AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT
Protesters pour into cities for another huge mobilization
WASHINGTON (AP) — Tens of thousands of protesters streamed into the nation’s capital and other major cities Saturday in another huge mobilization against police brutality, while George Floyd was remembered in his North Carolina hometown by mourners who waited hours for a glimpse of his golden coffin.
Military vehicles and officers in fatigues closed off much of downtown Washington to traffic before massive marches. Large protests also took place across the U.S. and overseas, including in London, Paris, Berlin and Sydney, collectively producing perhaps the largest one-day mobilization since Floyd’s death 12 days ago at the hands of police in Minneapolis.
The dozens of demonstrations capped a week of nearly constant protests that swelled beyond anything else the nation has seen in at least a generation. After frequent episodes of violence in the early stages following Floyd’s death, the crowds in the U.S. shifted to a calmer tenor in recent days.
In Philadelphia and Chicago, marchers chanted, carried signs and occasionally knelt silently. Both protests unfolded peacefully.
On a hot, humid day in Washington, throngs of protesters gathered at the Capitol, on the National Mall and in residential neighborhoods. Many groups headed toward the White House, which has been fortified with new fencing and extra security measures.
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As Trump blames antifa, protest records show scant evidence
WASHINGTON (AP) — Scott Nichols, a balloon artist, was riding home on his scooter from the protests engulfing Minneapolis last weekend when he was struck by a rubber bullet fired from a cluster of police officers in riot gear.
“I just pulled over and put my hands up, because I didn’t want to get killed,” said Nichols, 40. “Anybody that knows me knows I wasn’t out there to cause problems.”
Nichols, who before the coronavirus pandemic made his living performing at children’s birthday parties under the stage name “Amazing Scott,” spent two days in jail before being released on criminal charges of riot and curfew violation.
President Donald Trump has characterized those clashing with law enforcement after George Floyd’s death under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer as organized, radical-left thugs engaging in domestic terrorism, an assertion repeated by Attorney General William Barr. Some Democrats, including Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, initially tried to blame out-of-state far-right infiltrators for the unrest before walking back those statements.
There is scant evidence either is true.
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Anatomy of a political comeback: How Biden earned nomination
BALTIMORE (AP) — It seemed easy to write off Joe Biden.
The former vice president came across as easily blindsided at debates. The crowds at his presidential campaign speeches were far from stadium size. Other Democratic candidates such as Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg each had moments of radiating a kinetic energy, while Biden appeared to be conserving his resources.
But Biden had name recognition.
He is able to connect on an emotional level with people who have experienced personal loss, as he has. And as Barack Obama’s wingman for eight years, Biden was a reminder to many Democrats of what a president should be.
The opening contests in the 2020 nominating race in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada were humbling losses for Biden. Then came a commanding victory in South Carolina with help from African American voters. Rivals departed the race, and within days his coalition expanded to make him a lock for the nomination that was officially secured Friday night.
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Analysis: White House, Pentagon tensions near breaking point
WASHINGTON (AP) — Tensions between the White House and Pentagon have stretched to near a breaking point over President Donald Trump's threat to use military force against street protests triggered by George Floyd's death.
Friction in this relationship, historically, is not unusual. But in recent days, and for the second time in Trump's term, it has raised a prospect of high-level resignations and the risk of lasting damage to the military's reputation.
Calm may return, both in the crisis over Floyd's death and in Pentagon leaders' angst over Trump's threats to use federal troops to put down protesters. But it could leave a residue of resentment and unease about this president's approach to the military, whose leaders welcome his push for bigger budgets but chafe at being seen as political tools.
The nub of the problem is that Trump sees no constraint on his authority to use what he calls the “unlimited power” of the military even against U.S. citizens if he believes it necessary. Military leaders generally take a far different view. They believe that active-duty troops, trained to hunt and kill an enemy, should be used to enforce the law only in the most extreme emergency, such as an attempted actual rebellion. That limit exists, they argue, to keep the public’s trust.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper, a West Point graduate who served 10 years on active duty, argued against bringing federal troops into Washington. In a contentious Oval Office meeting with Trump and others on Monday, the president demanded 10,000 federal troops be sent to the capital city, according to a senior defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
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Coronavirus disrupts global fight to save endangered species
WASHINGTON (AP) — Biologist Carlos Ruiz has spent a quarter-century working to save golden lion tamarins, the charismatic long-maned monkeys native to Brazil’s Atlantic Forest.
Thanks to painstaking reforestation efforts, the population of these endangered monkeys was steadily growing until an outbreak of yellow fever hit Brazil in 2018, wiping out a third of the tamarins. Undeterred, Ruiz’s team devised an ambitious new experiment: This spring, they would start vaccinating many of the remaining wild monkeys.
Enter the coronavirus, which is now hampering critical work to protect threatened species and habitats worldwide.
First, members of Ruiz’s team exposed to the virus had to be quarantined. Then the government closed national parks and protected areas to both the public and researchers in mid-April, effectively barring scientists from the reserves where tamarins live.
