AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EDT

A sometimes halting Biden tries at debate to confront Trump, who responds with falsehoods

ATLANTA (AP) — A raspy President Joe Biden repeatedly sought to confront Donald Trump in their first debate ahead of the November election, as his Republican rival countered Biden's criticism by leaning into falsehoods about the economy, illegal immigration and his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.

The debate, featuring deeply personal attacks by both men, came at a pivotal juncture in their unpopular presidential rematch and a critical moment to make their cases before a national television audience. Biden’s uneven performance risked crystallizing voter concerns that at age 81 he is too old to serve as president, while the 78-year-old Trump’s rhetoric offered a perhaps unwelcome reminder of the bombast he launched daily during his tumultuous four years in office.

Biden repeatedly tore into Trump in personal terms, bringing up everything from the former president's recent felony conviction to his alleged insult of World War I veterans to his weight and golf game. Initially focusing many of his answers on illegal immigration, Trump in the latter half of the debate lapsed into familiar grievances. Each man called the other the worst president in history.

The current president and his predecessor hadn’t spoken since their last debate weeks before the 2020 presidential election. Trump skipped Biden’s inauguration after leading an unprecedented and unsuccessful effort to overturn his loss that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection by his supporters.

Trump equivocated on whether he would accept the results of the November election, saying he would accept them if the vote was “fair” and “legal,” repeating his baseless claims of widespread fraud and misconduct in his 2020 loss to Biden that he still denies.

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FACT FOCUS: Here's a look at some of the false claims made during Biden and Trump's first debate

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump traded barbs and a variety of false and misleading information as they faced off in their first debate of the 2024 election.

There’s no comparing the volume of false and misleading claims Trump has deployed throughout his campaigns and presidency with Biden, who tends to lean more on exaggerations and embellishments rather than outright lies. Here’s a look at the false and misleading claims by the two candidates.

ECONOMY

TRUMP: We had the greatest economy in history.”

THE FACTS: That’s not accurate. First of all, the pandemic triggered a massive recession during his presidency. The government borrowed $3.1 trillion in 2020 to stabilize the economy. Trump had the ignominy of leaving the White House with fewer jobs than when he entered.

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Trump and Biden spar on economy and abortion at their presidential debate

PHOENIX (AP) — President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump opened their first 2024 president debate without shaking hands and went right to mixing it up on policy Thursday night. Some key moments from their 90-minute faceoff.

Their first exchange delved into the economy.

Biden spoke softly, in a hoarse voice, as he talked up the economic gains on his watch, saying he rescued it from “free fall” and “chaos” when he took over the presidency from Trump in 2021. He cleared his throat several times.

Trump listened with a bemused expression but did not try to interrupt, though his microphone was muted while Biden spoke.

When it was his turn to speak, Trump bragged about the state of the economy during his term, saying “everything was rocking good.” He blamed Biden for rising prices that have frustrated Americans.

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Despite Supreme Court ruling, the future of emergency abortions is still unclear for US women

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court did not settle the debate over whether federal law requires hospitals to stabilize pregnant patients with emergency abortions on Wednesday, despite saying Idaho hospitals can provide abortions in medical emergencies even with the state’s restrictions.

The court delivered a 6-3 procedural ruling that left key questions still lingering about whether states can ban doctors from providing emergency abortions that save a woman from serious infection or organ loss.

Health and legal experts say Thursday’s order that divided the Supreme Court’s conservatives does nothing to protect pregnant women in other states with strict abortion bans, where state bans might conflict with a federal law that the Biden administration argues requires emergency abortions.

“The decision the Supreme Court released this morning doesn’t shed any light on how that conflict will or should be resolved,” said Joanne Rosen, the co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Law and the Public’s Health.

Here is a look at emergency abortions in the U.S., the federal law that the Biden administration says requires hospitals to provide them, and why the debate on the legality of those abortions is far from resolved.

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Former Uvalde police chief indicted over response to Robb Elementary shooting

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The former Uvalde schools police chief was indicted over his role in the slow police response to the 2022 massacre at a Texas elementary school that left 19 children and two teachers dead, the local sheriff said Thursday.

Pete Arredondo was indicted by a grand jury on 10 counts of felony child endangerment/abandonment and briefly booked into the county jail before he was released on bond, Uvalde Sheriff Ruben Nolasco told The Associated Press in a text message Thursday night.

The Uvalde Leader-News and the San Antonio Express-News reported that former school officer Adrian Gonzales also was indicted on multiple similar charges. The Uvalde Leader-News reported that District Attorney Christina Mitchell confirmed the indictment.

Mitchell did not return phone and email messages from The Associated Press seeking comment. Several family members of victims of the shooting did not respond to phone messages seeking comment.

The indictments make Arredondo, who was the on-site commander during the attack, and Gonzales the first officers to face criminal charges in one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. A scathing report by Texas lawmakers that examined the police response described Gonzales as one of the first officers to enter the building after the shooting began.

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Bolivia’s president lambasts accusations of a self-coup as 'lies' as his supporters rally

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Bolivian President Luis Arce on Thursday angrily called accusations that he was behind an attempted coup against his government “lies,” saying the general who apparently led it acted on his own and vowing that he would face justice.

