Wave of New Polling Suggests an Erosion of Trump’s Support

NY TIMES

The coronavirus pandemic, a severe economic downturn and the widespread demonstrations in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd in police custody have posed severe challenges for Trump. His approval rating has fallen to 13.2 percentage points among registered or likely voters, down from 6.7 points on April 15, according to FiveThirtyEight estimates. And now a wave of new polls shows Joe Biden with a significant national lead, placing him in a stronger position to oust an incumbent president than any challenger since Bill Clinton in the summer of 1992.

He leads the president by around 10 percentage points in an average of recent live-interview telephone surveys of registered voters. It’s a four-point improvement over the six-point lead he held in a similar series of polls in late March and early April. Since then, Bernie Sanders has left the Democratic race, the severity of the coronavirus pandemic has become fully evident, and the president’s standing has gradually eroded.

The erosion has been fairly broad, spanning virtually all demographic groups. But in a longer-term context, the president’s weakness is most stark in one respect: his deficit among women. He trails Mr. Biden by 25 points among them, far worse than his 14-point deficit four years ago. He still leads among men by six points in the most recent polls, about the same margin as he led by in the final polls of registered voters in 2016.

Over the shorter term, the decline in the president’s standing has been particularly pronounced among white voters without a college degree, helping to explain why the Trump campaign has felt compelled to air advertisements in Ohio and Iowa, two mostly white working-class battleground states where Mr. Trump won by nearly 10 points four years ago.

In the most recent polls, white voters without a college degree back the president by 21 points, down from 31 points in March and April and down from the 29-point lead Mr. Trump held in the final polls of registered voters in 2016.

Mr. Trump didn’t just lose support to the undecided column; Mr. Biden ticked up to an average of 37 percent among white voters without a degree. The figure would be enough to assure Mr. Biden the presidency, given his considerable strength among white college graduates. 

Mr. Biden has also made some progress toward redressing his weakness among younger voters. Voters ages 18 to 34 now back Mr. Biden by a 22-point margin, up six points from the spring and now somewhat ahead of Hillary Clinton’s lead in the final polls of 2016. Young voters will probably never be a strength for Mr. Biden — a septuagenarian who promised a return to normal, rather than fundamental change during the Democratic primary — but for now his margin is not so small as to constitute a grave threat to his prospects.

BUT five months remain until the presidential election. There is plenty of time for the race to swing in Mr. Trump’s favor, just as it did in the final stretch of the 2016 campaign. Indeed, the 2016 race was characterized by a predictable, mean-reverting oscillation between nearly double-digit leads for Mrs. Clinton — as in August and October — and a tighter race in which Mr. Trump trailed in national polls but remained highly competitive — as in July, September and November.

Mr. Biden’s lead in the polls today is not vastly different from the leads Mrs. Clinton claimed at her peaks after the “Access Hollywood” tape was revealed or when Mr. Trump became embroiled in a feud with a Muslim Gold Star military family.

If the race does revert toward the president, as it did on so many occasions four years ago, he could quickly find himself back within striking distance of squeaking out a narrow win. His relative advantage in the Electoral College compared with the nation as a whole, or possibly among likely voters compared with registered voters, means that he doesn’t need to gain anywhere near 10 points to get back within striking distance of re-election. In the final national polls of registered voters in 2016, Mr. Trump trailed by around an average of five points. It was close enough.

If the election were held today, the Electoral College would pose no serious obstacle to Mr. Biden, thanks to his strength compared with Mrs. Clinton among white voters and particularly those without a college degree. He would win even if the polls were exactly as wrong as they were four years ago.

Trump's campaign announced he will restart his “Keep America Great” rallies with a rally in Tulsa Oklahoma 0n June 19.

Campaign manager Brad Parscale previously said the rallies would probably resume in late summer, but Trump has been increasingly determined to get back out on the road as he slips in the polls. (Josh Dawsey and Felicia Sonmez)

Trump campaign officials are unlikely to put into place any social distancing measures for rally attendees, or require them to wear masks, people familiar with the decision-making process said, adding that it would be unnecessary because the state is so far along in its reopening.

Mr. Trump has also made it clear he doesn’t want to speak in front of gatherings that look empty because of social distancing, or to look out on a sea of covered faces as he tries to project a positive message about the country returning to normal life and the economy roaring back, even as his top health advisers have warned the pandemic is far from over. “Oh my goodness,” Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the federal government’s top infectious disease expert, said Tuesday. “Where is it going to end? We’re still at the beginning of it.”

Campaign officials said they were considering some modest attempts at reducing risk by providing hand sanitizer on site, but said no final decisions had been made about how to safely bring together a large group of people.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Oklahoma had recorded 7,480 cases of the coronavirus and 355 deaths, according to its health department.

Mr. Trump will return to the campaign trail on Juneteenth, an annual holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States and celebrated as African-Americans’ Independence Day. After weeks of protests over the killing of George Floyd in police custody, protests and marches are already planned this year for the holiday in many states.

In 1921, Tulsa was the site of one of the country’s bloodiest outbreaks of racial violence, when white mobs attacked black citizens and businesses with guns and explosives dropped from airplanes.

For years now, Mr. Trump’s rallies have not shocked, awed and driven news cycles the way they did during the 2016 election, when he was an unknown political entity

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And during the 2018 midterm election cycle, aides and advisers unsuccessfully pinned their hopes on rallies to improve the president’s mood over his lackluster polls and the special counsel’s investigation. But they did little to stabilize his frame of mind, or keep him less active on Twitter.

Why Mayor De Blasio Is Hemorrhaging Support

In the week or so since Mayor Bill de Blasio first defended the NYPD's response to protests against police brutality — and instituted the city's first curfew since 1943 — more than 1,000 current and former staff members have signed a letter saying the mayor is failing at his job. A senior aide resigned, as Politico put it, over "de Blasio’s near-unconditional defense of the NYPD amid incidents of violence against protesters." And yesterday, hundreds of employees from the mayor's office gathered at City Hill to express opposition to their boss.

