Summary
Here’s a glance at today’s biggest news items ...
- Democrats call for police reform in wake of Rayshard Brooks killing. Leading Democrats said on Sunday the killing of an Atlanta man underlined the need for significant change in US law enforcement, as the country headed into a fourth week of unrest over police brutality and systemic racism.
- Beyoncé seeks justice for Breonna Taylor in letter to Kentucky attorney general. A written message to Daniel Cameron from the recording artist highlights the fact that officers involved in the African American woman’s death are still employed.
- Republicans insist Trump Tulsa rally won’t spread coronavirus – despite local concern. Republican lawmakers are downplaying concerns that a Trump indoor rally planned for Tulsa for next weekend could contribute to the spread Covid-19 amid an increase in cases in the city.
- Biden VP contenders in spotlight after Rayshard Brooks police killing. Friday’s tragic killing in Georgia focused a fierce national spotlight on Atlanta – and two of the candidates to be Joe Biden’s running mate against Donald Trump in November.
- White House adviser says Covid-19 payments are a ‘disincentive’ to work. “The $600 plus-up that’s above the state unemployment benefits they will continue to receive is in effect a disincentive,” White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said. “I mean, we’re paying people not to work.”
- Trump lashes out after critics highlight unsteady walk down West Point ramp. Amid widespread comment about his apparent difficulty walking down a ramp at West Point on Saturday, Donald Trump tweeted a predictably angry and dismissive response.
The US has administered at least 23.5m coronavirus tests, though testing volumes remain wildly variable across the country according to Sunday’s just-released update from the Covid Tracking Project, a collaborative, volunteer-run project that collects data from local health departments.
Testing volumes remain quite variable across the country. Here's a look at tests per 100,000 people for today's numbers. pic.twitter.com/OcSCJ7JmkO
— The COVID Tracking Project (@COVID19Tracking) June 14, 2020
Here are the 10 countries with the highest number of known cases, according to the Johns Hopkins tracker. The true figures for deaths and cases are likely to be higher, due to differing definitions and testing rates, time lags and suspected underreporting.
US 2,090,358
Brazil 850,514
Russia 528,267
India 320,922
UK 297,342
Spain 243,928
Italy 236,989
Peru 225,132
France 194,153
Germany 187,518
Trump: ‘Radical left’ have ‘taken over’ Seattle
Donald Trump, who has been relatively quiet on Twitter throughout Sunday as he celebrates his 74th birthday at his golf club in New Jersey, has accused the “radical left” of “taking over” Seattle and criticized the media’s coverage of it.
“Does anyone notice how little the Radical Left takeover of Seattle is being discussed in the Fake News Media,” Trump wrote. “That is very much on purpose because they know how badly this weakness & ineptitude play politically. The Mayor & Governor should be ashamed of themselves. Easily fixed!”
He added: “Interesting how ANTIFA and other Far Left militant groups can take over a city without barely a wimpier [sic] from soft Do Nothing Democrat leadership, yet these same weak leaders become RADICAL when it comes to shutting down a state or city and its hard working, tax paying citizens!”
Does anyone notice how little the Radical Left takeover of Seattle is being discussed in the Fake News Media. That is very much on purpose because they know how badly this weakness & ineptitude play politically. The Mayor & Governor should be ashamed of themselves. Easily fixed!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 14, 2020
Interesting how ANTIFA and other Far Left militant groups can take over a city without barely a wimpier from soft Do Nothing Democrat leadership, yet these same weak leaders become RADICAL when it comes to shutting down a state or city and its hard working, tax paying citizens!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 14, 2020
Earlier Sunday, contrary to Trump’s secondary criticism over media coverage, Seattle police chief Carmen Best appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation, one of the highest-rated Washington discussion programs on television, and described her department’s approach to the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, or Chaz, as “methodical” and “practical” to reach a resolution where everyone gets out safely.
“We don’t want anyone there to be harmed,” Best said. “We don’t want this to be something that devolves into a force situation. So we’re really trying to take a methodical, practical approach to reach a resolution where everyone gets out of here safely.”
When asked for her perspective on the protest movement that’s spread across America in the three weeks since George Floyd’s murder, Best acknowledged that change would be “incredibly difficult” but believes an opportunity exists to “bring people together and get positive change”.
“I was at the Black Lives Matter March, and I saw many people carrying signs about defunding the police, ending police brutality and looking at resolving the qualified immunity issue,” Best said. “So I know standing there watching and listening that we’re going to change in policing. We have to. It has to be a movement that involves everybody. And we need to reimagine and refigure out, if you will, how we’re going to move forward as a country and as an organization to make things better for everybody.”
Updated
Donald Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame has been defaced yet again during Sunday afternoon’s Black Lives Matter protest in Los Angeles, although these days it might qualify as bigger news if the former reality TV host’s terrazzo-and-brass totem went longer than a week unmolested.
