NATION/WORLD
Thursday, September 6, 2018
Kavanaugh keeps mum on White House
subpoenas, pardons during hearing
By MARK SHERMAN AND
LISA MASCARO
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Pres-
sured by Democrats with Don-
ald Trump on their minds,
Supreme Court nominee Brett
Kavanaugh rejected repeated
efforts at Wednesday’s Senate
confirmation hearing to reveal
his views about a president
pardoning himself or being
forced to testify in a criminal
case.
For a second day, the judge
nominated by Trump insisted
to probing senators that he
fully embraced the importance
of judicial independence. But
he refused to provide direct
answers to Democrats who
wanted him to say whether
there are limits on a presi-
dent’s power to issue par-
dons, including to himself or
in exchange for a bribe. He
also would not say whether he
believes the president can be
subpoenaed to testify.
“I’m not going to answer
hypothetical questions of
that sort,” Kavanaugh said in
response to a question from
Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont
about pardons. Still, he began
his long day in the witness
chair by declaring that “no one
is above the law.”
The Senate Judicial Com-
mittee hearing has strong
political overtones ahead of
the November congressio-
nal elections, but as a practi-
cal matter Democrats lack the
votes to block Kavanaugh’s
confirmation.
They are concerned that
Kavanaugh will push the court
to the right on abortion, guns
and other issues, and that he
will side with Trump in cases
stemming from special counsel
Robert Mueller’s investigation
of Russian interference in the
2016 election and possible ties
to the Trump campaign. The
53-year-old appellate judge
answered cautiously when
asked about those matters.
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh testifies be-
fore the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington.
Protesters continued their
efforts to interrupt the hear-
ings, but senators basically
ignored their shouts as they
were removed by police.
Democrats’ complaints also
persisted that they were being
denied access to records from
Kavanaugh’s time in the
George W. Bush White House.
One TV viewer gave Kava-
naugh a rave review.
Trump said he had been
watching the hearings and
thought the Democrats were
“grasping at straws” in ques-
tioning the man he chose
to replace retired Justice
Anthony Kennedy. He said he
“saw some incredible answers
to very complex questions.”
The committee’s top Dem-
ocrat, Dianne Feinstein of
California, disagreed. “He’s
not being very specific,” she
said during a break in the
proceedings.
The Democrats weren’t the
only ones who recognized the
importance of questions about
Trump and the Russia inves-
tigation. Committee Chair-
man Chuck Grassley, an Iowa
Republican, asked Kavanaugh
right away whether he would
be independent from the presi-
dent who chose him for highly
prestigious lifetime position.
Kavanaugh said, “The first
thing that makes a good judge
is independence, not being
swayed by political or public
pressure.”
He cited historic cases
including the Brown v. Board
of Education ruling that deseg-
regated schools and the U.S. v.
Nixon decision that compelled
the president to turn over the
Watergate tapes — a ruling
that Kavanaugh had previ-
ously questioned.
“That takes some back-
bone,” he said of the justices
who decided those cases.
But when asked more spe-
cific questions, including
whether a president can be
required to respond to a sub-
poena, Kavanaugh said, “I
can’t give you an answer on
that hypothetical question.”
The Supreme Court has
never answered that question,
and it is among the potentially
most important since Trump
could face a subpoena from
special counsel Mueller.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a
Minnesota Democrat, asked
whether a president could
be criminally investigated or
indicted. Kavanaugh again
said he had never taken a posi-
tion on those issues, though
he did write in a 1998 article
that impeachment may be the
only way to hold a president
accountable while in office.
“The Constitution itself
seems to dictate, in addition,
that congressional investiga-
tion must take place in lieu of
criminal investigation when
the President is the subject of
investigation, and that crim-
inal prosecution can occur
only after the President has
left office,” he wrote in the
Georgetown Law Review.
On abortion, Kavanaugh
said the landmark 1973 Roe
v. Wade decision that ensures
access to abortion has been
affirmed “many times.”
“Respect for precedent
is important. ... Precedent is
rooted right in the Constitu-
tion itself,” he said.
