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Trump pleads not guilty to federal charges that he tried to overturn the 2020 election WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump pleaded not guilty Thursday to trying to overturn the results of his 2020 election

Trump pleads not guilty to federal charges that he tried to overturn the 2020 election

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump pleaded not guilty Thursday to trying to overturn the results of his 2020 election loss, answering for the first time to federal charges that accuse him of orchestrating a brazen and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to block the peaceful transfer of presidential power.

The former president appeared before a magistrate judge in Washington’s federal courthouse two days after being indicted by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith. Of the three criminal cases he's facing, the most recent charges are especially historic since they focus on Trump's efforts as president to subvert the will of voters and obstruct the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory. His refusal to accept defeat and his lies about widespread election fraud helped fuel the violent riot on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol.

Trump, who is now the early front-runner in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, sat stern-faced with his hands folded, shaking his head at times as he conferred with an attorney and occasionally glancing around the courtroom as his court appearance began. He stood up to enter his “not guilty” plea, answered perfunctory questions from the judge and thanked her at the conclusion of the arraignment.

His appearance Thursday unfolded — as will the rest of the case — in a downtown courthouse between the Capitol and the White House and in a building where more than 1,000 of the Capitol rioters have been charged by the Justice Department, which last November appointed Smith to lead a probe into the role of Trump and his allies in the events of that day.

The indictment charges Trump with four felony counts related to his efforts to undo his presidential election loss, including conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. The charges could lead to a lengthy prison sentence in the event of a conviction, with the most serious counts calling for up to 20 years.

After his hearing in federal court, Trump calls it a 'very sad day for America.' Follow live updates

Follow along for live updates of Donald Trump's appearance in federal court Thursday after he was indicted by the Justice Department for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. It’s the third criminal case brought against the former president as he seeks to reclaim the White House.

— Here's a breakdown of the sprawling election indictment

— Trump lawyer hints at a First Amendment defense in the Jan. 6 case

— Republicans are remaining silent about the latest charges against Trump

— The judge assigned to Trump’s case is a tough punisher of Capitol rioters

Appeals court allows Biden asylum restrictions to temporarily stay in place as case plays out

WASHINGTON (AP) — An appeals court Thursday allowed a rule restricting asylum at the southern border to temporarily stay in place. The decision is a major win for the Biden administration, which had argued that the rule was integral to its efforts to maintain order along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The new rule makes it extremely difficult for people to be granted asylum unless they first seek protection in a country they’re traveling through on their way to the U.S. or apply online. It includes room for exceptions and does not apply to children traveling alone.

The decision by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals grants a temporary reprieve from a lower court decision that had found the policy illegal and ordered the government to end its use by this coming Monday. The government had gone quickly to the appeals court asking for the rule to be allowed to remain in use while the larger court battles surrounding its legality play out.

The three-judge panel ruled 2-1 in favor of the government's request to stay the lower court's ruling while the appeal goes forward. They also said they would expedite the hearing for the appeal with both sides expected to send in their arguments to the court by mid-September and a hearing to be held at an unspecified date, meaning a relatively fast timeline to review the case.

Judges William Fletcher and Richard Paez, who were both appointed by President Bill Clinton, ruled in favor of the stay but gave no reason for their decision. Judge Lawrence VanDyke, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, dissented. In his dissent VanDyke seemed to agree with the legality of the rule in theory but said it was little different than previous rules put forward by the Trump administration that were shot down by the same appeals court when Trump was in office. He suggested that the judges had been moved to grant the stay because they feared that if the case went all the way to Supreme Court, that body would have done it instead.

Testimony from Hunter Biden associate provides new insight into their business dealings

WASHINGTON (AP) — Focusing on the Bidens rather than Donald Trump's federal court appearance, House Republicans released a transcript Thursday of their interview with Hunter Biden’s former business associate detailing overseas financial dealings by the president’s son.

The more than five-hour closed-door interview with Devon Archer by the House Oversight Committee, released hours before Trump's appearance to face a third list of charges, provides fresh insight into how President Joe Biden's youngest son used his relationship with his father, who was then vice president, to court foreign investors. Archer said Hunter Biden was using the “illusion of access” in Washington.

Republicans on the panel hope to use their work to prod impeachment proceedings against the president. However, though pressed repeatedly, Archer offered no tangible evidence that Joe Biden's role in his son’s work was more than saying hello during their daily family calls.

“You know, Hunter spoke to his dad every day, right?" Archer said to committee members and staff on Monday. “And so in certain circumstances, when you’re in — you know, if his dad calls him at dinner and he picks up the phone, then there’s a conversation."

He added, "And the, you know, the conversation is generally about the weather and, you know, what it’s like in Norway or Paris or wherever he may be.”

Ex-Mississippi officers plead guilty to racist assault on 2 Black men during raid

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Six white former law enforcement officers in Mississippi who called themselves the “Goon Squad” pleaded guilty Thursday to a racist assault on two Black men in a home raid that ended with an officer shooting one man in the mouth.

The officers entered the house without a warrant on Jan. 24, assaulting the men with a sex toy and using stun guns and other objects to abuse them over a roughly 90-minute period, court documents show. After one victim was shot and wounded in a “mock execution” that went awry, the documents say the officers conspired to plant and tamper with evidence instead of providing medical aid.

The Justice Department launched its civil rights probe in February. The Mississippi attorney general’s office announced Thursday it had filed state charges against the six former officers, including assault, conspiracy and obstruction of justice.

“The defendants in this case tortured and inflicted unspeakable harm on their victims,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said, adding that they “egregiously violated the civil rights of citizens who they were supposed to protect.”

