Philadelphia's district attorney scores legal win against GOP impeachment bid

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Philadelphia's district attorney scores legal win against GOP impeachment bid

2024-09-27 05:57 Last Updated At：06:01

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania state lawmakers who tried to impeach Philadelphia’s elected progressive prosecutor improperly tried to stretch that process across two different legislative sessions, the state's highest court ruled Thursday.

The decision was a victory for Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, a Democrat, following his impeachment by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives in 2022.

Chief Justice Debra Todd, writing for the majority in a 3-1 decision, said the state Constitution does not grant power to the House and Senate in subsequent sessions to act on matters that were begun in a prior session.

As a result, the articles of impeachment “became null and void” when that legislative session came to a close at the end of 2022, Todd wrote.

“Accordingly, given these explicit constitutional constraints, we conclude that, when the House exercises its power of impeachment during one session of the General Assembly via the passage of articles of impeachment, trial on those articles must be held by the Senate of that session before it ends,” Todd wrote.

Todd, a Democrat, was joined in the opinion by Justices Christine Donohue and David Wecht, both Democrats. Justice Sallie Mundy, a Republican, dissented. Three other justices did not participate.

Krasner has remained in office after being overwhelmingly reelected in 2021 to a second four-year term. Krasner has not been charged with a crime or been sanctioned by a court.

The Republican-controlled Senate never took the Republican-penned House impeachment articles to a trial while it awaited the outcome of the court case and Krasner never faced expulsion from office.

The House’s seven impeachment articles asserted that Krasner should be removed from office for various reasons, including complaints about his failure to prosecute some minor crimes and enforce bail in some cases.

The articles also cited court rebukes of how his office handled several cases, complained that he had not adequately notified some crime victims of developments in their cases and claimed that Krasner obstructed the House’s investigation of his office.

Krasner — a progressive civil rights lawyer who ran as an opponent of the death penalty, cash bail and prosecuting minor nonviolent offenses — had called his impeachment “pure politics” and an effort to subvert the will of Philadelphia voters. Democrats accused Republicans of abusing their legislative power.

The high court's decision was at odds with a lower court's split ruling last year.

The lower Commonwealth Court had agreed with Krasner that the impeachment articles didn't meet the state constitution’s definition of misbehavior in office. But it rejected his arguments that lawmakers cannot impeach local officials, like him, and that the constitutional window for a trial had closed when the legislative session ended in 2022.

The state Supreme Court did not rule on the other claims. Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, had protested that the court had no role in determining whether the constitutionally empowered impeachment action was appropriate.

The House's vote to impeach Krasner was along party lines, except for one vote. A successful Senate vote to convict Krasner — and force him from office — would have required cooperation from Democrats to reach the necessary two-thirds majority, but Democrats never showed any willingness to cooperate.

Democrats now control the state House. Jason Gottesman, a spokesman for House Republicans, declined to say if the GOP caucus will try to take up the impeachment issue again.

Air raid sirens sound across Israel’s populous central area, including Tel Aviv

2024-09-27 05:59 Last Updated At：06:00

NEW YORK (AP) — Israel’s military says it has intercepted a missile fired from Yemen that set off air raid sirens across the country’s center.

Air raid sirens rang out across Israel’s populous central area, including the seaside metropolis of Tel Aviv.

Another missile from Yemen landed in central Israel about two weeks ago.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

NEW YORK (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday vowed to carry out “full force” strikes against Hezbollah until it ceases firing rockets across the border, dimming hopes for a cease-fire proposal put forth by U.S. and European officials.

Israel carried out a new strike in the Lebanese capital, which killed a senior Hezbollah commander, and the militant group launched dozens of rockets into Israel. Tens of thousands of Israeli and Lebanese people living near their countries' border have been displaced by the fighting.

Netanyahu spoke as he landed in New York to attend the annual U.N. General Assembly meeting, where U.S. and European officials were putting heavy pressure on both sides of the conflict to accept a proposed 21-day halt in the fighting to give time for diplomacy and avert all-out war.

Nearly 700 people have been killed in Lebanon this week as Israel dramatically escalated strikes, saying it is targeting Hezbollah’s military capacities. Israeli leaders say they are determined to stop the group's cross-border attacks, which began after Hamas' Oct. 7 attack that ignited the war in Gaza.

Israel’s “policy is clear," Netanyahu said. "We are continuing to strike Hezbollah with full force. And we will not stop until we reach all our goals, chief among them the return of the residents of the north securely to their homes.”

Just before his comments, the Israeli military said it killed a Hezbollah drone commander, Mohammed Hussein Surour, in an airstrike in the suburbs of Beirut. Hezbollah later confirmed Surour's death.

