Tag: buffalo

The Past 24 Hours or So – Protests/Race Relations, Trump Administration, and Presidential Campaign News

Read Time: 5 Minutes

Protests/Race Relations 

  • Gov. Gary Herbert of Utah declared a state of emergency Thursday in response to protests in Salt Lake City that erupted after the authorities said the fatal police shooting of a 22-year-old man in May was justified.

Protesters smashed windows and splashed red paint on the district attorney’s office in Salt Lake City after prosecutors cleared police in the fatal shooting.

The Salt Lake County district attorney, Sim Gill, announced that there would be no criminal charges against the two Salt Lake City Police Department officers who shot the man, Bernardo Palacios-Carbajal, on May 23.

  • State troopers folded the Mississippi flag at the Capitol for the last time last week, a turnabout that was powered by a coalition of seemingly unlikely allies, including business-minded conservatives, Baptist ministers and the Black Lives Matter activists.
  • The wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was among those who emailed to criticize a Virginia town’s “Black Lives Matter” banner, telling city officials that protesters responding to the death of Black Americans in police custody “hate America.”

“BLM is a bit of a dangerous Trojan Horse and they are catching well-meaning people into dangerous posturing that can invite mob rule and property looting,” Thomas, who is white, reportedly wrote in a signed email that was shared with The Washington Post.

  • Police in St. Petersburg, Fla., said they will start fining protesters who block traffic during demonstrations this week following tense and dangerous standoffs between activists and drivers around the country.

Officers will be enforcing laws already on the books – and the St. Petersburg Police Department said Wednesday it would first begin a public awareness campaign by issuing warnings and handing out flyers.

After a few days, the department will begin issuing fines of $62.50.

  • Twitter suspended over 50 accounts operated by white nationalists Friday amid criticism over its handling of inflammatory posts on its platform.
  • Republican Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst says she supports renaming military bases that are named after Confederate figures even though she’s “been getting heck” from her own party over her stance.
  • Two suspended Buffalo Police officers are now back on the city payroll despite being charged with felony assault.

Officers Aaron Torgalski and Robert McCabe were suspended last month after shoving 75-year-old protester Martin Gugino to the ground, leading to serious injuries for the protester.

Administration News

  • The president of Goya Foods went on Fox News on Friday to defend comments he made a day earlier praising President Trump during a visit to the White House. The company has since become the target of a boycott and considerable backlash.
  • President Trump told reporters Friday that he is “looking at” pardoning Roger Stone, as he continued to build suspense over whether he will intervene on behalf of his former aide and longtime confidant before he is scheduled to report to prison next week.

“Well, I’ll be looking at it,” Trump said. “I think Roger Stone was very unfairly untreated, as were many people.”

  • The House Appropriations Committee voted to block a controversial Trump Administration transparency rule that the Environmental Protection Agency’s own independent board of science advisers criticized. Scientists have decried the 2018 rule, which the administration sought to broaden in March, as an effort to block the EPA from being able to use significant amounts of research in its rulemaking.

“This rule would place new crippling limits on what studies can be utilized when EPA crafts new regulation,” said the amendment’s sponsor, Rep. David Price (D-N.C.).

  • A former top Department of Veterans Affairs official in the Trump administration improperly steered a $5 million contract to personal friends, according to a report released Thursday by the department’s Office of Inspector General. The OIG report found that the actions of Peter Shelby, who was then the VA’s assistant secretary for human resources and administration at the time, were not only unethical but resulted in the complete waste of government funds.
  • President Trump says he intends to sign an executive order on immigration within the next month that he said will include a “road to citizenship” for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
  • The president Tweeted: “Too many Universities and School Systems are about Radical Left Indoctrination, not Education. Therefore, I am telling the Treasury Department to re-examine their Tax-Exempt Status…and/or Funding, which will be taken away if this Propaganda or Act Against Public Policy continues. Our children must be Educated, not Indoctrinated!” 
  • President Trump commuted the sentence of his longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr. on seven felony crimes on Friday, using the power of his office to help a former campaign adviser days before Mr. Stone was to report to a federal prison to serve a 40-month term.
  • President Trump confirmed for the first time on Friday that the U.S. launched a cyberattack on the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) in 2018.

