Summary
- Democrats and civil rights groups criticized Trump’s executive order on police reform. Critics said the order, which incentivizes police departments to review their use-of-force policies and ban chokeholds in most cases, does not go far enough to address police brutality after the killing of George Floyd. Such reforms failed to prevent the killings of Eric Garner, Charleena Lyles or Ryan Twyman, for example.
- The Trump administration has sued to block the publication of former security adviser John Bolton’s book. The lawsuit alleges that Bolton has risked exposing classified information. Trump has previously threatened that Bolton would face consequences for publishing the memoir which is expected to depict the White House as chaotic and ineffective.
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Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell signaled he would be comfortable with renaming military bases named after Confederate generals. The annual defense authorization bill currently includes an amendment laying out a plan to rename the bases within three years, but Trump has said he will “not even consider” the idea.
- The Buffalo protester who was shoved by police officers has suffered a fractured skull and cannot currently walk. A lawyer for 75-year-old Martin Gugino said in a statement to CNN, “I am not at liberty to elaborate at this time other than to confirm that his skull was fractured.” The two officers who were captured on camera shoving Gugino have pleaded not guilty to assault.
- Virginia’s governor proposed making Juneteenth a state holiday. “It’s time we elevate this,” Northam said of Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in America. “Not just a celebration by and for some Virginians but one acknowledged and celebrated by all of us.”
- A new poll indicates Joe Biden is pulling farther ahead in Michigan. The Detroit Free Press poll showed Biden leading the president by 16 points in Michigan, which Trump carried in 2016 and will almost certainly need to win again to secure a second term.
Updated
Six states are reporting record coronavirus case increases.
New coronavirus infections hit record highs in six US states on Tuesday, marking a rising tide of cases for a second consecutive week as most states moved forward with reopening their economies, Reuters reports.
Arizona, Florida, Oklahoma, Oregon and Texas all reported record increases in new cases on Tuesday after recording all-time highs last week. Nevada also reported its highest single-day tally of new cases on Tuesday, up from a previous high on May 23. Hospitalizations are also rising or at record highs.
Health officials in many states attribute the spike to businesses reopening and Memorial Day weekend gatherings in late May. Many states are also bracing for a possible increase in cases stemming from tens of thousands of people protesting to end racial injustice and police brutality for the past three weeks.
Read more of the Guardian’s live coronavirus coverage :
Philadelphia’s police commissioner Danielle Outlaw received racist emails, according to a US attorney who announced charges against a Massachusetts man for sending “vile and disturbing” threats.
Peter Fratus, 39, was arrested and charged for sending at least two threatening emails.
Outlaw, the first Black woman to lead the Philadelphia’s 6,500-member police department, has been tasked with reforming a police force after a series of scandals. In 2019, hundreds of officers were found to have made racist and offensive Facebook posts. The former police commissioner Richard Ross resigned last year after a lawsuit accused him of retaliating against an officer after she ended their relationship.
She had been tasked with helping reform a department that faced a series of crises in 2019, including a scandal over hundreds of officers making racist or otherwise offensive Facebook posts, the abrupt resignation of former commissioner Richard Ross over claims in a sexual harassment lawsuit, and stubbornly high levels of gun violence.
In recent weeks, Outlaw has faced criticism over the police department’s excessive use of force against protesters.
Updated
Here’s a look inside Chaz, Seattle’s police-free zone:
In Tacoma, Washington, the police chief said today he plans to ban chokeholds and require officers to intervene if a colleague uses excessive force.
Hallie Golden reports on a recent case of an officer in Tacoma using a chokehold against a Black man:
New video released on Monday shows a police officer using a neck restraint on Manuel Ellis, in the crucial moments leading up to the African American man’s death in Tacoma, Washington.
The silent video, taken by a man on 3 March in a car directly across the street from the scene, appears to show Ellis in a chokehold, struggling on the ground, when a second officer uses a Taser on him. Ellis is then turned on to his stomach, and at least one officer’s knee is put on his neck or back.
“The level of force that the officers used was remarkable,” said James Bible, the lawyer for Ellis’s family. “And there’s nothing that suggests that any portion of what they did was OK at all, including approaching him in any way.”
Bible said the man who shot the 59-second video just happened to be driving by the scene, and started recording about 35 seconds to a minute after pulling over “because it was such a shocking event”.
The footage contradicts accounts from the Pierce county sheriff’s office that said the officers did not put Ellis in a chokehold and no Tasers were used.
New York banned chokeholds. Seattle required de-escalation training. Los Angeles restricted shooting at moving vehicles.
But those reforms did not stop police from killing Eric Garner, Charleena Lyles or Ryan Twyman, who died when officers used the very tactics that the changes were supposed to prevent.
Since the early days of Black Lives Matter protests six years ago, lawmakers and criminal justice groups have pushed reforms aimed at curtailing discriminatory and deadly police conduct. Some mayors and police chiefs mandated the use of body cameras for police officers. Other local governments passed regulations that banned controversial policing tactics. Departments hired more officers of color, and African American officers took over troubled departments.
But as the death of George Floyd continues to spark a national reckoning over police violence and an avalanche of videos has shown militarized officers brutalizing protesters, city leaders are facing mounting pressure to recognize that those incremental reforms have not addressed systemic harms and, as some studies show, have not diminished bad behavior by police.
Activists say those realizations have created unprecedented momentum for the more radical ideas they have long promoted, like defunding and abolishing police, and reinvesting in services.
Los Angeles’s city council has introduced a measure that would send crisis response teams, rather than police officers, to handle nonviolent situations.
The motion instructs the city’s police department to work with the county’s departments of mental health and homeless services to send in unarmed responders in cases of drug abuse, mental health emergencies and other non-violent situations.
