AP News in Brief at 9:04 p.m. EDT
'Stop the pain,' George Floyd's brother pleads with Congress
WASHINGTON (AP) — George Floyd's brother challenged Congress on Wednesday to “stop the pain" as lawmakers consider a sweeping law enforcement overhaul, so the man he looked up to won't become just "another name” on a growing list of black Americans killed during interactions with police.
Philonise Floyd's appearance before a House hearing came a day after funeral services for his older brother, the 46-year-old African American whose death has become a worldwide symbol in demonstrations calling for changes to police practices and an end to racial prejudice.
“I’m here today to ask you to make it stop. Stop the pain,” Philonise Floyd told the silenced hearing room.
Choking back tears, he said he wants to make sure that his brother, whom he called “Perry,” is “more than another face on a T-shirt, more than another name on a list that won’t stop growing.”
Floyd challenged lawmakers to be leaders: “Our country, this world needs the right thing.”
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Trump: No change at bases named for Confederate officers
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday said his administration will “not even consider” changing the name of any of the 10 Army bases that are named for Confederate Army officers. Two days earlier, Defense Secretary Mark Esper indicated that he was open to a broad discussion of such changes.
“These Monumental and very Powerful Bases have become part of a Great American Heritage, a history of Winning, Victory, and Freedom,” Trump wrote. “The United States of America trained and deployed our HEROES on these Hallowed Grounds, and won two World Wars. Therefore, my Administration will not even consider the renaming of these Magnificent and Fabled Military Installations.”
Name changes have not been proposed by the Army or the Pentagon, but on Monday, Esper and Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy indicated in response to questions from reporters that they were “open to a bipartisan discussion” of renaming bases such as Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Fort Benning in Georgia.
Supporters of disassociating military bases from Confederate Army officers argue that they represent the racism and divisiveness of the Civil War era and glorify men who fought against the United States.
To amplify Trump's view, his press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, read his tweets to reporters in the White House briefing room. She said he is “fervently” opposed to changing the base names and believes that doing so would amount to “complete disrespect” for soldiers who trained there over the years.
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For George Floyd, a complicated life and a notorious death
HOUSTON (AP) — Years before a bystander’s video of George Floyd’s last moments turned his name into a global cry for justice, Floyd trained a camera on himself.
“I just want to speak to you all real quick,” Floyd says in one video, addressing the young men in his neighborhood who looked up to him. His 6-foot-7 frame crowds the picture.
“I’ve got my shortcomings and my flaws and I ain’t better than nobody else,” he says. “But, man, the shootings that’s going on, I don’t care what ‘hood you’re from, where you’re at, man. I love you and God loves you. Put them guns down.”
At the time, Floyd was respected as a man who spoke from hard, but hardly extraordinary, experience. He had nothing remotely like the stature he has gained in death, embraced as a universal symbol of the need to overhaul policing and held up as a heroic everyman.
But the reality of his 46 years on Earth, including sharp edges and setbacks Floyd himself acknowledged, was both much fuller and more complicated.
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Relatives: Bodies found are 2 kids missing since September
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The bodies of two children uncovered in rural Idaho are a boy and his big sister who have been missing since September, relatives said Wednesday, bringing a grim end to a search that captivated people worldwide but no fewer questions about a case that has put their mother and her husband behind bars.
Authorities have not released the identities of the bodies discovered on the property of Chad Daybell, who married the children’s mother, Lori Vallow Daybell, a few weeks after the kids were last seen.
But Joshua “JJ” Vallow’s grandfather Larry Woodcock told the Post Register in Idaho Falls that “both children are no longer with us.”
Relatives of JJ, who was 7 when he vanished, and 17-year-old Tylee Ryan sent a joint statement to Phoenix television station KSAZ-TV confirming the deaths and asking for privacy.
It’s another gruesome turn in a case that had dragged on for months without answers and grew ever stranger with its ties to the couple’s doomsday beliefs and the mysterious deaths of their former spouses.
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Amazon bans police use of its face recognition for a year
NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon on Wednesday banned police use of its face-recognition technology for a year, making it the latest tech giant to step back from law-enforcement use of systems that have faced criticism for incorrectly identifying people with darker skin.
The Seattle-based company did not say why it took action now. Ongoing protests following the death of George Floyd have focused attention on racial injustice in the U.S. and how police use technology to track people. Floyd died May 25 after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into the handcuffed black man’s neck for several minutes even after Floyd stopped moving and pleading for air.
Law enforcement agencies use facial recognition to identify suspects, but critics say it can be misused. A number of U.S. cities have banned its use by police and other government agencies, led by San Francisco last year.
On Tuesday, IBM said it would get out of the facial recognition business, noting concerns about how the technology can be used for mass surveillance and racial profiling.
Civil rights groups and Amazon's own employees have pushed the company to stop selling its technology, called Rekognition, to government agencies, saying that it could be used to invade people’s privacy and target minorities.
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Trump picks Tulsa for return of signature campaign rallies
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is planning to hold his first rally of the coronavirus era on June 19 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And he says he’s planning more events in Florida, Texas and Arizona as well.
Trump made the announcement as he met with a handful of African American supporters Wednesday afternoon for a roundtable discussion.
Trump's signature rallies often draw tens of thousands of people but have been on hiatus since March 2 because of the coronavirus pandemic, which has now killed more than 110,000 people in the U.S.