"We came to this administration because we saw someone who was listening," Catherine Almonte, who has served in various roles in the administration, told Gothamist. "We saw someone who shared our values and we showed up to do the work. And we are not happy right now. This is not what we signed up for."

One of the boldest public rebukes yet has come from Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who accused the mayor last week of "hiding behind your black wife and children."
"I don’t know if they give out F-minuses," Williams added, "but he deserves one, at least for this entire year, in how he responded to the pandemic and how he’s responding to the protests. We’re probably better off with no mayor at all, to be honest."

George Arzt, who was Mayor Ed Koch’s press secretary and has spent years working in city government, told Gothamist that it's "unprecedented" in city history "to have employees protest the policies of the current mayor en masse."

"He’s the first person from the progressive wing of the [Democratic] party to have become mayor, and so within that wing of the party, there was great hope," Arzt said. "And the results haven’t been there."

There are other reasons why liberals rag on the mayor — he takes an SUV to the gym, he hasn't turned the city into a cyclist's paradise, his affordable housing expansion hasn't gone far enough. But some see the root of this current backlash not just in his shortcomings as a progressive, but in his futile attempt to appease the police — and conservative police unions — who never liked him in the first place.

To recap: De Blasio originally ran on ending Bloomberg's stop-and-frisk policing strategy (his son Dante highlighted the point in that famous ad from 2013). Then, after a Staten Island grand jury failed to indict an NYPD officer for killing Eric Garner in 2014, de Blasio said he "couldn’t help but immediately think what it would mean to me to lose Dante." At a subsequent funeral for two officers who were gunned down in their squad car, police officers turned their backs on him.

"The mayor was clearly so deeply affected by the NYPD backlash in 2014," said City Councilmember Ritchie Torres, "that he has been governing in a state of fear of his own police department ever since. . . . He went from a reformer of the police to an enabler of the police and the culture of silence and indifference to black and brown lives."

New York City began to reopen. 

“Monday marked the first, limited phase of a four-part reopening plan. Wholesale sellers and manufacturers were allowed to resume business, and the construction industry made its noisy return. Many businesses remained closed. In Lower Manhattan, where City Hall and most city agencies are based, lunch spots were still closed or boarded up. Vehicle traffic was light and there was a fraction of the foot traffic that would normally clog sidewalks.”

NYC Transit officials on Tuesday said that subways and buses saw an additional 213,548 riders on Monday, the first day of the city's reopening, compared to the same day last week.

It was the first time that subway ridership reached 800,000 since before the coronavirus crisis began. Manhattan, which had seen the largest drop in ridership during the pandemic, saw a 20 percent increase on Monday.

Overall, bus ridership has fared better, reaching 40 percent of pre-pandemic levels. Ridership on subways on Monday was 15 percent of its level one year ago.

The fraction of New York City residents tested for coronavirus and found to be positive is now 1 percent, the lowest it has been since the coronavirus crisis began,

Although the infection rate is based on the number of city residents getting tested, the city has significantly ramped up testing to nearly 34,000 people tested in one one day. Governor Andrew Cuomo on Monday said that going forward, the city would test a minimum of 35,000 people a day to ensure that health officials receive a reliable snapshot of the daily infection rate.
On Monday, the state recorded 40 new deaths from the prior day.


A new Washington Post-Schar School poll finds Americans’ move toward acknowledging racism as a top problem in the United States has been remarkably fast. The issue in the context of police brutality isn’t new, but the iteration of this debate made national news in 2014 in Ferguson, Mo. At that time, less than half the country, 43 percent, saw police killings of black men as a sign of a broader problem, The Post reports. Today 69 percent say as much.

Perhaps the only other issue to move public opinion so quickly in recent years has been same-sex marriage.

Mnuchin arrives for a Presidential Recognition Ceremony in the Rose Garden[/caption]

Following messy start, enormous Paycheck Protection Program shows signs of buttressing economy

New jobs report suggests PPP helped prevent broader economic collapse, but its overall effectiveness remains unknown

The government’s giant corporate loan forgiveness program initially ran dry, prompting outrage. The new problem: Now not enough businesses are taking advantage.

The economy remains extremely weak, with a high unemployment rate and a surge in Americans seeking assistance. Many economists say conditions will remain shaky for at least another year.

But they also say things would be even worse without the giant loan forgiveness program, which Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) shepherded through Congress and then helped defend during chaotic weeks of implementation.

Getting to this point strained the government, the banking industry and small businesses, with many missteps and pivots along the way as they tried to build a program from scratch. And the Trump administration vacillated wildly between trying to rush money out the door and then trying to tighten rules, enraging lawmakers such as Rubio, confusing borrowers and nearly overwhelming banks, even those with small-business expertise.

Two months later, the PPP has directed more than $530 billion to 4.5 million companies, and economists, business leaders, White House officials and lawmakers from both parties think it helped stabilize the economy. Because the government has released no detailed information about how many jobs the program has saved, it’s still unclear whether it achieved its primary goal of apportioning the lion’s share of the money to workers.

People are sawing through and climbing over Trump’s border wall. Now contractors are being asked for ideas to make it less vulnerable.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has asked contractors for help making President Trump’s border wall more difficult to climb over and cut through, an acknowledgment that the design currently being installed along hundreds of miles of the U.S.-Mexico boundary remains vulnerable.

The notice of the request for information that CBP posted gives federal contractors until June 12 to suggest new anti-breaching and anti-climbing technology and tools, while also inviting proposals for “private party construction” that would allow investors and activists to acquire land, build a barrier on it and sell the whole thing to the government.

Trump continues to campaign for reelection on a promise to complete nearly 500 miles of new barrier along the border with Mexico by the end of 2020, but administration officials have scaled back that goal in recent weeks. The president has ceased promoting the $15 billion barrier as “impenetrable” in the months since The Washington Post reported that smuggling crews have been cutting through new sections of the structure using inexpensive power tools.

