In Brief: June 25, 2021

Many feared dead after Florida beachfront condo collapses

SURFSIDE, Fla. — A beachfront condo building partially collapsed Thursday outside Miami, killing at least one person and trapping others in the tower that resembled a giant fractured dollhouse, with one side sheared away. Dozens of survivors were pulled out, and rescuers kept up a desperate search for more.

A wing of the 12-story building in the community of Surfside came down with a roar around 1:30 a.m. By late evening, nearly 100 people were still unaccounted for, authorities said, raising fears that the death toll could climb sharply. Officials did not know how many were in the tower when it fell.

“The building is literally pancaked,” Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said. “That is heartbreaking because it doesn’t mean, to me, that we are going to be as successful as we wanted to be in finding people alive.”

Hours after the collapse, searchers were trying to reach a trapped child whose parents were believed to be dead. In another case, rescuers saved a mother and child, but the woman’s leg had to be amputated to remove her from the rubble, Frank Rollason, director of Miami-Dade emergency management, told the Miami Herald.

Video showed fire crews removing a boy from the wreckage, but it was not clear whether he was the same person mentioned by Rollason. Teams were trying to enter the building from a parking garage beneath the structure.

___

Chauvin could face decadeslong sentence in Floyd’s death

MINNEAPOLIS — Former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin learns his sentence Friday for murder in George Floyd’ s death, closing a chapter in a case that sparked global outrage and a reckoning on racial disparities in America.

Chauvin, 45, faces decades in prison, with several legal experts predicting a sentence of 20 to 25 years. Though Chauvin is widely expected to appeal, he also still faces trial on federal civil rights charges, along with three other fired officers who have yet to have their state trials.

The concrete barricades, razor wire and National Guard patrols that shrouded the county courthouse for Chauvin’s three-week trial are gone, and so is most of the tension in the city as it awaited a verdict in April. Still, there’s a recognition that Chauvin’s sentencing will be another major step forward for a city that has been on edge since Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020.

“Between the incident, the video, the riots, the trial — this is the pinnacle of it,” Mike Brandt, a local defense attorney who has closely followed Chauvin’s case, said. “The verdict was huge too, but this is where the justice comes down.”

Chauvin was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter for pressing his knee against Floyd’s neck for about 9 1/2 minutes as the Black man said he couldn’t breathe and went limp. Bystander video of Floyd’s arrest for suspicion of passing a counterfeit $20 bill prompted protests around the world and a nationwide reckoning on race and police brutality.

___

Biden extols bipartisan infrastructure deal as a good start

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden announced on Thursday a hard-earned bipartisan agreement on a pared-down infrastructure plan that would make a start on his top legislative priority and validate his efforts to reach across the political aisle. But he openly acknowledged that Democrats will likely have to tackle much of the rest on their own.

The bill’s price tag at $973 billion over five years, or $1.2 trillion over eight years, is a scaled-back but still significant piece of Biden’s broader proposals.

It includes more than a half-trillion dollars in new spending and could open the door to the president’s more sweeping $4 trillion proposals for child care and what the White House calls human infrastructure later on.

“When we can find common ground, working across party lines, that is what I will seek to do,” said Biden, who deemed the agreement “a true bipartisan effort, breaking the ice that too often has kept us frozen in place.”

The president stressed that “neither side got everything they wanted in this deal; that’s what it means to compromise,” and said that other White House priorities would be taken on separately in a congressional budget process known as reconciliation, which allows for majority passage without the need for Republican votes.

___

House GOP leader to meet with officer hurt in Capitol riot

WASHINGTON — A police officer who was injured in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and has pushed for an independent commission to investigate the attack will meet with House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy on Friday, according to two people familiar with the meeting.

Officer Michael Fanone has said for weeks that he wanted to meet with McCarthy, who has opposed a commission and remained loyal to former President Donald Trump. It was a violent mob of Trump’s supporters that attacked the Capitol and interrupted the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory after the former president told them to “fight like hell” to overturn his defeat.

The meeting comes after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Thursday that she is creating a special committee to investigate the attack. She said a partisan-led probe was the only option left after Senate Republicans blocked legislation to form a bipartisan commission.

Fanone is expected to be joined by Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, who was also among the officers who responded to the rioting, and Gladys Sicknick, the mother of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, according to one of the people and a third person familiar with the meeting. Brian Sicknick collapsed and died after engaging with the mob; a medical examiner ruled that he died of natural causes.

