From the lectern, Ms. McEnany said renaming the bases would be “an insult” to the troops who served there and then were sent off to combat zones overseas. “To tell them that what they left was inherently a racist institution because of a name, that’s unacceptable to the president, and rightfully so,” she said.
She added that Mr. Trump would not compromise with lawmakers on the matter. “The president will not be signing legislation that renames America’s forts,” she said.
Leaning into the argument, Ms. McEnany then expanded on the point, criticizing HBO Max for announcing this week that it has temporarily removed “Gone With the Wind” from its catalog over concerns about the film’s romanticization of the slaveholding South.
“Where do you draw the line here?” Ms. McEnany asked.
Picking up an argument that Mr. Trump has made, she suggested that revered figures like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Franklin D. Roosevelt could be “erased from history” next. She then took it another step by suggesting that a highway truck stop named after former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, could be renamed because, by his own admission, he worked with segregationist lawmakers when he first arrived in the Senate, and they were powers in the Democratic caucus.
Mr. Trump, a native of New York who avoided military service during the Vietnam War citing bone spurs in his foot, has aligned himself repeatedly with Southern defenders of Confederate heritage, most notably during a rally in 2017 in Charlottesville, Va., that attracted white supremacists and turned violent.
Among those who say it is time to change the base names is Gen. David H. Petraeus, the retired Army commander in Iraq and Afghanistan who served at Fort Bragg three times.
“The irony of training at bases named for those who took up arms against the United States, and for the right to enslave others, is inescapable to anyone paying attention,” he wrote in The Atlantic on Tuesday. “Now, belatedly, is the moment for us to pay such attention.”
Editor’s Note: This story and headline have been updated to reflect a new account from David Pinney, who previously said he worked with George Floyd and Derek Chauvin.
A man who worked at the same club with George Floyd and Derek Chauvin – and previously told CBS News the two had “bumped heads” – changed his story Wednesday, saying he had mistaken Floyd for another unnamed African-American employee.
David Pinney told CBS News he worked at the same club where Chauvin and Floyd were employed to provide part-time security. Chauvin is the former police officer who is charged in Floyd’s death.
In an interview with CBS News, parts of which aired Tuesday, Pinney had described a tense relationship between Chauvin and a man who he said was Floyd, and said that the two knew each other “pretty well.”
On Wednesday, Pinney told CBS News in an email he had confused Floyd with someone else: “There has been a mix up between George and another fellow co-worker,” he wrote.
The club’s former owner, Maya Santamaria, had connected Pinney with CBS News. “She specifically said she was unable to give detail information about George because she did not have a close relationship with him as I did,” Pinney said in the email. He said that led to his mistake.
“I apologize for not doing my due diligence and placing you in a very uncomfortable situation,” he wrote.
Pinney had also described Chauvin as “extremely aggressive within the club,” a characterization he stands by.
On June 6, in a 50-minute-long videotaped interview with CBS News, Pinney described, in detail, several interactions he recalled between Floyd and Chauvin.
“Is there any doubt in your mind that Derek Chauvin knew George Floyd?” CBS News asked Pinney. “No. He knew him,” Pinney said.
“How well did he know him?” CBS News asked. “I would say pretty well,” Pinney replied.
“I knew George on a work basis,” he said. “We were pretty close. When it came to our security positions, he was in charge and I worked directly below him as a security adviser.”
Pinney said he worked with Floyd for about five or six months in late 2015 and early 2016.
Pinney originally described how he worked with Floyd to break up fights: “He was good at talking with people and establishing himself. He never had to put his hands on anybody. Usually his presence would stop people from having any type of competition with one another.”
Pinney also said, “Our job, in a security position, was to hold the peace in the club and separate the guests if there was an issue. And honestly, we had very few issues when we worked together in the club.”
He initially described a close bond: “It’s a difference when you work side by side with somebody. Like, I see him like a brother….”
Pinney also described working with both men and said Floyd didn’t want to interact with Chauvin because of Chauvin’s aggressive behavior.
“…..he always showed aggression to, you know, George. So George, to keep it professional, George had me intervene and – interface with him instead of himself, just to be – just to get away from the conflict and keep it professional.”
Pinney also said: “I can relate to George, how he felt. And I think that’s what makes that personal bond between him and I, dealing with Derek.”
CBS News has confirmed that as part of the investigation, investigators are looking at whether the two men knew each other, and if so, what the relationship was.
Santamaria told CBS News that investigators have asked her questions about the two men and whether there had been any disputes.
Chauvin has been charged with second-degree murder. The Floyd family says they believe what happened on May 25 was in part personal. Their lawyer has previously called for Chauvin to be charged with first-degree murder, “because we believe he knew who George Floyd was.”
Amid a new wave of coronavirus cases in many states and protests against police brutality, President Trump announced Wednesday that he will resume his campaign rallies on June 19 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, located in a county that’s seeing coronavirus infections spiking dramatically.
CHARLOTTE, NC – MARCH 2: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to supporters during a rally on March 2, … [+] 2020 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Trump was campaigning ahead of Super Tuesday. (Photo by Brian Blanco/Getty Images)
Getty Images
KEY FACTS
It’ll be Trump’s first rally since March 2, with the resumption of his free-wheeling live events coming amid the president’s flailing approval ratings and poor head-to-head performance in polls against presumptive Democratic candidate Vice President Joe Biden.
During the pandemic, Trump compensated for his inability to hold in-person events with elongated, televised White House briefings, and later used official visits to manufacturing facilities in swing states as pseudo campaign stops.
Tulsa County on Tuesday reported its largest one-day increase in confirmed cases, beating its previous record at the end of April and bringing the total in the county to 1,261 cases.
The rally will also take place on Juneteenth, a day commemorating the end of slavery in the U.S., and around two weeks removed from the 99th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre, when a white mob destroyed the prospering “Black Wall Street” neighborhood of Greenwood and killed as many as 300 black people.
Trump rallies are also planned in Florida, Texas, Arizona and North Carolina; the campaign has yet to detail safety procedures.
In total, there are 1,994,834 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the United States with new cases still rising in 19 states, as well as 112,647 reported deaths.
Key background
Trump’s campaign has pointed to the protests occurring during the pandemic as justification to jumpstart the rallies again. Demonstrators are pushing for accountability and policy changes in policing following the death of Floyd while he was being forcibly restrained by Minneapolis police officers including Derek Chauvin, who knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Some local municipalities have taken action, from banning chokeholds to cutting funding to announcing plans to disband and rebuild departments. The Trump administration has yet to propose any policy it would support but has said changes to qualified immunity protections outlined in a House bill are a “nonstarter.”
The police crackdown to clear protesters from Lafayette Square last week looms as a defining moment in the national debate over race and law enforcement that followed the death of George Floyd.
An exclusive USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds Americans overwhelmingly endorse the right of peaceful protest outside the White House – a view held by nearly 9 of 10 people across racial and partisan lines. Nearly 9 of 10 heard about the clashes that cleared demonstrators before President Donald Trump walked across the square to stand in front of historic St. John’s Church, holding aloft a Bible.
