The Latest: Biden decries 'extremism' on the Supreme Court, lays out plans for reforms

President Joe Biden decried “extremism” that he says has undermined public confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court. He has called on Congress to quickly establish term limits and an enforceable ethics code for the court’s nine justices. He also called on lawmakers to ratify a constitutional amendment limiting presidential immunity.

The FBI says former President Donald Trump has agreed to be interviewed as part of the investigation into the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania earlier this month.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign raised $200 million since she emerged as the likely Democratic presidential nominee last week, an eyepopping haul in her race against former President Trump.

Follow the AP’s Election-2024 coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.

Here's the Latest:

Rapper Megan Thee Stallion will join Vice President Kamala Harris for a special performance during her campaign stop in Atlanta on Tuesday.

A Harris campaign spokesperson confirmed the hip-hop star’s performance alongside the vice president in a post on X on Monday night.

The Harris campaign is promising a large rally in Atlanta, on par with the large events that Republican former President Donald Trump has made his signature.

If Vice President Kamala Harris were to ascend to the presidency, she would become the first female president, but also one who is also multiracial.

The daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, both of whom immigrated to the U.S. during the Civil Rights Movement, Harris’ historic presidential bid has again put a spotlight on American identity politics and the growing number of people who say they are multiracial.

Different countries divide people into categories depending on different national traditions. The U.S., with its slavery-molded history, divides people into Black or white, and nine million people identified as multiracial in 2010.

When Harris ran for vice president in 2020, 33.8 million people in the U.S. identified as being more than one race, according to the census.

In an address at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, President Joe Biden said Monday that “extremism” on the U.S. Supreme Court is undermining public confidence in the institution and called on Congress to quickly establish term limits and an enforceable ethics code for the court’s nine justices. He also called on lawmakers to ratify a constitutional amendment limiting presidential immunity.

Biden, who has less than six months left in his presidency, detailed the contours of his court proposal while marking the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. His calls for dramatic changes in the court have little chance of being approved by a closely divided Congress with 99 days to go before Election Day.

“Extremism is undermining the public confidence in the court’s decisions,” Biden said. He added, “We can and must prevent abuse of presidential power and restore faith in the Supreme Court.”

Biden pointed to the 2013 high court decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade and rolling back abortion rights, and a 2023 decision “eviscerating” affirmative action in college admission programs as three prime examples of what he saw as “outrageous” decisions that have shaken Americans’ faith in the high court.

A series of hastily organized Zoom calls to raise money and rev up supporters have been quickly stirred up over the past week in support of Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign for president — including one on Monday night billed as “White Dudes for Harris.”

In the past week, tens of thousands of people have joined virtual gatherings spun up by activists and outside organizations to rally support for the vice president among specific groups including Black women, Hispanic women, Black men, Asian Americans, Native Americans and the LGBTQ+ community.

The calls reflect how Democrats, including Biden, have frequently relied on voters from broad and disparate backgrounds to piece together a diverse coalition of support.

Organizers of Monday night’s “white dudes” Zoom expect 100,000 attendees to join a gathering featuring appearances from actors including Mark Ruffalo, Sean Astin, Mark Hamill and Bradley Whitford. Also set to participate: Democratic officials including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, all of whom have been mentioned as potential running mates for Harris.

Vice President Kamala Harris highlighted endorsements from mayors of border towns in swing-state Arizona Monday as she looks to blunt the impact of Republican criticism of her handling of illegal border crossings.

Harris’ campaign said she was backed by the mayors of Bisbee, Nogales, Somerton, and San Luis, as well as by Yuma County Supervisors Martin Porchas and Tony Reyes. The mayors were elected without party affiliation but represent left-leaning communities. Porchas and Reyes are Democrats.

A week into her sudden promotion to the top of the Democratic presidential ticket, Harris is getting her campaign off the ground and refining her pitch to voters with less than 100 days before Election Day. Republicans are trying to make the border a political liability for Harris just as it was for President Joe Biden before he ended his reelection campaign.

