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

Rivalry between Trump and DeSantis deepens with dueling New Hampshire campaign events

HOLLIS, N.H. (AP) — The rivalry between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump deepened Tuesday as the two leading Republican White House candidates mocked each other during dueling events in the critical early voting state of New Hampshire.

Addressing a town hall in Hollis, DeSantis vowed to “actually” build the U.S.-Mexico border wall that Trump tried but failed to complete as president. He also pledged to tear down Washington’s traditional power centers in ways that Trump fell short.

Speaking later at a Republican women’s luncheon in Concord, Trump countered that DeSantis was being forced to settle for second place in the primary and accused the governor of supporting cuts to Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs as a way to tame federal spending.

Beyond the rhetoric, the conflicting events demonstrated each candidate’s evolving strategy. DeSantis took extensive audience questions — a trademark in New Hampshire politics that he eschewed during his previous visit to the state, drawing criticisms that he was stilted and overly scripted.

Trump, meanwhile, offered a free-wheeling speech for more than hour. He didn’t take questions in Concord, and reporters covering the event were confined to a pen, chaperoned to the bathroom and told they could not speak to attendees in the conference center ballroom or even in the hallways. But the former president answered questions at a subsequent stop in Manchester, where he opened his New Hampshire campaign office.

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Canadian wildfires are causing the worst air in the US in cities like Chicago and Detroit

CHICAGO (AP) — Drifting smoke from the ongoing wildfires across Canada is creating curtains of haze and raising air quality concerns throughout the Great Lakes region and in parts of the central and eastern United States.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s AirNow.gov site showed parts of Illinois, lower Michigan and southern Wisconsin had the worst air quality in the U.S. on Tuesday afternoon, and Chicago, Detroit and Milwaukee had air quality categorized as “very unhealthy.”

In Minnesota, a record 23rd air quality alert was issued Tuesday through late Wednesday night across much of the state, as smoky skies obscure the skylines of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy issued an air quality alert for the entire state. Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources also issued an air quality advisory for the state.

In Chicago, officials urged young people, older adults and residents with health issues to spend more time indoors.

“Just driving into the zoo … you could just see around the buildings, kind of just haze,” said Shelly Woinowski, who was visiting the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago.

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Supreme Court rejects GOP in North Carolina case that could have reshaped elections beyond the state

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that state courts can curtail the actions of their legislatures when it comes to federal redistricting and elections, rejecting arguments by North Carolina Republicans that could have dramatically altered races for Congress and president in that state and beyond.

The justices by a 6-3 vote upheld a decision by North Carolina’s top court that struck down a congressional districting plan as excessively partisan under state law.

The high court did, though, indicate there could be limits on state court efforts to police elections for Congress and president, suggesting that more election-related court cases over the issue are likely.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court that “state courts retain the authority to apply state constitutional restraints when legislatures act under the power conferred upon them by the Elections Clause. But federal courts must not abandon their own duty to exercise judicial review.”

The decision was the fourth major case of the term in which conservative and liberal justices joined to reject the most aggressive legal arguments put forth by conservative state elected officials and advocacy groups. Earlier decisions on voting rights, a Native American child welfare law and a Biden administration immigration policy also unexpectedly cut across ideological lines on the court.

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Prigozhin has moved to Belarus, and Russia won’t press charges for mutiny

Yevgeny Prigozhin, owner of the private army of prison recruits and other mercenaries who have fought some of the deadliest battles in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, escaped prosecution for his abortive armed rebellion against the Kremlin and arrived Tuesday in Belarus.

The exile of the 62-year-old owner of the Wagner Group was part of a deal that ended the short-lived mutiny in Russia. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko confirmed Prigozhin was in Belarus, and said he and some of his troops were welcome to stay “for some time” at their own expense.

Prigozhin has not been seen since Saturday, when he waved to well-wishers from a vehicle in the southern city of Rostov. He issued a defiant audio statement on Monday. And on Tuesday morning, a private jet believed to belong to him flew from Rostov to an airbase southwest of the Belarusian capital of Minsk, according to data from FlightRadar24.

Meanwhile, Moscow said preparations were underway for Wagner’s troops fighting in Ukraine, who numbered 25,000 according to Prigozhin, to hand over their heavy weapons to Russia’s military. Prigozhin had said such moves were planned ahead of a July 1 deadline for his fighters to sign contracts — which he opposed — to serve under Russia’s military command.

Russian authorities also said Tuesday they have closed a criminal investigation into the uprising and are pressing no armed rebellion charge against Prigozhin or his followers.

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Deputies accused of abusing Black men are fired by Mississippi sheriff amid federal probe

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — All five Mississippi deputy sheriffs who responded to an incident where two Black men accused the deputies of beating and sexually assaulting them before shooting one of them in the mouth have been fired or resigned, authorities announced Tuesday.”

The announcement comes months after Michael Corey Jenkins and his friend Eddie Terrell Parker said deputies from the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department burst into a home without a warrant. The men said deputies beat them, assaulted them with a sex toy and shocked them repeatedly with Tasers in a roughly 90-minute period during the Jan. 24 episode, Jenkins and Parker said.

Jenkins said one of the deputies shoved a gun in his mouth and then fired the weapon, leaving him with serious injuries to his face, tongue and jaw. The Justice Department opened a civil rights investigation into the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department after the episode.

Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey announced Tuesday that deputies involved in the episode had been fired, and some had already resigned. He would not provide the names of the deputies who had been terminated or say how many law enforcement officers were fired. Bailey would not answer additional questions about the episode.