The policy was introduced by council member Herb Wesson, who said, “We have gone from asking the police to be part of the solution, to being the only solution for problems they should not be called on to solve in the first place.” The measure would allow trained specialists to respond to mental health emergencies, he said.
Today I, alongside my colleagues, will introduce a motion to replace LAPD officers with unarmed, non-law enforcement agencies who will be responsible for responding to non-violent calls for service.
— Herb J. Wesson, Jr. (@HerbJWesson) June 16, 2020
Updated
The lawsuit filed by the US against John Bolton aims to stop the former administration official “from compromising national security by publishing a book containing classified information.”
But it states that “on or around” 27 April, Ellen Knight, who was reviewing Bolton’s manuscript, “had completed her review and was of the judgment that the manuscript draft did not contain classified information”.
After that, the lawsuit details, Bolton reached out several times to inquire about the status of the review, but Knight repeatedly told him that the review process was ongoing and she wasn’t able to provide any information.
After contacting Knight three times, the document details, Bolton stopped inquiring and announced that the book could be published on 23 June.
Updated
Bolton’s book The Room Where It Happened will be a critical account of the Trump administration, according to the publisher.
Bolton “shows a president addicted to chaos, who embraced our enemies and spurned our friends, and was deeply suspicious of his own government”, according to Simon and Schuster.
Yesterday Trump told reporters that Bolton would have a “very strong criminal problem” if he publishes the memoir.
Updated
Trump administration sues to block John Bolton book
The Trump administration has asked a federal judge to block the publication of former security adviser John Bolton’s book, arguing that Bolton had breached a contract and would risk exposing classified information.
The suit alleges that Bolton’s manuscript is “rife with classified information” and alleges that Bolton backed out of a White House vetting process for the book.
Bolton’s lawyer Charles Cooper has said that the administration’s efforts to block publication are “a transparent attempt to use national security as a pretext to censor Mr. Bolton, in violation of his constitutional rights to speak on matters of the utmost public import.”
The book is scheduled to be published later this month.
Updated
The mayor of Richmond, Virginia has fired the city’s police chief, saying, “we are ready to move in a new direction.”
Mayor Levar Stoney asked chief William Smith to step down after a police vehicle drove through a crowd of protesters on Saturday night and officers doused peaceful demonstrators in teargas two weeks before.
Smith had said that protestors “were intent on provocation and creating mayhem by throwing rocks and other objects at the officers on duty, who showed great restraint in response to these attacks” but witnesses said the demonstrators were respectful until police deployed pepper spray.
Hi there, it’s Maanvi — blogging from the West Coast.
One of the reasons Donald Trump’s executive order on police reform has drawn criticism is that it never addresses race and racist policing. J’Ron Smith, Deputy Assistant to the President, defended the choice to omit mention of racism.
“A lot of people want to make it about race but it’s really about communities and individuals,” he told reporters. “You’re trying to fix something that you can’t really fix, the heart of people, but you can fix individual pieces that deal with the real problem, which is access, opportunity.”
The “goal of the order was not to demonize police officers,” according to a senior administration official who spoke to Politico’s Nancy Cook. The executive order, which emphasizes training and incentivizes police departments to review their use-of-force policies, doesn’t go far enough to address the issue, according to critics.
Today so far
That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
Here’s where the day stands so far:
- Democrats and civil rights groups criticized Trump’s executive order on police reform. Critics said the order, which incentivizes police departments to review their use-of-force policies and ban chokeholds in most cases, does not go far enough to address police brutality after the killing of George Floyd.
-
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell signaled he would be comfortable with renaming military bases named after Confederate generals. The annual defense authorization bill currently includes an amendment laying out a plan to rename the bases within three years, but Trump has said he will “not even consider” the idea.
- The Buffalo protester who was shoved by police officers has suffered a fractured skull and cannot currently walk. A lawyer for 75-year-old Martin Gugino said in a statement to CNN, “I am not at liberty to elaborate at this time other than to confirm that his skull was fractured.” The two officers who were captured on camera shoving Gugino have pleaded not guilty to assault.
- Virginia’s governor proposed making Juneteenth a state holiday. “It’s time we elevate this,” Northam said of Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in America. “Not just a celebration by and for some Virginians but one acknowledged and celebrated by all of us.”
- A new poll indicates Joe Biden is pulling farther ahead in Michigan. The Detroit Free Press poll showed Biden leading the president by 16 points in Michigan, which Trump carried in 2016 and will almost certainly need to win again to secure a second term.
Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.
Virginia governor proposes making Juneteenth a state holiday
Virginia governor Ralph Northam is proposing making Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in America, a state holiday.
“It’s time we elevate this,” Northam said at a press conference. “Not just a celebration by and for some Virginians but one acknowledged and celebrated by all of us.”
The proposed legislation seems likely to pass, considering both chambers of the Virginia legislature are controlled by Democrats, and Todd Gilbert, the Republican minority leader of the Virginia House of Delegates, said he would support the bill.
“July 4th is the birthday of our nation, but Juneteenth is the day where it truly began to fulfill its promise of freedom for all,” Gilbert said in a statement. “For the first time since enslaved Africans landed at Jamestown in 1619, the chains of bondage were finally cast off.”
Trump was recently criticized for scheduling his first campaign rally in more than three months on Juneteenth in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the site of a deadly 1921 race massacre that targeted African Americans and their businesses.
In a rare moment of reconsideration from this president, Trump announced on Friday that he was rescheduling the rally for June 20.
Men carrying guns and wearing Hawaiian-print shirts, a symbol of the “Boogaloo,” have showed up at protests over the police killing of George Floyd across the country, including in Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, Dallas, Atlanta, and Philadelphia, the Washington Post reported.
Boogaloo rhetoric often identifies law enforcement officials, especially federal officials, as the enemy. The term “boogaloo” has also spread among a wide spectrum of pro-gun activists, including in the leadup to a massive protest this January against new gun control laws in Virginia.
