Trump not ready to commit to election results if he loses

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is refusing to publicly commit to accepting the results of the upcoming White House election, recalling a similar threat he made weeks before the 2016 vote, as he scoffs at polls showing him lagging behind Democrat Joe Biden. Trump says it's too early to make such an ironclad guarantee.

“I have to see. Look ... I have to see,” Trump told moderator Chris Wallace during a wide-ranging interview on ”Fox News Sunday." “No, I’m not going to just say yes. I’m not going to say no, and I didn’t last time either.” The Biden campaign responded: "The American people will decide this election. And the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House.”

Trump also hammered the Pentagon brass for favoring renaming bases that honor Confederate military leaders — a drive for change spurred by the national debate about race after George Floyd's death. “I don’t care what the military says,” the commander in chief said.

The president described the nation's top infectious diseases expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, as a “a little bit of an alarmist” about the coronavirus pandemic, and Trump stuck to what he had said back in February — that the virus is “going to disappear.” On Fox, he said, “I'll be right eventually.” The United States tops the global death toll list with over 140,000 and confirmed infections, with 3.7 million.

It is remarkable that a sitting president would express less than complete confidence in the American democracy's electoral process. But for Trump, it comes from his insurgent playbook of four years ago, when in the closing stages of his race against Hillary Clinton, he said he would not commit to honoring the election results if the Democrat won.

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Facing uncertain fall, schools make flexible reopening plans

MANCHESTER, Mo. (AP) — Administrators in the Parkway school district in suburban St. Louis spent the summer break crafting a flexible reopening plan, with options that include full-time classroom learning, full-time online instruction and a hybrid system.

It's a good thing because the dangers of the coronavirus are so uncertain that district officials are reluctant to make predictions about the fall semester, which begins in only five weeks. Confirmed coronavirus infections in Missouri's hardest-hit city waned in June, but they are now spiking, along with hospitalizations. Schools plan to resume classes Aug. 24.

“If you had asked me even two weeks ago, ‘Do you think we would be able to come back?' I would have said, ‘Yeah,’” Assistant Superintendent Kevin Beckner said. “Today my answer is ‘I’m not sure,’ just because of how the situation has changed so quickly.”

Schools around the U.S. face the same dilemma. With the number of reported COVID-19 cases and deaths still rising, districts must grapple with whether to bring students back to classrooms, and how to keep pupils and teachers safe if they do.

Pressure is mounting in many areas to reopen classrooms. President Donald Trump has urged schools to bring children back to class in the fall and has threatened to cut off federal funding if they do not.

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How the Black Lives Matter generation remembers John Lewis

Of all the ways that John Lewis influenced American life and politics, his indelible impact on young people may be among the most enduring. From student activist to elder statesman, Lewis continually encouraged the nation's youth to start “good trouble” — and modeled just how to do that.

He was arrested alongside millennial activists pushing for comprehensive reform of U.S. immigration laws in 2013. He led a sit-in in the House of Representatives over gun control following a mass shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Orlando in 2016. And when he was not protesting, he was helping young people understand history, as when he cosplayed as his younger self at San Diego’s Comic-Con to celebrate the release of his Selma, Alabama-themed graphic novel series in 2015.

Lewis, the Black civil rights icon who some called the “conscience of Congress,” died Friday.

In one of his last public appearances, he posed for a picture in June, standing on the Black Lives Matter Plaza mural painted just outside of the White House amid nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd.

For the Black Lives Matter generation, the connection to Lewis is deeper than many may realize. As a young man, through clouds of teargas and a hail of billy clubs, Lewis nearly lost his life marching against segregation and for voting rights. As a Georgia congressman, Lewis was generous with his time, taking meetings and sharing stages with activists who, from Sanford, Florida, to Ferguson, Missouri, Baltimore to Minneapolis, also withstood teargas — as well as rubber bullets, pepper spray and arrests — in their own protests against racism.

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How the coronavirus spread through one immigration facility

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Gregory Arnold walked into the warden’s office April 1 as the novel coronavirus ripped through one of the largest immigration detention centers in the United States. Waiting with about 40 guards to begin his shift, he heard a captain say face masks were prohibited.

Incredulous, he and a guard who recently gave birth wanted to hear it from the boss. Arnold told Warden Christopher LaRose that he was 60 years old and lived with an asthmatic son.

“Well, you can’t wear the mask because we don’t want to scare the employees and we don’t want to scare the inmates and detainees,” Arnold recalls the warden saying.

“With all due respect, sir, that’s ridiculous.” Arnold retorted.

He said he wanted to wear a mask and gloves, and “everyone else should be doing the same.” But the warden was unmoved. And in the weeks that followed, Otay Mesa Detention Center would see the first big outbreak at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s 221 detention centers.

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In French Guiana, virus exposes inequality, colonial legacy

PARIS (AP) — When white doctors walked into Camopi, a majority Indigenous town in French Guiana near the border with Brazil, townspeople felt worry instead of relief.

With French Guiana facing a wave of coronavirus infections, the doctors from the French mainland were there to administer tests and treat the sick. But for residents of the former colony, few of whom have internet or television or knew about COVID-19, the appearance of the health workers carried echoes of the arrival of Europeans in South America and the disease and exploitation they brought.