Arce’s comments, his first to the press since Wednesday's failed apparent coup, came after the general involved, Juan José Zúñiga, alleged without providing evidence that the president had ordered him to carry out the mutiny in a ruse to boost his flagging popularity.

That fueled speculation about what really happened, even after the government announced the arrest of 17 people, most of them military officers. Opposition senators and government critics joined the chorus of doubters, calling the mutiny a “self-coup.”

Some Bolivians said they believed Zúñiga’s allegations. “They are playing with the intelligence of the people, because nobody believes that it was a real coup,” said 48-year-old lawyer Evaristo Mamani.

Those claims have been strongly denied by Arce and his government. “I am not a politician who is going to win popularity through the blood of the people,” he said Thursday.

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Oklahoma state superintendent orders schools to teach the Bible in grades 5 through 12

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma’s top education official ordered public schools Thursday to incorporate the Bible into lessons for grades 5 through 12, the latest effort by conservatives to incorporate religion into classrooms.

The directive drew immediate condemnation from civil rights groups and supporters of the separation of church and state, with some calling it an abuse of power and a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

The order sent to districts across the state by Republican State Superintendent Ryan Walters says adherence to the mandate is compulsory and “immediate and strict compliance is expected.”

“The Bible is an indispensable historical and cultural touchstone,” Walters said in a statement. “Without basic knowledge of it, Oklahoma students are unable to properly contextualize the foundation of our nation which is why Oklahoma educational standards provide for its instruction."

Oklahoma law already explicitly allows Bibles in the classroom and lets teachers use them in instruction, said Phil Bacharach, a spokesman for state Attorney General Gentner Drummond.

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Judge in Trump classified docs case grants his request for hearing on key evidence in indictment

WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal judge presiding over the classified documents case of former President Donald Trump granted his request Thursday for a hearing on whether prosecutors had been permitted to improperly breach attorney-client privilege when they obtained crucial evidence from one of his ex-lawyers.

The order from U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon ensures further delays in a criminal case that has already been snarled by significant postponements, resulting in the indefinite postponement of a trial that had been set to begin on May 20 in Fort Pierce, Florida. It means that Cannon will revisit a different judge's order from last year that permitted prosecutors to get testimony and other evidence from a Trump attorney that wound up being repeatedly cited in the indictment of the former president.

Trump faces dozens of felony counts accusing him of illegally hoarding classified documents from his presidency at his Mar-a-Lago estate and obstructing the FBI’s efforts to recover them. He has pleaded not guilty.

Defense lawyers are ordinarily shielded from being forced to testify about their confidential conversations with their client but can be compelled to do so if prosecutors can show that their legal services were used in furtherance of a crime — a doctrine known as the crime-fraud exception.

The then-chief federal judge in the District of Columbia, Beryl Howell, agreed last year with special counsel Jack Smith’s team that the exception applied and ordered grand jury testimony from a Trump attorney, M. Evan Corcoran, who represented the former president when the FBI on Aug. 8, 2022, searched Mar-a-Lago for classified documents and seized boxes of classified records.

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Survivor of Parkland school massacre wins ownership of shooter's name in lawsuit settlement

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — The most severely wounded survivor of the 2018 massacre at Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School now owns shooter Nikolas Cruz's name, and Cruz cannot give any interviews without his permission, under a settlement reached in a lawsuit.

Under his recent settlement with Anthony Borges, Cruz must also turn over any money he might receive as a beneficiary of a relative's life insurance policy, participate in any scientific studies of mass shooters and donate his body to science after his death.

The agreement means that Cruz, 25, cannot benefit from or cooperate with any movies, TV shows, books or other media productions without Borges' permission. Cruz is serving consecutive life sentences at an undisclosed prison for each of the 17 murders and 17 attempted murders he committed inside a three-story classroom building on Feb. 14, 2018.

“We just wanted to shut him down so we never have to hear about him again,” Borges' attorney, Alex Arreaza, said Thursday.

Borges, now 21, was shot five times in the back and legs and collapsed in the middle of the third-floor hallway. Video shows that Cruz pointed his rifle at Borges as he lay on the floor, but unlike most of the other victims he walked past, did not shoot him a second time. Arreaza said he asked Cruz why he didn't shoot Borges again, but he didn't remember.

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NBA draft finally worth the longer wait for some players after moving to a two-day format

NEW YORK (AP) — Jaylen Wells sat in the stands at Barclays Center in his snazzy white suit, hoping to hear his name called in the first round of the NBA draft.

A day later, at a second site in a second borough, Wells was finally on his way to the NBA — wearing the same white suit.

“Actually, I had two suits planned and then I was like, I just love this one so much,” the forward from Washington State said Thursday. “I was like, ‘I’ve got to wear it again.’”

Wells was one of the early selections in the new two-day NBA draft, taken with the No. 39 pick by the Memphis Grizzlies. The league went to the format this year instead of having its draft drag too late into the night.

The second round was held at ESPN’s Seaport District studios in Manhattan after the first round took place as usual at the home of the Brooklyn Nets. Ten players and their families attended, though Bronny James wasn't present to hear his name announced after the Los Angeles Lakers took the son of the NBA career scoring leader LeBron James at No. 55, near the end of draft.

The Associated Press