Here’s what you need to know:
- Rally workers tested positive as Trump supporters gather in Tulsa.
- Trump supporters, few of them in masks, are coming together in Tulsa.
- Black leaders in Tulsa call for the mayor to cancel rally.
- Minnesota lawmakers failed to compromise on police overhaul measures.
- Two people were shot in Seattle’s ‘autonomous zone.’
- George Floyd’s death has renewed scrutiny of past cases.
- From Washington to Golden Gate Park, statues continue to be removed.
Rally workers tested positive as Trump supporters gather in Tulsa.
Ahead of President Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Okla., Saturday night, his campaign acknowledged that six staff members who were working on the event had tested positive for the virus during routine screening.
“Six members of the advance team tested positive out of hundreds of tests performed, and quarantine procedures were immediately implemented,” said a campaign spokesman, Tim Murtaugh. “No COVID-positive staffers or anyone in immediate contact will be at today’s rally or near attendees and elected officials.”
“As previously announced, all rally attendees are given temperature checks before going through security, at which point they are given wristbands, facemasks and hand sanitizer.”
Mr. Trump, made aware of the sick campaign aides before departing for the rally, was incensed the news was made public, according to two people familiar with his reaction.
In the hours before the rally, cloth masks were being handed out to supporters as they filed into a designated area, but wearing them was not enforced. Some people threw masks out immediately after being handed to them, and few wore them at the outdoor concert happening next to the arena.
Upon being handed a mask, attendees were also given temperature checks before going through security. According to the event’s staff, if a person failed the temperature check — they would be placed in a cooling room and given a second test, to account for the hot weather. If they failed that test, the staff member said, they would not be allowed entry.
Public health officials have warned that these measures would not prevent the spread of a positive case of coronavirus, and would not identify individuals who are asymptomatic carriers. Leaders in Mr. Trump’s administration and campaign have repeatedly dismissed these concerns, and emphasized the importance of an individual person’s right to not wear a mask, if they choose.
Former vice president Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic nominee to replace Mr. Trump in this November’s general election, has declined to hold large events out of concern that it could further spread the virus.
Trump supporters, few of them in masks, are coming together in Tulsa.
Following a relatively quiet night in Tulsa, Trump supporters assembled on Saturday near the BOK Center, where President Trump is scheduled to hold his evening rally, adding to the voters who had staked out his event for days, camping in lawn chairs and tents in a line that stretched for several blocks.
The mood among many supporters was exuberant as they awaited the president’s return to the campaign trail after months without rallies amid the coronavirus outbreak. Some attendees already knew each other from previous Trump events and reunited with old friends, others played music or struck up chants of “four more years!”
A few hundred supporters gathered Saturday morning at Fourth and Cheyenne, the first rally checkpoint, about two blocks from the arena. A majority of them wore red MAGA hats, while others had on hats with patriotic emblems or colors. Some waved red, white and blue banners with the Trump 2020 logo, the American flag, or the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag.
Some wore them like capes. Almost none wore masks.
“If it is God’s will that I get coronavirus, that is the will of the Almighty,” said Robert Montanelli, a resident of a Tulsa suburb who chose not to wear a mask. “I will not live in fear.”
Angela, a Tulsa city employee who refused to give her last name, also said she did not want to wear a mask. “I am a healthy young woman,” she said. She compared coronavirus to the flu.
Mike Pellerin, from Austin, Texas, wore a T-shirt saying “Are we dead yet?” “I am 68,” he said proudly. “I don’t feel sick. I don’t have the virus. I’m not going to give it to anyone.”
Just before noon on Saturday, the police arrested a woman in an “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirt outside the BOK Center, the Tulsa World reported. Sheila Buck, who lives in the city, said she had a ticket to the rally and was arrested for trespassing.
Black leaders in Tulsa call for the mayor to cancel rally.
Just hours before President Trump’s rally was set to begin in Tulsa, local black leaders held a news conference in the city’s Greenwood neighborhood pleading with the mayor to cancel the event.
The community members, which included religious leaders and civil rights activists, stood in front of the memorial dedicated to the victims of the racist massacre of black Tulsans by a white mob in 1921.
