Boston Tea Party turns 250 years old with reenactments of the revolutionary protest

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Severe storms that tore through central Tennessee killed six people Saturday and sent about two dozen to the hospital as homes and businesses were damaged in multiple cities.

Three people, including a child, were killed after an apparent tornado struck Montgomery County north of Nashville near the Kentucky state line, county officials said in a news release. And the Nashville Emergency Operation Center said in a post on a social media account that three people were killed by severe storms there. Montgomery County officials said another 23 there were treated for injuries at hospitals.

Photos posted by the Clarksvillle fire department on social media showed damaged houses with debris strewn in the lawns, a semitrailer flipped on its side on a highway and insulation ripped out of building walls.

"This is devastating news and our hearts are broken for the families of those who lost loved ones," said Clarksville Mayor Joe Pitts in a statement. "The city stands ready to help them in their time of grief."

No other information about the victims was immediately available.

The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office said in a statement that a tornado touched down about 2 p.m. A shelter was set up at a local high school.

Residents were asked to stay at home while first responders evaluated the situation. In a briefing shared on social media, Pitts said there was extensive damage.

"So please, if you need help, call 911 and help will be on the way immediately. But if you can, please stay home. Do not get out on the roads. Our first responders need time and space," he said.

Shanika Washington said that as soon as she heard the storm sirens going off in her Clarksville neighborhood, she took her children, ages 5 and 10, to a windowless bathroom in the basement of her townhouse.

“The lights were flickering, so I knew it was somewhere close in the vicinity,” she said. “I just kept praying to God as it was going on. It was very terrifying and scary.”

During their 20 harrowing minutes in the bathroom, Washington hovered over her children as a protective shield.

“The back door absolutely did fly open, and you just heard a bunch of wind,” she said. “The blinds and stuff were like shaking really bad. I could tell that we were dead smack in the middle of a storm.”

When she came out of the bathroom, she looked out of a window and saw the destruction: Debris swept onto cars that had their windows broken out. Shutters ripped from homes. Some roofs were ripped off townhouses. Air conditioning units and backyard grills were tossed like toys, and wooden dividers between townhouses were missing.

Because the power in the area was out, Washington took her children to a hotel for the night.

“I’m still shaken up a little bit, so I probably won’t get much sleep tonight,” Washington said. “I’m still trying to just kind of like process it all."

Allie Phillips, who lives in Clarksville, said she was grabbing lunch when she began receiving notifications of the tornado that was quickly approaching her neighborhood.

"It was excruciating watching the live stream and not knowing if my house was still there," she said. "When we finally decided to leave, the road to my home was shut down because so many power lines were on the road and we had to take a detour."

Phillips said her home survived with minimal damage — noting her daughter's toys were banged up and a neighbor's dog kennel hit the back of her home — but she was saddened to see that her neighbor's house was missing a roof and a home up the block had all but completely disappeared.

"This doesn't happen enough that you're ever prepared for it," she said.

The National Weather Service issued multiple tornado warnings in Tennessee, and said it planned to survey an area where an apparent tornado hit in Kentucky.

About 85,000 electricity customers were without power in Tennessee on Saturday night, according to PowerOutage.us.

The storm came nearly two years to the day after the National Weather Service recorded 41 tornadoes through a handful of states, including 16 in Tennessee and eight in Kentucky. A total of 81 people died in Kentucky alone.

NEW YORK — Even before anyone has cast a vote in a 2024 presidential primary, the attention of many political journalists has shifted to Jan. 20, 2025.

There has been a flurry of recent stories about the implications of a potential second presidency for Donald Trump, and his team's planning for Inauguration Day and beyond. Polls show his continued dominance over Republican rivals and the likelihood of a close general election.

The New York Times reporting team of Charlie Savage, Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman has been mining that topic since the summer, and last week wrote in depth about the former president's authoritarian impulses, and the possibility of fewer checks on his power. On Sunday, they examined whether Trump would leave NATO.

A special issue of The Atlantic magazine released last week collected essays by 24 writers on how a Trump presidency would affect things like foreign policy, immigration, journalism and climate change. Editor Jeffrey Goldberg wrote that people should read every one, "though perhaps not in one sitting, for reasons of mental hygiene."

Among several other pieces:

1. The Washington Post outlined plans by Trump and allies to use the federal government to punish opponents, and Editor-at-large Robert Kagan suggested that a Trump dictatorship was "increasingly inevitable."

2. The Associated Press has written extensively about the implications of Trump's campaign rhetoric. Also, detailed planning by conservative groups for a second Trump term was outlined by AP.

Government-politics

Trump’s intensifying rhetoric offers insight into how he might govern again as president

• MICHELLE L. PRICE and NICHOLAS RICCARDI Associated Press

3. Politico's Jack Shafer wrote about Trump's "recipe for a shockingly raw power grab."

4. Axios collected speculation on the possible staffing of a second Trump administration. Can you say Vice President Tucker Carlson?

TOO MUCH? EVEN TRUMP'S PEOPLE PRESCRIBE CAUTION

The volume of stories had reached the point where the Trump campaign at the end of last week sent a memo calling on allies and former aides to cool it, saying messages about a potential second term from anyone but the former president and his team were "an unwelcomed distraction."

