Grand jury indicts 4 ex-cops involved in George Floyd's death

MINNEAPOLIS — A federal grand jury has indicted the four former Minneapolis police officers involved in George Floyd’s arrest and death, accusing them of violating the Black man’s constitutional rights as he was restrained face-down on the pavement and gasping for air, according to indictments unsealed Friday.

The three-count indictment names Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, J. Kueng and Tou Thao. Specifically, Chauvin, Thao and Kueng are charged with violating Floyd’s right to be free from unreasonable seizure and excessive force. All four officers are charged for their failure to provide Floyd with medical care. Chauvin was also charged in a second indictment, stemming from the arrest and neck restraint of a 14-year-old boy in 2017.

Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and J. Kueng appeared via videoconference in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis. Chauvin was not part of the court appearance.

Chauvin was convicted last month on state charges of murder and manslaughter in Floyd’s death and is in Minnesota’s only maximum-security prison as he awaits sentencing. The other three former officers face a state trial in August, and they are free on bond. They were allowed to remain free after Friday's federal court appearance.

Floyd, 46, died May 25 after Chauvin pinned him to the ground with a knee on his neck, even as Floyd, who was handcuffed, repeatedly said he couldn’t breathe. Kueng and Lane also helped restrain Floyd — state prosecutors have said Kueng knelt on Floyd’s back and Lane held down Floyd’s legs. State prosecutors say Thao held back bystanders and kept them from intervening during the 9 1/2-minute restraint.

Chauvin’s attorney, Eric Nelson, argued during his murder trial that Chauvin acted reasonably in the situation and that Floyd died because of underlying health issues and drug use. He has filed a request for a new trial, citing many issues including the judge’s refusal to move the trial due to publicity.

Floyd’s arrest and death, which a bystander captured on cellphone video, sparked protests nationwide and widespread calls for an end to police brutality and racial inequities.

The Black correspondents at the White House

White House reporters have access to the highest seat in the country — and they’re a small group. An even smaller group within that? Reporters of color.

On this episode of Playbook Deep Dive, Eugene Daniels is in conversation with fellow Black White House correspondents April Ryan (The Grio) and Ayesha Rascoe (NPR) about everything from microaggressions to death threats — to Ryan's fiery encounters with former President Donald Trump. “Covering the White House from Bill Clinton to now, race touches everything,” says Ryan. “Everything.”

Kicking off the episode, former journalist Carol McCabe Booker takes us back to the 1950s, when Alice Dunnigan was the first and only Black woman sitting in the White House briefing room. The longest President Dwight D. Eisenhower went without answering her questions? About two years. Listen to the full story on Friday’s episode of Playbook Deep Dive.

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"Something, April, that I'm always thinking about is how people that look like you and I built this building." — Eugene Daniels

"Sean Spicer telling me as a grown woman, “Stop shaking your head.” And then the president tells me to sit down. I kept popping up because you're not going to tell me, a Black woman, to sit down. Nope. So I stood up.” — April Ryan

“I think I looked at myself like, you know, [White House reporting] is a trajectory for certain people and that's just not my trajectory. And so I think you can hold yourself back because sometimes we lack the vision, right, to see where you can be because of all these other things that we often put on ourselves.” — Ayesha Rascoe

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms not seeking reelection

ATLANTA — Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced Thursday she will not seek a second term, an election-year surprise that marks a sharp turnabout for the city’s second Black woman executive who months ago was among those President Joe Biden considered for his running mate.

Bottoms, 51, disclosed her decision publicly in a lengthy open letter and accompanying video Thursday night after having told family and a close circle of associates and supporters.

“It is with deep emotions that I hold my head high and choose not to seek another term as mayor,” Bottoms wrote, saying she’d prayed over the decision with her husband, Derek, an executive at The Home Depot.

Bottoms, who narrowly won a runoff election four years ago, pushed backed against any questions about whether she could have secured a second victory later this year. She noted a re-election fundraiser she held with Biden and said polls showed her in a strong position.

