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WASHINGTON (AP) —
Donald Trump faced an avalanche of fresh criticism Monday for questioning Sen. John McCain's heroism. But he's getting no pressure at all from the one community that could push a candidate out of the 2016 presidential race: political donors.
The billionaire businessman is paying for his own campaign, and that means Republicans may have him around far longer than some party leaders would like.
"Nobody leaves a race because they get tired, or because they think they don't have the votes. They leave the race because they run out of money," said Frank Luntz, a GOP pollster. "Donald Trump will never run out of money, and that makes him incredibly powerful."
Indeed, Republican operatives suggest that Trump enjoys a rare freedom.
Because he doesn't need tens of millions of dollars from wealthy donors — a notoriously risk-averse crowd — the standard rules of politics simply don't apply. He can afford, literally, to continue dropping the verbal bombs that have defined his presidential campaign since the day he joined the 2016 contest in June.
At his formal announcement last month, Trump portrayed immigrants from Mexico as criminals and rapists. Then, at a conservative summit in Iowa last weekend, he dismissed McCain's reputation as a war hero, saying of the Arizona senator who was held five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, "I like people who weren't captured."
PHILADELPHIA (AP) —
A heavy equipment operator charged in a building collapse that killed six people and injured 12 during a demolition project in downtown Philadelphia pleaded guilty Tuesday to manslaughter and other charges.
Prosecutors have agreed to recommend no more than 10 to 20 years when 44-year-old Sean Benschop is sentenced in October. Authorities say Benschop had previously been warned not to use machinery to demolish an unsupported brick wall.
Investigators believe the vibration from his excavator caused a four-story brick wall to collapse onto an adjacent one-story Salvation Army thrift store, burying shoppers and employees in debris. One woman lost both legs after spending nearly 13 hours in the rubble.
Benschop was also operating the machinery with a cast on his right hand after taking the painkiller Percocet for the injury and using marijuana the day of the June 2013 collapse, authorities have said.
He was working for a cut-rate demolition contractor, Griffin Campbell. Both men had been charged with six counts of third-degree murder.
DENVER (AP) --
The time has come for jurors to hear whether James Holmes should be executed for killing 12 people in a Colorado movie theater. But even if they decide on death, Holmes could spend the rest of his life in prison awaiting capital punishment that never happens.
Colorado has executed only one person in nearly half a century, and just three people sit on the state's death row. The man closest to seeing his death sentence carried out was granted an indefinite reprieve in 2013 by the state's Democratic governor, who said he had doubts about the fairness of the state's death penalty system.
"Capital punishment is on life support in Colorado," said Denver defense attorney Craig Silverman.
As a prosecutor, Silverman secured a death penalty verdict against a man for kidnapping and killing a woman in 1984. Sixteen years later, Frank Rodriguez died on death row from Hepatitis C complications.
"If you want a case that never dies, seek capital punishment and get a death verdict, and you'll be working on it for the next 20 years," he said.