Republican Rep. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania witnessed the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump firsthand and will now lead the House task force charged with investigating what went wrong and recommending solutions to help ensure such an attack doesn’t happen again.

Kelly represents the city of Butler, where the July 13 attack occurred. He attended Trump’s campaign rally and sponsored the legislation to create the task force, saying his community was grieving and that “the people of Butler and the people of the United States deserve answers.”

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York jointly announced on Monday that 13 lawmakers, seven Republicans and six Democrats with backgrounds in law enforcement, legal affairs and the military, had been appointed to the task force. It will issue a final report before Dec. 13.

“We have the utmost confidence in this bipartisan group of steady, highly qualified, and capable members of Congress to move quickly to find the facts, ensure accountability, and help make certain such failures never happen again,” Johnson and Jeffries said in their statement.

A video that uses an artificial intelligence voice-cloning tool to mimic the voice of Vice President Kamala Harris saying things she did not say is raising concerns about the power of AI to mislead with Election Day about three months away.

The video gained attention after tech billionaire Elon Musk shared it on his social media platform X on Friday without explicitly noting it was originally released as parody.

By late Sunday, Musk had clarified the video was intended as satire, pinning the original creator’s post to his profile and using a pun to make the point that parody is not a crime.

The video uses many of the same visuals as a real ad that Harris, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, released launching her campaign. But the fake ad swaps out Harris’ voice-over audio with an AI-generated voice that convincingly impersonates her.

A New Jersey judge on Monday denied an effort to keep Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from running for president under the state’s sore loser law.

Judge Robert Lougy denied a request by attorney Scott Salmon, who sought to keep Kennedy from appearing on the Nov. 5 presidential ballot as an independent. He said the law compelled him to dismiss the case but that Salmon could still raise complaints to the state’s top elections official, Secretary of State Tahesha Way.

Kennedy’s famous name and a loyal base have buoyed his bid for the White House, and he could do better than any independent presidential candidate in decades. Strategists from both major parties worry he might negatively affect their candidate’s chances.

President Joe Biden has unveiled a long-awaited proposal for changes at the U.S. Supreme Court, calling on Congress to establish term limits and an enforceable ethics code for the court’s nine justices. He’s also pressing lawmakers to ratify a constitutional amendment limiting presidential immunity.

The White House on Monday detailed the contours of Biden’s court proposal, one that appears to have little chance of being approved by a closely divided Congress with just 99 days to go before Election Day.

Still, Democrats hope it’ll help focus voters as they consider their choices in a tight election. The likely Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, who has sought to frame her race against Republican ex-President Donald Trump as “a choice between freedom and chaos,” said the court’s fairness had been called into question following recent decisions.

The FBI says the gunman in the assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump looked online for details about mass shootings, power plants and improvised explosive devices.

Thomas Matthew Crooks also searched for information about the attempted assassination earlier this year of Slovakia’s prime minister. That’s according to Kevin Rojek, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office.

The FBI has also says Crooks looked for information about how far away Lee Harvey Oswald was from President John F. Kennedy during the November 1963 assassination.

The FBI says former President Donald Trump has agreed to be interviewed as part of the investigation into the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania earlier this month.

It's customary for federal agents to seek to interview victims of crimes during the course of their investigation.

Kevin Rojek, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office, says investigators want to get Trump’s perspective on what happened July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania.

The FBI said Friday that Trump was struck by a bullet or a fragment of one during the assassination attempt.

The Democratic National Committee says it's investing at least $8.3 million in state parties around the country this cycle, which it says is 25% more since 2020.

In a memo released Monday detailing its strategy with Election Day now less than 100 days away, the DNC said those investments include nearly $2 million being sent to state party officials in Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington and elsewhere with an eye toward boosting down ballot races.

The party is also concentrating on a program to boost Democrats in traditionally Republican states, and said it has spent $4.5 million-plus on the initiative, which included key 2023 races -- like Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s reelection in Kentucky.

Beshear is now being mentioned as a possible running mate for Vice President Kamala Harris, who's poised to formally clinch the Democratic presidential nomination in a matter of days.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has raised $200 million since she emerged as the likely Democratic presidential nominee last week, an eyepopping haul in her race against the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump.

