By Benjamin Din, Christopher Cadelago and Sam Stein on Apr 20, 2021 08:08 pm
President Joe Biden renewed his calls Tuesday for action to address racial discrimination in policing and the criminal justice system, in response to the guilty verdict of the former police officer who killed George Floyd in Minneapolis last May.
"Nothing can ever bring their brother, their father back," Biden said after speaking with Floyd's family. "But this can be a giant step forward in the march toward justice in America."
His remarks were in response to the guilty verdict delivered by the jury late Tuesday afternoon in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who killed Floyd. But they were born from decades of experience navigating the tumultuous fallout of verdicts that almost always go in the other direction.
Indeed, racial tensions — mainly, the riots that ripped apart his adopted hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, following the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. — were instrumental, Biden said, in shaping his understanding of racial inequalities, law enforcement, and the value of public service.
It wasn't a straight line from there until now, not for Biden himself and certainly not for racial progress. As a senator, Biden cast himself as a tough-on-crime Democrat, spearheading the type of legislative initiatives that activists now say made police feel so emboldened in the first place.
Biden refused to back away from that posture until recently. After all, it was politically useful for him. When a New York City police officer was shot and killed in 2014, it was Biden, not his boss Barack Obama, who was dispatched to attend the funeral.
The assassin's bullet, Biden told the mourners in Queens, targeted officers, the city and it "touched the soul of the entire nation," he said, drawing on his relationships with law enforcement and his own family's experience with grief.
Those in Biden's orbit say it is his ability to walk among that crowd — to speak their language — that has allowed him to be such an effective voice for racial justice now. His motives aren't questioned like they would be for another Democrat. His involvement won't inflame tensions like Obama's did during his presidency. When Obama issued a statement after the Michael Brown verdict, he made sure to note that "there are good people on all sides of this debate… that are interested not only in lifting up best practices."
During the 2020 campaign, Biden didn't try to level the sides. He tried to harness the image of a politician angered by the failure of the country to progress. His launching pad was Donald Trump's handling of the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville. But it was Floyd's death that ended up dominating the campaign conversation, touching off a worldwide movement for police accountability.
As the contrast with Trump came into starker view — and not even 24 hours after law enforcement used tear gas to clear a park so Trump could stand outside St. John's Church to hold up a Bible — Biden delivered a seminal address in Philadelphia in which he denounced systemic racism and implored Americans to look in the mirror: "Is this who we are? Is this who we want to be?" he asked.
He called on Congress to make a down payment on the "work of a generation" to reduce police brutality, banning police choke holds and taking weapons of war from departments. "It's time to pass legislation that will give true meaning to our constitutional promise of legal protection under the law," Biden said in Philadelphia, where Obama had given his own major speech on race in 2008.
Before the speech, Biden met with big-city mayors, telling them he believes that the "blinders have been taken off." "I think this tidal wave is moving," Biden said.
"I realize we've got to do something big, we can do it, and everyone will benefit from it."
It opened him up to the very attacks from Republicans that he had sought to avoid years earlier when he worked on crime bills. It also failed to placate some in his own party too, who wondered how reformed he actually could be if his campaign proposal was calling for an increase in police funding.
All that culminated Tuesday when the jury, which reached its verdict after more than 10 hours of deliberations over two days, found Chauvin guilty on all three counts of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
Both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris watched the verdict with aides in the private dining room of the White House, officials said. A day earlier, the president had called the Floyd family to say he was praying for them and hoping for a favorable outcome. After the guilty verdicts were handed down, he and Harris called again, this time promising that they would fight for passage of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, the criminal justice reform bill that has passed in the House but not the Senate.
It's a promise Biden's made before, but one he's having trouble keeping. The White House has been focused on other priorities, and Biden recently sidelined a key piece of his summertime pledges when the White House confirmed it would not pursue organizing its long-planned police oversight panel.
"Nothing is going to make it all better, but at least now there's some justice," Biden said on the phone with the family, a video of which was posted to Twitter by their attorney. "We're going to stay at it till we get it done," he said of the reforms.
The call lasted less than four minutes. But it was a moment unique in U.S. history — a president openly engaging in an act of collective relief over an outcome in the criminal justice system.
David Litt, a speechwriter for Obama, recalled how 12 years ago, his old boss caused a national incident when he called out the stupidity of a police officer arresting a Harvard professor at that professor's home.
"It's easy to forget, we were such a different country about these issues in 2009," Litt said of the infamous Henry Louis Gates incident. "And now even conservatives who are conflicted about today's verdict, most of them have to acknowledge that there is at least some problem. The general understanding on how most Americans see these issues has totally changed."
It's changed for Biden too. As he took to the cameras hours after the verdict came down, the president emphasized the need to take action and called on Americans not to forget Floyd's last words: "I can't breathe."
"This can be a moment of significant change," he said.
The president pointed to the number of factors — someone to record the killing, a nearly 10-minute-long video, police officers testifying against one of their own, among others — that it took to reach a decision that he said was "much too rare."
"For so many people, it seems like it took a unique and extraordinary convergence of factors ... it seems like it took all of that for the judicial system to deliver a just, just basic accountability," he said.
By Burgess Everett, Marianne LeVine and Nicholas Wu on Apr 20, 2021 07:20 pm
Derek Chauvin's conviction for the murder of George Floyd is heaping more pressure than ever on the Senate to finally enact nationwide police reform, senators in both parties said Tuesday in the wake of the verdict.
And progress toward a bipartisan deal that addresses the fraught issue of police bias is currently at a standstill.
Though the House has passed police reform bills, the Senate has yet to approach a deal that can get 60 votes. And there's been no real movement to speak of since last year's Democratic filibuster of Sen. Tim Scott's (R-S.C.) policing measure.
Scott said he was relieved by the guilty verdict reached against Chauvin but that more work needed to be done. His party and Democrats conceded one point on Tuesday night: The long-running gridlock on police reform has become untenable for both parties.
"It's pretty awful to have the nation's eyes on a courtroom. It's up to us to try to stop this from happening as frequently as it does," said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.).
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) put it even more bluntly: "The judicial system worked. But a man is dead. So that's a very high price to pay. And avoiding more circumstances like this, more events like this, is still a huge priority."
Romney suggested a return to Scott's approach, which sought to encourage an end to police use of chokeholds, made lynching a crime and increased disclosure requirements for the use of force. Democrats found that bill relatively toothless and pushed for a more stringent approach that banned chokeholds and no-knock raids.
In addition, senators have reached no consensus on whether to end qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that shields police officers from lawsuits. Eliminating qualified immunity is a red line for many Republicans.
Despite resolve among senior lawmakers in both parties to move forward, it's not clear Congress can add another divisive issue to its plate. Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.), a former Congressional Black Caucus chair and the lead House author of police reform legislation named for Floyd, said it was "extremely important" to reform qualified immunity in any bill that passes Congress.
"If you don't like qualified immunity, then tell me what we can do to hold police officers accountable," she said, arguing that Chauvin acted as if he knew he would not be prosecuted or sued. "They have to feel that there are consequences to what they do."
Bass said she had talked with Scott and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) about policing reform and hoped to have a bill on Biden's desk by the end of May, but that there were "no formal negotiations" yet.
Her timetable is incredibly optimistic. Congress is set for a recess during one week of May, and it's taken the Senate a full week to negotiate a relatively modest hate crimes bill. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will follow it with water legislation and a U.S.-China bill — and his chamber still has yet to tackle any gun legislation following a recent spate of mass shootings.
Several Republicans were skeptical of their colleagues' insistence on legislative reform of police conduct. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) warned lawmakers not to "do something [just] to be doing it." Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), one of the few in the GOP open to touching qualified immunity, was not particularly optimistic about the path forward.
"As hard as it is to get anything done here, I think it's still going to revive" discussions, Braun said of Chauvin's conviction. "If it goes anywhere? I'm not sure."
Even if the Senate can move forward on a compromise, progressives are likely to push back. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said during an Instagram Live stream after the verdict that House-passed policing legislation is "important" but "not good enough." The failure to craft a better bill lies with Democratic leaders as well as the GOP, Ocasio-Cortez said.
Both the left and right have used police reform to try to score political points, with conservatives sloganeering that they "back the blue" and progressives calling to defund the police. Former President Donald Trump literally weaponized the issue last year as his administration forcefully cleared a crowd of protesters from outside the White House, and he urged officials to "dominate" protesters.
Even before the verdict was announced, the Chauvin trial itself was politically divisive and spurred incendiary rhetoric. House Republicans tried to censure Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) for telling protesters to "get more confrontational" and "stay on the streets" if Chauvin was acquitted. Meanwhile, several Republicans criticized Biden for suggesting that there was "overwhelming" evidence for a guilty verdict.
The debate over police reform is only the latest emblem of Congress' dysfunction. Senate Republicans offered their own proposal led by Scott, but Democrats blocked the measure on the floor. Since then, there's been little tangible movement toward a strategy that could overcome a filibuster, though Schumer has vowed to put the House-passed policing bill on the floor.
Police reform joins a litany of other issues the 50-50 Senate is laboring to solve amid real-world pressure across the country, like gun control and immigration. But the sustained attention that policing has received since Floyd's murder, particularly from the Democratic base, means it may be difficult for the Senate to avoid taking up the issue at some point.
"The public has paid so much attention to this. And I don't know how Republicans are going to think about this … but there's more impetus on our part," argued Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). "People saw so much about this and saw what good cops do and what bad cops do, knowing most are good cops."
The protests that dominated Washington, D.C. last summer eventually faded away, even though cities like Minneapolis and Portland, Ore., continue to grapple with unrest over police brutality toward African Americans.
Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) said those demonstrations allowed everyone in the country to see that the nation has different standards of justice for white people and people of color. And that if ever there was a "tipping point" to actually do something, she said, it's now.
"The reason that so many people took to the street is because they could see that [double standard] and they were demanding change," she said. "So the question here is: Will those demands be heard here in the Capitol? And I've got to be optimistic that they will be."
A white police officer stands convicted of all three of the charges he faced: second-degree unintentional homicide, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
A 77-year-old white president who, on the campaign trail was skewered for being hopelessly out of touch when it comes to race, hailed the verdict as a triumph of racial justice. And in the immediate aftermath of that verdict, he made promises to the Black community — and directly to the family of George Floyd — that a change was gonna come.
For a country roiled by a pandemic, a year of protests, a bitter presidential campaign colored by ugly racial invective and a failed insurrection, the verdict felt, for many, something like relief.
But even with the conviction of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, there were pointed reminders that one case does not equal systemic change.
On the one hand, the guilty verdict in one of the most closely-watched trials of police brutality is a win for Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and his team of prosecutors. It's also a win for progressives and grassroots activists who kept Floyd's name in the forefront of America's consciousness through protest rallies, through speeches and on social media.
And without a doubt, Chauvin's guilty verdict gives hope to those convinced the justice system is rigged against Black men like George Floyd, whose death by asphyxiation was captured on cell phone video for nearly 10 agonizing minutes.
The mounting evidence against Chauvin even seemed to push some conservatives to acknowledge that the 19-year veteran Minneapolis officer was not someone who should be shown deference.
"Even if you 'back the blue,' Chauvin ain't it," according to the Twitter account for the Utah Tea Party. "Long history of complaints and abuses before the death of George Floyd."
But even amid the celebratory mood, there was a note of caution, a feeling like this was just one victory in a very long battle for equal justice. And there was worry that this would be a case of one and done, that one guilty verdict of one white police officer would be used as an example that the system was working — and not in need of a massive overhaul.
Ellison hinted as much in his post-election news conference. While praising the jury for its decision in the Chauvin case, he said the verdict was not enough to bring justice to so many other Black men and women who were killed or seriously injured during encounters with police.
This wasn't justice, Ellison emphasized, but "accountability." Then he invoked the names of other victims of police brutality: Rodney King. Abner Louima. Oscar Grant. Philando Castile. Anton Black, Breonna Taylor…
"This has to end," Ellison said. "We need true justice ... a social transformation that says that nobody was beneath the law and nobody is above it. This verdict reminds us we must make enduring systemic. Societal change."
Former President Barack Obama, in a statement, echoed Ellison's demand for systemic change.
"True justice requires that we come to terms with the fact that Black Americans are treated differently, every day," said the nation's first Black president. "It requires us to recognize that millions of our friends, family and fellow citizens live in fear that their next encounter with law enforcement could be their last."
"We're going to start to change it now," Biden said. "I wish I was there to put my arms around you."
"America, let's pause for a moment"
Immediately after the verdict, Rev. Al Sharpton held a press conference with the Floyd family and their attorney Benjamin Crump, who's been dubbed, "Black America's Attorney General." The mood: Triumphant. Jubilant, even.
"Let's pause for a moment, to proclaim this historical moment not just for the legacy of George Floyd, but for the legacy of America," Crump said. "The legacy of trying to make America for all Americans so that George Floyd's victory and America's quest for equal justice under the law will be intertwined."
But watching the trial itself was anything but jubilant. Watching the trial was trauma. Again and again, those tuning in were forced to watch the last minutes of George Floyd's life, as he begged for air, for relief, for his mama. Though many Black men and women have died at the hands of police before him and since him, his case felt… different.
It was not done in the dark of night, but rather under the setting sun of a holiday weekend and in front of a group of mostly Black and Brown bystanders, many of them pleading for the officer to relinquish the hold on Floyd's neck. Pleading for the officer to allow him some air.
That footage was played and replayed from countless angles throughout the trial. From different vantage points in gavel-to-gavel televised coverage.
From the outset, the Chauvin case has been about race. And whether Black and Brown communities that come into contact with the U.S. criminal justice system are treated fairly under the law.
This trial provided an unvarnished look at how excessive force by police is carried out in real-time, particularly when a suspect is a Black man. The presumption by law enforcement was not innocent until proven guilty, but rather guilty upon sight and overtly menacing. A threat.
The prosecutors walked the jury through the by-now familiar details of Floyd's murder: Police were called to the scene of the Cup Foods in South Minneapolis at the corner of Chicago Ave. and 38th street.
Floyd, the police alleged,had tried to purchase cigarettes with a fake $20. Chauvin's defense team described it as a "high crime" to the jury.
AndFloyd ultimately paid for it with his life.
But someone had the presence of mind to capture Chauvin digging his knee into Floyd's neck. And this time, around the world, protestors of all races took to the streets demanding justice.
That constant drumbeat of protests galvanized federal lawmakers to pass a sweeping federal police reform bill in March. They named it after George Floyd.
The measure would outlaw racial and religious profiling by law enforcement and bans chokeholds by federal officers. It was barely a bipartisan effort — just one House Republican crossed the party lines to get it passed.
Tuesday's guilty verdict puts more pressure on the Senate to take up the legislation, which has been stalled for weeks. It's been reported that talks remain ongoing between a handful of senators, including Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.) to see if a framework agreement can be reached on a measure.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in the wake of the verdict, seemed aware of the potential political implications of the verdict, awkwardly likening Floyd to a martyr in a press conference with the Congressional Black Caucus:
"Thank you George Floyd for sacrificing your life for justice," she said. "Because of you and because of thousands, millions of people around the world who came out for justice, your name will always be synonymous for justice."
As for Biden, getting out ahead of the verdict likely gave him a boost from the activist community.
Earlier Tuesday while meeting with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the president told reporters: "I'm praying that the verdict is the right verdict, which I think, it's overwhelming in my view." Later, addressing the nation, he said, it took herculean efforts "for the justice system to deliver just basic accountability."
But even in the weeks of the trial, people, most of them people of color, continued to die at the hands of police, from Daunte Wright just a few miles outside the Hennepin County courtroom where the jury determined Chauvin's fate, to 13-year-old Adam Toledo in Chicago.
Still, something's shifted.
Arthur Rizer, a both a retired federal prosecutor and former police officer, said the Chauvin trial was unique in one notable — and very important way: So many officers testified against their former colleague.
And that's a good thing, Rizer said.
"You really saw that blue wall fall apart," Rizer said.
He adds there's got to be an end to policing culture that encourages officers, like Chauvin, to believe that there are no limits to the exercise of their discretion.
"I'm hoping this is a turning point."
Or perhaps not. Tuesday afternoon, just before the jury rendered its verdict in the Chauvin trial, some 750 miles east in Columbus, Ohio, police shot and killed a 15-year-old girl. Her aunt told the Columbus Dispatch that her niece was holding a knife to defend herself in a fight and she'd called police for help. She said the girl dropped the knife when she saw police.
Derek Chauvin has a few issues he can pursue to appeal his conviction Tuesday on murder and manslaughter charges in the death of George Floyd, but the former Minneapolis Police Officer faces an uphill battle in trying to overturn the jury's three guilty verdicts, legal experts said.
Testimony at the three-week-long trial, court rulings that preceded it, another nearby killing of an African American motorist by police and provocative comments by politicians are all expected to factor into Chauvin's efforts to challenge the verdicts.
One potential vulnerability stems from the imposing number and stature of witnesses Judge Peter Cahill permitted prosecutors to call, including Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo.
While Arradondo's testimony was expected to focus on the police force's training and policies, the chief also twice told jurors that Chauvin's actions violated the department's "values."
"It is certainly not part of our ethics or our values," said Arradondo, who had previously offered in public that Chauvin's actions amounted to murder.
Some experts said the judge probably shouldn't have allowed the chief to opine so broadly.
"He gratuitously added that this doesn't adhere to our standards or our values," said Geoffrey Alpert, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of South Carolina. "He probably shouldn't have said that."
