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

Dorian aims for US, causes limited damage in Caribbean

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Hurricane Dorian caused limited damage in the northern Caribbean as it left the region Wednesday night, setting its sights on the U.S. mainland as it threatened to grow into a dangerous Category 3 storm.

Power outages and flooding were reported across the U.S. Virgin Islands, the British Virgin Islands and the Puerto Rican islands of Vieques and Culebra after Dorian hit St. Thomas as a Category 1 storm.

“We’re happy because there are no damages to report,” Culebra Mayor William Solís told The Associated Press, noting that only one community lost power.

Meanwhile, Dorian caused an island-wide blackout in St. Thomas and St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and scattered power outages in St. Croix, government spokesman Richard Motta told AP. In addition, the storm downed trees and at least one electric post in St. Thomas, he said, adding that there were no reports of major flooding.

“We are grateful that it wasn’t a stronger storm,” he said.

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Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand ends once-promising presidential bid

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand dropped out of the presidential race Wednesday, abruptly ending a campaign that once looked poised to ride strong #MeToo credentials to formidability but instead collapsed amid surprisingly low polling and major fundraising struggles.

“I know this isn’t the result that we wanted,” the 52-year-old New York senator said in an online video in which she didn’t endorse any other 2020 Democratic White House hopeful. “But it’s important to know when it’s not your time.”

The decision came as Gillibrand failed to qualify for a debate coming next month in Houston by not hitting 2% in at least four approved public opinion polls while securing 130,000 unique donors — despite spending millions on online and TV ads to woo people contributing as little as $1. That proved especially embarrassing since candidates who began the race with far lower national profiles, including businessman Andrew Yang, made it.

On the eve of Wednesday’s qualifying deadline, Gillibrand sat down with her family and decided that if a pair of polls set to be released the following morning didn’t help her meet the polling threshold, she’d drop out.

Both ultimately showed her at 0%.

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US, Mexico widen asylum crackdown to push back all migrants

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico (AP) — A Trump administration program forcing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico has evolved into a sweeping rejection of all forms of migrants, with both countries quietly working to keep people out of the U.S. despite threats to the migrants’ safety.

The results serve the goals of both governments, which have targeted unauthorized migration at the behest of President Donald Trump, who threatened Mexico with potentially crippling tariffs earlier this year to force action.

Some people sent to wait in the Mexican border cities of Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros said they never requested asylum, including Wilfredo Alvarez, a labourer from Honduras. He crossed the Rio Grande without permission to look for work to support his seven children and was unexpectedly put into the program. He was sent back to Mexico with a future court date.

“We thought that if they caught us, they would deport us to our country, but it was not that way,” Alvarez said. “They threw us away here to Mexico, but we are not from here and it’s very difficult.”

Others said they were never asked if they feared persecution in Mexico, despite U.S. government rules that say migrants should not be sent there if they face that risk.

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Farmers’ loyalty to Trump tested over new corn-ethanol rules

LACONA, Iowa (AP) — When President Donald Trump levied tariffs on China that scrambled global markets, farmer Randy Miller was willing to absorb the financial hit. Even as the soybeans in his fields about an hour south of Des Moines became less valuable, Miller saw long-term promise in Trump’s efforts to rebalance America’s trade relationship with Beijing.

“The farmer plays the long game,” said Miller, who grows soybeans and corn and raises pigs in Lacona. “I look at my job through my son, my grandkids. So am I willing to suffer today to get this done to where I think it will be better for them? Yes.”

But the patience of Miller and many other Midwest farmers with a president they mostly supported in 2016 is being put sorely to the test.

The trigger wasn’t Trump’s China tariffs, but the waivers the administration granted this month to 31 oil refineries so they don’t have to blend ethanol into their gasoline. Since roughly 40% of the U.S. corn crop is turned into ethanol, it was a fresh blow to corn producers already struggling with five years of low commodity prices and the threat of mediocre harvests this fall after some of the worst weather in years.

“That flashpoint was reached and the frustration boiled over, and this was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” says Lynn Chrisp, who grows corn and soybeans near Hastings, Nebraska, and is president of the National Corn Growers Association.

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UK’s Johnson moves to suspend Parliament ahead of Brexit

LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson manoeuvred Wednesday to give his political opponents even less time to block a chaotic no-deal Brexit before the Oct. 31 withdrawal deadline, winning Queen Elizabeth II’s approval to suspend Parliament. His critics were outraged.

Though Johnson previously had refused to rule out such a move, the timing of the decision took lawmakers — many of whom are on vacation — by surprise.

Johnson insisted he was taking the step so he could outline his domestic agenda, and he shot down the notion that he was curbing debate, saying there would be “ample time” to discuss Brexit and other issues.

Lawmakers reacted with fury, including John Bercow, speaker of the lower House of Commons, who was not told in advance of Johnson’s plan.

“Shutting down Parliament would be an offence against the democratic process and the rights of parliamentarians as the people’s elected representatives,” Bercow said. “Surely at this early stage in his premiership, the prime minister should be seeking to establish rather than undermine his democratic credentials and indeed his commitment to Parliamentary democracy.”