The campaign, which announced its latest fundraising total Sunday, said the bulk of the donations — 66% — comes from first-time contributors in the 2024 election cycle and were made after President Joe Biden announced his exit from the race and endorsed Harris.

Over 170,000 volunteers have also signed up to help the Harris campaign with phone banking, canvassing and other get-out-the-vote efforts.

Osama Siblani’s phone won’t stop ringing.

Just days after President Joe Biden withdrew his bid for reelection and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the Democratic presidential nomination, top officials from both major political parties have been asking the publisher of the Dearborn-based Arab American News if Harris can regain the support of the nation’s largest Muslim population located in metro Detroit.

His response: “We are in listening mode.”

Harris, who is moving to seize the Democratic nomination after Biden stepped down, appears to be pivoting quickly to the task of convincing Arab American voters in Michigan, a state Democrats believe she can’t afford to lose in November, that she's a leader they can unite behind.

Community leaders have expressed a willingness to listen, and some have had initial conversations with Harris’ team. Many had grown exasperated with Biden after they felt months of outreach had not yielded many results.

FILE - Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk addresses the European Jewish Association's conference in Krakow, Poland, Jan. 22, 2024. A manipulated video that mimics the voice of Vice President Kamala Harris to impersonate her is raising concerns about the power of artificial intelligence to mislead just three months away from November's elections. The video gained attention after Musk shared it on his social media platform X on Friday, July 26, without noting it was originally released as parody. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski, File)

FILE - Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., is pictured at the Capitol in Washington, Oct. 13, 2023. Kelly will lead a House task force charged with investigating the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump. Kelly was appointed leader of the effort on Monday, July 29, 2024. Kelly was present at the Trump rally and his congressional district includes the city of Butler, Pa., where the attack occurred. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally, Saturday, July 27, 2024, in St. Cloud, Minn. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

FILE - Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during the Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc.'s Grand Boulé, Wednesday, July 24, 2024, in Indianapolis. An election year that was already bitterly partisan has been completely upended by President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the 2024 White House race and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings, File)

ATLANTA (AP) — The mother of a student in class with the boy accused of killing four people in a Georgia high school shooting says information that school officials were warned that the boy was having a crisis shows the shooting could have been prevented.

“The school failed them, that they could have prevented these deaths and they didn’t,” Rabecca Sayarath said Sunday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “I truly, truly feel that way.”

Sayarath’s daughter, Lyela, told reporters on Wednesday, the day of the shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, that administrators appeared to be looking for Colt Gray, the 14-year-old who has been charged with four counts of murder, before the gunfire began.

Others, though, are declining to blame school or law enforcement officials.

"I’m not going to referee or second-guess what happened with the authorities the other night," U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Georgia Democrat, said on CNN's “State of the Union" on Sunday. “I applaud our first responders. When others are running away from danger, they run toward the danger in order to do the best they can.”

Officials say Gray shot and killed students Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn, both 14, and teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53. Eight other students and a teacher were injured — seven of them shot — and are expected to recover.

Annie Brown told The Washington Post that her sister, Colt Gray’s mother, texted her saying she spoke with a school counselor and warned staff of an “extreme emergency” before the killings. Brown said Marcee Gray urged them to “immediately” find her son to check on him.

Brown provided screen shots of the text exchange to the newspaper, which also reported that a call log from the family’s shared phone plan showed a call was made to the school at 9:50 a.m. Warrants for Gray's arrest say the shooting started at 10:20 a.m.

Brown confirmed the reporting to The Associated Press on Saturday in text messages but declined to provide further comment.

Marcee Gray expressed remorse for the shootings Saturday to The Washington Post and The New York Post.

“I am so, so sorry and can not fathom the pain and suffering they are going through right now,” Gray told The Washington Post in a text.

“It’s horrible. It’s absolutely horrible,” Gray told The New York Post outside her father’s home in Fitzgerald, Georgia, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) south of Atlanta.