Invoking the tragedy, they argued that the rally would wound a city that has worked hard at creating a shared language of racial reconciliation. They also said the city’s black community may bear the brunt of a coronavirus resurgence, if the rally helps increase infections in the area.
“It is purposeful that this moment is happening to Tulsa right now,” said Greg Robinson II, a progressive activist who is running for mayor.
The leaders’ focus on the mayor, G.T. Bynum, is intentional. Mr. Bynum, a Republican, has tried to cast himself as a friend of the city’s black community.
He also said this week that the city was “honored’’ to be hosting Mr. Trump’s rally.
Pastor Robert Turner of the Vernon A.M.E. church on Greenwood Avenue, one of the only structures still standing from 1921, said he understood the chances that the mayor would cancel the rally were slim. But he said the leaders sought to pressure Mr. Bynum to “stand up the president.”
“This is more about scoring political points with this president than the health of their citizens,” Mr. Turner said.
On Saturday, the twin sister of a man shot and killed by a police officer in 2016 said Mr. Trump’s visit to the city was an affront to her family and to the memory of the hundreds of African-Americans who died in the 1921 riot.
In 2016, a police officer shot and killed her brother Terence Crutcher, 40 — a black motorist who was walking away from his vehicle with his hands up. The confrontation was captured on video, and led to the officer, Betty Jo Shelby, being charged with first-degree manslaughter in the death of Mr. Crutcher.
Ms. Shelby was later found not guilty of manslaughter.
Tiffany Crutcher, Mr. Crutcher’s sister, said in an interview that she and her brothers are descendants of a survivor of the 1921 massacre, Rebecca Brown Crutcher.
“As an African-American and a descendant of the survivor of the worst domestic terror act against black people, it’s a slap in the face,” Ms. Crutcher said of Mr. Trump’s visit, as she sat at the Vernon A.M.E. church. “We know the residual effects that come out of his rallies — the rhetoric, the spew, the hate, the bigotry. All of those things are simply a recipe for a disaster for Tulsa, Oklahoma.”
A high-ranking Tulsa police official said on a talk-radio show recently that officers are “shooting African-Americans about 24 percent less than we probably ought to be, based on the crimes being committed.” And on June 4, two black teenagers were confronted by the police for jaywalking and wrestled to the ground and handcuffed, all of which was captured on video.
“We were already triggered,” Ms. Crutcher said. “For Donald Trump to come and fuel the fire with his supporters, it’s simply unacceptable. We are outraged.”
Mr. Trump’s remarks are scheduled to come one day after the Juneteenth holiday, which celebrates the abolition of slavery in the United States. The rally was originally scheduled to fall on the holiday, but Mr. Trump moved it to Saturday after public pressure and quiet lobbying.
Minnesota lawmakers failed to compromise on police overhaul measures.
Political leaders in Minnesota promised sweeping reforms after George Floyd’s killing turned their state into a focal point for nationwide fury and grief over police killings and racism.
But those efforts collapsed early on Saturday as leaders in the Minnesota Legislature — the only one in the country where Democrats control one chamber and Republicans the other — failed to compromise on a package of law-enforcement reform measures before a special session ended.
Ultimately, legislators could not come to an agreement that reconciled the Democrats’ calls for far-reaching changes to police oversight with Republicans’ efforts to pass a shorter list of “common-sense police reforms,” which included banning chokeholds in most situations and requiring officers to stop their colleagues from using unreasonable force.
Democrats said the Republicans’ plan consisted of tepid half-steps that were already in place in most law-enforcement agencies and did not rise to the moment’s calls for dramatic action. Republicans balked at Democratic proposals to restore voter rights to tens of thousands of felons and put the state’s attorney general, Keith Ellison, a Democrat, in charge of prosecuting police killings.
Democrats in the House shared a late counteroffer, dropping those demands. And Republican leaders said they had agreed to alter arbitration proceedings when officers are accused of misconduct.
But as the clock ticked toward a midnight deadline on Friday — and then far past it — leaders of both parties blamed each other for failing to reach a compromise. The breakdown finally came just after 6 a.m. on Saturday, when both chambers adjourned without a deal.
The Legislature’s failure to pass a bill was a disheartening turn for activists who have pushed for far-reaching changes to policing, including cutting police budgets or dismantling police departments altogether to reduce the presence of armed officers in minority neighborhoods.