In their wake, Americans by a huge margin, by 22 percentage points, express more trust in the Black Lives Matter movement to promote justice and racial equality than they do in the president of the United States. Former President Barack Obama is more than twice as likely as Trump to be seen as a president who could best handle this moment of civil unrest.
Two-thirds of Americans, 63%, oppose the show of force that swept the protesters from the park just north of the White House, the scene of many demonstrations in the past. Almost half, 44%, say they “strongly” oppose it.
“That was a bad call,” says Aaron Jones, 40, a Republican from Katy, Texas.
Charles Ritt, 56, a Democrat from Roseville, Minnesota, who watched the scene unfold on TV, called it “disgusting and ridiculous.”
Some of those surveyed side with law enforcement.
“That’s kind of sad that force had to be used,” says Jane Gillespie, 26, a Republican from Glendale, Arizona. “But it seemed like they felt like there was a threat to the president, and that’s why they were acting the way they did.”
Thirty percent of those surveyed, including 50% of Republicans, support the use of rubber bullets and tear gas in the park.
The online poll of 1,113 adults, taken Monday and Tuesday, has a credibility interval, akin to a margin of error, of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.
Divisions along racial and especially partisan lines remain, including when it comes to finding the right balance between protecting peaceful protests and ensuring law and order. Americans are split down the middle: 45% say law and order should be the priority, 44% say the right to protest should be the priority.
Biden more trusted to promote justice
The poll underscores the degree to which the president’s provocative comments about the demonstrations in particular and the issue of racial justice in general seem out of step with the mood of the country.
The poll was in the field when Trump posted a controversial tweet Tuesday that promoted an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory about a 75-year-old protester who was pushed to the ground and injured by police in Buffalo, New York.
Thirty-eight percent of Americans say they trust Trump to promote justice and equal treatment for people of all races – much lower than the Black Lives Matter movement, trusted by 60%, or the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, trusted by 51%.
Asked to choose among the current president and the four former presidents who are living, 45% of Americans identify Obama as the one best suited to handle the challenges. Twenty percent choose Trump.
Among Democrats, 75% choose Obama. Among Republicans, 43% choose Trump, lower than the support he and his actions generally command within the GOP. Eighteen percent of Republicans choose former President George W. Bush and 15% choose Obama.
“I think it speaks volumes that the (former) presidents have kind of unified and that so much of the country is unified in its feeling,” says Brittany Baca, 31, a Democrat from Oregon City, Oregon, referring to public statements issued by former presidents expressing support for the protesters. Trump “is making opposite, opposing statements” that she calls “atrocious.”
Baca, the daughter of a police officer, says cellphone videos showing police violence against Floyd and other African Americans were an awakening for her and others. “It just breaks our hearts to hear what’s going on in the country,” she says in a follow-up phone interview. “This feels terrible to say, but it’s really opened our eyes to the fact that it’s happening.”
Mostly peaceful or mostly violent?
On some questions, the partisan divide is yawning.
Three-fourths of Democrats, 73%, say the protests after Floyd’s death have been mostly peaceful; a 54% majority of Republicans say they have been mostly violent.
Two-thirds of Democrats, 65%, say the right to protest is the most important thing to ensure, “even if it means there are some incidents of violence.” Two-thirds of Republicans, 69%, say law and order is the most important thing to ensure, “even if it means limiting peaceful protests.”
Three-fourths of Democrats, 75%, oppose the idea of deploying U.S. military forces to states in the wake of the Lafayette Square protest. Two-thirds of Republicans, 68%, support the idea.
“Views toward George Floyd’s killing and the subsequent protests tell a tale of two Americas,” says Cliff Young, president of Ipsos. “The vast difference of opinions and experiences here highlight not only a deep racial divide but one based on partisanship.”
There are jarring differences along partisan lines about what institutions and forces can be trusted to promote justice and equal treatment. Republicans most trust the U.S. military (89%) and police and law enforcement (79%). Democrats most trust Black Lives Matter (84%) and Joe Biden (78%).
The divide is also racial. Black people express much lower levels of trust in police and law enforcement than white people do, 28% compared with 65%.
A solid majority of Americans agree on some basics. Sixty percent say Floyd was murdered; just 2% say the police officer “did nothing wrong.” Sixty-five percent support the protests that followed, and 87% support protesting peacefully outside the White House.
Ten days after demonstrators were cleared from Lafayette Square, it continues to be a center of protest activity. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser renamed a section of the street “Black Lives Matter Plaza,” and a makeshift shrine to Floyd covers part of an expanded security fence that was erected around the White House.
“By protesting and reacting, that shows me that people still have a sense of humanity about them, and they believe … that their expression of how they feel and what they think can still have the desired effect,” says Maira Nigam, 62, a Democrat from Stamford, Connecticut, though she adds with a touch of skepticism: “So they still have hope. We’ll see if that holds up.”
In 2017, when a shortage of inpatient psychiatric beds in Dallas was driving up the number of 911 calls, overwhelming emergency rooms and crowding jails with mentally ill people, the city decided to try something different.
It put an officer, a paramedic and a social worker in every car responding to mental health calls in the city’s troubled south-central region, an attempt to get people the help they needed without an arrest or violent confrontation. The pilot program, RIGHT Care, led to a drop in arrests in the area.
RIGHT Care is one of several programs across the country drawing the attention of activists seeking to end law enforcement’s systemic abuse of black Americans. In the aftermath of George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police last month, protesters in many cities have said they are fed up with trying to change police behavior and are instead advancing a more radical idea: to “defund the police” by cutting their budgets and offloading police functions to other municipal departments or community groups.
Taken literally, calls to defund police departments conjure images of empty precinct stations and the proliferation of citizen patrols. But if the ideas behind the movement take hold, their implementation may look less like the Minneapolis City Council’s vote to disband its police department and instead resemble more moderate experiments already underway in cities and towns around the country. That includes projects like RIGHT Care that don’t reject police or seek to take away their entire budget but rather aim to decrease their role in situations that are not dangerous, while allowing medical and social services workers to take the lead.
“There is no magic switch to turn off and boom there’s no police department,” said Alex Vitale, a sociology professor at Brooklyn College, whose 2017 book “The End of Policing” has become a manifesto for protesters and police-reform advocates.
“People are trying to figure out what kind of society would be possible that doesn’t rely on police and prisons to solve its problems, and that’s a long-term political vision that is important to this movement. But if you look at what people are doing on the ground, it’s taking money for gang enforcement and spending it on after-school programs and youth counselors. It’s about going to budget hearings and lobbying city council members and holding town hall meetings in neighborhood centers.”
Driving this effort is a realization that police use of deadly force against black people has not abated in the six years since a string of killings of black men by police ignited a national call for more police training and accountability.