The cyberattack, first reported by The Washington Post in 2019 but not confirmed publicly by the Trump administration, involved U.S. Cyber Command disrupting internet access for the building in St. Petersburg that houses the IRA on the night of the U.S. 2018 midterm elections, halting efforts to spread disinformation as Americans went to the polls.

Presidential Campaign

  • President Donald Trump on Friday accused former Vice President Joe Biden of plagiarizing his economic policies, a day after the presumptive Democratic nominee unveiled a plan to promote American manufacturing and goods.

But despite some similarities in messaging between Biden’s “Buy American” and Trump’s “America First” rhetoric, the two candidates’ policy plans significantly diverge.

“He plagiarized from me, but he could never pull it off,” Trump told reporters at the White House when asked about Biden’s plan for the economy. “He likes plagiarizing. It’s a plan that is very radical left. But he said the right things because he’s copying what I’ve done, but the difference is he can’t do it.”

Trump did not specify what parts of Biden’s economic plans were plagiarized.

  • Amid ongoing concerns of small crowds, the Trump campaign canceled a rally planned for Saturday in New Hampshire, citing safety concerns about an incoming tropical storm.
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden tore into President Trump as he prepared to visit a coronavirus-stricken Florida on Friday, blaming the president’s response to the pandemic for a sharp rise in cases and virus-related hospitalizations in the country’s largest battleground state.

“With over 232,000 cases in the state and over 4,000 deaths in Florida, it is clear that Trump’s response — ignore, blame others, and distract — has come at the expense of Florida families.”

Sources:  ABC News, The Atlantic, Axios, Bloomberg, CBS News, CNN, Financial Times, Fox News,The Hill, NBC News, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, NJ.com, NPR, NY Times, Politico, Reuters, Salon, Slate, Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post

The Past 24 Hours or So

Read Time: 7 Minutes

Protest News

  • President Trump on Tuesday shared a conspiracy theory that the 75-year-old man pushed to the ground by police in Buffalo, New York could be an “ANTIFA provocateur,” claiming without evidence that Martin Gugino was “pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out equipment.”

“I watched, he fell harder than was pushed,” the president tweeted. “Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?”

  • New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo went off on President Trump for his tweet voicing an unfounded conspiracy theory that the 75-year-old man who was violently pushed to the ground by police in Buffalo during a protest could be part of a “set up.”

“It’s all made up, it’s all fabricated. There’s no fact to any of it,” Cuomo said. “He accuses this man of being associated with antifa, no proof whatsoever, no fact, just an assertion.”

  • Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer said President Trump should “go back to hiding in the bunker” after the president tweeted an unfounded conspiracy theory suggesting a 75-year-old protester who was violently pushed by police in Buffalo, N.Y., could be part of a “set up.”
  • A New York City police officer surrendered to face criminal charges on Tuesday, over a week after cellphone showed him shoving a woman to the ground and calling her a “bitch” during a protest against police brutality.

The Brooklyn district attorney’s office plans to charge the officer, Vincent D’Andraia, with misdemeanor assault, harassment and menacing over the May 29 incident

  • Alison Hirsh, a senior official in the de Blasio administration, has left the mayor’s office over his handling of recent protests across the city. The senior adviser  was so troubled by de Blasio’s near-unconditional defense of the NYPD amid incidents of violence against protesters, she decided to step down from the job she was hired for last fall.
  • Authorities are investigating after a family camping in Washington state was harassed and confronted by people who accused them of being part of Antifa. 

The family went to a local store to get camping supplies, where they were confronted by “seven or eight car-loads of people” in the parking lot.

“The people in the parking lot repeatedly asked them if they were ‘ANTIFA’ protesters,” according to a release from the sheriff’s office. “The family told the people they weren’t associated with any such group and were just camping.”

Officials say at least four vehicles followed the family and two of the vehicles had people in them carrying what appeared to be semi-automatic rifles. 

The family eventually made it to their campsite. But officials say the family became concerned for their safety after hearing gunshots and power saws down the road from where they were camping, so they decided to pack up and leave. 

As they drove down the road, the family discovered someone had fell trees across the road, preventing them from leaving. They called 911 for help. 

The sheriff’s office says as deputies were responding, they were contacted by four high school students, who used their own chainsaws to clear the roadway for the family. 