“‘Is she afraid of the competition?’ NEVER,” Bottoms wrote.

Bottoms’ tenure has been a mix of rough-and-tumble City Hall politics and an ever-brightening national spotlight for her beyond the city. She was among Biden’s earliest endorsers and watched her profile rise early during the coronavirus pandemic and the renewed attention on policing in the United States after George Floyd’s killing by a white Minneapolis officer last spring.

She drew plaudits for a nationally televised news conference in which she chided protesters to “go home” while noting her own experiences as a mother of Black sons to empathize with citizens distraught over police violence.

Bottoms became the focus of criticism herself weeks later when an Atlanta police officer shot and killed Rayshard Brooks. The officer, Garrett Rolfe, was fired last June, a day after he shot the Black man in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant. Rolfe was later charged with murder.

But the Atlanta Civil Service Board on Wednesday reversed the firing, finding that the city did follow its own procedures and failed to grant Rolfe due process. Bottoms said then that Rolfe would remain on administrative leave while criminal charges against him are resolved.

The mayor did not mention Floyd or Brooks in her announcement letter, alluding only “social justice movement (that) took over our streets ... and we persisted.”

New Jerseyans still giving Murphy high marks for his handling of the pandemic, poll finds

Two-thirds of New Jerseyans say Gov. Phil Murphy is doing a good job handling the coronavirus outbreak, and nearly as many say the restrictions he‘s imposed to slow the spread of Covid-19 have been appropriate, according to a Monmouth University poll released Thursday.

While the 66 percent who approve of Murphy’s handling of the outbreak may be a strong number, it’s down significantly from the 79 percent who said the same thing a year ago, just after New Jersey suffered the worst of the pandemic. At the same time, 27 percent of those surveyed said Murphy has done a bad job dealing with the pandemic.

Murphy, a progressive Democrat, is up for reelection in November. Other results released Wednesday from the same poll showed his general approval rating at 57 percent. Other than California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who’s facing a recall, Murphy is the only incumbent governor on the ballot this year.

Although New Jersey has the highest coronavirus death rate in the country — much of it from early in the pandemic — 53 percent of those surveyed think the state is doing better than others in dealing with coronavirus, while 23 percent say it’s doing worse and 23 percent say it’s doing about the same.

The poll also found that majorities of New Jerseyans support the easing restrictions placed on businesses and support opening schools for full-time in-person instruction in the fall. New Jersey residents are also less likely to refuse to get the Covid-19 vaccine than the nation as a whole, according to the poll.

Overall, 58 percent of New Jersey residents say the measures Murphy took to slow the spread of coronavirus have been appropriate, while 27 percent say they went too far and 14 percent say they didn’t go far enough. Seventy-three percent said they support earlier-announced plans to loosen restrictions on outdoor gatherings while 60 percent felt the same regarding indoor gatherings.

The poll was conducted largely before Murphy announced earlier this week that he would lift indoor capacity limits for restaurants, gyms, businesses and churches, though still require social distancing.

Republicans have been critical of Murphy in recent months, arguing he has been slow to ease restrictions on businesses and schools and have gone after him over deaths in long-term care facilities.

On other issues, 63 percent of residents surveyed reported receiving at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, while 7 percent said they hope to get one soon. Fourteen percent said they want to “see how it goes” before getting the vaccine and 14 percent said they “likely will never get a vaccine.”

A Monmouth University survey from last month found 21 percent of the nation’s residents outright opposed vaccines.

Thus far, nearly 7.3 million vaccines have been administered in New Jersey and more than 3.2 million residents have been fully vaccinated. Murphy has said he wants 4.7 million people, or 70 percent of the state’s eligible population, fully vaccinated by the end of June.

The New Jersey survey did not find a significant difference in vaccine hesitancy between white residents and those from minority backgrounds, but 66 percent of whites reported getting the vaccine compared to 58 percent of people of color, suggesting a discrepancy based on access instead of attitudes.

“Looking at the differences in attitudes among New Jersey’s diverse communities, we may need to focus more on access than opposition to explain the varying vaccination rates,” Monmouth University Poll Director Patrick Murray said in a statement that accompanied the survey results.