Instead of trying to change things from within — a process that funneled more resources to police departments — the defund movement calls for reducing communities’ reliance on police for a number of services: monitoring the homeless, resolving domestic quarrels, disciplining students, responding to outbursts by people with mental illness, swarming neighborhoods to tamp down violence and responding to minor complaints like someone trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill, the accusation that triggered the police call that ended in Floyd’s death.
Demonstrators call for defunding the Minneapolis Police Department on June 6, 2020.Stephen Maturen / Getty Images
That work, advocates say, could be better done by outreach workers, social workers and community workers trained to de-escalate street feuds. That could be paid for by diverting money from police budgets to municipal programs that deal with underlying causes of crime, including poverty, inadequate housing and poor education.
“When we talk about defunding the police, what we’re saying is invest in the resources that our communities need,” Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza told NBC News’ “Meet the Press.” “So much of policing right now is generated and directed towards quality-of-life issues, homelessness, drug addiction, domestic violence. … But what we do need is increased funding for housing, we need increased funding for education, we need increased funding for quality of life of communities who are over-policed and over-surveilled.”
Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza speaks in Las Vegas in 2018. Sam Morris / Getty Images file
Some cities have responded with gestures of support. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has pledged to shift money from the NYPD budget to youth and social-services programs. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has vowed to pull $150 million from the LAPD to boost funding for health care, jobs and “peace centers” — which critics noted was a small drop in the department’s $1.8 billion budget. Portland, Oregon, has agreed to pull police from public schools. Several Minneapolis institutions, including the public school district, the University of Minnesota and the Park and Recreation Board, have moved to curtail or end their contracts with city police.
Law enforcement officials have said cutting police budgets could cause a dangerous uptick in crime and police abuses. Attorney General William Barr has warned of “vigilantism” and “more killings.” President Donald Trump has threatened to use the movement against Democrats. Former Vice President Joe Biden, who is running against Trump, also came out against defunding police.
And so the movement will likely remain a local issue, playing out in municipal budget battles and emulating programs like RIGHT Care in Dallas.
RIGHT Care was funded by a $3 million grant from a local foundation in response to the overwhelming demand of emergency mental health calls, not only on hospitals but also police. As in many departments around the country, officers in Dallas had come under scrutiny for using deadly force on black residents, including those suffering emotional breakdowns. David Brown, who served as police chief from 2010 to 2016, was criticized for saying the officers who shot a schizophrenic man holding a screwdriver in 2014 followed department rules. Brown later said publicly that police should not be responding to most mental health calls, which is part of the reason Dallas police agreed to become part of RIGHT Care.
Since the program began in early 2018, arrests and ambulance calls for people experiencing mental health troubles have declined in the south-central region of Dallas where the program operates, which has freed up officers to deal with other calls, officials said.
“Police involvement is still very important to this program,” said Kurtis Young, director of social work at Parkland Health and Hospital System, which provides social workers to the program. “It’s not taking away something or defunding police. It’s adding a service to the community.”
Another example cited by advocates is Building Healthy Communities, a project in Salinas, California, where fatal shootings by police — including four in 2014 — frayed public trust and led to an array of internal reform efforts aimed at correcting deficiencies identified in a 2015 Justice Department review of the department. The police killing of a young mother in 2019 raised new protests.
With that backdrop, Building Healthy Communities has successfully fought an increase in school police officers in elementary schools and lobbies city leaders to prioritize social services and economic development over expanded police budgets. Lead organizer Jesus Valenzuela said their work is similar in spirit to the “defund the police” movement, but they are careful not to use those words because they want to work with police and avoid being demonized by people who support law enforcement.
“Our message is not explicitly ‘defund the police,’ but we do want money to come from the budget,” Valenzuela said. “The moment we say ‘defund the police,’ the reaction is to make us look like we are anti-police. We become part of the pro- and anti-police narrative.”
Police detain protesters as they march during a solidarity rally for George Floyd in New York on May 30, 2020.Wong Maye-E / AP
In Milwaukee, where neighborhoods erupted in unrest following the fatal police shooting of a black man in 2016, police have also enacted a series of reforms regarding use of force. In addition, the city has created an Office of Violence Prevention and put it under the health department, where it uses public health strategies, rather than just police enforcement, to reduce shootings and other serious crimes. The office helped residents develop a “Blueprint for Peace” that outlines “community-driven solutions” to violence, including methods to interrupt conflicts and retaliatory gun attacks, increase investment in youth programs and improve health care, family resources and employment opportunities in vulnerable neighborhoods.
That approach tries to correct imbalances in funding between those services and police operations, and is similar in spirit to the strategy advocated by defund the police proponents. But the Milwaukee plan is envisioned as complementing police work, not cutting it out.
“We don’t look at this as an either/or proposition,” Reggie Moore, the office’s director, said.
Advocates have also pointed to a Eugene, Oregon, program that dispatches medics and crisis workers on calls for help that don’t necessarily require police, and the Health Alliance for Violence Intervention, a network of hospital-based programs that try to break cycles of violence by helping victims get better health care and social services.
Even in Minneapolis, City Council members who voted to dismantle the police department said they will take an incremental approach. That will start with an effort to redirect funds from the police to other programs — including the city’s own violence-prevention office — that might become part of whatever the city’s new public safety system looks like, several council members said in an online panel hosted by The Appeal, a journalism website that focuses on criminal justice reform.
“We’re talking about abolishing a failed police structure that doesn’t keep us safe,” Council Member Jeremiah Ellison said.
He also said that the replacement would include a system that responds to violent crime.
David Kennedy, director of the National Network for Safe Communities at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, which works with police and community leaders to disrupt gun violence, said he’s watched the defund movement evolve from an “advocacy aspiration to political reality almost overnight.”
The challenge, he added, was that “almost all of the details still need to be worked out.”
Hours after George Floyd was laid to rest in Houston, his younger brother made an impassioned plea to Congress to prevent his death from becoming just “another name” on an ever-growing list of black Americans killed by police.
Philonise Floyd testified before a House hearing in Washington on Wednesday amid a national reckoning over race and policing that has drawn millions to the street in protest and cries for action to be taken in every institution of American life, including government, military, media and entertainment, sports, academia, business, science and tech.
“I’m tired. I’m tired of the pain I’m feeling now, and I’m tired of the pain I feel every time another Black person is killed for no reason,” he said, his voice rising with emotion as he addressed the committee. “I’m here today to ask you to make it stop. Stop the pain.”
The room fell silent as he testified, gripped by the rawness of his grief. Many wore masks while some attended the hearing virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Lawmakers also heard testimony from national civil rights leaders, including the Floyd family lawyer, Benjamin Crump, who advocated for a range of reforms to police practices and accountability. Some witnesses seized on calls by protesters to “defund the police” – an effort to reimagine public safety by cutting budgets for police departments and redirecting the funding toward social services – to warn that lawmakers risked going too far and impeding public safety.
George Floyd died in custody after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, ignoring his protests of “I can’t breathe.”