Trump’s star was defaced during today’s Hollywood protest march. #blm #hollywoodprotest #JusticeForGeorgeFlyod #hollywoodboulevard #hollywoodblvd #protests pic.twitter.com/UI3SOIZSiV
— Challywood (@akaChallywood) June 14, 2020
Since Trump became US president in 2016, there have been a number of attempts to vandalize his star including, most successfully, a pickaxe attack in 2018. In 2016, James Lambert Otis, 53, was also recorded using a jackhammer and a pickaxe to remove Trump’s name. The star has also been the subject of protest art, with a wall erected around it in 2016 to symbolize the president’s policy on immigration. The Celebrity Apprentice host, accused of sexually harassing or abusing 25 women, received his star in 2007.
In 2018, West Hollywood’s city council voted to remove it, a largely symbolic gesture as the star isn’t actually in West Hollywood.
The strip in Hollywood features multiple stars dedicated to celebrities, with recently announced honorees including Spike Lee, Octavia Spencer and Julia Roberts. Recipients are selected by a committee that considers applications throughout the year and stars are purchased for $30,000.
Other celebrities who have seen their stars defaced include convicted rapist Bill Cosby and Ellen Degeneres.
Hundreds of demonstrators have gathered at the Montana State Capitol building in Helena in protest of the killing of George Floyd and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The Helena Independent Record reports Sunday’s protest is the largest of a number of demonstrations that have been held in Montana’s capital city in recent weeks amid the nationwide backlash to police-related violence against black and brown people.
The protest for George Floyd in Helena, MT is... huge. pic.twitter.com/LLwdiHMwxZ
— Mara Silvers (@mara_silvers) June 14, 2020
The New York Times has reported that the protests for police reform in Floyd’s memory have spread to more than 2,000 cities and towns in all 50 states.
My colleague Amanda Holpuch reports that Republican lawmakers are downplaying concerns that Donald Trump’s much-ballyhooed return to the rally circuit next weekend in Tulsa could contribute to the spread of Covid-19 in a region that has experienced an recent increase of cases.
Tulsa city-county health department director Bruce Dart said he worried the rally could be dangerous for attendees as well as the president.
“I wish we could postpone this to a time when the virus isn’t as large a concern as it is today,” Dart told Tulsa World.
“I think it’s an honor for Tulsa to have a sitting president want to come and visit our community, but not during a pandemic. I’m concerned about our ability to protect anyone who attends a large, indoor event, and I’m also concerned about our ability to ensure the president stays safe as well.”
Trump is set to travel to Oklahoma next Saturday, to stage his first rally since early March.
The event was moved from Friday to avoid a clash with Juneteenth, the day on which African Americans celebrate the end of slavery. The president had faced criticism for planning a rally on such a day in Tulsa, the scene in 1921 of the worst race massacre in US history.
You can read more here:
Updated
Beyoncé demands justice for Breonna Taylor
Beyoncé has written a letter to Kentucky attorney general Daniel Cameron demanding justice for Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old certified EMT who was shot to death by plainclothes police officers while asleep in her Louisville apartment in the early hours of 13 March.
Three months have passed -- and the LMPD’s investigations have created more questions than answers. Their incident report states that Ms. Taylor suffered no injuries -- yet we know she was shot at least eight times. The LMPD officers claim they announced themselves before forcing their way into Ms. Taylor’s apartment -- but her boyfriend who was with her, as well as several neighbors, all say that this is untrue.
Three months have passed -- and zero arrests have been made, and no officers have been fired. The LMPD’s investigation was turned over to your office, and yet all of the officers involved in the shooting remain employed by the LMPD. Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and Officers Myles Cosgrove and Brett Hankison must be held accountable for their actions.
Three months have passed -- and Breonna Taylor’s family still waits for justice. Ms. Taylor’s family has not been able to take time to process and grieve. Instead, they have been working tirelessly to rally the support of friends, their community, and the country to obtain justice for Breonna.
The Houston-born recording artist, who posted the letter to her website on Sunday afternoon, ends with three specific requests: 1) to bring charges against the three officers who opened fire on the night (who have since been placed on administrative assignment); 2) a commitment to transparency in the investigation and prosecution of the officers; 3) an investigation into the Louisville police department’s response to the shooting.
Beyoncé addressed the ongoing wave of racist violence against black and brown people in her remarks last week during a virtual commencement ceremony for 2020 graduates.
“The killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and so many others have left us all broken,” she said. “It has left the entire country searching for answers. We’ve seen that our collective hearts, when put to positive action, could start the wheels of change. Real change has started with you. This new generation of high school and college graduates who we celebrate today.”
The singer and mogul has long been a public advocate for the Black Lives Matter movement. In 2016, following the police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, she posted a stark message in all-caps on her website and called on her legions of fans to demand action on police brutality: “We are sick and tired of the killings of young men and women in our communities. It is up to us to take a stand and demand that they ‘stop killing us.’”
Updated
Fulton County district attorney Paul Howard, who said on Saturday that his office has already launched an “intense, independent investigation” of the Rayshard Brooks shooting, tells CNN’s Fredericka Whitfield that a decision on whether charges will be brought against the officer involved in Friday night’s incident will be made “sometime around Wednesday”.