Deputies escorted the family, consisting of a husband and wife, their 16-year-old daughter, and the husband’s mother, to the sheriff’s department for their safety

  • Hundreds of mourners packed a Houston church Tuesday for the funeral of George Floyd, capping six days of mourning for the black man whose death has led to a global reckoning over police brutality and racial injustice.

Floyd, 46, was to be laid to rest next to his mother in the suburb of Pearland. He called out for her as a white Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee on his neck May 25.

  • The Phoenix Police Department will no longer train officers to use chokeholds effective immediately, according to a statement from police chief Jeri Williams.
  • The Washington, D.C. City Council on Tuesday passed a sweeping slate of measures to reform police conduct in the city, as calls grow for reforming law enforcement agencies after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The legislative package, which passed unanimously, included a ban on hiring officers with a history of serious misconduct on other police forces and requires the city to quickly disclose the names of officers who are in situations where they use force against citizens, The Washington Post reported. The city would also be required to disseminate their body-camera footage. 

The package also includes a measure that bans the Metropolitan Police Department from using chemical irritants or rubber bullets to disperse peaceful demonstrations. It also makes it a felony for officers to use a neck restraint against citizens.

  • A police chief in Tennessee who went viral last month for saying officers who “don’t have an issue” with the arrest and death of George Floyd should turn in their badges has issued new guidelines requiring officers to stop others from committing acts of police brutality and abuse of authority, and officers who fail to comply could face disciplinary action.

“Each department member has the individual responsibility to intervene and stop any other member from committing an unlawful or improper act,” the new policy reads.

  • Fencing around Lafayette Park across the street from the White House will remain up until further notice even as barriers south of the White House start to come down, officials said Tuesday.

Administration News

  • The Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump conservative super PAC, has launched an ad in battleground states highlighting former President Eisenhower’s leadership during the D-Day invasion of World War II and contrasting that with President Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and the nationwide protests that have erupted since the police killing of George Floyd.
  • The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Tuesday voted unanimously to propose a record-setting $225 million fine against Texas-based health insurance telemarketers for allegedly making approximately 1 billion illegally spoofed robocalls.

The order names two individuals using business names including Rising Eagle and JSquared Telecom. The FCC said robocalls falsely claimed to offer health insurance plans from major health insurance companies such as Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, and UnitedHealth Group.

  • The Navy is planning to ban Confederate flags from being displayed on any of its installations.
  • President Trump reportedly wanted to fire Defense Secretary Mark Esper last week after Esper broke with Trump and opposed the use of active-duty troops to quell nationwide protests, but Trump was talked out of it by advisers and lawmakers.
  • In a unanimous 98-0 vote presided over by Vice President Pence, a rare occasion, the Senate voted to confirm Gen. Charles “C.Q.” Brown as the Air Force’s next chief of staff, the U.S. military’s first African American service chief.
  • The Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group,said it will sue the White House if President Trump doesn’t walk back an executive order that waives endangered species protections along with a host of other environmental laws.

The order from Trump relies on emergency authority to waive the requirements of a number of environmental laws, arguing the U.S. needs to fast-track construction projects to fight the economic fallout tied to the coronavirus pandemic. 

Coronavirus/COVID-19

  • A top expert at the World Health Organization on Tuesday walked back her earlier assertion that transmission of the coronavirus by people who do not have symptoms is “very rare.”  

Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, who made the original comment at a W.H.O. briefing on Monday, said that it was based on just two or three studies and that it was a “misunderstanding” to say asymptomatic transmission is rare globally.

“I was just responding to a question, I wasn’t stating a policy of W.H.O. or anything like that,” she said.

  • Gilead’s remdesivir slows disease progression in monkeys with COVID-19. The drug has been cleared for emergency use in severely-ill patients in the U.S., India and South Korea. Some European nations are also using it under compassionate programs
  • Members of the D.C. National Guard that responded to protests against the death of George Floyd have tested positive for coronavirus.
  • The country’s top infectious disease doctor, Anthony Fauci, said the novel coronavirus is his “worst nightmare” and warned that it is far from over.
  • Sun Belt states have seen some of the biggest week-over-week increases — such as California (+18,883), Texas (+10,974) and Florida (+7,775). Arizona and North Carolina are emerging hot spots, while the number of new cases in the Northeast ebbs.
  • Arizona added nearly 7,000 new cases last week, and models maintained by the PolicyLab at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia show cases exploding in Maricopa County over the next few weeks.