According to the poll, 79 percent of New Jerseyans are either somewhat or very satisfied with the way the vaccine has been rolled out. At the same time, 52 percent say the pause in the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has not made them less comfortable about getting inoculated while 32 percent said it made them less comfortable about that specific vaccine. Just 14 percent said the J&J pause has made them less comfortable with all of the Covid-19 vaccines.

Despite the general acceptance of the vaccine, 65 percent of the parents surveyed said they would oppose requiring it for children to attend school if the vaccine is approved for them. New Jerseyans as a whole, however, narrowly favor requiring vaccines for schoolchildren, 50 percent to 46 percent.

Fifty-three percent of residents and 57 percent of parents of children under 18 say school should be fully in-person in the fall, while 33 percent and 37 percent, respectively, want schools to operate with a hybrid model. Just 7 percent of residents and 9 percent of parents want schools to operate remote-only. Fewer than 20 New Jersey school districts are still offering remote-only learning.

The Monmouth University Polling Institute surveyed 706 New Jersey adults by telephone from April 29 to May 4. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.

Florida's Agriculture commissioner outlines attack strategy against DeSantis ahead of likely challenge

TALLAHASSEE — Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried has a message ahead of her likely challenge to Gov. Ron DeSantis: It’s all about “Ron’s regime.”

Fried in recent days has been previewing her forthcoming attack strategy to voters, a pitch that will paint DeSantis as a dictator in the governor’s mansion. For fuel, Fried will focus largely on DeSantis’ push for legislation that cracks down on rioters as well as his signing an election overhaul bill that Republicans call safeguarding state elections — but Democrats have decried as voter suppression. She'll also criticize DeSantis for overruling local governments on pandemic restrictions.

“The people of the state of Florida are done with this authoritarian regime taking away power from the people of our state and trying to lock more and more people up,” Fried said.

She made her comments during a Tuesday news conference where she called on DeSantis to veto a lengthy list of bills, as well as amplify her forthcoming gubernatorial messaging on the same day Democratic Rep. Charlie Crist, a former Republican governor, announced his bid for governor. The availability came less than an hour after a meeting of DeSantis and the Florida Cabinet, where Fried and the Republican governor sat just feet from each other for nearly two hours.

Fried, like other Democrats, has zeroed in on so-called anti-riot legislation DeSantis called for in the wake of protests that sprang up across the country after the murder of George Floyd. But she’s also increasingly hitting DeSantis’ decision to invalidate pandemic orders put in place by local governments, such as mask mandates.

“The people of our state do not want a dictator for governor,” she said. “They want someone who looks out for their well-being.”

As Florida’s only statewide elected Democrat, Fried has long been seen as a 2022 challenger to DeSantis, but the field will not be her’s alone. Along with Crist announcing his bid to return to the governor’s mansion on Tuesday, Orlando Democratic Rep. Val Demings is also expected to run, and the former police chief is already drawing significant buzz in Democratic circles.

The Republican Party of Florida has largely been serving as DeSantis’ defender, lambasting Crist after his Tuesday announcement, but also sharpening their attacks on Fried because of her long-seen frontrunner status.

“Nikki Fried is once again using her office for political grandstanding and has been campaigning for governor since the day she was elected,” the party said in a statement Tuesday. “Fried should be focused on the agency she was elected to oversee. Unfortunately, she is up to her ears in conflicts of interest, and is beholden to special interests.”

Her timeline for declaring her candidacy is not yet clear, but she has signaled the announcement is imminent.

“I get that question on almost an hourly basis at this point,” Fried said during the press conference. “As our state’s only statewide elected Democrat and as someone who has always put public services before partisanship, it is becoming clearer and clearer ... that what we have seen from this governor that last two and a half years from this governor, the he must be a one-term governor.”

Yang falls behind Adams for first time in New York mayor’s race poll

NEW YORK — Eric Adams is leading the field of mayoral candidates in a new poll, marking the first time Andrew Yang is not the top contender since he shook up the race with his unexpected entry in mid-January.