"The stakes are high," said David Halbfinger, politics editor at the Times. "We saw on Jan. 6 of 2021, when we cover politics, we don't just cover elections. We cover democracy now. Everybody has to take their jobs seriously, and it's good to see that everybody is."

For decades, journalists have been criticized for concentrating too much on the "horse race" aspect of politics: who's winning, who's losing and the machinations of campaigns. With the Republican and Democratic nomination processes uncompetitive so far, there's less taste for it.

Much of the recent reporting is an emphatic example of what New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen calls "stakes journalism," or examining the potential consequences of an election.

As Trump talks about retribution and his challengers fail to dent his popularity, the story line about threats to democracy "becomes more and more plausible," Rosen said. "Horse race coverage feels more and more trivial. At least it does to me."

At the same time, reporters have discovered the extent to which Trump allies have been specifically planning for a return to power, Halbfinger said. Journalists have learned — or should learn — to take seriously what the former president says while campaigning.

"The skeptics who might have consoled themselves about the first term of Trump, saying that he's too incompetent to get things done, they can't console themselves by saying Trump and his people don't know what they're doing this time," he said. "They've learned a lot and they're preparing."

Goldberg said in an interview that he began thinking of The Atlantic's special issue when reporting this summer for a piece on General Mark Milley's actions in the waning days of the Trump administration. He said he saw the value of putting in one place all of the potential impacts of Trump 2.0 — in what The Atlantic labels "a warning."

While he has no specific metrics about reader response, Goldberg said "I didn't think it would be so galvanizing."

MORE SUCH COVERAGE? OR IS IT BIASED?

Rosen and Margaret Sullivan, who hosts the podcast "American Crisis: Can Journalism Save Democracy?", have repeatedly urged for more of this coverage. Journalists should report "with far more vigor — and repetition — than they do about Biden being 80 years old," Sullivan wrote last month in a column for The Guardian.

Both Sullivan and Rosen said they were encouraged by the recent reporting. Not surprisingly, that's not the case among Trump supporters.

Jordan Boyd said in the Federalist last week that corporate media was trying to "gaslight Americans" and are leading a coordinated effort to paint a potential 2024 Trump victory as the beginning of a cruel and unyielding dictatorship.

There's a "whole new level of panic" in the media about polls that have shown Trump matching up well against President Joe Biden, said Tim Graham, director of media analysis at the conservative watchdog group Media Research Center.

"There's a frustration with, 'Why can't we destroy this guy?'" Graham said. "I think everyone figured that 91 indictments would do the trick and it did the opposite."

The question remains whether the new reporting will be noticed by people who rely mostly on conservative media.

"I'm just not sure it's sinking in to the public in general," said Sullivan, incoming executive director of a journalism ethics center at Columbia University. "There's a lot of people who understand there's a threat to democracy that comes with a second Trump presidency and there are a lot of people who continue to think that it's a normal presidential contest. I don't think that's the case."

Goldberg said he hopes people hand a copy of The Atlantic to "their on-the-fence uncle" over the holidays.

"We have to do whatever we think is right and we have to try as hard as we can to advance the ideas that we think are true and good," he said. "If people listen, great. And if people don't listen, we still have to do it. That's our role. We also want to be able to tell our grandchildren that we tried hard."

___

The 2024 presidential field, in the order they've announced

Donald Trump, Republican

Nikki Haley, Republican

Vivek Ramaswamy, Republican

Marianne Williamson, Democrat

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Independent

Larry Elder, Republican (dropped out)

President Joe Biden, Democrat

Asa Hutchinson, Republican

Tim Scott, Republican (dropped out)

Ron DeSantis, Republican

Mike Pence, Republican (dropped out)

Chris Christie, Republican

Doug Burgum, Republican (dropped out)

Francis Suarez, Republican (dropped out)

Will Hurd, Republican (dropped out)

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday said it will hear an appeal that could upend hundreds of charges stemming from the Capitol riot, including against former President Donald Trump. It also agreed to take up a dispute over a medication used in the most common method of abortion in the United States, its first abortion case since it overturned Roe v. Wade last year.

The justices will hear appeals from the Biden administration and the maker of the drug mifepristone asking the high court to reverse an appellate ruling that would cut off access to the drug through the mail and impose other restrictions, even in states where abortion remains legal. The restrictions include shortening from the current 10 weeks to seven weeks the time during which mifepristone can be used in pregnancy.

The nine justices rejected a separate appeal from abortion opponents who challenged the Food and Drug Administration's initial approval of mifepristone as safe and effective in 2000.

The case will be argued in the spring, with a decision likely by late June, in the middle of the 2024 presidential and congressional campaigns.

Read more:

Capitol riot charges

The justices will also review an appellate ruling that revived a charge against three defendants accused of obstruction of an official proceeding. The charge refers to the disruption of Congress' certification of Joe Biden's 2020 presidential election victory over Trump.

That's among four counts brought against Trump in special counsel Jack Smith's case that accuses the 2024 Republican presidential primary front-runner of conspiring to overturn the results of his election loss. Trump is also charged with conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.

The court's decision to weigh in on the obstruction charge could threaten the start of Trump's trial, currently scheduled for March 4. The justices separately are considering whether to rule quickly on Trump's claim that he can't be prosecuted for actions taken within his role as president. A federal judge already has rejected that argument.