The three people spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private meeting.

___

New York court suspends Rudy Giuliani’s law license

NEW YORK — An appeals court suspended Rudy Giuliani from practicing law in New York on Thursday because he made false statements while trying to get courts to overturn Donald Trump’s loss in the presidential race.

An attorney disciplinary committee had asked the court to suspend Giuliani’s license on the grounds that he’d violated professional conduct rules as he promoted theories that the election was stolen through fraud.

The court agreed and said suspension should be immediate, even though disciplinary proceedings aren’t yet complete, because there was an “immediate threat” to the public.

“The seriousness of respondent’s uncontroverted misconduct cannot be overstated,” the court wrote. “This country is being torn apart by continued attacks on the legitimacy of the 2020 election and of our current president, Joseph R. Biden.”

Trump called the suspension a politically motivated “witch hunt,” while Giuliani said it was a “disgrace” on his afternoon radio show. The court’s opinion, Giuliani said, was based on hearsay and “could have been written by the Democratic National Committee.”

___

Nearly all COVID deaths in US are now among unvaccinated

Nearly all COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. now are in people who weren’t vaccinated, a staggering demonstration of how effective the shots have been and an indication that deaths per day — now down to under 300 — could be practically zero if everyone eligible got the vaccine.

An Associated Press analysis of available government data from May shows that “breakthrough” infections in fully vaccinated people accounted for fewer than 1,200 of more than 853,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations. That’s about 0.1%.

And only about 150 of the more than 18,000 COVID-19 deaths in May were in fully vaccinated people. That translates to about 0.8%, or five deaths per day on average.

The AP analyzed figures provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC itself has not estimated what percentage of hospitalizations and deaths are in fully vaccinated people, citing limitations in the data.

Among them: Only about 45 states report breakthrough infections, and some are more aggressive than others in looking for such cases. So the data probably understates such infections, CDC officials said.

___

Falling short: Why the White House will miss its vax target

WASHINGTON — Standing in the State Dining Room on May 4, President Joe Biden laid out a lofty goal to vaccinate 70% of American adults by Independence Day, saying the U.S. would need to overcome “doubters” and laziness to do it. “This is your choice,” he told Americans. “It’s life and death.”

As for the ambition of his 70% goal, Biden added: “I’d like to get it at 100%, but I think realistically we can get to that place between now and July Fourth.”

He won’t.

With the July Fourth holiday approaching, the White House acknowledged this week that Biden will fall shy of his 70% goal and an associated aim of fully vaccinating 165 million adults in the same time frame. The missed milestones are notable in a White House that has been organized around a strategy of underpromising and overdelivering for the American public.

White House officials, while acknowledging they are set to fall short, insist they’re unconcerned. “We don’t see it exactly like something went wrong,” press secretary Jen Psaki said this week, stressing that Americans’ lives are better off than they were when Biden announced the goal.

___

US to keep about 650 troops in Afghanistan after withdrawal

WASHINGTON — Roughly 650 U.S. troops are expected to remain in Afghanistan to provide security for diplomats after the main American military force completes its withdrawal, which is set to be largely done in the next two weeks, U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Thursday.

In addition, several hundred additional American forces will remain at the Kabul airport, potentially until September, to assist Turkish troops providing security, as a temporary move until a more formal Turkey-led security operation is in place, the officials said. Overall, officials said the U.S. expects to have American and coalition military command, its leadership and most troops out by July Fourth, or shortly after that, meeting an aspirational deadline that commanders developed months ago.

The officials were not authorized to discuss details of the withdrawal and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

The departure of the bulk of the more than 4,000 troops that have been in the country in recent months is unfolding well before President Joe Biden’s Sept. 11 deadline for withdrawal. And it comes amid accelerating Taliban battlefield gains, fueling fears that the Afghan government and its military could collapse in a matter of months.

Officials have repeatedly stressed that security at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul is a critical requirement to keeping any U.S. diplomatic staff in Afghanistan. Still, the decision to keep additional troops there for several more months makes it more complicated for the Biden administration to declare a true end to America’s longest war until later this fall. And it keeps the embattled country near the forefront of U.S. national security challenges, even as the White House tries to put the 20-year-old war behind it and focus more on threats from China and Russia.