“[Brooks] did not seem to present any threat to anyone,” Howard said. “The fact that it would escalate to his death seems unreasonable.”
Howard added that three charges are under consideration in the case: murder, felony murder or voluntary manslaughter.
Garrett Rolfe, the seven-year veteran of the Atlanta police department recently trained on de-escalation tactics who killed Brooks, was terminated on Saturday, APD spokesman Carlos Campos said.
As statues of Confederate leaders and slave owners are taken (or torn) down in the US, France’s president says his country will not take such moves with monuments from its colonial era. Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday that “the republic will not erase any trace, or any name, from its history ... it will not take down any statue.”
Macron did, however, acknowledge that a French citizen’s “address, name, color of skin” can affect their chances of success. Anti-racism protests have taken place across France in recent weeks, and police fired tear gas into a demonstration on Saturday.
Macron promised he would be “uncompromising in the face of racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination.”
Macron also addressed the Covid-19 pandemic, saying restrictions in France would be eased further on Monday. “We must get our economy back on track whilst protecting the most vulnerable,” Macron said.
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that seven Minneapolis police officers have resigned in the wake of the death of George Floyd protests. According to the newspaper:
“Morale has sunk to new lows in recent weeks, say department insiders, as officers reported feeling misunderstood and squeezed by all sides: by the state probe; by protesters, who hurled bricks and epithets their way; by city leaders, who surrendered a police station that later burned on national television, and by the media. Numerous officers and protesters were injured the rioting.”
A former Minneapolis police officer, Mylan Masson, told the Star-Tribune that “[officers] don’t feel appreciated. Everybody hates the police right now. I mean everybody.”
In an appearance on CNN on Sunday, Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar said the city’s police department was “rotten to the root”.
Four Minneapolis police officers have been charged over the death of Floyd after one officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes last month.
On ABC’s This Week earlier, the Oklahoma Republican senator James Lankford was asked if it was time to stop having military bases named after Confederate generals.
“If you have a military base that is named after someone that actually rebelled against the United States government, then you would want to be able to go back and look at that name,” he said. “That should be a pretty basic principle.”
The Associated Press has had some fun with this issue, over Donald Trump’s expressed high regard for such generals.
Even though I’m both weekend editor and Guardian US resident history-loving centrist dad and civil war nerd, I don’t think I can justify running the AP piece in full. But I can bullet-point its admirable dissection of some of the ways in which such generals really don’t stand for “Winning, Victory, and Freedom” as the president claimed.
As the AP puts it, some of the generals “made costly battlefield blunders; others mistreated captured Union soldiers, some were slaveholders and one was linked to the Ku Klux Klan after the war”.
Here’s how:
- Gen Robert E Lee: though his early victories put the Union army on the defensive, his failure at the battle of Gettysburg in 1863, capped by the disastrous Pickett’s Charge, was the turning point of the war. Lee has been portrayed in the South as a gentlemanly hero, but he was a slaveholder in his native Virginia and at least one of his former slaves testified that Lee had him whipped brutally.
- Gen Braxton Bragg: namesake for the famed North Carolina army base, was also a slaveholder and an unpopular general who resigned his command after defeat in 1863 at Chattanooga.
- Gen John Bell Hood, namesake of the Texas base, and his other commanders slept at Spring Hill, Tennessee, after a long day of mostly successful fighting in 1864, allowing Union soldiers to get away on a road so close to the sleeping Confederates that some reportedly used the rebels’ campfires to light their pipes. He followed with defeat at Franklin, Tennessee.
- Gen AP Hill: namesake of a base in Virginia, was killed in battle in 1865 but is remembered for actions after the Battle of the Crater in 1864, where some rebel troops were enraged by the North’s use of black units. Some soldiers wrote letters describing rebels executing defenseless black soldiers.
- Gen George Pickett, namesake of another Virginia base and the big loser at Gettysburg, had 22 Union soldiers executed and later fled to Canada.
- Gen John Brown Gordon: an effective commander, became governor of Georgia after the war but was suspected of being a Klan leader in the state.
Here’s some related reading:
The Associated Press is reporting that at least seven Minneapolis police officers have quit and another seven are in the process of resigning, citing a lack of support from department and city leaders as protests over George Floyd’s death escalated.
Floyd was killed on 25 May, when an officer kneeled on his neck for almost nine minutes. The death inspired protests, some of which turned violent in the city and in other cities across the US.
More from the AP:
Current and former officers told The Minneapolis Star Tribune that officers are upset with Mayor Jacob Frey’s decision to abandon the Third Precinct station during the protests.
Demonstrators set the building on fire after officers left. Protesters also have hurled bricks and insults at officers, numerous officers and protesters have been injured and the state has launched a civil rights investigation into the department.
Minneapolis representative Ilhan Omar told CNN on Sunday that the department is “rotten to the root”.
