AP News in Brief 11-15-19

Pelosi says Trump’s Ukraine actions amount to ‘bribery’

WASHINGTON — House Democrats are refining part of their impeachment case against the president to a simple allegation: Bribery.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday brushed aside the Latin phrase “quid pro quo” that Democrats have been using to describe President Donald Trump’s actions toward Ukraine. As the impeachment hearings go public, they’re going for a more colloquial term that may resonate with more Americans.

“Quid pro quo: Bribery,” Pelosi said about Trump’s July 25 phone call in which he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for a favor.

Trump says the call was perfect. Pelosi said: “It’s perfectly wrong. It’s bribery.”

The House has opened its historic hearings to remove America’s 45th president, with more to come today, launching a political battle for public opinion that will further test the nation in one of the most polarizing eras of modern times.

Trump wants Supreme Court to block subpoena for his taxes

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to block a subpoena for his tax returns, in a test of the president’s ability to defy investigations.

The filing Thursday sets the stage for a high court showdown over the tax returns Trump has refused to release, unlike every other modern president. The justices also could weigh in more broadly on Trump’s claim that sitting presidents can’t be prosecuted or investigated for crimes.

The subpoena from the Manhattan district attorney is seeking Trump’s tax returns back to 2011 from his accounting firm as part of a criminal investigation. Trump’s lawyers say a criminal probe of the president at the state or local level is unconstitutional and unprecedented in American history.

“Allowing the sitting president to be targeted for criminal investigation — and to be subpoenaed on that basis— would, like an indictment itself, distract him from the numerous and important duties of his office, intrude on and impair Executive Branch operations, and stigmatize the presidency,” said the brief signed by Jay Sekulow.

Lower courts have so far rejected Trump’s claims of immunity.

From wire sources

Student opens fire in California high school, killing 2

SANTA CLARITA, Calif. — A student pulled a gun from his backpack and opened fire at a Southern California high school Thursday, killing two students and wounding three others before shooting himself in the head on his 16th birthday, authorities said.

The attacker was hospitalized in critical condition, officials said, and investigators offered no immediate motive.

The gunfire began around 7:30 a.m. at Saugus High School in the Los Angeles suburb of Santa Clarita. Authorities estimated that the suspect took just 16 seconds to pull out the weapon, shoot five classmates and turn the gun on himself.

At the time, students were “milling around” and greeting each other in an outdoor quad area, sheriff’s homicide Capt. Kent Wegener said. Surveillance video showed the shooter standing still while “everyone is active around him.”

“He just fires from where he is. He doesn’t chase anybody. He doesn’t move,” Wegener said.

AP source: Second US official in Kyiv heard Trump call

WASHINGTON — A second U.S. Embassy staffer in Kyiv overheard a cellphone call between President Donald Trump and his ambassador to the European Union discussing a need for Ukrainian officials to pursue “investigations,” The Associated Press has learned.

The July 26 call between Trump and Gordon Sondland was first described during testimony Wednesday by William Taylor, the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. Taylor said one of his staffers overhead the call while Sondland was in a Kyiv restaurant the day after Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that triggered the House impeachment inquiry.

The second diplomatic staffer also at the table was Suriya Jayanti, a foreign service officer based in Kyiv. A person briefed on what Jayanti overheard spoke to AP on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter currently under investigation.

The accounts of the two embassy staffers could tie Trump closer to alleged efforts to hold up military aid to Ukraine in exchange for investigations into political rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s business dealings. In defending Trump on Wednesday, Republicans repeatedly highlighted that Taylor never directly heard the president direct anyone to demand that the Ukrainians open the probe.

Trump on Wednesday said he did not recall the July 26 call with Sondland.

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Diplomat gets chance to tell of her ouster by Trump

WASHINGTON — The former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine watched in disbelief as her reputation was publicly sullied in a slow-burning campaign to discredit her. She was unceremoniously ousted from her job even as her boss assured her she had done nothing wrong.