While most witnesses are categorized as experts or fact witnesses, the police chief seemed to operate in both realms by discussing department policies, police techniques and the investigation into Floyd's death.
"That's something an expert witness isn't supposed to do, but the fact [prosecutors] posted him as a fact witness kind of finessed that," said Mark Osler, law professor at the University of St. Thomas, which is based in the Twin Cities. "There's no doubt that he was a very good witness for the government."
Osler said Arradondo's hands-on role might seem odd in bigger cities but made sense in Minneapolis.
"In New York City, if something like this happened, there are so many levels in the police department and it's a bigger operation," Osler said. "We're a small enough place here that the third or fourth person called when something big happens is the chief of police. … He was on the scene, he was involved in a lot of the decisions made."
While testimony from a sitting police chief at an officer or former officer's trial is highly unusual, Arradondo also testified two years ago at the trial of ex-Officer Mohamed Noor, who was convicted of murder for shooting Justine Damond, 40, while responding to her 911 call about a possible sexual assault.
Noor was convicted and sentenced to 12 and a half years in prison. The Minnesota Supreme Court announced last month that it would take up Noor's appeal, but it is unclear whether the justices will delve into any issues that could affect Chauvin's case.
The public uproar over Floyd's death and the attention heaped on Chauvin's trial by the media and prominent politicians could also provide fodder for an appeal, lawyers said.
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and even President Joe Biden bolstered the expected appeal with comments that suggested convictions in the case were needed to keep the peace.
"We're looking for a guilty verdict," Waters said during a rally near Minneapolis on Saturday night. She added that, if there was no such result, "we've got to get more active, we've got to get more confrontational."
Those remarks prompted a flash of anger from the normally mild-mannered judge, Cahill, who called her comments "abhorrent."
"I'll give you that Congresswoman Waters may have given you something on appeal that may result in this whole trial being overturned," Cahill declared. "This goes back to what I've been saying from the beginning. I wish elected officials would stop talking about this case, especially in a manner that is disrespectful to the rule of law and to the judicial branch and our function."
Despite his suggestions about an appeal, Cahill declined to declare a mistrial or to interview jurors about whether they'd heard Waters' remarks.
Biden's comments on Tuesday morning that he was praying for the "right verdict" were a bit more vague than those from Waters, but also seemed to signal a concern that an acquittal could lead to trouble. The president did add that he was sharing his thoughts only because the jury was sequestered after closing arguments on Monday.
Osler said defense lawyers were likely to argue that the high-profile statements created an atmosphere that put pressure on the jury.
"Their basis of appeal would be that jurors were influenced not by the evidence, but by fear of what happened if they didn't convict," the professor said, noting that the defense was denied a change of venue for the trial.
Another potential influence in the middle of Chauvin's trial: the shooting and killing of an African-American suspect, Daunte Wright, by a police officer in the nearby suburb of Minneapolis.
Convictions have only rarely been overturned based on publicity prior to or during the trial, or perceptions of pressure on the jury. The most prominent such case recently involved Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was sentenced to death following a jury trial for the deadly bombing of the Boston Marathon finish line in 2013. Tsarnaev's lawyers opposed the death sentence, but conceded his involvement in the bombing.
Last year, a federal appeals court overturned the death sentence, ruling that the 2015 trial appeared to have been tainted by "an avalanche of pretrial publicity" and that the judge overseeing the case did not adequately question jurors about whether they were exposed to the "reign of terror" in the Boston area during the manhunt for Tsarnaev and his brother, who died during a shootout with police.
The Supreme Court announced last month that it would take up the marathon bombing case, meaning the justices will likely issue a ruling on the publicity issue late this year or early next.
In a uniquely Minnesota twist to the case, Chauvin may even have a ground for appeal on the basis that prosecutors were too mean to his defense lawyer. After a prosecutor called the defense's arguments "nonsense," defense attorney Eric Nelson objected.
"We actually have a rule in Minnesota saying you can't belittle the defense," Osler said, explaining the rule as a product of the state's reputation for courtesy.
"It's a very Minnesota issue," he said. "In Texas, if as a prosecutor you weren't belittling the defense, you probably wouldn't be doing your job."
By Quint Forgey and Nolan D. McCaskill on Apr 20, 2021 03:34 pm
Democrats and activists celebrated Tuesday's conviction of the former Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd last May, but warned that more needed to be done to address systemic issues with policing and criminal justice.
A diverse 12-member jury found Derek Chauvin, a 45-year-old white man, guilty of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
Police were called on Floyd on May 25 over concerns that he paid with a counterfeit $20 bill at convenience store. Police claimed the following day that Floyd died after a "medical episode," but bystanders had recorded Chauvin pinning his knee on Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes, ignoring his pleas for oxygen and his late mother as a group of Chauvin's colleagues stood by without intervening.
It was an act of police violence so searing that it set off a nationwide racial reckoning nearly one year ago. The fact that it was captured on video that reverberated around the world led to the swift firing of all officers involved and likely played a significant role in the jury's decision to convict Chauvin.
Judge Peter Cahill, who read aloud the jury's verdict, said Chauvin, who was handcuffed and remanded to the custody of the Hennepin County sheriff, would be sentenced in eight weeks.
The second-degree unintentional murder charge carries a maximum 40-year sentence, and the third-degree murder charge carries a maximum 25-year sentence. The final charge, second-degree manslaughter, carries a maximum 10-year-sentence and/or a fine of up to $20,000.
The trial for the three former officers who stood by is expected to begin in August.
The Chauvin verdict comes after the jury heard 14 days of testimony from 45 witnesses — including Chauvin's former superior officers — and deliberated for several hours over two days.
"Today, you have the cameras all around the world to see and show what happened to my brother. It was a motion picture," Philonise Floyd, George Floyd's brother, said at a news conference with the family and civil rights leaders. "The world seen his life being extinguished. And I could do nothing but watch, especially in that courtroom, over and over and over again, as my brother was murdered."
Philonise Floyd said people from all over the world had told him they wouldn't be able to breathe until he could. "Today," he continued, pumping his fist as he spoke, "we are able to breathe again."
President Joe Biden addressed the nation from the White House, where he presented the moment the country faces now as a potential "giant step forward in the march toward justice in America."
"Let's also be clear that such a verdict is also much too rare," Biden said. "For so many people, it seems like it took a unique and extraordinary convergence of factors … for the judicial system to deliver just basic accountability."
Vice President Kamala Harris, whose remarks preceded Biden's, expressed a sigh of relief.
"Still, it can't take away the pain. A measure of justice is not the same as equal justice," Harris said. "This verdict brings us a step closer. And the fact is, we still have work to do. We still must reform the system."
Both Biden and Harris called on Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, with Biden conceding that while no verdict will resurrect Floyd, "through the family's pain, we are finding purpose so George's legacy will not be just about his death but about what we must do in his memory."
The two leaderswatched the verdict with staff in the White House Private Dining Room and spoke to Floyd's family by phone from the Oval Office. Biden had told reporters earlier in the day that he was "praying the verdict is the right verdict," and deemed the prosecution's evidence "overwhelming."
"We're all so relieved" that Chauvin was found guilty of all three counts, he said. "This is the first shot at dealing with genuine systemic racism."
Moments before the decision came, Harris acknowledged in an interview with CNN's Dana Bash that not even a guilty verdict "will take away the pain of the Floyd family."
"It will not take away the pain of the communities, all communities, regardless of their color or geographic location, that felt sadness and anger in what they witnessed in that video," she said.
In the call with Floyd's family, Harris described Tuesday as "a day of justice in America" and the family as "real leaders at this moment where we needed you." She also pledged to ensure Floyd's legacy is intact, as activists and the family renewed calls for passage of the federal Justice in Policing Act.
Former President Barack Obama credited the jury for doing the "right thing." But "we know that true justice is about much more than a single verdict in a single trial," he said in a statement. "While today's verdict may have been a necessary step on the road to progress, it was far from a sufficient one. We cannot rest. We will need to follow through with the concrete reforms that will reduce and ultimately eliminate racial bias in our criminal justice system."
On Capitol Hill, several members of the Congressional Black Caucus gathered in a room off the House floor to watch the delivery of the verdict on a laptop. Several members grew emotional, including Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), who took off his glasses, wiped his eyes and left the room to compose himself before an imminent news conference. Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), also tearing up, clutched the arm of Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) after the verdict was heard.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called the guilty verdict "an official proclamation of what so many of us have known for nearly a year: George Floyd was murdered by an officer who was sworn to protect and serve."
"However, we should not mistake a guilty verdict in this case as evidence that the persistent problem of police misconduct has been solved or that the divide between law enforcement and so many of the communities they serve has been bridged," Schumer added.
That sentiment was shared overwhelmingly by the Democratic officials and left-leaning groups who blasted out statements in the wake of the verdict.
Ken Martin, the chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, applauded the decision but challenged Congress and the state Legislature to deliver justice for Floyd through policy change.
"George Floyd should still be alive today, and until we pass serious police reform and accountability measures, the likelihood of this happening again here remains very high," Martin said. "Our state and national legislatures have work in front of them to pass real police reform and accountability measures to deliver on the promises we have made to ensure this never happens again."
At a news conference, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison argued that the verdict wasn't "justice" but "accountability," which he framed as a step toward justice.
"Although a verdict alone cannot end their pain," he said of the Floyd family, "I hope it's another step on the long path toward healing for them. There's no replacing your beloved Perry or Floyd, as his friends called him, but he is the one who sparked a worldwide movement, and that's important."
Jason Williamson, deputy director of the ACLU's criminal law reform project, added: "While today's verdict is a step forward in the fight for police accountability and may help heal a grieving community, the systems that allowed a police officer to murder Mr. Floyd, ripping him away from his family and the communities that loved him so much, remain fully intact."
Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center, urged Americans not to allow the outcome of the Chauvin trial let them forget about the deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Dion Johnson and so many others.
"This case galvanized a movement for justice that has expanded across the country, rooted in longstanding demands for a reimagining of a criminal legal system built on anti-Black racism and white supremacy," she said. "Lawmakers at the state and federal level must begin holding officers accountable for police violence. The time to act is now."
DeRay Mckesson, Sam Sinyangwe and Johnetta Elzie, co-founders of Campaign Zero, wrote in a joint statement that the verdict "doesn't change the demand for transformational change to end the epidemic of police violence we face in this country."
The verdict is likely to provide some solace to protesters across the country who have responded with outrage this month to the police killings of two other Americans of color: 13-year-old Adam Toledo in Chicago and 20-year-old Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center, Minn.
Wright's killing, in particular, has shaken the Minneapolis area. He was shot to death during a traffic stop only 10 miles from where Chauvin stood trial, and Floyd's former girlfriend knew Wright from her work at a local high school.
Any potential unrest provoked by the Chauvin verdict would bring full-circle the countless demonstrations that began with Floyd's death in police custody last May.
Those resulting protests transformed the politics of a presidential election year already upended by the coronavirus pandemic, touching all corners of the United States — including Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C., where then-President Donald Trump ordered the violent dispersal of an apparently peaceful crowd so he could pose with a Bible in front of a nearby church.
In the months before Election Day, the Trump White House and its allies sought to tie all the protests to episodes of rioting and looting that took place in some cities. Trump repeatedly warned that the country would descend into all-out anarchy if Biden were elected, and reinforced his own "law and order" message by deploying militarized federal forces to Portland, Ore.
In recent days, a handful of governors had activated National Guard troops in anticipation of the Chauvin verdict, and White House press secretary Jen Psaki confirmed on Monday that the Biden administration was in communication with state and local officials ahead of the announcement. She would not elaborate further on coordination between the federal government and law enforcement authorities.
"There's a range of conversations about how to ensure that, no matter what the outcome, there is a space for peaceful protest," she said. "But, of course, we'll let the jury deliberate, and we'll wait for the verdict to come out before we say more about our engagements."
In the final hours of Chauvin's trial on Monday, the state's attorneys emphasized Floyd's humanity, Chauvin's use of force, medical experts' testimony and the nine minutes and 29 seconds of cellphone footage that sparked a mass movement against racism and police brutality last summer.
"This case is exactly what you thought when you saw it first, when you saw that video," prosecuting attorney Steve Schleicher told jurors. "It is exactly that. You can believe your eyes."
"It's exactly what you knew. It's what you felt in your gut. It's what you now know in your heart," Schleicher said. "This wasn't policing. This was murder. The defendant is guilty of all three counts. All of them. And there's no excuse."
In his own closing argument, defense attorney Eric Nelson stressed the prosecution's burden of proof, sought to highlight the perspective of a responding police officer, and insisted the case could not simply be narrowed down to the now ubiquitous video of Chauvin's knee on Floyd's neck.
"You have to take into account that officers are human beings capable of making mistakes in highly stressful situations," Nelson said. "In this case, the totality of the circumstances that were known to a reasonable police officer in the precise moment the force was used demonstrates that this was an authorized use of force, as unattractive as it may be. And this is reasonable doubt."
Nelson later asked Judge Cahill for a mistrial in light of comments made over the weekend by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who urged protesters to "get more confrontational" should Chauvin be found not guilty. Cahill rejected the defense's request but noted that Waters "may have given you something on appeal that may result in his whole trial being overturned."
As the jury's verdict was read — guilty, guilty, guilty — millions of Americans breathed out.
Despite the widely circulated video capturing Derek Chauvin choking the life out of George Floyd on a Minneapolis street last summer, it was never clear that the former police officer would be convicted of anything, let alone murder. Despite increasing attention to police violence, particularly against Black Americans, it's still vanishingly rare for officers in the U.S. to be charged, let alone convicted.
So Tuesday's verdict marked a big moment in the nation's ongoing racial-justice reckoning, and in the push for more accountability from the police. But will anything more come of it?
POLITICO Magazine asked a select group of experts on race, policing and the law to comment on the verdict, including whether it suggests the system can work and where society needs to go from here.
Several said the verdict offers justice for Floyd but frustratingly little reason to think it signaled broader progress. "Year after year, police officers have killed Black and Brown people in this country with impunity. Many of those cases were also caught on video," wrote historian Keisha N. Blain. Others noted, hopefully, that Chauvin's conduct was condemned by some former colleagues. "The fact that several police officials — including Minneapolis' chief of police — testified that Chauvin's actions were unethical and criminal signals an important change," said Chuck Wexler, executive director of Police Executive Research Forum.
The overwhelming sentiment echoed that of Yale's Monica C. Bell, that the outcome is important but only one step forward: "As we exhale along with the Floyd family in the wake of this outcome, we must redouble our efforts to confront and root out racial injustice throughout our society."
Their full responses are below.
'This case has set the bar on what holding a police officer accountable in America should look like'
By Chanda Smith Baker
Chanda Smith Baker is the chief impact officer and senior vice president of the Minneapolis Foundation.
During this trial, I could not bring myself to hope, but today the justice system worked. I am clear that justice prevailed because Minnesota has an attorney general, Keith Ellison, who has moral clarity and a commitment to justice. Minneapolis has a police chief who, after viewing the video, immediately took action, firing those officers and later testifying that what happened was against the policies and training of the Minneapolis Police Department. This case has set the bar on what holding a police officer accountable in America should look like. This is not what we've seen in so many other cases. This verdict reminds us that justice has not prevailed for far too many and — without continued commitment — it will not endure.
The public witnessing of the public execution of George Floyd has brought a spotlight on the injustices of the criminal justice system, on the ways Black and Brown communities are engaged with by police and the consistent lack of accountability. This verdict brings closure to our community in this case. However, it should inspire us to continue to push for significant change in our criminal legal system and the system of policing.
In this instance, we are talking about the legal system working. For justice to really prevail, we would have never witnessed the death of George Floyd. We must continue to work to have public safety and policing that doesn't allow for this situation to happen in the first place. And while we are hopeful with this verdict, we should be clear that there's a long road to justice ahead of us. We need to remain steadfast on pushing for policies to change the many systems that have, for too long, adversely impacted Black and Brown people.
The world has been watching Minnesota, and I hope that we can become the epicenter for change, and what justice prevailing consistently looks like.
'No, the justice system did not work'
By Kwame Raoul
Kwame Raoul is the attorney general of the state of Illinois.
It is important to note that the justice system is not solely composed of proceedings that come after a crime. The justice system also includes proactive steps that are taken to avoid these tragedies in the first place. For instance, if Derek Chauvin had a history of complaints filed against him, should he have been in a position to commit murder in the first place? So if you look at the "justice system" as including taking action to address previous misconduct, then no, the justice system did not work. Ideally, the justice system should prevent death instead of reacting to it. With respect to this court proceeding, you can argue that the system worked.
I would emphasize that this is one case. The jury is still out on the long-term implications here. We still have so much to do in order to eliminate the systemic failures that allowed Chauvin to be on the police force for so long in the first place. Looking at just this verdict as a final answer is taking a "bad-apple" approach to criminal justice reform instead of taking a holistic approach to the challenge of constitutional policing.
My fervent hope is that we go to a place where we can have honest discussions about the policy deficiencies that have existed over time, and the implicit bias that has allowed for these deficiencies to prevail for so long. Comprehensive police reform — not merely tinkering with separate components — will go a long way toward allowing us to have honest and complex conversations such that Black and Brown communities do not fear the police, and police officers who are in communities doing their jobs the right way are not painted with a broad brush.
'It is too early to know whether this verdict is a flash in the pan or a sea change'
By Christy Lopez
Christy Lopez is a professor from practice at Georgetown Law.