“We have an adaptive adversary; regardless of materials, nothing is impenetrable if given unlimited time and tools,” the agency said. “Walls provide the U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) the ability to slow and stop potential crossings. That means building wall will deter some people from attempting to cross, while slowing the efforts of those who still try.”

The public notice is the first indication that CBP officials do not think the steel bollard design they selected from prototypes in 2017 is sufficiently formidable to achieve that goal.

Smuggling crews have managed to saw through the steel bollards using commercially available demolition tools such as reciprocating saws with inexpensive metal-cutting blades. Others have fashioned long, improvised ladders out of cheap rebar. More-athletic fence jumpers have been seen using rope ladders to climb up the barrier, sliding down the other side by gripping a bollard like a firehouse pole.

Trump is expected to attend a ceremony in Yuma, Ariz., next week to mark the completion of the barrier’s 200th mile, according to officials who were not authorized to describe the plans.

In massive day of rallies, more than 10,000 people pour into nation’s capital to protest racism, police brutality. 

Demonstrations across the United States, which began as spontaneous eruptions of outrage after the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police less than two weeks ago, appeared to have cohered by Saturday into a nationwide movement protesting systemic racism. 

Thousands marched in big cities like New York and Seattle, and tighter groups in small towns like Vidor, Texas; Havre, Mont.; and Marion, Ohio, denouncing a broken law enforcement system marked by racial injustice.

The outpouring of activism came at a time when the coronavirus pandemic has underscored many deep inequities in society, and has also removed competition for the public’s attention by disrupting work, school and entertainment.

One of the largest protests was in the nation’s capital, where new fences, concrete barriers and a force of unidentifiable guards have shrouded the White House, projecting a new symbolism of militarized defensiveness rather than openness and democracy.

 

A multiethnic, multigenerational crowd of thousands of protesters converged there, at the mouth of Lafayette Square. Demonstrators on foot and bicycle headed to the freshly painted Black Lives Matter mural on the main thoroughfare, passing cars with “BLM” and “Stop Killing Us” written on their rear windows. Later, they also passed people sipping cocktails at a few upscale restaurants open for outdoor dining.

At times, it felt as if the entire city had emptied into downtown Washington as the numbers swelled to high for the two weeks. Lines of protesters — often but not always masked against the virus — snaked their way through side streets, while others converged in nearby parks.

By early evening, 16th Street had the feel of a street fair. Ice cream trucks idled on the side of the road, parents rolled tired children in strollers, people played guitars and harmonicas. Music was playing out of the back of cars. Some people danced.

Protesters also gathered in the once predominantly black neighborhoods of U Street and Columbia Heights, north of the White House. In Meridian Hill Park, which locals call Malcolm X Park, a large crowd gathered to chant, “No justice, no peace.”

Just down the street, the intersection of 14th and U Streets was filled with protesters who had gathered to listen to D.J.s and musicians play go-go music, a type of funk music recently designated the official music of the district. The chanting crowd paused to listen to a woman sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which black Americans have embraced for more than a century as an anthem of liberation.

Protesters fill the streets of the boroughs of New York 

Several thousand demonstrators marched from Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza at noon Saturday, walking through the borough and eventually crossing over the Brooklyn Bridge to New York city hall in Manhattan. The event was just one of dozens of protests planned throughout the day in the city, with tens of thousands of people out in the streets.

The first protests kicked off around 11 a.m., with demonstrators meeting at dozens of locations across the city’s five boroughs and continuing to do so sporadically later in the day. Multiple waves of rallies and marches are expected at such places as Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn and Washington Square Park in Manhattan.

In a city hit hard by the coronavirus, parents could be seen carrying children on their shoulders, and even blocks away from the marches, the sidewalks were filled with people walking to and from protests, carrying signs at their sides. Police officers have been escorting participants of the marches, which have so far been free of clashes.

A largely peaceful night, as marches continue well after curfew.

Protest marches against racism and police brutality continued in New York City well past 11 p.m. on Saturday, defying an 8 p.m. curfew but allowed to continue peacefully by the police, who had moved aggressively to stop protests after curfew on recent nights.

The biggest march of the night, which began at Barclays Center as curfew fell, with well over 1,000 people, made a jubilant 8-mile loop through the center of Brooklyn.

“We’re in our neighborhood!” Courtney Taylor, an organizer, yelled into a megaphone as the procession turned onto Church Avenue in Flatbush, a heavily African-American and Caribbean area. “This whole neighborhood, they got us!” The Brooklyn protest took one last knee and observed a minute of silence back at Barclays Center before dispersing with a loud cheer shortly after 11:30 p.m.

 

There were no reports of major confrontations or mass arrests as of 1 a.m.

After more than a week of images flooding social media of the police cornering, roughly arresting and sometimes beating protesters, one of few arrests the police reported Saturday was of an angry motorist who drove onto the sidewalk to get around protesters on a street in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. The driver struck a man on the ankle, the police said, and mangled a protester’s bike. He was arrested.

 

GET YOUR KNEE OFF OUR NECKS

A teenager outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal, taking a knee on a block crowded with protesters, relished the feeling lost these last months — of being part of something.

A 23-year-old art teacher, Evan Woodard, was thrilled to see his city at the fore of a nationwide event. “I’m proud to call myself a New Yorker,” he said. “This is everyone’s city.”

People who just last month were dutifully keeping behind doors and masks have turned out by the tens of thousands in the past week to gather in the streets and shout to be heard.

The lurch between twin crises with opposing aims — isolation and assembly — has been jolting, and to many, positively liberating. People feeling penned for months, then pushed past a tipping point by images of a man’s life ending under an officer’s knee, have surged to the streets — for some, mask be damned — to be part of something.For those coming out day after day to protest, marching with friends and strangers under cheers from the open windows above feels something like normal. If sheltering at home was a reaction to a threat, this is the opposite — action.

