In Brief: October 31, 2020

As Trump faces uncertain future, so do his signature rallies

LITITZ, Pennsylvania — They began to arrive more than 40 hours before President Donald Trump took the stage in this stretch of rural Pennsylvania where horse-drawn buggies remain a common sight. By 10 p.m., a small group had set up an overnight camp on lawn chairs as a cold drizzle set in.

“I am the crazy Trumper,” declared Kyle Terry, 33. He had been the first to arrive at the IMAX parking lot — at 8 p.m. Saturday for a Monday afternoon rally, his fifth of the fall. “I love it. I’ve been having the most fun of my life. And I really just don’t want this to stop.”

As President Donald Trump faces an uncertain future, so too does a fixture of the American political scene over the last five years: the Trump campaign rally, a phenomenon that has spawned friendships, businesses and a way of life for Trump’s most dedicated supporters. His fans have traveled the country to be part of what they describe as a movement that could outlive his time in office.

Some have attended so many rallies they’ve lost count, road-tripping from arena to arena like rock groupies. They come for the energy, the validation of being surrounded by like-minded people, the feeling of being part of something bigger than themselves. Sociologists and historians see elements of a religious following.

They are people like Cynthia Reidler, 55, who has been a Trump supporter since he announced his candidacy. She has been to nearly 20 Trump events, from rallies to Fourth of July celebrations on the National Mall.

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Illinois authorities extradite Kyle Rittenhouse to Wisconsin

WAUKEGAN, Ill. — A 17-year-old from Illinois accused of killing two demonstrators in Kenosha, Wisconsin, has been extradited to stand trial on homicide charges, with sheriff’s deputies in Illinois handing him over to their counterparts in Wisconsin shortly after a judge on Friday approved the contested extradition.

In his afternoon ruling that rejected Kyle Rittenhouse’s bid to remain in Illinois, Judge Paul Novak noted that defense attorneys had characterized the Wisconsin charges as politically motivated.

“This Illinois court shall not examine any potential political impact a Wisconsin District Attorney potentially considered in his charging decision,” Novak’s six-page ruling said. He added that it is not for an Illinois judge to “reevaluate probable cause determined by a Wisconsin court.”

Immediately after Novak issued the ruling at the courthouse in Waukegan, Illinois, deputies with the Lake County Sheriff’s Office picked up Rittenhouse and drove him five miles (eight kilometers) to the Illinois-Wisconsin border, sheriff’s office spokesman Christopher Covelli told The Associated Press. Rittenhouse was then turned over to Kenosha County sheriff deputies at the state line at around 3:45 p.m., Covelli said.

The ruling and speedy transfer came several hours after a hearing Friday morning in which Judge Novak heard arguments for and against extradition.

Armenia, Azerbaijan vow to avoid targeting residential areas

YEREVAN, Armenia — Armenia and Azerbaijan promised Friday to avoid shelling residential areas amid the fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh, a pledge that follows a day of talks in Geneva even as Azerbaijani troops pushed deeper into the separatist territory.

The two sides agreed they “will not deliberately target civilian populations or non-military objects in accordance with international humanitarian law.” They also promised to help recover and exchange the remains of soldiers left on the battlefield and in a week’s time submit lists of prisoners of war for the purpose of “providing access and eventual exchange.”

The talks between foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan were sponsored by the so-called Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which is co-chaired by Russia, the United States and France. The co-chairs said in a statement issued after the talks that Armenia and Azerbaijan also promised to offer their proposals regarding possible cease-fire verification mechanisms.

Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a war there ended in 1994. The latest outburst of hostilities began Sept. 27 and left hundreds and perhaps thousands dead, marking the worst escalation of fighting since the war’s end.

A U.S.-brokered truce frayed immediately after it took effect Monday, just like two previous cease-fires negotiated by Russia. The warring sides have repeatedly blamed each other for violations.

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AP: Use of slurs not ‘isolated’ at Louisiana State Police

BATON ROUGE, La. — A Black trooper with the Louisiana State Police was on a break when his cellphone buzzed with an unusual voice message. It was from a white colleague, unaware his Apple Watch had recorded him, blurting out the Black trooper’s name followed by a searing racial slur.

“F——- n——, what did you expect?”

That unguarded moment, sent in a pocket-dial of sorts, touched off an internal investigation at Louisiana’s premier law-enforcement agency that remained under wraps for three years before a local television station reported last month that the white trooper had not even been reprimanded for the racist recording.

“I believe this to be an isolated incident and I have great confidence in the men and women who serve in the Louisiana State Police,” the agency’s outgoing head, Col. Kevin Reeves, said in response to the controversy.

But an Associated Press review of hundreds of State Police records revealed at least a dozen more instances over a three-year period in which employees forwarded racist emails on their official accounts with subject lines like “PROUD TO BE WHITE,” or demeaned minority colleagues with names including “Hershey’s Kiss,” “Django” and “Egg Roll.”

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Actor Lori Loughlin reports to prison in college scam

BOSTON — “Full House” actor Lori Loughlin has reported to a federal prison in California to begin serving her two-month sentence for her role in the college admissions bribery scandal, authorities said Friday.

The U.S. Attorney’s office in Boston said Loughlin was being processed at the federal lockup in Dublin, California.

“The parties recently agreed that the defendant can report to prison on October 30, 2020, instead of on November 19, 2020. The defendant has further agreed that, during her two month sentence, she will not seek an early release from prison on COVID-related grounds,” prosecutors said in a statement.

Under the Bureau of Prisons’ coronavirus protocols, Loughlin will be screened and tested for COVID-19 and will be placed in quarantine for 14 days.

The low-security prison in Northern California houses 874 inmates and had two positive coronavirus cases among inmates, as of Friday morning, federal statistics show.

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NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

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Biden tax plan would not raise taxes on majority of Americans

CLAIM: By reversing President Donald Trump’s tax cuts, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden would raise taxes on 82% of Americans.

THE FACTS: A popular but false post on Facebook claims, “By reversing the tax cuts @realDonaldTrump signed into law, Joe Biden would raise taxes on 82% of Americans.” The quote is attributed to Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, who made similar inaccurate claims at the party’s convention in August. In fact, Biden says he won’t raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000, which translates to a small portion of American households. “If you’re looking only at individual income taxes and payroll taxes, we find that about 2 percent of all families would see their taxes go up directly under the Biden plan — almost all of them in the top 5 percent by income,” John Ricco, a senior tax analyst at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model, told The Associated Press in an email. Biden has also proposed repealing part of Trump’s corporate tax break. Trump lowered that tax rate from 35% to 21%, and Biden has proposed raising it to 28%. The false social media posts about Biden raising taxes on 82% of Americans appear to misstate the Penn Wharton Budget Model’s analysis of how a corporate tax increase will impact the country. Ricco said the model predicts that 82% of families will be affected long-term by an increase in corporate taxes, but not because their individual taxes would go up. “Instead of seeing their taxes go up directly, those additional families are paying the corporate tax hikes in the form of lower investment returns or lower wages over time,” Ricco wrote. For the bottom 90% of American households in terms of income, the Penn Wharton Budget Model predicts the passed down costs of the corporate tax increase in the future would average between $25 and $690, depending on income. But for those same households, the model found that tax credits proposed in Biden’s plan would more than offset those costs on average.