Charles Polhamus, the boy's grandfather, has told multiple news outlets that Marcee Gray got a text from her son on Wednesday saying he was sorry. Polhamus told CNN that Marcee Gray drove to Winder, more than 200 miles (320 kilometers) from Fitzgerald, immediately after the shooting.

The Washington Post also reported that texts show relatives contacted the school about the boy's mental health a week before the shooting, and that Brown told a relative he was having “homicidal and suicidal thoughts.” The newspaper reported that the teen's grandmother, Deborah Polhamus, met with a school counselor to request help.

The boy "starts with the therapist tomorrow,” Polhamus wrote in a text to Brown after that meeting.

Investigators haven't said what they believe might have motivated Gray or whether they believe he targeted particular victims.

Authorities have said Gray's father, Colin Gray, gave him access to the semiautomatic AR-15 style rifle used in the shooting. It's not clear how Gray brought the gun to campus or what he did with it in the two hours between school starting at 8:15 a.m. and when shots first rang out.

Colin Gray became the first parent of a school shooting suspect to be charged in Georgia, District Attorney Brad Smith said Friday. He’s accused of second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and cruelty to children for providing his son with the rifle.

Colin Gray is jailed in Barrow County after declining to seek bail in a brief court hearing Friday in Winder. Colt Gray is being held in a juvenile detention center after declining to seek bail. Neither has been indicted or entered a plea.

Lyela Sayarath said Wednesday that Colt Gray had left her algebra classroom and that she believed he was skipping class.

In the minutes before the shooting, a female administrator came to her class looking for a student with the same last name and almost identical first name as Gray, she said. That other student was in the bathroom, but the administrator demanded to see his bag. That student returned with his bag moments later, Sayarath said, and told her that administrators had concluded he wasn't the student they were looking for.

Someone also called the teacher on the intercom, apparently asking about Gray, Sayarath said. She said as the intercom buzzed a second time, the teacher responded, “Oh he's here,” seeing Gray outside the classroom door.

When students went to open the door, which automatically locks from the inside when closed, Sayarath said they backed away. She said she saw Colt Gray turn away through the window of the door and then she said she heard gunshots — “10 or 15 of them at once, back-to-back.”

Rabecca Sayarath, Lyela’s mother, has said she believed the school erred by sending an unarmed administrator to look for Colt Gray instead of one of Apalachee High's armed school resource officers.

When she questioned Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith about her daughter’s account at a Wednesday night news conference, Smith cautioned, “With all due respect, ma’am, I think your information is incorrect.”

It's unclear if Barrow County school authorities knew before the shooting that Colt and Colin Gray previously had been interviewed by a sheriff's deputy in neighboring Jackson County in May 2023 after a report of an online threat to shoot up a middle school that Colt Gray, then 13, attended.

Colt Gray told the deputy that “he would never say such a thing, even in a joking manner,” according to a report filed by investigators. No action was taken because of inconsistent information about the social media account used to make the threats.

Colin Gray told the investigator back then that Colt had access to unloaded guns in the house but knew “how to use them and not use them.” He also said his son had struggled since he and his wife separated and that Colt was picked on in school.

Nicole Valles, a spokesperson for the Barrow County school district, declined to comment Sunday in response to emailed questions seeking more details about what may have happened before the shooting.

“Because this is an active investigation and now court proceedings have begun, we are not commenting on specific details,” Valles wrote, referring questions to the district attorney.

Smith didn't immediately respond to emails Sunday with similar questions, while the Georgia Bureau of Investigation referred requests for comment to the district attorney.

Colin Gray, 54, the father of Apalachee High School shooter Colt Gray, 14, sits in the Barrow County courthouse for his first appearance, on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Colt Gray sits in the Barrow County courthouse during his first appearance for the Wednesday shooting at Apalachee High School, Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, Pool)

Mark Gorman holds a candle during a candlelight vigil for the slain students and teachers at Apalachee High School, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

People embrace at a makeshift memorial after a shooting Wednesday at Apalachee High School, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

A memorial is seen at Apalachee High School after the Wednesday school shooting, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

A memorial is seen at Apalachee High School after the Wednesday school shooting, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)