WASHINGTON — It’s a stretch, at best, to think the military would bear the brunt of a partial government shutdown, as President Donald Trump asserted Thursday at the Pentagon.
Although he was meeting Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and other senior Pentagon officials to get briefed on two key defense reports — on nuclear policy and defense strategy — Trump emphasized in remarks to reporters that the budget showdown was uppermost on his mind. Republicans and Democrats were scrambling to avert a shutdown, which could come at midnight on Friday night if no deal is made.
He mischaracterized the dispute as something that could shut “the country,” not just parts of the government. That might be written off as a slip of the tongue, but his statements about the consequences to the armed forces were deliberate, and off base. Meantime, the blame game raged between Democrats and Republicans.
A look at his comments:
TRUMP: “If for any reason it shuts down, the worst thing is what happens to the military.” He added: “The group that loses big would be the military.”
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — A California couple tortured a dozen of their children for years, starving them to the point that their growth was stunted, chaining them to their beds for months at a time and forbidding them from showering more than once a year or using the toilet, a prosecutor said Thursday.
“The victimization appeared to intensify over time,” Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin said in announcing charges. “What started out as neglect became severe, pervasive, prolonged child abuse.”
David Turpin, 56, and Louise Turpin, 49, were charged with torture, child abuse, dependent adult abuse and false imprisonment. David Turpin was also charged with performing a lewd act on a child under age 14.
The litany of abuses was enough to invoke a house of horrors that apparently went unnoticed for years in California and Texas until Sunday, when a 17-year-old girl managed to escape and call 911.
The girl and her siblings had plotted the escape for two years, Hestrin said. Another girl who escaped out a window with the teen turned back out of fear.
WASHINGTON — The nation’s premier medical research institute is in “a scramble” to prepare for a partial government shutdown that could ruin costly experiments and leave sick patients unable to enter cutting-edge studies, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health said Thursday.
Fauci stressed that patients currently in NIH-run studies — including those at the research-only hospital often called the “house of hope” — wouldn’t be adversely affected even if President Donald Trump and Congress don’t reach a budget deal to avert a shutdown at midnight Friday.
“We still take care of them,” Fauci, the NIH’s infectious disease chief, told The Associated Press. “You never want to put patients in any jeopardy.”
But new patients attempting to enter studies of experimental therapies, often because they’ve failed standard treatment, would have to be turned away, as happened during the last government shutdown.
The idea first came to Teresa Shook, a Hawaii retiree, in the hours after Donald Trump was elected. Perhaps, she suggested to a few friends on Facebook, women could march on Washington to show the depth of their resistance. Two days later, New York fashion designer Bob Bland joined the call for action with her own message.
“Who wants to join me?!?” she asked.
Turns out, a whole lot of people did.
The astounding sea of women in bright pink “pussy hats” — half a million in Washington alone, and many more in hundreds of marches elsewhere — became the face of the resistance to Trump and his agenda. It inspired thousands of women to do something they’d never done before: explore a run for political office.
The jolt of energy, and unity, also laid the cultural groundwork, many believe, for the “#MeToo” phenomenon to catch fire later in the year, calling powerful men to account for sexual misconduct.
Now, the loosely defined “resistance movement” — a network of groups around the nation, with men and women raising money and knocking on doors and supporting hundreds of progressive candidates — is setting its sights on the 2018 midterm elections, hoping to deal the White House and the all-GOP government in Washington a permanent setback.
PHOENIX — A serial killing suspect shot and killed nine people, including his own mother, and used a victim’s gun in some of the slayings that unfolded in a three-week span late last year, authorities said Thursday.
Shell casings, DNA, stolen jewelry and a cellphone taken from a victim were among the pieces of evidence that investigators used to tie Cleophus Cooksey Jr., 35, to the killings, according to court documents.
The seven men and two women were shot between Nov. 27 and Dec. 17 in their homes, suburban apartment complexes, in a parked car or while outside, the documents state.
Cooksey, described by police as an aspiring musician, knew some of the victims but investigators were still trying to determine motives in a few of the attacks.
HARRISBURG, Pa. — A gunman opened fire on law enforcement officers serving an arrest warrant inside a home before dawn Thursday, killing a deputy U.S. marshal before he was shot to death by police as he fled outside, authorities said.
Police were on the first floor handcuffing the woman they were seeking to arrest when a man began firing from the second floor, said U.S. Attorney Dave Freed. The man was fatally shot as he later ran out the front door, again shooting at police, Freed said.
Deputy U.S. Marshal Christopher David Hill, 45, an Army veteran who has been with the service more than a decade, died from his injuries.
From Associated Press