“There is still in the minds the time of colonization and the havoc wreaked by viruses brought by colonizers,” Jean-Philippe Chambrier, a member of the Arawak tribe and representative of Indigenous communities in French Guiana, told The Associated Press. “So when they saw white people from the mainland, they made the link.”

France’s most worrisome virus hot spot is on the northern coast of South America: French Guiana, a territory of about 300,000 people where poverty is rampant and health care is scarce. Its outbreak has exposed deep economic and racial inequality that residents say leaders in Paris have long chosen to ignore.

Months after the virus stabilized in mainland France, it grew in French Guiana. For weeks in June and early July, about a quarter of new daily infections reported in all of France were in French Guiana, which has just 0.5% of the French population. More than 6,500 cases have been recorded in the territory, although officials fear the number of infections is estimated to be much higher.

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Police contracts can stand in the way of accountability

SEATTLE (AP) — A stipulation in a Kentucky police contract prohibited officials from initially firing the officers involved in Breonna Taylor's death in Louisville.

The disciplinary history of a Chicago police officer who fatally shot Laquan McDonald had been deleted under the department’s contract, so officials didn’t know about the officer's previous bad behavior.

A Seattle officer fired for arresting an elderly Black man who used a golf club as a cane got $100,000 in back pay, thanks to the union contract that said the investigation missed a deadline.

Collective bargaining agreements for officers provide protections that stand in the way of accountability, even when the federal government is overseeing an agency through a consent decree, experts said. The killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis officer ignited protests and calls for change, but experts say police contracts threaten to undermine those efforts.

Contracts designed to ensure officers receive fair wages and benefits have spilled over into public policy.

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AP FACT CHECK: Trump bending facts on virus, Biden, economy

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump clung to the false notion that the coronavirus will just “disappear,” made incorrect claims about a top government expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and again insisted that Americans are getting all the COVID-19 tests they need — all in a television interview Sunday where his answers fell short on the facts.

A look at the president’s alternate reality on the virus threat, as well as his falsehoods on Democratic rival Joe Biden, the economy and the military in a “Fox News Sunday” interview:

TRUMP vs, FAUCI

TRUMP: “Dr. Fauci at the beginning said, ‘This will pass. Don’t worry about it. This will pass.’ He was wrong.”

THE FACTS: Trump is overstating it. While Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease official, said in January and February that Americans need not panic about a virus threat at the time, he also said the situation was “evolving” and that public health officials were taking the threat seriously.

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Roger Stone calls Black radio host 'Negro' in interview

Roger Stone, a political operative whose 40-month prison sentence was commuted this month by President Donald Trump, his longtime friend, called a Los Angeles-based Black radio host a “Negro” on the air during a contentious interview.

The exchange occurred on Saturday's Mo'Kelly Show, whose host — Morris O'Kelly — grilled Stone on his conviction for lying to Congress, tampering with witnesses and obstructing the House investigation into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election.

O’Kelly on his program's website said “Stone could have reached for any pejorative, but unfortunately went there,” adding that “Stone offered an unfiltered, unvarnished one-sentence expression of how he saw the journalist interviewing him.”

O’Kelly characterized “Negro” as the “low-calorie version of the N-Word.”

Stone's attorney on Sunday said he was unaware of the broadcast and had no immediate comment.

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Arizona's rugged individualism poses barrier to mask rules

PHOENIX (AP) — With the coronavirus spreading out of control and Arizona cities beginning just last month to require residents wear masks in public, a few hundred people gathered in Scottsdale to make clear they didn’t approve of the heavy hand of government telling them to cover their faces.

A city councilman, Guy Phillips, came to the podium and ripped off his black face mask, declaring, “I can’t breathe!”

He later insisted his comment was meant to highlight the oppressive nature of masks, not to mock the dying words of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer, though Phillips' words were widely interpreted as racist.

The episode highlights the visceral opposition to government mandates, a fierce individualism that has endured among some in Arizona since the days of the Wild West. The buzz-off attitude is taking on new importance as the state has become one of the world’s top hot spots for the spread of the coronavirus.

The message that “my mask protects you, your mask protects me,” isn’t always well-suited to the mind-your-own-business mentality of a state that produced Barry Goldwater’s small-government conservatism and John McCain’s self-styled “maverick” persona.

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House leaders 'alarmed' federal officers policing protests

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Top leaders in the U.S. House said Sunday they were “alarmed” by the Trump administration’s tactics against protesters in Portland, Oregon, and other cities, including Washington, D.C., and called on federal inspectors general investigate.

“This is a matter of utmost urgency,” wrote House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-New York, Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson, D-Mississippi, and Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney, D-New York, in a letter to the inspectors general of Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security.

The Democratic lawmakers are seeking an investigation “into the use of federal law enforcement agencies by the Attorney General and the Acting Secretary of Homeland Security to suppress First Amendment protected activities in Washington, D.C., Portland, and other communities across the United States.”

The mayor of Oregon's largest city said Sunday the presence of federal agents is exacerbating tensions in Portland, which has seen nearly two months of nightly protests since the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Speaking on CNN's ‘State of the Union,’ Democratic Mayor Ted Wheeler said federal officers “are not wanted here. We haven't asked them here. In fact, we want them to leave.”