“The Boogaloo movement is not a defined group,” an FBI agent noted in the affadavit supporting the criminal complaint against Steven Carrillo, who has been charged with murdering two law enforcement officers in Oakland.
“In general, followers of the Boogaloo ideology may identify as militia and share a narrative of inciting a violent uprising against perceived government tyranny.”
Law enforcement officials discovered a ballistic vest with a “Boogaloo” flag on it in a van they said Carrillo had used, and also alleged that Carrillo had written phrases associated with the movement in his own blood on the hood of a car he hijacked, according to the criminal complaint.
"Carrillo appears to have used his own blood to write various phrases on the hood of the Toyota Camry that he carjacked... I recognize the following words and phrases: “BOOG,” “I became unreasonable,” and “stop the duopoly.” From the complaint: https://t.co/Cc9hA1ZZPR pic.twitter.com/KLBkIsdp9o
— Lois Beckett (@loisbeckett) June 16, 2020
The phases in blood included “Boog,” short for “Boogaloo,” and “I became unreasonable,” a phrase associated with Marvin Heemeyer, an anti-government extremist from Colorado who is frequently cited in Boogaloo social media groups, NBC News reported.
Heemeyer’s attack happened on June 4, 2004, “almost 16 years to the day,” of Carrillo’s alleged attack on sheriff’s deputies in Santa Cruz, NBC News noted.
More context on "I became unreasonable" from @BrandyZadrozny @oneunderscore__ + team https://t.co/J7E3pLUP9o pic.twitter.com/ItRVGT2XuQ
— Lois Beckett (@loisbeckett) June 16, 2020
The man who allegedly killed a federal officer during a George Floyd protest in Oakland had multiple links to the far-right, anti-government “Boogaloo” movement, federal prosecutors said at a press conference on Tuesday.
US attorney announces the gunman who allegedly killed two law enforcement officers in California was associated with the right-wing Boogaloo movement. A patch bearing the group’s symbol was found in the van used by the shooter in Oakland and Santa Cruz killings
— Jon Passantino (@passantino) June 16, 2020
Steven Carrillo, 32, an active-duty US air force sergeant, has now been charged with murder in the shooting deaths of two law enforcment officers: Damon Gutzwiller, a sergeant with the Santa Cruz county sheriff’s department, and David Patrick Underwood, a federal protective security officer who worked at a federal building in downtown Oakland.
Law enforcement officials identified multiple pieces of evidence that linked Carrillo to a developing anti-government extremist movement associated with the term “Boogaloo,” an ironic word for “a violent uprising or impending civil war in the United States.”
Actual photograph of the Boogaloo patch found on a ballistic vest in the van Steven Carrillo used, according to the criminal complaint filed against him: https://t.co/Cc9hA1ZZPR pic.twitter.com/FzT7CJWV4o
— Lois Beckett (@loisbeckett) June 16, 2020
The imagery in the Boogaloo flag patch -- an Igloo and a line of Hawaiian print -- reference alternative terms for “Boogaloo” that have spread in social media discussions, including “Big Igloo” and “Big Luau.”
While the concept of “the Boogaloo” is popular with white supremacist accelerationists, it has also attracted a broader spectrum of American anti-government extremists, including those who do not think the movement should be racist, as Guardian contributor Jason Wilson and Robert Evans reported in late May.
Updated
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell made clear he does not support the police reform bill crafted by House Democrats.
McConnell accused Democrats of wanting to “federalize” policing policy. “That’s a non-starter. The House version is going nowhere in the Senate,” the Republican leader said today. “We have no interest in that.”
The police reform bill written by Republican senator Tim Scott and his team is expected to be released tomorrow, and Senate majority whip John Thune said the chamber may vote on the measure as soon as next week.
The House intends to vote on the Democrats’ bill next week, and it already has enough co-sponsors to pass, but it clearly faces a rocky future in the Senate.
Buffalo protester has fractured skull and cannot walk
Martin Gugino, the 75-year-old man who was shoved to the ground by two police officers during a George Floyd protest in Buffalo, New York, has a fractured skull and cannot currently walk.
Gugino’s lawyer, Kelly Zarcone, confirmed the news in a statement provided to CNN.
“I am not at liberty to elaborate at this time other than to confirm that his skull was fractured,” Zarcone said. “While he is not able to walk yet, we were able to have a short conversation before he became too tired. He is appreciative of all of the concern about him but he is still focused on the issues rather than himself.”
Zarcone also relayed a comment from Gugino: “I think it’s very unnecessary to focus on me. There are plenty of other things to think about besides me.”
The two Buffalo police officers who were captured on video shoving Gugino, Aaron Torgalski and Robert McCabe, have each pleaded not guilty to assault.
In a tweet last week, the president suggested (without evidence) that Gugino was actually an Antifa plant, but Gugino’s lawyer and loved ones ardently denied that allegation, describing the elderly man as a longtime peace activist.
Senator Tim Scott said the White House meeting with families who had lost loved ones to police brutality was “very emotional.”
“So grateful they are willing to share their powerful stories, and pleased to hear the President and AG commit to helping find answers and solutions,” the Republican senator said in a tweet about the meeting.
Very emotional meeting at the White House this morning with families of those killed by police in recent years. So grateful they are willing to share their powerful stories, and pleased to hear the President and AG commit to helping find answers and solutions.
— Tim Scott (@SenatorTimScott) June 16, 2020
Scott, the only black Republican in the Senate, attended the meeting because he has been leading a group of several senators working to craft a police reform bill.
Trump privately met with the families before his Rose Garden event this afternoon, where he signed his executive order on police reform.
But the families did not attend the Rose Garden event itself. Instead, law enforcement officials stood around Trump as he signed the executive order, creating a bizarre visual after weeks of protests against police brutality.