Simonez Dega, 23, a waiter at Olive Garden at a protest near the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, welcomed the change from making music alone in his apartment to marching elbow to elbow. “It feels truly warm,” he said. “It felt like we were all bees in the hive. Now it’s like, that’s another bee, that’s another person that is here for the same reason. It’s a different energy.”

Mr. Dega added: “As a black male, I had to go out and protest.”

The demonstrations would consume the city at any time, but they arrive at a particularly anxious moment, with virus restrictions about to start easing after months of a curve-flattening quarantine.

Even as new cases ebb, New York City remains the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States. More than 200,000 residents have contracted the virus and 21,000 have died, or are presumed to have died, of Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.

More than 2,000 people have been arrested. The arrests continued on Thursday, with thousands of people still on the streets past the curfew, and confrontations with the police again flaring up.

Encircling of Peaceful Protesters Shows Aggressive Shift by N.Y. Police

Officers have charged and swung batons at demonstrators after curfew with seemingly little provocation. The mayor said he would review any reports of inappropriate enforcement.

NY TIMES

It was about 8:45 p.m. in Brooklyn on Wednesday, 45 minutes past the city’s curfew, when a peaceful protest march encountered a line of riot police, near Cadman Plaza.

Hundreds of demonstrators stood there for 10 minutes, chanting, arms raised, until their leaders decided to turn the group around and leave the area.

What they had not seen was that riot police had flooded the plaza behind them, engaging in a law enforcement tactic called kettling, which involves encircling protesters so that they have no way to exit from a park, city block or other public space, and then charging them and making arrests.

The kettling operations carried out by the city’s police after curfew on recent nights have become among the most unsettling symbols of the department’s use of force against peaceful protests, which has touched off a fierce backlash against Mr. Blasio and Mr. Shea.

In the past several days, New York Times journalists covering the protests have seen officers repeatedly charge at demonstrators after curfew with seemingly little provocation, shoving them onto sidewalks, striking them with batons and using other aggressive tactics.

In an interview on WNYC on Friday, the mayor said the encircling of protesters was sometimes necessary for public safety. “I don’t want to see protesters hemmed in if they don’t need to be,” he said, but he added “that sometimes there’s a legitimate problem and it’s not visible to protesters.”

Some protest organizers urge crowds to go home. Others marched on, and were arrested.

The protests that have filled New York’s streets in recent days entered their second week on Friday with thousands of people gathering at sites across the city for demonstrations, marches and vigils that continued to be overwhelmingly peaceful.

While several groups defied a citywide curfew again and risked encountering the forceful tactics the police had used the two previous nights to clear out those who did not disperse, other rallies broke up voluntarily as 8 p.m. approached amid intermittent rain.

“Everybody go home,” organizers of a group on Manhattan’s Upper West Side implored the crowd as a number of officers approached shortly before the curfew took effect. “It’s a wrap.”

In Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill neighborhood, where mass arrests were narrowly averted on Thursday night, one protester announced to the crowd, “You are nothing less to the cause if you’re not here after curfew.”In Brooklyn, a line of officers blocked hundreds of protesters at Grand Army Plaza, while dozens of patrol cars kept them from retreating. The protesters stopped and raised their arms, led in front by a line of cyclists who had been acting as a buffer.

Randy Williams, 38, stepped forward and began to talking to some of the officers, working with other organizers to try to ease a tense situation. The group negotiated for the protesters to be able to leave peacefully, without arrests.

“This is the first protest people have not feared for their life,” Mr. Williams said. “The protest has ended for the night. We will respectfully go home now.”

But less than an hour later, the police again employed the more forceful tactics they had used on recent nights, targeting a group that had left Grand Army Plaza.

Officers appeared to surround a number of protesters on Nostrand Avenue. Videos showed officers aggressively pushing back a man who was filming them as they made arrests, then chasing him with a baton and shoving a reporter who was filming while the man was taken into custody.

On Manhattan’s Upper East Side, police blocked a march that started near Mayor Bill de Blasio’s official residence and arrested around 20 people, rushing at some and forcing them to the ground.

The night’s relative calm came on a day that started with the mayor continuing to defend the police’s actions in breaking up demonstrations, even as videos and photos showed officers employing aggressive and sometimes violent tactics to do so.

“What I saw overwhelmingly, and have continued to see, is peaceful protest being respected on both sides,” Mr. de Blasio said at a news briefing.

But with criticism of the mayor mounting — including from Jumaane Williams, the city’s public advocate, who had helped the tension in Clinton Hill on Thursday — he said for the first time that some officers would be disciplined, and suspended, for their treatment of protesters.

Late Friday, several were.

In a statement released late Friday, the commissioner, Dermot F. Shea, said that one officer had been suspended after video emerged of him pushing a woman to the ground in Brooklyn on May 29. In addition, the commissioner said, a supervisor would be transferred as a result of the incident.

An officer involved in a separate incident the next day was also suspended for pulling down a man’s face mask and then spraying the man in the face with pepper spray, the commissioner said.

Sherrilyn Ifill

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This boy had his hands up when an NYPD ofcr pulled his mask down and pepper sprayed him. ⁦@NYPDShea⁩? Mayor ⁦@BilldeBlasio⁩?

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The mayor also continued to defend the curfew against calls that it be abandoned. He said it would be enforced through Monday morning, when the city is scheduled to begin reopening after a lengthy shutdown prompted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr. de Blasio’s affirmation of the curfew came even as the Manhattan district attorney joined his counterparts in Brooklyn and the Bronx in saying he would not prosecute those who were arrested during the protests for low-level offense like unlawful assembly.

Commissioner Shea, who has condemned the killing of Mr. Floyd, apologized at a news conference on Thursday for any instances of misconduct his officers had committed.

But he also demanded that demonstrators stop insulting and attacking his officers and he warned that anti-police rhetoric could lead to continued violence against those he oversees.

“For our part in the damage to civility, for our part in racial bias, in excessive force, unacceptable behavior, unacceptable language and many other mistakes, we are human,” he said. “I am sorry. Are you?”