“A beautiful new venue, brand new. We’re looking forward to it," Trump said during a White House event. “They’ve done a great job with COVID, as you know, the state of Oklahoma.”
The rally will take place on Juneteenth, the commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. Tulsa has its own troubling history on race. Its once-thriving African American business community was decimated in 1921, when a racist white mob killed hundreds of black residents. Black residents attempted to rebuild in the decades that followed, only to see their work erased during urban renewal of the 1960s.
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'Grief overload': Families absorb multiple virus deaths
It may seem hard to imagine the cruel toll of the coronavirus getting any worse than losing one of those closest to you. But Johnjalene Woods has been dealt that pain three times over.
In a pandemic of countless sorrowful realities, it’s bringing a special kind of loss to people around the globe who are seeing their families shattered with multiple members succumbing to the disease.
“This generation, this level of my family has just been very quickly obliterated,” said Julia Chachere of Sag Harbor, New York, whose mother and stepfather died of COVID-19 four days apart. “All of a sudden, it’s gone. And all of a sudden, I’m that generation now.”
Though no data on the trend has emerged on families experiencing multiple fatalities due to the coronavirus, the stories have repeated around the world: Couples, siblings and other relatives falling ill and dying, their families left to rebuild life with a massive hole in it.
“This virus has taken so much from us,” said Sheila Cruz Morales of Teaneck, New Jersey, whose uncles — brothers Javier and Martin Morales, who lived one floor apart — died a day apart.
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Primary chaos puts Georgia in race to fix voting by November
ATLANTA (AP) — Coronavirus infections sidelined some poll workers and scared away others. New workers were trained online instead of in person. And when Election Day arrived, trouble with new voting equipment and social-distancing precautions forced voters to wait in long lines, sometimes for hours.
The resulting chaos during Tuesday's primary elections in Georgia resulted in a national embarrassment and for the second time since 2018 raised questions about the state's ability to conduct fair elections. It also set off a scramble to identify and fix problems before the high-stakes November general election.
“It scares me," said Cathy Cox, a Democrat who oversaw Georgia elections as secretary of state from 1999 through 2007. "But hopefully it was such a traumatic experience for so many people, and appears to be such a black eye for Georgia, that it will ring the bell for elected officials to make significant changes.”
Tuesday's breakdown drew the second round of stinging criticism for Georgia election officials since 2018, when the state's closely watched gubernatorial election was marred by hourslong waits at some polling sites, security breaches that exposed voter information and accusations that strict ID requirements and registration errors suppressed turnout. That led to lawsuits and changes to state law that included the $120 million switch to a new election system.
Much of the outcry over the 2018 election targeted Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who still served as secretary of state when he ran for governor two years ago. Kemp has so far stayed silent on the most recent problems.
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HBO Max removes 'Gone With the Wind,' will add context
NEW YORK (AP) — HBO Max has temporarily removed “Gone With the Wind” from its streaming library in order to add historical context to the 1939 film long criticized for romanticizing slavery and the Civil War-era South.
Protests in the wake of George Floyd's death have forced entertainment companies to grapple with the appropriateness of both current and past productions. On Tuesday, the Paramount Network dropped the long-running reality series “Cops” after 33 seasons. The BBC also removed episodes of “Little Britain," a comedy series that featured a character in blackface, from its streaming service.
In an op-ed Monday in the Los Angeles Times, the filmmaker John Ridley urged WarnerMedia to take down “Gone With the Wind," arguing that it “romanticizes the Confederacy in a way that continues to give legitimacy to the notion that the secessionist movement was something more, or better, or more noble than what it was — a bloody insurrection to maintain the ‘right’ to own, sell and buy human beings.”
In a statement, the AT&T-owned WarnerMedia, which owns HBO Max, called “Gone With the Wind” “a product of its time” that depicts racial prejudices.
"These racist depictions were wrong then and are wrong today, and we felt that to keep this title up without an explanation and a denouncement of those depictions would be irresponsible,” said an HBO Max spokesman in a statement.
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NASCAR bans Confederate flag from its races, venues
For more than 70 years, the Confederate flag was a familiar sight at NASCAR races. Through the civil rights era right on through the season opener at Daytona in February, the flag dotted infield campsites and was waved in grandstands by fans young and old.
As the nation - and at last, NASCAR -- comes to grips with race relations in the wake of the death of George Floyd, it was time: The flag is no longer welcome in the stock car series.
NASCAR banned the flag at its races and all its venues Wednesday, a dramatic if overdue step by a series steeped in Southern tradition and proud of its good ol' boy roots. It must now hope to convince some of its most ardent fans that it is truly time to leave the flag at home, leave those T-shirts in the drawer, scrape off the bumper stickers and hit the track without a trace of the longtime symbol to many of racism and slavery. Policing the policy may prove challenging and NASCAR did not offer details.
The issue was pushed to the fore this week by Bubba Wallace, NASCAR’s lone black driver and an Alabama native who called for the banishment of the Confederate flag and said there was “no place” for them in the sport.
The ban was announced before Wednesday night’s race at Martinsville Speedway in Virginia where Wallace was driving Richard Petty Motorsports’ No. 43 Chevrolet with a #BlackLivesMatter paint scheme. Wallace, wearing an American flag mask, clapped his hands when asked about the decision before the start of the race.