Adams, the Brooklyn Borough president, was the first-place pick for 21 percent of the respondents in a three-day survey conducted by Washington, D.C.-based firm GQR, according to a copy of the survey obtained by POLITICO. Yang followed at 18 percent, and City Comptroller Scott Stringer had 15 percent support.

The poll of 500 likely Democratic primary voters was conducted over the course of three days last week, during which Stringer’s campaign was rocked by a 20-year-old accusation of sexual assault.

No other candidate cracked double digits, and 11 percent of those polled reported being undecided ahead of the June 22 primary to replace outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Until now, Adams has generally ranked second to Yang, though a poll conducted by charter school organization Students First recently found him inching closer to the first-time mayoral candidate who has received the most media coverage — albeit much of it critical.

But Adams, who has yet to spend any of his $7.9 million campaign war chest on TV ads, typically gets the second-highest amount of media attention, according to someone involved in the race who tracks that metric.

A former police officer who speaks openly about being assaulted by police officers when he was a teenager, Adams has been almost singularly focused on the rise in gun violence across the city. Where Yang is looking to capture the mood of an electorate anxious for New York to rebound from the Covid-19 pandemic, Adams is positioning himself as the candidate vowing to tackle a steady spike in crime.

Adams dominated with Black voters, garnering 47 percent of their support, compared to 11 percent of whites and 8 percent of Hispanics polled. Yang, by comparison, polled best with Hispanics — 22 percent — compared to 17 percent of white voters and 12 percent of Black voters.

Stringer did best of the eight candidates polled among white voters, seizing 24 percent, even as his campaign became embroiled in responding to an allegation that he groped a campaign volunteer in 2001. Though he denied the accusation, many of his left-leaning supporters quickly abandoned his bid. He has said he has no intention of abandoning his mayoral run.

“Every other poll has us in first place, but we’ve always said this would be a close race,” Yang co-campaign manager Chris Coffey said. “The only poll that really matters is the one on June 22 and we expect to win that one.”

Evan Thies, spokesperson for Adams, said the poll “shows what we have seen on the ground for months — that New Yorkers want Eric to be the next mayor because they share his vision for a safer, fairer city where prosperity is shared by all.”

The results are disappointing for the two candidates who have spent the most on TV ads — Shaun Donovan and Ray McGuire — who are at 8 percent and 6 percent, respectively. Between their own campaigns and multimillion-dollar expenditures on their behalf, each has been on air consistently in recent months, advertising their life stories and policy chops.

"It's clear this race is wide open and will break late, and this poll is yet another that speaks to exactly that dynamic," said senior Donovan adviser, Rick Fromberg. "It's also important to remember that the candidate who was in Shaun Donovan's position at this stage of the race in 2013 is the current mayor."

Of those polled, 55 percent identified themselves as liberal, 27 percent as moderate and 14 percent as conservative. Both Adams and Yang are running on relatively moderate messages, and both have been identified as concerns for a political action committee fundraising to elect a progressive mayor.

Forty percent of those polled were white; 30 percent Black; 19 percent Hispanic; and 7 percent Asian.

Newsom's AG pick will test California's mood on criminal justice

OAKLAND — Becoming California's top cop may have been the easy part. Keeping the job is another story.

Rob Bonta was Gov. Gavin Newsom's choice for state attorney general after eight years as a liberal Democratic state lawmaker. He was celebrated in March by police reformers and Asian American organizations as a groundbreaking pick at a time of social upheaval.

But Bonta has routinely been at odds with law enforcement, who remain powerful in California and could very well back a credible challenger. Whether Bonta survives next year in his first statewide election will be the ultimate test of whether this once tough-on-crime state has truly changed.

Bonta enters as one of the nation's most liberal attorneys general and has repeatedly spoken about a lack of trust between law enforcement and the communities they police. His ascension comes as reform-minded prosecutors have come to power around California and the country and ignited a fierce battle with from law enforcement. Bonta is allied with those prosecutors.