Some lawmakers said they hoped that Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, would call them back again next week or later in the summer to take up the issues, but activists worried that the window to change the laws was closing as the 2020 election approaches.
In Colorado on Friday, Gov. Jared Polis signed into law a bill to remove the shield of legal immunity that has long protected police officers from civil suits for on-the-job misconduct, a measure civil libertarians hailed as landmark legislation.
The Colorado state legislature passed the bill last week.
Mr. Polis, a first-term Democrat, took the 155th anniversary of Juneteenth, celebrating the abolition of slavery in the United States, to formally enact the law.
Two people were shot in Seattle’s ‘autonomous zone.’
Part of a Seattle neighborhood overtaken by protesters was the scene of a shooting Saturday that left one person dead and another wounded, officials said.
The shooting unfolded early Saturday morning near the main entrance of a protester-run area that has been celebrated as a “no cop” zone. Last week, the Seattle Police Department made the unusual decision to abandon a police station in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, board up the windows and let protesters have free rein outside, in the wake of demonstrations nationwide over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Protesters took over several city blocks, named it the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone and put up a banner on the front entrance of the now-empty station reading, “This space is now property of the Seattle people.” The zone, with the atmosphere of a street festival or commune, drew the ire of President Trump, who called on Twitter for officials to crack down on protesters and declared that “Domestic Terrorists have taken over Seattle.”
The authorities said the victim who died was a 19-year-old man, and the person wounded was a man of unknown age who was being treated for life-threatening injuries.
The Seattle police said in a statement that the shooting occurred inside the protest zone. Officers responded to a report of shots fired at about 2:30 a.m. in Cal Anderson Park, inside the autonomous zone, which is also being called the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (C.H.O.P.) area.
“Officers attempted to locate a shooting victim but were met by a violent crowd that prevented officers’ safe access to the victims,” the police statement said. The police later said that they had been informed that the two men had been transported to the hospital by protest-zone medics.
The suspect or suspects had fled, they said, and the motive behind the shooting was not known.
The police acknowledged the unusual circumstances of conducting a homicide investigation in a no-police zone, writing in their statement that detectives are “conducting a thorough investigation, despite the challenges presented by the circumstances.”
Videos taken at the scene and posted on social media by Converge Media showed the volunteer medics racing through crowds of onlookers in the pre-dawn darkness.
As armed police officers in riot gear entered the zone, people screamed, “The victim left the premises!”
Tensions were high as some protesters appeared to object to the entry of the police. At one point, protesters briefly surrounded a police car and then yelled, as the vehicle sped away, “Whose streets? Our streets!”
Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington said on Saturday that he was saddened to hear of the shooting, but he said it was clear that the government needed to be able to provide protection for all citizens, including in that zone.
“We have to have a way to provide police services and fire services in that area,” Mr. Inslee said.
George Floyd’s death has renewed scrutiny of past cases.
The story of Elijah McClain’s death, which came after he was confronted and detained by police officers last year in Aurora, Colo., did not go unnoticed by residents and the local news media in the weeks that followed.
Articles were published, and a few modest rallies were held. But it was nothing like the avalanche of fresh attention his killing received after the death last month of George Floyd sent thousands of protesters onto the nation’s streets, including in Colorado.
Now the story of Mr. McClain — a 23-year-old black man who had committed no crime but was reported as “suspicious” by a 911 caller — has come to occupy a central place in the state’s emotional and fast-moving debate over police reform.
“If George Floyd didn’t die, I don’t think people would have paid attention to Elijah McClain,” said Tay Anderson, an activist and director of the Denver Public Schools board, in an interview. “I think people would have continued to ignore it.”
Mr. McClain’s killing is among many deadly episodes involving the police that are now receiving renewed scrutiny in the wake of outrage over the death of Mr. Floyd.
Across the nation, from San Francisco to Houston to Duluth, Minn., the names of other men and women killed in confrontations with the police are now on the lips of protesters or back on the pages of the local newspapers.
From Washington to Golden Gate Park, statues continue to be removed.
