AP News in Brief at 12:04 a.m. EST

Trump lawyers: Impeachment based on hatred, not facts

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s impeachment lawyers accused Democrats of waging a campaign of “hatred” against the former president as they sped through their defence of his actions and fiery words before the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, hurtling the Senate toward a final vote in his historic trial.

The defence team vigorously denied on Friday that Trump had incited the deadly riot and said his encouragement of followers to “fight like hell” at a rally that preceded it was routine political speech. They played a montage of out-of-context clips showing Democrats, some of them senators now serving as jurors, also telling supporters to “fight,” aiming to establish a parallel with Trump’s overheated rhetoric.

“This is ordinary political rhetoric that is virtually indistinguishable from the language that has been used by people across the political spectrum for hundreds of years,” declared Trump lawyer Michael van der Veen. “Countless politicians have spoken of fighting for our principles.”

But the presentation blurred the difference between general encouragement to battle for causes and Trump’s fight against officially accepted national election results. The defeated president was telling his supporters to fight on after every state had verified its results, after the Electoral College had affirmed them and after nearly every election lawsuit filed by Trump and his allies had been rejected in court.

The case is speeding toward a vote and likely acquittal, perhaps as soon as Saturday, with the Senate evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans and a two-thirds majority required for conviction. Trump’s lawyers made an abbreviated presentation that used less than three of their allotted 16 hours.

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The Latest: Tuberville stands by account of Trump phone call

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on former President Donald Trump’s second Senate impeachment trial (all times local):

8 p.m.

Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama is standing by his account that he told then-President Donald Trump that Vice-President Mike Pence was being evacuated from the Senate during the Capitol riot.

The conversation is of interest to Democrats because Trump sent a tweet at 2:24 p.m. on Jan. 6 saying that Pence didn’t have “the courage” to challenge the election results. If Tuberville’s account is correct, then Trump would likely have known before sending the tweet that Pence had been evacuated and was in danger. At the time, the insurrectionists had already broken into the Capitol, some of them calling for Pence’s death.

Tuberville recounted the phone conversation to reporters on Friday, saying, “I said, ‘Mr. President, they’ve taken the vice-president out. They want me to get off the phone, I gotta go.”

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CDC: Strong evidence in-person schooling can be done safely

The nation’s top public health agency said Friday that in-person schooling can resume safely with masks, social distancing and other strategies, and vaccination of teachers, while important, is not a prerequisite for reopening.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its long-awaited road map for getting students back to classrooms in the middle of a pandemic that has killed nearly 480,000 people in the U.S. But the agency’s guidance is just that — it cannot force schools to reopen, and CDC officials were careful to say they are not calling for a mandate that all U.S. schools be reopened.

Officials said there is strong evidence now that schools can reopen, especially at lower grade levels.

Recommended measures include hand washing, disinfection of school facilities, diagnostic testing and contact tracing to find new infections and separate infected people from others in a school. It’s also more emphatic than past guidance on the need to wear masks in school.

“We know that most clusters in the school setting have occurred when there are breaches in mask wearing,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, said in a call with reporters.

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Cuomo administration ‘froze’ over nursing home data requests

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s top aide told Democratic lawmakers that the administration took months to release data revealing how many people living at nursing homes died of COVID-19 because officials “froze” over worries the information was “going to be used against us.”

Republicans who term the comment admission of a “coverup” are now calling for investigations into and the resignations of both Cuomo and the aide, secretary to the governor Melissa DeRosa. And a growing number of Democrats are joining calls to rescind Cuomo’s emergency executive powers, blasting the administration’s defence of its secrecy.

“To continual defenders of NY Gov. Cuomo how is this ok?” New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, a Democrat, tweeted. “How is it not #Trump like? And when FORCED into admission, the most you get is a sorry we got caught…and not even directly from him or to the families.”

The disclosure of DeRosa’s comments, made on a Wednesday conference call with Democratic legislative leaders, came as the Democratic governor — a third-term Democrat who says he’ll run again in 2022 and penned a book touting his handling of the pandemic — and his administration were already facing backlash over their handling and reporting of outbreaks in nursing homes.

Cuomo refused for months to release data on how the pandemic has hit nursing home residents, instead pointing to figures more favourable to his administration. Experts say the release of more — and accurate — data can shape policy to help save people’s lives.

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Biden: Governors, mayors need $350 billion to fight COVID-19

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden met with a bipartisan group of governors and mayors at the White House on Friday as part of his push to give financial relief from the coronavirus pandemic to state and local governments — a clear source of division with Republican lawmakers who view the spending as wasteful.

As part of a $1.9 trillion coronavirus package, Biden wants to send $350 billion to state and local governments and tribal governments. While Republicans in Congress have largely objected to this initiative, Biden’s push has some GOP support among governors and mayors.

“You folks are all on the front lines and dealing with the crisis since day one,” Biden said at the start of the Oval Office meeting. “They’ve been working on their own in many cases.”

Republican lawmakers have stressed that some past aid to state and local governments remains unspent and revenues have rebounded after slumping when the coronavirus first hit. But state governments have shed 332,000 jobs since the outbreak began to spread last February, and local governments have cut nearly 1 million jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Republican Govs. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas and Larry Hogan of Maryland attended the Friday meeting, along with Democratic governors, including New York’s Andrew Cuomo and New Mexico’s Michelle Lujan Grisham. The mayors of Atlanta, Detroit, Miami and Arlington, Texas, also were at the meeting. New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell was set to attend, but she could not because a White House test showed she was positive for the coronavirus, according to her press secretary. A second test taken later came back negative.

