AP News in Brief at 11:02 p.m. EDT

In NYC after Ida, Biden calls climate ‘everybody’s crisis’

NEW YORK (AP) — President Joe Biden declared climate change has become “everybody’s crisis” on Tuesday as he toured neighborhoods flooded by the remnants of Hurricane Ida, warning it’s time for America to get serious about the “code red” danger or face ever worse loss of life and property.

Biden spoke after walking streets in New Jersey and then Queens in New York City, meeting people whose homes were destroyed or severely damaged by flooding when Ida barreled through. The storm dumped record amounts of rain onto already saturated ground and was blamed for more than a dozen deaths in the city.

The president said he thinks the damage everyone is seeing,from wildfires in the West to hurricane havoc in the South and Northeast, is turning climate-change skeptics into believers, but years of unheeded warnings from scientists, economists and others mean time for action is short.

“The threat is here. It is not getting any better,” Biden said in New York. “The question is can it get worse. We can stop it from getting worse.”

Biden sounded a similar theme before he toured Manville, New Jersey, also ravaged by severe flooding caused by Ida.

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Taliban form all-male Afghan government of old guard members

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban on Tuesday announced an all-male interim government for Afghanistan stacked with veterans of their hard-line rule from the 1990s and the 20-year battle against the U.S.-led coalition, a move that seems unlikely to win the international support the new leaders desperately need to avoid an economic meltdown.

Appointed to the key post of interior minister was Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is on the FBI’s most-wanted list with a $5 million bounty on his head and is believed to still be holding at least one American hostage. He headed the feared Haqqani network that is blamed for many deadly attacks and kidnappings.

The announcement came hours after Taliban fired their guns into the air to disperse protesters in the capital of Kabul and arrested several journalists, the second time in less than a week that heavy-handed tactics were used to break up a demonstration.

Drawn mostly from Afghanistan’s dominant Pashtun ethnic group, the Cabinet’s lack of representation from other ethnic groups also seems certain to hobble its support from abroad.

As much as 80% of Afghanistan’s budget comes from the international community, and a long-running economic crisis has worsened in recent months. Near daily flights from Qatar bring in humanitarian aid, but the needs are massive, and the Taliban can hardly afford isolation.

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COVID-19 boosters are coming but who will get them and when?

COVID-19 booster shots may be coming for at least some Americans but already the Biden administration is being forced to scale back expectations — illustrating just how much important science still has to be worked out.

The initial plan was to offer Pfizer or Moderna boosters starting Sept. 20, contingent on authorization from U.S. regulators. But now administration officials acknowledge Moderna boosters probably won’t be ready by then — the Food and Drug Administration needs more evidence to judge them. Adding to the complexity, Moderna wants its booster to be half the dose of the original shots.

As for Pfizer’s booster, who really needs another dose right away isn’t a simple decision either. What’s ultimately recommended for an 80-year-old vaccinated back in December may be different than for a 35-year-old immunized in the spring — who likely would get a stronger immunity boost by waiting longer for another shot.

FDA’s scientific advisers will publicly debate Pfizer’s evidence on Sept. 17, just three days before the administration’s target. If the FDA approves another dose, then advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will recommend who should get one.

That’s tricky because while real-world data shows the vaccines used in the U.S. remain strongly protective against severe disease and death, their ability to prevent milder infection is dropping. It’s not clear how much of that is due to immunity waning or the extra-contagious delta variant — or the fact that delta struck just as much of the country dropped masks and other precautions.

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Texas GOP bets on hard right turn amid changing demographics

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Republicans in America’s largest conservative state for years racked up victories under the slogan “Keep Texas Red,” a pledge to quash a coming blue wave that Democrats argued was inevitable given shifting demographics.

Now, those population transformations have arrived, with the 2020 census confirming that the state got bigger, more suburban and far more diverse. Yet a more apt state GOP rallying cry for today might be “Make Texas Even Redder.”

Faced with increasingly dire demographic threats to their party’s dominance, Texas Republicans have championed a bevy of boundary-pushing conservative policymaking that dramatically expands gun rights, curbs abortions and tightens election laws — steering a state that was already far to the right even more so.

Far from tiptoeing toward the middle to appease the Democratic-leaning Texans driving population growth, the party is embracing its base and vowing to use a new round of redistricting to ensure things stay that way through 2030 — becoming a national model for staying on the offensive no matter how political winds may eventually shift.

“Texas, obviously, is a national leader as it concerns the laws that we pass and other states follow,” Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who is fond of vowing to make Texas the “freedom capital of America,” said Tuesday.

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Strong quake hits near Acapulco, buildings sway in capital

A powerful earthquake struck near the Pacific resort city of Acapulco on Tuesday night, causing buildings to rock and sway in Mexico City nearly 200 miles away.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake had a preliminary magnitude of 7.0 and was centered 17 kilometers (about 10 miles) northeast of Acapulco.

The mayor of Acapulco, Adela Román, said in statement to the television news outlet Milenio that “there is no really serious situation” so far and no reports of casualties.

“There are nervous breakdowns, people are worried because there have been aftershocks,” she said, adding that there are “many gas leaks in many places” as well as some landslides and fallen walls.