The Memorial Day encounter on 25 May, which began with a call about an alleged attempt to use a counterfeit $20 bill at a local market, touched off demonstrations around the world that have already prompted local leaders to act to curb the powers of police as public support for the Black Lives Matter movement surges.
“Is that what a Black man’s life is worth? Twenty dollars?” Philonise Floyd said. “This is 2020. Enough is enough.”
“Be the leaders that this country, this world, needs,” he continued. “Do the right thing.”
Democrats unveiled sweeping legislation this week aimed at combating excessive use of force by police and limiting legal protections for officers accused of misconduct.
Republicans have scrambled to respond to the growing calls for reform. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the lone Black Republican in the chamber, has been tasked with drafting a conservative legislative response.
But their efforts are complicated by the president, whose incendiary response to the protests – and blunt calls for “LAW AND ORDER” – have only inflamed tensions.
On Wednesday, he tweeted that he would “not even consider” renaming military bases named after Confederate leaders, even though the Pentagon said it would consider the move.
This week, thousands of mourners attended vigils and memorials for George Floyd, which culminated in his funeral in Houston on Tuesday. In his eulogy, the Rev Al Sharpton, the civil rights leader, called George Floyd an “ordinary brother” who had become the “cornerstone of a movement that’s going to change the whole wide world”.
In death, George Floyd became an international symbol of police violence and injustice. But in life he was a father, a brother, a “gentle giant”, Philonise Floyd told lawmakers on Wednesday.
While the video of Floyd pinned to the street under the knee of a police officer started a distinct new wave in the justice movement, the family is clearly finding it deeply painful to constantly relive his final moments in what seems like an unending loop on TV and online.
“I just think about that video over and over again,” Philonise Floyd said, wiping tears from his face. “You don’t do that to a human being, you don’t even do that to an animal.”
“Justice has to be served,” he said. “Those officers have to be convicted.”
The four officers involved in Floyd’s death have been fired from the force and have been charged by the state attorney general. But activists want more – they are demanding systemic changes to policing to prevent future deaths at the hands of police.
In response to the protests, Minneapolis city council pledged to dismantle and restructure the city’s police department, and other cities are proposing reforms, infuriating some powerful police unions.
In testimony on Wednesday, the Houston police chief, Art Acevedo, said there was “no denying that changes in policing must be made”.
Philonise Floyd with Democratic congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee at Wednesday’s hearing. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images
Yet the hearing laid bare the political divide that has long stood as a barrier to policing reform in America.
The committee chair and Democrat Jerrold Nadler urged Congress to adopt the Democrats’ Justice in Policing Act of 2020, which he says would create a “guardian – not warrior – model of policing”.
Republican Jim Jordan of Ohio, agreed that it was “time for a real discussion” about police misconduct and discrimination. But he tried to tie Democrats to calls for defunding, which he called “pure insanity”.
Among witnesses called by Republicans was Angela Underwood Jacobs, the sister of Dave Patrick Underwood, an African American security officer contracted by the Federal Protective Service who was fatally shot while guarding a courthouse in California during the unrest after Floyd’s death.
Speaking to Philonise Floyd, Jacobs said she mourned with his family. But despite most protests being peaceful, she said discrimination was no excuse to “loot and burn our communities” and “kill our officers of the law”.
Meanwhile, the congresswoman Lucy McBath of Georgia told Philonise Floyd: “I know your pain.”
McBath’s son, Jordan Davis was murdered at 17 by a white man after refusing to turn down rap music in his car.
Philonise Floyd urged Congress to at least make his brother’s killing a catalyst for reform.
“If his death ends up changing the world for the better – and I think it will, I think it has – then he died as he lived,” he said in closing. “It is on you to make sure his death isn’t in vain.”
Hours after George Floyd was laid to rest in Houston, his younger brother made an impassioned plea to Congress to take action and prevent his death from becoming just “another name” on an ever-growing list of unarmed Black Americans killed at the hands of police.
Philonise Floyd testified before a House hearing in Washington on Wednesday amid a national reckoning over race and policing in America that has drawn millions to the street in protest and unleashed
“I’m tired. I’m tired of the pain I’m feeling now, and I’m tired of the pain I feel every time another Black person is killed for no reason,” he said, his voice rising with emotion as he addressed the committee. “I’m here today to ask you to make it stop. Stop the pain.”
The room was silent as he testified, gripped by the rawness of his grief.
George Floyd died in custody after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, ignoring his protests of “I can’t breathe.”
The Memorial Day encounter, which began with a call about an alleged attempt to use a counterfeit $20 bill at a local market, touched off demonstrations around the world that have already prompted local leaders to act to curb the powers of police as public support for the Black Lives Matter movement surges.
“Is that what a Black man’s life is worth? Twenty dollars?” Philonise Floyd said. “This is 2020. Enough is enough.
“Be the leaders that this country, this world, needs,” he continued. “Do the right thing.”
Democrats unveiled sweeping legislation this week aimed at combating excessive use of force by police and limiting legal protections for officers accused of misconduct. The measure, the most expansive effort by Congress to overhaul policing in modern times, make it easier to track, prosecute and punish police misconduct; prohibit chokeholds, limit the use of deadly force; ban no-knock warrants for drug-related crimes as well as tie federal grant money to training and practices that aim to reduce racial bias and discrimination.
Republicans have scrambled to respond to the growing calls for reform. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the lone Black Republican in the chamber, has been charged with drafting a conservative legislative response that the party can coalesce around.
But their efforts are complicated by the president, whose incendiary response to the protests – and repeated calls for “LAW AND ORDER” – have only inflamed tensions. During a meeting this week, Donald Trump suggested that incidents of police brutality were isolated and not systemic, insisting that virtually all officers are “great people”.
On Wednesday, Trump tweeted that he would “not even consider” renaming military bases named after Confederate leaders, even though the Pentagon said it would consider the move. This comes as several states, the navy and the marines have taken steps to remove or ban Confederate-era symbols and insignia.
Thousands of mourners attended vigils and memorials for George Floyd, which culminated in his funeral in Houston on Tuesday. In his eulogy, the Rev Al Sharpton, the civil rights leader, called George Floyd an “ordinary brother” who had become the “cornerstone of a movement that’s going to change the whole wide world”.
In death, George Floyd became an international symbol of police violence and injustice. But in life he was a father, a brother, a “gentle giant”, Philonise Floyd told lawmakers.
While the video of the encounter ignited the movement, it is deeply painful for his family to constantly relive his final moments in what seems like an unending loop on TV and online.
“I just think about that video over and over again,” Philonise Floyd said, wiping tears from his face. “You don’t do that to a human being, you don’t even do that to an animal.”
“Justice has to be served,” he said. “Those officers have to be convicted.”
The four officers involved in Floyd’s death have been fired from the force and now face criminal charges. But activists want more – they are demanding systemic changes to policing to prevent future deaths at the hands of police.
In response to the protests, a veto-proof majority of the Minneapolis city council pledged to dismantle the city’s police department and replace it with a new community-based system of public safety. Meanwhile, cities like Houston and San Diego have moved to ban chokeholds while New York and Los Angeles are considering changes to their policing budgets.