The obstruction charge has been brought against more than 300 defendants in the massive federal prosecution following the deadly insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in a bid to keep Biden, a Democrat, from taking the White House.

A lower court judge had dismissed the charge against three defendants, ruling it didn't cover their conduct.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols found that prosecutors stretched the law beyond its scope to inappropriately apply it in these cases. Nichols ruled that a defendant must have taken "some action with respect to a document, record or other object" to obstruct an official proceeding under the law.

The Justice Department challenged that ruling, and the appeals court in Washington agreed with prosecutors in April that Nichols' interpretation of the law was too limited.

Other defendants, including Trump, are separately challenging the use of the charge.

Read more:

___

The 9 current justices of the US Supreme Court

Chief Justice John Roberts

Justice Clarence Thomas

Justice Samuel Alito

Justice Sonia Sotomayor

Justice Elena Kagan

Justice Neil Gorsuch

Justice Brett Kavanaugh

Justice Amy Coney Barrett

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

Two men were indicted last week on federal charges of illegally killing and trafficking numerous bald and golden eagles in Montana. 

According to a grand jury indictment filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Missoula, Simon Paul, Travis John Branson and "others" killed about 3,600 birds, eagles among them, during a self-described "killing spree" on the Flathead Indian Reservation north of Missoula and elsewhere. The pair allegedly sold the birds and parts of birds "for significant sums of cash" in the U.S. and internationally.

The events leading to the indictment were alleged to have occurred from about the start of 2015 through about March 2021. Branson allegedly told buyers he was "out (here) committing felonies," according to the indictment. Together, the pair are alleged to have sold whole bald and golden eagles, bald and golden eagle wings, and golden eagle tails.

The indictment charged each defendant with one count of conspiracy and one count of violating the Lacey Act, which prohibits trafficking illegally taken plants or animals. The conspiracy charge carries a penalty of five years in federal prison, three years' probation and a $250,000 fine. The Lacey Act violation is punishable by the same prison sentence and a $20,000 fine. 

Additionally, Branson, of Washington state, was charged with eight counts of violating the 1940 Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. Paul, of Ronan, was charged with five counts of violating the act. 

The law makes it illegal to kill, possess, transport, sell, purchase, import or export bald and golden eagles, their body parts, nests or eggs. The law was expanded in 1962 to cover golden eagles in addition to bald eagles. A first violation is punishable by one year in federal prison, one year of probation and a $5,000 fine. The prison term and fine are doubled for subsequent convictions on the same charge.

In June, a Hardin man was sentenced in federal court in South Dakota to three years in federal prison, one year of probation and $70,000 in restitution for killing 14 juvenile golden eagles and selling their parts. That man, Harvey Hugs, was previously convicted in 2012 of aiding and abetting eagle trafficking. 

According to events outlined in last week's indictment, Branson traveled from Washington to the reservation in Montana from 2019 through March 2021 to shoot bald and golden eagles with Paul, who lived near Ronan on the reservation. 

"When Branson arrived on the Flathead Indian Reservation," the indictment stated, "Paul would meet and help kill, transport, and ship bald and golden eagles for future sales on the black market." 

In one particular incident, Branson allegedly texted a photo of a golden eagle tail to a buyer on Dec. 17, 2020, and received payment for the tail via PayPal the same day. Paul allegedly mailed the tail from St. Ignatius to Texas on Dec. 19. The indictment alleged that Branson received a text from the buyer two days later stating, "Got that thang from Simon. And the mirror feathers. Tnks." 

Later, on March 13, 2021, the pair allegedly killed a golden eagle that was lured to a previously killed deer. Paul cleaned the animal, according to the indictment, and the pair "placed various golden eagle parts in the vehicle for transport." 

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference case in Washington will be put on hold while the former president further pursues his claims that he is immune from prosecution, the judge overseeing the case ruled Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Tanya agreed to pause any “further proceedings that would move this case towards trial or impose additional burdens of litigation on Defendant.” But the judge said that if the case returns to her court, she will “consider at that time whether to retain or continue the dates of any still-future deadlines and proceedings, including the trial scheduled for March 4, 2024.”

This is an update. AP’s earlier story follows below:

A look at the 19 people charged in the Georgia indictment connected to Trump's election scheme

Key people in the Georgia election fraud case

Donald Trump

Rudy Giuliani

John Eastman

Mark Meadows

Sidney Powell

Kenneth Chesebro

Prosecutors have said Chesebro, an attorney, worked with Republicans in numerous swing states Trump lost, including Georgia, in the weeks after the November 2020 election at the direction of Trump’s campaign. Chesebro worked on the coordination and execution of a plan to have 16 Georgia Republicans sign a certificate declaring falsely that Trump won and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors.

Jeffrey Clark

Jenna Ellis

Ray Smith

A Georgia-based lawyer, Smith was involved in multiple lawsuits challenging the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. He also gathered witnesses to provide testimony before Georgia legislative subcommittee hearings held in December 2020 on alleged issues with the state’s election.

Robert Cheeley

A Georgia lawyer, Cheeley presented video clips to legislators of election workers at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta and alleged the workers were counting votes twice or sometimes three times. He spoke to the lawmakers after Giuliani.