In Mexico City, the ground shook for nearly a minute in some parts of the capital, but was less evident in other parts. Some people evacuated their buildings briefly, but most quickly went back inside on a rainy night.

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Two decades after 9/11, Muslim Americans still fighting bias

NEW YORK (AP) — A car passed, the driver’s window rolled down and the man spat an epithet at two little girls wearing their hijabs: “Terrorist!”

It was 2001, mere weeks after the twin towers at the World Trade Center fell, and 10-year-old Shahana Hanif and her younger sister were walking to the local mosque from their Brooklyn home.

Unsure, afraid, the girls ran.

As the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks approaches, Hanif can still recall the shock of the moment, her confusion over how anyone could look at her, a child, and see a threat.

“It’s not a nice, kind word. It means violence, it means dangerous. It is meant to shock whoever … is on the receiving end of it,” she says.

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At Brazil rallies, Bolsonaro deepens rift with Supreme Court

BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — Tens of thousands of supporters of embattled right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro heeded his call and turned out at rallies Tuesday as he stepped up his attacks on Brazil’s Supreme Court and threatened to plunge the country into a constitutional crisis.

Bolsonaro has been locked in a feud with the high court, in particular a justice who has jailed several of the president’s supporters for allegedly financing, organizing or inciting violence or anti-democratic acts, or disseminating false information.

In calling on his followers to take to the streets on Brazil’s Independence Day in protest, Bolsonaro stirred fears among his foes that the demonstrations could erupt in violence akin to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump. But by late afternoon, there were no reports of any serious violence.

Bolsonaro got a rousing reception from demonstrators in the capital, Brasilia, and in Sao Paulo, as he lit into the Supreme Court and Justice Alexandre de Moraes for making what he characterized as political arrests.

He declared he will no longer abide by rulings from de Moraes, who will assume the presidency of the nation’s electoral tribunal next year, when Bolsonaro will seek reelection.

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Newsom’s nightmare: How one November day fueled the recall

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — On a single day last November, two events helped set the course for just the second recall election against a governor in California history: Gov. Gavin Newsom dined with 11 friends and lobbyists at one of the country’s most expensive restaurants as he pleaded with Californians to stay home, while those looking to kick him out of office won four more months to qualify for the ballot.

Photos of the maskless dinner showed the Democratic governor going against what he had been urging for months to combat the coronavirus: don’t gather in groups, keep your distance, wear a mask. That it was happening at the French Laundry — where the cheapest meal is $350 — fueled the idea Newsom was out of touch. The dinner turned up the heat on the fledgling recall, and the extra time allowed it to reach full boil.

By March, organizers had more than the 1.5 million signatures they needed to force a vote on whether to remove the first-term Democratic governor in the nation’s biggest blue state.

“We had a perfect storm with the judge’s ruling, with the French Laundry incident, with the greater environment of COVID and the economic disaster,” said Mindy Romero, director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at the University of Southern California.

Voters will have the final say next Tuesday. A majority of voters would need to mark “yes” to oust Newsom more than a year before his term ends.

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Afghan officer rescued from Kabul starts new life in U.S.

The dramatic rescue in Afghanistan happened under the cover of darkness. The Taliban were closing in, and Americans were running out of time to save Mohammad Khalid Wardak.

The high-profile Afghan national police officer spent years working alongside the U.S. military, and after the fall of Kabul, he went on the run, moving from safe house to safe house, at one point running barefoot to avoid capture. The U.S. and its allies had only minutes to get Khalid, as his friends call him, and his wife and their four young sons to the safety of a waiting helicopter.

As part of Operation Promise Kept, the family was whisked away to an undisclosed location in Kabul and then to Kuwait, where Khalid was treated for a wound from a mortar attack. Less than three weeks later, the warrior who once directed resistance against the Taliban from a hospital bed has settled with his family in the United States.

“I’m a free man,” Khalid told The Associated Press through an interpreter after arriving at Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C., aboard a U.S. military flight 15 days after his rescue. “It’s like a dream for me.”

During a 90-minute conversation from a U.S. government official’s home, Khalid, who left Afghanistan with a few important documents and the clothes he was wearing, recounted his final firefights with the Taliban, the brotherhood he developed with U.S. special forces and the prospect of a new life with no need for bodyguards, thanks to the generosity of friends and strangers.

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Photographer, his leg lost, seeks answers from Paralympians

When I last saw Freddie de los Santos, his mouth was ravaged — his teeth had been blown away by the same blast that took his leg. And yet, he always smiled.

The year was 2009. We were both being treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center; I too had lost a leg in southern Afghanistan. We spent months together, the soldier and the photographer, and he would tell me of his exhaustion, his trauma and his nightmares.

A dozen years later, Freddie has a new life. He is a Paralympian, one of several American soldiers who rebounded from horrendous injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan to compete in the Tokyo games. And I have resumed my career with a camera, traveling the world, telling stories.

At times I think I would give it all away — my life’s work, the prizes and recognition, including the Pulitzer I was awarded this year — just to walk on my own two legs again. But I also realize the role my disability has played in shaping who I am today.

And I wonder: Can disability actually give us more than it has taken?