One aspect of the trial that was encouraging was the willingness of so many law enforcement officials to state unequivocally that Derek Chauvin's use of force was unlawful and unnecessary. That was likely quite significant in the jury's reaching the verdict it did, and it underscores the importance of law enforcement officers policing their own — not only to ensure that an officer is held accountable for wrongdoing after the fact, but also to prevent harm from occurring in the first place.
Still, it is too early to know whether this verdict is a flash in the pan or a sea change. Even if it signals a new willingness for prosecutors to bring charges against officers, and for juries to convict, holding an individual officer criminally liable does not fundamentally change the trajectory of policing. This verdict is significant and important. But it shouldn't cause us to lose sight of the fact that Chauvin was more a symptom of policing's current pathologies than a cause.
We need to move beyond conceptualizing criminal prosecutions as the solution to police misconduct. For one thing, prosecutions of police officers generally occur only after someone has been terribly harmed or killed. We need to do much more to prevent policing harm. This requires vastly different recruiting, training and accountability measures, but it also requires fundamentally rethinking the policing function. We have given police an impossible job — one that under-protects communities even as it needlessly provokes conflict. Unsurprisingly, it's not going particularly well. No amount of after-the-fact prosecutions — even successful ones — is going to change that.
'I'm left to wonder if justice in this country will always be synonymous with a prison cell'
By Reginald Dwayne Betts
Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, lawyer and memoirist. He is also the director of the Million Book Project, an initiative out of Yale Law School, where he is a Ph.D. candidate.
A friend of mine was once sentenced to life in prison for murder. My friend, then a 17-year old Black boy, had murdered another Black boy. Two decades later, I worked as a lawyer struggling to convince a parole board to free him. But I knew the family of the dead Black boy might believe freedom for the trigger man is an injustice. That for them, only life in a cell amounted to accountability. My view: Two decades in prison was enough.
I shouldn't think back to my friend when I think of the Derek Chauvin verdict. But Chauvin's eyes remind me of others I've seen struck with the sudden knowledge that decades in a prison cell might await them. And so, when I ask myself where does society go from here, I really have no answers. Chauvin is another man going to prison for destroying a life and ruining his own. The verdict gives me some relief, I suppose — but on most days, I think about prison cells, what they can and can't do. The men I know condemned to die in prison for violence look more like me than Chauvin. The men I want to free from prison all look more like me than Chauvin.
If justice is a 40-year prison sentence for Chauvin, I'm left to wonder if justice in this country will always be synonymous with a prison cell. That's a troubling thought. Because prison cells have never made this country safer. I won't make this verdict an occasion for me to pretend that the criminal justice system is just and the rates of incarceration in this country don't profoundly worry me. The verdict makes me want to imagine a different United States, one where the undercurrent of so many lives isn't violence. Because I know when death comes, we all tend to want prison. And, sadly, maybe that's all we can want, even if at night prisons make none of us sleep any easier.
'This case is an outlier'
By Philip M. Stinson
Philip M. Stinson is a professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University.
The criminal justice system worked with the jurors returning guilty verdicts on all three counts. The verdict, however, likely means little in terms of the long arc of holding police in America accountable for their actions. This case is an outlier. Most instances of police brutality are not captured on video, and most do not receive the level of media attention that the Derek Chauvin case has garnered.
I study police crime and police behaviors. Roughly the same number of people are killed by police officers every year in this country, and roughly the same number of police officers are charged with murder or manslaughter each year. Less than 2 percent of the on-duty police officers who kill someone are ever charged with a crime and held accountable in the criminal courts. While justice was served with the guilty verdicts against Chauvin, my fear is that it will not lead to meaningful reforms in policing.
There are more than 18,000 state and local law enforcement agencies across the country employing more than 700,000 sworn officers. The Chauvin trial will do little to change the culture of policing at many of those law enforcement agencies. That is because many police officers exhibit fear of Black men and Black boys. Until we deal with this core value of the police subculture, it will be difficult to change police behaviors.
Today we have seen accountability for one police officer's actions. We have witnessed some form of accountability take place, which was necessary. However, we should not be mistaken that justice has taken place. Justice would have been George Floyd not being murdered. Every day that Black people worry whether they will be the next George Floyd is another day without justice. The one guilty verdict does not mean that the criminal legal system values Black lives. It took overwhelming evidence with unimaginable footage and witnesses to bring this case to trial and gain convictions.
Collectively, so many people were holding their breath waiting for the verdict. The fact that so many of us knew what the verdict should be but remained uncertain of what it actually would be speaks volumes about the state of our nation. Police are rarely held accountable. Hopefully this case will send a signal to every official within the criminal legal system that the tide is shifting.
There is still so much work to be done, which begins with acknowledging that structural racism is entrenched in policing, and we must continue to fight for systemic change to policing in America. We need to stop pretext traffic stops, stop reliance on fines and fees, end qualified immunity, restructure civilian payouts for police misconduct, limit the power of police unions and defund the police.
'Prosecution of rogue cops has a role to play, but it isn't enough'
By Walter Olson
Walter Olson is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute's Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies.
Police are not above the law. And yet it's hard to get juries to convict an officer. Social respect for the job often sways the outcome toward acquittal where the facts are ambiguous. They weren't ambiguous here, thanks to the video. "I feared for my safety" often works as a defense. Derek Chauvin couldn't make use of it. Prosecutors and judges, no matter their integrity, thread a narrow path because they have to work with cops every day.
The eyes of the world were fixed on this courtroom. Now the question is what's going to happen after the eyes of the world move on.
Prosecution of rogue cops has a role to play, but it isn't enough. Around much of the country, attempts to separate bad officers from the force are hobbled by union power, reluctance to testify against other officers, and barriers to discipline like the "Law Enforcement Officer Bill of Rights" laws that prevail in more than a dozen states, including Minnesota.
What about civil lawsuits by surviving families against cities or individual officers? In all but the most egregious cases, these tend to be restricted by doctrines of "qualified immunity," which often shelter both police and other government officials from being held liable for harms they commit under color of law. Those are judge-made rules, not found in the Constitution, and it's quite right that they're being rethought across the country.
'It is critical that we do not allow this outcome to lure us into complacency'
By Monica C. Bell
Monica C. Bell is associate professor of law and sociology at Yale University.
My soul is pleased with the conviction of Derek Chauvin. At the same time, it is critical that we do not allow this outcome to lure us into complacency about the enduring injustice within and beyond our criminal systems.
As I watched the closing arguments, what stood out to me was how sharply the prosecutor focused the jury and public attention solely on the 9 minutes and 29 seconds that Chauvin spent with his knee on George Floyd's neck. This was an excellent legal strategy. Yet it underscores that this case was never about any of the myriad injustices that preceded those 9 minutes and 29 seconds: the aggressive, multiple-officer response to an incredibly minor incident; the immediate wielding of a gun against Floyd when stopping his car; the racist and dehumanizing lens through which officers viewed Floyd before he was in custody; the failure to take Floyd's mental health concerns seriously when he described his anxiety and claustrophobia. None of those injustices count as unreasonable uses of force, and Chauvin would not have been held accountable for any of them if he had not also murdered Floyd.
As we exhale along with the Floyd family in the wake of this outcome, we must redouble our efforts to confront and root out racial injustice throughout our society. That means, most fundamentally, at least three projects: investing in new ways to build safety in our communities, reducing the frightening and destructive presence of guns and other tools of violence in our communities, and deeply reckoning with historical and contemporary American racial inequity.
I do not presume to speak for George Floyd's many loved ones. I hope that they find this outcome just and that it brings them peace. Derek Chauvin was clearly guilty of murder. I am glad for people who find relief in the jury's confirmation of that fact.
But the punishment system — which is really what we have in the United States, as opposed to a justice system — also served itself quite well through the verdict. Chauvin's conviction allows for those who are within or who support that system to say that it "works" — to claim that the verdict is proof of the system's supposed fairness and justness. But it doesn't work. It isn't fair. It isn't just. If it were, George Floyd would be alive. Daunte Wright would be alive. Adam Toledo would be alive.
The reality is that Chauvin's deployment of violence against Floyd was not an exception to the everyday rhythms of policing in the United States. Violence is central to the institution and the practice. American policing relies on the constantly existing threat of violence as a means of coercing cooperation. And that routinely, relentlessly escalates into worse forms of violence, such as what Chauvin did to Floyd. Those within or who support America's punishment system would like to claim that what Chauvin did was a "bad version" of police work. He was, nevertheless, doing police work, ever-reliant on violence as both threat and reality, as always in this country.
No one should stake a greater claim on this verdict as potentially transforming policing. Until people understand that the murder of George Floyd was the outcome of everyday police work, not an exception to it, this miserable system will remain as it is.
'This could be a once-in-a-generation opportunity' to reform policing
By Chuck Wexler
Chuck Wexler is executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum.
The killing of George Floyd was an unspeakable tragedy, and today's verdict does not change that. Ultimately, justice was served: Derek Chauvin was held accountable for his criminal actions.
These past few weeks, not just the defendant, but the profession of policing, has been on trial. And the fact that several police officials — including Minneapolis's chief of police — testified that Chauvin's actions were unethical and criminal signals an important break from what has been characterized as the "blue wall of silence." That the testimony of Minneapolis police officers helped convict Chauvin was not lost on the policing profession. To fix policing requires change from within as well as outside, and this trial was an important turning point.
Over the 11 months between the killing of George Floyd and today's verdict, all of us have watched the video of his death, reliving those horrific moments time and time again. That has exacted a mental toll on Americans throughout the country, especially people of color. It has also taken a toll on dedicated, hard-working police officers, who were just as horrified by what they saw. Justice takes time, and so will rebuilding our communities, the profession of policing and a strong relationship between the two.
Even after this verdict, neighborhoods across the country will continue to face challenges — crime and violence, homelessness, untreated mental illness and myriad others. Often, police remain at the center of each one of these issues. This could be a once-in-a-generation opportunity for communities and police to come together and try to find meaningful long-term solutions — and for police agencies to continue the path toward lasting reform.
'We must not judge all police officers by Chauvin's actions'
By Bob Woodson
Bob Woodson is founder and president of the Woodson Center.
This verdict ensures that Derek Chauvin will be held accountable for his actions. But just like we should not judge an entire racial group by the bad actions of a few, we must not judge all police officers by Chauvin's actions.
Our justice system does not work perfectly, but it works better than that of any other multiracial society in the history of mankind, and Americans of goodwill are continually laboring to make it work better. The way to best improve it, however, is to shun inflammatory rhetoric, reduce polarization and work toward civil discussions of the best paths forward. If, as the presiding judge warned yesterday, the incendiary comments from public figures like Rep. Maxine Waters threaten this conviction upon appeal, it will clearly demonstrate the grievous harm that such rhetoric does to the rule of law and the cause of justice.
As I have said for decades — and as the work of anti-violence programs like the Woodson Center's Voices of Black Mothers has shown — our solutions often lie in the same zip code as our problems. Thousands of community leaders whose work is overlooked by policymakers and media alike already have the answers we seek.
'Justice is a world in which … a guilty verdict would never have been in doubt'
By Janai Nelson
Janai Nelson is associate director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Inc.
There is no doubt that Derek Chauvin should have been convicted — and, thankfully, he was. As for whether Chauvin's conviction equals justice: Justice is a world in which George Floyd's death would never have occurred, a guilty verdict would never have been in doubt and the recurrence of a similar tragedy would be unfathomable. Sadly, the deaths of Breonna Taylor and, more recently, of Duante Wright and Adam Toledo, tell us that we have not achieved that vision of justice. That it took the traumatizing reliving of Floyd's excruciating execution repeatedly through videos, still images and eyewitness testimonies indicates how severe and well-documented police violence against Black and Brown people must be to compel a conviction.
While there is undoubtedly collective, monumental relief that Chauvin was convicted for his horrifying role in Floyd's death and held accountable for the brutality we have long seen and experienced without being believed, there must be a systemic overhaul of our approach to police accountability to account for the countless instances in which our legal system has historically failed Black and brown communities.
The trial of Chauvin may be over — even if an appeal looms — but the trial of our system of justice is ongoing. Moving forward, we must take transformative steps to hold police who commit misconduct accountable for their actions as we simultaneously build a new model of public safety that honors the dignity and humanity of all people, especially those who have disproportionately suffered the wanton will of police. As a first step, Congress must pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act and the Department of Justice should freeze all federal funding to police departments until it conducts an audit to identify any and all law enforcement agencies that are in violation of the anti-discrimination provisions of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. These are vital steps in a long road toward true and lasting justice.
Ordinary Americans 'have moved well beyond assuming that the police are always right'
The justice system worked. In 1992, after several Los Angeles police officers beat Rodney King in an incident that was, like George Floyd's death, captured on video, a nearly all-white jury acquitted the officers responsible. The jurors in the King case accepted the defense's argument that they literally should not believe their own eyes, and that what appeared on the video to be a brutal, senseless beating of a helpless man was, if instead viewed frame by frame, a lawful, carefully calibrated use of force in response to ongoing signs of aggression from King.
Today, nearly 30 years later, a far different and more diverse jury had no trouble rejecting similarly tortured arguments from Derek Chauvin's defense lawyer. Instead of falling for defense claims that Floyd continued to pose a sufficient threat to justify Chauvin keeping his knee on Floyd's neck for nine minutes, the jury chose to believe their own eyes — and what they saw was a man who posed no threat to anyone having his life cruelly pressed out of him.
The guilty verdict in the Chauvin case suggests that police departments, prosecutors and ordinary Americans like those on the jury have moved well beyond assuming that the police are always right — a sentiment which, for decades, made it difficult to hold officers accountable for all but the most egregious abuses (and sometimes even in those cases, too). It also suggests that no longer are police leaders or ordinary Americans willing to accept that any failure to cooperate with police should be met with an immediate show of force regardless of the degree of threat posed by the suspect or the seriousness of the underlying offense being investigated. It suggests a healthy skepticism about the need for force, and puts police on notice that if they use force, the burden will increasingly be on them to demonstrate that no less coercive methods could reasonably have been used. Finally, the verdict suggests that Americans of all races increasingly understand the ways in which racial bias, whether conscious or not, can distort perceptions of threat — sometimes, as in George Floyd's case, with lethal consequences.
Looking ahead, the verdict suggests that America may finally be ready to have a more thoughtful and sophisticated conversation about policing than we have had in the past. Slogans like "abolish" or "defund the police" are polarizing, but beneath the rhetoric, they raise vital questions: What do we want public safety to look like? Which kinds of problems require armed police, and which problems are better left to social workers, medics or mediators? Which kinds of "bad behavior" merit arrest and prosecution, and which are better addressed outside the criminal justice system? We won't be able to transform our deeply flawed criminal justice system overnight, but asking these questions helps move us in the right direction.
'The outcome of the Chauvin case is rare, and therein lies the problem'
By Keisha N. Blain
Keisha N. Blain is an associate professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh, a 2020-21 Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University, and author of Set the World on Fire andUntil I am Free.
We can — and should — celebrate the verdict in Derek Chauvin's trial. Very few officers are ever found guilty of killing unarmed Black people. The fact that Chauvin was found guilty on all three counts sends a powerful message to police officers across the nation that they are not above the law.
That said, we should not be so quick to praise the effectiveness of the criminal justice system. Year after year, police officers have killed Black and brown people in this country — many of those cases were also caught on video — with impunity. Countless families have had to endure the pain of losing a loved one while watching the justice system provide cover for members of law enforcement who participated in the killing. The outcome of the Chauvin case is rare, and therein lies the problem.
As we move forward as a society, we must demand that all officers face legal consequences in cases of police violence and for the murders of unarmed citizens. Now that Chauvin has been found guilty, we can continue the difficult work of bringing an end to the systemic problem of police violence in the United States. We must join forces to denounce anti-Black racism and demand that police officers — and all Americans — recognize the value of Black lives.
'There is a long way to go'
By Ervin StauB
Ervin Staub is the founding director of the Psychology of Peace and Violence Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Yes, the justice system worked in this case. But this was a very unusual case, with the shocking, heartrending video of the killing of George Floyd. In many police cases, the justice system has not worked. Violent police officers often have not been charged, or when they were, juries often didn't find them guilty. It's hard to understand why the officials and citizens of this country have historically been so reluctant to bring police officers to justice.
I am not confident there will be a real change in the justice system heading forward, but perhaps this will represent a new beginning, in that police officers and a police chief testified against Derek Chauvin. This is contrary to police culture, which requires that officers support each other no matter what. But again, the videos showing Floyd's murder were striking and difficult to dispute.
Where do we as a society go from here? One possible and hopeful direction is toward a transformation of police culture and police behavior. Many years ago, I developed a training for officers to become active bystanders who intervene to prevent or stop unnecessary, harmful behavior by fellow officers. We started implementing the training in New Orleans in 2015 and are now training more than a hundred departments, including the NYPD with its 35,000 officers; more departments are in line. The evidence so far suggests the training can change police culture and benefits citizen-police relations. It also benefits police officers themselves, by making them less likely to take actions that cause them to lose their jobs or be criminally prosecuted, and by making it less likely that officers will have to report bad behavior by their colleagues, which is anathema to police culture.
All of this is a hopeful direction for our society. But there is a long way to go, as there are 18,000 police departments in the country.
'A step toward improving trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve'
By Mark V. Holden
Mark V. Holden, the former senior vice president of Koch Industries, Inc., serves as senior vice president of Stand Together and chair of the board of Americans for Prosperity and Americans for Prosperity Foundation.