On Friday, diplomat Marie Yovanovitch gets her turn to tell the public how she feels about her treatment by the Trump administration.

Yovanovitch, 60, is a career foreign service officer with a solid reputation who suddenly found herself labeled “bad news” by President Donald Trump over the summer. She will be in the spotlight as the lone witness when public impeachment hearings resume for a second day.

She’s already laid out her story for legislators in private.

“You’re going to think that I’m incredibly naive,” Yovanovitch told House impeachment investigators at a marathon, closed-door deposition hearing in October. “But I couldn’t imagine all the things that have happened over the last six or seven months. I just couldn’t imagine it.”

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Tents, stench, smoke: Health risks are gripping migrant camp

MATAMOROS, Mexico — A smoke-filled stench fills a refugee camp just a short walk from the U.S.-Mexico border, rising from ever-burning fires and piles of human waste. Parents and children live in a sea of tents and tarps, some patched together with garbage bags. Others sleep outside in temperatures that recently dropped to freezing.

Justina, an asylum seeker who fled political persecution in Nicaragua, is struggling to keep her 8-month-old daughter healthy inside the damaged tent they share. The baby, Samantha, was diagnosed with pneumonia and recently released from a hospital with a dwindling supply of antibiotics.

“I face cold, hunger and everything because I don’t have resources, and my daughter doesn’t either,” said Justina, who didn’t want her last name used out of fear for her safety.

The camp is an outgrowth of the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which has sent more than 55,000 migrants, including Justina and Samantha, south of the border to wait and pursue their asylum cases.

A humanitarian crisis is worsening each day at the camp across the border from Brownsville, Texas, where a large American flag flapping in the wind is visible from more than 700 tents. As many as 2,000 immigrants are waiting for U.S. court hearings amid deteriorating medical and sanitary conditions.

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US presses European countries to take Islamic State fighters

WASHINGTON — European and other members of the international coalition fighting the Islamic State group must take back and prosecute their nationals detained in Iraq and Syria to help keep IS from regaining territory, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday.

Pompeo told foreign ministers and senior officials from some 30 coalition members that it’s imperative that they hold thousands of detained foreign fighters accountable for atrocities committed while the Islamic State held swaths of territory in the two countries. Many of the detained foreign fighters are from Europe, but countries have been reluctant to take them back and officials acknowledged there are still differences of opinion among coalition partners about how best to deal with them.

The meeting came amid concerns about the U.S. commitment to the fight against IS remnants. Those concerns have increased as President Donald Trump has pressed to withdraw American troops from Syria. It was also the first meeting at such a senior level since IS was driven from the last of its major strongholds in March and the first since the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, killed himself during a U.S. raid last month.

Pompeo said bringing the foreign fighters to justice in their home countries is critical to preventing IS from resurrecting its caliphate and exporting its ideology.

“That work begins with carrying out justice against those who deserve it,” he said. “Coalition members must take back the thousands of foreign terrorist fighters in custody and impose accountability for the atrocities they have perpetrated.”

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Swift says AMAs performance in jeopardy over music dispute

LOS ANGELES — Taylor Swift said Thursday that she may not perform at the American Music Awards and may have to put other projects including a forthcoming Netflix documentary on hold because the men who own her old recordings won’t allow her to play her songs.

“Right now my performance at the AMAs, the Netflix documentary and any other recorded events I am planning to play until November 2020 are a question mark,” Swift said on Twitter and Instagram.

Swift said she had planned to play a medley of her hits when she’s named Artist of the Decade at the American Music Awards on Nov. 24, but the men who own the music, Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta, are calling the television performance an illegal re-recording.

“I just want to be able to perform MY OWN music. That’s it,” Swift said. “I’ve tried to work out this out privately through my team but have not been able to resolve anything.”

The 29-year-old singer-songwriter has loudly spoken out against her old master recordings falling into the hands of the music manager Braun, who bought them by acquiring Borchetta’s Big Machine Label Group in June. Swift has used the sale and its aftermath to publicly advocate for the rights of artists and to further a feud with the two men.