Quake in northern Japan causes landslides, power loss
By MARI YAMAGUCHI
Associated Press
TOKYO (AP) — A power-
ful earthquake rocked Japan’s
northernmost main island
of Hokkaido early Thurs-
day, triggering landslides that
crushed homes, knocking
out power across the island,
and forcing a nuclear power
plant to switch to a backup
generator.
The magnitude 6.7 earth-
quake struck southern Hok-
kaido at 3:08 a.m. at the depth
of 40 kilometers (24 miles),
Japan’s
Meteorological
Agency said. The epicenter
was east of the city of Toma-
komai but the shaking also
affected Hokkaido’s prefec-
tural capital of Sapporo, with
a population of 1.9 million.
The Japanese national
broadcaster NHK, citing its
own tally, reported that 125
people were injured and about
20 were feared missing. Hok-
kaido’s local disaster agency
put the number of injured at
48.
The Fire and Disaster
Management Agency said a
man was found without vital
signs in Tomakomai, but his
status was unclear. Several
people were reported missing
in the nearby town of Atsuma,
where a massive landslide
engulfed homes.
Reconstruction
Minis-
ter Jiro Akama told reporters
that five people were believed
to be buried in the town’s
Yoshino district. Some of the
40 people stranded there were
airlifted to safer grounds,
NHK said.
Aerial views showed doz-
ens of landslides in the sur-
rounding area, with practi-
Kyodo News via AP
This aerial photo shows houses destroyed by a landslide after an earthquake in
Atsuma town, Hokkaido, northern Japan, Thursday, Sept. 6, 2018. A powerful earth-
quake rocked Japan’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido early Thursday, trig-
gering landslides that crushed homes, knocking out power across the island, and
forcing a nuclear power plant to switch to a backup generator.
cally every mountainside a
raw slash of brown amid deep
green forest.
Airports and many roads
on the island were closed fol-
lowing the early morning
quake.
Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe said that 25,000 troops
and other personnel were
being dispatched to the area to
help with rescue operations.
National broadcaster NHK
showed the moment the
quake struck the city of Muro-
ran, with its camera violently
shaking and all city lights
going black moment later. In
Sapporo, a mudslide on a road
left several cars half buried.
Power was knocked out
for Hokkaido’s 2.9 million
households. Economy, Trade
and Industry Minister Hiro-
EARTHLINK INTERNET
HIGH SPEED INTERNET
shige Seko told reporters that
the extensive power outage
was caused by an emergency
shutdown of the main thermal
power plant that supplies half
of Hokkaido’s electricity.
Utility officials were start-
ing up hydroelectric plants,
Seko said, adding that he
hoped to get power back
“within a few hours.” In the
meantime, authorities sent
power-generator vehicles to
hospitals so enable them to
treat emergency patients, he
said.
Chief Cabinet Secretary
Yoshihide Suga told a news
conference that the authori-
ties were doing their utmost
to rescue and assess dam-
age after receiving hundreds
of calls about people missing
and buildings collapsing.
The central government
set up a crisis management
taskforce at the prime minis-
ter’s office.
Three reactors at the Tom-
ari nuclear plant were offline
for routine safety checks, but
they are running on backup
generators that kicked in after
losing external power because
of the island-wide blackouts,
Japan’s Nuclear Regulation
Authority said. Spent fuel
in storage pools was safely
cooled on backup power
that can last for a week, the
agency said.
The powerful earth-
quake and tsunami in March
2011 that hit northeast
Japan destroyed both exter-
nal and backup power to the
Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear
plant, causing meltdowns.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — In a striking anonymous
broadside, a senior Trump administration official wrote
an opinion piece in The New York Times on Wednesday
claiming to be part of a group of people “working dili-
gently from within” to impede President Donald Trump’s
“worst inclinations” and ill-conceived parts of his agenda.
Trump said it was a “gutless editorial” and “really a
disgrace,” and his press secretary called on the official
to resign.
Trump later tweeted, “TREASON?” and in an extraor-
dinary move demanded that if “the GUTLESS anon-
ymous person does indeed exist, the Times must, for
National Security purposes, turn him/her over to govern-
ment at once!”