Mylan Masson, a retired Minneapolis officer and use-of-force expert, told the Star Tribune officers don’t feel appreciated.
White House adviser says Covid-19 payments are a 'disincentive' to work
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow says the $600 checks sent to unemployed people as part of the Covid-19 relief scheme will soon stop, saying “we’re paying people not to work”.
“The $600 plus-up that’s above the state unemployment benefits they will continue to receive is in effect a disincentive. I mean, we’re paying people not to work. It’s better than their salaries would get,” Kudlow said during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union. He said the payments will probably stop in late July.
Current unemployment benefits stemming from the coronavirus stimulus package are "a disincentive" says White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow. "We're paying people not to work. It's better than their salaries would get." #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/9iZB5Pe6bC
— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) June 14, 2020
State of the Union host Jake Tapper questioned Kudlow’s view that the payment were a disincentive and said he believed most people wanted to work. “I think that’s a fair point,” said Kudlow. “I personally agree with you. I think people want to go back to work. I think they welcome the reopening of the economy. I think they’re anxious to get out and about.”
Kudlow said he believes the US economy is starting to recover as Covid-19 restrictions are lifted. “I think we are on our way. We are reopening, businesses are coming back and therefore jobs are coming back,” Kudlow said. “We don’t want to interfere with that process.”
Updated
The Associated Press has a report from New Orleans, where demonstrators took down the bust of a slave owner:
Protesters on Saturday tore down a bust of a slave owner who left part of his fortune to New Orleans’ schools and then took the remains to the Mississippi River and rolled it down the banks into the water.
The destruction is part of a nationwide effort to remove monuments to the Confederacy or with links to slavery as the country grapples with widespread protests against police brutality toward African Americans.
TONIGHT: protesters removed the John McDonogh statue at Duncan Plaza and tossed it into the Mississippi River. More at 10 from @ShermanWDSU and @SOCONNORNEWS @wdsu pic.twitter.com/N4WPn7OII3
— Christina Watkins (@CWatkinsWDSU) June 14, 2020
Police said in a statement on Saturday that demonstrators at Duncan Plaza, which is directly across the street from City Hall, dragged the bust into the streets, loaded it onto trucks and took it to the Mississippi river where they threw it in.
Two people who were driving the trucks transporting the bust were apprehended by police and taken to police headquarters, authorities said. Their names were not given in the statement. The police did not identify the bust but it was of John McDonogh.
Video on social media showed dozens of people surrounding the bust which sat on a pedestal while some people pulled on a rope tied to the bust and another hit it with what appears to be a skateboard. As the bust tilts and then crashes to the ground the crowd cheers. Another video posted on social media shows a crowd watching as the bust is rolled down the rocky banks of the Mississippi River and into the water.
Mayor LaToya Cantrell said in a tweet that the city “rejects vandalism and destruction of City property. It is unlawful.”
When he died, McDonogh left a large portion of his money to New Orleans and Baltimore for schools, and many schools in New Orleans are named after him. The McDonogh Day celebration in which schoolchildren across the city laid flowers at a different monument to McDonogh became the subject of boycotts in the 1950s. The ceremony was racially segregated, and African American children would have to wait for hours for white children to lay their flowers first.
New York governor Andrew Cuomo has given his daily press briefing. He says that 23 deaths were reported in New York state from Covid-19 in the last 24 hours, the lowest number since the pandemic began. New York has been the hardest hit state by the virus, with more than 30,000 reported deaths. “We breathe a deep sigh of relief today,” Cuomo said.
Cuomo said New Yorkers should continue to wear facemasks in public, saying failure to do so is “disrespectful to the healthcare workers and the essential workers who sacrificed themselves for 100 days – some of whom died and gave their life to crush this Covid virus.”
Cuomo’s comments came as the US surgeon general, Jerome Adams, tweeted that wearing a mask increases freedoms. “Some feel face coverings infringe on their freedom of choice - but if more wear them, we’ll have MORE freedom to go out,” wrote Adams.
Some feel face coverings infringe on their freedom of choice- but if more wear them, we’ll have MORE freedom to go out.
— Jerome Adams (@JeromeAdamsMD) June 14, 2020
Face coverings ➡️ less asymptomatic viral spread ➡️ more places open, and sooner!
Exercise and promote your freedom by choosing to wear a face covering! pic.twitter.com/3A4fW2qmN8
Cuomo added that there have been 25,000 complaints related to people violating reopening rules in New York. The incidents include large gatherings, masks not being worn and drinking on the streets.
Manhattan and the Hamptons lead complaints, Cuomo says. "It's disrespectful to healthcare workers and essential workers who sacrificed themselves and some of whom died."
— NBC New York (@NBCNewYork) June 14, 2020
“What’s alarming about the 25,000 is the volume but it also shows how smart people and how offended people are that they are complaining,” said Cuomo. He said Manhattan and the Hamptons are “the leading areas in the state with violations.” He warned reopening orders would be rolled back if people continued to break rules.