At his news conference, Mr. Shea ticked off ways in which he said the police had been attacked over the last week and said “anarchists” armed with dangerous weapons had tried to undermine otherwise productive protests.

Late Friday, he sought to provide evidence for his assertion, posting photos on Twitter of items he said had been seized from people who were arrested at a protest in the Bronx Thursday night.“These are not the tools of peaceful demonstrators,” he wrote. They were, he continued, “the tools of criminals bent on causing mayhem & hijacking what we all know is a worthwhile cause.”The items included handcuffs, a backpack, lighter fluid, gloves, a pocketknife, a hammer and a wrench.

District attorneys in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx will not prosecute people arrested and accused of low-level offenses in the protests.

Since last week, more than 2,000 people have been arrested in the city on charges like disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, unlawful assembly, assault on a police officer and burglary, according to the police and prosecutors.

Protesters rallied at a Brooklyn jail where a prisoner was pepper-sprayed and died this week.

There were more than 1,000 people in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn on Friday evening at the Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal jail where, the authorities say, guards pepper-sprayed a prisoner early Wednesday. He was found unconscious and later died, officials said.

“We see you,” one person in the crowd shouted. “We hear you,” another said, as detainees pounded on the jail windows. “You are not alone,” the crowd chanted again and again.

The death on Wednesday of the prisoner, Jamel Floyd, has become another flash point amid the protests that have continued for more than a week across the United States over police brutality and institutional racism, including in the criminal-justice system.

Mr. Floyd, a 35-year-old black man who was serving a state prison sentence for burglary, had been moved to the Brooklyn jail in October, the federal Bureau of Prisons said in a statement on Wednesday

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The guards used the pepper spray on him after he became increasingly disruptive and potentially harmful to others, the statement said. He barricaded himself in his cell and was breaking the cell-door window with a metal object, the statement said.

Mr. Floyd’s family has challenged the official account.

More police violence occurs during protests over police violence.

As protests over the death of George Floyd sweep the nation, the demonstrations have revealed powerful moments of peaceful protest and in some cases among police officers, who have been seen taking a knee in solidarity, reading the names of police brutality victims out loud or quietly crying alongside protesters.

But the protests have also revealed widespread incidents of police aggression, documented with the same tool that captured Mr. Floyd’s death under the knee of a white police officer in Minneapolis: video.

In Buffalo, two police officers were suspended without pay after a video showed them shoving a 75-year-old protester, who was hospitalized with a head injury. In Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Miami Herald reporters filmed officers who were shooting a nonviolent protester in the head with foam rubber bullets, fracturing her eye socket. Cellphone videos show New York City police officers beating unarmed protesters and sideswiping demonstrators with opened squad car doors.

Captured by bystanders and sometimes shown on live television, the episodes have occurred in cities large and small, in the heat of mass protests and in their quiet aftermath. A compilation posted on Twitter by a North Carolina lawyer included over 300 clips by Friday morning.

The episodes have emerged over nearly two weeks of largely peaceful demonstrations in at least 600 cities across America, as thousands of people filled the streets in historic protests against systemic racism and police brutality.

Authorities in the city of Las Cruces in southern New Mexico announced on Friday that a police officer would be fired and charged with involuntary manslaughter in connection with the killing of a man who fled from a traffic stop.

The man, Antonio Valenzuela, 40, died on Feb. 29. The Las Cruces Police Department said he had an open warrant because of a parole violation, and was tased twice by officers while running away after being pulled over. Officer Christopher Smelser then used a chokehold technique on Mr. Valenzuela.

The Las Cruces medical examiner’s office determined this week that Mr. Valenzuela died from the injuries caused by being asphyxiated, the department said.

The death of Mr. Valenzuela, a painter and father of four, has resonated across New Mexico, which was already grappling with some of the highest rates of fatal shootings by police officers anywhere in the United States.

Involuntary manslaughter is a fourth-degree felony. Officer Smelser is also in the process of being fired from the force, said Dan Trujillo, a police spokesman. Officer Smelser could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday, and it was unclear whether he had a lawyer. 

The message from the president is to dominate the streets with force. The message from many of their chiefs and mayors is to tolerate, connect and empathize. The message on the streets, at times, is that they are part of the problem. The message from the news media is watch what you say and do.

In St. Louis on Monday night, four officers were struck by gunfire in a shootout between gunmen at a protest and the police. In Las Vegas, an officer was put on life support after he was shot near the Circus Circus Hotel and Casino as police forces tried to disperse crowds that had hit them with bottles and rocks. In Buffalo, the driver of an S.U.V. sped through a line of law enforcement officers in riot gear, injuring two of them in an episode caught on video.

But the outrage over the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis has upended that notion, inciting social unrest and violence that has put urban and suburban police departments across the country on alert. It has been a challenge for officers, at a time when many are also confronting the coronavirus.

“These type of protests take a significant toll on an officer’s mental wellness, and they add so much stress,” said Manny Ramirez, a sergeant with the Fort Worth Police Department and the president of the police officers’ union. “This is Fort Worth, Texas, 1,000 miles away, but yet these officers have become targets for that rage.”

Sgt. Ramirez, 35, was in a command post on Sunday when protesters began hurling frozen water bottles and rocks at officers. One officer was struck on the elbow with a projectile. Another broke his leg while chasing a looter. “There’s got to be some way to ensure that going forward we can have something constructive come out of this,” he said.

“I’ve gone home once in the last four days,” said a Los Angeles officer watching the crowd months after having the coronavirus. “My girlfriend had to drop off clothes so I could change. It’s been hell, for everybody. Monsters and Red Bull, that’s the only thing that’s keeping me up.”

In Austin, Texas, a 20-year-old African-American protester was in critical condition after he was shot in the head with a beanbag round fired by a police officer on Sunday. A protester standing next to the man had thrown objects at the police, and in response an officer struck the victim instead. Others hit by similar police-fired rounds include a woman giving medical assistance and a pregnant African-American woman.