Thankfully, reason prevailed. The 9-year-old girl who told the Minneapolis officers to "get off of" George Floyd was right: This never should have happened. The jury's unanimous verdict is a critical step in helping the country to move forward in a productive way.
As important as this case is in its own right, and as much as it represents a victory for the rule of law, it also highlights the need for more justice reform. Our country must now turn its focus to police reform that works for everyone, especially for those who have been marginalized for generations. Smart reform can help our citizens, as well as the majority of law enforcement officers who work hard to do the right thing every day.
My hope is that this verdict begins a healing process and is a step toward improving trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve. Good policing and protecting communities should not be mutually exclusive. We need to continue working to make our justice system smarter on crime, and to make equal justice a reality for every American.
'George Floyd did not die in vain'
By Corey Pegues
Corey Pegues, a former New York Police Department commander and professor of criminology, is author of Once A Cop.
The justice system has finally worked for Black people across America. More than 66 years ago, Emmitt Till was viciously murdered by a racist mob of white men, who were never held accountable for their actions. Today, the Derek Charvin verdict represents "justice" for Emmitt and so many other Black people who have been unjustly murdered throughout American history. Since the inception of policing, including with slave patrols, law enforcement officers have been getting away with the murder of Black men and women with no accountablily. The 12 men and women of the jury in the Chauvin case, which was made up of a rainbow coalition of citizens, took less than 11 hours to finally bring closure to a case that has stoked the emotions of people all over the world. The guilty verdict on all three charges shows that the criminal justice system can work when people honestly look at the evidence without tainted eyes.
This verdict should finally crumble the "blue wall," and send a strong message to police departments around the country that the oath they take to preserve life and protect property is one they need to take seriously from the day they raise their hands. If not, they could end up in the same position as Chauvin — in cuffs. A new day is on the horizon. No longer will police officers be able to get away with murdering Black men and women with impunity!
As a society moving forward, we should be proud of the job the jury did in this case. Each one of us should have that same courage to do the right thing when called upon for jury duty. Hopefully, this will be a stepping stone to hold officers who commit crimes accountable for their actions. I also hope that this verdict can be the catalyst for the passing of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act in the Senate. That can be a start for broad change across America, but there is so much more to be done. Police officers are the "gatekeepers" of the criminal justice system, meaning they start the process. It is vitally important that we have officers patrolling our communities who have a true understanding of the phrase "Black Lives Matters." George Floyd did not die in vain.
'The first step in a long road to recovery'
By Cynthia Lee
Cynthia Lee is a professor of criminal law at the George Washington University Law School.
Yes, the justice system worked in this case. This verdict is historic. For far too long, police officers have not been held accountable for their excessive uses of force — force that is often aimed at Black and brown individuals. This verdict — guilty on all three counts — holds former officer Derek Chauvin accountable for his actions.
Granted, this is just one case and just one officer, but as George Floyd's girlfriend, Courteney Batya Ross, put it, the verdict can be seen as the first step in a long road to recovery. We need to hold officers accountable when they cross the line and abuse their authority. This verdict shows that is possible in America.
Still, we need to continue pushing for policing reform. We need to unite in passing laws like those recently enacted in Virginia, Connecticut and the District of Columbia that make clear that law enforcement officers must not use deadly force unless all other reasonably available options have been exhausted. We need to pass laws that encourage police to engage in de-escalation measures prior to using deadly force.
'Police will still be given the benefit of the doubt in future cases'
By David Safavian
David Safavian is the director of the American Conservative Union Foundation's Nolan Center for Justice.
The justice system worked in holding people accountable for their actions. The weight of the evidence was insurmountable. Combined with outside pressure from activists and politicians, that made the outcome a near certainty. The only question is whether the verdict is at risk on appeal.
Had Derek Chauvin been acquitted or had there been a hung jury, I think the message would have been very clear that it's nearly impossible to hold law enforcement accountable for wrongdoing. In the grand scheme of things, today's conviction is a small step toward accountability. But I think police will still be given the benefit of the doubt in future cases.
I hope Minneapolis can heal. But I'm doubtful it will happen anytime soon.
'Chauvin was held accountable for his actions [but] George Floyd is still dead'
By Abdul El-Sayed
Abdul El-Sayed, the former health commissioner of Detroit, is an epidemiologist and progressive activist. He is the author of Healing Politics.
Justice was served in Derek Chauvin trial, and yet justice is far from having been served in America. It took 9 minutes and 29 seconds of agonizing video evidence, in which Chauvin choked the life out of George Floyd, to get a conviction. And despite that shocking evidence, the trial's outcome was nowhere near certain.
If this is the high-water mark for justice in police killings of Black people in America, this case should remind us how far we have yet to go. Because although Chauvin was held accountable for his actions, George Floyd is still dead. So is Adam Toledo, the 13-year-old boy murdered by Chicago police while he had his hands up. So is Daunte Wright, shot miles away from where Floyd was killed during a routine traffic stop. And those are just two of the people of color murdered since this trial began.
True justice will be served when we no longer have to wait anxiously to learn whether police officers who murder are going to be held accountable. It will be served when they no longer murder at all. The Chauvin verdict doesn't fix the system—it reminds us of the system's glaring failures. Today, one bad apple was picked. Perhaps it's time to rethink the tree that bore it.
'The terrain going forward will not be the same'
By Laurie O. Robinson
Laurie O. Robinson is a professor of criminology, law and society at George Mason University, twice served as a U.S. assistant attorney general, and was co-chair of the White House Task Force on 21st Century Policing in 2014.
The Chauvin verdict today represents an important milestone showing that America's justice system can work in holding police accountable. It was highly significant that policing leaders — including Minneapolis' police chief — took the stand in court on behalf of the prosecution. That is rare.
But going beyond the jury's action to find one individual guilty, this case is significant in other ways. It has dramatically penetrated public consciousness not only in this country but across the world, and with the verdict today it has reshaped the landscape in which policing will now have to operate in this nation.
The terrain going forward will not be the same. In that environment, there is a broad demand for racial equity and change. I hope policing leaders, both from management and from unions, will now be carrying the baton in advancing measured and honest discussion about how to change what is broken in American law enforcement.
By Natasha Korecki and Laura Barrón-López on Apr 20, 2021 09:06 pm
Avoiding an escalation of conservative attacks against President Joe Biden's immigration policies was one of the factors the White House considered when it initially decided to keep his predecessor's controversial cap on refugees.
Though the issues are separate, administration officials predicted raising the number of refugees, as Biden had promised to in February, would turbocharge the false claim on the right that the administration was "opening" its U.S. borders.They feared the ramifications, as they would come at a time when the White House is also asking Republicans to negotiate on a massive infrastructure package.
"You're not going to throw gasoline on top of that fire," said a person briefed on internal discussions, who described it as one of the factors considered. "Fox News would have had a field day with it. It's the easiest talking point for every Sunday show."
But if the White House was hoping to avoid a political fire with conservatives when it announced that Biden would keep former President Donald Trump's 15,000-person cap — an historic low — it ended up sparking one with Democrats in Congress, immigrant advocates and refugee resettlement agencies. Later Friday, the administration reversed itself after the flood of condemnations, saying it would indeed raise the number for refugee admissions by or before May 15.
The flip-flop was just the latest example of an otherwise buttoned down administration struggling to find its political footing in the immigration arena. Though it has shown message discipline on Covid-19, vaccinations and the economy, the issues around immigration have repeatedly dogged the Biden world since the president took office. Hiring in key agencies dealing with immigration policy and enforcement lagged in the administration, with new officials having to quickly ramp up even as new challenges emerged. The refugee program was already beset with difficulties left behind from a Trump White House that gutted it.
The Biden administration has argued that both the situation at the border and the refugee admissions cap are intertwined because of the federal resources that they drain. But allies have not found the argument persuasive.
In an effort to contain the fallout, the White House held a Friday call with refugee and immigrant advocates after it reversed course on its refugee cap announcement. But attendees were unable to get their questions answered about who played a role in the decision and why the May 15 deadline to increase the number of admissions was only mentioned hours later. The White House asked for questions beforehand and selected five, according to a source on the call.
Multiple advocates on the call said they left it unsatisfied with the White House's explanation for its decision and subsequent walk back.
"They made the calculation that in political terms this would be something that could be used against them," said Galen Carey, vice president of government relations for the National Association of Evangelicals. "The waffling is probably going to be used against them more than if they'd just stuck with doing the right thing."
Carey, who was on Friday's late night call with White House officials said he was pleased the administration walked back its initial decision to keep the cap refugee admissions at 15,000 but said "the explanation and the trying to cover their tracks, it's not very convincing."
A White House aide on Tuesday said the administration wanted to make sure it wasn't rushing the issue and instead was allowing enough time to properly review a refugee system that they say Trump left more hollowed out than they initially anticipated.
"This was always meant to be just the beginning," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday. But the White House did not say until its afternoon clarification that Biden would issue a cap increase by May 15.
On Tuesday, Psaki pointed to the transfer of millions in funding by the Health and Human Services Department to address capacity for safe housing for children at the border as part of the reason for the administration's decision on refugee admissions.
Several allies privately say they see the missteps with immigration as evidence that the White House was not prepared to tackle the issue in its first 100 days, instead focusing on a deadly pandemic and efforts to reboot the economy. That included the president who, while talking to reporters after golfing, used the word "crisis" to characterize the border, something the White House later walked back.
Republicans have hammered Biden on issues at the border with conservative channels like Fox News regularly teeing off on the administration. In a Monday interview with Fox's Sean Hannity, Trump described the border as "a horrible situation," that "could destroy our country."
Still, the Biden administration is getting more than its share of pressure to do more from immigrant and refugee rights groups.
Krish O'Mara Vignarajah, president of Lutheran Immigration Refugee Services, pushed back on White House messaging conflating asylum seekers at the border and the refugee resettlement program.
"They are different and distinct — one is largely run by Health and Human services. The other is largely run by the State department," she said.
"There is no logistical or administrative reason we can't protect both of these vulnerable populations," added Vignarajah, who will join others advocates Wednesday for a meeting with White House officials on refugee resettlement. "I believe if we want to make good on President Biden's promise to restore the soul of our nation, we must protect both."
By Laura Barrón-López and Nicholas Wu on Apr 20, 2021 08:20 pm
President Joe Biden promised Hispanic lawmakers on Tuesday that he would make a more proactive case for the economic benefits of immigration.
In the process, he left the impression that it would not just be a portion of his upcoming address to a joint session of Congress, but that he'd support moving immigration measures through budget rules allowing a simple majority vote in the Senate.
"We can expect the president to be talking about the economic benefits of the immigration bill" in the future, said Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-N.M.), one of multiple Congressional Hispanic Caucus members who met with the president at the White House.
A push from Biden touting the economic benefits of immigration reform could supplement efforts by progressive groups to sell a pathway to citizenship for undocumented people as a $1.4 trillion boon for the U.S. economy. It also may boost efforts by some on Capitol Hill to argue that a pathway to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants can be passed in a reconciliation package that, if sanctioned by the Senate parliamentarian, could move through the chamber with just 50 votes.
During Tuesday's meeting, members of the CHC asked for Biden's "unequivocal support for immigration reforms to be included in the reconciliation package," said Rep. Darren Soto (D-Fla.). "He said he was committed to making those statements publicly."
Biden said that he generally "supports passing certain immigration reforms by reconciliation if we can't get the 10 Republican votes," Soto said after the meeting, referring to the number of GOP votes needed in the Senate to meet the 60-vote threshold required for most legislation. "And he would make a statement in the State of the Union."
A White House spokesperson did not address questions about Biden's comments to lawmakers during the meeting, instead saying the administration is committed to immigration reform and "supports the House-passed Dream and Promise Act and calls on the Senate to pass this important legislation as soon as possible."
Narrow bills providing a citizenship pathway for Dreamers and legal status for farmworkers are currently stalled in the Senate after passing the House earlier this year. And Biden's comprehensive immigration bill hasn't received a vote in the House, where it faces resistance from some within his own party.
Hispanic Caucus Chair Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) said Biden urged lawmakers in the meeting to "continue to speak about the economic benefits to all American families through immigration reform."
"He supports the cause," Ruiz said. If Biden's current infrastructure plan ultimately goes through the reconciliation process and the Republican votes aren't there for immigration, Ruiz said the Hispanic Caucus and Biden administration would "support the budget component of immigration reforms and job creation ... and also a pathway to citizenship through the budget reconciliation."
According to Ruiz, Biden expressed a "strong sentiment" about getting immigration reform "done once and for all," through whatever means available.
Biden did not commit to an "exclusive list" of specific undocumented immigrants that could be included in a potential measure considered under reconciliation, said Soto. But members specifically asked for a pathway for Dreamers, farmworkers, essential workers and Temporary Protected Status recipients to be on the list.
Both the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Progressive Caucus have pushed for Democratic leaders to include immigration reforms in a future reconciliation package as narrow immigration measures face headwinds in the 50-50 Senate. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) along with Sens. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) introduced legislation providing a pathway to citizenship for undocumented essential workers that they recently pressed the White House to include in negotiations around the next reconciliation package.
"We think we can make a case about the budget impacts of immigration in our country, and we are going to try to do that," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Asian American advocates earlier this month.
By Betsy Woodruff Swan and Daniel Lippman on Apr 20, 2021 01:27 pm
Months before news broke that the feds were investigating him for sex trafficking, Rep. Matt Gaetz was at the center of a separate internal fight at the Justice Department. The sparring match involved an Oval Office meeting, a foul-mouthed threat from the attorney general and voting in Florida. It has not been previously reported.
In Aug. 2018, President Donald Trump nominated Larry Keefe — a former law partner of Gaetz's at the firm Keefe, Anchors & Gordon — as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Florida. More than a year after he was sworn in, and as Joe Biden was locking up the Democratic nomination, Keefe looked to open a wide-ranging probe into voter fraud in Florida, according to two people familiar with the matter.
To open the probe, he needed approval from the Public Integrity Section at the Justice Department's headquarters. The lawyers there blanched at the statewide scope of Keefe's proposal, the sources said, and indicated they thought it would be too broad.
Keefe told Gaetz that he was facing resistance from the Public Integrity Section, according to a third person familiar with the situation.
In a phone interview with POLITICO about this reporting, Gaetz described the conversation this way: "Keefe did not share with me any details of any investigative work, nor would he. We were having a broad discussion about legal doctrine related to jurisdiction and venue."
Specifically, Gaetz said their conversation was about whether U.S. attorneys whose districts included state capital cities could investigate voter fraud in parts of the state outside their districts.
Gaetz described Keefe's view of the law this way: Since presidential electors are certified in state capital cities, any harm related to their fraudulent certification would be caused there — meaning the U.S. attorneys whose districts included those cities should have the authority to investigate those crimes.
"I got the sense from Keefe that the DOJ wanted U.S. attorneys to be very passive when it came to election integrity," Gaetz said.
After Keefe and Gaetz discussed the issue, the congressman had a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House with Trump. Gaetz said Trump brought up his views on fraud connected to mail-in voting. In response, Gaetz brought up Keefe's legal theory.
"I said to him that an appreciation for the Keefe position on venue would give good U.S. attorneys in every capital city the necessary jurisdiction to root out fraud," Gaetz said. "I also shared with President Trump that Keefe had faced substantial resistance from the Department of Justice."
Gaetz said that Trump then told White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who was in the room, to tell Attorney General William Barr that Trump believed Keefe's legal theory had merit.
When Barr learned about Gaetz's conversation with the president, he was incensed. The attorney general called the U.S. attorney and gave him an earful, according to two people familiar with the call.
"If I ever hear of you talking to Gaetz or any other congressman again about business before the Department, I am going to fucking fire your ass," Barr told him, according to one of the people with knowledge of the call.
Gaetz said he didn't know about any testy conversations.
"I am unaware of any discussion Barr had with Keefe," he told POLITICO, "but I did get a message from Keefe subsequent to my meeting in the Oval wherein Keefe said he was not going to be able to discuss these matters with me, and I got the sense that the politics of the Department of Justice were such that they did not want U.S. attorneys looking for election fraud in this type of very proactive way."
Barr declined to comment for this story. A spokesperson for Trump also declined to comment. A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment.
Trump won Florida handily in the 2020 race.
Keefe, like almost every other U.S. attorney appointed by Trump, was asked to resign by the Biden administration and left office on Feb. 28. Keefe said in a statement: "It is not appropriate for me to comment on details related to my previous service as a U.S. Attorney. I stand by the decisions I made and the actions I took in honoring and enforcing the laws of this nation during my public service."
Gaetz is reportedly being investigated for whether he engaged in sex trafficking. He has not been charged with a crime, and no women have publicly accused him of sexual misconduct in the three weeks since the New York Times first reported on the investigation. He has denied any wrongdoing.
At the time of Keefe and Gaetz's attempted investigation, the issue of voting rights, especially in Florida and other swing states, was a top national political story. Republicans have long raised concerns about voter fraud hurting the legitimacy of elections, even though numerous studies have shown that there are very few actual cases. Voting rights advocates, meanwhile, engaged in a wide-ranging effort to help people convicted of felonies who'd completed their prison sentences register to vote.
A landmark constitutional amendment passed in 2018 restored voting rights to people in this category — some experts have estimated it could have let up to 1.4 million people vote in Florida who couldn't previously, as ProPublica reported. But because of a state law and a court ruling, those people also had to pay any outstanding fines, restitution and fees before being able to vote — what has been called a 21st century poll tax. Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg offered to help pay down the fees, and Florida's Republican attorney general asked the FBI to investigate if the move broke any voting laws.