In the late hours of Friday evening, statues of Confederate figures were yanked off their pedestals by cheering crowds of protesters in two Eastern cities and paraded through the streets, while on the West Coast, protesters pulled down figures from early in the nation’s history.
After several attempts, protesters in Washington toppled and set fire to a statue of Albert Pike, a Confederate general whose monument has been targeted for removal by different groups for decades. The statue stood in Judiciary Square about half a mile from the Capitol.
Shortly afterward, President Trump tweeted: “The D.C. Police are not doing their job as they watch a statue be ripped down & burn. These people should be immediately arrested. A disgrace to our Country!”
Earlier in the evening, in Raleigh, N.C., protesters pulled down the bronze statues of two Confederate soldiers that had been attached to the base of a 75-foot-tall monument on the grounds of the State Capitol. Pictures and video from the scene showed people pulling one of the statues off the pedestal, dragging it through the street and then hanging it from a sign pole.
And in San Francisco, videos on social media showed protesters in Golden Gate Park bringing down monuments of Junípero Serra, a Spanish priest who founded some of the first Catholic missions in California, and Francis Scott Key, the writer of the lyrics to the national anthem and a slave owner.
These are just the latest monuments associated with racial oppression to come down across the country, most of them by the orders of authorities but some at the hands of demonstrators.
Protesters have removed or defaced statues of Christopher Columbus from Miami to Boston, toppled statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson — both slaveholders — in Portland, Ore., and pushed authorities to take down Confederate monuments in Alabama.
On Saturday, an armed man was arrested after he was spotted on the roof of a building that overlooked the Robert E. Lee monument in Richmond, the police said. Protesters have recently gathered at the statue for demonstrations.
The individual, identified by the police as Riley O’Shaughnessey, 38, is an officer with the Richmond International Airport Police Department and was armed with a handgun.
A coalition based on the Poor People’s Campaign is calling for a ‘moral revolution.’
A national coalition called the Poor People’s Campaign released a sweeping legislative platform in a virtual rally on Saturday. The coalition’s policy agenda addresses the challenges of the working poor, including proposals to address mass incarceration, health care and wealth inequality.
The agenda’s authors say it offers a road map for tackling the systemic injustices that have captured the nation’s attention in recent weeks after the police killing of George Floyd.
“The worst mistake we can make now, with all the marching, the protesting in the streets, would be to demand too little,” said the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, a co-chair of the campaign along with the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis.
Although the organizers said their coalition — inspired by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign, an effort that was cut short by his assassination — was nonpartisan, it offered a boldly liberal agenda.
“We are here today to say together, ‘It’s time to choose life, America,’” Dr. Barber said at the end of the rally, which was streamed online. “It’s time for us to do it together. It’s time for a moral revolution of values.”
How the death of Breonna Taylor changed a Senate race.
Senate Democrats thought they had it all planned out.
Maybe they could not defeat Senator Mitch McConnell, their legislative bête noire, in Kentucky this November. But by nominating Amy McGrath, a former Marine fighter pilot who earned a national following in a close 2018 House race, they figured they could keep the race relatively competitive, raise cash against the majority leader and perhaps draw some extra money for their efforts to reclaim the Senate.
Then came the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor, who was shot eight times after officers entered her apartment in Louisville with a battering ram. And suddenly everything changed.
Ms. McGrath now finds herself in a rapidly tightening race against Charles Booker, a 35-year-old African-American state representative who was tear-gassed by the police at a recent protest.
With just over a week until the Democratic primary, the fury in Kentucky over Ms. Taylor’s death, uncertainty about voting in a pandemic and a host of late endorsements from progressive leaders have provided fresh momentum to Mr. Booker’s candidacy — upending a nominating contest few in the national party were even following last month.
“I’m traveling Kentucky talking about structural racism and I’m seeing folks, even 99 percent white, putting their fists in the air because they know that we can’t let this moment pass,” Mr. Booker, clad in a “No More No Knocks” T-shirt, recounted to a multiracial audience in Lexington.
Reporting was contributed by Maggie Astor, Mike Baker, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Shaila Dewan, John Eligon, Richard Fausset, Ben Fenwick, Manny Fernandez, Katie Glueck, Maggie Haberman, Jack Healy, Astead Herndon, Jonathan Martin. Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio and Campbell Robertson.
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