How Whites and Blacks Are Divided On Racism
FiveThirtyEight has an excellent interactive feature showing how white and black people view racism differently.
Trump Aides Despondent Over Latest Tweet
Jonathan Swan: “My phone blew up yesterday with texts from White House aides, current and former, who seemed at their wits’ end over President Trump’s tweet that the 75-year-old Buffalo protester who was rushed to the hospital after being shoved by police last week ‘could be an ANTIFA provocateur.'”
“They rarely register the president’s tweets anymore — let alone complain about them. This one felt different.”
“POTUS aides and the campaign had constructed this week around getting Trump into the conversation around rebuilding/recovering, listening to ideas about police reform, etc. One former aide remarked that it’s tweets like this that make him wonder whether Trump actually wants to get re-elected.”
New York Times: That Trump tweet? Republicans prefer not to see it.
Opinions Have Shifted Quickly on Black Lives Matter
Nate Cohn: “Over the last two weeks, support for Black Lives Matter increased by nearly as much as it had over the previous two years, according to data from Civiqs, an online survey research firm. By a 28-point margin, Civiqs finds that a majority of Americans support the movement, up from a 17-point margin before the most recent wave of protests began.”
Politico: George Floyd’s killing has transformed views on race.
Biden Holds Wide Lead Nationally
A new Data for Progress poll finds Joe Biden leading Donald Trump nationally in the presidential race, 54% to 40%.
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds Biden ahead by 46% to 38%.
Complete Meltdown In Georgia
“Georgia’s primary quickly turned into an ordeal for voters who waited for hours Tuesday when it became clear officials were unprepared for an election on new voting computers during the coronavirus pandemic,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
“Poll workers couldn’t get voting machines to work. Precincts opened late. Social-distancing requirements created long lines. Some voters gave up and went home.”
“The primary was a major test of Georgia’s ability to run a highly anticipated election in a potential battleground state ahead of November’s presidential election, when more than twice as many voters are expected. Elections officials fell short.”
New York Times: Georgia’s election descends into chaos.
GOP Expects to Move Convention to Jacksonville
Washington Post: “Seeking a city willing to allow a large-scale event amid the coronavirus pandemic, Republicans have tentatively settled on Jacksonville, Fla., as the new destination for the premier festivities of the Republican National Convention in August.”
“The details of the arrangement are still in flux and RNC aides are scrambling to determine whether the northern Florida city has enough hotel rooms to accommodate the quadrennial event, which typically kicks off the final stretch of the presidential campaign. Republican officials were in Jacksonville on Monday looking at the city and the surrounding areas.”
Ossoff Leads Democratic Senate Race In Georgia
Atlanta Journal Constitution: “Jon Ossoff built a commanding lead in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate on Tuesday as polls began to close after a day of voting marred by long lines and faulty equipment, but it was not yet clear whether he would face a runoff.”
White House Goes Quiet on Virus as Outbreak Spikes Again
Politico: “The coronavirus is still killing as many as 1,000 Americans per day — but the Trump administration isn’t saying much about it.”
“It’s been more than a month since the White House halted its daily coronavirus task force briefings. Top officials like infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci have largely disappeared from national television — with Fauci making just four cable TV appearances in May after being a near fixture on Sunday shows across March and April — and are frequently restricted from testifying before Congress.”
Washington Post: Hospitalizations rise sharply in several states following Memorial Day.
Trump Had Halted Probing Police Departments
Boston Globe: “For 20 years, investigations like those, and the consent decrees that followed, were key to federal efforts to bring more accountability to policing in the United States, especially during the Obama administration. But as the nation reckons again with racism and police brutality following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the Trump administration is all but out of the business of systemic police reform.”
“Since President Trump took office, the Justice Department has sharply curbed its use of investigations and consent decrees, essentially locking those powerful tools in its toolbox. What’s more, the president himself has made multiple public statements that suggest he does not see police accountability as a high priority. And some former Justice Department officials and other criminal justice experts see a connection between the vacuum of accountability at the highest levels of government and the ongoing police violence that has sent Americans cascading into the streets to protest.”
Only 1 In 4 See Trump as Man of Faith
Only 27% of registered voters in a new Politico/Morning Consult poll said they somewhat or strongly agree that President Trump himself is religious, while 55% somewhat or strongly disagree.
African-American Jobless Rate Tripled
Wall Street Journal: “The black unemployment rate, which at 5.8% in February was near the lowest since records began in 1972, tripled to 16.8% in May, according to the Labor Department.”
Trump Plays Defense In Iowa
Politico: “Iowa, once a model swing state, fell so hard for Donald Trump four years ago that 2020 seemed like a forgone conclusion. But in a sign of how Trump’s reelection prospects have weakened across the country, even the heartland may be having second thoughts.”
“Since the start of the year, Democrats in Iowa have added about twice as many active voters to their rolls as Republicans, nudging ahead in total registration for the first time in years. The farm economy has been battered by the coronavirus pandemic. And though Trump still holds a small lead in the state, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average, he’s now airing TV advertisements there – a tacit acknowledgment that the campaign anticipates a contest.”
GOP Scrambles to Respond to Demands for Police Reform
“Congressional Republicans, caught flat-footed by an election-year groundswell of public support for overhauling policing in America to address systemic racism, are struggling to coalesce around a legislative response,” the New York Times reports.
“Having long fashioned themselves as the party of law and order, Republicans have been startled by the speed and extent to which public opinion has shifted under their feet in recent days after the killings of unarmed black Americans by the police and the protests that have followed. The abrupt turn has placed them on the defensive.”
“Adding to their challenge, President Trump has offered only an incendiary response…”
Trump Is More Like Wallace Than Nixon
“President Trump said last month that he had ‘learned a lot from Richard Nixon,’ and many interpreted his hard-line response to the street protests of recent days as a homage of sorts to the 1968 campaign. The president’s Twitter feed has been filled with phrases famous from the Nixon lexicon like ‘LAW & ORDER’ and even ‘SILENT MAJORITY,'” the New York Times reports.
“But if anything, Mr. Trump seems to be occupying the political lane held that year by George Wallace, the segregationist former governor of Alabama who ran as a third-party candidate to the right of Nixon. While he does not share Wallace’s extreme positions, Mr. Trump is running hard on a combative pro-police, anti-protester platform, appealing to Americans turned off by unrest in the streets.”
McAuliffe Says Democrats Fine with Biden In Basement
Terry McAuliffe told a videoconference meeting of Virginia Democrats over the weekend that Joe Biden should remain in his basement — where he has famously campaigned remotely during the coronavirus pandemic — and that Democratic officials are broadly “preferring” that Biden stay out of the limelight, Fox News reports.
Said McAuliffe: “People say all the time, ‘Oh, we got to get the vice president out of the basement.’ He’s fine in the basement. Two people see him a day: his two body people. That’s it. Let Trump keep doing what Trump’s doing.”
When Police Are Caught Lying
“Minneapolis police initially told the public that George Floyd died after a ‘medical incident during a police interaction.’ The Buffalo, New York, department said a protester ‘tripped and fell.’ Philadelphia police alleged that a college student who suffered a serious head wound had assaulted an officer,” the AP reports.
“All three claims were quickly disproved by videos seen widely on the internet and television, fueling mistrust and embarrassing agencies that made misleading or incomplete statements that painted their actions in a far more favorable light.”
Extra Bonus Quote of the Day
“Third Ward, Cuney Homes, that’s where he was born at. But everybody is going to remember him around the world. He is going to change the world.”
— Rodney Floyd, quoted by the AP, as his brother George’s funeral.