Michael Roman

A former White House aide who served as the director of Trump’s election day operations, Roman was involved in efforts to put forth a set of fake electors after the 2020 election.

David Shafer

Shawn Still

He was one of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate falsely stating that Trump had won the state and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors. Still was the finance chairman for the state GOP in 2020 and served as a Georgia delegate to the Republican National Convention that year. He was elected to the Georgia state Senate in November 2022 and represents a district in Atlanta’s suburbs.

Stephen Cliffgard Lee

Prosecutors say Cliffgard Lee, a pastor, worked with others to try to pressure Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman and her daughter after Trump and his allies falsely accused them of pulling fraudulent ballots from a suitcase during the vote count. Lee allegedly knocked on Freeman’s door, frightening her and causing her to call 911 three times, prosecutors said in a court filing last year.

Harrison William Prescott Floyd

Also known as Willie Lewis Floyd III, he served as director of Black Voices for Trump, and is accused of recruiting Lee to arrange a meeting with Freeman and Chicago-based publicist Trevian Kutti.

Trevian C. Kutti

Prosecutors allege Kutti, a publicist, claimed to have high-level law enforcement connections. They say Freeman met with Kutti at a police precinct, where she brought Floyd into the conversation on a speakerphone. Prosecutors say Kutti presented herself as someone who could help Freeman but then pressured her to falsely confess to election fraud.

Cathy Latham

Scott Graham Hall

An Atlanta-area bail bondsman, Hall was allegedly involved in commandeering voting information that was the property of Dominion Voting Systems from Coffee County, a small south Georgia jurisdiction. Also charged in the scheme were Powell, Latham and former county elections supervisor Misty Hampton.

Misty Hampton

She was the elections director in Coffee County. Hampton was present in the county elections office on Jan. 7, 2021, when a computer forensics team copied software and data from the county’s election equipment. She also allowed two other men who had been active in efforts to question the 2020 election results to access the elections office later that month and to spend hours inside with the equipment.

Read the Trump indictment in Georgia

WASHINGTON — A jury awarded $148 million in damages on Friday to two former Georgia election workers who sued Rudy Giuliani for defamation over lies he spread about them in 2020 that upended their lives with racist threats and harassment.

The damages verdict follows emotional testimony from Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, who tearfully described becoming the target of a false conspiracy theory pushed by Giuliani and other Republicans as they tried to keep then-President Donald Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election.

There was an audible gasp in the courtroom when the jury foreperson read aloud the $75 million award in punitive damages for the women. Moss and Freeman were each awarded another roughly $36 million in other damages.

“Money will never solve all my problems," Freeman told reporters outside Washington's federal courthouse after the verdict. "I can never move back into the house that I call home. I will always have to be careful about where I go and who I choose to share my name with. I miss my home. I miss my neighbors and I miss my name.”

Giuliani didn't appear to show any emotion as the verdict was read in Washington's federal courthouse after about 10 hours of deliberations. Moss and Freeman hugged their attorneys after the jury left the courtroom and didn't look at Giuliani as he left with his lawyer.

Giuliani told reporters outside Washington's federal courthouse that he will appeal, saying the “absurdity of the number merely underscores the absurdity of the entire proceeding."

“It will be reversed so quickly it will make your head spin, and the absurd number that just came in will help that actually,” he said.

Giuliani had already been found liable in the case and previously conceded in court documents that he falsely accused the women of ballot fraud. Even so, the former New York City mayor continued to repeat his baseless allegations about the women in comments to reporters outside the Washington, D.C., courthouse this week.

Giuliani’s lawyer acknowledged that his client was wrong but insisted that Giuliani was not fully responsible for the vitriol the women faced. The defense sought to largely pin the blame on a right-wing website that published the surveillance video of the two women counting ballots.

Giuliani’s defense rested Thursday morning without calling a single witness after the former mayor reversed course and decided not to take the stand. Giuliani’s lawyer had told jurors in his opening statement that they would hear from his client. But after Giuliani's comments outside court, the judge barred him from claiming in testimony that his conspiracy theories were right.

The judgment adds to growing financial and legal peril for Giuliani, who was among the loudest proponents of Trump’s false claims of election fraud that are now a key part of the criminal cases against the former president.

It's not clear whether Giuliani will ever be able to pay the staggering amount. He had already been showing signs of financial strain as he defends himself against costly lawsuits and investigations stemming from his representation of Trump. In September, his former lawyer sued him, alleging Giuliani had paid only a fraction of nearly $1.6 million in legal fees he racked up. His lawyer suggested that the defamation case could financially ruin the former mayor, saying “it would be the end of Mr. Giuliani.”

And Giuliani is still facing his biggest test yet: fighting criminal charges in the Georgia case accusing Trump and 18 others of working to subvert the results of the 2020 election, won by Democrat Joe Biden, in that state. Giuliani has pleaded not guilty and characterized the case as politically motivated.

Jurors in the defamation case heard recordings of Giuliani falsely accusing the election workers of sneaking in ballots in suitcases, counting ballots multiple times and tampering with voting machines. Trump also repeated the conspiracy theories through his social media accounts. Lawyers for Moss and Freeman, who are Black, also played for jurors audio recordings of the graphic and racist threats the women received.