By Sarah Ferris and Melanie Zanona on Apr 20, 2021 04:08 pm
A GOP push to punish Rep. Maxine Waters for encouraging protests against police brutality fizzled on Tuesday. But the effort exposed a massive problem facing congressional leaders in both parties as they struggle to rein in members' inflammatory rhetoric.
House Republicans, who have wrestled with incendiary remarks among their own, rallied around a resolution to censure Waters (D-Calif.) for urging Minneapolis protesters to "get more confrontational" and "stay on the streets" if former police officer Derek Chauvin is acquitted of George Floyd's murder later Tuesday. The GOP bid failed in a party-line 216-210 vote Tuesday after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy brought it up, a big victory for Democratic leaders who successfully defended one of their own committee chairs from the threatened rebuke.
The vote occurred roughly an hour before a jury found Chauvin guilty of murdering Floyd, lessening the likelihood of mass protests in Minnesota and throughout the U.S.
Nearly a half-dozen centrist Democrats privately considered backing the effort to reprimand Waters, arguing that her comments were out of line with the nation already on edge this week, according to multiple congressional sources. But Democratic leaders, who have uniformly defended Waters, worked hard to keep their caucus together to present a united front against the GOP attacks. The whipping effort went beyond the leadership team, with Waters herself phoning members throughout the day Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the calls.
"I love my colleagues and they love me. I don't want to do anything to hurt them or hurt their chances for re-election," Waters told reporters after the vote. "I will make sure that they are comfortable with my kind of advocacy so that we can all be sure that we can do the right thing."
Members of the Congressional Black Caucus huddled together to hear the Chauvin verdict, replacing a tense moment for the caucus with sighs of relief, and for some jubilation.
"Someone said it better than me: I'm not celebrating, I'm relieved," Waters said after the jury announced its decision.
Even several Democrats who are personally uncomfortable with Waters' rhetoric said they would refuse to reprimand her while letting Republicans such as Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) go unpunished for his provocative speech during a Jan. 6 rally hours before a pro-Donald Trump mob attacked the Capitol.
Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.), among several Democrats who considered voting to censure her colleague, said she was "deeply concerned about [Waters'] word choice" but ultimately did not think it compared to the conduct of some of her GOP colleagues in recent weeks.
For those Democrats wary of Waters' remarks, censuring their own colleague while ignoring what's been said by their GOP counterparts — several of whom Democrats have accused of helping to incite the Capitol riot — would smack of hypocrisy. Then there's first-term Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who has a long history of promoting extremist rhetoric online and was booted off her House committees for endorsing violence against Pelosi.
"I had to weigh it long and hard because of the votes we've taken earlier this year," Wild said, referring to the House votes to strip Greene off her committees. "I don't think it rises to that level. But it was not an easy vote."
Adding to complications on the resolution, some lawmakers were concerned that punishing Waters — or any member, for that matter — could lead to the weaponization of similar resolutions down the line. Such votes are relatively uncommon in the House, and both parties are typically reluctant to punish their own members on the floor.
In recent years, the House has voted on measures to rebuke Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and former Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), for instance, but only after intense pressure from both sides. Republicans had planned to use Tuesday's censure vote to tie vulnerable Democrats to Waters, long a liberal bogeywoman for the GOP.
For many members, the debate over whether to punish Waters, a veteran member of the Congressional Black Caucus, reopened a painful schism over how Congress can proceed to normal business — and relationships — after Jan. 6. The GOP's censure push quickly turned into a moment of judgment for several other lawmakers who have courted controversy with their conduct since the fraught 2020 election concluded.
"I think it's a totally phony effort to distract from what the Republicans know has been the rhetoric of so many of their members, which has aided and abetted and condoned violent activity," said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. The Maryland Democrat fiercely defended Waters hours after the judge in the Chauvin trial stunned many in Washington, D.C., by criticizing Waters' remarks from the bench.
But the dispute over the resolution wasyet another reminder that a Capitol long strained by partisanship remains near a breaking point after the traumatic violence of the insurrection. The attempt to rebuke Waters gave Republicans an opportunity to unify after months spent grappling with their own members' divisive conduct and waging ugly intraparty battles. During a closed-door party meeting Tuesday morning, McCarthy encouraged his members to back his resolution and argued that Waters has incited violence.
"Censure is appropriate for the actions she has taken," McCarthy told POLITICO after the meeting. "And we will bring it to the floor and see if Democratic members stand behind the words she said or believe censure is appropriate."
House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, argued that Waters' rhetoric was more inflammatory than that of former President Donald Trump, who was impeached for inciting the Jan. 6 riot, and pointed out that the Democrat's remarks were condemned by the judge in the Chauvin case.
"In fact, President Trump used the words 'peaceful' when he talked about the statements that he made," Scalise said at a weekly press conference. "I haven't heard Maxine say anything about peacefully protesting."
Republicans are also expected to paint Democrats as anti-police in next year's midterms — and Waters' remarks may give them more fodder. Top Democrats, however, presented a united front in defending Waters.
Pelosi said Waters doesn't need to apologize and was merely encouraging civil rights-style forms of protests. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Waters "wants peace." And House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said McCarthy should worry about his own problems.
"Lauren Boebert is a mess. Matt Gaetz is a mess. MTG is a mess," Jeffries said, referring to Rep. Greene and other GOP lawmakers who are facing their own political headaches. "Clean up your mess, Kevin. Sit this one out. You've got no credibility here."
President Joe Biden will step into the global climate spotlight on Thursday, aiming to portray the U.S. as ready to take the lead in the international campaign to curb the pollution that's warming the planet, driving devastating storms and raising sea levels.
The two-day Climate Leaders Summit represents the return of the U.S. to the climate diplomacy it abandoned under President Donald Trump, and Biden is eager to demonstrate his resolve by laying out an aggressive set of targets that will move the country closer to the goals set by the European Union — and try to set the pace for nations like China and India to follow.
Officials close to the Biden team say the administration is planning to pledge to reduce the nation's heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions by about 50 percent from 2005 levels by 2030 — a figure that one person with direct knowledge said climate envoy John Kerry's team shared with Chinese officials during the last-minute trip he took to Shanghai last week.
Any lesser target would thwart momentum, according to environmental activists, experts and veterans of global climate diplomacy. Even a range of cuts that includes reductions that are less than 50 percent, as the White House is considering, could spell trouble both domestically and internationally for Biden's agenda.
"He has a coalition and a kind of organizing base — and particularly a sort of a political connection to younger voters — that is his right now [and] pumped to try to help get this done," said John Podesta, the former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and who led Obama administration climate efforts. "If you deflate that, there's consequences."
The U.S. officials have a lot of ground to make up after years of the federal inaction, and Biden has pushed his team led by Kerry and national climate adviser Gina McCarthy to move quickly by organizing the global summit less than 100 days into his tenure. That scramble has left a lot of questions circulating about exactly what to expect from the speeches from the 40 nations invited to participate in the virtual event Thursday and Friday.
The agenda for the summit was still an "evolving document," Sue Biniaz, a member of Kerry's team, told reporters on Tuesday. The administration has not even fully staffed all its climate positions, and as of last weekend, senior officials were still deciding how to roll out the event's centerpiece: the new U.S. greenhouse gas emission targets.
"The responsibility feels like a lot," one White House official who is working on Biden's climate efforts told POLITICO. "We've been hoping for this moment for a long time. And I think that just being here and knowing that we have an opportunity to actually make what I hope is a pretty big step forward, and almost a step change, it really feels exciting."
Kerry made his late sprint to Shanghai and Seoul, South Korea, last week, on the heels of his visits to India and Bangladesh. That trip, which was handled by a skeleton staff since theclimate offices at the State Department were decimated during the Trump administration, did draw a fresh joint statement between the U.S. and China that they would cooperate to fight climate change, making it a rare point of policy agreement in the increasingly tense relationship.
The effort to put together the climate summit so soon into the new administration may not yield major breakthroughs from huge emitters like China, India or Brazil, experts said, although it does show the Biden team is serious about its commitment to the issue — and has persuaded allies to devote more energy to how they will improve their goals.
"Diplomacy is generally not fast, so to try to bring the world's major economies together in 100 days is a huge undertaking," said Nigel Purvis, who held a high-ranking State climate position during the transition from President Bill Clinton to George W. Bush and now runs consulting firm Climate Advisers. "We were not asked to host a world summit within 100 days of the administration. I can tell you how hard that would have been."
While the Biden team has been tight-lipped about its new greenhouse gas targets, the White House official has said the emissions goal was designed to be achievable without help from Congress, where the fate of his $2.2 trillion infrastructure package that includes massive research spending, electric vehicle incentives and power grid investments remains uncertain.
Although the U.S. is well on the way to reaching the target set under former President Barack Obama to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025, the reductions recorded have been aided by sharper-than-expected cost reductions for renewable technology and aggressive moves by cities, states and the private sector to swiftly shift to clean energy in response to the Trump climate policy rollbacks.
"It really feels exciting," the White House official said. "I mean, obviously this is going to be criticized in every way, from every direction as being too much or too little — all the things. But for me at least ... I know this does really represent an incredible step forward."
And experts say the U.S. plays an outsized role in the international climate arena, and an aggressive target from Washington to rein in heat-trapping gases could put it in the type of leadership position that helped deliver the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015. That's a role top U.S. officials are aiming to play.
"Our diplomats will challenge the practices of countries whose action — or inaction — is setting us back," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday. "When countries continue to rely on coal for a significant amount of their energy, or invest in new coal factories, or allow for massive deforestation, they will hear from the United States and our partners about how harmful these actions are."
While the U.S. is the planet's second largest emitter of carbon dioxide at about half the level of China, which is the leading source of the gas produced by burning fossil fuels, no nation in history is more responsible for putting the world in its current dire position than the U.S.
That's put pressure on the U.S., as well as other countries that built their economies over the last century on fossil fuels, to help pay to bolster the defenses of poor nations and small island states that are expected to face the worst consequences of the severe weather and rising seas. And developing countries eager to build modern economies are pressing for financing to create clean energy systems, rather than relying on fuels like coal.
Those financing issues remain among the toughest to solve in the international negotiations, which will continue at the upcoming COP26 meeting set for Glasgow, Scotland in November.
"I see it as the starting line for all the work that needs to be done this year," Nat Keohane, senior vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund, said of the White House summit. "The U.S. has a role to play in that and a leadership role if we can show we are doing the work at home. The summit is the start of something, not the culmination."
But living up to his promises to fight climate change will put Biden in a tough spot, particularly if he cannot muster enough support from lawmakers to commit the U.S. to take sustained action.
"[Pledges] are great, but what I like even more are laws," said Leah Stokes, an environmental policy expert and assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "What is Congress going to do?"
Environmental activists, climate modelers and scientists have marched administration officials through scenarios to make the case that a 50 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by the end of the decade is possible. They also say it is necessary to put the U.S. on track to meet Biden's goal of net-zero economy-wide emissions by mid-century and to pressure other nations to up their game.
"There's a strong scientific and moral case for the U.S. to do more than 50 percent," said Dan Lashof, director of the World Resources Institute. "But to be credible in the international community, it has to be both ambitious and achievable."
That doesn't mean it will be easy.
The U.S. shaved about 24 percent of its emissions relative to 2005 levels last year, close to Obama's 2025 goal, said Zeke Hausfather, climate and energy director with think tank The Breakthrough Institute. Economic and travel restrictions to curb the coronavirus pandemic played a role, though, and emissions are expected to be about 20 percent less than 2005 levels this year and in 2022, he said.
All that means a 50-percent cut seems like a stretch since it took 15 years to bring the U.S. emissions to where they arenow. And it would have to find another 30-percent drop in just nine years, Hausfather said.
"There's a real potential downside if we promise big and underdeliver," he said
Joe Biden campaigned on raising taxes on companies and the wealthy. It didn't dissuade some of America's biggest companies and richest donors from helping to fund his inauguration.
Many of them opened up their checkbooks for Biden's inaugural committee, helping him raise more than $61 million to fund his largely virtual festivities.
The list included companies with major business before the federal government — on everything from taxes to regulations — such as Uber, Lockheed Martin, Comcast, AT&T, Bank of America, Pfizer and Qualcomm, all of which gave the maximum $1 million.
Unlike presidential and congressional campaigns, inaugural committees are not barred from accepting corporate donations, giving companies a rare opportunity to write big checks to politicians.
Biden barred his inaugural committee from taking money from lobbyists and foreign agents as well as fossil fuel companies, but he accepted corporate contributions of up to $1 million and checks of up to $500,000 from individuals. (Obama didn't take corporate money for his 2009 inauguration but relented in 2013.)
Others hitting the $1 million cap included the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers labor union; the Sherwood Foundation, a Nebraska nonprofit run by Warren Buffett's daughter, Susie Buffett; Levantine Entertainment LLC; and Masimo Corporation, a medical technology company whose founder, Joe Kiani, was a top donor to a super PAC that backed Biden during the Democratic primary.
Other corporate donors that gave at least $100,000 to Biden's inaugural committee include Amazon and Google, both of which are fending off calls to be more tightly regulated if not dismantled. United Airlines, which has been hit hard by the pandemic and has benefited from federal support, donated more than $200,000.
Ford, Doordash, Airbnb, Charter Communications, Anheuser-Busch, Walmart, Verizon, Yelp, the health insurer Anthem, Microsoft, PepsiCo, the law and lobbying firm Holland & Knight, Dow Chemical, General Motors, FedEx, the biopharmaceutical company Amgen and the parent company of Quicken Loans gave at least $100,000 each.
The National Football League, which has found itself at the vanguard of culture wars and has been targeted by conservatives in recent years, also gave $100,000.
Top executives at some companies wrote checks of their own, including Microsoft president Brad Smith, who contributed $100,000 and Amazon's David Zapolsky, who gave $25,000.
Unions, eager to see the passage of laws that would make unionization efforts easier, also chipped in big money, including the United Association, along with the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. The American Federation of Teachers, which has been urging caution around efforts to reopen schools amid the pandemic, gave $250,000.
More than a dozen individual donors gave the maximum $500,000, including Ken Griffin, the hedge fund billionaire and Republican megadonor; Constance Williams, the Hess heiress and former Pennsylvania state senator; the private equity executive Jean-Pierre Conte; Peloton chief executive John Foley; and the Democratic megadonors Haim Saban and Donald Sussman. The venture capital investor Chris Sacca and his wife, Crystal Sacca, each gave $500,000.
All told, Biden outstripped President Barack Obama's fundraising for both of his inaugurations even though many of the traditional festivities were canceled this year due to the pandemic. Obama brought in about $53 million for his first inauguration in 2009 and $43 million for his second in 2013.
Biden, however, brought in far less than President Donald Trump's 2017 inaugural committee — a record-setting $107 million haul. D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine later sued Trump's inaugural committee, alleging that it had violated its nonprofit status by overpaying to book a ballroom at the Trump International Hotel.
By Nicholas Wu and Natalie Fertig on Apr 20, 2021 07:30 pm
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's biggest challenge to legalizing marijuana is his fellow Democrats.
The New York Democrat has repeatedly promised a vote on cannabis reform, promising to tee it up even if President Joe Biden does not get on board. But that goal, which Schumer underlined with a public celebration Tuesday of an unofficial but widely marked marijuana holiday, means little if the majority leader can't corral the votes for passage in his own caucus. And two Democrats told POLITICO that they oppose removingfederal penalties on marijuana.
"I don't support legalizing marijuana," Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire said in an interview. "We're in the middle of an opioid epidemic, and the research that I've seen suggests that that is a way that more people get into drugs."
Sen. Jon Tester of Montana was similarly unenthusiastic about ending federal marijuana penalties. Legalization would "cause more problems than it solves," Tester said.
Schumer can't afford to lose a single vote on his side of the aisle in his legalization push, and that's before an even tougher battle to win over Republicans who have little interest in working with Democrats. If Schumer can't find a path to Senate passage this year, with a midterm election that's historically not been kind to the president's party, it could mean a long delay before pot is legal in the U.S. — even as 18 states have embraced full legalization.
As he seeks reelection in a state that recently legalized recreational marijuana, Schumer is working hard on the issue. He's developing legislation with Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) that mostcannabis policy watchers speculate will build on a far-reaching marijuana legalization bill passed by the House on mostly party lines last year.
Schumerrepeated that vow in a Senate floor speech on Tuesday as he lauded the pro-weed day of "4/20," a tradition since the 1970s.
"Hopefully the next time this unofficial holiday 4/20 rolls around, our country will have made progress in addressing the massive over-criminalization of marijuana in a meaningful and comprehensive way," Schumer said.
Marijuana legalization has spread rapidly across the country, with more than 40 percent of Americans now living in states that have embraced full legalization. Polling shows that nearly 70 percent of the public supports cannabis legalization, double the level of support two decades ago.
But as it stands on Capitol Hill, Schumer does not have enough votes from his own party to pass cannabis reform, let alone the 10or more Republicans necessary to reach 60 — the threshold needed to bypass a likely filibuster. If a cannabis vote was held in the Senate tomorrow, the bill would certainly fail.
In addition to Shaheen andTester saying they would not support removing federal marijuana penalties, Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) said they are undecided on legalization.
"Everything seems like it's moving in that direction," said Manchin, whose state has legalized medical marijuana but not recreational use. "But right now, we're not there."
A Schumer spokesperson referred to his previous comments to POLITICO that indicated he was open to revising his comprehensive approach in order to win more votes.