Sources:  ABC News, Axios, CBS News, CNN, Financial Times, Fox News,The Hill, NBC News, NPR, NY Times, Politico, Reuters, Salon, Slate, Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post

The Past 24 Hours or So

Read Time: 8 Minutes

Protest News

  • Former Defense Secretary William Perry became the latest ex-defense chief to rip into President Trump, accusing the president of politicizing the country’s military.

“I support the right of protesters to demonstrate peacefully, and deplore the suggestion that our military should be used to suppress them,” Perry told Politico in a statement.

“The U.S. military is a powerful force that has served our nation well, in war and in peace. But it was never intended to be used against American citizens, and it was never intended to be used for partisan political purposes.”

  • “The idea that the president would take charge of the situation using the military was troubling to me,” former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey. “The idea that the military would be called in to dominate and to suppress what, for the most part, were peaceful protests — admittedly, where some had opportunistically turned them violent — and that the military would somehow come in and calm that situation was very dangerous to me.”
  • The White House is now surrounded by nearly two miles of fencing and barricades.
  • Minneapolis agreed Friday to ban chokeholds by police and to require officers to try to stop any other officers they see using improper force, in the first concrete steps to remake the city’s police department since George Floyd’s death.
  • Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took a knee during a rally in Ottawa over the death of George Floyd.
  • President Trump said News Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees should not have apologized for statements he made hammering players who kneel during the national anthem to protest racism and police brutality in the United States. 

“I am a big fan of Drew Brees. I think he’s truly one of the greatest quarterbacks, but he should not have taken back his original stance on honoring our magnificent American Flag. OLD GLORY is to be revered, cherished, and flown high,” Trump tweeted.

“We should be standing up straight and tall, ideally with a salute, or a hand on heart. There are other things you can protest, but not our Great American Flag – NO KNEELING!” he continued.

  • Sen. Kamala Harris clapped back at President Trump invoked George Floyd while giving a speech praising a minor upturn in the economy which has slumped amid the coronavirus pandemic, suggesting Floyd was “looking down” from heaven on this “good day.”

“Keep George Floyd’s name out of your mouth until you can say Black Lives Matter,” Harris responded.

  • The entire Buffalo Police Department Emergency Response Team has resigned from the unit after the department suspended two officers without pay after a viral video surfaced showing them pushing over a 75-year-old protester to the ground and then passing him to arrest a peaceful protester while he laid on the ground bleeding from the ear.
  • The U.S. Park Police is suddenly hedging its earlier claims it did not use tear gas to clear crowds near the White House on Monday ahead of President Trump’s visit to a nearby historic church, saying in a new statement that it was a “mistake” to say no tear gas was used given that the chemical agents they did use cause similar eye and lung irritation.

“I’m not saying it’s not a tear gas, but I’m just saying we use a pepper ball that shoots a powder,” Park Police spokesman Sgt. Eduardo Delgado.

  • Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office said she wanted to honor peaceful demonstrators who were forcibly removed from Lafayette Square by law enforcement officers so the city commissioned painters to spell out the words “Black Lives Matter” along the major road leading to the White House.
  • Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has requested that President Trump “withdraw all extraordinary federal law enforcement and military presence,” from the nation’s capital after the president mobilized the forces to deal with protests over the police killing of George Floyd.

“The deployment of federal law enforcement personnel and equipment are inflaming demonstrators and adding to the grievances of those who, by and large, are peacefully protesting for change and reforms to the racist and broken systems that are killing Black Americans.”

  • President Trump continued his attacks on Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, calling her “incompetent” after she demanded he withdraw military personnel and federal law enforcement from the city amid ongoing protests against the police killing of George Floyd.

“If she doesn’t treat these men and women well, then we’ll bring in a different group of men and women!”

  • Several members of the Minneapolis City Council have vowed to “dismantle” the city’s police department following the death of George Floyd. They have called for drastic overhauls into the handling of law enforcement — ranging from defunding the department to sending social workers, medics or mental health professionals to some calls currently handled by police.
  • William McRaven, the retired Navy admiral who oversaw the team that killed terror leader Osama bin Laden in 2011, condemned federal law enforcement officials for forcefully clearing peaceful protesters out of a DC square before President Trump visited the local church.