The women’s lawyers asked for at least $24 million for each woman in defamation damages alone. They also sought compensation for their emotional harm and punitive damages.

On the witness stand, Moss and Freeman described fearing for their lives as hateful messages poured in. Moss told jurors she tried to change her appearance, seldom leaves her home and suffers from panic attacks. Her mother described strangers banging on her door and recounted fleeing her home after people came with bullhorns and the FBI told her she wasn’t safe.

“It’s so scary, anytime I go somewhere, if I have to use my name,” Freeman said, gasping through her tears to get her words out. “I miss my old neighborhood because I was me, I could introduce myself. Now I don’t have a name, really.”

Defense attorney Joseph Sibley told jurors they should compensate the women for what they are owed, but he urged them to “remember this is a great man.”

An attorney for Moss and Freeman, in his closing argument, highlighted how Giuliani has not stopped repeating the false conspiracy theory asserting the workers interfered in the November 2020 presidential election. Attorney Michael Gottlieb played a video of Giuliani outside the courthouse on Monday, in which Giuliani falsely claimed the women were “engaged in changing votes.”

“Mr. Giuliani has shown over and over again he will not take our client’s names out of his mouth,” Gottlieb said. “Facts will not stop him. He says he isn’t sorry and he’s telegraphing he will do this again. Believe him.”

The judge overseeing the election workers’ lawsuit had already ordered Giuliani and his business entities to pay tens of thousands of dollars in attorneys’ fees. In holding Giuliani liable, the judge ruled that the former mayor gave “only lip service” to complying with his legal obligations while trying to portray himself as the victim in the case.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Read more:

A look at the 19 people charged in the Georgia indictment connected to Trump's election scheme

Key people in the Georgia election fraud case

Donald Trump

Rudy Giuliani

John Eastman

Mark Meadows

Sidney Powell

Kenneth Chesebro

Prosecutors have said Chesebro, an attorney, worked with Republicans in numerous swing states Trump lost, including Georgia, in the weeks after the November 2020 election at the direction of Trump’s campaign. Chesebro worked on the coordination and execution of a plan to have 16 Georgia Republicans sign a certificate declaring falsely that Trump won and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors.

Jeffrey Clark

Jenna Ellis

Ray Smith

A Georgia-based lawyer, Smith was involved in multiple lawsuits challenging the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. He also gathered witnesses to provide testimony before Georgia legislative subcommittee hearings held in December 2020 on alleged issues with the state’s election.

Robert Cheeley

A Georgia lawyer, Cheeley presented video clips to legislators of election workers at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta and alleged the workers were counting votes twice or sometimes three times. He spoke to the lawmakers after Giuliani.

Michael Roman

A former White House aide who served as the director of Trump’s election day operations, Roman was involved in efforts to put forth a set of fake electors after the 2020 election.

David Shafer

Shawn Still

He was one of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate falsely stating that Trump had won the state and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors. Still was the finance chairman for the state GOP in 2020 and served as a Georgia delegate to the Republican National Convention that year. He was elected to the Georgia state Senate in November 2022 and represents a district in Atlanta’s suburbs.

Stephen Cliffgard Lee

Prosecutors say Cliffgard Lee, a pastor, worked with others to try to pressure Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman and her daughter after Trump and his allies falsely accused them of pulling fraudulent ballots from a suitcase during the vote count. Lee allegedly knocked on Freeman’s door, frightening her and causing her to call 911 three times, prosecutors said in a court filing last year.

Harrison William Prescott Floyd

Also known as Willie Lewis Floyd III, he served as director of Black Voices for Trump, and is accused of recruiting Lee to arrange a meeting with Freeman and Chicago-based publicist Trevian Kutti.

Trevian C. Kutti

Prosecutors allege Kutti, a publicist, claimed to have high-level law enforcement connections. They say Freeman met with Kutti at a police precinct, where she brought Floyd into the conversation on a speakerphone. Prosecutors say Kutti presented herself as someone who could help Freeman but then pressured her to falsely confess to election fraud.

Cathy Latham

Scott Graham Hall

An Atlanta-area bail bondsman, Hall was allegedly involved in commandeering voting information that was the property of Dominion Voting Systems from Coffee County, a small south Georgia jurisdiction. Also charged in the scheme were Powell, Latham and former county elections supervisor Misty Hampton.

Misty Hampton

She was the elections director in Coffee County. Hampton was present in the county elections office on Jan. 7, 2021, when a computer forensics team copied software and data from the county’s election equipment. She also allowed two other men who had been active in efforts to question the 2020 election results to access the elections office later that month and to spend hours inside with the equipment.

Read the Trump indictment in Georgia

WASHINGTON — U.S. inflation ticked down again last month, with cheaper gas helping further lighten the weight of price increases in the United States.

At the same time, the latest data on consumer inflation showed that prices in some areas — services such as rents, restaurants and auto insurance — continued to rise uncomfortably fast.

Tuesday’s report from the Labor Department said the consumer price index rose just 0.1% from October to November. Compared with a year earlier, prices were up 3.1% in November, down from a 3.2% year-over-year rise in October.

But core prices, which exclude volatile food and energy costs, rose 0.3% from October to November, slightly faster than the 0.2% increase the previous month. Measured from a year ago, core prices rose 4%, the same as in October. The Federal Reserve considers core prices to be a better guide to the future path of inflation.