Moderate Republicans are hardly leaping to fill the shoes of Shaheen, Tester or any other Democrat. Even those from states with legal recreational marijuana — such as Republican Sens. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, Steve Daines of Montana and Dan Sullivan of Alaska — are against or undecided on removing marijuana entirely from the Controlled Substances Act.
"I think this is a terrible public policy," Rounds said soon after his state legalized cannabis in November. "I have not changed my position on it."
Rounds is out of step with voters in his state. South Dakotans approved a measure to legalize adult-use cannabis 54 to 45 percent in November.
The House has already taken steps to reflect the emerging consensus on legalization: In December, it passed a bill to remove federal penalties on cannabis. Butthe Senate is yet to even consider a similar bill in committee.
"Despite public polling on this issue, and the issue's popularity, it doesn't seem to be having an effect on a sufficient number of senators," said John Hudak, an expert on cannabis at The Brookings Institution. "I think they should be less scared of this issue. But ultimately, they're not."
Win-win situation
A party holding political power rarely gains by failing to follow through on a promise. But in the case of cannabis, which has broad support among both Democratic and Republican voters, legalization supporters arguethat a failure this year could work to Democrats' advantage. That's because Schumer and other progressives could then wield the issue as a cudgel against the GOP in next year's midterms.
"A failure serves as a motivator for 2022, saying 'We need more Democrats,'" Hudak pointed out. "That can be an effective fundraising message for [Schumer]."
Industry officials argue the issue is a political winner regardless of whether Congress currently has the votes for a major overhaul of federal marijuana policies.
"I think there is room for ... being more progressive with it, without a loss being seen as a political negative in the same way that maybe some other" issues might be, said Charlie Bachtell, CEO of Cresco Labs, a major cannabis company with operations in multiple states, as well as chair of the National Cannabis Roundtable, a leading industry group. "I think it would be more of an issue for [Schumer]if he doesn't bring it [up]."
Libertarian support?
Schumer could find unexpected legalization support from the GOP, but may need to make some compromises on the bill in order to do so. Libertarians like Republican Sens. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Rand Paul of Kentucky signaled openness to descheduling marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act, but Republicans have balked at tax and racial equity provisions in legislation like the MORE Act in the previous Congress.
"I'm not a big fan of having a federal excise tax and adding criminal penalties to regulations," Paul said.
Removing social equity funding or provisions to expunge criminal records could lure additional Republicans to a cannabis reform bill. But those changes could alienate Democrats — especially progressives who will not pass a cannabis bill without criminal justice reform language.
"The decriminalization of possession is something I've already supported, but legalizing requires more work on my end, on the science of it," said Casey, whose state has legalized medical but not recreational marijuana. Casey and Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) introduced a bill last Congress to automatically seal federal convictions and arrests for simple drug possession.
"Whether or not … this comprehensive reform bill has a likelihood of success or not [depends on] how they tackle those gray areas," Bachtell said.
Ultimately, neither party has reached consensus on a unifying political strategy when it comes to cannabis reform. Trying to find 50 votes for a comprehensive bill in this Senate — let alone 60 — will be exceedingly difficult.
Alternate pathways
Schumer has already found creative ways in the 117th Congress to get Democratic priorities over the finish line. The so-called budget reconciliation process requires only a simple majority vote but demands that any bill it's used for have a substantive budgetary effect.
A federal excise tax on marijuana, for example, could qualify for the process, though tackling a narrow change like that through the budget would require going around Republicans in order to circumvent a filibuster. It's far from clear that that approach could win the support it needs from all 50 Senate Democratic Caucus members.
"The challenge for Schumer … is that someone like Manchin or someone like Shaheen is going to look at this issue and say, this has nothing to do with the larger bill," Hudak said. "Could something like the MORE Act be included in reconciliation? Yes. Is it politically feasible for it to get included in any reconciliation? The answer is probably no."
One other pathway exists: legislation that would make it easier for marijuana companies to access banking, known as the SAFE Banking Act. Tester and Sullivan told POLITICO their focus is on passing that banking measure, which has much stronger support in both parties. Bachtell suggested a middle-ground route between the banking bill and comprehensive reform to get more Democrats on board.
"Something in the middle there is where they're going to focus their efforts," Bachtell said, in a bid to "get something done before priorities shift to [the] midterm election cycle."
By Sarah Ferris, Melanie Zanona and Olivia Beavers on Apr 20, 2021 12:21 pm
House Democratic leaders believe they've found a workaround to defuse weeks of delay tactics used by hard-line Republicans that have irked lawmakers in both parties and brought much of the chamber's floor action to a halt.At least temporarily.
The conservative firebrands have sought to make life difficult for Democrats in protest against what they say are efforts to shut out the minority party. But their tactics have made it virtually impossible for Democrats and Republicans to fast-track so-called suspension bills — noncontroversial measures that are critical to running the House — and instead created a legislative slog.
Under the response shaped by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, leaders of the far-right Freedom Caucus would no longer be able to effectively seize control of the floor by demanding individual votes on dozens of suspension bills and forcing members to vote late into the night,at least for the rest of this week.
Instead, Hoyer plans to package much of that broadly palatable suspension legislation into a single block on the floor, which he said would "save us somewhere in the neighborhood of seven-and-a-half hours" of voting time.
"What we have seen in the past few weeks has been an unfortunate example of extreme partisanship getting in the way of even the most bipartisan legislation there is," Hoyer said in a statement, confirming POLITICO's reporting on the planning.
In total, Hoyer said, the conservatives' tactics have cost at least 15 hours of votes on bills that otherwise could have been approved with little fanfare in a voice vote.
"There are Democrats and Republicans who want to get things done, and we will work around those who do not," added House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern.
The Freedom Caucus has wrestled over how far to push its rebellion. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy stopped by the group's weekly meeting on Monday evening, where he encouraged members to fine-tune their strategy and focus on achievable goals. McCarthy also warned Freedom Caucus members that they could face potential consequences from Democratic leaders if they keep disrupting the floor.
One of the ultimate goals driving the Freedom Caucus' floor tactics is getting controversial Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) back on her committees after a bipartisan vote to strip her of those assignments. But Democrats are ruling out that demand.
"I've been meeting with Steny and I went to the Freedom Caucus last night. We had a good discussion," McCarthy told POLITICO in a brief interview. "They want to fight. They're frustrated with everything that's happening, and I get all that. But my point is: What's the goal, what's the strategy?"
The House's dispute over suspension bills appears obscure. But beyond the wonky details, it's emblematic of bigger partisan tensions that have dominated the first few months of this Congress as emotions run high following the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.
Shortly after lawmakers were caught up in that day's violence, a handful of Democrats also sought to use suspension bills as a form of protest against Republicans who voted against certification of Donald Trump's loss to President Joe Biden. That effort proved short-lived after top Democrats stepped in and convinced the aspiring rebels that noncontroversial bills needed to easily clear their chamber.
Democrats' strategy to vote on suspension bills "en bloc," rather than individually on the floor, is set to be discussed in the House Rules Committee hearing later Tuesday afternoon.
Conservatives touted the Democratic move as further proof that Democrats are curbing their rights while the minority.
Freshman Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) tweeted a Wile E. Coyote gif in response.
The House Freedom Caucus also tweeted that Pelosi and House Democrats "are so frustrated" by their efforts, that they are working to considering making changes to ensure they can pass bills without members present to take a formal vote, while arguing that if they "choose to strip of us of our right to request votes, it will be yet another example of Democrats…undermining the rights of the minority party to expedite the passage of their partisan, far-Left agenda."
Mark McCloskey — the gun-toting St. Louis attorney who drew headlines last year for brandishing an assault rifle at Black Lives Matter protesters — says he's looking at running for Missouri's open Senate seat.
"I can confirm that it's a consideration, yes," McCloskey said in a brief interview on Tuesday evening.
McCloskey, a wealthy personal-injury lawyer, said that he had no timeline for making a decision about whether to enter the race for the seat from which Republican Sen. Roy Blunt is retiring. This past weekend, McCloskey spoke at a Jackson County GOP dinner, which also drew former Gov. Eric Greitens and state Attorney General Eric Schmitt, both of whom have announced their candidacies.
In June 2020, McCloskey and his wife, Patricia, waved guns at protesters who were marching past their mansion on the way to the home of then-St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson. Images of the barefoot couple defending their home — which took place amid a summer of social unrest following the killing of George Floyd — almost immediately went viral. They were later indicted on charges of unlawful use of a weapon and evidence tampering.
The couple became a cause célèbre for conservatives and won the support of then-President Donald Trump, who used the incident to advance a central theme of his reelection campaign — that far-left activists were overrunning upscale communities. Trump retweeted video footage of the incident and defended the couple in a televised interview, saying it was "disgraceful" they were facing legal action.
The McCloskeys were awarded a speaking slot on the opening night of the 2020 Republican convention. In a pre-recorded, four-minute video, the couple warned that liberals wanted to "demolish" suburban areas and take away gun rights.
GOP Rep. Jason Smith has also been mentioned as a potential candidate for the seat, as has GOP Rep. Billy Long, both of whom will be appearing at separate fundraising events next week at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida. The list of Democratic contenders includes former state Sen. Scott Sifton and attorney Lucas Kunce.
A bipartisan group of senators on Tuesday unveiled plans to offer more emergency pandemic relief to the country's tiniest employers, a last-minute revamp of Washington's nearly $1 trillion small business rescue that is close to exhausting its funding.
The bill introduced by Senate Small Business Chair Ben Cardin (D-Md.) would allow thousands of self-employed Americans to qualify for more aid under the massive Paycheck Protection Program, which offers government-backed loans that can be forgiven if businesses maintain payroll.
Cardin and the bill's co-sponsors — including Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) — face a narrow window to pass the legislation because PPP funding is expected to run out in the coming weeks. Their bill would not appropriate additional money. As of last week, the program had $44 billion to lend out of the nearly $292 billion made available by Congress since December.
It's unclear how many potential borrowers the bill will help without any more money being pumped into the program. And the legislation doesn't extend the May 31 deadline for loan applications either.
"No new PPP funding is currently proposed," said Paul Merski, executive vice president of the Independent Community Bankers of America, which represents lenders that make PPP loans. "It is hard to see how all this can be implemented before the money runs out."
The last-minute proposal is the latest complication for the PPP, which policymakers have operated via ad hoc and ever-changing guidelines since creating it at the outset of the pandemic. The program has nonetheless been one of the most popular Covid-19 relief efforts, delivering nearly 9.9 million forgivable loans worth more than $762 billion.
It was not immediately clear how quickly the legislation would move ahead. The bill's backers would need to try to obtain unanimous consent in the Senate to pass it on an expedited basis. Otherwise, the legislation would be at risk of being bogged down in a lengthy floor debate.
Congress is returning to the PPP after passing legislation less than a month ago that extended its application deadline from March 31 to May 31. At that time, lawmakers declined to appropriate additional funding, even as the Small Business Administration, which administers the PPP, warned that the program would be on track to run out of money well ahead of the new deadline.
This week, Congress is once again proposing changes to the program without appropriating more funds. While Cardin said earlier this month that he would be open to a bipartisan effort to add more money, sources following the negotiations said Republicans were resistant.
"Congress must pass this bill as quickly as possible so eligible small businesses have time to secure the aid they need before PPP closes on May 31," Cardin said Tuesday.
The new bill would add new demands on the PPP's limited financial resources.
The legislation is a response to complaints raised after President Joe Biden revised the rules for PPP in March so that self-employed individuals, sole proprietors and independent contractors could qualify for larger loans.
While the administration's idea was to help a group that had long struggled with access, the changes were only offered to businesses applying for new loans. It triggered a backlash from business owners who had already received PPP loans and were unable to retroactively increase the size of the aid they had already gotten.
Cardin's bill would let self-employed individuals who were left on the sidelines apply for additional support under the PPP. Similar treatment would also extend to farmers and ranchers. The SBA would be required to create a new process that would allow those businesses to request a recalculation and potentially receive a payment equal to the difference between what they would have received under the old rules versus what they would have gotten under the new rules.
"The Biden administration has taken steps to make PPP more useful to farmers, ranchers and sole proprietors so making the changes retroactive is a matter of basic fairness," Cardin said.
The change could prove to be a significant administrative headache for the SBA and private lenders that are responsible for issuing the loans on the agency's behalf.
Banks have warned that the smallest applicants can often prove to be the most complicated to process, and some lenders may be reluctant to work with borrowers on retroactive changes.
The SBA, a relatively small agency, is already facing huge challenges in administering the PPP as well as separate rescue programs for live performance venues and restaurants.
"SBA is overwhelmed with what is already on their plate," Merski said.
A concern among advocates for the legislation is how quickly the SBA would be able to implement it if Congress passes the bill. In the past, the SBA has taken weeks to draft rules to execute changes to the PPP.
"We would be really interested in seeing how the SBA is planning for implementation, in particular the communication to lenders encouraging them to work on this retroactivity," said Rebecca Shi, executive director of the American Business Immigration Coalition. "These are the smallest borrowers. The majority are businesses of color or rural businesses that will be affected. They've been left out of this program and so this is their opportunity to get fuller relief."
David Yarnold, the CEO of environmental group the National Audubon Society, is stepping down under a "mutual agreement," coming on the heels of an internal audit into its workplace culture that resulted from revelations first reported by POLITICO.
Yarnold is exiting an organization he helmed for nearly 11 years, leaving behind an organization that faced charges of permitting an atmosphere marked by systemic racism, gender discrimination, intimidation and threats.
"Over the course of the last few months, the board and David have discussed succession planning and reached the mutual conclusion that now is the time for Audubon to find new leadership to create its next strategic plan and to address many of the culture issues that have come to light," Maggie Walker, chair of the Audubon board, said in a statement. "As we have met with and listened to a significant number of our staff in recent months, we have heard their messages that there is much we can do to improve our organizational culture."
Walker thanked Yarnold in in an all-staff email obtained by POLITICO for his "energy and passion leading Audubon to a new level of relevance and importance." Elizabeth Gray, who joined Audubon in March, will serve as interim CEO as the organization conducts a search. It will use an outside firm for that process.
The personnel change caps off a tumultuous period for Audubon, a storied organization that recently confronted questions about how it handled staff diversity and whether employees of color were given equal opportunities for promotions, senior roles and success. Yarnold, for his part, rejected such claims and said Audubon was trying to become more equitable just like many other organizations facing a long overdue racial reckoning.
But the staff uproar led to a flood of emails to senior leaders and board members for several months, with many dissatisfied with the resultsof the organization's efforts to address complaints about diversity. Audubon's board eventually brought in Morgan Lewis, a law firm, to investigate the workplace culture. Recently, some staff began a push for a union in light of workplace issues, E&E News reported.
By Tanya Snyder, Marianne LeVine and Burgess Everett on Apr 20, 2021 04:05 pm
Republican senators Tuesday discussed a counterproposal to President Joe Biden's infrastructure plan, likely coming in at $600 billion to $800 billion and paid for with user fees and unspent Covid relief money.
The plan: Twopeople who attended Tuesday's GOP lunch said the plan, spearheaded by Environment and Public Works ranking member Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.V.) on behalf of a group of centrist Republicans, would cost roughly $600 billion to $800 billion, depending how many years the plan lasted. One of the sources was more specific, putting the plan estimate between $550 billion and $880 billion. The latter number would be for an eight-year plan, the same duration as Biden's $2.2 trillion proposal.
POLITICO reported last week that Republicans were preparing an infrastructure counteroffer in the $600 billion to $800 billion range.
The pay-for: Capito proposed paying for the plan with user fees that would extend to electric and hydrogen-powered cars, which don't pay gas taxes but which as yet make up a vanishingly small minority of vehicles on the road, and with money left over from the Covid relief package, people in the meeting said. Public-private partnerships would also be a component of the plan.
The reception to the counteroffer was positive among Republicans, the meeting attendees said. Capito's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
What's next: Biden on Monday challenged Republicans to bring him an alternative proposal, complete with a way to pay for it, by mid-May.
Facebook's oversight board on Tuesday tapped as its newest member a prominent human rights lawyer who has argued that the company may have a tough time selling the panel on why it should uphold former President Donald Trump's suspension from the platform.
The significance: Board spokesperson John Taylor told POLITICO that the new member, Suzanne Nossel, will not participate in the deliberations over Trump's case, and will instead spend the upcoming weeks undergoing training for members. But her earlier views offer a glimpse into what factors the board's current members may be considering as they take up Trump's case — which could bode well for him.
Nossel, the CEO of human rights group PEN America, wrote in a January op-ed for the Los Angeles Times that Facebook's "silencing of Trump" was a "testament to the staggering influence of Facebook and a few other media companies over public discourse."
Nossel, a veteran of the Obama administration, argued the board will need to consider whether Facebook's decision to restrict Trump was clearly grounded in specific violations of its policies and consistent with the company's other enforcement actions against the former U.S. president and other world leaders.
That could be difficult to prove, she argued, given that Facebook "cited no specific rule-breaking post" in announcing Trump's suspension after the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6. Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg said at the time that the risk of allowing Trump to remain on the site in the wake of the violence in Washington was "simply too great."
Nossel also suggested that Facebook had ulterior motives, both politically and financially, in booting Trump.
"The Facebook Oversight Board's decision on the Trump case ... will show whether that expulsion can be justified by something other than an impulse to appease angry users and butter up a new administration," she wrote in the piece, headlined: "Banning Trump from Facebook may feel good. Here's why it might be wrong."