“I’ve been proud to partner with each of you to pass a number of big reforms and to right historic wrongs — to repair our criminal justice system,” Bonta told lawmakers during his confirmation hearing, adding that he hoped to make California “a national vanguard for reform.”

Bonta, 48, takes over a position that has become a prime Democratic stepping stone. The last three state AGs were now-Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Vice President Kamala Harris, and former Gov. Jerry Brown.

Eight years ago, Bonta arrived in Sacramento in the midst of a generational shift in thinking on law and order. Emboldened by durable Democratic majorities in both houses of the Legislature and victories at the ballot box, California lawmakers have spent years repudiating the state’s tough-on-crime past by pushing to reduce incarceration and cut down sentencing. Bonta’s record as a lawmaker aligns him firmly with that trend.

Still, voters remain unpredictable. While they affirmed sentencing rollbacks at the ballot last year, they also chose to keep California's cash bail system, overriding the Legislature's attempt to ban it.

Two serious Bonta challengers have emerged and more could follow. Republican Nathan Hochman, a former assistant U.S. attorney general, and independent Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert announced they would run soon after Bonta was confirmed last month.

Schubert in particular could pose a tough challenge if she survives the June top-two primary. She left the Republican Party in 2018 and has won big headlines for playing a lead role in solving the Golden State Killer crime spree — perhaps the state's most puzzling cold case in the last 50 years — and helping to identify inmates who were illegally collecting unemployment benefits from California during the pandemic.

She said in an interview that “some of these bills that Bonta is supporting or passing” fuel “the continual erosion of crime victims rights and really a danger to public safety.”

The campaign could morph into the latest referendum on California’s aggressive moves away from stringent sentencing and incarceration. A new class of progressive prosecutors like Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón and San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin has come to power in California, channeling a national racial justice movement and tapping into a national fundraising network that can counter the deep resources of law enforcement unions. Bonta endorsed Gascón and has worked with Boudin on police use-of-force legislation.

Both Boudin and Gascón have faced headwinds since their election. They are staring down recall campaigns, and a statewide group representing prosecutors joined with Los Angeles line attorneys in suing to block Gascón’s efforts to suspend sentencing enhancements, expanding a rift between the majority of California’s prosecutors and a new generation of reformers. Schubert is a leader in the prosecutors' group, the California District Attorneys Association.

Bonta’s reelection campaign is likely to reproduce those dynamics on a statewide scale. Bonta predicted at his introductory press conference that “a lot of folks [are] prepared to get behind an election.” Law enforcement interests could throw their weight behind a candidate who rejects the agenda of reformers like Bonta and Gascón.

Schubert already has repudiated Gascón, refusing to share jurisdiction on cases with him, and she said in an interview that “when Gascón and Chesa Boudin are the ones tweeting out their overwhelming support for [Bonta], anyone who’s concerned about public safety should be concerned about this nomination.”

“I believe crime victims’ rights have been eviscerated and they have been ignored by these types of individuals,” she said.

Bonta political adviser Dana Williamson responded that Schubert is "tremendously flawed" and called the Sacramento prosecutor's criticisms "Trumpian lies" in a likely preview of campaign messaging next year. Williamson was quick to point to CDAA's misuse of $2.9 million in enforcement funds on political activities and Schubert decisions not to prosecute officers in high-profile police shootings.

"She has refused to bring excessive force cases and serves as treasurer of an organization that misspent millions meant to prosecute polluters," Williamson said in a statement. "Now she wants to lead the Department of Justice — the same entity that is investigating her organization's misdeeds."

Bonta’s history has trained him for a legal career while orienting him toward activism. His parents helped organize California farm workers, giving him a front-row seat from the family trailer — provided by the powerful United Farm Workers — to one of the state’s most storied social justice movements. That experience ensured, in Bonta’s words, that “their fight for justice has been hardwired into who I am.” He went on to earn undergraduate and law degrees from Yale, where he captained the soccer team, before working as an attorney for San Francisco and as a health care official and then vice mayor of Alameda.