The Health Ministry said two people were killed and 15 wounded in the strike. Associated Press photos of the scene showed a gutted apartment in a residential building in Dahiyeh, the mainly Shiite suburb where Hezbollah has a strong presence.

Until recently, Israel had rarely targeted sites in Beirut during the low-level conflict with Hezbollah that has been ongoing since October. However, in the past week, Israel has struck Beirut’s southern suburbs several times.

Over the past week, Israel has carried out several strikes in Beirut targeting senior Hezbollah commanders. One strike in eastern Lebanon on Thursday killed 20 people, most of them Syrian migrants, according to Lebanese health officials.

Israel hit 75 sites early Thursday across southern and eastern Lebanon and launched a new wave of strikes in the evening, the military said. Throughout the day, Hezbollah fired some 175 projectiles into Israel, the Israeli military said. Most were intercepted or fell in open areas, sparking some wildfires, though one rocket hit a street in a town near the northern city of Safed.

Israel has talked of a possible ground invasion into Lebanon to drive Hezbollah -- an Iranian-backed Shiite group that is the strongest armed force in Lebanon -- away from the border. It has moved thousands of troops to the north in preparation. Some 100,000 Lebanese have fled their homes in the past week, streaming into Beirut and points further north.

Israeli military vehicles transported tanks and armored vehicles toward the country’s northern border with Lebanon a day after commanders issued a call-up of reservists. Several tanks arrived in Kiryat Shmona, a hard-hit town just several miles from the border.

The escalation has raised fears of a repeat – or worse – of the 2006 war between the two sides that wreaked destruction across southern Lebanon and other parts of the country and saw heavy Hezbollah rocket fire on Israeli cities.

“Another full-scale war could be devastating for both Israel and Lebanon,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said after talks with his British and Australian counterparts in London.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was at the U.N. meeting with Israeli officials over the truce proposal. Speaking in an interview with MSNBC, he said major powers, the Europeans and Arab nations were united, “everyone speaking with one clear voice about the need to get that cease-fire in the north.”

“I can’t speak for him,” Blinken said of Netanyahu.

Hezbollah has not yet responded to the proposal. Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati welcomed it, but his government has no sway over the group.

Netanyahu’s office downplayed the initiative, saying in a statement that it was only a proposal.

One of Netanyahu’s far-right governing partners threatened on Thursday to suspend cooperation with his government if it signs onto a temporary cease-fire with Hezbollah – and to quit completely if a permanent deal is reached. It was the latest sign of displeasure from Netanyahu’s allies toward international cease-fire efforts.

“If a temporary cease-fire becomes permanent, we will resign from the government,” said National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, head of the Jewish Power party.

If Ben-Gvir leaves the coalition, Netanyahu would lose his parliamentary majority and could see his government come toppling down, though opposition leaders have said they would offer support for a cease-fire deal.

Hezbollah has insisted it would halt its strikes only if there is a cease-fire in Gaza, where Israel has battled Hamas for nearly a year. That appears out of reach despite months of negotiations led by the United States, Egypt and Qatar.

One day after Hamas’ Oct 7 attack on southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza, Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel, bringing Israeli counterfire and a cycle of reprisals that has gone on near daily since. Hezbollah says its barrages are a show of support for Palestinians and that it is targeting Israeli military facilities, though rockets have also hit civilian areas.

Before this week, the cross-border exchanges had killed about 600 people in Lebanon, mostly militants but including more than 100 civilians, and about four dozen people in Israel, roughly half of them soldiers and the rest civilians. The fighting also forced tens of thousands to flee homes on both sides of the border.

Israel says its escalated strikes across Lebanon the past week are targeting Hezbollah rocket launchers and other military infrastructure. Since Monday, strikes have killed more than 690 people in Lebanon, around a quarter of them women and children, according to local health authorities.

The campaign opened with what is widely believed to be an Israeli attack on Sept. 18 and 19 detonating thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah, killing at least 39 people and maiming thousands more, including civilians.

Hezbollah in turn has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel. Several people in Israel have been wounded. On Wednesday, the group fired on Tel Aviv for the first time with a longer-range missile that was intercepted.

Early Thursday, an Israeli airstrike hit a building housing Syrian workers and their families near the ancient city of Baalbek in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley. The Lebanese Health Ministry said 19 Syrians and a Lebanese were killed, one of the deadliest single strikes in Israel’s intensified air campaign.

Hussein Salloum, a local official in Younine, said most of the dead were women and children. The state news agency had initially reported that 23 people were dead.

Lebanon, with a population of around 6 million, hosts nearly 780,000 registered Syrian refugees and hundreds of thousands who are unregistered — the world’s highest refugee population per capita.

Mroue reported from Beirut, Lidman from Tel Aviv. Associated Press journalist Sam McNeil contributed to this report from Kiryat Shmona, Israel.