The stickiness of inflation in the economy's service sector will likely keep the Federal Reserve on guard against inflation as it meets this week. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has been scrutinizing such costs as a guide to whether underlying inflationary trends are cooling.

Inflation remains above the Fed's 2% target. And while Powell has expressed optimism about slowing inflation, he said earlier this month that it was “premature” to assume that the Fed was done raising its benchmark interest rate or to speculate about rate cuts, which many on Wall Street expect as early as spring.

Michael Gapen, chief economist at Bank of America, said that persistent inflation in the service sector “fits the ‘wait and see and be careful’ narrative that the Fed is constructing.”

“In terms of building confidence that you’re in a disinflationary environment and opening the door to cuts," Gapen added, “I think you have to say, well, we need more time to assess where services inflation is is going.”

Prices for such services as hotels, health care and entertainment are heavily determined by wages because they are labor-intensive. And wages are still rising rapidly, though they've eased from pandemic-era peaks.

Restaurant prices are an example. They rose 0.4% from October to November for a third straight month, leaving them 5.3% more expensive than they were a year earlier. Rents are also fueling inflation: They accelerated slightly from October to November. Real-time data from companies like Zillow and ApartmentList, though, suggest that apartment rent growth is slowing. That slowdown has started to bring down the government's official measure of rents and should continue to do so in coming months.

Gas prices tumbled 6% just from October to November. From a peak of $5 about a year and a half ago, the national average has dropped to $3.14 a gallon, according to AAA.

And grocery prices are showing signs of further cooling, which should provide consumers with some relief for one of their most frequent purchases: Food prices ticked up just 0.1% in November and are only 1.7% higher than they were a year ago. Bread, beef, chicken and pork prices all dropped.

Many goods prices, including furniture, clothing and appliances, also fell last month. Used cars were an exception. Their average prices jumped 1.6% in November, though they're still down nearly 4% from 12 months earlier.

The sharp decline in goods prices reflects substantial improvement in global supply chains, which were severely disrupted by the pandemic. At the same time, Americans ramped up spending on cars, stationary bikes and furniture in 2021 and 2022, worsening the bottlenecks for many factory-made items.

In the past year or so, a slower economy and smoother production have helped reduce inflation pressures by making it easier and cheaper for companies to obtain supplies and find workers.

At Christmas Decor, a company that installs holiday decorations for homes and businesses, sales are still growing this year but at a less frantic pace than in the previous two years. In 2021, for example, Brandon Stephens, the company president, was so busy and customers were so willing to spend money on decorations that some people were willing to wait until after Christmas for his company to put up lights and ornaments.

“This year wasn't as feverish as it felt in the last two years,” Stephens said.

Stephens, who imports most of his Christmas lights, Santa statues and greenery, said that in 2021 shipping costs had jumped from $6,000 for a 40-foot container to as much as $30,000. He recommended to his roughly 275 franchisees that they raise prices by 7% to 9% that year to cover the higher costs.

With shipping prices having since dropped back to pre-pandemic levels, Christmas Decor is raising prices more slowly. Still, the cost of some goods and labor remains much higher than before the pandemic. A basic install at a home now costs about $2,300, Stephens said, compared with $1,700 before COVID.

The mixed picture in Tuesday’s inflation report will likely keep the Fed on track to leave its benchmark interest rate unchanged when its latest meeting ends Wednesday. Inflation still exceeds the Fed’s 2% annual target, which is why its officials are set to leave rates high. But inflation is also cooling faster than officials expected, a key reason they likely see no cause to further raise rates, at least for now.

If the Fed leaves rates where they are Wednesday, it will be the third straight time it has done so. The central bank last raised its key rate in July, which suggests that it's probably finished raising borrowing costs.

The central bank has pushed its key rate to about 5.4%, the highest level in 22 years, in a determined drive to conquer inflation. Its rate hikes have made mortgages, auto loans, business borrowing and other forms of credit much costlier, reflecting the Fed’s goal of slowing borrowing and spending enough to tame inflation.

Even if the central bank is done raising rates, it’s expected to keep its benchmark rate at a peak for at least several more months. The Fed raised its key short-term rate 11 times starting in March 2022.

According to a lesser-known inflation gauge that the Fed prefers, core prices rose 3.5% in October compared with 12 months earlier. That was less than the central bank’s forecast of 3.7% for the final three months of this year.

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WASHINGTON — The House on Wednesday authorized the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, with every Republican rallying behind the politically charged process despite lingering concerns among some in the party that the investigation has yet to produce evidence of misconduct by the president.

The 221-212 party-line vote put the entire House Republican conference on record in support of an impeachment process that can lead to the ultimate penalty for a president: punishment for what the Constitution describes as “high crimes and misdemeanors,” which can lead to removal from office if convicted in a Senate trial.

Biden, in a rare statement about the impeachment effort, questioned the priorities of House Republicans in pursuing an inquiry against him and his family.

“Instead of doing anything to help make Americans’ lives better, they are focused on attacking me with lies,” the president said following the vote. “Instead of doing their job on the urgent work that needs to be done, they are choosing to waste time on this baseless political stunt that even Republicans in Congress admit is not supported by facts.”

