AP Top News at 11:47 p.m. EST
LOS ANGELES (AP) — As another powerful storm walloped California, a 5-year-old boy was swept away by floodwaters Monday on the state’s central coast and an entire seaside community that is home to Prince Harry, Oprah Winfrey and other celebrities was ordered to evacuate on the fifth anniversary of deadly mudslides there. Tens of thousands of people remained without power, and some schools closed for the day. Streets and highways transformed into gushing rivers, trees toppled, mud slid and motorists growled as they hit roadblocks caused by fallen debris. The death toll from the relentless string of storms climbed from 12 to 14 on Monday, after two people were killed by falling trees, state officials said.
ATLANTA (AP) — The special grand jury in Atlanta that has been investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies committed any crimes while trying to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia has finished its work, bringing the case closer to possible criminal charges against Trump and others. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who was overseeing the panel, issued a two-page order Monday dissolving the special grand jury, saying it had completed its work and submitted a final report. The lengthy investigation has been one of several around the country that threaten legal peril for Trump as he mounts a third bid for the White House.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Electing the House speaker may have been the easy part. Now House Republicans will try to govern. Speaker Kevin McCarthy passed his first tests late Monday as the Republicans approved their rules package for governing House operations, typically a routine step on Day One that stretched into the second week of the new majority. It was approved 220-213, a party-line vote with one Republican opposed. Next, the House Republicans easily passed their first bill — legislation to cut funding that is supposed to bolster the Internal Revenue Service. The Republicans’ IRS bill ran into a snag ahead of votes because the budget office announced that rather than save money, it would add $114 billion to the federal deficit.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is reviewing a batch of potentially classified documents found in the Washington office space of President Joe Biden’s former institute, the White House said Monday. Special counsel to the president Richard Sauber said “a small number of documents with classified markings” were discovered as Biden’s personal attorneys were clearing out the offices of the Penn Biden Center, where the president kept an office after he left the vice presidency in 2017 until shortly before he launched his 2020 presidential campaign in 2019. The documents were found on Nov. 2, 2022, in a “locked closet” in the office, Sauber said.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. (AP) — Stetson Bennett threw two touchdown passes and ran for two scores in the first half as No. 1 Georgia demolished No. 3 TCU 65-7 Monday night to become the first team to win consecutive College Football Playoff national championships. The Bulldogs (15-0) are the first repeat champs since Alabama went back-to-back a decade ago, and they left no doubt that they have replaced the Crimson Tide as the new bullies on the block. “We wanted our kids to play without fear,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said. “All year I told them, I said, ’We ain’t getting hunted guys, we’re doing the hunting, and hunting season’s almost over.
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (AP) — In the moments before a 6-year-old Virginia boy shot his teacher, there was no fight, no physical struggle and no warning, authorities said Monday. “What we know today is that she was providing instruction. He displayed a firearm, he pointed it and he fired one round,” Newport News police Chief Steve Drew said. Drew, who spoke during a news conference, offered the first detailed description of a shooting that shocked the city and was notable even in a country like the United States that seems inured to constant gun violence. Drew had previously said that the shooting was not accidental and had declined to elaborate.
Enraged protesters broke into government buildings that are the very symbol of their country’s democracy. Driven by conspiracy theories about their candidate’s loss in the last election, they smashed windows, sifted through the desks of lawmakers and trashed the highest offices in the land in a rampage that lasted hours before order could be restored. Sunday’s attack by supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil’s capital drew immediate parallels with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by former President Donald Trump’s backers two years and two days earlier. The two populist former presidents shared a close political alliance with an overlapping cast of supporters — some of whom helped spread Trump’s lies about losing his re-election due to voter fraud and later parroted Bolsonaro’s similar claims after his own re-election loss last fall.
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans began their tenure in the majority Monday by passing a bill that would rescind nearly $71 billion that Congress had provided the IRS, fulfilling a campaign promise even though the legislation is unlikely to advance further. Democrats had beefed up the IRS over the next decade to help offset the cost of top health and environmental priorities they passed last year and to replenish an agency struggling to provide basic services to taxpayers and ensure fairness in tax compliance. The money is on top of what Congress provides the IRS annually through the appropriations process and immediately became a magnet for GOP campaign ads in the fall claiming that the boost would lead to an army of IRS agents harassing hard-working Americans.
From the book’s opening citation of William Faulkner, to Prince Harry’s passionate bond with his wife Meghan, you could almost call the Duke of Sussex’s memoir “The Americanization of Prince Harry.” Bereaved boy, troubled teen, wartime soldier, unhappy royal — many facets of Prince Harry are revealed in his explosive memoir, often in eyebrow-raising detail. Running throughout is Harry’s desire to be a different kind of prince — the kind who talks about his feelings, eats fast food and otherwise doesn’t hide beyond a prim facade. Like an American. From accounts of cocaine use and losing his virginity to raw family rifts, “Spare” exposes deeply personal details about Harry and the wider royal family.
ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (AP) — Bills safety Damar Hamlin said he returned to Buffalo on Monday “with a lot of love on my heart” to continue his recovery in a hospital there, a week after going into cardiac arrest and having to be resuscitated on the field during a game in Cincinnati. Hamlin was discharged from the University of Cincinnati Medical Center in the morning and flown to western New York. He was listed in stable condition at Buffalo General Medical Center/Gates Vascular Institute. “I can confirm that he is doing well. And this is the beginning of the next stage of his recovery,” said Dr.