Such actions have infuriated police unions, which have long stood in the way of efforts by local officials to curb police powers. But some law enforcement officials believe change is not only inevitable but necessary.
In testimony on Wednesday, Art Acevedo, the chief of police in Houston who has been outspoken about the death of George Floyd, said there was “no denying that changes in policing must be made”.
“In crisis comes opportunity,” he said, referring to the political moment.
Philonise Floyd with Democratic congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee at Wednesday’s hearing. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images
Yet the hearing laid bare the political divide that has long stood as a barrier to policing reform in America.
Congressman Jerry Nadler, a Democrat of New York and the chairman of the House judiciary committee, opened the panel’s hearing by urging Congress to adopt the Democrats’ Justice in Policing Act of 2020, which he says would create a “guardian – not warrior – model of policing”.
The ranking Republican on the panel, congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio, agreed that now was the “time for a real discussion” about police misconduct and discrimination.
But he seized on calls by protesters to “defund the police” – an effort to reimagine public safety by cutting budgets for police departments and redirecting the funding toward social services – and accused Democrats of supporting the movement which he called “pure insanity”.
Among the witnesses called by Republicans was Angela Underwood Jacobs, the sister of Dave Patrick Underwood, an African American security officer contracted by the Federal Protective Service who was fatally shot while guarding a federal courthouse in California during the unrest that followed Floyd’s death.
Speaking directly to Philonise Floyd, Jacobs said she mourned with his family and understood their anguish. But she said discrimination was no excuse to “loot and burn our communities” and “kill our officers of the law”.
She called demands to defund, dismantle or abolish police departments “ridiculous” and said such solutions would only further erode the “safety net of protection that every citizen deserves”.
Philonise Floyd did not address the protesters’ demands directly. But he urged Congress not to let this moment pass.
“If his death ends up changing the world for the better – and I think it will, I think it has – then he died as he lived,” he said in closing. “It is on you to make sure his death isn’t in vain.”
Since Arizona lifted its stay-at-home order on May 15, coronavirus cases have increased 115%, reaching record highs and leading officials to call on hospitals to “fully activate” their emergency plans as intensive care units reach capacity.
A patient is taken to the emergency room of a hospital in the Navajo Nation town of Tuba City during … [+] the 57 hour curfew, imposed to try to stop the spread of the Covid-19 virus through the Navajo Nation, in Arizona on May 24, 2020.
MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images
KEY FACTS
Ventilated Covid-19 patients in Arizona have increased by 400% since reopening, according to Banner Health, Arizona’s largest medical network, who warned its ICU facilities are approaching capacity.
76% of the state’s ICU beds were occupied as of Monday, according to CNN.
The state health director instructed hospitals on June 6 to “fully activate” their emergency plans, meaning they should increase ICU capacity by 50%, suspend elective surgeries and staff medical volunteers, among other things.
A former state health chief warned the state may need to implement new social distancing measures or build field hospitals, according to Reuters.
“Alarming” is how Dr. William Hanage, an epidemiology professor at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, characterized Arizona’s situation to AZ Central. “The only sort of crumb of comfort that I can find is that I think, in general, it’s sort of easier to social distance in Arizona than it is in some places.”
Big Number
28,396. That’s the number of Arizona Covid-19 cases, 1,074 of which have been fatal, per New York Times data.
Crucial Quote
“He’s going to have to either A) implement a field hospital plan, B) do another stay-at-home order, or C) both,” Will Humble, former Arizona health chief, told Reuters about what Gov. Doug Ducey must do to control the disease spread.
Key Background
Coronavirus is on the rise in 19 states, and decreasing in 24 states. Experts warn there may be another peak in cases due to the cohort of people congregating in public places—which includes the racial justice protests occurring across the country. North Carolina is also experiencing a record-breaking number of hospitalizations with 37,226 cases and 1,068 deaths, and is urging anyone who attended a protest to get tested for the disease regardless of whether or not they are experiencing symptoms. And further down south, new cases have risen in Montgomery, Alabama, by over 500% since the beginning of May, causing full occupancy in area hospital ICU beds.
REXBURG, Idaho — A judge set bail at $1 million Wednesday for Chad Daybell in the case of his wife’s missing children, in a development that comes a day after police found two sets of children’s remains at his rural Idaho home.
Daybell, 51, is charged with concealing evidence after the Tuesday discovery in the search for Joshua “JJ” Vallow, 7, and his big sister, Tylee Ryan, 17. Both were last seen in September.
Although authorities have not yet publicly identified the remains, JJ’s grandmother Kay Woodcock confirmed that one set belongs to the boy, the East Idaho News reported.
The children’s mother, Lori Vallow Daybell, is awaiting trial on charges including child abandonment.
Fremont County Magistrate Judge Faren Eddins sided with prosecutor Rob Wood’s request of $1 million bail for Chad Daybell, noting the evidence that he is accused of concealing is human remains.
“It’s not simply a document, drugs, a gun,” Wood argued. “These are human remains and although those human remains have not been positively identified, we are aware that those remains are the remains of children.”
He called the manner of concealment for one body “particularly egregious” and argued that Chad Daybell is a flight risk.
Eddins ordered Daybell to wear an ankle monitor if he raises bail and said he would be ordered to remain within a three-county area, avoid any contact with victims’ families and keep in touch with his attorney.
Daybell, 51, appeared in court over a video feed from jail, wearing a gray striped jail uniform and sitting next to his defense attorney. He answered brief questions from the judge, responding “yes” when asked if he understood his rights.
Attorney John Prior argued for bail of no more than $100,000, noting that his client is not charged with a crime more serious than evidence tampering. Daybell has family and property in the area and has “every intention of addressing these issues,” Prior said.
His client did not try to run when police showed up at his home Tuesday, and while the case has drawn widespread attention, “publicity is not a reason to raise the bail to an extraordinary amount,” Prior argued.
Rexburg police said Wednesday they have notified those whom they believe are family members of the deceased.
“Autopsy results are pending,” Assistant Rexburg Police Chief Gary Hagen said.
Kay and Larry Woodcock, JJ’s grandparents, asked for privacy Tuesday night and said police had notified them of the discovery at Daybell’s home.
This combination photo of undated photos released by National Center for Missing & Exploited Children show missing children Joshua “JJ” Vallow, left, and Tylee Ryan. Their relatives are offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to their recovery.National Center for Missing & Exploited Children via Associated Press
Daybell was booked into the Fremont County Jail a short time after several police agencies served a search warrant and made the discovery at his Salem property just north of Rexburg Tuesday.