In many ways, the police response to what is happening on the streets illustrates a kind of post-Ferguson era of policing. Officers — not only chiefs but even the rank and file — have embraced the demonstrations and aligned themselves so much with protesters that they march alongside them. In some parts of the country, chiefs have become more politically outspoken and more emotional than they have been in decades.

The N.F.L. commissioner said the league should have listened to black players’ concerns earlier.

After President Trump renewed criticism of N.F.L. players protesting during the national anthem, Commissioner Roger Goodell delivered his strongest support yet for their right to demonstrate to fight racism and police brutality.

In a swift response to a video montage that featured star players asking the league to address systemic racism, Goodell said he apologized for not listening to the concerns of African-American players earlier and said he supported the players’ right to protest peacefully.

During the 2016 season, Colin Kaepernick started the movement within the league when he knelt to call attention to racial injustice and violence by police, but no team has offered him a contract since then.

Goodell’s comments were diametrically opposed to the president, who spoke out to defend New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, who said this week that it was disrespectful to kneel during the pregame playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Brees apologized on Thursday after immediate backlash. But the president said on Twitter that Brees should not have backtracked and that people should stand when the anthem is played. On Friday night, Brees directed an Instagram post to the president.

“We can no longer use the flag to turn people away or distract them from the real issues that face our black communities,” Brees said. “We did this back in 2017, and regretfully I brought it back with my comments this week.”

More than any other major sports league, the N.F.L. has wrestled in recent years with the issue of race, the lack of African-Americans and other people of color in positions of power in the league and the rights of players to protest social issues on the field. While three-quarters of the league’s players are African-American, nearly every team owner is white and several of the most prominent owners are strong supporters of the president.

George Floyd’s memorial gives way to a 10th night of protests. UPDATES

Hundreds gather for George Floyd memorial in Minneapolis

After 10 tumultuous days across the United States, hundreds of people gathered at a private memorial service Thursday afternoon in Minneapolis for George Floyd, whose death in police custody has sparked widespread protests against police violence and systemic racism.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, president of the civil rights organization National Action Network, took the stand at the service to call Floyd’s death emblematic of the oppression black Americans have faced since the nation’s founding.

“George Floyd’s story has been the story of black folks,” Sharpton said. “What happened to Floyd happens every day in this country — in education, in health services and in every area of American life. It’s time for us to stand up in George’s name and say, ’Get your knee off our necks.’ ”

 

Mourners of all races — African American, white, Latino, Asian and Native American — gathered to show support for Floyd’s family. The ceremony in Minneapolis kicks off a four-day “celebration of life” touching all of the places Floyd called home. Additional services are planned in North Carolina and Houston over the coming days.

A somber and defiant memorial for George Floyd in Minneapolis gave way to a 10th night of protests on Thursday as thousands of demonstrators again poured into the nation’s streets, crowding outside City Hall in Seattle and marching across the Brooklyn Bridge.

The tone at many protests on Thursday was largely mournful, after more than a week of crowds burning with grief and anger over the death of Mr. Floyd and other black Americans whose deaths have spurred calls for criminal justice reform.

 

Fueling the anguish on Thursday, an investigator in the death of Ahmaud Arbery, a black man who was fatally shot while being chased by three white neighbors in suburban Georgia, said that one of the suspects had used a racial slur after the shooting.

The developments came as officials from Louisville, Ky., to Seattle have been lifting nightly curfews, after protests there had become largely peaceful in recent days.

• New York: Crowds gathered Thursday outside Gracie Mansion, the Upper East Side mayoral residence, and snarled traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge, ahead of a nightly curfew that will remain in effect until June 8. [Follow our live coverage of the protests in New York.]
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• Nashville: The Black Lives Matter movement held a protest at the Bicentennial Mall. Demonstrators marched to the National Museum of African American Music, which is scheduled to open later this year. The procession made its way to the state capitol.
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• Boston: In Jamaica Plain, a silent vigil was held on Thursday afternoon to protest racial injustice. The city’s mayor, Marty Walsh, led a moment of silence for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, which was how long the Minneapolis police order charged in the killing of George Floyd kept his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck.
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• Washington: Mayor Muriel Bowser said there would be no curfew on Thursday night, despite President Trump encouraging shows of force from the military and law enforcement to crack down on protesters,
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• Santa Monica, Calif.: In Los Angeles County, a nightly curfew that had been widely criticized was lifted on Thursday. The decision came after more than 3,000 people had been arrested in the nation’s second-largest city since the protests began last week. Most of the arrests were for curfew violations, with offenders issued citations and released. There were demonstrations in several places in the county, including Santa Monica.
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• Salt Lake City: A man who pointed a bow and arrow at demonstrators and brandished a knife during a protest last week was charged with two felony weapons counts and one count of aggravated assault, the county’s district attorney said. The man, Brandon McCormick, drove his car into the crowd and said, “Yes, I’m American. All lives matter,” a video of the altercation showed. The crowd beat him up and set his car ablaze.

• In his most extensive comments on the civil unrest gripping the country, Attorney General William P. Barr defended law enforcement’s aggressive, militaristic response to protests while acknowledging the “long-standing” concerns with police that were exposed by the death of Floyd.

• President Trump’s former chief of staff John F. Kelly defended former defense secretary Jim Mattis on Thursday over Mattis’s criticism of the president’s handling of nationwide protests. Kelly also dismissed Trump’s assertion that the president fired the retired general in 2018.
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• In a major break with Trump, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) said Thursday that she is struggling with her support for her fellow Republican president and praised Mattis for a statement in which he sharply criticized Trump.

New US unemployment claims reached 1.9m last week despite rate of increase slowing

• ‘The figures are so high that it’s hard to grasp the reality’
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• New filings down for ninth consecutive week
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• Another 1.9 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week as the total number of claims passed 42 million since the coronavirus pandemic hit the US.The pace of layoffs has slowed dramatically from its peak of 6.6m at the start of April as states start to relax quarantine orders and last week was the ninth consecutive week of declines. But the scale of layoffs remains staggeringly high. In the worst week of the last recession “just” 665,000 people filed for unemployment.Jason Reed, professor of finance at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, said the numbers may be coming down, but “this is unprecedented. The figures are so high that it’s hard to grasp the reality.”