“Due to recent developments, including findings during our internal investigation, those deputies that were still employed by this department have all been terminated,” Bailey said at a news conference. “We understand that the alleged actions of these deputies has eroded the public’s trust in the department. Rest assured that we will work diligently to restore that trust.”

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Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani interviewed in Jan. 6 investigation

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rudy Giuliani, who as a member of Donald Trump’s legal team sought to overturn 2020 presidential election results in battleground states, was interviewed recently by investigators with the Justice Department special counsel’s office.

A spokesman for Giuliani confirmed he met with the special counsel. “The appearance was entirely voluntary and conducted in a professional manner,” Ted Goodman said in a statement.

A person familiar with the matter said the interview was not done before a grand jury. The person, who insisted on anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, would not say what questions investigators asked.

The interview is an additional sign of busy investigative activity by special counsel Jack Smith as his team of prosecutors scrutinizes efforts by Trump and his allies to undo the results of the election in the weeks before the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.

Smith filed a separate case earlier this month charging Trump with illegally retaining classified documents at his Florida home, Mar-a-Lago.

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Misconduct by federal jail guards led to Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide, Justice Department watchdog says

WASHINGTON (AP) — Jeffrey Epstein was left alone in his jail cell with a surplus of bed linens the night he killed himself. Nearly all the surveillance cameras on his unit didn’t record. One worker was on duty for 24 hours straight. And, despite his high profile and a suicide attempt two weeks earlier, he wasn’t checked on regularly as required.

The Justice Department’s watchdog said Tuesday that a “combination of negligence, misconduct and outright job performance failures” by the federal Bureau of Prisons and workers at the New York City jail enabled the wealthy financier to take his own life in August 2019, finding no evidence of foul play.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz blamed numerous factors for Epstein’s death, including the jail’s failure to assign him a cellmate and overworked guards who lied on logs after failing to make regular checks. Had the guards done so, Horowitz said, they would’ve found Epstein had excess linens, which he used in his suicide.

The failures are deeply troubling not only because they allowed Epstein’s suicide but also because they “led to questions about the circumstances surrounding Epstein’s death and effectively deprived Epstein’s numerous victims of the opportunity to seek justice,” Horowitz said in a video statement.

Horowitz’s investigation, the last of several official inquiries into Epstein’s death, echoed previous findings that some members of the jail staff involved in guarding Epstein were overworked. He identified 13 employees with performance failures and recommended possible criminal charges against four workers. Only the two workers assigned to guard Epstein the night he died were charged, avoiding jail time in a plea deal after admitting to falsifying logs.

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In an audio recording Donald Trump discusses a ‘highly confidential’ document with an interviewer

WASHINGTON (AP) — An audio recording from a meeting in which former President Donald Trump discusses a “highly confidential” document with an interviewer appears to undermine his later claim that he didn’t have such documents, only magazine and newspaper clippings.

The recording, from a July 2021 interview Trump gave at his Bedminster, New Jersey, resort for people working on the memoir of his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, is a critical piece of evidence in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump over the mishandling of classified information.

The special counsel’s indictment alleges that those in attendance at the meeting with Trump — including a writer, a publisher and two of Trump’s staff members — were shown classified information about a Pentagon plan of attack on an unspecified foreign country.

“These are the papers,” Trump says in a moment that seems to indicate he’s holding a secret Pentagon document with plans to attack Iran. “This was done by the military, given to me.”

Trump’s reference to something he says is “highly confidential” and his apparent showing of documents to other people at the 2021 meeting could undercut his claim in a recent Fox News Channel interview that he didn’t have any documents with him.

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A heat wave in Texas is forecast to spread scorching temperatures to the north and east

DALLAS (AP) — Scorching temperatures brought on by a “heat dome” have taxed the Texas power grid and threaten to bring record highs to the state before they are expected to expand to other parts of the U.S. during the coming week, putting even more people at risk.

“Going forward, that heat is going to expand … north to Kansas City and the entire state of Oklahoma, into the Mississippi Valley … to the far western Florida Panhandle and parts of western Alabama,” while remaining over Texas, said Bob Oravec, lead forecaster with the National Weather Service.

Record high temperatures around 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius) are forecast in parts of western Texas on Monday, and relief is not expected before the Fourth of July holiday, Oravec said.

Cori Iadonisi, of Dallas, summed up the weather simply: “It’s just too hot here.”

Iadonisi, 40, said she often urges local friends to visit her native Washington state to beat the heat in the summer.

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Actor Julian Sands died while hiking on California mountain, authorities confirm

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Actor Julian Sands, who starred in several Oscar-nominated films in the late 1980s and ’90s including “A Room With a View” and “Leaving Las Vegas,” was found dead on a Southern California mountain five months after he disappeared while hiking, authorities said Tuesday.

An investigation confirmed that it was Sands whose remains hikers found Saturday in wilderness near Mount Baldy, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said. The 65-year-old actor was an avid and experienced hiker who lived in Los Angeles and was reported missing Jan. 13 after setting out on the peak that rises more than 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) east of the city. Crews aided by drones and helicopters had searched for him several times, but, severely hampered by wintry conditions that lasted through spring, no sign of him was found until the civilian hikers came upon him.

The chances of Sands being discovered alive had long since diminished to nearly nothing, but the Sheriff’s Department, which conducted an official search the day before he was found, emphasized that the case remained active.

An autopsy has been conducted, but further test results are needed before the cause of death can be determined, authorities said.

Sands, who was born, raised and began acting in England, worked constantly in film and television, amassing more than 150 credits in a 40-year career. During a 10-year span from 1985 to 1995, he played major roles in a series of acclaimed films.