He faces two charges of destroying or concealing evidence, a felony offense. A conviction carries up to five years in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Chad Daybell, 51, of Salem, Idaho, was arrested and booked into Idaho’s Fremont County Jail Tuesday. Authorities said they recovered human remains at his home as they served search warrants in the case of his wife Lori Daybell’s missing children.Fremont County Sheriff’s Office
A criminal complaint alleges that Daybell either helped or hid the remains sometime between Sept. 8, 2019 and June 9, when the FBI and the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office helped Rexburg police in serving a sealed search warrant at Daybell’s home. Aerial photos showed large mounds, tarps and tents in an expansive yard there Tuesday.
Authorities in Rexburg say the Daybells have lied several times about the children’s whereabouts and noted Lori Daybell flew to Hawaii the day after police first questioned her and her new husband.
The case also includes investigations into three mysterious deaths of people the couple is tied to and their rumored apocalyptic religious beliefs. They have both been involved in an Idaho-based group that promotes preparing for the biblical end of times.
The Idaho Attorney General’s Office is investigating them in the death of Chad Daybell’s former wife, Tammy Daybell. Two weeks after she died in her sleep, Lori and Chad Daybell wed in Hawaii.
Her remains were exhumed, but an autopsy report has not yet been released.
Lori Vallow appears in court in Kauai, Hawaii, on Friday, Feb. 21, 2020.Pool photo
Lori Daybell’s estranged husband, Charles Vallow, was shot and killed by her brother Alex Cox before Cox’s own death, which was determined to be from natural causes. In divorce documents filed before his death, Vallow alleged that his wife believes she is “a god assigned to carry out the work of the 144,000 at Christ’s second coming in July 2020.”
Chad Daybell returns to court for a preliminary hearing July 1; Lori Daybell is due back in court the following week.
NBC News is a leading source of global news and information. Here you will find clips from NBC Nightly News, Meet The Press, and original digital videos. Subscribe to our channel for news stories, technology, politics, health, entertainment, science, business, and exclusive NBC investigations.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is an elitist who is leaving the residents unsafe, Fox News contributor Gianno Caldwell says after Chicago marks its deadliest day in 60 years.
Fox News political analyst and Chicago native Gianno Caldwell called out the Democratic mayor of his hometown for abandoning the city’s African-American residents, after Chicago experienced its single most violent day in six decades, amid protests and riots in the wake of the death of George Floyd.
“This is not a mayor who is for the people. This is not a mayor, who the African-Americans, who mostly put her in office, this is not who they picked,” said Caldwell on “Fox and Friends” on Wednesday, blasting Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
“She is an elitist and she’s proven it — time and time again,” he argued. “And she’s leaving the city residents unsafe.”
Criticism of Lightfoot was amplified on June 5, after a recording of a May 31 conference call to discuss violent and destructive riots in the city was released by WTTW-TV.
In the audio, Chicago Alderman Raymond Lopez tells Lightfoot, “Half our neighborhoods are already obliterated… we have to come up with a better plan because my fear is once they are done looting and rioting and whatever is going to happen tonight, God help us, what happens when they start going after residents?”
“I have got gang bangers with AK-47s walking around right now waiting to settle some scores …” Lopez continued.
“I think you’re 100 percent full of s—, is what I think,” Lightfoot responded. “If you think we were not ready and we stood by and let the neighborhood go up, there is nothing intelligent that I can say to you…”
Caldwell said that Lightfoot, like her Democratic predecessors, is shirking responsibility.
“They were not ready and it is a complete lie that she is telling,” he said, “From Mayor Rahm Emanuel to Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the city officials there have completely and totally failed and every alderman has every right to be upset.”
According to Caldwell, Lightfoot made the decision to deploy National Guardsmen to protect predominately white areas of Chicago, leaving black residents to fend for themselves.
“On May 31, the city 911 center received 65,000 calls to 911. That’s 50,000 more than they typically get,” he explained, “The mayor requested … National Guard members and instead of pushing them throughout the city, she said no, we’re going to protect the downtown communities and those businesses, which is typically where white people live.”
“It’s not wrong that we are protecting those areas, but she left disenfranchised people, the businesses that are minority-owned on the south and west sides, available for the looters and rioters.”
“Now we think about the liberals throughout the country are saying ‘defund the police,’ one of the stupidest mottos you can have at this particular point,” Caldwell concluded. “Say that to the people of Chicago, say that to the poor black people that are living there. They do not want to see the police defunded. They want to see more police in their communities — community policing.”
Caldwell is a product of Chicago, and as detailed in the Fox Nation documentary, “The New Battle for Chicago,” he determined early on in his life that he would dedicate himself to helping the city’s people.
“One day my grandfather and I were driving through this area in Chicago called Englewood. It’s one of the worst-off communities in Chicago — gangs, violence, drugs,” narrated Caldwell, who was rescued by his grandparents after his mother became addicted to drugs and incapable of caring for him and his siblings.
“He begins to tell me about the elected officials and the power they have to effect real change in people’s lives,” Caldwell continued in the Fox Nation show, “how they can create tougher penalties for those who sell and distribute drugs, how they can provide grant funding for those who want to be rehabilitated. And I said I wanted to be an elected official.”
“At the age of 14, I began to volunteer and learn the political process and the legislators there, the lawmakers often talked about how they wanted to change things, but it began to seem more and more like all talk and no action.”
“That’s when I began to question the policies of the Democratic Party, and that’s when I began to seek out a better way to live life. That’s when I became conservative,” he said.
Caldwell also put faces and names to the grim crime statistics that come out of Chicago every year, interviewing dozens of city residents, including politicians, gang members and drug dealers.
To watch all of “The New Battle for Chicago,” learn more about Caldwell’s upbringing, his joyful reconciliation with his mother, and what he believes is the key to the city’s rehabilitation, go to Fox Nation, and sign up today.
“These cop reality shows that glorify police but will never show the deep level of police violence are not reality, they are P.R. arms for law enforcement,” said Rashad Robinson, executive director of Color of Change. “Law enforcement doesn’t need P.R. They need accountability in this country.”
Also on Tuesday, HBO Max removed from its catalog “Gone With the Wind,” the 1939 movie long considered a triumph of American cinema but one that romanticizes the Civil War-era South while glossing over its racial sins.
The streaming service pledged to eventually bring the film back “with a discussion of its historical context” while denouncing its racial missteps, a spokesperson said in a statement on Tuesday.
Set on a plantation and in Atlanta, the film won multiple Academy Awards, including best picture, and remains among the most celebrated movies in cinematic history. But its rose-tinted depiction of the antebellum South and its blindness to the horrors of slavery have long been criticized, and that scrutiny was renewed this week as protests over police brutality and the death of George Floyd continued to pull the United States into a wide-ranging conversation about race.
“‘Gone With the Wind’ is a product of its time and depicts some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that have, unfortunately, been commonplace in American society,” an HBO Max spokesperson said in a statement. “These racist depictions were wrong then and are wrong today, and we felt that to keep this title up without an explanation and a denouncement of those depictions would be irresponsible.”
Reporting was contributed by Jason M. Bailey, Nate Cohn, Catie Edmonson, Nicholas Fandos, Thomas Fuller, Emma Grillo, Sarah Mervosh, Kevin Quealy, Ed Shanahan, Nicole Sperling, Tracey Tully and Daniel Victor.