The writer, claiming to be part of the “resistance” to
Trump but not from the left, said, “Many Trump appoin-
tees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our demo-
cratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more mis-
guided impulses until he is out of office.” The newspaper
described the author of the column only as a senior offi-
cial in the Trump administration.
“It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Amer-
icans should know that there are adults in the room,” the
author continued. “We fully recognize what is happening.
And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald
Trump won’t.”
The makeover of the Democratic Party
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Democratic makeover
is in full swing.
With just a few primaries remaining before the deci-
sive midterm elections in November, voters have dramat-
ically reshaped the Democratic Party to become younger,
more diverse and unquestionably liberal.
The latest turn came Tuesday in Massachusetts, where
Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley, 44, trounced
10-term congressman Mike Capuano, 66, in a Demo-
cratic primary. It reprised a June primary upset in which
self-proclaimed democratic socialist Alexandria Oca-
sio-Cortez, 29, toppled New York congressman Joe
Crowley, one of the House Democrats’ top leaders. They
join minority candidates like Democratic gubernatorial
nominees Stacey Abrams of Georgia and Andrew Gil-
lum of Florida and a host of younger white candidates
— including dozens of women and a gaggle of veterans
— who are offering voters an antidote to President Don-
ald Trump.
“We are at a crossroads,” Pressley declared during a
party unity rally Wednesday. “This can be our darkest
hour or it can be our finest.”
Outsider candidates are taking on establish-
ment-aligned Democratic incumbents in the final prima-
ries of the season over the coming week in states such as
Delaware and Rhode Island.
Blamed in baby’s death, weakening
Gordon spreads rain inland
DAUPHIN ISLAND, Ala. (AP) — Blamed for the
death of a Florida baby and intense wind and rain that
pummeled parts of the northern Gulf of Mexico coast,
Tropical Depression Gordon weakened Wednesday but
still spread bands of heavy rains across a swath of the
South as it swirled over central Mississippi.
It promised more of the same on a forecast track
expected to take it northeast into Arkansas, which was
forecast to get heavy rain from the system by Wednes-
day night. By Saturday, what’s left of the storm was fore-
cast to hook to the north, then northeast on a path toward
the Great Lakes. National Weather Service offices in Mis-
souri and Oklahoma said Gordon’s remnants could add
to the rain caused by a frontal boundary already causing
heavy rains in parts of the Midwest. Flash flood watches
stretched from the Florida panhandle through parts of
southwest Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma,
Kansas, Iowa and Illinois.
Gordon never reached hurricane strength by the time
it came ashore Tuesday night just west of the Mississip-
pi-Alabama line. Its maximum sustained winds reached
70 mph. It knocked out power to at least 27,000 util-
ity customers in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. By
Wednesday afternoon the numbers were down to about
5,800 in Alabama, 3,000 in Mississippi and a little more
than 2,000 in Florida.
Pictures on social media showed damaged roofs and
debris-strewn beaches and roads. However, no major
damage or serious injuries were reported, other than the
one fatality — a baby in a mobile home, struck by a large
tree limb in Pensacola late Tuesday.
Neighbors told a newspaper the victim was about 10
months old, but the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office
confirmed the child was 2 years old.
No immediate ruling in GOP’s
latest ‘Obamacare’ lawsuit
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The latest push to scrap
the Affordable Care Act once and for all pressed ahead
Wednesday as Republican-controlled states asked a fed-
eral judge to finish what Congress started last year and
bring the law that insures 20 million Americans to a halt.
A small group of protesters, some holding signs read-
ing “Save the ACA,” shouted across the street from a Fort
Worth, Texas, courthouse where former President Barack
Obama’s health care law is again under attack. At issue
are core principles of the law, including protections for
people with pre-existing medical conditions and limits on
how much older customers can be charged.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor made no immedi-
ate ruling following a four-hour hearing. Twenty GOP-
led states brought the lawsuit, arguing that the entire
health care law was rendered unconstitutional after Con-
gress repealed the “individual mandate” that required
most Americans to buy insurance or risk a tax penalty.
“Texans and other Americans should be free again to
make their own health care choices,” said Republican
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is leading the
court challenge.
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