Human rights lawyers and other free speech experts tracking the case told POLITICO the board may opt to reinstate Trump if Facebook can't prove Trump was given proper due process under its rules. The case has drawn public massive interest, with the board receiving a record number of submissions for comment on the proceedings.
She had been chief operating officer of Human Rights Watch and executive director of Amnesty International, two NGOs that also work on issues of human rights and free expression. In the Obama administration, she was deputy assistant secretary of state for international organizations.
Nessel fills a vacancy left by Pamela Karlan, a Stanford Law professor and renowned voting rights scholar who decamped from the board to join the Biden Justice Department's civil rights division in February. Karlan drew national attention for testifying in a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Trump's impeachment in 2019.
The New Yorker reported in February that Trump had pressured Zuckerberg to drop Karlan from the board.
The announcement brings the board back to its initial full complement of 20 members, five from the U.S.
Where the Trump case stands: On Monday, the board announced it would delay issuing a ruling on Trump's indefinite suspension from the platform, a case it has been deliberating since January.
Facebook referred the case to the board, which has the power to overrule its content decisions, after the Jan. 6 attack.
By Kyle Cheney, Nicholas Wu and Sarah Ferris on Apr 20, 2021 02:30 pm
Congressional security officials reversed course late Tuesday and abandoned a plan to reconstruct fencing around the Capitol — one that had been approved by Capitol Police and other security leaders just hours earlier.
The plan for fencing was approved in anticipation of potential unrest following the verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer charged with killing George Floyd. Shortly after the jury returned a guilty verdict on all charges, the Capitol Police revealed they had scrapped the renewed fencing plan.
"USCP is no longer planning to go ahead with reinstalling some of the outer perimeter fencing," a spokeperson said in a brief statement that offered no explanation for the change of plans. The rebuilt fence also appeared intended to precede President Joe Biden's first joint address to Congress on April 28.
The seesawing security plans came as Congress once again closely scrutinizes its security planning, with many lawmakers still on edge in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot by supporters of former President Donald Trump.
Under the now-abandoned plan, portions of an outer perimeter fence — removed just weeks ago — would have been re-installed. The Senate sergeant-at-arms announced the rebuilding plan in an email to lawmakers and aides shortly before the Capitol Police walked back that very same preparation.
The 180-degree turn on outer fence planning also followed frustration from at least one senior lawmaker with responsibilities to oversee Capitol security.
Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, top Republican on the Senate Rules Committee, which oversees Capitol security matters, had expressed frustration that he hadn't been consulted on the new fencing plan. The Capitol Police Board, which includes the Senate and House sergeants-at-arms and the architect of the Capitol, is empowered to make security decisions for the Capitol complex without congressional approval.
"Well apparently the Capitol Police and the police Board have no interest in sharing any of these discussions with the oversight committee," Blunt said. "I'm certainly not aware of the particular threat to the Capitol, nor do I think that every time there's some incident somewhere in the country that could possibly create a public response that we should fence off the United States Capitol."
"I think it's a mistake and maybe more importantly, as the top Republican on the Rules Committee, no one has stepped forward to explain to me why it would be necessary," he added.
A new wave of anxiety on the Hill about possible protests this week, which seemed to abate soon after the Chauvin verdict, coincides with plans to reopen the Capitol to limited groups of visitors on Wednesday. It's the first time that outside visitors on "official business" will be allowed into the House side of the Capitol since the coronavirus pandemic forced significant restrictions. Additional visitors will be allowed into the rest of House buildings next Wednesday, the day of Biden's speech.
The House sergeant-at-arms is expected to formally announce the new visitation protocol in a letter to congressional offices on Tuesday.
The task of securing the Capitol also came up Monday night in a House Democratic leadership meeting where lawmakers discussed potential protests this week, according to sources familiar with the conversations.
Some draconian security measures implemented after Jan. 6 have started to wind down around the Capitol complex. The outer perimeter fence was removed just a few weeks ago, amid bipartisan concern that the heavy fortifications had gnarled traffic in Washington, D.C. and created a fortress-like atmosphere in what has traditionally been an open campus. The National Guard also has scaled back its presence in the Capitol complex in recent weeks, though some troops still remain.
But just days after the outer fence came down, an attacker rammed a vehicle into a Capitol Police checkpoint, killing one officer, William Evans, and injuring another. That deadly incident, as well as ongoing reviews of Capitol security in the aftermath of the insurrection, have added an air of uncertainty to safety plans for lawmakers, staff and visitors.
Former President George W. Bush described the modern-day GOP as "isolationist, protectionist, and to a certain extent, nativist" in an interview Tuesday that was packed with implicit criticism of the most recent Republican president.
"It's not exactly my vision" for the party, Bush told NBC's "Today" show in a rare live TV appearance. "But, you know, I'm just an old guy they put out to pasture."
Still, Bush remained hopeful that a more moderate Republican — one who supported reasonable gun reform measures, increased public school funding and a path to citizenship for undocumented workers, among other policies — could succeed in the party's 2024 presidential primary.
"I think if the emphasis is integrity and decency and trying to work to get problems solved, I think the person has a shot," he said.
As for the Jan. 6 insurrection perpetrated by supporters of former President Donald Trump, "it did make me sick. I felt ill. And I just couldn't believe it," Bush said.
"What's really troubling is how much misinformation there is and the capacity of people to spread all kinds of untruth," he added. "And I don't know what we're going to do about that."
Bush, who was on hand Tuesday to welcome 30 new U.S. citizens from 17 different countries during a naturalization ceremony on Rockefeller Plaza, also decried the divisive rhetoric that has surrounded the immigration debate in Washington — and reached new levels of hostility under his Republican successor in the White House.
"It's a beautiful country we have. And yet, it's not beautiful when we condemn [and] call people names and scare people about immigration," he said. "It's an easy issue to frighten some of the electorate. And I'm trying to have a different kind of voice."
Bush has been reluctant to publicly rebuke Trump over the past several years, despite the previous president's frequent attacks on members of his storied political family.
But Bush did express disapproval Tuesday of President Joe Biden's announcement last week that all U.S. forces would be withdrawn from Afghanistan by Sept. 11 — a decision Biden said he made after calling Bush and former President Barack Obama.
Bush said he was "deeply concerned about the plight of women and girls" in Afghanistan and feared they were "going to have real trouble with the Taliban" after American troops left the country.
"I think the administration hopes that the girls are going to be okay through diplomacy. We'll find out," Bush said. "All I know is the Taliban, when they had their run of the place, they were brutal. Brutal."
Bush's remarks Tuesday were part of his efforts in recent days to lobby for a bipartisan immigration reform proposal. The former president's push comes as the Biden administration works to stem the flow of unaccompanied migrant children at the southern border.
TALLAHASSEE — The Republican-controlled Florida Senate appears to be abandoning a controversial transgender sports ban, a development that would hand LGBTQ activists and Democrats a huge victory.
The bill, which specifies that K-12 and college sports teams must be designated based on "biological" sex while charging state agencies with crafting policies to hash out gender disputes, was condemned by the LGBTQ community and lawmakers who viewed the measure as discriminatory toward transgender students.
"Ding dong the witch is dead," tweeted state Sen. Janet Cruz (D-Tampa), a critic of the bill. "Rip Transgender bill."
The issue was magnified last week when the NCAA put states like Florida on notice just before the Florida House voted for the measure, warning that locations that don't treat all student athletes with "dignity and respect" could be ineligible to host future championship games.
A top Senate panel on Tuesday put off considering the ban, a move that signals the upper chamber is reluctant to move forward with the bill. The proposal's sponsor, powerful Senate budget chief Kelli Stargel, said her attention will be on finishing the state budget with less than two weeks left in session.
"Right now, my primary focus as Appropriations Chair is our constitutional responsibility to pass a balanced budget," Stargel, a Lakeland Republican, said in statement to POLITICO. "And in a time-limited environment, I don't know that we will have sufficient time to revisit SB 2012 this session."
The Florida House approved its transgender sports bill, dubbed the Fairness in Women's Sports Act, on April 14 by a 77-40 mostly party-line vote, with all but one Democrat opposing.
Florida's GOP lawmakers contend the bill is needed to protect the sanctity of women's sports, following the path of more than 20 other GOP-leaning states that are using the issue to limit transgender rights. The measure has been a priority for the GOP-led House, which this legislative session has pushed several bills that thrust lawmakers into the nation's culture wars, including measures aimed at cracking down on social media companies and anti-riot legislation.
Opponents of the transgender ban argue it would only "legalize bullying" for transgender students.
State Sen. Shevrin Jones (D-Miami Gardens) said he hoped the Senate bill, FL SB2012 (21R), would die in its committee Tuesday — the last scheduled meeting of 2021.
"The Florida Legislature has done enough bad policies for one session, and the last thing we need is more divisive rhetoric that will do nothing but keep all of us in our little corners, while the people of Florida look at the Legislature in disgust," Jones, an openly gay lawmaker and outspoken LGBTQ advocate, said in a statement to POLITICO.
House leaders rebuked the NCAA's criticism of transgender sports bans, with House Speaker Chris Sprowls (R-Palm Harbor) telling reporters last week that "we couldn't care less" after the House approved the ban.
"I think that this is now a movement that you're seeing in corporate America that, whether it's the NCAA today or it might be someone tomorrow, that we're going to use our corporate largess to bully the state," he said.
The Senate's transgender proposalbroke from the House version by allowing athletes who declare as female to participate in sports if their testosterone levels are below a certain mark, although Stargel filed an amendment that would have brought the bills closer in line. The House's version allowed for medical professional to verify a student's sex if gender disputes arise.
"I believe Florida should protect the ability of girls and women to safely participate in athletics, and I think there is consensus among my colleagues surrounding that underlying policy objective," Stargel said Tuesday. "We want to get there in a manner that respects the inherent dignity of each person, while at the same time acknowledging the fact that the biological differences between men and women can be significant, and can vary based on how far along a person is within their transition."
It's not hard to know what images we'll be seeing this week of Walter Mondale, who died Monday at age 93. There's the one-punch knockout of Gary Hart in a 1984 Democratic primary debate, when he said of Hart's "New ideas" campaign, "Where's the beef?"; the blue-ribbon-for-honesty line from his speech accepting the presidential nomination ("Mr. Reagan will raise your taxes and so will I. He won't tell you; I just did"); the rueful laugh when Reagan parried questions about his age by pleading not to use for political gain "my opponent's youth and inexperience." He later said he knew at that moment that he had no chance to win, and indeed he didn't: His 49-state loss would become another, more painful point of fame.
Take a step back from this inevitable headline reel, and a more substantive portrait emerges. Mondale was the amiable, agreeable embodiment of a Democratic Party whose 50-year-old foundations were withering away, and who would be the last of his kind to win his party's nomination.
Mondale's steady rise to political power was something out of a Garrison Keillor tale without the darkness. Born in the town of Ceylon, ("The Biggest Little Small Town in Minnesota"), graduate of the state's university and law school (the latter thanks to the GI Bill of Rights), he didn't so much ascend the greasy pole of politics as he was elevated by the kindness of others. Every position he attained was by appointment: attorney general at 32, senator (to replace Hubert Humphrey) at 36, picked as vice president on the 1976 presidential ticket by Georgia's Jimmy Carter for geographical and political balance. By 1984, he was the presumptive nominee of his party long before the campaign began.
It was in this arena that the political structure built by FDR, Truman and Kennedy, that had already shown its weakness in the flight of Southerners and working-class whites, demonstrated its vulnerability even within the Democratic Party itself. While Mondale did not embrace the full-throated liberalism of Humphrey, his power was solidly rooted within the community of Black leaders, labor unions and big city Democrats; a community that seemed ready to deliver the nomination to Mondale with barely a ripple.
"The sweetest primary in history," Mondale called it as it began, and after his landslide sweep of the Iowa caucuses, it seemed as if the contest would be over by the time the polls closed in New Hampshire. On the eve of that first primary, the New York Times reported that Mondale had the biggest lead in public opinion polls of any non-incumbent in history.
And then Hart showed up. On the "strength" of a distant second-place showing in Iowa (16 percent to Mondale's 50 percent), he had become The Alternative. He was only eight years younger than Mondale, but he looked and talked like someone from a different generation. He was as cool (or cold) as Mondale was ebullient; and in his politics, he was at pains to define himself as something different ("we're not all a bunch of little Hubert Humphreys," he once said). In his talk of military reform and entrepreneurship, in his ads that featured high-tech graphics, Hart was in effect saying the Democratic Party was no country for old ideas.
To the shock of the entire political establishment, he beat Mondale in New Hampshire by 10 points; beat him in Vermont and Wyoming; and seemed headed for a virtual sweep on the first Super Tuesday. Indeed, Hart won that day in Florida, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. What saved Mondale were victories in Alabama and Georgia, where the Black voters of Atlanta and Birmingham turned out and salvaged his campaign. But even when Mondale's coalition of traditional Democrats put him into the lead, his victory was tight. Were it not for a snarky remark from Hart about visiting a "toxic waste dump" in New Jersey—his capacity for self-destruction would return with a vengeance in the next cycle—Mondale might well have faced a genuinely contested convention.
There's a common judgment about what doomed Mondale's chances: his pledge to raise taxes; his choice of Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate, a historically significant but politically vulnerable choice; and that clever Reagan quip. But the judgment goes only so far. For one thing, Mondale didn't actually lose that first debate with Reagan; he dominated it. Even before the incumbent president got lost in a rhetorical fog, Mondale was hammering him for breaking promises about health care and other issues. And the most striking aspect of that election, in retrospect, wasn't all campaign missteps: It's that Mondale suffered one of the most crushing losses in political history despite having a unified party.
Usually when a candidate suffers a 20-point popular vote loss and manages to win only one state (his own, barely), it's because the party is split in two, as happened to Barry Goldwater and George McGovern. Mondale suffered no such open defection from within his party; rather, it was the voters who, enjoying fair economic winds, saw no reason to choose a candidate without a compelling message just because their own party was telling them to.
That historic defeat may be one reason why Mondale was the last Democratic nominee to run a campaign with a New Deal flavor. Four years later, Michael Dukakis declared that "this election is not about ideology, it is about competence." In the next cycle, Bill Clinton declared himself "a different kind of Democrat" and jettisoned some of his party's positions about crime and welfare. Al Gore began his political life as a centrist, much in the model of Clinton.
In many ways, Mondale was a man fully prepared for the presidency, not just by experience but by character and personality. He had, at least offstage, a frankness and a sense of self-awareness not all that common among politicians. (When he offered a dyspeptic judgment about a fellow Democrat, he said "the difference between him and my folks is that when we act like assholes, we know it.") It was his political fate to be launched into his biggest political battle of his life with weapons that no longer worked.
After an intensive, months-long election, only one-eighth of the workers at Amazon's Bessemer, Alabama warehouse voted in favor of a union. More than twice as many voted against. Roughly half didn't vote at all.
The election's losers are incredulous that they could have fallen short on the merits. Challenges are already underway, accusing Amazon of unfair labor practices such as positioning a mailbox improperly. And to be sure, Amazon appears to have behaved obnoxiously, and perhaps even unlawfully in some instances.
But when nearly 6,000 workers have two months to cast ballots, and the union secures fewer than 750 "yes" votes, the idea that it has what workers want looks a bit ridiculous. Before there was Bessemer there was Chattanooga, where the UAW had Volkswagen's active support in pursuing a two-year organizing campaign, and the workers voted "no" anyway.
Maybe, Big Labor, they're just not that into you?
Labor activists see "pro-union" as synonymous with "pro-worker" and celebrate workers as tenacious fighters when they vote one way and as manipulated pawns when they vote the other. But faith in workers to understand and pursue their own interests should be a first principle of anyone claiming to represent them.
None of which suggests that Big Business is in the right. Corporate leaders and their political allies have cheered the decline of private-sector organizing and prefer an economic arrangement in which management's prerogatives go unchecked. In this thinking, "pro-business" and "pro-market" are synonymous, and unions have little role to play so long as working conditions are tolerable. That misunderstands organized labor's vital role in a well-functioning market economy.
The one group that clearly understands the folly in both perspectives is workers themselves. Workers have shown that they dislike the hyper-adversarialism and political activism that American unions bring into their workplaces but are eager for more representation, voice, and support than they can achieve individually. What they want, and need, is a middle ground that neither side is offering.
Research has borne this out. In a landmark 1994 survey, Harvard professor Richard Freeman and University of Wisconsin professor Joel Rogers asked more than 2,400 nonmanagement workers whether they would prefer representation by an organization that "management cooperated with in discussing issues, but had no power to make decisions" or by one "that had more power, but management opposed." Workers preferred cooperation to an adversarial stance by 63 percent to 22 percent, a result that held even among active union members.
In 2017, MIT professor Thomas Kochan conducted a similar survey and found that interest in joining a union had grown and workers wanted a wide range of services that a union could provide to them, including: collective bargaining; health, unemployment, and training benefits; legal assistance; input into work processes; and representation in management decision-making. On the long menu of options, the two that stood out as making workers less likely to join are exact the ones that seem to get union activists most excited: politics and strikes.
Rather than celebrate the Amazon workers' decision as vindication for the corporation or condemn it (and, by implication, the workers) as not possibly in their interest, we should recognize it for the tragedy it is. We know that workers would like to have organizations that can represent them effectively. We know that Amazon is among America's most aggressive employers when it comes to pushing the envelope on labor practices. And yet our nation's system of labor law and our existing unions cannot come close to providing something palatable.
