covington Catholic last year and was part of a small group who came to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Covington on Tuesday to support the students.
In the wake of the incident, parents, alumni and others have rallied to the school’s defense, with many changing their social media profiles to say things like “I stand with Covington Catholic High School.” Others, though, have gone on the attack against the 586-student school, situated just outside Covington in Park Hills.
States move to ease restrictions on child sex-abuse lawsuits
NEW YORK — In many states across the U.S., victims of long-ago child sex-abuse have been lobbying for years, often in vain, to change statute of limitation laws that thwart their quest for justice. This year seems sure to produce some breakthroughs, due in part to the midterm election results and recent disclosures about abuse by Roman Catholic priests.
New York state is Exhibit A. The Democrats’ takeover of the formerly Republican-controlled Senate seems almost certain to produce a more victim-friendly policy in place of one of the nation’s most restrictive laws.
Prospects are considered good for similar changes in Rhode Island and New Jersey, and the issue will be raised in Pennsylvania — which became the epicenter of the current abuse crisis in August when a grand jury accused some 300 Catholic priests of abusing more than 1,000 children over seven decades.
Abuse survivors and their allies are once again proposing a two-year window for now-adult victims to sue perpetrators and institutions over claims that would otherwise be barred by time limits. That provision was approved by the Pennsylvania House last year but rejected by the top Republican in the Senate.
Nationwide, only a handful of states — including California, Minnesota, Delaware and Hawaii — have created these “lookback windows” enabling victims to file civil lawsuits against institutions such as churches and youth groups that bore some responsibility for the abuse. California’s one-year window opened in 2003, leading to hundreds of civil actions and more than $1 billion in payouts by the Catholic church; activists and legislators in California hope to create a new lookback window this year.
Nurse arrested in rape of incapacitated woman who gave birth
PHOENIX — A nurse who was supposed to be looking after an incapacitated woman at a long-term health care facility has been charged with raping her, weeks after the patient stunned her caregivers and family by giving birth to a baby boy , Phoenix police said Wednesday.
Investigators arrested Nathan Sutherland, a licensed practical nurse, on suspicion of one count of sexual assault and one count of vulnerable adult abuse, Phoenix Police Chief Jeri Williams said.
“We owed this arrest to the victim. We owed this arrest to the newest member of our community — that innocent baby,” Williams said.
The surprise birth late last month triggered reviews by state agencies, highlighted safety concerns for patients who are severely disabled or incapacitated and led to disciplinary actions and resignations of staffers and managers. It also prompted authorities to test the DNA of all the men who worked at the Hacienda HealthCare facility.
Sutherland, 36, submitted his DNA sample under court order Tuesday and the results came back a few hours later, showing he was a match to the baby. He declined to speak with police and invoked his Fifth Amendment rights, police spokesman Tommy Thompson said.
Witness: El Chapo’s wife was in on plans for prison escape
NEW YORK — The wife of Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman played a key role in his infamous 2015 escape from prison through a tunnel dug into the shower of his cell, a witness tesified Wednesday at the kingpin’s U.S. trial.
Former cartel worker Damaso Lopez Nunez told the jury that Emma Coronel Aispuro helped her husband trade messages with his sons and others who coordinated the breakout at Altiplano prison in central Mexico.
Coronel “was giving us his orders,” Lopez told a New York jury, adding that she also was in on meetings about the escape.
After Guzman was recaptured and thrown in another Mexican lockup, the cartel paid a $2 million bribe to a prison official in exchange for getting him moved back to Altiplano, the witness said. Before that could happen, Guzman was sent in 2017 to the U.S., where he’s been kept in solitary confinement while facing drug-trafficking charges he says have been fabricated by cooperators like Lopez.
The testimony cast a harsh spotlight on a spouse who has sat quietly in the courtroom for most a trial that began in mid-November. Most of the attention on her so far has been for her wardrobe and her reaction to waves from the defendant. At a lunch break, she didn’t speak to reporters and Guzman’s lawyers declined comment.