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Biden to slowly allow 25,000 people seeking asylum into US

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Biden administration on Friday announced plans for tens of thousands of people who are seeking asylum and have been forced to wait in Mexico under a Trump-era policy to be allowed into the U.S. while their cases wind through immigration courts.

The first wave of an estimated 25,000 asylum-seekers with active cases in the “Remain in Mexico” program will be allowed into the United States on Feb. 19, authorities said. They plan to start slowly, with two border crossings each processing up to 300 people a day and a third crossing taking fewer numbers.

President Joe Biden’s administration declined to publicly identify the three crossings out of fear it may encourage a rush of people, but U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat, said officials told him that they are Brownsville and El Paso in Texas, and San Diego’s San Ysidro crossing.

The move is a major step toward dismantling one of former President Donald Trump’s most consequential policies to deter asylum-seekers from coming to the U.S. About 70,000 asylum-seekers were enrolled in the program officially called Migrant Protection Protocols since it was introduced in January 2019.

On Biden’s first day in office, the Homeland Security Department suspended the policy for new arrivals. Since then, some asylum-seekers picked up at the border have been released in the U.S. with notices to appear in court.

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A fight or a ‘fight’? In impeachment, a clash about context

Was he calling for a fight, or was he calling for a “fight”?

In American political speech — and particularly in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial and the discussions around it — words matter. But beyond that is another axiom: Context, it seems, can be everything.

Yes, Trump used pointed, intense words that aroused supporters’ emotions. Yes, he deployed the notion of battle as potent political metaphor. Yes — he might have gone too far for some. His attorneys acknowledged all of that during their combative defence at his impeachment trial Friday.

But what the 45th president didn’t do on that day in January, when he stood near the White House and used the words “fight” or “fighting” 20 times as he tried to overturn a legitimate election was this, his lawyers insisted: He didn’t cross the lines of free speech and wade into literal incitement that produced the riot at the Capitol.

“We fight like hell,” Trump said then. “And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

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Census: No redistricting data until end of September

The U.S. Census Bureau said Friday it won’t be delivering data used for redrawing congressional and state legislative districts until the end of September, causing headaches for state lawmakers and redistricting commissions facing deadlines to redraw districts this year.

Officials at the statistical agency blamed operational delays during the 2020 census caused by the pandemic.

“The biggest reason? COVID-19. It’s something beyond the Census Bureau’s control,” said Kathleen Styles, the Census Bureau’s chief of Decennial Communications and Stakeholder Relations, in a call with reporters.

Styles had previously said the redistricting data would be available no earlier than the end of July because of delays caused by the virus. Before the pandemic, the deadline for finishing the redistricting data had been March 31.

The redistricting data includes counts of population by race, Hispanic origin, voting age and housing occupancy status at geographic levels as small as neighbourhoods, and they are used for drawing voting districts for Congress and state legislatures. Unlike in past decades when the data were released to states on a flow basis, the 2020 redistricting data will be made available to the states all at once, according to the Census Bureau.

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White House aide suspended for threatening reporter

WASHINGTON (AP) — White House deputy press secretary T.J. Ducklo has been suspended for a week without pay after he reportedly issued a sexist and profane threat to a journalist seeking to cover his relationship with another reporter.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that Ducklo’s conduct was “completely unacceptable.” Psaki said while she had not spoken about the incident with President Joe Biden, Ducklo and aides “at the highest levels” of the White House’s communications team had apologized for the incident.

“No one wants anyone to feel uncomfortable, to be put in an uncomfortable position,” Psaki said.

Psaki said in a statement earlier Friday that Ducklo had been suspended without pay with the approval of White House chief of staff Ron Klain. She said Ducklo “is the first to acknowledge this is not the standard of behaviour set out” by Biden, and that Ducklo had sent the reporter in question “a personal note professing his profound regret.”

Ducklo’s personal life came under scrutiny earlier this week when Politico reported on his relationship with a reporter for the news outlet Axios who was assigned to cover the Biden campaign and its transition. Before Politico broke the story Tuesday, People Magazine published a glowing profile of the relationship. It was the first time either one had publicly acknowledged the relationship.

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Timberlake apologizes to Britney Spears and Janet Jackson

NEW YORK (AP) — In a lengthy social media post, Justin Timberlake says that he wants to apologize to Britney Spears and Janet Jackson “because I care for and respect these women and I know I failed.”

“I’ve seen the messages, tags, comments, and concerns and I want to respond. I am deeply sorry for the times in my life where my actions contributed to the problem, where I spoke out of turn, or did not speak up for what was right. I understand that I fell short in these moments and in many others and benefited from a system that condones misogyny and racism,” he wrote Friday.

Timberlake’s social media post comes a week after the release of The New York Times’ documentary “Framing Britney Spears,” the FX and Hulu film that takes a historical look at the circumstances that led to Spears’ conservatorship in 2008 and highlights the #FreeBritney movement of fans who want to see her released from it and given control of her life. The documentary aired an old interview when Timberlake spoke about sleeping with his former girlfriend and indicated that he ridiculed her by hiring a look-a-like for his “Cry Me a River” music video.

Fans called out Timberlake for contributing to Spears’ very public breakdown and controlling the narrative about the end of their relationship.

More backlash hit Timberlake as social media began to recall the wardrobe malfunction with Jackson that caused a national controversy at the 2004 Super Bowl. Some argued that Jackson, as a Black woman, fell victim to a racist and sexist double standard and received harsher treatment than Timberlake, as a white man, did and that he benefited from “white male privilege.”

The Associated Press