Read Time: 4 Minutes
Protests/Race Relations
- Attorneys representing the family of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who died earlier this year after a police officer kneeled on his neck for several minutes, have filed a civil suit against the city of Minneapolis and the four officers involved.
- Kimberly Gardner, the circuit attorney for St. Louis County ripped President Trump and her state’s governor in a statement after the two criticized her office’s investigation into a couple seen on a viral video threatening Black Lives Matter protesters at gunpoint.
“While they continue to play politics with the handling of this matter, spreading misinformation and distorting the truth, I refuse to do so,” Gardner said.
- The Asheville City Council has apologized for the North Carolina city’s historic role in slavery, discrimination and denial of basic liberties to Black residents and voted to provide reparations to them and their descendants.
The measure calls for a plan to provide reparations to its Black residents in the form of investments in their community such as “increasing minority homeownership,” “increasing minority business ownership and career opportunities,” and “strategies to grow equity and generational wealth,” according to the resolution.
- A Confederate flag banner was flown over the Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee on Wednesday ahead of NASCAR’s All-Star Race.
The banner flown over the Wednesday race also included the website “SCV.org,” a website operated by the organization The Sons of Confederate Veterans.
Trump Administration News
- The Trump administration is escalating its fight against the Chinese telecom giant Huawei by placing unspecified restrictions on visas of company employees within U.S. borders, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced.
- Senior adviser Ivanka Trump was accused of violating a federal ethics law that bans government employees from using their public office to endorse products when she posted a picture supporting Goya. The White House, however, blamed the media and the “cancel culture movement” for the criticism she received.
- President Donald Trump said that he would welcome retired Gen. Michael Flynn back into his administration now that the former national security adviser’s legal troubles are on the verge of receding.
- Nearly two dozen of the country’s Democratic attorneys general are suing Education Secretary Betsy DeVos over her rollback of Obama-era regulations that allowed students to seek student loan relief if they were scammed by their higher education institution.
- President Trump has officially finalized the rollback to one of the nation’s bedrock environmental laws in a move critics say will be particularly harmful to minority communities. The change would undo the requirement for environmental reviews of major construction projects and pipelines, which some say will allow for increased pollution in non-white communities.
- President Trump intends to fight a subpoena for his tax returns and financial records from the Manhattan district attorney after the Supreme Court rejected his claim that he’s immune to criminal investigation, the president’s lawyers told a judge
- A report by the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s nonpartisan investigative arm, found the Trump administration set a rock-bottom price on the damages done by greenhouse gas emissions, enabling the government to justify the costs of repealing or weakening dozens of climate change regulations.
The report said the Trump administration estimated the harm that global warming will cause future generations to be seven times lower than previous federal estimates.
- Last week, Lt. Col. Alex Vindman announced his retirement from the Army, with his attorney accusing Trump of “a campaign of bullying, intimidation, and retaliation” since Vindman’s testimony. Now, the White House is accusing the former National Security Council member of creating a hostile work environment after testifying in the impeachment inquiry against President Trump.
An earlier review found no basis for the claim against Vindman.
- The Supreme Court has cleared the way for a second federal execution to take place this week.
- Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner has reportedly halted his plans to divest from a tech startup that he co-founded even after it was revealed that it had been partially fueled by foreign investors, which critics worry violates ethics rules and creates a conflict of interest.
Presidential Campaign
- Joe Biden’s choice of a running mate is the talk of Washington, but a majority of American voters said Biden’s VP selection won’t affect their vote, according to a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll released Wednesday.
Fifty-four percent of respondents said that Biden’s running mate will have no impact on how they’ll cast their ballot. Only 16 percent said that it would have a “major impact” on their vote. Another 20 percent said it would have a “minor impact.”
- President Trump is replacing his campaign manager less than four months from Election Day, removing Brad Parscale from the role and promoting another top political aide, Bill Stepien.
- Former Vice President Joe Biden has widened his lead over President Trump to 15 points in a new national Quinnipiac University poll.
The poll released Wednesday shows Biden with 52 percent of the vote to Trump’s 37 percent, the widest lead for the presumptive Democratic nominee recorded by a Quinnipiac survey to date.
Sources: ABC News, Associated Press, The Atlantic, Axios, Bloomberg, CBS News, CNN, Financial Times, Fox News,The Hill, Independent, NBC News, NJ.com, NPR, NY Times, Politico, Reuters, Salon, Slate, Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post
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