Business leaders are missing out too. They understandably resist letting Big Labor in the door. But if they think that they can maintain indefinitely the status quo of minimal worker power, stagnant wages, and rising inequality, they are sorely mistaken. The end result will be higher taxes, more regulation, poorer consumers, and an unstable political system. Beyond providing the foundation for healthy capitalism, robust worker representation can also lead to higher productivity, better training, and the genuine partnership necessary to a firm's long-run success.
Fortunately, our dysfunctional system is not the only one. To the contrary, the American idea of a union as something that organizes workplace-by-workplace in the face of employer hostility, of Sally Field as Norma Rae standing on the table with her hand-scrawled sign that says "UNION," is something of an outlier. In most western democracies, models look quite different, with unions serving workers across an industry, who join and pay dues voluntarily for the benefits offered. At the company level, firms often have collaborative arrangements such as "works councils" that give workers a meaningful role in setting policy and running operations.
One such model is the "Ghent System," most popular in northern Europe, that assigns unions responsibility for providing unemployment insurance—funded by workers themselves as well as employers and the government. Similarly, unions in many countries, and even some in the United States, are heavily involved in workforce training systems, which tends to increase the level and quality of training provided. U.S. businesses that complain about a lack of skilled job applicants should consider the benefits of empowering workers to assume a greater role in building a talent pipeline.
Another model is "sectoral bargaining," in which unions representing all of an industry's workers bargain with trade groups representing all of an industry's employers. Rather than Amazon fighting tooth-and-nail against a union that might place it at a disadvantage against Walmart, a warehouse-workers' union and a retailers' association could work to reach agreement on terms and conditions of employment that would apply to everyone. Amazon and Walmart would both be committed to treating their workers well, and rather than compete on who could cut costs furthest they could focus more on boosting productivity and innovating to serve customers well.
The most important first step to finding a better system is simply allowing innovation to occur. Currently, the National Labor Relations Act bars formal cooperation between management and workers, such as works councils, outside the confines of traditional unions; Congress should revise the law to eliminate that provision. Likewise, the NLRA is famously aggressive in preempting states from departing from its national framework, while antitrust law makes industry coordination suspect, and employment law leaves too few issues open for the parties to resolve. Congress should create exemptions.
Meaningful labor reform is more likely to start on the right than on the left. The Democratic Party remains reliant on Big Labor's political and financial support and seems destined to double down on the failing model. Conservatives, by contrast, are shifting away from their corporate allegiance and giving much greater attention to workers' concerns. They are also beginning to consider the many ways that a vibrant labor movement could help to advance their core values: broadening prosperity through the market rather than relying on redistribution, positioning the parties to govern workplaces themselves rather than relying on regulation, and rebuilding a vital social institution that can strengthen communities and bolster solidarity.
Experimentation could start in one location—say, a red-state governor bringing a trade group and a worker organization together to negotiate a new system for benefits and training; in one industry—say, the gig economy; or on one issue—say, minimum wages. Congress, or even a state legislature, could help by offering funding and other incentives for labor-management relationships that provide workers with real representation and valuable services, reversing the current dynamic where firms see a union's presence as a dire fate. Ultimately, it will require representatives from both management and labor to recognize the status quo as unsustainable and take the leap toward trying something new.
A Ghent-like approach to providing healthcare benefits is a limited-government, market-based approach that could reduce pressure for government-sponsored options like Medicare-for-All. Sectoral bargaining might raise the specter of "corporatism" or "crony capitalism" that would throw sand in the economy's gears, but placing workers and management on equal footing to set their own wage scales should be preferable to a national Fight for $15.
The Republican Party has already begun rethinking some of the stale orthodoxies of free-market fundamentalism that went largely unquestioned since the Reagan era, and in parallel its coalition has begun broadening. In a virtuous cycle, the growth of a multi-ethnic, working-class conservative base pushes political leaders further toward concern for workers, which in turn accelerates the transformation of the coalition. Skepticism will rightly persist about the sclerotic unions that our nation's Great-Depression-era labor law offers, but the Chamber of Commerce's preference for ending the discussion there could give way to enthusiasm for reforms that would serve workers and the economy well.
Bessemer's workers found themselves caught between Big Business and Big Labor. At the ballot box, though, they may soon have the option to vote for something else.
By Joanne Kenen and Meridith McGraw on Apr 20, 2021 04:30 am
With more than half of adults in the country having received at least one shot of a Covid vaccine, Trump supporters remain stubbornly resistant to vaccination — and it's sparking a new round of questions over what role, if any, the former president could play to move those efforts along.
Former President Donald Trump's unwillingness to pitch his voters on getting the jab has become the source of frustration for former aides, who lament the political benefits that would have come had he done so. It has also worried health officials from his own administration, who told POLITICO about a monthslong effort to get him to publicly take the lead; and medical experts, who say a full-throated endorsement could sway vaccine skeptics on the right and get the country closer to herd immunity.
"If he spent the last 90 days being the voice — and taking credit because he deserved to for the vaccine — and helping get as many Americans get vaccinated as he could, he would be remembered for that," said a former senior administration official. "Honestly, I think if he was out on the road and celebrating his accomplishments and trying to get people vaccinated he wouldn't have been in the mindset that led to [Capitol riots on] January 6."
The latest example of Trump's interest in selling the vaccine more than vaccinations came on Fox News Monday night when he began reflecting on why U.S. regulators announced they were pausing the Johnson & Johnson's Covid vaccine while they investigate whether it is linked to rare but serious blood clots. The former president suggested political subterfuge was at play, touted his own record and called the decision "so stupid." He only encouraged people to get vaccinated when pressed by host Sean Hannity, and did so in the process of explaining why he hasn't recorded an ad encouraging his skeptical supporters to do so.
"They all want me to do a commercial because a lot of our people don't want to take vaccine. You know I don't know what that is exactly, Republican?" Trump said. "They want me to do a commercial, some commercial and they do this pause?"
Virtually everyone around Trump and in public health circles says his influence on the vaccine campaign could be hugely important. Trump voters are among the most vaccine-resistant blocs of Americans, with one third to nearly one half of supporters of the 45th president, white evangelicals or Republicans expressing hesitancy or antagonism in various polls.
Trump has, so far, not been persuaded to do more. Aides say he takes immense pride (justifiably, many public health experts acknowledged) of his White House's "Warp Speed" initiative, which incentivized and accelerated vaccine development.
But his focus has often been elsewhere. In the final months of his presidency, much of his attention, according to senior aides, remained on efforts to challenge election results, and then, after the January 6 assault on the Capitol, his second impeachment and its political aftermath.
That wasn't how it was supposed to go, according to a dozen former officials who served in the White House or health-related federal agencies. They planned on Trump being the vaccine's salesman-in-chief, viewing it as a natural role for a president who cut his teeth hawking real estate and starring on TV.
Two former administration officials said that the pitch was made to Trump to get vaccinated publicly, but there was skepticism that he'd be open to the idea.
"Someone joked and said, 'Have you ever seen him wear a short sleeved shirt in public? I don't think that's going to happen,'" said one of those officials.
Health officials in the Trump administration had actually begun working with Trump aides as far back as last September on the vaccine rollout. They wanted Trump to get his shot on camera, preferably alongside one or more doctors in white coats to validate a vaccines-are-safe message.
That's precisely what Mike and Karen Pence did. Along with former Surgeon General Jerome Adams, an African-American physician who has been reaching out to vaccine-skeptical Black Americans, they all got their shots together with several white-coated medical personnel. Aides coordinated with the morning shows at television networks to make sure images were broadcast live across the country.
But Trump and Melania Trump got vaccinated in secret — so secretly, in fact, that top health officials and aides only learned about it after Trump left office. Word got out following Trump's speech at CPAC, during which he encouraged people to get the shot in passing, and an adviser confirmed both he and the first lady got the shot in January. No photos or cable-news-ready footage has been released.
One former official said Trump's own bout with coronavirus may have affected the timing of his shot. Since he had been hospitalized and treated with experimental monoclonal antibodies in October, it wasn't immediately clear he should get the shot in December. Still, he could have explained that, and then gotten inoculated publicly soon after, according to that official, who was close to the vaccine development.
Another senior administration official said there were concerns Trump would be attacked by the press for "jumping the line" ahead of higher risk people and first responders.
Former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and others still in Trump's orbit defended his response. "During the last few months of the Trump administration, the president put a strong emphasis on providing vaccines to the most urgent places and for critical personnel offering as much capacity for the general public as possible," said Meadows. "Because he'd already come down with Covid, he made the determination there were others far more critical for receiving the vaccine than he and the first family."
***
Vaccine hesitancy is complicated, and pro-vaccine statements from Trump wouldn't magically make the entire MAGA world roll up their sleeves. But he probably would make a difference, experts on vaccine hesitancy said. A March poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that one-in-five vaccine hesitant Republicans said a Trump endorsement would spur them to get immunized. Combine that with other public health reassurance, and Trump's message could be amplified, building vaccine trust among his base.
Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster working with the de Beaumont Foundation and other public health groups on vaccine confidence, thinks politicians generally have limited ability to sway voters. But he said that a message from Trump, surrounded by doctors nodding approval, would have some oomph.
"Instead of raising money, raise awareness for the vaccine," said Luntz. "Deliver straight to the camera a message that says, 'Look. Do it for me. Do it for the country. Do it for the future. Most importantly, do it for yourself.' "
"In the end, he's the reason they would listen. The doctors are why they would act."
The Biden administration also has struggled to make inroads with vaccine skeptics on the right. White House efforts to engage conservatives have included running ads during shows popular with right-leaning voters like "Deadliest Catch" on Discovery, and Country Music Television. Venues like NASCAR speedways have been used as vaccination sites. But many experts are worried that even if health officials deem J&J safe, the blood clot scare will only heighten the fears.
The Biden White House has said it has not asked Trump to do pro-vaccine messaging. And Trump was not asked to be part of the Ad Council PSA that featured former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, according to a staffer for one of the former presidents involved in that ad and multiple advisers to Trump. Planning for the ad began in December and was filmed on Biden's Inauguration Day. At that point, Trump had made clear he would not be staying in Washington for the festivities. Notably, however, the council shot another ad with the former presidents and First Ladies, and included Jimmy Carter who could not travel to the inauguration.
When Trump has made public statements encouraging immunization, they have been rare, and sandwiched amid political statements, endorsements of potential MAGA 2020 candidates, and attacks on the small group of Republicans who backed his impeachment.
During an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox News, he recommended the shot — but then acknowledged that people have a right to refuse it.
"I would recommend it, and I would recommend it to a lot of people that don't want to get it, and a lot of those people voted for me frankly. But again, we have our freedoms and we have to live by that and I agree with that also," Trump said in March. "But it's a great vaccine, and it is a safe vaccine and it is something that works."
In his first statement after the J&J pause, Trump accused the FDA of playing politics, of trying to help Pfizer, the maker of a different vaccine, and of intentionally delaying vaccine approval until after the 2020 presidential election.
"They didn't like me very much because I pushed them extremely hard. But if I didn't, you wouldn't have a vaccine for 3-5 years, or maybe not at all," his statement read. "The only way we defeat the China Virus is with our great vaccines!"
Some former Trump administration officials said they haven't given up on him deciding to chime in more consistently, particularly if it gets him back in the public eye. They note that he takes immense pride in Operation Warp Speed, the $10 billion private-public partnership which helped more than 200 million vaccine doses get developed, tested and authorizedat record speeds by pharmaceutical manufacturers.
Others argue that he could be doing more, bristling at the notion that he has been anything other than engaged in promoting vaccination.
"President Trump has been a consistent leader and an important voice — and has advocated for the production, development, and use of the vaccine early and often, including him taking it and instructing other people to also get the vaccine," said Kellyanne Conway.
And Trump senior adviser Jason Miller said the former president "is going to continue to push folks to get the vaccine."
But few beyond the Trump faithful believe he has been an aggressive and eager promoter of vaccinations. Andwithout Trump in the lead, other prominent Republicans have been left to pick up the slack. Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter, tweeted a photo of her vaccination last Wednesday (and received pushback in the comments section from the anti-vax corner of MAGA world), RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel shared news of her vaccination, and Republican leader Mitch McConnell has repeatedly called on the public to get the vaccine. Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), who leads the House Doctors Caucus, doesn't just defend the vaccine; he goes home to Ohio and administers shots — in one case, he said, on a bus full of elderly, mostly low-income, people who had traveled for their injections.
And last week, House Republicans welcomed its newest member, Julia Letlow of Louisiana, to Congress. Letlow, who lost her husband, congressman-elect Luke Letlow, to Covid-19 before he was able to enter office, has called on those vaccine-skeptic Republicans to consider her own family's experience.
But Trump's relative silence on this front is notable, other Republicans say. And without it, it could prolong the vaccination campaign and the virus fight as well.
"He could have a real impact and not by getting the standard public service announcement but by talking to his people like he talks to his people," said former Republican congressman Peter King, who advised that Trump make a personal appeal to his supporters in his own unique way. He even suggested a script the former president could use: "'Believe me, I wouldn't take this thing, I wouldn't put my own health at risk if i didn't think it was necessary,'" King said, imitating a potential Trump sales pitch for the vaccine. "Do it in a real conversational way but a wise guy way. 'You think I would let my daughter get it if I didn't think it was safe?… Just because Fauci is for it doesn't mean it's wrong.'"
"I think it would serve a real purpose," King said.
By David Cohen on Apr 20, 2021 06:44 pm People react after the verdict of the Derek Chauvin trial on April 20 in Minneapolis, Minn. | Scott Olson/Getty Images A throng of people react after hearing the verdict at the intersection of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis. | Brandon Bell/Getty Images People hug at the intersection of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue after the verdict. | Brandon Bell/Getty Images Numerous Black Lives Matter banners were on display in the aftermath of the Derek Chauvin verdict. | Morry Gash/AP Photo People celebrate after a guilty verdict was announced at the trial of Derek Chauvin. | Morry Gash/AP Photo A man offers a victory salute outside the Hennepin County Government Center after the verdict was read in the Derek Chauvin trial. | Scott Olson/Getty Images A man exults from atop a car after Derek Chauvin was convicted on all counts in the death of George Floyd. | Morry Gash/AP Photo Flags are waved in Minneapolis after the conviction of Derek Chauvin. | Morry Gash/AP Photo A man stands atop a truck that had attempted to make its way past the crowd as people react after the verdict was read in the murder of George Floyd. | Scott Olson/Getty Images The verdict in the emotionally charged case brought a flood of emotions from spectators in Minneapolis. | Brandon Bell/Getty Images A woman with an "I can't breathe" mask marks the verdict in the slaying of George Floyd. | Morry Gash/AP Photo A man in Minneapolis voices his opinion about Derek Chauvin's role in the death of George Floyd. Chauvin kneeled on Floyd's neck on May 25, 2020, for more than nine minutes. | Scott Olson/Getty Images Attorney Tony Romanucci hugs Donald Williams, a key witness, after the verdict. | Julio Cortez/AP Photo A video screen is seen as the jury affirms a guilty verdict at the trial of Derek Chauvin for the 2020 death of George Floyd. | John Minchillo/AP Photo Derek Chauvin is escorted from the courtroom after his conviction at the Hennepin County Courthouse in Minneapolis. | Court TV via AP, Pool Read in browser »
The family of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed when a police officer pinned him with his knee for more than nine minutes, expressed relief and gratitude Tuesday after Derek Chauvin was convicted in Floyd's death.
"I feel relieved today that I finally have the opportunity for hopefully getting some sleep," said Philonise Floyd, the brother of George Floyd, who was killed in Minneapolis in May 2020.
Chauvin, a 45-year-old white man, was convicted of Floyd's murder Tuesday, with a jury finding him guilty on all three charges he faced: one count of second-degree unintentional murder, one count of third-degree murder and and one count of second-degree manslaughter.
The killing of Floyd set off a nationwide reckoning on race and sparked ongoing calls for police reform.
At a news conference after Chauvin was convicted, several members of Floyd's family celebrated the verdict — expressing relief at the outcome — and echoed calls for police reform "to make sure not another family has to suffer what we suffered."
"I get calls. I get DMs, people from Brazil, from Ghana, from Germany. Everybody. London, Italy, they're all saying the same thing. 'We won't be able to breathe until you're able to breathe.' Today, we are able to breathe again," Philonise Floyd said.
Terrence Floyd, George Floyd's brother, called the trial's outcome "monumental," adding that he's grateful his family "got to see this history made."
"I'm going to miss him, but now I know he's in history. What a day to be a Floyd, man," Terrence Floyd said.
But the family also stressed that Tuesday's verdict does not mean the fight for reform is over. Several family members called Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act and said they'll continue to fight for justice for victims of police violence.
"We need each and every officer to be held accountable. Until then, it's still scary to be a Black man or woman in America encountering police," said Brandon Williams, George Floyd's nephew. "So when I say today is a pivotal moment, it's a time for America to take the turn in the right direction and right a lot of wrongs so we don't keep adding to these names."
Following the news conference, Philonise Floyd told CNN that though people are celebrating Tuesday, it would be "back to business" come Wednesday.
"We all need justice. We are all fighting for one reason and it is justice for all. And I think today has been an occasion where people can celebrate but tomorrow is back to business because we have to stay steps ahead of everything," he said.
President Joe Biden, who earlier Tuesday said he was "praying" for a guilty verdict in the trial, spoke to the Floyd family over the phone following Chauvin's conviction, telling them he wished he was there "to put my arms around you."
"Nothing is going to make it all better but at least now there is some justice," Biden told the family.
Chauvin will be sentenced in eight weeks and faces up to 40 years in prison.
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