Two Buffalo police officers are suspended after shoving a protester.

Two Buffalo police officers were suspended without pay on Thursday night after a video showed them shoving a 75-year-old protester, who was hospitalized with a head injury, the authorities said.

Mayor Byron Brown said the man was in serious but stable condition. A video showed the man motionless on the ground and bleeding from his right ear.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York condemned the actions of the officers in a statement late Thursday night.

As coronavirus took jobs or workers fell ill, teen children have toiled full-time, becoming lifelines

As the pandemic took jobs or workers fell ill, teens have toiled full time, becoming lifelines

With parents in quarantine or unemployed, teens have had to forgo schooling to become family breadwinners, working jobs in grocery and big-box stores and keeping links in the nation’s food supply intact while eschewing almost everything about being a teenager.

Few police and a relaxed atmosphere at a Brooklyn vigil.

People assembling for a 7 p.m. Black Lives Matter vigil at McCarren Park in Brooklyn were almost indistinguishable from regular parkgoers, until an air horn and a round of applause on a plaza between two ball fields signaled the start — and suddenly hundreds of people who had been lounging on the grass, playing catch and listening to reggae from a sound system on a vintage school bus turned to face a small band of speakers and organizers.

“This seems more chill,” Emily Engle, 26, of Bushwick said before the start of the vigil as she sat on a park bench. She wanted a relaxed gathering, she said, after seeing the mayhem firsthand in SoHo on Sunday night. “We felt the rage,” Engle said. She didn’t condemn it, or its connection to what became a night of looting that led to a citywide curfew. “It’s an important time to take physical action because it’s easy to just post something online,” Engle said. But she added that it’s “a tough question” of how far to take it.

The McCarren vigil seemed unlikely to test limits. There was virtually no visible police presence, a fact one speaker, a woman, referenced in call-and-response opening remarks delivered through a bullhorn to a predominantly white crowd.

“We acknowledge our privilege to assemble without police violence,” she said. Demonstrators then knelt or sat for 30 minutes of silence, which fell over the park.

 

Manhattan judge denies Legal Aid request to free hundreds of George Floyd protesters held more than 24 hours

A Manhattan judge sided with police on Thursday by denying Legal Aid lawyers’ request for the immediate release of hundreds of prisoners held in custody for days after their arrest amid George Floyd protests.

The emergency lawsuit filed Tuesday against the NYPD called for the release of 108 New Yorkers “detained illegally” in violation of New York state’s 24-hour arrest-to-arraignment requirement.

As of the Thursday afternoon hearing, the number of people arrested in Manhattan who have been waiting to see a judge in cramped cells for more than 24 hours had climbed to 202, according to an NYPD lawyer.

After lengthy arguments from Legal Aid and city lawyers — who all appeared via video — Manhattan Supreme Court Judge James Burke denied the request, saying the police processing of the cases is “a crisis within a crisis."

Burke elaborated, saying he saw “a civil unrest crisis within the overarching Covid-19 crisis.”

"To that end, the entire police department has been deployed and the entire Manhattan DA’s office is, quote, all hands on deck and working to relieve the problems which we are currently addressing,” Burke said.

“It is simply a fact that virtual parts [remote hearings] slow down the pace of arraignments, including but not limited to technical issues," Burke said. He also noted that the volume of cases before the courts and police has increased.

This male is arrested on the corner of W. 14th Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on Tuesday, June 2. (Sam Costanza/for New York Daily News)

Burke said in this case, an exception the 24-hour rule could be made because of the unusual circumstances.

[More New York] 14-year-old boy pleads guilty to robbery in connection to Tessa Majors’ murder, prosecutors drop murder charge »

 

Legal Aid Society lawyers said they’d monitor the situation and would appeal “if necessary.”

“We are also disheartened, however, because the overwhelming number of people held illegally are those accused of charges that should have resulted in their automatic release,” the society said in a statement.

"Motivations aside, the NYPD is fully responsible for the hundreds of New Yorkers who are currently languishing in cages, deprived of their due process rights and at an increased risk of contracting COVID-19.”

[More New York] MTA pulls newest subway cars after two trains come unhitched in tunnel while carrying passengers »

 

Social distancing is nearly impossible in holding cells, NYPD Assistant Deputy Commissioner Janine Gilbert said in court. “But I might add that these protesters are not social distancing when they’re out in the street,” she said.

There are many disorderly people — looters and rioters — who are fighting with the police, throwing bottles at the police, throwing Molotov cocktails at their vehicles, setting several ablaze, throwing flaming garbage and Molotov cocktails at vehicles with officers inside them.”

The NYPD said cops have provided masks to suspects not wearing them when they were arrested, but said there is no hand sanitizer dispensers in holding cells as prisoners were making weapons out of them.

Senior staff attorney for Legal Aid Marlen Suyapa Bodden lambasted the NYPD’s narrative, claiming the NYPD has ample resources to handle the caseload and is delaying the processing on purpose.

“They have 38,000 police officers, so they have plenty of police officers to do their policing work. The fact is, the police department is not doing its job,” she said.

"The NYPD is one of the wealthiest police departments in the world. They have access to the best technology and that’s why they can run around surveilling people, wiretapping people, doing all sorts of things.

“But now, when it comes to processing protesters, people who are asserting their First Amendment rights, oh, all of a sudden, because they’re protesting police brutality, now we’re back to the days of carrier pigeon.” 

VOX

Rubber bullets can seriously mess you up

The dangers of “nonlethal” police weapons — like rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades, and tear gas — explained.

Around the country, police and law enforcement agents are responding to the protests against police brutality with ... brutality.

Standard crowd-control weapons — including rubber bullets, chemical irritants, flash-bang grenades, and contraptions that combine aspects of all three — are being deployed against protesters and the journalists covering them to disperse crowds, sometimes seemingly unprovoked, and against peaceful protesters.