Democratic presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden speaks via video at a funeral service for George Floyd in Houston Monday.
David J. Phillip/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
David J. Phillip/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
Democratic presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden speaks via video at a funeral service for George Floyd in Houston Monday.
David J. Phillip/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
Former Vice President Joe Biden has mostly responded to the aftermath of George Floyd’s death by contrasting his governing and leadership style with President Trump’s. But the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has also laced his speeches, interviews and campaign statements with policy specifics.
Biden has called for a federal ban on police chokeholds, a new federal police oversight commission, new national standards for when and how police use force, more mandatory data collection from local law enforcement, and more power for the Department of Justice to investigate local police departments, among other changes.
“Let us vow to make this, at last, an era of action to reverse systemic racism with long overdue and concrete changes,” Biden said in a speech last week.
And while Biden has rejected progressive demands for something that Trump is eager to tie his fall opponent to — “defunding” police departments — Biden has said that federal funding for law enforcement should be “based on whether or not they meet certain basic standards of decency and honorableness.”
Two members of a task force charged with pulling Biden’s campaign platform to the left are encouraged by Biden’s initial statements and demands, but remain hopeful the onetime author of tough-on-crime bills will embrace even broader policing and criminal justice reforms.
“I’m encouraged that he’s getting specific and trying to meet the moment,” said Chiraag Bains, who worked in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division during the Obama administration. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders tapped Bains to co-chair the criminal justice reform committee the Sanders and Biden campaigns set up at the end of their primary contest as part of a broader effort to try to reach more policy consensus between the progressive and moderate wings of the Democratic Party.
“It’s not enough to speak to people’s pain and utter the right words,” said Bains, who emphasized he was speaking for himself, not the task force.
Bains said Biden’s statements and speeches have been the right start, and have been well-received — especially when contrasted to the president. “But we need a specific agenda and it needs to be bold,” he said. ” I do see that the vice president moving that direction. I just think we need to do more.”
Bains wants Biden to expand on already-announced proposals on ending mandatory minimum prison sentences and ramping up the use of clemency. He’s also pushing for the restoration of federal parole and the legalization of marijuana, among other policies.
Progressives see this moment of national protests and calls to action — a moment where even a former Republican presidential nominee is marching and declaring that “black lives matter” — as a once-in-a-generation chance for substantial reforms.
Stacey Walker, a fellow Sanders appointee to the criminal justice task force and chairman of Iowa’s Linn County Board of Supervisors, called the worldwide protests against police violence and racism “a global liberation movement” that could open the door for massive policy changes.
“I think the vice president totally understands that we are at a moral moment in history,” Walker said. “The policies that he is supporting certainly is a step in the right direction, and it’s going to help move the dialogue along on the issues we seek to address. Now, there are a lot of advocates in the criminal justice reform space who believe that we can do more, who believe that this is a moment, unlike any other, in the fight for freedom for black Americans in this country.”
The task force, divided between Sanders and Biden appointees, meets online once a week, with constant smaller phone calls and emails between members in between sessions. Along with the other committees working on climate change and other policy areas, it aims to present proposals ahead of August’s Democratic National Convention.
One example of the push and pull between Biden’s instincts and those of the progressives who flocked to Sanders, and would need to back Biden in order for him to win this fall: how to lessen federal marijuana penalties. Biden has called for decriminalizing marijuana. Bains is hoping Biden shifts to a call for full legalization.
“Decriminalization typically means that you don’t have a criminal penalty, but you could still be issued a civil fine. And then there are other kinds of consequences that could follow from that,” Bains explained. “It’s still illegal conduct. If possession of marijuana is just decriminalized and that is the hook for extensive police involvement in people’s lives. And if you haven’t addressed the underlying systemic problems in policing and the justice system overall, then people could continue to be stopped and searched and frisked and so forth.”
Still, a call for decriminalizing — if not fully legalizing — marijuana marks a notable shift for Biden, who as a senator authored and voted for several tough-on-crime measures in the 1980s and 1990s that strengthened penalties for drug-related crimes in particular.
President Clinton, left, hugs then-Sen. Joe Biden during a 1994 signing ceremony for the crime bill oat the White House.
Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images
President Clinton, left, hugs then-Sen. Joe Biden during a 1994 signing ceremony for the crime bill oat the White House.
Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images
The most high-profile measure: the 1994 crime bill, which Biden helped write as a senator. While Biden regularly highlights the legislation’s domestic violence protections and 10-year ban on assault weapon sales, the measure is more broadly seen as a key moment in a generation-long policy push that led to increasingly crowded prisons, and that disproportionately targeted African-Americans.
“We now know with the fullness of time that we made some terrible mistakes,” Jeremy Travis, the president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told NPR in 2014.
“Here’s the federal government coming in and saying we’ll give you money if you punish people more severely, and 28 states and the District of Columbia followed the money and enacted stricter sentencing laws for violent offenses,” Travis said.
When Biden’s campaign rolled out his criminal justice policy platform last year, a key provision proposed just the opposite. Biden wants to fund a $20 billion grant program aimed at lowering incarceration and crime rates in states. “In order to receive this funding, states will have to eliminate mandatory minimums for non-violent crimes, institute earned credit programs, and take other steps to reduce incarceration rates without impacting public safety,” the campaign’s policy paper reads.
But despite Biden’s shifts, some progressives still view him with skepticism on criminal justice, and have watched warily as Biden promises to take on policing abuses amid an unprecedented national focus on police violence and racism.
“This is an opportunity for him to come to account for his role in promoting the crime bill back in the ’90s that led to a lot of federal support of local police departments, federal arming of police departments and a lot more expectations and money that goes toward them,” progressive organizer Aimee Allison told NPR’s Morning Edition.
Allison is particularly frustrated at how quickly Biden rejected calls for “defunding” police departments.
“We understand the phrase ‘defund the police’ to be shorthand for a range of serious policy proposals that will end the cycle of police violence against black people and put public safety before violence,” Allison said. “But if Joe Biden is not serious about ending that cycle, he’s risking the success of his campaign. I mean, this is the make-or-break moment for him.”
Stacey Walker supports police defunding, too, though he conceded “we may have a marketing and branding issue on our hands” when it comes to selling non-progressives on the idea of shifting government resources away from law enforcement, and toward social services, education, and other areas.
Walker doesn’t see Biden shifting ground on the issue. But ultimately, he doesn’t think that will hurt Biden with the progressives who have embraced the push.
“We all understand that Donald Trump poses an existential risk to our democracy, to the American project and to everything Democrats hold dear,” Walker said. “So while you know, we’re not going to get to a point where everyone is happy, although that is the goal. I think Democrats are going to be united.”
Hourslong waits, problems with new voting machines and a lack of available ballots plagued voters in majority minority counties in Georgia on Tuesday — conditions the secretary of state called “unacceptable” and vowed to investigate.