“You’re not gonna use, whether it’s the military or the National Guard or law enforcement, to clear peaceful American citizens for the president of the U.S. to do a photo-op. There is nothing morally right about that.”

  • Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon condemned President Trump’s treatment of protesters demonstrating against police brutality, saying it is “hard to not conclude” that the US leader is racist.

“If you don’t want to be accused of racism, then don’t use racist language.”

  • NFL commissioner Roger Goodell called for peaceful protests against police brutality in a new video, reversing past opposition to protests and saying the NFL admits “we were wrong for not listening” to players earlier. The move comes after the league implemented and repealed a policy against kneeling protests after Trump and conservatives took issue with the demonstrations by Colin Kaepernick and others.
  • The CEO of the company behind fashion brands Coach, Kate Spade and Stuart Weitzman dismissed stores being vandalized and looted during ongoing protests, saying the focus should be “on the cause.”

“We can replace our windows and handbags, but we cannot bring back George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Emmett Till, and too many others. Each of these black lives matter.”

  • An Ohio National Guardsman was removed from policing protests in Washington D.C. after the FBI found he expressed white supremacist ideology online. He’ll likely be ousted from the National Guard.
  • Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best has ordered a 30-day ban on the use of tear gas during protests, Mayor Jenny Durkan said in a news conference Friday.

Administration News

  • The Trump campaign removed an ad that violated NASA guidelines by featuring images of astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley.
  • The U.S added 2.5 million jobs in May and unemployment dropped to 13.3 percent as businesses begin to reopen after coronavirus-related closures, according to data released by the Labor Department on Friday.

The numbers shattered economist expectations that there would be another steep rise in joblessness.

  • Black unemployment hit its highest rate in a decade in May, despite a better-than-expected jobs report across the economy following the coronavirus closures.

For black workers, last month’s unemployment rate ticked up to 16.8 percent. For white workers, May’s unemployment rate dropped to 12.4 percent from a record high of 14.2 percent in April.

  • The unemployment rate is likely about 16.3 percent — about 3 percent higher than listed in the May jobs report that came out today. The numbers weren’t rigged, say experts; the Bureau of Labor Statistics report itself included reference to a major misclassification error.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, the agency that puts out the monthly jobs reports, said it was working to fix the problem.

  • President Trump on Friday declared it a “great day” for George Floyd after the monthly jobs report that showed unemployment falling — except for African Americans — and days of unrest sparked by Floyd’s killing.

“Hopefully George is looking down right now and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country. This is a great day for him, it’s a great day for everybody. This is a great day for everybody. This is a great, great day in terms of equality.”

  • President Trump has directed the Pentagon to remove thousands of U.S. troops from Germany by September.
  • President Trump issued an order which would remove protections from the Northeast Canyon and Seamounts — the only marine monument in the U.S. Atlantic Ocean. This move that would jeopardize hundreds of species is likely to be contested in court.

Coronavirus/COVID-19

  • New York on Thursday reported the lowest number of COVID-19 deaths in the state since the pandemic began. Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced 42 deaths were counted, an “amazing” improvement compared to 800 daily deaths two months ago.
  • President Trump signed legislation to extend the window for businesses to spend loans granted under coronavirus relief legislation, thanking Democrats for helping the measure pass almost unanimously through Congress: “I hope we can get along with the Democrats because it’s been a disaster for our relationship.”
  • The daily average for new coronavirus cases in the U.S. has been increasing slightly in recent days, with counts rising in the South and West.
  • Anders Tegnell, the epidemiologist who managed Sweden’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, said he should have implemented more restrictions to avoid the nation’s high coronavirus death toll. Sweden’s no-lockdown policy resulted in higher death tolls than neighboring countries like Denmark and Norway.

“If we were to encounter the same illness with the same knowledge that we have today, I think our response would land somewhere in between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world has done,” Tegnell said in an interview with Swedish Radio.

Sources:  ABC News, Axios, CBS News, CNN, Financial Times, Fox News,The Hill, NBC News, NPR, NY Times, Politico, Reuters, Salon, Slate, Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post