Democrats call for change to policing after killing of Rayshard Brooks
Leading Democrats said on Sunday the killing of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta underlined the need for significant change in US law enforcement, as the country headed into a fourth week of unrest over police brutality and systemic racism.
Brooks, 27, was shot on Friday night after officers responded to a call about him falling asleep in his car while in the drive-thru line at a Wendy’s fast food restaurant. Video showed Brooks and officers in lengthy conversation before an altercation erupted. Officer Garrett Rolfe shot Brooks while he tried to flee.
The killing came after weeks of protests fueled by the killing in Minneapolis of George Floyd, on whose neck a police officer kneeled for nearly nine minutes. On Saturday night, demonstrators marched in Atlanta and the Wendy’s where Brooks was killed was burned down.
House majority whip James Clyburn said he was incensed by Brooks’s death.
“You wonder, sometimes, when you’re dealing with an issue like this out here for two or three weeks, and then you see a police officer still being insensitive to the life of a young African American man,” the South Carolina Democrat told CNN’s State of the Union.
“This did not call for lethal force. And I don’t know what’s in the culture that would make this guy do that. It has got to be the culture. It’s got to be the system.”
Stacey Abrams, a former minority leader of the Georgia House and candidate for governor now a contender to be Joe Biden’s vice-presidential pick, told ABC’s This Week more money should be allocated to social services, along with comprehensive police reform.
“What happened yesterday to Rayshard Brooks was a function of excessive force,” she said, adding that officers “were either embarrassed or, you know, panicked led them to murder a man who they knew only had a Taser in his hand”.
You can read the full article below:
Britain’s biggest police force has condemned the “mindless hooliganism” and “utterly shocking” violence towards officers during clashes led by far-right protesters in central London on Saturday.
The Metropolitan police said 23 officers were injured after being kicked, punched or hit by missiles as they faced hundreds of angry demonstrators who claimed they were protecting statues from anti-racism campaigners.
Police said 113 people were arrested, including a 28-year-old man detained on suspicion of urinating by a Westminster memorial dedicated to the murdered police officer Keith Palmer.
The Metropolitan police commander Bas Javid said: “The scenes officers encountered across central London yesterday were utterly shocking. Once again they were pelted with missiles, or challenged by groups of men intent on violence.
“Mindless hooliganism such as this is totally unacceptable and I am pleased arrests were made. We will now work closely with the courts in pursuit of justice.”
Javid thanked officers for showing “enormous bravery in confronting violent behaviour” during the demonstration, which came after a week of tension about monuments including that of Winston Churchill following anti-racism demonstrations over the killing by police of George Floyd in America.
The clashes in London occurred as hundred of demonstrators, mostly white men, descended on the capital ostensibly to protect statues from vandalism. The protest, organised by far-right groups, turned violent when hundreds of self-proclaimed “statue defenders” took over areas near the Houses of Parliament and Trafalgar Square and hurled missiles, smoke grenades, glass bottles and flares at police officers.
The 113 arrests in London were for offences including breach of the peace, violent disorder, assault on officers, possession of an offensive weapon, possession of class A drugs and being drunk and disorderly. Similar demonstrations took place elsewhere, including in Bristol and Bolton, but appeared to pass off mostly peacefully.
Boris Johnson condemned the “racist thuggery” of the London demonstrators, while the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, described the scenes as “shocking and disgusting” on Sunday.
Police bodycam footage has been released showing the build-up to the moment when police in Atlanta shot dead Rayshard Brooks. The killing led to Atlanta’s police chief resigning and demonstrations in the city.
Updated
Democratic senator Cory Booker has appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation and discussed qualified immunity, which can make public officials, such as police officers, less accountable for their actions. “I think it’s time that we change qualified immunity,” said Booker.
Booker added: “What qualified immunity does in this country as it allows a case in Washington where a pregnant woman, seven months pregnant, was dragged into a street for not signing a parking ticket and tased three times. No accountability. Those police officers were qualified- had qualified immunity. It’s a case in Utah where a bicycle rider 100 yards away was shot multiple times by multiple police. And then they claimed it was just mistaken identity, no accountability in terms of qualified immunity.”
Booker said the protests have given politicians the prefect time to make reforms. “This is not a time for lowest common denominator, watered down reforms,” he said. “It’s a time to stop the problem, because ... if someone’s knee is on your neck, you can’t take it halfway off and say that that’s progress. We have the tools with which to stop people from dying. And any bill should have a ban on racial and religious profiling called for by George Bush in his first address to Congress.”
A Latino man was shot and killed by police in California on Saturday night. The San Bernardino Police Department says it responded to reports of a white man waving a firearm. The department says an “officer-involved shooting occurred” after a suspect, with a handgun, was identified. He later died in hospital and police determined he was Latino rather than white.