“We are worried about missing the window of opportunity to save the species,” said Ruiz, the president of the nonprofit Golden Lion Tamarin Association. “We hope that we ... can still do our work before a second wave of yellow fever hits.”
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Prosecutor: 2 Buffalo police charged with assault in shoving
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Two Buffalo police officers were charged with assault Saturday, prosecutors said, after a video showed them shoving a 75-year-old protester in recent demonstrations over the death of George Floyd.
Robert McCabe and Aaron Torgalski, who surrendered Saturday morning, pleaded not guilty to second-degree assault. They were released without bail.
McCabe, 32, and Torgalski, 39, “crossed a line” when they shoved the man down hard enough for him to fall backward and hit his head on the sidewalk, Erie County District Attorney John Flynn said at a news conference, calling the victim "a harmless 75-year-old man.”
The officers had been suspended without pay Friday after a TV crew captured the confrontation the night before. If convicted of the felony assault charge, they face up to seven years in prison.
Phone messages were left on Saturday with their lawyers.
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Amid virus, US students look to colleges closer to home
As students make college plans for the fall, some U.S. universities are seeing surging interest from in-state residents who are looking to stay closer to home amid the coronavirus pandemic.
At the University of Texas at Arlington, commitments from state residents are up 26% over last year. Ohio State and Western Kentucky universities are both up about 20%. Deposits paid to attend Michigan State University are up 15% among state residents, while deposits from others are down 15%.
Colleges and admissions counselors credit the uptick to a range of factors tied to the pandemic. Students want to be closer to home in case an outbreak again forces classes online. Some are choosing nearby schools where they're charged lower rates as state residents. And amid uncertainty around the fall term, some are paying deposits at multiple schools to keep their options open.
At the same time, scores of universities are bracing for sharp downturns in international enrollments amid visa issues and travel concerns. The result, some schools say, is that campuses will have a more local feel if they're allowed to reopen this fall.
“We are going to be a more regional and local university,” Bob McMaster, vice provost of the University of Minnesota, told the school's board of regents at a May meeting. “The spheres of geography have certainly changed this year.”
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Government job losses are piling up, and it could get worse
Jobs with state and city governments are usually a source of stability in the U.S. economy, but the financial devastation wrought by the coronavirus pandemic has forced cuts that will reduce public services — from schools to trash pickup.
Even as the U.S. added some jobs in May, the number of people employed by federal, state and local governments dropped by 585,000. The overall job losses among public workers have reached more than 1.5 million since March, according to seasonally adjusted federal jobs data released Friday. The number of government employees is now the lowest it's been since 2001, and most of the cuts are at the local level.
“With that comes a decline in essential public services,” Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said on a conference call with reporters this week. For instance, “911 calls are taking a long time to be answered.”
Clean drinking water and trash pickups also are being affected in some places, he said.
Tax revenue from businesses walloped by coronavirus restrictions has plummeted, forcing cuts by cities and states that rely on that money. It's likely to get worse in the coming months unless Congress delivers additional aid to states and cities.
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Fox News: Black deaths, stock market graphic was insensitive
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Fox News apologized Saturday for how it displayed a chart correlating the stock market's performance with the aftermath of the deaths of George Floyd, Martin Luther King Jr. and Michael Brown.
The graphic that aired Friday to illustrate market reactions to historic periods of civil unrest "should have never aired on television without full context. We apologize for the insensitivity of the image and take this issue seriously,” the cable channel said in a statement.
The apology followed a sharp backlash to the “Special Report with Bret Baier” segment. Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Illinois, tweeted that the graphic makes it clear that Fox News “does not care about black lives,” while Michael Steele, former Republican National Committee chair and a MSNBC political analyst, posted, “This is how they mourn the loss of black men at #FoxNews - by how much the stock market goes up.”
Baier retweeted Fox’s apology without further comment.
The chart included on “Special Report” illustrated gains made by the S&P 500 index after King’s assassination in 1968; the Ferguson, Missouri, police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in 2014, and the May 25 death of Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody. It also measured the financial yardstick against the 1991 acquittal of Los Angeles police officers in the beating of Rodney King.
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AP FACT CHECK: Trump's alternate reality in time of anguish
WASHINGTON (AP) — "Vicious dogs.” “Ominous weapons.” Injured police. Gagging protesters. Shattered storefronts. Armed personnel at centers of power and landmarks. Anguish and arson.
Taking the measure of these days in the nation's capital, President Donald Trump exclaimed: “Washington, D.C., was the safest place on earth last night!”
Such alternate realities pervaded the world described by Trump and his team over the past week.
The White House, tweeting as an American institution, not Trump's personal account or campaign, posted social media disinformation to make people think leftists were stockpiling rocks to commit terrorist attacks in the United States.
Trump and aides denied that authorities in Washington used tear gas against protesters, who fled from chemical clouds that looked like tear gas, stung eyes like it and met the dictionary definition of it.