Democratic congressional leaders are criticizing Trump’s executive order on police reform, saying the measure does not go far enough to address police brutality in the country.
“While the president has finally acknowledged the need for policing reform, one modest executive order will not make up for his years of inflammatory rhetoric and policies designed to roll back the progress made in previous years,” Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said.
“Unfortunately, this executive order will not deliver the comprehensive meaningful change and accountability in our nation’s police departments that Americans are demanding.”
While Pres. Trump's finally acknowledged the need for policing reform—one modest executive order will not make up for his years of inflammatory rhetoric & policies designed to roll back progress
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) June 16, 2020
Unfortunately, this executive order will not deliver comprehensive meaningful change pic.twitter.com/JgcjHudgdp
House speaker Nancy Pelosi similarly said the executive order “falls sadly and seriously short of what is required to combat the epidemic of racial injustice and police brutality that is murdering hundreds of Black Americans.”
She added in her statement, “The Executive Order lacks meaningful, mandatory accountability measures to end misconduct. During this moment of national anguish, we must insist on bold change, not meekly surrender to the bare minimum. ... Democrats urge Congressional Republicans and the White House to join us to support real change.”
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said he was comfortable with renaming military bases named after Confederate generals.
“I can only speak for myself on this issue, if it’s appropriate to take another look at these names,” McConnell said on Capitol Hill, per a Wall Street Journal reporter. “I’m personally okay with that, and I’m a descendant of a Confederate veteran myself.”
The Senate armed services committee has approved an amendment to the annual defense authorization bill that lays out a plan to rename the bases within three years, but Trump has said he would “not even consider” renaming the bases.
However, McConnell expressed caution about removing certain statues from the Capitol, as House speaker Nancy Pelosi has called for.
“What I do think is clearly a bridge too far is this nonsense that we need to airbrush the Capitol and scrub out anybody from years ago who had any connection to slavery,” McConnell said.
The Senate leader noted that eight presidents had owned slaves, although Pelosi has specifically called for the removal of 11 statues representing leaders of the Confederacy and John C Calhoun, an ardent defender of slavery.
Updated
Amnesty International has released a statement sharply criticizing the police reform executive order signed by Trump this afternoon.
“President Trump’s Executive Order amounts to a band-aid for a bullet wound, and the public will not be easily fooled by half measures when this moment is calling for transformational change of policing,” said Kristina Roth, the senior program officer for Amnesty’s criminal justice programs.
“The United States needs much stronger national standards to provide parameters on the use of force and restrict the use of deadly force, to ensure accountability when these boundaries are breached by law enforcement officers.”
The White House has released the text of the police reform executive order that the president just signed in the Rose Garden.
The order makes clear that police departments will have to meet new credentialing standards to receive federal funds from the justice department.
The credentialing bodies will be required to review departments’ protocols on issues like “policies and training regarding use–of-force and de-escalation techniques; performance management tools, such as early warning systems that help to identify officers who may require intervention; and best practices regarding community engagement.”
The order specficially asks credentialing bodies to confirm that “the State or local law enforcement agency’s use-of-force policies adhere to all applicable Federal, State, and local laws” and that “the State or local law enforcement agency’s use-of-force policies prohibit the use of chokeholds ... except in those situations where the use of deadly force is allowed by law.”
However, the order only incentivizes departments to review their policies on use of force and chokeholds but does not require them to do so. Critics of the order were quick to say it did not go far enough to address police brutality.
A new report documents more than 2,000 black victims of racial terror lynchings killed between the end of the civil war in 1865 and the collapse of federal efforts to protect the lives and voting rights of black Americans in 1876.
The report from the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), Reconstruction in America, shows that during the 12-year period of Reconstruction, a reign of terror was unleashed by Confederate veterans and former slave owners in a brazen effort to keep black people enslaved in all but name.
Technically freed slaves were lynched at an average rate of almost one every two days – eliminating the hope that Emancipation offered millions of black people and effectively terrorizing them into submission.
The report is a prequel to EJI’s groundbreaking 2015 research that identified and recorded more than 4,400 black victims of racial terror lynchings from the post-Reconstruction period, 1877 to 1950.
The new report allows that grim tally to be further expanded with the addition of the 2,000 documented victims from the Reconstruction era itself – bringing the total number of documented cases of black people who were supposedly free yet were lynched in the most sadistic fashion to a staggering 6,500 men, women and children.
Today so far
Here’s where the day stands so far:
- Trump signed his executive order on police reform. The president said in a largely unscripted Rose Garden speech that the order would incentivize police departments to ban chokeholds, except when an officer’s life is at risk, by establishing a new credentialing system. Critics were quick to say the described order fell far short of the reforms needed to prevent police brutality.
- Trump privately met with families who had lost loved ones to police brutality shortly before signing the executive order. However, the families did not attend the Rose Garden event, and the president interestingly chose to sign the order surrounded by law enforcement officials after weeks of protests against police brutality.
-
A new poll indicates Joe Biden is pulling farther ahead in Michigan. The Detroit Free Press poll showed Biden leading the president by 16 points in Michigan, which Trump carried in 2016 and will almost certainly need to win again to secure a second term.
The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.
Trump’s Rose Garden speech about his police reform executive order included many apparently unscripted comments on everything from school choice to coronavirus.
At one point while applauding the work of scientists working to develop a coronavirus vaccine, the president accidentally said scientists had previously created an AIDS vaccine.
“They’ve come up with the AIDS vaccine” pic.twitter.com/Z8MQK5Bi2F
— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) June 16, 2020
“They’ve come up with the AIDS vaccine,” Trump said, before quickly trying to backtrack. “Or the AIDS -- and as you know, there are various things, and now various companies are involved -- but the therapeutic for AIDS. AIDS was a death sentence, and now people live a life with a pill.”