Democrats and election watchers said voting issues in a state that has been plagued for years by similar problems, along with allegations of racial bias, didn’t bode well for the November presidential election, when Georgia could be in play.
“This seems to be happening throughout Atlanta and perhaps throughout the county. People have been in line since before 7:00 am this morning,” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, a Democrat, tweeted shortly after polls were supposed to open — and in some cases still hadn’t.
Cody Cutting was in a long line at Lang Carson Community Center in the Reynoldstown neighborhood of Atlanta, where the line snaked around the block and some people had been waiting to cast their votes for 4½ hours.
“People are a bit frustrated, but spirits are still OK. Neighbors are bringing around food, water and chairs,” he told NBC News.
Lengthy waits were reported in other parts of Fulton, DeKalb and Gwinnett counties.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, said the problems “in certain precincts” in Fulton and DeKalb counties were “unacceptable.”
“My office has opened an investigation to determine what these counties need to do to resolve these issues before November’s election,” he said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Senate primary in Georgia is too early to call. In Georgia, candidates must win more than 50 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff.
With more than half of the expected vote counted at 1:30 a.m. EDT, Jon Ossoff has approximately 48 percent of the vote. He leads Teresa Tomlinson, who has roughly 16 percent of the vote, and Sarah Riggs Amico, with about 13 percent.
Voting problems in the state also plagued Fulton County in 2018, which led to allegations of voter suppression by Democrats. The secretary of state at the time was Brian Kemp, a Republican, who wound up winning the governorship by a thin margin against Democrat Stacey Abrams. Abrams at the time called the election “rotten and rigged.”
“From Jasper to Fulton to Coffee & Chatham, long lines, inoperable machines & under-resourced communities are being hurt,” Abrams wrote, adding that Raffensperger “owns this disaster.”
“He must stop finger-pointing and fix it,” she said.
Democrats have targeted Georgia — which has added 700,000 registered voters to the rolls since 2018 — as a possible swing state in November. Rachana Desai Martin, the national director of voter protection for Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said that what happened Tuesday is “unacceptable” and noted that many voters reported asking for — and never receiving — absentee ballots.
“We only have a few months left until voters around the nation head to the polls again, and efforts should begin immediately to ensure that every Georgian — and every American — is able to safely exercise their right to vote,” said Martin, whose candidate NBC News projected to win the Democratic primary in the state shortly after the official poll closing time. Martin said the Biden campaign “will remain fully engaged in defending” the right to vote.
Download the NBC News app for breaking news and politics
DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond blamed Tuesday’s issues on Raffensperger, who Thurmond said should be investigated by the governor’s office.
“It is the secretary of state’s responsibility to train, prepare and equip election staff throughout the state to ensure fair and equal access to the ballot box. Those Georgians who have been disenfranchised by the statewide chaos that has affected the voting system today in numerous DeKalb precincts and throughout the state of Georgia deserve answers,” Thurmond said.
Kristen Clarke, president and CEO of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a civil rights group, called the election “a catastrophe.”
“If we view the primary election as a dry run for November, then Georgia gets an F today,” Clarke said.
People wait in line to vote in Georgia’s primary election in Atlanta on Tuesday, June 9, 2020.Elijah Nouvelage / Getty Images
She said her group has been flooded with calls from “voters who encountered barriers from polling sites that are not open on time, malfunctioning equipment, long lines with several hours’ wait time, insufficient backup paper ballots and more.”
Three-quarters of voters who called with problems identified as African American, Clarke said.
In Roswell, a mostly white Atlanta suburb, there were far fewer problems. Brian Takahashi voted there and said “it went well.”
“There were problems with the voting systems for approximately 25 minutes. Afterwards, it was smooth sailing,” he said, estimating that he was “out the door” in 20 minutes after the problem was resolved.
Basketball great LeBron James weighed in on Twitter.
“Everyone talking about ‘how do we fix this?’ They say ‘go out and vote?’ What about asking if how we vote is also structurally racist?” he tweeted.
Robb Pitts, chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that “everything that could happen or go wrong has gone wrong so far.”
He pointed to numerous issues, including fewer polling precincts, new voting machines and absentee ballot issues.
Nicholas Roth, 30, said he’d been in line at an Atlanta precinct where the woman ahead of him was told that she couldn’t vote because she’d already asked for an absentee ballot.
“She responded: ‘I never got an absentee ballot. That’s why I’m here,'” Roth said. The woman was sent to an area with other would-be voters who’d had similar issues.
“The individuals had requested absentee ballots, but they didn’t arrive in time to send in, but when they showed up to try and vote in person, they were blocked because the system had indicated they already had an absentee ballot, which, again, they said they never received,” Roth said.
People wait in line to vote in Georgia’s primary election in Atlanta on Tuesday, June 9, 2020.Elijah Nouvelage / Getty Images
Adding to the headaches were the new voting machines, which some poll workers and voters struggled with. When voters check in, poll workers give them cards, which they insert into touchscreen machines to cast their votes. The machines then produce paper ballots that voters insert into scanners.
The new system was put in place following allegations that the previous system wasn’t secure. Local activists sued the secretary of state three years ago, noting that the system didn’t produce any paper record.
Earlier this year, Georgia switched to a new voting system made by Dominion Voting Systems, which the state government said should mitigate most, if not all, of the plaintiffs’ concerns.
Richard DeMillo, a cybersecurity professor at Georgia Tech who observed the voting process at College Park Auditorium in the Atlanta suburb of College Park, called it “pretty chaotic.” He cited bottlenecks from voter check-in delays and estimated that half the center’s machines were turned off and not in use.
“Not a lot of guidance is being given to a lot of people,” said DeMillo, who saw voters unaccustomed to the new system sometimes walk away from machines with their paper ballots without scanning them — who would have to be “grabbed by the neck” by poll workers to make sure their votes get counted.
Eddie Perez, an election technology expert with the OSET Institute, an election technology nonprofit, said the new machinery, combined with consolidation of polling locations and shortages of provisional and emergency paper ballots at some locations, may have created a “chain reaction” that led to the long lines.
The lines caused some polling places to announce that they would remain open past the official closing time of 7 p.m. ET.
A Dominion spokesperson said that as of 4 p.m. ET, the manufacturer had needed to replace only 10 pieces of “fielded voting equipment” — such as scanners, printers and touchscreens — out of about 30,000 total voting systems across the state.
Raffensperger blamed Tuesday’s voting problems on local officials.
“Obviously, the first time a new voting system is used there is going to be a learning curve, and voting in a pandemic only increased these difficulties. But every other county faced these same issues and were significantly better prepared to respond so that voters had every opportunity to vote,” he said.
The state Democratic Party blamed him, saying his office failed to provide “adequate support and training.”
“We demand statewide action by the Secretary of State — the chief elections official in Georgia — to fix this problem immediately,” the party’s statement said.
This is a widget area - If you go to "Appearance" in your WP-Admin you can change the content of this box in "Widgets", or you can remove this box completely under "Theme Options"