While these riot-control weapons are said to be “nonlethal” or “less lethal” by police and their manufacturers, they can still cause significant harm. In some cases, they can kill or cause lasting disability.

“These weapons are supposed to be used as a last resort, if there’s really an uncontrollable level of violence that threatens public safety,” Rohini Haar, an emergency room physician who has studied the impact of crowd-control weapons, tells Vox. “Without that level, that threshold, the use of weapons against unarmed civilians is pretty unjustified.”

Here are three of the more common crowd-control weapons being used on protesters. Let’s walk through them.

Rubber bullets are bullets. Bullets can kill.

Rubber bullets are not always made out of rubber. Technically, they are called “kinetic impact projectiles.” Some are made out of hardened foam or plastic. Others contain a metal core. Some are more like beanbags shot out of a rifle. Wooden bullets also are grouped into this category, and they are also dangerous and have been used against protesters in recent days.

Regardless of their composition, these projectiles are shot out of guns at speeds comparable to that of a typical bullet, and when they hit their target, they can maim, blind, or even kill. The rubber bullets are meant to be “nonlethal” or “less lethal” and used in crowd control. But research shows how brutal these bullets can be.

“It sounds like a Nerf gun or something, but it’s definitely much more dangerous than that,” Haar says. “From our research, we find that there’s really no safe way to use rubber bullets.” The group found 26 studies on the use of rubber bullets around the world, documenting a total of 1,984 injuries. Fifteen percent of the injuries resulted in permanent disability; 3 percent resulted in death. When the injuries were to the eyes, they overwhelmingly (84.2 percent) resulted in blindness.

These weapons can also cause internal bleeding in the abdominal region, concussions, injuries to the head and neck, and skin and soft-tissue damage. Furthermore, these weapons are unwieldy and hard to aim at specific targets.

“At short range, they come out of the gun as fast as a bullet,” Haar says. “And so they can break bones. They can fracture skulls. If they hit the face, they can cause permanent damage and disability. At long distances, they ricochet, they have unpredicted trajectories, they bounce, and they’re quite indiscriminate. So they can’t possibly target either an individual or a safe body part of an individual.”

Flash-bangs, a.k.a. stun grenades, can burn and damage hearing

Rubber bullets are hardly the only problematic “nonlethal” weapon used against protesters. Flash-bang grenades, or stun grenades, are another tool being deployed by police that explode with a bright light and incredibly loud sound to get people to scatter from an area. How loud? 160 to 180 decibels, according to Physicians for Human Rights.

These noise levels are “not safe for any period of time” according to the American Speech-Language Hearing Association. They can damage the eardrums and cause temporary deafness. The light can temporarily blind a person. Pieces of the grenade may fly off as shrapnel, injuring a person. These grenades can also burn people at close range. The North Carolina Supreme Court has even declared them a weapon of “mass death and destruction.”

Tear gas is illegal in warfare, yet it can be used by police

Finally, there’s tear gas, or chemical irritants that affect the eyes, nose, mouth, lungs, and skin (there are several types of chemicals that fall under the “tear gas” category). These chemicals are banned internationally in warfare, yet they are still legal for domestic police forces — including in the US — to use to disperse crowds.

They cause immediate irritation to the eyes and lungs, but their long-term effects are less well understood.

“It’s still questionable what kinds of respiratory damage tear gas does,” Anna Feigenbaum, a journalism professor and the author of a book on the history of tear gas, told Vox’s Jen Kirby.

“We don’t really know what its impacts are in terms of different kinds of asthma and lung disease,” she continued. “What we do know is that for people who have any kind of preconditions, it’s incredibly dangerous for them to be in spaces that are tear-gassed. For anyone who’s very young or very old, it has increased dangers.”

Putin’s Favorite Ex-Congressman Dana Rohrabacher Is Now Pitching a Cure for COVID

Former Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) has booked his first lobbying client, a company promising a COVID-19 cure and led by a California businessman who’s been collaborating with Rudy Giuliani on a documentary on Joe Biden and Ukraine.

The company, Linear Therapies, is seeking to develop drugs that can both prevent people from getting the virus and cure them if they do. And Rohrbacher’s role is pretty simple: use his political connections to pitch Vice President Mike Pence’s office, which is playing a leading role on the White House coronavirus task force.

But while Linear is one of many companies turning to K Street for help to pitch its COVID remedies to federal legislators and regulators, the cast of characters behind it—from Giuliani to Rohrabacher to Tim Yale, the Orange County Republican who leads the company—makes it a notable entrant in an industry where political connections can mean a financial windfall.

Yale said Rohrabacher’s tenure on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, as well as his particular “network of skills,” made him a natural advocate for the company.
Rohrabacher began plotting his move to K Street just weeks after he was defeated in 2018 at the hands of Democrat Harley Rouda. In February 2019, less than a month after leaving office, Rohrabacher’s new firm, R&B Strategies, signed its first client, a Kuwait-based company fighting what it says is that country’s political prosecution of one of its Russian-born executives.

During his thirty years in Congress, Rohrabacher had a quixotic reputation and ideological streak. He was ahead of the curve in his advocacy for medical cannabis, and though Linear was incorporated on 4/20 this year, Yale told PAY DIRT that it’s not doing any work in that space.

Rohrabacher also had a famously friendly relationship with Russian president Vladimir Putin, so friendly in fact that the FBI warned the congressman in 2012 that the Kremlin considered him a potential intelligence source. In 2017, he attempted to broker a deal whereby the U.S. would pardon Assange in exchange for evidence that Russia was not, in fact, behind the hacking of Democratic email accounts during the 2016 presidential election.

China, Iran hackers are targeting presidential campaigns, Google says

The company said the efforts so far to hack staffers’ Gmail accounts have failed.

By Matt Viser, Josh Dawsey and Ellen Nakashima ●  Read more »

y Robert Klemko ●  Read more »

 

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