The civil rights charges come after an Associated Press investigation linked the deputies to at least four violent encounters with Black men since 2019 that left two dead and another with lasting injuries.

Texas A&M reaches $1 million settlement with Black journalism professor

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas A&M University reached a $1 million settlement Thursday with a Black journalism professor whose hiring was sabotaged by backlash over her past work promoting diversity.

The nation's largest public school agreed to pay Kathleen McElroy and apologized to her while admitting “mistakes were made during the hiring process.”

Texas A&M, which is located in College Station, about 90 miles (144 kilometers) northwest of Houston, initially welcomed McElroy with great fanfare to revive its journalism department in June. A former New York Times editor and Texas A&M alum, McElroy had overseen the journalism school at A&M's rival — the more liberal University of Texas at Austin.

But McElroy told the Texas Tribune last month that soon after her hiring, she learned of emerging internal pushback from then-unidentified individuals over her past work to improve diversity and inclusion in newsrooms.

According to investigation documents released Thursday, those individuals included at least six board of regents members who began “asking questions and raising concerns about McElroy's hiring" after Texas Scorecard, a right-leaning website, highlighted her past diversity, equity and inclusion work.

Pittsburgh synagogue gunman has been sentenced to die in the nation’s deadliest antisemitic attack

PITTSBURGH (AP) — The man who killed 11 congregants at a Pittsburgh synagogue was formally sentenced to death Thursday, one day after a jury determined that capital punishment was appropriate for the perpetrator of the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history.

U.S. District Judge Robert Colville ordered death by lethal injection for Robert Bowers, a 50-year-old truck driver whose vicious antisemitism led him to shoot his way into a place of worship and target people for practicing their faith.

“I have nothing specific that I care to say to Mr. Bowers,” Colville said from the bench. “I am however convinced there is nothing I could say to him that might be meaningful.”

Grieving families confronted Bowers in court before Colville pronounced the sentence, describing the pain and suffering he had inflicted, and calling him evil and cowardly. Bowers, who chose not to speak, spent the entire hearing shuffling through papers and writing, and refused to look those he victimized in the eye, even when invited to do so.

Several survivors spoke of lingering traumas — sleeplessness, fear of crowds and loud noises, and physical and cognitive struggles triggered by the 2018 massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue. But survivors and family members, several wearing yarmulkes signifying Jewish observance, also emphasized their resilience in practicing the Judaism that the defendant hated.

Babies should get recently approved drug for RSV, CDC says

Infants should get a recently approved drug to protect them against a respiratory virus that sends tens of thousands of American children to the hospital each year, U.S. health officials said Thursday.

An infection with RSV is a coldlike nuisance for most healthy people, but it can be life-threatening for the very young and the elderly. There are no vaccines for babies yet so the new drug, a lab-made antibody that helps the immune system fight off the virus, is expected to fill a critical need.

The drug, developed by AstraZeneca and Sanofi, is expected to be ready in the fall before the RSV season, typically November through March. In the U.S., about 58,000 children younger than 5 are hospitalized for RSV each year and several hundred die.

A panel of outside advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended the one-time shot for infants born just before or during the RSV season and for those less than 8 months old before the season starts. They also recommended a dose for some 8- to 19-months-olds at higher risk of a serious illness from RSV.

The CDC director signed off on the panel's recommendations later Thursday.

A federal appeals court just made medication abortions harder to get in Guam

People seeking medication abortions on the U.S. Territory of Guam must first have an in-person consultation with a doctor, a federal appeals court says, even though the nearest physician willing to prescribe the medication is 3,800 miles (6,100 kilometers) — an 8-hour flight — away.

The ruling handed down Tuesday by a unanimous three-judge panel on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals could make it even more difficult for pregnant people to access abortions on the remote island where 85% of residents are Catholic and about 1 in 5 live below the poverty line. The last doctor to provide abortions in Guam retired in 2018, leaving people seeking the procedure without local options.

That changed in 2021 when a lower court partially lifted the territory's in-person consultation requirement and said two Guam-licensed physicians in Hawaii could provide medication abortions via telemedicine to people in Guam.

The appellate court panel reversed that ruling Tuesday, saying Guam can enact the laws it thinks are best, even if others find them unwise.

“Guam has legitimate interests in requiring an in-person consultation: the consultation can underscore the medical and moral gravity of an abortion and encourage a robust exchange of information,” wrote Judge Kenneth K. Lee.

2 US Navy sailors charged with providing sensitive military information to China

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Two U.S. Navy sailors were charged Thursday with providing sensitive military information to China — including details on wartime exercises, naval operations and critical technical material.

The two sailors, both based in California, were charged with similar moves to provide sensitive intelligence to the Chinese. But they were separate cases, and it wasn’t clear if the two were courted or paid by the same Chinese intelligence officer as part of a larger scheme. Federal officials at a news conference in San Diego declined to specify whether the sailors were aware of each other's actions.

Both men pleaded not guilty in federal courts in San Diego and Los Angeles. They were ordered to be held until their detention hearings, which will take place Aug. 8 in those same cities.

U.S. officials have for years expressed concern about the espionage threat they say the Chinese government poses, bringing criminal cases in recent years against Beijing intelligence operatives who have stolen sensitive government and commercial information, including through illegal hacking.

The pair of cases also comes on the heels of another insider-threat prosecution tied to the U.S. military, with the Justice Department in April arresting a Massachusetts Air National Guardsman on charges of leaking classified military documents about Russia’s war in Ukraine and other sensitive national security topics on Discord, a social media platform popular with people playing online games.

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