He won his East Bay Assembly seat in 2012, wearing a traditional barong tagalog for his swearing in as he became the first Filipino-American to serve in the Legislature. Throughout his time there, Bonta has been a reliably progressive vote at the leftward end of Sacramento’s ever-growing Democratic caucus, and his bills show a long-running commitment to overhauling how California incarcerates immigrants and inmates — repeatedly putting him at odds with influential law enforcement interests.

He fought for years to limit California’s use of private detention facilities, in 2019 securing a ban on for-profit prison contracts. His efforts to phase out cash bail culminated in a law banning the practice that voters subsequently overturned. He sought repeatedly to limit California’s cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He has pushed to expand compensation for crime victims and to offer services like condoms and pregnancy care to inmates. He firmly opposes the death penalty.

Bonta has also pushed year after year to have California collect more precise data on Asian American subgroups. One of his first bills signed into law required state curricula on California’s farmworker movement to cover the contributions of Filipino-Americans like his parents.

That record helped build an alliance of criminal justice reformers and Asian Americans who pushed Newsom to appoint Bonta attorney general — a message that gained urgency after a wave of anti-Asian violence. In an interview, Bonta said it was possible to be “smart on crime, while pursuing accountability, supporting our victims and enforcing our existing laws is the right way.”

Progressive backers hope Bonta will continue pushing to reduce incarceration and policing in marginalized communities, forego the death penalty and advocate for more police accountability. During his confirmation hearing, Bonta endorsed legislation that would allow California to decertify peace officers for misconduct — a priority for reformers.

“What's happening in the world is we're talking about accountability for individual officers, as we just saw with the Derek Chauvin trial,” said Melina Abdullah, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Los Angeles Chapter, “but we're not talking about accountability for departments. And so we'd love to have Bonta engage in a way that brings accountability for departments.”

That accountability would include investigating police departments when officers shoot and kill suspects, Abdullah said. One of Bonta’s tasks will be enforcing a new state law requiring his office to take over police slaying investigations — which was enacted last year after years of thwarted attempts.

Bonta will have just months on the job before he has to stand for reelection in 2022. That he represents a safely Democratic seat in the liberal Bay Area brings advantages and disadvantages: a lack of competitive elections has let him pile up a $2.4 million war chest, but it also means Bonta has never been truly tested during election season and has scant statewide name recognition.

Despite the competitive election ahead, Bonta can win public opinion, said Tinisch Hollins, the executive director of Californians for Safety and Justice. She points to the elections of Gascón and Boudin as an indication that voters want progressive-minded law enforcement officials.

“There will always be a public political debate about it,” said Hollins, “but when we look at where folks have placed their priorities in terms of what they want to see around public safety, AG Bonta and others like him are on the right track.”

Santa Clara District Attorney Jeff Rosen, a progressive who was on Newsom’s short list for the attorney general nomination, said he believes California voters have a strong desire to see “smart and balanced” criminal justice reform that will be reflected during the election, but cautioned that there’s “very little appetite for a radical dismantling of the criminal justice system.”

“It's not defunding police, it's not tearing down the jail, it's not closing all the prisons,” he continued. “I think [voters] are looking for solutions that keep them and their families safe, and that reduce crime in a humane and effective way.”

Law enforcement groups are taking a cautious approach for now, wary of antagonizing the state’s new top prosecutor before he takes office. San Francisco Police Officers Association head Tony Montoya said Bonta’s record would put him to the left of any prior California attorney general, but Montoya said he remains optimistic they can find common ground as long as Bonta acts “based on the law and the facts” and “with the least amount of politics involved.”

El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson, who heads the California District Attorneys Association, argued Bonta will come to power at a critical moment for public safety, pointing to a “staggering” surge in homicides in Los Angeles and criticizing Gascon’s “reckless” policies.

“It’s a big responsibility, and we’re really hoping he’s a serious attorney general that will recognize some of those serious problems we’re facing,” Pierson said. “In Los Angeles, and to a lesser extent in San Francisco people don’t feel safe.”