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Family of minor league baseball pitcher slain in Virginia

CHATHAM, Va. (AP) — The brother-in-law of a minor league baseball pitcher killed the athlete’s wife, toddler son and mother-in-law before he was captured naked during a manhunt in a tiny southern Virginia community, authorities said Wednesday.

Matthew Thomas Bernard, 18, was arrested after police warned of a dangerous gunman on the loose upon finding the bodies Tuesday morning at a home in Keeling.

Bernard’s sister, one of the victims, was married to Blake Bivens, a 24-year-old pitcher for Alabama’s Montgomery Biscuits, a Double-A affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays.

News of the slayings had prompted the Biscuits to cancel their scheduled doubleheader Tuesday.

“All we can do is kind of put our arms around (Bivens) as an organization, him and his family, and do the best we can,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said Wednesday.

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MSNBC’s O’Donnell: I shouldn’t have reported Trump story

NEW YORK (AP) — MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell said Wednesday he made an “error in judgment” in reporting about supposed Russian ties to President Donald Trump’s finances without verifying the story.

O’Donnell’s admission came in a tweet Wednesday after a lawyer for Trump said the story was false and defamatory, and called on NBC News to apologize and retract it.

MSNBC had no comment on any potential disciplinary action for O’Donnell, saying he would address the matter on Wednesday’s show.

O’Donnell said in his tweet that the story, which led Tuesday night’s broadcast, “didn’t go through our vigorous verification and standards process. I shouldn’t have reported it and I was wrong to discuss it on the air.”

He said on the show that he’d been told that Deutsche Bank had documents showing that Russian oligarchs had co-signed loans for Trump. He said the report came from a single source, who he didn’t identify. The documents also supposedly reveal that Trump paid little in taxes, he said.

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O’Rourke campaign ejects Breitbart reporter from speech

NEW YORK (AP) — Beto O’Rourke’s presidential campaign said Wednesday that it ejected a Breitbart News reporter from an event at a South Carolina college because it wanted to ensure that students felt “comfortable and safe.”

The Texas Democrat’s campaign found itself in a public confrontation with the aggressive conservative website a day after its senior editor-at-large, Joel Pollak, said he was booted from an O’Rourke speech. He said the campaign told him was being ejected because he’d been disruptive at past events.

O’Rourke spokeswoman Aleigha Cavalier said that Breitbart walks the line between being news and a perpetrator of hate speech. The campaign asked him to leave because of Pollak’s “previous hateful reporting” and the sensitivity of the topics being discussed with black students at Benedict College.

“Whether it’s dedicating an entire section of their website to ‘black crime,’ inferring that immigrants are terrorists, or using derogatory terms to refer to LGBTQ people, Breitbart News walks the line between being news and a perpetrator of hate speech,” Cavalier said in a statement.

Cavalier did not immediately outline what work from Pollak the campaign had found objectionable or whether this was a one-time action that would apply to Breitbart personnel in the future.

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Questions after US turns away Palestinian Harvard freshman

BOSTON (AP) — A Palestinian student trying to start classes at Harvard University was denied entry to the U.S. in a case that critics of the Trump administration call emblematic of overly invasive screening at border checkpoints.

Ismail Ajjawi, who had been living in Lebanon, was refused entry into the U.S. after landing Friday at Logan International Airport in Boston, university and federal officials confirmed this week. The 17-year-old freshman said the denial had to do with politically oriented social media posts by his friends.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection would not confirm that, with spokesman Michael McCarthy saying only that the decision to cancel Ajjawi’s visa was based on information discovered during an inspection. He declined to elaborate but stressed that Ajjawi was not deported, meaning he can still seek reentry.

Harvard is working to resolve the matter, university spokesman Jason Newton said. AMIDEAST, a non-profit organization that awarded Ajjawi a scholarship, is providing legal assistance.

Federal agents detained Ajjawi at the airport for eight hours, searched his cellphone and laptop, and questioned him about his friends’ social media posts, according to a written statement Ajjawi gave to The Harvard Crimson , the student newspaper.

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Ex-Pentagon chief Mattis says bitter politics threaten US

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Defence Secretary Jim Mattis is warning that bitter political divisions threaten American society, saying he views “tribalism” as a greater risk to the nation’s future than foreign adversaries.

The retired Marine general, who resigned in December 2018 in a policy dispute with President Donald Trump, said he worries about the state of American politics and the administration’s treatment of allies.

“We all know that we’re better than our current politics,” Mattis wrote in an essay adapted from his new book and published Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal. “Unlike in the past, where we were unified and drew in allies, currently our own commons seems to be breaking apart.”

Mattis said the problem is made worse by this administration’s disregard for the enduring value of allies, which he alluded to in the resignation letter he gave Trump on Dec. 20.

“Nations with allies thrive,” he wrote in the Journal essay, “and those without them wither. Alone, America cannot protect our people and our economy. At this time, we can see storm clouds gathering.”