Authorizing the monthslong inquiry ensures that the impeachment investigation extends well into 2024, when Biden will be running for reelection and seems likely to be squaring off against former President Donald Trump — who was twice impeached during his time in the White House. Trump has pushed his GOP allies in Congress to move swiftly on impeaching Biden, part of his broader calls for vengeance and retribution against his political enemies.

The decision to hold a vote came as Speaker Mike Johnson and his team faced growing pressure to show progress in what has become a nearly yearlong probe centered around the business dealings of Biden's family members. While their investigation has raised ethical questions, no evidence has emerged that Biden acted corruptly or accepted bribes in his current role or previous office as vice president.

“We do not take this responsibility lightly and will not prejudge the investigation’s outcome,” Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team said in a joint statement after the vote. “But the evidentiary record is impossible to ignore.”

Authorizing the monthslong inquiry ensures that the impeachment investigation extends well into 2024, when Biden will be running for reelection and seems likely to be squaring off against former President Donald Trump — who was twice impeached during his time in the White House. Trump has pushed his GOP allies in Congress to move swiftly on impeaching Biden, part of his broader calls for vengeance and retribution against his political enemies.

White House: ‘baseless fishing expedition’

The decision to hold a vote came as Johnson and his leadership team faced growing pressure to show progress in what has become a nearly yearlong probe centered around the business dealings of Biden's family members. While their investigation has raised ethical questions, no evidence has emerged that Biden acted corruptly or accepted bribes in his current role or previous office as vice president.

Ahead of the vote, Johnson called it “the next necessary step" and acknowledged there are “a lot of people who are frustrated this hasn’t moved faster.”

In a recent statement, the White House called the whole process a “baseless fishing expedition” that Republicans are pushing ahead with “despite the fact that members of their own party have admitted there is no evidence to support impeaching President Biden.”

House Democrats rose in opposition to the inquiry resolution Wednesday.

“This whole thing is an extreme political stunt. It has no credibility, no legitimacy, and no integrity. It is a sideshow," Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said during a floor debate.

Some House Republicans, particularly those hailing from politically divided districts, had been hesitant in recent weeks to take any vote on Biden's impeachment, fearing a significant political cost. But GOP leaders have made the case in recent weeks that the resolution is only a step in the process, not a decision to impeach Biden. That message seems to have won over skeptics.

“As we have said numerous times before, voting in favor of an impeachment inquiry does not equal impeachment,” Rep. Tom Emmer, a member of the GOP leadership team, said at a news conference Tuesday.

Emmer said Republicans “will continue to follow the facts wherever they lead, and if they uncover evidence of treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors, then and only then will the next steps towards impeachment proceedings be considered.”

Most of the Republicans reluctant to back the impeachment push have also been swayed by leadership's recent argument that authorizing the inquiry will give them better legal standing as the White House has questioned the legal and constitutional basis for their requests for information.

Democrats unified in opposition

A letter last month from a top White House attorney to Republican committee leaders portrayed the GOP investigation as overzealous and illegitimate because the chamber had not yet authorized a formal impeachment inquiry by a vote of the full House. Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, also wrote that when Trump faced the prospect of impeachment by a Democratic-led House in 2019, Johnson had said at the time that any inquiry without a House vote would be a “sham.”

Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., said this week that while there was no evidence to impeach the president, “that’s also not what the vote this week would be about.”

“We have had enough political impeachments in this country,” he said. “I don’t like the stonewalling the administration has done, but listen, if we don’t have the receipts, that should constrain what the House does long-term.”

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., who has long been opposed to moving forward with impeachment, said that the White House questioning the legitimacy of the inquiry without a formal vote helped gain his support. “I can defend an inquiry right now,” he told reporters this week. "Let's see what they find out.”

House Democrats remained unified in their opposition to the impeachment process, saying it is a farce used by the GOP to take attention away from Trump and his legal woes.

“You don’t initiate an impeachment process unless there’s real evidence of impeachable offenses,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, who oversaw the two impeachments into Trump. “There is none here. None.”

Democrats and the White House have repeatedly defended the president and his administration's cooperation with the investigation thus far, saying it has already made a massive trove of documents available.

Congressional investigators have obtained nearly 40,000 pages of subpoenaed bank records and dozens of hours of testimony from key witnesses, including several high-ranking Justice Department officials currently tasked with investigating the president's son, Hunter Biden.

While Republicans say their inquiry is ultimately focused on the president himself, they have taken particular interest in Hunter Biden and his overseas business dealings, from which they accuse the president of personally benefiting. Republicans have also focused a large part of their investigation on whistleblower allegations of interference in the long-running Justice Department investigation into the younger Biden's taxes and his gun use.

Hunter Biden is currently facing criminal charges in two states from the special counsel investigation. He’s charged with firearm counts in Delaware, alleging he broke laws against drug users having guns in 2018, a period when he has acknowledged struggling with addiction. Special counsel David Weiss filed additional charges last week, alleging he failed to pay about $1.4 million in taxes over a three-year period.

Democrats have conceded that while the president's son is not perfect, he is a private citizen who is already being held accountable by the justice system.

“I mean, there’s a lot of evidence that Hunter Biden did a lot of improper things. He’s been indicted, he’ll stand trial,” Nadler said. “There’s no evidence whatsoever that the president did anything improper.”