Patrol Officers arrived and located a suspect matching the description, and the suspect was still carrying, what appeared to be a black handgun in his hand. An officer involved shooting occurred and the suspect was struck and was injured. (Page 2) pic.twitter.com/aE6PiWkNrp
— San Bernardino PD (@SanBernardinoPD) June 14, 2020
Updated
On Tuesday, Donald Trump tweeted a conspiracy theory that Martin Gugino, the 75-year-old pushed to the floor by police during an anti-racism protest in Buffalo, could be “an antifa provocateur” and the entire incident “could be a set-up”. At the time of writing, Gugino is still in hospital with a head injury. Jason Wilson has taken a closer look at Gugino, a man described by one person who knows him as “one of the gentlest people I know”. Here’s an extract from the article:
Gugino’s presence at the protest and his attempt to engage the police was in keeping with the Catholic Worker Movement, which Gugino and Daloisio are aligned with. The movement takes its position not from a political tract, but from what they see as the most radical passage in the New Testament.
“Different people figure out ways to live out the Beatitudes,” Daloisio says, referring to the precepts outlined in the Sermon on the Mount.
The passage is familiar to anyone who has even a casual acquaintance with Christian teaching: Jesus inverts worldly values to elevate the poor, the sick, and the meek. In Sunday school, it might have the force of a platitude, but Catholic Workers take it with the utmost gravity.
Dorothy Day, the co-founder of the movement, described it as their “manifesto”.
Even though the movement – which Daloisio calls “anarchist” – has no binding structure or formal membership, those aligned with it engage in actions to advance peace and justice as they see it, from voluntary poverty in the service of the poor, to protest, to sometimes controversial forms of direct action.
You can read the full article below:
Anonymous says it has taken the Atlanta Police department “offline” after an officer shot dead Rayshard Brooks on Friday night. The hacker collective wrote on Twitter that: “Anonymous has taken action against Atlanta PD for the execution of #RayshardBrooks, we call for the arrest of the two murderers. No more impunity. #BlackLivesMatter”.
Anonymous has taken action against Atlanta PD for the execution of #RayshardBrooks, we call for the arrest of the two murderers. No more impunity. #BlackLivesMatter #AtlantaShooting #AtlantaProtests https://t.co/jpFhU7T8Ij
— Anonymous (@YourAnonCentral) June 14, 2020
After a relatively quiet few years, Anonymous has stepped up activity in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd. It also took down the Minneapolis Police Department’s website after the death of Floyd last month. The group does not have central leadership or any official policies but it has targeted the KKK, Neo Nazis and Isis in the past.
Donald Trump says he will no longer watch the US national soccer teams after a 2017 policy requiring players to stand during the anthem was repealed.
On Saturday, the president responded on Twitter to criticism from Florida Republican Matt Gaetz about the new anthem policy. “I won’t be watching much anymore!” wrote Trump.
On Wednesday, US Soccer repealed a rule that requires all players to stand during the anthem. The policy was originally put in place after USWNT star Megan Rapinoe knelt during the anthem in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick. US Soccer’s decision came in the wake of protests across the United States against police brutality and racism.
You can read the full story below:
Meanwhile, two high-profile white NFL players spoke out about the anthem protests on Saturday. Three-time NFL defensive player of the year, JJ Watt, tweeted that: “If you still think [kneeling during the anthem] is about disrespecting the flag or our military, you clearly haven’t been listening.”
A) don’t speak for me
— JJ Watt (@JJWatt) June 13, 2020
B) if you still think it’s about disrespecting the flag or our military, you clearly haven’t been listening https://t.co/tnsEq5D9WC
Meanwhile, Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield said he would “absolutely” be kneeling during the anthem. On Thursday, Mayfield wrote a post outlining his stance. “It’s a pivotal time for change,” Mayfield said. “What’s being addressed now obviously has been going on for a long time. So now everybody’s finally coming together to address it. And doing it the right way of holding people accountable.”
Oklahoma Republican senator James Lankford is on ABC’s This Week. He has been involved with discussion on police reform. He says that choke holds should be banned. George Floyd was killed after a police officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes.
“That is one of the things that we should have engaged in a long time ago,” he says. “Many departments around the country have already banned choke holds. And I think a lot of other departments are increasing that now. Some departments just didn’t train for choke holds and told their officers they can only do one if they have been trained for ... There’s been a longstanding principle out there that that is not needed for that situation. And there’s been a consensus document that was done in 2017 by law enforcement around the country to say that that is not needed.”
Lankford was among those who encouraged Donald Trump to move a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, from Juneteenth, a day of celebration of the end of slavery. Tulsa was also the site of a massacre of African Americans in the 1920s. He is asked if the event should be cancelled altogether, given the dangers of spreading Covid-19 at a large, indoor rally. He says he “will be attending. I absolutely will be.”
Lankford says: “Our hospitalizations continue to decline. Our deaths continue to decline and we encourage people that are high risk not to get involved in any location, whether that be a rally or other higher risk locations. So, high-risk folks need to be able to step back and everybody needs to be able to take responsibility for their own health.”