Of course, there is no vaccine for AIDS, although treatment for HIV, which causes AIDS, have led to dramatically improved outcomes for such patients.
Trump signs police reform executive order
Trump has now signed the executive order on police reform, surrounded by law enforcement officials who were invited to the Rose Garden event.
The visual struck some as odd, considering the president had privately met with families who lost loved ones to police brutality moments before the event and the order comes after nationwide protests in response to the police killing of George Floyd.
Trump met ahead of the event in private with families of suspects killed by police; he surrounds himself with law enforcement officers and union members as he signs executive order in Rose Garden. pic.twitter.com/XbiCcJQ1vd
— David Nakamura (@DavidNakamura) June 16, 2020
Trump said the order would, among other things, incentivize police departments to ban chokeholds except when an officer’s life is at risk by establishing a new credentialing process for departments.
However, the administration will likely be asked for more clarification on how to determine when an officer’s life is at risk, considering many criminal justice activists have complained that reasoning is too broadly applied to justify police violence.
Updated
Trump appears to have veered off his prepared remarks and started delivering a campaign-style speech boasting about his leadership.
The president started discussing his work on historically black colleges and universities and then moved on to discussing school choice, which he called the “civil rights of all time in this country.”
Trump also claimed that Barack Obama and Joe Biden, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, “never even tried” to address police reform. In reality, the Obama administration launched a number of initiatives around the issue.
Trump blamed police brutality on a small number of police officers, even though criminal justice activists have argued police brutality is a reflection of systemic racism.
“They’re very tiny,” Trump said of the officers responsible for police brutality. “I use the word tiny. It’s a very small percentage. But nobody wants to get rid of them more than the really good and great police officers.”
The president also insisted the country wants “law and order,” a phrase he has frequently invoked on Twitter since the start of the George Floyd protests.
“Americans want law and order. They demand law and order,” Trump said. “Some of them may not even know that is what they want.”
Elaborating on the details of his police reform executive order, Trump said the department of justice would prioritize federal grants to police departments that pursue high standards on the use of force.
The president added that the order would incentivize departments to ban police chokeholds, except for instances where an officer’s life is at risk.
Trump also pledged more resources for “co-responders,” such as social workers, who can help officers respond to calls related to homelessnness, mental health issues and substance abuse.
Updated
Trump said his police reform executive order would be focused on ensuring “the highest professional standards to serve their communities.”
The president criticized the defund the police movement, lashing out against those who have called for reenvisioning the country’s public safety systems.
“Without police, there is chaos. Without law, there is anarchy,” Trump said. “Law and order must be further restored nationwide.”
Trump has taken the podium in the Rose Garden, and he said he had just privately met with several families who lost loved ones to police brutality.
“All Americans mourn by your side,” Trump said to the families, who were not present for the Rose Garden event. “Your loved ones will not have died in vain.”
TRUMP: "We are going to pursue ... what we said. We will be pursuing it and we will be pursuing it strongly, Tim. Right? Okay." pic.twitter.com/O6707PeCrU
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 16, 2020
The president applauded the work of attorney general William Barr, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and Republican senator Tim Scott, who is working to craft a police reform bill.
“We are going to pursue what we said,” Trump said vaguely. “We will be pursuing it, and we will be pursuing it strongly, Tim, right? Okay.”
Trump to soon sign police reform executive order
Reporters and guests have gathered in the Rose Garden for Trump’s event, where the president is expected to sign an executive order on police reform.
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and Republican congressman Louie Gohmert and Jim Jordan were spotted among the guests of the event.
There was no microphone set up, suggesting the president did not intend to take questions after signing the executive order.
Trump similarly declined to take questions at two recent Rose Garden events, even as reporters shouted questions at the president about the George Floyd protests.
The House will vote on a bill to make Washington, DC, a state next Friday, weeks after the federal government’s response to protests in the capital city sparked criticism.
House majority leader Steny Hoyer said the chamber would vote on the statehood bill, HR 51, on June 26, marking the first time since 1993 that the House has held a vote on the issue.
With 220 co-sponsors, the bill is expected to pass the Democratic-controlled House. This would be the first time either chamber has passed the statehood bill.
“This will be an historic vote,” House speaker Nancy Pelosi said. “This deprivation of statehood is unjust, unequal, undemocratic and unacceptable.”
But the bill will be dead on arrival in the Senate, considering majority leader Mitch McConnell is an ardent opponent of statehood. Trump has also said statehood will “never happen,” expressing concern about the overwhelmingly Democratic city getting two senators.
The vote comes weeks after federal authorities’ handling of the George Floyd protests in DC, combined with Trump’s efforts to take over the city’s response to the demonstrations, reenergized the statehood debate.
Senate majority whip John Thune also said the Senate could vote on a police reform bill as soon as next week.
“I think the leader is going to try and move it as soon as it’s ready to move, as quickly as possible,” the Republican senator told reporters. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he would do that at some point again, potentially, next week.”
Senator Tim Scott, who is leading a group of several senators working to craft the legislation, said yesterday he thought it would be a mistake to delay voting on the bill, which is expected to be unveiled tomorrow.
“If the House is voting next week — I think it is — I think us waiting a month before we vote is a bad decision,” Scott said.
House Democrats intend to vote on their sweeping police reform bill next week, and it already has enough co-sponsors to pass the chamber.
Senate majority whip John Thune said it is “perhaps time” to rename the military bases named after Confederate generals.
The South Dakota Republican said it would likely be difficult to remove senator Elizabeth Warren’s amendment from the annual defense authorization bill. Warren’s amendment lays out a plan to rename the bases wthin three years.
“It’ll probably take 60 votes to get out,” Thune told reporters on Capitol Hill. “This is a debate whose time has probably come. I think we’ll listen to where people in the country are.”
Thune acknowledged Senate Republicans did not want to risk a veto from Trump, who is staunchly opposed to renaming the bases. But he added, “We have to proceed here, and right now we’ve got a provision in the bill that, at least for right now, looks like that’s going to be maybe the new position.”
Two justice department officials have been subpoenaed to testify in a House hearing next week on the politicization of the department.
The Democratic chairman of the House judiciary committee, Jerry Nadler, said John W Elias and Aaron SJ Zelinsky had been subpoenaed and were expected to appear at the June 24 hearing on “the unprecedented politicization of the Department under President Trump and Attorney General William Barr.”
Zelinsky was previously a member of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, and he was one of the prosecutors who quit the Roger Stone case after Barr and other senior leaders intervened to request leniency for the former Trump associate.
“Again and again, Attorney General Barr has demonstrated that he will cater to President Trump’s private political interests, at the expense of the American people and the rule of law,” Nadler said in a statement.
The hearing comes less than a month after peaceful protesters were forcibly removed from near the White House, a highly controversial decision that Barr was reportedly directly involved in.
Here’s some unsurprising but still demoralizing news: Americans are the unhappiest they’ve been in half a century amid the coronavirus pandemic and nationwide protests over police brutality, according to a new study.
The AP reports:
This bold — yet unsurprising — conclusion comes from the COVID Response Tracking Study, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. It finds that just 14% of American adults say they’re very happy, down from 31% who said the same in 2018. That year, 23% said they’d often or sometimes felt isolated in recent weeks. Now, 50% say that.
The survey, conducted in late May, draws on nearly a half-century of research from the General Social Survey, which has collected data on American attitudes and behaviors at least every other year since 1972. No less than 29% of Americans have ever called themselves very happy in that survey.
Most of the survey’s interviews were completed before the police killing of George Floyd last month, which sparked the most recent protests against police brutality.
However, early evidence suggests Floyd’s death, along with the video capturing a white police officer kneeling on his neck in his final moments, have taken a toll on African Americans’ mental health.
Census data indicates rates of anxiety and depression surged among African Americans in the week after the video was made public, even as those numbers remained relatively flat among white Americans.
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The vice president is headed to Iowa today, marking his second trip to the Midwestern state in the past six weeks amid signs that Joe Biden may be gaining support there.
Mike Pence will meet with the state’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, and tour Winnebago Industries, which produces recreational vehicles, to highlight the reopening of the country.
Pence’s trip comes one day after the Des Moines Register released a poll showing Trump leading Biden by just 1 point in Iowa, which the president carried by 9.4 points in 2016.
However, Barack Obama carried the state twice, giving some Democrats hope that Biden could win it back in November. If he can, it would have major implications for the Senate map, as Republican senator Joni Ernst is up for reelection in Iowa this year.
This is Joan Greve in Washington, taking over for Martin Belam.
Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms was on the Today show this morning, discussing the police killing of Rayshard Brooks and the policing reforms she has already implemented in response to his death.
“When I watch the video and interaction with Rayshard Brooks in that drive-thru, that could’ve been any one of us. ... We do so many things in Atlanta, we thought, to get it right. And this went so terribly wrong.” -Atlanta Mayor @KeishaBottoms pic.twitter.com/bMu5mI2gbQ
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) June 16, 2020
Bottoms said the killing of Brooks, a black man who was fatally shot by a white police officer, is “so personal to so many people of color in this country.”
“When I watch the video and the interaction with Rayshard Brooks in that drive-through, that could have been any one of us,” Bottoms said. “It breaks my heart. This interaction with these police officers was almost a pleasant interaction, and it did not have to end this way.”
Bottoms announced yesterday she would sign a series of administrative orders aimed at reforming the city’s police department. The orders specifically called for examining use of force policies and requiring de-escalation in police encounters.
The Democratic mayor initially said after the police killing of George Floyd last month that a task force would offer recommendations on police reforms in the coming weeks, but Bottoms then came out with her own orders, stressing the urgency of the situation.
“We can’t wait,” Bottoms said in her interview this morning. “We don’t have another hour to wait in Atlanta, and there will likely be even more announcements and more administrative orders from my administration for us to very quickly begin to address and in so many ways undo the training that our officers have received over several years.”
Updated
Like today, 1968 saw racial tensions boil over in more than 100 cities; like today, the country was riven by such partisan divisions it seemed to be ripping apart at the seams.
In the past few days another aspect of the parallels between 1968 and 2020 has exploded on to the nation’s consciousness: the warped character and dark scheming of their respective Republican leaders – Richard Nixon and Donald Trump.
Not only has Trump taken to wielding the “law and order” baton on Twitter with abandon, but he has gone where Nixon never dared to tread – spouting direct threats of violence and using openly racist language.
Trump’s intentions in all this are clear – to try to repeat the Nixon playbook and turn white voters’ deep-rooted racial anxieties to his advantage in November. The billion-dollar question is: will it work?
Eduardo Porter is a social analyst who fears that it might. In his new book, American Poison, he argues that racial hostilities have so distorted the social contract in America it has turned the country into a failed state.
“It’s all about sharing the bounty of citizenship,” Porter told the Guardian. “White Americans have a real difficulty with doing that.”
He sees the current moment as a tribal inflection point that could trigger white fears, much as it did in 1968.
The University of Virginia has announced it is changing the logos it uses for its athletics teams, just two months after they were unveiled. They had been criticised for a design element that referred to the school’s history with slavery.
Objections were raised to the serpentine curves put on the handles of the sabres that were meant to mimic “the design of the serpentine walls” that long stood on the campus.
Athletic Director Carla Williams said she decided to change the logos after she was “made aware of the negative connotation between the serpentine walls and slavery.”
Historians pointed out that former President Thomas Jefferson designed the original eight-foot-high walls to muffle the sounds of slaves and hide them from public view.
“There was no intent to cause harm, but we did, and for that I apologise to those who bear the pain of slavery in our history,” Williams said.
The school has redesigned the detail in the logos to remove the curved handle. Fans who purchased clothes with the logos between 24 April and 14 June who are interested in exchanging them for the newly altered ones are being asked to email the athletics department.
Donald Trump is up and tweeting about a record increase in retail sales.
Wow! May retail sales show biggest one-month increase of ALL TIME, up 17.7%. Far bigger than projected. Looks like a BIG DAY FOR THE STOCK MARKET, AND JOBS!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 16, 2020
My colleague Jasper Jolly has looked at the figures for us on our live business blog.
US retail sales rose by 17.7% in May, more than double the average bounceback expected by economists.
Sales had slumped in April by 14.7%, according to a revised reading from the US Census Bureau, but Americans increased spending by more than $70bn in May.
Spending in May was just shy of March levels at $485bn, although still well below the $516bn spent in May 2019.
Incidentally, The Hill’s Jonathan Easley is reporting that Donald Trump Jr. will interview his father Donald Trump on Team Trump’s online show “Triggered” this week - it will air Thursday night. Possibly not going to be the most hard-hitting interview of Trump’s re-election campaign.
Elizabeth Warren has just endorsed Jamaal Bowman for the 16th Congressional District of New York.
I'm thrilled to have earned @ewarren's endorsement, a fighter for workers and an economy that doesn’t just serve those at the top.
— Jamaal Bowman (@JamaalBowmanNY) June 16, 2020
She knows it’s not enough to keep electing Democrats who will only nibble around the edges.
I'm running to make big, structural change in #NY16. pic.twitter.com/prarae0WA6
Bowman is challenging longtime New York Rep. Eliot Engel in the New York primary elections on 23 June.
CNN had a copy of the endorsement in advance, reporting Warren’s statement as: “[Bowman] is exactly the kind of person we need in Congress fighting for big, structural change. Whether it’s fighting for high-quality public schools, affordable housing, or rooting out systemic racism, Jamaal Bowman will be a champion for working people in Washington.”
Bowman promises “big, structural change” rather than “nibbling around the edges.”
Hillary Clinton yesterday endorsed the incumbent Engel, who has been a congressman since 1989.
Gerald Bostock was one of the lead plaintiffs in the case that the Supreme Court adjudicated yesterday, leading to the ruling that the 1964 civil rights law bars employers from discriminating against workers based on sexual orientation or transgender status.
Bostock, an award-winning child social services coordinator, was fired from his job in Georgia after his boss discovered he had joined a gay softball league.
He was on television this morning, talking about the case and the struggle to get equality. You can watch a clip here:
Watch @savannahguthrie’s full interview with Gerald Bostock, one of the lead plaintiffs in the historic Supreme Court case on LGBTQ rights is the workplace.
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) June 16, 2020
“There is absolutely no room in this world for discrimination or racism,” Bostock says. pic.twitter.com/1bPmHDP7wJ
The killing of George Floyd has seen protests all around the world, including in the UK. Today photographer Henry J Kamara has published a picture essay for us looking at what it was like to experience the protests in London.
The protest movement has started a national debate in the UK about statues and memorials, which led to ugly clashes at the weekend as far-right activists sought to defend monuments which they claimed were being targetted.
One such monument was in Mowbray Park in Sunderland, in the north-east of England. The statue is of General Havelock - a major figure in crushing rebellion in India in 1857 when it was under British rule. That statue appears to have been vandalised overnight with the words “racist” and “parasite” daubed on to it.
BREAKING: The statue of Henry Havelock in Mowbray Park has been vandalized overnight #safc #sunderland pic.twitter.com/5kBfy0el2p
— Sunderland Global Media (@Sunderland_GM) June 16, 2020
Less successfully, and to some considerable ridicule on social media, a group of men has also been somewhat inexplicably defending the Nuneaton statue of 19th century novelist Mary Ann Evans - she is ofter better known by her pen name George Eliot.
Oh my god ... they are ... *rubs eyes* they really are guarding the statue of George Eliot in Nuneaton. pic.twitter.com/i7yiSEjZ46
— Helen Macdonald (@HelenJMacdonald) June 16, 2020
The Associated Press is reporting that it has seen a draft text of a resolution that might be presented by African nations to the United Nation’s top human rights body which specifically addresses “systemic racism” in the US.
It could become the centrepiece for an urgent debate scheduled for Wednesday at the Geneva-based Human Rights Council.
The text calls for a Commission of Inquiry to look into “systemic racism” and alleged violations of international human rights law and abuses against “Africans and of people of African descent in the United States of America and other parts of the world recently affected by law enforcement agencies,” especially encounters that resulted in deaths.
The goal would be “to bringing perpetrators to justice,” said the text, circulated by the Africa Group. The AP says that the breadth of support for the measure was not immediately clear.
The US embassy in Seoul in South Korea has generated some headlines in the last few hours after it has taken down a Black Lives Matter and a Pride banner that were hanging on the building.
Embassy staff will probably be a little busier than they expected today, after North Korea earlier blew up a liaison office set up to improve communications with the South in a row over defectors’ plans to send anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets across the border. Video of the building’s destruction has now emerged.
New poll shows Biden stretching leading over Trump in Michigan
A new poll of swing state Michigan shows Democratic nominee Joe Biden pulling ahead of incumbent Donald Trump in one of November’s key battlegrounds. The state switched from Obama to Trump in 2016.
The poll by the Detroit Free Press shows Biden leading Trump 55%-39% in Michigan, a 16-point margin.
But perhaps what is more striking is that the poll was carried out only a day after a similar exercise by EPIC-MRA of Lansing delivered Biden a 12-point lead. It implies that Biden is pulling away from Trump at a fast pace as the national protests and coronavirus outbreak continue.
A note of caution - the poll is of 600 people and carries a four-point margin of error, so may just be a stat blip in the state - but you would imagine it will be raising eyebrows in the Trump re-election campaign HQ.
Ilhan Omar confirms death of father due to Covid-19 complications
Minnesota Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar has announced the death of her father due to complications from Covid-19. In a statement, Omar said Nur Omar Mohamed died on Monday.
“No words can describe what he meant to me and all who knew him,” Omar said in her statement. “My family and I ask for your respect and privacy during this time.”
Since her election in 2018, Omar has been at the forefront of promoting progressive policies, and a frequent target of attacks from Donald Trump.
Trump Jr deletes tweet claiming NYPD cops poisoned at Shake Shack
One story that has developed overnight is about the NYPD police and Shake Shack. Three officers were hospitalised after having drunk milkshakes from there.
The NYC Police Benevolent Association then made a claim that the officers may have been poisoned with bleach. The NYPD launched an investigation after the officers fell ill - and has dismissed the claim, saying that there was no criminality by Shake Shack employees. Investigators say that a cleaning solution wasn’t fully cleared from the milkshake machine, which is how it may have got into the drinks.
This all appears to have passed the president’s son by. Donald Trump Jr angrily tweeted demanding that Democrats comment on the “poisoning” - and then rapidly deleted the false claim.
Updated
My colleague Sam Levin in Los Angeles has been looking at the years of pressure for reform that Black Lives Matter has put on law enforcement in the US, finding that not all of the reforms that have been enacted have the desired or expected impact.
Research into the use of body cameras by police officers has shown no statistical difference in behaviors or reduction in force when the cameras are on. Body cameras also haven’t stopped egregious killings, have rarely led to discipline or termination, and have almost never yielded charges or convictions.
It’s worth reading the piece in full for a reminder of the extent to which forces repeatedly seem to step outside their own guidelines about the use of force.
In Austin, policy dictates that officers may use beanbag rounds to de-escalate potentially deadly situations or “riotous behavior” that could cause injury. But at one of the early protests after George Floyd’s death, police fired a beanbag round at a 16-year-old boy’s head, even though he was alone on a hill far from officers, and appeared to be watching the events. His brother said the ammunition fractured his skull and required emergency surgery.
You can read it in full here: ‘It’s not about bad apples’: how US police reforms have failed to stop brutality and violence
Updated
Justice Department sets date to re-start federal executions
Associated Press is reporting that the Justice Department has set new dates to begin executing federal death-row inmates following a months long legal battle over the plan to resume the executions for the first time since 2003.
Attorney General William Barr directed the federal Bureau of Prisons to schedule the executions, beginning in mid-July, of four inmates convicted of killing children. Three of the men had been scheduled to be put to death when Barr announced the federal government would resume executions last year, ending an informal moratorium on federal capital punishment.
“The American people, acting through Congress and Presidents of both political parties, have long instructed that defendants convicted of the most heinous crimes should be subject to a sentence of death,” Barr said in a statement. “The four murderers whose executions are scheduled today have received full and fair proceedings under our Constitution and laws. We owe it to the victims of these horrific crimes, and to the families left behind, to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”
The move is likely to add a new front to the national conversation about criminal justice reform and raise interest in an issue that has largely lain dormant in recent years. The Justice Department had scheduled five executions set to begin in December, but these were halted after legal challenges. The department wouldn’t say why the executions of two of the inmates scheduled in December hadn’t been rescheduled.
Three of the executions are scheduled for July, with one in August. The Justice Department said additional executions will be set at a later date.
From Albany in New York, to Wilmington in North Carolina, a New York Times study has been published this morning identifying 96 cities in the US where teargas has been used against protesters since 26 May.
The report observes that:
If used appropriately, it drives people to flee the gas, which irritates their eyes, skin and lungs without causing serious, long-term injuries in most. But in cases where law enforcement misuses the agent, it can cause debilitating injuries.
It goes on to quote Balin Brake, a 21-year-old student who lost an eye after being hit by a tear gas canister. “I’m angry that I was protesting police brutality and fell victim to police brutality,” Mr. Brake told the New York Times.
There’s a map as well, so you can see which states have - and haven’t - deployed teargas.
Read it here: New York Times - Here are the 96 US cities where protesters were tear-gassed
Updated
There’s some very dramatic pictures coming in of the protest at Albuquerque against the statue of Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate. A man was shot and is now in hospital in a condition described as critical but stable.
Protesters at one point were using a chain to try and bring the statue down.
Albuquerque police detained members of the New Mexico Civil Guard on the site.
“The shooting tonight was a tragic, outrageous and unacceptable act of violence and it has no place in our city” the mayor, Tim Keller, said in a statement.
After the unrest the city has said that the statue would be removed until officials determine the next steps.
Earlier on Monday, another statue of Juan de Oñate, was removed from outside the cultural centre in Alcalde, New Mexico
Good morning, welcome to our live coverage of US politics and the Black Lives Matter protests taking place across the country. Here’s some of the key points from yesterday and overnight.
- The family of Rayshard Brooks have called for murder charges after he was killed by police
- Police reforms continue to be proposed across the US, with Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, California’s attorney general Xavier Becerra, and New York police commissioner Dermot F. Shea among those announcing changes
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Donald Trump will add his voice to these, signing an executive order on safe policing and safe communities at noon. The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on police reform at 2.30
- A man was shot during a protest Monday night in Albuquerque demanding the removal of a statue of conquistador Juan de Oñate
- Mike Pompeo may be having a busier day than expected, after clashes on the India/China border and North Korea reportedly blowing up a liaison office set up to improve communications with the South
- The LGBTQ and transgender communities continue to celebrate their civil rights victory at the Supreme Court yesterday
You get in touch at martin.belam@theguardian.com - I’ll be with you for the next couple of hours.