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• Lee Media Studio, The Associated Press

Hunter Biden arrived for a rare public statement outside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, saying he would not be appearing for his scheduled private deposition that morning. The president's son defended himself against years of GOP attacks and said his father has had no financial involvement in his business affairs.

His attorney has offered for Biden to testify publicly, citing concerns about Republicans manipulating any private testimony.

“Republicans do not want an open process where Americans can see their tactics, expose their baseless inquiry, or hear what I have to say,” Biden said outside the Capitol. “What are they afraid of? I am here.”

GOP lawmakers said that since Hunter Biden did not appear, they will begin contempt of Congress proceedings against him. “He just got into more trouble today,” Rep. James Comer, the House Oversight Committee chairman, told reporters Wednesday.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Read more: 

Photos: Biden impeachment inquiry hearings

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — One of the biggest and brightest stars in the night sky will momentarily vanish as an asteroid passes in front of it to produce a one-of-a-kind eclipse.

The rare and fleeting spectacle, late Monday into early Tuesday, should be visible to millions of people along a narrow path stretching from central Asia's Tajikistan and Armenia, across Turkey, Greece, Italy and Spain, to Miami and the Florida Keys and finally, to parts of Mexico.

The star is Betelgeuse, a red supergiant in the constellation Orion. The asteroid is Leona, a slowly rotating, oblong space rock in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Astronomers hope to learn more about Betelgeuse and Leona through the eclipse, which is expected to last no more than 15 seconds. By observing an eclipse of a much dimmer star by Leona in September, a Spanish-led team recently estimated the asteroid to be about 34 miles wide and 50 miles long (55 kilometers wide and 80 kilometers long).

There are lingering uncertainties over those predictions as well as the size of the star and its expansive atmosphere. It's unclear if the asteroid will obscure the entire star, producing a total eclipse. Rather, the result could be a "ring of fire" eclipse with a miniscule blazing border around the star. If it's a total eclipse, astronomers aren't sure how many seconds the star will disappear completely, perhaps up to 10 seconds.

"Which scenario we will see is uncertain, making the event even more intriguing," said astronomer Gianluca Masa, founder of the Virtual Telescope Project, which will provide a live webcast from Italy.

An estimated 700 light-years away, Betelgeuse is visible with the naked eye. Binoculars and small telescopes will enhance the view. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles.

Betelgeuse is thousands of times brighter than our sun and some 700 times bigger. It's so huge that if it replaced our sun, it would stretch beyond Jupiter, according to NASA.

At just 10 million years old, Betelgeuse is considerably younger than the 4.6 billion-year-old sun. Scientists expect Betelgeuse to be short-lived, given its mass and the speed at which it's burning through its material.

After countless centuries of varying brightness, Betelgeuse dimmed dramatically in 2019 when a huge bunch of surface material was ejected into space. The resulting dust cloud temporarily blocked the starlight, NASA said, and within a half year, Betelgeuse was as bright as before.

Scientists expect Betelgeuse to go supernova in a violent explosion within 100,000 years.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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50 images of the universe from the Hubble Space Telescope

50 images of the universe from the Hubble Space Telescope

The Pillars of Creation (1995)

The Eagle Nebula in Infrared (2015)

Prelude to a Cosmic Explosion (1995)

The Giant Next Door (2015)

The King of Planets (2017)

Jupiter's Auroras (2016)

Galaxies in Collision (2010)

It's Full of Galaxies (1996)

Echoes from an Explosion (2010)

The First Image of Another Star (1996)

Seeing With Gravity's Telescope (2018)

Five Moons for Tiny Pluto (2012)

A Dying Star and an Hourglass (1996)

The Horsehead Nebula in Infrared (2013)

A Jet from a Black Hole (2010)

The Colorful Crab (2020)

A Flickering Cosmic Candle (2013)

Saturn's Rings and Hexagon (2019)

Northern and Southern Lights, Saturn Style (2010)

A Supernova in the Galactic Outskirts (1999)

A Galactic Whirlpool (2005)

A Ring of Bright Matter (2013)

Gonggong and Xiangliu

What's Deeper than Deep? Ultra Deep (2004)

The Invisible Made Visible (2009)

Neptune's Dark Spot (2019)

Gravity Makes You See Quadruple (2020)

The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy (2014)

A Stellar Shockwave (2002)

A Cosmic Penguin (2013)

Snapshots of Infant Star Systems (2006)

Ancient Stellar Jewels (2015)

The Tarantula Nebula in Infrared (2014)

An Inbound Comet (2017)

Our Next-Nearest Galactic Neighbor (2019)

A Galactic Rose (2011)

A Cap of Clouds (2019)

When the Same Supernova Happens More Than Once (2015)

Blowing Stellar Bubbles (2016)

A Supernova on the Face of a Spiral Galaxy (2018)

The Red Rectangle Nebula (2004)

A Moon for Makemake (2016)

Yeeting a Star From the Galaxy

The Sombrero Galaxy (2003)

A Dusty Red Planet (2018)

A Deceptive Grouping (2009)

The Beauty of a Dying Star (2004)

A Breathtakingly Distant Galaxy (2016)

A Most Peculiar Star (2004)

Hubble's Legacy (2019)

50 images of the universe from the Hubble Space Telescope