Republican Sen. James Lankford tells @GStephanopoulos that it’s time to stop naming military bases after Confederate leaders, saying there are “lots of great” modern military leaders that we can honor.
— ABC News (@ABC) June 14, 2020
President Trump is against renaming Army bases. https://t.co/nvT22nsDL9 pic.twitter.com/5tZsWhHKW7
He also says he believes military bases, such as Fort Bragg, should not be named after Confederate generals. “If you have a military base that is named after someone that actually rebelled against the United States government, then you would want to be able to go back and look at that name. That should be a pretty basic principle,” he says.
Stacey Abrams, the former leader of the Georgia House of Representatives and a possible running mate for Joe Biden, is on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos.
They discuss the police killing of Rayshard Brooks, and comments from Atlantas mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, about the “disconnect” between police and local communities.
“There’s a legitimacy to this anger, there’s a legitimacy to this outrage,” she says. “A man was murdered because he was asleep in a drive-through and we know that this is not an isolated occurrence.
“We also know that a man taking a Taser from a police officer in Pennsylvania resulted in his arrest, but because this person [Brooks] was black, it resulted in his death.
“Those are conversations that have to be had, not only through speeches but through the decisions made by budget allocations, and I think that’s the next conversation we have to have in Atlanta.”
Abrams is then asked about voting problems in Georgia last week, which many have seen as an ominous sign ahead of November’s presidential elections. Voters encountered hours-long lines and equipment malfunctions as they showed up to vote in person in the state’s primary races on Tuesday.
“We had 20 counties that had to get judicial orders to extend their elections because of inoperable machines, because of lack of training for their staff, because of the challenges posed by the failures of the secretary of state,” she says.
She adds: “My focus is on making sure that we have elections that can happen in November. There will be no vice president, there will be no president if our democracy crumbles under the inefficiencies and the inequities that we see happening. And we want to have an administration, led by Joe Biden, that transforms America and makes us a stronger and safer nation.”
Tim Scott, the only African American Republican senator, is on CBS’s Face the Nation. He is asked about the police killing of Rayshard Brooks on Friday, and whether it was justified. Brooks appeared to have possession of a police taser when he was killed, although he also appeared to be running away from the officer who shot and killed him.
“The question is when the suspect turned to fire the taser, what should the officer have done? One of the challenges that we have in a split second decisions is the need for more training,” says Scott. “... In order for us to provide more opportunities to de-escalate these situations and reduce the use of force, we have to have effective training. That situation is certainly a far less clear one than the ones that we saw with George Floyd and several other ones around the country.”
Scott is then asked about comments from the US attorney general, William Barr, last week in which he denied US law enforcement is systemically racist. Scott has spoken of incidents he has experienced, including one in which a police officer questioned whether he was actually a senator.
“What I would suggest is that you look at the racial outcomes, is there a nexus to race in some of the outcomes in law enforcement? I think the answer is yes,” says Scott. Can we reduce that so that we’re no longer battling the question of the definition of systematic or systemic racism? I think the answer is yes. But there’s no question that the outcomes seem to have a racial component. And that’s why we’re working on getting all the information, then retraining and then eliminating those police officers that have a pattern of misbehavior. If we can do those three things, America will be better and our streets will be safer for the suspect, the officer and the community at large.”
Scott has said in the past that Donald Trump is not racist, but is “racially insensitive”. He is asked about the president scheduling a rally for Juneteenth, the celebration of the end of slavery, in Tulsa, the site of a massacre of Africa Americans last century. Trump later rescheduled the rally.
“I’m thankful that he moved it,” says Scott. “Certainly the Tulsa, Oklahoma race riots were the worst in American history by a count. The next year is the 100th anniversary. The president moving the date by a day once he was informed on what Juneteenth was, that was a good decision on his part.
Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who represents part of Minneapolis, is on CNN’s State of the Union.
Host Jake Tapper begins by asking her about Rayshard Brooks, the black man who was shot and killed by police in Atlanta on Friday night. “It’s a reminder that police officers can’t continue to be judge, jury and executioner,” she says and says deaths such as that of Brooks are “disheartening”.
Tapper then moves on to ask her about her calls to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department, after one of its police officers killed George Floyd. She is asked what takes the department’s place if it is dismantled. Omar says it is impossible for the city to move forward if it has a department with a “crisis of credibility” and “what you can do is rebuild.”
Omar adds that she is not saying there should be no law enforcement in the city. “No one is saying that the community is not going to be kept safe, that crimes are not going to be investigated,” she says. Rather she believes that the current police system “cannot go forward”. It is an issue not just for her city but “many places” in the US.
Tapper then points out that some Democrats, including Joe Biden, do not support defunding the police. Omar says “giving more money” to police is strange when people are on the streets protesting against police brutality. She says it’s a local issue rather than a federal issue, which Biden would work on if he was president.
Earlier on CNN, James Clyburn, one of the leading African American members of Congress, had told Tapper he did not support defunding the police.
“I would simply say ... nobody is going to defund the police,” Clyburn said. “We can restructure the police forces, reimagine policing.”
Clyburn also spoke about the death of Brooks. “I was very incensed over that,” he said. “This did not call for lethal force.”
Updated
Putin blames unrest in US on 'deep-rooted internal crises'
Vladimir Putin has said the recent civil unrest in the United States is linked to “deep-rooted internal crises” in the country. The Russian president also appeared to hint that he believes opponents of Donald Trump are involved.
“I try very carefully to comment or better, not comment, on what is happening in the United States or other countries,” said Putin. “... What happened there is a manifestation of some deep-rooted internal crises. In fact, we have been observing this for a long time now, from the moment the incumbent president came to power, when he obviously won in an absolutely democratic way, and the losing side came up with all sorts of tales in order to question his legitimacy.”
Putin’s comments were made to Russian broadcaster Rossiya 1, and were his first comments on the unrest in the US following the death of George Floyd.
Updated
It’s Donald Trump’s 74th birthday today and the president is at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, having given the commencement address at West Point in New York on Saturday.
That occasion went pretty well, although the president is not a fan of people who speculated about why, when exiting the stage, he seemed to find walking down a ramp rather hard:
“The ramp that I descended after my West Point Commencement speech was very long & steep, had no handrail and, most importantly, was very slippery. The last thing I was going to do is “fall” for the Fake News to have fun with. Final ten feet I ran down to level ground. Momentum!”
Momentum, as the president notes, tends to gather when things are going downhill.
Also, from the Department of There’s Always A Tweet For That… there’s always a tweet for that:
The way President Obama runs down the stairs of Air Force 1, hopping & bobbing all the way, is so inelegant and unpresidential. Do not fall!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 23, 2014
But never mind.
The rest of Trump’s Twitter feed overnight featured favourable coverage of his speech, retweets of inflammatory videos about “antifa” protesters and again harsh criticism for those, Joe Biden among them, who choose to kneel to express solidarity with protesters against police brutality. Nothing to seek to calm the troubled streets of Atlanta. So far, so modern-day presidential.
Trump is due to head back to Washington late this afternoon, so there will be chances for “chopper talk” words with reporters. That said, the president hasn’t been particularly keen to speak to the press of late.
Here’s world affairs editor Julian Borger on the West Point speech and Trump’s troubled relationship with the US military:
Here’s a video report on events in Atlanta last night:
The Associated Press has more on what released video footage shows of the arrest of Rayshard Brooks, his struggle with police officers and the moment he was shot:
The Atlanta police department also released body camera and dash camera footage from both officers. More than 40 minutes elapses between the time officer Devin Brosnan first knocks on Brooks’ car door in the Wendy’s drive-thru and when gunshots ring out. Officer Garrett Rolfe arrives on scene about 16 minutes in.
The shooting is audible in footage from Rolfe’s dash camera and both officers’ body cameras, but wasn’t captured on any of the four recordings provided by police. Both body cameras fall off during the struggle that ensues when Rolfe moves to handcuff Brooks after speaking to him for about 20 minutes. Brooks is briefly glimpsed being Tased before he is shot.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation released security camera video of the shooting, which does not show Brooks’ initial struggle with police. The footage shows a man running from two white police officers as he raises a hand, which is holding an object, toward an officer a few steps behind him. The officer draws his gun and fires as the man keeps running. The man then falls to the ground in the parking lot.
A reporter in Atlanta, meanwhile, has tweeted a picture of the scene at the Wendy’s restaurant this morning:
Wendy’s on University Avenue gutted after overnight fire set during protests. Building still smoldering as people come to look . @wsbtv pic.twitter.com/VjhEeJpqIB
— Tony Thomas (@TonyThomasWSB) June 14, 2020
Good morning…
…on another day in a country still under a public health crisis, and still gripped by protests over police brutality and structural racism.
The protests began after George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man, was killed by officers in Minneapolis. But the deaths, and the protests, keep coming.
In Atlanta overnight, demonstrators marched and a Wendy’s restaurant burned. The night before, outside the drive-thru, police were called to deal with a man sleeping in his car. The man failed a sobriety test, investigators said, and after a struggle in which he took one of the officers’ Tasers, Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old African American man, was killed.
On Saturday, the story brewed slowly through the day, facts coming out, crowds gathering, law enforcement talking. The incident was caught on video. Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said she “did not believe that this was a justified use of deadly force”. Atlanta police chief Erika Shields resigned. Garrett Rolfe, the officer who allegedly shot Brooks, was fired. The other officer involved, Devin Brosnan, was placed on administrative duty.
And protesters took to the streets.
“You can’t have it both ways in law enforcement,” said Chris Stewart, an attorney for the Brooks family. “You can’t say a Taser is a non-lethal weapon ... but when an African American grabs it and runs with it, now it’s some kind of deadly, lethal weapon that calls for you to unload on somebody.”
Welcome to another day in America.
Here’s some more hopeful further reading from Sandra Susan Smith, of Berkeley, soon to be of Harvard:
